Category Archives: thankful

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Sometimes, you have to say to yourself: It just doesn’t matter.

Sometimes…

…I wonder….

is it really your business anyway?

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who are you to be watching?

what are you doing with your life?

spending it as a voyeur?

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if you spend all your time watching

thinking you know who is good

and who is evil

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what are you contributing to humanity?

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who elected you judge and jury?

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whatever

go ahead

sit in your castles

poke your telescope through the shades

and watch

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seems boring to me

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I’d rather fight for healthcare for all

I’d rather fight for local housing

I’d rather take in an elderly cat or a foster baby

or an elder whose apartment has been sold out from under them

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what about you?

isn’t there ANYTHING

you’d rather do?

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thanks to everything2.com for the title

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stealthie in the grass

Stealthie in my yard, two days ago. I like the current crop of grass and weeds.

Music: Simon Lynge Hallelujah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIHpeaHJJ9s

His website is here: https://simonlyngemusic.com/. Hey Simon, when do we get another local concert? Concert in the grass? Hugs, ya’ll.

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myalgic encephalopathy

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, actually. I put encephalopathy on the Ragtag Daily Prompt, but …. my brain is still a bit fuxxy. Yeah, tried to type fuzzy. It’s sometimes annoying and sometimes funny. I have a little trouble with my balance, as if my proprioception is not quite working right. I have not fallen, but that is really my dance chops. All those years jitterbug dancing, I recover my balance very well. However, I am staying off of ladders for now.

The antibodies are annoying. The dopamine ones are down a little, which is a relief. I still spent 20 minutes this am organizing CDs into categories. This satisfies both the ADHD and the OCD bugs. I have four categories: women musicians, rock and blues, classical/ethnic and local/folk. Sometimes I don’t know where the hell to put a CD. Southern Culture on the Skids… hmm. Harry Connick jr…. double hmmm. I now have a pile of movie soundtracks and a pile of DUNNO. I have picked up CDs at garage sales when they are a dollar each. Random. Those are in a separate “listen to it and decide” pile. They could end up in the library box outside if I dislike them enough. There seems to be some rap, I don’t have tons of that. Punk, now, it gets filed with the rock except when it’s more Americana…..

I can lower the antibody levels with a hot bath. Tend to wait until I really have to eat, eat, then with the antibodies start poking me I have the hot bath. A sauna would help as would a hot tub. Dang. Where is my hot tub? I hurt a lot more if I eat gluten or get my blood sugar high. Sugar is bad. Rice is pretty ok, though muscles hurt afterwards. I’ve long since trashed my glycogen stores, so my blood sugar will drop back to ketosis within 2 hours instead of taking 2-3 days. Feels terrible while it is happening. I get really cold and achy and just feel like I am dying. Lie down, wrap up in a really warm pile of blankets. I feel the shift: lights get brighter, sound gets louder and the pain switches off. Then I get too hot and throw off the blankets and have some energy again. I still have to behave: any little thing like starting to trot up the stairs and OW, my chest starts hurting and I get short of breath. I am a little short of breath just being vertical. I am glad I am not bad enough to have to just lie in bed, that would fungking suck.

Hope you are well. Get the covid vaccine: it may well make you feel rotten, but covid 19 does the same thing only more so. I think that if I got covid 19 I would croak.

Ribbit.

Peace be with you.

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The Brewer’s Big Horses

This is one of the Songs to Raise Girls, songs that I learned before Kindergarten. A very weird list of songs.

This song comes from my maternal grandfather. My mother said that it was a Congregationalist temperance song….

The photograph is Morris D. Temple and his grandson, F. Temple Burling. F. Temple Burling is my maternal grandfather. I am related to Temple Pumps. According to my mother’s stories, Morris Temple was more interested in Japanese art than in Temple Pumps and the company eventually folded. I don’t know if that is true, or if it was a different Temple then Morris. However, my middle name is Temple.

This song is one that I don’t have memorized, though I know the tune. I have my mother’s handwritten lyrics, with her drawings framing it. There is a tape of my grandfather singing it in the Library of Congress, according to my mother. I would like to go listen to it some time.

I’ve copied it just how my mother wrote it out. There might be an issue about political correctness, but I have a picture of Morris Temple in the 1860s, in his civil war uniform, with a sword. You will have to wait for that post to see which side he fought for….. I presume that my mother wrote it down as she was taught it. I am not sure who talked like this in Iowa in the 1880s, but maybe it was most people.

The Brewers’ Big Horses

O, the brewer’s big horses, comin’ down de road
A totin’ along old Lucifer’s load
Dey step so high and dey step so free
But them big horses can’t run over me

Chorus:
O no! boys O no!
De turnpike’s free where ever I go
I’m a temperance ingine don’t you see
So them big horses can’t run ovah me
Repeat with “toot toot toots”

O de liquo’ men been actin lak de own de place
A livin’ off de sweat o’ de po’ man’s face
Dey’s fat and sassy as dey can be
But deir big horses can’t run ovah me

Chorus

I’ll harness dem horses to de temperance cart
I’ll hit ’em with the gad fo’ to give ’em a start
I’ll teach ’em how fo’ to haw an’ gee
So them big horses can’t run ovah me

Chorus

It took me a while to find this song on the internet. It is listed in temperance songs in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_songs and is mentioned in The Christian Advocate under lyrics: The Brewers Big Horses. It is listed as written in 1913 by JB Herbert and HS Taylor. Isn’t it interesting that Budweiser still uses the Brewer’s Big Horses in advertising?

Again, this is a song I was learning way before I know what a brewer or a turnpike was. My parents stopped singing a bunch of songs when they realized that I was memorizing all of them. They did not want me singing certain songs in Kindergarten.

They did not need to worry. I shut up when I got to school, because no one wanted to sing and no one knew the songs. They all talked about television and we didn’t have one.

I was very disappointed in school. Not enough singing and it was lonely.

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biotics explained

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Conbiotics: These are BAD FOR YOU! They are sold by the other companies. They lie. They get biotics from prisoners poop. They will turn you criminal. They will make you fight with your mother and disinherit your first born, lie, drink too much and cook meth. You will know they are conbiotics because they are cheaper and not refrigerated. And some of the biotics in their tablets are bacteria! Do you want to take bacteria? DEAD BACTERIA, they don’t even give you live ones.

Antibiotics: THESE KILL PROBIOTICS. BY THE MILLIONS. THESE ARE PASSE, OUT OF FASHION, EVIL AND YOU REALLY DON’T WANT THEM (unless you have strep throat or pneumonia or sepsis, and even then, the antibiotics suck because the sepsis mortality rate is 28-50%, THAT MEANS HALF THE SEPSIS VICTIMS DIE EVEN WITH ANTIBIOTICS, DOES THAT PROVE THEY SUCK OR WHAT?)

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rescue

We were leaving for a Seattle, dressed up for a musical, and Patrick an animal on the road.

“Shall we stop and rescue her? It’s cold and she can’t move fast.”

“Let’s!”

He turned around, stopped the car, hopped out and handed me this salamander. Who liked the warmth of my hand. We pulled into a driveway, he took the picture, and I set our friend farther from the road.

Thanks to all the responders, fire, flood and mud.

Photo credit Patrick Rubida.