McCain would like you ladies to stop worrying your pretty little heads about your "health" and just make him a damn sandwich already

The last few weeks of the presidential campaign has had me up in arms; ok, I should probably clarify. The last few weeks of the McCain-Palin campaign has had me yelling at the tv, jumping up from my seat, literally angry with rage. Each time I think a new low has been achieved, I would watch another debate (air quotes? seriously?), stumble across yet ANOTHER divisive incident that occurred at one of their rallies via youtube or receive one of their incendiary and often blatantly false advertisements in the mail (more on that later). I suppose that's one of the joys of living in a battleground state, in a part of the country that's not quite American enough for Governor Palin or Joe McCain, the senator's brother. But McCain's little visit on Fox yesterday just took it to a new level of crap on a crap cracker.

According to McCain, Sarah Palin is a "counter to the liberal feminist agenda."



Sigh. I mean, I don't even know where to begin. From belittling the importance of women's health, to his calling the pro-choice ideology "pro-abortion," to the C-U- Next Tuesday incident with his wife, the gorilla rape joke, and so on and so forth ad infinitum, there seems to be no end to his overwhelming misogynystic and paternalistic attitude regarding women. Think about it: when asked to describe his running-mate's qualifications, he said she had "a tough husband." Or like the time he and she both met with Katie Couric and he wouldn't let Palin answer a single question (though that probably wasn't such a bad idea after her previous abysmal performances), pulling an attitude like an overprotective/impatient father called in for a meeting with his "misunderstood" kid's principal.

Let's have a quick vocabulary lesson:
Liberal, adjective: marked by generosity: given or provided in a generous and openhanded way: broad-minded; especially: not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms.
Feminist/Feminism, noun: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.
Agenda, noun: a list or outline of things to be considered or done.

You know what? McCain is totally right. Sarah Palin stands for and represents the complete opposite of the above. If being a part of the liberal feminist agenda is wrong, then I don't want to be right. (You know, like "on the right?" Get it? I'll be here all night, folks.)

This is not photoshopped

Holy crap, Trish and Josie are actually sharing the SAME couch. Hopefully this means that the duel sneak attacks of poop and puke all over the frickin' house when I least expect it will soon be a thing of the past; cats are passive aggressive little beasts when they want to be, aren't they?

Waiter, there's a bug in my salad

I was out watering my herb garden the other day when I noticed some strange looking caterpillars chilling amongst my rather pathetic parsley. I dumped some water on them, hoping they would be knocked off or would seek shelter elsewhere, but they just stayed there without moving an inch. They did however sprout some weird little yellow horns though whenever the water hit them. Hmmm...I wasn't about to try and remove something with my bare hands that had retractable horns and was brightly colored. If I remembered anything from Wild America, brightly colored things are generally best left alone. So it was off to the interwebs to see if I could figure out just what exactly was making itself so comfortable in my garden.

Turns out they are all black swallowtail caterpillars, also known as the parsley caterpillar...appropriate, eh? They're apparently in the stage right before they they overwinter as chrysalis, which means in the spring I'll be greeted by these eye-catching guys:


Not too bad, as far as weird bug infestations go.

Homecoming, part one

The husband is home! Hooray!!!! (Sorry, I would write more, but I'm too busy spending time with the hubby and the kitties)

Keys, please

I think I need to figure out a way to permanently affix a set of keys to my body so that I'm never without. On Saturday, after a lovely day running around rural Virginia with my friend and co-worker, Ann, I had that moment of panic that one gets when you realize you are no longer in possession of your keys. This was sort of a problem, because I was the one who had driven that day, and without my keys, Ann and I were potentially stranded in Culpeper, Virginia. As far as places to be stranded in, Culpeper was quite quaint, but it was quite a distance from home, and I had no one with a set of spares that I could call upon for assistance. We re-traced our steps and got pretty lucky; apparently I had put my keys down at the first antique shop we had gone into, and they had them at the counter, waiting for their owner. I'm just glad I realized I no longer had my keys on my before all of the shops closed at six!

So that brings us to Sunday...I had bought some pretty fall marigolds with which to adorn my rather plain front door and stairs, and I figured I should probably water them before I headed off to my part-time job in DC. I filled up my watering can, went downstairs and left the front door open behind. I had just finished watering the flowers when a stiff breeze came along and blew the door shut. I tried the knob; it was locked. Crap. I was out on the front stoop of my house with wet hair, in a t-shirt, skirt, and flip-flips (it was a little chilly), without my wallet, cell phone or keys. I ran down my list of options: the garage was shut tight, so no getting in that way; I didn't know any of my neighbors well enough to ring their doorbell on a Sunday morning to ask for their assistance; I didn't have any friend in the wings waiting with a set of spares, and even if I did, how was I going to contact that person without my phone?; and that's when I realized I was pretty well screwed and began cursing my cats and their lack of opposable thumbs.

I decided to walk up to the "main street" area of our housing development and see if any of the businesses were open, thinking someone might be nice and lend me a phone book and a phone in order to call a locksmith. I didn't get my hopes up though; I knew that none of the dry cleaners were open on Sundays, which only left the nail salons and I was was pretty sure none of them would be open at 10:20 or so in the morning on a Sunday. Well, fortunately for me, I proved myself wrong as one of the nail salons had just opened up for 10:30. They let me borrow a phone and call a locksmith who I chose based solely on their yellowpage ad that said, "Service in 15 minutes!" After I called and made the appointment, it became quite clear that today was not going to be one of their 15 minute days, as I was told it would take at least 45 minutes for a locksmith to arrive. Great. Now I was locked out and would have to wait outside in the chilly morning and I was going to be late for work.

An hour or so later, after contemplating whether or not I could scale my front porch and climb up to the window I had left open on the second floor, the locksmith arrived and got down to business. The only problem being that he couldn't pick the lock. At this point, thoroughly exasperated, I told him to just drill it out and get to it. I'd fix the lock later, which was fine, because the deadbolt was still operational. 5 minutes and $240 later, and I was finally back in my house. Now I'm trying to figure out ways to hide spare keys all over the outside of our condo so I never ever have to go through that again. Anyone have any ideas?

Documented proof!

Here is evidence of the cats' latest progress in sharing the same dwelling place (the Trish-monster is on the left with her banana, and Josie-cat is eyeballing it jealously on the right, even though she has her own perfectly fine banana in her room, but I digress). As you can see, they're about four feet away from each other. And they're not attempting to eat the other one's face. Amazing! I hope to eventually have the two of them on the couch with me simultaneously (Josie has been bogarting my lap for the past week), but that may require a stronger sedative for me and the cats.

In other news, the husband will be home for a short visit in only a week and a half. Wee! Don't expect us to be answering the phone over the Columbus Day weekend (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Progress

As I type this, both the Trish-monster and the Josie-cat are occupying the same floor of the house at the same time, without sounding like they'd rather try and kill each other. At some point last night, they were separated only by 8 feet of carpet. It was amazing. I credit this fantastic progress to the cat prozac that my friend Chad told me about over the weekend. I put one in Josie's "safe room" and another where Trish likes to relax in the dining room and they seem to have mellowed them both out a bit. I'm not quite comfortable with having the two cats roam around on their own at night just yet (basically I don't want to be woken up at 4 am by a cat fight), but I think in the next week or so the cats will have reached a point where they no longer really care about the other one. Hopefully I'll be able to grab a photo of the two of them in the same room soon as proof.

In other news, the hubby is doing well in Kansas although he seems to be a bit bored these days. I guess running around with night vision goggles and being flipped over in a vehicle to learn the proper way of escaping a wreckage just doesn't do it for him anymore (I thought it sounded kind of fun). As of right now, he's supposed to get the weekend of Columbus Day off, so he's flying home to hang out with his girls for a day or two. We like to think of Columbus Day as the light at the end of the tunnel...well, this particular tunnel, I guess. As you all know, there will be many more tunnels in the next year, but we're both taking things day by day. Its kind of funny; we've been married for nearly two months, and we've spent five weeks of that time separated. But I'm fortunate in that I have a wonderful group of friends who have taken it upon themselves to make sure that I'm still going out and about and not sitting at home feeling sorry for myself. Hooray for good friends!