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Friday, August 24, 2012

I'm no longer horrified by all the mass shootings...



As I was leaving to go to work this morning my daughter informed me that there was another mass shooting, this time in front of the Empire State Building...and I heard myself say "so how many shot this time?" It's like I can't even muster amazement or horror, it's just, "how many this time?"

It was 3 weeks ago and 10 minutes from my home, that a deranged neo-nazi decided to stroll into a Sikh temple on a warm Sunday morning and shoot everyone he could...It was a gorgeous August day outside, clear blue sky, no clouds and yet I spent the entire Sunday afternoon inside, glued to the television set...just a couple of weeks before that it was the mass shooting at the Colorado movie theatre...The night before, my son informed me he had tickets to a midnight showing of the new Batman movie and I was uneasy, he told me to "stop worrying, what could possibly happen at a movie theatre?"

I'm sure that for the next couple of weeks we'll be subjected to all sorts of stories about the shooter, like what kind of student was he in grade school, were his parents nice neighbors, did he have a hamster, or "what possibly could've convinced this loser that this was a good idea???" Not that it matters, the damage is done...but for the next couple of weeks it's going to be the life history of this loser...til the next loser...

And maybe that's the problem...you want to be famous but you don't want to do the work that goes with earning fame, but if you have a vendetta...fame is cheap and easy, and every news channel in the country will beat down your door, or your neighbors door fighting other news channels to obtain and reveal your life story...until the next loser comes along, and your story is filed away in the loser trivia section of mass shooters...mentioned occasionally until the various lawsuits are dried up and the only two people who will really care about you are your mother and satan...

And how quickly the rest of us forget the shooters, do you even remember the big shooter story from six years ago? It was October of 2006 and the shooter was the local Pennsylvania milkman who shot 10 little Amish girls killing 5 of them...Remember what happened next? The families of the children killed promptly forgave him and offered their support to his widow and children...

Wow!

What's wilder...that their forgiveness made major headlines...shows you how rare something like that is...And I'm a little ashamed too...not at the fact that they can forgive and I, probably not as much...but the fact that I always sort of, well, while I didn't think I was better then the Amish, but I certainly didn't understand how they could stubbornly cling to the 1800's while the rest of us went wizzing by them in 2006...

My son and I were driving towards Iowa one freezing January Sunday morning earlier that year on Highway 18 when we passed several of the Wisconsin Amish on their way towards church...I had the heat blaring and the radio on and they were huddled together in open air wagons with blankets...my son had never seen Amish before and simply couldn't believe that they didn't have cars, and television and PS 2's..."they don't want to live in our world" I told him then...and today, who can blame them? But the fact that they could forgive and continue to love after all that has happened to them...well, I'm not even in their league.


Cindy Huber

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Just because...my thoughts from this year's State Fair

So, I talked to my doctor last Friday, and he said my triglycerides were way too high, my glucose was way too high, and my cholesterol, (yep, you guessed it), way too high, and that I need to go on a diet immediately to which I replied "Doctor, I've been dieting for over 20 years, and it hasn't worked yet!"

This is my former boss, Stan Atkinson who I still absolutely adore even if he did LAY ME OFF!!! The only problem I can ever remember with him, is he always talked about how much he hated cream puffs...yet, he always got to do the cream puff eating contest at the fair! (I've been saving this picture for over 3 years...)

This is my crush from last year's State Fair, chocolate covered bacon...This year I moved on...to pork chops on a stick!!! (oooohhhh yeah baby!!!) I never did locate the "Fat Elvis..." Deep fried Reeses Peanut butter cup in banana batter wrapped in bacon...I also did not locate the deep fried stove top dressing dipped in gravy...I think my guardian angels deliberately blocked my way...I did make it as far as Apollo gyros...they're a great gyro place that ONLY do the fair for 11 days, they've been in the same location for over 25 years...But I was a little disappointed because they didn't have the karaoke machine set up this year...I suppose that was everyone else's guardian angels protecting their ears...Hey, I only do one song anyway...Jose Cuervo...Just my way of keeping it country at the fair! ; )

These are my girls...CV, Julie and myself from a few fairs ago...
I haven't seen CV in ages, but she's a fellow Iowan so I consider her a sister...Julie is my "sister from another mother..." Julie is the reason I'm in another dance contest this year (MargaretAnn's Place Hosting Milwaukee's Dancing with Our Stars Gala--September 15 at Potawatomi Bingo Casino)...The last one we were in I got 6th place...Thank God there were only 6 contestants! My odds are much better this year...there's only 5 contestants...


This is why I LOVE the fair!!! I get to meet YOU!!! This is a very cherished photo from a fan of mine and I can't believe anyone wanted to come out and say "HI" to me...I consider myself very blessed, and grateful...Thank you!

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

The F Word

I was a senior in high school the first time I heard someone say the "F" word...I swung around and glared at the female...FEMALE...AND she was only a SOPHOMORE!!! "How crude," I thought to myself. Yeah, that was as close as I got to any swearing...In fact, it may amaze you to know that my mouth wasn't even PG rated in those days...which is unbelievable when you consider I spent my teenage years just outside of Chicago, Illinois...Nope, it was gosh golly, or on the rare occasion gol' darn, as taking the Lord's name in vain swearing was strictly prohibited in the bible, and I was a Baptist babe...my using the word "dammit" was still a couple of years away...that didn't start until I started working as a nurse aide at nursing homes, and I blame the nurses for that...; )

When you start to use the word dammit, it becomes a slippery slope, because once you start with that word it's a short jump to gol' dammit...and then one day you slip up and use the Lord's name, and when you're not immediately struck down by lightning...the F word is just one bad moment away, or the first time you accidently spill a full bed pan all over your feet...

The F word...the queen mother of all curse words...wasn't that the line in the movie the Christmas Story? The kid sits in the bathroom with a bar of soap in his mouth...when my Aunt Loretta was a little girl she actually discovered she liked the taste of one of the soaps...a fact my grandmother discovered when she found huge chunks of soap missing one week, and had to change brands...

I spent almost a whole winter standing in a corner during my Kindergarten year for using the "H--E--double toothpicks" word...a couple of little boys would knock the head of my snowman off, I'd tell them to go to hell, they'd tell the teacher, and I would spend the rest of recess indoors, in a corner...I missed weeks of recess that way...(I seriously could've used global warming back then)...but eventually my 5 year old brain wised up and I stopped making snowmen, and spent the rest of Kindergarten slamming the little brats with snow balls...which apparently was OK...

After a while I didn't notice how often I swore...I can remember dating a guy when I was in my 20's who wanted to bring me to a picnic with his family, but when he asked me if it was OK if I wouldn't swear around them I was furious..."forget it," I told him...Can you believe it? I turned down a free meal!!!

But years later I'm dating the man who became my second husband (poor guy), and I'm sitting in the car with him and my little daughter (who was around 7 or 8 at that time), when all of a sudden she spills something and starts cursing like a little sailor, which is not as cute as it's depicted in the movies...I chewed her out and she left the car in tears...I turn to my date and tell him "where the hell does she get that?"

Bob: "Where do you think she gets it...she mimics the person she lives with, the person she admires..."

Me: "Wait...are you trying to tell me that I swear?"

Bob" "You swear a lot..."

So I started working on my language...which turned out to be a whole lot easier then quitting smoking...with swearing, I went cold turkey...and the weird thing is, when you give up swearing...you start to notice people who swear..."how crude," you think to yourself...but just recently...one swear word has attempted to creep back in my vocabulary, and yes, it's the queen mother...

The problem with the F word is that it's effective...it leaves the recipient with no doubt about where you stand on the subject, it can't be misconstrued, and it's never misunderstood...I think that's the main reason the "F" word is still the Queen...where other words like damn has lost it's power to offend, and bitch, well, that word has just become so...almost friendly...the "F" word still retains all of it's original power...

But it's still not as offensive to me as that other "F" word...fat.