Suebob's Red Stapler

Been on a plane all day. Here are some highlights.

There’s a reason I still love to fly.

People asked the Occupy Wall Street protesters, “Why do you hate corporations? What are you wearing Nikes for, then? Don’t you drive a car? Huh? Huh?”

Here’s my answer. I don’t hate corporations. I work for a Fortune 500 company. I’m proud of my work and proud of my co-workers and extremely happy to be employed at a job I like. Every bite of food that goes in my mouth, every month’s rent, is thanks to that. I’m also glad to have a car and telephone service and food and electricity and all the lovely things corporations bring to me. I’m not ignorant of all those things.

But I do have a few issues with corporations. I expect them to obey the laws just as I expect my fellow citizens to obey the laws. I also expect them to be punished when they don’t.

I have heard that publicly held corporations have a duty to provide value for their stockholders. This is generally held to mean money. They need to do the thing that provides the most money to their stockholders.

Defining value only by money is like defining the worth of food only by calories. So if a corporation were a mom feeding her kids, she would be applauded for feeding them fried mozzarella sticks and shamed for feeding them broccoli. Sure, she’s providing the maximum caloric value, but what about other important, perhaps less easy to quantify values like health and longevity?

I have one suggestion. Corporations should stop trying to provide value for stockholders, and start providing value for stockholders’ children.

Instead of making sure stock values go up, make sure that everything they do contributes to a better life for the next generation. Make sure they pay their fair share of taxes so education and infrastructure will be good. Make sure they keep the environment clean and safe so the next generation won’t be sicker than ours. Create manufacturing processes that use renewable energy and resources. Provide high quality jobs with humane working conditions, so their parents will be able to provide for them.

That’s my simple, stupid suggestion. Stop thinking about the stockholders. Start thinking about the children.

I used to have a blog called Linkateria. I used it just to share links I liked. Now I have the same blog, but it is called “Facebook.”

Remember yesterday when I told you to go read Jenny Lawson’s embarrassing moments post? There are more today.

I was at physical therapy today, lying face down, getting ultrasound on my inflamed achilles tendons. I started reading the update and was soon shaking.

“Are you crying?” asked the physical therapy aide.

“No, laughing” I said, then read her some of the posts.

In the spirit of Jenny, let me share one of my most embarrassing moments with you.

I worked at a place where we had to either wear a turquoise t-shirt, turquoise polo, or turquoise apron. For eight years. No, I will never voluntarily wear turquoise again, thank you for asking. One day, I wore a beautiful green silk shirt and black skirt. I thought “Damn it, I am not ruining this outfit with a blue apron.” I was in my office when the owner of the company stopped by (a rarity). I opened the door and he was standing there. He gave me a long slow look up and down.

“Crap,” I thought. “He is so pissed about me not dressing in company colors.”

I fled to the darkroom, where I held my head in my hands. Looking down, I saw what he had been looking at. Somehow, my shirt had unbuttoned itself, revealing a bright purple lace bra.

He never complained about my lack of a turquoise shirt, as far as I know.

Sorry about swearing on the blog yesterday. I was upset because I felt like my mom wasn’t being treated very well in the hospital. It was very crude of me.

After today, I just want to say: double fuck hospitals.

Mom was in the hospital from 3 pm yesterday to 3 pm today. In that time, she got no sleep, no water, one stale turkey sandwich complete with decomposing lettuce, a scoopful of canned mandarin oranges, and a small juice box.

This is a woman who, under normal circumstances, gets thrown off if lunch is 15 minutes late.

By the time she got home, she had started to hallucinate.

Good work, hospital. Another day and you might have actually killed her.

Forgive my mood. I know part of it is hormonal. I started crying today when I realized that disgusting, media-destroying Rupert Murdoch had bought National Geographic magazine. It’s only a matter of time before they start publishing articles about how Muslims are evil and maps of Obama’s Kenyan hometown.

I’m trying, though. I spent part of the day trying to find a decent affirmations app for my phone. Could NOT find one, though there are many out there.

Note to self: learn app development.

If you’re sick of my whinging already, go read Jenny’s post about embarrassing moments. Pure gold.

Ok, folks, that day is in the can. Goodnight.

Me at the Dia de los Muertos celebration, about 10 seconds before I honest to God broke the tree of life. What does it mean?

I don’t swear a lot on my blog, but seriously, fuck hospitals.

Mom went in to the emergency department about 4 pm with some jaw pain and arm pain, which was a concern because the last time she had a cardiac event, those were the symptoms.

She’s 89 1/2 years old. She has 2 stents, heart failure, arthritis, osteoporosis and doesn’t see or hear well.

She has been there since 4 pm and has not had a sip of water or bite of food.

Fuck hospitals. In hospitals as they exist now, data matters more than people.

Nurses skitter around with laptops on wheeled stands before them, never meeting the patient’s eye because they are so busy typing.

No one explains anything to the patient. No one knows anything.

God, I’m just so pissed. How is this HEALTH CARE when the patient’s comfort is last on the list of things people think about? How is it care when you don’t offer a 90-year-old woman a bite to eat or anything to drink for five hours? Do you really care when you leave a nasal cannula in that makes her so uncomfortable and you don’t even bother to connect it to an oxygen line?

I’m not blaming the nurses. They are just dragged downstream with the current.

But here’s what I want to know – where is the care in health care? Where?

Mom seems fine. Pain is gone, all the all-important numbers are good. I hope she can get some sleep.

Good night.

In pagan tradition, Samhain, Oct. 31, celebrates the coming of the new year. When I awoke this morning, I felt renewed and truly like another year had started. Happy New Year!

It got cool last night. Not nippy, not cold, just blessedly cool. Cool enough that I put a blanket on my bed, something that had not happened since well before I moved in June. It got up to 86 degrees again today, on Nov. 1, but I will take that if the nights will stay cool so I can just sleep.

And for another, my achilles tendinitis is finally, thanks to modern medicine and physical therapy, beginning to subside. A year of hobbling about seems to be drawing to an end. I even harbor a tiny hope of dancing again.

Pain is sneaky. I was in pain for a long time before I thought to tell my doctor, and stayed in pain because I kept putting off a follow-up visit. I knew I hurt, I knew I was in a bad mood because of it, but somehow it just seemed inevitable. Now that it has begun to leave my body, I wonder why I didn’t do something a year ago, but I’m a dope. Let this be a lesson to you. Don’t put off taking care of yourself.

Happy New Year, everyone. Let it be a good one.

It’s that time of the month again. No, not my period. I have The Menopause, which means that I will not get my period, unless I dare to set foot in an airport, in which case I will be visited with a flood of biblical proportions. Ask me how I know. (EVERY SINGLE TIME).

No, it’s the time of the month when I write a blog post, because apparently all I can muster is one post a month.

I have excuses. See above, The Menopause. Also: it’s HOT. Hot? It’s October 13, isn’t it? FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK. Yes, yes it is. It has been above 90 degrees every day, which isn’t the bad part. It’s the nights. Normally at night, we get a cool ocean or mountain breeze. Not now. It has been still at night for weeks, with the temperature hovering between 75 and 80 all night long.

I know, I know, I could live somewhere hot like Phoenix. But the point is that I don’t live somewhere hot like Phoenix. I live in a wonderland of mild temperatures, or should I say I used to? Because it is HOT.

Which brings me to my first Fury. I am absolutely furious at all those jerks in Congress and the former President who blocked climate change legislation because they wanted to keep their campaign donors happy. When New Orleans and Miami disappear under the waves, as they are scheduled to do, I want to make these guys stand on the shore with shame signs around their necks reading “AT LEAST MY REELECTION FUND WAS FULL.” We could have saved the planet, but these idiots dithered around claiming climate change wasn’t real. FURY.

My second fury is for Bristol Palin, who is somehow, unaccountably, famous. I’m not so much mad at her – she’s an idiot from a low-rent family of idiots, so maybe she can’t help herself – but for the media who keeps on reporting on her as if we should take her seriously. She has 2 out-of-wedlock kids from 2 dads, and yet she somehow opines that the state of Washington is wrong in trying to lower its teenage birth rate. FURY.

My third fury is for this old man who shooed me and Abbie when we were walking the other morning. SHOOED us. We were walking in front of his house and he stopped to stare at us, so I stopped to see what he wanted. Then he SHOOED us with his hand motions and said “Go on, go on.” “GOOD MORNING” I yelled back, being me. Look, Festus, my dog isn’t gonna poop on your lawn. And if she does, I HAVE POOP BAGS AND AM NOT AFRAID TO USE THEM.

What isn’t making me furious?

I got a new phone. Traded the iPhone4s for a shiny new Samsung Galaxy Note, which is as big as a paperback book, putting it in the phablet category, a category made horrible by the use of the word “phablet.” Nice phone though, with a stellar camera. Switching from one platform to another is good exercise for your brain. In just 6 months or so, I will have it all figured out. In the mean time, the camera is making me so happy.

When I had to move earlier this year, I had an opportunity to buy an ideal place up north, where I used to live. I was SO ready and excited. It seemed perfect.

Then in church one Sunday, the announcement came that our dear music director, Todd, was moving to Boston. Everyone gasped and moaned a little. I started to cry, and not a little. I started to cry a lot. After a few minutes, I thought “Maybe this isn’t just about Todd. Maybe this is about you not wanting to leave this church and these people.” I knew then that I had to stay.

I spent last night crying about the suicide of one of our blogging community’s most beautiful members, Anastasia Campbell, Stacy. I didn’t know her well personally, though we followed each other on every platform, seemingly, and often liked and commented on each other’s work. It was the online version of casual friendship.

To tell you the truth, I was intimidated by her. Her physical beauty was just otherworldly. Her talent, both in writing and photography, was considerable. And sometimes I lost track of her because she was a frequent name-changer and shape-shifter online.

Still, her death was like sticking my arm into ice water and keeping it there. Stinging. Painful. Aching.

As with Todd, I realized it wasn’t just about losing her. It was about all those other losses and all that other helplessness over the events that tumble and blast through our lives. I’m old enough now to know too many people who have taken their own lives or who have died far too young.

One of the strangest parts about growing older is knowing so many dead people. It’s peculiar that I have to keep learning the lesson over and over that they’re not coming back, too. Just when I finally know they’re permanently dead, I slip up and again find myself thinking “I can’t wait to show this to them…oh….”

It’s a sad and beautiful world. Sometimes we can’t do anything that will help someone. I think that was the case with Stacy. Sometimes we can, and sometimes people do, which is why I still walk the earth. Help one another. Be kind. Love animals. Do it for Stacy.

Goodnight, Stacy, beautiful soul. I hope it is better for you where you are. You deserve a world made for you.