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Seminole, Texas, United States
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Sir Winston Churchill

Friday, September 29

Political Clarification

Some of my favorite blogs (mine included) tend to post political subject matter once in a while. All of it very interesting reading. I rarely dismiss these kind of postings in search of lighter, fluffier fare.

Rightly or wrongly, in the past I have posted my own quasi-informed political jibberish. And I know I have not projected a clear picture of my political leanings. It bothers me that someone (even a stranger) would jump to the wrong conclusions as to where my heart is at regarding this particular topic.

- I am a registered Republican voter.

- I am sadly disappointed in the current administration. That goes for our Governor, too.

- I believe that terrorists will do whatever it takes to achieve their goal - they see it as their duty to rid the earth of us "infidels."

- I believe that our Constitution has been and is being dismantled not only by politicians but by American citizens as well. Democrats and Republicans are both guilty of this.

- I am a liberal conservative. I believe that gay couples should be entitled to the same miseries and benefits as straight couples. I don't give a rat's rump whether someone's "companion" (or whatever) receives insurance benefits or anything else. If someone is entitled to it for themselves and their family, they should be free to choose who they deem "family" if they are paying the premiums.

- Miss Black America and Disney World GLAD Day (and the like) piss me off. I thought the whole idea was everybody gets treated equally. Because we all know how well anything strictly for "white folk only" would go over. So long as particular "groups" are allowed to be exclusive of someone, then we have achieved equality for no one.

- I work every day to be a good person and to be strong in my faith. That doesn't make me better or worse than anyone else. The world's problems aren't about me, it's all about us.

- It doesn't bother me that I have to get non-prescription cold medicine from the pharmacist. I'm not doing anything illegal with it so if this protocol is helpful in keeping meth cooks from getting their product created, fine by me.

- I enjoy political discussions with people who have other views (and party affiliations) so long as the conversation is sane and reasonable. I refuse to engage in discussions with people who won't shut up until they are convinced that I "see it their way."

- I see my right to vote as a privilege and an honor and I USE IT! (FYI to all you old buggers in Mason County - my husband is ONE man. He should not have to knock on every single door to get votes. We spend a lot of our own limited personal funds to pay for newspaper, billboard, and radio advertising informing voters about my husband, his qualifications and his stance on given matters pertaining to the office of Sheriff. A candidate should not get your vote because they knocked on your door and the other guy didn't. Casting your vote is a privilege and it is your DUTY to make yourself knowledgeable about each candidate and what they stand for. Any less effort from you makes you a poor voter so stay home and out of the way of more responsible and informed voters.)

My soapbox is being put away now. Thanks for your patience in listening.

Thursday, September 28

Not a good day for . . .

for me to be hopped up on chocolate and Blogger to be on the fritz.

Just spreadin the love . . .

Here's one of my very favorite blogs by Gavin.

It's a guaranteed giggle everytime!

Costume Quandary

You ever heard that saying, "Somebody stop me before I volunteer again!!" Well, somebody seriously needs to stop me. Seriously.

Last year in my excitement about the Bear's first Halloween (okay - technically it was his second but really it was the first one that he was semi-aware of), I went and opened my big yap to some other parent friends and said, "Hey, why don't we do a Halloween Hayride and take the kids around to a dozen houses or so and then have an after party with a bonfire and munchies and everything?!?!!" Everybody was like, "Yeah, that sounds great!! Let's do it!! You organize it."

Now organizing something like a Halloween Hayride for 24 kids (most of them toddlers) may not sound like much but, trust me, I could have taken a leave of absence from my full-time job to plan it and still not had any free time. There's the rig (truck and trailer) to line up, multiple bales of hay for everyone to sit on (and hay ain't cheap around here after a drought), you gotta call all the folks you know who don't have little ones that would want to hand out candy to a gaggle of rowdy 2-foot Trick-or-Treaters. Then there's the after party stuff to plan and giving a dozen set of parents their marching orders on what to bring and where to bring it and what time to be where.

Well, apparently my big yap knows the calendar because it went said the same thing again this year. Plus it added an idiotic comment like, " . . . and hey! we should do this every year and make it an annual event!!!" SOMEBODY STOP ME! SERIOUSLY!

Now for the actual purpose of this post. The Bear's costume. His first costume at 7 months was a cute little black and white bull with horns and everything. See the look of pure misery on his face? Awwww

And last year he wasn't any happier with the costume of choice: Frankenstein. See same look of misery on his face in picture 2. Awwww

Last year Daddy got the honors of riding on the trailer with the Bear and do all the trick-or-treating while I navigated the truck on a pre-determined map of candy locations.

Now this year it's my turn to Trick-or-Treat with the Bear and I want to dress up, too! Daddy wants him to be a cowboy or Spider Man or Bob the Builder but I happened upon a great costume website and how darling would it be if I dressed up as Snow White and he went as Prince Charming??!!!? My husband had this look of "Oh for the love of pete, woman, don't do that to my son!"

We'll see what happens. Cuz everybody knows if Momma ain't happy . . . nobody's happy.

Quote of the Day

"If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's in English, thank a soldier."

- - bumper sticker

Wednesday, September 27

Something that made me go "hmmmm . . ."

Let me first start by stating that I in no way consider myself a great philosopher or adept political mind. The whole US military situation currently in Iraq is one that I, personally, support. I come from a military family and, right or wrong, I believe that our armed forces do their best to keep our freedoms intact. Whether they are currently being led in the correct or incorrect manner is an argument best left for another day.

This post is about the fact that I realized something this morning. I am currently listening to Def Leppard's "Hysteria" album in my CD player. One song on that album is called "Gods of War." I never really listened closely to the spoken words at the end of the song before but today, for some reason, my attention was caught and I heard the words.

This album was put out in, what? 1987? If you're not familiar, it starts out like this:

When we fall down
When we walk into silence
When we shadow the sun
Then the damage is done
Put away that gun!

Anyways, toward the end of the song there is a lot of explosion and war-zone like sound effects and in the midst of these sound effects is former President Ronald Reagan's voice. I'm guessing his comments are sound bites from media briefings or presidential speeches or the like. Included in his comments are:

"We are not going to tolerate terrorist attacks . . ."

"They counted on America being passive. They counted wrong."

"We will not cave in."

"Today we did what had to be done."

Call me dense but why are we still dealing with these lunatics? If everyone else in the world is against terrorists, after 20+ years, why are they still able to function cohesively? Because from what I can tell, they are not having many problems with manpower and accomplishing, if nothing else, their short-term goals - i.e., bombing public places and killing innocent people.

Do I like the idea of "big brother"? No.

Do I like the idea of my child living in an extremist, intolerant society? Absolutely not!

Does the obliteration of terrorist fanatics bother me? Not if it means being able to give my son a country that allows him to freely choose his religion, career, life partner, opinions, etc etc.

Like it has been said, "It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it."

Friday, September 22

Thursday, September 21

Quote of the Day

If I can be of any help, you're in more trouble than I thought.

Wednesday, September 20

My Days are Numbered

I'm going to get a little (okay - a lot) wistful on you here for a bit.

I went home at lunch today to try to get a few chores done. Anyone else out there with a 2.5 year old will understand where I'm coming from because let's face it: the little buggers are detrimal to your ability to complete any given task including, but not limited to, going to the restroom. Apparently this skill is somewhere in their job description and they zealously and consistently maintain high marks in this particular area of being a 2.5 year old.

So I am methodically unloading (not much to unload because the dishwasher has lately become just another cupboard for clean dishes that get used frequently) the few clean dishes and begin to put in the dirty dishes that have been stacking up for the last few days. I really have no idea why we have dirty dishes because nobody cooks and we pretty much all eat out of a bag or a box.

Anyways, I was putting all the little colored plastic forks and spoons and sippy cups in to be washed when the thought suddenly struck me: One day soon there will not be any little colorful forks and spoons and cups to wash. Such a feeling of sadness washed over me that I almost started crying. My little boy is not a baby anymore. He's walking and talking and so many times of late he adamantly refuses my or Daddy's help to go to the potty or pull up his training pants or put on his boots or walk up/down the front steps or get in/out of the truck. He's growing at such a rapid rate it seems. I'm running to keep up with him that I don't have time to reminisce about his baby days. They literally flew by.

Maybe that had something to do with the sleep deprivation I was suffering from. For those of you who were lucky enough to have a new baby sleep through the night the first night home from the hospital, you won't understand what I am talking about. At 2.5 he is just now starting to sleep through the night. The pediatrician tells me that some kids just don't sleep their full 10-12 hours for the first couple of years. It's common. But it still makes me kind of angry that I was soooooo exhausted that I barely remember his first year. My body was on auto pilot after the first two weeks.

And now here we are: He's 2.5 going on 12 and I'm blubbering over plastic utensils. Where did the time go? Why did my body require so much sleep that I can't even remember the joy of being a new mommy to a beautiful blue-eyed auburn fuzz-headed little angel?

I read a piece by Anna Quindlan not too long ago wherein she talked about putting too much thought into getting things done (wake up, breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, school, home, dinner, bath, book, prayers, bed) and not enough time spent enjoying the moments and fully living in them. The day of a picnic in the backyard, what did we eat? what did they play with? how did they sound when they giggled? *sigh*

If my days are numbered then I'm going to work at making them count. I'm going to click on my mental recorder every time he says "I ruv you, Momma" and if we play so long outside that he's late getting to bed - big deal. We'll play til we're all played out and at the end of the day, he'll fall asleep knowing that Momma ruvs him, too. More than he'll ever know.

Til he has little ones of his own.

Monday, September 18

yeah . . . but you should see the other guy!

Why is it that all of my smart-aleck remarks about others somehow always come back and bite me in the a$$?

Case in point: I have on numerous occasions made some hilarious comments about redneck chicks who wear shorts and steel-toed boots. With my timing and forked tongue, I can come up with quite the zingers. Apparently the Guy Upstairs is not so appreciative of my smarmy sense of humor because most of the time it does not go without some kind of "acknowledgment."

The most recent acknowledgment to come my way happened on Tuesday evening last week. Hubby and I decided to do a little clean up around the new horse trough and clear out some softball-sized rocks before the horses stepped and twisted their legs. Well, one rock in particular was not coming out of the ground as easy as it should so I grabbed a metal-pronged rake to "pick" it out. Now, here's the funny part. I'm doing all this "farmin work" in flip flops. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I bet I don't have to tell you what happened next.

You guessed it - - the rake skipped off the rock and one of the prongs went straight into my foot between two of my toes. prunk!! It punctured a hole right next to my second toe and went about an inch into my foot. I didn't scream or holler but Hubby saw it happen and he looked at me like he was waiting for me to start screaming bloody murder. What I did say was . . . "hmmm, that's not good." Hubby was starting to freak and wanted me to go to the ER for stitches but I calmed him down while I hobbled on one foot into the house to wash it off and survey the damage.

Once I got it cleaned off it was evident that I only had a puncture wound and the bleeding had subsided so (hopefully) I didn't hit a main vein. I'm not going to say it didn't hurt like son of a gun but it hurt less than I expected. I got up the next morning and went to our local clinic and got a tetanus shot (which, by the way, hurt worse than my attempt to skewer my tootsie).

The funnest part of this ordeal has been the colorful characteristics my toe has taken on in the last 6 days. It went from light blue to light purple to dark purple/red to dark blue/purple to a mottled purple/blue/brown/yellow.

All this to tell me that the redneck chicks in shorts and steel-toed boots are apparently smarter than me.

Wednesday, September 13

What You've All Been Waiting For . . . My Top 100

Warning: The opinions expressed herein are solely that of the named blogger and are in no way to be construed as that of her husband, friends, or other family members although, despite her taste in music, they still love her.

The following is in alpha order to discourage false importance of placement within the List:

A Thousand Beautiful Things - Annie Lennox
A Woman's Work - Kate Bush
Amarillo by Morning - George Strait
Amazed - Lonestar
Ashes by Now - Leeann Womack
At Last - Etta James
Beautiful Child - Fleetwood Mac
Best of My Love - Eagles
Better Be Good to Me - Tina Turner
Bless the Broken Road - Rascal Flatts
Bolero - Ravel
Can't Get Enough of Your Love - Barry White
Can't Get Used to Losing You - Andy Williams
Carol of the Bells (Christmas)
Celebrity Skin - Hole
Chances Are - Johnny Mathis
Coast of Colorado - Skip Ewing
Dirrty - Christina Aguilara
Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys
Easy - The Commodores
Faithfully - Journey
Feel My Body - Headpins
Fly Me to the Moon - Frank Sinatra
Follow You Home - Nickelback
For the Good Times - Ray Price
Funkytown - Lipps Inc.
Ghost in the House - Shenandoah
Got to Get You Into My Life - Earth Wind & Fire
Got to Give it Up - Marvin Gaye
Happiest Girl in the Whole USA - Donna Fargo
He Stopped Loving Her Today - George Jones
Home - Sheryl Crow
I Believe in You - Don Williams
I Can Only Imagine - MercyMe
I Can't Seem to Make You Mine - The Clientele
I Fall to Pieces - Patsy Cline
I Still Believe in You - Vince Gill
If I Were You - Stevie Nicks
I'll Think of Something - Mark Chesnutt
It's Only Make Believe - Conway Twitty
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Just My Imagination - The Temptations
Knock on Wood - Amii Stewart
Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
Let's Stay Together - Al Green
Lonely No More - Rob Thomas
Make It With You - Bread
Mississippi - Train
Moon River - Andy Williams
Moondance - Van Morrison
My Hero - Foo Fighters
My Romance - Carly Simon
My Sacrifice - Creed
My Testimony - Mary J Blige
Naughty Naughty - John Parr
Neon Moon - Brooks & Dunn
Night and Day - Tony Bennett
Nocturne - Secret Garden
Nowhere and Everywhere - Michelle Lewis
Oh, Jesus, I Have Promised
One More Day - Diamond Rio
Pink - Aerosmith
Play the Game Tonight - Kansas
Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard
Rescue You - Joe Lynn Turner
Return to Me - Dean Martin
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini - Rachmaninoff
Screamin in the Night - Krokus
September - Earth Wind & Fire
Shame on the Moon - Bob Seger
She Thinks I Still Care - George Jones
She's Not There - Santana
Skin - Collective Soul
Some Fools Never Learn - Steve Wariner
Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
Stayin Alive - Bee Gees
Stampin at the Savoy - Glenn Miller
Stormy Weather - Lena Horne
Stuck on You - Bobby Caldwell
Sure Can Smell the Rain - Blackhawk
Tearin Out My Heart - Rainbow
That's the Way I Like It - KC & the Sunshine Band
The Way You Look Tonight - Tony Bennett
These Are the Days - Van Morrison
Thunderstruck - AC/DC
Unwound - George Strait
Up on the Roof - The Drifters
Voices Carry - Til Tuesday
Waiting for a Girl Like You - Foreigner
Wasted Time - Eagles
We'll Burn that Bridge - Brooks & Dunn
What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life - Michel Legrand
What's Goin On - Marvin Gaye
Where the River Flows - Collective Soul
Woman - Neneh Cherry
Workin My Way Back to You, Girl - The Spinners
You Don't Know Me - Ray Charles
You Make Me Sick - Pink
You Send Me - Sam Cooke
You Won't Be Mine - Matchbox 20

okay

let the heckling begin . . .

Wednesday, September 6

Another one bites the dust.

Y'know, I get so little pleasure from television these days. I guess that's a good thing in the great scheme of things but a little sad. It foretells of the end of an era. Because, you see, I was a TV kid. Oh yeah, my parents tried to restrict my access to its effervescent siren song on a daily basis.

"Get outside and get some fresh air! You're turning grey for pete's sake!"

"Sit any closer to that tv and you'll go blind!"

"Hey look! Your brother got your mini bike out - some kid is getting on it!!"

All to no avail. I had to have my fix of the Mickey Mouse Club (the original 50s version). And who could think of completing mundane chores when Felix the Cat was up to his tricks with that magic bag?!! Then there was the afternoon staple of all 70s latchkey kids: The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. I know you feel me.

Wait . . . . where was I going with this?

Oh yeah . . . so my current choices for good quality time with my television are few to say the least. But yesterday I had myself all lathered up for the highly anticipated season premiere of Nip/Tuck. meh

Apparently the writers from seasons past are no longer with the show or they are still with the show but have already given us their best stuff. Is it just me or are the homosexual overtones between best friends Sean and Christian just a little too much? Not that I have any problem with gay relationships portrayed on tv. Will & Grace will always have a special place in my tv memory. But c'mon . . . for the past 3 years Sean and Christian have portrayed best friends who have been through some serious stuff together (even Christian siring a son with gullible Sean's wife). Do the writers of this show seriously expect us to buy that after a supposed 20+ year friendship, Christian all of a sudden figures out that he might have romantic feelings for Sean? Guess what people?!! Christian's "feelings" are not those of homosexuality - it's called INSECURITY!! This particular character has smacked of emotional insecurity from episode 1.

And what about Kimber? Where was she? And Matt? "He's in the garage" - that's all we get about him in the season premiere?

Oh and one more thing: I am so tired seeing these so-called professional females (detectives, psychologists, etc) continually turning around and lifting their skirts so Christian can have his doggy booty call. That is SO not believable. There's a little thing called ethics that almost all professionals have to adhere to if they don't want to lose their licenses and no good cop is going to jeopardize the integrity of an investigation for a quickie with Dr. Incompetent.

Looks like my short list of favorite shows just got shorter.

*sigh* just my opinion