hrraatth

10:36 am: Intimacy

Something I found in a really obscure place made me want to share:

"Strangers rarely give away anything about themselves.  Lovers must trust each other with full knowledge of their true selves, and be comfortable being naked in each other's presence.  Physical nakedness is relatively simple for our sexual drives carry us forward like a rising tide.  But to be naked and unashamed together in spirit –- that is so much more risky, hence so much more difficult."

... and yet so very essential. When you are wearing a mask any relationship you try to maintain is based on a lie, and true intimacy is impossible.

12:13 pm: Me, V6m5
Gadzooks ... halfway through my sixth decade. It feels like I should have something wise and thoughtful to say, but I don't and so I will cheat by quoting G. K. Chesterton:

Contradictions are just the truth,
standing on its head
to get our attention.

Time passes, and the world changes, and my truth now is that you young whippersnappers are now truly in charge of the world because the world I knew and controlled for the last forty years or so no longer exists. So go ahead and take charge and see if you can do better than my generation has done. I hope so, because if you can't we are all in for it.

11:39 am: In Memoriam: Emene Hâlenur Akbay
It is exactly a year ago that our Hâle passed on. In some ways it seems longer, because in a way we really lost her when we had to put her in a nursing home in April 2007. But today is the official anniversary of her passing.

Godspeed old gal. We shall remember you fondly always, and miss you until Allah (or Yahweh or however He prefers to be called) joins us all again.

03:40 pm: Thirty-three years .... how time does fly.

I found this on one of Randy Cassingham's sites and it is just too appropriate to pass up the chance to hand it along, today being the 33rd anniversary of my official wedding to my wife and life partner Lale Akbay.

Thanks for the memories, canim, sevgelim.
GPat.

05:55 pm: A fable for our times ...

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected.

I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys!

Now you can understand the WALL STREET BAILOUT PLAN!

04:16 pm: Stick a fork in me ... I'm done.

---

Awright awreddy ... in Bullwinkle's immortal phrase:
      "Gee Rocky, this time for sure."

I hereby finally declare myself to be officially [if involuntarily] retired.  Unless, of course, someone comes to me saying "I have this neat job that I really hope you will take."  Yeah right.  As if.  After almost a year and a half of being jerked around by HR jerks, finally I am saying no mas.

And ohboy does it feel good!

Now maybe I can get on with finding out what it is that The Boss has in store for me.  Who knows?  Least of all me!  But the neat and cozy thing about faith is that I have no burning need to know.  All will be revealed in the fullness of time, whenever He decides I'm ready to know.

The adventure begins!  I'll keep y'all posted.    (Really!)

---

01:34 pm: Tempus fudge it

Golly ... time really does fly while you're not looking. Now that I'm semi-officially retired [retarded?], a couple of body shops have pinged me about the possibility of jobs, but while I haven't brushed them off I'm not going to lose sleep anymore over whether or not anything comes of it.

In fact, we're just back from a week in North Myrtle Beach, SC. I spent a huge amount of time sitting on the beach, and another huge amount of time doing something I enjoy and have not done in years: recreational reading. In fact, I went through a Mary Higgins Clark mystery, a Michael Creighton techno-thriller, and four Nicholas Sparks books that were in the cabin in the space of four days.

Whee! I have not been so relaxed any time in the last four years!

And finally, in the milestone department, as of March I really have come to be sixty-four. Who'da thunk it? Certainly not I ... but here I am. The Universe really does appear to have a well developed and highly active sense of humor.

03:10 pm: Time has flown -- when do we start with the fun part?
I find it difficult to imagine that it has been almost ten months since my last posting!

That one concerned our Hâle ... who passed on just two weeks ago on Thursday December 27th. It was sudden and relatively painless; she was OK one day and two days later was gone from sudden and complete kidney failure. It is sad in a way, but I'm confident it is a great relief to her to be freed from the non-functional meat suit in which she had been trapped. So godspeed old gal, and bon voyage, and we'll all be up to see you bye and bye.

I'm still unemployed, and it's way beyond the four to six months I said I would give it. Gee Rocky, this time for sure ... if the one or two irons I have in the fire go cold, I'm packing it in and calling this retirement.

Happy New Year to one and all ... in many ways 2008 won't have to work hard to be better than last year.

:|

12:07 pm: Endings and beginnings
We have finally come to the realization that we are unable to reliably provide the 24x7 minute-to-minute supervision that she requires to our Hâle. Accordingly yesterday, after thirteen months and a day (but who's counting) of trying to care for her at home, we have put her into full time nursing care.

It's a wrenching decision with which we have agonized for all of the past year. By coincidence (? no such thing!) today I found a link to a discussion of Tolkien's 'Gift of the One to men' which lays out pretty well how I have come to feel about it all.

So pray for us all, and especially for our Hâle, who I earnestly hope will be granted the Gift of the One without having to endure much more. And also for Lâle and I, that we may now have a new beginning: of a life where we can at long last become the prime foci for each other.

10:36 am: Here we go again ...
WOW!
Lotsa time, lots of events since last post.

One thing unchanged: Hâle's condition (and thus ours) continues unchanged or gradually worse, as we approach one full year of attempting to care for her at home. As my brother Roy not only would but has said: "the thing is to do is to try and do the most loving thing you can at all times". But alas, the most loving thing is frequently far from the most pleasant or comfortable thing.

One major thing has changed: I was laid off from my job at LandAmerica on Groundhog day. Bummer. This is now my fourth time around the job-hunt loop, and it gets less fun every time. I plan to give it the old college try for 4 to 6 months, after which I may just accept that the Universe is telling me to take early retirement. So wish me luck with the hunt, and we will see what the Boss has planned for me.

A quip I heard somewhere seems appropriate:
"I know the God won't give me anything to deal with that
is beyond my capacity. I just wish He didn't have so much
confidence in my abilities!"

01:29 pm: This guy's a hoot !
Check out WaiterRant, and see if you don't find yourself being described somewhere!

04:54 pm: Being a merkin ...
Here's a link to a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed article by the Sci-Fi author Ray Bradbury. Give it a peek and see if he doesn't make you stop and think about things.

Don't be scared, now, thinking can be fun and shouldn't be a threat. Let yourself envision opening some windows in your mind and letting some fresh ideas blow through.

05:03 pm: Doged a bullet, we did.
Ernesto has come and gone, and slid far enough east of the predicted track that "all" we got was a bit of a blow and a lot of rain. But my tulip poplar trees were brittle as glass from the drought, so I was worried we might lose some big chunks. Fortunately, while we got lots of small to medium stuff down, nothing big fell. I just spent 5 hours picking up 8 or 10 wheelbarrow loads of branches and twigs and such, from just the front yard. Two side yards and the back still to go ... whew.

01:49 pm: Same old same old.
Our lives continue to be about taking care of Hâle 24/7 ...
since the middle of March to now is 4 1/2 months.

Seems longer, somehow. No end in sight.
I'll have more to say if/when I have a life again.

04:23 pm: The road goes ever on and on ...
Since my last post, we have been dealing with the unpleasant realization that our Hâle has descended into dementia to a truly alarming degree. Bad: she would always just ignore anything anyone said that she didn't like ... now she ignores everything because she has no short-term memory. Worse: she was always subborn and unreasonable ... now she has lost the capacity to reason.

What triggered our sudden realization was that she fell and broke her arm. And doesn't understand why we are being mean and making her wear an uncomftorbal and ugly cast on her arm. Which cast she sets about trying to remove every time we leave her alone for a few minutes.

Gaahhh. We tried adult daycare, but Lâle is getting no sleep because she has to sleep on the cough in the den to intercept Hâle when she wakes up and heads for the kitchen looking for a knife to cut the cast off. Saturday afternoon, she asked "Why is this thing on my arm? Let's take it off." And we explained about her broken arm bone, and on and on. And 5 to 10 minutes later, same question. And again. And again.

This morning she said to me: "Pray for me that Allah will let me die."

I wish I didn't agree with her, but I do.

Pray for us all.

02:19 pm: WHEW! another Christmas survived.

Not to sound Scroogey, but Christmas can be quite a load and we had a rather frantic but successful Christmas this year. It sneaks up on you ... I had to work last Monday and Tuesday, so on my first day off I was wandering around the house with my first cup of tea and wondering what I should be doing when I realized that while I had got the candles in the windows already, I had NOT set up the tree! (Gasps of horror) So I busied myself with getting down lights and building my virtual tree.

Friday evening zeroband called from JFK on Long Island to say he had made it back to North America, but was connected to DCA while his car was at Dulles. So we hopped into the van at 23:30 and headed for DCA. I'll leave it to him to tell the long and gory tale, suffice it to say that we made it back to Richmond 04:00 Christmas Eve. Later Saturday (after we groaned our way our of bed) was a whirlwind of package wrapping and food preparation, punctuated by my yard guy showing up for one last whirl of picking up leaves and debris from the yard ... whew.

But Christmas day was a tribute to the benefits of all the planning and preparing we had done, so we were able to have the obligatory huge feast and then open presents and just sit around talking and reminiscing and enjoying each other's company. It was a very Merry Christmas indeed .. and here's hoping you all had a good day and will have a jolly holiday season and a happy New Year.

07:51 am: A moment of silence, please ...
Veterans' Day is a day dedicated to honor all men and women, both living and deceased, who have served in the United States Armed Forces. Some willingly, some reluctantly, but all served and to those who say they were stupid and wars can never be justified I can only say that those who served have bought your freedon to say and feel such things with their blood.

Some history many of you don't know:

In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, an armistice was signed. After four years of bitter war, the "war to end all wars" was over, and the world rejoiced and celebrated.

November 11, 1919 was set aside as Armistice Day in the United States, to remember the sacrifices that men and women made during World War I in order to ensure a lasting peace. On Armistice Day, soldiers who survived the war marched in a parade through their home towns. Politicians and veteran officers gave speeches and held ceremonies of thanks for the peace they had won.

Congress voted Armistice Day a federal holiday in 1938, 20 years after the war ended. But Americans realized that the previous war would not be the last one. World War II began the following year and nations great and small again participated in a bloody struggle. After the Second World War, Armistice Day continued to be observed on November 11.

In 1953, townspeople in Emporia, Kansas, called the holiday Veterans' Day in gratitude to the veterans in their town. Soon after Congress passed a bill introduced by a Kansas congressman renaming the federal holiday to Veterans' Day. In 1971 President Nixon declared it a federal holiday on the second Monday in November. It soon became apparent, however, that November 11 was a date of historic significance to many Americans. Therefore, in 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date.

Americans give thanks for peace on Veterans' Day. There are ceremonies and speeches and at 11:00 in the morning, many Americans observe a moment of silence, remembering those who fought for peace.

I shall pause this 11/11 at 11:00, and give thanks that I had the good luck to be born and to live in this great country. People from all over the world take incredible measures and brave incredible hardship to get here, becuse here in this land anyone with energy and initiative can start from absolutely nothing and by their own hard work raise themselves to where they can support themselves and their children and live a decent life free from want and fear.

And may God bless all those whose blood and toil has bought us this privilege.

09:02 am: Election day approaches
and so it's time for some relevant quotes on the subject.

Vote early and vote often.
-- Al Capone

In democracy it's your vote that counts;
in feudalism it's your count that votes.
-- Mogens Jallberg

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy,
but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter
a chance to do something stupid.
-- Art Spander

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies
to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule –
and both commonly succeed, and are right.
-- H.L. Mencken

I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper.
Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
-- Gore Vidal

Let's all prove Bill Vaughan wrong -- get off our asses and go VOTE !!
(Even though Virginia's candidates are living down to H.L. Menken's expectations.)

01:25 pm: Here we go again ...

Now it's Rita's turn to expose the extent to which our mighty gummint is unprepared at all levels. Without the storm even getting close, the patched-up levees in New Orleans are failing (again). Great job, Corps of Engineers, I'm sure you will be campaigning to get a bigger budget next year.

We can all forget about waiting for the gummint to do anything substantive in an emergency. Even if they were to spring instantly to work putting their plans into action, events have shown that those plans essentially boil down to saying: "It's gonna be bad and y'all need to go somewhere else." And when did any gummint bureaucrat ever start doing something without days and weeks of studies and committees and authorization from higher-level drones?

GO somewhere? Has anyone tried looking down from their helicopters on the hundreds of thousands of cars jamming all roads out of Houston and/or New Orleans? Apparently our omniscient gummint planners failed to consider that it might be a problem evacuatomg the fourth-largest city in the nation over exactly two interstate highways. Many of these people are now trapped on the road, with their cars either broken down from overheating (it is well over 100°F in Texas today) or simply out of gas. One wonders how many of these people will die when the storm actually hits and finds them still stuck on the Interstate as a result of following their gummit's advice.

I for one plan to expand my stock of emergency water and be sure I keep enough gas on hand to be able to make it to Fort Valley the next time the gummint's bureaucratic Bozos offer to "save" me.

As for Texas and Louisiana, may God help them all. They're gonna need it.

---

PS: there's an old saying that "God helps those who help themselves."
        Which sounds like pretty good advice these days.

08:38 am: I will lift up mine eyes ...
... unto the hills, from which cometh my help" Psalm 121:1

I'm just back from another trip up the hill to visit my brother, aka the Old Man On The Mountain, who turns 65 on Wednesday. It was brutally hot Saturday, so we basically hid from the heat and spent the time reminiscing about old times and old friends and family stories. As usual, I feel spiritually energized every time I go up the hill. It's largely because of the OMOTM, but he too says there is something about the hill itself that pours out positive energy.

He's getting himself used to the idea that he is too frail to risk spending the whole winter on the hill this year. As he puts it: "If I live as long as December I'm going to have to move off the hill by then." The up-side to this is that he will likely be moving in with his youngest son, who has bought himself one of those yuppie trophy houses with lots of room. And the OMOTM was saying as I got ready to leave, "Come this winter I'll be needing you to give me a ride up the hill to check on things."

Oh, darn ...   it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Please don't throw me in that brier patch Br'er Bear ...