Monday, September 29, 2008

The NY Giants Largest Ohio Fan Base...the W's!


This actually happened a few weeks ago but I'm just now getting to it...

Phil and I came to a compromise when we were first married and he had just joined the church. I came from a strong stance of "no sports on Sundays" and he came from a family was sports on Sundays (and any other day in which any sport of any team might have air time) was how they connected and enjoyed their time together. So as the brand new heads of our new family unit, we decided that when the NY Football Giants play Sunday games, that are broadcast in our local area, we would watch as a family.

This year their first game was on Thursday, the 9th, against the Washington Redskins, which we won! It was extra special because Michael Strahan, who retired after their Superbowl win, returned to present NY with the championship trophy. I'm going to miss him. He was my favorite player. Now I'll have to pick a new favorite teammate to cheer on for equally obscure and ridiculous reasons.

As part of our tradition we all dress in gear for the game and I make a big deal of making tailgating cuisine for dinner for the first game of the season. Chili, soda pop, wings, am I a fantastic wife or what? Not a single vegetable or fruit was forced! Both of my babies have scrapbook pages of their first televised Giants game in their baby books. This is actually a big deal for us and a really fun family tradition.





Saturday, September 13, 2008

Hey, hey, here I am!

So I've been taking pics of the kids and mentally creating awesome blog notes about the fam, and work and school, BUT... then I get caught up in fam, and work, and school...and voila! Here I am 10 days later without a post and that on the 3rd was a cop out.

I do beleive in getting out the vote. Please remember that I was a voting deputy registrar and Perot campaigner in the '92 elections. I am a complete POTUS08 and NPR addict this go around but I'll be honest, cutting and pasting on the 3rd?! I didn't even make one single comment on how I FEEL about this election! What kind of blog entry was that? One in which I didn't have to download and cut and paste any of my adorable pics. So I'll be getting to the new family photos soon enough.

So about school.

I am in an awesome craft of fiction class that is already kicking my butt and making me fabulous. Oh yes, brothers and sisters I think this may be ticket on the train of stardom. OK maybe not. But I love my two stories this week and one still makes me giggle and when I get back it back on Monday from my instructor and tinker with it a bit more I'll post it for you guys to read.

The second I think is well crafted for an amateur of my experience but it does have two bad words, which are character appropriate, but I won't post. If you are interested in a suspense driven non-traditional story arc with a handsome rover who says "1" bad word that isn't even one of the terrible 5 but on the fringe, just let me know and I will e-mail it to you. My mom read it, gasped, and wouldn't let my grandmother take a turn because she said Grandma wouldn't look at me the same. There you have it, I like it, but I have to own up to the word choices.

In fact I'm only posting now at 7:30 am on Saturday because I'm at my mom's taking care of her dogs for the weekend and ignoring a 3-5 page paper on how character and setting effect the short stories "Cold Snap" and "Brokeback Mountain".

I'm in two other classes as well and besides having to memorize a speech for Wednesday (I chose Emma Goldman's "An Anarchist Looks at Life") and trying to stay awake in a warm dark classroom from 4:30-5:45 to look at slides and read from a pre-composed lecture handout. They are boring and not worth talking about today, even in avoidance of my paper.

Love you guys, talk to you later.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

In honor of Labor day - and because I forgot to take pics of family picnic

My apologies to the creators of this e-mail that was sent to me. I don't know who you are but I stand by the thought...

A Message for all women

THIS IS MOVING. HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET.....IF ....WE EVER KNEW......

WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.


Remember, it was not until 1920

that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed
nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking
for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.
Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing
went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of
'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'



(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above

her head and left her hanging fo! r the ni ght, bleeding and gasping
for air.

(Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her
head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate,
Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging,
beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the
'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917,
when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his
guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because
they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right
to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks
until word was smuggled out to the press.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because-
-why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work?
Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new

movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle
these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling
booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the

actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history,

saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk
about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought
kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said.
'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use,
my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just
younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history,

social studies and government teachers would include the movie in
their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere
else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing,
but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think
a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so

hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

History is being made.

Design

About Me

My photo
Ohio, United States
Just a mom, doing mom things, thinkin' mom thoughts and wishin' I could look like the models in the Lands End catalog. Except without dieting, exercising, or giving up 3 hour naps.