Long Time, No Blog

 It's been ten years since I used this blog and my life has really changed in some ways since I last wrote anything here.  There aren't any excuses, I just couldn't...  Or maybe that's more of a "didn't need to" write.  Writing has always been my best therapy.

When I started this blog I had hoped that I'd return to a professional kitchen someday.  But I have accepted (now that I'm pushing 60) that it's not going to happen.  Let me tell ya, dreams die hard.  Accepting the fact that I'd never run my own kitchen again was tough.  

Not only will I not cook professionally, but I barely cook in my own kitchen anymore.  My tiny kitchen has literally three square-feet of counter space, that's three 12-inch by 12-inch spaces in a row, not three running feet of counter space.  After all, the toaster and microwave have to go somewhere!  My kitchen is why I can empathize with people who love to cook but live in big cities where their kitchens are just like mine!  Tiny and inconvenient as HELL!  But, I didn't really come here to whine about long dead hopes and dreams or tiny dysfunctional kitchens.  Trust me when I say that all of my old hopes and dreams are long dead.  Dead as Otzi dead.  

Speaking of the dead...  

I have found myself in the position where I suddenly have a whole pack of 30-something "kids" that either call me or think of me as Mom, and their kids call me Grandma!  Sadly, the fact of the matter is that these "kids" have all lost their parents in the last couple of years.  COVID-19 has really done a lot of damage to families-- especially small families like mine... was.

I don't understand why so many people won't get vaccinated.  Yes, I understand this vaccine was created differently.  It is the benefactor of decades of research trying to make a vaccine for HIV.  THAT is why they were able to make the COVID-19 vaccine so "quickly."  It's sort of like those Hollywood "overnight success" actors that took every background "extra" or bit part they could get for 20 years before their "overnight success."  The hesitancy, at this point, is either pure ignorance or selfish defiance.  

My own mother (who is pushing 80) won't get vaccinated, and until she does, or COVID is gone, I cannot see her.  If I were to go see her, and then she got COVID, and died, I wouldn't be able to bear it.  Not only that, but I'm certain her partner and her employees would blame me for her death.  So, I guess I won't get to see her for her birthday or for the holidays again this year. 

Aside from all the death and destruction, the last couple of years have been decent, at least for us.  The COVID relief checks really helped us live a bit more comfortably for a while, and I really appreciated living on the edge of lower-middle class, rather than the my-god-how-do-you-manage-not-to-be-homeless? class.  I'm sorry that it took a world-wide pandemic that has killed more people than any virus since the Spanish flu, but I'm glad people are waking up from their long period of sleeping at the wheel.  

People are finally seeing that working for peanuts so the big bosses can pocket 10,000 times thier starvation wages is stupid.  Keep the pressure on The Powers That Be!  Never let up!  If a job needs to be done, it needs to pay a living wage!  TPTB have been standing on your neck and the necks of all your family, friends and neighbors since the lie of Reaganomics took hold in the 80s.  But repeating the same lies over and over again just doesn't make them true, even if Faux Noise programming says it does!  BTW, Faux Noise is one of the Reagan Era's "contributions" to our current society because they scrapped The Fairness Doctrine, and one-sided "news" programming was the result!  No more equal time for opposing views.  I can't even think of a single newspaper that has a Labor section,  OK, the very unique Worker's World News (I believe that's what the communist newspaper published in NYC is called) has a labor section, other than skimpy want ads I mean, but they all have business sections.  

While we're at it, let's close up the rich folks tax loopholes and businesses' tax loopholes, too!  Make them PAY THEIR SHARE!!!   

The rich have gotten away with far too much for far too long!  They are all like Jeffrey Epstein, in their own ways.  Of course, a LOT of them were JUST like Epstein, including Don the Con and Slick Willy (with all that name connotes,) Epstein's long-time buddies and Lolita Express frequent fliers.  Heck, Slick Willy even evaded his government issue body guards to hop on board! 

When I tell my son how things were before Reganomics, he can hardly believe me.  But I had (mostly older) friends who worked their way through college with part time jobs, had small apartments, or shared an apartment with a buddy, had a car and could still go out to a movie or dancing on Saturday night.  The reason most of my friends who did this were older is because I graduated from high school and turned 18 in 1980, the same year Reagan was elected and the insanity of Reaganomics/Voodoo economics, or whatever you want to call it, happened.  And it happened to ME FIRST.