bitteroldhag

You look wonderful! Go shopping. I went shopping and found I could fit into a size 18!!!! I even have some size 14!!!! Alfred Dunner denim pants. I almost fainted when those fit. Buy clothes.

Man, Seattle has suffered horribly this year. My brother was in Cheyenne during the snowstorm (he lives in Greeley) and decided just to stay in the hospital where he works. He had one patient all night. I haven't heard from him for a day, so I'll have to call him to find out where he is. Last week, I had the air conditioner on. It was in the 70s all week. Not very Christmasy. Luckily, this week, it's been in the 40s and 50s so we can have roaring fires in the fireplace every night. I love that. Oklahoma is generally hot so we love winter here. At least, it's not 90-100+ degrees outside. But we are worried about you all who are suffering from bad weather. I hope it goes away soon.

Your MIL plays golf at 87? She's going to live forever. Get out. Run! This sandwich thing is something I don't have to deal with, thank God. But at least you have DH to help you. I don't have anyone except home health and I hope God blesses everyone of them.

Our senior citizens center is designed for ambulatory folks and mother isn't. The poor old thing just sits in the house when I'm gone. When I'm here, I am her servant. On occasion I go to a nearby town and stay in a motel for a couple of days. I like to stay in motels since I get to read and watch what I want on TV and just veg. But I can't really do that now since Mother is not ambulatory. I used to do it, but I'm afraid to leave her alone. I may go for a night or two before long and see how it works.

Assisted living would be great, but Mother doesn't qualify. She can't walk or take care of herself enough to live in an apartment. Besides, it costs the earth. So I'm pretty much stuck. But thanks for the advice.

BJ -- I relate to this. Mother can't go to an assisted living facility since she can't walk and take care of herself. So the only alternative is a nursing home and she's just too sane to put her there. I often dream of Tahiti even thought I hate the beach. Just anywhere away from here. God bless you for being so good.

I absolutely hate Donald Trump. He inherited his money. His casino did go broke and he is the sort of prep-school bully that just disgusts me. I don't think the man has any ability. He just has money and a really big ego. I'm on Rosie's side. I think making a federal case out of underage drinking is silly. And when did Donald Trump become the arbiter of American beauty pageants? I can't imagine anyone worse. I think we should dump Trump.

Well, the title covers most of this. They dress out a deer in the backyard every fall. Apparently they gut it on the hunt which is good because I really don't want deer guts in my house. But the rest is available for the dogs. If my husband hung a deer carcass in the shower, he'd be history. But we butchered that elk my dad killed in the garage and it smelled horrible. Blood smells so metallic and there was blood everywhere. Elks have a lot of blood. I know from experience.

This reminds me of something Mark Twain said. It was something like "When I was 16, my father was the stupidest man in the world. When I was 21, it amazed me how much he'd learned in just a few years." There is hope with kids.

BJ -- They put me on Plavix and I was already taking a baby aspirin a day for my heart. Well, I now bleed like a stuck pig. The other day I blew my nose and had a nosebleed that dripped all over my shirt and it took me 30 minutes to get it to stop. So I think I'm going to quit taking the aspirin. If your MIL is 81 and has just had some TIAs, I think she's doing really well. They can signal a stroke, but also can just be passing problems. The docs will put her on some blood thinner and she'll be okay unless she has some other problem. Who cares what she thinks of you or your meds? Besides, I just read today that fatter people have a type of bacteria in our intestines that is super efficient at breaking down food and storing it as fat. This is interesting, but I want a big dose of the other kind of bacteria that isn't so efficient. However, it's nice to know that something about me is efficient.

DailyKos is a liberal website that I read because some of it isn't absolute crap though much of it is. I hope I don't get sued for putting this essay on this site, but I thought it was important. Actually it is from another website which is noted in the title--truthout.

Iraq Is Vietnam - And You'd Better Believe It By John Graham t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor Tuesday 19 December 2006 I was a civilian advisor/trainer in Vietnam, arriving just as US troops were going home. I wasn't there to fight, but I hadn't been in country a week before I learned that the word "noncombatant" didn't mean much where I was posted, fifty miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that then divided South Vietnam from North. I got the message when a sniper's bullet whistled past my ear on the main highway twenty miles south of HuŽ. Joe Jackson, the burly major who was driving, yelled at me to hold on and duck as he gunned the jeep out of range, zigzagging to spoil the sniper's aim. Snipers or not, in 1971 it was the US government's policy not to issue weapons to civilian advisors in Vietnam, even to those of us in distant and dangerous outposts. The reason was not principle, but PR - and here begin the lessons for Iraq. Sometime in 1969, the White House, under siege from the public and faced with unrelenting facts on the ground, quietly made the decision that America couldn't win its war in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger didn't put it that way, of course. America was a superpower, and it was inconceivable that it could lose a war to a third-rate nation whose soldiers lived on rice and hid in holes in the ground. So the White House conceived an elaborate strategy that would mask the fact of an American defeat. The US would slowly withdraw its combat troops over a period of several years, while the mission of those who remained would change from fighting the North Vietnamese and Vietcong to training the South Vietnamese to carry on the fight on their own. At the same time, we would give the South Vietnamese a series of performance ultimatums which, if unmet, would trigger a total withdrawal and let us blame the South Vietnamese for the debacle that would follow. This strategy was called "Vietnamization." Implementing it cost at least 10,000 additional American and countless more Vietnamese lives, plus billions of dollars. It was a rigged game from the start. All but the wildest zealots in Washington knew that the South Vietnamese would not and could not meet our ultimatums: an end to corrupt, revolving-door governments; an officer corps based on merit, not cronyism; and the creation of a national state that enjoyed popular allegiance strong and broad enough to control the political and cultural rivalries that had ripped the country's fabric for a thousand years. During the eighteen months I was in Vietnam, I met almost no Americans in the field who regarded Vietnamization as a serious military strategy with any chance of success. More years of American training could not possibly make a difference in the outcome of the war, because what was lacking in the South Vietnamese Army was not just combat skills but belief in a cause worth fighting for. But none of that was the point. Vietnamization was not a military strategy. It was a public-relations campaign. The White House hoped that Vietnamization would keep the house of cards upright for at least a couple of years, providing what CIA veteran Frank Snepp famously called a "decent interval" that could mask the American defeat by declaring that the fate of South Vietnam now was the responsibility of the South Vietnamese. If they didn't want freedom badly enough to win, well, we had done our best. To make this deceitful drama work, however, the pullout had to be gradual. The plan (Vietnamization) had to be easily explained to the American people. And the US training force left behind had to be large enough and exposed enough to provide visual signs of our commitment on the 6 o'clock news. Pictures of unarmed American advisors, like me, shaking hands with happy peasants would support the lie that Vietnamization was succeeding. Living in the bulls-eye, we understood the reality very well, especially when, as public pressures for total withdrawal increased in 1971-1972, most of the "force protection" troops went home too. That left scattered handfuls of American trainers left to protect themselves. As the very visible US advisor to the city of HuŽ, I was an easy target for assassination or abduction, anytime the Viet Cong chose to take me out. I kept a case of grenades under my bed, I slept with an M-16 propped against the bedstead, and I had my own dubious army of four Vietnamese house guards who I hoped would at least fire a warning shot before they ran away. In April 1972, North Vietnamese forces swept south across the DMZ, scattering the South Vietnamese Army defenders and driving to within six miles of HuŽ. I and a handful of other American trainers and advisors could only watch as a quarter-million panicked people gridlocked the road south to Danang, in a terrifying night reverberating with screams and explosions. We knew that any choppers sent to save us would be mobbed by Vietnamese eager to escape. I'm alive because American carrier jets caught the advancing North Vietnamese just short of the city walls and all but obliterated them. Now we have the Iraq Study Group Report, advising that the mission of US forces shift from fighting a war to training Iraqi troops and police. The report calls for the US to lay down a series of performance conditions for the Iraqis, including that the Iraqis end their civil war and create a viable national state. I've lived through this one before. Deteriorating conditions on the ground will soon force President Bush to accept this shift in mission strategy. It is Vietnamization in all but name. Its core purpose is not to win an unwinnable war, but to provide political cover for a retreat, and to lay the grounds for blaming the loss on the Iraqis. Based on what I saw in Vietnam, here's what I think will happen next: The increased training will make no difference. It could even make things worse, since we will be making better fighters of many people who will end up in partisan militias. What the Iraqi military and police need is not just technical skill but unit cohesion and loyalty to a viable central government. Neither can be taught or provided by outside trainers. When US troops pull back from fighting the insurgents, most Iraqi units will lack both the military skills and the political will to replace them. More soldiers and police we've trained will join the militias. Violence and chaos will increase across the country. As the situation continues to deteriorate in Iraq, anti-American feelings will increase. Cursed for staying, we will now be cursed for leaving. Iraq will become an ever more dangerous place for any American to be. At home, political pressure to get out of Iraq completely will increase rapidly as the violence gets worse. The military force left behind to protect the US trainers will be drawn down to - or below - a bare minimum, further increasing the dangers for the Americans who remain. Military affairs commentator General Barry McCaffrey issued this sober warning in the December 18 issue of Newsweek: "We're setting ourselves up for a potential national disaster in which some Iraqi divisions could flip and take 5,000 Americans hostage, or multiple advisory teams go missing in action." Nothing destroys troop morale faster than being in a war you know is pointless. At this same stage in Vietnam, drug use among Americans became a serious problem. Our ultimatums and conditions won't be met. As the situation gets worse, whatever remains of a central government in Baghdad will be even less able to make the compromises and form the coalitions necessary to control centuries of factional and tribal hatreds. The civil war will spiral out of control, giving us the justification we need to get out, blaming the Iraqis for the mess we've left behind. Then we will face the regional and global ramifications of a vicious civil war whose only winners will be Iran and al-Qaeda. US leaders may decide, as they did 37 years ago, that we must again create a "decent interval" to mask defeat and that the PR benefits of that interval are worth the cost in lives and money. If they do, however, they should not - like the Iraq Study Group - lie to us that such a strategy has any military chance whatsoever of success. John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was sixteen, took part in the first ascent of Mount McKinley's North Wall at twenty, and hitchhiked around the world at twenty-two. A Foreign Service officer for fifteen years, he served in Libya during the revolution and in the war in Vietnam. In the mid-seventies, he planned nuclear war strategies for NATO, then served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator John Glenn. At the United Nations in the late 1970s, he was deeply involved in US initiatives in Southern Africa, South Asia and Cuba. When he left the Foreign Service, he took a job lecturing on cruise ships. On his first cruise. with 550 people on board, the ship burned and sank in the Gulf of Alaska. His lifeboat lost in a violent storm, Graham was finally pulled to safety and to a new sense of purpose for his life. Today his speeches, workshops and books - all part of the non-profit Giraffe Heroes Project - have helped thousands of people solve tough problems in their communities and beyond. He is the author of Stick Your Neck Out - A Street-Smart Guide for Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond, from Berrett-Koehler. -------

Man, it gets boring telling you that you are right all the time Carlene, but you are. Most people are overlooking that the Iraq war was sold to Americans based on fallacies. I teach fallacies in Comp. I, and so I was suspicious as hell from the beginning. I was not for the war because, unless you can produce reasonable evidence of wrongdoing, you shouldn't go to war. The Bush administration couldn't do that and kept changing the question of why we are at war. I can't remember exactly what kind of fallacy that is, but it is one. I'll have to look in my notes. I'm sort of tired because the neighbor puppy stayed with me last night, sleeping in my bed, or I should say squirming, and I didn't get much sleep. Then I had to have some tests to determine why I had a mini-stroke which interfered with my sleep further. Anyway, if one looks at common fallacies, one can see that the Iraq war was sold on the basis of fallacies. I never like that.

I googled failure and google has an explanation for George Bush being on top of the list. It's always good to read what Google has to say.

Since I live with a whole lot of Indians, I thought I might mention some of their foods. Every spring they have a wild onion/scrambled egg feast. This is a big deal because the wild onions grow in the early spring and so it signals spring is here. The most delectable thing I've had is fry bread. They make a sort of flat bread, fry it, and then put butter and honey on it. Lord, it's good though off limits for me now. I haven't had much other Native American food since the Five Civilized Tribes were from the South and ate Southern food mostly. Regarding Indian food from India, I had some in England and it was good, but it gave me the worst case of gas I've ever had except for the lapband surgery. They had some sort of red thing that was really delicious. The English eat Indian food like we eat Mexican food, actually Tex-Mex, since real Mexican food isn't nearly as hot. I think I'm going to make a pot of chili this weekend. Cheers!

Well, my thread took off in another direction. Rugulach or rugalach is a Jewish delicacy similar to baklava but without all that honey. It's good -- full of nuts and spices and stuff. You can look it up on the net. I live in Oklahoma where beef is king and pork and chicken are next. We never, and I mean never, eat lamb though I once had lamb chops, and they weren't too bad. I won't eat veal or lamb anymore because I think little animals should get to grow up before we hit them in the head with a sledgehammer. This is probably because we had a flock of sheep near where I lived in grad. school, and the lambs were so cute that I couldn't even imagine eating one. Calves are cute, but lambs are really cute. When I was in England, they had "lamb" one night and I wouldn't eat it because it was a baby. They informed me that sheep that are a year or two old are considered lambs. I don't consider them lambs. I consider them sheep. But then sheep are not very common here in cattle ranching land. I also once ate an Irish stew with mutton in it. I would never do that again. Like someone said, it tasted like good beef gone bad and it was really greasy. The oryx is interesting. I haven't eaten oryx though I know they are out in New Mexico from a Tony Hillerman book. Once my dad shot an elk. We ate elk for about 3 years. We hate elk. It tasted pretty good, but enough is enough. Elk are big and it takes a long time to eat one. Around here people deer hunt, and I don't much care for deer. Neither do they because they make Jerky or chili or barbecue it (for the Aussies, that means with a whole lot of barbecue sauce). I don't think anyone except possibly the full blood Indians eat deer roast or anything like that. However, my neighbors who are Indians, kill a deer every year and then my dogs bring the leftover pieces home to me. Joy! One got a deer leg fully furred from the knee down with hoof and dragged it into the house. One got a deer skull with hair in spots and dragged that into the house. So every fall, I dispose of the leftover pieces of deer that the neighbors shot. I suppose it pays me back for my dogs being so obnoxious the rest of the year. This year, they only got bones, thank God. Of course, they may just have not gotten to the worse stuff yet. We have prawns which are gigantic shrimp here. I have no idea how to cook them so information would be good. On a cold plate, one prawn would take me most of the night to eat. I haven't tried shrimp since the band because I figure it would take me an hour to eat just one. But I may try some over Christmas. My dad learned how to cook bacon and shrimp in Mexico. You just wrap a little piece of bacon around a shrimp and fry it, or you can broil it until the bacon is done. We absolutely love these though the shrimp are a tad rubbery by the time the bacon is done. But the real way to cook shrimp is in Shrimp Creole, especially the recipe from Brennan's which is a famous restaurant in New Orleans. Never, never put a bay leaf in shrimp creole. If anyone is interested, I'll give you their recipe for shrimp creole though I'll be breaking copyright. It's the best in the world though. Thanks for such a fun thread. Now I think I'll have a little baklava.:speechles

I decided this confession should be a rant because I bought about 8 pieces of baklava at Walmart and ate most of them. I love baklava and have concluded that while Greek and middle eastern people eat far too much mutton, they have created a truly delicious dessert. It's almost worth eating mutton (yuuuuk) just to get to dessert. I think they have decided to undermine the progress of humanity by forcing us to eat baklava which puts us in such a pleased state that we don't want to conquer the world. We just want more baklava. I could say the same thing about rugalach which is Jewish. It's delicious beyond reason. I think we should have a middle eastern standoff between the best baklava bakers versus the best rugalach bakers. Whoever wins gets the middle east. I want to be a judge. What about you?

It is true that cats are unreliable in eating stuff dropped on the floor. Mine are so choosy that I have to practically serve them on a silver plate. My cat did eat some of my asparagus this evening, but the dog just gobbled it down. He doesn't care what it tastes like. My dogs always run free at parties. They clean the place up so I don't have to the next morning. Let's hear it for dogs.

It seems to me that you can't shop by size anymore. In some clothes, I wear 16 pants, and in others 14. No one who weighs 185 pounds should wear a 14, but these are stretch jeans. I still wear a 2x top which is weird because I bought some old clothes on eBay and 18s fit perfectly. I got a Pendleton suit in a 20 which fits, but is a petite so the sleeves are too short. I just don't know what to get. I weigh 185 (and have for months). My hairdresser weighs 170 and wears clothes a lot smaller than mine. I just don't get it. I really wish they'd just have a universal size that fits everyone of that size. That would make shopping a lot easier. But since I buy clothes on eBay, I save money and get some nice stuff. I've only ordered two things that were too small and that's because they didn't give the measurement correctly, so I figure I haven't lost much money and I have gotten some stuff in size 18 that is wonderful. Go figure.

This is very useful. I have lost 35 pound and still wear a 2x blouse. Something is wrong in the sizing world.

I certainly glad that some bandsters are in touch with reality. I think George W. Bush is one of the worst, if not the worst president, we've every had. He has moved this country closer to fascism, i.e., a police state, than anyone in recent memory including war presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt. In WWI the country moved toward fascism under Wilson or Coolidge who are both considered two of the worst presidents we've ever had. I hope that we can reverse the damage done to our civil liberties by this president. But that will take years. One thing that we have seen is that neo-conservatives just don't have a decent political philosophy. I don't want to be the major empire in the world. It's too expensive, and my taxes are high enough already. I am doing better financially that I was a few years ago because I have seniority and have worked up to some decent money. But if I were just starting out, I suspect I wouldn't be so relaxed about money. I started out in Reagan's trickle down economics and nothing trickled to me except inflation. I want to retire but I can't afford it. One has to start saving in one's 20s to be able to afford retirement now. And the government has squandered the social security trust fund. That trust fund consists of a bunch of IOUs from the federal government. Even I can handle money better than that. I read that each person in the U.S. owes around $8,000 just to make up the deficit. That includes babies. When Clinton left office, we didn't have such a big deficit, but wars are expensive so we're spending trillions in Iraq. I don't think I've gotten my money's worth.:heh:

Thanks for all the loving messages. I'm feeling a lot better. I have my bad days and the day they said mother had cancer of the colon was one of the worst. Then they said it might not be cancer, but we have to remove it anyway to prevent more GI bleeds. I'm okay with that since mother made that decision. If she dies, it's her responsibility, not mine. Luckily she is sane and smart. So many people who take care of Alzheimer's patients have terrible lives. So while I may have a little talk with God, I think they're going to be first in line. I'm going to enjoy Christmas and eat fattening stuff and then clean up my act next year. Maybe I'll lose a little more weight. Or maybe not. But someday I want to look like Carlene.

I just want to have collarbones again. They disappeared sometime ago and I want them back.

I was banded on May 11, 2006 and immediately lost 35 pounds. That was great, but I haven't lost a pound in about 3 months. I got the band so that I could eat normal food and still lose weight. That was a pipe dream. I often can't eat much because I have a lot of PBs since I got 4.5 cc in my 10 cc band. I don't know what to do. I absolutely loathe exercise so I haven't done that part, but it will be my New Year's resolution. I would be thrilled to lose 1 pound a week, but I eat cookies and stuff. I eat oatmeal cookies because they help with regularity. I can't eat salad because of irritable bowel syndrome. Fresh veggies just tear up my colon. So, despite my initial success, I think I qualify for the slow losers club. I just don't understand why I'm not losing weight since I eat FAR less than I used to. Maybe there is some sort of plateau or something. Anyway, I'm a slow loser now dammit.

I hate you, Carlene. You are so skinny it makes me sick. I was sitting outside the hospital today having a cigarette and saw myself in the window. I look terrible. I am a nasty fat old bag whose mother is going to die of cancer. I hate happy people.