Saturday, July 23, 2005

We Survived!!!!!! And check out Patti Smith!

Joel and I have now, officially, lived through what may have been the most stressful week of our lives and we came out of it with just a few scratches. We are a bit beat up and "the Jake" has a cold and I have discovered Coors Light, but it's all o.k. (Joel isn't talking to me about the Coors Light). The 3-day-shoot for me coinciding with Joel's catering, was a series of ships passing through the day and night. I would get up at 4:30am and go to work, Joel would take Jake to school at 7:30am, race to the kitchen cook and deliver, go home, get Jake and hang with him until I got home, we would drink a beer together, he would go back to the kitchen and prep until midnight, come home and go to bed. While he was gone I would wrangle the little spitfire into a bath and bed and try to pick up the house. Argh. I am spent, done, beat and Joel had to get up and do it all over again today for another catering. God, I hope he lives through it. "The Jake" was so stressed by Thursday that we asked Uncle Rol to watch him on Friday. It was so beautiful and they seemed to work out just fine. Oh, if Rol could just be his nanny, it would be perfect. Anyway, recovering now. What's next? I DON'T KNOW. Joel, my superstar, is going to save the world with his food. I love it. He's a fucking rockstar of the catering world. I love him. How lucky am I to have found him. ONWARD. I got my latest subscription of The Sun and there is a fucking amazing interview with Patti Smith. Check it out by clicking on the title of this blog entry. If you don't know who she is or never bothered, get to know her. She's the original female rocker poet and she's a mom too. She's speaking about the atrocities of this fucked war we complacently sit by and let happen. The quote that rocked me to the core was "Once you become a mother, every child becomes your concern". This was so real, and true. How, as parents, we can sit by passively knowing that other mothers and fathers are watching thier children be blown to bits by bombs and guns that our tax dollars pay for makes me SICK. I'm done and I told Joel that we had to make a decision about where we stand. Then I realized that it was a personal decision and in many ways I couldn't convince him to do anything until he's ready. You can act for the war, against the war, or remain in some neutral cow stance gazing towards that not so distant middle ground that allows you to pretend that it really isn't happening because it's not in our backyard, but it will be soon enough. Another thing she mentions in the article moved me because of it's unaccepted truth. I quote, "I remember that when Jimmy Carter was president, he actually inspired me. He asked the American people to sacrifice. He asked us to bring down our thermostats, to use less energy, to buy fewer material things. He asked us to strip away a lot of what we didn't need and in that way to help our environment. He also asked us to develop ourselves spiritually and mentally". Jimmy Carter is truly the only real, good, honorable, active president that I can recall in my lifetime. I believe people ridiculed him because he was ahead of his time. Even today, 2005, he is so far in the future. By the time this country is ready for a president like Carter, it will be too fucking late. Clinton stuck a cigar up Monica's twat and Reagan, Bush and little Bush have depleted all of our resources and drained our public assistance programs in order to blow up other people's countries. What about we the people. What our we doing for the great U.S. of A. Anyway, I could go on forever. I'm drained and often disgusted by my association with this country, but also thankful for the freedom's that I have been given merely by being born on this continent. Life is a catch-22. So, I am going to go work on a compost pile, grow my own veggies, rip up old clothes and make new ones and take old furniture and refurbish it. I'm gonna ride my bike instead of driving my car, do some yoga and get some love for my fellow man through some sort of spiritual force. AND, I am going to put a sign in my yard that says "American's for PEACE". And maybe, I'll make a difference. God, it's so hard to freely state your opinion when you are simultaneously trying to save your 3-year-old's life.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

congrats on joel's cooking 'victory'....i am now a subcriber to redtruckbetty..

yours,

peter

Anonymous said...

I remember the Viet Nam war. I saw it on TV, saw the horror, listened to the sounds of war. Beautiful boys came home everyday packaged in red, white and blue. I wondered...why are we over there? I was told whe had to protect Asia from Communism and keep it from spreading. I was young then and had been taught every day in school to be afraid of the Communists. They wanted to take away our freedom. But still my heart broke for lost lives and boys with shatered futures. I'm ashamed to say I pulled myself into my life as mother and student and went on my merry way. It came back to haunt me later when I met and became friends with Viet Nam Vets. They were embedded with the mental shrapnel of that distructive war. Many could never come back to their homes and resume their former lives. They were haunted with the ghosts of that war. I sat and listened to the stories with shame and anger. Then after my child was grown war reared it's ugly head again, this time only taking a few lives and lasting a few days. The early success and few casulties made it easy for me to forget and move on. Now in the days of grandchildren I am again listening to the TV, hearing names of young men and women who gave their lives this time to protect "our country" from terrorism. 911 was a scary, surreal, experience for me, like I was watching a TV move. When I could think again after days of shock and tears, I was angry. "Go get them, boys!" I thought. They have to pay for what they have done to our country. Then I thought, "Just exactly who are "They?" I have no idea who "They" are, who we are fighting or why we are fighting in Iraq. I feel we can't leave Iraq now to the "wolves of war" or the innocent people can never make their land a place of freedom and safety. We are there now and we have to protect NOT THE OIL, but the people. I wonder if anyone really thought about the the lives of all the people who would be lost to this war which could go on for years. I'm beginning to understand the "high cost of freedom" and I have an uneasy feeling in my stomach, a nagging worry that history is repeating itself.

Anonymous said...

I love to read your rants and raves! If you can get Joel to save the world through his cooking I would be forever in debt.
penny