Dear Van­cou­ver,

My hus­band and I heard on the news this morn­ing that Van­cou­ver does not “have enough snow” con­sid­er­ing the Win­ter Olympics start this week­end.  We believe a lit­tle fore­thought on the olympic com­mit­tees side would have pre­vented this, because Iowa was never in the run­ning and they should have been.
See, they think because we don’t have moun­tains that you can­not hold the olympics here. Hello??? Have you seen Iowa lately? No, we don’t have moun­tains in the sum­mer. How silly would that be?? Just block your view and you need 4 wheel drive to get over them, and all sorts of peo­ple want to visit your state, and you have to worry about mud slides. Well, you get the pic­ture. No, here in Iowa we do  it right. We MAKE our moun­tains every win­ter. Lately, with “global warm­ing” this seems to be eas­ier.
Right now, for exam­ple, every park­ing lot, and I do mean EVERY park­ing lot, in every town, has moun­tains. You’d have your pick of cities. In fact, we have so much snow in Iowa right now that they have run out of places to put the snow!!! Bet you wish you were hav­ing that prob­lem right now!!! We have 6 or 7 foot drifts in our yard alone!! They are dump­ing snow in the gravel pits which would be PERFECT for snow­board­ing, and just our county roads them­selves would make excel­lent luge runs!! Ice skat­ing? Our rinks are going full force. You wouldn’t have to worry about work­ers as there are plenty of peo­ple out of work right now, not to men­tion all those who can­not GET to work, and stay at home par­ents who would pay YOU to come work to get out of the house that has had kids home from school more snow days this year then any other. Yep, you’d have all the help you need.
See, you missed a rare oppor­tu­nity. And we feel kind of sorry for you. We know, sadly, that it is too late to move the olympics here, but my hus­band had a great idea this morn­ing. Sell Van­cou­ver our snow!! I knew there was a rea­son I mar­ried him!! Bril­lant!! So, even as I write, he is talk­ing to all his dump truck dri­ver friends and get­ting this set up. You are not to worry. We love to help in Iowa. We’d have to charge for the snow, of course. Noth­ing is free these days. How badly do you want it? Then there would be gas, food, lodg­ing and tick­ets to all the events for the dri­vers. All and all you’d maybe come out ahead. So, if you are inter­ested, go to www.iowasellsnow.com and we will see what we can do. You are wel­come.
And to the olympic com­mit­tee? Maybe now you will put Iowa on your list for the next win­ter olympics and not make such a glar­ing mis­take again. An over­sight, I am sure.
I sin­cerely hope you take us up on our offer. Should you not, being the kind peo­ple we are, we promise not to snort, choke or laugh as you “make snow” for your games. And if you are think­ing of “help­ing your­self” to our snow? Think again. We’d know in a minute it was taken from here. How? Well, that is for us to know and you to find out.
Happy olympics from snow bound Iowa!!

I had the won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to have the grand­son for a week­end here lately. It was the best of times.

Today I finally got around to pack­ing away all the toys I had drug out to play with him that were still lurk­ing in boxes in the base­ment. Try­ing to be a good and respon­si­ble per­son, for the first time in my life I remem­bered to remove all the bat­ter­ies, from all the toys, so they would not corrode.

Sim­ple you say? No. The kid is a techno geek in the mak­ing, at 18 months,  and anything…and I do mean ANYTHING that clicks, clangs, buzzes, rings, tweets, zaps, hums, talks, and oth­er­wise makes a noise sim­i­lar to his par­ents “toys” makes him a happy camper for hours on end. True you have to alter­nate fre­quently to avoid bore­dom, and he will let you know by dropping/throwing said toy down and mov­ing on, but he is yet at that age where an hour later it is again exciting.

That being said…48 bat­ter­ies later.….did I say FORTY-EIGHT?? I am think­ing my next stock option will be in recharge­able bat­ter­ies. Or I could stop buy­ing him toys that click, clang, buzz, ring, tweet, zap, hum, talk.….….

Nah.…it’s way too fun watch­ing him push every sin­gle but­ton on every toy to see what it will do! So I sug­gest you too get your stock option now…this kid is going places!!!

I just renewed my dri­vers license yes­ter­day. It is good for 5 years. When I renew again I will be COUGH #%@**@%@# HACK*@##%@**&@@# turn­ing 63.

That puts a whole new per­spec­tive on life.

Crap.

Crib up-check
stuffed animals-check
books in place-check
toys in boxes-check
cup­boards locked-check
diapers-check
butt wipes-check
balmex-check
kidlet food-check
whole milk-check
three fun filled days-check
grandkid.…..????????

One of our few tra­di­tions around here at Christ­mas time is buy­ing nuts in bulk. It is the only time they sell them that way around here. So I buy alot of almonds and wal­nuts and restock the bowl until they are gone.  For some rea­son they lasted longer this year. Today my hus­band ate the last wal­nut. Back in the drawer go the nut cracker and picker. Back in the cup­board the bowl. Christ­mas is over. Sob.

I was dri­ving home from town today and hap­pened to hear on the news that Sam’s Club was ter­mi­nat­ing ten thou­sand jobs and would be out­sourc­ing them. I imme­di­ately called a friend I know who works part time there and when she picked up, asked how she was. Her response was “fine con­sid­er­ing we were ter­mi­nated this morning.”

Here’s how it went down. They were emailed and called yes­ter­day and told that there was a manda­tory meet­ing today at 8 AM. She and her co-workers showed up and they were taken to a back stor­age area and lead into a “room” made up of pal­lets of mer­chan­dise in which tables and chairs had been placed in the mid­dle leav­ing only one open­ing. The room was cold. They were told that all of them, from part-timers to full timers and man­agers of the demo crew were ter­mi­nated imme­di­ately. They were given a few min­utes to ask ques­tions. No they did not get sev­er­ance, no exten­sion of ben­e­fits. Nada. For sev­eral of the peo­ple this was their only job. They were given no noti­fi­ca­tion it was com­ing. They were escorted back to their lock­ers to get coats and per­sonal stuff. The man­ager was not even allowed to go in to where she’d been doing the sched­ules for next week to get her glasses or jacket. What.…did they think she’d steal some­thing? Then they were escorted out of the build­ing. Inter­est­ingly enough, although none of them are allowed to work any­more, they are not offi­cially ter­mi­nated until Feb­ru­ary 5th. If I had a way of find­ing out why that is, because I am pretty damn sure it has some ben­e­fit for Wal-Mart, I’d find out and plas­ter it in every news­pa­per in the coun­try. The meet­ings were held simul­ta­ne­ously across the coun­try at 8 this morn­ing. Ten thou­sand peo­ple ter­mi­nated in one swoop.  And this is a com­pany “for the peo­ple?” Are you jok­ing? What under­handed, mean, secre­tive behav­ior from a com­pany towards it’s “val­ued employees.”

I, for one, will never, ever, set foot in a Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club again. I don’t care how poor we may get. This is yet another in a long line of crappy employ­ment prac­tices by a mega com­pany and it sucks.  They take advan­tage of a poor econ­omy, and instead of help­ing they cre­ate unimag­in­able hard­ships for employ­ees whose only crime was to show up for every shift when they were sup­posed to, glad to have a job to go to.

Oh. And they ter­mi­nated there Sam Club cards effec­tive imme­di­ately. Nice touch jerks.

There are days, and then there are days.…..

My hus­band, busy sort­ing papers last night, did not get to bed til after 2 AM.  Know­ing this, I decided this morn­ing to not wake him, and instead, leave him a note when I left to go to town to clean our office and then attend a cau­cus. Now the temps had risen, then fallen, so there had been some dis­cus­sion about him tak­ing me to my des­ti­na­tions if the roads were bad, but since the temps had risen and were hov­er­ing around 32, and the radio guy said the roads were just wet,  I fig­ured there was no prob­lem dri­ving myself. It was rain­ing and things were pretty slushy, but I headed out, know­ing if I could get to the black­top I was good. My first hint of pos­si­ble dis­as­ter was when I sunk into the muck and started fish­tail­ing down the dri­ve­way. Because it is down­hill I made it, but I knew there was no way in hell I’d make it to the black­top as it was up hill thru even worse slushed up gravel. Mak­ing an imme­di­ate deci­sion, I decided if I could get back up the dri­ve­way I could con­tinue to let my hus­band sleep and just wake him if I needed to, to take me to the cau­cus. Only by gun­ning the car was I able to make it back up the dri­ve­way and with shak­ing hands put my undam­aged car in the garage. By the time I got every­thing back out of the car I was soaked, as it was now rain­ing pretty hard. I got in the house, took off my drip­ping coat and decided to go into the den to see exactly what the temp was on our out­door ther­mome­ter. Thank God I did, as water was run­ning in streams down the walls. Need­less to say my hus­band was rudely awak­ened by my pan­icked “WE HAVE WATER RUNNING INTO THE HOUSE” wake up call.
Now over the course of the last week I have spent sev­eral days get­ting the ice jam off the west side of our house. I knew there was snow piled in the cor­ner where the water was now com­ing in, but I also knew I could not pos­si­bly get a lad­der thru the 4 foot drifts to get the snow off so just hoped God and warm weather coop­er­ated for a nice slow thaw. NOT. So we spent the bet­ter part of the morn­ing, in rain, try­ing to get the ice dam off the roof. We were soaked. Gloves were soaked and we used every pair in the house. Pants were soaked. Boots were soaked. Tow­els to catch the water drip­ping down walls were soaked. We used picks, salt, hot water and what ever we could think of and finally got the ice out and all the gut­ters opened so they could drain. And it rained harder. Need­less to say the cau­cus never hap­pened. And the drip­ping in the house stopped. And I spent the rest of the after­noon wash­ing and dry­ing every­thing. The guy that came to take the slush off the dri­ve­way said the gravel was almost impos­si­ble. And it is worse then ice when it gets like this. So I’m think­ing I’d cheer­fully take out the peo­ple that “just love a Jan­u­ary thaw”.  Get me their names.

My hus­band and I have been very lucky in that any time a major thing like this has hap­pened we have been home.….the fur­nace break­ing down in the mid­dle of win­ter, the pheas­ant fly­ing thru the liv­ing room win­dow, the tree com­ing down on the roof, the base­ment flood­ing, the roof in the kitchen leak­ing water every­where and now this. And for all you renters…you want to be home own­ers because???????

In the Celes­tine Prophecy it talks about every­thing hap­pen­ing for a rea­son. If I had made it up the road and safely to all the places I intended to go, I am pretty sure the water would not have been dis­cov­ered until I got home around 3 or 4, if at all,  at which time the wall and the floor would have been ruined as that room is not fre­quented by my hus­band unless pass­ing thru to the closet and even then I don’t know if he’d noticed it or not and I cer­tainly, at that time of day, would not have used the room. We wouldn’t have had the day­light to spend hours get­ting the dam off and every­thing would have been so much worse. So as much as I hate that the roads were too slushy to go down, and that I missed the cau­cus, and that I now have to clean the office tomor­row, I am ever so grate­ful events hap­pened as they did. What a day.

You know how you kind of learn how many steps there are in or around your house so you don’t pay any atten­tion? You kind of skip down them not even think­ing, until one day you miss one and every­thing feels off ’cause you didn’t land on the foot you always land on, or your foot is sus­pended in mid air? Or you know exactly how many steps to the bath­room, but not really as you’ve never counted them, you just know how it FEELS? Well I kept won­der­ing why it felt weird lately every time I came in from out­side and it dawned on me today that our bot­tom step is gone. Well, not gone. The step is still there but the snow on the side­walk is even with the step so instead of 3 steps into the house there are now 2. How I didn’t notice before is beyond me. How there can still be that much snow on the side­walk is even a big­ger ques­tion. Now with this new, crusty, sleet frozen top­ping on it every­thing is so much more fun! And they’re say­ing rain for Sat­ur­day then a cold front mov­ing in? And it’s still only Jan­u­ary? Sheesh.

It is a bit dis­con­cert­ing when, you go in to go to the bath­room and the water in your toi­let tank is gen­tly sway­ing to and fro. It does give you pause. This is not the first time I have observed this strange phe­nom­e­non. I have just cho­sen to ignore it. Here are my thoughts. “Hmm…that’s strange.” “Hmmm…wonder if we are hav­ing an earth­quake?” “Hmm…wonder if I should call some­one.” You get the gist. I always, and I am so proud of myself, go first to the base­ment to make sure no sewage is enter­ing the house thru the base­ment drain, and then peak out the back door to make sure the sewer gas pipe is still in place and not bent, then I check the ground to see if there is any sink­ing, or tell­tale bub­bling, and can I just say in win­ter with 4 ft. snow drifts that is con­sid­er­ably eas­ier?.  If all things equal a no I sort of for­get about it and hope I don’t get splashed. Now I am won­der­ing if I shouldn’t track this as we are once again hav­ing a sleet/ice/rain/snow fun day and if the two aren’t con­nected? I don’t know why they would be but it seems alot more fun then call­ing a plumber and hav­ing him come out and pay him to stand there and go “Hmmmm”. I am per­fectly capa­ble of that myself and I’m lots cheaper. So as much as it puz­zles me I will prob­a­bly ignore it this time. Life on a farm is noth­ing but fun. Am think­ing mild earthquake.….hmmmm.

Well that title is a bit mis­lead­ing as I will have many thoughts on Haiti in the days to come but just a cou­ple of things.…

Am hop­ing the Domini­can Repub­lic and Haiti can set aside their dif­fer­ences long enough to see this thing through. They are not the best of neigh­bors so we can only hope.

My hus­band and I were lis­ten­ing to a talk show the other night and although I dis­agreed with some of the things the com­men­ta­tor said about Haiti, he did give me pause. He started his con­ver­sa­tion with the fact that what he had to say wasn’t prob­a­bly polit­i­cally cor­rect given what is hap­pen­ing in Haiti. He then went on to make a few obser­va­tions. The first being, and he did not deny that Haiti needs imme­di­ate human­i­tar­ian help and money as this is an unqual­i­fied dis­as­ter, but that he hopes, in the years to come, that we exam­ine our desire as a nation to keep giv­ing money to a coun­try as poor as Haiti when it is obvi­ous it is not going where it needs to go. The fig­ure he threw out, which I am sorry to say I don’t remem­ber except that it was huge, regard­ing the amount of money we have sent to Haiti in non-disaster times , stag­gered me. See­ing the des­o­late homes, and the obvi­ous poverty backed up against a pres­i­den­tial palace to suit the fussi­est of lead­ers, it strikes me that the money did not go to the peo­ple. There are only a cou­ple hos­pi­tals and 2 doc­tors for every thou­sand peo­ple. There is no obvi­ous emer­gency per­son­nel, no great amounts of police/security, so where did the money go? The sec­ond point he made, and he was really try­ing to be respect­ful of what is going on over there, is that every time they showed some­one being dug out of a home, it was usu­ally the rel­a­tives and then the cam­era spanned to show thou­sands of able-bodied peo­ple sim­ply walk­ing around. His ques­tion was, “why aren’t they help­ing? Why isn’t every able-bodied per­son any­where near a col­lapsed build­ing, doing every­thing they can to try to see if there are peo­ple there?” Instead they are milling around wait­ing for help to arrive. He says he thinks we have taught them this apa­thy by giv­ing them money time after time and not expect­ing some sort of result from it…kind of like you give a man a fish story.….

It is cer­tainly a point to pon­der. And what he observed is true. I’d think there was a bit of shock going on but after 911 every­one, and I mean every­one pitched in here.

A cou­ple other things to pon­der. He also said that when San Fran­cisco had their last quake it was the same mag­ni­tude. 63 peo­ple died com­pared to the hun­dred thou­sand they are pre­dict­ing for Haiti. If the money sent to them had gone to make struc­tures that would with­stand as best they could, an earth­quake, if they had laws that said their build­ings HAD to be built that way, the events that are tak­ing place may have been averted.

Haiti has had 96 coup attempts over the course of its his­tory accord­ing to this man. I had no idea.  How does one go about see­ing that human­i­tar­ian aid against awful poverty such as they have goes where it should, when the gov­ern­ment doesn’t even know what it wants or how to exist.

There will be so many orphans from this dis­as­ter that it makes my heart hurt. Of course we will con­tinue to give. Of course we will con­tinue to help. And there are cer­tainly things worth pondering.