Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Flying Into The Future

Ten years.  It's been ten years this past August.

A full decade since the Sharp family made the decision to send Rudy forth, and for me to hold down the fort in Austin.

Ten years of busy children, laughter, tears, heartaches, heartbreaks, endless soccer, theater performances, parties, and visits that were as often as possible, but still not often enough.

In those years, our children have flourished, sometimes floundered, graduated high school, went on to college, and two are now out in the world making their way.  The third is eagerly awaiting his turn to leave the nest and get on with the business of forward motion.

Through these years, this blogmunity has been a lifeline, a family, a support system, and you have watched our kids grow up, much like Rudy has had to - virtually.  For everything you have been for me, for us, my gratitude is beyond words.

Ten years.  Typing it out loud still boggles my mind.  

But I find that when I say it to people, it boggles theirs more.  There is always "the look".  It says a thousand things about how they view marriage, how they fear infidelity, and a flicker of how they could ever possibly make this choice, much less handle it.

I get it.  One has to have the willingness and ability to be self sufficient.  Fierce independence helps, too.  Add in my Type A Irish temperament and well, here we are.  A decade.

I have made no secret through the years that it has not been easy.  Relationships of any kind rely a lot on shared experiences.  They need dedicated attention to communication.  And they require that the two people involved understand the end game.

Rudy and I have always nailed that last one.  This was a choice.  A choice to let our hydroponically rooted children finally exhale.  To let them dig in to a place without fear of being snatched away again to start over somewhere new.  It was the right choice.  They have always appreciated that we backburnered our marriage for them, but I also know they have always worried how much of a toll it would take on it.

Their fears were not completely without merit.  Distance is a hard hurdle.  Schedules conflict so phone calls are brief, and quite frankly, Rudy and I have evolved to doing better texting one another more than calling.  Slights feel bigger as they get magnified by miles and separation.  And I will admit, no matter how much I was an active part of this decision, there were times I felt left behind, taken for granted.  And those periods are hard to hurdle with no face to face.

But we moved forward. 

He worked all the time, and I facilitated three overachieving little shits - my promise to them having been that I would not say NO unless it was physically impossible to say YES.  I wanted them to be able to take advantage of opportunities, pursue their passions.  And to that end, I gutted myself to make things happen.  That is not me seeking accolades, just an acknowledgment of the challenge.

And one year slipped into the next.   We made the most of visits, but they consisted mostly of weekends when he could fly home.  And as much as I wanted to whisk him off for a romantic dinner, I was ever mindful that those three kids missed him, too.  And me being the adult, I was supposed to be self sufficient, so I made sure they had their father as much as possible when he came to town.

More calendar pages got turned, new calendars bought and put up for yet another year apart.

I have often been asked about trusting one another, the intimation being that surely I worried about cheating.  The truth is pretty boring.  Neither of us is built that way.   End of story.  

We just plowed forward, heads down, doing what needed to be done.  Rudy worked hard, moving three more times from the place he went when this odyssey began.  And I made the kids' life my life.  Soon one was graduating and heading to college.  The next followed a year later.  Then three years followed in which Toby and I were a team.  Soccer, training, traveling, recruiting - and then he was gone, but I stayed in Austin so I could still be accessible to them all, and so I could travel to watch him play.

Could I have moved years ago?  Sure.  But I did not, and it put me where I needed to be when Culley needed saved, when Kendall needed the security of home base, and when Toby's life changed dramatically.  I shudder to think of being the thousand miles away that Rudy was when these kids needed me.  It was nightmare enough for him to be that far away. 

More years passed, course corrections happened, lives were rebooted, and onward we have gone.  The best part is the fact that we are more in love today than ever.  We are stronger, more committed, and appreciate the strength each of us has had to show through all of this.  

Which brings me to today.  I am writing this from 30,000 feet in the air.  Tonight I meet Rudy in Orlando to spend a week celebrating.

Call it a honeymoon of sorts.

Because after ten+ years of separation, longing, daydreaming, crying, laughing, texting, sporadic visits, and loneliness, our life together is about to begin.  When I return to Austin, the movers are coming, the house is being emptied, the keys are being handed to a realtor, and I AM MOVING TO COLORADO.

We will embark on this new stage of life re-energized, refocused, and ready to immerse ourselves in the million small things we have missed by being apart.

To you all - THANK YOU for your love, laughter, support, and for coming on this ride with us.  I hope you stay as our next chapter unfolds.  To my kids, you have been amazing.  Thank you for every moment you made this bearable for me, even when I was making it unbearable for you.  I hope through it all you saw that I was trying my best.  And to Rudy, you have loved me at my worst, believing that if you stayed the course my best would eventually resurface.  I cannot wait for this next chapter.

This decade has been the longest we have ever been separated, but all the other moves and those separations add up to us having lived more years apart than together.   

That's why tonight, we are both flying to each other, flying into our future, and are about to start reversing that equation.

See you soon, Rudy.  I love you.

 

Las Vegas Terrorist Attack: Every Outing Is A Roll Of The Dice

Pride, lust, gluttony, envy, sloth, anger, greed.  Between the bright lights, excitement, scantily clad performers, gaming at all levels of $$ and risk, world class cuisine or low $ dining, lazy days by lazy river pools and grottos, and an always revolving menu of A list musical acts, Las Vegas has a "sin" for every indulgence.  

Last night, however, the only sin that mattered is the one that turned deadly for 59 concert goers.  Over 500 more lay wounded, the blood of both staining the ground of the 3 day Route 91 Harvest Festival.

It is almost hard to fathom.

Almost.

After all, we are talking about the United States of America where gun violence is given little more than an eyeroll and an emotionally exhausted sigh - so pervasive is its existence in our daily reality.

Think not?  I would hazard a guess you are not aware that this is the 273rd mass shooting in the 275 days 2017 has been turning calendar pages.  (A mass shooting is defined as a shooting in which 4 or more persons are shot.)  Don't feel bad if you did not know this.  Part of it has to do with coverage, and let's face it, four people shot doesn't exactly rise to the top of the national media anymore.  "If it bleeds, it leads" requires far more bloodshed.  

Like 59 dead, and over 500 wounded.  Now there's a headline. 

So while all eyes are focused today on Vegas, let's stop for a moment to at least acknowledge a few more numbers, shall we?  ALL from 2017.

Some pretty sobering statistics, wouldn't you say?  All because the only amendment we seem to hold dear, sacrosanct, untouchable in this country is the 2nd.  The one that emboldens the NRA, unleashes millions of lobbying dollars into the body politic, and results in seriously compromised individuals acquiring the means to make any outing into a gamble. 

Now, before you go off and accuse me of just being another "gun grabbing librul" - STOP.  LOOK.  AND LISTEN.

This was my father's.  Hmmm, fine, whatever, Linda, you say?  OK, let's move in closer on those patches.  This is not a Boy Scout jacket.

This jacket was worn by my father when he was in the Air Force.  When he was on the USAF National Pistol team, to be exact.

I was raised by a man who is GOOD with a gun.  Fucking fantastic, actually.  (One was a world wide competition. He came in SECOND.). And the definition of responsible.  I was raised in a home where guns were present.  Where a trophy case of his medals and regalia were on full display.  I was raised by a man who taught all his children how to handle, aim, fire, and most of all, respect the power of a weapon.

Yes, a weapon.  

Guns have one purpose.  Hide behind words like defend or protect or sport, but a gun has one purpose - injury and/or death. 

Even raised with the proper respect and handling, I did not fully appreciate the "purpose" part till I was 15 years old.  Standing alone on our second story porch, holding one of my brothers' BB guns, I spied a bird waaaaaaay up high in a tree.  I aimed as I was taught, and pulled the trigger.  And I was immediately shocked and sickened by what I had done.  Never in a million years did I think I could hit a target that small that far away from me.  But I did, and it died.  I am 51 years old and still can see that poor bird dropping so very far to the ground below.  

THAT was the day I fully understood what a gun was about.  THAT was the day I truly understood "do not aim unless you intend to kill."  THAT was the day my feelings changed about guns.

That being said, no, I am not a gun grabbin' librul.  I don't want yer guns.  I want your sanity, your common sense, your love of life, your desire to watch your children grow up.  I also want better legislation, screenings, and accountability so that I do not become a librul with a literal bleeding heart.

And these days, we have seen repeatedly that no place is safe, no outing is less of a gamble than another.  Concert, movie night, company party, school classroom, boring day at the office, worshipping in church - guns, and the creatures firing them, have stolen innocent lives everywhere.

As was the case last night in Vegas.

Ensconced in a hotel room high up on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort, 64 year old Stephen Paddock, of Mesquite, Nevada hammered his way through the window glass and opened fire on the assembled 22,000 concert goers below.

Notice anything?  Stephen is white.  Yet despite unleashing horror, unfathomable fear, and hell, this white man, this citizen is not being referred to as a terrorist.  He is now responsible for a death count that continues to climb, and is the owner of the new Guinness record for "Largest Mass Shooting In Modern US History."  But for some reason, media and even officials are loath to use the descriptors "terrorist" or "terrorism."

As I discussed with a friend on FB this morning, I get that so many conflate the word "terrorism" with outside forces, 9/11, "those people" - this country's true collective experience with the word was 9/11, digits now synonymous with it - but I dare anyone to try to deny that what was being unleashed last night on those innocent people was NOT terror - TERRORISM.

This monster was a terrorist in every sense of the word.

Like it or not, inconvenient truth to your gun loving, red, white, and blue soul or not - domestic terrorism is REAL.  It is more of a danger to you and me than any radicalized ISIS worshipper.  That we have been led to color the word "terrorist" with a brown mental crayon, is wrong.  DEAD WRONG.  Stephen Paddock will be granted all the typical white privilege, terror apologist words like:  lone wolf, misunderstood, disturbed - all the ways we allow domestic terrorists to be rationalized, normalized, less scary to us.

When, in fact, we should be scared, horrified, moved to action.  Yes, even you with the handgun permanently strapped to your body.  How many home grown terrorists do we need to be terrorized by before we unite?  Surely, despite whatever differences in fervor we feel about the 2nd amendment, we can agree that we don't want to be in the next body count?

But then, I suppose it remains folly to believe that even this will move us or our representatives to change.  We all let Sandy Hook come and go without any effectual changes to our laws, our outrage, our desire to live in a safer country.  If we can just keep on keeping on after 20+ first graders are slaughtered, we don't just have a leadership drought, we have a morality famine.

Yes, this country and all her cheerleaders who have their asses in knots about sports players kneeling during the anthem; all the Bible huggers and churchgoers who insist we are a Christian nation;  all those patriots who cry about disrespecting the flag; all the idiots I see defending the overt bigotry and negligence of the man they installed in the White House - have empty souls.  There is rhetoric aplenty, but no real humanity attached to it.  We have "patriots" who have no idea what is even contained in the Constitution.  And we have gun owners who willingly ignore the body counts, rationalizing them away just so no one comes near their personal cache of weapons.

This is a country dedicated to keeping 85 year old dicks hard past their expiration date, when what we really need is Viagra for the soul, the conscience.  We need a bravery erection to confront what we are.

And what we are is a country full of guns.  Over 300 million firearms, meaning every man, woman, child, and newborn could hold one and there would still be extras.  And those guns are NOT all in the possession of rational, sane, responsible owners.  They are not all locked up in tamper proof safes.  They are not all owned by trained users.  They are not all used for sport, target practice, hunting.  

Rather, we have a paranoid populace, regularly infused with faux rage, made up bogeymen, and too many viewings of Rambo and Commando.  Think not?  I live in Texas.  These wannabe Wolverines are everywhere.  Pick a Sonic on a warm night.  That outside eating area will have just as many firearms as orders of Popcorn Chicken.  Young, old, cocky, complacent, and strapped up is a normal sight.  Walk through a grocery store.  Three aisles MAX before you see someone's gun peeking out of their vest or purse.

Stephen Paddock had more than NINETEEN rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammo in his hotel room.  At least one of these was capable of firing without pulling the trigger for each shot - that is evident in so many of the videos taken during the carnage - you can hear the rapid firing. 

Small aside:  the House is literally voting on legislation this week to ease the purchase of silencers.  Seriously, Hollywood script writers can't come up with shit this ironic or ridiculous.  Imagine if no one heard the shots ringing out last night.  Sound enabled people to recognize and begin running.  But hey, let's help take that advantage away.  And save your blathering about "politicizing this tragedy" - it NEEDS politicized because politicians are the ones who must create, debate, and pass any new laws in this regard.

But back to Paddock - our dead domestic terrorist - his ability to get these weapons will be traced.  Pundits will fight over the verbiage used to describe the weapons fired.  Sane voices will rise and demand something be done.  And all politicians will offer meaningless, empty thoughts and prayers.

Here's the problem with that last one:  we cannot think away the deaths, and looking up will never solve the problems we should be facing straight on.

God - whatever version you ascribe to - will not be solving this problem.  "God" is not responsible for the carnage, "God" will not proffer the solution.  WE created this mess, and WE have to solve it.  Tears won't.  Prayers won't.  Tears and prayers are all well and good as a form of emotional therapy, but they do nothing to keep the next shooting from happening.

Our legislators are ineffectual.  The NRA has a $tranglehold on many of them.  So as for answers?  Sorry, I don't have them any more than do you.  I will agree with Trump (sit down, it's hard for me, too) on one thing today: this was "an act of pure evil."  

But evil alone cannot kill 59 people.  Evil with access to weaponry can.  That is where the focus must be, and the changes must take place.

Like millions around the world, I love Las Vegas.  For every "sin" it offers, every escape it provides.  But when we gamble, we prefer to do it in a casino.  No one at that concert last night thought they were rolling the dice with their very lives on the Pass Line.  WE CAN DO BETTER.  WE MUST DO BETTER.