Calulu - Roadkill on the Information Superhighway

When The Going Gets Tough Things Get Weird

2012-01-26T10:57:00.002-05:00

Turns out the Maw In Law has had oxygen problems due to her ongoing pneumonia problems. The hospital finally got her straightened out and on the mend. Last night she went home finally. She's still having mental issues and will be seen by an Alzheimer's doctor in a few days.

My poor husband is still down there in Louisiana with her. He and his brother have clashed over her care, family money and a host of things. My new sister in law accused my husband of 'teasing' and 'tormenting' my Maw In Law. It's just not good at all. Makes me so very thankful that I stayed behind to start my new job.

My mother and I have had another in a long series of falling outs. This one was particularly stupid. I've decided to just let her be for awhile. There's no sense in trying to talk to her because it's just agitating her even more.

Now, for some good news. Pedro came home. I opened the door a few days after he disappeared, after 3 nights of snow flurries, ice and low temps and in he strolled. He was still rather fat and sassy, acting like nothing had ever happened and this was a normal thing, his 'Who me??' performance. He makes me laugh.

Work is going well. I feel like I'm finally catching on and doing much better. Met a few graying hairs like myself working there so I no longer feel like the Wreck of the Hesperus in a field of teenyboppers any longer.

Things could always be worse I suppose. I am enjoying being home with just my son Andy. The two of us have always gotten along very well when left behind.

Snow Luck

2012-01-21T15:04:00.002-05:00

Not a real good couple of days. My Siamese cat Pedro disappeared on Thursday night ahead of this snow storm we got yesterday. Andy opened the door to let our mostly outdoor kitty Kiki in and Pedro leapt and darted his way to freedom. Pedro is primarily an indoor cat but he had escaped a few times. Usually he returns to the back door, looking in through the glass with a sheepish look on his face. Not this time.

I don't know what to do. We've walked the streets and driven the surrounding countryside calling his name to no avail. He hates everyone that isn't a family member so I feel pretty confident that no one snatched him for his prettiness. But there are hawks and wild animals out there that might harm him not to mention cars. We're pretty upset right now.

Jim is still in Louisiana with his mother. Some days she seems almost well and then the next she has a bad day. There's no real diagnosis yet, just that she's having troubles maintaining oxygen saturation levels and other things. Heart attack ruled out by enzyme testing, no word yet on the GI tract bleeding.

My insurance company nurse that calls and monitors me weekly is insisting I get a oxymeter and a medical alert bracelet so that's what my morning was filled with. I ordered a very pretty bracelet with a beaded band of crystals in light blues containing an engraved silver disc with my medical information on it and in the database. It wasn't cheap but I guess it's better to have that on me all the time than to fall into the hands of some EMS or others that could not tell from looking at me all the common things I am allergic to and my laundry list of medical conditions.

Giddy Up Gene

2012-01-16T22:35:00.004-05:00

(I've been watching Weird Al videos whenever the stress of this situation is getting to me. I love his video about Charles Nelson Reilly "CNR" Rest in peace Gene Rayburn..)

Jim's been blogging his days onto his Facebook notes each day and it's breaking my heart. His time in Louisiana is wearing on him. Most of the time his own mother doesn't know who he is or anyone else. When she does regain lucidity she tells him she doesn't want to visit that dreamland again. She knows something is wrong but not exactly what that is.

He did manage to get her in to see her doctor, who started examining her and determined something was horribly wrong more than dementia and slow recovery from pneumonia. The doctor had her immediately admitted to one of the better hospitals in town, not Mid City. The doctors there discovered she has bleeding in her GI tract and that Friday night she'd had a heart attack. A. Heart. Attack!

Mid City kept her in the ER a few hours and said it was merely rapid onset dementia. Now how in the hell does a medical professional mistake dementia for a heart attack? Pissed here.

So everything is still pretty scrambled up. Jim has to be at the hospital tomorrow at daybreak to meet with the cardiologist and the gastroenterologist so he can plan around what needs to happen for her. It's obvious now that there is no way he can possibly fly home on Friday like originally planned. Typically Continental is being diskish about allowing him to schedule a later flight but the upcharge is doable, not as much as I feared it would be. I encouraged Jim to stay as long as he needs to, he has lots of accrued sick leave he'll never use. She needs him.

On this front I've been shook up by the ever changing daily reports from Louisiana. Between the training on my new job and my Maw in Law's medical problems I've been a nervous wreck, praying for her and that my husband have the strength to get through this. Tomorrow he'd got to get the power of attorney signed off on and filed.

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A brief note to those coming here from The Daily KOS. Many of you are taking my piece "Bring Me The Flaming Head Of Barbie" completely out of context. I suggest you check out No Longer Quivering, Vyckie Garrison's site, and read the rest of the series, particularly "Surfing" to get a sense of my torturous recovery from Fundamentalism. The reason I find the Duggars repellant and dangerous is that they only show a false sugar-coated picture of what being an Evangelical Quiverful family is like. They completely misrepresent the life and its manifold dangers. Read the story of Tess Willoughby at NLQ and tell me that type of life is not dangerous.

Plus, I'm no feminist. In fact, I hate quantitative labels like 'Feminist' or 'Good Baptist' or even 'Chosen sexual orientation' What I am is a woman that survived spiritual abuse and have come out the other side with a deep desire to help those who either have suffered or are suffering from a similar type of abuse. I am a licensed minister who does counsel others. I've seen my old church splinter and fall apart after the pastor embezzled church funds and went on his merry way unpunished. I've counseled and helped those left that did their darndest to torment me and tell me I was going to hell after leaving that church. Now they are deeply broken people that keep asking me how you survive seeing what you believe crumble and those you love as brothers and sisters betray you. It's a hard struggle.

Thinking About Old OLD Age

2012-01-15T11:31:00.002-05:00

If this week has taught me anything it's that getting old really sucks in some significant ways. I'm working at the new job with a gaggle of sixteen to eighteen year old kids and they smoke my fanny in job performance every single day. I flub up, left and right, while they cruise on through and remember all the zillion nit picky little details like it's nothing. I pray I get better at what I do but I fear I will never catch on like that.

I guess I've been thinking about old age because of what's going on with my mother in law and, I know this sounds silly, with my cat.

Jim's called and told me he arrived in Louisiana to find his mother back in the hospital again, this time because she completely stopped making any sense and could not breath well. I can hear in his voice how shocked he is by how rapidly she's deteriorated in only two short weeks. The woman that baked loads of her infamous sugar cookies a mere three weeks ago cannot walk, control her bodily functions or talk to where she makes any sense.

Jim is taking my advice and getting her to a geriatric specialist, getting her evaluated for possible rapid onset dementia and trying to have her seen by a critical care pulmo. He's seen the Mid City hospital in action and is demanding she not be taken there any longer because it's obvious they don't know what the heck they are doing. All good steps.

But in all reality probably not enough. The ritzy retirement community she lives at is pushing to have her relocated elsewhere as you cannot stay there if you cannot feed yourself and get around. So Jim has the additional burden of trying to place her in a different facility.

It doesn't sound at all like she's long for this world to me, which breaks my heart.

While Jim's been gone my little old man cat, Lil Bit, has been all over me. He drowses on my shoulder while I crochet and watch tv. He lays on me and naps when I'm laying down reading. He sleeps next to me all night long. He follows me.

I've had him since 2004 when our neighbors abandoned him after moving out. The vet said he was older than ten years then, which would put his age at perhaps at the youngest 18 or 19 years old. He's having balance problems and will fall over sometimes. He's going blind, already blind in one eye with cataracts forming on both. He's pin thin even if the vet has run tons of tests on him and says his only real problem is he's getting very old and things are wearing out. He has no teeth so I must mix up special geriatric super mushy kitty food for him. He's starting to show signs of senility setting in.

He has the best personality and sweetest nature I've ever seen in a cat. I love him so dearly and I'm his favorite person in the family. The vet says in human years he'd probably be around 85 to 95 years old, same age grouping as my mother in law.

All this with my mother in law is making me dread not only her eventual death but the coming passing of Lil Bit. Feels like I'm in a season of coming mourning and I've already started.

Up Up & Away

2012-01-13T23:01:00.002-05:00

Poor Jim. I had to drive him in this morning so he could catch his flight out of the Baltimore-Washington airport down to our middish sized city in South Louisiana his mother resides in.

I feel for him. Coldest damn day of the year so far. Stiff blowing wind. 30th anniversary of the worst air disaster to take place in the Washington Metro area. And that is all without adding in the supposed bad luck of Friday The 13th.

No bad luck here today, unless you count my bi weekly Xolair injections. But I'm so used to that needle now I rarely flinch. (If you've arrived here Googling "Xolair" and want to know what to expect or are worried about starting the therapy leave a comment and I can point you in the right direction.)

Hoping Jim had a good flight because getting from here to there is a pain in the rump. I remember the olden days, when I was young and flying was something rather rarefied. People actually dressed up to fly. The flight crew was solicitous, respectful and attentive to your every need. They even served meals on the flight along with Highballs and Scotch.

I must have been all of five the first time I flew, back in 1965. We flew from Greater New Orleans airport to Las Vegas. I barely remember Vegas except I was confined to the swimming pool, snack bar and hotel room. Seemed pretty boring to me plus a sitter came in to watch me at night while my parents gambled and drank.

But the thing that stuck with the most was that flying was something special, privileged even. Now you're squashed into an airborne tin can with other sad saps, praying the flight attendant will take pity on you and bring you a soda, if you're lucky.

The flying part isn't even the worst part of it all. The worst has to be what you now have to go through at the airport. At least Redcaps are still there to tote your luggage if you need it. Monstrously long lines at the counters, pushed through what seems like cattle chutes into the security area where you must strip off your shoes and shuffle barefoot over carpeting surely rife with the foot funk, athletes foot of the masses and worse.

They xray your stuff and I always wonder how much residual radiation ends up in your laptop and other possessions. Last time I flew I ended up going through one of those silly newfangled body scanners that lets the TSA see just how weird your body is and if you're hiding something you shouldn't under your clothes. I worry about the long term effect of the radiation of those but it's preferable to the search....I flew a few years ago mere days after the infamous Underwear Bomber and set off some sort of detector at the airport with the cast on my fractured tibia/fibia. I got treated to one of those wonderful searches in a private room.

Flying home brings it's own extra challenges. We cannot get direct flights there, so changing planes it is, ending up on a very ghetto tree hopper tiny airplane. Usually there's turbulence badly during that landing at the airport on the banks of the Mississippi River from the buffeting winds off the water. Look, there's Exxon and their storage tanks, oh, there's the FEMA trailer park, oops, the River, ahh, the airport as the plane bumps around giving you the penny tour.

Jim's task is a grim one, to see if his mother improves or goes downhill and to try to help her as best he can. No one is quite sure if she's going to recover from this illness or if it's the end. I'm getting the sense that this may be her last year on earth but I'm hoping that I'm wrong.

I hope his flight was alright. I haven't heard from him but I haven't heard of any planes crashing either, ha ha.

Aleve Taking

2012-01-12T09:31:00.003-05:00

Turns out my mother in law isn't doing very well. The doctors don't seem to be able to make up their minds what to do with her. They change the antibiotics, keep her in the hospital for four days then send her home. Two days pass and she's back in the hospital. This has been going on since right after Thanksgiving.

Jim's brother has been with her all week but tomorrow Jim is flying out to see if he can take over from his brother. The sad fact of being in many hospitals is if you don't have a family member there with you then you face the risk of being ignored by the medical staff. My experience is that at the teaching hospitals and more highly rated ones this isn't a problem but you end up in a small town hospital or one of the ones that has a reputation for problems and you better have someone up there calling for the nurse or making sure you get what you need.

They are releasing my mother in law today and it's back to the retirement community. Jim will be there with her and this will give him a chance to assess what's really going on. She's talking that she's tired of living.

I wish I could go but with two kids in college at the same time someone has to slog along at work as well as oversee the home front. The job is going well. Yesterday I got to work with the customers and I was having a ball, going into my usual stand up routine self and laughing with folks. I'm not laughing over one part of the stand up, my stupid back is acting up again so while Jim is doing his leaving taking today at work I'm going to be taking Aleve and/or other things like I have no concerns over croaking my liver.

A friend of mine passed along to me a web addy Jules Gluten Free recipe to make your own very light popcorn flour! I haven't had a chance to try it yet as I'm still eating my giant loaf of whole grain bread but this will be next up - Gluten Free Popcorn Flour Bread

Training & Blue Corn

2012-01-10T11:02:00.002-05:00

The last four days have been filled with training and worship team. I did discover that we have Gluten Free blue cornmeal on sale at work and I'm dying to try some. I have the perfect recipe for it that I had made for years. The only flour it calls for is cornmeal. I made it last night with coarse ground organic cornmeal and it was delicious!

The only problem being that it's loaded with cheese and with eggs as well as chopped veggies. I'm trying my darndest to eat healthy and this cornmeal isn't exactly what I would call healthy. But it is hearty and satisfying.

Yesterday it snowed off and on all day in the Piedmont of Virginia. It was the perfect day to stay home, bake bread and make navy bean soup. The cornbread is the perfect compliment to bean soup or chili.

I was having sort of a stress meltdown yesterday so by the evening baking, cooking and working on a purple silk sweater were about the only things I was capable of. My elderly mother in law has been in and out of the hospital and she's not doing so well. It's throwing something of a monkey wrench into our lives and has pretty much upended our ability to plan. I adore her, she's been the best mother in law a gal could have so I'm sorry to see her suffering like this. I hope she gets better soon.

Family is really one of the most important things in this life. Even when the family is a little off kilter or doesn't match up with something like the Brady Bunch..

Gluten Free All Purpose Whole Grain Bread

2012-01-09T18:36:00.003-05:00

I love this recipe because of the fact that it is so versatile. You can switch out the 'whole grain' ingredient with GF oats, chia seeds, flaxseed meal, Teff flour or almond meal. Just make sure your mixture comes to a complete cup.

Also when I list 'butter' in a recipe it's real butter, not margarine. Margarine can be substituted according to your own tastes/budget. I usually try to use organic or natural ingredients, such as farm fresh eggs, butter and milk. Sometime I use unpasteurized goats milk or almond milk in this recipe. If you cannot eat the eggs for allergy or you're practicing vegan you can use an egg substitute, such as flax gel and the recipe will turn out fine. It really is very adaptable to any dietary need!

Gluten Free All Purpose Whole Grain Bread

2 cups brown rice flour
1 cup your choice of grain or combo of grains
1 1/2 cup sorghum flour
1 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup potato starch
2 1/4 teaspoon yeast
2 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
5 eggs
4 tablespoons blue agave syrup or brown rice syrup
1/2 cup of melted butter
2 1/2 cups warm milk

Usually I put this together in the bread machine, placing the ingredients in the order listed in the machine before setting the machine on the dough cycle, put the finished dough in greased bread pans and allow to rise in a warm place for an hour until baking for 50 minutes at 350F in the oven.

Enjoy!

Back To Normal Whatever That Is

2012-01-06T16:52:00.002-05:00

Half the family is back now and we've moved back into the school, work, home routines again except we've all been hitting the gym daily now as part of our whole New Years resolution.

I went in today for my first day on the new job. It was okay. I go back every day in the next week for training. We will see. Just got back from buying work approved pants and shoes. Retail requirements are often so weird in the dress code. At least this time I'm not sitting unseen in a cubical wearing a business suit.

The thing that's taken up huge blocks of my time this week was watching the Iowa Caucus and the developments from that. I'd heard from a few friends still in the Evangelical and Fundamentalist movements that they are being encouraged from the pulpit to turn out en masse and vote for Santorum.

It's funny because he's a Catholic and you know in the Fundigelical world that's a hop, skip and jump closer to hell.

So why him and not Bachmann? Because while Bachmann is closer to their ideological positions she's a vagina possessor and heaven forfend if a woman dares do something that runs counter to that old chestnut they believe in that dictates that a woman's role is in the home, only in the home.

Why not Romney or Huntsman? They're Mormons and according to the Fundyland guide Mormons are cult members in an evil Satanic cult.

Ron Paul is too leftist for them and I suspect that Rick Perry having so little chance now is why they dropped him even if he had the Tea Party and Fundy seal of approval originally.

The Republicans are a mess this cycle and the religious folks aren't helping any even if the Duggars came out and endorsed Santorum.

Gluten Free Vegetable Burrito

2012-01-04T16:11:00.002-05:00

This is a quick easy recipe that I picked up from a mailer our insurance company sent my husband. The point of the recipe was that it was low fat/low glycemic index for those people like him who are pre-diabetic. I altered it very slightly and have been making this as a quick, cheap, filling and nutritious lunch.

The recipe calls for corn tortillas but in the illustration that came with it they clearly used white flour tortillas. I've made it with the corn tortilla but much prefer it with Teff tortillas from La Tortilla Factory. The only trick to using the Teff ones is that you need to heat them in a pan, not in the microwave before assembling. Teff seems to toughen up in the microwave.

The advantage to Teff is that it is a very high protein grain. It's a bit pricey to buy the flour and use in breads but the nutritional value of Teff is so much better than many of the Gluten Free flour alternatives that it is well worth the price. It adds another layer of flavor to this recipe.

Gluten Free Vegetable Burrito
(makes 4 servings)

Ingredients
1 1/3 cups cooked black beans
2 tbsp chopped red onion (I usually use more)
1/2 cup chopped tomatores
4 tortillas (corn or Teff)
1/2 salsa
4 tbsp plain Greek yogurt
2 tbsp chopped green onions

Mix beans with onion and tomatoes. Microwave the corn tortillas or heat in a skillet the Teff tortillas. Divide bean mixture between tortillas & fold each tortilla around filling. Spoon salsa over burritos and microwave on high for 15 seconds. Top with yogurt and chopped green onions.

This is another recipe I sometimes alter by adding chopped sweet peppers or red bell peppers or any other Mexican food favorite that isn't too high in fat or carbs.

Gluten Free Power Breakfast

2012-01-03T10:42:00.003-05:00

This is what I've gone back to eating this year to boost my health again. I lose weight when I eat proper amounts of vegetables and fruits. Want to lose weight and NOT feel hungry? Add vegetables.

It's a flexible recipe. The non negotiable are brown rice cakes, sauteed fresh spinach & a scrambled egg. Anything else is just extras depending upon what I have around. My favorite version of this contains tomatoes, sweet mild peppers and avocado on top.

It's quick, it's easy. It makes the same amount, two, as seen in the photo. In a tiny amount of olive oil saute down two handfuls of fresh spinach. I usually add a little garlic to the spinach. Layer the spinach on the brown rice cakes, scramble an egg and layer it over the spinach. You can add a tiny amount of cheese or sliced tomatoes, peppers, avocado or any type of veggie you fancy.

I know many people go with things like oatmeal when dieting but oatmeal is tricky for people with gluten intolerance. Gluten Free oatmeal options are limited to Bob's Red Mill or one of the GF instant options that are loaded with sugar. For me oatmeal doesn't last, it makes me so super hungry before lunchtime that it sabotages my attempts to not eat between meals. I have found I need the protein of an egg in the morning. Find what works for you in the morning that's gluten free.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T12:26:00.003-05:00

I had what had to be the most low key New Years Eve in my life. Andy went to a party and I stayed home working on his crocheted Skyrim hat, watching the History Channel and drinking a few mango avocado papaya smoothies. Around midnight I lay on my bed and listened to worship music and worshiped for about two hours.

This has been the most blissful restful relaxed week I've had in years. No responsibilities, no cares, no worries, nothing on the agenda. I've slept a great deal because of my cold, I've read, I've simply contemplated the divine and it's led me to make a few resolutions this year.

1 - I'm not going to tolerate crap from anything this year. I will be calling out people that act like jackholes and stress me out.
2 - I'm going to treat myself kindly, rest when I need it, regardless of how anyone else in the universe feels about it.
3 - I will always strive to be true to who I am and drop any people pleasing performance behaviors.
4 - I will try to acknowledge the divine and keep God foremost in my thoughts.
5 - I will do my best to look at the hurt behind others words and actions instead of taking offense. I will pray more for those that usually yank my chain.
6 - I will redouble my efforts to eat clean organic and wheat free this year. I might go on a raw foods fast for a few weeks to kick it off.
7 - I will be more active, not planning on running a marathon but I will take small steps, like parking a long ways from the store and walking, going to the gym every few days, small steps.

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Simple list but ultimately things I must do for me, my health and my emotional well being.

I saw this article this morning about how eating Gluten Free seems to have triggered eating disorders and depression in some people. I'm not surprised. When I first realized I was super allergic to wheat I raged and mourned because I love bread. It's not easy to get past that depression and realize there are good alternatives. It was the thing that sent me on an inward journey to start trying to develop my own recipes. I learned I could make bread so good that it tasted almost identical to the real thing. In this year I will start posting all of my bread recipes here, that thing I've guarded against since I was selling bread at the farmers market. But as I've taken a real job and will not be baking for anyone but me I've decided to share here. Missing bread is a terrible thing.

Thirty One

2011-12-30T23:11:00.000-05:00

I was driving around the other day running a few errands and when I got back to my car I caught the tail end of a some random preacher speaking about the proper role of women in The Kingdom on local Christian radio. I didn't catch his name or the name of his ministry or sponsor but his message was loud and clear and made my blood boil. Bullseye. Trigger hit. Buttons pushed.

He started off speaking on the subject of what his ten year old daughter wanted to be when she grew up. She's crazy for gymnastics and he asked her that question about the future we all contemplate, what did she want to be when she grew up. I thought it was rather sad that his daughter said she was going to grow up to teach gymnastics instead of saying she dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast or of winning this or that gym meet. She simply wanted to teach her passion. She didn't dare expand her dreams to include anything like actually being in competition as a gymnast. Her own goals were limited in scope to start with.

It was pretty obvious she wasn't going to receive the same type of nurturing or encouragement the average 'worldly' or 'atheist' parent might give their offspring. Her passion and talent would never receive the type of acknowledgment and respect it might elsewhere. It's hard to develop to the best of your talent without the emotional support of those closest to you. I suspect that is why this child could not see any further than teaching one day.

Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to teach. But most of the people I've known that have a great passion for something and end up teaching do it much later on, as adults, they don't envision it as a kid. My friend that teaches sewing started out designing and sewing, not dreaming of a future teaching. I can tell you the first twenty years I painted I never once thought of teaching, passing on my knowledge to others until I reached middle age. Now I teach the occasional art class and I still create on a regular basis. It blows my mind that the only way this child can see her future involving her passion is by channeling it into teaching.

Random Preacher stated in a very proud voice how he reminded his daughter that gymnastics teacher was a worthy profession, at least until she took on her real God-given honorable profession as wife and mother, at which time she'd have to give up gymnastics.

I forgot even what the niggling details of his sermonette actually were because I could not get over the audacity of this strange man decreeing that his daughter's future was one of such a limited scope, limited by the restrictions he imposes based upon his own personal interpretation of a book written long ago and transcribed many times. I'm so saddened for that poor child, not allowed to decide for herself what her role will be years from now, her future as mapped out as that of any lifer in prison.

Her father started pontificating on the role of the Proverbs 31 woman and how our society is all screwed up because women don't know their 'place', don't live that Proverbs 31 life of waiting on husband and kids hand and foot.

I don't know what version of the Bible this guy was reading but in mine the woman described in Proverbs 31 as a righteous woman wasn't sitting around trembling waiting on her lord and master. This was a woman in charge of her life in significant ways. She supervised others in her household, she bought and sold, she didn't stop every two seconds to ask her husband what he wanted for dinner or if she should do this or that. She understood her value, her worth and her role as self confident and freely able to do what was right for those in her care and for the family. Seemed to me that she occupied a role of almost equality with her husband, like a partner, working at those things she had talent for. Not a slave, not a servant by any means.

Yet most Fundegelical people will tell you that a true righteous Christian woman never works outside of the home, never has servants, never moves or does a damn thing without the man's approval. Looks way different to me than what Proverbs 31 outlines. How can that be?

I think if most women, Christian or not, acted with honor and self confidence at the things put before them as their lot, be it raising kids or working at a job, this world would be a better place. And yeah, there should be room for those things you have a passion for. Life without passion isn't worth much. I hope that poor kid realizes that truth and has a chance to live her passion without a bunch of knuckleheads telling her no.

Gluten Free Medications

2011-12-30T14:25:00.003-05:00

You may not realize it but by trying to live a Gluten Free life there are many over the counter and prescription drugs containing glutens. You can call the manufacturer to inquire or here's a list from of the current 'safe'gluten free medications.

If you're unsure it never hurts to ask. So many things have unlisted gluten lurking in them.

Recovery Discoveries

2011-12-29T11:20:00.002-05:00

I did learn one new thing about myself during the holidays. Now that I'm in year six of recovery from abusive fundegelical Christianity I am not willing to passively sit back and allow my former abusers to try to heap more on me again.

While I was working the trunk show at Costco one night a former member of my old church came in. I recognized her from a long distance away and I know she saw Laura and I. But each time I caught her looking at us she looked away. This must of happened at least a dozen times. Jane would gaze curiously at Laura or myself until one of us turned to her and she frowned and looked elsewhere.

This was working my last nerve for a variety of reasons. First of all I'd always been on good terms with Jane. We'd never been anything but cordial to each other even after my leaving. Second, I could see how this was affecting Laura. Laura had come to reject anything of faith after being hurt repeatedly by these people. And here was another one heaping it on again.

I walked over towards her a couple of times and she darted away. Finally I cornered her at the cash stand and told her that what she was doing was cruel to Laura. I didn't get a rats patootie if she spoke to or even acknowledged my existence with the nod of a head but I would not allow someone to continue to hurt my daughter that way. Pointed out I had nothing against her or any of the others still at the church and I wasn't involved in their split and I would have greeted her gladly. Everyone is owed basic human decency.

Jane said nothing, just gasped in shock and walked away without a word.

Several days later Carol from the old church came in and she was friendly to me, but she always had been ever since Jim and I had spent time with her before and after her kidney cancer surgery. She turned to us because of Jim's own cancer surgery.

While Carol stood there in the Costco she told me many things that had happened at the old church, filling in the blanks from what Josie and the ones on the other side had shared. Things made more sense now.

Turns out our old pastor Patrick had been moving monies around in different accounts of the church to pay himself after most everyone who had high salaries that tithed left. I knew of Patrick's letter he'd sent everyone in the church the year after we left. The letter speculated about the salaries of most at the church and what percentage were tithing. Patrick went on to say he demanded everyone fully tithe their ten percent. It was angry, it was ranty and many resented it so badly they stopped tithing, hence the money shuffling against the wishes of the Elders board.

At some point Patrick just started taking money without going through the Elders, basically he embezzled what little there was left in the building fund, mission funds and other set asides. When confronted Patrick resigned suddenly.

I knew there had to be more to the story than Patrick suddenly deciding that he was going to teach yet ending up being the dairy stocker at the local grocery store. Saints with feet of clay!

At the old church so many people idolized, sucked up to, treated Patrick like a rock star that could do no wrong when it was painfully apparent that he was just a guy with the flaws and foibles everyone deals with.

Carol, Jane and pals are outraged that Patrick has been hired on as a part time pastor at a much bigger church and are determined to make a stink, out him as a thief to that congregation so he'll be fired.

I suspect the other congregation's ministerial team already knows and that Patrick is allowed nowhere near the funds. This is a small town and nasty secrets have a way of squirming out.

Isn't the whole point of Christianity that we're all going to mess up and need forgiveness? I know I sure do and I probably shouldn't have said the things I did to Jane. Why can't we all just get along. Why does religion always have to devolve into the 'us versus them' mentality?

Colds, Jobs, Peace & Quiet

2011-12-28T17:52:00.002-05:00

I'm enjoying having half the family gone down to our old family stomping grounds in Louisiana. It's quiet, I go to bed when I feel like it, get up whenever, eat out of the fridge leftovers. Andy is here but he looks after his own meals and needs.

During this break I'd initially planned to swink and tote the furniture around into new positions in each room so I could scrub every surface. Yeah, a real old fashioned spring cleaning a season too soon. But this continued cold I have has played havoc with my plans. Today I managed to get my pulmonologist to load me up with meds and I'm still swanning around and resting like I'm some sort of delicate flower of the Southland instead of the tough old bird I am.

But I got word this morning that one of the jobs I'd been interviewing for, a part time job in retail, was hiring me in the New Year. I couldn't be happier as job hunting, interviewing and testing seems to be one of the strangest and most humility-producing acts a human can encounter. Plus I need the dough to pay my capacious load of medical bills. Jim will delay paying medical bills till threatened with a lawsuit. I don't get it. Pay the damn thing and be done with it. This year there's been quite a few so I'm thrilled to have a way to finish paying them out.

Tonight I will be continuing to work on my second Sky Rim crocheted helmet hat, this one for Andy. Amber, yours is next, I promise!

Life is good even with a cold.

Fiery Strawberry Smoothies

2011-12-27T15:20:00.002-05:00

Someone complained to me the other day that I'd posted no new Gluten Free Recipes in awhile. That is true.

During the time I spent at the Big Box store I got to see many many demonstrations for the Vitamix blender and sample all the delicious smoothies and soups you can make with it. Now that I'm home and sickly I've hauled out my old non-Vitamix blender and started having a smoothie when my throat is sore or my sinuses stopped up. This one is one of my favorites.

Gluten Free Fiery Strawberry Smoothies

Place in your blender
1 cup strawberries with the leaves still attached
1 cup ice cubes
1 half a banana
1 half a fresh jalapeno pepper
1 spoonful of blue agave syrup

and puree till smooth. Sometimes I like to add a little mango and plain greek yogurt for a creamier smoothie.

One of the big things I learned from the Vitamix gal is that I've been tossing into the compost bin things you can grind up in your smoothie that are good for you. Like, the leaves and tops of strawberries, cores of pineapple, tops and greens of celery and carrots. Apparently they also had vital nutrients and fiber. I know it sounds gross but it is so delicious!

Blue Toothed Christmas

2011-12-27T10:04:00.002-05:00

We survived another family holiday together. No blood was shed even if some cursing did occur from me at one point. We exchanged nice gifts, we went out to eat on Christmas Day at the local Chinese place with friends ala "The Christmas Story" just because Josie and I both decided we weren't cooking for Christmas this year.

I don't know why Josie decided no cooking but for me it was simple. Cold plus fever plus honking out gallons of snot equals the most low key holiday ever. I stayed in bed most of Christmas day and yesterday. Most of the family has left for a post-Christmas get together in New Orleans. I decided being sick I would stay home this year.

Working retail for the holidays was an experience in and of itself. I developed a new pet peeve while working at the Big Box store. I discovered I hate, hate, hate, hate many Blue Tooth users.

Why? It's simple.

You'll be sitting in your little booth with your product and someone will walk up or by and they are talking. For a split second you think either they are talking to you or perhaps they are some random crazy person talking loudly to themselves. It's disconcerting either way, like suddenly waking up in the middle of a convo when you haven't heard the beginning. So you startle and wrack your brain to get with the program here only to realize it's some entitled person traipsing around the Big Box Store shouting about their hemorrhoids or foolish sexual adventuring or why they hate squid. Really TMI territory.

I'm not a fan of people yakking it up on their cell phones in stores and restaurants in general but the Blue Tooth earpiece takes it to an entire different level of annoying.

I've decided my rebellion for the next year is to go out of my way to be extra polite in public since this world is filled with folks that seem to be making it their lifes mission to trample the rules of polite society.

Ho Ho Ho & All That Jazz

2011-12-19T23:17:00.002-05:00

"On the 7th day of retail the Big Box Store gave to me..

7 types of coworker drama
6 hotdogs eaten
5 other crazy vendors
4 pies balancing on a fat lady's lap on a Hoverround complete with adult diapers held between her knees.
3 creeps a flirting
2 lesbians kissing
1 Buddhist monk buying a Taylor Swift CD....."

I haven't been around much because I've been working a seasonal job. I'm a rep for a luxury bedding company that was supposed to do a trunk show over the last few weeks in a upscale dept store. I've ended up being switched to a Big Box store before the sale even started.

And it's been hella weird, weird in just about every way you can imagine...

The set up was supposed to be that I worked 5 to 6 hours a day, all I am permitted by my doctor, selling this expensive bedding.. it didn't work out that way.

The other person working there was a gal named Trudy, who had sold these trunk shows before. Day after we started working our back to back 5 hour shifts Trudy's cousin or uncle or niece or someone she might be slightly related to died in a car accident. She was distrait, bereft even...so I agreed to work her shift and my shift that day and the next day so she could attend family visitation and the funeral. She offered to work all day Friday and Saturday for me so the hours would divide out to be fair.

Did this happen? Oh hell no. She neglected to show up or call and is currently not answering her phone or apparently picking up any messages. So I've been working 11 shifts back to back to back till tomorrow.

I could gladly smack Trudy around considering she's been acting like the C word since training, whining about the schedule demanding Christmas Eve off even if she's Jewish. I've been very laid back and bit back my tongue about all of this.

The owner of the company worked for me Sunday morning so I could go to church but he immediately hired Laura, my college aged daughter and today I trained her. She's more than slightly freaking out because she doesn't know the products well but I know she's going to do a great job.

In the middle of this the Creep That Hangs Around And Stares At Women got into some sort of dramatic encounter with the Vitamix lady. The cops were called and the rented brownshirted mall cops escorted him far far away. Plus we are both pretty sure the Pottery vendor is on drugs. Plus we've send some very freaky people showing up. People watching is so much fun even if most the people coming into the Big Box Store seem to be as joyful, happy and filled with the holiday spirit as Grinchs farts.

The Poor Tax

2011-12-08T16:51:00.003-05:00

You know I've never really given it much thought as to how modern suburban or rural life places an additional burden on the poor but boyo boy, did it hit me today.

Couple of weeks ago my fancy European top of the line three year old dryer decided to only partially function. It was even nice enough to blink out an error code on the display panel that tells me exactly what's wrong with it. Turns out that the heating element was malfunctioning.

I knew when I both the washer dryer pair that getting them fixed might be a bitch. But I was confident that repairs would be few and far between as I'd had similar models of these machines by the same manufacturer when I lived in Germany. They'd been awesome.

These have been awesome up until now. I called the only authorized repair shop nearby and it's in another state completely. They have a two week wait time for appointments to even look at it much less repair it. They charge mileage. By the time I tottered up the repair was going to run I could put a decent sized downpayment on a new version. So I looked up the repair on YouTube and it's simple enough. The unsimple thing is waiting, waiting for the part. Andy and I prized the back of the machine off to get the part number and it's going to be a couple of weeks till we get the heating element assembly and repair the machine.

It works, but it now puts out minimal heat. You can chose to dry one item at a time or a small load in about four hours. We do daily small loads. Except for sheets and towels, I let them pile up til today, I took the towels and sheets down to the local laundry mat, a place I've only been in once in all these years here, the last time a dryer broke down.

I realize the last time I was using a coin operated washing machine and dryer had to be back when I was a single gal, back in the Mesozoic era. Back then loads were usually around fifty cents to wash and fifty cents to dry. Usually I did two loads a week then, sheets and towels and then clothes. Two bucks. Big deal.

Now it seems like how much the price has gone up is astronomical. It cost $3.50 to wash and $3.75 to dry. Total of $7.25 per load. Two loads would run you about $14.50.

Don't give me that jazz about inflation and energy costs, let's break this down into buying power of that $14.50 now versus $2.00 back then. For two bucks I could have gotten a Diet Coke (you know I know my Diet Coke prices because I'm as addicted to Diet Coke as Charlie Sheen is to hookers and blow) and a bag of Combos. $14.50 these days might buy you two and a half meals at McDonalds, if you have coupons. It just doesn't stand up as inflation, it's artificially inflated I suspect because the ones using the laundry mat seemed to mostly be those at the bottom of the socio economic ladder.

I sure didn't see any one percenters there, or any Teaparty type people or even regular old middle class. I did see a lot of desperately poor folks, more than a few of which had either run out of money or were over stuffing their washer or dryer in an attempt to get the most laundry done with the least money.

I realize the issue of poor people having to pay far out of line to wash their clothes isn't a national emergency but I think it speaks to one of the fundamental problems in our society right now. The poor have few options and those that they do have access to seem determined to screw them out of every hard earned quarter.

In my years here on this planet I've been sad to observe that the ones least able to pay get taken advantage of again and again yet get blamed for their own poverty. Still makes me furious to see the injustice of how the poor are treated in this country, how conservatives just want to blame the poor for being poor instead of coming up with ways to help them help themselves get up to middle class.

As for me I think I'm going to take my old German drying rack out of the attic and start hanging out those sheets and towels instead of spending our dwindling nickels and dimes in a place that exploits the poor.

Occupy Wall Street is a good start but I think we need to start demanding better of people and places that exploit us all, but particularly the poor.

Tired On Tuesday

2011-12-06T11:25:00.002-05:00

I've been working on a huge catering job that I delivered this morning to one of the local country clubs. The crowning masterpiece of the job was the five gluten free Red Velvet cakes. They were decorated for the holidays and turned out beautifully! However, now I'm tired, bone tired, laying down on the floor tired, but that would never do at a time like this.

Today after cooking, cleaning, laundry and making like an electrician (changing out furnace thermostat) I'm going to attempt to decorate the house for the holidays. It's a task I love doing but I don't like doing alone. Now that the kids are older and Jim is obsessed with his fantasy football it always falls to me.

Sunday I did the outdoor lighting alone but I wasn't too bend out of shape about it. The day was surprisingly warm for December in the Piedmont and it was nice to be doing something different while everyone inside the house did their own thing.

But I have to say this is one of the things that does suck about your kids getting older. Christmas loses its importance to them. No excitement putting up the tree. No excitement over presents, caroling, anything to do with the holiday except that you get a long span of days off from college. That's it.

My Cat Is Racist

2011-12-02T21:46:00.002-05:00

I get such a chuckle out of my Siamese cat Pedro. When he was just a few months old he saw his first African American, Andy's pal Chad came over to spend the weekend. Pedro did what Pedro goes best around any stranger, he freaked out. But it wasn't his usual freak out and hide under the bed, it was freak out and not hide under the bed, his hair stood on end and he stared horrified at Chad for ages. Eventually, before the end of the weekend he decided Chad was okay even if he was a different color than the rest of us.

And Pedro remembers pretty well. He's undisturbed by Chad's comings and goings at our house. Chad is just another extended family member in his mind now.

This week Chad showed up with three other African American guys and one Chinese guy and it was Pedro freaking out over black people again. We laughed. Racist cat.

Now when it's a strange whitey it's freak out and hide under the bed, it's not freak out the world is ending.

Siamese are so damn strange.

Interviews & Pyramid Schemes

2011-12-01T16:43:00.002-05:00

So I'm looking for a part time job that will help ease the tightness of having two kids in college at the same time. I'm going to be at the farmers market again next year with my things again but in the mean time I am interviewing like mad.

And mad is what some of the responses to my inquiries after positions has been. Turns out that it seems like at least half of all employment ads are either a) a different version of the Nigerian scam or b) an attempt to get you to up click someone's ads for building ad revenue or c) some form of an Amway-like pyramid scheme.

Until I get an offer on a job I can do weekly until Farmers Market season I will be working a trunk show at various high end retailers of luxury goods. There will be some traveling involved.

This morning I had an interview at a Fortune 500 company I've wanted to work at for many years. I think it went well. I was the first person interviewed for the position so I'm hoping this helps me get my foot in the door.

One thing I did notice as I left and the next three interviewees were sitting in the lobby was that many people don't have a clue how to dress appropriately for different situations. Most everyone was looking so sloppy I could not believe it. Especially since the manager that interviewed me said that this company has a higher standard and you should reflect that in all ways there.

I learned it's not just idiotic middle aged ladies that drool over American Idol singers that don't have a clue how to dress. Most of the others waiting for their interviews wore pants, not even dress slacks, a few had on tee shirts and hoodies as well and the over all effect was just so sloppy.

My mother was a stickler for correct dress for the correct occasion and she has the tendency to over dress as a result but she's right. Better to show up over dressed than under dressed. I had on a tailored black dress with black pumps and a peacock blue suit jacket and was very well groomed. If nothing else I know I'll stand head and shoulders out from the crowd in that interview bunch.

Tomorrow I have another interview with a different firm and it will be an excuse to wear the pair of beige and cream spectator pumps I found in my closet, brand new, never worn and nestled in their original box. I can't even remember buying them but there they are, perfect for one of my nicer dresses.

You don't have to have expensive clothes to dress well and look right for situations like interviews. Good looks can be attained by simply mixing up what is in your closet.

I hope I get this job I was interviewed for today.

Shameful Joy

2011-11-29T14:55:00.002-05:00

I just finished that semi annual task that makes me crazy every time. Cleaning out my closet and packing away that seasons clothing.

I have so many clothing pieces it's shameful. I'm trying to still sort and give about half of my wardrobe to the local church poor closet. I didn't realize until today that I possess a black leather coat, a mink, a shearling lamb jacket and a coat make of antique Indian blankets. Gluttony, clothing gluttony of the worst kind. Everything is going but the Indian coat and the mink. I feel horrible that I've managed to accumulate such a greedy overstuffed closet. I think I'm going to have to sit down and work out exactly how much gear I really need and donate the rest. I have three, count 'em, three formal ball gowns, groan. I can't even remember the last time I wore one, had to be an MI ball in DC. Ugh.

How did this happen?

But I'm about to test drive a recipe for the holidays, Bacon Candy. Will post pictures and recipe if it works out. I think it's a win-win before even making it. Bacon and chocolate together.

Black Friday Shock

2011-11-28T10:50:00.002-05:00

Watching the news reports online during the day Friday made me so happy I've stepped away from the rampant consumerism that seems to be endemic in our culture now. This year, as in many years, I'm done with shopping except for a few things for stockings which I'm going to order online.

Once I did the Black Friday thing, many years ago and got up at 3 am to stand in line to get discounted toys for my kids. The pushing, the shoving, the general rudeness of every single shopper in the store was revolting so I decided years ago that the only thing Black Friday did was make me feel like Mr. Grinch. Bah Humbug..

I realized that for me personally I could not handle the stress of the season on my poor less than perfect health so I a) buy things when I see them that I know the family will love and b) give more small simpler things. This is a household where you will never find a Xbox or the keys to a new car under the tree. I make a few things, Laura has been begging me to make her a few garments out of batik material and I've crocheted a hat for Andy and Laura's boyfriend that look like characters in a video game they are nuts for. I'm crocheting Jim a purple silk & cotton sweater right now. Next will be my mom that will get a silk wrap in turquoise.

This weekend I'd intended to put up the Christmas lights on the outside of the house (Hello Mr. Griswold!) and put up the tree. But it was in the 60s and 70s here, unseasonable warm so I spent this weekend working on my garden, mulching, bedding down everything for winter and re potting those plants at are going inside.

Not very exciting I know, but it's just whats happening in this time of my life. No drama, not much interesting.

Turkey, Shock, Fatigue, Elvis and Jewish Fish Grits

2011-11-25T08:26:00.002-05:00

We got up early yesterday and took that couple of hour drive over to my eldest daughter Beth's house. It's gotten to be a tradition that we go to Beth's. She seemed to enjoy making this enormous part-traditional, part-Cajun and part-Jewish meal. Her in laws come down from Maryland and assorted family members, like her eldest daughter comes over from H-burg and we eat.

The meal is always weird-good and yesterday was no exception. Her in laws brought 6 pies, challah bread, grits with gefelt fish on top and sweet potato casserole. I am so sorry, I know I can't spell the fish, no offense intended. We brought home made french bread, freshly made cranberry sauce and my famous cranberry amaretto pound cake. Beth cooked seafood gumbo, turkey, salad and mixed veggie dressing. We ate, we talked, we sat around like bumper stunned toads.

Eventually Jeremy decided to show everyone his and Beth's vow renewal in Las Vegas at the Graceland Chapel by an Elvis impersonator. Both of them were pretty tipsy in the video but it was the Elvis minister that was a big old hoot!

I am worried about Beth because I could not help but notice she has black bags under her eyes and her face is bloated. She doesn't look well. I tried to ask her how she was doing but she blew me off, saying it was just a reaction to the flu shot. I hope so, but I think it might be more.

We left Beth and Jeremy's home and drove another few hours towards Josie's house like we were tripping on tryptophan. I'd been having a few Mimosas at Beth's so I was already goofy before we ate.

When we got to Josie's house I was happy to see my friend Laurie who'd moved up from Texas a few months ago. We all knew each other from the Koolaid drinking cult like church we'd all attended and been pretty much driven out of. Others from the old church were there too.

When Laurie attended she used to be besties with a lady I mentally called 'Shrimpy' due to an art project she was involved in that had a shrimp as it's main theme. Shrimpy used to tell the worst tales of Mr. Shrimpy at the womens retreats and Bible studies but I never got the vibe that Mr. Shrimpy was anything but a good old boy redneck woodchuck type, happy go lucky, happiest when hunting a deer and probably not a great candidate for the kind of well scrubbed Jesus-shouting type of guy that Shrimpy seemed to expect him to be. I'd heard they divorced a while back.

So while we're scarfing down round two of turkey and gobbling the gravy Laurie drops a bombshell. She announces she's dating Mr. Shrimpy, her former BBF's ex husband. I choked on my pumpkin pie.

I don't exactly know why I feel this way but it just really rubbed me the wrong way. Who dates your old friend's ex? I tried to ask her about what Shrimpy is up to but Laurie was very closed mouth about it. I would love to know the mental gyrations one does to justify that. I cannot imagine. Even when I was young, foolish and sort of horny my rules were, no dating married men and no dating friends exes. How do you get to that place? Loneliness? Need? I just don't know. Jim and I talked about it all the way home. Neither of us got it.

Shawn Pops

2011-11-23T10:21:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had a very hard time getting started. The weather was yuck, I was feeling sleepy all day plus I was shooting out the resumes like I was playing a video game. Josie called me right after lunch asking if I would go with her as moral support if she went to the pawn shop to sell her broken gold jewelry.

Of course I was up for that! To the Shawn Pops! (stealing Overend Watts of Mott the Hoople favored line after arriving in a new city.) So we went pawn shopping, looking at the jewelry and goodies. Josie never did sell her gold but she got offers at every single shawn pop and jewelry in a ten mile radius before we hit up the hospital auxiliary thrift shop. Or would that be the Shilliary Auxrift Thop?

We both ended up buying clothes, just what I don't need. For the munificent sum of four bucks I got a beautiful winter LLBean dress in my size and a silk duster tunic sort of a thing to wear over leggings.

Today I will probably be much lazier. Last night I stood up suddenly after picking up flaming wood that rolled out of the fireplace and brained myself on the mantle edge. I think I even scared Jim because I staggered backwards to try and sit on the loveseat and fell on the floor. I was seeing stars and black spots. By the time I went to bed I had one hell of a headache and a discernible lump on the top of my head. Head okay today but my neck feels like it hates me now.

I'll Take The Plague For Thanksgiving With A Side Of Flu

2011-11-22T09:26:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I spent three full freaking hours at our only medical clinic in town with Andy. He had a fever of 101 and had been coughing and hacking up snot for days but had taken a turn for the worse over the weekend.

Half the town was there and everyone was snotting and coughing and hacking like Andy. One very long wait, a flu tests and piles of medication samples later we were out of the door.

I started thinking about all the Thanksgivings in our family when someone was sick. I guess it's just this time of the year. One day the temps are in the 60s and the next it's 20 degrees combined with being in a dry indoor environment with masses of people must breed this galloping crude people get in the fall.

During my old fundamentalist days I would have drug my feverish sweating honking sniffling sneezing carcass into the kitchen and cooked a full dinner, just sucked it up and kept on going. In my new years of religious freedom the one time I was sick on Thanksgiving I suggested Jim take the family to the buffet at the Holiday Inn. As they went out the door I croaked at him to 'Bring me a Big Mac from McDonalds please!'

I guess I'm trying to say that so many things in the past that I was so hidebound insistent on just hold little weight with me now. It's just more important your heart attitude. Your personal thankfulness. This year I'm going to be thankful for freedom, thankful that in the grand scheme of things it matters not if we eat turkey or a Big Mac on that day.

We're going out to friends and families homes this Thanksgiving so I'm not even having to cook that turkey..heeeee.. I'm bringing dessert.

Bitchin' In A Winter Wonderland

2011-11-21T17:39:00.003-05:00

I have been job hunting. Looking for something seasonal to bring in some Christmas/Chanukah/Kwaanka bucks, tiding me over till next farmers market season. I had a craft booth at our local farmers market and I did very well indeed. Just not enough to have much money after Christmas.

It seems like about a full 50% of the jobs listed on online sites are scams of some sort. Lots of Nigerian Scams where you're told that your resume looks great and they'd love to hire you for part time personal assisting paying $400 bucks a week. They are in 'Holland' or 'Israel' or wherever and will be sending you a cashiers check for your wages and to ship packages to them until they return to this mysterious office they neglect to tell you the address of. Don't fall for it. Common Nigerian 419 scan, the checks are fake.

Today, a pretty horrendous day filled with total crazy I get a different one that makes me laugh my ass off. Today has been a doozy, a typical recent day, which will explain why I've not been around posting...

Actually today had the makings of another shitty day till I came home laughing and had a glass of wine a few minutes ago. Andy is dreadfully sick with bronchitis and it was hell to get him an appointment at the only clinic in our tiny town. I had to bypass the usual way and call the nurse practitioner I knew to have Andy seen as a work in. We were at the doctor for 3 hours waiting to get seen because what Andy has is going around the entire town. We spent that time surrounded by half the town sneezing, coughing and honking just like Andy.

Add in my other errands, getting a new DVR box from the cable company, dropping off stuff at church, dropping off 3 gallons of soup to the soup kitchen, etc, etc, trying to find a pharmacist in a ten mile radius with that lovely delicious trippy hydrocodone cough syrup for Andy.. etc ..etc..all this following a two hour Monday morning job hunting... I was shooting out resumes like Michelle Duggar shoots babies out of her crotch.

And I get a call in the midst of this. It's about a seasonal job I applied for online. All the ad said on the online job site was "Wanted: Families hurt by the recession that would like one day of seasonal work. Have check in hand Dec. 1st Reply with name & phone number." I applied thinking it was probably bullshit but you never know. If it was the Nigerian scammers at least I'd get contact info to pass along to my pals at 419 Eater to bait this asshole.

The guy says, "Hey, you applied for our one day job for families having financial troubles... actually this is the *****************seen on national tv talk show. We're looking for families to come on the show we're taping on Dec 1st."
Me (suspicious now) - "Talk about what? Financial troubles?"
Asshole producer - "Tell me about your family's money story."
Me - "I don't think I'm interested, plus we'd be all wrong for your show. Everyone fights on it, don't they?"
AP - "No, no, we're all about helping. So tell me your story and maybe we can find a way to help."
Me (thinking this is probably a very bad idea) - "Well, it's pretty simple, We have 2 kids in college at the same time, I'm not working much because I'm sick and that has forced us to dip into our stock portfolios. My husband is upset because we're spending our savings and even tried to take away credit cards from us."
AP - "How much credit card debt and general debt do you have? Has this debt ever made you consider doing something out of character for you... like work as a prostitute or deal drugs?
Me - "What??? No... we pay off our credit cards monthly and the only debt we have is two years left on our mortgage."
AP - "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you are wasting our time here. you're a whiny soccer mom and it sounds like your most major problem is that you're pissed you have to give up your mocha grande at Starbucks for now..we're looking for stories of men that gambled away the Thanksgiving turkey money, moms that hook to buy Xmas gifts, Grannies a stripper for money, not entitled yuppies pissing and moaning about having to be thrifty."
Me - "Look asshole, YOU called ME and that employment ad was a complete bait and switch."

I got off the phone laughing.. seriously we're not going bankrupt, it's just two kids in college, me not working much and our spending habits have started to eat into our savings. I guess I need to be more thankful and thankful I'm not desperate enough to go on any damn talk show for the moolah.

Grumpy Pants

2011-11-09T16:53:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted because I've been sick with some horrendous sinus infection and resultant migraine. I've also been participating again in Nanowrimo.org for their write a novel in a month November.

Have done very little this week waiting for the antibiotics to kick in but right now I'm pretty annoyed over something so minor. About six months ago a big group of people moved into the rental house across the street. The house is the only rental in the 70 + house neighborhood and it's the smallest house, a small rambler with three tiny bedrooms.

We have had some kinda sick parade of the kinds of neighbors you don't want in the last 7 years it's been a rental. We've had a drug addicted welfare mom living there with social services coming in and out all the time. We've had a redneck family I know from Madison that had all their farm animals taken by the state for mistreatment. The last bunch we had were pretty awful, I called them secretly the Bumpasses after the family in "The Christmas Story" because they had lots of smelly hound dogs and they were pretty irresponsible. Yes, this is also the same Bumpasses that had a drug fueled fight on the front yard between the man and his wife in front of our Russian guests from the Carter Center. Both ladies were high ranking Russians that worked on preventing domestic abuse in Russia. They came to America and got to see it here first hand. I was so embarrassed.

So.. the tenants of this house have always been a problem and an annoyance. Most everyone here either works in DC for the government in some capacity or they are retired. With the exception of the place across the street. I don't know what the new man of the house does for a living except he seems to work regular hours. I rarely see the mom, but I do see the ten kids running in the street, screaming, yelling, running in front of my car and just generally being so annoying that I think I'm about to invest in a pair of ear plugs.

Today, I'm here in my dormer window hide-a-way with my laptop and my migraine and they are running around screaming. I wish I could go out there and knock their heads together.

I know that's wrong so I guess I should be grateful that they aren't the type of family to sit in front of the tv playing video games. It's so rare these days to see kids playing outside.

Candy Overkill

2011-11-04T14:32:00.003-05:00

I never thought it was possible but apparent we have reached the point in this household that with all the leftover Halloween candy we are officially sick of candy. Over it. Done with it all.

How sick? Laura and I just returned from World Market with their delicious display of international candies from the places we've lived. Neither of us bought any candy, just wine, a Thanksgiving centerpiece and assorted hot teas. That's pretty strange for both of us. We didn't even waste a glance on the ginormous packs of gourmet candies at Costco, only had eyes for buying a down comforter and down pillows for each bed.

Wonder how long this candy aversion will last?

Super Heroes & Shower Curtain Rods

2011-11-02T07:31:00.002-05:00

Well I learned yet again something about myself. I am NO plumber, nor could I ever be.

Yesterday I had a slew of bathroom related things that had broken down at once. Needed to replace a faucet spout in the guest bath, unclog a tub drain in the guys bath plus replace the shower curtain rod.

Many years ago Andy decided during the end of one bath session that he was George of the Jungle or Batman or who knows, jumped up on the rim of the tub, grasped the shower curtain bar and tried his damndest to swing only to have the bar pop out of the fixture to dump his behind right on the tile floor.

I remember popping the rod back into the fixture and praying that it would hold. It did for about 15 more years until Andy was showering off his Halloween zombie gook off the other night and the bar mysterious popped from the socket and really bent this time. I had to ask him if he knew Zombies can't fly and Andy had no memory of trying to fly using the shower curtain rod at 8 years old.

Remembering that incident I also remember I didn't punish him, I merely gave him a warning to knock it off and went off to laugh over it where he couldn't see me.

During that time span when this happened I was a Fundigelical type of Christian and someone had given me the book 'To Train Up A Child' by Michael and Debi Pearl. I remember reading through it in total astonishment, jaw dropped open in shock over all the places it explained that good Christian parents were to start beating their kids with a quarter inch plumbing supply line starting when they were six monhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifths old to assure they turned out with a 'right spirit' and an 'obedient spirit'. I refused to do what the book said because it was just ridiculous to me. I buried the book in the bottom of the garbage can and never considered trying any of the advice.

Now I'm seeing news piece after news article about children that are dying because their parents are using that system. Makes me sick but I'm hoping this opens up the eyes of the world to some of the dangerous ideas linked to hard core Christianity.

Late yesterday I heard that the Pearls are on the verge of publishing a new book on child rearing. Curiously enough it looks like they are cynically exploiting the deaths and attendant publicity to launch their new book.

There has to be a special place in hell for those two.

P.S. The plumber is coming today to 'fix' my fixes. I know better than to meddle with what the pros do. At least there are pros instead of demented people out there doing more damage. I'd still like to beat Michael Pearl and his wife with plumbing line.

The Demon Candy Got Me

2011-11-01T09:51:00.002-05:00

Yesterday worked out to be very pleasant. I baked cookies and frosted them with little pumpkins on them, Andy and I made homemade pizza together, I cleaned the downstairs rooms till they were sparkling unlike my usual slap and dash. Our kitties even let us lock them in one of the bedrooms during trick or treat time without too much protesting.

But we got probably only 10 groups of kids. Before 9/11 happened we would get swamped every single year. When we moved into our house it was new and our neighborhood was considered the nicest in town so it wasn't unusual to see truckloads of kids from even surrounding counties and all over town being brought in. Every year I ran out of candy by 7:30 pm and had to start handing out things like stickers, pretzel & fruit gummi packs or change.

Ten years ago they built these huge elaborate McMansions right behind our subdivision but it didn't affect the numbers of kids that first year. People would go there and then come here. Then 9/11 happened. That year we had a mere handful of kids.

Post 9/11 many of the area big churches, merchants associations, civic orgs have started hosting trick or treat alternatives and their numbers have swelled while door to door trick or treating has died off in this area. I never dreamed that 9/11 would alter the landscape of this old tradition in the shadow of Washington DC but it has.

Too bad. Now I have oodles of candy left over. I guess next year I should go back to helping out with our church's Halloween event.

I'm glad my father isn't alive to see this. He loved Halloween and trick or treat and would be sad to see a tradition fading.

Happy Jesusween (Halloween)

2011-10-31T10:34:00.003-05:00

Makes me laugh hard that the fundegelicals are trying to co-opt Halloween as a Christian holiday when it actually has roots in Christian culture. I don't object to what they want you to do in the season, volunteering to help those less fortunately is always a great idea but renaming the holiday something ridiculous doesn't exactly help their cause. It just makes them look a lot more insane.

Speaking of insane I was gobsmacked to see this recent Pat Robertson quote about why you should never allow your kids to go out trick-or-treating and you should never buy fall candies -

“Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.” -- Pat Robertson

To borrow a phrase from a friend - The devil's in my candy corn?!!! Laughable. that would mean that is extremely well-organized evil everywhere, especially candy factories and warehouses, hundreds of thousands of witches, real witches praying for Satan to put demons in the candy? Must explain why all those fun sized candy bars are so damned delicious!

But seriously here, there's just no way, we're too lazy here in America for that type of a well-oiled organized evil machine. I find most evil seems to be ignorance, fear, self-inflicted or venial, not hardcore legions.

Halloween has it origins in Christianity. The name Halloween translates to All Hallowed Souls Eve. There is a tradition in the Catholic church to remember and commemorate those loved ones that have passed on. November 1st is a sacred day in Catholicism. In New Orleans my father and I would take flowers, cleaning supplies and a picnic lunch after attending early mass. We'd clean the gravestones and tombs of our family, lay flowers then have our feast among our dead ancestors. We weren't the only ones, many people did the same on All Souls Day.

I'm not sure how trick or treat came out of All Souls, but it did. What's so evil about giving out candy to hordes of kids? It's not.

Robertson has always been something of a fear-mongerer and I'm frequently astounded by his statements. This is a new low in fear mongering.

Well, I'm going to still enjoy my relationship with the Lord and those cruelly named 'Fun-Sized' candy bars. AND I'm going to decorate my home. Praise be.

Still More Busy

2011-10-30T13:46:00.002-05:00

It's just been unreal these last few months/weeks.

I've been in the hospital getting tested for something pronounced 'Chan-Stokes', something about deep brain lesions causing a host of nerve problems, but most specifically General Sleep Apnea. I'm on a VPAP now and it's helping but it is worrisome that I could have brain lesions. So far the tests have been inconclusive either way. More tests and I have my wonderful sleep machine! Feel better, much much better.

Working on my own business and going out to sell products on Saturdays plus busy with the other things I do for money. Plus I'm still hunting for a job with benefits. Nothing scarier when you're used to working steady than winging it in this economy.

We had a hit and miss yesterday with a Nor'easter, only a few flakes fell here when just north of us by about 20 miles they got hammered. Happened before I could winterize the yard, get the gazebo down and rake leaves to pack the flower and vegetable beds down till next spring.

Gluten Free Quick Skillet Dinner

2011-09-08T10:51:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was filled with me running around, running to a meeting with our attorney over a variety of things from the mission trip abuse through ousting the officers of our HOA. I also spent time at the doctors office and hospital having tests run to figure out why my oxygen stats bounce around when I'm not having asthma symptoms. Add in meetings at the church, a vet visit and picking up more cat food and my day was shot. I left home at around 9 am and didn't return with my list completed till almost 5 pm. Which left me with no real time to cook dinner that meets everyone's needs, my allergies, Jim's high cholesterol/high blood sugars, Andy & Laura's high protein needs to support their training for a 5K.

It was raining hard and so chilly yesterday that I was tempted to simply open two cans of Amy's soups and make a salad but I didn't have two cans of any one soup. I decided to try and come up with my own healthy version of Hamburger Helper but I used ground buffalo instead of hamburger. Jim loved it.

Gluten Free Quick Skillet Dinner

1 lb ground buffalo
1 Tbsp of olive oil
1 chopped green pepper
1 chopped large onion
1 cup brown rice
2 tbsp crushed gluten free dry spaghetti noodles
2 cups broccoli florets
2 cups water
2 tsps Organic Gourmet Soup Stock
Garlic, salt, pepper and spices of your choice (I used Cajun Shake of course)

Simple, brown the buffalo in the olive oil. Add the peppers, onions and crushed noodles and cook till wilted. Add everything else, turn heat down and let simmer till rice is done.

Filling, cheap, easy and nowhere near as unhealthy as Hamburger Helper.

Today I am experiencing with Gluten Free Pumpkin Bread. Sure, it's not hard to bake gluten free, but it seems to be a real challenge to make it taste good. Will post the best of the recipes.

Easy Gluten Free Peach & Raspberry Cobbler Recipe (now with angst!)

2011-09-06T18:24:00.003-05:00

It's been one of those days, things going haywire after a weekend filled with responsibilities. But this morning my world came thudding to a stop after my daughter Laura and I sat down and she told me what she and close friends had endured at the hands of Teen Mania and Global Expeditions years ago. I've been in tears but I've written about it for No Longer Quivering where it will be up in a few days.

I just wanted comfort food today so I slow roasted a pork loin, steamed the last of the asparagus from the garden and roasted a few new potatoes. I made a dessert out of the last of our peaches and raspberries too. I suspect the recipe will work with any variety of fruit and you cook it in a crock pot for about 90 minutes. Great for cool autumn days when you need something warm and old fashioned.

Gluten Free Peach & Raspberry Cobbler

1/3 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Biscuit & Baking Mix
2/3 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Quick Rolled Oats
1/3 cup Brown Rice Syrup or Blue Agave Syrup
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups sliced fresh or canned peaches
1 cup raspberries (or berries of your choice)
1/2 cup fruit juice of your choice

Grease the crock of your crockpot with butter or margarine. Add first 4 ingredients and stir with a spatula until they are a crumbly uniform consistency. Add peaches, berries and juice, stir again. Cook at meduim or high for 90 minutes or until the edges start to crisp up a bit. This is delicious with a little cream or ice cream on top. Best if eaten while hot.

Some Folks Part Deux

2011-09-03T12:17:00.002-05:00

And so it continues. This morning as Jim and I were doing our Saturday morning gym thing we ran into two members of PCCF. We were both getting in the hot tub after the Nautilus, Elliptical trainers and swimming. I smiled and said hi, how are you as they were getting into the pool. They got out and RAN.

Very curious as I've been nothing but nice to everyone at PCCF, the ones that left, the ones that stayed, the ones that accused me of being seduced by Satan for leaving five years ago.

I have to wonder what's going on in their minds to act like that. This is a small town and we have to share facilities, run into each other, etc. Why not act like, you know, normal adults?

I don't get it at all.

Some Folks

2011-09-02T10:38:00.003-05:00

Last night was an interesting clash of old and new folks. I was at worship team rehearsal at the church I started attending 5 years ago after leaving Possum Creek Christian Fellowship when I had a very nasty encounter with someone from PCCF.

The funny thing is that the PCCF member is someone that was heavily involved in the recent nasty church split that occurred there. It was someone I never much liked, I used to mentally call her Mrs 5 by 5 because she was 5 feet tall and about the same width. Her entire family, kids and all, were huge like her. She always was unpleasant but during the recent church split she went beyond unpleasant to down right nasty, controlling and hateful. Her church secretary office was always Gossip Central. She's said many lies during the split. Makes me thankful I left long before the split happened.

She's also one of those that tried to throw rocks at me verbally when I left. She's a piece of work.

So we were playing our usual rock n roll for Jesus when she comes running into the room to chew us out for being 'too loud'. Now, she's on our turf, this isn't her church and we always rehearse on Thursday night so she was politely invited to leave and shown the door.

Turns out her homeschooling organization were using our basement for a meeting and she took it upon herself to demand we stop. Afterward many of the homeschooling mamas came up to tell us that she didn't speak for them and they liked our music. We gave away many of our most recent CDs to the mommas that came up.

Mrs. 5 By 5 still thinks she can control the universe I see. Control is something that most fundamentalists love to do all the while insisting they are fully yielded to Jesus. Not possible.

Fallen

2011-09-01T09:14:00.004-05:00

Looks like Fall is on it's way here in the Virginia Piedmont. The last week, since Hurricane Irene, it's been cool in the mornings and by the time Jim gets home from Washington DC it's very comfortable outside. Yesterday afternoon I sat out in my wooden Adirondack chair and read.

Beautiful sunsets. Everything is ripening up nicely in the garden. I love Fall!Can't wait to post hot food recipes!

Hoping this early Fall does not mean an early & intense Winter.

We got a 3.4 earthquake this morning that jolted me out of bed at 5:09 am this morning. But I'm glad. I got to see the hummingbirds en masse all around the sunflowers. Life is good.

Shake Rattle & Roll

2011-08-31T09:12:00.002-05:00

Not one quiver of an aftershock for the last 24 hours! Hahaha! Finally!

Yesterday I had trouble getting up because I'd had trouble sleeping due to aftershocks. Figures it took another aftershock to jolt me out of bed to shuffle towards the coffee pot like a zombie after brainnnnsssss.

We've been having aftershocks almost like clockwork every night around midnight to one am, just as I'm settling in for the night. There have been aftershocks during the day too but they don't screw with my sleep cha-cha the way the midnight special ones have.

Laura's college has been closed last week and this week as the school scrambles to rearrange the campus. One of the main instructional buildings has been condemned due to earthquake damage. She's most annoyed because she had exactly a day and a half back at school when the quake hit.

The quake didn't effect Andy's university or Jim's work so they're out of the house now daily.

And now, hopefully, the quake will stop affecting me. I can stop being rattled by the shaking.

Irene: The Little Hurricane That Couldn't

2011-08-28T11:04:00.002-05:00

Just checked the rain gauge and we got perhaps 2 inches of rain and a few winds from Hurricane Irene. A big buildup for nothing.

One funny thing did happen yesterday morning as Jim and I were outside preparing for the storm. I was taking the last few bird feeders down as he disassembled our picnic table and hammock. Jim yelled over at me, "What do you want to do about the hot tub?"

I paused, very puzzled because we don't have a hot tub and replied, "Huh?" thinking surely I misheard him.

He sighed and yelled with more force, "The Hot Tub!!! THE HOT TUB!"

I could see he held a plastic bottle in his hands and he shook it in rhythm with his words. "What hot tub?" I asked.

Jim rolled his eyes, shook the bottle with even more force and bellowed, "THE HOT TUB! THE HOT TUB!!"

At that point I thought he had lost it so I came over to him and read the label on the bottle which said, "Hot Shot Naturals Ant Killer" and asked, "You mean that Hot Shot?"

Very exasperated with me Jim replied, "Yeah, that's what I've been saying, the Hot Shot."

I had to stifle my laughter and tell him to toss it. Does 'Tub' and 'Shot' really sound alike or was he having a massive brain fart?

Pork Chops With Vegetables (Gluten Free)

2011-08-27T22:44:00.002-05:00

I've been experimenting lately not just with gluten free recipes for my food allergies but with low fat and low carb recipes for my husband and his recent diagnosis of diabetes. He not very fond of vegetables so I'm starting to sneak them in, like putting shredded zucchini into spaghetti sauce or this recipe where I'm layering some of the vegetables under the meat so that they pick up the flavor of the meat. I'm finding that the men in my family will eat veggies if they pick up a new flavor from the meat.

I burned out on trying to cook meals for three different sets of nutrition and tastes. So now I'm modifying so that everyone eats the same things.

All of the recipes posted here will be wheat-free and gluten-free unless otherwise noted.

Pork Chops With Vegetables (Gluten Free)

1 pound lean thick sliced pork chops
1 large eggplant, peeled and sliced into thick slices
1 sliced onion
1 minced clove of garlic
1/2 of either chopped tomatoes or halved cherry or cocktail tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon of basil, rosemary and salt and pepper to taste

This is one I make in the crock pot and it's a very simple recipe. The eggplant picks up the flavor of the meat very well. First make sure your crock pot is either sprayed with Pam or another cooking spray or use a small amount of olive oil to rub down the inside of the crockpot. Layer the eggplant on the bottom. Top with the pork chops followed by sliced onions, tomatoes and spices. Slow cook for around 3 to 4 hours, until the meat is tender and beginning to brown on the edges.

Transitions

2011-08-27T10:13:00.002-05:00

From one natural disaster to the next...

Yesterday they demolished the old Levy Building in downtown. It was one of about 5 buildings condemned in the historic downtown. What's the rush you ask? They were afraid this building in particular would not without the winds of Hurricane Irene later today.

Jim took the day off yesterday since Amtrak announced it was suspending service later in the day on the East Coast due to the combination of the coming weather and the fact that all tracks in this area had not been inspected after the earthquake.

Watching dark clouds moving rapidly to the west while I'm writing this. I think the first outer bands of Irene are arriving.

While Jim was off not only did we play, snuggle, lay around nekkid in each others arms, we also went downtown to watch the Levy Building come down before doing the usual bad storm stuff we do to the yard. Everything is secured down, moved or stored, so let the bad weather come. I was just a little saddened that a building that large and substantial built over a hundred years ago could be taken down in so few minutes.

I'm just happy they didn't tear down St Stephen's Church, one of the others that has been condemned. It was built back in 1821 and has seen its share of heartache, joy, war, peace and all things. I'm hoping at least some of the church can be saved and rebuilt. Thankfully the community hall, offices and the Food Closet are newer buildings and are usable. The loss of the Food Closet might be more than our town could take. There are so many poor in this town that depend on the help the Food Closet gives.

It is amusing to watch everyone run around like chickens with their heads cut off over the coming hurricane. After many years in South Louisiana I still laugh at the hysteria a hurricane engenders in my adopted home town. They just don't know what a real intense hurricane is. Well, at least it's going to rain, we need the rain here.

For me it's going to be a cooking, sewing and reading kind of a day. Stay safe all my East Coast friends.

Are You Ready?

2011-08-26T07:51:00.003-05:00

I had to sleep in yesterday after being jolted awake by an aftershock at 1 am and again at 5 am. We got a few more aftershocks during the day and another last night at midnight. But that wasn't what occupied my day.

Hurricane preparedness. Thank Gawd I'd bought a battery powered weather/Am/Fm radio and new flashlights with lots of batteries the day before because when I stopped cleaning and plotting what needed to move out of the yard I ran out for a few items. The stores were stripped bare of any batteries, flashlights, radios, bottled water, bread, milk, etc.

Which is kind of silly here. Sure, we'll get winds and rain here, we may even get extremely high winds. But being pushed up against the Blue Ridge mountains we'll not get the brunt of this thing. People don't know what the full force of a hurricane is like. I wish I didn't. But growing up in South Louisiana I got to experience the full hurricane effect too many times to count.

The funny thing is that I didn't buy the radio, flashlights and batteries for the hurricane. I bought them in the aftermath of the earthquake to keep in an emergency preparedness kit in the laundry room after realizing how unprepared I am if something really big had happened. My small efforts at luring myself into feeling safe again.

Which is really silly because the reality is we're not safe. Anything could happen and happen at any time. I guess the best policy is prepare for the future, learn from the past and live in the moment.

Even saying that it didn't stop me from getting a few extra Lara Bars to sneak into my emergency kit. Sometimes chocolate is the best fix of all.

Cell Day

2011-08-25T08:55:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I just had to take what professed nuns in convents call a 'Cell Day' It's a day devoid of most responsibilities where you take time to do things that you like. A 'Me' day. By yesterday morning between the aftershocks and picking up what the earthquake did I was pretty shaky myself.

Woke up to still no local phone service and realized I'm missed my Xolair injections appointment so I rushed to my pulmo and begged to be fitted in. He did.

It's been a week of doctors, first Laura & her skin flareup at the dermo, various cats at the vets office and I went to the ear nose and throat doctor for one of the worst tests I've ever had. They threaded a long scope up my nose and down my throat. I cried it hurt so bad and I'm usually pretty stoic when it comes to pain. Add in some CAT scans and other tests and all that effort only told the doctor that I had developed arthritic pains in the cartilage of my throat.

I'd been telling my pulmo for six months or more I'd been having short term memory loss problems that were impacting my life but I don't think he really thought that they were that bad until he witnessed it first hand. I've never forgotten my shot appointment ever in the last 3 years of treatment with the Xolair.

So now he's scheduled testing to see what's going on with the memory. By the time I left I was oozing like a pincushion much more than normal. Insurance company send him paperwork asking him to give me a flu shot, pneumovax and other injections. So I really was an oozing pin cushion. To add insult to injury some silent dipstick in my brain was screaming "Add a quart!" after I had a blood draw for the first of the tests to look at my memory.

Called one of my closest friends and away away away we went. We went shopping, hitting the discount racks of every better dept store we could before stopping for one of our famous four hour lunches that aren't much about eating but more about swilling ice cold Arnold Palmers and talking about answers to life, the universe and everything. She, like me, was feeling all sorts of out of sorts because of the earthquake.

I was calmer by yesterday evening but then we got a big tremor at 8 pm and a 4.5 aftershock on the richter scale at 1:15 am that caused everything to jump out of the medicine cabinet and fall over in the master bath. Jim and I didn't get much sleep after that last night.

Please, no more tremors.

Today I'm going to take my camera and go downtown to take photos of the work crews demolishing some of the oldest buildings in town. They are all pre-Civil War and all severely damaged during the quake. Now the town is racing the clock to get the buildings down before Hurricane Irene rolls through this area and creates more havoc.

Guess I better make sure we have flashlights, a radio and other disaster supplies for this weekend and a honking huge bottle of wine for my nerves (not really, I can't drink. Times like this only make me wish I still could. I know it's not the answer. Only the Lord is)

Gluten Free Pasta Suzette

2011-08-24T22:28:00.003-05:00

Tonight I cooked a gluten free version of an old recipe given to me years ago by a gal I worked with at the corporate offices of Wilsons Inc. Suzette worked in the next cube over and started talking about what she cooked right before payday that was cheap and filling. As a single mom working and going to school at the same time and pinching every penny I started cooking it too.

The basic recipe was cook up as much pasta (any type) as you wanted, drain and set aside. In a separate bowl crack up a couple or three or four eggs, whisk them together with salt, pepper or whatever seasoning you liked. Pour them in with the pasta, add a spoonful of butter and some cheese, whatever type you liked and stir over a medium heat till the eggs cooked and the cheese melted.

My kids always loved this but loved it more when I added thin strips of ham, green onions sliced fine and a cup of green peas.

We haven't eaten this in years so tonight I decided to try and improve on Suzette's basic recipe.

8 ounces of cooked gluten free pasta
1/2 chopped green pepper
1/2 chopped Vidalia onion
8 ounces fresh spinach
1 cup halved fresh grape or cherry tomatoes
1 cup diced cooked chicken
2 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs or equivalent of Eggbeaters
Basil, salt, pepper and garlic to taste - I used lots of Cajun Shake in mine
1/2 cup shredded low fat mozzarella cheese

Heat olive oil in pan before sauteing the peppers, onions, spinach and tomatoes till cooked down and soft. Add seasons and garlic, add chicken. When chicken and vegetable mixture is heated through mix into the pasta. For the final step add the beaten eggs and cheese, heating just until the cheese is melted and eggs cooked.

Sorry I don't have calorie counts, etc but this is one of those recipes you can adjust. If you're dieting add more vegetables and less pasta, or serve the vegetable/meat over a small serving of the pasta.

Shaken Not Stirred

2011-08-24T11:23:00.002-05:00

Wow, all it takes is something like a 5.8 Earthquake to reorganize your priorities.

Yesterday morning Jim and I were having our monthly unfriendly 'discussion' over household expenses. I do what I can to hold them down but with two kids in college at the same time and me being out of a day to day job it's not as easy as it once was when I was pulling down serious bank from my corporate job a couple of years ago. We ended the conversation on a better note than we started but it still wasn't what I would call loving or peaceful.

1:50 pm, the whole house began to shake. At first I was merely irritated, sure this meant that my fancy expensive two year old washer had started coming unbalanced but after a few seconds I was thoroughly disabused of this notion when lamps fell over, pictures popped off the walls and books tumbled while Andy shouted up the stairs to me, "MOM!! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. EARTHQUAKE!"

Running down the stairs I met Andy and Laura's boyfriend Andrew on the lawn. My bird was upset and flying everywhere and the cats were on the lawn behaving strangely. I hope to never see the ground moving like that ever again.

Other than a few cracks in the upstairs closet door frames and stuff everywhere it seems that there were no causalities, just my nerves. I cannot imagine that a 5.8 did so little damage and no one died, it had to be the hand of God over this place, this region, this state.

When Jim finally made it home from DC after they decided it was safe to run the trains all the squabbling over bills seemed like an ancient petty memory.

Parents BE The Parent

2011-08-23T08:26:00.002-05:00

Yesterday in between running errands, weeding the garden, paying bills and the Monday deep cleaning I always try to do I had a spate of phone calls, texts and IMs from friends and relatives all coping with parenting problems.

The day started with myself and one of my cousins by marriage discussing the recent convictions of Kevin & Elizabeth Schatz, fervent followers of Michael & Debi Pearl's dangerous book "To Train Up A Child"

My cousin insisted that it was okay to spank your children over any infraction because of what the book said and that lack of discipline was why kids were running wild throughout the nation.

While he has a point there are better, less dangerous, more effective ways to discipline a child and make them mind than whipping out a 15 inch long quarter inch thick piece of plumbing supply line and lashing your kids backs. The Pearls' particular brand of discipline carries with it a high risk of causing Rhabdomyolosis. He told me he had used a wooden spoon on his toddlers. Well, I can see that, but I have always found that spanking should be a very last resort. We used Time Out and taking away privileges, finding for us that it was much more affective than any physically painful method.

When I was a young Christian I was urged to adopt the Pearls' methods and given their book. The book was held almost sacrosanct right behind the Bible in my old fundamentalist church. I remember reading it and being slightly horrified, knowing that even if it made me a 'bad' Christian I could in no way do much of what they were advocating.

Interestingly enough as I left that church after watching what happened to the kids being raised that way in that church I see no difference in the rates of who rebels, who does drugs, who has unsuitable friends as those kids raised without the church. It seems to cut right across the board. I see no difference in how the kids turn out.

But on the other end of the spectrum is one of my friends that called yesterday to complain about the behaviors of her 16 year old, 10 year old and 5 year old. She's got the opposite problem, her idea of discipline is screaming, yelling and making pointless threats. Her kids have picked up on the fact that she's all talk, no action. Which I pointed out to her. I am always telling her, "BE the parent!" It goes in one ear and straight out the other.

Gluten Free Granola Recipe

2011-08-20T12:10:00.003-05:00

I make my own Granola rather than buy those expensive brands that taste stale once you open the box. It's pretty easy and you can make this gluten free or if gluten doesn't bother you with regular rolled oats.

6 cups gluten free oats (you can vary this with different grains added in, like flax seeds, chia, brown rice puffs, etc)
1 cup nuts (I use pine nuts, pecans, walnuts and pumpkin seeds)
2 cups dried fruits (used blueberries, cranberries, dried pears & raisins)
1/4 honey or blue agave syrup
1/4 oil

Mix together in a large bowl, taking care that all the grains get equally coated. Put in a thin layer on cookie sheets and bake till golden at 350 degrees. This stores well in air tight containers and it's so easy to make. You can experiment, add more or less of any the ingredients, add spices, use different ingredients. For our family it's an essential to keep around.

The HOA Ate My Brain....

2011-08-20T11:37:00.002-05:00

Okay so I'm removing last names and email addies but posting this mess here for everyone to see. Thinking about doing a site ala www.feelmypain.net to document the ongoing stupidity and petty from being part of an HOA. I have to vent or I will explode..whole forests of teal deer slaughtering about to commence.

Backstory: James and I are original owners, here when the HOA was set up. We've been largely uninvolved & it ran well for years. Neighborhood is three and four bedroom homes like Cape Cods, Colonials, Ranch, Split levels, just regular American type non-McMansions. Good quiet neighborhood. The HOA has a large facility five houses down from us with a swimming pool, workout rooms & equipment & meeting rooms. That is, at least until 7 years ago.....

7 years ago the old treasurer embezzled over 100K in funding from the HOA account. She paid the money back by refinancing her house but faced zero criminal charges. It was swept under the rug. At the same time work was started to redo the pool & pool drainage system (15 years old) and botched, and redone, and botched again until the facility was closed.

Many of us completely stopped paying our HOA dues because a) there was no accounting for the spending, b) there was no accountability for those that stole or ripped off the HOA in shoddy work and c) no one seemed willing to do the work to reopen the place.

The new treasurer took us all to court. I am the only one that fought it, hired a lawyer and took the stance that as long as the HOA wasn't fulfilling their side of the HOA contract then I was under no obligation to pay anything. My lawyer is the lawyer that set up the HOA contract in the first place. We settled out of court and I only had to pay back HOA dues, no penalties, no interest, no lawyer fees or court costs. We asked them for a profit and loss statement over where the HOA monies were being spent, as it says in the contract we are entitled to receive when we ask and must be published to the community once a year. Treasurer refused to provide it. This has gone on for well over a year now, no P&L.

So, fast forward, a couple of homeowners meetings and I'm the HOA secretary & newsletter writer/publisher, sitting on committees and James is on a couple of committees as well as helping out the president of the HOA. Treasurer is refusing to give President P&L statement. I need that P&L for the newsletter and the next HOA meeting. Sound fishy? Crazy cakes emails below...

It starts because James was contacted by another homeowner wanting to know what the status of stuff is. We're all on a email list.

Hello James,

My name Barry Z. I live in the Meadows and was wandering if you ever heard from any officers of the HOA? I still have no idea whats going on there. Please feel free to contact me at ---.---.---- or email me back.

Thank you

James replies.

Hi Barry,

We met with President Nargil G and Treasurer Dorethia C (by phone) on July 30. My wife Suzanne agreed to write the minutes (which you should have received). The next step is for my wife Suzanne to put together a newsletter, then Nargil and I deliver it to every homeowner. Included in that newsletter is supposed to be an income statement for this past year (which is overdue). I just spoke with my wife and she will attempt to meet Nargil today and see if he can supply that information so we can get the ball rolling on this.

Thanks for your email. I will keep you posted. Jim

Simple enough, right? Sounds good. Everyone's playing nice in the sandbox right? Barry Z replies.

Thank you… That’s good to hear… I been very frustrated that I cannot even used the club house but have to pay 50 a month.

Jim asked the President to address Barry's email and says again we must have the P&L. Polite, friendly, trying to work together, right?

Hi Nargil,

Please see emails below.

Could you please call Barry and update him on what is happening with the Home Owners Association (HOA) and why he can’t access the club house? His number is below.

Also, I really think we need to put together a newsletter soon, deliver it to each homeowner’s house, and ask them what they would like from the HOA. An income statement needs to be included in that newsletter. It is unfair, and a violation of the contract, to insist each homeowner continue paying $50 a month yet not tell them how the money is being spent.

Thank you, Jim

Presidente replies to Barry. Again, adults working together..

Good Afternoon Berry

The ADT system has been finxed and if you are current on your dues you should have access to the club house.

If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me at Blah blah blah

Then crazy treasurer sounds off with the paranoia of a frau.

James if you have something to say don't exclude me from the emails. Let me give you the checkbook and you can be the treasurer. Oh I know you don't want the responsibility. You keep saying what is not fair, whats not fair that we had to serve a warrant in debt in order for you to pay, what is not fair is that you lied that you hadn't received notice and someone should have came to and knocked on your door (but you knew exactly when you stop paying). That's what's not fair

Barry, you have my email address so why you would email James about access to the clubhouse is beyond me. What blows me is that you know why you do not have access to the clubhouse but if you have forgotten let me refresh your memory. You are thousands of dollars in arears in your HOA dues (there's a judgement againt you) so why would you act as if you do not know why you cannot access the clubhouse. So James you probably need to stay out of this COMPLETELY.

Do not email me with this silliness anymore. Once all HOA dues, interest and attorney fees are paid current then you can get access, that applies to you and anyone else who is delinquent in their HOA dues.

James whatever you are trying to say let me tell you I DONT NEED THIS hoa's money that is why the books will be dropped off and yall figure out who will handle this mess. I better do this to keep me from cursing you out.

Doretha

Whoa! Who forgot to take their crazy pills today. All of that crap she's saying about my husband is a freaking lie! We just wanted them to account for the money before we paid.

So Barry kisses some ass and attempts to smooth things over yet make his point.

Doretha,

This was my original email to James:

Hello James,

My name Barry Z. I live in the Meadows and was wandering if you ever heard from any officers of the HOA? I still have no idea what’s going on there. Please feel free to contact me at blah blah blah or email me back.

Thank you

That was all I asked. He just brought me up to speed about what had transpired since he sent out that original email. I do have a right to be informed about how the money I am paying and the money I am currently repaying back is being spent. Just as I have an obligation to the HOA to pay my dues the HOA has a responsibility to keep me informed and provide to each home owner the privileges with the community. I as well as the rest of the community are very disappointed about the billing process and the inability to access the club house even when we are current. These reasons are why a lot of people stop paying. I apologize if this offends you. That is really not my attention. I just want to know what is going on in my community and want to do everything I can to make this the strong community that attracted me too move into this development. Please let me know how I can personally help to get us back on track.

Thank you,

Barry Z

Jim calls me and tells me to be on the lookout for Doreath with the checkbook or an axe because Narqul has just called him and told him that Mrs C is on the warpath and talking about kicking asses. I'm pissed and upset because I'm in the middle of canning ketchup and making enough granola for the next month. I don't have time for this drama.

I had been silent till this point but the tone of her emails provoked me so I replied to her.

Ms. C,

I am personally uncomfortable with the names of those who have been or are currently behind in their HOA dues being discussed openly on an email list. It borders on privacy violations and serves no purpose in unifying the residents of TMoC. We're all adults, let's all act like it, put personal petty likes/dislikes aside to see if we can come together in a way that will benefit the community instead of divide it. We all need to work together.

That being said I do think you've had a thankless task for the years you've been treasurer and I do thank you for your years of service to the community. But perhaps the time has come for you to step down if you feel that personal attacks and posting the words "cursing you out" are actually viable options that benefit the HOA. This is neither the time nor the venue for personal attacks and insults.

If putting together a Profit & Loss statement is too time consuming for you then I suggest that you allow James to do it or you and I could work on it together. He's an economist with the federal government and holds an MBA, meaning he is well qualified to take care of that task for you. As Mr. Z and James both stated as homeowners we have every right to see what the monies coming in via the HOA have been spent upon. Even if none of us were up to date on dues. You are required to provide that information to all homeowners yearly and upon request per the HOA covenants that we all signed and agreed to abide by.

I understand you are frustrated but if you'd like to sit down like the adults we are and discuss what needs to be done to get the information on the budget out to everyone I will be home this evening. Please call or come by. I think we all want what is best for the community so lets work together. But I must have those figures for the newsletter by the middle of next week.

Mrs Suzanne T.

Made my point yet tried to leave the door open to working together on this.

She ignores it but responds to Jim and Barry this morning...

James,

Your lame excuse for why you stop paying is a bunch of crap and even when you are shown this information you still have an excuse or try to figure out how you can get out of paying HOA dues (ie selling the clubhouse). I am not the only one obligated (loook in the mirror ). Let me tell you James other homeowners who know how you have acted and things said by you are asking the question "what is he talking about and why and I am not wasting my time with him and neither should anyone on the board because he is all talk but won't offer any help"

James and what you say has as much values as a canadian penny to me and what you have to say became of no value when you lied over and over about YOUR OBLIGATION.

You send out this mass email like you work in the HOA but left facts that Nargil later pointed out. You really are not worth my time so do not send me anymore emails.

Sorry Barry! I will reply to your email. Can you send me your phone number so I can give you a call?

and to Barry....

Barry,

First let me start by saying James is not even on the board and as you see will add his personal twist to things.
Not once have I said that you or any of the other homeowners don't have a right to know where the money is being spent. You are not offending me but I think before people sit and have their neighborhood sidebars to discuss the billing process and clubhouse access they should try to get the correct information.

Barry you have lived in the HOA for several years as I have and never have their been a monthly billing by the HOA. When I became treasurer I did spend money to print payments books for every home, mailed them to every home along with a memo explaining the payment book and people did not use them, the HOA did not receive more money because of this and the people who pay monthly continued to do so and the ones who didn't pay still did not pay, another time I sent a memo with a yearly calendar and had the 1st of each month circled and asked that everyone post the calendar as a reminder that HOA dues are due on the 1st of the month, I also sent an email letting people know that they can set the HOA up on bill pay like their other bills and I now have a handful of people who is doing that. I am not sure what is being discissed during the sidebar meetings about the billing, please let me know. As for the clubhouse access anyone who had an active badge prior to the system breaking still have an active badge, if you moved in when the system was not allowing me to make the badges or your badge broke or got lost after that time then NO you will not have access. Many many many attempts were made to get that ADT system fixed. Many many many days of work was missed by Nargil and myself waiting for ADT (that was our PTO) Many many many phone calls were made to ADT (I have cellphone bills to prove some of my calls from my cellphone and the time spent on the phone during my work hours is ridiculous jeopardizing my job for something that I volunteer to do) the system was fixed and I am aware I need to create some badges and also now deactivate others but I work long hours sometimes and commute to N.VA so if someone has a question about their access they can email me and stop meeting in the middle of the road and talking to the neighbor then we can set up a time and met them to fix the problem.

Everyone who have provided an email address knows how to contact both Nargil and myself but they choose not to. I have no problem with any of the homeowners emailing or phoning me (with the exception of James) so please let them know.

Doretha

So that seems calmer now right? This morning Nargil called the emergency meeting of the HOA to discuss what to do about Doretha after she called him up shouting threats against him, Jim and I. She showed up on my lawn at the crack of dawn to threaten to 'kick your ass'. On Monday Nargil and I are going to my lawyer to get a court order to get the books from her since she refuses now to turn them or the information over to anyone. Cops have been called and it's about to get stupider. I hate HOAs and neighborhoods.. and it's not even 1 pm yet today. Too early for super dramaz..

Volunteering Is For Suckas

2011-08-19T07:51:00.002-05:00

Not really, but again it seems like I got roped in for one thing that has morphed into an entirely different thing. I wonder how I get myself into these situations, oh yeah, by trying to help out.

A few months ago I offered to help out by taking the minutes of our homeowners association. No big deal right? Write a list of what was discussed, who attended, etc. and go from there.

Yesterday I spent the majority of the day working on a six page 'newsletter' because now I've been designated the newsletter person too, and head of the beautification committee, on this or that committee.

This is way more than I wanted or can handle. I guess I'm going to have to work on learning to say 'no' again.

I did find that you can download many different free templates for things like newsletters and reports over at Open Office.

The comical thing about all of this is that there is almost no news to put in the newsletter other than begging for volunteers and reminding people to pay their monthly dues. So I'm having to fill much of it with articles on recycling options, reminders that fall is the perfect time to get your furnace inspected & cleaned and how fall is the time to plant those spring bulbs.

Guess that's better than what I could be writing, who was arrested for intent to distribute, who's being sued by the association for not paying dues for years and who is zooming who, who peed in the pool, etc. All the dirty little secrets just below the surface of this pretty middle class subdivision.

Kids off to hike part of the Appalachian Trail today while I have doctors visits, gardening, canning and a newsletter to finish. I better get to it.

August

2011-08-18T10:59:00.002-05:00

I'm waiting for this endless summer to end. It's been a rough one. My oxygen levels are down hovering around the high 80s. This happens every summer as soon as my critical care plumonologist leaves the state for vacation. Now I seem to have a lump on my thyroid that's pressing against my esophagus. Getting tests run tomorrow. (Updating for that one person that says I bitch about my health here too much..hehehehe)

Did do a couple of pleasant things this summer, flew down for a couple of weeks stay in a luxury resort in South Florida and took a driving trip all over the midwest for a few weeks. Bugging Jim to go back to the beach for a few weeks in September.

I've been busy canning like mad, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, salsa, jams, jellies, veggies so I'm spending almost every day up to my armpits in hot water during the hottest summer on record here. Makes me wish I could still drink alcohol.

This summer Jim has been diagnosed with diabetes and super high cholesterol and he's not handling the diet aspect so well. I'm trying to help him out by modifying recipes and cooking only healthy foods at the house. The way he eats at home isn't the problem, it's all the places he eats at away from home. I think that's where the diabetic problem came from in the first place. For about six months he was having a sugary frappechino on his way home from work. Told him those things have obscene amounts of sugar in them but he doesn't listen.

I have found if I use the following recipe every evening and top it with a little greek yogurt mixed with honey that it seems to keep Jim out of the bad food snacking mode.

Jim's Chocolate Pudding

2 cups skim milk
Enough Eggbeaters to equal 2 eggs
1 Tablespoon ground Stevia
3 Tablespoons Drostes Cocoa Powder
2 Tablespoons Corn starch
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract

Wisk together all ingredients in a medium sized saucepan and cook till thickened. Stir as you cook so that there are no lumps. Pour into individual serving cups or in a bowl and cool before serving.

Simple, quick, easy, cheap while guaranteed to calm the worst sweet tooth without raising their A1C levels.

Gone

2011-06-30T09:55:00.001-05:00

I have moved elsewhere. If you still wish to read my writings shoot me a line at ithrowhissyfitsATgmailDOTcom. I'll shoot you the link.

CYCLOPS!!!

2011-01-13T18:25:00.002-05:00

Today Andy had his knee surgery and it went well. He is spending the night in the hospital and will be able to come home tomorrow. Turns out he didn't have a torn meniscus, he had floating bone fragments that were reading in the MRI film as a tear. So the fragments were removed and he had an ACL graft using cadaver material. I left him just a few minutes ago starting to fall asleep from the load of pain medicines he's on. One night in the hospital and he'll be good to go home.

Most of the afternoon Laura and I sat in the waiting area of our local hospital just beyond the snack bar. Something happened that really made us laugh.

There's always a volunteer manning the desk in the waiting room that fields calls from the OR and the prep areas for the family. Usually it's a tiny frail little old lady with a beautiful silver puff of hair like a halo. But today we got someone entirely different that kept butting into our conversations. At one point she jumped in and started ranting about a man she called 'Cyclops' because of a huge swollen wen on his forehead about where a cyclops would have a single eye. She said the week before he'd been laying down in the parking lot under the rear wheels of the car screaming that 'It don't matter. I wanna die!' She went on to talk about him following women around Wal Mart and how he begged her pal for Capri Sun drinks. She kept talking about how he needed to be locked up for being crazy. She kept talking about keeping our lily white pure small town as Norman Rockwellian as possible, there was no room for the nasty dirty mentally ill.

Now I knew exactly who she was talking about because I'd worked with both the homeless shelter here and the soup kitchen. Yes, I was offended by her inference that the homeless or mentally ill had no right to be in our town. But before I could say that I knew the man and knew he was harmless, he was just struggling with substance abuse karma reared it's ugly festering head and bit her on the rear end. In walked the man himself and plopped down in a nearby chair.

The look of horror on her face! She looked like she'd pooped those fancy pants of hers, Ms. NIMBY. She mouthed at Laura and I, "It's CYCLOPS!!" It took everything I had not to bray out loud laughter. Laura didn't help the situation any when she whispered, "Hey wouldn't that be triclops because he already has two eyes?" and I had to bite my tongue to stop the laughter trying to bubble up.

We saw him many times throughout the day, one of us whispering 'Cyclops!' after we'd moved out of earshot. We laughed over and over about her reaction.

About 5 pm he boarded the community shuttle bus heading towards the cold weather shelter, where he'll be fed a hot meal and given a bed for the night. I know why he was buzzing around the hospital all day. It's very cold here and the hospital is a safe warm place to spend the day in the various waiting rooms watching television.

It sickens me that so many are so intolerant of those on the fringes of polite society. I know people fear what they don't understand but in this economy homelessness is becoming an increasing problem along with substance abuse. I wish more peoples hearts would break when they viewed the homeless among them and that they'd volunteer to help. We're always short handed at the shelter, the food bank and the soup kitchen and I think it's going to get worst before it gets better.

Farty Bacardi Havarti

2011-01-12T10:58:00.002-05:00

(Title refers to a solo game I was playing while sort of clam-baked on narcotics. I kept rhyming various words.)

Starting to feel incrementally better now but moving in the direction of getting everything squared away for Andy's surgery tomorrow. We did the whole pre-op thing yesterday morning, rushing to beat the snow.

What a crock that was! The DC area weathermen warned of snow deep and crisp while all we got here was a mere inch.

Yesterday was also the day all the sites where the nurse kept sticking me to get blood and put in an iv turned gloriously black and purple. Why is it that if you're a hard stick because you have scar tissue, collapsing veins, rolling veins, etc, and you let them know that you're a hard stick, whoever the nurse and/or phlebotomist is decides they know better. You end up with a thousand different holes in your arm/hand and they end up going in the one spot you pointed out is still good. It would just save everyone trouble if they would listen the first time.

The interesting thing to me is that they had lots of trouble getting those attempts to stop bleeding and it was suggested I might have a bleeding disorder. Which is really funny because that's exactly what I'm being tested for now and the assay results have not come back yet.

Have errands to run this morning before that point in the day when I must take a pain pill. It's cold as hell outside, I'm not looking forward to this or to tomorrow. Andy is the only truly well one in the family.

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

And a special note to those who read here because of FDC. I doubt I'm going to update it in this year because it seems to me like a lot of bad fan behavior is merely on repeat and it's boring, tiresome and getting extremely uninteresting. I told my family over the holidays that they were likely to get phone calls branding me a big meanie for the things I've talked about at FDC and they all laughed, said they knew already what a big meanie I am. So one of my resolutions in this New Year was to not be quite so big meanie. I'm trying to be kinder gentler me. It doesn't always work because I'm used to being all snarky and sarcastic but it's a start. I will only be inwardly griping about plagiarism, bad behavior of others, lying liars and stalkers. Leaving the site up, just not updating much. American Idol does bring out the crazy in fans though it looks like this is it's final season.

Those Westboro Idiots At It Again

2011-01-11T12:47:00.002-05:00

In the midst of our various medical things I've somehow managed to throw my back out so I've been horizontal on the sofa watching television when I've not being doing the last few things for Andy's surgery. Andy will be having his knee reconstructed on Thursday afternoon finally. The ER misdiagnosed his knee back in June and our family doctor dropped the ball in August.

Back to tv. I was distressed to see that those hateful lunatics at Westboro Baptist are planning on showing up to protest at the funeral of nine year old Christina Green. Christina was killed at the Gifford shooting this Saturday in Tucson.

I don't 'get' the Westboro folks. Sure, this is sin in the world and many things are wrong, messed up, whatever parlance you wish to use to describe them. But when did the message of Jesus, which was love thy neighbor, turn into 'link everything to sin and show public hatred for the suffering'? I don't get it. Have any of them even read the Bible? For the life of me I cannot figure out how they got from the love of Christ to protesting at funerals. It's sick and wrong even if you don't believe in Christ.

About six years ago a military family I knew through my former church lost a promising young man to the Iraqi situation and the Westboro Baptist people turned up. They took what should have been a solemn remembrance and time of mourning into a circus side show. I've never seen anything more disrespectful to the dead before. Several times the funeral plans were changed in an attempt to throw off the protesters but still they found us and ratcheted up the stress of it all much more.

Surely one day a family member somewhere is going to snap and there will be tragedy if these hateful non-Christians are allowed to continue. I cannot believe as a polite society we don't step in and blockade this group from getting near a funeral.

Happy to read that there is emergency legislation going to be passed in time for the funeral that will not allow them to be any nearer to any funeral in Arizona than three hundred feet.

Costo Emergency Surgeries

2011-01-10T15:03:00.002-05:00

Saturday I spent the day in my studio working on a few special projects before Jim and I went on our monthly Costco run. So exciting! Not, but I have enough things so if it snows tonight like they predict we'd probably be good stuck inside for a month or more.

But Sunday was all screwed up. I got up and wasn't feeling very well. For days I'd had some off and on pains in the same area of my abdomen I have had diverticulitis in. Apparently I have scar tissue from my hysterectomy that is causing issues. I've only had one bad bout of diverticulitis. Sometimes it grumbles and I have pain for a day or two before it stops but this time it kept building and building after starting to flare up on Friday night.

Don't these things always seem to start when the doctor is closed and you have no way of being seen for a day or so?

Long story short. Sunday, high fever, bloating, extreme pain around noon and I had Jim take me to the local ER. Several CT scans later and I was home with a surgical referral, lots of antibiotics and pain meds. I'm on three days rest and then off to see my regular guy.

I had to break that three days bed rest thing to go with Andy to see what the results of his MRI on his knee were. He does have a torn ACL and meniscus. He's having surgery on Thursday and we'll go from there. The timing really sucks because it will be back to school practically as soon as he can handle the crutches. My baby's going to have to trek around that big campus on crutches for a few days. Ouch!

Hoping that my situation gets better so that I can handle stepping and fetching while he's down with the recovery from surgery. It's been over 24 hours of high powered antibiotics and I'm feeling no better.

Awake In The Piedmont

2011-01-08T00:11:00.002-05:00

I can't sleep and I don't know why. I guess it might be the cold weather. Our lovely expensive nearly new furnace has chosen to go on the fritz on a Friday morning. After a morning spent calling around for a repairman I found four places booked solid for the next week and my regular guy out of town till Tuesday. He's coming out first thing Tuesday.

It's almost certainly the thing it always is, the computerized controller switch into the unit that seems to be susceptible to breaking even if only the slightest breeze blows on it. Too delicate.

In the meantime it's quite cold in my Cape Cod in the shadow of Shenandoah National Park. Today has been spent schlepping wood from the two cords we bought to the fireplaces and woodstoves.

We're warm now but it takes work. Thankfully this is the year that Jim took pity of me and built in wood racks in the empty side of the garage. I only need to trudge with my trug basket through the laundry room and past the mud room and into the garage to get wood. No dealing with snow or the elements. It's just that the silly man decided to use our extra freezer, which is in disuse, to pack in the kindling. So I have a freezer filled with kindling as well, right next to the freezer packed with meat and produce.

Visited the studio and firmed up plans for another gallery showing in February before coming home and working on a custom order this afternoon. Made marmalade from the sack of oranges my aunt Meg gave me from her garden in New Orleans and I did all the mending I'd been putting off six months or more.

Jim's downstairs drinking Crown Royal and watching the Cotton Bowl recap.

Me? Readying my art supplies for another day.

The Rundown Of Life

2011-01-07T10:49:00.002-05:00

Whew, it is c-o-l-d here this morning. I just lit my bedroom fireplace and I'm hoping it warms the room up soon because it's like a meat cooler in this room. It's the furthest away from the main furnace.

We were supposed to get snow last night but that didn't happen. I'm looking out my dormer window this morning watching the birds hit the birdfeeder while I'm drinking my coffee. I got up so late this morning.

Yesterday was the usual, gym, housework and work with one exception. I had to take Andy to the hospital for his MRI. I was amused to note he had take out his earring and dressed in loose fitting clothing with no metal. As we sat in the waiting room he proceeds to tell me how he researched all about MRIs online the night before. Smart kid.

Stopped by the studio to pick up supplies and touch base with everyone there.

Went back to the gym a second time once Laura got off work. We went swimming in the current pool and talked. I miss her being around now that she's working full time at the bank and going to school so it's good to touch base sometimes.

I am contemplating a run out to the Mennonite store today to pick up homemade soup and butter. It's going to be a lazy day.

The Insurance Tango

2011-01-06T09:11:00.002-05:00

The majority of the day yesterday was sucked up by dealing with our health insurance company. Why? Because of Andy's upcoming MRI (today) and surgery. Add in my DNA recombiant drugs have come up for renewal and you have cluster-you-know-what city.

Remember back, oh say, about 18 months ago when the Obama administration started working on Health Care Reform? I was heavily involved in that, working our district daily, making calls, attending telephone strategic meetings, leafleting, talking to folks, shaking the bushes trying to help make a history desperately needed change in this country to single payer health care.

Unfortunately what we ended up with was a compromise that benefits only the insurance companies and what I was dealing with yesterday was the new regs as a result of that bad policy.

It is frustrating enough to make me vote for anarchy next time. Obama, keep your stupid White House Christmas cards and do what you promised during the campaign. Keep your promises, dude or you're out of here in a couple of years.

Under the old laws Andy was kicked off our policy at 21 years old. It didn't matter than the new laws had been passed, they weren't going to be implemented until Sept. 2010. Until we could put Andy back on our policy under the new rules of coverage for college students up till 27 we were forced to buy a very expensive stop gap insurance that paid for only hospitalization. We added Andy back on our police in September to be effective January 1, 2011. They even sent us an insurance card for him.

Come to find out yesterday he's not in the computer system completely yet. There's some huge backlog of adding in the college students. So, while there are notes on our records indicating he is covered as of Jan. 1, anyone calling the prior authorization line is going to be told he is not on the policy. Took a number of phone calls to get the insurance company to confirm to the hospital that Andy was covered. They hospital was insisting we pay up front for the MRI if he was not covered and the last time I checked MRIs are very pricey.

The problem with my treatment drugs was a different one caused by the new policy. There is only one pharmaceutical company in the USA that is authorized by the FDA to carry this DNA recombiant drug and we have to go through another company as well, my insurance company's choice of mail order pharmacy.

Usually what happens when I need my three month supply shipped to my doctor the doctor's office calls the mail order pharmacy, who orders it shipped from the pharmaceutical company while charging my insurance copay straight to my Visa card. Once a year in Sept we have to update the prior auth from the insurance company and I sign off to allow them to keep charging my credit card and shipping the drug, give them my permission to do it without calling me each time.

Under the new health care laws now I am required to have a series of tests run yearly, tests that my doctor has already told them are a waste of time and resources because they don't relate to the underlying condition driving everything. I have to have a complete new set of PFT and other stuff, the doctor had to write a new prescription, we had to fill out all new paperwork while nothing has changed and get a new prior authorization from the insurance company.

Did I mention that this drug is essential to me maintaining enough health to function and keep from being the gal with one foot on the banana peel and the other on the tombstone?

This is definitely not the change I voted for. But I think I have both things straightened out now, I hope. Fingers crossed. On my way to the hospital for the PFT and for Andy's MRI this afternoon.

That New Year Smell - Ahhhh!

2011-01-05T16:17:00.002-05:00

So I was cranky last year, now's a brand new year and I'm excited. I have a lot of projects in the works.

We did take the trip down to Louisiana for the holidays, staying at a beautiful suites hotel that was part of the Hilton chain mere minutes from my favorite aunt's house. But I spent most of the holiday flat on my back with a chest cold that threatened to morph into bronchitis. I read, I quilted, I watched a lot of television but mostly I managed to avoid that most irritating of all holiday things, family dysfunction. I got a pass on ALL of it. I simply lay in the bed and occasionally picked up the phone to say, "Hello, room service please"

Christmas was wonderful and peaceful even if it was snotty.

The kids stayed home alone. I didn't ask too many questions about what they did in my absence because I'm sure I would not approve of all of it. They're over 18 now and there are just some things I do not want to know about them. The house was in one piece when we got home so it's all good.

My husband has refused to get his hernia repaired even if two doctors now have told him that it's not going anywhere and it's definitely not going to go away on its own. But trying to reason with him over medical things isn't the most fun thing on the planet. I suppose I'll be hauling him to the ER when his hernia decides to assert itself in the most unpleasant of ways.

Andy is currently home from college and it looks like he might have a torn ACL and a torn meniscus from a long skateboarding accident. He's scheduled for an MRI tomorrow afternoon. The question is if this is repairable by a simple laproscopy procedure or will they have to do a full ACL reconstruction. I am praying it's only a torn meniscus.

Jim and I made a number of resolutions this year, one of which was to step up going to the gym from 3 times a week to daily. I never realized what a huge chunk of time working out takes up but it takes about two full hours out of my day now. Days I work it really puts a crimp in my day.

One of the other resolutions was that I would start cooking again every day from scratch. I stopped doing much cooking after I became ill four years ago. We've eaten out quite a bit and it has meant prepared foodstuff and sandwiches. I feel it would be much easier to monitor and control my food allergies and Jim's weight if I cook again daily.

The Bumpass Family Update

2010-09-02T19:29:00.002-05:00

I've been busier than a one legged man at an asskicking contest. Daughters #1 and #2 are fighting with each other over stupidly immature things and Hurricane Earl is bearing down upon us. I was outside much of the morning picking what could be picked from the vegetable garden and quick picking my two apple trees. We're well away from the worst of the storm path but we are supposed to get hurricane force winds. I want those apples before nature and Earl turn them into applesauce.

The apples are all carefully stowed away now, some in crock pots to turn into apple butter and apple sauce. Some are in the cider press which I'll jar up on Sunday, some are in the dehydrator and still others are hanging in a cheesecloth bag draining juice out. That's just the apples.

I've been steadily canning the produce all summer but I didn't plan on doing both trees worth of fruit in one day because of a storm.

I cannot tell you how much of a laugh I am getting out of the fact that this hurricane has the same first name as my late father. He would be tickled by that. Makes me smile and remember him.

Since I've been outside picking I have been treated to the action at the Bumpass household. Right now the HOA is after them to move the rolling tenement, which is sitting on two flat tires in the driveway rusting.

But today I witnessed the police show up three different times, various shouting and fighting on the front lawn but the most amusing were the three cretinous young men that showed up to tow one of the Bumpasses assorted rolling scrap iron.

They didn't have a tow truck, just a car transport like cart from U Haul behind their truck. One of them pulled out the metal incline for them to push the car up. They'd grunt and they'd heave, push the car up the ramp, get it just about up there and.......

....... down it would roll. I watched them try on six different attempts before they finally accomplished the task at hand.

I'll almost be sorry to see the Bumpasses go when the inevitable eviction takes place. But we'll get someone equally funny in a redneck way, we always do. This neighborhood is sedate and quiet with the exception of that one house..

Thousand Pound Gorilla?

2010-08-26T10:42:00.002-05:00

You've heard the old joke about the thousand pound gorilla? Where does a thousand pound gorilla sit? Anywhere it wants! I'm beginning to think that the right wing and the right wing pundits are the thousand pound gorilla.

They've switched the water yoga classes around at the gym and discontinued the night class. Now I'm stuck going with the gray hair brigade during the day and it's driving me nuts! I had to complain to the gym management about it. They said they'd do something about it but I doubt it. I'm not a thousand pound gorilla there.

So what's wrong with doing water yoga during the day? The other people.

I've done yoga off and on since the mid 70s and in every group I've practiced in there is quiet, stillness, reverence for the practice of this discipline of mind and body.

Not during the day with these old biddies. They cackle and giggle and gossip all the way through the class, seriously screwing with my focus. Yesterday one of them screeched out a teapartyesque screed about how black people complained that our gym was exclusionary and unfriendly to persons of color but that when blacks joined they only came a couple of times before quitting. She was sputtering and spitting about the nature of black folks in a very derogatory racist just under the surface fashion. I was itching to drop Warrior Pose number three to turn around and throttle her for being the very type of reactionary hidden racist stirring up trouble in this summer of fear that seems to have gripped our nation.

People, Civil Rights passed into law back in the 1960s and African Americans or Mexicans or pick a race/sexual orientation/religion are as America as we are with the same rights and responsibilities. You're missing out on so much when you exclude a group from your life or try to treat others as lesser. You only expose your own ignorance when you act like that.

It's just plain old wrong.

Speaking of wrong, Jim and I will be in DC this weekend protesting at the Glen Beck rally. I blame him as one of the more major culprits in this polarized climate of intolerance, hatred and fears. But we all plan on being respectful at the protest and leave the ugly to the other side.

I cannot tell you how badly it pains me to see what this nation has started to morph into.

The Old/New Switcheroo

2010-08-20T08:44:00.002-05:00

This week I -

Quit my job and started a new job. The new job is like heaven! I'm working at an art and design studio. It's a 360 degrees turn around from the old one.

I didn't cuss everyone out on the intercom, pop the inflatable safety slide and steal beers as I made my get away from the old job. I left in such a way as that I can always come back. But I'm not... hahahha

and I think I've found another church home. Visiting all these different churches is awkward and weird but this place felt like home. I also saw a number of people I knew from the big major denom place I left.

Jim has been grumpy this week because I switched our cell phones for an upgrade. He doesn't get it that the kids wanted phones capable of surfing the web and that they paid for the things. This is just one of those things that he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into.

He still will not schedule his hernia surgery.

On my way to get my treatments this morning at the infusion center. Raah! Shots!

Rolling Ghetto

2010-08-12T14:55:00.002-05:00

So I'm still too sick to work today and Jim had his appointment with the surgeon to be told he needs his hernia repaired asap. But that's not what has me laughing today. It's my across the street neighbors, the Bumpasses.

Apparently they are preparing for vacation and have begged, borrowed, stolen an RV. And like Cousin Eddie from 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' their RV is rusted, old, looking more like it's ready for the scrap metal heap than any foray down the interstate.

I've been guffawing and watching them try to clean up this tin tenement on wheels all morning. I cannot imagine a trip in it as there is no central air and the jalousie windows are rusted along the edges. I don't think it has a fridge as they've been hauling out and cleaning large ice chests.

Doesn't sound like a fun vacation to me. No AC, no fridge, camping in a rusted tin can. I'll be down at the nearest Suites by Marriott if you need me.

Wonder if they know the neighborhood association rules prohibit boats and or RVs from resting in your driveway more than an eight hour stretch. Perhaps I can rent them a slot at my newest investment, soon to be mobile home and RV court?

ER Or Bust?

2010-08-11T14:20:00.002-05:00

So I did not grout the tile or do anything with the delivered vanity, sink, mirror or toilet. I'm spending most of my time in bed.

Screw the company bathroom, screw work, screw everyone and everything. My oxygen levels have fallen to hospitalization levels but I'm reluctant to check in since my pulmo is on vacay.

Yesterday I got dizzy and took a tumble in the dressing room at the club, earning me a quick trip to ER, where I learned my oxygen levels are iffy. So I knew better than to go out yesterday. It was a code red day. But I decided a swim at the indoor pool at the club was just what I needed. Now my lung function is so far down I can barely climb the stairs without getting completely out of breath. I see spots before my eyes when I do any type of exertion.

So I'm getting to spend most of my time laying propped up in my bed huffing on my nebulizer. I hate being this inactive.

The only upside is apparently this time I've frightened the kids enough that Laura cooked last night and she and Andy cleaned yesterday and today.

Guess I Can't...

2010-08-09T16:48:00.002-05:00

...laugh and point any longer. Jim has a hernia and he has to have surgery. He also has been diagnosed with sleep apnea (pending testing) and jock itch. What next?

My quandary is that I wonder how this is going to go over with the ogre crew in management where I work? I have to have Thursday off to take him to the specialist and the surgeon because I go to all his doctors appointments. I'm the only one that thinks to make notes and handle all the arrangements for appointments, etc.

Part of me hopes it makes them finally fire me so I can be free to go implement my new plan to be a Louisiana Slum Lord for a living. I'm considering putting a mobile home park on about ten acres of my land. Minimal investment and it would more than cover my lost wages. I've been researching it for the past few weeks and talking to the parish zoning committee and various local folks. It's a strong contender on the 'Earn Suzanne A Living Without Much Effort' sweepstakes.

If I didn't have to work to help out while we have two kids in college at the same time I could never worry about being with Jim through his various illnesses and problems. It would give me more days like today, where I placed about 300 bucks worth of hand painted Mediterranean tiles in my guest bathroom. Tomorrow I grout. Wednesday the new toilet and sink are being delivered and on Thursday I install them. Friday I plan to do touch up paint and hang a few pieces of artwork in the room. And then it's on to the kitchen to replace the sink and dishwasher, tile the countertops and back splash. Lastly will be laying hardwood flooring in my bedroom and terra cotta tiled floors in the dining room. I am redecorating and remodeling, easier to do when you don't have pesky work to attend to.

Jim Makes Me Laugh Again

2010-08-08T12:02:00.003-05:00

I know I bitch about him here but he's also one of the most wonderful guys I've ever known. He's been taking me away for long weekends this summer after realizing I'm getting overwrought and overwhelmed by the house remodel, work bullshit (like this week when they took every employees vacation time and sick leave away) and various family confloptions with our college aged kids.

We went away to Virginia Beach last weekend, so last second that we had no advance notice to reserve one of our suites at the suites hotel we own several suites in. So we ended up in a Mom and Pop sort of place beachside. It rained and rained and rained so there was a lot of lazing around the room watching television the first day. Second day the rains lifted and we ventured out to the beach finally.

Our hotel overlooked a Dairy Queen, heee, Jim's favorite place to eat.

After a long walk on the board walk we ended up sitting to watch the surfers and the crowd. I like to people watch, it always gives me ideas for fiction writing but this was one of the rare times Jim joined me. What a funny potential disaster!

Jim proceeded to loudly critique the passing masses of humanity, proclaiming this one fat, that was geeky and pidgin chested, another one spanked by the ugly stick. I had to ask him, "Looked in the mirror lately?" every time he judged someone as fat and went off into a long rant about the general state of lazy obesity in the USA. But for the most part his proclamations were hysterically funny, very juvenile but funny.

I know, one hell of a junior high way to spend an afternoon but it was most amusing. The man makes me laugh.

Last night he really made me laugh. He came rushing into our bedroom wearing only his tighty whities while Laura and I were talking and started spouting out in a panicked voice that he'd discovered something weirdly wrong with his body. Which really made me laugh hard because he was referring to the small hernia sprouting from his belly button. He's had it a long long time. The doctors at UVA remarked upon it at his hospitalization. So did the doctor in Tampa during his pre op physical. Apparently last night was the first time he had noticed it. He has no memory of the different doctors mentioning it or it being ruled harmless in the grand scheme of other health care concerns.

You'd think he was dying or giving birth he's so incredibly verklempt about this. Tomorrow he's going to the doctor and I'm planning on going with him. I want to point out a suspicious spot that looks like skin cancer starting and see if I can nudge the doc into testing him for sleep apnea.

There Has Been Bloodshed

2010-07-26T14:53:00.000-05:00

Well today was an experience in pet ownership. I took Pedro my Siamese into the Vet for his booster shots and yearly exam. He hasn't been to the Vet in just over a year, when they neutered him just as he was coming out of kittenhood.

I started off like I start off all cat to vet visits, I haul out the cat carrier a few days in advance and clean it, letting it sit in the living room the cats stop staring at it like it's a portal to doom. I clean the box and talk to the cats, 'now, now, you're going to see nice Dr Harry in the morning, it will be fine' Pedro was very curious, kept coming in to watch the cleaning, got in and out of the box a bunch of times for shits and giggles.

About 45 minutes before the appointment and 40 minutes before leaving I've learned is the ideal time to stuff whoever has an appointment into the box. It tends to make my guys calm down a little to have a few minutes to get used to the box. Usually I march over to that day's victim, scoop them out, thrust them into the box and quickly fasten off the top door. Do it quick before anyone's really aware what's going on.

Today? Not so much. I called Pedro over, picked him up, petted him, talked nice to him as I took him to the box. As soon as he saw the box he turned into a ball of flailing claws. Scratched me up pretty good. I actually got him into the box in first shove but as I was lowering the lid he shot out like someone had blown a cocaine rocket up his ass. Ten minutes of coaxing to get him off the top of the china hutch in the dining room. I started petting and loving on him again but the second I picked him up it was all flailing claws again.

Lather, rinse repeat a few dozen more times.

Then he decided he'd had enough and he was hiding. First he hid inside the sofa till I started trying to grapple him out. He moved from room to room to room till I had to get my son to get up and help with the cat chasing. After chasing him over an hour with a pause for me to let the Vet's office know we were going to be late and why, we finally cornered him in the window dormer of my bedroom. I grabbed him, threw a brand new towel over him and wrapped him like a huge furry burrito skin tight. Even then he was fighting so I tucked his head under my left arm pit and used both arms/hands to put a death grip on the burrito before shoving the whole snarling attempting to claw mess into the carrier. It was pretty much over by then except for the hideous bleeding wheals I have all over my arms, legs and torso. I look like I tried to shave with a weed eater.

He was meek at the Vet's office and kept cuddling against me to keep the evil doctor from poking him. Meek when poked with needles. We get home and he dashed from the crate never to be seen in the last 4 hours. He's sulking and I'm nursing my wounds.

Never had a pet visit go quite like this. Usually my cats protest but get into that box without bloodshed and upon first scoop and thrust.

Cry Baby

2010-07-23T21:37:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in a month and boy has it been one of those proverbial months from hell. Changes at work combined with indie contractors flooding in to replace salaried full timers have me on the bubble at work this last month. Threats of firing, etc, retraining, sales meetings with the bosses. I cried at one meeting. It wasn't pretty. I hate when I lose control like that and cry at work.

So I've started contemplating what I'm going to do next. I have some job possibilities and some new ideas for starting a business again but I'm unsure what the next step will be. Guess I'll have to pray.

Speaking of prayer I've been moved through my prayer life to leave the stodgy mainline denomination I have led worship at for the past four years. So I'm visiting different churches each week. I've heard in my prayer time that I'm going to end up leading worship some place that's going to require I wear a skirt. Ha! Old hippie me.

Visiting other churches has been awkward and uncomfortable. Tears, fears.

Andy hasn't been healing very rapidly from his knee problems. He got to the one month mark the other day, went out to ride his long board and promptly reinjured his knee again. Some girls yelled at him that he looked 'gay' riding that long skateboard and he promptly fell off the board and the knee is worse.

And today added to my free floating anxiety related to my job and my faith walk. Today is Laura's 19th birthday and she worked. I called her from the store where I was picking up a cake and ice cream to ask her what type she wanted. She bit my head off, informing me that SHE would do the picking, not I. It was a particularly bad moment. I hung up, beat a path out of the store and shed a few tears before ranting to Jim that our daughter was an ungrateful control freak.

But before the end of the day Laura and I had hugged and talked. I'm better. But I'm still in a very uncomfortable place in my life. Major changes coming.

Sore Knee Redux

2010-06-25T08:39:00.002-05:00

We had quite a day yesterday.

It started with me awakening from a vivid dream that I believe was straight from the Lord. A warning that I needed to do something that Jim had been after me to do for years that I was disinclined to do since leaving the fundamentalist life style. What was it? Not spend money like a drunken millionaire. Be more budget minded. I'm not really super spendy but I admit I live a pretty luxe life sometimes.

So, that really made it a challenge when I had to run out to the grocery store for coffee since I was out. I try to buy only ethically if that makes any sense. I get the eggs from cage free chickens, buy only organics and things made by small cooperatives before buying something made by big agri business.

There's a coffee I like that is from a co-op of small Columbian coffee growers where they get a higher percentage of the profits than the usual coffee from one of the giants in industry. The problem with eating this way is it is more expensive and here I'd committed to trying to spend less.

Damn store discontinued that brand so they could fill the space with Starbucks branded nasty tasting crap. I was rather unhappy but it make picking the cheaper option much easier.

Ran into a good buddy at the store. We stood around and talked about recipes for pickled eggs and tequila lime chicken. Before I knew it I'd been there at the store for about an hour.

When I'd left Andy left at the same time to go skate the town streets on his long board skateboard. I walked in through the door with my pound of coffee and a cup of frozen coffee in one hand, a bag of sale items in the other and found Andy laying at the top of the staircase screaming and moaning. The first words out of his mouth were "Mom, I have to go to the hospital right now! I dislocated my knee!" I dropped my bag and coffees right there, ran up the stairs and manipulated his knee back into position. He was shrieking, hurts like hell when someone pushes your dislocated anything back into place.

I took him straight to the ER, calling my boss to tell her I was going to be late for work. After an Xray and MRI and a six hour wait the hospital concluded he had a very bad sprain. Of course this happened on his skateboard.

Had to bite back a laugh when the doc started to order him a shot of high powered pain killer and a script for pills. My darling 22 year old son blurted out that he'd done it the old fashioned Civil War era way and downed some shots of tequila while waiting for me. He learned the hard way that they will not give you the good stuff for pain if you've been boozing.

I'm just thankful it was just a sprain and that it occurred yesterday, not today. Yesterday was the last day that our insurance company will cover Andy. As of today he has no health coverage until July 1. They boot you off 31 days after you turn 22 years old, which is today.

So we've got this fancy new healthcare bill that says if your child is a full time college student that the insurance cannot boot them till 26. The law doesn't take affect until September. Our insurance company has stated that they will not honor it until the next open benefits period, which is January for us. We signed up for a bare bones hospitalization policy for Andy through his college but it doesn't take effect until July 1. He's without coverage for the next week.

So wrong. I'll remember this Blue Cross.

Now I'm wiped and worn out from the drama and the strain of getting Jim packed for his trip to his family reunion. Jim cannot find a thing. I was up till very late.

Gender Roles & Rights?

2010-06-17T08:35:00.002-05:00

I adore Mad Men and I love this send up of Mad Men's sometimes sexist ways even more. I remember those bad old days when a girl was expected to cook and sew. I still cook and sew but I enjoy it. Right now I'm working on a quilted batiked jacket for fall and canning everything from the garden. I like gardening too.

But I also love some very unfeminine things too, like boxing. I do some boxing training at our gym even if I'm too chicken to fight. I love to surf. I like to explore old buildings.

I'm so glad that the mores of the early 60s no longer hold a woman down into those tightly defined roles. There are days when I'd rather race Go Karts than iron shirts and I usually give in to that urge.

Unfortunately this weekend Laura decided to push her rights and role a little too far. She spent the weekend fighting with her daddy trying to get him to treat her more like an adult. She wanted to do things we just don't allow in our home. I didn't intervene, I let them verbally duke it out. I'm sick with one of the worst bouts of asthma I've had since starting my treatments, I have zero energy and am not about to allow family teenager manufactored drama sap my strength. I put on the headphones and listened to Lady GaGa every time the yelling started.

Eventually they did settle it but Laura learned she had to give in more than she wanted.

Youth, Age, Appropriateness

2010-06-10T13:23:00.003-05:00

I went to Wal Mart this morning. Wal Mart never fails to provide me with more than just cheap stuff to buy and a giggle at peopleofwalmart.com It usually manages to provide something thought provoking or incredibly irksome into my day. This might have been irksome today but it lead me to start thinking about age, youth, how we're not really bound by chronological age except by those insistent on putting us in certain age groups.

Bright and early this am I went by my local Wal Mart to pick up a couple of yards of fabric to make a set of drapes. Since I trimmed the trees in the back at night you can clearly see into my office. Since I work till sometimes 3 am the last thing I need is someone staring in at me from the street.

As I marched over the worn and filthy tiles leading into my local Wal Mart Super Center I heard a voice behind me bitch, "I cannot BELIEVE how slutty these young girls dress here. SHEER blouses in WAL MART! No wonder so many of them get raped!" A man's voice tried to shush her, telling her that the person she's complaining about can hear her.

At this point I realize that the lady is talking about me. ME! I'm wearing baggy capris and a loose white cotton embroidered Mexican tunic hanging almost to my knees. It's sheerish, but I have on a bra AND a white husband-beater beneath it. It's hot here and I'm not wearing heavy clothing in the summer. I had to turn around, look at the lady and burst out laughing with a "Are you kidding me?", which just made her angrier.

I'm so not young girl any longer but I could clearly see the complainer was at least ten or fifteen years older than me. She was dressed and coiffed like an old grandma in comparison to my old hippie self. There was nothing wrong with the way either of us was dressed but I have to say that the days of allowing someone else to dictate what I wear or don't wear are long gone.

Back when I was a member of Possum Creek, back in the early days, we all wore long sleeved shirts and loose long jumpers with socks and shoes. From neck to toe nothing much was exposed.

But even after the church loosed up some and most of the Quiverful people left to form their much stricter stringent holier church and things loosed up modesty was still preached from the pulpit. I've have never worn a shirt like this in public without a long sleeved tee beneath.

It's been a long journey out of fundamentalism for me to get to the point where I'm not self conscience changing at the gym, wearing shorts in the garden or a swim suit in public. It's hard sometimes to overcome that voice in your head. I don't know it was about my perfectly acceptable attire that made the lady lose it but I suspect it had to do with her own preconceived notions of modesty. Still laughing she mistook me for 'young'. Plus the delicious irony of being told I was inappropriately dressed for Wal Mart, home of crazy dressed customers.

It really doesn't matter a fig what you wear, just as long as it's something you like that doesn't get you arrested for public exposure it's all good. People that want to insist you dress one way or another, religious or not, only want to control you, put you in a nice tidy box that fits into their way of thinking.

I prefer freedom.

Dicing With The Dangerous

2010-06-09T16:02:00.002-05:00

I have been one foolish old lady.

Yesterday I spent most of the day cleaning and rearranging my pantry and laundry room. Cleaning the laundry room I discovered my set of nail clippers for the cats. Then I embarked on the most foolish of all tasks, trimming the kitties nails. The feisty kitten Pedro laid still for the clipping but getting my old man cat, Lil Bit, to stay still was an exercise in futility. He didn't scratch me but I was hard pressed to clip him as he squirmed like a fish out of water. I missed and nipped myself a couple of times with the clippers.

My second bout of dangerous behavior came at bedtime when I started to eat the last of a few mini M&Ms while playing a game on the upstairs computer. I dropped my candies like a dumbass, bend down, picked them up and ate them. But when I bit down I'd somehow managed to sweep up one of Jim's old Urelle pills. Gack!!! Like biting into the world's most bitter substance mixed with chocolate. Uh, no thanks. Now I see how kids sometimes mistake pills for candy as this one was a tiny shiny purple circle the same size and shape as a mini M&M.

I'm such a dumbass sometimes.

Sex And This City

2010-06-08T07:13:00.004-05:00

So yesterday I took a 'me' moment that didn't involve shopping, the gym or the day spa. I went to the afternoon matinee of the new SatC movie.

For a long time now since I heard what the actual storyline was I've had very mixed feelings about going. I loved the original series, I liked the first movie but this sounded too unbelievable. I've been to the UAE and could not imagine a scenario where the gals, at least Samantha, wouldn't be almost immediately arrested. I've ridden a camel in Morocco back in 1987 and I couldn't imagine wearing silks and designer fashions to ride those uncomfortable spitting beasts. Seemed too preposterous for my tastes and would require too much suspension of belief.

It didn't bode well that when I got to the local theater in our small town that I was the only one that showed up for the matinee. Granted, it was a Monday afternoon but still. When I went to see the first film it was also about this long after it had opened, also at an earlier showing and the theater was packed. Not only was it packed but most of the ladies were dressed to the max while I was slubbing around in comfortable khakis and soft Life Is Good t-shirt. This time there was still just me, still in khakis but this time in a nod to the movie I wore my new coral, tigers eye, turquoise, sapphire triple strand necklace with cute shoes and a pima cotton tee.

And I was most surprised, only I ignored some of the ridiculous moments like Charlotte making cupcakes in her vintage designer outfit (no way!), Sam dressing like she does without arrest, etc. I thought that the message that the film held on marriages, trust in marriage and maturing was good one. I have friends that schlep around the same damn Suzanne Sommers book and creams and supplements. I have friends that agonize over the fact that temptation in the path of their sig-os every day. Other friends that microanalyse every single word dripping from their husbands mouths like he's some mysterious oracle. And best of all, friends that trust their mates, give them space, treat them with value. The movie was a good example of what works and doesn't work and about embracing getting older.

Getting older is what I noticed the most. Everyone had wrinkles no matter how much botox or plastic surgery they've had. That's cool too. I'm happily embracing every silver hair and wrinkle happening to me now because it's a season in life.

I love this George Harrison song about aging.

Love is really the only thing that matters in the long run, the only thing that lasts and has the power to transform the world.

It was a good outing for me because of the recent weirdness with Jim. Jim stomped out of the house late Sunday night, stayed away till past midnight talking to a mutual friend at church. I think this friend talked him into seeing reason, that the kids and I are personally responsible for our own spiritual life. He arrived in a better mood and we went out to dinner with friends last night.

Religious Non-Freedom

2010-06-06T09:21:00.004-05:00

So I'm playing hooky from church today. In fact I'm shortly to depart for shopping and Costco. I need to see if I can get a formal dress to wear with my new over the top diamond earrings, something slinky to wear for my anniversary and I need bras.

But the hooky, I'm sort of bent out of shape about skipping church. Originally I'd planned to go back to our old church, Possum Creek, just to visit and worship. This is youth weekend at our church and I have no desire to sit through that so I thought I'd go visit old friends and great worship.

In the eyes of Jim this constitutes some sort of back sliding betrayal. Once Jim caught wind of my plans last week he has nagged me incessantly not to go back for any reason. He's gone way out of his way to point out the huge glaring wrongs at Possum Creek, the lock step conservatism, the conformist mentality, the gossip, the butting into other peoples business, the dress code and on and on..

And he's right, those things do exist at Possum Creek, but they always did and I never paid any of them much mind nor did I have much to do with those there that are concerned with such things. Then and now I only want the presence of the Divine, not the religious games played by others. I still have friends there and the worship there is still some of the truest worship I've ever experienced. There are some good people there regardless of some of the bad things that happened to me there. The wicked there I ignore and I've forgiven.

Ghandhi said "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong" and that's how I've chosen to live my life now. I forgive. Sometimes it takes a pile of time but eventually I reach that place. I've forgiven Ned Flanders to the point where I feel nothing but compassion for him. He has a hard row to hoe in life. He means well.

I've chosen strength, compassion and forgiveness.

There's a lot that's gone down at my new church that gives me pause, the greatest being that I tend to gag on the ritualism and lack of freedom there. It's just like the old church, in a different guise and stricter rules. Same old same old without the great worship. I've been called on the carpet so many times for being the same old Charismatic crackhead in how I pray and worship that I have rug burns now.

This denomination has a flame incorporated into their symbolism but all I see are cold ashes. People there are content to sit in the pew for an hour and be done with it, pat themselves on the back for being all holy without any notion that there are deeper things in the realms of the almighty. I feel like they're just missing the boat on so much more that they could be experiencing.

The way the pastor is handling the budget also gives me pause. It's not Biblical. Right now they are 80K short on the budget and keep spending, hiring new staff, etc. Only a few people on the finance team have bothered to voice the opinion that it's wrong to spend money you don't have. The pastor seems to think it's a-okay even as the church owes the state denomination group over 30K right now.

and as I was writing this all this morning Jim came home from church and declared himself 'in a pissy mood' while refusing to tell me the why. Turns out he's very upset that the kids refuse to go to the new church and that I played hooky. He's ranting that our defection is making him so unhappy he's going to stop going, which is really some sort of stupid bs to me. Don't passive aggressively blame it on the kids and I.

If this is where he's blessed he should go but he needs to extend me the same sort of grace. When he left Possum Creek he said that I could stay there if I wanted, that we didn't need to go to the same church but now he's insisting on this lock step conformity with him in a church that is a terrible fit for me? I don't get it.

I adore him but if he's dumb enough to try and make me chose between him and my relationship with God he's going to lose every time.

Must think and pray on this.

Telephone Man

2010-06-05T11:02:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had a super frustrating experience. I had to cancel my landline with Verizon. I wish it had been as easy as the cheesy song above from the 1970s makes it sound, those phone company dealings.

They transferred me from person to person, told me horror stories of only going with VOIP and cell phones, offered me discounts. It seemed to bounce off the ear drums of everyone I talked to that I was dropping my land line only because the big evil international corporation I work for has switched to 100% VOIP. I have no part in this decision, it was someone at corporate that thought it made more sense for us. I never use the landline.

Ridiculous excuses Verizon's drones offered for why I should keep my landline?
1. VOIPs cannot be used in storms. Cell phones are unreliable in storms.
2. The sound quality of VOIPS & cell phones is poor.
3. Cell phone reception is spotty
and on and on and on....

I wonder if I was canceling my cell phone with Verizon what excuses they'd offer about land lines? I should call them up for shits and giggles just to find out.

It took standing my ground and insisting that I was canceling my land line no less than 30 minutes before Verizon threw in the towel and finally canceled the service, flicking the switch immediately.

The things I do to keep my silly job and big paycheck.

I do love that dress on the tranny in the video. She needs lots of black bangle-ly bracelets to really work it.

Fifty Is Nifty

2010-06-04T20:00:00.004-05:00

Lots has happened since last I posted. I'll keep it brief, as brief as someone as long winded as myself can. Been working 60 hour work weeks since my last posting. Not much to talk about.

I turned 50 just a few days ago. It was a good day. Took the day off and loafed for days. James and I took a trip to the mountains of West Virginia for four days, staying in a beautiful cabin in a valley surrounded by steep mountains. Our cabin had a heart shaped Jacuzzi and a deck directly over a small babbling mountain stream. Relaxing. No kids. We visited underground caverns, national parks, big rocks, art galleries and loony bins.

Yes, one of the side trips we took was to the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

This place

Despite having called a few days before to find out if it was going to be open for tours it was closed up as tightly as a debutantes corset the day we visited. That did not stop me from taking loads of photos and walking around the various buildings. James became frightened of the strong vibes he was getting and ended up hiding in the car for most of the visit. You see the place is reputed to be haunted. Once we saw a few fog apparitions on the grounds in broad daylight Jim was so over being there.

It's a good thing he ditched. As he was in the car and I took pictures of a building at the end of the complex I could hear doors slamming shut in the abandoned building. There wasn't a soul around. If this place was manifesting so in the daylight I'm almost afraid to see what type of activity happens at night.

Once we returned home I found that my elderly great aunt had sent me a present. I am almost ashamed to confess this, makes me sound like even more of an entitled c-word than I normally am. I was so excited to open the box and see the distinctive Tiffany blue box tied with a white ribbon. Once I opened the box I was horror-struck to see the tackiest most over the top platinum, diamond and gem stone earrings I've ever seen. They look like something straight out of Dynasty or the Real Housewives, not my style at all. I feel guilty possessing something that took that many dollars to buy in an age when people are losing their homes and jobs. It's the worst of conspicuous consumerism during an appalling time.

I don't know quite where I'm ever going to have the opportunity to wear something so blinged out. Not in a mountain cabin or hiking or ghosthunting, that's for sure.

I guess all in all if that's my worst complaint in life then things are going swimmingly.

Cruel Spring Almost Summer

2010-05-20T21:15:00.003-05:00

Sorry I've been MIA but I've been so busy. Just a quick rant tonight.

One of the big things I hate about this time of the year is that I get pressed into service as a local bird shelter. One of the big things I love about this time of the year is that I get pressed into service as a local bird shelter.

Once baby birds start falling from nests in the neighborhood or a storm knocks down an entire nest of tiny peeping baby birds they find their way to me. Sometimes a neighbor brings them to me. Sometimes I just find them while gardening.

Yesterday a neighborhood kid came to get me because he'd found a bird 'just standing there' I came with my birding net and a cage. Sure enough it was a three quarters of the way grown nestling. Nearly as big as an adult but with a stocky torso and undersized wings and tail. Not quite able to fly yet.

Could not determine which nest he came from or if he'd been injured other than some dislodged and rumpled feathers. He protested loudly just once when I picked him up and shoved him into my cage to carry home.

But it was evident after a short time that he had injuries either from the fall from the tree or an encounter with neighborhood cats. He died in my hands. I'm always so sad when it works out that way.

The Back-Up Panties

2010-05-07T08:24:00.003-05:00

I've been cleaning the closets out and now I'm doing my semi-annual sweep of my own. I have lots of clothes, an embarrassing amount of clothing to the point where I have to rotate seasons in and out of the closet.

This year I decided that's just crazy making and creates more work for me so I'm sending about half of my wardrobe out to Goodwill. I have too many things I just never wear. Who needs five coats? So far I've filled 8 large boxes and I'm just getting started.

Some years ago I had a closet organizer installed with pretty wicker baskets that pull out to store underwear and socks, special shelves for shoes, hats, purses. It's groaning and overloaded as well. But some of those things present special problems.

I know some people do this but I shudder thinking about it. Donating used panties to charity. Who wants to be walking around in the possibly funk-encrusted drawers of a stranger? I'm tossing my excess from the 27 pairs in the basket.

Most of the panties are in good shape so I'm not tossing that many. However, there's the problem of the back-up panties. I hate them, they are scratchy or don't fit perfectly yet my practical nature abhors just tossing them because they're just like new, worn only once or twice.

What, pray tell, are back-up panties I'm sure you're asking yourself right now. Those are the underwear you end up with because you're somewhere on vacation or a trip and you realize you didn't pack enough underwear or perhaps you go on a spur of the moment overnight and need a change.

Back in January when Jim had his parathyroid surgery in Tampa I made a major miscalculation with the weather. When my daughter dropped me off at Reagan National to catch my flight I shed my heavy leather coat in the car for her to bring home and walked the ten short steps from the curb to the front door. Now it was in the minuses that day with the wind chill factor but I was wearing layered sweaters for the trip. I always freeze on the plane and I knew it would be in the 60s and 70s in Tampa according to the relative I'd talked to the week before. So I packed just one change of clothes, capris and a short sleeved shirt and underwear. I was wearing the lone sweater just in case it got chilly at night.

I was shocked, surprised and dismayed to get off the plane in Tampa and discover they were in the beginning of a cold snap nearly as frigid as Washington DC. One of the first places I stopped after dropping my carry on at the cousin's house was Wal Mart. After arriving I found out we were staying longer than a day and I'd seriously under packed. I picked up a couple of cheap long pants, a fleece pullover and a couple more sweaters along with a packet of Hanes cotton panties. In fact, most of the things I bought were Hanes brand. I usually do not shop at Wal Mart for clothing, in fact I was really surprised how nice the pants, sweaters and fleece jacket were.

The panties? Not so much. Sort of how I picture prison underwear to feel like. Stiff, thin, cheap. I got back home and they ended up in the back of the basket behind everything else after only one wearing. They aren't big enough to use as dust clothes and I'm too squicked out to donate them. I just hate throwing something away I paid good money for. Too bad there's no good way to recycle them.

May Fools Day

2010-05-03T15:25:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I crashed. I'm in that sick/exhausted state again that only rest helps. Slept in till noon yesterday, spent the rest of the day on the couch, took a nap from 5 till almost 9 pm before sleeping another 12 hours last night. It works. I feel marginally less sick and tired.

But it led to Laura and I accidentally playing an April Foods Day like joke on Jim. Last night when I awoke at 9 I realized I'd eaten nothing all day long. Laura came home and we both decided to swing through the drive thru window of a nearby fast food place. Asked Jim what he wanted and he grumped he was fine.

We took his car and since I'm five feet two inches tall I had to move the seat way forward and adjust all his mirrors. Laura decided she had to listen to country music on the way to get food. We got home, left the settings like we adjusted them.

Get up late this morning to a frantic message from Jim about hillbillies, like the Bumpasses, possibly hotwiring his car for a joy ride. He genuinely thought our neighbors had done this. Ha! I laughed and explained what it really was. Silly man.

Exhausted My Ass

2010-05-01T19:23:00.002-05:00

So I haven't posted much. It's the busy around here.

Jim did get his tube removed from his back/kidney and he seems to be doing better. Once we went to UVA for his preop clearance it was discovered that large stone driving the problems has dissolved. We were told by that doctor this was not very likely to happen since the stone was the size of an eraser on the pencil. But it did pass.

I've been giving Jim hell about not admitting or giving God the glory for this. So many people were praying that the stone would breakup and pass. He believes more in doctors than divine healing. I guess it doesn't matter what happened to pass the stone, just that he passed it without a lot of pain.

Got to go for a few hours to Gold Cup and rub shoulders with the rich and semi famous.

The rest of this month has been work, work, work followed by housework. So so so exciting.

Starbucks Is My Drug

2010-04-16T08:45:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I stopped by my local Starbucks for a shaken black tea lemonade before I had to log into work. I should just have a portion of my earnings go straight to Starbucks because that's where it ends up anyway. Having a Starbucks three short blocks from my house doesn't help either.

There's always an interesting mix of people at Starbucks too, from the most redneck woodchucks through the yuppies invading our small town after years living bumped up against DC. Yesterday I ran into actor Robert Duval there. I know he lives not far away and he used to be a patient at the medical clinic I worked at. It was nice seeing him again. He started talking about a new project he's working on that he has in mind for Brad Pitt.

Once I started work I got another little interesting tinsel town tidbit. One of our clients was buying something for someone working in Dr Conrad Murray's office. You know, the same doctor that was present when Michael Jackson kicked the bucket. He claims that Dr Conrad has been swearing since day one that Michael injected himself with the fatal Propofol shot when Murray was out of the room. Says he's been interviewed by TMZ and other media outlets. That Michael was extremely hooked on drugs and Dr Conrad Murray was merely trying to wean him from the drugs. Could be. Who knows.

I've had Propofol and I don't get why Michael wanted it so badly for sleep. It doesn't allow you to sleep, it freaking knocks you unconscious. The last D&C I had to have before my hysterectomy they used that drug. One minute they're setting up in OR while my doc and I talk about our teenagers and the next they're shaking me awake and telling me the procedure is over. Felt like it happened in the blink of an eye even though the clock clearly showed me that it was something like a half hour.

I don't get it. But I guess that's why I'm a civilian and not an entertainer.

Toss Jim From The Train

2010-04-15T08:13:00.002-05:00

This morning I had one of those phone calls I completely dread. Jim calling to tell me in a very panicked voice that he'd lost his wallet. He wanted to know if it was upstairs on the dresser, which, of course, it was not.

With the urostomy he cannot wear his usual suits and suit pants because the waist band tugs on the urostomy tube coming right out of the kidney. So he's wearing workout pants, silky elastic waisted workout pants. And the pair he's wearing today has the tendency to dump out his keys, wallet, etc.

Add in that Jim is prone to losing everything you could imagine and this is oh so not good but too common.

He was demanding I drop my day, everything I was doing, and retrace his steps to the train station looking for his wallet. He wanted me to go to the train station parking lot and search his car.

Now that station is a good 45 minutes from here and I have to go to work in not too much longer not to mention I have daily responsibilities here. The dishes, meals, laundry, taxes, bill paying, gardening doesn't simply stop because the absent-minded professor lost his wallet. There are daily things that must happen to make this place run. I don't handle curve balls very well, especially not with my ongoing illnesses.

Days like today I end up feeling like the guy that follows the elephant. Jim's up on top feeling like a big Pasha, riding that elephant getting the adulation of the crowds while I trudge behind with a big ole shovel scraping elephant crap off the road to make his ride more enjoyable.

I adore him, I love him, I cannot imagine myself with anyone else but I have days where I wonder if it's worth it or should I just toss him from the train and set up a asthmatic womens commune with Faerie on my property in Louisiana.

Today is one of those days.

Roll Away The Stone Part 3

2010-04-13T08:09:00.002-05:00

We had quite a fright last night. Gave Jim his sponge bath and helped him wash his hair before starting to change out the padding & gauze around the incision and tube in his back. As I watched the urine bag started to fill with a mixture of blood and piss. Blood! When I pulled away the bandages there was what looked like a small amount of pus oozing from where the tube was.

Had to call the urologist on call at UVA. I was panicked because I'd just taken the chemical cocktail of things I take for my asthma. To have to drive him over an hour away to the research hospital would be a drive impossible to make. The drugs I take at night tend to do to me what Louie Anderson once described Nyquil does to him, drop him in his tracks. It didn't help that I'd taken a much larger dose on top of an afternoon/evening filled with asthmatic doping because I'd reacted to the high pollen levels outside while weeding the garden. I'd been the walking stoned for at least 6 hours at that point. I was not getting behind the wheel of a car if my life depended on it.

Turns out it was a false alarm. Apparently when you get a urostomy it's not unusual to have bouts of mild bleeding as scabs inside the kidney break off. And the pus I saw was just tissue sloughing off.

Good, because I would have certainly have been a DWI last night.

Upwards and onwards. Come on Monday.

Sleepy Sundays

2010-04-12T12:29:00.003-05:00

Part of the deal with my problems with anemia, IBS and asthma is that when I get run down, like with Jim's medical adventures, the weekend turns into this impossible task. I work to 1 am on Friday and then turn around to work an open to close on Saturday followed by late beddy-bye that leads in turn to getting up early Sunday morning to do rehearsals and lead worship team. Which means right after church on Sunday I oh so desperately need a nap.

Last week I made the mistake of taking my Sunday nap on the love seat in the bay window of our living room, right in the sunshine. That also happens to be where Leroy Jenkins our cockateil holds court. He decided my nap time would be the perfect time to groom the fine hairs on my upper lip and then pull out my nose hairs. It was a rude awakening to say the least.

Usually when I'm super tired I'm spending time on that love seat and Leroy gets his attention that he craves. His favorite is to watch "Worlds Dumbest Criminals" with me on Saturday night. The second I start laughing he'll run or fly from wherever he is to come stand on my shoulder or boobs and peek into my mouth while I laugh. He cannot understand why there are hard white things in my beak. Usually he'll settle down to groom me and beg for scratching quickly.

Yesterday I started to repeat last weeks mistake, taking up my preferred spot on the love seat and sinking almost into a sound sleep. But before I was completely out my feathered friend decided this was prime groom Mama time and I moved my nap up to the bedroom. I was so out of it I don't remember the family asking me if I wanted pizza or what, or when plans were made to take Andy back to his college dorm.

Got up just as Andy was plaintively begging someone to drive him back to college with a side trip to Costco.

So I ended up being awake and vertical only long enough to sing and long enough to transport Andy back to school after we shopped.

Today I've gotten very little accomplished beyond a quick pickup of the house and buying a load of mulch for the garden. I think I'm going to read outside for the rest of the afternoon followed by a pre-dinner dip in the pool. I'm still worn out.

What A Week! Or Two

2010-04-10T10:30:00.003-05:00

It's been an interesting two or three weeks with Jim's ongoing health problems, his being rushed to a teaching hospital hours away and our trying to deal with the fall out.

I'm great in a crisis, this crisis was no exception. I deal, I make things happen, I do what needs to happen. The problem for me is when it's over and all that surging adrenalin leaves my body I'm just wiped out for weeks afterward. And this time it happened too. I'm crawling around with no energy no matter how many B12 injections I'm getting per week.

Jim is better even though he's walking around with a tube hanging out of his remaining kidney and his urine is draining into a plastic bag. The stone that caused his kidney to fail is still in situ but he'll have surgery in a week to remove it. A week later the stent in the kidney comes out. So we are still dealing with this thing.

We got Jim to the hospital before the stone could cause irreversible damage to the kidney. His kidney is working again. That was the bit worry for us. It doesn't take long for a kidney to become trashed beyond any point it could recover. I'm so grateful we're not looking at a kidney transplant or dialysis.

But this was a much longer more difficult recovery on him than his kidney and cancer removal. I guess it's from the poisons backing up in Jim's system that have really made him quite ill.

The stress and strains of taking care of him has worn on me. I need a vacation in the worst way but it's not going to happen as I blew my two weeks of vacation time from work on his illness. Bummer.

I'm not a very good nurse type at all. I'm too squeamish. But I have had to give him sponge baths because he cannot bath or shower with the tube and other equipment strapped to his body. I've been changing the huge wadding and gauze packed around the tubes coming out of his back and I've been playing step and fetch it.

However I am no saint, several times I've run away going 'Ewww!' most squeamishly when something has gone haywire. Including the time he wanted to make sure his, uh, 'equipment' still worked and had a retrograde orgasm. That time I had to clamp my hand over my mouth and run from the room to keep from braying out laughter at his panic over his penis not providing nasty man juice.

This is one of those male-female differences that makes me laugh. If a lady's parts didn't do exactly what they usually do during sex most women figure it's just temporary, or something minor is wrong. If a man's penis doesn't work like it should it's suddenly the END OF THE WORLD!!!!

Somehow we have to train our men that the world does not revolve around their penises, the functioning of or non functioning.

Roll Away The Stone Part 2

2010-03-31T07:13:00.002-05:00

Jim is in the hospital right now with kidney failure. That kidney stone they failed to break up in September has blocked all output from his lone kidney. They did surgery to install a shunt from his kidney to his back so that the urine can leave his body and his kidney start functioning again. It is starting to work but he still has a massive infection meaning he's going to be peeing from his back for a few weeks until the infection is gone. In a few weeks it's more surgery to remove the stone caught somewhere between the kidney and the bladder.

Dreams, Guts & Upper Respiratory Infections

2010-03-25T13:26:00.003-05:00

I have been down and out the better part of a week. Last week I even ditched work for several days. That's the main drag of the injections I get, they create UPI in some folks. I'm one of those and if I don't drop everything and rest it morphs into bronchitis with the next stop being pneumonia. Never again.

Now that I'm well I'm having a bout of stress. Work is targeting senior employees and forcing us to up the productivity levels. I knew it was bad last week when one of the top agents who used to be a supervisor was put on probation. Now I am too. I think it's a bid by Big Evil Corporation to thin the ranks of us with vested retirement plans because it's everyone that's been selling oodles and making lots of money over years. None of the temps or newbies. I have decided not to worry. It won't help anyway. I have other options.

I am getting concerned about Jim. He's getting as plump as a spring stoat.He eats like a horse and whenever I gently suggest he needs to join Laura and I in trying to eat smaller portions he immediately babbles that he swims 50 laps once or twice a week.

It doesn't matter how much you exercise, once your metabolism shifts you must do portion control. Example of Jim not doing that. A couple of nights ago I baked the last of the potatoes from the garden, 5 medium to smallish potatoes along with a quart of chili, organic cheddar and green salad. I ate a large salad, 1 potato and a spoonful of chili over the potato. Laura ate the same as I minus the potato. I'd made 2 extra potatoes for Laura and I to have for lunch the next day. Jim ate most of the chili, 4 count 'em 4 baked potatoes and no salad. Last night was much the same.

So this morning Jim awoke me at 4:30 to help him with his belt. He'd broken his old belt and was wearing one that I'd bought for him that he didn't like. It had been hanging abandoned in the closet for ages. He woke me up to fasten his belt. I had to push up his 9 months pregnant belly, grab the belt and tell him to 'Suck it in' like I was some modern day version of Gone With The Wind's Mammy corsetting up Scarlett O'Hara.

It was a new level of awkward.

Jim doesn't look bad to me, I just want him to get to a healthier weight so he doesn't die before he's old. I just don't know how to motivated him to lose the pounds.

Also weighting heavily on my mind has been all the violent threats being issued towards the lawmakers on Capital Hill. Which I am blaming on my dream of moving back to Germany last night. Long, confusing but I do know one thing. I felt far safer in my dream than I've felt any day since health care reform passed. That toxic noise and violence has to end. Whatever happened to civility?

Not Firing On All 8 Cylinders Today

2010-03-19T22:40:00.002-05:00

Well crap, I'm experiencing one of the not so fun side effects of immunio suppression therapy - the free floating upper respiratory tract infection. Started as an ear infection before rapidly moving into my lungs. I cannot take much in the way of antibiotics for it so today was an exam with Dr Z, shot in the ass of antibiotics, supplements, supplements, supplements followed by bed rest. I ditched work after 45 minutes this afternoon and went back to bed.

Tomorrow remains to be seen if I will work. I have to get this under better control by Monday when I get more treatments and more B12 shots. I have to kick this stuff.

I needed some rest because I've been spring cleaning the house and putting in the garden. Trimmed the roses in the back rose garden, planted all sorts of flower seeds, trimmed up the asparagus patch and strawberry patch along with planted onions and potatoes.

The big thing this week is that Jim was trying to get me to sell my car since mine has the highest insurance and I drive it a couple of times a week to the grocery store and doctors office only. Laura and I protested soundly. Laura has her own car but loves to take mine occasionally because of the big V8 engine. She loves the pick up, speed and ability to go 85 up the side of a mountain.

I didn't want to sell it because I like having the freedom to do what I want when I want it. It's paid for, I've maintained it like new and it's still a beautiful large luxury sedan. And I have that same need for speed and power that Laura has. Jim can keep his 4 cylinder car.

Excuses Excuses

2010-03-17T11:32:00.002-05:00

Or Personal Responsibility Takes A Holiday

Yesterday was a good lesson in why we should teach our children personal responsibility when they've done something wrong.

Laura got her first speeding ticket and she was outraged. She called home screaming and crying that she could not charm her way out of the ticket. While she was moaning the unfairness of it all I was pointing out the flaw in her thinking that she can break local traffic laws with impunity and escape ticket free.

I've known for awhile now that Laura sometimes uses her charm to get her way. But I thought she'd learned when she didn't get into her top choice of college that charming people can only carry you so far. Then she kept crying that if she could just interview face to face she knew she could talk them into allowing her a slot that fall. We had that conversation about hard work, following the rules and charm and I thought she'd absorbed the lesson.

Obviously that's not as deeply ingrained as I'd hoped.

So when she came stomping home still crying about the ticket I turned an unsympathetic shoulder to her. I told her while it was sad she got caught she shouldn't have been doing 45 in a 25 mph zone in the first place. I told her the cop was doing her a favor because that far over the limit he could have charged her with reckless driving, impounded the car and arrested her instead of issuing a mere speeding ticket. She burst into tears complaining I didn't understand before going off to sulk in her room.

By the end of the afternoon she was in a better frame of mind, came out and talked to us about paying for the ticket and picking up any price rise in our insurance. I hope this means she's relearned that original lesson about not expecting your way because of whatever reason.

Laura's blond and cute, she looks a lot like Dakota Fanning. And yes, she can lay on the charm most heavy. I know a great deal of the breaks she gets in life are because she is beautiful. I'm sure that's why she wasn't charged with reckless driving. But I don't want her to fall into the trap of thinking she's entitled to not take responsibility for her actions.

It's a slippery slope. One minute you're flirting with a cop to avoid a ticket and the next there's a bench warrant out for your arrest. And it doesn't have to be charm, people use all sorts of things like their weight, their disabilities, their bank account, social status, you name it, as justification for not doing what's right and taking full responsibility for their actions. People like that make me sick.

WooHoo!

2010-03-16T09:49:00.002-05:00

We found out yesterday that Jim's parathyroid levels and calcium levels are in the normal ranges for the first time in ten years! The surgery in Tampa worked! Thanks Dr. Norman of Norman Parathyroid Clinic! I guess he did know exactly what he was doing.

On the downside my energy levels are falling even with the extra B-12 shots and sub lingual vitamins. I don't know what's going on.

Artistically I've never felt this creative and on fire in a long time. I just wish I had the energy to match.

The kids are back from spring break. Laura is having a drop a class she's struggling with and I'm preparing to order Andy a final exams snack kit. This is typical of them both. Andy sails through his classes with little effort and little study with top grades while Laura has to dig in and study madly only to sometimes not make the top grades. I'm amazed how different they are coming from the exact same parents only a few years apart being raised the same.

It's getting warmer here and I'm starting to spend a lot of time gardening now. The sunshine is calling. Be well, be blessed.

Where's My Blue Agave, Dude?

2010-03-14T06:30:00.002-05:00

Had another lesson reinforced yesterday that I should have known oh so intimately.

Never send a man to Costco with a list of things you need because chances are he'll be unable to find half the list and will come home loaded down with things you don't want. Like an industrial sized box of Dove bars instead of your organic sweetener.

And by the way, I broke down and ate one, had an immediate severe allergic reaction because of all the chemicals it's obviously loaded with. Between the Dove bar and something else I cannot figure out what it was I spent the night eating allergy pills like they were M & Ms.

While today I get the joy of making a second Costco run to pick up all the things Jim didn't get when he was buying ice cream and potato chips. I wonder about that man sometimes, his belly looks like he's carrying our baby and it's due any day now.

Simple Economics

2010-03-12T08:53:00.002-05:00

We were going over the family expenditures for the last few months last night. Money's been kind of tight lately with two kids in college and our assorted oodles of medical bills. We've got just about everyone paid off now with the exception of five more years on our mortgage and we have managed to stockpile a rather impressive amount of funds in our retirement accounts. We could retire now but are thinking it would be better to retire in five years when the house is paid off and the kids are finished with college.

Of course we discussed cutting expenses, different ways, to bring down the amount we spend a month. I didn't realize how much I was spending on my special groceries, wheatless breads, organic fresh vegetables and meats, until face to face with the figures in black and white. I figure on the bread alone I am spending as much as 30 dollars a week. It adds up.

Not much I can do about the veggie expense until my garden starts to flourish again. I did plant early spring things this week so hopefully before too much longer I'll be eating my own spinach and peas etc.

The bread thing just boggles my mind. I had no idea I was spending that much per week to have 1 loaf of bread, 1 pack of rolls, 1 pack of bagels or English muffins plus 1 box cookies and/or crackers. It's insane.

So it's back to the task of baking weekly. I don't relish it. The days when I loved baking and felt a sense of hearty self sufficient pioneer pride have vanished. Now it just looks like another thing on the endless 'to do' list. It ranks right up there with ironing (another cost cutting measure as I used to send the shirts out for washing/iron) and scrubbing the tub.

I am so tired today, anemia must be returning, but it's raining and chilly, the perfect day to stay inside baking and watching old movies between loading up the oven.

Figure Studies

2010-03-11T15:28:00.002-05:00

One big benefit of the kids being gone is that I can continue on the series of nude figure studies I'm doing right. I've already drawn a close friend and myself in the all together but now I'm doing a series of nudes of Jim. He's been more than happy to pose, which really makes me laugh. It's led to some interesting fooling around and Jim getting to see his body from angles he usually does not get to see.

Back last year when I started hitting the gym I got very infatuated with other peoples bodies. People walking around the dressing room naked, or nearly naked in the pool area kept catching my eye. I'd never realized, not even back in my university days when I routinely drew nude models, how amazing different and the same everyone is when the clothes are stripped away. I could hardly wait to get home to start sketching the different weird variations in bodies.

This is definitely not a project I would have undertaken back during my old Possum Creek Church days. Fundamentalist churches tend to frown on any notice taken of the body and insist you cover up in baggy clothing not too dissimiliar in comfort and fit than a burqa. Anything of nudity is always sexually related in that mind set, sex, sex, sex, it all boils down to that.

Which is funny as hell for me because I can look at the oddities of the human frame and feel not one jolt of sexuality at all, no desire, no out of control lusts. Just a fascination with our differences. Guess this means I'm on my way to Fundie Hell.

Bumps In The Spring Break Road

2010-03-10T13:49:00.002-05:00

Laura called me last night in tears, wheezing and very upset. She had suddenly gotten extremely itchy, her lips and airways started swelling and she was freaking out. She didn't have a clue what she was reacting to.

I wanted to say, "Welcome to my world. Now go swallow about three benadryls" but I refrained.

I cannot tell you how disturbed I am that she's going from having IBS and immune reaction problems to having asthmatic reactions. This is something I would not wish on an enemy much less a beloved daughter.

Fortunately her attack was not severe enough to go to the hospital but it scares me, her being so far away without an epipen or her momma.

House, Sunshine & Friends

2010-03-09T09:12:00.002-05:00

Spend yesterday with my BBF Joanie after I got back from the gym. We did some power shopping, got facials and ended the morning with one long boozy lunch. I'd forgotten how much fun it can be to do the girly things.

Still searching for the perfect dress for ordination. No luck so far.

I did a fair amount of gardening too, getting the seeds and plants for spring harvest, lettuce, peas, cabbage and many other things. All the bulb flowers are coming up too. I'm very excited about spring for the first time in many years.

The drag of the day were my treatments, my shots, with Dr Z. The stupid shots hurt, the solution is thick, oozy-thick like a milkshake and he's trying to shoot it into the muscles of my upper arms through a super fine needle. On my left arm he always manages to hit a surface skin nerve, transmitting the pain up and down my arm.

I know, I know, I should be grateful I'm getting the Xolair in the first place. Insurance companies rarely pay for it and it's expensive out of pocket.

The interesting thing about the appointment was that my bloodwork and other tests have come back and the reason I'm so anemic lately is that I now have Malabsorption Syndrome courtesy of my IBS. Which means my gut is too damaged to take all the nutrients I need from the food I eat. Which is terrible because I eat all organic healthy foods only among the group of foods I'm not allergic to.

Later yesterday evening the case on "House MD" turned out to be the same damn thing, Malabsorption Syndrome from a infection. It was one of the few times I've seen the show and taken an issue with a diagnosis. If that was the case in real life her initial blood levels, i.e. calcium, would have been out of wack. I don't know why I always expect shows to be factual when they are meant only as entertainment.

What L Anne Is Dying To Know

2010-03-08T14:52:00.003-05:00

Sandy says he was crap in bed and has a micro penis, Utterly unlike your fantasies of his supposed perfection.

Now you can scuttle off to your little corner of the internet your curiosity satisfied instead of boogieing in here a zillion times a day.

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To my regular readers I know the above makes no sense. I have someone that distinctly does not like me yet comes here to read many times daily just because I mentioned on another place that one of my sluttier friends had a one night stand with her crush. She's searching for information. I find it all kind of funny myself.

PS To Sandy: Good for you Sandy, for cutting a slice of a much younger man.

Glorious

2010-03-08T08:14:00.002-05:00

The weather yesterday was just what I needed, sunny blue skies and warm air. It feels like spring has finally arrived even if there are still huge piles of snow in many places in my yard. All the bulb flowers, the forerunners of spring are well on their way up.

Jim read in the sunshine while I planted seeds for the early spring garden in our square foot gardening frames. I planted peas, lettuce, spinach, green onions and beets. Discovered that the Koi in the pond are all fat, sassy and made it through the winter just fine without heating the pond.

Today's agenda is planting cabbage, cauliflower and brocolli as well as early spring flowers, putting together new trellis work for the grapes and cleaning off the deck. If this good weather holds I plan on trimming the apple and pear trees before they bloom out.

One of the other awesome things happening besides the weather was church. It was so good, the new direction of the reconfigured worship team seems to have released a fresh wave of anointing and glory. I could hardly stand and sing the presence of the Holy Spirit was so strong.

We were also joined by some of our college aged members, like two young ladies going to school at Liberty to study worship and they added an essential drop of spice to our worship. It was a great way to start the week.