Weird

The weirdest thing just happened -- my 16-year-old called just to talk! And not to ask me for money or a ride or to buy her something! She's upset about her ex-boyfriend and apparently needed to let off some steam about it. I'm totally flattered.

Fallen Hero/Fallen Soldier

On Monday, June 26, 2006, Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar, 30, died of injuries he suffered while conducting combat operations in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province. Thank you, SS Plouhar, for your sacrifice for the ideals of our country. May you rest in peace.

I'm So Ugly

I hate myself because I'm so ugly. My features aren't so bad but my skin quality is just awful. Every now and then I start to think I'm pretty, but then I see a photo of myself and I realize, 'No.' My love for my husband includes a certain amount of gratitude that he thinks I'm attractive; that he even loves me at all. How silly of me to even think someone else might want me! How silly of me to be all mopey about Joe. Like I'd ever stand a chance with him.

Here's What I Should Have Said

When I saw the candy and the coke:

Could I talk to you a minute? (they go outside)

"The complications of diabetes are really severe. I don't want you to go through all that. You're actually pretty important to me, and you have been for several years now. It's one of life's little ironies, I suppose, that you live on my street and my husband gets to be your friend, and all I get is look up at your window when I drive by. The universe mocks me. "

"Be that as it may, I still need to know that you are okay in there. I want you to be doing well. I want you to be around for a while. I don't want you to be killing yourself with this crap that you are eating. "

I didn't spill my guts like that, though I did take away his candy and his coke, and I said, "Candy bars? Coke? What are you thinking?"

My Lai Massacre

On March 16, 1968, a bunch of American soldiers wiped out hundred of villagers of Son My village. Old men, old women, young wives and children -- all killed. There was a huge outcry, of course, when it all came to light.

Do you ever think what would make a bunch of normal young guys snap like that? Most of our guys aren't crazy psychos.

Here's why -- because in Vietnam you couldn't tell who the enemy was. They looked just like civilians. They dressed just like civilians. After a day of shooting at American soldiers, they'd go home to their villages and pretend to be innocent bystanders. Those old men and old women, maybe they weren't carrying guns, but they knew where their rifle-carrying sons were, and as soon as our soldiers' backs were turned, they knew their boys would come out and kill them.

The same thing is going on in Iraq just now. Sometimes our guys snap and kill innocent civilians. But are they really that innocent? They know where the roadside bombs are planted. They know where the insurgents are. By not saying anything, they become complicent in the things that happen.

What if they tortured us like we torture them?

So, they found the bodies of our two soldiers, Pfc. Thomas Tucker and Pfc Kristian Menchaca. They had been tortured to death, mutilated so badly that it was impossible to visually ID them (probably while alive), and beheaded. I figured it would end this way. Probably the whole world did. But where's the global protest? Where's the outrage?

The things that our soldiers did to detainees at Abu Ghraib don't even come close to what the terrorists did to our guys. Yet THAT was all over the news for months. Thomas and Kristian experienced real torture. Real torture is the death of a thousand cuts. It's having your eyes gouged out, your tongue cut out, the bones of your fingers and hands broken one by one.

Wouldn't it be great if we'd found Thomas and Kristian alive, and they told us 'horror stories' of being made to crawl around naked on all fours, and being forced to stand on a box with a hood over their heads, and not having been allowed to attend church service or have spiritual reading material? Oh, the terrible atrocity of the insurgency, we'd say.

Those bastards. I want those guys taken down. I want us to pour our whole hearts into defeating them. Let the hammer strike, and let it strike hard.

A teenage snake

Yesterday Kendall rescued a snake from the little kitty. I hate the little kitty. She kills the wildlife in our garden. I'd rather have a snake than her. It's a small snake, but not as small as the baby one Little Kitty killed last year. It's like a teenage snake. I didn't let it go right away because it would just become a cat toy again. I built a lovely terrarium for it in the back yard from that large glass case out there. Lotsa dirt and plants. I bought live crickets for it, too. Today I went to Petco and bought a set of plastic nail caps. If I can get them glued on Little Kitty tonight, I'll let the snake go free.

It's Over Now

What do you do when what you love has gone? You had something once, something beautiful and wonderful, but it's gone now and will never return.

It must have been love, but its over now
It must have been good, but I lost it somehow
It must have been love but its over now
from the moment we touched till the time had run out

Like gray-haired Charles remembering Roxaboxen. Like me and Joe on the sailboat. Like my childhood, and my children's chidhood.

It must have been love, but it's over now
It was all that I wanted, now I'm living without
It must have been love, but it's over now
It's where the water flows, it's where the wind blows

Rhiannon has gone to Minnesota to be a camp counselor. In October she'll go to bootcamp, and sometime after that, to active duty. What if she never comes back? How can I live without her?

Here's some good news from Iraq

Reported by Scientific American:

"In the 1990s the Garden of Eden was destroyed. The fertile wetlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were diked and drained, turning most of 15,000 square kilometers of marsh to desert. By the year 2000, less than 10 percent of that swampland--nearly twice as big as Florida's Everglades--remained. But reflooding of some areas since 2003 has produced what some scientists are calling the "miracle of the Mesopotamian marshes"--a return of plants, aquatic life and even rare birds to their ancestral home."

You can't tell from reading the piece who diked and drained the fertile wetlands, or what might have happened in 2003 that made their restoration possible. Weird. You'd think that would be important in understanding the whys and wherefores of land management and restoration in the area. Or is even Scientific American driven by political ideology, such that they can't even bring themselves to say the words?

Media is Naive and Gullible

Here's letter the OpinionJournal received from a U.S. military officer stationed in Iraq. He asked that his name be withheld.

*** QUOTE ***

I am currently stationed here in Iraq and have been here for the past 11 months; I am an adviser to the Iraqis and meet them on a daily basis. I have been in many locations in the country and am involved on a daily basis together with the Iraqis fighting the insurgency.

The media manipulation by the insurgents is brilliant and extremely effective. The press has become a puppet for the insurgents; the insurgents know exactly what they are doing with these "massacres" (quoted here because the investigation has not been completed, nor have any charges been filed) and the political nightmare they will cause the current administration. Bodies are produced for film, and there is zero fact-checking by the media--the media eat up this "news" like there is no tomorrow. A couple of hundred bucks paid by the insurgents to a few guys/ladies in the town where this "massacre" occurred to make up some bad news and pine for the BBC's or CBS's or whoever's cameras is a nice month's salary for many and money well spent by the insurgency.

All the Arabs (Sunni and Shia), Kurds and Chaldeans I have come to know well here will tell you that Arabs are emotional people who tend to exaggerate. A lot. Experience has shown that "50 insurgents hiding out in XX location" is five, at most 10. "Three hundred dead" at the morgue is at most 40. "A huge cache with WMD" is 45-50 weapons. It is a cultural norm and is accepted over here as a norm. It is reported in the West as fact. With no fact-checking.

When we convoy, all in the town/village know when and where there is a bomb/IED/VBIED that is targeting coalition forces. This is not so true in Baghdad, but in the outlying towns all know. What is the culpability for those people in the village/town? Would the Marines be guilty in the U.S. under the same circumstances?

I do not know whether or not the Marines are guilty. A Marine's job is to "close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver," and I can guarantee its effectiveness. But the insurgents have the ear of the press. Hopefully the politics will be put aside for the investigation and the facts will be told, whatever they may be.

*** END QUOTE ***

Piriformis Syndrome - Oh the pain!

My piriformis syndrome / hip bursitis is getting better. Every week the distance I'm able to walk increases. Last weekend I worked in the yard for a couple hours! I feel so encouraged. Maybe sometime in the future I will actually be pain free.

Here's the story on this: Nine months ago I was doing calisthenics in front of the TV when something in my hip went 'pop'. Ever since then I've hurt. As the months went by the pain slowly increased and I became less and less able to get around. Finally my family insisted I see a doctor. The orthopedic surgeon I went to diagnosed piriformis syndrome and said physical therapy should give me 60 to 70% relief of symptoms so off I went. Twelve P/T sessions and over a thousand dollars later there was no improvement. The pain was as bad as ever. People told me that acupuncture often improved pain symptoms -- gets the body's chi in harmony and all that, so I gave that a try. I did four sessions and each one freaked me out. I can't stand the thought of all those needles stuck in me. It didn't hurt but it was really hard to just lie there like a sick porcupine unable to move. I maybe could have 'stuck it out' (hee hee) if it helped, but it didn't, so back to the orthopedic surgeon I went for a cortisone injection. No perceivable result from that either. I tried a Rolfing session. That felt wonderful while it was going on, but afterwards the pain was there just as bad as before. NSAIDs (like ibuprofen and acetominophen) worked just fine to control the pain and let me get some sleep, but I don't want to take those things long term. They are killers in the long term.

While doing research on this problem on the internet, I bumped into a reference to a book, 3 Minutes to a Pain Free Life. The commentator had had good results from the exercises prescribed within. I bought a used copy for five bucks on Amazon. Lo and behold, the exercises are working for me, too. Two exercises specifically are reliving my pain: 1) squatting with toes turned out and 2) the yoga position called The Cobra. I do these several times a day. The author suggests holding them for 30 seconds each, but I hold them for a minute or two. I can feel the muscles and tendons relaxing, stretching, and letting go.