SOTU

Trump clapping for himself after SOTU speech.

Well, damn, I missed Trump's State of the Union speech but I did read it online this morning and I see it was the usual Trump lies and the usual attacks on people who aren't white or Christian.

(BTW, did you know that every time a racist says, "God Bless America," he spends another 1,000 years in hell.)

WOOF!

Yesterday morning, Belle is sitting it the front window barking at something I couldn't see.

Loudly, "WOOF!"

"Belle, no."

Loudly, "WOOF!"

"Belle, no."

Loudly, "WOOF!"

"Belle. No!"

(Silence for 10 seconds.)

Softly, "Woof."

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

115th US Congress

It's A Hard Knock Live- Part 2

Deja vu all over again.

Poor Belle was at the vet again. I noticed two side by side what looked like infection bubbles on the inside of her mouth above her lip a week ago Tuesday. Got her back into the vet on Friday. They said if it got any bigger to give them a call.  Sunday night when I looked under her lip I could see that one bubble was a bit larger and a third bubble had formed. So Monday morning I made sure not to feed her and had my husband take a photo of the whatever it was and we  e-mailed it to the vet's office. They said to bring her in. Once they looked at it they agreed it had to come out and we left her there. The doctor said that she is optimist about Belle's surgery because the margins looked good. Next is the pathology report.

Belle is doing great and  wakes up full of energy and demanding her breakfast each morning. The only post surgery limit on her has been to feed her soft food only. I've been putting boiling water in her dry food and the wait for it to soften and cool down drives her crazy. She can smell the kibble and cannot understand why I am not giving it to her right away. In  four days we can go back to normal meals. Hopefully, everything goes back to normal then.

Why Does Marie Callender's Think It Needs To Put The Words "MADE WITH REAL PUMPKIN" On The Box?

Have I been naive thinking store bought pumpkin pie is made with real pumpkin all these years?


Maybe not.

This is the list of ingredients for Blue Bell's Pistachio Almond ice cream:

Milk, Cream, Sugar, Buttermilk, Almonds (Almonds, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Butter, Salt), Corn Syrup, Natural Pistachio Flavor With Other Natural Flavors, Carob Bean Gum, Guar Gum, Mono & Diglycerides, Carrageenan, Blue 1, Yellow 5.


I do not see pistachios on that list that list, only 'natural pistachio flavor" and blue and yellow dye to  make the ice cream green. Not the same thing at all.

I Vote And I Do Jury Duty

Thank God It's Friday

Love and Kisses (1978)

It's A Hard Knock Life

This is Belle tucked into bed with a small goose down blanket wrapped around her on Monday night.  Right before this she had gone potty, finished eating a little chicken and rice with her meds hidden it, and enjoyed some comfort scratches and words.   She had received her second set of PRP  injections at the vet that day and was still recovering from both the shots and the anesthetic.  The  anesthetic was the reason for the down blanket  since she was still cold.  That blanket worked well and she was  toasty warm an hour later.

If you haven't heard of Platelet Rich Plasma injections, they are used to help with severe osteoarthritis.  The first injections she  had done two month ago helped a bit so I am amazed by how much the second ones have helped her already.  The Doctor said she wouldn't show any real improvement until a week had past.  I was rubbing her belly and it finally dawned on me that she was lying in a position where both legs were wide open just like a puppy sleeping on its back.   She is feeling so much better today it is getting hard to keep her as quiet as the vet  wants her to be until Sunday.  So she is on leash walks only, not allowed to go out into the backyard to go potty without being on a leash, and not allowed to go downstairs.  On Sunday we are all free to get on with our normal lives.

And,,,,Done

Finally finished  Doris Goodwin's book , Team Of Rivals, today. I've been reading it at bedtime for the last 6 months and  was about halfway through it when I realized I needed to up my game.  Today I finished the last 100 pages.  This is a book you are either going to love or hate.  It's long, it's detailed, it's well researched, and it's a fascinating story.  It is the story of Abraham Lincoln and the cabinet he put together consisting of  his political rivals.  Men he felt could help him  grow into the job of President  and run a war.  I did not know  anything about the men Lincoln picked and, after reading the book, I also see that I did not understand just how great a president Abraham Lincoln  really was. Doris Goodwin brought them all to life.

Things Go Better With Coca-Cola, Things Go Better With Coke!

Me (left) and my sister (right) before the Blondie concert at the Hollywood Bowl, July 9, 2017.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018

Martin Luther King Jr.  (1929 - 1968)

WOW!

The New York Daily News has never pulled its punches.  The front page today.

Sewing Book

I found this book the same day I found Ready Set Sew.  When I pulled it out from between two other book and first set eyes on the cover I thought, "Wow, how dated."

Then I found the photo of the author inside, a nice white-haired grandmotherly type, and thought... actually, nothing. My brain could not connect the face in the photo with the illustration on the front cover and the photos on the back cover.  Who was Ann Person and how did she produce such a  incongruous book?

Ann Person is actually a big name in the home sewing field and the author of many books. She started in the late 1960s when she opened a sewing store and started teaching her new knit-sewing technique, Stretch & Sew, to other women. By the  mid 1970s  there were 350 Stretch & Sew stores across the globe.   In 2004 she was inducted into the American Sewing Guild's  Hall of Fame.   

Now back to this book.  After reading the Sewing Guild's Hall of Fame article, I learned that Ann Person's daughter and granddaughter were running the business around this time and that the granddaughter is the model on the back cover of the book.  Incongruity explained.

Sew Splashy, Ann Person (1990)

Hola Amigos!

Estoy aprendiendo español. No hay tiempo para bloguear hoy.
(I am learning Spanish.  No time for blogging today.)

Sewing Book

I'm still collecting vintage sewing books and this is one of my latest.

"The name of the game is fashion sewing-with Butterick on you side, how can you possibly lose?"
-Ready Set Sew by Butterick  (1971) 

Sewing books during this time period seemed to favor  whimsical drawings. 

Speaking Your Truth

"Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up."
-Oprah Winfrey, Golden Globes, 2018





Oprah Winfrey's speech at the Golden Globes; the Republican Party's worst nightmare.

Listen up GOP. We are coming for you- you who dismiss us, you who demean us, you who patronize us, you who try to control us, and you who undervalue our worth. You, who helped put a bigoted, sexist, racist, demented man into the White House. You, who enable said man in a desperate attempt to hang on to your power over us. We are coming for you.

Yippee, They Made It!

I can take down my Christmas decorations tomorrow.  It was difficult this year to get into Christmas decorating which means I never strung Christmas lights inside my house like I usually do. I did put up my pre-lit Christmas tree and plugged it in but  I did not put any ornaments on the tree except for the Angel on top.  The Christmas spirit did not show up for me this year, too much dark in the world right now.  I guess you could say I had a Blue Christmas without it.





Carrie Rodriguez

First You Draw A Picture

I found this book (All 668 pages of it.) at ARC the other day and have been working my way through it. I must say Walt Kelly's  POGO is one of my favorite comic strips- right up there with George Herriman's  Krazy Kat. He was both a great political satirist and a great cartoonist. He took on Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s and turned him into wildcat named Simple J. Malarkey.

Now I can't help wondering what he would have done with Donald Trump.

Stop Hunting? Never!

My husband took our dogs to a hunting preserve Tuesday and let them each hunt one bird.  Then he staked them out by his guide's truck and hunted some more with the guide's dogs.  After they finished they came back to the truck and put their guns in the back.  That is when the guide's dogs went on point almost right next to the truck.  The guide hesitated, saying, "I think I know what this is about," pulled his gun out of of the truck and walked over to where his dogs were pointing.  He found nothing.  When he came back to the truck he told my husband that sometimes his dogs do not want to stop looking for birds so they pretend there birds hiding in the grass near the truck just so they can continue hunting.  Those dogs sure love their job.

Donald Trump's Statement About Steve Bannon, Former Chief Executive Officer Of His 2016 Campaign; Former Chief Strategist And Senior Counselor In His Administration

Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn't represent my base—he's only in it for himself.

Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
-Donald Trump

Short version:

"We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates....helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down."
-Donald "Nero" Trump, right before he and GOP Congressmen started to spontaneously ignite.

Twitter Wars

Trump has, so far, sent out nine tweets this morning filled with lies and insults.   I sent one back:

You are a busy little bee this morning with all the insults and lies. What is it you are trying to divert everyone's attention from now? Russia? Special Counsel Mueller? The travesty that is your presidency?

Ring Out The False, Ring In The True

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

   The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

   For those that here we see no more;

   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

   And ancient forms of party strife;

   Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

   The faithless coldness of the times;

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the spite;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

   Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

   Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring the Christ that is to be.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)