Well, it's not going to kill you

Beck-O-Rama

Brought to you by Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, the Koch brothers and GOD.

Well it appears that the wing nut Beck has more followers than I realized.  A truly sad state of affairs in my opinion.

Thousands showed up today for his rally that he claimed would bring "grass roots" protesters together.

Yes "grass roots" as in Dick Armey's Freedom Works, you remember him the disgraced majority leader of the House who lost his reelection bid for among other things sexual harassment.  He's now a lobbyist and raking in tons of money at our expense.

And then we have the Koch brothers.  Inheritors of Koch industries with their "grass roots" organization.

Just take a look at the brands they own.  Last time I'll ever buy Brawny paper towels.

Another highly offensive thing that the wing nut spews about is God.  Hello just because some of us don't believe that God comes and speaks directly to us telling us we MUST HATE anyone who is not a "christian ".  That does not indicate we are lesser persons or we don't believe in our version of God. Dipshits

I think God in what ever form you believe - I look out at my redwood trees and see God at her most fine thank you very much.  I hold the women of my book club, one of whom happens to be a Catholic nun as the most holy people I know.  The four of us are there for each other come hell or semi high water.  I only say semi high because the four of us life in far flung places in Sonoma Co which could prevent us from trudging through high water to get to each other.

So now that I've ranted and raved I really don't feel better I just feel more frustrated.  People like wing nut  Beck, O'Rielly, Coulter and the like are allowed to go about spewing garbage (Obama family vactions) opposed to Shrub vacations which filled most of him time in the White House.

OK I'm going to quit now because I'll just let it rip.  It's the past, it's over, we can't do anything about it except try to repair the damage they did.

Spiritually outraged or outraged spiritually?

My apologies internets it's time for another rant.

I was raised Catholic and all the way through college I attended mass.  In Davis (UCD)  we had a Newman Center  it was the center of most Catholic students lives at Davis, I say most because we were always a bit avant garde and the more traditional of those among the student body choose St. James the actual Catholic parish in Davis.

 I sang in the Sunday 11 o'clock choir and in the Cathedral Choir in Sacramento.  It could get a bit schizophrenic at times. Wait where am I, can I address the priest or assistant bishop by their first names as I usually did in Davis or I am in a place where I have to say Father so and so, or Bishop so and so?

I've never found a place that met the same standards of loving family not hung up on "formal rules" as I did at Davis thus I no longer attend mass, or rather so rarely that it makes people in town who know me do a double take to see me in church - I occasionally go with Mom when she's here.  You've never seen so many heads swivel so fast as the first time I showed up.

But I digress.  As I've worked with Dr. Sanity I've come to realize that my Catholicism is deeply ingrained.  I've had offers from Amy to attend her church (Methodist) with her, I just can't do it.  Part of that is the "old" Catholic teaching that going into any other church but a Catholic you were assured GOD would strike you dead with a lightening bolt on the very spot.  While I no longer believe that, I think, I still cannot bring myself to commit to another religion.

to be continued...

Notes for a Good Friday

In both senses of the word as it is Good Friday in the Christian sense it was also a good Friday for me, most of it anyway.

The infection in my tooth is kicking my antibiotics ass.  Dentist put me on a more potent one last night.  With 4 to 6 advil every 4 hours I can keep the pain at a manageable level.

Oh I don't think so  short version the Pope's personal preacher said that criticism of the Church's handling of the abuse matter  "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.  Yes a actual said that out loud at Good Friday services in Rome.

I was accidentally going to kill my sister on Easter.  She asked me to bring a salad, no prob, I have a wonderful recipe with pears and avocados so I shoot the recipe off to Mason last night to make sure it will go with the pork roast he's making.  Thank God he emailed back this morning, nope Janice can't have avocados because I totally forgot.  She is terribly allergic to them, hence the accidentally.

Had a very good session with Dr. Sanity.  The last few minutes she spent updating me on her battle with my insurance company.  Slowly making a sort of progress.  Even though the benefits clearly state UNLIMITED VISITS, they're really lying.  They won't pay for 2 sessions a week unless I'm suicidal.  She explained that she sees me twice a week to keep me from becoming suicidal.  She's finally getting a peer to peer review.  Neither one of us expect much to change but I have American Express on my side and the direct number of the person who helped me a couple of weeks ago.  It's just a matter of working through all the insurance games to get them to pay for what I purchased.  Take my advice try to avoid dealing with UnitedHealth Cares mental health branch if at all possible.

Had a 30% off coupon from Borders plus the rest of my $50 gift card - 2 books - score!

Actually remembered to pick up dry cat food and a new toy for Colin.  He like soft floppy stuffed animals with long appendages that he can grab in the middle and thrash them around.  Stripes, his clear favorite is now down to some fabric holding the legs together but I can't bring myself to toss him out because we can't find a new Stripes at the moment.Had lunch with Erin at the new veggie restaurant Garden in SR - yummy

But I did once again forgot to drop my hearing aid off to be fixed.  Stupid, stupid, stupid

Now it's about time to open a bottle of wine.

Happy Easter or Happy Passover depending on what you celebrate.

Open letter to the Republican members of Congress

I hardly know where to begin so I'll start with that childhood chant "liar, liar pants on fire".  And I think I'll follow that with hypocrites.

For all your whining about the increase in the deficit why did you vote for the biggest tax cuts in history?  Not just once but twice.  Why did you fall for Shrub's lies about WMD's?  Why didn't you hold his feet to the fire about accounting for the war off budget? 

Oh and those tax cuts you voted to pass, knowing that they would increase the deficit exponentially? You and your ilk put our country in a budget deficit that will take years for our country to recover but you choose to whine about the health care bill that will reduce the deficit. 

Tonight I listened to you all intone about freedom of choice but you really don't believe it freedom of choice.  You think that you somehow have the God given right to dictate what a woman can do with her own body.  You and your state comrades have all but eliminated a woman's right to choose.

Then there is the glaring fact that many of you are owned by the Insurance industry lock, stock and barrel.I currently pay more than 1/3 of my monthly income to UnitedHealthCare.  I stepped down my plan because the lower premium plan although it included deductibles and only partial payments to my doctor because it covered out-of-network mental health benefits (recurring depression and PTSD) with a no visit limit.  Sounds great right?  Yes it does until some desk jockey decides that I should only see my therapist once a week instead of twice.  Isn't that called practicing medicine with out a license?

And funny so far none of my visits regular office visits have been recorded against my $500 in- network deductible.Thank goodness AMEX  offers health navigators as a benefit.  I had to have emergency ruptured bowel surgery in Hawaii - WAY OUT OF NETWORK.  It took 16 months, yes read that again 16 months to get the bill paid.  UHC's first response was I did not contact them before I had the emergency?  Um, no I was busy trying not to die.

As a group you should be hanging your heads in shame.  And to Mr Boehner perhaps if you could step out of your tanning booth long enough you would realize just out of touch your party is with the American public.  I understand that you think this vote will help you in the midterm elections.  If you still think that is the case you are even more delusional that I believe you to be.

Sincerely,Cathy Carey

I'm asking ANY ONE who has a connection with these despicable people to pass this on.  If you don't have one perhaps now is the time to establish a relationship.  They lied through eight years of George Bush and now we're supposed to believe they have our best interests at heart.  Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing.

He claims to be a Christian

I came across this wonderful post at Julie's a little pregnant blog this is an answer to Pat Robertson's "Haiti made a pact with the devil" rant.  

Which of course lead me to "he claims to be a Christian".  You can find his rants on youtube, I choose not to link to them because I don't want a despicable person like Robertson getting more attention via my blog.

Moving On

Yes Christmas is over and with it I can shed the bag of guilt and grief over not be able to afford presents for the family.  And to be honest a small amount.  I was able to give one gift that absolutely made Christmas for me.  There is no doubt in my mind that giving is better than receiving.  To have the power to create incredible joy in another persons life is a gift beyond belief.

Larry and I had a lovely quiet Christmas a made crab cheesecake, a treat not to be missed.  We first discovered it at the Palace Cafe in New Orleans which happens to to right around the corner from out timeshare - how every convenient.  We exchanged small gifts and Colin got a new animal a pig that Larry promptly named Oink.  Colin seems to have a fascination for ears.  So far one of Oink's ears is holding on my a tread, the other somewhat intact.

Last night we were invited to Bev & Chase's for dinner.  Their daughter Traci, her husband David and their 7 month old Olivia were out from Boston for Christmas.  All 4 of them are spectacular cooks, Traci & David had received a wonderful Chinese cookbook for Christmas and decided last night that they had to experiment with it.  Fresh, authentic Chinese food lovingly prepared.  Yum, probably the best hot and sour soup I've ever had. Sticky rice with chicken and shrimp wrapped in lotus leaves, lotus root salad, black mushrooms and bok choy, honey glazed walnut beef and for dessert and very interesting sweet soup.  It had Mandarin oranges, lotus root, lotus seed in a rock sugar and base.  A wonderful evening of joy, laughter exquisite food and wonderful company.  We were charged with bringing the wine.  How in the hell to you match wine to Chinese food?  I did a little research, as it turns out it's not so hard.  We had a couple of German reislings in the cellar and Merlot was also recommended, also in the cellar - Voila wine for Chinese food!

Of course Olivia held center stage while she was up.  At one point she was sitting on the sofa between Larry and I.  Babies are always fascinated with Larry the feeling is not exactly mutual.  He's held exactly one baby in his entire life.  We were at Mom's and had Chris and Eric with us, everyone else was out running errands.  I realized that I needed something from the grocery store just a few blocks away.  I dropped Eric in Larry's lap, said watch him and took Chris with me.  When we arrived home Larry and Eric were still sitting in frozen in the same position, a riot.

But back to Olivia she also was fascinated by Larry.  She sat for 15 or 20 minutes snuggling up to him, holding his hand, babbling to him. At one point she started turning her head looking at me, then at Larry, back and forth, back and forth it was delightful.  Every time there was a break in conversation Olivia registered her opinion, often using her stuffed quail for emphasis.

Early in the evening we had allowed ourselves 20 minute to discuss radical Islamists and the air plane in Detroit.  Once we were done.  Olivia held forth with a great dissertation on the subject.  It appears she doesn't understand their motives any better than the rest of us.

So tomorrow it's back to dealing with the tenants and the rest of the real world but that's tomorrow.  Today I sit here with the 49ers game and Larry playing with Colin in the backround while I go explore what's happening in the rest of the world.

Philosophically speaking

I was just talking to a friend who told me God never gives you more than you can handle and the more she (he in her case) gives you the more she loves you.  She said God must really love you.  We then ended our conversation laughing hysterically because if I start crying it's all over.

So the tenants are being stupid, drugged out and insane.  They were clearly standing behind the door on the day God handed out brains.  I had a lovely conversation with 2 sheriff's deputies at midnight last night.  One tenant doesn't seem to think we'll notice things disappearing, as in the coffee maker that was there last week and now is gone, along with a table, 2 lamps and 2 stools or the four large chainsaws.  If they'd taken the little ones' we'd never have noticed until winter rolled around and it's time to carry one in the back of the car for fallen trees.  No they were stupid enough to take the 4 large and expensive ones.

I've declared NO ONE is to have any visitors until Larry comes home because the first rule of landlording is to keep your tenants safe.  I've spent hours on the phone with hysterical tenants, one is convinced she's going to be raped and murdered how she's decided she's the one out of all the tenants is beyond me but there you have it.

I've spent hours on the phone with the HUD/section 8 people and am trying to find a way to evict at least one (the alleged thief) from the property asap.  I have to say I'm REALLY tired of talking with sheriff's deputies no matter what time of day.  Then I called Larry today to say I just could not make it to see him.  I felt SO bad, here's the person I love most in the world and the tenants are sucking me dry so I don't even have the energy to drive 45 minutes to see him. 

I talked to all of them and told them I needed peace this weekend.  NO VISITORS and CALL THE SHERIFF NOT ME.

I'll let you know what happens.  Mama said there'd be days like this.

BTW -  Nik, the devil sister I'm so jealous of your iphone I can hardly stand it.

This is getting out of hand.

Will someone PLEASE make the Dugars stop,  baby 19 on the way.  Oh and their son & daughter-in-law who have only been married a few months are expecting as well.  Maybe they'll have a contest to see who can pump out more babies.

Yes babies are beautiful, cuddly, adorable little people and the world is lucky to have them but these "we'll let God decide how many babies we have" people are just selfish and irresponsible.  God gave you a brain and she expects you to use it, like the people who invented birth control - they used the brains they were given so the rest of society could benefit.

There is severe overcrowding on out planet as it is.  People are starving to death every day, children dying of disease now unknown in our country.  These Quiverfull people seem not to understand or care that every extra baby they have takes away resources from another child who desperately needs it.

And the message they send is that women are just broodmares just popping one baby out after another.  How do you make time to give a single child the love and attention he or she needs when they're one of a herd?  How do you teach them to be an individual in their own right?How do you teach them that women are more than baby factories?  That they're not automatically the one who does the dishes or the laundry or the grocery shopping?  How do you teach them to respect women as human beings?

I could go on but I won't because I'll really get to ranting and none of us need that.  Besides I think I did a similar rant when they annouced #18.  These things bother me.

Reconnecting

Therapy the last few weeks has been incredible, stunning, amazing, enlightening - I don't think I have enough adjectives.

Last week I turned a corner.  Yes there is still that kernel of fear in the back of my brain that the cancer may return but it no longer carries the power it once had.  The same thing for going forward with therapy.  I know there are some seriously painful times ahead (Thank you American Express) but I no longer fear them.

It will be hard, it will be painful but it will not have mastery over me.

Also in the last week or so space has opened up in my brain to let my spiritual self to come to the surface.  Although I was raised Catholic (once a Catholic always a Catholic) I don't need or want the "traditional" church (especially with this pope).  So now the task is to find the right way to develop and express that spirituality.

I'm FINALLY reconnecting to the world around me in a concrete manner.  It's not easy but it's very rewarding.

Tomorrow I will post about how it feels in music.

Lights, camera, action

As the regular season viewing comes to an end we've been watching pay-per-view movies.  We've had Directv since it first came out.  When you live in the middle of nowhere tv viewing is iffy at best.  I remember before Dtv trying to watch Monday night football and the screen was so fuzzy you could hardly make out the players let alone the ball.  Ah yes the good old days.
But I digress. Pay per view was the subject.  We watched Slumdog Millionaires which was great, not sure it should have won the best picture Oscar but terrific none the less. 

Then we watched Frost/Nixon which we knew would be good but it just blew us away - now that's the movie that should have won best picture.  Amazing performances especially from Frank Langella. You forget he was an actor playing a part and he simply seemed to be Nixon.  For those of you to young to remember most of us were glued to the TV during the Watergate hearings and I'll bet a lot of people remember exactly where they were when Nixon resigned.  I happened  to be at work.  They had a tv that was always on in the Jr. dept.  I worked the floor above but just happened to be "passing" through the Jr dept when he made his announcement.  I remember the entire 3 floor store being totally silent for a couple of minutes.
Last night we watched Doubt, another winner.  Meryl Streep did her usually stellar job but the supporting cast was just as good.  As a (once upon a time) Catholic who knows one priest that was convicted of child molestation and one who was accused it was a very enlightening, disturbing, unsettling movie.  And it does leave you with doubt. It did bring back the days when priests had way too much power, especially over the nuns.  But it also brought back childhood memories.  Growing up in Garberville the priest was the same age as my parents, aunts and uncles.  He was just part of the family.  As kids we were always trooping through his house, he was coming to ours for dinner or a party.  He was just a regular person that was part of our life.  Drove like a fricking maniac but for some reason our parents seemed to always sending us off hither and yon with him.  I guess they figured he had God on his side. I'm glad some things have changed but sorry that because of the taint of some really bad priests people, particularly kids, don't have the same relationship with them anymore.  I know one priest that feels he can no longer hug the girls (elementary school age) because he fears that someone might misinterpret the situation.
As for the nuns things have changed light years.  Growing up we NEVER saw the nuns out of their habits.  In fact there used to be a group of nuns who came to Garberville every summer to teach us whatever - Garberville was too small to support a school- and the nuns would come out to our house to use the pool that our three families shared.  At that time the pool was completely fenced, later one end of the fence was replaced with chain link fencing so our parents could take a glance and make sure no one was breaking the rules while my cousin and I reigned as queen of the pool*.  So the pool was completely fenced which allowed the nuns to use it.  We were not allowed to be anywhere in the vicinity of the pool when they were there.  I always thought it was so unfair because these nuns were usually young joyful women who would have had a blast playing and swimming with us.
 * we got to reign because every fricking summer until we passed Sr. Lifesaving we had swimming lessons in the dirty, gross river (to us) Eel River at Benbow Lake.  Once we advanced to Jr. lifesaving Susan and I were appointed caretakers of the smaller kids in the pool.  Our special enforcement was making sure the little kids didn't get into the deep end unless the could really swim.  Our poor San Franciso cousin spent many a summer in the shallow end or in a life jacket because he only swam when he came up for the summer.
Well that turned out a bit more rambling than I expected but there you have it 3 great movies.