Nachos for breakfast & so lucky to have them

This morning I got up shortly after 5, was up, dressed, caffeinated and out for a walk by 5:30 am. The air was breezy and comfortable -65 degrees out - a balmy day in a heat wave. I walked for a full hour - more than usual and came home hungry.

Poking around in my kitchen looking for some breakfast - I came across Mexican corn chips and oddly they were calling me. I spread them on a plate and decorated them with southwest style diced tomatoes, a mixture of black beans, brown rice, barley, peppers, onions, spices and a sprinkle of pepper jack cheese. 

I slid them into the microwave with anticipation and was not disappointed....

So yes, (maybe for the only time in my life), I had Nachos for breakfast. Lucky I am to have a meal at all, a natural place to walk and a present peace however long it lasts. So much of the world is in rubble, in danger, cold or hot and hungry and thirsty, worried, fearful.   

I'm not powerful or influential. I'm not even particularly friendly or social. not a person who is necessarily agreeable. There are people who would say I'm a total shithead And nobody is reading this for sure. 

I can't do much, but stay informed, vote, donate to aid orgs, help when I'm able. The news, both local and global breaks my heart. 

Age-related Downsizing - Relief!

Before I moved (back in February,)  I lived in a 75 year old 4 bedroom house whose systems were aging poorly. I didn't choose it, I didn't buy it. I'd inherited it. 

I deeply appreciate my good fortune. That said, I've come to realize how much of my life energy was consumed by memories of the past, sorting the piles of  memorabilia inside, by worry about what to junk, what to keep or give away, what problem to fix, when to fix, the order of fixes, prequals to each fix, and researching contractors and their proposals. It was endless and I was out of my depth as a elderly female never involved with the building trades. As just one person taking up so much space I didn't need - well that bothered me quite a bit also....

I admit I enjoyed the front yard: having coffee on the bench in front of a dwarf lilac I had planted for my Mom. I even enjoyed mowing, snow shoveling, shrub trimming in the front yard - up to a point.  But trying to contain poison ivy, invasive weeds, an out-of-control hedge, a half dead blackberry patch and an overgrown uneven backyard became too much - tics, thorns, yellow jackets, large fallen branches, etc...  

Combine those stressors with the increasing traffic in Danbury! There used to be shortcuts I knew to avoid  jams. But there has been so much construction - so many new apartment complexes in all those formerly under-built areas -  even my back roads were crammed with traffic most of the day.  And My location was at the top of a steep circle without sidewalks or shoulders - not a safe walking spot especially in winter. My habit had been driving somewhere else to walk.  But now the traffic - and crazy stressed drivers - ah well.

After 11 years of fence sitting about leaving, my move was sudden. On New Years Day I had no inkling - it wasn't on the agenda.  By last week of January I'd made an offer and was packing like mad. By February's end I'd secured a new home.  I moved into a 1 bedroom condo in a 55+ complex with various places to walk to without driving and a little garden area right out of my door, a landscaping crew and enough units that local contractors consider it a "market" and are familiar with the units and the rules.  

The house went to flippers, who gave me a detailed repair plan, and got a bargain for their trouble.   

No regrets. Just immense relief and time to think about other things.

 

Time Rolls, yes it does, no one stands against it

You’ve got one life - do what you can while you can! Friendships, institutions, traditions you rely on appear then vanish! Disasters happen! Defend yourself as best you can!

Life is messy and difficult, so beautiful and brief.  Be alive until you aren’t- don’t give up contributing to the human story —even if nobody seems to hear, offer up your heart!

The backhanded non-apology....

 Got creeped out recently on the phone when a computer voice interrupted  - - "This call is being recorded!"  I said what the heck is that? And it suddenly said it again. I insisted the caller turn it off and said little after that. As always when I don't know how to react -- I don't. 

The next morning I woke up already a bit freaked out thinking about it. This person I was talking with posts nearly everything she does on Facebook - lots of selfies with groups of people she knows and places she's gone. Has to always have a social plan to go somewhere or be with someone. Hates to be alone. Also talks endlessly about what this or that person said to her - no matter if the conversation was yesterday or 60 years ago.... 

When I texted her saying to record someone secretly is really a betrayal of trust (also illegal which is why the app alerts people!)  Rather than apologize, she turned it right back on me - saying the presumption and assumption of malice in my reply was shocking and calling her mean was hurtful. 

But I never called her mean. I had asked what she planned to do with the recordings -post them to Facebook? She's pushy rather than mean, kind of bullying the reluctant into doing what she wants, or repeatedly asking very pointed questions for personal info which I had always found troubling.  Being more or less easy going I'd  awkwardly blurt out the answer and be filled with regret afterward. 

But recording me was a bridge too far. Way too far. And apparently there were two recordings - which she stated and claimed to have deleted, saying they were "gibberish" anyway. So she reviewed them before deleting. To see if they were useful? To see how the app did at recording? 

No regret was expressed. "I'm sorry you feel betrayed," she said. Not sorry about what she did, just sorry I found out and felt betrayed....

OMG I've moved.... I'll never find anything again

 Oh yes, I have pulled up stakes and moved, boxes and boxes I thought I'd never be done but finally after endless trips, I moved the last box. I'm still exhausted. No words of wisdom here. Just plunge in and do it!

That said - I'll still be unboxing sorting and tossing in September. 

Give Your Life Another Chance Before it’s Gone - Mad Mar Walker

This rendition of Time Rolls On (Give your life another chance before it's gone) was recorded at the Putnam House Restaurant and Bar on 8/31/25, with my phone - by propping the phone against a coffee cup!!! The Putnam House has great food, nice people too - the open mic is hosted by The Incredible Kelly who has a fabulous voice and plays a mean guitar both acoustic and electric.  She has rotating colored stage lights, which on my low res phone video made me purple and green. It  looked weird to me so I thought I make it even stranger by added a retro effect in Google photos. ( I'm doing what I can!)

The Terrible Mistake

 

On the seventh day, 

when the Almighty should have been napping,

He paced the glassy surface of new poured sea

wringing his sculptor's hands in celestial anxiety.

A nagging tug, a vexing doubt

about creation, something about creation -

something obvious and overlooked.

That single lively thread, woven

in his own image in a split second of pride.

One thread, twisting in the solar winds

unraveling slowly down the eons....

Four acre lots of the mind,

are circumspect and clean, so clean

God forbid the ideas should touch one another

Or leak onto the plot next door

Which might accidentally create some 

new upstart idea, something

Unclassifiable and awkward

Requiring a hazmat team to extract....

For fertility of ideas

multifamily structure is best

 

Stack em up

like floors in a highrise

Skyscrapers of boxes on a dock

rickety, shabbily

 

Zagging every which way

expanding in various directions 

In danger of falling over

Askew. Like community garden patches,

Overgrown, seeding their neighbors

plots with something untoward and interesting.... 

                            --- Mad Mar (Mistryel) Walker

The Essential Trick

If you have perennials, biennials, 

things that seed themselves 

and return to you in odd moments,

sprout anew after a while of dying back

-- then you can't indiscriminately

pull up unknown sprouts in the name of neatness.

Be patient.

Study the situation.

Is it a weed or a daisy in waiting?

or Queen Anne's Lace 

or the wee tip of fern

about to uncurl?

The essential trick?

Never uproot a thing

that will, sometime later,

fill you with the earnest, wild

energy of delight

& make you glad you are alive...

                            --- Mad Mar (Mistryel) Walker

Selecting a worry list for the Zombie Apocalypse

Never. That's when I thought I'd see the unfolding of events as they are tumbling into chaotic existence this year. And look it's only July. And I fear much is unfolding unseen.  I don’t know what to worry about anymore - there are so MANY choices!! 

All the countries that used to be our friends and allies, but have stopped calling. 

And all the people who’ve died because certain international agencies that dispensed food and medical aid have suddenly turned on a dime and disappeared - absorbed by the so-called state department.

Will we ever have vaccine recommendations we can trust again? (Hmmm try the AMA  - they still believe in science.) What happens during the next pandemic when research funding has been axed?

Will NOAA be trustable after all the climate experts have been banished? What will happen to the coast as things melt on - will AMOC stop?  Will we bake in the oven of our folly?  Or will a new ice age suddenly arise and make Popsicles of us all?

So many floods,  epic rain and wind events in recent years! And Think of all those campers and RV-ers  swept away in the night as they slept - heartbreaking. They are still searching, many finding the sudden darkness of grief....

 

What about all the forest fires creating swaths of charcoal out of  the animate and inanimate alike?  Will 47 have everyone sweeping the forest floor, and pull all the national guard fire details to help ICE?  Speaking of ICE what happens to all those folks snatched and deported leaving families and jobs dumped in countries they’ve never been to  or incarcerated incognito?  What of Due Process? Rule of Law?  Will Miller reduce the US population by jailing half of us in various Alligator Alcatraz iterations? 

And if there is a "Big One" along the Cascadia Subduction Zone - how will we recover?  I don't think we will really. California is the engine for a large chunk of our national economy. By then, FEMA may be a memory, missed more and more as the months pass. As stodgy and rule bound as they were - they helped many.

And what of democracy? Of Technocrats, cryptologists and accelerationists trying to  burn down the world.....

Speaking of technocrats - think of  all the various AI iterations preparing to take our jobs, hallucinate new law cases and other nonfacts, run and analyze all those surveillance cams and drone-swarms, acquire human targets for.... ummm, never mind. 

The only thing I can think to do is turn off Siri and never ask ChatGPT. MetaAI, Claude or Gemini etc any questions. Those other iterations, many with industrial or military purpose or having secret code names --- are too frightening to contemplate.  And Grok - why don’t people realize Grok is named for a sci-fi verb “to grok” which means 'communing with your dead friends by eating them'?

             Zombie apocalypse indeed.