Regina Noctis

Castle Magic castle builders. I’ve already got the floorplan in mind that I want.

Though I think one of the amusing parts about this is that they operate out of ID. Sandpoint, to be exact. Seems to me I’ve seen that name a few times in someone’s posts…

And here I thought that the only coolness in ID (at least until recently, when coolness factor was cut in half) was provided by and Kidita.

Unhappy with a poor quality job? Bush campaign worker says, “Take a Prozac.”

Undoubtedly one of the dumbest things I’ve seen anyone on either side say.

The sad part is that, while I have no direct quotes that I could put into play here to show why I have this feeling (because I’ve heard nothing to support OR disprove this feeling) I have often thought that this has been the attitude of much of the current administration toward the huge amount of decent jobs that are being outsourced. I suppose I’d be better informed if I had been paying attention to the television, but I have been pretty much out of contact in that way for several months now. This is still the feeling I’ve gotten from what I have seen, however.

Many years ago, a friend introduced me to an a capella group called The Flips. A friend of hers had made a copy of his tape for her. She didn’t know the name of the album, and neither had her friend when he gave her the copy he’d made for her. Apparently, the copy her friend had was a gift from someone else.

So, when my friend gave me a copy of her copy of his copy of… you get the idea… it had some pretty obvious imperfections from being several generations deep into being copied. But the sound quality was still okay. Certainly no more background hissing and such than I was accustomed to from years of listening to vinyl.

Then the tape deck in my car, damn the cranky thing, ate my copy. I was out of contact by then with the friend who’d made the copy for me in the first place. I had been out of contact with her for quite some time… years, as a matter of fact… and didn’t have any idea of where to start trying to find her to get a new copy. Or if she even still had her copy.

This morning while waiting for my dentist appointment, I had one of the songs from that old tape running through my head. It made me want to hear the entire album again. I’ve had some success over the last few years with tracking down the really rare stuff that I was missing. Things like “Satanic Permutations,” “Housecleaning on Narcotics,” and the punked-up Cristina version of “Is That all There Is?” So I decided to pass the time until my appointment on doing some more music detective work.

Finding anything about The Flips was hard. There have actually been several bands that have the word “flips” somewhere in the name. With dilligent re-wording and changing of queries on Google, I was slowly managing to narrow in on my objective. Finally, I found one page that mentioned them by name, and clicked the link. The page no longer existed, but I did manage to fish it out of the Google cache. Since I could then see the full text about The Flips, I learned the name of the album, at long last.

Further searching for the name of the group plus the name of the album turned up Flying Fish Records, a label under the house of Rounder Records. Flying Fish still sells tapes of What’s in the Bright Pink Box? through Rounder as distributer. It’d be lovely to have it on CD, since those last longer and tape players are starting to go the way of turntables. But it’s either tape or vinyl, and I no longer own a turntable. I do own two tape players that still work, on the other hand. And the price isn’t bad… $10.

You can’t order online from Rounder. You have to call their toll-free number.

I know exactly who I’m calling once I’m able to speak more clearly.

But first, much sleep. I have hardly gotten any for the last three days, and the crash has come.

Apparently.

My appointment was for 9:30, and here it is, around 10:45 as I type this. And I sat in the waiting room for a while, and then in the Dental Chair of Tortures for a while, before I was actually seen. It was real fast, and I didn’t feel a thing. I’m sure that’ll change as soon as the numbness wears off, however.

When I got there, Dr. Choe convinced me to get all the ones on the left side done at once, rather than just the two that had been actively bothering me. The third, apparently, was in pretty bad shape, and he was predicting that it would start bothering me in a month or less. So, I figured, why not get the pain in one lump sum on that side, rather than some now and some later. So, he did three surgical extractions. Just snap, snap, snap, done.

Right now, the only downside, at least until the numbness wears off, is that I have to spend the rest of the day biting down on this packing in order to get the bleeding to stop.

So, two wisdom teeth, one of which was broken, and one broken molar, gone. On the 10th, we do the three on the right side. Then, some as-yet-unknown time after that, two fillings. Probably a cleaning in there somewhere. And, finally, I will be done with the major stage of not-going-to-the-dentist-for-15-years penance. Then I can start thinking about getting my fake teeth of some species to replace the ones that parted company with me.

This was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Of course, I may change my tune later. And then I’ll be very, very happy for the painkillers Dr. Choe prescribed.

That time may even be soon. I can feel a little twinge in my lower jaw, and it’s hard to tell if it’s where the broken wisdom tooth used to be, or and irritated arthritic joint that had to be held in an unaccustomed position for a while. I guess time will tell.

Didn’t sleep at all. When it got to be around six, I just gave up. After all, I would have had to get up again an hour or two later, and that little sleep actually makes me feel worse than just not sleeping at all.

And, in something like 30 minutes from now, the dentist will be making preparations to rip my teeth out.

Welcome to another lovely day.

*sigh*

As usual, I can’t sleep. Bloody DSPS and all the other little sleep disorders that plague me.

Part of it is also nerves. I have a 9:30 AM appointment with the dentist. It’ll be the first couple of the surgical extractions. The closest I’ve ever come to having teeth removed was when I was losing my baby teeth. I even still have my wisdom teeth, since they weren’t impacted and there was room for them in my mouth. Of course, one of the teeth that’s coming out tomorrow is a wisdom tooth, the one that broke.

I am not looking forward to this.

On top of the expected unpleasantness of having those teeth removed, there’s also the arthritis in my jaw. Holding my mouth open that long causes great pain anymore. It’s not TMJ. It’s arthritis. But the end result is similar.

Hell, there was one time, with my last dentist, that I couldn’t help it. The muscles spasmed once the arthritis ache got bad enough, and I bit my dentist.

So, they’d better either knock my ass out or make me so high on the goofy gas that I don’t care anymore. For the dentist’s protection as much as for my own.

The interesting part for me with this quiz was looking at the various results after I got done taking it, and realizing that while this might be my category now, I have actually been several different ones over the years.

But I can’t really much argue with this result. Even I recognize that I get a little weirder every year.

Category X – The
Changeling
Witty, amusing and a bit weird, you’re welcomed
into most social groups, even though you don’t
‘fit in’ perfectly .

What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

My broken wisdom tooth was hurting badly enough that I got an emergency appointment with a dentist here in Hellano. This was something I was hoping to avoid until I have insurance again. I can’t afford it, and hate to soak up a substantial part of Mom’s limited so-so security income. But it couldn’t be helped.

The verdict after the dentist examined me was two fillings and six extractions, four of them requiring oral surgery. The first bout of that starts on the 29th at 9:30 in the morning.

Still paying the penance for not having had insurance for most of my adult life. Who can afford anything medical, be it with a dentist, GP, or any other species of medical person, without insurance? I sure can’t.

At least four of the extractions are things I knew were coming. The three broken teeth and the remaining little piece of the tooth that my previous dentist did a root canal on and then never put a crown on. That was the first to decide it’d had enough of being part of me. Leaped right out of my mouth and skittered across a table at Denny’s while I was talking to . Damn good thing I don’t get badly embarrassed all that easily. It was a little bit of an embarrassment, but it could have been worse.

Following in the footsteps of my parents, both of whom have very weak teeth. They gave me calcium supplements to try and strengthen my teeth before my baby teeth even began to come in. They figured that genetics were working against me on this. I guess it worked somewhat. Despite the lack of dental care, I held onto all my teeth (including the wisdom teeth) just fine for longer than either of them were able to.

But now I get to lose almost all of my molars. And the price tag of more than $1,000 is just for the fillings and extractions. That’s not counting any kind of replacement. And I may have to just learn to gum my food to death for a little while. After paying to get everything torn out, I doubt Mom will be able to pay right away for the following refurbishment.

On top of that lovely news today, Whiskers is sliding into a pretty bad asthma attack. And my idiot cousin let him out this morning, despite the way he was coughing and visibly struggling for air. In the past, if Whiskers got out during an attack, he’d always be back in the afternoon. When Whiskers hadn’t returned by 9 tonight, we were pretty sure that he’d suffocated to death somewhere out there. Mom was sobbing, just absolutely torn apart.

Well, I say let the cat out. What really happened is that my idiot cousin seems to be absolutely incapable of ever closing a door when he comes into the house. We’ve asked nicely, not so nicely, yelled, screamed, etc. Does no good. So, about every other asthma attack, the cat gets out.

Fortunately, Whiskers returned, around 9:30. He’s lying on the floor behind me, his sides heaving, too weak from oxygen deficiency to do anything. He goes to the vet tomorrow. And this time, Cousin Idiot won’t get the chance to let him out to disappear all day rather than make the trip to the vet.

Since John resented that my mother asked him (yet again) to close doors behind him, he walked out of the house and purposely left the door open. I’d been there, trying to comfort Mom as best I could as she was weeping over Whiskers before he returned. I’d been there through her asking him to close the doors, and his attacks on her in reply. I’d been there when my grandmother started yelling at Mom for fighting with John, completely ignoring that he was the one that initiated the attacks, and that she had only been asking him to do something everyone else does every day. I’d been there when John decided to try and get at Mom by starting to try and upset me, talking about how I’m just a stupid lazy bitch who gets everything done for her and paid for her. I’d been there when he gave Mom his best “Fuck you, bitch” look just before leaving the door wide open. And I had enough. So, while he was still close enough to see exactly what I was doing, I marched over and threw the lock on the door. If he can’t learn to behave like a reasonable person, as far as I’m concerned, he’s banned from access to the house.

Of course, the down side of that is that I’m stuck inside the house tonight instead of in my room. Since Grandma has flatly refused to do anything about the broken toilet in the half-bath connected to my room, I have to be inside, in case.

I didn’t sleep last night because of my tooth. I’m not sleeping tonight because I’m still, all these hours later, too furious to be able to even think about sleep.

I suppose it’s possible that John could take this opportunity to trash my room. The promised door has not arrived, so there’s no way to lock my room. I can’t even get the door to shut properly, much less lock. And when he started after me, I was no shrinking violet. I tore into him in return, and with gusto. So, he may decide to take his vengeance on my things.

I almost hope he does. Because if he does, he’ll be in jail so fast it’ll make his head spin. I’m just waiting for him to give me the excuse to have him put away where he belongs.

The fluffy ball of kitten cuteness has been saved! Yay! Enough donations came in to cover it all, and Hero is now doing fine. He came home from the vet yesterday, and all reports have him being adorable, kittenish, and healthy. The two lovely ladies who rescued him will take care of him until he’s old enough to no longer need any special care, and then he’ll be adopted out. Unless someone gets too attached to part with him, and I could see that as a possibility just from the pictures. If I wasn’t already owned by multiple felines, I’d be trying to muscle my way to the head of the adopt-a-kitty line myself.

I finally got around the annoying technical issues I had that got in the way of posting the three contenders I came up with for a possible theme song for Eric in the Elevator. I posted them over in the community, and I’ll see whether there’s any interest in using one of them. It was fun making them. A good excuse to break out of the industrial/noise/goth stuff that I tend toward.

Now back to working on the remix for the Tweaker song “It’s Still Happening.” Which is, unsurprisingly, sounding rather industrial.

It’s not so appropriate since I began to learn to set boundaries, but I still am amused by the joke.

and are trying to save the life of an abandoned kitten. He was dumped by a woman who didn’t want to deal with a litter of kittens, and couldn’t be bothered to try and place the kittens or even go to the Humane Society to have them place the kittens. The others in the litter have not been found.

This one was taken from his mother too young. And he is having life-threatening problems. The Sniffle and Bess have taken him to the vet, but they can’t afford the bill on their own.

I just made a contribution to the fund to save the life of the poor little thing. Yeah, even though I don’t have any income. I can’t just not help out.

If anyone else can spare something to save the life of Hero, please go here and clicky the PayPal button.

Yeah, yeah, I know a bunch of you have friended some or all of the other people who’ve posted this, and so you’re just seeing this yet again. Deal.

How could any cat lover resist this face?

Psycho Cousin got my grandmother all riled up today, and she then tried to take it out on me. When I was a very damaged teen and living here, I let her do it. Today when she started going off on me, I shut her down fast by yelling back in exactly the same tone of voice. She stopped immediately. And, when I wandered into the kitchen later to heat up a bagel for lunch, she apologized for yelling at me.

While eating my bagel, I felt more than heard a snap. One of the broken teeth that didn’t get taken care of by my dentist before I lost my job broke further and is now loose. It wiggles when I eat, and it hurts when it wiggles. Fun, fun, fun.

I got sent out to buy food for everyone a bit later. Psycho Cousin’s two oldest are still here, even though they were supposed to go back home last night. So I went out and bought food for them as well. It was more than the amount of money I’d been handed for the food, so I wound up paying for it myself on my debit card. When I got home, John and kids had left. They’re riding with him while he delivers pizzas, and that means that he will be feeding them. $40 I didn’t need to spend, as it turns out.

When I got back from picking up food, I discovered that my mother’s order had not been packed with the rest of the food, so I turned around and went back to discuss the lack with selected employees of the place I’d just been. While I was gone, Mom and Grandma had a fight, partially inspired by my grandmother’s yelling at me for something that was neither my fault nor my responsibility. When I got back the second time, Mom and Grandma were both too upset to want to eat anything.

While I was getting the scoop on this from my mother back in her bedroom, Grandma came in and tried to corner me into saying something that would allow her to get pissed off at me again. Since part of the fight she’d had with my mother concerned how my grandmother had gotten in my face and started yelling at me, Grandma came back to say that she had no memory of ever getting in my face about something, ever. She asked me if I remembered her ever getting in my face, and if I did, to tell her about it, since her selective memory has conveniently erased these things. I remember many of these incidents, including several since I moved back in. But I didn’t want to get the fight going again. I knew that’s exactly where it would go, and that it was what my grandmother really wanted. She goes through these periodic fits of stirring up drama, and I usually refuse to play. I refused this time. She kept on trying to get me to tell her, and I kept telling her, “No, I do not want to get into this. I am not going to start a fight with you, or contribute to keeping the one you have with Mom going.” She decided to take this as me somehow agreeing with her premise that she doesn’t remember anything like that because it doesn’t exist, and started in on Mom again. The whole thing got me angry enough that I really, really wanted to remind her of all the things she did that made me miserable, which she so conveniently forgets. But I controlled that urge, since this thing will die down more quickly if I don’t feed the drama troll.

Instead, I got out of there and went out to the relative peacefulness… if an overheated peacefulness, since my little wall-mounted air conditioner isn’t capable of helping much… of my room. I settled in to eat my own dinner, now nicely cold thanks to the trip back to the restaurant and then the drama with Grandma once I got back. Since I was having a problem with the tooth that had cracked further when I ate the bagel, I was primarily chewing on the other side. This is something I usually avoid, since there is a missing molar there. My dentist had given me a root canal there, and told me that we needed to get a crown on it, otherwise I’d lose the tooth. But thereafter, every time I made an appointment and came in, she informed me that she wouldn’t be putting a crown on that tooth after all, and did other work. There was a lot to be done, admittedly, since I’d been without insurance for about 15 years, and hence had not been to a dentist in all that time. But, eventually, the molar she’d done the root canal on fell out. Makes eating on that side difficult. I tried it tonight anyway. And a completely different tooth, one that had gotten chipped during the deep cleaning but otherwise had shown no sign of any problem at all, snapped off at the gumline out of the blue. So now I’m missing two teeth on that side.

Counting the baby teeth that shattered rather than fall out, this makes a total of six teeth that have essentially crumbled. I’ve got a number of friends who also have PCOS, and most of them have had or are having similar problems with their teeth. I’ve never seen any information connecting the two, but I’m starting to really wonder about that. I just hope that the very few who haven’t had these issues don’t develop them.

And just now while I was typing all this, my grandmother walked into my room uninvited, without knocking, and tried to get things going again. My room is supposedly my safe haven when I need to get away from the drama. But she is starting to bring it out here, and has told me that I have no right to any privacy whatsoever on a couple of occasions now. If she could, she’d be in here reading everything I put into my journals, this one and the paper one, as I write it. She’s done that kind of thing before, back when she could still see to read.

I hope that Mark hurries up with the door with the lock. I’m so tired of this. And I do need a safe haven to get away from the drama sometimes, and wind down. When I feel I have no escape from everything, my blood pressure rises. It’s reached dangerous levels before, and moving here had lowered it back to normal for a while. But I can tell it’s higher tonight than it has been for a while, and if no one leaves me alone so I can get over the stress and anger, it will just keep on going up. Since Grandma has decided that I have no right to privacy in her home, ever, I really need to be able to lock her out now, for my own health and peace of mind.

I’ve got my first high blood pressure headache in almost a year. Dammit.

The last time that Psycho Cousin destroyed some of mine and Mom’s things, I told him then that if he ever touched anything of hers or mine again, I would call the cops and have him tossed in jail, where he belongs.

He has his two oldest kids over today, and they rented some violent, drug- and sex-filled movie. Not the kind of thing most people would want their kids to see. They used my DVD player to watch it, without my permission. My grandmother was in the living room, because there isn’t really much of anything else for her to do but sit and listen to the TV since she lost so much of her eyesight, her heart condition is getting worse, and her back still hurts. She said that this was nothing she wanted to be watching, and she certainly wouldn’t let children watch it. They ignored her and watched it anyway. And then Psycho Cousin’s son started to play the movie again. Mom went in and stopped the movie and told them it was time to give the TV back to Grandma. John then proceeded to inform my mother that he’s going to kick her ass and mine and kill our cats. The kids are both treating Mom and me like lepers now. They won’t even look at us. Neither will say a word to me, even though I wasn’t in there when this went on and just found out about all of it.

So I cleared my DVD player out of the living room, and told both Mom and Grandma that John is not allowed to touch anything of mine. I don’t care if he goes and wastes his money on renting a DVD that he then can’t watch. He’s not touching my things again.

I just wish I’d been in there when the threats happened. John would be in jail right now, and to hell with what the kids think of me for it.

Part of what has me angry, too, is the reaction of the kids. The boy has gone through fits of deciding that the hates my mom because of the shit that Psycho Cousin feeds to him. But the eldest girl hadn’t reacted like this before, and we had been becoming friends. She now stops getting the consideration she was getting before, as far as I’m concerned.

Hell with ‘em all. Who needs them causing trouble here? There’s enough already without them.

According to this, my zodiac sign is Slide Rule.

So there you are. That proves it. I RULE. At least, I slide rule. :D

I loved spending time with my silly up in Guerneville. A pity that and weren’t able to make it up. It would have been lovely to see them too. And I wish I could have kept Sylvan for longer. Maybe even permanently. I miss him so much.

It was a good trip in general, though there were the not-so-good moments. I had a minor medical problem while I was in Guerneville. And after I got to the Bay Area to spend a few days with Angel, my car decided that it needed $540 in repairs. Not that Angel minded having me there a couple more days than originally planned. If she could have, she’d have kept me for longer. She’s campaigning to have me move back up to the Bay Area permanently. On the drive back, the car ran beautifully, except for one thing. It’s not a problem Mom particularly cares about, so she didn’t want me to go back and holler at the guys who fixed the car about it. The cruise control no longer works, you see, and she never uses it. It was a problem for me, however. My right knee is the one that has the worse arthritis, and the cruise control has become a necessity for me to do any driving that lasts more than an hour or so. Otherwise, I have to stop every hour or so to prevent my knee from locking up and then being nearly impossible to bend the following day. And I know that the mechanics I went to did something while repairing everything else that screwed with the cruise control. It was working perfectly fine right up until I took the car in.

But there is a 12-month warranty on the work they did, so I have time to get the car back up there some other time. Besides, it’s an excuse for another visit.

So, the drive was a bit longer than I would have liked, what the the constant stops in order to keep my knee happy. But I did succeed in preventing the thing from its usual reaction to distance driving, so I’m happy about that.

Then I got home and made Mom happy with a dozen poppy seed bagels. There are no good bagels in Hellano or Bakersfield, and she’s been fiending for them since I moved in.

I also made the cats happy, since I picked up a new pad for them to sharpen their claws on, and some catnip for our the addicted Manx.

Before I left, we had to have my grandmother’s cat put down. We’d been trying to convince her for some time that it was necessary. The cat had cancer that had almost entirely eaten away one ear, and was working its way into his head through the ear canal. He had blood running from his ear almost all the time as the cancer ate through blood vessels. He was bleeding from his eyes and mouth as well in the last couple months. He would yowl in pain even when nothing touched the cancerous ear. But my grandmother couldn’t deal with losing the cat she’d had for the last fifteen or so years. When the cancer started hitting his brain and making the cat truly crazy, she finally admitted that it was time, and Mom and I took him in. Grandma had difficulty sleeping after that, since she was so accustomed to the feeling of Chico lying on her legs at night.

But a solution offered almost immediately. A small stray cat in black and gray tabby colors started hanging around. Instead of tabby stripes, he’s got an almost leopard pattern of spots. And polka-dots on his tummy. Morris, my cat, has decided that he adores the new one, and will go roll around in the grass with him. We’ve named the stray Spot, and are getting close to taming him. He wouldn’t allow us near him for a while. Now he’s more interested in being petted than in the food we bring out for him twice a day. In a little while, he should be calm enough that he’ll be okay to come in the house, and then my grandmother can have a new cat sleeping across her legs. Even Whiskers has accepted Spot, and he’s never been particularly friendly to the strays around here. The last one he hated, so we gave her away to a friend who’d just lost her own cat to old age.

One thing this house has always been good for, and that’s attracting strays. It never seems to stop, either. And it’s not limited to cats. Chickens, dogs, rabbits, ducks, and even a California condor have all shown up here and said, “I’m home! Did you miss me?” The condor, of course, eventually moved on, since this area is not condor country. But it was interesting having that huge bird here for the couple of days he enjoyed our hospitality. And probably just as well he moved on. Keeping him in meat would have been an expensive proposition.

This is mostly so and know what the plan is for my trip up to Sylvan’s dad’s.

Since I got no sleep, but am tired now, Mom is going to use today to get the car taken care of. I am going to sleep most if not all the day away, and I’m going to spend the night driving, with an eye to getting up there sometime in the morning. Since I don’t want to haul everyone awake when I get there, what time is wake-up time at Chez Dad? If I seem to be arriving too early, I can slow down, be more leisurely, find a Denny’s or something and hang there for a few hours, whatever.

And I need good news of some sort after the BBC article. And of course, I also need good news because I’m STILL not asleep.

Senator Boxer replied to the letter I sent her about the Federal Marriage Amendment. The first time I’ve written to a senator and the senator actually took the time to write back.

Dear You:

Thank you for contacting me regarding same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships. I appreciate hearing from you.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), recently announced that he intends to bring the Federal Marriage Amendment before the Senate during the month of July. It is unfortunate that Sen. Frist has decided to focus on this divisive issue at a time when so many important issues face our nation.

I have been a consistent advocate for equal rights throughout my career, and I have consistently supported legislation to assure those rights. I oppose this effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to legally define marriage between a man and woman, and will fight it on the floor of the Senate. The amendment could also threaten other laws giving benefits to same sex couples and jeopardize the ability to provide full equality. I will work diligently to rally opposition to the amendment among my Senate colleagues.

As I talk to Californians, I hear a call for Congress to work to make life better for our people. They want broader, affordable health insurance coverage for all Americans and better education for our children. They want more and better jobs. And they want to feel safe, both here and abroad. I believe that these are the issues to which the Senate  should turn its attention and that we should leave the Constitution alone. You may rest assured I will fight the Federal Marriage Amendment every step of the way. It is a waste
of the Senate’s time, and an issue that will serve to divide rather than unite our nation.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to do so again about this or any other issue.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Still not asleep. I laid down to try and sleep, and a catfight started up outside my window almost the moment the light went out. I went running out there, since our Manx, Morris, is constantly getting in fights and developing infections from the claw marks and bites. Turned out it wasn’t Morris. He was in the house for once. But by the time I got done trying to find him, I was wide awake again.

Now it’s approaching 6 in the morning, I haven’t slept yet, and I’m supposed to go to Guerneville. I’m not going to be in any shape to drive unless I sleep, and with how late it is, going to sleep means I won’t wake up until far too late to head up there. I’m finally starting to feel like I could sleep again. So either I drive all night, or I put off the trip up for a day. Either way, it means I have less time to see before he has to head back to Seattle.

I hate the timing on my sleep disorders sometimes. Hate, hate, hate.

This SUCKS.

This is so not right.

I completely agree with the Lincoln quote at the end of the article.

And I say that there’d better be an election. There just damn well better be.

Delay it now out of fear of a terrorist attack, then terrorists will know that they can use that against us any time they want. After this, the deluge.

Alternately, if the administration plays on fears to delay the election this time, what’s to stop them from doing it again and again? If an administration didn’t want to leave power, and could use fear of terrorism as an excuse to put off elections for long enough, we’d no longer be striving for the ideal of democracy. We become, in effect, a dictatorship where the dictator is called “President.”

Either scenario is so not acceptable. And not just because I don’t like Bush and would take just about anyone other than him as the leader of the country. It wouldn’t be right even if it was a president that I liked and respected.

My father wanted Reagan to be the lifetime ruler of America. Not because of anything about Reagan’s presidency, or even about Reagan as a person. It was an opinion based solely on the fact that, while on the campaign trail, Nancy Reagan stopped at my father’s restaurant for dinner. My father didn’t even know she’d been there until after she’d left. But he expounded to me at length about how Reagan should be elected dictator for life. Maybe even make it hereditary, so it would pass on to Reagan’s descendants. I had no opinion on Reagan as a president. I was too young to really pay much attention to politics, and really knew nothing of the good or bad of Reagan’s presidency then. But I did know then, too, that a ruler instead of an elected official with a limited term of office  is not what the US wants or needs; that for the US, it was wrong. It brought about one of the many long and stupid fights between my father and me. I was supposed to have agreed blindly with him, since he thinks that even when your parents are wrong, they’re right. Not a belief I subscribed to. Nor the one about Reagan.

I’ve said – and while it’s said somewhat seriously, it’s not entirely so – that if Bush is elected for another term, I’m finding some way of moving the hell out of the country.

If there are no elections this November? Just watch me. I’ll be on the first plane/train/bus/boat to anywhere other than here.