Little observation: Ask, and I am sure a great majority of your friends will tell you that they do not agree with factory farming; or they will tell you that corporate greed has had a hand in our current financial situation.
At least I know that as much as I love meat, the main reason I managed to remain (mostly) vegetarian since 1994 was because I could not stomach (literally) eating meat that came from a factory farm, that was tainted by misery, bad feed, no sunlight and fresh air and hormones and antibiotics. If I can not find meat from an animal that has led at least as natural a life as possible, I will not eat it.
But here is where my observation lies; though most people will agree that corporate greed is one of the most pervasive evils and that they would not do that if they had the power, I see an interesting reflection in a totally fantastical and virtual world. Games.
I remember when I started playing Farmville, and now Cityville, given that power, I have not changed in how I play since I was a little girl. I always see it as my only chance to make that ideal world I imagine a reality. I always have sacrificed points, levels, whatnot, for the opportunity to make things right in a way that I can not do so in the real world.
In my imaginary and game farm, my animals roam; if there are fences, the gates are open, there are no crowds, no hoarding of anything! And, yes, it has taken me over a year to reach high levels, but with the pleasure that I did it my way.
In my imaginary city, there is also space, and paths and freedom. I have sacrificed "winning" (because in these games, much like life, there is no definite finish line anyway) or leveling quickly or getting imaginary wealth for the pleasure of making my little make believe world.
So I am surprised by how many people I know, who in real life may not "be" that way, become hoarders, crowding and piling everything for the sake of leveling quickly, of making points and money. I KNOW, I know this is a game, but it only leaves me wondering, just how many, if they had the power, would do exactly the same thing that those in power have done for so long: hoarding animals, people, sacrificing space and freedom and beauty for money.
Remember, there really is no defined finish line, or winning, just like life, you play until you play no more. Enjoy.

My dream this morning: I find myself in a world that is falling apart. Like one big special effect, rocks and trees and structures crumbling away into space. What look like ancient greek buildings bursting into flames and crumbling, ashes and fire dispersing into nothingness. All around me people in panic, mostly people running forward because if you stay in one spot,or run the wrong way you will find yourself "standing" on nothing.
They say not everyone dreams in color, but I recall the reds, yellows and oranges of the fire coming from beneath and eating the world. The browns of the dry earth beneath me....
I started to run forward, no panic, I actually felt like I was running on a treadmill since the earth seemed to be getting sucked up behind me.
I ran past people and the hot fires. I kept running until I got ahead of the chaos. I even thought, if I run enough, will I eventually make it all the way around? Will it be the end or the beginning?
Then I arrived at what looked like a temple with dark brown men wearing low slung burnt orange robes. I ran past them though, until I reached a shallow pool and then a rock wall.
The hermits or monks told me to stop. "Do not go over that wall" they all came after me to stop me but would not touch me.
"Why?"
"It's the end of the world" they said, looking at me and toward the wall.
I started to climb it. "I have come this far," I said "I may as well keep going, I want to see what is at the end of the world!"
And I woke up. 4:30am, hot because no matter what the thermostat says, our heater ALWAYS seems to kick on at 4:00am and run for an hour, even when it's set at 62F!! I was hot, dry, and thirsty.
I did not get to see the end of the world.

Life Sucks and Then You Die
How many times have we heard this? I know I have heard it and hardly ever used it and sort of sometimes felt it was so. Then this morning I just knew it is true.

As I walk around the park I get to this area where for some reason, a set of three or four trees seem to be the breeding ground for these small black fuzzy caterpillars. These caterpillars all mill around a small 50ft area of the dirt path, and to see all the ones that get squished is impressive. More squished caterpillars than live ones, I mince my way from clear spot to clear spot, trying to avoid stepping on them, and I check the soles of my shoes at the end to see if I stepped on one or not (I may be a poor Buddhist in many ways but on this one thing I seem to be OK, haha).

Life Sucks and then you die, because how many of those tiny wandering caterpillars make it? Such a blink of an eye brief life and in that brief life: make it down the tree, cross the dirt path, crawl 50ft and go up the other tree and meet up or do whatever fuzzy black caterpillars do. Seems pretty simple and yet so full of hardship, pain, and senseless tragedy. So many didn't make it. And what were the odds that during this brief week of fuzzy black caterpillar migration, the park people decide to spread fresh dirt on the dirt path, thus squashing even more of the lucky ones that had not been stepped on or run over.

Makes me wonder is there a god or gods? Maybe they are there, like me, watching this and wanting to help but not knowing how to because I don't speak caterpillar. I want to pick them up and help them across that treacherous perilous road, but I don't really know where they are going. What if I just take it back the way it had come from and now it has to do it all over again thus once more increasing its chance of being flattened by a tennis shoe? So I watch from above as they inch their way to who knows where on what errand I don't know. Is that what is really happening? Some god above watching us and all the horrible things that happen but it doesn't understand us and doesn't know if meddling would mean help or hindrance?
I suspect that it is possible, just possible that in that chain of weak to strong, there are those aching to help but just not knowing how and often instead of helping they end up hurting.
And so all I can do is avoid stepping on them, check my shoes, and keep walking my circles around the park until the next time I pass by.

This is the same blog as posted on MySpace, so if you read my blog there, don't repeat this unless you found it so midbogglingly amazing the first time you want to read it again! Mua hahahaha!

Sooo... Happy New Year. I hope that this 2009 is not as scary crappy as it portends to be. At this point I am just grateful I have a job and so does Glenn, even if half the jobs he keeps getting scheduled to do keep getting canceled; at least he is at the shop getting paid instead of claiming unemployment. I tell you, this year could be horrible. At my work we already got the letter that pretty much says: no bonus this year and no cost of living increase.
Which brings me to my first opinion soap-box stand of the year for all you poor souls who stick around to listen to me rant and rave and never change a thing.
In all my ignorance of fiscal matters, I think that this country is going to shit... turning very quickly into a third world country.
I have a friend who always opines and is very eloquent and funny. Mostly he is always right (or seems to be, or at least I agree with him), but this time I beg to differ and as much as he may know, or his father, a college professor who teaches business or economics or both (albeit a small college in a small town in Michigan, nevertheless still: a professor! my respects!), may know, they are both still raving republican fanatics (sorry, but true, and I still love my friend dearly) and he always preaches as to how the economic crisis would be solved if the rich were able to hang on to more of their money, if they were taxed less and if corporations were taxed less and were allowed to hang on to more of their money too.
When I hear this all I can think to myself is: ahh what YOU want is a third world country ecomony! Having lived in many third world countries and being from one (though it claims to be somewhere in between third and first.. yet no "second world" term exists as of yet) myself, I KNOW how that works: the rich and the corporations (and that is why they all go there to build factories in the first place!) get all the breaks. ONLY the rich can afford schooling and higher education, only the rich can afford the houses and the cars and the rest is a barely visible middle class that works their ass off and a very poor majority mass that works and begs for the favor of the rich and is happy just to be able to afford a bus or maybe have a beat up car and a tv in their house. THAT is what happens when the rich get more breaks and more money. Trust me on this, I got 10 countries under my belt in 4 continents.
Bailing out banks and bailing out auto manufacturers does NOT change the fact that the masses can no longer afford to pay for their houses, cannot afford to buy a car and cannot afford to pay their debt. So.. you can give all the breaks you want to the guy who makes cars, but who will buy his cars and then how will his company pay off its loans? See??? very simply said, in the very words of my republican friend as way of explanation as to why the poor should not get breaks: "if you give money to the poor they will just spend it."
Exactly, my friend.
And that is called FLOW: that means the cash FLOWS. Oddly this is the one time that something has to flow DOWN before it flows back up.
As in: the less rich need the money which they will spend buying the stuff that the rich make and thus returning the money to the rich who employ the poor and thus pay the poor for their labor who then happily go and spend their money... it is a very simple cycle as you can see.
Hmmmm.... am I retarded???? Do you need to go to Harvard to understand that? I am livid knowing that my taxes which I will openly share for the sake of this point: $22,365.76 just me, not counting my husband's, for last year. (OF my first paycheck of 2009, already they took over $800!!!) went to bail out banks!
BANKS!
Banks which used the money to acquire other banks, NOT to help with the mortgage crisis. MY TAXES went to help corporations, not to help others, and certainly not to help me, though even I struggled, as my husband spent nearly half of 2008 unemployed, to pay MY MOTGAGE on TIME!!! See how that works??? I did not shop I did not consume.. Had I had an extra 22K to spend, then it would have FLOWED right back into the the very greedy grubby hands of the rich businesses that need it. Small businesses may say they need tax breaks, guess what, all the tax breaks in the world will not help them pay THEIR loans if people like me can't afford to go to their small business and spend some money!!! I could have paid off A LOT of debt had I had my 22,000. That is more than millions of families around the world make in a year!
Think about that.
Think some more.
I paid more in taxes than a family makes in a year, even in THIS country!
But I got no assurance that I will have social security when I retire, I still have to worry if my health insurance will want to cover me the rest of my life.
I will stop whining.
It is not about ME.
It is about the fact that 22K of my money went to a government that is doing nothing, NOTHING to stop the downward spiral into a third world country economy. My MONEY went so that a CEO can still earn MILLIONS of dollars a year, so that a BANK can buy other banks, so that an AUTO company can continue to make cars that guzzle gas and break down a year after they are made. It is exactly as my friend said: My money helped keep the rich rich and the poor poorer; and me? I just worked my ass off so that I can pay the bare minimum and stay out of debt hell.
Think about that the next time you hear someone say that businesses need the breaks. It is likely that person speaking has never lived in a true third world country. You do not need a Harvard education to tell you that throughout history it is the middle class, and the poor, who carry the rich.
Happy New Year.
Now go back to work!

OK, so I was wrong... this weather has actually lasted two weeks now... I am impressed, this is the longest any kind of weather has actually stayed constant for a while. Being so close to the lake, things are always changing and I was thinking how sorry I'd be to see all that beautiful snow go. So far, it's sticking around and it is truly a sight for sore eyes like mine, which have lived way too long in hot weather.
This photo is of a wind storm and blizzard warning day we are having. The wind blows so strong it hurts and gave me a headache in the time it took to shoot a few photos. The "fog" you see by the sunny spot is actually the snow from the frozen lake being blown about.

This is the most snow I have seen since I moved here in 2003. I am loving it. I wish this was more common than rare. I thought Michigan was supposed to be cold and snowy, but this is a once in a while kind of photo.

Does She Dive?
May 13th 2004
Today I spent the day staring at bubbles as they came bursting to the surface. My objective, even as I was lost in thought, was to be the best possible tender. I wanted to be able to anticipate the diver’s every need, to give slack as slack was needed and to gently guide it back when it was time for him to head back in.

I wanted to be able to write longer chapters in my journal, perhaps little stories that could stand on their own but I come home and stare at the notebook instead. Words avoid me sometimes, and more often than not I am the one avoiding the notebook. Where to start for that day? What do I tell first?
How about this for starters? I overhear this, it was said loud enough for me to hear but still spoken as if I weren’t there.
“Are they all divers?”
“Yeah I think.”
“All of them, or does she just tend?”

This conversation is also very real.
“Are you guys divers?” Someone at the plant we are working at asks our crew.
“Yes.” One of the guys or the foreman will answer.
“All of you?” At which point as if the question wasn’t obvious enough one or all of the questioners will look in my direction.
“Yeah.” I know sooner or later this gets old, but you know this first response is never convincing enough so 90% of the time now looking directly at me but still asking one of the guys the man will persist.
“Does she dive?”
“Yeah.”
Eventually I took to ignoring them completely. At first I was worried that I was coming off as arrogant or stuck-up but what did it matter if they all treated me as if I was deaf anyway? I might as well be deaf.
Just a couple of days ago our plant contact asked me this directly (for a change).
“How come you never dive?” What made him come to that conclusion? You know what was the worst part? The day I dove he wasn’t there! Regardless, what kind of answer did he expect from me? What was he thinking when he asked that question?
“Gee sir, I don’t dive because I don’t have the experience or the balls. Ha ha.” But that one doesn’t work because I have about as much experience as half the crew there. “I’m just a really really good tender.” I could say but don’t you think that perhaps the correct answer could have been “I don’t dive because I’m a girl and girls don’t dive.” Sometimes I’ve been tempted to just respond with a completely absurd statement when asked if I am a diver.
“Are you really a diver?”
“No, actually I’m just their fan base. I tend them and service them. Oh, I also pick up their lunches and laundry.”
This because I have actually done laundry and lunch pick ups. On one job I was half way down to the shop to pick up a particular torque wrench when I was called back. After I turned around and walked the distance back to the foreman he pulled some bills out of his pocket and handed them to me. “Why don’t you get the me and the guys some sandwiches instead.” Would you be furious or just mildly annoyed? I was a bit of both but mostly surprised, yet that day I knew enough to keep my big mouth shut. I let the simmer die down, but not before one of the divers, with whom I was close friends noticed.
“Are you annoyed at that?” he asked. There was genuine concern in his expression. I trusted him so I was honest in my reply.
“Hell yeah, but I’ll get over it.” I didn’t consider what had just happened as a big deal. All this time I still don’t know what moves men to do or say half of what they do and say. I have no understanding of what their convoluted idea of honor and respect is all about, but I knew enough to understand that this was one of those things you just need to let go of and eventually it will be dropped and forgotten. Sadly, the guy I trusted told the foreman. I want to think that he did it because he thought he might help me, I don’t want to think that he was just being a gossip. My foreman on this particular job, being the possessor of the coldest blue eyes ever seen looked me straight in the face and said:
“If you have a problem you need to come to me. You need to tell me. I heard what I did bothered you.”
“Whoever told you had no business telling you.”
“No. You need to tell me.”
I smiled as if nothing but I was thinking “If you knew this would be cause for bother why did you do it?”
Why do they do it? What answer do I give to “How come you never dive?”