Happy Halloween

Being sneaky

I was surprised to learn today that the Senate had tried to move forward a "Dream Bill" for illegal immigrant benefits - proposing that we give college tuition rate breaks to illegals age 30 and under along with legitimizing their stay here. (We don't do this for our own citizens, mind you, but that didn't concern the Senate Democrats.) I was surprised because it sort of slipped in, in the middle of fire disaster news, and didn't seem to get a lot of press. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but fortunately someone was. Lots of 'someones' apparently had a lot to say to their Senators about it. And the Senators were surprised at the vehemence of it. They'd had massive amount of input from their constituency and it all said "NO!" And they actually listened. People are angry about this.

So if the message is so clear, why aren't we doing something about it? Why are we, instead, trying to 'sneak' things in when no one will notice? Why are we rewording, piece-mealing, and otherwise trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the general public in order to force through legislation that a clear majority of our people think is wrong, unfair and will have a long-term negative impact?

And the commentators on the news this afternoon were categorizing illegals as "the victims of America's broken immigration policy." Just staging for the next attempt.

(They're victims?)

Rhetoric is everything. Spin, spin, spin.



On a Post Script: Arizona's Sen. John McCain was absent for the vote, even though he’d been present on the Senate floor for another vote just an hour earlier. I wonder if any of the other presidential candidates were there?

Reflections on aimless activity

I'm feeding squirrels again today. After a week of cold and rain we have a respite of Indian Summer and the squirrels and jays are out in force. They are endlessly interesting to me - and to the cats who sit inside the window and cackle at them - the critters on the deck.

Mostly I've been sitting around waiting for news - two family members were having surgeries today - and, thankfully, the news is good on both fronts. But I've spent some time today doing nothing.

So I'm wondering: How much of our lives do we spend in aimless activity? Puttering around the house. Flipping through channels. Paging through magazines. Sorting through stuff. Obviously it depends on the person and the personality, but for me... it seems like a lot of time. I must enjoy it. There is too much going on inside my head to not allow for some 'reflection' time but I probably use a lot more time for that than I should.

Once in a while you see some 'data' (and I use the term loosely) about how many years of our lives we spend tying our shoes or waiting in traffic or sleeping. I wonder how many of my years I've spent aimlessly?

Plunking on the piano... rummaging through the cupboards for something to make for dinner or snack on, playing string with the cats, surfing the internet, cataloging my Terry Pratchett books... looking for lost things, figuring out where to store the last book that I finished reading and want to keep... rearranging knick knacks, looking through photo albums... starting new projects that I won't finish, peering out the window to look for signs of fall, winter, or spring as the case may be...

I had a teacher in high school who spent an entire class period trying to figure out which way a question mark curved. A friend I worked with, long before the internet, spent the better part of her work week at one point researching where best to send a complaint about Donald Duck orange juice (Dear Mr. Duck...)

... scratching cat ears, trying to get to sleep (or trying to wake up, for that matter...) Writing letters of complaint that I won't mail, making lists of things I probably won't do or Christmas presents I probably won't remember about when I need them or groceries I won't buy because I forgot to bring the list along. Planning projects I won't know how to complete...

Worrying...

Autumn Leaves in the Wind

There is a big ______ tree (insert name of deciduous tree with huge leaves - I don't know what kind) in our front yard that is losing leaves at a pretty alarming pace. I raked leaves up yesterday, many of them having already blown into our neighbor's yard (which I thought was sort of like littering and didn't want to do.) I don't have anything to put them in so I piled them up inside the back gate hoping that they would be protected from the wind there and, in any case, unable to attack the neighbors again.

(I wish there was a chance to go jump in them. But since it's been raining almost from the moment I finished gathering them up in the first place, jumping in them is pretty much out of the question without a wetsuit. They are mottled in color, mixed with leaves from other trees in a beautiful blend of gold and red - a massive pile. Impressive. But...)

Today, of course, the other half of what had been on the tree is on its way down, heading, once again, for lawn-other-than-our-own. We are having a wind storm. Oh dear.

We find ourselves to be a bit skittish about wind just now. Having lost a couple of massive trees last year in a devastating storm that damaged our roof, smashed our shed, broke through our fence and generally cost us a whole bunch of stress and inconvenience, we are eying the remaining trees with suspicion as they wave madly in the wind. Hmmmmm. Maybe there is something to be said for the "pristine lawns and low-lying flower beds" landscaping school-of-thought.

If we'd cut all these trees down, there wouldn't be all these autumn leaves to rake. That's the good news as well as the bad news.

Pumpkin patches again

We really have some spectacular pumpkin patches in our valley. We went back to our favorite from last year, of course, but have seen others as well. Pumpkin growing must be easy. Wish I could say that was true of our own little patch this year though. We were late getting them started (since we had to wait for our drainage issue to be resolved, which took forever) and then I think the slugs trimmed them down every time they tried to grow a new tendril. They finally started to bloom about 2 weeks ago - far too late to be found by bees with any enthusiasm at all for the job at hand.

So we went off looking for more successful plots and, as I've said, found them in abundance. We even had a sunny weekend in which to look. It is funny to watch people in search of the perfect pumpkin. Mark marches purposefully off into the patch with great enthusiasm looking, of course, for the big ones. Others look for oddly shaped ones - or perfectly shaped ones, or really, anything that isn't rotten. We ran across a woman who had been completely smitten by an absolutely huge white one which she had rolled all the way from the middle of the patch to the road and then couldn't lift into her wheelbarrow by herself. A little girl had found a little-girl-sized one that she was obviously pleased as punch with. I got sidetracked this time by the discovery of a wide variety of colorful gourds that had been planted in between the pumpkin vines and didn't really end up finding a pumpkin at all. We'll have to go back.

It was a nice way to spend a weekend, and we were happy that the weather was nice since my mother had to leave yesterday already to go home to Arizona.

Happy pumpkin hunting, everyone!

Fall Hiking

Our fall weather is not cooperating. We've had rain - much forecasted, but far less actually falling - and some wind, and we haven't gotten out as much as we had hoped. But we did manage a drive across the mountain pass and a less-than-satisfying ferry trip to the San Juan Islands and yes, a hike on the valley trail. We are trying also to keep an eye on the river level, which is already rising. Up next? A visit to the pumpkin patch.

There's going to be a pause here...

... because my mother is visiting for 2 weeks and we have things to do and places to go and, though not actually having people to see as well, I think we are going to be busy.

In spite of the rain.

Maybe I'll have pictures to post.