I am thinking of trying something new. To support local (and not so local) artists (given the state of our economy and the fact that some of them suffer worst and first), I am going to try to purchase as many handmade items as I can to give as Christmas gifts. We’ll see how it works out. I know that there will be some things that it just won’t work for (and I am really big on giving books as gifts, so that’s an issue), but where I can do it I am going to make a change.

Whenever I find a good vendor with nice products I will be posting about them here. Probably won’t be posting the gift haul until after the 25th of December though

Speaking of gift giving holidays, today I am going to lunch with coworkers for what is known around our office as “white trash Wednesday” to celebrate my birthday (it’s Friday, November 14). I know what restaurant it happens at, but I have no idea the reason behind the name. Afraid it could be terribly offensive.

Today I wanted to find a photo of my grandfather to put up here, but sadly, I do not have one. My mom has some at home, but right now I don’t have access to post any. He served in the Navy for a number of years and fought in Korea. I never knew him though. He died when my mother was 15 and as one of the few constants in her life, I know that it must have been terribly traumatic.

Calling him “grandfather” is terribly formal for me and for this part of the country it can even be seen as callous or rude not to have a more familiar pet name for a grandparent. And that’s a strange thought. I have no idea what I would have called him. I asked Mom once before and I believe she mentioned something like “Daddy ____” (a lot of folks in her family tag “daddy” onto the front of an older man’s name). He had a few names though. Joseph Weldon “Leon” Kincade. Most folks called him Leon, but my grandmother called him “Joe” (go figure, her name was Lillian Louise and everyone called her “Sally”–which is interesting because when I was younger a man we went to church with started calling me Sally and it stuck. He never met or knew anything of my grandmother).

What I do know of my grandfather is what Mom has told me. He did his best to provide for and take care of his family and he served his country well. He was a pilot and once he was out of the service he flew commercially (I believe). That’s why my mom was born in Colorado and not in Texas.

I hear that women often end up marrying men that share traits with their fathers (of course, in cases of deadbeats or abusers it can be either this way or running as far to the other end of the spectrum as you can get). Piecing what I know of him together with what I see in my dad, I can deduce that he was a faithful, dutiful, responsible man, who wanted his children to have the very best chance in life. Without divulging too much (I believe I’ve talked about my mom’s family before, but I can’t recall), I can say that my grandfather made some tremendous sacrifices for the sake of his children. Some of the decisions he was forced to make…well, I cannot imagine the pain he probably went through in choosing to let someone else take care of his children. But instead of being selfish he gave them a new life and a chance.

And I think that, while a lot of that decency was instilled in him when he was a child, a good portion of who he turned out to be can be attributed to the training and discipline he received while serving our country. Without that presence of mind and selflessness I am not sure that he would have made the decision to give his children a chance at a better life–a decision that brought my mother to Oklahoma, through the doors of a church, and eventually to an altar where she would marry a man that reflected the decency and kind heart she’d seen in her own father.

Friday, I had all of my wisdom teeth removed. They were slightly impacted and required surgery to take them out. As you know if you have been following my blog or any other presence of mine online, it has been an ordeal to get these suckers out of my mouth. God is good though and the teeth are gone. Not only that, but it appears that my time spent suffering counted as “time served” on the pain-o-meter, because I have had no pain whatsoever post-surgery.

Throw your shoes at me. I know. So far I have talked to two people who shared the same type of experience (one was my grandmother—who only had one removed, so I’m not even sure if that counts—and one was a coworker of mine). Almost everyone else has a horror story to share.

I scheduled this appointment back when I got this new job and waited months to get the procedure done in hopes that my new insurance would cover a good portion of it (they did!). The doctor I’d planned to use was going to be on vacation for a long time, so I settled on another gentleman in his office. His picture on the practice’s website has him in some sort of military uniform. Immediately, I am imagining some gory, front lines medical work, but I tried not to dwell too much on the thoughts swirling in my mind. And am I ever glad that I let that go. This man was an artist. There is no way I can chalk up having no pain to my high tolerance for the stuff (because I definitely do not have that). My teeth must have been ready to go and this guy was the fellow to take them out. Thank you, doctor, for your superb work.

We (Mom & me) arrived at the office a few minutes before 8:00 a.m. and were ushered into the waiting area where we filled out a few forms, then I was led to a room near the back. Already the chair I was seated in was much more comfortable than the last time I’d tried to get this done. They hooked me up to all the pulse monitors, clamped things on my arms, and prepared the nitrous.

At this point they put the contraption over my nose and instructed me on how to breathe. Then someone asked if I’d ever had it before. “No,” I answered and after that things got a lot slower. I felt like I was dreaming. I listened to the conversations between the nurses. One had a husband she was worried might be redeployed. The other was complaining about a baby shower. And then I was dreaming that I was ballroom dancing. I opened my eyes once, then quickly closed them again. I had no desire to know what was going on around me. Better to be oblivious and out of it. For what seemed like the tenth time, someone asked me if I was feeling the nitrous. “Mmhmm…”

A cold hand grabbed my arm and the owner asked, “How are we doing today?” The doctor. “Oh, I’m fine. How are you doing?” (I imagine it took 5 minutes for those six words to come out of my mouth) He sprayed something on my arm, rubbed it down with what I thought was alcohol, and I knew what was about to happen. Before I could worry about anything or concentrate enough to listen for my heart rate to increase, the IV was inserted and he was talking again.

“Did that hurt?”

“Just a little.”

“But nothing obscenely awful?”

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“Well, good. Got any questions before we get started?”

I giggled, “Well, you waited a little late to ask, didn’t you?” I heard some nurses laugh. “No, I’m fine.”

“Do you have any allergies?”

“No.”

“Has your medical history changed any since your last visit?”

“No.”

“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”

“No, but go tell my mom I am. She’ll have a heart attack.”

Then a nurse said, “Yay, we can use the defibrillator!”

I don’t know how much time passed here, but I got the feeling that they weren’t expecting me to speak when I did. “Hey, wait. What did you poke my arm with?” He explained that it was the IV and that I’d be feeling something soon. It wasn’t very long before I felt a warm, tingling up a vein in my arm. When the feeling finally reached my brain, I was out.

The next thing I remember is one of the nurses helping me into a wheelchair and wheeling me outside toward a ramp. She asked which car was ours and I pointed to my mom’s Tahoe. She said, “There’s no one in there.” I said, “I don’t care. That’s our car.” I was shivering and my teeth were chattering, so she wheeled me back in until my mom was out in the car. As the nurse pushed me around the back of the vehicle I said something about Sarah Palin, pointing out the bumper stickers on the Tahoe, and telling her that we voted for McCain. I’m sure she appreciated my sermon.

Once I got in the car the first thing I did was put on my glasses. As anyone who wears glasses or contacts knows, you want that “I can breathe” feeling that comes from putting on your spectacles whenever you have any of your other senses numbed. (I’ve heard that the rest of your senses don’t “turn on” all the way until you have ALL of them on.) The second thing I did, which I now realize took me 10 minutes according to the time on my phone, was send out the following text message:

9:01 a.m. I am done and pretty coherent. Mouth full of gauze. Need my pain meds.

I hope those that received it enjoyed it

When I got home all I wanted to do was replace the gauze in my mouth, get a drink, take an oxycodone, and take a nap. I couldn’t speak for a few hours, but once the intense bleeding had stopped, I was going. Dad said that the medicine made me really goofy and chatty. I couldn’t tell that it did anything at all. I will tell you though, that I have not had any pain at all until today (and that’s minor). Now I’m feeling sick from small amount of blood that I am swallowing during the day. It’s been right on the dot at 5:45 every evening that I start feeling nauseated. Working all day has been pretty interesting, as the phones started getting very difficult to answer after just a few hours. Gums and inside of mouth are now swollen. I’ve never been so excited to go home to an ice pack.

*Because I keep it really real around here (oh please, I hate that saying, but I couldn’t help throwing it in there—how else could you describe my appearance?) I am including a picture of myself that I took with my phone, about 20 minutes after surgery. See? I think about blogging all the time. Even when they were putting me under, I remember thinking that something one of the nurses said was blogworthy. Too bad I can’t recall what it was.

The Aftermath: “She’s worth fighting for.”

h/t The Anchoress

• “I seek and rely on a higher authority.” Could not agree more.
• Balding white boys, there is no need to fear. America has not forgotten you and you WILL be represented in this White House!
• “I’m not a fan of messengers–I’m a fan of messages.” And I’m a fan of Greg Gutfeld.
• Flip-flop.
• “Sarah Palin Frontrunner for 2012” – girl, I am with you all the way. And if she’s running in 2048, after I evaluate where she stands on some things, she may just have my vote as well.
• Hey, Nume? Remember that thing I told you about? TRUE.
• Clearly, disagreeing with you means that they were not thinking, right, Nancy?
• This is one of the sweetest, heartbreaking Post Secrets I’ve ever read.
• An open message to the GOP leaders: “Be the orchestra.“
• Sometimes you need a nice day outside. This weekend was an inside one for me, but one full of rest that did me good.
• You, my dear, are gorgeous and classy. Stay that way. I think we would be pals, Miss Meghan McCain.
• I don’t trust people who take shots at elderly women.
• It’s really nice to have people do everything for you and get you through a tough time. He should try getting his wisdom teeth removed!
• She’s a doll. And kinda like my blogging mom, only younger
• Sexy TV shows linked to teen pregnancy. Duh.
• You can always count on Nume to let everyone know what’s worth seeing in the theater, in fact, Fireproof was one that was suggested a while back. Now Ed Morrissey of Hot Air says, “Those who want to see theaters featuring Christian values and uplifting stories of faith, forgiveness, and love should support Fireproof before it disappears from the big screen.”
• Chinese dragon tattoos–we were 14 at the same time and I am trying to remember if these were cool then, Leah…? And stay tuned. I found some poetry I wrote in 8th grade.
• Since I wasn’t around, I’ll leave it to Jay Tea to show us the similarities between when Carter went into office and our current situation as Obama takes his seat behind the desk. I wonder if presidents have desk toys?
• Cindy has got some FREE FOOD for you! And some that isn’t quite free, but close enough.

Aside: Whenever I was on the painkillers and still coming down off the anesthesia, I starred some random links on my Google Reader. For the life of me I cannot figure out why I thought some of these things (that I am not including) were worth blogging about.

And finally, I would rather be hated for something I did, than loved for something that I would have no part of.

Not so much cartoons (again), but this episode of Sesame Street is so memorable to me because around the same time, I got a baby brother!

Hopefully I’ll be able to post something else by the end of today. If my texts are being accepted by Twitter (they weren’t on Thursday), maybe there will be some updates.

That’s not the Spanish translation, but that’s what I call them.

I am not actually here this morning. As you read this I am most likely under the influence of some very good anesthesia, getting a chunk of bone removed from my skull. I KNOW. So much fun, right? Right. The posts this weekend were all written ahead of time, so that I could keep up with NaBloPoMo while I am out of it. Things will be back to normal when I return home (my parents are kindly taking care of me right now) on Monday.

Go read Kick the Anthill while I’m gone.

For your patience, please. I have a lot of email waiting in the inbox that you guys sent yesterday and I was hoping to get to it before leaving to go to my parents’ this evening, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Rest assured that I will be answering each of you as soon as I am able. The reason I say that is because tomorrow it finally happens.

If you don’t know what “it” is, care to guess?

I am not one for airing dirty laundry. That’s why I don’t name names. They know who they are and how they deal with my words is their own business.

This morning I woke up to a few pieces of hate mail, comments, and texts from people that were nothing less than rude and inflammatory. Honestly, aren’t you supposed to be happy today instead of accusing me of being WRONG to express my opinions, unChristian, and rich (umm…what?)?

Most of it came from high school friends and people I don’t see on a regular basis, but who I had still considered somewhat close. Well, you know, they are making their own decisions. I might think that they are foolish to continue hurling insults at someone who would never do that to them, but whatev. They are adults and they can make up their minds about how they will behave.

I am going to leave you with what I posted on my Myspace blog this morning, right after I was bombarded with these lovely messages that were sent overnight, and right before I called my mom and cried, because people who I had considered some of my closest friends were writing me off because I am a conservative.

Over the past few days, and overnight, I have had people I thought were friends attack me for how I voted, what I believe, and APPARENTLY for being rich.

Last time I checked, it was a free country and I have the right to vote and talk about who I am voting for, whenever and however I please.

IF YOU KNEW ANYTHING about me (your friend, right?) you know that I am a Christian, that there are some issues that are very important to me and that I follow what the Word of God has to say on them. Not my freaking pocket book. Oh, you think you’sa gon’ getchoo some money now, honey? Have fun!

And about the rich thing–I live on my own, BELOW the poverty line for the state of Oklahoma. Want to know what that means? LOOK IT UP. I am about to marry a man who is going to be a teacher and I am going to be a teacher. Not exactly rolling in it over here. So you need to zip it on that front.

If you are going to judge, take it elsewhere. I decided what I did based on facts, my belief in Christ, and prayer. I DIDN’T decide who I was voting for based on the color of someone’s skin, what the mainstream media was telling me, how much money someone said that I’d receive if I voted for them, and certainly not because the only reason I could find not to vote for someone is because I “hate” them or because their VP candidate has “less experience” — which still equaled more than what your candidate for PRESIDENT had.

I am done. If you are choosing to burn bridges, I will let you. You have hurt me deeply and if you are going to choose to let this be the thing that ends your friendship with me, go right ahead. If this is the way you choose to operate, you are a petty, little person, who does not know their own mind and instead follows the masses into an orgy for a man.

Stop it with the hate mail. If your problem with me is that big you need to go ahead and remove me from your friends.

I’ll be praying for you, because I love you, you are my friends, and I don’t really understand why you are insisting on treating me in this manner. But I want you to understand that I am not going to beg or fight for your friendship. There are a couple of you who have already chosen to walk away. GO. I don’t need this.

As we look toward the next four years it will be good for everyone (myself included) to remember that we need to work together, whether or not the outcome of yesterday’s election has made you happy or sad.

And so I leave you with a lesson I learned on the street.

However…

“We do not apologize for our beliefs. We do not re-brand them, re-form them, or relinquish them. We defend them.”

This is only the second presidential election I have had the privilege to participate in, but I have had an interest in politics from a very young age. When I was in 3rd grade and was nominated by my classmates to be the Halloween Carnival Princess candidate I had to fill out a form where I let the student body know what my favorite color was, favorite animal, favorite subject, and what I wanted to be when I grew up. “The First Female President of the United States of America,” I wrote. I remember a giggle or two bubbling up from the crowd as I stood on the stage.

But I meant it.

Every year in school I was a class officer and involved in student government. Eventually I was elected to serve as Student Council president my senior year. I went on to be chosen to represent my school at Girls State, a mock government program (a week-long camp) that teaches young women about how various roles in the government work. What that made me see was that there was no way I had the patience to sit through hours and hours of legislation (I won my race and was elected state representative for my district), especially whenever the stinking governor (a “Sooner”—the equivalent of a Democrat at the Oklahoma Girls State…“Boomers” were the Republicans) would veto all of our bills except for the one about picking up dog poop. Anyway. More importantly, it sparked a fire in me that lives to this day. I remember leaning over to a friend during an evening full of speeches by some state politicians and saying, “I think I’m a Republican.” (Look out world…)

November does something to me. It is the culmination of years of work for a lot of people and the air is electric with hope—real hope. Not just some campaign slogan. The hope that your candidate will carry this election and go on to lead our country into the next few years.

We’ve established that I am passionate about it, right? Good. Something else I should say is that while I am loud, proud, and very Right here on my blog, I am not some rub-it-in-your-face loud-mouth in real life. Yes, I will get into it and talk for hours with fellow conservatives, but I am in no mood for a debate, ever. Honestly, if you are a liberal, I know where you stand. I have liberal friends and family. I don’t talk politics with them because I believe so deeply in what I believe, that it would be impossible for me to keep things separate and peaceful. Plain as that. Close-minded? No. Made-up-my-mind, “I Have Decided To Follow Jesus (No Turning Back, No Turning Back)”? YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Point: I am not confrontational. There is not a bone in my body, not even the tiny ones that make up my pretty little fist, that likes to confront anyone.

This election cycle has brought me to my knees with an onslaught of verbal and emotional attacks, with even a bit of vandalism. The worst of which happened last week.

I would rather not go into great detail, because if the person who did this to me happened to read my blog, the last thing I would want would be to offend them further than I (apparently) already have.

A long-time friend of mine chose to step out of my life and a very important part of it, because I am not voting for Barack Obama. This person could not explain to me why they were voting for Sen. Obama, nor why I should. I am at a loss. Honestly, I chalk it up to ignorance. This person literally knows nothing about Obama’s stances on any issue, only that he’s made it sound as if they will receive substantial tax breaks if he is in office.

Now, dear, you get to find out.

And now, sir, you get the chance. Go out. Do well. I am patient and will be waiting right here in four years.