Good day, friends.
*Please forgive the grammatical errors.
I'm going to jump all over the place so please bear with me. Lots to chat about.
First, God rest Val Kilmer in peace. What a talent. A true loss in the movie world. Gone too soon. I love Kilmer in so many films. I have a picture of me in my bedroom in 1991 after The Doors came out pointing at framed photos of Val Kilmer in Jim Morrison black leather. If I didn't look like a Goth junkie in too much pancake makeup I would post the photos. (Actually, I don't think I fixed my blog yet to post photos. Busy.) Google AI wrote Val Kilmer is now "cancer free" in its description of Kilmer's throat cancer. Well done AI. Well done. Good grief.
Every American GENX is watching Tombstone tonight. I just fired it up on Disney+.
I'm waiting for my cancer screen results. In early March I suddenly lost 14 pounds in two weeks. That's a pound a day and that's not normal for a sober healthy person. All the prescriptions I'm on I've been on since 2021. The only new prescription is Levothyroxine and I've been on that since last summer. And while I did lose weight the first three months on Levothyroxine, which is normal you either gain weight or lose weight depending on the person, but this recent sudden weight loss is something else. I wasn't hungry every day. I could go two days on just one apple, caffeine, and water. After eating the apple, I completely lost my appetite. Food made me sick just to look at it or smell it. For women we have to be very careful how much info we give certain male doctors, or they'll deem us depressed or suicidal if we say we lost our appetites. Luckily my doctor was out, and I had a female doctor who prescribed the Zenwise enzyme. She said that she and her entire family take it for all kinds of medical conditions like IBS, pancreatic care, and diabetes. I'm a diabetic. I've been taking Zenwise for a month now and feel 50% better, some days more. Some days I can eat just fine, other days food makes me sick to my stomach. I highly recommend Zenwise nonetheless. On my eat days everything passes through like it's supposed to. Still, I'm not back to how I was before January. One day, just like that, last January something in my body quit working, or isn't working like it's supposed to. Just to be safe, I started my cancer screenings. It's a lot. Everywhere you can get cancer they have a screening for it. Once you get your test result for one screening and it's negative you go on to the next screening. Exterior screenings are cheaper, so you start there. It gets more and more expensive depending on what thing they have to stick up into your body and where. Is it a finger, a camera, a wand ultrasound, and where in your body are they stuffing it. Some days I wonder what I'm doing all this for but in the end the answer is always the same, 56 is too young to die.
The big dumb wannabe oompa loompa in the White House, and his pet nazi saluting pigeon want to cut healthcare programs along with education, and government sectors that actually help people. I agree 100% there are too many useless government jobs. If you really want to cut spending and close the social security offices forever, cut each American a check for all the money taken out of our paychecks for social security since we were 16 years old. Then you can just shut those offices down completely forever - but first you have to give us our money back. Shouldn't be hard. Y'all know how much we've made every year, where we've worked, just give us our money back and we'll call it square. GIVE US OUR MONEY BACK. Clearly investing in social security was a sham retirement "savings" program because every politician democrat and republican has "borrowed" from social security and not paid it back. Not one single president has paid back what they "borrowed".
I'm going to mention the Midwest a few times in this blog. For starters, you should know the only thing Midwesterners hate more that politicians are their wealthy friends. Hate them. Elon Musk sticking a cheesehead hat on his DEI noggin was just embarrassing. Funny thing, Wisconsin probably would have voted republican had Elon Musk stayed home. Did he drink a beer with a plate of cheese curds anywhere? 'Cos that would have been even more embarrassing than the cheesehead hat. I can totally hear Elon Musk asking what part of the cheese curds come from. (The front half, bro. The front half of the cheese, DUH! You Xenomorph alien reject.) I'm not a fan of cheese curds. I take issue with anything that squeaks when I chew it.
And speaking of the Midwest, the storyline to my book has taken a rather sudden jerk in a new direction. Backstory: I grew up a Minnesota townie. It was a very small town in the 70's and 80's. I was born in 1969. It was mostly prairie land back then. Little House on the Prairie - esque, to be exact before the big migration and immigration boom of 2000. My hometown is directly in the middle sandwiched in between farms and deep thick woods. We all grew up speaking one dialect of German or another. Speaking German and knowing how to ice skate were kind of must-haves by second grade. I can't ice skate anymore unfortunately not since my stroke/s plus I'm old and I wouldn't make it around the rink one time without my ankles shattering into a million pieces. Not having anyone to speak German to since 1989 that too has gotten sloppy. On occasion I'll take little refresher courses online. German is one of the easiest languages for Americans to learn. A few months back home sharpens my German up some. Minnesota early on was primarily German. There wasn't a huge population of Swedes. The only reason people outside of Minnesota thought Swedes dominated Minnesota was because Swedes brought the church of Sweden with them to Minnesota. The church of Sweden is the loosest form of Lutheranism there is. Martin Luther (the priest who found Lutheranism) was German but that's not why Minnesotans spoke German. The earliest pioneers of Minnesota were German though I think many of them were also French, and those pioneers were German Mennonites and French Amish. Mennonites and Amish don't advertise their church. You have to be born into the Mennonite and Amish colonies to be Mennonite or Amish. It's not like you can just show up to their colonies one day and be all, "Hi. I want to join your fancy group." They don't advertise their church; they don't want outsiders in it. Swedes however do. The church of Sweden, like all protestants and Catholics, advertise their church. These churches want bodies. Small towns are different in every corner of this country but the one similarity all small towns share is God. Christianity and Catholicism are HUGE in small towns and yes, Christan and Catholic are different religions. Very different. Same God, just different ways to find Him, praise Him, receive Him, and talk to Him. Don't even get me started on the Pantheists! In the 70's German was still a very dominant language. I have a theory that most of the French Amish moved north into Canada once the German Mennonite colonies moved in. My book has a lot of small-town Minnesota vibes. It's what I know. The 70's and 80's marked a lot of struggling Midwest farms. There are abandoned farmhouses from the 70's rotting away in Minnesota still to this day. Minnesota is one of those states where the bulk of the people live in or around the twin cities. The further out you get the more you better be comfortable with horror movie dark nights out in the middle of nowhere, guns, beer guts, racism, no teeth, and dealing with 7th grade education - but always God. So much happens out there in between the corn fields. That's where my book now begins.
The baby eagles in Big Bear CA are so frigging big now! The baby eagles have big ol' Beaky Buzzard dumbo feet. So cute. Y'all remember Beaky Buzzard dontcha?
The remainder of the week is a nutty one. Doctors, cancer screening, wait for test results, an assortment of various appointments, etc. I was going to move into the valley but man it's just so expensive. Some people legit want 15K a month for a room. Just a room. Shared bathroom. I pay 1K a month where I am, and I pretty much have my own bathroom. Plus they leave me alone which is nice. On occasion the homeowner and I chat. Language barrier and all. AND I just met the homeowner's cat! Pretty indoor kitty. A tuxie. I had no idea they even had a cat! So cute. So now I can never move out. I met their cat! There's a neighborhood cat who has an injured tail. This kitty is so pretty. She's grey with puffs of white fluff. Pretty little friendly face. I'm trying to get her used to seeing me so I can take her to the vet to fix her tail. I don't know if someone cut her tail off or if she lost it in a fight, either way there's some exposed tail at the end of the nubby without fur or skin around it and I don't want it to get infected. I want to take her to the vet and get it wrapped up. I just have to catch her first which is really hard to do.
I'm finally going to Sheldon's gravesite tomorrow after my appointment. It'll be an emotional day. I'll give Andy a call and see if he wants to go with me.
Be good to each other. Being back home in southern California I'm reminded that the state itself, homeless, and governor aren't the problem here, it's the mentality of oh so many residents. I'm reminded how people out here don't even buy their friends coffee. We all have Zell, Paypal, Venmo, etc., one person pays among your party of six. Seriously, how hard is that? Some people out here really make it unnecessarily complicated. When I lived in Hollywood I had a friend crash on my couch for almost six years. I never once asked her for rent or money. I don't even think she asked me. She just started crashing on it one day. In the Midwest and east coast one person pays, then the other friend pays the next time, or like I said we all have Zell and Paypal! I don't know what the malfunction is in SoCal. No one shares a ride to work. A group of five people, after a group of three people, after a group of four people buying coffee holds up the line so everyone can pay individually with a credit card and half of those people still don't know how to use the credit card machine. SoCal has to get out of the me-me-me-first-only-me-me-me-matters mentality. Selfish. Just be a good person. One good deed a day makes a world of difference.
If any man has ear to hear, let him hear.
--Mark 4:23
God bless!