Jabberwocky for 2004 February

There is a woman at church who reminds me so much of me at her age--glowing with health and happiness, three little blonde stairstep kids, handsome husband. I feel like telling her to wake up and enjoy it, because before she knows it, it will all be..... gone.

Cambria is still quaking. (Lookit all the fools who moved there for retirement; serves them right!) The Caltech site has a category of measurements of "quality" of earthquakes. I think that's a hilarious concept, to rank earthquakes for quality.

create your own visited country map My World Map! My State Map:
create your own visited states map

I've been doing a "rough draft" of my federal taxes. Arrrrrrrrgggghhhh! I owe LOTS of money again this year! I absolutely HATE this. I went to Human Resources and filled out a new W-4 so that hopefully the problem won't occur again in 2004. I don't know why Mr. Bush thinks he has relieved America's tax burden. He certainly has done NOTHING for me.

I am a little bit tiffed at my maps. I think the world map shouldn't show that I've been to Alaska (I wish!), and it shouldn't show all of Canada, when the truth is I've only been to British Columbia. And why won't it let me revise them?

Follow Up: See I was right. In today's business section of the paper, there is a big article headlined "What Happened to the Tax Cuts?" It says that millions of Americans will have their taxes go up instead of down. Dumb George W. Bush.

I think that, as a nation, we have been had.

Today's big headline is that the KHSD board has voted to keep the Toni Morrison novel in the classroom. Hooray! Strike one for religious freedom for The Rest of Us, and for the First Amendment, and for the critical thinking skills of the new generation.

The troublemaking parent who started the whole scandal is thinking of running for the school board though. That is a scary thought. I will have to campaign for her opponent. Especially if it's Wesley Crawford.

A dependent clause worksheet had the sentence, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union." One of my students corrected this sentence by adding "will do anything it takes to make it perfect."

I thought that was sweet.

I donated absolutely every cent I thought I could afford to sacrifice to the Clark campaign. I don't know if it will do any good, but perhaps it will send a message to the universe.

Frances: Hey, Universe! All this stuff you loaded into my life really bites, ya know?

Universe: Huh? Did some little pipsqueak say something? Do I care?

This morning I went to the post office and the grocery store, and when I came home I had to just keep on driving. The Jehovah's Witnesses were parked right in front of my house (taking up both parking spaces!) and they were clustered in a large group right there on the sidewalk. So I drove up and down Oleander Street for a while.

I think the last time I did this was the time LuJean and I came home from a movie and there was a momma skunk with her babies on our front porch.

I feel sorry for our missionaries. There is nothing I resent more than answering the door, and lo and behold, it's representatives from some other religion. I don't want to hear their message, and I have no intention of EVER joining their church, and I don't like feeling bad about it if it's a nice old lady or a little kid. I am always doing something important, no matter what time of day it is. I never have time to just sit and chew the fat with strangers who want to convert me. I am a busy person, and I try to stay productive. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way, and our poor missionaries!

I really don't mind if it's a knock on the door and it's our missionaries. Even though they usually want me to type something for them.

I only did a little bit of yard work today. It is COLD! And I didn't feel all that great, so I went back to bed in the morning. In the afternoon, I went to lunch at the Tea Room with Kim Cornett, Karen Nations, and Karen Olson. We had a good time and sat at our table for forever. I bet they were glad to see us go! I ordered Hawaiian Chicken Salad, but brought it home for Gretel to eat. She did more justice to it than I was able to.

The daffodils are starting to come up and the crocus are blooming. I wish I could find someone to help me with the weeds who will do a decent job.

Today in Relief Society they passed out petitions for the constitutional amendment to preserve the sanctity of marriage. I was really bothered: 1) we are told not to use church meeting for politics, 2) I'm not sure marriage is worth preserving (only partly a joke!) and 3) I think that is the dumbest excuse for a constitutional amendment I've seen in my life.

What? We couldn't get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified, so we're going to pass this nonsense into law?

When the stack of petitions came my way, I didn't take one. I thought I would be alone, but Sarah [Welch] Giorgis saw me and smiled. Then she didn't take one either! I'm not alone! Ernestine Boonstoppel, who was sitting by me, took one, but asked me to explain it to her after the meeting. She listened to my explanation (I tried to be neutral and fair) and then she said "Flubathththth."

My hair spray smells like Robitussin. It's Clairol Herbal Essence, and I thought it would smell nice when I bought it. I can't for the life of me think why any marketing or development person would think it's a good idea to have hair spray that smells like cough syrup. I hope this is as close to Robitussin as I ever get again in my life, but in the meantime, I'm stuck for a long, long time because I don't have anyone using up the hairspray along with me.

Gretel was choking when I did my hair this morning.

It's time to start packing for my drive to Utah. I will attend Alyssa's wedding, see my children and other family members, and bring little Sadie-dog back to her new home. I only have a stack of papers about 3 inches thick to take and grade over my vacation!

Today the newspaper published the results of the Fat Cat Contest. Tonks is still working on it. The winner weighed in at 33 pounds. Now THAT is a fat cat! I put Tonks on the bathroom scale to weigh him and he weighed in at 16. He was very confused by the procedure--dim bulb, you know. 16 pounds is still a pretty hefty kittycat. Bobocatmorn at his most glorious weighed seventeen.

I am home from Youuutaaahhh, and survived the trip, even to the point of being able to drive all the way there and back myself. Ruth Davis went with me and we had fun talking. It was nice traveling with Ruth because she won't eat junk. I think I made it through healthier, although I was very tired. It was nice to see family at Alyssa's wedding and the next day at lunch. I took Camilla to a movie, and went over to play a game with Aaron and Kristen, Joe and Louise. Went to the scrapbook store with Susie.

Sadie was a good little dog all the way home, but she's kind of obnoxious to the cats now that she's here. I spent the day getting her settled in--new ID tags, fencing, and so on. I had thought I had some chicken wire, but couldn't find it, so we had to go to Home Depot. One roll wasn't quite enough to do all three gates, and I had to buy two. So now I have enough left to build a new screen for the crawl space someday. Keep the kitties out.

I made Stir Fry Chicken with Pineapple and Pecans for Leonard and Brendan. They arrived just about dinner time. I'm making Leonard take the leftovers home because I don't think it's going to stay down.

The dogs are getting along wonderfully and playing nicely together. Only thing is, it's like being a nursery school teacher or a Campfire leader.

When we go to the temple, everyone is dressed alike in white clothing. Everyone is equal, and it doesn't matter who in the world you are. This is the way it will be in heaven, and this is what our democratic society has been striving for these last couple of centuries.

Our great-grandmothers marched and fought and went to jail for female suffrage and abolition of slavery. Thousands have given their lives in defense of freedom and equality.

Now, some of the Christian Right is promoting this FederalMarriage Amendment. This is a huge step backwards, and the Constitution of the United States is going to be amended to mandate inequality based on biology over my dead body.

I went to the website to sign the "anti" petition; there were 557,573 signatures.

http://www.petitiononline.com%2F0712t001%2Fpetition.html

I told one of my students this morning that I was going to come home and write about his triumph on my weblog, but I can't remember who it was or what he did that was so wonderful. I think he used a semicolon correctly.

English teachers have no life.

Everyone on the Molly list is on a diet/fitness kick, and I mentioned that I've gotten so I'd rather eat a real orange than a chocolate one. So Alyson, via Leonard, sent me a bunch of organic oranges! What a surprise! I made juice this morning, and it is yum.

Meanwhile, I've almost made it through the orange I got in my Christmas stocking. It's not an orange one, it's lime flavor, and it is luscious. I have just two slices left. It's funny. Years ago the whole thing would have been gone in one sitting, but I think I'm enjoying it more a tiny bit at a time.

"Time is Nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once." --Anonymous. So says a little doohickey at the scrapbook store. If I had said such a ridiculos thing, I think I would be "anonymous" too.

I have a huge box of floppy discs that Aunt Jeuney made and gave to me because she couldn't bear to throw them out. They contain PCX files of all her scanned family history photos and odd little other things, like templates for address labels. I am going through them and converting the files to JPEG preparatory to putting all the photos on a CD. I'm also changing the file names from gobbeldygook to a meaningful title. It's taking longer to do than I thought it would, but I am afraid the days of floppy discs are numbered.

Dr. Amin says my viral load is down some, so I guess my new healthy eating program must be paying off. It's nice to have something going right. The CD4 count, however, is zip.

Good old Dubya spewed out an endorsement of the federal marriage amendment today. The man has GOT TO GO, I tell you! He's going to get a pile more votes from all the conservative Christians now.

Those people are dangerous.

I am shaking my head at the way the Church is crawling over itself to be considered "Christian." From where I sit, Christian is not all that great of a thing to be. For one thing, they believe in justification by grace, which absolutly doesn't fly in my book, and they believe that they are the only people who have the opportunity to be saved. In addition, they believe that they should be able to dictate how everyone else should live, what they should read, and what should be studied in school.

These people have and promote a bigoted fundamentalist mindset, and I think we can do very well without them and the Christian-in-Chief.

At long last, I have finished resizing all of Aunt Jeuney's scanned photos and loaded them onto my hard drive. There were only two that had bit rot, and one she had two copies saved, so it was ok. The only thing I couldn't load was a file called Christmas 1973. Now, what I have to do is sort out all the various other pictures and make scanned copies of all the pictures from the Call side, and then I can burn a CD.

Gracie Harsh, one of my students, had her baby die of cancer. He was only eight months old. She is selling chile verde burritos to raise money for Relay for Life. The burritos are really good, and we all sat chomping them in class.

It makes me furious that in this country only the wealthy have access to state-of-the-art medical care and Gracie is selling burritos to advance that state-of-the-art. The other thing that upsets me is George Bush is spending billions of dollars on his ego in Iraq; meanwhile he has plopped on his promise to fund AIDS research. And Gracie is selling burritos. This is where a "compassionate conservative leads us." I say, let George Bush hold a bake sale.

This afternoon on my way to Green Frog Market I waved at the strikers in front of Albertson's. They looked tired and drawn, and it is starting to rain.

There are only 69 signatures on the petition in favor of the federal marriage amendment-- and two of them are Morticia Adams and Esme Weatherwax.

Now Sigmund Freud has signed it too.

This month's Scouting magazine has a forum by Scoutmasters on what if your wife thinks you are too involved in Scouting. One reply, from a Scoutmaster in North Carolina, says the solution is to involve your wife by having her teach the Scouts to cook, sew on patches, and make a budget. I cannot BELIEVE they printed this!

When I finished rinsing the shampoo out of my hair this morning, I opened my eyes and there was a Very Large Dog in the shower with me.

Everybody be sure to read my reply to Kristen's comment under my rant about Dubya below. Meanwhile, is anyone planning to see The Passion? It's playing to very large attendance here, but I don't think I'm going to go. I don't think I would be able to handle it. I cried when Seabiscuit died, for heaven's sake. I cry when the Germans march on Paris. The only thing that kept me from falling apart at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows is David Oman pointing out that the dog was opening and shutting his eyes as he lay there being "dead."

Today at Church, Brother Morris told me that there are chocolate candy bars you can have on the Adkins diet. My reaction was "Huh?" because I'm of the opinion that chocolate tastes ever so much better if there is sugar in it. He said that there are some types of sugars that don't spike your blood sugar. This flies in the face of what I learned in college, that a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate and your body doesn't know the difference--as in, between sugar and honey, for example.

However, a lot of what I learned in college has turned out to not be true over the years, just as the information from my tenth grade biology class is now outdated. I *like* Bill Morris, and I hope he has a long(er) and happy life and gets to eat lots and lots of candy bars. He can eat my share as well. I can't believe the changes in my eating habits since I got sick.

The Bishop taught the Fifth Sunday lesson today. One of his points was the story of Nicodemus, who asked Jesus "What lack I yet?" It occurs to me we all need to ask ourselves that question. Bishop's emphasis was on temple work, but that aside, I bet we could all think of something if we examined our own lives.

The lesson plan tomorrow calls for a discussion on gender equity, with writing assignment to boot. One of the articles in the anthology is a debate on whether women should be drafted. One writer argues that drafting women, just as men are drafted, would be a false equality because the military does not treat female recruits the same as male ones. For example, women are not assigned to combat positions.

Of course the edge on this one is getting narrower and narrower. But I was thinking, would I be willing to be drafted to serve my country in the military. Yes, I think I would if I were needed. I think if a person believes in equality, then they have to take all the ramifications as they come.

HOWEVER, I don't think I would be any good as a soldier. I have never been buff, strong, and healthy. Don't think I would make it through boot camp. If the military were to need me, there are many, many other things I can do and do well--office type work, writing, potato peeling, who knows but what I can do technical stuff. I just don't think I would survive hardship and combat. So am I equal? hmmm. Has biology turned around to bite me in the seat again?

I think I need to cheer myself up with the thought that everyone has something to contribute, and not everyone has the same something. Maybe you CAN compare apples and oranges.