These days

The trip to see my son and his family was a good time. Both of the girls love fancy dresses, and it is my favorite thing to look for them at thrift stores. I find a dress or two every time I go, and it is fun to see how excited they get over their 'beautiful dresses'.  When you are paying $6 or less for a dress, they can dress up every day of the week if they want, because it is not the end of the world if a dress gets damaged. 

So it was a great weekend. My kids got a 'date night'. My grandkids and I had a movie night. It has been a long time since I saw '101 Dalmations'. It has been years since I read a Ramona Quimby book out loud. There was a fairy tea party. The youngest was very proud of a rock she had painted for me, which now sits in a dish on my window sill with other rocks, a flint scraping tool, pottery shards and fossils. We went to a chile pepper festival. We went out to eat an I had the best apple walnut salad I ever had in my life. We played in the creek and gathered walnuts for the 'queen of walnuts' who stood on a rock tossing them into the ripples and watching them float away. It was a wonderful weekend filled with both extraordinary and ordinary moments in perfect measure.

We are working on the siding. We will finish the third side of the house today. 

We had errands to run yesterday. We went up to see Levi and Mattie. We want to invite them to our house for a picnic. We are also hoping to be able to take them on a train ride. It is a three hour trip through some pretty scenic areas while listening to stories about the history of the oil boom days.

Levi is not sure. He needs to discuss it with his elders. For the first time, I really got a clear glimpse of what they are up against. There is a community meeting. The Kwik Fill wants to start selling beer. The Amish community is hopeful that it won't happen. There is one other place in town that sells beer, the 'Beer Bank', which is just what it sounds like: a local branch of the bank closed, someone bought it, and now it is a beer distributor. Levi said, 'if you see an Amish coming out of there, you know exactly what he is doing. Kwik Fill sells a lot of things. It is easier to sneak beer out of a place like that."

I said, "I didn't realize that was a problem in the Amish community."

He said, "it is a big problem."

That kind of opened a door to ask questions. I talked about the archery place, and the young Amish man who used trail cams and had a cell phone to receive the pictures. The surprising thing (to me) was that "when a business that huge goes up, it is because they are making big profits. They are ripping people off." Levi feels strongly about that. He also feels strongly about young people just ignoring the rules that the community sets. He sees a way of life going. 

We couldn't stay long. We just explained the train ride, and left it with them to decide. We will respect the decision.

It has been raining kittens. They are all over the place on the second floor of the garage, which means they are falling into the first floor on a pretty regular basis. One of the older feral kittens was quite aggressive. For the babies' own safety, we gathered them up and brought them into the basement, and are in the process of finding homes for them. 

I gave five kittens baths yesterday. They took that pretty well. They eat a surprising amount of cat food and are fat as ticks, very playful and come running when I go downstairs. Possum, the mother comes in to visit at will. She is the next to be neutered, along with the oldest kitten, from Sigh. Then in October, Tiger's two kittens. At that point, we will only have Possum's kittens, the ones that haven't gone to new homes. We are getting a handle on that problem.

Charlie Kirk. 

It is ironic that a man who publicly declared that "unfortunately, there will people who will be killed by guns", but that it was worth it to protect oursecond amendment rights. He called it prudent and a rational choice. He also felt that empathy was a liberal concept that "has done a lot of damage". His current talking points included pinning the blame for mass shootings on transgender people, even though the vast majority of shootings are done by young angry white men.

So. now he is dead. To the evangelicals, he has become a martyr. I hear the news reporting his death as "an assassination", words that I did not hear applied to the shootings of the Minnesota legislators a few months ago.

There are ultra conservatives putting out "calls to actions", urging people to avenge this.

You know, a couple days ago, we had a young man taken into custody for threats at our own high school, the one our William attends. Of course, social media was on fire. Someone commented that Obama started this. Someone else got a lot of likes for wondering about the young man's sexual orientation. He defended himself vigorously in a flurry of comments, and he had a great many supporting comments.

I can't grieve for Charlie Kirk. His words did a lot of damage, but I have a feeling his death will do even more.