Category: Rants

A Rough Start

This week start has not been a smooth one. For some time, we have observed the “newer” of our two vehicles, it is only 13 years old compared to the almost 16 year old one, has been not running well and leaking oil. We wouldn’t drive it farther than town and kept our fingers crossed that if it broke down, that daughter would be available to get us home or to a rental car location. Because it is the larger vehicle, we loaded the trash and recycling in it yesterday morning to take down to the “Convenience Center.” Don’t you love that as a name for the fenced in area with the dumpsters and recycle trailer boxes in it? As soon as hubby put the beast in reverse, I could smell the clutch and suggested we take both cars and leave the Xterra at our local shop for diagnosis and state inspection. The decision was made to take it the next time we had to go out and not yesterday. The garbage was dispatched, the package I had that needed to be dropped off at the USPS was dropped off, we drove into town to get lunch and a birthday card for a grandson, but didn’t make it home. As we started up the first hill, the smell got stronger, the car got slower, and before we got to the top, there were no gears that the car would go in. A call to daughter, but she was an hour away headed home. A call to the local mechanic and he sent a masked driver in their “Shuttle” van and another driver in the tow truck to haul it in. Once we get an estimate, we have to decide if a 13 year old car, leaking oil, with 246,000+ miles on it is worth the repair, leaving us at least for the moment with the 16 year old car with 240,000 miles on it as our sole transportation.

Last night as I prepared to address the birthday card, I realized that one of my favorite pens was missing. I can’t find it anywhere. Usually it is clipped to the small leather notebook cover that I carry in my bag, but it isn’t there. Isn’t in the bag. Isn’t stuck down the cracks of my chair. It has at least temporarily gone missing. I’m sure it will turn up at some point, in a car, a pocket, or some place I normally wouldn’t set it down.

Also yesterday as I continued to knit on my fingerless mitts, I realized that somehow, I had crossed yarn balls and both mitts were knit from one ball, linking them together with a piece of yarn too short to just cut and weave in, so I had to begin tinking (knitting backwards) for a row on one mitt and another row on both. After doing that, I decided I didn’t like the thumb gusset on the fingers down pattern as I tried one on for fit, so I pulled the needle and frogged (ripped out stitches) for many rows to get back to where the thumb stitches were picked up. Then tediously and carefully picked up the stitches again in an order that would still allow me to knit two at a time, knit a couple of rows to make sure there were no missed stitched and all the stitches were turned the right way and decided to work the wrist up vanilla pattern I always use with a classic thumb gusset that will allow me to knit a real thumb. I am probably back about to the total length I was before yesterday’s error.

During this reknit project, the television was on to the news and talking heads that analyze everything going on and I was appalled at how a congresswoman who had been in the Capitol during last week’s siege would throw a toddler tantrum over not being allowed to carry a gun into the chambers, and how dozens of the rioters from last week and people interviewed at Trump’s bazaar charade of a visit to the Alamo and his incendiary speech there yesterday, exactly parrot his language to the exact phraseology. And they call those who don’t agree with them sheep. They call themselves patriots and true Americans, yet they attack our halls of government and threaten our lawmakers.

Next disaster, a relatively minor one today. Lunch was prepared, just grilled cheese sandwiches still sitting on the griddle pan on the stove, the plates with pickles served out beside them and I called hubby down to eat. In reaching up to get a glass for my water, he knocked another to the Silestone counter below the cabinet and it exploded sending glass shooting across the stove top, the adjacent counter where the plates were waiting, and all over the floor. After glass was cleaned up, lunch tossed in the garbage, counter tops and griddle and dishes washed, I started over.

On the positive side, the hydroponic herb garden that Son 2 and family gave me for Christmas has sprouted all 6 herbs. I check each day to see how much growth has occurred. The dill, thyme, and parsley are putting out secondary leaves, The mint and basils are above the rims of their planting baskets. That was such a great gift for a gardener suffering the off season doldrums that houseplants just don’t satisfy.

Back to chores, knitting, and spinning. Hmmm, I wonder where the pen is?

Challenges begun

As the ball dropped beginning 2021, I started spinning my Christmas gift fiber to be the first official block of the Breed Blanket Project 2021 challenge. The fiber was two ounces each of two colors of a very soft BFL wool. It only takes less than an ounce to do a square so the first ounce was spun, washed, dried, and is now being knit onto the test square of Jacob wool that I spun in November and December and plied in the late days of December. Because I want a larger blanket than a dozen 10 inch squares would make, I am going to be making two or even three squares each month of the fiber selected for the month. The other two ounces of the Christmas gift is the teal still being spun. There is another ounce of each of them that can become additional squares or a hat or fingerless mitts. I love the colors of both and they are gorgeous together.

I am glad to have this challenge to keep me occupied until such a time as we can finally get a vaccine and feel somewhat safer about going out into the region for essentials and family connections. Our county of only about 15000 people has reported 652 cases of COVID, and 95 of them have occurred since December 31. The village store keeps their newspapers right at the door and my routine on days we get a paper is to take one step in with exact change, take a paper, put the money on the counter and flee without ever letting the door close. Yesterday, three customers and a vendor all left the store just as we arrived and none of them were masked. The resistance to such a simply safely measure is so strong here. I’m sure that we will see even more of a surge as the holiday gatherings that surely happened all over the county spread it. So far the hospitalization and death rates here have been fairly low which surprises me as the population is older and if the products carried by and brought out of the village store is any indication, a lot of smoking and drinking is done by the population. This is just another challenge to our new year.

Our country is facing the worst challenge with COVID and with the political climate when our “leaders” take to social media and the airwave encouraging violence to over throw a legitimate, fair election. Our Democracy is threatened, our country is fractured and it is frightening. We are not a third world country. What happened to civility. Did none of these people pay attention in Civics and Government classes? We have a Constitution, but it is being ignored by so many politicians. We have a President who envisions himself a Dictator and has a cult following that is armed and dangerous. I hope the next few days are not as contentious as they are playing out to be, I hope no one is harmed, and I hope that all the players who are encouraging the rabble are properly punished.

Emotions and Mistrust

The current political climate in our country is disturbing and each incident seems to make it worse instead of improving the situation. I’m not just referring to right vs left, GOP vs Democrats, but anti-science vs science, masks vs non-masks, whether a protest is a protest or a riot and how many days of protesting is effective or becomes fuel for bad behavior not necessarily promulgated by the protesters, but then blamed on them.

I would like to believe that as an educated, free country, that sane discourse could be held to resolve differences, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. My brother sent me a video that was funny, yet disturbing as an interviewer asked questions and when the interviewee answered and then was challenged with factual information would basically say, “I don’t care, my mind is made up,” and they didn’t see the irony in that disparity.

People are untrusting. I was very disturbed by a news article about a young black man stopped while jogging as a possible suspect in a domestic assault. He was cuffed, held for over an hour, and forcefully put in the back of a police car. And though he wasn’t the perpetrator they were seeking, he was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. That situation is so wrong on so many levels. He was asked his name and DOB which he refused to give and by law he didn’t have to, but if he had, the situation may have ended very differently as they had the name of the man whom they were seeking. The mistrust of police and even each other has caused a lack of common sense.

When we were kids, our house was never locked except for when we went on vacation. You trusted your neighbors. Cars were not locked in parking lots, there was no need. Now you wouldn’t think of not locking your car or your house, you trust no one.

I go no where without identification on me. It is unlikely I would be stopped and challenged, but who knows in these times. What used to feel like a free country is feeling less free and are we tearing ourselves apart by our actions and divisions. In these times, I think more and more about my Dad. He was on a Peacekeeping task force. He would be so disturbed and distraught by our current times. Our grandchildren are not going to grow up in the same environment as the one I grew up in. We saw change happening and there were those that resisted, but it looked for years like it was change for the better and was being accepted, but now I question whether the resisting factions were just being silent and have become vocal and worse.

We are all the same on the inside, regardless of our color, gender, religion or lack of on the outside. Young children seem to recognize this until they are taught differently by their elders. Maybe we should be learning from them, not teaching them.