life

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The Unclean

Things are not clean.  Even though soap and water have been applied, objects remain clogged with grease and protein, bacteria and mire.

Grease beads on a pan, coats a plate, overlaying knives and spoons.  Grease does not like soap.  Add soap and grease goes away, but with too little soap or soaks in water full of oiliness the grease hovers and swims.  Grease prefers cold water to warm.  The hotter the water, the less likely grease will remain.

Starch is another skin.  It adheres carefully and craftily, defying efforts at its removal.  It cannot be seen in the water.  Water must be removed or scrubs must be soapy and vigilant in order to ensure it moves on to pipes.  Left to its own devices, it curls and dries, affixed with tenacity.

The backs of implements used to eat and to prepare sustenance (plates and bowls, pans, glasses and cups) all need cleansing on their backs and under their bottoms.  Material hides there, ignored by those who do not consider its existence.

Toilets with urine that is not flushed begin to smell acrid and pungent.

If a toothbrush is electric and removed from the mouth before it ceases rotation, it leaves small bits of bacteria and spit on all surfaces in its vicinity.  Others who come into contact with these substances may share.

Why remove items from the floor when it is more simple to walk across them than to place them elsewhere?

Used toilet tissue does not replace itself.

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The a Turns It Around

Apathy, like a virus worming its way through cells.  It gets in and makes nothing appealing.  It wins.  It is floating, moving along the surface.  It no longer feels the urge to push.  It no longer cares.  Some would call it depression, but there is no pain in it.  Depression connotes pain.  Depression is drowning while apathy floats.  Apathy is flatter, something not angry.  Depression has anger and vile, venom and spit.  Apathy is a pool of water on oil; it sits there, not even holding itself, simply roosting, waiting for nothing.

A pathos.  Pathos with an added vowel that takes it away.  Add the a, the pathos leaves.

Somewhere in my belly if I turn towards certain things I notice a place where apathy has not moved in.  It could, given the right set of circumstances.   There are a handful of things that still know pathos, that still know rage, that still know love.  Give them time and the a will turn them around, help them float.

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Tell it Like it Is: Torture

I read a story on the BBC website today.  The story is repeated in its entirety below.  What struck me after reading the story was the BBC’s willingness to relate the torture described by Mr. Binyam Mohamed, a man held by the US for just under 7 years and released last February, all charges against him dropped.  US mainstream media is completely unwilling to tell it like it is, preferring instead to describe the fringes, keeping the hard truth from reaching our eyes.  Chickens.

Americans need to read and see what torture means.  The word torture isn’t horrific anymore.  We hear a bit about waterboarding, or see the most sanitized photos from Abu Ghraib, but unless we’re looking for it, we’re not hearing what our country did to people.  It’s appalling.

Last week I read an article on Mr. Marri, the man who has been held without charges or trial for years.  It was an online article, which meant anyone could comment.  Some guy commented that “torture works.”  Really?  How is that?  Does that mean that if I hold a lighter to your balls while you are tied to a fence in neither a sitting or standing position and ask you whether you raped my mother you will continue to deny it, even if I set your balls on fire?  Is that evidence of torture’s “success”?

Read this BBC story and judge for yourself.  Ask whether you could hold out under such conditions.  Ask whether you would say anything to get someone to stop drowning you, or cutting you, or leaving you hanging by chains in the dark with music so loud you cannot hear.  Then tell me whether torture works.

The link to this story can be found here.

Demands for MI5 ‘torture’ inquiry

Binyam Mohamed getting off his plane

Mr Mohamed arrived back at RAF Northolt in London in February

MPs have demanded a judicial inquiry into a Guantanamo Bay prisoner’s claims that MI5 was complicit in his torture.

In a Mail on Sunday interview, UK resident Binyam Mohamed claims MI5 fed his US captors questions which led him to make a false confession.

His allegations are being investigated by the government, but the Foreign Office said it did not condone torture.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the “extremely serious” claims should also be referred to the police.

‘Dark prison’

Mr Mohamed told the paper he was held in continual darkness for weeks on end in a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan.

He has claimed that while in US custody in 2002, he was rendered to Morocco for interrogation and torture.

Now he has released what he said were two telegrams sent from British intelligence to the CIA in November 2002.

In the first memo, the writer asks for a name to be put to him and then for him to be questioned further about that person.

The longest was when they chained me for eight days on end, in a position that meant I couldn’t stand straight nor sit
Binyam Mohamed

The second telegram asks about a timescale for further interrogation.

The legal organisation Reprive, which represents Mr Mohamed, said its client was shown the telegrams in Guantanamo Bay by his military lawyer Lieutenant Col Yvonne Bradley.

Mr Mohamed claimed he acquired the telegrams through the US legal process when he was fighting to be freed from Guantanamo Bay.

Daniel Sandford, BBC Home Affairs correspondent, said Mr Mohamed’s claims would be relatively simple to substantiate.

“As time progresses it will probably become quite apparent whether indeed these are true telegrams and I think it’s unlikely they’d be put into the public domain if they couldn’t eventually be checked back.”

The Conservatives have called for a police inquiry into his allegations of British collusion.

Mr Grieve called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations.

“And if the evidence is sufficient to bring a prosecution then the police ought to investigate it,” he added.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said there was a “rock solid” case for an independent judicial inquiry.

Labour MP Andrew Dismore, who chairs the joint committee on human rights, said he would asking the home and foreign secretaries to explain how Britain’s policy against torture is being implemented and monitored.

Shami Chakrabati, director of campaign group Liberty said: “These are more than allegations – these are pieces of a puzzle that are being put together.

“It makes an immediate criminal investigation absolutely inescapable.”

Former Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis accused the government of “stonewalling” by referring the claims to the Attorney General rather than the Director of Public Prosecutions.

“What appears to have happened is they have been turning blind eyes,” he added.

‘Wrong-doing’

Mr Mohamed told the paper the worst part of this captivity was in Kabul’s “dark prison”.

“The toilet in the cell was a bucket,” he told the paper.

“There were loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out what felt like about 160 watts, a deafening volume, non-stop, 24 hours a day.

We abhor torture and never order it or condone it
Foreign Office spokesman

He added: “They chained me for eight days on end, in a position that meant I couldn’t stand straight nor sit.

“I couldn’t sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night.”

Mr Mohamed spent just under seven years in custody, four of those in Guantanamo – the US’s camp in Cuba.

He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 as US authorities considered him a would-be bomber who fought alongside the Taleban in Afghanistan.

But last year the US dropped all charges against him, and he was released in February.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We abhor torture and never order it or condone it.

“We take allegations of mistreatment seriously and investigate them when they are made.

“In the case of Binyam Mohamed, an allegation of possible criminal wrong-doing has been referred to the Attorney General.

“We need now to wait for her report.”

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Stylin

I realize on some level how silly this is, but I love the way I feel after having some beauty ritual performed, be it hair dressing or nail smoothing or whatever.  Yesterday I had my hairs arranged and cut and made to look beautiful.  Leaving the salon I could feel it silky and swinging on my neck.  Odd how simply having my hairs arranged can provide a pick me up.

I think I have mentioned before that I am not naturally the sort of woman who easily maintains makeup and hair styling and whatnot.  I am simply not one of those women who look perfectly made up at all times.  I cannot keep my sausagey fingers from looking unkempt.  I manage to keep pedicures looking somewhat okay, but I think mostly it is an illusion fostered by toes existing over five-and-half-feet from my eyes.  If I get closer, I often notice there are little bumps in the polish or nicks on the edges of my nails.

I am perpetually battling dry feet skin, never able to achieve the milky white perfection seen on Photoshopped advertisements.  I could probably make a mint if I figured out how to accomplish that little trick.  I will stay on top of the eyebrows for several days in a row, then realize one morning that Hey, I haven’t looked at them in a while.  It is with some foreboding I look into the mirror because I have had genuine fears of having my head turn into one giant hair pile, Cousin Itt come to life.  Yikes!  Except for lipstick (my take to an island mainstay), I have never been the sort to wear makeup for any length of time.  I invariably forget and rub my eyes, or smear the stuff on my lids, or do something else equally unattractive.

I try to maintain a well put together outfit.  I actually choose and wear quite pretty clothes.  The problem is when nylons start creeping down so the crotch ends up between my thighs, or waistbands creep into uncomfortable creases, or I dribble something on my chest.  You get the picture.  And after a while, in spite of my greatest efforts, my hairs just start to fly about.  I think it has something to do with the fact that my hairs would be curly left to their own devices.  I use a brush and hairdryer to make it straight.  It waits and then when I’m out in public some of the hairs stage a mutiny, reverting back to their curly ways.

While I was in the salon I read a little article about which beauty regimens women are giving up in times of financial difficulty, and those they simply cannot live without.  I chuckled to myself at the irony of my sitting in that chair having my hairs arranged as my bank account is gradually depleted to nearly nothing while taking a break from job hunting.  Attempting some semblance of beauty through hair dressing is most certainly the beauty regimen I will not give up.  My answer to that question is easy.  No matter what, I always manage to get my hairs arranged.

Hair is a funny thing.  I tend to be the sort who, either through thin finances or thin time and sometimes both, leaves my hair arranging for 8 to 10 weeks rather than the recommended 6 to 8.  The result is that I usually arrive at the salon looking like a scruffy puppy.  While it is not much fun to go through life looking and feeling scruffy, it is marvelous to come out of the hair salon feeling like I got a shiny new coat of wax or something.  The feeling lasts for a couple of weeks after the arranging.  Then it fades into the background until the scruffiness reminds me that I really ought to do something and stop scaring people with the way I look.

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Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

I’m not alone in saying that the books of Dr. Seuss were among my favorites as a child.  Unique and clever, they hold a spot in my heart because they contributed to the development of my lifelong delight with the english language.  When I started reading to Milla his stories became her favorites too.

I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am.  I could recite the lines from Green Eggs and Ham in its entirety at age 2.  After Milla came along and I read it to her over and over and over, she too could recite the entire book.

I could not stand Thing One and Thing Two.  I wanted someone to slap them.  I was grateful when the Cat came along and cleaned up their mess and the goldfish was back safely in his bowl.

I adored Horton.  As a child I pondered whether we humans weren’t perhaps a speck in some giant’s universe or if tiny worlds existed, so minute we could blow them about like the dust that existed all around us.  I admired Horton’s insistence on protecting the Whos and his unwillingness to allow them to perish.

I began to understand about discrimination after reading of the Star Bellied Sneetches.  Mr. Geisel, a foe of fascism and racism, helped to teach small children what it means to dislike someone because of something superficial and meaningless.  He helped us understand just how silly and perverse discrimination is.

I could go on and on, through each of these stories that are so dear to my heart.  Thank you, Theodore Seuss Geisel.  There are those of us who are grateful you were born.

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Rick Santelli is an Idiot

I can’t believe this guy.  I heard him spouting off here about how Americans shouldn’t pay for their neighbor to have one more bathroom.  I wanted to reach into the screen and slap his ugly head.  What an idiot.

Here’s a clue, Mr. Smarty Pants:  People who are in foreclosure are in foreclosure because the system is a mess, not because they are “deadbeats” and want a free ride from the government or their neighbors.  Want to point fingers, idiot?  Point them at the banks that overvalued properties in the first place to get people into questionable loans so brokers could collect bigger fees.  Point those fingers at the lenders for telling consumers that their ARM loan wouldn’t be a problem because they would be able to refinance in three years when the rates change (and hey, rates have been going down forever, so  why shouldn’t this continue? Your payment will be lower!) while simultaneously neglecting to point out there would be no way in hell any traditional lender would refinance property that is mortgaged for more than it is worth.  And oh, be sure to keep it a secret from the borrower that refinancing will not be an option if you lose your job.  How about pointing the fingers at lenders who convinced people to take out that second mortgage or a HELOC to “consolidate their debt” without pointing out that trading unsecured debt for secured debt would make bankruptcy pointless should the need arise?  How about pointing fingers at the pathetic and useless Bush administration who drove us into an economic crisis and higher unemployment than we have seen in decades?  Let’s just blame the victim for losing their job.  They should have known to move to China or India ten years ago so they would be there when there jobs were shipped overseas.

I heard the jerk in an interview claim that buyers should have hired lawyers.  Guess what?  Lawyers aren’t free.  And assuming someone could afford $225 an hour to hire one, a lawyer wouldn’t hire an appraiser to know that the bank overvalued the property.  Plus hiring an attorney when you buy a house is theoretically unnecessary anyway.  Mortgage brokers and lenders have a fiduciary duty of care to their clients.  This means they are held to a higher standard of care in dealing with the public.  They are expected to act EXTRA honest because it is expected that they have greater knowledge about the mortgage industry than consumers.  How does this work, Mr. Santelli?  Are the consumers supposed to suddenly educate themselves so they can catch dishonest bankers and brokers?  Would you hold a patient to the same duty before going to a doctor?  Am I supposed to go get an MBA before I go to a financial expert to ensure they are upholding their fiduciary duty?  Should I get an MD before going to the doctor?

I can’t stand the mentality that we are not obligated to help one another.  Guess what?  We are all in this together.  We can sit in our foreclosed bunkers with our guns aimed at our neighbors and barbed wire wrapped around our hearts to protect us from the enemy, ensuring we keep that property because, hell, it belongs to us, right?  We don’t need to share.  Or we can grow up and realize that society at its heart means social.  It means taking responsibility for one another.  It means what we do for each other we do for ourselves. It means we care for and protect one another and when someone is down, we offer them a hand up.  Taking care of one another is the stuff life is made of.  The alternate choice is to live like Rick Santelli, cold and alone with his gun pointed at everyone, dragging his loot into the afterlife.  Good luck with that, Buddy.

P.S. Being a stock-broker might be a high risk financially, but it is not hard work.

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Unreasonable Faith

My piece titled Who Would Jesus Bomb was published on the blog Unreasonable Faith today.  If you are interested, feel free to go read it here.

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My Response to a Comment

I received a comment from a reader of my post yesterday.  I have posted the writer’s comment here and responded individually to specifics.

“You might think that the fact that you use words as “vilify” makes you an authority on something which you obviously know nothing about.”

By phrasing your opening line with the words that I “might think” something, you limit logical denial.  However, while I “might think” using the word vilify makes me an authority on something, I don’t.  My use of the word is as a verb to describe behavior of certain people.  How is it you prove I have no “obvious” knowledge, because I did not give a history of religious bigotry in an opinion piece?  I need not give such a history; your own letter proves my point in its last line.

“You vilify Christians in the same breath you claim we vilify you.”

Show me where I say anything about Christians and show me where I vilify anything.  I am making a valid criticism of organized religion.  You jump to conclusions and take it further, ascribing my criticism to Christianity, then claim I am vilifying, all in the same breath.

“You don’t understand us, but yet we are supposed to understand you.”

Again, this comes from nowhere.  My fundamental thesis requests that we look hard at religion, that we seek understanding.  You miss this point entirely and as you do in your entire letter, making assumptions and jumping to unjustified conclusions.  You state I want “you” to understand me; does this mean you think I am in a minority and want religions to understand me?  Is it something else?  I offered an opinion, I did not ask for religious tolerance of what I had to say.

“It seems that whenever any group of people creates a movement with the same rhetoric you espouse, you want to play with a different set of rules and on a different playing field.  Your attitude and language mirrors that which you abhor in Christians.”

What rhetoric is it that I espouse, that we should look at religion’s place in furthering intolerance and bigotry?  I suppose you are right that I want to play with a different set of rules on a different playing field because I am not arguing we use intolerance and bigotry in making this examination.  And again, where in anything do I specifically mention Christians?  Where do I show abhorrence?  In asking we stop intolerance and bigotry?  Is that abhorrence?  It seems you are the one with the attitude, as well the one who is jumping to conclusions and making assumptions.

“Have you thought about that?”

Why yes.  See my previous response.

“You make leaps and bounds and speak with hyperbole, and use circular reasoning to prove your point.”

Ironic, considering this exactly what you have done through this entire diatribe. Making leaps and bounds?  You have done so by assuming I speak only of Christians.  I said religion.  Does this mean only Christianity qualifies in your narrow mind?  And where exactly is my hyperbole, in claiming religion is used as an excuse in most bigotry?  This is not overstatement; it is truth.

“I don’t think you’re going see people give up on religion.”

Did I make such a request?  No.  I said we need to look at religion honestly to see its place in bigotry.  I did not say do away with it.  Read my words, don’t jump “leaps and bounds.”

“After all, religion is a word that people don’t understand.  What we really focus on is a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

As is typical with those of your ilk, you think the only religion is yours.  There is no response to your narrow-mindedness.

“You don’t have to understand us or believe the way we believe, especially with regard to sin and our own sinfulness.  But, then again, we don’t have to understand you or believe the way you believe, either–even if you don’t want to believe that there is such a thing as sin.”

Again, as with this entire pointless rant, you make assumptions based on your own beliefs, not based on anything I have said.  And again, there really isn’t much one can do to respond to your own imaginings.

“So, I will respect you and let you live the life you want to live; but, please, respect me and let me live the life I want to live without the name-calling and generalizations.”

Name calling?  Where in what I said did I call anyone any names?  You are deluded.  And if this entire letter is your being respectful, I would hate to see what you consider disrespect.

“The proposition was voted, and unfortunately for you, you are in the minority.”

Yes, thanks to religion and the hatefulness of most people like you, bigotry is alive and well.  Thank you for proving my point.

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I Have Been Sick

I have not been writing.  I have not been reading.  I have not been doing much of anything except lying in bed like a lump wishing I would feel better.  I try to do things.  I get up and go about for a bit, then I’m so sorry because of the overwhelming fatigue, nausea, and coughing.  It’s a travesty. I even got a fever, and that is extremely rare for me.  The last time I had a fever was fifteen years ago, and it put me in the hospital.  This time I just laid there like a dry stick, sucking on lozenges, popping Tylenol, dextromethorphan, and antihistamines, completely catatonic.  Yuck.

I’ve gotten some ideas.  Really, I have.  It’s possible to come up with some pretty interesting things to write about when one wakes up from coughing after the drugs have worn off at 3 in the morning.  But the thought of being upright to actually type some of these clever things into the computer is seriously more than I can manage.  I have to get up frequently to go to the bathroom because I’m trying to drown this thing (it’s not working).  Going to the bathroom is the extent of my energetic abilities.  It’s getting old, I can assure you.

I told Boyfriend today that I want him to buy some oranges because I’m going to try and kill it with vitamin C.  And some grapefruit.  Maybe if I eat a bunch of them every day I’ll kill the bad little viruses.  Plus I’ll eliminate any possibility of scurvy, and help keep the orange growers in business.  And grapefruit growers.  I’ll be doing my part.

I think it is evident from this post what my mind is capable of.  Today I took a couple dozen quizzes on facebook.  That also gives some indication of my potential mental capacity.  It’s like I’ve been working hard all week and my brain is fried.  I get the fried part, but it has not been because I have been working.  I did do some fun activities because Milla is home this week.  I went to the zoo, then came home and collapsed for 3 hours.  I went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, then came home and collapsed for 4 hours.  I went to the Union Square Farmer’s Market and almost threw up right there in front of all of the farmers.  Not fun.  Maybe all that running around is kind of like hard work and that is why I feel like I’ve been busting my ass all week.  I don’t know.  In any case, I hope I get over this soon.  I am sick of being sick.

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Have We Overcome?

This piece can be seen here on Huffington Post. If you like it, buzz me up.

Isn’t it ironic that as we’re congratulating ourselves on our ability to elect a black president we are simultaneously lamenting the passage of Proposition 8? We Americans have been quite pleased with ourselves because we were able to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. I would argue that we may have overcome something, but it is not bigotry. The day we will really know we have overcome bigotry is the day we elect a black, Atheist, lesbian–THAT would be a feat.

Inherent in the post-election discussions of race and politics is the conclusion that because large segments of our population have moved away from open racism, we are beyond bigotry. Nothing could be further from the truth; we have simply traded one for another, or several others, as the case may be. And these latest forms of intolerance and discrimination are often made more palatable through religion, as open racism against blacks used to be.

Because of religion and its ever-encroaching move into the political spectrum, Americans were forced to live through an administration that would not allow medical research on single cells to help find cures for diseases in people who are alive right now. Because of religion, pro-life politicians gain support from citizens whose actual interests are ignored in favor of policies that benefit the extremely wealthy. Because of religion, all over the country laws like Proposition 8 proliferate.

In spite of Obama’s election, what America has not given up and seems loathe to give up, regardless how far backward we move socially, morally, and legally, is religion. Why should it? Religion allows people to vilify those they don’t understand. Simply claim that anything different from you is against your religion and you are protected by your God-given, inalienable right to believe.

It is truly a significant step in the right direction that a black man will be our president. It is evidence that progress is possible and that society is able to make changes that seemed impossible only decades earlier. Yet is seems to me that if we are ever able to really end bigotry, if we are ever able to end all forms of discrimination, we are going to have to take a cold, hard, honest look at religion and its role in the promulgation of hate and intolerance. Only then will we truly overcome.

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I Hate Windows

I’ve switched to mac. However I still own a pretty decent PC that I keep because of WordPerfect, the best and only word processing program, a program that makes stupid, counterintuitive Word look like the mangled piece of shit that it is. If only Corel would make a WordPerfect for mac, things truly would be perfect.  Anyway, I digress.

I have not had the PC out for about 7 months.  It’s been packed away in Oregon.  I used it yesterday to work on some documents in WordPerfect.  I forgot just how hideously obnoxious windows is.  I hate the constant updates.  I hate the stupid little messages telling me stuff I already got 4000 times ago without the stupid little message.  I hate that I have to give “Supervisor Permission” to do anything, even though I’m the only one using the damn thing, and even though I told it I was the only one using the damn thing.

Windows-based computers are called PCs, for “personal computers,” but the truth is they are anything but.  They are completely designed for work in an office with some IP nazi who wants total control of everything you do.  There should be some way to shut that shit off, but there isn’t.  I called HP when I got the thing new and nope, can’t do it.  Annoying.

Just now I came into my office after taking a shower.  The PC had turned itself on and was sitting there wondering if it could install updates.  Um, no.  Go away. I don’t want to have to sit and wait and give you permisssion and then hang out while you reboot and do all your foolish things. Leave me alone.  I’m going to go use my mac.

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Let’s Just Change History

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell stood on the senate floor and basically just made up a new history.  The New Deal didn’t work, he said.  Unemployment was at 15% in 1940.  The programs couldn’t have worked.

Um.  Considering unemployment was at 25% in 1933, a 15% unemployment rate seven years later is a significant reduction.  If one examines an economic graph, improvements and growth are seen throughout the 1930s (except for one small blip in 1937 when President Roosevelt took Republican advice and started cutting rather than spending, causing a downturn in economic growth.  Thank goodness he paid attention and ignored their clamoring a year later).

We as American citizens need to start taking responsibility for what is going on in this country.  We can blame government all we want, but we get the government we deserve.  If we do not know history, if we cannot argue against outright changes to history because we don’t know what happened, and we can be manipulated and controlled in any manner by those in power.   Mitch McConnell wants to claim the New Deal didn’t work, even though it has been accepted history for nearly 8 decades that it did?  If we don’t know any better because we aren’t educated, than how can we refute him?

Democracy requires responsiblity.  It requires an effort on the part of citizens, an effort beyond watching screaming heads on Fox News, or anywhere else for that matter.  If we don’t start taking this responsibility, it doesn’t matter who is President, the United States as we know it will be over.  History is clear on that.

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Judgments

I am really at the point where I can’t stand all the judgments in this world.  Everyone seems to know what everyone else should have done.  I’m not a Bible person, but there are adages in there (and other religious texts) that would be useful for us to consider.  One of these is the quote about the sawdust in another’s eye while ignoring the plank in one’s own.

I’m certainly not immune to this.  When I heard about the woman who birthed 8 children, even though I was telling anyone who would listen to stop carrying on about her parent’s bankruptcy and other choices she made, I was still asking aloud why she had IVF in the first place.

I do try, though, to accept that each person has their own journey, their own lessons to learn, and sometimes what may be easier for one with certain life experiences may seem impossible to another with a different set of circumstances.  It is so easy to judge from afar when we really have no concept of another’s life, even if we’ve lived with them.  It is so easy to state what someone “should have done,” especially with the benefit of hindsight and our own experiences.  People are so unwilling to consider things from another’s perspective, as if in judgment one is able to deflect attention away from the self.  There is also the group mentality at play in many cases; it feels better to sit in judgment against one with many than to be the lone voice of distinction.

I get it that this is a shitty little blurb, not backed up by anything other than ranting, and not well articulated, but I’m sick.  I have a horrible upper chest cold.  I am sick to my stomach and on the verge of vomiting most of the time.  I don’t have it in me to write something perfectly articulate and original.  I just wanted to say what I said.

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Settling In To Our New Home

I live in an apartment where the previous occupants must never have cleaned.  It is easy to draw this conclusion based on the grime covering nearly everything, the sort of grime that requires years to accumulate.  Now, I completely accept that I am tidier than a lot of people.  I have higher standards than others when it comes to dust and whatnot.  I do not say this with any sense of superiority, but only to point out that I know I am pickier than a lot of people.  But seriously, the filth in this apartment takes the cake.  Even Boyfriend, who probably dusts twice a year, has been appalled at just how disgustingly filthy this place is.

Getting the apartment clean, and getting us unpacked and settled has been slow going.  As we have moved in, we have had to clean each place before putting anything away.  We left the rugs for each room for last.  The floors were so grimy the mop would catch on the goo in the first couple of runs over it.  Vacuum, then mop, rinse, mop, rinse, mop, rinse, sometimes six or seven times before we would get to clean wood.  Needless to say it has been slow going.

The windows easily qualify as the most dirty part of the apartment.  The outsides were so unclean, it was difficult to see through them near the edges.  The sills inside were so black with grime and filth that rags used to wipe them would be completely black.  I don’t mean a bit of dirt, but actually black as if they had been wiped through soot.

The other day I set out to try and clean these windows.  We had wiped down the inside in an effort to allow some natural light, but the outsides were so disgustingly filthy, with streaks of black grime, that every day appeared to be cloudy, even in bright sun.

We live on the fourth floor.  The windows in our bedroom are next to a fire escape, so I figured I could climb out there, although the prospect was not exactly appealing.  The living room windows, however, were another matter.  There is nothing between them and the cement below except air.  I decided I would reach outside with a mop and keep at it.  I did this, bringing the mop in every few seconds to rinse the soot-like blackness from the mop’s edge.  Then I reached out and up as far as I could in an effort to remove some of the streakiness.  The result was far from perfect, but a vast improvement.

In the meantime, Boyfriend had gone down to the basement to dump some recycling, then to the mailbox to pick up our mail.  He was gone a bit longer than I would have expected, but I was busy and did not really pay much attention.  A few minutes later, he came into the apartment, walked into the living room, and popped the bottom window down, exposing the outer face.  He then clicked some buttons on the top pane and lowered it.  Voilà!  Access to the outside of the windows!

It turns out he met a neighbor while checking the mail, a nice man who had welcomed us to the building the day we were moving in.  He saw Boyfriend and asked him how we were settling in.  Boyfriend mentioned the windows and wondered aloud whether the management company ever cleaned the outside, and the neighbor showed him how we could do it ourselves.

We are finally settlling in for real.  The windows in the living room and our bedroom are so clean, you can’t tell there is glass there.  Milla’s room and the kitchen are on slate for this week.  Curtains are up in the living room and our bedroom as well.  The rugs are on the floor.  There are only three boxes left, two of which are full of donation items we’re trying to figure out how to get rid of.  Overall, it seems our little home is coming together.

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Goodbye Lady

When I was about three years old, my mom took me to visit her sister, then age twelve.  Her sister had an originally named pony named Patches, an old pinto with large patches of brown and black covering her white body.  My aunt took me riding and I was hooked for life.  From the day of that first ride, I begged my mom for a horse.  Finally after listening to my ceaseless cajoling, she promised I could get a horse when I was twelve, never imagining for a moment her tiny child would remember the promise.  Ah, such simple logic.

From that moment I read, slept, breathed horses.  I took riding lessons when I could, went on trail rides at farms that rented horses, attended horse camps.  When my twelfth birthday came and went, I knew a horse was on the horizon, and not long after, the promise was fulfilled and Rosie came home to me.  She was too small for my long legs, but I adored her and she quickly became a part of the family.

Riding was fun and my sister started saying she wanted a horse too.  My parents relented and took a trip north of Salem to the horse auction.  They came home with a larger, seven-year-old pony mare.   She was a perfect bay, shiny and red, with black points and a rambunctiously thick mane and tail.  She was dainty and pretty, quite ladylike, and so we named her Lady.

I had outgrown Rosie by the time I got her and a year and a half later, my feet touched the ground.  It broke my heart, but I had to find a bigger horse.  This story continued for the next several years.  After I sold Rosie I bought a larger pony, sold her and bought a horse.  As time progressed I became rather horsily proficient and started doing some training work.  For one such job, I traded training work in exchange for stud service to Lady.  Eleven months later, Lady had her first and only baby, Prize.

We had many horses live with us during those years.  We experienced many different horse personalities, some pleasant, some obnoxious.  Lady always lived up to her name.  Where many of our other horses were difficult to catch, Lady would always come wait at the gate, eager for human contact.  She was a smart girl.  She seemed to know the capacity of the rider.  If the person was skilled, she was right in front of the leg, willing and capable.  If the rider was timid or really young, she responded in kind, taking gentle, gingerly steps and walking very slowly.  My mom was terrified of riding.  Her young sister had jokingly put her on a horse with much too much spunk for her abilities or willingness, scaring the daylights out her in the process.  But she rode Lady a few times, the only horse who made her feel safe.  My brother would ride Lady like a wild hellion up and down our mile-long driveway, his whoops filling the air as Lady’s feet clattered on the gravel.

Time progressed and I grew up and moved out.  I kept riding in various capacities, but when I left, my sister’s desire to ride left as well.  My brother only seemed to like riding because horses went fast.  Once he moved on to cars and motorbikes, horses lost any appeal.  My parent’s horse farm dwindled and eventually Lady and Prize were the only horses remaining.  After a few more years they sold Prize to some horsey acquaintances of mine.

For a few years, Lady did not get much attention, but she enjoyed hanging out with my parent’s cows.  They would band together to eat and block the wind.  Then my sister started having babies, I had a baby, Derek had a baby.  All these babies grew into small children who liked to ride the pony at Grandma’s house.  When Milla was two, we rented an old farmhouse in West Linn, Oregon.  It sat on two acres of land right in the suburbs with a grandfather clause allowing livestock.  We decided to have Lady come and live with us.  I was riding at a large hunter jumper barn and Milla had been begging to ride.  I did not feel confident putting her on a tall Thoroughbred, but Lady was just right.

Milla would go out the back door to spend time with Lady.  Lady would lower her head and allow Milla to put on her halter.  She would then lead her around the yard or out into the fenced paddock.  Milla used an old log to clamber onto Lady’s back so she could walk and trot the perimeter of the field.  Friends would bring their children over for a ride.  Our suburban neighbors were thrilled.  They would stop by the fence and offer Lady bits of carrots and apple.

We eventually bought a house and moved on from there, so Lady headed back to my parent’s farm.  My sister had four children and between them and Milla, Lady got pretty regular rides.  My sister bought a farm and Lady came to live there for a while until the place got too muddy, then back she went to the farm.

Lady was long in tooth and pretty swaybacked, her eyes cloudy with cataracts, but she would always come to our whistle, eager to see if we had any special treats in our pocket for her.  Last winter her weight dropped dramatically.  The year was bitterly cold, far below the average, and we worried Lady might not make it through the season.  My parents bought her a warmer blanket and started bringing her up to the house to eat her grain separately from the cows who were hoggy and pushed poor Lady to the back of the line.  Her weight improved and it seemed she would get to see another summer.

The last time I was in Oregon, in late December, I went to visit my parent’s farm.  Like an old fixture there stood Lady out in the pasture among the cows, grazing on the stubby grass.  She was so familiar, such a part of the landscape.  I pointed her out to Boyfriend, who had not been yet to my family’s farm.  “That’s Lady.  She’s got to be in her thirties by now.”  Little did I realize or even think to consider it would be the last time I saw her graying face.   My mom called this morning to let me know that Lady died on Martin Luther King’s birthday.  I had been driving the death truck across country on the day of her death, and my mom had not wanted to add further stress to our blisteringly stressful trip.  Apparently Lady was lying down in the pasture as if asleep.  My dad saw her and realized she was gone.  They buried her on the hill below the house in the place were as children we always rode.

Over the years, Lady patiently allowed little hands to braid her mane and tail, and stood untied while they brushed her, bathed her, and picked her feet.  She would carefully nibble treats from outstretched palms, making certain to leave fingers behind.  In her easy manner, she helped us learn how to care for horses.  She was a part of my life for so long, carrying three generations of our family on her back.  So many children rode, played with, and cared for Lady.  In turn, she cared for us.  I will miss her.

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Gee thanks, Benson

The Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon has decided to stop playing live music.  They gave the musicians who had been playing there for years one day notice.  Not long before they had installed a flat-screen television in the bar.  I guess sports or Fox News is preferable to any sort of culture.  Nothing like treating the people well who worked for you for years.  You never comped meals or parking, I guess there actions should not come as a surprise.

We still do not have the internets.  We are expecting the installation Friday.  I am really looking forward to having the internet at home.  I have so much stuff to post here, plus TONS of work to complete for my scholarship application to Columbia and Milla’s application to the Waldorf School here.  I have been hanging out at Starbucks, starting the process, figuring out what information is needed, heading back home, finding the information in all the boxes of crap, making another trip down, and on and on, so it goes.  The deadline is Saturday at midnight, so the internets better be hooked up Friday or I’m screwed, that’s just all there is to it.  I’ve been trying to get all the stuff together, but certain pages will not let you access them until you have entered information on the previous page.  So I gather that info, enter it, am allowed access to the next page, only to discover I need another 20 years’ worth of crap.  So much fun.  Um, not really.  I also have a bunch of blog posts, and a photo journal from our trip to post, but those things will have to happen after the financial aid apps are done.  I guess my February work is cut out for me.

Update:  So my boyfriend spoke to one of the lead musicians today.  It turns out that while the Benson decision to dump the musicians with one day’s notice was poorly timed, their reasons came from critical money problems.  The hotel has operated at 20 percent and below capacity all year.  Their bar costs more to operate than it brings in.  They are suffering economically.  To cut a $400 a night operation seemed a necessity.  Plus they are in talks to bring the musicians back as soon as they can afford to.  I get it–they couldn’t afford it.  I just wish they would have given the players the two weeks’ notice they were contractually obligated to supply.

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He’s Just Not That Into You

My boyfriend does not want certain people to know we are together. I am not sure why exactly; he does not provide an explanation, instead turning the conversation around to my perceived insecurities. And perhaps he is right. Perhaps I should not care that I do not have a boyfriend so proud of my existence he wants to tell everyone. Perhaps I should not mind he rarely has photos taken with me, let alone posting them publically on his networking sites. Perhaps I should not care he does not want his grandparents to know about me because we aren’t married and because, gasp! I am older than he is. He continues to list himself as single on myspace. He says nothing on Facebook. He made sure to keep me out of his Facebook status updates while we were driving across the country together. And like I said, definitely no photos. Perhaps in keeping the fact of my existence from the public it will make it easier for him when someone better comes along, I don’t know. I am left only to speculate and try not to be insecure. There is just something in his unwiilingness that makes me wonder.

When I suggested moving in together in New York he made sure to point out living together would not mean we were engaged. The thought had not crossed my mind, but thanks, duly noted. When I ask if he would have moved in with me if we had stayed in Portland he answers, “I don’t know,” which is his way of answering when he knows I won’t like the truth. This “I don’t know” has a different quality than true “I don’t knows” do. It is the same answer I got when I asked if his ex knew about me. And he wonders why I think he moved in with me to make his move into New York an easier transition and not because he loves me and wants to be with me all the time.

You know, I have read that book He’s Just Not That Into You. Boyfriend can tell me he loves me until he is blue in the face, but actions speak louder than words, and his actions are telling me one thing: ambivalence. I guess I really don’t know what to do with that.

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Midwest Out of the Rockies

Here are some photos from Colorado, Kansas, and the Mississippi River.

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Wyoming

Wyoming was scary. By the time we got to it, we had experienced two of our near death rocks in the truck and were fairly terrified. We decided we would stop in Rock Springs, then head out early the next day to reach Colorado and Milla in Boulder. When we woke up on the morning of January 9, we were greeted with an unexpected surprise: snow! The weather reports had all predicted temperatures in the 40’s. Unfortunately this forecast changed while were sleeping. The storm was a surprise to many and left many traffic accidents in its wake. A couple of the photos are of trucks we saw crashed on the side of the road. We had another truck rock in Wyoming and the final one we experienced on the trip as we headed south into Colorado. Needless to say, we were nervous wrecks upon our arrival there!

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Welcome to Everywhere

We tried to capture photos of the Welcome To signs as we drove across. I left off the photos of missed signs (there were a few). We crossed California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and finally New York. Of these 14, we captured 8. The photos are below.

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AAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!

Okay.  So I am going to spend a few minutes bitching and complaining even though I know that I am the person responsible for everything I am bitching and complaining about.  I get it.  This does not undermine my desire to bitch and complain, however.  I took it upon myself to pack all my shit in a moving truck and hike 3500 miles across the country with my boyfriend.  I get it.  I knew such an undertaking would result in chaos and disorder for a period of my life.  I get that too.  I underestimated how difficult it would be to reorganize having packed nearly all of my belongings over six months ago.  I also underestimated how long it would take to get things organized and situated within the tiny apartment in order to unpack.  I guess I really had no idea until I actually did these things.  I do know myself.  I do know that disorder and chaos for extended periods of time drive me batty.  I have been doing breathing exercises and working to relax through this transition.  As the chaos gradually turns to order, I have been moderately successful in these exercises.

Yet in the one area where disorder drives me the most insane is paperwork.  I cannot stand out of order paperwork.  I cannot stand not knowing how much I owe exactly, how much I have exactly, where proper tax documents are, etc.  I have taken to keeping all tax documents online in an effort to streamline this process and have been successful.  But this year is a mess.  All my stuff is spread between four boxes.  There isn’t anywhere to put anything.  I don’t know what I need, and I need to apply for scholarships and financial aid to two extremely expensive institutions.  On top of everything, both of these institutions require applications completed ONLINE.  Small problem.  No ONLINE.  No INTERNETS until next Friday.  One school’s papers are due that Saturday.  One’s are already overdue.  I cannot wait until Friday to work on these applications.  This necessitates running down to Starbucks to use the internets.  However the paperwork required for these give us all your information including the date of last intercourse applications is back at the apartment.  I get through a step.  I figure out what I need.  I go back to the apartment.  I look for the shit.  I find the shit.  I come back to Starbucks.  I discover another step not previously accessible.  I discover new paperwork requirements.  I have to go back home.  I’m losing my mind with this.

Today I discovered two MORE essays I have to write for the scholarship application to Columbia.  I have already written four admission essays and one scholarship essay.  The scholarship essays nearly mirror the application essays in some regard, at least two of them do.  For Christ’s sake, can’t they all read the same ones?  Apparently not.

So apartment chaos, financial applications, and lack of internets are all making me crazy as a nutjob.  I’m having batty stress dreams.  I also need to find a job and try to get the publisher I have been editing for to send me more work.  It’s enough to make me jump off a bridge.  If the water weren’t so frigid, that might be an appealing option.

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Windmills

I took photos of windmills all along the trip. I can’t even remember all the states where we photographed windmills. Wyoming and Kansas. Maybe Indiana?

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Clear Cuts National Forest

One thing that struck both of us immediately as we set out early January 8 was how shocked we were at the bright, sunny, and simply warm weather.  As we crossed the Siskiyou Pass, there was so little snow, the landscape around us looked almost summer-like in places.  Then as we headed into California and passed through national forests, Shasta and Lassen, we were apalled at the level of clear cutting. The forests there were simply obliterated.  We decided to take some photos.

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Bleeding

I have a dream sometimes where I gently poke a hole in my arm and watch the blood slowly leak onto the grass.

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I Want the Internets

Ah, the internets…  I have been spoiled, having 24 hour a day access for years.  During the trip across country, we would choose motels that Expedia claimed had wireless access.  The first two did not.  Because of that and the fact Expedia had also advertised pets as allowed in motels where that turned out not to be the case, we gave up on Expedia and started looking for Motel 6’s, only they charge for the access so we only paid for one computer at a time.  Plus the week before we left, Boyfriend’s access was not working (he pirated off a neighbor’s wireless, so our access was limited to when that worked).  Now we’re here and have to hook up through a network connection, which means heading to a Starbucks to get access.  Considering we are trying to unpack and put things away, taking a detour to Starbucks (like this one) feels like slacking.

Anyway, we are looking forward to getting back online.  Modern citizens we.  Now we have to go again.  Boyfriend needs to get to the bank before closing.  Hopefully it won’t be another 2 weeks before I can post a decent post.

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Dear Indiana

Your interstate highways are shit. Stop spending all your money on your idiotic basketball team and replace I-70 from Indianapolis to Ohio. Your money would be better spent and you would likely save some lives.

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Get Us Home Safely Please

This trip has turned into a horror show. Driving this truck is like driving a giant death mobile. We are both so fearful of the nightmarish wobble and fishtailing, we are total nervous wrecks.

For the record, so far Colorado handily beats every other state for the most poorly maintained roads, at least Interstate 25 from Wyoming to Denver. Denver was also a beast, although eastern Colorado was somewhat of an improvement.

We are currently driving toward Salina, Kansas. The road in Kansas has been lovely, although the fact we stopped, purchased, and took vitamin B for stress may have provided some assistance toward that view.

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January 8, 2009 Driving to New York

Day three of the trip.  I have not been able to post much of anything because, as I explained in my mini-iPhone post this morning, we have not had internets in our motel rooms, in spite of promises by Expedia to the contrary.

My last long piece was written before we reached Susanville, California at about 4 in the afternoon.  Heading into Susanville tested my driving mettle.  Leaving the mountains we headed down a 6.5% downgrade curving into the town.  The final curve is 20 mph 180 degree turn at a ridiculously steep downgrade.

The road leaving California and heading into Nevada is mostly flat, long and low across the desert.  We decided we would stop for the night in Elko, Nevada, nearly across the state.

When I was twelve, my dad worked in Alaska for part of the year.  He and my mom decided to have her drive up in a truck with a camper on the back, taking my brother and step-brother.  For years after the trip my mom would tell the story of the drive on the narrow freeway, trucks passing and causing the camper and truck to rock back and forth, back and forth.  She was terrified, but my brother was little and my step-brother had only a learner’s permit–the job was hers.

I fully and completely sympathize.  I had been driving comfortably on the long, flat straight highway.  For the most part the road was smooth.  Bridges were a different story.  There were seams at the beginning and end of each bridge, some dipping a good four inches below the surface of the road.  Driving along at 60 mph, I hit a dip and the truck began to rock side to side, back and forth, the up wheels completely off the road.  Boyfriend had experienced a similar rocking on I-5 in Oregon, but not nearly to the extent of this.

Fear of that magnitude is a physical experience.  As the truck rocked side to side, I felt my body blanch, sweat pouring from every gland.  My heart raced.  I thought I was going to wet myself.  Seconds later as I managed to straighten the truck and slow significantly.  My heart was pounding.  My only thought was that I wanted to get to Milla.  Minutes later, I began to weep.  Weird, this fear response.  I continued for my portion of the drive, then Boyfriend took over.  He kept braking, terrified of a repeat.  He had experienced the same terror as I did.  When we finally arrived in Elko after midnight, all we wanted was a bath and sleep.

This morning we headed across Nevada towards Salt Lake.  Our intention was to get to Boulder in one day.  The roads were clear, the sky was bright with sun, and we were optimistic.

The desert there is quite lovely.  There are snow-capped mountains in the near distance.  Sagebrush dots the landscape contrasting beautifully with spots of snow.  Its expansiveness filled us both with awe.  Ours is such a beautiful planet.

I fell asleep two hours outside Elko.  A half an hour later, I woke and sat up sleepily.  As I stared catatonically into the distance (I have had only 4-6 hours of sleep each night in the last week.  My insomnia has returned with a vengeance.), I felt the truck jerk and bump, then it began its furious side to side weaving.  Boyfriend attempted to drive over the anti-sleep ruts on the shoulder.  This did not work and the truck veered madly toward the edge of the road, tilting and rocking.  That fear hit me again.  Boyfriend managed to straighten it out and slowed to nearly 35 mph.  He had not been going faster than 55, but the combination of a monster tractor-trailer and massive dips after a bridge created the turbulence.  I could smell the sweat on him after, fear palpable between the two of us.

A short time later we made our driver switch.  Driving into and through Salt Lake, I was a wreck.  There were tons of tractor-trailers.  They buzzed by proving just how piddly our truck and trailer were to them.  The roads were terrible.  There were repair seams everywhere crossing all lanes.  Construction projects forced cars into narrow, cement-sided passageways.  I spent the entire trip taking deep breaths, constantly wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.  As we headed into the mountains east of the city, I was not sure I would be able to manage.  I was so afraid and I could not talk myself out of it.
I am not normally a very fearful person.  I will often push through situations when fear seems to want to take over.  But too many nights without enough sleep, a lot of pretty crappy road food, and the stress of driving the monster weaving truck had me completely out of sorts.  I felt on the verge of tears at every turn.  Finally as we headed towards a sharp 45 mph curve on a 6.5% downgrade slope, I lost it and started bawling.

Boyfriend had called my dad who has driven trucks across the country before.  My dad described the physics of what was happening to us.  He said that rather than braking or stopping acceleration, when the truck began to rock we should actually accelerate.  Once the truck straightened, we could then brake.  He said the worst thing to do was brake.  This made sense and we wondered that we hadn’t figured it out ourselves, but our automatic response was to try to slow down not speed up.

As we headed towards the severe downgrade curve, Boyfriend told me to brake.  So afraid of rocking back and forth, I had stopped wanting to brake altogether, taking the advice to avoid it to the extreme.  It’s okay to brake, we aren’t rocking, he told me calmly.  I managed to slow from 50 to 35 and we made it through the curves without incident.

We continued on through Park City, Utah.  I had managed to accelerate through a few minor rockings and discovered that it did indeed work.  Then we saw a sign indicating that Cheyenne was 427 miles from our location.  I quickly calculated in my head and realized we would not reach Boulder and Milla at a reasonable hour.  Boyfriend was on the phone with a friend and at that moment, after describing how slowly we were going to avoid tipping and rocking, said We aren’t in any hurry.

I realized he was right.  Why were we breaking our necks to get to Boulder tonight?  I wanted to spend time with Milla.  We had forgotten to change the clocks so our calculations put us in Boulder even later.  When Boyfriend got off the phone, I told him I wanted to stop somewhere right inside Wyoming, get a good meal, a solid night’s rest, and relax.  He said, I think that is the best idea we have had in a while. What a man.

Our trip from that point on was much more relaxed. I drove to Edmonton, Wyoming.  We stopped at the corporate addiction palace to get some caffeine and to log onto the internets to make motel reservations in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  When we left, Boyfriend took the wheel.  We are almost there.  I am looking forward to some time to relax an enjoy ourselves.  It is 5:45.  We’ll be there in under a half an hour.  Boyfriend has been driving like a pro.  Now that we have figured out a way around the horrible careening truck swings, and since we know we’ll have a night to relax, we’re both much happier.

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January 7, 2009 Driving to New York

We just entered California on the second day of our great moving adventure.  We are both happy to be on the road and headed to our new home.  I have lived in a lot of places, moved around the country on several occasions, but this time feels surreal and exciting at the same time.  It is the first time I have decided to permanently settle somewhere besides Oregon, with no intention of returning, and the first time I have done so with another person.  We are both thrilled and a little scared.

The last few days have been exhausting.  We picked up our rental truck on Monday morning, drove to my friend Kathleen’s house to pick up my boxes that were stored there, drove to my friend Mark’s house to get the last of my boxes, then drove home to pack the truck with the piano.  Our timing was perfect; we drove up just as the piano movers did.

A word about piano movers–they are brilliant at their job.  They loaded up a baby grand and got her on the truck in under a half an hour.  I was mightily impressed.  We had a set of stairs at our Oregon house.  They led from the yard down to the street.  The piano movers backed up their truck and placed a bridge across.  They then just wheeled the piano across the bridge, backed their truck up to ours, set the bridge into our truck, and rolled the piano onto our truck.  Viola, piano loaded!

After the piano movers left, we loaded some gross furniture on the truck to take to the dump.  That was an experience.  We went to an environmental dump where they parcel everything out into different piles depending on what it is.  There was a giant wood pile, a giant couch dismantling station with piles of upholstery, foam, and wood, and a giant plastic pile.  The plastic was tossed onto a conveyor belt where it was dumped into a compactor that turned it into hideous, plastic lumps.  I am constantly refusing to buy certain items for Milla because they are landfill disasters.  I took a photo of the landfill disaster and sent it to her to see where all the ugly plastic goes when it breaks or someone doesn’t want it anymore.  Too bad we can’t put the dump next to Walmart or Target so people can see where the shit goes six months after they buy it.

After the dump at nearly 4 in the afternoon, we headed home to load up.  Boyfriend wanted to leave early Tuesday morning.  I thought he was being overly optimistic, but hey, who am I to rain on his parade?  Unfortunately, Boyfriend’s belongings were not quite packed yet.  We started packing boxes and loading the truck at the same time.  A friend came to help, but things were slow.  Another friend of Boyfriend called and offered to help.  It was dark but things were moving.  Boyfriend’s mom came and helped to pack the kitchen (thank goodness–she was a lifesaver).  Her fiance’ packed Boyfriend’s bike (thank goodness again).

One of our best helpers was Robert, an old, alcoholic singer with grey hair.  Long in the face and long in tooth, he is simply awesome.  He took charge and ordered Boyfriend and helpers diplomatically.  When rope needed cutting, he pulled out his trusty “Old Timer” pocketknife.  Such an old character, so cool, and he adores Boyfriend.  He was indispensable.

It became apparent after the mattresses went into the truck that all the stuff would not fit.  We packed the truck completely, but realized at about 10 p.m. we were going to have to get a trailer.  The rental places were closed at that hour so we amended our plan to leave until later on Tuesday.  Finally, at about midnight, we were ready to stop work and get food.  It had begun raining about 11, so we were grateful everything was in out of the weather and that we could finally eat.  After eggs at an all night Denny’s we headed home to get a tiny bit of sleep.  We had packed the bed so we curled up on an old twin mattress on the floor.

Our dog was confused by all the changes. She had spent the day wandering around watching all her stuff leave the house, her black, triangle-shaped head cocked to one side.  She lay on her bed next to us, blinking sleepily.  I can only imagine her doggy thoughts.  Probably not much more than some vague notion that life was not right, and hopeful her people wouldn’t leave.  Before dawn the next morning Boyfriend moved to his roommate’s futon because he kept falling off the twin mattress, so the dog came and curled up next to me.  It wasn’t until the alarm went off that I realized it was the dog I was snuggling and not my warm man.  She was a worthy substitute.

The next morning I immediately called the Uhaul up the street.  They had trailers we could look at.   As we drove the truck to get the trailer, it became patently obvious that the truck had not been packed evenly.  It listed precariously to the right, all the weight dragging it over.  A baby grand piano, 300 pound armoire, and thousands of records were all on one side, mattresses were on the other.  Damn it if we weren’t going to have to repack half the truck.

Boyfriend immediately jumped on the phone and called everyone he could think of who might help us.  An hour later we had three friends to help, the rain had stopped, and we began to furiously unload to beat the weather and lost time.  We managed to reload and load the trailer in only a couple of hours.  We both feel much better about the reload; the armoire and records are now on the opposite side of the truck from the piano.  We also repacked a bit more securely.  It must have worked; so far at every check, nothing has shifted and fallen.

We were finally able to leave the house at about 6 p.m. Tuesday night.  We had to stop and give a friend the key to Boyfriend’s car because he is selling it for us.  We also had to stop and buy a lock for the trailer.  It was rainy and late, and traffic was terrible because of the hour, but we were both so excited to be on our way, we didn’t care.

Boyfriend climbed a steep learning curve last night on how to drive a big truck with a trailer.  I have driven many trucks and trailers because I have hauled horses all my adult life.  I am used to the stopping distance and turning radius required.  I have learning how important it is not to overcorrect, how a little move of the steering wheel results in a big move with a heavy vehicle.  Boyfriend figured it out last night driving in the dark and rain.  Needless to say, his shoulders were a bit tense.

Today, however, is a different story.  He is driving like a pro.  At one point he went to pass a slow car in the right lane.  The truck began rocking side to side.  He held the wheel and the rocking gradually ceased.  Later, he was making strong man arms as he climbed the mountains at 45 mph.

Our iPhones have been a fantastic road trip addition.  Once we were finally on the road, we figured we would make it to Grants Pass, Oregon for the night.  I jumped on the internets and booked a room on Expedia for $40 a night.  Not bad for a twin bed, clean room, and warm bath!  Tanya the dog approved of the room, and she protected us this morning from an 80-year-old Navy veteran.  Good dog, Tanya!

Luckily for us but not so for the planet, it has been sunny and warm today.  It was too warm for hats and scarves, that’s for sure.  Anyone who thinks climate change is a myth is deluded.  We spent the last two hours driving over the Siskiyou Pass.  At 4600 feet there was barely any snow on the tops of the mountains off in the distance.  Everywhere else it looks like late August.  I can’t quite express my dismay and fear at the sight.  Things really are changing; arguing over it is a tragic waste of time.

Right now we are driving through Shasta national forest.  It is breathtakingly lovely.  Here there actually is snow on the ground, but the road is completely clear and dry and the sun is shining.  We could not ask for better conditions for driving the first week of January.  Our original plan was to head south through Albuquerque, but forecasts and friends assure us we can go through Denver without any problems.  We will decide here in few hours because we have to decide by Reno whether to continue to Elko or head south.  Right now it is looking like it will be Boulder.  We’ll get to stay with friends and see Milla besides.  Sounds good to me.

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I Have Other Posts

I have a very long blog post about packing and the start of the trip. Unfortunately neither of the two motels we stayed in had the wireless Expedia advertised, and so we have had no internets access except for iPhones (from which I am typing this blog post). Tonight we are staying in Boulder where I know we will have the internets, and I can post the longer stuff there.

Something to note: if you hit crappy, concrete road in a ginormous, heavy truck going 65, the truck will begin to wobble side to side to side. This is rather terrifying, causing heart palpitations, dry mouth, shaky limbs, and immediate sweat of both driver and passenger. Side effects may include poopy pants, deployed airbags, and insurance issues. Driver may weep when truck slows and decides not to tip over.

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Happy New Year Musings

I got a headline in my email inbox that said It Will Never be 2008 Again.  Well, it will never be this moment again, or this one, or this one.  We have all these silly human traditions to mark the passage of time, yet time passes every moment. Each one is a new beginning and an ending.  That moment is the future, now it is now, now it is over.

And on and on.  Every year I mull over this curious holiday celebrating what is essentially the same moment as previous, but we label it as new, give a party, scream and shout, and have another method of categorizing our time.  It does its job, to some extent anyway.

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Holiday Season

I’m learning how to be.  I’m seem always to be failing at it.  Maybe I need to change my standards.  I don’t know.

Last night was infiinitely better than yesterday.  I finally opened my mouth to the man I love and once we started speaking, things were better.  I find it odd to have roles reversed for me in this relationship.  In the past I was the one prodding and speaking and working to make the other say something.  I have now become the one who clams up.  Weird, this.

We cleaned the house and decorated for Christmas last night.  Then we wrapped too many gifts. The gifts are small, but we have quite a few of them to hand out so there was a lot to wrap.  It’s satisfying that it is done.

Portland is buried in snow. The city does nothing when it snows like this.  I find it completely frustrating.  I just left Boulder, Colorado, where it snows like this all the time.  The city plows the roads, puts down gravel, and gets on with it.  Portland just turns stupid.  We went to the mall today with a friend.  While there a customer service person at Ross accosted us upon walking in the door, WE’RE CLOSING!  We’re closing in TWO MINUTES!!  He was frantic.  This was four hours before the store was scheduled to close.  God forbid anyone is open past dark.  None of the stores salt or gravel their walks.  It’s slick, but not unmanageable.  I don’t get it.  People keep saying it is because no one here is used to it.  I say that argument is bunk.  People are from everywhere these days.  We drive in rain in Oregon; we can drive in snow if we so desire.  It would help a lot if the city actually did something productive like scrape and sand more roads, but to stop everything is ridiculous.  We did not even get mail today.

I have a wretched bladder infection.  Can you believe tha when I called my doctor.  The office was closed…of course, it’s snowing! Who goes to the doctor in the snow?  Foolish me to expect otherwise.  So the message at the office claimed it would forward me to the answering service.  Guess what?  The answering service never answered.  I called and called.  No answer.  I guess it’s too hard to answer the phone in the snow too.  Let’s hope it isn’t true that the climate is changing so drastically that snow will be a norm here.  If so, Portland might disappear considering no one can function when it snows here.

So today we are comfortably ensconced in our warm house.  I am grateful for the warmth in our home.  We are packing and getting ready for our big trip across country. I’m kind of scared, but excited too.  It’s a big step.  I hope our apartment works out.  It’s big by apartment standards, but so small in many ways.  The kitchen is wretchedly small. There isn’t even a counter.  We’re going to have to create our own.  Anyway, it feels better when I consider the prospect with Boyfriend, but I’m still sort of freaking out about fitting it all in and wanting to get the goods at Ikea to make it all fit.  We don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around.  Certain things simply will not work without Ikea to help us.  Yikes.  We’ll work it out.  I will definitely be glad when we are on the other side of the move and have actually had to do it rather than just think about it.  Soon enough.  For now, Christmas awaits.  Santa is coming to see Milla.  The tree is up.  Snow is falling.  It should be lovely.

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Dear Oprah

I read today of communities in Ghana where people die daily from dysentery and disease because they do not have clean water.  The watering holes are foul and bacteria laden.  There is no fuel for citizens to burn to boil the water and kill germs.  What these people need are water treatment facilities.  I got to thinking about your generosity building schools in Africa and realized you could probably use your influence help with a project of this magnitude.

Of course I realize this isn’t a possiblity in many countries in Africa.  There is so much violence and strife, any efforts would be thwarted.  But Ghana has held proper elections since the early nineties.  They have worked to rise above civil war and to make their country a safe place to live.  Isn’t it time to help them along this journey by bringing them clean drinking water?

Our intentions are worthy.  We send bags of grain, but they never arrive.  We pull musicians together to sing about children and we buy the cd’s.  Yet what these people really need is good, strong infrastructure to help them on the path to self-reliance.  We have the expertise. We have the wealth.  We should put it to good use.  Oprah, you can help.

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On a Plane

This is a first for me.  I am writing this while I fly on a plane to New York.  I am going to find an apartment for Boyfriend and me.  I am pretty excited about doing this.  About the only thing that would make it better is if he or Milla were here with me, but I’ll manage on my own.

I am flying Jet Blue.  This is my first flight on this airline and I am impressed.  After I booked the ticket, people told me to let them know if the seats were bigger as rumored.  I can’t tell if the actual seats are wider, but I can absolutely attest that there is more leg room.  I have a good 8 inches between my knees and the seat in front of me. That is a HUGE improvement.  I usually touch the seat in front of me.  Planes are made for tiny skinny people.  I’m thin, but tall, and I am usually very uncomfortable on a flight of any duration.  Not on this flight, however.

I just stopped and turned on the little t.v. in the back of the chair.  This is not something I get, this need for a screen on every seat, on every corner, hanging in stores, blaring noise and advertising all the time.  I don’t own a television.  I can’t stand advertising.  But I digress.

So I turned it on because I was sitting here and it was there.  First I discovered that as I am flying, another aircraft has crashed in San Diego.  It appears to be a military plane and it crashed in a neighborhood.  I need to call my friend Megan who lives there and check on her.  I changed the channel, and discovered a thing called Live Map.  it has a map with a little plane on it showing where our plane is at.  Looks like we are over Pennsylvania, nearing Scranton.  What a trip.

Our flight is on route to being forty minutes early.  That is nice.  The flight was also not full.  I had three seats in a row to myself.  I did not get a lot of sleep last night and the second we took off I laid down and fell asleep.  I slept for almost three hours.  I feel a million times better.

Some other little details about Jet Blue.  They charge you for a pillow and blanket, but they don’t charge for one piece of luggage or a snack.  And they have good snacks, enough to actually feel like you ate something, not just three piddly pretzels.  And you get the whole bottle of a drink, not just a cup full of ice with a quarter cup poured on it.  I would rather have the snack, drink, and piece of luggage than a pillow and blanket, given the choice, but I’m sure there are others who would want the bedding instead.  Also they charge a dollar for headphones, but I have my own, so I didn’t buy those.  In fact if I did not have them, I would not use them anyway.  I have already had my five minute fill of the television.  I’m listening to Shirley Horn on XM, but would have listened to my ipod if the desire overcame me.

Now we are flying over some water.  It looks like a big river.  Oh wait, no. We’re here!  Okay, Lara is a dork.  Look at that!  I can see the Statue of Liberty!  How silly.  How cool.  I can see Manhattan Island and Staten Island.  I’m a serious dork.  I love the little ribbons of road and river.  Now the plane has turned south so I see New Jersey.  Ah, too bad.  But we must be going to circle around….OUCH!  I was listening to a song called Empty Pockets when suddenly Miss Stewardess came on to tell us to fasten our seatbelts.  Okay, fine, but does it have to be so much louder in the headphones than the music?  Shit.  In an effort to preserve my hearing I changed to my ipod.  I have that song on there.  Also the plane version kept breaking up.

Ohhhh boy.  We’re turning quite sharply left and circling around, just as I predicted.  I’m all up in the air.  The sun is setting on the horizon.  It is so lovely and orange out there, the sun spreading across the clouds.  Apparently it is 31 degrees out there.  I’m glad I brought a warm coat and wore a hat.

Well, I’m going to end this odd, stream-of-consciousness, in-flight review.  Looks like we’ll be landing shortly, way ahead of schedule.  We weren’t supposed to land until 5:40 and it is only 4:45, and we’re on our way down.  And they just told us to put everything away.  Hopefully the next time I write something it will be to rave over our brand new New York apartment!

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Cranberry Sauce

The local Boulder weekly paper published this article with advice on how to make holiday parties easier.  Among the ideas is the suggestion to buy certain foods rather than making them yourself, including cranberry sauce.

Advising someone to buy cranberry sauce to make preparation easier is like telling someone to buy bottled water instead of using the tap.  Gravy I can understand.  It take a bit of effort and skill to get it right.  Pie?  Same thing.

But cranberry sauce?  Toss cranberries, water, and sugar in a pan and boil for five minutes.  Voila, cranberry sauce.  It tastes better, has no extraneous ingredients, and doesn’t use up a can.  If you’re really feeling brave, you can add cinnamon or other spices.  Again, it’s not rocket science.  Homemade cranberry sauce is so easy and tastes so good, it’s a wonder people ever thought to put it in a can.

Sometimes, it seems, humans go out of their way to make life more difficult.

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No Wonder People Go Postal on the Post Office

And I don’t even care if I sound like a lunatic.  A more incompetent bunch of losers never occupied the earth (oh wait, there was the last US administration).  Useless useless useless.  You might think I would be sympathetic since my mom works there.  I’m not.  They steal every second the possibly can from her.  She is a rural carrier.  This means they do “mail counts” to determine how long a route should take and pay accordingly.  Every year during this count, all the bulk mail magically disappears!  Isn’t that amazing?!  During most mail days, she has between eight and twelve feet of bulk mail.  During count it is only one foot tall or less!  Unbelievable.  The net result is they claim her route should take seven hours when it takes over ten, and she is fast.  She’s been doing it for twenty years.  It’s been this way the last several years; every count the amount paid for each route goes down.  Now they are making those with the most seniority work six days a week.  Ever wonder why workers go postal?  This may contain the clue.

As for me personally?  I think someone somewhere is just fucking stupid.  I sent three packages parcel post from Honolulu, Hawaii, on 10/28/2008.  I have a receipt for these three packages.  Two of the packages arrived a week and a half ago.  One did not arrive.  I went in and asked about it and was told it could not be tracked because it was parcel post, even with the receipt.

Today, DECEMBER 1, I receive a postage due, FINAL notice that if I do not come pick up the package by DECEMBER 1, the package will be returned.  I received this notice AFTER the post office closed December 1.  This is the ONLY notice I have received, EVER.  I called the post office to attempt to ascertain what was going on.  I was informed after an extended hold that the package was still there and they would hold it (good thing because the wrath they would have incurred had they sent it back would have been that of the devil).

And the cherry on this little sugar cake?  I was informed the package had NO POSTAGE on it and I would have to pay AGAIN to get my package even with the receipt.  I paid over forty-five dollars to send this package.

I have had so many problems with the post office, and now it wants to STEAL forty-five more dollars from me.  It is the WORST organization ever created (next to Enron and Walmart).  No wonder people go postal–the morons who can’t figure out how to deliver a package or affix postage really ought to be removed from “service.”

Assholes.

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I Should Have Been Born a Thoroughbred

I am one of those nervous nelly types who reacts physically to mental upsets.  I get a sore throat and diarrhea if my boyfriend and I have an argument.  Once I even threw up.  The consequence is that I have many activities to help with mental harmony.  I have a special grounding meditation.  I like massage and acupuncture.  Exercise helps.  So does listening to the right music.  Writing is a near cure-all for mental imbalance (isn’t that a nice way to describe being somewhat high strung?).

The thing that is rather a paradox is that when I’m all in mental order, I am one of the most laid back, relaxed people I know.  I remind myself of a Thoroughbred horse.  When they are happy, they are some of the mellowist, brightest, most easygoing creatures on earth.  But get them in a dither and watch out.  Actually, I am feeling great kinship right at the moment with these, my favorite breed of the horse world.  I have had a few Thoroughbreds who got diarrhea when they were upset.  Maybe I’m not so weird after all.  Or maybe I should just have been born a horse.

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America the Ugly

Milla’s dad informed me that a store I was looking for was in Longmont, Colorado.  Considering I have explored the south and the east of Boulder fairly well, and also considering Milla was spending the day with her dad, I decided to traipse on over to see if I could find the store and check out the town.

No offense to Longmontites, but what a disappointment.  Longmont is covered in ugly, bland, spread-out big box stores and their smaller corporate cousins.  The houses were modern bland equivalencies, the sort preferred by developers who buy their blueprints from Plans-R-Us.  Maybe I turned around to leave too soon, but I did not discover a prettier town center.  I had to get out.  The place sucked the life out of me.  Like so many truly homogenized American towns, the place had no aesthetics, no character, nothing.  No wonder so many Americans are depressed.

Going to Longmont, Colorado was exactly the same as going to Redding, California, which was exactly the same as going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which was exactly the same as going to Beaverton, Oregon, only flatter.  With few exceptions, American towns have zero character.  It is impossible to tell you are in another city in another state other than the fact that the license plates are different.  People lament the lack of community in America today; perhaps part of the problem is that we can’t tell one community from the other any more.

Longmont resembled the tri-cities area of eastern Washington nearly identically.  One thing Oregon has that seems to be sorely lacking in both Washington and Colorado is an urban growth boundary.  In both Colorado and Washington, buildings sprout seemingly out of nowhere, randomly placed wherever the landowner had a whim, regardless how well it fits with the landscape or where a town ends.  Lots of developers in Oregon bitch about the growth boundary, but I’m all for it.  It forces people to be creative with the space they do have.  In towns in Oregon where the boundary has been extended, the decimated orchards and fields are replaced with cloned McMansions, cloned townhomes, and hideous utilitarian corporate chains.  In the coming weeks, yards will be filled with hideous, plastic, walmart holiday atrocities.  Wretched.

While I’m not a huge fan of overly ornate, clean has translated into purely utlitarian, which basically means completely ugly.  Who knows, maybe clean wasn’t the culprit.  Perhaps it has more to do with rape and pillage development, make as much money as possible and get out.  Whatever happened to wanting to make something look nice?  Whatever happened to originality?  It was all sacrificed at the alter of the almighty dollar.

There is that Cree proverb that states, “Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money.”  It seems when money is the only consideration or the highest consideration, not only are life and nature sacrificed, so too is beauty.  What a shame.

We should change the name of the song “America the Beautiful.”  It does not hold true any longer.  We are now America the Boring, America the Utilitarian, America the Ugly.  We don’t need some futuristic, sci-fi warning of a world in a plastic bubble to worry about.  We’re already there.

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What I am Thankful For

Because I am a sap and it is traditional to do so, I have decided to make a non-inclusive list of things I am thankful for (in no particular order).

Milla
Boyfriend
Animals
Mom
Dad
Sister
Brother
Other relatives (I guess the previous could have been gathered in the catchall family.)
My nice housemate and her animals
Friends
My hairdresser
Sleep
Love
Warmth
Bunnies
Snuggling
Humor
Music
Down comforters and pillows
That Obama is going to be president
That Palin is not going to be vice-president
My computer
Proper use of grammar
Proper spelling
Milla’s inability to spell
Mobile phones
Flushing toilets
Running water
Bathtubs and baths
Peace
Earth
Oceans
Plant life
Horses
Tea
Food
Sugar
My brain
My health
My body
Wordperfect
The internets
Articulation
Having a place to live
Language
Beauty
When Milla listens to me
When my boyfriend listens to me
Being listened to
Acupuncture
Massage
OSOM
Shoes
Nice clothes
Holding a Boston Terrier puppy
Books
That I can read
Earplugs
Frosting
Pumpkin Pie

I am also very thankful that my life is comfortable, that I have enough to eat, a warm place to sleep, and that in comparison to a lot of the world, my worries are trivial.

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Welcome Back, Dear

My mac died on Sunday.  It turns out the hard drive was bad.  The funny thing is, I was so pleased with mac over windows I did not realize some niggling things were the result of a bad hard drive.  Now I have a new hard drive and the niggles have gone away.  Mac is even better.

While I realize it isn’t great my hard drive went caput after five months, I am very happy that I have a mac and could simply walk into a mac store and they would fix it.  No sitting on hold for 8 years with some techie somewhere to prove what I already know.  No waiting to ship it off, then shipping it off, then waiting for its return.  My mac was back to me this morning.

Another lucky thing for me was that the mac people were able to recover just about all the things that had not been backed up.  I literally had my external hard drive sitting here on the desk next to me ready to hook up and back up the day my drive finally quit on me.  I was on the phone with a friend trying to send her an email and it just stopped.  I couldn’t shut down properly and had to turn it off with the button.  It never recovered.  It went to a blue screen with a little flickering question mark.  Awww…..

My kind housemate allowed me to use her old windows computer while I waited for mine to return.  This was good for someone so tethered to the internet and the need to dump useless thoughts (like these).  I am quite thankful to her for allowing me to use it to check my email and to post on my blog.  However, while using this computer I was reminded of all the reasons I left windows in the first place. I do not miss the constant and ubiquitous popup messages giving me some piece of information I either already know or do not care to know. I hate those little messages.  I do not miss the constant and ubiquitous updates that are always on the ready to install, freezing things up, making the machine click and clatter and rattle.  I hate those updates.  I do not miss the random desire of pc’s to freeze for no apparent reason as they click and clatter and rattle.  Perhaps they are thinking up new little messages for me.  I don’t know.

What I do know is that I am SO glad to have my mac again.  I wrote my boyfriend a text message when I got my baby back.  It said I have three major loves in my life:  one is in school, one is asleep in Oregon, and the third is sitting here next to me in the car. Yes, I’m silly enough to count my mac as one of my major loves.  Welcome back, dear.  I missed you.

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Who Would Jesus Bomb?

I have seen this bumper sticker quite a lot. I saw it again tonight and kept ruminating on it, wondering about it, asking the same question, “Who would Jesus bomb?” Over and over, the answer that came to mind was everyone, if certain fundamentalist Christians have their way. Those asking this question are under the false assumption that fundamentalists are framing their religion on the behavior of Jesus Christ. Such an assumption is erroneous, and in the long run could contribute to the Armageddon so many fundamentalists of Abrahamic religions hope will occur.

A frightening number of persons are focused heavily on this prophecy (ever hear of the “Left Behind” series?) and support global policies that seem geared to ensure its occurrence. Why is this? It’s simple: Armageddon offers “evidence” to back up these belief systems. See, what did we tell you? Our prophets foretold the world would come to an end, and therefore we were right. The disheartening aspect of this is that it doesn’t seem to matter whether this prophecy is self-fulfilling or not. For whatever reason, there is a need for vindication to prove to non-believers that they were right all along. Never mind if the world ends if you get to be right.

I can hear it now: it isn’t evidence that is desired, but rather an entry into heaven. This is a baseless explanation. If one is theoretically good enough to get into heaven at all, what difference does it make if it is through Armageddon or at the time of death? Why the need to get there sooner? Why the need to get there through the destruction of mankind? Is it simply a matter of the inability to delay gratification, a wretched impatience more important than the lives of others or the planet? I certainly hope not.

Logic is not part of the equation when thinking like a fundamentalist. If it were, there would be no focus on Armageddon at all. According to the Bible, humans are not supposed to know when it will happen; how therefore could they engineer its manifestation? And if divine interference is a given, it will occur without human intervention.

Fundamentalists are called fundamentalists because they claim to follow a literal interpretation of whichever text they profess to follow (although of late Christian fundamentalists prefer the term “evangelical” as a descriptor because of the negative connotations associated with the word fundamentalist). But let’s be honest. Fundamentalism is only a literal interpretation of whatever rules the fundamentalist is interested in following. It is picking and choosing. It has to be because many of the rules in these ancient, many times translated and transcribed texts are in diametric opposition to one another.

Ultimately, fundamentalism has little to do with trying to live a moral and honorable life. Rather, it is giving authority and responsibility to a book and abdicating such for the self. It is based on fear, guilt, control, manipulation, and hypocrisy. It gives an excuse to inexcusable behavior. It allows one to judge others while simultaneously claiming not to do so, to control how women use their bodies, to decide for others who they can marry, and on and on. It is a way to include and exclude–junior high on a global scale. Worst of all, it provides an excuse to justify horrific actions, including the use of bombs. Fundamentalism is so popular because it requires such little effort and no imagination. It isn’t moving beyond fear, but into it. At its heart it is a cowardly system of belief.

As Martin Luther said, “Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.” For all these reasons, we should work to eliminate fundamentalism. Any benefits it offers are vastly outweighed by its risks. Allowing our society and our world to be ruled by fundamentalism could very well be our undoing. This would not be evidence of anything except the end of humanity.

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Let’s Eliminate Pure Med Spa

See my post on the Pure Med Spa bankruptcy here.

I am writing an article on Pure Med Spa.  For info, please click here.

Because I have received so many messages in response to this post, and since it seems not many of these commentators have read my later piece on the Pure Med Spa bankruptcy filing, I have included this paragraph to inform any readers of that filing.  Effectively, if you received your treatment or they stole money from you BEFORE they filed their bankruptcy case in 2009, this means you may NOT file a lawsuit against Pure Med Spa, except through the bankruptcy court, and there only for certain causes of action.  You may NOT contact the company in any way about the money they owe you.  You may NOT call the CEO and harass him.  In short, you may not do anything to them.  That is the point of the bankruptcy stay, to protect the company from creditors, and I absolutely support this, even when the filer is as abominable as Pure Med Spa.  The same laws that protect Pure Med Spa protect you if you ever had to file, and speaking from experience as a bankruptcy attorney, that relief means a lot to people who are being harassed night and day by creditors.  Don’t think this means you don’t have options, just follow the rules to ensure you don’t violate federal law.

Original Post Let’s Eliminate Pure Med Spa:

I admit it, I do make my title statement without actual and personal knowledge of how well they perform their spa services. I have only my customer-no-service experience with them stealing my money to go on (I am planning to sue here in a couple of weeks once I get the paperwork together). However, Pure Med Spa needs to be run out of town on a rail.

In spite of my lack of spa services, I can glean from the feedback I get here that Pure Med Spa has a lot of people really upset. See my previous post on them here. By far, I get more hits on my blog because of Pure Med Spa than any other. WordPress has a feature where we can see the searches people use to find us. Every single day, without fail, someone connects to my post on Pure Med Spa because they searched for it with some derogatory descriptor like Pure Med Spa complaints or Pure Med Spa sucks or Pure Med Spa steals money or Pure Med Spa ripoff. These are all actual searches and the list is by no means complete. I received a comment from a woman asking me to contact her about her horrible experience. I received others describing their horrible experiences.

Here is a quote:

I paid Pure Med Spa thousands of dollars, in return received cancelled appointments, broken equipment, refusal to honor the packages I purchased, and overbooking, in addition to extreme difficulty and delay in even getting an appointment due to overselling and short staffing…. hat really bothers me is the company’s indifference and arrogance. It seems to just be an effort to take money from clientele without accountablity to perform the services people pay for. Michelle

Here is another:

I’ll kick Pure Med Spa’s ass too. They are liers (sic). They sold me a treatment which they had known that the machine will burn my skin because of my skin type. But they still talked me into buying it. Then later, they told me the machine would burn my skin, and they are trying to give me some other more expensive treatment which I do not need at all. They have a stupid ‘no-refund’ policy, they would not give my money back, that is for sure. Lucy

Considering the number of people who are searching for Pure Med Spa because of problems with the place, I would suspect there may be enough people out there who could file a class action lawsuit against them. That said, even though I’m an attorney, I know very little about class actions, especially since the feds made them harder to file. I do think though, that someone ought to look into it. That place needs to have its ass kicked straight out of business.

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Isn’t She Lovely?

I have the most beautiful child in the world, and she is a genuinely sweet person.  I love her so very much.

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Portland the Hipster

It is just odd, this need for trend and flavor and aren’t we all tony, sipping our lattes, carrying our shopping baskets over an arm, wandering the aisles of the grocery store listening to live jazz.  I find it so bizarre.  Grocery stores have gone from little boxes with rows of shelves lit by small bulbs and windows and no music, to giant rows of shelves lit by fluorescent lights and muzak over the sound system, to monoliths with shelves arranged at angles lit by attractively placed track lighting and live music playing in the corner.  It’s grocery shopping as social experience with strangers.  You are going out to buy your food anyway, why not hang out and look cool doing it?  Plus if we cover everything in pretty packaging, not only will you not realize you are being sold to, but we can charge you 80 times more for everything you buy because we have you convinced we are such honest corporate citizens bent on saving the planet.  Yuck.

I suppose something I have noticed upon returning to Portland is how damn hard it tries to be cool.  As much as I recoiled from the slick corporate touch of Hawaii, I realize the version in Portland is just as calculated.  Some tres chic advertising agencies and publicists have put their touches on liberal communities to ensure the corporate touch is more obscure.  They sell to those of us who think we are too cool to be sold to.  How better to do it than to fill the grocery store with plants, smelly candles, attractive lighting accents, live music, and a sign in the corner telling us it doesn’t exploit third-world farmers and that our veggies have no chemicals (we’ll ignore the fact it took untold hours and gallons of oil to get it all here).  The sad thing is how well it works.

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Wacky Head

I guess I should just accept the part of myself that no matter how many times it happens, I will only remember that when I’m starting to chomp at the bit and get a little wacky in the head it means I haven’t been writing, even if I’m just writing nonsense like this.  It is probably even further evidence I should be writing nonsense like this rather than trying to write anything intelligent.  Part of the reason I have not been writing lately is that I can’t seem to think of anything intelligent to say.  I can’t even think of anything not intelligent to say.  My brain has been a vacuum.  Well, that’s not true.  But it’s been caught up in wanting to leave Hawaii and not much else.  The foolish thing about this is I should just write even if what I have to say is pointless because it helps to leak off some of the pointlessness thereby leaving room to possibly think of something a little less mundane.  And so it goes.

So here I am draining off the air, releasing some of the unimportant crap in order to clear my head.  We’ll see if it works.  The way things have gone in Hawaii over the last couple of days, all I can really think of is my escape and whether I will make it off this island.  I actually had the completely irrational thought that Hawaii would not let me go, that I would die here.  I told my boyfriend if this happened I want him to fly me to Oregon and bury me there.  Just don’t leave my body here.  You can see why there isn’t room for intelligent thought.

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Ignorance Remains Sublime

As a response to the profound and distributed ignorance in this country on the basic definitions of forms of government and common economic systems, as well as the widespread interchangeable use of terms describing aspects of each, I have decided to post a mini civics lesson.  I am so fed up with the way words are tossed around by politicians, pundits, and citizens, with no respect for their actual meaning.  Frankly, I’m sick to death of it.  Apparently in America, ignorance remains sublime.

Forms of government describe the ways societies govern themselves. Economic systems describe the ways societies produce, distribute, and consume goods and services. Of course, it would be too simplistic to say that these two are not intimately intertwined, but they are different things.

Herein lies the problem.  Because political leaders and pundits use the terms interchangeably, most citizens haven’t a clue that the two are not the same.  For instance, the US claims it wants to “bring democracy” to a certain country.  However, the US has helped to topple democratically elected governments that were not capitalist.  The truth wasn’t that the US wanted democracy, but that the US wanted capitalism.  Two different things, but to most people, democracy equals capitalism, and that is okay.

Another word that is bandied about with little regard for what it really means is socialism.  This is the bad buzzword today, along with terrorist.  People use this word with no knowledge whatsoever of its meaning.  This one particularly irritates me, along with the misuse of communist.  Socialist and communist are used pretty interchangeably by people who don’t know what they are talking about.  They just heard on television that socialism and communism are bad things, so they go along with it.

I wonder if any of these people who think socialism is so bad realize that public education is a form of socialism.  Public roads?  Socialism.  Want the government to help you with health care?  Socialism.  All socialism means is that we, as society and through our government, pay for certain things so that all of us benefit.  Each society gets to decide which of the things it pays for.  In the US we have decided to let the government manage road systems and public education.  We haven’t yet figured out it might be better to get profit out of health care, but that is because everyone is so afraid they might have to pay taxes, and the capitalists in our country do their damndest to make sure citizens stay afraid so they can continue to profit.  The irony is that people will scream and yell and have a fit about spending .25c of each dollar on taxes, yet these same people fork over .65c of the same dollar to a private company who skims .40c off the top before applying the other .25c to the actual cost of the good or service received.  It’s inane.

Do you hate it that your HMO makes a profit off your heart attack?  Does it bug you that insurance companies make a profit off your illnesses, or that children go without basic health care because their parents can’t afford it?  Can you stand it that energy companies, phone companies, airlines, and banks can all mostly govern themselves and profit off of you, regardless how fundamental some of their services are to your survival?  Well, you can thank capitalism, the economic system based on supply and demand, for all that profit.  Capitalism is not democracy.  It is not a form of government.  It is an economic system, as is socialism.  It describes the exchange of goods and services.  It is not the way a government runs (although a government may partake in a capitalist system).  Governments are intrinsically linked to economic systems, but the two are not synonymous.

Forms of government are the institutions societies, as states, use to govern themselves.  Democracies and dictatorships are forms of government.  A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government where the leader enjoys absolute rule, free of laws or other political factors within the state.  Democracies are forms of government in which citizens govern themselves.  There is no hard and fast definition of the term, but democracies invariably include two principles.  First, all members of the society have equal access to power.  Second, all members enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.

It would be nice if Americans were educated as to the real meanings behind all these words they so carelessly spew, democracy, socialism, communism, et al.  Sound bites are easy; they can make you sound like you have a clue when you really don’t know what you are talking about.  Dictatorships (a form of government, not an economic system) are easy too.  The dictator tells you what to do and you do it.  No thought required.

Democracy, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult.  It requires citizens educate themselves on things in order to make wise choices.  The problem is that many Americans don’t actually partake in the education process, they partake in the sound-bite process.  They hear a word and react to it without any idea what the hell it is they are talking about.  Because of this, I fear we are headed for disaster.

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1242

Regardless of your politics, having a black man running for president has been good for one thing:  it has sussed out all the secret racism that has been seething under the surface in this country for years.  People who felt unable to express their nasty views publicly seem galvanized by the knowledge there are others just like them and are now willing to put their racism out there on display.  Terrorist attacks too have brought the issue to the fore, letting racists vent their hatred against people from the middle east all in the name of supposed fear of terrorism.

Obvious loathing for Mexicans isn’t even a secret.  Public officials and citizens claim to want immigration reform to “protect American workers.”  They tout limited Spanish instruction in southwestern schools and propose English-only referendums sold under the patronizing aegis of wanting to help Mexican children assimilate into American culture.  It’s all just racism.

I have often suggested it has not been publicly okay to be racist against blacks, but a person can get away with being racist towards Mexicans and Arabs.  Hating blacks is moving back out of the closet.  Perhaps the acknowledgment that it is going on will help kill it once and for all, although I don’t expect this to happen overnight.

Racism is the epitome of ignorance.  It is the Parable of the Cave come to life.  It is the philosophy of The Other.  It brings some sort of pitiful security to the hater who feels some protection in perceived superiority, unwilling to admit base and immoral fears.  I personally cannot fathom why someone’s skin color should scare someone enough to hate them, but it happens.  It happens all the time.

Racism is confusing.  There are members of my family who are blatantly racist. My mother was the oldest of seven children.  When my mom was six, my grandmother divorced my biological grandfather.  With three children in tow, she married a Navy man and had four more children.  When the youngest child was 8, my grandmother developed cancer.  Over the next four years, she lived and died a harrowing death, her body completely eaten by the disease.

By the time my grandmother died, my mom had moved out, married my father, and had two little girls.  The rest of the children were in various phases of growing up.  My mom’s step-father was the man I called Grampa.  He was the generous person we visited on every holiday.  When my biological father physically abused my mother, my Grampa helped her out, offering financial and emotional assistance.  He did not date or remarry until his youngest child was in her early twenties and married.  He was a Navy man who fought in World War II.  He was a good man who worked hard and took amazing care of his family.  And he was a racist.  He is still a racist.

I know others with similar family members, the grandparents who give them everything yet hate black people, the step-father who was kind, but rails against Mexicans in restaurants.  It is such a complex problem.  Interestingly, in all of the cases I know of good people with loving family members who happen to be racists, none of us are willing to do much about it except to sit silently, thinking these people are old and will never change, that they have good in them too.  Perhaps in our complicity we are perpetuating the problem.  I don’t know.  It is truly a conundrum.

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Silly Me

I’m all in silly love.  I love my boyfriend so much, I wanted to say so.  This is my metaphorical shouting from the rooftops.  He is magnificent.  I know this is silly, but it feels good so here it is.  Nine months ago he was brave enough to start talking to me.  For this I thank my lucky stars.  He reads this sometimes so he might see what I’m saying here.  He would tell me I’m a dork. Yeah.  My adoration is not news to him; he knows.  We are moving in together, after all.  He is a delight.  I love him, all of him.  Meeting him and knowing him has been one of the best things to happen in my life.

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Wishing for Change

I went and saw the movie W tonight and had the same feeling I have every time I see a movie like this. I wish to hell I could do something big and profound to help change things and then I end up feeling more pathetic and helpless than ever before.  All I’m good at is writing things, but I don’t know what to write that hasn’t been said that could actually make a difference.  I wish I could inspire people to want to help our world.  I wish I could help to heal the rifts between people.

A week ago I wrote an article on Huffington Post trying to get people to recognize our common humanity.  The result was more than my share of ugly emails and quite a few angry comments from people who missed the point entirely that we can be mad and want to change things without turning into them, the Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs of the world.  We don’t have to be ugly to be angry.

I also realized that if I’m feeling this frustrated and unable to change, what must it be like for someone who has no artistic or other outlet?  I feel small and insignificant, like I can do so little, but at least I can write.  At least I do write.  But there are millions who don’t.  How are their voices heard?  I try to effect change in how I’m raising my child; I suppose others can do that too.  But what do we do in the short term?  How do we get our spirits back?  How do we all stop hating each other and being so polarized?  I don’t know the answer to that one.

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Blogging to Ease Off

Busy busy.  Feast or famine, right?  I went for weeks with little to do except going to the beach, taking Milla to school, and working on some stuff I’m writing.  I would apply for jobs, go to interviews, and other interim things, but for the most part, I was bored out of my skull.  Then Boyfriend came to visit and we decided to move together to NYC and life suddenly hit warp speed,  I decided definitively to apply to grad school at Columbia.  I met a publisher who liked my work and offered me some editing assignments.  My housemates have a friend who needed help in her costume shop.  I have been writing pieces on Huffington Post and wanted to keep going with that.  Literally, all this hit at the same time and I was suddenly buried in things to do, so much so that I felt enormously pressured.  On top of it, my darling Milla went to visit her dad.  He has some changes going on in his life and it will be good for them to spend some time together until I get there, but I miss her like my arms are missing.  Yikes!

Anyway, life has not been conducive to daily writing on the blog, althugh I am getting writing done, just not here.  But I feel like I need this as a mental outlet and when I’m not getting it, the pressure seems only to increase.  Luckily today I was able to take an additional day off from the costume shop.  This is a good thing because I have started to feel like I’m coming down with something.  I woke up coughing twice last night and it took a while to stop.  This morning I was buried in the throes of sleep when Boyfriend sent me a text message at nearly ten that woke me up.  Thank goodness!  I would have kept sleeping all day at that rate.  My body is telling me to find a way to ease off.  Okay, so here I am.  Blogging to ease off.

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Mail Order Bride

I went from nothing to do to too much to do in the space of a day.  It’s weird how life can go like that.  I’ve been working at this costume shop for a little extra cash before I leave this island.  It’s so boring most of the time, I can hardly stand it.  Yesterday there were a lot of customers, but most of the time, it’s sitting around staring at the piles of stuff in there.  The shop is crazy stuffed with costumes and junk. Some of them are so beautiful and elegant, but others are so crappy, I can’t imagine anyone will ever touch them.  A few days ago, just to ease the boredom, I started combing wigs. The place is filled with wigs, hundreds of them. They are fun to comb.  I like the transition from crack whore tangles to silky smoothness.

Finding costumes for people can be fun, especially people who are willing to get into it and find something interesting to wear.  Some of them though, can be so yuck. Today, for instance, this toady little man came in with his wife.  She was Thai, her body childlike and tiny.  He was short, heavyset, in his early 20’s, with tatoos on his arms.  He wanted her to have a “sexy” costume for work on Halloween. I did not ask what “work” was, but gathered from things they said that it was in the sex industry.

Nothing the woman tried on satisfied the man. Most of our smallest costumes were too large for her and the children’s costumes weren’t sexy enough (um, yeah).  So she’s putting things on and taking them off and anything that looks good, he says no.  He kept talking on his mobile phone, acting self-important to be doing so.  She’s looking through things, finding stuff she likes, taking it to him, only to have him shake his head no, vetoing costumes as either too big or not “sexy” enough.  At one point, the other girl who works in the shop and I were chatting about Whole Foods Market.  We laughed because I called it Whole Paycheck.  I said, That store is so expensive.  It’s a total ripoff. Toady Man, upon hearing this, walks over by a rack of clothes and, honest to god, pulls out a wad of cash and starts counting it right there in the store!  He peeled back fifties and hundreds, counting the wad several times to ensure we saw how much money he had.  What a fucking idiot.

I giggled to the other employee and rolled my eyes. After a bit, he went outside to talk again on the phone while his wife shopped.  We finally convinced her to try on a cute and very short Egyptian, Cleopatra style dress.  It was kind of plain, with a gold cord that wraps around and around.  We accessorized her with a snake hair ornament, arm bands, strappy sandals, and a fantastic brass neck piece.  She looked pretty amazing, considering every other item she had attempted to wear made her look like a child trying to dress as a hooker.  She even seemed excited at the possibility, a happy glint in her eye apparent for the first time since she had walked in the door nearly an hour previous.

Dressed and smiling, pleased at last to have found a costume that seemed to show enough skin for her husband while looking cool at the same time, she walked out for the verdict.  We heard voices, his raised, hers contrite.  Minutes later she came back into the store and told us he did not like it. She apologized as she removed the jewelry and costume and put back on her clothes.  No problem, we told her.

After they left in their giant black Escalade, I could not stop thinking of that horrible man with his wad of money, obscene car, and mail-order Thai wife whom he sought to dress in as slutty an outfit as possible.  Everything about him made me cringe.  He was desperate to show just how important he was, how much more money he had than us pitiful costume store employees who complained about the cost of Whole Foods.  His wife seemed unhappy, trying desperately the entire time we were in the place to please him, but he would have none of it.  Yuck.  He was reprehensible.

Thinking on it later, I realized that she is likely in a quite precarious position.  Married as she is, if something happens and she is no longer married to him, she would probably have to return to her native country.  I realize I am speculating, but it is easy enough to imagine this being less than desireable for her, a means for him to control everything she does.  Marriages like this one are legalized sex slavery.  If she doesn’t want to return home, this man has control over her, it’s as simple as that. Anyway, I don’t know the whole story.  I could only take away my observations, and what I saw was pitiful. I hope this woman achieves in her life all she desires.  I hope for her sake if her story is as I imagine it, she is able to find a way to live her life in spite of her husband and find happiness.  I wish her well.

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Miscellaneous Ramblings

I keep having these thoughts when I am driving or lying in bed that I think I would like to write about.  Then when I sit myself down in front of the computer and have sorted through emails, responded to skypes, and talked on the phone, none of them are left. I’m not talking spectacular stuff here, just thoughts I would like to write about for myself.  Ah well.

I miss Milla.  She is in Boulder with her dad.  I will be there soon enough, but I miss her oh so much.  It is much more difficult to have her gone when I am in Hawaii where I have not enough to do.  Well, that’s not true.  I am applying to Columbia University for a master’s in journalism.  That is going to take some time. I lined up my references.  I need to begin work on the essays that have been floating in my brain since I decided to do this.  There are things to do.  But my body is rebelling.  It is tired and feels rather like viruses would like to invade.  It is difficult to concentrate when viruses want to invade.

I cannot wait to move to NYC.  Every time Boyfriend and I look at apartments or how to travel across the US, my heart goes pitter patter in excitement.  Apartments are not as ridiculously expensive as one would expect and the neighborhoods look just cool.  I have not felt for a very long time that a place was right for me, but this place, it feels right.  This move, it feels right.  The sense of vagueness of purpose is gone, like I have been a laser poking around in the dark and now I have found my target.  I’m so excited, I can hardly stand it.

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You Winner Lottery National!!

You winner in lottery national!

Ooooh!  Excitement!  I received an email today that said just these words.  Can you believe it?  Yeah, me neither.  Somehow I think if I won the lottery, several things would be different.  First of all, I would have had to have actually played the lottery, which I don’t, so it would be difficult to win.  Second, wouldn’t you think they would notify me in some other manner than email?  And finally, would the email really say, You winner in lottery national? Call me a fool, but I would think it would at least say You are a winner, not just You winner.

I hope I haven’t lost out by deeming this message junk and deleting it.  I really hope I have not done some serious damage or something.  Geez.  Oh well.  I have to hope I’ve done the right thing.

Tonight my computer acted like it had Windows installed.  Eeewwwww yuck!  Damn thing.  It kept freezing when I tried to do a find on Firefox.  I had to do forced shutdowns twice and had to just use the button to turn the entire computer off twice.  It was all very annoying and Windows deja vueyish.  I was finally able to restart properly and things appear to be on track, but that Windows behavior, it gets me all sketchy.

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We Don’t Need That

This piece can be seen on Huffington Post. If you like it, buzz me up. Thanks.

A couple of days ago I received several emails forwarding the video of Sarah Palin being booed at the hockey game.  I watched as she stepped onto the ice with her children, boos resounding from the highest bleachers, fans waving thumbs down signs in her direction.  While I shared their sentiment, I also felt sad and sort of sorry for her, standing there with her daughters at her side, the one child so small, tossed into a giant mess of which she can have no understanding.

A few days before I received as many emails forwarding the video of the angry mobs outside the McCain rally.  I felt a similar discomfort at the sight, a vague sense of unease and knowing that even though I disagreed with their views, it felt wrong to display these people in all their rage and ignorance.

Today a friend sent me an email containing the photo of a man above.  I asked myself, What kind of fear leads a man to become this person?  What has happened in his life that this is what he believes?

This photo is being sent around to horrified liberals, an excellent representative of the trainwreck display this election has become, but I see no one asking these simple questions, trying to understand the minds of the humans on the other side.

Every day I open my email to dozens of new notices from well-meaning friends pointing out the obvious level of new lows in this campaign.  We have gotten to the point where we take hideous and superior delight in the stumbles on the other side, react in anger at the latest new lies, and laugh and point fingers at angry right-wingers screaming and acting like lunatics.  We do this, seeming to miss the hypocrisy in our own schadenfreude.

The level of simply bad behavior is evident on both sides.  I certainly do not advocate bending over and taking it in the backside, but what about our own fundamental human decency?  Are any of us on either side able to see where the other is coming from?  Are any of us able to have some compassion?

I am especially disturbed by the videos of McCain supporters screaming hateful obscenities and photos of men like the one described above, not only because of the behavior of the people in them, but because decent people I know are forwarding them on to laugh at and criticize.  This election has turned into so much us versus them.  Each side is demonizing the other.  None of this will get us anywhere that solves any of our very large, very real problems.

We receive and pass on videos of the candidates.  See our candidate?  See how good he is? Then we get a video from the other side.  See their candidate?  See how horrible he is? And while I absolutely might agree with what is being shown, I keep coming back to the belief that all this bickering and finger-pointing is doing absolutely nothing to elevate the common good.  In fact I am afraid that all of this fighting is going to lead to an all-out war among ourselves regardless which candidate is elected.  Unless and until we actually do start seeing ourselves as part of one country in this together, until we start to recognize all our humanity, we are going to dissolve in destruction and violence.  This is a very real and frightening possibility.

I know it sounds simplistic, but it is possible to focus on the issues and get this country back on track if we all start acting with a bit more civility and stop making of fun of people who must be experiencing real inner turmoil and fear to act the way they do.  We just have to take the initiative, stop passing around hate mail, and focus on what really matters.

This morning I watched a video of Obama giving a speech at a rally in Ohio.  When he mentioned John McCain, members of the audience started to boo.  “We don’t need that,” Obama said calmly. “We just need to vote, that’s what we need to do.”

Barack Obama is right.  We don’t need that.  Regardless who wins this election, we all have the very real job of putting this country back together again.  We simply cannot do it if we’re all fighting each other.

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Periodically Disappear

The problem with wanting to be open about who you are and put your name on what you write is that if there are things you want to say that you don’t want certain other people to know about, you can’t write them on your blog, even if they are things you would really love to put on your blog.  There are so many things like that right now. Maybe I should make an anonymous blog.  But who really cares.

I’ve said it before, but I wish I could disappear.  I wish I could be someone else.  I wish I could feel optimistic most of the time like I used to, but that’s been years ago.  One thing after another after another after another.  Now it’s not so bad but my spirit has taken a major nosedive.  I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back.  I know I’m supposed to learn to be happy right now no matter what my life is, but I can’t do it.  It’s like there is one thing in my life that when it’s going well, I’m happy and when it’s not, I’m not.  Nothing else affects me in this way.  Nothing.  But I can’t stop being this way.  I’ve spent a decade trying and it does not work.  I have to just pretend there isn’t a future because to imagine the rest of my lifetime feeling like this is unbearable.  So I don’t imagine anything at all except a desire to disappear. I don’t mean die.  No.  I mean exist as barely as possible.  I can hear it now.  I can just hear it.  I’ve heard it before, all the reasons against living this way.  But no one is me.  No one has my brain and its energy and its unfulfilled desire.  I am sure others have felt this.  No doubt.  None.  And some went on and became happy again.  And others didn’t.  But I’m so tired of not having the one thing I want, the one and only thing I have consistently wanted for as long as I can remember, and I can’t imagine 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 more years like this.  I can’t even imagine the next 1.  Is this living in the moment, avoiding considering a future that might reflect the way things have been?  Is this just it?  So rather than live with that hope I will live barely.  I will periodically disappear.

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Drive Your Car, McCain

This piece can be seen on Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lara-m-gardner/a-leader-should-be-able-t_b_129341.html

Out of curiosity, I made a small survey of job postings just to see what kinds of skills employers are requiring of potential employees. Among other things, one of the primary requirements of job seekers is that they possess the ability to multitask. Multitasking is a simple concept really. It means doing more than one thing at a time. Quite a lot of jobs require it. I did this because of all of the discussion yesterday on McCain’s desire to cancel the debate, as well as his temporary cessation of campaigning, both in order to “focus on the economy.”

How does this “focusing on the economy” work exactly? Does one sit and stare at numbers for a while in order to create this focus? Perhaps it means getting together with other people to talk about the economy. Maybe it means actual participation as a senator, an activity he was rightly allowed to place on hold while running for president.

What I find confusing is why McCain’s focus on the economy cannot take place concurrent with running his campaign or why it impacts his ability to debate. If he knows the issues, if he is prepared to lead this country, then he should be able to think on his feet and debate as necessary. He should be able to throw out a sound bite or two or answer some questions on talk shows for his campaign. Basically, he should be able to multitask. While debating may require some skill, certainly campaigning does not require as much. All he has to do is show up.

The man has been a senator for what, twenty-six years? Based on the number of years McCain has spent in public office, debating and campaigning should both be skills in which he is quite adept. These activities should be the sorts of things he can do without a whole heck of a lot of effort, the sorts of things at which he should be able to multitask quite well. It should be easy for him to focus on the economy.

For McCain, debating and campaigning should theoretically operate like driving a car. At first, steering and braking and shifting all at once is overwhelming, requiring our complete attention After a few years, these actions become so automatic we do not even realize we’re doing them. We can focus on other things while we’re driving, even stressful things like driving someone to the hospital or navigating through bad weather. Although our basic skills may be diminished, requiring greater attention so we do not end up in an accident, we do not suddenly stop being able to drive at all just because something bigger is happening at the same time.

I find it puzzling and distressing that rather than using the economic meltdown to display his prowess at multitasking, in order to focus McCain must stop performing skills that should be as automatic to him as driving a car. When older drivers reach the point where they cannot perform these basic functions we take away their driver’s license. If McCain has reached this point, should we really allow him to drive the country? I don’t think so.

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Pitiful

It just makes me sick, those poor babies made ill by milk powder in China.  It reminds me of Nestle going into third world countries, telling the women to stop breastfeeding and to “use formula like western women,” all the while ignoring the fact that the water is unsafe to drink.  The result is a 50% infant mortality rate in these countries because the babies die from dysentery.  Now we have over 59,000 babies sickened and killed in China from drinking poisoned milk powder.

Fifty percent infant mortality rate.  59,000 sick and dying children.  All these giant numbers, all these sanitized words used to cover one salient fact:  some parent’s baby got really sick or died.  Each of those hurt or killed had a mom and dad who either had to sit up worrying about a sick baby or they lost a little baby they loved, not to mention the fact that these little kids had to suffer through sick stomachs, diarrhea, and vomiting.  Use sanitized words and it becomes so easy to forget that.

The other piece of this that strikes me is how truly sad it is that formula is fed to children instead of breastmilk.  I wrote a law review article calling for laws requiring employer accommodation of breastfeeding women.  For that article, I did extensive economic and medical research to back up my arguments.  The conclusion I drew was that breastfeeding saves lives and money.  We never should have switched to a system where it was not the norm.  Of course, money drove the trend on many levels.  Money, money, money.  Everyone wants it.  Everyone wants everyone else to think they have it.  Stupid decisions are made because of it, from the decision to make our babies sleep in other rooms to the decision to feed our children milk made from powder to prove we can afford it.  Later these decisions became the norm to the point where children who want to sleep with their parents are considered problems and babies drinking from mothers’ breasts is considered obscene.  No one questions why it started and what was normal for thousands of years becomes disgusting and unnatural.

I continue to marvel at the ridiculousness of human beings. We’re too smart for our own good.  Unfortunately, we aren’t smart enough to make milk that is as good as our own and the result is that it makes babies sick and kills them.  Pitiful.  Truly pitiful.

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There Oughta be a Law…

How many times has something really catastrophic happened followed by people scratching their heads and saying, “There ought to be a law.”  I wonder how many of these same people would call such laws “regulation” because that’s exactly what they are.  Deregulation?  Deregulation is the removal of laws, including laws that protect us from harm.  In all the talk and rhetoric about less government and deregulation, this point is lost.

This morning I opened the newspaper to read about babies sick and dying in China because of tainted milk.  I searched for articles from all over the world about the scandal.  All of them contained the same refrain:  tighter regulations.  What does this say to me?  There were not enough laws to protect these people from milk that could kill or harm their children.

When it comes right down to it, deregulation is only a good thing to people who are only concerned with making more money.  Deregulation means letting the market (e.g., greed) determine entirely what should happen and what should not happen.  Here in the US, we are experiencing firsthand what it means to let the market make decisions.  It means letting greed make moral choices.  It means letting corporations balance a baby’s life versus the cost to make its milk safer.  Unfortunately, in many cases it is cheaper to let the child die than it is to fix the milk.  There are profits to be made by putting someone into a house they can’t afford.  Who cares if a family ends up on the street in three years?  We made our money. The market made the decision for us.

When we use sanitized terms to describe real, human, moral conditions, when these terms become buzzwords, it is so easy to forget that real people with real lives are involved and affected.  Deregulation means there are no laws to protect us from harm.  Letting the market regulate itself means letting money and profit determine what decisions are made.  Too often, these decisions have nothing to do with humanity and morality and instead focus entirely on making a profit.

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Smitten

I’m completely smitten.  Okay, here’s an aside.  How is it that a person who reads as many books as I do, who loves words and word origins, who loves language actually, can have gone through life and not known that smitten is a past participle of smite?  How is this?  I am completely pitiful.  I should have known this.  I knew its use as an adjective, as in struck with a hard blow, grievously afflicted, and very much in love.  I knew these definitions.  I did not put together that the very much in love use was metaphoric for being struck.  Cupid’s arrow and all that.  I make these discoveries that there are so many things I do not know.  Sometimes they seem so obvious, I wonder how it is I came this far in life and did not know them.  It’s like driving down the same road every day your entire life and suddenly noticing a gas station that has been there for years.  Duh.

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Published!

So how cool is this?  I submitted an article to Huffington Post and they accepted it!  It is a piece I wrote here on this blog about Sarah Palin.  If you’re interested in viewing it, go to the link here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lara-m-gardner/lowering-the-glass-ceilin_b_128346.html

If you like what I wrote, feel free to hit the buzz up button.  The more hits I get on that, the more likely the post will make it to a more visible page.

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Sleepy

I’m sooooo tired.  Somehow adding the extra o’s makes it more.  I like that, that adding a few extra letters means emphasis.

When I first arrived here, my insomnia returned with a vengeance, mostly because I missed my boyfriend and sleeping with him.  Then a couple of weeks ago I started sleeping a bit better, actually making it through the night.  Of course, it helped that I figured out to close the windows to the noisy roosters, put up curtains to keep out light, as well as remembering to wear my usual eye pillow and ear plugs.  These things helped immensely.  Plus I think I just settled down or something and was able to sleep.

Yet the night before last I woke up and could not go back to sleep even though I knew I could sleep in the next morning (for some reason knowing I have to get up the next morning makes insomnia worse for me).    I was tired and grumpy most of the day as a result.  Last night I was so tired and fell asleep quickly when I went to bed.  Only this did not stop me from waking up too early this morning.  Goddamned insomnia.  I hate it.

Yuck.  I know the experts don’t call it insomnia if it doesn’t last 2 weeks.  Whatever.  It’s all not sleeping.  Last night I fell asleep sooner than the night before, which is good, but I’m still pooped this morning so I am going back to bed.  Hopefully I will be able to get over this hump or I’ll turn into a monster and it won’t be good.

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Enough Already

Every time I open up my blog or look at my web-based email or go anywhere I like to go on the web there is another article another analysis another something looking at Sarah Palin and John McCain and on and on and on.  I’m so tired of it.  She’s a disaster.  He’s a disaster.  This does not stop him from being about equal to Obama in the polls.  If ANYONE who would vote for McCain gave a shit we wouldn’t be in this mess. We’re all yammering on and on about it but it isn’t changing anything.  Guess what?  Those of us who get it get it.  Those of us who don’t never will.  What’s the point of pointing out the obvious to people who DON’T FUCKING CARE?  I just can’t see it.

I would love to be able to go back to the time before Sarah Palin, back when we pointed out the pitifulness of McCain’s positions on various things, back before every day brought a new low to the discourse.  I am normally not that sort of person, the one longing for the past.  I like change.  But this change, this is ridiculous, and frankly I’m tired of it all.  I wish we could stop being red and blue and fighting all the time.  I wish there wasn’t a cultural battle being waged.  I hate this.  It makes me want to go bury my head in the sand or run off to somewhere where none of this matters on an everyday level.  I’m not naive enough to believe what happens here won’t affect the rest of the world, because it does–unfortunately it does to a frightening degree.  But I would love to find a place where it wasn’t so corporeal, somewhere it wasn’t in my face every day.  Enough already.  Really, I’ve had just enough.

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Deregulate Insurance Like We Deregulated Wall Street

Good one, McCain.  You’re on top of things.  You obviously know your stuff.  I cannot believe there are people out there who would make this man president…

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/20/mccain-deregulate-insurance/

Paul Krugman notes that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) published an article on his health care plan in the current issue of Contingencies — the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. In his article, McCain attempts to make his case for deregulating the health insurance industry by extolling the benefits of the last decade of deregulation in the banking sector. He writes:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

As Yglesias writes, McCain is “such an enthusiast about financial market deregulation that he was bragging about his plan to make the health care system as awesome as the financial system.”

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Missing is So Unkind

What possible biological basis can there have been for us to evolve a mechanism that allows us to feel like a limb has been removed when we miss another human being?  Is it truly only the mating sequence? Why couldn’t our biology be content to know another mate will someday take the place of the first?  Or is it that in ancient times if our mate died or was lost to us, we couldn’t easily find another?  Is that it? Maybe it is something else.  Whatever it is, I just don’t get it.

Perhaps it is some other mechanism that has simply gotten stuck in the missing another human category.  Maybe we’re supposed to feel serious missing when we lose an actual limb because losing an actual limb could pose a serious detriment to our ability to hunt and gather.  It would impact our ability to find a mate. Perhaps the two are juxtaposed in some manner in certain brains.

I know I am not the only one like this.  I watched this film last night called My Blueberry Nights.  One character, rather than live without the person who left him, drives himself into a tree.  This after drinking himself into oblivion every night for months.  Yep, his limb missing mechanism was severely out of whack. And the woman who left him realized after he was dead that she missed him like a missing limb as well.  So her missing limb mechanism was juxtaposed onto her missing partner as well.  Maybe I’m onto something here.

I am going to see the person who I miss in a little over a week.  Ironically, I am feeling his absence more acutely as his visit draws closer.  It is like knowing he will be here, that he is somehow within reach, makes the desire more visceral.  I have to fight myself NOT to send him text messages telling him how much I miss him and all the things I want to do with him when he gets here.  I have to force myself to be here and now, focus on my legs, focus on my arms, recognize they are actually in place and I do not require a prosthesis.  I can do this.  When I do this it is easier.  See brain?  Limbs intact.  Man will arrive shortly so stop thinking about him so much.

Then he calls and I’m listening to Woody Herman sing about being in love and clouds having silver linings and his own melancholy without his dear, the piano tinkling perfectly in the background, and I feel that old familiar pull in my belly.  Gads, missing is so unkind.

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A Windfall Plum

I feel so crappy in the morning lately.  I would blame it on needing tea, but I have always had tea in the morning and it did not engender this level of unpleasantness.  I ache.  I think one reason may be my bed.  It is a futon on the floor.  It is hard.  It is not comfortable, not in the least.  I keep doing yoga stretches and lying on tennis balls in an effort to alleviate my aching muscles, but to little avail.  It may also be that I keep staying up too late watching movies on my computer, writing, or reading books.  I’ve had two books in the last week alone that I did not want to stop reading at bedtime.  I kept reading on and on, well after a reasonable bedtime when I knew I had to get up early the next morning.  Oh, then there was the day my dog died.  This was not an easy means to relaxation, I can assure you.

So here I am this morning, sitting in my chair at my desk and my shoulders hurt, my chest hurts, my neck hurts, my lower back hurts, and my ass hurts.  I am doing little stretches, but they aren’t working.  I creak.  My neck just cracked.  I’ve got to do something about this bed, but I don’t know what.  And I need to go to bed earlier.  I hope this works.  Feeling achy does not awaken in me a desire to get out of the bed, regardless how uncomfortable.  I would rather lie there like a plum on the ground next to the tree, its bruises spreading to mush, turning into a brown and soft plum rather than a firm and purple one.  I landed on a root rather than on some grass.  My plum skin is withering.  My insides are turning brown.  My pit is sinking and shifting.  Yep, that’s me, a bruised plum.  Yummy.

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Obama and the Palin Effect by Deepak Chopra

I just had to post this here because it is so well written:

Obama and the Palin Effect
by Deepak Chopra
http://www.chopra.com/node/1064

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision

Look at what she stands for:
•    Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
•    Ignorance of world affairs — a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.
•    Family values — a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be needed.
•    Rigid stands on guns and abortion — a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
•    Patriotism — the usual fallback in a failed war.
•    “Reform” — an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness

Obama’s call for higher ideals in politics can’t be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow — we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

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Lowering the Glass Ceiling

See this piece on Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lara-m-gardner/lowering-the-glass-ceilin_b_128346.html

I would like to take you on a journey of the imagination…

Imagine that Sarah Palin is not a woman, but a man.  We’ll call him Mr. Palin.  Mr. Palin has been mayor of a small town in Alaska, and governor of that state for less than two years, a state whose entire population is less than that of most US major metropolitan areas and in this position.  In this position, Mr. Palin is being investigated for questionable conduct.  Imagine that he obtained his passport within the last couple of years, and that he considers foreign policy experience living next door to another country.  Take it further and imagine he believes the earth was created in a few thousand years, that dinosaurs roamed the earth with humans, and that creationism should be taught in public schools.  Suppose also that this man believes women should not have the right to choose, and that rape victims should pay for their own rape kits.  Imagine Mr. Palin hunted moose from a helicopter and sought removal of environmental protections for polar bears. Imagine he has no knowledge of financial markets, the cold war, weapons systems, or Middle Eastern history.  Imagine all of this and more.

If this were true, and Sarah Palin were a man, would he have even been on the longest list of potential US vice-presidential candidates for any political party?  It would be unthinkable.

Why are the standards for this woman running for vice-president so much lower than they would be for a man?  Shouldn’t the standards be the same?  To determine whether someone did not get a job because of something other than merit, simply slip whatever that person is not into the position in your mind and ask yourself whether the same standards would apply.  If there are disparities in the standards required between two people seeking the same position, it is quite likely that discrimination is occurring in some form, even if it is allowing someone to be worse at something in an effort to pretend there is no -ism taking place.

Here, we have a woman running for vice-president who is grossly underqualified.  Those who support her claim that her position as a vice-presidential candidate is evidence of women shattering the glass ceiling.  Actually, the opposite is true.  Allowing her to take a position for which she is not qualified and giving her extra points for being a woman is the ultimate in sexism:  it is using gender as a qualifier rather than merit.  Beyond the obvious arguments against her abilities, her position as a vice-presidential candidate assumes on some level that a qualified woman could not perform the job.  Sarah Palin’s place on the Republican ticket does not shatter the glass ceiling, it lowers it.

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What IS it???

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My Response to a Comment

Some person commented on the letter I posted written by Lyra Kilston and Quinn Latimer.  In the letter, Kilston and Latimer make several statements about Sarah Palin.  They then ask that those who agree Palin is the wrong choice for VP and that she is not representative of women send them a statement to this effect. It was their intention to take all such statements and create a blog with all of the statements they receive.  I posted the letter because I fundamentally agree with the premise that Palin is wrong for VP and wanted to allow others who agree to add their voices to the mix.

The commentator stated that I lose “credibility” when I publish something that isn’t the truth.  On that point, I agree.  If I am asserting something factual and it is wrong or inaccurate, I lose credibility in my assertion.  I also agree that I should fact check something before I publish it.  (Incidentally, I did check to ensure the purported letter writers had in fact written and disseminated the letter.)  However, my issue with the commentator and the reason I am responding via blog post is to point out that I did not allege anything other than that I agreed with the letter writers.  How could I fact check my own opinion or lose credibility when I have not attempted to persuade anyone of anything that would require my words be reliable?  I have little doubt that the comment writer intended that I somehow lose credibility by agreeing with persons she claims make inaccurate statements, yet I reassert my original assertion:  I agree with the letter writers.  No one should have any reason to disbelieve this assertion.  Does anyone think that in posting this letter I might actually want Sarah Palin for vice-president?  I seriously doubt it.

The fundamental point of the Kilston Latimer letter is that Sarah Palin is wrong for the vice-presidency and that although she has a vagina, she does not represent American women.  They wanted to create a statement by women saying as much.  Because I find Palin’s positions on a number of issues to be completely reprehensible, I wanted to add my words to this statement.  I wholeheartedly believe that Sarah Palin is the wrong choice for vice-president of the United States.  She may not have taken the steps necessary to successfully ban books in her library, but she asked what would happen if she tried (per factcheck.org).  Yet her position on certain books is the tip of the iceberg as far as I’m concerned.  Her lack of education and experience, her methods for management, her perspective on the environment, her religious views, her previous actions while in office as mayor and governor, as well as so much more all compile to create what I perceive as a disaster should the unthinkable happen and she and McCain are elected.  If there is any doubt as to my credibility in holding this opinion, I hope this post puts it to rest.

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We Need to Help Haiti

Imagine Katrina hitting New Orleans not once, not twice, or even three times.  Imagine just as one storm flits away, people are dying and starving, levies are bursting, the city is in utter chaos.  Then it gets hit again, and again, and again.  This is the situation facing Haiti today, and Haiti has even fewer resources and options than New Orleans did when it was hit by Katrina.

We are not hearing enough about Haiti, and what we are hearing only skims the surface of what needs to be discussed. Haiti has been bombarded by storms, several in just the last few weeks.  The country has been so deforested in the last five decades that there are no root systems to hold the ground together.  Water sits on the soil creating a muddy disaster area.  There is no ground in which to grow crops, there are virtually no trees, there is no fuel to heat or cook with, the country is nearly under water, and its cities are cut off from the rest of the world.  We need to help, not just the problem today, but the global problems the country faces.

Immediately, people are suffering. They need food, clothes, and shelter from the elements.  Then we need to help them with their long term problems.  The country needs to be properly reforested.  There needs to be an alternative fuel plan so citizens do not have to continue using the remaining forests as a fuel source. Food security needs to be created and developed by addressing unfair trade practices and creating jobs.

For more information on this global problem, see this article in Wikipedia and another that gives some detail on the complexity of Haiti’s problems.

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Cute Fuzzy Thing

I signed up to elect Michael Palin for President.  You can do it too.  Simply click here to show your support.  Anyway, as part of my support, I got a free cute fuzzy thing!  It is so adorable.  I love it.  After I got the cute fuzzy thing, I received a thank you message from the campaign with instructions on how to proceed to ensure Mr. Palin is elected president.  Part of my duties as a supporter include rubbing my cute fuzzy thing all over republicans and doing silly walks in government buildings.  I’m going to get right on that.

You too should work to elect Michael Palin as president.  As his website attests, he knows all about government processes.  He even has proof.  I would contend his foreign policy experience is far superior to Sarah Palin’s (no relation).  She just lives near Russia.  Michael Palin has actually lived IN a foreign country!  This is obvious evidence of his foreign policy prowess.  Sarah Palin is a hockey mom.  Well, Michael Palin has actually worn ice skates!  Further evidence again of his superiority as a presidential candidate.

America is truly beautiful my friends. It is a place of opportunity where anyone can attain the highest office in the land.  Show your support for this dutiful and officious servant: MICHAEL PALIN FOR PRESIDENT!! (And don’t forget to pick up your free fuzzy thing.)

I urge you voters.  Vote Michael Palin for president.

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Please Give Me a Big City

I want to move to the east coast.  I want to move to a big city on the east coast.  Boston, New York, Philadelphia.  As part of my gradual understanding of parental conditioning, I realized I had bought into the family story about me. This included certain statements that were presumed to be true, but were in fact not.  For instance, for years I was told I was a “country girl.”  I bought into this notion because I loved horses.  Several years ago I realized that I am so far from a country girl it is nearly laughable.  Going to the country for a ride or a run or a boat ride can be fun, but take me back to the city as soon as it is over.  I am not a country girl.

Another of the claims my family has made about me is that I would “hate” living in a big city.  When I moved to the east coast, first to model, later to go to school, that was the statement.  You will hate it there.  There were things I hated, yes, but these things had everything to do with being broke and nothing to do with the cities I lived in.  I loved those cities.  Why did I buy into this thinking?  Maybe because it never occurred to me to question it.

Now I am living in Honolulu and I am bored to tears.  I realize that part of why I wanted out of Portland was because I was so bored there.  I needed a change of scene.  I needed an increase in activity, not a decrease.  I want to go somewhere that never sleeps.  I want to live in that kind of energy.  I have expressed this desire to some of my closest friends.  Their responses have been unanimous that they believe such an environment would be most suitable for me.  Why is it that something so obvious about me to others is so inapparent to myself?  Am I that blind?  I guess so…

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Are YOU Ready to Be President?

Do you think you can be president of the United States of America?  Should you be president of the United States of America?  Do you have the qualifications necessary to run this country?  Regardless whether you want to be the president, would you like to have a president you see as a person with whom you could share a beer or hang out with?

It seems to me that the desire to hang out or have a beer with the president comes from a desire to view this person as human, as “like us.”  But think about it, how much “like us” should the president really be?  Are any of the people you hang out with ready to be president or should they be?  Are the people in your child’s soccer league ready to run the country?  What about the people in your PTA?  Are the people you have a beer with at the park ready to run the country?  Hell, are the people in your city council, or even your mayor ready to run the entire United States of America?

Just because we could sit and have a conversation with a person does not mean either of us is ready to run one of the most powerful nations on earth.  Think about it.  Faced with the prospect of leading at least two wars, global starvation, natural disasters, increasing environmental concerns, a worldwide mortgage crisis, an economy on the brink of collapse, millions of uninsured and unemployed Americans, and a multitude of other issues, are you or your neighbors ready to run this country?  Could you do it?  Could you fix these problems?

Don’t just ask yourself if the person running for president could drink a beer with you or hang out at your church.  Ask yourself if this person can manage the complex and myriad problems facing this massive nation. Over three hundred million people are citizens of the United States. Three hundred million!  Could you lead three hundred million people?  Perhaps in considering whether someone should be president we should worry less about whether that person is “like us” and start asking if they can do the job, because I highly doubt that most of us could run this country.  I doubt our neighbors could.  I doubt our friends could.  Perhaps after years of experience and training we could do it, but not right now, not today after drinking that beer. Being “like us” does not qualify someone to run this country.  It might make someone more likable.  It might provide us with some link to the enormity of their responsibility to feel that person could be “like us.”  Being “like us” may make us feel in another lifetime at another time we actually could do that job.  Unfortunately it is not enough to determine whether someone could be president of the United States.

Presidents should be super heroes.  Yes, they are human.  Yes, they shit.  But I want someone in charge of the fate of a very large number of people to have superhuman strength and abilities.  Just because this person could have a beer with me is simply not good enough.

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Ginormous Headache

My head hurts like nobody’s business, right at the base of my skull in the back.  I slept wrong.  I wear this eye pillow.  It was cockeyed, plus my regular down pillow had slipped under my shoulders, so I awoke basically balanced on this little lump of eye pillow and my skull screaming in pain.  Every time I turn my head, I see white light and feel like vomiting.  The only thing that alleviates the pain is to stab my thumb or a finger deep into the tight muscle.  Unfortunately because of the angle, my arm cannot twist that direction very well.  I’ve tried stretching my neck to the front and back, left and right, to no avail.  This is so much fun.  I think I’m going to have to try an NSAID, and I generally avoid taking medications for such things.  Only for this, I don’t care.  It hurts that much.

I don’t know why I”m blogging about this.  It’s kind of a ridiculous subject.  But I told myself I would write some blurb every morning and all I can think about right now is this headache and Vantucky.  I know.  It’s silly.  There is a town next to Portland called Vancouver.  Portlanders call it Vantucky.  The reasons for this are self-evident.  Boyfriend is going to Vantucky this morning and he called me on the way. For some reason, the word Vantucky is stuck in my head, along with the headache, and the lyrics to Judy Garland singing I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.  It’s quite a combination, I can assure you.  The song is getting annoying.  It’s been crawling around in my head, worming its way through the neurons for days now.  I’m ready to be rid of it.  I will have to listen to something else over and over and over in an effort to make it go away.  Then that song might get stuck, but at least it will be a different song.  Last week it was Cape Verdean Blues.  I did not mind that song being in my head.  It flittered around, showing up periodically.  I would hum bars of it here and there.  It did not sit insiduously on one line for hours like the chasing rainbows number.  No.  It was a pleasant visitor.  Chasing rainbows is like a houseguest who has overstayed her welcome, leaving empty dishes around the house with food stuck in them and her underwear in the bathroom with the crotch up.  I want her to leave me.

I’m off to take drugs to try to obliterate this headache, then I need to take my baby to school.  Hopefully by the time I return home the drugs will have kicked in and this pain will have been alleviated.  If not, I’ll poke a nail in my hand.  It would probably feel better than this wretched headache.

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I Don’t Get It

Here’s the thing I don’t get.  What damn difference does it make whether climate change is man-made or not?  If we know we can help slow its progress, why not do it, regardless whether we caused it? Why let it continue unabated until we are all dead simply because “it’s not our fault”?  Alaska is falling in the ocean.  Hurricanes are destroying cities and killing thousands every year.  Wet places are getting wetter. Dry places are getting drier.  Hot places are getting hotter.  Cold places are getting colder. Whether we caused it or not, it is happening.  The evidence of this is irrefutable.  We can slow these changes down, but we don’t want to because we didn’t do it?   Such thinking is ridiculous.

I know there are those who think that because we didn’t cause it, we can’t fix it.  Ample evidence exists to the contrary, but I doubt these naysayers will change their minds.  What does it hurt to try?  If by some anomaly we cannot affect the changes, we are certainly no worse off than if we did nothing; we are in exactly the same place.  But if we can affect the changes and do nothing, the results are going to be catastrophic.  They already are.

Every time I hear the discussion about whose fault it is, man or nature, I want to ask Who cares?  I just don’t get it.  Whose fault it is does not matter.  What does matter is whether we can change it and actually try to do so.

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Miscellaneous Thoughts

So I’ve been convincing myself that it is okay to skip inconsequential writing because I’m working on a book.  The problem is that when I stop blogging or at least writing in my journal, then the words start pounding on the inside of my skull again and I start turning a little nuts.  That’s not a good thing.  I am not the best human when I am nuts.  I guess even when I work on a book I will have to write some little blurb here or in the journal or I’ll never end up completing the book because I will be in an insane asylum.  What a wierd brain I have, one that requires I write in order to be functional.  It also doesn’t seem to remember this until it’s going blathering nuts and I start wondering why I’m such a bitch all the time then I think Well duh, Lara.  It’s like food and sleep.  I know if I’m off and losing my mind, food and sleep are usually required.  I should add writing to the list because lately, I’ll have the food and sleep and still be going nuts.  Duh.  Write.

I have had a lot of thoughts about the political situation in this country, but there is so much to say and so many people saying it, I feel a bit overwhelmed to even know where to begin.  The progressives seem to understand that the McCain Palin ticket is a disaster.  It’s all we’re hearing about.  My question is whether average Joe American who pays little attention to politics can see past the fact that Palin has hot legs and McCain is a good ol’ boy.  Unfortunately, I’m not so sure.  Of course, there is the consolation that a person with these views would not likely vote, but that’s not much of a consolation.

I read an op ed piece today whose author said he did not want someone he could take out for a beer as the leader of the free world, he wanted a super hero.  My sentiments exactly.  I would love to try and reach average Joe American with that image…we need superheroes running our country or we will not be leaders for very long.  I cringe at the thought of what the rest of the world will think if McCain is elected, how humiliating that will be, especially after Bush.  I am not a person who gives much credence to what other people think, but I do care that our country does not appear as a pathetic joke.  If that moron and his Caribou Barbi are elected (or steal the election, which is a possibility with Diebold still in the picture), we may as well kiss our asses goodbye.  Or stage a revolution.  Unfortunately, in 2008, I do not see many people willing to go there.

I read another article where the author argued that we need to send Hilary after Palin.  I could not agree more.  This would eliminate the complaint that the men are picking on her because she is a woman, and Hilary is brilliant as an attack dog.  I wish she would do this.  Come on, Hilary.  If you are with the Democrats, do this for your country.  Take that pitiful excuse for a woman down.  She wants to claim she’s on your side, but she’s so far from anything you represent, she deserves your intelligence, your debate, everything you have to offer.  Go for it.  Do it for the country.  Do it for women.

Apparently Obama went on the O’Reilly Factor.  Here’s hoping they don’t edit the piece before airing it in such a manner to make Obama the fool.  I don’t trust that O’Reilly bastard or his network one bit.  Putting someone who can answer questions intelligently next to a man who screams, cajoles, and calls names….I’m not so sure. We will see.

Well this is it.  We’ll see if I can tame the word poundings.

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I Cannot Think of a Clever Title for this Post

I have not been writing as much here as I usually do because I have been working on a book idea that I have.  It’s an academic book so I’ve been doing some research in an attempt to solidify a thesis argument.  I have also been researching grad school programs to determine whether it might be worth my while to turn this idea into a dissertation (it’s that sort of book).  It might be useful to turn it into a dissertation because I could get a degree that would allow me to teach if I wanted to.

As an undergrad I wanted to become a university professor.  I entered the honors program at my university because it was designed to determine whether one would be interested in that track.  After spending a year on my subject and writing the thesis, I decided I was not interested enough in any one subject to become an expert on it.  Since then, I have often wondered how different my life would be if I had made that choice instead of law school.  I have considered attending law school one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.  I decided to attend law school because I thought it would be a way to make money while writing.  I realize that for me, making money should never have been part of the equation.  It’s one of those life lessons that are often talked about, but have little meaning until you experience them yourself.  Actually, thinking about it now, if I had chosen grad school then, it would not have been the right choice because I was not fired up enough about any one subject to become an expert on it.  Oh, I probably would have liked my job better than I liked being a lawyer, but it still would not have been just right for me.

Since I have had this idea for a book/dissertation, it is nearly all I can think about.  I believe that if I had been this fired up about a subject when I was considering graduate school as an undergrad, there would have been no question I would have gone that route.  I would have wanted to pursue something that arduously if I was passionate about it.  This latest is a subject I have been thinking about, talking about, and even blogging about for about 8 months now.  The friends of mine I’ve told about it kind of go hmmm, like Lara is nuts.  I just can’t get it out of my head.  Lately, I see and hear more and more around me that make me want to write about it even more.  The idea is solidifying, taking form.

This is how it was for me when I had the ideas for the papers I wrote in law school that eventually became law review articles.  One of them started niggling my brain in a constitutional law class.  The professor had made a passing remark about something and I started turning it over and turning it over, wondering and thinking.  I finally went and spoke to one of the con law experts at our school, an absolutely brilliant constitutional law professor.  After discussing the thought with him, I still kept thinking about it.  I went back and asked him if he would advise me if I wrote a paper about it.  I had already written my A and B papers.  I did not have to write about this, I just wanted to.  He agreed to act as my advisor and I wrote the paper and published it.  I was similarly fired up about the subject of my A paper, and I got it published too.  I feel just as excited about this latest idea.  Maybe I can turn it into something.  If not, I can at least write about it and try to convince a couple of people that my argument has merit.  Rather than sitting around on the computer lamenting myself, I have been working on this book, giving it shape.  It is preoccupying.  I need to find a temp job, or some job, but I keep thinking about this and wanting to work on it instead.  Ah, the muse…

Some who read me may have noticed a rather large number of my posts disappeared.  Well, they are not gone, they are simply marked private.  This means they don’t show.  Why did I do this?  Ah, hell.  I don’t know.  I was having one of those days when I wanted who I have been, at least parts of me, to go away.  So I hid everything I had written.  I periodically go back and unhide certain posts when the whim strikes, but like I said, having a project to focus on has been quite useful for my overactive brain, leaving me little time to worry about myself, or to repost my writings, as the case may be.  It’s a good thing.  I don’t imagine people are going back and reading old posts anyway.  My saying this is not me being a martyr; it is me being realistic.  If I thought anyone really wanted a post, I would put it back out there.  I just doubt it’s that important.  I am not some famous author, after all.

Aaaaanyway.  Didn’t my professors tell me never to begin sentences with aaaaanyway?  Maybe not.  Anyway, if I don’t post, it is not because I have jumped off of a bridge or drowned in the ocean.  Rather I am likely holed up in the library here where I cannot check out books. Or I’m online researching grad school programs.  Rest assured, if I decide to kill myself, I will write about it first.

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Today is Autumn’s Birthday

Doesn’t that sound like the first line of a poem? Speaking metaphorically of course.  I am not, however, speaking metaphorically.  August 16 is the day my Autumn was born, in 1993.  She died July 19, 2005.  I chose her the day she was born and she died in my arms.  She lived her life with me.

Most people today will go on and on about this being the anniversary of the day Elvis died.  I have not yet seen any news sites or anything to proclaim this event, but having spent the last fifteen years noticing August 16, it is difficult not to notice this other event associated with it.  I find it remarkable that two decades after the man’s death, the date is still so publicly memorialized.  Ah, the cult of celebrity.

Autumn was a gem.  She was my little partner.  I knew before she was born that I would have a dog and imagined her riding with me in the car.  My boyfriend at the time and I drove across the US to go live in Virginia/Tennessee (yes, on the border), and the whole way there I fantasized about getting a dog.

I chose Autumn within weeks of our arrival; she came home five weeks later.  I went and held her every day from the time she was born, before she had eyes or ears.  I’ve since heard from a rather know-it-all dog breeder that this was completely dangerous because Autumn could have supposedly acquired some disease or other from me, but she did not.  All she acquired was the desire to spend all of her time with humans and particularly with me.  Throughout her life she followed me wherever I would go, no matter how trivial or short the trip.  Going into the kitchen for a glass of water?  There was Autumn, at my side. Going for a short visit to the toilet?  Autumn would rise from wherever she had been lying, follow me in, sigh heavily as she laid down next to me, then rise again thirty seconds later to follow me back to wherever I had been.  I spent a term at school in Munich, Germany when Autumn was just a puppy.  Upon my return, she peed on the sidewalk at the airport, her face and demeanor obviously relieved that the person she loved and remembered from the time before she had sight or sound was back.  The person she adored had not disappeared forever.

Autumn’s fur was golden, laced throughout with brown hairs and white.  She was the color of autumn, hence the choice for her name.  She had a white patch on her chest, on two of her toes, and on the tip of her tail.  She had the most beautiful brown eyes and I took it as a compliment that people often commented that we looked alike, even more so the year I wore brown contact lenses.  Two of her teeth were broken in half from carrying around and chasing rocks.  The dog loved fetching.  I would mark rocks and then toss them into three or four feet of water in a moving stream.  Invariably Autumn retrieved the marked rock from the floor of that stream.  She loved to swim, she loved to fetch, diving was the natural result.

Her last years were not pleasant for her.  First she acquired interstitial cystitis, then diabetes.  All of these I believe now came from problems with her adrenal glands.  At the time, no one really knew what caused interstitial cystitis, but I’ve learned that recent research shows a link to adrenal malfunction.  All along the doctors thought she had Cushings disease, although she never tested positive for it.  Considering Cushings is an adrenal malfunction and Autumn’s diseases were all manifestations of adrenal malfunction, I think it’s a safe assumption that this gland did not work properly for her.  Diabetes was the worst.  In spite of the twice daily insulin shots I gave her, she wasted away over nearly two years.  She lost her sight and grew thin.  Yet until the day she died she was lively and happy, chasing sticks and frisbees she could smell even though she could not see, snuggling close to me under the covers after I lifted her onto the bed to be with me.

I am so glad she was born and spent her life with me.  I have another beautiful dog named Molly I chose from the humane society when Autumn was two.  Molly is a photo negative of Autumn–black where Autumn was yellow, and yellow where Autumn was dark brown.  Like two children with their own personalities, each were individuals.  Autumn was outgoing, a textbook Leo in personality, Molly is timid and precise.  Autumn would attack the vacuum cleaner.  Molly goes and finds a corner as far from the sucking machine as possible.  She often worries she might be in trouble when you call her. She stares at the floor if someone else has been naughty, human or canine.  She will go and hide if another dog potties on the floor, fearful of the possibility someone might get mad.  I have now had Molly longer than I had Autumn.  She lives with one of my best friends in Oregon.  I have missed her stealthy presence, hiding under my bed or in my closet.  My friend calls me.  He tells me Molly is in the closet. He sent me a photo of her in there staring at his boots.  He coaxes her into his basement to eat her food and to get away from the summer heat.

I realized this week that this is the first time that I have not had a dog since I brought Autumn home in September 1993.  Growing up we always had dogs.  I am not used to being dogless.  I like the presence of another in the house always there.  I enjoy having my own pack.  I miss it.  I wonder, sitting here thinking, if maybe I have been experiencing a version of empty nest these last few years, years I have been wanting a purpose, needing something to do, feeling sort of lost.  I honestly enjoy taking care of my babies, whether they are dogs or humans. The happiest days of my life I remember are the times when I was taking care of my dogs or my baby girl.  My girl has grown enough into herself that she does not require that level of care anymore.  My dogs are all gone.  How 1950’s housewife of me that taking care of a house and babies is what brings me the most contentment.

I miss Autumn.  I love her.  Her life is one of the two most important things I have ever experienced.  For her life and the time she shared with me, I am grateful.  I realized at the birth of my daughter that celebrating one’s birth is a celebration of the fact of being born.  I celebrate the fact that Autumn was born.  Happy birthday to you, dear one.  Thank you for living your life with me.

If you would like to read more about Autumn, I have written about her here. More about Molly can be read here, and the story of her death can be read here.

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Spinning Time

My blog has turned into two things.  One is me going on and on about how pathetic I am.  The other is my ranting about the godforsaken political situation in this country.  It’s as if my sense of humor has taken a monster shit and been flushed down the loo.  It does not exist anymore, at least in writing.  I am not sure though that I ever had it.  I just had these magical moments where things came to me and I wrote them down, but they are gone now.  Or maybe it was just that I was not living in mental chaos all the time.  Lately I feel as if I live in mental chaos, in this box where I just want to know what the fuck it is that I want out of life and I go for it.  But the times I’ve known what I want and gone for it have been monumental failures, so I have really almost given up trying.  Well, I don’t know about that, but I’ve not known exactly what I want for ages, and that has been a big part of the problem.  Recently, I have figured out exactly what it is that I want, but it is one of those things that requires others on board and I have not exactly figured out how to present these desires to the other parties involved.  The result is that I mope about wanting these things, wondering if they are the right things to want, waffling whether I actually do want them, then wondering again if I do in fact want them how to present these things to other involved parties.  It’s a conundrum, I can assure you.

As it is I just spin time, organizing my room, thinking about things I want to write, sitting at the computer and staring, trying to remember what it was I sat down for, then getting up and wandering over to my bed to stare at the wall, continuing in my humorless vein.  It’s a good time.  It’s such a good time I am going to do it again right now because I am tired.  Good night.

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Ronrey

Ronrey, I’m so ronrey.  I wonder if the universe wanted to teach me a lesson that Portland had its positive side too by sending me somewhere that everything would go wrong and cost me a ton of money.  Of course, this assumes the universe thinks like a human, which I do not believe.  It also assumes I did not know the good things in Portland, which I also do not agree with. Especially right before I left I noticed that there were certain things that I liked quite a lot, but I also knew I had to go and try something else, that I needed to be away from there.  I still don’t really want to be there, but I don’t really want to be anywhere.  So what does that mean?  I’m the one who is fucked up, that’s what it means.  I need to figure out something to occupy my none too busy brain.  I need something to manage.  I need multiple tasks to manage, in addition to my writing.  The man is sending me his taxes to work on.  I can’t wait.  I am frothing at the mouth with the possibility of doing his taxes.  How pathetic does this make me?  Not pathetic really, I just have a brain that is too active.  It needs too much stimulation.  No wonder people tell me I should smoke pot.

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Blah Blah Blah

So I don’t write a couple of days and they change everything again.  Well, at least they moved things around somewhat.  It’s not as drastic a change as before.  I know a lot of people did not like the other changes, but I did, so I think I can get used to a little column switch.

I don’t have much to write.  Ironic considering most of the day my brain was bursting with words, but I’m so tired now the words all went to sleep.  Running around settling into our new home is exhausting. And I have insomnia again because I don’t have my man.  Love kills insomnia, that’s all I can say.  Sleeping with him every night took it away.  I felt safe with him.  I love him.

I’m going to bed.  I will be a better writer again from now on.

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Locomotion

I leave for Hawaii on Thursday. I feel like I’m going forward, getting it done, but observing from the outside.  It’s like I can’t let myself feel anything about it before I go because I don’t know how I feel about it other than that I know I have to do it.  In some regards I feel like immigrants in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s must have felt.  I’m leaving pretty much everything behind except a few small belongings and Milla.  Even my animal babies won’t be with me.  Thank God it’s the 21st century and there are phones, the internet, email, Skype or Gizmo, whatever, to keep us connected with our families and friends in a way the immigrants could not enjoy.  In that regard, we have it so much easier.  But that’s about the only situation I can find analagous to this one.  Similiarly though, I do think it is something that will improve our lives.  So off we go…

Have you ever spent a good deal of time helping someone with something just because you wanted to help them (for whatever reason), then made an offer to help further and the person acted like the further assistance was expected or even required?  Such things make me less inclined to want to help out, you know?  Such things make me want to say fuck you and give the proverbial finger.  Instead of thanks a bunch for helping out, it’s how come you’re not doing more or doing it faster?  Nothing like a little ingratitude to keep me from offering up assistance in the future.

Today is colder than it has been.  It is the first of August.  Incidentally, this is also my mom’s birthday.  She seemed pleased when I called and wished her well.  I gave her a gift some weeks ago because I was moving and did not want to lose it.  She told me all about where the gift was at and how much she liked it.  She was appreciative.  My daughter is visiting my mom this weekend.  I picked her up at the airport and very nearly took her straight over to my sister’s where my mom was going to pick her up.  I figured I would let Milla keep traveling and stay in that mode before coming to me and moving to another state.  There will be a lot of changes for both of us coming up.  I’m looking forward to parts of it, but honestly, I’m scared shitless.  I guess that’s how it goes.

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little bits

I’m in the middle of so many books.  About ten I think.  This non-sequitur comes from nowhere, as non-sequiturs are apt to do, the sort of thought that has probably been floating in his brain for a bit and is finally expressed seemingly out of the ether.  I am in the middle of so many books too, I tell him.  Later I think that I would have finished these books, but I’ve been fucking instead.  Quite a lot actually.  I could have said that. He would have chuckled.  He would have known what I meant.  But that response only came just a bit ago when I was reading one of the aforementioned books.  Actually, this is a new one.  I’m already in the middle of how many books?  Maybe five or six instead of ten.  Then I found one of my favorites yesterday while sorting through boxes, one I have been wanting to read lately, one I went searching for a few weeks ago and did not find.  So this book moves to the top of the pile in the bathroom and will go with me when I’m a passenger in the car with him or have to go somewhere and wait.  I will finish it quickly because it has been tickling my brain begging me to read it again.  In fact I had to stop myself from buying another copy because I knew this one was nearby.  I just had to search further into the boxes.  And I did that.

I do not like packing.  I do not like moving.  It’s worse this time because I already did it once last month and it lasted several weeks.  I’m down on stuff, but these are things I did not finish or sort or have to decide whether they go to Hawaii or storage for another country I hope.  I have to pack so things can be shipped without breaking.  So far this hasn’t been too terribly difficult because the belongings are not breakable.  My friend, Noelle, helped me with breakable things at the old house, so I’m hoping not packing breakable things will remain not too terribly difficult.

Okay, I know he got his own post a few days back, but Chet Baker…baby.  I’m listening to Chet Baker in Paris.  I’m so in love with that voice.  Man says Chet made the ladies’ panties wet.  You know, I can see it.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), heroin and cocaine addiction isn’t exactly attractive, so I don’t think he would have done much for my panties, but still.  The man can sing and blow a horn.  Man told me a joke that goes What does a trumpet player use for birth control?  His personality.  This may be true, unless one is Chet Baker.  He could have the worst personality and that voice and face would go a long way to alleviating any personality flaws…like drug addiction for instance.

Well time to go investigate iphones.  Yes, I know.  How cliche’ is that to go and get an iphone right when they come out?  I don’t care.  My contract is up with Sprint and my phone is broken, so I’m going to get an iphone to go with my ipod and macbook.  Then I can write all of them without capital letters on the fronts of their names.  The computing world’s version of e.e. cummings.  Brilliant.

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mary jane white and red

Mary jane red and white, smoke a grape through a pipe. Mary jane white and red, eat a chocolate chip instead.

These days have been filled with beautiful moments. I keep forcing myself to live in the moment because I do not want to lose them. I will miss these moments when they are gone; I do not want to spend them thinking about a time that has not yet arrived.

I am in a room next door to a room where Man is playing music. Good music. Tight. I like it. It’s nice to be able to sit in here and play around on the computer and write while simultaneously hearing music. He’s doing a little piano solo now on keyboards. He’s got it set to an organ sound, plus he’s playing some left handed key bass as well. This appears to be a good and appreciative crowd. Their applause seems genuine and interested. I peeked in and saw some heads bobbing. That’s always a good sign. I just can’t get it when I see people listening to music and they seem not to feel it at all, especially a swinging jazz quartet with an amazing piano player.  Actually, all the players sound really good.  I’ll go in and listen from there in a few, but being in here is nice too.  Mellow.

Right now is one of those moments when I wish I drank coffee and could. I feel like lying down and taking a nap. I feel like I’ve had a sugar crash, but I haven’t eaten much sugar. I’m sleepy. Well this is a crappy post. It’s my pitiful attempt at showing up, but I’m too tired so I think I’ll go take a nap on the indoor outdoor carpet and dream of the sun.

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Chet Baker

Ah, Chet. How horribly, dysfunctionally sad you are. Were the demons who drove you to infuse your body with toxins the same that inspired you to play? Are you the Sylvia Plath of horn playing? Your voice is like butter, so smooth and creamy, I want to lick your words. Your playing is sensual, lovely, golden. The sounds you create are so perfect, yet everything else about you is a disaster. Would your music be so beautiful if you were not so tortured? I suppose we will never know…

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Melancholy

Well, by accident I just discovered full screen mode for typing this blog.  Wow.  Seriously.  Here I am all somber wanting to write and try to expel some angst and I accidentally hit a button and get this.  This is cool.  It is a nice little distraction.

What is the source of my angst?  I am moving to Hawaii.  I do not want to leave the man I love.  The thing is that if I take him away from the Portland picture, I do not want to be here.  He is the only thing I want to stay for.  I do not want to leave him.  If I thought for a half a second he would want me to go with him wherever he goes, I would do it.  But I just don’t think he feels as strongly as I do.  I could be wrong.  I haven’t asked.  It’s one of those things where I don’t know if I want the answer.  I will probably say something.  But in the meantime, I’m going to Hawaii, at least for now.

Why Hawaii?  There are two places on earth I would like to live.  One is Australia.  One is Europe.  I mainly chose Australia because it is an English speaking country.  Plus it is far away from wars and whatnot.  I’m afraid of wars and whatnot when it comes to my little girl.  I want her to be safe.  Perhaps I am naive in thinking that because Australia is farther from the wars we will be safer, but this was part of my thinking.  We also seriously considered Spain, and actually, I would still consider Spain.  I speak enough Spanish I could pick it up, and Milla speaks it as well.  But it is so close to the middle east.  So for now, I chose Australia.  In the meantime, on the way to Australia, I did not want to live in Portland anymore.  I have to leave here.  For an on the way to Australia place, I chose Hawaii because I have lived there before so it is a known entity.  I also know people there.  And Milla was accepted to school and got financial aid there.  Plus it is sunny all the time and I get seasonal affective disorder in this gray and damp place.  So why not, right?

Why not.  I did not expect to fall in love and I did not expect to fall in love like this.  This feeling is indescribable.  It feels like all the silly love songs from fifty years ago were written for me.  But it also feels like all the songs written about heartbreak are for me too.  It’s such a weird place to be in.  I know I have to leave, but I cannot bear the thought of leaving him.  This will be the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  Unequivocally.  I do not know how I am going to manage.  Well, that isn’t true.  I will manage because I always do by putting one foot in front of the other.  But I wonder if I’m making a monumental mistake, going there instead of I don’t know what.  Maybe he would not be the way he has been with me if I were staying here.  He has been wonderful.  He has been exactly what I want in a relationship.  Even the hard parts.  I have learned more about relationships from him than from all the others put together.  I have learned more about myself.  And then there is the fact he is just plain brilliant and so much a match for me.  I am completely blathered.  Love.  Damn biology.  His immune system must jive with mine.  His genetic footprint must be what mine needs to propagate.  Silliness.  Plain silliness.  I alternate between love songs and melancholy.  I cry.  All the time.  I am on cloud nine.  All the time.  What a disaster.  I take the steps I need to take to make this move, but I take them reluctantly and after procrastination.  I am getting done what I need to get done.  Yet I’m going through it in a daze.  Is this how it’s supposed to be?

So I write and hope it will help me through.  I have been writing, even though the dates on the posts don’t say so.  There have been things I cannot share because they do not affect only me.  There have been things that have happened he might not want others to know about.  I don’t know if anyone he knows reads this, but I do not want to take a chance, so even though I must write about these things, I keep them private.  I hope writing will get me through.  I hope when I land on that island in the middle of the world’s biggest ocean and my heart is crushed with longing I can write and it will be okay.  It’s something anyway.

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Love Kills Insomnia

It’s true.  Loving and being loved help you to sleep.

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Not Mine Anymore

I had to go over to my old neighborhood and pick up a prescription.  One of the benefits of being on the Oregon Health Plan is that they assume every move you make is intended to defraud them, so they take steps like only allowing you to get your prescriptions from one place.  If you want to change to another place, you have to expect hassles, paperwork, and delays.  It’s all fun.  Because of this, I needed to drive out to Milwaukie to get my Tamoxifen.  Since I was already over there, I drove over to the old house to say hi to my previous neighbor and also to see if there was a ceramic sun I forgot and left at my house.

I could see an immediate difference upon driving up.  There used to be a giant Camelia bush by the front walk.  It provided shade and lovely flowers in the spring.  Gone.  An azalea had been completely removed from near the front porch.  I could see into the house when the new owner came to the door and the built in bookshelves I had painstakingly built into the living room wall were gone.  And the backyard….wow.  My neighbor let me peek through her kitchen window to see.  Nothing left.  All the plantlife in the back was gone.  Part of the charm of the yard for me was the abundant plantlife.  It kept the yard and house shaded and floral.  Nothing like cutting everything down in the middle of summer to ensure it doesn’t grow back, huh?  On top of it all, they had thrown away the ceramic sun.  Good times.

Oh well.  The house isn’t mine anymore.  It’s decorated in SE Portland antique store chic.  It looks like a Martha Stewart magazine from 10 years ago.  It’s annoying.  Seeing the house that way, I knew nothing of it was mine anymore.  Guess it’s more evidence it is time for me to move on.

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Who Wants Me?

WordPress is great.  It gives me lots of information about my blog.  I get statistics on how many people read it, an analysis of top posts and searches, all sorts of things.  One thing it shows is what searches someone used to find my blog.  There have been some VERRRRY interesting searches that somehow found me.  Stuff like “spank nun big broomstick.”  Huh?  I’m just the messenger…don’t ask me.

Anyway, nearly daily there are searches that locate my blog by looking for my name, often several a day.  What I want to know is, who is looking for me?  It’s weird, knowing people are searching your name.  I mean, I’m not naive.  I know people google search each other all the time.  I do it.  It’s fun.  But this happens for me nearly every day.  This means someone out there is searching for my name quite a lot.  I know of 2 other Lara Gardners in the USA.  One is an attorney in Florida.  The other is some sort of scientist who wrote some articles.  So it is possible they are the objects of these searches.  Yet some of them are probably for me and it’s kind of weird.  Who is looking for me?  I wish I knew that.

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Weeds

Okay so I’m completely addicted to the television show Weeds.  BF has it saved on his hard drive so we watch it on his computer.  I think we’re nearly through with Season 2.  I love it.  I avoid getting into these cable shows that have been put on dvd because if I like them, that’s all I want to do.  I watched the entire series of Six Feet Under, like the first four seasons, one after another after another for weeks.  I stayed up until all hours.  I ate, slept, and breathed it until I finished it.  Then I had to wait for the final season to come out, and rented it the day it showed up at the video store.  It had an original release date that never happened and came out a few weeks later.  I was BITTERLY disappointed on that first date when I ran down to the video store at the butt crack of dawn and my show was not there.  When it finally arrived, I watched the entire season all in one sitting.  How sad is that?

So since then, I’ve avoided serial shows.  But BF suggested Weeds and after his description, I was intrigued.  We have spent literally HOURS watching it.  I’m thoroughly addicted.  I think about it when I’m not watching it.  Good times.  Isn’t it fun to waste hours on something like this?  I’m being a productive, useful member of society, staring at a screen and having it entertain me.  I love it.

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Thought Clarification

Yesterday while driving home a man who had been standing at the curb waited until I was about 3 car lengths away to step in front of my car.  I thought to myself, idiot must want to commit suicide. Then I thought what if I wanted to commit suicide?  I would have nothing to lose in running the man over.  This is what inspired my thought for the day yesterday.  While I have on occasion contemplated suicide, I was not doing so at the time I had this thought.  Just thought I would point this out, in case anyone was wondering.

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Something to Think About

You should not enter an intersection in front of a car whose driver is contemplating suicide.

Just a thought.

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Her Hair was Attractively Styled

I am not one of those women who is able to maintain a perfect beauty regimen. In fact, I’m pretty pathetic. I sit here typing at the computer and one of my nails is splitting. I am nearly pathologically unable to quit playing with it until I find a nail file. The urge to pick and chew at the piece that is sticking out near the split is overwhelming. I finally give up and bite the damn thing off, making the nail ragged and ugly. The fact the nail split in the first place is part of the evidence against my ability to maintain western trappings of femininity. Don’t get me wrong, I do not go out of my way to eschew such contrivances. I don’t purposely dress in sacks or not shave my pits or grow a mustache or not wear deodorant or any of it. In fact, such things would bother me immensely. I actually LIKE certain aspects of western trappings of femininity, I’m just not very good at them. And so I exist in my little, pitiful, half-baked attempts.

I have a wonderful hairdresser. She does such a lovely job putting in highlights and cutting my hair. My hair is naturally curly and I straighten it. My hairdresser knows this and cuts it accordingly. She straightens it for me beautifully. Even I am capable of straightening it fairly well, and during the time after it is straightened and before I go to bed or get it wet, it looks moderately attractive. Yet I’ve developed a habit of staying up too late with the male person in my life, so when I have to get up and go to work, I do not want to spend the extra 45 minutes showering, straightening, and coiffing. I would rather sleep. The result is that my hair has odd bumps in it in places where it has been slept on, the places that tried to return to their natural state of curliness, but did not quite make it. Most mornings I throw it into a ponytail, make a feeble attempt at presenting my bangs in a semblance of order, and head out the door.

Oh, and the bangs. Do you know why I have bangs? I have not had bangs in over a decade. I’m not partial to them. Last summer, my hairdresser noticed my hair had thinned significantly. She deduced this was the result of radiation treatments the winter before. Small problem…radiation does not cause hair loss unless the radiation is on the hair. Mine was not. We decided stress was the culprit then. In spite of my attempts to stave off the loss, the hair continued to break and thin. One morning while straightening my hair, a large chunk of hair fell right into my hands. Its ends were burned brittle, sizzling and smelling as I held them. WTF?!?!? It turns out my blowdryer had been sucking hair into its coils and burning it off my head. Hence, the hair loss. I went into hairdresser and described what had been happening. As she laughed in horror, she attempted to repair my mangled head. The result was bangs. I was forced into bangs and layers to deal with the trauma. Yikes. The hair is growing back now. It is healthy and it is thickening. I have pretty thick hair so it’s noticeable when it thins. Since having this happen, I am grateful for my thick hair. I like the way it hangs when it’s thick. It’s pitiful when it’s thin.

The other beauty area in which I am woefully lacking is makeup. I can’t wear it. When I do, I forget, rub my eyes or cheek, and smear it across my face. Lovely! I wear lipstick. I’m actually kind of abulic about wearing lipstick.  The lipstick takes over and informs me that it will be worn, whether I like it or not.  Have you ever seen a baby mouse or rat?  They are so cute when they are really little, just after they get their fur.  What is really cute is how they try to wash themselves before they are physically able to do so.  It is apparent that they are driven by forces outside themselves to clean themselves like they do.  It’s the same way with me and lipstick.  I’m driven by a force outside myself to wear it.  Often when it’s on it’s way to my lips I realize I’ve unthinkingly reached into my purse and removed the stick to put it on.  It’s rote.  I do not like the feel of my lips without lipstick; they are too dry. I also do not like the look of my lips when they match my skin. I like them to look reddish, like lips. I like them to show. Women’s magazines often ask some movie star what one makeup item she would take to a desert island (in order to attract the palm trees or crabs, I suppose). My one desert island item would be lipstick. It’s true. I admit it. Please do not think less of me for this. Give me points for admitting it.

My worst beauty area by far is my fingernails. I cannot keep them manicured properly. I try, oh yes, I do. I file them. I keep them even. I attempt to force back the mountains of cuticle. I let them grow so they look sort of long. I just can’t keep them looking pretty. I have paid for professional manicures before. They look ragged and sad within hours. It’s simply not worth the money. I’ve also found that nails that are too long get in the way of doing the things I like to do. When I do such things with long nails, the long nails break. This is not attractive. I do pay for pedicures. I like having my feet pampered and since my toes are further away from people’s lines of sight, they don’t notice the dings as much as the ones on my fingernails. Part of the problem is that my fingernails are ridiculously thick. Where many of my friends complain of thin and brittle nails, I have the opposite problem. One split goes deep and filing it away does nothing. I have to cut the whole thing off, behind the origin of the split, or it just keeps going. Not good. I’ve had some nasty splits that went into my nail bed because of this. They hurt. I am also constitutionally unable to keep polish looking nice. For one thing, my nails are short and fat things. They match my short and squat fingers. For someone who is rather tall and very thin, I certainly have the fingers and fingernails of a troll. They are like mini sausages. I do not have willowy fingers or hands. My hands look like they could pick up a hammer and start banging something with precision. They’re workers’ hands. And they’re ugly. The nails match. Good times.

I am also woefully lacking in the ability to dress femininely. I always miss, usually on accessories. I see girls who are all put together. Their hairs are tamed, their nails are polished and manicured, their makeup is flawless, and their clothes are pert. Not me. My hairs are wily, my nails are squat and splitty, my makeup is lipstick and sometimes some dark circle coverup, and my clothes seem thrown on at the last minute, even when I’ve attempted to look put together. I just can’t quite manage it. Maybe if I had a personal assistant and makeup artist I could do it. I suspect, however, that I would give such a person fits.  She would follow me around rolling her eyes, doing her best to remake what I had undone.  Such an assistant would need to be the sort who likes to watch her work destroyed and making attempts at rebuilding.  I would be a good project for someone like that.  If I were famous, People Magazine would have a field day with me. I’d be the constant go to girl for hideous shots of stars looking pitiful. Even better, they could use me in the See, they’re just like US! section of Us Magazine.  She gets toilet tissue stuck to her shoe!  She spills gravy on the front of her blouse!  She forgot to zip up her fly!  She drops her groceries, keys, and purse then flails mightily to recover them! They’d love me. They would never run out of fodder.

Since typing this, I’ve managed to worry down the nail split somewhat. It’s raggedy and needs a file, but it’s better than it was when I began. It’s hopeless–I’ll never be a model of western femininity. I couldn’t do it if I tried.

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Filtered

A friend of mine called me about this blog.  She read it and saw today there is a password protected post.  I told her there are a few.  She wondered why.  I told her it is because there are some things I need to write but cannot share with anyone. She laughed, surprised I had a filter, considering some of what I’ve written and shared.  Ah yes…it seems I share so much, but some of me remains hidden.  Part of me is not for consumption, the secret place in my head. I have to write about some things, to work them out for myself, but I do not want to share them.  Maybe someday when some of it isn’t so fresh, I will remove the password, but by then the post will be so far back no one will read it anyway.  Perhaps even I will have forgotten it was written.  For now, however, I am filtered.  in a tiny way, I have to do this.  The writer needs the expression; the person needs the cloak.

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Inconsequential Blabbing

Well I managed to move out of the house I owned and rebuilt over the course of four and a half years.  You know, the first time I received an offer, tears formed in my eyes, but I knew it had to be done and moved forward.  Then that sale fell through, then the second sale fell through, and by the time of the third sale, I was so sick of the entire process, I never thought I’d be rid of the place.  During the sale that actually went through, there were numerous requests and addendums and all kinds of annoying crap that went on.  In addition, I had rented an apartment and begun moving stuff there I wanted to keep.  I needed to organize the stuff I did not want to keep in order to have a sale and get rid of it all.  During that week, I got to the point where I was so sick of it all, I didn’t care anymore.  I just wanted the process to be over.  When I finally visited the house for the last time to pick up my dogs and run a vacuum through the place, I felt nothing really except relief.  On the day the sale closed, I went over to meet the buyers and show them some stuff about the place.  I walked through showing them all the details, seeing this house I had lived in and loved, and felt no remorse or sadness of any sort.  I guess it was time to move on.  I made the house beautiful.  I am glad someone else will enjoy something to which I contributed.

I do not like the fourth of July.  I do not like fireworks. I do not like crowds of people, even if they are gathered together to listen to somewhat decent music.  We went down to the blues festival on the waterfront yesterday.  We walked back and forth through the incredibly dense crowds (so dense the fire marshall closed the place and only 10 people could enter for every 20 who left).  At one point we were at one end of the park and headed down to one of the stages.  As we walked, I noticed all the people sitting on their blankets facing the water.  There was a stage to their left and a stage to their right.  I wondered to myself why they were facing the water and surmised that perhaps it was to listen to both stages.  Then it dawned on me, genius that I am, that the people were there and facing the water to watch the pretty fires in the sky at dark.  Thousands of people were all mashed into that small space, smelling and rolling and milling about so they could spend a half an hour watching noisy fires in the sky.  My goodness.

I bought a Macbook.  I am typing on it now.  I am in love with it.  I like my desktop computer all right.  It serves its purpose.  But this thing is cool. It has so many features and runs so smoothly.  I am loving the steps that are left out.  On a pc, there are so many extra steps to arriving anywhere compared to this.  I also got an ipod.  I had one last year, but had to give it back to the ex-boyfriend who gave it to me.  Lucky Lara, welcome to the twenty-first century.

So now I have a little extra money, but I need for it to last.  I had a mini panic attack this morning considering all the things I am going to need to spend money on in the next few weeks.  I do not want the money to all end up gone.  The weird thing is, the more I have, the less inclined I am to want to spend it.  But I can be remarkably frugal (Macbook and Ipod notwithstanding).  I just have to pay attention.

This is a boring post.  I realized I had not been writing enough.  I have been staying up too late, and when I’m not working or doing things, I’ve been lying on my bed like a blob trying to catch up on sleep.  I recognize, however, that I have to write something, even if it’s boring, preferably every day.  It’s that old showing up I’ve committed to myself to do.  Since I’ve written less in the last two weeks then I’ve written in the last six months, I’ve got to recommit or I’ll end up out of the habit and I can’t do that.  So here I am, showing up and writing boring stuff.  Wheee!

I discovered Nina Simone.  I am in love.  Her voice gets under my skin, in my belly, fills me. I can’t explain it.  I hear her singing and I never want to turn it off.  Apparently she was a classically trained pianist who was not allowed to perform because she was black.  They let her sing instead.  Maybe it’s something behind that story I hear in her voice. Maybe it’s the grief of an entire race.  When she sings certain songs I feel something deep inside, a visceral response in my belly and chest.  There are a few other artists when theys sing that take me to that place.  When I hear music like this I feel like it channels me into that creative energy field, that primal place where I have to write and feel like I will expire if I don’t.  Weird.  I don’t think I’m explaining it well. I’m obviously not tapping into that place right now because I can’t seem to describe this.  Anyway, she’s brilliant.

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Book One, Book Two

Have you ever read a book where there are parts, often called books: book one, book two, book three, etcetera? Book one has all its stories, book two has other stories, often connected to the first book, but book two is a very different story, often a book of its own. Perhaps there are further books, three, maybe four or more. The Three Junes by Julia Glass comes to mind. I love that book. I love the name of the main character. I have often thought that if I ever have another child and the child is a boy, I would like to name him Fenno. I love that name. Anyway, this part one, part two world is how I feel about my life right now. I feel like I’ve lived part one and now I’m moving into part two and it will be very different from part one. Only I have little idea how the second part will be. It is exciting and frightening at the same time.

Today I was corrected for thinking Helen of Troy was inside the Trojan Horse. I don’t know where I got that idea, but I had it. I know I heard somewhere that Helen of Troy was inside the Trojan Horse. I remember some story about her coming out and her looks killing the soldiers or something. I was clearly mixed up. In any case, that version of events was in my brain. I was informed otherwise. I went online and read the history. After reading the histo, the history became familiar again. I don’t know where I came up with the idea of Helen of Troy being in the Trojan Horse, but I did. Weird. However, I was wrong. Being told I’m wrong is one of my favorite activities.

My daughter leaves me tomorrow for a month. A month. A whole month. I will miss her. For the first week or two I will be busy doing my thing. Then there will be one or several days where I realize how much I miss her presence. Lately, everyone I know is so busy, I have spent a lot of time alone and have been kind of lonely, especially contemplating the changes in my life. I am not looking forward to the lack of distraction resulting from the lack of child. Ah well. I’ll get through it; I always do.

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Song of the Day

Also known as proof that corporate mind takeovers really do work.

I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner,
That is what I’d truly like to be.
‘Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer weiner,
Then everyone would be in love with me.

Isn’t that special? I know that song because I heard it on television as a child. I spent a lot of time watching television. See how I turned out? Yikes. I’m the poster child for why you shouldn’t let your children watch television or be loners. I’m so Generation X, it’s boring.

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I Have a Burr in My Ass

I think anyone who reads this will wish I kept not having an internet connection for a few more days. I’m in one of those moods where I’m not mad at anything specifically, just generally irritated. I want to slap something. Too bad Boyfriend isn’t here. I would tell him some of the things I don’t usually say to avoid an argument, but which probably should be said. Of course, because I have a burr in my ass we might fight and fights with him tend to be demoralizing affairs. The air doesn’t get cleared, it gets filled–with shit, and I just couldn’t handle that right now. It’s probably a good thing he’s off playing the piano at musical theater he claims is crap and not here acting nice to me one minute and cranky the next. Did I mention I’m slightly irritable?

Annoying Number One: I can’t even spell out the whole story because it annoys the crap out of me, but Qwest needs its rectum cleaned with a giant bottle brush. I will be posting the entire story here sometime soon because the world needs to know what a filthy toilet germ Qwest Communications is. I just can’t do it now. I’d get all mad and shit and being irritable is annoying enough.

Irritating Number Two: This woman I’ll call Pita because she’s a pain in the ass stopped bugging me for a few days after she made me royally angry. She was one of the things that inspired the rage spoken of in my post from a couple of days ago. It has been so pleasant not seeing her number on my phone EIGHT THOUSAND TIMES a day. It has been so wonderful not having FORTY MINUTE voicemails left on my telephone. Well, she called today. I was on the phone with Annoying Number One. I saw her number on the phone. I hit ignore. A few minutes later, I’m shooting the breeze with the rep at Annoying Number One when I hear a message beep in. Huh? I didn’t even hear that ring. Uh, yes I did. It was Pita SEVERAL MINUTES prior. Pita is constitutionally unable to just call and either a) leave no message, or b) leave me a short message. Every message is like a call to the therapist or an instruction manual. The calls to the therapist are long, drawn-out affairs whereby I end up hitting 3 every few seconds to fast-forward through her self-analysis. Instruction manuals are her telling me what to do and how to do it. These inspire hits on button 3 as well. All of it irritates the fuck out of me. I have decided never to answer her calls again and delete all messages before I ever hear her voice. Perhaps she’ll figure out the plan soon and stop calling me.

Grumpy Number Three: Part of the I is Pore and Dum concert series, back today by popular demand, we have the Lara can’t get medsin agin cuz shes on Orgun Helth Plan an cant do nuthin but make up fake pill papers an sellum fer muny. Dang me! I was hopin I cud get sum muny for them fake pill papers but that there Walgreen place stopped me.   Nunna my kids daddies sent any muny agin.  Men.  Shit. Mebbe all jes hafta go an watch that telly agin an keep on wippin them 7 kids amine cuz they is blockin my soaps. Hell fire! Wish one a thems daddies wud come on over here and takes one of em cuz theyz makin me tired. Mebbe him an I can roll in the hay also for old time sakes.

Demoralizing Number Four: One minute Boyfriend acts like I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. He has a way of making me feel pretty special. Unfortunately, the next minute Boyfriend acts like he thinks I’m the stupidest fuck to walk the planet and he’s going to make sure I am apprised of this fact. My friends wonder whether he’s just using me for sex. I asked him once. I may as well have asked him whether he had murdered someone because he was so offended I would even ask. That’s how it is with him: you can’t ask because asking comes with the implication that by asking you imply he could do such a thing and how dare one imply he would do such a thing? I don’t know, the fact he seems not to give a shit about me half the time makes me kind of wonder. However, there seems to be no correlation between sex and his desire for me because occasionally even during sex he’ll suddenly turn from really cool to really shitty in about 30 seconds. I can’t figure it. Yesterday it seemed to come after a meal. Eating made him stop being talkative and friendly. To that point, he was the best boyfriend in the world. I actually was thinking I love him again (yes, my love waxes and wanes, like the moon. And don’t give me a lecture about real love not waxing and waning. Whatever. Maybe for you. For me, it fluctuates.) Anyway, he gradually became less talkative and more sullen towards me. He pointed out some error I had made in an observation. By the time we got to the place we were going for dessert, he barely spoke 10 words to me. I almost told him to go home and leave me alone. Demoralizing. I don’t know if he realizes all of a sudden he’d rather be picking his ass or cleaning his sock drawer than be with me, but it’s disconcerting and yes, very demoralizing. I don’t know how much more of it I can put up with. I keep asking myself if the half time wonderful is worth the half time feeling like shit. On top of it, I think he still might read me. I’m not sure. But if he does, he’ll think this is some broadcast message about him and he’ll probably punish me for it. Good times.

Pissy Number Five: Why did WordPress change the layout of this design to include the list of tags? I hate that. It’s ugly. Now I’m going to have to go through and find another design and blah blah blah so I don’t have all those words at the top. If something isn’t broken, DON’T FUCKING FIX IT people, for Christ’s fucking sake. Fuck.

Whipped Number Six: I can’t fucking sleep. I can’t fucking sleep. I can’t fucking sleep. Did I mention I can’t fucking sleep? The days I’ve been able to sleep in, I can’t. It used to be Boyfriend snuggling me at night helped me sleep. Lately that doesn’t even work. Part of it is the demoralizing issue, but the BIG thorn in my backside is STRESS.  Too much stress, too little outlets for it.  I have to be out of my old house a week from today and still haven’t sold enough crap. I don’t want to give it all to charity yet; there is still a lot of nice stuff there. On top of it, I’m required to pick up the dog poo in the dog yard and paint some spots the size of silver dollars and clean the place up after getting the things out of it and I work and I’m a bit overwhelmed. I also can’t find a home for my dog and do not want to give her back to the organization that gave her to me. Also I’m kind of frightened by all the changes I’m instigating and want but which still scare the shit out of me. And basically, I simply tired tired tired tired tired. I just need a good massage and a cuddle. I think those two things would go a LONG way to improving my outlook on life in general.

So there you have it. Don’t you wish you had stopped reading after about, oh, sentence two? I would. Perhaps being able to write again will help. Getting through major life changes would help as well. All I can say now is that my bed is beckoning and I’m going to go try and sleep.

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Dribbling Sanity

I don’t know if the fact I feel like I’m going crazy is because I have not had this outlet or because of all the other shit going on in my life or both.  Last night, I totally and completely lost it.  I went out into my car and screamed FUCK at the top of my lungs.  It did not help.  I had to sit there and stew in my juices until I calmed down.  I was so angry.  Actually angry.  The kind of angry where if the wrong person had been in front of me, I probably would have smashed them in the face.  That would not have been good.  It was just one thing after another after another after another, all damn day long.  I finally blew a fuse.  It kept me twitching for hours, like some fucking meth freak or something.

This morning when I came to work and was able to get on the internet, there was an email from someone who reads this blog checking in on me.  He was worried about me because my posts of late have been a bit angsty, then I disappear for 6 days.  I thought this was so sweet and somewhat ironic.  Some person I do not know wants to make sure I’m okay, but the people who do know me could give a shit.  It’s fucking insane.  This is the life I’ve created for myself?  Indeed.

I do not have internet access at home.  It will be a miracle if I do tonight after the shit and hell I’ve been through with stupid Qwest.  Their bullshit contributed to my fuse blowing.  I have a lot of work to do at work, not to mention the fact I’m being paid by someone to work for him, not write on my blog.  But today, I had to write something, even if it’s trivial nonsense like this.  I can’t stand the angsty, twitchy way I feel.  I can’t stand waking up in the middle of the night, then falling asleep before dawn, then waking up feeling like a train wreck.  If writing these few paragraphs will help, I’m willing to try it.  It’s worked in the past.

One kind of cool thing happened.  I won these tickets to a live performance at a radio station this afternoon.  I think I’ve heard the band.  I had one of their songs on my computer downloaded from when I used to have an ipod.  Other than that, I don’t know if I know their music since I’m great at knowing a song but pretty lousy at knowing who did it.  I don’t have a guest to bring to the performance, even though I’m allowed, but I’m not going to dwell on that.  I’ll pretend one of my internet friends is with me since it seems that’s what I’ve created for myself these days, a world where internet friends give more of a shit than live ones.  But that’s a big pity party and I hate that shit, so I won’t go there.  Still, all this makes me wonder where I went wrong.  Was it one thing or a series of less than decisions leading to this conclusion?  Probably the latter.

Sometimes I feel like my sanity is slowly dribbling away.  I try and regain it.  I try and exist in a life I want to be in.  I try not to focus on being lonely.  I try to enjoy each moment.  But sometimes, it just doesn’t work.  When shit is piled on one thing after another, when I realize I’ve drifted down a path I thought I took on purpose but it isn’t where I want to be, when my heart aches with the love that is no longer there, I feel like whatever semblance I had of who I am is escaping from a valve in the back of my head and this person I do not know is taking over my body.  And I’m not sure this is the person I want to be.  However since I can’t seem to figure out who that is anymore and no one else seems to give a shit, I wonder if it is worth bothering.  So I’ll keep on keeping on and hope in the meantime I don’t kill something when I lose my mind.

Reading back through this, it sure seems like a big pity party.  Ah well, such is life.  It’s one of those extra lonely days after a really bad day.  Guess I can’t be perfect.

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Interesting Beats

I had to go to work today since I did not work yesterday and also my boss has a big brief due so he needed for me to proofread it and then help him put it all together in notebooks for the hearing. I’m tired. I woke up too early again this morning. I laid there contemplating things I did not want to contemplate, too tired to get up, but not falling asleep. Then I got the brilliant idea that it might be the light waking me up so I put on my eye pillow and promptly zonked out. Sometimes I marvel at my own incredible brilliance. Truly remarkable, me.

I heard a song I liked today. It’s called Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck. Actually, I love the rhythm. You can download it for free on the internet, so I’m going to. I found it because I’m working on my website. My logo is going to be a lamp with 7/8 in it for 7/8 time and 7/8th houses in astrology. I did a search for songs in 7/8 time. I found a great list. All the works have this unusual time signature. I really liked this one.

I get my new apartment keys today. Yippee. Moving from a house to an apartment sounds like so much fun. But it’s temporary. And I love the neighborhood. And the apartment really is cool if one is required to live in an apartment.

Altogether the day is shaping up to have different sorts of interesting beats. And it is sunny. That’s the best beat of all.

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You Know It

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. — William Congreve

I have told more than one person that I work at resolving situations before I get truly angry, because once I get there, once I get truly angry as opposed to being simply irritated, bothered, or annoyed, then I lose any semblance of giving a shit and whoever is in the way better get out of it or they will be sorry. I don’t think having such a capacity for rage is unhealthy, but I do think it’s a problem if I get that angry if I do something I will regret because I’m too mad to care. I have to be responsible about that level of anger. A friend of mine suggested expressing some of this rage in a healthy manner by going out in a field and yelling or something. But when I’m actually feeling that mad, the only healthy thing I can do is to stay very far away from anyone and try not to break anything valuable. It is probably also a good idea to stay away from the computer where I can compose an email or a blog post and send it before calming down and regretting it later. Going out in a field or the forest and screaming and yelling isn’t really getting mad, it’s acting like it. It isn’t actually feeling it, because it takes some situation to trigger feeling it. Anger isn’t just sitting in there inside me like a time bomb waiting to explode. There has to be a reason to get that angry, usually coupled with my being hungry, tired, or both. Then fucking forget it.

Why am I writing about this and thinking about it? There is a situation that occurred that when I think about it, I come close to that mad. It’s like it is just sitting there, waiting for expression. I keep hoping I can resolve it without getting pushed over that cliff into being so mad I lose all sense of reason and do or say something that makes the whole thing worse. Or at least completely irrevocable. I suppose I believe though that sometimes when I get that angry it’s because I’ve left something undone or unsaid too long, and it takes getting that angry to put it out there. In some cases this makes things worse, but sometimes it makes things better. It was like this at my old workplace. I put up and shut up and put up and shut up and finally my brain said enough and I got mad enough not to give a shit, put it all out there, and was finally able to leave, utterly and completely.

But is that what I really want in this situation? I don’t know. I don’t know. Part of why it has gone this far is that I don’t want a complete and utter break. I don’t want an irretrievable situation. Yet it seems like every attempt I make at resolution goes nowhere, then more stuff is added, and now here I am, realizing that now, yes, I’m mad. It’s been festering. I’ve been stewing on pieces of it for a while, then because there was no resolution and new stuff kept being added, here I am, fighting off a really solid anger bender. Yikes. If I don’t resolve the mad without going over the edge, I will end up over that cliff and I am psychically incapable of logical thought when that animal part of my brain takes over. Is this what is necessary to achieve resolution? Is this the only answer since the other things I have tried don’t work? I can’t believe there are no other options, but I’ve been utterly unsuccessful at utilizing them.

The same friend, who is a very good adviser I might add, told me that writing isn’t going to work. I’m not going to resolve this by sitting here at the computer. I agree. This sort of self-analyzation is not the answer. But there is something to the “poison pen.” I am capable of being very destructive with what I write if I so choose. Yet I don’t really want to. I want peaceful resolution. I want things to work out. I don’t want utter chaos, although because he’s been in this position, my adviser seems to think utter chaos is the only way out of this mess. I hope this is not true. I hope resolution can be achieved without that level of rage.

So knowing self analyzing writing isn’t going to solve anything, I sit here and self analyze write. Good job. This is a good use of my time. I would rather go to sleep. First I could not go to sleep last night and stayed up way too late, then I woke too early this morning. I wrote a few emails, read a few blogs, checked out Old American Century, then crawled back into bed. Only the thing I am mad about keeps hovering in the fringes, keeping me awake. It is clearly time for a resolution.

The electrician is here. I have had multiple problems with home inspectors. They seem continually to find things wrong that experts say are not problems at all. My first two home sales fell through because the “inspectors,” with their whole six hours of training and their passage of a 200 question test, said the foundation was faulty. An inspection by a licensed structural engineer (6 years of college, multiple continuing education courses) showed that the house was structurally sound. Unfortunately the buyers were unable to overcome the “inspectors'” opinions and both sales fell through. In this latest sale, the “inspector” seemed more savvy, but there were a couple of things he came up with that have me rolling my eyes. First of all, he said rats could come up the drain in the basement. Small problem with that theory: the drain is filled. Simply poking a screwdriver into it four inches would have revealed this to the inspector. So now I have to pay a licensed contractor to come and fill a hole four more inches with cement. I could do this. It would not be hard. But no, the sales contract won’t allow this. I have to pay someone else a hundred and something per hour to do it for me. What a fucking waste of money.

And now, the electrician is here. A little over a year ago, I hired another electrician to rewire the house and put in a new electrical panel. The work was inspected by the county and approved. Unfortunately, Mr. Inspector thought the work was “sloppy and had deficiencies.” Okay. Apparently things have changed since the other electrician had the work approved a little over a year ago. I described what needed to be done to the new electrician. He walked into the room where the “deficiencies” exist. He looked kind of confused and said What is wrong? This is perfectly legal. I don’t get it. I could cover those two junction boxes, but why do you need an electrician to do that? Why indeed. He looked at the county approval sticker and pointed out the work was done just over a year ago. He exclaimed in disbelief again that the work was improper.

I know what it is. It’s that “inspectors” are a big, fat joke. They provide buyers with an opportunity for remorse, giving them a chance to get out of a sale when they have second thoughts. They let buyers think they are doing due diligence. They keep contractors in business because any work done as a result of an “inspection” has to be done by licensed contractors. All around, it’s a big scam. It’s annoying and can be costly when they tell you something is wrong when it isn’t. It’s a travesty when they miss something truly dangerous. I’m obviously opinionated about this issue, but I have never encountered such a racket. I have no problem fixing things that really need to be repaired. I have no problem with trying to make sure a place is fit for living before its being sold, but the methods employed are pathetic. I have no doubt there are very good, experienced inspectors. I had one when I bought my house and, having nothing to compare him to, thought nothing further of the profession until now. Since I have had these experiences, I have heard story after story after story from buyers and sellers alike of the bad sort of inspectors. When I looked up the requirements to be an inspector in Oregon, I can understand why. As far as I am concerned, these “requirements” are woefully inadequate and allow anyone with a half a brain cell to hang up a shingle and call themselves an inspector. Good times.

Well, now that I got that little rant off my chest, I’m going to go eat breakfast. I’ll try not to kill anything on the way to the kitchen.

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A Good George

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You Know It

Okay, gag and gross. The nasty sores on my elbow and chin/lip are staph infections. How disgusting is that? What is really weird is that one of the elbows began spontaneously healing. The other one turned gooey like the chin/lip. Yuck. I’m a mess. I got some more antibiotics though, different from the ones for my bladder, so we’ll knock out these bacteria too, and all the good bacteria in my colon, and then I’ll get another yeast infection and that will cause another bladder infection and on and on ad nauseum until time immemorial. I love it.

On a separate note, McCain calls himself an agent of change. I laughed out loud when I saw the headline. An agent of change? Yep, back to 1943, or hell, even 1929. We don’t need no dang new deal! We’ll all pretend we’re in the roaring twenties. Women will still be in the home making dozens of babies (high falutin hussies). Black people will still be in their place and segregated as God meant things to be. Mexicans will hopefully be in Mexico. Poor people will be out of sight where they belong. White men will rule. Corporations will be allowed the unfettered ability to polute as they see fit. It will be AWESOME! You go, McCain; change things back! We love ya!

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I Don’t Find this Stuff Amusing Anymore

I cannot get the song You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon out of my head. It started because there is a bass riff in it I would like to learn. Unfortunately some of the lyrics seem particularly apropos to my life these days. The line that keeps sticking in my brain is “I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.” Also “ducked back down the alley with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl.” Just kidding. That one isn’t running through my head. I just like saying roly-poly little bat-faced girl.

The lip sore has increased in pain and ooziness. I love it.

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Alone

Loneliness brings its own sense of permanence.

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I’m Here, Aren’t I?

Showing up. Showing up. Showing up. As a writer, it is necessary for me to show up. I don’t have any desire whatsoever to work on the important things tonight. I have no desire whatsoever to work on unimportant things tonight. I have nothing spectacular or funny to say. I am boring. I recognize this. I also know why. I have not slept well recently. Over time, the lack of sleep draining causes sustained retardation in my brain. About the only thing I am capable of doing well (and well is the key word here) is watching South Park videos. Small problem. South Park Zone won’t let me watch South Park videos. I tried reading a book. I realized I had read a page with zero comprehension of the words in front of me. This means I have reached a state of brainlessness rarely achieved, even for me.

So here I sit, starting paragraphs with the word so. This is not a good thing. Oh, guess what I saw today? The back of a street sign had a foot tall green penis and balls drawn on it. There were little squirties coming out the top. Isn’t that original? I thought it was. Particularly the choice of green as a color for the penis. Perhaps that helped to make the penis stand out.

One of my bank accounts is a big, old mess. I have this account I use for Milla’s money. Well, I thought there was a deposit made that wasn’t, so a bunch of crap went overdraft. Here’s the thing, the crap that went overdraft was from point of sale purchases. What does this mean? It means that I used a debit card. I asked the bank to explain to me why they would approve the point of sale charge if there was no money in the account. Why not simply say no, this card is useless? Well, they could not answer this. Instead, they charged me $25 for the first two $7.75 purchases, then $28 for additional purchases, one for about $37, another for about $60, and a third for $20. There were a couple of others. Here’s the other thing. I had one big charge for $200, this was the one that caused the problem. It put the account overdrawn, then all these piddly ones came after. So I said to the bank, if that hadn’t gone through, none of the other stuff would have gone overdrawn. The bank person told me they put through the big charges first. At this point I noticed that indeed, the charges began with the largest and proceeded down in denominations. What does this mean? It means a big purchase makes you overdraw, then all the little nickel and dimey crap comes through and runs up BIG money for the bank. Isn’t that a great money-making scheme? The guy on the phone said it was because big purchases were more important. Oh really, you think so? I think it’s a scheme for your bank to make more money. Add to that the fact you allowed point of sale purchases to go through when there was no money in the account. He said my pointing that out was being abusive. Since I was speaking in a calm, normally volumed, well modulated tone of voice, I found this confusing. Abusive? I asked. How in the world is my pointing out that your bank is ripping me off abusive? I would say that your bank is abusive. He then asked if there was anything further he could do for me. I told him he could go and take a hike. Yes, perhaps that last line was abusive. I’m a bad person. I admit it. I guess paying $156 in fees for purchases totaling less than that makes me this way. Yes, I know there are those out there who would get all judgmental on my ass for not knowing about the deposit in the first place, but there are extenuating circumstances. Another person puts money in that account and I thought he did it. The judgmental people can now be original and say see what you get for doing your own thinking? Yes, I do. I get abusive, that’s what I get.

Well imagine that. I managed to eke out more than one paragraph. Wonders never cease. I didn’t even think while I did it. I suppose it is not necessary for me to point that out, my not thinking. It’s probably quite evident from what I’ve written. I know this. In my altered, brain dead state, I am able to fathom that my writing is pitiful. But I’m showing up, that’s what I’m doing. I’m having impure thoughts too. Isn’t that nice to know? You don’t know what they are. I could be thinking about sewage in the Willamette River. That would be an impure thought. You probably thought I meant sex, especially since I mentioned seeing the giant green penis drawing. But there are other things out there I could be thinking about that are impure. I’ll never tell.

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Tired of Justifications

Maybe it is evidence of my friend choices, but I realized the other day while trying to justify again to another friend why I want to live somewhere else that I actually was justifying myself. After I got off the phone I started thinking about all the people in my life who have made it their business to question my choice and to try and talk me out of it and it leaves me wondering why the fuck they think that’s okay. I would not question their choice to live somewhere else or make any other decisions. And it isn’t simply a matter of people asking out of curiosity either. They genuinely question me like they think it is their job to talk me out of it. I don’t get it. It’s my life. Part of me can hear them reasoning that they just want to make sure I’ve thought things through. The irony in this statement is that I would be willing to bet most of these people would describe me as one of the most responsible, unfrivolous people they know. I have heard all of them say something to this effect at one time or another. Yet when I make a decision they wouldn’t make, they try and talk me out of it and claim it is for my own good.

Now that I’ve noticed this is going on, I’m going to point it out to people when they do it. We’ll see how quickly the backpedaling begins when I ask someone why they are questioning my choices, what they hope to gain from the interaction. I’m not justifying myself any more. I do not make huge decisions lightly. I have my reasons for making the choices that I do. They may not be the same reasons or choices another person would make, but that is one of the beauties of being human, we are individual and can be different.

A friend of mine emailed me about the second house sale falling through. She said, “You’ve been living in a perpetual house of horrors for several years now.” Exactly. That is exactly how it has been. So I want to make a locational change in an effort to 1) get away from the perpetual house of horrors, and 2) perhaps live a life without a perpetual house of horrors. Is that too much to ask? These people who question my choices haven’t lived my life. They don’t have what I have here. Their situations are different.

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Another One Bites the Dust

Another sale just fell through on my house.  I swear to god, I have a fucking cloud over my head.  Just shoot me now and get it the fuck over with.

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Bass Lessons

Well I finished the absolute beginner book on how to play the bass. In fact I got to the point where if I have a piece of music and it is just the notes, I can play it. I do not know how to just play anything by hearing it. I do not know how to do anything fancy like wiggling my fingers or sliding them except for fun. I do not know how to do anything very complicated. But simple baselines, I can do them. I also got fairly fast, at least on the same song over and over. Given a new piece, it would take me 20 tries to go fast if the song required it. Maybe more. Going fast is difficult. It also seems like once I get it one finger goes awry and I screw it all up again. Guess I’ll have to keep practicing, but I like practicing because it makes my brain empty in the same way writing does.

Anyway, it was fun. I love the long, low notes. They resonate.

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Trivialities

Holy criminy.  I don’t look at my eyebrows for a few days and the damn things completely take over.  Yikes.  Little sprouts here and there and everywhere.  It’s not a pretty picture.  I wonder if electrolosis really works and if it does if it costs much and if it doesn’t if it hurts.  If all these pieces can be satisfied I ought to go and get some in order to negate the requirement that I remove these hairs with tweezers every three days if I would like to avoid a forest across my face.  Frida liked that look. It doesn’t work for me.  I’m too pale.

I hurt my back.  I spent 20 minutes bent over picking up dog poop out of the backyard, tried to stand up, and that was that.  My back was out.  I have had difficulty walking, moving, sleeping.  I’m beginning to improve.  I have not had the back strength to sit and write.  I have had lots of interesting things I have wanted to write about, then I think of my desk and chair, my back gives a twinge, and that is the end of that.  Back trouble is not conducive to a writing career, at least for a person who does not have a laptop.

I have another offer on my house.  It is a good offer.  There is another offer in backup if this one falls through for some reason.  It’s not as good as the other, but it isn’t bad either.  Both potential buyers are in love with my house.  I have said all along that I want someone who loves it to buy it rather than some investor who is just going to rent it out.

Last night the man and I went to a hookah lounge and smoked a blueberry hookah.  Or rather an exotic blueberry hookah.  Every flavor is exotic, but when we asked for blueberry flavor, he said, Exotic blueberry.  Oh yes, our mistake.  Interesting little experience.  Lots of over-synthed techno pop eurotrash music that after a few hits off the hookah thingy wasn’t so obnoxious, although it would not have been my first musical choice.  I tried blowing smoke rings.  Can’t do that.  I tried blowing out just one nostril without covering the other one with my finger. Can’t do that either.  I’m not a smoker, never have been, so all those little smoker tricks are lost on me.  Overall though, it was fun to try something new.

Darling Milla, my NINE year old, is off on a trip with her class. They went to a farm.  It’s in Silverton.  She gets to milk goats, among other things.  Lucky for her it is supposed to be merrily warm over the next few days.  If I had to go camp on a farm and milk goats, I would infinitely prefer merry warmth to icy chilliness.

Now I have a drumming lesson.  I like drumming.  I love bass.  I am not taking official bass lessons.  I have been using a dvd.  I would like to take bass lessons, I just haven’t done it yet.  Plus I’ll need to find a decent bass teacher.  I don’t want to waste time or money on a crappy bass teacher.  So off I go to bang on percussion instruments and make noise.  That is if I can remove myself from this chair. The back is not happy I sat this long.  I realize this is a pathetic post.  It’s my effort at showing up since the painful back has kept me off track a few days.  It is what it is.

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Musings in the Library

I saw this book at the library today called God’s Politics.  I only saw it as I was walking by so I did not examine the contents of the book, but I had the thought immediately upon seeing the title that such a thing proves that god is a construct of man because politics are a construct of man.  Why would any god have need of politics?  It’s foolishness.  Politics are the process by which groups of people use to govern one another and to decide who gets what.  If god were a supreme and single being, what would be its need of politics?  It would have control of everything and would have no need to bargain.  In any sense where a god could be involved in politics, god would be a human construct, a way to complicate the political process.

I find it so ironic that people who believe god wants things one way think god wants it their way.  They seem so unable to consider a universe where there might be one god that wants it some other person’s way.  In that regard, the god becomes a further extension of the self and a justification for something the person either isn’t willing to say alone or for which the person has no honest justification.  It’s the devil made me do it reversed.  The god is constructed to back up an idea or to stand for that which the person can not or will not stand for alone.  The reliance on the god becomes a way to remove personal responsibility.  Ironically enough, in our society, the religious person is automatically afforded a moral compass and assumed responsibility simply by the fact of being religious.  Again, the requirement for actual personal responsibilty or development of an actual moral compass is lessened simply via the association.  This is simply absurd.

These are just the thoughts that fumbled through my brain as I wandered the aisles of the library in search of books to play my bass.  Politics, religion, and bass guitar.  Who could ask for more than that?