slowly she turned

I wanted to sleep a little later, but I really didn’t need to. Pablocito convinced me of that with his loud meowing. He is a pain in the ass early in the morning and he is the most vocal kitty we have ever lived with. However, he has settled in to curling up beside me in bed sometimes and has claimed the spot on the bed that he always wanted.

We still miss Diego. It’s been almost four months since we let him go. We have talked about getting Pablocito a companion after we returned from Scotland and after the election (who knows if we liberals might need to flee the country!). I don’t know. If we do, it will be an older female cat that an elderly person has had to relinquish through moving or death or illness. I’m hoping for a black cat, since I haven’t had one since childhood, or an orange cat, but the right cat will show up at the right time. Just like Diego and Pablocito did in 2013. Just like Theo did in 2009.

Right now, like a lot of people, I’m just hanging in there to see if Americans are going to come to their senses on Nov. 5. We will go to early voting this week. We’ve become big fans of Kamala. Sandy went to one of her rallies while I was at Wildacres in September and came back very energized. My retirement savings are doing very well in the stock market. I’m not sure that I understand why some people are blaming Biden for inflation when it began under Trump, is worldwide, and corporations have been raising prices despite major profits, but logic has taken a vacation from their brains, apparently. It has mostly made me extremely sad. How do people live with these thoughts in their head? This violent rhetoric that has caused real harm to real people? Do they think that deporting immigrants will LOWER food prices when most of our agricultural and food processing workers are immigrants?

And women’s rights. My God. I have two friends (that I know about) who had to have abortions or die. Their babies were dead or not going to live. They wanted those babies very much. I’ve had other friends who had abortions because their economic and personal lives could not support having a baby at that time. I never wanted a child, and if I had become pregnant, I would have been a terrible mother. I would have had to consider the choice. But the reasons don’t matter, really, so much as the basic fact that abortion is health care and shouldn’t be up to government or religious institutions.

It is all such a mystery and the dissonance is making this half-Vulcan mind hurt.

It is the meanness that has been revealed that hurts the most. And from some of the people I knew in my past that I thought were smart and kind, or at least intelligent enough to look at the evidence and think through it.

Enough of that. Maybe writing it out will let me sleep more soundly tonight. I have to say that retirement has helped with my sleep problems so much. Not having to get up at a certain time when I was awake until 2 or 3 a.m. has been a godsend to my health, and I’ve actually been able to get to sleep by midnight and then get up at 7:30 or 8 without a problem. When I do have to get up early for an appointment, I still get anxious and find myself reading a book at 3 a.m. to get to sleep, otherwise I toss and turn, worrying about insomnia, which of course makes it worse. At least now I know that I can take a nap if needed.

Now that that’s out, I think I’ll start another post.