cluttered brain...have to write!

 

ended up doing several local walks on my last stretch off. in the end i was still pretty drained and it just felt better to be home at night. still always fun getting out there and hunting for mushrooms. got some good, though not overly strenuous walks, in. 

i did look into cabins up north but like Homer, not much available and i just decided that in truth i was happy at home with my meds, my pets and my bed. the Healy place that allows pets has changed policy to only one pet. can't just leave one home so that option is out.  bummer. i do have a cabin lined up in Talkeetna for thursday/friday. there was openings at the MacClaren place too. we have been starting to get snow in the higher elevations though so.....hmm. we shall see. i may just head up to Denali National Park for a day trek and sleep in Talkeetna, walk and come home. cuts up the drive a bit more.

so it was another stretch off that was kind of slackerish. 

watched a program about pain meds, specifically oxycontin.  the push to sell those was gross.  many got addicted and sadly, we still push them like candy at the hospital. made me feel bad about giving them as prn's to so many out there. we convince ourselves that since it's for pain, nobody is going to get addicted but who knows what happens after they leave the hospital. 

i hadn't realized that one of the owners lawyers was none other than Rudy Giuliani and the trial was taking place while trump was in office.  Rudy just called up trump and trump put pressure on his doj to force a settlement that did little harm to the family who owns the company that produced and pushed the drug.  i shouldn't be so shocked i guess. just further proof of the corruption that exists in our nation.  i still find myself hoping we can somehow clean this nation up and make it a better place for the humans that come after us. i doubt it will be improved in my lifetime.  who knows.  it could also get much worse before it gets better. more freedoms lost. a Christian Nationalist state...so many horrific possibilities. 

yesterday was Sept 11.  it's been 22 years since the planes flew into the towers.  nearly 3000 died that day and many more died as a result of inhaling all the chemicals/dust from the collapse.  i was protected as i was in the process of moving from Ketchikan to Anchorage. i entered the Yukon Territory on September 11 and re-entered the US on September 12.  the roads out there have signs that say leaving 911 zone. there is or was very little contact with the outside world for much of that time you are out there. it was a gift really.  when i got to my place i was without a tv for several weeks so all i had was newspaper and npr for news. 

i would still have to say, the terrorists won that day.  for decades the right had pushed for a good chunk of our tax dollars to go to the military. they wanted to be safe and the bigger the military the better. that day it was proven that it didn't matter how big your military was you could be vulnerable.  the right especially seemed to spiral.  they became more filled with fear, guns were bought, they wanted more money to go to the military. they wanted war. all of this has come at the cost of basic things for our citizenry. i believed, like so many, the lies that iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  in truth most of the terrorists responsible for what happened that day...came from Saudi but Saudi has never really had to take responsibility. Iraq and Afghanistan did. wars dragged on for years and Bin Laden was eventually killed.  ultimately, the terrorists won. it was a long, slow process but we have become a nation waring against each other. paranoid, paralyzed with fears.  loaded with guns, killing each other off, hate, fear, ignorance. 

the biggest losers are our own citizens, the children the elderly.  we have plenty of money to fund healthcare, education, for the elderly to have dignity. for the sick to not become homeless and bankrupt in order to try to heal. we could do so much. i've watched the infrastructure crumble. other nations have developed parks and roads.  we have just watched them wear out.  there are no bathrooms out there anymore for public use it seems. this just forces people to shit outside. 

the military has money and the wealthy have money. you can see that people are getting more and more agitated. big fire in Hawaii.  oprah and rock start a fund.  people are angry..they have money, why do they want us, who have so little, to give more while they sit in their huge mansions. of course, oddly, trumps supporters have no issue it seems continuing to send him more and more money to their own detriment no doubt. he is their cult leader.  he has grown into the greatest grifter who ever lived...he did always want to be the greatest and sees himself as such.  i will give him the greatest grifter/conman for sure. 

the money imbalance is just not going to be sustainable.  no society can flourish when only a few at the top are solvent. they may be able to keep it going for a bit, use control tactics, but eventually it will fail. disproportionate wealth distribution is a culture collapse waiting to happen.

of course, the racism has also been allowed to build. the top has to find an enemy that is not them.  push the poor to blame each other, to battle with each other. that has hit the lgqbt as well. sounds very familiar to the '40's and Germany.  it's them, it's their fault, hate them. everything bad in your life is because of those people.  it's not because those in control and power have been greedy and are allowing the poor and middle class to fail for their own benefit. 

did watch a program on Sept 11 last night. does seem like what i do on these days. kids born have grown up with it now. it really doesn't take that long for historical things to kind of drop off the radar. always kind of surprises me that Hitler and all of that madness wasn't that long before i was born. to me it was ages before i was born, but really...it was in the '40's and i was born in the 60's. i was the age these kids are now. for me it was stuff you read about but didn't really feel that real.  it's tough to keep history real. 

never forget...but things do get forgotten. generations die off. perhaps since there is more photo's/video's it will last longer in our memories.  there is so much out there to watch though, will future generations watch this? looked so horrific to have been in New York that day. last night they had a huge double rainbow over New York.  pretty sweet timing really. 

i did get the little free library fixed.  on my own. always proud of these little accomplishments.  

i have finished the 3 nights of work and now i just have the two nights to go. this week it was ICU, ER and then RCU.  i actually got to go home early from the ER on that middle night which hasn't happened in ages. haven't worked ER in ages. 

i had all the nasty, mean, pissed off patients it seems that night. well, the one was nice, just kind of nuts. i didn't have that many in number but they did take up extra time as they were pissed and uncooperative. some days are just like that.  

there are a few branches still hung up in the trees in the yard. another wind may bring them down of the weight of the snow. we've already had our termination dust for the year and it looks to be sticking. 

i need to winterize soon.  change over the tires on the CR-V. get another oil change. 

the darkness comes earlier and earlier. makes road trips less fun as well. i'm not a big fan of driving in the dark.

funny someone mentioned they went to a bar or something and the person checking their ID was super fast.  so they commented about how fast the look was...the guy just said, "you were born in the 1900's, everyone from the 1900's is over 21". 

moving on from the May 2022 to July 2023.  

these are mostly from the fun times with my nieces.  

playing at matanuska glacier. 

watched a clip between a guy who was, i think, Arabic? anyway, he was talking to a major Christian lady.  trying to get him to become Christian maybe.  he was all, you want me to follow Jesus, you don't even know his real name. she just kept saying it's Jesus.  he was all, no, that isn't his real name. Aramaic doesn't have a J.  that name isn't Aramaic. she countered with the Angel said what to name him. anyway. the man said his name was Yeshua.  she said no, that was a Jewish name.  the guy laughed and was all, he was Jewish. 

i wrote that down on a tiny bit of paper. on the other side i'd written, 'thought terminating cliche". i've heard many of these in my life time.  just seemingly rehearsed lines that stop the conversation from proceeding and stop the person from having to further examine things that make them uncomfortable. there were so many of these growing up.  "things we just aren't meant to understand in this life" " you just have to have faith and trust in God and the prophet".  things like that. i just liked how it was called that. 

always funny hearing them now from adults i grew up around. the lines haven't changed since they were programmed into me as a kid.  always feels so strange now. they don't even bother to try and intellectualize those responses.  

i was always surprised that the answers to the questions i had never evolved. never matured even as i did. seems they should.  i mean you speak about sex very differently with a 3 year old, or an 8 year old or a teen or an adult...but not in religion.  it's all the same canned responses. responses that really were geared toward a child and never evolved.  

i wanted and demanded more adult answers and really, they weren't coming. what i got were these thought terminating cliche's. blame as well.  you just need to pray more, read the scriptures more. 

as always the answer was always the same. the church had to be true and any other answer or lack of answer you were coming up with with clearly proving your lacking. you were the failure because the answer had to be the church was true.  there was no off ramp if you didn't come up with that.

so many Gods have existed over the thousands of years.  Gods that have been brushed aside, upgraded i guess. i often think that we may be in a transition to a new Gods emergence.  maybe the Christian God will fade away and be replaced like all the others have.  get changed into some mythology. no God seems to work for the masses and it seems Gods are created and pitted against each other. my God is better than your God.

there does seem to be some failing of the current Christian complex. in many cases they just have gone to far in trying to control their flock. perhaps, they have just gone to far in making them turn against people they once loved. hating gets exhausting i imagine. 

the church i grew up in seems to be chilling on stuff every time i turn around. sins are now becoming more tolerated. they haven't gotten to accepting the lgqbt population whole heartedly but they are willing to hedge on coffee, coke, tattoo's, piercings, the cross use.  they prefer to not be called Mormons anymore. they are apparently piloting a program where the missionaries aren't in ties.  they encourage more social media use by elders a long with allowing them more contact with family back home.  now i guess, the google map search is using more crosses than moroni's to denote their location.

we were never allowed to use/wear crosses and you didn't find them in the churches or on the churches.  we were told that unlike the others we didn't celebrate his death we celebrated his rebirth. 

Mormonism is morphing into just one more Christian church...which is always amusing to me since Joseph Smiths angel visit included being told that all the mainline Christian churches were totally wrong and that was why he needed to establish this church...now they are just morphing into the others. seems to negate that whole vision. 

we had a blast out there on the glacier.  

our guide was great. 

this is a random Eklutna photo.

we stayed there the night before. 

it's nearly two.  i do need to get these dogs out walking i guess. when i don't walk them, my shoes get moved around and even chewed up. 

Covid Cat has been busy killing/catching shrews of late. so much fun for me. 

i took both cats to their vet appointment yesterday.  they are both fine.  both have lost a pound each. i figure it's all the play time with Sunny Boy and shrew chasing. 

aww...so sweet!

Miss Breezy has discovered my office chair so i am currently sharing it with her. can't disturb the napping cat.  Covid has been snuggling with me each night as i settle in for some Netflix program

large earthquake in Morocco and flooding in Libya.  two dams burst?? that is horrible. bodies washed out to sea. 6,000 missing!!  just reading about that one.  entire communities washed away. 

Musk apparently speaks directly to Putin and shut down his starlink in order to prevent Ukraine attack. that is a bit scary that this super wealthy becoming a nut job can just take control of our international relations and interject himself into wars.  too much power out there in the wrong hands. 

putin is meeting with North Korean leader today.  

yesterday i was reading some stuff about September 11 and started to hear some military jet action outside. it was loud and sounded like several planes.  i did learn later that Biden had a stop over in AK. probably explains that.  the house, who have zero interest in creating anything but madness, have begun another foray into mania as they start an impeachment inquiry into Biden.  they refuse to impeach trump for his involvement in an insurrection but they are going after BIden. not really clear why at this point. no doubt something to do with his sons lap top.  they've been obsessed with that since decades of Hillary's email inquiries went nowhere. 

hike in Arctic VAlley. 

it also is odd to me that people on the right know the names of kids who are trans in sports. seems creepy to me really.  those poor kids and their families really. 

well, i better get off this computer. not sure if i covered all the stuff cluttering my brain or if i make any sense in these blogs.  my brain is just a mess of thoughts running through it at any given time.  i come up with great things in the shower but no doubt forget most of it by the time i get the day started. 

grateful for A.  the awakening that happened through 9/11 and the subsequent wars.  i certainly changed many of the views i was raised with on politics. B. that i was in the middle of nowhere when all that was happening.  protected from it. maybe that saved me from spiraling like so many others C. chill time with the pets.  mushrooms and views of the tiny world around us.