BANG! BANG! SHOOT! SHOOT!

WARNING:  WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ COMES DIRECTLY FROM THE IRRATIONAL BRAIN OF A BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL! 

It's been ages since I've written a blog post regarding religion or politics.  I've purposely done that because those issues tend to ruffle too many feathers and quite frankly, I haven't felt like reading a lot of other people's bitching and moaning lately.  What a selfish wench I am!  Although we all like to believe we're 100% correct regarding our political ideology and spiritual beliefs, I'm intelligent enough to know that rarely is one side completely right about anything. The exception to that rule is the dogma surrounding Mildredism. Mildred, after all, is right about everything! 

Today is the day I'm going to break my dry spell and jump back into the insanity of public opinion.  One issue I'd like to weigh in on is the increased gun violence in the United States. Without stepping on anyone's toes or Second Amendment rights, I really believe something concrete needs to be done to curb the violence.  Too many innocent people are being slaughtered daily.  I listen closely to all the rhetoric surrounding this hotbed issue, but all I really hear appears to be are confirmations of an irrational need to be heavily armed and a quite twisted relationship between weapons and their owners.  Instead of people focusing on a very real problem and having a rational discussion about it so a consensus can be reached, all I hear are people wailing about their guns being taken away from them.  To that I say BOO FUCKING HOO!

Perhaps when the Constitution was first written a need to be armed was a truly legitimate need, but it's an entirely different world now than it was then.  At that time people had to hunt to provide food to feed their families.  Veganism wasn't the going rage back then. People were meat and potato connoisseurs not bean sprout and tofu gurus.  Back then guns were a person's only defense in the savage environment they were settling. Today fewer people hunt to feed their families and those who do hunt, do it more for sport than for dietary need.  Those who chose to hunt and it is a choice because meat is readily available for sale at any store near where they live certainly can do so without doing it with a semi-automatic firearm.  Wouldn't hunting be more like hunting if it were done with bows instead of guns? Just a thought! 

Having a fully equipped arsenal of weapons seems a little bizarre to me and just a wee bit on the paranoid side.  Maybe I feel this way because I've never felt a need to own a gun.  As many times as I have attempted to discuss this issue no one has ever adequately explained to me any rational reasons why people have a need for weapons in this day and age.  What I generally get are loud tirades that come off sounding more like something an emotionally unstable person might rant. And oh boy, that's the kind of person I want armed and ready for anything! Today's savage environment doesn't include marauding bands of Native Americans or outlaws who rape, plunder and pillage.  The savage situations of today are school shootings and crimes of passion.  Could the answer be as simple as taking all weapons away except those used by law enforcement and the military? Perhaps if that was done, the violence might vanish.  Just a thought! 

So what's it going to take to turn the violence around?  Any thoughts on the subject? Other industrialized countries don't seem have the amount of gun violence we have here.  Are we not doing something right?  What's their formula for a relatively peaceful co-existence? Are we just a nation of spoiled children who want what we want when we want it regardless of the consequences of our actions?  Have people become incapable of compromise? Has our gun violence gotten so out of hand that it can't be fixed and why does the NRA seem to wield so much power? Who made them Grand Poobah of Gunslingers?  These are just some of the questions floating around in my bleeding heart liberal brain. 

* Repost from June 25, 2014

30 TRUTHS IN 30 DAYS - DAY TWO

Truth #2: I was browsing through the news this morning online and came across an article where Supermodel Paulina Porizkova stated that dating at 57 sucks. Hey, if it sucks for her, you can only imagine what it's like for us ordinary folk (the fuglies). I hate to break it to her by letting her know that it doesn't get any better with age. In fact, I believe the older you get, the worse suckier dating gets. Perhaps by middle age most people are just burnt-out by the whole process and know their chances of finding that forever love is slim to nil. Why keep doing it then? Truth? Most people would rather have someone...anyone than to die alone. Me...I'd rather be alone than be with the wrong person! It's a sad state of affairs when men your own age want women half their age and us "cougars," are left to find a worthy 35 year old! But if I do find one, do I have to talk to him? lol 

BUBBLE ALLEY

Bubble Alley's multi-colored aerial display of large balloons in the heart of downtown Pensacola is getting an encore and contract extension. The more than 3,000, 18-inch diameter balloons suspended over one block of Intendencia Street between Jefferson and Tarragona streets were originally scheduled to be on display Nov. 3-14. But due to the display's growing popularity among downtown visitors, the bubbles will remain in place through the end of the year and perhaps beyond, said Walker Wilson, Downtown Improvement Board executive director according to the article in the Pensacola News Journal.

I wish I could have gotten on top of one of the buildings to take a few pictures from there.

30 TRUTHS IN 30 DAYS - DAY ONE

Truth #1 - The elderly have wisdom to share and once they are gone so is their wisdom. I often wish I had written down the stories I was told as a young person by my elderly relatives. Instead of rolling my eyes and thinking that the old fools knew nothing and that I knew everything, I now know that the old fools knew everything and I knew nothing at all. What the old fools tried to give me was something more valuable than gold itself, but I was too blind to see what was right in front of me. All I needed to do was stop and listen, stop and learn and stop and love. It really is such a simple thing to do, but as a young person it was probably one of the most difficult things to do in life.

THANKSGIVING BLESSINGS AND UNBLESSINGS

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend Thanksgiving with my children and their spouses, one of my nephews and one of my closest friends. We had a beautiful dinner...nothing burnt! Everything was perfect! But not all people were as fortunate as I was.

Of the people I did spend Thanksgiving with the roll call is short by a few people: my grandson couldn't make it in from Massachusetts (but will here for Christmas with his girfriend Sophia) and my friend, Linda's husband, Max (is still working in Maine for a few more weeks.)

During the day my thoughts lingered on other people in other places far and near:

I have a few friends and relatives going through difficult emotional and stressful times (you know who you are.) I have a few friends and relatives going through serious medical issues (you know who you are.) 

Today I found out I have a friend that was basically forgotten about by her adult children. No phonecall! No nothing! That makes me sad and mad that people can be so thoughtless and selfish regarding their parents at times. I encouraged my friend to not keep her feelings bottled up, but to express her feelings to her adult children and let them know how much they had hurt her. After all, she is 1600 miles away from her family and no one called her except her husband. What's up with that? Did they all have broken fingers and laryngitis?

Drumroll please...the biggest blessing-unblessing: the week's worth of leftovers I'll be eating!

Is it spring yet?

BEHIND BROWN EYES

Somedays I have to remind myself that being alone is okay. Others days I know being alone is better than being with the wrong person...or the right person at the wrong time. Sometimes I feel compelled to say out loud that "finding home" or my center of gravity isn’t anything I can discover externally. This quest is all about me and no one else. I've had a void in my life for so long that I’ve come to accept it as being as much a part of me as are my long legs. Every now and then I throw myself into the abyss of relationship uncertainty and drama. Each time I explore it, what I find is the same old thing. That brick wall never gets easier to run into no matter how many times I do it. 

The inner peace and happiness I’m lacking is not in someone else nor is it somewhere else. I know that happiness lives within and radiates outward. The missing factors in my life are factors that left me at an very early age. The void I feel I often times think is simply the childhood I never had and will never have. How do I fill that void? I often wonder who I would have been if I had grown up in a family where love was not a painful thing or if I had never left home as a young teenager. Would I have perished or would I have survived? Could I have thrived? Would I have learned to stand and fight instead of running away? Would I have learned how to ride something out from beginning to end? Would I have ever known the taste of sweet success? And would I have learned how to love myself without this path I chose? Can anyone really answer those questions with absolute certainty? I certainly can't! 

Sometimes nostalgia floods my thoughts along with thoughts of "what if". What if I just stopped running into that brick wall time after time? The last time I made that mistake was several years ago. I allowed myself to once again believe that loving someone could change my life. Silly me! I really did know better than that, but foolishly got caught up in flood of feel good moments. I let how I felt when I was with this person grow into believing that love conquers all obstacles. What I forgot was that unreciprocated love and one-sided relationships conquer nothing. From my track record, one could assume that I’m everything from a glutton for punishment to being just plain stupid where love is concerned. In reality, I’m neither. In reality, my interest in finding that special someone has waned drastically to being almost non-existent. Now finding home has become more of a quest for inner strength as I deal with my declining health. 

 As I've developed several health problems and often times feel as if I'm quite literally falling apart, I find myself less interested in the whole relationship scene. The memory of my last cruise on the Love Boat still haunts me. My entire worth was measured in terms of my physical performance or should I say my lack of physical performance? How could I have been so wrong once again about someone who had captured my heart? I remember feeling crushed, disappointed and unworthy. But unworthy of what? Of not being able to do something I’ve never been exposed to doing before or ever attempted to do before this person came into my life? Would anyone be able to climb a high mountain on first try without climbing the small ones first? I now believe by letting this fish go without a fight, it was I who lost nothing. In my quest of finding home, I found where home isn’t and was reminded that being alone is okay.

*Repost from November 28, 2011