CHANGING COLORS

It's interesting how quickly a conversation can change direction... and the temperature in a room can suddenly drop dramatically.

The Microsoft PC vs. Apple Mac commercials teasingly banter and josh. Religious and political jokes are funny.... when you or someone of the same belief(s) are the one making them.

But some topics immediately affect that atmosphere of a room.

For instance -

Zoning restrictions. Well, at least where I live. Some of us want to keep the Palominas area rural. and everyone else wants to have a 'real' grocery store locally instead of having to drive eighteen miles for a gallon of milk (just plan ahead, that's my motto... or borrow it from the neighbor who drove the eighteen miles the day before).

Gay marriage - which gets everyone who is heterosexual dreadfully hot under the collar immediately. I LOVE the fact that almost all of my acquaintances 'assume' that I, as a Latter-Day Saint, will 'of course' have supported every family measure (i.e. defining marriage as one man and one woman... which somehow coming from a church which moved to what was at the time part of Mexico in part because of practicing polygamy just tickles me pink).


And, of course,

Who you voted for for president (how can that sentence possibly be grammatically correct, yet it is) last Tuesday. Again, since I am LDS, and especially since I live in Arizona - "What do you mean that you didn't vote for McCain?" The main objection doesn't seem to be anything against Obama, it's just not voting the straight Republican ticket. There are people insisting that Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama (?????), that it was only because the 'liberal media made up' stories about her (hmm... I saw the actual Katie Couric interview, and in print it's even a little more scary) and she was in no way a negative influence in the election.

So here is what I propose - let's do away with red and blue states, and just color the entire U.S.A. map purple.

Think that will help?

COMPLUSIVE PURCHASING

Okay, come clean, all four of you (that's an extremely optimistic count of the number of readers of this blog... including myself). Now that we know Annette buys pens, I buy notebooks, what else do we have?

I freely admit to... Sharpie pens. ESPECIALLY multiple packs with every color of the rainbow. And multiple purchases of multiple packs!

(and it's obvious I am not the only addict - man, it's great to know there are others, isn't it?)

Desk file supplies. And not files with actual papers inside a nice big cabinets, but things where you put other things in some vague but creative and/or colorful organized fashion to keep right on your desk to take up more room that normal people would keep clean so they could work.

Car organizers. Now this one I pretty much have under control - because I drive a truck, and there simply isn't a whole lot of room (especially when you provide rides for 280 lb. adults as well as purchase horse feed in bulk when it's raining and you can't put it in the back) - but man, do I still drool over them at Pep Boys.

Finally - horse stuff. I have two saddles, when I ride one horse about every other week. I have probably eight halters, and up to ten lead ropes of all colors. I have every grooming item that can be bought - and I have two incredibly dusty, dirty and tangled mane/tail animals that never get groomed - and only occasionally get hosed down by me,

Okay, now it's your turn.

BEING BURIED ALIVE BY NOTEBOOKS

Sometimes it is so incredibly reassuring to discover that there is someone else who is as insane as you are about notebooks. I have, literally, hundreds of notebooks. I buy the large spiral-bound, college-ruled (an essential item to me - I cannot write on regular-spaced lined paper) notebooks in October at Target when they are clearing out the school-sale-items. And I mean, I buy fifteen or twenty of the plastic-wrapped groups of TEN notebooks. It does help that I only pay about 25 cents per package, but I hoard them like a squirrel does nuts.

SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM

I can't tell directions. Well, no, actually I seem to have a magnetic needle somewhere in my body. It doesn't point exactly north, but it generally gets me where I want to go.

But when I hear a voice (I mean, a voice that is not inside my head), I have to do a 360 to figure out where the heck it's coming from. It makes me look pretty goofy... okay, those of you who know me, it makes me just a little more goofy than normal.

So when my cell phone rings (BIZARRE-MY CELL PHONE JUST RANG), I check in the places I normally keep it - my jeans front pocket. I just don't keep it any place else - so I usually know where it is.

Today? Guess what? IT WASN'T THERE. And since I was driving at the time, I pulled over to the side of the highway.

By chance, I had also just driven past a group of workers who were creating a rather large rock entryway into a has-been-in-developement-and-yet-nothing-being-built-for-the-past-three-years area. And after watching a frantic white woman throwing random large items from her truck in a fruitless hunt for the ringing phone, several men offered to help (after muttering "una senora loco" or something like that), used their cell phones to make mine ring, located it, and pulled it out for me.

I also discovered that under my truck seats was an sickening, gelatious viscid MASS, composed of melted bubble gum, squashed Carls Jr. french fries (from when my son was driving my truck every day to work there), spilled Diet Coke and items that I don't ever want to acknowledge, and mingled with $8.39 (mainly in nickels and pennies), thirteen bungee cords, and two towels I must have snitched from Cochise Health and Racquet Club years ago.

MY GUY

Before I married a political-science major in 1978, I had never voted. I was, if this is at all possible, a political atheist. Meaning that I didn't believe in politicians.

I mean, they existed, they were people... sorta. But they were figureheads who took money from lobbyists, who got it from rich people, and voted the way the money told them to. I didn't believe they listened to the people who voted them into office, so I never voted.

But, then as I mentioned, I married a poly-sci FANATIC. Not interested in politics, but LIVING politics, textbooks, theory, education, as an avid, rabid, dead-dog Democrat, by the way. Much the way he is now about terrorism.

So I began voting, under pressure. But have been more than a bit of a fatalist about it. When I vote, the person loses. I mean, just like that. Didn't seem to matter if it was local, state, or national election - just if I voted for 'em, that sealed it, they lost.

Wanna see?

Gerald Ford (he's from Michigan, and really got screwed getting the job of President - Spiro, Nixon, etc)

Jimmy Carter (but only the second time, don't tell my husband, okay? I couldn't take his accent the first time around)

Al Gore (damn Florida voting machines, otherwise he would have nailed it)

Also didn't help that so many times my vote and my husband's vote cancelled each other out, but that's a whole other story.

But guess what. My guy won tonight. My guy.

So now we're gonna have a left-handed Hawaiian guy with a GREAT smile.

I'm proud to be an American tonight.

GO VOTE

THE ABSENCE OF HALLOWEEN

Some extremely strict Christian's object to the celebration of Halloween as 'worship of evil' and observance of satanic rituals. They believe that forcing little children to observe such malevolent ceremonies as trick-or-treating door-to-door will obviously lead to capitalist traits such as consumer manipulation, the American dream of 'something-for-nothing' and open market free enterprise , judging by physical appearances...

Wait, isn't that what extremely strict, politically-correct Christians in America want?

Well, the point is that living far enough out from any town/city/hamlet that people drive their cars to visit their next-door neighbor instead of walking, you simply don't get trick-or-treaters.

I thought of dressing the animals up; just couldn't find anything that would fit a Quarter Horse or a Thoroughbred.