28 Days

28 days till the election.  It can't get here soon enough.

So yeah.  I watched the debate.  I also watched the pre-debate talking heads and remember when Brian Williams was interrupted and practically speechless when he went to a press conference Trump was holding with four Clinton accusers.  Really?  None of those women looked particularly happy to be there.  Then he arranged for them to sit in the front row of the VIP: section during the debate

With all that is going on in this country and in the world, this is what Trump wanted to focus on??  Well...yeah.  The first...what?...20 minutes?...was devoted to sex. Trump's sexual misadventures, Bill Clinton's sexual misadventures. I know it is all anybody is talking about, but THIS is the thing the candidates have to debate? Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said this might be the first presidential debate that parents would have to keep their kids from watching.

Trump was determined to dominate this debate and whenever Hillary spoke, he walked behind her and loomed over her, glowering, mic at his mouth ready to interrupt at a moment's notice.

He complained when the moderators "let" her extend her time by 10 seconds and then frequently extended his own time by 30 seconds or more and continued to interrupt her throughout the debate (though admittedly less than he did last time)  He also promised that if he is elected the first thing he will do is to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton and make sure she goes to prison.

In honesty, he was better prepared this time and I suspect if you are a Trump supporter you thought he "won" the debate, while Hillary supporters think she "won."  It was not as clear cut as it was the last time. 

In the past, I have written here about the thing I have observed about men--how they unbutton their jackets when they sit and then button them when they stand up, how talk show hosts button and unbutton their jackets dozens of times during the course of a show.  Trump never buttoned his jacket and he just looked sloppy all night long as he paced around the stage.

I am reading a book about Eleanor Roosevelt right now and she wrote at one point when she was touring the mining towns of West Virginia (first ladies could do that in those days!  She even did it without Secret Service accompaniment) that standing and looking at the poverty and the terrible condition of the families just made her want to cry at the futility of it all (though she actually did quite a bit to alleviate the living conditions of many families).

In watching the debate that's how I felt -- helpless to do anything and feeling on the verge of tears.  I know people who refuse to watch for that reason, but I am unable to turn away.  I do it on compulsion, and always feel worse for it.  In parts of last night, I felt like I'd stumbled upon something very dirty and shameful.

28 days....28 days...28 days...

In other words, I took the day off from Atria again and spent the day at home.  I can't even think of what I did.  I didn't write any letters because it was Sunday and not a mail day.  I didn't work on pocket letters because I finished the last one I was working on on Saturday, on the theme "cute critters."

But I did spend a good portion of the day writing a review for the show we saw last week, Romeo and Juliet.  I had already written a review for the Enterprise, but also had to write one for the News and Review. I have learned, to my surprise, writing the short reviews for News and Review is actually more difficult than writing the longer review (250 vs. 750 words).  When it's a good show  it's fun to ramble on and on about all the good things about it.  But when you have to break that down to only 250 words, then you have to decide what to emphasize and what to ignore.  When it's a Shakespeare play, it is even more difficult because (a) I never studied Shakespeare and don't really like it--though I have gotten better over the past 15 years) and (b) my colleague, who reviews for the local public radio station and occasionally fills in for me when I am unable to do a show, is to Shakespeare when I am to Gilbert & Sullivan.  He loves it.  He travels anywhere he can get to see a show he knows inside out, but wants to see how this company does it in this production.  He told me after the show that it was surprising how much of the script they had cut to tighten things up.  Well, while I can practically recite any G&S show, I wouldn't know whether a script had been cut or not.  His radio review was very professorial and so I was intimidated from the get go, but I did get it written, for good or not.

I get paid more for the shorter reviews, which I initially though was weird, but having done it now for a year, I agree that they are worth more.

And I have to admit that even Shakespeare is a better thing to obsess about than Donald Trump.

Mini Vacation

I've had a 2 day Atria vacation, but went back today  But I didn't go until the afternoon.  I've spent the 2 days doing a little more sorting, throwing out, and putting back into my office  Slowly a dent is being made in the living room.  I have to get it finished or I will never see the grandchldren again. I can't ask a dog sitter, even Ashley, to be in the house the way it is now.  As it is, Ashley is so close to her due date that she may want to fumigate this house before she ever brings her baby here.  (But he could sleep in the office.  THAT, at least, is relatively orderly!)

The other thing I've been doing on my mini vacation is meeting pocket letter deadlines. I was late on 3 of them, and got two finishedand mailed off.  This one was part 3 of an A-Z challenge. The pockets for this one were supposed to represent the letters S through Z.

I was thrilled to find the little quote from "The Velveteen Rabbit," one of my favorite books, for "V".  And of course, the Yellow Brick Road was a natural for "Y"

The other page I finished was called "Daily Chores" or something like that.  The top row was supposed to represent your job, the middle row your daily life, and the bottom row your hobbies or interests.

The lower left says "avid reader" and the lower right is for photography.  One more to finish tomorrow, about my home state, but I have ample supplies to get that one done.

I did go to Atria and found my mother sitting out by the Dining Room.  She asked her usual question--what I'd been doing that was exciting.  I told her I was trying to arrange a luncheon for several girls from my grammar school days.  She wsa non responsive.  I don't think she knew who I was talking about. All she said was "I'll have to see how I feel.  I don't feel well today."  She was relieved when I told her she was not invited, so she didn't have to worry. 

Then I told her about the sad news about her friend Jeff, from whom I received an email today,  She used to work with Jeff at Hospice of Marin and though she seems to have no memory of her female friends there, when I mentioned hearing from Jeff a few weeks ago, she instantly brightened and said of course she remembers Jeff and that the two of them had great fun together.

But today I learned that he has been diagnosed with liver cancer and is about to undergo chemotherapy. He would like to see my mother and I told him when he was up to it either we could go there, or he could come up here, whichever worked best for him

I told her what I had learned and she didn't remember him.  When I gave her enough information she said oh yes, she remembered, but I'm not convinced that she did.  And the news of his cancer elicited the response "Well, life goes on..."  It bothers me so much that she has lost her ability to feel any emotional response to news, good or bad.

She really didn't feel well today. She said all her insides feel like they are shaking and when I left her to try to find some of the non-existent coffee that Atria never has any more, I came back to find her bent over with her head in her hands. Not knowing where she is or what she is supposed to be doing (which has been her daily problem for the past three years) is driving her crazy, and I just don't know how to help her.  She can't remember an explanation of where she is and if you give her a chores to do, she doesn't want to do it, she just sits there wondering what she is supposed to do.

Walt and I did not go hoopty do-ing, or dancing tonight, just had our Blue Apron meal, which was quite tasty, and off to retire for the evening.  Tomorrow back to Atra to make sure she gets up for her scheduled TB test (she was going to refuse to go until I told her it was there at Atria, that she would not have to leave the building and that I would g o with her), then on Wednesday I'm back again to take her to her hair appointment there at Atria.  She's not all that thrilled about that either, but her hair is getting long and stringy and desperately needs cutting.  I have reassured her many times that I will be there to take her to the appointment and to bring her back to her apartment afterwards.

This and That

I am so glad that Pat suggested in the comments section yesterday that I contact the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame, here in Davis, about my godfather's scrapbook of his biking career.  Some of the articles date back to the first decade of the 20th century.

I sent a note off to the email address on their web page and was amused, but not surprised to discover that the person who answered me was our good friend Bob Bowen, the good will ambassador of Davis.  We've known Bob since our kids were little, the kids grew up with him.  They marched in holiday parades that Bob led. They were all in the first Davis Children's Nutcracker, which was Bob's brainchild back in 1977 and is now a beloved city tradition...they all performed and some went on to be directors or tech people. Paul did man on the street interviews for local TV with Bob. Jeri, Ned and Paul at one time or another worked for Bob at one or the other of the two theaters in town. (Paul was managing one of the theaters at the time of his death). He's been part of several theatrical events we've been part of.  

At the time of Paul's death, Bob's son (who is now in college) was 5 years old and had been a particularly good friend of Paul's and was very upset by his death, I remember his mother telling me.

So now I have this piece of biking history and who is there to talk to about it? Bob.  He's very interested and says they even have an ongoing display on bicycle racing.  Right now, though, he is helping to run Picnic Day, the biggest event in Davis (it's really a university event, but it involves the whole town).  He says for him. Picnic Day, April 15 this year, ends in May (since he'll be working on clean up for a couple of weeks), but when that's behind him he'd like to meet with me and go over my Uncle Fred's scrapbooks and see if they can use them.

I thought all of the scrapbooks contained a mixture of biking and boxing and vaudeville, pictures of all 3 brothers, but one of them is just biking, so I will give that one to the museum, if they feel they can use it.  It would be wonderful for my godfather to be part of a museum display, even if it is only in Davis.

At some point I hope to offer my grandfather's memories of his days in vaudeville to the Performing Arts Archive in San Francisco.  They already have all the Lamplighters memorabilia that we collected when we were writing the two histories.

I had lunch with my mother this morning and then went to the post office and mailed off three pocket letters, two for here in the US and one to Malta. (The clerk at the desk in the P.O. said he couldn't remember what he knew of Malta and would be thinking about it all afternoon and look it up when he got home--he thanked me for giving him something to think about while he worked!).  None of the envelopes cost nearly what I feared they would.  Even the one to Malta was only about $3.50.  

I'm almost finished with a new one, which is going to a 79 year old woman in Indiana and I guess the idea with this swap is that it becomes like a pen pal thing, where I write to her, she answers me, and I answer her, and all of our letters are in the form of pockets.  With that in mind, I designed an introductory "about me" page and each pocket represents something important in my life.

(incidentally, the graphic for that "Avid TV watcher" pocket is a graphic I did with PhotoShop.  I found a picture of a stack of TVs and put pictures of some of my favorite TV shows on them.  I'm actually kind of proud of it.)

Tonight we went to see Newsies, the touring Broadway show.  Lively and fun to watch, though with the horrendous acoustics in the theater I missed about 90% of anything they sang.  Fortunately, it's a fairly simple story and the lyrics aren't necessary to understand anything.

Aquarians

While I am not a big believer in astrology, I remember a co-worker who was heavily into it many years ago, who was excited to draw up an astrological chart for me.  She got the information she needed and worked on it, then reported that she was very excited to show me her results.  I met with her and she explained all of her findings, most of which I couldn't understand at all, but the only thing I remember from that session is that in every critical point on the chart, "writing" came up.  Apparently it is written in the stars that I was to do something with writing, which is interesting because I come from a line of writers.  One of my great grandfathers founded the newspaper in Santa Rosa and was its chief columnist for many years.  And those old farmers who stayed behind in Iowa were copious letter writers to their offspring who moved to California.  

Everywhere on the family tree--at least my mother's side of it (the only side I really know) there are people who wrote, whether casually, like letters or journals, or people who did it professionally.

The two big things I have read about Aquarians is first, of course, their "untidiness."  I remember years ago when Walt's mother (a tidy Virgo) was talking to his sister on the phone.  She is far from untidy, but she is an Aquarian and her mother said that she had just read that Aquarians were likely the ones who never quite closed doors or drawers completely. At that moment, Alice looked around her and realized that all of her cupboards and drawers were just ever so slightly not quite closed completely.  Definitely one of my many failings!

But the other interesting thing I read sometime awhile back was that Aquarians tend to jump in whole-hog into activities, immerse themselves in them, and then just as quickly walk away.  I mentioned that to Peggy, an Aquarian, once and she scoffed that she never did that.  I reminded her that at one point she decided to take up rubber stamping as a craft, bought tons of stamps, ink pads and other paraphernalia and then one day just decided she was tired of it and gave it all away. She agreed with me (perhaps "friendships" work that way with her too...one day you're all close and then next day you're finished....)

I frequently relive old entries of this journal when I'm writing today's entry; I click on an entry under "Today in My History" to see what I was writing about x years ago.  And I find things I had forgotten...things I'd been heavily involved in, but are no longer a part of my life.  The other day it was a couple of entries about volunteering at the homeless shelter, which I did for about a year.  I enjoyed being there, enjoyed interacting with the men (we had no women in that shelter) trying to get their lives back together...or just have a place to sleep before they moved on, but I quit when the leadership changed and the new person in charge was so impossible to work with that I decided I didn't need to put myself through that every week.  I haven't been back, and only rarely think about it, when I see someone on the street with a sign asking for money.

Many, many old entries remind me of the dogs we fostered, especially the puppies and how involved I got in that, but don't do it any more (thank you, Polly).  Another phase of my life I've left behind.  I suppose some day Funny the World will be in that category too, but no plans for that in the foreseeable future.

In my never-ending attempt to "clean up" I came across one of those portable file boxes that was labeled "Scrapbooking."  Inside it is a treasure trove of background papers, stickers, die cuts, and pictures to use for embellishment that I collected when I started to make fancy scrapbooks.  I really got into the scrapbooking craze, like Peggy did with rubber stamps.  I made some really nice books I'm proud of, but it all came crashing down when David died, and especially after Paul died.  I had this box of photos that I was going to get into books and realized that I just couldn't make happy pages with happy pictures of people who were no longer here and whom I missed so much.  Fortunately that kind of coincided with the rise of the digital camera so it would soon have become a moot point anyway.  So this box of scrapbook supplies has been sitting here gathering dust for about 20 years now, since we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of David's death next month.

Now the new craze is pocket letters, which I am having so much fun creating.  I signed up to do one on Swap Bot with a music theme and really liked how it came out.  This one had a back page (most don't).  Most of the pockets contain little "gifts" behind the pictures, like a package of glitter, some stickers, etc.  In the pocket with the singers collage, I've included three Forever stamps -- one of Elvis, one of Sarah Vaughn, and one of Ray Charles.

I also did a book-related page that I like too.

I am learning my own style.  I won't be doing all the fancy frou frou that the real artists do, but I enjoy what I'm doing and how I'm doing it.  

With all the scrapbooking stuff I found in that old box, I have a whole new supply of things to use for other pocket letters, two of which I am working on now.  I intend to enjoy this new craft as much as I can until the interest wanes and I move on to something else.

It's what Aquarians do.

A Simple Jam

Yesterday was one of those days where one thing led to another, which led to something that took all day that led to something that is probably going to take several days.

It started simply.  You know, I'm really getting into this whole pocket letter thing.  I've already finished one that I'm going to mail off today.  It's kind of by way of an introduction and I was happy with how it turned out.

Behind each one of those pockets is a little gift...things like stickers or Washi tape or something else (a copy of two of my reviews is behind the "I am a writer" pocket).  Some of them have mini letters explaining -- like the Lawsuit picture.  It's not nearly as fancy as some pocket letters you see, but I'm pleased with it.  The woman I am sending this to is in Australia, so on the back there is a California map showing where in the state I live.

The next one I'm doing is for a woman in Malta, who suggested we might swap pocket letters with a book theme.  I'm having fun with it but have been so obsessed that I even dreamed about pockets.  In my dream, I was thinking of a pocket about Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue," about which I have spoken here so often.  the book is about the development of the English language and I thought it would be fun to have a bunch of English words, with a picture of the book on top of them.

I thought about how much easier it would be if I printed the words on sticky paper, the kind I used to use for transcription.  That would make it easier because I would not have to individually glue each word, but just peel off the backing and position on the pocket background.

Easy peasy.

Only I put a too-small piece of paper into the printer and when I started to print, it jammed inside.  This has happened once or twice in the past couple of years, but this time it was so securely jammed I couldn't even see it.  Now the problem with working with the printer is that there is so much stuff piled on the floor, since I am out of shelf space, that you can't get to the printer, so it involved removing everything on the floor, most of it to a box and then I had no place to put the box, so I needed to clear off my desk, putting all that stuff into another box, both of which I could now put on my desk.

When I got everything cleared away, I still couldn't find the lost paper.  I called in the Big Guns -- Walt.  He couldn't find it either.  We lifted everything that could be lifted and couldn't even see it, but it was definitely jammed, the printer kept telling me.  Finally we found it, jammed in so tightly it was in a place that we couldn't get to.  I was about to write a "help!" message to Canon when Walt turned the printer off and back on again (I had done that too, but this was after a lot of poking and prodding) and the paper just fell right out.  Doh!

So now I had a working printer again, but everything that had been on the floor was in one box and everything that had been on the desk was in another box and a bunch of stuff was piled on the kitchen table.  One of those "where do I even start" sorts of things.  But I looked around at the whole office, at the dust-covered piles of things I haven't looked through in years and decided that this was the time I should take advantage of the job started and clean up the office to see if I could make it more workable.

This is the perfect time to do it because  there is nothing on my calendar this week, except working at Logos on Thursday.

So this is what I will be doing for the next few days -- trying to find a way to make this office more efficient. a seemingly impossible task, but might as well give it the old college try.

Next Best Thing To...

People are always saying something or other is the "best thing since sliced bread."  But did you ever think about we came to have sliced bread?  I participate in a "Trivia a day" thing which asks various multiple choice questions.  Today's question was "who invented sliced bread."  I guessed wrong.  Here is the correct answer:

In 1927, a jeweler named Otto Frederick Rohwedder created the first automatic bread-slicing machine for commercial use. Rohwedder, the owner of three jewelry stores, used his work with watches and jewelry to invent new machines. Convinced he could develop a bread slicing machine, he sold his jewelry stores to fund the development effort and manufacture the machines. In 1927, Rohwedder successfully designed a machine that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it. The first loaf of sliced bread was sold commercially on July 7, 1928. Sales of the machine to bakeries increased and sliced bread became available across the country.

By 1930, only two years after the debut of sliced bread, Wonder Bread was building its own machines and distributing pre-sliced loaves of bread throughout the United States. This product is what put Wonder Bread’s name on the map.

I appreciate Mr. Rohwedder whenever I make my own bread and try to slice it.  Even with the help of an electric knife, I can never get the slices uniform...and thin enough.  So thank you, Otto Rohwedder.  Nothing is the best thing since sliced bread.

However, lunch with old friends may come close.  Our friend Grainne has been here from Ireland again and is about to return to the auld sod, so a group of eight of us gathered at the University Retirement Community to have lunch and tell her goodbye until she returns again (which she does about four times a year).  We spent about an hour and a half and discussed everything from death, dying and dementia to turkeys in Davis to Frederick's of Hollywood.  But what happens at these lunches stays at these lunches!  Suffice to say there were tears and lots of laughs.

I also got my first pocket letter finished and mailed off to my partner.

Reading more about this craft today (after sending this), some consider this a different type of letter, where you are sharing something of yourself as you type.  I didn't really do that, but I am happy about how this turned out.  It was a "yellow themed" pocket letter.  Six of the pockets were supposed to have gifty "stuff" in them.  So starting at top left behind that are a few tiny note papers, then behind the smiley face are a bunch of smiley face stickers.  The next pocket has tags in it and the tape across it is like packing tape which holds down two foreign coins. 

In row two, I had to use the yellow brick road, of course, and the pocket contains Wizard of Oz stickers, the middle pocket has a card of washi tape samples and I actually changed the pocket on the right I had used the book mark that you see (one of the magnetic ones) but then found one in a gold color with a nice quote on it and I substituted that because it was more in keeping with the yellow theme.  The pocket itself is empty.

Bottom left contains a personal letter from me and the next two pockets are empty, but just had a bit of a design on them.

As I said, I have never done this before and am not really very crafty but I found my craft genes were stimulated as I worked, so I've signed up to do a music-themed pocket letter and someone in Belgium is looking for someone to make a San Francisco themed pocket letter, which I thought would be a lot of fun, so I offered to make one for her. 

It's all more fun, at least, than sliced bread!

Jumping In with Both Feet

It was one of those beautiful days, where the sky was a deep blue, the air was clear, and there were lots of bright white fluffy clouds floating around.

It took me awhile to come to life.  I woke up around 3, as usual, but this time could not get back to sleep.  Never did.  I tried for a long time, to no avail, so I watched shows that I'd recorded the night before but had not yet seen.

I was kind of a zombie most of the morning, but had Things To Do, so couldn't give in and just go back to sleep. I didn't feel like lunch at Atria, but knew it was time to pick up laundry, so I ran my errands first.

The first was the trip to Michael's that I'd been looking forward to.  I've decided to get into the pocket letter thing and have been watching tutorials (which are kind of silly because they show you how the person making the video makes her fancy pockets, but it really depends on your own creativity and the kinds of decorating ideas you can come up with).  I have the plastic pockets and stuff to decorate them with but what I am lacking is that creative gene that may make my first attempts at pocket letters pathetic.  We'll see.  I'm starting small and easy -- a project that is "yellow themed," which means that everything has to have yellow on it.  As an aficionado of smiley faces and The Wizard of Oz, I could easily envision at least two of the nine pockets.  Two down, 7 to go.

I left Michael's with a sack of goodies involving patterned papers, and kitschy things to go into the pockets like tiny paper clips in the shape of wire coat hangers, mini note books, glitter, and string and I don't know what else.  I don't have a clue what I'm going to do with all this.  

The big purchase was a paper cutter.  I've had one for some time, but it's kind of small for what I want to do, so I went up one size, which should do me nicely for this (these?) project.  But I'm all ready for starting this project and designing a yellow pocket letter and let's see where it takes me.  Aquarians are the kind of people who go all in to a project, bury themselves in it completely and then in a few months, they're over it and ready to move on to something else.  

With my heavy bags in the car, I went to the post office to mail off a package and then finally to Atria.  I wasn't sure if it was time to pick up dirty laundry yet or no.  I had just been there about a week ago, but I swear she must change her underwear three times a day because she has enough to get her through 2+ weeks, but I think every pair she owns was in the dirty laundry.

We had our usual visit which, this time, involved asking me who had given her which flowers.  Over and over again.  And asking me what I was doing exciting tonight.  I finally realized I was falling asleep and could not stay awake, so decided it was time to go home and take a nap, which I managed to do.

So here I sit at midnight finishing this up, stopping every few sentences to cut some more paper or put some other do-dad on a pocket.  I'll have this thing finished in no time at this rate.

I wonder how long the excitement is going to last.