It seems like my days go dashing by faster than I can possibly keep up with them.

I miss my friends. I haven't heard from Melody for over a week. Leann called and she just seemed lonely. I had stuff I was supposed to do, so I didn't plan anything, but tonight I sent her an email and invited her to pickle with me tomorrow. LaDawn and I have no time. She's always insanely busy, so I tried to call her when she wasn't busy and got the phone machine.

I guess, it's fair to say that I'm feeling lonely, too.

Next week, I think I have a temp job registering people to vote outside one of the local post offices. They're supposed to call and firm things up with the temp agency, after which I will be called and I'll get to set up a little table and chair with my clipboard and stuff. My temptation, of course, is to use an ironing board to register people to vote, reminiscent of my days on the quad at UCD, registering people to vote with the campus NOW and getting them to sign anti-abortion petitions.

I'll probably chicken out in the face of the heavy duty red-neck contingent and just bring my card table, toss my blue checked table cloth on it, and call it good. But Evil Ruby thinks it'd be fun to toy with people. Truth be told, however, my ironing board is a bit tipsy, so is not a practical choice.

I still have my pro-choice posters in the garage. Mike and Dan were working on the door out by the laundry stuff, which is where they are stored and Dan asked Mike about them. Mike quickly told Dan the Strict Mormon that they were mine. Bastard. Nonetheless, Dan said he was going to have to have a talk with me.

Little does he know what liberal feminist woman lurks in this mom suit. Mike knows, though, and he just shouldn't tease the Mormons.

Kitty made it home safe and sound.

I had my foster niece from last summer up for a few days, which is why I haven't posted squat here.

I have spent way too much money, lately. I have had help, of course. We were trying to get the last hurrahs in before school starts for the kids. We took them to the state fair and while it doesn't even mildy compare to the California State fair or even several of the California county fairs, it was still fun and we still blew an enormous amount of money there.

We played squirt gun races and won a lot of stuffed animals. My first game, I won the biggest prize they had and gave it to Genny. I got a temporary tattoo. Mike requested the atom versus the butterfly. Freaking engineers! I watched the kids do rides. I didn't really feel like getting nauseous and banged around in a rickety anything. I enjoyed the various exhibits, but was disappointed they were so small. There were livestock shows, but they were also kind of small.

Tomorrow, I run a friend to the doctor and back, then I meet Mike for lunch, so we can shop together for Russell's birthday gifts. We had thought about giving him a computer, but decided rather than blow $500 on a shitty computer, we could give him our old computer and fight over the one we have. Mike and I figured that we could simply just build a kickass computer for $1000, in lieu of basically crapping the money away on a brand new POS computer that is already out of date. Then, I'll be baking an oreo cake for the birthday boy. 11 years old. He's heading inexorably towards adolescence and while I love the person he's becoming dearly, I miss little boy kisses and questions.

With the kids returning to school tomorrow, I am thinking about my week ahead. I have lots of zucchini bread and relish to make. I also have a lot of pickles I'd like to work on. I also need to contact professors at the university and get my incompletes made up. I also have books to return to the university and the fridge to give to the grad students. I have a hard time doing my stuff when the kids are here, I think because I'm so busy doing stuff with or for them. This summer, of course, I've been super ill. I plan to swim, I've got sewing projects, canning, mailings, bills, you name it.

It's not true, but tonight, the day before school starts, Ifeels like I have been waiting all summer for them to go back. I think it's because in the last week, I've actually started to feel better -- a lot better, which is what I have been waiting for all summer. It just happens to coincide with their return to school, which makes me very sad, because I feel like I missed the summer with them and that all my wonderful plans for the summer are a shambles because of my illnesses.

To address that sadness, I walked up the hill with Genny tonight and we went down and talked to the horses, which she enjoyed a great deal. It made me realize how few moments like that I've had with that kid over the summer. I'm going to have to make more of them in the coming months. Soon, she'll be in kindergarten and I'll be much less interesting to her and I won't get all those fruity-breathed kisses and giggles any more.

My sugars are officially better. I actually had a fasting sugar this morning of 110. Not great, but honestly, better than the 138 of just a few days ago.

I'm still tired, but I figure I'll just take naps as I need them and go with it. I am eating on a schedule, which is working pretty well for me. The only drag is that last night because it cooled down, we didn't run the fan and that had screened out the cock-a-doodle doo-ing of the 4 fucking roosters. Apparently, the roosters think that 530AM is when everyone should get up.

I'm thinking I need to make rooster stew. One goes off and then the other three talk to it.

Yesterday, I nearly killed my son because he let the damned chickens out and we had to shoo them out of the garden 20 times. I have lotsa veggies and I'm not sharing them with the chickens. I'll be so glad when Mike finally puts the cement in the chicken run, so we can let them out during the day at least there.

I know they like to explore, but they're so disgusting and EVERYWHERE that I'm not gonna do it. On top of that, we've started having a lot of coyote visits in the wee hours, so we really need to protect them from becoming food. I guess we could um *accidentally* leave out a couple roosters. :)

Oops. Wow, we seem one rooster short. *evil grin*

Russell didn't get the cat in last night and is all freaky that she got eaten. I heard the coyotes last night, so me, too.

He's been out calling for her, so hopefully, she'll come back home. Otherwise, I think we're going to take a couple kittens from his friend's cat's new litter. *sigh*

Hot damn, my sugars are normalizing. Jumping Jesusfreak on a Pogostick, baby!

I tested a couple hours after I ate breakfast and lunch and had a 107 and 109, respectively. While I had a nap this afternoon, I feel a lot better. I got more done today and I actually *made* lunch for the kids this afternoon.

Genny's got a cold, poor thing. She's been sleeping for the past 4 hours. She's slept through four phone calls and the wind pummeling the house. I figure I'll send Mike in to wake her up when he comes home in about 10 minutes.

I'm doing laundry and not forgetting about it. I remembered to put clothes away, I went to the garden and picked produce, I made my phone calls, and generally, did ok. I also went to the neighbors and made sure the house was in order and the horses had water. Tomorrow morning, I have to get up and do the budget. There's a lot of money I've got to account for, which should be interesting.

*sigh*

At least if I'm cooking meals at home, I won't be spending money on going out and that's a good thing. Particularly, if I'm feeling better, I will be able to think beyond the next inhalation of air, which frankly has been extremely difficult this summer.

Sucks to be this tired and still having what I need to get done hanging over me all the time, but it sincerely rocks that I don't feel so much like crap and I am beginning to feel like I am catching up.

For your average diabetic, my sugars have been ok. However, for me, they remain high. The way I can tell is that my feet are fucking killing me. I've been generally hovering around 130-150.

Last night, I had low carb noodle lasagna and my sugars were 180, but after about an hour, they'd dropped to 135.

Eventually, things will even out -- however, this tween time is killing me and my feet.

__

We went and visited Mike's grandparents. It was nice, quiet, and boring and like last time, the kids didn't sleep much, so neither did we. We took our time getting home, stopping at various food joints and a craft fair, taking time to enjoy the ride.

However, on the way home, we had a misadventure of sorts. Genny said she had to pee, and Mike told her to hold it. But she was using the urgent "now" whiny voice and I said,"She's had a rootbeer and an icee, she's gotta go now!" He argued with me until we heard this little voice in the back seat say,"Daddy! I peed!" At which point, I was thanking my lucky stars for the fact that I always bring an extra set of clothes for everyone -- just for such an emergency, so I pulled out a complete set of clothes to change her into. We have the fold out child seat in the car, so I took her soaked booster, tossed it in the back and put down a towel to cover the seat of the van's childseat because the cover is in the laundry room ( I keep forgetting to put in back in the van. )

I very nicely avoided the "I told you so" commentary that Mike so richly deserved because I made him take her to the bathroom to change her.

I. So. Mean.

It's official. I'm considered depressed. I hadn't really considered myself depressed and then I called Mike and asked him what he thought. He waffled as any self-respecting man would until I corned him and said, "Look, my doctor thinks I'm depressed, do you?" To which he responded unhesitatingly,"Yes!"

It's one of the symptoms of hypothyroidism that will eventually go away, but it's the eventually, I'm waiting for.

I burst into tears in my doctor's office. I'm just so damned frustrated with how lousy I've been feeling and how unable to do anything I am.

Add to that that my sugars have been kicking my ass, and not only am I frustrated and tired, but I'm in agony because I never heal up from any exercise that I do.

I'm taking a pill -- just for a few months until the thyroid stuff gets rectified. I also am taking a low dose of glucophage to help kick up my actos. My ankles look like logs of flesh, but I've lost 6 lbs. And that's a start.

Doctor said I could take tylenol for the pain until my sugars work themselves out.

I just feel so useless like this.

Well, yesterday, in a flurry and a rush, we went to have Russell evaluated for the appropriateness of botox injections for his legs. I know you're thinking, "For his legs?" Yeah, plastic surgery took their idea from the CP kids.

They inject the muscle that is stiff with botox and it essentially makes the muscle quasi flaccid and makes it much more susceptible to physical therapy improvements, in the case of CP kids. It's not permanent -- the effects last 3-4 months. Kids have to wear braces at night to keep the muscle stretched out.

The idea that my toe-walking boy, might be a heel-to-toe walker like everyone else is astounding. I've spent more than a decade, catching him when he falls, dressing the wounds from his falls, and watching him get easily knocked down when someone brushes by him. I remember in Kindergarten he used to come home and cry because he was sure classmates had intentionally knocked him down all day. When I watched the classmates at parent-kid night, kids were brushing by as kids do, but he'd go down. His ADHD added drama to the moment, so he'd bawl and carry on every time. His teachers thought he was making it up. I didn't think he was, but I had no means of responding to that. I mean, how do you respond to that?

We've never owned a dog because a dog could knock him down and he's terrified of falling, thus, he is terrified of dogs. Fido is Russell's worst nightmare.

I feel like such a bad mother for not seeing how different he was sooner. I didn't know how he was different, just that he was, but I loved him so fiercely that I simply said that that was just the way he was. I accepted him no matter what. I had taken him to the pediatrician asking about cerebral palsy and ADHD, and had been dismissed. I just figured something was wrong with me and that we'd struggle along the best we could.

Maybe it's a throwback to my dad. He had a terrible lisp as a child, but his family understood him. In those days, speech therapy wasn't available to poor farm families, and he was a big buff farm boy, so none of the kids at school dared tease him because they knew he could kick their butts. His speech impediment was let lie until he took a speech pathology course in college and taught himself how to speak correctly.

I can't fix the past. I've talked with Russell about it. He simply has said,"You didn't know, Mom, and I'm ok now."

And when we talked about him being scared about the impending surgey, I said,"I know it's scary, but wouldn't you like the chance to walk pretty normally and like everyone else without falling all the time?" He quietly answered,"Yes." There was a conviction and dreaminess in his voice, which told volumes about how much he's yearned for that -- just to be like everyone else. I have watched the kids in games play more gently with him and be more careful of him, and I said something about that to him. He was a little embarrassed -- he, of course, knew that. He said,ruefully,"Yeah, they are trying not to hurt me."

I asked him,"Wouldn't it be cool, if they didn't have to do that any more and you could play like everyone else?"

"Definitely!"

Well, that's what the botox shots will do, babe.

I don't know what happened, but basically, I'm a giant ache only relieved by a lot of ibuprofen mixed with tylenol. It's fucking embarrassing.

I went swimming yesterday and I think I was already tired, but add to that the short night's sleep last night due to a persistent husband before bedtime and a promise to the 10 year old at wake up, and I'm toast.

Today, we had a birthday party/BBQ in the park out, which ended abruptly when the lightening, thunder, and rain started to come down and the pinata contents were tossed, but thank God. I was so damned tired and my feet were just killing me. We got pounded here for an hour or so and things moved on, but it was scary -- you could see the lightning strikes really close to where we were with kids.

However, spiffy thing about today? Two people told me how much weight I've lost since they saw me last -- a year ago.

I need to lose the rest and get down to somewhere between a little frumpy and svelte, which coincidentally lands between mild aching and slight muscle soreness.

I'm trying really hard to be motivated to live. I distinguish that from being motivated NOT to die. Being motivated to live seems more empowering to me, though not wanting to die, has its own rewards.

Today, I swam for nearly an hour. It wasn't a hard hard workout, but it was a workout. I went with a new friend, Leann, and she and I swam laps and talked the whole time. It was really fun. I suddenly realized I'd been swimming for an hour, so I decided I needed to stop because there was that whole wanting-to-be-able-to-move-tomorrow thing. Mostly, just my achilles tendon is tight, so I've been doing little stretches and I took some alleve, so I sleep ok. Otherwise, I'll wake myself up all night, kicking about.

My sugars are starting to normalize. The highest sugar I had today was 150, which was a lot better than last night, after a careful meal's 178! I swam last night, too, in order to bring it down.

I'll swim again tomorrow at Mel and Dan's. We're going to have a BBQ there and hang out. Thankfully, they also have air conditioning. The swamp cooler has been sucking ass in all the thunderstorm humidity we've had lately.

Well, it's later than hell. I need to sleep because I have to go to Sylvia's and make her the chicken marinade at 11AM. Even cooks need their sleep.

So I got the best bit of mail today.

My pap smear was normal. Not even slightly abnormal.

Who'd have thought normal would sound so fluidic. So mesmerizing. So delicious.

Normal.

What a beautiful word.

I made jam tonight with lime, lemon peel and lemon, added into the apricots. It'll be nummy. More jam. Lots and lots of jam. If I am a good jam monkey, I will stay home tomorrow and make more jam.

If not, I'll be the bad jam monkey hanging out with the 10 year old, applying for temporary work and watching the Yu-Gi-Oh movie.

Today, I took Bear shopping. Yeah, *that* was so exciting. Not!

I got him jeans and long-sleeved shirts. I found Genny a couple of cute jumpers. I found Mike a $2 pair of shorts and a few nice shirts for winter. I found me a pair of dress pants and a couple of $5 shirts. JCPenney outlet is the bomb, baby.

The thing that made me want to sell my body on the streets for pocket change? They had these matching beautiful blue wingback chairs that would look loverly in my livingroom, in lieu of the hunter green one that doesn't match anything, despite being a really nice chair. $100 a piece. So, I didn't buy them.

Dammit.

And they had short-short underwear. Thongs, I realize are the thing now, but short-short underwear? I kept thinking, oh, yeah, I need one more thing crawling up my ass, disguised as underwear.

So tired, I'm jaded. I tell ya.

A rip from Sue's site
"Which Random Irish Gaelic Phrase Are You? "

Teastaioinn cineal uaim - 'I want sex.'

Horny little bugger, aren't you? You enjoy porn and being naked. Hell, you're probably naked right now. Both hands on the keyboard, you pervert!

Okay, I'm not naked, but if I had spare time and no kids, I'd be doing my husband a lot more often. And there's that whole tired all the time thing, but I'm trying to kick that!

---

Took the kids swimming today and I got to wear my new speedo. Then I took bear to Big 5 (sports emporium) to buy him goggles. While there, I found a items to complete my aqua-aerobics ensemble -- a matching speedo towel and pool bag. With an ass as big as mine, it's important to accessorize to distract onlookers from looking at one's large rump and have them look at your spiffy towel and matching handbag. *Vogue* *Ratchet Position* *Vogue*

Now, that that is complete, I need to take some alleve and crawl into my bed. Too many errands followed by physical fitness. Ugh.

I'm back to canning. I put up 11 pints of apricot-pineapple-cherry jam. I had a couple licks off the spoon, after I finished -- superb stuff. The problem is that I've got a buttload more apricots to go before I rest. Also, I suspect that the neighbors with the tree, probably would like me to relieve them of the rest of the apricots.

I looked into canning them -- you know in a little sugar or juice to eat in the winter, and I'd have to buy a $75-90 pressure cooker. I like canned fresh fruit, but that seems steep. Mike suggested lemon jelly.

There's a couple recipes for it, but everyone wants you to rind the freakin' things and after doing two lemon cakes a year, I'm freakin' rinded out, thanks. Genny and Mike would enjoy it, but I kind of think it's more work than I'm willing to do right now, especially in light of a half bushel of apricots in the kitchen needing to be put up.

I've gotta go pull them out of the boiling water baths and get to bed.

And tomorrow, my speedo arrives! Mine's purple, which seems kind of wild and crazy, but I figure I'll be swimming at the buttcrack of dawn when no one else will give a crap about a fat chick in a speedo working out.

Nighty, night.

I'm starting to look for part-time temp work. The bitch is that everyone wants full-time, and with my skillset, I know they will want me BAD around here.

I know too much. At least if I were in the CIA, I could get killed for it, but here, I'll have to set boundaries for myself that will allow me to continue to work without working more than I wanna.

The thing is that I don't know if I can handle office work. The wardrobe alone would make me nauseous. The idea of having to wear pants in summer, much less NYLONS EVER, makes me want to screech and run out of the room.

I've got a couple cute skirts, but what I really need is cute pants. I love dresses -- hate nylons and shaving, so I'm stuck wearing pants with my comfy shoes and cotton socks.

I don't know if I'll be ready for this, but I'm gonna give it a whirl and if I still feel like shit, I'll ditch it until I feel human and put up with the lowered income.

It's official. I hate glucophage.

I'm on this glucophage extended release stuff and my GOD, if it isn't beating the crap out of me. Literally.

I've been running for the bathroom on a regular basis with this stuff. I often have heartburn with this, too. I usually start about 3PM and make a lot of trips to the bathroom up until bedtime.

I've just soooo had it. I'm calling the doctor on Monday and asking for help.

___

Other than that...I picked more apricots today. I'm a canning fool, I realize.

I took Genny with me, ideally, to just get her out of the house and let her do something kind of fun. However, I don't think it wasn't fun for her. She whined, she crabbed, she angled. I finally just picked as fast as I possibly could to fill what containers I had and put us in the car and tried to put her down for a nap because she was acting wiped out tired.

And you know, I swear she never ever sleeps. She. is. so. 4. She's in that tween place between really needing to take a nap and just staying up and going to bed early, but being a miserable pain in the butt between 4 and bedtime because she won't nap. The problem is that she rarely goes to bed early and she's almost always the first one up and she's up super early.

If she naps, you get to hang with the nicest sweetest girl in town. If not, you wish you could duct-tape her to something that's nailed down and gag her because she's nasty, mean, into everything, and blathering at you a mile a minute ("Mommy?" "Yes." "I love you." -- repeated 10 times per hour until you absolutely start to loathe her.) When she's like that, every minute with her is painful. Because you can see this little person you love and adore who is exhausted beyond reason, who simply won't/can't sleep.

Tonight, she was still up and playing in her room after bedtime and after not taking that nap. It was after 9PM and she was still spinning madly, despite being up since 730AM and running all over town with us, helping Daddy and Russell outside, picking apricots with Mommy and playing in her room. We finally gave her a little benadryl, just so the poor thing could sleep because she was absolutely wiped out and frankly, so are we.

I feel like a bad parent, but I'm fresh out of chamomile tea and honey for honey and milk and the little pookerbutt was so tired and wired that she was having trouble settling. Been there, done that. I've also taken benadryl at those times to get dropped off. I figure with the sagebrush bloom heading into full swing, it's probably not a bad thing to give her at this point with night-time being the worst for asthmatics like Genny and Mommy. We're also going to have to restart her asthma regimen because if my allergies are any indication, she's going to need it.

Sidenote: Yesterday, Mike told her that "You need to get your beauty sleep so you get more beautiful." To which she replied,"I'm already all the way beautiful." As a secondary thought, Mike asked,"Do I need to get beauty sleep?" "Yes, Daddy, you better get to bed."

Well, I'm off to bed. Dealing with Ms. 730AM is going to be a very early event, I guess. I just hope one of us gets some sleep around here because I'm not even brown bag pretty before 8 on the weekends.

Dear Medical Insurance Company,

Don't screw with me.

My diabetes is in good control. I know what I'm doing with it. I've got excellent blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides levels. My sugars are well within healthy ranges. My last HBA1C was 6.5. Not great, but not bad, either.

Don't try to enroll me in your stupid disease management program. I know that stuff. You wanna be helpful? You want to actually make a difference? Get me a cheap gym membership. Help me pay for that. Give me incentives to keep going -- like after one year, you'll reduce how much I pay if I go X number of times.

Don't spend money on a bunch of nurses I can call 24 hours. That's why I have a doctor. Don't spend money on a bunch of glossy PR mailers. Don't waste your postage, dude. It's not any help and it doesn't adequately resolve shit for me.

I need help and encouragement to exercise and get my weight down. I want a place that has childcare facilities. I want you to actually think about what's good for me as a person, because the day you do that, is the day I gain success over this damned disease.

And I want you to stop shaking my ass out of bed at 8AM on Saturday by calling me to ask me if I'd like to join your long-term disease management program, after I've already ignored 3 mailings, and 4 phone calls. I'm not old enough to be up that early, fuckers, and if I were interested in having you in my business, I'd have let you know.

Back on off of my Kool-Aid, or there's going to be an asskicking.

Totally fucking not kidding,
Red-Neck Ruby

I have been hating my body lately. Everything hurts. My feet hurt horribly. They cramp up so badly that they make my leg tendons ache. On top of it all, I'm so damned tired that I can't hardly contemplate the whole idea of working out just yet.

It's hard right now to contemplate grocery shopping because I know if I go shopping that I'll just be tired again.

I should be depressed, but I'm not so much. I'm frustrated. I feel like I'm watching the world go by while my meds build up.

It's really pissing me off.

So, I hung out at the lake with my new Mormon friend, Leann. I don't know why I keep finding all these Mormons with whom I become fast friends, but I do. I keep asking myself, if God puts me in the way of all these Mormons because I'm supposed to change religions.

Every time I actually start to think about that, I realize that that is NOT it. I love my church and while I think examining one's faith is a good thing, I keep finding my faith intact. But I feel like I am supposed to learn what God has in mind with me by putting me in the position of having to hear all the gory details of the Mormon faith by exposure. I say gory intentionally.

I wouldn't want to be a member of a church where I wouldn't be welcome into the temple of God. Mormons make a distinction between the temple and church. To enter the temple, you have to be considered "temple worthy." Of course, it's not God who determines a Mormon's worthiness, but fellow parishioners. My whole problem with that is that it flies in the face of what's in the Bible -- how when Christ died that the veil was torn that separated the most sacred parts of the temple from people -- the idea that God had accepted humanity (with flaws and all) fully into the church -- that there was no more holier than thou God any more. God had spent time with us kids and loved us unconditionally and would constantly remain part of our lives.

The idea that the Mormon's flout that really sticks in my christian craw. It's one of the most beautiful ideas in the Bible -- that all people are accepted by God and that God is accessible to anyone. As a hippie throwback, I think that most major religions are just different paths to God. Because God accepts us so unconditionally, he accepts that we travel different paths to gain that sense of godliness and service in our lives. My husband who doesn't really believe in God, behaves in a way that shows me that he has a sense of godliness in him. His willingness to help anyone in need is the biggest demonstration of that and is one reason I married him.

--

At any rate, I think Leann's a sweetheart. Her kids are wonderful. Our kids liked each other and we had a wonderful day at the beach and were not keen on leaving because it was really lovely today -- not too hot or too cool.

I got a lot of mail today -- the book box from my kids' group, the therapy putty for Russell, but most importantly, I got my spiffy new floor cleaner. It vacuums up the crap, scrubs the floor for you, then sucks up the water to leave it dry. I wonder if it has a vibrate attachment. It's damned near as good as foreplay.

So I'm going to the beach today with the kids and a new friend.

But tomorrow, I'm getting a gift. I get an afternoon without children.

I'm going to sew. I'm going to can. I'm going to be a very happy person with no responsibilities for four whole hours.

Diggin' it.

Politics have been bugging me a lot lately.

At heart, I'm of the green philosophy. I'm a Hippie Momma throwback at heart. Candyassed liberal -- All the way, baby.

However, because the Green Party hasn't got a rat's ass chance in hell of winning an election, I'm becoming a hard-core democrat, promoting my own green agenda at home, being that such things should start at home. And I love many of the democratic politicians -- the Clintons, Lieberman....it's liberal and social of me, but that's the way I am. I can't say I'm thrilled with John Kerry -- he doesn't give me political wood -- but he comes across as a New England democrat. He genuinely cares about other people and while he's not as charismatic as Clinton (nor as much of a ho!), he does give me the sense that he'll work to do right.

I've been annoyed by criticism that he "flip-flops" on votes. The thing is he voted for us to go to war -- and based on the info he had, heck, anyone would have gone to war. He didn't know, as did none of congress, that the info they were being presented was mostly fabricated rubbish from the Bush administration. Now, he's against us being there. The thing is that a good politician to me, is someone who is willing on a regular basis to evaluate the information and make a reasonably informed choice on my behalf. If based on the information, the politician thinks something is a bad idea, I've given them my permission to make the best informed choice they can. Kerry does that. And this war?

Well, sheeeeit.

Bush has been dragging this thing on as long as he can, so he can look like some kind of war hero. Unfortunately, the cost is that we're losing human beings in this fabricated war. The thing is if Bush had actually GONE to war and BEEN a war hero, like say um, John Kerry, he might be more believable. Instead, he's been doing some kind of dance of the tarantella, undulating from vague lie to vague lie about his "service" in the National guard, which apparently, no one on God's green earth can actually find proof of. And Kerry not only served, but then he came home and protested the war because he saw horrible things being done in the name of the US. People say he protested like it's dirty. He protested because he loved his country -- which is the same reason he went to war. He didn't want our country to be known for war atrocities! I don't either.

However, under Bush's administration we have military personnel perpetrating some not so cool war-time behavior in Iraq. If Bush had the nads of a tse-tse fly, he'd be apologizing, but his approach is that um, he just didn't know about it. Frankly, as Commander-in-Chief, however, it still makes him responsible. No one expects him to have known about it, but at least to acknowledge it, apologize for it to the parties involved, like a freakin' adult...stuff like that, yes, the American Public and the international community expect those kind of manners.

Seemingly, George must have inhaled a LOT in the early 70's. Or maybe we can attribute that to brain damage/forgetfulness from his youthful drinking. Gee, this screams Reagan in Iran-Contra: "I can't recall."

George, if you ignore it, it doesn't go away. However, you just keep ignoring it...and then, hopefully, voters will see to it that you go away. Ignorance may be bliss, but it isn't presidential.