As I type this it's 6:28pm. I'm on my swing on my back patio watching smoke waft from my grill. The pork shoulder is now into hour 8 and sitting at 193 degrees. Not much longer. I got my yard cut today and I love sitting out looking at it fresh cut. Supposed to rain every day next week so who knows when I'll get to it again. The sun is filtering through the trees and making long shadows in the yard. In the distance a yellow billed cuckoo is calling. But during this I've had time to think at how polarized we are as a nation and here locally. It now seems impossible for anybody to be in the middle. Everyone is immediately grouped into one extreme or another. If you wear a mask in public you're a scared sheep believing the lies of a controlling govt setting us all up for martial law. If you don't wear a mask then you have no regards for others and want my grandparents to die horrible deaths all alone. If you say black lives matter then you want all police to be executed where they stand. If you say all lives matter then you hate black people and think there should be an open hunting season. If you support Trump then you're a scum of the earth racist and fascist. If you're against Trump you're a damned card carrying communist hell bent on the destruction of the country. The list goes on and on.

I wish the world would get back to more minding your own 17ing business and get the hell out of everybody's lives. All of this lately has me wishing I was in a cabin in the absolute middle of nowhere with no way to get news. Nothing to do but sit on the bank of some lake or creek and fish all day and watch lightning bugs at night. Just spend days growing a garden and tending to some livestock. I guess pretty much the lives my grandparents had. But that's not this world. Not any more. Not for most of us. If that is your existence then I'm extremely jealous. I'm not off social media but I've unfollowed a bunch of people that can't go five minutes without making a political post. I'm tired of being labeled, and to be honest, I'm tired of labeling. I'm just as guilty. I got off our new poli board for months, but for some reason got back on. I may have to change that. I'm tired of it all. I just want a normal life back where the social agenda of the day is not being rammed down my throat and I'm accused of character traits I do not possess because of my beliefs on certain issues or support of certain political candidates.

I think more people would be a lot happier if they'd just sit on their back patio or porch and watch their kids play in the yard while you sipped a cold drink of choice. I think I'm going to try it.