STOP THE RIDE I WANNA GET OFF

It's days like today that make me very, very glad that I had a conversation with my doctor a little while back wherein we upped my anti-depressant dosage.

Yesterday I had to fire one of the the CNAs that has been taking care of my terminal aunt. She didn't show up at 8 when she was supposed to - never actually showed up at all. This is after several times of her being over an hour late, or not showing up - ooo, or there's the day the guy she's living with called to tell my aunt she'd been drinking, that was fun... This means I have nobody to cover Saturday & Sunday day shift, which means 9 times out of 10, I'll be doing it. If you know a CNA or caretaker with experience taking care of the elderly, I have a bed-bound elderly congestive heart failure morbidly obese woman for them to take care of. Hourly rate negotiable.

Tuesday I have a "monitoring" at work. I have a box of documentation that I have to put together - that incidentally took them a month to do last time, and I was given 2 weeks - and then somehow get that box to the monitoring people, who are not physically there. I believe I read somewhere that we should fax things. If that's the case, I will be sitting at the fax machine for hours. No exaggeration. So I'm trying to get an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier that I found in a back room working, so hopefully I can SCAN everything and send it to them. (It'll still take hours.) We're being monitored, and the outcome of this monitoring will affect whether or not we get our grant next year.

Day before yesterday, I think it was, Obama released the details of his budget. My mother called me at work, in the middle of a meeting with my team members about getting things together for this monitoring. She told me that the federal grant project that I work under has been completely eliminated, because the data says that it doesn't work. I'm not sure which is more depressing - looking at the possibility of no job in 2010, or knowing that the data shows that what we're doing is useless. (Granted, I'm sure that means overall, country-wide - who knows, maybe in our county we actually DO make a difference. I can hope.)

So all this stress, all this work, may be ultimately pointless. We have to write a brand new grant next year anyway, and evidently we're still going to do that, even though the project may cease to exist.

I hate doing pointless shit. It bothers me on a core level.

That's one of the main reasons that I never finished college, I think. I hate filling out paperwork. It gives me borderline anxiety attacks.

But, I finally got off my ass, filled out the FAFSA, the application for a Stafford loan, and I'm going back to school to finish my bachelors degree. Online, of course - there's no way schedule wise I could actually go sit in a class. School starts Tuesday. Yes, the same Tuesday as my work deadline. Sadly, my books have not yet arrived, and the pdf files of the first couple of chapters (that they kindly provide in case your books haven't arrived yet) for whatever reason will not open on my computer. I've not had a chance to ask tech support if the files are indeed damaged, which is what it says when I try to open them.

The other major paperwork that I filled out/have been filling out is all the stuff for my aunt's long term care insurance. I got the phone call yesterday from her (that I avoided, btw, it went to my voicemail) that they're sending the "4th and final" copy of a form that they evidently need filled out. I thought I already had. Who the fuck knows; I'm going to have to do it AGAIN and send it return receipt mail. Mom has already paid out more than a thousand dollars to these caretakers, and if she doesn't get reimbursed, life is going to suck.

I've ended up in the hospital with both my parents, on separate days, in the last month. Dad you already know about. That night ended with me unlocking the back door & letting them into their house, and also by showering dad & getting him into bed - something mom couldn't have done on her own, so I'm glad I was there.

One of the reasons mom couldn't have done it herself is because she has a hernia. A massive one. It goes at least halfway across her abdomen. This will be the {counts in my head} 4th? 5th? hernia. The first 3 she had surgery for. The fourth surgery was to take care of the grapefruit sized seroma that had formed. While the doctor was in taking care of that one, he discovered that all the mesh he had put in to hold her together in the first three surgeries hadn't adhered the way they were supposed to, and were basically just curled up and useless, so he had to get those out before they caused a problem. When mom developed this last one, he said to wait and watch - unless it caused a problem, we'd leave it alone.

Well, I ended up in the emergency room with her on Cinco de Mayo - up until then, when she felt stuff pushing out, she could push it back in. Except now she couldn't get it pushed back in. And it hurt. A lot. And she started throwing up. All signs point to: strangulated hernia. So she's lying on her bed, having just thrown up, and says she's really cold, so I pull the blanket over her (thinking to myself hrm, fever... not good) and ask her why she hadn't been getting dressed to go to the ER while I was on my way over. She wasn't sure she should go. I had to call her insurance's urgent care facility, to verify that they didn't have the equipment necessary to diagnose a strangulated hernia, before she'd agree to go to the hospital. So while we're in the waiting room, it pops back in. We got a doctor who was very surprised at our level of education and understanding (I didn't bother mentioning that I used to be a pre-med major) checked her out and said yeah, you're probably right, call your surgeon in the morning and talk to him about what to do next. We were in and out of the emergency room in - are you sitting down? - THREE HOURS. It's a fucking record.

While all this in my life is going on, my palm Centro (that I love to pieces) has had all it's data wiped (I was trying to do an OS update, it was acting squirrelly) and my iPod had started malfunctioning too. So I don't have any of my contacts with me anymore. Makes it hard to call caretakers to take care of my aunt, or anything else, really.

Two weeks ago I got the kids up to get them dressed & take them to school early, because I had a meeting at work at 8:30am (that _I_ had called), and my son (who is almost 5) is in almost screaming hysterics saying his penis hurts, and he won't let me look. He had said the day before that when his pee came out it felt REALLY hot, and I asked J about it when I got home that night (first thing in my mind was urinary tract infection) but he said sometimes it feels really hot coming out, it's not a big deal. Well, after that morning, it had become a big deal. So I take my daughter to school. I park and walk her in, and while I'm walking back to my car, my aunt calls - the caretaker who was supposed to be there at 8 hadn't shown up yet, and it was 8:30 or 8:45 already. So I called the caretaker, and she said that she'd had to talk to her son's teachers, and was running late, but was on her way. When I get back to my car, it won't start. I have to go back inside and ask if anybody can jump my car off - I have cables. Once I get it jumped, I head to the doctor's office. As I'm pulling into the driveway, the caretaker calls again. She says that there are problems with her son, and she won't be able to make it at all today. It's now about 9am. So I park the car, and go inside, trying to figure out how to get my aunt taken care of while I'm in the doctor's office with my son. I just walked in with no appointment, and they were amazingly kind and fit me in really quickly. The woman behind the desk saw my face and asked me if I needed a hug - I said at this point, I probably needed a tranquilizer. Sure enough, it was a UTI, and they gave me a prescription for antibiotics. Guess what happened when I went to leave? Yup, car wouldn't start. Had to walk back into the doctor's office again (about to completely lose it at this point) and ask if anybody there could jump my car off. At this point my memory is fuzzy - I think I went to go take care of my aunt, but I'm really not sure. I think I got to work around noon.

I still haven't gotten a new battery (or checked the water in mine, maybe I'll remember to go do that in ten minutes when I take a break from work) but fortunately I have a portable battery jumper thing. I think the most I've ever had to jump start the car is 3 times in one day.

I'm tired.

Today my son's behaviour was so atrocious (and his sister's only marginally better) that both J & I completely lost our temper. When they refused to clean up their room, J & I did it for them - anything that was on the floor went either into the trash, or into a box for goodwill. The hysterics THAT engendered was exhausting. More exhausting for me is knowing that a large part of the reason why they (especially he) is acting this way is because they're stressed out, because I'm stressed out, and haven't spent nearly as much time with them as I should have. And J's had a massive deadline at work too, and then last week it was like murphy's law decided to beat him up - all kinds of shit broke at his office. So he's been busy, and working god knows how many hours a week.

So I've been depressed anyway, feeling guilty, feeling tired, feeling ANGRY, because I'm tired of having to do all this. I'm tired of being an only child with older parents. I'm tired of being my aunt's only younger relative that is in any way responsible enough or sane enough to take care of her. (I have two cousins in California - one is in jail, and her two children are being raised by my uncle & his wife, and the other has gotten in and out of trouble for years, and I'm not even sure where she is now.) I love my kids to death, but I'm not a good mother, and they deserve better. J has to wake up every day, never knowing if I'm going to be a competent, helpful, loving partner, or a fucking basket case that drains all his energy and requires him to basically be a single parent. Worse than a single parent, because he has to deal with me, too. (Those times haven't been as frequent lately, thank god.)

So, like I said, it's a good thing that about a month or so ago I went to my doctor, concerned about my memory loss, and had my anti-depressant dose updated. Because I'd probably be at commit-me level of insanity right now otherwise.


*UPDATE*
That steak cheese & mushroom sub from hungry howie's that I just finished has been the best thing that's happened this weekend. My husband is awesome.

Crashing

Well, that good mood and cheerful outlook on life got beat up pretty quickly.

I remembered one of the main reasons I hadn't finished college.

I hate filling out forms.

Bureaucratic hoops that I have to jump through make me anxious and cranky.

Add to that the phone call from my aunt I just got - the caretaker who works nights just didn't show up tonight. We're not sure if she didn't realize she worked Saturday & Sunday (because I can't remember if that was brought up or not) or what, and so far we've not been able to get a hold of her. The MORNING nurse was an hour and a half late, and when my aunt pointed out that she'd not had anything to drink or eat, and that she is basically helpless if there's nobody there, the nurse got all pissy and said well, do you want me to leave? If I don't come, I don't get paid. (Implying that that was the only consideration.) So the hell with her, I'll find somebody else. After the phone call from the guy she was living with who said she'd been drinking (?!) before she showed up one day, and the other time or two she came late, and the attitude - I'm tired of it.

So I'm headed over to my aunt's apartment. She's getting on her bedside commode and will need her ass wiped.

Then I'm going to come home and take a long, wonderfully scented, bubbly shower.

If anybody would like to take me out for drinks afterwards, call me.

*sigh*

The previous post was a wonderful example of irony.

Entitled "Speechless" and INCREDIBLY WORDY.

No, I didn't do it on purpose.

Speechless

So much has happened lately. Both personally and nationally.

The United States tortures. While this doesn't exactly surprise me, it does make me feel ill. What makes me well and truly angry are the people who defend it as being worthwhile because of the intelligence we got as a result. I've got a response for them: THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS.

I won't talk about that more because I honestly can't handle it yet. I get too upset.

Personally, it's been interesting.

My aunt hasn't kicked the bucket yet. And as of yesterday, she's in the infamous "doughnut hole" so all her prescriptions are now totally out of pocket. Which means that the almost $300 a month anti-depressant is not going to work; I get to talk to her doctor and see if we can go back to her previous medications (which costs less). This conversation is going to include him saying that ritalin is a stimulant, and that somebody with congestive heart failure shouldn't be taking it - and I'm going to have to do the same thing I did with the provigil argument: it's a quality of life issue, if she doesn't have much longer left anyway, what the hell difference does it make?

Fortunately we've got most of the day covered by either CNAs or an experienced caretaker - when one of the original nurses had her day job schedule changed and suddenly was unable to be there, mom & I were it for evening shift. I'm glad we've found someone to cover that, because the stress of mommy not being there (and being tired & stressed when she WAS there) was beginning to show in the children.

I still get the occasional 2am "I've gotten out of bed to poop and now I can't get off the beside commode, can you come help me get back to bed?" call. For a little while there it was REALLY common and I'd decided if I was going to be a night-time toilet rescuer that I wanted a cape and an outfit, dammit.

On a flattering-but-kinda-weirds-me-out note, my father-in-law evidently thinks I'm awesome. I volunteered to answer phones one morning during this year's public radio pledge drive (I figure if I have no money to give, I can give time instead) and ironically when he called in, I was the one who answered the phone. So his challenge that he wanted read on the air? 'For all fathers or father-in-laws to show their appreciation for their daughters/in-laws who give back to the community.' He called me yesterday to tell me that one of the things he really likes about me is that I'm a nice daughter. When I laughed he clarified that by explaining that when my mother asks for something I help, rather than telling her that she's got to take care of it herself. I (and my husband, I'm sure) would argue that I err on the side of being a little TOO helpful, that sometimes I SHOULD tell my mother no, dammit, do it yourself - but I can't wrap my head around the idea of my family (or friends, either, actually) REALLY needing help, and not attempting to help somehow. The reason my father-in-law's admiration weirds me out so much is because he's historically been kinda rough on his children. When they were younger, anyway. He just retired, and the lack of stress seems to have changed his interaction with the world significantly (and for the better).

The other day my father fell in the bathroom and was rushed to the hospital. I'm so glad his next door neighbors were home - his "I've fallen and I can't get up" button calls her, mom, & me. She came right over and found him face down over the edge of the bathtub (thank god there was no water in it), and decided to call 911 so the experts could make sure there'd not been another stroke or somesuch. She couldn't move him. While she was outside waiting for the ambulance, the other neighbor - my chorus director, actually - happened to come out to get his mail, asked her if everything was okay, and when she said no & explained, he went in and picked dad up so he'd be upright. Dad was ragdoll-limp, and while he's not big, he's still a good 120lbs of deadweight - yes, my conductor is buff. He & his wife were there with the other neighbor until my mom got there and she & dad left for the hospital in the ambulance. The neighbors then very nicely locked the front door behind them. Unfortunately, they locked the bottom lock - which nobody has a key to. We all use the deadbolt above it. So when mom & dad got home from the hospital around 1:30am, they had to call me to go around to the back of the house to unlock the door and let them in.

Nothing is ever simple, you know?

Dad's diagnosis - he'd been feeling nauseated all day and hadn't eaten or drunk anything. He's had problems with being dizzy lately, and the combination of that, lack of food/water, and congestion reducing his oxygen input (he has COPD and emphysema), there's really no surprise he went over. So far the tests seem to say that everything is fine.

My awesome husband has started teaching me python. So far, it makes sense - I've not had a whole lot of spare brain cells to give it lately, unfortunately. I'm hoping I'll be able to retain at least a LITTLE of it! Work has been kinda nutty - I have a major deadline on the 30th, and two days ago found out that I have another major deadline on May 12th. The thing due on May 12th? Last time they had to do it at work it took them a month. I'm hoping that because I'm there now it will go faster. (Not to be smug or anything.) The OMGHAIRONFIREINEEDTHESENUMBERSBYTODAY that got thrown at me and 3 other people yesterday or the day before? Found out today 'Nevermind, finance department screwed up and we don't actually have any money to spend, don't need those numbers after all.'

*sigh*

On the bright side, at least I got my new laptop at work. The old one was making me absolutely crazy. This one? Muuuuuuuuuch faster.

The most exciting thing that's happened to me personally, though?

I'VE GONE BACK TO COLLEGE!!!

Registered today, and am now filling out all the financial aid paperwork. According to the advisor (I hope to god he's right and not blowing smoke) I should be totally covered. So I'm finally going to finish my bachelors degree. (online) Am currently aiming for "social science" - a history/polisci focus. So all that free time that I had (bwahahahahahahahahaha) I've now got something to do with! It was really cool that both friends I told today were not only incredibly excited as well, but they said if there was anything they could do to help me to just let them know.

I didn't get any pictures from my most recent facepainting adventures. It's just as well, because now that I have two classes to cover, holidays are slammed trying to get to everybody. Well, more than two classes, actually - not only do I have both of my kids' classes, but since I work at a school, I get the teachers there asking if I can do it for their classes too. This means the cheek art has gotten MUCH simpler - hearts on valentine's day, 4-leaf clovers on St. Patrick's day, and decorated eggs right before easter. Not much worth taking pictures of.

I was going to do facepainting for the March of Dimes walk, but the dress rehearsal for my choral concert was rescheduled and there was no way I could miss it. :( I felt really bad cancelling on them relatively last-minute - I hope they'll keep me in mind for their next event.

Speaking of that dress rehearsal? We were singing The Creation by Haydn. (In english, thank goodness - I've been too busy to try to do it in german.) It's about 2 hours long. Or more. And the soloists do quite a bit of singing without us, the chorus - so we have chairs to sit in. Now imagine this: about 200 people, sitting down in folding plastic & metal chairs. SQUUUEEEEAAK! You should have seen the look on my director's face. He's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to his music. So here's me in a nutshell - the next dress rehearsal (we had two) I brought a can of WD40 and tried it on my chair. It seemed to work, so after rehearsal, I spent an hour on my knees spraying the 4 joints of almost all of 200 chairs. I couldn't get to all of them before the people in the church had taken them down & put them away, but I hit most of them! Yes, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, or obsessive-compulsive, or both, why do you ask? So when we're all standing there the next day warming up before the concert, we've not sat down yet, and I'm DYING to know if the chairs still squeak. We're about to go into the back so they can open the house, and I ask our assistant director (he's a PhD student, and very inspiring) if we can sit down & stand up because I want to know if it worked! (I think he did too.) So he gets everybody's attention and says "Okay, sit down everybody. (everybody sits) Okay, stand up. (everybody stands) If you notice a difference in how your chair sounds, thank her, she sprayed them all with WD40 yesterday." Everyone started applauding, and he made me stand up and take a bow.

I have had a very gratifying life lately. :)

Both my kids have gotten into a local charter school that looks REALLY COOL, and I'm really excited about it. It's not that far away from where we live, either, which is a bonus.

Babbling I am! I'm almost out of battery as well, so I'm going to quit now. I'm sure you now have heard more than you ever wanted to about the minutiae of my life, but it's been a while since I've written, and I'm out of practice.

Hope all is well with all of you out there in cyberspace!

The advantages of blogging

I've not blogged in a long time. And ever since I started playing with Twitter & Facebook, any time I normally would have spent here has been frittered away elsewhere.

That being said, it's not possible to be quite as verbose as I'm used to on either one of those. And since here at the office most of my coworkers are on a different plane of existence, I've got to talk somewhere, to somebody, before I lose my ever-lovin mind.

I don't know how stay-at-home mothers do it. There are days like today, when J isn't available to chat online, when I'm so desperate to talk to a like-minded adult I could cry. There aren't a whole lot of like-minded adults out there that I know well, which is part of the problem. And those I do know - well, they have a life, and can't chat with me in the middle of the day. I am not the witty conversationalist of sparkling personality that I thought I was. *sigh*

So I've started looking into finishing college. As much as I'd like to actually BE IN a class (to meet other intelligent - or hopefully intelligent - human beings) the online route is probably going to have to do for right now. Considering how much time I spend talking to people online anyway, I won't even notice the difference. :)

Well, time to pack up and take a kid to gymnastics. After that, I'm sure there's a whole list of other things I have to do. I'm going to go take my second wellbutrin. Maybe that will help.

Please kill me before I get to this point

I'm sitting here in the living room, listening to my aunt and whomever this friend is who's come over to do her nails. My aunt is in the process of making shit up to this woman. Which she does all the time. When my mother told me that the Hospice nurse had called her supervisor, who called mom, because my aunt had told the nurse that I wasn't giving her her medications, I managed to just cuss a lot rather than call my aunt up and ask her what the FUCK was wrong with her. Withholding her meds? What? ARGH!! (This was a week or so after mom had told me she'd overheard my aunt telling some of her friends that my husband and I were having marital problems. WTF?)

Heh. I'm throwing a monkey wrench in my aunt's bullshit by telling the woman who's here what REALLY happened about the hospital bed fiasco. (That's a whole 'nother story.)

She had a recent heart attack, and has congestive heart failure, and I think the doctor said 15% injection rate - so there's not much heart there. I doubt she'll live much longer - which will probably be a blessing for all concerned. I try not to feel guilty for saying that.

The thing that kinda bothers me is that this mental stuff, that's not new. She's always told one person one thing, and another person another thing... it's just that before, the people she was telling elaborate misinformation to didn't matter. Now she's telling the nurses & home health aids stuff that's not true, and when I ask her about something, she tells ME something that's not true.... I put together a "Medical Notes" page so the nurses etc. can WRITE DOWN notes about what's gone on when I'm not there - because my aunt is not able to be relied on. It gets very frustrating sometimes. Her grasp on reality, and her view of reality, have always been a bit... different. Nowadays it seems even more disconnected.

It doesn't help that she sees her sister (my mother) as the authority figure to be rebelled against. (At least that's what it seems like.) I told my mother - if the worst were to come to pass and her sister had to go and live with her, that I was leaving the state and getting an unlisted phone #.

Today's "what having older relatives means"

Looking up congestive heart failure online.

We're so well matched

So J & I are sitting here, and in the course of our conversation we wondered how many ex-presidents have ever been alive at the same time. Because I'm a curious sort of person, and a geek, I whipped out my laptop and opened up excel and made a spreadsheet.

So it turns out, the most ex-presidents that have ever been alive at the same time is five.
In 1862, Martin Van Buren (died July 24), John Tyler (died Jan 18), Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, & James Buchanan - Abraham Lincoln was president.

In 1994, Richard Nixon (died April 22), Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, & George H.W. Bush were alive - Bill Clinton was president.

From 2002-2004, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, & Bill Clinton were alive - George W. Bush was president.

Now, if you wanted to know the year that the most were ALIVE, whether they'd been president yet or not... I went back to 1732 (the year Washington was born), but there was at most 18 men alive who either had been, were, or would be president. The last year there were 18 alive was 1845 - there were many years before that.

I am now watching the Adams miniseries with my husband. Doesn't get much better than this!

I found a designer I like!

How bizarre. I've spent too much time in brain numbing net surfing.

I noticed that I liked several dresses on the red carpet that were designed by Elie Saab, so I went looking.

Not bad! Wonder if I can find some knock-offs?

Working from home

Totally unrelated to anything going on in my life right now, this is something that's been bugging me.

I'm not allowed to take a hundred bucks (of my own money) and bet on the outcome of the Super Bowl (not legally, I mean) but Wall Street financial gurus are allowed to take millions of dollars (OTHER people's money) and bet that 'this' particular chunk of people are going to pay their mortgages?

I'm not generally accused of being too logical, but I do TRY, and this just is beyond me. I don't hear this talked about a lot, either, which makes me wonder. People just seem stunned; they don't understand where all the money has gone. Well, a good chunk of the money was NEVER REALLY THERE to begin with - so much of economics is based on psychology - what somebody THINKS something is worth, makes it worth that much, you know? The other half - it was gambling. The banks were gambling with your retirement money, your investment money, etc. They gambled and they LOST.

Anyway, I've discovered a problem with working at home. Aside from the fact that I feel like shit, and the kids feel like shit off & on (and are 4 and 6, so are doing their normal 4 & 6 stuff aside from illness) - the problem with working at home that I've never heard anybody warn me about? The fact that my cat thinks I'm the most comfortable bed in the house. When I'm not available, he'll frequently find my open laptop to lie on. Right now he's trying to manage to lie with his head on my hands while I'm typing.

I'm a lot better than I was two or three days ago, but I'm really tired and nauseated right now. Having a very hard time concentrating on these columns of numbers. :( Hopefully I'll have more success tonight after the kids are in bed.

It's 2am and my head hurts

Bitch bitch whine.

Have spent the last thirty minutes or so perusing Red Carpet Fashions and I have to ask -

do they pick ugly models on purpose?
do they tell the models to put on that face - you know, it's either "I hate you all" or "this place smells" - I think I might have seen ONE smiling.

I already think it's insanely stupid to model your fashion on walking sticks when most of the population does not (and will never) look like that - aside from the fact that I just don't think women that are that skinny are attractive. At all. If I wanted to see bones, I'd go for my anatomy book. What's wonderful about women is their CURVES. Sexy, soft or strong, curves. Why hold up as a feminine ideal somebody who looks like a concentration camp survivor? (Not to belittle concentration camp victims, but you know what I mean. At least they didn't starve THEMSELVES out of some perverted ideal of beauty.)

I'm going to try to go to sleep now. If those two tylenol pm don't kick in soon, I'm gonna cry.

I should be working

Right now, my head hurts too much to even think about looking at spreadsheets. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything anyway. Sinus infection heading to bronchitis. (And my throat hurts too - can't really talk anymore. Difficult to be mom when you can't talk.)

I've been thinking several times as I'm driving around about things I'd like to post blog entries on, and yet, when I get home, there's always something else that takes away my attention.

Like now. 102° fever makes it hard for me to think. Brain slowly being cooked.

Hopefully, however, this post will remind me to post more often. So much to babble about lately!

Sitting inside on a rainy day

A thought just occurred to me.

In all the kerfuffle about the McCains lying about how Mother Teresa herself implored Cindy to take two babies to America for medical treatment, I just realized - Cindy McCain brought TWO babies to the United States. One she adopted and is now Bridget McCain - whatever happened to the other one?

The strange thing about all this is the lie itself. Cindy McCain goes over there, one of the nuns 'persuades' her to take some kids home for medical treatment that they wouldn't be able to get locally, Cindy agrees. How does lying about it being Mother Teresa herself asking you make you look better? I mean, the nun has to persuade you to take this poor child for medical treatment when you're a multi-millionaire - the idea didn't occur to you on your own to use your money to help these less fortunate, you had to be 'persuaded'? Good for you for bringing them to the US, good for you for adopting one. You have 7 houses (two more that other people live in) - you could have paid for a thousand children to be adopted by other people around the world who want children. Don't expect too much in the way of acclaim. A quote from one of my favorite movies: "You have been born to privilege, and with that comes specific obligations."

heading out to get my prescriptions

This is the reason I got the prescription for xanax, or whatever it is.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/02/hitchens-after-being-waterboarded-believe-me-its-torture/

I'm finishing up reading this article, and my three year old son came in, and asked me (pointing at the picture) "Who's that?"

I said "That's a reporter... experiencing being... waterboarded."

And then it hit me, and I started to cry.

THIS is the country that I am bringing up my son in. A country that does this to people.

A good rule of thumb:

If you have to preface your statement with "It's none of my business, but" then IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Don't even say it.

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHH

Surrounded by children

Am sitting here in the living room.

Which is now cleaned out and cleaned up and not stacked chest high with stuff anymore, by the way. Thank you, darling husband.

Listening to mom & dad in the kitchen.

Dad was looking in the meat compartment. Bitching out loud to himself, as usual. (Usually it's yelling at the television - yesterday he was watching something talking about Obama & Hillary and he was shouting bible verses - the one about those with ears let them hear - at the tv. I called the doctor and have a prescription for xanax now.) Anyway, dad was looking for lunchmeat. Turkey, specifically. We happen to be out, and there's a lot of sausage in there. Mom's in there cleaning & unloading dishwasher. He said something about there not being any lunchmeat and I piped up that there was corned beef. So mom asks him, do you want corned beef? Back and forth, dad is like well, there's nothing else. Mom is like it's a yes or no question. Dad is like, well, I WANT turkey. Mom's like well, we don't HAVE turkey, we have corned beef, or you could have cheese, or tuna, what do you want? Dad says oh, just hand me the plates. (To put away in the cabinet.)

Mom finally had the contractor over, and has given him the go-ahead. Who knows, we may actually get the house fixed before dad dies. Or I die. Of course, we have to pick out tile and fixtures and whatnot - and considering mom has spent days - DAYS - looking at cell phones, and researching them, and going to the store to work with them hands on, only to finally order one and decide she doesn't like it and is going to return it - there's no telling how long it will take to get the house done.

It's a wonder I'm not a raging alcoholic. The amount of hand-holding is taking a mental toll. Mom wanted me to come back to her room to take a look at her new phone (a blackberry) because the ball wasn't acting the way the one in the store was, and could I take a look at it. (This was Thursday night.) I told her I was going to go spend some time with my husband, as I'd not spent a whole lot of time with him lately, and that she'd have me all day tomorrow during the day (Friday) as my office is closed Friday and I wasn't going to be working. She was pissy the rest of the night. Snapping at people, etc.

I'm trying desperately to break the cycle. I already have more bad habits from my mother than I care to admit. My husband, bless him, is good about standing up for himself and calling me on my bullshit. I don't appreciate it at the TIME, but I do appreciate it. I don't want my daughter to grow up with the same problems.

Watching the physical and mental deterioration of my parents is difficult. Some days I handle it better than others. On days like today - well, today I'm not handling anything well. Last night I got back from going to Home Depot and looking at tile and bathroom vanities with my mother, and crawled into bed in a dark room and laid there for the rest of the night. This morning I took my medicine, but it's not helped a whole lot. I don't know if I'm ramping up for my period or what, but this depression is getting old. It's been worse than usual the last few months. It could have something to do with the fact that I'm living in a room with three other people (two of whom are under 6 years old) and a rotting house full of garbage and two adults who frequently act like children with a job that's getting consistently more complex and time consuming (I'm now on the 'statewide data committee', how's that for taking up more time than the excruciatingly-part-time-secretary job that I thought I had? That's what I get for being intelligent and competent, ha.) and that I'm still paying off old debts and the car needs new tires and brakes and oh god stop the world spinning I WANT TO GET OFF


But on the bright side, I've gotten to do some wonderful things lately (my alarm just went off on my computer, and it's playing the Testament of Freedom that I got to sing at the Kennedy Center, that's a wonderful memory - and we get to sing at Carnegie Hall in 2010, and Prague in 2012!!!) - for example, I just finished a week long rowing camp - I learned how to row long skinny boats! Got the bruises to prove it, too. Ow. And I have a roof over my head, and food to eat, and two awesome kids and a husband whose patience will become legendary - so what am I complaining for? ;)

I'm going to go take a shower. Water always makes me feel better.


*edit*
The shower was nice - the adult time was even better. Got two hours to go bowl with my husband and all the people from his office.

I have to say, though - coming home to sit in the living room with the kids and having my daughter show me how good she is at feeding Gnocci (pbskids.org) while dad sits in his chair watching tv (which he does about 15 hours a day) and bitching about how loud the kids are...

they're your grandchildren. DO SOMETHING WITH THEM.

Even YOUR DOCTOR recommended you do things with them, for chrissake!

I managed not to snap at him this time. I have snapped at him in the past. (Something like "sure, because your television is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than your grandchildren" as I stomped off. It made no difference.)

Are YOU better off than you were 8 years ago?

From ThinkProgress:

78 percent: Those questioned in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey out this morning who rate the economic conditions as poor. “That’s up from 75 percent in March. Only 22 percent rate the economic conditions in the country as good.”

I'm betting that's the same 22% that still thinks Bush is doing a good job...


Had dinner over at my father-in-law's house the other night. While we were there, my sister-in-law (a conservative) was teasing me by whispering to my daughter "Tell mommy you want McCain to win!" - I had to fight back a surge of irritation, because it's all well and good to joke about it, but there are people DYING right now, fighting a war that should never have been started... and when you look at the economy, people are not doing well (hell, she's not doing so great herself), and McCain is just promising more of the same as Bush on the economic front... I know she's religious and pro-life, so the spectre of a Supreme Court that will reverse Roe vs. Wade doesn't bother her...

So I walked away. I don't think I'm going to change her mind on anything (heck, if the shape the country is in hasn't made her double check her assumptions, then me arguing with her isn't either) and I didn't feel up to getting into it.

I would really like to get that book "how to talk to a conservative" (it's something like that) so I have an arsenal to fight off the talking points. In the same vein, I want to learn the bible backwards and forwards, so when talking to fundies I can point out the insanity. It helps to be prepared.

Although in this case, I don't think logic would sway her. She's not the type to let reality change her mind about something. :)

Marie rocks!

But not as much as Elton John. 

Marie calls me up at 7pm and says "Hey, wanna come to the Elton John concert? I've got free tickets and you &  J can come!"   J didn't feel up to it, but told me to go and have fun.  I have to say, even though in the past I've not been a big Elton John fan, I REALLY enjoyed myself.  This man has so much fun on stage, it's hard not to smile watching him.  And very classy, too - apologized that his illness had made it hard on us here in Tallahassee when he'd had to reschedule; then after being called back on stage for his encore, he went down the front of the stage and signed a bunch of stuff for all the people clustered there, then sat down and played more.  

The sunglasses were smaller than I was expecting.  :)

Nightmares

I rarely remember my dreams.  Last night/this morning not only could I remember it, but whenever I fell asleep I jumped right back into the dream.  Which, had it not been a nightmare, could have been fun.  

Dreamt I was trapped in the USSR.  For whatever reason I couldn't get out - either couldn't find my visa, or was in trouble somehow.  I had a small child with me - twoish - which was an interesting blend of both of my children.  J had met up with somebody - possibly Bruno from the West Wing - and they'd decided to try some sort of escape plan.  I thought it was a stupid plan, and hadn't joined them.  They'd been shot.  So I'm looking frantically through my van for some sort of official paperwork, and thinking in my head that I could just go to the US Embassy and at least drop my child off there (had the child's visa) so my child would survive and make it back to the states, because I knew that somebody was going to be coming for me soon...  then some woman comes up and snatches a large envelope from under the windshield wiper, and takes off.  I have no idea why it was there, or what it was, but I assumed it was something important, so I took off after the woman and snatched it back, and as I'm heading back to my car, I see ANOTHER woman snag something from the pile of papers I've been looking through in the glove compartment and take off.  I'm now wondering if the first woman is a decoy, as I run back to the car, shut it, grab my keys and beep the lock, and turn around to see the second woman looking at me from her spot on a train as it starts to go by.  I run to try to jump on the train to get whatever this paper is back, and that's when I wake up.

Why yes, I am feeling a little trapped, why do you ask?

I am printing copies of this

I am printing many, many copies of this and I am going to hand it out at cons.

Send it to everybody you know.

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable
By David Wong

Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test, and it works like this: say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Bestiality, perhaps. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If you're like the rest of us, you probably have at most two.

Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.


The average number of close friends we say we have is dropping fast, down dramatically in just the last 20 years. Why?


#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.

That's not sarcasm. Annoyance is something you build up a tolerance to, like alcohol or a bad smell. The more we're able to edit the annoyance out of our lives, the less we're able to handle it.

The problem is we've built an awesome, sprawling web of technology meant purely to let us avoid annoying people. Do all your Christmas shopping online and avoid the fat lady ramming her cart into you at Target. Spend $5,000 on a home theater system so you can see movies on a big screen without a toddler kicking the back of your seat. Hell, rent the DVD's from Netflix and you don't even have to spend the 30 seconds with the confused kid working the register at Blockbuster.

Get stuck in the waiting room at the doctor? No way we're striking up a conversation with the smelly old man in the next seat. We'll plug the iPod into our ears and have a text conversation with a friend or play our DS. Filter that annoyance right out of our world.

Now that would be awesome if it were actually possible to keep all of the irritating shit out of your life. But, it's not. It never will be. As long as you have needs, you'll have to deal with people you can't stand from time to time. We're losing that skill, the one that lets us deal with strangers and tolerate their shrill voices and clunky senses of humor and body odor and squeaky shoes. So, what encounters you do have with the outside world, the world you can't control, make you want to go on a screaming crotch-punching spree.

Oh, yeah. Right in the crotch, buddy.

#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.

Lots of us were born into towns full of people we couldn't stand. As a kid, maybe you found yourself in an elementary school classroom, packed in with two dozen kids you did not choose and who shared none of your tastes or interests. Maybe you got beat up a lot.

But, you've grown up. And if you're, say, a huge DragonForce fan, you can go find their forum and meet a dozen people just like you. Or even better, start a private room with your favorite few and lock everybody else out. Say goodbye to the tedious, awkward, painful process of dealing with somebody who's truly different. That's another Old World inconvenience, like having to wash your clothes in a creek or wait for a raccoon to wander by the outhouse so you can wipe your ass with it.

The problem is that peacefully dealing with incompatible people is crucial to living in a society. In fact, if you think about it, peacefully dealing with people you can't stand is society. Just people with opposite tastes and conflicting personalities sharing space and cooperating, often through gritted teeth.

Fifty years ago, you had to sit in a crowded room to see a movie. You didn't get to choose; you either did that or you missed the movie. When you got a new car, everyone on the block came and stood in your yard to look it over. You can bet that some of those people were assholes.

Your parents, circa 1982
Yet, on the whole, people back then were apparently happier in their jobs and more satisfied with their lives. And get this: They had more friends.

That's right. Even though they had almost no ability to filter their peers according to common interests (hell, often you were just friends with the guy who happened to live next door), they still came up with more close friends than we have now-people they could trust.

It turns out, apparently, that after you get over that first irritation, after you shed your shell of "they listen to different music because they wouldn't understand mine" superiority, there's a sort of comfort in needing other people and being needed on a level beyond common interests. It turns out humans are social animals after all. And that ability to suffer fools, to tolerate annoyance, that's literally the one single thing that allows you to function in a world populated by other people who aren't you. Otherwise, you turn emo. Science has proven it.

#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.

I have this friend who uses the expression "No, thank you," in a sarcastic way. It means, "I'd rather be shot in the face." He puts a little ironic lilt on the last two words that lets you know. You ask, "Want to go see that new Rob Schneider movie?" And, he'll say, "No, thank you."

So one day we had this exchange via text:
Me: "Hey, do you want me to bring over that leftover chili I made?"

Him: "No, thank you"

That pissed me off. I'm proud of my chili. It takes four days to make it. I grind up the dried peppers myself; the meat is expensive, hand-tortured veal. And, now my offer to give him some is dismissed with his bitchy catchphrase?

I didn't speak to him for six months. He sent me a letter, I mailed it back, unread, with a dead rat packed inside.

It was my wife who finally ran into him and realized that the "No, thank you" he replied with was not meant to be sarcastic, but was a literal, "No, but thank you for offering." He had no room in his freezer, it turns out.  

So did we really need a study to tell us that more than 40 percent of what you say in an e-mail is misunderstood? Well, they did one anyway.

How many of your friends have you only spoken with online? If 40 percent of your personality has gotten lost in the text transition, do these people even really know you? The people who dislike you via text, on message boards or chatrooms or whatever, is it because you're really incompatible? Or, is it because of the misunderstood 40 percent? And, what about the ones who like you?

Many of us try to make up that difference in sheer numbers, piling up six dozen friends on MySpace. But here's the problem ...

#4. Online company only makes us lonelier.

When someone speaks to you face-to-face, what percentage of the meaning is actually in the words, as opposed to the body language and tone of voice? Take a guess.

It's 7 percent. The other 93 percent is nonverbal, according to studies. No, I don't know how they arrived at that exact number. They have a machine or something. But we didn't need it. I mean, come on. Most of our humor is sarcasm, and sarcasm is just mismatching the words with the tone. Like my friend's "No, thank you."

You don't wait for a girl to verbally tell you she likes you. It's the sparkle in her eyes, her posture, the way she grabs your head and shoves your face into her boobs.

That's the crux of the problem. That human ability to absorb the moods of others through that kind of subconscious osmosis is crucial. Kids born without it are considered mentally handicapped. People who have lots of it are called "charismatic" and become movie stars and politicians. It's not what they say; it's this energy they put off that makes us feel good about ourselves.

When we're living in Text World, all that is stripped away. There's a weird side effect to it, too: absent a sense of the other person's mood, every line we read gets filtered through our own mood instead. The reason I read my friend's chili message as sarcastic was because I was in an irritable mood. In that state of mind, I was eager to be offended.
And worse, if I do enough of my communicating this way, my mood never changes. After all, people keep saying nasty things to me! Of course I'm depressed! It's me against the world!

No, what I need is somebody to shake me by the shoulders and snap me out of it. Which leads us to No. 5 ...

#5. We don't get criticized enough.

Most of what sucks about not having close friends isn't the missed birthday parties or the sad, single-player games of ping pong with the wall. No, what sucks is the lack of real criticism.

In my time online I've been called "fag" approximately 104,165 times. I keep an Excel spreadsheet. I've also been called "asshole" and "cockweasel" and "fuckcamel" and "cuntwaffle" and "shitglutton" and "porksword" and "wangbasket" and "shitwhistle" and "thundercunt" and "fartminge" and "shitflannel" and "knobgoblin" and "boring."


And none of it mattered, because none of those people knew me well enough to really hit the target. I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing.

Tragically, there are now a whole lot of people who never have those conversations. The interventions, the brutal honesty, the, "you know, everybody's pissed off because of what you said last night, but nobody wants to say anything because they're afraid of you," sort of conversations. Those horrible, awkward, wrenchingly uncomfortable sessions that you can only have with someone who sees right to the center of you.

E-mail and texting are awesome tools for avoiding that level of honesty. With text, you can respond when you feel like it. You can measure your words. You can pick and choose which questions to answer. The person on the other end can't see your face, can't see you get nervous, can't detect when you're lying. You have almost total control and as a result that other person never sees past your armor, never sees you at your worst, never knows the embarrassing little things about yourself that you can't control. Gone are the common quirks, humiliations and vulnerabilities that real friendships are built on.

Browse around people's MySpace pages, look at the characters they create for themselves. If you've built a pool of friends via a blog, building yourself up as a misunderstood, mysterious Master of the Night, it's kind of hard to log on and talk about how you went to prom and got diarrhea out on the dance floor. You never get to really be yourself, and that's a very lonely feeling.

And, on top of all that ...

#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.

A whole lot of the people still reading this are saying, "Of course I'm depressed! People are starving! America has turned into Nazi Germany! My parents watch retarded television shows and talk about them for hours afterward! People are dying in meaningless wars all over the world!"

But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn't live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common. In those days, if your buddy moved away the only way to communicate was with pen and paper and a stamp. We have Iraq, but our parents had Vietnam (which killed 50 times more people) and their parents had World War 2 (which killed 1,000 times as many). Some of your grandparents grew up at a time when nobody had air conditioning. All of their parents grew up without it.

We are physically better off today in every possible way in which such things can be measured ... but you sure as hell wouldn't know that if you're getting your news online. Why?

Well, ask yourself: If some music site posts an article called, "Fall Out Boy is a Fine Band" and on the same day posts another one called, "Fall Out Boy is the Shittiest Fucking Band of the Last 100 Years, Say Experts," which do you think will get the most traffic? The second one wins in a blowout. Outrage manufactures word-of-mouth.

The news blogs many of you read? The people running them know the same thing. Every site is in a dogfight for traffic (even if they don't run ads, they still measure their success by the size of their audience) and so they carefully pick through the wires for the most inflammatory story possible. The other blogs start echoing the same story from the same point of view. If you want, you can surf all day and never swim out of the warm, stagnant waters of the "aren't those bastards evil" pool.

Only in that climate could those silly 9/11 conspiracy theories come about (saying the Bush administration and the FDNY blew up the towers, and that the planes were holograms). To hear these people talk, every opposing politician is Hitler, and every election is the freaking apocalypse. All because it keeps you reading.  

This wasn't as much a problem in the old days, of course. Some of us remember having only three channels on TV. That's right. Three. We're talking about the '80s here. So there was something unifying in the way we all sat down to watch the same news, all of it coming from the same point of view. Even if the point of view was retarded and wrong, even if some stories went criminally unreported, we at least all shared it.

That's over. There effectively is no "mass media" any more so, where before we disagreed because we saw the same news and interpreted it differently, now we disagree because we're seeing completely different freaking news. When we can't even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable. That constant feeling of being at bitter odds with the rest of the world brings with it a tension that just builds and builds.

We humans used to have lots of natural ways to release that kind of angst. But these days...

#7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less.

There's one advantage to having mostly online friends, and it's one that nobody ever talks about:

They demand less from you.

Sure, you emotionally support them, comfort them after a breakup, maybe even talk them out of a suicide. But knowing someone in meatspace adds a whole, long list of annoying demands. Wasting your whole afternoon helping them fix their computer. Going to funerals with them. Toting them around in your car every day after theirs gets repossessed by the bank. Having them show up unannounced when you were just settling in to watch the Dirty Jobs marathon on the Discovery channel, then mentioning how hungry they are until you finally give them half your sandwich.

You have so much more control in Instant Messenger, or on a forum, or in World of Warcraft.

The problem is you are hard-wired by evolution to need to do things for people. Everybody for the last five thousand years seemed to realize this and then we suddenly forgot it in the last few decades. We get suicidal teens and scramble to teach them self-esteem. Well, unfortunately, self-esteem and the ability to like yourself only come after you've done something that makes you likable. You can't bullshit yourself. If I think Todd over here is worthless for sitting in his room all day, drinking Pabst and playing video games one-handed because he's masturbating with the other one, what will I think of myself if I do the same thing?

You want to break out of that black tar pit of self-hatred? Brush the black hair out of your eyes, step away from the computer and buy a nice gift for someone you loathe. Send a card to your worst enemy. Make dinner for your mom and dad. Or just do something simple, with an tangible result. Go clean the leaves out of the gutter. Grow a damn plant.

It ain't rocket science; you are a social animal and thus you are born with little happiness hormones that are released into your bloodstream when you see a physical benefit to your actions. Think about all those teenagers in their dark rooms, glued to their PC's, turning every life problem into ridiculous melodrama. Why do they make those cuts on their arms? It's because making the pain-and subsequent healing-tangible releases endorphins they don't get otherwise. It's pain, but at least it's real.

That form of stress relief via mild discomfort used to be part of our daily lives, via our routine of hunting gazelles and gathering berries and climbing rocks and fighting bears. No more. This is why office jobs make so many of us miserable; we don't get any physical, tangible result from our work. But do construction out in the hot sun for two months, and for the rest of your life you can drive past a certain house and say, "Holy shit, I built that." Maybe that's why mass shootings are more common in offices than construction sites.

It's the kind of physical, dirt-under-your-nails satisfaction that you can only get by turning off the computer, going outdoors and re-connecting with the real world. That feeling, that "I built that" or "I grew that" or "I fed that guy" or "I made these pants" feeling, can't be matched by anything the internet has to offer.

Except, you know, this website.

Essential Insanity

Essential Insanity
By: Ian Welsh Sunday January 20, 2008 12:00 pm

ND by Nesster

Walk with me a while and imagine you are mad. Crazy. Insane. It's an interesting sort of insanity--you see the world as something other than it is. You are dead convinced that people are out to get you, but these people have almost no means to harm you and fear your retaliation greatly, because you're a powerful person and they are weak.

You believe that you are hale and hearty; but in fact you're ghastly, obese and ill. You think you're rich, but in fact you're poor. You think you have the best doctor around, but in fact your doctor is worse than almost every other doctor and charges 50% more than them. You think you're tough, and you certainly haven't let the fact that two ninety pound weaklings seem to be able to stand up to you get in the way of that.

You think that you have the most advanced technological toys, that what you have is the best, and once you did, but these days everyone else seems to have more advanced stuff.

The illness goes deeper though, a deep decay in your brain. The parts of your brain that make most of the decisions for your body think everything is wonderful. They seem only able to take in sensations from the taste buds these days, and for the last thirty years you've been on a rich diet. So they think everything's great. Your once lean body, packed with muscles, has been replaced by a flaccid one, paunchy and fat, but somehow the key parts of your brain don't know that. They don't feel your sore back, they don't hear the broken down breathing and they don't see the gut hanging over your belt.

The you I'm referring to, as I'm sure many have figured out by now, is the US. For years I've been writing for the US and observing it carefully, and I've found it one of the most interesting problems I've encountered in my life. Because America and Americans are very unpredictable. Now, of course, the first thing I thought was "it's me," and in a sense, that's true.

Yet, here's the thing, I have a very good record of predicting what will happen in Somalia, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. And when I get it wrong, I can look back and easily figure out why. Yet I've never visited any of those countries and really, know very little about them. On the other hand I grew up imbibing American media, know American history well, have visited America a number of times and spent 8 years in jobs that required me to deal with multiple Americans daily.

Odd. Very odd. And something I've discussed with other foreign observers of American society and politics.

The first clue to what was wrong came around the time of the Iraq war. It was obvious, dead obvious, to everyone outside of the US and to US citizens who were spending a lot of time parsing news, that the war was a joke and that Saddam had no nukes and was no threat to the US. Most Americans, however, didn't get that. The reason, of course, was propaganda.

Fair enough. Every country whips its citizens into war hysteria with propaganda. But what was truly remarkable wasn't that, it was that somehow the majority of Americans, over 70%, thought that Iraq was behind 9/11. Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing.

Remarkable. Americans went along with going to war with Iraq then because they thought Iraq had attacked them and had nukes and could attack them again. A complete propaganda tissue of lies. But if you believe it all, well of course Iraq needed to be attacked.

What looked to the rest of the world as crazy was entirely logical. It was, however, still insane. If I see a tentacled monster from the fourth dimension attack me and I respond by grabbing a knife and slashing apart my next door neighbour who's waving at me, well, I had a logical, coherent reason for what I did, but I still murdered him, and I'm still insane.

This is the first type of insanity in the US and it runs deep. I often feel like I spend more time correcting outright lies, outright propaganda, than anything else. Just this week I had to explain to a left wing blogger (who should know better) that single payer health insurance is cheaper and gives better results than private insurance system. Now in the US this is somehow still in doubt, but that's insane--this isn't in question, every other western nation that has single payer insurance spends about 1/3 less than the US and has as good health metrics or better either in most or all categories. This isn't something that's up in the air; this isn't something that is unsettled. This is a bloody FACT.

Americans think they are the most technologically advanced society in the world, yet the US does not have the fastest broadband, the fastest trains, the best cellphones, the most advanced consumer electronics (go to Japan and you'll see what I mean) or the most advanced green energy technology.

In the primary season Ron Paul was repeatedly cut out of media coverage and John Edwards was hardly covered. The majority of Americans thought that Edwards was running as the most right wing of the Democratic candidates. Huckabee was constantly called a populist when his signature tax program would gut the middle class and slap the poor onto a fiscal rack.

And when all is said and done, politicians are still running on slashing taxes and having that make up for itself, while the US runs a balance of payments higher than any other country post World War II has ever done without going into an economic crash.

That's one type of insanity--thinking the world is something that it isn't.

The second is worse, in a sense. When Diamond wrote his book on why societies collapse he came to the conclusion that it occurred when elites weren't experiencing the same things as the majority of the society--when they were isolated from the problems and challenges the society was facing.

For 30 years ordinary Americans haven't had a raise. And despite all the lies, Americans are beginning to get that.

But for the people in charge the last thirty years have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously, things haven't been this good since the 1890's and the 1920's. Everyone they know--their families, their mistresses and toyboys, their friends--is doing well. Wall Street paid even larger bonuses for 2007, the year they ran the ship into the shore, than they did in 2006 when their bonuses equalled the raises of 80 million Americans. Multiple CEOs walked away from companies they had bankrupted with golden parachutes in excess of 50 million. And if you can find a Senator who isn't a millionaire (except maybe Bernie Sanders) you let me know.

Life has been great. The fact that America is physically unhealthy, falling behind technologically, hemorrhaging good jobs and that ordinary Americans are in debt up to their eyebrows, haven't seen a raise in 30 years and live in mortal fear of getting ill--because even if they have insurance it doesn't cover the necessary care--means nothing to the decision making part of America because it hasn't experienced it. America's elites are doing fine, thanks. All they can taste, or remember is the caviar and champagne they swill to celebrate how wonderful they are and how much they deserve all the money federal policy has given them.

This is the second insanity of the US--that the decision making apparatus in the US is disconnected from the results of their decisions. They make sure they get paid, that they're wealthy, and let the rest of society go to hell. In the end, of course, most of them will find that the money isn't theirs, and that what they've stolen is worth very little if the US has a real financial crisis.

The third insanity is simpler: it's the wealth effect. At the end of World War II the US had about half the world's economy. Admittedly that's because Europe had been bombed into oblivion, but even when Europe rebuilt the US was still far, far ahead. The US was insanely rich and powerful. See, when you're rich you can do stupid and unproductive things for a long time. There are plenty of examples of this but the two most obvious ones are the US military and the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs hasn't reduced the number of junkies or drugs on the street in any noticeable way. It has increased the US's prison population to the highest per capita level in the world, however. It has cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It has gutted civil liberties (the war on terror is just the war on drugs on crack, after all). And after 30 years does anyone seriously say "wait, this doesn't work, it costs billions of dollars and it makes us a society of prisons?" Of course not, if anything people compete to be "tough on crime." What's the definition of insanity, again? Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results?

Then there's the US military. It costs, oh, about as much as everyone else in the world's military combined. It seems to be at best in a stalemate and probably losing two wars against a bunch of rabble whose total budgets probably wouldn't equal a tenth of one percent of a US appropriations bill. And it is justified as "defending" America even though there is no nation in the entire world which could invade the US if the US had one tenth the military.

But the US could (not can, they are now unaffordable, but could) afford to have a big shiny military and lots of prisons, so it does. Lots of people get rich off of both of them, lots of rural whites get to lock up uban blacks and lots of communities that wouldn't exist otherwise get to survive courtesy of the unneeded military bases and prisons which should never have been built.

Insane--believing things that aren't true.

Insane--decision makers are cut off from the consequences of their decisions and in fact are getting reverse feedback, as things get worse for most Americans and as America gets weaker and poorer, they are the richest they've ever been.

Insane--so rich that no one will stop doing things that clearly don't work and are harmful, because people are making money off the insanity.

All of this is what makes predicting the US so surreal. It's not just about knowing what the facts are and then thinking "ok, how would people respond to that?" You have to know what the facts are, what the population thinks the facts are, what the elites think the facts are, who's making money off of it, and then ask yourself if these facts are having any real effect on the elites and if that effect is enough to outweigh the money they're making off of failure (how many of them have children serving in Iraq? Right, not urgent to fix.)

And then you have to go back to the facts and ask yourself "what effect will these have even if they're being ignored." Facts are ugly things, they tend not to go away.

All of which makes the US damn near impenetrable, often enough even to Americans.

But here's what I do know--you can get away with being nuts as long as enough people are benefiting from you being insane. When the credit cards are all maxed out, when the relatives have stolen even the furniture, suddenly all the enablers go away and the kneebreakers or the men in white pay you a visit. At that point you can live in the real world, or you can go to the asylum.

I wonder which way the US will go?

Okay, never thought I'd say anything nice about this lunatic, but...

I'm sure by now you've seen the video of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology.  (I read a transcript.) 

Yes, he's insane.  Yes, I think his disdain for mental health practitioners and medication is downright dangerous.  Yes, I feel sorry for his daughter, and everybody else who's been brainwashed into thinking Scientology has the answers.

But you know what?  He's trying to make the world a better place.  He feels a responsibility to help.  

And while lunatics trying to save the world and recreate it in their ideal image has caused untold misery and death (communism, the Inquisition, Crusades, etc.) -- I have to at least give him credit for thinking about the rest of humanity.

It's more than a lot of celebrities do.

I. Had. No. Idea.

The things my husband comes across.  I'm glad he shared this one, I laughed out loud several times.  Who knew??  Every time I think of those women going to doctors over... and over... and over again...  

bwahahahahahahaha!

Too cool to pass up

Via Sleep Dirt:


Generate a fake band and it's first album:
Step 1: Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

Step 2: Go to http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote are the title of your album.

Step 3: Go to http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture -- no matter what it is, is your album cover.
Please remember to give credit to the photographer. All images on Flickr are copy written in some form or another.


Throw it all into some image editing software, mix well, and voila!

Here's what I came out with:




My photo courtesy Jim Mayes, it looks like.

I like!

Somebody should be collecting these somewhere - there are some really awesome ones out there.

So this is bronchitis

I am not impressed.

Audition postponed until August, as there's not a position opening up in the chorus right now. Just as well, as my schedule is busier than I thought it would be - what with ballet, gymnastics, working the polls on election days, and chorus rehearsals - not to mention taking care of mom, dad, and my aunt - I'm pretty much tapped out.

However, there is one thing that's getting crammed into both my budget and my schedule.

I'M GOING TO SING AT THE KENNEDY CENTER!!!!!

{jumping up and down}


Donations accepted!

Long time no see

....aaaaand it's 2008.

Wow.

What would YOU do if you had an opportunity to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.?

If I ever work in a cubicle again

I'm SO making one of these.

Right now, my office actually has a window. Go figure - In all my working life, I've only once before had an office with a window.

I love Boing Boing for many reasons

Here is one:

Food company's annual report needs to be baked before reading

How cool is that?

Is it Friday yet?

About a month ago I started two new jobs. I'm a part-time secretary for the school M goes to, and I'm tutoring three girls in 6th grade math. I also took my first paid gig as a face painter for a kid's birthday party, and made the cake as well. (It was a pirate ship, complete with sails, water & a shark.)

As soon as I pay off some old debts, I think the first thing I might put my paycheck towards is one of these. I have to have some help keeping track of my schedule. Between stuff for the kids, doctor appointments for my father & aunt, work, tutoring, and everything else, I either need something like this or a personal secretary.

Yes, I'm still alive

This is a great idea.


Nothing more to add.

When you lay it out like that...

Thanks to Senate 2008 Guru, here's a run-down of Republican corruption scandals JUST SINCE JANUARY 2007. It's a bit mind-boggling.

January 23, 2007: Republican radio personality Scott Eller Cortelyou of Denver arrested on suspicion of using the Internet to lure a child into a sexual relationship

January 29, 2007: Republican former Jefferson County, Colorado, Treasurer Mark Paschall indicted on two felony charges "in connection with an allegation that Paschall solicited a kickback from a bonus he awarded one of his employees"

January 31, 2007: Republican Congressman Gary Miller is named by Republicans as ranking member of oversight subcommittee of House Financial Services Committee despite the FBI's investigation into his land deals

February 14, 2007: Major Republican fundraiser Brent Wilkes and former CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo are indicted by a grandy jury for corrupting CIA contracts

February 16, 2007: Major Republican donor Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, aka Michael Mixon, is indicted in federal court on charges of providing material support to terrorists

March 5, 2007: Ethics complaint filed against Republican Senator Pete Domenici for his role in the Attorney Purge scandal

March 6, 2007: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney found guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury

March 8, 2007: Republican former U.S. Congressman and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich admits to extramarital affair

March 23, 2007: Former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became an architect of George W. Bush's energy policies, pleads guilty to obstructing justice by lying to a Senate committee

March 27, 2007: Criminal charges filed against Republican Pennsylvania State Senator Robert Regola in connection with the death of a teenage neighbor who was shot with the senator's gun; he is accused of three counts of perjury, allowing possession of a firearm by a minor, recklessly endangering another person and false swearing

March 27, 2007: Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, "indicted on charges of defrauding investors and banks of $1.6 billion while chairman of Collins & Aikman Corp., an auto parts maker that collapsed days after he quit"

March 28, 2007: Robert Vellanoweth, a Republican activist and appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is arrested on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter and felony driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, after a crash that killed three adults and one child

April 18, 2007: The FBI raids the home of Republican Congressman John Doolittle, investigating his ties to Jack Abramoff

April 19, 2007: The FBI raids a business tied to the family of Republican Congressman Rick Renzi, as part of an investigation into his business dealings

April 23, 2007: The FBI questions Republican Congressman Tom Feeney about his dealings with Jack Abramoff

April 23, 2007: Federal auditors find repeat violations of federal election law from the 2004 Senate campaign of Republican Senator Mel Martinez

April 26, 2007: David Huckabee, son of Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, is arrested at an Arkansas airport after a federal X-ray technician detected a loaded gun in his carry-on luggage

May 4, 2007: Bruce Weyhrauch and Pete Kott, former Alaska state Republican legislators, were arrested and accused of soliciting and accepting bribes from the corrupt VECO Corporation

May 4, 2007: Republican state Assemblyman Michael Cole is censured and stripped of his leadership position after the married father of two spent the night at a 21-year-old intern's apartment

May 11, 2007: A field coordinator for Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry is indicted for voter fraud in North Carolina

May 12, 2007: NBC News breaks the story that the FBI is investigating Republican Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons for suspicion of accepting bribes in exchange for securing government contracts

May 15, 2007: Connecticut Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy is arrested for drunk driving (he pled no contest on June 1, but didn't publicly disclose the event until June 11)

May 18, 2007: Republican former South Dakota State Representative Ted Klaudt is charged with eight counts of second-degree rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, one count of sexual contact with a child younger than 16, two counts of witness tampering and one count of stalking against two foster children in his care

May 21, 2007: Republican state Senate candidate Mark Tate is indicted on nine counts of perjury and two counts of election fraud by a grand jury

June 11, 2007: Republican Senator Larry Craig is arrested for lewd conduct in the men's bathroom of an airport

June 19, 2007: South Carolina Republican state Treasurer and South Carolina Chairman of Giuliani for President Thomas Ravenel is indicted by a grand jury on cocaine distribution charges

July 2, 2007: President George W. Bush commutes the sentence of former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby following Libby's conviction on obstruction of justice and perjury

July 3, 2007: A grand jury report declares that the sale of public land to Republican Congressman Ken Calvert and his business partners violated the law

July 11, 2007: Republican state Representative and Florida co-Chairman of McCain for President Bob Allen is arrested for soliciting a male undercover police officer, offering to pay $20 to perform oral sex

July 16, 2007: Republican Senator David Vitter holds press conference acknowledging being on the D.C. Madam's list and past involvement with prostitutes

July 16, 2007: Story breaks that Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski was involved in a sweetheart real estate deal

July 19: Republican former state legislator Coy Privette is charged with six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution

July 24, 2007: Michael Flory, former head of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans, pleads guilty to sexual abuse

July 26, 2007: Media report that Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski will sell back land purchased in a sweetheart deal, following close scrutiny of the shady transaction

July 29, 2007: Glenn Murphy Jr., recently-elected Chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, is accused of sexually assaulting a sleeping man

July 30, 2007: The FBI and IRS raid the home of Republican Senator Ted Stevens following investigations into Stevens' dealings with the corrupt VECO Corporation

August 2, 2007: Bush administration senior adviser Karl Rove disregards a Congressional subpoena and refuses to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee

August 6, 2007: Investigation called for after House Republican Leader John Boehner leaked classified information regarding a secret court ruling over warrantless wiretapping

August 8, 2007: Republican Senator Larry Craig pleads guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct following his June 11 arrest

August 9, 2007: Major Republican donor Alan Fabian is charged with 23 counts of bankruptcy fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and perjury

August 15, 2007: Republican state House candidate Angelo Cappelli is arrested for perjury and grand theft

August 22, 2007: Republican political consultant Roger Stone resigns his role with the New York state Senate Republicans after reports surfaced that he made a "threatening, obscenity-laced" phone call to the 83-year-old father of Governor Eliot Spitzer

August 27, 2007: Story breaks that Republican Senator Larry Craig was arrested and pled guilty - he had not publicly disclosed the events to that point

Has anybody seen a Democratic equivalent? I'd be curious to do a comparison...

The beat goes on

Whistleblowers about corruption in Iraq get thrown into jail and interrogated - BY U.S. FORCES.  

Gonzales is finally gone. I'd throw a party, but I want the bastard prosecuted - and I'm afraid of who Bush is going to put in his place.

I knew corruption in Iraq was bad, but this is enough to make you vomit.

I spent the evening in front of the old capitol with an end-the-war rally.  The response from the cars driving by was amazing - there is definitely a majority of people (at least a majority of the ones that drove by us) that want the war to end now.  I've never heard so much honking in my life.  I wonder, though, about the few who flicked us off.  Most of them were young men - made me want to point out to them that if there's a draft, they'll be first on the chopping block - will they then be so gung-ho?

J sent me to Good Reads.  It's similar to other things online, but looks like it might be fun.  Drop by.

Remember the Milk looks like it could be really useful - I'll have to see how well it fits into my life.

I... I have no words...

I've joked about something like this for years now - you know, the "Just wait! Some horrible something will happen and Bush will claim it's not safe to hold an election, etc. etc.... ha ha!"

To see it proposed as a serious idea makes me physically ill.

However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.
When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.
Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

Entire article entitled Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy.

Just a bit of stuff you might enjoy

And stuff to (hopefully) make you think...

How to Achieve Career Happiness by Being Gay on the Inside



Do We Need Another Jungle? - has some great fair trade links, among other things

Here's a book I'd like to read sometime soon...

Here's a GREAT blog entry from a stay-at-home dad - something I hope J can do soon...

This reminds me of some of the frustrations I feel: Oh, but it’s atheists who can’t have morals

I'm tempted to read this to find out what they'll arrest me for that is unconstitutional so I can go find some public event involving the president to attend... I could use $80K!

Tis almost the ides of August

J & I had a lovely dinner at the Melting Pot last night for our birthdays, courtesy of my mom.

I woke up this morning to a note left on our door in probably 92pt font: ROVE QUIT. I think I'll consider that a birthday present. Now if they'll just get him to testify!

So I get online and jump on some of the political blogs to see the details, and while I'm reading various and sundry articles, I see a link to an article in The Observer (a UK paper) "Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq" and after reading it, I think to myself WOW, that's pretty blunt - gee, I wonder if any US news organizations are reporting on this?

Can't find much. Found an article in the magazine The American Conservative talking about how Bush has broken the military - but all the rest of the articles I've found are elsewhere. For example:
"For an exhausted, disenchanted army there is still no end in sight" - The Independent (UK)
"Army Chief calls for return of draft to ease fatigue" - New Zealand Herald


Well, here's one from the US - but you note the article's title doesn't mention exhaustion:
"Military Is Ill-Prepared For Other Conflicts" - Washington Post
I'm guessing that the title is meant to point out, AHEM, that BOMBING IRAN IS STUPID. (Cheney has evidently been walking around chanting "bomb Iran" - given the amount of oil that China buys from Iran, wouldn't that bring China into a fight? Or is that what he wants, a proxy war with China?) After reading the article, I'm thinking maybe the title understates the problem.


So in looking for US articles about our exhausted military (you get slightly better results if you look for "broken" military, since several high ranking US people have used those words) I notice that our War Czar has basically called for the draft to be reinstated. I'm surprised I've not heard the administration backpedaling furiously.

In other news - watch out, the market is looking scarier and scarier. I'd like to point out that I saw this coming 6 months ago. Here's a quote:

Bottom line: there are a ton of problems in the credit market that aren't going away anytime soon. The main reason for that comment comes from Countrywide Financial's report on Thursday. Countrywide is the largest mortgage lender by volume. That means they have a ton of stature and clout in the market. The problem is simple: they can't find liquidity for their mortgages right now. They had to place $1.8 billion of loans into their investment portfolio and devalue both investments by between 14% and 20% when the transferred those assets. The devaluation tells me that buyers are pretty scared about the whole mortgage mess right now.

Add to this the news that BNP stopped withdrawals from some of its funds, a Goldman Sachs fund lost over 20% since the beginning of the year, Washington Mutual agreeing with Countrywide's assessment of the credit markets, and the central banks pumping liquidity into the market, and you have a recipe for increased volatility and concern.

And in case you thought that wasn't enough:

But, he adds, the full weight of resets on adjustable-rate mortgages have yet to been felt. From the beginning of 2007 through the middle of 2008, over $1 trillion ARMs will reset, many from low "teaser" rates. Then the extent of the declines in home prices and the financial fallout will be apparent, Magnus observes.

The news has continued to come out in a very negative vein. And it's the big players who are making the announcements. That is all the more concerning. When the mortgage mess first started in last 2006/early 2007 it was the smaller players making the announcements. While this was disconcerting, it wasn't earth shattering. Now the big boys are saying, "boy is it rough out there". That should concern everybody.

There's just too much to comment on. I've got the bad news fatigue that seems to be hitting almost everybody. US military lost over 100,000 weapons in Iraq? Whatever. Our people are probably getting killed by our own weapons. Gotta love it. FEMA tries to hide the toxic outgassing of its emergency trailers that is making people sick? No surprise. Bush now talking about creating tax cuts for corporations? Sure, why not.

I think I'd better stop reading the news today. You'd think news of Rove resigning would make me happy... *sigh*

Today was great!

Well, yesterday, at this point, I guess.

Got up early, got to chat with J before the kids were up. Took my meds eeeeaaaarrrrly. Made breakfast for me, the kids, and dad. Went outside with the kids & scrubbed two chairs, a booster seat and a trashcan - getting soaked in the process, and creating much mud for the two munchkins to play in. While they played in the mud, I trimmed the bushes along the front right of the house (that haven't been trimmed in probably years at this point) and the pyrecantha bush (that is not a bush, the damn thing's a tree - it's taller than the house at this point! I told J later "I wonder how many of the bushes in our world are just oppressed trees? I can just see them saying "well, I'd be taller if you'd just STOP CHOPPING MY TOP OFF!"" Got a great laugh out of that. Anyway, got those bushes done, chopped down some unruly growth in the front of the yard, and managed to find 5 or 6 fire ants that hadn't died off yet from me putting fire ant killer on their mounds yesterday. They got my feet. Then managed to find a few more that must have dropped onto me from somewhere else - got a couple of bites on my neck & back; should be entertaining. Then brought the kids in, we watched a short movie, read some books and took a nap. Then got up, picked up Dad from his art class (yay, he went! Even if briefly, and without art supplies! I'm under orders to bring him back and bring his supplies next time.), went by the grocery store, came home & unloaded the dishwasher, made a fruit salad, made dinner (meatloaf, baked potatoes & spinach), fed everybody, took kids into bedroom, read books, put kids to sleep, and spent some quality time with my husband.

And was in a good mood pretty much all day. Sang, hummed or whistled all thru making dinner. The latest news about Westboro Baptist church heading up to the funerals of the bridge collapse couldn't even break me. And even hearing about some ex-friends of ours didn't hijack my brain the way it sometimes does! Of course, that might be because of WHAT I heard, hee - ran into somebody who knows them now, and said "Oh, yeah, I know them. She's a CUNT. Total bitch, you know? And HUGE, too, man!" I know I shouldn't find that as amusing as I do, but damn, it makes me laugh every time I think about it. Considering the BS she put me through, I have a hard time being a nice person about her. I mean, if I found out her house burnt down, I'd probably laugh. Isn't that awful?

Anyway, I'm going to go listen to some political commentary and cuddle with my babu. I just wanted to write this day down so in a few months I can look back and try to figure out what went right today, so as to do it again. :)