Love the kitties Blue.

I booked for us to go to our daughters for Nicholas's 2nd birthday in May last night - can't wait

It finally stopped snowing here in Niagara about 9 last evening, leaving at least a foot of snow in its wake.  Today is sunny and very cold.  Tomorrow the temp is supposed to go up to 5C (or about 40F) but.....not fast or high enough to melt!  Shovel here I come!

Yes Sunny, I know what you mean about avoiding ice -- I fell flat on my keister about 4 years ago which made my hip go out of alignment and caused significant pain, to the point of having to use crutches.  Finally, physio sessions got me back on track, but I've been so fearful of falling ever since.

WOW - c4c.  Small world.  Just what happened to me on "black ice" near my newspaper "sleeve" ( where daily paper is delivered, like an open mail box) at the street and I fell FLAT WHOMP on my back.  Think it was the very padded parka I was wearing ( with my lanz flanel nightgown AND polertec bathrobe underneath) which kept anything from breaking. Was going to pick up my morning newspaper.  Have a very long driveway ( down hill to the street) and literally had to crawl on all fours to get back to house. My feet went completely out from under me, really knocked the wind out of me.

Took weeks to get back to normal.  Has made me VERY aware of how dangerous ice can be.  So many women I know have falled this winter, and broken bones. There was even an article in the paper about how much busier the emergency rooms are this winter because of people falling.  

Snow, very windy, sleety ice underneath snow means "STAY HOME" to me.  Very very grateful I get to do it too. Love the Saturday Life ( what my friends call retirement)

WHAT RL SAID:

 Imagine,
indeed. Imagine if all the effort put into repealing the Affordable
Care Act, hating President Obama, suppressing the rights of women,
people of color, LGBT people, and people the knuckledraggers don't agree
with, suppressing the vote, legislating people's personal medical
choices, attempting to force religion on other people and subverting the
Constitution - imagine if they put all that hate into making sure
children were properly fed, housed and educated. Imagine that.

just had to repeat while I read it to myself, again, and again.  What's it going to take to have this kind of a world?

If you haven't yet watched the segments which NBC Nightly News is doing this week on the Children of Syria, check their website. Very Important.

Libby, the irony is that your insurer will tell you what docs you can see, whereas the idjuts who criticize Canada's "socialized" medicine insist on saying that our government tells us what docs we can see --- not true!  We can see any doc we want to.  And 97% of the costs of our healthcare are actually spent on our healthcare.  Oh my!

Warning:  rant starting!  The folks who are always yelling about "freedom" are blind to the relative lack of freedom they have compared to those of us in other western countries.  We women don't have governments telling us what we can and cannot do with our own bodies.  We don't fear going into public places that allow folks to carry weapons, concealed or otherwise.  We don't permit our broadcasters to tell lies to us to further a political party's agenda.  We don't allow corporations (which are NOT people, BTW) to spend untold amounts of money via secret PACS to influence election outcomes.

Yes, I could go on, but I know our gal pals here already know both these and other examples.  It behooves those who brag about American "freedoms" to start investigating the situation in other countries.  Maybe then, and only then, will my American gal pals start experiencing the freedoms that the rest of us enjoy.

Rant over!

Love the rant, C4C, and am totally on board.  The REAL "death panels" are and have ALWAYS been the insurance companies who denied care to people on the flimsiest of pretexts - or on no pretext at all.  Thousands of people (tens, hundreds of thousands) died because they could not access medical care because they didn't have insurance.  It is disheartening to watch this from the inside ... it must be frightening to look at us from the outside! 

Sunnyflowers ... I'm glad you're okay and you had all those clothes on!  Being alone in that bad weather makes it even more scary.  Last time I shoveled snow it was so freakin' cold out I couldn't breathe.  I thought I was going to pass out in the snow and Tim would find me sometime in the spring.  I'm not good at setting reasonable limits for myself, but with the ice I have to be really careful.

hugs,

Bren

Alex -- I don't wear fashionable winter boots anymore.  Give me deep treads instead!  Glad you missed the snowfall but take your boots to Vermont -- this has just GOT to be the last snowstorm of the season, please! 

I honestly don't know what makes me angrier - the morally bankrupt people who deliberately lie, knowing what they are saying is false and hurts many people, or the people with the intelligence to know better who deliberately refuse to do the research to know the lies are false.  

It used to be in this country that we all wanted the same things for the country - a country that offered opportunity for all, that helped those who needed help, that didn't leave anyone behind.  We wanted people to be fed and housed and educated and given opportunity to move up.  We wanted a strong country, a prosperous country, a country in which everyone had the opportunity to participate  - for ALL.  We disagreed on how to get there, but we didn't used to want to leave anyone behind.

Today, the regressives only want these things for themselves. Oh, they might say they want people to have opportunity, but they don't and their actions show it.  The screaming about EEO programs, the frothing and foaming that people might get an "unfair advantage" because of their skin color or national origin, the tsunamis of hatred toward people who look different, who believe differently, who weren't born here, who speak with an accent.  They want to suppress the votes of people who believe different things than they do, they want to disenfranchise women and people of color.  They want cheap labor but hate the people who provide it.  They are PROUD of the roadblocks they put up in the way of people who want to participate in society.  And they seem to glory in letting people, especially children (see school lunches), go hungry, saying, "It will build character" or "Their parents should make them a sandwich," refusing to see that there is nothing with which TO make a sandwich in a household where both parents work minimum wage jobs and can barely make rent.

We are so badly off course.  How did so many people get to the point that they think this is OK?  We used to be better than this.

There's always been an element that hates anyone different, hence the No Irish Need Apply and the exclusion of Jews at the beginning of the 20th century.  However, I do think that what's going on now has a lot to do with economics.  The wealthiest and the corporations have garnered so much of the economy, so many people have lost ground or fear losing everything, and so what happens?  The top .01 percent, not merely the top .1 percent, the .01, Koch brothers and their ilk, use Fox and other media to point to people of color, women, immigrants, gays, transgenders, to say, look over there, they're the reason you're losing or could lose your middle class life style.  It's not the CEOs taking too much money - or companies outsourcing - or the disbanding of the unions that is destroying the American middle class, it's the minorities and the liberal policies they advocate. The thing that's infuriating is that it works - that lies are told by Repugs, by Fox,and there are so many stupid people who believe them.  Back in the depression, the average person knew that the people heading corporations were not generally speaking going to offer a living wage out of the goodness of their hearts - hence the union movement.  If I say that I support a minimum wage of $15 a hour, people will start yelling about communism - without the slightest idea what communism actually is.  ARRRHHHH

Wow.  You gals must have cabin fever.  Love the rants.  

I must say that it has always surprised me how many "regular" people buy into what the wealthy and corporations tell them about finances.  (I think the "trickle down" theory was the best sell yet)  If they would only think about it for a minute, they would see how self serving their policies are.  

Hi, PiP!  No, no cabin fever here - I was just prompted by the zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan's latest "I-am-not-a-racist" racist screed about inner-city urban men being a problem. And Snowdrift Snooki taking Dr. Seuss in vain.  And sometimes I just get sick of the racist, sexist, hateful comments on articles where the commenters should know better .... And I get sick of watching people flock to the idea of dismantling the very institutions that helped them get where they are - and will help their children stay where they are.  Nothing like watching a bunch of educated people (figuratively) burn a library down because their corporate masters told them to.  And I haven't ranted in a long time ... Just needed a good rant-stretch, I guess!  :-)

Everyone here has always gotten this: