Reason #89 Why I Can't Run For Office

Besides the whole Rocky Horror cabaret thing, and the naked pictures of me on the internet before everyone had naked pictures on the internet (they were art pics - very tasteful.  Trust me.), and the whole "my body is trying to kill me" thing that cuts into my free-time...

But the latest reason...  I was watching Rachel Maddow tonight (as I often do), and she's covering the Gorsuch nomination. She had Dahlia Lithwick on and the first part of the program was pretty much going into his judicial history (and a bunch of Merrick Garland frustration, covering how much harder it keeps getting to get anyone through the system, starting with Johnson, running through Bork and Thomas, etc...)  but then the last segment on her show was basically "Oh, by the way - did you know who his mother was?" Turns out his mom is Anne Burford, Reagan's head of the EPA for 22 months (and apparently it was a really interesting 22 months - at one point, she had Jacques Cousteau testifying in Congress against the agency's plans.) 

At that point, I realized... I can never run for office.  For one thing, my family history tends to read like a really bad episode of Jerry Springer, but mostly I know the one member of my family that they would manage to dig up.  Trent.  Even though I haven't seen him or talked to him since 1980, right after the Gabrielle Gifford's shooting, they had one of the founders of the Arizona Tea Party on CNN, and surprise!  It's my half-brother.  Gene pools are weird things...

Please tell me you can't see the resemblance

I Guess It's Official

Yep... it's official

I received a surprise package from my old office - the photos from my retirement ceremony back in April.  I teared up a little, but... for the most part, the people that I remember were gone before I was.  If home is where they have to take you in... this isn't home anymore.  But it's still a lovely place to remember. 

Excitement over the weekend

(Initial stage setting - our house has a fenced-in backyard that Moose considers his own personal fiefdom.  Well, his and the birds and the squirrels.  He's shed blood defending it - around here, it's referred to as "the night of the raccoon" and "the night of the raccoon II - this time, it's personal".)

The bush on the left - that's the one that was defiled

  So, we're sitting in our usual spot, Moose mostly snoozing but doing an occasional security check out the glass door in back of us, when suddenly he went into full-on berzerker mode.  Roger looked out as well, and saw that one of the neighborhood dogs had somehow made it into our backyard.  Worse, this cocker spaniel was lifting his leg on one of Moose's bushes!  Well!  Moose was not having this - he was ready to go out and do battle, but saner heads (not to mention heads that had to pay the vet bill last time he was like this) prevailed - Roger grabbed the snarling, struggling little studmuffin and handed him over to me to hold until he calmed down (little whelp headbutted me in the process, which proves how out of control he was), and went out to run the fences.  Turns out the gate had collapsed, so we're going to have fix that before Lili and Daisy get here, as I've been informed that Lili is an escape artist par excellence. 

Now for something completely non-political

For Christmas this year, in addition to Lili (who is recovering well, by the way), Mom gave me a wonderful set of pyjamas. (And before you ask, Joel, I'm not planning on wearing them into a Tesco-like environment any time soon.) 

They're a set of leopard-print silk (or at least silk-like) pyjamas - totally indulgent and I absolutely love them.  Moose, on the other hand... not so much.  First time I wore them, he didn't know what to expect and came romping across the couch, over the couch arm, in for a landing on Mom's "vast tracks of land"... and just kept sliding.  If I hadn't caught him, I believe he was headed for Gresham. 

Now, he's a lot more cautious, but it's still difficult for him to get purchase and get comfortable. He gets there eventually, but it's a lot more work than he's used to. But considering all the times that he's done the testicle tromp on his dad, and the breast boogie on me, Roger and I don't have a lot of sympathy for him. 

Update On My Little Lili

Ignore the demon dog red-eye... she's lovely, really

Just to get you all back up to speed - Lili is my belated Christmas gift. She's a lovely little doxie girl that Mom had rescued from life as a breeding machine for me - she's Daisy Mae II's actual sister, and Mom was in the process of bringing her to me when the weather intervened (the State of Oregon was closed due to harsh weather).

Since then, Mom has been taking care of the girls for me until she can bring them over to my house (she's decided that Daisy is also my dog - the girls are lovely, but they're rebound puppies for her, not true heart dogs.)  In the meantime, she took Lili into the vet today to have her operation - you know, conversion to pet quality life, rather than serial motherhood. 

Well... turns out that Lili is following in the family footsteps.  When the vet got her open, she discovered that her uterus was not only very oddly shaped, it also had small lumps in it.  Yep.  Mini Hanks.  Fortunately, we think that they got everything, although it's being sent to the lab to have it checked out. 

I'm choosing to think of this as Lili just following in her mother's and grandmother's (heck, and great-grandmother's, for that matter) footsteps of having plumbing issues, but not letting it stop us.  At any rate, Lili is out of surgery, back awake and heading for home with Mom (and really annoyed by the cone of shame - sadly, she follows in her mother's footsteps there, too.  I always did hate wound care.)

New Definition of Irony

For some reason, the women in my family all seem to have issues as they grow older with one particular type of food.  Well, sometimes more than one - I think Aunt Sandy was down to only being able to eat boiled chicken at one point, but at least one.  You never know what's going to trigger it, and it's usually something you could eat as a kid, but...

So... you all know me.  My rallying cry has always been "My ancestors did not claw themselves up the food chain for me to eat nuts and berries!"  I've always been a carnivore, but with the advent of Hank, I've tried to eat much healthier - I managed to last almost a year as a vegan, even, although eventually my body said "enough of that nonsense".  But now...

My body has decided that it hates salad.  Green stuff.  The stuff that I avoided like the plague when I was younger - now that I'm older and want to eat it, it goes through my body like Usain Bolt heading for the finish line.  So, you know all those stock photos of women laughing while eating salad?  Yeah, not so much.

Ten Influntial Albums of my teens

Latest obsession on my FB wall seems to be people listing out their top ten albums from their teens.  I didn't really have a top ten, but here's 10 that influenced me, with a few liner notes.

Private Dancer - Tina Turner - bought this on my first home leave from Job Corps, and wore it out.  Literally wore it out - wore the cassette thin. My goth side loved Private Dancer, my "men are pigs" side (hey, I was a teenage girl) loved "What's Love Got To Do With It", my mystical side loved "I Might Have Been Queen" - it had everything.

Summertime Dream - Gordon Lightfoot, 1976.  The second or third album that I ever bought with my own money.  While I initially bought it for the same reason everyone else did (the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald), I ended up preferring the other side of the album- Spanish Moss is a lovely song that winds around your dreams, Protocol is haunting and not in a good way, and The House You Live In is just good advice. 

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - Grandmaster Flash (I liked the compilation because it had New York, New York on it along with The Message) - Upward Bound, represent!  I spent my high school summers living in a dorm where I was a distinct minority, and it was my first intro into rap - probably the best intro into rap you could have. Absolutely not my language, but angry enough and well written enough to get through to a white girl from Southern Utah.

The Outlaws - Waylon, Willie, Jessie, Tom Paul - Ok, much more my language.  My first concert as well - wonderful concert...

Purple Rain - Prince - Another album where I wore it thin.  Daddy issues, purple motorcycle, lovely goth clothing...  and the man could write. 

Future Fossils - Christine Lavin - cheating a bit - she's standing in for a lot of folk music that I loved
and Beau Woes was a better album, but this had Cold Pizza for Breakfast and Artificial Means, so...

Bat Out of Hell - Meatloaf - Wagnerian rock and roll- the best "screaming down the highway" road music ever.

Pretty much everything Jane Olivor released in the late 70s - I loved her voice, but more importantly, she was a connection to Don, the guy who imprinted me on guys wearing flannel. 

Quarter Moon in a 10 Cent Town - EmmyLou Harris - Pretty much the entire A side I can still sing from memory, and Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight and To Daddy are still my favorite EmmyLou songs ever.