Good Old Bob

Well, the polls are closed and it appears that you guys like to read about Politics the least! Shame on you! But since My Personal Thoughts come in at second place by a margin of only one vote, and since this is my blog, here's a daily dose of politics for you!


Good Old Bob & Those Stupid Ass Liberals
Bob gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffee pot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Bob gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Bob's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate them eat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Bob reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some cry baby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Bob dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Bob begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Bob's employer pays these standards because Bob's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Bob is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a workers compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time and Bob needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Bob's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Bob's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Bob has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Bob and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Bob is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal (FDR) stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, quiche-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Bob wouldn't have to.

Bob gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show.The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. Bob agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives!After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

Is there a problem, officer?

"and he kicked that ole drunk coyote..."

a line from Ginga's latest release

Ready for bed in their favorites - my or Jeff's t-shirts


Anybody seen my driving glasses?

Recipes Worth Remembering

In the last month or so, I have been wowed by two culinary concoctions to come from Lane & Jill's kitchen. I have to put these somewhere so I won't lose them and I need to do it before I forget the ingredients. What better place to do so than right here!

Jill's Sangria

Seriously, the best cocktail I've ever had. Period. The recipe went missing but she's pretty sure this is it (Jill, please comment if I get this wrong!).

1 cup vodka

1 cup triple sec

1 bottle dry white wine

1 cup sugar

1 can lemon-line soda

1 peach

1 lime

1 orange

1 lemon

Clean and slice the fruit. Mix the vodka, triple sec, sugar and fruit in the bottom of a pitcher and let set until the sugar dissolves. When you're ready to serve, add in the wine and soda. Serve over ice.

Lane's Wicked Good Fried Chicken Strips

Barbara comes walking across the street holding this crispy morsel in a napkin and says I have to try this new chicken tender Lane's just created. I look at it and think, yeah, OK chicken strips... woowee. Then I take a bite! Serious perfection!

I think he eye-balled the measurements so he didn't have a definitive recipe, but I think I've come close.

1-2 lbs chicken breast tenders

1 sleeve saltine crackers, crushed

1 cup corn meal

1 cup flour

salt

pepper

garlic powder

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 hot sauce (my addition!)

Soak chicken tenders in buttermilk (add hot sauce if you want them a little spicy). Meanwhile, mix together crackers, corn meal, flour, salt & pepper and garlic.

Drain buttermilk from chicken. In a large plastic container or paper bag, toss in chicken and breading mixture, shake until evenly coated. Let set for at least 5 minutes. Fry until done!

Enjoy!

Glass Ceiling

It was 105 degrees at least two days last week. Sitting in the parking lot at the grocery store, I watched a very pregnant woman slowly waddling the 20-yard hike from her car to the store. I sat and remembered what that felt like... pelvic bones aching from the bone and cartilage shifting and increasing pressure inside, back sore to the touch from the constant strain, lungs tight and confined from the bulging uterus, body sweating and weak from extra 30-50 pounds it now had to carry.

Seeing this woman and thinking a lot lately of my friends and family that are expecting or either just delivered (Amanda just had baby Shelby, Jenny still in the hospital with baby Reese, Kelley expecting her second - maybe a boy! and Sherry expecting a baby boy at the end of the month) gave me an idea. Many of you might have gotten an email from me asking for support for a proposed bill referendum that allows women in their second trimester to be issued 6-month temporary handicapped parking.

Whether you agree or disagree is absolutely up to you but I will say that I was taken aback by my mom's response. When I asked what she thought she responded that she would not support the referendum. She said that she had to walk when she was pregnant and she made it just fine.

Well, there you go. Once Mom has formed an opposing opinion, there can be no dialogue or conversation. She clamps down like a bear trap around her ideals and beliefs and time spent discussing usually ends up with me pretending not to hear the partisan barbs while I nod in silence. I try to keep my own thoughts to myself because a) there's no use and b) I love her and don't want to argue with her.

Was her only reason for not wanting to make life a little easier for someone else because no one had made it easy for her? What harm or inconvenience would come her in the far fetched event that the law was amended? Then I wondered if Mom was looking down through her own glass ceiling.

The first time I ever felt the glass ceiling was when Tammy Cagle (aforementioned in the Wretched Cows I Can't Stop Hating post) informed me at an annual review that she would not be increasing my salary. That I was a tremendous asset to the company (which had just peaked it's most profitable year) and growing as a business woman in leaps and bounds but she had worked for the company for 10 years before she made the salary I was making. I could not be rewarded because she had struggled. The glass ceiling.

By definition, the glass ceiling is an invisible barrier that exists that keeps minorities from advancing beyond a certain level. I always imagined an overweight white man with a big office, coffee stained teeth and a receptionist he called Darlin' keeping the foothold on the ceiling. Not us. Not women.

I'm sure we may all be a little guilty of it. I was more than a little green when I heard they were no longer making you wait to be dilated at 5cm before giving you an epidural and thought "psssh... stinking little heifers don't know what it REALLY feels like to be in labor - you try being in labor 14 hours without an epidural and see how much of a woman you are!" I secretly wished their episiotomies would get infected. What the hell does it matter if your experience isn't like mine? If you can pop that little sucker out without breaking a sweat, then more power to ya, sister!

Here's the thing. We wake before anyone else each day to fold that basket of laundry, lay out something for supper and maybe steal a quite moment with a cup of coffee, we dress the kids, we get their breakfast and pack their bags, we dress ourselves - wondering if we have enough time to shave our legs AND moisturize, we haul the kids to daycare and school, we work all day long at our jobs eating leftovers for lunch to save money, we rush home, we cook supper, we bathe the kids, we put them to bed, we survey the damage and tidy up the house, we pay bills or fold clothes while we watch TV and when the day is finally done we have sex with our husbands (because, God we need one more thing to have to do everyday).

Life for the modern woman is tough. There will always be a glass ceiling. Let's try to make sure it's not tinted pink.

WHO's Who

I'm talking about the World Health Organization not that section of your high school year book. OK, so I'm on my soap box again and this time it's about health care.

Talk to most Americans and you'll hear some common thoughts.... 1) Health care systems managed by the government is Socialism. 2) The US has far superior doctors and the best wait times. 3) You receive poor heath care and service in countries like Canada and France - where the services are free. 4) The insured are tired of paying taxes that fund medicare and other social services - OK, so I'm not touching that one today... that's for another post.

I disagree. This year, for the first time ever, WHO asses ed the health care systems of all the countries in the world. This study was based on five criteria: 1) overall level of population health; 2) health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; 3) overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); 4)distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); 5) and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

Top 20
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland

Where did the US rank? 37th place.

I, for one, have no first hand knowledge of Singapore or Luxembourg. Let's talk about what's closest to home. What we may know more about - like Canada. Most Americans have been lead to believe that the Canadian health care system (and the other 72% percent of the top ten) may be free but you have to wait for hours to see a doctor, weeks to have surgery, etc. What did WHO find? The 10 nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. OK, so there goes that argument.

Speak with anyone in my husband's family, who are all Canadian, and you'll not hear anything akin to what we Americans perceive to be true of the Canadian health care system. My husband's experiences with US doctors and services are no different than what he experienced back home.

So how do we fix it? How does the greatest, strongest country in the world move up from #37? I'm not sure, but I think we can all agree that changes are needed. Prepaid medical accounts maybe? None of us cares how much our doctors and surgeons charge because a third party (our insurance company) is paying. If we were all paying out of pocket, I bet we'd be paying more attention to the $25 aspirin and $800 ambulance fees. One thing's for sure, we have created a monster - doctors and pharmaceutical companies charge what they want because the insurance companies will pay - they just jack our premiums up and up and up. And so long as these industry giants are funding political parties, I think it'll be a long time coming before we see any changes (or maybe just until 2008! Go DEMS!)

So, that's my rant for the day. Before you focus your attention only on your tax dollars paying for the uninsured - maybe spend some time thinking about why it is that we live in a society where we have folks that can't afford said insurance.

Sunday Dinner

I can guarantee you that I would not be able to pick up the phone on Sunday and reach any of my home-town friends between the hours of 11AM-3PM. I know where they are though... at their Mama's for Sunday Dinner.

This is a tradition that goes back before we were born. Since the beginning of time, Southerners have spent Sundays with family eating giant homemade meals, napping in their daddy's Lazy-Boy, reading the newspaper, watching football, just taking it easy and catching up. I'm not romanticizing this either - it's the way that it is, or at least it was in the small town I grew up in.

I shared many Sunday meals at my friends' homes (and their grandparents) as a teenager having spent the night. Every weekend I ever spent visiting my college roommate was complemented with Sunday dinner at either her parents house (love me some of Judy's apple butter), an aunt's house or even her girlfriend's mother's house - the point being on Sunday you find someone's table to park your brogans under. Even as I got older, there was no hangover that would keep me away from the comforts of Sunday Dinner... I'd drag ass up, throw on a sweatshirt and ball cap and head home.

One of the things Jeff and I will never be on the same page about is how to spend Sundays. Sunday seems to be Jeff's "Day of Rest" wherein he wants to see no one and go nowhere. I find myself climbing the walls, missing my Mama and wanting so damn badly to be peeling peaches for a fresh cobbler she can toss together in 2 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and children more than anything on this earth, but Sunday for me is bigger than just us. It's watching Ginga wrap himself around Holly's finger and smelling the mouthwatering goodness coming from Mom's kitchen. It's stretching out on someone else's couch - a luxury I don't get at home because there is always something that needs to be done at home. It's grandparents helping entertain the kids for a little so I can actually pee alone or slip out on the front porch and sit with my hubby - just the two of us. It's the perfect way to end the week and get ready for the next.

I can't think about Sunday Dinner without thinking about my friend Stephanie. Stephanie has spent many a Sunday at my folks' house and can tell you in under 15 seconds what she'd like to have: Baked ham, macaroni & cheese, butter beans, greasy rice (actually, that's mine, but you HAVE to have greasy rice with ham!), potato salad and biscuits. All homemade, all delicious and all reasons why she loves my mom!

My Perfect Sunday Dinner
Fried Cubed Steak
Rice & Gravy
Crowder Peas
Sliced Tomatoes & Cucumbers
Zucchini Pie
Biscuits
Chocolate Delight or Banana Pudding for dessert!

What's yours? What dishes sum up good memories for you? Please post your favorites here or send me an email. I'd love it if you would share your recipes too!