My crappy little homemade card (with macaroni glued on it) to all you moms
I'm up early with the flower arrangements and getting the kids to help out with the Mother's Day breakfast (Lox & Bagels, mimosas), placing the cards and presents, doing what I can to give MBS her due on this, her day.
The moms-in-law-to-be, her boyfriend, bro-in-law and his family, the brood times two, MBS and I will be heading to Williams Creek Resevoir for a picnic. If there's time, I'll prowl along the irrigation ditches on the land and clear out some of the brush (I'll post some more on THAT task later in the week).
Moms: I hope you're having a wonderful day and are reading this a day or two later. A belated happy Mother's Day to you all. Or, if you're taking it easy and using your down time to surf the net, I hope your day is a splash.
Now, answer me this, please - the kids "got" MBS cards and a retro-ish vase (that I picked up from a consignment store - we need the vase, btw), I got flowers to put in the vase; I also gave her a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Did I do well?
Wasn't it just a couple years ago that these mouthbreathers were high-fiving each other over the notion of a "permanent majority"?
On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.
"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.
Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.
It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.
Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day."
Reasons why I am head over heels in love with her, #8
Well the kids are all hopped up and ready to go
She loves most of the same music I love.
Gawdahmighty I was trying the daily post thing in earnest but between the unreasonable demands of my pesky editor at the paper (who knew the whole "deadline" thing was so serious-like? sheesh), cuddles on the couch with MBS to watch The Third Man, and oh, you know, taking care of the brood times two, well, ain't it funny not how time slips away but blogging takes a backseat to having a life?
Maybe I need a little more time to figure this all out. Posting daily, that is.
Sunday found me on rafting our little class-2 river. Not so much a thrill-ride as a drink some PBR and talk politics ride. A beautiful day that made me crave a little more whitewater. However, no craving to jump on here and write about the excursion. The rest of the week... bad habit, this not writing.
And all you get today is Reason #8, timely in that we're going to see these guys at The Santa Fe Brewing Company June 6:
Really, how can life get any better with MBS at my side, slam-dancing to X We're too old to "mosh"), and getting cooled by the local brew. Better yet, these cats are opening:
I stumbled on The Detroit Cobras a little while ago and put one of their songs on a mix I made for MBS while we wuz a-courtin'. After she got the mix she had to know what band it was (I never label my song lists) and ended up downloading a bunch of their stuff.
MBS is off to Durango with her girlfriends for a bachelorette's night on the town. I'm making tacos for the brood times two, cleaning the garage while a fight over the video choice rages upstairs. An example of life being somewhat fair, I think.
Reasons why I am head over heels in love with her, #16
Tis' better to trip than fall
She says she can dress me up and take me out.
A night on the town for MBS and I, at her suggestion, a date night that we take some R&R; going to see celtic guitarist Jerry Barlow perform, have a little dinner, and a nightcap.
Stuck here at the agency. A group earlier and now just doing the drug-testing thing. Ugh.
I should be using this downtime to crank out some quick articles for my newspaper (my editor wants them in first thing Monday for a supplement which is, in his words, "a big money-maker for the paper"). Maybe ol' Lefty has the answer to how I'll get it done:
To clarify a bit of Wednesday's post (which I didn't get around to posting until today - oddly playing with the timeline...), I in fact continue to work in the mental health field. Yes, I'm working two jobs. Writing for a small town paper, covering town politics and business is where my heart is at, obviously. But as I said in that post, it's not yet a full-time gig and working as a lowly stringer doesn't feed the bulldog (or anyone else, for that matter).
Whatever time I have left after hunting down and writing stories, doing far less than my share of raising six kids, planning a wedding, and this blog thing (ok, knock off the giggling), I spend running groups for DUI offenders and monitoring drug testing (i.e. watching guys piss into a cup). The more the newspaper job demands, the less I want to be at the D&A agency. There's no dilemma - I want to write. It's just that the part-time / piecemeal aspect of my writing job makes it impossible to break from being a DUI counselor.
OK, enough bitching and whining... time for some fun:
Until you've walked a mile in my shoes, you won't know how my feet smell
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
Ah, the glory of being a city-desk reporter. Or editor. Or something. Hell, I'm just a stringer. And it's not so much a "city-desk" as a "small town-desk".
I mean, the town is small, not the desk. There isn't even a desk, really, just a cell phone that my editor calls on to tell me what to cover, write about.
Again, not entirely true. Doing the wildcat thing makes it incumbent that I chase down the stray story, since I'm getting paid by the piece. The light posting here the past few days has been a reflection of that. Attending meetings, making calls, dropping in on town officials, stirring things up to see what rises from within the mire, all in the service of a few column inches; this past week has been balls to the wall. And if the gods are with me (my editor seems to be), I'll have five articles to my name in this latest edition.
Working hard for a pittance, yes - but having the time of my life. And sometimes, compensation is not measured by the size of paycheck, at least not for me. One of the reasons I stayed in the mental health field for so long was decidedly not because I thought I'd get rich; with the exception of a driven few or the therapists on the tee vee, people in the mental health field are not motivated by wealth. The more I work at this journalsim gig, the more the same seems to be true of my colleagues, that money is not the motivation.
Posting everyday (as I've been attempting to do the past week or so) isn't as easy as it sounds... WAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
