{"id":32922,"date":"2017-09-18T17:17:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T00:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=32922"},"modified":"2017-09-18T17:18:16","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T00:18:16","slug":"a-monday-ramble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/18\/a-monday-ramble\/","title":{"rendered":"A Monday ramble"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually, not so much rambling as sitting indoors under a tornado warning. The current twister probably won’t come near my neighborhood, but we have about 30 more hours of unsettled weather, so who knows what we might eventually see?<\/p>\n

And here I thought The Wandering Monk was joking when he said if a tornado struck the NW corner of the screen porch would be the safest place in the house. I may have to find out.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Quite to my surprise, we are in the midst of National Unmarried and Singles Week. I had no idea, did you? How did we manage to swing an entire week when dear old Mom gets only a day? <\/p>\n

It seems no one else knows about this Momentous Occasion, either. After learning this morning that I’d already missed a full day of this Glorious Celebration, I DuckDuckGoed it and found that even its official site doesn’t appear to have been updated in the last three years<\/a>. Practically the only article suggesting ways to celebrate it<\/a> is from 2011.<\/p>\n

USA Today<\/em> did print an article this morning about how it’s still more expensive to be single<\/a>. But not a particularly good article. And gads, that actress broad they quoted seems a math-challenged narcissist.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, should you be single (as so many of us are these days), it’s your obligation to get out and party hearty. Our special week started yesterday and ends on Saturday the 23rd. Which coincidentally — or perhaps not so coincidentally — is the most recent day on which the world’s supposed to end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Here’s another of those articles I’ve been saving to write a longish meditation on. But not having gotten to that, here you go: how to embrace getting older<\/a>.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Fact check, Bernie. Americans are not clamoring<\/a> for single-payer medicine. Certainly not when the question of who pays for it<\/em> is raised.<\/p>\n

And after fleeing single-payer, Vermont tries a new experiment<\/a> in wellness medicine. Which might be a good idea if not done by a government.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Did you know that the man who prevented WWIII<\/a> died this year, unnoticed by the world? He was a Soviet soldier, and not a particularly high-ranking one.<\/p>\n

Funny, isn’t it, how sometimes “big” people make only small differences and “little” people can make big ones.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

National Unmarried and Singles Week may be an underwhelming occasion. But I’ve got one that’s earth-shattering. <\/p>\n

Well, for me. <\/p>\n

You OTOH are likely to care less about this one than you do about an event whose own sponsors can’t keep it up to date. But for me, it’s YUGE. <\/p>\n

The Monk showed up unexpectedly this morning (between raindrops) and sawed up half a wall — the last of the remaining construction rubble — and carted it away for firewood. Tomorrow he’ll return to take away a few miscellaneous items, including tools he left onsite and the one of his three redneck earth-moving contraptions that exploded under stress. <\/p>\n

And here’s the occasion for celebration: This fall and winter, for the first time since I bought Ye Olde Wreck, there will be no construction rubble, no tarp-covered piles of materials, no random junk, no spare plumbing fixtures, no salvaged doors, no unsightly this-and-thats heaped behind the house. Or in the dog yard. Or leaning against the outside walls. Or piled in the driveway.<\/p>\n

Oh, there will be Useful Stuff. We ended up with quite a lot of materials left over from this year’s projects (including enough unused foundation lumber to construct most of a deck next year — yay!). I’ve still got a few spare windows and doors. But everything will either be tucked neatly in a corner of my very large lot and well-covered against weather or stashed in the back of my neighbor’s garage.<\/p>\n

After all this time, I will have a yard. A yard that looks like a yard. Rather than a salvage yard.<\/p>\n

This is really important now that I plan to spend so much time on the screen porch or patio looking out on this wonderment.<\/p>\n

My neighbors should love me. But who cares about them? I’m going to love looking out on grass and ferns and gravel and trees and retaining-wall block without viewing rotted remnants of the house that was or bits and pieces of the house to be.<\/p>\n

Alas, inside<\/em> the house is another matter. But that, too, shall pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, not so much rambling as sitting indoors under a tornado warning. The current twister probably won’t come near my neighborhood, but we have about 30 more hours of unsettled weather, so who knows what we might eventually see? And here I thought The Wandering Monk was joking when he said if a tornado struck the NW corner of the screen porch would be the safest place in the house. I may have to find out. —– Quite to my surprise, we are in the midst of National Unmarried and Singles Week. I had no idea, did you? How did…<\/p>\n

Continue readingA Monday ramble<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,14,19,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-health-and-science","category-home-improvement","category-miscellaneous","category-war","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32922"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32934,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32922\/revisions\/32934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}