I'm in a fog this morning. One of those days when I can't wake up, which in me is an indication that I'm coming down with a cold. So, I'm not really alert and conscious yet today. Which means this post could be a totally boring, rambling bit of nonsense. Then again it could be a totally revealing episode in the ongoing saga of Sherry's Cherries. Well, it could be if there was such a thing. How lengthy a saga can you get out of drinking coffee in my creamer instead of creamer in my coffee? I screwed up and put two spoons of creamer into it instead of one. In case your interested, it tastes like liquid fat. I could throw it out and pour another one if I wasn't so lazy today. Unfortunately, I'd have to make another pot. This is the last cup of coffee available, and the taste of liquid fat isn't that bad. All right, sip number two made me change my mind, we are waiting for another pot of coffee to drip. You might not be, but I am and if you are reading this drivel, you need another cup of coffee, ergo, you are waiting with me. There I go...being judgemental again. For all I know, you may be waiting, if you're waiting, for me to make sense. That will be a very long wait because I don't really intend on making sense. Sort of the opposite of...you drive me crazy...short drive. I'm waiting for you to make sense...long wait, coffee's not done yet.





In between admiring the view out my window and sipping liquid fat while I'm waiting for the coffee, I was thinking. I said to someone that the person I know best in the world is me, but is that a fact? Do we really know ourselves on any real level, or do we pick and choose the attributes of ourselves that make the most sense to us and assume something based on that? Yesterday someone said they were used to me calling it like it is. Do I really do that or do I call it like I believe it to be, and am I right? I don't believe I'm judgemental, yet there is every evidence that I am. I don't believe I'm small minded or petty, yet there is some little spark of those attributes in some of what I say. As a person, I say I'm a work in progress, but how much and what kind of progress can I make if I truly don't know myself? Who I believe myself to be will determine where I feel that I need to make progress, and if I'm not really who I believe myself to be what kind of progress can I make? To draw a conclusion one must have considered all the evidence, not just the evidence that points in the direction that I prefer my conclusion to be. Obviously the coffee's done...I'm making sense, which does not mean I plan on drawing any conclusions today.





Today I'm in a whimsical mood. Cutesy little graphics and artwork are appealing to me. I just had a case of the warm fuzzies over the fact that my cat is stretched out on the floor in front of the woodstove soaking up the heat.
Awwww, how cuuuuuuute! went through my mind, followed by a smile. The fog is beginning to lift, now that I've given up drinking liquid fat and am actually enjoying a cup of coffee, and I don't have a scratchy throat or runny nose which means I may not be coming down with a cold. There you go, another proof that I may not be that great at self diagnostics. The facts are not yet all in, but they are as follows:

1. My head is in the clouds.
2. I can't make up my mind to anything.
3. I don't care if I'm not making sense.
4. Really silly stuff is appealing to me.
5. I need another cup of coffee.
6. The sky is blue.
7. I'm seeing more green than white out my window.
8. I'm not dressed yet, and I don't care.
9. The breakfast dishes are not done yet, and I don't care.
10. The calendar says the first day of spring was last week.

Conclusion: Spring is really here and I have a good old fashioned case of spring fever. I think I'll go shopping. That is, after I get dressed, do the breakfast dishes and whatever.

My ancestors came from Germany in the middle 1800's and settled in an area that was, at that time, part of the town of Boonville. In the latter part of the 19th century it became more settled and it's residents decided it no longer wanted to be a part of something, they wanted to be something, so they formed a township and renamed themselves Ava. There isn't much there anymore, A sawmill, a small cafe which has a real hard time staying open, a Methodist Church and a post office. It was predominantly a farm community in it's heyday, and it's one claim to fame is that it's the burial place of Nathaniel Foster who purportedly was the prototype for Natty Bumpo.
There is some evidence supporting that claim, and at one time it was the feather in the cap of a growing, independent community. Why the community did not grow any bigger than it did I don't know. Somewhere in time it appears that progress passed it by and left behind a community rich in land mass and little else.

There used to be a general store. That building is still there. Someone, I suppose the owner, uses it for storage. It hasn't seen a coat of paint in... I don't know when. It sits silently at the only intersection in the town and whenever I see it I wonder what tales it could tell. My ancestor Valentine Pohl owned a General Store in the late 1800's, was this the building he made his living in? I suppose I could ask someone, but it really isn't necessary. Old buildings should be allowed their aura of mystery. They should be the silent keepers of secrets hinted at and given flesh by the fertile imaginations of their residents. I was sitting here trying to remember where the post office is. I can't remember exactly, but I do believe it's just past the Methodist Church on the left before you get to the intersection. Another old building with secrets. Many secrets that are coming to light in a courtroom in Utica, New York.

Margaret Bork, age 62, stand accused of murdering her husband by poisoning. The State alleges that she gave him a glass of lemonade sweetened with antifreeze. Quite a lot of antifreeze since he had enough ethylene glycol to equal a 4 to 6 ounce glass of antifreeze left in his system when he died 24 hours after becoming sick. She's much in the news, Margaret Bork is, and I've had a bit of time to study her. She looks familiar to me on some level that I can't quite explain. Every evening at 6 I find myself asking myself where could I possibly know her from? A fleeting memory of something that I can't quite grasp before it's gone. I have no clue, yet I believe I have encountered her somewhere. Craft fair perhaps? Who knows?

She's a rather sturdy looking gray haired lady that appears to have some very firm ideas. She looks back at the camera, unflinchingly, almost with defiance. Very calm, emotionless unless she smiles, and yes, she does smile. There is something not quite natural in that smile. Secretive, doesn't reach her eyes type smile. Hubby says she's a bitch. Men know these things, but not usually until after they've lived with the bitch for awhile. I am not sure what she is, because there is something there that eludes me. Something I can't quite define.

Her husband was 12 years younger than she was and he worked for the Ava post office as a rural mail carrier. He wasn't the only mail carrier there, the other one is a woman. The other woman in this rather sordid tale. The woman he's loved for the last 5 years and wanted to leave his wife for. A younger woman, younger than his wife anyway. Margaret knew about her, the courtroom is full of tales about the threats she made to the other woman, the mistreatment the other woman received at the capable hands of Margaret Bork. Very capable apparently. So capable that she was not going to stand by and take this kind of treatment without retaliation. Possibly capable of quenching her beloved husbands thirst, on a warm day in the fall, with a glass of lemonade spiked with antifreeze? Yes, I think so.

I don't understand the motivation behind her act. I've never hated someone that much. She says she loved him. I don't believe that. Nothing in my emotional makeup would allow me to hang on to someone that didn't want to be there. There is no part of me that would think..."If I can't have him no one else will either." There is no part of me that would allow me to take the life of another human being intentionally, and there is no part of me that could live with myself if I had done so accidentally. I would be unable to sit quietly, dry eyed, at a defense table and listen to the details of agony caused to someone else by my actions. Yet she sits there, shows no emotion, and smiles for the camera.

The prosecution has rested it's case yesterday. Today the defense begins it's presentation. I wish this was a trial televised on Court TV. I would dearly love to hear the evidence presented on her behalf. I want to hear in it's entirety the evidence the defense thinks will prove his client innocent of any wrongdoing. I would like to think that this woman is something other than the monster I believe her to be. I want to know what, in this woman's soul, would drive her to murder her husband rather than just let him leave. Not one single nurse, either in the emergency room, or on the floor where her husband died has any sympathy for her. They have all testified that she didn't care. When she was told that her husband wasn't going to make it she gave them a rather off hand "Oh well, I expected it" kind of statement. She never shed a tear, nor did she show a single bit of emotion. He suffered a painful horrible death that was neither quick nor clean. At least they didn't see her smile.

This morning I was leaving a comment on another bloggers post, and before I clicked submit I looked up at the ads. As a premium member I don't see ads on pages, except for the comment box page. I thought at first it was a blessing, but an ad caused this post. Which is something, because I didn't have anything to say, and that might have been a good thing, but then again maybe not. The ad was an offer to find out if I or any of my friends are stupid. There's a quiz for that you know? I didn't know you had to take a quiz to find out if this was an attribute you possessed. In some cases, that particular attribute is pretty obvious. Then again, maybe it's just that some things are confusing?





On the other hand, there are those things you see that just make you stop and think. After carefully considering everything you just scratch your head, and wonder if you're supposed to laugh or cry.







I didn't take the quiz, I all ready know the answer.

At the time that I am writing this, these are my statistics, 15,162 visitors, 338 posts, 8750 comments. The comment total includes both other comments to me and my response to those comments. Actual comment total which doesn't include me would be 4375. I have been here since April 26, 2006 so we see that I have not been here a full year. This morning I looked at blog lists and discovered I am number 32 on the "Most Popular" and number 7 on the "Most Active". Take that Dr, G, who says I'm not active enough? Out of 22,000 or so active blogs I'm number 7 on the "Most Active" list. Something tells me this is not what she means, but I can dream can't I? I asked myself this morning, as I gathered all these "statistics" for this post, what does this all mean? I see the number of visitors to my blog on a daily basis and the only time I pay attention is if Dad is asking me how many readers have I had, or if I notice what I think is a really big jump in the numbers. Dad hasn't asked me in a couple of weeks because he's too sick to care. I haven't bothered to look, until this morning, because knowing the numbers of my statistics isn't going to help him live longer.

My position on the Most Popular or the Most Active lists doesn't make me younger, better looking, richer, or thinner. My position on those lists doesn't get my house cleaned, my dishes done, my Hubby fed, the washing done, the grocery shopping done or any other important household chore done. Those lists don't kiss me, hug me, or sleep next to me at night. Those lists don't have texture like fur, and I can't cuddle or pet them. They don't have color pleasing to the eye, or music soothing to the soul. They don't have knowledge, poetry, passion, nor do they have ideas. They are numbers on an otherwise blank screen. They do not tell you who I am in any real way. They are not going to help me or any of my family live a longer, trouble free life.

So, doing this post might tell you that sometimes I'm an idiot. Why would I say this about myself? Largely because I'm doing this post in the hopes that someone will listen, that someone will see something they haven't seen before. That others will realize that blogging is not a competition. It isn't about doing posts that are better than other bloggers posts, it's about doing posts that are better than others of your own posts. It's about honing skills, learning new things, being exposed to new ideas. It's about being the best you can be because you want to be that for yourself. It's about defining ourselves as individuals. It's about talent and creativity. It's about having a place to vent emotions and fears that might otherwise cause serious amounts of stress. Competition equals stress. There are enough real world problems that we deal with every day, why would we want to create more stress by obsessing over statistics? We will arrive at deaths door fast enough without that.

I was born, I pay taxes, and I will die. This is my lot in life. Nothing changes that. In between birth and death, hopefully I will have had a full and enjoyable life. How that happens for each individual depends on a number of things, it might depend on family and friends. It might depend on having a job you really love. It might depend on having sufficient money left after taxes to take a trip to someplace exotic, or at least different. What it will not depend on is having 15,162 visitors, 338 posts, 8750 comments, being number 32 on the "Most Popular" list or number 7 on the "Most Active" list. Depend on that.