It was a little cold and damp outside today, so I spent the morning putting some grease on a couple of squeaky door hinges, working on PC updates and reading emails. That's something I do pretty much every morning. The emails that is.

After our midday meal, I went outside to repair some failing electrical wiring for my automated lawn sprinkler system. Something I discovered a couple of days ago. Once I had that project finished, I went to work on my wife's front flower garden making repairs to the border around the bed.

Let me first explain to any climate activists, that the lawn sprinkler system came with the house but, the HOA won't let me go without using it. They don't care about the water usage as long as the grass stays green. My water bill gets a little expensive during the summer months, but I lost that battle, along with mowing my own grass the first year after we moved here.

You see, I live in a seniors, managed subdivision. It used to be considered upscale for upper middle class white people over 55 years of age. A sort of retirement community. I specify white people because they try to discourage non-whites from living here. They can't deny anyone from buying a house here if you are other than white but you can tell they don't like it by their attitudes towards us. Their are only two other non-white families living in this subdivision. One of them lives just a few houses up the street from us. A very nice elderly Sikh couple. They stay to themselves with their children and grandchildren being the only visitors I've ever seen there.

The other folks are a young Muslim family with kids. We're pretty sure they're renting from the owners. Again, the bylaws don't stop the owners here from renting out their houses but you can tell that some of the neighbours aren't too keen on non-whites, with small children, disturbing the retirement atmosphere here.

Then there is us. I'm of Irish descent and therefore white. My lovely wife is from northern China, and therefore a little darker in skin tone than the stereotypical Han Chinese we're used to seeing in the tourist advertisements. Her original home is somewhat close to the North Korean border in north eastern China. So, her hair can be a bit curly and her skin is a bit darker than mine.

The neighbours will wave to us and some will talk to us on occasion, but most, not so much. Some of that is because I'm a bit of a contrarian and I fly the Irish tricolour flag from the front of my street facing garage instead of the American flag. That miffs some of the MAGA neighbours here.

So now that you have an idea of what living in American is like from the street level, so to speak, I want to segway over to today's topic. Coping with all of this racist nonsense.

As I said in the intro, I like to work with my hands and I have a lot of skills with hand tools and home repairs. I'm far from perfect and there are jobs that on hind sight, I probably should have let someone more skilled do for me but, oh well, shoot me for trying to save a little money these days.

My guest bathroom wall is one of those projects I should have let someone more skilled at repairing sheet rock do for me a couple of years ago but I was mad at the homeowners insurance company I had at the time, and a bit stubborn. Hence, if you ever visit me, don't look too hard at the wall behind the toilet.

Otherwise, I try my best to stay in my lane and only tackle jobs I'm pretty sure I can handle myself. Which is a considerable list, despite my age. Today was a case in point.

As I mentioned, I had to repair some wiring for my lawn sprinkler system today. I noticed the issue during my annual inspection by the sprinkler repair guy I pay to come repair my older system nearly every spring. My system was not kept up before I bought the house over five years ago now, and every year, I end up making small and sometimes, major repairs, for things around the house that break or has worn out over the years. My house is almost twenty five years old now and it wasn't exactly built with quality materials. It was built by a developer only interested in building look alike houses as cheaply as possible right at the building code lines and selling them as high end houses to seniors who don't know any better.

Which is why I had to put a new roof on this spring, and why I had to go out and make repairs to the wiring for my lawn sprinkler system. As much as I like my sprinkler guy, I don't trust him to do any electrical work. Which is why I replaced my own sprinkler control last year, and I make my own wiring repairs on the rest. It's not about saving money so much as I don't trust him to provide me a quality electrical repair after seeing some of his work. he's a nice guy, for a Trump fan but otherwise?

As a retired low voltage electrician appliance technician, I know that I can do a better job than most of these service people that don't normally do electrical work as a primary skill, like I did before I retired. Better I do it to code than have to keep spending money for someone like my service guy to jury rig the wiring and have to keep returning every year for the same thing.

And that is part of the trouble with America these days. The days of people taking pride in their work has gone away. Now, it's all about doing things as quickly as possible and collecting a check. If they have to keep returning for the same repair over and over again, that's okay. Their getting paid.

When I owned my own repair business not so long ago, I took pride in doing the job right the first time. I had a warranty policy on my work that said I would return for free if I didn't do a repair right the first time. And there were times when I had to honour that promise. Not too many but no one is perfect.

That sense of pride seems to be gone these days. Which is why I prefer to do as much of my own repair work as I can. That way, there is no one to blame but myself if things don't go right. Here in my house, I have made simple and not so simple repairs to the interior plumbing, such as with sinks and toilets. As I said, I made a valiant attempt at dry wall repair which I regret now. I installed a complete internet infrastructure system in this house where there was none. I've painted walls and ceilings, repaired doors, replaced light switches and receptacles, replaced dining area light fixtures and so on.

I drew the line at flooring though. We hired some people to replace hardwood flooring and carpeting. And I hired a company to do my roof. Don't get me wrong, I have replaced roofs before but I won't at my age anymore. I was much, much younger the last time I replaced a roof and remodelled a house.

I'm not too old to help my little bit younger wife take care of her gardens though. Shes only a handful of years my junior, so she's no spring chicken either. But between the two of us, we manage every year, so far.

She prides herself on her flower gardens and we plant a small kitchen vegetable garden every year. If you've ever planted gardens before, you know how much physical work that entails. Not every day but in the spring, it seems almost like a full time job sometimes getting everything ready to plant. But we eat well as long as we have vegetables to harvest.

Which is starting to become an issue with grocery stores lately. The fresh produce is not so fresh anymore, and has, more times than not, salmonella or E coli all over it that is hard to wash off. I can't count how many times we've brought home fresh produce from the local grocery that made me sick for a couple of days afterwards. We stopped buying our produce at the American markets anymore and she buys some things at the Asian stores she likes. It's funny that I rarely have any issues with the produce from these immigrant run stores. It's almost always with the Americans. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

And the American president wants to get rid of all the immigrants. We have a health minister that wants to eliminate vaccines and medicines. I doubt they have any plans to deal with any major disease breakouts, if one should occur. Can anyone say Hantavirus? Not that that is going to turn into the next pandemic but the next Covid is just around the corner with the planet warming up, according to the scientific experts.

My coping mechanism is getting out and accomplishing handyman projects around the house, writing blog articles like this one, and working on my weekly podcast, The Village Oak Tree every week. If you're new here, bounce over to my podcast page and check it out. I also write dystopian fiction novels when I have time to sit down and write a few pages. I have one out now that's for sale in multiple platforms, including this web site.

I just hope, for all of our sake, that the U.S. government will come to its senses someday soon. I'm a little worried that the economy is going to crash hard and all of my coping mechanisms will not manage the stress anymore as we worry about food shortages and other related things. I remember the stories my parents and grandparents told us about how hard life was back during the global depression of the 1930's and I don't want to have to live through something like that now in 2026 and beyond.

I grew up dirt poor so I know what that's like and I don't want to go back to that again. I grew up on a very poor farm so we always had something to eat but we had a lot of land to grow things on and go hunting. I don't have anything like that now. I don't want to have to compete with a lot of other people for food. I also know what that's like after seeing that in poor, war torn countries around the world during my many military deployments. I still remember the ever so brief months in 2020, when most of the world's grocery stores had rationing and empty shelves. Imagine that for a much longer period of time if the farms in the U.S. can't provide enough food for all of the people soon?

We don't know for sure that this will happen but a lot of people are using the internet to scare people in order to make money, touting this new fear of the country running out of food in a few weeks. Obviously, this is just another internet scam but the timing is good and it's working, for now.

I think we'll keep planting our own vegetables and buying what we can while it lasts. I have enough stuff to deal with, without having to keep up with the internet trolls trying to convince us to give them money to support their stories.

With the price of gas not coming back down for a while yet, we need to focus on the here and now, rather than some snake oil salesman yelling that the sky is falling with no proof. But hey, if gullible people want to give up their meagre dollars to people like this, who am I to tell them they're stupid. I said the same thing about all of the American religious preachers who grifted millions of people out of their money through the years. The U.S. has a president who is doing that right out in the open right now. But I don't need to tell anyone about that. Most everyone across the world knows it by now. It's not like he's trying to keep it a secret.

I'll save that topic for my podcasts. I wish everyone well. I hope anyone reading this has a coping mechanism of their own they're using to help them get through these challenging times. Gods knows, we all need something to get us through it all. Maybe even a pint or two now and again when all of the absolute stupidity gets to us on a bad day. We've been having a lot of bad days for the last year. I think we've about had enough, don't you think?

Take care of yourselves as best as you can. If we don't take care of ourselves, then we can't take care of anyone else close to us. That and pray to whatever Gods you want, for an end to this madness soon. Sláinte