Our Strength? in Everyday Ramblings

If you look carefully here, you can see oranges on the tree in the middle. I bet that tree smells divine in the spring. It is unusual but not completely unheard of to see citrus growing here. This yard has intense Western exposure as it is basically on the top of a cliff overlooking the industrialized flatlands by the river. You can hear the trains.

I know it has been a couple of months now but every day I wake up I am thrilled to be back in my own apartment. I don’t think I ever took living here and being able to afford to live on my own for granted but now I most certainly do not.

Next weekend I will take the tomato plants down. The community garden turns the water off and ends its gardening year on Halloween. Kes and Most Honorable have invited me to come to the beach with them one last time, (as the place we stay at is being completely remodeled), at the end of the month for a few days.

Stuff needs to be done before then. And I am running another hybrid Zoom/In Person Discussion Unit for the League that week as well. The last one had some hitches, but it worked, and the participants were happy.

I was hoping to get all my cookie making stuff sorted by then. I still have a couple of weeks. Some nice fresh oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries would be nice to share for what is a morning meeting. I need to not let my ambitions run away with me though. This month we are talking about public accountability of our police force here. We have issues.

Speaking of local issues, the City changed how one records business taxes here and I need to file new forms for the last two years this week. I did get a helpful articulate fellow on the phone yesterday to help me understand exactly what I need to do and that was a relief. Nothing to it but to do it as they say.

Over the weekend we had a charming local storyteller come to our book group and tell us stories of Mythic Ireland. It was fun and at the end a great many book titles were floated on the subject of Ireland and its culture.

I had been listening to a series of lectures on ancient Greece and Sparta in particular. A female body can be glad she wasn’t born into Sparta. What stood out for me in both historical records is how much waring was going on. I guess at least a woman, if she was extraordinary, could be a warrior in ancient Ireland. It feels like right now we haven’t come very far. We are just more sophisticated in how to harm the human body and how many more people there are to harm.

The news is devastating. As if there wasn’t enough suffering. Ugh.

We go on. We adapt.

Yesterday afternoon I discovered that Netflix was making “Love Actually” available as part of one’s subscription. Last time I looked there was an extra charge to see it. I haven’t watched it in years and thought it held up fairly well. Bill Nighy is such a hoot. And sad to see Alan Rickman knowing he is gone.

Yes, if watching Christmas movies in October is what it takes to stay relatively sane while people all over the place are justifying doing horrible things to each other than so be it.

What does it take to remind us that we are all in this together and are differences are often our strength. Sigh.