Ashwagandha is another medicine I can’t take. I tend to have backwards effects from all kinds of medications. I’m told that this is a symptom of my autism. I have to wear a bright orange bracelet in the hospital before surgery, warning nurses not to give me any Valium or Ativan, because the calming benzodiazepines make me paranoid and anxious. Melatonin makes me go into a dreamlike state, but then I startle awake without drifting off. Benadryl works sometimes,... Read more
There has been another school shooting. There is always another school shooting. I’m an elder Millennial. I’ve been watching school shootings happen since I was a teenager, when Harris and Klebold murdered thirteen and then themselves. Since then, there have been 416 school shootings. By the time you reads this, there might well be another. This latest shooting happened at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, and the death toll is four. The shooter was a 14-year-old boy. He’s being... Read more
It’s time to talk about the election again! I’m trying to do one post per week on the upcoming presidential election itself, with separate posts discussing the pro-life movement and the shenanigans in Ohio in far more detail than anybody asked for. But at this point, with sixty-two days to go in the entire election and less than five weeks until early voting starts right here in Steubenville, I may need to cover the news in a couple posts... Read more
It started with the pumpkin. Well, it started on Saturday, with an artificial pumpkin. The Gang wanted to play baseball for a change. Adrienne is now surrounded by a gang of teens or pre-teens who like to visit in the afternoons and eat massive quantities of whatever I bake. This Saturday it happened to be blueberry muffins. They each had several, and then the ran off to play in the vacant lot. The gang usually play football and sometimes... Read more
I won’t be getting to swim in the lake this year. The lake at the state park wasn’t supposed to close until the eighth, and I thought I’d surely have a breakthrough in replacing the ill-fated car by the eighth, but then I saw that they had to close the lake beach due to bacteria. I don’t know where the bacteria came from. Such a thing can be caused by the water getting to low and too warm after... Read more
Let’s talk about the pro-life movement again. It’s been getting a whole lot of press lately. Just to be clear, before we begin, I’m going to be using the word “fetus” to describe a baby that hasn’t been born yet and “infant” to describe a born baby, because that’s the proper medical term and it’s easier to understand what I’m saying if I do that. I’ve heard some pro-life people say “fetus” is a dehumanizing term and a way of... Read more
The cardinal is an avid preacher. As I sat on the sofa, hunched over the laptop, trying to make words appear on a screen, worrying, he came to the back window to admonish me. “Chip chip! Chip chip!” I put down the laptop. I opened my camera app on the phone. I tiptoed to the dining room, hugging the wall like a spy in a terrible movie. I leaned towards the pane just a bit, with my camera out,... Read more
Alrighty, it’s time for another Election Update! This time for the presidential election as usual! This is the more-or-less weekly feature where I try to enumerate the stories dominating the presidential election news as we barrel toward November. If you want to know my opinions on Ohio news, I’m trying to keep up with that too, and I usually blog separately about what the pro-life movement is up to. Because I am a Catholic blogger here on Patheos, please... Read more
All right, let’s talk about politics: but this time, I need to take a minute to talk about Ohio politics. We can go back to the presidential race shenanigans soon enough, but I live in Ohio, so I’m going to address Ohio right now. Ohio’s politics are invariably a bigger mess than the nation’s in general, and the 2024 election will not be the exception. This year, we’ve got an exciting constitutional amendment proposal on the ballot for all... Read more
“Tell me about the Cheese Haven,” said Adrienne. “Oh, the Cheese Haven. You want to hear about how we tricked your uncle into going to a tourist trap called the Cheese Haven, even though he was terrified of cheese?” Adrienne nodded. I sat back on the scratchy sofa where we’d been chatting over our phones after dinner. “Oh dear, I don’t really remember. I think one time when we were staying in a hotel, your grandfather opened a jar... Read more
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