My Cat is Talented

Why is it that if you put a cat in a tile room with a teeny tiny scrap of carpet it will manage to hit it every time?  My cat can be fifteen feet away from the rug, and suddenly you hear horrible retching barks and then see the cat running drunkenly across the room while his back arches in jerky spasms. He rarely misses. On the off chance that he misses he makes a repeat performance to make sure he gets at least a little on the rug.  

While I was writing this (describing the incident from this morning) he decided to re-enact the situation so I could make sure to describe it correctly to you. See? He's helpful AND talented :)

Fighting for Freedom

I wasn't going to post about this incident but it's very important to me so I feel I must.

On Memorial Day one of my friends said some things to me about the United States military that I found untrue. He told me that we haven't fought a domestically defensive war  since 1812 and that he found the violence-for-freedom argument to be illogical. He also stated that free countries all over the world look at the United States and shake their heads. He told me that other countries don't have to "defend" their rights and freedoms and people saying that our military defends his is BS. He claims he defends his own rights and freedoms. He finds it offensive to believe that a military acting like the strongarm of a corrupt government is defending him. The government scares him and he claims they have taken a lot away from him already.


I was pretty upset upon reading these things and then even more upset to find that this friend had blocked me, not deleted me, from his facebook so I have no way of communicating with him whatsoever. I have no way to rebut his statements or even tell him he's being immature. I had almost forgotten the issue when earlier today, a woman (a friend of a friend) started verbally attacking my friend about an issue she is having and when I tried to explain the situation she verbally attacked me (and all Army wives for that matter) for sitting on our asses praying for our husbands in this "stupid" war and going to BBQ's while our husbands get everything for free. She said the Army is stupid, the war is stupid and that I should get some education about whats going on in the world because all of Europe thinks Americans are stupid. (This woman is from the Czech Republic). She said, "Fighting for freedom? What freedom?" She said no one was occupying the United States, that the US does that to other countries and she then deleted my friend from her Facebook account.  (Her husband kept the drama going however by posting in her defense and starting some insults as to peoples physical appearances and some lovely name calling :)


What I don't understand about these two very similar incidents in less than a week is that in both cases the people involved seems offended that the United States claims to fight for freedom and in both cases deleted or blocked the person "offending" them immediately after posting their opinion. Are they scared to defend their position? Supposedly they defend themselves; my friend practically proclaimed that we don't need a military. I feel the need to point out that we not only liberated Czechoslavakia from Germany in 1945 (before it became the Czech Republic.) We may not have been occupied, but we didn't join that war until we were physically attacked in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I find it hard to believe that we should not have taken any action after something so horrible. Should we have stood by and been overrun by Japanese and German soldiers? Would she have preferred we let the Nazi's have control over her people? 


I'm not making an argument for the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, I may not completely agree with it, even if some would argue that the people there are happy to have our assistance. The Czech Republic has their own military in Afghanistan assisting the United States!  The politicians may have their own agenda but I'm not talking politics. I'm talking about our servicemen and women. They are fighting for freedom. They are not there for oil. They are there so that we have the freedom to discuss this topic. There are countries where women do not have the right to vote, or show their faces in public. If you don't like the government fight for a change. Otherwise, please move to a country that suits you better, one far enough away I can't hear you complaining. Perhaps they could find one with no internet service ;)

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. - Martin Luther King Jr. 

Do you recycle?

Last month USAG Baumholder asked what three things are recycled on post. Only five people answered and only one got it right. I hope that statistic isn't reflective of the rest of our post! 


Obviously a lot of folks don't know this but we are required to recycle here in Germany. It's part of our agreement with our host country and it's in our housing handbook. It's much stricter off post in the local community. We have it pretty easy on post. There are recycling bins for paper & cardboard (the blue dumpsters) next to every building here in Baumholder. In Smith housing there is a recycling point next to the commissary. You can take glass, metal, paper & cardboard, clothes and even bulk items such as electronics, tires, and scrap metal. There is another recycling point in Wetzel between the elementary school and the gate to the golf course. It's not hard to do. We have a couple extra trash cans next to our fridge and we use one for soda cans, soup cans, ect. We use the other for our paper and cardboard. When they get full we take them out. I don't have a lot of glass but I save it in the built in wastebasket.  I often times see trash in the blue bins and cardboard in the black bins. I hope this is just a lack of information and not due to laziness. We all need to do our part so please take advantage of the recycling bins. There are other ways to recycle as well. You can turn an old newspaper into a pinata, as packing paper, or line a cage. Use a plastic bag from the commissary as a trash bag, to pack a sack lunch in or pick up dog poo (that's a whole different post LOL!).


For more ideas and information on recycling in general click here
For more information about recycling in Germany click here
For hands on information from an eco-smart blogger click here

What ways do you recycle?


**UPDATE: There are now receptacles near each building for Paper/Cardboard (blue), Glass (red), Cans (yellow), and Trash (black)!!! Please make sure you're using them :D