I Don’t Even Know What To Title This One

July 2, 2009

I just found out some scary news about one of my favorite people on earth.  I can’t wrap my brain around it.  My friend Mel has a tumor in her brain.  WTF?  How is that fair?  How is that right?  How can this happen?  I have more questions than I have the ability to type. 

She’s my friend.  From the first moment we clicked.  We were riding the same slipstream.  She smart, and fun, and funny, and h0nest,  and brash, and vocal, and sweet,  and real.  She’s herself and I love her for it.  She’s smarter than the average bear.  She’s got dreams and goals and someone she loves.  She has plans.  She has a life!  

So what the hell is a tumor doing in her head?  There is nothing more frightening than being attacked by your own body.  It feels un-natural in the extreme.  It’s wrong on such a fundamental level that it’s hard to even accept, much less understand.

The surgery is soon.  Too soon.  Not soon enough.  My thoughts are scattered everywhere and I can’t seem to catch any of them. 

I read somewhere that there was a study done that proved that people who were in bad health, got well faster if they were prayed for.  They didn’t even need to know that it was happening.  It still worked.

So, do my friend Mel a solid, if you will.  Pray for her.  Start now.  Please?


On Being Hacked On eBay

May 16, 2008

On the 24th of April we were hanging out at the old homestead, doing nada.  I was probably trying to make my way back to the end of the internet again.  The telephone rings.  I didn’t recognize the number so I answered it.  Normally I don’t do that.  However I live on my instincts and this time something told me to see who it was. 

Some lady asked me if it was MDH’s residence.  I said yes it was.  She asked if he was selling anything on eBay.  I said not that I knew of but that he had a way of surprising me sometimes so I had better let her ask him about that.  I took him the telephone and went back to my e-travels.

Not long after that he comes into the room looking more bewildered than he has since Possum projectile vomited when she was two.  (THAT was a HOOT!)  He tells me I need to check our eBay account.  Sure enough, someone has listed some hoity toity crap on our account for sale!  The lady on the phone bid on it and won.  I’m not sure what happened on her end to raise her hackels, but she somehow got a hinky feeling and decided to check it out.

What to do?  Well, on the home page of eBay is a link that says “Live Chat” or something to that effect.  I clicked on that link. 

And here begins the saga of the eBay bogus seller fees.  For some reason they decided that I was responsible for the fees that the bogus seller incurred.  I decided I was not.  I decided that if it was necessary, I would close out my eBay account and just do my business on Craigs list if I had to.

Well, it just so happened that every time I had time to try to resolve this issue, it would be bad weather here.  And unfortunately my internet connection is through satellite.  *sigh*  I talked to three different people in ten minutes in one conversation one day because my connection kept going down. 

The last guy I talked to that day kept telling me that I had to pay the fees I incurred when I listed the items for sale.  I kept telling him that in the first conversation I had, which I had printed out, we had already established that my account had been subject to unauthorized activity.  Therefore I was not responsible for the fees.  I was getting dizzy going around in circles with this guy.  Thank God the connection went down again before I succumbed to apoplexy! 

So, tomorrow, the 17th, is the day the fees were to be charged to my bank account.  I decided to give them one last chance to rectify the situation before I called my bank to tell them not to pay the charges.  I click the Live Chat link on the eBay home page.  I got connected to the right person the first time.  She asked me what the problem was, referred back to the previous conversations I had had with all the other people there, read the messages and alerts that eBay had sent me in regards to the unauthorized use of my account, and fixed the problem in less than five minutes.

I was blissed out!  I gave that little darling about a thousand atta girls, wished her a raise, a wonderful life, a jump in Karma and just about every other good thing I could think of! 

All I could think of was how glad I was that I had been pleasant to all of those other people I had talked to before her!  Because it could have turned out so different if I had blessed out her best friend in the chat center the last time I was on!

I guess patience really IS a virtue.

 

But you know what?  I’ve been thinking about it today.  I know my side of this equation inside out.  They don’t know ME from Adam’s house cat.  I could be anybody.  I could be just trying to get out of paying fees that I really did incur.  I’m sure people do it all the time.    And it wasn’t their fault that the weather intervened the first few times I tried to get this done.  On their end, it must have looked like I was backing out of the conversation every time things got sticky. 

So, in the end, when I had a chance to stay on the conversation, it took eBay a full five minutes to fix a problem for me that could have been a disaster.  And they did it with good grace and were very pleasant about the whole matter.  Not bad for a place that you absolutely cannot contact on the telephone.

Now, if I could just figure out how on earth that lady got my phone number to call me in the first place I think I could lay this whole thing to rest.

 

Things I’ve learned: 

1. Change your passwords often.

2. Be pleasant to the people you want something from.

3. Change your passwords often.

4. Try to see the situation from the other point of view as well as your own.

5. Change your passwords often.

6. Don’t give up.

7. Change your passwords often.

It sure made my day when she said it was all taken care of and my account had been credited.  I just love it when something like that happens.  It just starts my day out right!


Court Ordered Child Abuse

October 4, 2007

I watched the news today and saw a story about a foster child being sent into court ordered risk of child abuse.  I have first hand experience with exactly this issue.  It is both astonishing and sickening how many people will blindly send a defenceless child into danger simply because the letter of the law says to do so.  It sounds eerily similar to the Nazi’s claiming that they were only following orders. 

In the case of the foster child, he is 2 years old and has lived with the foster parents virtually his entire life.  His parents have lost all parental rights and the foster parents want to adopt him.  The birth father, a convicted pedophile who is a Mexican national, stated in court that when released from prison he intends to return to Mexico to live with his mother.  His birth mother never showed up for the hearing. 

However, before the foster parents can adopt him the state must try to find a blood relative who is willing to take him.  After a 2 year search, the mother of the pedophile finally agreeed to take the child.  Yes, this is the same woman that the pedophile father will be living with when he gets out of prison.  In another country.  Where the United States, the birth country of this 2 year old child, will have no jurisdiction.  And the state is actually defending their position of sending this AMERICAN child there and not letting him be adopted here by the only family he has ever known. 

He will be taken away from the only parents he has ever known and sent to a country he has never seen to live with people he doesn’t know, who speak a language he doesn’t understand.  And why are they even thinking about doing this?  Because the stated goal of Social Services Departments in this country is to keep families together.  NOT……I repeat NOT the welfare of children.  Look it up.

If this isn’t a case of court ordered child abuse I’ll kiss your ass on the courthouse square at high noon.

Did you know that if you have a child crossing a county line for visitation and they are abused, if you do not see the abuse yourself, and there is no physical proof of abuse, you cannot report it in your county?  Because YOUR county doesn’t have jurisdiction in any other county.  Think about that for a second.  This means that you have to literally stand outside the windows on the sidewalk peeking in and witness the abuse yourself in order to report your child being abused in another county.  Scary isn’t it?

Can you imagine what it would be like for a child to be sent into another country?  No offense to Mexico, I happen to love that country.  The fact that it’s another country just makes it exponentially more likely that he’ll be lost.   

We wonder why people are so much more violent than they were in the past.  It isn’t the availability of guns.  It isn’t violence in movies and on TV.  (although it might have something to do with the JackAss movies and Bam, but that’s another blog)  It isn’t even drugs.  For the most part those things are all symptoms and tools.  Until children are big enough to DO the things that catch our attention, we allow the most atrocious things to happen to them and we hide behind the letter of the law like that makes it alright.

It took My Dearest Husband and I years of anguish and pain, along with the help of an incredibly wonderful counselor who was willing to actually DO something, to finally get our daughter out of a sentence of court ordered child abuse.  And now we are seeing all the unfortunate effects of the time she spent in that hell.  She will never be who she could have been if there had been more people like her counselor.  She will never be the happy, light hearted little munchkin she was the first time I saw her.  With alot of hard work, she CAN be a fantastic, wonderful, caring, happy woman.  Unfortunately, she will have to fight a fight she had no business having to fight.  She should have been protected.  She wasn’t.  She was tossed under the wheels of the bus by the Social Services system who believes that the law is more important than the well being of children and that blood is more meaningful than love to a child.

What the hell are we thinking?


Random Thoughts October 3, 2007

October 4, 2007

Life is perception.  How we perceive an event is our reality of it.  One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  What you perceive as meaningless, someone else might perceive as the most meaningful thing in their life.  Pay attention to how those important to you perceive the events in your lives.  It counts.

Inaction is an action all by itself.  It indicates indifference on a massive scale. 

Why in the hell would anyone in this country with even ONE functioning brain cell think that Hillary Clinton would make a good president?  This is a woman whose self esteem is so low that she stayed with a man who cheated on her in front of the entire world on more than one occasion.  This can only mean one thing:  He will pay in front of the entire world, and he will pay big!  So, let’s put her in the White House?????  Is she planning on giving her VP a BJ on TV during a State of the Nation Address?  (Do you think I used enough acronyms in that sentence?)  Women who stick around after being treated that way have one thing in mind: revenge.  If Bill is smart (I know, I know, but it’s only a figure of speech) he would do something searingly outrageous and destroy her chances.  It might save his life.  And speaking as a woman myself, I can tell you this: Hillary remembers every one of you who have screwed her over.  You might not even be aware that you did. *see paragraph one*  And you will not get away unscathed either.  Kenneth Star, I’m especially talking to YOU!  She will smile for the cameras while she is listening in her earpiece to them tell her that the “package” has been deposited.  That will be you in the East River wearing a pair of cement overshoes, going to sleep with the fishes.  But only after she has caused them to make you scream like a girl.  Think about it guys.  Women are by far more vicious than men will ever be.  And we never forget a slight.  We certainly never forgive one.  Putting Hillary Clinton in the White House is like dressing up Brittney Spears and putting HER in the White House.  Sounds good, don’t it?

I wonder if the people that Blackwater were hired to guard and protect in Iraq want them gone?  I haven’t heard anyone ask them.  I haven’t heard any of them say.  I would love to hear the answer to those questions.  I also wonder who it was that Blackwater had with them at the time of the last big incident that caused all this hooohaaa.  I hate magicians because I feel like misdirection is inherently dishonest.  So this last big deal over Blackwater makes me wonder who was there and why all the fingers are pointing in so many different directions, but no one is saying who was with them. 

Why are children always at their most obnoxious when my head hurts?#$%^&*

What parents say and what kids hear are two completely different things.  example: Me-“Hi Honey, how was your day?”

Them-“Why R U gettin all up in my KoolAid?”  That wasn’t a good exchange at all was it?  We had no exchange of information, no exchange of pleasantries at all.  That’s because what they hear is not what we said.

Me-how was your day       translation:  What did you do that was wrong or that I’m going to get a call from your school about before the day is through?

No wonder the response is so vehement!  I have no solution for this distortion as yet, however I am working on it and as soon as I perfect the formula, I will put it on a paid programming commercial at 4:45am and you too can have it for 6 easy payments of JUST $19.95 plus shipping and handling! 

When we were kids our dad used to wake us up every morning and whip us before he went to work.  He did this because he knew that before he got home that night we would have done something to deserve it.  He was right.  I’m thinking about reviving that old tradition.  Either that, or take up drinking.  I’m not really sure which way I’m going to go yet.  I’m leaning towards the whipping, but I’m not sure I could stand all that whining and crying.  But after the first time or two, I’d probably cowboy up and stop doing that.  On the other hand, drinking would be so much less work for me.  *sigh*  decisions, decisions


Random Thoughts 9/28/07

September 28, 2007

Don’t say yes if you mean no, then get all pissed off later.

If you have something to say, say it.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

If your significant other asks you a question, answer them as honestly as you can.  Do NOT expect them to read your mind.  That’s just stupid and unfair.  If they could read your mind, they would have already got the Pick 6 number and you’d be filthy rich and boppin the pool boy/girl.  Give them some information they can use.  Play fair.

Keep in mind that it is not being mean if you hang up on someone who has called YOU.  Especially if you don’t know them. 

When someone calls you and starts asking questions, your automatic response should NOT be to answer, but to start asking questions of your own. 

example:  Riiiiiiing.  Hello.  

Is Mr. Whoozit in? 

 No, may I take a message? 

Who am I speaking to?   

That’s not really your business.  Who am I speaking to? 

This is Mr. Soanso from Suchandsuch.  Do you have a number where Mr. Whoozit can be reached in an emergency? 

IS this an emergency?  If you’ll give me your number I’ll get in touch with Mr. Whoozit and give it to him and I’m sure if it’s an emergency he’ll be sure to get back in touch with you as soon as humanly possible. 

*SIGH* Nevermind, I’ll just try back later.  CLICK!!!! 

Seriously, it is NOT someone else’s place to be asking you questions on your phone and it is not rude, mean, or socially unacceptable to refuse to answer them. 

Listen to your instincts.  Human beings are still alive today because of them. 

Pay attention.  To Everything. 

Be careful what you say.  You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t unsay an unkind word or undo the hurt it causes.

Care.


Teenagers

June 8, 2007

Teenagers …………..  *sigh*  ……………..  nuf said.


Gay Marriage

April 17, 2007

It amazes me that in the the most advanced time that we know of on this earth, in one of the most socially, economically, and scientifically advanced countries on this earth, we still can’t manage to keep our asses out of each other’s bedrooms!

Who cares if gay couples get married?  How in the hell does that possibly have any contrary effect on heterosexual couples?  And don’t come thumping any Bibles at me either.  Let me just remind you that one of the main reasons this country was founded was the desire for religious freedom.  That means that you don’t get to pound your mainstream Christian beliefs down my throat. 

We no longer need to be fruitful and multiply.  I think it’s pretty plain for anyone to see that the human race has gotten that one down pat.  We might even be said to have been excessively successful at it.  So, other than procreation, what is the problem?  

Let’s just put it bluntly.  Because heterosexuals are in the majority, we can just refuse to allow anyone in a minority the same rights and protections as us because they are different.  I thought we took care of that kind of idiotic thinking with the civil rights movement.  I guess not quite.

It’s funny….I notice that when children are young, you have to point out to them the same lesson over and over.  They don’t have the ability to apply a lesson learned in one situation to a slightly different situation.  It takes a little bit of maturity and a little bit of intelligence for them to get the hang of it.  Sadly it seems that we haven’t reached that point as a country yet. 

Aside from the fact that I just don’t feel like someone else’s sexuality is my business, the problem I most have with the national feeling against gay marriage is this:  if it’s OK for the majority to tell gay people who they are allowed to marry, how long will it be before they can tell YOU who YOU can marry? 

That may sound alarmist to you, all comfy and safe in your bed with your husband or wife.  But what if your spouse is of a different faith than you?  What if that becomes politically incorrect?  What if the majority suddenly decides that interfaith marriages are a security risk?  What if they’re un-American?  What happens if you can’t marry the person you love because their faith is one thing and yours is another?

Not their business, you say?  What about the separation of Church and State, you ask?  Good question!  What about that?  There are plenty of churches ready and willing to marry gay couples.  The states won’t legalize the marriages.  Their reasons are all based on religious beliefs.  That is a pure, unadulterated violation of the rules governing the separation of Church and State.  Go figure.  Not the first example by far, and certainly won’t be the last.

Here’s the deal.  We let it slide that two people who love each other and are willing to make a legal binding commitment to each other, be told that they can’t do it because someone doesn’t like what they do in bed together.  We let it slide because it isn’t us.  We let it slide because we are ignorant, embarrassed, afraid.  We let it slide.  And the next thing that happens is, someone is standing in our bedroom door making judgements about whatever private things we do that are none of their damn business, and saying that we can’t do it because the majority says it’s wrong.

Couldn’t happen here, could it?  Not in America.  Not in the land of the free.  Well, it’s not really free anymore though, is it? 


Sickness

April 15, 2007

I am at a total loss as to an explanation for sickness.  What possible purpose does it serve in the vast scheme of things?  Why should we become ill and then get well?  Why should we become ill at all?  What is the underlying cosmically necessary meaning behind it all? 

Couldn’t there have been some other teeny tiny prey for a virus to pounce upon that didn’t live in my body?  You would think that either the Higher Power(s) or evolution would have hit upon something!  Seriously!  There could have been herds of little cow like creatures roaming around in snotty stuff for viruses to feast upon and we would never have been the wiser.  Or how about little rodentesque critters scampering around hiding in obscure places for viruses to ferret out? 

The viruses could have banded together and made little slaughter houses to deal with the varmints they caught!  And for those vegan viruses there could have been little plant stuffies for them to eat.  Nutritionally sound if consumed in the proper quantities.  Why would that have been a problem?  Why didn’t it develope that way?  Instead we’re stuck with viruses and an immune system!

The way I see it is this:  My body wouldn’t need an immune system if there wasn’t anything for it to be immunized against.  So, why sickness?  What is it’s purpose?  Why not just be well until we die?

We should live long healthy lives until the very moment that we keel over dead.  Or at least not get sick until it’s time to die.  Yeah!  That’s it!  We’ll be totally well for all our lives!  The only time we get sick will be the one and only time in our lives we will ever be sick.  Then……kaplooey!  Yer dead. 

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Until you’re skipping down the street having the time of your life, and suddenly……ACHOOOOO!

Uh oh!   *gulp*


Free Speech

April 11, 2007

If you have a problem with people saying what they think, you might want to stop reading right here.  Because unlike Imus, I won’t be coming back later to apologize for saying it.  As far as I know we still live in America.  I still have a right to free speech.  If you don’t like what I say, you still have a right not to listen to it. 

I understand why a politician will apologize for making a remark that most intelligent people will naturally notice is remarkably stupid, like Imus did.  They have a future riding on their ability to appeal to a majority of the people in their districts. 

Entertainment personalities, especially “shock jocks” like Imus, on the other hand, are supposedly making their living by saying incredibly stupid things on a regular basis.  Why should they bow to the pressure of public opinion and apologize for saying it?  Hell, why bother apologizing for it at all?  It’s out there for all time now anyway.  You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, dude.  All you’re gonna do now is smear it all over the counter.

Imus has a right to say whatever stupid thing he wants to say.  As long as he doesn’t violate any FCC rules and regs he can say anything he likes and we have no right to censure him.  If we don’t like what he says we have the option of simply turning him off.  As long as Imus keeps his dumb ass off my property, he can say all of the backwardly stupid, inbred thinking, family-tree doesn’t branch kind of stuff he wants to and I’ll defend his right to say it to the death.

I don’t have to agree with him, what he says, how he thinks, or even the fact that in some areas he obviously can’t or hasn’t thought.  It doesn’t matter that I believe that he is probably making remarks like this out of some sort of self hatred.  He has a right to be an idiot on the air if he wants to and he doesn’t have to apologize to anyone for it!  He owes no one an apology for being less than a decent human.  Being a creditable, decent, humane individual isn’t a requirement for having your rights protected in this country.

We in America need to remember that we are guaranteed the right of free speech.  We don’t need to apologize to anyone for the things we say.  Whatever stupid, ignorant, ill thought out, uneducated, pitiful opinions we might have, we are free to state them to the world if we want to and we don’t owe apologies to anyone for them. 

We are free in this country to be idiots, racists, bigots, and fools if we want to.  It’s a free country.  So, I say:  Go Imus!  Talk it up!

Just make sure you stay away from my house because your right to free speech ends at my property line.  I have no problem with temporarily seceding from the Union and kicking your sorry ass from here to next week. 

Barring that, talk on, ya idiot!  I’ll defend your right to do so on the public airwaves until America isn’t America anymore.  Which could be next year if we keep on in the same way we’re going now.

I’ll put the coffee on the for the Homeland Security guys, just in case.  If having sex on an airplane is in their domain, defending Imus’ right to be an idiot might be too.  *sigh*


Friends

April 10, 2007

My dearest husband and I have the best friends.  Wow!  This one is going to be harder than I thought.  See, it’s really hard to say exactly how great our friends are.  It’s easy to tell about the kind of friends who come over on Saturday and drink a beer and hang out.  Or the kind of friends who watch the Superbowl with you. 

But our friends are so much more than that.  If you’ve read much of this site you might know that last September our house burned down.  In the minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months since then we have been firmly in the palm of our friends’ hands.  They have kept us with them, safe and sane. 

While Bella was in the hospital, our friends kept Buddha and Possum with them, bought them clothes, school supplies, etc.  They bought us clothes.  They taught the grand-kids that when bad things happen, their world will pull together instead of explode apart like it had always done in the past.  Our friends changed the way they looked at their world and its possibilities.  They changed the kind of world our grandkids live in. 

We are their grandparents, giving them a safe place to land comes with the job description.   Our friends are a different story.  They didn’t have to do that.  They didn’t have to do any of the things they did and they would have still been our friends and we would have still loved them just the same.  But they did do it.  They made a circle around our kids, all three of them, that made them feel safe and secure in a way that we could never have done because we were in the same boat they were in and at the time we couldn’t do it. 

Now, our friends are the most eclectic group of people you could ever hope to meet.  No two of them are even remotely alike.  We couldn’t have gone out with the intention of picking completely different people for friends and done as good a job.  And yet, they are all remarkably alike in several respects.  They are all fantastic people.  They are all interesting.  They are all interested.  They are all intelligent in the extreme.  They are all fun and funny.  They are all thoughtful and kind.  They all have remarkably different personalities.  Some are shy, some are extroverted, some are hyper, some are laid back, some are psycho, (ok, I’m in that category) some are insanely sane. 

But when push comes to shove, we move like a well oiled machine.  We have gone from single, to married, job to job, dating to parents, and now to grandparents.  And we are still here, still together, still a unit.  Sometimes we see each other more often, sometimes less, but we are always in each others thoughts and we are always in each others hearts. 

We all have our faults and our quirks.  We like that about each other.  It’s those very things that make us all unique and intriguing to each other.  We have differences of opinion.  That’s what makes a horse-race.  We like that too.  We’ve all made mistakes.  That’s why they put erasers on pencils.  That’s just one more way we’re all alike.  We learn from each other.  I can learn more from one night with my friends than I can from 6 days on the Internet.  And that’s saying something.  I’ve been to the end of the Internet and back several times now. 

I’m the oldest of everyone.  The youngest of our friends is about 30 years younger than me.  That gives a pretty broad range of perspectives. 

I wouldn’t trade our friends for anything on the face of this earth.  Not one thing.  Because as long as we have them and each other, there is nothing else we need, and nothing we need that we won’t have.  And as long as they have us and each other, if we have a dime, they have a nickel.

There needs to be a word between friend and family.  Framily.  That’s what they are.  Our Framily.  And if I had tried to invent them I wouldn’t have done as good a job.