First shovel-able snowfall of the season fell early this morning. I shoveled for a while, then fired up the snowblower. I love shoveling, but I love the snowblower perhaps a tiny bit more, and not because it’s easier. In many ways, it’s not. You come back into the house covered with a powdered-sugar film of snow, reeking of two-cycle engines. Also, the damn things are loud; why can’t we muffle engines like this effectively? And yet, is there any feeling more wonderful than pushing that thing through the pristine white, the flume arcing off to the side, the bare sidewalk following?
After we bought it last year I told Alan my next purchase would be some insulated Carhartt coveralls, so I could, you know, take it around the neighborhood and make some extra money.
Quiet house this morning. Spriggy’s over at his barber, being handsomed up for the holidays. I forget how much he’s a part of daily life until he’s not here. I just went down and threw the deadbolts, something I’m too casual about other times. I rely on the pooch for protection or at least an alarm, even though he’s having the usual age-related declines. The other day Alan and I came into the house through the front door rather than the back, and Spriggy, snoozing on his bed, didn’t even wake up. It must have been a really good dream.
One thing I love about paying close attention to the news is how it always deals you a mixed hand. On the same day the Iraq Study Group releases its gloom and doom, we get some comic relief in, what else? Mary Cheney’s pregnancy. Or rather, the pregnancy isn’t comic relief so much as the reaction to it. Sniffed the gay-pride faction: “Grandfather Cheney will no doubt face a lifetime of sleepless nights as he reflects on the irreparable harm he and his administration have done to the millions of American gay and lesbian parents and their children.” Yeah, right. Everyone knows Cheney doesn’t sleep at night in any case. He sleeps during the day, in his coffin.
The Concerned Women for America was no less indignant: “It’s very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father,” said a representative. Sorry, but I didn’t see them tut-tutting over all those pregnant military widows standing at their dead husbands’ gravesides lately. Oh, but I guess all those ladies can find new husbands, whereas Mary would have to renounce homosexuality and go through extensive reparative therapy before that could happen. Do you believe in miracles?
Daron Aldrich said on December 7, 2006 at 12:10 pm
I had to comment on my old dog who long ago went wherever old dogs go. In her last years she was completely deaf. At one time a great watch dog. My parent’s best friend had a key to our house and she was coming over to wait for my mom to get off work. She went in the house and saw our dog laying in her doggie bed. You had to actually go up and tap the dog on the head and let her know you were home. Our friend was not aware of this and she thought the dog had died. My mom pulls up and her friend is standing in the driveway sobbing that the dog had died and she didn’t know what to do. Needless to say my mom went in and tapped the dog on the head and she jumped right up to go outside and do her business.
d
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alex said on December 7, 2006 at 12:35 pm
So whose au jus did Mary baste with?
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mary said on December 7, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I had a cat who went deaf in her final years. It enhanced her feline detachment attitude.
Max, my great dane boxer mix is having some weird issues lately. He’s afraid of the dining room. To get from the kitchen to the living room, he has to go through the dining room, and for the past week he’s been standing in the kitchen, barking and whining, refusing to go through the dining room. If you force him, he does it in a crouch, head down, fearful. Nothing has changed in there, and he’s a young dog. Very strange. A little frightening.
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James said on December 7, 2006 at 12:39 pm
I’m guessing Andrew Sullivan.
… maybe Jeff Gannon?
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mary said on December 7, 2006 at 1:38 pm
I think it was the old guy her father shot in the face.
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brian stouder said on December 7, 2006 at 3:37 pm
I think it was the old guy her father shot in the face.
In which case, his aim is better than Dick’s!
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nancy said on December 7, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Wonkette had a poll on this lately. My favorite was: Bush family fixer James Baker.
Seriously, though, don’t lesbians who do this have this concept of one’s “sperm equivalent?” The idea that if the non-carrying partner is tall and blonde, then you should select a tall blonde sperm donor.
So based on photographs, I’m pinning Mary’s oven bun on…Sam Waterston.
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brian stouder said on December 7, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Sam Waterston is my all-time favorite B-list celebrity! He does a great Lincoln, and in fact he delivered Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech (a 90 minute oration!) to a packed house at Cooper Union, in connection with Harold Holzer’s book on that subject.
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alex said on December 7, 2006 at 4:20 pm
And I thought my “dream oven” would be a Jenn-Air.
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Dwight the Troubled Teen said on December 7, 2006 at 5:19 pm
“Sorry, but I didn’t see them tut-tutting over all those pregnant military widows standing at their dead husbands’ gravesides lately.”
Nancy Derringer, please.
It’s very simple.
1. Stop
2. Think
3. Write
Conservatives are so fixated with war that they don’t grieve the loss of soldiers or worry about the impact that it has on a generation of children without fathers?
You don’t really believe that. For such a smart woman, you can really unload the occasional WTF whopper.
Just out of curiosity, how many military funerals have you attended in the past four years? Rough estimate? I’ve had the misfortune of attending two. I heard quite a bit of “tut-tutting” after the one where two teenage daughters were bereft, even from some very staunch hawks and newly reformed hawks.
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mary said on December 7, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Hey, my kids have a father and he just announced he’s moving in with his girlfriend, about two hours drive away. He lives in the same neighborhood I live in now so I can make him spend time with the kids, but no more of that as of next week. He’s not unique among dads, from what I hear.
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nancy said on December 7, 2006 at 5:29 pm
I’ll stop saying stuff like that when conservatives stop saying that it’s simply impossible to raise a healthy child without two parents in the house, of two genders, in the approved work and domestic roles. The fact is, throughout human history children have been successfully raised in all sorts of non-ideal and untraditional family arrangements — absent mothers, absent fathers, serial mothers/fathers, in cities, in the country, in the ghetto, everywhere. What it takes is parents who are dedicated and on the job. And when parenthood has to be pursued with turkey basters and adoption agencies and all the rest of it, I’d say we have “dedication” pretty well covered. Why can’t these finger-shaking scolds get as exercised about, oh, divorce, at least as much as they do about gay parents? Because half their friends are divorced, that’s why, and those kids seem to be doing fine. Well, I’ve known many gay parents in my day, and all of their kids are fine, too, or are fine/not fine in the same rough proportions as other children.
So until you’re going to take kids away from widows and widowers, on the grounds that children simply cannot be healthy in a one-parent or one-gender household, they need to shut their yaps about it.
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basset said on December 7, 2006 at 5:45 pm
“Sperm equivalent?” Who THINKS of this stuff?
about the dog who won’t cross the dining room… maybe it’s a ghost, or something else paranormal. Or its ectoplasm equivalent, I dunno…
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brian stouder said on December 7, 2006 at 6:20 pm
about the dog who won’t cross the dining room
I’m betting that there is a high-pitched noise of some sort centered there, that the dog is hearing…
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Kim said on December 8, 2006 at 11:29 am
I’m with you, Nance. Yet as much as I totally don’t consider parenthood born of desire and dedication any of my biz, I have to admit to snickering when the story of Mary’s immaculately conceived baby broke during Christmas. I blame my having fun at another’s expense on being the eldest (and heterosexual) child of one mother, one father, who stayed together until dad died.
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mary said on December 8, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Brian
Good guess, but the other two dogs aren’t hearing it. Only Max.
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Dwight the Troubled Teen said on December 21, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Nancy, you’re not a moron.
You’re a journalist. At least you used to be.
That’s my beef, Nancy. You are a journalist. That’s supposed to mean something. You aren’t just another knee-jerk blogger spewing hate because it’s easier than seeking the truth in foreign values. You are a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be gatekeepers of fairness and reason, even when they disagree on a personal level.
You say you’ll stop writing illogical, crazy stuff when people of opposing ideologies stop writing illogical, crazy stuff?
You?
You, Brutus? You are a frickin’ Knight-Wallace fellow, for goodness sakes.
If Mike Wallace was standing next to you, would you tell him that you were entitled to write anything that came into your head because some fundamentalist wacko somewhere was writing their own propaganda?
And this, the most unkind cut of all. You are totally breaking my heart.
Mike’s heart is so far to the left that he pisses pink, but he still manages to write with objectivity in spite of his personal bias. I feel that you dishonor him when you eschew journalistic fundamentals.
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