Veteran Suicide Awareness - it's not always the quick way...

September is suicide awareness month and I've been thinking about my cousin Ronnie Presley who served in both Korea and Vietnam as a Captain in the Green Beret. This song always reminds me of him. I was a little girl when he was in Vietnam and he was married to this beautiful blonde girl named Judi. Judi was a Playboy bunny at the Playboy club in Atlanta. One time she was featured in Playboy with some other bunnies, wearing their bunny costume not nude. I'd go stay with her sometimes while Ronnie was in Vietnam. They would make tapes (reel to reel back then) and send them to each other. Once when I was at her apartment she got one from him and we listened to it and then she made one with me on it to send back to him. She was from Texas and she was the love of his life. 

When he got back from Vietnam he was a mess, like so many other Vietnam veterans, and their marriage eventually broke up.  Ronnie never married again and between the wars, losing Judi and what we now know was PTSD his life just fell apart. He eventually drank himself to death, thus the title of this blog. He didn't come home and put a gun to his head an pull the trigger but the booze did the same thing, just much more slowly. 

I heard tonight during the Clinton/Trump "forum" (WTF is that shit?) that 20 to 22 veterans a day kill themselves. I'm sure that's the ones who commit suicide the fast way. No telling how many there are if you count the ones who eventually die from drug or alcohol abuse. I can't imagine what it's like for them. Iraq vets like Vietnam vets came home and hear how they risked their lives, lost their friends, left their families for a war that was a mistake. They come home and can get little or no help with PTSD or mental health or drug or alcohol abuse problems. They can't even get help for physical health problems. It's just disgraceful!

Our country spends over 50% of the discretionary budget on military spending and only about 7 or 8% on Veteran's benefits and Trump sat there talking about building up our depleted military. Come on people how can our military be depleted when all that money is spent on it, give me a break. Let's take half that military spending and spend it on our veterans. That's how we lower suicides and take care of the people who risked their lives for this country. 

For everyone who spent time in the military this for you! May our government cease ignoring you once you've risked your lives in their wars. May they start putting more money into getting you all the care you need. May you know you are loved and appreciated, even by us liberals. May you find the strength you need to keep surviving. Thank you for all you've done for our country and may our country properly repay you for it. You all are the best of the best! 

Everyone Farts...

I just read the most hilarious female fart story I've ever heard. I couldn't stop laughing. As a matter of fact I have to admit I laughed so hard I let a little fartlet of my own slip out. You know... a fartlet, too big to be called a poot or toot but just not quite big enough to be a full blown fart, thus a fartlet. :-)

Well this story reminded me of my own embarrassing fart story so I figured I'd share it here for everyone to read...

When I was pregnant with my daughter Anna my husband and I took the standard, and then very popular, lamaze classes. It was sometime around my 7th month, maybe 8th, so I was good and pregnant. It was at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta where all the uppity Buckhead Moms-to-be go. The instructor had all the women sitting between their baby daddy's legs and we were practicing pushing, well.... I raised up a bit and did my practice push and out comes this loudass fart, this was no poot, toot or even a fartlet, it was a full blown fart which was made even stronger by that forceful push. They probably heard it 2 floors up.

Well, I'd barely gotten the fart out, much less had time to even turn as pink as spring peony, when my oh so sweet husband says, loudly I might add, "Well I guess you pushed hard enough". Well I started laughing and that brought on a loud and persistent case of rolling farts which just made us both laugh even harder. I swear I laughed and farted for a full 2 minutes, if not 3. The harder I laughed the more farts escaped. The entire class was laughing, even the instructor.

Well part two of that story came later... when we lived in Douglasville, I got invited to join THE Junior League (the one in Douglasville was part of the Association of Junior Leagues International or AJLI for short, yeah whoopy shit and all that). Well, just in case you don't know, Junior League is generally made up of women who in earlier times would have been called housewives, later called stay home Moms. Of course there are some women who worked those (these) days but there are still plenty of them who don't. It's an organization devoted to volunteerism and charitable works. While they do charitable work, in reality it's a sorority for grown women, with the same snobbery, superiority and pretension.

That little lapse of better judgement is now filed in the 'what the hell was I thinking' category of dumbass shit I did before I got old enough and mature enough to just be who I am instead of who someone else wants me to be or who I thought I should be. Other things in that category include our joining Coosa Country Club (the 2nd oldest country club in Georgia and the height of pretension), moving back to Rome (home of Coosa Country Club) to send Anna to good ol' preppy, pretentious Darlington private School (where my husband graduated from) and several other things I did before I said to hell with all that shit and went back to and accepted that I am who I am and that is not any of that crap. Those places are not made for people who have no internal regulator and don't give a flying fart what others think of them, which is who I really am.

Well... during the provisional training class, which equates to a pledge year and pledge training in a sorority (see I told you Jr. League was a sorority for grown ass women) our provisional mentor (or whatever she was called) asked what our most embarrassing moment was. There were several women who went before me and of course they properly told some silly superficial story which was Jr. League, pretentious, snob acceptable. Well, then it was my turn... As I mentioned before, I have no internal regulator and whatever pops in my head at the moment seems to just pop right out of my mouth. In this case what popped out of my mouth was my lamaze fart story, yep told it right there to about 15 of the most uppity, pretentious women in Douglasville, GA.

I'll tell you what, if you ever need to assess the sense of humor, level of pretension and level of how full of shit people in a group are just tell an honest embarrassing moment story like mine. Hell, it doesn't matter if it's honest or not as long as it's fairly inappropriate to tell to the group in question. By the end of my story about 1/2 the class was laughing, a few with a little look of "that's funny as hell but I can't believe she told it" look on their faces. Of the other half, about one fourth looked like they wanted to laugh but didn't dare and the other fourth looked like I'd just gotten up and slap the living shit out them. I however, was laughing my ass off and enjoying the moment and the different looks immensely.

May all your funniest farts happen at opportune moments or not :D