Equality

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

For Equality

Perhaps because I was raised during the era of the civil rights movement, I've always been a supporter of equal rights.  In my formative years my heroes were the leaders of the civil rights movement: the Freedom Riders, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, and Medgar Evers, to name just a few.  I greatly admired those who, at great personal risk, used civil resistance in the fight against racial discrimination.

Throughout the 60's my family never bought grapes, honoring the grape boycott organized by the United Farmworkers who were boycotting to improve the working conditions and pay for farmworkers.

Although I never burned a bra, I certainly supported the women's liberation movement in the 70's.  I was still naive enough to believe that centuries of domination would be overturned within the decade.  We have yet to pass an equal rights amendment to the United States Constitution.

I can probably blame my leftist leanings on my mother who marched at the U.S. border in support of immigration reform and donated to every liberal cause, and probably to more than a few scams in the last years of her life.  My brother saved the bumper stickers from her car...

It should come as no surprise that I am a strong supporter of marriage equity and LGBT rights.  I was stunned in 2004 when Oregon passed a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between one man and one woman.  Try as I might, I can't understand why anyone cares who anyone else marries.  I understand that some people cite religious reasons for not supporting marriage equity, but those people are certainly free to not marry a same sex partner.  Government has no business legislating who we love.  Consenting adults should have the right to marry any other consenting adult.  Groups in Oregon are organizing to once again challenge the legality of the ban on same sex marriages in Oregon.

Today's theme is equality.  To find out more about Marriage Equity visit Freedom to Marry.org

Dave, I'll Miss You

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

 for David Letterman     

David Letterman announced his retirement today.  It feels like I'm losing an old friend.  I've been watching him for over 30 years.  When my children were babies, and I was a stay-at-home mom, I watched his morning show.  When my kids were in preschool and I went back to college to get my teaching certificate, I wrote my Master's thesis late at night with Dave to keep me company.  One of the benefits of retirement has been staying up to watch Dave on the "Late Show" without having to get up early in the morning to go to work.  

Dave has had his ups and downs.  I commiserated with him when he didn't get the Tonight Show and I admired how he dealt with the very public disappointment.  His frustration became material for his comedy, and while he sometimes sounded a little bitter, he was always funny.  I appreciated that he didn't deny his disappointment, but he went on and achieved even greater success.  

Years later he had another very public humiliation when his sexual relationship with a staffer became public.   He he made a public apology.  He showed us that he was human; he made mistakes, and he moved forward and tried to rectify them.  He's a pretty good role model.  He's demonstrated that you can fail and still achieve, make mistakes and make amends, and be a celebrity and human.

Although I will miss his company late at night when the rest of my household is fast asleep, I wish him all the best in his retirement.  I hope he will find, like I have, that retirement is one more opportunity to find joy every day.  

Thanks, Dave, for sharing so much of yourself with us for so many years.

Clutter

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

Today I gave in to the urge and started spring cleaning.  To be absolutely truthful, I lost one of my hearing aids in the pile on the table next to my chair and decided that it was time to tackle the clutter.  When I didn't find the aid after clearing off the table, I was ready to expand the search area to the vacuum cleaner bag in case I had sucked it up in a brief cleaning frenzy.  Fortunately the spouse found it under the coffee table.  Whew!   The pair of hearing aids was $6,000.00!!!  I don't have an extra $3,000.00  around to replace a lost one.  Tragedy averted! 

So, I had one small clutter-free area in my living room and I was encouraged to continue.  Right next to my chair sits a basket that holds my reading material.

It's a big basket.  I hadn't gotten around to reading that Oprah magazine on top of the pile.  Notice the banner that reads, "De-Clutter Your Life 2014!"  In fact, I hadn't read most of the magazines in that basket.  I filled a tote bag with magazines to drop off at the library's recycle reading box; some of them were from 2011.  I still have a full basket, but all this month I'll take at least one tote bag a week to the library.  I'm going to work my way through the bookcases this evening as I watch The Voice.  Books I recycle through paperbackswap.com.  

The dust bunnies are gone and even the baseboards have been cleaned.  Now there is one relatively clutter-free zone in this house.  Tomorrow I'm going to declutter the utility room and pantry.  I'll probably have to slay some spiders in there.  

...and the spouse will start putting up the sheetrock in the bathroom and fill the house with dust.

Bathroom Renovation

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

The closest the spouse and I ever got to divorce involved plumbing.  That's why, when the spouse said, "It's time to redo the bathroom,"  I thought it was a good time to leave town.  I spent spring break in Texas with the grandchildren.  We took walks to the park and went shopping for shoes.  We went out to eat and did craft projects.  We went to Dallas and learned about history (the Texas School Book Depository and the grassy knoll,) explored the Perot Science Museum, and visited the Fort Worth Zoo.  I came home after 10 days and the bathroom was completely gutted...not remodeled, gutted!  Here's what it looks like now:

 

Believe it or not, this is progress!   This bathroom is tiny, the size of a small walk-in closet.  The new shower walls are framed in and the plumbing is hooked up.  New sub-flooring has been installed and is ready to be tiled.  Most of the minutes on my cell phone have been used this month for plumbing.  No, I haven't been calling the plumbing supply company ordering parts.  I stand in the bathroom with my phone while the spouse, out in the pump house, turns on the water.  My job is to monitor for leaks so he can turn off the water before there's a flood!  

I love watching those remodeling and renovating shows on TV.  They can renovate an entire house in a half hour show.  I have noticed, however, that they never have to run back and forth to Home Depot for missing parts and supplies.  That's probably why we're into month two of this project, but, we haven't called the divorce lawyer yet.

All Of A Sudden...

All this month I will be participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Every day, except Sundays, I will be writing a new post starting with the letter A on April first and finishing up the month with the letter Z.  Let me know if you have suggestions for topics.

All of a Sudden it's spring.  The sun has returned.  Our yard has gone from brown and barren to green and blooming overnight.  The daffodils are in full bloom and the tulips won't be far behind.  The tulips are still short stalks with tight  green bulges at the top, but soon the yard will explode with their color.

These are last year's tulips

All of a sudden it's April. I signed up for the A to Z challenge at the beginning of the year, and had plenty of time to plan and prepare.  Now it's April and I have done no planning and haven't written a word.  I haven't even posted the A to Z Challenge banner on my sidebar (because I can't remember how to do it!)

Why did I think this year would be any different?  I know I like to work under pressure.  I've done some of my best work when the clock was ticking down to a deadline.  I would like to be one of those people who gets everything done early, but that's just not my nature.  Heck, I've still got 15 days to get started on my taxes...

WTF Wednesday: Mike's Market

WTF Wednesday is a semi-regular feature of this blog. It documents the things that have made me pause, slap my forehead and say, "What the f**k!"  Well, that and I just like saying WTF. I'm retired. I don't have to watch what I say anymore. I'm not any one's role model.

They know me at Mike's Market.  I'm a regular.  Every day, rain or shine, I get my fix of Diet Coke for just a dollar.  At the beginning of the school year when I was working, I was there early in the morning.  Now that I'm on a more relaxed schedule, I roll in sometime after 10:00.   I fill my giant Big Gulp mug with ice and Diet Coke, and if the lottery is over a hundred million, I might spring for one ticket.  The Diet Coke will last me all day.  It's 9:00 p.m. as I write this and I'm still sipping on the one I bought this morning.  Those Big Gulp mugs are well insulated.

This morning I was filling my mug when the clerk asked me, "Are you working today?"

"No," I responded. "Why?"

"Well," she said. "You're all dressed up."

"I'm wearing sweat pants and a fleece pullover."

"Yeah," she says "but you match." 

WTF???  Maybe it's time for me to upgrade my retirement wardrobe.

Adventures On The High Sea

Update:  Pictures included.

I write this from the library of the Veendam as we cruise off the coast of Mexico, heading toward Puerto Vallarta.  There are photos that go with this post, but the wireless on the ship is way too slow to load pictures.  There are a few clouds in the sky, but the sun is shining.  I am enjoying it even more knowing that Oregon is buried in snow!

We left home last Wednesday at 4:15 am and it was 13 degrees.   By the time it started to snow in Hermiston, we were safely basking in the sun in San Diego.

On Friday my brother, Leigh, had arranged for us to go sailing with his friend Lou, who has a 38-foot sailboat.  It had rained overnight in San Diego, but we left Oceanside Marina in sunshine with a light breeze.  We were ready for a day of whale watching.  We saw lots of pelicans and a seal or two, but no whales.  About a mile offshore the spouse spotted something floating on the water.  What was it?  After determining that it wasn’t a bird or a seal, and definitely not a whale, we cruised past it and saw it was a black plastic package wrapped in twine. 

“Marijuana,” Leigh said,  “I bet it’s pot.” 

Lou turned the boat around and we circled the package.  Someone said, “Let’s go get it.”  We were all excited to find out what was in the package.  Then I remembered that Dexter disposed of all his victims in the ocean.  “I hope it’s not body parts,” I said. 

Lou maneuvered the boat alongside the package and the spouse and Leigh used a grappling hook to pull the bundle alongside the boat.   It was too heavy for them to pull out of the water, but in the process of hooking the package they had torn a small hole and they could see and smell the bricks of marijuana.  They used the winch to pull the bundle out of the water.

My brother, Leigh, got on the phone and called the Harbor Patrol to report our find, and then we noticed a white boat speeding toward us.  The Harbor Patrol was answered by a machine.  We notice that the white boat was still headed toward us.  Leigh called 911 and they asked if we could retrieve the package.  Leigh said we could and then the 911 operator asked if we would bring it in to port.  Leigh told them that it wasn’t really convenient for us to do that since we were on our way out for the day and asked for them to send a boat out to pick it up.

The white boat was making us nervous.  We’ve all watched too much TV.  What if it was the drug runners coming to retrieve their contraband? They would be equipped with AK47’s and could mow us down.  “We’ve got a boat headed right toward us,” Leigh tells the 911 operator, “Would you send that boat right out?”

We take pictures of the white boat.  In the back of my mind I think that when the Coast Guard recovers my bloodied corpse, they will also find the pictures, clues to start tracking down my killers…Yeah, way too much TV!

The white boat speeds right by us headed out to sea.  We are alone with a hundred pound bundle of high-grade marijuana hanging from the stern.

“How much do you think it’s worth?” someone asks.  None of us is knowledgeable of the current street value of marijuana and our estimate of $35,000. to $40,000., we find out later, is way under value.

A rescue boat from the harbor patrol reaches us and, after some maneuvering, hauls our bundle onto his boat.

With that excitement over, we begin searching for whales…but can’t help but look for more pot.  We don’t find either, but every once in a while someone would say something like, “If we had decided to keep it, how would we have gotten it off the boat?”  “How would we have gotten rid of 100 pounds of marijuana?  It’s not like we could turn our kids into pot vendors.”  …although a few of them would have been willing.

Returning to harbor we see a police vehicle driving along the beach and then we sail by the Oceanside Police Station as we enter the harbor.  We all agree that if we were trying to smuggle in the pot, we would be crazy with paranoia at the sight of so many police.  But, by this time, we had come up with a good plan for removing a large bundle off the boat unnoticed!

Later that evening we recounted our adventures to younger family members who all said the same thing, “Why did you call the police?  Why didn’t you bring at least some of it home?”  Our conversations continued to explore “What if…,” especially after we discovered that our bundle was worth somewhere between $400,000. and $500,000.  But really, to whom would I sell it? I don’t picture myself as the world’s oldest pot dealer.  I’m destined to live out my golden years living on my pension.