Happy Easter!

My Easter was very nice. My new friend here in California, Ellen, invited me to have Easter with her family: husband, son and a bunch of water polo guys he plays with in college.  Very nice guys.  And she went all out with Easter centerpieces made of little boxes of grass (really, catnip), and kumquats stuck on sticks like Easter eggs.  Very cute, and a delicious meal: standing rib roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted vegetables, cardamon rolls, Yorkshire pudding (which I'd never had before, or even knew what it was), wine, key lime pie, apple tarts. 

She sent me home with a nice plateful, and a bone for Benji.

Guest Ranter, My Brother David, on the Music Industry, Drugs, and Alcohol

My Rant Against the Music Industry
by David Miller

Have you ever wondered why there is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country built around addiction to drugs and alcohol?  

I didn't until I took three or four trips driving across this beautiful land of ours to visit and ultimately say good-bye to our mother.  It didn’t really sink in until I took the trip with my alcoholic teenage daughter.  When I drive I listen to music and when I drive 10-15 hours a day on a road trip I listen to a LOT of music, and typically multiple genres of music.  When I took the trip alone I found myself changing stations quite often as I went from one metropolitan area to the next and got tired of country and moved to pop or hard rock or classic rock or sometimes even rap or dance stations.  

When I took the trip with Mikayla so close to her latest bout with alcohol I found myself more than a little uncomfortable when different bands or artists would glorify the use of alcohol or marijuana, and I would try to quickly change the station.  By about the third hour my arm was about to start cramping up and my shoulder began to ache.  If you think I’m exaggerating try it sometime.  Here’s a little sequence of songs or genres I tried to avoid and the lyrics or phrases that I was trying to escape.  If you decide to try it I bet you can’t go more than 30 minutes without a song that will tell you why you need to, or should feel justified, in losing yourself or soothing yourself in some kind of drug or alcohol.

Kayla likes pop/dance/teeny bopper music (imagine that) so we started on that type of station.  This is all music that I have listened to with half an ear with Becca [age 4] in the car hundreds of times and never really thought about it.  But when you’re sitting in a car with someone you really don’t like very much at the time and aren’t spending a lot of time trying to discuss the meaning of life or politics you tend to pay a little more attention to the lyrics.  

We were no more than 10-15 minutes into the trip and Kesha had brushed her teeth with a bottle of Jack and gone out with her gang of friends for a night of debauchery that lasted until the sun came up. Katy Perry was worried that most of what she did the night before was illegal but she really couldn’t remember due to all the empty bottles strewn around her yard and in her pool and she really hoped none of the pictures hit the internet or she was really “screwed”, and I found that Nicki Menaj really likes shots of Patron.  

I tried switching to a hard rock station and found that these artists really like the harder drugs like cocaine, heroin, and of course you gotta have some Jack, Jim or Johnny to chase it with.   The rappers like their gin and juice and Patron tequila and usually chase that with a very expensive bottle of champagne and a blunt or bowl is always a good idea.  

Think country’s any better?  Think again.  Kenny Chesney has an entire song about how it’s totally acceptable to use moonshine or tequila to escape from reality, Toby Keith has his red solo cup that he likes to party with and everybody knows how much he likes to get high with Willie because he wrote a song about it.  The Zack Brown Band likes to drink beer with their toes in the sand and roll a big fat one and play, George Strait says to hell with the red wine and bring on some moonshine, and Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet say “it’s five o’clock somewhere so make it a hurricane before I go insane”.  And let’s not forget newcomer Jerrod Niemann wants to know what’s wrong with “Another Drinkin’ Song”.

Now don’t get me wrong!  I’m not hypocrite enough to say that I’m never going to drink again because of the damage all these songs have done to my daughter.  Ultimately our decisions are just that: OUR decisions.  I really like a lot of these and the many other artists that write about how socially acceptable it is to go out and get shit-faced, or high as a kite, or both, whenever you have a bad day at work, get dumped by your significant other, feel a little down or really want to have a good time.  

But is it really any wonder that a lot of our kids are very curious about what’s so fun about these many different ways to feel better, and completely fearless in regard to the possible consequences?  I think not, but there is one thing that has changed I can assure you.  I will always be a little more conscientious about what I’m listening to when Becca’s in the car, and she and I will have a lot of conversations about consequences at a much younger age than Mikayla and I ever did.  I can only hope that it will help her make better decisions as she starts to feel the pressure to fit in and be cool.  

Because the big thing that all the rock stars forget to tell you in the song is if you don’t have millions of dollars for attorneys and fines you may very well find your ass in a whole lot of trouble when you do the things they so love to glorify and celebrate.

Overheard Today at Target

Several mothers and daughters were looking at the tanning lotions, the kinds that color your skin to look tan.  They were talking about the pressure to look tan, and how one of the young teens there was very fair.  One of the daughters said, "Do you know what they called a girl at school because she had really pale legs and you could see her veins?  They called her a leper!"

Nice.  Nice world we live in, when young girls are taught from a young age that they're not OK the way they are, that they need to alter...well, just about everything about themselves in order to be suitable to appear in public.  I know it has always been this way to some extent, but it just seems so much worse now, with the media putting unrealistic (Photoshopped) images in front of us all of the time.  People start to think that they're supposed to have dazzling-white smiles, perfect skin, and perfect figures - according to some odd standard the gay men in Hollywood who are generating all of this media and designing women's clothes have dreamed up.  Have you noticed that the "perfect figure" for a woman looks more and more like a young boy's body than a young girl's body?  Do you suppose there's some odd psychology at work there?

Oh, and while I'm on a rant, I saw a woman carrying a bag from Abercrombie & Fitch with a photograph something like this one, only even more risque, if you can imagine it.  The guy's pants were all but off, showing absolutely everything short of his parts that it could.  She was with her two small children.  I just had to wonder.  No one sees a problem with this?

Almost every store I went into had a loud soundtrack, enough to drive me right back out again.  I think the kids are in control of the volume these days and they're all half deaf from listening to their iPods at high volume.  It's insane.

I feel old.

Sleepy Benji

He's taking a peek out the plane window during boarding. Sleepy because he went to daycare today and wore himself out playing.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

More Glowing Optimism from Brother Dave

His response to my last post:

I’ve been thinking along similar lines. When I first started in this business you could plan on a certain amount of annual increase and had a good idea of what other positions made and I had a grand plan of where I was and where I was going complete with planned annual dollar amounts at age 30, 40 and 50. That has really leveled out and expectations have really dropped over the last 4-5 years. Annual increases are no longer a given, bonuses can and are restructured whenever convenient or necessary for the employer and upper management positions are eliminated more often than any others so opportunities to move up are fewer and less appealing due to the risk that comes along with them. I’ve gone from thinking I’d have a nice retirement package at 54-55 and ride off into the sunset to enjoy life like dad did only with more money to thinking I’ll probably be working until I can’t anymore.
It really does make you wonder where we’re going as a society and what this world will be like when we leave it to the next generation. I have to say I am not at all optimistic and unfortunately neither are my two oldest kids.

David Miller
Branch Manager


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Gone With The Financial Cyclone

I was commiserating with sister Chris today about how tired I am and how I can't seem to get anything more accomplished once I put in my work day.  I'm just getting older and it's becoming too much to ask to do the second shift after I get home from the first shift.  There's so much to do all the time: taxes, real estate or rental issues, researching pet insurance, researching the new lawsuit for mortgage loan restructuring and trying to figure out what it means to my two mortgages, if anything, keeping myself in appropriate clothes, attending to Benji's needs, ordering medications, health spending account claims, etc.

I wondered, "What ever happened to the good ol' days when one could come home and the work was over, you could just relax in your house that was nearly paid off, find everything you need in the right places because you put it there and lived there for decades."  In my world, I'm forever needing something that I left at the other house.  Last trip I left my medications behind and had to have them shipped.

Then, I said to Chris, "I guess those days are gone like the wind, gone with the financial cyclone that has passed through this country."  It really feels that way, like we will work and work and work and hope to have a home, keep a home, keep from losing a home, or being stuck with something that on paper is worth way less than you owe on it...and then end up a ward of the state anyway, the thing you've been trying to prevent all along, struggling against and trying to do the right thing so you don't have to rely on the state.

But we're all going to end up in some state-run institution anyway because there will be no other options - no retirement income, no social security income, no way to keep the home you owe too much on, no way to sell the home you owe too much on.  It's very disheartening when you think about it.  While the Greatest Generation went through a terrible depression and worried about feeding the family day to day, we're going through a mental depression, worrying about what will become of us in a few years.  It's a different thing, completely, but still brutal.  How will our approaching-retirement generation face this?  Will we have a choice in how we face it, or will we just be swept along by the Financial Cyclone, with no choices, no real way to steer our own boats?  How does one step out of the Cyclone winds and get a grip?

I don't know.  I just asked a whole bunch of questions and I don't have answers.

I read the Mortgage Relief Act information and it looks like the date parameters they put on it will exclude me from any help on the Arizona place.  I should probably hire an attorney to help me sort it out, but they want so much money, up front, and the Act says that it will take three years to get any pay-out.  So how does that help us? An attorney over three years of filings and hassle would eat up any gain I might get.

Mom had a good old country phrase for that: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But - I saw this little sign in a catalog this evening and have to share it.  It sort of boils things down to brass tacks and makes it all clear.

How to Handle Stress Like a Dog:
If you can't eat it or play with it,
then pee on it and walk away.

Poem of the Day, For My Dad: The Tuft of Flowers, by Robert Frost

I found this poem in college in a class of Miss Vincent's, and heard it again this week, in my voice, when I turned on my iPod Shuffle for Benji's work-day entertainment while I'm gone.  I have my Librivox recordings on the iPod and this is what came up randomly.  I had forgotten all about having recorded it a few years ago.

It brought me back to that year in college when I sent this poem to my Dad.  He's not a poetry kind of guy, but there was a story behind it. 

I'd come home one day during my high school years to find Dad outside all sweaty, and he asked me to come outside to the pasture. 

I asked, "What? Why?" with teenage attitude, I'm sure. 

He said, "Just walk down there and see what you see." 

So I walked, wonderingly, and found that he had hand-mowed the mid-summer waist-high grass with a scythe. 

"What?  You mowed?" I asked.

"Yep, walk a little further," he answered.

So, I did, and I found, to my great surprise, that he had mown everything flat except for a tuft of daisies, my favorites, then.  I liked them for their purity, their lack of show or pretense, for their simplicity.  They were like me, I liked to think, then, a little country girl.

That's why later, when we read this poem in class I had to copy it and send it to him.  Mom said when he got that letter from college, he nearly cried.

The Tuft of Flowers

I WENT to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the leveled scene.
I looked for him behind an isle of trees; 
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a ’wildered butterfly,
Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.
And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.
I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;
But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.
The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
And feel a spirit kindred to my own; 
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’