May you please go away

I am looking forward to June.  June is not my month, but it is close to my month.  July IS my month.  This is the month where my parents welcome their firstborn child, ME.  I will talk about June and July in their prospective months.  In the meantime, I hate to do this, but it is reflection time.

May the pandemic

Photo by Pixabay.com

There is no doubt that May continued the lockdown.  It wasn’t until May 16^th that things started to open back up.  Was it too soon? Probably, people are just too glad to get out.  To wear a mask or not wear a mask in my opinion is a personal preference.  I prefer to wear one for safety since I have to go visit my parents, who are elderly and sickly.  I have mentioned that in several of my posts as of late, and I am not about to change that stance soon. 

Because of my stance, I have postponed my family’s trip to Disney.  I have mentioned in a previous post that the trip that was canceled in October 2019 for a totally different reason and will not be rescheduled until July 1, 2020, for the date of December 2021.  I have other reasons too, including that Walt Disney World will not accept reservations until July 1, 2020, so I have no choice.

I have stepped into two stores since the state of Ohio opened back up. It was yesterday.  I had to get an air filter from Lowes and water from Dollar tree.  My air conditioner needed the filer and I needed some water to put into my toilets.  Why?  Because my water was shut off due to an outside pipe bursting from the winter thaw.  It started leaking the Thursday before, and from where the sound was coming from, I thought that it was the next-door neighbor’s pipe.  I ignored it.  I was going to take something to my parent’s house when I found a note on my back door.  I grabbed the note and showed it to my dad, who tried to see over the next several days on how to get the outside pipe, which was not in my fence.  To make a long story short, the water was shut off.  I could not bath, wash clothes, wash the dishes (thank God for being able to hide dirty dishes in a dishwasher), and found out that my attic is attached to my neighbor’s attic and only separated by a divider. Got to love the designer for these buildings.

My water is now turned back on.  It is in moments like these that allow me to respect outhouses😅.  Tip:  if you have a Dollar Tree or any dollar store, getting water from there for $1 is wonderful.  You can get $10 worth and store them in case of emergencies.  When the emergency is over, refill and save for next time.  The good news is water does not spoil.  If you feel uneasy about refilling the bottles, buy 10 more sealed new ones for $1.

The cat is in heat again. I tell you, I feel brand new when she does this.  Thank God she will be fixed soon.

May the activist

I do not have to tell you about what has been going on in the African American community and beyond.   It is another sad story of an officer overstepping his authority, and he put his own agenda over the person who he was arresting.  The man died, and it took the officer’s superior and department a day after George Floyd died to arrest the officer. At first, it was going to be just a firing. People started peacefully protesting, then it got out of hand from there. They are even protesting in my city. I found out that it is only an arrest for 3rd-degree murder.  If it had been the opposite, George Floyd would have been charged for 1^st-degree murder.  The officer needs to be charged for 1^st-degree murder.

I have or will have mentioned this in my last post, but I am tired. My people are tired.  When you see a photo of a tired person, it is of an African-American.  We have been down this road oh so many times until we cannot count anymore.  We do not have to be doing anything but going about our day, just living in the moment.  What do I mean by that? Let see:

·         Going to work

·         Sitting in the back yard

·         Going to the mailbox

·         Talking to a neighbor

·         Getting something to eat

·         Sleeping in our own home

·         Walking the dog

·         Going to the store for some skittles (remember Treyvon Martin)

·         Having an outing in the park

·          Add sitting in a car or having anything to do with a car (Sandra Bland and now George Floyd)

·         Enjoying a night of fellowshipping (the 9 that were killed in a North Carolina Church during bible study)

·         Jogging (Ahmad Avery)

I have a whole list of things that we want to do without some white person getting upset, calling the police, and wasting taxpayers money, and putting in false reports, or becoming a vigilante and take matters into your own hands.

This started well before these incidents.  There was:

·         The 1960s

·         Jim Crow

·         Sharecropping

·         Slavery

To name a few.  When will it end?

Now, I am not saying that all white people are racist.  I have some good, decent white friends who have my back.  Not all black people are cheaters and anything else that we are being accused of. I do not want to spend any more time on this than I have to.  I have started back my YouTube channel (I took a break from it), and I have addressed it there.

So, May was not a good month for me.  I want a do-over, but, I would then ask for a do over for a lot of months and years, including the months where I almost took my life, the times I did not get the job I wanted, the times I ran completely out of money and had to depend on my parents, and the times where I wished I was taking care of someone other than myself, only to find out that in one big swoop that ability was taken away from me.

Those disappointments were replaced and filled with great big moments of joy, happiness, “Yay, I got the job”, “yay, I have enough money to go on that trip or to buy something I really wanted”, and “yay, I am going to be an aunt and niece (or nephew), aunty is going to spoil you like nothing else matters, but I am also going to teach you something.  I cannot wait until the newest Logan is old enough for me to give her the same treatment that I gave her cousins, uncle, and father have gotten before her. Aww, heck, she gets it now.  I am trying to think of an outfit that will make my 3-month old niece look fly. (Oh, do they still say that?  Let me know in the comments section). 

It is times like these that keep a person on their toes and to remind us that everything is not always going to go our way.  I am trying different techniques like journaling, meditating, exercising, and being kind to myself and others.  Yes, these are angry times, and for that, I try not to watch too much news, pray about a situation, and try to take a positive approach, which includes trying to ignore the tyrant in the white house.  It is hard when your race has once again become the subject of white people acting ugly and black people responding ugly.  Find your happiness or calmness in the midst of this storm of illness and protests.  You will be surprised how much better you will feel.

Until then, I pray that June will be the start of something better for all of us.

small house and condos...Help me understand

(Photo credit: OiMax)

I have been watching a lot of You Tube videos of people who live in small houses and condos.  I currently live in a 2-bed, 1 1/2 bath condo, and even though this space is supposed to be everything that I would need in space, it is not.  I really would like to graduate to a three-bed home with a nice kitchen and craft room, and here is why.  I work out of my home, and would love to have a dedicated office, where I can shut the doors (walk out the room) at the end of the day, and transition to things more personal as opposed to business.  I would love to have a place for my potential little occupant, other wise known as a child, to have a place to sleep.   I love to spread out when I cook and I want a place to craft.   But the small apartments and condos I am talking about are smaller than the one I have.
I have seen one that is no bigger than a regular size bedroom, another no bigger than a hallway (in fact it was a hallway in its heyday), and one that was a former school bus (I am not kidding, a SCHOOL BUS).  Some of people occupying the spaces are single, while some are married, and I even seen a couple who had a couple of children in the spaces.   What these people all had in common were the items in the space was very minimal, they were not previously poor and they were very, very happy about their choice.  This is not a post about being critical about where they choose to live or how uncomfortable I would feel in the space, which, BTW, I would.   This is a post to all the you tube commentators out there who are critical of us "Horders" out there, in big house/condo land.  (Because they may think what I have is too big)
Please do not get so high minded if we do not get rid of all our stuff like you did.  Everyone has to crawl before they can walk.  I am still trying to understand why a person wants to sleep on a bed that folds up into a couch everyday, but then I am thinking about the sofa sleepers my parents used to have.  Those sofa sleepers were very hard on the back and everything else for that matter.  Give us a chance, and maybe one day, you can convince us to live a minimalist lifestyle.  Sometimes we do think we have a lot of stuff, but old habits are hard to break.  I personally think what you are doing is beautiful for you.  I still have a desktop computer as a main computer, but it suits me for me.  You do things for you, and maybe we will come around.  If we do, great, if not, then great still.  I know it is the matter of leaving a carbon footprint, and to leave the planet in a better shape then when we first found it. Now I am speaking as a Christian; When Jesus comes back, it does not matter what this planet looks like, but yes, we will all answer to how well we took care of what God entrusted us with.  For the moment, I would rather recycle in a bigger place from where I currently live, and still take care of the Earth.  I believe that can be achieved.
So let agree on a few things:  I will not criticize where you live if you do the same.   Agreed.   Have a blessed day. 

P.S.  I am purging things, and my place now seems a little bigger, but I still want that third bedroom.

Day 3: Blessed quietness

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is quiet now.  The only thing that is making a noise is me tapping on the keys of this keyboard, and me signing every once in a while.  Yes, I know it is a constant sound that I hear since I am single, but even single people have noises to deal with.   Here are my noises through the day:

All of my neighbors smoke and I am the only one of the 4-condo complex who does not.  I have one neighbor who goes outside, sits in her chair and studies.  She is a college student and is studying to be a nurse or some sort of a health assistant.  I hear her on the phone and can tell when she is outside, because the smoke travels from the garage to my back door and through my kitchen.  Who says that smoke does not travel.
Another neighbor has dogs, and when they hear something, they bark.  They now can tell the difference between me getting into my car, and other noises.  It is a great deterrent if I am in here, and I hear them barking.  That means someone is coming and it better be my parents.
My phone, especially now, because they want to make sure that I go vote early.  I decided not to, because I have a wonderful place across the street that I can go vote at Tuesday.  very few people will show up there because it is at the clubhouse in an apartment complex.  I go there during the day (hooray for self employment), and I am gone by the time people who work outside of the home get there to vote.  Sometimes it is my sister, who has no car, but wants me to take her someplace, so I go there to pick her and her two kids up and we go to where  she need to go (not this Monday though).
The television is another noise.  I have shut it off for the morning.
All of this means I can think without interruption.  Now I feel I must get interrupted one more time.  I am starting to yawn, my bottom hurts from sitting, and I have the need to sit on the porcelain throne.  I will talk to you later.