I am making this a news free weekend because I am exhausted after the heart wrenching testimony on Thursday of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the ensuing pissing match between Lindsey Graham Cracker and Brat Kavanaugh to see which could spew their putrid stream of testosterone the farthest in service to their own egos.

So.  .  . well, I went to an orientation meeting to become a volunteer for The PNA Village. The PNA (Phinney Neighborhood Association) began life as a community center for an area of town called Phinney Ridge. It has expanded into a Seattle octopus of good will and services that encompasses other neighborhoods, kind of a community center on steroids but in a bighearted way, not like the toxic steroidic display of the senators on Thursday.  The Greenwood Senior Center where I hold “All Present,” my song circle for people with dementia is now part of the PNA. My neighborhood of Crown Hill is touched by one of the tentacles (again in a good way, a protective way not the insidious way this administration is poisoning the country) of the PNA.

The Village is a program happening all over the country that helps people age in their homes. Earlier this year I had to make a decision about whether to sell my house (and free up some equity) or try to remain in my home without pots of money to actually keep it standing. In my research for this decision, I learned about a lot of programs and services that I was now eligible for because I am aging. I’m on the young side of aging but it is inexorably happening. It helps to identify facts, look ahead and just get on with things. Some people might want to identify the fact that women are human beings but I’m not thinking about that this weekend.

The Village, among other lovely services, deploys volunteers to do things for people. All kinds of things. One morning, five able-bodied and energetic young women came over and worked in the yard for an hour in a half, doing things I and my gardening buddy Tim couldn’t have done in months of work.  Another time someone grounded four electrical outlets for me. I’ve gotten wood chopped and trees pruned.  One volunteer who has come twice, brings his adorable little miniature-pinscher-chihuahua-ish dog named Smalls.

After five volunteer visits I was so grateful, I wanted to volunteer as well. I can’t do any of the physical things that have been done for me, but I can do other things: visit, play piano duets, play Scrabble, sing songs, take walks. But the salient thing here is the gratitude. In my earlier life as the self-erasing daughter of alcoholic and mentally ill parents, I often felt taken for granted, used really. As many women have felt when their feelings are dismissed and they aren’t entitled to throw a tantrum in front of the entire nation when they don’t get what they want. For me to actually choose to do something that in my earlier life I would have resented is a measure of how grateful I am.

So I went to the orientation. I already had an exhausting seven hour meeting on Thursday along with much of the rest of the country but I really want to be involved in the Village. I rode my bike to the meeting, got through it and came home.

Oxi-Fresh arrived to clean the carpets. While a cheerful guy named John attacked all the cat vomit stains, I worked in the garden. Tim and I are creating a little cat cemetery under the lilacs where there are already five cat graves: two of mine, two of neighbor cats and the bones of The Unknown Cat. We’ve got a little wall and a little entrance and five indicators of where the bodies are buried. We’re priming the area with succulents. Photos in the future.

OK, a paragraph without mentioning anything political. Not that I don’t think of politicians when I think of graves. Some of those guys on Thursday looked like they had crawled out of graves to come sit on the judiciary committee.

I talked to my friend and former college roommate, Mary-Ellis on the phone. She expected I would be all wound up from the hearing on Thursday. I told her I had been but that this was a news free weekend. Uh- huh.

Mary-Ellis said she hadn’t seen a blog post from me in a while. Once when I published a diatribe about rape culture, she commented mildly that she missed those “slice of life pieces you do so well.” Today I told her I would try to write something if for no other reason than I usually find it therapeutic. It’s been a challenge to not make any comment on politics or the lack of respect women get in this country. I think I’ve done pretty well all things considered.