trying to grok

EEK

"So, who are you going to vote for?"

There are few words that strike fear into my heart like those. How much should I say to someone I am just getting to know? Should I let on how much I follow this kind of stuff? Dear heavens, what if she says she's voting for Hillary?

It worked out just fine in this case and we had a lovely chat. But man, do I hate when that comes up for the first time.

THE END OF POVERTY

I heard on the TV last night that, before he got out of the election, John Edwards called Clinton and Obama and asked them to promise to keep hammering his message of ending poverty.

Ending poverty...from the most expensive home in his county.

Look, I have nothing at all against Edwards living in that house. But don't talk to us about how there's Two Americas and then live in the one that you have contempt for. That's ridiculous.

Someone who seriously wanted to help fight poverty could get by with a smaller house and use his "extra" money and time to do things in his community that actually help fight poverty: volunteer at an adult education program, donate money to the soup kitchen, whatever. But seriously, stop lecturing us about how we have to pay more in taxes and get by with less in order to end poverty.

End poverty. Snort. There's no such thing anyway; they'd just raise the bar for what constitutes the poverty level.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS

Mrs. du Toit has a lengthy but good post covering a variety of ideas. One segment I particularly liked:

Take something like a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. While it might seem affordable to us today, even in today’s dollars, the idea that someone would spend $3.00 a meal for the kids, when the ingredients cost 50 cents, would have been considered a luxury item. What we have done as a society is put a value on our time, and a willingness to pay someone else to add the value of preparing it. The ingredients cost 50 cents, and if you add your free labor to prepare the same meal, that’s how much it will cost you (plus about 5 cents to cover the energy costs).

If, however, you do not want to spend the time to prepare the meal yourself, then you have to pay someone else to do it, and that is why we say “a couple can no longer live on one income.” They sure as hell can, IF they are willing to assign to the job description of a wife the same level of labor that was assigned 100 years ago.
...
My point is that what we define as “getting by” now includes luxury and non essential items. A welfare recipient once said, “I can’t afford a Happy Meal for my kid on the money I get.” Nor should she! She is not working, so she has plenty of time to prepare the meal and save the labor costs.

That last sentence killed me.

GRIM MILESTONE INDEED

I had the thought today that, if Hillary Clinton is elected president, as a woman I will probably be expected to be happy that we have reached a historical milestone. Instead I will feel zero percent joy. I don't care if we ever have a woman president; I only want a good president. I don't care if it's a woman, man, Rhodesian Ridgeback, whatever, as long as they approach the job from my value system. Otherwise, I will be bummed.

(Also, do go and read that link of Rachel Lucas' dog's platform, if only for the little quotes under the issues. See here and here. It is teh funny.)

THE FLOWERS AND THE ROMANCE AND THE LIES UPON LIES

I read Rachel Lucas' fisking of 10 Things You Should Never Say To A Woman. She is spot on at how stupid they are. Actually, come to think of it, I have never had any man ever say any of those 10 things to me, so either 1) I have surrounded myself with high quality men since puberty or 2) the article is a bunch of hooey.

I will say though, that I have had the opposite experience of #2 ("They both look the same to me"). When we were registering for our wedding gifts, my husband thought I would be mad if he didn't express opinions, so he announced that he liked blue dishes. I searched high and low for suitable blue dishes, thinking that I should do something nice for him since he thought it was important. Turns out that weeks later when I broke down in frustrated tears and apologized to him that I couldn't find any blue dishes...well, he had no idea what I was talking about. He said he was just trying to be involved and pretend like he gave a whit of difference. That's when he got in trouble. Men, if you really don't have a preference, say so rather than making your woman tear her hair out trying to please you over something you made up just so you'd look "caring."

Also, I completely disagree with #9. My husband quotes movie lines to me all the time, and I think it's very romantic. Whether he's telling me in all sincerity that I am his Rushmore, or hamming it up and giving me a creepy "I wish I knew how to quit you," I think it's cute. Because for us, every day is Double Soup Tuesday, and every day we choo-choo-choose to be together.

I feel sorry for men trying to pick up women, worrying about offending her at every turn. Maybe if women weren't so full of themselves they'd be happy with a nice man who treats them like a person instead of a delicate little flower. And maybe poor men wouldn't have to change and fake everything about themselves in the hopes that some woman will like the new him.

Sheesh.

FRY: OK, you're on a date. What's the first thing you do?

ZOIDBERG: Ask her to mate with me.

FRY: No. Tell her she's special.

ZOIDBERG: But she's not. She's merely the female with the largest clutch of eggs.

FRY: Well, tell her that. And then?

ZOIDBERG: Then mating.

FRY: No. Make up some feelings and tell her you have them. Yes?

ZOIDBERG: Is desire to mate a feeling?

FRY: You're not even trying!

[Zoidberg buries his head in his claws and groans.]

ZOIDBERG: It's all so complicated with the flowers and the romance and the lies upon lies.

Yep, we quote that too. And yes, I consider it romantic when we do.

HEH

Marketing Lithuania: How about name change?
Officials say they may seek something easier to pronounce in English

Might I suggest Awesomestan? Or woo the young crowd with Republic of McLovin.

The ridiculousness just writes itself.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS

This article on the truth behind the Jena Six is just so depressing. But the part that stands out to me is this:

Bean's narrative, though, contained an interesting factual error: It stated that there had been three nooses, not two, hung from the tree at Jena High School. The error was not material, and the truth did not exonerate the perpetrators (one noose would have been too many), but to an observer examining the numerous stories about the Jena Six that flooded newspapers, radio, television, and blogs, the three nooses, which appear again and again, are a kind of journalistic dye-marker signaling a tendency on the part of the reporters to rely on Bean's narrative, his handpicked sources, and the reporting of Witt--whose frequent stories appeared nationwide in Tribune Co.-owned papers like the Los Angeles Times--instead of doing their own legwork by consulting court records and other documents, or even the Alexandria Town Talk, which accurately reported the number of nooses from the very beginning.

Some guy makes a bunch of "facts" up, and the news sources copy and disseminate it. Good heavens, are they even trustworthy at all?

And remember this the next time you read a report out of Iraq. If journalists don't even bother to interview someone in Jena to get the real story, how much of what we hear from Iraq is verified?

DOLPHIN LOVE

See, I told you, I freaking hate dolphins.

Killer dolphins baffle marine experts

It's not really the dolphins' fault; it's dolphin love that I hate. It's the tattoos and the t-shirts and the "healing dolphin therapy" crap.

The smarter a species is, the more it can manipulate its surroundings. Enter murder. Lo and behold, humans aren't the only creature with the brain power and time on their hands to kill for no reason.

Those darling dolphins do it too.

Watching the films, Aberdeen marina biologist Dr Ben Wilson explains yet another shocking phenomenon - that the dolphins use their incredible ultra sound abilties to home in on the vital organs of their victims that will cause most damage.

"The blows are carefully targeted," says Dr Wilson, who is a member of the Scottish Association for Marine Science. "And the attacks are sustained, sometimes up to 30 minutes.

So they intentionally cause maximum damage when they're killing for fun. How quaint. But at least they don't waterboard their prey; that's torture.

God, I freaking hate dolphin love.

CONGRATS

Pictures of Tucker!

I realized I am freaking out like no one has ever had a baby before, but Erin is honestly my very first close friend to ever have a baby. That seems so funny to say, but it's true. I couldn't be happier if it were my own.

And I realized, as I typed that last sentence, that it is true.

UPDATE:

I realized I ought to clarify this post, lest I hurt the feelings of everyone else in my life who's ever had a baby. Many of my friends already had their kids when we met. Some of them had babies in the meantime, but usually after we'd PCSed away from each other and weren't in constant contact. None of my or my husband's siblings have ever had children, and I don't live near my aunts and cousins.

But Erin called me repeatedly from the hospital, and called me before she even called her dad to tell him the news. I am so honored that she shared her special day with me.

Also, I want to say how strong she's been. Her husband deploys in the next few weeks or so, but I haven't yet heard her complain at all. Heck, he leaves tomorrow for a week of training, and she is taking it in stride.

She has fully grokked how special it is that she now has a little baby to call her own. Nothing else matters, and nothing else is worth complaining about.

I hope someday I can be as mature as she is.

I'M SO JITTERY!!

Holy cow, this is exciting. Erin just called me from her car on the way to the hospital; Tucker's birth mother is going into labor!

Stay tuned!

UPDATE:

Holy heck, I want to have a delivery like that! He's already here!

And I burst into tears as soon as she told me.
I am so happy for them...

HEH

My husband and I were trying to figure out how we could put our "stimulus refund" to good use while still showing our contempt for it.
Eureka: we're buying a handgun.

T FOR 'TIME TO LEAVE THE WOMB'

Erin should change her blog name to Erin Raves About Sarah...and I'll change mine to Trying To Be Humble And Not Link Every Time Erin Raves About Sarah.

But she got her baby gifts...

Incidentally, I was thinking about Tucker while I was knitting. But that's a lot of knitting, and I was definitely also spending some time thinking about the episode of South Park where they burn a cross on Will Smith's yard but say that they're burning the letter T. I kept repeating the line as I knit -- "T, for 'time to leave'" -- until my husband was about to go batty from hearing the same lame joke for two weeks.

Also I was thinking about what a bonehead I am for making a burnt orange blanket with an f-ing T on it to send to a family stationed in Texas. Of all the dumb moves. I was 2/3 through the blanket before I realized that everyone is going to think they're University of Texas alums.

And yes, my sewing machine tried to murder me.

Round three of Erin's presents will be on the way shortly, hopefully before the baby is born. One more week!

HAND-CRAFTED AWESOME

I am mostly finished with this round of baby knitting, so I have thrown myself into crocheting squares for Hand-Crafted Comfort. Some of the ladies from my preemie knitting group donated yarn to me, and it all seemed to be red and blue. I threw some white in, and voilà:

I made 35 of these new patriotic squares. Coupled with the 16 for my autumn-themed blanket, that means I'll ship at least 51 squares to Heather soon.

Hey, 51.

But Heather's in the process of moving -- her hubs is returning from Iraq soon! -- so who knows how many I'll have by the time she gets an address. I still have a lot of that red and blue left, and I love the freeing feeling I get when I'm using up extra yarn that's been sitting around for a decade.

(Yes, I have yarn that's been sitting around for a decade. If by "sitting around" you mean PCSing with us five times and being dragged across the Atlantic.)

I WANNA RIDE IT ALL NIGHT LONG

I was popping in on people's MySpaces and came across this...

Have you ever tried to philosophize about life, as I am trying right now? I was on one of the three interstates (H-1) on Oahu the other day in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the other side of the road was packed with rush hour cars zooming by.... I thought to myself, "Life is like a highway." ...A few minutes of silence went by in my car... "You know, maybe life isn't like a highway." (end thought)

And for whatever reason, it just got to me. And made me laugh.

Sometimes I think we try too hard to make sense of things when, usually, they just are what they are. There's not much point to trying to make them deeper or more significant. And most metaphors suck.

I had my last round of bloodwork this week.
I'm finally not pregnant again.

FARSI UPDATE

My husband got his score on his oral exam today. He got a 3. No one else in the entire language program, in any of the languages, even Spanish, got a 3. He was the only one to score so high.

He is embarrassed that I am posting this, but I am tickled pink. Now let's just hope he can do as well on the written exam in two weeks.

And tomorrow he jumps out of an airplane. What a life he leads!

THREE CHEERS FOR TEH STRING BEANS

I looked smart today, thanks to AWTM.
Someone actually asked me if I knew that Nebraska has a unicameral legislative system.
I stared at her incredulously for a moment before replying, "Actually, I just learned that the other day."
Thanks to AWTM...

No, seriously, that really happened today.

UPDATE:

Sorry, Tim, I fixed the link!

I AM JOE'S BURSTING PRIDE

I was in the shower and realized that I had something stuck in my head. Was it a song? What was it? Then I realized that I was just chanting one sentence over and over; I was saying "My name is Sarah" in Farsi. Which is remarkable, because I didn't ever learn to say that. Apparently I have learned some Farsi just by being around it.

My husband took his oral exam yesterday. The proctor said he was one of the best students he's ever seen. I am beaming with pride.

FAREWELL

Parting thoughts from a Fred Thompson staffer:

Personally, I’m hoping that he does not accept one of the political appointments, which he shall surely be offered. Ultimately, the reason that his ideas couldn’t overcome the advantages of organization is that ideas still do not count for as much as they should in the 21st century. Fred, however, is in a better position today to spread and explain those ideas than he ever has been; sort of a Newt Gingrich without the baggage.

If you were a Fred guy, read the whole thing.

I remain disappointed that you have to lust after the presidency in order to be considered a serious candidate.

NOT FUNNY

Hey, rednecks...your shenanigans are not amusing.

I was driving home from grocery shopping today when I saw what appeared to be a man injured or dead lying in someone's front yard. I immediately turned around to go back to help.

OK, so maybe I've watched too much CSI, but your pair of jeans stuffed with leaves to make it look like a body, that's not funny. It makes sense around Halloween, but in January I just get ticked off that I turned around on a major thoroughfare to try to help some non-existent victim.

Yeah, fake dead body jokes...not so funny.

OLD MEDIA

In October, I got interviewed for a Military Spouse Magazine article on how deployments mess with family planning. We had just found out that I was finally pregnant, so I had a triumphant story to tell: we had wasted most of our safe year, but it had worked out in the end.

The article just got published. So much for happy endings.
It's pretty surreal to see your happiness immortalized in a magazine after everything has gone to crap.

I've had a couple of people suggest that I try to get paid to write for a publication, but this is a prime example of why I don't have much interest in such endeavors. Talk about old media; so much has happened in the three months it took for the article to go to print that the story isn't even remotely accurate anymore.

So I'll keep writing my drivel here for free.

UPDATE:

Son of a gun...I just found this interview that I gave, dang, like last summer. Tee hee, it's about Erin!

HELLO, SPIDER

We had one day to spend in the nation's capital. We went out to a celebratory breakfast for AirForceSon's birthday and then took him to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. We got to see the Enola Gay, which is much bigger than I imagined, for some reason. I guess it makes sense -- Little Boy was pretty darned big -- but for some dumb reason, I always imagined the Enola Gay to be the size of the Spirit of St. Louis!

Afterwards, my husband and I made the two hour trip (ugh) into downtown. We went to see the WWII memorial (which hadn't been built the last time we were in town, for our honeymoon), took those ridiculous pictures, and then hoofed it to the opposite end of the mall to go to the, um, Air and Space Museum. AirForceGuy looked at us incredulously when we returned, saying, "You mean you didn't get enough Air and Space this morning?"

There is no such thing as too much Air and Space.

What we didn't know was that the Smithsonians close at 1730, and we arrived brokenhearted at 1710. There was only enough time to run and see the one thing that made it all worthwhile.

And then we turned around and returned to AirForceHouse for pizza and birthday cupcakes.

One day in DC is highly inadequate, but at least I got to see some of the coolest stuff, like the lunar module and Jay Irwin's spacesuit covered in moon dust. I didn't make it to Arlington to pay respects to Grissom and Chaffee, but I guess that just means I'll have to go back.

Now, if I could just go to the moon itself...

A REAL CONVERSATION THAT TOOK PLACE ON THE MALL

Husband, let's try to take a picture of ourselves with the Washington Monument in the background.

Oh, hmm, I have really bad hat hair and you are not smiling at all. OK, um, let's try another one.

Well, that's better, but can we try to take one where the Washington Monument isn't sticking out of the top of my head?

Eh, still sticking out of my head.

Um, no, honey...like can you angle it so that the monument is over to the side of us?

Can't you just be satisfied with that one, Sarah?

No, honey, now you're angling the camera the wrong direction.
Woman, I am going to choke you.

That's perfect! That's exactly what I want. But, um, you look like you'd rather be single. Can we do that exact same thing again, but this time with you smiling?

Derp!

DERP!

OK, I am going to pee my pants! Just do it right!
Woman, I am going to kill you.

HAHAHAHA! No, that's totally wrong! Now it's coming out of your head! And I have a flag coming out of mine!

You are the worst picture taker ever!
Well, why don't you do it, woman?
My arm isn't long enough to hold the camera. Come on, do it again.
Grrrrrrr.....

Yeah, yeah, yeah! Great angle, except, um, you chopped the top of the...
Aw, screw it.

This is so going on the blog.

OUR TRIP TO SEE AIRFORCEFAMILY

If you were placing money on who'd be the biggest troublemaker of the weekend, who would you choose: the pit bull who got rescued from a life of dogfighting or the fluffy, angelic Tibetan terrier?

I mean really. I felt sorry for AirForceDog; Charlie was egging him on the entire time. Poor AirForceDog kept looking up at his owners all weekend with a look on his face like "I promise I am trying to be good!"

Charlie also went after AirForceKid like she was made of ham.

The dogs got along great, the kids were really good, and we adults had a blast. Oh, and AirForceWife can knit socks now.

Good weekend.

ONE LUCKY BABY

Erin and her husband are all ready for this adoption. They've gotten fingerprinted, had a background check, had a home study from social services, gotten vaccinations for the dogs, answered awkward questions about their personal business, gotten friends and families to fill out forms to vouch for them, and paid a lot of money. Now they're just waiting for the baby to be born so they can take him home.

And I was thinking last night: Don't you wish every child who came into this world would be guaranteed the same things? That every family would've put time and energy into providing the perfect home?

Erin's baby is lucky; he is 100% wanted and will always know that his parents specifically chose him to be a part of their life.

I can't wait for him to come home...

TOP BREED, FOR SURE

Seriously, how could Charlie not make the list of top dog breeds? How can you deny this face?

We are heading on a roadtrip this weekend to visit AirForceFamily, where Charlie will meet his first pit bull. We keep telling him he'd better behave, because a pit bull ain't nothin' to mess around with. I wanna see AirForceDog lay a smackdown on Charlie. Heh.

INDEED

You know you're a blogging family when you're faced with an ethical dilemma and your husband's advice is "What would Glenn Reynolds do?"

DAYAKS

Some of us SpouseBUZZers are reading the book The Airmen and the Headhunters for an upcoming author interview. I am thoroughly enjoying this book, and it's just starting to get really exciting.

I don't want to spoil anything, but there's one event that I can't get out of my head. The Dayak people have finally decided that the only way to protect the American airmen is to start fighting back against the Japanese. But they needed a foolproof trap, so the Dayak leader asks the most beautiful young girls in the village to bathe naked in the river to distract the Japanese soldiers long enough for an attack. Nudity is not acceptable in Dayak society, but the young girls did it anyway to help protect the airmen. They laid the trap for the Japanese.

I have been thinking about how it must've pained the Dayak leader to ask the young women to do this. I have imagined my father asking me to expose myself in the middle of town for the greater good. I can't imagine asking so much from a young girl. And I've also tried to put myself in the girls' shoes, letting go of their shame in order to save lives by facilitating the taking of other lives. But if I could run naked through the streets of Baghdad, and it saved just one soldier's life, it would be worth it.

Maybe we should add Girls Gone Wild to the Surge?

LUCKY

It sounds like Tim and Patti had a good day. I got this email from him tonight:

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:58:22 -0500
From: tim
To: sarah
Subject: Just to Make You Jealous...

...I shook hands with Fred today.

Tee Hee

Tim

Too cool.

MERGING BACK ONTO THE EXPRESSWAY

In three weeks, my husband joins the Army. No, really. For the past year and a half (two and a half if you ask him; he doesn't consider his time in Finance to be "the Army") he has been in Army schools. Life has been super easy on us. But all that changes in three weeks: he'll get assigned to a battalion and then find out which continent he's deploying to and when. Life's about to get interesting again.

DONE

Erin's baby present is now in the mail.

A couple of people have acted a little shocked that I would wrap yarn around needles for 36 hours when there's a chance that the adoption could still fall through. But Erin and I discussed this a long time ago, right when they found out that getting this baby would be a possibility. I told her that I wasn't going to treat her any differently than if the baby were in her tummy, because nobody looks you in the face when you're pregnant and says, "I'm not going to invest my time or money until the baby pops out and is real." I said I'd treat her the same way I would be treated as a pregnant lady, which in hindsight seems ironic, since her baby is more real than mine was. But I never wanted her to feel different about being an adoptive mommy.

And I had a couple of people sock me in the gut with an I-told-you-so attitude, like I was some halfwit who had never considered a miscarriage but somehow they had glorious wisdom all along that it could happen to me. Those people are lucky we weren't in the same room when they mouthed off. If anything bad happens to Erin and something falls through, anyone who says anything even remotely condescending is going to have to answer to me. I will straight up punch them in the larynx.

PERSPECTIVE

Erin called me this morning to talk about me, my feelings, my life, my stuff. And then later in the conversation she reminded me of the date. All of a sudden I burst into tears, realizing once again how small and petty my own stuff is.

Today is not about me.

And so I sit here today with tears on my cheeks, thankful for all I have and thankful for men like Gunnar Becker.

WAITING WIVES

Last night on SpouseBUZZ Talk Radio, Andi and AirForceWife interviewed two military wives: Stephanie from She Who Waits and Elaine, a Vietnam-era Army wife. It was so interesting to hear what life was like for the "waiting wives" of Vietnam.

My favorite story was when Elaine said that, because she has epilepsy, the doctor told her that she could inform the Army of her condition and her husband wouldn't have to go overseas. Elaine said she went home from the doctor and never told her husband the info. She knew he was a soldier and she wasn't going to be the one to prevent him from doing his job. What a lady!

If you want to listen to the archive, it will be available here at Blog Talk Radio.

HEY, GREEN, LOOK WHAT I DID!

I took some before and after pictures, but Charlie was definitely not cooperating. And let's face it, I'm just not so good at taking a picture of myself and the dog with the tripod and timer.

And afterwards, well, I just smelled like eyebrow wax. Which to a dog is quite a curious thing.

I was able to donate 13 1/2 inches, and since the hair salon I went to was a partnered up with Locks of Love, the haircut was free!

And the husband approves. He says it makes me look 30, which I will take as a compliment.

AWWWW

Yes, I am so shameless that I am going to link to a post about how awesome I am. But it feels good to be loved. And Erin takes better pics of my handiwork than I do.

Thanks, Erin, I could use the pick-me-up today.

Speaking of which, this morning I was reminded of two of my favorite things: Weezer and baby animals.

COLORBLIND LYNCHING?

I heard on the news this morning about the golf commentator who made a joke about lynching Tiger Woods. I don't know what to make of it all, but one thing I did notice is that, if you look at the video, she obviously has no idea that she just said something offensive. There was no wincing, no wide eyes, no recognition whatsoever that she realized that she had just said something that could be construed as racist. None.

So what I wonder is this: isn't that progress? Is there something to the fact that a white woman could quip about lynching someone and have no notion of the racial overtones of what she said? I don't know, I'm really asking. It seems to me that it is a type of colorblindness to publicly make a comment like that. If she had any inkling that what she was saying was racist, she would've immediately reacted, I think. It's like she really didn't associate lynchings with black people. Heck, in a weird way, that's a good thing, right?

A colorblind lynching comment. How absurd. Makes me think of the South Park flag:

I don't know what this means to people. I think the comment was in a different category altogether than Imus, and I genuninely don't think she meant to be racist. And Tiger Woods laughed it off too.

But Al Sharpton licked his chops and got ready for the cameras. Sigh.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THE GALL?

This is really rich. Mahatma Gandhi's grandson says that Jews just need to get over the Holocaust:

It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.

You know who else is one individual that the whole world regrets what happened to? And who gets "overplayed"? Gandhi.

What an a-hole.

WELL SAID

Definitely go read this article today, Great (American) Expectations. Excerpt:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is chided for not moving legislation quickly enough through Parliament. But the very essence of a real parliament, as opposed to a rubber stamp, is gridlock. Have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with nothing worse to overcome than their Republican opposition, done better in their first year in the majority than Mr. Maliki, who must run a government besieged by al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias?

From The Wall Street Journal's offices in New York City, one can look down at Ground Zero, still mostly a huge pit after more than six years during which its reconstruction, now in its umpteenth design iteration, was supposed to have been the signal proof that Americans would rebuild--better, taller, prouder.

Also across the way is the hulk of the old Deutsche Bank building, critically damaged on 9/11 and slated for destruction. In an attempt to ensure that not even trace levels of asbestos and other unpalatable elements would escape the wreck, a meticulous plan was devised to dismantle the building floor by floor, at a price exceeding that of its construction. In August a fire broke out, and two firefighters died after getting lost in the maze of internal scaffolding erected to keep the asbestos in. Those brave men lost their lives for the sake of an EPA standard, and there's been no work to speak of on the building since. It's a case of the perfect becoming the enemy--the mortal enemy--of the good.

And the rest is just as good.

I'M A FUNNY GIRL

Earlier tonight, I mentioned to my husband how lucky we are that we have nearly the same taste in movies, music, and TV. I asked him, "When's the last time I dragged you to a chick movie?" He couldn't think of anything, until I laughed and said that, ironically, I'm usually the one saying, "Can we please see Die Hard/Terminator/Rambo?" and he's the one who reluctantly agrees. I like westerns, kung fu, and action movies probably a little more than he does.

I got my husband Street Fighter and Return of Street Fighter for Christmas, mostly so I could watch them. I'm a funny girl.

UPDATES

Butterfly Wife updated that she sent out her 696th card to wounded soldiers at Landstuhl. Not too shabby. So I thought I'd give a little update.

To break the monotony of baby knitting, I have thrown in a square or two.

These 12 will be sent off to Heather for Hand-Crafted Comfort, her organization that assembles afghans for the wounded at Walter Reed. I haven't kept track of how many I've made total, but I am keeping track of certain colors because I am trying to make enough to provide an entire afghan. I've made 35 so far towards my own blanket. And isn't this just the greatest way to make a project: I do the fun stuff and then mail everything to Heather so she can assemble them, sew them together, weave in ends, and cut tails? Awesome. Why can't all my projects be like that?

And someone else mentioned the other day that we haven't had a pupdate in a while.

This morning, Charlie had an upset stomach. Apparently he decided the best thing to do was to go all the way downstairs, crawl under the Christmas tree, barf, and then lay down in it. Our dog's a genius.

IT GOES THE OTHER WAY TOO

Kayt sent me a very touching article today: The Blank Space in our Family Album

We just finished watching True Romance, one of my favorite movies of all time. And one of the beginning lines held new meaning for me during this viewing:

I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. And he'd say, "That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too."

Here's to hope that it goes the other way too...

CHANGE

We watched the Democrats debate last night. How tired am I of the phrase "But let me first say..."? They get asked a direct question and given 30 seconds to answer, and they say, "But let me first say..." and go on some tangent and never answer the original question.

There was also a mini-exposé about how Social Security will run out in 2017 and Medicare will run out in 2013, so what do you suggest to do about it as president? All of them answered that the solution to the problem was...change. They are all pro-change. They actively and vociferously support change. Problem is, they never exactly said what it was they planned to change in order to make us stop running out of money. They completely didn't answer the question.

Vodkapundit clowned on 'em in his drunkblogging:

9:00pm Did you know that Hillary has experience? Experience with change? Change that only her experience, her experience with change, can bring about? And that she’s a woman, a woman bringing change with her experience of womanness? Yeah, me neither.

Roger L. Simon has decided we must ban the word change from English.

The whole exchange was so meaningless that it reminded me of the presidential debate on Futurama:

John Jackson: It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: I'm against those things that everybody hates.

Jack Johnson: Now, I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man. But quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said.

Are we there yet?

KISS UP

Wyoming held its caucus today. (Did you even know that? I didn't. Iowa stole the show.) Romney got most of the delegates, but this quote from the article rankled me a tad:

"Number one, he campaigned here," delegate Leigh Vosler of Cheyenne said of Romney. "I think that helped while some other candidates ignored us. But also he's the right person for the job."

Am I the only one who thinks that it's sad that people will vote for someone just because he kissed up to them? I have not gotten a single piece of mail, email, or phonecall from any candidate at all, so I based my choice on reading articles and opinion pieces from people I respect and watching the debates. I don't need a candidate to come suck up to me and shake my hand in a diner to make me want to vote for him.

Politics is so fascinating...and so disgusting.

HOORAY

The SpouseBUZZ knit-along is complete!

HMMM

Remember when Halle Berry won her Oscar and the media crammed it down our throats that it was a major step for The United Racist States of America? How it was a major milestone for black people? That it somehow proved that we were healing as a nation from Jim Crow?

How come people aren't saying those things about Obama's win last night? Isn't being selected as the top Democrat in a ridiculously white state more groundbreaking than a black actress getting an award from her liberal peers?

I don't get it.

HOW DELIGHTFULLY ABSURD

A comment my brain goes back to all the time came from Joe Willingham over at Porphyrogenitus:

Somebody needs to do a study of learned (both in the one and two syllable versions of the word) stupidity, as opposed to the natural kind. Liberals today believe things that are remarkably stupid, such as that all people are equally intelligent at birth, or that there is no such thing as intelligence, or it there is then differences in intelligence are socially determined and have nothing to do with heredity. That all differences between the sexes are socially constructed. That social classes are the result of a sort of conspiracy and could be abolished if we voted in the right government. That all "cultures" are equal in value. That the reason the Third World is poor is because of the machinations of the corporations and the US government. That we kinda sorta deserved the attacks on 9-11 because we've hurt the Muslims' feelings with our insensitive attitudes.

Waitresses and truck drivers are smart enough not to believe such patent absurdities. The amazing thing is that the majority of English and social science professors and journalists do believe them.

This quote popped into my head again this morning when I read Amy Alkon's slaughter of a HuffPo post, some piece of crap that says that we are all terrorists deep down.

Only an intellectual could say something so stupid.

FRUSTRATED

This, this is exactly how I feel:

I know, this is how politics in America works, it's all Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, all the time. But look at the ideological variety on the GOP side, and tell me that if we listen only to the winners coming out of those three states, how can they POSSIBLY produce a consensus candidate for 2008?
...
Just because bat-crazy Iowa loves its Huck and looney-tunes New Hampshire loves to vote for mavericks, this means I'm going to lose any chance at all to support Fred, Mitt, or Rudy in a mere month's time? And this is accepted as normal and sane why??

I've only been interested in politics for a few years, and I didn't have to do much last time except watch my incumbent and wait for November. But now that this caucus and primary rigamarole affects me too, I feel mighty frustrated.

I'm just ready for it to be November already.

CRUEL

I'm sure you've heard the joke that there's no such thing as being "a little bit pregnant," but it's not true. I have been returning weekly to the hospital to get my hormone levels checked, and my body is taking its sweet time. Despite the fact that it's been a month since the D&C, my body still recognizes itself as being "a little bit pregnant." And until it stops, there's nothing we can do to try to get a whole lot pregnant.

I find it a cruel trick of nature that, by the time I went to the health clinic to prove I was pregnant and get an appointment, our baby was already dead. The baby that only lived three weeks has taken an additional 12 weeks to finally let go.

And the sad thing is that we thought my husband was deploying this year; his orders not to go didn't get amended until the day we PCSed. We thought he'd be gone for a year and then come home and we'd start a family. Instead he went into Civil Affairs training and we decided to make good use of his time at home. And now here we are, just shy of one year from the day we decided to start a family, with nothing to show for it. According to the original plan, he'd be returning from deployment right now and we'd be starting the journey towards having a baby...just like we're doing right now anyway. Only if he had just come home, he'd've lined his pockets with deployment money, and we'd just be beginning our safe year, not ending it.

Cruel. It just feels so cruel. And we don't even have real infertility problems. It could be so much worse.

THE DILEMMA REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN

Bill Whittle lays a smackdown on a commenter. He then goes on to write:

Many people hear or read something like “american’s” rant and think that because it is structured and literate there must be something to it. How many college students today, when presented with such nonsense, would read it and think that they are approaching the days of a Nazi state?

Lots.

Damn it! Lots of them would. Why? Because, like the 9/11 conspiracy “troofers,” no one bothers to call these people out. Thinking about this response took half again as long as actually typing it did: which is to say a few minutes. That is because I know how far from reality this diatribe is. These are things I think about every day, and likely, so do you. Realizing from scratch that his point was absurd, the specifics were easy.

We can no longer afford to let this anti-American garbage pass unchallenged. As a kind and secure people, we tend to let a lot of this go under the bridge, but this kind of crap gets more and more traction, and those days I think must come to an end for a while.

Now normally I do not employ personal ridicule, but I was writing in the heat of the moment and I thought it was no less than such a puerile attempt deserved. These people need to be challenged, factually defeated, thrashed, and mocked.

There was a time when common sense was prevalent enough that arguments this absurd would be laughed at on the street. I mean to return to those times, one self-righteous idiot at a time.

I have struggled with this dilemma for years, ever since I read Carl Sagan's story of the taxi driver. It's the dilemma from the monorail in Vegas, and my husband's right: as long as we keep giving people permission to promote crap, they will keep doing it. I blogged about it before the 2004 election, and now here we're already in another election cycle, battling the same baloney. And I am still struggling with the same dilemma.

By the way, Whittle is back. Settle in and read Forty Second Boyd and the Big Picture.

MY JEOPARDY STORY

Carren Z wrote that she hit a deer yesterday. Luckily no one was hurt, and she didn't mention massive damage to her car, so that is good news too. I started writing in the comments section about my experience with hitting a deer, but the story is just too much for a comments section.

Last night the husband and I were trying to decide what cheesy little story we'd tell Alex Trebek if we were on Jeopardy. My husband wants to use the time they found the dead insurgent's body they were looking for when his cell phone went off. We laughed that he'd freak the bejesus out of the Canadian ponce. But today, after I read Carren's post, I told my husband that my Jeopardy story would have to involve the deer.

It's Halloween 1997, and I call my boyfriend at his college in Iowa to break up with him. He is stunned that I would break up with him over the phone and insists that I drive up to see him and talk it out in person. Nevermind that it's 11 PM; apparently I feel guilty enough about breaking up to think this is a rational idea. And it's Friday, so I suppose I could go.

I set out for the three-hour drive to his school. I am exhausted already when I start driving in the rain, so I stop and buy a soda and a bag of Sun Chips. There is no one on the road so late at night, so I'm cruising along. And this was before I became a fuddy-duddy who never speeds; I was flying.

All of a sudden out of the corner of my left eye, I see a unicorn. No, for real, that's what it looked like. The lights of my car reflecting off the deer made him look white. And the split second I see him, I crush into him. I didn't even have time to react: all of a sudden the car comes to a nasty halt, and Sun Chips go flying everywhere.

I get out and look around, but it's so dark that I can't even see the deer. I start screaming incoherently at the deer, something about how he better be dead because if I find him, I'll kill him. The car looks like hell, but it still works and I pull in to a gas station at the next exit. I asked some rednecks in the store, with hope in my voice, if I can still drive the car. They look at me like I'm insane and say that it will blow up if I keep going. And then they take off to go find the deer carcass.

I have to call the police, who show up and yell at me for leaving the scene of the accident. I explained to them that the deer was already gone and that -- this being the era before cell phones -- how on earth was I supposed to call in the accident if I was still sitting back at the side of the road?

And then I had to call my parents.
Oh lord.

This was also the era before Mr. T pitied the fool who didn't use 1-800-COLLECT. I just made a regular old collect call to wake my parents up and tell them that I was stuck somewhere in podunk Iowa with the totalled car that they'd paid for. Then I called the ex-boyfriend and told him, through my teeth, that now he had to find a way to come get me.

You know how girls love that Alanis Morissette song, how they get righteously angry over break-ups because of "You Oughta Know"? Yeah, well, that song came on the radio as I was riding in the car in silence, in the middle of the night, through Iowa with the boyfriend I had just dumped over the phone. That's his break up song for me.

And then I spent my weekend imitating Huis Clos: I was stuck in a dorm room with no car with the boyfriend I had just dumped.

It was agony.

I also was a moron and didn't know anyone's phone number from my college. I remembered one person's number who lived down the hall from me, and called him. He wasn't home, and in tears I begged his roommate to go find one of my friends to call me back, someone who would come save me from the weekend from hell.

Incidentally, that is why I immediately bought a Casio Databank Watch, so I would always have people's phone numbers handy the next time I am trapped in a dorm room in Iowa with an angry ex.

There are no buses out of this town in Iowa. There are no trains. There was no way to get home except to bribe someone to drive up and get me.

Meanwhile, I'm still breaking up with the boyfriend, who does not at all want to be broken up with and sees this weekend as his chance to talk me out of it.

Yeah, Huis Clos.

Damage to the car: $4500
That five minute collect call to my parents: $80

And the priceless part about the story is that, a week before the deer incident, I got my fishing license violation. My friends all decided that I was a menace to the environment. I would come home every other day to find cartoon drawings of dead deer and articles about the mating season taped to my dorm door. And of course when a Pennsylvania man made the news a month or two later for beating a deer to death with his bare hands...well, I never lived that down.

Having a story to tell Alex Trebek: priceless

A KNITTER'S SORROW

Knitting woes are universal:

I am convinced that all that jazz about the big Christmas Knitting Deadline and the Will it Fit/Will They Like it Debate fluffs up the project so much in our minds that if, when the recipient finally opens their gift, they have a heart attack and go totally blind from from the joy of it all that our knit-gifting experience will never be exactly what we expect. I mean, really, let's be honest. A heart attack and total blindness--add to that a small amount of some sort of incontinence or maybe a swoon or two would fall just a tiny bit short of what we'd expect, once we add up all those skyscraper dreams, etc. that we graft into all those stitches, bulky or not.

I can so relate. This year the two things I knitted for people in my husband's extended family, they didn't even understand what I had knit them. I had to mail their gifts, and apparently both of them spent a week staring at the items and wondering what they heck they were and why I'd made them.

My husband keeps telling me to stop knitting for non-knitters. But when you're a knitter, you can't go out and buy a pack of onesies for a baby gift; you have to make something for baby. So I have to live up to that expectation while balancing the fact that it takes about 60 straight hours of knitting to make a baby blanket.

So I keep going. I'm 3/5 of the way through little Tucker's gift. And it totally doesn't match the nursery. Sad.