Ring Ring Ring

Just read a "wanted" post in my local free cycle.

Wanted: Large bell to call in kids.

Reminded me of my childhood. Not that my mother had a bell. We knew we had to be at home at 6:00 for dinner or else.

However, my best friends mom had a bell. She lived two streets over from us and you could hear it when she stood on the back porch and rang that big bell. Heads would snap up and whatever we were doing would stop and feet would go running towards the door and she would fly home.

I am not sure we were every out of bell range. Miss Jinny would ring that bell and we all knew what it meant. Get home now!!!

Rapturing for dollars

OK, so the rapture did not happen. Because if it had, you would not be reading this.

Anyway, needless to say Harold Camping, was flabbergasted that it did not happen and is looking into it. Where is he looking? Is there help desk he could call and ask why things didn't pan out the why he thought.

Followers were disappointed when they were still here Saturday night. Yeah, I'd be disappointed too if I had spent my life's savings ($140,000) advertising the end. Or if I had taken my family on a trip to the Grand Canyon (something you got to see before you are called up to the Lord) using my already maxed out credit cards and now had to wonder how to pay for it all.

I certainly would be making plans to put in my claim with Harold Campings church, since his PR guy says he hopes that Family Radio will reimburse the true believers that spent all their savings in anticipation of the Rapture.

Road crap

Well the road home is always full of surprises. Some good and some bad.

Today it was a bad surprise, a mattress, a brand new still in the plastic mattress right in the middle of the on ramp.

How the fuck do you miss your brand new mattress flying out from wherever onto the road and why don't you try to retrieve it.

Child Brides

Too Young to Wed - The Secret World of Child Brides by the talented Cynthia Gorney is worth a read. It will break your heart and make you wish you could change things.

Cynthia is married to a man I work with and I started hearing about this story quite a while ago and was surprised when I opened National Geographic this month and there it finally was.

There was the late night wedding of a 5 year old Indian girl and I wondered if Cynthia thought about grabbing the little girl and running. A paragraph or so later I found out she did want to grab her and run. But the fact is grabbing that one girl changes nothing, you have to change everyone and everything around her.

I look at young girls I know, the beautiful 4 1/2 year old across the street, my 11 year old niece, my other niece that turns 13 in a few days and I am thankful they will never be subjected to this kind of horror.

I hope that Cynthia's article can help change the world.

You can help by making a donation at ICRW's website.

At lunch this afternoon a woman a little older than me sat down with her mother, who looked older than dirt.

The daughter said "Mom, I'm going to order our usual. OK"

So she orders a bento box with chicken teriyaki and something else.

The meal comes and the mother says: "What's that?"

The daughter said "It's rice, Mom. Here take some and some chicken."

The mom says: "What is it?"

The daughter says with a little bite in her voice: "It's chicken MOM, you like chicken. Eat it"

And she did.

The conversation made me think of how I would act if I was in the position of taking care of an aging mother that does not have all her marbles anymore. I am not sure I could do it.

Dead

Osama Bin-Laden is dead.

As my cousin said, this is bittersweet.

And as a friend said, bad karma to celebrate the death of any human being. This is just the end of an evil man, not the end of evil.

I have to ask, the man was living with his family and followers in basically plain sight in a mansion in a town in Pakistan.

Someone tell me, how did the people in charge in Pakistan not know where he was?

I heard that the mansion had been built in the last few years and had lead walls.

So... nobody noticed this being built?

What does our government do about our relationship with Pakistan now. To me it is obvious that Pakistan has been lying to us for years about the what they knew, now what?

I am sad today, not because of the death of this evil, but because it brings back all the feelings from 9/11. Helplessness, horror, fear.

I believe that the end of this evil man is just the beginning of more evil deeds.