Mayberry

There was a rumor going around Mayberry that Barney shot himself in the chest and had died.  Actually, he just got a scrape on his finger, but like the old "telephone" game, each person who passed along the news to the next person embellished it a bit until the undertaker showed up at the sheriff's office to take away the body.

I couldn't help it.  They introduced Chris Christie and suddenly I just went into Convention Overload, realizing that the best (or worst, depending on your feelings) moments will be replayed endlessly tomorrow and I don't have to sit through every excruciating moment tonight.  I had messages from two friends that just said "I want to vomit."

I was watching the Stepford-perfect Trump children seated in the box, remembering that the son was one of those rich guys who pay thousands of dollars to go out and kill innocent big game animals and didn't know if I could stomach anything he had to say.

Mayberry was a nice alternative.  Two sweet little old ladies helping Andy find the stills around town so they could run their competition out of business.

Now and then I would switch back to the convention but couldn't stomach the sight of bloviating Christie indicting Hillary Clinton and whipping the crowd into such a frenzy that they chanted "lock her up! lock her up!"

What must other countries watching this be thinking?  A text message I received said "If some nut shoots Hillary, it will be Christie's fault."

I have never seen such hatred coming out of a political convention (and I hardly watched it last night!).  You don't see hatred like that in Mayberry, where everybody seems to like everybody. Even the town drunk is treated with respect.

Yes, I know Mayberry is a fictitious place and probably nowhere like that ever existed in this country, but when the ugliness and venom is flying thick and fast by the people who want to lead our country, it was nice to take a brief escape back into that fictitious place and to wish I could turn today's world off and just sit on the porch with Aunt Bea, singing a quiet song and listening to the crickets chirp.

The Sweat of Our Brow

Walt has been working like a dog in the back yard, trying to clear away shrubbery so the new fence can go up, working with the tree folks to came out to find out why your big tree had decided to drop a branch and leave one on the verge of dropping, and just cleaning up the yard in general.  Each night he comes in, dripping with sweat, his shirt drenched.

Ned put the finishing touches on my office, moving all the slides to the top shelf and all the scrapbooks up on the shelves.  

He also had made this great shelf unit for my desk.  

He also moved all the cords on the floor up to the wall, so the dogs, who have made the space under my desk as their beds, won't unplug anything.

The guy has thought of everything.

So even though I myself made countless trips back and forth from the living room to the office (about 30 steps each way...whew!) moving more stuff in, I had no reason to be sweating and exhausted by the time I put dinner on the table.

This was a delicious dinner, which I did not expect it to be.  One of the things I love about Blue Apron is eating foods I have never eaten before, which I expect to hate and then discovering that it's really quite good.

This was crispy cod with squash.  The cod is breaded and fried and then topped with a salad of arugala mixed with quinoa and toasted almonds.  The whole thing sits on a bed of marinated summer squash, sliced and then added to vinegar, dijon, garic, and olive oil.  After you take the squash out of the dressing, you then put the rest on the arugula salad.

It was delicious.

But, as always, I was dripping sweat before the dinner got on the table, huge drops of sweat rolling into my eyes and temporarily blinding me, at least for reading the recipe.

The problem with Blue Apron dinners is all the prep work...which is, of course, what makes them so good.  By the time I have peeled and chopped and tried to cook things so that they all come out at the same time, I sometimes long for my reliable "Joe Special" which is just hamburger cooked with spinach and egg...one stop shoppping.  However, I am learning how best to do the Blue Apron dinners, which is to take breaks.  That may sound silly.  The work involved isn't all that much, but when I start sweating and my back aching, I just have to walk away and sit down for a few minutes....and I'm hoping that all these healthy meals are gradually making me more able to handle the work of putting them together!

I also shouldn't feel bad about how many trips I made back and forth carrying stuff to put away.  After all I had an almost 2 hour rest while I visited with my friend Cindy.  Of course my friend Cindy is also my dentist and most of those 2 hours were spent with her hands in my mouth, but  I honestly look on my trips to the dentist as restful visits. We get caught up on our lives, I get to vent about my mother, I hear about her trips to the Netherlands to visit her father-in-law, who also has dementia.  We compare what our kids are doing. She was filling 3 small cavities and I left there looking like I had a permanent sneer from all the numbing, but all the numbing means zero pain and only minor discomfort, so I don't mind.

The end is in sight as far as my office is concerned.  I am going to be left witha lot of  "miscellaneous sundries" that have no place...and had no place in the old office...and I'm going to sese how many of those I can actually throw away.

But I can see the living room again and that is a nice thing.

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And just to get political for a minute, in this day and age how does ANY politician think they can get away with ANYTHING when there are cell phones and fact checkers behind every corner.  What was the Trump machine tinking of allowing Melania Trump to plagiarize.  Paul Manafort, campaign chairman, denied allegations that Melania Trump plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention, calling the accusation "just really absurd."

But you can play the speeches side by side and they are word for word identical in a big spot.  You think I'm going to believe that Melania (who says she wrote thes peech herself--anybody believe that?) just channeled Michele Obama and somehow came up with the identical words?  Give me a break!  American people aren't that stupid....or are they?  These days I don't know any more.