IND Bloggers - a Night at the Opera

I went back to work today, sniffy but better. It was a typical Friday in ANY workplace, the occasional angry villager with a pitchfork, several experiments that didn't work as planned and old coffee that smelled like electrical wires burning. But I can still look around my space and smile.

click to enlarge.

For I was looking forward to the weekend. You've met IND blogger Dave L. (Scout26) on here and if you read his blog, you know this week has been pure hell on the cancer front. But at least there is a bright spot, for a short time back Dave mentioned Symphony tickets. And someone to go with (but "it's not a date" he said!) Hmmm. I bet he knows some IND bloggers of the female persuasion who would be proud to be his "non date" to the Indiana symphony orchestra Saturday night. OK, it's not the opera, but it's close.

So off we go! The other gals in our group had plans but Midwest Chick and I are going to make it; one for each arm, a blond, and a redhead. She's coming down for the weekend, the men we keep company with, just chuckling in the wake of our female preparations for the event.

But what to wear! I haven't bought a dress in 4 years. My " fashion designer" is more Sgt. Friday than Donna Karan, and my off duty wear is pretty much Irish sweaters, T shirts, the occasional black button down shirt and jeans.

So I braved a mall and bought a dress tonight after work, a black dress of soft, silky material. I need to. Dave's one of the IND bloggers, they're like family. Though both his kidneys recently went tango uniform from everything, he's got a heart as big as this state. So I got a real girly dress.

It's cut low, with a defined waist and a slit up the side to show just a bit of leg. Being the classical curvy build, not a bag of antlers, this looked really awesome on. With the right accessories, including sheer, silky hosiery (NOT pantyhose) and a handcrafted necklace, I'm set. On one arm, for our friend, a lady in red, on the other a lady in black.

Midwest Chick will be gorgeous as always. Me, I'm going for "non pitchforkable." :-)

Barkley: On Love

Since Mom is sick I get to do the quote of the week!

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
- Lynda Barry

Until We Return To Our Regular Programming

Head Cold 3. Brigid 0.

Tales From the Road - Strength and Beauty

As my regular readers and friends know, I travel a lot in my work. Sometimes I stay in places where I can go out and explore, and sometimes I'm in cities and countries where I can go out and about, but only unarmed. For such places, I stay in after dark, not spending my money at local businesses, hesitant to venture out as a female alone, after sunset in an unfamiliar area, armed only with a pack of breath mints.

Such evening aren't always so bad. I'll perhaps have a simple dinner of cheese, crackers, an apple and a glass of wine. Then later, with tea and crime scene yellow jammies, I'll write a couple of posts to save up for days when I'm too busy for thoughts outside the tape.

There was an evening like that not long ago, when settling in and unpacking I found a surprise. Although some of the crackers I packed in my computer bag were crumbs, in the bottom, unharmed, was a small bowl made from the shell of a moon snail. It's delicate, yet it survived the flight. I'd forgotten it was in there, placed when I recently moved and found it after the boxes were already packed.

On my desk are the shells of moon snails, this one of which was cut in half to form a dish. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, while still a young man, first scientifically chronicled this strange little mollusk when he came upon it little during a 2-year sojourn on the island of Lesbos. In classifying this tiny creature, he wrote in De Partibus Animilium, "In all of nature there is something of the marvelous, even the tiny, legless sea urchin."


I agree with Aristotle in this, for in examining the shell, the empty remnant of this ungainly and indelicate creature. There is surprising power and beauty in such small things. I see a delicate brush of blue sky, grayish tones that bleed into fragile whites. If I was in the mood to paint, especially if I was painting water, I'd capture it with items flung down by its force. Alone on a wind swept landscape, I'd reference my subjects with pieces of wood, position them in delicate frames of dying leaves. Here, held captive as well by of those who have left, in my minds eye I paint evidence of those departures . . . prints in the sand, ghost feet of little creatures, searching, the rushing feet of playful lovers, the footprints dissipating with the surge of water. There, seen at the waters edge, the soft clawed paths of a predator looking for prey, following the single footprints of a lone woman who followed the wandering path a moon snail might have left behind.


Strength is not always in a form that is familiar. Beauty is composed of more than you think. Both are built of more than meets the eye. It has as much to do with strength inward as strength outward. Though what we see before us holds allure, still in the evidence of what has been lost, is even greater beauty, greater courage. In even the smallest of things. In even those small remembrances of that which has gone, is the delicate moon snail's whorls of light and gray, the colors of the heavens. Tints of purity and substance. A strength that survived security screening, being stuffed into a too small space aloft and 4 hours of technical meetings. Small, strong colors to be captured while I continue on my own meandering journey.

There is beauty without strength, but there is seldom strength without its own beauty, a resolution of being that pervades the air with the scent and echo of the force of a life. As the invisible cloak of my duty slips from my form and I sit down in the chair by the window I see it. Not simply a city where I can not walk in safety under the moon, but my reflection in the glass, water streaming down, a city's tears for the defenseless.

Strength is not always where you expect it. Sometimes even in a city you can see it, in the eyes of a woman looking out at the night sky, unarmed but not willing to give up the fight. Look past the delicacy and the fragile form, there you will see it, the purity of will, the strength that will surprise you.

Danger - Even in the Country.

I've written about the cool Ipod Nano I got from my friends Mr. B. and Midwest Chick for my birthday, preprogrammed by my friends with music I love. You know, people that know me better than most people (ahem).

So there I am, on a deserted country road, waiting for a slow moving piece of farm machinery to cross the intersecting road. On the truck stereo, courtesy of the birthday Ipod Nano, is LaBelle coming up after 30 minutes of Metallica (what can I say, I have eclectic taste and they have programmed it so well). The windows of the Silverado are down to a beautiful fall afternoon, no one around, I crank UP the volume.

Gitchi Gitchi Ya Ya Ta Ta
Gitchi Gitchi Ya Ya Here
Mocha choca lata Ya Ya
Creole Lady Marmalade

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

And yes, I'm singing along, loudly, using a LaraBar as a microphone, shaking my red hair around, when I glance out of the corner of my eye, and there next to me along the shoulder, waiting to turn, is this 80 year old farmer in an old truck. . . .giving me a BIG wink and a thumbs up before turning.

Oh, God, I hope he doesn't recognize me at the American Legion pancake breakfast next month.

Speak Softly . .

I'm back from my little jaunt (sorry, no pictures as the camera had a dead battery and I'd tell you who I was with but then I'd have to kill you). Suffice to say a good time was had by all, with home crafted beer, Italian food, and a dessert involving homemade caramel cream sauce.

I was able to take a firearm with me for the solitary drive. I have a concealed carry permit for Ohio since it's recognized in many states, which has come in handy, since Indiana's is not. The last time I drove through the state to visit friends who live there, you couldn't carry at a highway rest stop, so I don't stop there. Face it, that "call police, emergency" blue light thing in the rest stops that flashes if I get to it before someone robs or rape mes, is as scary to most criminals as K-Marts blue light special.

Face it, in the wee hours, on a deserted highway 20 miles or more from the nearest cop, the criminal will be having a cigarette 10 miles away by the time armed help arrives. So instead of highway rest stops, I get coffee and a bathroom break at restaurants that aren't "gun free" for law abiding citizens. It's a comforting feeling, especially as a female traveling alone, getting back in my truck with my McCoffee and my Mc1911.

As I waved goodbye and headed out of the drive for the open highway back to Indiana, I was thinking about something else Mr. Roosevelt said, about "speaking softly and carrying a big stick".

I do carry a stick, a tool like many others I own. However this one is forged from the steel of eternal vigilance. - Brigid

Steel Plate Magnolias

I spent the first 20 or so years of my life in the West among cowboys and lumberjacks (and yes, I DO know all the words to the lumberjack song). But after that I ended up living in the South. That was something I hadn't planned on, for quite young, I married a Canadian pilot, expecting to continue the Western life, playing with airplanes and making a home in the mountains. But fate intervened, with those dreams going down in flames and I somehow ended up remarried and living in the South, on 40 acres with cows, a horse I named Elmer, and a couple of black labs.

The blending of the background of my acquired language patterns was a bit rough ("would y'all like seconds, aye") but I soon found my niche, mostly through my cooking. For just as Southern women know their elegant gentlemen:

Men in uniform
Men in tuxedos
Rhett Butler

They also know the three deadly sins.

Having an unkempt home
Having bad manners
Cooking bad food

But even after 10 years there, I never quite became a Southern gal. I never could get the exact GPS coordinates of "yonder" and didn't get a handle on exactly how much catfish, peas and beans made up a "mess of". They even tried dragging me off to a "beauty salon" ("I thought you said Saloon!!") and forcing me into big hair to have a portrait taken.


Still, although I picked up a slight accent over time, I was a "Northerner", favoring a six shooter and going west to play weekend warrior for my employer. I didn't do my nails, and after "BigHairGate" I got my hair done where I was based. Plus, I never could sit all the way through that classic Southern Chick Flick "Steel Magnolias". There's just not any good action in it. Maybe if I rewrote the script.

Shelby: Truvy, you know what you need in here? You need a radio, takes the pressure off of everyone feeling they have to talk so much.

Truvy: I had one once, but we took it out back to blow it up with some with C4. (KABOOM!!!) OK, time's up, time to take those perm rods out.

That's why I don't get to write scripts.

But the cooking skills and recipes I gained down south are some I treasure. Many of the dishes I'd never had growing up. Grits, Frito chili pie, biscuits and gravy, sweet potato pie and the growing lust for a small piece of fried dough known as the Beignet - which, in Home on the Range speak, is "happiness squared." I had it for the first time on a trip to Louisiana, and I never looked at a plain old donut in the same way again.


The word beignet (pronounced beyn-YAY) comes from the early Celtic word bigne meaning "to raise." In French it means "fried dough". They are a distinct New Orleans speciality, a fried, sweet dough, often cooked in cottonseed oil and usually dusted with powdered sugar.

They're sort of the early ancestor of the raised donut and when you hear people in New Orleans say "Goin' fo' coffee an'doughnuts", what they really mean is that they're going out for coffee and a little plate of beignets.


The coffee traditionally paired with them is café au lait. In New Orleans, that is strong dark roast coffee and chicory, served with equal part hot milk. Chicory was originally added to the coffee to stretch short supplies, but it was found to create a richer, smooth brew that is good on its own and works wonderfully with the milk.

There's only a couple of bakeries around Indiana that have them, but as they are best freshly made, hot with a soft, tender middle, why not make your own (recipe in the comments for now).

click to enlarge

They're a perfect pairing with that morning cup of coffee before a Steel Plate Shoot to give you a little energy. Because this "almost Southern gal" does know the fourth deadly sin.

A really bad grouping.

Cloudy With a Chance of Space Debris

LOS ANGELES: A bus-size, 6.5-tonne, 20-year-old NASA climate satellite is falling out of orbit and likely to hit Earth some time today. However, it is impossible to say where.

The chances are slim that anyone will see any of the 26 assorted pieces of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite that are expected to survive re-entry into the atmosphere. The chances that someone, somewhere on the planet, will be hit by one of those chunks are 1 in 3200."


I'm home again and I think it's safe for all of us to get out for a walk (no Barkley, you can't wear a tinfoil hat). Cheers!

Carrying a Firearm- What It's Really About.

You look, and you steady yourself, prepared, yet not, anticipating the recoil of something you've never felt in your life; wanting it, expecting it, yet still sort of afraid of it. With the intake of breath and the gentle movement of your muscles finite contraction, the trigger draws towards you.

It's your first time shooting a large caliber handgun. The gun is not that large, you could conceal it with the right clothing, yet the bullet seems immense in your hand after the .22. Firing it for the first time is not what you expected, it's more and it's less, and you exert every square inch of pressure on to the floor that your feet can manage, locking hands and arms tight. You could hear it fire though even good ear protection; the explosion of sound, and the smell, the room buzzing as the bullet cleaves the darkness of the low lit range.

It's a sound you were oblivious to for years, and from now on, when you hear one from a distance, or a range stall one or two down from where you stand, you will look with a smile, to see what it was they are holding.


In just small moments of your life, things change, in a flash of light dancing with movement. A change of a way of thinking, a change of need, in a perfume of lead and powder that kisses your hair, creating in your mind the unbroken diminishing cessation of fear.

For in that one shot, with the confidence it brought, I knew. With this weapon, and practice, I can walk freely, a woman unbound by convention or unseated fear. I can hold my head up high, aware of my surroundings, walking with that purpose that shows I am not afraid of you any longer. Too many victims, too many women afraid, nothing left but soft murmuring bones and deep sighs like wind. Brave women, yet in the end, unarmed, their fight so insubstantial against mass and anger that we can not distinguish it from the bone colored earth that is all that remains or their final moments.

One minute a young girl was jogging, music in her ears, clothing scant in the hot weather and concealing little, not form, not fear, not fearlessness. She is the age of the innocent, with that bubbling naive impatience of youth, the blending of childlike trust that seems to protect without reason, but rather, robustly inhibits the skills she needs to survive. It won't happen to me, this is a good neighborhood. I'm in good physical shape. I've heard them all from victims. Those still alive to talk.

It was a beautiful night, the sense of peace and quiet, the night breeze building steadily, bringing with it the damp familiar breath of water. She was running, there alone along the river, which she now saw, for the last time, as she rounded a small curve, the path reaching off into the twilight that was advancing fast. She'd meant to get home before now but she had stopped to readjust her headset, slipping from the sweat on her brow, stopped to just enjoy being young and carefree.

From the trees a shadow, watching, stalking, creeping forward, driving shadows behind as he advances. In a moment, the attack unheard by anyone by the cold blooded, she was taken, pulled into the darkness by the dark thief, who wants that childlike innocence flowing like water through his hands, until it too disappears into the dark soil.

She doesn't come home that night. We read it in the paper, we hope and we cry along with the family. Strangers, yet, parents ourselves, we are connected by a web that binds us all together. It happens much too often. Monthly, sometimes weekly, a young woman taken, child, mother, daughter wife. Those that seek closure to such crimes do what they can, walking into the family home with no answers, only determination, looking up the stairwell that goes to a room now empty, the echoes of a child's feet laying on the steps like the dust of a generation that will never be.

We hold our own children close and we pray that those that prey on the gentle meet their own demise in a smear of hard red, for it is not a forgiving God we want for such monsters, but the Jehovah of might and justice.

I won't be one of those women. Nor will my daughter. Not if I can help it.

Years later, the sound of the same type of shot echoes in the air, darkness blends behind it as if its passing were only a thought. But the muscle memory holds, and I gently squeeze again, an expenditure of breath and muscle that in this moment sounds only like innocence protected. The discharge of the weapon is more than power and noise. It's an inarguable truth, like something I view under a microscope now, seen clearly, supporting the truths that I learned the hard way.

Yes, I do this for protection, but I also do it for other reasons. It's about skill, it's about challenging myself, it's about self awareness, purpose and the sheer affirmation of putting an exploding dot exactly where I want it to go, which is dead center in the forehead of a paper bad guy, holding a female hostage.


Carrying a weapon. It's not about dying. It's about living.

From two stalls down a small head looks around, a girl in her teens, shooting .22 with her LEO Dad, whom I know. She hears and sees my firearm, looks at me, and then at her Dad with a shy smile. Do you think I'm ready to try that? she asks.

I motion for them to come on over after ensuring the chamber is clear and the muzzle pointed away. Young lady, you are more ready than you know.

Kitchen Defense - Tactical Potluck Recipe

The holidays will be here in just a couple of months.

BE PREPARED!

You never know when you'll be asked to bring a tasty dish to a gathering. With a few simple ingredients, which many of us have on hand anyway, this is a recipe that will have them reloading at any potluck or family get together.

It's not at all photogenic, but outside of peeling the potatoes, it's quite easy to make and is always one of the first dishes emptied. This dish has survived the scrutiny of Lutheran Basement Church Women (what, no peas?) on my Mom's side and the Irish side of the family (potatoes!)


Brigid's Best Potatoes

3 and 1/2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled or not, cut into 1/8 inch thick slices
1 and 1/2 teaspoons dried dill
small sprig fresh basil, chopped roughly in small pieces
Mix together: 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, and a pinch of Penzey's garlic powder (or your favorite brand)
3 cups grated Gruyere cheese (about 10 ounces whole cheese)
1 and 1/3 cups whipping cream
1 and 1/3 cups chicken stock (I use homemade which I make and freeze but you can use chicken broth)
1/4 cup Dijon and white wine mustard (the Grey Poupon brand is quite good for the price)

Heat oven to 400 F. Butter a 2-3 quart shallow baking dish. Overlap 1/3 of the potatoes in dish, sprinkle lightly with 1/3 of the salt/pepper/garlic mixture, sprinkle with 1/2 tsp dill and 1 cup cheese.

Repeat layering twice, using the rest of the potatoes, divided, 1/2 t. dill and 1 cup of cheese for each layer, sprinkling with the remaining salt/pepper/garlic mixture.

Lightly whisk the cream, chicken stock and mustard in bowl. Stir in chopped basil and pour over the potatoes.

Bake until the top is crusty and starting to brown and the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork.

400 degrees for 1 hour, or 325 for 2 hours.

Home on the Range Women

When I wrote the post about the Home on the Range Man, I got more comments on it than about anything I'd written at that point. But several have asked about being a Home on the Range Woman. I had written a short piece about that a while back but thought about it again when I was in a grocery and spotted one of those woman's magazines, You know the ones I'm talking about, where on the cover is some anorexic airhead showing enough skin to make a hooker blush, too much makeup and touting all kinds of articles on how to trap a man by being something other than your true self, and once you have done so, how to CHANGE him so he's some wimpy, henpecked version of the original.

I can "put on my face" in the time it takes to apply tinted sunscreen, cherry flavored lip gloss and a little mascara, and I will likely never go out in public wearing some outfit that costs $500. But it's more than that that makes me a a Home on the Range Woman, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So with that, how to you know if are a HOTR woman?

1. Any salesman that ventures to your place while the garage is open can't help but notice the man sized target with 50 holes in the chest, head and groin area. For some reason, you don't get many sales calls any more.


2. The day after Christmas you go to the gun range just to see everyone's new toys.

3. You don't think camping involves a hairdryer or a portable TV.

4. You know the value of a dollar because you work hard to earn your own dollars.


5. You don't force your beliefs on others. If you don't want a gun, you don't buy one; you don't demand laws so that NO law abiding citizen can have one.

6. You'd rather watch Mythbusters or Top Gear than Dancing with the Stars.

7. Your dog has more emergency rations than 90% of the U.S. population.


8. Your property is more secure than Area 51.

9. You can fix a toilet, change the oil in your vehicle and put dinner on the table for a crowd without asking for help. If you find a spider the size of a Buick in the bathroom you will, however, immediately holler for backup.

10. You know that if you believe the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, you need a geography lesson, but a good pecan pie never hurts.


11. The checker at the local home improvement store knows you by name.

12. The local deli saves up their 5 gallon buckets for you.

13. "Girls Day Out" involves lead residue.



14. You've used a Gerber tool to cut a steak at a fine dining establishment.

15. If the power fails in the local movie theater you can show yourself out with your mini mag.

16. The books on your coffee table include two reloading manuals and a a zombie survival guide.


17. Your knife collection has its own footlocker.

18. You've laughed til it hurt through a Steven Seagal movie and found out afterward that it wasn't a comedy.

19, You avoid opening day of the stores after a holiday, but will journey for hundreds of miles to be at the start of an adventure.

21. Not only can you recognize the sound of a generator from a half mile away, but you also know the brand, horsepower and the kilowatts per hour that it is putting out.

22. You consider reloading equipment as "decorative furnishings".

23. If you need something, be it food, a car or health care, you go shopping for it, or choose a job that provides a means for it. You don't demand that the government pay for it with your neighbors hard earned money.

24. You refuse to place the word "person" after mail, fire, congress, etc., and instead still use "man". You look at some female Congress members and you could definitely think of another word for them, but it's NOT congressperson. That just sounds silly.

25. When you come up against something tough you don't think "who can do this instead of me", you think "how can I handle this".

26. You've shot and field dressed your own dinner more than once.


27. You don't know anyone that voted for Clinton.

28. If you see something that is a threat to you, you think about how to defeat it. You don't plan on how to surrender gracefully while still looking good.

29. People don't come to your house for "tofu croquettes".


30. As a woman, you realize that for some silly reason you are still considered a "minority". As such, you see yourself as someone capable through your own efforts, NOT as a victim in need of government protection, special laws, and favored hiring practices. You can't legislate respect, you must earn it.


31. You can stand on your own, but if you are blessed, there is a day you can look up into the eyes of one like yourself. Eyes the color of a winter morning, holding all the power and magic of the sky. In those eyes you will see the strong spirit of someone who still believes. Someone who still holds on to the hopes and the faith of past generations, when hard work meant something and craftsmanship was its own value, someone who believes that character counts and actions speak louder than promises. Someone that still dreams.

Field Dressing

Before I had my first piece published in a magazine, I got a couple of rejections. I'm a scientist by education, not a writer, it's just the way I relax and work through things. But I thought it was as good as some of the stuff I've read out there, at least with a good editor, so I went ahead and tried. One well known outdoor magazine said my work was really, really good but "too philosophical" for them. A woman editor at another publication that had a mostly male demographic suggested I perhaps write for a fashion magazine if I wanted a wider audience.

Oh yes, fashion is MY middle name.

The best outing I've had in ages with a handsome male, I wore a ballcap. I own one dress, the cobalt blue screen of death number and the last time I wore a ball gown was some Presidential Inagural Ball thingy I got invited to. My house is decorated in "Outdoor Life" and I have more guns than shoes, so I am NOT the person to go to for fashion advice and I'm not sure how I'd write about it.

"She had been waiting, knowing her target would come, moving though the trees with certitude. She holds her gun in solemn readiness, waiting just for the perfect moment. There, between an oak and a the ditch line, was the buck. She drew in her breath, bringing up her bright and shining weapon, which coordinated perfectly with her caban coat, in quilted napa leather so soft and weightless it practically floated and her Mongolian Tapestry boots.

What was that? She looked through her chic but dark shades of Persol PO 2720S Sunglasses. The buck was almost into view, moving quietly as if simply formed out of still air. The muscle memory in her is poised to call him to her, as her finger moves towards the trigger, its touch but a final kiss.

But she hesitated, distracted by a sound above, removing her finger from the trigger guard, the Chanel lambswool glove a perfect match to her hunting ensemble. There! Overhead. A formation on the wing, the honking just saying "Canadian Goose season opened yesterday in the South Zone". It would be a perfect shot. She is torn, undecided. Should she bag the buck that's coming into range or something in genuine 100% goose down? What's a girl to do?"

In next month's issue: Hair Accessories That Work and Stalking the Latest Fall Trends in Fur.

I don't think so. I'll stick with what I like, even if its appeal is lost to the masses.
- Love, Brigid

Glasses Half Empty. . .

I met a friend for lunch yesterday and we got to discussing really crappy jobs we had when we were young. She's a bit older than I, but many of the jobs available to teens and college students didn't change much from when we were both young. Her most disastrous job was at was a popular fast food restaurant at $1.69 an hour. Turned out she was allergic to one of the food ingredients and not only bloated up terribly but ended up covered in little spots. I said "did you look like one of those seseme seed buns" and she started choking on her drink (she knows better than to tell me these stories when we're eating).

Me?

I worked as an elf.

And got fired.


You see, in college there was a company that hired students and homemakers looking for part time work to do "product demos". You know, those annoying smiling people who try and assault you with a spray of Calvin Klein "Narcissist" as you walk through the cosmetics section at Macy's. Or those friendly people with food at grocery stores. "Sure I'll try your hickory smoked bacon but be advised I'm shopping with my identical twin so she'll probably be by for some too."

The pay was much better than minimum wage so it was a popular job and not everyone got hired. I applied. The choices though, for my first job assignment weren't great. A Mr. Peanut Costume, handing out nuts (oh please please please dear god no), more of the perfume thing (I LIKE rejection) or wait, this is perfect! An elf at Santa's Workshop at the fancy department store! All I had to do was wear the elf costume and help keep the kiddies organized while they lined up to sit on Santa's lap for a photo. I got picked for one reason only. Flaming red hair and bright green eyes. Elf material if there ever was one. Plus it was double minimum wage. Woo Hoo!!


The problem was the costume. Scooped neck Elf Dress, Elf shoes, plastic Elf Ears. All too small, especially the dress.We found bigger shoes, probably boy elf ones, but I was stuck with the dress. They usually hired petite students to be the elves, but there were a sucker for the hair and eyes, overlooking the fact that I'm half Viking. But I squeezed into it. Some parts didn't exactly squeeze into it well and were sort of on display.

Don't picture a female Herbie the elf.

Picture a green hooters waitress with really pointy shoes.

Yup.

But I really needed the extra cash for college and flight lessons. So off I went, having fun with the kids, chatting with Santa (who was VERY jolly that day). It was all kinds of fun, and I collected enough money to pay for more education.

Until I got fired.

For you see, I was called to come in the next morning and canned as an elf, with an abject apology "It just wasn't suited for you, we've got an even BETTER position for the rest of the week, we're so sorry, here's your apron".

Apparently some of the Mom's complained that
(1) I was distracting Santa
(2) (and I quote) Elves do NOT have bosoms!!

So much for my elfin career.

The next day I was standing in a grocery store handing out hot dogs wearing an apron that said on it, in big letters "Have I Got a Wiener for YOU !"

THAT wasn't humiliating.

It was a job though, something even as a teen, I knew was a precious commodity and something to be thankful for. That was something I'd learned from my parents, even if I still totally disregard the whole "wait an hour after eating before going swimming Mom Rule #47".

But apparently, that thought process is not the norm in our "entitlement generation". I was in line at the grocery store the other day, and two very well dressed young mid 20 somethings, were chatting. One said "well I could get a job, but none I've been offered I really liked. I'd rather keep getting the unemployment since with what I save on daycare I have more money for me anyway".


That's not the attitude I was raised with. If you could work you did. Perhaps it is because I was raised by the generation of "if you didn't work you didn't eat". Both my parents grew up in the Depression, my Mom's Dad killed in a logging accident when she was a teen, leaving the family with neither insurance money or benefits. My grandmother could have just sat down and given up, abandoned in the backwater of lonely isolation of a small Montana homestead. But she did not.

She could cook and bake like no ones business and she did. Gathering up her tattered pride around her like a shawl, she sought out the prosperous in town and let them sample what she could create. Soon she had full time employment as a cook, while still tending to chickens, cows, stall and garden to feed 3 teenagers. Meat on the table was game, the other animals being sold for what they could bring in. Not only did she survive, she put my Mom through college, my Mom in turn helping to put her two younger brothers through. Both of them majored in engineering, ending up at Boeing with good jobs to support their families and grandma, who lived with us until she died.

A gamble it might have been, but it was one, that by hard work, paid off.


My Dad did ROTC in college, and had to work to pay for his expenses. My Dad is a very handsome, proud man, always popular with his peers. The job he had was going around the University of Montana campus with a nail on a stick, picking up other kids trash while the more well to do students made fun of him. He spoke years later of how he worked so hard so that he could do more in life than pick up the waste of others. He remembers the taunts. It drove him to excel, but even as much as he said he hated the task he was given, he never hated the job. He was thankful to have it, looking up from the leaves and trash to the high, pale, morning star of the future.

As a youngster, some kids teased me because my parents were so much older than theirs. I know I benefited from it, their words and wisdom. From them I got what work ethic I have. I learned that if you couldn't get work (and I've been there) you continued to try. I'd left a government position for a job in the private sector when unexpectedly, the economy tanked. I sold most of my possessions to get back into school, working multiple low paying jobs to make ends meet while taking more courses towards a goal I'd always had, looking at a uniform in my closet with no regret, only pride. I learned it again when the great hundred year flooding of the Mississippi took out most of my husbands poorly insured business, leaving us broke and me soon alone.

No complaints, no whining, it's life, plain and simple. But I know I'm beyond fortunate to have a good job. I say thank you in a blessing as I have food on the table each and every day. Yes, I worked my butt off for the qualifications to get it, but simply having it is a blessing. But I will never forget NOT having anything.

This Saturday instead of going to the range I'm volunteering with some other squirrels to staff a food bank where we will spend the day packaging up meal kits for seniors and some disabled vets. Sure, I'd rather go shooting, but I have good health, time and two hands. I won't think of it as missing range time, but rather "reloading" some deserving folks with supplies.


For those of you with jobs you like, you are beyond fortunate. Never forget it, and try and give some of it back. Not to the freeloaders and the lazy, they get enough of our hard earned tax dollars, but those in your community who are down on their luck after working and serving most of their lives.

For those of you still looking for work, my prayers are with you. It's never, ever easy. You're used to working, waking up each day to an early alarm, an orderly flow of named and numbered dates that line up like the pickets in the fence, holding in what's dear. Then you wake up one day and it's gone, bulldozed by bad decisions, politics and fear and you're left exposed, with nothing more than a pittance of a bank account and false promises from our leaders, blowing as trivial as trash and dead leaves.

It's true you never really appreciate something until it's gone be it home, a job or love. You spend years underneath a slow constellation of stars, brights spots of light that have no name and you don't even think about them until clouds roll in, leaving you without reference or direction. It's as much like being lost as any feeling I know. But please don't give up; keep searching.


For those of you with jobs you hate, remember it's not a lifetime, it's just this moment. Be proud of a character that propels you to work, rather than live off of the hard work of others. You may think the job beneath you or not worthy, but there will be those that are proud of you for simply having the ethics and strength to hold it.

For all of you, remember that there are those who care, even if they are terminated elfin people.