Rude and Mean Spirited.

Today I got exposed to bad attitudes. My day started much like any other day. But, shortly after I had finished running the late letters, the boss called to let me know he was on his way but was stopping to pick up something he needed. While I was on the phone the guy who leases the building up front open the door and started f-ing this and f-that. I really wasn't getting very much else of what he was saying because with just one ear working and the phone up to that one, well you can figure it out.

To make a very long story short. He had a bad attitude and decided it was o.k. to be rude and mean spirited to me. I might have been surprised and somewhat shocked if this was the first time. It wasn't. I told the boss I think the guy is a manic or schizo. Every other day it's something. One day, he's had enough and he ain't gonna take it anymore then the next day everything is ok and things are picking up. The last time he was overly rude the boss had to talk to him. He asked him to leave his profanity at his shop. It's not that I don't know the words it's just that I don't want to hear them...Especially at work. What if that was a customer on the phone. That would have been rude, rude, rude.

Well, the man is on a roller coaster ride I don't want to take. Since he moved his shop in, I have gone out of my way to help him and be nice even when he's been in a foul mood. But, he has reached my last nerve. It takes a lot to piss off Little Zookie but when she gets at that place it takes a lot to get her away from it. People have been known to die from it...not literally but figuratively. I have erased people out of my life because of their bad attitude and how they "act" when they're in one. I take all the beating anybody should have to stand from my husband's bad attitudes. I don't need anymore. I especially don't like what it does to me. It puts me in a bad attitude and stresses me out. Luckily if I busy myself, I forget all about it until something reminds me.

However, he wasn't the only one today. Two other people came off as rude today, one on the phone and one in person. The one in person acted like I should have told the customer I was taking care of to "excuse me but evidently this women and her PROBLEM is much more important than you, and you will have to wait until I GET HER OUT OF MY FACE!!! I didn't. She went off in a huff, I politely asked the customer if he minded if I call the boss to go help the lady. He said it was fine. So I got the boss to go handle the rude lady. That's what's nice about not being your own boss. The boss gets to handle the rude people. Except for the one on the phone. He just seem disturbed that I interrupted his life to deal with something so menial and insignificant as having to drop off a key. I think he thought we should have a maintenance person standing watch over his unit, awaiting for his arrival, whenever he decided when he wanted to come so the guy could fix his door then.

I just can't help it. It hurts my soul to be exposed to so much rudeness and mean spiritness. Life is much too short to be that way. Why do people have to be that way. In this country, people can win a million dollars for being the rudest and most mean spirited. They call it Survivor. I was never one to play king of the hill. I don't care what they say I won't stay in a world without love. Oh, if I wanted to think about it I could hurt an awful lot. People can be so mean. Heck, people are so mean to the people they love and so much more to the people they don't like or they disagree with. Nothing could be ruder or meaner then a suicide bomber. This person doesn't just use words or gestures, they are so mean, so rude they are willing to die in order to make others suffer. I don't think it can get meaner then that. Oh, people are so strange. It hurts.

Whatta I know??

If I hadn't mentioned it before, my sons got me blogging. They have the most interesting sights. Some times they talk way above my head, and they might as well be speaking another language, but most times they have very entertaining entries. I know how to get by with a computer but most of the stuff they do with their blogs are beyond my capabilities. So if it's something new or difficult to me, I call on my younger son's assistance. If I knew how I would have their blogs listed on my site. Well, enough of that because just thinking about how ignorant I am is making me feel really ignorant. Maybe I can get that to work the other way?

I am smart and truly enlighten. I am smart and truly enlighten. I am...wasting my time.

My eldest is having a birthday this week, so I thought I would devote some time reminising about his life.

T'was Cinco de Mayo 1974. The earth was quiet as we enter the atmosphere around 2am edt. I was going over the final paperwork and debriefing before touchdown. I had been carrying now for nearly 9 earth months and I was getting quite tired of the whole charade. This was just too long to carry, how did human women stand it, and then go through it again some as many as 10 or 12 times. I was ready for my little piglet to pop after the 3rd pilour, but I had to suffer these past "months" to keep everything appearing normal.

Yes, normal. To me way too normal. I am a sleeper. A sleeper from Pigmania. Many, many earth years ago I was placed with a "normal" family. They chose a Native American family to place me with. I grew up with this family in a normal sort of way and now the time had been chosen to continue my own family. When the time would be chosen, I would return home for good and my offspring would take over. Until then, we were to observe.

In 1972 they had set me up with a partner and we started living a normal life preparing for a family. Soon I would hold my little piglet in my arms. We hovered over the small home my partner and I had chosen for our little one. We beamed down and all was now set for our little piggy to enter this world. All that was left was to wait for the time of birth. That happen May 7, 1974.

Oh my Piking! Human children are plain and simply UGLY! They are red and wrinkled and bony and ugly. How much more did they expect me to bear? I swore right then and there, nothing, absolutely nothing they could do or say would make me go through all this again, ever. Humans must of not thought too much better of their babies, you are not allowed to take them home unless they are wrapped up tight and a blanket placed over their faces. I had no problem with that custom. I didn't want any one to see that puny human looking child I had carried for too long. With all the excitment, I had completly forgotten another human custom...making over a baby. You hear, "Oh, he's sooooo cute.""He's adorable." "Such, cute toes"...etc, etc. Why couldn't these PEOPLE just leave us alone. But everyone we had come to know had to come see the baby. I just wanted to grab my little piglet and catch the next piji back to Pigmania. There he would be able to be himself...plump and pink and I could be round and routing in the ground. Instead, I had to put on a happy face and bear all the awful comments and raise my piggy as a human, in human form. The shame of it all.

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!