It's been awhile since I posted on this Blog, and a few folks have actually contacted me wondering where I went, and why I stopped posting.
The answer is, strangely enough, pretty simple; I decided to get some things done that I needed done.
The Blogging, the demonstrations and marches that consumed my time and attention last year were good, admirable and necessary, but did little to further my long range personal goals. Add to that the tendency to sit at the computer all day Blogging about what innumerable other individuals were being paid to write about, and my own life was being consumed in a seemingly never-ending game of "I told you so." And that game has no winners, just angry participants.
My life partner has a business that I participate in, a fact of which I'm most thankful for, but which we both wish to someday leave behind, since it requires us to be "home bound."
Being cheap, this works pretty well, but leads to an inevitable outcome; I've become a "motor mouth." I tend to, at the first opportunity, to jump in and take over any and all conversations.
This is ok sometimes, but ultimately, some folks feel, well ... overwhelmed.
Sorry 'bout that, folks. It may be a character flaw. Maybe.
So, instead of "just" shutting up, I'll ask your forgiveness and thank you for your understanding, my friends, as well as your forbearance in the face of my verbal onslaughts. I'll try on to be too strident.
If overwhelmed, just "duck & cover," and I'll get your drift.
My darling partner and I are in the Child Care business, which is, as are all businesses, endlessly challenging, and sometimes rewarding.
The small bright children we care for every day are wonderful and wondrous, but provide precious little intellectual feedback when conversation occurs. They're also rather "unsophisticated," leaving me to conclude that my attitudes toward them could easily become the same as Democrat politicians attitudes toward "mere" Citizens have proven to be.
I do my best to not do as our legislative "Representatives" have done, and not just stop listening.
To do so would brand me the same sort of fool that our Senators, Representatives and all of the innumerable Bureaucrats, Lobbyists and Elites who seem to be their actual Constituents, have proven themselves to be.
Now, it's a proven fact that, whenever someone asks what business anyone is in, conversation revolves around how challenging said business is in comparison with the questioners business.
Think about it. Go ahead, I'll wait right here. (Filing fingernails, folding underwear, blowing bubbles in my coffee ...)
See, I knew that you'd agree with me.
So, rather than going on ad nauseum about changing diapers, wiping sticky substances from diminutive body parts following lunchtimes that are often actually just bellowing contests between 2 year olds, and all of the myriad joys and duties, I'll make it quick:
I've decided to have a Life. I've decided that it was a good thing to be different.
Because, when you have only one small 'topic of conversation,' folks tend to drift away after awhile. No matter how well intended, how earnest, how incredibly sincere you truly are, you have to give in to the fact that someone, somewhere really does care about 'Dancing with the Stars.'
Really, someone does.
And, if you're going to keep anyone's attention, you need, at the very least, to have some information, some 'frame of reference' about what they want to talk about.
You need a "touchstone" beyond water, or politics or even our mutual dislike and disdain for elected Representatives who turn into shills for interests that are contrary to the Citizens of the District they were elected to Represent.
You need to actually tell them something about yourself, and not just make a "game" of seeing who can quote or cite the newest "thing" that Rush or Glen or Sean or whoever said today or last week or whenever.
You need to help them see how much you're really like them, the way your life is like their life, without allowing your life to be as boring as they think their life really is.
My Life is, well, different. It's been "a Life less ordinary." So I've decided to live it, and talk about it, a little more.
~
I am blessed with having the life experience of suffering with a genetic neurological syndrome.
It causes me to have, among myriad other things, constant pain, a noticeable hand tremor, nervous "tics," and an immune system that guarantees that I catch & suffer through every virus or cold or whatever that's "going around" this week.
Now, why would I say, "I'm blessed"?
Because, in the wee dark hours, I know that I have learned some things that others have not come to know.
I am more patient than most folk, and also more "matter of fact." Patience is born of that which cannot be avoided, and Reality comes easier when you live in terms not of "Will I hurt today?", but of "How am I going to hurt today?"
Truth isn't an option for me, since "going along" with whatever silliness others may partake of, such as getting a "little tipsy" or "overdoing it" can mean days or even weeks of recuperation for me.
Truth starts with owning my decisions, since I know that I will pay a price for any excesses I commit.
I am blessed with good days and bad days. A good day is always relative, since my good days are always accompanied by "types" of pain. At my last count, these "types" include over 300 different and distinct sensations, allowing me to be thankful that at least the pain isn't boring!
A good day is one without too much fatigue, and when the pain is not too terrible. A great day is one that doesn't start with fatigue.
Patience is unavoidable, since I'm going to hurt whether I like it or not. This brings us to the question of my attitude, which some friends have described as "remarkably sunny." (I'm sure that it doesn't always show through in my blog posts. Lucky you, eh?)
Back in my childhood, and the pain which is now old and familiar first began, I was already a "sunny" child. I made, at that time, a conscious decision to be happy.
I had noticed that pain often made people seem angry or sad or somehow actively unhappy. I had already almost died in childbirth, and had almost drowned when I was 6, so I was aware that my very survival, my life was a gift from God.
But for His hand, in the form of what others who'd been unwilling to give up had done to save me, I would have been but a memory.
My Mom was a Special Ed teacher, and so many of my friends were "physically challenged." Looking at the pain that they faced, my own seemed so much less. Their challenges required braces and wheelchairs, whereas my own had required only orthopedic shoes, and eyeglasses. My blessings in life always seemed to outweigh my sorrows. Thankfulness was, it seemed, so much better a way of living than bitterness.
It was apparent that happiness was a choice, as I made my way through a childhood filled with people who laughed, even as they knew that they really might not wake the next day. A sobering reality, to be sure, but one that saw the opportunity that could not be passed up.
The best way to meet pain is with laughter. After all, isn't every joke you know about some kind of pain?
~
Now, I can hear you asking, "What about politics?"
Well, you don't need me to lecture you about politics anymore, do you? If you're not awake and aware by now, you're likely a Democrat shill. Or a Progressive who asks only "What's in it for me?"
For this is the answer that President Obama gave us. His take with Health Care Reform was and continues to be "Wait 'til they see what's in it for them! Wait 'til they see what we're giving them!"
President Obama was, and seems to still be, blind to the fact that Americans are aware of just what they're going to "give us." He also seems to be unaware that we know just what they intend to take from us, as well.
How can we possibly applaud a Health Reform Bill that is filled with exceptions and favors and favoritism, that requires us to surrender so many freedoms and so much treasure, granting us in return only the "right" to the level of Health Care that the Government decides we deserve, according to their heretofore blatantly faulty "Wisdom?"
To attempt to cite examples here is pointless, as we all have a favorite example of how incompetent the Federal Government is in its execution of its largely self assumed, extra-Constitutional 'duties.' I don't need to give even one, much less chapter and verse.
The saddest testimony to the evils of the Federal government is the fact that so many honest, well meaning folks who try desperately to do a good job for the People are so consistently thwarted by Bureaucrats whose only concerns seem to be "What's in it for me?!!!"
So, what can we do? My answer is "UP THE VOLTAGE!"
Keep bombarding the Government, lest they think we've given up. Don't accept the excuses anymore, and don't give them an excuse to make excuses.
Anyone who doesn't get my drift need only look to the plaintive defenses and apologies of Senator Ben Nelson in the last weeks. They need only to look to the "strategic retirements" of such luminaries as Christopher Dodd to see the continuing political game that the Politicians are attempting to play upon what they think is a gullible and unsuspecting public.
And any who think that this is a "Democrat only" game should look at the juxtaposition of what Micheal Steele is saying as opposed to what is actually being done in the Republican Party. The continued attention to the Media cry of "Where are the Moderates in the Republican Party?" should be answered with "Why should there be Moderates running the Republican Party?"
The painful Truth continues to be that Moderate Republicans are still trying to "Just get along" with Democrats in Congress! And the painful Truth to that is that it requires them to be and act like the very Liberals they claim to oppose.
The politics of appeasement must end. The never-ending bargaining by Moderates such as George Radanovich has been proven to be, most literally, "Giving away the FARM!"
Bargaining with those who, as in the case of the San Joaquin Settlement and the "Environmentalists" who forced it and then betrayed it and have no "good will" or good faith, much less any real answers, must be brought to an end. For, even as they "enjoy" the fruits of that settlement, they break their word and seek to deprive the People of NObama County of their livelihood by commandeering even MORE
of the less than sufficient water that has been left for Agriculture.
~
So, even as I say "NO MORE!", I'm dedicating my energies more selectively. My online collectors mineral business is "getting there," and other plans continue to bear fruit. Life is good, even in these poor economic times, since I know how bad it can be.
Be well, dear friends.
PAX!
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