Tag: Revolutionary War

You’ve Got Your Troubles

Ah, Alabama.

I spent the day with Dad, going around to cemeteries and visiting graves and getting family history lessons. We went to the oldest known grave1 in Alabama–which is in the county, and Dad’s sister-in-law is descended from the Revolutionary War veteran buried there. We had lunch in a little diner in Carbon Hill which was phenomenal–old-style home Southern cooking (didn’t care for the cornbread, but no one could make cornbread as good as my mom, and you could tell it wasn’t baked in cast iron). It’s weird being here, a bit melancholy and always a bit sad–most of the older folks from when I spent summers here as a kid are all gone. I’m sixty-three, so that’s really not a surprise but I generally don’t think about that a lot when I’m not here; being here reminds me of things and people. I remembered one of my dad’s uncles, which shocked him because that uncle died when I was about seven. (I also remember my mother’s younger brother, who also died when I was seven, less than two weeks after he turned eighteen.) I even have a single memory of our first apartment in Chicago, when I just over two years old. It’s very faint, but I remember it–it was my first time hearing the air raid sirens (which used to be tested every day back then) and it scared me, so Mom picked me up and carried me out to the back porch and told me it wasn’t anything to be scared of, and it never bothered me again.2

I’m also glad to spend this time with Dad, and also get a break from every day life and the world burning to the ground3 for a brief respite. I was listening to Nick Cutter’s The Troop in the car yesterday (yes, I picked a book that wasn’t on my list of choices, but in fairness to me I’d forgotten I’d downloaded it), and really enjoying it. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of it on the way home tomorrow. It’s surprised me; I don’t know what I was thinking the book was about other than knowing a Scout troop was having a camp out on a remote island, and it was horror. It is that, but I thought the threat, the big bad, was going to be a psycho killer; it’s such a slasher story set-up that my brain defaulted to that trope. But it’s not that at all–and it is so much worse than that. So much worse. It did get a slow start and I had to acclimate to driving from being at the office, so my mind was also wandering a bit…but once it gets going, it really gets going. I hope my mind is receptive enough to pick up on it again right away. There had been a big twist and shift to the story right as I got here and stopped listening, too. DAMN YOU CLIFFHANGERS!!!

Okay, I didn’t finish this on Friday night because I got sleepy–I was very tired–and then this morning I got up, packed, got cleaned up, packed the car, and had breakfast with Dad before I departed for my drive home. It’s always amazing how much faster and easier driving home to New Orleans always is than driving anywhere else. I love when I first spot the Laurel New Orleans exit sign as 20 veers off east and 59 continues heading south. It was a lovely day for a drive, really. I got home around three–really good time–and collapsed into my chair, cuddled with Sparky, watched the LSU-Oklahoma gymnastics meet (it was a replay on Youtube; I knew they’d won but wasn’t able to watch Friday night. The Tigers won and broke 198.00 again, which is the kind of score you need to win at nationals), and then settled in for a lovely binge of Arrested Development. I finished listening to The Troop on the drive–finishing just as I pulled up in front of the house (more on that later, I promise) and I really enjoyed it.The Bell in the Fog is definitely going to be my next read. I was really tired, so I figured I was going to sleep well last night, and I did. So, here I am on Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, slipping back out of my little bubble back into the real world. I am sure the world continued burning and more fuel was added to the fire…there are measles outbreaks popping up all over the country just in time for an anti-vaxxer to be in charge of health and human services. The dismantling of the CDC has already started, apparently. It was kind of odd to be visiting cemeteries with Dad on the same day, so I started taking pictures of children’s graves–and there were a lot of them. That will be a newsletter post, methinks. I wonder how many of their children have to die before the anti-vaxxer bloodlust ends?

We certainly live in the stupidest timeline–one where anti-vaxxers see themselves as pro-life somehow but want their kids to die instead of “catching autism” from them? It’s amazing how much damage an idiot D-list celebrity (Jenny McCarthy) can do to a country, isn’t it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I recommend taking the day off from the world so you can take care of yourself, your own business, and prepare yourself for the fight.

Don’t let the bastards win.

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  1. According to my dad, who was told this by a high school friend he saw Friday. So, proverbial grain of salt involved, but…it’s also a great story. ↩︎
  2. Maybe not a good thing to get so used to air raid sirens that you don’t notice them? ↩︎
  3. Typical American arrogance; the world isn’t burning, but the government is collapsing and the Constitution becoming nothing more than a scrap of paper to be ignored. Yes, our country collapsing into a nightmare Christian National Socialist country will eventually set the world ablaze, and that meteor cannot get here fast enough. ↩︎

Chemical

Well, we have apparently survived yet another Monday, so here it is Tuesday morning again.

My manic Monday wasn’t too bad, other than the utter insanity of an issue with my car insurance that is going to end up wasting more of my own time than it’s worth, to be completely honest. I did start getting tired in the afternoon–it’s not easy being a Gregalicious–but I got some emails answered (I will never get all of my emails answered, and that’s just a sad fact I need to accept; because there will always be more) when I got home and then repaired to my easy chair where I finished watching Sons of Liberty. (Paul didn’t get home until just before it was time for me to go to bed.) And here I am this morning with the space heater on–it’s chilly in the Lost Apartment this morning, but I am sure it’s going to warm up during the day time–and apparently our new HVAC unit will be installed today; they’ve been doing all the other work the last few days; it was quite astonishing to come around the last corner to the apartment last night and see a big blank space where the big unit used to be. Better late than never, I suppose, and I hope this means a stronger unit that will help offset the loss of the trees when the sun will shine directly through these windows in the summer time, creating a glass house effect in my kitchen. (I’ve been trying not to think about that too hard.)

I bit the bullet and asked for more time for the book–deadline extension–and they gave me longer than I asked for, which was an enormous relief and pressure release on me. They were actually very lovely about it, and apparently I am much more fragile emotionally than I thought because the kindness of the response almost made me choke up…which wasn’t the response I was expecting to have. I feel like I’m doing a fairly decent job of soldiering on through everything that’s going on in the world and around me these days–so much PTSD, from so many past traumas, I suppose–not to mention that it seems like almost everyone I know is going through a rough time. Two friends lost their fathers over the course of the past week, for example, and there have been so many other issues for everyone I know and care about that it’s almost like one body blow after another. And yet I keep moving forward because there’s no other option, really, and just keep sending out positive energy to my friends while keeping them deep inside my heart and mind and soul. I’ve said it before and I will say it again here–there’s nothing worse than seeing people you care about suffering when there’s nothing you can do about it.

Hell, I don’t even know if people in Texas have recovered from the horror of last week. So many people I owe emails to…heavy heaving sigh. The emails are endless, aren’t they?

The other good news is Paul has finally been scheduled for the vaccine, round one, on Thursday. That’s one less stressor off my plate, and it just now occurred to me that there’s another, buried stressor inside my head–now that I am older, I fear I am going to see a repeat of the past where I keep living while so many people I love and care about do not. After all, it’s happened before, and I think that’s part of the issue of my facing my age and so forth lately–the fear that I will outlive everyone I care about again. Obviously, I am not hoping that I die soon or anything like that–but recognizing a fear that’s been imprinted on my brain, no matter how unrealistic or nonsensical it may be, will certainly help me figure out how to cope with it or conquer it entirely, I think.

Watching Sons of Liberty (and did they ever take liberties with history!) was a pleasing enough diversion; I always enjoy the Revolutionary period–it’s been a favorite of mine since childhood–so when I was finished with the final episode–the signing of the Declaration of Independence–I got down my copy of The Wars of America by Robert Leckie and started reading the bridge section between The Colonial Wars and the Revolutionary War; Leckie’s book is really a history of the country as told through the perspective of the wars and the lead-up to them in the periods between them. Leckie is a very good writer–The Wars of America is one of my favorite histories–but he definitely is a subscriber to the mythology of American exceptionalism, even as he talks right up front about the evils of slavery and the slaughter of the indigenous. (The copy of the book I have now is not the one I had when I was a child; this is an updated version including the Korean and Vietnam wars, and he is very much a drum-thumping anti-Communist right-winger when it comes to those two conflicts, to the point that I’ve never read those chapters because the native jingoism is too much for me to stomach) As I mentioned yesterday, I am now thinking a series of mysteries set in revolutionary Boston, with John Adams as defense attorney and investigator, would be highly interesting. I doubt that I will ever have the time to research or write such a series, but I do wish someone would. I believe–and could be wrong; it just flitted into my brain as a memory–there was at one time an Abigail Adams mystery series; I never read it, but now am curious enough about it to go looking to see if it’s a false memory or not. I mean, why not? Both Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Truman have been the main character in crime series, so why not Abigail? (A very quick search has, indeed, offered up an Abigail Adams mystery series written by Barbara Hamilton; it’s nice to know it wasn’t a figment of my imagination….alas, yet another series of books to go not ye olde wish list.)

And tonight, of course, once I am off work I must go to the gym. I am sure I will have to force myself to go–the temperatures will undoubtedly start falling again after I get off work, so there will be that…but it will feel good, as will the protein shake and shower afterwards. I also have another load of laundry to get started tonight when I get home.

The glamorous life, that’s me.

Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!