A close friend just boarded a tiny cruise ship in a foreign country & saw her nemesis at the lifeboat drill. Like NEMESIS. The last time they saw each other was when they SUED each other! They are assigned to the SAME LIFEBOAT! I am riveted.
Picture it: 2 wealthy ladies in their 60s. 1 used to be married to the others’ brother. There is decades of bad blood between them & a very expensive lawsuit. Haven’t seen each other since depositions. The one who won is sitting at the lifeboat drill crocheting a blanket...
...for her newest grandchild when the other walks up and says, “well, hello Sally.” It’s a Viking Cruise. The ship is tiny & the entertainment options are very limited. They are going to be seeing each other CONSTANTLY for the next 2 weeks!
AN UPDATE! But first ... some delicious backstory... Sally is traveling with three people in her party: her middle aged daughter Karen, her new (4th!) husband Tom, and Marian, the sister of her ex-3rd husband. Sally ditched the husband years ago but she and Marian stayed close.
So Sally is on a cruise with her ex sister in law from her 3rd marriage (whom she loves) when she runs into her ex sister in law from her 2nd marriage (whom she hates). FWIW Karen is a product of her 1st marriage. AND Tom, her 4th husband, is on this trip. I'll let that sink in.
Sue has been married once & is still married. Her husband, Geoffrey, is delightful. Dorky, sweet, kind ... Sue runs roughshod over Geoffrey. Several nights ago, at Geoffrey's invitation, Karen (we can just call her "weak link") had dinner with Sue & Geoffrey!
AND last night Tom (husband #4) spent an hour chatting, one on one, with Geoffrey! They became fast friends! But Sue and Sally are definitely still not speaking.
More backstory ... I'm not accusing her of anything, I'm just sayin' ... but Sally was on a different cruise ship earlier this summer when an older lady fell overboard and was never found.
And do y'all even want to know about how Bob (Sally's ex #2 and Sue's dead brother) is a ghost who haunts Sally's house? There's a lot here.
NEW UPDATE: Tonight after dinner Sally & Tom bumped into Sue & Geoffrey in a narrow hallway. There was no escape. They had to engage in awkward pleasantries. Another passenger who already knew Sue walked by just then. Sue introduced Sally as her “ex-sister in law”...
...the lady remarked, “it’s so wonderful that you two have stayed so friendly & close!” Geoffrey couldn’t take it — he busted out laughing, guffawing really, even choking, right there in the hall.
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The thing I’d love to see come out of the Walz swiftboating is an acknowledgment that most everyone in the military is extremely insecure about what they actually did and constantly compares their service to others’ service. And how unhealthy and wrong it is. 🧵
If you volunteered (or were drafted) to serve, you did more than the vast majority of the population, including me.
If you volunteered during wartime, you stepped forward knowing it could cost you your life or limbs.
(I spent last week researching young male vets who need IVF to have children because they lost everything below the waist. This is very fresh on my mind.)
The Washington Post Editorial Board members would likely all qualify as “high earners” by CBO means testing standards.
How much would they sell half their leg for?
Their hearing?
Their ability to sleep?
Being able to watch a fireworks show, or stand in a crowd at a concert.
We’re sacrificing good Americans by the thousands each year, many of them children, because a few people insist that someday they might need to overthrow the government.
I call bullshit.
Guns are fun to shoot. That’s the real reason why gun fetishists are standing in the way of tougher gun laws.
I harbor no illusions that these gun lovers will ever take up arms to protect our form of government, even if there was “tyranny”.
How do I know?
Because many (most?) of the same people who claim they need weapons of war now conveniently sat out our nation’s entire 20 year war after we were actually attacked.
They weren’t willing to fight four our country even when there was a recession and they were unemployed.
This is Rep Andy Ogles’ stupidly drawn, purely politically motivated District:
For those who aren’t familiar with middle Tennessee, this district is more than 120 miles from tip to tail. If you tried to drive it —WITHOUT— factoring in Nashville’s notorious traffic, it would take more than 2 hours. In all, it’s 1,250 square miles.
The story I’ll tell my grandkids to describe GWOT is my husband deployed to Afg hearing over the radio that his best friend was killed in Iraq &calling me in the middle of the night to ask me to go to his house at first light so his widow wouldn’t be alone when she got the news.
And I did. I grabbed a couple of coffees and was going to tell her that I “was just in the neighborhood” — at 7 am — and planning to just sit there & wait. But the notification team was already there. And they were glad to see me. And then we cried for weeks.
And then a few weeks after he died I lost my shit on war protesters who marched past my house carrying a styrofoam coffin. The told me “people need to know that soldiers are dying!” And I screamed “EVERYONE IN FAYETTEVILLE ALREADY KNOWS THAT!”