I went out in the heat today and ran three errands. Walking from the car to a store in this heat hits me like a ton of bricks. I had 5 stores on the list, I made it to 2.  Tomorrow’s another day, and I have plans to go shopping earlier in the day with BFF.  I’ll finish getting what we need and get back in somewhere that’s cool so we can talk.

It’s days like today when I miss my pool.  We’d spend all day in and out of the water between chores and things. All of the neighbors would stop by and get wet too. Our pool was unheated, so on uberhot days it felt so good to jump into 70 degree water and you stayed cool for a while after getting out.  Breakfast was cereal, lunch was sandwiches, and dinner was grilled outside.  There was no indoor cooking on days like today because the house didn’t have AC. We didn’t really have a one hour rule after eating either because the pool was only four and a half feet deep. No one ever got cramps anyway, so we figured that was a myth.

We always took a nice long dip to cool down before bed too and if it didn’t cool down at night, we weren’t above a midnight dip. There was no sleeping when the house was 90 degrees.  That pool was such an integral part of our lives. I’m still a water baby. It soothes me like nothing else can because I grew up with that pool.

Those were awesome years. Pure, innocent, and beautiful. Filled with beach ball volleyball and frisbee tossing in the water. Playing tag while weaving through clothes lines filled with sheets and clothes. Playing on our swingset, monkey bars, and our trampoline, before trampolines were cool. My back yard was like a kids dream.  I rode my bike a lot when I was a kid too. I’d go out for hours. As long as I kept moving, even if it was 85 out I didn’t overheat. Summers were my favorite time of year.

Pardon me while I get up on my soapbox for a bit. I haven’t done so in a long time, so indulge me won’t you?

I think about that level of activity when I was a kid, and what is considered normal now, and it makes me sad.  Kids these days grow up with video games, and computers, and instant access to their friends. They play together, but not like we used to. I really don’t think we’ve done any justice by our children allowing so much of that and not enough real hard core, running around the yard, and learning how to be social in real life.  If I wanted to play with a friend, I went to their house and rang the doorbell. These days kids IM or text each other, and if one friend doesn’t answer immediately they’re tossed aside and the next friend is contacted in seconds. It’s more about immediate gratification and amusing themselves no matter what, than it is about being social and playing with this friend or that friend and just spending time together. 

I wonder what the world will be like as time goes on and more and more of the kids that grew up in this new way that come of age and matriculate into the power that runs this country. I’m not dissing them, there is some extraordinary talent out there, in every generation. I’m just wondering how things will change, and what will be important to them on a global basis. They’ll get along, in their own way.  My daughter is one of those talented kids, and my BFF’s oldest just turned 18, so she’s not far behind Minime.  They’re good kids, level headed for the most part. I hope the world works out for them.

I’m totally stealing this idea from Eden who got it from someone else. Eden is the originator of NaBloPoMo, so if she can do it, I figure it’s ok for me too. I could be lame and just post a pic or something, but I’m saving that for later when I really need a quickie post.

Today’s post is brought to you by insomnia. It’s been nearly 2 years since I had the surgery that took my hormones and introduced me to my friend insomnia. It’s been a long road trying everything go make her go away too. I finally have found a combination of OTC stuff that helps enough to make the difference most nights.  I haven’t had serious insomnia for a few weeks and I’d hoped she was packing her bags and leaving, but last night was ROUGH.

Today, of course, I have blood work at 8:30 AM and a 12 hour fast before that, and in spite of eating an extra little bit last night at 8:30, I woke up at 2AM wanting to soothe the antibiotic belly ache and it’s accompanying headache, but I’m screwed until 8:45 when I’m done with the lab at the doc’s.  I’m starting this at 4:30 AM, because I’ve been up for two and a half hours with this headache and belly that aches like it’s hungry when I know there’s no way it can be.

As for what follows, I’ll be adding to it during the day as I think of things. My own self imposed rule is that for everything on the first list, there will be at least one entry on the second one. Here goes:

Things I do not like

• These all go together: antibiotics, headaches, stomach aches, asthmatic bronchitis, and albuteral (which may be the cause of the insomnia).
• loneliness- sometimes a girl just needs a snuggle from something that doesn’t have 4 legs and a tail.
• guys that pretend they don’t live with their mothers, but then call every day, at least four times a day, and especially at the end of work to see if she needs anything from the store for dinner.
• friends getting H1N1. So far I’ve been lucky. Four of my friends haven’t. One of them is hospitalized in critical condition with multiple organ failure. Needless to say, I’m a little nervous about it.  I’m playing hermit until the other kind of vaccination is out. I can’t get the current one because it’s still live, but weakened, virus. Going to the Dr’s office isn’t my favorite thing to do this morning.
• Having to go to the damn mall to go to the Apple store to get a new iPhone battery. Why can’t AT&T just change it at their store? That would be too convenient I guess.
• cat barf on the bed while I’m at work. EW.  Extra laundry tomorrow.

Things I do like

• my best friend, for 28 years now, who calls 20 minutes before the pilot episode of a new/recycled SciFi show starts to remind me to either watch or tape V because I was in love with the show when it was on in the 80′s.  I’m a sucker for bad SciFi.
• She also offered up her 17 year old to rake the leaves in front of my house. If we can figure out a time this weekend, I’ll take her up on that.
• My DVR that I can watch previously mentioned show on when I have time. I’m blessed with friends that wanted to chat for nearly the whole hour it was on.
• My boss is cool for a lot of reasons, somedays I’m not so in love with my job, but he makes me smile and we get through it together
• cats that snuggle when sleep is elusive.
• Smoked Almonds
• blogging from said iPhone that needs a new battery
• Minime IMing me to tell me random details of her life or ask for advice.
• free hot chocolate at work. I’m not a coffee drinker.
• roommates that rake leaves while I’m at work

Jimmy Carter wasn’t a great president. He did a few good things, and didn’t to too much harm, but none of it was really remarkable.  Since his tenure in the White House though, he’s done more good than most for anyone that he can.  Between his involvement with Habitats for Humanity, and many other charities, and now his involvement with The Elders which is a group that Nelson Mandela put together, he continues to fight for basic human rights.

Another blogger that I follow re-tweeted a link to this article today.  Holy Awesomness Batman!  As a woman, a mother, and a former church leader, I wholeheartedly believe that Mr Carter hit it directly on the head, no doubt about it.

I left my church for a lot of reasons, one of them was the restriction of women at the pulpit.  I held a lot of leadership roles in my church.  I was superintendent of the sunday school,  secretary, treasurer, minister of music, and an officer in the homeless shelter that we ran. I enjoyed most of it, it was rewarding and fun to do, and I was making a difference in people’s lives. They trusted me with their money, their property, teaching thier children, and even running their services musically (and s/he who does the music affects the flow of the whole service), I could even read from the Lectern, but heaven forbid if I ever take the pulpit and say something that I, as a female Christian,  researched and wrote.

I’m am college educated, with a good degree of intelligence, and the insult that I wasn’t good enough to preach, even though that wasn’t my calling and I never really wanted to,  just the fact that I couldn’t do it if it was needed, bothered me more and more as time went on. That along with congregational politics and moving out of range of that particular church all led to a convenient parting of the ways with all of it.  I never really joined another church.  My daughter went to church based schools for some of her education, and I think she understands my spirituality, she claims to be an athiest now, even though I know she’s a very spiritual creature. She’ll figure it out eventually.  I don’t claim Chrisitanity anymore, I do however continue to be reminded that there is something in my life leading me to beauty and peace. Call it a Higher Power, call it Universal Energy, call it done and stick a fork in it. I don’t care what people call God. I do however care that people are using God’s “words” to subjugate ANYONE.

There is nothing that makes the conglomeration of cells in my body superior to the cells in any other living thing.  I have a deep and profound basic respect for life whether it comes with extra estrogen, testosterone, melanin, fur, chlorophyll, whatever.  When you get to the level of honoring all creation, all life, and see the beauty that comes when it’s free to do what it was meant to do, it’s an amazing world and I can’t even fathom that it’s all just a happy accident, so I believe that there’s a higher power directing all of it.  There have been many mystics, spiritualists,  prophets, whatever you want to call them, that have basically said the same thing. Jesus, Buddah, Mohammed, Mother Theresa, and any number of others, famous or not, were all on board with this thought train.  I don’t care what name you put on it, all of the world religions have the same basic tenets in common.  Live in peace, and tolerance, share what you have, help anyone that you can, pray/meditate, stay centered, but most of all at the core of it is Love Each Other.

The Elders are an impressive group with an impressive charter.  We need to support more efforts like that.   I love my country, and it disturbs me that we’re losing our identity, but more and more I accept that the global “village”  kind of thinking is what will save humanity.  There will always be people that denounce such thinking. There will always be “holy” war, but there will also always be people working for unity and good, and  when you take a step back and look at the planet, everything on it was put here to do something to help.  Plants give us oxygen, food, medicines. Animals spread the plants around, and provide a food chain of their own. It all works together, just like we all need to work together. No one race/religion/sex is superior, we’re all just humans and we all need to work together.  The Elders understand that.  Read their charter. They can think, do and spread any message that they want, and they choose to spread love, equality, and freedom. Wouldn’t it be great if the rest of the world’s leadership that claims they have power did that too?

*stepping off my soapbox*

Personally I’m a lot more upset about Farrah Fawcett than Michael Jackson.  I respect his talent, which was huge, but he had so many problems, and that negativity overshadowed the pure energy that he was when he was performing.  His life was twisted and tortured by his own personal demons, but his music was amazing and he contributed a huge body of work at the time that my generation was listening.  I’ll remember that about him and not the bad stuff.

I also watched Farrah’s story.  Her documentary about having cancer aired in May and again this evening.  She fought the good fight with grace and as much dignity as her particular kind of cancer would allow.   That story touched me on a personal level. She worked at living, and literally fought for her life, for more than two years after her diagnosis. Y’all know my personal opinion of that particular disease. I believe I summed it up with two words on my private blog that I kept when I was going through my own very minor & curable version of it – Fuck Cancer.

Cancer takes thousands of lives every year.  Farrah’s last production was her documentary, and the unfortunate timing of Michael’s death somewhat took the spotlight off of the good that she did to show what cancer really does to a person.  Her death is tragic, she was a good person, and also a hugely talented actress, but the one good thing that could have come from it was the education and potential for donations to whatever cancer cause people are closest to. We won’t beat cancer until we throw enough research dollars at it to finally figure out the puzzle that lays in learning what makes a person susceptible, what causes cells to shift, and how to stop it from happening and cure it when it does.

Most of my donations go to the cancer society these days.  It’s a worthy cause. There are very few people that aren’t affected by it, whether it’s from having a loved one with it, or in my case, experiencing it myself.  I wouldn’t wish what I went through on anyone, and what I had was extraordinarily minor comparatively. I didn’t have to go through chemo or radiation. I had surgery, and I go to get checked every 3 months, and that’s it. Before my surgery, I did have to face my own mortality, and prepare for the inevitable. Nothing teaches a person what is important more than deciding who gets what piece of crap is left behind when they die.  How useless, how futile, who cares who gets what, really!?!  If I die, they’ll work it out. All I could do was offer my guidance and my wishes and realize that I’d have no control over whether any of it actually happened. That was a hard lesson. Cancer has no bias, no prejudice, it takes whoever it wants.  I believe that cancer is curable. I do what I can to help find the cure.

*stepping off the soap box*

Other things happened, or didn’t, this week.

I had registered for a photography class that I really would have enjoyed if it hadn’t been canceled. I didn’t find that out until I showed up for the class.  Oh well. At least I left work on time one day this week. I hope the school doesn’t hassle me about getting a refund.

All of the pieces of my waterbed have finally arrived, so tonight I’m spending the last night I’ll ever spend on my old beaten up rag of a mattress. Tomorrow morning the new mattress will take it’s place.  It will take a few hours to get it set up and filled, but when that’s done I’ll finally have the new bed.

I’m taking a few days off next week.  I have plans that I’ll share as the time gets closer.  At least one day will be spent with my best friend.  She had a birthday this week too. Her husband threw her a very cool suprise party.  If nothing else, it makes me happy that she’s got someone that loves her so much in her life.  She deserves that.  He got all her good friends together in one room for a few hours one evening. She was so happy, it was great to see.

So, it’s been a rollercoaster of a week.  The good news is that my company is doing well, and I got caught up with one of the three parts of my job today. I’ll work a few hours over the weekend and get a significant piece of another part of it done, and that will leave one project for the 2 days that I do work next week.  It’s been a challenge lately but I haven’t felt this on top of it for a while.   I have the weekend to get caught up at home too.  Once the bed is set up, the rest of the weekend will be dedicated to housekeeping. It needs it.  Physical work is more difficult than I want to admit, but I at least want the house clean for the 4th.  Who knows, maybe I’ll have a barbeque or something.

I live in suburbia, where people come to escape the crime and bustle of the city.  Good people, that want to raise their children away from gangs, drugs, and everything else that comes with city life.  We’re not immune to it out here, but it’s certainly many degrees less extreme here.  The biggest crime in my suburb is usually some punk kids robbing the change and CD’s out of unlocked cars. Most of my neighbors are from the inner city. We are quite the melting pot around here. They’re good people, nice, caring neighbors. They are also NOT wealthy.  The kids next door think that I’m rich because I give them a can of pop occasionally. It’s worth it to see them smile.

The lady that lives in the house across the street with her kids is a nurse. It’s an expensive dream to live in suburbia, but parents make sacrifices so that their kids can grow up better than they did. They make sacrifices so the kids can learn how to be better people. It’s a lot easier to do that here than it is where kids can’t go out at night because there are bad people around.  So they move out here with their little ones, hoping for something better, and the economy tanks, their mortgage is suddenly bigger, and there worse off than they were in the city.

It’s not right.

The stores hype the hell out of their day after thanksgiving sales.  People become animals in search of their 20% off prey. They show up hours early and push and shove for their place in line, crash the doors when they aren’t unlocked fast enough, and today, a 34 year old temporary worker that didn’t get out of the way when the doors were broken down died when a couple thousand stark raving animals trampled him in search of their sale item. A pregnant woman was also taken to the hospital, but her and her baby are OK.

Welcome to the most civilized nation on the planet, huh?

Is the economy so bad that we stop caring about each other because we can get something for $5 off if we can just get in the doors and grab it first before they’re gone? Or is it that human beings have degraded to such an extent that a human life isn’t important as long as it’s some lowly guy that makes $6 an hour at Walmart?

Those people, the ones that killed that poor man, I sincerely hope they understand what they did today. It’s not in me to wish vengeance on anyone, but dang, it’s hard not to at least hope that as many people as trampled him are charged with manslaughter.

When I was a kid, Christmas was about music, and gatherings, and midnight service at church, and a present or two somewhere along the way.  Now that I’m divorced and on my own, I’m much more in that mode than I was when I was married to a man that turned it into a greed fest.  You won’t ever see me participating in the day after thanksgiving sales. I did it once with my daughter and it was just stupid.  I have most of my Christmas shopping done for the six people that I need to shop for this year, and the few things that I have left to pick up will be done after work.

I realize that the stores hype the sales because they need to make money, and I realize that the customers need to save money too, but when there’s a mob situation like there was this morning it might be a good time for the marketers to step back and evaluate the situation. At the very least there should be enough security to protect the lives of the employees and the shoppers.  The mob mentality that these sales generates calls for that. Hopefully lessons were learned from this tragedy. I’ll be watching what they do next year.

In my every day life I enjoy the company of many diverse friends. I enjoy the diversity that they bring to my life. I learn from them. I laugh with them. We help each other through things. I have some awesome friends.

I purposely have refrained from any commentary on the election or our new president in this blog. Politics, quite frankly, bores me. My hope is that somehow, someway, our new president delivers even a little part of what he’s talked about and this country unifies again. We need that. The grass roots groundswell of energy nationwide that went into the election yesterday says a lot about how much regular every day people want to change the world. I hope they hang on to that energy, claim it as their own and facilitate a change from within, because one man at the top can’t do it without help.

It starts at home, not at the White House. If people don’t care, then our leadership doesn’t matter.

I do have one thing to say about some of the issues that a few states addressed in this election though.

I am deeply disappointed, again, at the acceptance of legal discrimination in every state that had things like gay marriage, and unmarried adoption, gay or straight, on their ballots.  Proposition 8 in California passed. People in power now have reinforced their “right” to pass judgment on their constituents based on who they sleep with.  Like it’s any of their business.  Like it matters in the day to day world outside of people’s private homes in ANY way.

I have friends and family members that are gay.  I’ve been close enough friends with a couple of them to discuss relationships, and families, and every day stuff, and guess what?  They are just as human, and fragile, and loving, and spiritual, and brave, and scared, and funny, and every other adjective that you could think of, as anyone else in my life.

No ridiculous law is going to stop people from loving each other, straight, gay, whatever. The only thing their laws accomplish is to create a climate where if something happens to one half of a gay couple, then the other half isn’t allowed, by law, to make decisions, or God forbid, inherit the property that they might have shared together for the better parts of their adult lives.  These are the same laws that prevent adoption of a child if the couple is unmarried. Like they won’t raise children that will be good citizens, or heaven forbid, the child that they raise is different somehow. I brought a child into the world by myself. Does that make her somehow better or more deserving than a child that is raised by two people that happen to be the same gender, just because I’m straight? Honestly, she would probably have been better off being raised by a loving gay couple than she was in the house being raised by me and the mentally ill asshole that I married and divorced. That’s a whole other story though.

This country has come a long way in the last century.  I have an aunt that was born before women could vote, when segregation was the norm, disabled people were institutionalized, and the last war was between the US Cavalry and Native Americans.  We have come a very long way since then, but there are still some tragic excuses for discrimination.  Basing laws on something as personal as sexuality is just ridiculous and petty, and driven by small minds that can’t accept that every person on this planet isn’t like them.

Namaste – we are all equal, and different, and that’s very cool. Respecting those differences is not what happened yesterday, and that bothers me. A lot.

For those people out there that think that being gay is just wrong or disgusting or whatever, I have two suggestions for you. The first is: Don’t do it. It’s that easy. Personal choice. No one will force you to make love to someone that’s the same sex as you.  Isn’t it great living in a free country? You have made your decision to lead “straight” lives.  Please respect the fact that other people make their own choices, and who they love has absolutely no bearing on your life.

My second suggestion: Don’t hate. Live and let live.  This country was built by people that were hated, and banished, or made so miserable they had to leave their homelands. The constitution here was purposely written in a way that made clear the intent of all people being equal, and that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is up to each individual.

Legislating marriage is a slippery slope.  Those laws are inherently unconstitutional, and morally wrong.

If you want to call me a bleeding heart liberal, go ahead, I’ve been called worse. Just know that when we meet, I will respect and honor you as a human being, and as a person that is another receptacle of the same divinity, the same spirit, the same oneness that rules us all. If we can relate to each other on that level, then there is nothing to judge.

Namaste.

She never watches the DVD. She bought it because of the sentimental attachment. The memories of watching it when we were kids, and the possibility that someday it won’t be on TV anymore were the reasons she owns the movie.   TNT hyped the heck out of it last week, so they planned their lives around the 7 PM start time, and they HAD to watch because it was ON TV.   It didn’t matter that the DVD right on their DVD rack is the “extended” version with all the extra stuff. It didn’t matter that there are commercials when it’s ON TV. They were SO excited!

The conversation went on. They brought up all the other shows that we all used to stop and watch as kids.  I could relate. The stuff they were mentioning was everything from my childhood.  The Charlie Brown holiday specials, Rudolph, Frosty, and even the saturday morning cartoons (Warner Brothers and Pink Panther were my fav’s).  My Bedtime then was 7 pm, so it was special when I got to stay up and watch Charlie Brown or some other kid show.

When I was a kid, the TV at home wasn’t on all the time like it is in most homes now.  When I was preschoolish, I remember watching Sesame Street, Mr Rogers, Electric Company, and Zoom a few times a week during the day when mom had grown up stuff to do. Even then I would do things while watching. I was more interested in whatever I was creating or pretending than what was on TV. I’m still like that. I have the TV on so there’s background noise, and other than 2-3 shows that I’ll actually stop and watch, most times, I couldn’t even tell you what’s going on. (As I’m writing this, Iron Chef America is on, and they have 2 chef’s on each side?? That’s a new twist, but dang that custard looks yummy!)

Like the DJ, I own a couple hundred DVD’s.  I had twice that amount before my divorce. We used to have friends over to watch movies on the big screen with the surround sound. It was a social thing. We kept up with a few new releases every month and there was always a selection to choose from.  In the last 3 years, I think I’ve watched 3 of them.  Some I keep for sentemental reasons (the SchoolHouse Rock DVD, Dead Poets Society, Godspell). Some I keep because they’re just good movies (Good Will Hunting, Shrek 1 & 2, Fiddler on the Roof). Some I kept because I didn’t want him to get more than his half. (The silliness of divorce. I’ll never watch them, but he couldn’t have them because that wouldn’t be “fair”.)  I could probably get rid of 1/3 of the DVD’s that I own and not blink an eye about it.  Hello eBay!!…. after surgery when I have time on my hands!) 

The really pathetic thing is that even though I’ve watched about one movie every 3 months in the last year, I keep buying them.  It’s so ingrained, that I have to have them, even though I obviously don’t care about watching them. I’ve recentely bought Shrek3 and Ratatouille.  A few months ago I bought 2 other movies that I never watched and I’ve since then forgotten the titles to. (But I know that I wanted them!!)  I’ll dig them out and watch them when I’m recovering.  Daytime TV will not melt my brain!

The conversation definitely got me thinking though.  Today’s kids don’t really understand stopping to watch something special. TiVo has killed that. Todays kids are all about cramming as much pop culture into as little space as possible. The TV is on all the time, while the computer is charging/loading the iPod, and the text messages are coming in on their cell phones.  It’s high speed, high pressure, and in my opinion, a huge disservice to them.  If they don’t learn how to relate to each other as kids, the world will be a mess when they grow up.

I was born on the cusp between the baby boom and GenX.  I’m kind of a tweener that way.  Roomie is defnitely a boomer. He’s a bit older than me, listens to really good music that I know most of the words to, and our parents were of the same pre-WWII generation. We both have many memories of playing with our friends, inventing games, exploring the planet. I didn’t own a computer until college.  He probably got his first one a few years before that, but he was self employed and it was a handy thing that saved him a lot of manual paperwork.  They didn’t have cell phones cheap enough for everyone to own until well after I was married.  I did have a pager before that so my kid could find me if there was an emergency, that pager was a big deal. 

Kids now have cell phones, computers, iPods, and a video game platform or two.  They TiVo shows and watch them when it’s convenient, and most wont ever remember the world stopping to watch Rudolph, and good Lord Charlie Brown is SO LAME!  It’s a different pace that they live at.  They have so many toys to distract them that they’ve forgotten how to relate to each other without them.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the kids of my daughter’s generation have to run the planet.  Maybe by then they’ll have learned to unplug and really live together.

I hope so. The alternative makes me nervous.

Honoring veterans is important, but it’s also personal to me.

Today I take time to honor my dad’s brothers, who were all combat soldiers.  I also honor my mom’s uncle, and many other people in my ancestry were also soldiers.  I am the same age as many who went to the Gulf in the first war there and I have a dear friend that was a Marine in that arena.  These men all served this beautiful country that I am proud to live in. They did what they had to to make us as safe as possible. 

Freedom isn’t free.  It’s a fragile thing that needs to be protected with the lives of men and women. Soldiers that understand and care enough to do that sometimes very ugly job, day in and day out, so I can sit here and fuck off on my computer, safe in my house, and whine about my little life. While I do that, they’re out there getting blown apart by an enemy that hates their guts just because they’re from here.  That’s not lost on me either.

Dad had 4 brothers. Two of them died within a couple of years of returning from World War 2.  They drank themselves to death. There was no understanding or counseling then for shell shock, or post traumatic stress as it’s called now.  Another lived until I was a kid, maybe 1970 or so, when he fell down the stairs drunk and sustained a head injury that killed him. He was the definition of shell shocked. He came home broken. He stayed that way until he died. The 4th brother, the youngest, fought in Korea. He had a good life with his Korean wife. They had 5 kids and he died of cancer well into his old age. One out of 5 of them lived into old age.  3 of the 4 that died young were all War Veterans. It takes its toll.

My mother’s uncle died on the beach at Normandy 20+ years before I was born. He was the son of a German immigrant, fighting for America. I’d have to look up his name, I don’t remember it, but I honor him too.  

My friend from the Gulf War, he’s got the most beautiful, gentle, wondrous childlike soul, but there’s a very big part of that time of his life that he won’t talk about, that he’s still tortured about.  It makes me sad. We met for lunch one day, and the restaurant was particularly crowded. We had to take a table in the center of the room, and he spent the whole meal uncomfortable because he still doesn’t like to be that exposed. 15 years after coming home, if there’s not a wall to his back, he gets squirmy. We ended up leaving pretty quickly and finished our discussion in a quiet park right down the street. He was much less distracted.

There are more stories that I could tell. Less personal to me.  All of them about men that sacrificed their day to day lives for a cause that they believed in, some of them that returned forever changed, and some that returned in a body bag.

There are stories about the ones that stayed home too. My dad was badly burned as a child and as a result was missing parts of his fingers. He couldn’t fire a rifle, so they wouldn’t let him enlist like his brothers did.  He turned 18 in 1940, during the heat of World War II, and he watched his brothers go off one by one and felt the guilt and responsibility of staying home, caring for his mother, and getting on with life while they were living in hell.

Dad was American, through and through, even if he couldn’t fight for his country, he could play his part back at home. He was proud of his brothers, and God help you if you bashed this country or it’s leaders. That wasn’t tolerated. They may be bad leaders, but they were and are still leaders. Respect the position if you can’t respect the man. Dad was all about honoring his brothers on Veterans Day. He couldn’t be a veteran himself, and that tore him up inside, but he did what he could to teach us what it meant.

Today I’m at work. I don’t think that’s right, but I work for a Japanese company. Go figure that they wouldn’t want to celebrate a holiday that honors the soldiers that nuked their country. Kind of an ironic twist isn’t it.  At least they give us Memorial Day off. They understand honoring the dead.  

Yesterday I was driving through our village on the way to the store. There was a ceremony going on at the war memorial that’s by the Village Hall.  The park was packed. It felt good to see that. There are others out there that have the respect and honor and dignity enough to thank those in my village that did their part to protect my freedom.  Another friend of mine is another Gulf War vet. He’s on the village committee here that is partly responsible for that ceremony. I’m proud of him. It’s a good thing that he does every year.  

I don’t know anyone among my friends that hasn’t had a soldier among their family and friends. 

Take some time today to appreciate the hard won, high priced gift that those men and women give us every day.

Freedom.  

Sigh.

2 hours at the vet and $250 later, he’s got a UTI, a sore in his mouth that might be a mass, and more blood tests to check for diabetes…

He’s on antibiotics. That will help the UTI.  We still have to deal with the diabetes and the whateveritis in his mouth. He goes back in a week for a recheck.

I go to the urologist myself tomorrow. I think my kidney infection is back, I feel like crap,  and I can’t have surgery while I’m infected.  The back surgery is scheduled for the 23rd. Hopefully there’s enough time to clear out the ickies so i can get fixed.

Enough already. I’m going to bed. Tomorrow will be better.