Tag: General

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Jesse got to ride in the nice car yesterday…

I get to spend some time cleaning the nice car today.

Jesse had a Vet appointment yesterday. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that it had been a while since I last drove the station wagon and we’d had a cold snap.

OOOppps. The combination, and I suspect the age of the battery in that vehicle combined to “Surprise!” Make the car not start.

Goody!

I thought about using the nice car to jumpstart the wagon but If I’m going to have to pull the nice car out of the garage grab jumper cables start the wagon, then put the nice car back in the garage, get the dog loaded in the wagon, and do all that in less than 5 minutes so I can make the appointment. 

Too much stress!!!!

Ah well, Jesse was going to be riding in the nice car sooner or later. I flip down the rear seats, toss a blanket on top of the  platform and load him up. 

He was mostly good. As usual, he wouldn’t settle down and kept pacing like he couldn’t get comfortable. Coming back from the Vet, I tried having the rear seats in their normal position. In a way that might have been better because Jesse tried to curl up and lay down. Something kept him from staying curled up or getting comfortable for more than a minute or two.

It might have been the stop & go traffic or just that he was too spun up from the excitement of going somewhere.

I suspect, that if we were on a long freeway trip he’d find a way to curl up. Lately as long as he can see me he seems to be content.

We had an incident last Friday with another dog that was totally out of control whose owner had zero control over. As is always typical in these situations, the idiot owner was letting their dog run free off leash. Great!!!! 

Their dog really came after Jesse and I both. To his credit, Jesse kept himself between the aggressive dog and me. Jesse’s attitude toward me changed on Friday. I’d had enough of this aggressive dog biting and snapping at both Jesse and I and got aggressive back. I made a sound Jesse has only heard once or twice, on those occasions it was directed at him because he was out of control. This time he looked up at me and realized I wasn’t angry with him, I was fixated on the other dog and when I moved toward the other dog Jesse moved with me.

It only took him a moment to connect the dots he and I were going to fight this dog together. The dog’s owner finally got their fat ass to where Jesse & I were making a stand and her dog ran off up the street, the minute she reached for its collar.

She offered a lame weak “sorry” to which I bellowed “Sorry my ass! Your dog attacked us, it went out of its way to follow us and was waiting for any opportunity to bite one of both of us.” I was very mad about it. We were less than 300 yards from our house. Jesse picked up on my being pissed off. He checked to see if I was angry with him and when he figured out I was yelling at the lady, (another human,) it seemed to give him pause.

At this point her dog ran in front of a delivery truck narrowly missing being hit and causing the delivery truck to lock up the brakes on a downhill run. 

Jesse & I continued our walk. I needed to clear my head, and perhaps so did Jesse. On the walk, I noticed Jesse was sticking much closer to me than usual. Every subsequent walk since, Jesse hasn’t been pulling on the leash or trying to drag me up or down the mountain. He’s been paying more attention to where I am versus where he is and we’ve been waiting on each other. He’ll wait for me to navigate rough terrain and he’s not dragging me into the underbrush but I’ll wait on the trail for him to investigate intriguing smells in the underbrush. 

Somehow the whole incident on Friday changed the dynamic between us.

That change in dynamic also carried over to the Vet visit.

He was more obedient and relaxed. Oh he didn’t like being there and really hates waiting for anything but he was more mellow. He got on the scale with no production then sat when I asked him to, 69 pounds! He laid down next to me in the waiting room and was mostly obedient even when he heard the kitten in a cat carrier and really wanted to know what that thing was. He was good with the Vet, & the Assistants. I was super impressed. The only thing that was annoying was him doing this high pitched whine that he does when he’s anxious or not getting his way. 

People in the waiting room were laughing when I was talking to him. “Jesse stop that whining. Look you can talk about it all you want but the whining is really annoying.” For some reason he chose that moment to “Talk” and it was like he was back talking me. We became the entertainment in the waiting room.

He’s got a clean bill of health. I’ve got the documentation that he’s had his boosters, so now I can take him to the groomer.

When we got home he was tired, I also noticed his head seemed a little warmer than usual. I think the booster they gave him may have made him feel a little punky. He napped the rest of the afternoon and wasn’t interested in his usual sunset ritual. He tends to want to be outside on the deck to watch the sun set and I guess he’s keeping an eye on the critters.

Last night he was curled up on the couch next to me with his head on my thigh. He wasn’t interested in rope, or ball, or anything other than my scratching his ears every once & and while.

Even this morning, he’s not fully himself but I can see him improving since we’ve gotten out of bed.

I know, too much information about the dog.

You know what? The Dog is way more interesting than the Washington D.C. follies!

Have a great day!

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When I was young, and my life was an open book…

I’ve lived a few places. I’ve spent way too much time in California. I ended up in the California town I live in for two reasons. 

1) It was where my love, wanted to live.
2) It was, 30 some odd years ago a compromise. Living here allowed me to stay in California without losing my mind, be able to work. & provide for my love.

In truth way back in the day, I was on my way out of California. I got sidetracked for 30+ years. Oops!

I visited this little town originally because I was gonna get laid and figured it would be a fun diversion for a weekend. Strangely, a relationship bloomed. We dated for 3 or 4 years, then I moved up to this picturesque mountain town.

When I first got here, we had a police substation, the fire department, a general /hardware store, grocery store, several bars, more churches than I thought reasonable for the size of the town, and an odd collection of shops & services.

It was the hardware store that always caught my attention. It reminded me of the general stores of my childhood. There were always older men sitting in front of those stores smoking pipes or cigars discussing the events of the day. 

This hardware store often had similar older men sitting on a bench chatting although they weren’t usually smoking.

At the time, this hardware store sold ammo, and snake rounds. They sold hunting slingshots, a couple brands of arrows, & I think one model of recurve bow.

Wandering around the town in those first few months, I felt at home. I told my love, “This is country enough for me,” and it was.

We built a good life here.

Now that I’m older… Okay much older, I find myself thinking about those older men from my youth sitting and chatting amiably in front of the old country store.

They knew everyone coming & going, the rare stranger to whom they’d provide accurate directions. (It might take a while, if there was a discussion about which landmark was best to turn left or right at.)

Cows grazing.It was quiet at the country store, sometimes the men would sit contemplatively lost in their thoughts, looking out on green fields with cows lowing in the distance.

At the time, I didn’t understand them. Now, I begin to, and wonder if they were looking at the fields, or out over the years of their lives, recollecting and thinking what they’d might have done differently. While appreciating the luck or divine intervention that informed the parts of their lives they’d not change.

I’m not ready for the chair in front of the general store quite yet. I do however want a country store close at hand. It’d be nice if that store had a “guest chair” that I could try on.

My town still has a hardware store that’s a lot like a general store. They no longer have a porch with benches or chairs.

Times have changed, even in this little town. We have homeless people, they’ll create makeshift camps in odd places. They’ll sleep on benches or stairs here just like they do everywhere else in California and perhaps other states as well.

The response is to remove the benches and put gates over vestibules to encourage homeless people, vagrants, and drug addicts to move along. I don’t think this response is a good one. I think a more proactive approach is needed. Unfortunately, I know that my little town will never adopt one.

Over the years, my little town which used to be very conservative, has become a pretty liberal enclave. Now it’s about using the “Approved” names for things. Homeless should now be called “Unhoused” and that sort of thing.

278975855 Arrogance.More power to them!

None of their Neo-progressive crap is of any interest to me at this stage of my life. I’m looking for a country store.

I’m looking towards shedding this California persona I created to blend in. Due to my Southern accent, Californians treated me like a moron when I first got here. Well I was smart enough to see the problem and correct it, you arrogant pricks. Most of the people I dealt with in my career never knew I was from (gasp!) a flyover state in the South… 

I know, scandalous!

Now in the years that I was hoping would be calmer which have turned out to be more contentious than the Vietnam era, I’m longing for a little country store like those I remember from my youth. 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

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I thought I was bored with it all. That’s not actually true.

I should be doing other things.

Right now my mind is drifting through all kinds of things. There’s sort of a theme, it’s all kind of connected. But there’s a randomness to my brain right now. Perhaps getting this stuff out of my head will help clear the static.

I could do with a massage, but I don’t want to spend the money and gamble on yet another massage person. I could change my mind but for now nahhh.

Justice 2bpblogspot.I was writing a post about the justice system, the news, Biden’s corruption, and lamenting that I’ve gotten bored by all of it.

Then I realized it’s not boredom. It’s overload, disappointment, anger, fatigue, and I just want it all to stop.

I haven’t felt like this since Obama’s second term. I felt so disenfranchised & the government was not representing vast swaths of the American People.

I felt lied to, and generally hopeless. I was genuinely looking for another country to move to. I was investigating asking for asylum. It wasn’t that I hated my country, It was that my country felt more and more like it hated me.

Obama hope poster1 1615971418935_1783f670338_original ratio.Jerry was happy, and pointed out that part of what I was feeling may have been the employment situation. He asked me to be patient and keep working toward getting a job. I told him that me getting a job in California was becoming more impossible every day and asked that he consider moving to another state.

He agreed, then I got the job in San Diego.

That job did me more emotional harm than I realized.

Obama Change poster.

A lot of the bosses were vindictive and needlessly cruel. The job provided some income but was honestly not a place I should have stayed. Looking back, that place may have set me up to fail with them from the beginning. It certainly instilled in me a major mistrust about any future employer.

These days, with the pronoun police, DEI, and all the other non productive work rules. I might not even be employable. What the hell happened to just going to work, doing your job, and going home? When did that philosophy get chucked in the bin?

Cubicle9 grid.

I was looking for a job during my time in San Diego but didn’t get any traction. Then they laid us all off, & guess what? Employment wise I got fucked again trying to do the right thing.

Working in San Diego, I did get an opportunity to watch a cross section of people react to Trump being elected. Initially I thought maybe things would get better. I was mistaken. The company enacted more draconian rules and those rules while directed at “everyone” were only enforced against white males.

Selfish boss meme.

The guy that had to lawyer up so that he could take allowed company paternity leave, was epic. The company tried to deny him leave that had been pre-approved 5 months before. As if he could stop his child from arriving. Their excuse was they were short handed because 3 women had gone out on stress leave.

The guy’s attorney presented that the company staffing issues were not the fault of the father to be & that effectively the company had entered into a separate employment contract with him 5 months before. The company attempting to re negotiate the contract 1 month before it was to be executed simply because it was no longer convenient for the company imposed a hardship on the guy that was unfair. The court agreed.

Perfectionist boss meme.

The guy took his 6 week paternity leave. While he was out, the company revamped corporate policy to remove paternity leave as a benefit for our department. I guess they wanted the virtue signaling credits, but on the down low no man, especially no white man was supposed to use the perk.

The company also couldn’t keep a director of our department for more than six months. One director came in for 6 maybe 8 weeks and stopped his cross country move. He & his husband chose instead to stay in Texas. No-one ever got a straight story about that one. The last week or two with that Director, it was obvious that he was angry. In one angry conversation that echoed through the office he said his hands had been tied from the beginning and that wasn’t what he’d signed on for.

I don’t know if any of this was a response to Trump, I do know that 80% of the staff was constantly bitching about stuff the media said Trump said, but actually hadn’t. The higher ups int he company seemed to be really pissed off about anything & everything all the time. 

Facts didn’t matter, truth didn’t matter, and dismantling one lie or misrepresentation simply led to people seizing on the next media lie or misrepresentation.

I will never forget the customer phone call I got after Trump was elected. It was a person from Canada who said, “My condolences regarding your election.”

It might have been at that moment that I first thought the world was going mad. On the plus side, the Canadians got Trudeau. (Vengeance is a dish best served cold.)

I try to look at the brighter side of the situation. When those assholes laid me off, it meant that I had time to visit my mother in Florida, see my Brothers, see my step mother, and spend the little remaining time Jerry had, with him. Jerry’s death came out of the blue. There’d been signs for a while, but like everyone I thought we’d have more time together. I’m glad that I was with him, not working at some other shithole company god knows where.

Black lives matter protest nyc.Flash forward to the goings on of today and it’s all too much. I’m overloaded with crap from all sides and that means I’ve been reading, watching, or listening to the news or social media too much.

I feel the same despair that I felt during Obama’s reign. Once again I feel that there is no place for me, and this time, that feeling is worse than before. Obama’s motto was “Hope & Change” at the beginning, at the end of his term I secretly thought “Hopeless and changed”. 

Then, as now, I wanted to just disappear, to walk away from all the noise and confusion, the politics, and stupidity. At that time my opinion of humanity in general was one of disdain and that a meteor strike couldn’t happen soon enough. The intervening years have left me more convinced that an extinction level event would be a welcome occurrence.

O DTE ENERGY POWER OUTAGE SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN facebook.This morning a few minutes before 6AM the power went off. Had it just gone off, I probably would have slept through the event and woke up to a dark house, or maybe woke up when the clock on the stove chirped.

It didn’t work out that way. The power thunked 6 times, (chirping the stove clock each time,) and that woke me up. Then I thought of the electronics, the NAS, the PlayStation, the smart lights, and all the other devices. None of these devices like having the power stutter off & on like this.

That realization woke me up. I walked around the house flipping power strips off so that Edison’s follies didn’t royally screw me. The NAS was already going to require my running a maintenance routine on it, since the power dropped while it was powered up. Nonetheless I protected it from further power surges and god knows what was coming down the line. 

I was annoyed but not angry. Damage was already done so no reason to get spun up, just gotta deal with it. Then I went back to bed. Jessie was stretching across the bed but allowed me a small corner of space. 

It was at this point that I noticed the predawn silence. The sun was cresting the hills but we were still in shadow. Without all the machines running, the silence was really nice. Jerry’s pocket watch was ticking on my night stand, but there wasn’t a droning of machinery.

It was nice & I fell asleep after briefly wondering if the power had gone out due to an EMP bomb from Russia or Iran. Given the way the power was thunking, it could have been 5 or 6 EMPs and the country was toast.

Ah well, nothing I could do about it, so a nice nap claimed me. I’d do what needed to be done when I woke. Strangely, that nap was more restful than my night’s sleep.

I woke when the power came back on. The stove clock chirped about an hour later.

Since then I’ve reset clocks and devices and thought to myself, perhaps I need to simplify my life in significant ways.

What do I really need? Perhaps a better question is what do I want & actually need? How much crap do I have that is pointless? That thinking extends to non-physical things as well. Things like politics and trials and the news in general. Do I really need this blog? What do I care about and what future do I want to paint for myself?

Burned down house ruins.There are tons of mementos of day life here, my life with Jerry, and my whole life. Those I’ll keep but in reality if I’m just going to pack them away in a box and never see them, then maybe I don’t need to keep them.

Alternatively, if I thin everything out to the point that what I keep is actually stuff I’ll use or that I want to dust occasionally on a book shelf, that’s probably good. I need to be lighter in all kinds of ways. I was super light, after the fire I’d like to get back to that place. Although in a less dramatic fashion.