Rant On

So, we get the databackup from my computer today (oh yeah, my old computer died, forgot to mention). I should be cheering, right?

Wrong.

First some background. From the day we dropped the computer off to Best Buy (yes, yes, I know but it was under warranty), we have been given the runaround. If someone wasn't lying to us about where they were in the process, someone else had no clue as to what was going on. These people made ZERO notes as they were working. We finally had to get the general manager of the store involved due to the gross incompetence of the Geek Squad. He personally makes sure it gets done and it does.

Flash forward to today. I start going through the DVDs of the backup, of which there are about 22 or so. The first one certainly LOOKS like it has data written on it but my computer wont' read it. Neither will my husband's. The second DVD had data I could access. Several more look as if they have nothing written on them by looking at the backs and nothing comes up. Out of TEN so far, three have had actual data written on them. I am not optimistic about the rest.

The general manager of the store will be hearing from me tomorrow. Regardless of the outcome, I will be writing the corporate offices about the incompetence, complete lack of customer service and, at times, hostility we were met with at this store. There's no excuse for it and we certainly won't be taking our business to them again.

Personal Responsibility

You guys remember that, don't you? I've been thinking about personal responsibility a lot lately, especially in light of the remarks Senator Kerry made about the military. Later, he "apologized" but still placed the blame on everyone else for "misunderstanding" his flubbed joke. Because, you know, if it really was a joke and he flubbed it it's our fault for not understanding what he meant to say.

Shame on us. How dare we? How about accepting responsibility for what you said and not place the onus upon us to interpret your words? If you are going to apologize, then apologize. Either way, you either need your eyes checked for reading glasses or to revisit your elementary reading class, Mr. Kerry, for you left out some VERY important words in your 'flubbed joke'.

Segueing away from personal responsibility, I've been involved in a lively discussion over Senator Kerry's words over at The Original Musings. Some of it has been very enlightening, complete with an obviously uneducated liberal defending Kerry and calling us all idiots (complete with copious amounts of swearing). Some of the commentary has been thought provoking. Some of it has been laughable. A poster who identifies himself as 'Daniel' posted the following response:

At the risk of being jumped on, I have to say that when I read the names and information about the soldiers from Florida who have been killed in Iraq I don't see a great deal of Worth Ave in West Palm Beach adresses listed. Nor do I see that they went to Pine Crest Prep near Star Island. I am most certainly NOT saying that makes them uneducated but it does point to a certain disparity in my opinion on whom is serving in the armed forces right now. Historicly speaking it has always been the poor to middle class who has been the front line solider. From the Irish immingrants given a uniform and gun right off the boat during the Civil War to the working class guys with no college exemption to fall back on during Vietnam. This does not make thier sacrifices any less importnant but it does make me pause and wonder why this is so.

I felt he deserved a well thought out response and not to be 'jumped on'. Following is my response to 'Daniel'.

I'll tell you why this is so, Daniel, because it's hard to make your way in the world when you are poor with little prospects for the future. College is EXPENSIVE. If you want to work more than a minimum wage job, you need skills or an education. That's the way the world works. The military not only gives the most excellent on the job training in the world for EVERYTHING they do, I will go so far as to say young people who do join the military come out better prepared to deal with the real world. Not only will they have valuable job skills but they'll come out a hell of a lot more educated than when they went in. That goes for EVERYBODY, not just the poor and "uneducated". In today's military you do need at a minimum a high school diploma (I'm not sure they accept GEDs anymore, they may). You have to pass a test to get in that is NOT easy. I passed it in high school and it was harder than any other aptititude test I had taken up to that point. By the way, I was a straight A student, on the honor roll, and part of a "gifted student's" program for kids with high IQ's. If it was hard for me, imagine how hard it would be for someone who is "uneducated".

Add in the military benefits, of which there are many. I was married to a Marine for many years with a daughter who was hospitalized many times due to illness. If not for military care, we never would have been able to afford the hospital bills, even with civilian insurance. My ex-husband had more than a chance to go to college and better himself, with a large amount of assistance from the military. He chose not to use that chance. It was his choice but at least the opportunity was given to him.

I added in an additional comment:

Let me add on to what I just said as well. It is never good to paint a single group of people with a broad brush as Mr. Kerry did. Let's not forget that for all of his high class education (which the average person can NOT afford by the way), he had very poor grades after all. He may be educated but I'd go so far as to say he's ignorant. :)

So there it is, in case all of you were wondering (and I am sure you were). That's where I stand on the whole Kerry mess.

The Hell?

The New Birth Control Ban

Okay, you know, I can understand being morally against abortion. If all the pill was good for was preventing pregnancy, I might even agree in principal to the doctors and pharmacists refusing to prescribe or fill the prescriptions. However, I can not support any physician or pharmacist denying a woman what might just be an essential part of her healthcare because it might (it's never been proven scientifically from what I understand) prevent embryo implantation and they consider it a kind of pre-emptory abortion.

I'm not one of those foam-at-the-mouth type of feminists. I just want to live my life and have the option of choosing what is best for my body. I had a tubal ligation years ago and don't need the pill for birth control. I take it because I have debilitating menstrual cramps. The kind of cramps that leave me crying in bed for, literally, days. The thought that a doctor or pharmacist could, in some cases legally, deny me this enfurates me beyond belief.

Don't even get me started on the whole birth control aspect....

This is a long overdue update of my journal. I had thought about keeping this private but I know that so many of you who do still read my journal actually care and I need a little contact with others right now. This post may ramble quite a bit.. I apologize for that in advance.There is so much happening and nothing at all at the same time. I am stressed to my limits. I need grounding. I need centering. I need a healthy outlet for my stress.

My daughter came out for her summer visit in June. It didn't take long for her to decide that she wants to stay here for the school year. Some of you will remember what happened two years ago. Those that do know that it wasn't pretty at all. My daughter is two years older now and feels able to stand up to her dad. She told my sister that, looking back, she can now see how he manipulated her two years ago into staying.She's told her dad several times she wants to stay here. He's being completely and totally unreasonable. He's SO not listening to her and completely disregarding her feelings. It's pissing me off that he's treating her like this and it's really starting to piss her off too. A lawyer has been put on retainer. This time I'm NOT backing down from the bastard.

Add to that her ex-boyfriend in Texas has gone psycho on us... it's not been fun. When she first came down here to visit this summer, his possessive behavior was very apparent. He was calling (what seemed like) every five minutes. He wanted to know what she was doing at all times of the day and expected her to call him when she left the house and when she came home, etc. etc. She told me he had been acting really possessively and said she had been thinking about breaking up with him. The impetus to break up finally came when she reconnected with the boy next door (okay, he lives three houses down from us but still). Well, things went from bad to worse. The phone calls got even more frequent and then his mother called my ex mother-in-law (who is the REAL person who's been raising my daughter not her damn father and she and I have become pretty close over the past couple years) and told her that my daughter was killing her son because he's depressed, he won't eat, etc. etc. Because, you know, my sixteen year old is responsible for this boy's happiness and well-being ::dramatic roll of the eyes here:: His mother even called me... at 1:00 in the freaking morning. You can imagine my reaction to her. We finally had to threaten to press charges for telephone harassment with him to get it to stop.It's not like I didn't feel for the kid. They'd been dating two years and I know what it's like to be 18 and in luuv. But he went from heartbroken to out and out psycho. Things had calmed down. He stopped calling all the time. They stopped fighting. Things seemed to be okay and they had begun talking again.

Wednesday I received a call from the ex MIL and said that he had left a bag of Shyanne's clothes on their front porch. Things she had left over at his house, including the dress she wore in my wedding two years ago (she had also worn it to homecoming this past school year). If all he had done was leave the clothes in the trash bag, that wouldn't have been a problem. But he didn't. Every piece of clothing in that bag was shredded. How scary is that?

Ex MIL is trying to get a restraining order against the kid (who is 18 now). Meanwhile she tells me that she believes Shyanne NEEDS to stay here because she's afraid of what this kid might do to her and, I can't say I disagree. You can guess what her father had to say to this. "I'll protect her. She'll be taken care of." I'm so enraged by this, I can't even see straight.

My daughter has been begging me to enroll her in school here. I can't without his permission and he won't give it. He says he wants to talk to her face to face. This sound fishy to anyone else here? What this tells me is that he can't wait to get his hands on her so he can try to guilt trip her and basically talk her into staying there.

My sister came up with the idea of having my daughter go out to visit her in Austin (just a couple hours from where he lives, even closer to where he works) and see if they can't get him to meet with my daughter so he CAN talk to her face to face. The idea was that if he does and sees she really IS serious about staying here, he'll finally listen to her and back off. My lawyer seemed to think this was a good idea. So, Shyanne is going on a plane in a few hours back to Texas.

My ex-husband went ballistic when my sister talked to him. Completely and totally irrationally ballistic. My daughter knows and I asked her what she felt about it. She said "he's being retarded". He's going to call her later this afternoon at my sister's. I hope she can be strong. She admitted this will truly be her first time to stand up to him. All I can say is I am scared to death of what he's going to do. Two years ago he ran off with her and hid her from me (my daughter told me his lawyer suggested he do that). I don't know what I'll do if he does that again...

So, that's it.. now you guys know why I'm being silent and why I'm so stressed out.

Kids and drugs

Read this. If that isn't enough to set your teeth on edge, read this. Still not enough? Then read this and these kids aren't buying crack or marijuana.

I'm all for responsible drug use among adults (okay, so responsible is such a subjective term but still). I've smoked pot and probably would do so again. I don't think it should be in the hands of children and certainly not a kindergartener! What in the hell is wrong with parents these days? It's bad enough that many parents feel that video games, TV shows and the computer are acceptable substitutes for parental interaction with kids now they have to put illegal drugs in their hands?

Then there are the teenagers. I remember in high school the most dangerous thing we did was drink and think about licking these poisonous toads that secreted something that was akin to LSD (I never did, I was too much of a chicken and thought that was just really too gross). I never would have thought of using inhalant. This stuff causes brain damage and often death. I imagine their parents don't even notice because they are too caught up in their own lives to pay attention to what's going on with their own kids. "My Janie would never do drugs." Of course not you twit. She's not doing drugs, she's sniffing glue or spray paint.

My own daughter does not live with me. I try very hard, however, to instill good values in her. I try to encourage her to think for herself and not let her friends pressure her to do things she knows is wrong (or wrong for her at any rate). In the end, I have to trust in her judgment and hope she does the right thing. So, yeah, I'm not there all the time for her but I'm involved in her life. It's a shame that more parents can't find time to get involved in their own kids lives.

I am in a ridiculous amount of pain this morning... abdominal pain that is. There are no drugs I can take to ease the pain or take the edge off it. I've tried. The doctors gave me vicodin and even morphocodone (the generic name for it) which is like vicodin but with morphine in it instead. They didn't even *help* and, since they are highly addictive, I stopped taking them when I realized they weren't going to stop the pain.

I should be in bed. I can't even *think* about sleeping right now, no matter how tired I am. There's absolutely *no* sleeping with this pain. It's the worst it's been in months right now. I'll be so glad for a diagnosis. I'm hoping my doctor can give me one soon. Unfortunately gastro problems are some of the hardest to diagnose because so many symptoms overlap and mimic each other for different disorders. I have a friend who *finally* got a diagnosis on her problem after 5 years. I'm going on three...

I know one of my friends on LJ understands what I'm going through even if our health problems are vastly different (::hugs to Angela::). It's frustrating as hell. I'm having more mood swings right now than a 15 year old girl. It's got to be hard on my husband too...

snarl

http://www.petitiononline.com/mrphelps/

No, I'm not snarling at the petition. I'm snarling at the NEED for the petition.