10/18/24

 Friday, October 18, 2024

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I was in bed at 9, awake at 4:15 with a very painful back, listening to Lilly pacing, and up at 4:20 with Lilly waiting for me in the vestibule. I let her out, but she did her normal look around for a couple of minutes, turned around, and came back into the house and disappeared into Geri's bedroom? sun room? living room?  I had the kitchen cleaned up, the dishwasher loaded and working, and Geri's morning coffee station set up by 7 a.m.

Prednisone, day 157, 5 mg., day 8/28.  Prednisone at 5:15.   

Losing it?  I started my morning reading with the NYTimes and realized that there was hardly anything in this morning's paper that I cared to read.  No interest in reading more about Yahya Sinwar or the Mideast bloodbath  No interest in reading about Trump's and Harris's campaign stops.  No interest in reading about Volodimar Zelensky's plan for Ukraine's victory over Russia within the next year.  I ended up reading (and listening to) an article about James Carville, about to turn 80.  I haven't even read the last two op-ed pieces by Tom Friedman, whose columns I normally read, at least for the last year.  Just as I am losing interest in reading and watching "the news," I'm also losing interst and motivation to write about it so this journal, like me and Lilly, may be on ints last legs.  Speaking of which, the pain and stiffness in my back and hips (my "pelvic girdle") are making walking an ever more hazardous undettaiking.  I used to think that it was my difficulty with balance that made me a high risk for falling.  I still have the balance problem, and perhaps it is worse than in years past, but it's the stiffness and pain problems that are increasingly challenging.  I thought of my propensity to fall down yeterday as I walked into Sendik's to get a few bratwurst buns.  I always try to park next to a grocery cart stall so I can grab a cart and use it as a walker getting to and from my car.  Should I be joinging the YMCA or JCC, retaining a personal trainer, or at least going out for walks with Judy or Rachel, or am I just fooling myself that I'm capable of any of that?  I see Dr. Chatt at the VA on the 29th and maybe she'll have some recommendation(s), but probably just more physical therapy, at which  I am not a good patient.   In any event,  . . .

Before switching from the NYTimes to the WaPo, I read Jamelle Bouie's column titled "When the Top General in the U.S. Says You’re ‘Fascist to the Core’.  He warns that

 Presidential rhetoric corresponds to presidential action; it precedes and defines it. What a candidate says on the campaign trail connects to what he (or she) will do in office. And if Trump has had a single, consistent message, it is that he’ll use the violent arm of the state to cleanse the nation of “scum” and “vermin,” whether immigrants and refugees or dissenters anhd political opponents like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.

It's easy to see why Trump is out to get Adam Schiff. Schiff was the lead impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial of Trump and has inveighed against Trump for years.  He is a Harvard Law graduate and worked as a research assistant for Professor Fawrence Tribe, another persistent critic of Trump.  It's a little harder to come up with a specific reason for Trump's animus against Pelosi although she certainly has also been a most effective critic of much of what Trump has done both in office and as a candidate.  My theory is that he's out to get her because of the famous meeting at the White House when Pelosi stood up, in a room full of powerful men, pointed her finger at Trump, and uttered the insult "With you, all roads lead to Putin!"