This is a good post to avoid :-)

Okay, this is the political post. Doubt I'll have another one of these this year. You should pass along to the recipe or craft posts; they're more entertaining! :-)

I just want to say, on the record, that I don't trust ANY political candidates, particularly presidential ones. I don't think any of them have my interests at heart. The only time they act like they do is when they need my vote around voting time. In actuality they work for their big donors. I'm not saying anything profound here, just stating how I feel and how disgusting it all is.

I also don't trust any political candidate's religious statements or views. In particular, I don't trust presidential candidates of any ilk stating that they are Christians or etc. Yes, there are some elected officials that are members of other religious organizations (most notably as of late the Muslim members of Congress which is a fairly new situation), but in America at least at the present time you have to say you are a Christian to be elected president. Does that mean that I don't trust ANY of the presidential candidates' statements that they are Christians? Well, it does mean that I think they will do whatever they have to do to be elected, and if that means say that they are Christians or participate in Christian churches, so be it. Romney? Well, I'm not opening that can of worms. ;-)

Years ago I remember a pretty high-ranking music executive who visited the church I was attending. He basically said "I love your church, but I can't go here." What he was saying was that our church wasn't large enough, wasn't politically/musically "connected" enough, for him to make his mark in his career. I think that he was just more honest than most. Many others, not just politicians, choose churches based mostly, or totally, on how it can help them advance in whatever arena they deem important.

I also think that most people vote based on their own greed or self-absorption. Which party is going to give me more money, or help me keep more of my money, seems to be the litany. I don't think it matters which party we're talking about; the motivation is the same. Either you want money from someone else, or you want to keep all yours to the detriment of the overall good.

This does not mean that I am a moderate. I don't think the Democrats or the Republicans like me. I am sick of the inactivity, waste, and absolute lack of concern for what seem to be basics. And I don't think it is going to get better.

This post must be a sign of middle age. That's it, I give. I'm retreating to a more energetic, less cantankerous age, and only visiting these feelings once in a while. It's not worth it. Maybe this is why so many people have punted voting.

Mostly doing better

It's hard work to focus on healing and becoming healthy, or at least it is for me. It doesn't come naturally. In my world, serving the needs of the abuser was the main focus and not even noticing one's own feelings was the goal.

I do like the feeling of being a little more healthy, though. I'm focusing on vitamins, soy, exercise, and learning some positive things about myself. That last part truly does feel like fiction but sometimes it may possibly be true. Once in a while. Learning what God has to say about me helps. It's not like the latter is a newsflash, but somehow hearing it again does seem to help me see that truth more clearly. If you hesitate to care for yourself because you don't feel as though you are worth it, or there isn't time, or both, I know some of how you must be feeling. Try to embrace even a little loving care for yourself if you can. Try to treat yourself, even for a little while, as God views you...much loved and cherished.

It hasn't been easy lately. Hubs' mom is hospitalized again, and still spending out of control and hoarding like crazy. Let's not talk about my own mom, 'k? Kiddo and his mom are the standard bubbling cauldron of stress, and hubs and I have our own stressors. One would be having replaced the transmission on the car, because it seemed to be the cheapest tack overall. Hard to think of $2300 as being the cheapest way, and certainly wasn't something without stress. 'Got a majorly stressful situation to deal with this morning, which I think is now mostly calmed down.

The long and the short of it is that the stress hasn't abated one bit, and it is still overwhelming to deal with, but the good thing is that I have more reserves to deal with it. Whether that helps in the long run, we shall see. But for now there is encouragement in the midst of all the turmoil that gets dumped on us. We know this is our calling, and we are sheltering ourselves from the situations that we can't really improve anyway. Seems like the wise tack.

Overheard at our house...

I walk into the house around 8:30 or so. Hubs is on the couch, and the Golf Channel is on. He is gently snoring.

I say, "The Golf Channel. That is EXACTLY what I would switch to if I wanted to fall asleep. I guess it definitely works." ;-P

Close Encounters of the Equine Kind...

We had quite an experience last night. Hubs and I ran an errand out to a shopping area out east of town and then headed home in the truck. We took a road home that is fairly heavily traveled, but in some areas is very dark at night--no streetlights, no yard lights, not what I would call rural, but more acreage than the houses in my neighborhood, to be sure.

All of a sudden out of nowhere a horse bolted across the road. It was almost impossible to see them because of the darkness. Hubs was driving, and somehow he mostly missed the horse. His only option was to pull the truck right, and for some reason the horse lunged in that direction as well. We heard a loud "clunk" and pulled our truck over to the side. The horse, amazingly, did not even stop but continued galloping down the side of the road. With the lack of light it was impossible to tell where the horse belonged or, after a few seconds, where the horse had gone.

All we could do at that point was call 911 to alert the authorities to try to get the horse off the busy road, if they could possibly find them.

The weird part was that hubs, fortunately, had been able to slow down considerably and he thought that he and the horse were probably traveling about the same slow speed at this point. For whatever reason, the horse did not even dent our truck. The side mirror bent in from the impact, as it was meant to do, but easily went back in place. There may be some permanent scratches and maybe a small dent, but quite amazingly that was all that happened.

We had invited kiddo to go with us on our errands, but they had elected to stay at their home. That's a good thing, as we would have been in the Civic instead, and that would have been a very different scenario with a horse. Now I'm glad my hubs let the truck run really low on gas, so we took it to gas it up in the midst of our errands. That probably saved us significant injury as we might well have seen if we had driven the Civic.

We have no idea where the horse went, which is very sad indeed, but we also didn't know how to find it or what to do that would have been useful other than alerting the authorities immediately. I certainly hope the horse is okay, and that another driver did not meet up with the same situation we did.

It was hard for hubs to get to sleep after that. Gee, adrenaline and fear keep you awake? I would never have guessed. ;-P

Wisdom...

Someone who has abused me for years is trying a new tack. Now the plan is to have someone else call me and tell me how I should contact the first person, that they are so kind and nice.

Grrrrrrr.

Someone very close to me said "This is like getting getting shot by a person every time you see them, and then you decide that you are not willing to get shot any more so you avoid them. The person who shot you can't figure out for the life of them why you aren't willing to let them shoot you any more, and is angry about it and lonely."

Exactly.

I love and care for the abuser, but I cannot allow myself to be abused any longer. This is a situation with no positive outcome, other than continue to insulate myself from the abuse. It's gutwrenching, but it's the only way. Period.

I am just now for the first time in my life feeling a glimmer of peace and healing, self-knowledge, and being embraced by God in love and care. I know that sounds bizarre or unbelieveable, but it is true. I have lived in fear and trauma all my life and I just can't do it anymore.

I'm not going back.

Decadent Dark Chocolate Fondue

My local store had bars of Green and Black's Organic Baking Chocolate bars for a whopping 88 cents. How did I find such good fortune as they are usually $4.50 or more? I guess after Christmas they had an overabundance.

My MIL's kitchen yielded a few goodies as we cleaned it out...one was a NordicWare double boiler. I plopped 2 1/2 broken bars in the vessel, and added around a half cup of half and half. Usually I guess you're supposed to use cream, but I just did that because that's what I had on hand. I also added some demarara cane sugar. A double boiler insert isn't necessary, but I do think that double boiler is a better way to gingerly handle chocolate so it behaves well.

As everything melted, I added some more half and half to get the consistency I wanted, and you will probably need to add a fair amount of the cane sugar to get the taste you want. But this means you will get to enjoy more chocolate samples as you make your fondue, so why not? :-)

When it was ready, I put it into our tealight warmer (yep, I actually have a fondue set, I guess I'm a child of the seventies) and served it with bananas and strawberries.

This made more fondue than three could enjoy, so it might be best suited for a group. When it cooled and was refrigerated, though, it made a very nice chocolate spread for a chocolate/peanut butter bagel. Ask me how I know. ;-)

Well, I took a break from posting.

The last minute buzzer beater that sent Drake home was a bummer. It was nice to see that Western Kentucky, the team that beat them at the last minute, won their next game and gave UCLA a tough fight before losing. I'm still very proud of the Bulldogs, and proud of the school's focus on academics. Last Friday wasn't much fun. But hey, it's only a game.

After the game, I took kiddo bowling, and hubs was able to come too as Good Friday led to an early end of the work day for all the folks over there at the big monolithic company. This was the day I started making yoyos. (The fabric kind.) I always said I wouldn't do it, but it was strangely comforting. I made them all afternoon and even made some DURING church while I tweaked the sound board. Okay, admittedly I mostly tweaked the sound board and only made a few yoyos (during the sermon there isn't much tweaking to be done), but I did make yoyos. I'll do a different post about that later.

Several posts ago I mentioned that having laryngitis for almost two weeks was not all bad. For a while there, I used a little notebook to communicate. Someone I know said "laryngitis, for a woman, is a fate worse than death." I wouldn't go that far, but it was amazing how many things I couldn't do. I was supposed to call my doctor's office. I couldn't. I went out in public in the latter days of my malady, and hoped beyond hope that no one would try to carry on a conversation with me. I whispered sometimes when I needed to communicate, and only exacerbated the problem.

The best part of having laryngitis, though, is being forced to listen. That's not all bad, AT ALL. There are real advantages to talking less in the car with kiddo. It was my experience that kiddo talked a whole lot more when I couldn't. This has motivated me to listen more and talk less. I grew up in an interruptive (is that a word), get-a-word-in-edgewise house. This is a good lesson/change in tack for me to learn. I'm grateful for that part of laryngitis.

Hokay, here we go

Pins and needles

I'm an old school dog.
'Worried about our game tomorrow. It is NOT going to be easy. I'll have to watch it on the 'net...as Tennessee has a game at the same time. :-P

You know, that's a nice thing to be worried about instead of all the things we have been wrestling with as of late. Truly, I can see God's hand in healing us little by little, giving us a little rest. Some good stuff for kiddo...at least it appears that way. I assume nothing.

I'm getting some help healing from some dear folks and I am grateful. All this abuse and bad patterns are hard to replace with good stuff...I don't even feel worthy to do so and definitely don't know much about how to do better. But step by step things are improving.

Lord, thanks.

And now off to the basketball madness yet again. :-) Lots of stuff that needs to be made too. Farmers market isn't long from now, and accounts need stuff too. Plenty to do. It's spring break so I have a little more time than usual to work. What we really need though is a REAL vacation. I'm praying for that.

Which mid-major is most likely to pull a George Mason '06?
Bilas: Drake Bulldogs
Davis: Drake Bulldogs
Fraschilla: Kent State Golden Flashes
Gottlieb: Drake Bulldogs
Rankin: Drake Bulldogs
Vitale: None

March Madness!!!!

Usually we don't give a lick about the NCAA tournament since our alma mater hadn't been in it for 37 years. Well, we're back and in a big way. Scary game on Friday and if we win it we will probably be playing UConn. Not getting ahead of myself, as Western Kentucky University is not going to be easy.

Still, it's a heck of a lot of fun to see Drake get all these props.

We were even in USA Today in a flashback article today...ironic that UCLA is in our bracket. It's a story of the 1969 run...party like it's 1969, bay-bee!!! :-)

Our coach has won a couple coach of the year awards. Considering they thought Drake would finish ninth in the conference and is instead rated #14 overall, that's probably a good call.

"Missing Zach: Drake's basketball team will be missing one fan when it's in Tampa, Fla., for the NCAA Tournament. Reigning Masters champion and Drake grad Zach Johnson, who now lives in Florida, won't be able to attend. "It stinks,'' Johnson said."

As I've said before, we'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Overheard at our house...

Me: "When I die, I would like black gospel music played at my funeral, I think."

Hubs: "Well, THAT will make everyone sad."

*L*

Somehow, this is just my style...

Earlier on this here blog I told you pardners that I had signed up for a western mini apron swap. Well, hubs didn't call a shrink and I'm not in a psych facility, so now that I'm mostly not sick I finally finished the crazy things. If you know me, these won't strike you as out of character. *L*

And of course, dear little feline Mandy was nowhere to be seen until it was apparent that one of her slaves was going to take some photos. Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my closeup...*L*