I took a chance. Pillowed her up in the front seat and took her for an hour’s ride to the old family farm, where cousins and such were gathering for their first introduction to the toddler on her first visit from Poland (accompanied by her family, of course; oh boy, do we have cousins).

It was the perfect scenario for my mother, who, as the last remaining relative of her generation, got all the attention she craves. I was there to serve her, in all senses of the word. “You’re a saint,” they would whisper, as they walked by, patting my arm, nodding their heads solemnly. I want to scream “I hate my life!!” but instead I go about the business of filling my mother’s plate, and mine, with all of the golabki, kielbasa, kapusta, and various apple and blueberry cakes — all homemade and all to drool for. I made sure I got some doggie bags to bring home.
Over the course of the afternoon (the best weather of the summer, so far) each relative stopped to pay hommage to the nonagenarian, even though she really didn’t remember who anyone really was. She can’t hear well, can’t remember worth a damn, and the conversations with her all had a tinge of the old “who’s on first.” But they all humored her, winked at me, and then went back to enjoying interactions with those with whom they could actually have an intelligent conversation.
At least the rides back and forth went smoothly (which isn’t always the case because she starts panicking when she realizes that the seat belt is constraining her; she started in on the way home, so I just unbuckled her seat belt, figuring that if we had an accident, with her fragile bones, she’d be better off not surviving it). Frank Sinatra crooned from a CD compilation sent to my by a college buddy, John S., and that set just the right tone for the long (for her) drive.
You would think that she’d be tired from the long day with no nap, but nooooo. Bugging, bugging, bugging me.!! In my frustration, as I brush her teeth I mutter that taking care of her is like taking care of a baby. “I don’t want another baby,” she misreplies. (Surprise, surprise.) “Neither do I,” I sigh. She doesn’t get it. I’ve had it.
And so I go up to my space and check my email — which includes a long catch-up from someone with whom I went to grade school who found my weblog when she Googled “Yonkers,” and another long catch-up from one of my former colleagues, recently retired, who just got back from a week of doing Chinese brush painting at the Omega Institute.
My “real” life pretty much sucks. And I thank the oddities of fate and the miracles of tecnology for a virtual life that keeps me interested enough to get up in the morning.
Oh, and, of course, there’s always him:

Maxine is my alter ego.

All of this news of what is amounting the WWIII is not funny. Coming home to my mother in the middle of a dementia episode is not funny. It’s not funny that theVatican announced that, while it paid $9 million for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, it still made a $12.4 million profit in 2005. It’s not funny that Red Buttons died. Except for the statement about my mother, the above “not funnies” are from Harper’s Weekly.
I don’t know if it’s funny, but it sure is interesteing that:
— Scientists in Maryland found that two thirds of people who consumed the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin had extremely meaningful experiences.
— scientists in Massachusetts implanted sensors in a paralyzed man’s brain that allowed the man to check email.
— Jack Kevorkian, who is dying, said that he would not choose suicide
The above interesting facts are also from Harper’s Weekly.
What was really funny was watching my grandson in his airline pilot uniform, and his chef’s uniform, and his astronaut uniform (with talking space helmet), and his Red Sox uniform — all of which he got for his birthday. In addiition to trucks, of course. And watching him hit a ball with a one-handed bat-swing and then run around invisible bases, only to roll around the grass in his version of a slide into third.
And now I’m back to what’s not fun in my life, and it’s not just a matter of my mother’s self-centered needs sucking up all my time and energy; it’s also dealing with a sibling who wants everything done his way. We are as unlike as two siblings can be. I am almost at a point at which I can pack up and leave all of this behind and feel not a shred of guilt.
But then I get a comment left on one of my posts from someone who found my weblog and is in the midst of a situation even more exhausting than mine. Her weblog is part of her strategy for dealing with the tragic death of her daughter, a victim road rage, and with the challenge she now faces of raising her daughter’s twins — in addition to her own young son. I read this post of hers and I have such admiration for what she is so lovingly and valiantly doing. She does have family nearby, and they are becoming that “village” that it takes to raise a child.
Unfortunately for me, there is no “village” here to share what it takes to help at the other end of life’s line.
So, I will get up early tomorrow morning and plant the colorful annuals I bought on the way back from Masschusetts today, and I will weed and water and try to create a little more color and beauty in my own life before she wakes up and I lose sight of the sun and the memory of fun.

I’m heading out tomorrow to join in the celebration of my grandson’s fourth birthday. The day will be hot, but the kid is very cool, so I’m looking forward to spending a couple of days being a Grammy instead of someone whose name she doesn’t always remember.

When I made the post that asked the question, I didn’t know what to expect as answers. Here’s the question:

If you could make up ONE new law and have it enforced FOREVER, by goons, what would your law be?
Use your imagination, let your despotic instincts run free.
First, here’s my answer — at least as close as I can remember, since I didn’t make a copy of what I sent in:

I would enforce a U.S. law that would greatly limit tax write offs/loopholes and significantly increase the tax rate (to somewhere around 40%) on the income of individuals who make more than 2 million dollars a year (in gross income) and on corporations who make more than 2 billion dollars a year in gross profit. That tax money would be used to fund universal health care and also set up an updated version of the WPA to provide fair wages for work done to shore up and enhance the country’s physical infrastructure.

Now, you have to undersand that my dad was a centrist Republican who use to tell me that the older he got, the more he thought that the best form of government is a benevelent dictatorship. Of course, given human nature, we know that would never work because we’d never be able to find a thoroughly fair and moral individual to take the job. At any rate, that’s why I had no problem “letting my despotic instincts run free.”
However, there were several respondents who couldn’t do that and answered with the following:
— Well…mine would be paradoxical and self-contradictory, making it impossible??? The new law to be enforced forever by goons would be: No law forever enforceable by goons may be passed. (non-blogger myrln)
— Stu’s new law : Fascism is forbidden, e.g. you are not allowed to enforce anything, by goons or military might. (Stu Savory)
— Well, there’s the obvious One New Law: Henceforth, I get to make ALL new laws! But there’s probably a clause in the contract that results in making NO new laws and probably getting beaten up by the goons to boot. I’m really not sure, Elaine. All laws are flawed. For instance, what if all public schools got equal funding, but it was zero? Maybe a law outlawing goons. But then only outlaws would have goons. But maybe we do need some goon control laws. (Dave Rogers)
Then I had a few whose first thought was for the Golden Rule. I also believe that we wouldn’t need a whole lot of laws and wouldn’t have all these problems in the world if everyone lived by the Golden Rule. I just don’t know how even goons could enforce it:
— Well, it’s a close call — “Do to others what you would have them do to you” has a lot going for it, but it leaves a lot of room for equivocation and manipulation. The simple clarity of “Thou shalt not kill” wins for me. (AKMA)
— When I first read your question, my initial reaction was to demand the implementation of The Golden Rule: compulsory in all educational levels, from pre-school through university. I have always felt that if we could just submerge our young people with the cause and effect/action/reaction physics based on human emotion so that it is ingrained on all levels, in multiple dimensions within our beings … the world would be a much better place for all.
Then I re-read the question and saw the part about “the goons” enforcing this new law and well, … that whole passive, empathic ideal kind of collapsed in on itself. (Klondike Kate)
Then there were those, like me, who feel a little coercian can go a long way:
— my first thought is that we have all the laws on the books that we need. The problem is the laws are not enforced. Another thought is that a law banning all cars (except emergency vehicles) over four cylinders could solve a lot of problems.. A law banning private ownership of automatic or military weapons would make America a better place, but might cause a revolution. (non-blogger John)
— Equal funding for ALL public schools wherever they are. (Tamarika)
— My law would be that everyone would have to be polite and considerate of others at all times. (And no one could drive a car and talk on the phone at the same time). (non-blogger Bonnie)
— I would dictate that…that no one and no book would dictate to you how to live. (Steve James of Lunchmoney)
— 1. Mankind must never be allowed to use weapons of mass destruction ever again against each other, and includes but not limited to nuclear bombs and missiles, biological and chemical warfare, grenades, landmines, bullets, firebombs, arrows, and rocks. 2. Mankind must never be allowed to destroy any ecological system, nor treat in an inhumane manner, any living creature, and must be good stewards of the planet earth and its inhabitants one and all. (Cowtown Pattie)
— Nationalize the arms industry. the pentagon wants our tax money? fine; let them use it to actually manufacture weapons. maybe they’ll get a little more parsimonious with using them. this has the added benefit of taking profit out of the arms dealing equation, to my way of thinking. economic and military experts may have very good reason to call me insane on this one, but i’m just thinking if it’s not profitable anymore maybe the vultures will no longer rule our society. same goes for drugs. legalize it and tax it. maybe less gang violence then, no? and less deficit. spend some of the money on drug rehab and other programs for addicts. (Ex-Lion Tamer)
— 1. All politicians must henceforth be squeaky clean honest.
(a)No money may be accepted from any source other than the government for conducting political campaigns.
(a.1) While in office no money may be accepted from any source other than the government
(a.2) Upon leaving office the candidate may not work for, or serve in any paid capacity for, any person, company, organization or corporation directly and positively affected by any legislation voted favourably on by the candidate.
(a.3)All politicians must immediately resign their seat if any relative closer than 1st degree cousin assumes a paid position with any person, company, organization or corporation directly and positively affected by any legislation voted favourably on by the candidate
Penalty for breaking this law is life in prison without parole and no country club prisons either. (posted at Doug of The Alders)
— That everyone had to tell the truth. (non-blogger Joe)
— I’d have them repeal the Mann Act. (non-blogger Pete, who never takes anything seriously)
Any chance we can get those goons to sit on Congress until they deal with the global warming situation?

Yes, it figures that I would ask for comments (see previous post) on a day when Typekey comment feature is not working and my mother slips into some kind of weird mental place that requires my constant presence. But I am getting very interesting and unexpected email responses and will post them soon. If you haven’t responded yet, please do.

For those of you who know my son and are curious as to what he’s like these days, go here to see him and hear him speaking to the audience at the Portland Serenity benefit, wearing a Jayne hat. 🙂
By the way, the world-wide effort he coordinated has raised more than $64K (and still counting) for Equality Now.

I took a Politics Test and came up with this assessment:
I am a Social Liberal (70% permissive), an Economic Liberal (11% permissive). I am described, as a Socialist: You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.
Well, yeah. Shouldn’t everybody??
On the montage of famous people depicted in a visual representation of where they fall in the political spectrum, I fall somewhere between Gandhi and Boris Yeltsin.
At the end of the test is this:

AND FINALLY, if you could make up ONE new law and have it enforced FOREVER, by goons, what would your law be? Use your imagination, let your despotic instincts run free.

Leave a comment or email me your idea.
How would you answer that??

Intelligence — brain power — is a wonderful thing, but they wouldn’t know that over at March Together, where the resident blogger, never having heard of The Onion, mistook an article, by-lined by a writer who doesn’t exist, as serious instead of satire. And then the anti-abortion blogger made it even worse, including excerpting a definition for satire that omitted the fact that it is based on wit and irony.
b!X is right. This is the kind of person who voted for our current president. However, there’s hope if you look at the more than 600 comments and several trackbacks to this post.
The level of writing and critical thinking displayed on the March Together weblog makes it hard to take it seriously. It almost seems as though pro-choice people might have set it up to make a laughing stock of pro-life people. The scary thing is that’s not the case. These people are serious. Seriously uneducated.
Best line in one of the comments:

the opposite of intellectual Left is unintelligent Right

And so now the unEjumacated blogger thinks he can escape the criticisms of both his allies and his opponents by starting a new weblog at www.marchforlife.blogspot.com.
You can run, Pete, but you can’t hide.

There is so many awful newsworthy things happening throughout the world that this Tuesday’s Harper’s Weekly digest contains very few oddities to report:

“New research confirmed that smoking and obesity increase the risk of erectile dysfunction.[New York Times][Reuters] U.S. tax revenue was up.

“It was reported that Melinda Gates is more comfortable than her husband Bill when it comes to holding AIDS babies in Africa or talking to male prostitutes in India.[New York Times] The world’s oldest crow died in Bearsville, New York,[Associated Press] and astronomers observed what they said might be a strange glowing blob of dark matter sucking in gas.[New Scientist] …. .[Bloomberg] President Vladimir Putin of Russia explained that he had recently kissed a young boy on the stomach because he “wanted to stroke him like a cat.”.

The depressing news is that, according to the NY Times

“A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed “large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists” to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
“We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. “That’s a problem.”.

‘YA THINK??!!
Read the reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center here and here.
On this mountain home front, life is just as surreal, as mom wanders, babbling something that has the word “potato” in it. During lucid moments, she wants to help — cook, clean, all the things she knows how to do to keep busy. I can’t let her do anything because she’s a danger at the stove or with a knife, and she’s not supposed to bend down and everything she touches seems to wind up someplace else and then we can’t find it. She gets really mad at me, shouting that she hopes someone does to me someday what I’m doing to her. “I hope that someday my daughter will try to keep me safe and take care of me if I’m like you,” I say. “You don’t have a daughter,” she throws back at me as she stomps away.
I spent all day today making homemade chicken soup and trying to keep her calm. She just wouldn’t sit for more than five minutes; she paced and panted and cried and refused to lie down and rest. On top of that, I got up early today and colored my hair, which didn’t come out the color it should have. Feh. I’ll bet it’s the stupid minerals in the well water, which my sib says he runs through a softener. I think he needs a new one. FEH! (as my old Polish grandmother used to say.)