Inspections Or Not?

From NBC News this morning: “Tyson, one of the country’s largest meatpackers, is petitioning the Trump administration to reduce the number of government inspectors at a Kansas beef plant”

Sure, why not. I mean it worked really well when the FAA opted to let Boeing do its inspection and certification of the Max 8, right? And the government has been really busy overturning all of the safety measures to try to sustain a livable planet for us all, so what the heck?

None of us really needs safe airplanes, or foods, or clean air and water, or temperatures we can withstand anyway. Heck, our government seems helpless to try to stop the seem-to-be-daily mass shootings in this country, so if we just eliminate all inspections and all regulations, perhaps our population will reduce much more quickly, which might allow our planet to recover and live on. Right?

Yeah right. What happened to listening, reasoning, logic, acting instead of reacting? What is the point of no return?

Just to be clear, this is a reaction.

Advertisements

Share Your World – 8/12/19

It’s Monday again! A nice, sunny day – one that says it’s time to get outside and get some things done – but that’s for later, when it warms up a little more. It’s 47 out there now, I’d like it just a little higher. I’m very much a fair weather outside person. Fair – neither too hot nor too cold. While I wait for the warmth, I’m going to join Melanie and those who wish to participate in Sharing my World.

What makes you laugh? Things. Silly things. You want examples? Well, if I could come up with some, I would share them. Maybe something will pop up as I go along.

What’s the world coming to?  (Credit to Mel of Crushed Caramel…) An end. If you were wanting a up-lifting answer, you came to the wrong place.

In one sentence sum up the Internet. A time sucker-upper. I spend so much time on the internet, hunting for recipes, shopping, researching things I’m wondering about, communicating with loved ones and friends. It’s a real time-sucker-upper.

If over time you replace parts on a car, at what point does it stop being the same car you bought? How many parts do you need to replace to make it a new car?  I think maybe once it has a new engine, transmission, hood, doors, and roof it would be a new car. Our maybe just go through a car wash and it would feel like a new car.

Gratitude is an attitude.   Yea or nay?   Explain your viewpoint please!   Yes. Gratitude is an attitude. Attitudes are things that are cultivated and if you focus on being positive, or finding beauty, or seeking joy, or being grateful, it will become a habit – ergo, an attitude. Yes? Yes.

Silly animal videos make me laugh. Babies being babies make me laugh. Those are happy laughs. Then there’s the rueful laughs – the ones that are prompted by many of the things our politicians say. Yeah, sure, kind of laughs. And when did you last experience the real world laughs. Or how stupid can you be laughs. Cause laughing takes less energy than getting angry. I’m working on that.

Share Your World – 8-5-19

I’m jumping right in on this one, because I have all these feelings of anger and frustration foaming through my brain – and Melanie has just given me the perfect opportunity to spout.

Does life have a reason (meaning)? I don’t know. I’d like to think our lives are given to us to use thoughtfully, productively, to share love, joy, tears – to be there for one another. I think that’s in my dreams now.

Will the world come to an end by human hands (man’s actions)? Yes, I think it will. Never before have I been a dooms dayer but I am becoming one now. Mankind is so vain, so greedy, so power hungry that we cannot see the forest for the trees. When either we finally blow ourselves up or our world just combusts, maybe there are beings that will learn some lessons from our history, because we sure don’t.

Will stricter laws make a better world?  Would less strict law make it better? In some respects, I think we need stricter laws. I think we need something – better eyesight, better hearing. I wish I had the answers, yet all I can think is that New Zealand suffered one mass shooting and took action. How many have we had, and all we can do is talk, offer prayers, say the words we think we should say, and do. Absolutely. Nothing. Because our politicians are greedy sheep who follow the leader (who agitates and encourages the hatred and anger) thoughtlessly, carelessly. Maybe if DC became a giant sinkhole and we had to start all over we could do a better job. I wish I could believe that. I do not.

If death is inevitable, why bother doing anything? Another question for which I really don’t have an answer. See the first question. If we could be the best we can be, maybe there is a reason. All I do now is wonder if we’ll wake up before it’s too late.

Wow! This is a real downer of a post, isn’t it?

Are thoughts and prayers useful or a sop for people who wish to pay respect but interact through a virtual venue?   Yea or nay – please explain your viewpoint (without rancor) if you would. I think thoughts and prayers are the most that most of us can do, because we have no control. We can speak to the proper authorities if we see or hear things that we know are a potential threat – but I think that’s about all. We could encourage those who represent us to be constructive, but I don’t think they hear us at all. They get those votes, then they seem to get sucked into that vortex called power. Where they live with great health plans, great salaries, paid sick leave and vacation time – unlike the ordinary citizen. More like that top 1%.

That was not entirely without rancor – but how can it be?

What gives me the will go go on? These things (not necessarily in order of importance):

Sharing My World – 7/29/19 on 8/3/19

Now that it’s time for a new Share Your World, and because I haven’t participated in awhile, I decided I’d join Melanie and her friends and see how I could do with this week’s share.

1. Is it wrong to sell store-bought pastries at a bake sale? Only if you purport them to be homemade, I think. My objection would be the preservatives that come in commercial products that are not in homemade. Then again, if it was something you bought from a bakery that makes the products it sells, why not?
2. Have you ever interacted with the police? Sort of. When our garage was broken into and my son’s bike and my orange juice that was in the refrigerator out there were stolen. Orange juice is a strange thing to steal, don’t you think? Oh, and there was the sad time I got a speeding ticket. Guilty as charged.
3. What will you remember most about this past year (this question will show up again, in late December, just FYI) Gosh, I don’t know. Probably what I usually remember – trips taken, time with my kids and friends.
4. Is it better to have fungus on your toes, your tongue, or your pizza? I think I’d go for fungus on my pizza, providing it was an edible fungus. Fungus on body parts is problematic.
5. What is one slang word that makes your skin crawl? There are a few, none of which I care to repeat here. There are just certain things to my way of thinking that should be called by their proper names, not the rude, crude slang that some use.
6. Gratitude question – I am grateful that I have been able to wake up, stand up, and move about each morning. I am grateful for those I love and for my furry babies. I am grateful for online shopping that brings goods to my door, despite the fact that the ease of doing so sometimes makes my budget grumpy.

 

Looking for Words

It seems words are still scarce here in my world, but I had a couple of thoughts this morning, so I’m going to see if anything comes out now that my fingers are on the keyboard.

I have chocolate chip banana bread in the oven. It’s good for you you know – fruit, dark chocolate – what could be bad? Half the four is spelt, and that compensates for the half that is not. Right?

I’ve been visiting Amazon too often these days. But really, I haven’t bought anything I didn’t NEED. Uh huh. Listen, an air fryer has become an essential for the kitchen. I read that on the internet, so I know it’s True.

I read the news headlines this morning – they made me sad. Yet another shooting. It seems a daily event. But we Americans must have the right to own those guns, because if we can’t hunt, we won’t eat, right? And other reasons. Yep. We need to curb our anger, but it’s hard to do when our so-called leader spends most of his time stirring it up.

This cat – this Nong Saw cat – this little girl who comes from Thailand, formerly Siam – and we all know about cats with Siamese blood, right? She’s a love, but she’s a talker. And she likes to talk before wake up time in the morning. Which makes Shasta think it’s wake up time, and doesn’t make it easy for me to sleep. Because what I want is to sleep until the sun is over the yardarm. Or close to it.

 

My planning for a trip to meet a very dear friend of long standing in Galveston, Texas, next February is progressing nicely. I don’t like waiting till the last minute, so we have our VRBO booked – with a balcony on which we can sit and see the ocean — and I made my flight reservations this week. Because – deal. Well, deal after I worked it a bit. Now I need to find a pet sitter. I know of one, I just need to call her. Galveston is the most central and southern location we could find – because we will want a reprieve from winter. Now we just hope that extreme weather doesn’t wash Galveston away.

Any minute now I’m going to apply glue to a cracked hose end and see if that works. Then I’ll also plant the wheat grass seed that I bought for cats. The idea is the little girl will then leave my spider plant alone. One can always hope.

Oh, I can smell the banana bread. I’m getting hungry now. For healthy food. Wouldn’t consider anything but. You know that, don’t you? I think I need to go check it.

Wishing you a day filled with enough. What the heck, let’s just go for the whole month of August, which is rapidly approaching, full of enough.

Share Your World – 7-15-19

I haven’t participated in this challenge for awhile, but today I’m raring to go and join Melanie and others in sharing my world.

Why do we seem to respect the dead more than the living? very good question – I don’t have any answer, but it’s always baffled (and bothered) me when we feel a need to eulogize a person and make him/her larger than life, and a perfect example of the human species. Truth is, none of us are perfect, all of us have done stupid things, and we are what we are. I’m not saying a eulogy should consist of the black marks, but come on, let’s be real. Let’s not go overboard with the praise.

Why is beauty associated with morality?  Or not?   (a few weeks back I asked a similar question, but the key word was MORTALITY, not MORALITY).  Is it? I didn’t know it was. I don’t think beauty and morality (or mortality for that matter) have anything to do with one another. Although someone with an inner beauty, a generosity of spirit and manner, may have a longer mortality than some others. And may or may not be more moral – but the morality comes from within the workings of our brains, not from our exterior appearance. Or maybe we need to define beauty?

Have gadgets and apps taken away emotions? No, I don’t think they’ve taken away emotions. Perhaps reduced face-to-face experiences – but then, maybe they’ve also increased our communications and contact with one another. So much easier to text or email someone who can then respond when it’s convenient for them, rather than making a phone call which might interrupt something the receiver doesn’t wish to have interrupted. Watch where your minds go there!

Is there a perfect life?  What’s your version of a perfect life if you care to share?  Until humans become perfect, life will not be perfect. Unless you view “perfect” as having a good amount of contentment, happiness, satisfaction, love, peace, joy, sadness (because how would we appreciate the good without some not so good?) If that’s what makes perfect, then my life is there. But to increase that perfection, I would put my life in a home close to a beach, where I could see the water, feel it’s soothing peacefulness, and hear its waves lapping the shoreline.

As to what I’m grateful for? Well, I spent the last week of June with my daughter and her fiancé, and then my son came and spent the following week with me. That there is gratitude and happiness making!

A Little of This, A Little of That, Probably Nothing of Consequence

I’m been absent for awhile – going through a period of no words scrambling to pour out of my brain. Or even dribble out for that matter. Now I’ll see what I come up with and hope I don’t bore all of you to tears or worse.

Not sure where my hummingbirds and Orioles are this year. I have a few, but not like in more recent years. I was going to say normal, but I’m not sure there is a normal anymore, especially when it comes to weather. Back to the birds – I suspect I was negligent earlier in the year about keeping things filled when they were all out looking for housing. So it goes.

I spent the last week of June up visiting my daughter and her fiancée. We had a nice time. They’ve just moved into a new house and were busy overseeing outside work being done. When I came home, my son drove up to visit me for a week, so I’ve had time with my adult kids this summer. It’s wonderful.

I’ve been doing a lot of cooking this week. My son likes his food. We’ve been eating healthy foods. Except for the day we went into town and had lunch at the brewery. I made the mistake of having fish and chips which is my usual there, but it’s been a long time since our last visit and I’ve changed my way of eating a lot. This time, the grease in the fish and chips just didn’t sit well with my stomach. We’ve had a butternut squash/kale salad, a rice/bean/veggie salad, pulled pork with cole slaw and potato salad, more stuff like that. It’s the season for me to be thinking cold salads for the most part, but one cool day we wanted some warmth so I made a veggie pizza with spelt flour dough. Yesterday I cooked a chicken to have with leftover salads. Today will be a bok choy/Napa cabbage stir fry with rice and tofu.

You all were holding your breath to hear about that, weren’t you?

Cutting back on the news I read and listen to. I keep thinking we’ve hit the lowest points of stupidity, but they keep proving me wrong. Denmark is looking good, but they have that winter weather stuff.

Wondering – why is curious spelled with that second “u” and curiosity doesn’t have that second “u”?

What? Oh, you want to know how my garden is growing? Well, my first Early Girl regular size tomato plant has four tomatoes, and I don’t know that I’ll get anymore from it.

My smallest cherry tomato plant has tons of little green tomatoes.

Do you see them? A couple maybe, but there’s a bunch. I’m excited. My large cherry tomato plant is getting lots of blooms so tomatoes should show up before too long.

In my flower gardens, they’re doing their thing. In too many of them, the grasses that insert themselves quite readily in places they are not welcome are also doing well. I’ve developed a “win a few, lose a few” attitude towards that.

My Nong kitty

And my Shasta girl

are adapting quite well to one another. When Shasta says “don’t bother me” Nong is smart enough to listen. The Queso kitty comes near me when it’s time for soft food, otherwise he still maintains his distance. That’s just his thing.

Apparently I’ve used up my allotment of words for this time.

Wishing you all enough, today and each day going forward.