My Marine

This is my oldest boy, my 21-year-old son in his dress uniform. This was last year after he came back from The Sandbox the first time. He put on his uniform and came to my office so I (and all my co-workers who know him from when he was a little kid who made robot costumes from copier boxes when he visited the office) could see him in all his glory. This is the picture that I have right underneath my computer monitor that I gaze at every spare moment I have and pray over when I should be thinking about work.

It's funny because I am not a religious person as far as going to church, or any of the other outwardly religious ways. But I have my spiritual side and this side is praying on a daily basis, and I hope it helps him. Also, I guess that my brain was programmed by the Catholic upbringing, including the thousands of masses and rosaries and whatnot, and now, try as I might, I cannot NOT pray when I am seriously worried about something. My logical side says "Why pray? We are all God's children, and if God is listening to us he would answer all our prayers, not just pick and choose from whoever is getting through to him." And my motherly side says "I don't know what else to do, so I'm praying."

He is my son and of course, I adore him. He is at the same time, the strongest, most stubborn, most persistent person and yet he is the sweetest, most squishy-hearted, give-you-the-shirt-off-my back guy in the world. When he spent time with us before this deployment, he would tell us stories of things that had happened over there and this strong, automatic-weapon-carrying Marine cried over buddies that had been killed or hurt or maimed. He, and we, will never be the same.

God, please bring him back.

Dedicated to Tommy

This is dedicated to those of you who wear "Mandals." If you want to read this funny yet on-the-money article written by The Bitch, you can click here. The Miami New Times is a free publication and they specialize in local, bs-free journalism.

I love this cartoon and the best part is the little blue fly at the bottom, puking his guts out! Enjoy!

Things that make me go HAHAHAHAHA!

I am the type of person that you can see walking down the street or in the next lane at a traffic light or at a table near yours at McDonald's, and I will SEEM completely normal but all of a sudden, without any warning, I will burst into uncontrollable laughter. Sometimes to the point where I am wiping away the tears after a great laugh. "Why?" you may ask, and I will answer: I don't know, except that if I think about something funny that happened, it will strike me as funny as it did the first time. I'm weird like that.

Some of those memories that make me laugh to the point of making my ribs hurt will be listed. And I sincerely hope that they will have the same effect on you:

* Party Girl: When my sister and I were 18 and 17, way back in the early 70's our family was invited to a barbecue (asado) on an island on the Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was a highbrow barbecue since members of the Argentine government as well as the CEO's and COO's of several construction and dredging companies were attending. My sister and I, blooming fashionistas, donned our elephant pants which were the rage that year, our platform shoes, and our midi-length coats, ironed our hair, donned our big hippie purses, and we achieved what was then the "Peke of Perfection." In order to get to the island where the barbecue was held, a huge yacht was chartered, complete with stewards serving drinks and hors d'ouvres (sp?). High class. Top drawer. Until we got to the island. The guests had to cross from the yacht to another huge boat anchored at the island and from that huge boat to the dock. I made it ok, following the other invitees, my sister following behind me. As I stepped onto the dock, one of the sailors grabbed my hand to help me cross. I put one platformed shoe on the dock and as I did, I felt it slide under me. In desperation I gripped the sailor's hand and flipped him. He actually hit the water a few seconds before I did. We both fell in the river. When I fell, he was already in the water and I clawed him in utter despair as I sank to the muddy bottom and pushed myself back to the surface with my platform shoes. He had scratch marks all over. Two or three sailors were needed to drag me from the water because due to the heavy jeans and my long coat plus my purse, all waterlogged, I weighed like three tons. Water poured from my pockets, my purse, my hair as they dragged me out of the water. My parents' faces were a study in deep embarrassment and consternation. I was just freezing my butt off. I still believed they tried to act like I didn't belong to them but they always said it was my imagination.

* Orange you glad? The summer I was 16, I was sitting on our front porch in Sioux City, Iowa, peeling an orange with a knife. I looked up and saw what I thought was my boyfriend's car driving up. I got up and started running to the car with a huge smile on my face, waving at the car. When I got a little closer, I saw that it was not my boyfriend's car and there was a scary-looking old guy driving it while he stared at me, so I turned around and started running back to the house. But I tripped on something, probably the crabgrass, and I fell on my hands and knees, the orange in one hand and the knife in the other. I was lucky I had not poked my eye out. I turned around and saw the old guy in the car driving away laughing as I pulled myself up.

* A little Poop - My parents-in-law were having a long overdue get-together and had invited even the family members they hadn't talked to in forever. All the guests were there, dressed in their pale pinks and blues (this is Fort Lauderdale) and everyone was having a wonderful time. I was in the living room talking to one of my favorite uncles-in-law and I looked out the sliding glass door to the pool area where my then husband was taking care of our then only son, age two and a half. I think it's an understatement to say that I was mortified when I watched my son taking down his diaper and pooping right on the pool deck and in full view of everyone. Yeah, his dad was mortified too, as was grandma and grandad.

* Roach clip - This one is also from way back when I only had one son. My little boy was then also about two and a half. On the weekends, he loved to help me clean the back porch. I would turn the hose on and he would play with the water as I would move the plants around and clean the tile floor and the patio furniture. One day as we were both enjoying the outside and playing with the cool water, I turned around from my cleaning just to check on him and he was standing about five feet away from me with a plastic truck in his hands, smiling at me. But something was very wrong. I noticed that he had a HUGE cockroach on his head. The kind they call Palmetto bugs. It was so big it looked like a little black derby hat on his head. I did the only thing I could do in my state of horrified panic while my whole body burst out with goose bumps and the hair on the back of my head ruffled up... I smacked his head. I got the roach off him and it scampered off but my baby's face pruned up and he burst out crying. I really felt so badly for him, but later we both would laugh at this story.

I have many, many more, but I will have to come back to this subject some other time. This is becoming way too long and unwieldy. If you get all the way to the end of this post, let me know.

A Lifetime of Waiting

First off, let me explain something about the way I look at politics. I am NOT by any means a Republican (Too many countries invaded) but neither am I a Democrat (Too many blow jobs in the White House). I am not a Libertarian (Wayy too much freedom and chaos) nor an Independent (They will never win an election). Like Chris Rock, I feel that I need to examine issues individually and not blindly and automatically adhere to whatever my party or my church or my ethnic group is backing. I am intrinsically afraid and wary of bunches of people deciding things for me.

So basically I don't feel I belong to any political group or follow any particular thought. What I do is think about each thing that happens (or that doesn't and should) and I make up my mind whether I'm for it or against it, and vote accordingly or email my congressman, etc.

All that preamble just to say the following: I know that a lot of people around the world revere Fidel Castro. I never understood this. Yes, he did stand up to the US proving he's either got big balls or he's insane, possibly both things. Yes, he did set up a system where there is social medicine , but there are no medicines and the hospitals have no equipment nor supplies unless you are a tourist and are coming to get breast implants. The Castro regime did build schools even in the most remote and rural areas in Cuba, but folks, if you're not a member of the Communist Party your kid does not go to the university, he cuts cane. He did a few good things, but to me that is like saying that Hitler got all the European Jews together and gave them jobs.

These are not meant to be political ramblings by a person that cannot even follow Vicus's posts nor the comments on them. This is just how I feel about the guy. First, he lied about not being Communist, then he took my country and made it into his own little fiefdom. So many people killed, silenced, tortured, imprisoned, intimidated, bullied, starved, worked to death, forced to flee into shark-infested waters. All of this so he could rule uncontested and unopposed.

In November 1960, my family and I left La Habana and took a 1/2 hour flight to Miami. Like any refugees, we got here with no money, no jobs. Just the 17 pieces of luggage that my mother packed. We had blankets, photo albums, clothing for my sister and me for the next year or two, some of my dad's books, and a Spanish/English dictionary that family and friends borrowed endlessly. I was six and my sister was five. My whole family, even while embracing life in the US and thanking our lucky stars that we were able to make it here, always dreamed and talked about when we would return to Cuba. What we would do, what a wonderful thing it would be to see the rest of our family, live in a free Cuba again. We never thought that we would be here 46 YEARS waiting for the insanity to end.

So when I heard the news that he was sick and that he was handing over power to his brother, my first thoughts were about the members of my family that died waiting for Castro to fall. My grandmother, who died without seeing her brothers and sisters in Cuba. My father, who at 36 years of age left his wife and two daughters in a strange country to fight in the Bay of Pigs invasion, and who later came back to us and would sit at home crying, his nerves shot by what he had experienced and the realization that his country was lost.

Needlesss to say, I took to the streets on Monday night, bringing my pots and pans to celebrate at La Carreta on 87th Avenue and Bird Road along with hundreds of other Cuban people. I hope he dies and I hope it's painful.