At Least It's Finally Over

Too depressed to write anything today.

Crazy Time

I've been one of those people who was never bothered by time change.  Spring forward, Fall back...it was all the same to me.  I went by what the clock said (and the fact that times change on Saturday night instead of Sunday night makes it all easier).  I've also not been someone affected by time changes when traveling.  When we get on on a plane, I set my watch (if I'm wearing one) or my mental clock to the time it will be when we arrive and I barely notice jet lag.

The jet lag thing started to affect me a year or two ago.  Suddenly I noticed it.  Must be age.

But still clock changes were no problem.

It's always a problem for the dogs.  They are incredibly polite in the morning, being very quiet and staying asleep until I start to move about in the recliner.  Truth to tell, I fake them out. I often wake up half an hour or more before I let them know I'm awake

But each of them, one at a time, will quietly walk over to the recliner.  I watch them through almost closed eyes and I breathe deeply and slowly.  They look at me, sigh and go back to where they were sleeping.  The second I touch the lever on the chair that will sit me up, they are up and jumping and barking and thrilled to see I am awake.  I suspect Lizzie's main happiness is to see me.  Polly's is imminent food. 

But dinner is a whole different story.  I love Springing Forward because they aren't bugging me to eat at 4 or 5 p.m.  They are content to wait until 7 because they don't know what the clock says.

The Fall Back this year has been hard on them.  They start bugging me about dinner at 3 and I can barely make it to 5 before they are so antsy I have to feed them.

This year, to my surprise the clock change has affected me.  The last two days, mornings seem to drag on forEVer.  And I start yawning, thinking surely it must be near my normal bedtime...only to discover it's only 9:30.  I went to sleep when I was sleepy last night...and then was up at 1:15.

It will all iron itself out eventually, I know, but this is the first year that I ever remember being affected by it.  Hell to get old!

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I went to Atria yesterday.  I wanted to find out how my mother was after yesterday's "incident" but mostly I wanted to speak with the person who will be in charge of billing the long term care insurance for her assisted living fees.  I had been told she works on Monday.  But she doesn't.  (Typical of how information gets passed along ... or not passed along ... at Atria!)  So I will go back today.  I have been told she works today.  We'll see...

Then I went down to the apartment, never knowing what I'm going to find.  I always check a few things...if the newspaper is still outside the door, that's a concern, but lately I think she's forgotten that she gets a newspaper.  Then I open the door quietly (I don't knock any more) I peek in and see if the bed is made or if she is in it.  Then I check to see if the curtains have been opened.  Finally, I check the couch to see if she's there.

So the newspaper was outside, but the bed was made and the curtains were drawn.  I thought maybe she was still at lunch, but no, she was asleep on the couch.  Well, not actually asleep, but lying on the couch, very subdued.

We talked for our usual hour and what was going through my head the whole time is ... I can't imagine what it's like to be her.  To never wake up in a familiar place.  To sit in her living room and recognize nothing around her.  When I tell her things, I've noticed that if she doesn't understand, she points out how beautiful that arrangement of artificial carnations I bought for her a year ago is, or the workmen outside and how they started last week and she hopes they finish soon.  Those are her fall-back safe topics.

I told her several times about her trip to the ER yesterday and her frustration is that she doesn't remember it.  I told her time and time again that she was out of it; of course she doesn't remember.  Then she thinks she's stupid because she can't figure out what is going on.  I pointed out that the doctors can't figure out what is going on, so she shouldn't be surprised that she can't...then I asked her if she had ever had medical training

To keep the conversation going between long gaps of nobody saying anything, I talked about the election, trying to keep it very simple and very short, but she said "I can't understand a thing you are saying."

I miss the mother I used to talk politics with.

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So.  Today is the day.

My head tells me to stay busy and keep the television off, but I've been so obsessed with this election, I know that is not likely to happen.

I thought about getting gin and tonic, but really I don't drink any more.  I'll have to make it on comfort food.

We watched talking head last night projecting results and when I read about the importance of the "battleground states" I always wonder if California...in fact, the whole of the country west of the Rockies....is chopped liver.  Look at the important states and there is nothing on the left side of the map.

But I'll go cast my vote for all the democrats, and all the propositions, and then head over to Atria.  So I'll avoid at least part of the talking heads today predicting what's going to happen.  Things seem to be pointing to Hillary, but then I remember this famous photo..

.

and I won't relax until it's all official.

Everybody...get out and vote!  It's going to be "crazy time" all day.

When Fiction and Reality Meet

I have seen Cabaret several times.  I am quite familiar with the movie, and have seen it many times.  But I have also seen the stage show several times (one of the shows that Jeri may have played more often than any other show, except maybe Chicago.)

The stage show is quite different.  It's darker, for one thing.  The Emcee somehow isn't quite as menacing in the movie, playing his role for comedy rather than for any sort of demonic presence; Sally only has one big song (the title song) in the stage show; several characters and subplots added to the movie don't appear in the stage play and it's quite confusing having a character of "Max" in the stage play who is a completely different character from the movie Max, who showers Sally and Cliff with riches and ends up screwing them both.  Literally. 

It seems that in the movie you had a hint of the rise of Nazism from the beginning, a glimpse of a swastika here, some violence seen out the window of the Kit Kat Klub, and eventually soldiers with swastika armbands as part of the clientele.

In the stage play, there is no hint of Nazis until just before the end of the first act.  And then it hits you like a jolt.

One of the reasons it hit me so forcibly is that I had just sat through a week of the Republican Convention (though admittedly, I skipped a lot of it because I couldn't take it--but got all the high (or low) points in sound bites from talking heads the next day)

And I watched most of Day 1 of the Democratic convention and as much as I could before we had to leave for the theater tonight (I recorded the rest of it and we sat up until midnight watching Clinton's speech).

So in the stage show, you get the nice choir starting to sing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" very sweetly and it escalates into something more strident.  Now, I've always been disappointed that it's not nearly as effective as it is in the movie, but still tonight it was pretty darn effective.

Suddenly I wasn't sitting in a theater watching a musical, but my mind was thinking of that awful Republican convention that was all about hate--hate--hate--hate.  Hatred and divisiveness.  And a room full of white people (did you know there were SEVEN black delegates?  More black people on stage than in the audience!) yelling and cheering and waving signs like "Lock Her Up!"

I was thinking about how the speeches were designed to build hatred and suspicion, of Hillary Clinton, of your Muslim neighbors, of NATO member nations, of those Mexican rapists, and yet offered zero clue as to how the candidate plans to make America great again.

I contrasted that convention with Hillary's resume which we got in bits and pieces from so many people on the stage tonight, each relating something that she had done that had changed their lives, and then Bill summing it all up with her work on this committee and that committee and helping pass this or that bill, and negotiating this or that peace settlement.  Whether she deliberately or innocently misused email became irrelevant because, love her or hate her, this woman has a lifetime of experience in local, national and international politics, whereas all I heard about Trump's qualifications is that he builds the biggest, best, most expensive hotels and golf courses in the world and that everybody loves him.  Not, in my opinion, the person I want with his finger on the button that could set off World War III.

In Act 2 of Cabaret we see the Nazis rise to power, with the start of attacks against the jews, beating people for expressing their opinion--all with the backdrop of such silly songs as "If you could see her..." saying that if someone could the Emcee's girlfriend (a gorilla), she 'wouldn't look Jewish at all."

When the beautiful relationship between Fraulein Schneider and her Jewish greengrocer friend Herr Schultz dissolves because she realizes the danger she would be putting herself in by marrying a Jew, Sally Bowles wails, "But it's just politics.  It doesn't concern us."

And I wondered how many people still slavishly devoted to Trump feel that way about international relations or a bunch of other things that would be completely ruined if Trump carries out even a portion of the things he plans to do.  Just for starters the thousands of people currently receiving health care under the Affordable Care Act, having their medical insurance coverage ended and replaced by "something" that he assures us is going to be "so much better," but can't give us a clue what that is.

The whole thing keeps me awake nights (I'm writing this at 2:30 a.m.)

And then I go off and see Cabaret and that doesn't help at ALL!!!

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Char came up for lunch today.  They were turning her water off for several hours and, since she had not yet seen the big office remodel, she decided this would give her a chance to do so.

She was, not surprisingly, impressed.

She is really enjoying the new senior center where she moved recently and we discussed what Walt and I are going to do with this house, eventually.  I've mentioned it before on Facebook and Ashley panicked.  I reassured her that three things had to happen first:  We have to clean the house, my mother has to die, and the dogs have to die (No way I would move these guys to a new place and while I could find an adoptive home for Lizzie, nobody in their right would adopt Polly).  I told her that given those three conditions, the new child she is about to give birth to will probably be in high school before that is a possibility.

A Part of History

Well, I voted.

I only had to stand in line for a couple of seconds, behind two people, but that was longer than I normally have to wait in the middle of the day in Davis and all but two voting stations were filled, so I take this as a good sign that people are coming out to vote.

There are four other people in this family besides me.  One voted for Bernie, one threw the vote away by voting for neither Bernie nor Hillary, and I don't know if or how the other two voted.

I went back and forth between Bernie and Hillary until this morning. Each had positive attributes and each had negative attributes.

In the end I guess that I voted in the same manner as the throw-away vote, i.e., I decided Bernie couldn't get the nomination and I wanted to be part of history, part of putting the very first female in the country's history on the ballot to run for president.  Something to tell my grandchildren. In other words, this was not a vote based on firm convictions, but more on "I have to vote for someone, so why not be a part of history?"

When/if this nomination is locked down and she is officially the nominee, my choice will be significantly more clear.

I wonder if Trump is going to actually make it to the nomination, or if he's going to go all Captain Queeg on the country and end up hauled off to the loony bin.  It certainly wouldn't surprise me, given his bizarre actions of late, what with his demanding his staff keep up pressure on the "Mexican" judge and then getting angry when they would not and saying he'd run his own campaign because he was smarter than his staff, who were all stupid people.  (He may be the first candidate ever to run for president while under indictment, though there are those who feel Hillary may be under indictment too, which would certainly make an interesting race!)

He has called all reporters racist and is trying to bar most of them from his rallies and some have been ejected simply for being there because Trump doesn't like them.  There are so many points for which he needs to answer that it is getting more difficult to evade questions...and reporters are getting more tenacious in asking them.  One reporter asked him the same question something like 24 times and he evaded every time.  I don't see THAT going on until November.

I can't believe that this morning I woke up liking Lindsey Graham, who has removed his endorsement of Trump and has called for other Republicans to do so as well.  Graham says that Trump's statements are "the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy."

I even thought kindly toward Newt Gingrich who said that this was one of the biggest mistakes Trump had ever made and that it's inexcusable. Mitch McConnell has said he does not agree with what Trump is saying. Paul Ryan says he completely disagrees with him (though he still endorses him). Ana Navarro, Republican strategist says "what he is doing is disgusting. I'm livid about it." Senator Mark Kirk has removed his endorsement. Iowa State Senator David Johnson has left the GOP in protest over Trump. "Johnson, who said he would change his registration to No Party, compared Trump’s rise to the top of the GOP ticket to the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s."

This is their candidate!

There are a host of Republicans on Twitter who are leaving the party.

"Pigs may fly, hell may freeze over, and I, a lifelong GOPer, will never unite behind the Orange Menace."

"So I guess I'll cast a vote for a democrat for POTUS for the first time in my life, way to fail the world, RNC."

"I've been lifelong loyal GOP, since the day I could vote. Tonight, I have unregistered and now am an Independent."

I am not eager to live as long as my mother, for example, but I sure would love to come back in 50 years and see how the books treat this period in our country's history. What will my great, great grandchldren learn of history in school?

And just a hint of what we may have in store under President Trump Iran denied visas to 3 GOP Lawmakers. “Despite what you seem to presume, members of the U.S. Congress do not get to dictate the policies of other countries,” the Foreign Ministry added. “This clearly applies to Iranian visa policies.”