Brave New World Revisited

Two great quotes from Brave New World Revisited which I think are quite timely for today even though they were written in 1958.

The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as though he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.
~Aldous Huxley

Under a scientific dictator education will really work—with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.
~Aldous Huxley

Ron Paul, the fresh breath of reason

I've been involved in a lively debate on government forced vaccines over at a skeptic blog. When I found this, I thought it was very timely to the discussions I've been having with my skeptic friends. Food for thought, folks.

(hat tip to Granny Miller for this link)

Um, do any of you watch television?

My fever is back. Just when I thought I had this thing licked, it crept back in on me today and I've spent a good bit of my day in the recliner in front of the television.

Tonight I watched a new episode of Law and Order. I'm a big fan of mysteries so I expected to at least be entertained. Let's just say it didn't work out that way. That liberal Obama mouthpiece called Law and Order had an episode where they charged a mother for MURDER because she didn't vaccinate her child for measles. The theory being, that the unvaccinated boy gave measles to a little girl and the little girl later died from measles. There were a plethora of plot holes. You could drive several 18-wheelers through them. For example, how did they know the little girl caught the measles from THAT boy? There were three other unvaccinated people that had measles, why weren't they equally culpable? How did they know the little boy didn't catch it from the little girl? You get the idea. It was ridiculous.

The propaganda during the "trial" for government control of our children was mind boggling. Not ONE mention of why a parent might choose to delay vaccinations. Not ONE mention of autism, just a condescending medical examiner saying that 'rarely there are complications'. That was IT!! That was the only presentation of the other side. Not ONE mention that the government doesn't have the right to force us to vaccinate. Not ONE mention that the government can not tell us how to raise our children!! There was even a snide comment about homeschooling in passing but they didn't 'go there' on this episode.

I'm going to stop now because my fever is sky high and I should be in the bed. So much for watching a little tv to get good and sleepy for bed. Thanks a lot, NBC.

By the way, who can I sue for this swine flu that is hanging on me like a cheap suit? I need someone to blame.

Mother's Day Thoughts?

MOM, DIVERT YOUR EYES! THIS POST IS NOT FOR YOU!!!

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OK, is the coast clear? Let's get on with it then. I've been lacking in 'get-up-and-go' these last few days so I've done a little more web surfing than usual. I came across this craft project at one of my favorite sites, Make and Takes, and I think I really MUST do this for my mom for Mother's Day!

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Mom, this is the honor system!! Don't click on that link!

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Everyone else, click on that link and tell me what you think. Or what you are doing for Mother's Day for your moms. Or what you think that project would look like with a couple of baby handprints etched on. I'm getting inspired to get up from this computer and make a trip to Hobby Lobby!

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Mom, I mean it! No peeking at the comments either!

Because I am bereft of anything more creative

Video Tour - Part 5

Video Tour - Part 6

This concludes our video tour mini series. Thank you and good night.

The Video Tour continues...

Part 3


Part 4

Two more parts to come...

Sunday on the homestead

It's a rare Sunday post but I'm not feeling well and I needed to do something to enjoy this fabulous weather and lift my feverish spirits. Yes, gentle readers, I have succumb to the Swine Flu Black Death Consumption the fever virus making its way through our homestead. So far I'm not as deathly ill as ALMOST EVERY MEMBER OF MY FAMILY but if patterns mean anything, tomorrow I should be perishing. This precipitated my desire to chronicle our work on the homestead now for posterity and to boost my legacy from a mere whiner about Obama to a loving wife, mother and expert homesteader. Work with me here.

So, shall we? This morning instead of going to church, I sucked ice and picked radishes. Ice helps fiery sore throats. But I digress. Those as some seriously good looking radishes, wouldn't you say?

Our bees are settling in nicely and I must admit that I love them! Amazingly I am no longer afraid and I find them utterly fascinating. The work ethic, the drive, the energy. It makes me tired and makes my fever go up. But, on less feverish days they're fun to watch.

Peaches! Loads of them! I plucked a bunch off at the beginning of our peach fruiting to keep the weight from breaking the branches. Since then new peaches have emerged but I'm going to go with it for now and watch for weight strain on the branches. I may have to thin them again.

Here is our chicken castle full of big, fat, happy hens. Another really fun animal to have around!

Because Poppy dressed them up like babies and strolled them in strollers while they were yet hatchlings, the original ladies are so tame they run to the edge of the enclosure and beg to be petted. Or fed. I prefer to think they love me for me and not for my chicken feed. The two new hens that joined the flock later thanks to Sherlock's generosity are quite the standoffish pair. You see, Sherlock, you need to put baby bonnets on them and stroll them around in strollers. It's Poppy's Guide to Chicken Taming 101.

Here is the dastardly Serial Chicken Killer (aka Shelby). When the chickens are having their fun out in the open, Shelby is not having fun chained to this tree. Shelby, you brought this on yourself and I refuse to feel guilty no matter how many sorrowful looks you give me when I point a camera in your direction.

Over in the garden the lettuce is looking delicious! It might make its way to a salad on my dinner table this week. Or not. Sickly mama, don't you know. It may be bottled spaghetti sauce over noodles all week.

Here is what happens when a flock of birds discovers your tantalizing strawberry patch.

Freckle lettuce! I don't know if its any good but I bought it during one of my many manic seed buying episodes in the winter. Can you see the freckles? Snazzy!

Turnips, radishes and carrots all reside here. The turnips look good but I don't know when to harvest them. Back to consult the books.

Kale, in all its many forms. I think I have three varieties. I've never eaten it before, but it sounds very health conscious to say you're growing Russian Red Kale, doesn't it? I want to appear very health conscious. (no wise cracks about the boat load of Cadbury Mini-Eggs I consumed recently)

Here is our next tray of seedlings to go out in the garden. They really should have gone out last week but I had a cake to bake, a day to throw away in the emergency room, and sickness popping faster than a bag of Orville Redenbacher in the microwave. Life happens, is what I'm saying.

And, the newest addition to the homestead... Skittles the worm composter bunny! Skittles is named Skittles because of my obsession with candy names. I tried to talk my boy into Cadbury Mini-Egg but he wouldn't go for it. We have had pets named Hershey, Nestle, Rolo, Sugar, Snickers, etc. ad nauseum. I don't know why I like candy names for pets but I do. We've gotten away from that in recent years with Coosa and Shelby but they were named before we got them and we didn't want to injure their psyche with a late in life name change. Therapy is just too expensive. Skittles the worm composter bunny has cherry red Skittle eyes which makes his name just perfect!

Because my voice is on its way out and because when you're the only well person in a house full of infectious disease you get bored and have to work hard for entertainment, Flibby is taking you on a video tour of our homestead. There are five parts to this video tour. These are the first two. I think Blogger would implode if I tried to upload all these pictures and the videos in the same post. Therefore, we'll do these first two and put the others in a separate post. I know you're on the edge of your seat!

Video Tour-Part 2

That's it for now. Back to ice sucking, Motrin dispensing, whine calming, smoothie fixing, and all around general dying.

Updated to add:

Here are Video Tours 3 & 4 as well as Video Tours 5 & 6

To see other great... and I do mean GREAT... gardens, hop over to the Peterson Clan's Garden Club!

Saturday ups and downs

Today was the beautiful bridal shower for a young couple in our church. I was in charge of the cake and I had great plans for a spectacular cake. Then the pestilence hit. This created a problem because my baby boy feels the need to become one with me never to part when he is not feeling well, even if I have a cake to decorate.

Cake Plan A had two tiers. Cake Plan A had a fancy pastel braided border. Cake Plan A would have been so great.

This is Cake Plan B. One layer. Simple, sweet and to the point. One has to whittle down one's delusions of cake grandeur when decorating with a whiny baby on one's hip. Ask me how I know.

(click to enlarge as long as you promise not to notice all the imperfections)

All in all, I'm pleased with how it turned out. I wanted to do more but I'm content with the compromises I had to make. The Lord is teaching me contentment. Pestilence is a good teacher.
When I arrived at home this is what I found. Poor girl.
She is so sick.
If you're keeping count, there are four kids plagued with illness and two still standing (fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that). Since this seems to be a particularly virulent strain of the Black Death, I am bracing myself for a full onslaught. It's not pretty.

Praying for sleep tonight and a happier, less feverish tomorrow.

How I LOATHE thee, Children's Hospital Emergency Room... let me count the ways

I hate, abhor, detest, loathe... really there is no word in the English language to adequately describe how much I DO NOT LIKE the emergency room at our local Children's Hospital. It's bad. Seriously bad.

My baby boy is very sick. So sick that his pediatrician sent us to the dreaded Children's Hospital Emergency Room yesterday afternoon. Hearing that news gave me a few more gray hairs, caused Mr. P to violate the speed laws on the interstate to get to us and caused abundant grief and worry for all the grandparents. You would think when you have a referral from your child's pediatrician because he thinks there is something serious going on, that you would receive priority treatment. Not so.

This may not be the case everywhere, but our Children's Hospital is the gathering place for all the people without insurance that are on government assistance. What this means is that people bring their children to the emergency room for ear infections, sore throats or well baby check-ups. You can imagine how this bogs down the emergency room for people who have actual emergencies!!

When we arrived there was a nice flat screen TV that flashed the expected wait times much like you see when standing in line at Dumbo in Disneyworld. It had color levels based on how serious they think your condition is. The red is seen immediately and then there are four other colors all the way down to green which is the 'perfectly-healthy-therefore-what-the-heck-are-you-doing-at-the-emergency-room' level. We were the third person in the emergency room when we arrived. Foreshadowing.

After TWO LONG HORRIBLE HOURS IN VERY UNCOMFORTABLE PLAGUE INFESTED CHAIRS ELBOW TO ELBOW WITH EVERY INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA we decided to sweetly ask the receptionist how much longer, for you see, when we had arrived the green level had flashed a wait time of one and a half hours. We had already exceeded that by thirty minutes and since my pediatrician had called ahead and explained our dire circumstances, I felt sure we were higher on the priority color flashing screen than green.

Silly me.

The receptionist informed us that we were considered green and there were twelve people ahead of us!!! TWELVE PEOPLE!!! We sweetly and with much grace informed the receptionist that we had already waited the one and a half hours posted for green people, even though we should not have been classified green, in my opinion. She, without looking up, pointed out the wait time for green was two hours and forty-five minutes.

I. Wanted. To. Throw. Something. At. Her. (but I didn't)

At this point I lost all sense of time and space. I have no idea how much longer we waited as the room grew more and more crowded with all brands of pestilence that we were inhaling into our otherwise healthy lungs. I could feel the microbes multiplying all around me. I couldn't take it anymore. I decided since we had been there FOR HOURS AND HOURS and my baby boy hadn't gone downhill, I would take my chances with him at home. We signed him out and left. If I need to take him to the emergency room again it will NOT be at Children's Hospital. A person could fall over and die in that place and they'd just step over you.

If this is a taste of socialized medicine, NO THANK YOU!

Prayers for my very sick little man, much appreciated.

Super Cuteness Revealed!

(photos pirated from Poppy's pictures because I am a photo pirate. It's who I am.)

Amen and amen!!

This is four minutes of Doug Phillip's speech before the Tea Party at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Can I get an amen?

You can download the speech in its entirety at behemoth.com. I strongly urge you to do so! This is a vital message to liberty loving, Bible believing Christ followers!

Something romantic

It's that time again! I'm doing a cake for a bridal shower next weekend and I need to come up with something spectacular. It's got to be dazzling! I want to do something really great. Help!! I need inspiration!

I've been on my favorite cake sites looking for just the right thing. I want something semi-formal and nothing at all silly. If I see one more cake with the bride dragging the groom to the church, I might just gouge my eye out.

Here are some contenders. This one has possibilities. I'm not a big fan of flowers shooting out of the tops of cakes so I would probably eliminate the top thing all together. Thoughts?

This one is an actual wedding cake. I had to resort to the wedding cakes to find something appropriate. All the bridal shower cakes consisted of ladies panties, big giant engagement ring diamonds, and the aforementioned shackling and dragging of clumsy ignoramus grooms to the altar. So, to the wedding cakes we go.

This cake can be modified to get a little closer to what I'm imagining. I would, of course, forget about the bride and groom topper, and either do the little cakes base, stopping at the larger cake or I could use the larger cake as the base, eliminate the white middle stacker and use the smaller top cake minus a topper. What do you think? I like the lace design of this one and the smaller roses. I wouldn't use the big ones on the little cakes. They are a tad much.

I don't know why but this one is my favorite. It violates my usual rule of nothing 'cartoony'. Those are cartoon flowers if ever I saw them. But, it's whimsical and I'm in the mood for a little whimsy. To get it to my level of formality, I'm thinking of using real flowers on the top and not the cartoon flowers. I am still going to use those cartoony daffodils on the sides as pictured. They are speaking to me! I can't explain my love of this cake but I love it. I really love it! Is it too silly? To cartoony? To weird? Enquiring minds need to know!!

If you stepped into a bridal shower and feasted your eyes on one of these cakes (modified though they may be), what would you say to yourself? Speak up! I need inspiration!! I only have a week to pull off something breathtaking, fabulous, and mind blowing! Help a poor uninspired cake decorator out, would ya?!

A very nice spot of tea, it was.

WHAT A NIGHT!! The most refreshing part of the whole tea party is knowing that I am not the last sane person in the country! What an amazing relief! I was beginning to wonder there for a while. Seeing the sea of people that are just as fed up with this socialist direction our government is taking was a balm to my Obama-weary soul.

The traffic was AWFUL! It took about an hour to go three miles. Then Mr. P detoured off the main road and found a back road into the park.

Look at that crowd! I read an article on MSNBC that said this tea party thing was all hype and there wouldn't be much of a turnout. If our little corner of the world is any indication, it was a blow out! I can't wait to see reports (I'll have to work hard to find them!) of how many people came out nationwide to tell Obama what we think of his spend-us-straight-into-socialism agenda.

Love this guy! His sign read, "Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies"

The signs were priceless! My children made a list of their favorites. Here they are in no particular order:

"Socialism - Your tax dollars at work for those who won't"
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention"
"The Brits lost and so will you"
"Free Markets, not Free Loading"
"Obama, I'm not an ATM"
"Commander-in-Thief"

I could go on. And on. And on. But, I'll let the pictures tell the story...

Everyone signed a petition...

...and the crowds were only growing as my family left. It was getting late and it's unbearably cold outside so home started looking mighty good after a few hours.

But, the party was still going strong!! It makes me proud to be a domestic terrorist a right wing extremist an American!

Tea, anyone?

Are any of you attending your local tea parties today? I will be at mine. With bells on! Though the socialist machine that is the Obama administration is going to be next to impossible to stop (all that "free" healthcare, welfare, and other nanny state provisions are a siren song to so many duped Americans), it still makes me feel better to make my voice heard. Even though it's a lone voice crying in the wind.

Evil thrives when good men do nothing. The tea parties may not be much but at least it's something!

Me, my family and my tea will be exercising our right to assemble (while we still have it). Who's with me?!

Other Tea Party news:

Doug Phillips to Appear with Glenn Beck Today at the Alamo!
Anti-Tax 'Tea Party' Protests Expected Across U.S.
Federal Agency Warns of Radicals on Right
Obama Report on "Right-Wing Radicals" Timed for Tea Parties
Tax Day Becomes Protest Day: How the tea parties could change American politics.
Glenn Talks tea with Ted Nugent