A Little of This; A Little of That

Ah, what to write about this week?  So many things; so little lengthy inspiration!  How about a little about a whole lot?  No!  Too bad!!  Here goes.  Some of value – some not.

I guess the new Republican budget could be worse, but I’m not sure how.  Although I have Medicare, and it helps us a great deal, we would still be able to scrape along without it.  But there are many my age, or younger or older, who desperately need it.  In good conscience, how could these people who call themselves Christian call for an almost total gutting of our country’s social safety net in order to cut taxes for those who don’t need to have their taxes cut.  Medicare, children’s health care, social security are all programs that truly help people who need the help.  There are many more that need help than churches, synagogues, temples and NGOs can conceivably supply.  Register to vote, then vote the bums out!

Last night we heard that a bunch of Christians are starting a Christian militia to go over and fight with the Iraqis against ISIS.  Oh, goody!!  A new crusade with their marching song, Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war?  This will certainly not endear us to the radical Islamist right to have a bunch of radical Christian right soldiers on their land.  That, by the way, is a song I refuse to play, along with Battle Hymn of the Republic in my music group at church.  It is not an issue at this time, but one pastor told the director to go ahead and schedule Battle Hymn, and that I would play it if everyone else was singing.  They sang without me. 

Closer to home, yesterday was a good day for me.  I got new “speakers” in my hearing aids, and my new glasses came in.  So now I can hear young women’s higher pitched voices much better, and can actually see some details I didn’t know were there.  Of course, that means I’ll have to haul out the sewing machine and mend some shirts of Bill’s that were ordered, delivered to our front door when we weren’t home, and our then puppies had a great time tearing the package open and playing tug-of-war with one of the shirts.  We took corrective action after that, but the shirt still has holes in the sleeve.  Fortunately it is a work shirt. 

Yesterday in between getting my new “ears” and “eyes”, we had a fender bender when a young driver thought he could make a left-hand turn in front of us before we entered the intersection.  Could have been much worse, but the good thing is the insurance adjuster today was a young woman with a very high voice, and I could hear her clearly!  How nice that was.  We used the fender bender as an excuse to have lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.  Hey, whatever works!

We have lived in our house now for some 35 years, so the inside really needed painting.  Which would not have been a problem except that I had a 60 year supply of books on one wall; books I considered as friends.  It took me about six months to slowly go through each book to determine if it should be given away, or kept in the new cabinet our neighbor/furniture maker was going to make for me.  Then I simply couldn’t part with any of the books until one of our daughters committed to taking them to the local homeless shelter for me.  She said they were always looking for books.  But then that meant that I had to take down all of the pictures as well, which of course presented the problem of what to do with them since we wanted to “unclutter” our walls.  I was complaining to a friend about what to do with all of the “kid” pictures which are about 40 years out of date, and her suggestion was brilliant.  Give them to the kids so we can enjoy them on their walls (if they chose to put them up).  We are in the process of doing that, but the guest bed is still awash in pictures, so hope no one wants to come and stay for a bit. 

Our big room is now all painted, the furniture is back where it belongs, a few pictures are up, and the only thing left is to have the new cabinet/console stained and a wall decoration put up.  I had looked in stores, catalogues, other people’s houses, etc., but really didn’t see anything I liked.  Then one Sunday morning a group of us decided to have brunch at a local restaurant after Mass.  I walked in, happened to look up at their big wall, and there it was!!  My perfect wall décor.  Bill liked it as well, so we bought it.  How nice of them to sell me their wall décor for my house.  Lovely people.  Now our neighbor is going to measure where it should go for me, since I am notorious for not being able to measure anything correctly, and we will be through with that.  Except that I bought a new quilt for the bed, and it doesn’t match the paint on the wall.  Ah, but I do love the smell of new paint!

Now if I could only get the Republicans in Congress to coordinate their often proffered religious beliefs to their actions, all would be well in my world!!