Three Days in January ’18

So the Government Shutdown came to an abrupt stop a little after mid day today. It was a surprise to almost everyone (especially the liberals). No one had expected Chuck Schumer to throw in the towel so quickly after so much posturing and preaching prior to the Friday vote.

Pelosi hemmed and thawed and postured and preened at the podium until one and all were well and truly sick and tired of looking at her and listening to her say the same old thing. She spouted her oft repeated words about the bad, bad Republicans and the perfect and wonderful Democrats. She repeated the same tired words with as much feeling as the  pinched look on her face. We have seen it before;we are not impressed.

Chuck Schumer took the podium and began with his disappointment in the President and his lack of participation in the planned groveling that should have taken place once the shutdown was a fact. Nothing seemed to be going as planned. Schumer went over the past week in his mind and relived the brilliant plan he had executed. He had told POTUS in no uncertain terms how this was going down. The Dems wanted DACA and that was how it would be. All or nothing. And suddenly, there was a government shutdown and he was walking out with a big smile on his face. What had just happened?

From that moment on, nothing was as it should have been. The news did report that the shutdown had begun and that Schumer had been instrumental in causing it but it didn’t sound like he was the savior he had planned on being. The news and gossip was saying that the Dems cared more for the dreamers than for the constituents in their districts or the people they were supposed to represent. Instead of pats on the back, they were getting emails that barely passed censorship.

All of a sudden POTUS was the patient man sitting in the Oval watching Schumer hang himself on Prime Time network tv. The voters were outraged. The Democrats had chosen their side and it was the side of illegal aliens. They chose to stake their reputation on the DACA order that didn’t expire until March. DACA didn’t have anything to do with the fiscal health of the country or the budget. The Democrats had shown their true colors. They don’t care about the legal US citizens they are elected to represent even 1/2 as much as they do about those DACA “kids” ( some now in their 30’s) who were brought here as children without their permission or consultation. Those illegal aliens are going to lose their status here in just a few weeks when DACA expires. The Democrats don’t want these people deported back to their home countries. The Dems want amnesty and fast tracked citizenship so they could have (at the least) hundreds of thousands to millions of ready made life long Democrat voters who will owe their allegiance to the Democrat party. For Schumer this far outweighs the pain of government furloughs, non payment of salaries, frozen services.  VOTES! It is all about the VOTES!

Surprise! We get it. You play with our rights and our lives for ILLEGAL ALIENS and their votes.

For three short days in January 2018, Chuck Schumer felt like a God. He had finally outsmarted Donald Trump. And then, he realized he hadn’t been the brilliant man he had planned to be. The people were blaming HIM and the DEMS for the shutdown and Trump wasn’t budging.

In a quiet manner, a vote was arranged and the shutdown was over in exchange for??????? In exchange for nothing except words that had been heard before. We will put DACA on the table.

The Democrat leadership showed its true colors;  they work not for the people who elected them but for the people who paid for them.

And, as they say in Vaudeville, THAT is when the fight started.

Government; what a joke!

Democrats and Republicans, newspaper publishers, network and local news fight like dirty children in a muddy play yard over DACA while the VA has limited funds, the armed forces funds are curtailed, people are furloughed or work without pay. it’s a Government Shutdown!

While our Congress is bickering like dueling poker players, the American citizenry who pay the salaries of these clowns are unable to do much but gripe and complain.

“WE, the People,” have found out for certain that our Democrat leaders have more interest in promoting the amnesty for several million potential voters than they do in balancing our country’s budget and paying our bills. This has been a staggering blow to many people who for years have thought that the Dems could do no wrong. As a consequence of Chuck Schumer’s latest actions, even the densest most blue dog Democrat has finally had to face just how crooked their party is and just how far they will go to get votes.

Do the Dems really care about the outcomes of lives of the so called “dreamers” or is there something else going on?  The legalization of the “dreamers” is something Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest of the Dems in Congress and the Democrat party not only want; they NEED it. They are working so hard to legalize these illegal aliens, their relatives and children because they believe they are creating millions of Democrat voters. Of course, illegals seem to have had no trouble voting in the 2017 election, so all they have to do is be certain they can STAY. In their minds, these illegals will forever be so grateful to their Democrat savoir that they will always fight for and vote for Democrats. Is it any wonder they are willing to shut down the government over something that doesn’t have anything to do with our fiscal health or budget?

On the third day of the shutdown, non essentials are furloughed, the people who have to continue working do so with no idea when they might be paid. The armed forces can’t purchase anything they may need because the funds are frozen. VA services are limited. NON emergency surgeries or procedures at government hospitals are cancelled. Postal workers deliver mail but won’t be paid as usual. As the children play out their plans, we normal people are wondering why Congress IS getting paid. Shouldn’t Congress have to play by the same rules and suffer under them along with the U.S. citizenry?

The whole thing aggravates me and maybe it does you. The whole idea of a political party that works harder for those who bought it than for the people they were elected to represent irks me. Yes, I am saying that the Dems have their loyalties mixed up.

This makes me wonder just who is in charge of the government. We have holdovers from the prior administration (some claim) dug into the framework of the administration and several alphabet services such as CIA, FBI, DOJ, and “who knows what” trying to undermine our current President. Is this so called “Dark State”working to take control of our government including the everyday operations?

To Bully or not to Bully

In these days of brother fighting brother over interpretation of the meaning of words spoken by political leaders of either party, we find ourselves destroying each other as we did over a hundred years ago during a like national argument later to be known as “The War Between the States”.  At this moment in time you are likely thinking that whoever I am, I must have lost my ability to reason and to know right from wrong. That is not the question you should be asking.

As in the days of the War Between the States, we fight against each other. We rail at each other that “our” way is the right way; the only way. Each side feels vindicated in his/her beliefs. This “vindication” leads the two sides to war with each other and to spit out vile slanders about each other and the differing beliefs. There is no possibility of friendship even between friends of long standing. There only remains “I am right and YOU are WRONG.” There is no way to reconcile the argument or the feelings caused by words once spoken that can never be taken back.

This happened in the 1860’s and the pain of those words and fights haunt us still. So many years have passed but there has been no healing because so many can not allow it to happen.

Who among us was alive during the time of slavery in this land? Not one of us has had that advantage. We cannot argue the good or bad of those years and we are not responsible these many years later. Responsible, though, are the people on either side that, through family ties, have carried a hatred born long ago forward to today and use it to fuel the new hatred that is being pushed on anyone who disagrees with you.

About now you are wondering why I am equating the two conflicts.  By my last name, you can deduce I am Southern. you will assume I have the prejudices of same but you will not know what side I would be on; if I am black or white. So, making any assumption of my beliefs would be interesting but mostly wrong. Like most people, I am not driven by prejudices of yesterday or today.  I am capable of forming my own opinions; checking my own facts; having my own ideas. I do not need to be called names or coached. I have no objection to having alternative ideas presented to me but I reserve the right to present MY ideas in equal time.

Am I special? Since my parents died, 49 years ago, I know I am no one special. It was made plain to me during the saddest time of my life that not only was I not special. But many others are and I was inferior. For many years I let this knowledge control the way I saw myself and allowed myself to be shoved around.

One night I realized that the people I had been taught were perfect were not and that my opinion is actually as good as anyone else’s. The realization changed my life. I have been able to observe how politics affects people’s judgement and actions and have learned to keep my opinions to myself if I didn’t want to be lectured by someone years younger than I am  and publicly shamed for being “stupid,” or worse.

I can’t help but wonder if some of these people realize how their language and actions demean themselves. Do the stars who criticize and black list their fellow actors for being a little different realize how much they are like he school yard bully that calls a little girl “four eyes” or steals a little boy’s lunch money

Everyone has his own cross to bear.

It has been 47 years since my parent’s deaths and still no one has an answer for what really happened. There have been many theories thrown out over the years and some have been investigated and some have been dismissed. People who knew my mother all of her life have never believed, and never will, that she could have killed my father and then shot herself. Stories regarding the dispensation of my father’s business to a “silent partner” no one knew about, remain at the top of the skeptics list. I was 22, no local lawyer would represent me against a well known businessman, and I had to stand by and watch someone that I had no proof was the legal owner of that business take it away from me without as much as a legal notice. I was never able to find legal documents to prove that supposed partnership even existed. No documentation was registered in the county office. The man in question asked for a portion of my father’s life insurance(saying it was really for the company) and convinced me that if I did not give it to him my father’s reputation would be ruined like my mother’s. Today, someone in this position would receive professional help. PTSD had not been named then. Seeking any sort of mental help, even in these extreme circumstances, would have covered that person with a terrible stigma that would have destroyed any chances of a normal life. The South handled this sort of thing back then by telling the person to not embarrass the family and to not air the family laundry in public. No help at all. Just get over it and get on with your life.

This is the season leading up to Easter when Jesus was forced to carry his heavy wooden cross up a hill to die. My pastor has spoken about us all recognizing his/her own cross to bear. I had never given it much thought but our choices in life direct us to this cross and how we handle it.

Recently my husband’s mind and thought process has begun to severely deteriorate. He is just beginning to realize what I have known for the last year and a half. He is no longer competent to drive or make important decisions. Life has changed. I shoulder the load of making certain our bills are paid, repairs are made, doctors seen and medicines taken. As he realizes how his life has changed, he gets frustrated and doesn’t know how to cope. He can’t understand the television programs and gets frustrated when I can’t explain them so that he can. It is like watching light fade at the end of the day.

As his health deteriorates, I wonder at times if he might not prefer to die. He doesn’t look “forward” anymore.

I worry about his health and I worry about the possibility of his sudden, unexpected death. I try to be a good caregiver but I have a lung disease that has made me lose a great deal of weight and I am not able to rest and take care of myself the way I need to because of it. I stay tired and I know that I have lost most of my strength. I pray that God will help me continue to care for him as he deserves. I pray there is minimum arguments and that love continues to thrive.

 

Death Kills

Death kills; no, that is not an oxymoron. I have seen it happen. In point of fact; it happened to me.

The day my parents died my world turned upside down. Nothing was as it should have been. Even the simplest thing seemed to be “off”.  I lived a block from their house but my aunt was the one who was sought out when it was realized what had happened. She arrived at my door without sympathy or information, ordered me to get dressed and get into her car and started driving away.

I was 22, raised in a tiny Southern town, taught to do what my elders said without question, and that’s what I did. On the  way to town, I asked what had happened. All she would say was that her sister, my mother, was in the hospital. She drove fast and didn’t talk. She answered no other questions.

It took fifteen minutes to arrive at the emergency room of our small local hospital. I looked around in the parking area for my daddy’s car. It wasn’t there. I asked my aunt where he was; she answered HOME. That was beyond strange but I couldn’t really think. She never asked me any thing about how I was feeling. It was all surreal.

Met at the door by a local doctor, I asked how my mother was doing and what was wrong with  her.  “She’s dead. Shot herself in the mouth. Bullet came out the top of her head.” My legs were weak. A nurse I had known all my life helped me to an empty room next to the E.R. My aunt and her best friend stood in the hall talking to each other. No one explained anything or asked how I was. I was left alone for about 30 minutes and then daddy’s friend (the local undertaker) arrived. He stopped to speak to my aunt and then came in to speak to me.

I will never forget how he knelt down on the floor in front of  me and took my hands in his. I asked where my daddy was and he told me that he was home; dead, too. Shot in the forehead at close range. He was presumably shot by my mother. And then the first cover up was told. He told me that daddy was having another heart attack and mother had shot him as he has begged for release. LIE #1 .

Another thirty minutes waited while our family doctor finished his morning rounds. He needed to go with my aunt and me to see my grandparents. My grandfather had suffered a stroke 2 years previously. My  66 year old grandmother was his caregiver.

When we arrived at their house there were already many people there. The doctor, my aunt and her friend, and I went in. My aunt went straight to my grandmother who was sitting in the kitchen by the oil stove. My grandfather got upset at all the visitors and tried to ask what was going on. Everyone just ignored him as if the stroke that had taken his speech and movement had also taken his understanding. It was left to me. I knelt down in front of his wheel chair and told him what I knew.

“Grandaddy, they are saying that Mother shot and killed Daddy and then , killed herself”.

He understood completely and as I heard my grandmother scream “oh no”, my granddaddy , offered me the only comfort I was given by moving his paralyzed hand onto my head in his lap. We both cried. In the hours that followed, we realized nothing would likely ever be right again.

God Never Left Me

I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in a small seaboard town on the Eastern Seaboard. Everyone knew everyone else and worked extra diligently to mind each other’s personal business. Sunday service was often a great deal like Ray Steven’s “Mississippi Squirrel Revival”

Nothing ever changed in our church except the color of the hats or dresses on the woman. People sat in the same pew each week. The preacher changed about every four years so if there was one I liked he was usually on the way out by the time I discovered it, he was moving on.

It never occurred to me to find a different church. I was enrolled when I was in the cradle. I made my profession of faith at 13 and was baptised all in the same church. In college I went to the inter-denominational service on campus and my regular church when I came home for weekends.

I studied religion in college and liked it so much that I had enough courses to have a major in Philosophy and Religion. I wanted to study Biblical archaeology but that was not an option for a Southern girl in the 196o’s.

God was a constant in my life. It never occurred to me to doubt him. I believed and that was it.

My senior college year I came home for Christmas with everything normal. I had gotten married in July and lived only a block or so from my family. I was looking forward to the holidays.

Mother had gotten Christmas tree; a cedar. She stood it in a bucket , of water outside the front door to be put up and decorated on Christmas Eve. Christmas would be Wednesday.

My world changed drastically on Sunday, Dec. 22. I woke to a knocking on my apartment door. My aunt was standing there and greeted me  with a terse “get your clothes on and come with me.” I did without questions.  But once I was in the car with her I asked what was going on. She wouldn’t answer and just drove to the small hospital nearby.

I prayed all the way there “please don’t let it be my daddy”. [When I was in grammar school he had heralded of a massive coronary and I in my head that was what had happened again. I still had my faith in God and I knew he would never let me down.

Little did I know that I would never,ever, be the same again.

 

 

 

 

Come Follow Me and Read My Blog

 

Come follow me and read my blog and I will amaze and amuse you with the copious amounts of totally useless information that is stored in my brain. I am a freelance writer, recently retired from the real world, and learning how to decompress while staying in tune with what’s going on. I have recently accepted two new freelance jobs and am enjoying deleting stuff from my harddrive (brain). I never realized all these years I had stored up so much useless information. At least now I have something to do with it.

Blogging comes naturally to me. I just sit down, open my minibook, and out all this stuff comes. It is better than talking to myself.

The guy next door is “retired” from the NSA. That’s a euphenism for not going into work at the Pentagon every day. He still does work for them; mostly on the computer. I think the NSA is a lot like the CIA; you can never really leave. I don’t know why but I feel safer just knowing he lives there. Of course, the fact that at least 15 other “retired” NSA, CIA, FBI,and other initialled divisions of the government  live in our tiny little gated community doesn’t bother me a bit. At least I know which side they are on. Today that is a major accomplishment.

I have a lot of opinions. I should keep most of them to myself but I am opinionally challenged. I say what I think.  Sometimes I wonder when the guys in the little white coats or the men in the black helicopters will swoop down and pick me up. LOL…..it may not be funny. Today everything is up for grabs.

I was born are Democrat. That’s sort of a joke but I was born in the Low Country of South Carolina so it isn’t a stretch to think that. Once I attained my majority and went off to college I diverted sharply to the right. I am a conservative, tea drinking, Republican with Libertarian leanings. I don’t know where to go next. I have been thinking about Costa Rica but they have some sort of new rules for new comers now so that may not be feasible. I guess I will just have to bite the bullet and buy a place over on Daufuskie Island. It can’t be reached except by boat and nobody I know wants to waste $25 to ride over there just to aggravate me. I am actually looking forward to the move.

Speaking of Daufuskie, I lived there for a few years when I was a child. My grandfather had an oyster factory over there and since my daddy was at sea in the war, I went to live with the sweetest chocolate colored woman I have ever known. I don’t remember her name; I called her Jimmy.  I was a sickly child and no one wanted to be responsible for me in case I just up and died on their watch. Thankfully, Jimmy didn’t mind. She nursed my malaria and was patiend with me. No wonder I want to go back someday.

Now days, Daufuskie is a haven for the rich. They live in fancy houses in little gated communities that they call “plantations”. I would just as soon live in the historic district where I could have a blue bottle tree and paint my front door blue to scare away the haints. I don’t know if I am just wishing for a link to the past or if the morphine in my pain patch is getting to me. My husband and I joke about it all the time. He picked out the house we live in here in Florida; I get to pick out the next one. He has no desire to go to Daufuskie but he will. That’s the kind of relationship we have.

Now I am rambling and you are wondering just what kind of kook I am. Actually, I am pretty sane and just feel a need to “pour” out information. Maybe I can tie it all together somehow and you won’t feel the need to call for a psych eval.  That’s how my mind works. You can see what I mean. It is so full of stuff that it just pours out when I am not looking.

As I write, I am amazed that it is almost Friday again. The weeks seem to go by so quickly when the weather is warm and the flowers are blooming. Too fast for an older person. When we are children we spend so much time wishing our lives away. We only realize it when it is too late.

I hope you will follow my blog. I am not always so scatterbrained. If you don’t believe me, check out my posts on www.authorsden.com/pdrivers. I have articles, blogs, stories, book listings, news and even poetry on there proving that I am, indeed,  a normal human being. At least sometimes.