Encounter

So I was walking Shamus home from the dog park the other day and an immigrant gentleman was walking there as well. He stopped me and politely asked me to define a word -- he had a whole bunch of English words written down in a little notebook, so he was clearly working on learning the language.

"Coincidence," I read when he pointed at it. "Boy, that's a hard one. It's...like when two things happen at the same time, but no one planned them to?"

He stared at me, clearly not understanding. "Can you give an example?" he asked after a moment.

"Maybe," I said, thinking about it. "So, for example, I'm going out a door at a store and a friend of mine is walking in the door, and neither of us planned to see each other? I might say, What a coincidence!"

I'm still not sure he understand, but as I was walking home I was thinking to myself that maybe I didn't understand what 'coincidence' means either.

The dictionary says it's when two things happen at the same time but there is no causal connection. Too bad I didn't have a dictionary with me at the time.

This reminds me of when a student asked me to define irony, and then how irony differed from sarcasm, and then what sarcasm meant, exactly.

That was an adventure.

My Major Complaints about Life At the Moment

In general I am pretty happy with how life is going right now, but I do have some complaints.

(1) I have to put my shoes on every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. Often socks are involved as well.

(2) If I don't feed and hydrate my body, it gets really cranky and sometimes starts hurting

(3) I have to fix meals. Like, every single day. Sometimes more than once a day! [See #2]

(4) Summer

(5) Dishes, laundry

(6) I have to take showers. It's such a production. First you have to arrange a time when the shower is not being used by someone else and the laundry and dishwasher are not running. Then you have to get out a towel and a washcloth and a bath mat. And soap. Then you have to undress. Then you have to get in the shower. Being in the shower is okay, even pleasant, but eventually you have to come out of the shower. Then you have to dry off and dress and clean up the towels and shower and bath mat and now there's more laundry.

(7) Not only to I have to bathe and feed and hydrate my stupid body, I have to exercise it. Even in the summer. UGH.

(8) Republicans and MAGA. Can't we vote them off the island?

(9) So many books are very bad. True, there are also good books. But I need to sort through all the terrible ones to get to the good ones. GOD.

(10) Once you hit about 65, everything starts hurting pretty much all the time. This is also when you retire and finally have plenty of time to live your life but how can you when everything hurts all the time?

(11) If you're thinking about getting a border collie mix, remember it's like installing external ADHD.

(12) Summer. Did I mention summer? Let's mention it again. It's going to be 101 degrees on Tuesday and there are still eleven more weeks until we can reasonably expect some cooler weather. If we must have summer, couldn't we just have it for a weekend in August like they do in some European countries? Or well, I guess as they used to do, since climate change has changed that.

What's that? What's that out there? Let's GO SEE!!

Weather Report

 Oh God, it's going to be 100 degrees on Tuesday.

I hate summer.

Piano Update

I am getting better.

But I have reached the point in the lesson books where I have to play with both hands at once, and as I often say to Dr Skull, "I can do ONE THING at a TIME."

Right now I'm slowing way down and learning the two-handed parts bit by bit. But it's difficult.

Also, one of the C keys on my piano does not work, so I kind of have to play around any music that requires that note. It's a bummer.

Dinner Party

The dinner party went well, despite my anxiety beforehand (what was I worried about? We invited six people, which meant eight at a table that comfortably fits six; it was a murderously hot day, so would the air conditioning keep the house bearable despite the heat from the cooking? Dr Skull had been having more trouble than usual getting around; did I mention how hot it was?). 

The menu:

• chicken with mushrooms
• grilled asparagus
• boiled potatoes with dill and butter
• baguettes
• chocolate pie with whipped cream
• white wine for those who wanted it

I cooked all of it, with a lot of coaching from Dr Skull, and it all turned out marvelously. The baguettes were especially good.

I forgot to take pictures, and probably I couldn't have shared them anyway since the kid and his husband brought along their two friends (from their 'friend group,' which is what kids today call people they met online and hang out with, frequently, online). These two flew in from Maryland and somewhere else which I don't remember. Also their friend from Kansas who is going to graduate school here came, as did Uncle Charger.

Shamus was very pleased. He loves having people visit, especially when one of them is Charger and two of the others are the kid and his husband. Although this time, his friend from Maryland was the very favorite.

Anyway. It took two days to clean up the kitchen, but now it is almost done. Just one...more...big...pot to wash. Ugh.

This has to be satire, right?

Apparently having won his first war against Iran, by means of declaring that he had won it, Trump now has to declare a "second" war on Iran? Is that really the world we're living in now?

Also! Chocolate rations have been increased for the third week in a row! And the economy is BOOMING!!

Rain and Thunder and various updates

A big thunderstorm went through here last night, terrifying the poor dog. (He has a new 'safe place' he goes when he's frightened -- our bedroom, Dr Skull's side of the bed.)

This morning it is wet and significantly cooler. We went to the dog park and he tore around, leaping in all the puddles. Now he is wet and filthy and I have banished him to his crate until he dries off some.

The kid has friends visiting this week, so they are going to museums and restaurants and playing games. They'll be here on Tuesday for dinner which is going to require me to cook (Dr Skull is going to tell me what to do).

I'm still reading biographies, but I did gobble down an epistolary novel yesterday, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which meant I had to read Helen Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road again. Now I am hungry for more epistolary novels. Please give suggestions if you have them!

I am currently reading both a biography of FDR and one of Eleanor Roosevelt. The two authors are both disdainful of the spouses of their subjects -- that is, H.W. Brands sees Eleanor as as one of FDRs problems, and David Michaels has a great deal of contempt for FDR. 

Did you know Eleanor Roosevelt was bisexual? If not straight up gay. They didn't teach us that in history class. FDR, on the other hand, had a number of affairs, maybe partly because Eleanor didn't really want to sleep with him, despite how hot and handsome he was. (This is Brands, but Michaels admits FDR was a hottie too.) Anyway, Eleanor apparently had seven children for FDR (six survived to adulthood -- FDR wanted six kids) and then refused to have sex with him anymore. She moved into a cottage with two other women, and eventually hooked up with Lorena Hickok, her lifelong companion, as they say.

She stuck with the marriage, though, and tirelessly worked for FDR and his political aims. 

The political world of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s reminds me quite a bit of the mess we're in now -- white nationalism, eugenics, hatred of immigrants, the concentration of wealth among a very few families at the top and desperate poverty elsewhere. Also, of course, systemic racism. In an odd way, it gives me hope.

Also, today Lindsey Graham died, and apparent Mitch McConnell is on the edge of death. What a shame.

My Kid's Comic!

 Today my kid's comic reaches a scene I helped them with ---

Read their comic now!

Weather Report

It's not as hot as it could be, I guess.

Highs in the 90s for the foreseeable future, plus high humidity. It's too hot to stay very long at the dog park, even in the evening when the shade is pretty deep.

July and August are my least favorite months. Could we not just skip them and go straight to October?

What I'm Reading Now

Basically biographies. What's up with this? I do not know.

I started out reading Ron Chernow's Mark Twain, and then Lenora Chu's Little Soldiers, along with Lauren Hough's Monster of A Land and Virginia Woolf's A Writer's Diary (none of which are exactly autobiographies). 

Now I'm reading Traitor to His Class, which is a biography of FDR and just filled with things I did not know about the years between 1880 and 1945. After this, I have two biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt queued up. 

And while I was finding them on the shelves at the library, I saw a biography of JD Salinger I am tempted to read, though honestly Salinger is one of the most annoying writers on the planet. But maybe the biography would show me why! I'm also considering reading Chernow's Hamilton, which is responsible for the musical, kind of. I really liked his Mark Twain, though.

I'm also still reading a lot of science fiction, of course. Currently a really good novel called Homebound, by Portia Elan; but also I just scored a review copy of Tanya Huff's newest novel.

New Recipe up at Cooking with delagar

It's Dense Bean Tabouli!

If you haven't yet heard of dense bean salad, clearly you don't spend enough time on TikTok. I combined the dense bean ethos with my love of tabouli to create something delicious. Also featured: Wensleydale!\

Rain

We had a big storm last night and this morning at the dog park it was actually very nearly cool -- about seventy degrees and not much humidity. Shamus had a good time chasing the ball.

Tomorrow we're back to Arkansas hellscape, or so the weather guy says.

Don't forget to buy my kid's zines!

Traumatized Pup

I was walking my dog one afternoon about a month ago, and a crack of thunder burst right over our heads. (It was cloudy, but no other sign of storm, or we wouldn't have been out.) Shamus freaked, of course, and since then he has been afraid of thunder.

Here in Fayetteville, fireworks are legal from July 1 through July 4. They sound like thunder to him, I guess. Anyway, he's shivering in terror for three or four hours a night, from the time they start (around 9:00) until the idiots finally quit (around 11:00).

Tonight should be a treat.

Buy my Kid's Zines!

 My kid has several zines for sale. I star in one of them, the one called "Sleepy Little Town." The red, orange, and yellow ones are the first three chapters of his werewolf comic

Get'em while they're hot!

This is MAGA

So here's a typical MAGA reaction to the SC decision upholding the 14th Amendment:

BUT the human wave attack has taken another form. Not only women performing birth tourism, but in China’s case doing that factory style. And in many ways, too. There have now been found more than one literal “factory” where Chinese citizens are having children via surrogate and raising hundreds of kids in various institutions throughout the land.

This is similar, apparently, to several conservative posts. Apparently some MAGA news outlet has started this rumor, and now every MAGA blogger and "thinker" is parroting it.

This is who is currently running our country. Or, I guess, not so much running it as driving it off a cliff. 

Please. Enough.