Friday, August 25, 2006

Plan B Vic-to-ry!!!!!

I found this lovely little note in my e-mail this morning, and I am jumpin for joy:


Dear Kelley,

I want to send a personal note of thanks to all of you who joined me in our difficult fight to get the FDA to approve the use of Plan B without a prescription, at least for women over age 18.

Making Plan B available over the counter has the potential to prevent millions of unplanned pregnancies. This decision is long overdue: for years, the Bush administration and its ideological allies refused to recognize the scientific evidence that Plan B was both safe and effective.

Senator Patty Murray of Washington and I have agreed that we will lift our hold on the nomination of Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach to be FDA commissioner now that the FDA has made a decision. We hope he'll provide the strong scientific leadership the FDA needs and deserves.

But this three-year effort to make one more reproductive health option available to American women is another reminder that we have to insist that policy decisions should be made on the basis of science, not ideology.

We never would have succeeded if we had not held firm -- and if we had not been able to count on your support. This fight isn't over yet. There are questions about the age restriction and other conditions imposed by the FDA. We know that we have to keep working to support women’s reproductive health choices. Meanwhile, this decision is a victory for American women -- and that's something to celebrate!

Again, thank you so much for your invaluable support.

Sincerely,


Hillary Rodham Clinton




Click Here to send a thank you note to Senators Clinton and Murray for supporting reproductive freedom.

Beyond-A-Gandhi


Click on over to E-Buzz for some "God-Dammed Elightenment" from the venerable Swami Beyondaghandi. (Hee-Hee-Hee)

Da Swami Sez

Snerk.

Monday, August 21, 2006

WOW! Im a Jingle Writer!!!




A while back, I wrote a jingle for the Blame Pet, the inventor over in Germany saw it on the internet, and asked for permission to use my lyrics. Golly! My first Music Video! Look out MTV, Here I Come!!!!!

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Love Story

Or How I met my hubba, hubba honey:

I grew up in the quaint little burg of Worthington Ohio. Frequenting the Dairy Queen, The Library and the local park. I attended the local elementary, middle and high school.

I had a paper route, of 200 daily rags, which included delivery to the little white house on the end of Pingree Drive. Over the years, I met most of the kids in town, or so I thought.

One hot summer night, when I was nineteen, I attended a party. A dashingly handsome guy walked up on the porch and stood in the doorway. The yellow porchlight behind him created a halo effect around his head. As he stood there, all studly and cool, the church bells across the street began to chime.

I elbowed Leeann in the ribs, hard. "That's Him!"
"What?"
"That's the man I'm going to marry!"
"Who, Greg?"
"You KNOW him?"
"That's Gretchen's big Brother. He's dating Debbie."
"Gretchen has a brother?"
"He's in love with Debbie. You can't go out with him."
"Gretchen's brother, Greg..."
"He's taken Kelley."
"I don't care. I'm gonna marry that boy someday. He's the ONE. Mark my words."

I begged Leeann to take a few pictures of him for me that night. "Please, Pleasepleasepleaseplease...It's just a picture!"

Here we are, that fateful night, in between many shots of tequila.




It turns out, he had just moved back home, and out of the apartment he shared with Deb. Now, I don't want to sound like a home wrecker, but circumstances as they were, we did suck face late that night, and dated briefly over the summer.

He gave me guitar lessons twice a week. We recorded a duet: "Love is a Rose." He sings the coolest Neil Young falsetto!
Ohhh Baby!

By the end of summer, things got sticky. Debs former boyfriend spied on us during a romanitic midnight swim. He stirred the pot, and to make a long story short, my upstanding man left me and returned to his former love.

It was complicated, as these things usually are. Deb was Gretchen's best friend from childhood, and considered a daughter by Greg's mother. His mother made it clear...Really clear, that I didn't stand a chance.

So, I backed off. I wanted him to be happy. I loved him that much. We were all friends for the next four years, and in the end, they married.

I donated blood the day of their wedding, gave them a painting of two love birds and wished them well, with sad sincerity.

At their wedding reception a friend who saw my pain, told me to "just f*ck him and get him out of my system."

"No. I'm not going to do that. It wouldn't be right. Deb is a good woman and I want him to be happy. I'll just go to Africa for a while, or Australia or something. I'll travel the globe in search of diamonds and gold. I'll have lot's of adventures while I wait. But I KNOW I'm going to marry him someday. Maybe I'll be 64, but It's gonna happen. It's fate."

With that, I went away.

I dated other people in those years, and even got a couple of proposals, but I compared them all to Greg, and turned them down.

Three years later, I ran into an old friend.
"Did you hear Greg and Debbie got divorced?"

I was on the phone in seconds!

I left a message. "I'll be at the Jazz and Blues fest on the riverfront tonight. Catch me if you can!"

We both went to the event, parked on opposite sides, and walked into the festival foray of 40,000. It was amazing. We walked straight to each other, as if Moses himself parted the crowd. We dated every night from then on, and married 6 months later.

Debbie was in a tragic car accident that fall, and suffered permanent brain injury. She lost all short term memory. Just like Drew Barrymore in the film "50 first dates."

Even though she has a husband and two children of her own, she sometimes gets confused, and thinks she is still married to Greg. It's so sad. I'm told that when this happens, she does not even recognize her own kids. My heart really goes out to her.

I always liked Debbie, and respected her claim on Greg, but I don't think she knows that. She remembers that we dated the summer they broke up, and she knows we got together after their divorce, so in her mind, the picture seems quite different than it actually was.

The truth is, that even though we had many opportunities to cheat with each other during those years, we never did. We were both tempted, but we held back.

It was as if we were both standing on opposite sides of a river, dying to jump in and quench our burning desires, but we knew, that the current was so strong, that even dipping in our toes, would be all it would take for the flood waters to rise and wash us away.

So, we called each other by our last names, made sarcastic jokes, to prove to others that we were just friends, and pretended to ignore each other, with overly deliberate intent.

Years later, after we married, there were those nights, where one or the other would be out. Those long lonely nights of waiting and wondering, when jealousy and insecurity creep in, and minutes seem like hours. But on those nights, we would think back to our past temptations, and remember our mutual resolve. I guess you could say we succeeded where Lancelot and Guinevere failed.

I think that is the reason our marriage is so strong. We can trust each other to be faithful. We were tested and we passed.

Aside from that, I find it so strange when I drive through the neighborhoods of my youth. Greg and I attended the same schools, played in the same parks, shared some of the same friends, and I even delivered his daily newspaper, but we never met.

I often wonder, if I could rewind my life, and look back, if I would find us, passing in the grocery, perusing the library, attending a school assembly, or standing in the same line at the Dairy Queen. Odds are, we did, but simply never knew.

We will celebrate our 16 year anniversary on September 29th, and I can tell you right now, that the look on my face and the song in my heart will be just as it was, that first fateful night, when the halo shined around his head, and the church bells rang in my heart.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Justifcation

I drove out to the Jolly Times campground last night to bring some suppiles to my daughter, who was happily recreating with our neighbors.

When I arrived, the three little sugar -n- spice girly girls were stomping off with furrowed brow and eminent tear.

"Whats going on?"
"My mom is making us go have a talk."

I nodded and headed for the adult circle to get the scoop.

"The power of three, you know. Two team up and leave the third left out. It's been going on all afternoon. I told them to go work it out."

When I later joined the girly girls pow wow on the playset, I asked if they had managed to sort out their differences.

They had.

In unified solidarity, they procalaimed "It's all Mom's fault!"

HA!

Sunday, August 06, 2006

HEad ON



Have you seen that annoying T.V. commercial,

HEAD ON
APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD

HEAD ON
APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD

HEAD ON
APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD

Everytime I see it, I imagine a big red boxing glove smacking that woman right on the kisser.

AUGGGHHHHHHH!


HEAD ON
APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD ***POW***




HEAD ON
APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD ***POW***





(Thank you. I feel all better now.)


What IS Head On? It is a product that makes absolutely no claims whatsoever!

Johnny Carson: "The American Public is SOO STUPID..."

Audience: "How STUPID ARE WE?"





Is it make up?

Is it medicine?

Is it a mind altering class three narcotic designed by the government, to turn all Americans into right wing Jesus loving Republicans?

Is it possible this product was created by the CIA and tested on Barbara Bush and her family, when she demanded action from FEMA during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina?


Barbara Bush: George! You call that FEMA guy RIGHT NOW and send relief to those people suffering in the Superdome!

Dubya: You got it Mamma! I'm gonna send in the troops right now.

CIA: Before you do, try this. It's called Head On. Apply it directly to your foreheads.






Barbara: So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

George Senior: Wow Man. I dig it now. Flower Power, not Fire Power. Peace Dudes.

Dubya: Heck of a job Brownie.

(The CIA agent gets on the Red Phone to report.)

CIA: Good news Mr. Rumsfeld. It works. We can air the commercials.

Rumsfeld: Excellent! My Evil Plan is working! Hee-Hee-Hee-Hee-Hee

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Corporate Cookie Kudos

My hubba-hubba-Hubby is a V.I.P., and V.P. for a big ol' Co. on the NASDQ. (But I'm supposed to keep that on the Q.T.), so I don't blog about him much.

This post is pretty innocent though, and it's all about ME, So I think it's O.K.

He is getting ready to hire a new employee, and we have this little tradition, where I bake homemade macademia nut cookies for him to take to work on the new hire's first day. Hubba-Hubba Honey takes them into work, puts them on the new employees desk, and then invites everyone to come by for cookies and meet the new guy.

Well, tonight my Hubba Hubba Hunk told me that the H.R. department is using Hubby and I as a Best Practice Corporate Example.

Ohhhh. Im so tickled with my sweet lil self, that I might just bake a DOUBLE batch for this lucky hire!

Everybody Sing: HOT, HOT, HOT...

Whew-eee, A WHOLE lotta weather we've been havin lately! Yessiree-Jim-bob-cattails, A WHOLE LOTTA WEATHER!

To beat the heat, I took the munchkins boating yesterday. We have a cool little jet boat called a Sea Rayder. It's really just a big jet ski, shaped like a boat. It's big enough for five people, while small enough to fit in my garage. It can do everything a jet ski can do: Spin a three-sixty, jump wakes, run right up to the beach, and skim across shallow water.

She has two names:
The Barbie Malibu Speedboat
and
The Pocket yacht.

Yesterday was rather amusing.

As those of you boaters know, the adventure of water sports is filled with amateurs. Folks who buy a boat and some beer, then head out fer some rip roarin fun. There is no such thing as a boating license in Ohio, and from what I have seen over the past twenty years, attendance in boater education courses remains abysmally low.

The place where this truth is most visible, is the marina.
At Alum Creek resivor, we have a four lane dock. This means FOUR boats: (4) boats, IIII boats... Can launch at a time.

Unfortunately, this should be, orderly procession, is ususally a clusterf*ck of idiots, who graduated from the zig-zag school of trailer towing. Then, there are also those poor souls who suffer from boater bulimia, and believe their trailer is SOOO WIDE, that they must use two lanes, and take their half out of the middle.

For the most part, the boating community is pretty tolerant of these fools, and those of us who have been around for awhile, are quick to lend a helping hand at the docks. (Finding help on the water when you raise a distress flag, is quite a different experience, however, as the beer boaters don't know what a distress flag is, and will blast right past you and wave, while watching you sink.)

Anyway, the point to this choppy narrative, is that I am always amused when guys see me launching with my crew of little kids. They assume right off the bat, that I am inexperienced, and in need of their help. While I appreciate their kind hearted attempts at chivalry, I am also offended by the assumed incompetence, because of my gender.

It has given me great pleasure, on hundreds of occasions, to back that baby into the lake, with precision accuracy, while my little swabbys jump to their posts, and launch our little pink Pocket yacht with enviable expertise.

The comments and expressions over the years have been priceless.



But, no one is perfect, no matter how hard we may try...and much to my chagrin, yesterday, I made a classic beer boater blunder.

I forgot to put the plugs back in the boat after our last trip.
What are plugs, you ask? Why plugs are the little corks in the back of the hull, that keep the boat from...
S
I
N
K
I
N
G

Oh, yes, my blogger friends. It was everything you might imagine; Mom and her two little tykes, toolin out on the lake, in the trajectory of a line graph, identical to President Bush's approval ratings.

It was not a pretty sight.

At first, I thought something was wrong with the engine, as I could not get enough power to make the bow plane out, so I checked the hold, and saw the water rising fast.

"Great Green Goddess, we're SINKING!"
"Kids, get the weight to the front!"
Bilge Pump:ON
Then, I did one of my famous 180 degree spins, full power, with her nose straight up in the air, like Camilla Parker Bowles, and flew for the beach, right thru the no wake zone, at top speed.

I felt like Quint, in the movie JAWS, when he pushes the Orca's engines past their breaking point, as the water is pouring in. HA!
HOOPER: "Quint! Quint! Shut it Down! She can't take anymore!"
QUINT: "Shadd-UP!" arghhh, matey. As he presses his shoulder into the already maxed out throttle.

We sped right past several shocked on lookers, ran her aground, and did a quick underwater repair job.

After that, we had a lovely day of boating, tubing, and swimming, complete with a slightly soggy picnic lunch.

What a way to beat the heat!