“Our children will be paying for this the rest of their lives!!!!!!!!!”

Whenever this particular reason to oppose health care reform is brought forth, I always want to respond with the following:

“Yes. Our children will be paying for this for the rest of their lives, and their children will also be paying for this the rest of their lives, onward into infinity. They will all be paying so everyone can have access to health care, because, after all health care isn’t free.

They will be paying for everyone to have health care forever and ever. Just like will also all pay for everyone to have a public school education by way of property taxes, for everyone to have roads by way of energy or gas taxes, for everyone to have cops to keep the order and firemen to put out fires by way of a variety of taxes, fees, and surcharges, and so many other things we all have been paying for and will continue to pay for in order to supply them to everyone. The list of things we do for each other for the public good is long. Health care is just one more public good that our children and our children’s children will be paying for for the rest of their lives.

Tangent: The right to a lawyer also comes to mind. I have the right to a lawyer if convicted of a crime and my freedom is threatened, even if I can’t afford to retain a lawyer, no matter how long or protracted the trial may be, and no matter how expensive to the state. Oddly, I do not have the right to be seen by a doctor and treated for a medical condition which may threaten my very life, unless I can afford it. I can even enjoy a long and slow death with no treatments at all, if I can’t afford them, and if I can afford it, they will take every last penny they can, leaving my family homeless and hungry … and still possibly quite dead. Pretty crazy, don’t you think?

I just got this Tweet –now that I am so trendy and interconnected with the larger universe– and it got me thinking about the garden. I’d already been sitting on the couch not paying attention to what was on the TV thinking about the garden. I have been having deep thoughts about the garden for the last few days.

The winter gardening experience was miserable. I can’t describe it any other way. I had hoped that having a winter garden would spark some appreciation for the colder segment of the year. I love being outside. I feel most alive when I am spending quality time outdoors puttering in “nature” –also known as my back yard. Alas, I can find no reason at all to be outside during winter. There is simply nothing at all to appreciate about winter. It’s just miserable. Even puttering around in “nature” can’t make me want to be outside during the winter.

There will be no future winter gardens. None. I may start some late-winter/early-spring things (like peas), but I am not fussing around outside in Texas mud in near freezing temperatures and high wind for any plant. I will occasionally pay a premium price for one organically and locally grown head of perfect^† for the privilege of not having to be outside and miserable during the winter. Or, I’ll buy the clone-like stuff at the grocery store. Or do without. What I will not do is spend another winter fretting over plants.

There. I said it.

Tomorrow, I may have things to say about the spring and summer garden too. Oh, there’s going to be one, because I have carefully selected seeds from carefully selected plants which were grown in my own yard that I have to plant in order to collect seeds from those plants ad infinitum. The Great Garden Experiment will go on. I’m just not certain about the scale of the thing, and that’s just one of the many decisions about the garden that I am currently contemplating.

And all that talk the other day about not bothering with a plan and just going all carefree about the nitty-gritty details of plants and growing things? Just ignore it. I started working on The Plan 2010 last night.

1. † And by “perfect” I do mean looking like an actual fresh vegetable grown in a natural environment and not a clone-like representation of what we think broccoli should look like – as one would see in most grocery store produce departments. [↩]

I am so tired of the cold. Tired of the wet too. The sun has been out lately, but I don’t think I’ve felt warm for days now, no matter how warm it actually is in the house. I’m ready for the seasons to begin to change. It’s usually much nicer than this by my birthday.

Oh, and there’s going to be cloudy, cold, wet weather this weekend too, just to set the mood for completing my forty-fifth year on this planet. I can’t wait! Break out the black balloons and tombstones, I am declaring myself officially middle-aged on Saturday night!

My glee … can you feel it?

Statistically speaking, I should have officially declared myself middle-aged some years ago. I feel confident stating that the larger portion of my life is now behind me. Not necessarily the better portion, but certainly the larger one. The years ahead of me are fewer than I have seen before, but I still think the best is yet to come … or it’s happening right now. This may be the best it gets, and you know what?

I’m cool with that.

Oh sure, being rich, famous, lauded, stunningly gorgeous, living in a mansion with a full staff including a driver, gardener, and cook wouldn’t be something I couldn’t adapt to in about a day and a half, but my life isn’t bad. It fits me like a worn pair of jeans fresh from the dryer. I may complain about the knees being out and hems being frayed, but I still love the jeans.

Anyway, the weather’s going to be gross for my birthday, which is just as well, because all I really want to do is eat candies and be introspective. Or mopey. It’s possible I will be mopey.

The scent of baking bread kept mysteriously wafting by my nose. I wasn’t baking bread, and the only thing I baked all day was corn fritters, and they smell like corn … not fresh and yeasty bread. Even having taken my allergy pills today, my nose was still so stuffed up, I couldn’t follow the scent to its source, but I knew I was smelling fresh baked bread. It’s a scent I’d know anywhere.

I discovered the source a few minutes ago when I went to stack the dinner dishes in the sink for washing tomorrow. I’d left the ziplock bag of bread from the freezer open. This is still some of the bread I made on Christmas Eve. It is, even in the world of bread stored properly in the freezer, probably beyond its “best by” date. Not inedible, but likely getting stale and dry. Or soggy, which is even worse. The kind of bread best served with stews, soups, and dishes with sauces. Generally, I would say that bread stored in the freezer, even for a short time, loses its wonderful bread smell. Yet, here I have a loaf of bread baked on Christmas Eve, carried on a 160 mile road trip in a ziplock bag, stacked with a bunch of other loaves in a tote bag, and then tossed into my freezer without being wrapped in plastic wrap or foil –it even had frozen veggies tossed on it at one point– and it smells as though I just made it today and is perfectly edible. It’s a wonderful thing.

I believe I will be mass baking our bread more often. It keeps much better than I expected. As much as I love baking bread, it is a pain in my butt due to my kitchen being completely non-user-friendly and inefficient. Spending a day baking bread every three or so weeks would be often enough to feed my need to knead, but not so often it would make me want to scream about my kitchen.

And now It’s time for a little smear of grape jelly on a thin slice of bread.

Mmmmm.

I need four large square canvases –stretched and not canvas boards. With gallery edges. I need them now. OK, I don’t need them right this minute, and probably not for a few weeks, but I will need them at some point soonish.

I also need an overhead photo of a slender nude woman curled up in a fetal position on a bed. Actually, I need an overhead photo of myself on my own bed, nude (of course). My need for this is a little more immediate. I want to start doing figure studies this weekend.

Last year was the year of spontaneous art. No planning. No real forethought. No sketches. No underpainting. When I felt like painting, I did. If I didn’t feel like painting, I didn’t. The end result of this year-long experiment has been fewer paintings finished, and I think every one of them is a great contender for the Worst Art I’ve Made award. Obviously, this means that long after I am dead, someone somewhere will be droning on about the significance of this one year period and claiming they are the best work of my entire art career.

I haven’t entirely decided what this year’s grand art experiment will be, but I suspect the word I would use to sum it up is LARGE. It’s also entirely possible I will be working in oils, though that does come with some difficulties. I’m getting sick of acrylics, I think.

Oh. I just had another idea to go with the idea I had that prompted this post. I wanted stretched and shaped canvases with gallery edges. That means I’ll have to build and stretch them myself. Ugh. I’ll have to ask my resident engineer/architect/master builder for guidance. I can stretch the canvas myself, but building a canvas with no corners might be a little beyond my building abilities. OK, it’s way beyond my building abilities. You’ve seen the things I build for my garden haven’t you? I wouldn’t let me build anything that needs to last longer than three months. Eh, probably too much work that would end in unsatisfactory results. I’ll look into it, but four large square canvases would be just fine too.

I should probably join Lin in bed now. We need to get up at 3 am to get him off to Houston for a ridiculously early meeting. Also, I’m doing lunch with a friend tomorrow. Good thing I suggested a late lunch, because there’s no way I will fall asleep until at least midnight or later, and having just found out I need to be up two and a half hours earlier than I am used to means I won’t get any sleep at all, until I get Lin out the door and go back to bed until moments before my lunch date.

And if I am not too fatigued after lunch, I think I’ll start doing sketches for the first painting of 2010, because I am eager to get started on it. I might even let people see this one.

It’s oddly warm outside. Well, it’s 54ºF, which feels oddly warm compared to the lower temperatures we have been having lately are the ones we are expecting soon. There’s a thick pea soup fog out there too. Always makes the back yard look so eerie. I like it.

I imagine the almost warm breeze barely blowing is every last bit of warmth from the more northern states being pushed down at us … right before the coldest air we’ve felt here in a long time blasts us into a frenzy, and Texans –at least the ones in my neighborhood– do seem to be working themselves into a frenzy about this cold front.

I would swear most of the mass of humanity crammed into my corner grocery store this afternoon were panic buying. I’ve been through hurricanes. I know when people are panic buying food and other essential provisions. The thing is … there’s no real reason to panic. It’s going to get cold. Very cold. But the weather isn’t supposed to be especially ugly. No rain or freezing rain or ice or snow. Sunny cold weather. I know I will regret not buying more things at the grocery store –I bought the ten most essential things, got through a quick check, and was in and out of the utter madness of the place in under 20 minutes, because I will likely have to leave the house when it is really, really cold, and this will suck. But I am fully capable and unhindered in my ability to leave my house and go buy or do anything I want just as if it was a totally normal non-freezing-cold day.

Austin will not be shut down. Life will be normal. The only true hardship will be some people will have burst pipes, there will be a couple of house fires caused by various heating methods, some schools or office buildings may close due to heating system breakdowns, it’s possible a few homeless and/or elderly people will die of hypothermia, and almost all of us will be freezing our butts off when outside, because very few of us own clothing designed to protect us from such frigid temperatures. Perhaps sales of appropriate cold weather clothing have risen as much as the sale of bottled water, soda, and canned foods. Seriously, people were stocking up on nonperishable foodstuffs as if there was a hurricane on the way and Austin had beachfront property.

The only sense of dread I feel about this upcoming cold spell concerns the fact this is our first really hard and long freeze in the house. Let’s just say I’m hoping we don’t get any horrible surprises or experience any house-related dramatic events in the next few days. Aside from that one concern, I’m actually glad it’s happening. Today I heard that when the weather warms up and it’s time to get to that spring and summer gardening, this cold spell will have diminished the supply of hungry bugs greatly. I can get through a few days of really cold weather knowing my future garden has a slightly better chance of being awesome, because it isn’t being eaten alive daily by the multitude of hungry, hungry bugs. I can always do with fewer bugs.

I’ve got to get to bed. It’s late, and I’m starting to babble. Where does the time (and energy) go?

I hate to do it, but I am closing comments on this one post for the night (or maybe longer). This one post is getting slammed by comment spammers from Russia, and I don’t have the time or patience to deal with it right now. I’ll open comments on it again tomorrow to see if it’s stopped, but enough is enough for now.

Well before my alarm was set to go off I was awakened by the dual sounds of metal chairs being rapidly set up in rows and a vocal group practicing on the giant PA system. I could have done without all the chair noises, but there are worse ways to wake up than hearing some excellent singers singing patriotic tunes. I quickly got dressed and went outside to roam around and investigate.

The weather had turned most foul. Very cold, windy and wet. Yuck. Still, there was plenty of activity to keep me entertained while I wandered around and shivered … like oodles of young people in spit-shined shoes and well-pressed uniforms setting up all those chairs.

They were really quick about getting all the chairs lined up, but unfortunately for them, someone with a lot of brass on his chest wasn’t pleased with the final result and gave them a dressing-down about it.

“When I say I want the chairs set up thirty-four inches apart, I do not mean thirty-four and a half, thirty-four and a quarter, or thirty-three and three-quarters! I mean thirty-four inches!”

I tried not to laugh while they were getting yelled at in a stereotypically booming military way, but I couldn’t help myself. Yardsticks magically appeared from somewhere, and the young military personnel set about making certain each chair was exactly thirty-four inches apart while I hustled back inside to stand in front of the gas heater in the living room and rid myself of an awful chill.

It wasn’t too long before Mom wanted to get out to our seats. I certainly could have waited a little longer, considering how vile the weather was out there, but she wanted to be sure we got good seats, so off we went at 8:30 am for a 9:30 am event. I grabbed the tickets, and we asked the first person we saw handing out programs where we should sit, even though I already knew what section we were in (having scoped that out while watching the earlier chair escapades). A very young and well-uniformed Navy boy escorted us to our section, and we found our seats up in the front. I was already feeling far too cold, because I was, of course, dressed nicely and not dressed properly for the weather.

And then we sat … and sat … and 9:30 am came and went … and we sat some more. Not wanting to take the chance of losing our prime seeing, hearing, and photographing seats, we sat there and suffered. Mom did make a quick trip back to the house to use the restroom and to grab a nice warm wool blanket for us to snuggle under about an hour earlier, for which I am eternally grateful. It was really, really getting cold and nasty. I spent the time alternately shivering uncontrollbly and taking photos of the crowd, like this one of the press box.

Finally everyone who was supposed to be up at the podium arrived^† most importantly, Number 41 and his wife, Barbara.

The show finally started at about 11 am. I was pretty much a popsicle by then. After some local bigwigs spoke, the Big Brass scheduled to speak got up and had his say.

I could get out my program and look up his name, but I can’t be bothered. His speech annoyed me. A great part of it was his disgust with how World War II is presented in school history books. His main complaints? There are only a few pages about it, and horror of horrors, there are some people who believe dropping nuclear bombs on the civilian populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima shouldn’t be considered a good thing to do. I’m accustomed to high-level and older military people being really rah-rah about World War II and the dropping of large and deadly bombs on people, but this guy was over-the-top.

Considering there were a large number of elderly Japanese who were alive during the war (and the Japanese have been so wonderful to my hometown and the museum–not to mention being great friends of America now), it felt a little less than polite to stand up there and complain that some people think killing and maiming a bunch of civilians in Japan might not have been such a wonderful thing to do. In fact, I thought it was quite rude, as was the cheering, hooting, and general rah-rah attitude coming from some people in the crowd who weren’t old enough to be alive back then and likely have no clue what those bombs did to the people who had them dropped on them.^††

There was a little more speechifying, and then we finally got to the ribbon cutting. I was ever so grateful, because I was just about as cold and damp as I ever care to get, and I was beginning to feel sickish.

Mom and I took off for the house almost as soon as the ribbon dropped. While there was all manner of activity on the street afterward with the chairs being taken down and some bands playing and whatnot, we did not leave the house again. It was too warm indoors and too nasty outdoors, and we’d had just about enough of being out the cold and wet weather … so another evening of hot chocolate, good food, and sitting by heaters watching heartwarming TV programming for us!

Previous posts on this big weekend: Day of Arrival and Fun Day Sunday.

1. † Everyone except Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Her absence and the reasons for it deserves a post of its own and will get one soon. [↩]
2. †† And just so you know it was just little bleeding-heart me that thought his speech was way over the line, even my super right-wing, kill-them-all-let-god-sort-them-out mom was totally put off by this guy’s going on about how wrong it was for anyone to think dropping the bombs wasn’t something to be proud and happy about. [↩]

Though the cold wind was still blowing on Sunday morning, the sun was out, and it looked like it was going to be a lovely day. My plan was to drag Mom out to the airport to look at the World War II planes and take some photos. Our street wasn’t supposed to be blocked off until 4 pm, so we putz around the house a little and watched the people setting things up for a dedication ceremony later in the day. After lunch I stepped outside to check the weather, and lo and behold, they had blocked off our street early!

While I certainly could have convinced the nice policeman to let us in and out for a trip to the airport, it was just enough hassle to make me lose interest in doing so. Instead, we sat out on the porch drinking coffee and watching people moving around heavy equipment … until Mom decided her front sidewalk needed to be swept. Obviously, I could allow my elderly mother to sweep the front sidewalk while I lolly-gagged around on the porch drinking coffee while being young and fit, so I volunteered for duty.

As you can see behind me, they had begun to stack the chairs on the street for Monday’s big event, so I had an audience while I worked, one of whom –the nice policeman guarding the entrance to our street– came over to say hello. Naturally, my mother had to have a photo.

Once I finished chatting with Officer Castillo and sweeping the sidewalks, I noticed the dedication ceremony for the submarine in front of the museum was in full swing, so I toddled down there to see what was being said and who was there. The reenactment group that performs at the museums other complex just down the road was in attendance.

After the ceremony ended they went back to making the war come to life a few blocks away, something that usually only happens a couple times a day … except during big events like this one when it seems like it was non-stop bombs and gunfire. It’s loud too, and always sounds like we are in the middle of a war zone while sitting in Mom’s house.^†

Since the weather had become so pleasant, Mom and I wandered over to the courtyard again to listen to the band of the moment, mingle with the tourists, stroll along the memorial walkways, and watch the WWII planes doing flyovers.

I even managed to convince my mom to sit in front of my camera and let me take a photo! It’s a rare event, indeed!

By this time the sun was starting to set, the cold wind was picking up again and the activities were all winding down, so we made our way back to the house for dinner, hot chocolate, and more heartwarming seasonal programming to finish out our day.

1. † If you ever wonder why I don’t flinch when there’s something that sounds like a bomb or gun going off? Growing up with WWII battles happening just down the street makes the sounds of war seem commonplace and safe to ignore. This will probably get me killed some day. [↩]

After eating some lunch, Mom and I looked over the schedule to plan our next few days’ activities. Saturday was much quieter than we expected, and it seemed like one of the bands didn’t show up. We did finally hear music late in the afternoon, so we bundled up against the cold wind and wandered over to the courtyard to listen to the Air Force band. Few things will drag me out of a nicely heated house and into a brisk cold wind as sunset nears. One of those things is an Air Force band. Any kind of Air Force band.

In my younger and more single past, I would have been twittering around them being as adorable as a newborn kitten, seeing them as potential spouses –or at least a few dates. Now in my more matronly and thoroughly married state, they are pure eye candy. A guilty pleasure, I assure you, but I do find it difficult not to twitter around them and experience a bit of … well … lust in my heart.^†

The crowd was sparse due to the cold wind and the building-created wind tunnel they had them set up in. I felt so sorry for them having to play under those conditions, because the wind blowing through the courtyard was bitterly cold. They didn’t play as long as scheduled, but those few of us out there listening to them fully understood their reasons not to. Conditions were less than ideal.

Mom and I made haste back to the warmth of the house and watched heartwarming movies the rest of the night.

1. † I will not apologize for believing Air Force uniforms coupled with band instruments is, in fact, HAWT. And also Air Force uniforms couple with airplanes equals HAWT. Though age is more of a factor in the attractiveness of pilots. A man in an Air Force uniform who can play a musical instrument is HAWT no matter his age. Pilots less so. [↩]

I had a thought. It was one of those thoughts that inspires rambling, babbling, and or ranting. Then I visited a well-known social networking web site, and whatever grand two-thousand-word-post-inspiring thought I had in my head dematerialized.

It’s a little more complicated than that. The whole process of losing my train of thought began when I came to my blog and noticed I had used a period instead of a comma in the first, and I believe only sentence in my last post. My inner grammar fascist shrieked in horror and almost died of embarrassment. That gave my inner child just enough time to remember she needed to put her staff to sleep for a while, so she can work them overnight until they drop from fatigue, because she needs money to buy water that sells for thousands of dollars a glass.

Don’t ask. If you don’t know what I am talking about, I am not going to be the one to spread the addiction.

Well, when I finally got back to the post page, I had already written the first sentence, but it was utterly irrelevant really, seeing as I had lost several trains of thought along the way. And now, yet again, I don’t know what the hell I am talking about or where I was going with it. I hate when this happens.

I’m sure it will come to me again about two seconds after I pull the thick comforter up to my chin and close my eyes, and then I’ll have to decide if the epiphany is world-changing enough to get out of bed and put it into words somewhere.^† But really, it would have to be pretty darn world-changing to get me out of bed on such a chilly night.

It’s time for bed. I had a productive day. I got some stuff done. I’m beat.

And my inner child needs to go check whether or she put her staff to sleep, because she can’t remember if she ever actually did that. I guess she can’t maintain a train of thought either. Also, my inner grammar fascist would like to bed forgiveness for any grammatical or punctuation or spelling errors in this post.

1. † I have been considering using Twitter to relay these lost thoughts rediscovered at the cusp of waking and sleep, but that would be utterly ridiculous and totally falling into navel-gazing territory. And if my inner grammar fascist can’t pay enough attention to keep my fingers from using a period instead of a comma while writing a blog post, I’m just CERTAIN typing on my cell phone in the dark would go so much better. Still … it’s an idea. [↩]