On 8 OCT 2008 Tim's Befuddled Universe announced its 4th annual celebration of Winter Holiday Songs. Submissions from all musical genres are encouraged. Submission rules and procedures can be found here.
Grand Prize
This year we will be offering a Grand Prize to the band or singer that submits the overall winning song. The Grand Prize will be a copy of Great Gran'ma Ensign's sour cream sugar cookie recipe. (Should the winner ever reveal the recipe, Great Gran'ma's ghost well bring the culprit second, third, and fourth helpings of potatoes and gravy after every dinner.)
Soon or Sooner
The deadline is noon on 10 Dec 2008 (Pacific time USA), so I will be expecting your submission soon, if not sooner.
Saturday we held the wedding reception for my second born daughter. This is the daughter that back in July took the cash option offered her to elope rather than have a traditional church wedding. (See my previous posting.)
I thought she might do one of two things, take the money and break off the engagement OR stop fooling around and plan the damn wedding! To that point the only dress that had been purchased was mine! (Which was killer, BTW.) Little did I suspect that she would take the $$$ and run. To Las Vegas in August. August 13, 2008 — which is also the doomed and disastrous anniversary date of yours truly and the father of second born daughter. My state of pissed off over this turn of events lasted only as long as it took me to realize that she had just saved me a ton of pain, suffering and aggravation not to mention the $$$!! I had met the future in-laws, finally after many months of the issue of our meeting being sidestepped and avoided and now I know why. Let me just say this one thing about them and then we will leave it alone, for now. ... Everything that I am, they are the exact opposite... Think "The Birdcage" with me in the role of Albie, if Albie were a real woman and not a drag queen, and you have a fairly clear idea of what we were up against.
So, I had a complete change of heart and there was much singin' and dancin' and chortlin' with glee in CrazyRedLand at my good fortune to have given birth to at least one child who was sensible until... once again fate and a pissed off mother-in-law interceded and on October 25, 2008, the previously planned for marriage date became the date of the wedding reception to honor the happy couple and I was back in wedding planning hell once again. My daughter, without discussing it with me aforehand and, in effort to appease her new mother-in-law who had not taken the Viva Las Vegas wedding nearly as well as I did, had made an offer in compromise, hence, the wedding reception. Of course, she was right once again and I set to work planning a home grown variety using harvest/fall colors as my jumping off point not only because of the time of year but mostly because those colors look great on me and coincidentally my killer dress was a killer shade of rust orange and I was determined to wear it come hell or high water. Which I did.
So, the month of October has been devoted to two things... cleaning my filthy dog hair laden house in time for the party AND dealing with my mother and her knee surgery...etc... etc... Everyday since I set foot back in Texas, I have been kicking dirt's ass, cleaning like a woman possessed, the white Tornado, have Dyson - will travel. No, seriously, several times last week it was all I could do to keep from loading my dog and my Dyson in my Tahoe and running away to join the circus or become an itinerant vacuumer or something.. I love my Dyson!! That fucker will suck the dog hair out of the air. If I could just get my dogs not to run from it I would vacuum them... go straight to the source.. what I was talking about? Oh yes...
Therefore, falling under the heading of "Take a picture it lasts longer"... I took pictures of my clean house. I tried to take pictures during the party, but at one point set my camera down and wasn't able to find it again until late yesterday afternoon. Therefore, I have no pictures of myself in my killer orange dress, no pictures of my sisters and I together...dammit! No pictures of the food, which was fabulous and cooked by my son the professional chef, his friend the professional chef and my Beloved, the amateur but really good chef. And only a couple of pictures of my beautiful daughter and her new husband and I was forbidden to blog those. What I do have are two amazing sisters that showed up on time, took over our mother for me and then kicked ass on pulling my house together, fabulous and talented cooks as friends and relations, a beautiful and sensible daughter who can stay calm in a crisis, and a fucking Dyson vacuum cleaner, man! ..... I heart my Dyson!
To sum up, if you are as high, as I am and forgot what I was talking about...
CrazyRed is:
Sitll Crazy
Still Red
and taking a personal day of rest and relaxation.
On Monday morning I awoke and started hyperventilating when I suddenly realized that I only thought I had done everything on my "do-list" of wedding arrangements. In my zeal of self congratulations over being so organized, I had failed to contact the rental place for the tent and other rentables, such as tables, chairs, knives, forks, glasses, plates, tablecloths, you know, minor things. So, I hied myself down to the rental store and thirty minutes later and one hefty check + 10% for breakage coverage drove home again secure in the knowledge that nothing else could go wrong until...
I arrived home and walked in the house to be assailed with the most horrible smell. Marilyn, my half Jack Russell Terrier -half long-haired Chihuahua had yacked up on every available cloth surface in my house after eating a stick of butter someone had left out on the counter. My washing machine ran day and night for three days and I held off on putting any slip cover or window seat cover or pillow back out until Saturday morning when the dogs were sequestered elsewhere and the dog hair had been dutifully sucked up by my trusty Dyson. Friday night, the sisters arrived and the next morning the transition began...
It is helpful if you have one sister that has a penchant for home decorating shows, is a little obsessive compulsive and you don't get your feelings hurt if she re-cleans your house. I just stood back, got high and turned her loose. It is also helpful if you have another sister who does litigation law and is always on the lookout for a potential lawsuit. She was in charge of risk management and tea light distribution and later she saved my ass during the great wedding cake snafu. Instead, I went outside and took care of the outdoor portion of the party preparations.
Photo credits: Crazy Red Click on photos to enlarge.
On 15 May 2008 the California Supreme Court ruled ``marriage is a fundamental right under Article 1, Section 7 of the California Constitution'' (see Wikipedia); therefore, since marriage was a fundamental right, no law could be established to limit that right. It is simple. It is straightforward. As the California Supreme stated, it is simply a question of fundamental rights.
Fundamental Rights
Fundamental rights are like the right to free speech, and the right to practice (or not practice) the religion of our own choice. If we do not treat our fundamental rights with great care, one day we might discover that a segment of our population has been rounded up, and put into internment camps, because someone fears some of them may be spies. We may discover that other people are being put in a detention camp on a far off island without trials or access to lawyers. Or we may learn that our email and phone calls are being monitored without court orders.
City Hall
Getting back to Proposition 8.
In 2004 Gavin Newson, the mayor of San Francisco, directed the City Clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This action, and a 2000 initiative prohibiting same-sex unions, were two of the main reasons that brought about the 2008 California Supreme Court ruling prohibiting discrimination in marriage.
Election
If you live in California, and you are a registered voter, get off your bum on November 4th, and go out and Vote NO on Proposition 8.
Videos
Vienna Teng performing ``City Hall" at Sun Studio Sessions
Justly Married Scenes from City Hall
14 NOV 2008 UPDATE
On 4 NOV 2008 approximately 52% of California voters voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry; that is, Proposition 8 (election returns).
As a resident of Santa Clara County, California, I was delighted and proud to learn that Santa Clara County has joined with the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles in a legal challenge to Proposition 8. (See an OP-Ed piece printed on page 15A in The San Jose Mercury News on 13 NOV 2008, We all have a stake in Prop. 8 challenge by Ann Ravel. Ann Ravel is a counsel for Santa Clara County. In her statement, Ms. Ravel argues that the initiative process was never intended as a means for the majority to strip minority groups of their constitutional rights.)
How My Mother Took the Yippi-Yi-Yo out of my Ki-Yay or "I've Got the My Mama Wears Depends, My Sister takes Dextrol and I'm Doing More Kegels Blues”
If you are just tuning into the continuing saga of my ridiculous life for the very first time let me briefly bring you up to speed on the latest doings then move on. We have a lot of ground to cover. Okay, my mother told me in August that her definitive decision regarding my constant nagging to get her knee replaced was "Shut up, Red, as usual you don't know what you are talking about. I will never have my knee replaced EVER! I will just suffer!". Two weeks into my 3 week vacation she emailed me to let me know that her "knee had finally imploded", she was having knee replacement surgery in October and how soon could I be home. The surgery was done on Tuesday morning of this week. The operation went smoothly, the recovery process has been a whole other enchilada.
Things I have learned this week..
1. My 80 year old mother LOVES "Hannah Montana" and the rest of the Disney Channel line up. Which I discovered on Tuesday when I asked if we might watch the debate. "No, Red, I absolutely REFUSE to watch the debates!” she shouted at me over the eardrum shattering volume of a hospital TV turned to high. She then proceeded to yell at me over a deafening roar of canned laughter the back story of " The Jonas Brothers". This is the same woman who in 1960, when our television was broken beyond repair, refused to allow my father to purchase another because we were growing up to be heathens and TV would be our eventual undoing. Instead, we were made to listen to recordings of “Peter Pan” with Jean Arthur and Sir Cyril Richard, “The Lady's Not for Burning” by Christopher Fry and “Winnie Pooh and the Heffalump” as narrated by James Stewart. Then one day my father came home from work early and found all of us including our maid, Rosita, next door at the neighbor's house watching the Mickey Mouse Club and bought a new television set that very day.
2. I have several friends whose parents have had the same surgery as my mother and assured me that she would be sedated for at least the first day or two and would sleep most of the time. Well, they sedated the wrong half. She had an epidural. According to the surgeon other than knocking her out for a brief time in order to insert the needle, she was awake through most of the operation and talked a blue streak to the anesthesiologist. I was informed later by the recovery room staff that she never shut up the entire time she was there and when they wheeled her into her room she was still talking. This continued all day until she finally fell asleep late that night and only because I insisted that the nurses give her something to knock her out. Please!
3. The “Sleeping Chair” for the family member staying with the loved one overnight is not made for sleeping no matter what the sign says. It is an instrument of torture designed to drum up future business for the Spine and Joint Hospital.
4. Before she drove us to the hospital my mother handed me a thick file folder containing among many things a sheet of paper with a list of 20 people that she wanted me to inform that she “had survived the surgery”. The list was divided into two categories, one for email and the other for phone numbers. My younger sister was dead last on the email list and my older sister was dead last on the phone list and the number listed as hers was an old number from several years ago. This may explain why my sister says my mother never calls.
5. Wednesday night she was in a lot of pain. Because of the epidural and her low blood pressure the pain medication had to be held to a minimum. To distract her I began asking her questions about her childhood. She told me stories from 6 PM until Midnight. This is my favorite ..
My mother loves cats and as a child saved up all of her money to buy Missy, a White Persian. At some point Missy went into heat and all of the Tom Cats began coming around and serenading the fair Missy outside of my grandparents house for several nights running. Finally, one night my grandmother had heard enough. She got up out of bed, stormed outside, looked over the assemblage of cats, selected the one she thought was the best of the lot, picked it up, took it inside the house, and threw him in the spare room where she was keeping Missy cloistered. Two months later Missy had kittens.
My mother was discharged from the surgical hospital this afternoon and is now ensconced in a rehab facility for the next 20 days. I told her that some of my StumbleUpon.com friends had sent her their best wishes for a speedy recovery and she said “Well, Red, please tell them I said thank you, but why you feel compelled to tell the whole world our business, I will never know. Now shut up, Hannah Montana is about to start.”
So, for those of you who have wondered why CrazyRed is so crazy.....
CrazyRed is:
Still Crazy,
Redder than ever,
and really wishing she were adopted.
