No, I did not purchase auto insurance when I was in Mexico because I did not drive when I was there.

Do you purchase Mexican auto insurance when you go to Mexico?

As for the hospitals and the illegals coming to Texas to give birth, it is awful that our tax dollars have to go to pay for their hospital stays. Let’s change the roles for a minute: If I were a pregnant woman wanting to give birth in America and I knew there was a hospital where I would have to pay NOTHING to have my child, I would hop across the river and do the exact same thing. There lies the problem. We need to stop offering these public services to people who aren’t citizens. These public works are paid by our tax dollars and those who aren’t paying into the system are therefore not entitled to the benefits.

I feel bad for the next illegal that causes a disturbance anywhere near me or Ms. Sliceofred because I know that all my anger will surface and there will be hell to pay.

“Whoa.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Don’t know if you were scorned, young lady, but clearly someone threw a wrench of Byzantine proportions into your world. I’m trying to paint a little picture of this guy – thankfully unnamed lest you be hauled into court for defamation of character type charges – and it just isn’t terribly pretty. What I’ve got so far is a guy who manipulates and morphs. Seems he likes to become someone he’s not to gain the trust of people, all while smoothly sliding his hand into their pockets to lift their wallet. He seems to cultivate relationships much the same someone cultivates a garden box – the stuff is supposed to be pretty and all, but it won’t last the first good windstorm. Heck, he could be any of a half-a-dozen or so guys I’ve known over the course of my professional career who tried it their way when The Way had already been long established and approved.

Darker, this guy sounds like his life is a series of prisms through which he manipulates. I have some predictions about the guy:

1) His family don’t know about the depth of his problems
2) Many of his ‘friends’ look the other way because he entertains them

Sedgewick passed this generic description through a friend who hangs PhDs on her office wall with words like “Clinical Psychology” and “Forensic Psychology” on them. I read aloud some of your descriptions and she listened pretty intently, adding the following off-the-cuff assessments:

1) He is a predator type, gaining his sense of value by taking from others or holding secrets from them; he is also a coward with little personal strength
2) His ‘escalatory behavior’ (her words) suggests he is building confidence and arrogance that will likely result in some signature event
3) He is dangerous to himself in others because his judgment is impaired and compromised by a flawed value system

She then scolded me for reading blogs before confessing she does too. Take that, Doc!! She also suggested posting your feelings, though cathartic for you, was incendiary for him and may cause that ’signature event.’ Her final bit of advice to me is for you, Caitlin. Get away. Don’t ever get close to him again because (in the doc’s words), the only thing worse to him than failure is someone else leaving his circle of failure and growing to rely on self successfully.

Dear Heavens, Sedgewick hopes he never steams someone so thoroughly that you get wind about it and write about me.

Egad.

It would appear ole Sedgers was right on this… your self-described pea-sized unit was, in fact, composed of plutonium… or at least enriched Uranium. To quote someone more young and more hip than I, “You go, girl!” People of my age should not be allowed to use the Phrases of the Young without proper supervision and training, of course.

I have selected an appropriate word – I believe – to serve as my transitional rejoinder…

Sedgewick is not being smarmy here… in fact, in a public confession of sorts, I’ll go as far as to say I’m an Apple Fan (I’m writing this missive on a MacBook Pro). I also own quite a few shares of AAPL, most of which were purchased long before you worried about such things as art projects. Sedgewick feels old now.

I love Apple as a company for a couple of reasons. From a consumer’s standpoint, I love the fact they blaze trails and develop products that are easy to use and are, frankly, transformational. I like the fact they’re a less-than-10%-market-share company that absolutely dictates what the high tech world does.

From a business perspective, I like Apple’s pedigree. Apple combines product innovation with a fearlessness pretty rare in consumer products these days. Finally, I like their business model. They are sitting on ridiculous liquidity and their P/E is WAY out of whack, yet the Street (and investors) are confidently investing because THEY BELIEVE Apple is going to blow their doors off. When you’ve got customers EXPECTING to be wowed because you’ve done it so many times before, you’ve achieved something.

Apple represents what all American companies should be – fearlessly innovative and willing to boldly lead. If Ford/Chevy/GM/Chrysler operated by the type of rules under which Apple abides, how good would American cars be? True, the example may not be precisely parallel, but Apple clearly has something most companies don’t.

Anyway. Nice art work, young lady. I have to chuckle thinking about some other logos up there, though. How trendy would your art be if, say, you had the logo for a ‘lesser’ company up there?

I don’t know why, but I keep thinking ‘Goodies Headache Powders’ or something equally old. Or spray cheese?

Sedgewick makes himself laugh frequently these days. Dementia is not all that scary, after all.

Here’s hoping for a better July, writing-wise, anyway.

I’m kind of agreeing, kind of disagreeing with Aletha here. Lemme ’splain…

Agreement: the whole ‘pea-brained’ thing paints you as lacking confidence and conviction. Reading these few slivers of your life as I have, you don’t strike me as a lamb among the wolves… you opine boldly. Yeah, you’re a little naive about some things, but I’d imagine you’re in your young 20s or so and probably have experienced just a ton of life away from the confines of home. Sedgewick is not generally considered and oracle of any means, but if you will hop up on my lap here, I’ll whisper a kind and sagely bit of advice…

Never sell yourself short. You clearly have talent and ambition. The first stage of defeat is believing you can be defeated. I’d point out a pea-sized chunk of plutonium – properly prepared and configured – is capable of a several kiloton explosion, more than enough to lay waste to a several-square-mile area.

Your homework, then, is to rewrite your post omitting all pea references and giving yourself the benefit of the doubt that you’ll kick academic butt and administer very severe academic noogies.

Disagreement: Art of any kind – painting, sculpting, music, dance – is subjective. It is also innate. Sedgewick has some artistic sinew in his body (buried under all the other stuff) and is married to someone who is comparatively bereft of same. I can sit and doodle while on the phone and sketch what’s on the coffee table with no problem… the Official Bride cannot with ruler and protractor design and reproduce a scene if a billion dollars were dangled before her and a shotgun aimed at her occiput. It doesn’t happen in her head.

I believe artistic talent can be developed and evolved, but not generally by following some “do this and this will happen” blue print. So Sedgewick’s artistic advice to you is this: experiment. Figure something that inspires you – maybe music. Get your fave tunes grooving, put on your favorite t-shirt, get comfy and just cut loose. If that doesn’t work, kill the tunes turn down the lights and draw naked. If that doesn’t work, find something else and try it. At somepoint, you’ll hit a combination that frees the mind. Once you free your mind, your butt will follow.

Know this… you may not be an artist. That’s okay, too. You overcome that kind of stuff and you move forward. You sound like a bright and resourceful girl – I have no doubt you’ll find something that works for you.

Finally, I have to tip the cap to Brenda. Rarely it is that someone writes something so short that makes me laugh out loud. Gad, you have no political future. The four-word-rejoinder “Gad. Girl. Arkansas? Fail.” may be among the most concisely phrased expression of disgust I have ever read.

Sedgewick is most pleased by this and now relinquishes the dais.

Read your post again and find for us, the enlightened reader, how you get to ‘anti Apple’ from there.