May 11th, 2007
My mother thought a good idea for a Mother’s Day present for my grandmother would be a framed photo of myself with Pugly, but she said that the photos I’ve taken of myself with the wigs on are all so fun that I should do the portrait with a wig on. O.K. No problem. In New Orleans, I used to do the costume wigs and costume stuff all of the time.
O.K. This is Maine. Definitely not the same as New Orleans.
And rural Maine? You cannot go out of your front door wearing a blue page wig, a Indian-made blouse, and blue jeans and carrying a tripod, a camera and a Pug and not have every single one of your neighbors come to the edge of your yard and stare like you’re about to climb up a water tower with a rifle or something.
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Tags: Pug, dog, the puppy, neighbors, dress up, New Orleans, rural, Maine, Mother\\\'s Day, family
January 16th, 2007
I’m annoyed at my mother.
Last night I was excitedly starting to tell her about this book I’m reading about gardening and what I was planning to do when Spring comes and she, being who she is, pooped on my party. She told me not to get too excited about it and not to go all out and invest too much in it and start too big. She told me I should start with a small garden and go from there because I didn’t want to overwhelm myself and take on more than I could physically handle.
*hrmph*
The sad part is that for once she’s actually not being critical or saying I’m an underachiever or something. I really think she was talking about my illness like she finally gets it. She didn’t want me to set myself up with grand ideas that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with on my own and then I’d beat myself up about.
I hate it when she’s right.
So I need to think this out at a small scale level.
Tags: gardening, mother
November 10th, 2006
I’ve always maintained that I’m not the motherly type.
Having cats were kind of perfect that way. I mean, they need care but they aren’t like children really. They’re kind of independent.
Since Pugly came in my life though, I’ve discovered myself doing little motherly things.
You know, taking him to “play groups.”
Wiping the eye boogers out of his eyes.
Wiping his nose.
Wiping his face when he’s eaten something and he’s gotten it all over.
Carrying him over puddles.
Taking him to doggy daycare — heck, worrying he won’t get in.
And the latest?
Last night when I took him out to pee-pee (yes, we use words like pee-pee and poo-poo), he ate some of those sticky brier things and they got stuck in his throat and despite the fact that I had a huge 7 out of 10 migraine that I took a Oxycodone pill for, I stayed awake for hours with him, playing Mommy trying to get him to hack it up. He kept making that sound like he was trying to clear his throat and he couldn’t get comfortable. Eventually I got him to drink some water. He swallowed it. Next thing you know, he wanted to play at 3am and I was trying to go to sleep. 
Anyway, I guess Pugly bought out the Motherly Instinct in me. My mother has pointed out that he’s my baby. I mean, I don’t love my kitties any less, but Pugly is definitely the little kid. I’m always so proud when people gush over him when we’re out and about. I love fussing over him. It’s not uncommon for me to find dog treats in my pocket or purse. There’s a rawhide chew in my car.
It’s definitely Puppy Love.
Tags: the puppy, motherly instinct
September 9th, 2006
A Little Fun First
- Thursday Thirteen #2 — ribbiticus @ Pond Perspective offers some gems of advice. Here are my favorites:
5. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
10. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
11. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
12. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
13. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Crayons, terrorism, Logan Airport, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Congress, wiretapping, Osama bin Laden, Mother Jones, liberals, 9/11, religion, aetheists, women, virginity, Journal of Sex Research Western soceity, involuntary virgins, economy, America
July 28th, 2006
Georgia Stillwell is a member of Military Families Speak Out and the mother of a soldier serving in Iraq. She’s active in organizations working for peace and to bring her son and our military home from Iraq.
Below is are her amazing thoughts as presented on Stories in America: (emphasis mine)
Distracted, damn right I am!
When I returned home from my trip to Washington DC. Where I met with various Senators, Representatives and the Speaker of the House as part of Military Families Speak Out Operation House Call, I received a notice of pending termination of my employment on Aug. 31st. It seems I have been distracted.
My priorities in life have changed since the war began. It has become my passion, my mission to be part of the frontline of peace.
How can I not be? On a personal level my son is still suffering from his participation in this war. He has killed men, women and children. Yes let us not pretend that our soldiers are not killing innocents. My son lives with it everyday. “We thought the little boy had a bomb.” My son weeps as he sits in the bottom of the shower and I recently found out he is experiencing combat flashbacks. No wonder my son drove his car over an embankment. No wonder he feels there is nothing left of his spirit at 22. Alive but dead inside.
On a global level…I deeply feel the pain of others. I listen to Gold Star Mothers cry and beg God to bring back their child just one more time. I relate to the Mother’s whose soldiers cam back and killed themselves. I still wonder when I am going to get that phone call. I hear the similarities of stories like my son’s. I think about the wives whose husbands return and vent their frustrations on them. I work in human services and have started to see the Iraq vet’s here. They are in so much pain, bleeding all over the place with invisible blood. And then there are the Iraqi people. Forgive us! My heart breaks again.
Most nights I don’t sleep well. I keep thinking is there more I can do? We do not have another second, not another child to spare! My job has become so unimportant. And I can’t stop being distracted.
I have been to DC twice this year already. Telling my story, telling other’s stories. “Bring them home now, Take care of them when they get here and never put our loved ones in harms way again for a lie.”
I remember looking in Dennis Hastert’s blue eyes and thinking about PFC. Steven Sirko’s blue eyes that will never open again. The Congressman comparing Iraq to a football game and me touching his arm and saying “Congressman our children don’t die in football games.” “We don’t have another child to give you.”
Begging Senator Obama help us. “We are looking to you for great things.” Save our children.
I can not express in words the urgency I feel. So I may lose my job. I may lose my home. I may not eat on a regular basis. Since I started on this mission of peace I have been evicted (some landlords don’t like when you post the number of dead) I have had an IRS audit. I have had people look at me with so much hate at times it was unnerving. So What? There our people dying as I write this and another Mother cries.
I am driven; my spirit will not let me rest. I will still stay in the frontlines. I will engage in acts of civil disobedience if necessary, I will not let a politician say they can not see me. And I will always be of peace. I have hugged the recruiter in my town and we have shed tears together. I have hugged the Speaker of the house. I must always show that I am of true peace. I shake the hand or hug every soldier I see. And the soldiers that have made it home, if I come into contact with them I tell them if they ever need help I am here. If there is a soldier who wants out , I will find you refuge.
Martin Luther King Jr. said “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” I have embraced that thought 100%. I do not pretend to have political savvy or be well versed on foreign affairs. I am just the mother of a soldier.
I beseech the people of America step out of your comfort zones; get out of those easy chairs. Pour out into the streets and demand an end to this war. Many of us are out here in the frontlines are waiting, wondering “Where is America?” Our children are dying, again.
Georgia Stillwell
Member of Military Families Speak Out
Tags: American soldiers, Iraq, Military Families Speak Out, Georgia Stillwell, Gold Star Mothers, politics
March 16th, 2006
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
–Voltaire
Without going back and digging through my own posts about Cindy Sheehan, I’m sure when she first arrived on the scene last summer in Crawford, Texas, I thought she was kind of nifty. I figured as long as she was participating in peaceful, anti-war protest she was doing a good thing and I pretty much backed her.
I’m all for Freedom of Speech. I mean, I have my limits of what’s good taste and what’s appropriate. I’m from the “harm none” mentality and also the “you don’t wear jeans to church” crowd.
So, anyway, I don’t recall if what I’ve said about Cindy here. I haven’t exactly agreed with everything she’s said or done in public and let’s face it, she’s said and done some real doseys. I think she makes us serious liberals look like “moonbats”, but I will defend her right to say what she believes as long as it isn’t gay bashing, sexist, racist, or otherwise outright hateful.
And I don’t believe that liberals are the only ones with a right to Freedom of Speech either.
Merrilee Carlson also lost her son in Iraq, but unlike Cindy Sheehan, her name hasn’t become a household name and she hasn’t been making the rounds of late night talk shows or public press events. Yet, she has her own message and her own organization and she’s been trying to get the word out. Merrilee Carlson believes that “we have to take a step back and look at what we have asked our military to do. We have asked them to do a job. It doesn’t matter how we got there. The fact is we are there and we have a job to finish.”
O.K. So I don’t agree with her message exactly. I understand it. I understand where she’s coming from. I understand why she feels that way even, but I don’t agree. However, I do think she has as much a right as Cindy Sheehan to make her message known. Starting last August and September, when Cindy started making headlines, Merrilee started to feel the need to balance things out, to “correct the record”. After all, her opinion is just as justified and right as Cindy’s.
In the last couple of weeks the organization that Carlson chairs, Minnesota Families United, has been in the center of a controversy that, by any objective reasoning, should have made national news.
Minnesota Families United teamed with Progress for America Voter Fund and produced two television spots. Minnesota was used as a test market for the spots and PFA made a rather large statewide television buy. The ABC affiliate in the Twin Cities market, KSTP, refused to air the spots.
The decision not to air the first MFU commercial was made by Rob Hubbard, General Manager. His objection was over two lines in the spot:
1) The media only reports the bad news, but American troops are making real progress
2) You would never know it from the news reports, but our enemy in Iraq is Al Qaeda.
Hubbard’s position was that those lines did not apply to his television station; therefore, he would not allow the spot to run. Hubbard says he would have run the spot if they edited it to make it clear they were talking about the media in general, but not KSTP specifically.
It is certainly understandable that Hubbard is worried his viewers might get the wrong impression. After all, the reason these spots were produced in the first place is that these families of our fallen heroes believe millions have gotten the wrong impression regarding the progress our soldiers have made in Iraq. Still, the question remains: Do these families deserve to have their voices heard, or should they be stifled?
This debate is not happening, because this story never made national news. To recap: In an election year, a group used Minnesota as a test market for a possible national buy and one of the prominent stations took the position that the spot should not air. Maybe this didn’t become news because of the hypocrisy of the industry. They often try their best to protect themselves from the type of stories they inflict on others.
The news hook gets better.
On Thursday, February 16th, the Chair of the Democrat Party in Minnesota called on all TV stations to pull the ad. The top Democrats in Minnesota want to suppress the message of Carlson’s group.
Merrilee Carlson was born and raised a Democrat. She doesn’t like politics and she wants to make it clear that her group is non-political. So, the Democrats in Minnesota are trying to suppress the message from mainstream families who have suffered the loss of their children from the war in Iraq. Why is this not news?
That other mom was a full-time, anti-war protester for more than a year before she came up with the PR stunt to go to Crawford during the president’s vacation. The media accepted the stunt and gave her message enormous coverage. This prompted Carlson to take action for her message. Now Carlson is in the middle of legitimate news and the media is silent. [“Pro-military mom silenced by mainstream media” (Townhall.com)]
A Google search of Merrilee Carlson brought up precious little than a few opinion articles about the above issue and this article about the death of Sgt. Michael Carlson — o.k. 29,100 links. In comparison, I could look at about 9,770,000 different links on Cindy Sheehan if I had the time and interest.
Anyway, I find it fascinating that Democrats are campaigning to keep her commercial from airing. Yet another disappointment from that party and proof that they’re all alike. I find it interesting that she is a Democrat to begin with. I also find it terribly fascinating that I found this violation of an American’s Civil Rights on not one of the liberal blogs I read but on the most right-wingingest blog I read.
Anyway, go check out Merrilee’s website and watch her commercial, whether you agree with her or not.
Tags: Merrilee Carlson, Cindy Sheehan, politics, Freedom of Speech, anti-war, pro-military, Iraq, grieving mother, Minnesota Families United, Democrats
