Musings

Fascism/life balance

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Well. So here we are. Children are still separated from their parents and now used as bargaining chips; if the parents drop their bids for asylum, they’re told, they can have their children back.

Of course I wouldn’t trust this regime on either front.

So now comes the question. How does one resume life while under the thumb of fascism? It happens all over the world, though in those countries, they are, unfortunately used to it.

I don’t ever want to be “used to it.”

Art, of course, is protest, and I suppose that too can be a means to resume work. I don’t know.

I’ve never lived through a regime that rips parents from children for reasons still unclear and uses them as hostages. At least not in this lifetime.

Meanwhile, life has not stopped, it does not stop, and that is another thing. So I’m trying to find that elusive fascism/life balance, and we’re back to normalizing.

How are you coping?

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

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Best: Method of stirring nut butter

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So I’ve decided to share with you, upon occasion, when the mood strikes, because who wants to be completely regimented, the best of random things. And yesterday I decided I’d stumbled across the best method of stirring a natural nut butter.

For the uninitiated, the oil in natural nut butter separates, so you have an inches-thick glossy ooze atop the good stuff. This is also true for peanut butter, which is not actually a nut but a legume, but I digress.

If you open a bottle of peanut butter or cashew butter or almond butter and it’s all blended, I hate to break it to you, but you’ve got additives. Often it’s got palm oil, which is harvested while destroying the environment of the orangutans, and if you’ve seen that heartbreaking video of an orangutan trying to fight off a bulldozer, you’re not going to want that.

Back to my method. It’s super, super easy, which is why I didn’t just say it because we’d have one paragraph and no blog post and what fun is that? Besides you would have missed out on legumes and palm oil.

In order to get an even stir, I use a long-handled plastic spoon. Any silicone- or plastic-handled utensil will do; just don’t use wood as it will be all the harder to clean and I suspect will forever smell of nut butter.

But don’t use the spoon part. Use the handle.

Ahhh.

Go slowly and kind of churn the oil in. Since you have to refrigerate the natural nut butters anyway, as they have no preservatives, once it’s in the fridge, it will be like you never had to blend it at all.

Any “Bests” to share?

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

Wednesday and the Red Vine Cleanse

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Well it’s all kinds of Wednesday just Wednesdaying it up, if you know what I mean, and you probably don’t, because I’m not entirely sure myself. It’s a bit of a mood and a bit of an early start. And I’ve been on a four day Red Vine cleanse.

Or that’s what I’m calling my obsessive eating of Red Vines since I found a tub of them at the supermarket (a huge tub. Like if were made of glass, it’s what they would have sold Red Vines out of at the old-fashioned candy store). Obviously I deeply regret my decision to buy them and even more so my inability to keep my hand out of the jar, even though I put them somewhere high and thought I’d be deterred by having to stretch and reach for them.

Says the woman who does yoga every morning.

So that might have been a hitch in the plan.

The temps have cooled considerably, and it’s almost as though we’ve had all our summer in a week, which immediately brings to mind that heartbreaking Ray Bradbury short story, “All Summer in a Day.”

(Go find it and read it if you must, but I warn you, it’s pure paper cuts to the heart. What a writer.)

Though getting up early didn’t agree with me at the time, it seems to agree with me now, I feel sharp and clear. Maybe because it’s chilly in here. No gentle warmth to lull me back to sleep.

So I shall strike while the striking is hot. Or chilly.

Whichever.

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

 

No, YOU’RE obsessed with coffee

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I wonder if I should make another cup of coffee.

I wonder that a lot. Pros: coffee. Also, it’s cool in here right now, and coffee is an automatic warming system.

Cons: It’s coffee. Caffeine.

Rebuttal: I can do a half-caff.

Rebuttal to the rebuttal: I’m sitting down and the coffeemaker is all the way in the kitchen and also I’m writing a blog post.

Rebuttal to the rebuttal to the rebuttal: Coffee essentially writes blog posts.

Ah. Good point. Can it overcome the “sitting” part of the argument?

Let’s find out.

Turns out the answer to that question is “yes.” Now we know.

While the coffee is coffeeing, a reminder to come by on Friday for #AccountaClub, where we talk about how our stuff is going, whatever stuff that may be. You can comment here, or blog on your site if you prefer, and leave a comment so we can come see what you’re up to or share in your frustration.

It’s no pressure and no judgment.

Especially in the matters of coffee. Which I can hear dribbling away into the cup.

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

Wednesday Wanderings

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It’s another day of gray, wet gray, though I don’t think it’s raining. At least not now.

After a stretch of impossibly hot temperatures for May, we’re back in the spring zone, and that’s fine with me. Yesterday, there were a lot of sirens; today is quieter, it seems.

I woke up early but managed to go back to sleep, with more condensed, strange dreams. Sometimes it feels as though I leave them in the bedroom, hovering just above the bed, eventually the entire room packed with these brief existences I cannot remember.

In what I do recall, there was a diner; and the diner was completely out of desserts. Given my desire for dessert last night while watching “Below Deck Mediterranean,” as the yacht chef made a dessert buffet, I don’t think there’s any deep meaning lingering in that one.

I just wanted dessert. And didn’t have any. At least not the kind I wanted.

Such is life.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Meet Maximo, the largest (type) of dinosaur ever discovered

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Meet Maximo, who is so huge, his head is at the second level. Is it just me or is he smiling?

Went to the Field Museum of Natural History yesterday to see the new (well, millions of years old but new to us) titanosaur Maximo who supplanted Sue the T-Rex  in the main hall. Sue, who informed me on Twitter prefers the pronouns “they/them,” will now live in the evolution exhibit among their dinosaurian brethren, though, being a T-Rex, a bit on their own for obvious T-Rex-related reasons.

Maximo is breathtakingly huge. I mean so huge that it looked like the teeny tiny little bone on the end of his tail was about the size of my wrist. He was so huge, I didn’t even make it to the height of his top leg bone, likely a femur but I’m no dinosaur anatomist.

I’ve included a picture with the iconic elephants that have adorned the hall of the Field for as long as I can remember.

Those enormous African elephants are mounted on a platform about four feet high.

And here’s my eye level.

And looking up.

So he’s big, is what I’m trying to say. It makes you gape at the thought of all of that covered in flesh and muscle. And Sue seemed perfectly content in their new surroundings, though the room is still pretty bare.

And here’s a giant sloth because holy mammal, that thing was HUGE. Not as big as Maximo, obviously, but wow.

No real cohesion today, just thought you’d be as fascinated as I was. And I was fascinated. Imagining this planet as it existed before we got our mitts on it is fertile ground for inspiration.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

 

Memorial Day isn’t about sales

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To all the men and women who have served this country, to their families, and to the ones we have lost, my thoughts are with you on this Memorial Day. This day is not about barbecues or beach openings or sales. Especially sales.

But I wasn’t always this clear on the holiday.

I came across this tweet on Friday from a veteran I follow (warning, strong language, though I suspect not a one of you is faint of heart):

And suddenly, like a lens coming into focus, I realized how grotesque it is that we mark a day for honoring our fallen veterans with discounted goods.

Yikes.

Did it just hit you in the gut too? Good, it probably should, as it did me. How blithe we can be; how oblivious. The day before I saw COB’s tweet, I was giddy over what I had gotten for a steal.

In a Memorial Day sale.

Break it down and it’s like something out of a far-future novel, something sprung from the mind of Ray Bradbury, a time where capitalism is so ubiquitous, so domineering that even men and women killed in service to our country are remembered with a hearty 50% off regular price.

So whatever you do with your day today, please take a moment to remember why we really have it. Thank you to the women and men who serve.