Helloo? Where've I been? I'm still here!
Leemmee see, what have I been up to...
I've taken up crocheting and have become absolutely addicted to it. I LOVE it! I find myself sneaking out of the house to go buy just ONE more different color of yarn. But that's boring, we'll talk about that later...

I'm thrilled about Barack Obama winning the election. I would never vote for a Republican, so it was a given I'd vote for him, but I support his ideas and I'm especially proud to have voted for the first Black president. Thrilled. Ecstatic, even. If nothing else than to think of all the right-wing conservatives gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair out over it. That thought pleases me to no end. It makes a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy.

And now everyone is running out and buying guns? That's hilarious. I think it has less to do with Obama being elected than the economy going down the tank. Besides fending off suburban marauders that will come begging for your pantry stores,
("You want to borrow a cup of SUGAR?! Are you fucking CRAZY?!" *Bang-bang-bang!* "Get off my doorstep!")
or perhaps taking up crime yourself and holding up the grocery store for a cart of canned soup and a couple gallons of milk, a gun could come in handy for feeding ourselves. We may have to resort to shooting our own dinner. A little squirrel casserole. You know, I don't see squirrels around here, mainly chipmunks. I guess we have wildlife around here, but I see mostly birds and stray cats. Oh! There's the rock chucks. A lady down the street had one under her house once, and you often see them standing up on their hind legs, watching the traffic go by, so they're not very bright. Or are they? I don't see many laying by the side of the road. I guess they've got the traffic surveyed pretty well, actually. Those guys get pretty big. I wonder what they taste like? So yeah, a gun could come in handy.

I highly support the right to bear arms. I've kept them all my life and so did my dad. He was an avid huntsman, but he also kept them for protection. Me, I am not into shooting animals, I have never, ever shot a poor defenseless animal. I don't think I could ever do it. I keep guns on the off chance I may have to shoot a person. Have I ever?
Naaah...
*kicks disappointedly at the ground*

When I first was dating my husband I had been single (by choice) for a few years. He came over one day and I had this stupid exposed conduit coming off the porch light (I didn't do this, the house came like that) and it ran another light to the other end of the porch. I had taken the light bulb out, because who needs the far end of the porch lit up like that? It was stupid and ugly. So he says,
"I can take that conduit and light off for you if you want," (he used to be an electrician) and I said,
"Yes! I hate that thing!" and he said,
"Next time I come over I'll bring..." (just like a fucking man, talk the talk and then try to procrastinate) and I was already inside pulling my toolbox and the other larger tools out from under the kitchen sink.

"Woah!" he said, "A woman with TOOLS!"
You betcha. I pretty much had everything. Well, except a table saw or large stuff like all the tools we've accumulated now, but you know, all the basics. He said,
"But I could really use a drill gun..." just as I was pulling it out and pulling the trigger to see if the battery was charged up. Whizzzzzz! I LOVE my cordless, I tell every lady, you HAVE to have a cordless drill. HAVE to.
His eyes lit up with admiration for me.
"I think I love you," he said. No it wasn't the first time, but he definitely was learning more about me.
"Oh, that's nothin," I said and walked back to the bedroom and came back with my 9mm pistol.
"Oh, holy SHIT! Okay, now I KNOW I love you!"

So not to be outdone, soon after we got married, Mr. Man had to have his OWN gun. He had a rifle for shooting Bambi's but now he wanted a pistol, same as mine. So he skips off to the gun store and comes back empty-handed, literally. They refused him a gun. All his felony arrests in California finally caught up to him. Well, he had a lot of arrests, but he had never actually been convicted of any felony (I'm so proud!) so he had to call around and try to get it straightened out. Do you know how many friggin counties there are in the Bay Area? Like, 10 or 15 or something... OK, I looked it up, 9, but he was arrested in most of them. He HAD to pick a place like the Bay Area to tear up in his foolish youth.

~ funny aside, sub-plot~

This is a funny story - one arrest was for, oh I forget what they called it, but nowadays it would be called a terrorist threat. He was at his regular biker bar hangout with all his buddies drinking for the night and they had just got a new cocktail waitress. The guys were the "regular" crowd that brought in plenty of money and they tipped well enough, but as the night would wear on, sometimes it would be more drinking and less tipping.
So the little new gal brought them another round and was kinda standing there, smiling, waiting for her handout, and one of the guys was all "WTF?" and another guy says,
"She's waitin' for her tip, boys," and my smart-ass husband happened (?!) to have one of those fake dud hand-grenades on him (standard Biker issue, doncha-know) and he plops it on her cocktail tray and goes,
"There's your tip!"
And the table explodes... in laughter! And the poor little girl goes screaming into the back office and the cops were called and etc. and they were banned from the bar... until the following Friday and the hiring of a new and more street-savvy cocktail waitress who knew how to deal with rowdy drunken bikers. The owner loved them and wasn't about to lose his best customers. When they came back into the the bar, there by the front door, the owner had taken an old milk crate and nailed it to the wall and made a little hand-written sign above it that read:

Please deposit all fire-arms and hand-grenades at the door.
Thank You!
~the Management

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

~end sub-plot~

So anyway, my husband had spent about a week on the phone with various California government agencies and they finally sent him an official letter with a State seal or something saying his record had been expunged (again, I'm so proud!) and 3 weeks later he was cleared to go pick up his gun.

We went downtown to pick it up and then out to the firing range to test it out. I was kind of nervous on the way there when I realized that I hadn't even shot a gun in over 3 years. When I had my farm house out in the county, I could just walk outside and shoot a gun off whenever I wanted, but then I moved into a neighborhood in town, so I had never bothered to keep up my target practice.
We got to the gun range and Mr. Man, Mr. Expert Marksman in the Army, explained all the procedures to me and how he was going to test out the sights on this particular gun and blah-blah-blah, my eyes glazed over and I nodded, dumbly, as I poked in my ear plugs.
*BAM!*

He called "clear" and walked out to the target (it was an outdoor range.)
"Shit! I didn't even hit it."
He came back scratching his head and spent a little more time lining up the sights.
*BAM!*

This time I heard a "thunk!" but we couldn't quite make out if he had hit the target board. He walked out and pointed to the area just outside the concentric circles of the target. Heh. At least he hit the general area this time so he was excited.
"OK, I think I got it down now. Here, you try."
He handed me the gun and I lifted it and aimed downrange, blinking at the sights and fighting my contact lenses to try to focus where I should be looking. He went on,
"Line up the sight there with the bulls-eye, just so, and then sort of aim as if the bulls-eye was just slightly higher, like about at the top of the third circle there..."
*BAM!*

"Hey!" he said, "I wasn't finished explaining how..."
Grumble-grumble, he stomped off to check the target board. He turned around and looked at me with that same miffed look he had when he missed the first shot.
"Bulls-eye."

His look of admiration for his wife's skills, like when he had first seen my tool collection, seemed different this time. It seemed to be tinged with a little fear.
He took the clip out of the gun, checked the chamber, packed it up in the case and said,
"Well, we're done here. Let's go home."

Daily Prayer:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

What do you think of gun laws and guns in general?
Are laws too strict or too loose? Why?