Presence, Security

Relentless Rain and Microwave Popcorn

February 8, 2025

I have been eating a lot of popcorn lately.

It was the kind of week that makes the hair on your head stand up straight. Even true for Biscuit, who ran into a bit of static.

When I get home from work, I know I should make a salad or roast some vegetables and put together something that seems like a well-balanced, healthy dinner. Instead, I’ve been throwing a bag of Kirkland Microwave Popcorn (from Costco, the movie theater butter one) into the microwave and calling it good. And also maybe having a few bites of low carb ice cream from Grocery Outlet.

It’s been that kind of week. Again.

(I wonder how many of these weeks we are going to have? Possibly four years worth?)

Popcorn is comfort food for me, pure and simple. An entire bag of it is filling and satisfying and easy and leaves no dishes that need to be washed. What is not to love about that? It was a perfect dinner for a week when Trump was Trumpity Trumping,  Rumpity, Rumping

(Let’s make Gaza the new Riviera! And who should be the new chairman of the Kennedy Center? Me, of course!)

It was also a week of nearly relentless rain around here. There was rain and blustery wind, the kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night and makes it hard to go to sleep in the first place because you are remembering that your next door neighbors just had a tree fall in their backyard that smashed their propane tank. When I drove down the street the other night, there was a CalFire truck by their house and a Campora Propane Truck  in my parking spot. The tank was not leaking, but they will need a new one, and the tree was big and is all over their yard and into my yard a little, too. They were lucky, though. If the tree had fallen the other direction? It would have hit their house, and they are a young couple with a preschooler and a toddler and that could have been tragic.

So I was awake listening to the wind the other night, hoping that one of the beautiful trees that I love that sits a few feet away from the house didn’t decide to fall, too. Thankfully, it didn’t. But the storm seemed to blow rain down my chimney at a strange angle, so that it landed on my woodstove, which spitted and sputtered and sizzled, and I eventually had to pull out my cast iron frying pan to catch the drips.

Good times.

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Power, Presence

Who Is Actually In Charge Here?

January 25, 2025

Early for the camellias to be blooming at the park, but that’s what happens when spring weather arrives in January

Ultimately, I don’t believe that Trump is in charge. Although he pretty much seems to think that he is.

There is finally snow in the forecast today for the mountains and rain for my house. The long-range forecast is also showing rain in early February, possibly three days in a row. That feels hopeful.

A possible change in the weather is a small bright spot. So far it has not rained this month. We’ve had day after day of beautiful spring weather. Spring weather in January is not good. While the lack of rain has been distressing, it was not the most troubling thing this week. (I’m sure you can guess what the most troubling thing was).

I am wondering when my stomach will return to normal. I am sure it is not good for me, to have this burbling anxiety churning away inside me. I am still trying to process all the things that have changed in our country since Monday when Trump took office and issued his executive orders. I bet you are already familiar with them and also with his response to Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s powerful sermon at the Washington National Cathedral last week. Budde simply (and respectfully) asked Trump to have mercy on immigrants and LGBTQ+ folks. Trump’s response? Budde is a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” (I love how he talks about himself in the third person.) Also, her sermon was “nasty in tone,” “boring,” and “uninspiring.” He even said she should apologize (because mercy is such a nasty thing, I guess).

It’s going to be a long four years.

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