I'm still feeling good. Minor body crankiness - I can tell I've started the hormone roller coaster so the next week and a half will be key.

Finally got going on the leafing. I forgot, spouse preferred silver instead of gold, so working with imitation silver (aluminum) leaf. Finished the art, printed it out, checked it for size, taped the printouts together. Transferred the bottom row. (Always start a new project at the spot least likely to be critically looked at, so you have chances to perfect technique as you work toward the more visible areas). 11 rows total. Applied the leaf and it came out just okay, not as good as hoped. 1) I got impatient and didn't sand the board before transfer, so there is a fine bumpy texture that isn't ideal. 2) I tested two popular brands of size - Old World Art and Speedball Mona Lisa. So far the mona lisa seems to be performing better - seems a teensy bit stickier, esp judging by the amount of stray cat hairs I have to pick out. But I'm getting too much unwanted ancillary sticking to the spray sealer on the background and it's causing annoying extra work. Wondering if I can dust the surface with a fine powder before applying leaf, to increase the sticky vs smooth contrast. 3) setting up a good work area is proving difficult because the board is 2'x4'. I thought I could work on the coffee table but sitting on the floor gets very uncomfortable. I set up a folding table w/ my comfy new chair, but I can't leave it set up because when spouse gets home he needs to be able to walk around and not bonk into a giant board. Which is an extra pain in the ass when leafing because I can't leave a sticky surface exposed either, due to cats.

Spouse went on a tear about afghanistan, apparently he's been really irritated by his right wing coworkers. "Why do you care when fox news tells you to care and don't care the rest of the time? 13 marines died, but how many afghanis died in our drone strikes? You want to play armchair geopolitics but you didn't even know azerbaijan is a real country?" I almost feel bad for them, but spouse has a natural teaching streak and he comes across as pleasantly informative instead of know-it-all. He can tell people they are ignorant without making them feel personally attacked or insulted, somehow. I sure don't have that skill. But he's pretty exasperated. Being the dissenting voice is a lot of work.

While he was on a rant he pointed out that in the US we are disconnected from our medical system since birth and death have been removed from the home. Which I thought was a really interesting point about our modern first world society in general. Sort of excising the dirty parts of life and outsourcing them to professionals where they can't inconvenience us with reality. It does create powerlessness, and events are more overwhelming when they deviate from what is expected, and at the same time our channel for emotional expression and general compassion is blocked. Putting elders in old folk's homes, for instance, because these days adult children don't have the time/resources to take care of their parents until death. The end stages of aging are hidden, invisible, not witnessed. We cannot connect with them. We are sealing our own fate to die alone and neglected.

How come the pro-life crowd believes abortion is murder, but when a woman experiences a miscarriage she (and her family) get no time for bereavement.

So many huge events lately pivot on the value of life. 13 marines died in afghanistan, but 1300 americans also died of covid on Friday. Where's the outrage for the 1300? Where's the outrage for the absolute hell we're putting our medical professionals through?

I've been thinking about the excuse some religious people like to give for not taking the vaccine, that what happens medically is god's will. If someone gets covid and dies, it was their time to go. And on the one hand, I have respect for that POV. Say, for instance, if a person decides that whatever health issues that arise in their life are divine will and they will gracefully accept the shortened life span if they get cancer or covid or whatever. They won't seek out advanced care, they don't want to be resuscitated. Okay. I feel like that should be a right people are able to choose for themselves as an adult. (Just like I also think people should be able to choose euthanasia - they are close to being the same thing, both end a life sooner than modern medical care allows.)

But the other edge of that sword is, it means no death is accidental or any reason to get upset, because it is god's will. 13 marines die in a suicide bomb, that was god's will too. People die young. People die old. People die before they are born. Good people, not-so-good people. If you trust god then it's all by god's plan. We would become like the Eloi in the Time Machine (the old movie, not remake). We don't get to feel like any death is wrong or undeserved without also accusing god of making a mistake. It's god's will there are murderers. It's god's will there are drunk drivers. Why make laws against things that endanger others - the 10 commandments should suffice. Why sue doctors for negligence - god could have worked a miracle and saved the patient anyway (if he prayed hard enough). And everyone knows that leads straight to culty madness and the dark ages, which is why christians like to make a bunch of noise about putting god back in government but, you know, not TOO much god. Not enough to take away their precious outrage, life extending chemotherapy, or right to sue. "Let's pray before our breast cancer charity 5k!!!" Seriously, why? Either you believe in god's perfect will or you don't.

Why am I not christian: because even christians aren't really christian. Logically, if god knows everything and everything is his will, why does anyone pray for anything? Does he just enjoy seeing mortals beg and getting to arbitrarily pick and choose who he helps? That's not a god I think is worth worshipping. Or, if prayer does nothing and all that happens is already pre-ordained, why does he need worshipping? He exists beyond that and my belief or not means nothing, and in fact as a non-believer who is allowed to be a non-believer I must be important as I am. Religion is so weird. It's the sanest and the insanest thing all at once. Good luck, aliens.

I've always hated the phrase "save a life". What does it even mean, so dramatic and stupid. Everybody dies. All you can do is delay biological death a bit. "Life saving care", no it's just life extending care. Maybe a month or a year or a decade or so. Nobody's life has ever been saved in the history of the planet. (I guess technically people with good fertility could qualify as a life saved if they produce a child after the event, but then you run into the sticky wicket of only fertile people being valuable, and then what about the precious sperms and eggs that go wasted???) I suppose one day our horrible Jurassic Park scientists will engineer a way to live forever, and THEN we can say some billionaires had their lives saved, except no not really, because the heat-death of the universe is inevitable and EVERYBODY DIES.

Why do we pretend some lives matter at some times and not at others. Why do we freak out at 13 deaths when so many more die silently because they don't have enough little green pieces of paper to get insulin (why do little green pieces of paper get to trump someone's right to live?). Or people chose to refuse treatment that would save them. Why pretend life trumps individual choice inside a woman's body, but ignore that when one is asked to wear a piece of fabric to keep from spreading potentially fatal infection.

It's a mad world.

And I think we're drowning in mental sickness because everyone can sense the lies and bad logic, everyone knows we're steeped in it, but we can never have a conversation about it in a truthful way that will allow the system to realign. Either life is precious or it isn't. Right now, it isn't, truth being rubbed in our face over and over. And we're so angry and crazy because we all know deep down: none of us matter. Our faith or lack thereof doesn't matter. The machine is what matters, and our lives are merely grist in the gears.