17 January 2008

The snow is so thick on my front lawn that walking across it leaves only depressions. White on white depressions-none of that awful bare spot a thin dusting produces.

The cats are completely unimpressed-"People! Wot's that cold, nasty, cold white stuff?!"

"In is Better!" So says Mozart, and Gonzo, as they shudder with the delicacy and disdain only cherished house cats can muster. They turn away from the horror of the open front door like society matrons presented with a colossal faux pas.

Neither cat is stupid, they managed to get In and In they will stay. Gonzo runs toward the interior every time the door opens; Mozart likes to casually sniff the air coming in and hint that perhaps, one day, but, no, not today thanks after all...

Meanwhile, People is out in the mess, the beautiful white picture perfect white Out, snapping picture after picture of the amazing and somehow restorative spectacle of the entire neighbourhood transfigured.

JEEZ! I hope the film develops! It is so cold out that the camera refused to snap pictures after I knocked off six. I had to come inside and let the camera warm up.

How lovely! I am not embarrassed to say that the sight of the fat wet flakes before the sun went down reminded me so much of Robert Frost's snowy woods poem.

How encouraging, the snowfall this Mid-January eve:)


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost
(written in 1922, first published 1923)

14 January 2008

OK, this is not good. I woke up with the same wretched headache I've had since Wed or Thur of last week, and have spent most of the day feeling miserable and sorry for myself.

Things at work are so awful I can't even talk about it all, so I thought perhaps I was suffering a stress related headache.

Nope, my sinus.

I live in a tin shack clinging to the side of a north Georgia mountain. I am very slowly renovating it. Very. Slowly. Very. So the dust, and other allergens are only being beaten back slowly. Very. Slowly. Very.

I told myself if my headache subsided I would at least take down the Christmas decorations.

Nope. It's only now quieting to a very dull roar. Now, as the evening news comes on...

I am not feeling as cheery and optimistic as I would like, primarily because my job is going so badly. I look around the tin shack and see all of the things that need to be done, and frankly, I am really tired of D-I-M.

Translation: doing it myself, as in completely alone 'cuz I'm not even dating.

The last guy who thought I was the answer to his prayers forgot I might have some of my own.

As in "Oh God, why are there no single, heterosexual adult men beating a path to my door without dragging an entire set of Dollar General luggage along with them??"

Somewhere my ex is laughing his you-know-what off.

I'd like to...

The world is going insane. I see us as lobsters sitting in a pot of rapidly heating water.

OK, I like cell phones, I like cable, I like the Internet; I love electricity (try Googling Electricity 101 and see if you can find basic information, or open courseware on learning to completely re-wire your tin shack).

I believe in my fellow man, I am not at all interested in gloom and doom, but lately, JEEZ!

I hate all of the horror I see going on, from the ridiculous spectacle of Britney Spears, to the unspeakable proliferation of man's escalating inhumanity to his fellow man, and it gets closer to home all the time.

A total bastard is going to end up bringing the death penalty back into public favour; he has been linked to four gruesome murders and was recently close to my little corner of the woods camping out while figuring out who to hurt next. He chose someone's lovely young daughter a county to the east as she hiked with her dog.

I know the latest news is that the young woman found drowned in an Athens pond has been ruled out as one of his victims, but I have to wonder because it is just too coincidental that the guy was there at the same time she went missing.

Last night a young man was caught in the cross fire; doctors think if he survives he will be a paraplegic.

The latest scam against the elderly is abusing the reverse mortgage lending program, and it ain't Vinnie the loan shark going after Grannie, it's the local banker!

OK, show of hands, who remembers the Perils of Pauline, or Dudly Dorights timely rescues of his lovely lady when Snively Whiplash tried to take the family farm?

Oh, and pay-day loans are being regulated-signs will be posted listing the prices of the loan for the borrower to peruse while on line, and consumers are being advised (by the fox) that pay-day loans should be used wisely...

We none of us trust the President, calling his administration a regime; corporate lunacy has destroyed the fabric of this country by manipulating the middle class into the poor house-who ever has missed that the sub-prime mortgage industry was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme is stupid, naive, or lying to cover his/her involvement.

George Orwell tried to warn us.

I sat there over thirty years ago looking at my classmates as we slogged through Senior Government and Economics thinking "Oh s**t, these ejits are gonna be in charge!" I wanted to get away, I thought if I just tried hard enough I could cancel out the fools. I dedicated my life to making the world a better place.

But man, look around!

People, an incredible lot of them, think Bush is OK, and those who don't are making a complete proof of Sir Edmund Burke's observation that evil flourishes when good men stand idly by.

Guys like my ex are chewing up the world and spitting it out, laughing all the way, and too many people are letting them.

I've seen it on small and large scale, and I know when it started.

It started in 1991, when my husband's company moved us to Melbourne, FL. I was appalled, in 1992, to read a citizen write (in a letter to the Florida Today editor) that he was willing to give up a few rights if it meant security. My skin crawled.

I come from a people whose motto is "Live Free, or Die!" We are facing a growing number of people willing to kill us off if it buys them five more minutes of air time.

I did not sign up to be an anachronism. I tired of being treated as though I am the problem while Orwellian Doublespeak is considered the norm.

I'm watching good people, not just good Americans, but good people all over the world, being priced out of life, and it alternately frightens and angers me, no, it outrages me.

Does anyone recall that CNN used to be live 24/7, and HNN was just that, the headlines, every 15 minutes, all night and day? That gasoline used to be 26 cents a gallon, and we thought we were being robbed? That we could go to sleep at night without having to be more than reasonably prudent about home security, and that going to the mall didn't include hiring a body guard?

When Crusty and I lived in Guatemala, a civil war was in progress; I went to the grocery with a body guard. I lived behind 12 foot high, three feet thick walls patrolled 24/7 by closed circuit TV the wires to which were protected by cement so that home invaders couldn't cut the wires.

I passed as upper class Spanish, and so was treated to listening to diatribes against the gringos that for my own safety I could not rebut.

My housekeeper and her brother-in-law dog-napped my dog, and were going to demand ransom. Luckily I'd trained the dog, and he scared the s**t out of them and they dumped him in the street. He got up, shook himself off, and fighting the drugs they'd given him, made his way home. I never let that dog out of my sight again until he died in 2000 at the age of 14.

One of Crusty's 'girlfriends' showed up one day holding a jar filled with a liquid I was sure was battery acid-thank-God for the CCTV.

One of Crusty's co-workers, an American from Mississippi said it was understandable, because really, I'd spoiled her good thing, and why would a decent white woman want to be in Guatemala anyway? He went on to tell me I should get out of Guatemala before one of Crusty's girlfriends bribed the body guard. He said I just didn't understand how the world worked, and besides, prostitution is legal in Guat, he said. I remember finally giving up and going back the the States, thinking I would be safe.

But I'm not, nor is anyone, when guys like Crusty and his cronies work for the Government forgetting we are the government, and that their corruption as men, as Americans, and as Christians-oh yes, these guys made it to church when they visited their State side families-has created a nightmare world good people don't recognize.

No, I don't understand how this world Crusty and his fellow military contractors made works. It's the Enron world, it's the "Oh, let's get our little Megan a Britney Spears outfit for her birthday!" world that somehow saw her gyrations in a Catholic school-girl uniform as cute. It's a world where a 70 year old grandfather fights his 40 year old son-in-law to be the first to serve the 14 year old raw oysters on her birthday!

It's a world where wholesomeness and morals really aren't welcome, where a man can write a book titled The God Delusion and the idea that if we get rid of God the religious wars will end.

No, I damn sure don't understand the world men like my ex made, and I don't want to. Ever. I want good people to stand up and stop these savages who are laughing as they send our sons to die in US Army uniforms while they are raking the money the taxpayer's hard earned money in their huge paychecks.

I want good business practices back in the marketplace, so that I don't have to be afraid to buy a head of lettuce because I have good reason to believe the farmworker harvesting it spat on it, urinated on it, or at the least irrigated the field with raw sewage-all things I've seen happen in the Central American produce fields, and in the San Joaquin right here in America.

I want good business practices back in the office, so that my co-workers don't have to be afraid their badge won't work after lunch; I want to know that when my employers say they have an open-door policy, they mean it, and I can take my concerns to the boss without fear of retaliation.

I want to be able to afford food, car insurance, and my rent, all at the same time, and to be able to put fifty dollars aside from every paycheck without having to use it to make it to the next paycheck.

I want my country and my fellow countrymen back, dammit!

02 January 2008

Happy New Year!

OK, show of hands-who can believe it is 2008, already?! Hopefully I will start the year off right by not writing '07, or worse, '97 on everything for the next week.

The Iceman cometh-the temp tonight is forecast to drop into the high 20's. Brrrr. I've got the heaters on, and the house feels pretty good so far, but I'll have to leave the taps open tonight, just in case. More of the adventures of living in a tin shack.

I made my resolutions, did the New Year money planting; I watched the Rose parade. I napped with the cats.

A good start to the new year, I think. Still, I am hoping this year will be better than last in a lot of ways, mostly work.

I miss being a homemaker; I miss working with real adults-has the world totally gone round the bend? I swan I've never been in the middle of such a large concentration of loonies as I am at work!

From what I'm seeing, most workplaces are more like day care for loonies than places where something useful is accomplished. If co-workers spent all of their work time protecting their jobs by doing their jobs instead of 'protecting' their jobs by cutting each others throats, the world would be a hell of a lot more productive!

Things don't look too good from where I'm sitting. Gasoline and food prices are on a steady upward climb; the mortgage and credit crisis is going to lead to Recession if not Depression, and most seem too willing to claim the Emperor is stylishly clad in the very latest Gucci...Geez Louise, whatta a bunch of bloody ostriches!

It's scary when everyone around is so afraid yet they refuse to admit the Boogey Man is real after all.

It all makes me think maybe all the doomsayers are on to something.

We'll see. Hopefully, everything will be great in 2008! Hey! Let's all prepare for um, maybe not the worst, but, ya know, just prepare, BUT...

Let's try that ole' Positive Thinking thing.

You know, "Clap your hands if you believe in Faeries!" and "Happy thoughts! Think Happy Thoughts if you want to fly!"

Let's fly!