Jessmiloo’s Neighborhood

Today/night:

Like most of the country, I have sat by horrified and deeply saddened by the incident that took place at Ft. Hood last week.  I have been further saddened by how Major Hasan has been portrayed as some fundamentalist Muslim on a religious mission of some sorts and the ensuing death threats against Muslims in the Ft. Hood area.  Whatever the reasons motivating Maj. Hasan, of which I am sure there were many, none of them justify further killing or threats of any kind.  Hate begets hate.  If we all, or even a few of us, respond to this incident by targeting Muslims because one of them made a horrendous decision not in line with their faith, the chasm will grow and more horrible incidents will ensue.  As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

So, I am writing to propose a way to refocus those energies and to respond to the situation with love.  Show our troops some love and get yourself educated on S.1963 - the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009.  The goal of the bill is to increase mental health services to veterans.  Our veterans are suffering tremendously and the VA, and the rest of the country for that matter, are woefully ill-equipped to manage the severity of the problem.  We are sending these people out on multiple deployments in a war zone unlike any other before.  Whatever your political take on the wars, I think we can all agree that we need to take care of our veterans.  I support this bill, but encourage everyone to do their own homework on it.

If you discover you support it, please call Senator Coburn's office and ask him to remove the hold from the bill.  He alone is preventing the bill from leaving committee and reaching the Senate floor for a vote.  The Committee on Veterans' Affairs has a statement about it here.  Senator Coburn has his rebuttal  here.  If you believe the bill should be supported, please call your senators and ask them to support it.  If you don't know how to contact your senators, go here.

I have hesitated for some time to post this because too often well-intentioned posts about how to offer support to our troops get thread-jacked by those wanting to debate the validity of the wars.  I am the daughter of a veteran who served in two wars and I am proud of my dad's service.  I am also a flaming liberal who vehemently opposes the wars.  If I can separate the soldier from the action, then you can, too, and I respectfully ask you to do so here.  If you want to say anything hateful, discriminatory, or negative, please make your own post.  I don't post publicly very often because it's easier to deal with my small community.  But, our troops are part of the larger community and we ALL need to come together to support them.  It isn't enough to put a ribbon on the back of your car and wear an American flag pin.  The heart of our country is action and I am asking you to take some positive action today to help support our troops and turn the events at Ft. Hood into a forceful, positive response from the country in support of our combat veterans.  Many thanks.

of the paper done! Yeay! Now for more editing, boooo. But at least the first draft is done. I have a couple more components to finish on this thing, plus editing, and then it will be wrapped, bow-tied, and sent off. Yeay!

Only seventy-eight more things on the list for November. Meanwhile, it's 5:45 AM and my bags are packed, so it must be time to bring art to the children.

Ok, today, I have:

I've manage to catch some sort of plague-like infection and it's totally put a damper on my weekend. What I had intended to be a weekend filled with working on short story has turned into nothing but whining and coughing and sleeping and sobbing.

In general, I'm kind of a crybaby. Even on my very best days. When I get sick, I'm leveled. I sobbed through a "Roseanne" marathon this morning, and because that wasn't quite enough I decided to watch the original "V" I TIVO'd last weekend, and cried through a lot of that too. "The Amazing Race" too.

I didn't cry during "The Maltese Falcon" though, perhaps that's progress.

Read a fucking book, you're probably thinking. I thought that too, but the pressure and burning in my eyes made reading nearly impossible. In fact, I tried and gave up because it just wasn't working for me. Some people are really good at working through the sickness. I'm not one of those people. My brain doesn't function well when I have a cold. It just feels slower and filled with mud. I try to think, but fail miserable. I don't get jokes and barely understand what people are saying to me. It's not good. Really, all I'm capable of is laying around being generally unhappy and whining about how much being sick sucks.

It does suck. I'm going to bed.

Is that a dragon I see before me?

Night 1:

Flamingo Dancer returns from the bathroom and Mr FD asks:

"Did you see any dragons?"

"Yes," said I. "They were bar-b-queing the yaks"

"I hope there are some leftovers for breakfast" he says and goes back to sleep.

Night 2:

Mr FD returns from the bathroom and I  ask:

"Did you see any dragons?"

"Dragons!" Mr FD exclaims. "I am sick of slaying dragons. Day in, day out, nothing but dragon slaying. At least they could keep it down to one a day." He returns to bed and goes back to sleep.

Dragons and yaks in our backyard...the neighbours are not going to be happy at all.

Stephan LOVES Christmas. He sees the displays go up in stores and gets excited. We were walking through Kohl's a couple weeks ago and he saw their Christmas area and exclaims, "mommie, it's Christmastime here!"

Friday night I was out with a friend and we stopped in Target (the one near me is attached to the mall), I found a small tree that was $9. Didn't quite want to get it right then, but I knew that Stephan would probably love to have "Christmastime" in his room. I talked to Andy about it and we both agreed the tree was worth it. So after nap I said I wanted to go to the store and get a surprise for Stephan. He of course wanted to know what it was. When I told him I wanted to get him a tree for his room he didn't seem super enthused about the idea.

However, as he realized what I was saying he got a little more excited about things. When I showed him the little tree he got very happy and decided he wanted colored lights. We usually have white ones on the big tree, and I figured the colored ones wouldn't be as bright to leave on at night when he's going to sleep. We found the tree, the lights, a mini tree skirt and a few ornaments.

Stephan's tree

When we got home, the first thing we had to do was set up the tree, and put on some Christmas music. Stephan's a riot.

Stephan and his tree

Everything always seems so much livelier through the eyes of a toddler.

I'm supposed to be writing this paper. Not my novel, this other thing. It's actually on something I'm quite interested in, it's just the timeline on it is kind of bad, so I'm not feeling super motivated to get the thing done.... when I really need to be very motivated, considering the deadline and all the other things that need doing in the same time. So I'm working on it, but not in the oooh, I've got to get this done so I'm plowing through it way I need to be. More of a peck peck, finally finished that paragraph I wonder what is going on in the New York Times sort of way.

It's the absolute worst kind of procrastination. See, I've got a long list of other things with imminent deadlines, but this one is the most imminent, so I am only doing that one rather than any of the others. Because if I actually moved on to those I would really be procrastinating, and this is the top of the list. So, instead of doing the paper, I'm writing a blog post while I pointedly do NOT write my nanowrimo, because the paper comes first. SIGH.Okay, back to the paper.