Dear Liz

Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was one of 10 Republicans brave enough to vote to impeach Donald Trump. She was censured and removed from her leadership position because of this. She has been disparaged by Trump and the Republican party. I watched and listened to Liz Cheney's honesty and calm demeanor in her position as vice chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. She is facing a primary today, and things don't look good in the polls. 

“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible:
 There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Cheney's opponent, Harriet Hageman, is leading by nearly 30 points. It looks like she may lose her seat, but as a registered Democrat living in New Jersey, there is nothing I can do to prevent that. Since I can't vote in the Wyoming primary, I wrote a letter to Ms. Cheney this weekend. 

Dear Ms. Cheney,

In all the tumult and chaos created by Donald Trump, I have been heartened by the actions of people that have seen the massive damage he has caused and spoken out, even when they have suffered personally. You have fought against the lies and the liars, upheld your oath to the Constitution, and not backed down. I hope that you can continue this work as a member of Congress, but if the voters of Wyoming feel differently, I hope that you will continue your work as an honorable public servant in whatever capacity might be available. The world is always in need of people who do the right thing, and you are certainly doing that. 

She will probably never see the letter, and even if she does, I doubt that a letter from a NJ Democrat will make her feel better. But anytime somebody does the right thing, great or small, it should be noted and celebrated. While I don't agree with all of her positions (she's an opponent of abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and gun control for a start), Elizabeth Cheney is absolutely doing the right thing here and I appreciate and respect her. 

Sometimes Monday ...

 ...is a day to breathe a big sigh of relief. 

We still haven't had any rain, but the temperatures and humidity dropped over the weekend. I managed to mop the kitchen floor without sweating and even turned the oven on to bake some zucchini bread. The temperatures look bearable this week and there is that ever-elusive prediction of rain by the weekend. I have hope this week and I hope you do, too!

Museum of Me: August 2022

For the August installation of The Museum of Me, we're opening the portrait gallery. It's not a large wing of the museum; it only contains one portrait. Kym's suggested topic for this month is a photo from your childhood that most captures the YOU of today. 

Except this photo captures the ME I'd like to be today. It's an old 3x5 black and white photo that I found while going through things we cleaned out after my mother died. It was dog-eared and water-stained, so I had a copy made and restored as much as possible. The copy doesn't look much better than the original, but I can see things in this photograph that may not be evident to the casual viewer. I see a five-year-old girl who was pretty happy with her world. I was attending a sort of casual kindergarten program at the local Y and my mother and I had just shopped for the best napping rug. It was gorgeous shades of blue and purple and I can even recall playing with the fringe while trying to fall asleep. Why we needed to nap during a three-hour program remains a mystery, but I had the best rug. I was sure that everyone else was envious of me and my rug.

Even though it's a black and white photo, I see the lovely yellow and white gingham pinafore that my grandmother made for me and the white blouse that fit perfectly. There was a yellow, blue, and pink border around the bottom, and it was one of my favorite outfits ever. It just felt good and I can still remember how happy and confident I felt while wearing it.

I remember one of our elderly neighbors calling me Suzy Sunshine, especially when I was wearing this yellow pinafore. She said my smile brightened her day and she liked to chant jump rope rhymes along with me when I was playing on the sidewalk. I felt strong, confident, and full of fun.

Not much of the above describes the me of today. I'm 60 years older, have been through a pandemic, have responsibilities, health issues, aches and pains, concerns for my kids, and money worries. I don't always feel comfortable in my clothing and don't feel strong, confident, and full of fun. But I'd like to think that that smiling five-year-old in a sunny yellow gingham pinafore and a sunny disposition is still somewhere inside. I just have to figure out how to let Suzy Sunshine out a little bit more, have a little bit more fun, and show the strength and confidence I felt so many years ago. 

We'll be back on the second Friday of September with a brand new installation. Thank you for visiting The Museum of Me!

Before and After

It's approaching mid-August and the garden is showing the expected effects of heat and lack of rain, but there were still plenty of things to pick and process. 

Tomatoes before:

Tomatoes after:

Two gallons of roasted and blended tomato "goop" to freeze and cook down in the winter. I was hoping for more regular tomatoes but we only got two, and those got eaten right in the garden!

Zucchini before:

Three giants and two babies

Zucchini after:

12 cups of shredded zucchini for the freezer, to be baked into zucchini bread when it finally cools down. 

Zucchini, spaghetti sauce, cheese, some Italian seasoning, and a little garlic powder. I like it cold. 

Cucumbers after: (I forgot to take a before photo!) The container was full originally but cold cucumbers are just crying out to be eaten when it's hot.

Hot peppers before:

The after photo will depend on what Justin's hot-pepper-loving coworkers do with them. They're pretty, and Ryan has used a few in eggs and stir-fried rice, but I tried a small piece of one and my mouth burned for 10 minutes. These are all getting passed along to people that can appreciate (and tolerate) them. 

These few green beans will just stay in the refrigerator and I'll make them for dinner over the next few days. 

Not too bad for only receiving about 22 sprinkles of rain in the past week!

Unraveled Wednesday: 8/10/22

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with very s-l-o-w progress on the Baby Surprise Jacket. I knit in the car on the way up to my SiL's and then got to the somewhat crazy row 80: k124, turn, k90, turn, k90, [turn, k90] 18x, knit up 10 sts from edge of flap, k34. 

I didn't feel like I could keep track of where I was and get this row knit correctly during John's stop-and-go driving during 12 miles of construction on Route 80, so I put it away for the weekend and just started working on crazy row 80 yesterday. I only have a couple more k90s to do, and then 17 more rows before the end, but I will be glad to see the end of this project. My fingers are itching to work on a Hitchhiker!

I finished a book from the Booker Longlist, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, and even though I wrote a review, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. There is a very fine line between pushing the form of the novel and becoming so inventive that you create something far too strange. I can't tell which side of the line Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies lies on. The book starts out telling the story of Lia who has been diagnosed with recurrent breast cancer and her relationships with her daughter Iris and husband Harry. Iris is a very perceptive child and some of her experiences at school are more than a child should have to bear. There is a disembodied voice in bold type that I took to be the personification of Lia's disease - disorienting but effective. There is also interesting non-linear typography that I found to be mostly distracting. Lia's story of growing up in a vicarage, her parents taking in a young man named Peter, and their eventual sexual relationship is told in bits and pieces. As Lia grows sicker, the voice of her disease begins to take over the narrative. My mother died of metastatic breast cancer, and the malevolent voice of Lia's disease was almost more than I could stand to read at times. Maddie Mortimer has written a unique, sad, and poignant debut novel, based on her own experience with her own mother, but I don't think it was a book for me.  I couldn't settle on anything new that I wanted to read so I decided that some re-reads were in order. The Shipping News is an old favorite and I'm also re-listening to Everything I Never Told You. Sometimes special re-reads are just what is needed.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled Wednesday: 8/3/22

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with just a bit more progress on the  Baby Surprise Jacket. 

I was about 20 rows further along but spied a dropped stitch while I was taking photos for Unraveled Wednesday. I tried to fix the dropped stitch but managed to do a sloppy job of it. It's just a few rows of knitting, so I unraveled it and will try to knit it right the second time. I don't have a lot more to knit and hope to finish this small purple blob while I'm spending some travel time in the car this weekend. If I do, I may make a return to Hitchhikers!

I only finished one book this week, but it was a long one. Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark was a saga that took me several tries to really get into it. Once I did, I enjoyed this tale of two old ladies. (I mean that sincerely.) I found myself wondering how Agnes was doing and if she was over her writer's block, and if her friend Polly was still deferring to her clueless husband. The book focuses on family and their many grievances, but Dark also writes about work, land ownership and stewardship, loyalty, and female friendship. I'm trying to read Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer, but it's quite a different book. It's from the Booker longlist, about a family coming to terms with a cancer diagnosis, and the author has given the cancer its own malevolent voice in the book. It's horrible and innovative at the same time. 

What are you making and reading this week?

I'm visiting my SiL in northern PA for a long weekend so I'm taking a small break. See you sometime next week!

Dreaming

That's what I spent time doing from Thursday when I bought the Mega Millions tickets to Saturday morning when I woke up and checked my numbers. While I didn't win, I think it was worth the $10 just to think about how I might spend $1,280,000,000 (Billion with a B!) or if I would be satisfied with the $747,200,000 million lump sum.

I think more than $740 million dollars would be plenty, and the first thing I would do is call the guy who did our taxes last year and ask him to set up an arrangement to pay the taxes on our windfall. Then I might pay the property taxes for the remainder of the fiscal year on our house (we pay them quarterly in NJ), on Justin's house, and the same for Ryan in PA. Then I would immediately call an AC contractor and have him come install mini-split AC units in our house. We could use units in seven rooms and eight would be ideal, so let's go with eight (since money is no object). 

Once I've got central AC units in the house, I might re-do the bathroom and have the porch painted. Maybe I would even think big and have the whole house painted (all the exterior woodwork and the interior) along with the barn. 

John would probably want to buy an old truck since he sold his a few years ago and I think I could go along with that. 

So how much have we spent so far?

   $747,200,000 winnings
   $179,328,000 taxes
             $28,000 property taxes
             $22,000 AC
             $15,000 re-do bathroom
             $28,000 painting house and barn
             $30,000 old truck for John

  ---------------------------------------------

That leaves $567,749,000 dollars left over! So maybe John could get a slightly more expensive old truck, a really nice 1932 Ford like he's always wanted. John says he might buy a $1,000,000 ranch somewhere, but I bought the tickets so we'll have to see about that purchase. I would make a big contribution to PBS, enough so they would read my name at the beginning of Masterpiece. I can just hear the announcer saying, "Funding for MASTERPIECE is provided by Bonny H. Becker". Another big donation would go to Olivia Julianna for abortion care. Who knows, I might even splurge on some nice yarn and a book or two.  As for the rest of it, I really have no idea what else I would spend it on.

The odds were a staggering a staggering 1 in 302.5 million against winning, but it was fun to dream. Maybe you had some Mega Millions dreams, too. How would you have spent your winnings?