Trust Our Government, That's Just Wrong, Page 28

First off, I always thought I'd write a book.  Well, I actually have a few ideas in my head, but one in particular would be called "That's Just Wrong".  This would be a book of short stories or anecdotes that once you read them you'd slap your palm to your forehead and say to yourself "That's Just Wrong".  I've been posting this future book, page by page into this blog.  So far, I'm up to this entry, or page 28 of my future book!

Here is my story:

I am a huge fan of our right to free speech.  This is just one of the things that makes this country so great.  I have the right to say any damn thing I want to.  With that right however, I believe we also have a responsibility to use good judgement and common sense before we open our mouths and start spouting crap.

For example, I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican or an Independent or any other party.  I don't care if you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Druid.  It is your right to be what you want to be and to talk about what you want to talk about.  I don't have to agree with you, but I will fight for your right to say what you want.

But here is where we need to talk about the common sense factor.  People that have been fired for bad mouthing their employer on social media comes to mind.  Yes, it's your right to call you boss an idiot publicly, but then you can't be surprised when they take offense to it and fire you.  Common sense.

I have called out the city I live in on this blog for their wrong doing to me, my neighborhood and my city.  That's why I was not surprised then when I was personally attacked by the city by means of a citation for a loose ornamental brick on my house.  Common sense.

You don't walk into an airport and yell "I have a gun" or jokingly say to your friend "Hi, Jack!" without
expecting to be thrown to the ground and then taken off to a room to be interrogated.  Common sense.

This brings us to one day last week when I was standing in line at the post office in Elyria on Bridge Street.  If you've ever been to this post office, you know you're going to stand in line.  They had two or three tellers working that day.  Suddenly, a young guy comes out of the back, walks up to each of the teller windows and was taking packages out of their bins to take to the back and sort.  I was AMAZED at the t-shirt this guy was wearing.  This wasn't the exact one, but the words are the same.  His t-shirt had a different picture of a Native American on it.

Wow.  My first thought was to get my camera out of my purse to take a picture of this guy at work!  I know I can take a picture of whatever I want to when I am out in public.  There is no right to privacy when you are outside in a public place.  However, I did not know what would happen if I started taking pictures IN a govenrnment building OF a government employee!  So I had to settle for a Google search for the t-shirt in question!

Dude, it's your right to say what's on your mind, even if it's about this government.  However, when you are EMPLOYED by this government, how could you have possibly thought this t-shirt was appropriate attire to wear to WORK?  And what about his supervisor?  You're letting this guy be seen by the public wearing this shirt?    I was just astounded.

I would have cared less if I saw this t-shirt on the guy while he was at the grocery store, at the mall, at the park or as a customer at the post office.  But this is what you wore to WORK at the post office.  For that stupid decision, I have to give you one piece of advice:

If you dislike your employer or your job that much, QUIT.  Along with free speech in this country comes a whole lot of other freedoms. You are not a slave who is owned by his employer.  Go find another job.  Good luck with that by the way.  Go find another job that pays what you are getting paid and has the benefits that you have as a government employee.

Not knowing how to dress yourself for work and for having no common sense, That's Just Wrong.

Rocky Update

A couple of posts ago, I told you about one of my outside cats, Rocky, getting stuck in my garage for a few days!  Well, in case anyone was worried about my Rocky, I wanted to make sure y'all knew that he is alive and well and back on my front porch!

I think Rocky has learned his lesson.  He's not running up to me in the garage any more when I come home.  Now, he waits safely on the front porch for me to come out there with the food.  He still comes to say hello to me and he still wants his petting and loving from me.  That's a good thing!  He just learned to stay away from the garage! 

He's really a sweet and loving cat!  But I still think he's had a rough first year of life.

Here is Rocky's face.  If you look at his right eye, on the left of the screen, the bottom of his eye has a big black spot.  It's been there since I've met Rocky.  At first I thought he had a bruise, but it never went away. 

That's his partner at the bowl with him.  She's a female about the same age as Rocky.  I've tried calling her Adrienne, but it really doesn't fit her and it doesn't just come out easily when I see her.  She's a pretty girl but much more shy.  She comes out when I have food, but she will not get close enough to touch me or let me touch her.  They are always together and rarely seen separately.  That should have been my first clue that there was a problem when she was at the food bowls with no Rocky!

And, here is Rocky's tail!  Again, to ME it looks like it's been broken at one time.  He doesn't seem to have any problems with it now, and that might just be the way his tail is.  I have run my hand all down his tail and he never flinched.  He seems to move it ok and he doesn't seem to be in pain.  I am hoping it looks worse that it really is for him.

 

There are actually two bends in his tail.  The one closer to his butt looks a lot worse, but there is a smaller bend a few inches in from the tip.

Rocky and . . . Adrienne for lack of a better name for her!  This was dinner time for them after I got home from work yesterday, so it was very difficult to get them both looking at the camera at the same time!

So there you go.  He is alive and well and living free on my front porch!  Life is good.

Lakeview Park, Revisited

I don't care how many times I've been to Lakeview Park in Lorain, I love it!  I always find something new to marvel at, or just ooh and aaah at the beautiful scenery there.  Some days I just drive in one end and right out the other, just to get a breather in my day.  Other days, I'll sit down there and enjoy the water.  Ron and I have grabbed sandwiches and gone to this park to have picnics, we have played bocce there.   So much to see and do in one little park!

Sunday we had a ray of sunshine in our dreary winter.  The temperatures were in the 60s and the sun was shining!  For the health of my SOUL I needed to get outside and enjoy that sunshine and warm temperature.  I grabbed Ron and we headed for Lakeview Park to walk the walkways for some exercise.  As soon as we started walking, I was kicking myself in my behind that I hadn't brought my camera with me!  UGH of all days.  The whole day was one huge photo opportunity!

To not spoil our day out, Ron and I enjoyed our 1-1/2 mile walk up and down the park.  We headed home, I grabbed my camera and headed out to do another 1-1/2 mile walk up and down but this time capturing all of the sights that caught my eye and made me say "ooh, I wish I had my camera on me"!  So come take a walk with me through Lakeview Park.  I bet you will find things you never saw before.  I found new things there on Sunday and I've been there hundreds of times!

Firsts off, a paw print in the mud!  Ok, maybe not exciting to you but it scared the crap out of me!  I didn't have anything in my pocket to put in this print to show the size of it, but I swear it was the biggest paw print I ever saw!  It was bigger than my FIST!  That had to be one big dog!  I'm glad the only thing I saw of him was his print in the mud!

Trust me.  BIG dog.

There are a few walkways through the park.  There is the actual sidewalk by the street.  There is a sidewalk that goes right through the center of the park and there is a sidewalk right before the beach.  Plus, we walked on the beach!  This walk started at the top by the street and I walked from one side of the park to the other.  The first thing I came across that surprised me was this monument.  I don't have a problem with the ten commandments or even prayer in school for that matter.  (Because for real, what kid ISN'T praying before a test?  But, I digress.)  The ten commandments.  A good reminder for some of us, I'm just not sure what it's doing at a public park.  A nice monument as an art piece, nonetheless.

 

On to the west side of the park, by the pavilion, I saw this Ohio historical marker.  I just found out recently at Oye Mi Voz at the Charlestown Coffee House that Helen Steiner Rice was born in Lorain Ohio.  Who knew!?  As a lover of Hallmark Cards, I've read her poems and even bought quite a few of them.  I just didn't know she was a home town girl.

There were more memorials on the middle walkway before the fountain.  This first one is self explanatory.  My ah ha moment on this one was that I did not know this property used to be a farm.  Pretty cool!

 

Next, a monument to one of Lorain's Mayors, Leonard M. Moore.  Looking at the date I thought perhaps Lorain's first Mayor?  But no, he wasn't first.  But he was the Mayor that spearheaded the movement to purchase this property to be used as a public park.  Anyone familiar with the area around here knows that most of the beachfront property is all privately owned.  In my opinion, there is very little public access to the water in Ohio.  Kudos to Mayor Moore for figuring out that this was needed for the enjoyment of the people, even way back then.

This is one that made Ron and I both scratch our heads.  Why would you put a tombstone up to commemorate the birth of a city?  Ron thought it didn't HAVE to be called a tombstone, but whatever.  It sure looks like a tombstone to me.

No memorial in this city would be complete without a shout-out to one of the most famous citizens, Admiral Ernest J. King.

Heading further to the east, when I got to the fountain, I stayed at the lowest level and walked around it.  I don't think I ever noticed the cool brick work.  I only took a couple of pictures but there were cool little shapes in I think sandstone, all around the fountain.  Very pretty.

The Rotary Club monument was next.  Another great organization doing a fantastic job with our park and with our city!  From the Lorain Rotary Club website: 

Did you know?
When the Rose Garden at Lakeview Beach was dedicated in 1932, Lorain Rotary was one of 17 community organization that sponsored it. The shape of the garden is the Rotary wheel with eight spokes. Approximately 2,500 roses are planted in 48 beds.

That makes much more sense to me now!  This is the last bit of information I got out of my trip to Lakeview Park.  What I liked most was the way the sun was shining inside of here.  This is also where I learned that Mayor Moore was responsible for making this land a public park!  But, as you see on the bottom in the middle, the diagram of the rose garden, I didn't put together the Rotary Club connection until I was writing this blog.  I like it!

That was the informational section of this blog!  Now for the shots of Lake Erie, the reason I went to this park to walk to begin with.

What really made me go home for my camera was the pictures of the Lake itself.  Keep in mind, the temperature was in the high 60s.  But, there is still ice on the lake.  As you can see in this picture, There are some ice dunes in the foreground covered in dirt and sand, some ice a little farther out and then towards the top of the picture, that is not a wave out there, just some ice!  It was an amazing day to be out there taking pictures!

Again, from bottom to top, water, ice dunes, ice, water, ice.  It was beyond description to see this in person.

 

Same view, a bit closer to the water.

This is one of my favorite shots.  You can see just how close the ice still is to shore in some places!

From the files of "I read too many detective books", as I was walking along the beach I saw this up ahead.  For real, I thought it was a severed leg!  I had to get up close to it and kick it a little to make sure it really was just driftwood!  DANG!  Those darn Michael Connelly and John Sandford novels will do you in every time and make you see severed legs.

Then one more picture of a picture perfect day.

 

A good day to get out and about and a great day to take pictures.  And another example of something wonderful right under your very nose.

Cat Census

Cats that live in my house:  3

Stray cats I feed on my porch:  9

Cats now living in my garage:  1

What the heck!  I intentionally built shelters on the front porch for the stray cats for the winter time.  I'm ok with that.  On Saturday, I found out I had a squatter living in my garage!  Ugh!

I came home Saturday afternoon, and while I was taking things out of my car, one of my outside cats, Blondie, came running into the garage.  Every once in awhile, one of the outside cats gets nosey and wants to look around.  That lasts only until I start closing the door.  Once that door starts coming down, the cats will generally run to get out of there.

So, Blondie came running in, and she headed to a corner of the garage where a lot of things are stacked up.  My garage is a two car garage, but one side is storage only.  Anyway, she is on the storage side and acting like she's looking for something.  Then, she started meowing and I was shocked to hear something coming from the pile of tarps meowing back at her!  Are you kidding me?  Who is in my garage!?

I climb over a bunch of stuff and I'm trying to look in that corner.  Something is meowing a LOT.  I am confident it is a cat, and I'm guessing it's one of my front porch cats, but at the moment I have no idea who it is.  I try to move stuff around, trying to get the cat to come out.  No go.  I ended up calling Ron inside of the house and asked him to bring me out a bowl of food and water as I believe that a cat has been stuck in my garage.

Ron the rescuer came out with the two bowls.  Between the two of us, we are digging through things, trying to find out where the cat is.  We put the food out on the floor hoping that would coax him out.  Finally, when Ron moved something, I saw a cat run out of that hiding place, but right into another one.  It was Rocky!  Rocky is a beautiful little gray kitten named because he looks like he's gone a few rounds with something.  His tail has a distinct bend it in.  To my uneducated eye, it looks like his tail may have been broken at one time.  His one eye also had a black spot on it.  Again, the poor guy looks like he's had a rough first year of life.

In spite of it, for a stray cat, Rocky is very loving and gentle.  He is one of the cats that greets me when I come home, will wind around my legs waiting for me to pet him.  Like all stray cats, they are never on the porch 24/7.  The cats come and go and can be gone for days at a time.  The more I thought about it, I know it's been DAYS since I've seen Rocky.  I didn't think anything about it because like I said, that's not unusual for a stray cat.

So I believe poor Rocky has been in my garage for a few days!  I found a pile of poop in the middle of the floor (no, not MY poop, but I believe Rocky's!) that looks like it's a few days of poop.  I have no idea what he's been eating, but I've been putting food and water in the garage since Saturday afternoon.  I figured if he's been stuck in there for a few days, he's hungry, he's scared.  I'll make sure he eats and drinks and when he gets his strength back, hopefully he will come back out of the garage on his own.

One of Ron's suggestions was to just leave the garage door open so that Rocky can leave when he's ready.  I'm afraid in my neighborhood that some of the neighbors would take that as an invitation to help themselves to anything not nailed down.  Plus, I was afraid of what other critters might take refuge IN my garage along with Rocky!

I did get Rocky to come out of his hiding place this morning when I took food out to him when I fed the rest of the outside cats.  I put the bowls down right inside of the door and Rocky came right to them to eat.  He wouldn't leave the garage but at least I watched him eat.  I thought that was a good sign.  He ate the food that I left there on Saturday, but only after he was left alone in the garage.   So, I definitely think he's feeling better.   Now if he will just move back to the front porch with the rest of them instead of his private quarters, I'll be happy!  I scoop enough cat poop in my life, I don't need to be scooping it off of the floor of my garage!

Update:  A little while ago I looked on the front porch and Rocky is out of the garage and back where he belongs!  He finally left the garage one of the times I've been in and out of there today!  At least my cat drama is over for the weekend and all is well!