Just returned from my usual Tuesday morning in Auburn.

I walked with friends in the cemetery, emptied my post office box, went to the library, and then to the supermarket where I picked up salad fixings and mushrooms, broccoli, a glorious red bell pepper, and tomatoes.

Walked briskly to the checkout lines, found the one with people buying only a few items each.  Third in line, I thought it would be a breeze,

The women in front of me had four items, one of which was a bottle of salad dressing.  She watched the little screen that shows what the checker is ringing up and when the checker told her the total the customer said, “You charged me $3.67 for the salad dressing and the sign said $2.67.” The checker called over a roving employee and asked her to take the dressing to the shelves and see what the sign said.

The roving employee came back after several minutes and told the checker that it was $2.67 with a coupon. The checker smiled at the customer and told her that price is with a coupon.  “Do you have one?”  Of course she didn’t!  So the really nice checker pulled over the weekly newspaper insert, found the coupon, tears it out and scans it for the computer, then tells the customer the new total.

Only then does the customer pull her wallet from her purse and leisurely extract a few bills. She tells the checker she has the change and ever.so.slowly counts out 84 cents. A nice employee had bagged her four items by then and she could have left right away, but wait.  She has to put extra bills back in her wallet, zip the little change purse shut and return it all to her purse. Very slowly.

Fortunately I was wearing a mask and speaking in a very low voice so probably no one heard my running monologue through all this.  It wasn’t pleasant.

This rant probably acquainted my readers with a few of my character flaws, being judgmental the most obvious. And where is my compassion for the woman?  Her husband might have died last week. She could be recovering from heart surgery. In addition to no compassion, I obviously have no patience.

Then there is the little screen that shows what the checker is ringing up.  I never watch what the checker is doing and would have no idea if I was being overcharged unless the total is more than $10 over what I thought I was going to pay. So I am not attentive to my finances, you know, like a proper householder.  In all fairness, I don’t pay cash.  I use a debit card and have to answer questions and type in numbers so when would I have time to police the checker.

As my friend Kathy would say, “It’s hard being human.”

I don’t multi-task.  I am not able to multi-task.

I don’t vacuum and listen to a podcast.  I don’t drive my car and listen to the radio or talk on the phone.  I can’t do my writing homework and read the comments on the blog.  I’m not mentioning this because I think it makes me a better person than those who can and do multi-task.  It’s because I don’t understand how they do it.

One example that confronts me daily is my experience with the Balloon Juice blog which I read every morning and a couple of times during the day.

I don’t read all the front page articles but I check the daily Ukraine coverage, as well as the political, COVID, and pet articles.

I rarely read the comments because I don’t have time but when I do I’m puzzled by the people who almost always comment who are also people doing real work, serious work.

Attorneys, architects, IT folks, managers, professional writers.  How do these people have time to read the front page articles (often long and comprehensive), then read the comments and respond to comments.  And do it for thread after thread while also working at their profession.

Probably they read much faster than I, they are able to think on their feet (not one of my talents), and they type faster than I.

Apparently afghans are back in style. I have one that my granny made for my mother more than 40 years ago.  Granny Rachel was a first-class needlewoman who could crochet, embroider, knit, and sew up clothes for her daughters and granddaughters.

Born in 1904, she had three sisters and a brother. She was a farmer’s daughter, then a farmer’s wife, until the early 1940s when she left her alcoholic husband back in Colorado and moved to Southern California where she bought a small tract house across the street from the beach that looked out over the Pacific Ocean.

Her real name was Ruth but most of the family called her Rachel after the person in the ditty:

     Rachel, Rachel I’ve been thinking

What a grand world this would be,

     If the men were all transported,

     Far beyond the Northern Sea.

She had a healthy contempt for men at the same time as she found many of them attractive.  She was a beautiful redhead, funny and fun to be with.  I suspect she was a good dancer, as were most of the women in our family.  She rarely drank alcohol, possibly because her husband, brother, and two of her three sisters were alcoholics.

In her early forties, living in Southern California where there were several large military bases, she had several boyfriends.  I inherited a beautiful jewelry box from her that was a gift from an ardent admirer. My mother said he was a good man who eventually went away because Ruth wasn’t ready to settle down with one man.

Once in California she may have gone to work in one of the many defense plants making ammunition, weapons, ships, and planes for the war effort.  I know that after the war she became a fry cook and remained one until I was in my early twenties, say 1960 or 1961.

When she and her husband moved to Reno in the early 1960s she became the cook at a monastery and was liked by her “boys,” the young men studying to become monks. She enjoyed spending time with them and cooking for them.  I find this amusing given that Catholics were one of our family’s prejudices, along with Blacks and Jews.

While they lived in Reno they bought a small farm in Sandpoint, Idaho and she became a farmer.  Her husband was the “hand” but she was the farmer.  She raised cattle for her table and probably sold some of the meat.  She also raised chickens for their eggs and for the table, and she had a large vegetable garden.

I don’t remember her being a great cook but she was a world class pie maker.  Her crusts, made with lard, were flaky and delicious.  My friends used to visit just to eat a slice of her pie. She also made fudge, chocolate and brown sugar (penuche).

I lived in Reno in the early 1960s and would visit her on her days off.  We would go grocery shopping together and she taught me how to choose the best fruits and vegetables.

In my late thirties I was a reporter at the Carson City newspaper.  Granny was proud of me and my mother sent her clippings of my articles.  I once wrote a five-part series about child abuse in Carson City but when I gave my mother the clippings she said she wouldn’t send them on because they might be hurtful for Granny to read.

That’s when I found out that Granny was a serious abuser of her three children.  I have a photo of my mother and her sister Virginia, probably ages seven and three.  They are wearing matching white dresses and somber expressions.  Looking closer I see that my mother might have a black eye and a sleeve of her dress is ripped.  I’ve studied that photo so many times and I’m pretty sure Virginia was scared.  My mother might have been scared but I think she was also angry.

The main thing I remember about the conversation with my mother was her saying that when she was 17 she “buried the quirt and the beatings stopped.”

My mother, brother and I lived off and on with Granny for years in the 1940s and 1950s.  She spanked me and my brother often (we were brats) and she wasn’t gentle. I also remember the time when my mother sent me to bed without supper and Granny brought me a piece of pie an hour or so later.  She owned a Model A Ford for a long time and I remember a teenage friend and I riding in the rumble seat.

One of her many Colorado nieces received a Christmas card with this inscription: “Been sitting here just a thinking and it all adds up that you have to have some thing to get up in the morning for, and be glad you got it.”

She loved fiercely and was loved fiercely in return. Her love was shown in meals, pie, fudge, knitted sweaters and hats, a roof and a bed.

She had a terrible stroke when she was in her late seventies and was in a wheelchair till she died in 1981 after a second stroke.  She asked her husband not to call the EMTs, to let her die.  He loved her fiercely and did as she asked.  

I read a long article this morning about the ways the COVID pandemic surprised the experts, national and international.

What didn’t surprise them was a shortage of toilet paper.

Join me in an imagined 2016 meeting of a dozen international epidemiologists.

First expert: What should we look for when the next pandemic strikes?

Eleven experts (in unison): A toilet paper shortage.

For once I was ahead of the game.  While my friends were roaming the paper goods aisles I was looking at my four unopened 12-packs of Trader Joe’s least expensive toilet paper.  I don’t buy the thicker softer toilet paper because our house has a septic tank and the thinner product is kinder to septic tanks.

I started keeping nearly a year’s supply of toilet paper on hand after I moved from Minden, NV to Grass Valley in 2014.  I was overwhelmed by the roads, the eight lane freeways full of thousands of cars hurtling along at 80 miles an hour, the miles of shopping centers, all the people, and I had no idea how to get to Trader Joe’s in Roseville. But I went back to Nevada to visit a couple of times a year and on my way out of town I would stop at Trader Joe’s to shop and among other things I would buy several packages of toilet paper.  Then I would go next door to Costco and fill up the gas tank for the drive home.

Because I’m very organized, I buy a new 12-pack soon after I open the closest pack on the shelf so I always have four unopened packages.  And yes, the newest pack goes behind the previously purchased packs.

I also follow that method when I put my clean clothes away.  Most recently laundered turtlenecks go on the bottom of the pile in the drawer.  This rotation ensures that my clothes wear out in the same order they were purchased leaving nothing wasting away unworn.

This system is possible because I buy the same brands, same styles, year after year.  Actually every three to five years. I buy L.L. Bean exclusively for everyday clothes.

I do have a tiny selection of dress-up clothes for dinner parties or the theater that were not purchased from L.L. Bean; they will last the rest of my life.  Keep in mind I’m turning 83 in February.

My oldest turtlenecks and long-sleeved T-shirts are starting to get tiny holes so they are on their way out but I won’t have to buy more for a couple of years.

The new year is starting on a high note, my friends.  I need nothing. There are four unopened packages of toilet paper on the highest shelf in my bathroom.

Happy 2023, full of love, laughter and most of all, plenty of toilet paper.

I had a wonderful reunion last night with a former love.  Music.  Reading the comments on a Balloon Juice post I clicked on a link to a YouTube of Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli singing We Will Meet Once Again.  Since then I’ve listened to it probably three dozen times.  It was the first thing I played this morning. 

I’ve been a fan of Bocelli’s for many years but had never heard of Brogan and had never heard that song until last night. It’s a melody so beautiful that it provoked pure joy, something I had forgotten music can do.   

One of my minor talents is that I’ve been a good dancer most of my adult life.  So at some point last night I stood up and began to dance to the music and discovered my balance isn’t so great anymore.  I actually knew that but somehow I didn’t expect it to affect my dancing.

I’ve always loved music, both listening to it and singing it.  As a child my parents let me choose my own churches and I chose the ones with the most singing.  I’m thinking now that I suffered a benign neglect on that score as I was allowed to attend church on my own at age seven or eight.  I must have walked to these churches and what did the adult parishioners think about this lone child attending their services and singing her heart out.  I still know most of the lyrics to “The Old Rugged Cross,” “I Come to the Garden Alone,” “Jesus Loves Me,” and several more highlights of the standard Protestant songbooks.

For some reason since I moved to California I have quit listening to music except at the rare concerts I attend.  I suspect this is because I don’t want to bother my landlady with the noise music might create.  And that is now ended.

This morning my balance is better and I was able to dance around a bit without scaring myself.  I haven’t branched out yet from Josh and Andrea; that is for another day. There will be music in my life again.  I’m grateful to be reunited with this old love.

It’s been quite a morning here.  I pulled out the long underwear.  I never remember to keep track of when I do that each year but I do think it’s earlier this year.  I’ve been cold for a week, huddled in front of the space heater, moaning to everyone who would listen.  The world is divided into people who love the onset of cold weather and those of us who don’t.  An indecent number of my friends are ecstatic and I’m huddled in front of the space heater quietly loathing them.

After donning the long underwear, a turtleneck and warm pants, I drove to the supermarket where I bought butter, sour cream, avocados, cucumbers, and two Powerball tickets.  I was behind a man and his two young sons who threw a $20 bill at the lottery machine and walked away with 10 numbers.

Went to the gas station and went inside to pay in cash (it’s 20 cents a gallon cheaper if you give them cash) and was behind a woman who was buying Powerball tickets, some for which she chose the numbers and some for quick picks.  She was also having the cashier check her old tickets to see if she had won anything (she hadn’t).  I was a little tight-lipped by the time I got to the register but the cashier was tight-lipped over gritted teeth. I was a little chirpy and happy but she gave me the look and I subsided.

The rest of the way home I was thinking of what I would do when I realized I had the winning ticket (like !.7 billion dollars) and smiled all the time.  First, I would phone two girlfriends and ask for their Social Security numbers.  They would know that meant I had a winning ticket and was turning in our three names as the winners. Second, I would phone my attorney and ask him what to do next, in what order.  Then I would phone my accountant.

For the rest of the day I will imagine many scenarios of what I will do with my winnings.  I may even write about it.  It’s such fun to be rich for a day.  

I’m also going to watch Waking Ned Devine, a funny movie made in Ireland in 1999, about a lottery win.

It’s been several weeks since two cops parked their SUV on railroad tracks, then placed a prisoner in the SUV on the railroad tracks, and left it on the railroad tracks long enough for a train to hit it.

I still can’t come up with a single reason that an adult, however diminished their cognitive abilities, would park on railroad tracks. Ever. Under any circumstances.

As a small child I knew to avoid railroad tracks and doubt that at age seven I would have parked my bicycle on railroad tracks.  And I was no brighter than the other seven-year-olds on the block.

These were not seven year olds.  They were adults.  What were they thinking?

Never mind.

The big news this morning is about Twitter, Elon Musk, and Musk’s competition Zuckerberg, along with the failure of Metaverse under Zuckerberg’s command. Most of which doesn’t even compute for me.

Last night I cancelled my Twitter account.  I only joined so I could read the Balloon Juice front pagers and quickly discovered what a time and energy sink it was after I read their posts.  I learned nothing of import although I did occasionally enjoy and/or laugh at some of the animal posts.  Musk’s purchase of Twitter made it easy to leave.

Twenty or more years ago I was on Facebook for three months.  At two months and three weeks I realized Facebook took me right back to being 15 years old, in high school.  I literally felt the same way I remember feeling almost every minute I was on the high school campus: not pretty enough, not busty enough, not popular, not well-dressed enough, not to mention that I was so self-centered in my misery, I assumed that any laughter I heard from any direction, was at my expense.

Looking at photos from that time I see that I was actually cute/pretty, my clothes looked like everyone else’s, and I didn’t have big boobs which became an advantage as an adult because clothes look better on women with small breasts.

So, whatever it was on Facebook that took me back to some of the most unhappy years of my life, I decided I did not need in my early old age. That was my experience of social media until 2020.  In June that year I took an online photography course and the instructor set up an Instagram account where we could post our photos.  I signed up for an account which I made private so people have to get my permission to follow me. I only have about 30 followers and we all post photographs of our pets, our families, and interesting photos we take of anything and everything.  No influencers in the people I follow or who follow me.

My default photo is the sky scape out my front door.  I live in a walkout basement apartment facing due west, overlooking ranch land, foothills, a swath of the central valley, the coastal range and that huge ever-changing sky. Next come cats, flowers, trees, books I particularly enjoyed reading.  Nothing is important, only half the photos are composed and deliberate, posted for the two or three people still there from the photography class. 

Almost all the requests I get from people who want to follow me are from influencers, sellers of fake money, life coaches, all manner of people I would never talk to in real life and have no time for in virtual life.

I don’t know what category blogs fall into.  I still read them, mainly Balloon Juice which I read first thing every day and check on throughout the day until I shut down the computer early evening.  It’s a full service blog—politics, pets, cooking, travel, music, you name it, there has been a post about it. It keeps me informed about politics, as well as introducing me to books, movies, TV, and other blogs I might enjoy. Commenters live in many countries on several continents although I confess that I don’t read many of the threads of comments because I’m a slow reader and don’t have the time.

More than you ever wanted to know about my life online.

There was rejoicing this week when the heart of a pig was successfully transplanted into a human.

My first thought was, “And they killed the pig to do this.”

Once again the life of a two-legged animal was determined to have more value than the life of a four-legged animal.

No four-legged animal was invited to join the discussion about the ethics or morality of killing one animal to benefit another.  The pig wasn’t consulted.  It did not volunteer to sacrifice itself.  It did not consent.

And then, several days after the rejoicing came another discussion.  The recipient of the pig’s heart might not be worthy.  In his past he inflicted grievous harm on another human.

To me, that is an entirely different subject.  The initial argument rates the value of one life form against another.  I think all life has value, equal value.  Any value beyond that basic level is a construct of the human mind.

For me, the life of the man who received the pig’s heart has the same value today as it did at the moment of his birth, no more and no less than the value of the life of the pig.

If I were to choose one word to describe the former president, Donald J. Trump, his three oldest children (and son-in-law), all the people in his administration, and all the people surrounding him for most of his life, that word would be tawdry, which my online dictionary defines as:

showy but cheap and of poor quality; sordid or unpleasant.