Chris and Alyona (Aly, Yona, Elena)

It's been so much fun having them in Austin, so glad they moved here. They came over Sunday evening for chat and yahtzee. Also snacky snacks.

We've decided that we will do Sunday dinner together, switching off houses. Chris says when he does dinner it will be at 8pm and when I do dinner it will be at 2pm. I told him if he waits until 8 I will start eating his fingers. And my dinner will really be 5 or 6. And his dinner will probably be 6 or 6:30, maybe as late as 7.

These kids and their late hours! They don't know about getting home before dark or never go out in a raging blizzard, re my dad. My siblings and I laughed at the time (as is the wont with young whippersnappers), now it just sounds like good advice.

Wind in Austin and Lake Travis

Austin in the Spring can get some fairly windy days. Two nights ago we had the wind that howled and the rain that poured. I'm actually not a fan of wind, but when I'm at home, curled up with a book and it's dark outside and I'm safe and snuggly and cozy inside, I like to listen to wind.

We got 2 inches of rain, which was great. Rick checked Lake Travis yesterday morning - we are 3 feet from full, yay, yippee, yahooooo!! It is still almost unbelievable for Rick and me to look at the lake and see water where we used to just see dry land. We asked someone once how long it would take to fill the lake back up and they said not long, it just needs to rain a lot above the lake so the rain flows down. Last Spring we got a lot of rain, and voila! The lake filled. This drought lasted 5 years and dropped the lake 60 or so feet, but the drought wasn't the only factor for lack of water in the lake. The powers that be had also been letting out too much water, according to law, I guess. The law was changed and so sources we have read didn't think we could have another problem with lake levels.

Lake Austin is a constant level lake; because of the money on the lake (meaning houses and recreational usage), they will never let it drop below certain levels.

But both lakes are actually damned areas on the Colorado River. All of Texas has only one natural lake, the rest are man-made. Lake Travis is 63.75 miles long and its maximum width is 4.5 miles. It's a big lake. It's highest level was in 1951 and its lowest was in 1991. It was created in 1937-1941 by building Mansfield Dam. I couldn't discover exactly why the lake was created, whether for recreation or electricity, but it does have 3 turbines for a total electrical generating capacity of 93,000 kw. Don't know if that's a little or a lot, but it is the extent of my interest and probably more than anyone reading this cares about.



                     

We have the jet ski (personal watercraft!) and kayaks and small sailboat, so with Rick's hip fixed, ready to water. Bring on summer.

Matt Walsh post

My commentary before you read: I don't agree with everything he says. Some things I disagree with. But he's right in the importance of who the next Supreme Court justice is. And Republicans don't always give us perfect justices. In fact, the last one I was totally on board with was Justice Clarence Thomas. He does highlight perfectly just who Democrats mostly admire, and who they mostly hate. And I am on the far side of most of their loves and hates. Obviously not all Democrats fit his description; there are many I like and admire, but enough believe as he writes about them to taint their party.

The Walsh post:

I’m not often “shocked” by the deaths of famous people, particularly if they’re 79-years-old, but when I read that Justice Antonin Scalia died, I actually let out an audible gasp.  He was one of our nation’s last true constitutionalists, a just man, a godly man, a great man, and his passing will leave a great hole in the conservative movement, the nation itself and especially the Supreme Court court. And that hole will be made even bigger if Obama is allowed to appoint the person who fills it.

Some notes on the jumbled mess left in the wake of this national tragedy:

Aside from being a good title for a death metal album, that about summarizes the way many liberals reacted to Scalia’s passing. Yes, yes, it’s the Internet and these are leftists, what else would you expect? Not much else, to be sure, but we shouldn’t reach a point where the predictability of deplorable behavior suddenly becomes its own excuse.

Within minutes of the man’s death — and this, by the way, is a man with a wife, nine kids and dozens of grandkids — progressives erupted with applause and jubilation all over social media. Plenty of outlets have compiled some of the celebratory remarks, but that probably isn’t necessary. If you didn’t see it, you can imagine. And keep in mind, these weren’t just a few scattered bad apples, but thousands and thousands of human beings gloating over the still warm corpse of a man so decent and admirable that some of his closest friends belonged to the ideological group now exalting in his demise. And these weren’t merely anonymous trolls on Twitter, but famous folks and folks in media and seemingly regular folks who used their real names and real pictures to post triumphant and sarcastic obituaries. Then, not satisfied with ghoulishly dancing on a freshly dug grave, thousands more began offering their fervent prayers that Clarence Thomas die next.

It was an insane, subhuman display. Evil, and proudly so. Another moment — one of many, often provided by leftists — that made me utterly ashamed of what this country has become.

I took about 50 screenshots of Tweets and messages sent directly to me and thought about posting them, but I’ve decided against it. Many of the comments cannot be published — like the fantasies about defecating on Scalia’s grave and defiling his corpse in various explicit ways — and the rest are from other callous hobgoblins too consumed by their own hatred and idiocy to feel shame anyway. Suffice it to say, American liberalism defied all odds Saturday night and somehow managed to reach an even lower low than the last low it reached. Liberalism is a religion of contempt and envy; each day it sinks deeper into moral oblivion, and upon Scalia’s death it plunged to new and terrifying depths.

What made the elation of liberals so sickening and grotesque wasn’t just the fact that they were delighting over a man’s death, but why. This a crucial detail. Those looking to mitigate the guilt of liberals by drawing irrelevant comparisons have pointed out that conservatives have themselves allegedly reacted inappropriately in similar situations; many argued that, for instance, right-wingers celebrated Ted Kennedy’s passing. But these two scenarios are quite distinct when you consider the motivations behind them.

Ted Kennedy — if this is the equivalence we’re settling on — was a drunken bully. He was deeply corrupt, scandal-plagued, and so lacking in courage and character that he left a woman to drown to death after driving her over a bridge. He was also a staunch opponent of the Constitution, the rule of law, and anything resembling the principles that lay at the foundation of this country. He was so cowardly that, for political reasons, he became a radical advocate of abortion despite knowing it to be a terrible evil. He left death, corruption and deceit in his wake, and his legacy will be forever marked by crime, exploitation and his active endorsement of child murder and other atrocities.

Though these sad truths obviously do not mean we should take pleasure in his death, they do lend a certain context to any conservatives who let their anger get the better of them when he departed a few years ago. For Scalia, the context is very different. Scalia was, objectively speaking, an honorable, honest, courageous man. Moreover, he was right. I’m not going to say he was right about everything he ever said — nobody is, although Scalia likely came closer than most — but he took truthful, important, noble stands on a whole host of decisive issues. He stood for the rule of law, for the Constitution, for human life and for the family.

He was right. These were the right positions. Not right in my opinion or in his opinion, just right. Correct. True. So when liberals hate Scalia, their hatred is made all the more reprehensible and absurd because they hate him for being right and for being courageous and for being decent. It’s like the difference between hating Osama bin Laden and hating Mother Teresa (many liberals do in fact have more hatred for Mother Teresa). We shouldn’t hate anyone, but if you lapse into hating a man like bin Laden, it just shows you are a human being who struggles to mentally separate his numerous wretched deeds from his humanity. I think, in context, it’s understandable if one were to lose that internal battle on occasion.

But if you hate Mother Teresa, it means, rather than hating evil and failing to properly distinguish the evil act from the evildoer, you actually hate goodness. And you hate goodness so much that you hate anyone who does what is good. In other words, the man who hates bin Laden at least hates him because he hates evil, but the man who hates Mother Teresa hates her because he loves evil. There is no moral equivalence here.

Liberals celebrating Scalia’s death aren’t just celebrating death, but evil. They aren’t just wrong in what they do and say, but in the reason why they do and say it. They hate a man because he protected the law, justice, human life, marriage and truth. They hate him for his rightness, and they’re happy he’s dead so that wrongness may win. That’s what makes this all so demented.

There are 11 months until we have a new president, praise the good Lord. That means Senate Republicans must spend 11 months rejecting Obama’s Supreme Court nominations. They’re saying now they’ll hold the line, but forgive me if I feel some skepticism. I’d love to believe they’ll hold the line, but I can’t quite get past the unfortunate detail that they’ve never held the line on anything.

If that’s going to suddenly change — and it must — they have to be prepared for a bloody, dangerous battle. Obama will likely put their heads in a vice, politically speaking, by picking a nominee who’s “mainstream” and “moderate” and has some tenuous connection to the Republican Party. It will all be a ruse, of course. There is no possible way — literally zero chance — that Obama nominates a constitutionalist judge with a record of defending life and liberty. Whoever Obama picks will be pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-big government, anti-gun and pro-judicial activism. That means whoever he picks will be unacceptable. There is no point in saying, “Yes, but what if he makes a good pick?” He won’t. Certainly we’ll be told it’s a good pick; we’ll be told the pick is “appealing to both sides,” “non-partisan,” so on and so on, but that will be a lie. The only thing that should be appealing to our side is another Scalia, and he’s not going to put another Scalia on the bench. It won’t happen.

Yet we need another Scalia. Not want. Not hope for. Not in a perfect world. Need. If the Democrats succeed in establishing a full blown liberal court — leaving only Alito and Thomas as the reliable conservatives, with Roberts playing the part when he feels like it — the consequences will be unspeakable. Overturning Roe v. Wade will be out of the question for another generation, signing the death warrant of millions of yet-to-be-conceived children. States that have succeeded in passing laws and regulations curtailing the procedure will eventually be overruled by judicial fiat. Meanwhile, of course, states will never be freed from the requirement that they recognize the court’s perverse and unconstitutional redefinition of marriage. Worse, when the government moves to coerce churches into performing gay “marriages,” the Supreme Court will be there to officially codify the oppression into law, finally eradicating religious liberty in America once and for all.

Go down the line through every amendment, look at every liberty detested by leftists (which is most of them) — free speech, gun rights, etc. — and wave goodbye should the court fall entirely into the hands of anti-Constitutional progressive activists. If the high court runs irreversibly left, you might as well take the Constitution out of the National Archives Building in D.C. and throw it into a raging dumpster fire. It’s gone anyway. Finished. Maybe it’s been finished for quite some time, but this will remove whatever vestiges of constitutionalism still remained covertly embedded into our system. It will be a day more disastrous than any you’ve ever seen; a joyful occasion for progressives, abortionists, homosexual activists, the national media, gun control lobbyists and bureaucrats, but a catastrophe for patriotic Americans.

So Republicans must fight this one with all they have. Whatever it costs. Whatever political capital they forfeit. Whatever they put on the line, including their careers. It doesn’t matter. This right here is a hill to die on. No, it won’t be easy. Democrats were already coming out of the woodwork moments after Scalia died to preemptively slander any Republican who might try to protect America from the uncontrollable tyranny of a hard-left Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton said Saturday night — with a straight face, somehow — Republicans would be “dishonoring the Constitution” if they try to prevent it from being continuously molested from now into eternity. There’s going to be a lot of that. There’s going to be a full year of that. But it doesn’t matter. They can say what they want, cry all the tears they want, issue as many indignant statements as they want, but when it comes down to it, Republicans still have the power. And for once in their lives, they’d better use it.

Liberals would do the exact same thing if the shoe were on the other foot. Can you imagine them approving a pro-life constitutionalist less than a year before a presidential election, just because they care so much about “honoring the Constitution”? Please. Does anyone actually believe that? Do liberals actually expect us to believe they believe what they’re saying right now? All of a sudden they think immediately approving Supreme Court nominations is some kind of solemn duty of the Senate? Where were these “dishonoring the Constitution” lectures back when Democrats were dragging Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas into the town square and assassinating their character in front of the jeering hordes? Democrats don’t just block Republican nominations, they devour them. They rip them to shreds. They pulverize them into dust.

And these are the people who would confirm a Republican nomination during an election year? Stop it. God, himself, could yell down from the heavens commanding Democrats to approve a conservative Supreme Court pick under these circumstances and still they would refuse. In fact, they’d launch a campaign of character assassination against the Almighty and then refuse.

Everyone knows this to be true. Everyone. Everyone on the other side of this knows they would do exactly what the Republicans are saying they’ll do. The only difference is Democrats would actually do it, whereas with Republicans I am not nearly as sure. That’s why I’m making my position on this very clear: If Republicans fail in this fight — the most important political fight they have ever faced, with the fate of the law itself hanging in the balance — it will be an unthinkable treason. I will leave the party forever and never return. If they cannot stand firm now, they are as much enemies of America as their Democratic counterparts.

Not every fight is worth fighting, but some are worth fighting to the death. This is one of those fights. And failure will never be forgiven or forgotten.

It ought to go without saying, but many things that ought to go without saying still need to be said these days: The priority now among conservatives — and this should have been the priority all along — is to nominate a conservative. That is, a conservative who can be trusted to find, nominate and fight to approve a Scalia-caliber Supreme Court justice. If you do not understand how important this is, then you simply do not understand enough about your country to justify voting in the first place. You should stay home, read a few books and maybe consider joining us at the polls in 2020.

Whatever else you care about — immigration, foreign policy, taxes, whatever — it won’t matter if we become a country where the rule of law is permanently supplanted by the whims of bureaucrats and judges, and human life and basic human liberties have been permanently and irreversibly suppressed, defiled, and redefined. Yes, that is already our condition in this country, but our job as voters is to elect someone who will fight to correct the situation. There are many theaters in the war to reclaim America, but one of the central political battlegrounds is the Supreme Court. And now we know the next president will have at least one seat to fill.

We cannot afford to screw this up. There is too much at stake.

Supreme Court

Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas are by far my favs on the Supreme Court. I was so saddened to hear that he died. And since I love conspiracy theories, perhaps murdered? I hope the Republicans remember what the Dems did in forcing thro, illegally, Obamacare. I hope they remember what the Dems did with their nuclear option, a rule change of theirs in 2013 to get approved judges they wanted. A synopsis of what happened then below:

"To overcome a GOP filibuster, Obama will need to win the support of all 46 members of the Democratic caucus and at least 14 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold to advance a nomination to final approval. In 2013, when Democrats were in the Senate majority, they forced a controversial rules change, invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” to allow the approval of ­lower-court judges by a simple majority. Those changes did not apply to Supreme Court nominations, which can be filibustered, and are therefore subject to the higher 60-vote threshold. Republicans were furious about the 2013 changes, and that residual anger could be a huge obstacle for any Obama nominee."

But read Matt Walsh's post on his blog, themattwalshblog.com, February 15, 2016 titled "If Republicans Let Obama Pick Scalia's Replacement, I will Leave the Party Forever." Perfectly written. I couldn't have done any better myself, but I do have a few things to say, so continue reading below, please.

About the nomination of a new judge to replace Justice Scalia, Ted Cruz said, “This is a 5-4 court. This next election needs to be a referendum on the Court. The people need to decide. We should not allow a lame duck to essentially capture the Supreme Court in the waning months of his presidency.”

And this is why I like Cruz and voted for him in the Texas Primary. He will not buckle, but is a gentleman, not a loud mouth like Trump.

He's also brilliant, "off the charts brilliant," as legendary liberal Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz said of his former student in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer a year ago.

Dershowitz had trouble rating another former Harvard student, Barack Obama, who despite multiple attempts couldn’t get into Dershowitz’s class.
“The computer kept him out,” Dershowitz said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Ahh, the computer. 'Nuff said.

Jaws, teeth, mouth

I decided for sure to not have the surgery done. Dentist said ok, oral surgeon said ok, the occlusion specialist let me know he thought I was making a bad decision. But now I'm going to have to wear the braces for another 9 months as he positions the teeth differently. I didn't know he would have done it different. On Monday he started moving them again, jaws really hurt and ringing began louder. I think just anything that upsets my jaws upsets my ears, inflames the whole mess.

Next Thurs I talk to the oral surgeon about pulling my 2 baby teeth to get the other teeth moved more and get ready for the implants. Yay.

Hillary

No comment needed

2 weeks post-op

We went to the doc today to have the staples taken out and just generally see how the surgery/recovery was doing. The wound site started bleeding when the nurse was pulling out the staples and so the doc said to wait one week.

Directions: Do NOT overdo. He can start using a cane instead of the walker but must continue to wear the support stocking, can take it off the non-surgery leg, keep it on the surgery leg for another 4 weeks. Walk slowly - the hip muscles and bone are still trying to mend and knit together, so it would not be good to overdo. Overall, Rick is doing great. It helps that he is *young* and in good shape.

Christopher had Monday off so Rick and I went over to his house to help, such as we do. We needed to go to Lowe's and Rick was fussing about using the scooter, but Lowe's is a big store and we had a bunch of places to walk around and gather up supplies. I told Chris to just get the scooter and bring it over to where Rick was sitting at the Outdoor Furniture. When he saw the scooter he smiled and shook his head, but did hop on. He's quite good at driving that little thing all around and loves to back up, go forward, situate the scooter precisely.

Next stop, Walmart and he didn't fuss but just hopped on. Sure makes it easier and less tiring, stressful on the hip/leg to use the scooter in the big box stores. 

Rick's hip

Rick and a Pfizer coworker who runs a site in Wisconsin developed a friendship after the big Massachusetts meeting and have kept in communication; this coworker also had hip surgery. His doc and PT won't let him use a cane until at least 3-4 weeks after surgery, and won't let him return to work for 8 weeks. Rick!! I knew he was overdoing it. I'm glad we see the doc tomorrow and he can help me set him straight about what he can and can't, should and shouldn't be doing. With Christopher and Alyona gone (my other support to keep him from overdoing) I need the doc to tell him.

He has been great about using the walker, but I just have a feeling he is overtaxing that hip and it won't heal properly.

Ggrrls in Valentine's dresses

They are just too cute. Ready for a Sunday Valentine's Day church. Can't wait until Alyona and Christopher have a cute little munchkin.

V Day or Valentine's Day or M Day

M Day makes me the saddest. It is Move Day (or rather, 2nd weekend of M Day). I don't particularly like Move Days, as I'm a person who doesn't like change. But I happened to marry a person who loves, even thrives on change. Some of my kids like change, some don't. Jason and Scott hate change. Chris loves change. Paige is in the middle and fulfills this need by continually changing her house. Decos, furniture placement, wall colors - they've all changed many, many times.

Rick is doing quite well, but then he overdoes and pays for it later. He is still using his walker, which makes me very happy. I am going to have to boot him out when his 3 week recoup time is up. He's claiming he could get used to puttering around the house. Luckily he's only going back for half days for the first week definitely, maybe two.

It's still hard for me to believe that my mom has passed. The ONLY consolation is that she had lived a beautiful, productive life. I can still wish I had been a better daughter, but then I wish I still would be a better person. The natural man is so hard to beat down.

More Obama foolishness

His directive that inspired this cartoon is so silly I can't even parody it (better than this), can't even comment on his lack of patriotism, his lack of compassion, his lack of understanding of the world, his lack of smarts, his lack of....

Rick with walker

I have not had to fight Rick about using his walker, he never walks without it. He quit taking the hydrocodone yesterday and started with Aleve. I won't say why, but it's not pretty. Let's just say that I'm pushing lots of fiber and water down him. I think he should still be taking the stronger pain pill but men are stubborn things.

As I watch him trying to recover it reminds me of mom and her 3 knee surgeries, which are actually harder to recover from than the hip. All the physical therapy involved. And her last one was when she was 80 or 81. Too bad none of them worked and she remained in constant pain. The high level of constant pain is what caused her blood pressure to rise so high, causing her initial stroke, beginning her downhill trajectory.

Kindness

Rick has been quite touched by all the concern his family, friends, and work people are showing. He has told everyone thanks, and then ordered for me some flowers and a Swarovski gift certificate. But of course I would be taking good care of him; he's my husband and I love him. And it was thoughtful of him to do that for me to say thanks. I wish all my kids could find a partner who is so kind and good to them, and that they reciprocate.

Rick's hip surgery

The surgery was scheduled for 7:30 am, which meant we had to be there at 5:30, which meant we had to get up at 4:15 to be able to leave at 5am. Quite early, Rick and I have promised each other we will quit doing the crazy early flights, this we had no control over.

The actual surgery only took 1 hour. The doc came out and talked with me for maybe 3-5 min, said it went well, the hip was really bad and the right hip will need to be done also but can wait on it for however long Rick wants to wait. It wasn't paining him but according to doc, will. I say do it younger rather than older.

The kids wanted to have a family fast and prayer, which we did. They touched his heart by being so concerned. His mom thought I wouldn't be enough to care for him, wanted Chris there, called Jason to get him on her side and enlist his help to get Rick to stay in the hospital longer, get more help, etc. A mom will always be a mom, yay!! Moms will love kids even when no one else will.

Rick had told me he could come home after the surgery, not stay overnight, so I just accepted that. So many nurses expressed surprise that I finally asked one how long the typical stay was. They said all docs but Goldberg make you stay overnight. Goldberg lets the patient go home the day of if they meet his criteria, which Rick did - walking, urinating, not nauseated, pain at a manageable level, worked/saw physical therapist. He was happy to get home, we left at 1. Unbelievable that he could have hip surgery at 7:30am and leave at 1pm. The pics tell the story.

Looks quite chipper, waving, smilely

IV bag made at the Austin site

Not quite so chipper, still recovering from all the anesthesia. Needed a pain pill. The gown looks puffy because it is, a new-fangled contraption, the gown is disposable but they have a vacuum type hose that they can blow cold or warm into the gown. Rick got cold, typical after anesthesia, and they blew him some warm air which he liked.

Sadness and joy

It makes me sad to realize that my mom really has passed. Life goes on. Soon it will be my turn and everyone else's life will go on. Hard to believe.

I have been wanting to understand evolution and how it all fits into the master plan so I checked out a book from the library, written by famous atheist Richard Dawkins called The Greatest Show on Earth. He does not get to the heart of the matter in proving evolution; it might be true as scientists believe, it might not. But this book doesn't convince me of anything, other than Dawkins just really "knows" everyone who doesn't think and believe as he does is a fool. I will always be a believer in a higher power, a creator, despite the atheists and their "proof." Too many "proofs" for me to not believe.

As I feel the need I will continue posting about mom. But for now, my 3 ggrrls, or little squirrels, as Jason called them. These were taken in the hotel room just before mom's Friday night viewing.

I remember in Bush's book about his dad, at one point George HW was in the hospital quite ill. His pregnant granddaughter walked in and he said something like, this is the cycle of life - we come and go, new life and old. Broke Bush son's heart, made him sad, even tho it is true and he was looking forward to the birth of his grandchild. It is how I feel. It seems so real and personal to me because it is.