I have had to take a two-week hiatus from the blog due to an overwhelming amount of writing I am doing at my job.

May sound like mumbo-jumbo but I have been simultaneously working on three reports for the same project – a final report, a proposal for renewal and a request for a no-cost extension – as well as writing a final report for another project and planning the writing of three more grants. Not only am I confuzzeled by the necessary split focus, I am afraid I am starting to speak in plummy, Thesaurus driven, multi-clause contraction-less sentences which require the listener to envision “air semi-colons”. So I have not been writing blog posts out of consideration for my readers. Both of you.

What follows are a list of blog-ettes with highlights of the last two-weeks so I don’t feel like a complete slacker…

• Heard a man in the Texas panhandle discussing how he is between a rock and a hard place trying to decide between a Morman and a Muslim for President. As he put it “I mean you got two isms there, neithers good.” What more can be said? It’s clear the election cycle is over for him.
  
• Saw a licence plate cover that said “With God all things are possible” and it struck me that it should read “With God and Money, all things are possible.” Well, maybe you just need the money and then the God part just follows naturally since God loves him some rich white people in America.
• Drove past a ramshackle soft-serve stand and my daughter remarked “That looks dirty!”. She has this thing about businesses that she perceives as dirty, whether they are really unclean or not is not the issue. The best I can figure out is that if a place looks run down, old-fashioned or out-dated in someway, she thinks they are “dirty”. A local Bruegger’s and Amy Joy Donut shops fall into this inexplicable category. Made me think of my mother whose most damning statement was that someone was dirty, by which she meant white-trash, hillbilly or a poor housekeeper. She had a vicious, hard judgement for women who didn’t wash their windows twice a year, sweep their sidewalk or keep their kids noses wiped. And she was considered a slacker by the babushkas that swept all the way to the center of the street. My mom died when my daughter was two so she didn’t have time to rub off on her, which means either a) perceptions of “dirty” are genetically transferred, or b) I have internalized my mom’s nuttiness and transmitted it to my kid. I think the jury is out on that one.
• Had several more incidents where I was subjected to “girl behavior” (non-confrontational, indirect punishments for unknown offenses) which made me think I really need to write a pocket-sized book of daily affirmations for use with the M-PAPy program. Something along the lines of: “Just for today I will give thanks that I know how to speak my mind and discuss my feelings face-to-face. Just for today I will be kind to passive-aggressive people because injuring or swearing at them deepens their sense of victim-hood and perpetuates their insanity. Just for today I will view them as souls who have given their lives to the higher power of martyrdom and I will not be angry.” You get the idea.

Regular posting is resuming so that I may continue purge my over-worked brain of the cranky observations of politics, parenting and the other little irritations that regularly inhabit my world.