Hot Women American Perspective

You know how the news the past week has been full of stories about the bombs in Gaza? This reminded me of something Trax and I talked about when we had lunch last month. I was asking her how things were going where she lives, in the far north of Israel. Reminding her how worried I was about her a few years ago when they were being shelled from Lebanon. She said things were OK in the north, but the southern cities were being shelled from Gaza. "Oh, yes, of course," I mumbled, trying to cover for the fact that I had not known that. A flash of irritation. Why didn't I know that. Why does our news media not find it newsworthy when Israeli cities are shelled day after day after day. Why does the United Nations not find that worthy of condemnation. But let the Israelis defend themselves, after a long period of patience, more than most any nation on Earth would show, and they are roundly condemned for shelling Gaza. Don't search for obscure stories that I misse...

I want to thank Harriet for giving me my very first blogging award. And such an attractive one, too. Very thoughtful.

I called to check on Aunt M this morning and got some good news. Whatever blockage there was got un-kinked, and her system is moving again. Yay! And she is 88 pounds, not 80. I hope she is able to maximize her caloric intake now and can gain weight, to be better able to face the next crisis. Suddenly my hope is back that she will be alive in mid-February, when I and my entire family (without the teenagers) will travel there to meet her. Even my husband. I purchased these tickets a couple of months back. There is a bat mitzvah happening with a niece from my husband's side of the family about 2 hours away on Saturday, and then we will spend Sunday with Aunt M and my cousins. Won't it be great if Aunt M can meet my husband and older kids?

I got a new menorah this year. An electric one. Tonight is the last night of Hanukkah. Here is a picture taken from my front yard, looking at the window. May the peace of the season be with all of you.

My cousin called yesterday with bad news about Aunt M in Missouri. Her colon cancer has grown again and caused a complete blockage. Surgery is a problem, because her weight has dropped dramatically and she is only about 80 pounds now. She is deciding between treatment options, all of which are dangerous. My heart is heavy. Our reunion in October moved me so deeply. Though I have not had the honor of knowing her over years, the days I spent with her are precious to me. She is precious to me.

Last night, my husband and his father were in our kitchen talking about the recent Wall Street Ponzi scheme scandal. A Ponzi Scheme is "a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors out of the money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit." (Wikipedia) I said that our American real estate market had also become a giant Ponzi Scheme. The government had forced banks to make loans to people who did not have to prove their income, and the interest rates were kept artificially low, so there was this buy, buy, buy mentality in the market that fueled a boom in housing prices that had people very happy about what they owned on paper. Our house here in So Cal we bought in 2000, and within 5 years it had about doubled in price. Now it is worth still more than we paid for it, and perhaps more than the amount that we re-financed at a few years later. But why did the prices drop and the housing market tank so precipitously? Because, a giant Ponzi Sc...

Seriously. My sense of smell is *that* acute today. These past few days I have been petrified with the fear that my plugged nose was never going to get better. After all, I had surgery 6 days ago, and I have not been able to breathe through my nose since. I'm talking plugging so bad that swallowing anything created a suction inside my head that caused my ears to pop painfully. With every single swallow. Again and again. I did force myself to eat/drink enough to sustain myself, but I think I may have lost a little more weight. So back to today. I went to the doctor's follow-up. I barely remembered being told after surgery that they would "debride" (pronounced dee-breed) me in one week. That usually means cleaning up stray tissue, like the little bit of ruffly skin that is left after you scrape your arm. He went in there today and pulled out a LOT of tissue, which was mostly clots, I guess. And now I can breathe. Even on the left side of my nose, which has...

OK, I'm hooked. I have avoided reading the book, Twilight, for some time now. I knew it was good, because one of my best bloggy friends is crazy about Twilight . So, yes, I wanted to read it. The problem was that I knew once I started, there would be a significant time drain and I was simply too busy. I was shopping for reading material this Monday, right before my surgery, though, and picked it up. I started reading it last night. It was a great excuse to hunker down in bed and not move, perfect for convalescing after surgery. I'm already past page 250. Oooops. Gotta go. Got "big" things to do this morning. ;-)

I need to make myself take it easy. Too much to do. I might have a fever. But, of course, the therms were all at the "other" house. So that means another car trip, of course. Hopefully a little more R&R will fix things up.

Sunday was J's 4th birthday party. We ordered the requisite bouncer/slide apparatus and it fit well into the back yard of our rental house. The whole rental house/rental furniture/rental housewares situation made it a fun adventure and some folks showed up that we had not seen in a long time. The party was great. All 20 bags of party favors disappeared (my boys got one too), and 40 of the sixty cupcakes were eaten. The other 20 I sent to J's school the next day. Can't have those delicious, fudgy things sitting around the house for too long. They'd get stale. The week leading up to the party I was getting over a cold. So I kept wondering if the doctor would cancel my nose surgery on Tuesday (yesterday). Nope. Turns out, unless you have a fever or something awful going on, it's full steam ahead. I wanted it done, anyway. Darn it, I want to be able to breathe through my left nostril again. I haven't really been able to do so since I had a sinus infecti...

I get asked from time to time how my next door neighbors are doing. The ones whose homes burned to the ground. I don't know. I don't know what they were able to get out of their house in the 15 minutes we had to pack. I don't have the heart to ask them. It probably wasn't enough. All I know is what my neighbor's 19-y-o son said. I invited him to come into my house a couple of weeks ago to help burn a CD of the pictures of the fire. I wasn't sure about the computer software, so he agreed to come in. We were in the upstairs office for a while figuring things out, when he wandered over to the office window to look out. He looked left and then right. Then he said, "Oh. This was my room." Something heavy dropped in the pit of my stomach. He grew up in that house next door. His mother was the original owner for the past 26 years since the houses were built. While she may build a new "dream home", he will never have his room back. ...

My daughter is now at the end of her Semester Abroad in Italy. She traveled to many places in Europe and is in love with the place. No disrespect to her family, of course, but she is really sad to be leaving Europe and coming home. If there is any way you can check out her latest heartfelt blog post and leave her some lovies or parental wisdom, perhaps we can cheer her up. Comment there, rather than here, s'il vous plait . Thank you in advance.

...and her husband and kids and my MIL today. It was SO awesome. This is the second time I have met her IRL in these past 5 years we have known each other online. She is an amazing young woman. There are some of you who know her from our online buddy groups. Isn't it cool that they came out here all the way from Israel? And she made time to see me on their last day before flying back. Thank you, Trax. I had a great time.

Even the neighbors were saying how surprised they were when the tiles came off and they could see how much more had burned in the garage roof than we thought. Except for those who witnessed the fire. My husband tells me that folks at the time told him that the garage was on fire, not a little bit, but a LOT. And they poured a TON of water in there to put it out. Strange thing was, the garage seemed dry the next day when we came back. Must have been the heat and the wind. Anyway, here are pics showing the garage as the men took it apart yesterday, and the trusses/rafters that are going up today. And hopefully the plywood as well. Can you believe how quickly these guys are working? They only started the job yesterday (Thursday) morning. And here are the new trusses/rafters already!

And she and her husband, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, were tortured before they were killed. All because they were Jewish. I am sick beyond words. Can someone tell me if the United Nations has condemned these attacks? I found this on the web: {edit} source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1262993/moshe_holzberg_is_orphaned_and_the.html

But there is no weight gain, either. I *have* been going hungry lately, usually running around meeting contractors and busy busy. So I was hoping that would translate into my losing the last couple of pounds and hitting my post-breastfeeding goal weight. No dice. I guess those late nights in the hotel chomping on cookie dough blobs might have had an effect. Oh well. Holding steady is OK too. Especially since we have been eating out for all our meals for two weeks. Last night was the first night I cooked. Spaghetti. On paper plates. In our new rental house. I'll have to take pics of the house to show you. Same size as this house, only no view. All the view homes burned.

Did you know that today, or rather tonight, is the deadline for college applications for the University of California system? My oldest boy, the 18-y-o high school senior, spent a few days with me this weekend. He had not completed his 2 essays yet, and they were due tonight. I helped him. I told him that the reason for most cases of writer's block was that people are afraid to write cr@p. I told him to go ahead and write cr@p, and I would help him fix it. He already had his topics worked out and got to work writing away. He wrote and wrote and came up with about 750 words per each essay. I cut out the repetitive parts and got it down to just under 500 words each, which is what was required. He is transmitting the application, along with the two essays, to the UC system and we will see which of the 6 universities he gets into. I will be sitting on pins and needles until spring, just like I did with my daughter 3 years ago. Wish him luck!

I mourn this tragic and senseless loss, as well as all those killed. Above is a picture of Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg on the right and his wife Rivkah the left performing a wedding in India. This couple and their children from New York were murdered by terrorists in Mumbai, India this week. To contribute to their orphaned son, the toddler Moshe who escaped with the nanny, or to help rebuild the Chabad Jewish Center in Mumbai, India, go to this website: chabadindia

Here is a view from the deck off the master bedroom. It is up a little higher, so you can see across the yards somewhat. The neighbor next door has cleared off her rubble. The corner house has not. Here is a view of the tarp we have placed across our hillside from the cul de sac below our house. I bet those folks are glad we are being responsible. If we were to have a mudslide, they are the ones who would me most affected. I was glad to see that the neighbors are tarping their hillsides as well. If any of the hill were to go, that would weaken our hill, and we would lose some of our property. You know that view I love so much? I guess there is a price tag. Hillside worries. Fire and mudslides . I went through the answering machine messages today. One of them really ticked me off. And I'm not the only one angry about this . We evacuated at 2:20pm on Saturday the 15th. I decided to leave my garage because, in addition to overwhelming smoke, I felt actual HEAT from the f...

Here is a picture of my house on the right, and the neighbor's house on the left. We lost 8 houses in the immediate neighborhood, burned to the ground. I just settled on a contractor today. I hope we can get going on the garage repairs. We can't move back in until that is completed, because the smoky smell keeps coming in the house. It's bad for the kids. The pool fence went up today, which is a big deal for me. I'm a stickler for pool safety. The wrought iron fence needs repair as well. It burned pretty thoroughly on the hillside and between our homes.

Here is a cell phone video of the news broadcast about our neighborhood. The little kid in the green pajamas is my 5-y-o son. I'm in there too. Sorry about the poor picture and sound quality.

You know that pic at the top of my blog? This is what remains of the deck. The one with the glass sides. Here is a pic from inside the garage looking up to the new "skylight" in the roof. One of the contractors just told me perhaps it will rain Tuesday or Thursday. I hope he is wrong. And this is my front door. Not a problem until the police and firemen keep telling us that there are looters in the neighborhood.

On this picture, you can see the attic vent on the left side of this house that allowed the burning embers from the fire to infiltrate the attic. If you live in a fire zone, make sure the vents don't face the oncoming wind. And here is the helicopter as it made one of the 3 water drops on my house. My big family is shoe-horned into 2 rooms at a small hotel. Blah. Our insurance company will be getting us a bigger house soon, I hope. We may be out for a month. The smell from the damaged portion of the garage is overpowering. And the baby's room is the worst. The corner of his room is about 6 feet from the burned out hole. We can't put the baby in there to sleep with that smell in there. They are packing up all the stuff in the house for cleaning. And they will send in ServPro. That is the service that comes in and cleans everything to make it nice again. And all new mattresses. I have been at the house constantly, during the day, interviewing contractors and over...

The house on the right is mine. The house on the left, my next door neighbor's, burned to the ground.

I am home. I had to sneak up by a horse trail to get here because the roads are all blocked. My kids and I hiked all the way up. Our house has a hole burned in the roof of the garage, and the back deck is gone, and most of the plants. Apparently neighbors used garden hoses to save our house because the firemen didn't arrive for 1 1/2 hours. :roll: There was no evacuation, just fire and smoke. I just got interviewed by a nice Aussie TV reporter for channel 10. So you may see me with baby A in the back pack being interviewed on tonight's newscast. :-D Our immediate neighborhood lost 7 homes. Including my next door neighbor. It was a miracle my house survived. I'll get pictures for you soon. Trying to settle the kids in and clear out the smoke smell.

I saw this at the dentist's office on Thursday. If you can't read the caption, it says, "Come back! I didn't say 'dentistry'! I said 'destiny'! Our team has a rendezvous with destiny!!

Sunsets are pretty. Not this one. I saw the late evening light turn amber. And my thoughts turned to those people in Montecito , California who have lost so much. Homes, plants and animals burned. Brown haze across the sky. Not pretty.

My boy still LOVES Brazilian Jujitsu. He loves every minute of the classes. Usually the class consists of 20 minutes of warm-up exercises, then technique demonstration and practice, then sparring, followed by a game. Recently they played tug-of-war. R is 4th from the right in this picture. Then last night he was awarded his 4th belt stripe. Here he is pictured with his teacher and a few classmates. R is second from the right.

I have to say I am so impressed with what I have been reading lately on the blogs. If you haven't seen these posts already, I want to share them. Julia at Sometimes Lucid wrote another amazing post, this time about the Holocaust . You know this is a topic near and dear to my heart. It is a description of some of the events of Kristallnacht, which I wrote about previously in my post on Holocaust Remembrance Day . Julia's post is a forwarded email from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and is very very profound. Another great pro-life blog post was written by Cassandra-Ann, about Down-Syndrome babies and abortion . This is a personal story about a family she knows and their experience having not one but two DS pregnancies in a row. My own topic for discussion today is about street resurfacing. This was the first inkling I had that something was going to be happening on my street: I had to park my minivan outside last night. I can't tell you how relieved I was to find my c...

I read such a cute post at Sometimes Lucid . It was about what you should do versus what you actually do. Then not an hour later at breakfast I was faced with a Should vs. Do. I Should eat the fiber-rich cereal in the bowl on the right. I Want to eat the contents of the plate on the left.

So my big date turned out well, with only one super embarrassing moment. I scheduled in a sitter from a local babysitting service. These are older gals, screened, with experience in early childhood education. The 30-y-o gal showed up with a suitcase full of toys, games and crafts. After she arrived I was able to put on my makeup and finish getting dressed. Then we went to a mid-level italian restaurant. I decided on this one because I had splurged on the tickets to the show already, and I didn't want to break the bank any more than it had already been broken. Dinner was great. I had Mushroom Raviolis Al Forno, in white sauce, with a glass of Merlot. From there, we went to see a play called The Heiress at the South Coast Repertory Theater . The play was amazing. Here is the description from the web page: In 1850s New York, a widower and his daughter go about their lives, craving love but powerless to express their needs. Into their home comes a charming suitor who awakens t...

I always wean my babies around their first birthday. Happy Birthday Baby! :-( It makes me want to cry. Especially now. I'm turning 45 in March. Such deep sadness. Every time he nuzzles in for milk in the mornings and evenings. I breathe in the sweetness of his hair. His tiny (and growing) body. His chubby cheeks. His greedy mouth. I want to freeze the moment in time to last forever. But this can't be. I'm so happy he is growing. And so sad to lose my baby. And last night on my big date, my breasts were over full with milk. So goodbye to big cleavage too.

Can you see a resemblance between my father and my boys? Especially the one on the left?

Well my daughter has stopped blogging, so I will have to do it for her. She and I last spoke about a week ago, right before she left on ANOTHER trip around Europe. She went first to Barcelona, Spain. From there she went to Scotland. And just yesterday she arrived in Paris, France. She will be back to her computer in Rome in a few days to post, hopefully, and share pictures on her blog (see link lower left). I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. In other news, baby A is getting a new name. A. He he. He turned 1 on election day, so he is not a baby anymore. I need to show you the piccies. Stay tuned for that. Otherwise the days consist of slogging through 3 boys-worth of homework every afternoon. Driving to piano class, jujitsu class, Hebrew school and errands. Entertaining and exercising the boys. I have been doing much better lately at keeping them away from the television. Also, I asked Miss I to switch her hours so she works from 10 to 6, an...

Congratulations to my left-leaning friends. I know this moment has been a long time coming. I sure hope you are right about this.

OK. Let's demystify this whole tax thing. Here are the tax rates for a number of countries. Starting with the United States of America , 2008 tax rates (Wikipedia): For 2008, the Federal tax brackets for a single (unmarried) person are: * 10%: from $0 to $8,025 * 15%: from $8,026 to $32,550 * 25%: from $32,551 to $78,850 * 28%: from $78,851 to $164,550 * 33%: from $164,551 to $357,700 * 35 %: $357,701 and above 40 percent of Americans pay no federal taxes. The bottom 50 percent pay 2.9 percent of total American tax. The top 10 percent pay 70 percent of collected taxes. Those are the IRS numbers. We almost have redistribution already . Canada 's federal government has the following tax brackets for the 2007 tax year: • 15% from 0 to $37,885 • 22% from $37,885 to $75,769 • 26% from $75,769 to $123,184 • 29 % $123,184 and above Australia 's 2008-2009 financial year taxes are: * Nil from 0 to $6,000 * 15% from $6,000 to $34,000 * 30% from $34,001 to $...

Look closely at your candidate.

You will never build a strong country by pulling the strong down. -President Abraham Lincoln

This really resonates.

This is very powerful.

Barack Obama shrugs off charges of socialism, but noted in his own memoir that he carefully chose Marxist professors as friends in college. -Fox News This sure brings me back to the old days. All these years since I attended UCLA, whenever anybody mentioned Liberal Professors, I nodded knowingly. I, too, had Marxist professors in college. It was just before I graduated that I found myself taking an elective class in Sociology at UCLA in 1987. I didn't know what to expect. I mean, what exactly *is* Sociology? OK, so I'd go in with an open mind. When I was presented with a TON of Marxist material, I was taken aback. HUH? What is going on here? Did we not win the Cold War? Yikes! Did I complete the class? Yes. Did I complain, raise my hand, or otherwise try to argue with the professors? No. I knew I had stumbled into a bastion of American Marxism, and I walked quickly in the other direction. America has freedom of thought and freedom of speech, so they had a right...

Welcome to the Socialist Republic of America. Does everybody understand that the "change you can believe in" is a shortened slogan from Barack Obama's old mantra of "Redistributive Change"? Make sure you know who you are voting for. Here is a recording of an interview where he speaks clearly about his views about the redistribution of wealth. He said that the courts cannot do enough, so it needs to be done legislatively. His discussion is not about whether it is right to redistribute wealth or not, but how it is best to go about it. "Redistributive Change" in Barack Obama's own words Once scary part is where he says that the Warren Court wasn't radical enough. That they failed to break free from the Constitutional constraints of the Founding Fathers. And that the Constitution is a "charter of negative liberties". How can he take the oath of office if he doesn't support the Constitution?

I think SNL has *way* too much influence in politics. It has been grating on me these last couple of months, let me tell you. Now, finally, there has been a fun change of topic. Did you see the political skits last Saturday night? There was one with Senator Joe Biden and Rep John Murtha "where they attempted to blow the election for Senator Obama", and another one with Senator Barack Obama and Michele Obama purchasing 30 minutes of network air time. Hilarious!

This cartoon is telling.

I certainly don't. But I will be following the IBD Tipp Poll now, instead of the other polls, because it turned out to be the most accurate poll in the 2004 election. Yesterday, October 23rd, it had Obama with a 1.1 percentage point lead over McCain. Today, October 24th, Obama has a 3.5 point lead. However things turn out, I want all my friends to know that there are no hard feelings. Besides, whoever doesn't win will be able to shake their finger in a few years and say, "I told ya so!"

I was, of course, properly dressed for the meeting. I had Miss I take a piccy of Baby A and myself before I changed to regular clothes after the meeting. It is tough making it to a meeting at 7:20am, but the good news is that afterward, you have the rest of the day to relax. The great thing is that I got everything I wanted for my son yet again. And he has been doing better on the program this year. He is starting to be less anxious and depressed. He is smiling and joking more at school. He does much less homework this year. He is continuing with jujitsu, which he still LOVES. At school, he will continue on the schedule of 90 minutes per day in the Resource Specialist Program (small group tutoring for Math and Writing), 30 minutes per week counseling with the school psychologist, 30 minutes per week with the Speech and Language teacher working on socialization in a small group. And a short course of 45-minute sessions with an occupational therapist working on fine motor for h...

I don't know if you remember last year how I posted a picture of the boys hanging fruit in the Sukkah outside of our house? We build this booth every year as part of a Jewish Festival called Sukkot. We eat in the Sukkah for 8 days and nights. The problem this year is that we experienced strong Santa Ana winds the first day, and the newly assembled Sukkah was pretty much destroyed. This is what I found in the morning. This hearkens more than usual to the time when the Hebrews were wandering in the desert for 40 years and lived in fragile booths. I decided I needed some comfort food. There was a surprising incident. Our ice maker suddenly and inexplicably started making ice again. Here you see ice-maker ice sitting on top of a bed of store-purchased ice. Things got better and we had a wonderful week dining alfresco.