I haven't been able to FTP to the hospital's site since the middle of last week. That means changes have been piling up. I have told the server guys at least 5 times that my access is dead, but they have more urgent things to attend to. Like the zilliontythree viruses that seem to be living in our servers. Despite the firewalls.
This morning I deleted 230 messages that were merely the husks of deleted virus hosts. For some reason this makes me think of the Roach Motel slogan:

Bugs get in, but they can't get out. Like viruses on our servers, huh?

At home, I spent the whole weekend dodging phone calls and laying around in my bathrobe. But it was a good thing, and not the messy depression it sounds like. I also put away a month's worth of laundry, cleared out my closet of all the dark, shapeless schmatas I've gotten too small to wear, and cleared out my studio so that I can start working in it again.

And I finished the bottle of Crown Royal that I'd bought to make Washington Red Apples. That was scary fast work. Maybe I shared a lot, huh?

Well, despite the fact that I can't upload the changes, I still have a lot of them to make. So off to work. Hi-ho, and like that.

My cell phone rang. It was the RLA. He was sitting in the vet's office with the great and noble dog Nails. It seems that Nails had nailed a bufo toad, or some other poisonous fauna in our back yard and was having doggy hallucinations and some serious mouth-foaming. The RLA was waiting for the vet to come out of surgery and give an opinion. He'd triaged Nails at home (second round of Bufo Toad Wrestling) and the sturdy little Jack Russell Terrierist seemed to be holding his own, all things considered.

But jeez, could I get a break here?
The PHB is in full press "I can't wait to get started fucking up the web for you" mode, and thankfully has gone to a seminar (or so he says) and can't annoy me until Monday.

It is now Friday afternoon, and I've submitted my weekly report. In less than an hour I can start drinking, and since there's nothing pressing on the calendar for this weekend, I don't have to stop drinking until after Deadwood Sunday night.

Here's my newest favorite drinkie. Think of it as a Cosmo with cojones.

The Washington Red Apple

1 1/2 shots of Crown Royal
3/4 shot of Sour Apple Schnapps
Splash of cranberry juice

serve in a martini glass and if you really want to impress your friends, garnish with a spiral slice of apple

So which part of my life is now the worst? Is it A) Work, B) Thinking about my dead father or C) Trying to juggle the demands of an estate, an Alzheimer-riddled mother and her tyrannical nurse, my newly-needy brother and extended family members, several commissions, a start-up quilting partnership and a household?
Right. There is no answer, because they all suck crusty moose dick and my mind is skittering around over each of them like a drop of water in a really hot pan.

There is not enough alcohol, Sherman Fantasias and Prozac in the world right now for me.

Excuse me a second, I have to renegotiate a contract that the PHB fucked up, answer a call from my brother, and reformat 25 pages of content, and arrange to take a head shot of the employee of the month. Right. And then, in fifteen minutes, there will be another crisis or something else that I have to jump on and do right this fucking second .

You just know that things are not flowing smoothly when the first response you have to a ringing telephone is to shout "Leave me the fuck alone" at it before you pick it up and recite the party line about "How may I help you".

Gotta run, sweetiedarlings, I smell smoke coming from a fire that needs putting out.

The front page of today's Herald features two photos, in color, above the fold. They are two frames from the video of the murder of Nick Berg. The first shows him sitting on the floor, surrounded by masked men. The second shows one of the men holding Berg's head to one side as he applies the edge of his knife to Berg's throat.

Thank you. I think we all needed to see that. Mr. Berg's family surely needed to see that. Like hell.
The US government prevents us from seeing photos of our military coffins, citing security (hah!) and sensitivity to the families. But a civilian (Whom authorities now say was advised to leave Iraq, and if that isn't a case of the buck stops with the victim, I don't know what is.) being murdered as payback for a photo of a prisoner wearing a dog collar (Oh, yeah. That's a fucking eye for an eye, I'll tell you. I can surely see the corollary there, boy howdy.) well, that's just perfect fodder for the insatiable American viewing public.

Fuck me. I don't think so. And if I were the least bit paranoid, I would say that Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg had one thing in common other than having their cold-blooded murders paraded through the American press: they were both Jews.

If I were the least bit paranoid, I would say that one thing is what makes it acceptable to show their deaths.

But I'm not that paranoid. I think that the reason these brutal slayings are shown ad nauseum is because we need images like that to keep the determination to stay in Iraq alive in the hearts of the American people. This is just propaganda for the Bush mill. Bush and his lousy, filthy cadre of chickenhawks. Not a one of the high-ranking men in his administration served in the Viet Nam war. Not a one of them has a son or daughter in the military, at risk for the kind of death they allow to be broadcast nightly. They condone the demonization of the enemy, and then react with faux horror when the citizen soldiers of our own republic are found to have committed "atrocities" against the enemy.

A person cannot commit an atrocity against an enemy who looks like them, or has the same values as them. You need to create a demon in order to be able to maintain the fight. Our government is creating a demon in fact by its actions in Iraq, and a demon in the popular imagination by what they chose to allow to be shown to the American people.

And I for one, have had enough.

I said I'd be back, and here I am. First thing to do is to undo everything the boss did while I was gone. Second thing is to let my co-workers know that my father died, because the PHB* only told them he was in hospice. He knew about Daddy's death, because I called him immediately to let him know I'd be out for another week. He responded by having me walk him through how to add a row to a table in HTML.

There are just no words.
But then, the most amazing thing happened as a result of running my father's obituary in the Herald. When I was five and six, the family next door had a girl my age. Her name was Linda and we were inseparable. We rode our stick horses through the neighborhood, visiting. We climbed the rose apple tree. We were each others first, best friends. Then her family moved and we never saw each other again. Until yesterday. She lives here in Miami and saw the obituary, and saw that I lived here, and called me. She left a message, explaining who she was. As if she needed to say anything other than her name.

After 45 years, our conversation picked up exactly where it left off, albeit with better vocabulary and a somewhat broader life experience.

It turns out we have lived parallel lives, living in the same cities, only a year or two apart, the same neighborhoods, chosen the same careers.

My father is already putting things in order, it would seem.

* Pointy-haired-boss

Katie is an angel, and she led my father up the golden path and into the light. He was surrounded by people who loved him. I'll be back.