If I had my way about it, someone somewhere would be starting a job search in the near future. Let me start at the beginning. I believe I have mentioned that I am a homebody more than once. I like to be home. It suits me. I like to go and do stuff, but I like to do it on my own schedule, and I LIKE being home. Be it ever so humble, and all that. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I have seven kids still at home and that we home school, too. All of that adds up to a couple of full time jobs, at least it seems that way from the work load. Plus my internet work, which would swell to a more-than-full-time if I did not cap it, which I am less than what one would call strictly successful at, the capping I mean, but, hey, whatever. And working is good, because dh’s work is slack right now, so I’m grateful mine is up a bit.

So, we have had a rigorous round of appointments lately: medical, dental, eye for the kiddos and dental fro me, and then the football and cheering practices, and I am just about as tightly strung as I ever get from all of this go-go-go, and it culminated today in a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy for my 6 year old. And did I mention that I did not sleep well last night? Perhaps due to the impending surgery?

Okay, that’s not even the beginning, it’s just the background. But do you now have a picture in your mind of a harried Cass who really needs to slow down and take a rest? Who maybe needs a NAP? Well, dh is home today so I lay down with surgery boy and we were taking a nap. Oh my word. It was the best sleep I have had in weeks. It was Beautiful. With a capital B. Picture angels, and harps and sweet music and ……..yeah, ok, you get it. And then the phone rang. And though my 9 year old told the man I was sleeping, the demon on the other end told him it was “very important” and he should wake me up. And so he did, and I spoke to that devil of a debt collector whom I have offered payment arrangements to no less than 15 times and I asked him if he was bleeding and he said no, and so I hung up the imp, and then I mentally cursed him and got up to go to work, because my blissful nap was OH-VER.

Lying Jerk. If it’s not important enough for you to take arrangements on, it’s not that important. I hope you get boils on the ear you use for the phone and also on your butt. And if that’s not a Christian sentiment, let me adjust it to this: I hope you sleep the sleep of a mother of 8 for one full year. And then I hope someone calls you about something “important” when you finally lay your head and are getting a decent rest.

Okay, ya’ll know I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I don’t like to snivel. But truly, I am at a loss. I have built numerous websites, and I have requested links to them, but I have never requested links to a parked page. But someone somewhere wants colon cleanse to point to a page parked at GoDaddy. So now it does, and my job is done.

I have posted before at some length on this blog about the crazy developers in my area, and their penchant for attempting to reclaim swampland and build houses and apartments on it. My little town now has what can only be called “blocks” where thtere were formerly just streets. And the madness continues. I was driving the other day, and noticed a new driveway. That driveway leads back into what used to be woods, and is still certainly swamp. HTHeck are they doing that? Here’s how: they no longer have to perk the land since we have city water and sewer. Much easier for developers, much less pleasant for the nice transplants who will soon own NC waterfront property. Whether they meant to or not.

Mama and I went to see Grandmother last night. While we were enroute, the nurse called to let us know that grandmother had a skin tear. They claim that Grandmother was swinging her legs in the hoyer lift. HA! Grandmother can’t move her arms, but she can suddenly swing her legs? As if.

Anyway, we got there, and there was a sock with fresh blood on top of her laundry, so we checked out her leg. When we pulled the covers back, an incredible stench just rushed out at us. I looked at her other leg, and noticed brown goo on that sock. When I looked at that leg, the tear she’d gotten last week was inflamed with readily apparent pussy pockets of nastiness that made me want to rip the hair right out of someone’s head. People should not smell like rotten meat, ok??

So! I pulled her laundry out of the hamper and noticed the socks as I went. There was laundry in there from last Friday, and one sock from each pair had that nasty brown goo on it. Her leg has been oozing pus and corruption for three days, smelling like a dead pig in July and no one noticed that? Hell-oh?

Recently BP has been in the news, and not in a real good way. Environmental activists are once again up in arms over how BP is “destroying the environment”, “killing the animals” and is, in general, a hemorrhoid on the butt of the world, and should probably be fined or shut down or maybe just SHOT, and we don’t need their stinkin’ energy anyway. And they are mostly sitting in air conditioned homes and offices while they type this tripe on their not-solar-powered computers. My heart bleeds. Really.

I just posted some words I wrote several months ago on this topic, and I believe if you search my archives, you might find a rant or two about media bias, and how one ought to read several news sources to begin to get a grasp on the multiple sides of any issue. Here’s what’s true in this case:

• BP will be dumping more ammonia into lake Michigan. What you aren’t likely to hear from the screech committee is that BP is still well within federal guidelines.
• BP wants to process heavy crude from Canada. Get that? Ca-na-da. A stable and reliable next-door-neighbor source. Not the Middle East. The heavy crude requires more extensive process and BP has planned $3.8 billion expansion to allow that. In the meantime, they need this still-within-federal-guidelines leeway.
• BP has been part of the community in Whiting for 117 years. They have voluntarily reduced polluting discharges, they have supplied jobs in the community and they are supplying gasoline, diesel and jet fuel which we need. Oh, and they also operate a wastewater treatment facility.

So here’s what I think: much ado about nothing. If we are going to continue to rely on fossil fuels to power our increasingly luxurious lifestyles, it’s time to just admit that and do the best we can with it. If we don’t want to pay the price in the form of a damaged environment, then we need to be willing to draw that pristine water with a hand pump, and haul it from the creek. And also, buy a horse, and let that Mercedes rust out in the garage. We’ll figure something out for dealing with the pony pies, I’m sure, and the increased demands on the food supply, and all the inconvenience that comes with that choice. Also, leave the city, because horses require pasture. You can’t keep them in apartments. And one more thing: turn off the air conditioner, and also the furnace. You may use a fireplace if and only if you practice replacement planting. And if you can’t agree with all that?? shut up.

Now then. I have to put this silly badge on this post: . However, if you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that I haven’t said anything here that I haven’t at least hinted at before.

This is a special post. I’m writing it for a commenter here who left his business name in lieu of his own (I fixed that for him), and then had the nerve to say, “the white shoes should be thrown. you got no use for them. but other than that looking good” on Mothering Many. Although it’s directed to him, I am actually writing it on behalf of women everywhere, as a follow up to my post about shoes last night.

Now, the shoes in question do in fact, not match the outfit for which I originally bought them. Though I refused to admit it to Bob, I did in fact have nothing to wear them with. I bought them at a thrift store quite some time ago because I saw them, and loved them, and had to have them. Well, last night I fixed that. I now have something to wear with those shoes, and wear them I shall. Just because I can.

Bob, do not ever again underestimate the lengths to which a woman will go to wear a pair of shoes she loves.

I have pretty much wasted this entire day, being mad. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal exactly what i am angry about, since that would violate a……well, hmm, can’t say that either. But you know, people really ought to stick to their word.

So what has this day taught me? That when I get mad, I forget to blog, and also to clean my house, and maybe to pay attention to my kids. It’s also taught me that when people make you angry because they are unethical, they will do their best to redirect your anger by throwing up false symbols of peace.

And then because you are an ethical person, you will decide to blog, but then you can’t because it would violate…oh. Well, see paragraph one.

I’ve had the do-follow plug-in on this blog, and on my other blogs, for quite a while. I’ve had it on some of them since their inception, and most of them before the do-follow lists came out. I enjoy interacting with my readers, and I do not mind one bit giving them a little PR juice when they leave a comment.

However, there is giving a bit of juice, and there is being screwed. It has come to my attention that there are people who use the do-follow list only to get backlinks. Those people encourage others to do the same. That wouldn’t seem quite so heinous, except that some of them still do not follow the links left by their own commenters, and some of them require you to register to comment on their site at all. I asked one such person about it, and was told they are thinking about the pros and cons from an SEO standpoint. I’m not linking to the specific blog, because they know who they are, and there is no need for me to get nasty about it. I suspect this isn’t the only blogger who feels that way, either.

I’ll admit that I considered the PR ramifications before I installed the plug-in. In the end, I decided I valued my readers more than I valued my PR. That’s a pretty big statement for a paid blogger to make. Remember that each link from my page takes a minuscule amount of my PR with it when it leaves my keyboard and hits the internet, and how much money I can earn is directly related to my PR. The theory that makes do follow work is that the PR can be regained by leaving comments on other blogs that follow. So, when you visit my blog for the sole purpose of leaving a backlink, and refuse to let me leave a followed comment on your blog, that costs me.

When I go to your blog to return your visit and engage you in conversation, and find that you do not follow comments, even though you freely abuse the privilege of back links on other people’s blogs, that really makes me angry. It makes me so angry that I am just going to call you what you are: a PR thief. You just got a very valuable one-way link for nothing, and Google weights those one-way links very highly.

I will be moderating all my comments from this point forward. I will no longer tolerate this theft. If I discover (and I have enough blogs to be able to spot a trend) that you are a PR thief, I’ll strip your link right out of your comment. Following is for givers, and I’m not going to be taken anymore.

In spite of what the button below may indicate, this story had been dugg. You can digg it, too.