A Billion Dollars

Can your mind wrap around a billion dollars? How about 92 billion dollars? As hard as I might try I can not grasp or visualize that much money yet we hear that the oil companies have reported profits in the billions on a quarterly basis. Next quarter will be higher because we are complacent enough to sigh and complain and not incensed enough to do something about it. Our Commander and Chief pays a visit to the folks holding the oil strings so-to-speak, glad hands, hugs, laughs and leaves then two days later oil is up $2.00 a barrel. I could not help but laugh today; for $10 I got 2.63 gallons of gas and I, like most people, can not fathom billions of dollars therefore when I go to the pump it breaks my heart to spend a good portion of my paycheck to get gas to go to my job. If I knew how to start a movement to get all the apathetic people angry enough to say enough is enough, I would.
The last two weekends have been full to say the least. Two weddings, four breakfasts and a rehearsal dinner, all toll a couple of hundred people. After the cooking is done I sometimes get to sneak in and people watch. Our last two groups have come with children; some very well behaved, some not so much. It is interesting to observe the differences in the parents. Those children who run wild and free and are into everything are generally accompanied by parents who pay no attention to them in a crowd or give them whatever they want just to get them to go away. Those children who are well mannered, respectful of others and other’s things seem to have parents who were brought up the same way and it stuck. These parents are responsible adults, the other parents seem to want to be the center of attention and often times act like children themselves. It is fun to watch the social interactions of others also. You can spot the insecure ones by the airs they put on just as you can spot the people who are at peace with themselves and just are themselves. You can certainly spot the phonies even if you don’t know them from before. Like those self righteous married men who attend alone but spend their time flirting with the single lovely bridesmaids. It is all very amusing to watch for a while but it begins to be the same old dance and it becomes boring.
This may or may not be something that I have previously mentioned but I am terrified of spiders. I will not go under my house to turn up the hot water heater because there are spiders in there. It seems a strange combination that gardening is one of my passions yet spiders inhabit almost every inch of the earth and somehow I have managed to over look them for the most part with one exception. I have these huge and I mean huge black and yellow spiders. The first year they showed up they camped out over the backyard water spigot therefore I avoided that and dragged hoses from the front. I have learned to live with them and up until this week there were four in my kitchen window. One ate one now there are three and as long as they stay outside it will be live and let live but no spider survives in my house. I love snakes, they don’t bother me at all, but spiders are another story altogether. I actually get light headed and nauseous when face to face with one even though they are an asset to the garden and I have learned to co-exist with them, I don’t have to like it.
Something exciting is happening next weekend.