I usually name the neighborhood stray cats after the feast day on which they first visit the garden, but Goretti came a few days late. I was outside, enjoying the breeze after a stifling few days, wishing it would rain again. This hasn’t been the best of summers. It’s far from the worst, as my longtime readers know. It’s peaceful. But it’s nearly four weeks since I’ve had a drive. Jimmy says the needed tester can be rented for... Read more
Hello folks, This is not a real post, it’s just my monthly blogkeeping post for organizing and telling you what I did when I wasn’t on Patheos. This month’s won’t be long, because I managed to do nothing except blog on Patheos, which is incredibly frustrating. I did do a collaboration with Skylight, and you should definitely read that and tell folks how much you like it in case they want to do a collaboration again, because I had... Read more
It’s not a good summer for the zucchini. It’s not a good summer for anything just now. It’s been unbearably hot, and it hasn’t rained nearly enough. My gut has been sick from the Augmentin I took to cure the other sick for the last three weeks: more than a month of sick all together. The car has been sick for three weeks. Jimmy will get to it just as soon as he has the time, so we can... Read more
The mother of the Baker Street Irregulars sent me a text. She texts me every day: a recipe for a dish made of mixed canned food, things I can’t eat due to my gluten sensitivity and PCOS. Sometimes she texts an obviously AI-generated image of a weird new snack, like Twix bars made with apple pie filling and a caramel coating instead of chocolate. Sometimes it’s a link to a news story about where to get free sneakers from... Read more
We got through the feast of Saint Maria Goretti, again. My longtime readers don’t need to be told my history of posts about Saint Maria Goretti. I insist every year that she was a beautiful, generous soul whose perseverance and forgiveness are a great example for us all, and that her hagiography has been exploited to shame rape victims in nasty ways. Being the victim of sexual violence is never impure. If Alessandro had succeeded in raping her and... Read more
I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a video game before. I don’t think I’ve been so excited about a video game in more than a decade. You have to understand, I grew up with Cyan games. They were one of my autistic obsessions. I was a lonely girl, a girl with no proper diagnosis because high-masking autism in girls was not something the medical community knew about in the 90s. I was bullied in Catholic schools until I suffered... Read more
Let’s talk about Ascension Catholic Parish again. As I mentioned just a week ago, this typical-looking Catholic parish in the affluent suburb of Chesterfield, Missouri, became the subject of a media uproar when they published a very strange ad in their bulletin. The ad called for young men of the parish to join the “Legion of Sancta Lana” and become militiamen ready to wear a white uniform and take up arms to protect the parish. The Militia would feature combat... Read more
So, here we are. It’s been an incredibly frustrating several days, if you follow political news in any way. Tomorrow is Independence Day, and I’m not exactly looking forward to it. I am incredibly discouraged. Truthfully I am feeling a little gaslit, because I know what I saw on Debate Night. You can verify that I’m telling the truth, because I live tweeted all my impressions of the debate as they happened. I honestly didn’t see that Biden had dementia.... Read more
I wanted to say a few words about today’s Supreme Court decision. Today, the Supreme Court ruled effectively letting the president get away with crimes– in a carefully worded way, so that only presidents whom the courts wish to get away with crimes can get away with crimes. It dovetails nicely with their ruling last week, that courts are the ones who can decide what government agencies are allowed to do. In one way, this decision turns the president into... Read more
It was the kind of weekend I haven’t had in awhile: the kind where everything goes wrong. Things have gone fairly well for several months. Not spectacular, always a little anxious, but well. 2024 hasn’t been bad. I’ve been happier than I’ve been in years. My stalker is gone; my daughter is thriving at her new school; my garden is beautiful; I’ve finally got a little circle of friends in the neighborhood. I like writing for the paper when... Read more
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