August Happiness Challenge -- Day 11

Look at my happy kitty

Today's happiness is bittersweet. Whenever I leave the house in the morning, Reynaldo calls after me. I can hear him as I go all the way down the hall to the elevator. The vet has told me that my cat is "unusually attached" to me. So while I am happy to be loved, I am sad about this weekend. When I leave this afternoon, I won't be back until Monday. 

 

Oh, I know he'll be safe. He'll have plenty of food and water, and I'll leave the AC on. He'll have Connie for company, but I know he'll miss me. 

 

Here's a Thursday Thirteen I wrote in tribute to my little old beige demon.

Each day in August you are to post about something that makes *you* happy. Pretty simple. And, it doesn't even have to be every day if you don't want it to be. It's a great way to remind ourselves that there are positive things going on in our lives, our communities, and the world.

If you want to play along, just come back here (meaning to this blog, not this individual post) each day in August, looking for the happy cat. Every day I will try to have a post with the headline: August Happiness Challenge: Day [X]. Leave a comment and then post your own daily happiness, with August Happiness Challenge in the title to make it easy to find. 

The saddest thing about this election

I wrote this back in May, and it's more true today:

"As I watch Hillary Clinton defend herself on two fronts -- from Bernie Sanders supporters and Donald Trump -- I find myself admiring her more than I ever thought possible. I mean, I don't like the woman, and I see her flaws rather clearly."

So far this week, I have heard that "maybe" HRC:

•  could be handled by "Second Amendment" folks
•  founded ISIS
•  is battling Parkinson's Disease

How ugly and lowest-common-denominator is this shit? Every time I hear crap like this, I get my wallet out and contribute more money to the DNC.

There ARE things to hit her on. Lots of them. For starters, she's too hawkish. She's never met a buck she didn't like. These things worry me.

But this isn't what we're debating. We're talking about whether or not Trump called for her assassination. or whether she's "celebrated" by our worst enemies, or if her body man always has a dopamine injector at the ready to shoot her up and prevent yet another stroke.

I believe that's the real tragedy of Donald Trump's candidacy. During the GOP debates, issues weren't discussed as prominently as his fingers vs. "Little Marco's," or Jeb Bush's "low energy." On the campaign trail, the emphasis was on the role a belt buckle may or may not have really played in Ben Carson's biography, and if Ted Cruz' father was implicated in the Kennedy assassination.

•  Marco Rubio sits on the Senate Committees on Intelligence and Foreign Relations. He could compare/contrast his views on national security and international policy without calling her Isis' poster girl.

•  Jeb Bush was governor of a densely populated and widely diverse state of nearly a decade. He's certainly qualified to go toe-to-toe with Hillary about ethics and domestic policy. Because of the Bush family's personal relationship with the Clintons, and taking the elegant way George W. and Laura have treated the Obamas, I am confident we wouldn't hear any him trade in the trashy gossip about "seizures."

Our country would be better for watching a Rubio/Clinton or Bush/Clinton race.

Instead we get this.

By the way, if you want to see how a patriot and a gentleman handles ugly campaign rumors ...

August Happiness Challenge -- Day 10

Look at my happy kitty

Today's happiness: an old joke. Somehow we got onto the subject of Paul Lynde, an actor/comedian all three of us grew up on. My art director contributed this joke, attributed to Lynde from his days as center square on The Hollywood Squares:

Q: How many balls on a regulation billiard table?
A: Depends on how many men are sitting on it.

OK, so it's not Noel Coward. Still, it made me laugh. And laughing is good for the soul.

Each day in August you are to post about something that makes *you* happy. Pretty simple. And, it doesn't even have to be every day if you don't want it to be. It's a great way to remind ourselves that there are positive things going on in our lives, our communities, and the world.

If you want to play along, just come back here (meaning to this blog, not this individual post) each day in August, looking for the happy cat. Every day I will try to have a post with the headline: August Happiness Challenge: Day [X]. Leave a comment and then post your own daily happiness, with August Happiness Challenge in the title to make it easy to find.