The Good Life......

Spend a glorious night in New Orleans with my beautiful wife this weekend!!

Yea for me.....

We went with my friend and attorney Mike Ratliff and his squeeze and we had a most wonderful time.

Dinner reservations at 9:30 at John Besh's Restaurant August and it was fab.

I had lamb three ways (which was braised shoulder, fried tenderloin and grilled chops) and Paige had speckled trout that was pan fried with a crust. I think it all went rather well.

Our plans were to go "out" after that but unfortunately, we're so old we just went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Oh well, there's always next month!!

On a more normal note, we had very good church yesterday. And even my daughter showed up and sat with me - that was very cool!!

Life feels so much better when everything clicks. And for me, church is a big part of everything.

We get into rhythms in life, some good - and some not so good, but when it's all working together it just sings.

Which is how it is right now.

As I approach Holy Week, I am optimistic that life is good and I am in a very good place.

And there is not much more a boy can ask for!

Except maybe the Powerball hitting for me.

Peace!

MOM

It's been 3 weeks since she's been gone and I haven't quite gotten used to the idea yet.

Paige told me last night that when she was shopping in Louisiana yesterday, that she kept looking for things for her. I do the same thing. I guess it's just habit.

Last Saturday, my beautiful wife and I went and scattered her ashes on my father's grave - well, half of them anyway.....the other half I put on her parents grave (my wife's great idea!!)

So I guess everything is done now with the exception of a headstone in the family cemetary. I guess even though you're not buried there, it's always good to mark your passage through this world for those that follow.

I still haven't really shed a tear over all this. Which is kind of my nature, but I'm still assuming that sooner or later it's going to hit me. Hard.

I guess I'll just have to wait.

And I have no idea where that will come. But I'll keep my eye out for it.....

I wanted to share what my friend and pastor, Little Eddie read at her memorial service because it was what she asked to have read. And I thought it was perfect - so I'm reminding everyone that this needs to be read at mine, when (and if)I go.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep,
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on the snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn's rain,
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of qutet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night,
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die....

Rest in Peace Mom, you deserve it more than anyone else I know.

Peace

Apocolypse Now? (or rampaging republicans on the loose!)

A few thoughts after the "health care bill" passed.....

There has been an awful lot of right wing "ohmygodism" going on. People screaming at each other, people tearing up other people's shit - quite frankly, we're just acting like ugly americans......

And as you all know, I'm a liberal, left-wing whacko in the mold of Jesus Christ. I'm all about helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and especially healing the sick.

But just a reminder, I'm also a southern boy. Which means I like to pamper my woman, be nice to small kids and dogs and I always carry a gun.

And I will shoot somebody.

Just for fun sometimes.

And lord help you if I get close to my arsenal. I could defend against and entire herd of you rampaging republicans if need be.

So let's play nice.

And then I won't have to shoot you.

Peace!!

Guilty? I Think Not!

I assume that each and every one of you knows that I love my wife more than I love breathing.

I would die for her but I have so much more fun living for her.

I spend as much time as I can trying to make her life easier and bringing a smile to her face.

Those things may take the form of me cooking for her, buying things for her or just trying very hard to be considerate by listening to her and not complaining to her about all the shit in my life.

I truly try hard to be the best husband/best friend/lover/companion in the world for her.

And I do it, not as a job or something I feel I have to do in order to keep the peace - but instead I do it as a fruit of my love for her.

It is truly my priviledge and honor to love her - and I try to make that love as active as possible.

So imagine my horror as I was awakened this morning at 4am by her..........

You see, she was FURIOUS with me.

Me, who lives my life as described above as well as I can.

And why, you ask, was she furious with me?

It was a dream.

She had a dream.

A bizzzzzaaaaarrrrrreeeeee dream wherein I was hiding from her at a fraternity party while she was frantically looking for me. No one was helping her find me.......she caught glimpses of me from time to time but I always went in the wrong direction.

She had her clothes on backwards and apparently was looking all disheveled.

She even ran into her old college boyfriend there and was trying to warn me he was there but she was innocent of any complicity in the meeting.

Even my friend Chris Bowen apparently threw her in a raging river to keep her from finding me.

And she was mad.

So my question is..........what's a boy to do?

Help me. All I was doing was sleeping. Honest!!!

Peace?

Good Luck!

Memorialized

I was so very blessed by my mother's memorial service yesterday.

It was a good service - very uplifting.

I was very humbled by the outpouring of love and support I received from everyone.

I am continually amazed at the grace that Little Eddie Rester dishes out without even trying. He preached a beautiful service and the music was quite amazing even if I did pick the songs.

Surrounded by what family I have left and a boatload of wonderful friends, I was lifted up and held firmly.

I'm not sure what I would have done without my beautiful wife. She as so gracious and amazing about everything. I am truly in good hands and my mother was right to know that she needen't worry ever again because I will always be taken care of.

Much better than I probably deserve!

About 20 or so friends took me to the Mahogany Bar afterwards and we told stories of my mother and we laughed and cried a little. But it is exactly what she wanted so there is a sort of heavenly sanction about the whole thing!

Anyway, I am blessed beyond measure and now I have to settle into life without her and my taking care of her. That will become a blessing in time, but for now, I seem to be walking in a fog.

So thanks to all of you that are the lights in that fog for me. I truly don't know how people that don't have so many friends are able to deal with things like this without going crazy.

Maybe they don't.......

I got so many e-mails and phone calls and I just appreciate more than you know everyone reaching out in this time to me. She would have been so very happy to know that many folks thought well of her.

And I know she's in a much better place now, finally able to rest and relax I hope.

My first thought when I got the news was I wonder who greeted her when she crossed over.......so many questions that we'll never know the answers to until it's over - but I am comforted by the promises that all will be well.

So I say unto you - PEACE.

God Bless My Guns

Borrowed this from Dr. Zero.........

The Second Amendment is once again in the news, as the Supreme Court considers a case that would invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to apply it to the states, striking down restrictive state and local gun-control laws.

I wish the Supreme Court would do more than rule the Second Amendment applies to the states. It’s long past time the last, ridiculous cobwebs of ambiguity were cleared away from the right to keep and bear arms. Gun control has been simmering on low heat for a while, after boiling over in the Nineties. We should clear it off the Constitutional stove altogether. We have better things to do than slip into another bitter, tedious argument about whether the government can interfere with our right, and duty, to defend ourselves.

The notion that citizens have no good reason to be armed, because the State can protect them from violent crime, is one of the most dangerous lies our government has fed its subjects.

The government reduces crime through the police and court systems, but no matter how tirelessly the police work, there is very little chance they can actively defend you from assault. There aren’t enough of them, and there never could be. The very areas of privacy that allow us to relax with our friends and families will always be soft targets for criminals… unless we fortify them ourselves.

Citizen access to firearms has reduced crime rates time and again, but this is more than a matter of practicality. It’s a question of principle. The people of an orderly nation surrender the business of vengeance to the government, replacing it with the rule of law. They cannot be expected to surrender the right of defense. The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child.

The Western nations which have abandoned this essential understanding of an individual’s right to self-defense have become rotting orphanages filled with dependent children. They’re not dealing very well with the invasion of a determined ideology that has complete confidence in its own righteousness, and few reservations about using violence to assert itself. Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements.

The Second Amendment is a concrete expression of the American birthright of independence. With the right of self-defense bargained away, our rights to speak and vote give us modest influence in a collective. The Founders wanted more, and better, for us.

Sometimes liberals sneer at the idea we might keep arms against government tyranny, because a bunch of pistol-packing Tea Party types have no chance of repeating the success of the Revolution against a modern military force. This completely misses the point.

A disarmed populace has little choice but to obey orders. If the population is armed, a tyrant’s forces have to do more than just brandish their weapons… they’d have to start pulling triggers. Victory for a righteous populace would come in the military’s refusal to pull those triggers. Tyranny should never be easy. Of course, it should never come to that again, in the United States. As long as the population is armed, this is an understanding, and a duty… not an assumption.

The right to keep and bear arms is a crucial intersection of liberty and obligation. A gun owner is entrusted with the solemn duty to tend his weapons carefully and securely. In accepting this duty, we remove the destiny of our loved ones from the hands of madmen, and it is no longer measured by the distance of a friendly police car from our homes. It would be a mark of our maturity as a nation if we stopped telling ourselves that freedom can exist in the absence of responsibility… or danger.

The shards of those illusions carry sharp edges, when they shatter.

So in conclusion - I will shoot your ass if you fuck with me or mine.

That is all.

Peace!

And Then There Was One

Death, it's final to those of us left behind....

Been through it before and it sucks each time. But this time it is different.

It's different because I used to be the only child of an only child - now I'm just THE only child left.

It's still too raw to even contemplate so there won't be any deep philosophical meanderings.....yet.

I haven't even found any emotion yet. Seen tinges of it here and there but no emotion.

Maybe it's because the brain works so fast and hard to make sure that everything gets done in time.

In time for what.......she's gone???

Luckily I can speak for guilt. I have none. I had none with my father either. And as I have learned in life, that is a blessing beyond measure.

I spent time with my mother. Not nearly as much as she would have liked, but considering the blistering pace of life these day, I did fine.

I sat with her as she ate the night she passed away. She was complaining that I fed her too much - but if I didn't, she would have complained that I didn't feed her enough!!

That was her way.

She loved me and was so happy for me that I had finally found the woman of my dreams and somehow got her to love me back. She was a joy to be around mostly - all the staff at the nursing home adored her. She was always smiling and happy to see whoever showed up. The folks from church that went around to visit her always commented on how sweet she was to them.

And as a son, I have no complaints. None.

My friends growing up loved both of my parents but my mother was especially close to so many of them. They all called her momma too!

My pastor and I were talking about "stuff" for the funeral and he asked me to tell some stories so I told him that she was the one that let us smoke in the house, bought us beer and even tried pot from one night just for fun.......and he laughed and said, "OK, tell me some OTHER stories"!

But that was just her way. She never saw what all the fuss was about marijuana - she said it just made her sleepy!!

She told me stories of her youth - how they used to have to drive up and blow the horn for the moonshiner's to bring them fruit jars full of the elixer because if they got out of the car, he would shoot them. She spoke of coming up in a segregated world but how her family always helped "the colored folks" and explained all the ways they did that and got in trouble from the "good" church folks for their trouble.

She always seemed a bit sad to me. As if her life hadn't worked out as well as she had hoped. She never mentioned a word of that to me but I sensed it all the same.

I respected her, which as I think back on it, was probably my greatest gift to her.

She was always the youngest of her family.

And she was just about the last one left.....

I guess now we can all start working on being the "old folks" and telling stories from the rip-roaring 60's and 70's. You know, the time before computers and cell phones and back when the po-po would just take your beer from you and drink it themselves....

Ah, the good ole days when we had things like parents.

Goodbye mom, I'll miss you.

expounded.......

By Golly, "they" were right this time!

It's very hard to be a blogger and a facebooker at the same time.

Just about the time I sit down to expound on a clever thought, I find that thought is now stale because it's already been of facebook for hours.

What's a boy to do???

So tune in later while I go out and search for interesting tidbits of something to entertain me with.

See you next month!!

Peace