Thursday Thoughts: Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

1. What is personal space?

2. Should we talk about the weather? Or just roast silently? Unless you're in my house, in which case you need blankets once MFD gets in front of the thermostat.

3. The kind people at Maple Holistics sent me their Apple Cider Vinegar Shampoo to try in mid-June. You know I never report back on things until I've had them in circulation for at least a month. I like this one as much as I like the tea tree shampoo, and I used the ACV with the tea tree conditioner. The apple cider vinegar shampoo is of course free of sulfates and parabens and is great for color treated hair - it does a great job of clarifying without stripping your head of color. My hair and scalp feel super clean post-wash. And one of my favorite things about this company is their recycling program - for every six empty bottles you return by mail, you get a free shampoo or they make a donation to the environmentally friendly charity of your choice. The returned bottles are chipped, melted down, and re-formulated into new bottles for their products. This.is.how.you.do.it, beauty companies. Come on. Get with this.

4. Steph and I will post about ways we're struggling with sustainability on Wednesday, 7/24, and how we did overall for Plastic Free July on Wednesday, 7/31. If you post about those things on Instagram, use the hashtag #sustainablestephs and tag us! Steph is here and I'm here.

5. I love seeing a Mural Arts project in progress in Suburban Station.

6. Love this sticker I saw yesterday while running an errand at lunch.

7. I've gone back to using old school blue tub Noxema on my face a few nights a week. I slather it on and let it mostly sink in for 15 minutes before rubbing it in and washing the remaining off. Bruce and Ben are so confused when it's on.

8. The demonization of brown people by this administration and the lengths that GOP congresspeople will go to avoid it and regular citizens will go to ignore or excuse it is fucking vile. Go back to your own country...said by a President of the United States, to members of Congress with the implication that it trickles down...while trump holds a rally and American citizens high on hate and what they have been told is righteousness chant send her back. It is so fucking fascist I have no idea how Congress is standing for it and the American people are not alarmed by it. Ugly and un-American too.

9. Reminder:

10. Ecards:

What appears after the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts is a song lyric to whatever I'm listening to when I start to write the post. This week is Space Oddity by David Bowie

Thursday Thoughts - How does it feel when there's no destination that's too far and somewhere on the way you might find out who you are?

1. You know how your brain gets jammed up and things take longer to process/tasks take longer to complete and you know you need a break? That's me right now. Vacation is coming! Signs of that are always on the spare room bed.

2. "It's a road trip but we are going in super light," she says, after she places an Amazon order to ensure the proper coffee is there the first day and takes up most of a bag with books.

3. I got to see Melissa and Evil Stephanie #1 and Alex for dinner on Monday. I always enjoy meeting up with them when Stephanie is out on this coast. Fish tacos and service at National Mechanics were both great. Originally built in 1837 as Mechanics National Bank, the building is pretty cool too. Good pic as well except Melissa's GD eyes are closed.

4. Not a mug you'll be seeing in my mug collection.

5. Things that have kept me up at night this week, causing me to write my congress people close to midnight, Item A: people caring more about the word we use to describe the camps or the fact that other presidents had camps or how the children got here. These are fucking children. They need adequate food, water, beds, soap, diapers. If this was your kid, what would you want people to do on your behalf? This is not a political issue. This is a human issue. Children should not suffer because of the actions of adults. I have to think anyone with a heart believes that. Action: call your govt reps, donate to RAICES , and be be vocal about this because staying silent or neutral is choosing the side of the oppressor. I always did like Highlights and that is the gift of the year this year to support them.

6. Things that have kept me up at night this week, Item B: When They See Us. All hard, but episode four was just...fuck. And this happens, more than we'd like to admit. Action: examine yourself and the systems around you. Read White Fragility. Speak up when you see differential treatment under the law and everywhere.

7. The big todo in our house this week is a bladder infection. Poor Mae. One zillion dollars later, she is on a shit ton of antibiotics and still uncomfortable but back to growling at the other dogs and eating food and treats. Not an expense or a worry you want before vacation. I hope she's back to normal by the time we leave.

8. Co-signed. It's crazy unrealistic to expect happiness all the time yet there are happiness and positivity pushers out there and just stop with that. That’s not real life, it’s smothering people so they can’t express the reality of where they are, putting on a false happy while inside they stew and stagnate instead of having the space to grow through pain and adversity. I have a sign with "Sunshine all the time makes a desert" in my house so you know where I stand. 

9. Reminder: I love seeing street art from one of my favorites in the wild.

10. Ecards:

Thank you and good day. I SAID GOOD DAY.

What appears after the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts is a song lyric to whatever I'm listening to when I start to write the post. This week is Living in America by James Brown

Thursday Thoughts - I see them, round the front way and I know and I know I don't want to stay

1. Stage of cold I'm in: blowing nose with toilet paper because I used all tissues and forgot them at both of the grocery stores I went to last night, taking every available vitamin in cabinet regardless of what it's for, eating everything Vitamin C I can get, not very liked by coworkers, asleep by 9 pm, reluctant to leave the couch even though I have very little clean underwear left and laundry does not do itself.

2. Yesterday I had a Wednesday morning that was totally Tuesday-ish. I missed my train because there was an overturned truck on 95 and all the 95 traffic was being routed through my train station. The way I come in, there is no stop sign. The woman driving like she was hellbent for election to get back through to 95 almost hit me and was stomping around outside our cars screaming at me until she realized I had no stop sign. She STFU very quickly then. That bullshit delay had me hauling ass to the platform only to miss the train by 30 seconds, after which I said fuck it and turned around to go back home but couldn't actually get out of the train station in a timely manner so I went back to the platform. The shuttle buses weren't running so I wogged a mile and a half with bags before 8:30 am.

3. Things were looking up by 10 after I unjammed the printer right before I hit Office Space levels of frustration. I had a productive meeting then dropped some stuff at UPS, mailed something I sold on Ebay at the post office, saw that news van - I get so fucking excited when I see the Action News van in the wild - and walked to the library to pick up books which is of course always the best part of the week.

4. New to me nail polish: Cirque Colors in Sapphire. I hope it comes off as easily as it went on given that it has flecks of glitter in it.

5. Bruce and Bender went to the vet Monday night. They were a riot. Bender has roundworms so he's being treated for that, but otherwise he's fine, just needs to fatten up a little. The dog listed as 17 lb in his description is not even nine pounds. When he was picked up this dog had parvo and wasn’t neutered. He was surrendered because there were too many animals in the house. I am envisioning a hoarder situation with zero vet care. He's doing really well in our pack, and the energy is more balanced. Bruce is still insane, but since he has a youthful partner in crime, he tires out more easily. He's also not obsessed to distraction with me, which is good for him.

6. I don't know if I have it in me to go to the shore this weekend, but I left quite a few things there that I need.

7. Something to think about as we examine ourselves - read the entire post here. As white people, a lot of times we don't see things because we don't want to see them. White is the norm, the baseline that everything else is based off. That's all we've ever seen. Until we can see it from another perspective (and once you see it, you can't unsee it), we will continue to have unrest and divide. It's up to us as white people to break this shit down even when we benefit from it.

8. A few more thoughts related to the post I wrote Tuesday:

9.  Reminder:

10. E-card of the week:

Toodleoo. 

What appears after the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts is a song lyric to whatever I'm listening to when I start to write the post. This week is Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam.

Not in the mood

For this political climate

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters

To argue with people defending teargassing children in any way. The correct response is “that is wrong” full stop - no but or any type of qualifier or waxing poetic or strutting around like the only voice of reason in existence - children, tear gassed, there is no reason. Shut up unless you are speaking against this 

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters

To cite sources for others on what immigrants do and don’t get for “free,” the situation in Honduras and how it was created by the U.S., or any other information that is available in a library or on, you know, fucking Google

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters

To listen to people rant about how immigrants are taking jobs/resources/opportunities and THEY WILL NOT PAY FOR THAT be totally fine with limitless corporate welfare and tax cuts that feed the rich and kill the middle class and be completely unable to connect all of these things and how they actually work

For people being so fearful of brown people coming in while okay with mass shootings and domestic terrorism by white men

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters

To see one more person call thousands of exhausted, hungry, poor people who have walked 2,000 miles for a better chance at safety for themselves and/or their children an “invasion.” Get the fuck out of here with an invasion.

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters

To see people value what they think of as legality above all else, including morality. How did that work out for Nazi Germany, when people valued what was the current law over what was morally right?

To see "maybe they should try legal immigration" one more fucking time - do you have any idea how outrageously expensive and bureaucratic our current immigration system is? Most of our poor Irish and Italian ancestors would not have been able to pay their way through that

To listen to people say they just want immigrants vetted but not say a damn word when their government sent 5,000 military personnel to the border instead of 5,000 agents to process applications

To need to convince others to remember common decency and basic humanity for all people

Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters

To listen to bullshit from anti-abortion people who are A-OKAY with these real, live children living like this

For people who cannot acknowledge the lengths they would go to to keep their kids safe, the laws they would break, the miles they would walk

To meet anyone in the middle when they are coming from a vile, hateful, fearful place

To be nice about any of the above, even frivolously, to remain civil. Not in the fucking mood even a tiny bit

Also, all of this copied from a public status of Alex Schiller on Facebook:

It is less expensive to fast track the vetting, court cases, and processing for asylum seekers than it is to separate families and detain them.

It is less expensive to feed, clothe, and house every member of 'the caravan' than it is to mobilize troops to defend our borders from people who have just walked 1000 miles with no food.

It is less expensive to create a public works project, and let migrants and asylum seekers build bridges and roads, than it is to spend taxpayer dollars on 2,000 miles of wall to keep them out.

It is less expensive to deal with imbalanced tariffs than it is to allow 98% of the soy we would have sold to China rot in a field, and watch GM lay off 15% of its workforce.

The amount of money spent by super PAC's on disinformation campaigns supporting Kavanaugh, the tax breaks, ACA repeal, and a host of other attempts by billionaires to rally public support for whatever benefits their bottom line (while the GOP held the executive and legislative branches, and had the votes to do all of this themselves) could have rebuilt half of Puerto Rico.

The ruling party, the one of God and financial responsibility and conservatism, takes every opportunity to spend the most money possible to solve the least pressing problems in the least efficient ways; all while signaling their own virtues of faith and family, decrying the financial mismanagement of past administrations, and turning a blind eye to the sea of open corruption they so painstakingly crafted.

I never imagined such an innovative and intelligent country could be so easily manipulated into doing the most harm at the highest cost, all in the name of defending ourselves from ghosts.

My Republican friends... whatever it is you think your party is now, you're wrong.

Whatever it is you're scared of that allows you to so hypocritically support such a hapless, inefficient, and often cruel administration; I assure you it does not exist. And if it does, these perceived threats are nothing compared to the real world problems we're both creating and ignoring.

It's probably time for you to wake up, because "gassing children at the border" is the type of headline that we would normally go smack the shit out of another country for doing... not something my friends and relatives defend on the fucking internet.

For giving Tuesday, try to give a shit about people.

TWTW - the one that slid into a meltdown

Friday was some time spent with my niece and nephew, a trip to the grocery store where I forgot two key ingredients, and reading a beta copy of an old friend's book while dining on cheddar jalapeno cheese curls due to ingredient fuck up.

Saturday I was up early making soup because MFD got the missing ingredients for me. I also changed and washed the sheets and quilt, ran and emptied the dishwasher, painted my nails (OPI humidi-tea which is now missing because Bruce attacked the three polishes on the coffee table when we were out and I found two but am still missing that one) and successfully made a little order out of life before heading to the campaign office.

Two door knocking shifts in the shell as fuck campaign office. I did hang some signs up in between first and second shift and I ran errands for food and modem etc. We had great volunteers. If you ever want to join us on weekend, let me know! I have a new full time job of recruiting and organizing volunteers until Election Day. If you can't get out to knock doors but will phone bank, we need help there too. Also campaign donations help. And if you want to help us personally, if you know anyone buying or selling a house who needs a realtor in PA or NJ, refer them to MFD! Yes he is still a realtor,  even now. I'm not sure if people think we are independently wealthy but we are not. He does not get paid to campaign - that's not what you are allowed to use campaign donations for LOL. Trying to keep all balls in the air and stay afloat over here. The stress is incredible but we've been through worse and made it. We'll get by on no sleep, hard work, and a little help from our friends. 

We went to the Welcoming the Stranger International Dinner for the second year in a row as guests of our friends at McCarthy Real Estate. The food from all over the world was fabulous but the best part was hearing from the immigrant students Welcoming the Stranger has helped learn English as a second language, find jobs, gain citizenship, etc. I truly fail to understand the fear of immigrants that has been encouraged in America. These people are so proud and happy to be here in this country and the hatred they get from some is heartbreaking. We are all just human beings trying to live. Back home by 9 to deal fight more fires and do more campaign work. 

Sunday I was up by 7:15 after less than five hours of sleep, did some food prep and processed my iced coffee, and was doing campaign shit and this blog by 8:00. I went out with Melissa for a short door knocking stint then back out again with a volunteer I hit it off with really well. I freaking love so many of the people I've met. It helps buffer the bad stuff and there is a shit load of bad stuff.

Unfortunately I did a series of not wise things - I didn't eat, I drank too much coffee, I didn't drink enough water. When I walked in the door at 6 pm for the last time (campaign office is less than a mile from home, I'd been in and out all day), all I wanted was to put pajamas on, eat soup, sit in silence, and be in bed by 8 pm. But alas there was trash and recycles spread across the first floor. When I finally got in bed the dogs were fighting. MFD was home and loud downstairs. I smelled pee. I couldn't find the pee. I played pee and go seek. It was on MFD's fucking pillows. So at 11:25 pm I nearly lost my shit screaming. He came up and changed the entire bed and tried not to laugh at me because I had seriously lost all of my marbles. I took an hour to calm down and chill out so another night of not great sleep. Bruce had exercise, play time, we were both home a bunch during the day. Whyyyy. More and more I think a friend is the answer.

Weekly food prep: breakfast is scrambled eggs and a power breakfast muffin, lunch/dinners are buffalo chicken spaghetti squash and Italian wedding soup. The spaghetti squash thing looks terrible but it's good.

I'm all out of anything witty or interesting to sign off with. Have a good day my friends! 

TWTW - the one with the Philadelphia Freedom

I got my beloved purse back Friday, signed up for Plastic Free July (will you?), visited Baby Seeeeve and Lola Jean who took 23944987 photos with my phone, fretted over Gus, and was in bed with a book by 11. Sleep was fruitless as Bruce Springsteen was crying all night and pooping and puking.

Saturday Bruce was better but Gus wasn't, and I got him a late afternoon appointment before hitting the grocery store. Then we were off to the Families Belong Together rally in Philly. I was already upset by dog issues but man, hearing a 13 year old girl crying trying to talk about what happened to her family who came here seeking asylum...how can people live supporting this? I was also happy to hear the messaging all tied together - you can't be upset about kids in cages and not be upset about brown kids being shot in the back for no reason. Kim from Kimrussell.com heeded my meet me there calls last week and met us, which was awesome. We work not too far from each other so drinks and/or dinner are in our future!

I'm proud of everyone who showed up in towns big and small yesterday to say we should be better than this. 

Amtrak switch problems fucked us getting home so we had to get off the train 20 minutes away and Uber. We were in a time crunch so I could get Gus to the vet. They confirmed what I have pretty much known - Gus has cancer. I declined the zillion dollar biopsy but the vet was confident there was no need. We'll just watch him and when he's ready to go, he's ready to go. We're already on borrowed time and the vet seemed to think weeks, maybe months, not years but we'll see when we see. Since he's approaching 13, we're not pursuing any treatment. He barked everyone out of the vet as he does and was a loon all afternoon so safe to day it's not right now. Bruce was also recovered from his sickness of eating God knows what and Mae was over both of them. 

The heat and the vet and the angst from the rally took it out of me, so I chilled out Saturday night and finished a book while MFD was out door knocking.

Sunday we slept in due to shitty sleep Saturday. I love that Bruce no longer gets up at 4:30 to pee. Then it was picking up, wiping down bathrooms, paying bills, food prepping,etc. 

Weekly food prep: I made greek orzo salad, hummus, hotdogs, and cut up watermelon and veggies and pita. I will be making breakfast burritos and mexican stuffed shells to freeze this week. 

Sunday afternoon Debbie and I went door to door for MFD, sweating our fucking asses off. Literally it was like being boiled inside and we were only out for an hour and a half. 98 freaking degrees. Video of us dripping with sweat here.  We came back to the air conditioning, hydrated, and ate, then Debbie went home and I had a rest on the couch with los perros. I basically rested the rest of the night and finished a book because heat takes it out of me. 

A disjointed week ahead - I'm working today and Tuesday, we're obviously off Wednesday, working Thursday, and heading to the shore Thursday night with Debbie so I'm off Friday. 

And yours?