Break out the champagne and break it over the bough

It's a big day here in the McQuillan house! It's so exciting! It's about time!

I've just planted the first permanent plant in the side bed. An azalea, naturally. Squee with me, people!

I need a rock tumbler, for, I need tumbled glass for my pathways. This is necessary for my continued existence.

Cirrhosis?

No, I don't think so. I choose not.

Rototiller with the fringe on top

Have you missed the garden learnin' updates? I give, as always:

I sometimes have thoughts that remind me that I am so very new to this whole gardening thing. I had one of those thoughts today as I was picking corn kernels out of the dirt where I had dropped them so that I could plant them in orderly rows. My thought was, "Oh, I should wash the dirt off of these before I plant them." Yes, yes I did.

I will giggle like a little girl when I think, "Wow! hoeing is hard!"

Dogs do not respect fences. Dogs especially do not respect fences when b a l l s go over them.

I should probably label the seed trays I am using to propagate seeds. I have absolutely no idea what is what.

I should probably not try to sing It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp when hoeing. I live in a nice area and my backdoor neighbor is in his 90s.

Rotting grass smells like poop.

People get tired of inspecting your compost pile, but mamas will always indulge you anyway.

It might be wrong to do half a happy dance when you beat someone else to an amazing deal on a roto-tiller, but I will do it in the middle of the street anyway.

Dancing with a forearm crutch in the middle of the street looks ridiculous but it does NOT warrant a call to the police! Really!

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Tired of love uninspired

I suppose I will never understand how people become fixated on other people. Obviously, I am intimately acquainted with fixations on processes (gardening, anyone?), but I have a hard time understanding the kind of fixation that is tied to a person. I can control my actions in the garden, right? To some extent, I can even control the garden itself; but we can't control other people, which is what makes it confusing to me. What if the person you're fixated on does something that bores you?

What is especially confusing to me is why someone or some people would be fixated on me. Seriously... why? Could I be any more boring? I don't think so. Let's look at just how boring I am! Here's my day so far:

Woke up before the alarm and immediately thought, shit! I set the alarm for the wrong time.
Let the dogs out, teeteed, got a bowl of cereal.
Graded two papers, brushed my teeth, took my pills, did my hair, put my make up on, got dressed.
Got out the door in exactly enough time to get to school, which I then did.
Took Lovers to Abrams to Northwest Highway to 75 south to Greenville to Walnut to campus.
Taught Stace in intro, Rachels in ethics (though we got really off topic today!), then walked out of class.
Ran into a former student who reminded me that I need to print something out for him.
Ran into another former student who told me her life is hard right now, which pains me deeply.
Got to my car and called my mom.
Asked her if she wanted to go to PF Chang's for lunch because I needed make up and had a craving for Mongolian beef.
She said yes, she'd pick me up in an hour and a half.
Drove home, though I took a different route: campus to Walnut to Greenville.
Stopped at Sonic to get a Route 44 Dr Pepper with extra ice.
Talked to Shelley on the way home, something I do not normally do (drive and talk on the phone).
Got home and talked to the painters my mother hired to paint our trim.
Realized that I forgot to put the cats up before they came so I went around making sure they were all still inside.
Tam Tam, Harvey, and Dixon were in one bedroom.
Mason was in the bathroom.
Pearl was walking around the house not even about to go near the open doors. She's a princess who does not go outside where there is dirt and other scary things.
Attempted to go to the bathroom and subsequently let Mason out.
Chased Mason around the house, finally catching him and putting him in the bedroom.
Went to the bathroom and put on lipstick.
Made it out the door and got into the car with my mom.
We drove to Northpark (Lovers to Abrams to Northwest Highway), and parked.
Ate lunch at PF Chang's, where I had Mongolian beef with steamed white rice and dragon eye oolong tea. My mom had some sort of noodle dish with shrimp and iced tea.
Walked out of PF Chang's and stopped in to see my SIL at Anthopologie.
Oohed and aahed over some measuring cups.
Walked around the Nasher Sculpture Center store and I got wobbly. Something weird with the lighting. that required some seriously slow walking out of the store. Of all places to get wobbly!
Walked to the Apple store where my mother bought a car charger and bought me a stereo dock for my iphone. Score!
Went to Origins, where my mom bought something and I bought two gumballs.
Went to Bare Essentuals where I bought foundation.
Walked back across the mall, going a different way this time.
Stopped at the restroom to teetee and my mom went into Cebu to get some gelato.
I got some sort of pastry thing.
We continued on to the car.
Mom drove me home, same route, and came in to talk to the painters.
I gave her the hydrangea I had ordered for her and another agave that popped up (they are always doing that) and showed her the compost pile, yet again.
Mom left and I changed into a t-shirt and long john bottoms.
I read some gardening sites while the painters finished up.
The painters left after a brief political chat.
Talked to Jon.
Took a nap.
Harvey woke me up by head butting me, wanting belly rubs.
I made some popcorn and ate some more Sonic ice.
I turned the TV on and half paid attention to the last 1/4 of Crocodile Dundee 2.
Now, I am here, sitting with Pearly next to me, writing this post.

Seriously, I bore myself. Find someone more interesting to fixate on, people! I can even suggest some people if you are at a loss. My friend Scarlett has had an incredibly interesting life and she is anything BUT boring. I can hook you up! (I am now picturing Scarlett cringing)

I am going to eat some more Sonic ice now and watch Countdown. I will probably watch Heroes with Jon, later. I might even finish the book I'm reading (Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan). Whew, too much excitement for me!

It may not be pretty, but I made it.

Fence? I haz it.

Where is St. Patrick when you need him?

Did you hear screaming coming from east Lovers Lane today? Yes, that was me. Yes, I uncovered a snake. What was I to do? It was sitting there, slithering this way and that, not getting out of the spot where I needed to dig. The best thing to do, clearly was pick it up, ever so gently throw it over the fence into the grass, screaming all the while.

What? you don't think it will respect the fence barrier... the chain link fence?

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Kumbayfreakingya

Some Saturday morning thoughts. I promise to get back to the comments on several posts soon. Also, I have decided to change "crazy gardening" to "OCD gardening." It's more accurate and has less of a punch in the gut connotation.

Several semesters ago I had a student in one of my classes who said something very racist or culturalist and very offensive. If anyone else had made this statement I would have been outraged and my first reaction would have been to yell at that person. Indeed, the collective reaction of the class was a general outcry that I immediately squashed by telling the class that we were not going to deal with that as it was not the topic of conversation. Here's the thing: I wasn't offended by his statement. I wasn't offended by it because I knew that this kid had some substantial mental issues that prevented him from having the perspective or knowledge of sensitivity to not say such things, even to believe them. But let's be honest: I also wasn't offended because he was one of my mine. As a human, I give the people who have a deep relationship with me (as students and teachers must have) a bit of a pass on the things they say. I don't endorse them, but I allow them to be human and flawed. I also give people a pass because I know more about them than I know about strangers. As I already stated, I knew that the kid who made the statement did not mean to be offensive and did not act on his statement because he was parroting what he had been taught and what he had learned through emotional experiences. So, my question to myself has to be, why don't I give others the same benefit of a bit more compassion when they say things that are offensive to me? Why don't any of us do that?

For some reason, I tend to get a lot of Iraq war veterans in my classes. Oddly enough, I tend to have mostly former and current Marines in my classes, as well. The thing that I have noticed about these young men (as they have all been men) is that when someone brings up anything relating to war or to Iraq, their demeanor changes. I've seen a student go from a happy-go-lucky expression to one of profound grief just on the mention of the word "Iraq." I know some of the experiences these men have been through and I know that the true horrors are far worse than they've shared. The thing I find interesting is that the visceral nature of war is something you can see clearly played out on their faces when they least expect it: in the middle of a conversation about something else. The progression is rapid and final and gut-wrenching for me to watch as a person who cares about them and wants all of their sadness, their bad memories to be taken away. They have been forced to request a benefit of doubt from the rest of us by the very nature of what they've seen and done in our names and it is this benefit of doubt that I hope we can expand to a broader acquaintance in our lives.

The two examples of students I listed above are obvious; we know that we should give war veterans more room for grief or the process of living in peaceful society just as much as we know that we should give people with mental deficits more room to fit into a world of soft edges while being all elbows themselves. But what about the rest of us? What about the person who says hateful things about others because they have never known another way? What about the subtle forms of prejudice that invade our lives without a thought because we simply cannot be ever mindful of others? Shouldn't we attempt to understand it before we start screaming about it?

This is a hard task. I find it hard not to scream at the television when I hear someone seek to devalue people based on their ideology or culture or race; I constantly have to remind myself that I am doing the same thing they are doing if I call them an idiot. What have I learned from that name-calling? Nothing. What could I learn if I listened to what they have to say? Perhaps, something. I find it hard to imagine a time when I would agree with someone like Rush Limbaugh, a racist and hate-monger, but I find it important to listen to him and attempt to hear the meaning behind the rhetoric. Why would he want our President to fail? What is it that makes him classify liberals as bad, no matter what, and call for one-sided thought in all things? I hope I am not like Limbaugh. I don't want to be someone who refuses to admit that every situation is nuanced beyond the cold, hard non-colored world of either/or. But I cannot be that person if I hate someone like him or anyone else. I don't think we should go around hugging these people or telling them it is O.K. to say the things they say, but I do think our intellectual duty extends past mere dismissal. I don't want to listen, but I must listen if I don't want to get stuck in the muck of complacency and agreement.

I think this idea goes beyond attempting to "walk in someone else's shoes." I think this idea must have two parts to be effective: We must acknowledge that there are things behind the hate that must be understood before we can deal with the hate, and we must be willing to admit that people are fallible and often wrong, including ourselves. I also think we should realize that if a person has turned us off so thoroughly by this offensive speech we can't expect to get through to them if we respond in kind.

There are some easy traps to fall into if we accept the above model for dealing with others: It would be easy to fall into a trap condescension if we do not decide to first listen, then question, then understand, then speak. It's not that I would have people be indulgent of others and their eccentricities or offenses; I would have people accept that the other person is preferring a viewpoint that is more than the words they are using to present it. In other words, the other person is more than the one thing they are saying at that moment and that history of experience must be considered. Pity is another emotion or thought that I think has no place in these situations as it, too, muddies the purpose of conversation. I fall into that trap all too frequently and find myself dismissing others with pity rather than anger. But, that dismissal is just as egregious as the angered dismissal; it is, after all, still a dismissal. Finally, it would be all too easy to use a lumping mechanism with this model. In other words, people with this disability need more room to fit into a conversation, or people with this ideology will always be this kind of person. No, a one-size-fits-all approach is just as bad as refusing to listen to others, in the end.

So... what do YOU think?

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Viva la revolucion!

Daylight savings time is here! It's time to go back to lighter, though oddly heavier, topics. It's time for more crazy gardening.

I've been remiss in updating all of my loyal readers with progress on Hydrangea (Happily Yanking Dead Roots After Neutralizing Garden Exiles Athrillingly). Much has been done, much needs to be accomplished.

After two weeks of complainingly lugging concrete pavers from the back yard to the front yard, we managed to get the back plastic down on the entirety of the front yard and east side yard. The entire thing, yes indeed, the whole of it. It was hard work and it looks ridiculous right now but it is finished for the time being. I had already finished the west side beds with newspaper and mulch, only to discover that mulch is stupidly expensive. Which sucks because I had put out a request on Freecycle for newspaper and had driven all over the damn city picking them up. One woman confused me for a free recycling program and included ALL of her recycling, including things you can't recycle in the regular bins (phone books) and her junk mail. Thanks for that, lady. Oddly, most of the other Freecyclers did the same. I didn't know we changed the definition of "newspapers" to "anything you don't want to lug to the recycle bin/center." I wonder if that would work for me? Maybe I'll offer all of my old student papers on Freecycle, only I'll call them "treasury bonds." What do you think?

One lovely Freecycler gave me newspapers and newspapers only, including several issues of Poultry Times. I used those more than anything else to line the west beds, which is kind of funny because I have suddenly become obsessed with getting some chickens. Why? I don't know. I hate chickens. Really, I do. There was even a story in the local paper when I was a kid to prove it. Anyway, those beds are sufficiently smothered and awaiting decomposition. Actually, I am awaiting it, ever so patiently. Or, not.

Now it is on to the back yard. Instead of nurturing the bulbs I planted in the back moonscape, I decided to dig them all up and plant vegetables. I don't know why, I just did. This was after I had frenziedly gotten them into the ground one day a few months ago. Remember the screaming next door neighbors? On the day I had allotted myself to plant those stupid bulbs, my next door neighbor was calling over and over to get me to go with her to Target to return something for which she did not have a receipt. Apparently, you can only do that twice a year at Target and she had long since used her two times to return things. So, after attempting to get them into the ground and going with this neighbor to Target to help her return this ridiculous shirt, what happened? She lost the return voucher thingy five minutes after getting it. I'm not making this up, nor am I exaggerating. We walked over to the "Dollar Spot" across from the customer service desk and she, I don't know, dropped it? put it down and forgot about it? So, back we go to customer service to see if they will issue her a new one. This takes 45 minutes. During those 45 minutes I walked around and did the teensy shopping I needed to do (toilet paper) and, amazingly, ran into aforementioned neighbor's husband. He tells me not to tell his wife he is there because he was supposed to be there hours before, and I just sort of stare at him in wonderment and eventually wander back over to customer service to check on the voucher progress. The husband then comes up to the wife to talk to her, forgetting, it seems, that he was supposed to be there far earlier. They then have a full-on make-out session at the front of the store while I am pretending not to know them and becoming quite interested in the weird boxed wine on display. That was a fun day.

Obviously, the bulbs went into the ground in a somewhat haphazard manner. You would think, actually, that I bought some of that fascinating boxed wine to drink while I dug and to forget the drama I had just been a party to at Target. I admit nothing. So, vegetables? I'm in the process of digging up the bulbs that are coming up (you don't actually expect me to remember where the rest of them are, do you?) and replanting them in pots in preparation for getting the soil ready for corn, beans, okra and maybe some other stuff. I've discovered that picking up the dog poop before you bend over to dig is a very good idea. I'm about half way through and then will begin to, guess what? dig around and root out, well, roots of bad, bad, bad. There are plenty to go around back there, too.

So, the one good thing about being outside all of the time is that when a neighbor dies, you might get some free stuff. Our two doors-down neighbor died (at 91!) after having lived in that home since it was built in 1954. God love him! His son-in-law was putting out chicken wire, poles, tables, etc. on the curb and let me have it all for the low, low price of picking it up and taking it home. He also sold me a nice table and chairs and umbrella stand for $5. Is it wrong to be delighted by free stuff from a dead neighbor?

The entire reason I started writing this blog post was to relate a funny little conversation I had with my dad today (he's visiting from California). I had dragged him all over Dallas getting red clay and humus to make seed balls which we were happily making in the back yard when he told me that my seed balls were not of uniform size and it was freaking him out. I laughed and told him it was obvious which parent passed down the OCD gene/proclivity. He told me I could not possibly have OCD because my seed balls were all different sizes and I was putting them on the tray any which way instead of in ordered rows. His OCD is different from my OCD, so he thought I did not have the right kind of OCD. Wait, what? Yes, it's true: we had the battle for the real OCD. Can you possibly imagine something more OCD than that?

We did get the seed balls finished and will start our guerrilla gardening any day, now. I look forward to days of throwing seed balls onto abandoned lots and medians in the spirit of taking it back for the earth. Oh, who am I kidding? I just like the idea of being an outlaw gardener. So, there's that, there's seedlings propagating on a windowsill (oh, did I not mention those little darlings?) and there's a new vision for the back yard. Oh! and two compost piles. Maybe the next few stages of digging, amending, composting, planting, feeding, watering will be drama free. I can has?

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My feet may be small but my path is wide

In teaching philosophy I have the opportunity to teach the great social and ethical ideas that have survived through the ages. We read about different systems of government and varying theories of duty and rights and I give each one equal weight in my classes. When we read about utilitarianism it always presents itself so simply and as something that should be easy to follow. It makes sense that we would act in a way that promotes our greatest happiness and be allowed to do so as long as we do not harm others. The very basic principle of utility seems utterly doable.

Why couldn't we apply this greatest happiness principle to government, as the utilitarians would have us do? If we were to follow the dictates of the basic governmental function, as outlined by the natural philosophers (and plagiarized in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence!), then we would have an easy time of understanding the confines of government and law. Right? Seems simple enough. But where does harm begin and end? Aren't there harmful consequences from indirect action? Truthfully, how does utility translate to reality?*

I've been thinking about this a great deal lately as we hear about the evils of this "socialist" stimulus plan. So many people seem to think that anything related to money or economic policy in any government is only about taxes, nothing else; I suppose I am just having a hard time wrapping my mind around that idea because I do not have the luxury of having more money to be taxed in the first place. I am, once again, going to attempt to sell the piano that has been in my family for over 100 years to help make ends meet. I am also going to attempt to find a second job, something that will destroy any leisure I ever hoped to have. Just as I don't have the luxury of the money to be taxed, I also don't have the luxury of good health or reserves of energy. A second job will be very hard on me, physically. Of course, not having a life outside of work will be very hard on me mentally. But what other choice do I have? I don't want to lose my home and I want to be able to afford the thousands of dollars of co-pays I must pay every year to keep myself alive. Anything else is a luxury I cannot possibly afford.

I think there's more of a cost to this than others might realize, though. I was thinking about my ethical footprint in this world yesterday, and I would estimate that it is pretty high. I don't always act in a way that is ethically correct, but I do a pretty good job of keeping my integrity in the face of some fairly burdensome issues. So, I'd like to outline what I think my ethical footprint looks like. I'm not doing this to toot my own horn or make myself feel better; I am genuinely hoping this sheds some light on the greater issues that face people like me for the people who don't have these worries. Indulge me.

Whenever I am admitted to the hospital they admit me into the teaching service. That means that I have daily visits from medical students, interns and residents who ask me questions, read my chart and look at my body. One of the things I make sure they see is the Livedo Reticularis on my legs. I have had this condition for probably 20 years, yet it was never diagnosed and therefore never recognized as a sign of a more serious disease, APS. I went to the Mayo Clinic, M.D. Anderson, U.C.L.A. and everywhere in between before finally finding a doctor who took one look at it and knew immediately what the dangers where for a person who is complaining of horrific headaches and has this weird vascular condition. So, all of those students learn from my admittedly rare case; they learn about diseases that can kill or greatly reduce quality of life and they learn about a hopeful case of someone who has had these dread things happen and has still come out the other side with a meaningful life. They learn that a stroke patient doesn't have to be old and that strokes do not have to indicate a full stop. They learn, in short, how to save someone else's life.

You know, of course, that I teach philosophy at a community college. This semester there are three full time faculty and seven adjunct faculty teaching the philosophy classes at my school. The reason this is the case is because there simply is not enough funding to hire more full time faculty. I know I've harped on this a lot, but it is relevant to this post. As an adjunct I do not have guaranteed classes and could have my classes canceled at any time. After taxes and student loan payments, I made $9,044.60 for teaching last year. That's $10,000 less than my mortgage payments. I am lucky to have a trust payment every quarter that brings my total take home to around $23,000, plus we have Jon's paycheck. But he just had his already puny salary decreased, so that isn't helping us much lately. He works in the automotive industry, you see. After taxes, student loans and insurance deductions, our total take home pay is around $35,000 a year. After paying our mortgage co-pays for medications, co-pays and deductibles for medical care, we will have about $5,000 left over for food, utilities, gas, insurance, and car care. It's doable as long as nothing unexpected comes up. But we all know how likely that is when you have autoimmune diseases in one person and diabetes in the other.

I'm sure you're wondering why I continue to teach when it is so financially unrewarding. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have lost track of how many students have told me I changed their lives or that my class saved their life or kept them in school or my encouragement was the first they had ever received from a teacher. My students usually have not had the easiest road to education and have often spent their lives unacknowledged and unappreciated; I change that as much as I can in as many ways open to me. I've visited students in jail and I've sat with them in emergency rooms. I have listened to their troubles and talked them down from a bottle of pills and a slow sleep to death. I've helped them get out of abusive relationships and I've given them all the cash I had on me when I knew they had not eaten in days. I am and always will be their advocate in life.

I don't do all of this because I want recognition or a full time position; I do it because I believe it is part of the duty I agreed to when I agreed to teach. A couple of years ago I had a devastating and eye opening experience; I thought I lost a great deal in that experience, but I was wrong about that. Even though it was enormously painful and it ripped apart relationships in my life that I thought were important, it also led me to the discovery of true importance, true meaning and purpose. I temporarily believed that I was without the foundation I erroneously thought I had which forced me to evaluate my life in fundamental ways, ways that I had not considered for a long, long time. If a thing is important to me but can easily be taken away, is it a thing that can create meaning or value in my life? The confrontation of what actually existed with what I thought existed created the necessary space in my life to fill with honest reflection. For some reason, I hadn't realized before that experience that I do have a higher power to which I am accountable and anything that transgresses what I would have this power know of me is not something I should be doing or saying. That power, of course, is the collective of my students. They are my Other, the form that gently but adamantly counter-weighs my worst qualities. It isn't just because of them that I act in ways that are ethical, but they are the surest guideposts I know of to point me in the right directions. When I realized that my duty to people who are present and watching is also present and minded, life got a lot clearer and a lot happier. It freed me from the ambiguity of particulars and allowed me to live in the universal acknowledgment of that sweet spot of interaction.

What all of that means is that I do all I can to make sure my actions, even my private actions, conform to a strict ethical standard. I almost always give people the benefit of doubt, though it is at times more difficult than anything else I do or have done. I have become far, far less judgmental than I used to be, knowing that we all struggle in ways too infinite to measure. I am conscious of the choices I make when I buy things and do all I can to save resources and money. I have a tub full of rocks I have picked out of the soil by hand that I plan to use in our front yard for pathways; I did this and continue to do it because I not only can't afford gravel, but because I want to use what I already have and save the resources to be used by someone else. It is painstaking work, but it is worth it. I am going to plant a vegetable garden in a part of the backyard where I had planned on planting bulbs. If I can grow healthy vegetables I can give a large portion away to people who would not otherwise have fresh vegetables.

I feed the birds and squirrels, even though they dig in my plants. I compost everything, even dryer lint, so that I have less waste. I freecycle things rather than throwing them away. I would not ever pass a child or animal in need without doing all I could to help, as evidenced by our three dogs and five cats in our 1300 square foot home. I am going to be taking care of my elderly father when he moves in with us this summer. I try to smile and say hello to every person I pass, though I am often lost in my own thoughts and fail at this one miserably. This is evidenced by my rheumatologist telling me just yesterday that I looked right at her at Walgreens and didn't recognize her. If I had actually seen her I would have recognized her; as usual, my head was in the clouds. I give each of my students a personal card at the end of the semester telling them how much I value them as a student and person. I write pages of comments on their papers so that they can learn to write better papers and I allow them to rewrite their papers as many times as they wish until they (hopefully) get the grade they want and deserve. I am odd about insisting that they learn something in my classes. Finally, and this is one no one knows, I leave strangers notes telling them they're more valuable than they know and that someone loves them. I've been doing it for years and not even my husband or mother know about it. I'm reluctant to give that secret away, but I am attempting to find complete transparency.

That is my ethical footprint. Now, why have I decided to lay it all out for all to see? Because I think I offer the world something of value. I think I am worth more than the money I earn or the taxes I pay. Yet, there are many people who don't agree. They may not know they don't agree, but they do not think I am valuable if they think that our measure in society is based on our financial contribution, or that someone like me does not deserve the benefit of a caring society. What this means, realistically and practically, is that if we do away with things like medicare and medicaid, or if we do not fix the way corporate insurance runs our healthcare, I will be one of the thousands of people who will either be put out onto the street to die or will be euthanized by people who have embraced the idea that if you cannot produce something worth bartering for money, then you do not deserve to live. Don't kid yourself, people: Your theory would destroy my reality because it would, quite literally, kill me. But not just me, many, many people will die of hunger, of exposure, of lack of medical care, of crime, of neglect. Do you know people who are perfect? Do you know people who are able to do and be everything necessary to care for themselves, utterly alone, for the entirety of their lives? I don't.

I'm going to give you the benefit of doubt and assume you hadn't realized just how entirely destructive libertarian theory, or what is being called conservative politics, is to people like me. I am going to assume that you assumed that the people who would be left behind are the ones who refuse to work or are too lazy to do their part. I still don't understand why you'd throw any human being away, but I will at least allow for the fact that an ethical footprint as large as mine gives me a bit more consideration in this equation. Now, give all of us the benefit of doubt. Allow us to be human, to be unlucky, and to be a part of a community, not just a money powered economy. Give yourself a larger ethical footprint by embracing the idea that all people have value and are more important than that new car you don't think you will ever have or the second home, or that vacation in Mexico. When all is said and done, would you rather have sipped margarita's by the pool or shared the burden of frailty we all are heir to by allowing me and people like me to live in your world? If you chose the latter, take that first step into a larger future and just say no to libertarian economic theory. Your future self will thank you for it.

*Utilitarianism is the womb that birthed our modern day libertarian movement.

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I doubt that the picture was taken by that blogger, but I chose it because I liked his post. I guarantee you that the man who writes that blog and I would disagree on many things; but we can and do live in the same world and we will continue to do so successfully as long there are people like him, people who would rather hand out warm coats to the homeless than stand on a street corner protesting homosexuality.

Sick

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Need the damn gallbladder out, which is not as simple as it sounds. We'll see what the plan is tomorrow. Once upon a time they told me they'd have to check me into the pokey for a week for any surgery. I'm hoping that has changed since I no longer take Coumadin. In the mean time, pity me and my guts of spewing all over the place.

Did I mention? uuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.