Just Ask Sonia

Sonia Dog knows how everything is supposed to be, and she holds Mommy to it. When doggie comes downstairs every morning, she expects Mommie to slide open the door to the back yard for obvious reasons, and then, when she comes in, Mommie is supposed to give her a nose-to-nose greeting (uno, dos, tres) and a good rubdown, including scratching behind her ears. Breakfast comes next--freshly-poured kibbles and clean water. After she's rested a while, Sonia notifies Mommy that it's time for her second breakfast--Mommy's breakfast, that is, because she knows Mommy will give her the dregs of her cereal bowl, followed by two Milkbones (uno, dos) as a reward for drinking her milk.
When she sees trash bags beeing packed in the trunk of the car, Sonia pads out into the garage and waits at "her" door, knowing she will be invited to  ride up the driveway to the street where the bin sits.  And, of course, when the car goes through the DQ drive-thru, she comes to attention to remind Fio and Husband that she is supposed to get a Puppy Cup. She even knows the bedtime routine, and will badger Mommie and Daddy with growling whines if they seem to have forgtten.

Patterns, patterns, patterns. Sonia is truly Mommy's daughter.

The Real Fiorella Outs Herself

Wanna see how bitchy Fiorella can be? These are some excerpts from when she was writing the Austin Community College union newsletter, lo, these many years ago:

ACC president Richard Fonte nodded on and off during an hour-long report on the role of the community college and sat through most of the rest of the meeting stone-faced--when he wasn't defending or pleading or explaining. Whatever happened to that affable, smiling administrator who would fulfill every board member's preference with a wave of his magic budget wand?
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ACC's Humpty Dumpty budget has had a great fall, and hopes for a tax hike in Ausgust 2003 are a likely casualty of the scramble. In Ausgust, 2002, consultant Howard Falkenberg  advised the board that employee support was vital to the success of any future ACC tax referendum. "Make sure the family is tight on this," he said.
Apparently no one was listening. It's hard to be "tight" when your classes are cancelled at the last moment or your chances of a well-deserved pay raise have gurgled down the drain.
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     Presidents Richard Fonte was unusually quiet during the April 1 board meeting. Maybe he was pondering how to tell the trustees that although the total number of classes ACC will offer this fall will be an all-time high, the number of English classes, a herd of cash cows if ever there was one, has been cut about ten percent.
    Guess the budget crisis is over.
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Fiorella never announced herself as the sharp-tongued scribe, but since she sat in on the board meetings with her pen scribbling down every word, it must have been obvious.

Anger and Violence

About the guns--Fio has read that psychologists say anger, not mental health problems, is what triggers violence, and she can believe that from her own experience.

When Fiorella was in junior high, she walked to school because, as you will remember, her mother didn't drive. Most of the time it was no problem because the school was only about five blocks away, the weather was mild, and there were a few other kids walking too. But one horribly stormy day, as cars full of warm, dry schoolkids driven by their mothers splashed by her, Fio was the only one walking. By the time she got to school, she was so furious that she would have taken out the populace if there'd been an assault rifle available. When her social studies teacher tried to find out what was going on, Fio said she was angry that FlyTaff, a government installation on her way to school, was crowding the sidewalk with its parking. But actually, she now realizes. was angry at her mother.

Declaration of Intent

I AM A FIREBIRD

CLEAR THE WAY--

WHAT GRIEVOUS WRONG

CAN I RIGHT TODAY?

To Eat or Not to Eat

Fiorella is an embarrasingly picky eater--nothing green but jello, nothing red but apples and jello, no dressings, no mixtures. It's partially due to her own wierdness, although another part can be traced to the WWII food rationing that was in effect when she was a child. A third part can be laid at the feet of her mother making a contest out of Fiorella's preferences. "Try it, you'll like it," she'd say. But Fio knew that if she did, Mother would triumphantly proclaim "I told you so."

Strangely, despite Mother's warning that Fiorella have problems socializing because of her limited palate, no one has ever given her a hard time. And, wonder of wonders, along the way, she's even added a some new things to her diet that Mother herself would never have eaten--like fish. Years ago, when Husband brought a sea trout home from a fishing trip, Fio watched him cook it, got curious, tasted it, and liked it--no contest involved.

When it came to her own kids, Fiorella didn't push, and after they got through some quirky teen-age food fads, all three of them settled down to much better food choices than Fiorella has ever made. And now Fio hears her granddaughter likes tofu.

More power to her!

Miscellany Plus

When Fio was younger, she dreamed of living in a big mansion. Now she dreams of living in a small cottage that's easy to keep up.
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Going through some of her life drawing (translation: naked people) artwork, Fio came across a drawing  that bothered her at the time and still makes her feel icky. It was of  young man who set up his own pose, propping his head and shoulders on one box and his legs on another, with no support for the center of his body.  The pose was a torturous, but he insisted on it. The experience was Fio's first--and only--contact with blatant maschism.
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At some tme in one's life, one has to take a stand, but these kids in Parkland have had to do it way too young.
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Friend Suzy and Fio had a hard time getting through on the transatlantic cable the other day, and they ended up calling other twice each before they could finally get a connection that wasn't being gnawed on by an octopus. What did they talk about? The same things they would have talked about when Suzy lived in "The States--" their jobs, their families, the weather, politics, Trump, the Russians, and of course, the Parkland massacre. Yes, people all over the globe know what happened and what the government should do to prevent anything like that from ever happening again. But will it?
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Pray for your faithful correspondent. Friend Evelyn is scheduled to be the speaker at a writers' league meeting this evening so Fio, who doesn't drive at night anymore, is going to gut up and drive over to the library to be cheer her on.

As We have Done Before--and Before--and Before

So now Hope Hicks is out the door. How much longer will Sarah HS be around? Or Jeff Sessions, or John Kelly, or even Jared Kushner? If this is the way Trump ran his businesses, it's no wonder they went bankrupt.

A while back, Fiorella contemplated putting together an acrostic using the names of all the people in Trump's administration who've come and gone, but as the list grew longer and longer, she realized her project would be the size of a large table cloth, and that because never-ending turnover was Trump's business model, that she would have to make that table cloth her life's work.

But what bothers Fio even more than the people who have departed are the people who are still aound. People like Betsy DeVoss,  Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Ryan Zinke, Stephen Miller, Stephen Mnunchin. What this admnistration needs is a good cleaning out, and Trump should be the first to go.