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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: The Week That Was [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-09-04

I’m going to start using my calendar more often, even for events which are routine each week and have been for years, like posting Thursdays here at KTK. On several occasions, like last week, I start the day running through my schedule in my head only to find later on that I’ve forgotten it’s Thursday evening and lost myself in a book. When this happens, I don’t recall until after I’ve returning from walking the dog and settled in for the night. By then its just too late to bother stopping by. My apologies, fellow KTKers. I will try to be more present.

This past week has been relatively uneventful. Went up to Petaluma to have lunch with my daughter last Wednesday and we drove through the Cottages of Petaluma, a 55+ community of small prefab homes. It was hot and there was no one out and about so it was hard to get a feel for what life might be like there. The units were built close to one another and none of them had fenced in backyards for pets. My daughter wants us to go tour a really nice community in Santa Rosa on a weekend. But I’m worried about being that far north, the heat and the fear of wildfires. I know there are a few folks here who live in that neck of the woods and hope you can chip in thoughts on what it is like to live up there.

Thursday was vet day. Aggie had been having loose stools for some time, which I was thinking was probably caused by all the medications she’s taking for canine cognitive dysfunction. I decided to have her checked out as it was getting worse and thank god I did because she has giardia. Undoubtedly picked up from some of the junk she manages to find on our walks. So the weekend was a homebound one for me, hanging with her to make sure she didn’t have any accidents in the house. Her CCD seems to be improving with the trazadone and gabapentin, although she had a rough night last night and I had to up the doses to settle her.

Friday night just before 8, as darkness descended, I stopped at the light in the turning lane near my neighborhood supermarket. A woman was waiting in front of me on an electric bike. Her very young daughter sat behind her, her long blonde hair cascading down her back from under her brown bike helmet. She was dressed up in a billowing blue skirt and a cape. There was a light on the bike. The mother balanced them with her white sneakered feet as we waited.The girl’s arms were wrapped around the woman’s waist except for now and again when she would gesture up at something in the distance and the mother would turn her head and talk to her.

The moment felt so precarious and magical. I was amazed that the mother would trust that her daughter would know enough to continue to hold on and remain seated behind her. I flashed back to when my daughter was that young and wondered about how I would feel taking her out with me on a motorized bike at night on some trafficked roadways.

I was mesmerized watching them, for a moment feeling as if they were misplaced and belonged somewhere exotic and foreign, maybe Thailand or Laos. The light changed and they passed through the intersection and veered into the bike lane. I passed them on the left and turned a block later into the street leading to my house. I was curious to know more about them.

As I got out of my car with the dog, the bike pulled up one house over. It was my next door neighbor and her daughter. She called out hello and I wondered if I should tell her about how magical the experience had been for me. I decided not to. To just hold it to myself.

x Whoa! Thousands rally in Maine against Trump and Susan Collins — and in support of Graham Platner, who is running to replace Collins in the U.S. Senate. 🙌💪👏✊️👇



[image or embed] — Bill Madden (@maddenifico.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 9:14 AM

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