Steak Nite! Yee Ha!

Saturday Night is Steak Night at the American Legion Post 677 in Lithopolis. For $8.00 you get a great tasting strip steak, baked potato, salad and cookies. Lemonade, water and coffee are free or you can buy pop or beer at the bar. The people are friendly and the food is great. It's better than going to a restaurant. One of the brothers usually join us, usually Tommy, he enjoys viewing the waitress. For me it's a way to get my husband out of the house and around the people he has known most of his life.

Today I was thinking about truth. My husband alway says he has to tell the truth because it's too hard to remember a lie. I remember twice (that's twice that I remember) in my life that I didn't tell the truth as I knew it to be. Both times I was convinced by somebody else that it would be better not to tell the truth to protect the other persons feelings. Both times things turned out terribly wrong and in the long run their feelings were hurt.

I think it was because without the truth, they could not understand what was going on. Because that's how I feel when I find out an explanation or situation was not what I was told or perceived it to be. The exodous from my tribe was due to not being able to distinguish what was the truth and what was what they wanted the truth to be. That and feeling like the girl strapped to a wheel while the knife thrower shows off his skill. Every time I got hugged or patted on the back I had to check for a knife in my back. So anyway, I guess I'll continue to be a truth seeker and speaker. I will try and learn not to listen to others who advise me to spare someone's feelings.

I survived!!! But, I'm still not living. My hand was just sore enough to remind me I am not running things. I am still somewhat bitter but I am working on coming to peace with life. I try not to think too much about it or I get terribly depressed. So instead I rely on my mind to ease me through the day. My mind is a wondrous vast dark chasm. Things go in some come out some evaporate instantly.

For example, I quit smoking January 1, 2005. I had smoked about 35 years quitting only when I had my babies some 30 years ago. Now, most days, I forget I ever smoked. My husband reminds me from time to time. But, as far as I "remember" I haven't smoked.

Another example...I just finish reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I truly enjoyed reading the book. I couldn't wait each day to come home and find time to read it. I finished it in about 4 days. Now here's my review from memory. Its about this boy and his father's servant's son growing up in Kabul, then parting and life's cruelities. I read about traditions, cultural differences and the tragedies of war. The best part of the book was the first part which covered him growing up and he was cruel to the servant's son but the servant's son adored and admired him, but they had fun. This a book I just finished last night.

So as I was saying, What was I saying? If I had a good memory I don't think I could get up each morning. It would drive me crazy. I drive my one son crazy 'cause I say something like, Hey, could you bring in the thing from that place out there and leave it so I can do something with it. What's even crazier is he is starting to understand me. Of course, there is usually some hand signals in with my general sentences. What I don't understand is although most of my memory sucks. I can still function at an above average level at work and stuff. But even my boss is getting to understand me when I say I left the thing for the stuff on my desk if you need it tomorrow for that thing. He knows what ever I am talking about is on my desk and it's just what he needs and it is done neatly, concisely, and explained in detail on the note left with whatever it is. Yeah, at work if it wasn't for poste notes I could not function.

But it's not just me lacking of the English language. It's a whole thought process. Like I said, if I wasn't reminded of it...I truly do forget I smoked. I like playing Bejeweled (I had to look that one up) and when you set off the wirly ball and it strikes all those jewels with a lighting style...that's how I feel things happen in my brain. Every once in a while my brain does that lighting style strikes and kills off some of my memory jewels.

I spoke out about God, so He took my voice.

Yesterday I spoke out about God. I have not been feeling well and to add to the misery yesterday I felt like I was coming down with a cold. I sounded off to my boss about my question of faith. You know "if there's a God" and "why does He make things so hard". I thought I was presenting perfectly legitimate questions. However, this morning I woke up with laryngitis.

I questioned how we are suppose to be His children and He our father, yet He does not seem to care that we suffer so. I mean if I was an all seeing, all knowing deity, I would not toy with my creations. I would want, like any parent wants for their children, the best. I mean, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Who wants everlasting life, if life sucks!

I am really having a tough time of this since I have gotten older, for one excuse. I was raised to believe in God the Father, and Jesus His Son, but I am finding it very hard to swallow now. For years I have had a hard time dealing with the Christian concept that if you believe and ask God to forgive you, you will go to heaven. That means if someone like Ted Bundy becomes a "Christian" in the last minutes of life, they get to walk around heaven being treated as an equal to someone like Ned Flanders.

I know I need to have a sit down with the pastor and talk about these things. I'm sure he'll have some very rational explanations, but that another problem. I am having trouble believing anything that mankind says. History is not the whole truth, it's only the truth as seen by someone at sometime. Biographies and autobiographies tell only what the writer wants to tell. People believe in almost anything, so what is real and what is not?

I should be allowed to think and speak about the questions I have. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow and see if I wake up with my hands wracked with pain, where I'm unable to type.

Tad

I did not begin my life as a tadpole. First, I was terry cloth turned into a wash cloth. Oh, that seems so long ago. I came to this house...now my home, and I have become Tad, the terry frog. I am not some brainless, mouth wipe. I am a talking, thinking being, perched between the kitchen and living room. I live! Mush Mouth & Fred Snout, side by side on the computer have told me stories of their lives. They tell me they both were quite active at one time but life has dealt them a more quiet time now. Mostly they do as I, watch, listen and learn.

Observation, a very good way to learn, but not the only way, or how would blind children learn to walk. I listen not just to Mush and Snout, as they like to be called, but to the humans and animals that come and go in this house. I have learned that the cat is tolerated but otherwise not welcome. Whisky is the boss animal. Zookie, the female human calls him her baby dog. Zookie is the boss human. Cookie, the male human...isn't. Oh, I can not forget to mention the "Boy in the Barn". He comes and goes mostly to eat, then he goes back to the barn. I see him mostly when no other humans are around. Someday I may even star in one of his blogs. He is so talented and smart. At least, from what I have learned. Cookie says he's real smart, smarter than him, because he doesn't have to get up every morning at 6AM and go to work like Cookie does. Mush and Snout are real smart too and they don't go anywhere, that I know. So what is better being smart or being employed? I may need to gather more information on that.

There Oughta Be A Law!!

Today I was saying to my son that the one phrase I could not stand since I can remember, is There Oughta Be A Law! I told him that ,and I stumbled for the right words, ever since say the 70's there has just been too many new laws. I am upset that the government thinks they need to protect us from ourselves.

Well, I stumbled for the right words because just as I was saying the words, I realized that in the day and time I was an activist. Ever since I can remember, I had rallied and spoke out on a number of subjects. I fought a private war with the high school principal to "relax" the dress code. I was a party to getting smoking allowed in the outside courtyard. But, what flashed in my mind as I spoke to my son was the time I lead a petition drive to get a railroad crossing barriers and lights.

Back in 1970, my older sister and her young son was killed when a train hit her car when she was crossing the tracks at an "unprotected" crossing. It had the stop, look & listen sign, but it did not have the crossing barriers or lights. This was not unusual, many crossings were like this because we lived in farming country, heck, we lived in the country, our little towns were connected by a bunch of country roads. Most of the crossings started as dirt crossing made by farmers. Over the years some became paved roads, others where just gravel roads.

So after their funeral, two of my friends and I decided we were going to gather signatures and petition the rail road to put up lights and barrier at all crossings. At the time we thought we were doing the right thing. My sister and nephew would not have lost their lives so tragically if the crossing had had barriers and lights. My youth and suffering didn't allow me to see, even after people from the scene, trying to comfort us said that she probably didn't even see the train because the volume on her radio was set real high. We, as family agreed, She always did play her radio way to high. That and having her a/c on and windows up, also lead to the tragedy.

Back then I thought I was doing the right thing. I shook my fist and screamed, "There Oughta Be A Law."

Our petition drive somehow caught the attention of the press. We got coverage. Public officials spoke up and got involved. We thought we were movers and shakers and WE were going to make a difference. When the railroad was confronted by the public officials and our petition they agreed that something had to be done so no more people would lose their lives crossing the tracks at "unprotected" crossings. They closed all crossings except main road crossing and made sure all had barriers and lights.

We had won, but the farmers and/or other people that used those crossings were not thrilled. Yes, they were cross about the crossings being closed. But, public opinion was not on their side. A young mother and her 18 month old son had been killed. That didn't go away easy.

Now, some 40 years later I see the err of my ways. That train did not kill my sister and nephew. Nor did not having barriers and lights shorten her stay on earth. My sister chose to take her own life and that of her son's or at least took a gamble and lost, when she did not STOP, LOOK and LISTEN!