Well, Bart's back, if I hadn't mentioned it before. Thursday morning, while waiting for Vicki to get back from the dentist, I was organizing Brian's Ipod for him and I heard the sound of tinkling liquid. It was too loud to be coming from the litter box. I turned toward the stairs, and there he was, picking up where he left off before we sent him to live with Brian.
"BART!!!!!!!!!!!!" I yelled. He immediately stopped and looked at me to see how serious I was. Then he took off up the stairs.
With good reason -- we said if he didn't stop we were going to have to put him down. I grabbed him and put him in the litterbox, then sopped up the mess and hit it with the enzyme. I didn't tell Vicki as we were headed off that day to see Brian off in Indianapolis for his deployment to Iraq. Figured she had enough on her mind.
I put one of the CatScrams at the bottom of the stairs pointing across the hallway to encourage him not to linger in the hallway. It seems to be working. He skitters by it, and there have been no more... ahem... "accidents" since then.
We went to see Brian off -- there was a special dinner for families of reservists who had been activated basically to let us know "hey, he's no longer a reservist, here's what you can expect now that your boy is an active Marine". Plus, how to get in touch with him, and a little about what he'd be doing.
Well, what he'll be doing is a lot more involved than training Iraqi soldiers and police, it seems. As a matter of fact, he seems to be part of the CAG, or Civilian Affairs Group. He'll be learning some of the language, and his job will be basically working with Iraqi civilians to re-build, re-construct -- in other words... just excactly the kind of target the terrorists like the best.
< /RANT ON >
This speaks volumes about our enemy. What should be the safest job for us is, in fact, the most dangerous. These people want Iraq to fail and fall in to their hands so badly that they use -- as their primary tactic -- the killing of civilians -- to keep chaos and disorder in place. The hope is that people will become frustrated with the fact that the new government can't keep the peace and either vote the terrorists in or simply let the terrorists take over.
Any group of a few thousand loosely organized people in any country who are willing to stoop to this dispicable level of -- ahem, "engagement" -- can, over time, cause the same amount of chaos being caused in Iraq by these villians. People don't seem to understand that.
The gleeful Bush/America bashers like to point to each little bombing and say, "look, it has failed" -- which is all the freaking terrorists want. All they have to do is kill a few people a day in some sort of dramatic fashion (explosion, beheading....) and it will run every day as a top news story. This is easy for people who have brainwashed people to blow themselves up in the name of Islam. The daily news stories magnify their puny successes -- and over time this myopic view will cause public sentiment to shift away from getting rid of them or further marginalizing them, and in the end have us turning the reins right over to these folks. If you think Jerry Fallwell et al are bad, stop and consider this.... how many dreaded Christian-Righters have you heard about kidnapping aid workers and cutting their heads off -- filming it for the world to see? Think about that next time you want to draw some sort of moral equivalence between Al Queda and the American Religious Right. I'm not a part of it, but get real!
Do Iraqis have to do things our way? No. But get serious. There are several thousand black-hearted evil people over there that want to run Iraq THEIR way -- and given a choice, I think the other 20 million+ Iraqis would take our way over theirs. And we're not even insisting on that.
< /RANT OFF >
Sorry, I don't usually rant on this blog -- but it couldn't be helped this time.
Ok, well Saturday I ran around and bought stuff -- food for Colorado and a few other things for the house. Then we went to see Gaelic Storm at 7 at Jesse. They were fantastic. Loved 'em. They are all extremely talented. I must say, though, that I think Ellery -- the fiddle player and probably the quietest member of the band is the one who really puts the sparkle on their sound and puts them over the top. It's not that she gets out in front of the music and takes over, but her playing weaves and winds around the band holding it all together with a silver thread.
Sunday I spent making up trail mix and dinners for the trip, and waterproofing Sam's backpack. Hung out with the neighbors for a while, then came back home. Kevin and Adriene came over and we watched some "reality" (shudder) competition on the Food Network. The little brother of a friend of Kevin's was on it... but he was eliminated last night.
And... that's the way it's been.
No comments:
Post a Comment