I made a post about Labor Day on Facebook today. It said, word for word, “Happy Labor Day. Let us honor all those who risked their lives and livelihoods in order to make the workplace safer. May we remember all who died in hazardous working conditions. May we remember that this country was built by the working class.”
And a friend of mine said something like, “Too bad most working class people don’t get the day off and that only salaried people reap the benefits.”
A certain former Doper, whom I love and respect and is generally quite rational, reacted like we’d just posted a fucking communist manifesto. Somehow thinking that working class people deserved a holiday off that was designed to honor the working class was invalidated how hard she worked to get high enough on the food chain to get labor day off. And then she linked to a clearly very heavily biased article about the evils of labor unions that I couldn’t even get through because the rhetoric was so bad. And my greatest fear is now that my best friend’s Dad, who is the head of a labor union and not nice about it at all, is going to come across her post and the internet is going to explode.
Take a chill pill, people. It should not ever be politically divisive to honor laborers on Labor Day. Jesus Christ.
That’s brilliant. I had a student that was going to drop out because her child care suddenly dropped through… so we took a vote, and had a four-year-old in class for a couple of weeks. A well-behaved one*, but I’m hoping your mom could be at least that unobtrusive.
*Dylan even made up mini-assignments for the class when asked to.
Sometimes I stay out late and take the night bus home. When I’m taking the bus home at 1 or 2 AM, I’m usually tired, and I just want to sit back and relax. I can’t do that very well when some idiot fellow passenger is yammering away on their cellphone. I totally don’t understand WHY people NEED to have such long conversations with anyone at 1:30 fucking AM! Unless it’s an emergency, or you’re having a very short conversation with someone who’s going to pick you up from the bus, or if you’re talking to someone in another time zone and it’s the only time you can reach them, I really don’t see a need to yack away in the wee hours like that.
Speaking of people killed on the job, we lose about a thousand construction type workers for every single policeman or fireman. Why do we make such a huge deal about killed firemen and policemen, but take dead construction workers as the cost of doing business? (Not to take away from the seriousness of every policeman or fireman killed, of course.)
This is why I consider earphones and music an essential when taking public transit. I really don’t need to hear all the profanity-filled TMI about other passengers’ lives and the lives of their friends and family (a lot of whom probably wouldn’t be happy about having their private business being shouted in public anyway), delivered at the tops of ample lungs.
Honestly, I really do appreciate the advice I got from folks here. I don’t like head on confrontation when some education will solve the issue.
Bill is willing to just putt around my area when he visits now. We let him sit on our bikes and pick them up off the kickstand so he could feel the difference in weight. Arnold had brought his 850 lb bagger over and after Bill had it balanced, I got on so Bill could feel that weight as well. (stealth brag…I’m 5’2" and I’m limber enough to stand flat footed and swing my leg over the back of a bagger, then just shift my butt a little and I’m on. It impresses the heck out of people all the time, especially when I used to do it with coffee in one hand and a cig in the other. No cigs now, so I take the lid off the coffee instead.)
One of the many reasons I love Bill is that he’s willing to admit it when he makes a mistake. Bill thanked my friends for their help and told them many nice things. One of which was that we all make it look so easy that he thought it wouldn’t be as hard as it is.
I don’t want anyone to think that we are elitists or anything. We want more people to ride, or at least be more aware of us. We just want the new riders to become good riders instead of smears on the road. It was horrifying to watch my sweetie fall over, but at least he only did it at 20-30 mph and wasn’t in risk of getting run over.
I’m quite sure that Bill will someday be able to ride a bagger, but that’s just not something that happens overnight.
Enough bloggy stuff.
Spike the cat and I have been having water bowl issues. The water bowl in the outside room is on a shelf and Spike liked to stretch out on the shelf and sleep with his face in the water bowl. This upsets me.
It wasn’t just the fact that when he woke up from his nap, that he’d want to use the litterbox and while sniffing for the perfect spot would get flipping concrete stuck to his face.
I really didn’t mind when I’d open the door to let Spike back in (because apparently its just a one way kitty door in his peanut brain) and he would rub his wet face on my leg and want to be picked up and loved. Wet fur feels so slimey.
I would have been good with that. It was just that I’d freak out when I looked out the window in that door and saw him all limp and not moving with his face in the bowl that made me start changing things.
First, I moved the bowl into a corner against the lattice and put the kibble bowl in the middle of the shelf. Spike is able to sleep on one bowl and have his head in the waterbowl.
Next, I moved the bowls into the middle of the shelf, reasoning that Spike is so big that he wouldn’t be comfortable enough to flipping fall asleep with his face in water with limited room…but he just pushed them around and sometimes the waterbowl would fall off the shelf and spill.
That didn’t make me happy either. My other cats can go inside if they want a drink, but as far as Spike is concerned, the kitty door is only one way. I can’t have him out there with no water in the middle of the summer.
Last night, I duct taped the bowl to the middle of the shelf. This morning, Spike had not only managed to shift the bowl to the side of the shelf, he had also duct taped himself to the shelf.
I sure hope he’s smart enough to learn how to use a rodent bottle, because I’m taking the water bowl away.
She has a wheelchair and all the other stuff but they are in my house for the time being. Eventually I will put them back in her retirement home/apartment. She is off to a rehab center later this week–we just talked to the surgeon this evening and he is not going to force her out before she is ready.
I am going back to work tomorrow.
As of today, I no longer have a home. I’m crashing with a friend, so I have a roof for the night, but no home.
Boy howdy this year has been fucked up.
At least the lady with whom I’m crashing is from the dog rescue… so even though I’ve had to (obviously) give up my foster dogs, I have a furry bed buddy tonight. Nothing could be more comforting right now.
I bought a bike about three weeks ago (pedal bike) and got a headlight and rear light for it as well. Head light takes 4AA batteries, rear light takes 2AAA
After a few days of riding it (only once at night) I found the headlight and tail light burned out. Darn I thought I was careless and left them on after use. (rear light you have to make a pretty good effort to turn on, reaching behind to toggle a switch) So I changed all the batteries.
Yesterday I discovered they were burned out again. I hadn’t used them at all. My bike has been parked in the building 's basement store room where there is a bike rack… full of other bikes and a huge jogging stroller. Inside, not open to the public. I have taken my bikes for short runs to the bank, etc, but my head and tail lights have not been turned on by me since I changed the batteries.
Someone is messing with them, in my building. Probably the same ones who have complained that my husband “loiters” in the hallways of the building? Loiters? Why? The hallways are narrow and dark, and smell like stale food and cannabis. We leave our apartment and go outside. Sometimes we wait inside the door for a taxi. Mostly we wait outside.
I know someone in the building has it in for him since he smokes… outside in a designated smoking area. I know smoking isn’t popular but others in the building smoke too… but he has been targeted. I hate his smoking as well, but he is doing something legal in a designated area. Yes smoke drifts, but so does the smell of pot, road repairs, and the various cooking that people in this building do. also the smell of mold/mildew from where the pipes burst a few weeks ago. Honestly we are looking for a new place.
This sequence would make a great youtube video, if you could catch it on tape. In my terrible mind, the next thing that’s going to happen is that he’ll knock the rodent bottle down and fall asleep laying on it, as it leaks all over the floor.
The mini-est of mini-rants: Pick less stupid stage names, strippers!
I drive past a “gentleman’s club” on my commute, and their headliner right now is named “Juelz Ventura”.
I’m pretty sure she means it to be pronounced like “Jewels”, but all I hear when I pronounce “juelz” is “Hwells”. Not sexy, not cute. Weird.
