FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.)  I read that the Texas legislature decided they need to get serious about dealing with illegal immigration, so they presented a bill with a stiff, $10,000 fine for anyone hiring illegals. Then, at the very last minute before the vote, someone inserted a paragraph exempting people who hire domestics and yard workers. I guess life just wouldn't be worth living in Texas without a house keeper and yard service.

2.)  I sure hope that the citizens of Wisconsin move quickly and surely to recall Governor Scott Walker and the senators behind the sneaky and underhanded stripping of rights from Wisconsin workers.  As Robert Reich said on his blog:

Governor Scott Walker and his Wisconsin senate Republicans have laid bare the motives for their coup d'etat. By severing the financial part of the bill (which couldn't be passed without absent Democrats) from the part eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees (which could be), and then doing the latter, Wisconsin Republicans have made it crystal clear that their goal has had nothing whatever to do with the state budget. It's been to bust the unions.

For me the most ironic idiotic thing said was by Gov. Walker when he announced that he was saving the "middle class" of Wisconsin by this move.  Who the heck does he think makes up the disappearing middle class but the teachers, police and other civil employees? 

3.)  We watched 127 Hours the other night.  I just want to say that anyone (like me) who has avoided the movie because of all the talk about the graphic scenes of him cutting himself free from the rock - it isn't as bad as they say and it is easy to look away for the most difficult moments.  I liked the movie, but I don't know why it was up for Best Picture. 

4.)  I am so amazed and saddened by the destruction in Japan from the historic earthquake last night.  Of course our San Francisco stations are almost completely focused on the effects on our area from the tsunami activity - it has been predicted to create a surge no larger than a big storm - but the stations have pre-empted all the national morning shows to say the same things over and over.  I wish they were as interested in devoting as much time and reportage to some of the budget problems and political issues of the day.  Perhaps our electorate would be better informed.

5.)  Ally is taking economics this semester.  The teacher has the class doing budgets based on randomly selected incomes and marital/family circumstances.  It has been interesting to go through it with Ally who has a "dumb" husband who insisted on renting a house for $4,400. a month and running the grocery bill up to $900. a month!  The exercise is a pretty good exposure to real life costs and decision making.  I was a bit upset to see that out of the required expenses the instructor assigned, saving money was not included. Talk about missing out on a teachable moment.


 I instructed Ally to make savings a priority and to cut down in other areas to allow for it. 
 
6.)  Happy weekend and remember to Spring Forward on Saturday night.  Save some of that daylight!

REALLY MIKE HUCKABEE?

I was asked about Oscar-winner Natalie Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby’s father. However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not “slam” or “attack” Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country. My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock.

So among the other strange and contradictory things Mike Huckabee is going around saying these days, he does not see his comments about grown adult actress Natalie Portman, engaged to be married to a grown adult man (who happens to be out in the public eye because she was awarded numerous prizes for her job) as a completely different sort of "unwed mother" than, say Bristol Palin, out in the public eye to glorify her famous redneck, "Christian" politician mother, pregnant at 16 with no real intention to marry the father of this abstinence ooops baby? Really? It seems to me that if anyone was going around "glorifying" unwed motherhood - it was Sarah Palin, not Natalie Portman or the media.


Not to mention that there is a big difference between single mothers and unwed mothers. Many single mothers have been left or widowed and did not have their children without "benefit" of marriage. However, our society and laws do not always protect them financially and many of them do end up needing public assistance. If Mike Huckabee was really interested in helping these women and their children he should be coming up with childcare and health care for the kids, decent and equitable pay for their mothers and better enforcement of support by the fathers of the children. 

But Mike Huckabee and his gang  are not really interested in so solving the problems, are they?  They are just really good at pointing the finger at the other guy and laying on judgment.

MRS. BRIGHTSIDE IS OUT

I am having trouble with my bright side.  I read a  post by Jenn on Juggling Life today and I couldn't summon up a sincere positive thought to use in my comment.  I didn't want to be negative so I didn't comment at all.

I grew up with a salesman,  my dad.  He is a big believer in the value of a positive attitude and I took his outlook to heart.  I developed into one to look to the bright side of things.  It is part of my very nature to see the opportunities in problems and to "spin" things in a positive direction.

But - and you know there was a but coming - lately I have been in a funk.  Jenn wrote about having to adjust her dreams and pursue other job opportunities in light of her husband's recent job loss and the budget crisis in education making her dream to teach less realistic.  She has the same gusto and "make lemons onto lemonade" attitude I had  back in 2002.

Without rehashing all the things which took us to the point where he started his own law practice in our garage and I started looking for work after being a stay at home mom for 16 years; I will just say that  the five years preceding that was a challenge to any positive attitude, yet I maintained.  In the 9 years since we have continued to have ups and downs - many chronicled here, many I have just kept to myself. 

It seems that just as things settle down, some other crisis intrudes to throw us off balance.  And, quite frankly, my positive attitude has worn thin. I just want the damned glass to be full and stay that way.  I need a break from squeezing the lemons and finding the windows that opened when the doors closed and I question what the hell I did in a past life to deserve what has been going on.

I know a positive approach makes a big difference and I don't like how I am feeling right now.  So that is my pity party for today.   I'll find my equilibrium again and the bright side will be clear. 

BOOKS

The closing of our  local Border's store was announced this week.  I will really miss it.  It is where I usually bought my book club selections, my coupon in hand.  About half the time I managed to find another book or two to take home, too.  Books are my splurge.  I keep trying to go to the library to be thrifty, but I still can't go without purchasing books pretty much every month.

I am a life long book lover.  I still have some of the Nancy Drews from my childhood.  The Edger Allen Poe book my aunt bought me when I was 12, eecummings poetry volumes I collected in high school and  the Jungian psychology of Robert Johnson I read in college.  I have lugged books up and down California and across 3 states when I have moved.  I still morn the loss of  a box of books that was pilfered during one move when someone saw the boxes on the sidewalk outside an apartment building and went through them, taking some choice volumes.

My dream home has rooms of floor to ceiling bookcases. 

When e-readers came out I had no interest.  As more and more people around me got them, I had some mild curiosity, but when I held one it knew it was not for me.  I love books - not just reading.  One woman in my book club said that if she really likes one of the books she reads on her Kindle, she buys a copy to keep!    That just seems so odd to me.  Other friends have told me that they never really know where they are in a book - they miss the placement of a bookmark and the glance that tells them how much more there is before they finish.

As my eyes get older, I sometimes get eyestrain and need brighter light to read by.  Sometimes I increase the font size on my computer and I appreciate the possibility of doing the same on an e-reader.  I can also see the benefit for travel when you would otherwise, perhaps, end up carrying several volumes.  Having one lightweight reader would be

nice in that circumstance. 

I know there are arguments on both sides about the greeness of paper and ink books versus e-books.  I would just miss bookstores so much and there are so few left that offer the pleasures of wandering through and discovering authors, subjects and stories which aren't on the current best seller lists. 

I sense that it is all going to go away so much faster than I am prepared for.  That my bookcases are going to be full of books that are considered as old fashioned as the typewriter I have in the back of the closet.

NIGHT LIFE

I had not really thought about what homebodies my husband and I have become until I started working in the hotel.  The front desk is just across the lobby from our small bar which is open from 3 until 11 pm.  Each night there are couples and friends and solo regulars who come in for a while.

Some nights the noise from the happy people is quite loud - many people talk much more loudly when they have had a few!  Most of the people stop in on their way to and from dinner in the many restaurants we have on our main street.  We do not have entertainment, so it is a quiet place for older folks (the over 30 crowd) to drop in and actually have a conversation.  Our main bartender is congenial and has customers who come in just to spend time chatting with her.

Sometimes the conversations I overhear are inane, sometimes I wish I was in the middle of the laughter.  But being here makes me feel both a part of it and not.  Of course now I am working 5 nights a week, including the weekends - so I am not available to go out when most people do.  When that changes, I hope I will remember this feeling of wanting to be out more and do it.

TIME MARCHES ON - MY FACE

One of the reasons I was reluctant to add my photo to my blog was that I am overweight, but the other is that my once often commented on nice complexion is now gone.  It has been replaced by the face I definitely earned by being a sun lover.  My complexion is uneven, I have sun spots and lots of wrinkles.   Foundation can only cover up so much before it becomes a mask and I never liked wearing it anyway.

I am not an especially vain person, I don't like the way my face looks compared to my youth and if I had the money I won't say I wouldn't look into cosmetic surgery or skin peels - but it is, as they say, what it is.  So when I saw one of the villains supermodels who haunted my youth on TV last night looking as if she has been able to live all these same years without aging, it ticked me off.

Christie Brinkley at 57 is the same damn age I am so I had to see her long legged, blond, blue-eyed perfectness everywhere.  So even though she can speak and smile without moving her face and maintains a look of surprise at all times and I know she has not had a happy love life, it ticks me off to still have to look at her looking like that when I look like this.

She was not the only blonde goddess gracing the magazines - there was Cherly Tiegs, too.  She looks more our age ( she is 63), though when I was looking for photos I saw there is speculation on plastic surgery in recent years.

I suppose few of us go happily into aging faces and bodies.  Not only the aches and pains and stiffness, but the packaging that shifts and softens, slides and discolors. 

I guess what it comes down to, really, is that those women have spent their lives with the world focused on their looks and so they are still working hard to look the best that they can - I have not done the same and it shows. 

Would I want to spend my whole life wrapped up in my looks - obviously not.   I am still not going to cut my grey hair short like the women of previous generations have.  I am going to have kinder thought about the women beating off aging with the tools available.  And I will try not to take it so personally.

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1)  What is it about letting an insurance policy lapse which triggers a need for coverage within days?

2.)  Our false Spring weather has caused the daffodils to burst into bloom and the cherry trees are getting started, too.  The rain and 50 degree weather is back in a few days.   It's got to be confusing to be a plant with all this climate change going on..

3.)   I had been thinking how fun it would be to hold my turn for book club at the hotel.  We have a beautiful board room with a private bath and big comfy seats.  Then it came to me that I am now working on book club night.  Oh, no!  I'll have  to drop out of book club.

4.)  On the other hand, Tom and I are getting a very nice, romantic room for Valentine's night.

5.) I worked with Jerry Brown during his first term as Governor of California.  I was a college student and had the opportunity through my student government position at San Diego State University to serve on a committee with the Governor.  When I read this I was so glad to be reminded that he has not changed. in all these years:

Anyone who needed a reminder about how much has changed in terms of California's gubernatorial style with the election of Jerry Brown just needed to look at Southwest Airlines Flight 896 from Sacramento to Burbank on Thursday morning.


There, in the fourth row, was Brown, sitting amid the regular procession of business travelers.


Not only does Brown fly commercial, but he flies coach, and without an entourage. No staffers or security traveled with the governor, who made the trip south on the low-cost carrier to address the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce on Thursday night.

And that's the way all the politicians should be behaving.  They are elected to serve the people, not reign over us.

6.)  Have you seen Car Lashes? 

Have a great Valentine's Weekend - if you are into all that!

CHANGE THE PICTURE

I found myself really bothered by seeing a young woman at the gym wearing a tee shirt reading "show your tits."  I mean, really? 

It just kept bugging me, so I decided that I needed to start looking for things to replace that image from my mind.  First thing was a little girl sitting on a bench outside the library, swinging her feet in sparkly pink shoes and reciting her own version of the alphabet, heavy on the x's.

Ahhhh, that did it!

AS THE WORLD TURNS

Last week someone said there was a pay off for being the kind of person I

am and I scoffed because there have been so many hardships in the last 10 years of our lives and we have worked hard at being good people and doing the right things all along the rocky way.  So when I was hired for a 2 week "trial period" to see if I was a "fit" for a job that meant a 40 minute plus commute each way with minimal benefits and pay, I thought, well, it is the best I have been offered in nearly 2 years.  Off I go but don't quit the weekend job!

So I started the new trial job Thursday and the work is interesting and the people are nice and the commute was as expected.

 I came into the hotel on Saturday and what has happened?  Someone has given notice!  Do I want to go full time?

The pay is a bit less, the benefits about the same but they will put me on the health plan sooner, no commute and I could work with my sister which would have been impossible with the other job. 

Hurrah!

POP GO THE PODS

Today was Groundhog Day and the little guy has decreed that Spring is on it's way.  Here in the SF bay area we are (sorry everyone else in the country) having really nice spring-like weather already.  Considering how cool our summer was and how rainy our fall was it is a nice break to have some sun and 65 degree weather.

I am not writing this to boast and make people feel bad about their weather and then move here (it's REALLY expensive and crowded already...) 

The reason I am writing about this is that all day I have been hearing the pop skitter, skitter of the wisteria pods in our backyard.  When the temperature climbs a bit and the sun warms those babies up, the burst open and send their seeds all over he patio.  The hard dry pods fall off, the vines, too.  It is a very noisy process!

I have been out sweeping up the pods and seeds daily.  What I should probably do is trim the vines back but I admit that I just love the flowers in the spring, even though the vines are really fast growing and invasive.

So today I was out sweeping and enjoying the sunny day.  Tomorrow I start something new...which I'll write about once things get going.