Make a Note...

Make a note of how you felt this morning when you heard the news that a gunman had opened fire on a group of Congressmen out practicing for a baseball game.

Make a note of that feeling in the pit of your stomach that it has come to this for him.

Make a note of how sickening it is that anyone would think killing a group of representatives was the right choice.

Make a note of how you probably thought of Gabby Giffords and how much worse it could have been.

Make a note of all of those things and then remember. Remember that feeling the next time someone argues for their 2nd Amendment rights so they can take arms against the government. Remember how you felt today. Or when Gabby Giffords was shot. THAT is what taking arms against the government means.

The government is not some nebulous THING in Washington. The Government is people. Living, breathing, working, people. With families. And lives. Real people.

Make a note.

Don't forget.

Yesterday's Day...

Looking at my On this Day list for yesterday in Facebook and this is what I had...

7 years ago today it was C's graduation from high school.

6 years ago today we were in Tennessee discovering that we really didn't want to move and work in a "company" town.

3 years ago today I got the blood results back from the vet and sat in the parking lot of the dentist's office and sobbed.

2 years ago today we saw a house that we sort of liked but thought it was a little over priced. That house is probably another 100K today. It's a crazy market out here.

1 year ago today I was in shock from the Pulse massacre. I still sort of am.

The On this Day feature is often a kick in the stomach.

I know it is around this time of year anyway. We are coming up on the anniversary of Dad's death. When we had to put George down in the same time frame a few years later it seemed extra cruel. Now we've added the Pulse massacre to the list.

The extremely personal, the beloved pet, the multitudes that I can't wrap my head around. There is a lot of death.

But there is also celebration. C's high school graduation was a lot of fun. They walked in to bagpipes for goodness sake! And a friend of his sang at commencement and her voice was so pure it gave me chills.

And there is knowing what you don't want. We did not want to move to Tennessee and have Brent work for Eastman. The idea of Eastman road and Eastman fields and Eastman this and Eastman that sort of gave us both the creeps. But it was good to go see. And nice for him to be courted. And good to have opportunities, even if you don't take them.

And there is the knowledge that even though that house is worth even more now, it was still over priced for what we want to do with our money. Where we live is not perfect. It never will be. But it's super affordable. And because it's super affordable we have the freedom to do a lot of other things.

Looking back gives us a chance to remember the good and bad so we don't get too precious with how much better things used to be, or how much worse. It gives us an opportunity to evaluate where we are today. Is it where we wanted to be? And if it's not is that because we changed our minds or because we stopped working toward that goal? Do you need the reminder to get back to work?

I like the On this Day feature. Even when it's a kick in the stomach. I really like it when it's a kick in the ass. And I like thinking about what I will see in a few years when I look back again. Will it be something big or something little? Will my vaguebook post about a hockey game make me laugh or shake my head because that call was totally blown and EVERYONE should know it. Will I see friends commenting that I miss now? Or ones that I know I will talk to soon?

I'm a fan of my own personal history, not just because I'm fascinating, though you totally know that I am...but because without seeing where I've been I'm not sure I would really SEE where I'm going.

And I am still going places.

Just check my feed to see where.

Bah...

Today has been a day loaded with false starts and stutter steps.

I started out with a line in my head that would work with another line I wrote down yesterday morning as soon as I woke up. I chose not to write it down this time because I was guessing it was around 4 AM and I really wanted to get more sleep. So I tried really hard to lodge it in my brain and went back to bed. When the alarm went off two hours later my first thought was to write down that line. Which was now missing. Well dang it.

Then getting ready to go in to the gym I started a status update and ended up copying it over to notes because I decided it would make a better blog. I could expand on it and fill it out and it would be pretty good, I thought. But when I sat down for the expanding I couldn't remember a single add in I had before my work out.

Then I got two different short story starts. I wrote down the quick note on them because I was in the middle of something else when they came. Sat down to turn first one then the other in to more than just a start and got nothing. Just a paragraph for each of them.

While I was showering I was running ideas in my head about the longer piece I've been working on. I have a few scenarios I want to go back to. I also have another scene that is there. My issue is I am starting to think I have two different stories that are trying to become one. I'm doing my best to ignore that and just get it all written out and then figure it out. But a BIG part of me thinks if this is supposed to be a long piece it really should have a plot. Which is answered by the other part of me that is pretty sure that's why I only write shorter pieces. I am well known for losing the plot...

So today has been a lot of hours put to writing with not a lot of hours of writing to show for it. Frustrating but it happens.

The good news is I have a lot of ideas just waiting to be fleshed out.

Hopefully starting tomorrow...

Well...

...we did not win the power ball last night. Just in case you were wondering. I bought two whole tickets as well. And nothing. AND I bought another ticket on Wednesday so $6 WHOLE dollars toward the endeavor, actually $7 WHOLE dollars because the lottery machine doesn't make change so I had to buy a $1 scratcher as well which ALSO wasn't a winner. So $7 WHOLE dollars spent and ZERO dollars won. What a rip off...

Which I knew going in. And I will know next time I decide to play. But play again I will. Because what if...what if we did win a few hundred million dollars. How cool would that be? I posted a status awhile ago on what sort of rich I wanted to be, it was mostly sports and music tickets with travel rich. Good seats. REALLY good seats. And travel without a second of thought on if we could afford it, what the trade offs would be needed to make to take the trip. That kind of rich.

Brent would like to be professional sports team owner rich. Hockey or football. But owning a team. That's his big dream sort of rich. My rich costs a little less than his does but both are levels of rich that a lottery win would help achieve.

So I will play again. Because I like that dream. That what if it happened feeling. And really I think right now we are the not poor kind of poor that can afford the $7 WHOLE dollars a few times a year. Though I am still the not poor kind of poor that pulled out the $5 bill and not the $10 when I bought tickets yesterday. I mean, adding an additional $5 to the $2 I spent Wednesday was okay but adding $10? Now that would just be crazy...

But we didn't win. So I'm back to counting my dollars. To making the decisions on what trade offs we make to take what trips. To cringing a little at the cost of hotel rooms in Ann Arbor on foot ball weekends. But also the kind of not poor that makes the reservations anyway and still has tickets to the game and to the musicals and to the concerts. Just okay tickets while keeping my really low mortgage instead of front row or 50 yard line while owning the super cool condo downtown. Travel on vacation or sabbatical instead of off season for the sport of the team Brent owns.

Maybe next time.

Always looking...

Last night I had a dream about this big town festival that was happening. We didn't live in the town, we were there visiting for the festival. It was one of those things that everyone should see. While we were walking around looking at what was all tied to the festival all I could think was "this is going to be a blog." I don't remember much about the festival itself, just that I felt like it was pretty solidly a sign of what was wrong with our current civilization. So you know, not my scene.

But it did make me a little amused this morning when I woke up and realized even in my dreams I am planning on my next blog.

Now, I can tell you where the pieces for the dream came from.
1. Sabbatical. With shifting sabbatical by a few months my loosely woven trips and concerts that made a relaxed yet still doing things sabbatical all fall apart. The two big trips and the concerts won't move. We will still do them as planned. But that leaves me with another two months to plan. And we've been talking about how to fill that time. What are the things we really need to see. So that was the town festival part.

2. The downfall of civilization. Well...let's see...I think you can figure that one out. I really do think we need some sort of shift or tilt to get us all back to the center. I was reading a friend's status yesterday and one of her more passionately conservative friends went off on a full on foaming at the mouth rant about the Comey hearings. It was amazing to me to see what he got out of it. Really relates to yesterday's blog, but he watched (assuming he watched, though from what he was posting it really looked like he was led afterward to what he believed was said) a totally different hearing than I did. He's takeaway is that Hillary should be locked up, Comey committed treason, Trump is a great man who does great things, believe me. It was a look in to an alternate universe.

3. The blog. I'm doing the blog everyday thing right now and just like I predicted it SEEMED like a really great idea when I was manic. Now that the mania has faded I'm looking at 20 more days of June and no ideas on how to fill them. So at least I know that I will regret the things I decide to do, I just should probably stop the committing to doing them part when I realize that. Though as Brent said today regarding something else, "Don't ever decide not to do something on the CHANCE that it might not work out."  So committing while manic makes that easy. Everything looks like it will work out fine if you are manic.

But all those together made for an odd dream.

And now a slapped together blog.

So it worked.

Today we are heading down town to a Geek Craft Fair. The pictures for the event had a Wonder Woman piece that I am hoping to pick up. And if I'm lucky there will be a great idea for a blog for tomorrow there as well. Always looking. Even when I'm awake.

Who Do You Believe?

It is just going to come down to "who do you believe?" That's generally the bottom line for everything though, right? Who or what do you believe and how firmly entrenched are you in that belief?

I watched and listened to the open session testimony of James Comey yesterday. Depending on who you watched afterward Trump is either FULLY VINDICATED! or IN BIG TROUBLE MISTER! I think it's the same as it was before. He's shady as fuck and it won't matter because Republicans hold the majority in both houses of Congress so...you know...reasons...

Those reasons actually make me crazy. As well as the fact that I can right now on my Facebook feed read an Op-Ed about why Comey's testimony showed clear obstruction and also how it showed there was no obstruction at all. How Trump is clearly vindicated because Comey did tell him that he wasn't personally under investigation and how Comey told him he wasn't currently under investigation which clearly means that he assumed he would be at some point in the future.

Add that to the usual level of frustration when each Senator had to ask the same questions as the last one because they needed the news clip for their re-election campaign. Which then led to missed opportunities on behalf of the Democrats and another round of "but her emails" from the Republicans. Though it was through that round of "but her emails" that one of the most interesting points came up, for me, which was of course not followed up on because they weren't actually listening to learn but whatever...

So anyway, here was my takeaway question for Mr. Comey, (I'm using quotes because I'm pretending to be Senator Mastenbrook from the Great State of Paying the Fuck Attention not quotes because I'm going to pull the exact words Comey had said earlier)

"You stated earlier that you considered calling for a special counsel in the Clinton email investigation after President Clinton met privately with Loretta Lynch and also because she urged you to use to word "matter" instead of "investigation" that's correct?"

"Yes."

"And you followed that up with saying the reason you chose not to was because the FBI had already completed their investigation and found there to be no criminality. Correct?"

"Yes."

"And that by bringing in a special counsel there would be the appearance of criminality and even though they would also find no case there it would take another year to 18 months to release that information?"

"Yes. That's what I said."

"You also stated that the reason you released your memos to your friend to send to the press was your hope that they would trigger a special counsel?"

"Yes."

"Can you answer why you are not concerned with the appearance of a criminal investigation in to Mr. Trump?"

"I'm afraid I cannot answer that in open session...."

THAT'S WHAT I WANT PEOPLE TO DO! Listen to what is being asked. Listen to what he is saying. Listen to what he isn't saying. Then ASK FUCKING FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS! It makes me crazy. Not crazy like McCain and whatever the fuck he was trying to do, but crazy nonetheless.

My personal opinion of Comey is that he is a boy scout. It was reaffirmed yesterday. I did not like the way he handled the conclusion of the Clinton investigation, with his little "careless" press conference. I thought it was inappropriate. But I think it's his very boy scout nature that led him to do it. I think he saw something shady in what happened but not illegal. He didn't trust HRC's reasoning for using the personal servers, he did not like the queasy feeling Lynch gave him by asking him to use to word "matter", he thought President Clinton getting on that plane was flat out wrong. But nothing he had showed any sort of criminal offense. So being a boy scout he wanted to get the opinion out there that it wasn't illegal but that didn't make it right. He found no reason to "lock her up" but he also didn't like what was there. Boy scout.

I don't think he should have done it. But I'm no boy scout. I'm a pragmatist and I believe that HRC would have been hands down and heads up a better choice than the Twitterer in Chief. Which brings us back to the boy scout.

After he was fired he would have gone away fairly quietly, I believe, except Trump couldn't just fire him and move along. He had to demean him as well. That's Trump's way. So he tried to say he wasn't good at his job, that people who worked for him didn't like him, that they also weren't doing a good job. And well, that didn't sit well with the boy scout. And when Trump tweeted about tapes the boy scout thought, "TAPES!" Or "Oh lordy, I hope there are tapes." And then put out his side of the story as bait. Which worked. Now we have a special counsel.

Now a day after the testimony Trump is trying to play both sides of the transcript. We are supposed to believe anything that Comey said that shows Trump in a good light and disregard anything that shows him in a bad one. But it doesn't work that way. Comey is a boy scout. He does not give a fuck about your good lights or your bad.

I don't like the way he handled the Clinton investigation. I thought the press conference was out of bounds. I thought the announcement two weeks before the election on re-opening the case was outrageous considering he had done a thorough investigation and found nothing just a few months earlier. Considering they were already looking in to the Trump campaign and Russia and he said nothing. All of that together makes me not care for Comey. BUT I see why he does what he does. He spoke out in the press conference because he believed that though not criminal Clinton was wrong. He spoke out again because he believed that re-opening a closed case was information that was necessary to reveal. He did not speak out about Trump/Russia because it was still early in the investigation and he did not feel there was enough information to be released.

I see why he does what he does. Because he's a boy scout.

Now ask yourself, what is Trump? Would you describe him the same way?

Who do you believe?

Types...

"This is a really good picture of your mom, I don't think I've ever seen it before."

Pete laughed, "Well that's because it's not my mom, it's my step-mom."

"Seriously? She looks just like your mom!"

"Yep. She does."

"I guess your dad has a type."

"As my mother said it was her only younger."

"Oh ouch!"

"Yeah, to be fair to my mother though she had no idea I heard her say that. She was on the phone with my aunt and would have died if she knew I had overheard her. She never said anything negative about my dad or Julie in front of us kids. She was really good about that."

"That's amazing. My mother bashed my father and my father bashed my mother constantly. I always felt like I was betraying the other one by even hearing it."

"Yeah, they had an agreement. She stuck to it more than he did, but they both did their best."

Cara picked up the picture again, "It's uncanny."

"Yep. There are times they are really alike personality wise as well. Which was a little surprising at first, but then not really. There are some areas where they are really different which made more sense to me. I mean after all Mom and Dad didn't stay together so it would make sense he'd want something different, but not too different because Mom is pretty amazing."

"How do they get along?"

"Dad and Julie? Well they are still married so I guess well enough."

"No, I mean your mother and step-mother. Mine hated each other. My step-mother was sure that my mother was trying to steal money from my dad and my mother was sure my step-mother was the evil step-mother from the stories. Now that could have been our fault because we didn't like her, but still."

Pete laughed again, "They actually got along really well. Here is where I will say again that my mother is amazing. Dad and Julie were married within 6 months of my parent's divorce being finalized. As my aunt used to say, the timing was a little too cute. My aunt did not agree with not saying anything bad about my father, though she was careful how much she said when my mother was around. But we figured it out once we were older anyway. There is no way Julie wasn't on the scene before my parents split. And my mother was still really kind to her."

"That's a little weird right?"

"A little. I asked her about it a few years ago; how she dealt with it. She said that Julie was a symptom of a diseased marriage not the disease. She couldn't fault Julie for falling for my dad, after all at one point she had as well. She said she wished that she and dad had had the courage to end their marriage ahead of time so that there wouldn't have been any questions from other people but it hadn't worked out that way.

I asked her about her feelings for Julie and she said that honestly at times she was a little jealous of her, but not because of my dad, because of the custody arrangement. She said it was hard to spend holidays away from us and so sometimes she would be a little jealous that Julie was getting us on that day. And that she imagined Dad felt exactly the same way when it was her turn to have us on a holiday."

"Does Julie realize she looks like your mother?"

"I would think she would have to. She doesn't really say anything though. But there are times when she is out with my sister and people comment on how much her daughter looks like her, and Gabby looks just like mom so..."

"That must be kind of weird for her."

"Maybe. Probably. As long as he never calls her by the wrong name it's probably okay."

"What about your mom? Does she have as strong of a type?"

"Ha! No. She's dated a few guys since she and Dad split and they have all been really different than Dad and really different from each other as well. I think variety is her type."

"But she never remarried?"

"She said she doesn't have an urge to get married. She did it once doesn't need to do it again. That's usually when she breaks it off with whoever she is dating. When they decide that she was kidding and really does want to get married. They start asking and she shows them politely to the door.

And it's probably good that she doesn't. At least for the working system we all have. Dad is not as gracious with her boyfriends as Mom is about Julie. He cannot stand any of them."

"Do you think he's jealous?"

"Oh yeah. Totally. But I don't think he realizes it any more than he realizes that Julie is pretty much a younger version of Mom. Just oblivious. Though I think Julie notices and isn't thrilled. That's about the only time I've seen them fight is when he's being a jerk about someone Mom is dating. It's amusing. Not that he and Julie are fighting, but that he's so oblivious."


"It sounds like you all have good relationships though, for the most part?"

"Yeah, I mean, I love Julie. She's been a really great step-mother, my dad can be a little challenging at times and I think she's been good for him. The one area she is different from my mother is patience, especially with him. My mom doesn't suffer fools gladly and when Dad was acting the fool she would let him have it. Julie is a little more gentle. Dad likes to feel like he's in charge, and is the man of the house. My mother is not good at playing the little woman role, but Julie is a little quieter and softer and doesn't seem bothered by Dad's bluster. I think we all ended up doing well because Mom and Dad decided to put Gabby and I first as far as emotions about each other and because Julie was so nurturing that she couldn't help but be a great step-mom. And then when Cole was born we all fell in love with him, even Mom, so that took care of any lingering animosity."

"Having a brother that much younger than you just must be weird though right?"

"What? Eighteen years isn't the typical age gap between brothers? It's different, but better I think. There was no jealousy between us. And Gabby and I loved babysitting for him when he was first born so there wasn't even resentment that we had to take care of the baby instead of go out with our friends. It was like a treat to get to watch him."

Pete took the picture from Cara's hand and put it back on the shelf.

"Well? Now that you know more about my weird blended family are you sure you still want to move in with me?"

"Hmm...let me think for a second. Your parent's are divorced but still nice to each other. You love your step-mother and have nothing but nice things to say about her. Your little brother is the cutest kid in my kindergarten class, don't tell anyone I play favorites, your sister has great taste in shoes and happens to be my size. I would be crazy not to."

"And? What about me?"

Cara stepped back and sized him up with a look then nodded. "You'll do."