A few weeks ago, I posted a picture of my adorable toddler granddaughter, Emily (or as I like to call her, Pookie, AKA Horadora- short for Horrible Adorable).

I don't think her picture was up 15 minutes before my son was on the phone, asking me, nicely, to take it down. He was worried about having her sweet face out there in cyberspace.

I don't really think there is anything to fear in posting a picture on the web, but I immediately did as he asked. If he is afraid of potential kidnappers, who am I to argue? Maybe he's got something there. Maybe kidnappers ARE surfing the web. It makes you think, you know?

Makes me think it is time to post a picture of Mama.

Mama on her 78th birthday in May.

My new pirate identity (shhh, it's a secret)

It has been a pirate-y month for this ole scalawag, and while I have enjoyed all the fun and friviolity, I am a bit concerned that

1) I have been too much in the public eye, which is not good for a pirate, especially when that pirate is a pudgy, grey-headed middle-aged broad who's ruthless days are mostly behind her (as, by the look of her butt, most things are);

and

2) there's a very real chance my old crew-mates may now be able track me down, which would NOT be good because there was a slight disagreement about the redistribution of wealth the last time we met which, of course, I won. (I cheated ... Hello! Pirate!)

I will never renounce the name Red-Handed Jill (which I stole, like the good pirate I am, from someone else) but will now also have an alter- ego I can default to when the British Navy gets too close on my heels, or my crew insists on its share of the booty, or I decide to run for Governor. It's good to have choices.

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Bonney

http://www.piratequiz.com/

There really was a Captain Ann Bonney, by the way. No relation to Billy the Kid. Or Billy Budd, for that matter. She's dead now. Her name is fair game.

Not a better daughter-in-law in the world... well, not in this hemisphere anyway... or the conflagration that was my 57th birthday

I had a three day birthday this year. My birthday was on September 12, but I worked all day and had my GFWC meeting that night, so planned no celebration. Besides, how celebratory can one be at 57? At least it is a memorable number. I was 55 (the speed limit) until I turned 57 (Heinz varieties) because I could not think of a memory device for 56. Turns out I did celebrate, because my Old Lady Mafia pals staged a surprise party with a pirate's theme for me at the Woman's Club. Great fun! On the 13th, Dave and I had a quiet celebration at home- we grilled steaks and fell asleep on the couch.

Will this gay, mad whirl never cease?! Tonight, my daughter-in-law arrived, kicked me out of the house for awhile, and continued the pirate theme in my diningroom. Then she made a fantastically delicious supper for us all, an Italianate chicken casserole, fresh hot rolls, a tossed salad, and a made from scratch cake, decorated with doubloons.... AND 57 CANDLES WHICH THE WENCH PROCEEDED TO LIGHT! I am amazed the smoke detectors didn't go off. It took three tries to blow the damn things out- I thought maybe they were trick candles, but by the time I was trying to blow them out, they were essentially one big, wide candle with 57 wicks. The cake was wonderful, and Pookie and I competed so see who could eat the most. Pookie won. All in all, a really wonderful birthday. I am posting a picture Dave took with his phone. It's not too clear, but clear enough, I think, for you to see the amount of heat 57 candles can generate. Now I must go put butter on my scorched nose.

Thanks, Becca. XX OO

And the results are in...

I'm a Mandarin!

You're an intellectual, and you've worked hard to get where you are now. You're a strong believer in education, and you think many of the world's problems could be solved if people were more informed and more rational. You have no tolerance for sloppy or lazy thinking. It frustrates you when people who are ignorant or dishonest rise to positions of power. You believe that people can make a difference in the world, and you're determined to try.

Talent: 46%
Lifer: 26%
Mandarin: 67%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

I'm a Porsche 911!

Take the Which Sports
Car Are You? quiz.

Three weeks in...

When I really don’t want to do something, I procrastinate.  At this very moment, I should be creating a PowerPoint presentation for my genetics class.  I am really enjoying my class, and have a wonderful, truly wonderful group of students.  I anticipate a very good semester with these young people.  I am enjoying being in front of a class again, refreshing my memory about my beloved subject, and remembering again just what it was that brought me to teaching the first time around.

It wasn’t creating PowerPoint presentations.  

Which is why I am blogging instead of slogging right now.  I will regret it.  I will push myself to the limits of deadline, I will be up until 4 o’clock in the morning, and I will not learn from past experience.

Sigh.

On the one hand, it has been gratifying to see how genuinely I have been missed at the college.  It has been lovely teaching again, and feeling like I have some cachet in the world.  A faculty parking hang tag does wonders for my self-esteem.  I am in the system again; I have an email that ends with .edu; I have access to the faculty web; I have a cubicle with my name on it.  (Actually, the sign reads “Kate Lapczynski, Resident Queen of Genetics”- and I didn’t post it!)  All of this is so seductive to me.

On the other hand, it is  aggravating that after two years away, many of the things that made my going away fairly easy in the first place are basically unchanged.  The administration is still calling students our “customers”… (excuse me, but isn’t the customer always right?  Because my students aren’t.  If they are customers- not clients, even, but customers- doesn’t that make us merchants?  And if we are merchants, just what is it we are selling?  Knowledge, or college credits? )  … there is little to no respect afforded the faculty… attempts to use technology are thwarted by failure of the technology, and the apparent inability of the IT people to make it work consistently… moral is low… pay is low…  

And I gave up scrapbooking for THIS?

Fortunately, one can bear anything for 15 weeks.  Except, maybe, Mother.  I am not sure I will maintain my fragile sanity through 15 uninterrupted weeks with Mother.  It’s me, really. She is what she is and what she has been and is incapable of change, and it is I who needs to maintain an even strain.  Of course, going deaf and blind would help, but what are the odds of that happening?

At least Dave is home for a week or two, just long enough to screw up the dynamics here, but not long enough to settle comfortably into greased grooves.  Soon he’s off to New York and then to San Diego.  

I will be here.

Kelly's blog is worth $500 more than mine... whew!

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

More germs, fewer emails... a rant of epic proportions

A friend sent me an email today, warning me of the dangers of my purse. My purse, it seems, is a portable laboratory of microbial nastiness, and should never be placed on my counter, my desk, or any other contaminatable surface, including myself. Just the latest in the germ phobia of the average American that is making our children the sickest they have ever been. Yes, I mean that. They have puny little immune systems and so get sick every five minutes. I blame Clorox, Lysol and all the other merchants of terror that want us to live antiseptic lives.

When I was a child, shortly after the creation of the firmament, childhood was a dangerous time. Children suffered from and were maimed and killed by “childhood” diseases no one gets any more, praise God and science. Diphtheria, typhus, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, measles, mumps, polio… all conquered, all but gone forever. There were scarier diseases back then, but fewer allergies, less asthma, and considerably fewer trips to the doctor. Since the advent of these wonderful vaccines, you’d think people would be more sanguine about the colds and flu we intermittently suffer. But no- Americans seem to think they should be immune from illness.

Americans do not seem to understand how their immune systems work. For an immune system to become competent to combat pathogens, it must be exposed to pathogens. That’s the underlying fundamental biological surety behind the development of vaccines. What do vaccines do? They introduce the immune system to pathogens that have been rendered mostly harmless so that the system will learn to recognize them. When the real thing comes around, the immune system is armed and ready to launch an attack against the pathogen it has been trained to attack. No exposure to germs, no protection.

So what have the last two generations of guilt-ridden, over-burdened, two-incomes-no-time parents done? They have created a population of “boys in the bubble” by pathologically protecting their children from pathogens. They have become psychotically over-protective to the detriment of their children at the same time that they have become convinced that they are well informed. Well informed by TV. What are the odds?

I wish Americans would turn off the damn TV. TV has convinced parents that pedophiles are on every street corner, taught them to fear gangs and drugs beyond any reasonable level of necessary fear, and trained them through advertisements that no home is safe for children until it is surgically sterile and hermetically sealed. Kids don’t go out to play anymore because pedophiles, gangs, drugs and germs lie in wait for them there.

News flash, constant readers. The world is NOT more dangerous that it was when I was a child and my mother threw me out of the house and told me to be back when the street lights came on. We just THINK it is because of TV. We are afraid of pedophiles in Texas and gangs in Los Angeles in tiny little Tullahoma Tennessee and it’s STUPID. Our children are fearful and sedentary because TV brings us a cornucopia of bad news every day that exaggerates the nature of danger because danger and fear SELLS STUFF.

And the stuff it sells the most are anti-bacterial cleaners. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against being clean. I am against being neurotic about it. Kids should be allowed to get dirty without having to be laundered with Lysol and fed antibiotics “just in case”. ANTIBIOTICS ARE NOT PROPHYLACTICS, PEOPLE. They can’t prevent an infection, they can only attack one. Next time a doctor prescribes antibiotics as a preventative, FIRE HIM! He is a moron, and you are being moronic if you take meds you don’t need, or feed them to your kids because you are fearful. Antibiotic resistant bacteria. Ever heard of them? Guess where they come from? FROM THE INAPPROPRIATE USE OF ANTIBIOTICS.

Tell me why you are wiping down your lamps with Clorox. Why are you so afraid of Salmonella, when just a little common sense is all you need to be safe? Detergent and water will clean up after chicken prep just fine. Wash your counters, don’t disinfect them unless you plan on doing surgery on them. You are going to cook the damn food anyway. High heat kills bacteria. Hello!

My grandmother and mother and women of their generations believed that a “child will eat a peck of dirt before its fifth birthday.” (A peck, by the way, is ¼ bushel, or eight quarts. How many quarts in a bushel, then, class?) Children didn’t take multiple baths in a day. They were washed regularly, don’t get me wrong, but they didn’t take morning and evening showers, or change their clothes three or four times a day, or only wear an outfit once before it was laundered. They were inundated with bacteria, microbes, viruses, and fungi, and still were healthier than most kids today. They had fewer colds, less flu, fewer infections, and astonishingly fewer allergies. Had the vaccines of today been available back then, they would have been superkids.

Most of the bacteria encountered in day-to-day life are harmless. Some of them are actually beneficial. I say, America, get over your germ phobia. Turn off the damn TV. Send your kids outside and let them get really dirty and sweaty; it’s good for them. And stop sending me emails about how there are germs on everything. I know that already, and frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

This-ing and That-ing Again

I babysat my wonderful baby granddaughter Emily (three in November) for the very first time in her entire life today. Becca left her with me while she ran to the grocery store. Emily looked adorable, and we had such a wonderful time she did not want to go home. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as the pleasure of a child’s company can iron all the wrinkles out of your life? My eldest granddaughters Kendall and Haley have apparently reached the “we don’t need you, thanks” age; Delaney still loves me, but she stopped dancing with joy at the sight of me some time ago. Sometimes you just need someone joyful at seeing you to know your life has meaning. We played with the castle and put all the people in the dungeon- Emily is very strict- we had Popsicles, and washed our hands and faces and admired ourselves in the mirror; she even let me brush her hair! We hauled out the paints and were in mid-masterpiece when Becca came back insisting on taking Emily home. Just because she had to pick up the three big girls from school, put away the groceries, and start dinner, was that any reason to spoil our fun?

Segue...
Every week, Dave and I watch “Two and a Half Men” and laugh our asses off. Fortunately, they are large asses and easy to find, and we have a good time screwing them back on again. Sometimes we exchange them, - which is always good for a laugh, and our asses fall off again. You find your amusements where you can at our age.
Anyway, at the end of each show, there is a 1.5 second flash of a vanity card, written by Chuck Lorre, writer, producer, and dazzling wit. (Mr. Lorre was same for Cybill, Dharma and Greg, Grace Under Fire and Roseanne.) What is a vanity card? It’s like a mini-blog flashed onto the screen in which the writer indulges his own vanity.

Or, as IMDB dryly puts it, “The Chuck Lorre Productions vanity card at the end of each episode consists of the words "Chuck Lorre Productions", the episode number, and a short essay or mini screenplay that changes with each episode. Topics have included a riff on slang words that Lorre wants to coin(1), the reason a certain scene containing the line of dialogue that was used as the episode's title was edited out(2), and a screenplay about Lorre's assistant entering his office and finding him curled up in the foetal position(3).”

Foetal rather than fetal.
How effete.
Makes you want to dash right out and read it, doesn’t it?
No matter -you cannot read a vanity card in 1.5 seconds anyway but thanks to TiVo, you can pause it to read it. Or, if you are like Dave and I at the end of the show- you know, looking for your ass- you can find the hilarious cards here:

http://www.chucklorre.com/text/


I warn you, his writing is subversive, politically incorrect, slightly skewed toward dementia and brilliant. It’s also somehow endearing. I would love to meet this guy. You cannot help but love a guy who makes you laugh with delighted abandon until you wet your pants. Thank God for Depends. The vanity card that nearly killed me was Year Three, Episode #146 entitled “The writers of ‘Two and a Half Men’ foolishly present the 25 'old' jokes we didn't use”( in an episode about Alan “dating” his 80-year-old next door neighbor, played by Cloris Leachman). Well, at least I would have died laughing.

1TAAHM- Year Two- Episode #130
The words Chuck invents are doorgasm, gridlove, and homortified. Look ‘em up.
2TAAHM – Year Two- Episode #124
The title of the show was “Frankenstein and the Horny Villagers”.
3TAAHM- Year Two- Episode #136
Title: “Persistent Vegetative State: Pilot Script”

I took the job.

Yes, I am a moron.

To teach, or not to teach... what a dilemma!

My answering machine is always complaining that I never listen to it, which is patently untrue. I listened to it last Friday. I ‘d left the house for the first time since my hand surgery, which went well, thank you, though the pain pills are better for causing indigestion than they are for curbing pain. And, of course, the minute I left the house, someone interesting called.

That someone was the division secretary of the college for which I used to teach. She’s a sharp cookie; she practically runs the math and science division single-handedly, and is the picture you see when you look up the word “competence” in the dictionary. She’s also a lot of fun. But I digress. She was calling to ask if I would be interested in teaching a genetics class this fall as an adjunct. She was calling on Friday. She needs an answer by Monday.

Remember, constant readers, three things:
I left the college so I could travel with my hubby, who is gone most of the time.
I recently had hand surgery and am still recovering from it.
I have been out of the teaching field for almost three years.
I hate making choices, especially ones that must be made quickly.
Okay, so that’s four things. I was in the science half of the math and science division.

There are advantages, believe it or not, to being an adjunct rather than a full-time faculty member, but none of them are monetary. The first advantage is that you don’t HAVE to teach anything you don’t want to. Don’t want to teach nights? Okay. Only want to teach one class? Okay. Only want to work two days a week? Okay. You don’t have to work registrations, do student advisement, serve on committees, or try to work professional development into an already over-crowded schedule. And if you don’t want to travel to satellite campuses, they can’t make you.

I spent 10 years commuting almost an hour each way to a site where I was, for all intents and purposes, the science department. Other faculty cycled in and out, but I was assigned there and was the lab supervisor there. I loved the campus, loved my co-workers, loved my students, loved teaching. I also hated my cubicle- in my entire career, I was in a bull-pen all but one semester- hated the long hours, hated fighting for every reasonable, necessary and logical thing with a bureaucracy that was a disinterested 47 miles away, and hated being treated with disrespect by the people who should have valued me. Towards the end, even the commute was becoming hateful. Those two hours out of every day were beginning to take their toll. Over time, I became very unhappy with my job.

But never with teaching. I have really missed teaching. So teaching this class will be a good thing, right?

Then again… it will take a lot of work to get prepared on short notice, and I have gotten kinda lazy being semi-retired. All my teaching materials are scattered, stored or outdated, so I will essentially be starting from scratch. Teaching the class will cut seriously into my scrapbooking time, but my clipped wing is going to do that anyway. It will call a temporary halt to my trips to San Diego, and I really enjoy my trips to San Diego, even though Mama tries valiantly to give me an ulcer with her antics while I am gone. If I take the job, Mama will be happy because I won’t be traveling, but I’m not sure how well I could weather 15 solid weeks of Mama without a break. I don’t have a professional wardrobe anymore… then again, that’s easily solved and I do love to shop. I don’t know. I’m torn.

I have been weighing the pros and cons and asking everyone’s advice. My daughter has disdained to offer any. David thinks I should do it. My friend Marcia thinks I should do it. My Dad is vehemently opposed to my doing it.

Damn. I have to have an answer for them tomorrow. I wonder what I am going to say. I will be on pins and needles until I find out.

Stay tuned.

It would be comic if it weren’t so painful.

About five weeks ago, Dave’s right leg began to give him serious grief. Serious enough for him to go to the doctor, have an MRI and actually take the pain drugs he was prescribed. The pain was relentless, poor soul, but it gradually lessened so that he could go from crutches to cane to own steam. Oddly, though the MRI showed a torn ACL and a torn cartilage, there is no surgery in his future.

About four weeks ago, I woke up with a very painful thumb. Once we got Dave stabilized and relatively pain-free, I went to the doctor myself, figuring I had slept on it wrong, or suffered some kind of X-treme scrapbooking injury. My doctor sent me to an orthopedic doctor for cortisone shots. Yeah, right. I am having surgery tomorrow- for trigger thumb (a tendon problem) and severe carpal tunnel.

I was feeling pretty put out- he’s the one with all the torn stuff and I’m the one going under the knife??!!- until yesterday, when his face swelled up until he looks like a walrus. His mouth is now the source of excruciating pain. Yes, he has an abscess. We took him to the dentist, and she started him on penicillin and pain pills, and Thursday, the tooth is coming out.

Dave was going to take the day off to take care of me after my surgery, but I may have to hire someone to take care of the both of us. Like I said, it would be laughable if we both didn’t hurt so much.

Mama is terribly upset that we aren’t well, but due to the perversity of her make-up, her concern takes the form of demanding constant comforting for herself. Forget that the man is in agony. Mama needs cosseting because she is worried about him. In her own inimitable nurturing way, Mama is doing all she can to make herself perfectly miserable. She really should write a book on the subject. I can already envision some of the chapter headings:

“How to be lonely by leaving the room whenever people come over, and by having two phones and never answering either one of them”.
In this chapter, Mama will explain how to get the maximum mileage out of the complaints “Nobody ever comes to see me” and “Nobody ever calls me.”

“How to be banished from the kitchen for setting fire to the microwave”
In this chapter, Mama will demonstrate how to get out of cooking for oneself by nuking a potato until it catches fire. (Frankly, I didn’t think it could be done, but if anyone can do it, Mama can.) An accident like this can be milked for weeks with endless variants of misery; poor me, I’m gonna starve; poor me, I was so scared; poor me, I can’t even cook anymore; poor me, Dave and Kate are mad at me- and, of course, peppered with the inevitable denials of responsibility-“It’s not my fault. It’s that stupid microwave’s fault.”

“How to turn other people’s misfortunes into laments of your own.”
In this chapter, Mama teaches the art of misery one-upsmanship. Apparently, once you live to be 78 (or 98, as she has been telling people she is here lately), no one can have an ailment you didn't have first and worse. David has a bad tooth? “They pulled out all my teeth when I was 18. It was a mistake. My mother was so mad. One tooth they were supposed to pull, and they pulled them all.” Run time for this story so far- 60 years. I have to have surgery on my hand? “Look at my hands. I had 38 operations and I have arthur-it is, and I am in pain all the time.” Heard it. Heard it. Heard it. Damn, here it comes again.

Right now, she is sitting in front of the TV, finally calm after an inexplicable burst of crying. She would not and will not tell me why she has been crying, but she has made herself miserable somehow.

“How to dwell on every slight, hurt or heartache you have ever endured for fun and profit.”

I don’t put too much weight on her immediate sorrow, since it doesn’t seem to have curbed her appetite at all. When she thinks I am not looking, she is chowing down on the Chex Mix snack I made for her. I just opened a can of Pepsi for her; sadness is thirsty work.

In the meantime, the two people who actually have reasons to be miserable right now are typing a blog with her hand in a splint, and working from home, despite a walrus face and mouth from hell.

Honesty, tact and other impossible missions

LIES.
I guess the biggest lie of all is that we are not supposed to lie. What hypocritical horse-hockey that is. We should stop using that lie… totally honest people are not well tolerated, and sometimes tarred and feathered in locales where the practice still persists. We don’t like totally honest people. We don’t want to be around them. We don’t want to be one of them, because they are usually lonely since no one wants to be around them. Face it, we must lie for the sake of our own social survival. That’s why we invented the lie about the “white” lie. All lies are bad, but some lies are less bad than others because they spare people’s feelings, right? Slippery slope, people, slippery slope. Still, if we must be liars, we should lie with

TACT
Tact is basically a tactic for softening or avoiding an unpleasant truth, and is therefore intrinsically a form of lying. Still, tactfulness is more highly prized than bluntness, and in my middling years, I am finally beginning to catch on to that. I am trying to blunt my bluntness.

I will give you an example. Imagine you are in the presence of young parents who are showing you the ugliest baby you have ever seen in your entire life. Pleasant enough looking themselves, they have managed to produce a living illustration of why some genes SHOULD be recessive. The dewy eyed parents look to you for a comment on the child.

Do not say “Omigod! What possessed you to bring that home?” Don’t do it. These people LIKE the baby. They may even think it’s cute. They certainly see it as a gift from Heaven, especially since they haven’t been parents long. They expect their spawn to be beatified by all who see it, so it would be bad to say “Honey, when the nurses said “Jesus Christ!” when they saw him, they were NOT announcing the second coming.”

Do not be tempted to say that the creature looks like either, or both, of its parents. One of the parents may actually be wise to the fact that the baby is a horror and take offense. And, for the same reason, do not tell an outright lie. I tried that once. I looked at an ugly baby and said, with a straight face and a falsetto voice, “Oh, what a beautiful baby!” and the father looked up at me and said “What, are you nuts? He looks like five miles of bad road.”

Now, learned reader, should I have agreed with that statement or not? See what I am saying here? Mendacity (AKA tact) is required in these situations. A tactful person would think of something innocuous to say and then change the subject. “Oh, my goodness, look, a baby. How about those Mets?”

It is not cool to respond to a dinner invitation with “Dinner with you? I’d rather have my teeth drilled.” Too honest. Or with “No.” Too blunt. Try “I am touched and honored by the invitation but regret that I must decline at this and all future times.” Now that’s tactful.

Other examples… When someone is stupid enough to tell their proper age, an honest person might respond with “Damn! You ARE older than dirt”. Once again I must ask, do you believe anyone would appreciate that level of truthfulness? I think not. The blunt person might respond “Bet you wish you’d taken better care of yourself, huh?” Tsk, tsk, tsk. The tactful person would respond “Oh, the history you have seen. How about those Mets?”

This is the end of today’s lesson. I know that to some people, my teaching tact is like Mother Theresa teaching belly dancing, but I am learning from my mistakes and want to share my insights with you.

Okay, so that’s a white lie.

Wine and whine and the dramatic arts

I really do not travel well. I wish I did. Like a fine wine, I am susceptible to changes in altitude, temperature, pressure, and am bruised by buffeting. This trip was really uncomfortable, since both Dave and I were walking wounded. Dave’s knee has stopped screaming, but is still protesting LOUDLY, and he can’t walk without a cane. I have tendonitis in my right thumb and am wearing a brace to keep it immobile. Imagine us negotiating security in any given airport and weep. Or laugh- we looked pathetically laughable, I am sure.

Segue - For some reason, people seem to think I am dramatic. Grant you, I can emote, mug, and ham it up with the best of them- I think most good teachers are really frustrated actors, and I am a really good teacher- but I don’t think of myself as dramatic. My emotions may be relatively binary, but they are genuine, and I don’t see that as dramatic. Unfortunate, yes. Dramatic, no.

Because of this general misapprehension on the content of my character, I have been “blamed” for my daughter’s dramatic tendencies. I am proud of her tendencies, and in awe of her talent but I have often said, and quasi-believe, that I was just the container for the thing contained when it comes to Kelly. I harbor a secret suspicion that despite my carrying her in my body for nine months and loving her with all my heart, she is really Dave’s sister Rita’s child. There is so much that is deep, strange, unfathomable- and similar- about the way Kelly and Rita’s minds work. Rita would have been one hell of actor had her interests bent in that direction. Since they did not, everyone assumes Kelly’s flare for the dramatic comes from me. Balderdash, I say. I really don’t think that with Mama around, fingers should be pointed at me.

I suppose it didn’t help, really, that I was gone Friday night and half of the Saturday before Dave and I returned to San Diego. I was attending the GFWC of Tennessee Summer Board meeting. As President of the Highland Rim District, I am a de facto member of the State Board. The meeting was in Cookeville, and was very instructive and great fun. I was home by 1 pm on Saturday. Mother was where Mother usually is unless the Western channel is playing on the living room TV- she was in her room, eating and watching old movies. I popped my head in to let her know I was home, and was thoroughly snubbed.

Here we go, I thought, and I was right. The rest of the day was spent enduring a concerted effort on Mama’s part to get us to cancel our trip. Dave’s leg was no good. Travel would be bad for it. (I happened to agree with her on that point). Then she worried about my poor thumb. As we spent the day preparing food for her, making hair appointments, setting the thermostat to her comfort level, etc., we reminded her that Stephanie would be there every day. (“No she won’t. She never comes when you are gone. She never cleans the house. She never cleans my room. I will be all by myself. I’m gonna cry”.) We reminded her that Jake would be dropping in. (“No he won’t. He never comes when you are gone. He never comes to see me. Becca doesn’t even talk to me. The baby spits at me. I will be all by myself. I’m gonna cry”.) I reminded her that Marcia and her crew would be there every Wednesday. (“No they won’t. They never come when you are gone. They never come to see me. She doesn’t even talk to me. I will be all by myself. I’m gonna cry”.) At which point I stopped talking to her.

Sunday morning, we fixed her a good breakfast and tried to spend some quality time with her… through her closed bedroom door. Dave set the TV to the Western channel and hid the remote so that she couldn’t screw up the TV while we are gone. As I was putting the finishing touches on my packing, I heard her sobbing away in the living room, and heard David “comforting” her. She apparently wasn’t comforted. She wailed her way into the kitchen where I was, and I made no attempt to comfort her, so she went out and wailed on the front porch. It was a nice quiet Sunday morning. I hope all my neighbors were in church.

We packed the car and kissed her good-bye and I genuinely felt bad because this time she had produced genuine tears. It can’t be easy living alone for two weeks at her age, I thought, though a part of me wondered what was going to be different when we left. She rarely interacts with us. Maybe just HAVING us there, whether she engages with us or not, is all she wants. I was feeling pretty low when I remembered I had forgotten my glasses. I tried to get back into the house. She had locked me out. When she came to let me in, she was not crying. She was eating.

No sign of tears whatsoever until I stepped back out the door. What an actress! I am sure she will be fine. I am also sure where Kelly gets her flair for the dramatic. She learned at the feet of a master.

My world... and welcome to it!

The pattern of things going wrong in Tullahoma whenever I am in San Diego has taken a turn.  I hope all is well in San Diego, because everything HERE has gone to worms.

First off, my housekeeper Stephanie took a week off to be with her beautiful niece Amanda and I was left to my own devices taking care of the house.   I actually was doing semi-okay on my own, except that my hubby came up lame in a big way, and threw a spanner in the works.  His leg was so painful that I couldn’t share the bed with him, so I was sleeping on the couch or on the recliner.  That was the second can of worms- I am not a pleasant person when I am not rested.  And I am never a pleasant person when my hubby is unwell.  It scares and frustrates me when the man is ailing.

I have been dealing with fear and frustration since we got back from California two weeks ago.  Dave has had another in a series of leg “flare-ups”, attributed variously to arthritis, tendonitis, and a damaged (local) lymphatic system , a complication from the bite of a black widow spider.  Yes, he has been bitten by a black widow spider.  Don’t ask.  He doesn’t get sick or injured often – which is a good thing, because he will not take care of himself in either case- but when he does, it is always picturesque.

And this time is no different.  A limp became lameness became a horrendously swollen leg; an ache became a twinge that became raging pain.  Through it all, he went to work.  By the end of each day, he was barely able to walk.  When a week of raging pain finally drove him in to see his doctor, the doc barely recognized him, it had been so long.  Doc injected cortisone into the knee and sent Dave home with an appointment for later in the week, but no drugs other than OTC ibuprofen.  An additional week of suffering, and Dave was back in the doctor’s office.  This time, instead of driving something into his knee, Doc now tried to pull something out- the excess fluid that was making Dave’s right leg look like he had elephantiasis- but it couldn’t be done.  He prescribed some medications, at LAST, so the man could at least get some sleep and scheduled Dave for an MRI the next day.

And the results are in.  Turns out Dave has both a torn ligament AND torn cartilage in his right knee.  All this damage was caused by an old fracture to the tibial tubercle, (a large outcropping of bone at the head of the tibia).  As the bone remodeled over the fracture, it became a dense mass with spurs that shred ligaments and cartilages.  But here’s the kicker.  Dave cannot remember breaking his knee.  To the best of his knowledge, Dave has never broken his knee.  And here’s where my frustration comes in.  I can remember at least two instances over the years where he “hurt” his knee badly enough to have fractured it and refused to go to the doctor.  He just stayed off the leg for a few days- you know, like you do- and let nature take its course.  MEN!!!  Now he’s telling everyone that I knee-capped him while he was sleeping.    

Of course, Dave being laid low has upset Mama.  She manifests upset in unique and peculiar ways.  First, she goes into what I call “babble and shout” mode.  She wanders through the house, making bizarre noises- gobbling like a turkey, shouting “YEAH, YEAH, YEAH” at the top of her lungs… If that doesn’t get her some attention, she sings in her shrill tuneless voice… for hours…   and hours…  The latest expression of concern is to imagine she has been robbed.   She has been obsessed about losing a necklace I have never seen her wear, so we tore up the house looking for it.  She became convinced she lost it at church, but it wasn’t in the lost and found, and the altar guild is pretty thorough.  She thinks its been stolen.  She thought her wedding rings had been stolen about three years ago, and after filing a police report, she found them in her purse.  I’m guessing the necklace is either mythical or in her purse.

Today, as Dave remained sequestered in our bedroom keeping his leg elevated, she insisted that Stephanie and I search her bedroom for an 8 X 10 portrait of herself that has gone missing.  We have searched for this before.  I am fairly certain she sent it to her daughter, but what the hell?  My time has no value anymore, so I helped search.  We didn’t find it, of course, so now – don’t get ahead of me - she is convinced someone has stolen it.  Since the only people who come into the house are friends and family, it would seem that she suspects those nearest and dearest to her of being thieves.  YOU have NOT been robbed, I say firmly.  Why would anyone leave your cash and jewelry and steal your portrait ? I ask, being the damn fool I am.  

Because it ‘s beautiful, she replies.  

Kinda hard to respond to that.

Off to bed, me, to cap my hubby’s other knee.  I think I’ll use Mama’s cane.

Punctures, pictures, and other minor crimes

My buddy Richard punted the Round Robin story ball back into my court, and I inadvertently punctured it. It be dead. Sorry. I like the idea that young Gryphon started, but think an email version would work better, as each addition could be tagged on and forwarded and the entire work would be of a piece. Anyway, killing the robin is probably one of my lesser crimes.

I am in San Diego for the first time since February, and am enjoying – NOT- the cold and damp of “June gloom”. It is otherwise nice to be here, great to see my lovely daughter Kelly again, lovely to finally meet Orrick, and beyond wonderful to have a mocha frappucino at Starbucks once again!

News from the home front- somehow the sand filter for our pool has been punctured and will have to be replaced. According to my son, by way of my husband who actually spoke to him, the punctures appear to be deliberate. I can’t imagine who would deliberately vandalize our property…

Well, that’s not strictly true. When I heard of the damages, my first thought was that the pool company I recently fired might have sent ole Terry over for a bit of mischief, or that Terry, who is not the brightest bulb in the box, might have done it on his own, forgetting he was fired, and doing the typical kind of damage to the system that got him fired in the first place. Like backwashing the pool to the point of draining out half the water, and floating the liner. Like improperly closing the pool and using the wrong chemicals so that our liner is permanently stained. Or like replacing a pool pump that was under warranty and only needed a $20 part. I could go on, but if I do, I will be compelled to go puncture Terry, and he probably had nothing to do with this latest damage.

Why do major things always seem to happen while I am out here? Televisions go south, trees fall on outbuildings, the pool is attacked by gremlins… Thank goodness my beloved son is on the scene to handle emergencies, but it is stressful fretting about them from half a continent away.

On a happier note, Kelly and I have done some shopping, a lot of cooking, and have shared some quality time with Orrick, who is a very nice man. Dave took us out to our favorite Italian restaurant Bellagio tonight and then we raided Barnes and Noble. It is heaven to have REAL BOOK STORES in the area. Expensive, but heaven. Wednesday we are going out for a day of beauty at Reflection Day Spa.

I was there on Tuesday, getting my hair cut. My stylist Tammy has moved on, as all good stylists seem to do, and I was assigned to Derrick. It has been a long time since I have had a male stylist, and it felt a bit weird, but I am very pleased with the result, and will use him again in six weeks, if he is still there. Stylists are a lot like nomads. They “fold their tents like the Arabs and as silently slip away” every 8-10 months. Which in turn makes me a nomad, because when I find a good stylist, I tend to follow him/her to the new shop. I followed one stylist to five different shops before I realized she was trying to lose me. Hope Derrick has better stamina.

And now, for something completely different- La Chef Kelleé, in our kitchen. Hope she doesn’t beat me to death with a spatula for posting this.

It should only be a poltergeist!

I got up in the middle of the night and tripped on something. Since I don’t sleep in my contacts and my glasses were out of reach, I just nudged the unseen something out of my way, made for the bathroom- where everything came out all right- and then went back to bed. In the morning, I discovered the something was the white rubber stopper from my tub. How in the world, I wondered, did that thing get here? I put it back where it belongs.

Later in the day, I stumbled upon a black rubber something that turned out to be the gasket from my garbage disposal. I jumped to the only logical conclusion for these bizarre events- we must have a poltergeist. You know, poltergeists really piss me off, so I did the obligatory three turns to the left followed by spitting on the floor which is guaranteed to piss them off in return, and put the gasket back into the kitchen sink. Done and done, I thought.

But I was wrong. (I will give you a moment to get over the shock of that statement.) It wasn’t over, because the next day, the two items were right back where they didn’t belong, in the middle of my bedroom (white) and the middle of the kitchen (black). I realized I was wrong on two points- we don’t have a poltergeist, and this thing isn’t over.

And as long as Hobbes lives with us, it may never be over. Yes, Hobbes, the water-loving feline has developed a fetish involving sink and tub stoppers. He needs them. He craves them. He may even worship them, who knows? Whatever his pathology may be, I don’t want him tearing up the plumbing. My problem is I am stymied as to how to discipline the little twerp.

The problem: You can’t reason with a cat (hello! They are morons!), you can’t hit a cat (they are vengeful and will pee down your heating vents), and, especially in the case of Hobbes, you can’t scare a cat. They can be startled, but, being essentially brainless, they are, of course, essentially fearless. I have a discipline tactic that is fool-proof, but sadly it’s not Hobbes-proof.

You may remember me telling you about using the tried and true water treatment on Hobbes to discourage him from naughty behavior. This tactic has worked on 15 of the 16 cats on which it has been used. You fill a squirt bottle with water and squirt kitty whenever he misbehaves… cats hate water… millions of squirts later, VOILA! You have a trained kitty. Unless, of course, kitty LIKES to be squirted.

Hobbes likes to be squirted. He likes to get into the kitchen sink. Since squirting didn’t deter him, I tried pouring a full 12 ounces of water on his head to get him out of the kitchen sink, and he liked that, too. He likes to slide around in the bathtub while it is still wet from my shower, and then slide across the laminate floor on his wet paws. Hobbes Brinker, the skating cat. He has learned to flush the toilet because he likes to play in the swirling water.

Sigh. I am at the end of my tether.

Newest wrinkle: He likes to sleep in Mama’s sink.

Mama, of course, doesn’t care for this behavior. She screams at him thirty or forty times a day.

Hobbes apparently likes being screamed at as well.

It’s very wet and noisy here. How are things in your world?

When the round, round robin come blog-blog-blogging around...

I have a friend who writes a wonderful blog.  His moniker is Gryphon and his blog is entitled “Life Among the Natives”.  I have been his “Annie Wilkes” – read biggest fan- for many years because he has a happy facility with the language and a most original mind.  You will find a link to his blog to the right.

Last week he set up a round robin writing challenge.  He provided the opening lines and then tagged me to add to it.  I, in turn, will tag someone else to pick it up and so on.
Here is his opening, in quotes, and my addition, in italics.
     “The Dancing BearThe bear came to me again last night in my dreams, dancing in a ray of moonlight outside my bedroom window. I felt no fear in seeing him there. I knew he would not harm me. But I also knew, somewhere deeper, that to go to him would be my death...”
     Fortunately, I woke up at this point.  I always wake up at this point.  I am used to bizarre dreams.  I have had a series of recurring dreams my entire life.  When I was a child, I dreamt of being trapped upstairs in a burning house while my parents, safe on the ground floor, made no effort to save me.  During my teens, I dreamed of an endless thirst for milk; of being consumed by snakes; of losing my teeth as they tumbled out of my mouth like falling dominoes.  I have dreamed of falling, of flying, of swimming in my house, inexplicably filled with water, and feeling perfectly sanguine about it.  I have even dreamed of dancing bare in the moonlight- not quite the same thing as the dream that awakened me.
     And now I will tag my daughter, having cruelly written her into a corner.  It will be interesting to see where she goes from here.
Kelly's blog

I fear I may be a totally frivolous person. *Sigh*

I think I may have a small shopping problem.  I have had it for awhile… well, actually, for about 40 years.   I was 16 when I got my first paycheck and I had to turn it over to my boss to cover my purchases.  I worked in a milliner’s shop.  Isn’t that charming and quaint?  I don’t think millineries even exist anymore.  The merchandise was charming and quaint as well, hence my incredible vanishing paycheck.  

For a great deal of the past 40 years, I was able to control the urge to splurge fairly easily.  I had no money.  Since we moved to Tennessee, however, our standard of living has just gone up, up, up.  I have been doing my best to ensure that my spending keeps pace with Dave’s earnings, but lately, I have become aware of some warning signs that maybe I am being just a bit, shall we say, OVER THE TOP about the whole redistribution of wealth thing.

First of all, local merchants have begun sending me cards if they haven’t seen me in awhile.   I’m not talking about the standard sales notifications, or general “special invitations” that thousands of others also receive.  No, no, no, no, no, I get handwritten notes.  

Second, I noticed that I got a LOT of Christmas cards last year from merchants, thanking me for my business.  I think I got 987, if I remember correctly.

Third, I am now getting gifts.  There is this absolutely wonderful shop here in town called “The Purple Cabbage” that, among other things, sells handmade and monogrammed clothing for children- all the things that drive a Granny wild, especially if Granny has four adorable granddaughters and the youngest two are a “girly girl” and a baby who adores dresses.  Today, because of my extreme loyalty to The Purple Cabbage, I was inducted into the “Kiss Club”, which means I will receive special invitations and advance notice of sales.   As a token of my new status, the lovely women who run the shop gave me a giant Hershey’s (best chocolate in the world) kiss.   So, okay, maybe not the best gift for a diabetic, but they LIKE me, they really, really like me.

Peebles likes me.  Macy’s likes me.  Dillards likes me.  Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Williams-Sonoma… and don’t get me started on craft and scrapbooking stores, which ADORE me.   And I love them in return, though sometimes my love is unrequited.  For example, I single-handedly put Amazon.com into the black.   I was one of its first customers and, to this day, must be one of its best.  In the early days, when the company was struggling, my patronage was appreciated.  I used to get Christmas gifts from Amazon.com.  I still have and use the to-go cup I got one year, but you know, when they get big, they forget the little people who helped them on the way up.  JEFF BEZOS, YOU BROKE MY HEART IN 17 PLACES!

But I digress.  Lately, I have begun to wonder if I am using shopping to compensate for something lacking my life.  Obviously, things are not what I am lacking.  I am awash with things… and so, thanks to me, is everyone else in my immediate emotional vicinity.  I thought about it in great depth, and finally decided that I needed help-   Shopper’s Anonymous or some kind of a 12-step program.  And I found one!  The brochures were very heartening.  I was happy to learn that I am not alone, I am not a bad person, and, since I don’t put us in debt, I am not destined to be locked in a room by an irate husband and forced to undergo retail deprivation.  It really sounded like just the program for me, so I signed up.  And paid for a year in advance.

Sadly, I have not made it to a single meeting.  Some genius booked them into the mall.

Ciao, bellos.  There is a mocha frappuccino and some leather Italian sling-backs calling to me.   I’m coming, dahlings!

They need to go home

My husband is a second generation American. His grandparents came to the United States LEGALLY in the early part of the 20th century. My friend Sandie was born in Italy. Her family immigrated LEGALLY when she was a child. Waves of people from other countries have LEGALLY swelled our population over time from every culture on the planet. They all had several things in common:

• They came into this country LEGALLY. Things in South America cannot be worse than they were in Poland during the Second World War, or Europe around the WWI, or China NOW, and yet people filled out the proper forms, went through channels, waited if waiting was a requirement, and came into this country with honor and honesty, not by stealth and criminality.


• They had no sense of entitlement. Prior immigrants didn’t come to this country expecting all the rights of citizenship without first becoming citizens. I cannot tell you how offended I have been by the Latino protests over immigration. What next? Felons on parade? The temerity, to come here illegally and protest our justified concern over their illegal actions, never ceases to amaze me.


• They had to learn THE language… which until recent times was without question ENGLISH. Dave’s folks had to learn it. So did Sandie. So did millions of other people. When the Irish came over by the millions- legally- stores did not advertise their wares in Gaelic for their convenience. When the Indians or Pakistanis immigrated, Lowe’s did not put up signs in Farsi or Hindi. Outside of ethnic neighborhoods, the language of the land was ENGLISH. It pisses me off every time I walk into a Lowe’s to see all the signs are bilingual. What are we, Canada? Belgium? Those countries deal with expensive, bureaucratic nightmares because of bilingualism. Do we really want to go there?


• They became Americans. Everyone has ties to their homeland. Hell, my mom’s family came from England in the late 1600’s, and my dad’s came during the Great Potato Famine, and we still have respect and pride in our ancestry. But we are AMERICANS. Not Irish Americans, not English Americans… Americans. We salute one flag. We recite one pledge. Each wave of immigrants prior to the Latinos strove to become American. This wave is another kettle of fish.

In my humble opinion, people who enter this country illegally are criminals. We have immigration laws. They should either be enforced or repealed. Mexico, in particular, will never be compelled to solve it’s own social and economic problems as long as its citizens can cross our borders and benefit from the society generations of legal immigrants have created here. Illegal immigrants are not vested in America. If they can’t or won’t become naturalized Americans, they need to go home and help solve their country’s problems. And we need to help make that happen.

The Turn of a Phrase

More and more, it seems that archaic phrases are creeping into my vocabulary. Well, at least they must seem archaic to anyone not in my generation. But the generations ahead of mine used these phrases to good effect. They were communication tricks, and moral lessons, and good indicators of which was the right path. And they were colorful.

For example:
“If you lie down with dogs, you will rise up with fleas”. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. It was said with a self-righteous sniff, usually after one person had been wronged by another (as expected and predicted), to the person who had been wronged. I am sure it was meant to be comforting.

“Birds of a feather flock together” was another favorite. It often went hand in hand with “Water seeks its own level”, meaning that the people being discussed were no better than they ought to be and probably a whole heck of lot worse.

It was very important when I was growing up to “earn your keep”. My husband and kids hate this phrase, but it’s so ingrained in my psyche that I use it without thinking. “Make yourself useful” is tolerable, but “earn you keep” seems to smack of dependency and servitude, and impending homelessness if you don’t toe the mark. Well, it did when I was a kid, too, and I was never fully confident that my folks weren’t going to sell me to the gypsies at any given moment, so I tried very hard to earn my keep, and they kept me, so there you are. People don’t threaten their children with the gypsies anymore, do they? Are the gypsies gone, do you think, or have they just stopped buying children?

There were special phrases descriptive of being unwell. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet” harks back to the day of the horse, I guess. Or “She looks like death nibbling on a cracker.” I just love that one. Wonderful imagery and it makes no sense whatsoever. People were genuinely concerned when the illness was real, but had no patience with “malingerers”. I am sure folks still malinger, but you don’t hear that phrase much anymore.

On a tangent: I am a whistler. I am a damn fine whistler, but it drives people crazy, except Mama, who loves my whistling, and wants a recording of it to listen to when I go to California. I became a whistler in imitation of my Grandma Brooks, who was a virtuoso whistler out of defiance. HER grandma had told her that whistling was a bad habit, and meant the devil was after her soul. Her mama told her the “whistling women and cackling hens always come to very bad ends.” Well, Grandma did not come to a bad end at all and lived a rich, full, and productive life of service, so her defiance seems justified. I whistle just to be near her again, and it has become such a habit I don’t even know I am doing it most of the time. I think every life deserves its own soundtrack, and I am whistling mine. I think of it as “making a joyful noise”.

There used to be phrases in school that they don’t use anymore, and it’s a shame, because they were so very useful. My favorite is “I before E, except after C, or when sounding like “A”, as in neighbor or weigh.” That one is wonderful! Or in housekeeping” “The way to set the table right is forks to the left, all else to the right,” Lousy poem, but good way to remember. Do people even teach their children to set the table properly anymore? Or even make them do it? Do kids have to do chores nowadays?

I know I did. When I was a child of about 8, my mother and grandmother started me off with simple tasks- drying the dishes, dusting the furniture, ironing the hankies. Yes, Virginia, we really did carry handkerchiefs and we really did iron them. I had chores because “idle hands are the devil’s play ground.” Over time, I graduated to doing the dishes and running the vacuum and ironing pillowcases and sheets… stop rolling your eyes, there was life before perma-press. I was taught simple sewing and mending because “A stitch in time saves nine” and mending saves money. To this day, I mend things, so I guess I really am a cultural dinosaur.

I learned to “separate the wheat from the chaff” and to “skim the cream from the milk”. I was expected to “put my best foot forward” and “walk the straight and narrow.” I was told that “the truest steel is tempered by the fire” and that God never “gives us burdens unless we have the strength to bear them.” I never “hid my light under a bushel” and always tried, as my grandmother admonished me, to “lighten the corner where you are.”
I don’t know how well I have succeeded, but if “a workman is worthy of his hire”, I think I have earned my keep. I’m rather proud of myself. I must look like the cat that ate the canary.