Gratitude

I feel like I'm missing something.

So many people posting about their life and feelings after the attack. So many people in such despair.

But there's a part of me that just wants to shout "how spoiled are we?" Sometimes I think we missed a BIG portion of the lesson.

My mother expressed some despair over how life will change for my daughter, who is 12. About growing up with war. My response? If we lived in the land where these people came from, she would have been living with war and bombs and gunfire and homelessness and starvation since she was 2.

We have come thru a horrible tragedy, with an almost unbelievable amount of lost lives. But there are no soldiers walking thru my streets that I must fear. The planes that fly overhead are not carrying bombs aimed at my house. I do not have to dodge sniper bullets while going for my groceries. My government is not storming my village, murdering husbands, sons and brothers. And all that is unlikely to happen here.

What must the people in Northern Ireland think, reading of our sadness about the dead or missing? Our fear of opening an envelope that might contain a powder that has a chance of causing us to become ill, and a lesser chance of actually killing us?

I'm embarrassed. I still have so little to fear. I still have so little to worry about.

And I am so very, very grateful for that.

I love to mow. Not.

The intense heat wave has given way to rain, rain, rain. I feel like a prisoner in this house. To step outside kicks in the mild but irritating asthma attack, so the yard is showing the effects of much rain and much neglect. I'll need a machete by the time I'm able to cut the grass.

Sidetracked

I SO admire people who can post interesting things every damn day. Is my life really that boring?

Don't answer that.

It's not all that boring from my end. I just can't imagine it being all that interesting from your end. Raising a child (or trying to), running a business (or trying to), paying the bills (or trying to), keeping my sanity (well, I think I've already lost that battle).

Like today. Got up early, planning on trying the meditation/yoga thing, but on my way to the area I've chosen to do that, I

• checked my email


• fed the cat


• picked up some laundry and threw it in the laundry room


• tried to get the laptop out of standby


• made coffee


• washed a few dishes


• opened the sunroom windows

Yes, I am the Queen of the Side-tracked. Needless to say, the meditation/yoga thing didn't work out. Of course, I don't know what I'm doing as far as yoga goes, and as for the meditation - if I could turn off all the noises in my head I might get somewhere.

But I did do a few stretches. Does that count?

Chuckleheads

We are, it seems, a nation of bored, ill-educated, vacuous, voyeuristic, attention-craving chuckleheads...

Isn't it about time we realized that sometimes what we want and what we need are two distinctly different things?

Bad Girls

I Am Not One of the Good Girls

Roosevelt

Two of the top three. Actually, I think they just should have included Roosevelt Boulevard, period.

Enough

Damn, I just love reading Candi's rants. She really lets it fly. He recent posts about guns and crazy mothers were pure screamers.

Take responsibility for your fuck-ups. Any way you want to word it. Pass the buck all you want to - it eventually comes back and lands right in your lap anyway. Stop blaming things on stress, or bad laws, or a lousy childhood. Wake up and pay attention to your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends. How can we be a society with so much to offer but at a loss to locate our basic humanity?

Take the Yates case. What in the world is this women who is so obviously unable to cope doing with five children? After she attempted suicide after the 4th child, did her husband think another one was going to make it easier? Did she need to put up a billboard? This woman was rapidly spiraling downward while her husband sat in the blissful ignorance of his own making.

Yes, what she did was horrible. She should had said "Listen, bud, I'm going to work for awhile. You take care of the kids. And I don't mean a few minutes of basketball. I mean 24/7. Diapers, vomit, tantrums, the whole bit. Have a ball. Just leave me alone."

My guess? He wouldn't have lasted a week.

Whitney

I had to put my dog to sleep today. She took a turn for the worse last night, and I could not let her suffer any more.

Posts might be a little sparse or uninteresting, if at all, for a bit. I am grieving the loss of a very good friend.

I love you, Whitney. You were the best.

Sad

I received some very sad news yesterday.

A few weeks ago, my parents stopped in for a visit. Shortly after they left, my father came rushing back in the door, telling me to call 911. My heart, naturally, stopped for a minute - I thought there had been an accident and my mother was hurt. But as they were driving down the street, they noticed a lady in her driveway who had apparently slipped and fallen on the ice.

I called 911 and they asked me several questions that I passed on to my father, and back and forth we went until the 911 operator was able to give me some instructions: keep her warm, and if she loses consciousness, call us right back. So I grabbed an old blanket that I kept in the car and rushed off down the street.

She was just lying there, repeating "Oh my head. My head." There was no blood, she was still conscious, and when I asked her her name and if she knew what day it was, she responded appropriately - no babbling, not incoherent.

We waitied to hear the sirens, and all the while I tried to comfort her that help was coming, she would be ok. Within a few minutes, the ambulance pulled up and the EMT's struggled up the icy driveway and began examining her and trying to put a neck brace on. This caused her to become nauseous, so we quickly got her turned on her side and I tried to clean up what I could with the blanket without moving her. She was very embarrased and I felt so sorry for her, but assured her that everything was ok, we didn't mind and just wanted her to get to the hospital where they would help her.

They got her strapped in and struggled down the icy driveway to the ambulance and they were off.

I wondered for several days how she was doing. I'd never met her before that day and didn't know any more about her than her name. But she was a neighbor, and I believe you should be at least on driving-past-and-waving terms with your neighbors. You never know when you may need them. As happened here.

I just found out yesterday that she died that night. And all because she wanted to bring in her trashcan.