Writing about the “real events” movie I just watched brought back more memories than just the  ’62 Cuban  missile crisis. I   joined the U.S. Air Force (WAF) in 1949, which ultimately led to a tour  of duty in Germany, a   marriage in Wiesbaden, and a daughter “Made in Germany”, etc etc.

But long before this scenario, there was the basic training from Hell, in San Antonio, Texas. Thirteen weeks of misery. The U.S. Air Force broke off from the Army Air Force in late 1948, and my squadron of WAF was the second squadron of women in the newly organized Air Force, lucky enough to go thru basic in lovely San Antonio.   Texas.  In mid-Summer.   Eeeeeuuuu….

Skipping quickly over the next move to Biloxi, Mississippi, where I flunked out of Control Tower Operator School, I did see, first hand, things I’d only read about and learned something about Southern bigotry. I’d never seen a “Colored Only” water fountain, for example. This blatant racism was quite an eye-opener to a naive white girl from “up North” !!

Ah, but then things got interesting. The Air Force sent me to Washington, D.C. I spent about six months lurching from one department in the Pentagon to another. From the horror of Files and Records to very neat-o Congressional Liaison. This was intended to be an orientation process for me, apparently.

This huge department dealt with all the mail that Congressmen received from their constituents. The constituents’   questions and inquiries were accompanied by a letter from the Congressman, telling our department to find out whatever that person wanted, and draft a letter to the voter on his behalf. The most prolific letter writing requests came from a sassy Senator by the name of Lyndon Johnson. He didn’t leave anything to chance when it came to pleasing his voting blocs.

Finally, whoever was in charge of personnel decided I was the best person to be the Air Force Chief of Staff’s personal secretary. 5-star General Hoyt B. Vandenberg. What a guy–so tall, slim, handsome, classy. Perfectly tailored uniform. Yummy.  This was a dream job but I really never appreciated it as I should have until years later, in retrospect. There was just myself and the Liaison Officer, Col. Godfrey T. McHugh, (pompous ass) in the outer office. [Col. McHugh ultimately wound up as Air Force Liaison Officer for President Kennedy] Gen. Vandenberg had a small sitting room complete with every amenity next to his gigantic office. It was just the cutest darn thing!!

I had orders (from the General’s doctor) to serve the General a cup of tea and an apple at a certain time. I prepared the tray in his sitting room galley and went into his office.  There were about eight men, including Thomas A. Finletter, Secretary of the Air Force, and a lot of bemedaled brass sitting in big leather chairs in front of the General’s mammoth desk. All conversation stopped as I walked towards Gen. V’s desk with my little tray. I was petrified. As I put the tray on his desk, the apple rolled off onto the floor. I was dying. The General leaned over, picked up the apple, gave me his gentle, patient smile and winked. I adored this man. He was a true leader.

There were code names we had to use when the General’s driver called, for example, we could not mention names or locations. The military has always been a little paranoid, I guess. Protocol was a PITA, especially with telephone calls. The less important person was the one who had to wait until I got the General on the line. The secretaries of Edward R. Murrow waited, Bob Hope waited. The door to the General’s office and galley were always locked. No-one could get into the General’s office until Col. McHugh or I pressed a hidden button under our desks.

General Vandenberg retired long before we were all ready for him to do so, but he had cancer and there was no choice in the matter. Gen. Nathan Twining, Deputy Chief of Staff, whose office door was behind and just to the left of my desk (he’d come roaring thru there sometimes, cigar clenched between granite jaws), took over as Chief of Staff. And I was out of a job. (VIPs bring their existing staff with them)

Col. McHugh asked where I would like to go next. I had been dating an Army major who recently transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany. So I said, What the heck, how about Germany?   So Germany it was. The major and I were not meant for each other after all. But then, along came someone else. And that’s all there is to that.

Oh!! While I was still in “training” I lived in the barracks; however, when I became the General’s personal secretary, it was deemed appropriate that I move off-base with a nice housing allowance, etc. I found a room and microscopic kitchen in a big converted house in Georgetown. Who knew then how *that* suburb would change!!   I had an [For Your] “Eyes Only” security clearance, which is one step above “Top Secret”. Again, I didn’t give it a thought at the time, but an “Eyes Only” clearance is a really big deal.

I also have a picture of my squadron marching in front of the reviewing stand and doing a perfect “eyes right”. You can see that famous haberdasher, Harry S. Truman smiling as we went by. Good man, good President.

Ah, those were good times.

Well, well. Speaking of cats, look what WordPress dragged in a few minutes ago. The attitude is kind of familiar, like — a tad friendly, a smidgen of hostility, a dram of indifference and mostly, just “Well I’ll be darned, do we know this weird-o blogger, she does seem a bit familiar. Sort of. Got that same aimless drool leak from the mouth, messy grey hair and those ugly glasses falling off her nose.

“OMG! MYRTLE!! DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS ???” It’s that nutso liberal freak-o whose blog we used to read all the time since back when “blogging” was called a *web journal* or a *web log* or some damn thing like that…….remember?”

“Oh for cryin’ out loud Marvin, go back to sleep…..Lorraine and her maniac cat are long gone by now. Anyway, so what if she’s back, she’s harmless. Isn’t she?”

[maniacal cackle] — Ah, so Myrtle thinks I’m harmless, does she? Boy, is she gonna be surprised when this *harmless* old crone gets her mojo going again…….meandthecat? Sure. But now it’s just

me and my bionic knee

Stay tuned. Please? Ah, Come on……..

SIGH!

Hello ?   Anybody out there?   Well of course there’s somebody out there, Good Grief, there’s visible proof of that in the comments boxes underneath the “Nothin’ Much” blog of whatever date it appeared here. On meandthecat.com.

Just a short note to explain my lunatic raving about this website (called meandthecat) and how it is disappearing. Whoever accidentally happened to wander onto this blogpage and read my idiot post about this phenomenon will undoubtedly never return but that’s how it goes. Win some, lose some. Am I right? Of course I am.

Apparently, I am the only person who sees my blogpage in a totally different perspective as anyone else. My kidlet, Kathie, aka Kitty, sees my site as it is supposed to be seen and all is well. Apparently visitors see a normal page layout as it is and always was intended to be displayed.

For me, however, every time I log on to the splash page, the width of the middle activity portion of the page (framed by the wallpaper on either side) is slowly getting squeezed, or as it appears to me, the right margin of the page is going, going, gone. The large letters such as CAT in the title are now gone — some of the “headers” (Home–About Me–Air Force Life–blah blah) — are becoming double-spaced instead of one continuous line of titles !!!

Don’t mind telling ya…..it is pretty doggone spooky! Kathie has never seen anything like this. And of course I don’t remember whether this spookiness began before my new computer was installed or WHAT? I guess I will just have to give ol’ Billy Gates a call and ask him what the heck is goin’ on here. I am not a big fan of Windows 7 (which came bundled with the new computer) but eventually I suppose I’ll have to make an effort to learn more about it, since it’s the OS I am stuck with now, so that’s that.

And that’s the way it is. Today. Monday (I think). May 10. 2010. Or something like that.

P.S.   Did I mention I am really not a very patient person, but in this situation I have absolutely no control over my destiny (re: this dumb blogpage).   My granddaughter’s baby girl is very close to being born.  So her mother will be going out of town to help Jennie for a little while. Kathie is really busy at the moment, so I will just have to pout all by myself until my great-granddaughter gets here (Planet Earth), and Jennie & Brian are all ready to lose some sleep over the next few months. Hah.

Hello.  It’s me.   I see by the insidious disappearance of the letters *A* and *T*  which once followed the letter *C* on that line…..has been consumed by the worsening condition of my blogpage.    I yearn for the simplicity of Blogger.com and wish I could just leave this giant alien platform called “Word Press”  and go back to where I was so happy for nearly nine years.

I regret all the snippy things I’ve said in the past about Blogger.com,  when its machinations by invisible Webmasters caused, now and then,  an interruption in my pursuit of slapping words down on the monitor screen and hoping something very dazzling and incredibly great showed up on the page.   *SIGH*

My very clever kidlet has never seen anything like this……(my Incredible Shrinking Splashpage)……from her cozy office in her home she does not see the same mess that my page shows right now.  To me.   It looks fine and dandy from her end of the cosmos.  I wish I knew what visitors see when they arrive at the “home” page of meandthecat.com.    Do they see the same squishing into a smaller resolution?    Am I even making any sense?   *SIGH*

Oh well.   As soon as I stop cowering in the corner of my closet feeling sorry for myself,   I will think more upon this really stupid problem.

Oh, gotta tell ya.  I had a great time the other day.   I had a date at the Nuclear Medicine clinic at my most favorite Med Center.  To receive a “bone scan”.    Somehow I was infused, totally, with radioactive “stuff” —- This stuff had to permeate every nook and cranny of my beat-up old carcass in order for the “scan” to see what’s what.    I sat for three hours in the Nuc Med waiting room with nothing but ancient magazines to keep me company.    Was I bored?   You bet your bippy.

Next Tuesday the Bonecutter and I will face off  and he will tell me what the heck is going on! ! ! !

*SIGH*  [hand me my bottle of Percocet, please? --- Thanx!]

Hello.   This is the “Me” part of meandthecat.   I haven’t produced a stunningly wonderful, peachy-keen blog for a while.   *sigh*   I’m pretty sure nobody noticed my absence, but what the heck, I thought I might as well announce I haven’t blogged for a little while because……………..Are you ready for this momentuous news?

I ben sik.  —I mean,  I have been ill.   I really, really hate when that happens,  it is such a total waste of time to feel like a big squishy blob of  “yes I know I haven’t taken a shower for two weeks,  just stand upwind of me then.  sheesh”     My bionic knee was (still is) giving me much pain, which is very annoying.   The Big Important Orthopod Bonecutter took X-rays  (well, HE didn’t take them, of course)  filled a vial of some icky looking fluid from my knee and after one of the “techs” tested it,  he said there’s no infection, everything is fine.    (And to make a follow-up appointment in two weeks)

HEY!  Hello?   What about the pain?   Alas it was too late, he had already left the exam room.   I decided I do not like Big Important Orthopaedic Surgeons, but when I just casually happened to mention to his nurse as she was helping me slide off the cold metal table,  “my-my, he certainly is full of himself, isn’t he?”    She said, Oh most surgeons are that way, they can’t help it.

Thank goodness for Internists.   Went whining to my primary care doc the other day, she fixed me up with a ‘script that solved [immediately] some discomfort so at least I accomplished something.     I had suggested to the Orthopod that perhaps I needed Physical Therapy???  He grunted, I think it meant “Sure, good idea”.   Why didn’t HE think of that?

So now I have something else to worry about when I start getting pummelled by therapists next Tuesday on my first appointment to their house of horror.  I have no idea what to wear!   Honestly, it’s always something.

  This mixed up cartoon cat head is supposed to convey my very serious message for today.  Sunday.   I hate Sundays.  Always have.   I have no idea why,  Sunday never did anything bad to me or anything like that.   So why the animosity I feel for this particular day–when the other six days of the week are always peachy swell ??   Well, I’m not going to dwell on it right now.   Got more important things on my mind.

Oh for crying out loud.   It isn’t Sunday…….today is *Tuesday*.   This is scary.   What happened to yesterday?   Maybe I just slept right thru Monday since I was up pretty late Sunday night,  watching a TV show I had no interest in whatsoever.   The Oscar Awards.   Prizes going to over-the-top beautiful humanoids who mostly all have lots of money for them to stay *young*  forever.   Plastic surgery, liposuction, fake breasts, cutesy butt implants, heads of long streaming locks of hair (mostly attached invisibly under the actual hair on their scalps,  make-up slathered on with paint rollers,  designer evening gowns the cost of which would feed a family of five for at least a year or more!   Nothing real lavish or phony, of course.   Just the usual “conspicuous consumption” of  Hollywood.

Would we really want it any other way?  Of course not.   haha    I’m just happy the majority of  Los Angeles’  and New York’s vast “entertainment”  worlds of most artistic ways and venués are Liberal leaning —- which makes the Rightwingnuts a tad p.o.’d—so they show their displeasure with the Leftwingnuts by mockery, derision and putting down “Hollywood” as nothing particularly special.   Then the mostly uptight, virtuous & oh-so-moral Rethuglicans pretend they don’t care about Hollywood and its money.  Sodom and Gomorrah, they snif.    TeeHee

I checked my VOD  to make sure I knew where to find “The Hurt Locker” so I suppose I will watch it this week some time or other.   Not real wild about seeing a movie concerning itself with that Iraqi  nightmare……but then,  I know I will give it a try, anyway,  I’ll still have  ”Julie & Julia”   to fall back on.  LOL

~~Shirley Temple & Me~~ 

Females have always followed the vagaries of fashion regardless of how old they may be, don’t you agree?  When I was about 3rd grade age, my mother took me to the “beauty school” downtown for a permanent.  It cost $1.25, and took an interminably long time because the student working on your head had to stop at each stage and have her supervisor check the work in progress.
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There was none of today’s soft pampering with soft curlers, a dab of watermelon scent perm lotion, maybe 10 minutes of “cooking” and then a nice neutralizing rinse. In the 1930s, after the operator rolled your hair and clamped on huge insulated covers over each curl, you were hooked up to the processor–black wires emanating from your head extending way on up to a mysterious source near the ceiling.
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You were ultimately a sitting duck if there were a fire in the building and since you couldn’t get away you were really “wired”.
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The most exquisite pleasure came the next day at school, when George Berman, the love of my 3rd grade life, pulled one of the sausage curls falling daintily on my forehead….it bounced back perfectly. This was as close a compliment as a rotten little boy was capable of expressing. And why do I still remember his name? That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?
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But on this day, everything was perfect. I left the “beauty school” with my Shirley Temple knock-off hairdo. It was amazingly impressive. If I’d had taps on my shoes I could have danced all the way home. I was one happy kid.
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Anyway, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Thank you, Shirley Temple, you truly made this one little girl very happy.

I have some  important news now. Listen up, this is something society needs to correct. I’m talking about those itsy-bitsy tags produce packers stick on every apple, plum, peach, nectarine, blah blah. My daughter nearly choked on one of those paper menaces once, but of course she’s usually in her own la-la land so didn’t even notice it on the apple she was eating.. But you can bet your sweet butt I know they’re there.

Next to the recliner in my bedroom I have a table where I keep my TV guide and magazines. When I bring an apple in there, I take off the little weezy label and stick it on the edge of the table. When I get a fair amount lined up, I scrape them off and discard them, provided I can shake them off my hand.

What is inexcusable are those tags that somehow escape the fruit, fall on the floor and cement themselves into the nap of the carpeting. When I vacuumed the other day, I went over and over the spots where the tags were firmly embedded. Nothing. I finally had to bend over and scratch them off the carpet !! That just ain’t right.  Is it?

I’d like to organize a protest march in front of the supermarket, but then it occurred to me that this wouldn’t work.   Now, listen up — this apple has a pretty short season  but it’s the best apple in the world.  It’s called “Honey Crisp” and they are wonderful.   After the honey crisps are kaput, I usually buy “Gala”  apples…..crisp, sweet and delectable. But then, in the same row of other apples, there are are Fiji, Braeburn, Macintosh, Johnathan, Rome. Mostly all of these look alike. So without the ID tag stuck on each one, how would a checker-outer know what to charge?

Never mind.

Blah…..URP! Gag … Retch

 I found this cutey’s photo in an interesting slideshow of big cats…….the organization is called “Big Cat Rescue”, and the site is very nice. Lots of videos — complete with cat sounds and other interesting stuff.   The sanctuary is located in Florida, and just like our little bitsy dogs and cats and such,  these people save abused, neglected, big cats and provide a good home for them.  Maybe I should pop out a blog about the horrendous lives too many of these wonderful creatures are forced to live in the U.S. — The big cats are exploited in terrible ways……… 

 Anyway, I really like that pretty American Bobcat’s expression and just wanted to have it around.  I donated a few dollars to BCR  for the right to download this particular image, so I guess I own it now. Yup.