Our old cat, Bagheera.  She was a terror in her younger days, but now is content to sit and sleep on my lap in the evenings.  She's getting skinny and walks with a limp but still gives Charlie what for if he's bothering her.  Because of her arthritis, I let her out in the yard now.  She cannot jump or climb a fence, but she does love lying in the dirt, with the sun beating down on her.  Last summer she still managed to catch a poor mouse but didn't kill it.  I grabbed her, turned her upside down and shook her.  Poor Bagheera.  The mouse survived and Bagheera didn't seem to hold it against me.

I saw the doctor yesterday.  No broken bones in my hand from falling a week and a half ago.  It's still swollen and my thumb doesn't work great but it will take time.  The doc increased my blood pressure medication and gave me more reqs for blood work.  I have joined that group that nobody wants to belong to, seniors on meds.  The alternative would probably be an early stroke so I'm good with the meds.  

Medications don't come without side effects though and now my electrolytes and kidney function must be monitored, alongside my blood sugar.  I have been so lucky though.  I have no dread diseases, mine are simply the result of getting older.  I've already lost four friends to cancer, and have another who struggles with staying healthy due to her cancer.  

Jack's birthday is coming up soon and we've booked a birthday party for him which includes nerf gun fights.  I'm sure somebody will end up crying at some point but it's only two hours and we can do that.  His doctor's appointment went well on Monday.

My closet door (the door in the middle) has been hung and I finally finished painting it.  It took three coats but it looks good now.  The bathroom ceiling still isn't finished because of my thumb, but it will get done.  Eventually.

I try not to think about all fuckery caused by trump but it's hard not to think about it.  He kidnapped one leader, participated in the death of another, and now has put a blockade on another country, leaving them hungry and in the dark, so that he can force a "regime" change.  So if this happened in the US, it would be an act of war, but if trump does it, it's something else.  The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

I found this book online and it looks interesting.

"In Catastrophic Success", Alexander B. Downes compiles all instances of regime change around the world over the past two centuries. Drawing on this impressive data set, Downes shows that regime change increases the likelihood of civil war and violent leader removal in target states and fails to reduce the probability of conflict between intervening states and their targets. As Downes demonstrates, when a state confronts an obstinate or dangerous adversary, the lure of toppling its government and establishing a friendly administration is strong. The historical record, however, shows that foreign-imposed regime change is, in the long term, neither cheap, easy, nor consistently successful. The strategic impulse to forcibly oust antagonistic or non-compliant regimes overlooks two key facts. First, the act of overthrowing a foreign government sometimes causes its military to disintegrate, sending thousands of armed men into the countryside where they often wage an insurgency against the intervener. Second, externally-imposed leaders face a domestic audience in addition to an external one, and the two typically want different things. These divergent preferences place imposed leaders in a quandary: taking actions that please one invariably alienates the other. Regime change thus drives a wedge between external patrons and their domestic protégés or between protégés and their people. Catastrophic Success provides sober counsel for leaders and diplomats. Regime change may appear an expeditious solution, but states are usually better off relying on other tools of influence, such as diplomacy. Regime change, Downes urges, should be reserved for exceptional cases. Interveners must recognize that, absent a rare set of promising preconditions, regime change often instigates a new period of uncertainty and conflict that impedes their interests from being realized."

I obviously am biased but it makes a lot of sense to me.  It's so frustrating that humans (including me) have such a hard time being kind to people who don't think as they do.  It weighs on my soul right now, one more thing to drag around.