Single parent and child care

Look at the picture below. That to me is a face of someone discouraged and hurt. Her name is Debra Harrell and because of her situation I had trouble sleeping. Some will look at her picture and only see color and already make assumptions. But please just hear me out before you judge.

On June 30th, 2014 Debra Hall had to go to work as a shift manager at McDonald's. It's summer time so her daughter Regina is out of school. Debra is a single mom and had no friends that could watch Regina while she went to work so Debra made a difficult decision. Instead of calling in she left her daughter at Summerfield Park in North Augusta, South Carolina alone. This is not any ordinary park. There are other children left in the park while their parents go to work or wherever else they may spend their time. During the day at Summerfield Park kids can get wet on the splash pad, play on the playground, or basketball courts. Volunteers also come by the park and hold the feed-a-child program. This program provides the children at the park free breakfast and lunch. Looking in Debra's eyes I see something deep that I don't see in everyone's eyes so I can only imagine how tough it must have been for her to kiss Regina's forehead and tell her she had to go to work. I'm not condoning what Debra did because there are too many child predator's out there to leave children alone anywhere. But if she was going to leave her anywhere this park would be the best spot. Someone spotted Regina alone at the park and called the police. Debra was arrested and spent 17 days in jail and lost temporary custody of Regina.

I do believe this story will have a happy ending and I can't say I believe that about all of these situations. You see Debra is what we root for in our society. When she was younger she was arrested several times but her last brush with the law was a traffic violation in 2006. Since then it seems as though she's tried to turn her life around. The last thing we need to do is prosecute her in this situation and set her and Regina back years. Regina is on the honor roll at her school and Debra was welcomed back to her job as a shift manager at McDonalds. On top of that people have donated over 40k dollars to a trust fund for Regina's education. I don't know Debra and I could be completely wrong but I have to believe in a woman who chooses to work at McDonald's instead of relying on others to take care of her. My only point in this is can't we as a country provide some kind of child care for parents in these situations? We send money all over the world but we sometimes ignore our own in order to do that. Look in Debra's eyes and tell me you don't see hurt and shame. Please just give people a chance in life before  you judge them. Kids like Regina are counting on us to help ensure she becomes the next generation of successful individuals.

I'm not a judge so all I'm going to do is remember how lucky I am and think all positive thoughts for Debra and Regina. I'll hope that their future is filled with smiles and love and that Debra never again has the look on her face like she does in her mugshot.

Orange County to Santa Barbara

On Friday, June 27th 2014 a group of us decided to go camping at Lake Cachuma outside of Buellton a little bit beyond Santa Barbara. We left at 4:45 in the morning but we ended up running into some traffic on the 405 because of a SIG alert. Some unfortunate man ran into the median and then got out of his car. He was then struck by another vehicle. It took an hour and fifteen minutes to get 3 miles but I spent most of the time empathizing with the man who lost his life that morning.

    If you have not had the opportunity to drive up the 101 through Ventura along the coast I suggest you do it. We stopped in a town called Summerland, where we ate at the Summerland Beach cafe. I had the steak and eggs but felt the steak was a little bland. The best plate looked to be Crabby Bill's Benedict, which is two poached eggs with hollandaise sauce on crab cakes. I wanted to trade for sure. Anyways, we went through Santa Barbara which has some of the best coastline I've ever seen. A few islands and scenery that's breathtaking. We drove into Santa Maria which is a very important area in California. This is where the Santa Maria bbq style started. It's a type of smoking where you use red oak to bbq beef. I've had the tri-tip and if done right is absolutely amazing. We then headed back to a town called Buellton where we headed out to Lake Cachuma to camp for the weekend.

Friday night we bbq'd terryaki chicken with homemade sauce made from our Japanese family members. We then used the Santa Maria style merged with the Japanese sauce creating some sort of fusion. Anyways, we were camping but add some coconut milk steamed rice with cilantro and we had a dinner that I would have paid for. The music then started and vodka and tequila were flowing as we told stories and laughed the night away. The only issue of the night was when I went to sleep and got locked out of the camper because everyone was passed out! I know right. Well, since I'm a chameleon and can sleep anywhere I laid the seats back in my Lexus RX350 and passed out. Woke up early Saturday morning but wasn't completely hungover because at some point we ran out of cranberry juice and switched to gatorade. Since I replenished plenty of electrolytes I was good to go. Which was good because we had a day of wine tasting and a dinner to die for coming up so I had to be ready to soak in the experience.

We started the morning with Frittatas and coffee brewed in a press. Seriously, coffee was top notch as was the egg frittatas and we were now ready to hit the Sun Stone winery for some foo foo time. We entered Sun Stone winery and immediately began some tasting of some wines like Grenache blanc, Grenache Rose, chardonnay, merlot, Pinot noir, Syrah, and others. The chardonnay was my favorite white while the Pinot Noir was my favorite red. I'm biased though because I'm not a big fan of white wines and I tend to like merlots and pinots the most. It's just funny to me how many descriptive words people find for wine. For me it's all about what fits. I might not be a wine connoisseur because I think it's an individual preference I go more for smooth taste with a light aroma. Wines were not too expensive so we picked up some for a night at home.

Since I had never been wine tasting at a vineyard before I really enjoyed the experience and then it was time to cruise through some small towns like Solvang which is a Danish farming community. Went to a few specialty stores and then back to the campsite. Before returning to the campsite we visited the grave site of our friend's mother Barbara. I always get a little somber when I visit places like that but I also try to picture the lives and stories off all the people laid to rest there. He put flowers on the site and cleaned around it. Very touching and I was honored to be a part of the moment. Of course like all good campers do we sampled some wine and cheese preparing for my favorite part of the entire trip a visit to the restaurant the Hitching Post II.

Our reservations were at 5:30pm and immediately we were a little bummed out because they were out of their best appetizer the Grilled Artichoke that is seasoned with their special Magic Dust. Instead we had the BBQ sauteed mushrooms and steamed mussels. Both were amazing and I don't even like Mussels. The appetizers were followed by shrimp cocktails (that were also delicious), garlic bread, veggie sample, sweat potato soup, garden salad, before we even got to the main course. One of us had the Grilled Texas quail, one had the filet, 2 had the Flat Iron steak, and one had the chicken. The two specials were swordfish and ribeye but I went with the suggested item. That was the Flat iron steak. Oh my lord! This was the tastiest steak I've ever had. It came sliced and I ordered it rare. The Santa Maria style of bbq sprinkled with magic dust made it to where I did not even need the cherry-peppercorn sauce. It not only fell apart in your mouth it was like a party of flavors that I did not want to finish. I'm already planning on practicing this style of cooking because I'm hooked. I had the fries because I had read about them and I did think they were pretty damn good. It was a two and a half hour experience I believe everyone should try at least once.

We continued our night back at the site late into the night until they had to come to our site and ask us to turn our music down because of quiet time. We continued by the campsite and ate some smores while telling stories. I have a big mouth so my wife told me she couldnt get her stories in. I'll have to work on that for sure but overall when we left the next morning after pancakes and bacon the weekend felt complete. We then jumped back on the 101 for our drive back down to Mission Viejo. We'll be back many more times.

The path of the US Government

It's unfortunate that entertainment and perception rule our society. Politicians stand up and smile and wave and everyone thinks it's all great. I was disturbed that we traded 5 high ranking Al Qaeda generals for Bergdahl when he got captured because he deserted his post. The White House announced that we had little chance to convict those generals so they were going to be released anyways. Fact is that the Taliban will now be working a lot harder to capture Americans in order to force trades. The position of the US for hundreds of years has been that we do not negotiate with terrorists. What changed? Now who knows if Bergdahl was actually a deserter because both the military and the government have grown fond of lying. But this situation in Iraq is building quick and we're once again at the mercy of what our government tells us and allows the media to broadcast. I do know that the second largest city in Iraq is once again under the control of Al Qaeda insurgents and we'll once again get involved because of natural resources but the message will be that it was because we care and we're humanitarians. If that's true why did we not help the Ukraine when Russia invaded? The system is corrupt. There is little doubt that The basis of what the United States of America is built is the most modern and successful of any in recent history. Unfortunately, in several hundreds of years the lawyers and policy makers have found a way to bypass all of it's laws in order to benefit. In the original Constitution Congress was paid only for time they were in session. When they returned to their home they would fill out a expense report and submit it to be reimbursed. This was because they were originally civil servants. This changed in I believe the Taft administration where he decided to make them all full time employees of the government. They were then enabled to vote on their own raises. Now, they not only receive their pay of almost 200k a year but they also receive about another half a million a year to pay for staff, travel, and misc expenses. They're basically living the good life while telling the rest of us that we need to pay for their lifestyle. When did this change and how to we change it back and hold these people accountable?

Lost in perception

I consider myself to be a patient person that does not judge and I try to mind my own business. But at what point does our society realize we're living in an age of perception and political correctness?

 The saying "perception is reality" drives me crazy. That tells me that what people think about you is more important then what reality is. Or that being nice and telling people what they want to hear is more important than being honest. I can't live in that world. 

To me that's the biggest problem with politics. We're voting for the guy that tells us what we want to hear and who we think is the best guy. Instead of doing that, why don't we take a little extra time to find the truth and reality? 

Our country (US) is filled with over 300 million people how can we be so naive to think we only need a 2 party system? How can the Republican and Democratic parties represent the population? I'll even be more cynical. How can people still believe that either one of these parties represents the population? Both these parties are sponsored by super pacs that donate hundreds of millions of dollars. Does anyone think they donate that much money without the assurance that they'll get some back room deal? 

I know people like to think everyone is honest but come on! Things are beyond corrupt now. So instead of people acknowledging it they just pretend everything is fine. The reason people do this is because we're all comfortable. Even though we're getting squeezed and things are getting tougher we continue to coast along cause the alternative is to admit that we have to change things and nobody wants to do that. 

So the politicians continue to smile and wave and we continue to pretend that a Republican is better than a democrat or the other way around. These guys only disagree on the things that have nothing to do with government. 

Those things are gay marriage, abortion, and a few others. 

A Republican will tell you he is pro life and does not believe in abortion. A Democrat will tell you he believes in Pro Choice but won't tell you whether he believes one way or the other. That's why democrats have been more successful lately. They play the fence and tell everyone what they want to hear. Then, they get into office and nothing happens. 

While the national debt is at 17 trillion and climbing. Who is going to fix that? 

But we continue to tell each other what we want to hear and the perception is that everything will get better if only we can get a republican in office.

What do you think?

Learning as I go (poetry)

Ive learned that this life is multiplied by infinity its just not for only me. Your time will run out thats just how it goes eternally. Im gifted my truck lifted. Through all the roaches ive already sifted the sun came up time to go back to work. Damn right im gonna work this. Too old to twerk this. Another hearse. Javon kearse retiring just yesterday magic was the best point guard on the planet. Everyones got it twisted. Im gonna drink a fifth to this. My grandmas were right family is the most important. These hours will seem like minutes. Gotta be generous cause you cant take any of it with you. Might as well have a send off thats worthy of another dimension. Im done pimpin ive been pimped. Id rather be square. They seem to live their life oblivious. But human nature has a way of getting up thats for sure. Im sure i wont be here much longer. After im done contributing to this fair existence that we perceive. Im not trying to deceive. I did that for a minute but im still trying to live. But i guarantee ya. While most brothers are looking to take. You can count on ol G danny V. Streets of pomona, phelan, san berdoo, im gonna give. Mr absolete, immediate absence of good decisions. But after a while dont dismiss me im gonna fix it. Cause i dont only got the friends i got the grits. From the dirt of the basement to being a complete solution lets do this im gonna bring attitude and humbleness.

You frustrate me like new religion

Your what i like to call new religion. Ive forgotten more books of the bible than you even know how to pronounce or even know were written. You misinterperet what your reading so let me learn you boy. Your about to get a mental whoopin from your daddy. Ill teach you lessons about how people in the old testament used to destroy. Eye for an eye but in the new testament turn the other cheek, written by man, to believe every single thing you would be a fool. You dont need to learn in school. Deep down you know the right choice the devine truth it lives and breathes within each and every one of you. Im no different. Only difference is i know life. From the bottom to the top. Ive been everywhere you can imagine. Ill never let go of the past Pat summerall and John madden. But the future is a dimension I gotta believe in. Even though you don't feel or get me leaving is tempting. A sudden disapearance would be fitting. I hope everyone would let go this disappearance isn't gripping. This aint murder she wrote. I fell off a boat. A note i wrote. Nobody liked me like a baseball card in the spokes. A quiet room and im the dumb ass telling jokes. What the fucks the difference. I should have just shut my mouth but instead i spoke.

The day my music died

Below is a brain leak from my feelings of 1996. That year was crazy. In March of 1996 Tupac released the album All Eyez on Me. It was probably the best rap album (close second is Snoops Doggystyle). A month later a week after he was married Bradley Nowell died of an overdose in San Francisco. 3 months later in July the album Sublime Sublime was released. Two months later in Las Vegas, Nevada Tupac was shot and died a week later. Then, to make matters worse Biggie Smalls was killed in March 1997. Literally, 3 of my favorite artists gone in less than a year. I guess it's true that the good die young.

 

I dont know how far ill go, it depends how far this thing will take me. Ive digressed in more things but overachieved in other ways got this situation in submission. But ya gotta stay on your toes. Took 40 years so you know i still aint learned. On my heels half the time, id give anything to have 96 back with sublime. Tupac still alive and tommy lasorda still on the sideline. But thats the year all my music died. Followed shortly by my nigga biggie from the east side. The left side of the coast i sit and talk with all their ghosts. I dont need to boast, quite the opposite im pretty humble for a lightning rod.   All you bitches got your pantiest in a wad. I have just cause to get away, call me jaws. You can call it an escape clause. Ill let you out of this business. Actually you can take it just because behind these 4 walls i cant feel alive. Get me out this coop into a sound booth. Or ill even take preventing the next john wilkes booth. Ill even take the fbi guy in bones, that dude booth. I guess i used to be smooth. Maybe its all been a figment my imagination. Gets away with me but ill take it cause my realities already spent. Ive already accepted the truth.