Kaput.

Baking, cooking, pedicure - all done before noon.  And shortly we shall move on to a big old fashioned backyard party. My friend Liz - she who received her Master's Degree in Nursing just last weekend - is having everyone she's ever known to her house for a cookout.

Well, perhaps not everyone - I think there are 4 people who can't come. :-)

It should be fun - their parties always are.  Relaxed, fun-loving people hanging out - talking, drinking, eating.  By the time the sun is down the group will be significantly diminished - at which point the firepit will be lit, more drinks, food and conversation will be consumed and we adults will continue to unwind.

All the while celebrating Liz and her amazing accomplishment - fulfilling her life's dream to become a Nurse Practitioner.  And she will be beyond brilliant at it - hell she's been doing it for years and now she has the degree to back-up her experience and abilities.

He's your oldest and your best friend
If you need him, he'll be there again
He's always willing to be second-best
A perfect lodger, a perfect guest

And next year at this time we'll be doing the same for her husband, Jim.  He will have completed his R.N. degree after making a significant - almost impossible to relate to - career change.  Jim lost his job as a programmer and realized that he'd never get a job as a programmer again - all of them have been outsourced to India and Brazil.

So - he got his Associate's Degree in General Studies and promptly enrolled in nursing school. He wants to work with Psych patients and he's perfectly suited for the work.  He has a gentle, tender touch and he has the unique ability to understand a person's deepest fears and the pathology that drives them.

Momentous times in the lives of 2 people who are dearer to us than could be thought possible - and we are privileged to be with them every step of the way.

They also found him guilty of the manslaughter of a woman who died in his care - Karnamaya Mongara had far more Demerol in her system than she should have ever needed and was in such deplorable conditions in Gosnell's clinic that the EMTs who were finally called for assistance couldn't get thru the corridors to what passed for an exam room.

I know he was charged with 227 counts of violating the State of PA's laws regarding late-term abortions; I don't know how many of those he was found guilty of.  He also faces federal drug charges for illegally prescribing Oxycontin.

Yesterday afternoon it was revealed that he agreed to drop all appeals in exchange for life in prison.

A choice he never gave to the hundreds of babies he no doubt killed thru his specious and predatory clinic.

He used to be known as Dr. Kermit Gosnell.  Now he'll be known by his prisoner number to the authorities; to the inmates he'll be known has a baby killer.

I have only 6 words for Kermit Gosnell:

Welcome to the General Prison Population.

Items 1 and 2 happened in Obama's first term and either one of them should have been enough to ensure that he didn't get re-elected.

But the sheeple rely too heavily on the MSM for their information which automatically makes them low-info voters. They take the pablum they are fed and say "please sir may I have another". And the MSM has been carrying Obama's water from before day one so they have been in the tank keeping P.BO afloat through 2 of the worst presidential scandals in our history.

Then number 3 happens and the MSM doesn't even blink.

Additional background and texture about number 2 start coming to light and the MSM's ears perk up a bit.  Inconvenient questions are asked, memos and e-mails are leaked.  Lies are uncovered.

Then number 4 is announced and the MSM starts to sit up straight, taking notice and not giving a free pass.  Then number 5 comes to the surface and...

...whoa nelly.  This administration ate one of their own - the media darlings at the Associated Press. 

Like the old movie trailer used to say - now it's personal.

When you have The Boston Herald writing a hit piece about you and Jon Stewart eviscerates you on national television, you know you've lost the plot.

So you go into denial and damage control. Except that the damage keeps on coming with the revelations about number 6.

Numbers 3 thru 6 have all seen the light of day in the last week.  4 monumental scandals in just one week.

I wonder how many scandals will it take for We The People to say we've had enough of this bullshit.  The first one should have been enough; the second one should have sealed Obama's fate to never see political office again.

I remember vividly how things felt during the Watergate years.  The country was sad and disappointed in our president.  And he did the right thing for the country - difficult and right - by resigning.  I watched the live broadcast of his resignation and I felt sad and a little bit scared. I was 11 years old and lived in a household that talked current events and politics every night at dinner.  So I knew what was going on and I fully understood the implications of Nixon's resignation.

Today...I feel anger and I'm seeing expressions of anger from others as well.  Not the sadness of Nixon's betrayal...the anger at a government grown so completely corrupt that the scandals are coming from all sides.  Anger that this time innocent American lives were lost because our government let them die.

Sacrificed by the administration that, for many, was supposed to be a sign of brighter times ahead. 

Hope and change, donchaknow.

It may be time for a revolution. It is certainly time to keep the pressure on your own congress critters.  E-mail them daily, never let up, bully them if you have to.

And start keeping track of how they respond; how their votes go on key issues including their positions on these scandals.  Because they need to understand if they don't stop voting their own will and start voting the will of We The People...

...We The People will use our own votes to give them a new occupation - trolling the unemployment lines.

There is only one Reality. Any distinction between natural and supernatural, sacred and profane, is a bogus one.

They have all been very uplifting and thought-provoking but the one received over the weekend in particular really hit me - hard:

Let us look at the phenomenon that some have called “falling upward.” The very activity we discern in the planets and evolution seems to be that through loss, crisis, stress, limitation—use whatever word you want—we move into deeper states of consciousness and freedom. I think even physicists today would say that actual loss is not real. Nothing totally dies. There is only transformation.

The common metaphor is that the liquid world is moving to solid, then to vapor, and eventually back again. Just wait a while. It looks like a death, a loss in each case, but in fact it is a becoming. Now we recognize that spiritual teachers were saying this all along. In Christianity it was called “the Paschal Mystery”—a phrase used by Saint Augustine to teach the paradox that dying must precede resurrection. Jesus, for Christians, became the Icon and living image of that mystery. Christians believe that his crucified body in fact transmuted, transformed into the risen Christ, and he is a stand-in, a corporate personality for all of creation. He holds the two sides of life together in one hopeful place. [all emphasis mine]

I particularly love that last line and can easily visualize it's meaning; Christ standing with his arms continuing to be outstretched as in his crucifixion, but this time with hands joining every hand of every person who has reached out to him for comfort, for solace and for peace.

The ultimate healer and connector.  I am still struck quite forcibly by the image that came to me as I read that line.

We bring our burdens to Christ, to God - and he takes them from us.  He shows us the way to heal our broken hearts, our over-burdened minds, our troubled souls.  He gives us a path to follow that is flooded with light.

Or as the wonderful MercyMe tells us in their fantastic song Hurt and the Healer:

I'm alive
Even though a part of me has died
You take my heart and breathe it back to life
I fall into Your arms open wide
When the hurt and the healer collide

Breathe
Sometimes I feel it's all that I can do
Pain so deep that I can hardly move
Just keep my eyes completely fixed on You
Lord take hold and pull me through

It's the moment when humanity
Is overcome by majesty
When grace is ushered in for good
And all our scars are understood
When mercy takes it's rightful place
And all these questions fade away
When out of the weakness we must bow
And hear You say "It's over now"

I have alluded to, in the past month or so, some additional family drama in my life. That drama continues and it's been - unpleasant (to put it mildly).  Each time I am troubled by the events and the ongoing aftermath, even when I hurt so deeply that I can't breathe - I turn to God and eventually feel better.  To the point where I just - move beyond the pain as it comes.  I take a deep breath, acknowledge the pain and ask God to reach out to me to ease it.

He does, every time.  I get this feeling of peace descending upon me - and the healer provides once again.  Proving Rohr's statements about about everything being transformation.

Beautiful.

I have to pace it all of course and that's OK too.  It's forcing me to slow down a bit and while I would have preferred not to have gotten seriously ill - I did need to slow down.

Life moves so fast - it's already May and in one week I will be 8 months post-op from my hip replacement.  And even that has started to feel like a part of me rather than something to be monitored seperate from everything else.  I just go about my day, moving as I need to.  I can't squat down to the floor fully - yet.  But that's coming soon and it will be one of the last things to come back online.

For today - it's a little rest mixed with a little housework.  The house really needs to be emptied, cleaned then refilled.  It hasn't gotten much attention in the last several months beyond the surface needs.  So today it's all about cleaning the windows. If I can just get the back part of the house done - that will be 5 windows plus a sliding glass door - I will feel so much better about how things look.

We have discovered that a catbird is building a nest on the front of our house, on top of a grapevine wreath.  Of course there is plenty of flora around for them to utilize but - no - they have to pick the front of the house and a beautiful wreath that was made for me by a friend.  The nest is nearly fully built and we don't have the heart to take it down.  And bonus - it's right outside the windows to our media room which means we will be hearing this up-close-and-personal for the next several weeks:

Should be fun.  In truth, we would never take down the nest. We love our wildlife sanctuary that masquerades as your average rural yard.

It is a cloudy stormy-ish day here today.  And I am glad for it - because clouds mean the pollen counts are way down and it means I can have the windows open.  So the house is getting a lovely airing out and I am feeling just fine.  Smelling the fresh, slightly ionized air from the coming storm is just heaven. And while I'll have to close up once the threatening thunderstorm actually arrives - I'll open back up again once the storm passes.

Which, upon reflection, maybe I won't clean the windows after all.  They'll just get dirty on the outside again anyway.

Tomorrow will be a busy day so I do need to rest-up.  My dearest friend - Liz - is graduating tomorrow with her Master's Degree in Nursing. This is a life-long dream for her that she has spent the last 3 years working hard to achieve.  Even though it's Mother's Day and we won't see The Oracle's mom - she understands. We simply can't miss Liz's graduation. We have been by her side every step of the way on this journey and to miss the culmination of her dream would be unacceptable.  So we shall be up early tomorrow to get there in plenty of time to find parking and a seat under the massive tent that went up last week on the campus grounds - with 3,000 seats under the tent you can imagine how large it must be!  And I will see my friend - who is more than that, more than a sister even - take a walk that has been a lifetime in the making for her and for those of us who love her.  It will be an amazing moment and then we shall adjourn to a lovely restaurant nearby for brunch and laughter with Liz's family.  It will be a blessed day for sure.

Ah - the rain is starting, the breeze is cool on my neck and the air smells so sweet.  Which means I should probably start closing up the house soon; while it all feels great when I look out the window - the skies are getting darker by the second.

So I leave you with some laughs.