My cardiologist appointment was a couple of days ago. Their office had called about three weeks ago asking for an appointment. They said that the doctor just wanted to chat. That gave me a bit of concern, but I figured if it was something serious, they would have been in more of a rush to schedule the appointment. When I went to the office, the intake nurse was going through my chart and asked me why I was here for the appointment. I told her that I didn’t know, that I was asked by the doctor to come. She took my vitals and then told me that she was going to go and get the doctor. This physician is the one who did my cardiac ablation back in 2015 when I was experiencing a lot of irregular heart beats. I cannot believe that it was almost 11 years ago.
He came into the examining room and asked me how I was feeling, etc. I discovered that the reason for the appointment was because I was in cardiac a-fib for about an hour and a half in February. I never realized it. I have a loop recorder implanted into my chest to record such events. I am on blood thinners, which helps prevent blood from clotting in case the heart isn’t pumping correctly. I have been on these blood thinners for about two years now when I had another incident of the a-fib. On that occasion I felt it, which prompted me to make an appointment. As a result I had a loop recorder being inserted underneath my skin. It is a tiny device that records my heart beats. It hurt like hell going in, but now I hardly ever feel it and I forget it is there. I have a monitor beside my bed that takes readings and then sends them “somewhere”. Any irregularities are sent to the doctor. He told me to continue to exercise and they would continue monitoring it. He also explained to me that if the problem starts happening more frequently, I will need to go in for another ablation. Hopefully that won’t happen. Fingers crossed.
I was out walking the dogs yesterday in the beautiful spring weather when I walked by a house that had been sold. There was a dumpster in the front driveway. As I passed by the dumpster, a man popped out of it and started yelling to me. I had my AirPods in so I didn’t hear him exactly. I took out the AirPods and I said, “excuse me?” He told me that he had lost his phone in the dumpster and wanted to know if I would call his phone. He spoke accented English. I could understand him, but I knew that he wasn’t born here in the United States. He may have been West African or maybe Jamaican. After five tries of calling him, he finally found his phone. He popped his head out of the dumpster kind of like a jack in the box and exclaimed with great vigor, “The phone is found! Praise the Lord! Thank you so much!” I smiled at him and said, glad that I could help. I wished him a good day, and he did the same to me as well, all the while profusely thanking me for helping him find his phone. I guess that was my good deed for the day.
I was out with the dogs this morning in the back yard and Murray was very talkative. After viewing the felon get his latest “award,” he just had to say something:
And here’s the award that the felon got. It is embarrassing that the president of the United States can be flattered and manipulated by giving him prizes. Ugh a thousand times.
The weirdest thing happened with this post! I published this yesterday mid-day. And when I got on the WordPress website last night, I noticed the post did not exist. I knew I had posted it as I had gotten a comment, but it wasn’t there. I searched for it to no avail. I went back through previous posts and I discovered it as an entry from February 2! So I duplicated it and am attempting to repost this morning. An inexplicable blip in technology I guess.
The Post
I have been religiously studying French everyday. Why? I am not exactly sure, but I love the language and I keep plugging away at it. I guess it is the joys of retirement, having time to do the things that I want to do. I decided to try an app that uses AI tutors to help with the conversational part of learning the language. I was skeptical at first, but I have found that it really has helped me get a bit better at understanding spoken French and being able to answer questions asked. The good thing is that I am not nervous when speaking to Giselle, my AI tutor, and she corrects me when I make mistakes. If I was plucked down into France right now, I would probably still be a deer in the headlights kind of French speaker, but I can see that I’ve made a bit of progress.
As I delved into the AI aspect of this app, I decided to ask AI about the current “president” and Obama when they were 7th graders. I taught 7th grade and I think I have a pretty good idea what runs through the mind of a 13 year old.
Below is AI’s version of the felon vs. Obama.
There isn’t a lot of detailed, day-by-day documentation about Donald Trump specifically as a 7th grader, but biographers, family members, and school accounts give a reasonably consistent picture of what he was like around that age (early adolescence).
Here’s what’s generally known and well-supported:
Energetic, assertive, and difficult to control
As a boy, Trump was known to be high-energy, impulsive, and aggressive.
He frequently got into trouble at school for talking back, fighting, or disruptive behavior.
His parents reportedly struggled to manage his behavior at home and in school.
Sent to military school at age 13
Because of these issues, Trump’s parents enrolled him at New York Military Academy when he was about 13 (roughly 7th–8th grade age).
This decision is widely described as an attempt to impose discipline and structure.
Trump himself has later said the experience helped channel his competitiveness and taught him self-control.
Competitive and status-oriented
Even at a young age, Trump appears to have been very competitive, wanting to win, dominate, or stand out.
Former classmates and later biographers describe him as someone who liked to assert authority and test boundaries.
He reportedly responded well to hierarchical systems once he learned how to work them to his advantage.
Not described as academically exceptional
There’s no strong evidence that he was a standout academic student in middle school.
The emphasis in accounts is far more on personality and behavior than on grades or intellectual curiosity.
Early patterns that persisted Many traits people associate with Trump as an adult can be traced back to this period:
Confidence bordering on bravado
A strong need to dominate social situations
Sensitivity to challenges or perceived slights
Comfort with confrontation
In short, as a 7th grader Trump was widely seen as smart enough, very energetic, often unruly, and strongly competitive, to the point that his parents felt a strict military environment was necessary.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Donald Trump and Barack Obama at roughly the same age (around 7th grade, ~12–13 years old), based on autobiographical accounts, biographers, and school records.
Trump vs. Obama at Age 12–13
Category
Donald Trump
Barack Obama
Setting
Queens, New York; traditional, affluent household
Honolulu, Hawaii; multicultural, nontraditional family
School Environment
Conventional public/private schools → soon sent to military academy
Punahou School, elite private school
Temperament
Loud, assertive, impulsive, aggressive
Quiet, reserved, reflective
Behavior in Class
Frequently disruptive; talked back; got into trouble
Trump at that age was a high-energy, boundary-pushing kid whose behavior worried adults enough to trigger strict intervention.
Obama was a thoughtful, inward-looking kid trying to understand who he was in a world where he felt different.
What’s most striking
Trump’s defining traits were external: confrontation, dominance, rule-testing.
Obama’s defining traits were internal: reflection, emotional control, identity formation.
Trump needed structure imposed from outside.
Obama relied on self-regulation and observation.
An important caveat
Middle school personality is not destiny. Plenty of difficult 12-year-olds become stable adults, and many quiet adolescents later find strong voices. Still, in this case, the patterns seen at 12–13 closely resemble how each man later led and communicated.
The caveat at the end is true, but I do think that the felon still has the emotional intelligence of a middle school student. Actually let me take that back. I taught many students who would do a better job at being president that he is doing now. I have no doubts about that whatsoever.
On a different note, I went outside with the dogs and I snapped a photo of an azalea that’s trying to bloom. We had a string of warm weather days, then a freeze, so I think these blooms are the best that it will be. I took one with my phone, then I downloaded the photo into Chat GPT and told it to make the photo artistic. Below you can see the results. The one on the right is the “artistic” photo.
And as I was walking inside, I spied a wild violet growing in the lawn. I took a portrait photo of it with my phone, and then asked Chat GPT to make it seem more spring like. The one on the right is the AI generated photo.
I am not sure how I feel about this whole AI thing, but I must say that the second photo of the violet kind of scrubbed away all of the dead leaves!
The realization hit me this morning that I haven’t posted anything in well over a month. I have had a couple of people reach out to me and check if I am okay, and that prompted me to think about writing another post. The problem is that I stare at the computer screen and the words just don’t come. So a solution is that I will just not think about what I am going to write about, but I will just write.
So why the lack of posts? I have been a bit depressed lately. Nothing serious or earth shattering really, just a bit blue. This sometimes happens to me. A trigger or something like that sends me on a downward trajectory. This time, I cannot pinpoint the exact moment where I began to feel a bit lost.
Health wise, I have been having a few issues. I am tired of seeing all of these different doctors and I guess when the day is quiet and my mind is allowed to wander, the whole mortality thing creeps into my brain. I have to go to my cardiologist next week for an appointment that he asked for. The nurse called me and told me he wanted to see me. I was just in a couple of weeks prior for an echo cardiogram and I was told that I had a leaky valve, but it was nothing to worry about. So now he wants to see me, and I cannot help but wonder and worry about it. I have also hurt my back and have been going to physical therapy, and unfortunately the therapy has done no good. I am returning to my doctor in a couple of weeks for another appointment about my back and a plan of action from there.
When I go to physical therapy, I look around and I see all of these old people with ambulatory issues, shuffling around. I call them old people, but I guess I am one of them! I think the physical therapist I see is good, yesterday he dry needled the muscle in question in my back as nothing is working to get my back to where it should be. Sometimes the pain radiates to my abdomen, and of course, that doesn’t help my mood.
I have had a lot of unforeseen expenses too. Michael and I went to the beach house for the last time this past weekend. (The rental season is beginning at the end of March.) I have a compact SUV, and we usually take my car as it holds more “stuff.” When we got to the beach, the hatch wouldn’t shut using the button to push on my dashboard. I tried doing it manually, and I could get it down to the bumper, but it wouldn’t latch. The dome lights wouldn’t go off so I shut them off so the battery wouldn’t run down. On the way home, which is about a 4 hour drive, we tied rope from the inside part of the hatch to the front so that the door wouldn’t fly open. We made it home, and I got the car fixed this week. It was not a cheap fix. The car is 8 years old, and part of me wants a new one, but the rational me knows that I need to keep it longer. The same day that I brought the car in, the garage door broke and I had to get that fixed. I guess when it rains, it pours.
As I was typing that last paragraph, I realized that these car and garage “problems” are nothing really in the general scheme of things. So maybe it was good for me to write about it. And of course, another one of the other things that is really eating at me is the state of my country right now. The item that really upsets me the most is actually not tRump. The man is a narcissistic idiot, a dolt, a moron. What upsets me is how people still support him after all of the things he has done. I am convinced he is as guilty as hell concerning the Epstein files, I am angry at the war with Iran, I think his cabinet is a circus of incompetent sycophants. And the GOP sits back and does NOTHING. When Mike Johnson opens his mouth, I feel an anger well up in me. I want to slap his face, and I am not a violet soul at all.
Michael wanted to watch the State of the Union address on TV back in February. I did not. But it was his night to pick TV (we alternate) and so I acquiesced and watched it with him. I found myself yelling at the TV, and every time Bert and Ernie (Vance and Johnson) stood up to clap, I lost it. Their condescending looks…ugh.
I mentioned earlier about going to the beach. Michael is trying to sell the beach house again, and we have been going down to work on the house to get it ready. It is on the market now, and a few people have looked at it. After the last rental season, so much stuff was broken by the vacationers. They broke a very expensive deck chair, they broke the brand new beach umbrella, etc, etc. We had to replace all of that stuff. My happy place is always walking along the beach, but sadly for the last month we have not been able to walk on the beach because the sand has been littered with dead fish. We looked online and someone said that these fish beached themselves to escape blue fish trying to eat them. I don’t know if it is true or not, but when I say the beach is littered with dead fish, it is no lie. You can even smell it from the street behind the dune. So maybe that the stench is a way to help me close the chapter on that house. Who knows?
Okay…I just got a lot off my chest. Maybe it is a good idea to post more, but it is negative stuff and I try like hell not to be a negative person.
I took this photo on the sound side as the sun was beginning to go down for the day. I liked how the sun’s reflection on the water looked as I was walking along the path. To give some perspective, the beach house is in Corolla, NC. The sound is on one side, and the Atlantic Ocean is on the other.
This is a photo of the dogs at the beach house. It makes me laugh because Shirley is in the little bed and Murray is in the big bed. He takes that lamb wherever he goes. It is his security blanket.
My Secret Journey 