Friday morning's musing's

Friday, December 29, 2006

Another couple days have past and it seems that I have gotten out of my writing habit on-line. Not helpful, under the circumstances. Now that I am maintaining a single blog again, my focus will change slightly so that I don’t find myself regretting having said “this” or “that”. I don’t that that is bad, necessarily, but one of the original intents was to just mentally unload someplace where I could reflect on my thoughts while sharing them with folks I trust, not just keep a running track of daily activities, but it has taken on a life of its own, to some extent, and so I’m following that out in a manner of speaking.

Over the past several days I have had some very tough bouts with nausea that often hit while we are traveling in the car. I’m not usually driving now and though that’s been uncommon for us, so has this nausea. I’ve always been a passenger who could look back while the car is being driven and not get sick. I could read while someone else drove no problem. Now? Not a chance. Spend the bulk of our travels now with my eyes closed and the window slightly open to feel the fresh air on my head in hopes of minimizing the sick feeling that seems inescapable. I also get this feeling at home occasionally as well and simply have to lie down until it lets up. Some times I can sleep, other times I just close my eyes and listen to life go on around me. I’d love to have some answers to this one. Of course, I should also remember that each time I’ve asked for answers in the past year, I’ve been given them and I’ve nearly always wanted to give them back, so maybe I’m better off not knowing…feeling somewhat damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

Missy was gone yesterday (Thursday) until around 4ish when we picked her up from a sleep over/play date with one of her best friends. Wednesday night, after dropping her off, Josh said he wanted to play Twister when we got home…not sure where that came from, but when we got home, we got the game down from the shelf and all three of us played a couple games of Twister and a game of Trouble. I found it amazing that I won the two games of Twister I played, not having played it in several years and not confident that I’d be even able to actually play it to begin with.
To recall Wednesday, one of Missy’s girlfriends had spent Tuesday afternoon, evening and night with us and so come Wednesday, the girls wanted to go to the friend’s house for a night as well, taking turns, so to speak, so after talking amongst ourselves a bit and to her mom, we agreed to the second overnight and the girls prepared for the trek to the other house. When Missy has play dates, depending on who they are, Joshy sometimes feels and/or is left out of the bulk of the playing and it becomes our responsibility to pick up the slack there and keep him occupied if he’s not enjoying a computer game or watching a video during the play date and this week was no exception. A good part of my time was spent being referee and equalizer so that he wasn’t feeling left out while also trying to safeguard the girl’s time together, something they referred to as “quality time together”…a phrase not learned here, unfortunately, and not necessarily a preferable description of their time playing together, but I suspect I know it’s origin and if I’m correct in my assumption then it’s understandable to have become part of the shared language. I just kept an open ear to its use and toned it down when I felt it was becoming a common phrase.

Missy needed to get measured and sized for a dress for her cousin Angel’s wedding in April on Easter weekend so we went to the Roseville Galleria where a dress outlet is for the wedding dress and bride’s maids dresses, and we had her measured there. I waited with Joshy in the car as the girls went with CC into the shop and proceeded to pick out future prom and formal dresses…CC thought it was cute…I on the other hand…never mind.
Anyway, we went to the Galleria for that purpose and found that the store was not IN the mall but ACROSS from the mall, but since we were all hungry and I was sick from the ride, we went to the food court and grabbed a late lunch. Food does seem to calm my nausea, weirdly enough. I ate food from a Japanese grill and found it very tasty and more healthy than most of my food choices there. After eating we ventured over to the afore mentioned bridal shop, got the measurement done and headed over to the friend’s house for Missy to spend the afternoon and night. I always have a hard time when she’s away from us; I’m uncomfortable, somewhat on-edge and listening for the phone to ring so we can go get her. As it was, she had a very good time and stayed up late talking and playing and my concern was for naught. But let’s also keep in mind that if Missy is spending the night at someone’s house that means that Joshy will have to sleep in their room alone…only furthering his current need to not be alone, must be with Mommy, must sleep and cuddle in Mom’s bed. I decided not to fight this particular evening’s battle and told Josh he could sleep in our bed with us and as expected, he slept great and CC and I woke up continually. I woke up yesterday around 8ish and CC was gone already on errands, one of which was taking the van to the repair shop to see if they would fix the heater fan which had stopped working fairly recently and given how cold it has now become up here in the mornings, a heater is as much a necessity as an air conditioner is in the summer. So she took it to them and it cost about $45 for them to locate the disconnected wire and re-connect it. At least she has a warm vehicle again. It’s averaging about 30 degrees in the mornings here, and though I know many of you are experiencing much colder temps than that, it’s generally pretty relative. Cold is cold in my book.
Anyway, she got her morning errands done which also included taking Shadow in for a bath, cleaning and nail-clipping. We got Shadow in our first year of marriage. If I recall correctly, CC brought her home one day after work in November/December of 1989, the year we were married. If you do the math, Shadow’s in her 17th year. She’s become pretty frail, as would be expected, and is a bit more on the irritable side than had been her life’s disposition. Her fur had become somewhat matted on both sides and they had to spend some extra time getting it combed through since it looks like she can no longer clean and care for herself as she used to. It’s going to require us to step up our attention to her cleanliness and coat and such instead of expecting her to keep it up, as most all younger cats do. I’m not sure how long we’ll have her, given her age, but if it was up to us, well you know how pets are…you want to keep them forever and you don’t like to think about the inevitable. I’ve talked to both kids and the wife, for that matter, about the normal longevity of a house cat so that there is some preparation for what we will undoubtedly face eventually. It’s not a favorite topic but it does get addressed from time to time.

While she was gone and Joshy was still asleep, I made a small breakfast and chilled on the couch and watched some of the History Channel. The program finishing was on the very end of the 2nd World War and Hitler’s bunker and subsequent suicide and the following program was on Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s two sons. They were unquestionable living proof that monsters do exist. Though Qusay was monstrous as his father was monstrous, Uday was near demonic and fairly early in life had become one I would perceive as unredeemable. His passion for wanton violence and unquestioned control fed his madness past the point of his father’s influence and restraint. His father even had him jailed twice for killing family and close friends of the family loyal to his father. The documentary was painfully loaded with information about the lives of these two men who were ultimately killed by Task Force 20, a specially designed unit of the military created to find and bring down the Husseins and their regime.
There’s a scary thought; the US military creates a special, single focus task force of professionals for the sole purpose not of fighting a war or battling armies, but of hunting down less than 50 people and bringing them to justice, one way or another. I do not believe that anyone could fully fathom or expect the level of attention these people had brought on themselves to this end. As leaders and sons of the regime, they were guaranteed political glory and success in the succession of their father’s authority as “president” of Iraq. Qusay has been the son widely perceived as most likely to have succeeded Saddam. He was put in charge of four key areas, including Baghdad and Tikrit, his family's tribal home. When the Iraq war began, he was and had been in charge of the country's intelligence network, the 80,000-strong Republican Guard and 15,000-member Special Republican Guard, which was responsible for protecting Saddam and his family.
Uday ran the Saddam Fedayeen security force, also considered the Iraqi special police. They were to the Iraqi people as the Gestapo was to the Germans and the KGB was to the Russians. By the way, in a moment of true digression, I always wondered what KGB stood for. It stands for Komitét gosudárstvennoĭ bezopásnosti or in English, “Committee for State Security”.
How whacked was Saddam? He put Uday in charge of Iraq’s Olympic committee. The very origin of that designation is an oxymoron. Uday had the athlete’s sign guarantees that they would finish First, Second and Third in all events they participated in and when they did not, once they returned to Iraq they were jailed, beaten and tortured, in the spirit of sportsmanship, I’m sure, of course…. Uday was also the editor of the nation’s leading newspaper, “Babel”, and was head of Youth TV, the country's most popular channel.
When Task Force 20 got the tip, a tip worth a cool $30 million collectively ($15 million for each son), they headed to the home/palace where the brothers were staying and took small arms fire initially. Once the fight was on, Task Force 20 kicked up the odds by bringing in 200 troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne including an apache helicopter loaded with rockets. The fighting had lasted a number of hours before the Apache fired a TOW missile into the building and according to eyewitnesses, “shredded a large portion of the complex”. Prior to the Apache’s participation, troops who were involved in the battle described the fighting as intense, with moments that seemed "like all hell had broken loose." according to a CNN correspondent. They died as they lived, by the sword. Qusay’s teenage son was also killed during the battle that killed his father and, harsh as it may seem, I can only imagine that the world was spared another monster in the making. That sounds and reads so heartless and harsh, yet look at the family lineage and I guess, ultimately draw your own conclusions.
Wow…guess I had THAT on my mind, huh? Sorry if I bored you or if you already knew it. Hmmm, let’s see, back to the end of 2006.

Oh yes, after her errands in the morning by herself, she had some more to do before going to pick up Missy in the afternoon, so Joshy and I went with her on her next trek. We picked out frames for her needed lens prescription, a new thing for her…glasses. Something she was successfully putting off until fairly recently when her eyes began to hurt terribly when trying to read gift boxes while shopping and then hurting when driving and such and after a recent doctor appointment, she learned that the whole ”CC needs glasses” thing was not a “suggestion” any longer. SO we picked out a nice frame for her and then headed to Mel’s Diner to have some late lunch again and to meet Missy returning from her play date. Lunch was good and we got Missy back (happy daddy) and we headed to the pet shop to pick up Shadow and then to home in anticipation of my parent’s impending arrival. I should have mentioned earlier that my parent’s were coming up yesterday (Thursday) after their respective different appointments in the Bay Area. They arrived about an hour after we did, though just after getting home, CC and the kids headed back out to pick up a couple videos for them to watch as promised earlier.

A fair amount of dialog and catching up was had during the evening yesterday and then it was time for bed. I’ve got a medium length list of things to accomplish for the day so I’d better get to it. I’ve been up since about 3:50 AM and wrote 2 sets of lyrics and this blog since then, so it’s time to get out of bed and begin knocking out the list.

Seriously worthy of note is that I am TOTALLY behind in my getting Christmas emails out to those in my address book, so hopefully you’ll see one from me sooner than later if you haven’t already. There are some reading this who’s address I don’t have, and to you I do apologize and hope you will take form this writing a warm regard from my family to yours for the Christmas holiday.
Kari and John, I’ll be trying to find you again today as will I try to be reaching you, Mr. Scott Rose!
Be blessed.

Peace-