Some Words from Carolyn Hax

The quote below is from Carolyn Hax's column yesterday. We all could do better, a lot better, at what she says:

"There's also the bigger issue of a finger-pointing culture, which I wish would just die:

If you're sick, then it's your fault for being irresponsible.

If you're poor, then it's your fault for being lazy or choosing the wrong line of work.

If your kids screw up, then you're a bad parent.

If you're lonely, then you must not treat people well.

Not only is this a fundamental breakdown of compassion, but it's also rooted in magical thinking — that if you just do all the right things, then everything will turn out right for you. That's not how life works.

We can do some things to help ourselves, protect ourselves, advance ourselves — but lightning still strikes when it wants to. Institutions and environments have their say. And we all make mistakes, but the price per mistake is often randomly assigned and rarely, if ever, the same from one person to the next.

It's such a tempting emotional habit to adopt, though, of seeing misfortune and then finding ways to tell ourselves why that couldn't possibly happen to us — or worse, why our superior selves and superior choices have lifted us above the possibility of such a fate.

We’d be warmer people and have a better-functioning society if we had the courage to look at misfortune and immediately connect to how that could happen to us — and be less self-congratulatory about why it didn’t. That’s how a society learns to act collectively toward a common good, instead of hoarding and yelling and culture-warring."--Carolyn Hax July 2021

"Got Sunshine in My Pocket"

 

Nine Days Late

 

Interesting Week

 On Monday, I stepped out of the shower, to discover approximately 40 flies (not drain flies) on the bathroom floor--looking like they were stumbling out of a bar into the daylight. They seemed to continue coming out of wherever they were coming from for the next couple of hours. Then it stopped. The next morning, there were more, though (thankfully) only half as many as the day before. 

We still have no clue how they got into the house, but we do have theories. Perhaps some living creature got into our attic and perished during the extreme heat, and maybe the flies that hatched from the maggots came through our bathroom fan? Hard to say, but I'm glad it seems to be over. 

And I'm trying preemie diapers on Hope dog. At first it was difficult to keep them on her skinny little bum--she's still a little Houdini at 17 years old. Cue, "Find the Diaper" game music. 

This week, I've done some fine tuning and discovered that a sheet clip works as a nice way to clip diaper to her halter. Which meant, I could remove the archipelago of small rugs, I've been using as crude, unreliable, urine catchers, and shampoo the beegeebers out of the carpet. Felt like winning to me, though who knows what Hope thinks.

But, though the week isn't over, the cherry on top, was getting a great haircut out on the deck. That was a sweet first. Love, K

Broken

When I was in elementary school, about once a year, a classmate would appear with a cast on either an arm or leg. Such a huge event! A broken arm! A broken leg! How did it happen? Did it hurt? Can I sign your cast? There were just enough of these injuries, for us to learn and forget the tricks of using a marker on uneven plaster.

Such a mysterious thing, these broken bones. Fairly certain, that my understanding of this mysterious and hidden injury, was that this injury might be similar (had they been around back then) to a Lego People snapping off a joint. No blood, no swollen, bruised tissue, just ... "snap". {paste, paste, paste}

Oh and then there was the inexplicable envy. Good grief! What kind of small barbarians were we? Or ... perhaps we were just normal. All that attention, with a class of curious faces turned to you, must've felt like the warmth from the sun. And all you had to do was fall out of a tree or ? ? 

You first. Love, K