Our Lives

 This was written by a young law student - and rings very true - I just had to share!

To:  American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:We have stuck together since the late 1950’s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.Here is a model separation agreement:Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure

 
our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can  
effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns  
and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore andRosie O’Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).We’ll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies,Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We’ll keep the hot
Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood …You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are
under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We’ll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a
right. We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya orWe Are the World.

We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.  

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheehan, Barbara Streisand, &
Jane Fonda with you.

P. S. S.  And we won’t have to press 1 for English.

Anyone that has known me for very long knows how much I love hummingbirds.  They would also know that I once rescued one that I found buried in a huge pile of boulders in MI.

Well, God granted me that privelage again today.  I heard a crash into one of our windows and saw a bird falling to the ground.  I went over to see if it was lying there or if it had gotten right up and on its way.  To my dismay, it was a tiny little hummingbird lying on the ground, not moving.

I ran outside and picked it up - took it to the sofa on our patio - laid it down and went inside to get an eyedropper and some hummingbird food I always keep in the fridge for my feeder.

I grabbed a soft towel, because it is really cold outside right now and began to try to feed the stunned bird.  At first it just looked at me unable to move, but it was blinking and breathing (very fast).  I kept offering it the food. Finally it started to drink a tiny bit, still barely able to move.

After a few minutes of eating and resting, the hummingbird was standing up a little and drinking.  Then all of a sudden, he was strong enough again, and flew right out of my hand and into the tree!

Looking at this tiny little helpless creature, all I could think about was how beautiful these birds are.  God has put some of the most beautiful creatures into these tiny little packages… imagine the love he puts into every living creature - not just us…. 

Thank you God.

Talk about a high stress day!  Yesterday was horrible.  I hope I don’t have a day quite like it EVER again.  The following computer escapade took up most of the day.  I won’t even go into the rest of the horror that had nothing to do with my computer!  : # 

My Norton had expired so I renewed the subscription at the end of Jan.  Since then, my computer performance had been quickly declining, until Wed when my mouse wouldn’t work properly.  Then I couldn’t get my browser to work properly (especially Facebook). 

Everthing I tried to do was an effort that I didn’t have in me.  So I got on the blogs to see what all the error messages meant and discovered that they were all a result of Norton bugs.  So I tried all the temporary fixes they recommended to no avail.

My next step was to call Norton and get a refund.  Which they gave me.  I then uninstalled Norton.  Now for anyone of you who have used Norton, you know that the normal uninstall method doesn’t do the trick completely.  To completely uninstall, you need to use their online uninstall tool (which they claim you don’t have to do). 

After I uninstalled it on my own, I went to their website to use the tool (which I found the url from a tech blog).  It still had a ton of files it found and uninstalled.  But wait, I’m not done yet…

Then I had to purchase a registry cleaning software to get rid of all traces of Norton completely!  Who do you trust?  I found one that is MS certified and McAffee certified.  So my registry had 587 files to fix.  Not all Norton, but I suspect most of then were.

Some of them were Itunes… but I digress.  So I cleaned my registry.  Then I got online through an account for McAffee I had created for Katies computer.  I was able to purchase a license for mine for $2.50!  It’s only good until May when her’s expires, but then I can get three licenses (Mine, Kates and Jay’s) for $45.

Norton was $60 for three licenses.

So for $29.95 for the registry clean up and $2.50 for the McAffee, I am in great shape.  My computer is running better than when I took it out of the box!  Yeah……

“This year, taxpayers will receive an  Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will  explain using the Q and A format:

“Q. What is an Economic Stimulus  Payment?

“A. It is money that the federal government  will send to taxpayers.

“Q. Where will the government get this  money?

“A. From taxpayers.

“Q. So the government is giving me back my  own money?

“A. Only a smidgen.

“Q. What is the purpose of this  payment?

“A. The plan is that you will use the money  to purchase a high-definition TV
set, thus stimulating the  economy.

“Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy  of China ?

“A.  Shut up.”

Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending
your stimulus check wisely:

If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all  the money will go to China .

If you spend it on gasoline it will go to  the Arabs.

If you purchase a computer it will go to  India .

If you purchase fruit and vegetables it  will go to Mexico , Honduras , and
Guatemala (unless you buy  organic).

If you buy  a car it will go to Japan .

If you purchase useless crap it will go to  Taiwan .

And none of it will help the American  economy.

We need to keep that money here in America .  You can keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to a baseball game, or spend it on prostitutes, beer (domestic ONLY), or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still in the USA.

Well, the Cardinals are playing.  Sure hope they win.  Jay will be sad if they don’t!  Imagine a home team actually going to the Super Bowl!  Would be pretty exciting. (Will be - gotta act as if)

The sun is shining, the temp is about 75 degrees, there is a breeze.  Nice.  Good time to go outside and read a book.  Too bad the game is on!

Joined Facebook the other day.  Pretty cool system. I have found and connected with people I haven’t talked to in 5 years or so.  Pretty neat.  It is addictive though!  But it is also a great tool.

Join up and look me up.  Would be good to connect.

Today has been a day where I really can see all the many blessings God has bestowed upon Jay and I.  (sorry for the length of this post)

Our church fellowship group was fortunate enough to adopt a couple of families for Christmas.  One of our members made a suggestion that we find a family in the National Guard that might need some help.  So through the efforts of some really outstanding people, we were able to find two families to adopt. 

I would like to share what I know about them with whomever is reading this:

The first family is a family of five and the husband/father just enlisted in the National Guard.  He was then laid off from his regular job - is now in basic training - and will soon be sent to join his unit.  We weren’t told where that will be, but I got the feeling he will be deployed somewhere in the Middle East.

We received a very short list for their kids Christmas wish.   Each childs name had one item on the list.  We were able to purchase the items on the list, get each child a little something extra, a game for the family, and a gift card for food for them.  The coordinator said that this family was embarrased to have to ask for help, so we were to deliver the package to her and she would get it to the family.

One of the other women in our group (Trudy) and I delivered the package to the National Guard coordinator that gave us this family.  She was very excited and grateful! And we felt very good about what we had done. 

We had taken a collection amongst our group based on the estimated cost for the two families and everyone very generously participated.

The second family was a very different story.  This young man  had been deployed in Afghanistan for two years.  He returned last spring and he and his wife just had a baby 3 weeks ago.  They are struggling to get on their feet. This family only had things like bottles, blankets, warm clothes, diapers and formula on their list.  We were able to get them all of these things and more, including a gift card for groceries as well.

I was a little worried because the coordinator that gave us this family told me we had to deliver the package to the family ourselves.  The reason I was a little concerned was that I didn’t know how they would react to us when we delivered their package.  The last thing I wanted was to make this family embarrased about needing help.  (Anyone who knows me knows that I am overly sensitive to other peoples feelings, enough so that it might actually be considered a fault)

So anyway, I called the family and first spoke with the wife.  She didn’t have any idea that anyone had “adopted” them and I could hear a weight lifted from her voice when I told her that we wanted to deliver a package to them to help them out for Christmas.  She was so grateful and kept saying that she couldn’t believe that anyone would do this for them.  She asked that we deliver it to them at his mothers house.  She lives way down at the foot of South Mountain in a very old neighborhood.

So, Wally and I drove down there today to get this package to them this morning.  When we got to the house, they both came to the door and they both looked so young!  It was hard to imagine that this young man had been overseas for two years fighting in a war that has gotten so ugly.  They invited us in and gave both of us a wonderful, warm, heartfelt hug.  The baby was asleep in a carrier on the floor.  He was beautiful.

We thanked him for his service to our country.  I asked him where he had been deployed and how long he had been back.  That’s when I found out he had been in Afghanistan.  He told me that he was actually gone (with training) a little over two years.  He said that his brother had also been deployed but to to Iraq.  He said that it was really hard because while they were gone, his mother battled breast cancer, with both of her boys overseas.  There was another young man that came out at that point that looked like he may be another brother that was much younger.

He proudly showed me his brother’s graduation picture and military picture on the wall, then he pointed to a flag folded and in a case on top of the television and said that was his brother’s flag.  It hit me then that his brother must have died or that flag would not have been there.  We said our goodbyes, hugged (big hugs) again, sincere and grateful thank you’s, and went on our way.

What struck me was the joy that this little family so obviously displayed on their faces.  Here they are, with all this happening in their family, but you could see love, joy, hope in their eyes.  I always say that the eyes are the windows into our souls - I truly believe that this is the case with this family.

This little family really taught me something about blessings.  We are blessed because we have God in our lives, a wonderful church, wonderful families, love for each other and others and the ability to help people, beautiful places to live, (and much more too…) - but they are also blessed because they have that love, joy and hope in their lives as well as each other, that blessed little baby and their family.  I don’t even know how to describe it.

I came home and wept, not because of anything that we did to help them, but because of what they did to help me.  I wish that everyone had been able to be with us.

I have truly been blessed.  Thank you God.