I really do mean to write but it ain't gonna happen

I know there's been nothing public here for six months, but I'm here every day and I often start posts. Most of them just get deleted and a few of them are saved as drafts.

I find that when I write, I bare my soul. If it's any less than soul-baring, it becomes trite and banal. I suppose even the soul-baring stuff can be trite and banal, too, but at least it's a little more interesting to me. The trouble is that I don't believe that most folks want to read what I have to say when I write what I truly feel. I've experienced it a number of times elsewhere on the 'net. When I just give a little peek into what I really feel, I'm told that I shouldn't feel it, which is really just people's way of saying that they don't want to be exposed to anything that is the least bit painful.

I suppose a lot of it is the way I was raised, too. There was never any problem with feeling things, but we were taught not to inflict ourselves on others.

So I'll never have an 8th blogiversary like my friend Steph had recently. Keeping a diary was never something I did before and the adage about old dogs and new tricks does come to mind. I'll probably keep this here because of the links to other blogs that are there. I like the fact that, when there's a new one, the link moves up to the top.

Do You Believe?

I was reading an online discussion about whether it is a good thing to tell children that there's a Santa Claus. One side thought it was wrong to lie to children, while the other side thought that believing in the magic was a wonderful part of childhood. I never really believed in Santa Claus. It came across as a fun thing to pretend about, rather than a belief that a given person really existed. The pretense never went away, either. As long as we celebrated Christmas, my mom would give me one gift with a tag that said "from Santa."

I didn't really know why I didn't believe in Santa Claus, though. I was thinking that it was more of an attitude by my parents than anything else. Yesterday for some reason I remembered an incident, though, which was probably the source of how I viewed the jolly old elf for the rest of my life.

When I was little, cousins in one family were in a very difficult situation. My uncle was in the Navy and was at sea for months at a time. My cousins were 5, 7 and 9 years old and their mother just decided she couldn’t or didn’t want to care for them alone any more, so she abandoned them. The kids were placed in foster care. (Eventually they ended up living with our grandmother and my uncle retired from the Navy so he could be with them.)

I was five years old and my brother was seven. We didn’t have a real strong belief in Santa anyway, but there may have been something there at that point. Hard to tell. Our family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we had enough to get by on and our Christmases were pretty good. That year my parents came to my brother and me and explained about the cousins. They told us that our cousins wouldn’t have any Christmas presents where they were. If my parents bought presents for the cousins, there wouldn’t be as much for presents for my brother and me. We would still get presents, but there wouldn’t be as many as there had been in the past. They gave us a voice in how Christmas for everyone would be.

I want to stress that my parents didn’t put the whole decision on us. But we were part of it. And in order to make us part of it, they needed to tell us that there was no Santa Claus.

We agreed that it would be better for all of us, including our cousins, to have something, rather than for them to have nothing. My mom took us shopping with her to pick out the gifts for the cousins so we were part of the whole thing. The only thing I remember from that Christmas was when we went to the foster home to give the presents to my cousins. That was the most important part of the whole holiday.

A rare post

I'm not a good blogger. But I'm here once in a while.

I saw the doctor earlier this week and we talked about my migraines. He gave me a prescription for nortryptyline, which is supposed to be effective in preventing migraines. It's also an anti-depressant.

I took the first one last night and I feel like real ca-ca. Sort of like I'm wrapped in cotton batting or something and I've got low-level but constant nausea. This is the same way I've felt when I've taken other anti-depressants, for one reason or another.

Sidenote: When I was in the nursing home a couple of years ago, they berated me into agreeing to take an anti-depressant because they told me I was looney for being unhappy about being in the nursing home. I took them for a few days and then refused to continue.

I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe this horrible feeling will go away after I take these for a while. I'm not sure whether they'll prevent the migraines, either. I do have a feeling that I may have to choose between migraines every few weeks and feeling like crap all the time. We'll see.

Eighteen years, eight months and five days she was here. Eighteen years, eight months and five days she's been gone.

Bizarro world

Several weeks ago, my arm started hurting. It wasn't constant, but it was really painful. It was like the muscle was on fire and affected either the muscle just above my elbow or just below, but never both at the same time. On the right side. I'd had something similar not long before the whole badness with my innards started, except it was on the left side. It started and then, after several months, just stopped again, with nothing I could figure out as a cause.

When it happened before, I went to all sorts of doctors. I saw neurologists and rheumatologists and every other -ologist I could find. They gave me a whole list of things that weren't wrong with me, but not a clue as to what was wrong. I got a number of misdiagnoses -- someone said I had tennis elbow, which isn't even close to my symptoms. There was no injury or muscle strain or anything like that. It was a bit worse when I got stressed, but it didn't seem that stress caused the pain, just exacerbated it.

So when it started again, I was pretty upset. I was in some pretty severe pain and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. Some folks I talked to suggested minerals, especially potassium, so I made a point of trying to add more potassium-rich foods to my diet. I was taking a multivitamin with minerals, so I didn't think I needed to take much more.

Monday morning, just after taking my daily vitamin pill, I got to thinking about the previous bout with it. It occurred to me that I likely was taking a vitamin pill at that time, too, but ran out just as the whole intestinal thing started and I didn't bother replacing them. I had only started taking the vitamins again relatively recently. Then the strangest thought came to me. What if the vitamins were causing the pain?

I've not taken the vitamins since and the pain is almost completely gone. I've had a couple of twinges here and there and it's sort of generally sore, but not the excruciating fire that I had before. Jim thinks that maybe it's the minerals that were included so, once this is completely out of my system, I can try taking vitamins that have no minerals included. Then I can start adding things one at a time. At least if I get that pain again, I'll know to stop taking whatever I added most recently.

But how bizarre is it that a vitamin pill would cause this kind of pain? Weird!

Counting chickens

I found a job for Jim on the 'net that looks just about perfect. It's exactly what he has experience in, working for the EPA (a government job) and minimum pay would be 170% of what he was making before. Cool, huh?

It's in the general area of where we live -- close enough that he could commute for a while, but far enough that we would eventually have to move. It's just nice to think about being able to stay where we are until the lease runs out, rather than paying a penalty. The area is absolutely gorgeous. I like where we are now, but this is even better.

I started doing some online research on housing (we could afford a lot more than what we have now and possibly even buy a place). I keep telling myself that it's a good thing to look ahead and be prepared, but I have to be really careful not to count my chickens ahead of time. I don't want to be too disappointed if it doesn't happen.

The job was just recently posted and they'll be taking applications until the beginning of August, so I have a lot of time to both worry and count. Fingers crossed, though.

We're now a statistic

Jim just called to tell me that he has been laid off. He knew something was up because he got a call yesterday from the lab manager, saying that he wasn't to come in early like he usually does, but to wait until a meeting that was scheduled for 8:00 this morning. The meeting must have been a little early because it's now 7:40.

We'll be all right for a while. He gets a month's severance pay, and health insurance will continue for that time. Then he will get the back vacation pay they owe him, which is almost 8 weeks, so we have income at the same level through September. I doubt that we'll have insurance after this month, though. He said he has some paperwork that he's bringing home, so maybe there will be information there.

The thing that just kills me is that he gave so much to that company. Way over and above what anybody has the right to expect from an employee. On days when he was coming home "at the normal time", that would mean that he only worked 10 hours -- with no breaks -- instead of 12 or 14 hours. Several times he went four or more weeks at a time without a day off at all. And they shaft him.

On the up side, he has referred to the lab as "the bad place" for a long time. He joked about this being his opportunity to become a professional poker player. :-) At least we should be able to spend a few days of just being together before he gets into dealing with resumes and interviews and all that goes into looking for a new job. At least it's not cold out, and we don't owe any money to anyone.

I can't tell you how much I hate this...

... but I have to agree with [choke, gasp, gag] Sarah Palin.

I don't watch David Letterman, but I think somebody would have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the comments he made about Sarah Palin's daughter earlier this week. It is completely unacceptable. The reason I'm posting this is that I expect that at a later date some of the more conservative people I know will claim that this didn't bother me and no matter how much I might protest that it did, without dated proof that I wrote it, they won't believe me. So this is a "for the record" post.

This morning, Gov. Palin made two points in an interview on the Today Show which I had to agree with. First, she talked about how, during the most recent campaign, Obama asked that people keep families off limits. Mostly that has been respected, but not in the case of the Palins. I think that families, especially children, should not be mentioned at all and, if they are, only in the most benign manner.

Back in the early '60s, I remember a joke that mentioned a president's child, which I thought was pretty cute at the time and still do. I believe it was Stan Freberg who said that Krushchev had called the White House on the red phone and every problem between the US and USSR was solved within five minutes. Then Caroline called her daddy to the phone.

That's a cute joke that doesn't in any way denigrate the child, but rather was a comment on the presidency and referred to families everywhere. Letterman's jokes were very pointed, no matter which of the Palin daughters he was referring to.

Sidenote: I do wonder about some of Palin's supporters who are up in arms now and whether they were similarly up in arms when Rush Limbaugh compared the young teenage Chelsea Clinton to a dog. (Limbaugh lamely claimed that the incident was an accident when he was called on it, rather like Letterman's lame excuse of referring to the older Bristol Palin instead of 14-year-old Willow.)

The other thing I agree with Gov. Palin about is that this kind of joke contributes to an atmosphere where the denigration and abuse of women is somehow acceptable. It is an attack on all women, and especially on younger women. As bad as the personal attack on the Palin daughter (whichever one he meant) was, I think this is more serious. But not surprising.

Socks!!!!

I finished my socks! They're really nothing fancy or anything, knitting-wise, but the self-striping yarn ended up pretty cool. And they fit.

I learned a lot while I was making them, especially about getting the stripes to match. I figured that they either needed to be pretty close to matching, or completely opposite of each other.

They are definitely worthy of being Nicki socks.

To Steph and Nettl

(who I think of as Kaye and Lynette)

Your anniversary is in a couple of days, but since tonight you're going out to celebrate it, I thought I'd post my wish for you today. I love this poem. I know that it's how I feel about Jim and I'm pretty darned sure it's how you feel about each other.

Tin Wedding Whistle by Ogden Nash Though you know it anyhow Listen to me, darling, now, Proving what I need not prove How I know I love you, love. Near and far, near and far, I am happy where you are; Likewise I have never larnt How to be it where you aren't. Far and wide, far and wide, I can walk with you beside; Furthermore, I tell you what, I sit and sulk where you are not. Visitors remark my frown Where you're upstairs and I am down, Yes, and I'm afraid I pout When I'm indoors and you are out; But how contentedly I view Any room containing you. In fact I care not where you be, Just as long as it's with me. In all your absences I glimpse Fire and flood and trolls and imps. Is your train a minute slothful? I goad the stationmaster wrothful. When with friends to bridge you drive I never know if you're alive, And when you linger late in shops I long to telephone the cops. Yet how worth the waiting for, To see you coming through the door. Somehow, I can be complacent Never but with you adjacent. Near and far, near and far, I am happy where you are; Likewise I have never larnt How to be it where you aren't. Then grudge me not my fond endeavor, To hold you in my sight forever; Let none, not even you, disparage Such a valid reason for a marriage.

Something's gotta give

I'm really in a quandry. My apartment is a complete disaster area. I have been trying to get it cleaned, although I can only work for about 10 or 15 minutes before I'm completely wiped out and have to rest. I did finally work out a system where I work as long as I can and then set the timer on the microwave for 10 minutes. That's usually enough rest time, but having the timer go forces me to get back up to turn it off so I get back to working rather than getting involved in something on the computer or knitting.

The trouble is that there's a lot of stuff that needs to be thrown away. Much of it should probably be recycled, but that's even harder to manage. The problem is that in order to get to the dumpster, I have to climb stairs and I can't climb the stairs with things in my hands. I have to hold on to the railing or I'm likely to fall. I'm seriously afraid to even attempt to go up the stairs without holding on.

I've asked Jim to do it and he says that I just need to put it near the door, but then he doesn't think about it when he comes home. He's been working so much -- he leaves home at 4:30am and hasn't come home until nearly 8:00pm every day for the past week -- that I don't want to nag him about it. He takes care of the regular day-to-day garbage without being asked, probably because it gets to the point where he doesn't have any place to put his coffee grounds in the morning.

It's getting to the point of being like those overly-cluttered places that you see on the news or in movies with crazy old people. I've never been like my mom whose house is almost scarily clean, but it's getting to me now. I'm starting to get depressed. Claustrophobic. And I can't forget even for a minute that the days when I was able to do just about everything on my own are gone, probably forever. Coming to terms with my own limitations is really hard.

No matter what I do, I'm afraid I'm going to hurt Jim. Nagging him hurts him. If I do it on my own, or at least try to, he'll feel guilty for not doing it. I could, I suppose, find a "handyman" sort of person and pay him to come in and do it, but that would make Jim feel bad, too. Above all, the last thing in the world I want to do is to make Jim feel bad in any way. He has been so good to me and he works so hard that the thought of adding any more of a burden to him of any kind is unacceptable.

So I'm pretty much between a rock and a hard place. Good thing he doesn't read my blog. :-)

A little Nicki story

One of the things that I love about little kids is that they take everything literally, not understanding the nuances of adult speech. There was just a commercial on tv that reminded me of a Nicki story.

She was about four years old. We were in the back yard at my parents' house and we could see that the neighbors were working in their yard. I knew that they were building a greenhouse out of redwood boards and heavy plastic sheeting. The boards were propped up against the fence so Nicki could see them. She asked what the Morgans were doing and I said, "They're building a greenhouse."

She looked at the boards and then looked at me and then back at the boards. Gently, obviously not wanting to contradict me but rather confused, she said, "I think it's red."

They still just don't get it

I threatened a while back to talk about politics here. I'm following through on my threat.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is still going around on one television show after another, saying things like "I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives," as a result of what have been called "harsh interrogation techniques" -- torture. He is saying that with President Obama's absolute forbidding of torture that Americans are in danger of another terrorist attack.

As far as I can see, never before in the history of our country has a former member of the executive branch waged such a campaign against the new resident of the White House. It's unseemly and it smacks of being a poor sport because the opposition party was the one that replaced him.

I've begun to wonder if Cheney is doing this as a way to, as they say on legal tv shows, affect the jury pool in case some folks get their way and those who authorized torture during the Bush administration are arrested and tried for their actions. Cheney is giving a defense to keep himself out of prison because he knows he broke laws in what he and Bush did.

The most striking thing about this, though, is that whether or not lives were saved is completely beside the point. This is a nation of laws and the only thing that Bush and Cheney vowed to preserve, protect and defend was the Constitution. Back in Dec. 2005, Bush claimed "As president, I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and I have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our freedom, and our way of life." He was wrong. His responsibility was to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution.

I belonged to a politics discussion list for a number of years and at one point the discussion centered around the "ticking time bomb" scenario, where there is a bomb set to go off that will kill hundreds or thousands of people and you have a terrorist with you that you know is aware of that bomb's location. The question was whether, in that particular instance, torture would be okay.

The more conservative members of the list didn't see a problem with torture in any case, but definitely agreed that in this case it would be perfectly fine. At least one of the more liberal members said they would do it and plead not guilty if brought to court for their actions. I said that, no, neither one of those was acceptable. If I were in the position as outlined and if I fully believed that torture was the only way to get the answer in time to save people, I would use it. And then I would turn myself in to the courts, plead guilty to the charges of breaking the laws against torture, and accept whatever punishment was deemed appropriate.

There seems to be a pervasive belief that if one does a bad thing for good reasons, it ceases to be a bad thing. But I don't believe it to be the case. It's still a bad thing and before we do bad things we have to be willing to accept the responsibility for doing them.

Should Bush, Cheney and others from the previous administration be prosecuted and punished for their illegal actions? I don't know. Once again being a Libra rears up and I can see two (at least) sides. I think it's likely a mistake for a new administration to investigate and prosecute previous administrations. It sets a bad precedent. But it also sets a bad precedent for nothing to happen to people who break the laws, even if those people are at the highest level of government. Remember the whole thing with Clinton? Supposedly the reason he was impeached was because he broke the law by lying to Congress and not because he had a really stupid affair. In the '90s, the Republicans were all in favor of the absolute rule of law. Now... not so much, it would seem.

There was a person on Bill Moyers a week or so ago who suggested that what Obama should do is to pardon Bush and Cheney, even before charges are brought against them. It would avoid the problem of one administration prosecuting the previous one, but, in order for the pardon to actually go through, Bush and Cheney would have to accept it, admitting what they did. Sounds to me like the ideal solution.

Socks and Denial ... Denial and Socks

When Nicki was little, but old enough to understand that people gave each other gifts, it occurred to me that I should come up with something that she could give to me for Christmas, birthdays, whatever. When I was a kid, my dad had two things that he needed on a regular basis -- a key case and a wallet. Each would last about two years before wearing out and it went to me to be the one to replace them each Christmas. There was no surprise to it, but at least they were things that I could afford and it pleased me to see him use them on a daily basis.

At the time that I was trying to come up with something, I had just bought some knee-high boots. I realized that I needed to wear them with relatively bulky socks in order to be comfortable. I bought some and got a kick out of getting what I thought were extremely tacky-looking socks with crazy stripes, weird-colored argyles, strange patterns because I knew they would be hidden in the boots. I could look very "put together" and stylish, all the while wearing something completely outrageous.

It hit me that socks were something that Nicki could give me. She could have fun looking for the most outrageously tacky pair of socks she could find, they weren't very expensive for a child's budget and they were something that I knew I would be able to use. It was a very special thing between the two of us. I sort of let it be known in the family that no one else was to give me tacky socks. That was Nicki's domain alone.

Over the years, she gave me some of the most outrageous socks I could ever hope for. We would laugh together when I opened my present at how truly ugly some of them were, and she would laugh again when she saw me wear them. My last birthday before she died, she gave me a dozen pair of socks, including two pairs of Christmas socks and a Halloween pair with skulls and pumpkins.

Naturally, some of them have worn out over the years or been eaten by clothes dryers. I'm not much for darning, so when a pair has become unwearable, I've placed the remnants in a special part of a dresser drawer. With her being gone, I've been running out. I bought some at The Joy of Socks, but it's just not the same.

Since my relatively recent return to knitting, I've been reading about a lot of people making socks. I've never made true socks before. Some slipper-type socks, but not socks that anybody could actually wear with shoes. they require the use of really fine yarn and little tiny needles, both of which I have avoided like the plague.

I decided to give them a try, though. I bought some extremely expensive yarn and made my first pair for Jim, as the first thing I've ever made for him. He liked them a lot. I've just finished my second pair for him. "Just" as in within the past half hour.

I've been thinking about how Nicki liked to knit and it would likely have been a logical progression for her to learn to knit socks by now, continuing our tradition of tacky socks by making them herself, rather than buying them. There is quite a trend these days of rather outrageous sock yarn, including self-striping yarn. I got several different colorways of it and I'm going to make myself socks next. The first one is this combination of blues and purple and green called "Martinique." I know it's a form of denial to imagine that she's making them for me, but that's okay. Denial's what gets me from one day to the next, or, as Lennon said, it's what gets me through the night.

A bit of a dilemma

I'm on the staff of a message board where people come for support for a web-based portal. The portal allows users to create a whole website around a forum. There's a lot of packaged code that comes with the portal, but the real reason that it shines is that it allows users to write their own code to do all sorts of interesting things. My specialty on the support board is to help people with custom code and I often write whole applications for people. (I've got one currently that I started a long time ago which I need to get finished. I don't like it, though, so I keep putting it off.)

I get annoyed with people who don't ever come back and tell me whether the code I wrote for them did what they needed it to do or not. About a fourth of the people fall into that category. Half or a bit more of the folks I write for are really nice and both tell me that it worked and give me a nice thank you. And then there's the ones who get effusive with their thanks and their compliments on my coding skills. I get a little uncomfortable with those. They tend to overestimate my ability -- I'm not really that good at it, just better than they are -- and it starts getting almost creepy. I tend to think of the original movie Bedazzled, where Dudley Moore says to Peter Cook "You're wonderful! You're marvelous!"

I went to the message board today and found a new topic which had been started by another staff member. It was a poll, with the title of "Do you think JPDeni is the Major Mighty $foo?" ("Major Mighty $foo" has become synonymous with something like "da bomb".) The only options are some form of "Yes", along with "Who is JPDeni" and "What?"

I really hate this. It makes me mega-uncomfortable and all I want to do is go away from the site and never come back. At the very least, I want to delete the topic (which I can do because I'm on the staff) and tell them that I don't like it. But I also don't want to embarrass any one or make them feel bad, either the person who started the topic or the ones who have responded. I know the intention is to be complimentary and nice, but I just hate it.

It's not that I can't take compliments. I can. It's just that at some point it becomes too much. Also, when they do something like that, I feel like I'm obligated to do more. I've come to the point recently where I decided to back off a bit on the custom code. I don't have time any more to do anything for myself and so many things that people ask for are things that I really don't enjoy coding. With this, they've set a level that I'm supposed to live up to and, if I don't -- if I'm just a regular person -- then I'll have let people down. It's rather like the old notion of a man putting a woman "on a pedestal." It's kinda nice at first, but then she realizes that one step outside of a narrowly confined area will cause a very nasty fall.

I don't suppose I'll do anything. I'll just hope it blows over. I hope it's soon.

Happy May Day!

When I woke up this morning and realized that it was the first of May, I remembered something that happened when I was a little kid. For several years up to the time I was 10 or so, my mother and I would put together a basket of flowers -- just a little one -- to give to a special neighbor. The deal was that the flowers were to be given anonymously. I would tiptoe up to the neighbor's front porch, put the flowers down, ring the doorbell and then run away. I guess it's a nicer version of the flaming-bag-of-dog-poo trick.

It was a nice thing to know that someone got a little smile and something pretty out of the blue. I guess it goes along with the way my parents taught me the concept of "pay it forward" without knowing the phrase. Giving for the sake of giving is a reward in itself.

Side rant: I have read where people have said that, since giving makes the giver happy, it's really a selfish thing to do and that's why they don't give anything to anybody. It's hard to believe the lengths some people will go in order to justify the things lacking in their own character.

I don't know why or when our little May day tradition stopped. I guess we just forgot about it for a couple of years and it faded away. But it was a nice thing to do.

I was looking online for May Day traditions and couldn't find anything about leaving anonymous flowers. I can't imagine that my mother made it up, but possibly it was some regional thing in the small area where my parents grew up. Has anyone else come across this?

Sometimes I hate being a Libra

One of the major negatives about many Libras is that they are indecisive and I have that shortcoming in spades. Maybe that's why I like random things so much.

The issue at the moment deals with my lampshades. In my living room, I have a table lamp, a floor lamp, two luminator-type lamps on the fireplace mantel and a little accent lamp. All of them are brass. The lampshades on them at the moment are self-adhesive shades. The idea is nifty. There's stickum on the outside of the shade and all you have to do is lay fabric or paper or whatever on it and it stays. Instant interior decorating!

Except that for the past two or three years since I got them, they've just had the white paper on them that is there when you buy them. The accent lamp has printed paper on the shade and around the base. (It allows you to decorate pretty much the whole lamp.)

I'm a crafty sort of person and I know how to do a lot of different things, which is really the source of my problem. I can't decide what to do with them. I could knit covers in lace or aran cables or any other knitting pattern. I could cross-stitch some pictures. I could learn a new craft and make paper (something that I've wanted to do for a long time). I could buy some handmade paper. I could get some parchment and use my printer to print out Shakespearean words/phrases/sonnets, printing in either gold color or black. I could just buy some fabric.

I suppose the problem is that I don't really have a style. Mostly it's decorated in "I've been sick for two years and the whole place is a wreck," which ought to be a clue to me that I need to take care of the wreckedness before I think about decorating my lampshades. And I'm doing that gradually, but I'd like to make a decision one way or another about what to do with the lampshades so I have something to focus on.

Maybe I should just make a list of the possibilities and go to random.org to get them to pick one for me.

I don't have to agree with someone ...

... in order to admire them.

Mary Ann Glendon, a conservative Harvard law professor who was U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under George W. Bush, has announced that she will not be accepting the Laetare Medal at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement ceremony on May 17. In her letter to Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins, Glendon stated that she would no longer be accepting, citing the conflict with President Barack Obama’s presence as both a commencement speaker and a recipient of an honorary degree.

Glendon is staunchly anti-abortion, and she expressed disappointment that Notre Dame was awarding someone -- in this case the president of the United States -- whose position on abortion is so starkly different from Catholic Church's and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops'.

Abortion Foe Declines Notre Dame Award

I hold a completely opposite position than Dr.[?] (Ms[?]) Glendon, but I can admire her for standing up for the things she believes in. She is not trying to influence legislation or chance Obama's position. She is in a position to make her opinion known, so she's doing it. It would have been easier not to say anything.

The president's response?

“President Obama is disappointed by former Ambassador Mary Glendon’s decision," Spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki, "but he looks forward to delivering an inclusive and respectful speech at the Notre Dame graduation, a school with a rich history of fostering the exchange of ideas. While he is honored to have the support of millions of people of all faiths, he does not govern with the expectation that everyone sees eye to eye with him on every position, and the spirit of debate and healthy disagreement on important issues is part of what he loves about this country.”

Once again, I am glad that I voted for him.

I'm meming too.

So much for my grandiose plans. They sort of fizzled.

In the meantime (memetime?) I'll do the high school meme that Steph did today.

1. Did you date someone from your school senior year?
No. I didn't have even one date my senior year. In fact, I really didn't have any dates at all during high school. I had a boyfriend who was in the Air Force, starting as a freshman and going halfway through senior year, but there was never any calling-up-on-the-phone "Are you busy Friday night?" sort of dates. Oh, yeah. There was one of those dates, early in my freshman year. It was an older guy (18!) from our church. That's the only real date I had until I was 30, and Jim called me up to ask me out to dinner.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school?
No.

3. Did you car pool to school?
I rode the bus. Both high schools were too far to walk and nobody had their own cars.

4. What kind of car did you drive?
Didn't have one until after high school. I got a 1968 VW Beetle -- Wooflie -- when I was in community college.

5. What kind of car do you have now?
Jim and I share a '95 Ford Aspire. Cute little thing.

6. It's Friday night... where were you (in high school)?
Usually at home. When my boyfriend was around, sometimes we would go out, but more often we'd just be home.

7. It is Friday night... where are you (now)?
At home.

8. What kind of job did you have in high school?
My senior year I had a steady baby-sitting job where I was the one at home when two little girls came home from school.

9. What kind of job do you do now?
I'm a professional slacker.

10. Were you a party animal?
No.

11. Were you considered a flirt?
No.

12. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
Not in high school. I played the flute in my elementary school band.

13. Were you a nerd?
Not really. I was probably thought of as "a brain," if I was thought of at all. I don't think very many people even knew I existed.

14. Did you get suspended or expelled?
Nope. One detention in freshman year for something I don't remember. It seems that it was something that I didn't have any control over, but nevertheless was a breach of the rules so I had to be punished.

15. Can you sing the fight song?
I can sing both the fight song and the Alma Mater from the first high school. We had to go to Friday afternoon pep rallies and I have a very good memory for songs.

16. Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)?
It's really hard to say. Probably my favorites were Mr. Jolosky (junior year German) and Mr. Basansky (senior year Russian). I don't think I thought enough of any of my teachers during my freshman or sophomore years to call any of them favorites. The best I could hope for was to have a teacher who wasn't an idiot.

17. Where did you sit during lunch?
Outside always. I hated being in the cafeteria, even when it was cold and rainy. I really don't remember freshman or sophomore year enough to be able to say, except that I know it wasn't inside. Junior year I remember being outside on the picnic tables with a bunch of people. Senior year I only went to four classes a day and left at lunch time. So lunch was at home or in the car while my mom was driving me to my college classes.

18. What was your school's full name?
Freshman-Junior: Atwater High School
Senior Year: Adolfo Camarillo High School

19. When did you graduate?
1969.

20. What was your school mascot?
Atwater: A falcon
Camarillo: A scorpion

21. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
If I could have a bit of insight so that I could make different choices, in a heartbeat. If it would just to relive the misery, no thanks.

22. Did you have fun at Prom?
No proms. The only high school dance sort of thing I went to was either freshman or sophomore year. Some semi-formal event that I got my boyfriend to take me to. It was okay. I got a nice dress to wear.

23. Do you still talk to your prom date?
No proms.

24. Who was your best friend?
Kathy Seeley in Atwater, but I hardly spent time with her after getting the boyfriend. At school in Atwater, I spent time with Grace and Richard. Then I moved and my friend was Kaye. (Steph)

25. What did you want to be when you grew up?
I was thinking about either a psychologist or a diplomat.

26. Any regrets?
Oh, yeah. Lots and lots.

27. Biggest fashion mistake?
Probably the flannel paisley/flowered Nehru jacket/bell-bottomed pants suit that my mother made for me from fabric sent by my boyfriend who was in Turkey. I still have it. (When she was in high school, I suggested that Nicki wear it for Halloween, as a hippie. She wouldn't even consider it.) Oh, and the culotte jumpsuit-y sort of thing that meant I had to get completely undressed in order to go to the loo. I wore it once.

28. Favorite fashion trend?
I liked bell bottoms. Still do. All the British mod stuff and the hippie stuff was nice.

29. Are you going to your next reunion?
I went to the twentieth, but I won't go again. It was interesting to see that the ones of us who had the most fun had been the outcasts in high school. The "soashes" (maybe that will get across the long "o" sound) and cheerleaders just sat around gossiping. The people I hung out with were people I knew from elementary school, though.

30. Who did you have a secret crush on?
Nobody. I think there may have been some crushes on me, but there wasn't anybody I was interested in who was in high school.

31. Did you go on spring break?
We had a week off school before Easter, but it was always just at home. The only one I remember is the one my senior year that was spent with Steph and Cher, with the three of us going back and forth between Steph's house and mine. Two whole blocks! (Steph, remember transcribing the words to "Atlantis"?)

Looking ahead

I've been thinking about what this blog should be. I'm not one to talk about the daily ins and outs of my life. There's nothing wrong with doing that and I often like to read what other people write, but it's just not me. So what's the point?

About 9pm every night, I am wiped out, falling asleep on the couch. I often have difficulty just getting through my brief bedtime routine. I drag myself into bed, turn out the light and suddenly I'm wide awake. Jim falls asleep pretty quickly, but I lie there in the dark for sometimes two or three hours, just thinking. My brain really starts working overtime about then and I get really philosophical.

I was thinking last night that I might just start writing out some of those thoughts. They're not fun, chatty things and it's likely that not very many people would like to read them. (Not that very many people come here anyway.) I think a lot about religion and politics and philosophy. Deep shit. ;-) But maybe if I write it out here I won't be thinking about it when I'm trying to sleep.

We'll see what happens. Maybe this'll end up just to be my own private diary, which is fine, too. I've never been one to keep a diary. I tried a number of times when I was a kid, but I just didn't have the discipline. And I won't do this every day either, but it's more likely that I'll make entries if I am willing to write about what I'm actually thinking about.

You have been warned. ;-)