Law and Order
26/06/20 07:19
We finally got around to seeing Mrs G at her independent living facility yesterday. It was an odd arrangement in that she sat outdoors in a chair in the parking lot while Nancy and I were confined to our car some six feet away for the entire visit. It was expected but it still felt funny so there's that. Mrs G looked and sounded well and seemed to relish her daughter's company after not so much as setting eyes on her for some three months. It was equally good for mother and daughter I suspect even though neither is prone to exuberance over such things. Constraints notwithstanding, it was a good visit.
We had a bit of a visit with Evan as well while in Exeter and we met up with him at Hannaford's to do a little food shopping. As hard as I try to get him to put together a list of things he might like to buy at the store he never quite gets around to it. So we go aisle by aisle and he throws things into his cart not quite helter skelter but close.
He steers clear of sugary items and items that are by any definition just too "carby." I think he knows that they do not serve him well either short or long term and they are to be avoided at all cost. At one point, I said to him "I see a lot of snacks here but not too many meals." It was good advice in a roundabout way and it was not lost on him.
For having an "off" morning it seems as though I got a lot done yesterday. I won't say that every morning when I go back to bed after being up for a couple of hours ends up being an "off" morning but yesterday was just one of those days. So much so in fact that when I was out for my morning bike ride I didn't really want to be there.
I had no other place in mind but I didn't want to be riding my bike. Period. For a guy who rides as often as I do that is an unusual feeling to say the least. I couldn't wait for it to be over. There was no lingering anything once I was done and I went about the rest of my day as though I never had a worry. It was never particularly noteworthy but if there is a place for passing thoughts then this is it.
Nancy is up now and she's bee bopping here and there while brewing her tea and pruning her flowers on the back deck. She puts the timer on while her tea steeps and, once done, allows it to drive me to distraction before coming back into the house to turn it off. I don't think it's intentional but she knows I've never much cared for the sound it makes and maybe it irritates her and maybe it doesn't. She's not saying one way or another.
She'll take a bike ride with me this morning although we part ways quickly once we're out of the gate. I won't say that she doesn't ride with the wind at her back but she is certainly more of a leisurely rider than am I so riding together just never works for either of us. I'm more likely to take advantage of a downhill slope and will accelerate traffic permitting while Nancy is more likely to brake periodically in order to slow her descent and stay out of harms way. If I approach the descent riding behind her I will issue the warning "on your left, on your left", while passing her and picking up speed as I breeze by her in full beast mode. That is usually the last I see of her until I arrive back home.
I'm not given to procrastination by and large but I am not beyond dragging my feet when it comes to doing things that need to be done. Maybe I tend to live by the rule of thumb that the late Mr G used to articulate so well when he would say, "nobody is chasing you." I don't know if it warms the cockles of Nancy's heart to hear me us one of her long deceased father's favorite expressions or not but use it I do. Her dad was a very decent and good man by all accounts and keeping his memory alive if only in my own small way is the least I can do.
But, sometimes having someone chasing you can make you do things that need to be done sooner than you might otherwise do them. Since I have no external forces pushing or pulling me in any particular direction it's all in my head and traffic lights in that venue typically flash yellow most of the time rather than solid red or solid green. Proceed with caution, Johnny boy. Anyway, I finally got around to a few things yesterday that have been on my mind and now that they're done I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment and that's a good thing.
The garage is tidied so I have a place to wheel my bike in and out of without tripping over something; I replaced the screen in the door that leads into the basement; I called for an estimate on having some insulation replaced; and I put out something to keep the ants away. All in a days work I suppose. I have a good mind now to see if I can remove a kickstand from an older bike I have in the shed and put it on my new bike. That should be in my wheelhouse so just call me Mr sometimes I do and sometimes I don't know-It-All. I don't need no stinking YouTube to assist me and I won't be calling a friend for advice. No siree, Bob.
Speaking of feeling pretty good, I think Nancy is feeling pretty good about the way things are going with all the things she's planted. I'm talking flower boxes, front yard, her garden, and things that are otherwise popping up hereabouts which she has no recollection of either planting or expecting one way or another. Even those plants that now appear to be budding and may well be weeds have a certain curb appeal which means that they stay for the time being.
Nancy's sunflowers, planted as they were in the infancy of their little lives, were nipped in the bud early on by a foraging creature of one skulking type or another. Simply put, she is not happy as she prizes her sunflowers above all others in her little garden of lost treasures. I've put up a fence so her plants can extend their branches and tendrils in, out, and around the plastic mesh of the fence to their hearts content.
If she is unhappy about anything garden related as the season grows long in the tooth, it is that her lovely plants have run out of places to run and their little shoots start to turn onto each other and become an unruly halo of interlocking tendrils and buds that may or may not produce her long awaited moonflowers or other. One year I actually ran a rough hewn rope between the fence and the branch of a low hanging tree hoping that the tendrils of Nancy's climbing plant might find it to be a suitable stepping stone upwards and into the branches of the adjoining tree. Mother Nature had other ideas and settled the matter with an early frost so that was that.
I don't remember when I started to get interested in outcomes as ejudicated by the Supreme Court of our great land but if anything I'm more interested this year than ever before given how polarized our politics are here in the year of our Lord, 2020. I don't always understand the tangle of logic involved in the various cases but I invariably know which side I'm on when presented with the facts that I do understand. I also can't deny that the more invested the other side is in the cases under review the better the chances are that I will be jumping in with both feet to advocate for my side.
Overturning cases of lower courts dominated by liberals in liberal bastions the likes of the 9th Court of Appeals is a sub specialty/interest of mine. And when the Supremes give the lower courts the equivalent of a good spanking by overturning their rulings it is a good day indeed. There is nothing worse for our country than having bad case law on the books. If Trump has done anything good during the first fours years of his presidency it is both adding conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and sending cases to the Supreme Court where having a conservative majority almost ensures a just and proper outcome.
Trump has prevailed on a number of cases involving immigration and that is a good thing. Our borders are more secure today than ever before and people entering our country illegally have fewer options than ever before once they step foot onto American soil. This coming week we'll probably see the decisions of the final cases of the year as they drop one by one.
Which decisions if any will affect turnout in the Fall elections is hard to say but conservatives would be ill advised to stay at home seeing what we've seen of the lawlessness and turbulence in the streets of our cities in the last three weeks. Law and order must be the rule of the day. Our freedoms depend on it. Let's git er done.
We had a bit of a visit with Evan as well while in Exeter and we met up with him at Hannaford's to do a little food shopping. As hard as I try to get him to put together a list of things he might like to buy at the store he never quite gets around to it. So we go aisle by aisle and he throws things into his cart not quite helter skelter but close.
He steers clear of sugary items and items that are by any definition just too "carby." I think he knows that they do not serve him well either short or long term and they are to be avoided at all cost. At one point, I said to him "I see a lot of snacks here but not too many meals." It was good advice in a roundabout way and it was not lost on him.
For having an "off" morning it seems as though I got a lot done yesterday. I won't say that every morning when I go back to bed after being up for a couple of hours ends up being an "off" morning but yesterday was just one of those days. So much so in fact that when I was out for my morning bike ride I didn't really want to be there.
I had no other place in mind but I didn't want to be riding my bike. Period. For a guy who rides as often as I do that is an unusual feeling to say the least. I couldn't wait for it to be over. There was no lingering anything once I was done and I went about the rest of my day as though I never had a worry. It was never particularly noteworthy but if there is a place for passing thoughts then this is it.
Nancy is up now and she's bee bopping here and there while brewing her tea and pruning her flowers on the back deck. She puts the timer on while her tea steeps and, once done, allows it to drive me to distraction before coming back into the house to turn it off. I don't think it's intentional but she knows I've never much cared for the sound it makes and maybe it irritates her and maybe it doesn't. She's not saying one way or another.
She'll take a bike ride with me this morning although we part ways quickly once we're out of the gate. I won't say that she doesn't ride with the wind at her back but she is certainly more of a leisurely rider than am I so riding together just never works for either of us. I'm more likely to take advantage of a downhill slope and will accelerate traffic permitting while Nancy is more likely to brake periodically in order to slow her descent and stay out of harms way. If I approach the descent riding behind her I will issue the warning "on your left, on your left", while passing her and picking up speed as I breeze by her in full beast mode. That is usually the last I see of her until I arrive back home.
I'm not given to procrastination by and large but I am not beyond dragging my feet when it comes to doing things that need to be done. Maybe I tend to live by the rule of thumb that the late Mr G used to articulate so well when he would say, "nobody is chasing you." I don't know if it warms the cockles of Nancy's heart to hear me us one of her long deceased father's favorite expressions or not but use it I do. Her dad was a very decent and good man by all accounts and keeping his memory alive if only in my own small way is the least I can do.
But, sometimes having someone chasing you can make you do things that need to be done sooner than you might otherwise do them. Since I have no external forces pushing or pulling me in any particular direction it's all in my head and traffic lights in that venue typically flash yellow most of the time rather than solid red or solid green. Proceed with caution, Johnny boy. Anyway, I finally got around to a few things yesterday that have been on my mind and now that they're done I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment and that's a good thing.
The garage is tidied so I have a place to wheel my bike in and out of without tripping over something; I replaced the screen in the door that leads into the basement; I called for an estimate on having some insulation replaced; and I put out something to keep the ants away. All in a days work I suppose. I have a good mind now to see if I can remove a kickstand from an older bike I have in the shed and put it on my new bike. That should be in my wheelhouse so just call me Mr sometimes I do and sometimes I don't know-It-All. I don't need no stinking YouTube to assist me and I won't be calling a friend for advice. No siree, Bob.
Speaking of feeling pretty good, I think Nancy is feeling pretty good about the way things are going with all the things she's planted. I'm talking flower boxes, front yard, her garden, and things that are otherwise popping up hereabouts which she has no recollection of either planting or expecting one way or another. Even those plants that now appear to be budding and may well be weeds have a certain curb appeal which means that they stay for the time being.
Nancy's sunflowers, planted as they were in the infancy of their little lives, were nipped in the bud early on by a foraging creature of one skulking type or another. Simply put, she is not happy as she prizes her sunflowers above all others in her little garden of lost treasures. I've put up a fence so her plants can extend their branches and tendrils in, out, and around the plastic mesh of the fence to their hearts content.
If she is unhappy about anything garden related as the season grows long in the tooth, it is that her lovely plants have run out of places to run and their little shoots start to turn onto each other and become an unruly halo of interlocking tendrils and buds that may or may not produce her long awaited moonflowers or other. One year I actually ran a rough hewn rope between the fence and the branch of a low hanging tree hoping that the tendrils of Nancy's climbing plant might find it to be a suitable stepping stone upwards and into the branches of the adjoining tree. Mother Nature had other ideas and settled the matter with an early frost so that was that.
I don't remember when I started to get interested in outcomes as ejudicated by the Supreme Court of our great land but if anything I'm more interested this year than ever before given how polarized our politics are here in the year of our Lord, 2020. I don't always understand the tangle of logic involved in the various cases but I invariably know which side I'm on when presented with the facts that I do understand. I also can't deny that the more invested the other side is in the cases under review the better the chances are that I will be jumping in with both feet to advocate for my side.
Overturning cases of lower courts dominated by liberals in liberal bastions the likes of the 9th Court of Appeals is a sub specialty/interest of mine. And when the Supremes give the lower courts the equivalent of a good spanking by overturning their rulings it is a good day indeed. There is nothing worse for our country than having bad case law on the books. If Trump has done anything good during the first fours years of his presidency it is both adding conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and sending cases to the Supreme Court where having a conservative majority almost ensures a just and proper outcome.
Trump has prevailed on a number of cases involving immigration and that is a good thing. Our borders are more secure today than ever before and people entering our country illegally have fewer options than ever before once they step foot onto American soil. This coming week we'll probably see the decisions of the final cases of the year as they drop one by one.
Which decisions if any will affect turnout in the Fall elections is hard to say but conservatives would be ill advised to stay at home seeing what we've seen of the lawlessness and turbulence in the streets of our cities in the last three weeks. Law and order must be the rule of the day. Our freedoms depend on it. Let's git er done.