Beating the Heat

We're having a bit of a heatwave in the Chicago area this weekend, so I'm staying indoors in the air conditioning. It's a good weekend to do some reading and catch up on some TV watching. This past week was also time for me to have a colonoscopy. With a history of colon cancer in my immediate family, I have to be vigilant. Thankfully, everything turned out fine. The prep was the most awful part. With all of the medical advances made, you'd think someone would be able to create a better-tasting prep solution because Trilyte sucks hard. Ugh. I miss the days of drinking that stuff from the green bottle (that was taken off the market, I believe) and taking laxative pills. I was glad to get the procedure over and done with so I could have solid food again. I'll get back on my regular eating plan starting tomorrow, but for the weekend, I've indulged a little. 

One thing I haven't been doing is writing. I've been struggling with the story I've been working on. I don't want to abandon it, but I need to make it a priority and get it finished. If I don't have a good draft done by the end of the summer, I might have to kick this one to the curb and start on something else. I'll cross that bridge if or when I get to it.

Frightening Times

Happy Pride Month! I know I'm late acknowledging Pride Month this year, so apologies for that. The mood is definitely subdued this year due in the US due to the current government administration that has done things like strip Harvey Milk's name from a U.S. Navy ship. (Whiskey Pete strikes again!) Ugh. It's hard to stay positive as you watch MAGA (Morons Are Governing America) in full force. Ugh again. 

I read an article recently in New York Magazine that's titled Could You Prove You're a Citizen? You think because you were born in the US and have a US birth certificate that there's no way you could be rounded up and deported to El Salvador, but think again, folks. People are being rounded up by ICE and not even allowed an opportunity to call anyone for help. And what kind of help could you provide? What if your family presents your birth certificate to the authorties and the government thinks it's phony? What then? We're living in frightening times, folks.

Still, we have to try and stop ourselves from going crazy over every awful thing this administration is doing or trying to do. Pride Month is still going on and people need to celebrate who they. Block the noise, folks, or try to block as much of it as you can. Live your life. Love who you love.

This Time, Last Year

Last May before Memorial Day, I spent a week in Madeira, Portugal and had a great time. This May, before Memorial Day, I went nowhere and I don't plan on leaving the country this year either. I'm really glad I decided to go to Portugal last year because I highly doubt I would have traveled to Europe this year. There's so much anti-Americanism overseas due to the reign of Donny T. that I wouldn't feel comfortable traveling outside of the country right now. A lot of overseas travelers don't feel comfortable visiting the United States either and I totally understand their discomfort. Aside from Donny as POTUS, I'm sure many fear having to deal with immigration over here. What if you're denied entry? What if immigration officials decide to put you into some kind of "holding" facility while they determine if you're worthy enough to enter the country? Who needs that kind of stress for a vacation? And the US is losing international travel dollars each day. No more floods of neighboring Canadians coming to town to enjoy the sights and spend some cash. And the immigration fear doesn't start and stop with non-US citizens. American citizens also are having to deal with surly immigration officials if they leave the country and try to reenter. Immigration staff can demand that you unlock your cell phone or just confiscate it entirely. Things are really scary and uncertain right now, so I'm choosing to play it safe and just stay home this year. 

But, I'll always have the memories of my trip to Portugal (and the pictures too)!

Random Observations

Congratulations to the new Pope Leo XIV who hails from my current home state of Illinois. I'm not Catholic, but I was on Pope-watch last week like many others waiting to see who would be chosen. I was shocked to see that an American was selected and a guy from Chicago at that. Huh! Good for him. I hope he follows in Pope Francis's footsteps and keeps fighting the good fight for those less fortunate in the world.

In less inspiring news, the US is bringing in white South African Afrikaner "refugees" now. Ugh. Just what we need in this country: more racists. As if we didn't have enough already, right? Give me a break. Just when you think this government can't go any lower, it does. Pathetic.

Yesterday was Mother's Day and this is always a hard holiday for me because my own mother is no longer living. My mother died nearly 30 years ago, but I still miss her. One year on Mother's Day, I was out and some poor guy wished me a happy Mother's Day and I told him, "Thanks, but I don't have any kids and my mother's dead." He looked at me, startled, and hurried away. I should have just said "thank you" and that's what I say now if someone wishes me a happy Mother's Day. I don't feel sad about not having kids (because I would have been a terrible mother, I believe), but I do feel bad because my own mother isn't around. To everyone who was able to enjoy another Mother's Day with mom, good for you and cherish that time with her.

Sinners and Church-goers

I saw the movie Sinners over the weekend and found it very entertaining. I purposely didn't read much about the movie so I didn't know a lot about it. I knew the twin brothers in the movie were opening a juke joint and that vampires were involved: that's it. What surprised me about the movie was how downright bizarre some parts of the film were. The Irish tunes and dancing took me by surprise. I certainly wasn't expecting to see a Riverdance performance in the middle of a film about Black folks in the American South in the 1930s, yet there it was! 

There are a lot of religious themes in the film and, over the past Easter holiday, I'd been thinking a lot about my own religious upbringing as a Lutheran. During holidays like Easter and Christmas, I think a lot about going to church as a child and how much I enjoyed the songs and the services. During the Easter season, we often sang a song called "Christ Arose" and it's always been a favorite of mine. I was fortunate enough to not have a traumatic, negative experience going to church as a child, but I was still brainwashed in some ways by certain religious norms that my parents and our church home followed that I wouldn't follow now as an adult. For example, it took me many years (like into my 30s) to wear a pair of pants to church (when I was still a church-goer). I'd been brainwashed to believe I had to wear dresses or skirts to church. Then, one day, I just wore pants. I'd seen other women wearing pants and I finally broke down and wore a pair too. If you weren't raised like I was, you're probably wonder what the big deal was to wear pants to church, but it was a big deal for me. I recall one time years ago when my father refused to go to church with my stepmother unless she changed her clothes. She wasn't wearing pants (God, forbid!) but she was wearing a denim jumper. It was a plain dress, but my father felt it wasn't good enough for her to wear to church and sit beside him in the pew while he was wearing a suit. So, what did my stepmother do? Did she say, "I'll wear what I want and don't sit beside me if you don't like it?" Of course not! She went and changed her clothes.  Brainwashing, folks!

Decade of Fun

In the "By the Book" feature in the NY Times, they sometimes ask authors what book have they read that they consider as "guilty pleasures." My feeling is that no one should feel guilty about reading a book, but if I had to specify certain books as guilty pleasures, I'd have to go with books by Bret Easton Ellis. As someone who was a teenager in the 1980s, I read Less Than Zero like a lot of folks my age along with Ellis's other books. His work was so different from what I'd been reading at the time and I enjoyed it. I'm reading his latest novel, The Shards, now and it's entertaining. I saw Bret years ago at the Barnes and Noble in New York around Union Square. He was doing a talk and Andrew McCarthy was there also. They were discussing the movie version of Less Than Zero (that Andrew starred in). Bret talked about seeing the movie and realizing as he watched it that none of the text from his book actually showed up in the film. (I think they did use that "people are afraid to merge" line in it, but I digress.) What surprised me was how perfectly calm and likeable Bret seemed during that chat. I was expecting him to be a jerk, but he wasn't! He was funny and entertaining. I was also surprised to see so many younger people at that reading. I was expecting the crowd to be filled with people who were my age (Gen X folks), but we were outnumbered by the Millennials. 

I told my sister Bret must feel like he lived his best life during the 1980s because he sure writes about that decade a lot. I just don't understand writing about a specific time period over and over. But, to each his own, I guess. I loved the 1970s because I was a kid during that decade and didn't have the pressures that come with age back then. The 1970s were tacky and ridiculous, but I loved that decade. However, I don't want to relive that time. I don't want to relive the 1980s or 90s either, although the 70s, 80s, and 90s are all looking better and better compared to what's going on today!  

Visit (While You Still Can)!

Back in 2017 BC (Before Covid), my sister and I went to Washington, DC and visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture (AAHC). We had a great time, enjoyed a great lunch there, and checked that visit off of our respective bucket lists. Back then, Donny T was in office, but too busy causing chaos elsewhere to bother with worrying about local museums. Well, the tide has turned now with Donny's second term. Now he's grumbling that museums like the Museum of AAHC cause further divisions in society and he wants JD to look into them (i.e. cut their funding). Give me a break. My suggestion for anyone interested in seeing the Museum of AAHC (or any other of the Washington museums that focus on minorities) is that you do it ASAP before Donny/DOGE/JD/Whoever shuts them down.

I, personally, would like to visit Alaska and I'm hoping to do so before Donny decides to give it to his Russian BFF, Vlad. Am I being paranoid? Maybe, but like a guy told me at a job interview once, "The paranoid have enemies too!"