I’ve been a little uneven this week. I went for a walk and cleared my head a bit.
Sequence.
We put a portable screen on one of the back doors of the great room. The intention was to create a chance of a cross breeze to keep the house cool during these spring months. It’s been lovely. However, Truman’s intention has been to use this new screen as an escape hatch.
Lucky and Jinx have been keeping an eye on Truman’s activities. While he did find one way out, we put up an additional barrier and now he’s checking that out.
Mired.
Yesterday’s shooting in Nashville was awful. Some sources say there’s been over 100 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 and we haven’t even hit day 100 yet. Unfortunately it feels like the country is numb to this sort of thing. Children should never be afraid to go to school. Teachers should never have to worry about evacuating their classrooms during a mass shooting. School was always suppose to be safe space.
There are no safe spaces in the United States in 2023.
According to some reports, the shooter, who was also killed, was a trans individual. Some of the news outlets are not reporting this, others are trumpeting it quite loudly. Apparently the shooter had been a student at this private school back during their school days.
There are some opinions I have that I won’t share here on this blog. My opinion of the recent trend of conflating gay rights with trans rights is quite complicated. My opinion is probably best left unwritten in this space. But the fact that the shooter was trans will definitely affect the increasing political spotlight on the subject.
And we don’t need that right now.
Love.
I have no idea why this clip crossed my mind today, but here we go. Let’s watch Charo perform “The Love Boat”. I don’t know why they’re in the lobby of a Holiday Inn.
Street Fair.
Marshall tagged along as we went to the Street Fair again this year. I don’t know the official name of the street fair but it takes place on Fourth Street Avenue. It’s a good time of year for this sort of thing; it’s not too hot and the vibe is friendly. I find the vibe to be friendly most of the time here in Tucson. I liked the laid back nature of this town.
We saw a few things of interest and had some good food. I had a beer while chatting with the folks in the neighborhood committee sponsoring the beer tent. The beer wore off quickly.
I stopped by a wet shaving supplies tent, but the man with the huge beard didn’t have much to say. I thought it was odd that he was selling shaving supplies but I’ll check out his website someday.
Overall we had a pleasant afternoon.
Caturday.
It’s a quiet Saturday here at the Desert Compound. The weather is gorgeous. The sun is bright, there’s a bit of a breeze, and it’s not overly hot.
Truman is enjoying the quiet of our home and taking a nap in the middle of the floor. True to form, he prefers to be close-by instead of being on top of us. He’s definitely not a snuggler. I enjoy his ambivalence that is so cat-like.
Yep.
When I was younger I noticed when folks said “life gets better as you get older”. They were absolutely correct. I’m comfortable with who I am and the way I look and the way I feel. Sure, the body doesn’t do everything it used to do (a bike ride would probably kill my knees right now) but I’m in a great place and right where I should be.
Splash.
I always enjoy the small splashes of color around us here in our desert home. These are little reminders of all the good things that happen around us.
Memories.
It’s kind of weird to think I have favorite photos that accurately represent who I feel I am on the inside. However, this selfie from 2009 captures my essence of the timeframe, and seeing this photo today makes me smile.
Surly.
Having documented nearly half of my life in the blog thing (which is no longer in a trendy thing to do) can be an interesting experience. Every once in a while I’ll talk about something that has happened to us in the past and there will be a disagreement on the specificity of the events. Occasionally I’ll turn to the blog and see if I wrote something about said event. It’s a 50/50 chance as to whether I wrote anything about what we’re talking about, but as I start strolling through blog entries nearing two decades old, I realize that I’m basically the same person I was 20 years ago, albeit with remarks around different stages of technology.
For example, this blog entry from 2005 illustrates how I felt about the increasing use of cell phones in public at the time. Older and wiser(?) me looks back at this entry and notices a level of hysterics that I don’t feel nearly as much these days. Jaded? No, I don’t think so.
I want to know when everyone became so damn important that they had to yak on their cell phone whereever they may be. Are people so full of themselves and so self righteous that they think that they need to be available to their public every single, solitary second of the day? What happened to a little “down time”? The morning commute was your chance to organize yourself for the day, maybe win a contest on the radio and breathe in the sunshine and exhaust fumes. Now everyone is busy making appointments with their metrosexual stylist, yelling at the kids for making toast with the clothes iron and calling ahead for Dunkin Donuts buckets of coffee all via their cell phone.
I think the comparison is similar to what Bea Arthur discussed in one of her last interviews, comparing Maude Findlay from “Maude” to Dorothy Zbornak from “The Golden Girls”.
“They were the same height, but Dorothy would probably tell Maude to calm down a little bit”.
