M and I were called to go to my father-in-law’s last night. Right in the middle of making the dinner that was going to be my #GoJunkFood post. His aide didn’t think he was going to last the hour it took us to drive up here.

I’m blogging about Politics, Religion, and Abortion today. If the topics make you queasy, come back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have another recipe.

I have no patience for extremists of any stripe. Period. If you can only see the world in terms of black and white, “right” and “wrong”, you have no place in my personal universe. Please don’t cry.

The cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller in church last Sunday in Kansas, at the hands of a so-called “Christian“, pushed me over the edge. Dr. Tiller, in case you hadn’t heard, was one of like 3 doctors in the country who would perform late-term (last trimester) abortions. I have no children and I’ve never had an abortion, so why should I care? Because I’m a woman. Because I’m an American.

Because abortion is legal in this country and unless you’re a pregnant woman, it’s none of anyone’s business. Any woman who sought Dr. Tiller’s help was already in desperate straits, and should not have been subjected to the terrorist methods of abortion opponents. You have no right to interfere in private medical decisions between a woman and her doctor. You have no right to terrorize medical people in the performance of their obligations to their patients. You don’t know the inner turmoil of a woman in that position. You don’t know her mind, or her medical condition. And by God, you have no right to kill a man because you don’t like his profession and call it “God’s Will”.

The hypocrisy in this is a stench not to be tolerated. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If men got pregnant and had to carry children in their bodies for 9 months, this wouldn’t be an issue. Religions run by men have never been friends to women. Women are either subjugated and treated like chattel, or raised on pedestals so high the air is too thin to breathe. In either case, women are considered incapable of making their own decisions.

It is historical fact that the Christian New Testament was assembled by the pagan Emperor Constantine in 325 CE and the “Council of Nicea” in an effort to keep the burgeoning faithful from killing each other over conflicting dogma and destabilizing the empire. Many texts and “gospels” written by other apostles and leaders of different sects were tossed out and destroyed as “divisive”. This was when the concepts of Jesus as “God” and Mary as “Virgin Mother of God” were canonized. By a bunch of guys sitting around a table, half of whom didn’t believe it themselves. You base your faith and “moral authority” on this.

You say that you’re protecting life. I’m sorry, that should be Life, with a capital L. Really? I have never met a “Right to Lifer” that wasn’t also in favor of the death penalty. So you take another life as retribution? That’s when you choose the Old Testament “eye for an eye” thing, right? I do not respect your position, and can not until you pick one. Either all Life is sacred, or it isn’t. Guess what? You don’t get to choose. We are a nation of laws. You don’t like the law? Protest. Not at women’s health centers, but at your legislators’ doors.

I’ll repeat myself yet again: If every single one of you who believes that you are saving children’s lives by this kind of emotional and physical violence commits to adopting each and every one of the babies you “save” – regardless of color, health issues, mental and physical deformities, and handicaps, I might change my mind. But you won’t.

You people are a dichotomy of hypocrisy: Government should stay out of our business, but legislate morality. Support our Troops, but bully mourners at their funerals declaring their deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality. Get out of our lives, but monitor our bedrooms.

No one wants an abortion. It is a painful and intensely personal decision. But it’s not your decision to make. Once you threaten, harass, bomb and kill law-abiding fellow citizens – and encourage others to do so – you’ve lost the “moral high ground”. You are nothing more than religious terrorists, seeking to impose your beliefs and will on the rest of us. You are our very own Al Qaeda.

I am now 100% convinced. If you want to bring out the worst in otherwise civilized people, put the words “Estate Sale” and “jewelry” in the same sentence.

We had a yard/estate sale this weekend and a hockey game broke out. I suppose I should have expected it, but it still kind of caught me off-guard.

This was the weekend we decided to try to sell off some of BJ’s (MJ’s mom’s) junk. “Nine o’clock! We’re not opening until 9:00 AM!” we shouted to all those cars that pulled up at 7:30 and 8:00.

We thought we were so organized, but I confess that my heart wasn’t totally into it, and not for sentimental reasons, either. Our friend, Rx, the paramedic, lent us a couple of his pop-ups to keep us out of the weather, and some tables, and even came by at 7:00 am after his shift was over to help us put them up. First, came the clothes and purses (this woman was the Imelda Marcos of the purse world), then a bunch of the “collectibles” and some books and paper ephemera. But what was the crowd all waiting for? The JEWELRY. Which I deliberately started to bring out last. For what I think were obvious reasons.

“Is this all you have?” Not by any stretch of the imagination, but you people won’t give me a break. “Oh, no. We’ll wait. Please.” I went back in the house for another container, and when I returned, no fewer than 6 “people” (and I do use the term loosely) tried to dive into the container and started grabbing and elbowing each other and shoving and pushing! “People! If you can’t play nice, LEAVE! Si no pueden jugan bien, VAN!” I shouted in my bad Spanish. What the hell?!?

Then there was Mr. RollingInDough. Mr. RollingInDough is of distinctively Caribbean heritage. MJ tells me that he appeared at our door Friday afternoon, pulled out a wad of cash (100′s on top), and offered to buy everything so we wouldn’t have to do the sale. MJ politely turned him away and asked him to come back for the sale on Saturday, and took his card: “One Call Does It All = Drywall and Plaster, Estate Sale Buyer and Buyout” Also “Screenplay Writer / Write All Types / Don’t Guess, Call the Best” Really.

Mr. RollingInDough appeared at the crack of 7:00 am Saturday, attempting to give me his hard-sell. “Don’t you know who I am? I was in the paper – rags to riches story. God’s been berry berry good to me.” Sorry, no. Please come back at 9:00. Mr. RollingInDough didn’t leave, but sat in his car. He came back, rifled through some things, bought some things, went back to his car, waited a little while, came back, rinse, repeat. “Why are you bothering with this? These people ain’t got no money. They ain’t got money like me.” as he flashed his (what I suspect to be a New York bankroll) cash. “You just tell me what you want for this (holding up a bag of miscellaneous jewelry) – name your price.” Okay, $300. “What?!? for this?!?!” You just said to name my price. I don’t know what the hell is in that bag you jumbled everything up in.

Mr. RollingInDough returned on Sunday. Then he started to sniff the jewelry. When it appeared that he was actually sticking something (I don’t know what) up his nose, MJ had enough and told him to put it down and get lost. I told Mr. RollingInDough that he was no longer welcome and asked him to leave. A shouting and swearing match ensued. I believe he called us “racist bastards” but MJ swears he said “honkeys”. Some of the other “customers” applauded what they deemed to be my creative use of some multisyllabic swear words, that I admit I have never used out-loud, in context, and actually addressed to an individual. I believe it was my delivery.

We made some money and met some nice people from the neighborhood, but all in all, it wasn’t worth it. Volume-wise, it seems like we have just as much as we started out with. Crap. In every sense of the word.

Please, kids, don’t try this at home. And don’t do it to your kids.

Several years ago, MJ and I made a pilgrimage to the land of (some of) his forbears, Ireland. We traveled on our own to Dublin, took a bus up to Termonfecken to peer at the lichen-covered headstones – searching for said forbears – rented a car in Galway, and adventured our way down the west coast and back up to Dublin, searching for music. We had a blast.

The following year, we heard about Celtica Tours to Ireland, headed up by Robbie O’Connell, a nephew of our favorite Irish Trad group, The Clancy Brothers. We couldn’t resist and booked ourselves in. Again, we had a blast. Despite the swan dive and face-plant I did off the top step of the bus at some castle or another. Not their fault, though. That was all me.

It was so much more relaxing to let someone else do the driving (except maybe on some of those narrow, twisting back roads, when it became tour bus vs. compact car, or worse, tour bus vs. tour bus), and we really got to enjoy the scenery. And there were “sessions” every evening. And the camaraderie of our fellow travelers – characters themselves. Like Anna the Puppet Lady from Boston.

That’s where we met the Zoo Lady and her hubs, who hail from Arkansas. The Zoo Lady and I hit it off and had many wonderful conversations over a Bulmer’s or Guinness and cigarettes in the hotel parking lots. We kept in touch via e-mail when we got back, mostly during hurricane season (she has family on the Florida west coast), especially when storms approached or passed (“Are you guys okay?” “Did your folks have any damage?”).

This past Fall, we discovered – through forwarded and personal e-mails – that we even share the same political views. Which was a relief. You know how you just don’t want to offend someone whose views you’re unsure of, because you like them and don’t want them to cut you off? It was like that.

The Zoo Lady was in Florida last week to visit her family and help out with stuff, but we couldn’t manage to coordinate a visit. Still, we had the first voice-to-voice contact since Ireland, and it was just like being back there. ->Sigh<- A bright spot in an otherwise dismal week of more dusting and straightening and digging out at my FIL’s. Yes, that mess continues. Although the living room pretty much resembles a living room now, and we discovered an actual couch and coffee table in the FIL’s “office”! Seriously, I thought it was all a mountain of junk, but when you cleared off the junk, there was furniture under there! Un-freaking-believable.

Anyway, the Zoo Lady reads this blog, too. I know you’re out there – I can hear you breathing… so if you don’t like your nickname, come up with something better. And leave a comment. Yo.

I know, I know. My first post in weeks, and it has to be an ad, right? It’s all true, though.

“Dad, how about a little light in here.” “Oh, sure. The blinds are all down because your mother wanted it that way. I don’t mind, though.” So, I give it a good yank, and the son of a bitch not only unrolls all the way, it tears off the roller. I never could get the hang of those damn things, anyway. I’m afraid to touch any of the others – they look like they’ll disintegrate.

There is some improvement, though. The discarded top rack to a dishwasher long-forgotten has been removed from the master bedroom(!) and discarded. We’ve gotten the giant rusting industrial janitor’s floor-washing bucket – you know, the kind with the rollers to squeegee a rope mop? – out of the living room(!) and into the trash dumpster. “Hey! Where are you going with that? That’s a great bucket. I used that to wash the floors all the time. It’s useful!” “Dad, this apartment is 95% carpeted, and when was the last time you washed the floor? Does your aide use it when he washes the floor?” “No. He uses the Swiffer.” “Say goodbye to the bucket, Dad.”

We count every six square inches recovered as a victory. You can now walk from the front door and the kitchen through the living room without barking your shins on anything. Mostly.

At this moment in time, I should be in a cushy Charleston, South Carolina hotel, perhaps just stirring to make some coffee and preparing for, oh I dunno, maybe a walk over to some famous breakfast spot we saw featured on one of Tony Bourdain’s travel/food shows, tiny camera in-hand ready to snap a few things for my photo blog.

But that’s not going to happen. MJ’s mother passed away Tuesday morning. She will be cremated, with no service of any kind. It’s weird. Definitely not what I’m used to. While the emotional ground has shifted under both his and his dad’s feet, neither one of them seems to be mourning in the traditional sense.

I’m trying to figure out how to talk about this without sounding like a cold-hearted bitch. BJ was passive-aggressive and emotionally distant. She was always civil, but never welcoming. If we went to visit them (they live only about 45 minutes from us), she started looking at her watch after about half an hour. I’m pretty sure she didn’t care for me at all, because she couldn’t bully me, and mostly, because I reminded her of her own MIL: independent, strong-willed, and only barely deferential because she’s my MIL.

I’m also pretty certain that she suffered from some form of clinical depression or another that escalated as time went on. She didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about much of anything. Except old TV game shows and QVC and HSN. She collected dolls and jewellry. She didn’t cook, she didn’t clean, and she wouldn’t let anyone into “her” room. She refused to see any doctor (except the dentist, for some bizzarre reason) since MJ was an infant. Doubly weird, since she was the daughter of a doctor. In the last several years, she barely ever left the house – even when “Dad” was in the hospital. So, when she fell a week ago, and was carted off by Fire/Rescue over her vehement protestations to the hospital, it should not have been too much of a surprise to discover that she had more things wrong with her than you’ve got fingers. But no one expected her to die. At least, not immediately. Six months, maybe a year. Not a week.

Both MJ and his dad (who seems to miss her in the sense of the “her” that was when they married), seem to look at this as an opportunity to clean up all of the crap she’d accumulated, reorganize (the one thing she did do was pay the bills, and that started slipping through the cracks over the last year or so), and get rid of the two-inch accumulation of dust that has settled throughout, because she wouldn’t let anyone touch anything. I’m not kidding. Think Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. You can’t put anything down on any surface without raising great clouds of fluffy dust.

So, we’re spending our days over there sorting, filing, and dusting while wearing dust masks. The company who makes Claritin is going to make a fortune on us over the next couple of weeks. Buy stock.