I haven’t been watching the Republican National Convention (RNC) as I see it as just a big pep rally and who attends a pep rally for a team they don’t support? Apparently lots of people do given the coverage from Facebook, the media etc.  In an election year where we all need to be fully engaged, I’m feeling more and more disengaged.

 I expect the Democrats to have the same sort of circus next week. I’m not sure I will watch that either. Just not a whole lot anywhere to get excited about. One of the things I really don’t understand is having family members and/or a spouse speak for the candidate. I get the humanizing aspect of this but what’s a wife going to say? “Yep, he’s a d*ckhead and slaps me around.” Of course it will be flowery and full of compliments.

I feel sorry for Melania. I have this picture in my mind of The Donald coming home on day and announcing he’s running for president. Melania, just home from lunch with friends and waiting for the chauffeur to bring Baron home from school, tells him that’s fantastic while thinking to herself “yeah, right.” Then next thing she knows, she’s being spoon fed sound bites and then ripped to shreds like never before. I’m not a PR expert but I could have spun that whole copying from Michelle Obama thing 20 times better than they did. And sorry folks, she did use Obama’s speech as an inspiration. But let’s remember that Joe Biden’s attempt for President was thwarted by a plagiarism scandal. So let’s all relax – life marches on. You can attribute that statement to me.

Speaking of speeches, Scott Baio explained how he came up with his speech – he wrote it in church last Sunday. I think the implication is that God was helping him and frankly, I hope that’s not the case. I was in church on Sunday praying for peace and sound judgement in these turbulent times. I don’t want to think God didn’t hear those prayers because he was ghosting writing Baio’s speech.

I do like Ivanka Trump and think she’s the smartest of the group. Of course this is based on People magazine articles and seeing her on The Apprentice, but still, I think it’s valid. I read that she did a great job except that no one recognized the person she spoke about. Go Ivanka! When I read she was going to introduce her dad I thought that was pretty generous of him- figured he would have picked one of the sons. But then again we all know he has a soft spot for Ivanka. Not every dad says that he would date his daughter, if only they weren’t related.

Once both conventions are over, it’s time for all of us to really look at the facts as best we can find them. It’s not easy getting to the truth under all the crap that’s lumped on it, but we owe it to ourselves to try. Read, read and read again everything we can find to not only support our position but understand the opposing one. Open your mind, make yourself uncomfortable and grow. Let’s all commit to making the best out of this crazy election. We owe it to ourselves, our fellow Americans and the world.

I’m so glad the Olympics are this summer. We sure need something to bring this country together and there’s nothing like beating someone or some nation, to unite these 50 states of ours.

I’ve been busy watching the Olympics trials. First was the diving. Cynthia Potter, a member of 3 Olympic teams, is one of the commentators. She patiently explains why each dive is great or not so great. Outside of the obvious belly flops or huge splashes into the pool, I’ve really no eye for what’s a good dive. I’m more fascinated with the rituals they all seem to have – throwing the towel down from the platform at baseball pitcher-like speed, getting into the hot tub immediately following the dive etc. Let’s talk about that, Cynthia.

As a kid, our family did not belong to the neighborhood pool like normal families. My dad wanted to belong to a pool where he could swim laps outside of the 15-minute adult time most summer pools offer so he found Starlit, a pool 25 minutes away, which was basically all adult swim time. Don’t get me wrong, my sister and I had fun there and because it was an indoor pool, we could go year around. Olympic hopefuls trained there. It was that kind of pool.

There was a high dive. And one Saturday I convinced my dad to let me dive off of it. I should have just jumped off but no, I decided to dive and came home with two black eyes. As Cynthia Potter would say, it was not executed well. And there was no hot tub to recover in.

After the diving trial was gymnastics. Let’s face it, anyone who attempts that stuff should get a 10 but that’s not the way the scoring works. The judges take off for little “bobbles” and extra steps. I’ve no great eye for this sport either and my comments, like my diving interests, wander off the main event. I’m wondering when the leotards became thongs. I’m wondering why the women wear so much makeup. I’m feeling bad for the men with the terrible bruises on their arms to find out they are getting some strange suction cup therapy that causes the marks. These are the things that catch my attention.

One woman had an unfortunate fall on the balance beam, more or less the female equivalent of racking herself and all the commentator could say was “oh, golly.” I had a bit more colorful commentary going at home. Racking yourself is a point deduction, in case you wondered.

Now track and field and swimming are on. These are sports I get. You run or swim the fastest, you win. My dad went to Notre Dame on a partial track scholarship and enjoyed the sport well after his collegiate years. Growing up, we went to many track meets and saw so many of the great runners of the 70’s and 80’s. At one meet, I stood in the bathroom line with Jackie Joyner-Kersee, one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time. Quite a thrill. Seriously.

Nowadays, everyone is a professional athlete. You have to be to afford the training. During the diving trials, a 20-year-old made the team and both he and his family sobbed. It was a reminder of what these games are about, at least in some sports. LeBron James came out and said he wasn’t going to compete because he was too tired from playing basketball professionally. Nothing against him but if you are too tired from your professional playing, maybe you shouldn’t be going to the Olympics in the first place. I miss amateur athletes.  I wish for the days when people competed and moved on and had a life. They didn’t make the Olympics their life.

I’ll be rooting for the home team come August. With the medals our country’s finest athletes are sure to earn, I know we will have a great sense of pride and unity. If only that feeling could last.

When Kathryn was in preschool we were informed of one item she needed to work on – she could not readily identify the color gray. Luckily, we caught this early, fixed the problem, and she’s had no color-related issues since then. Gray – the perfect blend of black and white, two opposites. Wish more of us could see the beauty of gray.

Kathryn couldn’t identify gray, but she was three – what’s wrong with so many adults these days? What happened to the coming together to find a compromise, a gray, so to speak, when we have opposing views? Seems if we all stopped the name calling, the need for sound bites, the need for likes or retweets, we might be able to move forward on important issues.

I love people who have strong views. But do strong views have be mean unwavering? Isn’t there room for some compromise? A step closer together. Maybe that compromise isn’t a perfect solution but maybe the next step will be. We have to start somewhere.

You may hate or love Ted Kennedy (when he was alive obviously), John McCain (before he lost his mind), Joe Biden and others but they all have a few things in common – strong beliefs but the ability to compromise, see the other side and work towards common ground. We just don’t see that anymore. These were people who sought out solutions, not always perfect ones, but attempts to find the compromise.

We face a lot of issues today including gun ownership rights, civil rights and terrorism. These are complex issues with many schools of thought and many huge consequences for action and lack thereof. Can we try, just try, to find the beauty in gray, which ironically, can be spelled two ways?

Last Thursday Kathryn called me at work to say that Smokey has come across a raccoon sleeping under our deck. He’d cornered it and was barking like mad. She wanted to know what to do. I told her to get the hose and spray Smokey which should give the raccoon time to get away. She did and then sent this photo. She had nicely written on it “A New Friend.”

Friday morning, our “friend” was back under our deck and Smokey again, in no uncertain terms, let it know whose yard this was. Mike got Smokey back in the house and called Animal Control because the raccoon didn’t seem well. We all went about our day.

Kathryn texts me around 4pm on Friday to ask if Animal Control should be coming back. I didn’t think so and honestly thought she was just asking as she’d been texting me asking about the fate of the raccoon and hoping they were going to try to rehab it or relocate it.

Well, turns out it had rabies (sorry Kathryn, only a trip to the Rainbow Bridge for our friend) and Animal Control was there to let us know Smokey was now under a mandatory 45 day quarantine – luckily at the house. Only allowed out to do his business. We have to limit his contact with people (no invites to our house this summer) and even in our fenced in yard, he has to be walked on a leash. We were so focused on this that the call from the health department took us totally by surprise.

The health department was calling because they wanted to see if any of us had touched Smokey following the two incidents. If the raccoon had spat on him and then we touched him, we could be infected if we had a cut etc. None of us could remember specifically touching Smokey but then again, it is such a common thing, it wouldn’t be memorable.

Thus began a flurry of calls to the doctor, ER etc to figure out our next steps. In the end, we decided, despite the small chance of getting rabies ourselves, that we would start the shots. We spent Friday night at the ER getting the first round of shots. When I was a kid, there was always the threat that if you had to get the shots, they were administered through your “naval” as my Mom would say, making it sound all the more disgusting. Fortunately, while it is still a series of shots, you get the shots in the arms and legs. We got 5 on Friday night, one on Monday and have two left to go. We can only get the shots at the ER so it is a bit of an ordeal. With two adults and one child, they aren’t sure where to put us. We all were in the adult section Friday and all in pediatrics yesterday.

Yesterday I felt we had too much, too little and vastly contradictory information all at once. It was overwhelming. It’s great to be able to read so much on the web but difficult to get some questions answered and then you see differing opinions. We actually got that between the health department, animal control and the ER doctors as well. Today, maybe because the routine is setting in, I’m feeling a bit more in control.

Smokey, our yard warrior, just had his rabies shot about a month ago, but got another booster yesterday. He was super excited to get out of the house even if it was to go the vet. As I write this, he is lazily napping on the floor, gently snoring, blissfully unaware of the craziness that has come upon us.

Last night I asked my friend Mary, who is currently undergoing chemo (who BTW, is kicking cancer’s ass – her tumor has dissolved almost completely!) if my “rabies card” trumped her “cancer card” if nothing more than because of the uniqueness. But she had to outdo me with some story of how she might have gotten cancer/chemo induced diabetes. And the win goes to…Mary.

I have to look at the positives. Smokey wasn’t taken from us which given his separation anxiety, would have been devastating for him and of course, for us. We have access to treatment. We have friends who’ve offered support and sympathy for our situation and I have Mary to keep me grounded. This whole episode will be yet another interesting chapter in our lives. But as Kathryn lamented the other night “Why do things like this always happened to us?” I’m not exactly sure what other things are on her list, but I’ll let her tell those to Dr. Phil one day.

Like most people, I was shocked to hear about the boy falling in the gorilla’s enclosure and the subsequent death of the gorilla. Shocking and horrifying on so many levels.

I’m not sure of the whole story and what I read it seemed like the boy went through a number of barriers to end up with the gorilla. I wondered the time lapse – how long did it take? But I know from experience that things happen in a very short amount of time and that’s why I have some empathy for his mom.

When Kathryn was about 2 and a half or so, she and I were in Toys R Us. I turned to put something on the shelf and when I turned back she was gone. I looked around and didn’t see her anywhere. I called her name, no answer. I immediately walked toward an employee who via her walkie-talkie, basically shut down the whole store. An employee went to the doors, everyone else stopped what they were doing to look for her. As I stood answering questions the employee was asking about her clothes etc., in comes Kathryn from OUTSIDE the store holding the hand of a woman.  Kathryn ran over and the woman follows and tells me she found her out on the sidewalk looking for me. The woman hesitated and I was pretty sure I was in for a big lecture so I preemptively thanked her and the employee and walked away with Kathryn.  I know she wanted to share a few thoughts with me.

Making sense with a child that age is difficult and the best I could gather from her was she hid from me but when she came back, I had gone for help and so she ran out thinking I left her. Left her. That stings that your child would think you would leave her but that’s a child’s thinking for you. The whole episode – 3 minutes. 3 of the longest minutes of my life. To this day, I remember the fast action of those Toys R Us employees and have nothing respect for the way they are trained.

That was a moment in time, one episode. So am I a bad mother?

Another time, as we stood in the Reptile House at the National Zoo looking at something, my stepson Matthew wandered off with another family. Everyone looks similar from behind when you are small. We realize he was gone almost immediately. I stood in place with the other kids while Mike made went to find him. Before Mike came back, Matthew appeared asking “Where’d you guys go?” Had he looked around he would have realized we didn’t go anywhere!

That was a moment in time, so are we bad parents?

Each year we hear of people forgetting their kids in the car when they go to work and the unthinkable happens, the child dies. It is easy to ask what kind of parent would forget their child but we are human and it happens. A moment in time. Do someone’s actions in that one slice of their life, define who they really are?

The zoo incident offers us lots of lessons and lots of discussion points – whether zoos should exist, what else could have been done, what’s the parent role in it all.  All valid points. Nothing will bring back that beautiful gorilla and nothing anyone does will ever provide “justice” for his death. And reversely, time won’t ever erase the fright and guilt his mom feels today, because no matter what you do to her or say about her, she is beating herself up again and again.

Doesn’t matter what his mom has said in public, in private I believe she is reliving it from realizing the child was gone, watching him in the enclosure and then the death of the gorilla.

So much has been said and written about the boy’s mom (not sure if she was the only parent there) and I’m not trying to be”Heidi Highroad” here, but can we really take the worst moments of someone’s life and use them to define who they really are? Is his mother really the worst parent, based on a moment in time?

This week news broke that the trending news feature on Facebook might be manipulated. Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee John Thune of South Dakota is right on this, demanding a hearing about this claim. The claim implies that Facebook trends liberal stories and suppresses those stories in which conservatives may have more interest. Senator Thune believes that if this charge it true, “Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet.”

Personally, I would prefer that Senator Thune and his colleagues not worry about this situation.  Why not spend time trying to pass a budget so that there isn’t a crisis in the fall? Federal employees and contractors find the pattern of threatening or actually closing the government a bit tiring. If that’s not of interest, how about consider Obama’s Supreme Court nomination?

Facebook for me is entertainment. I connect with my friends, look at photos, read articles here and there. I see the “trending” topics but don’t consider that my only news source. Most of time the stuff I see on there is not newsworthy. “Kim Kardashian posts butt photo.”

Am I the minority? Most of us post articles etc. that reflect our views. How many of us have really swayed someone, especially politically, because of an article we posted? My guess is few. Additionally, most of us have friends of varying political and religious views so we probably see a variety of items on any given day on Facebook. Do we really need the government to get involved? Seems there is plenty of political conversation within my group of friends. No censoring there.

Let Facebook look into it and if you aren’t happy with what they say, close your account.

Like many sources, maybe Facebook does have a bias. But it is up to us, as news consumers, to seek out differing opinions or new ideas. It’s not up to Facebook or our government to make sure we are well read.

If you ever want to feel your age, do yardwork.  When we moved into our house almost 17 years ago, there were grape vines planted behind our garage. It was quite a novelty back then and a few times over the years. In reality, the vines were overgrown and we never used the grapes. So, we decided to finally pull them and I’m going to make a sunflower garden in the space.

As I was pulling and cutting the vines today, I began to have MacGyver-like thoughts of how I could do it faster, easier etc. These ideas ranged from a controlled fire to using the dog to help me. I wasn’t sure how Smokey would help, but it was just a matter of thinking harder. As I was thinking these thoughts, I realized I was beginning to think like my stepson Matthew. As a kid, if you asked Matthew to rake the leaves, he would spend 60 minutes thinking through others ways to do it – blowing the leaves into an arch so his sister could catch them in the bag or getting a stick and stabbing them with it. Some ideas were creative and some just dopey. In the end, he would always do the task like most other people would have done an hour earlier.

Matthew was famous for flying in the door after school yelling things like “Ellen, do you know where the hatchet is? Or “Ellen, is that old lawnmower still here? I’m going to build a go-kart this afternoon.” These ideas were always followed by a call to Mike with the same message “Matthew is going to call you, just say no.”  Then I would hang up. Matthew would come out of his room ready for action and I would tell him he should probably check with his Dad. Fortunately, Mike would say he should probably be there when he used a hatchet or built a go-kart.  I know other parents would probably embrace these inventive ideas, but they probably didn’t have a kid like Matthew that cut off the cat’s whiskers literally within 5 minutes of having a pocket knife. Curiosity could have killed the cat!

One afternoon, Matthew and his friend Billy put a box on a skateboard and were riding this contraption down our driveway into the street. If you don’t aim more to the left, you will end up hitting the island in the cul-de-sac. I looked out the window and saw what they were up to and went out to tell them it was not a good idea. Too late. Matthew had his sister Kristina in the box, speeding down the driveway. She made a direct and very hard hit to the island and flew out of the box. We all stood there frozen. If there was ever a candidate for a head or spinal injury, it was Kristina. But, to everyone’s shock, she got up laughing. Sometimes we will reminisce about that ride and we still are shocked she’s alive today.

This year Matthew came over during one of the snow storms. The next day while we were out shoveling, he came out and stood in the driveway for quite some time. I finally inquired if he was just going to watch or actually shovel. He explained he was trying to come up with a way to make it easier, like using a fire bomb to melt the ice. This time instead of calling Mike, I just said “Just shovel the F*ing snow.” He just laughed and started shoveling but insisted later a fire bomb would have been the way to go. When you have the MacGyver thinking  in your blood, you apparently don’t outgrow it.

They are going to re-do the real MacGyver show. Who knows if it will be any good. I didn’t think a remake of Hawaii Five-O would be any good, but they’ve made it work and sweetened if for us viewers by having McGarrett take his shirt of every few shows. I read that the new MacGyver will focus on his younger years. Might just be a shirtless MacGyver in my future.

My friend Colleen collects pictures of funny or strange signs from all over. Now that I know, I’m always on the lookout for them and while I’ve taken pictures of some good ones overseas, there are plenty here at home. Last weekend, I had to travel no further than the next county over to see this sign.

It’s not funny but it did strike me as strange. Who’s dumb enough to stay outside during a thunderstorm? Obviously, the fact that a sign exists, people are, or they wouldn’t have had to post one. While I’m pretty easy-going on most stuff, I am quite obsessive about getting shelter when a thunderstorm hits. This stems back to an incident as a child.

Every summer we would on vacation to Fenwick Island for two weeks. It was a lot less built up then with little to do but to  hit the beach, walk to the corner store or at night, lie in bed and count how long it took the lighthouse light to go around (to the count of 17 if anyone cares). Despite being on vacation, we would go to church. Yep church. While on vacation. You can say a lot about Catholics, and one thing is true – we are good about going to Mass, no matter where we are. The closet Catholic Church was near Rehoboth so my parents would sweeten the deal with the promise of pizza at Grotto’s or a walk on the boardwalk.

One week we went and at the end of Mass, the priest asked everyone to keep a family in their prayers. Two sisters were walking on the beach during a thunderstorm and one was hit, split in half and killed. Split in half. If you don’t think something like that sticks in your head, you are wrong. I remember the moment of hearing that so clearly and my sister and I have shared the story many times with our kids when we’ve been at the beach. We hear thunder and poof! – back to the beach house. You can imagine the eye rolls when we start in telling the story again.

You don’t realize these reminders are that important until you have to put them in action. Each year while we are at the beach, we review riptide safety. In twenty years we never used it, but last year, when a number of us got caught in one, it came in handy. So parents, keep nagging. It pays off.

This week my friend Mary, a teacher, who is currently undergoing chemo, wrote about how sweet the kids in her class have been. One little guy is the hand sanitizer police – making sure everyone is fully covered with hand sanitizer, while another is erasing problems he’s already completed just so he can spend time with her as she “helps” him with the problems. I took these stories as signs that there is still hope for the human race because lately, I’ve been doubting it. We spend time and energy worrying about what individuals are sporting down under, so to speak, and what bathrooms they should use. We are worried about how everyone else is living their lives, instead of focusing on making our own meaningful. So, in the midst of all this craziness, I take comfort in these small signs of hope. And just like my thunderstorm sign, I didn’t have to travel far to get the message.

Today begins a new season for us, although here in the DC area, Mother Nature must have forgotten given the snow flakes we had today.  Friday marked a new season for my aunt, cousins and extended family as my Uncle Jack passed away.  Although well into his 80’s, you realize that no matter how long someone lives, it is never long enough for those who love them.

I was talking to my Aunt Grace when she got home from the funeral home yesterday after making the arrangements. She was worried that the clothes wouldn’t look good as my Uncle Jack has lost weight since they were purchased but the funeral director assured her they would be fine.

We laughed about worrying about this but I know the feeling. Before my Dad died, he had decided he wanted to be buried in this blue jacket of his. He was quite set on this. The jacket was probably ok when he first thought about this but as the years went on, the jacket was way out of style. Nevertheless, every time he asked if I still had his jacket, I replied I did. I thought that was true. But when the day came to get it to take it to the funeral home, I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t in any closet much less the one I was sure I put it in.

At the time, this was almost more of a blow than his death. Seems stupid but I felt I had disappointed him and in a time of grief, you get focused on some stupid stuff. I went off to the funeral home with a plan to go buy a jacket later and bring it over. Turns out, the funeral home sells clothes. Yep, have no fear, it is one stop shopping and much to my delight, there was a nice blue jacket. I just hope my Dad never took too good a look at it or he might have realized that his blue jacket, the one with the red stitching, a gem in the 70’s, had been replaced.

Similarly, my grandmother picked out an outfit for her burial. Correction, she picked out two outfits – one if her neck “still looked good” and one if it didn’t and needed to be covered. Not only had she picked out her clothing but she had picked out everything else. We just had to deliver her to the funeral home. It seems odd to plan everything yourself but not having to make so many decisions at that time of sadness it a relief. In the end, we went with the neck-covering outfit, just in case there was a disagreement of what constituted a good looking neck on a 90+ year old. Didn’t want to embarrass her in the afterlife.

As we say goodbye to Uncle Jack, the days ahead will be marked with sadness and I’m sure, many laughs. Our family loves to tease, that’s how we show our love and affection. So even after death, you might still get your share. My cousin Sue and I had a few laughs this morning as we chatted about the arrangements. A new season ahead for us all, but one filled with thankfulness, joy, many loving memories and more than a few laughs.

Today I was conducting an onboarding for a new employee. Granted the exciting work the finance department isn’t a thriller but man, did she look like she’d rather be anywhere else. No poker face. In the middle of a riveting discussion on submitting expenses reports, she lights up. A huge smile on her face, a dance in her eyes.

With great excitement she explains that she finally has figured out what celebrity I remind her of from her favorite show. I’m a bit nervous wondering if Rosanne Barr is back on TV or something. She grabs her phone and frantically finds a picture of this person.

When she pulls the picture up, I try to keep a poker face. Cripes, this is what she thinks I look like??? Sadly I can see the resemblance. Especially today when I’m feeling kind of good about my purposefully messy hair look. Not only do I look like this person, but we act alike she explains “You know, a little crazy.” Crazy? I hadn’t even started on being crazy with her. After all, it was our first meeting.

Once she leaves, I pull up the picture myself and send it to two friends saying they might get a good laugh out of this, while I have a good cry. One writes back that she knows the character who plays a sociopath on the show. A sociopath. Wow. The other is kind enough to say at best, we could be distance cousins. The sociopath is stalking Justin Theroux. As far as I know, I’m not stalking anyone. See, there is a difference. If you are wondering, here’s the photo:

In other celebrity news, Kathryn has informed me there is a whole group of people that believe Stevie Wonder is faking blindness. This is based on a photo of him taking a photo where it appears he can see the subject.  I wasn’t sure what to say except that I doubt he’s sighted given some of the outfits he wears – a sighted person would not wear that. Ah, that’s part of the plan too otherwise people would know he wasn’t blind.

Given the choice, I’d rather be considered a blind faker than a sociopath.