Alice

I did not sleep at all last night.  In fact, it was about 9:30 a.m. before I finally dozed off for an hour and a half.  I don't know why. I just could not get to sleep.  I've taken to writing my journal entries in the morning instead of at night, but I've never started one so late!  Thank goodness I don't have a show to review tonight!

I met Alice this week.

Alice is the UCD student who is partnered with my mother, to be her "buddy" and establish a relationship with her.  She will visit her every Wednesday, she tells me (a day of the week I don't have to feel guilty about staying home!)

She's a lovely girl, in her second year at the University.  I can't remember what she said is her major, but picked up on her brother, who is looking at UC Santa Barbara (where Jeri graduated) and Cal Poly (where Tom graduated).  I recommended both schools highly, Santa Barbara over Cal Poly because he thinks he might like to major in theater.

We tried to talk to include my mother who was lost, of course.  Turns out Alice is a theater fan and we both like the same shows, which really left my mother in the dust while we talked about shows and songs and her other brother who is doing theater in San Diego.

I guess Alice sat with us for about 45 minutes until time for her to leave.  I was so pleased to have her there because she got my mother talking animatedly, and when she left, the two of us had little to say to each other again.  

We were sitting at the end of the hall, the opposite end from where she lives and I made some comment about her apartment being at the other end of the hall.  I had to tell that to her about three times and she finally shook her head and said "Well, I'm going to have to think about that because I can't understand a word you're saying."

I think Alice will be good for her.

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I came home to turn on the news and what a depressing day it was.  It started at 3 a.m. with Morning Joe talking about General Kelly and his comments in support of #45 and how shocked he was that an Amercan Congresswoman would dare to listen in on the private conversation between the president and a grieving widow.  He didn't seem to know that they were in a car and that the grieving widow was listening on speaker phone and that her mother was as incensed as Congresswoman Wilson was, so it was hardy anything circumspect.

But then he said a few things that confused me.  The prez has said that he has called, he thinks, all the grieving families of soldiers killed since he took office.  That's 27 of our military who have lost their lives in defense of this country since January.  If you discount the three who died with LaDavid Johnson, that's 24 phone calls he has supposedly made.

So Kelly says that before he makes the call, he says to Kelly "How do I make this call?  What do I say?"  What did he say the previous 24 times he made that difficult call?  Or maybe 23 times, since at least one family says they were never contacted.

And isn't it convenient that Kelly says he told him, word for word, what he actually said in the "disrespectful" phone call.  Except when Kelly said it he added something to the effect that he was "doing what he wanted to be doing," which softens it a bit, I guess.

Johnson's mother was upset that he didn't seem to know her son's name.  Nor did Kelly.  They also referred to her as "the wife."  

I listened to a recording made by another family that 45 did call.  He said something like "this is a terrible thing."  He never mentioned "death" and he never mentioned that young man's name either, but just that he knew he was a wonderful man and a hero.

I'll give the prez marks for trying, but given the call I heard and the report by Congresswoman Wilson, I think I'd rather not receive a call at all.  

The problem with it -- and with everything with this president -- is that he won't let it go until he gets an apology.  He was still attacking Congresswoman Wilson in tweets this morning.  The whole thing would have blown away quickly had he not made a cause celebre out of it.  But at least more people know of LaDavid Johnson now than would have known of him before.

Today Kelly seems to be trying to trash Wilson and every news report is now centered on that.  "White House chief of staff Gen. John Kelly on Thursday erroneously claimed that Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Florida, claimed credit for securing "$20 million" in federal funding to build a new FBI field office in Miami in 2015, according to a video.  Accusing her of being an "empty barrel," Kelly said Wilson focused more on her own actions than the heroism of the two FBI agents for whom the new building had been named.

"While Wilson took credit in her speech at the dedication ceremony for shepherding legislation naming the FBI building after two FBI agents who were killed in a 1986 gunfight, she did not claim credit for helping to fund the building, according to the video.

"Wilson also spent a considerable portion of her remarks praising the valor of law enforcement, retelling the story of the two slain FBI agents and calling on those who work in the field to stand and be recognized."

Why does this administration have to attack everyone who has anything negative to say.

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Other than fuming at the news and finally turning it off after about the 10th replay of Kelly's statement.  I spent most of the day working on the new "Randomness" journal and am happy with how it's coming along.  The notebook is 80 sheets of paper and I have to decorate front and back, or 160 pages!

One of the things I included was an article, I think from the BBC, which says that scientists have proven that our brains still work after the body shows no signs of life, so it may be that we "hear" our own death.  "There is evidence to suggest that there's a burst of brain energy as someone dies." Creepy. 

So if a loved one...or maybe more appropriately someone you didn't like all that much...has just died, be careful what you say about them.  They may be taking that memory into the afterlife.