There are cats squabbling over who gets to sit in the window beside me and stare at the birds in the yard, and there are men in the living room watching Dr. Strangelove in hi-def at sound volumes I, in the other room, would describe as deafening.

Meanwhile, I am hormonally cranky, have a nasty headache, and am starving. Could everyone just keep it down please?!

And where’s the pizza? I need pizza now.

There are times when it seems to me I am the only American that still understands the English language. This is one of those times.

A few days ago, I think, Obama said that McCain was “losing his bearings.” Naturally, some of McCain’s aides are now barking about how ageist it is to say that.

A person doesn’t have to be old to lose their bearings. It’s not like he said McCain was becoming senile or losing his marbles. Those are the sorts of things I have been saying about him, because he is not the same John McCain I used to know and like … and yes, he does seem to be getting old, not just physically.

Yet the blogosphere and the 24 hour news circuit are alive with people ranting about how rude it is to say that McCain is losing his bearings, because it is a stab at his age. My suggestion is for these folks to learn how to use a dictionary, since they obviously don’t know the meanings of simple words and phrases.

Meanwhile, I will continue to believe that McCain is senile and losing his marbles.

Mom finally sent me the photo she took of me on the porch of the main building in Luckenbach, so I thought I would share.

It’s about ten thousand degrees outside, and I am physically worthless today, so my outdoor activities have consisted of nothing more than watering the plants on the porch and training the snap peas to grow on the trellis. Did you know, if you are really patient, you can actually see the little feelers gripping onto the thing you want them to grip onto? Well, you can, but you have to be really, really patient … like fifteen minutes worth of patient.

And as if to thumb their nose at me, those Better Boy tomatoes (I’d been calling them Best Boy, which is wrong) grew a couple of inches in the last 24 hours, and one of them now has blooms on it. I guess I have to let them live.

I’m beginning to consider that I need to think of things to do with a lot of tomatoes, because I am now beginning to suspect I am going to have a lot of tomatoes later this summer.

In other garden news, those two banana peppers are getting bigger! I didn’t even have to use the macro lens on the camera this time!

There have been a few things in the news that irked me today.

Three small-town eighth-graders were suspended for not standing at the start of the school day Thursday for the Pledge of Allegiance.

The school district has a rule that even if you don’t say the pledge, you still have to stand. Three students didn’t, and according to one parent never had, and they have now found themselves suspended. I am, of course, opposed to the punishment, not because I am anti-pledge, but I am against mechanical, blind, rote patriotism and forced allegiance. I am not alone in thinking this school is whacked in the head for punishing these students either. There are “numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings dating to the 1940s say that ’students who refuse to participate in the pledge cannot be punished for refusing to participate.’” Sitting would be refusing to participate. I call foul on the punishment.

When the Russians start parading their nuclear weapons and other war toys down their city streets, it would do everyone some good to take notice. They can say it isn’t saber rattling all they want, but some of us are old enough to remember when it was a rather regular occurrence. It was saber rattling then, and it’s saber rattling now.

No, I do not want our airport to be leased out to Australia. Could we possibly, just possibly, maintain control of some of our own infrastructure? It’s bad enough our toll roads are under the control of companies in Spain (and elsewhere). Our airport doesn’t need to be in anyone else’s hands. Their reason for even considering it is that taxpayers aren’t seeing any benefit from the money the airport makes, due to a federal law requiring that money be put back into the airport. Rather than leasing the thing out to some other country, why don’t we try to change the law that is causing the problem in the first place? Oh, yeah … that’s a lot more difficult than just selling out to the highest bidder.

A New York woman who took her family to visit the Maritime Aquarium has filed a $100 claim against the city, saying her child’s shoes, along with the entire outing, were ruined when her 1-year-old stepped in dog feces early last month outside the Maritime Garage.

Shit happens. Yes, occasionally, a human steps in some shit, but I have never known any shit to not wash off of shoes, hands, clothing, or whatever else it gets on. I question why she felt it necessary to throw away her child’s $42 shoes, but then I also question what toddler needs $42 shoes in the first place and why her 1-year-old was wandering around far enough away from her to even have the opportunity to step in shit. Additionally, why would her baby not having shoes on ruin the whole trip. Kids (and adults) do amazingly well without shoes. They aren’t a requirement for walking, sitting, or living. Something tells me this mom has more money than sense.

Time was, when a girl had a crush on a boy, she sent him a note in class. Today, as at least one local school district has learned, she might use her cell phone to take a naked picture of herself and send the photo to him. The Pioneer Central School District over the past two months has discovered three cases of teenage girls — ages 13 to 16 — electronically sending nude photos to male classmates.

And how did the school authorities discover the nude photos? They “came to light when school officials confiscated students’ cell phones for other disciplinary reasons.” They took the phone because the students were using them during class or at school, which is apparently forbidden, but that does not explain what gave the school the right to then poke through the things on the cell phone. Kids with cell phones need to read the manual and learn how to use the security features. It is entirely possible to keep anyone but yourself from nosing around in your cell phone. Just don’t give them the password. They’ll be expelled or suspended anyway, thanks to our lovely zero-tolerance policies, but they might as well keep their private data private. And as far as kids sending nude pics to each other, I have to ask why adults today continue to think that today’s kids invented teen sexuality and believe that kids haven’t always been sexual creatures?

And now for a bit of trivia! Did you know the male platypus has venomous spikes on their hind feet? I certainly didn’t, but now I know, and so do you.

What happens when a thunderstorm collides with a volcanic plume? Look at the first thirteen photos in this set. Be prepared to be amazed.

My plan this afternoon had been to go out and plant some flower seeds under the little tree in the front yard. I grabbed my garden tools and headed out there to do battle with the Bermuda Grass currently growing under said tree. Well, I chopped and chopped and chopped, and I tried to pull that grass up, but I got nowhere with it. I gave up. I hate Bermuda Grass, but it makes up about 50% of the grass in the yard, so we can’t exactly kill it all. Replacing all the sod in the front yard is not in the budget.

I then moved on to the end of the flowerbed that Lin had started removing the grass and weeds from. I cleaned it up some more and planted a whole bunch of old seeds there: sunflowers, marigolds, and two others whose names I can’t recall. These seeds are really old and past their use-by date. I have no idea if anything will actually come up. I’ll just water it and keep the weeds out, and we’ll see what happens. Something is bound to come up.

Then the stupid rabbits will probably eat it.

I might try again under that tree tomorrow, depending on how I feel. I’m all hormonal, crampy and unhappy, and chopping around, even the little I did, didn’t make that any better. In fact, my neck is killing me from the chopping and pulling. My back isn’t too happy either. But I really want something other than Bermuda Grass under that tree, and I have a bunch more seeds, both old and new, to use up. I want some more flowers in my yard!

Puttering in the yard was the only thing of note I did all day.

Tomorrow I’d like to putter in the yard some more and do an hour in the Box Room, now that the trash bin is empty again. I can finally throw more stuff away! Yippee!