It’s Inshallah All the Way For Me, Bay-bee

The pollinator garden is just an endless source of delight.

I wasn’t quick enough to catch the moment where five Spangled Fritillaries sat side by side on five coneflowers.

But even two Spangled Fritillaries sitting side by side on two coneflowers is an amazing shot.

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Apart from that, I’m kind of mopey.

I haven’t been exercising enough. I haven’t been sleeping well. Plus, I’m having the worst autoimmune disease outbreak I’ve had in ages: It kinda looks like leprosy. Fortunately, it’s all on my left leg, and it doesn’t itch; since I never wear shorts, it’s easy to hide. Still. It’s creepy-looking. And signifies that something is going on with my immune system.

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I’ve been hammering half-heartedly away on the latest Remunerative Project. Trying to rally myself: The sooner you finish this, the sooner you can get back to writing something you want to write!

But the rallying hasn’t been helping.

Really, I want someone to give me $250,000 so I can write whatever the hell I want!

(Don’t we all? 😀)

But I read The Monkey’s Paw at an impressionable age, hence I subscribe to a highly idiosyncratic form of fatalism: It is almost impossible for me to want anything; I am so convinced that the Universe with its fiendish sense of humor will give me what I say I want—but by taking something more valuable to me away in the process.

So, it’s inshallah all the way for me, bay-bee.

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On Long Island, they captured a truly creepy serial killer. The New York Post is having a field day.

In Phoenix, the temperature is 112°. (In Palermo, the temperature is 118°.)

Hollywood actors have gone out on strike. Part of me would like to support this because WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE, but most of me doesn’t give a fuck because there are already 100,000 + hours of “entertainment” on streaming platforms that I don’t want to watch. Why add more?

The Secret Service closed the cocaine-in-the-White-House investigation. (Which is all the proof you need that the coke was Hunter Biden’s.)

Putin released a photograph of Yevgeny Prigozhin in his underpants.

People are dying horrible deaths in Ukraine, Mexico, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria.

All I can do is water my house plants, feed the cat, keep up with the gardening, volunteer once a month with the local food pantry, and tithe approximately 10 percent of my monthly income to Good Causes. (Lately those have been the Hudson Valley Food Pantry, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the National Network of Abortion Funds, which maintains a list of organizations that fund traveling expenses for Red State women who need abortions.)

Because my Umbrella of Protection is very small.