I Almost died tonight... or so I thought

My husband and I were invited out by a very charming couple whom I had not met until tonight. The man and my husband work together.

The restaurant is one of our favorite and has been in the county for years and the owners were once our neighbors back in the day when we were all poorer.
We enjoy the ambiance of being in a home setting with a group of people who are there to enjoy a 6 course meal of fine foods and wines. There is no music or crowds of people coming and going; only the quiet chatter and laughter of close friends or business associates enjoying life.
Our table is in one of the smaller rooms of the house. I am facing a couple at a small table pressed up against the wall by the door. She has an engagement ring on and they are smiling and laughing with eyes only for each other. Everyone in the room is absorbed within their little group: quietly eating, drinking and talking non-stop.

The second course arrives and I notice it's the very rare lamb, sliced in thin, small disk shapes; that is delicious, but very hard to cut because of it's rubbery texture. I think nothing of it as I struggle to cut and tear a smaller piece off.

I am hoping my cold is gone, but sometimes I feel a dryness in my throat which reminds me to drink plenty of water. I feel energize by the company and our conversation which borders on death since my lady companion deals with death in her profession. She is a therapist for people who are going through terminal illness and for people who have lost loved ones. I didn't know there is actually a therapist for death. Good thing to know when you are about to die that night.

While eating, I am always mindful of how I am eating because I have noticed on occasion when I am stressed, I will swallow my food without chewing it.  I had often wondered what I would do if I actually took a bite that I could not swallow
.....until tonight.

I had this funny feeling in my throat.  I  normally can't feel my throat until it's sore; and now, when something small is lying on it, stuck. There it was, that thinly cut piece of dry rare lamb clinging to my dry throat. It would not go down. It was like breathing with a loosely tied  noose around my neck; making me feel claustrophobic.
I didn't want to panic, yet. I quickly grabbed the first glass of liquid in front of me.
The very red wine.

My first thought: everyone at my table knows I am having a slight problem because I am not talking: big clue.
I have a distressed look on my face:  help me...maybe?.... I'm not sure. Yet !

Second thought:  they won't think anything is wrong because I am grabbing the wine, and not the water.

I point to my throat; all the while, thinking: I cannot believe this is happening to me. I feel I am reenacting the scene in Tootsie.
Unlike the movie, I don't want to make a scene, even if I die. Everything has to be prim and proper.

Obviously, I can breathe a little or I would NEVER be this calm; although I did feel an urgency since I had no idea where that piece of meat was going or if I would freak out.  I was quietly wheezing.

While I am pointing to my throat, the lady looks to my husband and quietly, but with great urgency, says, "Heimlich, Heimlich.
My husband looks startled. He has never done the Heimlich Maneuver.
Knowing the stance, I get up, first, slowly and quietly with my large cloth napkin in position to catch anything I might throw up.

My husband hesitates, still looking at our lady friend who is directing him to put his arms around me. He keeps saying to me, "Are you sure...."
I am thinking: What are you waiting for? Just do it!.

FINALLY! He reaches around me, still uncertain, and squeezes my boobs.
Holy SMOKES!  I know I'm going to die now.

I am still calm enough to direct him to squeeze LOWER, under my boobs.
All this time, I am subconsciously holding my napkin under my face, properly, so I won't make a mess on the rug or anyone else near me.

Spilling forth, I can see red liquid. I hear the lady saying, "blood, it's blood."
I am thinking: It's blood?
I don't have my glasses on, but it looks red enough.
I see the meat tidily nestled within my nice and clean large white cloth napkin and a flood of red liquid that had come out through my nose.
I am thinking the same thing the lady is thinking: I am bleeding internally and this is more serious than I think.

When someone is dying, they usually see their whole life flash before them.
I didn't see my life flash before me.
Her husband says, "it's red wine, not blood."

I neatly wrap the cloth up so it looks all white and clean without a trace of red wine. I wipe my mouth and nose.
Then I start laughing. I sit down and we all laugh and continue our conversation about death.

In between courses, during the break, the man sitting across from our table asks me if I am "O.K."  He said he was amazed at how easy and calmly we made the whole incident seem. His brother is a lifeguard and he knows about life saving techniques, but he had never seen one done.
Later, I realized that everyone in the room stopped eating when I got up. They all watched quietly until I started laughing before they preceded eating and talking as if nothing happened. The owners of the restaurant nor the servers knew anything was wrong. No one freaked out.
I asked for a clean napkin.

My Life As A Dog

What it feels like to be my dog, I wonder,
 as she falls into a warm midday slumber.
She pounces on me when she's awake
while I am trying to pay bills, for Pete's sake!
 I have to pay attention to her and stop,
 or clean up poop, swinging a wet mop.
 She insists on having me throw her balls,
 no matter how urgent my phone calls.

On a customer dinner night out,
 my husband brought her, without a doubt,
the tenderest and juiciest 3" T-Bone steak to date.  It is true.
My life as a dog, happened, while slicing a piece for her and then; one for me too.
 

Holy Smokes! I'm actually going to tell you how I voted.

I will vote to legalized state marijuana for personal use. After seeing hundreds of illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico with bales of marijuana on their back; while thousands more are being executed by the Mexican drug cartel if they don't carry the bales; according to one Mexican who escaped execution; I would prefer my neighbors grow their own legally and cut down on Crime along the border.
Once it is legal, after a few puffs, a person will be less inclined to kill and more inclined to make love.
Yes, I know that doctors feel legalizing marijuana will only led to stronger drug use or mental illness; but if someone wants something badly enough, they will get it; that's why we have so much crime surrounding illegal drugs. 
The entire issue of using marijuana comes down to:  self-control or government control.


If the government really cared about your health, alcohol and cigarettes would be illegal.  Alcohol and cigarettes can kill; but they are also a good source of revenue for the very agency that legalizes it: our government. Once the government gets its hands on anything that is a source of income; they NEVER let it go. It would be like taking candy away from a baby....a very BIG baby.


On the 40th anniversary of Doonesbury, the creator said that he is very conservative now compared to his youthful days. I agree with that analogy in my case. Conservative, in the way of economical sanity.
As a young Democrat, I believed in voting with my emotions. Now that I am older, I vote with both my mind and heart.
My heart: for the ones who can't speak for themselves, like the dolphins and whales. 


My mind: when the National Debt is eating our retirement savings and I can't depend on the government to save the country or me. The National Debt Clock.


I am still liberal on most social issues that are backed by common sense.  Killing farm jobs in Fresno, CA by cutting off irrigation; in order, to save tiny fish for ecological purpose is not one of them.     Farm food vs. tiny fish?
     Instead of destroying jobs already in place that produce food; just create more jobs finding ways to divert the fish away from hazardous irrigation pipes. I am sure it's not rocket science. So you lose a few fish.   We lose a few people in tornadoes too.
 Nor am I in favor of the already spent 3.4 million 'stimulus' dollars to build a tunnel under the road for turtles, so they won't get killed by traffic. 
Whatever happened to the 'survival of the fittest?" The ones who learn to dodge. 
At least there will be one permanent government job created: the worker who has to guide the turtles through the tunnel.


I can hear my past, youthful voice, resounding in the voices of the youth of today. When a young   entrepreneur woman told me she refused to vote for Meg Whitman for governor of California because Whitman is against gay marriages. I asked her if she is gay.
She said, "no."
I asked her if she would rather vote on social issues rather than on economic issues? She paused for a moment, not knowing where I was going with this question. I said it's so easy when you are young to want to vote idealistically for the perfect candidate who will fulfill all your dreams, like the Wizard of Oz; only to find out later that a small person is behind the image.


For example: President Clinton created the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy for the gays in the military and Pres. Obama promised to change the policy to take the burden off the gays who service our country. Both Democrats skirted a Democratic idealistic way of life that got them voted into office. So who can you trust when you vote?


So I asked my young idealistic voter,  "if you are not gay, and you are an entrepreneur who is struggling for clients; are you going to vote for the candidate who is for gay marriage or are you going to vote for the candidate who will help your business grow?" She is still thinking.


I believe gays have a right to be married, but that is not my cause.
My cause is to vote to keep my retirement savings from being overly taxed; and to keep the government from stealing the inheritance from my daughters.
     .
       ...because governmental spending is out of control.   


The dumbest thing I ever heard on the news was a Democrat arguing in favor of Pres. Obama's decision to let the death tax expire because she believes that the children of the decreased have no rights to their parent's money..
       she believes.....it should go to the government, instead.   


I know, I had to clean out my ears, too!


           What are my guidelines for voting today?  
I voted for less taxes and less government which means no new measures that increases taxes.


I voted against transferring of taxes for one government department to another; for the same reason that our government raided, depleted and stole social security funds and used it for other than social security purposes.


I voted against a 'measure submitted to the voters" as  No. 23 which suspends pollution controls on companies until the unemployment drops to 5.5 percent or less.  
   If this 'measure' passes, unemployment will drop........from toxic fumes.


I voted for Republicans, Libertarians and Democrats who did a good job keeping my utility bills and taxes low; and I voted for candidates who will kick out the incumbents who didn't lower taxes.  
It's that simple when I consider that my daughters' inheritance has already gone to the turtles.


When I was younger, I voted, for the "Moonbeam" guy, Jerry Brown; for social justice in an idealistic world. Today I voted for Meg Whitman; for economic stability against a greedy government, even if Whitman is against some social issues.
Would you refuse to vote for George Washington or Thomas Jefferson because they owned slaves?  Life will always be full of paradoxes; so we are already screwed.


I will vote the way my forefathers would have voted to preserve the original ideals of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Because, even as, they owned slaves, they were as perfect as 'decision makers' could be for their Times for they created the universal laws in our Constitution to include all race and color
      for the purpose of protecting all American citizens from an over zealous government.

Garden of Eden and Emotions

I believe the Garden of Eden episode was planned from the beginning by God. If He did not want Adam and Eve tempted by the snake (AKA Satan); then, Satan would never have been allowed in the garden. After all, God created Satan. Was Satan in God's image too? Was that the bad side of God?

If Satan never entered the garden, we would not be here today. God would still be watching Adam and Eve, two asexual people, eating fruit from a tree; completely unaware of their sex organs; that, I assume,  had a purpose.  If not, what a waste of hanging fruit.

But without Satan, there would be no awareness of all of our emotions.
Even as painful as Life became with sorrow and death; these added emotions expands our emotional base to a greater level  of understanding;  that separates us from other animals and mammals on earth. It raises us up to a level of superior intelligence that we would, otherwise, not have, and could not share with others.

We are reminded by the Bible that we are "made in His image" which means, to me, that our body and mind; our emotions are like His.
The Law of Emotional Balance is a conservation law....Conservation laws prevent charged particles from turning back into pure energy until they are neutral. Emotions and electricity may very well be directly tied together so it is not a too much of a stretch, to say that there is a conservation law that governs emotions. There may very well be a reservoir of emotional energy and this reservoir is forced to follow the Law of Emotional Balance and is what humans have come to worship as God...." 

I believe that our emotions swing back and forth like a pendulum; much like Newton's law of physics: for every action there is an equal opposite reaction.

The argument for some, being that physics is not emotions. How can we compared motions with emotions. I say: take out the "e."  They both swing back and forth.  I do have a simple mind.

I believe that the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other for all of us, including God who swings at a greater degree from the center. The pendulum swings from happy to sad; from love to hate, etc..  When I hear that God's love is greater than any human's love than I believe His anger is also as great.

A young Jehovah Witness came to my home when I was in high school.  She said that God is always loving and good.
I said, "Not always."
She kept repeating her words over and over again trying to convince me and probably trying to convince herself as well.  I asked her if she ever heard of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. 
She said, "No."
So I told her.  That must have been a rude awakening.

Humans have already reach some levels of extreme: the atomic bomb is right up there with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Although, I don't believe that man can love as much as God loves
or we would not exist today as we have definitely broken all the commandments by now.

But to say I feel happiness only because I can compare it to sadness is not really true, according to some spiritual pundits. I had a revelation last night that if there were no sadness, I could still feel euphoric; although a one-sided emotion; mentally-off balanced, and a little creepy to others.

If I had not been tempted. I would not have had sex. And why did God make it feel so good; if it's suppose to be so bad?

From sex comes children. I would not have had that extended emotion of loving someone with a different kind of love; other than brotherly, sisterly, motherly or fatherly.
I often hear grandparents say they have a love for their grandchild that they had never felt before. It's unlike the love they had for their children. The feeling of sadness a parent feels when a child dies is unlike any other sadness felt.

For now, the pendulum swings toward the good things in life for me; but it will not always swing in that direction. When it swing in the opposite direction, I am sure God will make sure I am not ready for it; but I will not be afraid.  Although after writing this article, I should be.

The Importance of Being

Why this subject?

I was talking to a lady who told me that her husband is afraid of dying and we both laughed at how silly that sounded to us because we were not afraid of dying. Maybe, the way we die is frightening, but not death itself.

What is there to be afraid of? If God made us, we are just going back from which we came.

What makes life so desirable that we fear death? 
Our spirit has a desire to live in our body no matter how horrible life seems; when we find ourself struggling to hang on to that last breath of life.
I saw some suicidal statistics today. Most, if not all, survivors of suicide wish they had not tried to commit suicide. It was a desperate cry for help that did not come in time for many. It is a scary thing to be on the verge of death knowing at that instant you will leave behind all that you know based on fact; for everything you hoped for based on faith.

I just saw an interview with Philips Roth, considered a great American novelist, in which he says he does not believe in God. His whole existence is to himself in the here and now. Maybe, that's why he prefers to live alone and isolated in the woods. I understand that he draws his characters from reality and God is not a 'fact', but a faith. I wish him well. I don't think he is destine for Hell because I am
living in my own brainwashed mind by choosing to believe by faith in a God.
I don't mind questioning every aspect of it since it is a faith; and not a fact.

Should we be afraid?  If you are really evil then you know that there is always a possibility of going to a kind of Hell. Come to think of it, if Satan is in charge of Hell; you are in good company. If God controls the flames, then you are out of luck.

How can God send a person to Hell who kills someone or themselves if they were born detached from human love. How can He condemn babies born with one less or one extra chromosome. Where are the rules on going to Hell? 

We are reminded by the Bible that we are "made in His image" which means, to me, that our body and mind; our emotions are like His. And considering we are not perfect; He must not be perfect either and we have a lot to be afraid of, if God exists. 

God's commandment: Thou shalt not kill which is directed at humans for the purpose of not annihilating the human race, I assume; reserves the right to kill for Himself. And if killing is bad, then God is at the top of the list for being bad.
It's like a parent telling a child. Don't kill, but if I kill, it's O.K. 

Although, I feel I will see my love ones in another life based on "keeping the faith,"  this faith comes with fear.
There is only fear if there is a God because if there is nothing; than we can do what we want with our life without consequences.
There is no fear of dying by going into a nothingness. Just live life to the fullest now.

There were times I didn't think life was worth living. I could not understand why God planned such a hellish existence but that only pertained to my life. Once my daughter became mentally ill, I was all for living again, if only to save her life because I feel it's worth saving.  You ask: saving her for a 'hellish existence?' It's a real life based on facts compared to what we don't know in the hereafter.

I only hope there is more to our being in the way of a spiritual form than just this life on earth.

When I was very young, I thought God was like an Obama. You know that "hope and change" promise that never came.  I didn't vote for 'hope and change' this time around because I had learned early on that there is no hope for the life I had always dreamed about; but only change for the worse from what it should have been. It's a non-stop ride on a merry-go-round of every emotion known to mankind.

The original Garden of Eden. Whatever happened to that place? I think it withered away somewhere in Iran. That Lovely place where women get stoned to death.

How can I be afraid to die when fear is already here on earth?
What keeps us living are those real emotions we share with those we know.