Evil Mommy

If you’ve been paying attention at all to this session of Congress, you know that things are bad. Democrats don’t seem to realize that they have the biggest majority they have ever had, ever. Republicans are far better at behaving like a 2-year-old who’s postponed their bedtime for a bit too long than actually presenting reasonable alternatives. Like the kind they’re always bleating about.

And then there’s the Senate. The filibuster, that piece of procedure that allows one person to bring proceedings to a grinding halt, in theory protecting us all from the tyranny of the majority, has been used at least 154 times in this session of the Senate. It tends to get the filibusteree’s name in the papers.

Take, for example, Senator Jim “Oh hai! Iz an obstructionist dickwad!” Bunning. Senator Bunning has decided to take a “stand” against extending unemployment benefits, including COBRA benefits and Medicare payments, apparently just because he can. This has been going on since last Thursday.

“One single Republican senator is standing in the way of unemployment benefits for 400,000 Americans,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said on the Senate floor. She said Bunning’s stand is also blocking COBRA health insurance benefits to 500,000 Americans, forcing doctors to take a 21 percent cut on Medicare reimbursement rates and preventing the extension of critical highway funds.

“One single Republican senator has put posturing before people, politics before families and point-scoring before the needs of struggling Americans,” she said. “The American people are sick of this, and the backlash to the blockage of this bill is evidence of that.”

Not only is Sen. Bunning angering Senate Democrats, he is proving to be an embarrassment to his own party as well.

Bunning objected to a request from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to pass a 30-day extension of the measures, then defended his stand in a debate with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). Other Republicans sought to use the Senate’s morning business period to change the subject, but several Democrats hammered away at Bunning’s use of Senate rules to prevent approval of the stopgap legislation since Thursday.

Yes, and Sen. Collins isn’t the only Republican who’s angry about this. Honestly, the man should be ashamed of himself, even if he’s older than my dad and isn’t running for reelection. He truly doesn’t care about the rest of his party and their chances in November.

On second thought, keep it up Senator Bunning. November is getting closer every minute.

UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon Sen. Bunning finally gave up, the bill finally came up for a vote, and (surprise, surprise) passed by 78-19.

I am probably the worst knitalong (KAL) person you could want to have participating in…just about anything. For some reason, deadlines and Musts bring out the procrastinator in me like nothing else. I’ve been known to clean the house rather than try to meet a deadline, even for something fun (in theory) like a KAL.

So of course, I couldn’t resist giving the Ravelympics one more shot. For those of you who are scratching your heads, the Ravelympics is a fun (again, theoretically) event sponsored by the Ravelry social network site. There are different “events” to enter, but it basically works like this:

• You pick a piece that you’d like to work on, knitted, crocheted, or spun, start to finish, during the Olympic Games. Winter or summer, doesn’t matter – this time was the Winter Olympics, but there will be another during the 2012 Games in London.
• You work on it while you watch the Games.
• If you’re like a normal person, eventually you finish. Or you burn out halfway through the foot of your stocking and move on to the sweater you’ve been slogging along on for almost a FSCKING YEAR NOW…..
  Ahem. I mean, you do your best to finish but you get distracted. Yes. Yes, that’s what I meant. Sorry about the shouting. I blame the hockey game yesterday.

Speaking of the hockey game, the US and Canadian teams met for the medal final yesterday afternoon. I should say that I love hockey. I’ve been watching it for a long time now. My first introduction to hockey was visiting a friend/employer at his house after class one day. He and one of his roommates were watching a Pittsburgh Penguins game with the sound off and Verdi’s Aida set to “stun”. I was hooked. Several years later, my sister’s (now ex) fiance was also a hockey fan and got some of us really interested in the rules of the game. But I digress.

I thought it was a great game. By the end of the 1st period, it looked like it would be a Team Canada blowout. The US really came back and forced the game into overtime. Even though Canada won, it was a hell of a game. There’s no shame in losing to…well, let’s be honest, some of your teammates. Yes, that’s right. There were people facing each other who are going home to work together this week. In the case of the Avalanche, they’re working together today.

Did I knit? Oh yeah. Yes, I did. The sweater from hell, that I’ve been working on since last April, now has (almost) two sleeves. I also managed to tweet a little and have a refreshing beverage while taking a break during intermissions. I’m not posting a picture because they look remarkably like every two sleeves any knitter or crocheter has ever, ever seen. I will get it together enough to post a picture of the main part of the sweater from hell, once the sleeves are ready to insert.

So yes, I went down in a gigantic flaming fail for this year’s Ravelympics. But there’s always 2012…

Friday’s birthday/birthday party came and went. It was a pretty good party overall. Everybody except for one invitee came (she had a very good reason, and we’ll be arranging a playdate where there are less critters to contend with). The kids seemed to have a good time – no tears, and nobody seemed really eager to leave when their parents showed up.

School Girl came up with a couple of the games herself, and those went over very well indeed. One of the most successful games happened by accident last year – the Balloon Battle. This year I moved the sharpest pieces of furniture well out of the way, so nobody got hurt. The “pin-the-mic-on-Hannah” game was a good one too.

Our cake was disappointingly small, but very tasty (I hear). There was plenty of pizza and lemonade to take up the slack, so nobody went home starving. It never fails to surprise me how a group of 7-and-8-year-old girls can eat…

In short, all the kids seemed to have a great time, School Girl got a bunch of really nice presents, and it was easily the fastest 2 hours I’ve experienced in ages. And School Girl gets to do this all again next week, for a friend’s birthday/sleepover.

The next day, School Girl woke up with a hacking deep cough that made me run for the inhaler and K run for the phone. Our visit won’t be happening until next week.

…is password protected. If you’d like the password, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.