For a few dead horses that deserve a little more attention.

"I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so" – Romain Rolland

As we wandered in the front gate of the county fair we spied the traveling version of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Dad and I were excited to see it there, standing a mere 4 feet or so high, it stretched down the fence line until it was out of sight. At first its diminutive presence was a let down, still I wanted to look up Sgt Lancaster and headed down the black line, impossibly trying to take in all of the names. After a few moments we both stopped, Dad stood reluctantly with his hands in his pockets several feet away from it. We both know a lot of names on that wall and somehow we just could not bring ourselves to go any further on that warm spring day.

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. – Robert Stevenson

I first read about the tea parties on Facebook and it struck a chord in me. The home we have been paying on for 27 years now is worth less than it was two years ago, all of our retirement savings have lost money. They never recovered from the effects of 9/11. We are finally out of debt except for our mortgage only to face having to pay higher taxes when we retire. It took some planning and a great deal of courage on my part to go.

While Hubby was sure I was turning into a radical and telling me to call him if I get arrested, I made plans to ride the bus downtown. That ride was truly worth every centavo of the two dollar fare. I am, of course, talking about the side of the horse where several people get together and start flailing around with sticks. The squinty-eyed guy in the Mr. Goodwrench work shirt told us that the tire wrapped in the dingy yellow towel strapped to an orange dolly was for a 1930 Ford. And just before the little old lady with dreadlocks, polka dotted umbrella and finger gloves with pandas painted on them, got off, she turned around and hissed at him about how she hoped both he and his father rotted in hell with Satan. While the bus driver told them both to behave, he lectured her on the evils of doing meth as she disembarked. My seatmate, who was blind, said he thought Tucson was a scary town. No doubt, I had discovered the real demonstrators showing us how to beat the undead stuffing out of a horse.

I've never been to any kind of protest. The windchill was at least 30 below zero when Dwight swaggered up to the school bus stop at Kincheloe, ABF, MI. He was showing off his bruises like a schoolyard bully on the hunt for some lunch money and said he had told his dad he wanted to be a hippie. His words evaporated like our frosty breath into the crystal clear day because most of the high school kids knew he had gotten his butt handed to him for even daring to say anything like that out loud.

Tax Day was in the middle of National Library Week and the Farmer's Market was set up on the sidewalk on the way to the Presidio. There were no anarchists, counter-protesters or racists. The most alarming posters I saw were by two little girls who had demonized the POTUS. How sad that their parents would mislead them with such hate. There was a gal handing out anti-military pamphlets like Chick tracts at an atheist barbecue. We heard rumors that Moveon.org was there, however their counterparts, the Aryan Nation were a no show. Sorry to disappoint Ms Garofalo.

It was bright and sunny with the smell of popcorn in the air, a band played and people walked around with signs. I was wearing my cloak of invisibility and it was honestly surprising to see so many there. Lots of young families: some disabled folks, a few African-Americans, a few more Latin Americans, Veterans and mostly white folks—with white hair. And then it dawned on me that this is the demographic that has lost the most. While we still have over a decade to regain our losses, a lot of people there do not. They are stuck with what they had to pull out of their IRAs and 401 k's while the stock markets plummeted. The Federal Building loomed over the park where small heads could be seen watching us on the pavilion below. When we were asked to boo them, it was a sacrament to my soul.

Goodnight, travel well – The Killers

Hubby has been affected with some sort of indefinable lung disease for over a year. The doc seems to think it's either Valley Fever or sarcoidosis and while he milks our insurance company for all they've got, Hubby is on O2 at night. When they brought in the concentrator I looked at him and said, "Both you and my dad are going to leave me behind one day aren't you? "

Devotion

The first day of winter, it is cold, cold and cold. I love this weather, though I know I will be aching for summer by the time the season is half over.

You've probably noticed that I have been around quite a lot since my February 1, 2009 "leaving" node. I still catbox a lot, I node at about one a week, I message plenty of people and I have a mentee. I knew that getting a mentee would take up some time: messaging him, reading his scratchpads and helping him out in general. Happily for me, I got myself a good one, he capitalizes, uses punctuation and is a good writer who takes my advice about how to approach this place. Also, we are in the same time zone so I am around when he is around.

On E2 vs. School

During the last term I have found that I have really limited myself in the way of non-school related activities. The parties haven't started to any great degree, my friends are the studious type and so my social life has not taken over. That said, the social life of year twelve is much better. Everyone has started getting along much better, general bitchiness has been kept to a minimum. Also, I have started going to the local shopping center more often with a couple of my friends, perhaps once or twice a fortnight. This consists of donuts, spring rolls and two buses, but it is a good way to relax. Currently, I have no horse, I read few books these days and so E2 is my main source of relaxation and general distraction from school.

I have found that two things help me learn more: active listening in class and a good night's sleep. Of course, all of my subjects demand at least five hours of homework a week... 35 hours of school, plus 5 x 5 gives me just 108 hours a week to myself, half of which is probably sleeping, eating, and those other necessary things. Juggling it all is difficult, but I am not quitting this place.

E2 has become my distraction, my way to relax and ignore school and life in general. If I had a horse I would have to cut down on time here, if I had a job I'd have to cut down on time here. This place will be the first to go should I need to have more time, and over exams I shall be here as little as possible. That said, I do not know how long I could go without the people, the writing, the everything, to help keep me sane.

On School and The Future

School takes up most of my time, or it should. I have seven hours a day at school, after which I am exhausted from the sheer amount of learning I must do. My subjects, for those who do not know, are physics, chemistry, math studies (the second hardest, the hardest is what you must do to get into any engineering course), English communications (study of a few texts, but mostly it is commercials, journalism and the like that is studied) and visual art studies.

I enjoy chemistry, maths and English. Art is alright but it takes up so much time: I have a major art work to complete in the next four weeks, not easy as it takes about a week to dry to any reasonable degree, and I have no firm ideas for the middle panel of the piece. Once that is completed I must do a second major piece in the following fifteen weeks; I have a major essay to write about pop art, and two smaller ones, one on art and religion, the other on Jeffery Smart, whose style of painting I do not like very much at all.

I have decided not to be a vet. I am good at science, but then I am one of those people who is generally able to do anything, but not good at any one thing in particular. I am not scientifically minded enough to manage six years of university, plus a lifetime of that sort of chemical study, and I am not sure I would really enjoy being a vet as a career. I am now looking at a general course, a double degree in art and science, because I can do both of them. Otherwise a life in editing, journalism (probably not), or maybe a course in husbandry, as I have always been interesting in breeding. If I did that I would go with basenjis or pharaoh hounds, or maybe Welsh Ponies, though God knows there are enough of those cute hairy things around as it is.

Basically I have no real idea of what I want to do but I trust it will work out.

On E2 (and the people) in general

Previously I never hated any of you, and I still don't but there are some of you I have found to be jerks. Some of you are complete asses, and while pushin' niceness might be for pussies, if you seriously think that you have a lot of fucking work to do on your own life.

Some of you are absolute darlings, some of you have my greatest respect, some of you I trust as completely as you can trust an internet person; take the good with the bad because none of us are perfect. I enjoy talking to 99% of you, but I am only talking about the catbox here and that is a very limited way to view this site. There are many noders who never catbox, many I never see catboxing, many who are here just for the writing.

I have been going through my inbox lately, I am still undecided if it is better to copy them onto my own computer and delete them here, copy and keep or simply leave my inbox as it is. Before I realized that I was deleting moments of my life I removed the first messages from xWiz from my inbox; sangsoo has apparently sent me less than three hundred messages; I have only five from Creative Lives. I am utterly depressed that I did that, I think that nobody should be able to so completely remove a person from their life, and I never desired any of that to be gone.

Ignoring the people for a moment, and the catbox, I love the writing here, I love trying to find out about the people through their words. I love homenodes and the things that are C!ed. I love the editor logs and the Suggestions for E2. I love being able to write here and getting feedback, I love giving feedback, I love everything about this site. I ain't goin' nowhere in a hurry.

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Last night I woke up at three. I had a strange dream; it was either that or my roommate dropping a bottle of ibuprofen on the floor that woke me up. Being a light sleeper means that I wake up easily. It also means that I have trouble getting back to sleep once something has awakened me. After twelve minutes of not sleeping I got up to watch TV. My roommate had just gotten back from a night out with some of his friends. I don't know what it is about my roommate but it seems like he's always picking up women. The other night I turned the heat off because the weather's been warmer. I was cold talking to my roommate but he didn't seem to notice the chill. My roommate offered me something to drink while he told me all about the new girl he had met. Her name is Angela, she's twenty-four and she works for U.S. Cellular.

My roommate is six feet tall. He's skinny, his voice is effeminate and his hair is dark red but it is still red. People joke about him being gay, he drives a white BMW and we're both neat freaks but our compulsions manifest in different ways. e.g. I don't like it when he leaves dishes in the sink and I wear my shoes in our apartment because I don't care about the carpeting that will never be clean anyways. The house my roommate likes has hardwood floors which is what I grew up with. Nothing against the house but I'm not sure I want to live there with my roommate. Whether I'm ready for that type of a commitment or not if he wants to go forward with this I'm going to have to make a decision about what I want to do. In other news my ex-girlfriend called to ask if she had left her San Diego sweatshirt over at our place.

Before I could ask Trevor if her call was a ploy to get me to call her back he told me he thought he was going to puke. Later he told me he wasn't sure if it was the beer or all the ibuprofen he took on an empty stomach. Before I left for work I opened Trevor's door to check if he was still alive. He was sleeping on his stomach while his cell phone was napping on the pillow next to him. Today I have mixed feelings about last night. Anyone can get sick but is Trevor the kind of person I want to buy a house with?