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i love to cook…

i absolutely love to cook but i actually have very little talent.  i make up for my lack of talent with a very eager nature.   if i see a recipe that looks amazing, i can’t wait to try it.  sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.  i’m also a terrible food blogger!  usually, i’m half way through preparing the meal when i remember that i would have liked to blog it or i forget to take the picture before it’s all mixed.  many things make me a bad blogger.

take last night for instance….

i made one of my favorite dishes – baked salmon with steamed green beans, baby spinach salad and seasoned potatoes.  i probably make this once a week but i have yet to remember to blog it.  my family LOVES this meal and i think it’s super healthy.

i do wish i had more talent but i guess that’s the way it goes.  i follow the recipes and cookbooks and many food blogs and i turn out some great meals for my family.  sometimes, i can even tweak it a bit to make more to my family’s tastes.

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chile quake and other weekend stuff…

wow…things have just been crazy in the last couple of weeks; both man made and natural occurrences.

early this morning there was an 8.8 earthquake in chile and a week or so ago a 6.9 quake off of japan.

we saw a professor in alabama shoot and kill 3 professors and wound 3 others and a man shoot and wound two middle school children in littleton, colorado .

natural disasters, while horrific, are just that – natural.  it is the way of the earth and you cannot stop them.  countries prepare as best as they can.  unlike haiti, apparently chile has rather strict building codes because they are in an earthquake zone.  they have already said that any building found not to be built to code would result in the owner or builder being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

the shootings on the other hand are horrific and entirely preventable.  i am constantly amazed at our lax gun laws within the united states.  i understand that our constitution rather ambiguously talks about gun ownership.  i have no doubt in my mind that if the founding fathers were alive today, they would not have intended for the the constitution to be interpreted in this way.

the nra would like for you to believe that more guns are a better thing.  if everyone is armed no one will hurt anyone else.  i think it’s bullshit.  absolute bullshit.  unless you are a hunter, law enforcement or military you have no need for a weapon.  me having a gun in my house would NOT make me safer.  as a matter of fact, i would be less safe.  there is the possibility that my child could be hurt by the gun or if there ever was an intruder, that they gun would be turned on me.

i heard the nra say repeatedly, after the virginia tech shooting rampage, that if the students and teachers had been allowed to carry weapons on campus that they would have been safer since they could have taken out the shooter.  that’s a huge maybe there.  who knows if they could have gotten to the shooter.  how would they have known who it was if everyone around them is armed…it could have been anyone.  and once you begin shooting…why should the guy next to you trust your word now?  it would be absolute chaos.

i think the whole gun thing has gotten out of hand.  and now that obama is in office, the crazies have come out of the wood work.  americans are flocking to buy guns and stock up on ammunition.  i say with a totally strait face…these people are crazy!  if these people honestly believe that obama is leading us to a fascist, socialist state they are cuckoo.  there are plenty of laws in place and certainly many people within the government that would stop that from happening.  though i guess it is questionable when you think about the fact that most of those people stood aside and let bush/cheney rape and pillage the laws of our land.

i won’t go on any longer…you get my point.  i’m a gun safety person rather than a gun rights person.  that’s it…it won’t change.

the day seems to have been wasted really.  my husband and i did our chiropractor this morning after breakfast at ihop.  he then had to go to work (he’s still there 7 hours later!) and i headed home.

a friend was supposed to come down from LA and deliver the girl scout cookies i ordered from his daughter.  i waited until around 11.30 to text and find out if he was still coming.  he said he was.  i waited until 12.50 and then headed over to the spectrum where would we be meeting.  i assumed that was enough time.  turns out he wasn’t even walking out the door until then.  bummer.  i had already told the boys we would do something this afternoon after i was done meeting him.  so, he turned around and went back home.  that’s why i like plans a bit more concrete….

that’s saturday so far.  we’ll see what happens this evening!

health savings accounts and more…

fucking ridiculous.  this is rep. bill cassidy’s plan to help solve health care issues-health savings accounts.   my family can barely pay the daily bills that we have to take care of let alone set a large portion aside for medical savings.  as democrats have said, these accounts are great for upper middle and high income families.  we’re middle income and it’s not feasible for us.

what i’ve noticed over and over again in the republican ideas are that they cater to the wealthy.  they favor business over consumer.  it’s hard to stomach.  it’s also hard to stomach the fact that republicans have spent years ignoring the problems with health care….and besides that even actively trying to do away with medicare and medicaid.  why should i believe that they will help me?  they’ve given me nothing in the way of proof to show that they would.

my family is full of preexisting conditions.  we’re fucked if my husband loses his job…absolutely fucked.  my husband and i dream of owning our own business.  we have, what we think, is a great idea and one that we talk about often.  we couldn’t ever do it though….due to preexisting conditions.

here how’s it shakes out in my family:

my husband: colon cancer, high cholesterol, osteopenia, compression fracture of vertebrae with repair
myself: bi-polar, asthma, migraines, hashimoto’s thyroiditis
kaitlyn: occasional thyroid issues but relatively healthy thank goodness
thomas: asthma but relatively healthy
tyler: pectorus carinatum but relatively healthy

so were does that leave us?  only tyler could get coverage for asthma, as long as he doesn’t develop it in middle school like i did.  kaitlyn and i can’t get coverage for thyroid issues.  my husband will most likely be denied coverage altogether.

i’m just so tired of worrying about this.  we keep talking about how america is the greatest country in the world.  it’s not anymore.  we’re delusional.  our health care is 37th in the world.  our education is far behind in all aspects.  our green policies lag far behind.  our public transportation system is non existent in most parts of the country.  our civil rights are starting to lag. we’re in two wars which are not going well.  our relations with nations around the world were damaged severely by the cowboy nature of the last regime.

i’ve never been so pessimistic about the future of america.  this is due squarely to the destruction wreaked between 2001 through 2008 and the above issues further harmed by bush/cheney.

why is it NOW that all these teabaggers want to remember life and liberty?  why NOW do they feel we need to reform government?  it’s disgusting.

watching the summit…getting more and more disgusted.  boehner, blackburn, mccain and mcconnell just seem interested in scoring political points.  kyl and coburn did have a bit more in the way of ideas but seem unwilling to meet half way.

as obama has said over and over, the democrats have included many republican ideas but that doesn’t mean that they will be added word for word.  that’s the idea of compromise….you don’t get your way entirely and we don’t get ours.

the repubs keep talking about the percentage of americans who are against these bills as put forward.  that masks the facts.  i’m against the bills as put forward…not because they’re bad but because they don’t go far enough!  i think a decent percentage of those people are like me.

argh!  enough for now…

morning before school…

i decided to try an experiment this morning. i would wait to see if thomas woke up with his alarm clock rather than me having to tell him his alarm clock was beeping. it worked!

then i waited to see if he would take a quick (or at least quick in thomas terms) and he did. but would he remember to then wake his brother up and let him know that it was his turn for the shower? yes! 2 points…

tyler asking for a t-shirt

awww…a strike. i had to remind them to eat breakfast. not a big deal.

i hate that there is almost no school transportation. it is impossible to plan anything other than within the school hours. otherwise, the boys have to sit at school early (as they did wed. for my dr. appt. at 7.45 am) or they have to hang out late afterschool (as they did when i had to take kaity to work). i understand that there is a budget crisis in california but this does not help. if i were to want to work, i would have to find a job that would start no earlier than 8.30 and finish by 2.30. not an easy prospect.

thomas waiting for his shirt to dry

california drivers are horrible by american standards. they don’t hold a candle to italian drivers but still horrible none the less. i can’t tell you the number of drivers that are distracted by their phones and wander into my lane. my horn is working over time. i know now why the laws against cell phone use by drivers is so important. yesterday morning there was an horrific looking single vehicle accident. it blocked the 3 middle lanes of santa margarita. thankfully, i saw a gentleman on the side of the road talking to a cop so i hope that was the driver and that he was ok. his vehicle was totaled and he took out a number of street signs.

so i’m late…

i know that i said that i wanted to do the 365 blog challenge but after sitting for the last couple of days deciding what it is that i should write about, i realize…i’m boring! no, really…i’m boring. sunday, i was sick and didn’t feel well so we hung out at the house, i watched movies, surfed the interweb and read my book. monday…didn’t feel well…again. hung out at home on the couch. thomas had his guitar lesson today (rescheduled from wed.) so i took him and then went to get michael from work.

now today was a bit more exciting!

the boys had a plc day at school (they get out at 12.35 instead of 2.55) so i picked them and took them for haircuts. they turned out really good so we may keep going to that place. i’ll post pics this afternoon.

after haircuts…we headed to target. tyler is on his second backpack of the year and it was in bad shape…worn and torn. so we decided to pick up back pack number 3. he wanted a roller pack but target didn’t have any in “big kid” style and he didn’t want a powder puff girls pack so he picked a neat orange one. thomas’ wireless internet card quit working (or so he says. i think he took it apart to see the inner workings and that messed it up.) so i got him a new one.

we got pizza hut personal pizzas for lunch from the target pizza hut so we were all happy with that.

and then home…i didn’t feel well again so i took it easy on the couch for a bit.

i decided to start dinner early because i hate rushing later. so i made salmon, roasted potatoes and broccoli. it wasn’t too bad. i tried frozen wild salmon this time but it wasn’t as good as the fresh farm raised that i usually buy. lesson learned.

i had to pick michael up from work and head to the chiropractor. michael was in usual form…teasing me and drawing dr. micah into it. it is fun though. my back is still sore often but dr. micah seems to be making a difference thank goodness.

thomas had mma tonight so that was my last job…

it was a busy day…not an exciting day. such is my life usually!