Christians making Christians look bad: “The Insanity & Racism of the Religious Right”

I rarely get political on this blog, but some of the recent crap going on in this country is just pissing me off. I won’t post the photo because I refuse to post such vile stuff here, but anyone who would hold a sign of Obama dressed as a tribal witch doctor just infuriates me. How jaded, racist, and stupid can one BE?

I think Jimmy Carter is right when he says that there’s a huge amount of racism going on in this country, aimed directly at our elected president.

I have a former friend from college who became a fundamentalist Christian over the past 20 years and believes all the vitriol she hears from these uneducated, fanatically right-winged, closed-minded groups about President Obama. How embarrassing and disappointing that Americans – any American – would hold such disgusting and destructive views! It really scares me.

Rachel Maddow and Frank Schaeffer are right on in this piece:

And now, back to posting about family and pets and the weather. I just had to say that!

Changing with the seasons

Last Fall I snapped this photo from my office:

Fall had arrived.  Warm, bountiful, gorgeous.

A few months later, I took this photo:

Winter gripped us.  Bleak, cold. barren.

Then I fell here (at home)…

…and for the next few months I worked on campus at Microsoft because I couldn’t easily get up the long, steep stairway to my office.  Just as well because I was treated to this:

By summer I was back to my office, and I snapped this photo:

And today, you know what I noticed?

THIS!

If you look very closely, you can see the beginnings of…

Proof that at least one cat on the face of the earth is weirder than Boo:

Best Project Management quote EVVVER!

“You can’t throw nine women at a pregnancy and get it done in a month.”*

*With thanks to my fellow PM and office mate, Rebekah!

OCD: Oh! See? Dementia!

As I hit the halfway mark on my way to work I had to pull off the road to ponder a few grating questions.

Did I unplug the straightener? Did I turn off the stove?  Did I lock the front door?  Is Shasta in the house? Is a cat locked in a room?

I have never had any signs of OCD before.  Where is this coming from?

Keyword, dementia?!  Oh crap!  Not good.

Long ago and far away

Elisabeth has been doing some spring fall cleaning and organizing lately, taking some of her belongings from her childhood home with us to her adult home in Seattle that she now shares with CJ.  In the process, she’s also brought a few items back to us that she’s had at her house.

One of the items she returned is my mother’s old train case.

I don’t know if everyone called these small, hard, square suitcases “train cases,” but that’s what my mother called it because it was her constant companion when she travelled both in Germany and in America. 

I don’t remember a time when Mom didn’t have this smooth leather box – or when I didn’t want one of my own, with its many silken pockets around the edge (for grown-up cosmetics) and the up-and-down latches that made the sound of leaving.  

The sight, the sound, and the feel of Mom’s train case remind me of her wearing her very Jackie Kennedy short-jacket travelling suit with the big red buttons and of her hair ratted just so in the back and sweeping across her forehead in the front.

When I grew up I’d be just like Mom, I decided all over again each time her train case appeared at the foot of her bed, ready to be packed full of magical grown up treasures.

Mom’s train case had been sitting in the middle of the living room floor for days, since Elisabeth returned it earlier this week and I only had time this morning to finally pick it up to put it away among other treasures bequeathed to me by Mom. 

As I picked it up, the top fell open as the locks hadn’t been secured, and out fell this:

Dated April 12, 1983, twenty-six years ago and a little over a month before we got married, it’s Tom’s and my engagement announcement in my parents’ town newspaper, the Ashland (Oregon) Tidings.

Talk about grown-up treasures!  I had completely forgotten about this announcement.  I have no idea why it was in Mom’s train case (or why her train case had been at Elisabeth’s), but when I realized what it was my heart skipped a beat… just like it had for so many years every time my husband-to-be (and husband) walked into the room!

Odd, too, isn’t it, that just a few days after Kat took this black and white photo of us, I find what is probably the only other black & white portrait of us ever taken.

Kat’s capture

Tom and me, as seen by Kat.

Unscrewed, unpinned and deplated

Remember this?

On December 8th that hardware store inside me will officially be dismantled and I will be screwless, plateless and pinless!

I can hardly wait!  (That long plate is driving me absolutely bonkers!)