Where To Shop

I need a watering can.  Not a fancy decorated metal can with a filter in the nozzle, just an ordinary plastic watering can that I can use to supplement the irrigation when the winds blow and the temperatures heat up.  I also need a new garden hose.

Normally, in the olden days, before DEI and FFOTUS, I'd stop by Home Depot or Lowes or Target or Amazon and the problem would be solved.  But now, with corporations beholden only to stockholders and businesses capitulating to the whims of a deranged agenda, I'm voting with my dollars.  

I haven't been in Target since they caved and removed the Gay Pride display from the front of my local store.  Home Depot and Lowes lost me when they caved on DEI.  Jeff Bezos doesn't need any more of my cash; weaning myself from Amazon is difficult but doable.

I went to Ace Hardware but they had nothing that fit the bill.  I went to the nursery, but didn't want to spend $40 on a fancy can or over $100 on a contractor's grade hose.  

It's a quandary that has yet to be resolved.  But there are other places to shop for most things, and I had two lovely experiences with that this week.  

The first was the wording from Costco, when activist shareholders wanted them to remove DEI from the workplace.  The board said it "has considered this proposal and believes our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary."

I don't have to feel guilty about rotisserie chicken or roses or my garden supplies if they have them.

The second was walking into Dicks Sporting Goods on Monday to buy SIR the sneakers he wants for his birthday.  I was greeted with a big, colorful poster standing in the entryway.  There were many words but the intent was clear - the world is made up of a variety of people and you are all welcome here.

\I felt very good about spending those birthday dollars.

Acting on principle is difficult.  It probably doesn't matter in the case of one woman in Arizona deciding not to go to Target.  But foot traffic is down and so are their profits, so I'm obviously not the only one using my spending to make a point.

If only I could find what I need where I want to buy it.  

Something Is Not Right

I had to complete the paperwork for GRIN.  It was due in February but time got away from me.  There's no financial penalty for a late filing so I wasn't anxious when I opened the on-line link and began to click on boxes.

Names, addresses, titles were all current and required no action.  There were questions that had to be addressed, and that's when I realized that FFOTUS could not be on my Board of Directors.  

Has any person (a) Who is currently an officer, director, trustee, incorporator, or (b) who controls or holds over twenty percent of the issued and outstanding common shares or twenty percent of any other proprietary, beneficial or membership interest in the corporation, served in any such capacity or held a twenty percent interest in any other corporation (not the one filing this Certificate) on the bankruptcy or receivership of the other corporation?

Convicted of a felony, the essential elements of which consisted of fraud, misrepresentation, theft by false pretenses or restraint of trade or monopoly in any state or federal jurisdiction within the five year period immediately preceding the signing of this certificate?

Convicted of felony involving a transaction in securities, consumer fraud or antitrust in any state or federal jurisdiction within the five year period immediately preceding the signing of this certificate?

The Secretary of Defense has hired his brother, brought his wife to a classified briefing with a foreign dignitary, and texted battle plans over an unsecured phone line.  The Secretary of Health is presiding over a measles outbreak of alarming proportions by prescribing Vitamin A and Cod Liver Oil.  The CDC and NIH are stopping research in mid-stream.  Getting paid but not allowed to work, furloughed federal employees are bleeding the government of money that is unearned.  Saguaro National Monument (down the road from me) has no staff on Mondays.  

I know all of that.  Still, filling out that form and thinking about FFOTUS kind of solidified it all in my head.  

Like Miss Clavell said, something is not right. 

Luckily for Madeline, Miss Clavell saves the day.

Would that she could do the same for us.

 

April Fools

St. John's didn't lose in the first round. 

Your brackets are intact.  

You care about the outcome of the Final Four. 

That's what came to mind when I began to think about this post and my mind began to wander towards the dark side. 

The results of those thoughts are below the stars. Skip it if you just can't handle FFOTUS right now.  I won't be offended. 

I understand. 

*****

Tariffs will be paid by somebody else. 

The stock market isn't important. 

FFOTUS can serve a third term. 

Climate change is a hoax. 

Libraries and museums are worthy of funding. 

Social Security and Medicare and feeding children are priorities. 

We have a functioning democracy. 

Smiles

As we begin another week of chaos and confusion, misinformation (Cod Liver Oil for measles???) and outright lies (I know nothing about it), I thought I would lighten the load.  Here are two stories that made me very happy this week.

*****

Thousands of The Resistance were lining the cross town intersection, east and west, north and south on Saturday.  Up on the adjacent hill, directly across from the Tesla dealership, were dozens of protesters holding a giant American flag.  Horns were honked, motorcyclists clad in black leather and tattoos revved their engines, fists were raised in solidarity.  

I stopped by for a while, since my sign was still in my car.  I saw this sign 

and it brought me back to Thursday's demonstration outside Juan Ciscomani's office.  A gentleman holding a similar sunflower sign (did you know that the sunflower is the Ukrainian national flower?) smiled at my Slava Ukraine poster.  I said No, I don't speak the language but my DIL has family in Dnipro (which had endured bombing that morning) and before I knew it he was handing me this glass heart, 

clasping it in my hands, smiling into my eyes.

I didn't feel so alone any more.

*****

"What should I pick - rocket lettuce, mizumi, red leaf - it's a hard choice"

Look at that smile.  Look at those radish leaves in the front corner.  Look at that huge radish in her hand.

She will be the first to tell you that those are HER radishes and that SHE planted them.  She's been announcing those facts to everyone who stops by the All You Can Eat lettuce in the other half of the raised bed for weeks.  

She was very very very patient as she waited for them to mature.  On Friday, she harvested three of them, one to share with those in the garden, one to take home, and one to take to her teacher.

Look at that smile and imagine the hug that went with it as she left the garden.  My heart (and my ribs) felt every bit of the Thank You.

*****

Okay.

Do you feel a little bit better now?

Time to face the world.

Sorry about that.

Signs of the Times

This morning's street protest against the state of the world was outside Representative Ciscomani's office.  This is what it looked like. 

You Lied

From the middle of the 5th graders lining up after recess came an indignant young man.  Peering over the wall of Grandma's Garden, he looked me straight in the eyes and announced, in no uncertain terms: You lied.

 I knew where he was going with it, but he was on a roll, so I let him preach. 

You promised us that book when you read to us and then you said that you were giving it to her on Monday when we came back after break and that was yesterday and it was NOT in her mailbox.

The her to whom he most emphatically pointed was his teacher,  struggling between delight that he stood up for a perceived wrong and concern that he would hurt my feelings .  She need not have worried.  I spent two weeks wrangling a two year old; a 5th grader is hardly a challenge.

Anyway....

You lied.

Yes, I did.  I had the whole week off, with nothing to do and no place to go and doing the teachers' books was the only thing on my agenda and I just didn't do it.  I knew I should, but somehow I just didn't.  Did that ever happen to you?

The whole class was engaged at this point.  Nodding sagely, they agreed to forgive me.... on the condition that I fulfill the original promise and deliver the goods on the morrow.

And that's just what I did, spending last night writing short notes to 23 teachers on cards made at Shutterfly whenever they were on sale.  I carried in copies of The Lorax for the littles and  D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths for the 5th graders, with one young man specifically in mind.

Ooops

What day is today?

Last week was Spring Break for the Prince Mustangs.  It was discombulating.  Every day felt like Saturday. 

The malaise seems to have carried over to this week.  I've been one day ahead since Monday.  

Thursday is a very busy day for me.  There's a sidewalk protest outside Rep. Ciscomani's office at 9, pilates at 10, lunch with Taos Bubbe at the Botanic Garden and then hosting Dr. K and Not- Kathy for the UofA men's basketball Sweet Sixteen appearance in the evening. 

I spent yesterday thinking it was Wednesday.  I woke up this morning, dressed and packed for my various events scheduled for Thursday, ate a hearty breakfast, then checked my calendar for the Congressman's location. 

Oops.  Nothing showed up.  It's Wednesday. 

I changed clothes, went to the hardware store and the garden store, and spent a very productive morning in my garden.  

TBG took me out for a drive and lunch, then I settled in to check email, do the Wordle and Strands, and check The Burrow for grammar. 

Oops.  

No post.  Check admin page. Find today's post scheduled for Thursday, which felt like tomorrow last night when I thought it was Wednesday. 

Discombobulated. 

Tomorrow's post suffers from these same confusions.  I apologize in advance.  It was supposed to be today's post. 

I think I'll stop now.  

How Does He Still Have A Job?

This is a true story.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; Vice President JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Tulsi Gabbard, FFOTUS’s director of national intelligence; and Mike Waltz, his national security adviser were on a Signal (end-to-end encrypted text app) sharing operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

Mark Kelly: NOTICE TO WHILE HOUSE STAFF  there is a room in the building and secure systems where you are supposed to have these discussions. SIGNAL ain’t it.

How do we know this happened?  Also included in the text chain was editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.  Mike Walz invited him and he said yes.  Then he wrote about it.

Mayor Pete: the highest level of fuckup imaginable

Defense.  State.  Intelligence.  Security.  Those used to be words that gave me comfort.  

20,000

That's (the generous) count of the people who showed up to see Bernie and AOC on Saturday morning.

Foolishly, I thought the event would be held in the gym.  That's where I saw Tim Walz.  I knew I could manage that crowd. 

I arrived at the high school 15 minutes before the doors were to open.  The line was five people deep,  turning the corner, five blocks away from the school gates.  I drove by, slowly, smiling, loving the energy, looking for a parking space.  

A similar line snaked the same way in the other direction.  A group of about 100 followed a neon vested man toward the end of yet another line.

Neighbors were on their roofs, filming the scene, and relaxing in lawn chairs in their driveways, coffee cups in hand. 

I turned another corner to find a similar scene.  There was nary a place to place the UV.

Besides, I thought, all these people cannot possibly fit inside that gym.  Not wanting to be in an over-flow area, I drove home.

I wish I had looked harder for a parking spot.  I wish it had occurred to me that (obviously) they were holding the rally outside, in the stadium I passed as I made my final turn.  But it didn't, and I called TBG and told him I was on my way home.

And then I began to wonder if they were having it outside and that was why everyone was smiling because they weren't worried about getting in.  The lines were long, but not impossible.  How many humans can fit within the confines of a high school football stadium (Texas not included)?

I drove on, with volatile emotions, furious that I was missing a once in a lifetime experience and unable to figure out why I didn't put more energy into figuring out a plan.  Would a friend in the car have figured that out, gotten in line, and left me to park and catch up?  I had no one to answer to, no demands on my time, and TBG could be called again.  

And yet, I drove on.  

It's been nagging at me ever since.  The photos of the crowd 

credit Kyra Berg

are the stuff of my nightmares, and the notion of standing for three hours is, in retrospect, something that my body rejects out of hand.  I didn't go to the UofA when Barack came back to town, but I'd seen him in my hospital room and that was reason enough to skip a standing rally then and it should be enough now.

Perhaps it is JannyLou's reaction to the rally she attended in Tempe.  It was nice not to feel so alone.

Bernie and AOC talked about building community and taking action and not relying on the Democratic Party to bail us out of this mess.  Run for local office, Brothers and sisters, don’t let them divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our religion or our sexual orientation. Let’s stand together as one people. Proud people. Let’s take on Trumpism and defeat it.”

The tour said they expected 8-10,000 attendees.  Double that number showed up to drink the Kool Aid.  

I wonder if my Congressman was paying attention.  These are his constituents, and they were making quite a statement.  

I'll be mentioning that in my phone call tomorrow.  

I spend too much time in FFOTUS-adjacent territory to feel comfortable.  I do feel energized and empowered by the presence of so many like minded individuals coming together to do right.  

I am beginning to have a tiny bit of hope.  And my back and feet are thankful.

Watching and Not Watching

TBG and I just calculated that our family March Madness pool has been around for about five decades.  I've saved a lot of the hard copies; they live in a drawer that could probably house more necessary items.  But I like knowing where they are.  It's part of our history

This year there are some old, familiar names and faces.  Calipari and Pitino (two of them) and Izzo are coaches I've followed for decades, Mark Few and Shaka Smart for a few decades less.  

The second Pitino is the son of the first.  The first has a checkered past and is now at New York City's flagship basketball school, St. John's.  I guess fraud and corruption and adultery and abortion are lesser considerations when winning is at stake.

With 2.9 seconds left, it looks like Bill Self (another old friend) and his boys will be heading back to Kansas tonight.  No sense paying for hotel rooms when you're not playing any more. 

Yale losing in the first round wasn't much of a surprise.  Clemson losing to McNeese (senior laden, defensive wizards) was.  TBG and Giblet were the only ones who picked them in the pool (yes, the kids are part of it as long as they can discern animals or colors).

This is one time of the television viewing year that I enjoy living on Pacific Time.  Games starting here at 8 end around bed time.  Not so much on the East Coast.  The wrap up show on ESPN goes until 1am.  I'd have to be way more committed to the whole shebang to stay up that late at this stage of my life.

I'm going to see Bernie Sanders and AOC on Saturday.  I'm lifting weights with Amster and working in Grandma's Garden with Not-Kathy on Sunday.  There are games upon games I'll be missing, scores I'll have to catch on my phone, while I enjoy a rich and full life.

There was a time, though......