Is this an entry? in These titles mean nothing.

Who the f-word knows? Not me for sure. I am wondering in the world of not really knowing what’s going on and I guess I like it that way.

Here’s a quote from an article about the worlds oldest hottest Chinese model:

Deshun says the key to succeeding in fashion ― or anything, for that matter ― is choosing a goal and never giving up.
“It’s about your state of mind. It’s not about age,” he told The New York Times. “Nature determines age, but you determine your state of mind.”

So ain’t that cute? Cute to a certain level of possibility? Of honesty? Of how it is we are here and he is there? Also keep in mind we are reading about him because he is unusual. He is not the norm. Of course eternal youth is possible. Wait what did I just say? I can’t be responsible for everything I say. If I am then I can’t say anything.

OK.

The status of me. This morning of the first Thursday of November 2016.

1. Just got out of a very nice perfect temperature and perfect dish washing detergent bubbles bath. I would have stayed later but I wasn’t sure of the time and I have to be somewhere at 8 am. Turned out I had a lot more time but I did not want to cut it too close.

2. I had the perfect bathtub book with me. A travel opus by Paul Theroux called The Pillars of Hercules. It’s about the Mediterranean Sea and countries adjacent. It was copywrite 1995. He is a good writer and it’s a good book to open and read at random. I went through Israeli security with him just now. He entered Haifa on a Turkish ship and was questioned until someone knew his books. An advantage of being known. Funny how being known matters. We use is to our advantage. We scream about it. I am my mother’s daughter not so much since her contemporaries are all over a hundred years old by now. I’m still my husband’s wife, my brother’s sister, my kids’ parent. And of course Gracie owns me, at least for now.

3. I am going for a retake of the horrible test. They gave it wrong and we have to retake it. It’s voluntary of course and people wonder why I’m bothering. I do not seem smart at work. I am barely competent or more accurately too stupid to ask the right questions of the right people with the right degree of charm. But like Marlon on the waterfront I used to be a contender and I was seeing if the test would recognize that fact. I have my doubts after taking it the first time and feeling really at sea in it but I am nothing if not persistent at unimportant things so I am taking it again. This time it’s on my own time and involves another trip to the town where my job is. This time it’s at the city library’s new meeting room so.....

4. I have on new clean clothes. I am wearing underwear but not a bra. I have on a slippery women’s pale blue t-shirt I got at Good Will last summer and my one good pair of Wrangler jeans that I can get into. I am also wearing the expensive blue sweater that I bought way back in the Democrat years at a short lived resale place in Lansing. I had been early to a Saturday morning meeting and I went shopping. I paid forty bucks for it and that is a lot for me. I was there to be photographer with one of my cheap Walmart camera. I remember there was a big crowd at Milty’s including a woman who had been on the jury of a trial my son had been a witness at. She complimented my son. Funny world isn’t it? The main subject of the photos was a new potential candidate, a cowboy from Nevada who had fallen in love with a girl from Iowa who was on vacation and had moved back to be with her. A very romantic story. He was a good looking, rather carismatic guy. He was loyal to our local Democrats for quite a while. He would show up at all our meetings, bringing food for the food shelf which was one of our projects and helping clean up the our adopted road several times. Then he ran for the state legislature in an impossible primary in which we had FOUR!!!!! good candidates. He did not win. He gave up on us and is now chairman of the Republican party in his county.

5. I guess I need to think of time still. I am out of the tub and dressed but I can be sucked into the computer. I have to be there at 8 and I should give myself a little extra time so I should leave at 7:20. It’s now 6:53 on my computer and a few minutes later on the Funks Seed clock on the wall. I will split the difference. I am still barefoot. I have a nice new pair of purple Keen shoes. They have been making my feet feel a lot better. I had let my old shoes get too old. I bought them at Duluth Trading in LaCrosse. Duluth Trading has taken over an abandoned downtown department store - called Doerflingers. We are trying to keep them in business. Though I doubt we can really afford to. Still those are good shoes. And they are purple! Not bright purple, a conservative purple.

6. Talking conservatives and old time politics, I got a phone call from an old Dem friend who asked me what I thought of Hillary. I said I’d already voted for her and I hoped she would win the election. He said he had reservations. He was the man who went with my OD friend in the fall of 2007 to put up a big Hillary sign on the main corner in Lansing. He and I and another woman had made phone call after phone call. We had met in the Chinese restaurant with the little blonde who was doing her campaign before the caucuses. And now ‘suddenly’ he has discovered NRA scruples and seems to have voted for Trump. What the fuck? And he called to tell me about it. Life is so full of stuff. Good, bad, medium.

7. Weather has been exceedingly warm and relatively dry. We had an inch and a half of rain midweek but sunshine otherwise - except for when the sun goes around the world to light the other side. Harvest is going well. Jim announced last night that he doesn’t think he will have to buy any propane to dry corn this year. My four each tulips and daffodils are still on the counter. Maybe later this weekend. Maybe not.

8. They announced at work this week that we will probably work through November and they are urging us to book vacation for the three day shutdown between Christmas and New Years. Blink. Blink. I am ready to leave. I am ready to stay until they tell me to leave.

9. Jim went to the dentist yesterday and got five fillings and he has an appointment with a big city endodontist today for a root canal. He is rather overwhelmed. It had been seven years since he’d been to the dentist. And they want him to sleep with a guard in his mouth to keep from grinding his teeth. I can’t make the red squiggle go away for endodontist even after I look it up in google. To hell with it.

10. I cut my hair two weeks ago last night. I had come home from work and it was cold and I got in the bathtub - we have now come full circle. When I got out my hair was extremely tangled and I grabbed a scissors and cut a handful off from each side. I brushed it and cut off some of the stragglers that were visible from the front and called it good. It’s about shoulder length and I can not get a brush through it. I either lack vanity or have too much. You decide.

11. I finished my library book Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. It’s quite good. I had refrained from looking it up on line until after I had finished it. I hadn’t realized it had been made into a movie. So I looked at clips and stills from the movie. The actress with the impossible Irish name who played the lead got good notices and she is very interesting. Emory Cohen played the Italian boy friend. I had things to say about the book but they have kind of petered out. There was a reference though to walking by the Presentation convent. The Presentation sisters were the ones we had in our town and they had come to Dubuque from Ireland.

Ok, I guess that is enough chatter for the morning. I’d have you wish me luck with my test but I don’t think it would do any good and I don’t think it matters.

So anyway. Have a good weekend. I might be back. Jim took some harvest pictures and I haven’t posted much of that kind of thing in a long time.