We've finally got a Democratic government and most people are solidly behind our new president. The oil companies are raising gasoline prices again, even as the price of a barrel of crude drops below $35.00. But life is good when you consider everything.
As we watched our 14 year old Maine Coon cat get sicker, but we have two other gorgeous Maine Coons who love us and won't let us out of their sight. My father-in-law's goats started to birth kids. Our cat had to be put to sleep the other day, and one of Fred's nannies died giving birth to twin billies. I buried my cat then accepted the billies to raise. They think I'm their momma. I was sitting on the porch working on repairing a wind chime that had been wrecked by this week's storm and had the "boys" out and about from their enclosure. They're only 2 weeks old and full of piss and vinegar. They would run and jump through the yard for a while, then come visit me and start chewing on all my body parts and clothes. I never knew I had so many body parts that looked like tits.
The republicans in the senate are acting like they always act when nobody listens to them: like assholes. One of our U.S. Senators, John Cornyn, is behaving like he is still Bush's lapdog. Mitch (some call him Bitch) McConnell continues to embarrass the hell out of the people from Kentucky. But my onions have sprouted. My garlic broke ground yesterday. My lettuce recovered from a hard frost and is growing nicely, sending their red sails into the robin's egg blue sky of the Texas Hill Country.
I live about 20 miles from where LBJ grew up and lived until his last days. We have 3 pairs of breeding cardinals that sing to us all day. My peach trees have already started to bloom - a little early, but then climate change knows no calender or latitude, it seems. The begonias never stopped blooming this winter. If it weren't for the drought, it would be a glorious winter. It's so dry down here that even the highways are brown. Man!
The Texas State Board of Education still wants to dicker with the science curriculum; like they have a frickin' clue about what they are talking about. So much air, ink, time and money wasted over a subject that is, well, subjective: creationism. The OBJECTIVE other side of that issue is evolution. It bothers me greatly that people still describe evolution as theory. It isn't. It's a fact. Ask any cattle breeder or bacteriologist. We have to de-couple the word theory from the word evolution. It is the operating processes of evolution that are theoretical, not the outcome.
But, life is still good. The sky is blue, the air is warm and at age 67 I can still hit a golf ball over 250 yards as I did yesterday. I AM smelling the roses. Which reminds me: we're pruning ours tomorrow. We'll be trimming roses and fruit trees in anticipation of the spring glory they bring us. We live in a house of our own design similar to an Australian station house with porches all around and a corner pointed toward the predominantly southern breezes. For every Rush Limbaugh, I hear mockingbirds invent yet another symphony. For every churlish outspewing from Bill O'Reilly, I hear Fred's cows lowing for more feed.
So I am trying to pay attention to everything. And, in the end, life is pretty damned good. Let's all start appreciating it more.