Well, I s'pose it's time to say something. Real life and blogging both take a whole lot of time. Work has been intensely busy and my home life has been filled with the blessings of familial duties. It's all I can manage to try to stay abreast of the multitude of unfolding events and the take thereon in the greater blogosphere. I bow, in deference to those of you who post each day or even most days, 'cause I am falling short of just my reading and find myself secretly wishing that I didn't have to have a day job so that I could just lose myself in the blogosphere, taking in all the ideas. Among all the smart things I've read recently, perhaps the most jarring was Athenae at First Draft when she wrote in her post Four Years On:
Four years on, we've lost thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians, we've destroyed two countries, theirs and our own. If you think Iraq won't be the issue in 2008 you're kidding yourselves; if you think Iraq won't be the issue in 2024 you're kidding yourselves even more. Every even-numbered year is going to be about this, from now until the last veteran of this war dies, because that's how wars work, they stain forward, bloody those who fought them and those who waged them. Killing someone doesn't just end that person's life. It divides yours, too, into before you were the person who did that, and after. Four years on, we can't face what we did to Iraq; fifty years on I'll be shocked if we can face what we did to ourselves.
Real Time with Bill Maher was exceptional this week, with our Mayor, Shirley Franklin representin' the A-T-L on the H-B-O. The best part of HBO is that if you miss it the first time, no worry, because they'll run it again, and again, and again for you. I squeezed it in somewhere between This Week and March Madness this Sunday afternoon, thanks to both The Husband... and Oyster for the reminders to watch. In fact, for those of you who don't have HBO or the time to watch the whole show, follow my Oyster link and watch the You Tube version of this week's Rules for some succinct and excellent social commentary. Yeah. What he said. He's right. This administration is so messed up that it's hard for the ordinary working citizen to keep track of its messedupness (not exactly his word), no matter how much of our precious free time we might devote to the task. There are just too many scandals, they're far too serious and there simply aren't enough hours in the day with which to adequately follow it all. Maher also suggested, admonishing Obama, reminiscent of a post of mine, that if he keeps smiling all the time, his face will get stuck that way like Senator Clinton's has (this blog is, by the way, currently the number one return on Google for "your face will get stuck that way" - h/t to our fine Mayoress).
The best thing about watching college basketball on this beautiful spring afternoon instead of cleaning out and washing the car, or ironing the clothes I need for work this week or figuring out what in the world I'm going to bring as a dish to share for Geek Dinner III (they take their food so seriously), is that it's something I can do while blogging, which might make it possible for me to actually eek out a post. Besides, the first half of college basketball games doesn't mean much anyway, does it? Can't we just watch the last five minutes and get the gist of the game? So often, all else being equal, it comes down to who is playing with too many fouls, what happens at the free throw line and which team can drain the well-timed threes during the last minutes of the game.
In the meantime, spring has arrived and the woods that surround our little tree house apartment are bursting with bright green, while the rest of this fair city is covered with a yellow powder and the air dances with visible breeze-driven swirls of pollen clouds. It's the price we pay for our forefathers having built this town in a forest. The Oldest is fully moved home and settled in his apartment across the street. I'm adjusting to his popping in from time to time. Sis Bel fell and broke her arm and then had to have surgery. It complicates my life. High School baseball is in full swing, which means that I'm putting together my little post-season rec team, for the last time. Life is full. I am anxious, feeling like mine is not exactly a perfect fit for me, wondering what I can do to fix that. I don't have the big answers and I don't intend to make any substantial changes until The Youngest is launched, but I'm ready. In the meantime, new sandals and painted red toenails and little weekend road trips to be around bloggers and those who love them will just have to do.
Peace, out, y'all.
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