More and Less and Where I've Been Recently

Ming Mrach 3.

Well this has been a hell of a year to this point, if I can be allowed to start the year right around Xmas for which my wife and I got the flu for.

Then after that noticing that my chow was limping and taking her in to the Vet to get ACL surgery which requires that she be kept literally on a short leash for at least eight weeks.  That happened January 31 as I've mentioned before.

After that we agreed that we couldn't take the vacation we wanted to because one of us had to stay with the chow.  So I flew off to Florida to spend a week with my mother and to take her to the doctor.  Did that and we are for the most part in agreement that dementia is starting.  She, of course, refuses to get help or to come up home.  Trying to organize something more then watching the train wreck that I know is coming is not a lot of fun.  My niece (who was raised by by mother) is the only other person who seems to see what is going on.  One of my sister-in-laws was there last week and was so Pollianish that, well I threw up a little.  "Isn't she doing so well?"  Well no she isn't.  What she is accomplishing is because we have people coming in every day for two hours and because people are visiting.  Crap. 

Oh yeah, so my Mother in Law went to Florida for spring training which she has done for decades and as soon as she got down there she decided that her blood pressure meds weren't working and quit them then became very sick, so she is at home right now and my wife and her sister are trying to crowbar her to the doctor.  Oh yeah. now it turns out that my mother-in-law is pissed at me because I am trying to put my mom in an assisted living facility. I think that she thinks my wife and I are practicing on my mother so that when the time comes we will find it easier to do it to her. (Smart lady.)

So anyway, I got home and my wife told me that the chow had been throwing up daily.  We took her to our local vet who then had us take her to OSU, (well he was going to have us take her to Med-Vet, but I told him I wouldn't take another animal there).  Got her to OSU and the situation was much more serious then we thought it might be.  The chow had a reaction of some sort to the anesthesia from her first surgery and it had caused her esophagus to shrink nearly closed.  I'm sure that they were surprised that we agreed for them to take drastic measures to fix the problem..  So starting about February 23 we started to bring her up OSU weekly to have a balloon inserted into her esophagus and inflated to slowly bring the thing mostly back to where it was.  Because of the chows weirdness with the vet up there we would bring her home every day that she had the procedure, because she was feisty.  The first part of everything that happened was that the chow got a feeding tube inserted directly into her stomach, where it is to this day and where it will be for another couple of months in all probability. 

To start we had to feed her every four hours.  It turned out that the vet didn't mean every four hours through the night, just during the day, but for the first week we didn't know that.  We are now starting to feed her by mouth, pea sized meat balls made out of canned dog food.  We will never, the vet says, be able to give her kibble or to feed her by bowl, it will have to be by mouth in pea sized amounts. 

In the middle of all this my secretary got completely fed up with the guy I share office space with and quit.  Not you know like giving notice.  She came into my office and in a 45 minute monologue told me just what was wrong with him.  About 40 minutes into it I asked her if she was going to work out the day.  She told me no and gave me her key and shook my hand.  Given the quality of her work, I can't say that I am completely devastated, although I would have liked a little more notice.

I'm like one of these people who things happen to and who are always looking over their shoulder to wonder what is next.  Although to be honest, so far at least things aren't happening to me directly just to the entities who are near and dear to me.

Hey,  in news outside my back yard (which reminds me the weather has been so warm and the rain so intense, I have to mow my yard before the end of March) the head of the IMF says that the problems in the European Union are all over, even if the actual people living there are living on a lot less money.  Oh wait I'm sorry not all the people just the vast majority.

 

Mistah Breitbart He Dead.

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So Andrew Breitbart is dead.  Someone else claimed that Bette Davis said, when Joan Crawford died:  "You should only speak good of the dead.  She's dead, that's good."  I concur.

Fredoglake has a post up in which Lisa Derrick, who knew the guy, kind of says nice things about him.  Most, but not all of the commenters seem to be taking the line:  so young how sad.  Salon gives a of nice little obit ending with the lovely family man bullshit.  Blah blah blah.

I am not the kind of person who thinks the death of everybody is a tragedy.  To that person and his immediate family, probably.  But not always and not to everybody.

In Breitbart's case he was a man who used what skills and influence he had to destroy people's lives and to destroy and try to destroy organizations whose reason for existence was to help the poor and less fortunate.  What he did and what he stood for was evil.  That is what he was to the world as a human being.  In his life he chose to make a stand for everything that is wrong in this country at this time. Why should I feel any kind of sympathy for that kind of evil person?

Or if I my paraphrase Mark Twain:  But he is dead now and I hold him no particular grudge.  In fact if  I could send him a fan to help him where he is now, I would do so.

Or since I am getting all literary and the Firedoglake poster is defending Breitbart because he was nice to her:

The Hangman at Home by Carl Sandburg

WHAT does the hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day’s work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and talk about
The weather, base ball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here’s
A rope—does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Or does his face light up like a
Bonfire of joy and does he say:
It’s a good and dandy world we live
In. And if a white face moon looks
In through a window where a baby girl
Sleeps and the moon gleams mix with
Baby ears and baby hair—the hangman—
How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
I guess.

UPDATE -- 3/5/2012

I've had a couple of further thoughts.  If I didn't make it clear enough although Breitbart was a scum I am incredibly disgusted with the "liberals" who seem to need to make sure that they are not considered old meanies for saying nasty things about him.

A second thought is that he would have had no real power if there was anything like even a single back bone to pass around the various "liberal" organizations.  Acorn was defunded with overwhelming votes in congress, including most of the democrats.  Shirley Sharrod was fired by Obama and repudiated by the NAACP before anybody bothered to check out the realities of her speech and what she did for the white farmers.  Finally, who was the slimy democratic congress who was sending pics of his prick around who bailed at the first mild wind (with the assist of the democratic establishment) while diaper David Vitter is still a senator?  Breitbart would have been nothing if the liberals who are in "power" hadn't caved to him at every opportunity.