Bless the Beasts & the Children...

Cancer...

2012-01-17T23:34:00.002-06:00

I've been following the blog of (Dr.) Susan Niebur for awhile now. I don't remember how I stumbled upon it but after reading her story I knew I couldn't not visit her blog again... and often. I didn't always agree with her and even told her so on more than more occasion. We're both strong-willed and that was always alright. I have a feeling we're both aware of our strong-willed-ness and have learned to deal with it, when interacting with others as well as with ourselves.

Susan has drawn upon that very strength a lot, I'm guessing, since her metastatic breast cancer diagnosis in 2007. You can go to her blog to read the whole story but basically her story is the same as all women with metastatic breast cancer (no matter when their cancer was caught & no matter how "aware" they were of mammograms!)... in the end the cancer gets you. Nearly every time.

Not enough research has been done to tell women why. The pink ribbon money seldom goes for that!

Susan updated her blog, around supper time tonight, to say that the trouble she's had with her breathing the last several weeks had worsened and she was heading to the emergency room, per her oncologist's request, for some chest x-rays & such. To put it bluntly, to this ole registered nurse it doesn't sound good. I'm wondering if Susan will make it home ever again.

What must it feel like to be dying at 30-something years old? I can't imagine. I'm sitting here trying to but I simply can't wrap my mind around it. Her sons are 4 and 6 years old, for gawd's sake! I know they'll remember her when they grow up but probably barely. Sadly enough they'll probably remember the worst of times more than the best of times... just because that's the way things work with our minds' eye. Susan's been trying to make good memories with her children all during her cancer treatments & remissions & recurrences. She's a highly intelligent woman after all (an astrophysicist for NASA, actually). But I wonder sometimes how intelligent it is to put off the inevitable... postpone destiny... try to outsmart something that is far smarter than you are. I think Susan is a control freak (like so many of us) and likes to have every single "i" dotted & every single "t" crossed.

Every. Single. One.

So she fought this cancer with all she had to make sure she left no i's or t's unfinished. I sometimes wish everyone realized that fresh i's and t's always crop up in life & that we can't always do the dotting and crossing by ourselves... and that's perfectly alright. Others will come after us to pick up the gauntlet and carry on. Life and love don't end with our existence on this earth. Both will forever be, despite our absence. Lots of i's and lots of t's will come and go & get dotted and crossed without any problems whatsoever. We'd like to think we're the only one who holds the magic marker to do it but that's just not true. Sometimes when we hold the magic marker longer than we should, I think we can sometimes do more scribbling than anything else.

A woman so young had to fight. She had to try and beat this thing that was robbing her of time on earth with her boys & husband. Susan always wanted to add her statistics to the research of metastatic breast cancer, hoping to make a difference for the next women that invariably will come along. I don't think that's what her boys are going to remember though, after all is said & done. They're going to remember their mommy suffering for most of their lives before she died. I wonder if fighting was worth that. I wonder if her statistics are going to matter at all, compared to the lasting imprint all of this will have had on those two little boys.

Only time will tell. No one knows for sure what they would do if in the same situation. All any of us can do is the best we can with what we're given. I believe Susan's done that. I also believe it's time now for her to rest from the fight and to let her body deal with the hand it was dealt, in this earthly life. Grander things await after this existence here on earth is done and over with. I sincerely hope Susan truly believes that when she feels herself slipping away from earth's gravitational pull. I hope she can let go and not be thinking about i's and t's not completed. Her husband and boys will gladly pick up her magic marker and proceed where Susan left off.

Spread those wings and fly, Susan. So that you can get going with the next leg of your soul's journey and your husband & sons can move forward with their earthly one.

Blessings along the way for everyone.

"Of course you don't die. Nobody dies. Death does not exist.

You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world."

~Henry Miller

You've been Trumped....

2012-01-17T00:02:00.009-06:00

Greed in action! Please watch. Be informed.

Almost 3 months...

2012-01-16T10:52:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted in almost 3 months.

I started a new blog & then abandoned it after one or two posts. It just didn't feel like "home", as new blogs never do for me. I like this blog. I just haven't felt like talking. Nothing personal so please don't take it that way. I thought of you all throughout the holidays, wondered how you were doing, hoping that all was well & that you were enjoying the festivities.

No new year resolutions here. I decided to stop doing that because I never keep them anyway & then I feel like a failure as the months tick by. There are things I'd like to do but they're not connected with a new year having entered into the picture. I simply miss some things & hope to get back to them in the future. Painting, journaling, decluttering, updating, traveling, seeing, looking, experiencing, loving, having, changing, voicing.

We're gaining a new daughter this year. Our son proposed to his girlfriend of 4 years, Cyndi, and they're planning to wed on October 13. That will be nice.

We're thinking about selling our house this year... maybe. I have mixed feelings about it all but I do know that this homestead is big & getting harder to maintain by the minute, both inside and out. My man & I are getting older. Things don't come as easy as they once did. Time is marching on.

My tattoo sleeve is nearly done & if all goes well I will enter it into the competition at the National Tattoo Associaton convention in April. Who woulda thunk? :-)

My mom's been gone over 3 years now. I haven't been out to the cemetery once since she's been buried. I guess I just don't feel the need or desire. I did the grunt work while she was alive, by caring for her. I looked at her body everyday for 8 years, as I bathed her... and even moreso when she became bedbound the last 10 months of her life. Why should I stand on the ground that covers her & look down at the grass under my feet? Am I supposed to picture her there & somehow feel close to her again? Uhhh... being near a body that's been dead for 3 years isn't exactly something I have an overwhelming desire to do, thank you very much. I do think about her often though, as well as my dad who will be gone 25 years next month. It's odd not having parents you can talk to or see or hug anymore. I don't remember what my daddy's voice sounded like or how he walked or what his mannerisms were. It's just been too long.

Well, those are the thoughts rattling through my head this morning, for whatever they're worth. I'll make a concentrated effort to put more thoughts into words in the coming days & weeks ahead. Words, after all, do mean something... and we never know how they might inspire others, now or in the future, do we.

Looks can be deceiving...

2011-10-20T14:40:00.000-05:00

OK, I've just learned something today & it's concerning my "sugar free" cocoa I've been drinking!

I have always known that sugar free does NOT mean calorie free. But I didn't know that sugar free does NOT mean high carbohydrate free either!! >:-(

As I was waiting for the water to boil for my hot cocoa, I read the back of the No Sugar Added Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa mix container. One serving of this stuff has 14 grams of carbs in it.... 14 GRAMS!!! In case anybody didn't know, carbohydrates directly turn into sugar once they reach the bloodstream! So a diabetic might see the no sugar added on this mix & think they can drink it. Yet when they test their blood sugar it will have skyrocketed & they won't understand why. After all, their hot cocoa is "sugar free". *sigh*

There are about 15 grams of carbohydrates in a TABLESPOON of plain white sugar so if a person drinks a cup of this "sugar free" hot cocoa, they might as well have had a cup of hot cocoa with a tablespoon of regular sugar dumped into it.

One tablespoon of plain cocoa has 3 grams of carbohydrates in it.... so if you put 1 tablespoon of cocoa into a mug & add a couple pumps of Torani's sugar free vanilla flavoring in it (zero carbs!!!) & then add your hot water, you will have as close to a "no sugar added" cup of hot cocoa as you can get. If you want to add a couple tablespoons of fat free half & half into it for some extra creaminess, you will add about 3 more grams of carbs. A nice dollop of fat free whipping cream adds only 1 more gram of carbs. So for roughly 7 grams or half the amt of carbohydrates, you can have a really decent cup of hot cocoa without making your blood sugar soar.

The false advertising on that Swiss Miss makes me angry!! I wonder how many diabetics are sending their blood sugars into a tizzy by drinking what they think is safe for them, in this chilly weather!! GRRRRRR....

Booooooo-hissssssss!!!!

Nickelback = insensitive creeps

2011-10-15T15:33:00.000-05:00

I've always been a fan of the band Nickelback... ever since I first listened to one of their CDs. But not anymore. In fact, they can go to absolute HELL as far as I'm concerned. I've cancelled my pre-order of their new album coming out next month & I will never go to another concert of theirs EVER again.

I was on Twitter this afternoon & noticed this tweet from their account. It's Nickelback's authorized account so it came from somebody that the band has given permission to issue tweets on their behalf, if it wasn't a member of the band itself.

Proof that reincarnation might be real..... http://pic.twitter.com/BBluDyDm
The link led to this picture:

Now isn't that just damn sweet of whoever it was who tweeted this? Making fun of a little girl's appearance is just so fuckin' charming.

Nickelback has a rather large group of folks who loathe them. Whoever tweeted this just added another member to that cause.

Assholes!

HPV vaccination

2011-10-14T23:25:00.000-05:00

Listen... and learn. There is no excuse for being ignorant & there is no excuse for "going along"...

like lambs to the slaughter.

I broke'um face!

2011-10-11T23:10:00.000-05:00

Ohhhh-kaaaay, sooooo.... my mom would have said I zigged where I should have zagged. She would have been absolutely right!

I got out of the car Saturday evening, turned to walk towards the rear of the car, lost my footing, didn't realize the fall was coming, therefore didn't brace myself, and *BAM*!! I landed on my face... literally. But not without my face clipping the first concrete step of the staircase leading up to the side of our house.

Landing face first on concrete doesn't feel real good. I took this picture today, three days after the event. My face is much more presentable now, than it was anytime before this.

I think I broke the bridge of my nose but since it's not out of place I'm not going to the doctor. All they'd do is splint it anyway & I don't need it... or want it (the doctor bill OR the splint). I'm lucky I didn't get a skull fracture, knock out some teeth, or hurt my left eye. Real lucky.

Too bad it's not closer to halloween tho. My face would have made a GREAT costume face, eh?

Yeah, my face would have been great. This fake one here is lame. L-A-M-E!!!

My son bought his first car...

2011-10-10T23:34:00.002-05:00

My son bought his first car today.

2003 Buick LeSabre Custom

Paid cash for it. Our favorite car salesman: "You've got a nice first car there, big guy. You made an intelligent choice and you bought it the smart way. Good for you!"

Went to the insurance company & paid cash up front for the insurance. Our insurance agent: "You're certainly on the right track, son."

Had the oil & filter changed right away, along with a radiator flush and a couple of burned-out corner light bulbs replaced, tires checked, etc. The mechanic: "You sure did get a sweet deal on a sweet car, dude. This is a great ride in really good shape!" Went to the BMV, registered the title & bought his license plate. The young woman who did his paperwork: "Congratulations on your first car. Wish I had been smart enough to pay cash for mine."

Lots of folks proud of that boy today... especially his dad. And me!

Mama said there'd be days like these...

2011-10-02T23:26:00.000-05:00

I've had a rough two weeks. Not as in physically rough but more like emotionally & psychologically rough. I won't go into the details cos quite frankly they're not important.

What do you do when you hit a rough patch in life? How do you react when you feel under-appreciated or that your best is just never good enough for some folks? What happens when you do & do & do & DO for others and it still doesn't seem like enough in their eyes? How do you handle it when you love someone else so much but their love in return seems "forced" or dutiful? And you think that if you simply do more for them it will make them happier with you or like you better... perhaps even love you?

Some people turn the other cheek, like the Bible says. Well, I'm definitely not a turn-the-other-cheeker! I get slapped once and I sure as hell ain't gunna turn my face & wait to get slapped again. Nuh-uh. No way. Sorry, God, but that just ain't how I roll. You made me... You oughta know that by now.

Some people ignore it & go on like nothing happened. I can do that to a certain extent but I get tired of it real quick & then my resentment comes out, sometimes knowingly & other times unknowingly, in my attitude and in my words. So pretending that the under-appreciation didn't happen only works for so long with me. When the doing, doing & more doing continues to be not good enough it finally gets to me & I can't pretend it isn't.

What hurts the worst is when you do your best... give everything you have until you're so weary you have to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other... and then the person you served turns around & talks negatively about you to other people who don't even do one-tenth as much as you do for that person. When that happens it falls more into the official Psychological Bad Day category, rather than the emotional. And psychological bad days are no fun to endure. They mess with your head, leaving you to wonder over & over "What did I do to deserve this? I gave all I had to give. How can that not have been enough?"

My man keeps telling me that the problem is not mine, it's theirs. He keeps telling me that all I can do is my best... all I can give is what I have within myself to give & that I can't manufacture any more by magic. And if that's not good enough for some people then f*ck it. Nothing much bothers my man. He doesn't dwell on things he can't change, he pretty much has the attitude that he doesn't owe anybody anything, and he honestly doesn't care if not a soul in the world likes him even one iota. And he sleeps really REALLY well at night!

I, on the other hand, have horrible insomnia.

I hate it when my man is right all the time!

Americana = American Legion Fish Fry

2011-09-30T23:08:00.000-05:00

Certain things scream "Americana!!!" to me:

- country music
- homemade fried chicken dinner on Sunday
- coffee perking in a stainless steel electric percolator
- laundry hanging out on the line
- the sound of lawn mowers in the summertime
- parades down the middle of town
- root beer stands
- playing pinochle with another couple on Saturday night
- children riding their bikes
- high school football games
- locally-owned mom & pop grocery stores
- homemade birthday cakes
- bridal & baby showers
- bowling leagues
- school Christmas pageants
- piano lessons
- tights & patent leather shoes on little girls
- shoe stores that still measure feet with that silver thing
- sidewalk sales uptown
- washing dishes in the sink
- men in white aprons working at the meat market
- spring & fall cleaning
- pressure cookers
- newspapers thrown on porches
- walking mail carriers
- pharmacists who know your name & ask if lil Suzie is feeling better
- bread trucks
- new clothes for church on Easter
- expectant dads staying in the waiting room
- a woman watching her friend's children so she can go to the dentist
- watching "The Wizard of Oz" only once a year
- family reunions in the park with lots of homemade food
- big front porches on old brick houses
- a little girl walking her dolly in a toy buggy
- Five & Dime stores
- 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom houses
- visiting the cemetery to weed relatives' graves & plant flowers
- men taking thermos' full of coffee to work
- sandwiches made out of meat from supper the night before
- live polka bands at wedding receptions

... and most of all... MOST of all...

- going for a fish fry supper at the local American Legion Hall on Fridays.

United States of America flags... everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling, hanging on the walls, in flower pots outside the building, on big poles surrounding the building... everywhere. Many men & women fought for the dignity of that flag & the country it has always represented.

The children have a huge place to play while the adults sit at tables & look at the menu, drink their beverages, chat & wait for their food to arrive. The waitress understands the energy of children... undoubtedly she's a mom & possibly a grandma herself. So she makes sure the children have balloons to play with, to entertain themselves. Behind the playing children are nameplates containing the names of members of this particular American Legion Hall who have perished. They may be gone but they're not forgotten. Neither was their sacrifice in vain. They perished so the children have the opportunity to play with their balloons while waiting for their dinner.

Not a clear picture but the message is quite clear!

Pride abounds everywhere, including the multiple trophy cases of which this is only one. Many American Legion Hall-sponsored sports teams have "brought home the gold" for their beloved veterans.

Long live families going to their local American Legion Hall for a fish fry on Friday nights.

Bless our veterans, both alive and gone, (& those that are actively serving in the United States Armed Forces today) who assure us the freedom to do so.

Had to have fresh air today!

2011-09-28T22:52:00.004-05:00

I haven't been doing well with this cooler weather of autumn. It's the first change into autumn, from summer, that I've experienced this feeling... and it's surprising me. Up until now my favorite season was winter, followed by a very close second... my beloved autumn. Spring always came in third & summer was most definitely last. Now it's completely opposite. I don't know why.

Could my age have something to do with it? You know how it is with many older folks... off to Florida or Arizona they go the minute the temperature dips below 75 degrees. That's how I'm beginning to feel myself. I'm ready to pack up & head somewhere warm until our weather here in northern Indiana shapes up once again... next May!

But that's not going to happen so I suspect I best enjoy the sunny days of autumn & take advantage of being outdoors whenever possible, which is what oldest granddaughter & I did all afternoon today. I needed a jacket, which I detested, but I sat in my lawn chair with my beer & pretended it was about mid-July. Lil Sweetness played in her sandbox & bounced the ball & did everything else (but swim!) that she's been doing all summer long. So we had a perfectly enjoyable day... breathing deep the crisp cool autumn air into our lungs and listening to the birds tweet and looking at all the fluffy clouds in the sky and...

looking through a catalog we got in the mail today while laying on top of the picnic table and...

dropping pieces of mail through the cracks in the picnic table, then crawling underneath the picnic table to retrieve them, only to go back on top & do it all over again and...

sticking her tongue out for the camera just because she can and...

enjoying being alive just because she can... because her mommy (our oldest daughter) fell in love, got married, and gave Lil Sweetness life with which to enjoy many sunny autumn days. What a gift!

The gift of autumn and the gift of life.

Just dance...

2011-09-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

Where ever you are... what ever your age... turn this song up & dance. If you are confined to a wheelchair or to a sickbed, sway from side-to-side & get into the beat.

I promise your day will be better if you do.

Purging time...

2011-09-20T14:21:00.000-05:00

For some reason it feels like a season of purging in my life now. Out with the old & in with... nothing.

It's not a case of autumn cleaning fever, that much I do know. I'm familiar with that whole sensation, where the change of weather comes be it spring or fall, and you suddenly get the urge to clean-clean-clean. It's not that at all. It's much deeper than that. This need to purge my life & surroundings has more of a sentimentality be damned-type feel (courage) to it... an aura of shedding the past because I don't need it anyway & who else does.

I can't say that my mother was a hoarder because she was very neat and clean. But she did have a lot of sentimentality in her... way too much for her own mental well-being, in my view. She saved the holey sweater that her Budapest, Hungary-born mother wore for the last decades of her life. Grandma would wash it & wash it and refused to buy a new one, despite the holes that were getting larger with each washing. The five daughters vied for possession of that old sweater, once grandma died, and my mother won. Not exactly my viewpoint on it ("won") but it was definitely hers. The lottery, if there had been such a thing back then, would have paled in comparison to winning possession of the aforementioned sweater!

My mother put my wedding bouquet in a box & that's up in the closet too, along with my baptismal gown, the dress I wore (when I was 2 years old) to my brother's wedding (my bros were 18 & 14 when I was born), an old jewelry box containing every piece of costume jewelry ever bought for her by the grandkids, spring/summer purses (white) & fall/winter purses (black). In my mom's dresser drawer are curtains from the kitchen in her old house, nicely washed & pressed & put into a bag... for "just in case", I suppose.

There's the get-well card that I got from my godmother when I had the flu back in 1961, along with miriads of little statuettes that used to adorn my bedroom when I was young. Mother kept much of the memorabilia from our Washington DC trip when I was 7, the summer before President Kennedy was assassinated. Brownie & Girl Scout manuals, Miss Indiana pageant programs, pencils with my name imprinted on them (that was a huge deal back then), an old prayerbook written in Hungarian that belonged to my grandfather, my big ole piggy bank that used to sit on my dresser, baby teeth, obituary holy cards (the kind with the person's name on them that you pick up as you sign the book in the back of the funeral home). And pictures? Oh yes, lots and LOTS of pictures!!

It's all there and much more. Every bit of it.

Do I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at all these things? Of course I do. It's my heritage... memories of my childhood long ago, much of which I wish I could visit just one more time. It's pieces of my mother's life & the family she came from. But will my children know what these things even are or who they belonged to, much less want to keep them for all posterity? Nope! They're collecting their own junk & don't even want the old toys & things that I saved from their own childhoods. Why would they want leftover stuff from mine? Better yet my MOTHER'S?

Up until now I've never had the need, desire or courage to get rid of the things my mother saved. I have to admit that they meaned something to me... up until now. I don't know what has changed but "it" has and now I don't feel the need to hang on to these things any longer. The represent clutter to me now... a messiness of sorts. I have the longing to purge them from my life & from the earth itself. No, that sounds too harsh. Let me rephrase: I have the longing to put these things to rest... a feeling or want to return them to the earth from which they came. A need to give them back to Mother Nature because I know she will keep them safe, as they return to their original state (... and unto dust you shall return).

I feel like having some sort of ceremony to mark the occasion & to give proper due to these things from my past. I'm not sure if I'll simply bury them or burn them first & scatter the ashes. Sounds like a funeral, doesn't it. In a sense I think that's what it is.

I believe it's a season of letting go, for me. A time of purging my surroundings of things from my mother's past & also mine, but not wanting to simply throw them away or give them to Goodwill. These bits of history need a proper sending-off... a respectful good-bye.

I wonder if my mother will be pleased? I have a hunch I will know if she is. Or isn't!

We'll see.

Just stick with it & watch....

2011-09-18T00:20:00.000-05:00

True dat! Every bloody word of it!

Wish I was "normal"!

2011-09-10T11:13:00.000-05:00

~ I don't care what kind of furniture I have, the age of it, or whether any of it matches (it doesn't).

~ I don't care what kind of clothes I wear & usually wear the same stuff over & over (washed, of course).

~ I'm very immodest (I wear a sports bra & jean shorts outside in the summer time & would wear even less if I wouldn't get arrested).

~ I listen to hard rock music & love going to concerts.

~ I drink beer on occasion but most of the time I drink whiskey... Gentleman Jack preferably... & can drink any guy under the table at the bar we frequent on most Saturday nights.

~ I am totally not jealous if another woman dances with my husband (or sits on his lap for that matter) & I expect the same from him (sometimes that works & sometimes it doesn't).

~ I love tattoos & just started my first one a few weeks ago. It's going to be a sleeve on my right arm (nothing like going BIG for your first tattoo, eh?). I intend on being inked on my chest next.

~ I feel uncomfortable in a roomful of my peers. I feel like I don't belong. Their interests, concerns, maturity level, wants, & desires are simply not mine.

~ I want to get a Harley (motorcycle).

~ I don't care if my kitchen dishes aren't done until the next day... or the day after that.

~ I place a much higher value on animals that I do the majority of people I've met in my lifetime & can/will never just drive by an injured animal in the road if there is any possible way for me to stop, pick it up, & take it to be euthanized or rehabilitated for re-release.

~ I would sell my house for $30,000 less than I could otherwise sell it for, just so that I could be assured an animal lover would buy it & not some nutso hunter (we live next to 15 acres of woods).

~ I don't have cable tv & don't watch any sitcoms or whatever they're called nowadays. I prefer my VHS tapes & DVDs of shows like The Honeymooners, Andy Griffith & Dick Van Dyke.

~ I can't settle down with one religious affiliation or denomination or credo to save my soul (pardon the pun). My beliefs are like leaves blowing in the wind.

~ I believe the earth is being poisoned by all the crap (FDA-approved) that is sprayed, injected, ingested, pumped into, leaked, dumped, and scattered on our soil & in our water & in our air... aka: our food & air supply.

~ I don't go on vacations & have never been on a cruise.

~ Both our cars are going to be 16 years old pretty soon & I couldn't care less that we look like paupers driving them.

~ I cuss & swear up a blue streak when I feel like it & don't think there's anything wrong with children hearing those words. Words are words. I don't understand why some words should be deemed "bad" & some deemed "good". They're all made up of letters from the alphabet. What's the big deal?

~ I don't care much about food... for myself. If there was a pill I could swallow to take the place of eating, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat. Once in awhile I get a hankering for some food or another but, for the most part, I couldn't care less what I put in my mouth & swallow, to make my stomach stop growling.

~ I absolutely hate cell phones & refuse to have one for myself, even though I tried it... once. I have a regular telephone in my house but 75% of the time it's unplugged & I have no answering machine & no voice mail feature. I just hate talking on the phone.

~ I speak my mind & assume others will too, but they don't. I don't tiptoe around issues & expect others not to either, but they do. People think I'm rude as a result of this & I don't mind it.

~ I don't like to laugh. Do. Not. Like. To. Laugh. At. All. Comedy movies make me crazy. Maybe because the shit that's supposed to be funny today I don't think is the least bit funny. Totally. Not. Funny.

All these things I've mentioned make me feel not "normal"... at least by the standards our country seems to function by & embrace. I definitely do not fit the mold & that makes me feel different... odd... simply not "normal". I'm self-conscious about that so I have a tendency to stay away from people except my immediate family... and even they look at me oddly sometimes, including my man. He's gotten used to me, obviously (after being married to me for 35+ yrs), but he still "looks at me sideways" as my mama used to say, when I voice some of my beliefs or exhibit some of my mannerisms.

But it is what it is... and I am who I am... and I certainly can't change any of that. I'm too old now to be fake or phoney, so acting normal while at the same time not being normal isn't going to work. I just have to be me, as abnormal as that is most of the time.

I just wish I fit in better & had thoughts, feelings & actions that are more acceptable by the mainstream of humanity. Oh well. It sounds like a lot of work to be phoney & I'm just up to the task. I just wish other people's "normal" wasn't the equivalent of my "phoney".

Liberal feminists & other such labels...

2011-09-07T12:02:00.002-05:00

I was on Twitter this morning & had a most unpleasant (but typical) conversation with a woman who proudly labeled herself as a "feminist" and "liberal" and "progressive". Of course she revealed her hand very early in the exchange as being everything but those things. She did it in the same fashion as most self-labeled feminists... and liberals... and progressives... do.

It was the usual story. I told her I hated labels (which I do) and then I asked her what she had done for women lately? She said "my record stands for itself" and left it at that. She made me laugh. I told her that women need to stand together & not be divided, to which she promptly responded that she would not stand together with anyone who wanted to "put her back into the kitchen". Up until this point I never spoke of what I did for a living or how I spent my days. I simply told her that women should stand united & that's what feminism truly is. She started making assumptions the minute I said that. She was looking for a reason not to like me or agree with me... while at the same time saying she stood up for women?

I'm a woman the last time I checked.

She told it was "all about choice and equality". I then told her I was "in the kitchen" by choice & asked if she is the type of feminist that supported other women only when they made the same choices that she would/did? She never answered me.

I guess I wasn't equal to her because I made a different choice in life than she had.

The word feminine means to be a girl or woman. The suffix -ism means the action of. So, in my thinking, feminism is the action of being a girl or a woman. What girl or woman isn't into feminism?

The more I said, the more this liberal progressive feminist got angry. She started out of the gate angry but it only intensified. With every benign non-threatening statement I made, she had some sort of gesture to make, like #rollingeyes. I encouraged her to keep up the gestures & words because she was simply revealing her heart, which was far from being pro-women. I could almost hear her sputtering fumes from the other side of my computer screen.

To be liberal means to be in favor of progress and reform. I suppose there are some women who are totally against any progress (being progressive) and any reform. Amish women come to mind right off the bat. But I would venture to say most women in America favor progress and reform in one way or another. To some women, like the "liberal" woman I chatted with on Twitter today, the problem lies in what specific progress & what particular reform. If the ideas, systems & realities I feel should progress and be reformed did not line up with the ones she had in mind, I was not considered a liberal... but she was.

What an elitist, eh? How closed-minded can you get!

She epitomized the gold standard of women who find labels to divide us. She is the poster woman for Angry Feminist LLC. It didn't take too many sentences off her fingertips, onto a computer screen, to show anyone who cared to read her tweets that she is unhappy with herself... angry at the world... hateful of women who choose to be stay-at-home wives & mothers. I secretly think she'd like to be a stay-at-home woman but can't and that's a part of her angst too.

So let's hate all women who have what we don't have and are able to do what we can't do, now shall we?!

What a powerful force we women would be, in all the world, if we'd simply stop labeling ourselves with titles that we KNOW divide us. Let's just be united as women, whether some of us are in the kitchen or some of us are out in the workplace. Let's just be united as women, whether some of us have had an abortion or some of us haven't. Let's simply help each other along this path called life and treat each other with respect, regardless of our personal viewpoints. It is, after all, very very easy to disagree & converse respectfully about our differences of opinion. But let's not assume we know another woman's opinion without even asking her.

Well, I guess this "conservative" and "backward" gal ought to get back into the kitchen. I've got some dishes to do and some supper to think about starting. I won't have to cook supper this coming Friday though... cos I'm heading to my tattoo artist to have more ink added to my sleeve. It's going to be so freakin' awesome when it's done. :-)

Did I mention my tattoo artist is a woman? Nothing like supporting women in the workplace, eh?

#chuckle

What to let go of & what to keep...

2011-06-10T02:43:00.021-05:00

I've been married for 35 years. That's a long time of living, loving, nurturing, surviving, budgeting, questioning, deciding, arguing, making up, pushing, pulling, trying, failing, succeeding... ...and collecting. Stuff. You name it, we got it.

Now it's time to part with some of "it".

But what proverbial "its" do we part with & which "its" do we keep? That's the difficult question... probably one of the most difficult questions of my lifetime, I can honestly say. Most of the "its" have sentimental value or, at the very least, attachment. Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't DE-tach easily or quickly. I'm not a hoarder in any way, shape or form. It's just that I don't part with things that remind me of happier times gone by. Those things comfort me as I am greatly comforted by the familiar. It's probably why we don't travel and I myself don't venture off these couple acres very often. I am content with my milleu.

Except my milleu is getting a bit cluttered-feeling & like my garden, needs to be weeded.

I have no trouble parting with things that I bought which have no particular meaning or memories attached to them: chairs, lamps, appliances, dressers, bookshelves, curtains, dishes, bedspreads, that sort of thing. What I do have trouble parting with are things that remind me of when I was little or things that I remember me, my parents, or my children using when I or they were growing up: the set of four tv trays that I remember my Dad eating from when he'd watch the Flintstones after getting off work, as he'd eat his supper... or the pair of lopsided lamps that my parents picked out for our living room, from a place called The Railroad Salvage, which sold slightly damaged goods at discount prices (because my parents couldn't afford anything different)... or the orange recliner that I remember my Dad sitting in, especially at Christmas time, as we'd open up our gifts... or any number of vases that my Mom kept when my Dad would send her flowers after any one of their miriad of fights they used to have when I was a kid... or my Great Grandma Arch's (HUGE & heavy!) wedding chest that has been used as just about everything, from a coffee table to a tv stand, because it takes up so much space it can hardly be used as simply a piece of furniture to look at over in the corner... or the wood rocking chair my Mom bought me when I graduated from nursing school... or the Duncan Fife tea cart that is the only piece left out of the beautiful Duncan Fife dining room set that used to occupy the very first house I lived in as a child... or the chopping block I can still see my Mom rolling her Christmas sugar cookies out on... or the tv my Mom used to watch for endless hours per day during her last years on earth, when she could do nothing else... or the organ, which no one in our family plays, that my Dad sacrificed so greatly to buy in order for me to take lessons (which I never wanted nor appreciated)... or the very first new piano we bought for our eldest daughter, using some of the profit we obtained after selling the house before this one, because she was showing so much promise at such a young age & was doing so despite the fact she was forced to play on a 65 yr old upright cabinet grand piano we bought for $200 from some church somewhere... or my Mother's treasured sewing machine, cabinet, sewing box & (very) old patterns that she used, in order to sew so many satin & lace infant baptismal gowns that I can't even begin to guess the number... or the hope chest my parents bought me for my 16th birthday... or the two chest of drawers that were a part of my parents' "new" bedroom set back in the 1950s (I wonder whatever happened to the headboard??)...

Too many "its" for me to list here but you get the idea. How will we ever go from this big house to a smaller one or even to an apartment, if all the "its" are still in our possession? We won't and that's the problem... that I'm attempting to rectify. As each child moves out on their own (only one so far), I've asked them to make out a list of things they think they might like to have from Ye Ole Homestead. Things that hold special memories for them that they'd like to have or perhaps things that they need that I possess, so they don't have to go out & buy them. Our oldest daughter took several things, when she purchased her first home with her husband & baby daughter, so that helped to thin things out a bit. But she didn't take that much! There's still lots of "its" here. More than enough to go around and then some. I give away some things to friends also... things that I ask them if they can use & most of the time they're very pleased with their gifts. Just as pleased as I am to give them. But again, much remains.

So I'm weeding out the things that I have no problem giving to Goodwill or the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I'm also doing a bit of the "closing my eyes & putting the stuff into the truck & having my son make the drop-off" routine too. No tears yet so I must not be that attached to those things but just think I am. Slowly but surely it's looking less cluttered in here but I've got a long way to go, that's for sure.

Then there's the basement yet too, that must be gone through. All the boxes containing all the children's treasured & much-loved toys from when they were my precious little ones still at home... playing for hours in the toy room or in the front driveway... fresh-faced, innocent, smiling little ones whom I never dreamed in a million years would ever grow up & stop playing with those toys. Memories, not toys, packed away in those plastic tubs with labels on the outside... lining the basement walls on shelf upon shelf, from floor to ceiling. Lots and lots of "its"!!

I think we'll just keep this house until we die & let our kids decide what to do with the "its". I mean, after all, can't let them get off too easy, can we?!!

Overwhelmation

2011-06-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

I don't even know if that's a word or not... "overwhelmation"... but I'm going to make it one for today.

overwhelmation

~noun (person, place, thing)

1. the act of being overwhelmed.
2. the point at which one feels overpowered, overstimulated.
3. when a person reaches the realization they are being crushed by life.

Yep, I'd say that about sums it up. I reach the point of overwhelmation very easily these days. Some people poke fun of me because of it... some people give a big sigh and I can read their minds which are thinking "Here we go again!"... some people totally can not relate so they think I must have a screw loose upstairs. Whatever anybody thinks or feels when I reach, once again, my point of overwhelmation really doesn't matter a hill of beans to me. I won't allow them to add to my overwhelmation, that's for sure!

I am not a fan of technology. That's no secret to anyone who truly knows me. I tried a cell phone for awhile & hated it. Social media outlets like Facebook & Twitter, no matter how much I love the folks I interact with on those, absolutely drive me crazy after awhile (but I love to stay in touch via email so WRITE ME!!). So much so that I simply have to walk away from them or I feel like I'm going to lose my mind (the little I have left!). I don't have cable tv. If I want to watch the boob tube I'll throw in one of my VHS tapes (undoubtedly of some old b&w tv series I used to watch as a kid) because that's all that interests me anymore. We do subscribe to SkyAngel for $25/mo to have something for the rest of the family to watch once in awhile but for the amt of time they watch it, that's probably even a waste of money, to be honest. I do enjoy writing blog entries, conversing via email letters with friends & family, and reading the news online. But if our internet service was gone tomorrow (aka: my husband's place of employment didn't pay for it anymore due to hubby working from home), it wouldn't break my heart THAT much. It would be hard at first but I'd get over it pretty quickly.

Technology in general is a big source of my overwhelmation. That's why I find ways to avoid it. My list of ways is growing!

My husband started working from home over two years ago, when the facility he'd been working at closed its doors. His company didn't go out-of-business, thank goodness, but they closed some branches & hubby's was one of them. The nearest facility at this point is about 50 miles away and hubs refuses to make the drive everyday... period. So they allow him to work from home and simply make the commute to the corporate office only when necessary. It's a nice thing that he gets to work from home: saves on gas $$, saves on work clothes, is safer in bad weather, etc. etc. The downside is that it's like he's retired in the fact that he's home. AllTheTime!!! His office is in my (fairly small) laundry room so whenever I want to walk through there, I have to squeeze between him & the dryer. If I want to open up the dryer door, he either has to get up & push his chair in or scoot waaaaaay up until he can hardly breathe. If he's expecting a conference call online (which is often), I can't run my washer. If he turns off the washer or dryer, to talk on the phone, sometimes he forgets to turn it back on afterward (the result of that popped right into your head, didn't it??!!). Hubby is a workaholic so that means he's putting in more hours of work, here at home, than he ever did when he had to go in to a work facility everyday. I have to deliver his breakfast, lunch and beverages to him at his desk... everyday. I feel like I have a toddler in the house again.

Hubs working from home is a big source of my overwhelmation. I long for the good ole days when he'd leave the house every morning and come home just in time for supper.

I'm going to be 55 years old this summer. I have two children still living at home: a soon-to-be 24 year old son & a daughter who will turn 14 a week after I turn 55. Adult son works as much as he can (the economy is soooo terrible!) but when he's not working, he's showering up and getting all nice 'n good-smelling to go out with his girlfriend (probably soon to be fiance). He's a noctural creature like myself but without the sense of household duty that goes along with it. He won't sleep-in, get up at noon, and get busy with all the things he should have been doing at 8am. He will simply sleep-in, get up at noon, and get busy to leave the house! He has certain chores to do, which I have to remind him about nearly every single day. He does them cheerfully, when I remind him, but damn... why do I have to remind him of things he knows he has to do? Take out the garbage, take out the recycling, empty the dehumidifiers, rinse your recyclables & put them in the bin, bring your dirty dishes into the kitchen. That's it. I even have his chores written down on a piece of paper because he seemed to not be able to remember to do them from rote memory. Hubs told me: "Watch... you'll have to remind him to look at the note!!". I hate it when he's right!! >:-( I'm not even going there about the teen caboose. Teenager, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, continually shifting hormones, mouth-mouth-mouth... the whole nine yards. We've done the counseling routine, the 'regular school' routine, the praying/church routine, the time-out routine, the taking away privledges routine, the spanking routine, the cussing-out routine, the educational books (ad nauseum) routine... nothing works. So I drink alcohol!

Having children still at home is a big source of my overwhelmation. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

We live in a big house. It didn't start out that way but it's that way now. We added-on a 1,000 sq.ft. apartment for my mom back in 2001. Mom's now gone but she didn't take the apartment with her so... here it is, a sarcophogus that needs to be maintained like the rest of the property. Add to that the fact that I'm married to a man who doesn't have a handyman cell in his body & doesn't desire any. It's nice to be truthful with yourself about such things but unless you're independently wealthy and can hire-out for jobs that need to be done, you have to get over your handyman phobia & dig in... with both feet... when you own a home. Let's just say somebody's digging in with both their feet and I'll leave it to you to guess whose. So far this year I've been the one to, more times than not:

1. (wo)man the snowblower after the huge snowstorms we had

2. tear down the majority of the humongous wooden fence that had not worn well & was taking away from the value and appearance of our home

3. repair & paint the walls in one bathroom and hang border

4. clean up the yard (three-quarters of an acre of lawn & gardens)and plant flowers & transplant

5. strip the wallpaper off caboose's bedroom wall (took me 3 days!), repair the wall damage with spackle, and am now in the process of painting before buying new carpet

6. deciding which room to hit next because over half of this house is 30 yrs old and has most of the original everything

Being the only person in the household who is willing to learn new things (& DO them!) in order to maintain & update this house is a big source of my overwhelmation. I feel like a construction worker by day and a "hurry to catch up after 8pm everything a stay-at-home wife & mother does during the day" by night. It's wearing me out!

I have a couple health issues. One being hypertension almost all of my adult life. Hypertension is a disease, different from high blood pressure which is a symptom. Someone can have high blood pressure for any number of reasons: poor exercise habits, poor eating habits, the intake of too much sodium, stress, being overweight, whatever. As soon as you resolve any or all of the reasons, the high blood pressure is usually resolved. It's not that way with hypertension. Whatever you do to try & improve your hypertension, it usually doesn't work. I weigh 50+ lbs. less than I did 10 years ago and my blood pressure reading is higher now. It's simply the nature of the beast called "hypertension". The same as diabetes or any other disease. No matter how well you watch your sugar intake, if you have diabetes (not caused by overconsumption of sugar or being obese) it won't much matter what you do... you'll still need insulin. The same with me. I take three different hypertension medications everyday and have for almost 20 yrs now. Simply by being what it is, hypertension is wearing on the body & after so many years both the disease and the medications I take to treat it cause additional health problems. There's no getting around it or avoiding it. I've accepted the fact but it certainly doesn't make it any more fun. I also had a breast cancer scare about 15 yrs ago. I had a questionable mammogram which led me to a specialist in Chicago which resulted in 19 films being taken of my left breast, with a final diagnosis of "We're really not sure what's going on. There's something there but we've never seen anything like it so we're thinking it's an abnormal mammogram but normal for you." OK. Whatever. I had repeat mammograms every 6 months for a couple years and nothing changed so I was cleared. That breast has been bothering me for about a year or so. It swells, gets tender, then the swelling & tenderness go away for awhile. I've done a LOT of research on the subject (anyone who knows me knows I'm an information junkie!) and have discovered that regardless of whether or not this is something to worry about, "early detection" isn't going to change the outcome. That's the dirty little secret about breast cancer... the myth that's been promulgated by Early Detection Saves Lives groups. The true fact of the matter is that early detection simply tells you what you've already got. It doesn't alter the survival outcome very much. I am totally NOT a chemo/radiation person. I respect those people who are and I think it's wonderful that they want to fight their cancer. I suppose maybe I would too if I had a cancer that was considered (very) beatable. Most breast cancers aren't like that so, even if I had a breast cancer diagnosis handed to me, I would choose to just let my life play out and end when it was time, without treatment. That's just me. But the fact that I've got this left breast issue nagging at me, it's always in the forefront of my mind when my breast is swollen & sore.

Having health issues is a big source of my overwhelmation. I don't fear dying. I never have. It's the pain-in-the-ass of it all that causes me stress.

Overwhelmation. I really do think this word belongs in the dictionary. I'm going to contact Mr. Webster today. Maybe we'll have a little talk.

Oh for gawd sake...

2011-06-02T22:26:00.002-05:00

Would you believe the pro-choice idiots are upset about this video commercial by Pampers? How is that even possible? Who could be upset by a diaper company stating the fact that they think all babies are precious?

What do the pro-choicers want Pampers to say... that all babies are worthless pieces of shit but they gotta wear diapers so it might as well be Pampers?

::major eye roll::

I am totally tired of....

2011-06-02T18:59:00.011-05:00

I am absolutely, totally, without a doubt tired of:

1. social media

2. being a wife

3. having kids still at home

4. being the only one in the household who is capable of / has the desire to do home maintenance

5. people not following directions

6. laundry

7. cooking

8. cleaning

9. constantly doing - doing - DOING for others

10. not having any money

11. the people in this household treating me like a maid instead of a human being

12. being in charge of everyone else's happiness

13. having uncontrollable hypertension

14. every day being like the day before

15. every week being like the week before

16. seeing the same faces everyday & everyday & everyday

17. computers

18. the bullcrap that having a child in 'regular' school produces

19. having a child with mental issues

20. moody people

21. being in charge of what goes into other people's stomachs when I myself don't even eat

22. feral cats & trying to catch them

23. living in the same town & state since my birth

24. goodie two-shoe blogs & goodie two-shoe people

25. being alive

26. feeling like I've never really lived

Rinse & repeat...

Bucket Brigade Task Master

2011-05-22T22:25:00.000-05:00

I vividly remember the last time my man had the flu. I mean a really good (or should it be "really bad") case of the flu! I was pregnant with our first child and in the middle of a very cold & snowy winter in February of 1982. It was 2am and my man had been vomiting for 12 hrs. straight, with hardly any relief inbetween. You know how the flu is: there's two different kinds~ the kind where you urp once or twice & feel better... and the kind where you urp many many times with little interval inbetween. Well, this particular winter of 1982 my man unfortunately had the latter & not the former.

He was getting weaker by the ~~urp~~ minute and I knew I had to head out in all the bad weather, to see if I could find something at the drugstore to help stop the heaves. He didn't want me to go out & I most definitely didn't want to go out... but somebody had to go & it surely wasn't going to be him!! I made it back in one piece (considering it was all of 2 miles away, around the corner from our apartment, and I don't think I saw half a dozen cars in total, on the way there & back) with some liquid that the pharmacist told me would help. It did and all was well.

That was the last time I can remember my man having the flu and being so sick. I guess you might say he was overdue to have another bout of it. His luck ran out this morning about 5am!

Unfortunately, Caboose's luck ran out about 30 minutes before her Daddy's did!

Yep, from 5am-10am I was the Bucket Brigade Task Master: emptying, rinsing, flushing, wiping out, returning... then on to the next person to repeat. Back to the original person after that! Both of them vomited every 20 minutes or so, Caboose waiting the first time for the bucket with a panicked look on her face as if to say "Would you hurry up & hurl, Dad-e-o, cos the light's about to turn green in my throat any second now!!" I remedied that real quick with the production of a 2nd bucket.

The simple pleasures.

I don't remember having two people actively vomiting at the same time, with the flu, since the two oldest kids were little, which is many moons ago. Then it was the whole enchilada: cleaning up bed sheets, starting the washer in the middle of the night, watching kids like hawks to make sure they "hit the bucket" with the next round, etc. I sincerely do NOT remember it with much fondness either. Gawd! Those were definitely not my favorite memories of my children's childhoods.

Today is definitely not one of my favorite memories either, of Caboose's childhood or my man's adulthood! But all's well that ends well. The urps have stopped for both, Caboose was sleeping by 8pm & my man was close behind at 8:30pm, and both have managed to get some liquids & a little bit of food into their stomachs & it all stayed there. Son went to his girlfriend's house this evening so I'm about to hit a nice hot shower & call it a day.

Today certainly didn't turn out anything like I had envisioned it would. But I'm putting my life savings on a bet that tomorrow or the next day is going to turn out exactly like I picture it will.

At least we have two buckets now.

Five Minute Fridays: When seasons change...

2011-05-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

The idea for "Five Minute Fridays" came from Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama. I first learned about it from my friend Dorothy Abdelaziz over at Daffodil Dreams. To explain what Five Minute Friday is, I'll just let Lisa-Jo do the talking:

"So, here’s the skinny: I’ve been thinking about writing and how often our perfectionism gets in the way of our words. And I figured, why not take 5 minutes and see what comes out: not a perfect post, not a profound post, just five minutes of focused writing.

Ala-ka-zam - Five Minute Friday was born.

We’ve all got five minutes – while the kids are wrestling, while the macaroni’s boiling, while the dog is doing his business, while the plumber is resuscitating your washing machine.

Wanna just write? Without wondering if it’s just right or not. You’re welcome to play along. The rules are easy. Write your heart out for five minutes and show us what you’ve got."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today's prompt is: When seasons change...

GO!

Oddly enough, when I think of the changing of seasons I think of the "seasons" of life. You know... birth, baby, adolescent, adult, senior citizen, death. I think of all the different phases & facets of those seasons and how God was so wise to know that it's not a good thing for us to see into the future because we'd probably die of fright... therefore missing out on so many of our "seasons".

When I look back at all the seasons of my life it feels like sooo much time has passed but when I get up in the morning & brush my teeth, I feel like my life has just begun. I look in the mirror and honestly don't feel a whole lot different than I did 30 years ago, except for the aches & pains, of course. I remember a story that my mom told me of how, all her life, she had always wondered what it would feel like to be 70 years old. I don't know why she picked that particular age & neither did she. But 70 it was. Mom said she woke up on the morning of her 70th birthday, looked in the mirror, and thought: "So this is what 70 looks & feels like!". She said she remembered thinking that 70 didn't feel any differently than 60 or 50 had. Mom said that inside she felt like the same person she had been as a little girl. Nothing had changed except her body & even then her body didn't feel that much different to her. It looked different but it didn't feel different, other than for the obvious things.

The seasons come & the seasons go... and we're still the same person on the inside. Just our outside has changed. I wonder if everything in nature feels the same way?

STOP.

A little 'pump-ya-up'

2011-05-19T09:36:00.000-05:00

We need some more good ole 30s!

2011-05-18T19:35:00.000-05:00

My mom was 90 years old when she passed from this world. She used to tell me a lot about when she was a little girl & also a young bride. Hearing mom's stories, one thing always crossed my mind every time as I was listening to her: "The young people of today wouldn't know how to exist under those conditions! They would be clueless as to how to survive!"

Mom told me about how she & all her six siblings had to quit school the day they turned 16 years old (the legal age you could quit school) in order to get full-time jobs to help support the family. On payday, each child would take their paycheck & give it to Grandma. She'd cash it, give each child a token to call their own and the rest went for the household's needs. Mom said she nor her siblings even thought to complain.

Mom talked about how she & Dad got a used radio as a wedding present & how thrilled they were to receive it. Hardly any of their friends had a radio so after each couple ate supper, they'd sometimes walk down to Mom & Dad's apartment & spread out on the floor in order to listen to the various shows that came on each evening. Mom said once the last show was done, everybody would stand up & head on home. Nobody was afraid to walk the streets at night during those days.

Mom talked about how their first apartment didn't have a bathtub or a shower because they lived in a few rooms upstairs in someone's big old house. So Mom & Dad bathed in a big washtub that Dad would bring out into the kitchen, so it would be close to the wood-burning stove in the middle of the room. Mom never complained as she retold this story. It was just the way life was.

Mom & Dad walked everywhere they needed to go because in their newly married years of the 1930s no one could afford a car except for the weathy, so everyone walked. When Mom & Dad were dating, Mom said she waited to hear the click-click-click of Dad's roller skates as he skated towards Mom's house along the brick street. She said: "I could always hear him before I could see him."

When Mom was little, Grandma & Grandpa took in boarders to fill some rooms upstairs, in order to make some much needed extra money. They paid a set fee for a clean bed to sleep in, a bathroom to use, and 3 meals per day. Mom said that when school was out & the girls of the family got home, they had to start in right away with helping Grandma make supper. Usually there were pies to be made everyday and either potatos to peel or noodles to roll out. The boarders always ate good at the big Sabo house. Mom told me that the chores of washing laundry & cooking basically made up Grandma's entire day. There was little time else for hobbies or even simply sitting down. It was chores from sun-up until sun-down.

I wonder what the teenagers of today would do if their mother told them to quit school, get a job, and then turn over their paycheck to mom with only $1 or so in return? I wonder what the grade school kids of today would do if there were no such thing as after-school sports or dances or field trips... and the kids had to come home right after school, change their clothes, and do chores until it was time for bed? I wonder what newly married (or ANY married) people of today would do with only a radio as their evening entertainment? Or if there was only enough money for food, clothing & shelter and none left for anything else? No money for a second car... or meals out... or vacations... or fancy hairdos... or fake fingernails... or make-up... or weekly bowling leagues... or weekend movies... or steaks on the grill... or any of the things that married people take for granted today?

I came across some rare colored photos from the Library of Congress today, depicting life in the 1930s... right around the time my parents would have been married & my oldest brother was born. I maintain that most people wouldn't know how to exist this way and if they did they surely wouldn't be too thrilled about it. Life as it was in the 1930s was simply accepted & most were very grateful for what they had. I think we need another decade like the 1930s to exist right now.

I think there's much to be learned... or remembered... by all of us.

6 things...

2011-05-17T09:00:00.002-05:00

My oldest daughter over at Saying Our Nevers, Sleeping Our Dream wrote an interesting post a couple days ago (all her posts are interesting to me... she loves to write... wonder where she gets that from?). She wrote about 6 things you can't get enough of.

Hmmm... 6 things I can't get enough of. A thought-provoker for sure. Consider yourself tagged if you're reading this (if you want to play along) and try to come up with or narrow your list down to:

6 Things I Can't Get Enough Of

1. Eating out so I don't have to cook (or do dishes).

2. Thinking about how much I wish our society today was the same as it was back in the 1950s.

3. Finding good bargains at the Goodwill Store or The Salvation Army Thrift Shop.

4. Working outside in the yard when the temperature is absolutely perfect.

5. Getting up in the morning without pain in my joints or pressure in my head & neck.

6. Going out for lunch with one of my children & having that singular time with them one-on-one.

I saved the best for last. Isn't that what they say to do? :)

Decidedly & unequivocally overwhelmed!!

2011-05-16T23:32:00.003-05:00

That about sums it up. I'm overwhelmed in a BIG way & have been so, to be quite honest, since last December.

Since Caboose started "regular school". It's only gotten worse since then, with seemingly little things added-on to the pile until the pile now feels like it rivals the size of Mount Everest (and I scale it every single day, up one side & down the other... with no sherpa in sight to guide me!).

I think I'm out of rhythm... out of sync. I'm trying to fill a role & mold myself into someone totally foreign to me, believing things that I don't believe but am trying to convince myself I do. It's wearing me down to an absolute frazzle in every area... emotionally, spiritually, psychological, physically.

Especially physically!!

We're a homeschooling family. We homeschooled for 19 years total, until this past December. Caboose has "adoption issues", as the ole saying goes, and with that has brought a can of worms long since opened called Oppositional Defiance Disorder. I won't go into it in detail here but if you go to the link & read a bit, you'll realize the nightmare this disorder produces & why children with this disorder are not good homeschooling candidates. Caboose wouldn't cooperate with the counselor either & she finally told us we were wasting our money by bringing our daughter for her weekly sessions (to the tune of $125 for 50 mins).

Wonderful! Now what the hell were we supposed to do, eh?!

Trudge along like we had been for the 13 years previous, I guess. No, that clearly was not the answer. So we enrolled Caboose in a private Catholic grade school. I should say we enrolled all of us in a private Catholic grade school because Caboose wasn't the only one affected by this decision. We all were, to varying degrees.

The education at the school is probably pretty standard for all public & private schools. In other words (and there's no way to put this politely), the education Caboose is receiving there absolutely stinks! Substandard with a capital "S" and yes, I could do so much better but not with a child who has adoption issues & Oppositional Defiance Disorder. We already tried.
So we play the "regular school" game:

~ pay our $3,400/yr tuition

~ get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30am & rush-rush-rush to get Caboose out the door

~ fret over poor progress reports

~ fret over poor report cards

~ fret over (stupid!) geography group projects that end up being the parents' project just as much as the child's, if not moreso

~ shell out money for field trips, yearbooks, pizza party days, spring dances, Wear Jeans For $1 Days, candy sales, coupon booklets, project supplies... the list is endless

~ agonize over homework until way past bedtime

~ agonize over missed homework if Caboose is sick

~ watch the clock & be sure to leave in time for pick-up everyday

~ read the freakin' ENDLESS notes & emails that are sent out, telling the news for the week (gawd, what ever happened to simply learning to be proficient in reading, writing & arithmetic??!!)

~ calling the school, wondering why the religion teacher threw a ball at my child's desk & ended up hitting her on the side of the face

You get the idea & know my pain if you've ever dealt with the "regular school" system. It grates on every last nerve I've got... and I don't have many nerves left, believe me.

This is just soooo not "me" and soooo not "us". We're homebodies - back to the land type folks. We don't take vacations, don't eat out much, buy clothes from Goodwill quite a bit, are known to stay in our pajamas all day, used to doing school whenever we feet like it everyday (which more oftentimes than not used to be well into the night, first starting about 9pm), just your all-around free spirits.

But not anymore!

In addition to the fact that "regular school" (& all the baloney that goes with it) has entered our lives, other things have too:

~ trying to make our home actually look like somebody (who gives a hoot) lives here

~ trying to ~~keep up~~ catch up on home maintenance

~ trying to adjust to a set schedule of life everyday

~ ~~trying to~~ having to eat at set times everyday & bathe at set times everyday & go to bed at set times everyday (totally not in my body's rhythm at all!!)

~ feeling the pinch of our tight money situation since Caboose started "regular school", while at the same time looking at our two 15-yr-old cars (with over 100,000 miles ea. on both of them) & wondering how we're ever going to afford a new car if one of them konks out

~ feeling my (our) advancing age & realizing that sometimes the spirit is truly willing but the body just ain't budging!

~ the price of gasoline, food, insurance, medical care, medicine, even Christmas & birthdays for cryin' out loud

All these things, starting in December, have brought me to this bad, uncomfortable, tears-causing place of feeling overwhelmed... and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. The pressures are weighing heavy not only on my head but on my shoulders & chest too. The proverbial ton of bricks are laying everywhere on my body - emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, physically.

I felt like I had to walk away from Facebook today. I have so many wonderful, beautiful, cherished, loved, admired, dear family & friends-like-family on there that I love checking-in with everyday... but... I feel like I'm nearly in panic attack mode & the stimulus of the chatter felt like a million different voices talking to me at one time. I simply couldn't handle it.

I bolted... ran away... from all those people who are so precious to me. I couldn't help it. I hope with all my heart they understand. I will be back, when I'm in a better place but that's not now. Of this much I'm certain.

Of the other stuff? I don't have a clue. I'm overwhelmed & something has to give. There's 3 more weeks of "regular school" left & Caboose will have officially finished out the school year so that's what we're going to do. Whether she'll be back to homeschooling next year or back to "regular school" is still up in the air. I want my life back - my rhythm & sync to be tick-tocking in a natural order once again - and all three (my life, my rhythm, my sync) seem very far away from me (us) now & very jumbled. That's just not a good thing.

We're simple people, always having led very simple lives... keeping to ourselves, making our own way & our own happiness. At this moment our lives are not simple, we're not keeping to ourselves... and happiness is just a word in the dictionary.

Not good. Must change. Must go back. We aren't good at climbing mountains.

It's been forever~

2011-05-15T12:50:00.000-05:00

It's been forever since I blogged last. I don't know why but I have totally NOT been in the mood to write (which is very odd for me). Since I've blogged last I've:

~ celebrated my 35th wedding anniversary, married to the man of my dreams who was just a boy (& I was just a girl) when we walked down the aisle together on April 24, 1976, at 19 years old. We celebrated the week before because our anniversary fell on Easter this year. I felt honored by that... as we also were made to feel by our children, who did this special anniversary up right for us.

~ had an absolutely amazingly beautiful & healthy granddaughter born to my daughter & son-in-love. Her name is Genevieve Louise. Is that not the most elegant name you've ever heard? She's so different than my first absolutely amazingly beautiful & healthy granddaughter in so many ways. I think Genevieve may have more genes from our side this time. :-)

~ gone for my tattoo consultation and, in the process, made a new friend... a kindred spirit in so many ways. She's not going to be doing my tattoo but only kindred spirits would be brave enough to honestly come to that conclusion.

~ learned that one of my sister-friends (who is more "sister" than "friend"), that I met at our roughneck joint around the corner three years ago, has Stage 3 ovarian cancer. Even the sound of that is horrible but if anyone can pull through on sheer willpower & positive thinking alone, my Tina-sis can!

~ taken eight days, along with my man & son, and ripped down the huge (more like HUGE) wooden fence that was encasing our house like a sarcophagus because of the nutso neighbors that used to live next-door to us but left about four years ago (praise the Lord). The fence wasn't wearing well & was taking away from the looks (& therefore value?) of our home, so down it came... board by board. Hundreds of boards!

~ had a few tree removed from around the workshop out back & a new roof put on the workshop too (raccoons can spot two patches of rotted roof a mile away, I swear!).

~ finally gotten the wallpaper border hung in the one bathroom. It was only 9 months late... not too bad considering how things run around here.

~ mourned the loss, with my neighbor, of her mother who was sick for a long time. She was only 72 years old. Why does 72 sound a lot younger to me now that I'm knocking on 55's door?

~ learned that my brother is totally bald from his chemo, down in Florida, but his chemo's over now so his beautiful mane that so resembles our dad's (God rest his soul) will be growing back soon. Hurray for positive thinking & modern medicine.

~ been battling a sick household for two weeks now, ending with my own bout of 'whatever it is you call this that's really going around' (sore throat, runny nose, fever, raspy voice, cough). Can you hear me cough between each sentence I type? Gawd!

~ made the decision, along with my man, that this house *must* be physically updated & maintenance issues brought current or we're going to be left with a mountain of things to tackle that will be much higher than we'll ever be able to climb. So we've started to mosey on down that path now, working every day on things til well after dark. Thankfully the Lord gave Sundays to us for rest.

I'm sure there's more but I can't think of anything right now. Please forgive me if I've forgotten something important & it involves you. I'll try to blog more. It's certainly not for a lack of events in my life that I don't... actually quite the opposite.

Maybe that's why I haven't blogged lately?!

Wordless Wednesday~

2011-04-27T21:58:00.000-05:00

Admiration for Japanese people

2011-03-15T12:14:00.002-05:00

I have such incredible admiration for the Japanese people now, ever since the terrible tragedy of the earthquake & tsunami struck their country. It's not that I didn't admire them before. I guess I just didn't know enough about the people &/or didn't pay any attention.

There's no looting going on... no gangs walking the street waiting to rob the elderly... no raping of women & children... no authorities hurding people like animals into an ill-constructed convention center & leaving them without food & water... no need for martial law... all of which occurred in the United States during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

The people of Japan who live near the nuclear plants are being warned to stay inside their homes & seal their windows & doors. No one is forcing them to do so. Authorities aren't arresting people who don't comply. The government is being totally honest about the condition of their nuclear reactors & are not considering how bruised their pride might be if they ask for help dealing with the catastrophe.

The Japanese people are free to roam the streets, as they are able, looking for their loved ones or food or whatever it is they wish to do. They do not fear being raped or beaten or murdered.

What does this say about the differences between the cultures? Which one is more civilized as a whole?

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Going back to work

2011-03-12T14:20:00.002-06:00

Well, it looks like I'm going back to work (outside the home). A very dear friend of mine knew I was looking for a job & alerted me to a receptionist position available at a local law firm. I will be working 10am-3pm Monday through Friday... answering phones, filing, doing data entry on the computer, greeting clients, taking payments, that sort of thing. I didn't find the job... the job found me. How silly of me not to take it.

I haven't worked "outside" in a long time. I'm not homeschooling anymore, money is awfully tight, & I find myself sitting in my nightgown all day playing on the computer (which to me is a sign of depression). I'm a registered nurse but have been out of the field for over 20 years, so without some sort of refresher college courses the odds of me being hired somewhere as an RN are slim-to-none... and rightfully so. I don't need to work in that sort of pressure cooker environment anymore anyway, so I gladly hang up my nurse's cap.

I love people so a receptionist job is perfect for me. I worked at a local nursing home, in the front office, for a little bit about 5 years ago and enjoyed it very much. So I know I'll enjoy this job too. It will be just enough to help out the monthly budget & get me out among people at the same time. So it's a win-win situation. I'll be starting in a couple weeks.

"Good morning.

This is the law office of Bozo, Spiderman, Daffy Duck & Tinkerbelle.

How may I help you?"

Faith

2011-03-10T11:57:00.001-06:00

I know that spring is on the way. The cycle of life on this planet has been the same for all of my 54 years so far. The Lord tells me that everything has its season under heaven. So I not only know that spring is on the way but I have faith that it is.

Faith tells me this is true... my eyes deceive me to think otherwise.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When you have come to the edge of all light that you know...

and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown,

faith is knowing one of two things will happen:

there will be something solid to stand on or...

you will be taught to fly.

~Patrick Overton

A blessing to be "poor"

2011-03-01T11:43:00.001-06:00

The perception of being "poor" varies with every family... and the different words defining poor vary too.

We're just about as monetarily-challenged as we've been in a long time. A decade or two, actually. Medical bills have piled up, hubby's pay hasn't increased with the cost of simply living, gasoline prices are through the roof, our utility bill is higher each month than any car payment we've ever had, school tuition for Caboose (which came out of the blue last November) equals our property taxes per year, it costs over $100/mo to keep my blood pressure down so that I can stay alive, and usually by the 15th of the month our wallets are pretty well dry (hubby gets paid once a month... the last work day of each month).

Like in the good ole days of our early marriage, we have to try to make a quarter stretch into a dollar most of the time. We have to tell ourselves "no" to many things that we used to do & take for granted. Eating out is a huge treat now... and by "eating out" I mean McDonald's.

You know you're poor when.... sitting down to a meal at McDonald's is as big a treat as going to a fancy restaurant used to be years ago.

When there's no money in the wallet, folks have a tendency to get creative. "What can we do, to get out of the house, that doesn't cost anything?" The library's a big one for us. We usually head there, especially when we have granddaughter, because there's so many things she can do... run around, color, play on their children's computers, etc. We can get books & movies too. The library is still an amazing luxury to me & one that I'm shocked, in today's economy, isn't busier than it is. Reading books... checking out movies... for FREE. Doesn't cost one thin dime. A better deal can't be had anywhere else!

We sometimes head to our local mall as well. That place is nearly deserted most evenings & how they stay open I have no idea. But it's wonderful for our uses, in letting granddaughter run to her heart's content, in a sheltered environment. We look at all the store fronts & once in awhile we buy a few turns on the Bob The Builder ride. Granddaughter enjoys that! :-)

Yesterday was payday for us & we had granddaughter since Sunday noon. We were all feeling a little stir-crazy & money-deprived so hubby went to the bank, withdrew our monthly allotment, and we all (hubby, son, youngest daughter, granddaughter & myself) headed for the open road. Our first stop was the library, of course, and we spent about 90 minutes there. We had such a wonderful time!! We saw the son, and some of his children, of a dear former neighbor of ours who moved back to Louisiana about 7 years ago & has since passed away. It's always a blessing to see this man & speak to him, with hugs & handshakes all around, talking about years gone by. We couldn't believe how tall his oldest daughter is. When hubby saw her last, she was a toddler no bigger than granddaughter, in a frilly little dress visiting Grandma & Grandpa next door.

We all found books to read & brought home a Mickey Mouse video for granddaughter to watch while here. Our son even colored one of the pre-printed pages at the children's table (he's 6'4" tall... those long legs at that little table, sitting in that little chair... priceless!) & granddaughter did her usual library routine except this time she didn't cry when we left. She must have had her fill by the time 90 minutes was over. Have we hit on the magic number? :-)

We then all went to McDonald's for supper. It will be our only time we "eat out" for this payday so everyone ordered what they wished. No instructions to "Only order from the $1 menu, guys!" and no admonitions to "We have food at home too, guys, so don't order enough to get stuffed... just enough to fill the empty spot!". This time we had a table full of food with apple pies for dessert. We feasted & it all tasted soooo good. As we sat around the table eating, we talked & laughed & reminisced about so many things. We hadn't all been around a table, eating out, in a long time. After we got done we let granddaughter play in the Play Place at McDonald's, for the first time. I don't know if we've ruined it for future visits or not, as far as her eating before wanting to play. But somehow that thought didn't matter last night. It was a magical night with not a money concern in sight. Some playground fun in the Play Place seemed in order.

After we left McDonald's we went to the drugstore to pick-up my blood pressure pills & headed home. My heart was full. Really full... of joy, happiness, contentment. When you can go to the library & to McDonald's afterward and come home feeling like you've had one of the biggest treats imaginable, then that's the blessing of being poor. When you can find joy in the simple things, that's when you know that you are right where God wants you. He has brought you back to a place you left years ago, to perhaps locate once again some things you misplaced without even realizing it.

How do I love thee..

2011-02-14T11:30:00.002-06:00

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach,
when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's
most quiet need, by sun and candle light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use
in my old griefs and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
with my lost saints.

I love thee with the breath,
smiles, tears of all my life!

And if God choose
I shall but love thee better after death.

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My daddy...

2011-02-13T11:26:00.000-06:00

My dad died a relatively quick death from lung cancer, once we knew what it was that was making him so sick. By the time he was diagnosed until he died was 2 weeks. But for 18 months before he was diagnosed, he lived in hell... on earth. Back in 1987 the diagnostic tools weren't what they are today. Whether that's a positive or negative could be debated... seriously. They thought he had congestive heart failure & that's what was causing all the fluid to build-up in his lungs. They thought that was why he needed to have his lungs stuck with a HUGE needle every so often, to drain off the fluid.

Right there in the dr's office. No numbing of any kind.

My dad was a brave man.

Today is the 24th anniversary of dad's passing. He died at 3:01pm on Friday, February 13, 1987. I could go on & on about how much he suffered during those last months, weeks, days, hours, minutes. It wouldn't be hard for me to do because I remember every detail like the whole nightmare happened yesterday. But I've made a conscience decision this year to not dwell on his suffering but to dwell on the good things... the things I loved about my dad... the things that I can still remember.

~ I loved how well-groomed my dad always was. No matter how sick he felt, he a-l-w-a-y-s showered, shaved, combed his hair (and fingered-in those waves on top) & put on cologne. Always put on cologne. His face was as soft as a baby's bottom & whenever I would kiss his cheek, I would feel the softness against my lips & could smell his cologne... Avon Musk for Men. He never wore anything else but that cologne. I kept the last bottle he ever had for the longest time. I even might still have it, I don't know. But after he died I would open up that bottle & smell it and be instantly transported to a world where my daddy was still alive and still with baby butt soft cheeks.

~ I loved how my dad made oatmeal. Lumpy! My dad was a big man... 6'2" & 260 lbs. He loved to eat but never EVER looked sloppy in his clothes. He was simply just big but neat as a pin in everything he wore. Sometimes when mom was gone, dad would make breakfast & it was always oatmeal. It had huge lumps in it & I loved it, for whatever reason. Sometimes he would make it for me "just because".

~ I loved how my dad & I did some body work on an OLD Pontiac that my young husband had bought for me, to drive back & forth to college when, after being married a year, I decided I wanted to become a nurse. It was a jalopy if there ever was one. I swear it got (maybe) 10 MPG but it got me to school & back safely for 3 years... and was within our budget. The poor thing started to rust really bad one summer so dad convinced me that we could do a little sanding, puttying, and painting ourselves to make the car last longer & not totally fall apart. I'll never forget doing it in mom & dad's driveway while dad sat in a lawnchair & supervised. Dad already had heart problems for years by that time so he couldn't help me much but he coached me & together we did it. No, it wasn't the best of jobs but it served the purpose. That's such a vivid memory for me.

~ I loved how my dad worked for the same company all of his adult life. He took 2 years off, to serve in WWII when he was drafted, but then returned to the same company after being discharged. A plaque was given to him, upon his retirement, and it said: "Constancy is the complement of all other virtures". I believe that's true... and my dad was definitely constant in everything he tackled.

~ I loved how my dad made things with his hands. Whenever there was a need around the house, for a new table or a set of shelves or a kitchen cabinet or some cabinets for mom's laundry area in the basement, dad would always build it himself... usually with no pre-purchased plans or schematic. He would draw out the plans himself & then set to building whatever it was that the household needed. The house that I spent the most time in, from birth until 13 years old, went up for sale not so many years ago, by the owner who had purchased it from my parents back in the late 1960s. I saw the ad for an Open House in the newspaper & couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the address. My husband took me & I explained to the realtor how we were just there to reminisce. He was very kind & let us take pictures & slowly walk through the house. It was like I had stepped back in time because so many things were still the same. Especially in the basement, where the shelves still stood that my dad had made for my toys... and the cabinets he made for mom's laundry supplies next to the washer & dryer... and the beautiful bar that my dad had built in the family room side of the basement that was now stacked with junk & had totally lost the luster & beauty from when I was little. So many many things... too many for me to list here... were still in that house, standing in the very place my dad had built them. I wanted so badly to ask if I could buy those old cabinets & shelves & that bar but: #1 We had no money to buy them with & #2 Had no place to put any of it if we did. Walking out the door of that house that day, I felt like I was leaving a part of my dad behind. I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland walking through the looking glass into a whole different world.

~ I loved how my dad built me a doll house in pieces one winter, down our basement, and then assembled it outside in the spring. It's long gone now but it stood in the backyard of my old house for many years after my parents sold the house. It had windows, shutters, a shingled roof, a little table & chairs inside, the whole bit. A house in miniature. I was the most popular little girl in the neighborhood and all my friends & I played in that doll house for years.

~ I loved how my dad came over every single morning, Monday thru Friday, to have coffee & visit with our oldest (and only, at that time) child. My dad was our oldest daughter's "Papa" & he loved her more than life itself. Dad met his cronies at McDonald's every morning, after he was retired, and they'd meet when the place opened at 5;30am. All these men were used to getting up early & reporting to work, so after retirement their lives still needed an early morning purpose. They'd let dad buy (for 50 cents) the Happy Meal toy & so that's what he'd bring our daughter on certain mornings. Other mornings he'd stop at the drugstore & buy her a little something. He felt he could never come empty-handed to see her. He'd sit & color with her at the kitchen table for an hour & not mind in the least. She always looked forward to her Papa coming in the morning. We had a signal too. If I had a bad night or wasn't up by 6:45am, which was the time he'd usually stop by, I was to keep the kitchen curtains closed and that way dad would simply drive by & not stop. It only happened a few times, that I would keep the curtains closed, but God how I wish I never had done that. What I wouldn't give for just one more visit from dad!

~ I loved how my dad cried when he "gave me away" at my wedding. I was his youngest child... his only daughter... probably his favorite, if the truth be known... and he wanted to keep me for himself, as his "little girl", I'm sure. I was only 19 when he walked me down the aisle & I'm sure he thought he was truly handing me over to my husband & "losing me" as his own. It didn't take me long, after my marriage day, to make him realize he would never lose me & I would always be his little girl. Even at 54 I'm still his little girl today.

~ I loved how dad would want to take a little "vacation" once in awhile. Never anyplace far & never for a long time. Usually within a day's worth of travel & usually for always less than a week. It was just the fact of getting away for a little while. Mom never liked to travel so I was always dad's "partner in crime" to plan out our next destination. Dad loved atlases & loved mapping out our routes. I still have an old atlas that he used to use, along with a notebook he'd write in about the paths we should take. Those precious hands, writing down those precious plans, with all the excitment of a child on the night before Christmas. I would simply listen & smile... and do all the driving because, with his heart the way it was, he couldn't. He dreamed & I made his travel dreams come true.

I love you, daddy, and I miss you so much that my heart aches whenever I think of you. It's been 24 years since I've seen you smile... or heard your voice... or kissed your cheek... or heard you laugh... or saw you walk up the steps to my house... or watched you drive a car... or saw you swing a hammer... or watched you comb your hair... or listened to you sing to Fallon... or tasted your delicious oatmeal... or watched you knot your tie for church... or listened to you snore as you laid on the couch "watching" your favorite John Wayne movie... and my memory has so faded that it makes my heart weep. I used to be able to close my eyes & actually feel the softness of your skin on my lips as I'd kiss your cheek... but I can't do that anymore. The years have taken that away from me. I wonder if you ever fathomed me being a grandma, dad? Or Fallon being a wife & mother? She was only 4 years old when you died, dad. She's a 28 year old woman expecting her 2nd child this spring.

I'm aging, daddy, and one day... probably in the wink of an eye... we will be together again. I can't wait to hug you & kiss your cheek. Please wear that Avon cologne for me, would you, daddy?

A carrot, an egg & a cup of coffee

2011-02-10T08:23:00.000-06:00

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil; without saying A word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl.

Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me what you see.” “Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it.. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma the daughter then asked, “What does it mean, mother?”

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its insides became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

“Which are you?” she asked her daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy.

The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can’t go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling.

Live your life so at the end, you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

May we all be COFFEE!!!!!!

Hurray for the pro-choice movement!

2011-02-08T11:20:00.000-06:00

Hurray for the pro-choice movement. This excerpt should make you happy, no? You are proud of and promote the existence of abortion clinics, yes? You are in favor of what goes on in abortion clinics being legal, correct? Then this article should make you thrilled. It's a good advertisement for your cause, eh?

If you are pro-choice, picture me grabbing the back of your neck & MAKING YOU READ THIS ARTICLE. Because the chances are very good that you are in favor of something you've never witnessed & never received yourself. If you are pro-choice and unable to read this article, from start to finish, you are a weasel. A baby-killing weasel in denial of the actuality of what you favor.

You're the same suckers that car dealers count on to buy their used pieces of crap without driving them first or actually looking under the hood, as to what is lurking there... refusing to look at the reality of what you are about to buy, hook-line-sinker.

Read this article and weep... for the actuality YOU pro-choicers have helped to bring into legal existence in this country. How kind of you. On behalf of this little child, tortured to death, I thank you.

NOT!!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

An excerpt of the book "unPLANNED"

by Abby Johnson

Abby Johnson was executive director of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Bryan, Texas, and had been with Planned Parenthood for eight years.

One day in 2009, due to a personnel shortage, she was asked to assist with an ultrasound guided abortion. This was a technique uncommon in Planned Parenthood abortuaries, but the doctor executing abortions that day had opted for this method. It was a procedure Abby had not been part of before.

As she held the probe over the stomach of the young woman having the abortion, Abby saw the image of a perfectly formed baby appear on the ultrasound screen. The baby was about 13 weeks, and Abby saw the clear profile from face to feet.

Abby did not want to watch what would happen next, but she knew she had to. She saw the insertion of the cannula - a straw shaped instrument attached to the end of the suction cup. Abby repeated to herself the empty talking points Planned Parenthood had taught her: "The baby doesn't feel pain... the fetal tissue feels nothing as it is removed... This is a simply quick medical procedure."

She was jolted out of these platitudes when she saw the baby react - a sudden jerk from his tiny feet. The baby was kicking as if trying to move away from the invader.

"As the cannula pressed in," she writes, "the baby began struggling to turn and twist away."

The abortionist then made the callous comment, "Beam me up, Scotty", which was meant to instruct the nurse to switch on the suction.

Abby knew what she was about to see. She wanted to cry out "Stop!" But there she was holding the probe. She was an accomplice.

She then describes one of the most horrifying scenes a person could witness.

"The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting from it. For the briefest moment it looked as if the baby was being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then the little body crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. I saw the tiny perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube. Then everything was gone."

Stunned and horrified, Abby dropped the probe. She remembered the ultrasound of Grace at twelve weeks, her daughter who was now age three. She thought of her eight year affiliation with Planned Parenthood, and determined on the spot she would never be part of this again.

(I was going to insert a picture of an aborted, broken, mutilated, tortured 13-week gestation fetus here. I decided not to. Not everyone who visits my blog is a baby killing abortion proponent. Why should I expose them to the heartache. You pro-choicers... go look it up yourself. Wait, you don't have the guts to do that. But vote for pro-choice presidents & other governmental officials? No problem! You do it with smiles on your faces & celebrate afterward. God save your souls from hell's damnation, I pray.)

Indiana - February 2011

2011-02-07T11:16:00.000-06:00

It's winter in Indiana

and the gentle breezes blow...

70 miles per hour

at 52 below!

Oh how I love Indiana

when the snow's up to your butt...

You take a breath of winter air

and your nose is frozen shut.

Yes the weather here is wonderful

you may think that I'm a fool...

I could never leave Indiana

cos I'm frozen to the stool.

Valentine Dance

2011-02-04T19:10:00.000-06:00

Our little lady went to her first semi-formal Valentine Dance at the school tonight.

Lady, she is... little, not so much. Where have the years flown?

About 24" - give or take

2011-02-03T10:53:00.001-06:00

Another typical storm in our neck of the woods. We usually get one of these at least once every other year, if not once a year (or more).

All the snow melt, come spring, will be good for the ground water table. All the big old trees on our land will love it too. So it's all good. :-)

Trudging through to fill my birdfeeders.

On the upper left there is the start of the staircase... somewhere under that snow!

I think some big chicken took this picture from the INSIDE of the house (thus the screen showing).

Snowblowers are such a gift from God!!!

The big county snow plow actually got stuck in our driveway.

It was deeper than either of us thought.

I adore the 4 very different seasons on our land... and I love winter.

Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things,

but just look what they do when they stick together.

~Verna M. Kelly

Uh-oh

2011-01-31T13:35:00.000-06:00

We've got a couple bottles of wine in the house.

Apparently that's going to be a good thing.

Are we beyond the turn-around point?

2011-01-27T14:31:00.000-06:00

One of my dear aunts called me on the phone yesterday, to ask about my brother who just had lung surgery, amongst other topics. My Aunt really isn't my "aunt" in technical terms. She is actually my cousin but back in the days when I was a child, we always called those women relatives who were quite a bit (at least 20 yrs) older than we were by the term "Aunt". That's what I was taught to do back then & that's what I do now... she's my Aunt Shirley & that's that. My mother had 7 brothers & sisters and Aunt Shirley was the child of my mom's oldest sister, Aunt Julie. There are only a few years difference between Aunt Julie's child & Aunt Julie's youngest sibling, my Aunt Charlotte. So if I had to call Charlotte by the term Aunt, then I suspect they figured I might as well call my cousin, who was about the same age, by the term Aunt also.

Works for me and always has.

The older I get (I'm 54 now... turning 55 this summer) the closer in kindredship I feel towards my "Aunt" Shirley. She & I have a lot more in common now than we've ever had previously. Age has a tendency to do that, doesn't it. We both pretty much run our lives the same, very similar to the way our parents did... homemade suppers, Laundry Day Mondays, calling on the phone to find out how relatives are feeling after surgeries, sending get well cards via the post office rather than cyberspace. After we got caught up on the medical updates of folks in the family, we ventured to the top of the good ole days... a sure sign that both of us are indeed getting older!!

We talked about the "meal train" that every woman could expect to roll in to her household during the couple weeks after a major surgery or birthing a baby. That was just something that friends/family did for friends/family. No one had the money to buy fast food every night for 2 weeks & even if they did, fast food gets pretty tasteless after a couple days of it. So women would get together with each other (over the telephone) and each signed up for providing a meal on the day of their choice. When it was our turn to cook, we ALWAYS made our very best... our specialty... to take over to the family in need. Yes, that was probably a prideful thing but that's simply the way it was then. All women took pride in their cooking, cleaning & homemaking skills.

Today things like that simply don't happen. At least not very often. My Aunt Shirley & I discussed that awhile, trying to come up with reasons things have changed so drastically in the last 3 decades or less. I told her I personally think it's money and people having just too dang much of it these days. She thinks people are spoiled, not wanting to resort to what someone else decided they are going to have for supper. Another idea was that most people have "virtual" friends & the true, flesh-and-blood friends simply don't exist in folks' world of reality. It's so easy to send a "get well" email or comment to someone, upon hearing of their surgery, and leave it go at that. No one really wants to invest their time (time = themselves) in anything other than what they want to do. Doing something for someone else? Making a self-sacrifice for someone else?

Don't. Think. So.

As I told my Aunt Shirley, I don't think people are hungry enough... or destitute enough... or needy enough... or despairing enough... to understand the importance of neighbors, friends, & family. Times just plainly are not bad enough (yet) to understand what sharing a meal with a neighbor means. Your own refrigerator has to be empty at home, before you really understand how wonderful it is to sit down at your neighbor's table for a good, wholesome, homecooked meal (complete with dessert). You have to be without an operational vehicle before you really understand how generous it was for your retired Uncle Joe to pick you up, take you to the doctor's office for your appointment, and wait outside in the car until you're finished. You have to be without any clothes for your child who just had a growth spurt, and without the money to buy any new ones, before you realize what a true blessing that a bag of hand-me-down clothes from a friend really is. You have to be in an awful lot of pain after a major surgery, with people in the household whose stomachs are growling & the family purse empty & you just not able to get up to stand at the stove to fry some eggs for sandwiches, to realize how closely a pot of chili delivered to your doorstep by a dear friend really does resemble a meal fit for a King & Queen.

Many folks in our society, of the younger generation especially, feel they don't need anything or anybody in order to survive. Or sadly enough, maybe they don't even know any better & don't understand that people helping people is the only way any of us survive on this earth.

Maybe they don't realize because they've never heard of Matthew 25:45 "I can guarantee this truth: Whatever you failed to do for one of my brothers or sisters, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you failed to do for me."

Maybe because, in this land of plenty, most folks don't think they need God either. I wonder if we're beyond the point of being able to turn that around?

Crunching the cash

2011-01-23T13:26:00.001-06:00

I remember when I used to borrow money from my mom back-in-the-day. The amounts would vary and I'd always pay her back, usually on payday. When I'd drive over & hand her the cold hard cash, she'd respond in the same way every time. She'd say: "Ohhh, here we are, Ang... with our high finance again!" and she'd chuckle & take the money from me. I'm not quite sure what that meant but it always struck me as funny too so I'd laugh as well.

I've been thinking a lot about those days since the beginning of this new year. We had a lot of medical bills come up from Oct'09 through Oct'10, the biggest two being my abdominal surgery in Dec'09 (~$34,000) & my bat bite with subsequent rabies vaccination series ending in Oct'10 (~$8,000). Yes, we have insurance but boy, it's not nearly as good ($4,000 deductible) as it used to be & we're paying more for it now than in years gone by. The same ole story for most things we purchase, I suppose. It seems the gap in agreement between insurance companies & medical providers is getting larger & more cavernous by the year. Regardless, when the bottom line is stated it's stated & that's what you owe. Period. The nice thing is that most hospitals have a timed payment plan with no interest accrued. See, there really IS a silver lining to most clouds!

Add the medical bills to the fact that my husband didn't get a raise (no one did, at his place of employment) in 2008. His bonus (which is supposed to compensate him for the miriad of overtime he works on a weekly basis & which we use every year to play "catch up" on any medical bills or outstanding charge card balances) in 2007 was used for our oldest daughter's wedding... then there was no bonus either (in addition to no raise) in 2008... and both the 2009 & 2010 bonuses were used to pay off my mother's funeral (in 2008).

All these things added together mean only one thing: it's time to crunch the numbers & go down to "bare bones" to try & have some $$ leftover at the end of the month to begin to chip away at the outstanding bills that have accumulated. So that's been one of my main focuses, as chief cook & bottle washer & money manager around here, since we rang in the new year of 2011.

The ideas I've come up with & things I've started incorporating into our home & my routine are really nothing foreign or new to me. I had just sort-of laid some of them aside, for various asundry reasons. Luckily I didn't forget where I put them :-) so they were very easy to find once again. I'll share a few of these things with you, in case you might like to try them yourselves. WARNING: some of these things are really rather 'back to the land' - type stuff, which may appeal to you or may not. Take what you can use & let the rest blow away in the wind. Someone who lives downwind will catch what you've cast aside & use it for themselves, so don't worry.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1. I'll get the most shocking one out of the way first... I've stopped driving! *gasp* I drove one time this year & that was January 3rd. I haven't driven since. I am simply at home. Our youngest daughter went from being homeschooled to attending a church-based learning co-op (which uses A.C.E. paces for their curriculum) from Sept'10 - Dec'10. The co-op being unsatisfactory in every aspect of education, we switched her over to a parochial 'regular' school in the middle of Dec'10 & which she continues with today (& loves). But with the switch from homeschooling to out-of-the-home schooling, my hypertension (which I've had almost all of my adult life) went caflooey with my blood pressure skyrocketing & my head feeling like a solid rocket booster waiting for take-off! Too much tension, too much running, too much everything... and my body began sending out a warning that something had to give. I discussed it with my husband (who works from home - same company for 29 yrs & does same work but from home now instead of at the division building that closed back in 2008) and so now either my husband or our 23 yr old son has taken over transportion of Caboose. They also do any shopping I need done or any errands I need run. Which basically means that only the very minimum of trips are made, off the homestead here, because I don't know about your men but my men don't like going anywhere with a list in their hands. With gasoline over $3/gal now, that translates to less gas used than when I used to drive and also less $$ spent. The men get what's on the list: no more & no less. If they're sent on an errand, it's to accomplish that errand & get home. Period. Which leads to....

2. I'm back to using food & supply storage, buying staples in bulk, making the majority of our food solely from scratch, using dehydrated fruits & vegetables rather than fresh, always eating at home, etc. I was first introduced to this way of living back in the 1980s, when it was most popular for my generation. There were many magazines being published, at that time, that helped women learn to do such things as bake bread, store flour & sugar bought in #25 bags, and find beef by the quarter or half steer for the deep freezer kept in the garage. I soaked up the information like a sponge & never released it, even though I may not have always used it. I had indeed forgotten though the joys of: a.) eating good bread whose number of ingredients you can count on one hand b.) always having toilet paper in the house rather than running out after using the 4-roll pack just purchased a week ago c.) not going into a panic because we're down to the last quart of milk (in the middle of a snow storm) and just whipping up another gallon from the milk powder on the shelf d.) simply having the safe & secure feeling of knowing that my family has everything they need under our roof, to exist comfortably for quite awhile, without having to run to the grocery store first and e.) being self-sufficient in a small sense. Which leads to...

3. Since my men (I think like most) don't particularly relish being sent on errands with l-o-n-g lists in hand, I've been using Amazon.com quite a bit for my bulk buying. If some of you haven't tried them yet, for groceries, I sure wish you would. The bargains are tremendous (much cheaper than the grocery store, for most things I order and, if not cheaper, then exactly the same) and your groceries get delivered right to your door... for free. They have a beautiful organic section too. I still belong to a food co-op (that uses United National Foods Inc.) which I get many perishable items from like eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt, 25# bags of flour & sugar, etc. But for the other things such as dish soap, bar soap, laundry soap, toilet paper, paper towels, cereal, tea, coffee, waxed paper sandwich bags, shampoo and many other things, I use Amazon exclusively. For my dehydrated fruits, vegetables & milk powder I use Emergency Essentials. Their Provident Pantry-brand of powdered milk is the best we've ever tried! Our 23 yr old son, who is the milk expert in the household, can't tell the difference... and went out of his way to tell me so.

4. Back in the 1980s I learned how very important it is to drink fresh, clean, pure water. If our nation's water supply was polluted back then, imagine what it is now! *sigh* We have well water where we are, out in the county, that I refuse to drink out of the tap. I don't think drinking water out of the ground is good for anyone living anywhere these days. So for the last several years we've been drinking distilled water through a delivery service, which comes to the house here every 2 weeks with 5 gallon containers. It's good water & I feel good about myself & my family drinking it... but it's ~~horribly~~ very expensive... over $100/mo. for the water plus the rental on the dispenser. We're going to be phasing out that delivery service since we just invested in a Berkey Water Purifier, which I remember reading about in my early back-to-the-land days in the 80s. I did some research and it seems that the Berkey filters are just as good today as they were back then, if not better. Gravity drip filtration with no electricity used, which is a plus as well.

5. We're in the process of deciding what to do about these cell phones of ours. Yes, they're handy but are they necessary? Are they worth the cost? I've never seen any statistics that show how many adolescent or adult children have been saved from their kidnappers by being able to use their cell phones from their captor's car truck (which is the scenario we envision when we see our son heading out for the evening or learn of our married daughter walking out to the parking lot after working late). All I ever hear on the news is that police have tracked the cell phone "pings" to specific areas and then lost them, after the person is kidnapped, or they've found that the victim's cell phone has been turned off & therefore is no use to those searching. The only thing we use our cell phones for is to text our youngest, from us in the living room to her in her bedroom, telling her it's time to get ready for bed... or hubby to call me from the grocery store because he can't find the specific item I have on the list he's holding on to for dear life... or son to text me about a song that just played on the radio that he's sure I would absolutely love... or Facebook to update youngest daughter with the lastest news on which one of her friends updated their status last. The only time I can honestly say I was grateful to have my cell phone with me was when I spun out on the highway in Jan'09, with 4-month-old grandbaby in the car, & we were buried deep in a ditch in the median. I called my husband, barely able to talk but physically unharmed (as was grandbaby), and he in turn called the police. I suppose though, if I hadn't had my cell phone, I would have simply done what I would have done before cell phones even existed: I would have rolled down my window, waved a white napkin retrieved from the glove compartment, and waited for a trucker to call the police on his CB radio. The weather was horrible that day, with multiple spin-outs, so the chances are good that a policeman going by would have seen me before the trucker would have even had the chance to call. Our monthly cell phone bill is $145 (no internet, no apps, no games... just plain phone with unlimited texting, free incoming calls, free evenings & weekends, $10 per line after the 1st line) & it kills me every month when I pay it. Our house phone is $32/mo., including tax. Why do we need anything more than that?!

That's where we're at for the time being. We're only 3 weeks into the new year so I'm sure I'll figure out more ways to "cut the fat" around here. For now this is enough. Maybe I'll hunt up my "Tightwad Gazette" books. I know they're around here somewhere. I love those things... and I love Amy Dacyczyn!

Another day of creativity

2011-01-06T12:22:00.001-06:00

Something is in the wind. I can feel it deep inside.

Perhaps it is my Creator urging me on, to experience the joy of creating... even if it is only a minutely miniscule fraction of the joy He felt when creating me.

A treat for today

2011-01-05T19:19:00.006-06:00

Give yourself a real treat today by watching this video. I believe you'll be inspired to be creative (if you have never been before)... or to be re-creative (if your creativity juices have run a little dry)... or continue to be creative (with whatever outlet you use to express that part of who you are). I believe we often leave our creativity go, as the last piece of ourselves that we nurture, because we feel we don't have the time, the money, the energy, the space. Make the time~ find the money~ save up some energy~ designate a space... to create. It will be one of the lasting legacies we leave on this planet, for those who follow us.

Son-in-love's Birthday

2011-01-04T16:13:00.001-06:00

It's son-in-love's birthday coming up so I wanted to get his card mailed out today. I wasn't sure what to give him this year because:

#1 - his b/d is so close to Christmas & I pretty much exhausted ~~him~~ his gift suggestion list for that

#2 - 2011 is going to be the Year of Extreme ~~Poverty~~ Frugality around here.

We have a bazillion medical bills we must catch up on (from my major abdominal surgery a year ago & my bat bite with subsequent rabies vaccination series this past summer), a couple charge cards that need to be paid-off, and (2) 15-year-old vehicles that will undoubtedly need some decision-making done about them sometime this year.

I came up with the idea of putting a 2011 Ed Hume Moon Sign Gardening Almanac ($1.79) inside his birthday card envelope, with the free flower seed packet that came with it, and also including a "coupon" for a free overnight babysitting stay for grandbaby. Pete is a stay-at-home husband/daddy so I know he'll really appreciate that, probably more than most son-in-loves. (He also loves to spend time outside, digging in the dirt, like me!)

Rather than simply buying him a Moon Sign Gardening Almanac, I wish we could have bought him the moon itself. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride... wouldn't they.

Happiness Journal

2011-01-03T14:11:00.000-06:00

I love the idea of making a Happiness Journal for 2011. The folks over at Letters & Journals wrote a blog entry about it & the idea has stuck with me.

It's a quite simple project, actually, and can be as elaborate or as plain as suits a person's personality, I suppose. The object is to start a scrapbook-like journal of things that make us happy in 2011: pictures, articles, quotes, memories from the past, people. Whatever it is that "puts a smile on our face & a warm feeling in our heart".

The whole idea of this puts a smile on my face. Does it yours too?

I'm going to do this. I'll post pictures! :-) If you decide to participate as well, leave a comment here... especially if you blog about it & are going to post pictures as well.

What a bit of happiness, to experience & record, for 2011.

Looking ahead to 2011

2011-01-02T13:04:00.000-06:00

Now that I've got the short "not following me into 2011" list finished, I've been really concentrating about the other list... the "things I am inviting back for 2011" list. This may also include things that have never seen the light-of-day in my life but really do want to see present... either for 2011 only or maybe forever. Who knows. Anyway, here's my list of invited things for 2011. Do you recognize any that you would like to follow you into 2011 as well? I bet you do! That's what makes us blogging buddies! That's what makes you come here & read my blog.... because we have ideas, thoughts, beliefs, goals, hobbies, interests in common.

Or maybe you just like to hear what I have to say? That would be an honor if that was the case. You surely will find an eclectic cornucopia of topics discussed here, that's for sure. I'm pretty passionate about what I believe in & I'm old enough to know what I believe in too. My causes are well-rooted in my heart. But causes are not what's going to be on my "invited things for 2011" list. It's other stuff...things that might have been lacking in my life, things that might be non-existent right now in my life, things that I had forgotten about but want to un-forget about for 2011. Let's see what they are (in no particular order):

1. Art-creativity-hobbies: I've read in various outlets that nurturing the artist in ourselves is good for keeping our brain sharp & our mental well-being in a positive state. For his doctoral thesis, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied how visual artists create art & he found that not only artists deeply involve themselves in their work but so does everyone who is concentrating & intent on whatever they're doing... surgeons, chess players, rock climbers, dancers, musicians. Dr.Csikszentmihalyi found they all "forget themselves, the time, their problems" while engaging in their activity. That's why hobbies are so important in our lives, it seems to me. Anytime we are being artistic... letting our creativity juices flow... we are forgetting about our problems for awhile, therefore having a temporary respite from them. This probably makes our adrenaline pump slow down, our blood pressure decrease, our muscles relax, as well as giving us some right-sided brain exercise. I need much more of this in my life than has been present for a long long time. I intend on inviting my hobbies (some known & maybe some not developed yet) back into my life for 2011.

2. Time in actual reality: I can hear a lot of you reading this saying "Yessssssss". I think we're all in the same boat regarding our immersion in cyber reality. How did that start... do you know? I remember when we got our first computer & became connected to cyberspace. It was 1996 & I distinctly remember not believing my eyes in how fast information came on my screen & not understanding where it was coming from! From that very first day forward a certain percentage of my day has been spent in cyber reality... a percentage of my day in actual reality sacrificed - exchanged - reassigned... to a tan box with a screen. Lest I make it sound like cyberspace has been a total negative in my life, let me assure you it has not. Far from it!! I have connected with some of the most amazingly awesome people I have ever encountered or would have ever encounter otherwise, on this little two acres of mine out here in the woods. Blogging fits right up there with #1 above in allowing me a creative, artistic outlet & I wouldn't trade it for the world. But I have allowed the tan box, which is now updated to black, to overtake entirely too much of my actual reality & I'm sacrificing way too much because of that. I need more of a balance in my life & I need to reconnect once again with the actual reality things in my life... the things that were all I had before 1996. I've missed them & I want to embrace them once again.

3. Playing in the dirt: I love... completely, with my whole body & soul... dirt - nature - Mother Earth - trees - wind - sky - the changing seasons - sun on my skin - working outside - getting filthy, sweaty & sore - birds chirping - hearing squirrel nails against the bark of a tree - colorful things growing - lawn mowers mowing - grills grilling - clouds rolling in - storms coming... absolutely positively everything about outside I love. I didn't get enough of that in 2010 but that's definitely going to change in 2011. I can't survive without that change.

4. Home improvements: I do my housework each & every week but I (we?! my man & I?!) haven't been keeping up with home improvements... those little (& sometimes big) things that need to be done or they pile up so badly that it then takes thou$and$ of dollar$ & hundreds of hours to make the pile disappear. The kitchen sink & faucet in our side of the house needs to be replaced... many rooms need a fresh coat of paint... some carpet needs to be ripped up & some other flooring put down... and the list goes on. I want to do a few of those things in 2011. I want to notice a few of those things more, in 2011, than I did in 2010 (or 2009 or 2008 or 2007 or....). I think in this category also falls "decluttering". I started that this year but I intend to continue in 2011. Isn't FreeCycle the most wonderful thing?! :-)

5. National/International News: I'm staying out of it in 2011. No DrudgeReport, no CNN, no nothin'. I've decided I don't need to know our nation's or our world's problems. I've got enough of my own. I fully intend on spending 2011 being clueless about everything being played out on the news. If you readers think there's a crisis or calamity I really ought to know about, for my own safety or the safety of my loved ones, put it in the comments somewhere, ok? Thanks. :-)

6. Delving into the interior of myself: Sounds complicated, doesn't it. It does to me too. I think it's just because I don't quite understand what it means but others do & I want what they have - know - can do. No, it's not just reading the Bible & it's not just going to church & it's not just "making time for God" each day & it's not just following rules and regulations & it's not just ______ (fill in the blank yourself). It's much more than that... but I'm not sure what "that" is or how to get there. By the end of 2011 I hopefully will though. I'll share my journey here, on the pages of my blog. Maybe you'll learn to delve into your innards too, if you have such a desire & don't know how already.

That's it. Double the number of things I'm bringing with me into 2011 than I'm leaving behind in 2010. I wonder if that means something?

Probably not.

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T23:09:00.006-06:00

My beloved & I out to dinner on New Year's Eve.

I wore this dress on our first New Year's Eve together, in 1975. It was the first Christmas gift Dan bought me.

Looking toward 2011, with all its uncertainty & turmoil, isn't frightening to me because I know my beloved will be at my side. I love you, honey.

Blessings to one & all in 2011 & always!

Looking towards 2011...

2010-12-30T13:46:00.002-06:00

Earlier I wrote a post about three things I wasn't inviting to follow me into 2011. One was negativism, another was Facebook & the third was other people's rules. I had already changed my mind about Facebook & fully intended on inviting it to usher in 2011 with me. But for some reason it banned me from inviting my friends back to my friends list... something about "inviting too many people I didn't know" (why would I do that??!!). Then, I logged-in on Wednesday night & all the folks I had managed to get back on my friends list were gone! Vanished into thin air & I'm back to having the original 8 kids-neighbors-friends I had started with, on my friends list. So I'm taking that as a sure sign that I'm supposed to stick to my original "not welcoming into 2011" list.... which included Facebook.

Now that I've got the short "not following me into 2011" list finished, I've been really concentrating about the other list... the "things I am inviting back for 2011" list. This may also include things that have never seen the light-of-day in my life but really do want to see present... either for 2011 only or maybe forever. Who knows. Anyway, here's my list of invited things for 2011. Do you recognize any that you would like to follow you into 2011 as well? I bet you do! That's what makes us blogging buddies! That's what makes you come here & read my blog.... because we have ideas, thoughts, beliefs, goals, hobbies, interests in common.

Or maybe you just like to hear what I have to say? That would be an honor if that was the case. You surely will find an eclectic cornucopia of topics discussed here, that's for sure. I'm pretty passionate about what I believe in & I'm old enough to know what I believe in too. My causes are well-rooted in my heart. But causes are not what's going to be on my "invited things for 2011" list. It's other stuff...things that might have been lacking in my life, things that might be non-existent right now in my life, things that I had forgotten about but want to un-forget about for 2011. Let's see what they are (in no particular order):

1. Art-creativity-hobbies: I've read in various outlets that nurturing the artist in ourselves is good for keeping our brain sharp & our mental well-being in a positive state. For his doctoral thesis, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied how visual artists create art & he found that not only artists deeply involve themselves in their work but so does everyone who is concentrating & intent on whatever they're doing... surgeons, chess players, rock climbers, dancers, musicians. Dr.Csikszentmihalyi found they all "forget themselves, the time, their problems" while engaging in their activity. That's why hobbies are so important in our lives, it seems to me. Anytime we are being artistic... letting our creativity juices flow... we are forgetting about our problems for awhile, therefore having a temporary respite from them. This probably makes our adrenaline pump slow down, our blood pressure decrease, our muscles relax, as well as giving us some right-sided brain exercise. I need much more of this in my life than has been present for a long long time. I intend on inviting my hobbies (some known & maybe some not developed yet) back into my life for 2011.

2. Time in actual reality: I can hear a lot of you reading this saying "Yessssssss". I think we're all in the same boat regarding our immersion in cyber reality. How did that start... do you know? I remember when we got our first computer & became connected to cyberspace. It was 1996 & I distinctly remember not believing my eyes in how fast information came on my screen & not understanding where it was coming from! From that very first day forward a certain percentage of my day has been spent in cyber reality... a percentage of my day in actual reality sacrificed - exchanged - reassigned... to a tan box with a screen. Lest I make it sound like cyberspace has been a total negative in my life, let me assure you it has not. Far from it!! I have connected with some of the most amazingly awesome people I have ever encountered or would have ever encounter otherwise, on this little two acres of mine out here in the woods. Blogging fits right up there with #1 above in allowing me a creative, artistic outlet & I wouldn't trade it for the world. But I have allowed the tan box, which is now updated to black, to overtake entirely too much of my actual reality & I'm sacrificing way too much because of that. I need more of a balance in my life & I need to reconnect once again with the actual reality things in my life... the things that were all I had before 1996. I've missed them & I want to embrace them once again.

3. Playing in the dirt: I love... completely, with my whole body & soul... dirt - nature - Mother Earth - trees - wind - sky - the changing seasons - sun on my skin - working outside - getting filthy, sweaty & sore - birds chirping - hearing squirrel nails against the bark of a tree - colorful things growing - lawn mowers mowing - grills grilling - clouds rolling in - storms coming... absolutely positively everything about outside I love. I didn't get enough of that in 2010 but that's definitely going to change in 2011. I can't survive without that change.

4. Home improvements: I do my housework each & every week but I (we?! my man & I?!) haven't been keeping up with home improvements... those little (& sometimes big) things that need to be done or they pile up so badly that it then takes thou$and$ of dollar$ & hundreds of hours to make the pile disappear. The kitchen sink & faucet in our side of the house needs to be replaced... many rooms need a fresh coat of paint... some carpet needs to be ripped up & some other flooring put down... and the list goes on. I want to do a few of those things in 2011. I want to notice a few of those things more, in 2011, than I did in 2010 (or 2009 or 2008 or 2007 or....). I think in this category also falls "decluttering". I started that this year but I intend to continue in 2011. Isn't FreeCycle the most wonderful thing?! :-)

5. National/International News: I'm staying out of it in 2011. No DrudgeReport, no CNN, no nothin'. I've decided I don't need to know our nation's or our world's problems. I've got enough of my own. I fully intend on spending 2011 being clueless about everything being played out on the news. If you readers think there's a crisis or calamity I really ought to know about, for my own safety or the safety of my loved ones, put it in the comments somewhere, ok? Thanks. :-)

6. Delving into the interior of myself: Sounds complicated, doesn't it. It does to me too. I think it's just because I don't quite understand what it means but others do & I want what they have - know - can do. No, it's not just reading the Bible & it's not just meditating & it's not just yoga & it's not just vegetarianism & it's not just ______ (fill in the blank yourself). It's much more than that... but I'm not sure what "that" is or how to get there. By the end of 2011 I hopefully will though. I'll share my journey here, on the pages of my blog. Maybe you'll learn to delve into your innards too, if you have such a desire & don't know how already.

That's it. Double the number of things I'm bringing with me into 2011 than I'm leaving behind in 2010. I wonder if that means something?

Probably not.

Hef's hurting our cause...

2010-12-29T12:29:00.000-06:00

Sometimes someone else says it better than I ever could... so I just let them do the talkin'. In this case it's Marc Middleton, CEO of Bolder Media Group, specifically GrowingBolder. He's into smashing stereotypes too, like me.

This whole Hefner engagement deal? It's hurting our smashing efforts, most definitely!

Growing Bolder: Hef is No Longer Smashing Stereotypes -- He's Become One
Poor Hugh Hefner. His self worth seems totally wrapped around the imaginary affection of 24-year-old blondes looking for a higher media profile. At 84, Hef is no longer smashing stereotypes, he's become one and he's perpetuating others. A sugar daddy, dirty old man, gold digger. Does he think we look at him in his bathrobe and slippers with three teenage blondes on his arm and envy him? Or does he know we now pity him? Sorry, but Hef's image has jumped the shark. He's gone from being cool to being a fool and there is no turning back.

Hef has confirmed his engagement to Miss December 2009, 24-year-old Crystal Harris. Crystal swears, "I don't notice his age," but she does notice his $43 million bank account, Playboy Mansion and media empire. If Hef were a normal 84-year-old who somehow, against all odds, fell in love with his 24-year-old soulmate, maybe I would cut him some slack. But he's not. He's a serial sugar daddy who seems to have his identity wrapped around being attractive to women young enough to be his great-great-granddaughters. It's creepy and it's sad.

Hugh Hefner proudly admits he's been attracted to the same women for the past 60 years -- as long as they're 24-year-old blondes with big boobs and a desire to pose nude. He just keeps switching them out. Or they keep switching themselves out as soon as they get their own reality TV show or the cover of Playboy or a quarterback in the NFL.

At Growing Bolder, we've learned that hanging out with younger people is a great way to stay young yourself. There is power in most intergenerational relationships. But Hef's relationships have gone from laudable to laughable. He's become a cartoon character. He's not battling ageism, knocking down barriers or opening any doors. He's a sad man surrounded by shallow women. He's a reality TV show that's no longer interesting to watch.

We're building a business based upon smashing the stereotypes of aging. We like to say it's never too late to achieve your dreams. Except maybe if your dream is a 24-year-old blonde. Has Hef not looked around and seen the amazingly beautiful, interesting, passionate 80-, 70-, 60-, 50-year-old women today? Somehow, he thinks he's more vibrant than they are. He's not. He's become that which he seems to fear above all else -- impotent. His image has gone flaccid.

Oh really? Really!

2010-12-28T23:01:00.002-06:00

Obama is glad Eagles signed Vick

Oh really?

Really!

How quickly some people forget. Not this babe!

May I kindly suggest you not forget either?

One word to describe...

2010-12-28T01:12:00.000-06:00

If I was allowed only one word to describe the gatherings of my family, it would have to be laughter.

This Christmas was no exception.

We had yet again another very merry Christmas.

Gone too soon / Music Monday

2010-12-27T15:11:00.004-06:00

Absolutely love this song. Speaks to my heart!

R.I.P. Teena Marie

Let some things blow away with the wind...

2010-12-26T14:46:00.000-06:00

It's a great time of year to reevaluate your life. Figure out what's important..& let go of what's not.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T00:01:00.004-06:00

I remember Christmas Eves past...

2010-12-24T17:49:00.002-06:00

It's almost 5pm on Christmas Eve, 2010. Everything's pretty much ready for tomorrow. The house is quiet... son works til 5pm & then will come home, get dressed up, & go with his girlfriend to her family's Christmas celebration (traditionally held on Christmas Eve each yr). My man, caboose & I will be home, as we have been for the last several years.

The quietness of my surroundings & the uneventfulness of our evening screams loudly to me of Christmas Eves past... when I was a little girl. Both Christmas Eve & Christmas Day were big events in my family's life. Non-stop events from about 4pm on Christmas Eve until 9pm on Christmas Day. If I close my eyes & think on it awhile, I can still feel the anticipation of going to Aunt Katie's house on Christmas Eve.

Aunt Katie was my mother's widowed sister. Her husband died from a massive heart attack when he (& Aunt Katie) were 40 years old... and their son, my cousin Jimmy, was 8 years old. They had just started talking about having another baby a couple months before he died. I was 3 years old at the time & my Uncle Steve is said to have asked Jimmy: "Would you like to have a little sister like that, Jim?" Jimmy never got the chance to find out what it would be like to have a sibling. After Uncle Steve died, Aunt Katie dated once in awhile but she never remarried. She said she had already married the love of her life & there could not possibly be another. Luck only happens once per lifetime.

My grandma was a widow as well, by this time, so when Uncle Steve died my grandma went to live with her daughter, Katie, to help her raise Jimmy & to help her cope. They lived together in that arrangement for about 8 years, until grandma died... of a sudden & massive heart attack as well. I often wonder how Aunt Katie handled the act of fate in that she was forced to "find" two people she loved, suddenly dead under her roof? I truly think people were made of stronger stock back then. Death was more common place because medical technology had not advanced in such a way that kept people alive so long. In some ways that was a bad thing but then again, I don't know. Now it seems that doctors don't want to "let nature take its course" & only after hundred$ of thousand$ of dollar$ & much suffering does nature take its course anyway.

I digressed...

Aunt Katie had one of those silver tinsel trees in her small living room, with the multi-colored rotating light shining on it. I remember sitting in front of that tree, so different from ours at home, & being mesmerized by it. I often wonder today what happened to that tree. Probably given to the Salvation Army or put out on the curb for the garbage man after Aunt Katie died. I would have liked to have that tree today.

My mother had 6 living siblings... all married with children. So there was quite a big gathering in Aunt Katie's neat-as-a-pin basement on Christmas Eve. The adults didn't exchange gifts but we had a gift exchange between us cousins. We'd draw names at Thanksgiving & on the piece of paper was not only the child's name but what they might like for their gift... sometimes complete with page numbers from the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog. We'd list several things so what we got would actually be a surprise anyway. I remember the anticipation right before the gifts would be handed out. All of us cousins, dressed in our holiday finest, sitting on the floor waiting for our name to be called.

About 10pm we'd all say our good-byes & head home, hurrying to go to bed "so Santa Claus could come". That was always the incentive to go to sleep & it worked on me for many many years. If I didn't go to sleep quickly, Santa couldn't deliver my gifts... and if he had to wait too long, he just might have to bypass our house altogether that year! Today that probably would be labeled as child abuse & considered being horribly deceitful to children. Back then it was simply a successful & acceptable survival tactic used by very tired, worn-out parents. I think parents need to use more of those these days, instead of worrying so much about the psychobabble of children being harmed by the "lie" that is Santa Claus.

I miss (terribly miss) the Christmas Eves of my childhood. As I sit here, in my living room chair, contemplating making the last dish of the day... the veggie pizza for tomorrow... I wish I was sitting cross-legged on Aunt Katie's basement floor again, with my mom & daddy close by & all my cousins sitting next to me, laughing & giggling.

More than that, I wish I had that same experience to offer caboose, that I had growing up. I wish she didn't have to sit in her bedroom, all alone, trying to entertain herself with music on her radio & her art pad in her lap, on an evening that is supposed to be filled with Christmas Eve festivities. But as sure as I can't give her a sprouting garden in the dead of winter, I can't give her the kind of Christmas Eve I had as a child. It's just not within my power. Our family structure is different now. All my cousins are grown, married, have children & grandchildren of their own, and will be spending Christmas Eve with them. Caboose has no cousins... we have no extended family to spend Christmas Eve with.

But we have a huge Christmas Day celebration planned for tomorrow, with all of our children & our grandchild coming together to spend the day... eating, exchanging gifts, making merry. Hopefully those memories will sustain caboose as she sits many years into the future, as I do now, on Christmas Eve & contemplates life in years gone by.

The times are different yet the same...

2010-12-23T20:32:00.000-06:00

Things I'm not inviting back for 2011

2010-12-22T12:21:00.023-06:00

Daja Gombojav posed a question on her blog a few days ago & I decided to respond. I hope many of you will too. Her question is a wonderful opportunity for reflection on the past year, as well as affirmation of goals for the new one.

Some of the things I'm not inviting (allowing) back into my life for 2011 are:

1. Negativism ~ This comes in all shapes, forms, sizes & methods. Naturally none of us can stop negative 'things' from entering into our circle of reality but I'm not going to allow it to stay once it does approach. In other words, my reaction to it is going to be one of giving the negativism the ole heave-ho. If I'm reading something that is negative or brings me into a negative mindset, I'm not going to read beyond the first few words or sentences before cutting it off & moving my eyes along. If I'm speaking to someone who says something negative or brings me into a negative mindset, I'm going to politely nod & walk away. If my mind starts to stray into negative territory, I'm going to quickly snap it back into a positive focus.

2. Facebook ~ I still have a FB account but only have 7 people on my "friends" list (down from 300+)... my kids, my granddaughter, the neighbor to my immediate right, my cat rescue comadre, & one IRL (in real life) friend. That's it. And I will not let FB back into my life in 2011 or any other year, for that matter. It's a cyber time gobbler, a theatre for grandstanding, a back alley for arguing, & an open window for peeping toms (or tomettes) who really don't care about you but just want to silently "watch" what you're doing (& gossip about your actions to others afterward). There's nothing real about it... there's nothing healthy about it... there's nothing necessary about it... there's nothing life-enriching about it... for me. The people who are important to me I see IRL or talk to on the phone & those who live too far away, for me to see IRL, I can keep in contact with via e-mail, snail mail, texting or visiting their blogs.

3. Other people's rules ~ A lot of grief & letdown in my life has come upon me because I have tried to live up to other people's rules &/or have been chastised for not living up to someone else's standards for their own life. I will not bring that habit into 2011. My life is not someone else's life & the: rules, standards, norms, mores, canons, mandates, precedents, truths, habits, regulations... that apply to other people may not necessarily apply to me or may have applied to me in the past but no longer do. Therefore I will focus & concentrate on my own set of rules & will not lug on my back other rules, that don't apply to me, & bring them into 2011.

That pretty much sums it up. Three things that I won't invite back for 2011. Not too long of a list, eh?

It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to." ~W.C.Fields

My mom's last Christmas - 2007

2010-12-22T09:38:00.002-06:00

I miss my mom. Within 2 weeks after these pictures were taken, mom became disoriented & "not herself"... within 6 weeks after these pictures were taken, she became bedbound, never to walk again... within 10 months after these pictures were taken, she was buried out at the cemetery next to dad.

I don't think a Christmas will ever go by that I don't miss her. All the memories of many Christmases from my youth come flooding back to me around this time of year. But I surely don't walk this path alone.

God bless all of us who are missing our moms this Christmas.

A new friend of mine...Natalie Brown

2010-12-21T07:43:00.000-06:00

Give Natalie a listen below & then head on over to her website to buy her music.

What a gift she has, don't you think? Beautiful, Natalie!!

A lil truth on a Monday morn before Christmas

2010-12-20T08:54:00.001-06:00

Wild hairs, etc.

2010-12-06T15:59:00.003-06:00

Something's in the air.

I'm not sure what to call it but it's real similar to what my Mom used to say when somebody was crabby. She'd said "Somebody's got a wild hair up their butt." So maybe it's not so much as something is in the air as it is something is up people's butts.

I finally had to take a break from Facebook because of all the wild hairs floatin' around that place. Too many people saying too many crazy things & then, before you know it, everybody's panties are in a bunch.

There's been a couple blogs that have the tit-for-tat thing going on too, for whatever reason. Then you know how it goes... pretty soon sides are drawn up faster than 5th graders picking kids to be on their team for dodgeball.

I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I am seldom regretful for anything that has come out of my mouth (or off the tips of my fingers, as is such online). I have no problem saying what I think & I don't walk on eggshells doing it. In other words, I don't tiptoe around an issue. I simply don't see the point. Refusing to tiptoe and saying what you think is perceived as rudeness by some, however, and I think that's a shame. I can tell when someone wants to say something to me but is hedging, tiptoeing, arranging their words just right in order not to offend... and in the process they're offending me. I want to get in their face and say:

"Spit. It. Out. Would you please?? Cos I've got places to go & things to do, ya know?!"

In the process of NOT doing those things that offend me personally, I end up getting in trouble with those folks who happen to like the tiptoe dance routine. A curious situation to be sure... but not one that's going to change me or the way I say things or handle situations.

Andy Rooney has been credited in the past for the piece below. I have read in various places that he denies writing it, so I have no idea who exactly the author is. One thing I do know is that it was one smart dude! Read the piece below & substitute the name "Andrea" every time you read the words "an older woman". That's me & if you don't like it? Either put on your big girl panties or go home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the perks of dufferdom is an increased capacity to appreciate people. Friends. Spouses. And, for me, women. All women.

When I was 20, I had eyes only for girls my age. Any woman over 30 was ancient, over 40 invisible.

Today, now in my 70s, I still appreciate the 20-year-old for her youthful looks, vigor, and (occasional) sweet innocence.

But I equally enjoy women of my own age and beyond, and every age in between. I've learned that each has its own special wonders, attractions, magic and beauty.

As I grow in age, I value mature ladies most of all. Here are just a few of the reasons senior men sing the praises of older women:

* An older woman knows how to smile with such brightness and truth, old men stagger.

* An older woman will never ask out of the blue, "What are you thinking?" An older woman doesn't care what you think.

* An older woman has been around long enough to know who she is, what she wants, and from whom. By the age of 50, few women are wishy-washy. About anything. Thank God!

* And yes, once you get past a wrinkle or two, an older woman is far sexier than her younger counterpart!

Her libido's stronger.

Her fear of pregnancy's gone.

Her appreciation of experienced lovemaking is honed and reciprocal.

And she's lived long enough to know how to please a man in ways her daughter could never dream of. (Young men, you have something to look forward to!)

* Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off that you are a jerk if you're acting like one. A young woman will say nothing, fearing that you might think worse of her. An older woman doesn't give a damn.

* An older, single woman usually has had her fill of "meaningful relationships" and "long-term commitments." Can't relate? Can't commit? She couldn't care less. The last thing she needs in her life is another whiny, dependent lover!

* Older women are sublime. They seldom contemplate having a shouting match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive dinner. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.

* Most older women cook well. They care about cleanliness. They're generous with praise, often undeserved.

* An older woman has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A young woman often snarls with distrust when "her guy" is with other women. Older women couldn't care less.

* Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to an older woman. Like your mother, they always know.

Yes, we geezers praise older women for a multitude of reasons. These are but a few.

Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal.

For every stunning, smart, well-coifed babe of 75 there's a bald, paunchy relic with his yellow pants belted at his armpits making a fool of himself with some 22-year-old waitress.

Ladies, I apologize for my fellow geezers. That men are genetically inferior is no secret. Count your blessings that we die off at a far younger age, leaving you the best part of your lives to enjoy and appreciate the exquisite woman you've become. Without the distraction of some demanding old coot clinging and whining his way into your serenity.

Well, not the cat we planned on but...

2010-11-27T18:11:00.000-06:00

Well... not the yellow cat we were trying to trap but this black one's been hanging around for a long time too. Hot in the summer, cold & wet in autumn, never having enough to eat, never having a safe place to lay his head. But that's over now! He will forever have a wonderful inside home.

Merriest of Christmases, big guy! :-)

I don't usually say the Lord's Name outloud in situations like this... but He was invoked with as much respect as the excitement of the moment could muster. Pardon me, Jesus, for not being more reverent.

Caboose is watching the action from inside the house... until she gets drafted into service. :-)

Trap is covered, kitty has calmed down a bit, now comes the hard part... transferring the cat into the wire carrier. Hmmmm... not the easiest of tasks!

Not the easiest of tasks unless you have a Caboose with a broom handle, to poke through the chicken wire & gently coax. Git her done, Bailey Rosie!!

Pretty baby boy. BIG baby boy!!

OK, now maybe the yellow one tomorrow?

St. Francis... puh-leez? Thank you!

Tough times need tough measures...

2010-11-26T19:16:00.008-06:00

I've been trying to humanely trap a feral cat that's been hanging around our house for over a year now. I suspect the kitty was born in the spring of 2009 & is not quite 2 years old. He spent last winter outside & survived but now looks much worse for the wear. He's also much more feral (wild) now than he was if I could have caught him last year about this time. But no sense looking back on what might have been. I have to deal right now with what is.

And "what is" is bad weather coming in, for a domestic animal that was not meant to be outside & is not a part of the wildlife food chain. "What is" is also a cat that does not understand human tenderness or kindness. He hasn't encountered much in his short life span. So he doesn't understand I'm trying to help him... and his not understanding might cost him his life. :-(

I tried all the sure-fire methods I've used in the past, to humanely trap a cat, but to no avail. The standard wire trap is a bit lame for this smart character to fall for, no matter how I've tried & tried ad nauseum to tempt him to go into it for a very long time now. I also tried a homemade, humane, wooden trap that my precious rescue friend loaned to me. It looks like something from the Middle Ages but it generally works for cats who are afraid of the wire trap. It's made of all wood & feels a bit safer to approach, for some cats. But no dice for this feral feline friend of mine. Despite a freshly fried chicken leg put into the wood trap everyday for weeks, my furry friend wouldn't give the trap the time of day. He'd just sniff & walk away!

This morning I filled my birdfeeders & also fed my squirrels for the first time since last winter. Each & every winter for the past 10+ years, I've taken special care of my squirrels in the cold weather, putting out striped sunflower seeds for them as well as fresh water daily, in a dog bowl. No sooner had I put the seeds on the ground than 5 absolutely stunningly beautiful grey squirrels came rushing down from the trees, close to my house, to eat their lunch.

They remembered!! My dear wildlife friends remembered!!

I watched as 2 black squirrels joined the ranks amongst their grey cousins when, out of nowhere, came the feral cat... and he was ready for a kill. All my squirrels made it to safety but only by a hair's width. It made me sick because I thought the new little spring-born grey in the group was going to be caught. I was furious!!

That was it. I had had enough!! Through my tears I asked my man to call the neighbor & ask him to pay us a visit...and bring his gun with him. I decided this feral cat that I have been trying everything in my knowledge & power to catch simply had to go. I decided his death would be quick and merciful & that I would bury him in our backyard, which he loved so well... where he would forever be free & untouched by human hands... where he would forever be unable to be a threat to wildlife ever again.

But I caught my man's arm & said "Wait... let me give one more call to my friend & see if she can advise me on a last ditch effort to try."

This device is my rescue friend's ace-in-the-hole... the homemade, humane, capturing device for cats that simply will not go into any other trap. It was made for her by a fireman close by who couldn't capture a feral cat in his yard, despite whatever he would try. It's fail safe, my friend says.

We'll see.

My man & I set it up this afternoon but my feral friend never came by. That's ok. It was good practice for us in how to operate the trap. This trap is designed to be more "airy" & big than the other more confining traps. The food is placed inside & the chicken wire "box" is propped open with a heavy carved stick designed for that purpose. The stick has several feet of tough cord attached to it. The person at the other end of the cord must watch for the feral cat to go underneath the box & start eating... and then give a quick & firm jerk on the cord, in order to pull the stick away from the box so that the propped-up end falls on the ground, thereby trapping the cat underneath.

We have the cord fed through a window in my laundry room & the window closed down on top of it. When I see my feral cat snooping around, I'll silently crack open that window & be ready to give the cord a solid tug. There's a piece of carpet attached to the other side of the box, upon which a cement block is placed. That's to keep the box from moving once the cat gets trapped inside.

After the kitty is trapped under the box, I'll cover it quickly with a big quilt. Then I will take a regular wire trap & put it right next to a door that lifts open, on the side of the chicken wire box. The frightened cat, with no room to do anything else, should run towards the open door & light, directly into the plain wire trap & then I'll quickly shut the door... thereby having the cat in a regular wire trap for transport to my rescue friend who will take him to the vet.

The wheels will then start turning to get him tested, vaccinated, neutered, & slowly acclimated to life inside with other cats like himself... throw-aways that humans so carelessly, unfeelingly, unlovingly tossed aside on the road of life.

My dear rescue friend... she's a treasure! She never runs out of items in her bag of tricks. She's been doing cat rescue for decades now & there's nothing she hasn't seen & nothing she can't handle. Yes, she's overwhelmed as all animal rescue folks are... but that doesn't stop her.

I'm so thankful for my cat rescue friend. And not only on Thanksgiving!

The view from inside the house, as I watch this sneaky contraption from behind the curtains in my laundry room... with the cord firmly wound around my right hand, ready to give the tug when the time is right. Pray it's tomorrow, would you, everybody?

St. Francis of Assisi, if you're listening... I could use a little help here! Thank you!!

Thanksgiving... 2010

2010-11-22T09:38:00.003-06:00

Was this...

... worth this?

Absolutely!! :-)

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans go back to the old home to eat biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American. ~O. Henry

Music

2010-11-13T22:34:00.002-06:00

Two out of the three of my musical children.

Music is enough for a lifetime...
but a lifetime is not enough for music.

~Sergei Rachmaninov

Happy Veterans Day

2010-11-11T08:24:00.000-06:00

On this date in 1938 Kate Smith first introduced her "God Bless America" on her radio show. The song had been written for her by Irving Berlin. God bless our veterans, both with us today & those who have passed... ...and God bless America.

Too pretty of a day...

2010-11-08T20:22:00.000-06:00

It was far too pretty...

of a day today...

to find out...

my brother has lung cancer.

Wordless Wednesday...

2010-11-03T11:15:00.000-05:00

Simply a fact...

2010-11-02T23:44:00.000-05:00

It's simply a fact... President Barrack Obama got sent to the woodshed today, by the American people. For two years he tried his version of hyper-liberalism, without caring what the citizens of the United States thought about it or wanted. With today's vote it's obvious that folks are angry. They wanted change in government but not the change of America itself.

Good Democrats in office suffered today. They got booted out of office & didn't deserve it, for the most part. But because President Obama refuses to listen to the people & rather acts on what he wants, in order to further his own agenda, the people retaliated against anyone perceived to be on "his side". Even the fiscally & socially conservative Democrats who were good for this country. What a shame.

"Collateral damage" I believe that's called.

I knew what Barrack Obama's agenda was when he first ran for office in Illinois. I listened to many of his stump speeches on WLS-AM Talk Radio out of Chicago. I didn't like him then either but his agenda didn't matter to me because he wasn't running for elected office in my state. When he was indeed running for an elected office that might end up governing me, I voted against him. Not that it did a lot of good but I voted against what I knew would be bad for my country & her citizens.

It took others awhile to get up to speed but they did just that, didn't they. The people have spoken.

I wonder if President Barrack Obama even cares. He hasn't up until this point. I rather doubt if he's going to start listening to Americans now.

Fast & pray for my oldest daughter...

2010-11-01T00:05:00.001-05:00

If you are one who believes in fasting, prayer & mercy, I humbly ask you to do so... to whatever degree you feel so led... & offer it up for my oldest daughter. She, along with her unborn child, are flying overseas on a business trip. They are leaving today & will be gone 10 days. Please fast, pray, & show mercy for their safety in traveling, as well as for their health to be protected while out of the country & so far away from home.

Below is a treatise by one of the early church fathers, St. Peter Chrysologus, on the how & why of fasting, prayer & mercy... in case any of you are not sure of what I'm talking about.

Thank you with my whole heart, one & all.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Fasting, Prayer and Mercy

by St. Peter Chrysologus (Early Church Father)

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.

Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.

When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry. If you hope for mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness, show kindness. If you want to receive, give. If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery.

Let this be the pattern for all men when they practice mercy: show mercy to others in the same way, with the same generosity, with the same promptness, as you want others to show mercy to you.

Therefore, let prayer, mercy and fasting be one single plea to God on our behalf, one speech in our defence, a threefold united prayer in our favor.

Let us use fasting to make up for what we have lost by despising others. Let us offer our souls in sacrifice by means of fasting. There is nothing more pleasing that we can offer to God, as the psalmist said in prophecy: A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; God does not despise a bruised and humbled heart.

Offer your soul to God, make him an oblation of your fasting, so that your soul may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim, remaining your own and at the same time made over to God. Whoever fails to give this to God will not be excused, for if you are to give him yourself you are never without the means of giving.

To make these acceptable, mercy must be added. Fasting bears no fruit unless it is watered by mercy. Fasting dries up when mercy dries up. Mercy is to fasting as rain is to earth. However much you may cultivate your heart, clear the soil of your nature, root out vices, sow virtues, if you do not release the springs of mercy, your fasting will bear no fruit.

When you fast, if your mercy is thin your harvest will be thin; when you fast, what you pour out in mercy overflows into your barn. Therefore, do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.

Halloween should not be associated with evil

2010-10-31T13:17:00.001-05:00

It disappoints me that so many people associate Halloween (All Hallow's Eve) with fear, evil, satan, and so on. So many people link night time, the different phases of the moon, being interested in the cycles of the earth with anti-Christian sentiments. How very sad. But it seems that October 31st gets the worst rap of all and it's so incredibly needless. But ignorance has always spawned fear... misconceptions passed down through the ages have always grown in size until they resemble nothing of the original mild misconception that started it all. And simply put, people's imaginations make mountains out of mole hills, some to the point of absolute hysteria. They miss so much by doing that, in my view.

All Saints Day (Hallowmas, All Hallows, Feast of All Saints, or whatever else you wish to call it) - Nov 1 and All Souls Day - Nov 2 are such beautiful & meaningful feast days on the Christian Catholic calendar. Their origins date back to the beginning centuries of Christianity & coincide with many pagan holidays. I won't explain all that here. You can google it & find all the information you would ever want. Let it suffice to say that "back in the day" (100-700 years after Christ died, arose & ascended into heaven) Christianity & Paganism held hands quite often, in their celebrations & feasts. It was 1,500+ years after Christ died, arose & ascended into heaven that some of His "followers" decided to change their ideas about the traditions & rituals that had been in place for so long.

Imagine your ancestors, over a thousand years after your death, discounting some of the celebrations you performed & cherished as being of evil intent... and you not able to be present to defend yourself, your intentions & explain?! Not too fair, is it.

I am a friend of the night as well as the day. I believe that the cycles of everything on earth are a gift from the Creator. I love to burn candles to commemorate events or give honor to God in representation of His light shining for all the world to see. I love to burn incense as my ancestors of 2,000 years ago did, believing my prayers are riding on the coat tails of the tendrils of smoke rising upward to heaven. Candles, incense, personal sacrifices & abstinences, rituals, feasts days... they were all a part of Jesus' life on earth. But they are not good enough for us now? I hardly think that's the case. However some people act like those acts that Jesus partook in while on earth are now somehow part of the "devil's work". How incredibly silly.

Research, from unbiased sources, not only the reason you do things but also the reason you don't do things or have a distaste for things you think are evil. I'm of the opinion that we all would be a lot better off if we'd get back to our roots... the roots of our ancestors from 2,000 years ago. Much more could & would be accomplished in our prayer lives & in our world if we did. Enjoy the beauty of the rituals that were in place 2,000 years ago & beyond. Incorporate them into your daily lives & reverence the knowledge & wisdom that our ancient elders in the church had... instead of dismissing them as evil & of ill-intent.

Perhaps the people who successfully swayed the faithful away, from these long-held rites & rituals, 500 years ago are truly the evil ones!

A beautiful picture of the celebration of All Saints Day at a cemetery in Poland in 1984.

How reverent, how breathtaking, how holy... how non-evil.

Pray for my friend RivkA

2010-10-27T23:10:00.001-05:00

(Update: 10/29/10 RivkA has died. *sigh*)

Please pray for my friend, RivkA, in Israel. She has been battling breast cancer for awhile now & it doesn't look like she's going to be victorious. She is in the hospital as I type this & has a lot of pain. She would never want anyone to feel sorry for her... she would only want people to daven (send happy, healing thoughts) for her.

I'm davening for you, RivkA. Hang in there, dearest of hearts.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Below is a motivational talk RivkA gave over a year ago. It's in four parts. You will be blessed by them. Please watch.

Only for today...

2010-10-26T14:45:00.000-05:00

Only for today...

1) Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.

2) Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behavior; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.

3) Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.

4) Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.

5) Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.

6) Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it.

7) Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure that no one notices.

8) Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two evils: hastiness and indecision.

9) Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that the good providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in this world.

10) Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12 hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life.

~Pope John XXIII

My parents are alive again

2010-10-21T15:46:00.005-05:00

The little boy is this picture is one that I used to babysit for "back in the day". It's funny that, in reality, there's probably only about 11 years or so difference between our ages but at that time it seemed like I was an adult & he was an infant. It's funny how perceptions change with time.

I recently connected again with Scott via Facebook. We've chatted back & forth about the good ole days, he seeming to miss them as much as I do. Scott sent me the picture above not to remind me what he looked like as a little guy :-) but because he thought I would be interested in seeing the house in the background. It's the house I spent my teenage years in, from the time I was 13 until I left that house, to get married, at 19.

When I opened up the attachment that held this picture, I froze. I felt mesmerized by what I saw. I couldn't tear my eyes away... not that I wanted to but even if I did, I couldn't have! I had the feeling as if I was teleported back in space and time & my body felt that same "rush" as if I was time-traveling at 1,000,000 MPH in a time machine. Not like in the old-fashioned movie "The Time Machine" but more like the modern movie "Contact". It's hard to explain.

In that picture both my parents were alive. The family car (which my mom drove most of all) was under the carport & the beater car that my daddy drove to work was parked in front of the house. That meant that both parents were home. Perhaps it was a Saturday or Sunday when this picture was taken? I don't know. Perhaps it was taken after my daddy got off work.

My daddy was undoubtedly down in the lower lever family room, behind the windows on the bottom left of the house. He was laying on the big royal blue couch, with his pillow & a lightweight blanket (he never liked heavy blankets... he had gout & the weight hurt his toes). The same blanket I have today, tattered & thread bare, stored in a safe spot "just because". My mom was probably upstairs, either in the kitchen or sitting in the living room reading the paper, which were behind that big bay window on the upper right.

We would always eat supper at precisely 4:15pm and the dishes were done by 5:30pm at the very latest. Our household was very regimented, partly because I think that's the way things simply were in the 1960s & early 1970s. Ours was a one-income household so there wasn't much $$ for decorations or flowers or things of that nature, as you can tell by the picture. Not too many people did that sort of thing in the area where we lived. I think everybody was happy to have a nice roof over their heads, food on their tables, and clothes on their backs... with a few dollar$ left over for maybe a Saturday night out once in awhile.

I still stare at this picture wishing I could go up to the front door & knock. My mom would answer the door and say "What happened, Andree? Did you lock yourself out?" I'd hear my dad snoring from the couch downstairs & I'd quietly go up to my bedroom, close the door, and turn on my record player to a vinyl album of Carole King, Chicago, The Dave Clark Five, or The Cowsills. My Siamese kitty, TinkerBelle, would be curled up on my bed or laying on the loveseat in the living room. I would feel safe... secure... without a care in the world. I knew nothing about property taxes, grocery bills, school tuition, car repairs or anything else back then. I just knew about unconditional love.

I wish I could walk into this picture for just a day and live 24 hrs. back in time. Just once. I wish I could hug my daddy again & tell him how much I love him. I wish I could sit at my mom's knee & learn from her all the things I wished I did but are now too late. I wish I could simply see them alive again, walking around & talking & doing all the things that seemed so ordinary back then that I didn't even take notice.

I didn't realize back then that all those ordinary things were in fact the extraordinary things that would shape my life forever. Things that seemed to me, at that age, went on day after day with monotony but, in reality, were as fleeting as a butterfly landing on a flower.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.

~James Matthew Barrie

Autumn & I are connected...

2010-10-03T14:40:00.000-05:00

I have always loved autumn. The cooler temperatures, the changing color of the leaves, the fresh smell of newly-picked apples and carved pumpkins, the signs that we are about to embark on quieter, closer-to-home times.

I feel, for the very first time, that autumn & I have entered our season together. I feel like I have entered into the autumn season of my life... the winding down after a hectic younger season called summer. It's a relief, really. I have never much liked the season of summer... in nature nor in my human lifetime. Always hectic, always working, always in a turmoil, always having to be someplace or go somewhere, always having a chore hanging over my head that needed to be done yesterday... that's the way the season of summer has always felt like to me, both in my life and in nature. I am more than ready to let that season go.

I feel ready now, for the first time, to watch my life and my body "change colors": to perhaps whither a bit, feel the tug of the harsh wind on my limbs that is relentless & uncaring, to begin to let go of the tree branch I have been attached to for all these 54 years. I am almost ready for my years of seasonal changes to be over and to rest quietly underneath the winter's gentle blanket of snow.... in forever peace.

Almost ready... almost. But for now I will enjoy my autumn. It is so beautiful after all and I do not wish it away. But I know the season that comes after it and I can honestly say I in no way feel dread nor fear. I have always loved the snow. :-)

Done cooking...

2010-09-19T17:24:00.003-05:00

I'm done with cooking and I feel so incredibly liberated!

When I first got married, 34+ years ago, I cooked like my mama taught me. I rolled out pie crust, made homemade noodles, knew how to make a wickedly delicious beef roast (complete with mashed potatoes & gravy), and would never have dreamed of boiling up a package of hot dogs for supper. Hot dogs for supper? No way! Only lazy housewives did that sort of thing.

But as the years have passed, so has my appetite... and also the appetites of my family members still left at home. I could make the whole beef roast meal today & it might be enjoyed (somewhat) on the actual day I cooked it, but the leftovers wouldn't get touched again until they were handled to be dumped into the garbage can. The same goes for any "big meal" I cook today. It gets sorta eaten on the day I serve it but after that, nobody touches it. I usually don't even touch it the day I serve it cos me & big meals just don't get along these days. Give me an apple & a few tsps. of peanut butter and I'm very satisfied.

I made a big meal to serve at the picnic we had for our caboose's 13th birthday last Sunday. I made homemade chicken & noodles, kielbasa & sauerkraut, homemade potato salad, homemade taco salad... the list goes on & on. What the guests didn't eat on that day, and what the guests didn't take home with them on a "doggie plate", got thrown away in the garbage can this weekend. The leftovers were nibbled on by my man & still-home-kids but not very much and certainly not enough to polish anything off. I spent hours (it's nauseating for me to think of the number of hours I spent on that food!!) and to throw any of it away not only makes me sick but it's maddening too.

I do this throwing away bit on a weekly basis! So it amounts to me being sick & maddened most of the time, doesn't it?! Yes indeed. *bleh*

I tried to mentally make a list of things that my family eats on a regular basis... the foods they reach for above any others. Here's a few of the items I came up with:

~ cereal & milk
~ peanut butter & jelly on bread
~ lunch meat on bread
~veggie burgers on buns~ microwave mac & cheese
~ popcorn
~ ramen noodles with parmesan cheese on top
~ fresh fruit of any kind
~ fresh veggies & dip
~ yogurt ~ granola bars
~ raisin bread
~ ice cream
~ grilled cheese sandwiches
~ canned soup
~ crackers & dip
~ tacos
~ hot dogs (organic) & buns
~ any kind of salads

None of this stuff involves any type of major cooking. It's more grab-and-go type foods, which is maybe why the big meals just don't go over very well anymore. My son (23) made a comment the other day that kind of surprised me. He said he eats meat but he has a hard time eating a "chunk" of meat, just because he almost feels guilty in doing so (regarding what the animals have to go through in order for that meat to be available to eat). Made my heart shine when he said that. :)

In the last 20 years or so, I haven't made too many "chunks" of meat. It seems like if I made any meat at all it was ground meat in a casserole or one-pot meal of some sort. Within the last 5-7 years or so, I hardly even use that anymore but have opted for the meatless alternatives to ground beef such as Boca Grounds & that sort of thing. But even then, the base was still the same (casserole or one-pot meal) & those meals were just not being eaten.

So I've decided that I'm not going to battle it anymore. I'm not going to waste my time in the kitchen, preparing all those types of foods that nobody wants & nobody eats. It's going to be the grab-and-go type foods that I'm going to keep stocked in the refrigerator, so that I don't have anymore wasted food or wasted time in the kitchen. I've already gone through my cupboards, refrigerator & freezer and have pitched anything we simply don't eat anymore. Yeah, hundreds of dollars of food is sitting on the curb in the garbage can but I'm at the point that I don't care. It was important for me to clean-out the clutter & start fresh. My mother's voice in my head be damned ( "Andrea, just think of all the starving children in the world who could have eaten that food!!!" ).

If we need something special, for a birthday meal or whatever, I'm going to buy it pre-made. For example, it's my man's birthday today. I was going to slave all day in the kitchen to make him lasagna with garlic bread & a birthday cake. Not now! After I post this entry I'm going to head to the grocery store & buy all that stuff pre-made & frozen. I'll come home, pop the frozen lasagna in the oven & read a book while I'm waiting for it to get done.

They'll probably all rave at how good it is. MSG and artificial colors & ingredients usually do have that affect on food, don't they?!

Bon appetit!

I admit it

2010-08-30T11:25:00.007-05:00

OK, I admit it. I just can't leave this blog. This place is home!

I tried starting a new blog & called it "Just Plain Home". The flavor of it was geared more toward home-dwelling women... like me. Geared towards those of us (admittedly a dying breed) who actually enjoy being keepers-of-home & doing all the things that home-dwellers enjoy... cooking, cleaning, washing, drying, folding-and-putting-away, baking, keeping our man happy, keeping our kids (relatively) happy, and all that jazz. But I dunno... the whole subject matter seemed to be limiting to me & not exactly where my "whole person" is... only a part of me.

There's another huge part of me that is all about nature, wildlife, land, organic eating, organic living, recycling, music, tattoos, concerts, hobbies, beer... oodles of stuff that just didn't seem to fit with the new blog I started.

So... I'm going to delete the other blog & just have this one. This place feels like just plain home to me. I like it here. I hope you do too.

Destiny

2010-08-22T23:41:00.004-05:00

Well, I knew it was bound to happen. I knew I was destined for a series of rabies vaccination injections after a wildlife bite. I just never dreamed it would be due to a bat bite.

It was simple enough...my man & I were on our way home from a Saturday evening out & weren't quite ready to go home yet. Our son was still at his girlfriend's house so we decided to drop in for a quick cup of coffee & some conversation. When we pulled up (about midnight), both our son & his girlfriend were in her front yard. We thought our son was leaving & his girlfriend was walking him out to the car. Wrong! They were outside because a bat was inside.

Cyndi was smart. She trapped the bat in her bedroom & stuffed a towel under the door so that the flying black beauty couldn't escape out into the house from underneath. Good thinking!!

Wildlife don't frighten me. I'm not real nutty about spiders but they're the only wildlife creatures that I don't particularly like to see cross my path. Otherwise I'm always ready for an encounter of the wild kind. :) So I thought "No problem-o. We'll get this bat out of Cyndi's bedroom & then sit down to converse awhile." Cyndi opened her bedroom window & screen all the way up before exiting stage left, so that my man & I could show her visitor the way to freedom. "Here's your hat, where's your hurry" as my mama always used to say.

The bat circled the room & could sense with its sonar that something was different in the open-window area but she just didn't feel comfortable flying out, for whatever reason. We tried keeping the ceiling light on & turning it off, but it seemed to make no difference... except with the light off she seemed to stop flying as much. Everytime she would land on the windowsill or wall, I would gentle take a broom & encourage her to take flight once again. She wasn't going to find the open window by resting on the wall!

We tried everything... tossing pebbles out the window to see if the bat would follow them, jiggling the broom by the window to entice her to check it out & maybe find freedom that way... I even sat on the floor next to the open window to see if she would want to come check me out & then "accidently" fly outside that way. But no dice.

I saw a huge heavy-duty plastic Carson's bag laying on the floor and I got the idea that maybe I could somehow trap the bat in the bag & then release her out the window. I made two unsuccessful attempts when she landed on the wall but on the third attempt I thought I had her. I had both my hands inside the lip of the bag, inching the edges of the bag together to close it since I thought she had flown inside, when I felt her bite the pinkie finger on my left hand. Apparently she was still on the wall & not in the bag like I thought... and she didn't much appreciate my efforts.

The bite didn't particularly hurt all that much because the bat's little teeth are so sharp. But bite me she did, most definitely, and the instant she did I knew what it meant... a series of rabies vaccinations! The only way to have avoided it was to kill my beautiful little sharp-fanged friend & send her brain to be analyzed for rabies. And you KNOW I'm not about to let that happen. I'd rather endure the injections!!

We left the window & screen open & the bat flew out sometime during the night because at 5am Cyndi went inside her bedroom to check & the bat was nowhere to be found. Hurray! Another member of a species on the endangered species list was free to live her life in the wild. My heart never fails to dance when that happens.

In the meantime, the rabies vaccination series: 9 shots in the emergency room at 2:30am on Sunday morning... one shot of rabies vaccine (to enable my body to create antibodies against rabies) in my right shoulder, one tetanus shot in my left shoulder, four shots of rabies immunoglobulin (antibodies already active & ready to go against rabies in my system) into my pinkie finger near the bite site, one shot of rabies immunoglobulin in each buttock, and one in my left thigh. I also had to take one oral antibiotic pill in the emergency room, to ward off any infection from the bite, along with a prescription for 10 days of antibiotics to be taken at home. Add to that a couple anti-histamine pills I was given in the emergency room also, because I was having an allergic reaction in my finger from the injections. It was swelling like a sausage. The nurse told me I'd sleep until at least 3pm on Sunday after taking those anti-histamine pills. Yeah... right. I slept from 6am-10am. It takes more to put me out than two measly little pills! Unfortunately.

I have to go back on day 3, day 7, day 21 and day 28 for a rabies vaccination injection each time... so four more injections & I'll be good to go.

I always thought I would be nailed by a raccoon or an opossum that accidently got trapped in my Have-a-Heart trap as I was trying to rescue one of the many stray cats I go after from time to time. Just a couple weeks ago I got two baby raccoons in one trap (together!) and a very BIG mama raccoon in the other. Earlier this spring I got a small young opossum in the trap, with a very watchful mama opossum glaring at me from behind the bushes near the trap. So I always figured that one of those times, in releasing the wildlife animal from the trap, the usual behavior of them running like wildfire away from me would not occur & I would be taken aback by some surprising behavior in the form of an attack or at the very least a bite.

But that's not the kind of surprise I experienced this time, that's for sure. It's nice to know I'll only need two rabies booster vaccinations when those incidents do happen, since I'll have the big series out of the way by then.

There's always a silver lining, isn't there.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

~Aristotle

My "place" right now...

2010-08-18T19:41:00.002-05:00

We never stop worrying

2010-07-29T23:55:00.002-05:00

No matter how old our children get, we never stop worrying about them. In fact, I always tell young mothers who are heavy-laden with "baby chores" that the time period they find themselves in, at that moment, are the easy times of parenthood. When you can tell your child when to eat, what to eat, when to bathe, when to go to bed... you know you are in the glory days of parenting. It gets harder, in my view, after that.

My son (yes, the one who just turned 23) slept til noon today (his day off work), got up, showered, and said he was meeting a guy-friend at Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch. His friend had to work until 2pm so my son left the house about 2:30pm. I knew his beloved (promised) girlfriend had to work until 10pm so he said he'd be home after lunch, to do his chores. Well, 8 hrs after he left the house & no word from him.

I texted him twice with no reply... called his cell twice with no reply. After that my mind started racing. Fast. Faster than any car at the Indy 500, I promise! It took everything I had to not start calling hospitals, wondering if my boy's broken body was laying on a gurney in the emergency room... or worse.

My man called our son's girlfriend because I didn't trust my voice to be able to speak. She was home from work & had not heard from him either. She was the calmer head out of the three of us, but I could tell she was worried too. She didn't have the phone number of my son's friend either (lesson learned on this one!). She mentioned something about Facebook, thinking maybe the friend's phone number was on his account.

I logged back in to my computer, which had been shut down for the night, and checked out Facebook. His buddy (who happens to be on my friends list too *smile*) had a status that read:

This is gonna be a great night. Chillin with Steph, Jeremy, Austin, Brad, Brian, and Emily. :D

Apparently my son was having a glorious time, as youth usually does, oblivious to aging parents who were more than just a little worried about an 8 hr lunch & an unanswered cell phone.

He's home now, safe under our roof, and we had a little talk which he was receptive to & respectful of, as he's always been. He's quite old enough to be out in the evening, doing whatever his conscience dictates & our teaching has (hopefully) impressed upon his heart. He just has to keep his cell phone on him at all times (& not lay it down on the bookshelf at his buddy's house) & he also has to send his parents a quick text message once in awhile, to let us know what he's got going if the original plans change, after he leaves the house. Not so much to ask, I wouldn't think.

OK, now it's time for some prayers of thanksgiving & then some rest. Grandbaby will be up early in the morning... the easiest one to care for under this roof at the moment.

"Children are a handful sometimes... a heartful all the time."

Happy 23rd B/D son....

2010-07-24T14:16:00.001-05:00

Keep walking...

2010-06-23T00:52:00.002-05:00

When you're going through hell... it's best to just keep on going.

~Winston Churchill

Camping is ick...

2010-06-17T14:29:00.002-05:00

I've never been camping but I already know that it's icky. No matter the fact that I absolutely adore nature, wildlife, fresh air, sunshine, bonfires, picnics, lawnchairs & beer... camping is still yuck!

Homeless people sleep outside on the ground. Why would a non-homeless person want to do that? ICK!

Homeless people take showers where strangers have showered before them, anyplace that has droplets of water coming down from above. Why would a non-homeless person want to do that? ICK!

Homeless people have no air-conditioning & must endure the weather, no matter what it is. Why would a non-homeless person want to do that? ICK!

Homeless people have to carry all their belongings with them, wherever they sleep for the night... without benefit of drawers, closets, cabinets. Why would a non-homeless person want to do that? ICK!

Homeless people have mosquitoes buzzing around their heads & various bugs crawling all over them all times of the day & while they're trying to sleep at night. Why would a non-homeless person want to do that? ICK!

Homeless people have to sit on toilets after others, whom they know nothing about nor what diseases they have, sat there before them. Why would a non-homeless person want to do that? ICK!

My man has worked hard all of his life to put a roof over my head and to provide for me a comfortable bed to sleep on. He has bought me beautiful stoves over the years and has kept me warm as toast in winter and cool as a cucumber in summer. I can have a luxurious shower whenever I wish and I know exactly who has been standing in the shower stall before me. I have plenty of closet and drawer space to store everything he has ever bought me to wear & any article of clothing I want is always at my fingertips at any given moment. I intimately know whose (cute & sexy) butt (that I still lust after, even after 34 yrs of seeing it) has been sitting on the toilet seat before mine... every time. I am not homeless.

Why would I want to act like I am?

Ick!

I love it!!!

2010-06-16T13:27:00.001-05:00

Arizona is spending $1.25 million to build bridges for 250 rare red squirrels so they won't get hit by cars crossing the rural road. The expenditure is expected to save the lives of five squirrels a year.

I love it!!

I love you, Arizona!!

:-)

Darkness...

2010-06-07T20:09:00.002-05:00

He has the world by the tail... then heroin knocks on the door.

How does that happen?

Lying... stealing... to feed the habit.

Security alarms installed

...against an intruder you love?

A cloud of sadness no amount of sunshine can chase away.

My brother's grandson... my niece's boy.

Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Sister... all so weary from the worry.

I was there when he was born. I've watched him grow up.

How can his 21st year of life hold the fate of detox... rehab?

A monkey forever having to be fought off his back.

*sigh*

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.

Tend the sick, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering,pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.

Amen

Tattoo Time...

2010-05-25T10:41:00.005-05:00

Some things happen to us & the memory of them is fleeting. Here one minute & gone the next. Other things happen to us and stick in our head & heart for a lifetime.

Taking care of my mother during the last 8 years of her life is a sticker.

As most of you know, who are faithful readers of my blog (& I love you for that, by the way!!), my mother was bed-bound the last 10 months of her life. She was a very demanding woman as long as I can remember & that was pretty much status quo until she drew her final breath. Being bed-bound seemed to exacerbate that characteristic of her personality.

Mom used to call my name from her hospital bed in her bedroom. Most times she wouldn't need anything & didn't realize she was calling. At least that's what she told me. But I remember her doing it, even now... 20 months after we buried her. When I'm alone & it's quiet I can still hear her voice.

The Voice...

Calling.

Endlessly.

Hour after hour.

And me not being able to escape.

It was a mere part of the traumatic package... a small piece of the nightmarish puzzle... a drop in the rain cloud that will forever hang over my head because of The Voice. It's a piece of hell that I carry around with me everywhere I go, unable to put it down or even lose it for a few minutes. The Voice and my mother are a part of me... my history... and even after I'm buried, that part will never disappear. It will only be buried underground, hopefully to rot into an unrecognizable form.

I've been wanting a tattoo for a long time. I love tattoos... any kind, any shape, any size. I've never met a tattoo I didn't like! :)

I'm a painter. I love art, especially when it tells a story. The more personal the story, to the artist, the more I love the artistic piece. The same holds true for tattoos, in my view. The body is a canvas. Art that is permanently embedded on it should tell a story... reveal a piece of the puzzle that defines the body's life... show a portion of the earthly path that the person has walked along.

Perhaps even bring a sliver out into the open, that's been festering underneath the skin.

It's time for me to get my first tattoo. The first in what I fully intend to be many. The first of many stories, transformed from memory to picture form, on my skin. The first of many journeys, set to ink, taken from the inside & placed on the outside... for everyone to see.

About this size...? No guns!
Which earthly event will be first? The one that is festering & is most painful.

I'm going to get a tattoo on the ball of my right shoulder, going down my arm a bit. It's going to be of a cracked heart... with light feathery wings attached to it... and the heart is going to be listening to music, with headphones around it.

Maybe something like this...?

The only way I could cope with The Voice that incessantly called my name was to go into the laundry room where my computer was set up and listen to music, blaring as loud as I could stand it, through my headphones. I'd do it for hours, as long as it took to drown out The Voice, until it would stop. My headphones & music were the only way I could survive the hell. They were my lifeline to staying in place on the earth. One snip of the cord & I would have been floating away in space. Forever.

So the music... the headphones... wrapped around the heart that was breaking because of the situation I found myself in... the heart that was wanting so badly to fly away from The Voice... is significant. It's going to be my first tattoo. I don't know who's going to ink me yet but it's going to have to be someone who reads this blog entry & understands. Someone who can take this part of my life's story & fit it perfectly in the spot where this particular puzzle piece needs to go.

I like this heart without the blue streaks...? Facing the other direction? Cracked!
When you see me and see my first tattoo, you'll know the story behind it. You'll understand a very intimate part of me & who I am. You'll visualize the part of my life that contained The Voice.

Pesticide fallout

2010-05-17T09:37:00.001-05:00

Study: ADHD Linked To Pesticide Exposure

Children exposed to higher levels of a type of pesticide found in trace amounts on commercially grown fruit and vegetables are more likely to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder than children with less exposure, a nationwide study suggests.

Researchers measured the levels of pesticide byproducts in the urine of 1,139 children from across the United States. Children with above-average levels of one common byproduct had roughly twice the odds of getting a diagnosis of ADHD, according to the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics. Exposure to the pesticides, known as organophosphates, has been linked to behavioral and cognitive problems in children in the past, but previous studies have focused on communities of farm workers and other high-risk populations. This study is the first to examine the effects of exposure in the population at large.

Organophosphates are "designed" to have toxic effects on the nervous system, says the lead author of the study, Maryse Bouchard, Ph.D., a researcher in the department of environmental and occupational health at the University of Montreal. "That's how they kill pests." The pesticides act on a set of brain chemicals closely related to those involved in ADHD, Bouchard explains, "so it seems plausible that exposure to organophosphates could be associated with ADHD-like symptoms."

Environmental Protection Agency regulations have eliminated most residential uses for the pesticides (including lawn care and termite extermination), so the largest source of exposure for children is believed to be food, especially commercially grown produce. Adults are exposed to the pesticides as well, but young children appear to be especially sensitive to them, the researchers say.

Detectable levels of pesticides are present in a large number of fruits and vegetables sold in the U.S., according to a 2008 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited in the study. In a representative sample of produce tested by the agency, 28 percent of frozen blueberries, 20 percent of celery, and 25 percent of strawberries contained traces of one type of organophosphate. Other types of organophosphates were found in 27 percent of green beans, 17 percent of peaches, and 8 percent of broccoli.

Although kids should not stop eating fruits and vegetables, buying organic or local produce whenever possible is a good idea, says Bouchard.

"Organic fruits and vegetables contain much less pesticides, so I would certainly advise getting those for children," she says. "National surveys have also shown that fruits and vegetables from farmers' markets contain less pesticides even if they're not organic. If you can buy local and from farmers' markets, that's a good way to go."

The researchers tested the samples for six chemical byproducts (known as metabolites) that result when the body breaks down more than 28 different pesticides. Nearly 95 percent of the children had at least one byproduct detected in their urine. Just over 10 percent of the children in the study were diagnosed with ADHD. The kids were judged to have ADHD if their symptoms (as reported by parents) met established criteria for the disorder, or if they had taken ADHD medication regularly in the previous year.

One group of pesticide byproducts was associated with a substantially increased risk of ADHD. Compared with kids who had the lowest levels, the kids whose levels were 10 times higher were 55 percent more likely to have ADHD. In addition, children with higher-than-average levels of the most commonly detected byproduct -- found in roughly 6 in 10 kids -- were nearly twice as likely to have ADHD.

"It's not a small effect," says Bouchard. "This is 100 percent more risk."

Long-term studies including multiple urine samples from the same children are needed, Bouchard says. She suspects such studies would show an even stronger link between pesticide byproducts and ADHD. "I would hope that this study raises awareness as to the risk associated with pesticide exposure," Bouchard says. "There's really only a handful of studies on this subject out there, so there's room for more awareness."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO... I TOLD YOU SO...

*sigh*

Upbeat & happy?

2010-05-12T15:40:00.003-05:00

OK, so everything on the "popular" blogs is upbeat & happy.

Funny.

Entertaining.

Everyday.

Well... not here.

Maybe that's why my blog isn't too popular? I dunno.

I try to look on the bright side all the time. But what do you do when there's no bright side?

I'm a (retired) nurse. I gave up my nursing career to have a different career... that of homeschool educator to my children. Best move up the corporate ladder I could have ever made! The dividends & bonuses never stop coming, I swear. My point though is that I probably chose nursing in the first place because I've always had empathy for other things. Humans, animals, plants... doesn't matter what. If someone or something is suffering, having trouble or hit on rough times, I can put myself in that person or thing's place in a heartbeat.

Then I want to try to make things all better.

When I retired from nursing, that empathy didn't stop. It sticks to me like glue & I'll probably take it to my grave with me. It's a part of me like my ears, nose or hands. It's ok cos there will be plenty of room in my casket!

How is it possible, however, for me to be upbeat & happy with headlines like this in the news:

7 Children, 2 Adults Killed in China School Attack

Or pictures like this, to go along with the news:

This woman's kindergarten BABY was hacked to death by some crazy dude wielding a meat cleaver. Yeah, you read it right... hacked to death... meat cleaver. Ya know, the stuff that we thought only happened in horror movies. A guy chasing people with a meat cleaver... them screaming... then dying in pools of blood on the floor.

Yep, that kinda stuff!

20 kids attended the school... 11 kids survived the ~~horror movie~~ attack. Guess what their dreams are going to be about, for the rest of their lives?!

Yeah, exactly that!

Oh, and by the way, this isn't the first attack on the BABIES in a Chinese school. April 30th some numb nut armed with a hammer went into a preschool and tried to kill 5 kids before setting himself on fire, in the front of the classroom, killing himself. Nice, huh.

April 29th some idiot with a knife went into a kindergarten room there in China and injured 28 kids... most of them 4 years old.

Just the day before, on April 28th, some looney tune tried to knife to death 18 kids and their teacher at a primary school.

Fear of the death penalty apparently doesn't stop these crazies cos a few days before this carnage started, a guy was put in front of the firing squad there in China for stabbing 8 kids to death, and wounding 5 others, in an elementary school. The reason he gave for doing it?... his love life wasn't too hot. He couldn't get into his girlfriend's pants, in other words, so he decided to kill kids.

Now THAT'S going to make things a lot better, isn't it.

After reading all that, I'm supposed to come on here & type out happy words, eh? Like maybe about how the flowers are blooming... and the trees are getting green... and how shiny my bathrooms are because I scrubbed them down today... and the delicious recipe I'm going to try tonight for my family's supper?

Nope. Doesn't work that way with me.

My mind is with those kids... the ones who are going to have nightmares tonight (& for hundreds of nights hereafter).

My mind is with the families of those hacked kids... the parents who will forever be wondering how petrified their children were before they died... wondering how much pain their children endured before blackness mercifully encompassed them.

My mind is with those kids left behind... the kids who will constantly be watching & waiting for some guy with a meat cleaver to enter their schoolroom again... the kids who will constantly be wondering if they're next to die.

Maybe you can go about your housework, humming "Jesus Loves The Little Children", after reading an article like that. I can't.

I can't type happy words after reading it either. Sorry.

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T09:41:00.007-05:00

Happy Mother's Day, mom.

Rest in peace.

2007

A long time ago...

Good thing we didn't know what was coming in 5 short months,
isn't it, mom.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Happier memories made today.

"All my children" & me.

2010

Halliburton...friend of all

2010-05-08T13:40:00.000-05:00

It keeps getting funnier & funnier, I swear!

Obama Pentagon Gives $500M 'No Bid' Contract to Halliburton

December 14, 2006

To quote the wackos...

2010-05-06T21:36:00.003-05:00

Back in the 1980s the stay-at-home-mom, back-to-the-land, bake-your-own-bread, homeschool-your-kids, eat-organic, buy-in-bulk-from-co-ops, drink-pure-water, recycle, avoid-vaccinations, do-with-what-you-have movement was in full swing. I was into that movement then & still am today... tweeked here and there to avoid fanaticism & far-fetched legalistic ideas.

The "health food wackos", as we were called and of which I was & still am a part, have been screaming for years (decades really!) about the toxic effects of many substances that the sheep (aka: human citizens) of this country have been accepting without question all their lives. Chemicals, from vats clearly marked with a skull & cross bones and labeled TOXIC, sprayed on our food as it is growing from the ground... animals, whose flesh we eat & milk we drink, being injected with hormones & antibiotics that the FDA would never ever approve for injection into human beings... water that is so laced with toxins & waste that the govt. had to develop an "acceptable level" scale in order to make the toxins & waste deemed alright for human consumption... pharmaceuticals, supposedly designed to treat ailments, which are none other than poisonous to the body but yet their side-effects prove positive results... and on and on and on. World without end, amen.

Our screams have always fallen on deaf ears. Mainstream people would (& still do!!) laugh at us for inventing fears where none should exist, according to them. I mean, after all, the govt. wouldn't support something if it wasn't good for us, would they? The govt. would stop the poisoning of our land, our animals and ourselves if big, bad, evil chemical & pharmaceutical companies really were distributing cancer-causing agents to the populace, wouldn't they? Of course. The guys & gals on Capital Hill and in the White House love us, right? They wouldn't want the American people to come to harm. Nahhhh!! Surely not.

Wrong!

But now that the land, water & people are so polluted that cancers are everywhere... hitting everyone from 2 months old to 90 years old... all of a sudden a Presidential Cancer Panel admits that "exposure to potential cancer risks in daily life is widespread and underestimated, especially for children."

Really? Really!

The report also states that "the public remains by and large unaware of such common cancer risks as formaldehyde, benzene and radon."

Hmmm... now I wonder why THAT is?!

Exposure to benzene is widespread. Exhaust from cars and other vehicles contain benzene, listed as a known human carcinogen by the EPA.

Radon, which forms naturally and can collect in homes, is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, behind smoking, resulting in an estimated 21,000 deaths annually, according to the report. The report recommends periodically checking the radon levels at home.

You think that maybe formaldehyde, benzene & radon are so widely used now, that the manufacturers of those things... and the companies that use those things in their products... wouldn't know where to begin to start "un-manufacturing" and "un-using" them? Maybe it's just best to simply let the manufacturing and use continue without question, than to rock the proverbial boat? Can we forget about the mega-billion$ of dollar$ involved also? Yep. Yep. Nope. Let the health of humans on the planet be damned. Easier that way.

Elementary, my dear Watson & Watsonette.

We built on to our home back in 2001, so my aging mom could come live with us. We added on 1,000 sq.ft. ... a small apartment, in actuality, with her own eat-in kitchen, living room, bedroom, oversized bathroom, laundry room, 3-season back porch & 2-car garage. Along with that addition came, of course, new kitchen cabinets... new carpet... new paint... new insulation... new appliances... new draperies... new water pipes... new hot water tank. Four years after my mom & her kitty moved-in, the cat was dead. She died of a massive tumor in her chest that wasn't there when she moved to her brand spanking new abode. Jacinta primarily spent all of her days & nights on the floor. She preferred to not sleep on furniture but on the floor... on the new carpet throughout.

Almost all homes contain formaldehyde, considered a probable human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency. Formaldehyde is used in plywood, particle board, foam insulation, carpet and draperies, furniture, permanent press fabrics and toiletries. Exposure is highest when these are newly installed, the report says.

Hmmmmph!!

My mother became bedbound 6 years after she moved-in. She was 89 years old so she was indeed "up there" in years, but no one could ever diagnose what was wrong with her. One day she started falling a lot... doing strange things... talking out of her head. She spent 7 days in the hospital, with tests run. Her head was fine. Her heart was fine. The doctors were baffled. Mom was sent home here, to her little apartment attached to our house, where she spent the next 10 months wasting away & unable to get out of bed except when we bodily picked her up. She died weighing less than 50#... and to this day nobody knows why. But since she was 90 years old when she passed, it's just too easy for everyone (including her drs) to say that she simply died of "old age".

"She had a good life." is usually the mantra when a 90 year old woman dies, no matter what from. Only when 30 year olds die of cancer or some unknown illness do we try to get to the bottom of it all.

The Presidential Cancer Panel also recommends reducing environmental cancer risks as the cornerstone of cancer prevention efforts and said drs need to do a better job considering potentially harmful chemical exposures when diagnosing patients.

My, my... what a novel idea. Wish I had thought of that! :-/

In a "too little - too late" attempt to warn the public of all the hazards we health food wackos have been screaming about for years, here's their recommended list of things for all of us to do, to reduce our risk of cancer:

* Removing shoes before entering the home to avoid tracking in toxic chemicals such as pesticides.

* Filtering tap water.

* Using stainless steel, glass or BPA-free plastic water bottles.

* Microwaving in ceramic or glass instead of plastic containers.

* Minimizing consumption of food grown with pesticides and meat raised with antibiotics and growth hormone.

* Minimizing consumption of processed, charred or well-done meats, which contain carcinogenic heterocyclic amines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

* Reducing radiation from X-rays and other medical sources.

This Presidential Cancer Panel has been in existence since 1971 and they're first now coming out with these warnings.

Too bad they didn't know any of the women in our food co-op... cos we could have clued them in on this stuff decades ago, since we were broadcasting this exact information from the rooftops back then.

The initials for the Presidential Cancer Panel are "PCP". That's GOT to mean something, don't you think?

I like Kate

2010-05-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

I happen to like Kate Gosselin.

(I happen to like her old hairstyle too but anyway...)

I must admit I didn't like her at first. I thought she was gruff, flip, too full of herself, too cocksure (adj.- overconfident; arrogant) all the time, demanding, stern with both her kids & her man, & way too verbally opinionated. But that was my impression at first glance. I never watched "What's-His-Name & Kate Plus Eight" except for little snippets on YouTube or within articles about her online.

The more I watch her & read quotes from her, however, the more I like her. She's sort of grown on me. I see her fiercely protecting her children, working hard to support her children in the manner inwhich they've become accustomed no matter what she has to do (including making a fool out of herself on "Dancing With The Stars"), standing up to that walking-overload-of-testosterone-with-two-legs that used to be her husband, and pretty much saying exactly what's on her mind & heart when asked... by whomever. She doesn't mince words, as far as I can tell, and I've never watched an interview with her online where a question has seemed to take her off balance. No scripted answers with Kate... she says it like it is.

I think most men... and many women... are threatened by a strong woman who knows her mind & speaks it. In fact I don't "think" they're threatened, I *know* they are.

If that sounds like the voice of experience, it is.

Maybe it's a nurse thing. Kate & I share that too.

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

~Anna Quindlen