Can I Be On the List? Please? Pleeeeaaassee?!?!?

I'm not talking about the Santa's "nice" list - I'm certain I'm already there, thankyouverymuch. (And, as a side note, I hear that Santa is bringing nice girls new 60GB video iPods this year - sweet!)

No, the list I'm aiming to get on is the one that McCarthyist fuckwit Bill O'Reilly (AKA BOR - isn't that appropriate?) promises to publish of those of us on the internets who were a wee tad offended that he called for an Al Qaeda attack on San Francisco.

Some far left internet smear sites have launched a campaign to get me fired over my point of view. I believe they do this on a daily basis. This time the theme is O’Reilly is encouraging terrorist attacks. Unbelievably stupid. Not unusual with these guttersnipes.

I’m glad the smear sites made a big deal out of it. Now we can all know who was with the anti-military internet crowd. We’ll post the names of all who support the smear merchants on billoreilly.com. So check with us.

I just hope that he links to my blog, so I can watch the hit count go through the roof. Actually, I'm pretty sure that BOR has already visited; he's certainly one of those pervs who gets here by googling "writhing" in hopes of finding good girl-on-loofah pron. Note: If you're not BOR and got here by googling "writhing" - welcome! No naughty photos yet, but lots of really entertaining writing... stay and read for awhile; you can always masturbate later.

In his column today, my friend (well, not really, but I'd love him to be - e-mail me, dude!) Mark Morford says that we should look to BOR as a cautionary example of what we don't want to be, that we can always feel good about ourselves because at least we're not him. He also says "it is up to us to merely look at him like Shiva looks at a sea slug -- i.e., a moment of compassion for his regrettable incarnation -- and then laugh and shake our heads and move the hell on."

A-freakin-men. The man is beneath contempt, a boil on the arse of society. Karma is a bitch though, and his next incarnation will surely pay. Which gets me wondering... how awful would one have to be in a past life to have come back as Bill O'FalafelReilly?

Tired

So.

Very.

Note to self: Regardless of how much you are accomplishing, how cool you think it will be to wake up in the morning to see the fruits of your labour, GO TO BED AT A DECENT TIME! You're getting too old to try to get by on 5 hours of sleep, and you WILL pay for it the next morning.

I'm just going to put my head down for a moment now. Go on about your business. Nothing to see here.

The Sweet Smell of Avoidance

Cleaning is such the perfect activity when one is procrastinating for all one is worth, is it not? Yes, yes. I have an article I could be writing, but instead I have thoroughly cleaned and organized the living and dining rooms (to the point of rearranging DVDs and moving a bunch of kid books and stuff up to their rooms). I have also cleaned my computer desktop, caught up on logging my sales tax receipts (yes, I am a freak, thank you very much), and updated Quicken in preparation for balancing my checkbook (every month, to the penny - freak!).

The article isn't due tomorrow or anything, but it's starting to niggle at the back of my brain, giving me the feeling that the Sword of Damocles is, if not right over my head, at least right outside the front door waiting to get me when I walk through.

It's all good though. Because in the next two weeks I will manage not only to get the article done - on time! - but also to get the guest room painted and set up for our Thanksgiving guest, pay all my bills, blog, find an Incredibles poster on eBay for the kids, schedule several holiday activities, see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and floss every single day.

Promised Photos

Up the stairs

Okay, okay. I wanted to wait until it was ALL done but honestly that could take a few more weeks, all the little things like, oh, re-hanging doors and getting all the fixtures changed and putting final coats on trim and touching things up and... and...

This is how it looks now... and there are a few before photos (from when we first looked at the house when it was on the market) scattered in. Normally I'm not at all into painting wood, but it was SO dark up there and the kids were weirded out by all the knotholes that looked like "eyes." It's lighter and brighter and all theirs.

Click the staircase to go to the photo set.

Poems & Prayers & Promises

Just in a John Denver-y kind of mood. His music is one of my guilty pleasures, kind of like Anastasia has her Neil Diamond-y thing. This is probably my favourite of his songs, even if he does use that oh-so-not-PC-term "old lady." Eh, it was the seventies and he was stoned. Would that times were still so mellow!

I’ve been lately thinking
About my life’s time
All the things I’ve done
And how it’s been
And I can’t help believing
In my own mind
I know I’m gonna hate to see it end

I’ve seen a lot of sunshine
Slept out in the rain
Spent a night or two all on my own
I’ve known my lady’s pleasures
Had myself some friends
And spent a time or two in my own home

And I have to say it now
It’s been a good life all in all
It’s really fine
To have a chance to hang around
And lie there by the fire
And watch the evening tire
While all my friends and my old lady
Sit and pass the pipe around

And talk of poems and prayers and promises
And things that we believe in
How sweet it is to love someone
How right it is to care
How long it’s been since yesterday
And what about tomorrow
And what about our dreams
And all the memories we share

The days they pass so quickly now
Nights are seldom long
And time around me whispers when it’s cold
The changes somehow frighten me
Still I have to smile
It turns me on to think of growing old
For though my life’s been good to me
There’s still so much to do
So many things my mind has never known
I’d like to raise a family
I’d like to sail away
And dance across the mountains on the moon

I have to say it now
It’s been a good life all in all
It’s really fine
To have the chance to hang around
And lie there by the fire
And watch the evening tire
While all my friends and my old lady
Sit and pass the pipe around

And talk of poems and prayers and promises
And things that we believe in
How sweet it is to love someone
How right it is to care
How long it’s been since yesterday
What about tomorrow
What about our dreams
And all the memories we share

Milestones

It's hard to believe but it's true - our children are - right now - upstairs going to sleep in their very own beds in their very own rooms. The work isn't completely done as there are still dozens of little finishing touches I'll be making for months probably, but the kids are happy with it and most of their stuff migrated up today.

Nathan has been ready since the end of the summer when he spent 3 weeks sleeping up there in what was then the guest room (moving down only when we started painting). We weren't so sure about Sophie; if you asked, she said she was ready, but between being on a different floor from us and never having had her own space since... well... birth, we weren't completely sure.

No worries. She was thrilled to get into bed, turned her lights low until they looked like stars (they're halogen spotlights on a dimmer so she can bring them down to a glow), kissed us goodnight and that was that.

Tomorrow we go look for desks, under-bed storage containers, and a table with comfy chairs for their hallway sitting area. And then I take pictures. Patience.

I'll Take Mine Black, Please

Iowa Woman Finds Dead Turtle in Coffee

November 10,2005 | AINSWORTH, Iowa -- Marjorie Morris just wanted to pour coffee into a canister. What she found in the package of freeze-dried coffee left her shell-shocked.

Morris, 77, of Ainsworth, found a dead baby turtle in the 2-pound package of Folgers coffee last Sunday.

First thought: Thank god I live in Seattle, where our coffee is both plentiful and turtle-free!

Next thought: Folgers? GAH! The turtle actually probably made it taste better.

What Dreams May Come

Sometimes it takes a big ole kick in the pants from your subconscious to get it into gear, does it not?

I've always been a dreamer. I don't mean in the starry-eyed romantic sense (although... well... that too). I mean literally - I dream often and vividly and I am frequently able to remember my dreams for more that 3 minutes after I wake up. I keep a dream journal, on and off, and luckily have captured some of the really cool ones so that all it takes is a reading through to bring it all rushing back.

This one was a morning dream, begun after the alarm had come and gone and finished about the time my youngest crawled into bed for some warmth and cuddles. The dream itself couldn't have been longer than 30 minutes, but it grabbed me and still hasn't let go.

It was simple, and devastatingly sad. Jer, my best friend of nearly 20 years, died. I'm not sure how - it was quick, unexpected. And nobody told me. When I found out I flew down to Peru, where he lives half of the time with his partner José, and where he had been when it happened, where his service had been held without me. I let myself into his house and looked through his things, trying to find something I could take with me to hold and remember, sobbing sobbing. I looked through his clothes and could still smell him, and I looked through photos, finding some he had taken of me when I wasn't paying attention. José wasn't there so I called him and told him how sorry I was - sorry for his pain, and sorry that I hadn't made it down to meet him, and to see them together while Jer was still around. All the time bereft, wracked with sobs, on my knees, filled with guilt.

When I got out of bed, the first thing I told Stephen, after detailing the dream, was that I was going to Peru in the spring. Jer has wanted me to - I've wanted to - for a long time, but the timing has never been right, the money has never been there, I've had commitments here, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

But there's only so much time, and we don't know how much that "so much" is, do we? We have the now, and if we're lucky the next moment and the next. And as much as we might want to deny it, as hard as we try to push it away - those moments are finite.

There's no time like the present. And there's no excuse that stands any scrutiny that I haven't met the man my best friend loves and shares his life with.

So yes. Peru! In March. I can't wait.

In the "Things Could Always Be Worse" category

Doesn't it suck, when you're only a week from harvesting the wheat that will pay for the house you bought on credit and give you enough money to buy new boots, when a cloud of grasshoppers descends and destroys your whole crop?

Man. I hate that.

Yup, we're reading the Little House series at bedtime with the kids now, and we've made it to Plum Creek where Laura has crossed paths with, and leech-slapped, Nellie Oleson. Oh, the memories!

Note to self: Add Little House DVDs to Amazon wish list. L'il half-pint, here we come.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

"Our country is at war and our government has the obligation to protect the American people," Bush said. "Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture."

I guess it all depends on what this administration's definitions of "law" and "torture" are.

Oh, and then there's this, when asked about the Plame investigation:

"We take this investigation very seriously and we'll continue to cooperate during the investigation," he said.

God, I'm ashamed.