The Left Side of the Moon

Because We All Love Photos

Here we are, all dressed up for Halloween. I had wanted LT to be a knight, but instead we have two dragons. It's probably more accurate. And there's a shot of Trouble's school Halloween party with a couple of friends.

And Trouble has decided on his first career - an artist. The photos of the dinosaurs are his own photography work too. I'm thinking Santa should get the boys their own hardy, digital cameras. Yes Lissfull, I know, I'm stealing this idea. I admit it. It's a good one. I'm tired of the boys breaking my camera.

The Fabulous New Kitchen

Admittedly, we still have a few odds and ends to finish up. We still need to get outlet and switch fixtures in some places. The light fixture is not currently attached to the ceiling. But all in all, it's basically done, and I'm working on getting it into good working order. I still have boxes of kitchen supplies I haven't located yet, like my mixer and my pie plates. We just did the faux finish on the walls on Saturday, and touch-ups on Sunday, so it's not that I'm delayed in posting this. It's taken us this long. It's hard when you have kids, work full time and are trying to paint and such on the weekends, in between the Halloween parties, scouting events, and whatever else. But praise be, we're basically done. Of course there is one wall I want to address in the dining room. Blackstone told the contractor to go ahead and rip the wall paper when he put in the molding in the entry way between the kitchen and dining room. We're planning on painting that whole room, but for now I'd just like to address the one with the ripped wall paper and be done for a bit.

Global Warming: or Mother Nature's Pissed

It is one week from Halloween and it was 80 degrees in southern NE yesterday. And don't get me wrong,  I love Indian Summer, but 80 degree days at the end of October is way beyond Indian Summer. I was wearing shorts this weekend. We don't wear shorts in NE in October. We wear wool sweaters, jeans and fabulous boots. It's wrong that the leaves have turned and the foliage will soon be gone and I'm still wearing a tank top. It used to be that we ALWAYS had a snow storm before my birthday at the end of November. That hasn't happened in at least five or six years now.

And CA is on fire today. Looks like one of the worst fires I can remember. The winds are blowing fiercely. The increase of hurricanes, tornadoes, and the increase of their intensity in the past few years has been truly frightening.

It's not like we've never had the weather and Mother Nature to contend with. But in looking at the changes of weather over the past decade, I don't know how people can argue against global warming. I also don't understand how people can argue that, well maybe there's global warming, but we can't prove that people are responsible for it. Right. Because basic laws of science do not teach us of cause and effect, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, that if you alter one small part of an ecosystem there will be ramifications. Because why would we expect that the large number of forests and rain forests we've cut down in the last century would have a drastic impact on the world we live in? Why would the increases in population, pollutants and energy usage cause a hole in the ozone layer? Why should we at all alter the ways in which we live, consume resources and dispose of our waste to possibly improve air and water quality? Why would anyone presume that the swirls of smoke and hazy fog that surround our major cities would have any impact on the atmosphere?

I don't think it takes a degree in biology or in depth study of the planet to realize that our actions are affecting the world around us. I also can't understand how anything other than political or financial motivation would cause a person to believe otherwise. Global warming is not a new and trendy discovery. I learned about the hole in the ozone layer and how pollution was causing it way back in high school. Scientists have been developing alternative sources of energy like wind farms and solar panels and electric cars for decades. Towns have been recycling their garbage since I was a kid because, seriously, how many landfills do we want to have?

In the face of the melting ice caps, more violent storms, more frequent and wide spread wild fires - I'd rather err on the side of caution. Because to me, it only makes sense that as the ice caps melt, the amount of water in the ocean will increase, taking over more land. That the melting ice will cause the temperature of the water to rise, altering currents, which will affect storm trends. I know there are plenty who would call me crazy, a left-wing zealot, in other words - If Democrats had any Brains, They'd be Republicans - thank you very much, Ann Coulter. As my husband said to me the other day, "She's a b#!* with a capital C." Not that I like to throw out obscenities at people, but if she's essentially going to call me dumb, all bets are off. I think we should preserve the earth, feed the poor, educate our youth, make health care more affordable, promote peace, provide better opportunities, and not continually provide tax breaks for the rich. Exactly, how does that make me dumb?

Live, Laugh, Love

In reading The Faith Club, I find myself most closely drawn to Ranya, who is Muslim. In reading Ranya's perspectives and conversations, it is astonishing to realize how far off so many of the common stereotypes of Islam and Muslim women are. Ranya is a modern and intelligent woman. She is Muslim, educated and does not wear a burka. After 9/11, she has felt conflicted about being a Muslim in America and has spent time researching her roots, considering if this religion was right for her and her children. And what she discovers is how much misunderstanding there is of Islam, and how twisted it has become in the hands of extremists. Ranya explains, "If Suzanne's God is the God of passion and love, and Priscilla's God is a judicial God of mitzvahs (good deeds or acts), then my God is a poetic rationalist who appeals to my mind and heart." A poetic rationalist. I love that.

Ranya explains that Islam does not preach that Muslims blindly have faith in God, instead it encourages people to look at the world around them and to see the presence of God all around them. I do find this argument persuasive. It has logical appeal. And of all the women's reasons for having faith, for being followers of their religion, Ranya's is the most persuasive to me. It is sad that while Islam preaches tolerance and acceptance of other religions, particularly of other Christian religions, it has been so contorted and grossly misused in the form of terrorism. As Ranya responds to questions on terrorists:

But we should all recognize that when religion is used as a rationale for aggression, a tactic of war or to justify a promise of land, then it is a politicized religion. It becomes a human ideology that has nothing to do with Godly values. That doesn't excuse all this craziness, but it is not anything particular or exclusive to Islam.

Amen. I couldn't agree with her more. And she has hit the nail on the head as to why I have such a problem with religion. Because all too often it does become part of a political agenda and is used as an excuse for war.

Like Ranya, I can look up into the stars at night and feel the power and the beauty in the world. I can feel myself humbled and belonging to something greater than myself. I find it irritating when people assume that because I don't believe in God, that I am not spiritual. It's rather insulting, actually. I just have trouble accepting that there is an all-knowing being up there somewhere in charge of it all. That just doesn't sit right with me. When I feel that presence of something more than myself, I believe that it is that I am one person in this world, and what is bigger than me, is the essence of all mankind and our connection to each other and the world we live in. Spirituality to me is recognizing that we are one small part of that whole and that we should at once be humbled at how small we are and empowered by how important it is that we are all part of that whole, that we all have some power and responsibility to shape the world we live in.

I know some people who would explain that even just that feeling of something greater than yourself, is enough to say you believe in God. Perhaps. If that is the way you see it, I'm not going to argue with you. And I'd rather that you didn't argue with me about it either, because at this point I don't even think we're having a religious debate, we're arguing semantics. Do you call that awe inspiring feeling God or not? It's just a word. Well, at least to me it's just a word. But I'm always trying to remind myself that to someone else, it's so much more than that, because I just don't get it and I never really have, and honestly, I don't really want to. I'm much less concerned about whether you're atheist, agnostic, Catholic or Jewish than if you're a good friend, an honest person and if you're the type of person who'll take a moment do something nice for someone else.

And I do believe in miracles. Just because I don't believe in God does not make a miracle any less of a miracle. I may believe in The Big Bang Theory and Evolution, but just because we can explain or theorize how life came to be on this planet through science, does it really make it any less miraculous? I don't think so. I may not believe that babies are gifts from the heavens, but that does not mean that I don't think that experiencing that moment of childbirth is not one of the most precious and amazing experiences that a person can have. Now virgins giving birth, bleeding statues and Mary's countenance in a pancake, those miracles, not so much.

I understand that many people would view atheism as a negative and pessimistic perspective of life, but I don't see it that way. I believe that all people are fundamentally and intrinsically linked to each other and being a part of that, living this life, is plenty of meaning and purpose. I put my faith in my family and friends, the people that I love, and even more largely in the goodness of humanity. I do not need to believe that there is some larger plan for me, or some higher purpose that I must serve. I simply believe that the here and now is the purpose, that being a good person, a good parent, a contributing member of this society, is the plan. That in the end, to say that you have lived life fully, loved with all your heart, and given as much of yourself as you could, laughed as often as possible, should be enough.

Fantastic Halloween Books for Kids

Being an avid reader, I get very excited when I find children's books that I enjoy reading to my kids. Now Dr. Seuss is great for language development and my kids have lots of Eric Carle books that they enjoy, but I get tired of the same rhymes, looking at the same artistry and following the same story formats over and over again. And the boys love to read about dinosaurs, snakes, reptiles and bugs, but that's not exactly my cup of tea. I will appease them sometimes, but I usually like to save that material for dad, who can appreciate it. And we have tons of the Spiderman, Dora, Arthur and other popular character books. But these books are formulaic and are generally not among my favorite bed time reading material. So it makes me truly happy to find a new (new to me) children's book, one I've never heard of before, that my boys and I can enjoy. Here's a list of our Halloween picks.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by  Linda Williams and Megan Lloyd

ABC's of Halloween by Patti Reeder Eubank

Go Away Big Green Monster by Edward R Emberley

Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

Go Away Big Green Monster is really more for the pre-school set, but the other three both my three-year-old and six-year-old enjoy.

The Faith Struggle

Bookgirl sent me a copy of The Faith Club which I am finding fascinating and enlightening. It's written by three women - A Muslim, A Christian and A Jew. This is according to the title of the book, not really the way I'd put it myself, since they are all technically Christian and the "Christian" is Episcopalian. These three women originally come together to write a spiritual children's book, wanting to help children understand the commonalities in different religions. But quickly the children's book falls to the way-side as the women find they must confront the differences in their religions before they can find the similarities. While the discussions can become heated, and feelings are often hurt, the women continue their meetings which are serving an important spiritual need for each of them. The women are open, honest, intelligent and compassionate and truly want to understand and respect each other's faiths.

It is truly encouraging to me to see people of different religions coming together and searching for spiritual guidance from one another. One of the biggest problems I have with organized religions is the way they label and separate us. By belonging to one religion, you are automatically taking a stance - you believe this is the right religion, therefore everyone who is not the same religion as you is wrong. As an atheist, this is also true. And while a congregation is taught to come together and to value community, what community are they actually talking about? Your church and spiritual community, your neighbors, or do they mean something larger? Because this world would be a much happier and less violent place if we could just accept people from different faiths, without feeling the need to convert, save or annihilate them.

There are aspects of all of these women that I relate strongly to. My first and most immediate connection is to Suzanne, who is Jewish. I relate to her because she struggles with her faith. She is not so sure there is a God. It is very interesting to me that while she has this crisis of faith and even if she were to come out of this struggle an atheist, she would still be Jewish. I don't really think this could be said about someone of another faith. Judaism is different in that respect because it is not just about religion or going to church, it is culturally and biologically who you are.

I think most of us go through a religious struggle during our lives. Of course, there are some that don't. Some people just don't go to church and don't really spend time thinking about religion in any kind of depth. Others are born into a religion, accept that religion and that's the end of it. But it seems most of us go through the struggle at some point. Some struggle and change religions, some struggle and stay with their religion, and for some that struggle is constant. For me, that struggle happened at about fifteen. It happened pretty early probably partly because of personality, I'm not hot-wired to accept something just because someone told me to. Especially, not a funny-looking man who enjoys listening to himself talk way too much and wears a robe to work. Especially not him, and especially not my parents. But what truly caused my soul searching is what causes it for many of us - tragedy.

The ages of thirteen through fifteen were a very emotional and difficult time in my life, and not because of all the adolescent, coming-of-age drama we all go through. My grandfather died suddenly in his sleep due to heart failure, he'd had a triple by-pass a few years earlier but he'd been doing fine. He went to work, came home, went to bed and never got up. It was probably a blessing for him, but it wasn't easy for the rest of us. And both of my great-grandparents died slow, messy, deaths from cancer. I helped change the bandages when my great-grandmother got shingles. I watched them both lose their lucidity. My great-grandmother started talking to people who'd been dead for years. Once my great-grandmother passed, my great-aunt convinced my great-grandfather that my grandmother and my mother were after his money. In reality, what money? But he was a mean, paranoid man, who was losing his mind to age and the disease. We didn't see him at all in the few months prior to his death. The house still went to my grandmother. I know my great-aunt tried to get her hands on it, but since my great-grandfather was actually my step-great-grandfather, the house had been in my great-grandmother's name, and passed as she had requested to my grandmother. My great-grandmother had been widowed rather early in life after having her children. She managed to raise her kids and start her own sewing business with her brother during the Great Depression.

I still remember walking into that house after the funeral. It was empty - not a piece of furniture, not a plate, not a photo album. My great-aunt couldn't get the house, but she took everything in it. I couldn't believe a person could be so cold and cruel. As far as I know, she didn't have any motivation to behave this way. This was a woman I spent holidays with, who was family. I had sat on her lap. And what was most infuriating to me, was a woman in high esteem at our church. Her son, my second cousin, was the organist. She was there every Sunday and was supposedly this wonderful, humble, Christian woman. In contrast, my grandmother did not attend a church. She was a school teacher and volunteered much of her time to a thrift shop located at another church in the area, but she never went to church and never discussed religion. I've never really thought about it this way before, but given a choice - which woman's foot steps would you follow in? I really should follow my grandmother's example and start doing more volunteering.

I wondered through all the death and suffering, seeing my great-aunt at church and watching her turn the other way, where was God in all this? How could a woman so mean, petty, material and vindictive, be seen as a good Christian woman? Why did people assume that going to church meant you were a good, moral person? It just all seemed so hypercritical. So this was just the perfect timing for me to begin my confirmation classes.

At this point, our pastor had left and been replaced with a woman. She was a wonderful woman and was patient through all my questions over the year (normally it takes two years of classes, but somehow my mother convinced them to let me in late). It was encouraging to me to make my confirmation under a woman. It is one thing to know your religion allows female pastors, it is another thing altogether to have a female pastor at your church. But it was not enough to convince me in the existence of God or to want to be part of a church community. When I finally stood in front of the congregation and made my confirmation, my struggle was over.

The Limp Dish Rag Dilemma

You must have heard, right? Al Gore and the U.N. Panel have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work with global warming. After Gore "lost" the election to Bush and the Bush Administration has attempted to spread all this nonsense about global warming being a myth, what vindication that he has been singled out for praise internationally. That he has been awarded one of the highest honors a person can receive. There is poetic justice at work here. But then, as elated as I am to see such noble work and persistence rewarded, it also makes me even more angry at the leadership our nation has been forced to endure over the last seven years.

Instead of having an intelligent and dogged man working to better the world we live in as President, we have a moronic, good-old boy that's pushes the policy for the richest one percent. And the whole world knows it. What a better way to highlight the fact that they know it, than to honor the man that "lost" the election to Bush? Not that I blame them, mind you. No, I'm reveling in it. I'm ecstatic. Even if they would consider me a part of the America that they are laughing at. And there is really no doubt in my mind that internationally our country is being laughed at. Hell, there are many of us that are laughing along with them, because if we weren't laughing, we'd be crying. At least I know I would be. You're forced to joke about it, because we don't have much power to do anything about it until the next election. And if the elections over the past year are any indication, America is finally ready to admit its mistakes and change the course that we're on. Seriously, it's about time America. The rest of the world has known what a disaster path we were on since Bush took the oath and entered the oval office.

I voted for Gore when he ran. I liked him and I still like him. And he wouldn't have lost the election if voting booths hadn't gone missing in various Democratic districts around the country. If voters in these areas hadn't been forced to stand in line for hours, then told they could fill out paper ballots, only to later have officials decide these ballots wouldn't be counted. A little suspicious that all these voting problems popped up in Democratic areas, don't you think? And then of course there were the Evangelical Preachers telling their parishioners that they had to vote for Bush. What was that law about separation of church and state in this country? I could have sworn we had one of those. But it would have helped if Gore didn't have the charisma of a limp dish rag. Kerry suffered from this problem as well. I think it is this issue, the lack of presence, that has been the bane of the Democratic party in this decade. While I like Hillary and I'd love to see a woman in the oval office, her public presence it's not exactly endearing. She tries, but it's forced and you can tell she's trying. O'Bama's presence is a bit better, not quite so forced. But I think John Edwards has the best charisma I've seen in a Democrat since Clinton. He's no Kennedy, but then, that's one high standard to meet. Perhaps it shouldn't be that we look for Presidents who know how to work a camera or turn just the right phrase, but that does seem to play a major role. And good looks and a killer smile don't hurt either.

Of course charisma is not what won Bush the elections against Gore and Kerry. The man can't speak, cracks bad and insensitive jokes during press conferences and often just stands at the podium doing that despicable little snicker. The only thing that explains Bush is connections, money and bad judgment.

Health Care Woes

I am reminded as I go through weeks such as this one, that I am lucky to be one of the fortunate people in this country with health care. Because I have the damn health care, in fact pay through the nose for said health care, and getting sick still costs a fortune. It has been around $200 over the past week in co-pays alone.

$100 ER co-pay
$45 in co-pays for office visits for me, Trouble and LT
$50 in co-pays for medication (I'm guess-timating here. I didn't pick up Trouble's prescription.)

Not to mention it's been about $80 extra in child care because one of the boys has been out of school every day since last Thursday. LT is still out of school today and I'm not sure he's going back tomorrow either. And then there's the Motrin for the fevers, Triaminic for the stuffy noses, a new thermometer, cough drops and tissue. Getting sick, especially sick kids, are damn expensive. I can't imagine if my kids were in a day care and I had to be out of work over a week because one of the three of us were sick. As it is, I've missed four days in the last two weeks. The first because I had to be home when the counters were installed, all the others were due to illnesses.

As much as I am annoyed over the stress of trying to balance sick kids, my job, and school while I'm sick, I can't imagine how hard it is when you don't even have the insurance and are worried about getting fired or written up over the missed days at work. It makes me ashamed that the health care situation has only gotten worse in the last seven years. It makes me angry that we have for-profit health care. Illness should not be a money-making business. We handle one of the hospital websites, and to watch them actually spend money marketing themselves and the services they provide makes my blood boil. Education in this country isn't for profit, at least not until college level, not unless you opt for it. All students have a right to an education (and yes I know that's working real well too, but I'm not getting into that here). Why can't health care work the same way? Why do we allow it to be privatized? Don't we all have the right to health care?

I'm frustrated watching drug companies advertise on television. I'm horrified to hear that patients without health insurance are often charged more for procedures and treatment than patients who have insurance, because the insurance companies won't stand for paying more than they see is legitimate. Why do we always screw the little guy in this country? And I am terrified by the amount of political pull the drug companies have. Companies who profit off of making the drugs have little motivation in helping to prevent people from getting sick and needing the drugs in the first place.

The Mews

We took the whole family to The Mews Tavern in Wakefield last weekend. (In spite of how sick the boys and I have been. LT now seems to have the croup and I just started antibiotics for a sinus infection. You can only stay cooped up in the house for so long.) Now, Blackstone and I aren't new to the Mews. We've been there many times. It's just that the last six years have not provided tons of opportunities for us to eat out. The boys are just getting old enough for us to be able to take them to dinner and not have them under the table, racing between the tables and screaming at each other. And while we do get babysitters and go out to eat every so often, The Mews just hasn't been one of the places we've hit in a while.

The Mews tends to be a URI hang out at night, but along with being a bar, it's a great restaurant too. And the boys got a kick out of it. There are three very different rooms and then there's also a martini bar upstairs. The front room is the bar and there are signed, colored and otherwise decorated one dollar bills tacked to the ceiling and walls. It's a thing at The Mews to leave your mark in the form of a signature one dollar bill in the bar. Who would come up with such an idea? A drunk college kid? I really don't know. But I'd be surprised if the place wasn't decorated in a thousand one dollar bills. The back room is the brick oven pizza room made up of a bar area and about eight or so booths. One of their specialties is their brick oven pizza. The main dining room is large, open and noisy. The first thing that's likely to catch your attention is the large painted tree with decorations and an old bicycle in it's branches which resides in the center of the room. The bike has permanent residence in the tree and somehow just seems to belong there. It is a real tree, though very much dead at this point. Originally this area was a deck and when they built the deck, they built it around the tree, and when the enclosed the deck, well they did that around the tree too.

So the place is rather eclectic, has a lot of personal charm and tends to be well decorated for the holidays. It's already all decked out for Halloween. My boys entered the main dining room and both stopped dead in their tracks and said, "Wow!!" There are ghosts, monsters, witches and ghouls everywhere - in the tree, sitting in the canoe (yes, I said canoe) and dangling from the ceiling. The boys were quite smitten with the place from the word go. Trouble had a grand time being in charge of the "Got Beer"/"Need Beer" sign. You flip it to "Need Beer" when you want your waiter and then back to "Got Beer" when you have your waiter's attention. And yes, one of the things the place is known for is having 69 beers on tap. You can order a beer sampler which is a little wooden rack that holds six (I think it's six) small glasses (maybe six ounces) of beer, so you can try a bunch of them. It's totally fun and I highly recommend it, just probably not when you have your kids with you.

The food was great, as usual. They have fabulous and unusual burgers like the "Yuppie Burger" and the "Go F*#@! Yourself Burger" and great Mexican and their sweet potato fries are to die for. They also serve a hell of a margarita which is always a plus in book. Trouble asked me the next day, "When can we go back there?" Yeah, my sentiments exactly. The kid's got good taste. To hell with McDonald's.

Screen Name-less

It has been brought to my attention that not having a screen name is a dilemna that is a factor in keeping some of my readers from posting comments. I can understand that, being a person that does not want my name googled at will. And choosing a screen name for oneself can be a tricky task. You want it to be fun, creative, and somehow representative of you - not too generic, not too over-the-top. Not everyone lucks out like me, and has someone else choose their screen name for them. Of course Polly cleared this with me first, because you don't want to be that authoritative, bossy bee-yotch that assigns a friend a screen name they don't like. And to that end, I do not want to assign these women screen names on my own.

Now these are intelligent, spirited, beautiful women. Women who are more than just mothers or the sum of their careers. (Yes, I am buttering you up in hopes that you will take the plunge and choose a screen name and get commenting already.) Now coming up with screen names is not exactly my strong suit, but I'm going to provide you with some suggestions, ladies. You need not feel pressured to use any of them. But I certainly wouldn't want the lack of a screen name to keep you from joining the discussion. We have lots of fun 'round here and love to have others to spice up the conversation.

Ladyliss
Meli (means honey)
Lalita (goddess of beauty)
Hespera (goddess of dusk)
Vesta (goddess of the hearth)
Rapunzel
MsLiss
Melidy
Mel-O-Drama

As you can see, when in doubt I always go the goddess route. Now, you may need to let me know personally who you are, but I promise not to give you away. At least not publically. Not unless I'm offered oodles of money, and then I'll be generous and split it with you. I promise.

And if you happen to be unsure on how to go about posting a comment, just click on the "comments" link after a particular post. You'll see the comments that have already been submitted, and then a form to enter your name (screen name, of course), email address which is only view-able to me, the url of your own blog if you have one which will link from your name, and then a box for your comment. Just fill it out and hit submit. I even took off the annoying verification process at Polly's request, so it's just that simple.