Hooray for Boobies

Mom kicked off plane for breast feeding her baby.
Are you kidding me with this? What is the issue that people have about breast-feeding? Let’s break it down very simply, shall we?
We are mammals. Mammals, by definition–(Thank you, National Geographic): Any of various warm-blooded vertebrate animals of the class Mammalia, including humans, characterized by a covering of hair on the skin and, in the female, milk-producing mammary glands for nourishing the young.

Oh, my god, what are these bunnies doing????

And this orangatan??

And the worst of all, this shameless mother panda. Good lord, is that a breast???

I know, we shouldn’t stoop to this animalistic behavior. After all, who would support the 3 million dollar a year salary of Nestle, maker of baby formula? Do you think the CEO wants you to use free healthy, natural breast milk for your baby? Barbaric. No, we are more civilized than this. We humans want it known that breasts are SEX OBJECTS and should be treated solely as such. Yep, we know the real reason for breasts: For adolescent fun and mockery, of course.

Feeding babies? Ridiculous and repulsive.

Someone rescue me.

Happy Birthday, Xena!

Although we don’t really know how old “Xena” is, Lucy Lawless is the big 4-0 today.

Happy Birthday, Lucy!

Happy Birthday, Mr.Spock

Today is Leonard Nimoy’s birthday. He played Mr. Spock on the original “Star Trek” TV series and the movies that came from it, director of “Three Men and a Baby” and other movies, host of the TV series “In Search of…

He is 77 years old today.

Happy Time

I love having four days off in a row. I got my taxes all done and sent and happy about getting money back. I was anxious about doing the whole tax thing since we moved, sold and bought houses, etc. It was much less of a nightmare than I thought it would be.

Cats are Smarter Than Kids

Sick Humor

Happy Birthday, Grandma

Today would have been my grandmother’s 96th birthday. Sadly, she died 40 years ago at age 56 from metastatic breast cancer. I was five, but I remember quite a bit about her. I remember her making donuts: chocolate and lemon. She’s probably responsible for my coffee addiction because she used to make me “baby coffee,” primarily milk and sugar, tinted with coffee. Once I was in her room while she was changing her clothes and I saw a scar between her chest and shoulder. I asked her about it and she explained that when she was 11 a man in her neighborhood was cleaning his gun and it went off while she was standing on a sidewalk and hit her in the shoulder. I recall being horrified that someone had shot my grandmother.

She was pretty progressive for her time. When my mom got pregnant with me she told my father he didn’t have to marry my mother because pregnancy was a stupid reason to get married. People should marry because they want to be together. She had raised my mom and uncle by herself when my grandfather walked out on them when my mom was four. My father returned to his hometown for a while, but returned to marry my mother because he wanted to. I sometimes wonder how life would have been if I’d been raised by my grandmother without my father around.

Most of all, I learned the word cancer at an early age. It’s the monster that robbed us of these last 40 years that I wish my grandmother could have been with us. I would like to think she’d be proud of me now. Deep down–or not so deep down–I’ve always felt she’s been a presence in my life, possibly keeping me from being killed a few times, and generally watching over me. I know that whereever she is she’s no longer in pain. Pain was everpresent for her, but the only way you knew it was the presence of Anacin bottles and the smell of Ben-Gay. She believed she was fighting arthritis when, in fact, she was losing a battle against bone cancer. I know she’s happy and whole now.

Help Me Help You

Alright. I’m not sure what’s happening around here. I am failing to detect a pulse out there. These are my readership stats:

Pathetic, right. What is it? You hate the WordPress format? I don’t talk enough about how much I think GWB is a complete moron? I haven’t revealed any deep dark secrets? Frankly, I’m bored to death with the political arena. I’ve had my fill of GWB. As far as I’m concerned, he’s history. Like a tornado that has swept through the midwest and destroyed our reputation, the economy, and general morale. I can’t think of one good thing he’s done. Already the media is trashing the next president. Except for John McCain because he was a **waaa* POW during Vietnam. *yawn* We know, John, we know. Actually, I’ve stopped watching the news. I got tired of seeing that whackjob Britney Spears every time I turned on the TV. I stand by my opinion that 24 hour “news” is the worst thing to have happened in a long time. Do we really need to know all this stuff? I think it’s responsible for shooting sprees. Did we have this many shooting sprees when we had news at 6 and 11? No. Want to know why? Because these nutbags want the glory of being on CNN and that other “news” channel. Robert Hawkins, mall murderer, declared, “I’m going to be famous now.” Because he knew that the 24-hour news stations would publish everything from his first dirty diaper to the moment he shot himself.

Nope, can’t write about the news anymore.

I could tell wonderful tales about my work experiences, but I can’t talk about suicides, gunshot wounds, cracking chests wide open so the room looks like a scene from “Dexter.”

I can’t talk about babies dying in the ER and having to watch a father scream and cry while he rocks his dead baby. Or drunk men peeing on my shoes.

I could talk about the crazy dreams I have like the one where huge monkeys claw their way up the side of my house, smash through the windows and my legs get all slashed up from the shattered glass and how I wished I watched the docs more closely so I could better sew up the multiple lacerations on my legs.

I could talk about how all my friends are breaking up. Or how my co-worker OD’d and died.

But really, do you want to read about all this stuff? I didn’t think so.

I’ll try to be better, folks. I’ll get my groove back soon. And no, I’m not depressed and suicidal, so don’t panic. I may be the only one who’s actually OK.

Keep Repeating….I love my job

Yay, this is my last day of work for a week. Yesterday we had a 6 month old baby die in the ER. Well, he was found down at home and never got a heartbeat back, but we worked on him for nearly an hour. We had to send 2 nurses home afterward because they had a meltdown. both of them have children around that age. The father showed up during the code. The mother of the baby is in jail. The grandmother was just freaking weird. She didn’t really have any emotion. I felt bad for the father. He wailed, cried and rocked that poor dead baby. It was the saddest thing I’ve seen in a while. If this keeps up I’m going to need another roadtrip. Then the medical examiner came in and decided to do full body x-rays of the kid. They took him over to the x-ray department and then brought him back to the room. He told us we could send the baby to the morgue. I saw the baby wrapped in a blanket, lying on the bed, but 20 minutes later the bed was stripped and the baby was gone. The bad thing is, no one saw anyone take him out of the room nor did the paperwork go with him so there was a bit of a panic for a little while. We even looked in the hamper to make sure he didn’t end up there. Turns out the ME took him to the morgue himself and then met the funeral home at the same time so the funeral home took him. Still, we had the paperwork, so it was screwed up.

It’s good to get away

Whiskey breaths at Vesuvio

No, this is not me.

After my atrocious, depressing week, I let Nika steal me away for a long weekend. My birthday was on the 10th. We drove to Pismo where we stayed with our friends in their beach house. The weather was perfect, sunny in the upper 70’s. It was great to just rejuvenate. Our friend, Denise, cooked us an amazing dinner and invited some of our other friends. The woman can cook. She made ribs, chicken, potato casserole, corn on the cob, homemade rolls and for dessert a mocha chocolate cheesecake and her amazing chocolate chip cookies. Seriously, her cookies are to die for. I don’t know how she makes them.

May you live FOREVER, Mrs. Andersen.

For my birthday we spent the day in Santa Barbara. Another perfect day. Ate Indian food at Flavor of India and then of course, later we had to go to Andersen’s for the butter ring. Beats the hell out of any birthday cake.  They are chockful of marzipan. And I found out that they will deliver to the house. Oh.My.God. Yeah, it would be a $25 danish, but well worth it. I can’t talk while I eat this thing. It would be like interrupting a religious ceremony. It’s so much nicer to sit on State Street and watch the people go by.

On our way home, we decided to spend the night in San Francicso. We called up our favorite hotel in North Beach and spent the evening going to our favorite haunts. Headed to Caffe Trieste for a cup of java where we ran into Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the original beat boys and founder of City Lights Books.  We had a ball wandering around China Town where I found a true treasure:

Yes, it’s ULTRAMAN! The bonus was the quote: We have HOPES because we have love.  I also got some really cool magnets and socks. For cheap cheap. We made our way to House of Nanking where the gruff Peter Fang fed us some of his exquisite cooking. You won’t find a website for House of Nanking because he doesn’t need to advertise. People line up outside to eat there. It’s like eating in your dorm, but the food is so much better. Don’t even bother with the menu because Mr. Fang will bring you whatever he thinks you’ll like. Amazingly, he’s right on. You’ll think he hates your guts, but you know that he loves you when  you taste his food. He’s like some doctors I know: no bedside manner, but can bring you back from the dead.

We capped off our evening with a whiskey sour at Vesuvio. We love to sit in the balcony, sort out world issues, and watch the people in the bar. Easy entertainment. Of course, we wandered into City Lights next door where I got to witness a fight between some psycho woman with her kids crying and the  book clerk because she wanted to use the bathroom. Then her husband announces to them that he’s a “CEO of a Fortune 50 company.” Yeah, that means so much to the socialist/anarchists of North Beach. They literally laughed out loud at that one. Also picked up the book because I’m a voyeur/pervert.

I love San Francisco. I want to go back. Soon. Very soon. There’s so much to do. Next time it’s off to the Haight to Cha-Cha-Cha’s and sangria!