The Week That Was

 

How many highs and lows can you cram in one week? I don’t know, but last week fate did its best to break a record.

 

 

 

Riverwalk, Sanford, FL

 

 

Hannah in Antique Shop

 

Haley & The Dragon

Saturday, I prowled the nooks and crannies of antique shops in Sanford, FL with my granddaughters and daughter-in-law and let the cool breezes blow on us on the Riverwalk on Lake Monroe. Downtown Sanford is right on the water. Its beautiful old main street has been gussied up with charming restaurants and shops and is a great place to spend the day. What history lessons the “antiques” provide! Try it sometime with your grands. They’ll meet the first I Pod (78 rpm record player), manual cash register with pop-up numbers, embroidered tea towels grandmas made and put in a hope chest for their trousseau, and school desks with ink wells. You picture them in fifty or sixty years showing their grands antique stores with unrecognizable items such as flat screen TV’s, I Pods, I Phones, ear buds, and select furniture from Rooms to Go.

 

Two mornings later I’m on the phone to 911 before 7 a.m. Why do they try to keep you hanging on the line until six strapling EMTs are in the middle of your bedroom? Does anybody know? I finally told the lady I had to hang up and get some clothes on, and I did – just in time. I guess they are used to staying in contact when the caller is in the closet and Freddie Kruger is gassing up his chainsaw. But I had more important things to do than chat. The guys and girls got my husband breathing in seconds. We were totally impressed with them. We spent the better part of the day in ER, but were allowed to go home with promises to return immediately if the pneumonia worsened. I’ve been afraid to take my clothes off all week, but Jerry is better. My friend Abbe says the blonde medicine is working. 🙂

 

Highs and lows pretty much pinged around like a piston election night. Without anyone to really support, you would think some of the thrill would go out of the election, but no. It’s in our blood. I would like to nominate John McCain for best concession speech EVER. I had forgotten how gracious politics could be in the old days. Thanks for bringing that back, John, if only for a few minutes.

 

 

Mountain to Mole Hill --Someday

Cooler weather today was my cue to begin making a mole hill out of the mountain of wood chips the tree people dumped in our side yard for free. So I started this morning. I soon began to glisten and my muscles hinted at how they will feel tomorrow. I stepped back to see what must be a greatly reduced pile, and hoped I had enough. Take a look at the picture. Perspective. It’s all in the perspective. Up close it seemed I had chiseled away the size of the Grand Canyon.  At least I don’t have to do my yoga today for exercise.

 

To cap the week off, I checked our 401K. Am I ready for next week? I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll adopt the phlosophy of my friend Bob Buckman: The lower our accounts go, the less we have to lose. 

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Joe the Plumber Lesson

We are missing the real lesson of Joe the Plumber, the citizen who asked a question of Obama at a rally. He wanted to know how an Obama tax increase to taxpayers making over $250,000 would affect him when he buys the plumbing company he is working for.  A simple question that has become a new game called “Kill the Questioner.” The Google engine heated to fiery red immediately after the report aired. We soon learned Joe had no plumbing license, made only $40,000 (How could he afford to buy a company, we were asked.) and owed personal taxes to the state. Keith Olberman even did a six-degrees-of-separation search that placed “someone with Joe’s last name” as a cousin of Charles Keating of S&L fame.  

Courtesy The Inquisitor

 

 

So what is the real lesson? This is it. If you attend a rally, town meeting or ask a question at a debate, be very, very sure all your parking tickets are paid, your alimony is up to date, you scrubbed your computer of X-rated sites you visited last week, watch only PBS, listen to classical music and don’t pick your nose at the traffic light. I jest — but in truth. The REAL lesson is DON’T QUESTION AUTHORITY. Got it?

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We Need a Hero

Ask yourself one question. Do you want McCain or Obama tinkering under the hood of our economic engine as it is sputtering and choking? All I can say is, either of them better have a darn good set of wrenches. Somebody needs to demand names of prospective staff and cabinet posts — and don’t allow them to get coy. McCain admitted he knows little of economics. I frankly don’t see anything in Obama’s background that gives me hope.  Marry off our country to a rich one or get cash from a nefarious friend don’t seem to be viable answers for the situation we are in. One of those light weights will be keeping your country’s checkbook. I can’t think of anything more important than knowing who will be sitting beside him licking the pencil lead.

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Secrets of an Undecided Voter

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

 

John Kenneth Galbraith

  

 

 

Go ahead and deride me. I’m an undecided voter. I, too, once looked with scorn on voters who couldn’t make up their minds after months of political rhetoric. Haven’t they read and heard enough to choose a candidate by now? Well, perhaps they have heard and read too much – and what’s more, done so with an open mind. Here’s how I came to that conclusion.

 

Not deciding right out of the gate this year to back my party candidate has been totally liberating. It has had the surprising effect of allowing me to see all the candidates with amazing clarity. The rose colored glasses are off and so are the gloves. Every misstatement, embellishment, and diversion to inanity on either side is sharply defined. If a candidate says something stupid or wrong, I am free this year not to defend him. I don’t have to squeeze my candidate’s views like silly putty to fit back into the Truth Can. If the facts don’t fit, I don’t acquit. Just let that lump of stretchy, over inflated verbal dough lay there for all to see. Oh, the candidate’s faithfuls will quickly pick it up, fill the center with a rock and hurl at the opposing candidate.

 

At this point neither party represents my beliefs, or if they do, they don’t adhere to them. I would like to see our election process overhauled to allow those outside the two monopoly parties to have a fighting chance. Perhaps more of us would take a more critical, non-biased look at candidates who represent our ideas more than an ass and a pachyderm.

 

We need to be addressing real issues like: economy on the brink from bailouts, energy needing big shot of ingenuity and attention, and danger from uncontrolled borders, to name a few. I don’t give a flying f*&% about pregnant daughters, community organizers, gay marriage, or whether a VP can field dress a moose, etc. As far as I can tell the only useful issue anyone is addressing (McCain) is earmarks. That’s a part of the whole big economic issue, but just a part. What ever happens, if we, the taxpayers, continue to bail out uninsured organizations like Freddie & Fannie and let the CEO’s who ruined them walk away not only without penalty, but with $9M, this country will be bankrupt. We might be rethinking that whole “too big to fail” mantra.

 

Meantime, I’ll be standing on the political street corner, arms crossed, peeking from under my hat brim at every pathetic attempt by the candidates to shape and reshape themselves into an image I can rally behind. Save your pompoms.

 

 

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McCain’s VP Announcement

So Obama is using text messaging to announce his VP in order to showcase his technological superiority over his opponent. Clever. Now if I were running McCain’s campaign, this is what I would tell him. “Listen, you Luddite, you have lost the technological battle. That’s a remote, not a Blackberry. Put it down. We are going with your strongest quality, your wicked sense of humor.”

 

Then the day before the Republican Convention McCain would announce his vice president via CB radio. “Hello, my friends. I mean good buddies. Riding shotgun with me on this journey will be **squawk squawk**. See you at the polls. 10-4, over and out.”

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