I accomplished everything on my list yesterday. Feel pretty good about that.
There was a slight snafu in the evening with our pocket door. If you have no clue what a pocket door is, you’re missing out. A pocket door is a door that slides into a wall and is hidden when open. It basically hangs on a track and you push or pull the door along to open and close.
Totally needs to be cleaned now that the track grease got on my hands and all over the door
Ours is in our kitchen. It is used to block the entry way to our basement. Which now that we have a toddler, we use often to make sure she doesn’t go careening down the stairs. I’m actually not too worried about that, she’s pretty good about stairs right now, but we do keep our cat food dishes at the top of the stairs, and Marceline has a healthy interest in cat food.
So yesterday after grocery shopping, I left a bag of dry goods at the top of the stairs so I could bring them down into our pantry the next time I went downstairs. Towards the evening, one of our cats (Clue) was eating some food (I think…) and backed into the bag causing the groceries to tumble down the stairs scaring the cat. Clue jumped up in the air and banged into the pocket door knocking it off the track and wedging it tight in its door frame, leaving us with half an opening to walk through to get to the basement.
It took longer than I hoped to fix. I couldn’t get to the door without Marceline being interested, so I waited until she was asleep. Somewhere between the door being knocked off the track and Marceline finally being put to sleep a cat vomited in front of the pocket door – I guess they were as annoyed by the half opening as I was – and I totally stepped in it.
I couldn’t pop the door back on track. It was wedged in tight. I tried using a screw driver as leverage, didn’t work. I couldn’t move the door at all, it was stuck tight. I thought I was going to have to take the track down to fix it. After fifteen minutes of staring at the door and futile attempts to fix it, I decided to try the old ‘wiggle push pull’ technique.
I pulled on the door while wiggling it up and down and it moved slightly. I pushed the door while wiggling it up and door and it moved some more. About 30 seconds of that and the pocket door had moved enough to give me space to pull it down off the track, realign it completely and put it back on the track.
Felt accomplished after that.
Oh…. and I got a compliment on my hammock yesterday. I put it up in our front yard to lay in as Marceline plays. A lady walking her dog adn pushing a stroller said it looked ridiculously comfortable.
It has a nice view of the large tree its attached to when you stare up.
Todays ToDo:
Clean kitchen and living room (Kitchen floor is sticky?)
Put away laundry
TVP Tacos for dinner
Buy Cat Litter
Start a new book ( I tried to start a biography of Grant, but it starts in the middle of the civil war and the writing style isn’t for me)
So I have been wondering what to do with my website.
Sam and I had agreed a while ago that we didn’t want to post a lot of pictures of Marceline online, whether on my website, or social media or whatever. So here and there some Marceline pictures are fine, but regularly, probably not.
Basically it is a look at human history through genes. My favorite part of it was when he dove into the definition of species, in that we are Homo Sapiens – Sapien being our species. Species being defined as the largest group of organisms in which two offspring can interbreed.
For example, a lion and a tiger can breed to produce a liger, but two ligers can’t produce offspring. So ligers are not a species of animal. Two lions can breed and produce lions who can breed with other lions. Thus lions are a species.
Species are also different than breeds. There are many breeds of household cats, but they all fall under Felis Catus – Felis being the genus and Catus being the species. Along the same lines, Neanderthals can be considered not a separate species, rather a subspecies of homo sapiens. Everyone alive carries some neanderthal DNA (between 1 and 4%), which means neanderthals and ancient homo sapiens interbred, and those offspring are our ancestors. So cool, neanderthals are homo sapiens.
It’s a lot more complex than that. There is debate on the classification of neanderthals, but under the generally accepted definition of species, they are the subset of homo sapiens.
I’ve been running more over the last five months and only have minor injuries (sore hip that I stretch, knee pain that has largely subsided).
I slept…. ok last night. Marceline woke up uncosolable at 2am last night and ended up sleeping in our bed (I spent 40 minutes trying to get her back to sleep before giving up and bringing her into our bed). But from 10pm until 2 am I slept great! And from 2am until 6:30 I slept ok (Marceline moves and kicks a lot in her sleep). At least woke up feeling a little rested.
Today’s ToDo list –
Bath for Marceline
Clean cat litter boxes (its been two days and our cats poop a lot)
Sam and I talk about what is happening in our country all the time. We talk about daily news, national and local events, our horrible president who doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on either, and our congressmen who represent us.
Representative Anthony Gonzalez, our representative in the House, has not spoken, tweeted or given any other indication he even knows about the protests that are going on in our country.
I know I live in a heavily gerrymandered district. I wrote about that in the past. And despite Ohio passing a redistricting measure to fight gerrymandering 2018 – Republican’s petitioned the Supreme Court to ensure any redistricting wouldn’t take effect until 2022 – after census results are released.
My reading of it is “You guys (republican’s in Ohio) created this map to unfairly advantage yourselves in elections for the state and federal levels, and voters agree so much that it is an issue that they voted to take those decisions out of your hands for good – but we’ll (the conservative justices on the Supreme Court) let that slide for another four years because we don’t want to intervene.”
Basically – states made this mess with gerrymandering – they need to fix it. The issue being that technology and data collection has only gotten the point where gerrymandering can be super effectively recently. But the courts don’t want to listen to that argument.
Regardless – my Representative in the House is basically ignoring the issues that are facing our nation now. He is burying his head in the sand and not saying anything about race, police abuses of power, presidential abuses of power (and seriously – how is gassing and shooting peaceful protestors in front of the White House for a photo op not an abuse of power).
And if you don’t think it was a photo op, just listen to the White House press secretary try to compare it to Churchill walking through London after WWII bombings. So American Citizens protesting the death of an American Citizen at the hands of police, representative of systematic injustices, is the same as a foreign country threatening the very existence of your country. That should tell you how Trump views the protests.
Of course anyone who has followed Trump in the media for years would probably know that this is the par-for-the-course. This is the man who said this about Tiananmen Square:
When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world
Anyways, I digress. My e-mails and phone calls to Gonzalez have gone unanswered. His twitter feed shows that he celebrated the space launch and nothing since. So in the 6 days since the space launch – 6 huge days of protests, lock downs, curfews, rioting, presidential power abuses, violence against media, violence against foreign media, and violence against peaceful protestors has been ignored by my representative.
It probably won’t hurt him either, because our district is so gerrymandered. But it’s a disgrace that to our district that the obligatory “What happened to George Floyd should never happen in America” didn’t even happen. But he probably feels like he doesn’t need to, we are a 93% white district.
I’ll keep leaving him 2 or three messages a month, which will probably continue to get ignored.
Senator Sherrod Brown has come out pretty forcefully against how Trump has handled this current moment in time. And has an interesting idea of declaring race a ‘public health emergency’ that would require the disparities in mortality among races in America to be looked at. He conisders it an amplified issue, particularly with how Covid-19 is hitting minorities the hardest.
At the very least Senator Rob Portman gave what can only be called an unenthusiastic and monotone speech on the floor of Congress that things must change. Then again, this is Senator Rob “I’m late for lunch” Portman when it comes to Trump’s removal of peaceful protestors so he could have his photo op.
But Representative Anthony Gonzalez, from Ohio-16, can’t be bothered.
Sam sometimes complains that Marceline doesn’t understand when we are hurt or feeling bad. She doesn’t quite get when we frown or say “ow.”
But, while she doesn’t have that empathy towards us, she definitely has “cat empathy.”
When I comb out our longer haired cats, who continually get knots in their fur and hate being combed, they meow really loudly and clearly distraught. Marceline gets really quiet at that time, and eventually starts making noises that she is not happy. She actually started to cry once.
Today I was clipping our cats nails, and she did the same. Clearly she was not happy the cats were being restrained and fighting against having their claws nailed, and flailed her arms in a very concerned manner.
So while she may not care about us being in pain, she clearly doesn’t want the cats to be in any sort of pain. “Cat Empathy.”
I try not to write about politics on here. Because that would be all I write about if I did.
I find it insanely disgusting that Donald Trump doesn’t want Americans for have easy access to voting. He explicitly railed against Democratic provisions in a round of stimulus talks that would have increased the ability to vote by mail and early voting timetables:
“I will tell you this, when you look at the before and after, the things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again, they had things in there about election days, and what you do…and it was totally crazy.”
So there it is. Increased voter turnout is not something Republicans want. They would prefer low voter turnout, at least according to the President and head of their party.
How can anyone defend that statement?
Instead of defending all of his supporters and other Republican senators and representatives just ignore it. I know mine do.
I live in Ohio’s 16th District. It’s a pretty disgustingly drawn district.
I live in the top part of this. That small Minnesota shaped puzzle piece connected by a very thin strip of land. Before it was redrawn by Republicans after the 2010 census it actually looked like a sane person drew it, instead of a heavily data influenced algorithm that had a goal of making a safe republican seat. See for yourself:
Look at that district. Totally makes sense in the fact that it is a small, normal shaped area.
My current representative is Anthony Gonzalez. I’m sure he’s a real nice man, but I’m not sure why he is qualified to be a Representative. Judging by his bio, his sole accomplishments in life is playing football in the NFL.
I’m maybe an annoying constituent. When I worked at Summit and had early mornings, I called my Representatives and Senators on a weekly basis to let them know how I was feeling about issues. I was frustrated with Gonzalez because like most politicians his public tweets and statements don’t align with his votes.
The one time I actually got a response to him was last summer when immigrant adults and children were being held in horrid conditions all across the United States. I had written him an email and stated two lingering concerns: 1. That John Kelley, former chief of staff sat on the board of one of the largest private organizations housing immigrants in a massive conflict of interest, and 2. That these private organizations, including the one John Kelley sat on, were being paid more than triple the amount a school is paid to educate an average student on a day to day basis. Essentially they turned a massive profit by housing as many immigrants as possible in unsanitary conditions with many, many reported abuses.
His response to me didn’t touch upon either of those concerns, rather stated that he was proud congress passed the H.R. 3401 two months earlier and he was proud of that. Oh, and there has to be more discussions on immigration. Which is wonderful, I acknowledged both of those in my email to him, but my concerns were more narrow in the corruption and conflict of interest being ignored in the pursuit of profits, something he just didn’t seem to understand.
I can only speak for myself, but I’m a little disgusted that the non-response response I got from him is counted among those 20,000 responses. Other topics I’ve called and left messages with him on are budget votes (particularly when he says one thing and votes another way), oversight of the congressionally appropriated funds, and many, many of the president’s statements and actions that overshadow everything else in the world. Nothing else has gotten a response. And not all my calls are about concerns. There are times I’ve given him credit for his statements, but also called him out on his walk-backs of those statements and conflicting votes.
In Ohio we have one Republican Senator – Rob Portman, and one Democratic Senator – Sherrod Brown. I’ve probably left close to a hundred messages for Senator Portman over the years, and not one response. Which I guess when you represent a whole state could be expected. Although in everyone of his answering service messages he states he will get back to each person. Maybe it’ll be like Ringo Starr in the Simpsons and I’ll get a response decades from now:
https://youtu.be/GuYN8sNYBdk
Sherrod Brown hasn’t replied to anything either. But at least he gives the appearance of replying. And to be honest I’ve left much less messages for him than the other two. I used ResistBot to fax all of my congressional representatives about the USPS, asking what action they would take on the issue and its importance to me.
(Honestly, ResistBot is amazing and I encourage everyone – whatever your views are – to check it out.)
Since having Marceline, I’ve written more mail than any other time in my life. It would be ridiculous to think that such a service would be allowed to go bankrupt and fail when it benefits and serves every single person in the United States. How does the president, and republicans in Congress, justify bailing out airlines and other industries, but not fund the USPS fully?
Hell, (that’s right, Hell), more than half of all of the stimulus checks to Americans will be mailed to them. I wonder if the USPS was going to go bankrupt before those checks are going to be delivered, that Trump would have a different attitude towards them. If USPS having no funding left disrupted delivery of the stimulus checks Trump is so proud of, I bet he would find it in his heart to fund it.
Odd that President Trump is ok with that, but doesn’t think expanded access to vote by mail is a good thing. Of course it’s OK for him to vote by mail. That’s different, obviously.
Sherrod Brown’s office immediately replied to my fax with an email:
I suppose it is not much more than the answering service message from Senator Portman, but it was an actual response which is more than I was expecting.
All of this rant came from getting my Vote By Mail ballot yesterday. Ohio has easy access to vote by mail, meaning you don’t have to have a reason to vote by mail, you can just request a vote by mail ballot and they will send you one.
But not really. You see to get a vote by mail ballot, you have to first send a request to you county office to request a request for a vote by mail ballot.
Don’t go back and read again, you read it right. You have to request to have a request to vote by mail ballot mailed to you.
Then you can fill out the request to vote by mail, mail it back to the county office and they will send a ballot to you.
It seems absurd to have that extra step. It means from the day you submit a request for a request for a vote by mail ballot, it will take two weeks for an actual vote by mail ballot to arrive at your door. I suppose that not bad for three pieces of mail traveling 30 miles ( Me: online request for request for vote by mail ballot. Them: Mail vote request for vote by mail ballot. Me: Receive, open and fill out request for vote by mail ballot and put in next day’s mail. Them: Receive request for vote by mail ballot, process, and mail vote by mail ballot. Me: Receive vote by mail ballot).
When Ohio cancelled it’s primary election on March 17th (literally was cancelled March 16 in the evening – but even then a court challenge hadn’t been finished) it took just over a week for an agreement on what would be acceptable to happen. Instead of in person voting, vote by mail deadlines would be expanded until April 27th. That gave an extra 6 weeks to vote by mail, which when you think of how long it takes to actually get a vote by mail ballot it isn’t a lot.
With no physical voting occurring, and how many steps there are to get a vote by mail ballot, voter participation in the primary is going to be way down. Which is a shame. But as Trump clearly said, that’s good for republicans.
Still what it comes down to is that I am lucky enough to live in a state where I can vote by mail simply by requesting a request for a vote by mail ballot and filling it out. I suppose the multiple step process reduces the chances that voter fraud by mail would happen (even if it is extremely rare, just as any voter fraud is – the last big case of mail voter fraud, or any voter fraud, was a republican operative in North Carolina).
I know, again, this is a long rambling post. It is why I try not to write about politics often.
