A friend of mine in Sarajevo tells me the joke there is "It's too bad there isn't an American Embassy in Washington DC."

I'm interested in the structure of what we're going to do about it. The FBI is finding participants and making arrests, and "no charge is off the table at this point." That is a good first step, but then the cases hit the courts, which McConnell has been working diligently to staff with friendly judges.

Also, the people who participated in the attempted coup and who hold positions of public trust, such as police, fire department, and military...how are they going to be dealt with? How are the organizations they are part of going to be addressed? I know that a certain type of person tends to gravitate toward those jobs, but how can we change the culture from toxic+conspiracy to responsible?

How are we going to deal with the senators and representatives who either supported and encouraged the lies about the election right up until the vote and coup, or actually voted on record to overturn our democratic process? Who is able to judge and sentence them?

It's almost like we need a new Committee on Un-American Activities, but hopefully one that uses actual evidence rather than hearsay and gossip. We could even call it McCarthyism, for the poster child for sedition.

This is chilling to me.

Yeah, I don’t know. Something needs to happen, doing nothing is very clearly no good, but there are some very wrong choices it would be easy to fall into as well.

I also vote for no COVID for shrift.

I like ironing too. but I also did it for a job for many years, and I am super fast. I actually prefer steaming as more satisfying, but also, the steamer always spits. I almost carried home an good old fashioned Harvey metal ironing board I saw in the garbage on my walk today, but it was too heavy. Later, I did see someone else had picked it up, so I am glad it has a home.

My Friend Maria’s mother, who is 10 years older than mine, seems to be succumbing to congestive heart failure. I will be sitting with her Thursday afternoons to give them a break, and looking into a home health care aid for Maria. Any thoughts on how to do this? She has mostly been working with the pulmonologist,not the PCP. Maria has medical power of attorney. I just love Maria’s mom, and their family generally lives to over 100, so I didn’t see this coming before my mom. She has been so good to me, even though I am a weird best friend that just became family. I described it to my boss that I am an honorary daughter in law. M was amused that her mom was really happy to have me come, but not one of her actual daughter in laws, who is super annoying. I asked my boss for flex time soI can help as much as possible, because Maria is a classroom teacher, and Philip (her brother who I work with) is hourly, and she was so accepting of our oddball relationship too, so it is nice.

Timelies all!

Mr. S is wearing his cat costume from Halloween over his pajamas.(He did wear regular clothes and went outside for a while earlier)

I’m glad your boss was reasonable about things, Sophia. But I am sorry about your friends’ mom.

The number of dangerously delusional people in the US—many with guns—is terrifying.

I used my nervous energy today to get my filing cabinet ready for 2021 records. Shredding old utility bills is satisfying.

I used mine to move the table out of the closet in the Junk Room, now office-ish, grocery shop, put away the tree and already boxed up decorations (now that there's a place to put it with the table moved; it's a whole domino thing), and get a bunch of donated items into my big ol' outdoor rolly cart (I love this thing!) to trek it down to the car. A productive day really snuck up on me.

Rub some of that productive~ma on me for tomorrow, Jen. I've been useless since Wednesday.

As long as I can figure out a way to transfer the productivity without the nervous energy that's powering it, because nobody needs that.

[link]

Snopes has debunked the story about the man who died of a heart attack during the riot.

It looks like the assisted living (residents and staff) will be getting our first vaccination on Friday!

Somehow this means that I'm MORE worried about getting Covid in the next couple days than I was in the previous 9 months. Brain, you are downright weird.