I know that this will shock at least a couple of people….I have a sort of political comment.

Tonight is the Iowa caucus. That’s where the different parties decide on which candidate they will support. Now, not surprising, I’m not real clear if that dictates the candidate for each party only in that state, or if the rest of the states just go along with the Iowans. They explained it fairly well on the Today Show, but I didn’t listen very closely, because, well, I really can’t muster that much interest. I’m not very confident that my vote for president counts, anyway. (that was the political comment.)

So, to the reason for this blog. I was watching our local news this afternoon. They do an hour long show from 12-1 and cover a variety of local & national news, as well as just local gossip type stuff. The host of this news show is the anchor for that channel and has been there since I was a teenager. So this means he’s been doing the news for at least 30 years, right? He asked, on the air, “what is a caucus?”

Ok, for me or you to not know is one thing. For a career news reporter to not know is almost inexcusable and baffling. (Unless he’s developing alzheimer’s, in which case I apologize.) How can you cover at least 7 presidential elections and not know this?  I thought those folks knew everything. Sigh. Another illusion shattered. 

I went this morning and got the bandages off my arm. Deborah, the PA, had to give me a couple of minutes to just enjoy the ability to scratch my itchy arm before she could take the stitches out, but she understood.

Dr. Mike McCormick is the best Orthopedic doctor I know. He fixed my mom’s shoulder when she crushed it, fixed my husband’s knee when he tore his miniscus and has now fixed my irritated nerve. He also replaced my friend Cindy’s mom’s knees. And he’s just one of the nicest people and treats his patients with the utmost respect. I highly recommend him.

I have a suggestion for all those agencies out there getting in trouble for using inhumane torture methods. Put the captives in casts (at least both arms, and then if they are really hard cases, both legs, too). Leave them in a hot, humid room for a week or 2. They’ll tell you anything you want if you will just let them out of the hot, itchy devices. They will probably sell state secrets if you’ll just give them something they can reach into the cast and scratch with. There is a bonus if they are prone to the itching reaction in pain meds.

I had ulnar nerve surgery on my left arm last week, where they went in and gave the nerve a new home. It had become unhappy where it was and made sure I knew it. They wrapped my arm in a splint on the back side and then a lot of bandages covering all of it from above my elbow down to my fingers. They also have my arm bent at the elbow and with this splint, there is no moving it or straightening it. It’s amazing how many things I find that I need that arm for.

The first day I was pretty doped up from all the stuff they gave me (including what they gave me to try to keep me from being sick from the anesthesia….it didn’t work.) But I pretty much slept all the rest of that day and night.

The second day I found out that 10 milligrams of pain meds cause me to itch all over my body. 5 doesn’t do it, so the next time I cut back, but for about 4 hours every part of my body itched like crazy. The pain wasn’t bad, so a smaller dose was ok.

Around day 4 the real itching started. I have an idea of where the incision is, and I’m thinking it’s under the back part of my arm where the splint is. Naturally the dr. made it impossible to get to that part of my arm, but in the front there is just a bandage. That part is doing it’s fair share of itching too. So I found that if I’m very careful, I can use the rounded handle end of a skewer and stick it in there and gently rub the itch away. But it has a gap in this rounded end that tends to catch on the bandage and the last time I did it, the thing got caught. I probably won’t do that again.

This is now day 9. I was joking around earlier in the week when I went to the bowling alley for the client Christmas party and everyone was asking what happened, and told them I had my funny bone removed. Trust me when I say that my husband will now verify that this is exactly what they did. My sense of humor has fled and took my patience with it. I think he is ready to go back to work, which is bad because he just go here yesterday.

Tomorrow I get all this stuff off. I couldn’t be happier. I think if it was any longer, I would just be removing it all myself. Trust me, the military could easily use this to get confessions, state secrets and anything else they desire. If I knew where all the treasure was buried, I’d tell you in a second if it would get this thing off my arm!!!

Dictionary.com defines Hero as “a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.”

I was reading the paper this morning and saw an article about a  child who was born in India with 4 arms and 4 legs. She was born joined at the pelvis to a “parasitic twin” that stopped developing in her mother’s womb. The doctors were able to remove the extra limbs and organs and did the required surgery to make her body normal.

Great story, I thought, until I got to this part of the story…. ”Lakshmi is a hero,” her doctor said. A Hero? By the definition that she was born deformed and survived a surgery to correct that deformity? I don’t think so. Perhaps he meant to say that she was a brave little girl to go through all that, if she indeed was brave about it. But not a hero.

Years ago when I was little, a hero was really someone who put their life on the line to save someone else. A soldier, a  fireman, a policeman. Everyday people can be heros, too, when they do something heroic. What about the unemployed guy in NY city a couple if years ago who threw himself under a subway train to save a disabled man who had fallen? Now THAT is a hero.

There are many words you can use to honor a person…..an inspiration, a role model, maybe even a champion. But let’s save the hero title for what it’s meant for while it still has a definite meaning. Before long it will be like ‘awesome’ which, now only seems to mean the same thing as ‘pretty cool’.

“We can’t all be heros because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”   Will Rogers

What a beautiful country Tanzania is. We saw the most beautiful trees and flowers, wild animals galore and met some of the nicest people ever. The trip was full of blessings.

Dodoma was where we were actually doing the work. Then we ended up at the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Our first blessing was the weather.  We were told that up until the day before our arrival, the temperatures were in the 90′s with very high humidity. They wondered how we would deal with all the work we had to do in those conditions. But when we got there on Tuesday, there was a steady wind blowing and a cooling cloud cover for most of the day. This is how we found the worksite the first day. A lot of prep work was already done, but there was much to do. Teams were formed, blocks were moved, sand was sifted and the work began. We worked 10 hour days for 4 days and at the end of those days, here is what it looked like:

You have to realize that this is only one section….it’s going to be a 3 story dorm when finished, so it’s longer than my camera could capture. Below is one of the dorms already being used….I think this is what ours will look like when finished. Of course, there are many other teams of people coming to work on the project.

Another blessing was that there was a real bathroom for us to use during the day. The principal of the Bible college is also the pastor of the Church on the college grounds. His name is Pastor Ron. He and his wife, Annette, have 4 beautiful children and they were all so welcoming to us. They live just a few yards away from the worksite, so they opened their home to us. Annette taught us some swahili and we taught her kids some english. The 2 oldest children are in school and already learning, so they were able to help interpret for us when we needed to communicate with the 2 youngest.

We left Dodoma very early Saturday morning and endured a 14 hour bus trip to our next destination. I think it was Arusha, but I’m not going to swear to it. We had 3 days of travelling from one safari lodge to another and the names of the towns now escape me. It doesn’t matter….it was all beautiful. We saw scenery I could have never imagined and all the wildlife I had imagined seeing. Another blessing.

Looking into the Ngorongoro Crater

A sunset along the way

   Elephants in the crater

We saw all of the Big 5 (Elephants, buffalo, rhino, lion and leopard) along with flamingos, hippos, thousands of gazelles, many herds of zebra, lots of giraffe and more. The roads were bumpy and the rides were wild! It was a lot of fun.

This was definately a once in a lifetime trip. A total of about 40 hours on the airplanes and another 40 or more on the road travelling from one place to another (Not including all the safari driving). It was definately an experience! I was really blessed to have been able to experience all of that with my beautiful daughter, Holley. I’m so thankful that she wanted me to come with her and her group. They all made me feel very welcome. I guess the final blessing is that we all made it home in one piece.

I have many more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/joiwinds. If you only want to see the animals, go to that tab.

After 90 minutes of deliberation, the jury came back with 8 not guiltys for the defendants in the Martin Lee Anderson case. Otherwise known as the Boot Camp Death Trial on Court TV.

This was a jury I am really thankful that I wasn’t on. Martin was on his second day at the boot camp. He went there because he had stolen his grandmother’s car. He wasn’t a bad criminal but had come from a broken home and was perhaps heading down a bad road. His mother took him to the boot camp and checked him in, I’m sure with the hopes that they would take her son and turn him around. Never in her wildest nightmares would she have ever guessed the outcome.

Most everyone has seen the video. It looked to me like the guards were ganging up on this 14 year old child. At one point it looked like one of the guards was either kicking him or kneeing him in the groin area. I was horrified.

The defense basically said that the guards treated Martin just like every other kid at that camp. Unfortunately he had Sickle Cell trait and because of that, when he got overly tired, he got very sick very fast. The guards had no idea and thought he was just trying to get out of the exercises they were doing. The nurse said that there wasn’t anything in the way Martin was acting to show that he was in trouble.

The prosecution said the guards used improper force, then that they suffocated him and finally said that it was “a fatal failure to act on the part of the defendents”.

Supposedly this shifting of theories by the prosecution is what lost them the case. I’m sure the jurors will be interviewed by Court TV at some point and everyone will know what was in their minds when they made their decision.

I do know that there was a lot of prayer from both sides asking for God’s will to be done. And His will is not always our will, nor will it make everyone happy.

I hope that the prayers now will be for Martin’s family to find peace, because of all the people involved in this whole thing, they are the ones that really lost, regardless of the verdict.

After reading MelFamy’s post today, I searched on Google. Sadly, there are hundreds of these signs. Even so, some of them are pretty funny. I have to admit I’m kind of curious about the Chicken Legs w/Thing.

When I go to the grocery store and buy enough to carry out my purchases in a cart, I always return my cart to a designated place. It’s never more than a few steps away and I just consider it extra exercise. It’s really not a hard thing to do, is it?

Sometimes I will see an elderly person leave their cart beside their car. Ok, I can kind of see where they might not have as much energy or mobility to walk those extra steps to put it up. And the stores do pay people to come out and retrieve those carts.

One thing I will never understand is when someone who is parked in the handicapped spot and they leave their cart in the spot next to them blocking that entire spot from the next needy person using it. “Do Unto Others”, y’all!!!

But what really bothers me is when I see someone who is completely able bodied come out and empty the cart and then jump into their car and take off, usually leaving the cart partially in the parking place. That’s just lazy. Normal behaviour for a lot of people, but lazy.

Then today, the thing that prompted this rant, was probably the most ridiculous behaviour I’ve seen yet from a grown woman. I had put my groceries in my car and as I was walking a few feet over to return my cart, I noticed this woman shoving her cart aside to get back into her vehicle. I was tempted to walk over and get her cart while she was still there to see it and returning it for her in hopes of her noticing how lazy she was. As I was having that thought, this woman (very nicely dressed and driving a very expensive SUV) came back out of her vehicle with a handful of garbage, mostly fast food bags and drink cups, and dumped those into the cart. Then she just got back into her very expensive SUV and drove off.

Something like that should not shock me, but it did. I guess I still expect certain behaviours from people and i especially expect grown ups to act with some degree of manners and thoughtfulness. And when they are well dressed and driving expensive cars, I guess I have even higher expectations of them. I see now that I’m just going to have to lower those expectations. What a shame.

Last night my little pomeranian, who thinks she’s a really big dog, found a possum in our back yard. She got practically nose to nose with the poor little thing, barking in it’s face while the possum just stood statue still and stared at her.

I got worried about the critter getting tired of Sassy’s noise and attacking her, so after we finally got her to come back inside I went to Google for some answers. Here are some of the interesting things I found about the opossum from The Opossum Society:

The chance of rabies in an opossum is EXTREMELY RARE. This may have something to do with the opossum’s low body temperature (94-97º F) making it difficult for the virus to survive in an opossum’s body.

Opossums are marsupials, or pouched mammals. Marsupials carry young in a pouch on the abdomen of the female. Relatives include the koala and kangaroo. The opossum holds the distinction of being North America’s only marsupial!

Opossums are beneficial: eating the harmful, unwanted pests around your home such as snails, slugs, spiders, cockroaches, rats, mice and snakes. Think of the opossum as your free gardener. The opossum is known as “Nature’s Little Sanitation Engineer” for a good reason!

Adult opossums and cats seem to have a mutual respect and leave each other alone. In general, opossums are docile, non-aggressive animals and will not attack your pets. They prefer to escape and avoid confrontations, if possible. If not, the threatened opossum may “play ‘possum”, show its teeth, or bite in self-defense, as any animal would.

A lot of that information was really good to know. I have been afraid of them since I was a teenager. My twin sister had some rabbit pens and the possums would get into them and eat the rabbits. When we would try to get the possums out of the pens, they would hiss and snarl at us and I just thought they were mean, bad tempered animals. Turns out they were much more afraid of us than we were of them.

And I sure don’t mind having them cleaning out any insects or rodents in my yard. I’ll bet the cockroach population alone could keep them happy for a week or more ! Even Holley, who doesn’t find anything cute about these critters, wouldn’t mind them passing through her back yard for a quick meal, I’ll bet.  

Some of you know that the younger pastor at my Church (Nic) and his wife (Alexi) have been waiting for the birth of their 3rd child, 1st son. They found out several months ago that he would be born with some challanges. They could see on the sonograms that at the very least he had clubbed feet and some problems with his hands.

Nic was very good to put pictures and a daily journal on www.caringbridge.org. The baby’s name (and also the web site name) is jude elijah gibson. If you want to go on the site to see the new pics of the baby and/or read the journal, just type in his name (no spaces). There is no need to log in or anything.

Obviously I never had a child with a handicap but I have worked with adults who grew up with these types of problems themselves. They are just like you & me, with the exception of not being able to move like we do and sometimes having some neurological problems. They love and care, hurt and cry, just like everyone else. And from some of the parents I have had the pleasure of knowing, they change our lives much more than we could ever change theirs.

God has blessed them with this precious child and I don’t believe it will take these 2 long at all to realize how wonderful the blessing is. They are good people.  For those of you that pray, please keep them in your prayers.