Here we go again

My mother in all her grace managed to break not one, but both of her ankles. She was walking down a small little tiny set of stairs and on the last step she fell off, landed funny and down she went.  Her right ankle was broken in 3 places and her left one had a hairline fracture on one of the bones.

The orders read, "No weight bearing on the left foot for 4 weeks or the right foot for 6 weeks."

Well... shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit...

She has been placed back in the nursing home where she was when she was recovering from her colon surgery.  I had visions of her wasting away in bed for 6 weeks but they have her in physical and occupational therapy for two hours a day.  They are building her strength for everything above her knees so she will be able to support herself on a walker and rebuild the strength she loses in her calves.

I'm really proud of her especially because she is completely focused on her recovery.  She said, "I want to walk out of here."  One, she wants to get the hell out of there.  Two, she wants to walk again.

I visit her at least once daily.  I try to bring her popsicles. We may watch the news. We may just sit and talk.  Sometimes Charles is with me and he will sit and visit with her too.  It makes me happy that he is supportive of her recovery too.

The sad bit about all this is that we had to give up the dogs.  We both love the dogs but the potential for them to cause her to fall again is too high. I gave them to Westie Rescue.  They know what they're doing and will find them a good home.

My heart  breaks when I walk in the door and they aren't there to maul me. It's weird because they drove me crazy.  They ate my couch.  They destroyed every carpet they ever encountered. They cost us thousands of dollars in destroyed apartments, vet bills and grooming expenses but they were worth it. In time I will forget the couch. I will forgive the messes and the bills.

The lessons I've learned include:

• Be satisfied with loving other people's dogs.
• Use the accessibility entrance to the apartment building.
• Self-care is by far the most important skill anyone can ever learn. If you don't take care of yourself you can't care for anyone else.
• Be thankful every day for the support network you've spent your life developing.

I am most thankful that this is not a life or death scenario.  While it is still very painful and inconvenient she'll survive and carry on to raise hell another day.  (Yay Mom!)

Moved!

I'm still living with my Mom. I moved her with me.  We're just in a newer and better apartment.  

The complex isn't as nice but I was never going to use the bocce ball court or the 9 pools or the state of the art gym with all the meat heads.  I did get drunk and get into the hot tub with Charles one night.  But that was once and luckily no one noticed us.  

Besides that? I had bed bugs, my car was vandalized and the management treated us like shit.  When I turned in the keys, because they were holding our deposit hostage, I said nothing though she deserved the full force of my personality. I didn't call her a bitch and I didn't punch her in the face.  Be proud.

The new apartment is SO much nicer.  It's smaller and we'll have to squeeze ourselves in there.  The amenities include, stainless steel appliances, granite counter tops and wood laminate flooring.  I think the laminate flooring was the main selling point.  I do not want carpet ever again. 

This is why:

Bad & Badder

 Besides the laminate flooring looks a lot nicer.  

I think we'll be happy here. Mom is still sort of reluctant about Charles moving in and Charles is still a little edgy about moving in but it's just because they're intimidated by each other.  He should be a little intimidated of her but he's really laid back and she has nothing to worry about.  

She lived with Ian and he was bossy and aggressive.  He intimated both of us on more than one occasion with his opinions and his temper though he will deny it.  When you're 6'4" and you bellow, no matter how hard you try not to be, you will intimidate your audience.  

Charles is more like a hobbit.  He's shorter with giant, yet surprisingly elegant, feet and a very kind and sweet disposition.  

He says he likes my feisty personality.  He doesn't mind that I'm bossy because he won't mind anyway.

We are opposites in many ways but we balance each other out.  He gets passion, spirit and enthusiasm while I get sweet, gentle and stable.  We are equally intelligent and capable of communicating on the same level.  

My mom is an older version of me.  She is calmer because with age comes wisdom and dismantled give-a-shit.  It is obvious though that I was raised at her knee to learn how to be just like her.  Fortunately Charles is laid back enough to handle both of us with grace and charm and kindness.

This will work out well.

And now for a little bit of cute

This is the cutest picture I've seen in a long time. It makes me happy in spite of what the stupid legislative body is or rather isn't doing. So have a happy on me.

Giving up... ?

I made some sort of comment on a political thing that I read and was told by a lady I used to work with that I was filled with hate.  That burns.  I like to think I'm rather loving and gentle and accepting of humans in general.  I thought my response deserved a bit more attention than just those who bother to read comments on Facebook.  Here was my response:

I don’t hate Republicans. I align myself with Liberals because I believe everyone deserves healthcare, no child should ever be hungry, regardless of the source of the hunger, all children deserve a competitive, free education and there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality.  I also think the abortion argument is flawed for exactly ONE reason. If the government doesn't want women to have abortions, they why isn't birth control free?  I’ll be pro-life when I see all forms of birth control cheap and easy to access.  I see little logic in their arguments, mostly because it’s either based on a book written 2000 years ago or the predatory language of the Koch brothers.  Moderates have lost their voices and either been swallowed into the Tea Party fray, removed from office for the likes of Ted Cruz or become unheard independents.

I hate what the Republican Party has become.  It pains me to see a relatively small minority have such a loud voice and powerful position in our legislative body.

Everyone I know is angry and scared about this.  We don't all agree on the politics but we all know the consequences of a government shut down. I read on Bill Moyer's website an article where if we want to win we have to sacrifice everything.  It's a good article, TLDR: They win, we lose.

I fear at some point we, the liberals, will be seated with our heads in our hands, just having acquiesced because we can no longer match their zealous insanity with logic.  You can't tell someone who won't listen why their logic has no basis in reality.  It's simply easier to wave it off, say "fuck it" and move to Colorado where it's legal to smoke pot and have your give-a-shit dismantled.  At least in Colorado they were smart enough to legalize pot, where they can regulate and tax it and build public infrastructure and educate kids... 

oh wait... just fuck it, remember?

I'm just tired of being angry all the time. I acknowledge moving to Colorado and becoming a pothead isn't the answer. As a state employee though, this stuff really does matter and we are left here to watch this grinding train wreck of a legislative body terrorize us with their insanity.  

I suppose I should acknowledge the things I cannot change.  It's that whole wisdom to know the difference that I'm lacking.  

Not again... More table manners

I went to Threadgill's with my Mom last night.  We hadn't been there in a few weeks and I do generally like their food.  Actually she wanted to go to dinner at Brio or PF Changs or NXNW and I wasn't in the mood for the crowd, the wait or the pretense.  At Threadgill's I didn't have to do anything to look nicer.

We were seated in a section away from the main dining room that has the makings for a nicer intimate setting.  We sat down and immediately three men behind us finished eating and started talking.  They were older men.  None of them could hear the others so they were shouting at each other.  I could hear their entire conversation and had to speak over them to place my order.

Now I perceive this as an irritation.  They couldn't help they had hearing issues.  My only complaint was their series of comments about waitresses in general.  They also were bashing the University of Texas football team.  I could give a shit, but that's dangerous territory in Austin where they are the home team and everyone loves them and everything they represent.

These guys would be classified as a rowdy distraction and there's nothing anyone, especially them, can do about it.

My dad was like that.  He was loud, mean and vulgar at every opportunity unless the waitress was really pretty and then he'd hit on her.  Yes... my 80 year old father, shriveled by age and disability would hit on any woman who might have even a little pretty in her.  That was always fun.  That's a table manner... Don't hit on the waitress.

The biggest issue was after the men left a woman behind me had a very personal conversation with a friend who was putting his mother into hospice care.  She might as well have come to our table sat down and vomited on the table.  That's how appropriate her conversation was in that setting.

So to her I say, Take that shit outside.

Inspiration To Us All

IDIOT!

Who the fuck voted for Ted Cruz?  You should be ashamed of yourself.  My dumbass, shit-eating dog wouldn't be able to fuck up this country as well as this guy does.

He is a FRESHMAN senator from Texas.  Okay that on its own says a lot.  Perhaps he is high on the fumes from the chemical plants in Houston.  I don't know what his problem is but he filibustered a bill he supports!

He does his own thing with his Tea Party agenda.  He refuses to compromise his principles. He doesn't listen to anyone. We're stuck with him for another 5 years.  If no one is paying attention to what an idiot he is we will be stuck with him as the incumbent for decades.  In less than a year he is headlining on all the major news networks as a political power-house.  

Texas, haven't you had enough of the morons?  We have Governor Perry and now we have this wing-nut.  

I read an article by Bill Moyers where he quoted John McCain as calling him a "wacko-bird."  John McCain knows crazy because he is crazy.  If John McCain says you're crazy then you're bull-moose nuts. What did we do to deserve him?

Is anyone paying attention?  If we submit to the Tea Party and their ideals we will all fail as a country.  Their ideals are based on ignorance and fear.  They are justifiably afraid but they are so misinformed they don't know they are being manipulated by the people they should be afraid of.  

The Newsroom

This is my new guilty pleasure.  The term "guilty pleasure" implies that it's stupid but it isn't.  It's brilliant.

It was created and written my Aaron Sorkin who is one of my favorite screen writers.  He is also the brains behind The West Wing, my very favorite all time show in the history of television. I think my next bender will be watching all the seasons again.  This time I will take notes.

I love the way he writes like an articulate intellectual.  His characters always say what I want to say when I'm tongue tied in a political argument.  My best friend says I become very articulate when I'm angry.  And it's true.  When I'm angry and venting about something I turn into a fierce champion for what's right.  When I am confronted with a person I fail to remember all my vocabulary and resort to emotional grunts and moans.

One of my good friends is a Republican.  He is a "Taxed Enough Already" Republican.  He doesn't really care about the Christian right issues but he doesn't want to pay for children he doesn't have to go to school.  He doesn't want to participate in TANF or Snap.  He is fine seeing starving men, women and children suffering from a whole host of diseases on the street.  He chooses not to walk down those streets so it doesn't matter anyway.  He is a social Darwinist. 

He ripped into me and my mother one night with his Fox News dogma.  We very quietly sat through his rant and we did not talk for two months.  His argument was based on financial greed.  He still believes in the trickle down theory of economics and I doubt Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman could convince him to think otherwise.

The Newsroom grabs the Tea Party by the horns and wrestles with it the way the media should.  

In January 2009 John Stewart had a monologue where he told the conservatives who were angry about President Obama's successful bid for the presidency that they had 20 months until the mid term election and they needed to pace their rage.  They did and voted, in my opinion, the most worthless group of legislators I've seen in my lifetime.  A few weeks ago, Terry Gross interviewed Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times on her show Fresh Air, that airs nightly on NPR. It was about how little this congress has done.  ( I have included a link to the show.)

In short they have done almost nothing.  They throw tantrums and try to repeal Obama-care.  They throw more tantrums and deny SNAP benefits to hungry children.  They throw tantrums and revoke funding for education.  They do what they can to shut down the unions.  They do what they can to make abortion illegal yet they also want abstinence-only education in school. And then there are the wars.

I saw a Bill Moyers quote on Facebook that all the money we've spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could fund higher education for all high school graduates for at least the next 50 years.  Maybe that's a bit of a dream that would never come true, but it could feed a lot of hungry kids and supply a lot of after school programs. 

The Newsroom doesn't go into that much detail.  I've spent most of this entry spouting off about my own beliefs.  What it has done has gotten me and a lot of other liberals I know fired up against the Tea Party.  It has reminded us that we are appalled by what they represent.  It has helped us to articulate our arguments against them the next time we have one.

If you are a liberal like I am, get your hands on a copy of it, watch it and take notes.  It'll be worth your time.