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Why Do I Think I Need This!

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I went to the dump this morning…just like I do every Sunday. This time loaded with soggy bags from defrosting the chest freezer in the garage. It is such a great feeling when I drive away from there. No changing my mind now!! And before I leave the house, I take the half full bag from under the sink and walk around to bathroom drawers, open them up and if I don’t see a need for the assorted things in there, in the garbage it goes.

The lady at the bank who keeps me in twenty dollar bills told me that the free shredder won’t be coming til October. Too late for my needs. Now I am in the downstairs office trying to get a grip on three cartons of papers needing a shred. After about ten times, stacking three sheets together, it wants a break. A few minutes later it will start up again. This could take forever! I can haul the papers upstairs, load them into the car and drive about a half hour to the nearest professional shredder. There I can pay sixty-nine cents a pound and get it over with. It seems a tempting alternative when I think of how many bags of shredded paper need to be taken to the dump each week til I leave here.

I was going to watch a movie on prime while shredding but there is no audio…lousy picture that continually pauses and no audio. This particular computer is on its last legs and is waiting for the daughter with tech know-how to take it all apart, clearing information from the drives.

So like Dilly here, I am packing things up.

The new house should be completely drywalled by the time I go there on Tuesday morning. Thursday morning it was about half done.

My bedroom and walk in closet.

The following morning I walked the dam.

Then because I miss drawing and get bored with filling boxes, I started the sketchbook about the meadow near my new house….

I put a baby killdeer in because there are so many flitting about. Now because my shredder bucket is packed and it is taking a break, and I don’t have more garbage bags down here to fill with these endless strips of paper, I might just finish this and go back upstairs and draw some more,

It is the fourth of July holiday here. A celebration of our country’s beginnings. With the giant leaps backward made by the Christian-biased Supreme Court, there is not a lot to celebrate. We have begun the journey to abject failure as a free and open democracy. This is not a country I am proud of anymore. We are exactly what the rest of the world sees, a country that has lost its way, through ignorance and an insatiable greed that has found a way to feed the ignorance to maintain power for such a small minority.  Hopefully by this time next year we may be on a corrective course. There is always hope.

For now I am going to ask myself again, “Do I really need this?” And keep on packing.

Til later….

 

Back On Track

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I walked through the meadow a couple days ago to check on the house and deliberately get close to this pile of red soil near the gym. I pause there to appreciate how much it reminds me of being in Australia.

And you can see where it was dug from the rise behind under the trees. So there is more where that came from. I love it. And when I got to the new house, the drywall had been delivered to every room.

Naturally the following day I walked back over expecting it to be hung, at least in one room….not so. But one of the men I stop to have coffee with told me that if the drywall hanger is still the tall worker (6’8″) then it will be hung quickly. So tomorrow morning I will go back over to see if it is underway.

Last week I also had a chance to walk along the river. I took the down stream side and endured hundreds of mosquitos just to see how the high river was affecting the shoreline.

Geese swimming close to the path,

With so much soaked soil, a tree toppled taking some of the trail with it.

The mimosa trees are in full bloom. Pink powder puff blooms that don’t last long before covering the ground beneath.

Today I packed a couple more boxes and told the cleaning lady to not come back for four weeks instead of her usual two. By then the big moving truck that my son is going to pack full will be gone with much of the furniture and artwork.

I had some time to draw in my building book.

These two by fours are getting tedious. The book is close to the halfway mark and things should get more interesting once the drywall is in. Next will be shelves, shower tiles and doors, texturing walls and painting before flooring and cupboards arrive. The appliances are waiting in storage.

Packing so many of my books to take with me. I have had the grocery store bagger bring out sixteen boxes that held four gallons of milk each. Any larger than that and it is hard for even movers to pick up when loaded with books. Those sixteen should hold just the ones in the living room. Those big coffee table books that were in the den took three boxes. They are so heavy! I even found an old hardcover Australian cookbook. I might make myself a Pavlova with my new oven once I get settled. Too bad we don’t have passion fruit here….

Til later…..

Trying Hard

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I am trying hard not to feel such hatred now….but there’s a long way to go getting past this urge to throw the pain back into the lives of those who have caused this turmoil to so many.

Our country has suffered and declined with the rise of a new kind of fascism that far too many of us hoped we weren’t seeing. Who among us would want to admit it really could happen, and here of all places. Who would have thought that our trusted sources for truth could so easily manipulate the gullibility of so many who just wanted to find a way to matter in a world moving at a pace that was hard for them to keep up with. Who could have possibly imagined that their salvation would arrive in the form of a man so obviously corrupt with his own self interest. A man that would be positioned to become what history will claim the worst president in American history.

He rode into power on vile behavior and lies to an appallingly ignorant and lazy base of his political party. A party that has in turn seen their opportunity to push an agenda solely created to benefit the tiny percent of wealthy donors that keep them in power. In four years everything had been set in place to oppress the disenfranchised, crumble the safety nets we all assumed would be there forever, and lie, lie, lie to those so desperate to believe.

Lying has never come so easy to the Republican Party. And it has never brought them to the exalted positions they feel they deserve as it has now in 2022. Whatever they are selling, a good amount of our citizens are buying it. How else could so many sit in places of power that make decisions for the entire population of the United States and by extension, the world?

The slimiest among them, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Marjory Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Louie Gomhert, Mo Brooks, Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Josh Hawley, and more, have tainted the entire party with their desire to be seen as loyal to a disgraced leader and prove themselves worthy of his support in their political campaigns to move even further up the ladder of leadership. They make me sick.

Over the past several years I have wondered what their wives, husbands and children think of them. Why don’t they speak up, move out and get away from the suffocation of lives under the weight of insatiable egos. My own children try to tell me that the reason they stay silent is that they value the prestige garnered among their closed, small-minded, selfish circles and would not seek to give any of that up. Their hands are continually held out to be rewarded with private schools, nice cars, fancy clothes, and friends just as shallow as they are.

And in our country, as it has now become, the children will also attain the power of their parents on the backs of of another generation of people so easily pulled along on a string of lies.

The most egregious move the Republican Party has accomplished came through the Supreme Court’s ruling to reverse the guarantees of women’s rights over their own bodies. A right that has been “settled law” for fifty years. The court was packed with three lying, manipulating justices appointed just the last few years. They joined others just waiting for a majority to put women back where they belong…breeders and white breeders at that. Those of any other color will find it much more difficult to get the medical help needed.

In many states there will be no exceptions to their banning of abortions…not rape, not incest, not natural miscarriages, not babies who cannot survive outside the womb…..all, every one, must be carried to full term at great physical, financial, and mental cost to the families . involved. And several states like Texas, have made it unlawful to help these families in any way and to report those aiding the suffering to the authorities so they can be properly punished. Fascism.

I am obviously not a member of the Republican Party.  I lean left, not right. I was raised to help the less fortunate. I was raised to care and not hate. I am having a hard time with that not hating part. Today I am filling up with it. It is a good thing I am not attending the protests around the country. It is a good thing I am not confronted by a young pro-life christian man who thinks he has the right to push his beliefs down the throats of women everywhere. It is a good thing that for today I sit at home hating him and what he and his people have done to America.

Today I have donated to the campaigns of all those around the country who might be able to bring us back to where we can have the respect for ourselves that the world once bestowed on us.

Nice pictures and news of my house will come later…

Til then..

 

 

Off the Walls!

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Late in the day, a very busy day. Just downloaded pictures and poured a gin and tonic. Yesterday a workout at the gym and walk over to the house.

Insulation is complete and the builder told me the drywall will be finished by middle of next week.

 

Today a shortened workout and walk at the dam…..

Humidity and restless sleep seemed to have gotten the best of me….until…

The helper with no fear of heights and a willingness to clean walls and touch up with paint have resulted in this.

Tomorrow it all goes into boxes. Today it was enough to wipe off years of dust on all the high hung African masks and foundry molds.

Most everything has a planned place in the new house. I drew up sketches of wall spaces with the pieces that go on those walls. The first thing I see when walking into my new house will still be the Australian Aboriginal art woks. The fun is working out new configurations.

And because I was exhausted before even driving home this morning, there is nothing like a car wash to cool you off and make you feel something is being taken care of.

Til later….