It amazes me to no end what driver's do when behind the wheel.  It's bad enough talking on the telephone....and using your hands for emphasis.  Texting instead of watching the road is extremely dangerous, and one of my pet peeves.  But in the last week, I have seen drivers doing the most unusual things.

First I saw a woman plucking her eyebrows.  Now tell me this, would you feel comfortable driving down the street with a very sharp object near your eye?  The other morning I watched as a man ate his breakfast....cereal and milk in a bowl.  Then there was the woman who had the dog strapped into the front seat while the children, not in car seats, were not using a safety belt at all.  Of course the mother was strapped in....probably didn't like the incessant dinging of the seat belt alarm.  Then there was the guy who was so intent on shaving his face, he sat through the green light, even with the horns honking all around him.

But what I saw today took the cake.  She was driving a Lexus, one of the smaller, sporty models.  Her hair was perfectly coiffed and she had manicured fingers (her toes probably matched but I couldn't see them).  She was a very attractive woman who was watching the road and shuffling through, what I can only assume was her bag.  She pulls out a magnified mirror.  I know this because, while we were at a stop she flashed it at me, almost blinding me with the sunlight.  She was scrambling in her bag for something else.  Well, she pulls out these rather large shears like sewing scissors.  The light turns green and she eases forward then proceeds to trim her nose hair.  Of course she's only going 2 miles an hour.  I passed her and she never looked up from her mirror, intent on cleaning the forest from her proboscis.  For all I know she's still on the Princeton/Hightstown Road mowing the nasal lawn.

     I cannot help but wonder about the leadership of this country.  I feel, personally, that this administration is leading us down the wrong path.  Here we are trying to get backing to go into Syria when those major countries (who are far better off economically than us) are threatening retaliation if we should get involved in this civil war.

First of all, why would we send troops there in the first place?  We are in debt so deep, in large part due to the last two wars in which we were engaged, that we can't possible afford to enter a new conflict.  How can a man who closed the White House to tourists, put a wage freeze on White House staff (he should've put a wage freeze on Congress!!!), signed an order banning gifts from lobbyists and banning anyone from working in an agency they had lobbied in previous years (he promptly made the order toothless by immediately granting a waiver to a former defense lobbyist), passed a stimulus package that is creating no jobs across the country, (this bill has given more to the rich than every previous President combined!), did not support and protect our people in Benghazi who ended up being tortured to death!, took a very expensive vacation to Africa (spending millions of dollars) at a time when we are trying to cut back government spending, and more, possibly think that we should involve ourselves in another middle eastern war supporting the terrorists who bombed us on 9/11?  It makes no sense to me!

I know it isn't just Obama's fault.  We have a group of Americans that we voted into office that do not know the meaning of compromise and would rather see American's suffer than allow this President to succeed in anything.  And these same leaders are agreeing to send troops to Syria?  I believe they just want to put another major FAIL under the belt of Obama.

 

I was up early this morning to talk to Tezza, but since she had to have coffee with her sister causing our together time to be cut, I chose to read the news.  Of course the Syria crisis and Putin v. Obama held the front page, as did the suicide of Ariel Castro.  But what really caught my eye was the spike in the number of Americans choosing to give up their citizenship.  CNN is saying that some of the rush could be caused by the new disclosure requirements in our tax laws.  But I cannot help but wonder if that's the whole story.  I believe many things are influencing this decision, besides tax laws.  Maybe our government's inability to balance a budget for the last...how many years?  Maybe it's the huge deficit or the shadow of another war.  Then again, maybe it's because we are slowly losing our world leader status in the global view.

I did notice that most of the people giving up their citizenship "for tax purposes" were not just the wealthy few (like one of the founders of Facebook) but ordinary, run-of-the-mill citizens who have tried to save for retirement in offshore accounts or have retirement funds that will be taxed under the new laws.  Some of these people are ex-patriots who have to file in both America and the country in which they find themselves living.  The cost of filing in both countries is dear, and with these new tax laws, they are losing the "breaks" that having these overseas accounts first rendered.  

But this has got to be a real emotional break for some, or I would imagine it would be.  You still sound American, you have the American culture ingrained in you, especially if you were born and raised here.  How can you not be considered American?  I surely don't know if I could do it, though in this day and age with the government as corrupt as it appears to be, with big business running things, where the rich get richer and the poor increase in volume yearly, where we seem to have lost sight of what is important (the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few), where our government doesn't seem to be working for the people anymore....maybe jumping the American ship isn't such a bad option and the only thing some of us can do to survive. 

               Last year I purchased an I Phone 5 and it has become the bane of my existence.  Angelo pointed out just the other day how addicted I am to my phone.  I believe he's right!  I play spades as well as a plethora of other games, check my Facebook page constantly, send texts, but I hardly ever use it to talk on the phone (I hate talking on the phone).  It is next to me at all times.  It is rather embarrassing how it has become an extension of my arm. 

So I'm conducting an experiment.  I am putting the phone away for 24 hours.  I want to see if I can possible go ONE day without answering a text, playing a game, or checking Facebook (however I will still keep it next to me in case someone actually calls...)

....okay it's been five minutes and I can see people have already begun posting but I refuse to acknowledge their existence...at least for the time being.  (This is much harder than I realized it would be!)  Wish me luck!