Tell me...

HAT'S IT ALL ABOUT...

Just like Alfie, we will all face the music one day...not just in one way but in every way...,Karma yep.  I swear this summer was set up by last summer, 14 days of covid on the couch dying LoL ok I felt like I was dying I didn't but I think the virus has run amuck inside me and it had it's way with me for 12 months then I was ill twice this year with something similar, does it even matter if it was covid?  I didnt have to go to hospital or even a doctor as long as I didnt try to do ANYTHING I was fine, but NOW the weather is getting better and I want to do things...

Where is my energy, my strength, my will to try harder?  Damn it! 
So Ida swept by here yesterday evening gave us one heck of a thunder storm dropped a few trillion buckets of rain then went on up North to have her with the Yankees...hope she is kind to them. 

Yesterday before she hit I went out to tromp around a hot as hell sod farm.  Yes I hang out at sod farms, sewage ponds, and swamps.  Go figure why I have no friends, 
"Hello, yeah friend of mine, will you meet me at the sewage pond, we'll have lunch on the tailboard and then drive over to the right out in the open hot humid sod farm for drinks of tepid water after." 

Yeah right...just imagine that.  So I went to try for photos of the Upland Sandpiper, there was 2 of them there...but it was Tuesday on a sod farm, so there was telehandlers, tractors, semi's, huge sprinkling systems shooting out tons of water, and there was me off on the verge trying like hell to see 2 upland sandpipers who kept getting spooked by trucks, men, and water systems.  The photos sucked pretty much.  I made that ebird list Private as I don't want Give me a Break to review it. Not a new bird for me, but one I haven't had a look at since the 90's and rare for the area...I may go back on Sunday and hope they don't work on Sunday. 

I thought I was gonna die of heatstroke.  I just can't deal with the summer heat anymore.  So today Im trying to recover, I did give both my dogs a bath...Outside, just used the hose and lathered them up and rinsed them down dried them off and they are on the porch waiting to be dry enough to come inside where it is air conditioned and quite cold if you are damp and wet.  

One year ago on the 3rd our family friend who was my mom's bff passed away YES ITS been a year.  I want to go visit her grave and bring her flowers...tomorrow is supposed to be cooler so I plan to go tomorrow if nothing happens and I actually have the energy to make the trip.  

How soon they forget, the Republicans who goaded George W Bush into sending troops in to get even for the 9/11 terror attack on American Soil...they wanted to kill every Afghan in sight...now they are screaming because 20 yrs later they want us to stay, they got mad because we left? I don't get it.  What do they want...for us to go back?  Like I said before it was never a real war...in a real war you know who your enemy is.  We made a lot of mistakes the biggest was making it a war.  "Quilts for the troops, care packages for the troops, bring home our troops,"....what now it's "make our troops stay there so we can send cookies, quilts, and stream life feeds on their birthday?"  

The second biggest mistake is to believe we can build a nation Unite one WHEN WE ARE SO DIVIDED how the hell can we Unite Afghans when the last President we had tried to overthrow US??? Overtake our  government??? And half the fuckin people in this nation want that ????????????????????? And they wonder why we failed in Afghanistan, OMG it makes me want to barf. We went to kill Bin Laden, it took 10 yrs to actually do that...and then we tried to build a country one that was as divided as our own.  This is the same direction we are headed for petes sake...HALF the freaks in this country want to force the other half to live under their religious fantasies.  ITS NO DIFFERENT PEOPLE!! 

This post is all over the place cause I've already been dragged right back into it,,,,,seen the first 9/11 documentary of 2021, so a lot of Crap is coming back to me that I'd like to forget, it's all wrapped up in one neat little putrid bundle, GW Bush who was an idiot, the planes, the towers, the people jumping, the fear, the realization, the death, the marches, the tears, the piles of flowers and missing posters, then the military strikes, the moving on, the years of soldiers losing a leg, losing a life, losing hope...and then we sure as hell didn't win..... did we? 

Now we remember, and yet we learned nothing.  The GOP will welcome the Afghan refugees?  No they will not....we will see how soon they will start to complain about that, they don't want the refugees on our Southern Border, and they will want the Afghan's to stay put in Germany, Spain, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, there was already 2.2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and 3.3 million  more are being forced to leave or live under Taliban rule.  WHERE will they go?  It will become a humanitarian nightmare  really fast.  And when they get here which side will they be on?  OH yes they will have to chose. 

When Biden tries to ask congress for money to help, JUST you wait and see what they say....its okay to spend trillions for war, but it sure wont be okay with them to help Afghan children, women, men, and families start over due to the mess we made. 

Karma

AVES HER WAND...

I guess we have all seen Karma at work, and sometimes we don't see the whole picture till we get the rest of the story...

I have touched on how my X was side railed by early onset dementia.  I must put in this side note this struck him AFTER we split up but before we were divorced.  

I did not file for divorce, in fact when I realized something was not quite right I did my best to look after him as much as he would allow...but see even though we were still married he suddenly had his son from a first marriage made his Power of Attorney, and right after that he filed for  divorce.  I called the lawyer that served me and I said WHY is he doing this because I wanted him to stay in the home we owned together so I could look in on him as often as I could it was right next to my Mom's where I was living.  I had sat down with my X when I moved back to SC to help my Mom...I told him we can do one of three things.

1. I can buy you out and help you move into a smaller place in town. 

2. You can stay here as long as possible and I will do what I can to help when you need it.

3. Or we can get a divorce.  

We settled on Number two! He said this was his home and he did not want to leave. I was happy with that decision.  That's when I spent my savings to add a room to Mom's house and stay there to help her and look in on him and help when he needed it.  One year later he filed for divorce.  SO I was a little shocked.  I told him I no longer had money to buy him out I had spent it for the room addition at Mom's....

So long story short I had to get a part time job which turned into a full time job and was not able to be with Mom 24 hrs a day which meant she suffered and he suffered also...IN order to buy him out and keep the home...So when I called the lawyer he told me his father had appointed his older son from his first marriage as Power of Attorney and he was the one who was helping with the divorce action so I called that son.....

And I was quite honest...he lives in VA 500 miles away.  And I told him look, 

"your dad is not in his right mind as you have figured out, I was looking in on him but not managing any of his affairs, but he seemed to be managing his affairs fairly well his bills were paid he drove into town to eat dinner each evening, and he was doing pretty good.  I was helping him out with the yard work and looking in on him but if he divorces me and moves into town I won't be doing that, so are you going to do it?"

HE told me most likely once the settlement was done his father would be moving up to VA TO STAY with him and his "live in girlfriend" who had 2 children who were both about to move out on their own..

So the divorce was finalized and he had one month to move out and I had one month to pay him the settlement offer and get the keys to the house.  One day after I paid him he disappeared.  SO I found out he had driven up to VA...with the check I gave him.  It was deposited into his account and his son's name was then added to his account I found this out Later.  That was Oct of 2012.  

BUT my x came back in 3 days after going to VA...and he began to try to move the things he wanted...our son helped him move...and I got the keys. He left the house in a horrible mess.  He had pushed things up into piles like he planned to move it but in the end he took only a few things.

He moved into a low income seniors place in town and I was told he had a lady who came in 3 times a week to cook and clean for him and  did his shopping... his car died of an oil pump failure...A "friend" of his who had been "helping" him actually helped himself to many of my X's belongings, the list of things missing were:

A handgun, a 16 ft extension  ladder, 3 circular saws, assorted hand tools, 2 chain saws, a outdoor wrought iron dining set, a lawn mower, and some classic dinette chairs that were in the attic that had belonged to my father...and then his car came up missing.  See we had made a list of all the "objects" in the house as part of the settlement, and NONE of those things were in the house, the shed or his apartment.  AND his car was also missing...when he collapsed in McDonalds and was taken by ambulance to the hospital...and later moved to another hospital they said he had a stroke or a heart attack.  Ended up he had neither we never got a diagnosis except dementia, and early onset Alzheimer's. 

IT was me who went to sit with my x for about 30 days when he recovered in the hospital he def had a psychotic  break of some kind he couldn't even talk! But eventually he got better, but now his SON who had power of attorney and medical POA also decided he should not go back to this former living arrangement but into a nursing home..

SO I spoke to him..."you told him and ME that he was going to be living with you in VA." 

But as it turns out when my x went up there to finalize those arrangements, his son's live in GF did not want his dad to move in and live with them...So that's why he came back and was put in a senior low income housing.  Legally I could DO NOTHING but my sister had stayed in touch with that son and he confided in her that he was angry because my husband had been loaning money to our Son who had lost a job and was having hard times...a couple of grand.  I started trying to get the house  ready for my son and his girlfriend to live in as a rental we had decided...as it turned out my son lost his job and had to take a job that was too far away to commute from here so that deal fell thru etc. 

SO what did the step son do?  He took control of my husband's accounts wiped it out the divorce settlement money was gone, and when we tried to get my x into a Nursing home the SS Administration was the one who told us there was no money in his accounts, they went over his accounts for the past 5 yrs.....come to find out the POA son was giving him an eating allowance of $10 a day...

So I found out from my X when he became alert enough to speak to me about some things that his so called friend the handy man had his car and had agreed to pay him only $400 for it, but never did....the car was at that time valued at $5000.  

 SO I contacted the POA son and he collected the money for the car I don't know how much...then my sister told me that that son who was supposedly was handling things had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease a year earlier and he had to quit work  and had filed for Disability!! 

By this time my x was in  nursing home and he was doing pretty good I went to visit and he seemed to be settling in pretty well...and in fact he met a woman in there and they became sweethearts, at this point I backed away content things were ok,  and my sister would call and check on him and his sweethearts daughter worked at the facility and she was keeping us posted on his going on's but then....

That daughter changed jobs and she had her mother moved to the place where she was working and she requested that my x be moved also...in the end the step son said move him....so he was actually living closer to me, but NO one told me...until he had been living there 3 months and he fell.  He was moved to Charleston which is about 3 hrs away... 

He did not do well and at one point they said he went into cardiac arrest, his son had put a DNR on him but they did not have the paperwork in the facility they moved him to and they broke 3 ribs doing CPR and then he was transported to the ER and that is when they discovered his DNR was not in his paperwork from the original nursing home so they faxed it over and he was NOT put on life support and died of respiratory and heart failure (he couldn't breath with 3 broken ribs) at midnight the day before I had arranged for someone to look after my mom so I could go down to see him.  BUT he died.

SO what does this have to do with Karma you ask....well Im getting to that...

SO all along when I thought my Step Son was making these decisions about the care of my X it was actually his girlfriend someone none of us knew and  had never met, who was making the decisions and the step son was passing this info along, it appeared he was in charge but his Parkinson's Disease had gotten so bad he was not even able to work let along keep tabs on my x's affairs....SO my sis and I discussed going to court to have step son removed as his POA but before we could do anything he fell was moved to Charleston, and in the end died...

The step son never came to his dad's funeral, never sent flowers, and never helped pay for his final expenses except for $1,000.  I never spoke to him after he told me he had changed his mind about his dad living with them...I was so angry....legally I HAD NO LEG to stand on.  IN fact my name was not even on his "call list" and if I called to inquire of his condition I was told NOTHING..,,

So this week I found out....the same woman who had been pulling the strings to get my x's bank account signed over to the step son has placed that son in a nursing home on hospice! So this is where Karma comes in, the step son who out of jealously convinced his father to put him as his POA and divorce me, and  his girlfriend convinced him to take over his father's income so my son could not a penny, and then marry her and put her on his accounts,  has control of him has now put him in a nursing home....he is still a young man, and to me that is a death sentence for him. 

So I am still friends with this step son's x wife they had 2 children they were married 12 years during that time we were all friends  I considered those children to be my step grandchildren, and she is very upset and as an x wife I know how she feels the father of her children is in a nursing home put there by the same women who put the father of my child in a nursing home and neither of us could do a damned thing about it...

IM sort of happy my SON is not married!! 

You are...

HAT YOU THINK YOU ARE?

No you're not. 

Im doing a series of posts on things Im learning thru a Buddhist Monk in Thailand.  His perspective is a little different since he used to live in Hollywood CA and be a dancer while he worked on getting his degree in Family and Marriage Therapy.  So he is a man formed by Western Ideology.  

One thing I will say I am never in alignment with religious fever, that is why the teaching of the Buddha are more in alignment to what I will and will not be able to use in my daily life.  I do not pray.  The times I did made no difference.  I don't believe in this higher spirit.  I do believe the highest level of spirit is inside us. 

I know there's some who just said "well there you go, this is your problem." 

I don't think so.  Name one person who has lived a sincere happy life and God was their pillar?  The Pope? Hardly. Billy Graham, no way....Joel Osteen, not even close.  His message is positive, but he is telling people to use their enlightenment to achieve material wealth.   And we know that is not tangible in the end. All of the above are/were wrapped in Gold and swaddled in misery, or suffering. They die just like Jesus, the Buddha, Muhammad.  EVERYTHING even our Sun will die. 


LEARNING TO LIVE FOR NOW:

You take nothing with you on your journey, do I believe in reincarnation, I am on the fence with that one.  It doesn't really matter does it? One time I went through one of those past regression meditations.  And guess what image I had...I was an African man on the Savannah, protecting and providing for my wife...I felt the heat of the dry wind, saw the wave of the dry grasses as they waved high around me, and was in that moment seeing the world through the eyes of that man.   It was a really weird experience.  

Every session I had I kept saying, "I want to be free." 

If you know the story of Buddha he found enlightenment.  A new state of understanding.  It took him six years of searching and he spent much of that time suffering. He realized that nothing is permanent so why should we live our lives in seek of permanence when it is not achievable? Nothing is forever in other words.  There is no unchanging soul and the belief in reincarnation came from this ideal, if nothing is forever then so is the soul not forever and it changes also...

I'd like to think the loved ones who I grieve for are out there watching me, and waiting for me, but are they?  Maybe one of my dogs was my grandmother.  I may be able to channel them through memories  through thought but the Buddha reminds nothing in this world goes with you in death.  So the point is to live each day as it is your last, actually each moment.  HARD STUFF!

KARMA= "Your thoughts are your Karma."
If we have a good and kind thought for another person, that positive thought will come back to us in a favorable way. But if we harbor evil thoughts, those thoughts will come back to us as retribution.

So my despite of Trump, the GOP, all the people who won't get vaccinated, that is not helping me, so I gotta try to stop thinking about it!! I think the best way I can achieve that is to say "what they say and do is on them not me." I am not a turn the other cheek person, so I have a long way to go. 

Bad Apples?

alked early so nice...

The weather here is a daily changing thing..we had that gorgeous day yesterday with our head under the hood of the car, and it seems that my son has hit about the worst streak of bad karma anyone could hit..Now his washing machine, "mom and my old one" is not spinning and draining.  I have repaired this lid switch so many times, I know exactly which one to order so ordered 2 of the dang things...one for now one for later..thankfully they are cheap!! Got 2 for $13 free shipping..

BUT then he got some good news he can't officially start a new job till that SSA sends his new card WHO knows how long it will take but the Unemployment we filed sent him money SO finally he got some good news just in time as I was having to start picking up some of  his financial slack..I can't seem to convince him of the merit in having a good chunk of money in savings.  Child support is what keeps him poor to be honest.  And Next Tuesday he has a hearing for a decrease because he is not earning near as much now as he did when the order was issued 9 yrs ago.  

This hearing was filed for Last October it's almost a year due to all the delays this is the 3rd reschedule he has had! I hope that the amount they have taken this year so far will more than cover the whole yr when he gets a reduction, so maybe HE can begin to save and get a car..

NOW about the car..I'm keeping my phone handy as the pick up gal in case,... but he left in it this morning it started pretty much right up...and no WHITE vapor at the tailpipe! He said it's amazing...I said "lets don't count our chickens before they hatch". 

But he has been gone for a couple hours running errands etc and so far no phone call for roadside pick up!! Good news to me. Who would have thought...but let me not jinx it either by saying anything...we will give it a good solid week before passing judgement on the Product. 

So we have a cool breezy day on tap today and whatever remains of Hurricane Sally will be coming right over us...2-3 inches of rain is what they said,  it did some major flooding in Alabama and Florida... it collapsed parts of the Pensacola Bridge.  Wonderful can't wait...not!!

I got busy with some yard chores after my walk and my son left on his maiden solo voyage...the fence that encloses a part of woods where the dogs roam in the back needed some extra posts one section was drooping over.  This fence is made with metal posts but I guess we ran out of metal and used a couple of wood posts and they had rotted so I put in 3 new posts from a cedar tree I had cut last yr and sawed into 3 posts...I cut up a couple more of the large limbs that fell in last weeks wind for firewood...And Then I decided to spend some time in the screen porch watching the birds at the feeders, some large Mourning Doves are attempting to get on the small feeders and they keep falling off.  Im gonna toss some corn out for them they like it. 

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This was epic!  So ABC hosted a Townhall between Donald and uncommitted voters, see he is ALWAYS surrounded by his posse of  supporters so this time he is in the shark tank! They asked him some tough questions and his answers were pretty much Double Talk! Did you notice at his latest rally HE was right away mentioning about the incident where  2 sheriff's officers were shot point blank and he was all over that...but he has YET to address the brutality of the citizens KILLED  by COPS! He dances all around the question...and when he said Almost all cops support him, well there you go!!He said that's a lack of respect...being shot at while being a cop...but if a cop shots at  you while being black that is just how did he say it, oh yeah he said... "they choked". The Cops killing people, are "some bad apples" in the police department.  BUT he left out the most important of that assumption....and they should be tried for MURDER. Yes they are bad they are very BAD...let us hold them accountable that is the point. 

Doesn't that also mean there's some Bad Apples in our citizens too.. they happen to be the ones shooting at police??  They get charged, these bad apple cops get a slap on the fanny a THAT A BOY and off you go. Put their asses in jail. 

He said when people dumped water on the heads of cops in NY during a protest those cops should of turned around and "done something" to my ears he was saying they should have SHOT the protesters.  So cops who kill are bad apples, citizens who kill are horrible hell bound demons,,,Ok got it. That is what I call a Double Standard.  

HE wants to basically destroy the protesters in Portland..he blames Democratic Governors for all the violence, but mostly it's BIG cities of huge populations who happen to have Democratic Governors.  You are not going to get Democratic Governors  in IOWA, or KANSAS, or NORTH DAKOTA nobody lives there first off...except white people of privilege who are mostly Republican voters.  

Farmers who depend on Subsidies, Ranchers who graze their cattle on Public Lands, Oil  and pipeline workers  who need a man like Trump to make sure they can drill baby drill, and lastly suburban whites who don't want to co-exists with anyone who is not like them. The Midwest is the "forgotten middle class"  How come they can't reinvent themselves without government help?? I really don't get it.   

It is not reasonable to say all cities with large crime volume are Democrat run...more truth is in this statement..."Most larger Cities are heavily populated, and larger populations means more crime! That is logical.  

It's so funny how he thinks it's okay to tromp on one of our Constitutional Rights, the right to protest, and yet NO ONE has the right to deny the bearing of arms he keeps telling his supporters "they want to take away  your guns"...and on th is end he is saying " I want to take away your right to protest." so more bad apples? Protesters=evil demons, gun toting beer bellies=Bad apples?  got it,,,,

But .....lets put his theory to test...
Houston TX a Republican RUN STATE has double the violent crime of Portland Oregon. The USA  as a whole has 22.7% of crimes are violent, in Portland 21.7% is violent crime barely at or just below national average, while Houston has 50.4% violent crime...so that's more than double the National Average,....so what's the deal there ...bad apples or evil democrats?  It's more about income per-capita,  concentration than anything else...and there is NO statistic to show HOW convicted criminals voted! So just because a Governor is Democratic does not mean it's the Democrats  who are committing or allowing the crimes, it could be the disgruntled Republican Citizens there is NO data to make this assumption. 

Like I said he makes stuff up! His answers were not presidential I wished ABC had made one youtube of the whole townhall but they didn't that I found, it was per question asked...so you can google it up and read more for yourself, I saw it was on, but I knew I was not going to watch him I get kind of sick to my stomach just seeing him move his face soooo....

I'M beginning to sense there's flies all over the place with all these Bad Apples, beginning to fester and rot.