Talk Radio Quote of the Day

I don't believe in homosexuality.

-some idiot caller on Sean Hannity's show

There are a lot of things I don't believe in. Santa. The Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy. Brownies, elves, sprites, that sort of thing.

But homosexuality? C'mon. There's ample evidence for it, isn't there? (Or should I be calling up my best friend and telling him he's make believe?)

Now, you can think homosexuality is a choice, or that it's immoral. (And I can think you are an idiot.) But to say you don't believe in it?

Yes, yes, I know what he meant. But if I am to take your argument seriously, I demand of you--at the very least--the ability to coherently frame that argument. If you can't say it without sounding like an utter halfwit, then don't say it. If you must say it, be prepared to be treated like the blockhead you are.

And Mr Hannity, you really need a better call screener. For the good of the Right, quit giving these drooling mongoloids a national audience.

Notes from the other end of the stroller.

I've heard a lot of complaints lately about women with big strollers using them as battering rams. I had to stop and think: Have I ever done that?

Oh yes, yes I have. Generally, in a crowded place, after about thirty minutes of people walking into and over my stroller, backing up and falling over it, kicking it, kicking me, tripping over it and then staring as if the blasted thing just appeared out of nowhere.

It gets old, fast.

I try to minimize my stroller use, and to make it unobtrusive when I do use it (which, in hindsight, might be part of the problem). But I have back problems, so if I'm going to be out anywhere longer than about twenty minutes--and who's ever in the mall for only 20 minutes?--I need to have a stroller for my youngest.

We went to the Stock Show this February, which of course is one of the more crowded things in San Antonio, & had the elder two in harnesses (yes, I leash my children) and the youngest in the stroller. People do NOT look where they're going under the best of conditions, & I guess after a few rounds in the beer tent (no, we didn't go near it) they get kinda dazzled by the cheap cowboy hats. We went into the big exhibit hall that has most of the commercial booths in it...very, very wide aisles, easily large enough for six or eight people to walk abreast. I literally had people walk backwards and fall over the stroller two or three times. It's like it never occurred to them that perhaps one of the literally hundreds of people in the same building might be behind them.

So yeah, after a while I did get heartily tired of trying to yank my stroller out of the way, and eventually I started catching a few ankles. And was happy to, because I am not a creature of goodness and light at the best of times.

For the record, I don't have a particularly large stroller, either. It's not as small as an umbrella stroller, but it's a 3-wheeler that was bought because it is very maneuverable. I used a double stroller for a while with my first two, a front/back model no wider than a normal stroller, and I still had people falling over it. Loaded down with two kids and a purse, that sucker pushed 100lbs. If I'd ever decided to go kamikaze with that sucker, I could have done some damage.

The moral of the story is this: Look to your own damn self first. Chances are you're the one who tripped over that "battering ram" because you just weren't paying attention.

A Totally Pointless Trip Down Memory Lane

The illustrious AD brings us yet another bit of blogging humor, courtesy of a link to Murphy: Musical Insubordination. Apparently the modern-day Marine Corps is getting a little pansy when it comes to calling cadence, if you can get unvolunteered for stuff like that. It's hilarious, though. In fact, I'm about to go read it again.

I was in JROTC a couple of years in high school (Rob was in all 4 years), and we got away with some pretty rough stuff.

Our Sarge taught us a couple of old favorites:

In the Army, the coffee's mighty fine
It looks like muddy water & tastes like turpentine

In the Army, the biscuits are mighty fine
One rolled off the table and killed a friend of mine

This was hilarious to me because when my mother was in the Army, she was a cook, and her skills never really improved. That woman could boil anything, though, I'll give her that. (For the record, she's said that when she was in basic, they used to march along to Shake Your Booty, it being the '70s & all.)

I only went to one or two football games with the corps. The one I remember most clearly was at Alamo Stadium. They asked if anyone was afraid of heights, and when I said I was, they seated me at the top of the bleachers so I wouldn't have to walk down the stairs. This prompted me to explain to the battalion commander (who, in true Texas fashion, came up to my chin except for her bangs, which came up to my eyes) the difference between being afraid of heights and afraid of stairs.

Anyhow...

On the way back to the buses, we pissed off the football team by double-timing along to a chant of "We did it again, we did it again! We lost, we lost!"

During the bus ride home, LTC Aldrich apparently fell asleep at the front of the bus, and the battalion S-2, Luz Urbina, stood up in the back and started singing bawdy cadence songs, which unfortunately I didn't hear well back then, but I know one involved the relative merits of KY jelly versus Vaseline.

Sigh. I am getting dangerously close to my high school reunion.

The difference between liberals & conservatives

I've made this point before, several times in fact (though not here), but seldom have I had a perfect quote to illustrate my point. To wit:

Go ahead. Keep voting for the people who make sure you can barely feed your family. You deserve only the pathetic crumbs they dole out.

This is the difference between liberals and conservatives: Personal responsibility.

Though anonymous, the person who left the above comment in my last post has marked itself quite clearly as a liberal. Note such key phrases as "the people who make sure" and "they dole out."

Conservatives don't talk like that.

For the record: No one is responsible for my lot in life save myself and (to a lesser extent) my husband. It is he & I who earn the money--or don't--that keeps us here or moves us up to a nicer place. It is we who made the poor financial decisions that didn't turn the separation pay into what it could have been. It is he & I who made the decision years ago to forgo the hormonal birth control that wreaks havoc with my system, and who realize that pregnancies are never problems to be solved.

Politicians have little, if anything, to do with it. Radical concept, I know (perhaps for some on both ends of the political spectrum). But true: The vast majority of Americans go about their lives much the same absolutely regardless of who's in office in Washington. The last big politician thing that made an impact on my life, positive or negative, was W's tax cuts for the rich. They knocked our taxes down by a third. (From 15% to 10%.) I never knew I was rich til the Democrats told me I was, but that's a whole other topic.

Democrats aren't going to see us into a better economic stratum, either. Barack Obama, that man of the people, came to San Antonio earlier this year and gave two speeches. The cheaper of the two was $20 a head to get in. One of our former Eastside councilmen talked glowingly of the "diversity" present at this gathering--white and black and "Hispanic". (Liberals can't say Mexican even if the heritage of a city is overwhelmingly so.) As an Eastsider born and raised, I found this nicely ironic. That is the poorest side of town, which means that pretty much no one over there has a spare twenty bucks to go listen to some politician promise to make things better.

I dare Obama--or John Edwards, who has also been here--to take a walk over in Wheatley Courts (I'll be fair & say they can wear bulletproof gear) and talk to those youngsters concretely about how he'll...oh, I dunno, maybe get them to enroll in one of the multiple economic development initiatives this city currently offers. We can address larger issues like rampant fatherlessness and a disdain for education later on.

In fact, I'll say it now. In the upcoming Presidential election, I'll vote for the candidate who gets his (her?) ass out there on the streets with real, authentic poor people and does something for them, as opposed to hiding in an air conditioned place with the upper-middle-class and rich.

Failing that, I'll be writing in Neal Boortz's name.

Barack Obama is a Barking Moonbat

Bet you knew that already, didn't you?

Obama leaves some wanting a little more

I'm putting this here because I haven't seen it on any of my daily read blogs, not even Michelle Malkin.

Here's the quote that Sean Hannity's been playing on his show today:

“Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,’’ Obama said.

Campaign spokesman Reid Cherlin said Obama was not endorsing the current Bush policy, which consists solely of air raids and bombing of civilians.

He's an idiot.

I tend to give Democrats a lot of credit when it comes to troop issues, believe it or not. I know full well how poorly the troops were paid back in the '80s (and how comparatively well they're paid now), and also that it was under Clinton that the updating of WWII-era housing finally began. (The issue of turning most if not all of the housing over to private companies is a whole other subject, though. I'll rant about civilian contractors some other time.)

But there's a reason most soldiers and sailors are Republicans, not Democrats. (And my experience has been that the guys hate the few who are liberals, 'cause apparently they never shut the hell up.) And the short version of why is illustrated with the quote above.

Liberals are a bunch of condescending twits; at least the ones in power. And though there are no few Democratic members of Congress who have children/grandkids/nephews & nieces, etc in the military, this condescension quite often manifests itself in dissing the military. It's well known how true this is even in the case of the Dems who have served: witness Jack Murtha & John Kerry.

According to the guy who gave my husband's pre-separation class, approximately 1% of the US population has served in the military. So you'd think they're a relatively safe group to insult. However, this reads as campaign suicide. If it gets any play at all in the national media, which frankly isn't likely. But most Americans realize that our all-volunteer military (can't emphasize that enough) are by & large a group of stand-up men and women, definitely the sort of folk you want on your side. This isn't going to go over well with the "man on the street."

The only explanation I can even think of for Barack Obama? He was born in Hawaii. I've never lived in a more anti-military state, which is a shame as there have been no small number of brave Hawaiians to serve in our armed forces. But in the time we lived there, there was a sit-in at the University of Hawaii to protest a proposed Navy research facility, and an honest-to-God protest outside the downtown Army recruiters' offices. It's the bluest state in the Union (they are very proud of having legalized abortion in something like 1970), and frankly I am surprised by no anti-military statements coming from the mouth of a Hawaiian. (Some other time I'll go into the problems the local workers caused the shipyard.)


(Totally unrelated story prompted by the above anti-liberal stance of most of the military guys I've known: the first class at the second shop Rob worked for on Pearl Harbor was a liberal and virulently anti-Wal-Mart. Some enterprising young man or men obtained a large number of the Wal-Mart smiley face stickers and started putting them up around the shop just to tick him off. I learned of this when my hubby came home with a yellow sticker on his hard hat.)

Thank God for my cousin.

I have spent most of the past week dozing on my cousin's couch. She & her family live right across the street from us, & I seriously don't know how I'd make it through this pregnancy without her. The one day I tried to stay at home, I kept falling asleep despite my best efforts; not a great idea with a 5-yr-old, 3-yr-old, and nearly-2-yr-old.

I come across the street, let my kids play with her kids, & Maggie gives me a sheet and I curl up on her couch and read and half-assed try to stay awake. It's as good as life gets right now.

The transmission on my wagon went out Thursday morning. I had been resisting cancelling my gym membership. Although we can't really afford it, it's been about the only "me" time I get. But with this and the pregnancy I have to face facts. We really cannot afford $150 a month for something I won't be using (I want to exercise while I'm pregnant, but the morning sickness knocks me down & doesn't really ever go away til I give birth). Our landlord has the same model car we do, but a sedan instead of a wagon, & his replacement transmission cost about $800. I figure, worst case scenario, we can get a 'new' one in a little over five months. Hopefully it's just a case of a burst hose or some such; we had a similar problem with Rob's Corsica way back when (though it failed in a much more spectacular manner, in the middle lane in downtown Norfolk during rush hour)

But there is good news--and I am trying very hard to always look on the bright side of things--Rob's parents, for some reason, decided to buy us not only a new refrigerator but also a washer/dryer set. That's great news, no matter how you slice it. It's great to have the ability to do our own laundry now, instead of carting it over to Maggie's during the brief times she's not doing laundry.

The Weather

We Texans can talk about the weather longer and in more detail than folks from any other state, it seems. Well, non-meteorologists from any other state, I guess I should say.

It has rained more this year than I remember it raining in San Antonio in my life, outside of the 1998 flood (it also flooded in I think 2002, but I didn't live here from Feb 1999 to Aug 2006, submarines not being able to submerge in the San Antonio river).

When I lived in Hawaii, which I did from Jan 2005 to Aug 2006, we had 42 straight days of rain. Now, rain in Hawaii is nothing unusual, but it is generally gentle little sun showers that are remarkable only because they come from a seemingly-cloudless sky. But in early 2006, it rained hard and long every single day for longer than it did during Noah's Flood. So far as I could tell, it was ignored by the Mainland media until the dam burst on one of the neighbor islands (Molokai, I think) and the resulting flash flood killed two people. I have always been a night owl, so sometimes I'd watch Fox & Friends before heading off to bed, and from this I know that their weather discussions stopped short on the West Coast.

Anyway, this year we had more than that 42 straight days of rain. In all of June & July, in fact, we had only 3 days of no rain, if that, and they weren't all in a row. I noted when we passed the mark set in Hawaii, but after that I quickly lost count.

The other odd thing about this year is that we haven't had a single day here in San Antonio where it's broken 100. Last summer was one of the hottest on record; we were in something like Stage III water restrictions when we moved back. This year it's relatively cool--of course, 95° is cool only in retrospect, not when you're out in it--and the Aquifer is full to overflowing. Between the rain and the beer restrictions, no one's tubing the Guadalupe up in New Braunfels. (As an aside, if folks fought as hard to protect children as they do to get drunk while tubing, we'd never have any deaths from child abuse, but that's a whole other topic.)

It's surreal.

I remember well the flood in 1998. My mother & I were both working the overnight shift at West Telemarketing the day the rain started, as were my best friends Mark & John. If memory serves, it was also payday, & the three of us had made plans to go see Ronin later that day, once we'd caught some sleep.

It started raining about 5 or 6 in the morning, and by the time we got off at 7 the flooding had already started. I made my mother drive home, because I was 19 and a relatively new (and therefore scaredy-cat) driver. We had the sense to stay off the freeways at least, and drove about 20 miles an hour all the way home. We drove partially through Olmos, as we were going down McCullough. I remember that there was water seeping in through the door seals by the time we hit Porter Loring Mortuary on the outskirts of downtown, & their lawn was almost totally flooded.

We lived off of Southwest Military at the time, & the street we usually went down was blocked off by a police cruiser, so my mother took a detour down another street. It was raining so hard that we could not tell that the street we turned down was flooded, and it is only by the grace of God that we made it down that street safely--at one point there was water flowing up over the hood of the car, which of course is a recipe for disaster. It wasn't until we were safely past it that the realization hit my mother that we'd just driven through the San Antonio river! Usually this river is 3 feet deep, & not too far from where this happened, in my junior year of high school, I'd regularly cross the river by walking across some broken concrete blocks in water no more than 18 inches deep.

It was a stupid thing to have gone down that street. Hindsight, and all that. Honestly, though, I don't think that there was a safe way for us to have gotten home that day; the river neatly bisects the city north to south, and we worked on one side while living on the other.

We went right down that street to Roosevelt, which we'd been trying to avoid, and drove down it very, very slowly. There was just a mind-boggling number of vehicles on the side of the road that had stalled out. Pickups, SUVs, you name it, but my little Taurus just kept chugging. We made it home safely, & wouldn't you know it that trailer park was high ground and barely flooded at all. All of the richest areas of the city flooded badly, but in our little south side trailer park the living was good. Well, relatively.

Later we'd learn that an area of south Texas the size of West Virginia had flooded. I forget how many people lost their lives; I want to put the number at 50. Most were people who, like my mother and I, just didn't realize how bad it was at the outset. We've double decker freeways downtown, and people drowned driving on the lower level. There was just no way the police and others could possibly block things off fast enough to keep everyone safe.

That flood put the fear into me but good. SA is normally a sere place, but part of that means it can flood very quickly. Flash floods are a fact of life around here; virtually every time there's a very heavy storm the drainage ditch which runs alongside this trailer park flashes up over the road out front. (I've never seen this, only the debris left behind.)

This past week, though, it hasn't really rained at all here. I think we might have had a couple of sprinkles, but that's it. Little Hawaiian-style sun showers. My driveway has ceased to be a swamp. It doesn't stink anymore, thankfully. (The continual rains managed to rust a hole in my muffler before I had the sense to start parking on the street.)

The weather careens crazily from one thing to another here; it always has. I remember one year when it was 103° a few days after Christmas, and then this January we had Ice Heaven '07, as the local talk radio guys christened it. Whatever the weather, in Texas it will always be extreme.

I have nothing but the deepest respect for the folks who have to work out in it. My husband does, to an extent. I hate the rain for cutting into his work. They can't do roof vents when it's raining, & a lot of the older houses don't have cleanouts. He had to walk away from a few jobs because of that, but there were even more where he was outside running cable and getting soaked (even one memorable excavation where he got so wet that the next day the money he handed me out of the depths of his wallet was still damp). This is the guy who often stood topside watch in the sail and took waves, so he's no stranger to getting wet, but still!

I have a strange sense of humor about the weather, and I think I may have inadvertently insulted Matt G a couple of times about the rain and now the heat. I'm not trying to be rude (and I do try to apologize/clarify if something I say goes over like a lead balloon), I swear. I'm told I am quite funny in person, but I guess it doesn't come across in print.

I do think it's a good idea in general not to antagonize the guy with the ticket book. (Wouldn't know, I've honestly never once been pulled over in 12 years of driving.) We did discuss dealing with the police in Driver's Ed; if memory serves the bulk of the conversation was "keep your hands visible on the steering wheel & tell the officer what you're going for before reaching towards the glove compartment". Sage advice, I have no doubt.



Oh, and in case anyone happens to be drowning in curiosity (which I doubt), I have changed my Blogger display name from BellaLinda because Sabra is actually my name. (BellaLinda was my pet name for my middle daughter for a while, & was my moniker on LiveJournal back in my days of desiring anonymity in blogging.)

Is it too much to ask?

Grr.

I let my cousin & her husband drive my car when they need to, as they don't have one. All I ask in return is some gas and some consideration.

I don't like going out to my car to find all the windows rolled down and the car unlocked. I keep my purse in the car (out of sight, on the floorboard) because I'd forget it otherwise. The folks down at the end of the row have already shown a predeliction for stealing my stuff.

I've got power windows & locks, so it's not like I'm asking for a lot of effort.

Still doesn't beat the time they not only left it unlocked with the windows down but left the hatch up as well. (Thankfully, my stuff was in the house that time.)

I'm also not too happy (with myself) that I forgot the HEB bag in the car and the frozen breakfast sausage--an all-important protein source--was out there for several hours. Morning sickness has hit in full-force, and it makes my brain fuzzy.

This is going to be a long nine months.

I found out about this pregnancy very early on; I tested as soon as I was certain I was late. This is odd for me, as in the past I haven't found out until I was about six weeks or more along.

I sat down earlier and wrote up a birth plan. Opinions on these things vary widely amongst hospital staff, but I'm going to do my best to avoid those who disdain them altogether. I mainly wanted to get it in writing that I'm a hard stick. It would be really nice to not get a vein blown in both my arms by nurses trying to run an IV. (And I do solemnly swear that in the distant future when I finally make it to and through nursing school that if I'm not good at getting IV sticks I will admit this and call in someone more skillful whenever possible.)

I need to sit down with some of my large collection of baby name books and make a preliminary list of boys' names. Only boys; I have a good girl's name, though I reserve the right to change my mind.

I need to hit my insurance company's website & make a list of doctors & another of midwives fairly near me and then start calling them to see who's accepting new patients.

I'm already working on a girl's coming home outfit. I'm crocheting a skirt onto a newborn t-shirt that I never used with Esther, and plan to make coordinating booties, cap, and poncho. (I'm adding a poncho because the shirt is kind of plain on its own.) Because I am obsessive like that, I also have three big sister outfits to make, and a baby blanket.

I have also promised my cousin Becky, who is expecting her sixth, that I'd make a few things more for her (I've already handed over the blanket I made her), and I can't let that fall by the wayside.

I need to make a list of all the stuff we need to buy. I'm angry again at the neighbors who stole our baby swing. That was a damn expensive swing, and the bottom-feeders of course ruined it. (I was going to steal it back until I saw just what a mess they'd made of it. Note to self: in the future, when something is stolen, call and make a police report, so if it turns up again you can follow up.) I know I need a swing and a new car seat and some baby clothes.

I really hope this one's another girl, so I don't have to buy quite so many clothes.

Change of plans.

I'm not going to be going to nursing school any time soon, unfortunately.

Poor Robert is now going on a diet, and talking about the Army.

Things will be OK, as I know that children are a blessing, but this was unplanned as it gets.