Early voting began today in Delaware. I was considering voting early but decided not to, fearing long lines. Well, I was right. The wait was an hour and half to two hours. I can't stand that long. Besides, there are only a few early voting locations. On election day my regular voting location is right here in my development. I think I'll wait until then to cast my vote from Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I cannot wait to vote for Kamala and against that traitor to our country Donald Trump.
Trump has succeeded in terrorizing and intimidating many Republicans and even owners of newspapers like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times but not me and millions of people like me who are not in the Faux News silo bubble and Cult of Trump. What a shame they can't see the pure evil that Trump is. What a shame. If Trump is elected he wants to punish his enemies. Kamala says if she is elected she wants to help ALL the people. Trump wants to be a dictator. They actually believe if they elect Trump groceries will be cheaper. Wait until he institutes his tariffs which is just another word for a national sales tax.
I would like to say I feel sorry for those Trump supporters but I don't. As my late friend Wayne Juneau used to say "You can't fix stupid."
I've wasted too much of my life trying to please everybody. This is my new mantra. Better late than never. Especially now that I've lost so many of my family (my brother especially who is totally MAGA) and others who I once considered my friends. I cannot abide our ignorance and hate in supporting Donald Trump for president. I am done with you.
In a few weeks I'll be eighty-three years old. In the pat eighty or so years I have discovered that people you let into your life will either respect you and your views or they will not. If they do not, then do not waste one more second of your precious time on them. Nothing I would or could ever say will convince them otherwise because they are lost in the cult. I will live the rest of my life with those who respect me. I don't have any more time to waste on these people who do not respect me.
Every morning, when I get up, I open the curtains next to my bed and look out my window to the oval planter where my bird baths are located.
In early spring, robins arrive signaling the start of a new breeding season. For the next three months until the start of summer in June, there is a lot of activity at those bird baths.
When their young are grown enough to leave their nexts, the robins, with their young take off for the South to spend the winter. They will return the following year in early spring.
Then there are those robins who can't make the annual return trip to spend their winter in the South. These robins are too old to make the trip. They stay here in the North, where they were born. The robin in this video is one such robin. This will probably be his/her winter. We all die. Even robins.
Which brings to my mind. Pat and I have planned our trip to Palm Springs this February. We haven't been to Palm Springs since 2019. We used to go every year in February for Modernism Week. Little did we know when we returned from our last trip in February of 2019 that COVID would basically close the country down. Then in 2021 Bill had his strokes and for the next three years I was his full-time caregiver.
Now COVID is behind us and Bill has died. Pat and I are able to travel again. However, now there are some significant differences.
My income has been cut in half because I no longer work at the hotel nor do I have Bill's Social Security income to help with household expenses. I can still manage to keep Casa Tipton-Kelly afloat but gone are my free spending days when I could travel four times a year with Pat. Also, my physical limitations are greater now. My arthritis has progressed to the point where I have trouble walking. I used to be able to walk and walk. Walking was one of my big treasures. I always liked walking and could walk for miles without tiring. These days walking is painful and a chore. But I force myself to walk to keep my circulation going. Walking is absolutely the best exercise for older folk like me.
This November I will be eighty-three years old. That is OLD. I don't have that many trips left in me at this age. A fact I have to face.
So this year this old robin is going to make one more trip to Palm Springs but I think it will be my last trip.
There comes a time one has to face facts. I have a beautiful home here in southern coastal Delaware. I won't freeze this winter like that robin probably will.
I'll keep track of this robin. I'm pretty sure that robin is sending me a signal. The signal that my time to leave isn't too far away. And you know what folks? I'm not sad. I'm not afraid. In fact, I look forward to the next phase of my soul's existence. My eighty-three years of life on this earthly planet, my "school" has been quite interesting and fulfilling. I'm ready.
This is a video of my trip to visit Pat in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. A warning, it is long (eighteen minutes plus) but interesting. At least I think it is interesting. The reason I say this because whenever I post one of these compilation videos I receive no comments. Boring Ron! That's okay folks, I post this blog for my therapy and for history. I like to think that someone like me two hundred years from now will see this video I'm posting on this blog and say "Wow! Look at how weird they lived in the two thousands!" I realize folks that videos like this probably have about as much appeal as sitting down and watching your neighbor's photo albums of their kids or your elderly neighbor's slides of their summer vacation in Europe, which I actually did once when Bill and I lived in Philadelphia. Oh I'll never forget THAT experience. Our neighbors George and Flossie Kehrer, the nicest folks but oh man, SO BORING sitting through an hour of their visit to Germany, especially when George got stuck on one city "I think this is Cologne, or was it Koblenz Flossie?" After he batted that around for about five minutes Flossie said (thank goodness) "It doesn't matter." Oh well, it was a beautiful pictures of a cathedral in one of those German cities but I digress.
This video is of my trip from Delaware (my ride to the Philadelphia International Airport) to the Buffalo New York airport where Pat picked me up and took me over the border to Canada to Hamilton, Ontario where he was living at that time in a condo at the Royal Connaught Hotel. You'll see me and Pat at a party his neighbors who lived in a penthouse above him, invited us to their soiree. Also visits to various vegan restaurants, IKEA and his friends Paul and Deb who lived in nearby Port Dover. Pat and I never do anything dramatic but we always have a good time together because we ARE together. Never bored when I'm with Pat.
Again, this video is over eighteen minutes long. You've been forewarned.
Yet another Sad Saturday here at Casa Tipton-Kelly.
For the rest of my life, I will always miss that wonderful man who insisted on coming in to my life on that rainy July day in Philadelphia in 1964.
I am so thankful Bill never gave up on me.
These days I am comforted by my many memories of Bill and thankful that I had so many years with him.
I lead a comfortable life now, living out what remaining days I have left on this earth. This earthly existence because I am confident that our souls to ascend to a heavenly plain after we exit our old, tired and worn bodies.
Bill was so tired when he died last February 22, 2024 at 12:20 AM early Saturday morning. He wanted to go but he didn't want to leave me. But it was his time.
I was so fortunate than many people in that I had such a long loving relationship with this wonderful man. I really don't have anything to complain about.
Bill did not die in pain like so many. Yes, he was in a great deal of discomfort because his body and brain was failing him. What ultimately killed him was his brain short circuiting, "cerebrovascular disease" so says his death certificate.
I hated seeing him the last three days of his life at the hospice center where he received no food or water. I can't help but think me must have been suffering but I was assured by those at the hospice center that he wasn't aware of what was going on. He was unconscious the whole time I was with him. One time when I was holding his hand and whispering into his ear that I loved him, I felt his hand tighten on my hand ever so slightly. I would like to think somewhere deep in his well of unconsciousness that he heard me and was sending me a signal.
Since he died he has been in contact with me, mainly through telepathy and the blinking of that one burned out Christmas light over the curtain rod in our living room. For the last three weeks that light has been out but when I received news of the death of my former boss at the hotel, I wanted to tell Bill but of course could not. And wouldn't you know it, that evening, as I was doing the dishes, that light came on. That was Bill telling me that Ted (my former boss) was "up there" and they were "doing just fine." And I believe him. What a comfort that Bill still stays in touch with me.
These days, as autumn descends upon us (my favorite time of the year), I am living a comfortable life. No impending medical treatments. Yesterday I had a wonderful handyman to a superb job on paining my window cornices. He was so kind to me.
Pat and I continue our long distance relationship. Yes, he's still having major problems with his druggie neighbors and is pursuing legal action against them along with the neighbor on the other side of their three house units all next to each other.
Each day we're one day closer to the presidential election. Kamala is going to blow The Traitor Trump out of the water come November 5th. Trump and his traitorous enablers will of course try to overturn the election but the will of the people will have spoken. I'm hoping for a completed Democratic takeover of the presidency, House and Senate. For a generation. Yes, that sounds about right. Next up.....the Supreme Court.
And that folks is the news from my little speck corner of the world this Saturday morning, October 12, 2024.
This morning, while scrolling through my photo library I came across this instructional video I took of a hospice worker showing Bill how to get in bed.
Now remember, Bill hasn't used his bed in years. He slept in his recliner, fully clothed every night. But his hospice worker decided that he should use his bed. Bill didn't want to use his bed but we did want to cooperate with his health care worker.
The reason I'm posting this video is that it reminds me of Bill's unique personality and how much I miss him. He could be irascible and ornery at times but he was my Bill. I loved him so much. I am so glad I took this video even though he never put these "bed" instructions to use even after she left.
This video was taken October 31, 2023. Bill died the following February 22, 2024 at the hospice center in Milford. He died in a bed. But he wasn't aware of where he was because when he left our home three days prior to his death, he was unconscious and never regained his conscientious.
I treasure these videos I have of him. Oh how I loved that man and how he loved me. Something we had for almost sixty years of our life. We were so fortunate to have each other. I love Pat too but our love is much different than the love Bill and I had for each other.
It's been nine months now since Bill died early Saturday morning February 22, 2024.
The pain is still here. Now I realize it will never fully go away.
My whole attitude on life has changed in ways I had not imagined.
I knew I would miss Bill terribly when he died but this is one hundred times worse.
I still care about living (I didn't immediately after he died) but things I used to care about, what people thought about me, I just do not care for those things anymore. They are not important.
My main thing I'm looking forward to now is to see Kamala Harris elected president and the judiciary system finally hold Donald Trump accountable for his lifetime of crimes, especially against the people of the United States of America where he and his treasonous enablers tried to overthrow our last presidential election.
I have given up and frankly I don't even care anymore why so many otherwise reasonable people cannot see Trump for the fraud and traitor to this country that he is. These people vote against their own interest, that I don't get. And I never will. Maybe it's because they're afraid if they elect the Democrats their "way of life" will change forever because the Democrats will unleash the "forces of hell" upon them and their communities by having illegal immigrants (from Haiti and the Congo) invade their neighborhoods, eat their pets, rape their women and slit their throats in their very kitchens.
These ridiculous lies remind me of the whole gays in the military controversy. Remember that one? You couldn't let gays in the military because out military will collapse because a gay man might look at the bare ass of a straight man in the shower where they're serving together on the military bases. I remember the ridiculousness of Senators John McCain and Sam Nunn taking a new camera crew along to a Navy submarine dock in the New York harbor to show how close the quarters were for sleeping. I couldn't believe my eyes. These STUPID MEN just didn't have a clue. GAY MEN WERE ALREADY IN THE MILITARY! Remember how McCain and Nunn said our military would collapse if gays served openly in the military? WRONG!
If an openly gay man harassed one of his straight fellow soldiers you address that problem the way you address any sexual harasser. Simple as that! The same way you would handle the problem with a straight soldier harassing a female counterpart.
My fellow "Make American Great" friends, believe me when I tell you the country will not collapse in a hellscape of murder and mayhem if you election Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Anyway, get used to it because Harris and Walz will be elected and the hellscape that is Donald Trump and his enablers will soon be another bad chapter in the history of the United States.
Interesting how this post dissolved into another Trump rant. But that's the way things go now days in my world folks. I have given up on convincing any of my MAGA friends the folly of their ways. I'll probably never speak to my one remaining brother, he is so lost in the hate of the MAGA world. It just isn't worth trying to repair that relationship. He will go to his grave full of hate of me and so many of his fellow Americans. Such is the results of the Cult of Trump.
