Opining Online

For years my daughters have given me truly fantastic gifts, especially for Mother’s Day and my birthdays. These have included trips to Scotland, wonderful dinners, cards, photos, surprise visits… the list is long. *

What makes each gift special is that so much thought and planning (conspiracy!) goes into each one. Though an overseas trip is always a good gift, the one to Scotland was awesome because it was a trip to see my sister. Plus, they checked with my boss first to make sure I could get the time off AND announced the trip with a surprise party at my workplace on my birthday.

After the Scotland trip, I was informed that was “it” and that they would be starting over the next year with handprints on paper plates. I must confess I’m a tad bit disappointed that they didn’t actually do that.  

Yesterday, I got an out-of-the-blue gift from one of them. We’d discussed our tastes in music earlier this year when we drove to S Carolina together. (Not an entirely uneventful trip.) Our tastes overlap somewhat, but we both love types of music that the other just doesn’t quite “get”.

She had already sent me the cable I needed to hook my new smart phone to my car’s audio system merely because I mentioned I’d like to have it.

But… back to yesterday’s gift. Two music CDs. One of them is filled with songs we both like; music I’m quite sure she already had on her hard drive. It’s the other that is special because, with the possible exception of one song, I’m pretty sure she had to search, buy, and download them.

She made me my dream “Music To Drive By” CD.

Now while I’d like to believe she reads my blog daily and remembers posts from over a year ago, even my daughters aren’t THAT good. I’d sent her a link to that post this past August prior to traveling to S Carolina together to… shall we say… emphasize our differing tastes in music.

Thank you, my dear daughter, for paying attention.

I’m sure that I will never be writing a post like this one, though I submit that buying a gift for an old woman is easier than buying one for an old man every day of the week. Oh, it wouldn’t hurt to remember I like scotch (and wine, of course) as much as that old fart does but I’m not quite as particular about the age. 

*Disclaimer: I did nothing as a parent to deserve this kind of treatment. I’m just very, very fortunate.

TCU 36, Boise State 35.

My dad won!

The turnout for the run-off election was amazing — around 28% of the registered voters showed up and 68% of them voted for my dad! The mayor’s race was the only thing on the ballot.

I’m really good at breaking promises to myself. One of them was that I wasn’t going to post more photos of my grandchildren. Oh, don’t think I worried about boring the internet… I worried about overwhelming it with cuteness.

But then I got this photo in an email today. I bought the doll she’s chewing on for her before she was born, hoping… no, intending, that it would become her “lovey”. I accidentally stumbled upon the doll that serves as her older sister’s “lovey” and it has meant a lot to me that she loves that doll so much.

“Lovey” status isn’t quite there yet, but I’d say maybe it’s well on the way!

NOTE: The following is me thinking out loud, organizing my thoughts, and a journal of sorts. This disclaimer is meant to serve as notice that none of the following thoughts are set in concrete. It’s all a learning experience.

My father is running for mayor of his small town for the 2nd time. I wasn’t involved much the first time other than getting a kick out of snagging a hat and a pen with his name on them.

This time my father asked me to help him. And while he truly has nothing but the well-being and survival of the little town he lives in at heart, he was also at a bit of a loss when I asked him just exactly what it was he wanted to accomplish.

I sat across from him in his living room and said “Why do you want to be mayor? Convince me to vote for you.” I made notes of what he said then and asked lots and lots of questions. 

The first time he ran he was facing an incumbent who got enough votes to avoid a run-off. People adjust and anyone proposing to change the status quo faces an uphill battle. Thus, incumbents have an advantage.

This time, there is no incumbent running and there were four people asking the voters to give them the job. Oh wait… because I am totally biased let me rephrase that – there were three people asking for the POSITION and one asking for the job.

To be completely honest, one of those three who asked for the position is thoroughly naive, well-meaning, and would probably have performed decently, if with less competence than needed. I told my Dad several times that if he didn’t win, I hoped this man did.   

Out of the four, my Dad got the most votes – around 38% – but not enough to avoid a run-off with the guy who got around 22% of the vote.

Thus, 40% of the original vote is theoretically up for grabs.  

Let’s backtrack to my question to my Dad: why do you want to be mayor? His first answers were truly political. “I can do a better job.” “I’m more qualified than the other candidates.” “I have experience.”

But… after some not completely pleasant conversations it boiled down to “I want to, and know how to, fix the water, drainage, and street problems.”

AHA! I can work with that. Everybody in town wants those problems solved, so all the candidate has to do is convince the voters that he knows how to and can fix them. Now that we’ve identified the problem to be solved, all I’ve got to do is convince the voters that all those “political” answers are true. This candidate is more qualified, experienced, and can do a better job than the others.

Those issues are also indisputably something local government should be concerned with. 

One of the candidates that did not make the run-off presented himself as a union-affiliated progressive with some (rather unrelated) experience. The other presented himself as more or less a blank slate with limited, but possibly more leadership-related experience. The two in the run-off are more equally matched — neither are progressives or blank slates. They both have experience, though one of them (not my father) also has an easily identifiable financial interest in one aspect of city services.

The two candidates that most prominently campaigned on the city acting to change something are my father and the progressive. Obviously, the greater number of voters think basic infrastructure is the area where action is needed vs. the other’s idea of getting federal grants for beautification. (Of course, I’m not biased… what makes you think that?)

The progressive didn’t make the run-off. My father’s competition in the run-off does have some experience but is unfocused.

As one of the unofficial campaign managers for my father, I’m rather flummoxed on how to appeal to those who voted for the two candidates that didn’t make the run-off.  At the same time, I am thinking that if those who voted for my father show up again, that will be enough.

So… the run-off campaign is more complicated. How do I motivate those who originally voted for my father to turn out again? How do I motivate those who voted for the candidates who didn’t make the run-off to vote for my father instead of his opponent?

The other unofficial campaign manager got unilaterally vetoed on the issue of ever mentioning an opponent in the general election. All the campaign materials focused on the issues of water/drainage/streets and the knowledge/experience to fix those problems.

My gut instinct is to continue that focus. The other unofficial campaign manager is suggesting “politeness” in asking specifically the voters who voted for the two losing candidates for their votes, while thanking those who voted for my father and suggesting that those who voted for his run-off opponent vote “as they wish”.

Can we say “wimpy”? Of course we can. But is that right? Maybe it is gracious instead.

I should also say that I think my father’s success was mostly due to his and his supporters going door to door asking for votes. That tactic really has little to do with issues. Neither of us unofficial campaign managers had anything at all to do with that. (We’re both recluses.) Our focus was on newspaper ads and printed campaign material. AND on getting the candidate to present a coherent and easily repeated message. Oh wait… that was just me.

Bottom line for my father is that my method wins because I’m the only one of his unofficial campaign managers that will provide him with ad copy and campaign materials that he can actually use.

But… I worry that I’m wrong in my methods and way of political thinking. Perhaps my opposing (though less mechanically capable) unofficial campaign manager is right. Are appearances… politeness (in politics???) and personalities more important than issues?

The one thing both unofficial campaign managers agree on is that our candidate would serve the interests of this small town best. He has nothing to personally gain by winning. His status is secure. So is that of his family. And, since it’s a small town, it should be noted that family status is secure regardless which of the two run-off candidates win. It’s not that they are related, but it’s not that they are not unrelated either. If you don’t understand that, you are  not from a small town!

To me, that’s simply one more reason not to mention the other candidate in any campaign materials.

On a purely personal level, I wish my father had never entered this race. I figure he’s got another 10-13 years to live and I selfishly want him spending that time leisurely with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

On the other hand, he wants to do this. He asked for my help. I’ve got to give him my best… and hope that what I think is best (if he agrees) will win. Because he wants to win, I do to.

My my… is there anything sweeter than a young gentleman dancing with a young lady?

It was a lovely wedding – the bride beautiful, the groom handsome, and the location magnificent.

Someone said they’d been told you never really feel like a mother-in-law until you have a son-in-law because having a daughter-in-law was just like having another daughter. 

Since I’ve known for several years now that having a son-in-law is like having a son, I’m thrilled to know that it works the same way with a daughter-in-law!

Welcome to the family!

My 3 year old granddaughter visited a fire station today. This is an account of the conversation with her Mom on the way home:

I asked her what she should do if her clothes are on fire, and she said “put on different clothes and put the other ones in the hamper!” When I asked her if she’d like to be a firefighter one day, she said “no thank you, I’m going to be Sleeping Beauty because I already have that dress.”

Now, you must admit there’s a certain practicality in her thinking.

It is for me anyway — it requires thinking!

I cannot quite imagine the work that goes into a large campaign because the one I’ve been working on is for mayor of a very small town. There are no large events to plan, not much travel (gotta get to the county seat occasionally), and only one reporter to deal with. He’s a nice guy who asks questions by mail, and so far the same ones of each candidate.

It’s all very low key although my father is one of four candidates. Yet even in a small town that one thinks they know a bit about, there’s still research and planning to be done. One of the main questions I needed answered was “Why do you want to be mayor?” After that got distilled down to one or two sentences, it was a little easier to put together some campaign rhetoric.

For a small, low-budget campaign, I don’t think we’ve done too badly. There are signs up, there are campaign cards being distributed, newspaper ads are in the works, and we’re trying this social media thing out. The campaign has a Facebook page and email! It will be very interesting to see what kind of response that gets.

Roland Bush for Mayor

Promote Your Page Too

First is a self-portrait of an Apache Longbow pilot taken somewhere over Iraq circa 2003. Handsome, isn’t he?

Second is the eyepiece under the fancy shades. Just thinking about trying to use that is giving me a headache right now.

I got to see an Apache Longbow up close once. On the ground of course. Even though it’s a two-seater, no civilian passengers allowed. (IIRC, no military ones either unless they are also Apache pilots or training to be one.)

During Operation Desert Storm, I also got to take a tour of (parts of) a B-52. And because I live near an AF base, I get to see A10 Warthogs flying above my house occasionally. Years ago, it was common to see KC-10s regularly. Rarely do the B-52s fly near my house, but I do remember feeling and hearing them when they got home from Desert Storm as they took a celebratory tour of the area.

But I’m fascinated by helicopters because… well, because to me they still look like they shouldn’t be able to fly!

Third are some Apache helicopters in action, set to the theme from Airwolf.

I admit it, I liked that show.

I’ve let this place go, haven’t I?

Usually when I do this it’s because I’m vacationing in the comments on other blogs, but that’s not the case this time. I’ve actually been away from home for 10 of the 20 days since my last post. It’s not that I’ve lacked a connection to the internet, but that I really really am not flexible when it comes to using laptops or other people’s computer setups.

Oh yes, I am spoiled by my messy, but convenient for me, little office space.

I’ve also read four novels recently. Don’t worry; nothing particularly uplifting or literary. It’s just that for the last 10 years or so, I’ve read mostly non-fiction and a lot of that could be considered educational. That was a major change from my previous habit of consuming 3 or 4 novels a week.

I spent the Labor Day weekend with two of my grandchildren. It’s so very, very nice to have them only a 3 hour drive away instead of 20 hours. The 5 month old is just the sweetest baby. She’s fun and easy to care for. When she’s awake, she’s constantly cooing, laughing, or enjoying her new found manual dexterity.

The 3 year is not so easy, but she’s definitely fun. The theme of the visit was words beginning with P. She put together a 24 piece puzzle by herself. Her parents didn’t believe that I didn’t help her beyond verbal suggestions, but they should have. Did they really think *I* was going to actually get down on the floor with her? HAHA!

The other words were Papa, pizza, and piano. She has a little notebook that she wrote all those words in. There’s still a little work to be done in always pointing the z in the proper direction. I like the notebook because I found out that chalk dust really does a number on my nose and throat. She tends to erase her work with enthusiasm.

I was home for a few days and got word that my father was in the ICU with pneumonia. He’s 87 and a two-year lung cancer survivor, so that was scary news. I thought my step-mother would need help caring for him when he got home because he seemed really weak in the hospital.

Well, she didn’t because by the 2nd day he was home he had pretty much resumed his normal activities. Though the bug he got knocked him down quickly, modern antibiotics knocked it out almost as fast.

One of his current normal activities is running for mayor of his small town. I stayed another two days caught up in those discussions and helping a little with the campaign.   

That reminded me that my husband and I have to get absentee ballots this year because we’ve got a wedding in S Carolina to attend the weekend before the election.

One of the best parts of my trip was seeing my 3-year-old granddaughter’s reactions to her new baby sister. I wondered if she’d be jealous, would she want to be treated “like a baby” or would she imitate her mother’s behavior with her dolls?

Issie is, I think, the ideal Big Sister. Here she is holding Little Sister:

Awe is the best word to describe most of her reaction. Her first words upon seeing Penny were “She’s so cute!” These were followed soon by “Can I hold her?”

The first time Penny was laid on the playmat on the floor, Issie immediately got a book (about princesses, of course) and read it to her.

Issie also tries to comfort Penny when she’s fussy. This is so sweet to watch… but Big Sister doesn’t go overboard. When her efforts failed one day, she said “Bye bye” and walked away. I guess you would have to have been there to get how funny that was.

Overall, Issie has been much more interested in imitating her mother’s behavior than in wanting to be treated as a baby. She’s shown no signs of feeling that she needs to be a baby to get attention. And… while her imitations of her mother are hilarious, they just won’t get any play on the internet from me! Let’s just say boobs are involved and leave it at that, OK?

It was difficult for me to leave both these babies after having spent over a month with them. There’s nothing so sweet as holding a newborn or having a 3-year-old whisper a secret in your ear.

I am bothered that I have 3 other grandchildren that I’ve not been able to spend as much time with. This will have to change!

And I’ve got stories to tell. Too many for one post, so I’ll just put up a photo of the reason for the trip to Arizona:

My youngest grandchild, Penelope, was born on April 6 and I think she’s beautiful! That’s a completely unbiased assessment.

Along with more photos of the baby and her big sister, I’ve got stories about my Amazon account being hacked, my car breaking down, a stinky motel room, a horrible hospital stay, rigid unreasonable health insurance rules, my husband’s 27 hour Greyhound bus trip. Let’s just say it was all interesting.

I really like the sentiments expressed in this post at Casaubon’s Book:

Father and Mother and Uncle John…: Tribalism and a Place at the Table

My granddaughter, Issie, just had the perfect birthday celebration for a princess-obsessed 3 year old.

First, getting to spend three days at an amusement park with the undivided attention of both parents is pretty awesome. What child wouldn’t be having fun? Add to that the attentiveness and playfulness of the Disney character actors.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the adventure:

I thought it was pretty awesome that she wore her Halloween Cinderella dress on one day. I wish I could have done that! I plan to ask her to wear it and tell me Cinderella’s story when I visit next month.

Her favorite rides were the Tea Cups and the Ferris Wheel. I never liked the Ferris Wheel because I didn’t like getting stopped on top during the loading and unloading. This one had a cage, not like the old (ancient?) ones I remember, so maybe it would be better. But I always loved Tea Cup rides.

And it’s such fun to see how much she’s grown On her first birthday, wearing the cake was more fun than eating it!

This post – Yrs. faithfully - reminded me of the occasional odd electronic conversation I used to have with my youngest daughter in the ’90s. Remember the ’90s?

(Note: the memories he invoked have little to do with his essay other than the importance of the people doing the communicating. There’s much more there than what I reminisce about here.)

She used to send messages to me in my *office* via my printer from her bedroom. Yes, we had a home network facilitated by Cat5 cables (and Windows 95/98) strung from one end of the house to the other. These were not installed, they merely laid on the floor, also facilitating tripping and making vacuuming and mopping more fun. Not that I did a lot of vacuuming or mopping.

Believe it or not, we had 3 telephone lines into the house in those days. One was the primary voice number, it’s secondary line being the daughter’s line. The other was another “line 1″ for either fax or modem, mostly modem. A 56k modem which usually worked at 24k… because the lines were noisy. But we were wired, folks… wired.

My older daughter communicated through writing also, but not nearly as easily. There’s 6 1/2 years difference in their ages… and the ability to communicate a passing thought was much easier for the younger one than for the older, I think… because the younger one had the electronic advantage.

Now, through email and Facebook, we can all share our immediate thoughts much more easily and readily than ever before. Not to mention photos. I love digital photos!

Mr. Kinsell writes:

Properly used, the communications technology we now enjoy makes a whole lot of things easier and less time-consuming so that we can actually spend more time and energy on what’s really important.

Exactly. The key words there? “Properly used” and “what’s really important”.

Until yesterday, this was “the case of the disappearing cell phone battery” but now we are even more puzzled and in even greater need of someone of Nancy Drew’s sleuthing abilities.

My husband is known for many things, but not for his new-fangled electronic gadget knowledge. A little over a week ago he brought his cell-phone to me and impatiently and petulantly asked why it wouldn’t turn on.

My first response was “duh, the battery is dead” so I plugged it in to his charger, but didn’t hear the cutely annoying ditty his phone always played when plugged in. And, there was no “charging” indicator.

Hmmm… I said to myself. (I say this a lot, but that’s not important right now.)

Drawing on my years of electronic gadget knowledge, I decided that we should try the time-honored “trick” of pulling the battery out and putting it back in again. But, being a physically mechanically challenged individual, I couldn’t get the cover off the battery.

Where brute force is required to remove something, no one tops my husband (once a Marine always a Marine) and he said, “Give that to me.” So, I did and he got the cover off. I watched him do it.

And then he said, “There’s no battery in here.” Of course, I thought he simply didn’t recognize the shape and form of modern day batteries, expecting to find a 9-volt in there.

But, when he held the phone up where I could see it better, I discovered to my amazement that he was right! There was no battery in the phone!

With the power of a flash of lightning, I immediately knew that the lack of a battery was why the phone was NOT working. I’m amazing that way.

So, I ask dearest hubby why he took the battery out. He assures me he did not remove the battery. Then… because we are both old and doddering fools with less than perfect eyesight and reflexes… we figure the battery must have popped out when he took the cover off.

We were sitting in my office (otherwise known as the cave with the internet connection) when this took place and I’m a bit embarrassed to note that said battery could have popped off and been hidden anywhere.

Yep, my “office” defines clutter, trash, disarray, chaos, confusion, disorder, mess, litter, hodgepodge, and general mess. Being rational people, we figured that any place with more than an inch of undisturbed dust was not a likely spot for the battery to have landed. Thus our search area was somewhat defined.

We looked behind and underneath furniture, inside crates, laundry baskets, and other containers of “stuff” and we didn’t find the battery. We did find a discarded phone with a battery of the same size fitting the same charger and got the phone working again.

Yet, we remained puzzled. We ruminated over the time lapsed since the last call from or to that phone and who might have had access to it during that time. We called the one person we thought might know of a new trend of stealing batteries from phones… and endured the derision of the common sense thinking that suggested they would simply steal the entire phone.

And, we carefully examined the list of pranksters we know. Oh, yes… there are people we know who would delight in seeing us puzzled, bemused, confused, bewildered, baffled, rattled, and addled.

The worst part of this was that my dear loving untrusting husband considered me the prime suspect in this case. Maybe it was not quite so often, but it seemed to me that he asked at least seven times a day if I was yet ready to tell him where the battery was.

I swore, upon pain of everlasting blisters on my left little toe, that I had nothing to do with the disappearance of his cell phone battery. Finally, I think he came to believe me.

The most logical explanation he could come up with otherwise was that one of us was sleep-walking and had, um… perhaps, accidentally removed the battery. Except that he obviously thought that since I like sleeping so much, it must have been me doing the sleep-walking.

Not a chance, I countered. If I really wanted to mess with him I’d have hidden his keys and glasses. He countered that was silly because he couldn’t find those anyway. I had to concede he had a good point.

So… we come to yesterday. Saturday mornings my hubby and his biker friends regularly gather for breakfast, gossip, and tall tales. I regularly skip this meeting preferring sleep.

On the way home from this meeting… Mr. Coordinated (aka dear hubby) drops his cell phone in a public restroom. Now, he swears he saw it fall… and that that back did not fall off. He states, for the record, that when he was through with his business he put the cell phone back in it’s holder and that the battery cover was not loose.

A very few minutes later while on the interstate, he tries to make a call. Nothing happens. The phone is deader than a door nail. Knowing himself not to be a virtuous battery charger, he plugs the phone into the car charger.

Uh Oh. No melodious response, no lights, no cute graphic of a battery charging. Being a cautious man, he pulls over before he takes the cover off to discover there is — again – no battery in his phone.

Obviously this is not a fluke, as there is no sign of good luck to be found in this mystery.

Upon finding that a replacement battery cost $48 (since we’d run out of superflous phone batteries), my darling decided to purchase a new phone complete with battery for $29.95.    

If the battery in this new phone stays where it’s supposed to be, I supposed we’ll have to conclude that the other (refurbished, mind you) phone was haunted in some way.

UPDATE: One of the batteries has appeared in the comments. This is truly amazing, folks.

Sometime around the 7th of April, I will be the fortunate grandmother of a newborn granddaughter.

Her 19 week sonogram showed her to be perfect and healthy. I’m anxiously awaiting my grandma cuddle time with her as well as wondering what joy I will experience in watching her 3 year old sister interact with her newborn baby sister.

Until today, we all wished for a baby boy… but we all wished for that perfect and healthy even more. And now, after a few hours I find it difficult to think of this child as anything other than a perfect and healthy girl, though as recently as last week I thought of a perfect and healthy boy.

It does not matter. The most awesome and inspiring thing about having a child is the inability to imagine life without them. Once born, once cuddled, once held it is as that child has been a part of your life forever.

So, even though in reality it’s been only 30+ years that my daughter has been in my life… it feels wonderfully as if it is forever. And with each child my daughter bears, forever is extended exponentially, geometrically, and beyond.

Love cannot be explained by science.

My husband, my Uncle Willie, and several cousins I’m going to have to get photos of in uniform.

Cassandra at Villianous Company has a nice roundup of USMC Birthday posts. Check it out and donate to Valour IT while you’re there.

Halloween just isn’t a big deal for us since we have no young’uns living here and have had no trick or treaters in the last 5 years. The last thing we need is a bowl of candy sitting around for us to eat. And we would. We are not that strong.

This year of not having Thanksgiving or Christmas plans is an example of what’s going to happen occasionally since we share our children and grandchildren with other families. It often works out that we get one or the other and we have no problem exchanging Christmas gifts at Thanksgiving.

So, for me there is no big Thanksgiving celebration to get in the way of Christmas shopping. It will all have to be done in time to allow for shipping, so I might as well start now.

Especially, since I got a call this morning from one daughter who informed she’d just found the perfect Christmas gift for me and already purchased it. Another daughter sent out the Christmas/birthday wish list for a granddaughter today too. I really appreciate these lists because it’s hard to keep up with what they already have and neither set of grandparents or aunts and uncles want to send duplicate gifts.

Thus I have been wasting time perusing Amazon and other toy sellers. And you know what? I’m not that impressed by most of the items. Far too many of the toys for the 3-5 age range are not interactive, or would likely be boring after used once or twice. Far too many of the toys for 2 year olds are still listed as appropriate for 5 year olds.

Also, just how comfortable should a parent or grandparent be purchasing a puzzle of the U.S. that contains only 45 pieces??

I am having fun. I’ve found the absolute perfect gift for one grandchild and some pretty good ones for the others. Of course, I’ll keep looking because that’s my gift to myself! That, and trying to figure out just how much I can get away with in the way of musical instruments and chemistry sets.