Missing My Old Stuffies

In my accidental quest to be the World’s Worst Catholic, I caused one of those pearl-clutching moments on Sunday. The priest said he was going to bless everyone who proclaimed the Word of God at Mass, and he called up all the readers, but not the cantors who sing the Psalms. Afterwards I said to Rich that it was “bulls—t” that the cantors didn’t get recognized too, not super loudly but very emphatically, and an old man walking by stared at me, his eyes bulging out, then he clutched his chest and kind of fell against the wall. Guess I should refrain from swearing in the sanctuary…

Speaking of bulls—t, I have never made a movie of the delivery robots actually rolling around, and I thought of that when Travalon picked me up one day and we saw one rolling by. Monday on my lunchtime walk I saw one coming toward me, but I forgot to film it, so when I saw a second one coming toward me, I got my phone ready to record a video. But do you know what that a—hole robot did? It stopped dead in its tracks, and then it turned its headlights off!! Could it see I wanted to make a movie, and it was like, “Nope!”? What the heck??

When I was moving out of my bachelorette pad, I downsized a lot of stuff, including a bunch of stuffed animals that had sat in a box for years. I thought it would be better to donate them to St. Vinny’s, and then maybe some kid would play with them. Now that I am married to a man who doesn’t mind stuffed animals in our bed, I wish I still had Sara Swan, Winnie Whale, and Anthony Antelope. Why did I get rid of those three? Although Travalon did buy Gabrielle the Gazelle the last time we were at the Como Park Zoo, and she does look a lot like Anthony. I was also sad that I got rid of the stuffed herpes virus, because it looks like a little sunshine. I mentioned this to Hardingfele, and then I ordered one online while she picked one up for me at the hospital gift shop. So now I have two, but the one I ordered online looks more like a reverse egg because the inner round part is lighter than the surrounding membrane thingy. I also got rid of most of my e-Plush animals, and then it turns out Travalon wanted the black poodle, so I ended up buying one of those online for him. See? You just never know when you will want stuff again – that’s why I have such a tough time getting rid of stuff!

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Famous Black Lives Matter Too

A couple of weeks ago, the drummer from the band Rush, Neil Peart, died of cancer. This is very sad, and on social media everyone was saying how sad it was. Nobody posted anything like, “These other non-famous people died of cancer the same day, so if you’re a good person, you’ll share this to remember them,” and you would think a person was nuts if they did. Because of course it is also sad that other people you don’t know died of cancer, but you are mourning the person you do know (or at least know of, in the case of a celebrity). It feels like minimizing people’s grief and Neil Peart's life to bring up other deaths.

So then, why is it that when Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash this weekend, my social media feed was full of pictures of white people who had also died that day, saying if I was a good person I would share their photos to show they had died too? It was maybe a little bit understandable when it was the other people in the helicopter with him, but a cop who died the same day on duty? Come on! The people who post this probably figure you aren’t going to say, “What are you doing?” because all these deaths are tragic, but it seems just as wildly inappropriate as if they had been doing it regarding Neil Peart. I don’t know the people who died in the crash, or the cop, but I know of Kobe. I also noticed that nobody said, “Remember his daughter who died too!” Because she’s also black. It just seemed extremely noticeable that they were basically saying, “Instead of remembering some rich black guy, focus on the deaths that matter – white people!” It felt like they were minimizing Kobe’s death, and that to me is racism. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes people have to remind us all that black deaths matter as much as white ones.

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Happy Year of the Rat!

I hope my readers had a good weekend. Travalon and I didn't go anywhere on Friday because of the snow; he fried some tilapia in a pan (he is the BEST at cooking fish!), and then we danced around to the Soul Train playlist on Spotify. Saturday morning it was still snowy, so we spent the morning at home. When the weather had cleared up somewhat, we went downtown to a Chinese restaurant for lunch to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Happy Year of the Rat, everyone! We shopped a little on State Street and walked up to the Capitol, then we went to Matcha Tea for Lunar New Year treats, and the owner gave us a free chai.

In the afternoon Travalon went to visit his mother and then hang out with his old buddy, while I hung out with Hardingfele before our gig. We worked on the puzzle a little, but without a big piece of cardboard to put it on, it doesn't line up right. We went to Athens Gyros for a bite to eat before our gig, which was a dance at Waunakee High School. It was a fundraiser for the school orchestra, because they are going to Scotland. The teenagers danced enthusiastically for a little over an hour, then they lost interest or energy, it was hard to say which. We were supposed to play for two hours, but the organizer decided to cut things short so we got to go home early. I was sound asleep when Travalon came home and didn't hear him come in.

This morning a bunch of us went to brunch at Inn on the Park, and I was the only woman. Afterwards Rich gave us a big piece of cardboard to do our puzzle on. While Travalon caught up on sleep, I prayed with Rosie the Rosary, which is what he has dubbed the big cuddly rosary Ma Hat made. It's fun to have a rosary you can snuggle while you pray it! Then we went out to Sauk, where we saw one eagle flying around and two sitting in a tree down at the dam. We went to Wollersheim for Travalon's favorite drink, and we asked if they still had the blue cheese we got at Christmas as part of the gift box for Ma and Pa Hat, since Ma Hat said several times that it was the best blue cheese they had ever tried. They didn't have any blue cheese, and the place that makes it was about to close, but we can get it at the co-op. Then we came home and had more fish that Travalon fried in the pan - he cooks it to perfection! We watched Keeping Up Appearances, which we had taped yesterday, and it was the first episode ever. We just love that show. So it was a quiet, relaxing weekend for the two of us.

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Against Theocracies

Yesterday I read a rather terrifying article in which the writer stated that the reason people wanted to impeach Trump is to keep him from setting up a theocracy, and here’s the thing – the writer was hoping for the theocracy! He was a member of my own denomination, which makes me wonder if he has learned anything from history, since Catholics have often been suppressed in this country. Of course, lately so many Catholics seem to be in bed with the Evangelicals, even denouncing the Pope, that maybe they think these Evangelicals won’t turn on them if they win control of the government. Perhaps they are right, but the graver sin is in thinking that worldly powers will save us. We are supposed to put our hope in God alone, not in a theocratic government. Also, I wonder how this will go over with other members of the Trump coalition, like my brother-in-law and my nephew who both hate organized religion, and surely they are not the only MAGA types who do. The writer of this article said that the Civil War was God’s vengeance on our country for the Founders having set it up as a secular republic, which seems odd because I would say it was more likely God’s vengeance for the sin of slavery. Sometimes I wonder if in fact it is racial animosity that is holding this odd group of bedfellows together, because it sure isn’t shared faith if one group wants a totalitarian Christian regime and another group hates everything to do with religion. I never thought impeachment had anything to do with preventing the setup of Christian sharia law, but I am certainly in favor of anything that keeps that from happening! After all, as someone from Iran told me who has firsthand knowledge of such things, wherever the government dictates the religion, the regular people cease to believe in that religion.

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Provoking and Gaslighting

A few posts back, I commented on how a young relative would post things to provoke other people on social media, and then he would act bewildered that they were angry. He was doing this again, and I saw that he was gaslighting the other people, lying and saying he had never said things that you could clearly see he did say further up the conversation, and telling them they were the ones with the problem. I told him he should knock it off, and then he began gaslighting me, so I defriended him. Then I had a blinding insight: this is exactly how his father acts, and his mother before him. It’s so pervasive in our family that I had grown up thinking it was normal until seeing it done to other people on social media. Is this a mental illness of some sort? It seems maladaptive, because people don’t like being intentionally provoked, and so most people avoid these relatives of mine. Family might feel like they have to stick by their side (and as a minor child, I had no choice but to take the abuse), but friends do not like being belittled, told they’re too sensitive, or that they can’t take a joke. These people all complain about how they have no friends, and they really haven’t been too successful in the workaday world either. So why do they do it? It may work for the rare person (see: the current occupant of the White House), but most bosses and coworkers would not put up with this nonsense. I cut off a person who wanted to be my friend when she started showing this behavior. It does not seem like a path to success, so why would people indulge in this behavior? Is it genetic? Or is it learned? And is there any cure for it? And the biggest question of all: why are so many of these people on social media? They even have a name for them: “trolls.” I’m sure there’s a more scientific name for the problem. But how do we solve it?

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Memories I Never Lived

For the last few years, I have spent Martin Luther King Day at the State Capitol, usually with Rich or Travalon, attending a presentation to commemorate Dr. King. Yesterday, however, I was at a birthday party for OK Cap (whose actual birthday was at the end of December) with Travalon and Jilly Moose. We met for lunch at La Brioche, and I gave OK Cap a little stuffed narwhal, since I have always been into narwhals and lately everyone else seems to be too. The weather was sunny and pleasant, so afterwards Travalon and I went to the zoo to watch the animals that actually like winter, like the polar bears. The flamingos and giraffes were inside, but we could see them too. I was surprised that the lions were out in the cold, and that they were two males – wouldn’t they fight to the death? Something seems really wrong there…

In the evening, we went to Flix Brewhouse, the movie theater where you can get craft beer and dinner delivered to your seat, and we watched 1917. It was a really good movie about two young soldiers in World War I trying to get a message to another battalion on the far side of No Man’s Land. For some reason I always feel like I was there when watching movies about the Western Front, at least when they were in the trenches and out in No Man’s Land. A scene where they encounter a trap in the abandoned German trench didn’t feel familiar, but an eerie scene at night in a blazing village sure did. Where does this familiarity come from? It can’t be reincarnation, since if there really is such a thing, then I was definitely a female leopard in my previous life. I always wonder if somehow I can “remember” the memories of ancestors, and I’m quite sure some of my ancestors fought in the Great War. I also have a memory of being a girl on a spring morning in the South, somewhere on a plantation, and I am quite clearly a slave. When Travalon and I were traveling through northern Florida and into Alabama, I felt like that memory was getting so close I could touch it… and then we turned west, and it immediately subsided. And when I was in Siena, I could remember being there at seven years old, and inside the Town Hall I remembered walking along holding my father’s hand… and yet I had never been to Italy before going at the age of twenty-one. Can memories actually be encoded into DNA? Or is there some other explanation? Feel free to leave your own memories that are not from your immediate life in the comments section.

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Quiet Midwinter Weekend

Sorry that I haven't blogged in awhile. We had a houseguest for a few days, but she was a delight: very sweet and well-mannered. Also, she is adorable. As you probably guessed, she is not human but a Pomeranian. Then Friday I was at the hospital all day with Travalon, who had to have a medical procedure, and emergencies kept coming in so they kept pushing us back. They did give us two free coupons for the cafeteria, so I got free lunch and dinner, and Travalon got free dinner with room service (I would have had to pay for it) - he wasn't allowed to eat before this procedure, so he was pretty ravenous once everything was over. The good news is that they found nothing wrong with his heart, and the bad news is that I had to drive his car home in a snowstorm because he wasn't allowed to drive or make important decisions for 24 hours. At least his car is much easier to drive in the snow than mine, because it has four-wheel drive and some extra snow button that makes it grip the road even better. Anyway, we got home nearly fourteen hours after we had left home, and then we just had a relaxed weekend.

Yesterday we stayed home in the morning due to more snow, then we ventured out once it stopped, going to Matcha Tea House and then out to Sauk to see eagles. We saw one on the island and some flying by the dam and sitting on the ice, then we went to the Blue Spoon Diner for a late lunch, and an eagle landed in a tree right outside the window! We took pictures of it, but only with our cell phones because we had forgotten our good cameras at home. One guy had a camera with a super long lens, and he got some amazing shots of the eagle - he showed everyone in the restaurant! It started to snow again, so we just headed home and had a quiet evening.

Today after Mass we went to brunch with Rich and another bass from our choir, right across the street at Tutto Pasta. Then we went back out to Sauk, this time with our good cameras. It was a beautiful, sunny day but very cold, perfect for watching eagles. We saw six flying by the dam, but we couldn't get a good shot of any of them. Then we went to Wollersheim for Travalon's favorite cocktail, made of their apple brandy and cream soda. We drove to the big island on Lake Wisconsin, and I said it looked like the ice was solid enough to walk out to it, but Travalon convinced me that it would be more fun to go to the bar where you can see the two islands. We did, and we had hot cocoa with peanut butter whiskey in it - so good! On one island, we could see an eagle and its nest. We came home and watched the disappointing Packers game, where they did that thing they often do of not showing up to play for the first half. Then in the second half they did start playing, but it was too late - San Francisco was too far ahead, so they are going to the Super Bowl. I am disappointed but not surprised. Hey, it was still a great season. Maybe next year they will play during all four quarters.

Here are some recent photos. First is our houseguest, Michaela. (Travalon took this photo, and his camera has been really blurry lately.)

This is the rosary Tiffy gave me for my birthday. She got it in 2012 in Mexico and was going to give it to me back then, but she lost it somewhere in her house and didn't find it again until recently getting her carpeting replaced. I love it because it looks like it's made out of candy, and I really dig the teal crucifix.

This is the rosary I use during the Christmas season. Some monks sent it to me for Christmas years ago to thank me for buying so many other rosaries from them that year.

And this is what is inside the center piece that looks like a present!

We bought some more stuffed animals: a unicorn dragon (!) that we found in a gas station on the way to visit my relatives in Chicago, and a turtle made of recycled materials that we found at a gas station in Richland Center. Since we got the unicorn dragon on the solstice, we named her Solstice. The turtle doesn't have a name yet. I am open to suggestions.

And this is Shippy. We got her on the cruise to Cuba.

The Allen Centennial Garden near my office is beautiful even in the depths of winter.

Here is the eagle we saw from the window of the Blue Spoon. My shot is not so good. The guy with a fancy camera had a close-up of her face where you could see her eyes and every feather in detail.

Finally, some sunsets. This first one is from a couple of weeks ago; my office window faces east, and suddenly I could see the buildings across from me gilded with this amazing golden light, so I knew there was a spectacular sunset. I ran outside and took this photo.

And this is the glorious sunset we saw tonight just as we got home.

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