Looking Back

Just for fun, I decided to go back through my blog postings and reread everything that I’d posted since I started this blog just about 2 years ago.  Boy has it been a busy 2 years. 

1) There were the births of the babies in Aug/Sept of 2007.  Now the babies are toddlers, walking, talking and developing great personalities. 

2) My pseudo Brother Ben was deployed to Iraq with his unit and they served our country and the world honorably and returned to their families safely. 

3) I wrote 2 novels through the National Novel Writing Month.  I spent my “vacations” in 2008 and 2009 at Sturdy Memorial Hospital, but have made a resolution NOT to continue that trend!

4) I’ve been in my home for two and a half years now.  WOW!  Over the past weeks I even decided to invest in my back deck, so I bought some planters, and I’m now trying to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and parsley.  (Plus I hung the Topsey Turvey Tomato Plant grower up, and filled it with dirt, so those tomatoes can be donated to the local food pantry.

5) We had another family wedding, which is leading to another birth (a boy), which could happen any day now.

6) The United States went through an election, unlike any other, which in the end gave us President Barack Obama, and California being in the middle of the battle for gay marriage rights.  (And yes, Jason and Chris’ marriage is legal according to the court in CA!)

and finally

7) The kids are getting bigger.  Addie is 9 and her family is expecting a baby brother for Addie in August.  Varnai is 6 1/2 and just finished first grade.  I went to her end of the year dance recital.  She was too cute up on the stage dressed as a can-can dancer.  Seth is 7 and also finished first grade.  He is a total Star Wars fanatic.  He can’t grasp that Karen Marie was around when episode 4 first came out in the movie theater.  (He thinks they were made in order 1-6.)  But he is highly impressed that I can name Luke’s friend Lando.  And Bella is one of those babies born in September of 2007.  Every time she sees me, she says “kay ree, chip eeezz”  which means, “Karen Marie, chips please.”  Too cute.

So hopefully life will be good enough to allow me to write about more things for another couple of years.  Thanks to all of you for coming back to read what I’m writing.

love you all lots

karen marie

Go Keith Olbermann!!!

Last night Keith Olbermann talked about life, liberty and most of all love.   He was referring to the passing of Proposition 8 In California, which denies the chance to gay and lesbian people in California to get legally married.  Keith Olbermann talks with such caring and compassion about the rights of ALL people.  I began to cry about halfway through this commentary.  Because I have friends in California who got married on October 18th, 2008 and now the state of California is saying that their marriage might not be valid, simply because both of them were born with XY chromosomes, making them both male.  I don’t understand how wanting to be equal under the law is a bad thing, especially since, if you’re going to get Biblical with me, Jesus said the next greatest law (after loving God) is loving your neighbor.

Living in Massachusetts, I have had the privilege to attend the wedding, the legal wedding, of a lesbian couple that I absolutely adore.  I helped out with decorating the venue and with the centerpieces on the tables (which were picnic baskets filled with goodies.)  To me, this was exactly what I had done so many times before for heterosexual couples weddings that I was involved in, that I didn’t see any difference between the weddings.  And I still don’t.   I cried at the end of the wedding, just like I did before, and just like I have since.  To me, it really was just another wedding.  Even though I do know that there was something very special about it.

To me, it’s all about love.  We need more of it today.  So to Jason and Chris, as I said before, no matter what proposition 8 says, you’ll always be married in my eyes!  I love you guys!  

This post is dedicated to all of my friends who are fighting in the struggle for equality for people of all gender identities.  Straight, gay, bisexual, trans-gender, it’s the process that’s important, and we all need to keep on fighting until everyone gets the same rights.   For those of us who are straight, I leave you with the thought that I have on a button that I wear “Straight, but not narrow”

(Thanks to Krista for showing me the video in the first place!)

WordPress spelling error

Every time I write the words “Barack Obama” here in the postings on my blog, the spell check from WordPress says that the words are spelled wrong.  I finally got fed up and sent the powers that be a note stating that the 44th President of the United States name should be in the dictionary.  We’ll see how long it takes to be added!

Back on track

I decided to shut down this blog site for a while because I was having trouble keeping up with writing here and so I decided that I needed a break to collect my thoughts, and really take care of myself for a while.  But you, my family and friends have been absolutely great.  I’ve gotten calls and e-mails asking if everything was okay, because you tried to log in here and were getting error messages.  Gee, I never thought that my random musings would be of any interest to anyone but me!  So thanks to you all for really caring about me, I really appreciate it!

Facebook

Okay, I’m now horrible at this blog, because I’ve been spending any of my extra computer time on Facebook trying to catch up with old high school, college and friends I’ve made as I’ve travelled throughout the years.  My brother Dave got me started on Facebook because he kept saying that “so and so” says hi, so I decided to look them up for myself.  It is totally awesome!! I found a friend from Milwaukee that I went to 3 year old preschool with and we ended up graduating together from high school.  I’ve wondered what happened to her in the last decades (I haven’t gone back for any reunions.)  I’m primarily using Facebook to see what my friends are doing now, I’m not big on rehashing the past, so it’s neat to see who’s found the love of their life and who has kids and what people are interested in.  As I said this is really cool!

How to get attention (even if it’s bad)

I guess I’ve found the way to get my friends’ attention, and that is to do posts about Microsoft Vista.  I guess people could care less about politics, religion, the famous Lutheran dessert of lime Jell-O, and the words to ”Tessie” the unofficial Red Sox nation’s anthem.  So Vista.  I have been pleasantly surprised at all of the features of Vista on my computer.  So after the replies to the post, e-mails and conversations, I agree that XP really is so easy to use (in fact I’m keeping my old laptop with XP on it and explorer and the programs updated so I can use it if needed.) 

I realized that I haven’t noticed how slow Vista runs, is because I’ve upgraded the RAM in my computer, so things are simply running far faster than I’m used to any how.  I’ll let you know how the photo program I have chosen for Vista works.  Otherwise, hopefully Microsoft can figure out how to get rid of these kinks!

But as I said, anytime I have something really important to say, I should just put Vista in the title, and hopefully everyone will read that post. 

I am officially “cool”

I have never in my life been called cool.  I was and probably always will be considered a nerd or a geek, so when I was reading the blog of a friend of mine (Loki) and he called me ” someone really cool” I think I spit out the juice I was drinking at the time, because I began laughing really hard.  Loki was referring to the post about The Brick Testament Bible post of mine, where I reference the fact that someone did the Bible out of LEGO people.  ( I do want to give credit where credit is due.  So many thanks to my friend Faye for discovering this site in the first place and then sharing it with me, so that I can get the coolness award!)  Well, I’ve got to go think of more ways to display this new found coolness of mine.  I’ll let you know how I do! :0

Ok I’ve been thinking

Part of learning how to blog is realizing that once I post something, it stays on the Internet forever.  I’d like to comment on my last post.  In all of the excitement of Senator Obama getting the required number of delegates to get the Democratic nomination, I was bummin’ about Senator Clinton not getting the nomination.  But now I’ve had a chance to think.  (Plus I watched all three speeches given first by McCain then Clinton and finally by Obama.)  McCain came off as arrogant to me, so I really have written him off (not that he had much chance, but I really do want to see the positions that the candidates are taking on the issues.)  And I was totally fired up and excited after Obama’s speech, but I have to say that I was really ticked off at Senator Clinton.

I know that going into the closed voting booth (or the semi closed in cubicle as it is here in Massachusetts) to vote for our representatives and leaders is one of the privileges of being an American.  And a friend of mine is adamant about not sharing who we votes for, but honestly, anyone who’s talked to me for about 5 minutes lately would know that I voted for Senator Clinton in the Massachusetts primary on “Super Tuesday.”  I feel that she represented my interests and issues the best.  But after Senator Clinton’s speech on Tuesday, I was really ticked off at her.

When Hillary said that the 18 million of the people who voted for her deserved respect and to be heard, I was like, “What?????”  I wasn’t feeling disrespected, nor was I feeling like I and my views weren’t going to be heard.  I thought that was arrogant of her and at that moment it no longer became what was best for the country, but what was best for Hillary.  This saddened me.  I did resist the urge though to go on her web site and give her my thoughts, because they were not pretty. 

I think that if Senator Clinton wants to continue to fight for universal health care, for children to do better in schools (and not necessarily through No Child Left Behind,) to bring home our military, etc.  That maybe her best decision is to stay in the Senate and push for the legislation.  Look at all Teddy Kennedy has been able to do during his tenure. (My prayers are with Senator Kennedy and his family, after Kennedys’ cancer diagnosis.)  Back to Hillary.  Staying in the Senate would give her power, the longer she’s there.

So where can we put Hillary?  The most creative idea I’ve heard is to put her on the United States Supreme Court when the first seat becomes available.  The person who relayed this idea to me said “Wouldn’t that shake things up?”  Whoa!  I’ve also heard about giving her a cabinet post like Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State.  If Hillary is on the cabinet, I still think that Bush 41 and Bill Clinton should become Ambassadors at Large, wandering the world tyring to make it a better place.

I think that a new cabinet post should be created called Secretary of Keeping the Earth Sustaiable and that should go to Al Gore.  With that title should go to ratifying the Kyoto treaty already.  Plus he can get more resources to convince people that global warming is REAL!  I think Jim Webb or Bill Richardson would be great VP choices, but I’m hoping that it’ll be someone we haven’t thought of yet.  Someone totally new and exciting!

 

This is too cool!! – It’s me!!

A couple of my friends now have created themselves, so I decided to give it a try, and here’s what I came up with.  To create your own version of yourself go to meez.com and imagine away!  (And yes, I’m aware that I have no shoes on.  That’s how I am in real life! )

Just Chillin’

There’s actually nothing special going on to post here.  Life’s okay and nothing exciting is really happening.  At these moments it’s weird having a blog, since I feel like I have nothing worthwhile to say, so everyone stay safe… until next time…

(As Addie is fond of quoting, even though she’s 7.  Elvis has left the building.)