My Name is Mommy

Mommy goes to Seattle.

Greetings from Seattle! Yes, here we are in the fabulous Holiday Inn with free high speed internet in every room! Actually, this Holiday Inn must have been recently refurbished becase it is downright plush and I'm diggin' on the maroon and navy interior design scheme. The high speed internet is a bonus, and with the free HBO, well, we're livin' large.

Dean decided to sit this one out, so I'm travelling alone with the girls. Dean was so excited to see us go, he barely slowed the car down as he threw us out onto the tarmac at the airport. When I called him last night at midnight, he was still at work so I know what he's going to be doing all weekend. We had a good flight. There were several amazingly kind gentlemen who helped me ferry the children and carseats through security, onto the plane and then off again. There was some really bitchy woman who sat in front of us doing the "God, how dare you have children on an airplane" massive sigh and then the occasional over-the-shoulder glare. The really amazing part is that she was sitting with her husband and similarly obnoxious two-year-old. I do think that the airlines should segregate the seating. People with kids should all be in one area. Do people not understand that we hate sitting by childless-child-haters as much as they hate sitting by us? The last thing I'm worrying about when Avery's ears are exploding during landing is the auditory comfort of those CCHs around us. Yeah, why don't those people go an sit in first class and leave me alone? They can afford it, they don't have kids.

We survived the journey and went to pick up our rental car. Score! We were assigned the Pontiac Aztec! We are tootling around Seattle in the World's Ugliest Vehicle. What is it exactly? It's not a car. It doesn't seem quite like an SUV. It is more like a four-door minivan. But not quite. Anyhow, it is actually pretty comfy and very roomy. It is really hideous to look at though.

We're going to a wedding tomorrow. Well, the kids are staying with grandparents and I am going to a wedding with a few friends from high school. Today will be a busy day since I've got to go get my hair done, nails done and do some shopping. I haven't had my hair cut in something like a year and my roots are three inches long. I've bitten off my thumb and forefinger fingernails because of all the stress I'm under. Then I realized I forgot to pack anything but jeans. That is what happens when you pack 15 minutes before leaving for a trip. I also forgot our toothbrushes. That's cool. We all needed new ones anyway.

Okay, well, I'm going to hit the shower and get going. We're eating out at Wild Ginger tonight, as well. Can't wait!

Talk about terrorism!

So, the professor asked everyone to post a little something about what they got out of our anthropology class. One student with simple eloquence posted the following:

this class had thought me a little background of the cultures that we have covered.

Yes, today I took my final and the class is over. But, one last thought on terrorism:

Suicide bombings are scary because you don't know when or where they'll be. Every mother is frightened because her children can't go out and play and if they do there's always these uneasy feeling that something ba will happen. It's sad that in some countries that some children are brought up to hate, maybe that's why there's so much terrorism. Kid are taught to do these things at a young age and when they get older they become real good at it.

I know! Totally! You can't even go to the mall these days without having to worry about when Abu is going to blow his ass up all over you. Okay, really, though.
The following is an excerpt from an article in The Washington Post by Michael L.
Rothschild:

The odds of dying in an automobile accident each year are about one in 7,000, yet we continue to drive. The odds of dying from heart disease in any given year are one in 400 and of dying from cancer one in 600, yet many of us fail to exercise or maintain a healthy diet. We have learned to live with these common threats to our health. Yet we have been afraid to return to the malls and the skies.

What are the odds of dying on our next flight or next trip to a shopping mall? There are more than 40,000 malls in this country, and each is open about 75 hours per week. If a person shopped for two hours each week and terrorists were able to destroy one mall per week, the odds of being at the wrong place at the wrong time would be approximately 1.5 million to 1. If terrorists destroyed one mall each month, the odds would climb to one in 6 million. This assumes the total destruction of the entire mall; if that unlikely event didn't occur, the odds would become even more favorable.

In another hypothetical but horrible scenario, let us assume that each week one commercial aircraft were hijacked and crashed. What are the odds that a person who goes on one trip per month would be in that plane? There are currently about 18,000 commercial flights a day, and if that person's trip has four flights associated with it, the odds against that person's being on a crashed plane are about 135,000 to 1. If there were only one hijacked plane per month, the odds would be about 540,000 to 1.

So, another student responds to this reasonable and measured thinking with the following:

Yeah, people don't know what terrorism feels like until it happens to them. The people who have been victimized live a life where they have to look wherever they go. Some of us don't know about that feeling and we can't empathize with them. I think that many of us need to be careful and not think that it won't happen to you.

I am pretty sure that when terrorism happens to me(and I better be careful, cuz I think it won't happen to me) I'm not going to be feeling much of anything, except, arrrggghhhh! the burning! pain! everywhere! Ahhhh!! Is that you Jesus?

Ars longa, vita brevis.

I have been less than diligent on keeping up the ol' blog here. What can I say? Things have been busy.

For one thing, I was busy turning 31 on Sunday. I celebrated by going for a 6 mile run at around noon. Later, when the sweat had dried, my clothes were able to stand on their own.

It was a good birthday. We went to 'Buster Dave's' as Viola likes to call Dave & Buster's. I love that place. I don't know why, really, since I've always avoided both arcades and Chuck E Cheese like the plague. Later, Dean and I went out alone and saw The Bourne Supremacy. I received several pounds of chocolate, flowers and, oh yes, a hamster. I just have to wonder why people always buy me chocolate. They must sit around asking themselves, hey, what do you get for someone who likes to run several miles a day and has saddlebags that just won't quit? Well, chocolate, of course.

Hmm. I've been busy wrapping up stuff for my summer classes. The economics class I was taking went well, albeit somewhat boringly so. Anthropology is the giift that just keeps on giving. If you're good, I'll post some more original thoughts from the great thinkers of our time. Caveat emptor.

Things really are crazy. I am taking the girls up to Seattle for a visit on Thursday. We'll be there until Monday. I'll be back just long enough to do five loads of laundry and then we leave again on Wednesday for Boston.

Baby Avery and I ate a whole watermelon together today.

oh; The, Humanity!

Did I mention how much I hate my Anthropology class?

Do you guys think that the U.N. really isn't stepping into the Sudan affair because it sees it as a lost cause? Like, they will waste time and money and have no benefits or profit from helping them? Shouldn't the question of humanity soar above all of these other petty political concerns??

Yep, just another tidbit from my Anthro discussion group.
Here is another:

I don't understand why people can't get along in Sudan that they have to resort to ethnic cleansing. I mean there are thousands of ethnicities in Africa and there's no way that they can get rid of all of them so theirs is the only one that remains. I think the reason why there's so much ethnic cleansing that's been going on in Africa is because people aren't educated enough about respecting other people's culture, they also haven't been educated about the Holocaust because if they were there wouldn't be so much genocide in Africa.

No, totally. I am sure it doesn't have anything to do with, you know, stupid stuff like economics and racism and religious fanaticism. Why can't those damn Africans just all get along? Here is the above student's addendumb when I suggested there may be more complex issues at hand:

Economics does play a role because Africa is in poverty and there are millions of cases of AIDS, so they have to practice ethnic cleansing. It's their way of getting rid of the competition.

Oh, right. AIDS. That must be it.

We are so f-ed. The above represents views of our supposedly-college-educated next generation. I am so moving to Canada.

One for the road:

Globalization can be good and bad. The good part is because people from all around the
world can share a common interest and can meet people of other ethnicities to expand
their horizons. The bad part about is that when the U.S. globalizes their Starbucks and
McDonald's franchises they might exploit places that don't want to be exploited.
Sometimes they invade other places that might take it that the U.S. is trying to be
superior to them. It seems that other counties are ok with the U.S. globalizing in their
neighborhood except for Iraq.

Come on, big money!

WTF! I am up at 3:08 a.m. updating some stupid, f-ing reports. Why? Because I promised them to someone by tomorrow and my word is my bond. Man. Doesn't that suck? But also because I went to bed with Avery and watched Monster(don't worry, Avery was out the second her head hit the pillow). Anyhow, it was so good I actually stayed up and watched it. Normally, I watch about fifteen minutes of a movie and pass out. This is how I get to sleep at night. Is that pathological?

I think it has something to do with the fact that when I brought Bay-A home from the hospital and had the gaping-wound-or-giant-abyss-of-a-c-section-incision and I was taking all those drugs, I would fall asleep watching tv with this perfect, drug-induced sense of well-being. Being a pavlov dog and all, I can now evoke the same sense of well-being just by watching tv.

Anyhow, but really this was a riveting movie in some disturbing fashion and so kept me awake. I think the venti toffee-nut latte I had this afternoon must have finally hit, as well. I'm not one bit tired.

That brings me to the story of my weekend. We went back to Reno.

Dean got a ticket driving home from the family reunion. Truckee wanted to see him in court, front and center on Friday morning at 8:30. So we decided to make a weekend out of it. It just so happened that Dean's cousin Margaret and her famiy was also going up for the weekend. It was perfect. Viola was so excited that Sammy(Margaret's 4-year-old) was going to be there. We went up on Thursday and then planned to leave Saturday. We stayed an extra night since Hoobastank was playing at the Hilton where we were staying. Dean and I went with Margaret and her 17 year-old daughter, Katherine. So, Hoobastank was great. I felt conspicuously old, but what the hell. The rest of the time was a boatload of fun, too. We spent lots of time in the arcade with the kids. We went to the pool. We hung out. It was cool.

I even went running. Let me tell you: the difference in altitude is amazing. I felt like I was trying to breathe inside of a hot oven. LITERALLY. Nice thing about the Hilton is that there is a little river running nearby wth a nice jog path. Even if I was hot and gasping for air, I could do so on a nice trail along the riverbank.

We didn't win the big money. We didn't lose too much either. It was a good time, nice little vacation.

Upon our return, we discovered that Lemme had survived the weekend. Amazing little rat. Yes, he is.

Screw it.

I ran 4 miles this morning and just polished off the last of the Sees candy.

I hate my anthropology class. Here is an excerpt from a post by a fellow student:

I think that there is a speration of church and state. Everyone has the right to worship what they want, and even though some documents say the word "God" or they use the bible, it is purely out of historical reasons. What should we do, act like our founding fathers were not Christian and go back and take away everything they gave us? Pretend that it wasn't found on it? Totally wipe out all of their original thoughts? I really don't see a problem with the way things are now, I think we have more important things to worry about then some saying on our money.

Wow. I want to know how these kids got through high school. Here is Dumbass Speaks Part Deux:

in my opinion we should leave everything the way it is afterall i think our four fathers knew what they were doing when they made this country "one nation under god". so i guess what i am saying is that im ok with things like this as long as the church doesnt end up rulling us all like it did in ancient times...we all know how that turned out.

I wonder what our 'four fathers' would think of that?

Turkey Terror

Ya betcha. I was out at the ranch at 10am sharp. We had an appointment with the vet for a last palpation. Cosette is getting bred for the final time this season on Tuesday. Please. Please. Let it work. It seems we've had bad luck at every turn what with the FedEx mishap and whatnot.

After the vet we made the long walk back to the barn, past the flock of evil-horse-eating-wild-turkeys. Cosette has apparently never seen wild turkeys before. They are not gorgeous creatures, but they are hardly what I'd call scary. Cosette, however, has the turkey-terror. Deep within, she knows what they could do to her with those finely honed beaks, the razor sharp claws and wattley wattles. Granted, she outweighs one of them by about 1072 lbs, but hey. So no, man, she wasn't going near those turkeys.

After the vet it was bath time. Bath time requires being tied up to a post with our backs to the Cows of Doom. Now, these are the giant-horse-eating cows that live on the hill below the barn. Everyone knows, never turn your back on a cow. Especially not THESE cows. Anyhow, Cosette actually settled down pretty well for her bath. We even played in the water a little. She is so prissy, she hates getting her feet wet.

Liz and Nathen came out to check out the place. I hopped on Cosette for a little ride and then Liz took her for a spin. She was good as gold, a little peppy, more go than usual. I really want Liz to get a horse and put it at Indian Hills so we can go riding together. I'm suffering with new-kid/horse syndrome right now. I still don't really know anyone at the ranch yet.

The rest of the day consisted of eating some McDonalds at a makeshift Tivo picnic on a blanket outside of Dean's cube, just us and the girls. The girls and I then went to Petsfart to get a salt block and some fungicidal shampoo for Cosette. It's always something. After that we moseyed over to Borders and browsed for a bit, stopped at See's and got some chocolate and then headed for home.

Now I'm hot and tired and have lots of work to do before tomorrow morning's meeting. I best get to it.

But soft.

I just caught a glimpse out the window of the moon. It is a nicely sliced crescent this morning. Yes, it is almost 2:30. I've been making a bad habit of this lately, staying up too late. Last night I was up until 3am watching The Butterfly Effect. I liked it. Who wouldn't like the idea of being able to go back and change things? I was less than impressed with all the pretentious chaos theory bullshit. It's a movie, people.

Much fun was had today. Aileen has been here since Monday, which has been fabulous. Our house is infused with her germanic goodness, Viola wants to keep her forever. We went to see the horse today. Dean rode and I rode and no one fell off. After that we ate at Happi House. Don't be fooled. Happi does not equal happy. Happi is some translation for "Shit served on a plastic plate for which you will be charged an excess sum". We went to Dave and Busters after that and had a grand old time. Viola became the virtual bowling high scorer. We won thousands of tickets and came home with plastic bracelets, a spongebob keychain and a couple of D&B glasses. We raced the horses, played skee ball and drove a semi truck. Cool.

Aileen and I went to see Spiderman II at the Century 25. It was good. How can you not like Tobey as your friendly, neighborhood spiderman?

Lots of stuff going on right now. We had some fraud committed against our checking account which we had to close in turn. I've been running quite a bit, officially started training for the marathon. Work is hectic. We have a houseguest. I'm still here.

Let Freedom Ring

Happy 4th, y'all.

I ran a 10K this morning. It was brutal. Let me tell you, I am used to running in the cush environs of my local 24 Hour Fitness, replete with fans and televisions for my viewing pleasure. This morning at 8:45, on the starting line of Run San Ramon, already the asphalt was radiating waves of heat. I have trouble drinking water in morning, but especially after going to bed at 3am. It makes me urpy. I figured I'd allow myself to wake up a little and chug some at the race. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the free bottles of water(if there were any) before the race and my OCD doesn't allow me to drink from public water fountains. So, basically, I was exhausted, dehydrated and feeling kinda shitty from all the buttered popcorn at Fahrenheit 9/11, not to mention the Jolt Pizza from Shakers. All this at the start of the race. The first water stop was at mile two and I swallowed two full cups of water simultaneously with a giant bubble of air. As the miles rolled by, and my wheezing and gasping increased, I began to sound like one of those horrible little pug dogs. Then there was The Hill. It was one of those insidious little hills that last a long, long time and is just ever so upwardly sloped. Only your poor pounding heart and burning lungs know the difference. Somewhere around mile four I had an out-of-body experience. I don't remember much, but I think Shirley MacLaine was there. The pavement stretched out behind me and what, ho! Ahead of me was the glorious finish line! But what was this? No one was there. Everyone was gathered around the podium where they were having the awards ceremony for the race I was still running. A good run for me, though: I wasn't last. There was a a man in a wheelchair behind me.

Went to see the horse this afternoon. Nothing new to report. She is settling in at the new place but still spooks at every little thing. She thinks she is a show horse or something. High maintenance, you know.

Now we are celebrating the holiday by eating. Yes, we've decline to converge on any possible terror targets and instead grilled up some chicken-habenero-sausages, corn and sliced up one of those lovely little Dulcinea watermelons that I love. Pretty soon we are going to go eat some cake with strawberries on top.

A few quick thoughts on our independence: our forefathers wanted it, badly. They fought for it. They fought and died. Then, when their own blood, sweat and misery had brought them to a state where they could shape their own futures, they did. They moulded their freedom into a shape and form which has served this country well over the past couple of centuries. We, as Americans born and bred, have been enculturated with the ideals of our republic and its democracy. Maybe at the heart of freedom is the need that it be hard won. Maybe we cannot set people free. Maybe one of the things that makes freedom truly grand and ultimately real is to fight for it and win it for oneself. Freedom is a journey, baby, not a destination.

coup de theatre, coup de grace

Finally, we saw it. At the Century 25 Union City, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a crowd pleaser tonight. It was completely propagandistic and I loved it. I feel like finally the Left is getting some of its due. The sham that is the "free press" in this country seems to be the pocket pet of the Right. So, at last, some vindication for us 'crazy liberals', someone in our corner.

Moore clearly intended to play on the emotions of his viewing audience. He did this well. I was expecting some high impact 9/11 footage. It was high impact, but in a very subtle way. I have numerous thoughts on this film, but at the same time I don't want to ruin it for anyone. Go see it and decide for yourself. I am hammering out the barage of emotions I felt. The biggest emotion I felt was the urge to go kick George W. Bush's ass. Better yet, to smack his smug, baby-killing, family-destroying, soul-selling face with a big fillet of rotten, worm-infested herring. Yeah, and then make him eat it. And when he barfs it back up, make him eat that, too.

So, now I am left with that inexorable 'what next'? My immediate thought was that we could get a rally started right from the theater exit. We could march right across the country and by the time we reached the White House, all 290 million of us, we could just stride on up the lawn, tap on the door and say, "Come on out, Mr. President. We'd like to have a word with you." The Secret Service would be like, "Don't hurt us, we needed jobs in this suck-ass economy." They would pull out their little ear-thingies and join in. So then Bush would try to run out the back thinking to seek asylum at the Saudi Arabian embassy. He'd never make it though, because do you know how many square miles 290 million people would cover? Then, because we are a benevolent, peace-loving people, we would do the fish thing instead of something really atrocious like he deserves.

Then we'd get a real president, like maybe Martin Sheen.

Just kidding.

I wonder what it would be like to have a real president? I wonder what our country would be like if everyone wasn't bought and sold in Washington. Goodness like that can't exist in this world.

I just want to put it out there: if you are family or friend to me, please vote this time around. Really. It matters. And if you are going to vote for George Bush, okay, but don't tell me about it because I will have a really difficult time liking you and an even more difficult time respecting you. Mostly, too, I will know that you have gone to the dark side and God have mercy on your soul.