Having gotten that bit of bile out of my system

(for the moment), reason for more off & on than usual is son was home on leave for a few days; transferring to a new base/unit and took a couple of extra days so could visit.

Various people have written a lot of things about what being a parent does to you*; among those things are kids who start off something like this
hit being more like this
and wind up something like this


In daughters case, starting with things like this
and going(somewhat more recently) to this:
That's her on the right. Over the years everything from "YEEEEEEE!" at either happiness or something gross to a phone call during the first deployment:
"I no longer have a truck."
"What? It's in the drivew-"
"No, my truck here."
"Oh." Pause. "What happened to it?"
"It blew up."
Or, in daughter's case, the aforementioned screaming to "I got the house!" Definitely exciting, just less traumatic.
Which is all leading up to, after son headed to the new location, I missed Medieval Fair for the first time in about 30 years because
Just walking around talking to people and seeing performances isn't the same as being there working the forge and(more importantly)
Dad wanted to go to the Tulsa Arms Show; so we went.
Had a moment during the weekend of that two-sided vision: knowing that some of the things I feel about my kids now are the same one's he and Mom have been dealing with for a long time, just change the names.

In any case: the show was good(usually is). Crowded as hell Saturday, less so Sunday, everything from .22 single-shot rifles to .50 single-shots, ammo and drillings and double rifles to books and knives and general stuff. Good weekend, and I'm beat; all that walking around on concrete is a bit more wearing than the standing and walking on grass at the Fair all those years. And I get home and take a look at the interwebs and find
Idiot politicians excusing savages and murderers for not acting like civilized people,
" " talking about scrapping our freedom of speech so as not to offend the savages,
An idiot politician screwing our energy supplies and working to put us further in debt to others for energy**,
And, as kind of a capstone, reading this absolute flaming idiocy and abdication of personal responsibility in the name of handing lives over into the hands of a politician who's either an absolute incompetent or very competent at working to damage this nation(which my kids have to live in) because these people are either too brain-damaged, too stupid or too dedicated to their cause to say "Mr. President, what the HELL is wrong with you?"
I also find that the people involved in Gunwalker are the same ones who've screwed over the actual cops in the agency, over and over and over. And are now, along with their enablers(handlers?) at DOJ are telling Congress to go away and stop bothering them over a bunch of smuggled guns and dead Mexicans and a few dead Americans. And these bastards are screwing over the country my kids and yours are going to inherit IF it still exists as the United States of America.

More on the show later. Right now, having vented a certain amount of upset I need a shower and some sleep in my own bed.



*I'm reminded of some western in which a guy thinks one of his sons is dead, finds out he wasn't and belts him: "What was that for?!?" "That's for scaring me out of ten years growth, WHICH I CANNOT SPARE!"

**Ok, that one's a few days old, but it still pisses me off