Friday wine goodness: You know what? I'm not really in the mood to talk about wine.

(photo and description of the artist's play courtesy of UCSD Open Studio.  Wine, tater tots and the Russian Mafia have long interested Glenna Jennings. Guns really haven't. As a would-be pacifist, this wavering apathy/disdain toward weapons was put to the test when she inherited 15 hunting rifles and a few pistols after her father passed away in 2006. )

I found the picture above after tooling around on google image search looking for pictures of guns and wine.  I was hoping to find a wine label with a gun on it, as an appropriate seque from my Friday Wine Goodness theme, but I found this, and its totally awesome.

So, its been a difficult day, for a couple of reasons.  One, I read this morning on the local news that another child in the Kansas City area has been diagnosed with advanced stage Rhabdomyosarcoma, the same cancer which took our little friend Ben.  It is supposed to be a rare, one in a million type of cancer.  Yet we know of 5-6 children in the last two years alone, in Kansas City, to be affected with it.  It is brutal and horrible and I nearly started to cry reading the article, and several times during the day just thinking about it.  I cannot imagine another family going through this the way my friends have.  I cannot imagine a mother with the serenity and presence of mind to say "sometimes lilies only bloom once", having already arrived at what could be the horrifying truth of this diagnosis.

Then, the shooting at NIU yesterday, has left me angry and raw, and I don't even know anyone involved.  Add that to:

• The one earlier in the week in Baton Rouge (Oh look! girls are getting into the action, too.  Its not just boys and men who go nuts and shoot people.)
• The other one closer to home here in Missouri at a City Hall meeting
• The one where the fucking boy scout killed his entire family

You know what?  Here.  Just go check out the chart for yourself.  And this isn't even complete.  I can't stand it anymore.

I continue to want to rage against a self-righteous government who wants to spend $43 billion dollars on an un-winable war yet refuses, absolutely refuses to acknowledge we have an arms control problem in our own country.

Of course he went off his meds.  Of course he bought at least two of the weapons legally, IN THE LAST WEEK.  I would expect nothing less, in a country that holds the right to bear our precious guns ABOVE ensuring a minimum standard of healthcare insurance for children.  This doesn't shock me anymore.  It just makes me angry.  It makes me glad we have a decent Democratic candidate or two, who can inspire real change.

But It makes me sad.  Because deep down in my gut, where I don't want to talk about it, I don't know that I believe what the Democrats are saying, as much as I want to, way up here in the top of my heart. 

And now I'm going to go have a glass of wine.