Dear Facebook, I know this will come as a big surprise to you, but you are not God. You have fucked with me one too many times....you'll never see me on your platform again... I know you don't care, just wanted to get that off my chest....

My Extremely Poor Judgement in Men

Married Douglas E. Leinen in 1966 - we met when I was a senior in high school in Cheyenne, Wyoming and he was 19 out of school and working for a company that sold window furnishings - drapes, blinds, etc.  His mother hated me... a perusal of pictures of the both of us at that time might point at a reason for that because I was never anything but polite and modest around her. My own mother did not like the relationship because of my age so she shipped me back to Seattle before the end of my senior year. In any event that put an end to the relationship until several years later after he had joined the navy and I had married, had a child, and divorced.  He drove his car to Seattle and we got back together when my first-born was about two years old.  We got married shortly thereafter and nine months later, almost to the day, my first set of twins was born.  Life went on until one day when I asked him if he would adopt Eddie so he could have the same last name as the twins. He said no - his reason to me:  Because if we ever got divorced he would have to pay child support for a kid that wasn't his and in any event he could never feel about Ed the way he felt about his own... that was probably the moment I started hating Doug.  I have never been able to understand that attitude but have since learned it is prevalent among men as apparently anything that doesn't come out their own sperm isn't worthy.   On New Years Eve when the twins were about six months old we went to a party and both were feeling no pain by the time we got home.  He got lusty and guess he felt it was ok to rape me as I tried to sleep.  That resulted in another pregnancy since he hadn't bothered to use any birth control or wake me enough so I could use some...within two weeks I knew I was pregnant and I even knew I was having another set of twins... intuition.  When I told him he said I had to get an abortion. Well, while I support any woman's right to do so, I would never have an abortion.  He berated me brutally for eight months to get an abortion, threatened to divorce me if I didn't (not possible legally).... I gained a lot of weight, was sick, miserable and developed toxemia of pregnancy which killed one of the babies three days before he was born.  Carrying a dead baby in your womb is an experience that is indescribable.  Life after that was hell. Doug spent most of his time away, did not help with the children at any time, told a counselor "she wanted to have them, let her take care of them."  And, oh yeah he was shacked up with a clerk at the used car lot where he worked.  I caught them together.  We got divorced a short time later.  As far as the child support he was so worried about paying... in eighteen years as the father of three children he paid a sum total of $62.50, one time, full stop,  ONE TIME  -  this is after a judge told him to pay through the court... the amount he was supposed to pay was $210 a month. In a short time the house was repossessed as I could not make house payments and support four children on my own.  And to boot, a few years later his mother Emilyn Milstead put lies into the minds of my boys about their mother.   So am I bitter, you are damn right.  I understand child support rules have changed a lot since that time.... back then a man could and did get away with not paying.  Oh, but the icing on the cake, when Doug died he left his SONS several tens of thousands of dollars.  Nothing to his daughter because she had used drugs in high school - the hypocrisy of that is stunning.. the boys did share with her which is an indication that they did not inherit the perfidy of their father.... and nothing to me after screwing me out of over $45,000 in child support.  Quite a trick eh Doug? I hope you're rotting in hell right along with dear old mom.

"Normalizing" in a Nutshell

Occasionally I'm surprised to find many do not fully understand the term "normalizing" 

Yes, it does mean to make things normal but it's more than that. It means to make things SEEM normal that never have been until someone with money and power decided to make it so.

I'll use TV as one example.  This is what TV used to mean:

You would purchase this object for around $200, bring it home, plug it in and immediately have access to every television channel available in your area. Free access to every one of them.  No more.

Now you go out, pay many hundreds, or even thousands more for a flat piece of technology that you hang on your wall.  You're not done.

In order to get programming you must subscribe to one or more "services" depending on what kind of programming you want and in many cases you'll have to pay more to not include a flood of ads along with that programming.  You'll need to pay upwards of $70 a month to many hundreds a month for the privilege of streaming something to that flat screen that just a few years ago would have been free, paid for by advertising ... now you get the streaming AND the advertising.

To millennials and all future generations, this will seem "normal." It is and it isn't. It's normal now because they've trained people to accept it as the price you must pay to watch ordinary programming with the cost rising as you decide maybe you want to watch sports or science or programming for kids, any of a variety of choices.

The geniuses who bring you all this "entertainment" sold this packaging to us so long ago it is now considered "normal."

Just another chapter in the ongoing saga of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

I got rid of my TV several years ago when they started demanding we pay for a tiny bit of programming and hours and hours of ads. Even streaming programming through my computer will cost extra if I want to add anything other than very basic shows that are either invariably very old, or tripe.

Another good example of normalizing - cell phones. Not that long ago you would acquire a telephone, bring it home, plug it in and have a basic monthly fee that was only extreme if you made a lot of long distance calls. Sure, it usually had a cord and you couldn't take it with you.  So what?  Because they have "normalized" the idea that you must have a phone with you every second of every day. What has it added?  Nothing but people driving distracted, mothers shopping while paying zero attention to what their kids are doing, people walking with their eyes glued to that tiny screen because my God, be un-tethered, what a thought.  Everyone must know exactly what you're doing, where you are, what random thoughts are in your mind every single moment.

Be aware, your phone is also making a map, accessible to anyone  with a computer, showing where you are every second, how long you were there, and to whom you talked.  Leave your phone home. We did it for generations and guess what, no one ever died because they didn't have a phone. Sometimes "convenience" is a trap.

I'm not saying technology is bad, I'm just saying it's being overdone, overdone to the detriment of ordinary people and the enrichment of those who make us feel incomplete, unimportant, "not with it," or out of touch if we do not possess the latest gadgets.

Take some time to find out exactly what this convenience, all this instant gratification is costing, not just in terms applicable to you, but what is it costing the planet? What is it costing the environment, our health, loss of societal norms in terms of being aware of what is truly important? We are moving away from each other, not listening, not hearing, not seeing - there is nothing before us but a tiny screen which claims our attention even in the presence of that which is truly vital.

Chlorpyrifos

Chlorpyrifos (Roundup) was invented by the Nazis as a nerve agent. It was used to kill people.

It is still killing people only now it is killing our children because the EPA under tRump's order (after he received a million dollar donation from Dow Chemical) lifted the ban earlier put in place by a real president - Obama -.....

chlorpyrifos, which is present in MANY insecticides in addition to Roundup is being sprayed on our fruits and vegetables. This chemical causes irreversible brain damage in children which is the reason many countries have banned it, including Europe. Not our country though because you know, that million dollars from Dow to the criminal piece of shit donald j. tRump who really gives not one fuck about this country or its kids.

California has also banned this chemical,you know California the only state in our union which has so far displayed intelligence, integrity, and the grit to fight the cancer known as the republican party with its leader donald j. tRump.

"Accidental Overdose"

Not when you've got this in your system:

"Kennedy Hill had acute methadone, diazepam, nordiazepam, fluoxetine, norfluoxetine and ethanol toxicity in her system at the time of death, according to the toxicology results revealed in the death certificate."

But of course they're Catholic.... 

Perhaps it's time to take a look at a very cosseted family in terms of how she could have been helped, should have been helped.  I fear their past experience with familial mental illness is too much sheltering.  

Jail

I did spend a night in jail once.. it was a little town in Oklahoma, just over the Texas panhandle. My boyfriend at the time, his name was Mike, we were both sixteen, we were on our way to the drag races in Oklahoma. Drag races were big in that part of the world, and indeed in Cheyenne there were drag races every weekend which we always attended.  We weren't arrested, the cops just saw the license plate (Wyoming), thought we looked a little young and pulled us over.  Now this was Oklahoma and they have pretty heavy accents down there. The officer kept asking us "do you folks know where you are?"  We kept saying yes because we thought he was asking if WE knew where we were.  Turns out "you folks" were actually our parents.

Anyway, they stuck us both in jail since they probably didn't have anywhere else to put us, separate cells of course.  Filthy, two-inch thick mattress, no blanket, no pillow.  They called our parents and his folks drove down to get us next day.  I didn't get in trouble, mom just asked me what we were doing and I told her, driving to Oklahoma for the drag races. She mentioned how she thought that could be a little dangerous for people our age and next time please tell her before I decide to make any journeys like that. 

I never got in trouble for anything when I was a kid, mostly because seriously I didn't do anything wrong.  Well, when I was eight I stole a candy bar out of the grocery store in Lake City. Mom asked me where I got it because I stupidly left it on my dresser and she knew I had no money. I told her. I was driven to the grocery store, made to stand in the checkout line, tell the clerk what I had done, give her the candy bar AND a quarter (my next week's allowance) to pay for it.  Quite possibly the most humiliating day of my life to that point. Result though, I never stole another thing in my life. 

Why didn't I just lie to her and say someone gave it to me? Well, in my mind even way back then lying was about the second worst thing next to murder.  I figured anyone who would lie would do anything and time has proven that to be a very astute observation. 

Okay, So There's This Tree

It is located at the far left end of the back yard and so over the summer I have watched this thing grow. Last year it was a twig.  I sit on my steps listening to the birds, checking out the garden and the tree.... for some reason this year it decided to grow like gangbusters.... now over twenty feet tall with some branches reaching out at least thirty feet I'd guess, thankfully mostly on the neighbor's side.  This is a maple of some kind and really a pretty tree; however, it was starting to shade my yard... particularly the large Hisbiscus growing on the left side of my yard and a smaller evergreen in the extreme back left.

Now I'm fuming because the neighbors don't pay any attention to their yard so probably haven't even noticed their tree.  Now I'm scheming how to reach over the fence and cut off some of the more offensive shading branches when they're not home.  I did in fact over a couple weeks manage to lop off several branches without disrupting the shape, endangering the health of the tree, or being noticed by the neighbors, and I was pretty proud of myself for how stealthy I was at doing it. 

So yesterday I happened to be in the far back left side of the yard transplanting something and while down close to the ground I glanced to the right.... the tree, the damn offender, is growing snug up against the fence, but it's on my side of the fence.