All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

I think I am under some kind of bad star for mail delivery lately. Our mail service hasn't ever been great in the first place, but it's awful lately. We (and our neighbors) are used to getting packages, letters, bills and magazines addressed to other people on our street, and usually we all just walk whatever over to the correct address, or stuff it back in the delivery slot on the shared boxes.

But last week I had an order from Etsy go missing on me. The sender had set it up with delivery confirmation which showed it arriving last Monday, but it certainly never got to our house. After spending an interminable amount of time on hold with USPS customer service, I was told I needed to call my local post office for help in looking for it. Unfortunately, the only number listed for our area WAS the main customer service number I had just called, and that helpful (oozing sarcasm here) guy at the main number ended up giving me the fax number for the local branch.

I did some extensive Google work (because they clearly don't want to be called directly) and got through to someone who ostensibly could help. To his credit, he did drive out here to check and see if it was put in the package drop and we just never got a key for it. But no package was in the drop. He spoke to the mail carrier, who SWEARS she put it in our locked box. I know that's bullshit, and what I'm thinking, best case scenario for USPS, is that she put the package by our front door and someone stole it. That'd be pretty weird, since we live in a fairly stable subdivision.

And now I'm waiting on one coming from FedEx Smart Post, which is exactly the same thing as parcel post except it takes longer and costs more. Their tracking system has stalled out with it in Denver on May 27. No updates have been made since then.

I'm getting pretty damned sick of this. I'm about to start writing some very descriptive letters to the Postmaster General.

How about the rest of you? Do you have consistently good or bad luck with your mail delivery? Or is it somewhere in the middle?

I just wanted to share this with you all, in case you too might be spurred to action. If you feel motivated to do so, President Obama can be contacted via comment form at Whitehouse.gov.

Dear President Obama,

Sir, I believe in you. I believe in the changes you are making in our country. I have faith that you are here to do what is right. That's why I hope that my request (and that of thousands of others, I am sure) will be meaningful to you and help spur you to take action.

I am a resident of Boise, Idaho, which is located not far from the Mountain Home Air Force Base. I learned tonight (via KTVB.com) that a Mountain Home fighter pilot is in danger of being discharged for being gay. He has been "discreetly" so, until maliciously outed by an acquaintance. Now he stands to lose his 18 year career due to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Sir, I beg of you: please get rid of this policy. It is discriminatory to important citizens of our country. The GLBT community deserves equal representation, and should not have to hide in shame.

I know that reversing this policy will fly in the face of many traditionalists both inside and outside of the military, but that doesn't mean it is right to allow it to stand. America's young people are growing more accepting of GLBT folks, and I do not believe that most service men and women will face too much discrimination from their peers. I do, however, believe that the discrimination is more likely to occur at the upper ranks in members of an older generation.

The only way to bring equal rights for all of America's citizens is to break down these barriers. Please, sir. Please be the leader to help guide us out of this terrible predjudice.

Thank you so much.

Good grief. I can almost see what she's going to look like as an adult. She's only 3 and a quarter! Isn't she beautiful?

Oh world, the day has come: Freya is officially in preschool. I am a very proud mama.

The back-story is that Freya's Montessori program has two tracks--the toddler and the preschool. They're phasing out the toddler program and turning that classroom into a preschool as well, and we figured Freya seemed more comfortable there and that she could just be the oldest child in that room.

But then last week they didn't have enough kids at school to have both classrooms open, so they put all of them into the preschool for the day. Freya ended up having her best day of school ever, and was so happy when I picked her up. We started talking to her about starting preschool, possibly at the end of the summer. I mentioned that to her teacher a few days ago, and this morning we were told she could literally start any time she wanted to.

This morning before school, Freya asked me, "Is today the day I get to go to the preschool?" I told her, "No, not today, baby." But when we heard she could start whenever she wanted to, I asked her if she wanted to start today. She nodded her head so eagerly!

I'm so proud of her. I know on the surface it doesn't seem like much of a transition, but Freya has also never been good at change. (In fact, we were just criticized by my father for letting her have too much control over our lives.) So the fact that she willingly took a step into somewhat unfamiliar waters makes me feel very good.

Way to go, Sweet-Pea!

I was reading a post today at Bird on the Street that just about broke my heart. Bird wrote about a little girl she met this last weekend who has something called Batten Disease. In short, this little girl, Mary Payton, was born with no outward signs that there was anything wrong with her. But just before her third birthday, she started having seizures. Many specialists later, she was diagnosed with this rare genetic disorder. In short:

Over time, children affected by LINCL suffer mental impairment, worsening seizures and progressive loss of sight and motor skills. Eventually children become blind, bedridden and are unable to communicate. Unfortunately at present, it is always fatal. It usually ends in death between the ages of 8 and 12.

I got to thinking about how healthy (relatively) Freya has been, and how she appears (knock wood) to be perfectly fine. But what if one day she was struck by a mysterious malady that was guaranteed to take her from me before she even got to be a young woman? I think I'd just go right ahead and die with her.

I'm so impressed in reading the web page of Mary Payton's Miracle Foundation. They're working together to fund research to help treat and someday cure this terrible issue, and they offer support to families of other children dealing with it.

I believe that we could all change the world for the better if we just tried to do one good thing every day. If you feel the same and are short on inspiration for today, swing on over to the Foundation's donation page and reach out to help some helpless kids. Truly, nothing is too small. If you can't swing a donation, at least please check out her story and maybe blog it forward. Thanks.

As I was browsing Google News this morning, I came across a couple of interesting articles. First, CNN reported ten interesting facts about Memorial Day. First, I learned that Memorial Day came about as a response to the Civil War, where the soldiers' (primarily Union) graves were decorated and the day was first called Decoration Day.

Then I learned that President Obama continued a tradition started by Woodrow Wilson, where the sitting president sends a wreath to the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetary. He also started a new tradition of sending a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in the District of Columbia. Evidently, he was requested by many scholars to not send the wreath to the Confederate Memorial.

A group of several dozen university professors and scholars wrote a letter to the president asking him to not send a wreath or any commemorative token to the memorial erected in honor of the soldiers who fought and died for the South in the Civil War.

"We ask you to break this chain of racism stretching back to Woodrow Wilson, and not send a wreath or other token of esteem to the Arlington Confederate Monument," the letter states. "This monument should not be elevated in prestige above other monuments by a presidential wreath."

I guess I don't really get it. If the point of Memorial Day was to honor the Civil War dead, then we should honor the deaths of all the soldiers. It isn't like we can say, "Oh, all the Confederates were racists and all the Union soldiers were not." I'd venture to guess that the vast majority of all those who fought the Civil War were racists by today's standards.

I don't think, in fairness, that it is right to try to differentiate "good" soldiers from "bad" soldiers when making an attempt to honor all of America's war dead. I think the President found a pretty good compromise in this situation. Alternately, he could get rid of the tradition of sending a wreath anywhere. That's equality.

I spend a fair amount of time on Facebook lately. It's a fun and easy way to keep up with people. It's interesting to connect with people you haven't seen in a long time. There are some fun quizzes, etc.

But the one thing about it that I really don't get are all of the groups that are set up so that you can become a "fan" of something completely obvious. For example, you can become a fan of pie, peanut butter sandwiches, cats, the beach, and God. You really don't do anything with it from there--your friends just can note that, "Oh, Jimbo is waving the pizza flag tonight."

I dunno. I guess I'm just not ready for that level of transparency.

Do you use Facebook? What's the best and worst thing about it for you?

Speaking of alternative medicine, I just remembered a funny story about my mother.

Back when I was about five, my mother's side of the family had a giant family reunion in the small town we lived in. Folks came from as far away as...Nebraska. I had never even met most of the people, and I never saw most of them again. One of those folks was my mother's cousin, David.

Now, about this time my mother fancied herself an amateur iridologist: iridology being the theory that the eyes are a window to the body's health, and that you can diagnose medical problems or imbalances by looking for significant color and pattern change, as well as spots and things that appear on the sclera. She'd made a little reputation for herself by gazing at people's pupils and weighing in on their general physical state.

Then Cousin David stepped up. My mother looked and realized that something truly bad was going on with David. One eye looked normal, but the other was just all wrong. The pupil was slightly off-center, and there was no clarity to the white of his eye. All sorts of things flashed through her mind, but she didn't want to tell him she foresaw his imminent demise in his eyeball. She hedged and said, "Well, I'm having a hard time telling anything from this eye."

He replied, "Here, let me give you a closer look." Then he reached in and plucked out his glass eye and handed it to her.

She gave up iridology on the spot.

So yesterday I posted about my damned hippie doctor wanting me to go off sugar because she felt I had an imbalance of candida bacteria in my body. I freaked out a little, and started the struggle to quit eating foods with simple sugars in them. It wasn't until today that I decided to do some research.

Turns out that candida imbalance (or candidaisis) is one of the latter-day fads in diagnosing ambiguous but common problems. Much like thyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome and other scarcely-defineable maladies, candidiasis has many symptoms that are common to most people at one time or another in their lives. It is also very difficult to screen for with a most common testing techniques. It seems you can easily be diagnosed with it when you have a topical skin disturbance (a cut or something) that gets infected with candida bacteria, but to say that your natural candida balance is disturbed and requires treatment is something that sets off the quack-o-meters for most medical researchers.

Hence, I have decided to forego sugar withdrawls and seek a second opinion from another doctor. I'm also going to skip the test for amino acid absorption--I'm kind of figuring that an expense that your insurance company won't cover because it is unproven also should be making my quack-o-meter go "Ding!"

Either I'm right on this, or the sugar addiction is riding me like one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse...

So last week I was in a bit of a funk, and I went to see my damned hippie doctor to see what she thought. I should have known better to think I was going to get sympathy there; I see her expressly because she hates to prescribe things, rather she rattles bones and augurs for foul spirits takes a more holistic approach.

I have anxiety and OCD tendencies in the first place, and she knows that. Then she wanted to know how I was sleeping (pretty well with frequent naps on the weekends), what I ate during the course of the day, whether I drink any caffeinated beverages, what my exercise is like, yadda yadda.

Then she said she wanted to do another blood work-up on me to check my Vitamin D levels, and I mentioned my physical therapist gently suggested I might want to get checked out for arthritis, due to my family history and the fact that I'm so achy. So the doc added that test to the panel, then ordered me to do a urine test that involved me collecting for 24 hours and mailing off a tube of frozen piss to some lab somewhere. Evidently it will augur diagnose whether or not I am appropriately processing amino acids, or if certain ones are not getting absorbed into my bloodstream, and hence to my brain.

Okay, so it was all hippie-dippie and karmic, but then she dropped the bomb on me:

"I want you to eliminate sugar from your diet. Entirely. So no dairy products because of the lactose, cut down on your fruit intake because of the sucrose, and definitely no refined sugars."

*cue the "Wah, wah, wah" sound of misery*

She explained that my sugar intake could be creating a chemical and bacterial imbalance in my body, leading me to having aches and pains, anxiety and depression, inability to heal quickly from minor illnesses, and which could be contributing to the fact that I am generally very slim but have a poochy belly.

So. I was going to do it cold turkey, but then remembered that I had just bought a pack of my favorite locally made cookies--oatmeal, chocolate chip, peanut butter chip from Boise's Wildflour Bakery, which are just too good to waste. So minus two of those, I have cut out sugar since noon time Friday. I'm supposed to do it for a month and then go in for a follow-up.

I'm not too happy about it, but perhaps if I lose 10 lbs., my perspective will shift.

Certain friends of mine have an online tradition of posting a weekly (or so) message detailing what is happy and what is crappy in our lives lately. It's a concise way to get caught up, allows you to brag a little without being obnoxious, and let's you vent your spleen a little. I've decided to do it here to remind myself of the good stuff and maybe let off a little pressure. So.

Happies: Just had a very nice dinner and social time with our next-door neighbors and some other folks from the subdivision; it's nice to branch out a bit. I got a killer deal on a 30GB Zune at Woot yesterday and will be very happy to be able to hand it to Freya on long road trips so she can watch some of her favorite shows. The sky is beautiful tonight with huge, puffy clouds backlit by the setting sun. The clouds are the shade of old parchment on the west side, and dusky on the east side, while the sky is clear blue behind them.

Crappies: It seems like I can think of a hundred things to write in the crappies, none of them very large. But I think the fact that I've got so many little crappy things weighing on my mind is enough to qualify for one large crappy, overall.

What say you all? Any end-of-the-week happies and crappies you'd like to share with semi-strangers on the internet?

Guys, seriously like nothing has happened lately. There has been no irony, no particular comedy, no tragedy (thankfully), etc. I have formed no recent political opinions, nor has anyone done anything (that I know of) to incur my particular ire.

The sky is gray and my hair has been moderately flat.

Perhaps it is time to have my dosage checked...

Continue reading "Bored. And Boring."

This morning's dialogue went something like this.

Freya: Mommy, are you going potty?

Me: Yes.

Freya: Pee or poop?

Me: Both.

Freya: Want me to wipe your bottom for you?

Me: No, thank you.

*****************************************************************

As my friend Dee pointed out, let's hope she's that willing to help fifty years from now...

Matt and Freya done me right for Mother's Day. We all woke up about 7:00, and they let me sleep for another hour, and then made me my favorite breakfast food--pancakes. They also got me the large set of windchimes I've been wishing for, which are professionally tuned and supposedly can play the first bar of "Amazing Grace" when the wind strikes just right. (I expect that statistically that happens about as often as Halley's Comet.)

We loaded up and went to two different garden stores to get the things we needed for my really big Mother's Day wish, which was to build a new flower bed in the back yard. We're starting to develop our family holiday traditions--I ask for slave labor in the yard for Mother's Day and Matt asks for a trip to the woods and a picnic for Father's Day.

Much sod removal and rock extraction later, I now have a large bed for annual flowers. We also planted a lilac bush and a rose bush in there, and the whole thing is ringed by marigolds. And with any luck, some of the 50 or so sunflower seeds Freya planted will come up too. (They'll need rigorous thinning if they do.)

I overdosed on Vitamin D in the form of sunlight and have a dandy sunburn across my back, and I am exhausted. But it was a great day!

I sat on an interview panel today to hire an administrative position. I love doing these because I always learn something about the job application and interviewing process, and that will make me stronger if and when I decide I am ready to move on from my current position.

Today's lesson: if you have an interview on the telephone, do NOT call in from your cell phone.

Why? Well, you can't trust the reception. Several of our candidates were cutting in and out, and we had to ask them to repeat their answers. It was very distracting.

I realize that many folks are taking a break from work and definitely do not want to use the phone at their current job to interview for a new one. But if you really want the job, take a couple of hours off work and go home so you can use a land-line. If you don't have a phone that actually connects in to a wall somewhere, try using your parents' phone or that of a friend.

I'm just sayin'. Something that small can be all it takes to tip the scales in your favor.

My brother-in-law sent me a link to this video--it's pretty incredible, and I think you should check it out.

The following explanation from Gizmodo gives you some of the context:

This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley's base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz's added some metal percussion to it.

And from there, it just gets rock 'n' rolling bananas: The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.

There are more songs here.

I'd love to stop posting about these arch-conservative wackos here, but I don't seem to be running out of them. In this episode, Bryan Fischer, rabid anti-abortionist, rabid anti-gay proclaimer, has written an op/ed piece in the Idaho Statesman, claiming that protecting gays' civil liberties means that freedom of religion is threatened. His reasoning is cloudy (surprise, surprise), but he lists businesses and church groups who've had to change their ways in states that adopted protections for gays. Unspoken, but heavily implied, is the notion that a big ol' man hatin' lesbian is going to apply for a job as his church secretary one of these days and raise an unholy lesbian stink about how she was discriminated against when she didn't get the job. And wouldn't that be unfair? Yes, it sure would. But to who, Mr. Fischer?

The notion that religious freedom would be compromised by protecting basic rights that we straight folks are allowed is just ludicrous. Let us pause for a moment to consider those poster children of religious freedom, the Pilgrims, fleeing the pressure of the Anglican Church, the official church of state in England. They came to America because they wanted no sovereign authority other than God to tell them how to worship. That's great. However, what most pro-religion folks fail to note is that as Americans, we are also granted freedom FROM religion.

No one forces me to believe a certain way. No one can force me to think something is right or wrong. And neither can I force someone else to do so. What Bryan Fischer and his ilk would have you believe is that gays are out to steal away religious freedom. But isn't it the other way around--that religious groups like his would steal away basic human rights and liberties by denying gay people the opportunity to work, to be protected from hate crimes?

Finally, Fischer states, "Laws that provide special rights and privileges based on "sexual orientation" or 'gender identity' are bad public policy because they represent a clear and present danger to religious liberty, freedom of conscience and freedom of association. Such laws are quickly used to harass, intimidate and punish individuals, businesses and organizations that adhere to traditional, time-honored values regarding human sexuality."

Personally, I've worked with plenty of assholes in my various jobs. Did they offend me? Yes. Did I want to associate with them? No. Did their very existence cause my skin to crawl? You betcha. Did I have to put up and be a professional, and work with them anyway? Hell, yes. Since when are we guaranteed freedom of association and freedom of conscience (whatever the fuck that is)? Since never.

Time to evolve a little, Bryan. Wait, creationists aren't capable of it. Well, survival of the fittest and all that.

The City of Boise has recently instated a new program for trash collection and recycling. The gist of it is that you get one 95-gallon container for all your household trash, and a similarly-sized container for your recycling. You no longer have to sort your recyclables, plus the city is offering a great deal on a really sweet composter that you can buy to reduce your disposing.

Doesn't that sound brilliant?

Not if you're a Idaho wackadoo, states-rights, right-wing moonbat, it goddamn doesn't.

Commenters on the Idaho Statesman website took after this idea like Rush Limbaugh on an oxycodone. People held to the notion that their basic Constitutional right to generate as much trash as they wanted was being brutally impinged upon. Some noted that this was no doubt an "enviro" plot on the part of our "greenie Presidon't" to box us all into some hyper-liberal ideal of enforced recycling. One fruitcake even compared these efforts to the restrictive government of Nazi Germany and spouted "zig heil" all over his typewritten epiphanies.

Personally, I believe there is a huge problem going on if your average family generates more than 95 gallons of non-recyclable disposables per week. The containers provided are literally four feet tall. Then you've got another four-footer to cover your paper, plastic and cans. If all else fails, you could compost all that leftover food and use the squeezin's on your lawn or garden. But those who protest the most strenuously were citing their yard waste as the prime source of their garbage output.

Here's a thought: mulch those clippings back in to the grass. Between 20 and 30 percent of household waste can be reduced by mulching grass clippings during summer months. Not only does it reduce waste, but it helps retain more water in the soil and restores the nitrogen, phosphorus and postassium from the clipped grass back into the soil, contributing to a healthier lawn.

But hey, Idaho, why do that when you can take the Humvee down to Home Depot, buy a 50 lb. bag of Scott's Fertilizer with Weed Killer, get the neighbor kid to poison the waterways and destroy the soil's natural productivity while damaging his health spread it around for you, and then sit back and relax and watch the grass grow unnaturally green and tall? All you've gotta do is hop up on that riding mower with the bagger attachment, and then set all the pre-bagged clippings out for the trash men to collect...