On the update front:
We are waiting to hear back from the doctor about Keith's contribution to the baby making process. This will sound horrible, but as a writer, I simply long to spin out that particular yarn. As a wife, I know it would be high treason. No more can be said on the subject but that my husband is a brave man and deeply committed to fatherhood. The answer should come this week, maybe even today.
Since actually beginning this process, I've found that my desire for biological children has come back alive and I'm hopeful again. I'm enjoying the simple presence of that hope. Maybe I will get pregnant and have sonograms and check ups and, eventually, an epidural. But I'm not banking too much on that hope, I'm just letting it be.
Have you guys been watching that new Cooking Channel? Oh my goodness. I could keep that thing on all day long. I think I have put on five pounds just from watching Nigella make caramel pudding for dinner. And they show episodes of Julia Child and Company! What could be better? Or, as the Barefoot Contessa would say, "How bad could that be?"
My German Johnson's have sprung up beyond the deck railing, like precocious children peering into the great beyond. They have put forth lovely little yellow blooms. I love the acidic, earthy smell of tomato plants.
Keith painted the truck. He was completely right. It looks amazing now, much better than before. He's already gotten one call on it, at the price of twenty eight hundred. If it sells at that price, we would make a very tidy profit; even if it sells at a much lower price we still will.
He is back in the intense, several month long cycle of training lieutenants on tank maneuvers. Last time he was thrown in immediately after arriving. This time he was named Assistant Mission Commander, and as of the middle of last week, was promoted to Mission Commander and must oversee the entire thing.
"That's what you call "Performance Punishment," Keith has said wryly, on the assignment.
I am tired of living so stringently. If the truck sells I want to spend a portion of it on stuff. I miss buying stuff. I want one of those painted glass jars with a spigot, meant for holding lemonade. I want a silver or wooden dish rack instead of my white plastic one, a summer bedspread for upstairs and other stuff that I don't even know I want yet, but will when I see it in the store.
On the political front:
I was horrified when rereading my last post to see glaring grammatical errors. Nothing is worse when writing about politics than to do so with grammatical or spelling errors. So plebeian...(Forgive me, I had to fit that word in somewhere; I recently rediscovered it.)
It is not easy to write about this topic to begin with. In fact, no one else seems to write blog posts about politics at all. I've often wondered if it was an unspoken rule amid milspouse bloggers to avoid politics in order to enhance the sisterhood of military wives and not risk division by political points of view.
Or maybe they are afraid of being wrong or not grasping the subject, something I am also afraid of and probably do all the time. But this is America! We must have the courage of our convictions, and have informed opinions and political dialogue, no matter how amateur. We have to start somewhere.
Actually, there are blogs that have indicated by buttons and such that they are proud liberal milspouses. I follow several of them, it keeps me from making silly generalizations.
Anyway, I've been reading several articles that talk about the demise of either liberalism or the liberal agenda. On an international front, many European countries are moving more to the right, largely due to the fact that they cannot afford both their entrenched and wide spread welfare systems and their ever hungry public unions. As Margaret Thatcher has said, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
The other interesting thing affecting the liberal agenda is the government's inability to cap the spill. This is especially damaging to those who believe that the government is the answer, and most certainly the answer to environment concerns. To see this large, liberally controlled government helpless to stop the largest environment disaster in American history is devastating.
"The administration currently in power is committed to liberal ideology--to the notion that "government" is the solution to every problem. Faced with two actual crises--one economic, the other ecological--the administration has been ineffective and directionless. Meanwhile, it has poured great energy into remaking the country to deal with problems that are either far less urgent or nonexistent, such as health care and global warming.
The administration, that is, has set its priorities according to ideology rather than real-world contingencies."
-James Taranto, "Keith Olbermann's Wisdom" The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2010
Which, I think, is a major problem amid a host of serious problems inherent in a top down, centralized government; such a government will make decisions based upon the ideology that drives it, rather than the reality that surrounds it.
The other thing that has been striking to me lately is the liberal tendency to trust big government over big business. I honestly can't see any difference between the two. Why is it that those in a big government are credited with intellect, civic duty, enlightenment and foresight, when those in big business are credited with greed, deception and short sightedness?
Aren't they the same people? Isn't there a revolving door between big business and government that is constantly swinging, not to mention the constant flow between government positions and positions with the lobbyists?
I think smaller, restricted government and a free market is the only way to protect us, the citizens, from the greed and over reach that is inherent in humanity itself, regardless of where that person is deriving their power from, be it government or business.
Once we begin to want government to have all the answers, we are forced then to accept the answer it gives us. We are left vulnerable to the rapaciousness created by giving the government power over the question.
