Welcome Back

Let's see if I can remember how this blog machine works.

I did something new last week: got poison oak.  I do not recommend it.  I will post a photo so you can avoid the same fate.  Leaves of three, let it be.  I mean it.

Last night I watched 3 episodes of Madmen with my friend Winfree.  She has the netflix.  I think netflix is a wonderful idea, but I am sure the Woody's would find a way to lose money and DVDs and probably never watch anything.  But I digress from Madmen.  Which is a good thing in my opinion.  I can think of 3 words for this show:  awful, awful, awful.  It fails as a comedy; it fails as a drama.  It fails as a documentary.  Sheesh, it even fails as a mockumentary. Fail, fail, fail.  So that's one less thing for us to order if we ever get the netflix.

I have been enjoying the republican presidential candidate parade of fail.  Are they joking?  Someone could make a great TV show about these clowns and their "advisors" and all the drama that must go on each day as they prepare to go out on the world stage and make total idiots of themselves.  Do they practice?  Or does asinine behavior come naturally?  I think it would be marvelous if they just never settled on a candidate and we avoided the whole tedious and exhausting ordeal of a presidential campaign.  Think how pleasant that would be.  Maybe all the money normally spent of the presidential race could be donated to Planned Parenthood.  That would be my vote.

On the gardening front, my yard looks pretty good.  I have been paying Lawn Doctor to make my grass look decent and that's paying off.  I hate like heck to spend money on grass but it looked so awful last year it pained me to see it.  All of my various flower beds look nice.  My nectarine tree is drooping with a heavy load of what look like peaches to me.  I am going to have to time the harvest very carefully if we are to keep the squirrels and birds from stripping the tree.  I may have to call in sick to work for several days while I maintain a nectarine vigil.  I'll post a photo of the tree.

And, you'll be happy to know that we continue to clean up our frightening collection of crap.  I'm afraid we will end up on that show Hoarders if we don't do something about it.  I visit the Goodwill nearly every weekend.  If you were to come into our house right now and look around, you'd think I was lying about removing stuff.  So don't come in and look around, OK?  Just go right in the kitchen.  Stay there.  Get something to eat or drink.  Read the paper.  

And avoid the poison oak over at the dead-end.  Trust me on this.

 Don't touch it.  Don't mow it.  Don't make eye contact.  Back away from the poison oak and no one gets hurt.

Mother's Day Musings

Happy mother's day to all mothers, past, present, and future.

It's early here at the nest, and I'm enjoying the bird sounds, and the lush green of my yard after a night of rain.  The washer is washing, doing its duty just as I told it to, so that's a good thing.  Later the dryer will dry, also following my instructions.

Later I am going over to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and strip leaves off of trees.  This will be a fun outdoor activity, and after I'll be able to tell people that I stripped on mother's day.

I'm feeling kind of melancholy and need to shake that off.  I am blessed with 3 excellent sons so melancholy on mother's day is pretty ridiculous.  Maybe I feel unneeded.  Maybe I miss my mother.  And Paul's mother too.  Raising children is a 24 hour job for 18 years, then they all take off (thank goodness) for their own lives.  And that's what we want, independent, self-sufficient off-spring.

I think the solution to my melancholy problem is that I need to think more like a man.  

I'll get right to work on that.  

Dread Pirate Donald

So almost-president Donald Trump thinks that we should seize Iraqi oil as payment for removing Saddam Hussein.  Funny, I don't recall the Iraqis asking us to remove Saddam.  But I digress.  Donald will simply send his military to fetch that oil.  Ditto with Libya.  If they want us to remove Quaddafi (not sure of spelling, but does it matter?), then hand over the oil.

"EXCUSE ME, EXCUSE ME", he'd say, "That's my oil now."

And then he'd send in his Somali sailors to take care of the dirty work.

Next he'd turn to the debt ceiling problem.  There's no need to raise that ceiling he says.  "I'd make a deal."   We're still waiting for him to say who'd he'd make a deal with.

I thought his birth certificate ranting was the silliest thing about him until I read this, from the transcript from his ABC interview with George Stephanopolis.  This explains a lot about his desire to get to the White House:

Stephanopoulos: Would you renovate the White House?

Trump: No, I wouldn’t.  Although I will tell you something.  I called up the White House about a year ago.  And I saw that they were having lots of functions for people like the President of China.  He’s a con-- you know, they rip us off all the time.  Then we have functions, but regardless of that.  But for heads of state.  Heads of other countries. And I said, "Listen, every time I see a function, you put an old broken canvas tent, that they probably pay some guy, some local guy a fortune for.  Guy’s probably became rich on the course of the tent."  I said, "I will build you, free of charge, to a very high official at the White House, one of the great ballrooms of the world."  I have, I think, the best ballroom in the United States at Mar-A-Lago  I built it.  It’s six years old.  It’s gorgeous, okay?  People are there all the time.  Getting married and doing events.  And I raise a lot of money for charity in the ballroom.  It’s a very big ballroom.  Holds-- I mean, it could-- it could hold 1,200-1,500 people.  It’s a tremendous ballroom. 50-foot ceilings.  So, I offered this person-- I will build it.  It’ll cost maybe $100 million.  Anywhere from $50 to $100 million.  I will give you a gift and what we’ll do is we’ll hire the top ten architects in the world, hopefully, the United States, but in the world.  We’ll have a committee, a review committee set up.  We’ll pick the one that everybody agrees, because it’s a little delicate.  You know, it is the White House, after all. And we will build, instead of a tent, a canvas tent, which by the way is even dangerous.  Instead of a canvas tent, we will build one of the great ballrooms of the world right in Washington, attached to the White House.  And they said, "Wow, wow.  That’s great."  Guess what?  I never heard from ‘em.

Stephanopoulos: This is true?  This is a true story?

Trump: This is a true story.

Insert photo here of an eye-patched Trump waving his cutlass, shouting EXCUSE ME, I HAVE A LOT OF MONEY

Aarrrgh

this is pretty good

World's Worst Gardener

I'm back.  I've been busy.  I had to study every night for my horticulture exam.  I didn't really study every night, but I thought about it every night.  I'd organize my papers and books, and arrange the pillows just right on the sofa.  Get some dinner.  Talk to my husband.  Pet the cats.  Update my Facebook page.  It all adds up, you know.  I'm exhausted.

A few weeks ago I went out to the big old weed bed to get it ready for spring action.  I saw some parsley that I left to grow cause I liked the foliage.  (Who needs that much parsley??)  I reached over to yank it out of the ground and look what I got:

That's a hell of a parsley root.  Why yes, now I do recall planting carrots.

I left the carrot out there for the Easter bunny.

What's up doc?

Crazy Guvs on the Loose

From Florida:

In just weeks, Scott makes state cry uncle - St. Petersburg Times

Hey, here's an entrepreneurial idea: crazy governor trading cards. Governors could be rated on their likelihood of getting recalled, impeached, run out of town, or simply just ruining their states.

I remember when the voters in Minnesota thought it would be a hoot to have that wrestling guy as their governor. And now he looks pretty darn sane, doesn't he. What was his name?

If I had a set of crazy governor trading cards, maybe he'd be included and I could remember his name without having to google it. Hold on a minute ...

Jesse Ventura!

Very Interesting

I was curious about the governor of Wisconsin who says he will call out the National Guard on Wisconsinites if they squawk about losing collective bargaining rights and other employment protections for public servants.  He says he's just doing what he'd do if there was a snow emergency or flood.  

Since I've never heard of this fellow Scott Walker, I looked him up on Wikipedia.  He was born in 1967, never finished college, and got his first government job at age 27 when he was elected to the Wisconsin state assembly (in his second attempt).  He had that job until 2002 when he became the county executive for Milwaukee County.  In 2010 he won the race for the governor's job with a platform that included cutting wages for state employees and rolling back taxes.

All during his government career, he's been a champion for spending cuts, reducing government, shutting programs and services down.  To his credit, he gave back half of his salary for some of the years he was the county executive, but after a time, he cut his give-back amount to $10,000.

So, what we have here is a 17 year civil servant, earning a good living off of the government, accruing retirement benefits, providing his family with health care coverage, living a nice upper middle class existence; in other words, getting all the good things every family hopes for in America.  Who knows, maybe his charisma and political skill may take him all the way to the White House.

The rest of you chumps better shut up and take it and just be happy you have a job.  The National Guard is watching.