HONESTY OR SAFETY?

A few days ago I wrote a blog about honesty.

But now I am going to tell you why I, er, didn't exactly lie, but definitely did not reveal, ah, all the available information.

I know all about what chest pain can/may/does reveal - hey, if nothing else, I worked for the American Heart Association for almost seven years - and I was CPR-certified - and man, can you image being administered to by Charlie and Desmond... okay, just Desmond (sigh).

Okay, back to the story line here, Hope.

My husband has been taken (by me) numerous times to the emergency room with the checklist of symptoms that fit a heart attack to a T - severe and sudden chest pressure, pain radiating down one or both arms, shortness of breath.

And each and every time, after the EKG, blood tests, monitoring and sitting for several hours, the doctors scratch their heads, and admit that although they have NO no idea what this is, it was certainly NOT a heart attack.

So my little episodes of chest pressure, not really PAIN, in the evening, usually last about an hour or two - I've explained it away to myself as tension (my husband is home after work hours - enough said) - mentioned it to my regular physician - made an appointment with a cardiologist for early next month.

Which was all fine and great... until yesterday.

Yesterday I woke up to find a bowling ball sitting right in the middle of my chest.

No, not a real one, silly, but it felt like that. And although it was heavier than my regular chest pressure, I waited for it to go away.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, after almost twelve hours of it, I decided that I would have to do something - otherwise, I'd either stay up all night or go ahead and take my sleeping medication and drift off to sleep expecting to die in my sleep.

(I'm not quite there just yet)

So to me, at least, the obvious, logical answer was to drive myself the 20 miles or so to the nearest emergency room.

My husband can't drive after dark, let alone in the rain - and it was almost 7 p.m., with thunder and lightening surrounding our area [SIDEBAR: It is only in Arizona that we get excited about the FORECAST for 'possible' MOISTURE]

And my son was sound asleep, and would be going into work at 4:30 a.m.

If I had a real heart attack, I could just call 911 - but after 12 hours of the same pain, I mean, come ON - it was obviously something else.

And I hate hate hate being in an emergency room when you are NOT the emergency - and I am fully aware of how irritable my husband gets (when he IS the emergency and when he is NOT the emergency) - and I saw no reason to wake my SON up to take me.

Okay, okay - maybe I was not "up-front" - but that isn't lying - and it wasn't anything to do with my heart.

(And they have no idea WHAT is causing it - guess I just need to stop going to the lanes so much)

And no, Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond) wasn't there - maybe next time.

ILLITERACY

A young woman at church mentioned that it is 'impossible' for her to see but not read a word.

It had never occurred to her that there are people - an estimated one BILLION people - who cannot read, cannot write, and so would never have this dilemma.

She understood that she may not be able to read a word in another language immediately - but I don't think she could grasp the fact that she, a middle-class American youth, has quite commonly and without a second thought acquired a skill that many in the world may never have.

So many times I stop and truly appreciate the blessings I have of a roof over my head - running water - and as a favorite character in "Lost in Austen" puts it,"I cannot live ten minutes without chocolate, electricity or bog paper."

But I carelessly type these words, read my notes, look up the spelling of more words that I actually care to admit while reading the subtitles of the DVD I am watching (yes, my hearing is getting that bad).

And when googling "illiteracy" images, the first images that come up are celebrities at fundraisers. The concept is far away, in third-world countries, in deepest jungles and harshest deserts.

It makes it difficult to accept that even in the United State, "the number of functionally illiterate adults is increasing by approximately two and one quarter million persons each year, including nearly 1 million young people who drop out of school before graduation, 400,000 legal immigrants, 100,000 refugees, and 800,000 illegal immigrants."

Functionality in English has become a rallying cry for people disturbed by our illegal immigrants.

My one (and only) argument is to challenge the person issuing this call - "Have you ever had to learn another language?"

Okay, enough rambling for one post, at least.

A MORAL CHOICE

I think of myself as an honest person.

I will return money I find - I'll give back extra change - I don't cheat at cards (I'm not clever enough to get away it) - and most of the time when I say I will do something, I will try to do it... at least until I can come up with a clever enough excuse to get out of it with some shred of dignity.

But when a check simply shows up in the mail, made out correctly to myself, from a medical office with which I am extremely well acquainted...

Well, what should I do with it?

Of course - deposit it but in a savings account - and then if it is demanded back, I'll at least have earned $.04 in interest.

Right?

2010

Is it just me getting older, or did 2010 just fly in and swoop out and HALF OF THE YEAR is already gone?

Wasn't Obama just elected, and wasn't there just an ENTIRE PRESIDENTIAL RACE which very very carefully avoided terms like black and race and womens' monthly hormonal craziness and candidates age?

Didn't we all just get our knickers twisted because the year 2000 was going to make EVERY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD crash and destroy civilization as we know it?

I like 2010 - it's only two pen strokes for a date (as compared to year 1944 - that's 6 strokes - hey, I am talking about efficiency here, and it's a recession, so pay attention) - and it's enough of a year name to make sense. It gets confusing with '09, '08... and you can't just say "9", because that makes no sense - but ten, hey, that just rolls off the tongue.

Is there any way we can either tack another six months on, or just forget about 2011?

SAFFORD OR HOW TO GO BACK IN TIME 120 YEARS.

I'll bet you didn't know that Safford Arizona is 1,952 miles from and 164 years behind Washington D.C. The population in 1990 was approximately 7,359, give or take migrating Mormons, illegal immigrants and snow-birds, as we call the winter tourists who move down to Arizona to escape actual winter in the rest of the United States.

Google maps insists that the driving time from Palominas to Safford is 2 hours and 39 minutes, and although I kept almost exactly up to the speed limit the entire drive (75 mph on the freeway), and only got lost for approximately 5 minutes (W. 16th St. ends and does not reappear until about three miles east), it took me over 3 hours both ways.

It was a nice drive - I passed Texas Canyon, which was an amazing tumble of HUGE rocks, outcroppings and just bizarre stackings and piles of TONS of boulders - the only logical explanation of which would be giants of another age playing an elaborate game of Rook or (even better) the infants of the aforementioned giants heaping the prehistoric equivalent of alphabet blocks.

Safford was slightly larger than I expected - newer housing projects blooming between 110 year-old farm houses tossed randomly across farm land and irrigation canals - it even had a Home Depot and TWO Burger Kings (McDonald's lost a lot of my business when they stopped providing extra-large sodas, and BK got it with their 64 oz cups of caffeine-rush).

But it is also a typical Mormon town - wide streets, grid-oriented with carefully kept yards and houses - lots of LDS chapels but also a significant number of Baptists (New Testament Baptists, First Baptist, and Anything But Mormon Baptists) in addition to the Real Life, Seventh-Day, and Victory Fellowship (which I don't know if should be taken seriously since a review of it on the Internet begins "It is extremely clean, the popcorn is great, the prices are most reasonable").

And I didn't know that Safford and Thatcher are essentially the same town. I imagine they were once very distinct and separate, but now with a highway connecting them, any barriers have dissolved.

However, this lovely drive and/or cultural enrichment was not worth being told that yes, my glaucoma is not normal glaucoma and yes, there is nothing that can be done about it.

Whoopee.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER

I am climbing onto my soap box. Now I am standing on the top of my soap box. And I am getting to ready to speak from my soap box.

DISCLAIMER: Anyone reading from this point on has been warned.

As Latter-Day Saints in the United States of American, we are extremely patriotic. We serve in the military, we vote, we get involved in politics, we express our opinions - rather loudly at times, I must admit.

However, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints "has emphasized its political neutrality." Elder Ballard (stated) "We have members in the Church of all political persuasions... We encourage our people to get involved, to participate in party politics, to vote. But which party and which candidates are matters for them to decide."

The Church also states its members are expected to "respect the fact that members of the Church come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and may have differences of opinion in partisan political matters."  Even "elected officials who are Latter-day Saints make their own decisions and may not necessarily be in agreement with one another or even with a publicly stated Church position.... these officials still must make their own choices based on their best judgment and with consideration of the constituencies whom they were elected to represent. "

So WHY OH WHY then do loving, extremely well-intentioned and educated members continue to insist in church meetings/lessons/announcements that:

1. All good, faithful Mormons of course are aghast (isn't that a cool word? It sounds aghast. It's from the 3th century, obsolete use of agast as "frighten" and the Old English gāst "spirit, ghost) (okay, back to the ranting now) that the "liberals" are running and ruining the country.

2. We must "get back to our roots, to the basic ideas of the founding fathers."

Listen, I hate to remind you of this, but our founding fathers threw a REVOLUTION (defined as "a sudden, radical, or complete change in political organization - the overthrow or renunciation of one government and the substitution of another"), which is about the furthest from the average day-to-day Mormon you can find in the U.S.

I won't get into the average age of the 'framers of the Constitution', what happened to 79% of them after they signed it, and how all of this means that God has his hand in U.S. politics and is guiding this land...

Except, of course, when He isn't, such as when there is a (GASP!) Democratic majority in D.C.

Begging your pardon, although I am proud to be an American, and think this is a lovely country, I do not believe that, however inspired and good the originators of our means of government, they created the one, infallible and everlasting regime that will usher in the Kingdom come.

The design of our republic (and yes, it is a republic, not a democracy) is intended to encompass the inevitable and necessary change of a new and growing country -- and it's continued growth and development.

We aren't to return to our nation's embryonic state - it wasn't meant or designed for that.

Okay.

I am now stepping down from my soap box.

Thank you for your attention.

MURPHY'S LAW TRIUMPHS ONCE AGAIN

Today I felt unusually fat and pudgy (which unfortunately is now a regular sensation for me). So I was determined to go that extra mile, do some additional exercise, get my heart-rate up, burn off that extra slice of pizza last night, etc.

[ Sidebar here - does I come across as bragging when I talk about my horses? To me, they are 1,200 lb. pets that live outside and eat a lot. It isn't as if they are housed in fine stalls, coddled by grooms and exercised regularly - they are just my big pets animals - XXL in size... which kinda fits the whole subject here ]

  

On certain calm summers evenings, my husband is willing to walk the quiet old mare while I wrestle the colt over to the nearest vacant land, and both horses to graze for a half hour or so - and I use "graze" in the most open possible meaning of the word - we don't have much grass, let alone GREEN grass, in southern Arizona at this particular time of year.. or any other time of the year, to be truthful.

But tonight with my quest to use up a few extra calories, I went out early to vigorously brush both horses.

Which, in my case anyway, requires much more than simply using grooming tools.

Sally, the mare, is convinced that anytime she is brushed and made in any manner to be socially-presentable and/or clean, she is 1) going to be sold and taken away or. even worse, 2) the colt, her baby in every way possible except for physically, is going to be sold and taken away.

Yes, major separation anxieties here - there is no telling how many of her babies were taken away from her, but I am certain quite a few.

So when I come at her with a brush or a comb, she alternates between racing away from me (and she is a former race-horse, she can certainly move fast for an old girl), or getting in between the colt and me and blocking any attempt to groom him.

Therefore, most of my time was spent either trotting after Sally, forcing myself between Sally and Najale, or racing to head off Najale, as he was got into the sport of escape and would take off for the horizon after Sally.

So when Wilt came and I, with sweat dripping off my face, sore feet, and perhaps more than a casual hope for a shorter walk than usual...

Then, of course, right then, Najale determined that his current ambition was to become a performer. And not just a casual artist, but a dominant and debonair dancer, full of gyrating grace.

Yes, it was as disarming as it sounds, to have a pair of hooves whistling by your ears as your horse tries to prove he is worthy of admission to the Royal Academy of Ballet.

When a horse rears, you have an extremely limited amount of choices. He's obviously stronger, bigger and more determined than you can ever be - the best I can do was to keep hold of his lead rope and try to stay out of the way of his enormous feet as he waved them madly in the air in his manner of a pirouette or an elevé.

Najale obviously felt he was only expressing his inner creative self in the most inventive manner open for an equine.

I could only accept his actions as Najale's innovative eloquence of spirit...

... and the inevitable power of Murphy's law...

... because then I spent an additional thirty minutes having to discipline and counsel the horse about removing his application for dance school, learning to keep all four of his hooves firmly on the ground, and a new position for the retiré position.

Remind me next time not to assume there is a need to an additional workout until after the horses are done for the day.