#currents

I learned to drive on a 1971 Fiat 127.

The first time I got into the instructor’s car and drove up the street, he asked me “have you driven before?” Apparently, I was doing really well for a first- timer. Yet the only experience I had before that day was going through shifting motions on Mom’s Fiat and moving it around the driveway when she would allow me to.

“A natural” – my parents knew I’d be a serious driver from the day when I was 4 and ran out to meet Dad at the gate for a ride in when he got home from work. On this day, I gave into my urge to drive by putting his car into reverse from park. Dad was able to get to me and the car before it had traversed the whole roadway onto the opposite sidewalk.

I started official lessons early in the year – possibly February or March. I was taking the test in May or June. This I remember because I ALMOST had a clash with my exams and the driving test.

I managed to fail my driving test the first time around because despite bringing the car into  a parallel parking spot and positioning myself 6 inches from the wall and at equal distance at the front and rear bumper … I had hit the rear cone on my way into the spot.

Luckliy, I had done so well on the rest of the yard tests, that they determined when I came back to re-sit all I had to do was parallel park again and then do the road test – instead of starting over from scratch.

The second time around, I parked perfectly – albeit not as close to the wall.

The instructor almost failed me again on the road test – I was driving too fast. Test speeds were supposed to be 25mph – but I found myself hitting 35 and over very regularly. I think what won him over was that I looked fairly comfortable behind the wheel and was quite intimate with the road code (a lot of it is common sense, though, isn’t it? – I said.)

My first car, that was my own, wasn’t until a good 10 years or so later. With the help of my parents, I bought a Nissan Sunny. I remember feeling lucky because my Sunny had an advanced filtration system in the ceiling – clearly the previous owner had been a smoker – and the sales people hadn’t realized it was there until after the paperwork had been signed and therefore couldn’t charge me extra for it.

I’ve owned a few more cars since then – all of them ‘pre-owned’.

But yesterday, I became the first-time owner of a brand new car. Well, to be perfectly honest, the bank owns it and I am paying them to keep it parked in my driveway. But it’s still my name on the title. Hubby’s name is on it with me, but for all intents and purpose – it’s mine!

It’s a 2011 Suzuki SX4 Sport … It’s red (who knew?), manual transmission (6 speed), it’s comfy and it’s light … and I love it. Driving it from the dealership home (some 40-odd miles) wasn’t enough for me. I intend to take it out again ASAP.

Imagine that – I come to live in the United States and the first car I buy for myself is Japanese.

Heh – talk about back to my roots.

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It might have been a mistake, but I set up a google news alert on keywords “military spouse” a couple of days before the  shootings. Ever since then I have been bombarded with more news items accusing the media and the presidency of being politically correct than I have people refraining from accusation because it is such a complex issue to analyze.

Oddly, today I received 2 hits – one story was from a military spouse on Fort Hood right here who while outraged at the incident still stayed far from calling it “a terrorist attack from the Islamic faith”. The other …. ahem … person, was not so delicate.  And it is people … ahem … like him or her that get my blood boiling.

Here’s the conundrum I deal with: “Everybody is entitled to their opinions and their right to express them publicly” – yes? BUT “The people of this country, so arrogant and so protective of their so-called freedoms are too damned quick to point a finger at an entire religion”.

Here’s what I want to shout from the highest most visible point in the whole world “THE ISLAMIC FAITH IS NOT THE ONE TO BLAME“

Here’s what I want to say when questioned about that phrase: “The Islamic faith has been around for longer than Christianity. Maybe as long as Judaism. Religions don’t change overnight because America is the biggest target to aim at. Stop being stupid and do a little listening.“

Here’s what I want to say right here on my blog: “None of these Wannabe Whistle Blowers have ANY idea what life is like for the military – deployed or not – so shut the fuck up. You can’t know what was in Hasan’s head.“

And here’s what I sit home and cry to myself every single day: “Why the HELL did he have to be Muslim? Because now it’s ALL about that and not about the effects of war on soldiers and support forces.“

And here’s what I want to leave this post with: “I am not making any assumptions. I am not saying it is NOT a terrorist act. All I am saying is that if it is, it is no different from Timothy McVeigh and HE was home-grown American. Leave the Islam out of it.“

Thank you, and good night.

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One of the things I learned while preparing 2008 tax returns this year, was that most active duty military are able to retain their “home of record”. This means, for them, that they literally reside in the state they choose and pay state taxes to that state, and never have to get register again wherever they PCS to (PCS=Permanent Change of Station; or for the lay person, getting moved around to the many different military installations stateside and worldwide).

One of the things that I was told I would have to do every time we moved, was re-register in that state, get a new driver’s license essentially. Put the new address on record as the one where we currently call home. At the time, I cringed knowing we would be moving on average every 2 years. Which meant that I would have to pay a visit to my local authorities every 2 years and re-register current address and wait for a new driver’s license.

This last move from Kentucky to Texas was pretty annoying for me. And frankly that lay in the fact that after Kentucky, the process of getting a driver’s license in the state of Texas is annoying as hell. You go in, sign up the papers, give them all your information, take your picture and get a slip paper that replaces the one you had before and you wait 4-6 weeks to get your new license in the mail.

I thought it was archaic as hell. Kentucky had a 5-10 minute waiting period – depending on the number of people in the office that day. I have NO idea what it is Texas needs to do why it needs to go to a central location and why it needs to take 4-6 weeks. All I know is that after 2 weeks, I got a letter saying something went wrong and I had to go back and go through the same rigmarole all over again…. and STILL wait another 4-6 weeks.

When I finally got my license in the mail, I cried … because it was ugly and it was the same quality as the Kentucky license that I had to surrender. I had imagined it was coming embossed in gold with a magnetic stripe and keys to the kingdom.

In any case, I am scouring the Twitter network this morning for military spouse and I find a little gem that makes me glad I may never have to go through this again. It seems as if a bill sponsored initially by Senators Burr and Feinstein had been approved in Congress and was sent on to the President to be signed into law.

Under current law, service members can choose to keep their original residency as they relocate. Spouses who lobbied for the change said having that same right would prevent hassles associated with every move, such as obtaining a new driver’s license and reregistering to vote. In some cases, it also eliminates the need for couples to file separate tax returns and lowers the income taxes that some spouses pay. Moving is a ritual repeated nearly every three years on average for military families.

The House passed the legislation on a voice vote. Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, a bill sponsor who represents Fort Hood, Texas, said it would give “invaluable relief to numerous military spouses who regularly uproot their entire lives to accommodate our Armed Forces.” Carter said in a statement that he expects Obama to sign the legislation into law in the next few days.

Yay for military spouses everywhere!

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So, I get up this morning… course it’s hard to get up, but I get up. I lingered in bed for a good 20 minutes waiting for hubby to get home from night shift. At 7:30 when he still hasn’t come in yet, I get up anyway… drag myself out. I still had a bad taste in my mouth from last night when I bit into a strawberry and got THE worst bittery taste ever. A little afterwards, I managed to quell the nausea long enough to sniff the offending fruit and managed to detect a VERY strong odor of an insecticide flavour. The entire fruit was saturated with it. I don’t know if I am going to be able to eat the rest of them…

But I digress: I haul my ass out of bed this morning and, as usual, bring my cereal in front of the machine to eat. I check my mail, I buy a couple of buildings on Facebook Metropolis … I chuckle at a few things and THEN I check my Facebook mail … and WHAMO! I get hit so hard in the gut that I literally start coughing and crying.

A colleague with whom I worked with at Digicel – missing and presumed dead at Frenchman’s Cove, Portland (Jamaica).

WHAMO!

It’s like I was having a flashback …. everything around me got dark, watery, cold … sound of water in my ears … I am panicked … I can’t breathe, it feels like there is water in my lungs, something yanking on my legs so hard that I can’t move them… all of that spanned maybe 2 seconds…. when I come out of it, coughing, sputtering … cow-bawling! I don’t know WHY I had that … what do you even CALL that? I mean, Andre and I spoke briefly maybe 3 times since I left the DBA section at Digicel. Don’t get me wrong, I REALLY liked him, and I think he liked me to some extent. We were never close… not like bosom buddies or anything. There was a mutual respect and maybe a little more respect for him on my part – he was so smart, so willing to learn, so willing to help, such a golden heart….

I gotta admit – this news … it has hit me like a house… not like a brick, like a damned house.

I don’t know … I don’t know what to do with myself.

For the day I was ok – I chatted with Lonna and tended to customers and kind of escaped it for a while … but … the reminders are everywhere… the dinner: because I was bawling over it when hubby came in this morning… that is how ridiculous this is for me. I mean literally WTF?

/sigh

Gone too soon, Andre. Gone WAY too soon. Bet you never knew there would be this much sensation over your death. Hope that wherever you are, you are happy again and that it warms your heart to know that you were loved this much.

Man! Just writing that makes the tears brim again. I SO need to pull myself together … and just CAN’T!

/sigh

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Last month, I ranted about a particular situation here in Jamaica: the holding of public office by some of our people who had been naturalized as US Citizens. I was in panic mode, fearful of the repercussions of such an act by said officials. I was appealing to the authorities to do something before it was too late.

Well, I’ve been trolling on the visajourney.com forums, and I found a reference to the forfeiture of citizenship through deliberate acts. And hence onto this page.

With respect to loss of nationality, 349(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended, is the applicable section of law. Pursuant to 349(a)(4), accepting, serving in, or performing duties in a foreign government is a potentially expatriating act if the person is a national of that country or takes an oath of allegiance in connection with the position. Thus, the threshold question is whether the person’s actions fall within the scope of this provision. Information used to make this determination may include official confirmation from the foreign government about the person’s nationality, and whether an oath of allegiance is required.

I guess I might have been over-reacting. All that MAY happen to these stupid fools is that the US revoke their citizenship and residency statuses and they have to love up Yaad.

Heh.

It’d actually be a kind of poetic justice. snicker

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