Today I learned that asking the taller person in the house for help with your own willpower about snack food results in them putting said snack food at the back of the top shelf. In retrospect, this was not a good plan.

Well I was feeling great because I safely got my hair cut but then I ended up talking to dad and I ... I ended up basically hanging up on him becuase I just can't. I will never ever understand how he can think the things he does and I wish I was more ignorant of his thoughts on things.

The big contention was over Covid response and how he thinks it's a crafted narrative that Trump didn't do as good a job as he could have about Covid and caused more deaths and there's no way to know if someone else had been President if there would have been a better response. Trump LITERALLY pushed conspiracy theories and fake cures--- that people believed. And maybe if he hadn't done htat it would have been a little bit better. Maybe we would have had 200,000 deaths instead of as many as we do which wouldn't have been great but something. Or if there was a better federal plan on dealign with a shortage of PPE but when I brought up that -- "I don't think that's true, that's just the story the media is creating."

Also Dad "I don't know why the ballots aren't getting delivered, the person in charge should be finding out why and making it right"

Me: The person in charge is the one who is creating the problems, and then I outlined what those problems were. And then dad pulled the "are you sure that was their intent, how do you know this"

because it's been reported on for months.

skye, it sounds like we have the same dad. My dad has said shit like "The media lies about everything anyway," so I asked him "How on earth do you determine what's true, then?" and he said "Whatever sounds right to me." O_o

Which is basically how Trump thinks, and what makes him so appealing to voters like my dad. Although I think my dad didn't vote, thank god. (Not that it helped Ohio.)

I don't know what to think about , Dad most of the times he says he doesn't personally like Trump and then he'll say that whatever Trump does is bad but then kind of try to downplay or minimize whatever it is so it's not that bad or the Left is just as bad so it's both sides are to blame.

And I lied I didn't basically hang up on him, I literally did that.

I did text him and say what I did was childish and wrong and I'm regret what I did and that I love him. I was going to say "but I'm really upset about whatever" but then it doesn't really matter because what I did was rude and I should have ended the conversation earlier or not brought up topics but I did.

My dad won't change. I think I keep hoping since Mom did he will, but he is not going to. He's still the same man who went to Mom when I was 16 or 17 and said he was worried I was going to grow up to be a feminist.

ltc is in bed TCG is home, and thank goodness I made extra margaritas last night.

I've been able to avoid thinking about the election for the most part because of health woes for my mom and cats. Mom thinks she had a pancreatitis attack Monday night like the one that put her in the hospital years ago. Since it only happened the one night so far and she'd been having problems due to a hiatal hernia, I'm fervently hoping it was just the latter acting up when she had some acidic/oily salad dressing after a couple weeks of avoiding such. Both my cats are sick with what the vet thinks may be feline calicivirus, Jackson with a mild case that we're hopefully nipping in the bud and Molly badly enough that she's been at the animal hospital for a week and is currently on her second round of IV antibiotics.

Meanwhile the one healthy cat in the apartment is bouncing off the walls without the others to pester, and focusing his puppy-like need for attention on me 16 hours a day. Oh, and a workman my landlord hired demolished the back deck without warning this afternoon, so I have to find places for my plants to get sunlight yet avoid passing skateboarders, drunks, and homeless people with full bladders by tomorrow morning. (Kudos to the super, who built a sturdy set of steps to the back door from scrap wood in 20 minutes after surveying the wreckage. I'd have thought that the work of at least a full day for one man, even a very handy one!)

Those are not pleasant distractions, Matt. Health~ma all around!

Reading the results of the Wisconsin district races is infuriating. Dems win all their races by 30+ points and the GOP all of theirs by a comfortable 10%. So many "wasted" Dem votes by our ridiculous gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering in Wisconsin is criminal. 60 percent of the votes cast are Democrats and yet the state assembly is just 36 percent Democrat. After 2010, they did a number on the state and we are fucked for decades.

I have to go back to work tomorrow. Even when this is over, it won't be over. I'm tired.

askye, that sounds agonizing. I'm so sorry.

Related to your argument about Covid, I happened to look at the Johns Hopkins Covid tracker this morning at about 7:30, and then again at about 4 this afternoon, and in less than 10 hours over 1,000 Americans died. One of the worst death rates since the pandemic started.

Definitely one of the things that helped heal my relationship with my dad near the end of his life was our mutual loathing of Trump and his growing realization that, even though he was considered conservative by Bay Area standards, he was really a moderate Dem in the eyes of the entire rest of the country and if he wanted his old GOP back his only possible hope was to start *voting* like a moderate Dem. (Of course even his old genteel GOP was problematic in a billion ways that I could have hammered on, but I had to pick my battles to keep him moving forward--and I won just about every one I picked.)

If he'd been a Trump supporter or even a flabby apologist, I'm absolutely certain our relationship could not have survived.

Gerrymandering in Wisconsin is criminal.

2022 midterms, ISTG we're going to have to put as much energy into state-level races as House and Senate.

{{{{Buffistas}}}}, continued ~ma.