The fish lives!!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Greenville with Pandora. As she was having a good ole time cruising around the yard in a riding mower, I decided to go for a leisurely fishing trip at the little pool of water they call a pond. The owners have it stocked with catfish and I was informed that I could get lucky and have dinner for the evening. ...so there I go, pole in hand, with stink bait, my soda, my chair and my school text. I'm ready to just sit and relax. ...I'm there about 15 minutes, when my line gets caught on the only branch sticking up out of the water. I try to finagle it loose...nuthin'. A final tug breaks the line and I am left with a jumble of slack line. I decided I would just read for a bit since there was a nice breeze. The whole time, by the way, the 3 horses are on the other side of the land, seemingly discussing what the heck I was doing invading their watering hole. Unbenounced to me, they decide to explore. Minutes later I am surrounded by 3 curious beasts, whose big brown eyes could either mean curiousity or "get the hell outta here". I find out it's the former. They start by exploring so closely that I end up standing up from my chair, petting them and talking to them, hoping they understand that I have no snack food close by. They nudge my hands, then my chair, ...slobber everywhere, mind you...my soda gets knocked over. Even though, I find out later, they think they are lap dogs, I'm a little flustered. I can easily get intimidated enough to run. I think they sense that, so they back off. They head a few feet away for the water. The big one steps on my fishing pole, maybe on accident or maybe a warning. I take the hint and head in. Whew!!
Now here's the best part. Later on, the owner and myself head back in to see if we could spot the turtles that bob up every once in a while. Val said " Is that a dead animal over on the shore?" I had been around the whole pond only 30 minutes before with nothing there, we discover it's a snake eating a fish! A big fish!! He has the fish in it's mouth and pushed it up on land to continue the swallowing process. Of all times to leave my camera at the house! So I rush up to the house to get it while she keeps an eye on the snake. Val's husband is deaf so we have to lure him over and I don't know if he really knew what he was going to see when he got there. Pandora decided to pass on the whole idea. Photos would do just fine. When I get back, the snake is in the water, watching us. He has the fish in it's mouth and he's just waiting us out. He attempts to get up to shore a few times, but we keep scaring him back in. I get a few good pictures, a short 15-second video and a story to tell for weeks! Val insists he might be poisonous, so to make a long story short, the skin is hanging up outside Pandora's apartment, drying out.

Here's a link if you want to see the picture:
http://www.recios.net/roberta/SnakeWithFish.jpg

Life is uneventful right now!

Ah. Finding time for blogging. If your life is boring, you don't wanna write
about it and if your life is interesting, you have no Time to write about
it.

Mine has been a combination of both. Timewise, I've been burning out from
school and work and there there's my impending end of contract on the 15th
and the quest for jobs yet again and wondering if I will make it thru again.
This time without a severance package to pull me through.

Okay, that's the mundane stuff.

I had a weird, frightening, creepy, comforting, angelic thing happen to me
last weekend.

I've told the long story over and over, so the short story is that I broke
down crying (bawling) on Saturday. Uncontrollably. When it was all over, not
that I was really calm or anything, I realized that my outburst coincided
with the death of JP2. This incident occurred two hours before I had heard
the news. I have a receipt from Jack-in-the-Crack that reads 1:18pm and my
phone rang at 2:00, as I walked into my house to sleep off my tears. The
pope died at 1:37pm. I was in a state of calm for a few days thereafter.
Trying to understand what it all meant.

For those of you that don't know, I just recently started to go back to
church. It's something that reminds me of home since I was a military brat,
we didn't see too much stability in our surroundings. As a child I learned
that any Catholic church in the world was being taught the same things each
week and that "Amen" crosses all language barriers. When I feel homesick, I
tend to think about going to church. I am, by far, not regular about it yet,
every other week seems to be my pattern.

I don't agree with all of it, but who does? I decided long ago that I was
not going to leave the Catholic church to find one that fit into my
lifestyle or belief of the moment because I know I won't find it.

Enough of that.

I will be going to FIESTA in San Antonio this weekend. To PARTY. I'll
report back. Over and out!

Alright Already!

It's been pointed out that I have not updated my blog lately.

Let me rephrase that ...I've been getting sh * it for not posting anything
in a while.

I tend to post when I'm at school, don't ask me why, maybe all the chaos
inspires me. Or maybe it's an escape.

So the new Quarter is starting and I have classes on Wednesdays and Friday
nights (yuck!)

Keep a lookout for new and interesting stuff. I can't say if I will not tell
you about my day or whether I will wax philosophical, but I know I learn
about myself when I blog.

Turtle
"You have nothing to lose but Fear and Time"

Oh wow, what a rollercoaster week. Let me take you thru it really quick:
Tuesday (Noon), get new tires for the Jeep.(sounds unimportant now, but wait)
Tuesday 5ish-driving home: Get a call from my recruiter telling me that my contract will be up on Friday. This Friday.
Tuesday Night: Drink beer. Go to Pandora's just to sit.
Wednesday: Get kinda weepy. In the Jeep I think about how wierd it is to loose your job and not be walked like all the times I've been thru layoffs. This is the nature of layoffs.
Thursday: Everyone at work finds out. They plan a lunch for me. These folks have not invited me to lunch in the last 3 months, so this is interesting. This going away stuff if sinking in and we're joking about all the work that I took off my friend's shoulders is getting piled right back on.
Friday: Get a call from my recruiter that he has a job for me. With this company. For another five weeks. Yes, I'll take it....interesting news, I tell those around me. I talk to my supervisor who confirms the whole thing.
Right before my "Formerly Going Away" lunch she calls me to tell me to keep it hush hush. ...okay, so I tell everyone that is around not to say anything. All these people had gathered for my "Farewell" lunch then my "welcome back" lunch and now my "we have to keep it quiet" lunch.At the restaurant one person insists on paying for mine...no no no, yes, it's okay....no, you really don't understand!! okay fine, go on and pay. (I tried to warn her!)
After lunch,a close coworker is told that today is his last day. so my farewell was not a farewell and it could have been his, but it wasn't. Weird. Can you say "Awkward!" Turns out I am taking his position.
We go thru transitioning his work to me and he leaves, more like sneaks out, it's sad. I feel weird. I round the corner into another set of cubes and a sweet girl hands me a little white gift bag. "What's this for".."cuz you're leaving"...awkward again. Someone peeks their head out of their cube and starts giggling which makes me start giggling. "I don't think you want to give me this, I'll be here on Monday." She takes the present back and the nice person who bought my lunch finds out and I will gladly buy her lunch. We all had a good laugh, but thank goodness I didn't have school, I was stressed beyond belief. Count my blessings is all I can do.
So, I am back at work on Monday for the next 5 weeks, this gives me time for find something else.
The End, I hope.

Priceless

Priceless
Jack wakes up at home with a huge hangover he can't believe. He forces himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose!
Jack sits down and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. Jack looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, Spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He Takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror, and notices a note on the table: "Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go shopping--Love you!"
He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Jack asks, "son...what happened last night?"
"Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You broke some furniture, puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door."
"So, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?"
His son replies, "Oh THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, "Leave me alone, lady, I'm married!"
Broken furniture - $85.26
Hot Breakfast - $4.20
Red Rose bud -$3.00
Two Aspirins -$.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time........Priceless
Don't you wish it was always like that?

60 years ago

Today marks the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz concentration camp’s liberation and the beginning of the end of the holocaust.
The people who survived are fading from our history. Those still alive were just small children and have to be reminded every day how close they came to death when they look at their bare forearms with the tattoo marking them for possible death. I was only about 6 or so when I lived in Germany and visited Dacau, another concentration camp.
My brother was born while my father was on his first tour of duty in Germany in the late 60’s. Yep, my brother’s a Kraut. They lived on the second floor of a dairy farm. Naturally, the owners of the farm became his godparents and, my surrogate grandparents after we moved back. Needless to say, my ties to Germany are not just from reading books. Even though we were small, my parents wanted us to see and learn as much as we could while we were there. I learned not to ask for seconds at Mama Beckert’s house. She remembers the war and Sunday dinner is a luxury. I learned about feather blankets and hot water bottles. About garden gnomes and castles. About wooden shoes and walking sticks. …And about Nazi’s.
You’d think a kid wouldn’t remember going to a concentration camp. But I do. I remember the open field where the barracks used to be. I remember thinking what a great time we could have if we were allowed to play on that field. Instead we were kept back by a barricade. I thought it was a shame that we weren’t allowed to play on it. I thought it was odd that even though we were outside, we had to hold my father’s hand and be really quiet. The museum with photos of piled bones and piled shoes and articles of clothing. A pile of eyeglasses. And the ovens. I’ve seen the ovens. I remember talking to my mother about the ovens that day. I related it to Hansel and Gretel and the witch who wanted to cook them. This was exactly the size oven she would need to cook children. Strange how children’s minds work. Oddly, I remember it was a day like today. Not a full rain, more like mist the whole time, overcast.
Not until I got older did I really understand what I saw there, and I don’t regret having seen it. I regret the reason that I had to see it. I regret the lives and souls lost because of one man’s ability to sway the thoughts of a nation. The systematic, planned slaughter of an entire race of people. They sat at a table and planned this. It wasn’t a Tsunami that cared not how and who it struck. It wasn’t terrorists aiming at buildings not caring or knowing who was inside, getting it all over in one fell swoop. These people were picking off Jews. Specifically. Quietly.
Those sick F*cks. Cowards. Some lowly soldier had to carry out their bidding. Had to look into the frightened eyes as they crowded into the poison showers. As their bodies shriveled over time from starvation. Once proud people being taken down notch by notch to nonexistence. We can’t let this happen again.
We can’t let people say this was just a story. We can’t let people deny it ever happened.
I haven’t seen anything about Prince Harry going to Auschwitz. People say it was just a joke, but symbols are powerful and have powerful effects. I optimistically think he will understand when he gets there. Innocent ignorance will give way to knowledge and Knowledge is Power.