Let's Kick the Problem Down the Road for Others to Deal With

 As I was working on a genealogy profile early this morning, I was drawn to search for a death notice published in the Detroit Free Press in 1996. Although I was unsuccessful in my endeavor, I came upon a retrospective article marking the fact that the American Auto Industry turns 100 this year (1996).

Never in modern history has one invention been so impactful to so many and yet so damaging to our environment. Paved roads heat the planet, smog chokes our breathing, accidents happen that take their toll on the lives of families, and our finances and their remnants sit in museums, garages, driveways, on the side of the road, and in junks yards that litter our country. And besides gas, all of the fluids that support running any vehicle are poison to humans as well-coolant, brake fluid, wiper fluid, transmission fluid, battery acid. Engineering allows us to drive around "safely". Until one brilliantly stupid human does yet another thing no one has thought of before to screw it all up for the rest of us.

And here we are now in 2022, 26 years later and we, as a country, are being weaned off of the gasoline teat because Russia supplies a significant amount of crude to the world oil market and they are at war with Ukraine. Don't forget, we have to "save the planet" and ourselves. Crude oil is a byproduct of the dinosaur age and it's a finite resource and expensive. Barrels of the stuff are refined into any number of fluid products and plastics! (that get thrown away in landfills and microparticles get into our oceans and our food chain and not enough is recycled further polluting the earth, but that's a different bandwagon). We still buy gas every day we need it, but we seem to need it a little less when it's priced at $6.35 per gallon.

California has had to put into effect some of the strictest clean air quality legislation to get the smog under control in this freeway-driving car culture society we live in, but the rest of the country hasn't caught up yet.

The rub is that if electric generating plants are being fueled by coal, are all those EV electric plug-in vehicles really making a difference in our quality of life? Not for the people who live in the vicinity of a smokey coal-burning plant. Even the by-products of a cleaner coal-burning plant ( no coal plant can ever be 100% clean for the environment), are not healthy for the groundwater. And everybody has to drink water. An EV car is still a car, just without a gas tank.

We can thank the industrial revolution for making our lives what they are today.

But are humans the evasive species of planet earth? How long will it be till we have to colonize outer space or another planet to sustain our existence? I would like to be able to think positively about it, but an almost 2-year bout of COVID-19 in society proves to me that 1) humans can't stand to be cooped up in one place over a long period of time, and; 2) no one gets out of here alive. And now that mother nature has "thinned the herd" with yet another mutating virus, there are fewer of us on this planet. You'd think it would be easier, but it's just the same bunch of problems on a different day.

The baby boomers have kicked down the road the fact that social security won't be there for my generation, that there are not enough immigrants and locals willing to take low-paying thankless jobs in home healthcare for the elderly. And now the conservatives in the Supreme Court just took away the federal constitutional mandate for abortion rights. I think if you are a woman and not of breeding age, you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do with my body. If you're a man, and don't believe in abortion, you better believe in adoption because that number will only rise when it comes to states rights and the poor. 

President Biden is right when he said this November, you'll be voting for the people that want gun control and abortion rights.

We need to make ammunition expensive as hell because that's what actually kills people. Have all the guns you want, but if a bullet is $200 each, with a serial number and your name is attached to the purchase,  you might think again about using it to kill another human being.

It's funny, unless you're a guy wearing one.

 https://www.pcmag.com/news/flaw-in-sex-toy-can-let-a-hacker-literally-lock-down-your-crotch

It's June!

Last year, I was fully expecting that now I'd be recovering from my third major surgery battling Crohn's disease, but the medication the GI doctor prescribed has helped and gave me a tool to use when I'm feeling bad. After having a colonoscopy and finding out that the pain I was experiencing was from an ulcer instead of advanced Crohn's, I decided that it's probably a better idea for me to focus on doing things that make me feel well, eating well and de-stressing my life.

So part of that de-stressing regime has been looking for a job closer to home. I like driving, but having to drive in LA traffic to and from work four days a week (Monday's I work remotely from Brea) is a time waster and it's frustrating when it doesn't keep moving. I live 42 miles from work. In no traffic, it takes me 35 minutes to get to work. But in traffic, it can take anywhere from 1-2 hours to get to work. And, yes, I've tried rideshare commuting, but to be honest, it doesn't make that much difference in LA traffic. The solution is working closer to home. Immediately when I started to look for a new job, there were two different MERS positions that were posted and I got a telephone interview for the one I applied to, but found out that they couldn't meet my salary requirements. So I'm still looking.

Once the senior on my team came back to work after she had recovered from surgery, I scheduled my two week vacation. Last year, for vacation, I flew to DC and stayed with my aunt in VA and while my uncle was in a nursing home recovering from a heart attack. I drove up to Massachusetts and New York to meet up with family among other thing. I accumulated a lot of PTO between then and May planning on that LOA, but I didn't need it, so I had to take a vacation.

So instead of going back to the East coast this year, I'm having a stay-cation for the summer of 2015. The first week, I'm proud to say I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it felt good. The second week, I'm attacking the last of the floor project that was so rudely interrupted by December's broken wrist that I got from falling at work. Oh, and by the way, that infatuation for my therapist went absolutely no where. Which I'm kind of glad about because the new normal after menopause has not been any fun either. So I'm moving furniture and prepping the floor tomorrow.

Drama

I'm not sure what's worse - the drama that we carry inside ourselves or the unresolved drama in life that effects those around us. Maybe it's a combination of both to some degree.

Version 1:

It's easy enough to find unhappy men. Men unhappy in their marriage, in their unfulfilled career aspirations, in themselves. I guess what's hard is to find the courage inside to move forward and not dwell for too long on the stuff that depresses you. But how long is too long? When the inevitable conclusion is staring you in the face, does delaying the issue make it any less painful?

I've come to the conclusion that the man I've been dating since 8/13 has become a curmudgeon way before his time. I recognize now that he's been on the autobahn to this attitude because he has low self-esteem and that is something I find harder to deal with than his self-absorbed, crabby, opinionated ways. Add to his cocktail a set of health problems he's waking up to and it makes him seem more like a man who's approaching retirement instead of the age of 41 years he actually is.

Rules are for games. And I felt like a looser in the game of life where he carried the rule book. I was sad for about 5 minutes. I know I was stupid to get involved with a man in who was still breaking up with his wife after almost four years of continued co-habitation.

I took the long way home in Friday night traffic from LA. I watched the harvest moon follow me home. This is the first Friday night I've been home in 7 weeks.

Version 2:

My sexual prowess in bed was compared in contrast to a fat, loud, lying cancer infected alpha female diagnosed as clinically bi-polar who took medication in amounts considered overdosing to most. It's always an ego boost when someone under psychiatric care says fucking a crazy person on a mood swing was better than fucking you. Moron.

The fan must be on. The window must be open. There must be at least two comforters or three or more pillows on the bed at all times in all seasons. The door must be closed. The lights must be on and "without candlelight, I don't feel like I can get in the mood". These are the rules I had to play by in order to deal with  an ADD/OCD/diabetic man in bed. I closed that play book. I shut the door. I walked away barely shedding a tear.

Version 3:

He eats and he eats and he eats and then he drink and he drink and he drinks. His consumption is out of control and it's due to his diabetes and not much more. He's waking up to the fact that everything he knows is wrong, everything he thought was true is now false and you cannot live life without consequences. It's not a time to start a relationship. I can't fix him nor was I out to in the first place. I only showed him that dietary dilligence allows you to feel better one meal at a time, one day at a time. And now it's time to move on.

Version 4:

When someone from a website I contribute reviews to posed the question, "Any racial preferences?" I almost wrote, "Race isn't as important as employed non-alcoholic, not married and not having to take any mood stablizing drugs in order to function in society." That would have been the cruel, honest facts I was dealing with. Shit, what a walking mess of a man. And that's not even the half of it.

So Not "The One"

Sadomasochistic. I dated a man recently who exhibited this trait but was in denial it was what it was and I had to stop because his style of sexual talk creeped me out to the point where it left me feeling paranoid instead of an object of his love and affection. I thought that there wasn't enough trust and too much risk involved to my personal safety that I could bear and I couldn't allow that line to be crossed. After numerous sessions of hours of verbal foreplay and continual miscommunication about meeting up over a two month period, my hope for any type of healthy relationship with him died. His choice of verbiage was frequently repulsive and violent.

The three dates we had in the beginning were normal, nice and fine. But after that, I felt an increasing amount of pressure from him to hide the fact that we were involved and I won't be put into that situation. I'm a 43 year old grown woman and I see no need to "sneak around." I just don't feel the need to be devious. Life is too short. But now knowing what he has to hide, if I were him, I wouldn't want my kids to know either. Treating women like he wants to is not a lesson I'd be proud to pass down from father to son.

I feel sorry for any woman who gets into a dominating relationship such as he desires. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised to hear his name on the evening news one day as a rape suspect. And he picked 'me' from am online dating website. Knowing that these kinds of men would maybe target me has shaken my confidence in dating....and he called *me* quirky.

Cookies and cake

Sometimes life is like cookies and cake.

* You want cake, but you get cookies instead.
* You've got cake, but it doesn't taste as good as the cookies you remember.
* You've got cookies, but now that you've got a taste of something sweet, you find yourself wanting cake more and more.
* Sometimes a diet change is required because of all the cookies and cake you've consumed made you fat and lazy.
* Sweetener substitutes are a joke when you know what cookies and cake are like. Only real sugar will do.

... all analogies. Get the picture?