Saturday, March 3, 2012

Hey, we won the lottery!

- - - by being born in he West! With a world population of 7 Billion there are at least 5 or 6 Billion people that we are lucky not to have been born as, including China, India, Africa, and much of South America and Asia.

We are all among the top 1% of the world in income, even the people on welfare in the West rate among the top 1% in wealth in the world!

So you see you DO have something to be happy about!

(If only we could send some of those politicians and Rush Limbaugh to one of those other countries we could all be even happier!)

David.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Our new cat.

We are the "proud parents" of a new kitten who we have named Monty. He is just about 7 weeks old and left his mother to come and live with us about 2 weeks ago. A cute gray and white kitten he has captivated Julia's heart and receives the kind of attention from her that I would love to have!
His first doctor's visit was a few days ago and he was given a clean bill of health. No sign of the dreaded feline leukemia, but he does have ear mites, for which we douse his ears twice daily with some revolting, expensive, medicine that seems to be doing the job. Monty does not like it, nor do we as we get a dose too as he shakes his head after it is poured in (Well 5 drops are put into each ear!) this results in a shower of the medicine all over us and whatever else is within 10 feet. And presumably a bunch of dead and dying ear mites are in the resulting spray too.
Anyway this little story was prompted by Julia's remark this morning that Monty needed a bath. When I asked why, she pointed out that his little face was covered in food and the medicine. He washes himself, but is not too successful. The thought of washing this little guy, who even hates having a few drops put into his ear, and which when we do it results in vicious lacerations to both of us from his nasty claws, OK from his little needle like claws, that he is not yet able to retract, fills me with dread.
So my simple answer was, "Let's get Sarah to wash him." I then made an up and down motion with my hand as if I were dipping a cat into a barrel of water and pulling him out again, repeatedly. This brought laughter to us both as we remembered our daughter Sarah washing her cat Andrew like this some 38 years ago.
Here is the story.
We came upon Sarah just after she had put her small cat Andrew into the tumble dryer. Fortunately she did not know how to turn it on! We retrieved the miserable wet animal and asked her why she has put him into the dryer. Her simple answer was, "Because he is wet." When we asked her why he was wet she said, "Because I washed him." Asked how she had washed him, she explained she had washed him in the water barrel in our greenhouse. Of course we had to ask why she had washed him and received the answer, "Because he has paint on him." Indeed, on close examination poor Andrew appeared to have been painted green. Asked why he had green paint on him - remember at the tender age of 3 we don't know how to lie - she said, "Because I painted him."
So all was revealed and yet another episode of, "Life with Sarah", entered our repertoire.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Running down the Republicans.

Well at least I am being honest!
We all know who got us into the mess we are in now - The Republicans. The only thing that they are any good at (apart from running up the National Debt - 2/3 was made by Republicans) - is critizing the guy who is trying to fix the mess THEY made. I will give them that they are very good at critizing, but that is about all. They certainly are no good at connecting or compromising or helping. They are going all out to sabotage Obama at every turn. They seem to have no interest at all in fixing problems - problems that they made - or in helping anyone else to fix them.
In fact any plans that they do have - mostly cutting taxes for the wealthy and increasing taxes on the poor and middle class (soon to be the new poor if the GOP has it's way) will increase the National Debt substantialy. The WSJ and Money magazine etc agree that if any of the GOP candidates do what they say they want to do - cut taxes to the rich, they don't have any other plans that I can see - the National Debt will skyrocket again, as it always has under the Republicans.
It is not really necessary but I might as well point out that the present increasing National Debt is almost exclusively the fault of Republican policy. Namely starting two wars and not increasing taxes to pay for it, and then cutting taxes - to the rich - at the same time as they made no provision to pay for two wars!
Beyond belief.