I cannot celebrate the 4th of July this year. Instead, I offer up a portion of a speech given by Frederick Douglas 173 years ago. While he was addressing the evils of slavery, let there be no doubt that what was being addressed here was that one class of men had power to dominate and control another.
"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."
173 years later, people are being snatched off the streets by masked men and taken away to undisclosed locations. They are being backed up by military force called in by our own government.
There are people who have built a tent city in the middle of an alligator infested swamp. They plan to fill this with people, children included. Laura Loomer, one of the president's advisors gloated, "The good news is the alligators are guaranteed 65 million meals if we get started now."
Think of it.
Desperate people in the middle of a swamp. Insects. Tents that leak and flood (and have already done so after only two days). Parents. Children. Families. Old people. Very young people. The inhumanity of it is bad enough, but to be joking about it is pathologically lacking in empathy.
Yet, here we are.
So, I quote Frederick Douglas once again. "There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."
Deb asked a question that made me stop and think. "Has it been the two years you projected for the new house?" I looked back through my posts, and found that Carrot Top, aka Johnny began pouring our basement June 1st of 2023. So. Yes, it has been two years. Two years, 1 month and 2 days to be precise. It seems like such a long time ago, and I am grateful this project is winding down. We have the next big project which is the attic, and then it needs to be sided this summer, which can wait until we are moved into it to get done.
We've been cleaning up around the outside of the house now that the house is no longer a construction zone. William was a big help with that today, neatly stacking some wood. He also helped put up some lattice on the raised beds for the cucumbers. I've never done that before, but I see other people doing it, and it will save garden space if the vines are going up instead of sprawling out.
I am discouraged today. I've been working very hard on lifestyle changes. Part of that has been paying close attention to what I eat. Part of it has been walking faithfully. It is frustrating to me that my healthcare provider is really, really pushing the metformin. My A1C was 6.4, which is prediabetic levels. That really galvanized me into making those lifestyle changes. My A1C dropped to 6 which made me feel better. Much to my surprise, I still received a phone call. "The doctor has reviewed your test results and wants to put you on Metformin."
I told her that according to NIH, themselves, they do not recommend treating prediabetes with metformin. They encourage healthy eating and exercise and watching the numbers carefully to see if the levels respond to that. There was some polite disagreement. In the end, I refused to medicate.
My next well check? They wanted to send me to a podiatrist for a diabetic foot evaluation. I was starting to get frustrated. I said, "I am not diabetic. I am prediabetic, and after three months of exercise and good eating, I've reduced my A1C by .4. So no. We're not doing the foot doctor."
Today, I had another A1C test to monitor the situation. I walked to the appointment, which was a mile and a half. I was feeling pretty confident about the whole thing. I've lost 25 pounds now since making the big changes back in December, so I was pleased with that. Surely, surely, all my hard work would pay off.
I looked at my A1C results just now. 6.1. How disappointing! Mostly because I know I will have to argue with the doctor again, and I hate that.
So.
That's my day.
America has had even a worse day. I'm not going to go into it.
But here are some words of wisdom from Pete Buttigieg:
"The thing I would like for Americans to feel is that it is the very pain of this moment that signals how important it is. All the moments in history that we study, admire and romanticize were pretty brutal to be in the middle of and that's what makes it so interesting. For better or worse, we are in one of those now and that should propel us to think more originally as things get burned down around us - about what we would build instead."
(Thanks to Jackie for passing that along to me. If ever was a day that I needed to read an encouraging word, this is that day.)
I spent a couple hours working with my raised beds today. I ran string between stakes to make a lattice for my peas. I have stakes for the beans, but I didn't bother putting up the string, since the beans are not beginning to 'vine' and wrap themselves around things yet. I planted chives and an oregano. I pinched off the bottom leaves of the tomatoes. Everything looks hopeful.
A lady was redoing her flower beds and had a load of lemon drops to give away, and I love them, so I said I'd take a shovel full. Long story short, we got to talking (you may not noticed, but I'm a bit of a blabber), and it turns out she also takes care of ferals, getting them neutered and trying to find homes for them. On top of everything else, she's just made the decision to get a knee replacement, and was most interested to talk to me about it.
LATE EDIT:
I had no idea that there were so many flowers referred to as 'lemon drops'. These are the ones I have. They are an evening primrose.
Tim was supposed to pick up my lemon drops since she lives close to his church. Bless her heart. I got so many lemon drops. I also got spiderwort, some kind of lily that she can't quite remember, and a bag of bulbs dug up that certainly were something. (Oooh...I love surprises!) They all went into my rag bag flower garden. At some point, I am hoping that it becomes lush and green with flowers for all seasons. But, realistically, this will not happen over night.
Today, I painted trim boards. We are finishing up the trim on the bedrooms, and putting on bedroom doors. Tim has been working hard. We've got family coming and a lot to be done in 3 weeks. It won't be done, of course, but we are hoping that we will have it settled enough that everyone can be there, instead of here in town.
I'd like to begin filling the new house with memories, but it will work out the way that it is meant to work out.
Probably a year ago, someone posted a house for sale on Facebook. Since it was a place I recognized, I was interested in reading about it. Something I noticed right away is that the picture showed the whole house. It was a duplex, and 1/2 the house is occupied. The description made it sound as if the house was a single family dwelling, and that the picture was what the buyer was getting. It wasn't.
The first thing that I noticed was that they were attempting to attract people who could not get traditional financing. They did the financing. In fact they insisted that they do the financing. They didn't accept a bank mortgages. They said that they were trying to help people who struggled, whose credit might not be good enough to qualify for a mortgage.
In other words, they were targeting desperate people.
The other thing that I noticed is this. The house is very run down. Part of the purchase agreement was that the "buyer" needed to sign a paper agreeing to do repairs on a scheduled basis in addition to paying that 'low, low house payment'. (Spoiler: it was not a low payment. While I cannot remember what it was, it was every bit as high as paying rent.)
What made me sick was this: the sheer number of people wanting to know more about this. Scores of comments.
I put my own comment on it. I said, "Do NOT enter into an agreement with these people. Basically, this is a very run down house, and they are looking for other people to do the renovations for them. Not only that, they make you sign a time line of the repairs to be done, and make it clear that if you do not keep up with their time line, you will lose the house. I will bet money that the intention here is to get their house fixed up at no cost. I will also bet money that anyone entering into an agreement with this company will never own that house. This is a very unethical situation. Before you sign anything, you need to take the paperwork to a lawyer."
Of course the people "selling" this house were upset about this. They launched into me saying that they had been in the business of "helping people move into home ownership" for many years. I looked up their business license and called BS on that. It was a relatively new company.
They tried to tell me that I did not know how buying a house works. (HA!) I told them that we'd been buying and selling houses since 2008 and I knew exactly how it worked. I also said, "Okay. if this is on the up and up, I want to buy your house. I won't need to finance through you. We will purchase in cash."
I waited. No response.
"Proof of funds available." Again, no response.
So I posted the name of our lawyer and his phone number. I urged people to refuse to sign anything without having a lawyer look the paperwork over, pointing out that no lawyer would say that it was a good idea to pour money into fixing up a house that was not even in your name and wouldn't be in your name for many years.
I was blocked. But I kept an eye on that duplex and saw that after a few months, they found someone to move in.
I've been doing a lot of walking, all over town. I really try to get in at least two miles a day. Last weekend, I had Tim drop me off on the west end of town and I walked home. I walked by that house, and I saw a young couple with two small children loading up a shabby truck and a U-haul trailer.
I had so many questions. But I talked to the children who were playing on the sidewalk, and kept on going.
We got up early and went to Eastern States to buy the rest of the trim boards. We saw a couple with a 5 foot roll of 'bubble wrap', a product that goes under a tin roof. They were trying to stuff it into a Kia. It was not working.
We stopped and tried to help them, but there was just no way that it was going to go. I said, "Where do you need this to go?" and the man said ruefully, "Corry."
I said, "We're going to Corry..."
The man asked where we lived in Corry.
I said, "We don't, but we need to go through Corry to get our load to Grand Valley."
Tim said, "Yeah. We can haul it for you. We'll have room."
The guy said, "Really? Do you know where Gigi's is?" It made me laugh because that's Tim's favorite diner. "Yes," I said. We sure do know where Gigi's is."
Tim and he hauled the roll over to our truck and slid it under the tonneau cover. I waited with his wife, who was the tiniest bit cross. "I TOLD him it wouldn't fit in the car. I wanted him to bring the truck but nooooooo..." We commismerated about stubborn men, and she said, "Do you know -------- -------? He lives in Grand Valley." Could have knocked me over with a feather. He is a distant cousin. She said, "My sister was his mother." I said, "Well, my maternal grandmother was his father's sister." Just made me laugh.
Anyways, while we waited, Tim showed me the siding he wanted. It's not what I would have chosen, but you know what? At this point, I'm tired of debating every last little thing. I just want to get this done. I told him it didn't matter to me.
We met our new friends in the parking lot of the diner. He had just pulled in, so the timing was perfect. While we were there, since it was shortly after noon, Tim decided that we should have lunch. The man does not miss a chance to have one of those big hamburgers.
We got some more trim up in the last bedroom, but it started to rain, so we had to haul the saw back inside. The rain is making the raised beds look nice, and I just can't get over how quickly pumpkin vines grow. Every day, there are more blossoms on the tomatoes, and that makes me happy too.
One of the things that we got today was the pulldown steps to the attic. Normally you would put them in before finishing the ceilings, but the thing is that if the inspector had seen that, we'd have had to put electric lights in the attic. We didn't want to do that, because we have windows going in on each end for ventilation and light. So...when the inspector started in on everything we needed to do to meet the standards for an attic, we simply decided to stop talking about the attic. The inspection is complete, and now we'll put those stairs and windows in.
To reduce the dust from that job, Tim wanted to have the bedroom door on. We can tarp the room, and shut the door while we work, and hopefully the dust will stay in that room instead of settling all over the house. Of course, we don't have bedroom doors yet, so that was something else we needed to take care of. We made a run to Lowe's when we were done and picked out the doors we liked. Then, I walked around the corner and saw two special order doors that had been returned and were now on clearance. I called Tim around, and he liked them just fine, and so, for about half the price of just one door we wanted, we got the two doors. They are primed and ready to be painted.
I didn't walk today. It's rainy and I didn't feel like getting caught in it.
A sad thing happened Saturday. A young man with a new sports car was horsing around. He hit another car at a high rate of speed. Both vehicles hit a bridge and burst into flames. Both drivers were killed and the girl friend was life flighted to Pittsburgh. The road had been closed for hours while they cleaned up the scene. We passed over the bridge 4 times today, and it is a bit shocking to see the blackened concrete and the damage and to remember that on a beautiful June day, in the blink of an eye, two lives were lost.
Our hero, John Fetterman, with his thoughts on the Big Beautiful Bill. Start it at 37 seconds. Glad that he's got his priorities straight.
That's all I have to say. The news gets worse by the day.
Well...except that Bryan Kohberger has decided to plead guilty to four counts of murder in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table.
We have a neighbor. He drinks too much. Has a tendency to pee in the side yard because he's too lazy to do the stairs to use his facilities. He is a trump-er tried and true. After the last election, he began to yell from his porch every time he saw us. "What do you think of tRUMP now?" or "HAHAHHAAA! tRUMP won, how do you like that??" So four years ago, I stopped dead in my tracks and said, "Listen. We have been neighbors for quite a few years. This crap is going to stop. You will stop yelling about your politics. We don't want to hear it."
I stood right there and fixed him with a look.
He said, in a quiet voice, "I can do that."
I said, "Good," and continued up the driveway. And that was that.
The intervening years have been pretty quiet. He is paranoid as heck. Has cameras watching the street in front of the house. He owns one old car. One old truck. A trailer. 3 motorcycles, takes up all the parking in front of his building, and he is paranoid about his stuff. He thinks everyone is out to get his stuff.
He's riled up about something. He's been glaring and being mad and giving us the bird. We went out to dinner a couple weeks ago. My sister said, "What's wrong with your neighbor? Why is he flipping us off?"
"*sigh* It's what he does."
Tim trimmed the bushes at the end of our driveway. They blocked his view when he was trying to back out of the driveway. Part of them were over the line. He trimmed our side. Dan-the-man was pretty upset. We ignored him. He escalated the glaring and the flipping off and swearing at us when we came and went.
Today, he blew a fit. We had thrown his grill cover on the ground and it had cost him big money and by god, we were going to give him that money. Tim got mad. "We did NOT throw your grill cover on the ground..." but just that quick he was ranting about his bushes. He said something about his trailer, which for the record, we never touched either.
And it just made me mad. I was shrieking like a fish wife, loud enough for it to be heard up and down the street. "WE DID NOT THROW YOUR GRILL COVER ON THE GROUND!!!! WE HAD A PRETTY BAD STORM ROLL THROUGH LAST NIGHT. YOU EVER THINK THAT MAYBE IT BLEW OFF IN THE WIND?"
He looked a little shocked.
But I roared on: "AND BEFORE YOU SAY ONE WORD ABOUT THE FUCKING BUSHES, THEY ARE NOT YOUR BUSHES! YOU ARE A TENANT. YOU DON'T OWN THE HOUSE! YOU DON'T OWN THE BUSHES!"
He waved his arm with his cigarette. "I know it," he said.
"SO SHUT UP ABOUT THEM!"
And I wound up with, "AND WHILE WE'RE TALKING, YOU NEED TO TAKE YOUR DRUNK ASS UPSTAIRS TO WHEN YOU NEED TO PEE. I'M ABOUT SICK OF SEEING THAT. GOT ANYTHING ELSE FOR ME? NO? THEN KEEP YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH SHUT. JUST SHUT UP, BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE OF YOUR MESS."
I had my appointment with the surgeon today. The questionaire you had to fill out: omgeeeeeee, it was the most ridiculous thing ever.
The first part was about my mental health:
Have you felt despair? (Shoot. Any person with a modicum of sense has looked around at the chaos and felt some despair.)
Have you ever felt hopeless? (See above)
Do you feel sad sometimes? (see above...)
There was no way to answer the question in your own words. You had to tick a box. Sometimes. Never. Rarely. Often. etc.
This went on for like ten questions, and then we moved on to the physical questions.
Can you climb a flight of stairs? (Yes)
Can you climb three flights of stairs? (Dunno...)
Can you climb ten flights of stairs? (for heaven's sake. We don't have any ten story buildings where I live...)
I began to voice my complaints in a quiet voice to Tim.
Can you run 10 miles? (No...)
Can you run 5 miles? (No...)
Can you run 3 miles? (No again...)
Can you run 1 mile? (For pity's sake!)
I related the ridiculousness to Tim. "I suppose it depends on what is chasing me..."
And there was a snort of laughter from across the room. I looked across and another gray haired couple were laughing together. "I'm sorry!" the woman said, "But that's funny! Don't you think that this questionaire would be a lot more fun if they let you make up your own answers?"
"Absolutely!" I said. "The thing about these questionaires is that they do not factor in your own specifics. They want to lump everyone all together, and I don't see how this information is useful. What is normal for me at 68 is a lot different than say, a 20 year old athlete."
I said, "These questions are stupid, really. I swore when I left the military that I wouldn't run again unless a child was bleeding or something was chasing me. I've held true to that."
I read on.
Can you lift a 50 lb bag of sand?
I said, "Well, that seems awfully specific. I carried a 40 lb bag of diatomaceous earth yesterday. I guess that's close enough."
The man said, "You must have chickens."
I said, "Not yet. I use the diatomaceous earth to sprinkle on my garden to keep the bugs from eating my beans and peppers. I want chickens though. Three."
The man said, "Three is plenty to provide eggs for the two of you."
I said, "I think it will be. I have an nice chicken coop for them." The man laughed that I had my chicken coop already but no chickens.
We went on about the many uses of diatomaceous earth, to include deworming and flea control, which led us to talking about animals. He was curious about cows.
"My sister lives across the road and they have cows," I said.
"So they might not notice if one came up missing?" he laughed.
"Well, we can buy from them, but we eat a lot of venison, really."
His wife said, "When we get a place of our own, I want a teacup donkey." The man snorted. The woman said, "You promised me a teacup donkey!~"
They argued quietly between the two of them.
I went back to my questionaire. It was on a tablet and while we were cheerfully talking, it had timed out. I sighed and took it to the window. The receptionist said cheerfully, "All done?" I said, "Well. No. It timed out. You may not have noticed, but I am a bit of a blabber."
I heard laughter behind me.
I came back with the tablet.
Can you run 100 yds? (sigh...yeah. Probably could manage that.)
Question by question, I went through them. When I took the tablet back to the receptionist, I said, "This really is a ridiculous set of questions." She said, "It is ridiculous."
Anyways, my name finally got called and we waited 45 minutes to see the surgeon. He said, "It looks like you're doing great." I told him I was. "Remember I said that it was St. Boniface's feast day, and I expected a miracle? Well...you pulled one out of your hat. Thanks."
He laughed. He asked me how far I could bend my knee. I demonstrated. He said, "Can you do everything that you want?" I said, "Yes."
He told me that I didn't need another appointment, but to call if I had any problems.
So that was that. I walked out of there feeling like a
We came home, changed clothes and headed to the new house. Tim mowed. We settled the camper. I dug holes for three plants for some flower plants that a lady gave me. I took care of the cats and three of them came running when they were called. Possum will not be petted yet, but Sigh was as loving as she was yesterday. Tiger is nervous but accepting petting.
It was another hot and humid day. I was soaked with sweat after my digging. Tim was dripping wet after his mowing. 86° with 91% humidity.
We knocked off early.
Tim dropped me off on the west side of town and I walked home. It took me nearly an hour to accomplish that walk. The sun beat down. I watched the clouds building up in the west and knew a storm was coming. Once home, it came, and I threw open the windows to catch the wind and hear the thunder. It bucketed down. The storm is over, and it is comfortable for the first time in 3 or 4 days. The thunder is rumbling in the distance as another storm moves in, and it feels like a blessing.
