Thoughts And Prayers

We hear a lot of “thoughts & prayers” lately.  And if you are a person deeply embedded in his/her faith, those can be very comforting words.  Thoughts & prayers.

For the rest of us, however, looking at a loved one in a hospital bed who’s been shot (in the shoulder, chest, back, leg…doesn’t really matter where), those words are of little comfort to us.  Those words won’t take away any of the pain we’re feeling at that moment, or afterwards.  Those words won’t heal any of the wounds inflicted by those bullet(s).

There are appropriate times when those words can and should be used:  the passing of a loved one of natural causes, the passing of strangers of a natural disaster, the passing of a beloved author, movie star, painter, poet, and so on.  Those are the times when “thoughts & prayers” are appropriate.

That said, however, yes, there are appropriate times to speak out about gun violence, gun laws, gun use/abuse.  When?   

Please sit down for this as it will come as a complete and utter shock to you:

ANY TIME.

Now, yesterday, tomorrow. Morning, noon, night.  Weekdays. Weekends. 

Any time is the right and appropriate time to talk about issues surrounding guns.

Sounds simple.  And guess what?  It IS simple. 

Hold on there, pardner!

I know what you’re thinking.  I know exactly what you’re thinking:

If we talk about gun issues, ANY gun issues, there’s a chance that those “left-wing, tree-huggin’, nut-job liberals will take away our guns.  We NEED those guns for protection, and you’ll get our guns when you pry them from our cold, dead hands.

While there is a speck of truth in there, mostly it’s fear of the unknown for these people.  They actually believe that someone out there, some phantom person/group, WANTS to “take away our guns”.  No, quite the opposite.  

We, those people out there, want to strengthen gun laws for law abiding citizens, remove loopholes in gun laws, strengthen background checks, and basically keep people from losing or somehow forfeiting their Constitutional rights of gun ownership. 

The recent shooting in Las Vegas brought to light a device that turned a semi-automatic weapon into a fully-automatic weapon… the “bump stock”.   

Many in Congress and the Senate of the U.S. had never heard of such a device.  In my mind, if fully automatic weapons are illegal, then a device that makes a weapon fully automatic should be illegal.  Washington D.C. is still debating this issue.  Why?

And the people killed in that Las Vegas shooting, around 58 or 59, thoughts and prayers couldn’t save them.  They were just in Vegas for an outdoor concert, trying to have a fun time listening to some amazing music.  Thoughts & prayers. Thoughts and prayers. 

No, the right time for “that talk”, the one about gun related issues, is NOW, not later. 

What will it take to have “that talk”?  The President of the United States getting shot?

Would that be the appropriate time?

 (And NO, by the way, I'm NOT suggesting ANY sort of violence against our leader.)

Nope, once we even suggest “that talk”, the NRA, the Republican Party, gun owners across the country will explode because they are worried, really worried, that someone will take away their guns.  Wow.

NO ONE is making the suggestion, and it’s only a suggestion, that your guns be taken away.

I leave you with this:

When did ‘thoughts & prayers’ ever save a victim of gun violence?

 

Christmas 2017

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, and

wonderful New Year, 2018!

Snowflakes

Snowflakes

When I think of snowflakes, I think of winter, a cool, crispness in the air, and those little, delicate pieces of frozen wonder gently floating down to Earth from the Heavens.

Not anymore.  Now, it’s become a very divisive, derogatory remark mostly coming from conservative Republicans calling out Democrats, liberal Democrats, for not having a strong backbone or stomach for politics in our country at the moment.

And while I do find it offensive, I also understand that, yes, politics is no place for wimps.  You have to have balls to play in the game; you just have to.  The flip side of that is, if you are the person calling someone a Snowflake, you do NOT get to decide what the other person is sensitive about.  Think of "Snowflake" as a racial slur.  That is how people feel about it, and you don't get to tell them how to feel.  It's NOT your place to do that.

What the Republicans, conservatives, don’t understand is that the very same thing can be said of them (Snowflakes) when a Democratic president is in the White House.  And, it’s common knowledge that they (Republicans) were extremely hard and harsh to President Obama.  He was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but he was pretty damn close. 

No one in that office has or ever will be perfect.  It’s an imperfect world in which we live.  Was he better at the job that his predecessors? Some of them, yes. 

The current guy, # 45, Trump, makes no bones about how perfect he is.  Everything, if you believe him and his White House, everything is great, perfect, the best, so BIG, and so beautiful.  “You’ll get tired of winning”, he said during the campaign.  I’m tired of winning, and it’s been less than a year.

Ritz "Snowflake" Crackers

I saw this box of Ritz crackers, which I love because you can taste the butter in the soft, crunchy crispness of each cracker.  They are even shaped and imprinted with snowflakes.

So, I saw this, and it got me thinking about that term, Snowflakes.  Am I a Snowflake?  About some things, yes, we all are.  Those things that we hold dear to our hearts:  birthdays, holidays, precious childhood memories.  Absolutely, we’re all a bit of a Snowflake. 

I think, for me at least, the thing is that we don’t HAVE TO use that term aimed at one another in a mean-spirited way.

Maybe it could just be used to describe snow falling from the sky in winter?

Please?

Under New Management

Under New Management

I am coming to you today under a new screen name.  The posts moving forward have the same pleasant, thoughtful, inspiring, funny and sometimes just downright outrageous content you found previously... only under a new name.

I hope you've enjoyed the journey with me thus far and please, feel free to leave a comment or question below the post.

Thank you and have a wonderful day!

Apologies

We can say we’re sorry until we’re “blue in the face”, or “until the cows come home”.  It’s never enough.  It’s never enough to make the pain, the hurt, the anger, the mistrust, the deception, the abuse of power; all of these things go away.

Or better yet, never to have happened in the first place.

We can, and we need to apologize and take ownership for our actions and words.

And although we hurt another person, that hurt which we inflicted, it changed us.  We are no longer that bad, evil, vile, disgusting creature.  We cannot stay stuck in that time and place, and so, we have moved on.

What we can’t do is make those we hurt forgive us for the pain and hurt we inflicted.  We have no control over that.  Again, the best we can do is acknowledge and take responsibility/ownership of our own actions and words.

Another thing we can't do is to "be that person" anymore.  It simply didn't work, then or now.

At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the hurt person(s), the victim, has it in his/her heart to forgive us.  As bad as those words and actions were, hopefully, in time, that is how good a new, better, stronger relationship can be.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Finding Out Judy Was Pregnant

“The rabbit died,” she said.

“Huh?” I was clueless as to what she was talking about.  “Rabbit,” I replied.

The "rabbit test" refers to the late 1920s method of injecting a woman's urine into a female rabbit to test for pregnancy. Within several days of doing the rabbit test, the rabbit's ovaries will show changes if the woman is pregnant.  The phrase, "The rabbit died," came to be a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test after the late 1920 and early 1930s.

The expression "the rabbit died" was commonly used to mean that a woman was given a rabbit test and was found to be pregnant. However, although popular, the term is incorrect as the rabbit died whether the woman was discovered to be pregnant or not. The animals had to be killed in order to examine the ovaries. The rabbit test was later revised so that ovarian changes could be checked for on live, rather than dead, rabbits.

Right around Hallowe’en 1987, we’d been busy “baking”, and the end result was a “bun-in-the-oven”.  A rather archaic term to be sure, but that was a few decades ago, too.

Just about Christmas time that year, maybe a little sooner, Judy had returned from an appointment with her ob-gyn.  It was a “routine visit, to make sure the plumbing was still fully operational.”  I didn’t think anything of it, as I wasn’t really concerned about the inner workings of the female anatomy.  She’d missed her period, and wanted to make sure nothing else was going on. 

Another week had gone by, and she subsequently made a follow-up appointment.  I got home from work about 4:30 pm, 5:00 or so.  Judy rolled in around 5:30.  She’d left work a little early for her follow-up with her ob-gyn.

“Hey.  How was work?”                  

“Oh, it was fine.”  Nothing special.  Then she pulled out this little plastic thing, about 1 inch wide, 2 inches long.  It had kind of a blue plus sign, +, on it. 

“The rabbit died.  This is the grave.” 

 

“Wait. What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

I went from zero to full-on stern, father-mode.  Not husband-mode, FATHER-mode. 

“Well, how did that happen?  What did you do?? WHO did this to you???”

She tilted her head to one side, rolled her eyes, and gave me this look as if to say, “Really??”

What came out was this:

“Oh, I don’t know. You tell me. You were there.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” 

We both had a good laugh about that one for years to come.  And the best part:  Nine months later, our amazing little one was born. 

Adam Christopher.