Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

This morning as I was coming out of the bathroom after washing up, a spot of soapy water that splashed on the wood floor somehow reminded me of when my mom lived with me, and it was summer, and it was hot, and it was morning but I wasn’t on my way to work. And I longed to be transported back to that time. I started rifling my memory and trying to come up with times like that with my kids. For Al the one that popped up right away was when we were being lizards in the sun in a beach chair by the pool at my parents Ocean City time share. Summer of 1990 – I had my 35th birthday that trip, and Al wouldn’t be two till the end of October. He’d been scaring all of us, insisting on doing it “myself”, where it equaled jumping into water over his head. Getting him to be a lizard with me was relaxing not just for the pleasure of lying still with his little warm “myself”, it also meant I knew he wasn’t drowning.

For John, somehow the first thing I thought of was the time I drove to Milwaukee on a cold morning in late winter, January or February, dug him out of his apartment and took him to traffic court in Waukesha (Tuesday January 8, 2008 – I wrote at the time).  We were contesting a ticket he’d gotten the previous summer – speeding – no fighting that part, but then they tacked on brake light out. So we showed up with the receipt for the repair, and they knocked something like $180 off the fine, and even John thought the trip was worth it. I think what makes me remember the adventure fondly is the joy of being right – and seeing my recalcitrant, probably hung over, or at least sleepy, son, realize that what I told him to do was the right thing to do. Later that spring when John and three other art school kids all came for waffles at the start of their cross country trip is another good one, but I didn’t take any pictures.

I think I have a photograph of me & Al as lizards; maybe I can scan it in for that grainy old color photo on facebook look. Sometimes I wonder if I remember because of, or through, the photos. What would Ray say? I hope he made a ton of money when Hewlett-Packard used his song.

Mommy & Al being lizards in the sun

Mommy & Al - note diaper pin holding my sunglasses together

John dives in - such a big boy - 3 1/2. This is actually kind of a beautiful picture - bet my dad took it - click for larger.

Here in Wisconsin it’s day 14 of the protests at the Capitol. Half the time I feel like this is too big to be ignored – there were probably 100,000 of us yesterday, marching in the snow – to my eyes, absolutely more than last week’s 70,000. But on the Sunday talk shows, Gov. Weasel Walker said

two weeks of protests in the state capital hadn’t swayed his resolve to eliminate most collective bargaining rights for most public employees.

Last week, I was thinking that the stuff I was reading in the straight press was starting to sound like the Onion. But today, there’s a NYT Op Ed by Frank Rich, that lays out the Republican conspiracy in no uncertain terms. It is so NOT about the money – or at least it not about the negligible amount of money that would be saved with Walker’s so-called budget repair bill. This whole thing is about making the rich richer, and deregulating and privatizing everything.

I have to believe it has to be at least in part because so much of this is getting outed on facebook – there were only about 12 of us in the whole country who read the article in the New Yorker about the Koch brothers – probably I should post it to my profile, right now.

One of the first things I did when I moved to Wisconsin in August of 1977 was go walk the picket line at Madison Newspapers, Inc., where the printers were on strike, and the editorial union, the writers, went out in support. The technology changed and the company didn’t give the workers a chance to retrain, they just laid them off. Like many labor issues, it was complicated – the Madison paper got bought by a bigger company; the unions never shut the paper down completely – in the end the strike was a failure, the unions were de-certified 5 years later, and technology has marched on.

For a long time, I’ve been pretty dis-enchanted with unions, feeling like their glory days were over, along with the manufacturing industries in the US. I gravitated to co-ops, because it seemed like a better business model. But I am a public employee, as instructional staff at University of Wisconsin, I’m not represented by a union, but there are various governing bodies like the Academic Staff Assembly, and associations, like MASA, that represent me.

It’s restored my faith in unions to watch what’s happening here at the State Capitol – this article loads slow because of all the comments, which devolve into people calling each other trolls.

It’s not the money – it’s the bargaining rights. If Gov. Walker’s “budget repair” bill passes, my paycheck will go down by about $350 per month – I’ll be paying $208 for my health insurance – I really don’t mind that – and putting $258 into the Wisconsin Retirement System. I mind that more. So far, the WI retirement fund has been well-managed but I just know Walker’s gonna fuck around with that money. Plus, I already put money into my own TIAA-CREF, and it’s a better investment – so why should I be forced to invest in WRS, too? Isn’t it like the horrible “Obamacare” deal the Republicans have been whining about – if they don’t like the idea of being forced to buy health insurance, why should I be forced to pay into retirement, especially if that money’s not going to be there when I retire? And, that extra $350 will come off my taxable income (or at least the $208 for health insurance will) so I’ll be paying less taxes – I’m not a financial genius, but I thought taxes are a government’s best way to raise revenue – so seems to me that reducing my taxable income is NOT in the state’s best interest.

I took 6 dozen cookies down on Saturday, when the Tea Party was there, and handed them out in about 17 minutes. I thought since the Fox News was calling us thugs, what could be more UN-thug like than a 55-year-old librarian with a bag of cookies. And all I saw was politeness, and funny signs – even the Madison police department thanked us. Much more civil than the comments on the news articles. My favorite, that I didn’t get a picture of, was a Walker supporter’s sign that read “Runaway Dems, Your Fired” and nearby, “Free Spell Check for Tea Party Signs”.

Before we had all the excitement of the Superbowl, we had all the excitement of the blizzard – about a foot and a half of snow that fell on the night of February 1, with high winds and drifting. It was a Tuesday, and we knew pretty much everything was going to be closed on Wednesday before we went to bed, so we could hibernate and then just get up and shovel whenever. It took me about an hour and a half to hack a path from the back door to the front door, and clear a little of the front steps. I decided it was time to go in and make breakfast. Mark stayed out to shovel a little more, and it became the miracle of the men and the machines – the neighbors came over with snow blowers and did all the hard parts. We had perfect softboiled eggs, toast and fried potatoes for breakfast, by the way.

Drifted in backyard - those swoopy things on the far side are snow-covered cars

I had a dinner on Thursday – people were all dug out and back to work by then – and the prettiest dish was the Mexican Chocolate Pie (I made 1 1/2 the recipe in a rectangular pan).

Mexican Chocolate Pie

The folks that make the ‘sconnie shirts – as in Wi-scon-sin – have this Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood shirt:

Sconnie - Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood

Don’t think they knew that the real Mr. Rogers Neighborhood is in Pittsburgh.
Visiting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
WQED Pittsburgh