Seated: Brooklyn, Aubren, Elena and Hayden. Standing: Alyssa with Evan, Paris with Leeson, and Ethan.
We just survived four days of Thanksgiving with nine grandchildren!!!
Actually that’s not quite true. All nine were only with us from Wednesday evening at 6pm until Thursday at 8pm. The other seven were in our home for 97 hours and 38 minutes, to be exact. But, who’s counting? Delightful chaos!
It was fun – most of the time. Except when the boys, all 5 except for our son who is 38 going on 5, were playing nerf wars; running around the house with toy guns shooting light plastic/foam bullets at each other.
Until Sunday afternoon, when the oldest “5” year old got hit in the eye and ended up in ER. Twice. After spending 2 hours and 30 minutes at the first ER, he had to go to the second ER because they didn’t have the necessary equipment to examine the eye at the first. Both hospitals are owned by the same company, so you would think that the second hospital would let him go to the front of the line. No way. He had to wait another 5 or 6 hours to get any attention. It was eight hours before he arrived back at our home. 8 hours and a few hundred dollars, plus whatever his insurance company paid out on his behalf.
Waiting with him at the second hospital, I was observing what was going on. I usually take something to read when I have to wait at doctors’ offices or hospitals, but I thought this visit would be brief. Not so. After about three hours, our son wanted something to eat and walked into the main part of the hospital, which has a “Starbucks” – add another $20 to the cost of his eye injury. (And another $10 for parking!) He returned from the Starbucks exclaiming that it cost more than any Starbucks he had been to in any airport. Hospitals are clearly big business!
It looks as if his eye will be ok, but he has to go see the eye doctor every day this week to see how it’s doing.
His nephews had a lot of fun, but we may just be playing “Snakes and Ladders” next time they visit. No, I doubt it. If there’s anything they all have, it’s plenty of energy.
It’s now Tuesday and they have all been gone for almost 48 hours. However, Diane and I are both still exhausted. Even the house seems to be breathing a sigh of relief although three of the little delights live here. Only the cat had any sense – he stayed away almost all the time our visitors were here. For some reason, he’s taken to sleeping on my pillow, so if I want to take a nap, I have to fight him for the space. I could always get my own back by eating his cat food! Maybe not – it has turkey as one of the ingredients. I don’t think I could consume any more turkey for at least a year.
Our youngest grandson, Hayden, 18 months old, enjoyed all the attention from his cousins, aunts and uncles. He has a new tee-shirt with these words on it: “If Mom says No, go ask Grandpa”! I think he already knew that.
It was a great Thanksgiving and we have a lot to be thankful for, starting with the nine grandchildren (pictured above). If I had to live my life all over again, I think I would go with grandchildren before children – they are so much easier.
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AVOID THIS COMPANY
One thing we are not thankful for is roof repair companies. Or, at least one, the one we used in February to put a new roof over our bedroom. The company we used was Hanson’s, who offered us the best deal, or so we thought.
A few weeks after their work, we saw a dark shadow over our ceiling in one corner. And, some days later, the ceiling started caving in. We then saw the mold that had developed in the attic since their work on the roof. The mold had to be treated and the ceiling repaired. The water leak also ruined the heating coils in our ceiling so that source of heat had to be terminated, therefore installation of an electric heater near the floor was necessary.
After sending their foreman to examine it, and him denying it had anything to do with their roof job, they blamed it on evidence of a former leak, which happened apparently before we bought the place. Funny, it wasn’t wet up there before they gave us a new roof. And that “evidence” was on the chimney, not the roof – it would be leaking down the chimney if it were leaking at all. And it wasn’t. I had called them in because there was what looked like a small leak in a totally different part of the room.
Well, their foreman and his supervisor came back and did a “water test” and said it didn’t leak until they lifted the hose up to the former repair job on the chimney. Then they left saying it wasn’t their roof that was at fault. Well, we redid the water test ourselves when they left because we didn’t believe it. And when we just laid the hosepipe on the roof, water only going on their roof, it POURED in the ceiling. We called them and when we told them what we did – they immediately offered to give us a new roof – no apparent intent to come back and see again for themselves. So they “seemed” to accept their responsibility in this matter and I told them there were ceiling repairs and they said they would submit a claim to their insurance company. We had that hole in our ceiling for almost 6 weeks. No insurance adjuster was ever sent to see it. So I got it repaired and sent them the bill.
We could have saved on postage. They are now saying they will not pay. Of course, the ceiling is fixed now so nobody else can come out and confirm that it was their fault. They lied and that’s that. They said we called them originally because of a leak in the spot that caved in. Unbelievable! And because we did not start out this business with Hanson’s assuming they were dishonest shysters and did not document things as we should have, we now have to come up with the $7,348 to repair the shoddy work that originally cost marginally less than that. In effect, we will have to pay twice for the same work. No wonder America, with only 4% of the world’s population, has over 50% of all the world’s lawyers (which most can’t afford)!
This spoiled our Thanksgiving – their letter of refusal arrived on the Monday of Thanksgiving Week.
It led to the following thoughts.
I remember thirty years ago, when we lived in England, I needed a chiropractor and the nearest one was about 30 miles away, across meandering country roads. Beautiful scenery, but a long drive.
I was surprised to find the chiropractor was an American. I asked him why he was living in the UK. His response was that business in America was crooked. I came to America’s defense, pointing out that there were crooks in England, too. “Yes,” he replied, “there are some crooked companies in England, but in America they are all crooked.”
A more authoritative comment comes from a PBS documentary shown about twenty years ago. The program compared German business practices with American to see what made Germany such a successful exporting country.
.The conclusion was interesting. When a German company makes a sale, they consider it the start of a beautiful relationship with the customer; in the US, the sale is the end of the relationship. That’s certainly true of Hanson’s and of some others we have experienced over the years.
When we lived in Ghana, a local businessman there made a similar observation. He bought his veterinary products from Germany because every few months they would send somebody down to make sure everything was going right. American companies, he said, won’t do that – once the sale is made, they just want to go home.
When PM Margaret Thatcher was once asked to stop foreign nations from selling their cars in the UK; her response was to encourage the foreign car companies, until British companies learned from them how to do better.
It’s all rather sobering, but I would not be doing Hanson’s, or their future clients, any favors by covering up their shoddy work and blatant lying!
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TOTAL MADNESS FROM BRITAIN AND AMERICA
Don’t call female pupils girls or ladies because it reminds them of their gender, head teachers are told
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5104579/Heads-warned-not-use-gendered-terms-schools.html
New York phases out ‘ladies and gentlemen’ greetings on the subway in favor of politically correct gender-neutral terms including ‘passengers’ and ‘riders’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5070439/New-York-phases-ladies-gentlemen.html
Reminder: “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
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Poland’s Christian [Catholic] Government Votes to Phase Out Sunday Shopping So Families Can Spend More Time Together 28 Nov 2017 * Breitbart
Poland’s parliament has voted to slowly begin the process of abolishing Sunday shopping to allow workers to spend more time with their families.
The law has been passed by the sejm — equivalent to the British House of Commons or the U.S. House of Representatives — but must be approved by the Senate and the president, both of which could veto the decision. Although the major change — which reverses decades of movement on turning Sunday from a holy day of rest into an ordinary day of shopping and work — has been criticised as putting jobs at risk, the government hopes it will improve quality of life for ordinary Poles.
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TEHRAN IS WINNING THE WAR FOR CONTROL OF THE MIDDLE EASTJonathan Spyer, Middle East Forum 11/21
The confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is taking place across a swath of the Middle East in which, over the last decade, states have partially ceased to function — Iraq and Lebanon — or collapsed completely, as in the case of Syria and Yemen. A war over the ruins has taken place in each country, with Riyadh and Tehran arrayed on opposing sides in all of them.
Throughout the region, the advantage is very clearly with the Iranians.
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IRAN COMPLETES ITS LAND BRIDGE TO THE GOLAN Jonathan Spyer, Middle East Forum, 11/18
In the east of Syria, the so-called race to Abu Kamal between the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces and the forces of Iran, the Assad regime and Russia appears to be close to conclusion – in the latter’s favor. Regime forces moved into the town last Thursday. They were then expelled by an unexpected Islamic State counterattack this week, and have now retreated to positions about two kilometers outside of Abu Kamal.
The Islamic State move, however, has the flavor of a last roll of the dice. Clearly, the Sunni jihadis will lose the strategic border town in the days ahead.
The US-supported SDF fighters are covering ground rapidly to the north. But the forward units of the mainly Kurdish force remain about 25 kilometers north of Abu Kamal, in the area of the Kishma oil field.
Hezbollah can now be reinforced by Iran’s other regional clients in a future conflict with Israel.
Iran is a regional super-power in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is engaged in resisting Iran’s hegemony on a number of fronts. Iran now dominates an arc of Shia Islam which includes Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – an arc that covers the same territories as the biblical King of the North in Daniel 11. This would not have been possible without US intervention in Iraq 14 years ago. Note: these nations have Russian support. ISIS, a violent and reactionary force within Sunni Islam, is largely defeated, making the forces of Shia Islam even more powerful. This poses a serious threat to Israel. MR
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Headline in the Times of Israel: IRAN VOWS TO PUT EUROPE IN MISSILE RANGE IF THREATENED (Times of Israel 11/26)
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FRANCE SUBMITS TO TERRORISM, MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM Guy Milliere, Gatestone Institute, 11/28
- In France, since 2012, more than 250 people were killed by Islamic terrorism -more than in all other European countries combined.
- No other country in Europe has experienced so many attacks against Jews. France is a country where Jews are murdered because they are Jews.
- “Muslim believers know very well what is happening. Only a minority is violent. But as a whole, they do not ignore that their birthrate is such that one day, everything here will be theirs.” — Luc Ravel, Archbishop of Strasbourg
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TIME TO DRAIN THE SWAMP – ALSO IN EUROPE Geert Wilders, Dutch nationalist politician, 11/26
- Our democracies in the Western half of Europe have been subverted. Their goal is no longer to do what the people want. On the contrary, our political elites often do exactly the opposite. Our parliaments promote open-door policies that the majority of the people reject. Our governments sell out sovereignty to the EU against the will of the people. Our rulers welcome ever more Islam, although the majority of the people oppose it.
- Our democracies have become fake democracies. They are multi-party dictatorships, ruled by groups of establishment parties…. The establishment parties control everything, not just the politicians in their pay, but also the top brass of the civil service, the mainstream media, even the courts…. They call us “populists” because we stand for what the people want. They even drag us to court.
- We need to show that Europe’s streets are our streets, that we want to stay who and what we are, and do not want to be colonized by Islam. Europe belongs to us!
“Next month, I will be visiting Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. I have been invited to speak to a group of Czech patriots. The Czechs are a freedom loving people. In 2011, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, they named a street in Prague after this great American president and freedom fighter.
“This fact reminded me of a shameful event in my home town of The Hague, the seat of the Dutch Parliament and the government of the Netherlands. Look for a Ronald Reagan Street in The Hague and you will find none. A proposal in 2011 to name a street in The Hague after Reagan ran into fierce political opposition. Leftist parties, such as Labor, the Greens and the liberal D66 party, argued that naming a street in honor of Reagan would “do the image of the city no good.” The whole affair ended in a disgraceful political compromise. Last year, a short stretch of a local bicycle path was named the “Reagan and Gorbachev Lane.”
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UNBELIEVABLE BBC
Zimbabwe has officially declared 21 February to be Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day, thereby making the former president’s birthday a public holiday, the Herald newspaper reports.
Mr. Mugabe was the President of Zimbabwe for over 37 years. Under his period of rule, the country, once one of the most successful economies in Africa, collapsed economically. The army forced him out of office last week. Major change, badly needed, does not look likely. MR
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TIMES HAVE CHANGED
In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated, choosing the American woman he loved over the throne of what was then the British Empire. The parliaments of the UK and the Commonwealth Dominions, did not want Edward to marry a woman who still had two living former husbands. The King, titular Head of the Church of England, could not marry a divorcee.
In 1955, the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret was not allowed to marry Group Captain Townsend, a divorced equerry in the royal household.
Sixty years later, Prince Harry is to marry another divorced American woman, Meghan Markle. Nobody is ruffled at all by this. She is also biracial and could, as Ebony magazine pointed out, give birth to a black baby.
Times have certainly changed. Of course, Britain itself has changed, with one in ten cohabiting couples living with a member of a different ethnic group.
Divorce has become more common and more acceptable, even in the royal family. Princess Margaret divorced her husband over forty years ago; Princess Anne followed. Charles and Diana divorced more than twenty years ago. He went on to marry a divorced woman, Camilla Parker-Bowles, though the wedding was a civil ceremony in a Registry Office.
Having said all the above, the new royal couple seem well suited and very happy. Ms. Markle, who has been living in Toronto, seemed to understand the importance of the 53-nation Commonwealth and the royal family’s constitutional role within the organization. This came out during a televised interview with the couple.
She will not carry the title “Princess” as she is not of royal blood. As Prince William and his wife are the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, so Harry and Meghan will have a similar title. The wedding is scheduled for May. It will no doubt lift everybody’s spirits as they go through the challenging process of Brexit.
The latest news on that is the divorce bill. 55 billion euros is being offered by London, but is said to be too little by Brussels. As the UK has been subsidizing the EU for decades, they shouldn’t have to pay one penny. But the British government of Theresa May does not have the confidence to stand up to the Bullies of Brussels!
Fortunately, the wedding will not cost the tax-payer anything (except for police security) and should help boost the country’s income through tourism.
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