September 2025 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

The return of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show

In a whirlwind of political controversy, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show, a late-night talk show, was suddenly suspended “indefinitely” last week, then just as suddenly restarted, airing again on Tuesday, September 23rd. The cancellation was evidently a response to the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appearing on a conservative commentator’s podcast and threatening the company that produces the show. (His threats went over so well that fellow Republicans were criticizing his comments as attacking free speech.) This sudden turnabout was undoubtedly due to the financial setbacks experience by the parent company… someone called Disney… as consumers took a stand, cancelling streaming subscriptions and vacations, apparently to the tune of several billion dollars lost in less than a week.

Until this week, I had never watched the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show. The entire concept is antithetical to my lifestyle… “late night” is something that I usually only experience at conventions, and I generally prefer to read news rather than watch it. Don’t get me wrong, I only altered half of that… I watched the episode on YouTube the morning after it aired. According to YouTube’s count, so have 15 million (and counting) other people, so I’d say it’s doing fairly well.

I almost feel bad for The Onion, faced with the outrageous reality that they’re competing with, and yet that same outrageous reality makes it easier for the late night comedians, including Jimmy Kimmel, to find easy targets. And with malfunctioning escalators (allegedly sabotage, rather than the reality of an emergency stop triggered by his own team) and teleprompter (again, run by his own team), you’d almost think this administration is trying to provide fodder for those late night shows.

What we saw was a successful boycott with a specific target – restoring the show – influencing a mega-corporation. Imagine what we could accomplish as a country if all of those consumers who have a strong opinion about free speech would vote.

The Return of Mount Mulchmore

As I mentioned recently, we needed a bit more mulch before the winter weather hits. After a couple weeks, I cancelled my Chip Drop request – I can always enter a new one – and bought some mulch after my garden planner said these magic words: “If we don’t mulch it, we need to sod lift the whole area.”

Yeah, I’d rather mulch it. Here’s the work in progress, starting with a perimeter mulch path at the edge, then a combination of sod removal and mulching. The areas where grass was removed are destined for more immediate planting of somewhat tall plants. We briefly considered a metal edging for the perimeter plant, so the mulch doesn’t wash into the neighbor’s grass when it rains, but realized how expensive that would get given that the entire north edge has a bit of a slope into his yard. We’re looking at a plastic edging instead.

A new pile of dark brown mulch – about 10 cubic yards – on our driveway, the day it was delivered.
A 2-foot wide line of mulch along the edge of our property in the northwest corner of our yard.
A mulched area around the lilac, with a small portion where we did sod lifting instead for upcoming planting.
A view from the side patio to the mulch pile, showing the recently mulched area and the remaining grass for the northwest corner, which will all be mulched over or removed.

Feline goodness

The internet has been fairly vile this week, with videos of two different murders that occurred in the United States circulating: a violent stabbing in North Carolina and a targeted shooting at a college campus in Utah. You’ve probably seen more commentary about the second one, despite another school shooting in Colorado mere minutes later, because the person in question was famous/infamous (depending who you ask). Either way, most of the comments you’ll see online about it are pretty terrible, with many people celebrating the death and conspiracy theorists on the other side somehow naming every person who votes for the Democratic party as a murderer, despite not knowing who the murderer is or their motive. For anyone who thinks that way, please pull your collective heads out of your collective asses instead of painting a diverse group of people with a single label. Whatever the method or motive, senseless violence is wrong.

Ideally, I would have segued into a photo that involved both a head next to an ass here, but I typically don’t take photos of the cats in those particular poses. Instead, here’s a spattering of more delightful cat photos, in the hopes that they offer you a smile today and a brief refuge from whatever you need to hide from.

June, sitting on a blue tub next to our gaming table, with a plush Flying Spaghetti Monster lurking behind her.
Zuko lounged on our Gamefold table – folded, leaning against part of our games library.
Two cats, Arwen and June, sitting on a Hello Kitty blanket on the sofa.
Diane, mere inches from a water bowl, perches with front paws on the edge of a full bucket on the shower mat to drink.

Mount Mulchmore

One our perpetual summer projects is acquiring and distributing mulch around the yard, to help with weed suppression and generally improve the appearance of the yard. Earlier in the spring, I had a request in with GetChipDrop.com for wood chips, hoping to get a free (or close to free, with optional donation) supply of wood chips to mulch the yard. ChipDrop partners with local arborists and gardeners to mutual benefit: the arborists get somewhere local to drop the wood chips, and the gardeners don’t have to call every tree company or outright purchase mulch. It’s a simple process, but it doesn’t mean the availability of wood chips is sporadic. Each request is good for a month, and when we returned from the Canary Islands without having received wood chips, I bit the bullet and ordered mulch from a local supplier. (To be clear, their mulch is fabulous… but mulch is not cheap.)

A pile of mulch - approximately 10 cubic yards - in the driveway — Mulch pile 3-May

A smaller pile of mulch - maybe 5 cubic yards - in the driveway — Mulch pile 3-May

The initial distribution wave went quickly – from delivery on May 3rd to the second photo on May 10th, we probably distributed half of the mulch. This was the easy phase, re-mulching areas that were mulched in previous years. You can see how good the fresh mulch looked around the raised vegetable beds. We have a large yard and progressed fairly quickly through those initial 10 cubic yards. I was quickly becoming concerned with other areas of the garden I wanted to mulch as I ran through the pile.

So, before clearing the entire pile, I placed a new request through GetChipDrop.com on a Friday… and received a response Saturday morning asking if I wanted a 15-yard delivery. Woot! It wasn’t until partway through distributing the refreshed pile that I named it “Mount Mulchmore.”

The process inevitably slowed, between some intolerably warm weather, my wasted time at PT, and our discussions as to which areas needed weeding before mulching and which should have landscape paper set down first. I expanded the back border to put more distance between myself and the poison ivy lingering under the neighbor’s white mulberry tree. And then, in mid-August, after mulching around the strawberry bed, I cleared the rest of the pile.

I need more mulch. Yes, I have a request in.