what newt said

"Why is it political for the president of the United States to discuss education?"--Newt Gingrich
defending then-President George H.W. Bush's nationally televised speech to schoolchildren.

What I wrote the superintendent

I just wanted to send you an email to let you know I appreciate that you are not canceling the President's address to schoolchildren next Tuesday. My biggest concern when I began hearing that some schools, and school districts around the country were "boycotting" the speech was that we are setting dangerous precedent by implying that children should not be allowed to listen to the President of the United States speak to them directly about the importance of education because of the wild fears by some parents that their children might hear a "political" message. Indeed it is these parents who are themselves attaching a political agenda to this address.

And, it is those same parents who are jeopardizing their children's education by implying that if you disagree with someone's views you should not listen to them. And it is especially disturbing that parents are allowing their children to believe that the office of the President should be so disrespected. This is where I feel it becomes a bad precedent to establish...if this President is not allowed to address schoolchildren in a nationwide address—which both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush have done in the past—then no President (regardless of political affiliation) in the future should be allowed to address schoolchildren. Similarly, if I disagree with the politics of a Kentucky elected official (senator or representative) and they schedule a visit to my children's school, do I have the right to ask that my children not attend that event? This is where it can quickly become complicated, and an unnecessary obstruction to our children's education.

The President plans to speak to the children about ways they can achieve through education...a topic specific to the work they do at school. He has spoken on this topic many times, and has often emphasized how important it is for children to read, and how important it is for parents to take time to read with children. I am really saddened that some parents in this county are so threatened by the President's political views that they are not allowing their children to listen to the leader of their country encourage them to take advantage of the opportunities they have to learn at their schools.

My children will hear this address...and it is very important to me that they do hear it at school. I will be discussing what the President says in his address that evening with them, and I hope that other parents will do the same. Meanwhile, I just wanted you to know--because I'm sure you are getting many calls and emails to the opposite opinion today -- that I am in full support of this Presidential address being aired at the school on Tuesday.

then I'm proud too

If, by a liberal, they mean someone who looks ahead, and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas, without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties. Someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicioun that grips us. If that is what they mean by a liberal, I am proud to be a liberal.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, 2007

Ted

For good, and for bad, Edward M. Kennedy was an incredible Senator. I had the privilege of getting to watch him run a hearing on Superfund waste sites while I was an intern in DC during college. The room literally was charged with electricity as soon as he walked in, and it was fascinating to watch him question the witnesses, and banter with other senators.

And, exactly one year ago, he got up at the DNC convention in Denver and gave a speech in support of Barrack Obama. I went online and read the text of that speech, and while it wasn't a long or overly dramatic speech, the fact that he stood up in his diminished health and addressed that crowd was just amazing.

He certainly wasn't perfect as an individual -- far from it -- but the devotion with which he gave his life to public service, and to championing the causes of civil rights and health care made him a legend.

Go in peace.

like I said

I'm adding an update to the last post. To be specific about what type of bed I was selling I included the brand name of the manufacturer of the bed...from a store that is still in business in this town. I just had a call from yet another illiterate person about my bed-for-sale. This time the caller asked if she had reached the store that I actually BOUGHT the bed from three years ago.

"No," I said, that is just the brand of bed it is, and oh yes, I sold the bed yesterday so it is no longer available."
"Oh," said the caller, "well do you have other beds?"
"No," I said.
"But aren't you a furniture store?"
"No," I said again.
"Well what is the phone number for the **** Furniture store?"
"I don't know." I informed her, beginning to lose patience.
"Are they still in business"
"Yes," I said..."and I was only selling that BRAND of bed...I'm not associated with that store."

Clearly confused about it all, she hung up. No doubt to start coloring her socialist protest signs for a healthcare town hall.

Rampant ignorance

If you ever want to find out how stupid the people are who live in your area, place a classified ad in the "for sale" section of your local paper.

I placed two different ads last week...one for a queen size bed we are selling, and one for our house. In our house I put information about our online listing in order to NOT pay for a lengthy classified. So far I got a call from a man wondering if it was a commercial property (no, I would have not listed it under "house for sale" if that were the case); and yesterday, one from a woman who after hearing the details of the house (price and size of the lot) proceeded to tell me how she was going to buy a house for her recently divorced daughter, and she couldn't spend more than roughly half what our house was listed for, and the lot was too big for her daughter to mow, and now she was also going to have to buy furniture for her daughter as well, but her daughter wouldn't accept USED furniture, it had to be new--at which point I was thinking "WHY am I listening to all this?" I wished her well in her house-hunting venture, and got off the phone muttering about the fact that maybe she had family issues to deal with before she started furniture shopping for this apparently ungrateful daughter.

The other ad has generated a lot more calls, and a LOT more stupidity and rudeness. Maybe I'm naive about this, and maybe it ain't how it's done 'round here, but when I say "bed" in an ad, it does NOT include a mattress! The bed is the headboard/footboard frame part. The mattress is the mattress. When is the last time you went to a furniture store to buy a bed (remember, the frame!) and they offered to throw in a mattress for free? All of the calls I have had have been either assuming that a mattress comes with the "bed" -- then hanging up on me when they find out it doesn't; or asking what additional furniture (nightstand? dresser?) comes with the bed. Huh? If I was offering a whole bedroom suite I would have put that in the ad. I had one call yesterday saying they were interested in the box spring and mattress I had for sale. I told them I DIDN'T have a box spring or mattress for sale. Oh, said the caller, clearly confused.

So my theory on all this is if the public can't read a simple classified ad and understand what it is offering how in heck is Obama going to get healthcare reform passed?

organic food

I swear sometimes I think the news is going to do us all in. On the web this morning was a big story "Organic Food is No Healther, Study Finds." If you read the story the angle is that studies find that organic food is nutritionally no different than non-organic AND CHEAPER (as the story points out repeatedly) food. Here's a quote:

"Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."

Well, duh. An apple is an apple--nutritionally speaking--and the way it is grown (pesticide free) isn't going to change how much fiber it has, or the amount of vitamins in it.

I personally don't buy organic foods thinking they will be more nutritious. I buy them because I want to support growers who DON'T use synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizer, and who have greater suspect for the sustainability of their soil.

Of course the "read" of this story today is that we shouldn't be wasting money to buy organic because it doesn't really matter. It DOES matter, to me, and I will continue to choose organic over regular, when it is available (which isn't always the case here). I will spend $3-$4 on a half-gallon of organic milk instead of $3 on a gallon of regular (it tastes better...I promise you!) and twice as much on organic carrots (ditto...deeper orange, better flavor). There are some organic items I won't spend extra on at this point, but I suspect it is more a point of price-gauging on behalf of the local supermarkets, rather than the true cost.

Joe's Excellent Adventure

In the end the guy in the uniform always gets the girl. A photographic essay by T2

and it's lucrative too!

Much to our pleasant surprise, our ribbons garnered a total of $78 for us! Wooohooo!

Ribbon Whores

It's official...we have become the County Fair "ribbon whores" that Garrison Keillor makes jokes about on PHC. We knew it was getting bad last summer when we were scrounging around trying to just think of things to enter, but this year I probably crossed a line of sorts in my quest for ribbon domination.

So here's this year's tally: The Reenactor got a PURPLE ribbon (grand prize!) for his bread and butter pickles, which he honestly had forgotten he had even canned last summer. For the record, we cracked open a jar last night and they are DEE-lishus! Apparently the extension homemakers found merit in them too, because they won the grand prize in their division. He also got a red ribbon for his picklelilly (spelling?), a white ribbon for his pickled carrots, and sadly another red ribbon for his spicy dill pickles. The man can't seem to rise above red in this category. And the winning jar of pickles left much to be desired, in our opinion. We're truly mystified as to what exactly the judges are looking for in this category. But he's happy with that purple!

I won a purple for some raspberry muffins I made at the last minute this morning, and a purple for a color photograph of hostas emerging from the ground that T1 and I sort of took together. I also won blue ribbons for cornbread, and gingersnap cookies.

But here's where I might be injecting too much competition into all this. Literally at the last minute before we left the house I rinsed the label off a beer bottle, went outside and stuck a fresh stem of bee balm flowers into it, and entered that in the horticulture division under "wild flowers." Yes, and it won a red ribbon.

HA!

I swear...for those of you who live in this part of the Commonwealth you don't know what you're missing by not seeing what you can concoct to enter in the fair. It is a trip, and gives us huge laughs every year.

weather

We had a storm front go through tonight that produced a bit of thunder and a brief heavy shower, but a half hour later the back side of this storm made for some spectacular cloud watching. I happened to catch a few shots while I was in town.

from Dick

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.

[said at the National Press Club, this week, as reported on CNN]


Yet, if memory serves, that was the whole reason the war was started?

why corporations suck

I created this whole blog originally as a rant against corporate America, specifically the largest big box retailer with the initials W.M. I had made it a point to shop there as little as possible, but as I've said in this blog many times, it is often the only game in town for finding some products. In recent months with the loss of my freelance income, and the closure of many stores here in our town that I often went to in lieu of shopping at WM I've been forced to retreat on my pledge to not go there. Often it is the least expensive choice for groceries, although I'm trying to be more diligent about shopping the two other smaller chain groceries for sale items. But the fact of the matter is, I've slid badly.

So yesterday I went in to return a children's book that I had purchased for a friend's birthday (one of my kid's friends). The boy in question had received not one, but three of the same book for his birthday, so I volunteered to return the one I bought. I had the receipt and when I took it to the return counter was told by the very rude person who was working there who apparently was annoyed that I was disrupting her gossip session that "books have to be returned in 24 hours, that's WM policy." The book was slapped on the counter back at me and the receipt slapped on top. She then turned her back to me and continued on with her gossip. I picked up the book, and of course, felt the anger starting to rise in me at the rudeness of this person, and at the lack of a reason as to WHY WM has this policy. I walked away, and reviewed my receipt. Nothing was on there about not being able to return a book. In fact, there was NO information about returns because WM is notoriously easy to return merchandise to...that's part of why I purchased this book there to begin with.

I went to get a few other items I had gone into the store to pick up, and the more I walked around the store, the madder I got...mostly at the dismissal with no explanation I had from the employee. I walked through the book section and saw no signs or notices saying that books couldn't be returned after 24 hours.

So when I was checking out I had already decided I was going to go back to the returns desk and ask to speak to some other employee, or the store manager about this. In the checkout line I saw an employee who I know casually from another friend. I asked her who I should talk to and she called over one of the floor managers. I had just begun to explain the problem to this manager, and she did almost the same thing...cut me off in mid explanation, and said "It's corporate policy...we can't exchange it." Again, the tone was condescending, and just on the edge of being pissy. I asked her what the reason was, and she said it is copyright law. Hmmmm...I'm thinking. You can return books to online vendors like BN and Amazon, can't you? And what a screwy law...if you wanted to photocopy a book you could do so in less than 24 hours if you so choose. I told this floor manager that I was really frustrated by their lack of information about this. I could have returned the book the same day had I known..the only reason I didn't was that I had the kids with me and we were all tired so we went home after the birthday party. (I didn't tell her all that). I said, "why don't you put that on the receipts?" and her response was that it was all out of the main office, and they had no control. I also asked her why they didn't put some sort of sign with the books about this and she looked at me with genuine contempt and said, "If we put up a sign about every rule in this store you wouldn't be able to see the merchandise." The more I thought about that particular comment after she left, the more I wish I would have laughed in her face when she said it...how 'bout taking down some of the self-congratulatory "Low Price, Every Day" signs? The store is literally already reeking with signs!

Ultimately my anger wasn't so much over basically throwing away $10 on a book that we didn't need, and now needing to buy another gift for this boy, but on the way I was talked to. THIS is why so many businesses are failing. WM clearly isn't, but this is why so many other businesses are losing money..they have lost the ability to deal with customers in a civil manner. This is just one of many situations I've encountered like this in the last year...where I clearly have a legitimate complaint or concern with my bill or product, and have been told by a low-level employee that it is "corporate policy" and they have no way around it.

So my distaste for WM has been reignited, and I will try again to avoid the place. I'm not saying that customer service is any better at other stores...it usually isn't but I'm just not able to walk into WM without being uncomfortable that I'm feeding the corporate dragon...and that was true even before I had this experience this week.

I'll keep you posted as to whether I'm staying on the wagon or not.

And the book? Given to another friend who hadn't read it yet. Happy ending, there.

We're Keen!

Just because we are the strangest family we know, we now all have matching (sort of) sandals.

Volvos and soccer

I have officially become a Volvo Driving Soccer Mom. I already had the Volvo, now I have the soccer player. T2 told us he wanted to learn the game so he could keep up with his friends on the playground who all play that, or basketball. So I've joined that happy demographic of soccer mom. I haven't yet put the soccer magnet on the back of my car, and I probably won't. He had his first game last Saturday and scored two goals, which we thought was pretty good considering he had only one practice before the first game.

I haven't yet put a magnetic soccer ball on my tailgate, and I don't think I will. And for you younger campers out there, yes, I have been made aware that there is an Everclear song about me and my type. I don't exactly fit that description though...I certainly don't vote Republican.

Meanwhile, The Reenactor and I are going to become soccer hooligans...wave big flags, throw our shirts on the field, scream obscenities at the refs, etc.

baby in a planter

I saw this today at Jason's cousin's house. It just amused me, so I decided to post it.

Electric shopping carts and math

This post is all over the place. I don't have the inspiration to write on one specific topic, so I'll just free-associate for a while.

First of all, excessive numbers of people who can't make their way around a big box store without the assistance of an electric shopping cart. Is it a peculiarity of the state I live in (Commonwealth, if you're being picky), and the tendency toward obesity, and diseases caused by smoking that lead to poor circulation, or is this rampant everywhere?

The last time three times I've been in the big WM I've nearly been outnumbered by the herds of people driving those little electric carts around. I'm not exaggerating when I report to you that one morning last week, I encountered at least one person in each aisle (not the same person...a different person/cart per aisle) for the entire length of the grocery area. And in many cases they were traveling in pairs...husband and wife teams.

I'm truly not expressing an intolerance for the obvious need for these carts, but just am curious at what appears to be an epidemic of walking difficulties in people who are not elderly, and seemingly able to at least get themselves in the door of WM to begin with in order to gain access to the cart. What do they do at the mall? At church? At sporting events? Do they have these walking problems at stores without the carts? Do they sometimes take a wheelchair with them, just in case?

I am also concerned about the inability of many of these people to safely use the carts. I was getting some coffee and was nearly run over in a tragic backing up incident in which a woman in a cart five feet away from me hit the reverse with great dispatch, and in her unexpected trip backwards lost control, and nearly flattened me before I could jump out of her way. She bleated a horrified "sorry" and I assured her I wasn't hurt, but what if a child had been in her path?

On to my next subject...math. I'm not good at math. Let me clarify...I'm not good at math above the basics of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. I'm a whiz at those. But a kind professor at college saw my struggle in a "math for idiots" class, and recognized that I would surely never actually need to use math in my career since political science rarely requires a quick answer to an algebra problem. His solution in his pity for me was to pass me at an acceptable grade and end both his misery and mine. My inaptitude for math was the sorrow of my father, who while no math genius himself, at least "got it" enough to become an engineer, and actually had a useful purpose for it when brandishing his slide rule and jotting all sorts of interesting numbers and equations down in pencil on a legal pad in his office. I used to look at those scribblings and wonder what they meant. I still would have no idea. Math to me is just a foreign language that I have no hope of ever understanding. It is like trying to teach a cat to read.

So here comes my seven-year-old son who seems to have found some isolated math gene in his DNA, and is doing somewhat complicated multiplication problems in his head while we go for walks. He started asking me last week to give him some multiplication problems, and I started with 2 x 3. Too easy, he said...harder! 5 x 11. 55 he said without hesitation. How about 9 x 8? 72, he said. How about 4 x 32? He gave me the correct answer, but what was especially impressive to me was how he solved the problem. It is more complicated than I can write out, and it wasn't the way a teacher would have him do it, but it made perfect sense, and ultimately the correct answer. The next evening he did a problem for The Reenactor that left him stunned at the methodology T2 used to reach the answer. They have not been studying anything above basic addition problems in his class, yet he wrote out an entire page of addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems on his own, just because he wanted to. I admire the heck out of it, and while I know this is not entirely unusual for a child to be interested in and curious about working problems like this, I'm just amazed that MY child can do it! Granted, The Reenactor has way better skills at this than I do, so I guess I have to give him genetic credit, but just like watching my own father work a problem, I now get to watch my son work them as well.

Cool.

And finally, I took a one-day course last weekend at our church on the topic of understanding the Bible in its literary form. It was fascinating, and the instructor, a woman who has written a book on the subject, was very interesting, and kept us focused throughout a five-hour lecture and discussion. Even though I've understood this concept for a long time, it was still eye-opening to have a person who is an expert in literary form and style present some of the passages of the Scriptures as they were actually intended as written word, rather than through the religious goggles we usually wear when we read them. It doesn't challenge my beliefs, but rather made me curious to read, and re-read parts of the Bible with a whole new appreciation for truly understanding the context of the story, rather than pulling out individual chapters or verses and considering them complete stories. The Reenactor is reading the Bible, cover-to-cover, and has been on the OT for a while after finishing the NT. I kid him that he wanted to see how it ended, so he read the last chapters first. He just came out to inform me while I was writing this that the people Moses led out of Egypt were a bunch of whiners and complainers, and didn't pay a lick of attention to what God was telling them point-blank to do. His interpretation is always interesting.

That's it for now.

A Lecture on Lint

Sent to me by my brother:

Prof. Fillmer enters the classroom:

"Ahem...let me begin the lecture, if you please. Today we ponder the question, if you were to collect all the lint in the lint trap of a dryer that dried socks until they disappeared, would you have enough collected lint to weave the socks again?

Physicists know that matter cannot be destroyed, it simple changes to another form. Water becomes invisible as water vapor, or as you know it in KY 'humidity'. It's all there but in a different form.
Likewise, your well washed socks disappear in many ways. Bits of their fiber fall off in your shoes, as you walk around with socking feet, and as they are tumbled around in the dryer. What's collected in the lint trap is only part of their disintegration, but very visible to you since it's all in one place. But the fabric in the socks is also changing to other invisible forms as you wear them and as they go through the washer and dryer. Molecules of the various compounds and chemicals that make the socks may be changing to gas because of heat, water, or even the perspiration on your footsies.
So, in summary, yes one would have almost enough lint to almost equal the socks if you collected all the dryer lint, but much of the socks disappear into the atmosphere, the carpet, the sock drawer, and your shoe crevices.
And a few socks sacrifice themselves to the Great Single Sock Void never again to pair up with the partner they were created with in the sock factory of their origin. Test next Tuesday"

This concludes Prof. Fillmer's lecture on the Lenten Season Lint Mystery of the Socks.
Bell rings, class shuffles out, leaving countless bits of their socks on the floor to be swept up by the custodial who pays no tribute to the lint left behind.

lint

I realize it is Lent, so I guess that is why this Lint question is bugging me. If I were to wash and dry the same article of clothing....say a pair of socks....over and over and over again, would they eventually disappear and I would only be left with enough lint collected from the dryer lint screen to equal the socks that are now disintegrated?

Your thoughts and observations appreciated.

Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 5

Final chapter in this epic five-part blog...this one is titled, "The Circus in Our Yard."

About a week after we got power back some friends in town were having a huge, mature pine tree removed from a rather tight location next to their house. The tree had been severely damaged by the ice, and was in pieces all over their front yard and roof. As happens after storms like this there were tree removal people arriving in town offering services--some intent on scams, others were legit. A company from Tennessee stopped at our friend's house to see if they could remove that pine tree. They had bonafide credentials (at least what she could check on the internet) so they took it out. I was so impressed with their work I asked for their phone number, and the company came to give us an estimate on getting our hackberry tree completely removed (it was one of the three large pre-existing trees on our property) and the limbs in the sycamore cleaned up so it can hopefully survive and thrive. The Reenactor and I were both satisfied with the price they gave us so we hired them. The reality was that in spite of purchasing a swell new 20" bar Stehl chainsaw these trees were beyond the height and surgical abilities of The Reenactor.

So the next day these guys showed up. I didn't fully appreciate what they did until I stood in my front yard and watched them. Half the price I paid them was for the entertainment factor of watching the company owner dangle from tree limbs 100 feet off the ground, wielding his chainsaw like an electric knife through butter. It was just as if the circus had come to town and the high-wire acrobats were in our trees.

When they finished a couple of hours later I asked him if his mother knew what he did for a living...it looks incredibly dangerous, and I certainly wouldn't want to know if T1 or T2 were up to shenanigans like that. He and his crew all do competitive rappelling and are completely comfortable climbing straight up the side of a mature tree, tethered only by a single rope they loop over one of the higher branches. Add in a chainsaw dangling from your utility belt, and you've got a great afternoon.

Very, very impressive. Far more impressive than someone with a bucket truck would have been. If an ice storm or squall line messes up your trees this is truly the way to go.

Now to the final notes. One month post-storm and I'm really ready to move on. I've stopped being "wow-ed" by the mountains of limbs and debris that still line our highways and city streets. The sight of a convoy of bucket trucks heading out to a job no longer makes me want to weep in gratitude (although I still appreciate every last one of you guys!) and with the sight of a few buds of green bursting out on our willow today I'm hoping that spring, and all the lovely renewal of life it brings, is just around the corner.

The best way to sum all this up is to say that I DO appreciate the things that need electricity in my house. I am really grateful that I live in a time where a light can illuminate a room with just one flick of a switch. In a time where I can sit and channel surf for an hour when I just really have lost the motivation to do anything else. In a time where I can communicate with my extended family who are scattered to the four corners of our country, and to a friend in Europe, as well as friends in a dozen other states, just by typing out a few words on a keyboard. But, I also appreciate that this is all a luxury. We are wallowing in luxury these days, and we don't even know it. But take away our kilowatts for a couple of weeks and we are humbled.

And to quote a very dear friend who went without power for at least two full weeks (maybe longer?) and additionally hosted another friend who was without power even longer....

"If [the Weather Channel's] Jim Cantore comes to your town, get the hell out of dodge. It’s not going to be pretty."

Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 4

Lessons:

When I was working as a writer in the public relations office at Drury a zillion years ago they had an awareness week for their budding architecture students about how to design for people with disabilities. I'll never forget that the theme of the program was "TAB" --which stood for "Temporarily Able Bodied." The idea was that eventually we all are handicapped in some way. Most college students are Temporarily Able Bodied in that they have good vision, decent hearing, and can walk, run, jump and go anywhere they have a mind to go. But as architects they needed to be able to envision where someone without the blessings of good health, youth and vitality, might find fault with their design. The students were required to take on a handicap each day of the week for a few hours. They went to class in wheelchairs rather than walking; they wore nearly black sunglasses to eliminate their ability to see clearly; they wore sound-reduction earphones to simulate deafness. All of this was to teach them the lesson of not taking for granted what they were able to do without any difficulty. Obviously the lesson stayed with me as well.

During the ice storm I realized that even though I consider myself a person with fairly low technological expectations (no Wii, no TiVo, or iPhone) the massive, regional loss of power rendered me completely cutoff from everything that made me feel safe. Without electricity to run my computer I couldn't instantaneously check on local weather, road, or emergency conditions. And, I couldn't email friends or family to check on their status, or find ways to improve ours. Without cell phone service we were truly cut off from anyone outside our immediate neighborhood. It was all a huge, tangled Catch-22. If we DID decide to venture out in our car, where could we safely drive? There was no way to know based on our one source of information--the crank radio. If we did get into town the stores were all closed, and besides, what did we need to buy, other than a generator? If we could only call someone outside the area they could look on the internet about options for places we could evacuate to, but we couldn't even make a cell phone call. Our house phone relied on electricity, but even after borrowing our neighbor's regular phone we still couldn't get a call to go through because phone lines were out. And even if we DID get a call to go through I found out days later that the information on the internet about what was going on in this area was sketchy at best.

So I'm initiating the idea that as far as our reliance on modern devices we should all consider ourselves Temporarily Able Bodied. A massive earthquake, another ice storm, or some other disaster--nature made or man-made--could easily leave us in this situation again.

I have already purchased a line-only phone, which came in handy one of the days we had a prolonged power blip. The Reenactor and I have already decided that any home we own in the future will have at the very least a gas-log fireplace, and at the very most, a wood-burning fireplace or stove as well. I am glad we have a propane cook stove, but want to make sure we always have on hand a good supply of the fuel for it. Ditto with C and D batteries. A few more camping lanterns would also be a good thing to store up on, and maybe keep an extra propane cylinder for our outdoor grill. We could do a LOT of cooking on that! Additionally, I realized that as good as my food supply was, it could be improved on. Keeping more rice and beans and canned goods like tomatoes would make it easier to stretch food a lot longer if necessary.

And I pray it won't be necessary.

I have heard many in the local media (and all you regular readers know how much I love the local media) compare this event to Hurricane Katrina. Sorry you idiots, but this is not like Katrina. First of all, thousands of people didn't drown in the ice. Sadly, some 30 or people have died as a result of this storm in this state, but that isn't comparable to what happened in New Orleans. We lost trees, and in a few cases homes have been damaged by falling limbs, but entire neighborhoods have not been destroyed by this. There is certainly a lot of cleanup work left to be done, and this area will look damaged for a couple of years from the effects of the ice to the trees, but we don't have huge blooms of mold climbing up our living room walls. And even though communications were difficult for a few days there aren't families having to try to locate one another through the Red Cross because of this.

As of the Friday morning that I'm writing this there are still hundreds of people without power...three full weeks later. This isn't the fault of the hundreds of linemen working around the clock. It is just simple logistics. There are areas where getting a line up on the poles again requires that a special machine be brought in to cut through an entire woods' worth of tangled limbs. It looks like a giant weed wacker attached to a cherry picker arm on a large tractor. The fact that our neighborhood got re-electrified so early was incredible. The two subdivisions immediately to our north didn't have power for two full weeks because they were on a different central line than we were. In town there were many instances where one side of a street had power restored within a couple of days..the other side waited weeks. To restate something I wrote in the first post about this, the electric grid took 70 years to build, and just hours to destroy. People can't expect it to be completely rebuilt in a few weeks.

But the lack of power doesn't equate to the aftereffects of a Cat 4 hurricane. It also doesn't equate to the towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri that have been completely wiped out by tornadoes in recent years. When put into perspective this ice storm was a nuisance, and a huge inconvenience for most of us, and ultimately will be an expensive thing to clean up from, both for the city and county, and for individuals. But it wasn't a crisis on the scale of Katrina.

The happier lesson of all this is that we truly are a community. Three different families living in our subdivision offered us shelter in their gas-log-warmed homes. Another neighbor offered us the use of his kitchen, and any food he had in it when he left town. Two friends risked injury driving ten miles out to our house in the dark on the third night to let us know we could go to a house with heat and light. Our friends who left for vacation in New York were amazing in their generosity to open their home to people without power. Within our church community we began calling on one another as soon as we had phone service, and in many cases drove by the homes of elderly or ill church members to personally check on them. And as you drive around this area some three weeks later the amazing thing is that even though there are homes with significant tree damage still in their front yards, MOST homes have been picked up...at least to the point that volunteers and neighbors can do it. The Reenactor and I have been part of that volunteer work, but the fact is apparent that many, many, many people have been out helping their neighbors and strangers. The lesson learned in the aftermath of Katrina is that the government is not our savior after an event like this...we must rely on each other in our community to restore and rebuild. FEMA might take care of a few of the big things (debris removal?) but we must first get it to the curb.

The other happy lesson is that we came through all this with stories. Our kids will remember the Big Ice Storm. They will remember eating by candlelight, steam rising into the cold kitchen air above their bowls of hot pasta and fish stew. They will remember sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in fleece hats, gloves, and coats playing endless rounds of Monopoly (the kid version, not the grownup!), Sorry!, and Go Fish. They will remember using every blanket we had in the house to create warm cocoons to sleep in, and using camping lanterns to read their books before bedtime. They'll remember helping us listen to the radio by cranking the handle on the side. They'll remember the sounds of the trees breaking and crashing. And they'll remember the lovely warmth and comfort of the Price Ice Rescue House.

The Reenactor and I both felt confident from the beginning that with our camping gear and hillbilly common sense we could make it through this event. And ultimately we did. We came through it with a greater appreciation for daily luxuries...like CNN at the flick of a button on the remote. Like picking up a little plastic box smaller than a deck of cards and making a call to let the other know we're running late. Like being warm..right now....just by pressing a button on the wall. The reality is as human beings we don't actually NEED any of those things to survive....our great grandfathers did fine without any of it. They are luxuries, and at any given moment they are temporarily here. I think our lesson is to be better prepared for when they are temporarily not here from now on.

One more installment to come...

Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 3

This one is titled "Rescue Me" because that is the Aretha Franklin song I kept hearing in my head last night after I finished writing part 2.

So The Reenactor goes to check out the mystery Jeep in our driveway. I was only mildly concerned about who might come calling in the middle of a blackout, and the random thought of looters briefly crossed my mind. We obviously hadn't left candles burning in the house, so the house was completely dark, so it might be attractive to someone bent on breaking in. No, I was too busy happily chatting with our neighbor's grandfather in their 80-degree oven-like living room.

A few moments later The Reenactor appeared at the front door again, and asked me to step outside. When I did, there were two friends of ours grinning on the sidewalk, their faces lit up by flashlights. They had driven all the way out to our house, on roads only marginally passable, and still dangerous with dangling limbs, to give us the good news that we had a powered-up sanctuary to evacuate to.

Turns out another family we are friends with had left that afternoon for a planned vacation in New York, and just as they left town their power was restored to their mid-town home. In a last minute gesture of incredible hospitality they invited two other families to come stay at their house in their absence. Once those two families had settled in they realized there was still plenty of room for a few more, so they set out to find us.

We threw a change of clothes and some sleeping bags in the Volvo and set out at 9 o'clock on the darkest night I've ever seen. No street lights, overcast, so no stars or moon...only our headlights showed us the destruction on the roads into town. It was a matter of going quite slowly around downed limbs, electric poles, and piles of twigs and bark on the road. And the road was still icy in patches, adding an extra bit of treachery to the adventure.

Driving into town we were amazed at the little oasis' of lights that occasionally glimmered to our left or right. Mostly though, it was dark.

After we got to the house we shared a cold beverage with our fellow refuges, then went to bed. We slept in a second floor bedroom and occasionally through the night limbs from a mature oak next to the house would crash and fall, startling me awake again. But that house was warm, and I felt safe.

The next day the sun came out and started melting ice off the lines and trees. The four kids staying in the house were thrilled to have company with each other and spent the day running up and down stairs, and watching DVDs on the working television in the 3rd floor playroom. The adults hovered near the radio, and made phone calls to people in our church to check on their status...to see if they needed anything. A few brief trips were made to visit others to make sure they had some form of heat and food.

The Reenactor and I drove back to our house to get a turkey that was half-thawed in our freezer and take it back to town. That turkey was the nemesis for a wonderful "thanksgiving" meal that night. Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, someone's Granny's frozen cooked apples, and really incredible Wisconsin cheese from a home where lack of rrefrigeration was going to quickly doom it inedible. Add in generous amounts of wine and beer, and it a feast I'll never forget. We invited a few other people who of course were also without power, and while our gracious absent hosts were enjoying themselves in the Big Apple, we had a great time cooking and eating in their house in the Commonwealth.

I was also able to finally use my cell phone again (all five bars showed up!) and I called family in southwest Missouri who again urged us to come stay with them a while. Then, about 8:30 that night one of our neighbors called me to tell us that power had been restored to our neighborhood. We were stunned...it had been understood that it would be at least a week before the REA worked it's way to us. But, we certainly weren't going to argue with progress. We decided to spend another night at the Price Ice Rescue House because we weren't excited about driving those roads again after dark, plus our house would be so cold and take so long to warm up. So we stayed again with our friends. There was a quieter mood that night...maybe it was the turkey, maybe it was the notion that things were turning around, finally. Another family had power restored, and had left, and we had the house to share with another couple who were on their fifth night of gypsy living.

The next morning we returned to our house. I was nervous to go there again, and the kids hadn't seen the incredible sight of the effects of the storm in daylight yet...other than what they saw in our own neighborhood the first couple of days. They were quiet driving home, and I think they just couldn't absorb what they saw.

When we got to the house it was good to hear the hum of the refrigerator as it kicked back on, and to be able to see the curtains gently blowing over the heat registers. The house was a mess of gloves, socks, knit hats, blankets, candles, camping lights, dish towels, books, games and toys. But gradually, ever so gradually, it was warming up. We didn't have pipe damage, and in spite of being without power for four days, and below freezing temperatures, the house was still right at 40 degrees inside.

Our cat was pissed that we had left her to fend for herself. We figured her fur coat was sufficient to keep her warm, and I'm sure in our absence she had managed to curl up in a blanket somewhere in the warmth of a sunbeam. But it was apparent that all of this had thrown her out of her routine, and she was a bit high maintenance for a while.

We didn't have internet or cable tv, but those seemed like great luxuries to us now. We had electricity, thank God.

More to come....

Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 2

If you haven't read the previous day's blog (from the 15th) go back and read it. Otherwise, I am continuing the ice storm saga in this post.

So by day two our neighbors had started to venture out to talk to one another. Unfortunately for the kids, it was too dangerous to actually enjoy the snow and ice with sledding, and the added risk of them getting wet and cold without having a way to warm up in our house. But it felt good to at least talk to other people and get news and information they had gathered. One neighbor, hearing that he could at least get to the interstate in his car, decided to pack up his dog and head for the electric vibe of a friend's house in Nashville. In ditching his house to the elements he left us with two valuable commodities. First, he has a gas stovetop which was working fine. Second, he had a phone that only needed to be plugged into a phone jack to work (ours all required electricity). And because I frequently walk his dog for him when he's out of town on business, I had a key to his house, and his blessing to raid it.

Ironically, I had to loan him $40 to have on hand in case he needed it before reaching N'ville, as the ATMs were all non-functional in our town. This man always has a huge supply of cash, but he didn't at the one time he truly needed it.

We muddled through another day of board games and cards at the kitchen table, interrupted only with intense sessions of listening to the local NBC affiliate on the crank radio. They were finally broadcasting again, and they realized that they needed to preempt regular programming to just inform this end of the state with news and updates about electric service, where gas was available (which was rare); where a pallet of generators had just been delivered for sale; which stores were open, and for how long, and what restrictions were on them (eg: Wally World was open to cash customers only; 25 at a time in the store, and a spending limit of $25). I realized that the more I listened to the news the more anxious I became about what was going on outside our own neighborhood. It was frightening to hear that the local hospitals were running on generators only, and that all available personnel were required to be there to help. It was scary when the main source of news...the NBC affiliate...went off the air because their generators ran out of fuel and they had to get more. It made me nervous to hear that local communities were out of running water because pumping stations had shut down for lack of power. It was terrifying to realize just how primitive our lives had become. And the more we listened, the more we knew that we just had to make it until we could do something different. We inventoried our food again, and knew that we were in good shape. We added more vessels of drinking water to our already large supply. We put blankets and towels around spaces where cold air could leak in. And we tried to remain calm and optimistic in front of the kids.

At dinner that night we all said what we were grateful for...we reminded ourselves that many people were in much, much more difficult situations than we were. And when we went to bed that night we no longer heard the crashing of trees. We managed to stay warm in our blankets and layers of clothing, and we slept.

The next morning it truly was cold in our house. Two different neighbors came by within minutes of each other to offer the warmth of their gas log fireplaces. One neighbor had a working cell phone and I jumped at his offer to use it for a moment. I called my brother in Missouri to reassure him that we were okay, but I had to make the call short because the phone had another call beeping in. We decided to take up the offer of one of the neighbors to enjoy their fireplace while they were at work all day (they both work at hospitals, and they took their daughters with them to be in a warm place that day). We packed up some games and snacks and our radio and headed across the street. I'll admit it really was nice to sit in a room and not shiver. Their fireplace kept us comfortable for a few hours. We played with their dog, and ate sandwiches for lunch huddled next to the fireplace. As we occasionally listened to our radio we began hearing reports of how long it would take to restore power in the different REAs and power companies around the area. When we heard that our REA might take as long as two weeks to get back online I began to cry. When I next heard that there were several hundred linemen from other companies either in route, or already working in our area, I cried again.

I decided in the early afternoon that I would go commandeer our other neighbor's jack-only phone. I returned with it to our house to begin the process of trying to reach the outside world. For the first 20 minutes that I tried I got a constant busy signal, or a recorded message that service was not available. Again, I started to despair about my inability to communicate. I just needed to find out IF we could get somewhere...how far would we have to drive before we could readily find gasoline? How bad were roads between us and destinations where we had family?

We got the kids to hit the "redial" button on the phone so we could do other stuff. I had The Reenactor's parents' phone number in the redial. We had decided that since they lived just an hour away, and on the side of storm that might not have had as much damage, we would attempt to reach them to see if we could go there to stay for a couple of days. Finally the kids yelled that the line had gone to something other than the recording. Mother-in-law answered the phone and initially said that they had power. I asked if we could come stay with them, but as we talked I realized that they DIDN'T have power..she had misunderstood me. They didn't even have a way to cook because they have an electric stove and oven. They were keeping warm by the gas log fireplace, though, and eating lots of peanut butter and crackers. A generator was going to be hooked up in the next day, and we were encouraged to come over, but after The Reenactor and I discussed it, the destination wasn't worth the journey. We still felt the need to stay home and keep an eye on our own house, and short of a close-by promise of the utopia of electricity and heat, we weren't moving.

The national weather service called for temps to drop into the teens that night, as it had been the night before. We worried about our plumbing, and left the faucets dripping, and so far they hadn't frozen.

For dinner I took some fish and shrimp I had thawed out from our now-warm freezer, and drove it to the neighbor's house who had left town for N'ville. There I used his gas range to make a huge steaming pot of fish stew, and another pot of rice. I helped myself to his beer cooler while I was cooking and that, plus having just a half-hour of quiet to myself, helped considerably. I returned to our house with the steaming food, and we ate a wonderful hot meal. But each day the temperature inside the house had dropped by about 10 degrees, and it was definitely getting cold inside.

We decided to take up yet another neighbor's offer of a warm gas log fireplace and ventured there to sit for an hour and get toasty warm before returning to our own house to sleep. They had offered to let us sleep at their house, but we were fine once we got in bed with all our covers, so we just asked if we could sit with them for a while.

Their living room was 80 degrees if it was anything, and it felt like heaven to me. A half-hour after arriving The Reenactor noticed that a Jeep had pulled into our driveway across the street. We didn't know who it was, so he left to go check it out.

More to come....

Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 1

I've finally found after nearly three weeks the mental energy to blog again. I have wanted to sit down and write out my thoughts many, many times in the last 20 days, but just couldn't summon up the will to commit all the many notions, ideas and observations I've had to my blog.

That, and our electricity and/or internet access wasn't working.

For those of you who know me who but are living in an alternate universe somewhere, my family was one of thousands who were part of the massive ice storm that hit the middle of the country on January 26. The county I live in, as well as six or seven counties immediately around us, seemed to suffer the worst of the storm. NOAA now reports that from 1 1/2" to 2" inches of ice coated the trees and power lines here. Within twelve hours of the storm's arrival in our area we lost power. We were fortunate...in our particular subdivision we remained without power for four days. Two sudivisions immediately to our north, but on a different line were without power nearly two weeks. As of today, there are still thousands of people in our part of the state who do not have power restored to their homes.

Additionally, we were unable to make cell phone calls for nearly three days because our cell provider (begins with an "A" and ends with a "T") had apparently leased their good towers to a rival company (begins with a V and ends with an "N") and were using towers leased to them by a company with inferior equipment. This is what I was told by a friend who has inside information. The good cell towers (used by the competitor) maintained decent service throughout the storm. Our cell company's leased towers failed, and we were unable to communicate with the outside world. In addition, land line phones were either overloaded with people trying to make calls, or seriously affected as well by the storm (and resulting massive power loss in the area) and making a call that way was almost impossible as well.

I've got lots to say about all this. As of this writing, tonight, it is just about my initial observation of the storm itself.

First, being the daughter of an electrical engineer who worked for a power company I have always had a huge appreciation for electricity, and the people who make it magically appear in our lives. I don't understand how it works, and much to my father's disappointment will probably never grasp the concept, but I know that it is dangerous work for those who actually work near the stuff (can't see it, can't smell it, can't hear it, but it's lethal if you touch it).

I know that on the heels of many a thunderstorm or ice storm my dad was out the door to see about repairing whatever damage had occurred to his lines. Many times he and his crews were away from their homes for days making sure everyone had power restored. Your average homeowner probably has no real grasp of just how complicated that maze of lines connecting a home to a transformer somewhere to line, to a substation, or wherever the heck it goes...ultimately going all the way to the coal-fired power plant, or hydroelectric facility that generates it all to begin with. Those wires don't just have electricity coursing through them all by themselves, and they all have to be connected together in one big spider web. And, as I was reminded this week by someone who works for an REA, it took 70 years to build a system like this, and just hours for a storm of this magnitude to render huge chunks of it useless. Poles were snapped like toothpicks, tree limbs inches in diameter fell across and broke lines, leaving them curled on the road like a summer's worth of snakes. Transformers (or hopalongs as my mom used to call them) lay on the ground in snarls of limbs and tree trunks.

My dad would have been mighty impressed with just how much damage was done here.

So on that first morning, when the power blipped once, twice, three times, then finally a minute later shut down with a finality that I knew meant it was going to be out for a while we all rallied to the idea that we would get by for a day or two with candles, flashlights, our trusty camping stove (used in the ventilated garage, thank you, Jenny!) and layering clothing. It was camping inside! It would be an adventure! the kids were onboard, and we set about the task of making sure our ducks were in a row. We put all the items to illuminate with in one specific location, so we could find them in the dark if need be; we set up the campstove in the garage ready for that first meal while we still had daylight (via the open garage door) to see what we were doing. We got out our tote boxes of camping gear with our wool blankets and sleeping bags. We filled up the bathtub and extra containers (five gallon water can) etc. with water in case the need arose to use them to flush the toilets (or to drink). We inventoried our food supply and decided which foods to eat first...the ones most likely to expire in limited refrigeration. And we listed the resources we still had working for us. Namely, we had a gas water heater that thankfully supplied us throughout the power outage with lovely hot water. We had a crank weather/AM/FM/TV radio that we could listen to just by several turns of a handle. We also weren't terribly cold that first day because our house retained much of the heat that had been in it before the storm hit. And we had lots of jackets, sweaters, coats, hats, and warm socks to keep us comfortable.

We spent that first day playing board games with the kids. Again, it was fun. It was a lark...something for them to remember in the future.

Then, as the ice got thicker, the trees began to scream.

The first notice we had of this was that we heard a loud wooooooosh right in front of our house. We rushed to the front door and T1 immediately started crying hysterically. Our bradford pear tree...the one T1 and T2 love to climb...had split open and was laying in a huge fan across our front sidewalk and driveway. T1 was devastated. Suddenly this wasn't fun anymore. And suddenly I became really worried about our other trees. I stood outside on the front porch for a while and heard the crashes of limbs in the woods around us. I watched as the drizzle that was falling continued to coat everything above ground with a glaze of ice thicker than my finger.

That night we ate by candlelight. We had a yummy hot meal, and did a family cleanup job with our hot water and plenty of dish towels. We decided to have the kids sleep in our room...the farthest room in the house from the fall line of our biggest trees, and with the idea that by shutting the doors of our room we were creating a warmer, cozier space for all of us. I found that I couldn't sleep...the forecast had been for an additional coating of two to four inches of wet snow on top of the ice, and the dire prediction was that this would cause even further damage.

The weather service was right.

Starting about 9 o'clock that night I heard nothing but crashes. Huge, heavy thuds that were tree trunks or major limbs falling to the ground. The chandelier-crashing sound of limbs coated with ice falling to the ground. And the worst was when it was close to our house. I was convinced that a huge sycamore tree we have in our yard was going to end up on our roof. I kept an ongoing vigil by the front door that night. At the sound of each major crash I got up and went to the door to sweep the lawn outside with the beam of my flashlight. It went on all night. Every ten seconds on average I heard a crash. It was like listening to a war of sorts. I was in terror of what the ice might bring down on our house, yet helpless to do anything but watch in horror through the windows, or lie in bed cringing with each crash.

At morning's light we saw the damage. The snow had indeed fallen and with it, had brought down many of the trees in the yards and woods surrounding our subdivision. We lost a mature hackberry tree...which was split in half about six feet up from the ground. We lost nearly half the limbs on the sycamore, but thanks to an arborist who has already been here to clean up our property, we think it is saved. We lost the bradford pear, which was the hardest emotionally for us. But we were fortunate that is all we lost.

More to come.

Yes, we did

I had the honor of getting to watch the inauguration with some of my dear friends this morning, and all I can say is "wow." History is made.

Here's my ongoing list of surreal moments from the day:

1) That the Supreme Court Chief Justice screwed up the words to the oath of office. Helluva job, there Roberts.

2) Aretha Franklin's hat. Somewhere, Eleanor Roosevelt or Queen Elizabeth are missing a chapeau.

3) The benediction closing lines of ...Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right.

Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.

4) Cheney in a wheelchair. The resemblance to mean Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" was extra surreal.

5) The amazing view of the crowds who braved subzero weather to stretch out of sight to be witness to this.

6) Senators Byrd and Kennedy collapsing at the lunch afterwards. We can't lose any more Democrats in the Senate folks!!! We need a majority!

7) The camera shots of Bill Clinton checking out Michelle, and later the Bush twins. He had dirty thoughts in his mind...all you had to do was look at the expression on his face.

8) Malia taking her own snapshots of the occasion. Like the concert on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial, this morning she had out her little digital camera and was recording the moment for herself. I would love it if someone would publish her "view" of the events. She even asked Joe Biden to take a photo for her at one point.

9) Obama's address...not surreal, but incredible. Even though I heard it this morning, I just went online to read it, and it is even more powerful the second time.

10) That the companies advertising on CNN today are all employing a theme of change and hopefulness. Pepsi has apparently hijacked the Obama campaign logo to be the new Pepsi logo, and their commercials are blatant in their message of change, and the words Yes We Can.

That's it for now....I'm sure I'll add more later. Meanwhile, share your inaugural moments with me!

is this the way she sees us?

For the last few days T1 has been getting a lot of--well lets say "unhappy" --feedback from The Reenactor and me. Part of it has stemmed from our trying to get her to take responsibility for the unbelievable amount of stuff she has in her room, and making choices to get rid of a huge chunk of it. She's sentimental and reluctant to part with a lot of things, and that means her room is overflowing with dozens of stuffed animals, piles of parts to horse and doll sets, and books, journals, and now CDs. In the past the only way I could deep-clean her room was if she went to visit her grandparents for a couple of days, during which time I would go in with trash bags and boxes to put stuff to donate, and I always got rid of a LOT of stuff, none of which she reported missing when she returned. But she's old enough now to do this herself, and at times is remarkably good about sorting and choosing what to keep and what to get rid of. But at times it is like watching molasses pour in January to get her to go through just one box of mismatched toys.

Anyway...last night as I was working in her room with her I noticed that her dollhouse had the dolls set up in groupings in the different rooms. At the front of the kitchen she had this group...a Mom and Dad doll (no comment on the fact that the Mom is actually labeled as a "grandmother" on the package and is sporting gray hair!) clearly having a conversation with their pony-tailed daughter. I started laughing when I saw it, but the more I looked at it, the more I wondered if that is how she feels right now...Mom and Dad standing on either side of her, hands on hips in frustration.

If you playing with this group of dolls right now, what would your dialog be for them?

just another reason to rant

I have noticed an interesting trend in the last couple of weeks: drive-through conveniences are being geared toward people driving large SUVs. My bank has a new facility drive-through lane that has two heights for the box to come that you place your checks or whatever into. The top height is clearly convenient if you are in a full size truck or SUV. The lower height is for regular passenger cars. The problem is, if you pull up after someone who was in a larger vehicle the box has been left at the "upper" position, and I haven't found a way to get it to lower to the passenger car position. If I press the only button available other than "call" it goes to the teller. So to get the box I have to unbuckle, open the door, and half climb out of my car to reach it.

And today I was mailing some letters at a mid-town post office drive-up box, which has been replaced in the last year or so from the two "local" and "other" mailboxes into one large box. Again, I had to put my car in park, unbuckle, get out and mail the letters because the friggin' opening is set a good two feet above my reach.

I understand in the big picture this is truly a minor inconvenience. BUT, I'm irritated that apparently SUVs at one point became so popular in our culture that institutions like banks and the Post Office decided to cater specifically to those drivers.

Has anyone else noticed another place where things have been placed higher?

Gettin' over my own stupid self

Hey Campers, it's a new year, and I'm 50! Wow! I don't feel a week over 49!

My last post was a practice in wallowing in my own holiday blues. I apologize for how selfishly worded it was. I still maintain that there are too many things standing in the way of Christmas to actually enjoy Christmas, and we all need to return to a simpler holiday that is shorter in duration (not the month-long marathon starting at Thanksgiving) yet more meaningful in quality. It is interesting that a comment from my niece 'Shley mentioned the 12 days of Christmas and how we ought to start having fun on the 25th and just enjoy the next two weeks. That was the same message our minister had at the Christmas Eve service and I think it is a great idea. I have definitely had a better time after Christmas than before.

With one notable exception.

After three weeks of on-again, off-again tummy ache, complete with a spectacular case of sickness into a plastic shopping bag somewhere near Rogersville, Missouri the day after Christmas, we took T2 to the doc last Wed. just to rule out something bigger than garden variety stomach bug. Turns out that he had an inflamed appendix, and while it wasn't serious, or even close to it, a CT scan and review by two radiologists and a surgeon determined that he was going to need it taken out. He is home now, and other than some tenderness that causes him to walk around stooped like a little old man, he seems on the mend.

So since I wasn't in the mood to be grateful to anyone, or for anything before Christmas, this is my newly revised view of the world.

First, to Mariann who magically appeared in the ER just as the doc was recommending to me that T2 have immediate surgery, and helped me with him while I tried to tell the admitting folks all his pertinent details. You can't imagine who grateful I was just for her calm presence while I was trying to sort everything out and keep him from being too upset. She is a blessing to our family, and to our church family for her generous spirit and constant kindness and faith.

Second, to our friend John for giving The Reenactor a ride to the hospital that was described to me as "efficient" but nonetheless got him there before T2 was actually wheeled into the operating room. If any of you know how to bypass having an extra Volvo key made without having to go to an actual Volvo dealership, please let me know. We discovered that day that just one key on my keyring isn't an option any more.

Third, to our friends Hannah and Julie who both showed up in the waiting room while T2 was in the operating room just to keep us company and to help keep T1 distracted. T1 was very worried about her little brother, and all of you helped keep her attitude positive. Special thanks also to Julie for the delicious Taco Soup she delivered to our house the night T2 got home from the hospital. The Reenactor has declared her a Domestic Goddess for that crock full of soup.

Next, to our friend Erin who consulted with us multiple times via cell phone while on her own vacation about T2's condition, and gave us comfort and information. I'm sorry you were having to talk loudly about spastic colons and inflamed appendix in public places, but your advice was unbelievably helpful.

And finally, to all the docs, nurses, and OR people who took care of my sick and very, very scared little boy. I don't know your names, but I'm grateful that you were so kind to him.

Next up...my own take on turning 50. It's a real page-turner!