The boys and I have had another quiet day.  I’ve done a load of dishes, we’ve done a couple loads of laundry, none of us have volunteered to vacuum with the cool new bright pink Bissell.  (Maybe I should have gone with blue or green … but the thrifty side of me is still chortling over the low low price I paid for it, and I like it pink.)

I made another “fancy” dinner.  We aren’t eating huge but we are eating unusual for us.  We had our Thanksgiving out at Miss Eva’s house in the mountains on Thursday.  Last night I broiled small steaks and served them with rice and green beans.  This afternoon we had a late lunch/early supper of cornish game hens with rich mashed potatoes and broccoli.  We’ve had multiple conversations over the past three days about what we’re thankful for.  Mostly, we’re thankful for each other. 

I haven’t had a nap today, although I leaned in that direction for a while.  I got comfortable on the couch and the cat got comfortable on me.  The boys had never seen Karate Kid so we watched that this afternoon.  It’s amazing that 20 years down the road I still get all mushy over Mr. Miyagi and Danielsan.  Classic.

Looking around at the cheerful clutter of my apartment usually makes me grind my teeth in frustration.  I hate the mess and the lack of space here.  But, we are warm, dry and happy.  With the aroma of good food from the kitchen and the sound of the log crackling in the fireplace it’s hard to complain.  For two years after the divorce when I wasn’t sure from month to month that I’d have enough for covering utility bills, much less a Thanksgiving feast, we were adopted by people we didn’t know,  people who didn’t know us.  About a week before Thanksgiving, we got a knock on the door, and when I answered it, there was a box with everything we could have dreamt of not only for our Thanksgiving meal but for a couple of weeks after as well.  

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this year.  By many standards, our food is pretty simple for holiday fare.   Still, four years ago, the celebration we’ve enjoyed this weekend would have been far out of my reach.  I know that many of you have been my readers from before and then through that time.  Some of you, were involved a couple of years ago when some kind-hearted Xangans went far above and beyond to make my family’s Christmas the merriest ever.  (And whichever one of you sent that blue sweatshirt and pants to Tucker, I want you to know that he loved that outfit and wore it until it was literally falling apart.)

This year, we have the opportunity to be on the giving side.  It’s not quite the same as what we experienced.  We are planning for a family who may not even know yet that they will have a need this year.  The bank where I work is adopting a family through the Ronald McDonald house.  Maybe the family we’ll shower with gifts is already there.  Maybe they don’t yet know that there is a diagnosis, or an accident, or a transplant that will be scheduled at the last minute and bring them to live in a hospital with a child receiving treatment through the holidays.  We have some generic items we’re gathering now, and then when we find out more about who will be receiving our gifts, we’ll fill in the gaps with specific things needed or requested. 

The boys and I are excited to take part in this.  We don’t know the names or faces of the people who helped us and gave me hope when things didn’t look very hopeful.  The family we come alongside this year won’t ever know who we were.  I pray that they will be as encouraged and strengthened as we were.  We are excited to do this because it’s the best way we know to say “thank you” to people who chose to be angels to us.

Thank you. 

I completed most my Christmas shopping this morning between 5 and 5:20 a.m. at the Walmart SuperCenter on Eubank in Albuquerque.  

I’m shocked and saddened by the news from Long Island of the crowd who trampled the security guard to death.   I don’t understand how anyone could consider a new television to be worth a man’s life.  (Or a new digital camera/blue-ray player/game system).

So I want to tell you about my experience.  The Walmart I visited is open 24 hours, so people arrived very early.  I got there about 4.  We calmly strolled through the store and located the pallets holding items from our lists.  I really wanted a digital camera for Tucker, and that was the only area where people were gathering, so I joined the line, three people back from the front. 

We chatted about our families with strangers.   We exchanged information about sales items.  We talked about other area stores and what would be on sale there.  At regular intervals while we waited there were announcements overhead about the orderly processes that would enable us to purchase the items we came for. 

At 5 a.m. the Walmart Associates used their box cutters to open the boxes on the pallets.  Excitement was palpable.  So I picked up my camera and then I picked up 5 more.  As I made my way back from the pallet, I handed cameras to the five people in line behind me.  They were grateful, and the six of us stepped to the side and the next group stepped up.  From there I made my way through the store to the second item on my list, and then the third.  At 5:20 I was in the check-out line with a loaded basket. 

People were jovial, seemed happy, seemed courteous.   

I wonder if the crowd here would have been any different than the crowd in Long Island if the circumstances had been different.  Are we that desperate to have “stuff” that we don’t care about the people around us?  What if the people in Albuquerque had been locked out in the cold pre-dawn air with visions of disappointment?

Apparently there was a news report this morning saying that most of the people shopping today weren’t shopping for gifts.  They were shopping for themselves.  The visions of disappointment had nothing to do with little Vicky’s face as she unwraps the wrong present.  No, it was visions of sitting back in the Lazyboy pointing the remote at the brand new … nothing. 

It’s not our kids who think that they aren’t loved unless they get the biggest and shiniest.  It’s us. 

What do you hope to have for Christmas?  Is it something you can fit in a box?

I’m a bit hypocritical here.  I have my new toy.  In fact, I’m writing this blog using it.  After I got Tucker’s camera, Michael’s iPod, a digital photo frame for Tucker to display the pictures he’ll take, and a pink vacuum cleaner (since Tucker has a habit of vacuuming up toothpicks which poke holes in the hose which causes it to whistle in a way that sets every dog in the apartment complex howling and got us reported for harboring banshees) I got something I’ve been wanting.  I’m kind of freaked out by how incredibly cool this new computer is because relatively speaking, it was dirt cheap.  I’ve been asking myself all day long whether I’d have shoved past a fellow human being to get it.  I don’t think so.  I sure hope not.  I’m glad I didn’t have to.   

Some days the sun shines through the leaves, the air is gold, the scents that surround you are apple and spice.  The faces of the people around you light up in welcome and love when you walk in the room.  You have a table of food, a glass of wine, and pie for dessert by the crackling fireplace.  You look around, your heart is full, and you want to say … Thanks.  Go ahead.  Say it.  It’s all good.

And for those of you who are having a more traditional Thanksgiving with irritable relatives, that political imbecile who’s not only wrong but insists on arguing with your brother-in-law, and the kids who scream through the house, and the turkey that’s a little dry, and the football on television even though you really dislike football but all the guys are watching (at least the ones not arguing politics) well, for you, I offer a Thanksgiving prayer for peace, comfort, and a quiet corner where you can look around at the glorious mess, and feel alive.  Big hugs to you.  Thank you for all you do. 

1. hang out with the boys
2. read
3. write
4. create stuff, jewelry, quilts, recipes
5. go for a walk
6. pack a picnic
7. lie in the sun and listen to music
8. work a jigsaw puzzle, crossword puzzle, sudoku puzzle,

  187. Clean house 

Oh, wait, that’s pretty much what I do now.
   

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

I keep thinking about Dawn saying that I’m the biggest Obama fan she knows.  Okay, the only fan she knows so I realize that there are scales of comparison here, but still, it’s made me stop and think.

It took me a long time to make up my mind who I would be voting for.  I carefully weighed positions during the Primary and General elections.  Obama wasn’t my first choice last Spring.  My concerns were centered around his lack of time in Washington (inexperience) and what I thought was a health care plan that didn’t go far enough.  After spending almost 5 years with no health insurance and then in a blast of irony the trip to the ER two weeks before I was eligible for coverage under my new employer’s health plan, that’s a hot topic for me. 

What I learned during that long period of being on the outside looking in was that no one cares if an uninsured person gets pneumonia.  And if you get something chronic, you’re screwed.  Unless you can afford to pay for out of pocket care, and lets be honest, I don’t know anyone who can afford to pay for much more than a sinus infection without insurance, there is no care for you.  47 million uninsured people is a national shame.  I wanted to support a candidate who would enact a plan to get medical coverage, ANY medical coverage to the most people as quickly as possible.  I didn’t think Obama’s plan would do that.  But I thought his plan was better than the one the Republicans put on the table after their convention. 

I really expected that once the election was over and the decisions were made I’d go back to telling “Tucker Tales” in my blog.  (He was home from school today, sick with a sinus infection.  I came home at lunch to check on him and found him asleep on the sofa.  Curled up under a blanket with just his feet sticking out the other side.  All around him, as though his body were the eye of a storm, was shredded toilet paper.  Apparently, he’d gotten a roll out for blowing his nose, don’t know why he would do that because there are boxes of facial tissue all over the apartment, but he did.  Once he fell asleep, the cats shredded it.  And you know cats, they have no long term memory.  So when I walked in they were looking at me like, “I can only remember back about 3 minutes and so well, as far as I can remember this mess has always been here.  Got NO idea who would have done this boss, weird, huh?”)

So why haven’t I gone back to telling kid stories?

Because I’m hearing things that scare me.  Can I say that out loud?  It’s not entertaining to me to see frightened people making irrational decisions based on an unfounded belief that they or their families are threatened by the President Elect.  It’s not something I can just ignore when I hear people, “normal” people, saying things that are hateful and wrong, making racial slurs, or blanket statements about his religious beliefs.  It’s messing with my head to see the cover of civility ripped away to reveal people saying that Obama will (should) be assassinated, or punishing children for speaking the name of the President Elect, or preaching sermons saying that his election was a sin. 

The best and only way I know to combat this insidious disease, is with information and experience.  Obviously, we don’t yet know what kind of President Obama will be, he’s not there yet.  President Bush was a wonderful Governor of Texas.  He reached across the aisle, formed coalitions with Democrats, and governed from a Centrist base.  Once he was installed as President, he governed completely differently than he had in Texas.  I was disappointed when he was first elected, but I was hopeful because I was willing to give him the benefit of doubt based on his record in Texas.  4 years later I opposed him as strongly as I could with my one vote because of his record as President.  Although past behavior may be the best predictor of future behavior, Bush has demonstrated that it’s not a fool-proof means of evaluating in advance.  

So while I can’t offer experience to reassure people, I can offer information.  My remarks in this blog should not be understood as faith in Obama.  I have hope that he will be a good President.  I agree with many (not all) of his positions.  Where I disagree with him, I expect I will make those differences public because I’m the kind of person who says what she thinks about most everything.  Right now, I’m not hearing people take issue with his positions or his actions.  What I’m hearing is a lot of bizarre fear-talk based on things he’s never said and actions he’s never taken. 

What I’d like is for people to look at what he really has put on the table.  Then let’s debate it.  Let’s discuss it.  Let’s see if it’s something we can support or something we don’t agree with.  But let’s not have any more of this fear of the boogey man.    Okay?

I’m on the side of reasoned discourse. 

… the school bus driver in Mississippi who kicked two students off her bus because they spoke Barak Obama’s name? 

I admit that I was disappointed when George W. Bush was re-elected.  I felt depressed for weeks.  I had already witnessed the effects of his economic policies and believed they would only grow worse.  I was concerned about the war in Iraq and the steady march away from doctrines governing justice between nations.  And I can’t remember ever hearing anything that came close to rivaling the actions some disappointed Republican voters have taken, or the bizarre things some Conservative talk-show hosts have said in their opposition to President Elect Obama.

I love the people who read my blog.  You leave long interesting comments.  Some of you ask questions.  Some of you from yesterday said, “Well, I’ve heard …” which I took as a challenge to go and find those quotes and see what they were about. 

For those who have heard that Barack Obama said that the Constitution is flawed.  He did.  It was in an interview in 2001 and he was talking about the issues of race in America.  He said that the U S Constitution is a remarkable document which has served this nation well for over 200 years, but that it also reflects the Colonial Culture from which it came.  In that interview (I’m not quoting him now, these are my words) Obama pointed to something that even the framers of the Constitution considered a problem.  Early critics of the document felt it should have clarified the status of slaves as human beings with rights.  But the authors were concerned that if they pushed the issue, the document would never be ratified.  So they left it for future generations to sort out and that little issue culminated in a Civil War about 70 years later.  That’s what he was talking about when he said it was flawed. 

Wanna hear for yourself?

GUNS: Does Obama oppose Second Amendment rights?  Here’s a Q and A from the debate in Las Vegas last January.

Q: When you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?

A: I don’t think that we can get that done. But what we can do is to provide just some common-sense enforcement. The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers. As president, I intend to make it happen. We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You’ve got the tradition of lawful gun ownership. It is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot. Then you’ve got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago. We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets.

I’ve gotten into a really bad habit of binging on weekends.  I tell myself I won’t, but then I start thinking about it mid afternoon.  I tell myself, “just one before bed” and I mean it.  About 9 o’clock, I start.  But you know how that story goes, I don’t stop with one or two.

Last night, it was 9 in a row and I finally passed out on the couch about 2 a.m.

Today it took me hours to get over that groggy feeling of slogging through heavy mud, but you know what?  I’d do it again. 

I’m so addicted to NCIS!  I love Jethro, Abby, Tony and Ziva.  I’m thrilled that in Season 4 McGee writes a best-selling novel.  No matter how much I promise myself I’m going to take it slowly, I’m consuming the DVD’s like they were my first potato chips after six months of low-carbing. 

What did you think I meant?

o_0

I know, it’s cheap, I’m almost sorry.

In truth, I’ve been thinking a lot this weekend and I was more than happy to dive into NCIS to distract me.  I’ve had unsettling experiences over the past couple of days which I’m just not able to wrap my mind around. 

On Friday, a woman at work, someone I respect and consider to be highly intelligent told me that she’s planning to buy a gun.  She believes that President-elect Obama will act quickly to ban weapons and she wants to have one.  She also believes that President-elect’s policies are going to so destroy the economy and that we will soon be scrabbling for food and fighting like animals. 

Yesterday morning I heard another woman say that President-elect Obama has already reversed his campaign positions on Israel and that he will move quickly to force Israel to pursue policies of appeasement with terrorists.

Can someone explain to me where this garbage is coming from?

Can anyone explain to me why otherwise intelligent people would believe it?

Today, I saw a video clip of a pastor in Wichita, Kansas who has posted on the sign outside his church a message saying, “America, we have a Muslim President, this is sin against the Lord.”  The interviewer asked him how it was that he could say that Obama was a Muslim, and read Obama’s statement saying that he is a Christian.  The pastor took exception to one of the follow-up statements that were included in the statement saying that it’s not a position held by Christians. 

Sadly, the Pastor was wrong.  There’s a very large group of theologians, highly respectable Christian theologians, who hold exactly the position Obama referenced. 

Sadly, the woman concerned about Israel was wrong.  Obama has made no statement reversing his campaign positions and in fact appointed Rahm Emanuel his Chief of Staff.  Since Mr. Emanuel, has the reputation of being the most staunch supporter of Israel in Washington, that would be a remarkably bizarre appointment if Obama intended to withdraw American support of Israel.

Sadly, the woman in my office is wrong.  Obama has made no statement indicating a desire to ban gun ownership. 

I believe she’s also wrong in her predictions of coming economic collapse, at least insofar as it might be Obama’s policies which would prompt such a thing.  The policies of the past 18 years have taken us so far down the supply-side, voodoo economics path that there may be a lot more difficulty putting the brakes on our current trajectory than we might wish.  Still, we are a long way from the economic collapse of the 30′s and somehow even in that very difficult time the country didn’t fall into a state of anarchy and mob rule. 

I say it’s sad that these people are wrong not because I think it would be an improvement if they were correct.  I say that because I think it’s tragically pathetic that people would believe such things.  I think it’s sad that otherwise intelligent people would uncritically accept statements which seem obviously designed to inspire fear. 

Propaganda.

Where’s it coming from and why would anyone believe it?  I have for years consoled myself with the thought that although people are gullible, when the statements are so bizarre they would set of the bs detectors of a three year old, they would laugh and go to bed. 

No one’s laughing.  And apparently none of us are sleeping well either.

Tucker has this habit of over-reacting to everything. 

So he came out tonight saying, “Ouch Ouch Ouch” for the 15th time in a few hours and I asked him what was wrong.  “It’s my finger.  It’s very unhappy.”

So I suggested that he talk to his finger, tell it to be a tough little cowboy, and that cowboys don’t cry.

He gave me the look.  “o_0″

“It’s not crying Mom, it’s cussing.  Just like a real cowboy.”

So I started reading Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”.  In the first three pages he vividly describes how it is that Senators and Representatives make impassioned speeches and engage in lively debate with … no one.  It’s depressing.  I really liked the movies about when Jimmy Stewart went to Washington and he made the great speech and everyone listened and things got done.  I wonder if it ever happened that way.

I still haven’t finished the Philosophy and Bullshit book, but I accidentally left it at work.  So I’ll be reading two books simultaneously.  I can do it, I’m a big girl. 

About that wine …

There’s a reason they put that kangaroo with the big feet on the label of that wine … because it kicks!

I had two glasses of wine last night, and it was about four hours before everything stopped spinning.  I wasn’t able to have my oatmeal this morning because I was still a bit queasy.  Lightweight much?  Since I missed my oatmeal, I’m pretty sure the positive effects of having red wine were cancelled out by the negative effects of what I actually did have for breakfast.  Nothing. 

So I’m trying to lower my cholesterol level.  In addition to having oatmeal every day, taking garlique tablets, and trying to work up a sweat several times a week, I’m also from time to time having a glass of red wine.  I like Merlot.  So I’ve discovered this Yellow Tail Merlot from Australia. 

I like it a little too much.  Tonight, I had seconds. 

I don’t know about my cholesterol, but my inhibitions are down.  I’m tempted to put the toilet paper on the roll so that the paper comes under instead of over.  I’m tempted to go to bed without doing dishes.  I’m tempted to log in to Yahoo and play Literati! 

Those Kangaroos pack a powerful punch. 

What do you do when your inhibitions are down?