We hung out at our friend Rex’s all evening, ate pizza, drank things, and watched movies.  It was 65° out!  I got to play with kitties.  Here are random photos from around his place.  He has some fossils.  No, not us, silly, real fossils!

Got your attention?  In keeping with the survival theme of “nature, puppies, and food”, here is food! I’m working on a Mediterranean erev dinner of chicken with fresh homegrown herbs, wine, and potatoes, barley vegetable stew, Italian green beans with slivered almonds, and a fruit tapioca pudding with mandarin oranges, bananas, cranberries, strawberries, and cherries.  Slaver away!

While we’re waiting for that person in the WH to self-destruct, here are more homey scenes of herbs, seedlings, flowers, incense, and the Skullies to wish y’all a happy erev.  Cheers!  Don’t lose hope.

There’s a funny video someone made on social media of what it’s been like to wake up to a trumpworld every day—basically “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.  After a while you just have this permanent hideous silent scream face all day long.

That’s how it feels waking up every day to more unbelievably insane news of the trump psych ward—it’s so surreal, you think you yourself have gone mad.  Just where they want us, where insanity seems normal, and resistance is futile.

(A drama of a husband trying to drive his wife insane in order to distract her from his criminal activities—ring a bell?)

That’s why we have to limit our daily bad news intake to the top worst headlines, then go do something completely apolitical like gazing at nature or puppies or food.  So that’s what this post will be about. (Fooled you, didn’t I?)

Here are deadly delicious peanut butter cookies E made.  You can tell because these are the only ones left.

Here are my lettuce seedlings coming along.  I planted some other salad greens, so soon you’ll be seeing those as well.

Here are herbs and flowers on a cold, snowy day.  We apparently don’t get respectable blizzards here, just lame imitations.  Still, it’s white-ish.

And as alluded to, cute baby animals.  Here is what they think of the news.

There are frequent break-ins and vandalism in the neighborhood we live in.  Houses and vehicles belonging to neighbors, including the crowd downstairs, have been broken into multiple times.  Recently cops showed up late one night and managed to arrest some suspects.  But it doesn’t stop the activities.  Sirens are our constant background ambience.

The downstairs hillbillies from hell have continually refused to lock the common doors to our building, and loudly complain about the inconvenience, even with the security risk to all of us, including their own young children.  They have people coming and going loudly day and night.  We live in a constant state of nervousness.

After their rampage at E the other day, when the plumbing contractors and E had to clean up all the sewage in the basement caused by their negligence, we don’t even feel comfortable going downstairs to do laundry, in case of another crazy confrontation.  But we hesitate to talk to the landlord about these and other serious concerns, for fear the inmates will retaliate.

Last night I was awakened by a car alarm going off, then a car door repeatedly being slammed, and someone rummaging around by flashlight in the next-door neighbors’ car.  I stayed awake for hours,  feeling nervous.  This morning the vehicle was being hauled away, a typical occurrence around here.

We’re just trying to lay low and hold on until we can quietly move out of here, later this year.  We’re hoping the mob will self-destruct and move out first (just like a certain administration, but that’s wishful thinking).  We’re so looking forward to buying a small house of our own, with a private yard for a garden, where we can feel safe and secure.

I’ve peacefully coexisted with rednecks who were nice, civil, decent folks who just had a different world view from mine, but this is different.  It’s been an experience, living literally on the other side of the tracks.  I’m scared that the ignorance and lack of educational opportunities are just going to deteriorate further now with trump and company in power.  This situation is a perfect case in point.

The neighbors’ little children loved us when they first moved here, but now they’re being indoctrinated before our eyes to shun us, and are being subjected to chaos, crowding by too many unauthorized adults living there, constant smoking of various things, and ignorant behavior.  It’s sad, but there’s nothing you can do, just watch another generation get neglected and turn phobic.

But we’re trying to bide our time and look forward, hoping to find a safe haven in an increasingly uncertain political climate, a light at the end of the tunnel.

Some of us grapple with the fine line between the need to stay informed about disturbing political trends, and the point at which the bad news overload point is reached.  Does the fascist dictatorship win when conscientious citizens reach their limit and stop paying attention?  Or does it even matter if we stay vigilant, when the opposition appears to control and override all the checks and balances that used to work.  I feel strongly that it still matters, but I personally feel helpless to make any difference.

I know friends and family who have already reached their threshold for pain, and can’t take on any more train-wreck reporting.  It triggers too much fear and outrage.  I myself am close to that brink.  I can’t even deal with my select reliable daily news briefs, let alone all the petty politicians and stupid constituents on social media calling responsible voters “sore losers” and “fanatics” because we protest unconstitutional, illegal behavior in our government and demand a legitimate hearing.  I guess trumpsters should know; they tend to be the sorest losers and winners, when they don’t get their way or get exposed for the ignorant rabble they are.

But I realize I sink to their substandard level when I trade cheap insults like that; they don’t even deserve that much of my notice.  Engaging them in any kind of intelligent discourse is also pointless; their propaganda media have already programmed them to repeat delusional nonsense, devoid of actual facts.  It’s like debating with toddlers—they’ll just throw a tantrum and food at you.

If you’ve reached your limit, I sympathize.  Sometimes I’d like to go off-grid altogether, but I know I won’t.  I’m hoping against hope that we’ll get to witness trump and company self-destruct way before they destroy the world.  Also I doubt the rest of the world will just sit by and let themselves get nuked or screwed.  Sadly, it takes the extremism of a  trump to bring out the best as well as the worst in people.  Members of normally divergent points of view are banding together in solidarity to fight this evil, in places you’d never expect to see it.  It’s encouraging to know humans will generally fight for what’s ethically right, when pushed to their limit.

I’m just a powerless nobody, but I’m going to stay here online and speak my mind, for what it’s worth.  If you’re still with me reading my rants and ramblings, I welcome the good company.  There’s no way to know how this will all play out.  All I ask is that each of us hang onto our souls and our good sense, and not give in to this temporary insanity.  If we find ourselves in a position to do some good, however small it seems, we must not lose heart and succumb to fear.  That’s how the adversary wins.  That’s how the world as we know it ends.  “Not with a bang but a whimper.”  (T.S. Elliot, “Hollow Men”.)

Now this is the kind of February day I could get behind, if it weren’t for climate change.  It was 60°+ out, so after buying some much-needed clothing for E, we went for a short hike at Russ Nature Reserve.

They are doing a lot of good work there, like growing and planting native tree saplings, pictured.

There were some very decorative fungi, looking like undersea life.

We had an exciting encounter with a very exuberant young black lab/jack russell mix named Avery who jumped all over us.  Sorry, I didn’t get her picture, so here’s one like her.  We are so pet-deprived, I even like dogs now.

Back home at The Almanac, look how springy my seedlings are looking!  Just a harbinger of things to come.

Well, that’s about as prosaic as it gets, here at The Almanac.  I know we could all do with lighter fare these days, what with all the CRAP!  I myself am having an Eeyore kind of day, so I’ll sign off for now.

We are so beyond ready to move out of Ohio.  June (when we can start house-hunting) can’t come soon enough.  This has to be the saddest state I’ve ever lived in.

I’ve mentioned before how archaic the plumbing and sewage infrastructure is here.  It’s like 19th century London.  On a good day, the system can barely handle normal usage, and periodically the basement backs up.  Then we just do damage control, with the help of some plumbing contractors who work for the realty company.

Now we have the hillbillies from hell living (more like squatting) below us, and they act like infantile savages.  On top of all their other pandemonium, they refuse to take any responsibility for the consequences of their careless, delinquent behavior.

In this case, they flush any and all inappropriate items down their drains and toilet, and this time the basement totally flooded with unmentionable sewage.  Then not only did they refuse to help clean up, they went ballistic at E and the nice plumber Mom and son, screaming, cursing, and insulting them for no reason.  E and the team had to take care of it all and take all the abuse.  It was very disturbing, but at least the plumbers witnessed firsthand what goes on here, and how E has to bear the brunt of it and not complain.

These are the kind of people who vote (if they vote) for a whiny, selfish, temper-tantrum-throwing infant for president, and then hurl abuse and insults at conscientious citizens demanding responsible representation of their elected officials.  But I won’t go there right now.  It’s not just in Ohio or Tennessee, I realize that, but it’s discouraging to live in a place surrounded by that mentality.

That’s why we just want to find a quiet, private, secure, out of the way place of our own, to live out what’s left of our lives.  With a nice big, pretty garden, with produce and flowers to share.  I guess that’s not too much to ask.  If we can be some small part of the solution, without exposing ourselves to nazis and witch hunts, that would be even better.  On that garden-y note, here are my seedlings getting bigger.  Sorry about the poor photo quality.

My fellow Aquarians (you know who you are) will probably be able to relate to these traits that can be both an advantage and a curse.

We crave mental stimulation and intellectual engagement, and bore easily without that.  We can’t imagine just staying in one place doing mundane trivial pursuits our whole lives.  We are fascinated by other worlds and cultures.  We love to come up with new ideas, though we may let others actually put them into practice.  We are researchers, and love to acquire knowledge and pass it on.  We may tend to focus on detail, rather than the big picture, but we also like to imagine and envision alternate futures, environments, and improvements.

We have strong progressive opinions on social justice, politics, and the environment, and though we won’t judge you based on race, religion, or sexual orientation, we will judge your politics, and your resistance to progress and tolerance.  [I admit there was a period in my life when I let myself become indoctrinated into backward thinking, which I can’t explain or justify, considering Aquarians hate conformity, intolerance, or being dictated to like sheep.  But that’s history.]

We need to have a sense of independence, and tend to think/act unconventionally, even eccentrically.  We prefer to stay detached and uncontrolled by others.  We work best alone, and must have periods of solitary space in order to think and breathe.  This makes us seem aloof or even antisocial.  Indeed, we tend to be introverts and loners, but we also love to exchange intelligent ideas with individuals or in small groups.  It’s why communicating primarily online works so well for me.

I could go on, but I’d bore you and myself.  I leave you with “The Water Song”, by the Incredible String Band.  Yes, original hippie here, guilty as charged.  Grok the fullness, bitch.  This song sums up Aquarius for me.

Water water see the water flow
Glancing dancing see the water flow
Oh wizard of changes water water water
Dark or silvery mother of life
Water water holy mystery heavens daughter

God made a song when the world was new
Waters laughter sings it is true
Oh, wizard of changes, teach me the lesson of flowing

Written by Robin Williamson • Copyright © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

I’ll keep it short for now, so I can go slave in the kitchen.  Happy erev from The Skullies.  Here are some homey scenes, including seedling progress!