I voted early, I voted for Obama, I'll tell you why.

I don't expect some of you will agree with my vote. I do, however, expect you to respect why I voted that way.

I was born in Memphis in 1956, grew up half-way in Mississippi, grew up the rest of the way in Louisiana, and matured in Montana. My grandmother lived in the Mississippi Delta back when Tunica was little more than a whistle stop on the way to Memphis. On her property lived a black couple named Hannah and Golie. My grandmother and my parents pronounced it "Goalie". It's very possible that his name was "Goldie" or something but had been distorted by Mississippi accents. For my purposes, he's Golie because that's how I learned his name as a tiny child.

Hannah and Golie took care of my grandmother, Mammy, and my grandfather, Pop. Hannah helped Mammy around the house, Golie helped with outside work. I remember Hannah always had a big hug waiting for me when my parents took us up to Mammy's house. I didn't see Golie as much when we visited as I saw Hannah, but he was an important presence because Mammy could hardly carry on a conversation without mentioning something that Golie had built, repaired, needed to fix or would be called on to help with, especially after Pop died. When Mammy walked in as her home was being burglarized by a young black man and was knocked unconscious, it was Golie who found her. He and Hannah got her to a hospital and called us. They shared our worry. I cannot remember my grandmother's wonderful old house and it's magical yard without remembering Hannah and Golie.

I attended Sykes Elementary School during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. We had fire drills, we had tornado drills and we had bomb drills. Fire drills, we were sent outside in lines. Tornado drills we crouched in the halls next to the walls. Bomb drills we curled up in tight balls under our desks. Another bomb drill was that we had to walk home from school one day in case of a missile attack. I was terrified. My mother met me about 6 blocks from school. She said if there ever was a missile attack she'd make it that far even if she had to crawl over rubble. We actually got a light snow that year in Jackson, but we were warned not to eat any of it because of fallout danger. Is it any wonder that I don't remember blue sky in my childhood? My memories all seem like every day was overcast and grey.

I was taken out of Sykes Elementary after 2nd grade when my mother started a school called Southside Academy. Southside was a private school located in the Sunday School rooms of, what was then, Alta Woods Presbyterian church. The year was 1964 and Civil Rights violence was high in Mississippi. My mother and father were politically active in the Rubel Phillips campaign. I had no idea why my mother started this school or why my parents were so totally passionate about Rubel Phillips or Barry Goldwater. I only knew that I enjoyed the school, the occasional news reporters at the house were exciting and, later, the cases upon cases of "Gold Water" stored in the laundry room tasted great. I didn't realize that all of these things had to do with denying people like Hannah and Golie their civil rights. Rubel Phillips campaign slogan was K.O. the Kennedys. I remember John F. Kennedy's funeral procession on TV. Not a whole lot was said about it in my house.

Southside Academy didn't last and I was sent to Marshall for 5th and 6th grades. There were three teachers in each grade level there. In 5th grade every teacher was a woman and each of those women was her own special brand of bitch. Mrs. Henley was the worst of the three. She corrected my reading one day when I pronounced San Joaquin as San Wahkeen. She fussed at me and said it was pronounced San Joe-ah-kwin. My mother had to go speak to the principle.

My brothers attended Whitten Jr. High School (It's now Whitten Middle School). Their school projects were fascinating. They were learning Latin and building things in shop class. We knew the Art Teacher, Mr. Quinn, and if I had a love almost as great as the one I had for horses, it was for art. I'd looked forward to going to Whitten since I was 5 and was told "when you're a big girl you'll go there just like Robby and Mike". I finally got to Whitten, got into Mr. Quinn's art class, and a year later was taken out and sent to a private school outside town called Council McClure. I was told it was because black children were going to be coming to Whitten and it would be too dangerous there now. Council McClure's art class was mostly crafts and English was the only language taught. It is where I met my closest Mississippi childhood friend and I'm glad to say I'm still in contact with her.

Council McClure is also where I broke my hip when my friend and I were trying to catch a stray kitten. When I was in the hospital for surgery on my hip, my roommate was a black girl named Margie who had just been diagnosed with diabetes. When my mother couldn't be with me, Margie's mom would sit by my bed and watch over me just as she watched over Margie. She'd bathe my forehead with a cool wash cloth and Margie and I became friends. She was from Tougaloo Mississippi, home of Tougaloo College and center of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. I didn't know that at the time either. I only knew that I really liked Margie and her Mom. Margie and I wrote each other for several years, until my dad, who worked for Chevron, was transferred to New Orleans and we left Mississippi for Louisiana.

During the late 60's I watched the news and, thus, watched the footage from the Vietnam War. Back then we were allowed to see what happened in wars. We saw the mangled bodies. Most of us were utterly horrified by what we were seeing and the youth stood up, eventually MOST people stood up and said "Enough." Like most inconvenient truths, that's not remembered very well now. There'd be a lot more people standing up now if we were being allowed actual news and proof of the actual blood cost. Of course, that's why we're not allowed actual news and proof of the actual blood cost.

My mother was terrified of living in New Orleans so we bought property in what was then the only gated, exclusive, subdivision north of the lake. There was one way in, one way out, a sheriff's deputy at the gate, sheriff patrol 24 hours a day and 3 residents had to vouch for you in order to buy property there. This effectively prevented black families from residing there. I can hope that's changed by now. Most of the kids where I lived, went to the private schools in town. Most of the kids where I lived were pretty darned snooty to be honest, except for my two best friends. The town was small enough that it didn't think having a working train track running down the center of one of two main streets was anything unusual. It was southern enough that the black part of town was across those tracks.

The black part of town was poor enough that most of those houses were little more than large wooden boxes. It was still that way when I left in 1991, except that there were more businesses out on the highway. Even in 1992 there were not many good jobs offered to the black residents. Only city, Parish, State or Federal jobs were available to them and you can just imagine the competition for those jobs. In 1989 my office manager freely admitted she'd die before she hired a "niggeh" to work at our doctor's office.

My best friends did not go to my high school. I went to a public high school. I rode a school bus so many of the kids from the poor areas who went to my school didn't want to talk to me because I came from that ritzy subdivision. My two best friends went to the local Catholic girl's school. After we'd been best friends for 5 years, Zelda finally told me she was a lesbian. After a "wow. What did you just say? Are you sure? Okay that was dumb, of course you're sure." My attitude was "Well, okay. Fine by me." That's when she started taking me to the gay bars in New Orleans. That's when I started having a damned good time in life. I'd been so sheltered I didn't have a clue there were gay people. "Lesbo" and "Queer" were just nasty names the kids in school called people they didn't like. I didn't know what they meant. Also, back then, John Travolta hadn't ruined Disco yet. We were "Doing the Hustle" and dancing to "Lady Marmalade" under a disco ball LONG before Disco got perverted by the mainstream.

We'd go to the apartments of our gay friends and have too much to drink and then fight for space at the bathroom mirror before we'd all go out en masse to the gay bars. We'd jitterbug, bump and hustle the night away with the boys and laugh so hard we couldn't breathe. Back at an apartment on Esplanade we'd all sit around with drinks and watch movies, talk, gossip, and gripe about how hard it was to find a good man. They were beautiful, smart, funny, kind, wonderful young men and I loved them. Most of them are dead now. We lost them in the 80's to "that gay disease" that Reagan would never mention and didn't want to fund research on because it didn't affect good people.

It was in the 80's that I had my sons. They laugh and tell people that they were raised by lesbians because I had so many gay friends. My best friend and her partner treated the boys like royalty. At the time, my friend was singing in New Orleans with a band comprised of off duty musicians from the Marine Corps. The Marines were the "guys" in my sons lives. I laugh and tell people the boys were potty trained by the marines, which is exactly true. One show and tell from a Marine works much faster than 10,000 or so words from mom. When my mother died in 1983, if it had not been for gay friends, the Marine Corps, and a three month relationship with Jim Beam I don't know that I'd have survived. Even after I left ol' JB in the dust, the Marines and the gay friends kept my little family afloat by keeping me laughing, keeping me feeling loved and therefore, keeping me somewhat sane.

After the Marines, one by one, left the corps or took stations elsewhere, my friend took a singing partner named Daphne. Daphne's girlfriend was Becky and Beck was an absolute riotous good time. Back then, I had no clue that they'd both become such important figures in my life. I was busy working and raising the boys, Zel and Daph mostly sang in New Orleans, but would perform on my side of the lake once a month or so. If I could snag a very cheap babysitter, I'd go get toasted with Zelda's mom, listen to the beautiful combined voices of my friends and laugh until my stomach muscles were sore for days with Becky. Those once a month evenings were my only outlet for fun. This was the Reagan/"trickle down" era and the only thing trickling down on my head was watery and yellow colored. I worked to pay rent, pay utilities, buy food and pay daycare so that I could work to pay rent, utilities and buy food and pay daycare...

At the same time we had the beginnings of "family values", but as always, those "values" only extend to a certain style of family. Dan Quayle was at war with Murphy Brown. Women, after all this damned time, were expected to be married if they were raising children. I was a single parent. The divorce from the abusive, alcoholic ex-husband had given me my maiden name back, but I wasn't allowed by society to use that name, legal or not. Anyone that had any dealings with my children, from the school to their pediatrician, called me by their last name and Mrs. regardless of how many times I corrected them.

Another absurd myth was being spread back then too. The myth of The Welfare Queen. Supposedly they were everywhere. Black women, giving birth over and over again just to increase their welfare payments. I can tell you where that started because I was there. I was in Louisiana when Grand Dragon Duke and his followers started that myth and it spread through all the country's bigots like a brush fire fueled by santa ana wind. I'd had anywhere from 3 to 4 surgeries per decade after breaking my hip in the 60s. In the 80's I had the be all/end all of hip surgeries and I was out of work, so sick I could easily have died, could no where near pay my rent, bills and food, but I did get a small 400.00 per month from interest on some stocks after my mother died. That measly 400.00 per month kept me from being able to get Welfare.

I was in that welfare office on many occasions appealing, and never once did I see a "Welfare Queen". The people trying to get welfare were just like me. I couldn't work, I wasn't permanently disabled, I made too much money to be on Welfare. My rent alone was 400.00 per month and it's not like I was in a luxury apartment. I didn't even have central air conditioning. But that 400.00 per month kept me off food stamps, medicaid and welfare. If a struggling mother so much as went to work at McDonald's she'd lose her children's insurance, so why in the names of all the god's would she do that? No one was having more children just to get Welfare. NONE.

I finally did get back on my feet after that surgery. It took a couple of years, help from my dad, help from my friends, help from my aunt and my brother loaning me money to pay my electric bill because it always came due the week before my paycheck came so I'd have to get a loan from him until I could pay him back a week later. It's not about "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps", it's about someone at least tossing you a damned rope to pull yourself out of the hole.

In 1991 I sold most of what I owned, handed the Ryder Truck company $1250.00 and asked "How far will that get me from here?" I loaded the truck and the boys and I headed for Montana where I lived joyfully on an "Open" Reservation for 4 years. "Open" meant that the land had been set aside as a Reservation and 3 different tribes had been told to move there. When the white folks decided the indians weren't farming that land they'd so graciously given them, they changed the laws and started taking over big wads of that "unused" land. It was, of course, being used, just not in the manner those good town folks had in mind. Hunting and gathering isn't using the land. Of course, it's not using it up either.

On that reservation I was able to go to college and be taught by the best professors I've ever had the pleasure to sit in a class with. Salish Kootenai College was the small community college just a few blocks from my house. Through student loans, my small monthly interest check, a small grant, part time work as a peer tutor and lots of fishing, potato picking and abandoned orchard harvesting, we lived warmly and happily. I made more great friends and fabulous acquaintances. I found true spirituality in the natural beauty there and felt whole for the first time in my life.

I met my husband online while I lived in Montana. He lived here in Arizona and we would talk for hours on end. Literally. AT&T mourned when I moved to Arizona in 1995. We trucked along, building our life together. The boys grew up. It was my eldest son that woke us up on 9/11, sobbing into the phone, telling me to turn on the TV because something really bad was happening, planes were flying into buildings and no one really knew what was going on, but they thought we were being attacked.

We turned on the TV just in time to witness the second plane strike the towers. I wasn't even fully awake so it didn't dawn on me that there were passengers on the planes. I was horrified enough at the thought of the people in those buildings, but when my brain began to comprehend the full scope of what was happening and that there were innocent victims on those planes that had known for who knows how long what was about to happen, I nearly threw up. Who could be that cruel?! That inhumane?! My stomach churned as it had churned watching the footage of the atrocities in Vietnam.

I had not voted for George Bush. I voted for Al Gore and there is no doubt in my mind that he'd have been 20 times the President that G.W. has been. But in the days after 9/11, with my little hand-made memorial wreath on our front door and our flag flying, I was willing to follow our President, along with every other citizen in this country, to find the monsters that had done this heinous thing to those innocent people.

The President said it was Osama bin Laden. He said the Muslims hate us for our freedom. Of course, that wasn't true but I did not give a rat's ass what reason bin Laden had for doing this and I still don't. You have a gripe with the government, you take it up with the government, you don't kill innocent mothers and fathers and children and grandparents because of something their government did that they had no control over. You Just Don't.

So, we needed to go to war against the Taliban because they were harboring bin Laden. Fine. Get the bastard. But three months later, we corner the s.o.b. and then tell his sympathizers to go in and get him?? WTF? Of course, he "somehow escaped through the mountains". Three months after that, President Bush is relaxing with one elbow on his podium as he smiles and says "I just no longer think about bin Laden. He's just not that important to me". Well he was, and is, still important to me dammit.

That's when we suddenly were at war with "terror". We had a list we were told were an "Axis of Evil". Saddam Hussein was at the top of the list. He had weapons of mass destruction. He was ready to pounce. At the same time we're hearing this from the President, we're SEEING that Hussein is giving the U.N. inspectors "Unprecedented Access" to Iraq to search for these weapons. Even all of his private palaces were being searched. The French inspectors kept coming up empty. There were old rusted out buried missiles from decades before, but nothing that would pose a threat. But Bush kept shrieking "WMDs! WMDs!!" There were only 20% of us (myself, my boys, my husband and his family included in that percentage) yelling "WAIT WAIT please dear god let the inspectors do their jobs!!" But no. We forced the inspectors out of Iraq for their own safety and we went into "Shock and Awe" mode. Well. It was shocking.

90% of our news was and is, no better than what we were hearing from ol' Baghdad Bob who kept telling the Iraqi people "There are no American troops at the airport! There are no American tanks in Baghdad!" Just like the Mississippi newspapers in the 60s trying to tell the rest of the nation that black folks liked segregation, the majority of our news outlets tell us what our government wants us to believe just as the Iraqi state run media told it's citizens what it wanted them to believe. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, etc. are just little U.S. Bagdad Bobs, telling us what the corporate run republican powers want us to believe so that they can stay in power.

Muslims still hated us for our freedoms, therefore it was wholesale hate of Muslims. All Muslims. Wonderful peaceful Muslims, and wonderful peaceful people that idiots decided were Muslims, were being attacked all over the country. It was just like watching the attacks on blacks in the south in the 60s.

We briefly forgot to hate Muslims for a couple of years here recently because the people that were busily giving our jobs to workers in China, India, Indonesia and the Phillipines were telling us that Mexicans were taking them, so people got the excuse they'd been searching for to hate Mexicans and paid no attention to the magicians actually making the jobs disappear.

For the past 3 years Honeywell has been dumping employees all across the country. In Phoenix alone, about 6,000 families that relied on this corporation for their incomes have seen those incomes sent to India, Indonesia, Mexico, Germany and anywhere Honeywell can find tax breaks and cheap labor. Last year my husband became one of those casualties. Honeywell gets tax breaks, cheap labor and isn't forced to pay insurance for those employees. Therefore, it looks as if the company has made a profit, even though all it's done is cut costs. Profit made the stockholders happy. Nobody bailed us out. Nobody bailed out all the other families that Honeywell left with no income. What my husband got for his 27 years with the company was a heart attack two weeks after he was let go without severence pay, heart surgery, our 30K in savings wiped out by medical costs the COBRA didn't cover, and a huge monthly COBRA bill.

That is just one corporation, in one city. All of the major corporations that used to provide jobs for U.S. citizens are "offshoring" our jobs and getting paid by our government to do so. John McCain had Carly Fiorina stumping with him for a time. Said she would be one of his main economic advisors if he were elected. Do you know who she is? She's the woman who was fired from her CEO position for running Hewlett-Packard into the ground. She's the woman that said no American has a god given right to a job. She was not talking about lazy people who lay about on the job and expect pay for nothing. She was talking about everyone. If you currently have a job where you do not have to deal with customers face to face, your job can be sent to another country now and more than likely will be within the next 5 to 10 years if someone doesn't give corporations more reasons to keep our jobs in the U.S. than abroad. McCain and his economic advisor think we should just suck that up.

So, for all the Hannahs and Golies, for the children who had nightmares about "The Bomb", for those whose lives were torn apart or disrupted by segregation and busing, for the friends who died of AIDS, for the single mothers who were treated like pariahs, for those fighting the cleaned up "White Rights" face of the same old vicious bigotry, for those that died on 9/11, for those that have been crippled and killed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, for those who have worked all their lives only to have their jobs sent to other countries, for those without insurance, for those that can't afford college and for those paying astronomical insurance costs for insurance that doesn't cover decent care, I cast my vote, with tears of hope, mourning and gratitude streaming down my cheeks. I cast my vote and then stared at my ballot while remembering all the people and events that have touched my life in the past 50 years. I cast my vote with immeasurable pride for "That one".

Not through rose colored glasses

but rather between the fingers over my eyes, will I be watching both the bull riding news and election coverage.

Life has suddenly gotten just too darned suspense filled for me. I feel like I'm living in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. A neighbor of mine has two glasses of wine at night after work so that she can get to sleep. She told me "I drink too much." I answered, "I don't drink nearly enough." This fact may well change over the next 13 days.

My favorite candidate for the PBR World Championship will have to overcome bovine dirty tricks and not get injured or killed in his quest. My favorite political candidate must do exactly the same.

I read an article that said reporters from around the globe will be descending on the U.S. to watch for and cover potential election fraud and/or vote suppression in key states. I hope that helps this time around. I wish judges from Mexico, Brazil, Canada and Australia, would be here to cover the points fairy issues likely to crop up at the PBR World Finals.

There are a lot of prejudices to overcome in both the race for the Presidency and the race for the PBR World Championship. We had two southern rednecks recently arrested for plotting to murder black school children and then go out in a blaze of "glory" by assassinating Barack Obama. We have slope browed individuals wanting to send the Brazilian bull riders "back to Mexico". We have a nukular rocket scientist McCain campaign worker who doesn't even understand "mirror images" so she looks in a mirror, cuts a "B" into her own cheek, and swears to police that a big mean ol' black man (she probably used a different term to her friends) assaulted her because of her McCain bumper sticker. I'm sure the backwards "B" on her face was the police departments first clue she might not be playing with a full deck of cards.

But still I hear that there's no need for "affirmative action" anymore because prejudice is no longer a problem. Sha right, where are those people living that prejudice is no longer a problem? I'd like to live there.

So. Will our ballots be counted correctly this time? Will Marchi be scored fairly this time? Will the human bovines win the election by hook and crook? Will the points faerie visit Kody Lohstroh enough that he somehow snatches the World Championship away from Marchi? Will there be more assassination attempts amongst the throngs of rage filled voters Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity have convinced that Obama is a terrorist? Will Marchi be injured? Where are my giant 3 fingered Mickey Mouse hands to cover my eyes for the next two weeks?

Doctor Mom

I foolishly thought that when my boys were grown, there would be no more sleepless nights watching over a "patient". Well the heck and gone beyond the first time and no where near the last time I am up at 1:34am nursing a sick horse.

Usually, it's a horse pregnancy that has had me up at all hours, snatching rest when and where I could manage. The last time I was up all night with an actually sick horse was when Desi had the flu two winters ago. I don't really (not really) count the night I spent watching newborn baby Poppy when her mother wouldn't let her nurse, even though I had to haul her to the vet at the crack of dawn the next morning.

Tonight it's Blondie. All the hooved kids had their flu/rhino vaccinations yesterday. Some of them were mildly droopy today. Nothing big, a couple of them were just resting a little more than usual. As soon as I cranked up the treat wagon (aka Minerva the quad) they were all more than willing to race joyously along the fence lines, following me for their Nicker Maker horse treats. When I brought Blondie in this afternoon she was fine. She ate like a horse. Tonight when I went out to feed their nighttime meal, she was sick sick sick.

Poor baby could hardly walk. One leg was locked and she's never had a locked stifle. She was none too steady on the other three. She'd had diarrhea and was totally uninterested in her hay. She hobbled slowly over to her water tub and drank, letting a lot of water just dribble out of her mouth. I pulled her out of the paddock and put her in the temporary stall we have set up between the barns. I soaked her a little bit of hay, a little bit of beet pulp and a few spoonfuls of her SafeChoice, but she didn't want any of that. She just kind of hung her head over the bucket and looked very doleful. This is not healthy horse behavior.

Her respiration rate, gum color, gut sounds and capillary refill time are normal but her temp. was up at 102.5 and it's a darned chilly night. I rinsed out her tail, gave her a dose of Banamine and here I sit. Waiting to see if she gets better or gets worse or stays the same. If it were just the aches and the fever, I wouldn't be overly worried, but diarrhea is a bad thing in a horse.

When we first got Blondie she came with Blaze. Blondie was extremely bonded with Blaze. We had them stalled side by side and if we took Blaze out of her stall, Blondie would get so frantic that she would have spontaneous, stress induced diarrhea. 4 or 5 cowplop like poops in the brief 20 minutes we'd be bathing or trimming Blaze were not uncommon. Knowing that, makes me slightly hopeful that the stress of being sick may have given her the diarrhea tonight, but I can't count on that.

Other causes for diarrhea in horses could be parasites or sand ingestion. Gosh knows we have sand and she always has her nose in it, but that wouldn't cause the fever or the obvious aches. Neither would parasites. Plus, they get psyllium every month to clear the sand and are wormed every 2-3 months.

That leaves the really bad stuff like Potomac Horse Fever and Salmonella. Although Salmonella is a concern, I've not read where pain is a symptom and there is no foul smell to her diarrhea (you needed to know that didn't you). I'm doubtful that this would be PHF because we do not have a pond, it's the desert, and water buckets are dumped and filled frequently. She's been vaccinated for every lethal disease there is a vaccination for. Thus, I am stumped, and, therefore, awake at 2:14 am.

Off to freeze and stare at the patient for a while to see if she feels any better after her Banamine.

Happy HalloWeena

Evil Demon Found on Local Farm

The Evil Rowena Demon

Does this devil tail make her butt look big?

Joe The Manure Plumber

Oh, and just a note before you send me something about a poor plumber who's against that evile Obama.

"Joe the Plumber" isn't a licensed plumber and is actually plumbing illegally. He has lied (oh imagine that... I bet you don't remember Jeff Gannon, former White House Press Corps and frequent after hours visitor to the White House, who said he was a reporter but was really a gay prostitute). Not only that, but turns out old "Sam/Joe" hasn't paid his state taxes. He is also not "planning" to buy the plumbing business that he is illegally working for. "Planning" requires a plan, otherwise it's called "wishin'". (I know about wishin'. I wish an owl would bring me a letter asking me to live at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.) Don't you always ask for licensed contractors when you have something important done?? "Joe the Plumber", as my husband points out, is actually Joe Blow.

The real Joe Plumbers are the licensed plumbers, you know, the ones who are backing Obama because they don't make $250,000.00 a year.

Don't be telling ME to "Wake Up!"

Okay. I really need to get this off my chest because I find things like this really rude.

I have constantly said that I live in a great neighborhood. I do. I like my neighbors. Several of them I like a whole heckuvalot. I don't care that they are Republicans. I'm assuming they don't care that I'm a Democrat because they still call me up to chat. Mostly, we don't talk about politics at all. I've always found that most people are more alike than they are different. We all care about the same stuff, mostly. I don't feel that Fox News and the various republican run websites are legitimate sources for factual information, so I personally feel their beliefs are misguided. I can wish all day long that some of them would look the information up on legitimate non-partisan websites, but that doesn't mean I won't like them if they don't. Unless, they shriek at me in my email box. At that point, they are treading on very thin ice, but even then I put up with it and try my damnedest to ignore them. I have filtered all forwards out of my inbox. I have actually blocked a good friend because her husband was sending me about 10-20 forwards a day. Now I have to go into my Trash folder once a week to see if she has written me an actual letter. When I'm there, I have to look at the insulting garbage mail one person constantly feels compelled to send me. The last one was choice.

I went to my trash folder to check and see if any letters from my buddy Joann were in there. What did I find? I found something to "Obama's 'FANS'" which was just another stupid, rude, insulting, ill informed forward, but what got my goat is that before the huge lists of other people's emails, (why do people feel compelled to forward and reforward and continue to forward thus giving me 3 feet of other people's private email addresses. I'd like to reiterate that this is a very rude practice. Not to mention stupid. If someone's email gets hacked, gee thank you very much for giving the hacker all these extra spam recipients!) anyway, before the forwards, in capital letters, italicized were the words "WAKE UP!!!" I could practically hear the keys being pounded in anger. Welp. That woke me up better than 4 cups of coffee.

It woke me up to the point that I decided it's getting harder and harder to keep you as a friend and one more thing like that and there is about to be yet another person you don't get along with on this road. Don't be shrieking at me to "wake up". My last vote didn't get us into the messes we're currently in and you are the one fixin' to do that all over again. I've been using the internet for legitimate research for 13 years. I've been online for 14 years. In 1993 it was well known that if you address someone in capital letters, you are shouting at them. I'll not be shouted at in my own email box. I've sent you nothing that would warrant such behavior and never would.

I never forward anything other than our online Satellite bill and that only goes to my husband. That's it. If anyone gets something from me, it's from me. It's not me giving their private email addresses to every person in my contact list (which is like the rudest thing ever, are you going to call all your buddies up and give them my unlisted phone number while you're at it?). It's not me making no greater effort to keep in touch than to hit the forward button. No, if you get something from me, it's just from me. I might cut and paste a joke that I think you in particular might find funny, but I don't just clog the internet sending 100 people a joke. I also include a note.

Therefore I must ask, what in the last 3 years has ever made you think I want right wing propaganda in my email box? I seem to remember asking you several times to take me off the list of people you forward that garbage to. I told you then that I'd love to get letters from you to tell me how you are doing, but that I did not want any more forwards. I seem to remember gently pointing out the decided lack of facts in these forwards... a dozen or so times. So why on god's green earth do you send me junk you should know by now is both unwelcome and nonfactual? You must not care about me as much as I cared about you since you continue to send me this crap. You must have no respect for me at all to send me stuff when I've politely asked you to stop. I don't think this is a very nice way to treat someone that has always been kind to you. If you cannot take the brief time it takes to remove my email address from the forwards you send out when you know I find them insulting and that I don't want my email address spread among your friends, their friends, their friends friends, etc., then why would I take the much greater time it takes to be a friend?

Public Enemy Numbers One and Two

Mickey da Rat: Public Enemy Number One

Rocky da Squirrel: Public Enemy Number Two

I went out through the garage on my way to feed the horses one night several weeks ago and something large and furry raced out from under the shelves in the corner and ran under my truck. I got down on my sore knees to see what it was but it had disappeared out into the desert darkness. I thought.

I caught glimpses of the critter hopping at blinding speed across the patio and several more times in the garage over the next couple of weeks. It never slowed down enough to get a really good look at it, which is probably a good thing. I might have developed an emotional attachment if I'd been able to see it well. I knew it was a largish rodent. I knew it had big, round, Mickey Mouse-like ears. I Googled Arizona rodent images and discovered our new critter was a Pack Rat. "Aww how CUTE!" I thought and then spent a few minutes giggling about model parts, shiny bolts and such disappearing from the garage, only to turn up in a cozy little nest somewhere.

Just about the time I saw the pack rat for the first time, the engine light came on yet again in my truck. I'd just taken the darned thing in two weeks before and two weeks before that and two weeks before that. This particular week I just didn't have time to sit in town an entire day while the dealership figured out what was wrong this time, so I ignored the light.

The following week, the truck started dying at traffic lights. I called and made an appointment to have the dealership check out this latest problem. "Thank heaven for warranties!" Over the weekend the "Check Fuel Cap" warning came on. I checked the fuel cap. It was there. It was on. "Fab. Just fab." I added this latest nuisance to the growing list I would present to the service department.

In the meantime, the pack rat continued to play in the garage. I did begin to worry when I found a small pile of pack rat poop under my truck one morning. We did begin to wonder what was going on when we began to find small shreds of chewed rubber in the garage and on the driveway. Nothing, however, prepared me for Roger at the service department handing me a totally chewed up vacuum hose and the oxygen sensor with mangled wiring and telling me "You have a friend." Apparently pack rats (which we now have) AND ground squirrels which we have had an over abundance of since last April, love the taste of greasy rubber truck parts.

Rat chewed truck parts are not covered by warranty. $512.00 and 7 hours later, the truck runs fine. Truck ran great, as a matter of fact, straight to Safeway for a box of rat treats. $5.00 later there's a cache of lovely green hors d' oeuvres in each corner of the garage and a small offering under the truck at night. A friend suggested that we just park in the garage at night. Since the ground squirrels chewed big access holes in the rubber strip at the bottom of the door, it hardly seems worthwhile to empty the garage so that the vehicles will fit. The rodents would probably just think we'd done them a service by delivering dinner to their doors.

The Evidence