Mensamom’s Musings

Good morning, all. Brandon took a slight turn for the worse overnight, and we were called to the hospital about 3:30. He is currently sedated and on a ventilator, but in the big picture this is a good thing. He was having so much trouble breathing on his own, and now the machine is able to do it for him so he can conserve his energy and get some rest. I have my cell phone with me and Chris is at home withRichard & Dakota (well, Dakota is on his way to school, but still), if anyone would like to call and get more information. Please keep Brandon in your prayers. Thanks, friends.

I will preface this by saying that I have been posting on Facebook for a little under a week now, but I realized that the only people who would be able to follow those posts are the people who are my friends or friends with our immediate family. Hopefully, by transferring my Facebook entries to this site, more people can follow Brandon’s progress without me having to add 1,000 people as friends (not that I don’t love you all!).

So, here goes. The following entries will all be related to Brandon Forbis and his current medical condition. I am going to copy and paste Facebook entries, but I will also use this forum to elaborate, as the situation requires.

Tuesday, December 13 – 8:42 p.m.

One may be familiar with the concept of the armchair quarterback or the Monday morning quarterback, but over the past 45 years, the aftermath of the Super Bowl has changed considerably.  The Monday morning quarterbacks discussing the various aspects of the previous day’s game (and identifying what their particular team could have/should have done differently to bring about a more satisfactory outcome) have been replaced by the Monday morning Ad Executives.

When I went to work this morning, I expected to hear discussions regarding last night’s Super Bowl.  The Steelers fans would be talking about how their team just did not pick up enough steam soon enough, and while they played their hearts out during the second half, if it had only come sooner or lasted longer, they would have won.  The Packer fans would be talking about how amazing it was that they were able to fight off the Steelers in the second half despite a plethora of injuries to key players.  But no.  The vast majority of discussions centered around the Super Bowl commercials.  What was your favorite?  Which ones did you like?  Which ones just did not work?  Everyone seems to know how and why the different ads worked or didn’t work.  Fox Sports has even gone so far as to allow web viewers to vote on the ads, giving a “thumbs up” to the ones they like and the “thumbs down” to the ones that just don’t do it.  And just in case you were lured away from this great American tradition by the likes of the Puppy Bowl, Enchanted, or Netflix (or you were just in a cave somewhere), you can screen the Super Bowl ads here.

Personally, there were a couple that caught my attention.  As a parent, the Volkswagen/Star Wars commercial has to be my favorite.  For pure fun, I like the Bud Light “Product Placement“, Bridgestone Tires, and Doritos “Healing Chips”.  I thought there were a few too many upcoming movie ads.  I can understand the studios wanting to put their new releases into the minds of the public, but it just seemed like a little bit of overkill, considering that these same movie trailer commercials will be airing on every station day and night for the next one-to-six months, depending upon when the movie is released.  There were a few ads that really didn’t work for me.  I could have skipped both of the Eminem ads.  I felt the tea one was lame, and the Chrysler commercial was somewhat ambiguous, in that it was hard to tell if Eminem was endorsing Chrysler or the city of Detroit.  Actually, many of the car commercials were just humdrum – not a lot of entertainment value, just “here’s our new car and this is what makes it special”.  And none of them really seemed that special (aside from the aforementioned VW ad).

Over the past 45 years, Super Bowl ads have evolved from just putting a product in front of one of the annually largest TV viewing audiences to being part of why that audience is so large.  The comment that seemed to be repeated the most this morning was, “I didn’t really have a great interest in the game, I just watched it for the commercials.”  In truth, there was a point during the evening that I was in my son’s room, putting away clean clothes, and racing out to the living room only when the action on the field was coming to a stop.  All of this begs the question: What is the future evolution of the Super Bowl ad?  I foresee a day when a DVD of the ads is available to order as soon as the game is over, with the proceeds going to some charity or cause endorsed by the NFL.  Or, possibly a TV special, airing a week or so after the game, that consists of nothing but Super Bowl TV spots.  Of course, if that ever happens, only the football fans would watch the game.  The rest of us would be free to watch the Puppy Bowl, or whatever else tickled our fancies, and set our TIVO’s up to record the commercials.  Just don’t hit that “skip the ads” button.

When I was a kid, we lived for snow days.  It might be that I am not remembering accurately, but it seems as if we would have several each winter, and they would be two or three days in a row.  The end result was always that we had to go to school longer in the summer, but at the same time, we did not have as many No School Holidays as they do now.  We had Labor Day and Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, President’s Day and Memorial Day, but there was no once-a-month-we-have-Monday-off-for-another-Holiday.  So our snow day make-up days would carry us into the second or third of June, but that was it.

Today is our second snow day in a row, and there are fairly good odds we may not have school again tomorrow.  I know that I am not capable of shoveling all the snow between our house and the road, so until we get someone with a blade over here, we are not going anywhere.  But, rather than look at it as being stuck in the house, I should focus on having this uninterrupted time to catch up on stuff – laundry, dishes, cleaning the hard water marks off the shower walls, all that fun stuff.  Meanwhile, my husband and four-year-old are working on serious stuff like bringing up yet more Legos from the basement . . . I will be out shoveling while they are building the City Center in the living room.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not being disdainful of my husband.  He cannot shovel due to his physical disabilities, so it must be left to me, but there is only so much I can do.  On the other side is the four-year-old, who wants to know when we are going to be able to go skiing.  The funny part is the only time he has ever been skiing is on Wii Ski and playing the Vancouver Olympics on the XBox.

So, here I sit writing, while the hamper is poised at the top of the basement steps waiting to be taken down and sorted and the new load started.  And those few pesky items that can’t go in the dishwasher are calling my name.  But a snow day is supposed to be a day when you don’t have to do all the things you would normally do, like go to work or school.  Therein lies my dilemma.  Do I use this “free time” to do what I want to do, or what needs to be done?  While I decide, I think I will make a list of the books I would like to read in the near future, and maybe try and get some scrapbook pages done.  There will still be dirty clothes tomorrow.

Things are tough all over.  Any day of the week one can pick up any newspaper or turn on any local or national news program and it won’t take very long to find a story that focuses on the economy.  Often one can find several stories.  Regardless of the source, every town, borough, hamlet, village, city and burg is doing its utmost to provide services to the population in a (hopefully) fiscally responsible manner.  Many time hard choices must be made, and not all of them are popular.  A friend alerted me to one such situation in a small town in England.

Stony Stratford is what we would call a suburb.  It is part of the larger city of Milton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, similar to how Oak Park is “in” Chicago, but is still its own town.  The Milton Keynes city council has been trying to figure out ways to cut the budget and save millions of British Pounds over the next several years.  In December, a proposal was put forth that included shuttering the local library in Stony Stratford.  Now, as Stony is part of the larger local community, residents would certainly be able to visit other libraries in the vicinity, but that was not good enough for the town.  In the span of just over a week, residents swarmed the library and checked out every single book.  Over 16,000 of them.  The citizens wanted to show the council how vital libraries are to the community, so in a planned protest, the citizenry methodically checked out over 300 books per hour until the shelves were empty.  People checked out as many books as they were allowed, and continued to spread the message: “Go to the library and take out the maximum of books on your card (15).”  Postings appeared on the local government website and a “Save Stony Stratford Library” Facebook page has been stood up, with (as of this writing) over 700 people “liking” the page.

Now library closures are nothing new.  Do a Google news search on “library closures budget cuts” and you will get results dating back over 15 years and beyond.  Stories appear from all over the United States about local municipalities and state governments slashing monies allocated for libraries.  Libraries are often considered “non-essential” or “non-mandated” services.  It’s not like a town could close the fire department or the police department, but a library . . ..  During portions of my childhood, my mom was a single parent, struggling to make ends meet.  While there was always money to put food on the table and keep the roof over our heads, there was almost never money for extras like books, but we never went without.  At least once a week, Mom would pack us into the car and take us to the library.  We would spend an hour or two looking for books and reading books.  We would always come home with a stack of new titles that we would devour through the week.  By the time I was in grade school, I am sure I had read almost every children’s book in our local library.  As I got a little older, I was allowed to ride my bike to the library and would do so often.  When I was in college, I spent time in the library not only for research and study, but also just as a place to go for some quiet personal time.

The point is, lots of different people use libraries for lots of different reasons at different times during their lives.  Children can learn to read and hone their reading skills without bankrupting their parents, given the cost of children’s literature.  Students can do research and find titles for reading assignments.  Current and past newspapers and magazines are available in print or in a digitized version.  People who have no means to do so at home can use public computers to access the internet, apply for jobs, and find information to help put them in a position to better themselves or their situations.  Some local libraries loan DVDs, CDs, and even e-books.  Libraries are not only integral to the community, one could argue that they are essential – maybe not important in the same way as the police or fire departments, but just as important in their contribution to the community.

The people of Stony Stratford have voiced their opposition to the elimination of their library.  Make sure the same thing does not happen to you.  When tax increase referendums come up on the ballot to give more money to your local library, vote YES.  Find out what volunteer opportunities are available, then go and make yourself available.  Take someone with no transportation to the library.  Spend quality time with your child during the Story Hour.  Make so much use of your local libraries that the politicians who want to close them in order to save money will not have any way to support their positions.  And when you hear of libraries being threatened with shuttering for budget reasons, get angry and get active.  Our libraries are much too integral to be pushed aside.