No, He's Not. Probably

     For about thirty seconds, it looked as if Indiana Governor Mike Pence was giving serious thought to running as Donald Trump's #2.  (Leaving Chris Christie as, I don't know, a human stepstool?  Oh, those wacky eastern potentates!)

     ...Then he realized he had a fair shot at one more term as Governor, the RFRA mess notwithstanding, and why risk his whole bankroll on a single spin of the wheel?

     On the other hand, this is the man who managed to endorse both Mr. Cruz officially and Mr. Trump backhandedly leading up to the Indiana primary, so don't count him out yet; the wheel is spinning, the dice could be hot and who knows, he may think Lady Luck is winking at him.

     Gads.

This Morning's Omelette

     Ah, what an omelette it is, put together from odds and ends of this and that: chipotle chicken sausage (spicy-warm, not hot), applewood-smoked bacon, Swiss cheese, and a bright-red, mild chili pepper.  Got al the filling cooking and checked the fridge: only two eggs.  So three saltines and two big tortilla chips got mashed up, then I added enough water to soak 'em and that stretched it far enough.  Spices?  A little cilantro, some chives, just a bit of an accent to the other flavors.

And Now It's Monday

     Went to see Mom X yesterday afternoon.  She's doing much better.  Took her a lovely pink and green hydrangea -- a live one, so it will last.  My sister had brought her an orchid of similar hues, in a tall glass container with no dirt(!) - just add water for half an hour a couple times a week, and pour the water off afterward.

     Tam and I have got a lot done with the yard.  There's plenty more still to do, and a week of off and on rain to keep us from it, but progress has been made and expectations are more-or-less high.

     And now it's Monday:

     Back to the shrug.  It pays well and the toys are wonderful.  And every time the music stops, there are fewer chairs left.

     I have got to get back to writing fiction regularly.

Yard Work...

     It's doin' me in.  I got to bed worn out and achy and wake with the pains redistributed.

     We have yet to weedwhack the back yard but it's got to happen today and sooner rather than later.  I did make one discovery yesterday: pulling Virginia Creeper (like ivy but way more murderous) from an abandoned woodpile, I noticed various interesting fungal growths and among them, one that was kind of shiny-looking.  Gray-green, with darker spots....  I'd uncovered the napping spot of a limax maximus, the Great Gray Slug!  It was a medium-sized example, maybe three or four inches long and over a half-inch in diameter.  I made a little shield around it with some bark -- limax is on the custodial staff of the Great Outdoors, you see.  Mostly carnivorous, they eat dead bugs and may even hunt down the smaller slugs and such, including the ones that eat plants.  I have written about the slugs of Roselhome Cottage before.

     There's one more thing about them: they return home every day.  Yes, they pick a spot and come back.  So I'm going to have to leave that one billet of wood, if I want a big slug to keep the smaller slugs in check.

     I don't know if they hunt snails, too, but the number of empty snail shells I have casually encountered suggests something around here does.  I was collecting the empties on the Plate Of Mystery (it showed up stuck vertically into the soft sod of the back yard after a thunderstorm!) and when I took some recent ones over, one of the previous "empties" had sported foot, head and a pair of eyestalks and was making a crawl for freedom!  I moved it to a more snail-friendly location, figuring it deserved a fighting chance.

Much Done, More To Do

     The entire surface of the delightful back-garden patio is now fully exposed to the sun for the first time in a couple of years.  I'd started stacking fallen tree limbs in one corner quite some time ago and, well....  There certainly were a lot of them!

     Tam and I lifted and hauled, shoveled and hauled, mowed and trimmed the front yard and hauled, picking up more fallen limbs as we went.  There is more yet to do, but the patio, at least, is cleared and a canvas dumpster out front is full.

     Went to bed sore and tired, slept like a log and woke up with a few lingering aches.  On the other hand, I grilled some lovely filet mignon kebabs for dinner last night, which had a wonderfully restorative effect.

Ah, Sleeping In

     I have the day off.  I could do it.  I did.

     Much to do.  Maybe a report about later.

Short Sleep, Bad Worries, Bad Badness

     Last night was the first night this week I had anything like a full night's sleep.  Seven hours: a luxury! 

     Mom's nursing home continues to be a problem; it is clear staff is overworked, underpaid and even the skilled workers are from the middle third of the talent pool at best: paint-by-numbers nurses in a job that's anything but.  One of them tried to double-dose her pain meds last night, on the premise that "she missed her afternoon pill because she was at the doctor's office; she took that one late and I'm just catching her up now."  Not two hours after the first dose.  Hey, maybe that would be okay for an antibiotic or skin ointment, but it's not how narcotic pain relievers work and A) I expect a nurse -- any nurse! -- to know it* plus B) procedures should be in place to prevent it.  You know what happens when you give frail old people too heavy a dose of this kind of pain pills?  They stop breathing.

     If I'm unhappy, my siblings are even more so; one was on the scene and the other is presently driving back from a road trip, seething with anger.  He's the level-headed one and has been point-of-contact with the retirement home from the beginning. He'll be here today to, in his word, "sort 'em out."  Alas, I fear that harvest is mostly chaff.
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* I expect candy-stripers to know this.  I expect staffers at the levels that are the reason such pills are (supposedly) under lock and key, dispensation and dispensor (supposedly) tracked by logbook to know this.  For that matter, I expect pill-popping bums from Rush Limbaugh down to toothless box-dwellers in the the alleyways to know this: take too many of these kinds of pills in too short a period of time and your lungs stop pushing air.

Indiana Primaries

     My fellow Hoosiers have voted and they gave the tree quite a shake.  Senator Ted "Let Me At 'Im" Cruz* has retired his campaign in favor of Donald Trump -- the same guy he was decrying as an amoral Danger To The Republic a day or two earlier.  On the other team, Senator Sanders, having squeaked past Secretary Clinton on a 52/48 percent split, is calling his a "great victory."

     Looks like we want to see Hugo Chavez vs. Mussolini in Indiana, no?  Pundits are pointing in awe and wonder at the "deep divide" in American politics.

     As usual, they're full of it.  Here's how it works: Secretary Clinton and Senator Cruz are seen as Washington Insiders, part of The Establishment.  (This is a bit unfair to Ted Cruz, but the perception is there).  Mr. Trump and Senator Sanders are seen as outsiders, mavericks, men who'll take The System by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shaking.  (This view, too, is a bit askew from reality but nevertheless real.)  The ends of the bell curve won in Indiana based on something the voters have in common.

     Take my state as a rough microcosm for the nation (we're a bit to the right of center, but we're that way on the map, too.)  Americans are tired of "business as usual," of "same old same old."  King Stork looks way more interesting the King Log.

     ...There's that old saw about "interesting times," but here we are.  And the times certainly are becoming interesting.
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* I will note that "scary weirdos in the washrooms" did not appear to be nearly as effective an election ploy as "scary border-sneaks."  This may be in part because, panic aside, most people understand that criminal deviant conduct is as illegal in California's la-la land as it is in North Carolina; this was the case before NC decided to police the bathrooms exactly as much as it is afterwards.  On the other hand, ill-intentioned foreigners who want to kill U.S. citizens and blow stuff up is a much more evening-news-featured story, with plenty of examples from 2001 to present.  You know what the actual danger hiding behind theses drastically oversimplified and over-inflated issue have in common?  Armed citizens serve as at least something of a deterrent.  Pervs and jihadis fear citizen response.

News "Media"

     Interesting headline-link seen at the L.  A. Times website:

     "Gov." Bloomberg, is it?  Nope.  Never happened.  Y'know, when Hoosier spinsters from "a cornfield with lights" fact-check your damnable rag, that's a sign you should maybe hire yourself journalists who actually, you know, journalize.  Or get all the way out of the news business and just sell litterbox and birdcage liner with ads printed on it.

     Remember when we had newspapers?  Newspapers that even when their politics were contemptible, got the facts right and didn't confuse they're, there and their?  Newspapers that maintained a "morgue" of back issues with an index, and kept current copies of an Unabridged Dictionary and at least one fat, multivolume encyclopedia?  And later on, used the actual Worldwide Web as a backup to that?

     Yeah, well, reporters once stuck their press card into their hatband, and you used to able to set the choke and start your car with a crank, too.  Kiss 'em goodbye, just like the dodo and the passenger pigeon.  Buh-bye, newspapers!  Buh-bye!

Retirement Home Goat-Rope

     The nameless technician whose work product gave us Major Edward A. Murphy Jr. (formulator)* and Colonel John P. Stapp M.D., Ph.D.'s (popularizer) "Murphy's Law" could not have created a greater screw-up.  Then again, he was just wiring up four-wire strain gauges; yesterday's mess involved several levels of administrators, nurses and aides.

     Late yesterday afternoon, in an appointment made last week, Mom needed to go from the retirment home's hospital-lite† to a surgical oblast of the hospital, specializing in oculofacial work.  It had been arranged she would travel on a gurney, via ambulance.  So I showed at the appointed hour and lo, a bus driver appeared rather than an ambulance.  He was a bit skeptical of getting her in a wheelchair, what with the neck collar and all, so he asked for help moving her to it, which is where Mom's aide (from, let us note, an outside agency, not retirement center staff) and I realized the metaphorical wheels had done come off.  I corralled one of the administrative types from our conference last week and received somewhat snippy assurances that "doctors don's make that decision, we do," and "It's a perfectly safe way for her to travel."  Him not being an M.D or a Nurse-Practitioner, I asked him to confirm with her chart and the top nurse on duty.  Oddly enough, he returned shortly (still snippy) to say the ambulance was delayed but would be there in "about fifteen minutes."  H'mm, so much for "perfectly safe way...to travel," ey? Fricking stonewalled by a shitheel?  Sonny, I have to take that at work; from you, not so much.

     There was way more confusion and back-and-forth than I have time to describe, none of it in any way demonstrating concern for the patient, let alone effectiveness or organization.  Eventually, Mom's aide recognized the 'bolance livery though an outside door, went to check with them, and discovered they'd been waiting for several minutes at least.

    Have I mentioned Tam took time off from her writing and online work to drive me, as I'd been up since the previous evening for work?  Mom, aide and a pair'a paramendices took Mom to the doc in the big ambulance while Tam drove me. Tam waited in the car, so it was only Mom-plus-four waiting and waiting in the doctor's office (overscheduled as usual and you can't really blame the M.D.s: anymore, they just work there, same as the janitor).  Once the doctor got around to us, he was great, and Mom won't need additional surgery for the other (small) broken bone.  He even took out the complex stitches the ER had used on her forehead.

     We got Mom back a bit after dinner-time, some three hours or more after everyone (except the transport!) had showed up to move her.  Mom was feeling pretty good.  I was barely coherent.  After a short chat, I went home and slept, forgetting to reset my alarms and sleeping right through them until my normal waking time. 

     This would have been kind of difficult but not that bad had it gone as planned.  As it was, there were several occasions when I was pondering planting myself in the center of the nurses's station/office area and commencing to scream as a mildest-possible response.

     I'm not impressed with this place -- and I know from grim experience that as such places go, it's above-average. 

     The New Deal promised Mom's generation certain things and I feel obligated to help deliver.  My generation?  Let's just say my expectations are lower and I have planned accordingly.
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* "Murphy was said by his son to have regarded the many jocular versions of the law as 'ridiculous, trivial and erroneous.' His attempts to have the law taken more seriously were unsuccessful."  --Wikipedia.  Maj. Murphy was a proponent of "defensive design," which examines worst-case scenarios and their probability, then redesigns around them as needed.
 
†  Hospital very light, if you ask me, and not all of it their own fault.  Turns out bed rails are all but illegal now, partially because of their use as a restraint device, partially because they're not a very good restraint -- high-side a bed rail and your injuries are worse than they would have been had you only fallen from the bed -- and partially because patients were getting tangled up in them and being injured or killed.  Much of that could be solved by, ahem, defensive design (and the rest at least addressed by regulations), but we're woefully short on Edward Murphys these days.

Stormy Weather!

     Thunderstorms and a tornado rumbled through later Sunday, passing barely to the soouth of Broad Ripple.  I can't say I miss the chance of what was reported as egg-sized hail.

     Yeah, ponder that: egg-sized.  An umbrella's not gonna help.

     Not saying the weather around here spins trees, but...

     At least we get some good sunsets and sunrises from our storms:

     Not to mention scenes with a bit of Magritte to them! 

     Off to work now.

Mayday! Mayday!

     (It's not a real distress call unless you say it three times.  Still Felony Stupid over the radio, though.)

     I'm looking at this election, which appears to be boiling itself down to Senator Clinton vs. Mr. Trump, and damned if I don't wonder if we should send up flares and start screamin' for help in French, which is what "Mayday!" really is.

     No, it's not the prospect of The Donald or Miz Hillary per se that frets me; we've had worse.

     It's the ignorance of the electorate, abetted by grinning, vapid, cocksure jackanapes of whatever remains of the press.  "Clinton will take away our guns!" "Trump will expel all the Muslims!"  Bull -- pardon my French yet again -- crap.

     Presidents don't have that power.  Congress kind of does; anyway, that's where the attempt will be made.  And the balance of power in the Senate (you would not know this from The News) is kind of precarious this go-round.  The House, not so much.  Hey, does anyone know which chamber it is that confirms Supreme Court Justices?  (Presidents nominate -- and I'd like better nominees -- but the Senate says yea or nay).  And who remembers how a bill becomes law?

     You see this same thing at the state level. There are yard signs all over Indy bearing versions of "PENCE MUST GO," and that's about Indiana's "Restoration of Religious Freedom Act." Love it or hate it, Governor Mike Pence only cheerleadered for it and failed to veto it -- that baby was bred and raised in the State Legislature.  That's where the blame or praise should be directed. Which is not happening.

     The older I get, the more I suspect the real winner of WWII was Fuhrerprinzip.  Oh, the Allies stomped the Fascists, but their damnable notions have got the last laugh (aided in no small measure by the Great -- for which read "autocratic" -- Leaders of the Allied side). Voters think when they pick a Chief Executive, he or she will rule by decree; or they fear if the Other Party's creature wins, she or he will rule likewise.  That ain't their job! But when we keep treating them as if it was, that's what we're going to get, by and by.

     Dammit, this is how you get Caesars.  Do you want a Caesar?

     Don't answer.  History's gonna do that for you.  I don't think it will be pretty.