My Favorite Things: Fast & Easy Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken Tater Tot C...

My Favorite Things: Fast & Easy Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken Tater Tot C...: Y 'all, this casserole is so good. I just don't know how else to describe it. It is cheesy. It is bacon-y.  And you got your chicken ...

Decisions decisions decisions .......

Don't cha just hate it when you have alot of thoughts and they all seem to collide at once , leaving you to sift threw the train wreck and try to find that one that at the time really meant something. Or you get distracted and the thought that seemed like you were on to something really important floats away, sigh .......
So sitting here all alone again , having made some choices flying by the seat of my pants and not too sure about how things will turn out. I am not good at this , but with nothing but time on my hands and a blank page in front of me there are so so many things I wanna , nope need to say express whatever blog speak for get it out in the open.
But the one thing that is really buggin my butt is decisions, we all make them from time to time as grown-ups , its expected and for the most part taken for granted , expect where children are involved. When it comes to kids we hope to empower them with strong decision making processes , threw education , parenting and socialization. But what I have found is that even with these tools as children and grown-ups alike we constantly make poor choices. For instance Tori Stafford , I am sure that it was prolly not a good choice in retrospect for her to leave school with someone she did not see or perceive as a threat , was it poor parenting or something else that allowed that , hmmm not sure about that either , it is easy to second guess or Monday morning quarterback that but lets face it , not making any judgements here just putting this out as an example , Tori's Mom made some choices long before this happened and as a result bad things happened, yes she is trying to get "clean" but lets face it doing prescription drugs "methadone"is just as poisonous as real heroine , leaves you just as messed up physically as well as mentally , but the denial is what lead to this innocent life being ended too quickly.
My biggest fear is and has always been that a choice I make will result in someone I care about being hurt or worse. There are times though that you make choices as a parent or grown-up that you have little or no options and so have to live with the consequences of your actions.
What I have also found as a parent is that you can't force people to make good choices , you can only allow them to do so. Behaviourists will tell you that it can be modified and that good decision processes are a learned response this is true but only if that person wants to make the right choice. Knowing what is right and doing that are two very separate worlds and as much as you would like to think that people you love and care for will always choice to make the right choice this doesn't always happen.
Every day is a challenge and as a parent I would love to wrap my children in bubble wrap , slap on several coats of protective paint , maybe several levels of Teflon like material to their feelings and send them out to greet the world in the morning , this is not practical nor possible but I can do my very best to arm them with empowering thoughts and ideals and pray that they make healthy choices , of course this is not going to happen every day case in point , last week on our way to school we noted that there were a few small children running in the sprinklers of the school play ground , not really a bad thing except that it was 745 am and not quite 10 degrees out yet , both girls noted that this sort of thing wasn't the most appropriate thing to do considering that these children would most likely have to stay wet for the duration of the school day and no matter how warm it got outside it would be a constant chilly inside , I thought to myself , self this is a good thing that they recognise this and was proud of them that they came to this conclusion on their own. Then something happened that I had no control over but should never have happened. Imagine my dismay when I pulled up to the curb and was greeted by two very soggy drowned sewer rats that were dressed oddly enough similarly to the two small children I had dropped off that morning?? Dumb founded I sat behind the drivers wheel of our family sedan and had nothing to say. The older of the two apologized for being wet still and explained that the principle ( a known grown up ) had turned on the sprinklers for the kids to run in during lunch and they ( the drowned rats that used to be my children ) could not resist.
Feeling better about the whole thing with the apology , and the rats appearing to be in closer resemblance to the children I dropped off that morning I left the school area shaking my head , because the older one of the two had already been home two days the previous week with flu like symptoms and was still suffering the effects of having her nose not wanting to be a part of her face any longer, but this happened the nite before their finale concert of the year for the strings orchestra that they both play for, the older ones final finale, a very big deal , so big in fact that she had to invite her grandparents to this event on her own and was very proud of the fact that she had done so. Hmmm not surprising the evening of the concert both are running on empty emotionally and physically over turned by fighting the flu that they have and a combination of early mornings and late nights, so we didn't go to the concert a natural consequence , but it is all about decisions and as much as I had thought that they were empowered and had the necessary skill set to enable them to make the right choices , it seems that there are still influences that are beyond my control , so it seems that my theory has been proven correct given the choice between making the right choice and doing the right thing are worlds away from each other and even when we have the right tools me sometimes make poor choices , this example is not entirely the children's fault as a grown up in a position of authority influenced their decision making process , someone they trust and look up to so not really all their doing ,but it under scores the thought that even with the right tools decisions are not always made in a positive light or with clarity of thought.
As for my most recent career choice , if it works out I will be a hero , if it doesn't I will continue to be the unfavored child and the one who consistently makes poor choices , for better or worse I am sticking with the choice and will wait for a positive response and hope that my children can forgive my mistakes and learn from them rather then sit in judgement and condemn them

Past Present Future

So it seems that according to news sourses globally Canadian researchers have discovered the portion of the mind that contains our memories. And in fact have also a way to erase painful memories ?? How they sort the good from the bad is seriously doubtful as they have had a great amount of success with lab rats.Not being a rodent of person , (only character ) I find it somewhat disturbing that educated induividuals can actually claim with a straight face , yes we have tested this on lab rats and found that we have in fact made them happier??? Ummm did the "scientist" actually ask the rats if they were happier ??? Did the rats get up and dance or do a giggy for the "scientist"after having the "bad"memories removed ? Were the bad memories more then being tested in a lab with drugs and other poisins in order to see a reaction ?? and if so did the fact that these rats just lay there and not do anything be enough for the scientist to consider this a success?
After all our memories , painful or not are what makes us individual , the fact that no two people can share the identical experience is a known fact, so it rubbing out that experience makes us happier then why is there so much concern for trauma victems who experience temporal amniesia ??? Isn''t that considered to be a form of brain damage ?? And how is that a way to treat people with PTSD , isn't that by itsself enough for other not to want to mess with is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is caused by extreme forms of Stress and or Trauma , so lets just make that better we'll just do the humane version of smash you in the head with a big stick and knock out all those nasty memories and you'll be fine , here's your Timmy's now get out there and have fun ????WTF
Hello McFly , ???? ok firstly the ethical breech of this whole process , we as medically educated individuals have an obligation to do no harm , that is sorta that Hypocrytical oath , yeah swearing at someone can be hypocrytical sometimes but whatever , tampering with peoples fundemantal personaes was outlawed in the 50's for a reason , not only is it now illlegal but even then it was immoral , for whatever the freaked up reason of subjecting lab rats to high doses of electrical current can be midly entertaining for the most juvenille of minds , it can not and must not be allowed to flow into the mainstream of psyco-analytical diagnosis / treatment ,
Even the dumb as sticks voluteer who was most likely paid a great deal of money to go on public television and sputter I am afwaid of spidders , hewge haiwy spiders and I would like my mind melted to mush to it won't scawe me anymore , pfffffttt , not to sound too judgemental at all but buddy being a sperm burping , turd stuffing poofter is more of a deviation then being afraid of spiders, and I am sure that you wouldn't want to melt your mind for that , so there you go , but then moments later after eharing the whole truth he decides that he doesn't want to loose the whole big scarely being locked in a closet with his cousin , ( for obvious reasons) memory , just the scary spider reaction ?? hmmmmm can you say learn the difference between voluntary response and involuntary response and deal with butt plug , step away from the big hairy scary electrodes and sasha out of there , grrrrrrrrrr
But there you have it the modern ethical dilema of scientific discovery and its application to ?? human?? subjects
Would I voluntarily go and have my mind wiped clean , ummm nope not for all the cash in the whole freakin world , sorry , good bad of indifferent this is who I am and I am good with that ....

Myths Legends Fable and Lore

So sitting here completely stunned , while I lay awake late last nite thinking wonderous thinks and marvelling even myself and the enlightened tone of those thoughts while secretly harbouring anger hurt and other self destructive thoughts.Amazed because yet again when ihave these little thinks I say to myself , self you need to wtire this down or you will forget , and then you will be mad at yourself because , again you didn't remember like you promised you would and there will be nothing left of this think and who will know.
So instead of rousing the whole house and sitting here hammering away at the wonderous think I was thinking , I shambled off in my half wakefullness content that unlike other times I would remeber and it would be good and I could share with my eager stalkers and they would be content as I was with the think. Heavy sigh
After a lousy nites rest and virtually no sleep I sit here bleary eyed , jazzed on another cuppa wondering if I will ever learn that I should listen to me and myself when I am telling them that it will be alright that I will remember and me and myself shake their collective heads and say nooo you won't , I looks around and wonders who you is and where did they come from and why it seems that everyone is ganging up on I , but we digress ...
Myths Legends and lore are said to contain a kernel of truth , that all stories evolve from a shred of truth and grows with the retelling into the stories of legends and Fables , so my thought was on that kernel of truth , as ellusive as a whisp of smoke , at times as brilliant as the lightening strike on a hot summers night, slipping threw the hands of collective retellers like the sands of time until it is lost and only the story grows and remains , truth forsaken for the dramatisaion of the story itself that has caught life and reaps the soul of each breath of life it is given in the retelling, building like a small hurricane til it consumes everything else.
Religions of the world built on misguided retelling of lore and story have been founded and survived for millenium , each covetting their own story as the truth and the only , and yet stripping away the austentatious and the arcquane there is a similarity in many the story starts out the same with morale issues to resolve and with the fundemantal principle being that good shall triumph , and so when queried do you believe , my response is in most instances yes I believe , do I believe in a followed religion or religous practice , no , but I do believe , I believe in humanity as a whole , I believe that there are higher powers that control our lives that somewhere sometime we honestly find these answers , but only when life as we know it is truely ended , when we shed the outer skin of our worldly bodies and move on to the next being stage or exisitance that we are meant to be
It is our ignorance that binds us to this world we exsist in and that we struggle with in the TPOH
But returning to the story , the telling of the story , or retelling , the lose of innocence the shunning of the courage to speak the truth and allow the truth to stand alone to be retold in its entirety.
Ever wonder why when we speak of these things we use words like naked , hard stark and other cold and barren descriptions , is the truth so difficult to face that even the telling of it leaves us in a fragile state stripped of our defenses and layed open to critisisms and harm that we are unable to face this ?? Is that why when retelling even the truth it is embellished for the sake of the audience to mold it to something more personal then it actuallly is ? Investigators will tell you that there are always three versions of truth , protagonist , antagonist and the middle ground garnered from a collection of both sides spoken , which inevitably leads to the closest thing to the "real"truth that is being sought.
When we all know that "reality"" is the percieved moment from the viewers point of interaction, that each point of view is as individual as there are people that populate the earth, that no two persons will experience the same moment in teh same fashion as each is tainted by personal experience that precludes them from the others thoughts and responses
And so with that how is it that some may judge others to be crazy or lack reality when it is meerly the lack of percieved reality that one is lacking and which is the truth ?? Who speaks the truth if both are correct in their own perception, the truth then becomes an agreement between the parties as acceptable version of events or occurances by retelling the facts as percieved by individuals and processed by the tainted experiences of past to be projected on the future or the story.
Then it dawned on me that my writting is like this at times , confused , not entirely interactive and somewhat fringe like in its percieved existance. I could try to contain these thoughts but in the past that has led to some serious consequences that remain today as bright and sore and a fresh scar carved deep into my worldly self and bared only to the most intimate of consorts
thoughts can be like a praire storm that I remember as a young child , being in teh open field the air charged with electricity so much so that the hair on my airs stood on end , the smell of fresh rain and charred air a subtle and delightful mix , but broiling just out of the most attuned sensory perception roiling with charged ions blown on the front of the wind that carried the storm
At times I stand on the shores of desolation raging against the hurricane force winds screaming teh silent screams against the wind and waves that threaten to sweep me into the ocean of unknown and yet I stand alone , legs apart fist raised in anger and rage on unmoved by the violence that threatens to sweep me away and my thoughts swirl around in this storm free to go where they want
Then there are the quiet moments of solitude when the clarity of thought is as bold and striking as the altered back lighting of sun on a noon day square in the center of a highly populated area, dirt and dust cowered in the unseen corners litter blown by like autumns leaves on a forest floor , but the peace and surity of the moment so calming that it makes me tremble
Writting can be like that for me , words sometimes leave me at a pace that even my hands can not keep pace and yet when it is complete leaves me a withered and empty husk , lightened by the release of the burden of carrying these words purged of the weight of the story , released to grow and be nutured by others in the retelling and to take life of itself and move on, like a child sweet and innocent growing and becoming something of its own an entity of itself
The kernel of truth released , why do we seek that which we can not control , the dreams that can not be realised and when they are met , not welcomed with open arms but discarded as beneath our contemplation because they were less then what we had come to expect them to be.
Success , as defined and sought individually as our own personal experience will allow, measured by commonly accepted versions of truth , and judged on these merits. To whom do these belong
Those collective anonymous them , they who we as meer mortals seek approval from , who we desperately attempt to please with our everyday attempts and who drive us to the pursuit of happiness , bombarded constantly by their perseptions of what we need to make us happy to make us whole and complete and a better person , why is it that we continue to look in the wrong direction for the truth , it lies within , nestled next to that other power we seldom use, inner strength , the determination we use to frequently in the misguided believe that we are making a difference in others as we move through their lives and gathering their rewards for it as our own to placate our needs to feel good and righteous and worthy ? The failure in this is what I believe is what has caused humanity to seek the diety of God like statures to unburden themselves with thier guilt and a place to move the balance of personal need to another to free themselves to continue unempeeded by day to day life activities until they have found the end of this journey and move to that other exisitance. Why else would there be so many similarities in these legends myths and fables modern or ancient lore , the threads of tale are the same simply rewoven to a cultural or societal relevance ?
And yet at the heart of all these lays a truth , yet unspoken , lost and forgotten , to capture this would be to hold the power of untold stories , of unimaginable depth and meaning because to speak the truth is to leave oneself open to the critism of others and to lay bare the soul of the founder in honesty and with integrity to stand against the masses and rail against the injustice of retelling , the key to this is finding that common thread of mutually exclusive but agreed on perception and reveal the naked truth in this light , but surely only a god or god like personage could manage such a miracle as to attempt the retelling of any story in truth , without prejugdice or malice and not for personal gain but the betterment of the telling ?
and so it remains , myths legends and lore , fables of past deeds done in the name of society

Making choices that should mean something

So now I have decided what or who I wanna be if I grow up, and there in lies the rub, the truth and hurt of it all. Once you decide then there is always the thoughts , hmm is this right , if it is right for me is it right for those around me and the ones that inevitably get dragged along with this. Fact is that some decisions are made for you , hence the denstiny thoughts. I can tell that I am following destiny because that impending gloom of deja vu is pretty much constant , so that must mean that I have made the correct decision , even if sometimes it feels wrong , doing the right thing is seldom the easiest thing. In my humble experience such that it is doing teh right thing is pretty much guarenteed to either hurt , hinder or cause a great deal of tension and anxiety . Heavy sigh , but it has to be done because its right , it should feel good and will no doubt feel good when its done but getting there is the journey , Nés pas ??
I feel like sometimes myself is trying to convince the rest of us that we need more meaning in our lives , that we should try to get along a little better with the rest of us and leave all those nasty misgivings to others less secure about who or what they are and or want to be. Well that would be good and I am sure that a little less arguing would certainly quiet the voices in my head , but honestly if they were quiet for awhile then I would wonder where everyone else went and want to be with them as well and then I would loose myself and me again , and that would be a terrible thing in light of the most recent decisions we have come to.
So in the interest of preserving I , we must continue to debate other more or less significant issues to keep the constant drone of voices at least to a level where they are heard :)
And so the journey begins , life and everything after because as everyone knows life goes on long after the thrill has gone :) thankyou John , btw what happened to your middle name , another story I am sure

Destiny and its child cognative choice

So it seems that once you have purged the history , decided how you got to where you are and rehashed the mistakes you made along the way.Vowing of course not to make those same mistakes again that with destinys aid you can make the same mistakes over an over again.Unlike teh definition of insanity which is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result , destiny will guide you to make the same hard choices repeatedly unless you chose correctly or until you chose correctly. It isn't so much about emotion except when you deny the preordained and make that wrong choice, but the question is if you stick with that and ignore the consequences is it the wrong choice or the lesson you need to learn that illusive that we simply choose to ignore it.
So is destiny about the cognitive choices we make or are the choices we make actually part of the ultimate destiny , are they more about the journey then the destination and when you achieve the happiness that we all so desperately pursue is that the final destination , it seems odd that married men are not so much preordained to die earlier , just more eager.
Why do I have to get married again I didn't do anything wrong , there is a reason that married is not a vow but a sentence , the shortest spoken sentence with teh greatest impact.
Bitter twisted , otherwise crazy perhaps clinically but then again what or who is it that should decide these things and if they do , do we really have to answer to that or only the face in the mirror in the morning.
Its amazing how small things can change the perspective of how we deal with life and the curves that it tosses our way. The prospect of a brighter tommorow , the thought that I can do this , cautious optomism , slowly we peer out into the brightness of the new day , feeling very much like a character in a Tragically Hip song , all squint eyed and confused , breath deep and move forward regardless of the consequences , but what if it was the last time , the last day , the only chance you had to do the things that you had really really wanted to do but didn't for whatever the reason was at the time , regret , is there any time for that in the end ?
Is it a bad thing to live like you were dieing , to pursue the things that are important to you and forsake the ones that you care about most , or is that just to greedy?
SO many questions burning so little time

History , Evolution and destiny

It seems to me since my recent purge of history and evolution that there is another aspect to the slow ond constant change that I hve witnessed most recently. That would be destiny and how it interacts with our everyday life. When something happens that is good , we say that is was meant to be because it feels right.But what if it doesn't feel right , what if it isn't something that we can either deal with or want to deal with , is that destiny too , is it too painful to admit that even the bad things that happened are preordained by some higher being that controls our actions or decisions.And if that is true then is it our daily decisions that alter the final destination called destiny?? Are we so in control of ours lives that we can consciously decide what our fate is to be and therefore our own destiny , are we truely masters of our destiny.
If we were to be able to somehow see through that mysterious vale that shrouds our congnitive consiouness then why wouldn't we want to control our destiny to have simply everything that we truely desire for good or evil and damn the consequences that follow with the pursuit of those ideals or desires. That precisely is the rub, the consequences we suffer as a result of our own unflagging pursuit of happiness. It is the interaction with other individual destinies and their pursuit that interupts the unlimited retention of our own goals.
It is the hurt the misgivings and the desire , as fundamental as they are not to consciously do evil , that is the primal self in all humans. So within these parameters do we subconciously limit our own desires to those that we feel entitled to , a good job a nice family surrounding , a fancy car when we reward ourselves , the tangible things that honest pursuit con obtain , what about the esoterric are they so easy to dismiss , is the constant abbrassion of desiceful ignorance worth the avoidance of painful destinations ??
What if you knew that the things that you desire most were not obtainable , would that alter your pursuit , are these paths that we tread so lightly every day so untenable that the simpliest decision can alter dramatically the final destination , more a kin to flight paths then paths of soil tread by thousands previously in earth ?? or the concrete unforgiving path of destruction built for an by man to the detriment of humanity ?? Is this our path and were exactly do the individual paths place on this unending road to nowhere?
My destiny , and the control there of is beyond my own comprehension there are moments of clairty that I feel that I am actually in control and make decisions to follow the path where ever it may lead , but there are other times when lost and unsure that I feel that ther ecould n ot possibly be a higher being in charge of this mysterious journey as it makes so little sense and could not possibly have a good ending to it , alas my less philosphical self says it all ends in death for all humans and it isn't about teh destination so much as the journey so why bother asking why and where when you know the answers to these questions already , perhaps it is my morbid fasination with not so much where am I going and where will I be when I get there but what is it going to be like when I go.
When I was little we used to travel around being of military decent means that we lived a nomadic existance for most of my youth and I actually looked forward to the moves , to meeting new people , seeing new places and discovering new things , fasinated not so much with where we were going as it really didn't matter where we were going just that we were going , is that fundemantally who I am not what I am , am I truely that lost nomad destined to shamble from place to place hungry for new and adventures untold , there are faces and people and places in my head that I have not met , nor seen in real life or experienced in reality but are as much a reality to me as my waking exisitance , this should or could unnerve a normal person but for someone who is questionably sane by definition this only further intreuges me , and only raises more questions of destiny and the pursuit of the happiness that would be implied by the thought that we are masters of our own destiny.
Multiple personality disorder aside , becuase that would imply that there is actually a convulsion of destinies threatening to collide and in that collision be lost to all with the exception of the reality of the remainder , perhaps that would be the solution , the resolution of the MPD , and singling out of the strongest a sort of darwinian decisivness that would result in a single being with a single purpose and single destination
It would certainly answer the who am I question , easy you are who ever is left after the collision , like it or not that is who you are simple , then how do I explain the visions of people I have not met or could not be with because of physical limitaitons and are these spectors , simply spectators of my own destiny or intrigal parts yet to be introduced , I suppose only time will tell