I wore two masks today when I went to vote

The only elected position was school board but the incumbent is a scientist a physicist who believes in science and teaching facts and the people who were running against her or anti-vaxxer trumpy freaks

So even though I don't have any kids so I really don't have any skin in the game for school board I went ahead and went to vote

Plus there were eight amendments to the Texas Constitution that we had to vote on

Didn't mostly see all that important either especially since I don't really know

When there are amendments to the Texas Constitution they have like a little summary but the little summary doesn't necessarily let you know all of the implications that might come from voting one way or the other

So I try to do a little research on it

But I couldn't really find a lot of analysis she know like with the bathroom bill there was a lot of analysis because the way that was phrased made it sound basically like

Hey we don't want men coming in the women's restroom right

And if you just read that it's like well no I don't particularly want men coming in the women's restroom

But that wasn't what that was about that was a transgender thing so I mean you have to try to find out what the f*** they're actually talking about

So what I actually found was all the major market newspapers and well I guess not all of them but like Austin American statesman the Dallas morning News and then there's a conservative group called something like the freedom coalition and then there's a progressive democratic political organization that's called like progress Texas or something like that

And most of them were like the freedom coalition was against it and the everybody else was for it or the opposite right so it's pretty obvious

If the quote freedom coalition end quote feels this way then I probably feel the opposite way so if there's some nefarious content that's just not being discussed well you know

I don't like that I think it's b******* but I could see where if they printed the actual wording it would probably confuse people cuz it'd probably be in some kind of legal jargon I just don't know I don't like it it makes me uncomfortable

Like there was a this one that says people in nursing homes should be able to designate one family member caregiver whatever who can't be refused access to them

Well I mean that seems reasonable but if you say can't be refused access what that's going to mean in all practicality is you know people who aren't vaccinated who are sick or whatever are going to be able to just be traipsing in the nursing home and they're like if it passes then we'll come up with some you know alternative measures but basically the point is to work around the nursing homes ability to keep people out

And I've got very mixed feelings on that

Because while I don't believe that the poor people in the nursing home should be kept from their loved ones and in fact it might contribute to the deterioration of their position if they if they are deterioration of their health position or mental state

And nursing homes aren't necessarily known for being places where the people who live there are always treated with the utmost care you know sometimes nursing homes or abusive so the idea that they don't have any kind of oversight from the family that isn't so good either

But if you have a situation where people are just walking into the nursing home I mean without their being any sort of ability for the nursing home to say you cannot come in and unless you meet these specifications

And so then what I really want to know is what are you really saying because on the one hand I want to vote for this but on the other hand I feel like I need to vote against it to protect the people who live there

I don't like it I don't like it at all

And the voting booths were different for the last I don't know like 20 years at least 20 years when I've gone into a voting booth it's had push buttons and little turn dial and you vote and it gives you the option to check your vote to make sure that it's right and several times it hasn't been right I've had to go back and correct it but if you don't check it you just submit it then if if it's wrong then it's just voted wrong

And I'm always super careful so I feel like when it was wrong what happened was that it changed it

And it was always a situation where I was voting for a Democrat and it changed it to a Republican every single time but I guess since I never vote for Republicans I don't know what else it could change it to sometimes there've been libertarians or things that could have changed it to

So I've never felt very good about those voting machines I always liked the ones where you have your little thing and you stick it in and you have a little book that you flip pages on and you've got a little punchy thing and you punch holes I liked those punch cards make sense to me but then of course there's all that hanging Chad b*******

But this time they gave me a piece of paper and I take the piece of paper and it's got an arrow and I stick it into the machine and I do all my little voting things and then it automatically takes me to a place where I check it and it's like is this all right if this is all right and you're ready to print your ballot then hit submit so I submit my thing I'm a bob and it starts printing on the piece of paper and then when it's done I take it out and I have to take it over to this other person who has to scan it in their machine and then after it scans it and it makes the little waving American flag you know then it's recorded and the paper supposedly drops into the bottom of the recorder thing so that's their paper copy

Well you know that seems good I guess I think there's it's good that there's a paper copy for sure

Cuz it's not like that other s*** can't be hacked

I don't know it was just kind of weird I voted to school it's an elementary school

It's pretty close to where I live

Like I don't know maybe a mile a mile and a half if you lived someplace where you could walk I could probably have walked well not now I'm like all looking trying to decide normally when I voted I go to the far street and I go down and I park down you know a block or two and I walk back and I'm like now I'm like no I'm not doing that

How close can I get

And my clogs they're not really such good walking shoes

It's funny because clogs are the shoes I think of as the type of shoes I wear

And had one pair of these dansko there's a name for them I can't remember the name right now but had one pair that was kind of a natural leather color that I wore to Sanibel one time and they really haven't gotten worn out since then because I hardly ever wear them because I couldn't wear them to work I had to wear like tennis shoe type shoes to work and then I tended to wear those tennis shoe shoes to wherever

But then as soon as I wasn't working there anymore I was like okay well I have these clogs and so if I would go out I would just wear those

And over the course of the last year or so that I've been going to the studio and stuff I've picked up a dark green pair that's the right size that I wear and then I've picked up two other pairs a brown one and a gray one that are the next size up that I can wear if I'm going to be you know on my feet all day so that when my feet swell or whatever they still fit

So I'm traipsing around in my clogs saying man these aren't very good walking shoes but I really didn't have to walk that far

And then I went to the HEB and I got my booster and I'm still wearing two masks

And I forgot to wash my glasses with soap so they're fogging up really bad and I was getting like I don't know slightly dizzier slightly disoriented walking around the grocery store and at first I thought it was just the glasses being kind of fogged up and whatnot

But then after I came home I still felt kind of dizzy

My arm I get them to give me the shots in my left arm because then if my arm becomes you know to sort of lift or whatever I'm not as incapacitated I don't have to like do everything with that arm and say owie owie owie

It doesn't hurt nearly as much this time I wouldn't even really call it pain at all it's the muscle is kind of hard and slightly swollen so I look like I'm super buff on that side and it it's just stiff but it's not bad

And I have a headache but I've had a headache for several days off and on

I texted my mother to let her know in case she didn't know that there was voting and that the HEB had booster shots of Pfizer and moderna I don't think they have Johnson & Johnson but I'm not sure

And I also wanted to let her know that since I got my booster today there's a possibility that I won't feel good tomorrow and I didn't know if we were planning to do anything tomorrow or not

I thought we probably were

And she's like no it's supposed to rain tomorrow I don't want to be out in the rain but then she's like call me

I had bought some donuts at the grocery store and I had coffee and I had it heated up to just the right temperature for drinking right now because I was going to have donuts so then I had to call her and then I had to heat up my coffee again afterwards because it was cold completely cold after we got done talking

But she gave me a lecture about how if I don't drive my car enough that eventually the battery isn't going to be able to be charged and I have will have to buy another battery and I'm like right that's what just happened

Cuz I bought a battery like less than a year ago and then I just bought this battery from AAA

And she's like did you get your credit for your battery that you bought from AAA less than a year ago and I'm like well 

A) I didn't buy that battery from AAA I bought it from the car place and

B) it wasn't the car place is fault that I didn't use the battery the way it was supposed to be used so I didn't feel like it was appropriate to tell them they needed to pay me for it not last in the amount of time it was supposed to last

And she's like oh

Yeah okay

I mean I basically jumped the car whenever I needed to drive anywhere

And there's only so many times that you can probably do that

But I couldn't make myself leave

I couldn't make myself drive around

And I still don't feel right I don't feel like I'm able to focus enough on all the different things that you have to do you know when you're driving there's all this stuff that you do but you just do it you don't think about it you just do it but I'm out of practice enough that I

I mean it's not so bad driving down to the grocery store but even the grocery store the parking lot there's all these people and they aren't looking and it's it's just so hard

And whenever I get dressed like I'm going to leave the house the cat just looks at me like what the f*** are you doing

And it seems like hardly anybody out there is wearing masks I mean some people are

At the voting maybe half of the people were wearing masks I don't think so though but maybe

At the grocery store there were some people wearing masks but not all of them not more than half of them and a lot of people that work there weren't wearing masks

And probably they've all been vaccinated because I mean they do the vaccines there

Maybe they've all had boosters I kind of doubt it though

I guess I feel better that I got my booster

I don't know I don't feel very

Sane I guess is The word I'm looking for

I mean I'm pretty sure that the covid numbers are down

And I've been taking the vitamin d

There shouldn't be as much need to be afraid

But I don't think it's just all about being afraid to go out in the contagion and disease I think there's just now in addition to whatever residual fear there is of contagion and disease I think there's also just fear of going out it's a little bit less if my mom is driving and I'm just kind of riding and going to a place where I feel reasonably safe because I don't have to be the same kind of level of alert and aware and she's not really that great of a driver so it's not like that necessarily feels safer exactly

But it's just driving feels kind of disorienting and extremely overstimulating and the outside is overstimulating it's bright and it's loud and it's crowded and I just have an aversion to it now

But anyway I think I'm going to try to make myself drive everyday or almost every day I may not do it tomorrow if I'm feeling bad or if it's super rainy I've been having an aversion to driving in the rain cuz of PTSD for quite some time now but I'm going to have to make myself drive around because I can't just keep buying new batteries and I'm going to have to kind of get over it at some point

I'm not really sure what the fall looks like as far as

I've almost got everything rephotographed for the Etsy shop but I feel like there's probably going to be some things for the holiday season for trying to sell things and whatnot

I'm going to be 55 in January

I had all these kind of plans for things that I thought I was going to have you know kind of accomplished by then

But I don't think most of them are going to happen

I do want to lose more weight

I'm not going to be at my goal wait by my 55th birthday

I think since the last time I told you how much I weighed I think I gained weight and now I've lost weight again so I'm more or less back at that weight which if I remember correctly was about 5 lb heavier than my pre pandemic weight

I just ate some Cheetos this evening though so I don't know that may have fluctuated up donuts and Cheetos in the same day

I probably haven't had Cheetos for 6 months

I had donuts someday that I drove my car that I bribed to myself

I think maybe if I can manage to be sane again by my 55th birthday I will consider that to be good enough now

I need to get healthier and less paranoid about my health

Figure my s*** out

And not be so afraid of everything

My mom's going to get a booster though and she's not going to get Johnson and Johnson though she wants moderna which might be because of some report that I read article that I forwarded to her that basically said that if you had Johnson and Johnson you were probably better off getting a booster of either Pfizer or moderna rather than getting another Johnson and Johnson and moderna has pretty much the best track record apparently

When Dr fouche got vaccinated they asked him what which one he got and he said moderna and at that point I was like okay well that's the best one and that's the one I want but I didn't know that I would get that and I wouldn't have turned down a Pfizer shot to get moderna you know I just wanted to be vaccinated desperately but I'm very happy that I managed to get moderna for the first two shots and then the booster

Because really the first two shots shouldn't have been so close together ideally for your immune system to work optimally on it but they were trying to get everybody you know as close to full immunity as they could so they pushed it and I think I was like 4 days earlier or 5 days early getting my second shot so you know that was pushing it too but I got my second shot I think April 21st I believe that's right

And then I got this booster November 2nd so that's a little bit more than 6 months right out about 6 months

So I figure you know I'm about as vaccinated as I can be

You know and maybe I'm just paranoid but I don't come from a long line a healthy people

And I'm too old to feel impervious

But I've drilled down into the fear of a little too hard I think

After I went to the grocery store there's a torchy's tacos that opened like I don't know a little bit before the pandemic that's in the same parking lot as a grocery store and you know torchy's tacos is from Austin it's supposed to be amazing I've never eaten there and I've wanted to

And so you know I'm like well you know I got my two masks on and whatever and I could sit outside

And the people working there aren't wearing masks nobody's wearing masks

So I go in and I order and they got the good ice and I'm sitting outside and she brings the food

And I got a trailer park and a Mr Orange

Trailer park is like a chicken tender with some lettuce and tomato and kind of a jalapeno ranch type dressing on a you can get flour or corn tortilla so it's a soft taco so not like a real taco cuz real tacos or crispy

I mean the Baja tacos fish tacos in California they aren't crispy there soft tacos but they're really more about the slaw almost well I don't think I don't know if you call it slaw but you know that stuff that's on them that's basically like slaw if that's good then they're probably going to be good

And this had kind of an element of that except it was a chicken tender and it wasn't really slow cuz it was like lettuce and tomato and whatnot but it it was not like the lettuce and tomato that's on a crispy taco

I'm in the Mr Orange was a piece of salmon that was blackened with like Cajun spices with some lettuce and tomato kind of stuff and a sauce that was it was like a green sauce although a Texas green sauce when you can get a green dipping sauce in Texas it's not like a New Mexico one it's tomatillos and cilantro and jalapeno it's it's got some heat to it but it's not super hot and it's not like a cook sauce it's like a it's more of a raw green sauce it's really tasty so it was like that but with some avocado mixed in so it was a little bit like a cross between a really green fresh sauce salsa avocado and then like a s*** ton of garlic

I've had guacamole with a lot of garlic in it I've never really had a fresh green sauce with a lot of garlic in it but I mean this was different this was like I wanted to smear it on bruschetta you know

And ultimately I didn't really like that taco that much because it just had a little too much going on I mean it had the salmon flavor and then the blackened flavor and then all the different flavors that were going on in that sauce and so it was just it was kind of fighting against itself a little although I had to give him kudos for the kind of regional fusion but then I went back in to get some more tea and some ice and it weren't very many people in there but I forgot to put my mask back on so I'm like walking through there with no mask on and then I kind of freaked out a little bit but I couldn't really do it because my hands were full and again I wasn't close to anybody

I guess it was good

The music that's playing inside somehow seemed exactly like something that an Austin place would be playing I didn't really recognize the music but I was like you know shaking my head all around and I was really kind of almost want to dance

So anyway

I'm starting listening to the fourth book in the series I bought it this morning then before I really listened to any of it the novels came but I'm just really into these books so I thought well I really want to listen to another one and then maybe I'll read those two novels before I get the next couple it's like 12 days or 13 days something like that about 2 weeks until I get more credits

So we'll see if I managed to keep from buying them all they're seven and serious I think I said that we're nine but they're seven this is book four

I got myself all depressed about politics

I mean I don't think the Democrats are going to pull this off

The Republicans have already got the laws in place so that they won't need to have an insurrection next time they'll just do their little imaginations that they've got already in place and just quietly have their coup

I you know I know that all the Democrats they want to make the world a better place and they don't all agree on exactly what that means and mansion and cinema (sp) are gumming up the works

And the progressives aren't willing to give in because they want to fix things they promised they were going to fix things and I get it and I want those things fixed and I want to live in a wonderful you know Star Trek utopia where everybody just does what they're good at and nobody has to worry about money and all that kind of stuff but I think it's too late

They think they're going to make things better and then people are going to see that they're making things better and they're going to vote for Democrats in the midterms but I'm afraid that's not what's going to happen

And I'm saying to myself very seriously you know you can't even bring yourself to leave the house but what you really probably ought to be asking yourself is what other country should you move to because I don't think you live in a democracy anymore or if you do now marginally how much longer is that going to last

I kind of have disconnected myself from a lot of that stuff I was focused on the s*** that was happening here a little bit more and that mean it's not just here

I've got myself a little depressed

Good night sweetheart I love you very much 💋