The debate about opening schools continues. I repeat my only definitive opinion: thank God the decision doesn't rest in my hands. I can see positive and negative consequences with all decisions.
I printed out the Progressive statements from 2018 to July 2020 that Marissa, the Progressive agent I have been working with, sent me. Besides the regular summary statements that come every six months, I have any number that came in between. Now have to calculate where the changes came in and why. I also called National Car Rental today and got a copy of the accident summary for Mike's accident in November 2018. It doesn't give Mike's name, but it uses the word 'he' repeatedly to describe what happened. Whatever else has happened in my lifetime, I have been spared that confusion in my sexual identity. I am a clear unadulterated 'she.' Whenever I spoke to Progressive to ask them why the premium amount wasn't reduced when I took Mike off the account, they gave me some bullshit about being in an accident. Yes, but what is the likelihood of him having another one after he had been dead for several months? It's the illogic that drives me crazy. They create facts to fit the story. It is top-down reasoning that excludes any form of logic. I think this is what 'the alternative truth' looks like. I don't devalue top-down reasoning, but not when it is totally contradicted by facts.
When I shopped at Costco, they had everything on my list except the almond milk I like. I bought asparagus on an impulse. I don't know if I can eat that much of it and still like it. We'll see. Some of it will probably go to waste. This is the problem of being a single-person household. I wandered up and down the refrigerator and freezer aisles to see what is available. The problem is that I have to buy without knowing if I will like it, and it is always a quantity appropriate for a family of ten. I could be in the same situation I am in now with my salmon patties. They looked good, but I don't like the taste. I will try doctoring them the way John Z recommended, mayonnaise and lemon juice, and maybe a slice of sweet onion. If that doesn't work, I'll experiment.
My new electric car used 15 electrical units to drive 12 miles. Huh? There is no way Costco is 12 miles from my home. One way, maybe six. I'm going to have to monitor the end trip reports.
I had a session with Shelly. I worked on acceptance of the current world situation: grief over what is becoming of my country, acceptance that we are heading for a totalitarian state, one way or another. I will write more of my thoughts under musings. Shelly could feel Mike's love for me and was deeply moved. Maybe that's why I'm doing so well because I can feel his love for me. When I focus on it, I can feel it more than when I don't. It fills my heart. While I feel it at all times, I have to pay attention to get the full effect. It was easier when he was alive. He was right here. I didn't have to remember that he was here. All I had to do was look up or wait for his phone call. His hugs and kisses were the absolute best. I know how lucky I have been to have had a partner that I loved and who loved me. But then again, how am I defining love.
Love is different for everyone. For us, it was an energetic merging that filled our hearts and left us deeply satisfied, and allowed us to both be separate individuals at the same time. We each grew in our own way. We supported each other. Mike supported my choices even if he couldn't cope with some of them. He never thought they were actually bad choices, harmful for me or anyone else, just a little too risky for his taste.
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Musings:
On the coming totalitarianism.
Oh, dear. I see it as a tsunami that is just coming. If it were just in the US, I wouldn't be so overwhelmed. But I'm hearing it coming from all over the world. On a good note: I hear Grassroot movements moving in the opposite direction. We're living in 'interesting times.'
I believe this move to conservatism, returning to a simpler time, is a result of globalism. No, I am not afraid of a single global leader imposing a rigid dictatorship. But I do think that the rapid rate of change in my lifetime has been too much for many people.
People want a secure knowledge of the rightness of their being. They want to know that the way they live, what they believe, is beyond question. People want to believe that they represent the 'norm' for humanity.
I remember an anthropology teacher telling us that for primitive tribes, the word for human is the same as the word for their tribal name. That means that anyone who wasn't a member of their tribe wasn't human. Their lives didn't matter. Sound familiar?
These rapid transitions challenge who we are, forcing us to deal with people of other religions and other cultures. Some people were raised with people of some other identity than they are used to. They found some way of incorporating associating with this other group into their concept of self. But the rapid influx of immigrants due to dramatic changes in their own lands caused by war or climate change or marauding gangs is overwhelming people. Besides the problems caused by immigration, there is the Internet, which eliminates the protection of distance from the other. We are all walking side by side.
There's a book out called White Fragility, which discusses the challenge to white egos to have to reconsider their white privilege as something other than a given, something they get because they are 'deserving' instead of just 'white.' We're being challenged, left, and right.
It is hard on the nerves. Many want to contract into a smaller space, the space they used to live in—a great idea but no longer an option. We've brought this on ourselves with our technological advances. To return to our simpler life, we'd have to give it up and retreat to a time before TV, if not before commercial air flight I think we might be able to keep our local telephone companies, but I don't think much more than that.
Our intelligence is destroying us.
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