So this is Christmas…

My husband has been giving me grief lately, because he feels like he married the next John Grogan. The only thing I seem to post about on this blog are my dogs.

Well, let’s face it, I’ve had a rough couple of years in terms of my life with dogs. First, I lose my best friend and our first family dog. Then we bring home Mugen and he starts sewing us up and then we adopt Lucy and feel like the family is complete only to have her taken from us by cancer less than two years later. Along the way, we adopted Jazzmin because she needed someplace to go and when Lucy was gone, I was so horribly lonely without her that my husband decided we needed a third again and we adopted Jet. That’s a lot of doing with dogs in three years, so I have a lot to talk about when it comes to my crew. I apologize if that’s not what you were hoping to read on my blog.

I know I have bounced around from topic to topic over the years, but a lot of that was due to my going through a growing up phase. I had to figure out who I was as an adult, you see, and I grew up way too fast in terms of taking responsibility. I didn’t have time to sort through this crap along the way, I was too busy being a mom and taking care of a family to do that. So… here I am, having stopped talking about all of the things that I used to discuss here because I made up my mind on the issues and I never really explained why or how I got there.

I’ve made up my mind that our entire political system is nothing but a big fat scam. The guys on both sides of the aisle lie to us to get votes. They say they are going to give you this or that and make your life better, but they fail to tell you the truth: The only person that has the power to make your life better is you. The only way to make the world a better place is to stop being a douche and start donating to charity, real charity that actually gives money to help your cause, not some BS lobbying group. You should be smart enough to do your own research and know the difference between a group of people who are really doing some good, like say your local animal shelter, and a bunch of guys who are lining their pockets so they can afford to live the good life in Washington DC, such as the Humane Society of the United States, and if you’re not smart enough to figure that out, then you’re probably not reading my blog either. So I don’t discuss politics anymore. It’s a waste of time for both of us. Hopefully, you will grow and mature enough to figure out that the only way your situation is going to get better, is if you get off your ass and do something about it and if you want to change somebody else’s situation then you have to get personally involved. The government is NOT going to help the homeless guy on the street corner get back on his feet, but you can, if you want to. You just have to reach out and choose it.

I’ve made my decisions regarding technology and I’m not really interested in debating my choices on the internet anymore because it really does feel like it’s Apple vs The Geeks and guys, I dunno if you noticed, but I’m not really a “geek”. I’m geeky. I love Star Wars and Star Trek. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood involve sitting in front of the television with my dad watching Max Headroom. I used to know how to code over a decade ago. I couldn’t build a website now, even if doing so meant saving my own life. I do appreciate what it is to be a geek though because I married one and because I used to live that life, but somewhere along the way, my geekiness faded away and melted into motherhood. I haven’t given it up completely, but I can’t sit here and debate with you about why Android is better. All I can tell you is that I think that using an Android phone is a pain in the ass. The web browser has never been in the same place twice on any phone I have handled. The battery life kinda sucks and I could give two shits if the CPU is faster or the screen is bigger. I want the darned thing to go all day AND fit in the back pocket of my jeans. That’s what I want. If it’s not what you want, fine. Go buy the phone you want and leave me alone with the one I wanted, k?

Then there’s the whole “Mac” issue. I’m gonna say this once: If you do not use a Mac as your primary computer and you admit to your friends that you hate Apple products, do not offer to do tech support for them! I get so frustrated with people complaining about how difficult Apple products are to use, when they can’t figure out three little words that would make their lives easier: “drag and drop”. Geeks overcomplicate and over think things to the point of putting themselves through hell rather than attempting to use the most obvious solution to their problems. In the Apple universe, that obvious solution usually works. I can’t tell you how many complaint sessions I have ended by saying, “Did you try this really obvious fix that would have solved the whole problem if you’d just done it that way in the first place?”

I get it though, really I do. Some people don’t like things to be easy. That’s a personal preference though, not a standard by which the device itself should be measured. So, you go ahead and work out how you are going to put that square peg in that round hole and I will see you later. If you have a friend that needs help with their Apple product, send them my way. I will be only too happy to bail them out. It will be a hell of a lot less stress for everyone.

But that’s not what I really came here to talk about, this post was supposed to be about Christmas.

Guess I got a little side tracked.

Osama bin Laden is Dead.

I was going to write a piece about Script Frenzy.

I had planned to sit down this morning and really go through everything that had happened while I was learning how to write a stage play over the last month.
It’s amazing how so few words can change your world and change your direction.

Osama bin Laden is dead.

There are conspiracy theorists who will say that he lives on, that the burial at sea wasn’t good enough for them. To them, I have to say: The CIA has photos. The president has seen the photos. I may not agree with President Obama’s politics, and I do believe he is the kind of man that would lie about something like this to make himself look good, but I do not believe that he is lying. There’s also the little matter of the CIA having a confirmed DNA match to bin Laden’s sister.

So there it is.

Osama bin Laden is dead.

It has been almost ten years since I first heard the man’s name spoken. I had no clue who he was until September 11, 2001. His name came up in a discussion on the events of the day on the news. I had never heard of Al Qaeda before then. I was mystified as to how these people who lived half way around the world, could change my life, could invade my country and murder so many innocents.

I still remember watching people jump out of the World Trade Center on national news. The footage was so brief, CNN only showed it once by accident and I happened to be looking at the television at the exact moment that a man or woman jumped out of a 50th floor window. That is how desperate things were that day.

I remember sitting with my best friend in my living room, watching her cry. I remember her looking away from the television and begging me to turn it off because she couldn’t watch it anymore. I had been so stunned by the images on the TV, that the horror of it all did not sink in until the next day. I remember being afraid for weeks afterwards and not sleeping a few nights later, because there was a rare thunderstorm and I thought that someone was bombing the nearby Air Force Base. I remember sitting on a park bench with a friend as our children played on the swings and both of us stopping cold as a siren went off nearby. It turned out to be from a fire truck, but at the time, we thought we were going to have to find a bomb shelter.

We all made plans for how we would live if it came down to war and our men had to leave us. We all made plans for how the children would be cared for and how we would step in for each other. Those of us that could, donated blood. Those of us that could not, prayed for our nation, for our children and for ourselves.

I had never lived in such fear.

I have carried that fear with me ever since.

In spite of my fear, I believed in our men and women in uniform. I believed that our government would never, ever, let such an atrocity stand. Politics aside, the one thing that encouraged me about Barack Obama as president was that I felt the man would not forget about September 11th. How could anyone who was alive that day, ever forget?

I know that I never will.

Now, our children are nearly grown, but they can step into the wide, wide world and take their first steps on the path to adulthood knowing that the man who killed all of those people, the man responsible for the worst attack on American soil in the history of our nation, is dead.

If I weren’t crying so hard with relief right now, I’d be dancing in the street just like the Palestinians did on September 11th.

Now it’s our turn to dance. Our turn to celebrate victory. I will not lie to you and tell you that I grieve for this man, nor do I mourn his loss. I mourn what he took from me, the sense of safety and security that no one had ever launched an attack against us at home. I mourn the peaceful life that I lived without anger directed at a human being that I had never even met. I mourn for the person that I was before September 11th, because that girl died that day.

I was much more of a free spirit. I was much more accepting of others and believed, without a shred of doubt, in the innate kindness of human beings. When those planes flew into the twin towers, those beliefs failed to help me sleep at night. The only comfort that I had, was that our government would hunt that son of a bitch down and ruin every single thing that he ever loved.

The second part was, perhaps a bit idealistic on my part, but the first part, I never doubted. I knew that our government would never stop pursuing him.

Today, as I sit here crying, now in grief at the memory of all who died on September 11th and more than a little bit for the young woman that I was before that day, and can never be again, I know that our government did not fail me in this one thing and that every single American who remembers that day stands with me in solidarity. We are in tears for what we have lost but we have no remorse or regret for the lengths we have had to go to, in order to make it right.

God does bless America, from time to time.

Old Dog

There is a certain peace and serenity that can be found in the company of an old dog. I experience this every Saturday morning when Miss Lucy wakes me up before the sun comes up to take her outside. I step outside with her and watch her run around the yard and she smiles and I smile and then she comes inside, taking her time up the stairs leading to my deck so that she doesn’t fall. Then we come inside and she curls up on the family room sofa and I sit down with her and we just… stay like that.

Sometimes, it’s really nice to just… be.

I love old dogs. They have a wisdom and a knowledge that comes with an entire lifetime’s worth of experience. They have the most beautiful souls. There is nothing more wonderful in my world than the quiet, constant, companionship of an old dog.

Even if she does wake me up at 6 am on a Saturday, so I can take her out to potty in the freezing ass cold. At least she comes back inside for the snuggling part. This is the whole reason I’m awake this morning, because Lucy needed her special “Mom” time.

I love you Miss Lucy… even though you bark at me at 5:45 every morning to wake me up, and then sit on my feet until I roll out of bed with you, I just don’t even care. I love you anyway because you’re my pretty yellow girl.

Like Magic

So it’s been crazy this last week.

I started NaNoWriMo.

The basement smells like Axe, so I can’t go down there to hide and write. On top of all of that, I’ve had the flu, hubby passed his written FAA exam, one of my NaNo friends finally, after 29 hours of labor, gave birth this morning at 1:45 am and I was miserable that I could not be at the hospital with her because I’m contagious. She texted me frequently and sounded so scared, but I know that I was scared too when I was having my first child, I did my best to keep her calm via text message and be supportive. I’m surprised that no one took her phone away from her. I just wish I could have been there to hold her hand. I hope she knows that I was there in spirit.

This gal amazes me. I can’t believe she’s still intending on participating in NaNo this year, but she has done it every year for the last three at least. She said she wasn’t going to stop now.

Talk about dedication. I admire that. She is so brave and so strong. I just know that she and her newborn son are going to have a wonderful life.

To make matters more interesting, because it really DOES get more interesting, Lucy’s due for chemo next week. We’re expecting snow soon and I’m going to have to talk to the doctors and find out if it’s possible to make arrangements for someone here to give Lucy her final dose of vinblastine safely, if we have a snow storm that I can’t drive through. I wonder if the risk of that is even worth the benefits of the final dose of chemo at this point. If an unqualified doctor doses vinblastine improperly, it could cause tissue damage to Lucy’s leg.

I think I would rather skip the dose and risk having cancer show up sooner. I can’t imagine how excruciating it would be to have pain in your leg like Dr. House, but I suspect that’s about the size of what would happen if someone missed the vein. I know they make doggie vicodin, but unfortunately, I don’t see a large market for cool canes for dogs. Lucy would be missing out on a critical piece of attire.

We may be able to fly Lucy to Pullman for that last dose if it snows bad enough. Hubby’s flight instructor has offered to ride along with him if he rents the plane. That seems a bit over the top to me, to rent a plane to take Lucy to Pullman for chemo. I think they just want to make the flight because hubby needs the hours and are trying to come up with excuses to fly.

As if they need to come up with excuses. I’m so exhausted right now, they could tell me it was kumquat season and I’d buy it.

I’ve pulled more than one late night to get some writing in. I haven’t stayed up past midnight to work on insane amounts of writing material since um… 2008. Last year’s NaNo, I paced myself and just barely made the goal. This year though, my goal is not 50,000 words. It’s to get the majority of the frame work for a COMPLETE story down. 50,000 words is actually only about 150 pages of material. It is not enough for a novel. It’s enough for half of a really short one.

Through all of this, Lucy and Mugen have been my writing companions. They have taken up the banner for Reilly, who sat quietly at my side during 2008, gently nudging his nose into my armpit when I would get tired. Reilly was the best writing companion a girl could ever have. He was quietly vigilant and his support and his love for me just flowed out of his eyes when I looked at him. I knew he wanted me to do it. I knew that he believed in me. He stood beside me during my first NaNo and got me through it. I had the confidence to do it because he was with me.

Lucy and Mugen are taking turns splitting up the job this year. Last year, Mugen was more of a distraction than a help and Lucy wasn’t sure that she actually liked me yet. She liked my husband pretty well, so I flew solo for most of the 2009 NaNo season. It was rough because that novel was so intensely personal to me. It was all about Reilly. Reilly was with me in spirit as I wrote, and I spent most of last year crying as I typed.

This year is different though. This year, I’m not alone. It took some time, and my husband had to have more than one conversation with Mugen about how he had very big shoes to fill. As it turns out, it took two dogs to fill those shoes. They were just too massive for one dog to fill alone. He was just too good. I still miss Reilly every single day, but it’s hard to focus on the loss when a beautiful blonde barks at you at 7 am.

See, Lucy takes the early morning shift.

Lucy takes her job, very, very seriously.

If Lucy does not manage to wake me up by barking at my head, she moves around to the other side of the bed to wake up my hubby. When she does this, I’m sure she’s channeling Reilly’s spirit. Reilly never barked at us, but he would pace from one side of the bed to the other, shoving his nose under our hands until he’d managed to wiggle his head up under the sheets so he could put his cold nose in someone’s armpit. This was very effective for him.

Lucy finds barking works best for her because my hubby wakes up and says, “LUCY! What is the problem girl?” and then he scratches behind her ears and falls back to sleep. Him shouting “LUCY!” is what wakes me up. After Lucy has had her morning ear scratch from my hubby, she comes over to my side of the bed and barks until I move from a laying down position, to a sitting position.

This is when she knows her efforts have met with a measure of success. She then relaxes and takes a seat on her dog bed and wiggles until I grab my fuzzy red bath robe and head down the stairs with her then I open the back door and send her outside to play while I make some coffee or tea.

After she comes back in, she barks at me until I’m awake enough to remember that she should be getting her pills BEFORE breakfast and not after, so then I give her her pills and she settles down for a nap on the sofa, on the complete opposite end of the house from where I write.

She only sleeps there until I start typing. Once she hears my fingers hit the keyboard, she relocates and lays down in the floor underneath my dining room table where I am trying desperately to come up with something more substantial than the bad 1990′s anthem for clinical depression that’s been playing over and over in my head for the last fifteen minutes. And then, when she puts her nose over the top of my foot, I swear it’s like magic.

My muse wakes up and we begin to dance.

My NaNoWriMo Word Count as of this morning, is 16,536. What’s yours?

A Morning in the Life of 2 Gemini

So I got up on time this morning.

Daughter overslept.

Son got up on time.

Hubby took daughter to school and I took son to school and up to this point, everything was totally ok.

I get the son to school and I come home to discover that hubby has left me with the oatmeal that I do not eat for breakfast… and no other breakfast supplies. I checked the board where we write down the stuff we’re out of before I left because I pass 2 grocery stores and several breakfast establishments on the way back from taking the son to school. I also checked the pantry, just in case.

Read more »

First Day at Puppy School!

Mugen’s first day at Puppy Kindergarten was last night. I was disturbed by the fact that he was the only Lab in the class. There were five german shepherds, a soft coated wheaton terrier, a chihuahua and a sheltie… Oh and a flat coat retriever.

Read more »

Death Wish

I know that not everyone wants to know this, but it is important to my story. See… I am PMS’ing this week. My PMS is brutal. My husband wants me to get on medication for it, except they can’t put me on medication for it (I have adverse reactions to birth control and all those warnings that they say women shouldn’t be or do when they’re on the pill… I do or am almost all of them).

This is Mugen’s second run-in with me on PMS.

Read more »

September 11th, 2009

Ever since the terrorist attacks on the world trade center in 2001, I have used this day as a day of reflection. It was the first day of my adult life when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life would change forever as I watched events unfold. My heart broke as I watched the buildings collapse on CNN. My confidence in my safety sank and for weeks afterward, I didn’t sleep as soundly as I normally do.

Each year, on this day, the anniversary of the WTC collapse, I like to write a blog post and offer my heartfelt condolences to those who lost loved ones that day, but this year it feels a little bit different for me. I still feel for the families of those who died, but somehow I feel more as if there was something I lost that day too. We all did.

We all lost a little piece of our freedom.

Read more »

Cents and Nonsense

I saw the news this morning that the Obama administration told Citibank to ditch their plans to order a 50 million dollar jet from a French company and thought, “Wow… that jet represented jobs for French workers. I bet France is pissed.” and it occurred to me that no one is thinking about the bigger picture when it comes to the economy.

I believe that it is necessary to spend money in order to create stability in a capitalistic environment. I also believe that manufacturing jobs in France probably mean offices in the US that employ Americans. Now, I’m not sure that this is the actual case in this specific situation, but in most cases I suspect it is the truth.

Read more »

30 Civilians, Including Children Dead in Israeli Attacks on Gaza?

And how many Israeli children died or were injured when Hamas launched ROCKETS on civilian targets within Israel?

Is Reuters publishing that number in their article?

No.

Read more »