Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Religion and marriage

Opinion:
If I found out my husband was a rat bastard who lied and cheated on me and molested little girls, no matter what religion I had, I'd dump the guy so fast his dick would spin off.
What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
Well, if it is the man who is putting things asunder, let God punish him, not the wife who has to look at the lying, cheating, fornicating, perverse asshole every day.
Or better yet, if she feels some sort of obligation to remain in the same house because of the kids, I'd make sure there were plenty of separate bedrooms and locks on the kids' bedroom doors with access windows for them to escape.

Or something.

I hate liars and cheats. I also detest grown men who lie and cheat. Worse yet, I hate men who think it is perfectly okay to have sex outside of their marriage.
What would they think if their wives strayed?
Or worse yet, what would they think if their wives had a profile on that cheaters' website and they were matched?

Yes, I like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain.
Just not caught with someone else in my bed.

Rant over for now.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Changing times

Congratulations to Cpt. Kristen Griest and 1stLt. Shaye Haver for making it through West Point and the Army Rangers' program. It couldn't have been easy.

How do I know?

A long time ago, I was in the Women's Army Corps. I was a WAC. They don't exist any more and I wasn't in long enough to do much damage. There were plenty of young women, strong, courageous, talented, intelligent young women who were in for a full enlistment. To them, I tip my hat.

Basic training back then was hard, though not as hard as it was for men during the Vietnam War era. I wasn't athletic, but it sure would have helped. Most of the women who were with me (150 of them) were as soft and girly as I was. The physical pain and endurance was hard. Staying awake all night and marching five miles with a full pack in one day was hard. Attending classes for hours in the Alabama heat. Crawling on your belly, getting tear-gassed, buttoning buttons and zipping all zippers, scouring toilets and polishing floors...I consider that hard.

What these two abovementioned women did was stupendous.

I was a WAC because there was no other way I could support the fighters though not the war. I had to prove to myself that I could DO something, not just sit around and complain or watch television news and wonder if that was my brother being blown up. (He was there.)

But as much as I admire these women, something inside me, the real inner me who is old and physically past any prime I nearly had, wonders if it is going to be worth it. Is it going to be worth being the two Rangers in a field of so many strong, brave, powerful men who in the long run will probably be physically more fit because they're made that way?
Once again, I am thinking of myself in their boots and that is wrong. So wrong.

I wish you both enormous luck and safe journeys. Godspeed.
I'll be praying for you.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Daddy and the Hundred Dollar Bill

It was the 50s, to be sure, possibly '57 after we got the Pontiac.
I think, unless I am disremembering, that we were going on vacation...somewhere. We went on vacation every year, even if it was just upstate NY to see Niagara Falls again, hoping against hope to see the colored spotlights on the falls. It never happened, even when Herb and the girls and I went there some years ago.  I must bring on the breaking of the spotlights. Lucky me.

Anyway, we were going to go away. Dad must have gone to the bank to take out some traveling money because he came back with this great smile he was capable of smiling, the one he practiced in the mirror.
Mom called it his "shit eating grin". I think that was an ancient Ukrainian expression because I never heard anybody else ever use it. Stands to reason. Ukrainian expressions tended to involve fecal matter or wishes for dread diseases. I digress.
So Daddy walks in the side door with his grin in place and calls my older brother Jack and me over, he has something to show us.
We're all excited because Dad was not the demonstrative type, not really. But that grin let us know there was something afoot.

He bends down and takes a $100 bill from his wallet.
We gasp!
This is more money than we had ever seen in our lives. Jack had a paper route and regularly made about five bucks a week from it. He was a wealthy, hardworking young man. I probably had never held a dollar bill in my short life at this time.
And here was Dad, showing off his hundred dollar bill!
He was rich!
We were rich by proxy or proximity.

I don't know what happened to the money, how it got spent, if it got spent or put into the bank. Maybe we visited relatives in Canada that year and gave it to them...I don't know. They didn't seem poor to me, but Mom always gave them stuff. They were refugees, I was told. They came here with nothing. They couldn't come into the US for some reason, not to live, but I never knew or understood why. Not that Canada isn't a nice country, but, really. I was a kid, full of Eisenhower and patriotism.

That would be the end of this little story except for a little footnote: While driving our brand new Pontiac with a huge engine on one of the president's new superhighways, Daddy floored the engine and we went 100 miles an hour for a brief couple of yards! I know because we leaned over the back of the front seat and saw the speedometer slide over the 100 mark.

Wow. Such a little thing, such little things were so cool to unjaded kids in the '50s.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Lee the ogre has an epiphany

     "Don't touch that!"
     Lulu and Sally jumped away from the guitar. Lulu's eyes rounded while her sister's immediately filled with tears.
     Lee stood framed in the doorway, scowling, looking down at the two girls who had edged away from the instrument.
     "Ah...no. Don't cry!" A sharp blade of guilt stabbed him.
The girls' reactions had ratcheted up to fat tears rolling down their rosy cheeks.
     He'd seen tears before. The little Italian kids, half starved and tattered, had rivulets of tears coursing down their dirty faces more often than not. At first, he had tossed chocolate bars and gum at them. After awhile, though, there had been so many damp faces, he realized no chocolate or chewing gum would make their world any better.
     Lee allowed his humanity to surface.
     "Two things," he said softly. "Two things are important right now."
     Lulu wiped her eyes, leaving a wet smear. Sally blinked several times and sniffled. Their expressions were ten times worse than any little Italian kid's.
     "There are two things you must know." He paused.
     Lulu looked up, wiped her nose again. "What two things?"
     Lee straightened, felt the cramp in his scar and chose to ignore it.
     "Thing number one," he began, "is that the guitar, this particular guitar, is  a very delicate musical instrument. It is not a toy. Only people who really know how to play a guitar should touch it. Gently. Carefully. Do you understand rule number one?"
     They nodded, solemn as a pair of tiny nuns.
     Lee choked back a chuckle and continued. "Rule number two: if you really want to learn how to play the guitar, meet me back here after supper and lessons will commence."
     Lulu scrunched her nose. "Is that a rule?"
     "Yes. Yes it is."

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Reminiscing

We had a lively, fun dinner this evening.
The girls started remembering places we'd taken them on our trips, every museum, tour, boat ride and Civil War something or other.
Each place evoked memories.
Hated it or loved it.
Civil War stuff bored the pants off them, along with the Corning Glass museum (which I liked), but DC was cool--Arlington, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Korean monument and the pain of the Vietnam Wall. I knew two people who had died in 'Nam and we looked them up. Brought tears to my eyes for sure.

It was fun. They remembered most of our trip to England, but in a totally different way. Take the Tube. They didn't remember the ride, they remembered that there were Cadbury candy dispensers on the columns. Frankly, I thought that was also the best part of the Underground.
They remembered chicken sandwiches in York that had butter on them and how packed the McDonalds was in Chester. Lake Windemere, how old everything was, Daddy and the peacocks.

It made me feel good, knowing that they had good memories of us all being together, learning even if unwillingly, the food we ate, Reed's drive in in Lockport and the white hots and red hots.

They're too old now to see things through innocent eyes.   Elyse has been to England and Scotland several times. Karyn has been all the way to Russia!

I do miss us all traveling and experiencing life outside Bridgewater...together.
I'm glad we have so many good memories.  All of us.