INNOCENT BYSTANDER

The expression "don't kill the messenger" originated in 422 B.C. when a runner (the 422 B.C. equivalent of email) informed Sophocles that his wife was, once again, attending a meeting of "If Your Husband Is A Big Fat Philosopher" or IYHIABFP meeting - and Sophocles promptly shot him (this is historically accurate; the Remington rifle was invented in 433 B.C., but since the design did not get through the patent office until 1926 A.D., it was not in use through Biblical ages, the Dark Ages, and the Light Pastel Periods).

The saying was also promoted heavily by Shakespeare in both 'Henry IV, Part II' (1598) and in 'Antony and Cleopatra' (1606-07). Will was also responsible for beginning the alternate phrases, "Don't Shoot The Piano Player, He's Doing The Best He Can" and "Wa Ka Wikki Wikki Wa" (Hawaiian for "Yo, Bro, Ain't My Fault Your Wife Is Screwing Around." - bet you didn't know Shakespeare traveled that much in his lifetime, but the travel rates were incredibly low back then).

Okay, back to "don't kill the messenger."

Some times when a negative event occurs, the, er, negativity gets spread, you know, just a little bit more, and then, sometimes it becomes a large pool and then a raging storm of crushingawfuldefeatacrossallof....

Sorry. Got a little carried away there.

So this evening, 'someone' came home with some sort of bad news. 'Someone' had been in an office, a honest-to-goodness office for the past three years. One with a door, and a ceiling - no cubicle farm. His admin assistant also had a door, which was amazing in this world of government workers and crammed space. It also allowed room for the 43,776 files spread all over the floor, 614 hard-back books stacked in four bookcases, and 916 12-packs of Mt. Dew.

And today, this 'someone' was told he would have to vacant aforementioned office. Soon. Like the end of this week.

I am of the firm opinion that unless getting mad about something helps the situation, getting mad is just a waste of time and energy. However, I live with a certain 'someone' who believes that anger is good, that it is correct, and the more of it, the better.

So I am standing very carefully in a corner in a galaxy far far away to avoid the deluge, inundation and bombardment of pointless yet fervent emotion.

Wish me luck.

2009... NOT!

I like numbers. Back when I had a complete brain, math was one of those things that just came to me. And I loved it.

At least until I was a junior in high school. I wanted to take calculus, but was scared enough by the teacher - Mrs. Steele - that I simply quit. I had my general ed requirement in match already, so it wouldn't slow down my graduation.

(Mrs. Steele, if you're reading this, I'm sorry, but you were short and old and real DEFINITE. Everyone who had had you as a teacher said you were IMPOSSSIBLE. And you scared me. Sorry)

After I lost half my brain, numbers suddenly became the enemy (much like Mrs. Steele). The same integers were there, and the same equations, but now the answers weren't. And I was obviously somewhat dyslectic - I would see 48, and write down 84.

Gradually I became resigned to the fact that I had left behind a very good friend, and thank goodness BYU took my ACT math score to count as the math requirement - no more math classes required.

I still hold on to some math prejudices, however. Even numbers are almost always better than odd numbers, with some exceptions - like 13, 7 and 49. And even though it's an even number, 8 is pretty wicked.

But 2009. It's just WRONG. I don't know exactly why - maybe if I had a full brain again, I could explain this in a logical, coherent manner.

But I can't, so here is what I am going to do -

Relying solely on fanning fleeting feelings and passing provisional

passions (I just love words, don't you?), I want to begin a campaign to NOT have next year be 2009.

Instead, in January we will begin THE YEAR OF 2010 MINUS.

There - that should work.... shouldn't it?

MOMMY ESCAPE

Mother and infant bonding is essential - otherwise none of us would survive to childhood, let alone adulthood. Love is the only thing that can make it through sleepless nights, endless messes, and the extended period of crying/screaming without a clue as to any possible cause.

Najale was about 16 months old when he and I first became acquainted, and 18 months old when I brought him home. Horses are herd animals, and stay healthier when kept with other animals. So I was about to accept the offer of one of my neighbor's goats (fittingly named 'Dinner') for his companion when my husband 'suddenly' became aware of a co-worker who wanted to give away a couple of her horses simply because of the expense.

Turns out six months in Saudi Arabia had really turned him off on goats.

So Sally came to live with us. She had just been separated from her six-month old colt, was skin and bones, and emotionally and physically exhausted. It took her about 15 seconds for her to switch her allegiance to Najale as her baby, and they have been inseparable since.

Well, I need to be a little more specific - Sally is the one who is inseparable from Najale. Najale could seriously care less if he is taken anyplace, but Sally gets lathered into (quite literally) a huge sweat if her baby is more than a yard from her side.

I utilize this mother/son bond for my own selfish benefit. I need to feed the horses separately - otherwise Sally just lets Najale eat more than his share. But she is easily led into a corral once she is assured that the 'baby' has already started on his meal.

And when they both are done, it is fairly easy to simply open both gates, and Sally will predictably move back to the pasture.

Until tonight, that is.

I have stressed in a previous post how dark it gets out here. Tonight there was just a sliver of a setting moon on the west horizon, and no much else.

But, confident that Sally was going to be reliable, I set off in the dark to find the corral and pasture gates by touch - open them up - and Sally....

.... decided that the scrub grass right behind the house was more enticing than regrouping with her baby.

Okay, it's pitch black, I have one horse loose. Quickly I slammed the pasture gate shut - one horse loose is at least better than two horses loose.

And, thinking quickly, I whip out my handy-never-out-of-my-pocket cell phone, intending to speedily enlist my husband's assistance - no, not with the horses, he really isn't much good with them - but to bring out a torch (as the British call it) and/or flashlight to capture escaped mare.

Whoops. One little problem. We live far enough away from civilization that it was difficult to get a regular land line phone, and when we finally did, it was the old-fashioned copper-wiring - our neighbor in back, in fact, had their telephone wiring laying on TOP of the ROAD for about two months.

So, when I am on the internet, guess what - it's tying up that phone line. And my husband NEVER has his cell phone on or on him.

Bummer.

So rather than doing the logical thing (i.e. walking back to the house, and getting the large flashlight myself), I switched on my Super Horse Whisperer skills, don my magical Horse Whisperer cape and launch off on my Lost Horse Rescue.

Well, not quite.

I walked over to where Sally was grazing, put a rope around her neck, and walked her back into the pasture.

But hey, got you to read it this far, didn't I?

THE CARROT WITHOUT THE STICK

I have a few daily habits. It's nice to have some reliable customs, since so much of what happens in our lives can't be controlled (illness, weather, president-elect) by us (although I did vote for Obama, and am VERY happy he won).

Every evening, around 10:30 p.m., my dog and I walk outside and back to where the horses are. Now, just so you can picture the scene accurately, I (and my dog) live in a rural area - no streetlights, no business lights, true darkness. It's great for watching the stars - but it is DARK.

I have pretty good night vision, and even when the moon isn't out, you can actually see your shadow by starlight. It's cool. But I have two advantages on this nightly trip.

1) Murray, my dog. Murray leads me out, comes back if I stop, and looks up with concern if I obviously can't see where I am going and have run straight into one of our many mesquite trees (and for those of you who are not familiar with Arizona plant life, to survive here, plants feel obligated to hurt you when you touch them, let alone run into them in the dark - and I mean draw BLOOD)

2) Najale, my horse, is black and white. And even though he is normally a very dusty, muddy and dirty white, those white sploshes still stand out enough that he is easy to spot.

Now Sally, the 'other' horse, is a bay mare - which means she's sorta reddish brown with a black mane and tail. She sorts fades into the woodwork, so to speak, at night. She's also pretty old (26 maybe?), so I will walk around the pasture and find her if she doesn't show up beside Najale in a few minutes.

Tonight? Najale is right there, ready for his evening carrots. I break each in half, and give Sally the top, smaller and generally softer part (bad teeth) and give Najale the bottom, harder part. And Sally always gets fed first. Najale is a greedy, pushy gelding who needs to wait his turn, and is normally good about it.

Tonight? (Didn't I just type that?) No Sally at the gate. I went ahead and gave Najale three carrots while I kept waiting for her to show up - finally undid the gate, and walked in to check and see if she was okay. And THEN she trots up, all hale and hearty, for her carrots.

But I made the SERIOUS mistake of concentrating on giving her her fair share of what was left - and NOT giving Najale his 'half.'

So.... he bit me.

Not hard - I mean, a horse who is seriously biting can do serious damage. I had a horse take off the top layer of my left hand - you could see the underlying bones. This was just a nip on my index finger of my right hard.

But even after keeping frozen peas (the world's best ice pack) on my finger for 35 minutes, it's pretty obvious that my fingernail is going to fall off soon, and I am going to have one sore finger for the next couple of weeks.

Don't feel sorry for me - my own fault. Just needed to tell someone the story - and brag about typing this entire thing with one heck of a sore finger.

SO WHADDAYA THINK?

I have been looking for a wider sort of format, and since I have no idea (yet) how to design a template (in fact, I'm still not entirely certain what a 'widget' is other than it's not contagious), I am trying out some.

I LOVE the fact that the 'birds' above are like fuzzy pipe-cleaners - watch 'em for a second - don't they make you laugh? But I don't know how to bring the blog title UP.

Oh, well, enjoy for the moment, it may change in an hour or so.

GUTEN PUTENSCHNITZEL

A friend's blog asked about Thanksgiving memories, and while I assume she is asking about happy Thanksgiving memories, I began writing about unusual Thanksgiving memories, and then realized I had a perfectly good topic for my own blog.

Sorry, Annette - you just lost a comment but I gained a blog entry.

Thanksgiving of 1981, we were living in Dusseldorf, West Germany (in 1981 there was still a wall in dividing Berlin), I had given birth to our second child the month before (at a British military hospital, which someday will be an extremely long blog entry in its own right) in Munchengladbach (my daughter has to deal with the spelling and how to pronounce that city name for her entire life, don't you feel sorry for her?).

And, as one of few American families in Dusseldorf, and the only active LDS family (although we did have a wonderful family of RLDS that attended regularly), we had become sort of the alternate mission-home to a large amount of full-time American LDS missionaries working in Duesseldorf.

I'd like to think they flocked to our gracious home because of the naturally spiritual and uplifting atmosphere which occured there.

But in reality, it was because 1) we were already LDS , and 2) didn't have to be convinced about not drinking beer (although after drinking German public water, sometimes beer did sound good) and 3) did always have non-alcoholic beverages...

and 4)

(and here is where the drum roll comes in)... We had access to....

AMERICAN FOOD. At least after a two-hour ride to another country where there was the nearest American military commissary.

And wild and exotic things like....

KRAFT MACARONI AND CHEESE

HERSHEY / NESTLE CHOCOLATE CHIPS (German and Swiss Chocolate are entirely different organism from our sweet stuff)

MILK that needs to be refrigerated and does not sit in a carton on your shelf for two months before you use it.

RICE KRISPY TREATS - I can't really remember whether the type of cereal or the marshmallows was impossible to get in West Germany, but man, did the missionaries love 'em.

And since we had an apartment full of Americans almost every night (and afternoon and even sometimes in the morning), it was somehow assumed that we would do the entire Thanksgiving dinner deal.

Okay, right.

HOWEVER - do you know that it is possible to get LIVE turkeys in German, but not possible to get a dead one that's been de-feathered and gutted and all that.

There are no pumpkins or cans of pumpkin stuff that you can make pies from. There are a lot of squashes and things like squashes that you can cook for hours and hours and then smash and mash and add all the seasonings and THEN put it all together in a pie.

Stuffing? Are you kidding? Stove-Top was patented in 1975, but the Germans hadn't caught on to it by 1981. So... stale bread, a lot of herbs, bake that stuff, then stick it in the turkey... once you've de-feathered and gutted the bird.....

'Nuff said. It wasn't easy, it's wasn't very pretty, but it got DONE.

Now, if memory serves correctly, we invited our Scottish neighbor Maggie because she was interested in American customs and wanted to see how we celebrated Thanksgiving. And it didn't hurt the missionaries' time sheets any that she wasn't a member of the church (tick off 'time fellow shipping investigator' for five hours on November 24, 1981).

We ate, and ate, and ate, as only eight American boys aged 19-22 , a nursing mother, a two-year old, an adult who reached 30 just as he was introduced to German cooking on an expense account and a healthy Scotswoman.

And it all was happy and fun... until one of the dear, polite Mormon elders leaned back in his chair, slapped his stomach in contentment, and said, "Man! Am I stuffed!"

"WHAT?!?" cried Maggie.

"I just said that I'm full," replied the surprised elder.

Maggie turned to me and demanded, "Are you going to allow talk like that in your home?!?"

Lesson No. 1 - Different languages, especially languages that are called the SAME, such as English, have different definitions to the exact same word.

"Stuffed" in American English means... well, stuffed.

"Stuffed" in Great Britain English, which is an entirely different language, means "F*****" multiplied by a factor of 10 and somehow involves your mother and the legitimacy of your birth and wearing of army boots.

And "Full" is just as bad, if not worse.

There. That's my most memorable Thanksgiving.

So... how stuffed was your own Thanksgiving?

GOD AND MOMS

There is a saying, "There are no atheists in foxholes." I have always sorta wondered why EVERYone, when they get in a dangerous position, say (or screams) OMG (or words to that effect).

Maybe it's just covering all bases, just in case this is 'the end.' Even my dad, a life-long atheist, asked a lot of questions about my spiritual beliefs after his first big stroke and up until he died a couple of years later.

And I personally am convinced that is one of the main points of having 'opposition in all things', as Nephi so eloquently put it. If everything in our lives was always peachy-keen, why would we ever look outside of ourselves for help? If no one had any troubles, how would we learn to help another and serve each other?

So, (back to the original topic) what do God and moms have in common?

They get called on when the going gets tough.