Consciousness

Sometimes it's all just too much.

Michael Pollan's A World Appears has broken my brain.  I can't let my mind run free; I'm constantly wondering if I am thinking the thoughts before they are verbalized in my head.  

Is it my neurons firing or is it me, whatever that means.  Do I exist outside of the chemical and electrical impulses in my head?  Pollan notes that this problem is, in some ways, unsolvable since we cannot extricate ourselves from ourselves and observe ourselves from the outside.

See what I mean?  Thinking like that can really tie your brain in knots.

A kinesthesiologist chimed in on the subject this morning, giving me a very complex description of what goes on in my brain when I think or move.  Pollan calls this materialism or physicalism, the need for something quantifiable as an explanation.

But Pollan dabbles in psychedelics.  He meditates.  He spends time on silent retreats.  

Do plants have consciousness?  Do newborn humans?  Is consciousness a sense of self or is it the self itself.

There I go again.

I'll leave you to it.  

Todd Blanche

The presumptive Attorney General of the United States thinks he is the man's lawyer, not the country's lawyer.  L'etat, c'est moi seems to be the governing principal in DC these days, so his (misplaced) loyalty shouldn't be such a surprise.

But, it is.

John Cornyn is happy to let FFOTUS and family off the IRS hook now that he has a signed declaration that the pay-me-because-I-desecrated-the-Capitol fun is kaput.  I see no indication that Todd Blanche won't implement something similar once he's confirmed, nor do I foresee any such protection from tax audits for me and mine.

My favorite crooked AG is John Mitchell, Nixon's cohort and someone who actually spent time in prison (19 months for conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice).  Does hiding and lying about the Epstein files in order to protect his client, the guy in the gilded Oval Office, count as conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice?

I'm not a lawyer, and my personal legal eagle is napping so I can't ask him, but from my (hardly objective but vehemently held) position it sure seems that it is.

My Congressman's web page says nothing about any of this.  Mark Kelly is out in the field, fundraising for DCCC approved candidates while trashing the Administration.  Ruben Gallego is laying low; friendships with creeps have their price.

There are supposed to be checks and balances.  Three women on the Supreme Court are not enough to create a balance of power.  The House is stuck in the mud and the Senate seems to be going on vacation.

I agree with Mayor Pete:

I’m really worried about where we’re headed as a country. I think in many ways our entire existence has been about creating a different kind of political system and introducing it to the world. That’s what we’re about. And now that whole project is in question. That whole project is, in my view, it’s on the brink.

Another Surgery

Appliances that were inserted to treat him are going to be removed tomorrow, along with the offending irritant.  

This comes as a surprise, although not an unwelcome one.  The hospitalist managed to squeeze us into the surgeon's schedule.

Once again, I'll be driving to the hospital, parking with the valet, and waiting.

I've spent most of this summer in the hospital, waiting.

Getting old is not for sissies.

In Search of Lost Time

FlapJilly's birthday was July 29th.  Her mother called us so that we could sing happy birthday to her.  Usually, we make that phone call on our own.  That happens when I decide that it is July 29th.

Unfortunately, I spent all day Wednesday knowing it was the 28th.

How does this happen to me?  

Without a school or work schedule to follow, I end up at Pilates on Monday when I'm scheduled for Tuesday.... or I miss my eldest grandchild's birthday.

Spending days in the hospital added to the problem, especially when they don't update the day/date white board in the patient's room.

As G'ma said when asked for the day and date during her mental status exam - Do you have a newspaper?  That information is in the top right corner.

If only the print edition of the local paper weren't $90 a month......

It's Still July

Costco's aisles were filled with backpacks and lunch boxes this afternoon.  

Monday was New Teachers First Day.

School starts in one week - Wednesday, August 6th.

My desk is covered in planning for the year.  A planting calendar, the school year calendar, Back to School Love Feast..... my brain is not prepared for this.

It's July.  It's the middle of the summer.  I should be planning a trip to the ocean, not deciding which seeds to plant in Grandma's Garden.  

I don't understand why the school year is structured the way it is.  

Tucson Unified School District is floating the idea of year-round school, or 4 days/10 hour weeks.  (Parents have been asked to weigh in; this woman's analysis is worth reading).  The Cuters' school in Chicago was on trimesters; we loved it.  Having vacation time when everyone else was in school made ski slopes uncrowded and theme parks deserted.  We made good use of the time.

I'm not just complaining.  I have a solution.

Tucson kids can't really play outside in the summer; the sidewalks are scalding, the sun is relentless, and playground equipment is too hot to touch.  Our schools are air-conditioned.  Outdoor time is scheduled in 20 minute increments. 

The weeks between Thanksgiving and the start of the Winter Holidays are filled with learning squeezed in around partying.  Everyone is distracted.  

What if our school year began the first week of January and ended on Halloween?  

Families could travel to see distant relatives.  The weather is beautiful in the winter time; just ask the snowbirds.  The kids could be outside, families could be together, and, when the summer heat sets in there will be cool spaces for our students.

We're not an agricultural society any more.  Most kids aren't needed in the fields in the summer.  Maybe it's time for a change.

Coming Home

TBG is being released today.  The relief is palpable.... for both of us. 

The hospitalist managed to secure a follow up appointment with a doctor whose scheduler told me the next avaliable date was in November. 

Home health care is organized, and I had nothing to do with it.  Behind the scenes, people were working and planning and all we had to do was say yes. 

His bills this year are close to $500,000, and that's without this 8 day plus surgery stay. We paid a manageable deductible.  Procedures billed at thousands were magically reduced to hundreds because we have insurance.  The uninsured pay the not-discounted-amount.  It's easy to see why medical debt destroys families. 

Medicine in America is broken.  None of the staff here received the 40% increase that TBG now is paying for h his insurance.  Where did that money go? 

Gun violence is never acceptable.  I can, however, understand the rage and fury and helplessness that fed Luigi Mangione's desire for retribution. 

Saturday Night

Drove home in the dark, though tonight it was punctuated by bolts of lightning.  This is not the lightning of Long Island or Chicago or Marin.  These are vertical, startlingly bright, tremendously long, bolts of light that illuminate the mountains and make midnight feel like late afternoon.  Sometimes there are more than one at a time, and the whole sky turns a milky white.

I would rather have been a passenger than the one responsible for staying calm as the night explodes.

Hadn't remembered to leave a light on and groped to find the alarm, whose bright green clock wasn't enough to encourage a speedy transit of the 5 steps from the door.  I dropped my hospital purse and the bright pink cooler on the kitchen counter and turned to the sink to wash my hands.

I looked up as I replaced the detritus of the day with aloe and grapefruit and saw this

Last month,  Auntie M and Mr. T sent me a fruit basket filled with lots of multi-colored paper, some unfortunate fruits, and this plant.  It really didn't need much care; I basically ignored it, admiring its blooms. and picking them up when they fell.  When the last one bit the dust, I took away the basket, plopped the pot into that polka dot container, and, once again, ignored it..... until it announced its presence with authority Saturday night.  

I took it down to the lower counter to reassure myself that there were, in fact, little flowers - a few of them blooming and the rest of them teetering on the brink.  I grabbed my secateur (garden snips; it lives by the sink with the pot holders) and began to trim.  I spent twenty satisfying minutes repairing my prior pruning.  Those dead stalks I thought would sprout buds apparently would not.  

The anthropomorphism has officially begun.  I gave her some water and have begun to contemplate a name.  I'm taking her reawakening as a sign that TBG's health is about to break free from the ridiculous and into the sublime.  I went to sleep with a smile on my face and love in my heart.  

Gardening will do that.

Magic

Drove home in the dark.  

Hungry, but this isn't New York City so by 9pm there's MickeyD's or Burger King. 

Created a boring but filling turkey sandwich, read Miles Taylor's Substack.

Found Arcturus and Vega and went inside; the air was too thick to be enjoyable.

I was moping.  

Came into the library and saw a new message blinking red on  the answering machine (yes, an answering machine for our landline.... yes, a landline, too).

Wondered what the other 14 messages were and listened from the beginning.

Magic.

Giblet and Little Cuter babbling happily, signing off with a resounding BYE!!!

FlapJilly and Little Cuter encouraging Giblet to say hi.

Big Cuter and Queen T after their first ultrasound; she's beautiful.

The rest were nonsense and easily deleted.  While congratulating my past self for saving them, I replayed my three love notes from the past.

I'm smiling and my heart is full.  Like I said: Magic.

A Room With A View

Trying to find joy in a hospital setting is a matter of small steps.   This morning,  TBG was ready to lighten the darkness and let me roll up the windowshade.

It's a lot easier to be anxious when there is beauty avaliable with a tug on a chain.  Instead of focusing on the tubes and the beeps and the evidence of illness surrounding him, I'm lying back on the small, sort of comfortable, sofa,  watching the clouds and writing to you. 

I can feel the love.  I feel you caring.  It's a virtual, giant, warming hug. 

Thanks for being here.  

Degrees of Kindness

Hospitals (yes,  we're back in the hospital) create an interesting collection of humans.  When we arrived this morning, there were white,  middle aged,  sick people in the waiting area of the Emergency Department.  This evening,  it is filled with people of every color and size and shape. 

It also creates an interesting collection of machinery,  much of which is attached to TBG at the moment.  Heart rate,  blood pressure,  respiration.... I can watch it all from my chair at the end of his bed.  There are green squiggly lines,  white curves with flattened tops,  blue  mountains, all sorts of numbers in pink and green and turquoise.

There's some comfort to be taken from monitoring the monitor.  It makes up for the fact that I can do nothing to fix what's wrong with him. 

The EMTs came just after my 911 operator told me to call back if he stopped breathing.  That was a piece of information.... what else did she think I would do?  I've never seen an unattractive EMT; I had 7 of them in our bedroom. They poked and proceed and tested and left us the option of going to the hospital or staying home. 

That's when I looked around for the grown up who would tell me what to do.  Unfortunately,  there was no one else there.   

Having spent a night in the hallway of the Emergency Department last month,  I was not eager to repeat the experience.  We probably should have gotten him on the stretcher right then.... but I'm not second guessing myself.  Taking care of me is important, too.  Guilt will get me nowhere, fast. 

He's been examined inside and out as we wait for a room to become available.  I'm trying not to think about why there would be an empty bed at 9pm; discharges happen in the morning. 

And so,  I sit.  I read.  I play Candy Crush Soda Saga. I charge my phone.  I send texts updating family and friends. I do crossword puzzles.  And I watch the graphs on the monitor tell me that he's still alive. 

There's not much else to do. 

One Of Those Days

Did you ever stand in the middle of the room looking for the adult who would tell you what to do?

That was me, last night. 

I'll have more to say tomorrow.  Right now,  I'm trying to be the competent grow up on the room. 

Real Change

"Are you and the President friends?"

"I'm his lawyer."

At a certain point, the rest of us have to stand up and shake the 37% of Americans who think that this shit is okay.  It's really really not.

JD says that if Watergate happened today, it would be a 12-hour news story.  I have been thinking about that since he said it last month.  No matter how I spin it, I can't make it okay.  He's telling us that his administration's sins dwarf  Nixon's.  And he doesn't seem to mind.

It's not okay.  It's really not.

Pete Buttigieg just explained it all very clearly while talking to Jen Psaki.  We are in a moment where real change can happen.  FFOTUS certainly broke everything, but that doesn't mean we have to put it back together the same way.

Real thoughts spoken in complete sentences combined into paragraphs and plans and ideas and I really really really hope he gets to be president.  Soon.

20 Minutes of Terrifying Drivel

TBG and I managed to listen to some of it.  We clicked away at the same time that CBS stopped showing it.  

Sen. Mark Warner (not John Warner, the Virginia Senator once married to Elizabeth Taylor) called on his Republican colleagues to stand up and defend our elections against FFOTUS's lies and mendacity.  

But it's more than lies and mendacity.  It's truly drivel.

DRIVEL Definition & Meaning

Merriam-Webster

https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › drivel

Jul 2, 2026 — 1. to talk stupidly and carelessly

FFOTUS accused China of stealing millions of Americans' personal information by hacking into our (unbelievably, like no one has ever seen) insecure voter data bases.  

Sure, maybe.  Except it's an incredibly dumb argument, especially coming from a politician.

Anyone can access those data bases by paying the County a fee.  It's how campaigns are run.  I brought the huge computer printouts from the Marin County Recorder's Office to our Parcel Tax campaign office in the early 1990's.  I know it is true.  I did it.

You can trust me.

What you can't do is trust the man in the Oval Office.  He told me to go to whitehouse.gov  (he said it twice) to read the damning documents.  

I couldn't find them, although I used every possible iteration of election security documents released today in the website's search box.  If the documents are there, I couldn't find them.

I'm obedient and reasonably intelligent.  He's uninterested in learning anything and careless with his speech.  

Stupid and careless.  Not a great combination for running the United States of America..... yet here we are.

*****

Jan 6 is one of the tabs on the White House website.  Here's an excerpt.  Read on, if you dare.

The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as “insurrectionists” and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power. This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.