This woman is 10 years younger than I.

I don’t know what it is, but every time I see a woman, either in person or in a photograph, that is significantly younger than I, but looks (to me, at least) significantly older than I, it totally captures my attention.  It’s probably the old, not very admirable tendency to feel better about yourself, if someone else is doing worse than you are.  Ugh.  What I should be feeling is compassion for the person having to endure whatever set of circumstances that aged them so.

The private lesson was GREAT!  I highly reccomend it.  The new student special is a steal.  Usually a half hour private lesson is $85.  For $20, you get the private, a group lesson and an evening dance.  No-brainer!  The instructor was excellent.  I’m betting that will be the highlight of my entire week.

Today I heard our grandson’s heartbeat.  Cool.  Last time I heard that sound, it belonged to his mother.  The grandson’s mother.  My daughter.  (Just in case you were having trouble following)

Today I did not make it to my Pilates class…..since I was busy listening to heartbeats.

Today we are making a rather large financial decision, hoping for the best, after gathering hopefully enough information so that we understand fully what we are doing.  Praying for wisdom, preferrably before the decision, rather than gained the hard way after it.

Tomorrow I am taking my first ever private dance lesson.  Sigh.  I know I will never dance as well as SOME people, but there is the possibility of improving, and I am having fun, so it’s all good.

Yesterday I enjoyed the worship song portion of the service very much.

Now I’m gonna go do some housework and look for my notes on last week’s gold class moves.

Weird Car News:  Butter on Bridge Prevents Suicides

Government officials in Guangzhou in southeast China ordered workers to smear a 1,000 foot steel bridge with butter to prevent suicides.

Several attempts had been made at the bridge each month, backing up traffic for hours, a story by Metro.co.uk said. Officials say the butter makes the bars hard to climb, making it easy to thwart attempts. There have been no suicides since using the butter, the story said.

An article I just read:

Republicans are evil
Marcia Segelstein – Guest Columnist (One News Now)- 8/25/2009

Living in a part of the country that is most definitely “blue” (as opposed to “red”), it’s easy to begin to feel a little isolated, and certainly out of the mainstream. So it was especially fun reading Harry Stein’s latest book, I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican. Like me, Stein lives in the northern suburbs of New York City, in what he describes as a wildly liberal enclave of hip, culturally elite suburbanites.

Stein calls himself a libertarian-conservative and he paints a vivid picture, which I can easily relate to, of what it’s like to live surrounded by liberals. The book title’s origin speaks volumes. Stein and his wife attended a dinner party during the most recent presidential primary season and, as Stein describes it, “the discussion turned to the glories of The Messiah.” Stein had the temerity to mention Obama’s lack of experience, which was apparently over the top for at least one fellow diner. “[T]he guy beside me, who’d known me all of 15 minutes, drew back his chair, cast me a savage look, and roared…’I can’t believe I’m sitting next to a Republican!’” Yes folks, welcome to Blue America.

I have always been struck by the propensity of liberals to attack conservatives. Tolerance, for liberals at least, seems to apply to everyone except conservatives. Diversity is about skin color, not diversity of thought. My views have been called repugnant, even by some near and dear to me, based purely on assumptions about what I believe. Stein writes about “how astonishingly little they [liberals] know about us.”

Beyond making assumptions about what conservatives actually believe, in my experience liberals also tend to assume everyone around them is liberal, too. The beautiful, brainy daughter of close friends, a Harvard graduate now working in the northeast, echoed similar sentiments recently. “I started my job during the election,” she told me, “and people made the assumption that everyone was liberal. It was perfectly fine to lambaste McCain or Palin in public.” In her experience, if you’re perceived as a smart, decent human being, liberals can’t imagine the possibility that you might be a conservative.

What happens when people find out she is? She told me most people react with surprise, and then drop it. Much to her frustration, no one asks more about her views, or expresses any interest in them. “Liberals pride themselves on being tolerant,” she told me, “but they’re the most closed-minded.” Stein would concur.

He describes another encounter with a liberal, a guy he knew slightly, this time in the supermarket. Stein nodded to acknowledge him, when suddenly, “he spat out: ‘You people disgust me!’” All this guy actually knew about Stein was that he’d written a conservative book. “‘You’re disgusting,” he sputtered, swiping up his shopping bag and stomping away. ‘You sicken me!’”

Revealing your conservative leanings can be tricky, and sometimes it’s easier just to keep quiet. One of Stein’s conservative acquaintances, for example, didn’t want his name used in the book. “‘Why get into arguments with people?’” he told Stein. “‘Your kids have to go to school with their kids, and it just leads to no good.’”

A few years ago I chose not to allow my then elementary school-aged children to attend a school assembly promoting same-sex “marriage.” After babysitting them and a handful of other children in the school library until the assembly was over, I ran into a couple of mothers who’d come to watch the assembly for themselves. One was a friend who knew and accepted my point of view and gave me her take on the series of skits called “Cootie Shots.” The other made it clear that she was happy about the school’s decision to put on the assembly. After all, she pointedly remarked, she didn’t want her kids growing up to be rednecks.

Stein asked a liberal editor at a publishing house he knows for “a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives.” Without missing a beat she replied, “Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists….They hate everyone who’s not a rich white guy.”

I have long thought that one of the striking differences between liberals and conservatives is this: liberals believe conservatives are evil, while conservatives believe liberals are wrong. Stein recounts something his friend Marlene told him, which makes the point. “[S]omeone I’ve known for 27 or 28 years actually said to me, ‘Marlene, I know you’ve worked with the mentally ill, so I know you care about people. But how can you be a good person and a conservative?’”

I guess this is news we can use, as the saying goes. It’s important to keep in mind that the label “conservative” (or Republican) brands us, in the minds of many liberals, as just plain bad people. And while we shouldn’t worry too much about how we’re perceived, we should be concerned about the future of conservatism and getting its true message across. The country our children will inherit may depend on it.

It seems that person(s) unknown have decided that Everest Street, specifically in-front-of-our-house-Everest Street,  is the city dump.  We have a mattress, and a broken wooden round table on the sidewalk in front of our house. Oh, and this morning there was a new addition just across the street: a TV on the sidewalk there. Any suggestions on how to stop the ghettoization of Downey?

I’m quite pleased with myself. I have managed to purchase and download music from the itunes store AND burn it onto a CD. I now have a very nifty CD with 6 of my favorite swing dance tunes.

I think your chances of being a good mother are directly proportional to having been mothered by a good mother. What makes a good mother? Someone who takes the responsibility seriously, who would literally lay her own life on the line for her children if need be, and who figuratively does so, on a daily basis during the years her children are growing up. I fortunately had that with my mom. There was never a doubt in my mind that my well being was at the top of her list of priorities. It’s a security that I took for granted, but not every child is so lucky.  I think that’s the main thing. That, and a set of values that are consistent with God’s game plan, and which are diligently and consistently taught.  No mother is perfect.  Mistakes are made but children, luckily, are resilient.  Anyway, I’m glad I’m a mom.  My grown-up children (and their spouses) are everything, and more than, I ever hoped they would be.  I’m not going to take more than a quarter of the credit for that.  They can split the other three fourths, as they see fit, among themselves, their father and God.  But being their mom has definitely been one of the best and most important things I’ve done in my life, and I’m incredibly happy with the results.  Thanks to my mom on this Mother’s Day, and to hers.

On my way home from walking this morning I noticed something about our lemon tree. There weren’t any lemons on it. Where’d they go? Last time I looked there were about a dozen. When did the lemon bandit come into my yard and harvest my lemon crop?????

I officially declare the Prius larger than the Saturn. This I know because I just washed it and it required a step-stool for me to reach the middle of the roof.