Chess

I’ve kept up with Bridgerton on Netflix. G loves his Brit comedies and detective stories, but chick flix are definitely not his thing, and Bridgerton is the chick-flickiest of chick flix, so I watch alone.

Then came Charlotte, the spinoff, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much of an upgrade the story line was. Yes, it was a trashy romance. But in this case, it had an added layer of dealing with mental illness in someone you love. That, together with the all-too-realistic facets of dealing with the bigotry you KNOW was there, elevated it to another level from the original Bridgerton froth. It was enough to prompt a short poem:

Kings, queens, and pawns alike
Lie scattered on the floor;
Too many secrets broke the world
And empires are no more.
The misty hues of yesterdays
Time-softened, wrap the pain;
While secrets ever seek the sun
From behind their veil of rain.
[– LeiLani]

There’s another verse. I’m adding it to my slow-growing collection. Maybe someday I’ll have enough for a book. Today, however, is not that day.

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A new AC has been ordered. We should hear back Monday sometime with when they’ll be out to install it. In the meantime, I’m grateful the bandaid is holding and it’s cool in the house. Nobody’s overjoyed to have to fork out thousands of dollars. It’s still a blessing we can. What’s more, when I applied for financing through one of the more frequently-used companies and the interest rate was appalling, I was lucky enough I could (and did) tell the finance company to take a flying leap, knowing I have enough available my credit card to cover it, plus a little extra. Financing was approved and and the account shut down within 24 hours.

I feel for the people who don’t have a choice, though.

Unfortunately we can’t order health for my BIL, nor life for my grandson’s dad.

My grandson will be completing his school year where he is, and probably stay there for the summer. Then his mom plans to fly out and bring him back with her. He’s about the same age as my oldest daughter was when her dad died, and I feel for everybody in this mess. My grandson will be going through puberty while dealing with grief and moving cross-country. Distinctly not fun. My daughter already knows he’ll be a hellion for a while, at the very best. The one good thing is my daughter found out some of her health problems were bad reactions to a couple of foods and some specific meds. By cutting those out, she’s been able to go back to work part time, and found a job she loves. Fingers crossed it holds. She’s gonna need it, no doubt about it.

My BIL is still in ICU, and so “cranky” they may have to put him in restraints. I get it – he’s in pain and now can’t even eat because of a tracheotomy. On the other hand, how bad does it have to be when they’re considering restraints for a man with only one side of his body working…? I get that my sister loves him, and even a little bit why. He’s never been obnoxious toward her, which is a first in her life. I’d be concerned the record might not hold, if he were going home any time soon. He isn’t. I suspect he may never go home. If not for reasons of incapacity, then for becoming violent.

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I dug into my archive of photos from earlier this year and found these. We took them in February, on our second run to Gila Bend and along old US Highway 80. As you can see, signs warned there might be tractors ahead.

The signs were correct, as it turned out.

In case you were wondering: yes, there is such a thing as ghost towns. Arizona has dozens of them. I’m gonnna say Arlington qualifies, though it’s more intact than most, far as I can tell.

Some ghost towns are little more than crumbling foundations, maybe a handful of half-collapsed walls; some contain a few tenacious buildings, or a tattered and fading main street; a few, like Bisbee, Tombstone, and Jerome, have taken their ghost-town status and pivoted it into a benefit. The remaining populations in those places are a tiny group of residents who’ve cleaned up and turned their respective hometowns into tourist destinations.