Stilettos, Stoli & Scribbles ~ Served With A Twist

The pool of topics for today, as suggested by family and friends, is pretty darn funny and varied. Hint – I’m not writing about any of it.

• Living with your child after their first year away at college “Two pigs fighting under a blanket”
• Things you can’t unsee at high school graduations – “I wouldn’t wear that to mow the BACK yard.” ~ SIL Julie B.
• Indecent proposers, who once refuted, act insulted. – I firmly believe this is a by-product of the social media breeding ground of captive-audience-narcissists
• Urination orgasms (a topic on The Doctors – who knew this was a thing? – I couldn’t find a link to the episode so if you do hook me up)
• Yours, Mine or Stella’s – Which blonde shed this one?
• Stella’s Adventures in Becoming a Visiting/Comfort Dog or Training mom to walk on a loose leash.
• 30 Day Challenges – Health, Creative, Organizational
• Buzzfeed Quiz addiction – My aura is yellow, I’m going to marry Kahl Drogo, I’m Elizabeth Taylor & Lauren Bacall, Both CC and SA have secret crushes on me.
• Me & My Sleeve – Live after the gastric surgery honeymoon is over.
• Bugs – when you are trying to photograph them instead of kill them they are pretty darn cool

BUT – and nothing matters before the “but” – we in Texas and I believe as a country are in mourning. Not only for the precious lives lost, but for the death of a message. The death of conversations and solutions to unify and strengthen our nation. Those are drowned out by destructive violence, anger, frustration and deafening apathy.

Before we could draw a cleansing breath, France is once again in chaos. We watch in horror and think the unreal thought, “mercifully it was only 70″*, the person or persons had thousands in their sights. And we wonder, are we next?  Is it happening now?  Will we have another massive 9/11 type attack, or are we dying the death of a thousand cuts?

Believe it or not, there is hope. We are a young country, 240 is barely a teen by history’s standards. How many thirteen year olds with money, power, fame, glory aren’t make an absolute mess of things?  But we have something that no other nation has…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Have we always gotten it right?  Will we?  No, but the idea is there. The goal, the trying, the waking up daily and living this individually and as a nation give me hope. We are going to veer off the path. But our imperfect flawed human implementation of the ideal doesn’t change the dream.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” isn’t going to start with legislation. No piece of paper can grant us what we, as human beings are born with. That’s like saying we want a laws granting us lungs or the desire for water.  The freedom of these rights comes from the responsible exercising of them, and respecting our neighbor’s right to do the same. And when those pursuits conflict, finding a resolution that doesn’t involve killing each other!

There’s hope because we’ve fought each other, and those who wished to see us destroyed for it.  There’s hope because we have been given the tools to keep building, not an “all powerful nation” but one to be admired, emulated, studied. One who will look back on times of turmoil and see growth and learning from the mistakes.

*70 was the last number i heard before writing.

Stay – Part 3 tomorrow, catch up on Part 1 & Part 2.