James McAvoy Couldn't Save Me

So, I dreamed that hubby and I (hubby was James McAvoy, which I thought was rather nice of him) were spies.  Not just run-of-the-mill spies, but "if you get caught we don't know you, you're out in the cold" spies.  We'd captured . . . someone.  Some diplomat or counterspy or something like that.  Who just happened to be Joss Ackland.  Of course. Who else would he be?  He was unconscious, and we'd jammed him into a fifty pound bag of dog food (empty, other than Mr. Ackland, of course) and I was holding the bag rolled shut and jammed down at my feet in the car.

A faded blue 70s model Chevy, if I'm remembering right.

We were headed for some safehouse.  It was disguised as an old, decrepit "folk" Victorian home, just shy of "mansion" territory.  Much like the old place we pass every weekend on our way to the Farmer's Market, strangely.

As we made our way down a long, dark hall with warped wooden floors and peeling wall paper, Mr. Ackland began to stir.  I told hubby to hurry, that he was waking up.  We got to the room at the end of the hall and made a beeline for the closet.  See, the back of the closet was a false wall, and beyond was . . .

The afterlife waiting room from Beetlejuice.  No, no one from Beetlejuice was there, but it was that room.  That room, and it was full of spies waiting for assignments, spies waiting to be debriefed, etc.

Just as we began dragging the now struggling-in-the-dogfood-bag Mr. Ackland through the closet, it happened.  We'd been followed.

And a firefight ensued.

In the fray, I was shot.  At that point, I found myself watching from behind and above.  Watching as, shot, I shattered.  Like a mirror, I shattered. In fact, I WAS a mirror, and the long, bright shards of me collapsed in a shiny pile on the floor next to the wall.

And then I woke up.

I love my brain.  I love my husband.  But when my brain makes my husband James McAvoy?

Well, that, my friends, transcends mere love.

I have NO idea who this picture belongs to--I found it on a web search, clicked to find out whose it is (so I could ask permission and properly attribute), and wound up on a site rife with naked women and porn links.  It's an absolutely lovely pic, though.  I'll be glad to remove it, should the owner so desire.  

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Tonights dietary adventure?  Fake hotdogs (Lightlife hotdogs) and with fake American Cheese (Veggy) on lower-carb whole grain bread with organic mustard and ketchup.  With Farmer's Market corn on the cob (steamed, no butter or salt, of course), steamed broccoli, and salad.  Dessert?

Pear, apple, and watermelon juice.  

This is gonna be tasty.  I hope.  I'll let you know.

And now, three hours later?  It WAS good!  The hotdogs weren't the BEST, but they were good, they were palatable.  The texture still needs some work, but with melted vegan cheese and some ketchup and mustard?  Perfectly fine--even the boy liked them!  And the juice?

Heavenly!

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Had a sad while today, after yet another over-the-top religious bit of whatever came skidding across my Facebook wall from an old friend.  She used to be pretty with it, pretty stable and happy, but a hard divorce and a subsequent relationship with a freaky, out-of-control, Libertarian survivalist ala Nugent really broke her.  I remember hearing it in her voice, knowing that she was getting more and more out there, more and more politically disconnected and extreme.  All the while, her drinking was becoming increasingly worrisome.  Three hour phone calls, so disjointed, so absolutely drunken, sometimes from work (her line of work wasn't well-suited to sloppy drunkenness).  Listening to her puke her stupid guts out over the phone, then having her ask, days later, "Did we talk the other night?  I don't really remember . . . "  

She had, in college, all the makings of someone who was going to keep growing, keep honing those critical thinking skills, but it didn't happen.  She's sunk into the swamp of falling for every Snopes-worthy hoax and posting increasingly strident religious memes.  She doesn't really seem to "get" social media, and I feel really bad for her.  I don't think she's happy, but I don't want to argue "faith" with her because I think clinging to that might be the only excuse she has for staying relatively sober.  

What a sad mess.  Not sure what to do, since I'm sure any attempt to reach out would be disastrous, and she seems very insecure and unstable.  So I guess I'll just let her gawdawful memes wash across my wall and keep my fingers still.  

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Speaking of silly mythologies and gullibility, I just came across the friend of a friend's Facebook page.  His disjointed, failed-fartsy, barely literate attempt at wishing her good luck relocating led me to him.  Ever see the annual "worst fiction ever" contest?  This guy?

Absolutely a contender.

Anyway, so I check this guy's wretched page, and it turns out he's a "medium, psychic, spiritualist, and EMPATH."  He has, apparently, a "spirt" guide.  

Oh, goodness. Oh, my.  I may actually injure myself laughing.  My poor AURA is bright pink with mirth, and the VIBRATIONS I'm sending out can likely be felt for miles.  

There's a fortune to be made out there.  If only I could bring myself to manipulate and exploit the gullible.  But I can't

I just can't.  

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And that's it.  Here's some ugly:

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Low Salt, Low Carb, Low Calorie, and Low BS

So, in the midst of trying to save money, trying to pay things down, we've been screwing up a bit.  A JUICER here, a new crock pot there.  The juicer, while nice, isn't a necessity, and I'm really beginning to feel we shouldn't have gotten it just now--maybe saved that purchase for down the road a bit.  But hubby was inspired, he really wanted to try it, and it was pretty majorly on sale.  But still.  Now I feel obligated to push him to make juices because, otherwise, it's just a lump of cash on the counter, one of a million "used for a few weeks" juicers out there.

If you're in the market, it's a Cuisinart, and it does make super-nice juice, with pretty dry pulp.  No, I'm not trying to sell this one, just saying that if you're looking for a juicer and you can't afford a 600 dollar Breville, this one's good.  Here's a more DETAILED REVIEW.

The crock pot I feel better about.  While it won't save us any money on spaghetti sauce (in fact, it costs more to make at home), it does knock the sodium back by 75% over jarred sauce.  That's important to me, because I really struggle with keeping my sodium under 2,000 mg a day.  Plus, making our own Mexican beans at home IS markedly cheaper.  Make them in the crock pot, spice them up, then freeze them.  They're muy tasty, and a whole lot less expensive.

The gadget counter.  Funny, they all look very small in this picture.

Notice the dirty spoon?  That's for stirring the drastically lower-sodium homemade primavera/arrabiata sauce.  Here's a list of the ingredients and their nutritional information (we entered it as a recipe last night on My Fitness Pal so we can use it repeatedly without having to re-enter the information).  You can, of course, add whatever you want, but try not to add salt--sort of defeats the purpose:

Also, watch those red pepper flakes--they can heat up a vat of sauce in a big hurry!  Remember--less is more, you can always add more later.

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Our boy is feeling very self-conscious about his weight and appearance, specifically when it comes to going to the pool.  While he's certainly not obese (like his mom), he could stand to lose 20 lbs according to his doctor, and I agree.  However, it's hard to get a 15 year old to stop eating the crap--or, more specifically, it's hard to get him to start eating the good stuff.  The sheer volume of food we wind up throwing away because he only picks at it?  Upsetting.  But we keep trying, because it's important.  You see, he was a freakishly picky child--so picky that we couldn't even take him to restaurants because he wouldn't eat anything on the menu.  No beef (that's okay), no pork (that's okay), no chicken unless it was breaded and baked or fried (but had to be REAL chicken, no parts-is-parts chicken), no green veggies, no beans, no rice.  He would eat bread and fruit.  And, as a result, he was incredibly skinny (like boney-skinny) until he was 11 years old.

When he finally decided that he actually liked pizza.

And we, in our foolish joy that he was suddenly able to eat at birthday parties and the like, encouraged him!  Try pizza with this, try it with that!  Try THIS--it's pasta, and it's really just pizza in noodle form!  

Boy, aren't we stupid?

Anyway, he announced last night that he wants to go to the pool alone.  And that brings with it new worries.  Because those ratty children in this neighborhood scare me.  What if they follow him?  What if they hassle him?  

Or follow him to the pool and ridicule him?

What if they attack him?  No, I'm not overreacting, one of the rat children attacked another boy just a couple of weeks ago, beat him and strangled him.  

I think I'll let him walk up, call me when he gets there so I know he made it okay, and then his dad can pick him up on his way home from work.  That will put our boy at the pool later in the day, which will reduce his sun exposure (skin cancer mommy doesn't like him getting baked), and it will have him NOT walking home later in the day.  

Oh, and before you think I'm being completely smothering, the pool is over a mile away.  It's not like I'm worried about him walking around the corner.  

I think he's hoping to make friends, and, while that would be great, I really fear that the rats in the neighborhood will spoil that pretty quickly.  It's happened before--the new kids turns out to know the rats, and they pressure him to stop hanging with our boy.  One kid in the face of a group of bullies?  Not many will brave those bullies to hang out with the "loner."  Who is only a loner because he's been excluded and put outside.  

Well, and because he doesn't want to hang out with kids who kill small animals and beat the hell out of other kids.  

We'll see.  Cross your fingers.

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Saw a ridiculous meme come across my wall today:  

Okay, first off--seriously?  Let's be real here--Christ isn't the default position (if you think it is, look at India, the Middle East, or many Asian countries some time).  Children don't need to be taught NOT to believe in Jesus because that is the natural state-- NOT believing is normal, natural, and how we're built.  In order to produce people who don't embrace a particular mythology, all you have to do is avoid teaching that mythology as "fact."

Like they say--if you don't indoctrinate them by the age of seven, you almost certainly won't be able to.  My wonderful boy?  I read the bible to him, Old and New, before he was ten.  When I got to the story of Moses and the burning bush, he said, "Hang on--now God's a BUSH that's on FIRE and TALKS?  PLEASE!"  He demanded to see the book, thought for sure I was making it up.  After reading it, he looked up and said, "Nobody really believes this, do they?"

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And that's about it, I guess.  Time to wake that boy up and find out who stole my dark chocolate bars.  

Here.  Have something ugly!

Wow.

Gay Baby Feet Abortion . . . AND ENGLAND!

So, this garbage came across my Facebook feed today, drew from me an immediate and strong response.

The garbage:

"If most of my Facebook friends are going to support people who are gay by posting the red equal sign, I am going to post two feet, the feet represent the millions who never get to breathe the air of this world, who never feel love let alone get married, those who never have the chance to have children or go to school or do anything many gays are afforded the privilege to do. They are never given this chance because a human decides that their life is unimportant because of a defect or being an inopportune time for the person who conceived them. This is for the millions of children aborted yearly. Talk about rights being denied."

And my Response:

No need to consider the rights of women who are told that they must bear children against their will, their bodies used and their lives torn to bits because a bunch of people seem to think it's their right to impose their faith on others, though.  Right? Even if we accept that a fetus is "a human life" (and I don't--it's a human life like an acorn is an oak tree or an egg is a chicken), since when do we force one human being to support another human being, against their will, using their own body? What next? Blood "donation" squads grabbing you off the street and forcing you to give blood because someone needs it? How about organs ala Monty Python? Seriously, you don't need that WHOLE liver, you don't need BOTH kidneys, so FORK OVER because someone else NEEDS it to survive! What, that's not okay? That's wrong? The government shouldn't be allowed to require you to use your body against your will to sustain someone else? Hmmm. Maybe you're not so "pro-life" after all. Maybe you're just "pro-fetus." Or, taken at its most basic, most obvious, maybe you're just "anti-woman." Or "pro-slavery."

Okay, the crappy "gays have a lot more rights than ABORTED FETUSES" stuff aside (I know, it's hard to push aside, practically need a bulldozer it's such a weighty pile of manure), and the sickening "I'm going to hop on this bandwagon both to push my agenda AND to lessen the impact of the original movement" thing notwithstanding, what the hell, you know?  I seriously question the stability and psychological wellness of people who spend their days crying over aborted embryos and fetuses when there are real, live PEOPLE all around us who are suffering.  Who need our help.  There are tens of thousands of REAL children in our foster care system who will never know a loving family.  And you want to boob about the imaginary lives non-people might have had, had they actually developed normally in the womb and become humans? 

You need to grow up.  I mean, I support your right to FEEL that way, but your right to enforce your religion or wonky idea of what is and isn't a "person" ends when it forces women to carry unwanted pregnancies.  And shut the heck up with that idiotic "if you want to play, you have to pay/if you didn't want to get pregnant, you shouldn't have had sex" garbage!  One, that is totally woman-hating--proposing that women who are sexually active somehow "deserve" the punishment of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.  Two, that's like telling your wife that, if she hadn't wanted her daughter to die in a car accident, she shouldn't have bought a car.  Or telling your neighbor, "Hey, if you didn't want that lightning bolt to blast apart your home, you shouldn't have built a house."  It's disingenuous vomit, and you know it.  

And speaking of vomit?  "What if Einstein's mother had gotten an abortion?"  Goodness.  And what if Hitler's mother had gotten an abortion?  What if a runaway milk cart had taken out Abraham Lincoln or a shark had meandered miles upstream to take a chunk out of Mark Twain?  What if, what if, what if?  It's a stupid question, and it doesn't mean anything.  

Sorry, sidetracked a little there.  Fact is, I support your right to FEEL however, and also support your right to then LIVE as you BELIEVE, i.e., don't ever terminate a pregnancy.  But that's where it ends.  Just as MY being pro-choice shouldn't result in YOUR being forced to terminate a pregnancy, the reverse is also true--just  because YOU don't think abortion is okay doesn't mean *I* should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.  

*** A small note for the small number of slow, cowardly folk whose courageous defense of "the unborn" goes exactly so far as leaving anonymous comments on a blog?  ANONYMOUS!  There's not enough laughter in the world, so thank you for bringing some my way.  

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Alright, enough of that.

Our boy's oral surgeon appointment went . . . disconcertingly.  Scarily.  The only spot we've been so worried about?  No change, doctor says he's not worried.  But the new spot near the lower right wisdom tooth?  It's not new--it's on last year's x-rays, too, but it's markedly larger this year.  He wants to take a "watch and wait" approach because, again, it's down near that nerve canal.  There's another spot up near the wisdom tooth in the left maxilla.  It's small.  

What a mess.  Not sure how I feel about waiting another full year before having it checked again.  Seems . . . stupid.

Here are the x-rays for comparison:

Oh, there's also another spot, can't see it well with the scans, between the left mandibular bicuspids.  It's got that "radiolucent with a radiopaque halo" gig going on.  Whatever it is, you can see how the teeth have angled/grown around it.  He says he's not worried.  I'm worried.  I'm thinking I'm worried enough to wait six months, then seek out a second opinion.  

Just to see.

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Since I'm on a roll, let's talk about marriage equality.  Or, rather, let's talk about some of the memes going around promoting marriage equality.  Here's one in particular:

Okay, straight up, flat out--who cares?  I mean, I get the sentiment, but who cares?  Whether you embrace the particular mythology or no, religion has no place in our government.  So who CARES if Jesus or whomever did or didn't wax whatever on whichever subject?  Doesn't matter.  What does matter?

That homosexuals are.  That's really it, the central thing--they ARE.  And therefore, they should be entitled the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.  

And I KNOW that's not in the Bible.

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I saw a really, REALLY horrid wallpaper-carpet combo yesterday--let me go find it!

Ta Daaaaaaa!

Oh, and I nearly forgot--I just wanted to say I LOVE ENGLAND!  I do, you know?  I love England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.  Just love the living daylights out of them.  And yes, I absolutely recognize the differences, issues, and histories of each.  So, while I love England, I also think maybe she needs a bit of a serious dressing down for being such a bully for so long (good thing the U.S. stepped up to accept the "World Bully" mantle, huh?).  I adore Llewelyn Fawr, Robert the Bruce, and Brian Boru.  Oh, and Simon de Montfort.  That would be Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester and 1st Earl of Chester, not the other Simons de Montfort who came before.  What a guy, huh?  Sure, flawed as all get-out, but what a guy.

Mostly, I'm just pandering here.  It's not that I don't love the "British Isles."  Oh, I do--so much so that we have, more than once, tried to figure out how to move there in the long term.  But I'm writing this for a baser reason--I want more readers from that part of the world.  I would love to make that "leap across the pond."

So, was that butt-kissy enough?  Will you give me a read?  Come on, you know you want to!

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ