From Donna’s perch on the sofa or her recliner, she can comfortably watch both the television and the birds visiting the feeders in the front yard, but from my chair it’s one or the other, not both. Try as we might to rearrange the furniture in our front room, my view is restricted. Last weekend I had an idea — why not move the bird bath and feeders instead? So I did, and now both of us can watch the birdies and the TV at the same time.
You may have to click and enlarge the photo to see them, but there are two feeders hanging from the palo verde tree behind the bird bath; a vertical finch feeder and a spherical pigeon-proof feeder for larger birds (don’t worry for the pigeons — when I refill the feeders I always sprinkle a scoop on the ground for them).
My morning online news sweep has, over time, moved from The Guardian to Reuters to the BBC and now back to Reuters. The Guardian’s news coverage was slanted in a direction I didn’t like; Reuters was more neutral; the BBC was great until headlined story after story went behind paywalls — and now I’m back to Reuters. Along with, of course, AP News and Wonkette (whose ideological slant is in line with mine). I occasionally glance at Canadian news on the CBC website, and indulge my nostalgia for the Arctic with visits to the Barents Observer.
Social media-wise, Facebook remains my go-to for keeping up with friends and family. I love Instagram, and have set it up so that what I post there is automatically shared to Facebook and Threads. Say what you will about Mark Zuckerberg, his moderation policies have kept his three sites from going the way of TikTok and Twitter, which have been overrun by MAGAbots and Nazis. I keep hoping Bluesky will become Old Twitter, and maybe it will — IMO it’s not there yet.
But now I’m getting to it: things are not good with Polly, our live-in deadbeat alcoholic daughter. We’re approaching another crisis point, and increasingly it appears she’ll never change. I mean, shit, the woman’s 51 years old. The cake is baked. All we’re doing at this point is enabling her, and she’s ruining what should be our happiest years. I try to keep stuff like this off the blog, but sometimes need to release a little pressure. Whatever we did to make our girl the way she is, we’re sorry and wish we could start over again.
Not my favorite thing, ending on a down note, but that’s enough for one morning.
The only social media I use is talkbass.com, the site for bass players and builders: and YouTube if that counts as social media.
I hate everything about our oligarch 1%er owners and try my best to boycott them when I’m able. All bullet-headed space fascists- fuck ’em.
I’ve got PTSD from fear in Vietnam- nervous in the service- and my mental state makes it best for me if I can avoid all news sources.
Which I can’t because YouTube feeds me news channels every day no matter how many times I click ‘Do Not Recommend’.
So if our sun is going nova I’ll know about it anyway, even if I don’t want to know.
Since there is not one fucking thing I can do about the fire hose of doom and decline that is the news, why would I want to depress myself by following it?
It’s just ugly shit by ugly humans presented as jarringly as possible- ‘if it bleeds it leads’, for the lucretive clicks and views to further enrich our 1%er owners. So I can see their brain dead advertisements.
All news outlets are fascist oligarch owned. I’d like to see them terminated with extreme prejudice. It’s them or us.
The boycott is our only weapon, rejected by stupid America because of our laziness, love of luxury and convenience, political ignorance, and our owners’ destruction of our educational system.
As far as keeping in touch with family and friends on FacePlant, I’ve found my family likes me lots better when I only talk to them once a year on my birthday. I’ve learned to never stay in touch with them.
Don’t blame yourself for your useless daughter, you did your best as a parent but it didn’t take. Kids do not come with instruction manuals, and children are all different. What works for one will fail with the other. Wonky genetics combined with bad personal choices can be brutal. On the parents, too.
I raised my children the same and both are successful adults. However, my wonderful daughter calls me now and then and we are close.
While my son married the fragile, home-schooled daughter of a Trumpite traitor, moved to Oregon, and wants nothing to do with me.
And that’s fine, I’ve come to grips that, try as we will, not everything works out the way we’d like.
To my surprise I found hanging around my kids was one of the most rewarding events of my life.
I learned more from them than they learned from me and I’m glad they usually ignored my advice because I was wrong so often.
I consider my less than perfect parenting to be successful because they are both intelligent, happy, fully functional adults that need no financial support (or much of anything else) from me. That was my parenting goal.
You have my sympathy on your predicament. Not a problem because the word problem implies there is some solution. All you or your spouse can do is hang in there.