Finally!

I have finally remembered that, like millions of others, I have a blog! And I even remembered my user id and password which wasn't that difficult since I use the same one 9 out of 10 times. Makes it easier for me and God knows who else.
The best thing about having already raised the "kids" and gotten them out of the house is that I can finally do only the things that I want to do.
I don't suffer from empty nest syndrome and, frankly, I don't know why other people do.
There's so much to do and, at my age, so little time.
I spend a good part of it discovering things that I am totally unfamiliar with thanks, mostly, to StumbleUpon.
Without a doubt, it is one of the most fascinating sites I've found.
All you have to do is list things that you are or might be interested in and keep clicking the icon which provides you with a new site every time.
It's truly amazing what's out there and how stupid were we all before the computer!

Dysfunctional Families

My kids like to tell me that there is definitely something wrong with me or maybe it is the way I do things or the things I do.
I'm really not sure but whatever it is, I think they mean it. My oldest daughter refused to bring one of her male friends to meet me for fear of what I might say. As a matter of fact, since they liked to take road trips, she one time took a detour of one whole state just to avoid bringing him home to "meet mom." I thought that was kind of extreme.
She has a job (which is a good thing) in a state that I can't name under threat of God knows what on a newspaper that I am also not allowed to mention. This particular daughter is deathly afraid that her co-workers will find out that I am the person who designed the Kelo Christmas Curse Card which, I am very proud to say, made national even international, if you count New Jersey, headlines.
She also has extracted my promise that, if I use any photos of her on my various sites, including ctrsvp.org, that I will disguise/eliminate any identifying marks, etc.
Giving that copious amount of information, above is her picture.

This is my son who is actually the oldest. I don't know why he is always carrying that cross when he comes for coffee. His biggest worry is who will take care of him when I die. The sister who lives in the state I can't mention says there's no way in hell that she will do it. The middle sister (pic below)has 4 (count 'im) kids of her own and thinks he should take care of them. There's a major disagreement about that! When he feels like he's been forced into watching them, he does silly things like get into egg and maple syrup fights with them to get even. Plus he has a friend named Albie who no one else can see.

This is my middle daughter with the four children. Her brother likes to say it's time for her to have another and thinks she should make the next one Asian just to sort of round things out.

She, also, prefers not to be recognized which is probably pretty obvious. In addition to her 4 children, who my friend the mailman refers to as the "bin laden children", she is trying to get her college degree. She's a good daughter but she does have a bad habit of blaming things on other people-like me. I asked her to go down to another town, which I can't mention, and pick up the baby of the family who had no way home. So, with no license, car insurance or headlights, off she goes with her brother. Needless to say, the police stop her for driving w/o lights and she got into a BIG argument with them and made nasty references regarding their family members, etc. They took her car and I can't remember how she got home. Sure enough, though, she blamed it all on me.

This is the one child who doesn't seem to be bothered, too much, by the things I do or say or wear. She has even been on my show and makes a really good co-host. Maybe she figures what's the difference since we live in a fairly small but infamous city and most people already know she's my daughter.

She is the baby in our family at 20 while her siblings are, in order of appearance, 43, 38 and 33. God, how did I get to be this old but I know that it is certainly better than the alternative.

She did get her own apartment because she said I was driving her crazy but she calls or visits almost every day. She's in college too with a 3.9 GPA and works fulltime. Another hard worker and another to be proud of.

So, while it's true that our family is probably dysfunctional, we can all read and our shared motto seems to be "All for one and one for all". Maybe it's the other way around.

So what is it that I do that's so strange? Well, I've written so much that I've exhausted myself and if you've gotten this far, there's a good chance that you may be exhausted too so I'll just give you one example of what the kids think is strange but doesn't seem at all strange to me.

I tie chicken wings or pork bones to the ceiling fan, put it on high and drive the cats crazy. It makes (and them!) laugh. Did you ever wonder why a person can be as intelligent as all hell but if that same person likes to laugh and have a good time, you're suddenly less intelligent?

And, finally, don't eat Peter Pan Peanut Butter until some safer time in the future.

Ben Simon & the Military Mind

Even though I already have a website (ctrsvp.org), a blog seems to be a whole other area in which to share some of my more radical thoughts and ideas although people who are on the receiving end of my website would no doubt tell you that they can't imagine how much worse I can be.

I guess it isn't really a case of being worse, maybe just more truthful. Well, hell, I don't actually know what it is. I'm just hoping I'll be able to figure it out and share it here.

Let me tell you what is bothering me today.

Ben Simon is a 24 year old soldier from Waterford, CT serving in Afghanistan. He has been contributing some of his thoughts in a blog posted on The Day, a local newspaper and, for reasons yet unknown, at least to me, his writings have made the war more personal and terrible to me.

For reasons known only to the military, they have decided that notes from the war zone concerning such things as the numbness of the soldiers serving there, trying to quit smoking and the reasons for not doing so along with "Ah, Romance" are things that MUST not be shared with the public. Probably in the beady little brains of some military personnel, those in a position to make those decisions, what Ben has written about might pose a danger to the US although how that could be is beyond me.

And, even though, I'm ashamed to say that I don't normally follow the news of any wars we are involved in (and God knows there has been plenty of 'em), this piece of writing devastated me.
You can read the rest of his entries on ctrsvp.org

WE ARE NUMB

"Our emotions – other than anger – have been whisked away to a place we are unable to reach. Our ability to feel, and to be touched is gone. Our ability to sympathize and empathize with others is gone.
We have been in Afghanistan for eight months. In these eight months we have become numb. The Afghanistan sunsets that stretch like great big red and golden hands over the gray and bleak mountains do not reach us. The pain and suffering of many of the Afghani people do not affect us.
We, the five of us, in late October, drove into a village on a hilltop that overlooks a valley where there is a river surrounded by trees. These trees showed the first yellow and orange signs of fall, and their colors reflected on the river. This scene of water, and yellow, and orange, and green posed such a startling contrast to the surrounding dismal countryside that any regular person, I believe, would have been awestruck. We gave it only a passing glimpse.
In September, a child who had been hit by a speeding car driven by an Afghani was left dying on the side of a road. We, the five of us, did not feel any emotion as our medic did what he could for the dying child. We did not feel any emotion as the men and women from the nearby village, at the child’s side, moaned and wailed in agony and sorrow. We did not feel any emotion as they picked up the child and carried him away.
In August, the five of us watched an Afghanistan army soldier be whisked away by a medical evacuation helicopter. Just a short while earlier, we were only meters away when a rocket-propelled grenade hit him. He screamed, his fellow soldiers yelled, and smoke rose from his body. He lost both legs and an arm. We were not moved.
The five of us agree that the night skies of Afghanistan are the clearest we’ve ever seen. The Milky Way stretches across it, and on any given night countless shooting stars smudge it with their trails. The moon here, when it’s out, illuminates the tops of the mountains on the horizon, and we’ve all stood looking at it, along with the shooting stars and the Milky Way. We’ve stood and watched. But we have not been transfixed. We are numb.
Why are we numb? We are five soldiers from Connecticut who, after comfortable upbringings, have been whisked away from the warmth and ease of home. We have been placed in a strange country where danger and heartbreak are everywhere. We have been spat at, had rocks thrown at us, been shot at. We have seen bombs go off that were meant for us. Rockets have been launched our way.
We have seen our friends hurt. And we have seen them killed.
Yet we do not take issue with what goes on around us. We signed up for the infantry – to be spat at, have rocks thrown at us, be shot at, be mortared. But our emotions, our feelings have been whisked away. Our feelings were whisked away, perhaps down the gorgeous river that reflected the early Afghanistan autumn."