After watching the video of Romney discussing the murdered ambassador and three others murdered with him and watching that awful smirk on Romney's face I developed such an aversion to the man that I actually felt my revulsion for him viscerally. At that point I wasn't angry, just repulsed.
Then I watched the video I've linked.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/18/13936616-romneys-contempt-for-the-47-percent
That pissed me off. I have worked since I was 12 years old ironing and baby-sitting, got my social security card at age 14 when I went to work in a restaurant as a dishwasher. Since then I have worked continuously except for a three month period when I was just married and living in a new town, trying to pass the damned typing test so I could go to work.
I retired at age 61 with a decent but not huge pension and went back to work part time two years later and have been working most of the time since. During the time I didn't work I spent time taking my parents to doctors, hospitals, and taking care of empty houses and burials after they died two years apart.
So Romney does not just repulse me, he angers me. I just watched him explaining how he just said it inelegantly and he was still smirking.
His wife is more overtly creepy. She doesn't smirk. She sneers as she discusses "you people." What a couple of creeps. Repulsive creeps.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
Death of a Hmong daughter
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman
I haven't read the book. Read a NYT article (one of the free ten I'm allowed each month) about the subject of the book, Lia Lee, daughter of Hmong immigrants to the US. Lia died Aug. 31, age 30, after a struggle with epilepsy, cerebral palsy, pneumonia and sepsis that began when she was three months old.
As I was reading her obituary I was struck by the lack of understanding we have of other cultures. Living in a country ruled by the simplistic thinking of Teabaggers, fundamentalists, frighteningly ignorant national senators and congresspeople, people who only watch Fox News, it's easy to avoid developing an awareness of the need to open our minds and hearts to those who are different from us.
I'm not certain where I'm going with this. I had a brief flash of awareness of my own ignorance and how that ignorance contributes to enormous suffering. I need to let this simmer.
I haven't read the book. Read a NYT article (one of the free ten I'm allowed each month) about the subject of the book, Lia Lee, daughter of Hmong immigrants to the US. Lia died Aug. 31, age 30, after a struggle with epilepsy, cerebral palsy, pneumonia and sepsis that began when she was three months old.
As I was reading her obituary I was struck by the lack of understanding we have of other cultures. Living in a country ruled by the simplistic thinking of Teabaggers, fundamentalists, frighteningly ignorant national senators and congresspeople, people who only watch Fox News, it's easy to avoid developing an awareness of the need to open our minds and hearts to those who are different from us.
I'm not certain where I'm going with this. I had a brief flash of awareness of my own ignorance and how that ignorance contributes to enormous suffering. I need to let this simmer.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
The day after the day after
Aug. 31 was a wonderful day. I gave myself the day off and splurged.
I fixed a small, healthy breakfast and fed the cats. I did my small chores, got some laundry going, showered and dressed. Did not have any tea.
Left the house about 10 a.m. and went to Starbux with my book (a Miss Julia by Ann Ross), presented my coupon and ordered a grande Pike Place with heavy whipping cream in a mug. Went outside and sat at a table with an umbrella and savored my first cup of coffee in 31 days while I read about Miss Julia's latest adventure. Coffee is a drug of sorts and after 31 days I noticed it enhanced my appreciation of small birds looking for crumbs under the table, a young women training her young German shepherd, the slight breeze, the sun on my back, and my book. I sat and read for about an hour and a half, then ran some errands and met a friend for lunch.
I ordered the salad Nicoise which had a "basic vinaigrette" dressing. It did not occur to me to ask if there was sugar in the "basic vinaigrette" dressing. We live and learn. It was served on the side and I spooned a couple of teaspoons onto my salad and took a bite. Uh oh. I could taste the hefty sugar ration immediately. But, I figured, "What the hell, I'll see how it affects me." I had to spoon several more spoonsful onto the salad and ended up taking half the salad home for dinner.
Dinner was a small rib eye steak, the rest of the salad and an avocado.
Well, I went to bed early but woke up at 12:30, unable to get back to sleep until a few minutes after 5 a.m. Slept till 7 a.m., got up and felt like shit. I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't think to check my blood sugar two hours after lunch and dinner on my free day.
For the next four or five hours my sinuses were painfully stuffed or alternately, draining heavily, my eyes watered, I sneezed repeatedly, I felt slow and puffy, slightly depressed and exhausted.
The way I should have done day 31 was to add cream (my coffee with cream is the thing I missed during the Whole30 Challenge) to coffee with breakfast, cream to something at lunch and cream again at dinner. Then, on Sept. 1 I would have known what was responsible for the way I felt. That's the instructions all of us on the challenge were given by our hosts Dallas and Melissa Hartwig.
So, I'm back on schedule. Carol and Jim had me for dinner last night to share the beautiful fresh-caught trout he took out of the Walker River. Jim asked exactly what I could eat and prepared sauteed onions and mushrooms, a fabulous salad with vinegar and oil dressing and trout. They sent me home with a good-sized piece for lunch today.
I feel so much better today and ready for the next phase which began yesterday and ends Sept. 30. I am going to test the cream in 14 days and see if that accounts for the sinus problem. It definitely could be since dairy and sinus problems are often related.
Speaking of Miss Julia's books, they are a hoot. Ann Ross has produced a woman in her late 60s, recently widowed who is confronted by her late husband's nine-year-old love child, little Lloyd.
She is very proper, as was her hypocritical husband who kept her firmly tied down to severe rules about how a good Presbyterian woman, wife of the town banker and owner of multiple properties both business and residential, is supposed to conduct herself in the world (a small town in North Carolina). She is left a millionaire who decides to enjoy her money as well as deal with little Lloyd. The books are often laugh out loud funny, full of appropriate bad, hypocritical folks as well as endearing friends and neighbors.
First in the series is Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind.
I fixed a small, healthy breakfast and fed the cats. I did my small chores, got some laundry going, showered and dressed. Did not have any tea.
Left the house about 10 a.m. and went to Starbux with my book (a Miss Julia by Ann Ross), presented my coupon and ordered a grande Pike Place with heavy whipping cream in a mug. Went outside and sat at a table with an umbrella and savored my first cup of coffee in 31 days while I read about Miss Julia's latest adventure. Coffee is a drug of sorts and after 31 days I noticed it enhanced my appreciation of small birds looking for crumbs under the table, a young women training her young German shepherd, the slight breeze, the sun on my back, and my book. I sat and read for about an hour and a half, then ran some errands and met a friend for lunch.
I ordered the salad Nicoise which had a "basic vinaigrette" dressing. It did not occur to me to ask if there was sugar in the "basic vinaigrette" dressing. We live and learn. It was served on the side and I spooned a couple of teaspoons onto my salad and took a bite. Uh oh. I could taste the hefty sugar ration immediately. But, I figured, "What the hell, I'll see how it affects me." I had to spoon several more spoonsful onto the salad and ended up taking half the salad home for dinner.
Dinner was a small rib eye steak, the rest of the salad and an avocado.
Well, I went to bed early but woke up at 12:30, unable to get back to sleep until a few minutes after 5 a.m. Slept till 7 a.m., got up and felt like shit. I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't think to check my blood sugar two hours after lunch and dinner on my free day.
For the next four or five hours my sinuses were painfully stuffed or alternately, draining heavily, my eyes watered, I sneezed repeatedly, I felt slow and puffy, slightly depressed and exhausted.
The way I should have done day 31 was to add cream (my coffee with cream is the thing I missed during the Whole30 Challenge) to coffee with breakfast, cream to something at lunch and cream again at dinner. Then, on Sept. 1 I would have known what was responsible for the way I felt. That's the instructions all of us on the challenge were given by our hosts Dallas and Melissa Hartwig.
So, I'm back on schedule. Carol and Jim had me for dinner last night to share the beautiful fresh-caught trout he took out of the Walker River. Jim asked exactly what I could eat and prepared sauteed onions and mushrooms, a fabulous salad with vinegar and oil dressing and trout. They sent me home with a good-sized piece for lunch today.
I feel so much better today and ready for the next phase which began yesterday and ends Sept. 30. I am going to test the cream in 14 days and see if that accounts for the sinus problem. It definitely could be since dairy and sinus problems are often related.
Speaking of Miss Julia's books, they are a hoot. Ann Ross has produced a woman in her late 60s, recently widowed who is confronted by her late husband's nine-year-old love child, little Lloyd.
She is very proper, as was her hypocritical husband who kept her firmly tied down to severe rules about how a good Presbyterian woman, wife of the town banker and owner of multiple properties both business and residential, is supposed to conduct herself in the world (a small town in North Carolina). She is left a millionaire who decides to enjoy her money as well as deal with little Lloyd. The books are often laugh out loud funny, full of appropriate bad, hypocritical folks as well as endearing friends and neighbors.
First in the series is Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind.
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