In Flammen stehen

I’m kind of thinking about adding German to my Duolingo lessons. I’ve been re-learning Spanish since the start of the pandemic and it’s going well but a bit of boredom has set in. Should I re-learn German, too? And will I confuse myself if I try to study both languages at once. They’re both very different. German is more like English which is why I think my German is better than my Spanish.

Oh, right, so what’s on fire? (Per my title “to be on fire.” ) Just the world, that’s all. Just the world. I was thinking about how Trump, trump voters and trumpism are responsible for 100% of this horrific situation. I’m feeling unreasonable and wish to lay all the blame at their feet. I mean, sure Putin was signaling this before Trump. But it’s trump holding up aid to Ukraine for bribes that makes me say, once again, you’ve got blood on your hands. Trumpsters can only respond with crying laughing emoji due to an inability to confront, realistically their culpability. And then there’s Florida, where I have just fled. I was thinking about this “don’t say gay” law that their cute governor, Ronnie D, just signed into law. His leathery Florida Woman spokes-spider says it’s to stop pedophiles from grooming children. Taking her 30th cigarette break of the day she went on to explain through sun-burnt lips, dead-ends flying the breeze, that this law isn’t anti LGBTQ+. What a relief! I went to school in Florida in the 80’s and I can tell you I never met a pedophile in the classroom. The only pedophiles I ever met were priests in the Catholic Church who tried to molest me. Anyhow, I had no idea that Florida’s pedophile problem had gotten so bad in the intervening years of Republican leadership that they had to pass an anti-grooming law. (Isn’t grooming children (not dogs) already illegal?) I guess everyone should be warned that FLORIDA SCHOOLS ARE OVERRUN WITH PEDOPHILES so DON’T MOVE YOUR BUSINESS THERE BECAUSE PARENTS WON’T WORK IN A STATE OVERRUN WITH PEDOPHILES. It’s terrible, who knew Florida, under DeSantis had become such a runaway haven of pedophilia? I mean really! If he runs for president it will be important to point out his absolute failure to protect children in his state and how it got to the point they had to point a law like this. And really, pedophiles already know they’re breaking the law so are they going to follow this? It seems too little too late to me. I guess the schools in Florida are as bad as the Catholic Church when it comes to raping children. Wow.

Another fun fact, my mom is SO depressed. She’s been slowly giving up for years. Decades. But now she’s stopped paying her bills. The effort to write a check is too much. My sister and I had to set her up on auto payments so that her stuff doesn’t get shut off. She was so upset about it but. I guess we’re getting to that place. The crazy thing is, it’s all emotional and psychological. I don’t know much about aging other than my own experience. I know depression but I’ve always been fortunate to have an authoritarian parent in my head (thanks dad!) who would say, “too bad you feel bad, now make your bed and get some work done.” My mom doesn’t have that. And maybe it’s different with the elderly. She’s not at “call the nursing home” levels yet and she has the ability to change, just not the will. Ugh. This decade (and probably the next one, and likely the one after that) is going to be gnarly.