Good morning everyone!
Today I am going to practice speed blogging, which is code for the fact that I tried switching my morning routine up by doing everything I needed to do to get myself dressed and Kayla and Mark out the door and the dogs fed (except for Mandy finishing up – bless her heart, when I came out to sit down and blog, she still was eating her food) and then write my post – but without getting up earlier, which is the second part of my plan for a smoother morning. So, I am sitting here in a dress with (almost) perfect make-up and smoothed over hair and 25 minutes to write. I suspect the getting up earlier is going to have to happen, too.
- Help! I need a break from the news.
It has been quite a news laden few days, hasn’t it? We had the tornadoes come through Alabama (and other states) on the 27th during the day and night in what was one of the worse tornado outbreaks in history, so we spent Thursday the 28th beginning to deal with the their aftermath, which was particularly immediate here in Alabama. Then, on Friday the 29th, we had the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, who are now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, which received extensive media coverage throughout the weekend, and then Sunday night May 1 Osama Bin Laden was captured and killed and the media coverage since then has dealt exclusively with that.
The three events are very different, aren’t they? The tornadoes’ aftermath is horrible, and we in Alabama are just beginning to pick up the pieces and will be working to fix the damage for a very long time. Most of the day Thursday (and a good part of Friday, even while we were keeping an eye on the wedding, those of us with electricity at least) was spent simply trying to find out if the people we knew in the affected areas and their families were safe and had homes. In Alabama, no-one is much further than one degree of separation from knowing someone who either lost a home or a loved one in the storm.
The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was a lovely and happy occasion, and, whether you like it or not, an event worthy of the coverage it received – after all, one day, Prince William will be the head of State of many countries, including the United Kingdom (where he also will be the head of the military), Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica and several other places. (I admit, I had to look that up.) I did get a little irritated at the ridiculousness of some of the style and fashion coverage, but it was an event deserving of world-wide coverage and at least it was beautiful to watch.
Then the death of Osama Bin Laden – to me it was a solemn, somber event. He needed to be pursued and captured for the terrible crimes on September 11, and if he died in the capture attempt, then he died. But that death is also a reminder of all of the lives lost on September 11, 2001, and the terrible price we have been forced to pay in lives, money and in the shift in the fabric of our lives as a result of that day. My family lost a cousin of mine in Iraq a few years ago, a lovely man who simply was serving his country at the time. My daughter will never know what it was like to take a plane to the airport and have your loved ones waiting at the gate to meet you – remember getting off the plane and running to hug your grandparents, parents or friends right there when you came off the gangplank? Or going to pick someone up, and standing eagerly by the window as you watched the plane pull up to catch that first glimpse as that someone got off the plane? Or taking someone to catch a plane, and being able to stand in the gate area and wave and watch until the plane taxied away and began to take off even though you knew they couldn’t see you? She won’t even know what it is like to get on an airplane without having to take her shoes off, an operation I never can manage without a great deal of awkwardness!
So, until next Monday at least, can we just have a quiet, peaceful period of news where the main story is about a dog that saved its master by dialing 911 (or was that a cat? I don’t remember), or inner city children from Los Angeles enjoying a field trip to Washington D.C. courtesy of an eccentric philanthropist, or the invention of the riding vacuum cleaner, self-folding dryer or self-emptying dishwasher or Congress engaging on a lengthy debate on something completely innocuous such as whether the possibility of farming raspberries in the middle of the Arctic ocean should be explored? The breather would sure be appreciated!
Have a great day everyone!
Nancy
Tales from the Mom-Side 