Random Observations

We forget what we once knew. Sometimes it’s a blessing and sometimes it’s not. Killing time, waiting for a delivery, and just sort of wandering around YouTube without purpose and just randomly (! hey!) picked this one. I had forgotten how absolutely dim little kids are. It’s why they are so hysterically funny! They haven’t got a clue and we know it and we revel in their innocence. It’s why people love baby anything – puppies, kittens, mice; if it’s a baby, people will ooh and ahh because they are tiny things of the big things we’re so familiar with. If adults did this stuff, we’d be looking to get them put away somewhere safe, lol, but we delight (and sometimes encourage) this behavior. Dads – you know who you are! Take a few moments to delight in this video.

October is, of course, the spookiest month of all and I’d be greatly remiss if I didn’t include this video. No; it’s not a scary video, it’s a great tutorial on how to create something that looks like it may have existed in some place in time. You can advance the video if you want the ‘speed version’ but I really like this gentleman and have watched several of his tutorials.

Lots and lots of talk again about ObamaCare. I’ll be frank, I don’t quite know what to make of it. I’ve never had to apply for it; we have our own insurance, not tied to an employer. I had a bad attitude about it because I personally know two people who were fined $960 each by the government (pre-Trump) because they didn’t have any health insurance. Outrageous! If they’d had that kind of money, didn’t the government think they’d have health insurance? Tuesday a self-employed friend was here and she just happened to mention that she loves her ObamaCare insurance because her payment is based on her income ($93 a month) and she doesn’t have to pay a co-pay. So I don’t know what to think.

I once lamented that with the dawn of personal computers, we would never again see a book entitled “The Collected Letters of … ” because no one writes letters anymore. A friend laughed and said the new title would be the collected emails of … My, my, my; how current headlines bear that out!

And never forget – French bulldogs.

I am reminded …

That there are moments of great beauty in being American; of living in this crazy wonderful country of America.

You know my political ‘leanings’ (it’s a wonder I don’t topple over) but watching and listening to West Wing sometimes brings a tightness of chest and stinging eyes. Regardless of your own political leanings, there are golden nuggets in WWing that make watching it worthwhile.

I’m listening (I’ve watched the series so many times that I just listen to it now while I do other things) to the episode regarding Thanksgiving. There’s a fun storyline about the Press Secretary having to decide which of two live turkeys gets to be pardoned, and the important storyline about a freight container of 83 escaped Chinese. A difficult situation to deal with as this fictional (?) administration has trade deals with China that it wants to maintain and not jeopardize. The container box Chinese claim they are persecuted Christians. The President decides he will interview one and decide whether or not they are Christians or are merely coached on what to say. It’s really quite touching to watch (or listen to) the exchange between the president and the Chinese gentleman.

The president decides that they are, indeed, Christian. The Chinese are being held in a camp under military guard. The president pulls some strings and it all works out the way we hope it would.

My America.

Our America.

I never cease to be moved by the promise this country holds.

 

A Plea

Excuse me for stating the obvious – we’re losing. We’re losing the important things, the things that we’ve always held deep in our hearts. Civility, manners, traditions, all the things that make America – and Americans.

There’s something else we’re losing. It’s grievous. It’s lamentable. It’s just plain sad. It has become something wistful, some lovely lacey memory of what was.

Flowers. Yes. Flowers. There’s a whole tradition of flowers on Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and for funerals. They are predictable and virtually mandatory and have a certain ‘ho-hum’-ness to them. But your lady love, your significant other, your big (or little) sister, that favorite aunt, the little old lady that lives next door all alone. Think for just a moment – these people are important to your life and in your life. Shouldn’t they get flowers for no particular reason other than you love them and you think of them every day?

I have rediscovered the joy of jigsaw puzzles. I find that of the wide selection of ‘scenes’ to put together, I’m drawn to the ones with flowers. This has been such a terrible year – misery of one kind or another wherever we look. A lot of people are scared or depressed, or afraid of the future or any combination thereof. But there’s something very earthy, very calming about flowers. I would even say there’s something permanent about flowers – yes, they die but there’s always the assurance that they will come back again next spring, summer, autumn. They are bright, fresh, a statement of lasting beauty in the world. There are things that are untouched by politics or hatred or illness and flowers represent that. Life is beautiful. We forget that. God would not have created the range of colors, shapes, textures, fragrances, sizes because He had nothing to do one day. He created them to give us joy in simple things.

St. Matthews Gospel, chapter six, verses 25-29 “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Ever seen a field of wildflowers? Texas bluebells? It stops you in your tracks and you take five minutes out of your busy day and just gaze on it. It’s miraculous. It’s stunning. It’s humbling.

My husband has bought me flowers once in 24 years. He says they’re too expensive and then they die. What he doesn’t know – what YOU don’t know – is what it means to women. When the doorbell sounds or the knocker has clapped, she goes to the door and there’s a floral bouquet. She never even notices the delivery person – all she sees is the flowers. She closes the door and carries the flowers like they are crystal and diamonds. She looks around to determine the best setting to place them (she doesn’t ‘put’ them, she ‘places’ them – there’s a big difference). She has to find ‘the’ place for them – they have to be where she can easily see them from throughout the house but it also has to be a place where anyone coming into the house will notice them. Because she wants the world to know that someone loved her so much, they sent her flowers. What you don’t know is she’s suddenly twenty again and the world is before her and even if it’s pouring rain, in her heart and in her mind she’s in a place of love and light and beauty. For this moment in time, she’s lifted up.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what flower she likes. We like all of them. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what her favorite color is; there are so many colors that there’s bound to be a ‘special’ color in the arrangement that you never even guessed at.

What do YOU get from your financial investment? Shining eyes. Joyful surprise, a different kind of kiss. You get to overhear her tell her friends, “No! No reason! They’re beautiful!” What you ‘lost’ in dollars you can bank in your heart – you showed appreciation for all she does and for the lengths she would go to because she loves you and I’m not up on the exchange rate but I suspect that’s worth about a thousand times whatever the dollar amount was.

Here is my plea – it takes so little time. It is so easy to do online. Send her flowers. Just on account of because.

 

Random Observations

Just when you think it couldn’t get any better – check out this video.

Those are Hasidic Jews or Orthodox Jews; if you don’t think it’s a bold thing they’re doing, you have no idea how wrong you are. They are already targets – long before the Trump flags went up. This puts them right in the cross hairs of Antifa and BLM. I am humbled by their bravery.

If this doesn’t scare you – and hurt your heart – I don’t know what to say.

The Rabbi refers to procedures in New York as ‘soft pogroms’. Makes me shudder. Who would know better?

Another one. I’m stressing this because it is so important; we know ‘other things’ are at work during this virus. I don’t think these folks are wrong. 

Moving right along – I have collected (so you didn’t have to) the latest eye rollers on YouTube. I hesitate to say too much because sometimes, you just gotta see it to ‘believe’ it. But you’ll be happy to know (?) that the folks you assumed were gone, ummm, aren’t really. Check out these videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOuJItEozJc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxAvZXINSqc. You know I have a love for museums and thought you’d appreciate this one. Hey folks; I just do ’em, I don’t explain ’em. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThDYazipjSI.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear; I am only ‘off grid’ as far as bigfoot are concerned – they, at least, have a chance of being something of actual, earthly, species. The rest of the ‘stuff’? I leave it to your own understanding. Or lack thereof. Or care thereof. Or … ya know, whatevah…

 

Confirmation

Neo will roll his eyes but I have to mention the television series, West Wing. I learned so much from that series about which I had known nothing.

We’re watching the confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett and I never understood what that entails. Fortunately, West Wing covers some of that and I always operate under the assumption that if I don’t know something, other people may not know either. I think it’s a fair assumption.

The process takes far longer than you may expect it to. There’s generally one person in charge of the confirmation process, usually the ‘policy guy’ (I don’t have to type ‘or woman’, do I? I think we’re all adults here). He’s the guy with the ‘check list’. Amy Barrett allowed that she submitted 1800 pages for the confirmation team. Several people will have been chosen to read all or some of those pages, depending upon what topic the page covers. They read to see if the nominee for Supreme Court Justice has any legal writings detrimental to the policy of the current administration. They look for any mention displaying bias, discrimination, defamation, and/or disagreement with the current administration. They look for malfeasance and any hint of scandal.

If the written collection holds nothing that red flags the nominee, they begin the interviews of friends, co-workers, family, neighbors of the nominee. They go to previous employers. They sniff out every possible wrong the nominee may have participated in.

If there are still no red flags, the confirmation team will meet with the nominee and have a few face to face meetings, and the person’s work record is questioned and uncertain ground can be clarified and cleared. If the confirmation team finds no issues that require further inquiry, the team will then inform the president of that administration of their findings. If the president has reasons of his own, he may turn down the potential nominee and ask that another person be looked at using the same process.

If the president accepts the recommendation of the confirmation team, he then meets with the potential nominee to decide for himself whether or not he thinks the possible nominee meets whatever his personal criteria may be.

Having gone through this process and passing all the attendant laser focus of this background check of all time, the president will then announce to the press his nominee for the seat of Supreme Court Justice. And from that second forward, the members of the ‘other party’ begin the same process in regard to that nominee, considering the other party has other interests and policies that they are concerned with.

The actual hearing for confirmation, as we have learned – large and in our faces on the major networks – is a mud flinging, party boosting, scandalous innuendos, aspersions casting attempt to both ruin and/or elevate the nominee, depending on the party asking the questions.

This is what we need to understand. In this particular case, in this particular place and time, the hatred for the President of the United States is such that there is no depth of disgusting to which the Democrats will not delve. According to the Democrats, Amy Barrett has been nominated by the President to INSURE that what He wants gets done to the DETRIMENT of millions of Americans. You’re all very nice people so all I’m going to say to that is ‘stuff and nonsense’! Should she be confirmed, she will be one of eight Justices. [Nine including the primus inter pares Chief Justice*] So when they repeat – ad nauseum – that her decision will kill Roe v Wade, Obama Care, any of the cases that will come before the Court – they are lying. Pure and simple.

*The Chief Justice has no control over any legal decision made by any Justice, he does assign the writing of opinions with which he agrees and has a fair amount of administrative control of the court. admin.

Nightmarish Evil Ogre

(he who hides behind the innocuous NEO) should be afraid – very afraid – of what’s coming next.

We, the impish and malevolent, are planning a take-over of the Ogre’s den. Yes! WE are the ‘bumps in the night’ and we will make our presence known to all!

You can help to scare the mighty Ogre by writing a short horror story and submitting it to NEO. My heinous assistants will bind the Ogre with spells and publish your horrible horror tales right here, from the Ogre’s den!

The time is here! The time is now! Channel your inner Stephen King (left-leaning liberal that he is), your inner O. Henry, your inner Edgar Allen Poe (only I, the imp queen, am entitled to call him Eddie!) and scare the scales and warts off that Nightmarish Evil Ogre!

The gremlins and ‘ghosts within the machine’ have been trained and prepped to usurp the scheduling of Nightmarish Evil Ogre so your short horror stories will appear when he least expects it.

The sooner you get those horror stories to the gremlins, the better. After our glorious horrible Day of Demons (that humans call Halloween, foolish beings that they are), we may never again be able to bind the Nightmarish Evil Ogre.

Sharpen your quills, your talons, your jagged nails, and start writing!