Remember when you looked out the window for your weather forecast?

While I am as guilty as the next guy about being addicted to the Weather Channel's broadcasts about hurricanes, blizzards and tsunami's, I yearn for the days of old when you looked out the window and said, "Oh, it snowed last night we had better listen to the radio to see if school is off."

The forecasts are like watching a car crash. Let's face it. You want to look away. But you just can't! It all started for me when we lived in North Carolina and got two hurricanes in two months in an area that had not gotten a hurricane in 40 years. People had hurricane parties, mocking the forecasters. Being from New York, I thought they were all nuts and put my kids, my dog, my photos in our van and headed north. At the time I ran a daycare out of my home and mom's came with their children the morning the hurricane hit and left nasty notes on my door.

As I sat safely in my mother in law's home in upstate NY watching the town I lived in get plowed by Hurricane Bertha, I just couldn't believe that people mocked these warnings. But the old "cry wolf" story holds true. Hurricanes hit a particular area that is very small, but Mother Nature is a sick old broad and could change her mind any minute. So, no matter how many computer models we make she could still say, "Futt you and your computer models!! Here you go Wilmington - your turn. Hurricane Bertha!!"

So, my friend from PA stayed for the hurricane and said it was the biggest mistake of her life. They huddled in an inner hall of their home waiting for the driving rains and winds that sounded like a train to pass over their home. But that wasn't the worst. After it passed there was no electricity. It was 100 degrees out, 100 percent humidity and no way to get cool. The streets flooded from debris and the whole place smelled of rotten fish. So, I felt justified in my "yankee" decision to leave. But became addicted to watching weather news.

Now, we grew up in upstate NY and lived outside of Buffalo for many years. So, when we moved to Southeastern PA where they close school at the threat of a dusting of snow or if the temperature dips into the single digits, I thought I could kick my addiction. After all, where I grew up unless the school bus was pushing snow with the front bumper - there was school. My school's motto was, "Rain, snow, sleet or hail, Mohonasen District never fails." So, certainly the threat of deadly storms would be off my radar and I could walk away from the Weather Channel forever!

But, sadly, that is not the case. Now I watch it to see other people's misery and fear. I find I am disappointed when they are wrong and people don't get creamed with a blizzard or a hurricane misses us and goes off to sea. What kind of sick person am I?

Well, maybe it boils down to wanting the computers to be wrong and Mother Nature to be in charge. Maybe I just want to be able to tell what the weather is by looking out the window. Maybe I am darn tired of being warned all the time! Maybe, just maybe, I want to stick my tongue out at every computerized fortune telling computer model screaming out warnings about every gosh darned thing that might go wrong and just wanna live on the edge, not knowing, not being able to prepare.

I DON'T WANNA RUSH TO THE STORE TO BUY MILK AND BREAD EVERY TIME IT SNOWS! (Which is what they do here in SE PA ... I will never understand it since I would want candles, medicine, and an alternative heat source, having endured real blizzards, but that's just me.)

So, yea, I watch Weather Channel hoping for them to be wrong. I watch hoping the someone else will get hit by the blizzard so they can hone their survival skills. I watch routing for Mother Nature to futt someone up a little, not too much, but a little, so maybe just maybe we can all go back to walking out the front door and saying, "Hey, it's cold out today. I need a coat."

Thicker than Water

Started watching Thicker than Water on Bravo this morning. I was hoping for Salon Takeover and was making coffee so it was just on and sucked me in.

Not quite sure who Ben Tankard is, I googled him. Apparently, he was a pro basketball player who in retirement became a gospel singer and producer and preacher. This is his second marriage and he was never home when his children were growing up and they were abused somehow as kids. These kids are all grown now and in their 20s and maybe 30s and the whole family is dealing with a childhood without a dad because he was on the road making money.

The couple is so mentally healthy and his wife Jewel is the glue that holds the family together and gets Ben back on track when he slides into "throw money at it" mode. The grown kids were abused somehow as children. The one daughter blames her older brother for not "saving" her from the abuse and then finds out that while she was there on weekends and holidays being abused, he LIVED there and was being abused all the time. I do not know where this abuse came from but it apparently wasn't Ben who was the perpetrator. Yet, like most good parents, he feels guilty for his kids suffering. In his mind, if he was home more instead of making money on the road, the abuse would not have happened.

Given the fact that Ben's solution to problems is to throw money at it, I seriously doubt that he would have made a difference. That said, it brings up my age old peeve of parents who are successful, unbelievably successful, in their careers who get awards and accolades and who do NOT acknowledge their spouse, nanny, parents...whoever held their lives together, while they were off chasing their dream.

If you want to chase a dream, don't have kids. Kids require lots of time and one on one time with their parents. This whole "quality time" bullshit doesn't hold water with me. I am sorry if I am stepping on people's toes but kids would rather have you with them than have money. And not just physically with them, put your damn phone down!! When your kid has to say, "Daddy" or "Mommy", more than twice because you are on your phone then you are TELLING him/her that your phone is more important than they are.

Now, before you go all ape-shit on me I am not talking about people who HAVE to work to survive. I am talking about people who take promotions say, to be top of their game, when they KNOW it will require lots of travel, meetings and stress.

Once I was at a retirement party for a President of a University. He broke down in tears in the middle of his speech and turned to his children, "I am sorry! I am sorry I missed all of your ball games, chorus concerts, scout camps...your lives...to further my career. Please forgive me."

I think that about says it all.

So, if you have a good job, if you make a decent living and can pay your bills, if you have health insurance and food on the table and a roof over your head then keep that job! Don't take that promotion. It's OK!! Enjoy your family while you can. They will be grown before you know it.

In the end your co-workers won't be standing around your bed holding your hand as you die; your children will. In the end when you leave your company, no matter how much you did for them, they will have moved on to the next guy for all of their accolades and praises the day after you are gone. In a couple of short years all of your hard work will be forgotten because someone else will be doing the work your did in a better way. It's difficult to believe that a place you spend all of your time at for your whole life will not give two shits about you the day after you leave.

But, your family, your children, the people who love you, your real friends, friends that are family..they will be the ones who remember you always. THEY will be the ones who speak your name after you are gone, the ones who will tell your story for generations, the ones who will carry you in their hearts for always. They are your legacy, NOT your job.

OK, maybe if you are a brain surgeon who invents the cure for cancer this does not apply, but in general that is true.

Now, to get back to the old Tankard clan. They are trying desperately to make it work and move forward. I applaud that. One of my biggest faults is hashing things out, trying to fix old scars, make everything better. Over the years I have learned that scars heal stronger than the original skin. People can come to an understanding but that scar is always there, a symbol of that pain and how you got through it. One shouldn't try to fix that. It's a badge of sorts.

So, the Tankard clan has a better plan than I; talk about it a bit and move on.

Just be there for each other because you should be there for each other. You do not have to like your family but you do have to love them. Love means putting your pain aside for the good of the family. It means family over everything you want, you need, you desire for yourself. It means being content with what you have and not always seeking peace from outside sources. "Peace" sits next to you at the dinner table.

The Tankards are learning this lesson on national TV, a very brave thing. I just have one hope...I HOPE TO GOD THIS IS ONE REALITY SHOW THAT IS NOT ALL SCRIPTED!!! Please be real, please be real....LOL.

Ehhhh, even if it is scripted it still makes me feel good, sparks decent conversation and blogs and I am OK with that.

Government Cheese

Back in the day...people who didn't have a lot of money would get to go down to some local
community center or church in their town and get government cheese. My husband and I used to get
it from a friend who worked at a blind camp. 

He used to bring hams and turkeys and government cheese to us because "we wuz po". I guess the blind people couldn't see the expiration date...ha ha

...no I did NOT just go there. AHHHHHH.

A friend of mine looked at me with fond memories wafting through his head the other day, "Ahhh, I
remember when my mom used to tell me we were going down to get it! We would all go wait
for hours in line in this vacant lot next to a church. Man, that stuff was so great!"

Even great rappers like JayZ have eaten government cheese...

“After that government cheese, we eating steak/After the projects, we on estates.” 

Government cheese distribution started in the Reagan administration. The production of said cheese began in the early 1900s. That will tell you how indestructible this stuff was.

It's basically what we now call American Cheese, or processed cheese product and was invented by Kraft in 1916.  

In the 1980s the government used to pay farmers not to make it because we had stockpiled so much of it in the ole US of A could have eaten processed cheese forever. Then in the 1981 President Reagan said, hey guys lets give this shit to the poor!! They eat anything!

Guess what year I got married...yup 1981. And had Amber in 1982 so we qualified! 

Macaroni and government cheese was the best we ever had. And Peter was so happy not to have to eat tuna noodle casserole again that he almost voted for Reagan in his second term...I said almost! 

Even free cheese can't make one forget about trickle down economics! 

The Emergency Broadcast System

I was just speaking to my daughter about Government Cheese and trying to get some answers to questions that have plagued me all my life concerning said cheese, and she says, "You know what bothers me? Fourteen years ago when we really needed it where the hell was the emergency broadcast system?"

And you know she is right!

How many times in my life time have I had to listen to that stupid AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
noise right in the middle of my favorite song, and then beeep beep beep. "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test. If this were a real emergency you would be instructed ..." blah blah blah...I know it by heart! I swear I did not look it up. THAT is how many times I have heard it.

Yet, we get attacked on 911 and I do not remember even once hearing the damn emergency broadcast system. Do you?

I remember everything that happened that day. My daughter was deploy-able, just getting back from all of her Army training, so let me tell you my ears and eyes were open to everything all day long!!! And, no emergency broadcasting system type "computer voice" ever came on the radio or TV.

So, if you ever find out what the hell the emergency broadcast system is for please let me know. Cuz it sure as hell wasn't for the biggest emergency this country has seen since WWII!

Tomorrow I will be blogging about government cheese...stay tuned.

Allergies

My son in law is allergic to shell fish. He wants to eat shell fish. So, he came up with this brilliant plan to see if he is still allergic to shell fish. He wants his wife, a former combat medic from the Army, to drive him to the parking lot of an ER and watch him eat shrimp.

Now, this idea was borne from a real life incident that happened while my daughter was serving in the Army. This Lieutenant or sergeant or Colonel, I forget which, in the army used to make my daughter come to his big wig meetings at this fancy sea food restaurant and give him an injection of Benedryl before he ate and be ready to save his life should he eat too much shell fish.

It's kinda a great idea. People DO out grow allergies. So, when I heard about this story and my son in law's idea, I said, "Well, OK, but I wanna be the one who gets to video it."

I figure if it goes well and he doesn't die we can make a million with the video. If it goes badly and he dies he has a great life insurance policy with the military. Either way, it's a win win.

So, we will keep you up to date if he ever gets the nerve to do it. In the mean time, I accept no responsibility for anyone who chooses to use this idea to test their own allergies.

But if you do decide to be this much of a dumb ass........please video it for us!!!

We really are kinda sick

Have you heard of the new game, "Cards Against Humanity"? Well, it's basically "Apples to Apples" but with really sick shit answers.

"And the Academy Award for ________ goes to __________." is an example of one of the cards you need to answer. You have the answers in your hand and you submit an answer to the person with the question card. He/She picks the one they think is most fitting or sick or demented and if it's your card you win.

Win...a term I use loosely considering you have won the award for being the sickest mother futter.

Some of the answers include; dead babies, Hitler's dead body, and several sex acts that even I did not know what they were and had to Google them:  let's just say it included body parts and orifices that really should NOT have anything to do with sex.

My point is that you really have to be kinda sick to think this is funny, which we are! And not for nothin', but my family has been playing our own version of this game forever. It's called "What would you do for a million dollars" and gets very graphic and sick. 

The prompting for this game is not from cards but from each other. One person egging the other person on creates an environment mold could live in. It started with, "Would you have sex with _________ for a million dollars?" and has escalated from there. The price has gone up too. We all said we would do just about anything for a million so our family could be financially set forever ten years ago. 

Now, we are like, "No way, a million ain't enough!"

So, it has become what would you do for a billion dollars. Questions arise about ethics and how long you would spend in jail, what state you are in because some have the death penalty and legal questions about whether you would get the money if it's a crime.

All of this is good interaction for adults. But it gets pretty heated and loud and bleeds into dinner time and it is not Sunday dinner table talk!!! So, it has been banned from Sunday dinner along with Monopoly and Risk, two board games that have wreaked such havoc in our home my grown, intelligent, loving children are no longer allowed to play them. 

Can you spell COMPETITIVE?

Anyway, I never get involved in all of this stuff because I am very ZEN of late. I am unbelievably honest, to the point of thinking that trying grapes in a super market is stealing. So, the fact that I love this game has me very concerned. It's sick! It's demented! And almost as fun as the time I cheated at Risk, stealing people's armies while they were arguing over deals made and broken, until at some point I had so many armies in North America someone said, "Hey MOM, are YOU cheating?" 

I took over the world that night and no one suspecting me because I am such an honest person. There is something to be said for that. All angels have a little bit of devil ...even ME.

And "Cards Against Humanity" is one of the best games I have ever played! Let your sick side rock!

I have two really good blogs coming...

I have two really good blogs coming...but for today

Cancer sucks!