Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

Did you stop today to tell your kids why everyone had the day off?
Most kids think of Memorial Day as “the start of summer” or just a free break from school. We try each year to impress upon the boys of how the “holiday” is actually to remember those who have fallen in our place.

Dad does his part each year by participating in Rolling Thunder, a huge gathering in Washington D.C. by motorcyclists all across the country. I want to go next year - actually, I want to take the older boys, too.

Dad snapped this pic and sent it to us. 58,749 soldiers lost -truly lost, they never came home so we still don’t know if they died or are/were POWs- in the Vietnam War. Dad was drafted for Nam but ended up with stateside tours. He goes each year, as he puts it, “to honor and remember those who went in my place and never came home. There but for the grace of God go I.”

Talking with him today, he reckons that each of those guys would have had an average of two children, who’d be around my age now. Each of those children would’ve had an average of two children, who’d be the age of my kids or so. Some would even have great-grandchildren by now, if their kids got started having kids earlier than I did. So just stop and think for a moment about how much of the possible population was wiped out in that war. It’s devastating. Then for more mind-boggling tragedy, think about all of the WWI and WWII soldiers lost in action… and the soldiers we’re losing daily in Iraq. (I hate how the news calls them “troops”. To me, a “troop” is a group of soldiers, not one individual soldier.)

These men and women pay the ultimate price for us to be able to sit here comfortably blogging about how normal our lives are. Setting our flags at half-mast for half of a day once a year just isn’t enough to honor them for their sacrifices.

Just a little reminder about how freedom isn’t free.
To all of the veterans and the soldiers out there, thank you for my freedom, and the freedom of my sons.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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Updated! Pics are at the bottom.

More than half of my front porch is absolutely stuffed with stuff.
Stuff that I’ve spent months purging out of my overcluttered house.
Stuff that CHKD (the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters) was supposed to come and get yesterday. Sometime between 8am and 5pm - they barely made it at 10 minutes to 5.

Here’s the kicker - they didn’t take the stuff. Not a bit of it.
There was too much.
Now, I told the lady who was handling donation pick-ups that there was a LOT of stuff. She, apparently, didn’t believe me. (She probably hears that all the time, and they get there and it’s two boxes.) I told her there was a 55-gallon fish tank, a car bed, and enough stuff to make a good-sized yard sale. When she called back to confirm on Thursday I updated her and let her know we’d added a couch and even more stuff. Heck, I was still walking around grabbing things and adding them to the pile all day yesterday. I had planned on asking the guys when their next trip through our town will be, and telling them to make plans to stop by and pick up more of our purged stuff. Because we aren’t done - not by a longshot. That’s changed, though. I won’t be calling this charity again.

Get this… the guys who were here yesterday (and who are coming back this morning) told us that they won’t take all of it.
They’re going to pick through it.
Things like the baby high chair, which has some dust on it from sitting on the porch for 3 weeks waiting for CHKD to show up, they won’t take - because it’s dirty.
“We don’t do no cleaning of items,” the man told me.
He also pointed to where one of the cushions of the couch was coming loose from the arm (a ten-minute fix-up job that I never bothered to do) and told me the couch was staying, too. “We don’t do no mending, and I can see that’s torn, so we won’t be takin’ that.”
(It’s a good thing the couch was so piled down with boxes that he couldn’t see the rest of it. One of the cushions is torn completely across the top - again another simple fix-up job that we never bothered with… but he probably would’ve run screaming.)

Now, I do realize that this is a charity and that they want to make money, but in a way it bugs me. They’re getting these donations from people -people that could just as easily (and certainly in a much more timely fashion) have thrown these items into the trash- and they’re… well… being picky.
The phrase “looking a gift horse in the mouth” keeps coming to mind.

You’re not going to convince me that they don’t have a huge dumpster right outside the door, or even inside of the facility, where they could throw stuff that they deem not worthy. To me, that would be much better than actually offending the people taking the time -not to mention valuable space- to hold these items for them for THREE FREAKING WEEKS by picking through the stuff and leaving some of it behind.

I already purged the purge pile, as I was making the darn thing. There isn’t any trash in there. There isn’t anything that can’t be sold, and matter of fact anything that’s a little “rough around the edges” could be sold for a good amount as-is and much much more if it were shown a little attention; like mending the couch or hitting the high chair with a clorox wet wipe. There’s an entire box of solid silver items in there, and now I’m wondering if they’ll turn that away because it hasn’t been polished in years and looks black. Seriously, I’m not being cheeky - that’s the impression he gave me. They’re really, REALLY going to be picky.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s left over after they’re done this morning. I’ve taken pictures of the pile; when they’re done I’ll take some more and post a “before/after” comparison. Check back and see what stays and what goes.

Update
Before: Two different pics, one took the day they were supposed to take the stuff and one taken the morning they did take it (with more stuff added)

After: They ended up leaving the couch, the crib (because it wasn’t assembled), the fish tank (because it didn’t have a lid), and some pet supplies that were open (huge bulk bag of bedding, etc).

We spun the couch around and have really enjoyed sitting on it in the evenings. We might just leave it there. It’s tacky, I know, but it fits all of us better than my papasan chair I’ve got out there (which is the same color green, btw, so at least it matches). We’ll be taking the pet supplies to the SPCA this week. They don’t care if the bags are open. As for the crib and fish tank, those will probably get Freecycled.

I was able to actually get out onto the back patio and straighten up once the stuff back there was moved up front, and god help me, I found more stuff that was supposed to go that I’d missed. Now I’m trying to think of a place to keep that stuff as we add to it for the next run - when we’ll be calling the Salvation Army.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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Last night I was certain the LOST coffin held the body of John Locke.
Screenshots of the newspaper clearly showed “The body of Jo..”, which I thought was John. Also, prior to his sideways trip to the island, John lived in Los Angeles (remember when he inspected the house for Nadia, Sayid’s girlfriend, and how the FBI/CIA/Whomever told Sayid she was now living in LA). That John would hang himself after getting back to “civilization” made sense, because he has really become the man he’s always wanted to be on the island. He doesn’t believe he should leave, doesn’t want to, and certainly would kill himself if he were forced off of the island and couldn’t get back.

Here’s what changed my mind…
Take a look at this transcription of the newspaper story:
http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/2007/05/newspaper-through-looking-glass.html

The fact that the last name is “Lantham” is no big deal. Folks can change their name once they’re off the island - and I highly suspect that Kate has changed her name (probably Sawyer as well).

The thing that changed my mind was the last line - he’s survived by a teenage son.
John Locke has no children.

Who do we know that has a son that’s the age where he’d be a teenager 3 years after the island? Who do we know that used to live in New York?
Michael.

That would also explain why the funeral was being held in a black neighborhood. Many of the fansites are making a big fuss about the “black neighborhood” deal. I found it amusing that the funeral parlor’s name is an anagram for “flash forward”, and didn’t really care about the type of neighborhood the viewing was being held in; other than it seemed to be a lower-class neighborhood. (Further lending credit to my thoughts of it being John; desolate and paralyzed again after returning, with no real means of an income nor a desire to even have an income.)

But there’s no sensible reason (although since when has LOST been sensible) that Michael would change his name. He’s not a fugitive. Sure, he killed people on the island, but it’s not like anyone is gonna go running to the authorities and turn each other in once they get rescued. Hell, at this point, they’d almost all be thrown in jail for something they’ve done on the island.

So do I think it’s Michael?
Not really.
At this point Michael’s the only person that we know now that makes sense. But there’s still 3 seasons coming, and it could be someone we haven’t met yet. (Someone who also seems to be kinda short, judging by the size of the coffin.)

I’m still hoping that this is just a possible future, and will be until February. Argh.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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