Hunting Target

Once upon a time, we moved through the world around us without fear of noxious gas clouds on subways or gunmen lurking along the highway and even allowed our kids to go to school without the latest bullet proof jacket. But we live in a different world now. Whether it is the Islamist who may be secretly planning the next bio-terrorist event while giving us our change for coffee at the gas station or the quiet friend from a troubled family our kids bring home from school, we are faced with possible - and terrifying - threats to our security every day.

I remember in my bioethics class in college studying possible threats to our society and to what extent we would be willing to accept security trespasses to (almost) guarantee security, safety and most of all, not having to worry. Would we accept security cameras? Body searches? Secret surveillance? And ultimately, here we are all these years later debating the real question: what is the price we are willing to pay for the needful sense of security that enables us to snuggle in bed, smile as we send our kids off to school and drive to work unscathed?

The answer to this question is determined by the extent we have smelled danger lurking outside our own door. I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 19, 1995. It was around 9 o'clock, and I was heading over to the executive secretary's office to ask her a question. I walked in and instantly knew something was wrong. The President and Vice President of our company were tautly standing next to her desk and each person stared intently at a radio: The Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had just exploded. In utter terror we stood listening as horrific reports of the chaos and destruction as people ran for help, ran for safety, ran for friends, family, coworkers....just ran. Ditto the morning of September 11, 2001. I stood watching the news in our lunch room with the President and Controller of our company, wondering, et tu, Brute?

To me it all feels pretty darn close. Too close. So I am willing to pay for my unterrorized freedom by inconvenience, whether it is being scanned and people seeing my fat rolls or walking through the scanners at the county building. I don't want to be shot, I don't want people I love to be shot. I don't even want people I don't like to be shot. And for that, I'll pay the price.

Ahhh, finally!!

For those of you vain enough (dare I say it?) to use the location finder in BlogPress blogging app on the iPhone, please note: it doesn't freaking work! After weeks (or days....) of trying to get it OFF the blog I innocently tried to write a few weeks (or days...) ago, I finally had to just delete BlogPress off my phone and reload it, CAREFUL to make sure I TURNED OFF that option for my blog posts! You may note that I have used this feature in the past successfully. Alas, it was not to happen again and resulted in many unfulfilling moments in which I could have been blogging but instead spent 5 minutes saying "OK" to the continually repeating message that it couldn't find my location. Humbug!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The word of the day is....

Ah, why is it that life is so wretchedly demandingly tiredly work???? I do believe I shall have to take a nap at my desk just to clear out all the darn thinking I did this morning. If only life as an adult could be as excitingly random and freakishly fun as being a child....long bike rides, traipsing my Barbie through the grass, letting my guinea pig Skipper run around in the yard, playing endless rounds of my made-up ball game where I would throw it against the wall and have to get it when it bounced off....these were the chores life had for me then. Sigh....

Another Fine Day

Truly, madly, deeply I long to write here every day, filling your moments with joy as you trip gayly through my mental meanderings. Imagine the sheer bliss of experiencing the bulwark of my ever-burgeoning mental processes! Oh, joy, how it brightens my soul, and how it will brighten yours! Too bad I can't think of a freaking thing. Thanks, stroke, you suck royal jelly balls of phlegm!

Tune in tomorrow, I may be able to do better. Sigh.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:E Lakewood Blvd,Holland,United States

Slow long, good night

What the heck, I go to bed, and before I know it, the alarm goes off about 3 hours before I am actually ready to get up. So, here I am at BK hating myself for the 3,000 calories I am about to eat and the subsequent blood sugar of 375. But hey, another day, another dollar. Work awaits!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Bk in holland

I did it, I did it, I did it!!!!!!

Omg, I'm crying, literally CRYING because I have not been able to get into my blog and write for MONTHS because I changed the log in and couldn't remember what it was and I've been through 49 different web pages entering every possible email address I've ever had (and a few I don't think I ever had!) trying to remember what the freaking log in here was!!!!! I literally cried at lunch today thinking my blog and I were never to be joined together again, cast asunder for evermore! BUT NO!!!!! Goodness has prevailed and I am - yet again - Bunnyjo Georg. YAY!!!!!! :)

Life can be so stupid

Reading...

I am reading a lot which is sort of cheating on my getting better from my stroke. My Speech Tx said I should stop every so many pages and recall what has happened. Well, right now I am reading Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens and it is loooooong. But not only that, a normal Chs Dickens book has prorbably a dozen or so main characters that you must keep straight. This book however has probably twice that number and maybe as many as 30. So I thought I'd try to read something else bur nothing else works. The great thing about wahat I am reading is that every time I "open" my book (it is on my iPod) I can't remember where I am, who's talking and why. I remember many of the main characters but then again there are so many I don't remember that I've given up trying to keep track and everytime I read it is like a little story and although I have a general idea of what is going on with Little Dorrit and Mr. Clennam (name?) who are the main people, everyone else just is ... I don't know. Just a lot of people.

So, what are you reading?


-- Posted from my iPhone

Put Blogger on my iPhone

I've been a very bad girl because I haven't been blogging but that is mostly because I don't use my computer at all right now (and obviously don't go to work). So I put a program on my iPhone so I can keep the blog updated. This is boring, I know. Sorry about that. I will write more and be interesting next time.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Ho-ly Crap

On September 11th I had a stroke (yeah, Sept 11, can you believe it?!?) Then I had another one a week after getting out of the hospital. I was in the hospital a week each time and then had to go back to the hospital to correct my heart hole which caused all the strokes to begin with. Then had bleeding and all that stuff so back to the hospital. And it has sucked, all except the part when I originally had the stroke because everything was sooooo funny. Unfortunately, that was a sign of the stroke. So it went away. And then everything has continually gotten ugly.

The good news is - well, sorta good news - is that I don't have any of the physical characteristics typically associated with a stroke. My second stroke had some but because it was only a TIA (ONLY), they went away very quickly, like within a couple days. The bad news is the stroke was in my thallamous (I can no longer spell). It's a place in the brain that controls all of your cognitive thinking, history, what you feel and all that kind of stuff. My husband rattles off the list but I always forget. Anyway, it's basically anything to do with what you think and your personality. I was talkative at first and laughed a lot but when people kept looking at each other weird I got quiet and have been pretty quiet ever since. I don't chit chat like i used to and I mostly just think of things to myself. The bad news is, when I do talk it is usually because I'm frustrated and I'm not nice, in fact, I'm a rotten horrible person. I REALLLLLLLLY don't like that. It makes me very angry, which I suppose is a stupid response to being a bitch. Ce ca. (Spelling, anyone?)

So, Chris just came back and I'm going to go real quick, but I just thought I'd say what-the-hell and cherry ho or whatever. Bye for now.

5 Years and Counting

Glancing at my blog log I noticed that I've been blogging for 5 years now. Wow, has it really been that long? On the rare rare occassion that I read back over my years of scribbling and bibbling, I've come across some gems, things I am very proud of. Other things have great potential if I took the time to edit them. And then there are things I'd rather not read. Poorly written sign posts of where I was at that time. Bad company.

Now that life is less hectic with the girls out of school and nearly finishing the major portions of remodeling the house, I'm thinking I might go back and start weeding out the garden, picking a few floral specimens for the reading public at large. Who knows, I might hit a few homers.

Mixed metaphors, anyone?

Holy Shitoly

There is this guy who works at my company and he is the VP of Engineering. Right off the bat he didn't like me. I was too aggressive and what the heck was I doing asking him this question or that question. My boss went to bat for me (baseball analogies?) saying I was doing what my position required and that I had not crossed any lines...or hit any fouls (ugh). Even still, I learned to mind my P's and Q's with him and try to stay out of his....ballpark as much as possible. (Or should I say stay off his base - enough with the baseball analogies!)

Keep in mind this is a guy who outright verbally abuses his female engineer. He is quite buddy-buddy with the engineer I work with who is a very passive male and let's his barbed little comments go by with no reaction. Considering what a dick he is, I just ignored his attitude and continued to do my job in spite of him (with recent cut backs I know he would have loved to see me cut, too).

Fast forward to last week. I needed to schedule a production launch meeting for a new product - a very critical product I may say. He was in charge of setting up production. I call him and ask when he would be available to meet this week. He said Friday. Um, I said, we will be on vacation for 4th of July that Friday. He snapped, too bad! and hung up on me. Whew, was I pissed. Later I cooled off and found out he was waaaay behind on setting up production and that is why he blew up at me. The thing though about the incident that really bothered me though was that I had always promised myself I would never let him talk to me in a degrading manner and that if he ever did, I would say, hey, that's innappropriate. So, what did I do? I cowered like a beaten dog and worst of all, my mind was blank as to what I could say to him about it. So, yeah, I cooled off but I was still a little pissed.

Ok, so today he walks into my office twice looking for my engineer. First time I said, he didn't tell me where he was going. Two minutes later Dick walks in again and asks about the engineer. I say that I honestly don't know. No answer and I hear the door shut. I say very loudly, I guess I'm talking to thin air! and then say quietly under my breath Dick! 10 seconds later he begins rumaging through my coworkers cubicle and I realize he had heard me!!! OMG, I got so scared. He could get me fired for this! However, the logical side of my brain says bring it on, dick! I'd just love to see him complain about something I said when he's been verbally abusing people for years - something I've witness first hand on many occassions. Plus, he has a habit of ignoring me when I speak, so I guess I just sort of spouted off.

I wonder what is going to happen?

Twist and Turns

Life is an amazing thing, you know? Thinking back to my single-mom days, life wasn't amazing; it was hard. It sucked. Part of my problem is that I'm just not cut out to be a single mom - I'm just not that together. It's the old looking-good-on-the-outside-while-crumbling-on-the-inside single mom thing. Who asks for help? Not us.

But life is vastly different now. Observe my Monday: van overheated in Holland around 2 p.m. and Chris comes and rescues me. He then spends the rest of the night trying to fix it (that DAMN BOLT!), but not to worry: we have a spare car. Rewind to single mom days when there was no one to rescue me, no one to fix my car and you'd see a screaming meemie on the side of the road - with no cell phone. Ugly.

Then again, observe my Tuesday: Chris bought a new refrigerator for our new house, Emily fell off the monkey bars and had to go to the ER. Chris wouldn't think of letting us go alone so we all hung out together in the ER until Emily was ok'd and we went out to dinner.

Or take any other day of the week. It amazes me - truly amazes me - who this man is and how he's transformed my life. My love for him is equal parts awe, respect, adoration, inspiration and...his eyes, his muscles, his sense of humor. Did I say his muscles? Mmmmm....

Even still, when are we going to get that darn house done!?!??!

Still a hoot!

I know, perhaps it is unfair of me to make fun of the guys even after they have left office but gosh darn it all, I just can't resist!

P.S. Notice how all I do lately is post funny cartoons and stuff....well, sorry! It's just so much easier than actually putting two brains cells together and writing something! (Plus it's quicker...)

P.P.S. I'm also using a lot of ellipses lately too. And dashes. Where have all my punctuation super powers gone?

P.P.P.S. I just did a spell check, and you guessed it! Not a single misspelling. Hmm...apparently those super powers are still in effect....