Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. Trouble-Maker was with his friends. He called and told me that he was going to do stuff for Mother's day with Lisa and Nate's mom because they deserve a special Mother's day. Then he told me "It's not like it's a special day for you Mom". He loves to hurt me. That was really mean.

Pat is still down is SoCal with no end in site. I don't want to call them because I don't want to talk to them. Pat doesn't answer the cell phone. I need him and I hate him for not being here but he's needed down there.

Robert

My nephew killed himself last night. I had to call Pat at work and tell him. Trouble-Maker still went to to Sea Scouts. He doesn't care about his family. His friends always come first. Pat is driving down now to be with them for who knows how long. I am mad at Robert for what he did to Butch. I will miss Pat. We've not been separated like this in the course of our marriage. I feel selfish for wanting him when I know Butch needs him.

Book Review - Reagan and Thatcher

I'm a conservative, which is a daring statement to make nowadays. I have been since I my father explained Democrats and Republicans to me during the 1984 presidential race. No he did not influence me. My brother, who got the talk at the same time, is more liberal than Kruschev.

While Reagan is not my pick for number one president of all time (ask and you'll be shocked) He is in my top 5. So I wanted to read this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reagan and Thatcher, A Political Marriage was a survey of their relationship during their respective times in power as well as providing a background of their lives before they came to power. The information is taken from speeches, documents, events of the time, and phone conversation records between the two leaders. While their relationship was mainly political, they shared a close personal bond as well that was broken only by Reagan's diagnosis with Alzheimer's disease. This book engaged me, but I don't think I'd buy a copy for my personal library.

Kipper the Dog

This kids show has entranced my youngest son Bun. It is the story of Kipper, a brown dog, and his various friends. His best friend is Tiger, a grey dog, and he also has, for friends, Jake, Pig and Arnold. Mouse lives with Pig, and he had pet gerbil named Roly Poly in one episode.

Kipper is an unusual show for kids. It's very quiet and nothing too bad ever happens. Pat has a problem with one episode, when Mouse joins the cast, and Mouse is seen washing her bottom with Kipper's toothbrush. Later on Kipper brushes his teeth with the brush. Pat always watches it, the squirms and complains about the affair. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I enjoy reading the books to the kids because the illustrations are simple and to the point. The pictures focus on Kipper and whatever he is interacting with at the moment. No backgrounds and no borders. My kids follow along with the story better this way because there's nothing to confuse them with.

4 Years Ago

Pat had rotator cuff surgery on May 5 2005. That was a very hard day for him. Not only did he have surgery, obviously, he almost died. He given muscle relaxants during the course of surgery. His surgery took longer than expected so naturally he was given more of the relaxants. He woke up and they sent him home within 1/2 hour. His surgery was at the end of the day at the surgicenter and the nurses and attendants were anxious to go home. His doctor called in the evening to check on Pat, and to have him start doing some exercises to prevent scar tissue from building up. We raised his hand over his head, and his heart rate plummeted. He started going into shock and I raced him to the emergency room. In the truck he fell into my lap. I had to get the emergency room people to get a gurney to get him into the room. His heart rate was 30 BPM. Yes, thats what it was. They gave him medicine to counteract the muscle relaxant, to raise his heart rate and to get him out of shock. A few hours later we brought him home.

Shoemaker's Children

"A shoemaker's children go barefoot", the old proverb goes, "and doctor's wives die young." I would like to ammend this. LAN administrators wives go computerless. Our computer has been on the fritz for well over a year. It started when Norton did an update on our anti-virus program. We were running a firewall and the new Norton was incompatible with the firewall program. To fix the program Pat had to uninstall the firewall, uninstall the anti-virus, go through the registry to manually remove all instances of the Norton program, then reinstall the anti-virus. Understandably, he didn't want to have ANYTHING to do with fixing the computer after this and it's now suffering from a terminal illness. The blue screen of death comes up hourly, and most of the children's games wont load because it says they aren't compatible with windows, even though they were a year ago. I would like to kill the computer, to take the 22 rifle and put a slug though its mother board. Perhaps then Pat would get a new one.

Garbanzo Beans

So while I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, I like to add these options to our menu. I don't like to snack on chips or cookies that much, with the exception of Cheetos Hot Chips. What fills the need for snack food for me, at the moment, are these garbanzo beans whose recipe I got from Vive Le Vegan. I always keep a bowl of these in the refrigerator. I make them 3 cans at a time and they last two to three days. I add a teaspoon of pepper to the mix to spice them up a bit.