You Dropped a Bomb on Me (Baby)

It looks as though someone at the Pentagon is listening.

All these years protestors have been chanting Make Love, Not War! And finally, the Air Force took them seriously.

Now, if we could only get the government to listen when we ask for something important, like say, healthcare for our children. Maybe in another 40 years or so.

A Question Mark

Every now and then when I'm looking at Google Analytics, trying to figure out some way to increase my traffic, trying to figure out what I write about that gets the most attention, I find myself both confused and tickled at some of the search queries that lead here.

For instance, I have recently had people searching for:

blonde twins at Alabama game -- I know of whom they search, too. They're pretty cute and always wear Bear Bryant hats.

barnes and noble employee rant -- among several other barnes and noble queries. This leads to a post I wrote almost two years ago. I recently got a rather rude and obnoxious comment about the post. Dude, get over it. I'm sorry you hate your job. But you're clearly only 16 or so and there will be other jobs. Unless you don't change that attitude.

hyperthyroid pork -- Uh. WTF? Anyone hazard a guess? Could that be oxymoronic? I am befuddled.

And my favorite:

why not to sleep with awesome -- Why not, indeed! If he truly is awesome, I say go for it.

My Hometown

I stumbled on this. No one will care, but it made me nostalgic.

I hated growing up there. Couldn't wait to leave. But sometimes...I miss my hometown.

You Gotta Feel It

Sometimes my heart aches and breaks and I feel crushed beneath the weight of emotion when I think about Brendan. He's my darling, intensely feeling child. I swear he lives and breathes with every fibre of his being. He's sensitive beyond what any one person should have to endure and I often find myself thinking about Wordsworth's poem:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours;
And are gathered up now like sleeping flowers –
For this, for everything, we are out of tune.
It moves us not.
Great God! I would rather be
A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blowing his wreathed horn.

I guess I feel like Brendan is so connected to this Earth, so present to every moment of his life, unlike 99 percent of us. He feels everything so deeply, the joy and the pain. I worry about the pain. I worry when he takes responsibility for the pain and well-being of others.

Of course I want him to care about other people, especially his brother. But I worry when he worries about protecting others. And of course, when he hurts, I hurt. And he seems to hurt very deeply.

He sat in my lap and cried for 30 minutes yesterday when I told him about Mao. I'm actually thankful he reacted that way, really. It shows that he has the ability to love animals and understands they are important parts of our families. I think his reaction in that instance is perfectly normal.

But I worry about his reaction to other things over which he has no control. He overheard a news story about a day care center in Tennessee that was closed by the state after investigators found a 4-month old boy with a pacifier taped in his mouth. I don't generally let Brendan watch the news, but I was watching CNN at 6:00 a.m. when he wandered into the room and heard the story. The reporter stated that the boy might have died had they not arrived when they did. Brendan was very upset and asked why someone would do that.

How do you explain that one?

Several days later he came back to me and asked me what he should do if one of their babysitters ever taped a pacifier to Beckett's mouth and locked him in the bathroom! He was so worried.

Naturally, I explained that we know all of our sitters very well and they're all friends of our family and he should never worry about that. I told him that if a sitter ever did anything wrong or told him not to tell his parents about something that happened that he should tell us no matter what. Then, he asked if he could call me if we weren't home and tell me and got all worried over not knowing how to use the phone. It was so very sad.

I promised I would teach him to use the phone. (As an aside, I have tried teaching him before, but he has shown zero interest up until this point.) I told him not to worry and that no one we know would do that sort of thing -- that only bad people would do something like that. And I thought we were okay.

Then, the day before yesterday, he asked me if bad guys have mommies. When I said that they did, he freaked out! I mean, on the floor kicking and screaming, "No! No! No! Bad guys don't have mommies. I don't want them to have mommies!"

It just broke my heart.

What do you do with a little guy who is so sensitive? How does he survive in this world? This big ugly, scary, heartbreaking world?

Never Enough

After 10 years with us, our sweet kitty boy, Mao, has reached the end of his life. He's nearly blind. He has arthritis. He has a hyperthyroid condition, that despite treatment, has caused him to lose weight until he only weighs 5 1/2 pounds. He rarely seeks out affection. And, he has little control over his bodily functions.

At 10:30 a.m. today, I will take him to our vet who will then euthanize him.

I am so sad.

I know he's a cat. I understand that death is a natural part of the life cycle. I know he had a good life, at least the part of it he spent with us. He was 4 or 5 years old by the time he wandered up to our house and decided he wanted to stay.

I know all that. I know that it's cruel to keep him alive at this point.

But I will miss him. I'll miss the way it looked like he was smiling when he was sitting in my lap getting loved on. I'll miss his polite and silent meow when I was working in the kitchen and he wanted me to feed him. I'll miss seeing him curl up beside Brendan or go up to Cooper, our 65 lbs. German shepherd and sniff his nose.

He was the best cat I've ever known and I've had cats in my life since I came into this world. Okay. The tears are making it hard to write any more. You get the idea. I loved my cat. He's sick. I have to put him to sleep and it's not a fun or easy thing to do.

Goodbye, Mao. You were a good and true friend.