DOMESTIC SATURDAY

For the past days Spring has smiled on us with sunshine.  When it does that, the morning sun forms a big square on the yellow kitchen floor where the kittens (I call them the Sparrows) do their early tumbling.  I'm going to imitate Mueller by being domestic, picking up the debris, reshelving books, washing dishes, and trying out my new vacuum cleaner wand that sucks up sideways so a person can stick it in on tops of books to remove dust.  Also, I have this cute little gimmick called a Wonder Washer, which is really just a bucket with an agitator in the bottom, about the right size to do kitchen laundry like dishcloths or maybe the socks that fascinate the Sparrows so much because they are the right size to drag everywhere and because they're smelly.

I'm going around the house taking down the winter curtains, checking now and then to see whether the snow has melted enough for me to get into what I call the "Bunkhouse," which is really a storage shed.  The rooftop snow everywhere is about gone, so I'll see if there have been disastrous leaks. Of course I'll also check every now and then to see if Barr has released anything.  (I still haven't recovered a straight face after Colbert referred to him as the frog who swallowed John Goodman.)  

The bull tomcats in the nabe have been so determined to get into this house at night that they broke the cat flap!  Not the hinge, but the little plastic flap!  I made a temp fix with duct tape -- big strips of the stuff across the hole.  In the gaps the occasional baleful eye of a frustrated tomcat peers in at us.  A new catdoor is in the mail.

Conferring as injury veterans, some of us discussed the fact that pain killers as strong as opioids are simply off the market.  All docs and pharm folks are afraid of the paperwork necessary and the threatened consequences of misuse.  We're shifting to vibrators (They don't have to look like private parts.) and gizmos with faint electric pulses.  But opioids have a place and simply bureaucratizing them is no solution.

The discussion about the Mueller report varies from the sophistication of Seth Abramson, who has written two books, "Proof of Collusion" and "Proof of Conspiracy" (in case you need an overview) and those who fall for the TV series interpretations in which one brilliant man saves everyone.  No one is talking about China, Mafia, world-wide money webs.  No one is realizing that no matter what the report says, what we know so far has destroyed every henchman whether or not they are sitting in the slammer yet.  (Safer place for some.)  There's still a flurry of Brexit in the background.  The nations who were once the salvation of the world -- it was only a little while ago in the years that I was a child -- are now ridiculous, helpless, and looking at famine.  FAMINE.  (Like Ireland!)  Their citizens can't get their meds or even clean water.

How desperate was Putin to think that using Trump as a pawn would work?  A side show cannot save a circus.

I won't think about that for a while.  Now the sun is growing dusky and they say snow will be back, though it will be rain in the afternoons.  Curry's  Market was selling oxalis plants (four leaf clovers) just the right size for the kitchen windowsill next to the bits of geranium that always break off.  I put the ends in tumblers and soon they'll have roots for pots outside.

All winter I've been pitching empty cardboard boxes into the space between the two banks of filing cabinets in the garage.  Now I'm making the boxes flat and piling them so I can begin to empty and remove some cabinets.  It's clearer now which things I saved just in case, so can be taken away, and which things are important to keep. 

The world has changed.  The real work of redesigning and refitting our culture is already underway.  OUT with the electoral college.  OUT with electronic voting.  OUT with gerrymandering.  OUT with poll taxes.    But there are still mysteries.  I understand Trump, a hollow tin man.  But what accounts for the Repubs?  They have destroyed their party.  Many of them will soon be dead.  At least Nunes has left us his cow.