Back to Basics in Everyday Ramblings

On Wednesday morning after class I walked downtown to the League office for our discussion unit meeting and to get some invoices signed. I took this then. The far building is where my gym is around the corner. The building in the foreground is full of very expensive condos. A student from way back lives there, part of the year, when she isn’t in Arizona. She thought about having me teach a class there in their common room for a time, but it never materialized. Her condo is amazing. Open plan, just gorgeous. I reconnected with her briefly a few months back.

Carlo is recovering from all the indignities of his vet visit yesterday. I need to remember to wear my hearing aids next time because while I could hear the vet just fine, the techs were very soft spoken, and it was effortful trying to understand them. Gratefully, he is still speaking to me after all that, including the numerous attempts to get the gabapentin down his throat before I finally succeeded. Hearing him is not a problem at all.

I did wear my hearing aids to the meeting Wednesday. We were completing consensus questions for a position for the state on Childcare. In preparation I watched a video with four panelists. One from a state office that leads on this issue, one from a well-established nonprofit, one from a rural grassroots organization and one amazing advocate for childcare statewide. These people are so impressive.

This is something that gives me hope in this dire political environment. That these people are out there advocating for all the children in our state so they can have their needs met in a way that will allow them to thrive. It is a gnarly issue because there isn’t enough money allocated to support these providers. I learned a lot. Our state league did a study a number of years ago on this issue and we are updating it and one of the people who worked on the study back then was on our Zoom call Wednesday. We were doing a hybrid meeting.

You would think we would all want all the children to thrive.

I was listening to an organizer in Idaho on a favorite podcast talking about how they successfully got Medicaid expansion on the ballot back in the day (2017) by grass roots organizing going around to all the small towns and talking and listening to people. That same coalition recently came together to vote down a school voucher program that would take even more funding away from their public schools.

These things really do give me hope. In spite of the news there are good people out there doing good things and I want to be where they are. We can’t give up.

I appear to be on a minor spending spree. What with the suitcase and the vet visit, my annual continuing ed for Yogic Studies just renewed at $150 more this year than last and this morning I ordered a couple of modern cast iron skillets. This whole thing about plastics in our bodies is getting to me. I just threw away my black plastic spatula and got a stainless steel one. But that will scratch the non-stick skillet so…cast iron.

Back to the classics. I switched to glass and ceramic dishes for the cats from plastic about 5 years ago and got rid of all my plastic food containers. This is the next level. One wants that little health edge if possible. Without going overboard.

Mrs. Sherlock and I (and Frieda) are walking this morning even though it is one degree above freezing. It is dry. She told me yesterday is that one good thing that came out of her husband’s hospital stay is that he is now sleeping through the night for the first time in a long time. With the Sundowners, he was waking up afraid and feeling threatened and so this is a quality-of-life thing for them both.

Even when things are difficult, there are moments in there of relief, humor and good will. There are.