muses of a dragon mad knitter

Beginnings, Endings, and Acceptance

2010-10-23T22:33:00.004-05:00

Today was the end of an era.

Liam has been in marching band for the last 4 years, and, during those last 4 years, i've been more active as a parent at school than i ever had been for the girls (part of that was that alyse never did anything outside of school, and steph went to west point in the middle of her sophomore year, thus ending soccer). Most of it has been involving the band uniforms. I started helping out about 2 games into it Liam's freshman year, decided to shadow the lady who was doing it during liam's sophomore year because her daughter was a senior, and then ran the whole show myself last year and this year (when i say "ran the whole show, i was in charge. there's NO WAY i could have done it all by myself. i had some magnificent helpers, and i'm going to have to find a way to thank them). This year, i even went so far as to help with other stuff, as well. Part of that was because i wanted to, but the other part was because my work offers a "doers for donations" thing where they donate a certain amount of $$ for a certain # of hours of volunteer service, and volunteering for school stuff counts. this year, however, they were limiting it to one grant, unless the 2nd grant could be turned in by Sept 30. i got enough volunteer hours by the 30th to do it. And that was before the main competition season started.

That was the beginnings. The endings have been happening all week. Tuesday was the last evening practice for the season. I and 3 other moms helped put together gold sashes with 2011 and the seniors' intials on them, so they could wear them for the last home football game. Friday morning was the last zero hour practice (practice before regular class time). Last night was the last football game. And then, today, the final last of all lasts, the last competition of the season. The kids will be donning their uniforms on Monday (but i can't help, i'm out of vacation time, and i have to work) for some professional photos, but the real last was today. It's over. It's done. It's the endings.

However, I think i know why this ending is affecting me more than some have. High school was not easy for me. I excelled in my classes (if i had really WORKED i could have been a straight A student, but i didn't feel like it, so i got a's & b's), but the social aspect of it was an absolute nightmare. My first date was with someone from another town, because there wasn't a single boy in school who either a) f ound me attractive enough to date or b) was willing to buck the jocks and the popular girls to even try to ask, and that wasn't until the summer between my junior & senior year. The kids who are hollering about being bullied nowadays? They don't know this has been going on LONG before they came into the scene. Facebook may put a more open picture on it, but it happened to me in spades. In spanish class, we were allowed to pick our spanish names, and i chose margarita. the kids took to calling me margarine, and then crisco, because i had a hard time keeping my hair from being greasy (poor Sean has the same problem, but somehow it's less indicting for a boy). Anyway, here's why it means more now.

Acceptance. I've been accepted by my peers in a high school setting. One of the band parent organization presidents thinks i'm a genius, because i don't have to measure a kid to figure out what uniform will fit him/her 95% of the time. I work hard on the uniforms. Some of the kids have taken to calling me the pants nazi, or the black sock nazi (the requirement is calf-length black socks, and the band gets docked points if they don't match, perfectly). However, half the band also calls me mom. it's either 'MOM!' or 'mommy' or 'liam's mommy!'. One of Liam's friends calls me his other mother, except i don't sew buttons on his eyes, lol.

The point is, that whle my 'real' high school experience sucked big time, this one kind of replaces it, and eases the pain from those days. i'm liked, i'm wanted, and i'm acknowledged for my skill and work ethic. It feels amazing, and i'm going to miss it. Where's my kleenex?

surprise!

2010-09-12T22:10:00.002-05:00

i know, it's been MONTHS since i posted. i apologize. the dual time sinks of plurk & facebook have just KILLED my will to post. however, i'm going to TRY to change that.

however, don't expect nearly so much knitting content.

yes, i am still knitting like a mad woman (will probably NEVER stop). however, a lot of what i'm doing is simple st ockinette socks for A4A, and no matter what pretty color they may or may not be, there's only so much "here's another finished pair of socks" posts i can put up before people start unsubscribing in droves (if they haven't already!)

however, i did want to discuss another of my loves. food.

as many of you may know, for a year i was the food columnist at the daily chum. once a week i would wax eloquent on the joys and loves (and yes, even the disasters and sorrows) o f food & cooking. the chum ended about a year ago, and i find myself missing writing about food. the hard part for me was having a schedule. i HAD to have a column written every week (mostly my own pressure, b ut you know how that goes, you're your own worst critic bla b la bla), and i got to the point where i didn't love it so much.

so, here's what i propose. i'll write about food. i'll write about what i'm doing, and what i'm thinking and, of course, what i'm eating. lemme know if you get sick of it.

tonight? shrimp. i just had a friend on plurk tell me that she had the most flavorless meal, and it involved shrimp. i have to say, where seafood comes in, i think my all-time favorite is shrimp. i like lobster, and crab, and most salt-water fish (and even a few fresh water, who knew tilapia (geshundeit) was a fresh-water fish?), but my #1 love is shrimp. there are some TERRIBLE crimes done to shrimp, though. it's easy to over cook (anything that takes 3 MINUTES to cook will do that to ya), it has a subtle flavor that can be masked by too much spice, or other strong tasting foods, and it's just easy to fuck up. i think the #1 crime is boiling it. to me, cold boiled shrimp is akin to eating mock krab. it's ok, and it's in the right direction, but it's kinda drab. it's part of why i don't like shrimp cocktail. while i LOVE a good cocktail sauce, it should be reserved for fried shrimp, which are intensified by the frying process, and the horseradish tends to cut the richness of the fried breading. i think cold shrimp should go with lighter flavors, like a mild remoulade, or even a pina colada sauce like Red Lobster does with their coconut shrimp.

M has been on a smoked meats kick for a month, and recently smoked some shrimp. they were good, but there were 2 problems. 1) they were dry, because he shelled them. he'd gotten to them before i knew it, and lickety split, they were nekkid. 2) the smoke overpowered any shrimp taste, so most of what i got was the seasoning he put on them (he did 2 batches, one lemon garlic and the other cajun), and, of course, smoke. A better choice would have been to smoke them in the shell, which would have preserved the moisture, and screened out some of the smoke, and gone with a milder seasoning in the cajun batch. now mind, i like spicy shriimp, but this was too much in combo with the smoke.

my favorite preparation? sauteed in olive oil/butter mix with garlic. it intensifies the shrimp flavor (you're boiling the internal water OFF the shrimp), and infuses it with the loveliness that is/can be garlic. i like shrimp scampi, especially if it's done well (Red Lobster's is too salty for me, how many times have they boiled that butter?!?).

One quetion for you, dear reader: Do you eat the tails?

Here's my answer: Yes & no. If the shrimp is hot, and either fried or grilled, the tails can crisp up rather nicely, and add a nice texture to the dish (be wary though, i had a friend who got stuck in the gum with the sharp point of a shrimp tail and ended up allergic!) however, NEVER in a cold dish, and NEVER straight out of a bag of cooked shrimp. i have to pat those puppies dry, and hide their sometimes off flavors with coctail sauce.

Twas the night

2009-12-24T20:39:00.002-06:00

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,
Particularly my spouse.

The stockings were laying
On the chair with no care
Waiting for mom to get off her ass
And fill them (with what, air?)

Actually, while this is going to be a slim Christmas, a Christmas, it will be. We won't be seeing anyone but those in this house (the boys, mark and i) because of a huge blizzard, but we're together, and we're warm, and we have food.

Additionally, my mom is doing better every day. For those who don't follow on plurk, my mom had a mini-stroke about a month ago, and while she's taking care of herself adequately, i've had to step in in a few ways. I'm monitoring her medications, and helping with the bills, and coordinating any services for her, such as a physical therapist, and home health nurse. the hard part is she is now considered home-bound, so i have to do her grocery shopping. i'm working with my brother on getting power of attorney for both of us, so that i can take care of business on a more legal level (people give me lots of lattitude because i'm her interpreter, but i really want to be able to show a paper saying that i really CAN speak for her), and figuring things out. (the deal with both of us having POA is for his comfort level, not for necessity's sake)

today, however, was a landmark. i drove over there before the storm got too bad, and helped her set her medication up for the next week. when i got there, there was a big red bow on her door. i'd asked her 2 weeks ago if she wanted to decorate for christmas, and she had said no.
when i came in, she had all kinds of boxes pulled out of her closet, and presents and wrapping paper on her bed. i asked her if she wanted any help, and she said no, she was fine.

also, when she signed a check for a bill, her hand-writing was much more eventhan it has been for the last month.

i did do some holiday knitting this year. liam has a girlfriend who is a knitter (she gave him a scarf), so i knit a cowl in her favorite color for him to give to her (he got a big kiss out of that one). i've also made a sweater vest for sean in lion brand woolease chunky (story behind this one: we were watching tv, and he saw a commercial for oldnavy sweater vests. he turned, looked at me, and said "chicks dig sweater vests. i WANT ONE!" how could i not oblige, lol?), and a zippered cabled cardigan for liam in berocco comfort. the unfortunate part? both are GREY. next project i'm casting on is the brightest socks i can find in my stash!

and, in the inimitable words of that jolly old elf

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

Late, but still in time

2009-11-11T11:08:00.003-06:00

Here are the pictures i've promised since last week:

This is a superwash merino/tencel blend called platinum from C*eye*ber fibers. it's 4 oz of worsted weight yumminess

This is (i think) a natural brown alpaca, sport weight, about 2 ounces (i think,once again, lol)

This is superwash merino,8 ounces of aran-bulky weight from dyeabolical.

Here's the deal. Liam is fund-raising for a band trip in March to Chicago, and they're doing a bowl-a-thon friday night. He needs to raise $100, and so far he's got $50. Here's the deal. Donate $5, and you'll get a thank-you entry into a drawing for all 3 skeins of yarn. $10? 2 entries. Leave me a comment with your email, and i'll send you my paypal address. The colors are relatively true (i had to use my scanner as my camera is borked, lol).

Please help a boy go on such a fantastic trip (they're doing a clinic, and will see the blueman group, go to a blues museum, see the sears tower, and a bunch of other fantastic things)

i owe you guys and apology

2009-11-04T11:10:00.002-06:00

I had promised to post pictures of some of my handspun today, as i'm using them as prizes for sponsoring Liam in a bowl-a-thon for his band trip in March, but life got in the way. Think of this as a place holder, and I'll post t hem when i can (after i take t hem, of course!)

if anyone is interested in sponsoring Liam, leave me your email in the comments, and i'll get back to you.

Thanks!

whose fault?

2009-09-22T07:41:00.002-05:00

13 months ago a boy collapsed at football practice, and died 3 days later. while the community pulled together over this tragedy, the legal system kicked into overdrive. they charged the coach with wanton endangerment and reckless homicide. the coach was acquitted in 90 minutes.

there were a few things that came out in the trial that makes me question the parents. 1)this child was on adderal AND creatine (a muscle building supplement), both of which impair the body's ability to regulate heat. 2) he had not been feeling well the night before, and probably was not fit to practice in the first place.
The laws are being changed. Coaches are now being allowed access to medical information, and parents are required to provide it to schools.

Here's where i get upset. sean is on numerous medications. if it's going in his body, i research it to a fair-thee-well. I don't let him take ANYTHING without knowing how it's going to 1)make him react and 2)interact with his meds. How did these parents not investigate something like a muscle building supplement for their 15-year old? And if they didn't know he was taking it, why the hell not? Fifteen is not so totally independent that you can't find out what's going on.

additionally, why was he allowed to go to practice if he was ill? any coach worth his salt knows that 1) it's counterproductive for an ill child to come to practice and 2) it can cause his whole team to get sick.

the parents are filing a civil suit against the coach. however, he's been shown to have followed all the rules and regulations in place at the time, and has actually been released by the schools superintendent to not only teach but to coach if he so desires, with NO STIPULATIONS. who's investigating the parents?

today

2009-09-11T08:52:00.002-05:00

i went through my posts, and realized i haven't posted about what happened 8 years ago since 2006. it's about time, eh?

i'm going to tell you about how liam reacted to what happened. He was 9. There had been a call put out to give all the kids who lost parents in the bombing? hijacking? let's call it a tragedy, teddy bears, or some kind of stuffed animal. He had heard about it at school. He came downstairs in tears one afternoon, with his favorite teddy bear, and said "mom, i want to give them my teddy bear. i want someone to know that i love them, too." i almost lost it right then and there (and i need a tissue now!). I convinced him that it was ok to keep his teddy bear, and we'd buy a new one.

Steph? She was mad at me for making her turn the tv off that day, but i think later on she understood. i'd have to ask her n ow what she thinks about it all, as now she's older, and may have better perspective (she's 23).

Sean? He was so terribly young (7) when it happened, and i'm not sure he really knew what was going on. However, now, he'll tell you how he feels, in no uncertain terms. He thinks it was wrong, and that the perpetrators should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. As for the rest? He doesn't say much either.

While Alyse has become a bigger part of my life recently (she just stopped by this morning to drop off rent $$ and to give the boys some lego cars (she works at mcdonald's as a supervisor)), she wasn't living with me at the time, and considering it's a politically charged topic, she and i don't discuss it (she's still a JW, so we steer clear of anything like that).

I still harken back to what my dad would have thought: "those lousy sons of bitches."

it's hard

2009-09-05T23:32:00.002-05:00

i love watching the show saving grace. i started watching it in season 2, and decided it was time to get season 1 on netflix so i could see how it all started.

i watched episode 7 tonight, called "yeehaw, geepaw." a large part of the story revolves around grace's grandfather, an arapahoe indian, who develops the early stages of alzheimer's. this one was bittersweet for me in so many ways.

in some ways, i think it's harder to lose a grandparent as an adult than as a child. you get a sense of who they are as adults, and not just as grandma or grandpa. you hear stories about your parents as they were little, and you see similarities to your own childhood. the last time i saw my grandma ruth, she told me that my mother had been left-handed, but the school she went to forced her to learn to write right-handed. it explained where sean got his left-handedness. we went out there when the girls were 14 & 13, and the boys were 7 & 5. steph was being a particular pain (she's so a city girl). and i actually got upset enough to cry. even though i outgrew my grandma years before (she was about 4'10" and 90# at that t ime), she held me and let me cry on her shoulder.

watching grace mourn the man her geepaw had been made me think so much of how hard it was to lose my grandma, and my dad.

and now, my father-in-law. he was diagnosed with the early stages of alzheimer's AND parkinson's last year (he finally admitted it was parkinson's this spring), and i watch him lose himself. he's definitely not the robust man he was when mark and i started dating 6 years ago. he shuffles when he walks, and tends to do everything left-handed, even though he's right handed, because that's the side that shakes. he has the pd mask, and often his eyes show little there. he still has his driver's license, but never drives any more (thank god). he still has good days (we were over there wednesday, and he was definitely having a good day, lots in his eyes, and the shaking was at a minimum), but mom tends to focus on the bad days, and how much work itis totake careof him.

mark keeps telling me that that is what i have to look forward to when he gets old. his family calls it 'the olson shake' because, of the 10 kids in dad's generation, half have some form of familial tremors (most of t hem aren't as advanced as dad, he's the 2nd oldest). both dad's parents had it, too (from what i understand, they were distant cousins, and didn't know it til after they'd been married for several years.) he doesn't do it often, but sometimes, i see a fine tremor when he's holding something. he thinks he'll have alzheimer's, too. his short-term memory is for shit, but he was a bad boy in his early days, (i'm not worriedabout saying it here, he'll tell anybody that asks), and it is bound to mess with you for life.

anyway, mark sees his dad failing. his parents signed their house over to him last year,with the t hought of avoiding any tangles if/when dad hasto go into the nursing home. except it has to be in effect for 5 years. idon't know ifdad's going to last that long.

i was spared that fate with my dad. he was in pretty good health for a 75 year old man when he had his stroke. he died 12 days later. my mom, now 81, is a real go-getter (funny thing is mark's dad is only 4 months younger than my mom, and you'd swear he was years older) despite some health issues she has (a heart-valve replacement in '86 has her on blood-thinners for the rest of herlife, and she also has congestive heart failure,which was diagnosed 2 yearsago). the doctors are all amazed at how perky and happy she is, and energetic, etc. she lives in an apartment half a floor up, and still goes into thebasement to do her laundry on mondays. i think she'll be bugging the s hit out of me for years to come.

but not dad. it's hard to watch. mom'snot doing so well, either. but she refuses any help with dad. i'm tempted to tell her a story from my childhood. my grandpa was 89 years old, and had spent a goodpart of my childhood bed-ridden (he'd broken his hip when i was 4,and never really recovered). my grandmother was 10 years younger than him (this ispaternal, the other grandmother was maternal that i spokeabout earlier). her doctor told her "ethel, you can't take care of him any more. you can put him in a nursing home, or you can plan your funeral. your choice."

while we're not tothat stage yet, mark and i both feel that maybe she needs alittle helpwith dad. if nothing else, a planned afternoon away, once a week, without worrying about how dad's doing at home while she's gone. a support group for caregivers. SOMETHING. i have a feeling tomorrow (a family get-together is planned) is going to be showdown time. sigh.

but, back to saving grace. geepaw fell off a horse, and got banged up. grace had let him ride ahead, and the horse reared and bucked geepaw off. she felt like it was her fault. i can understand. i thought i was done worrying about every bump & bruise, but now it's with my mom, and not my kids.

sunrise, sunset

2009-08-31T22:43:00.002-05:00

i was reading stephanie's post about letting her eldest go to australia, and it got me thinking. i didn't do birthday posts for the boys this year because life's been nutty at best, but they did, indeed, get a year older. Sean is now 15, and Liam is 17.

mark and i were watching the original woodstock movie one day, while the boys were playing video games in the other room. for t hose not in t he know, it's rated R for nudity and some language. liam came in the room to tell us something, and we paused it to avoid any accidental montys. after he went back to playing, i looked at mark and said "do you realize he could walk into a movie theater right now, and watch this without our permission?" that thought, more than a nything else lately, has reinforced t hat my little boy is no longer little, nor a boy. He's definitely a young man, with his o wn ideas, thoughts, feelings, and ways.

He's even seemed to pull his head out of his ass as far as his grades. we're 2 weeks into the new year, and i've heard from 4 teachers, and he's doing well in their classes. some A's, even!

Sean has definitely shown a large amount of improvement, and maturity. He's started the school yearat level 2 of 6 levels atschool (the higher the level the greater the freedoms and the fewer "chances" to keep a level day and still misbehave.), and at the pace he's going, i expect him to hit level 3 by parent teacher conferences. we won't mentionthe fact that the little shit is now about 6' tall, and weighs about 185. haven't heard about academics, but the behavior is a huge t hing.

when did they grow?

WE DID IT!

2009-08-28T23:14:00.002-05:00

all kinds of happy butt dancin' goin on 'round here. With some sincere efforts by many people, and anonymous donations from others, not only did we raise enough $$ to save the Florence Library, but there's enough to put the other libraries back to their normal hours, and saved 50 jobs!

i've literally been moved to tears by the support from all of you, and plurkies as well. A special, huge thank you goes out to kat of Paperandyarn fame. She donated a sock kit to the cause, which we raffled off (i'm still getting the details, kat! i'll email ya when i know more, lol).

we are florence!

A Crime

2009-08-20T21:33:00.002-05:00

For those of you who live in omaha, you already know the crime being commited in my neighborhood, i.e. Florence. Florence was here before Omaha, and was annexed in 1917. When you hear about the problems in North Omaha, that's actually south of here. The Mormons over-wintered here in 1846. It's one of the most historic areas in the state.

And we're being robbed. The City of Omaha is short $12 million for 2009, and they've asked all departments to trim where they can. The Omaha Public Library Board, in their infinite (and, might I add, unregulated) wisdom, decided, rather than cutting hours and staff across all of Omaha (to include the new branch they JUST opened on Monday in west Omaha (where all the $$ is)), they're going to close our branch. In 3 weeks. They say it's temporary, and that they'll open back up in 2010, and that there's even $$ budgeted for renovations (it's bond $$, and can't be used for operations, by law) in 2010 (if it reopens).

Here's my major problems with this, in case you haven'tnoticed.

1) they opened a n ew branch in a higher priced neighborhood, with an annual budget of $730K while the Florence branch is only short $90K to finish out the year.
2) the library board is autonomous to the point that, once they're nominated by the mayor (they were actually nominated by the previous mayor, not the one who is in office now, although i have problems with him, as well), they can do anything they want with the funds allocated to the library system. they answer to no one.
3) they're nominated, not elected.
4)the library board says that absolutely, there will be renovation funds for the library. if it reopens. they won't guarantee that.
5) only one board member lives close enough to our branch to count (she lives about 1/2 mile away). the rest live in west omaha.

the closest branch from our branch is in "north omaha." it's only open 5 hours aday (and not after 5pm) because it's in a bad neighborhood. one of our local daycares decided to check it out, as an alternative to take her kids if our branch closes, and she wasn't even comfortable pulling into the lot, because of the "riffraff" in the lot.

there's been plans to "renovate" our area for years, and yet they never happen. everything that's happened here h as been because we, as Florence residents, have pushed for it, and made it happen. The big wigs downtown ignore us, and belittle us, and push us aside. Not this time, gang, not this time.

Oh, andby the way, the week after the U.S. Post Office announced that our Post Office was up for "consolidation," (which, btw, was revoked; we get to keep our post office) they announced the florence library closure. Yeah, right, we matter. uh huh. watch howmuch we matter.

oh, btw?

Friday, August 28th, at 7 pm, is a rally at the Florence Library. Be there, and be square.

getting stuff off my chest

2009-07-21T23:32:00.004-05:00

well, it had to happen sometime, and it did in may. i went back to work full time.

it's not working out very well right now. the job is fine. the benefits are fantastic, and i like everybody i work with, and my manager is fantastic. however, i work from 1030 to 7. in the old days, mark would go to bed around 730. now, with my commute, i'm not getting home til 730, so we often don't eat dinner until 8 or 830, unless mark cooks, then we MIGHT eat at 730. i would say about 1/3 of the time, he cooks, 1/3 of the t ime, i finish up or completely cook, and 1/3 of the time we order out. however, if mark doesn't get to bed by 730, he's incredibly grumpy. so, there's been al ot of fighting lately, because i'm tired when i get home from work, and have a lot less tolerance for bullshit.

and now there's band camp. when i volunteered to be the main band uniform mom last year, i wasn't working. now, i'mh aving to coordinate everything either in the morning before i go to work, after mark goes to bed, and on my days off. tonight was a bitch. mark decided tonight was an eat-out night, but didn't tell metil almost 8. i had to go get liam at 815, and ended up not getting the food until 825. so i had to go pickliam up, and talked to the band teachers while i was there, because there was information i needed in order to get things ready (band camp is in 2 weeks. sigh).

so he gets mad because the food was cold by the time i got home. i feel like i can't win for losing with this one.

add to that the stress of having a major asshole on the phone today, who refused to acknowledge that maybe the reason why his credit card keeps getting shut off is because he's not following the rules that his bank put in place to PROTECT HIM. add to that the fact that the aforementioned bank has the habit of dumping customers on us without any prior notification, and he came to me pissed (without any warning to me), and that i got screamed at for a full 3 minutes because he didn't authorize ### bank to give us the verification information (which, i'm sure, was in the paperwork he signed when he created the account, or was given that information when the bank changed their policies) and wouldn't let me explain that it's HIS bank that determines what is going to be verified, NOT US. he even choked, he was so apoplectic. i had enough and hung up on him (he was also swearing, and i don't care WHAT company policy is, i WILL NOT put up with that crap). my luck, 10 minutes later, i get the same bank sending him back to me. at least this time the bank rep stayed on the line and toldme who the customer was. i informed him of this customer's disgusting behavior, and asked if he would mind if i spoke to my supervisor. she ok'ed me to transfer them both to a different agent, because i was literally edging into a migraine from the stress of this asshole. i warned her ahead of time what was going on, then emailed my manager with all the details, in case they decided to review the call.

i was so upset, i ended up getting off the phone, and walking the halls for a few minutes, to calm down.

why are some people so damned hateful and vicious?

that was my week.

how was yours?

10 signs you're getting older

2009-04-15T22:33:00.002-05:00

This was prompted by Claudia posting the same thing today.

1. I took my mom to the bank, and heard Knights in White Satin. Not only can I remember when this song came out, I can remember when no self-respecting bank would play anything NEAR its style/genre.

2. I took a short nap the other day, and happened to look in the mirror right after I got up. The marks on my face weren't pillow creases, they were WRINKLES.

3. While getting up at 6 is still hard, staying up til 6 is impossible.

4. Mom's chin. Nuff said.

5. This is the first year i haven't gotten carded for buying beer at christmas time (i wear a santa hat that covers my grey).

6. Justin Timberlake? I have kids older than him. Sean Connery? now THERE'S a man!

7. I broke my finger when I was 14, and from then on, I had a weather finger (and yes, it's THAT finger. i like giving crazy aunt marge (the fill-in for mother nature) the finger). It would ache within 24 hours of an approaching storm/major weather change. Now? It never stops hurting, it just hurts MORE when those weather changes happen.

8. They're not hot flashes, they're power surges.

9. I can carry pencils around without using my hands.

10. More tolerance for teens. Yes, you're reading that right, i said MORE. was terribly impatient with the girls' and their friends. The boys? not so much.

And, just as an aside? I just turned 43 a couple of weeks back. At this age, my mother had a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and a 2 month old baby. How the HELL did she do it? And thinking of trying to deal with teens (and me and my baby brother were both incredibly strong-willed) from the age of 51 to 61? Unthinkable. she's 81 now, and i can only hope i'm half as tough as she is/was.

coming home

2009-03-27T00:13:00.002-05:00

I've been noodling around on Youtube, as I'm wont to do when I stay up way too late, and ran across a whole slew of military tribute videos/slide shows.

One that hit home was Ozzie Osbourne, and Coming Home.

My baby brother was in the first Iraqi war, Desert Storm. He left in September, 1990, after having only been in the Army for 6 months (total, including basic & AIT). He left a 19 year old boy. It changed him. He came home older, wiser, and sadder.

I'm not the praying type (even when I "had" religion, i didn't do it much), but in the months that he was gone, until he came back to the States in mid-April, I prayed every night that he'd come home. I put up yellow ribbons wherever I was (i ended up moving 3 times in that time period. it REALLY sucked). all i asked was "please let him come home."

He doesn't talk much about his time there (and I've found that a lot of them won't). He came back with some bad habits (he started smoking there, if only to relieve the boredom), and some new insights, and some health issues (don't let them kid you, Gulf Syndrome is real. he has small bits of neuropathy, foot fungus issues (still! and it's been 19 years!), and generally weird stuff).

He told me, when he got back to Ft. Bragg, and got in his car to drive home, on his first leave, that the last song that played as he drove down highway 75 to my parents' home was Ozzie and Coming Home. I think, at that point, he really was home, and it really was over. (apparently bloggers embedding feature is broke, so click the link)

Bob played his cards right. He stayed in the military for just over 8 years. Long enough to gain a small disability check (his knees will never be right), and long enough to get out of that inactive duty that has dragged so many people back into the military, who thought they'd gotten shut of it (i'm thinking of the woman who reported for duty with her kids with her, since there was no one else to take care of them), and not so long that he was obliged due to retirement (they nabbed my SIL on that one, but because she's developed some major health issues since she'd left, they couldn't send her overseas, so they put her on immigration control as a federal marshall (which she'd done before. the woman has had more military and military-type jobs than icare to thinkabout! (imagine a drill instructor with the last name of Payne. oy!)))

But that time will never leave him. He bears the scars inside and out. But he came home, which is so much more than some have done. And I'm grateful.

amazing

2009-03-21T21:02:00.001-05:00

so, apparently, someone is reading my blog from YEARS ago. apparently, even now, this person can't let go. won't go into all of it, but get a life, please?

it's done

2009-02-22T22:45:00.002-06:00

i keep coming back to my dad. you all know how much i miss him, every day, even though it's been almost 8 years since he died.

it was brought back to me again, tonight.

i'm watching the oscars, and they did they're usual "in memoriam" thing, and the last name to come up was Paul Newman. Paul Newman was my dad's age, almost exactly. I always connected the two. Somehow, as long as he was out there, kicking it, it was ok. But Paul Newman's gone, now. And, so, too, is my dad.

too funny

2009-02-17T23:12:00.001-06:00

this is TOO funny not to share. it's NSFW, but oh my god. i about peed myself.

going batty

2009-01-26T21:33:00.002-06:00

the phone rang about 45 minutes ago. considering it was almost 9, i knew it had to be steph.

here's a little back story on steph. she can't STAND creepy-crawlie things. they had a mouse problem for a while, and one got caught in a trap by just its tail and one leg. her solution? put a paper box top with an iron on top to keep it contained until her sister got home to deal with it. not quite sure how she's my child, since creepy crawlies don't bother me in the slightest, except for the bite factor (i don't handle snakes because my hands are tender enough without throwing bites into it).

so, i answer the phone, and she's SQUEALING. not in a good way. "THERE'S A BAT IN MY BEDROOM!" "where are you?" "UNDER THE COVERS!" "well, dummy, get out!"

she hadn't been feeling good, and had been in bed since she'd gotten home from work. she was calling me from under the covers. she had been lightly dozing when she heard what she thought was a mouse, so she thumped on the floor to scare it away. instead she heard wings!

i finally talked her into getting out of the room, amidst much squealing, giggling, and half-crying (yes, she's that scared). i called the humane society/animal control, and the lady told me that steph was going to have to keep a visual on the bat until they got there. i told her that wasn't going to happen, because she'd practically had a panic attack while calling me. finally, i told the lady i'd go over and keep an eye on the bat until they got there. she told me that since this was considered an emergency, we would be next. however, the officers were already out on a call.

i called steph up and told her to tell me how much she loved me, because i was going to come over and keep an eye on the durned thing. i went over there, and discovered she'd turned the light off. "how am i supposed to watch the bat if the light's off?!?" i turned the light on, and she screamed "don't let it out!" "would you s hut up! that's why it's flying around, you've got it all worked up!"

i got her to shut up, and it actually decided to land on the window sill at the top, and there it stayed until the officers showed up. i decided i could watch it by opening the door every few seconds, and that worked. i honestly think the poor little thing had gotten worn out, and since the nuttiness had died down, it needed a nap, lol.

So, the officers show up. They're both GIRLS, and both around steph's age. she was thoroughly disgusted, lol. I opened the door enough for them to go in and get the poor little guy, and steph fled to the kitchen.

We had to sign paperwork waiving rabies testing, but steph is positive it never touched her, so the officers didn't seem concerned.

The whole thing took about 45 minutes, from her call to the little guy being deposited in the container (which was a commercial-sized sour cream container with holes cut in the top, and what looked to be a paper towel sticking through the lid).

i'm still just struck over how much of a puss steph was over the whole thing, lol.

amazing

2009-01-20T12:43:00.002-06:00

i was unable to watch the inauguration today. i had to take my mother to the dermatologist to get a small thing on her forehead removed. (no biggie, i think it took longer for them to numb her forehead than it took to remove it). i tried to find a tv. walmart had theirs focused on their own internal network (big surprise there), and burger king just down the way didn't have one (some do, some don't).

so i sat in the car, and i listened. and i cried. not tears of sorrow. i don't know if i would call them tears of joy. tears of hope. such overwhelming emotion. bigger than me. bigger than all of us as individuals.

today is a milestone. not just for democrats. not just for african-americans. for all americans. "all men are created equal." indeed.

outrage

2009-01-13T13:53:00.002-06:00

i know, i seem to be pissed alot lately, but this one is justified.

sometimes political action groups have a place. however, the ones who 1) target seniors and 2) fear-monger are #1 on my shit-0-meter.

here's the story. my dad was a big one for small donations to these political action groups. when he died, my mom continued to receive requests. she donated in the small quantities that my dad had. did this for years. i know this. it's her money, and it wasn't hurting her to do so.

until recently. i got a call from the bank today, saying that her check to the IRS (she pays quarterly) was going to bounce because she only had $19 in her checking account, and there wasn't enough in her savings to cover it.

WHAT THE HELL??????

my mom is comfortable. she can buy what she wants when she needs it. she's loaned money to me and my kids and my brother, and not been bothered by the amount.

so i told them we'd be in as soon as i could pick her up. i called her, told her to get out her duplicate checkbooks (thank god for those, it helped me figure out what was going on), and i'd be right over.

i looked at them as she was finishing putting her coat on, and realized that the "small" donations she'd made in the last month were more than my car payments! i'm not going to give figures, but it made me very, very angry. i asked her what she was thinking, and she couldn't tell me. she got angry with me, until i told her that this was causing problems with her bank, and that this point, i wasn't even sure if she had enough $$ to go grocery shopping! that made her pause.

we went to the bank, and after going through all kinds of paperwork, we were able to place a series of stop payments, to at least stop the hemmorage of $$ from her account. we were able to cover the IRS check, and leave her with $$ to live on until her next checks came. we did eventually end up going to the grocerystore.

when we got back, she grabbed some letters that she had set out for the mailman totake (he hadn't been yet) and brought them back in with her. she said to tear them up and throw them away. i looked at them first. the "small" donations they used to ask for were,apparently, a thing of the past. the smallest "minimum" donation they were asking for was $100! this was with 3 different committees! kind of explained a few things.

one was asking for money because sure as shooting, Obama and Ted Kennedy were not going to protect her social security and medicare rights, and try to socialize health care, etc, etc, etc. (my mom's a republican, can you tell?) i'm not sure my mom would be able to make it if it weren't for medicare (she has numerous health issues that have her at the doctor's on a regular basis).

FEAR MONGERING! run, be scared, give us money so we can scare the shit out of you! that's what i read.

Traditional Values Committee
National Committee for the Preservation of Senior Rights
American Seniors Rights Committee

that was the 3 i saw today. these people were terrifying my mother, and as tiny and old as she is (she's 4'8" and will be 81 on the 30th), the only thing she thought she could do is give them $$.

i think i've found a new cause.

my mom has promised not tosend $$ to these people any more (and i have things in place to monitor this more closely than before).

but she's going to still get the mail for them. i've asked her to save them for me, and i'm going to do some investigating. finding out who is legit, and who isn't. and i'm going to act. contact my congressmen. my governor. my attorney general. i'm going to stop these fuckers. stop 'em hard.

i'm done.

i can't believe this

2009-01-07T09:01:00.003-06:00

Ok, gang, we all know that charity crafting is near and dear to my heart. However, there's a movement going on that i just became aware of, that may put it in jeopardy for me.

This legislation will prohibit the sale of children's products without costly, intensive testing. This just might be the the straw that breaks the camel's back for so many people. All those WAHMs who do small things to help supplement their income making simple things for children from safe products who can't afford this kind of testing.

i know i'm being kind of incoherent, but this pisses me off so much i can't stand it!

why not have the suppliers of the materials (who usually do this in massive quantities) sustain the costs of the testing, rather than making each individual do it, and drive them out of business. Admittedly, it will drive up the cost of the materials, and maybe cause these companies to cut back on some of their inventories, but i'm sure most of the people buying for their own businesses could increase their prices as well, and still be able to be IN business. one $500 test for a material that the company sells 10,000 pieces for breaks down to FIVE CENTS per item.

FIVE CENTS, people. where as Judy's Baby Binkies (hypothetical here, folks) may only make $500 a month on her blankets.

i know, this act is in response to the toy recalls of the last few years, but those were from toys manufactured OUTSIDE THIS COUNTRY. (lookin' at you, China!). What this legislation will do is drive the toy-makers (and other kids' items crafters) who people turned to when all those toys were recalled out of business. Which turns us BACK to those SOB's who weren't using safe practices with our children in the first place!

Anyway, go. check the link out. follow some of the suggestions made. I'm definitely going to write to my congressmen.

i miss him

2008-12-22T23:08:00.002-06:00

My dad's been gone for 7 1/2 years.

While I don't usually miss him so much this time of year, I was watching Little People, Big World, and saw that their best friend passed on, and it was sudden, and quick, and unexpected. It made me think of my dad.

When I was a kid, this time of year was quiet. The harvest was in, everything that could be repaired probably had been by now, and the sows weren't going to farrow for at least another month and a half. This is when my dad would get fat and sassy (yeah, right, the man never broke 160. he was 5'6", and definitely not a fat man. during really busy times, i think he was lucky to be 140).

"HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!" i can remember hearing that on several christmas mornings. my dad had a big voice for such a small man. he could rattle the windows.

i remember he could never say "banana." it was always "balana." He was very sick as an infant, and spent most of the years we learn language not hearing anything. When he finally began to hear again, it was never quite right. the Nebraska School for the Deaf focussed on sign language, rather than speech. i credit my ability to understand most people to the fact that i grew up hearing "mangled" english.

i don't miss him much this time of year. he's not as close now. wait for spring. when i drive in the country, and see farmers planting at all hours of the day and night, i hear my dad's hollering for more seed corn. when i see the corn growing up and up and up, i hear my dad talk about when they were kids and how corn grew during WWII (he wasn't allowed to serve, for obvious reasons, although he tried). My favorite smell is corn pollinating in july. Seeing combines on the road makes me remember rides on the tractor, going from field to distant field (although my dad NEVER took his equipment on the highway. if it needed to go to town, he had it trucked. said it was too hard on the tires to drive on the highway (and those tires were $500 in the 70's!))

i miss my dad

we remember

2008-12-05T22:03:00.002-06:00

One year ago, today, the nation's worst mall shooting occured in a place i've been several times. maggie webb, angie schuster, janet jorgensen, dianne trent, gary joy, beverly flynn, gary scharf, and john mcdonald were lost that day. their families still grieve, as do we all.

never forget.

i was at miss violet's when the shooting happened. i was driving down to sean's school, when carin called me and told me "don't go to westroads. there's been a shooting." as we watched, and heard the stories, and the horror, and saw the tears and fears, we cried.

never forget

Her name is Frances

2008-12-01T09:17:00.003-06:00

A couple of button down shirts. Some paper towels. Toilet paper. A book of stamps. Simple things. But that's all I know. These are what she wants for Christmas.

I found a giving tree at walmart today, for seniors. I went through all of them, and thought, "which one shall i pick?" when i saw Frances, I knew. What kind of life is she living that her wish is for paper towels and toilet paper? I almost broke down right there in Walmart, and every time i looked at the tag i'd taken from the tree, i'd tear up again. in fact, i need a tissue right now.

I'm so grateful for the fact that my mother isn't in that position. But Frances is someone's mother, aunt, or sister. So, I bought what she asked for. I hope it makes her Christmas a little brighter.

postcrossing

2008-11-29T23:06:00.002-06:00

I'm having a bit of fun. I joined www.postcrossing.com, which is a free service. you register, and ask for addresses to send post cards to, and when they're received, your name gets put in, and then you get post cards back. i've gotten them from china, germany (twice), the netherlands, the phillipines, lithuania, south africa, the us (west virginia, ohio and utah), and the last from spain. i actually replied to her in a small amount of spanish, let's see how she responds, lol.

i'm enjoying this. i've got odd postcards from interesting areas. and i'm keeping them. much to mark's chagrin, lol. right now, i've gotten 12, so my collection fits in one drawer of the desk. i've been going to the local bookstore, and getting nebraska postcards from there. however, their collection is kind of limited (a lot of them from the mormon cemetary up the street (they ARE the winter quarters bookstore, lol). i need to go to the zoo, and get some cool ones there.

the best part? all it costs me is the cost of the postcard AND postage. it's 97 cents to mail international, and 27 to mail in the us. wheeeeee!

Remind me

2008-11-20T11:50:00.003-06:00

I didn't craft at all yesterday. It was a bad day after I got home from Miss Violet's. The school called, and Sean got suspended again. This is his 5th suspension (and we still haven't finished the semester yet). I won't go into why, except he needs to learn to control his mouth.

It was a tense afternoon, and evening. Sean was absolutely livid when he got home, as was Mark. While dinner went well, there were specific tensions. Sean asked for ice cream, and I decided that he could have an ice cream sandwich, rather than the last of the drumsticks. That pissed him off, so he went upstairs rather than have any. Mark got bent out of shape, and went to bed.

Then Sean came down and proceeded to puke for an hour. He'd get up, puke, then lay on the floor in the bathroom. I won't go any further than that, for those of you who are a bit sensitive stomach-wise. He fell asleep on the bathroom floor, claiming he was going to stay in there for the night. I finally woke him up around 9, and he decided he felt a little better, and could go upstairs after all.

With a bunch of other stuff going on (in case y'all didn't know, I'm the Managing Editor for the Daily Chum, and i was working on some major stuff (watch that space after Thanksgiving. you'll love it!), and ended up not touching fiber or needles, and going to bed at 11:30.

Today, I picked up my crochet (AC4C are asking for strips to piece into blankets, as they're faster to join, for the Pine Ridge Reservation), and after 3 stitches, I could feel the peace and harmony flooding through me.

So, do me a favor. If you see me on Plurk howling about insanity, or if i bitch here about the nuttiness that can be and is being the mother of highly intelligent children (not to mention Sean's other issues), ask me if i've picked up any fiber. Doesn't matter what, be it spinning, knitting, or crocheting (not sewing, though, that causes me more stress). Remind me. I need it.

Red Neck Fire Alarm

2008-11-17T20:42:00.002-06:00

And now, for a little levity

2008-11-12T21:25:00.002-06:00

Get your dose today!

get the word out.

2008-11-11T23:57:00.002-06:00

as many of you know, sean has asperger's. he also has ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and OCD tendencies (obsessive compulsive disorder). the OCD isn't full blown because he isn't completely compulsive about things, but it can manifest itself at any time (when he's nervous, he'll pick his lip or his fingers, or anything else to bleeding).

here's what i propose. the biggest problem sean is having at school at this point is a lack of understanding. students, staff, and even a few teachers (i won't go into which ones, but i have my ideas) think he can control all of his behaviors, and just needs a good kick in the pants. what they fail to realize is that the last word in all those alphabet soup diagnoses is DISORDER. not working right. i don't wanna say that sean is disordered, but what he is is different.

i propose that we get the word out. if more people knew what asperger's was, and how it works, there might be more understanding. sean is a brilliant young man. he blows everybody out of the water in his biology class. there is actual discussion of putting him in honors chemistry next year, not because his grade in biology supports it, but because of what he says in that class. i'm sure i've said this before, but he has a college level chemistry book that he asked for a few years back. HE UNDERSTANDS IT. he understood it when i bought it. he and mark will go through it, and try and figure out what would happen if you combined this element with this element. also, his IEP teacher thinks that if he's in an AP class, the kids there have a different level of maturity, and be more tolerant of how he is (which is what he's getting in his biology class. the teacher is fantastic, and i've been told there's a group of kids in there who help sean as much as they can (not with homework lol, but other ways) and missed him while he was out of school).

most of all, if more people accepted sean for what he is, different (and not really all THAT different), he might be more accepting of himself. i know there is a small part inside that says "what the hell am i doing." he's told me. he knows when he's done wrong, but just can't stop sometimes. i just wish the life lessons in socialization were a little more gentle (unlike the young man who punched sean after sean kicked him for getting in his face because "you're weird.")

i have a new motto in life.

Normal is the setting on a dishwasher, not a description of people.

i have a dream

2008-11-04T22:12:00.002-06:00

a caveat, first: i think it's great that barack obama won. i honestly think it will be a revolutionary change.

however, here we go.

I have a dream. I have a dream that some day it won't matter if you're black, white, red, or yellow, male or female, tall, small, skinny or fat. It won't matter. I have a dream that a person will be judged on their merits and skills, on who they are, and not what they are.

That is my dream

A Bone to Pick

2008-10-22T23:10:00.004-05:00

Christmas is shot this year. Guaranteed. Wanna know why? I've got doctor bills to pay. Why, yes, I do have insurance. What of it?

When I checked into putting Sean into partial care 2 weeks ago, they told me that it would cover 50% up to $130 a day. That makes me responsible for $65. God knows what they've contracted it at, but that's what they cover. Sean was in partial care full time for 4 days. I have to call and find out how much they cover for transition days. There were 3 of those. Then there's the hospitalization. Dunno about that one either.

Here's the stinky bit. I CAN'T CHECK ON THE WEB. even though there's a website. i don't have authorization. it's mark's insurance. but i'm supposed to! We got a letter at the beginning of September that they were issuing new insurance cards as of october 1 (haven't seen mine yet, and i've been diligently checking the mail), and that spouses would be given log-ins so that they could check things like providers, and balances (it's a $750 deductible/person, with $1500/family, in network. don't even wanna discuss out-of-network. i think it's $1500/person, and $3000/family, but don't quote me), and coverage. haven't gotten it yet. it's FUCKING OCTOBER 22, PEOPLE!

Because of Sean's UTI problems earlier in the year, he met his deductible months ago. But as of right now, I'm still responsible for at LEAST $260 *for M-Th of last week, not to mention the rest. I'm still paying off the urologist from march for sean, and mark's facial surgery from EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO. And now i'm going to have new bills for sean at this same damned hospital. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, FOLKS. When mark had the s urgery, i had received SIX SEPARATE BILLS. Radiology. Anesthesiology. Surgeon. Lab work. Hospital. and (this one pisses me off huger than big) RADIOLOGY CONSULTANTS. because his dad had skin cancer, they wanted to x-ray his lungs (had to do 2, cuz his lungs are so long, lol). so, they had a radiologist to take the picture, and a CONSULTANT to look at it! WTF. still paying the hospital and the surgeon (at least the surgeon doesn't send snotty letters EVERY MONTH even though i'm paying monthly).

and i won't even get into therapy, which will happen with sean eventually. the sad part? they'll only cover 26 sessions a year. and you have to reapply every so often during the year to v erify that you still need the services. he'll be ok for the rest of this year (there's only a tad over 2 months left), but next year could get dicey.

such is the state of mental health care. and it pisses me off.

*and this is beyond the $250 mark pays a month for the insurance. i can remember not so long ago when i paid $60 every 2 weeks to cover me AND all 4 of my kids. *stomps off in disgust*

it happened again.

2008-10-22T09:36:00.002-05:00

I've hoped and prayed it wouldn't happen again. I've fought, and struggled, and done everything in my power to prevent it. However, it wasn't up to me, cuz I'm just the mom.

Sean's in the hospital again. We've been fighting this battle since school started. He's not adapting well to high school. He's been suspended 3 times, and the quarter ended today. He's been in fights, been picked on, and been outrageous in a not-so-good way.

We had him in partial hospitalization all last week (it's like a day-long therapy session), and were about to transition back to school full time, when he pulled his stunt. He didn't hurt himself, (and honestly, i don't really think he had any intention of doing what he threatened) but he made the threat, and at partial care, so it was grounds for immediate hospitalization.

He's there now. He will be there for 2 or 3 days.

This is so hard. i KNOW it's not my fault, that mark & i have done everything in our power to help him to adapt. he's been put into smaller classes, he's been moved away from kids who would torment him because he's different. it just wasn't enough.

but my heart hurts. i cried last night because i miss my baby boy. i miss him now.

dammit

Music Meme

2008-10-17T22:06:00.002-05:00

Here's the deal.

The rules:A.) Go to musicoutfitters.com
B.) Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year
C.) Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate (i'm going to bold the ones i couldn't live without that year)
I graduated in 1984 (cringe).

The list:

1. When Doves Cry, Prince
2. What's Love Got To Do With It, Tina Turner
3. Say Say Say, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson
4. Footloose, Kenny Loggins
5. Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now), Phil Collins
6. Jump, Van Halen
7. Hello, Lionel Richie
8. Owner Of A Lonely Heart, Yes
9. Ghostbusters, Ray Parker Jr.
10. Karma Chameleon, Culture Club
11. Missing You, John Waite
12. All Night Long (All Night), Lionel Richie
13. Let's Hear It For The Boy, Deniece Williams
14. Dancing In The Dark, Bruce Springsteen
15. Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Cyndi Lauper
16. The Reflex, Duran Duran
17. Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper
18. Jump (For My Love), Pointer Sisters
19. Talking In Your Sleep, Romantics
20. Self Control, Laura Branigan
21. Let's Go Crazy, Prince and The Revolution
22. Say It Isn't So, Daryl Hall and John Oates
23. Hold Me Now, Thompson Twins
24. Joanna, Kool and The Gang
25. I Just Called To Say I Love You, Stevie Wonder
26. Somebody's Watching Me, Rockwell
27. Break My Stride, Matthew Wilder
28. 99 Luftballons, Nena
29. I Can Dream About You, Dan Hartman
30. The Glamorous Life, Sheila E.
31. Oh Sherrie, Steve Perry
32. Stuck On You, Lionel Richie
33. I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues, Elton John
34. She Bop, Cyndi Lauper
35. Borderline, Madonna
36. Sunglasses At Night, Corey Hart
37. Eyes Without A Face, Billy Idol
38. Here Comes The Rain Again, Eurythmics
39. Uptown Girl, Billy Joel
40. Sister Christian, Night Ranger
41. Drive, Cars
42. Twist Of Fate, Olivia Newton-John
43. Union Of The Snake, Duran Duran
44. The Heart Of Rock 'N' Roll, Huey Lewis and The News
45. Hard Habit To Break, Chicago
46. The Warrior, Scandal
47. If Ever You're In My Arms Again, Peabo Bryson
48. Automatic, Pointer Sisters
49. Let The Music Play, Shannon
50. ~~To All The Girls I've Loved Before~~, Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson
51. Caribbean Queen, Billy Ocean
52. That's All, Genesis
53. Running With The Night, Lionel Richie
54. Sad Songs (Say So Much), Elton John
55. I Want A New Drug, Huey Lewis and The News
56. ~~Islands In The Stream~~, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
57. Love Is A Battlefield, Pat Benatar
58. Infatuation, Rod Stewart
59. Almost Paradise, Mike Reno and Ann Wilson
60. Legs, ZZ Top
61. State Of Shock, Jacksons
62. Love Somebody, Rick Springfield
63. Miss Me Blind, Culture Club
64. If This Is It, Huey Lewis and The News
65. You Might Think, Cars
66. ~~Lucky Star~~, Madonna
67. Cover Me, Bruce Springsteen
68. Cum On Feel The Noize, Quiet Riot
69. Breakdance, Irene Cara
70. Adult Education, Daryl Hall and John Oates
71. They Don't Know, Tracy Ullman
72. An Innocent Man, Billy Joel
73. Cruel Summer, Bananarama
74. Dance Hall Days, Wang Chung
75. Give It Up, K.C.
76. I'm So Excited, Pointer Sisters
77. I Still Can't Get Over Loving You, Ray Parker Jr.
78. Thriller, Michael Jackson
79. Holiday, Madonna
80. Breakin'... There's No Stopping Us, Ollie And Jerry
81. Nobody Told Me, John Lennon
82. Church Of The Poison Mind, Culture Club
83. Think Of Laura, Christopher Cross
84. Time Will Reveal, Debarge
85. Wrapped Around Your Finger, Police
86. Pink Houses, John Cougar Mellencamp
87. Round And Round, Ratt
88. Head Over Heels, Go-Go's
89. The Longest Time, Billy Joel
90. Tonight, Kool and The Gang
91. Got A Hold On Me, Christine McVie
92. Dancing In The Sheets, Shalamar
93. Undercover Of The Night, Rolling Stones
94. On The Dark Side, John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band
95. New Moon On Monday, Duran Duran
96. Major Tom (Coming Home), Peter Schilling
97. Magic, Cars
98. When You Close Your Eyes, Night Ranger
99. Rock Me Tonite, Billy Squier
100. Yah Mo B There, James Ingram and Michael McDonald

some of those i'd like to have bolded twice, i love 'em so much (cum on feel da noise, girls rock your boys, we'll get wild wild wild!)

name game

2008-10-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

i think i've done this before, but it's fun, hey?

1.Your rock star name (first pet, current car)

Penny Town & Country

2.Your gangsta name (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe)

Chocolate Birkies (funny, sounds like a hippy name to me, lol)

3.Your Native American name (favorite color, favorite animal)

Blue Dragon

4.Your soap opera name (middle name, city where you were born)

Ruth Blair

5.Your Star Wars name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name)

Olsmi

6.Superhero name (2nd favorite color, favorite drink)

Plum Ice Tea

7.NASCAR name (the first names of your grandfathers)

Kelsa Henry

8.Dancer name (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)

Dirty Jack Heath

9.TV weather anchor name (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)

Thayer Tallahassee

10.Spy name (your favorite season/holiday, flower)

Halloween Violet

11.Cartoon name:(favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now)

Mango Jeans

12.Hippie name (what you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)

Pancake Magnolia

13.Movie star name (first pet, first street where you lived)

Penny Monroe

Go ahead gang, play along! (yes, i know, this was started MONTHS ago, but i've been a plurkaholic. forgive me. Oh, BTW, clicky on my dragon egg! pretty please?)

i can dig it

2008-09-09T06:37:00.001-05:00

i don't normally discuss politics on this blog (that and religion are the two things that can cause the biggest fights). but i think i can get behind this ticket

My Soul

2008-09-01T21:33:00.004-05:00

ok, this sounds like it's going to be a religious post, and maybe it is, to a point. but. here's the deal. i'm a plains girl. i have never lived anywhere else. while i long for the sea, i sometimes wonder. maybe it's the openness i crave. i went to new york a few years back, and i was stunned at the number and variety of trees. even in the fields in the country, they were surrounded by trees. it *almost* made me claustrophobic.

one of my favorite shows is Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. Tonight, i'm watching the Egypt episode. Right now, he's in the desert with the Bedouins. and it appeals. the openness, the barrenness. knowing that there's nothing between you and the horizon, which is miles away. While i found the trees beautiful, and i find mountains beautiful as well, i long for open spaces.

when we went to tybee island, when we visited my brother in georgia, my favorite time was walking the beach. nothing before me but miles and miles of open beach, and to the east, uninterrupted ocean.

i think it's my pioneer soul. both my grandmothers crossed the plains in covered wagons. the older of the two didn't go far (she was born in mondamin, iowa, and they continued on to the tekamah, nebraska area when she was 6 weeks old, although they came from further east), but my younger grandmother was born in 1905, and travelled from iowa to wyoming when she was 5. considering horses/oxen were lucky to get 10 miles a day with those heavy burdens (it's 700 miles from here to gillette, the largest city where they settled), it was a long ass trip.

my grandpa ran away from home in indiana when he was 15, in 1903, so probably, he travelled the same way. i don't know about my other grandpa, except that he was born in germany in 1892, and travelled with his family to wyoming when he was 18 (it just occured to me that he and my grandmother went to wyoming at the same time, lol). he was the eldest of 10 children. maybe they took the train, but i kinda doubt it. 10 kids on a train?

either way, i crave open spaces. i miss living in the country, where there are miles to the next neighbor, and not feet (i often hear the neighbors coming & going from my bedroom, as their driveway runs right next to it). mark wants our next home to be in the country, but it's not feasible at this time, with both boys in high school, and both our folks here in the omaha/cb area.

maybe later.

we drove out to wilson island today, to double check everything for the family reunion that's coming in 3 weeks. it was wonderful, seeing the horizon miles away again, and open spaces. the river was even open to the sky. i'm supposed to go back on wednesday to check the electrical hookups (we're renting 2 camping spaces so that we have enough electrical hookups for all the food, lol). i may sit there for a while, and just absorb the open.

Just the Meme for me!

2008-08-19T11:07:00.002-05:00

Got this from Stephanie. A little something to get the tummy rumbling. This is the Omnivore's Hundred list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strikethrough those you wouldn't eat on a bet.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (does alligator c ount?)
6. ~~Black pudding~~
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (not that i would again!)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float(not now though. had to drink warm rootbeer as a kid when i was sick, ugh!)
36. ~~Cognac with a fat cigar~~ (won't ever take up smoking, so not an option)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (if i ever go to japan, i might give it a shot. it's not available in the us)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (not voluntarily, ugh)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake(all of the above, lol)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho (made it, too!)
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (venison. the deer trashed our car, i figured it was only right to eat it)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (and any variation therein)
83. Pocky (or something similar).
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
~~89. Horse~~
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (i like it almost burnt)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

ah, the joys of a culinary arts degree, lol. I've tried 63 of these things. you'll note t here's only 3 i won't do. sorry, just cant' eat secretariat.

link me if you do this, it's too cool!

meme me up, scotty!

2008-07-17T10:22:00.002-05:00

Fifty things you didn't know about me. At least I don't think so, lol.

1. Do you like blue cheese? is there anything that blue cheese can't go on? of course!

2. Have you ever smoked a cigarette? nope.

3. Do you own a gun? not now

4. What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic? COCONUT!!!!!!!!

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Nope.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? Wimmers NC weiners (prefferably the red ones!)

7. Favorite Christmas Song? Mary, Did You Know (Kenny Rogers/Wynona version) makes me cry every time.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Milk

9. Can you do push ups? Yep! And from the toes! YES! while i've become a chunky monkey, i've still got guns, lol!

10. Favorite movie? Highlander, Director's Cut (i wore the video tape out!)

11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? a sapphire necklace hubbie gave me when he gave me my engagement ring (if we're not counting wedding jewelry, lol)

12. Favorite hobby? KNITTING! (imagine that!)

13. Do you work with people who idolize you? i am THE adminnie. what do you think?

14. Do you have ADD? wouldn't surprise me if i did, since 3 of my 4 kids are adhd

15. What's one trait that you hate about yourself? my tendency to sit on my ass when i need to get off of it

16. Middle name? Ruth, after my grandmother.

17. Three thoughts at this moment: The race thing is still very heated, and as long as one doens't think the other understands, it will still be a race thing. I need to eat breakfast. I have to go get Sean from summer school in an hour, where did the time go?
18. Three things you bought yesterday. iced triple grande caramel macchiato, tall breve latte, and Sean's final 8th grade grades (he lost a book AGAIN! i swear, i'm not letting him check anything out any more!)

19. Name 3 drinks you drink regularly. ice tea, cherry 7up and Water.

20. Current worry right now? my daughter paying her bills (she just got a job after being out of work for 2 months)
21. Current hate right now? political commercials

22. Favorite place to be? at stitch & bitch

23. How did you bring in the New Year? watched it with my sons (my husband can NEVER make it any more, lol)

24. Where would you like to go? scotland, ireland, sweden (for hubbie), and the bahamas

25. Name three people who will complete this. dunno

26. Who's answer do you want to read the most? dunno

27. What color shirt are you wearing? navy blue ben franklin t-shirt i got on vacation in georgia

28. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? No.

29. Can you whistle? like a bird (and apparently i passed the ability on to liam, i AM whistler's mother!)

30. Favorite color? tie dye (is that a color?)

31. Would you be a pirate? ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Aye, Matey!

32. What songs do you sing in the shower? it's the only place i DON'T sing, lol.

33. Favorite girl's name? Deirdre

34. Favorite boy's name? Kelsa (my dad's name)

35.What's in your pocket right now? more like, what's NOT in my pocket, lol.

36. Last thing that made you laugh? something on Plurk

37. Best bed sheets as a child? the flannel sheets my mom would put on in the w inter

38. Worst injury you've ever had? burnt all 4 fingers on my left hand and the ER threatened to cut my wedding rings off

39. Do you love where you live? read previous post, lol

40. How many TVs do you have in your house? 5 (one is the game tv for the kids, one in our bedroom, and the living room one are used)

41. Who is your loudest friend? it's probably a tie between me and Miss V (we both got lungs, lol)

42. How many dogs do you have? none

43. Does someone have a crush on you? Only my husband!

44. If you could marry a movie actor/actress who would it be? Keanu Reeves. no ifs ands or buts about that one

45. What is your favorite book? the outlander series

46. What is your favorite candy? dark chocolate that snaps with nuts

47. Who is your favorite sports team? Don’t have one.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral? amazing grace played on the bagpipes

49. What were you doing at 12 AM last night? plurking my brains out

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up this morning? crap, i gotta get sean to school

Beaches, Booze & Buffett

2008-07-16T23:32:00.003-05:00

I don't think i can explain it. I'm a midwestern girl, born & raised. have never spent more than 24 hours at a beach, at any one time, and can count the time i've been to either coast on one hand. flat lands and cornfields are what i know.

what i want is ocean. a friend is going to a jimmy buffett concert in the next week, and posted some videos on her blog. i watched the first video, and cried. watched the second, and cried again.

i'm not ashamed to admit i'm a parrothead. i've read all of jimmy's books. at one time i owned every cd, except the very first album, which is very hard to find. but there's something about his music, no matter what style it is (i've heard country, pop, reggae, big band swing, and everyother thing except rap), it makes me think of the ocean. good times on the boardwalk, watchin' people go by. sitting by a bonfire on the beach with your honey, a good brew, and good friends. walking in the surf, thinking simple thoughts.

Smelling the salt air, feeling the breeze and the spray on your face, and the sand under your feet.

I think, maybe in a previous life, i lived on the beach.

forgive

2008-07-08T11:05:00.007-05:00

a lazy blogger. in case any of you are curious, yes, there was some crazy ass weather in the omaha area again, and no, we weren't directly affected by it, other than a wet basement (it's not been dry since mid may, i swear!) mu in-laws ended up with some minimal roof damage and skirting damage, and lost a good part of their small garden, but they're fine.

as for the boy scout camp? apparently, sean went to school with the boy from iowa, when he was living in west point. he's never said anything, but the day that they did their little montages on the news, after Aaron's was done, sean came out of the spare bedroom, gave me a hug, and said "i love you." i think he knew.

and on to life. it's been madness, hectic, and crazy. we did finally get the med crap straightened out, and should be fine until october. now that i know it has to be done, i'll be better prepared when we get that far. i still can't convince mark to complain at work. i'm about ready to contact HR myself, and find out what I can do (it'll piss him off, but this needs to be addressed).

summer school for liam is over and he PASSED! he got 2 B's and 1D. not thrilled with the D, but it's still passing. so, summer band madness starts, lol. we do have a small interval between liam's summer school and sean's. his starts july 17, and he's a little nervous. mark took him to his med check appointment yesterday, and sean told the doctor that he didn't want to go to central, because he missed his teacher at L&C. the hard part is getting it through to him that teachers are ephemeral. it's rare to have the same teacher 2 years in a row, particularly in a bigger school. i think he'll be fine, but i may arrange for a visit or 2 to his old teacher, just for comfort's sake.

and now, for some fiber news! i've taken over the editorship of the Daily Chum, and am busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest. it's fun, though. the hard part, is since i'm doing ESotD, is resisting all that delicious fiber! i'm taking lots of "resisting the yarny call" points on Knit Wars, lol.

i'm also in Tour de Fleece, on the L&V team. I've been good so far, and have spun every day since it started on Saturday. Saturday, i plied my second-to-last spunky club shipment, called "everybody likes pie" (please correct me if i'm wrong, lol, the slip went awol when mark decided to clean, lol). i think it's falkland wool. i liked it in singles, hated it while i plied it, but like it plied up. go figger.

This is it wound into a center pull ball in preparation for plying. i like doing it this way, as i can use up all of the fiber. i also worked on some bunny fluff i got from Miss V last year, but since it's so fuzzy, i can only work on it when the fan isn't on in the living room.

i've actually convinced mark that having the air a little warmer is better, and we compensate by using a room fan, when he's particularly hot. that's been happening alot this year, as he's decided to do as much as he can outside. so far he's cleaned up all the branches under the walnut tree, built up an area around the air conditioner (we're going to put in some fill dirt, then put down ground cloth and mulch, to help with the weed situation around there), rearranged the shed, and pulled up all the fence around the garden area. this includes all the concrete chunks he had up against the fence to prevent critteration. his original plan was to have the fence go all the way back to the shed, with just the one gate by the back patio, and be able to access the garden from the back through the shed (it has two doors). that plan never went all the way through, so up the fence came. now we gotta apply brush killer, to deal with all the small trees and grapevines that decided to make the fencerow home. speaking of the garden, i've not gotten much out of it yet, but we've had definite progress. I ended up pulling up the mustard greens because they bolted, and we couldn't get at them half the time because of all the rain. We did eat some baby greens, mixed with some of the mixed lettuces i've planted and store-bought romaine (couldn't find romaine seeds, or i'd have grown that myself, as well!). We did get some peas this weekend, but shelled only came out to a handful, so i mixed them with some frozen peas we had. they were yummy.

We've also got one egg plant growing out front! i decided it was better not to go with the traditional eggplant, as they get too big for one meal, and i can't convince anyone 'round here that eggplant parmesan would be good. but it's HUGE! well, not really, but i'm very pleased with it at this point. there are about 5 more blossoms on the plant, so i have high hopes for more. so far this was the 3rd blossom, so maybe i'll get a fruit out of every 3rd bloom? cross your fingers.

Other than that, there's the A4A stole i'm working on. No pic yet, but it's at 40", and they want 80", so i'm halfway. I've been using bits and pieces that i've had around, to include a bag of scraps sent to me by Deb, plus some doubled sock yarn. it's a simple feather & fan variation, but i like it lots. it's definitely colorful! however, it's actually quite muted from my usual color palette, lol. the last thing i have today is that i've dug into my CMF stash (pre teyani leaving), and am spinning Big Yellow Taxi. I'm making my own sock hop yarn, as i want to make nanner socks. what are nanner socks? well, the pattern is no longer available, but Wendy of Wendyknits gave it to anyone who was on Plurk. Oh yeah, Plurk. now there's a time suck! www.plurk.com. i like itmuch better than twitter, because it's threaded. and it has fun emotis like dancing nanners, lol.

and Erin, no i haven't forgotten the meme. i've just been having trouble downloading a picture i want for it. go figger, lol.

when will it end!

2008-06-27T12:34:00.002-05:00

ok, first off, i want to thank those who tried to help with my mom's insurance thing. apparently, she'd been paying for herself AND my dad (who's been gone for 7 years). the insurance company wants us to send in a copy of my dad's death certificate, a letter explaining why we didn't do anything about the insurance, and a letter asking for it to be cancelled. They won't refund her money for herself, but they will refund for my dad. oy vey.

now, for my own insurance woes. Sean is on high doses of medication. as such, the insurance company we now have covering prescriptions requires prior authorization for 2 of his medications. here's where the fun begins. i didn't know about the whole prior authorization need until i took in a prescription, and the insurance refused to give me the whole amount (120 pills). then we got to wrestle around with it for a week and a half, and have the doctor's office talk to the insurance company, and the insurance company take FOREVER to get the prior authorization in place before they would give me the other 30 pills. (the insurance believes he only needs 3 pills a day, as opposed to myself and his doctor thinking he needs 4. needless to say, the thought that an insurance company can dictate how my son is treated, as opposed to me & his doctor? infuriating as hell). fortunately, in this case, we were able to do it without my having to pay a second copay.

fast forward a month. sean also takes adhd medication, which is a controlled substance. for his age, he takes a pretty hefty dose. this medication, as well, needs a prior authorization. when the doctor's office failed to mail this month's prescription to me, i ended up not getting it until i only had pills for a few days (4 to be exact). i took the prescription in on friday afternoon 2 weeks ago, and picked it up after 5. or tried to anyway. the prior authorization had expired. nobody knew why, it shouldn't have, because this insurance company took over april first, and prior authorizations are for 6 or 12 months. this is only mid june, folks. so they refused to fill the prescription. the insurance company refused to talk to the pharmacist about it, because it was after 5 on friday, and their prior authorization department was already closed. so was the doctor's office. so, the pharmacist told me she would fax the necessary info to the doctor's office for the PA, and would work on it monday & tuesday. tuesday night comes, still no PA, and i'm now out of pills.

if you've ever dealt with an ADHD child who really needs medication (not all of them do, but some need it desperately), you know that every parent absolutely quails at the thought of no medication. we don't even scale back in the summer, because he needs it ALL THE TIME. so, i was forced to take the 30 pills that they would give me without PA, so that he would have medication for the next few days while everything got straightened out. the pharmacy, doctor's office AND insurance all told me that i would need to get another 30-pill prescription to make up for the one the pharmacy had to alter in order to get me medication.

once again, the doctor's office fails to mail my prescription, even though i talked to the secretary, and verified that they had the correct address. fast forward to this morning. i dropped off the prescription, and asked them to call me if it didn't go through. at 11, i got the call saying it wasn't going to go through. so i called the insurance. after being on hold for something like 20 minutes while they wrangled all this, they finally got it to go through (apparently, the system was treating it as a new scrip, and i was filling it too soon (i understand trying to keep a tight control on medication like this (people steal them to get high with), but this is driving me nuts!). however, they were going to make me pay another copay, even though it was just finishing filling out the previous prescription, because it had a different scrip # (controlled substances are written out on numbered scrip pads, and monitored by whatever agency takes care of it, to make sure the doctor isn't giving out too many to too many people). the pharmacy did say that i could probably call the insurance and explain the situation, and they'd reimburse me for the $30, as i'm really not supposed to be paying double like that.

i call the insurance company and find out 2 things: 1) the prior authorization had NEVER EXPIRED. she doesn't know why it showed up as such. it's good through october. this crap should never have taken place in the first place. 2) in order to get my $30 back, i have to cancel the 30-pill prescription i just took in this morning, and get a new 60-pill prescription from the doctor. and because mark hasn't logged in to the insurance website since they switched, i don't know passwords or anything to get into it, so they're mailing a form to me, so that i can get my $30 back.

and when i complained back 2 weeks ago? the insurance company said i needed to take it to the insurance holder, i.e. mark's employer. mark didn't want to do it because "i'd waited too long to get the prescription." WTF? i had called the prescription request in to the doctor's office when sean had a 10 day supply. i can't call it in much earlier than that. i did what i'm supposed to do. the doctor's office failed to mail t he scrip when i had asked for it. we are having a serious talk tonight, and if he doesn't go talk to hr or benefits or whomever he needs to speak to about this, there are going to be problems. i should not have to go through this EVERY FUCKING MONTH.

small wonder i have a headache, eh?

a sort of meme

2008-06-23T09:02:00.003-05:00

Mark's aunt sent this to me and i thought this would be kinda cool to do as a meme. leave me a comment if you do this (i prefer not to tag people if i can help it, lol)

the premise is you have to come up with ONE word to answer t hese questions. it doesn't have to be the same word, though, lol.

1. Where is your cell phone? charger
2. Your significant other? faithful
3. Your hair? long
4. Your mother? strong
5. Your father? missed
6. Your favorite thing? family
7. Your dream last night? knitting
8. Your favorite drink? starbucks
9. Your dream/goal? enjoy
10. The room you're in? main
11. Your ex? annoying
12. Your fear? loss
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? happy
14. Where were you last night? Home
15. What you're not? stupid
16. Muffins? YES!
17. One of your wish list items? friendship
18. Where you grew up? Nebraska
19. The last thing you did? nap
20. What are you wearing? shorts
21. Your TV? off
22. Your pets? cats
23. Your computer? loud
24. Your life? happy25. Your mood? satisfied
26. Missing someone? dad
29. Favorite Store? book
30. Your summer? hectic
31. Like someone? smile
32. Your favorite color? blue
33. When is the last time you laughed? today
34. Last time you cried? friday

Ghosts

2008-06-19T10:50:00.003-05:00

My dad died 7 years ago. At that time, we thought we knew about all the policies my dad had. A few years later, we discovered that he'd gotten some insurance, and my mom, not knowing, had paid for the policy for that number of years. We found out that they were unaware that he'd passed away when we got a letter from them asking for a death certificate FOUR YEARS after he was gone.

Today, it happened again. My mom's heart doctor's billing office called, and I found out that the insurance that my mom's been paying for for 7 years is NOT long-term care insurance, but Medicare supplemental insurance. She already has a supplemental insurance policy with a different company. Here's the kicker on that one: it's illegal to have two supplemental policies. You can have a secondary policy, but not two supplementals.

So, now comes the fun part. What the hell do we do? I have to go talk to my mom, and call the second company, and find out what we can do. The billing specialist said she didn't think my mom would get in trouble, because the main name on the policy is my dad's, and it went effective 3 days before he died. In case you don't know the time line, he had a stroke on May 22, 2001. He died June 4, 2001. I think, after my grandmother died on May 2, he decided to change policies, took care of it (and didn't tell my mom, because he took care of the bills), and then got sick and died before he could tell anyone. I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, if there is no long-term care policy, that we can switch this to that, and there will be no harm, no foul. I don't know at this point.

Anybody out there have any ideas?

mosaic of me

2008-06-12T23:48:00.006-05:00

i've seen this 'round, and decided to do it. i will say picture #1 was NOT my first pic (it was minnie pearl, a woman that ihave admired for many manyyears (and am as loud as!)), but i must say, it fits me ok. the last one onlyhad 4 pics to choose from, though, so i chose the one WITHOUT the funny looking guy.

The rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the mosaic maker (link below).

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.
i was gonna list the credits, but apparently the code was fubared, so no go. sorry! i enjoyed this.

long time, no post

2008-06-03T23:05:00.003-05:00

i think a bout blogging. honest, i do. but a lot of my online time is spent doing L&V things, or twitter, or the endless task of catching up on my bloglines, or yahoo, and with the kids out of school, my time is less my own than normal. so posting s uffers.

no pics, although i'll try for some tomorrow. laminaria stopped for a wee bit, cuz i realized i hadn't done much charity crafting last month, and felt the need to do so. hence, the hat/baby sock set, green booties, and 12 squares drying all over the house (they're wool, so no dryer). may's project was for nunavit, in canada, for a birthing center (rankin island, i think?). they asked for wool cuz it never gets truly warm there.

anyway, the real reason why i'm posting.

my mom went in the hospital for a couple of days last week. all in all, it wasn't a big deal, but it scared me to start with. tomorrow is the 7th anniversary of my father's death from a massive stroke. when my mom called me last thursday and told me she was dizzy, i worried. the doctor's office said to take her to the ER, so i drove over there quickly, and hauled ass up to the hospital. she was definitely off balance, because while i was helping her out to the van, i could feel the wobble.

they did a cat scan, and found what they were calling a TIA. a mini-stroke. when the doctor told me that, a large part of me was screaming inside. not again! my grandmother, who also passed away 7 years ago (33 days before my father, it was a WONDERFUL year), had started the downhill slide with a stroke the day after thanksgiving.

she went into AL for the winter, then had another stroke in the spring, which caused her to fall, and break a hip. my mother's cousin was guardian since my mom was so far away, and they had determined the best course of action was to put her in a nursing home. she passed away that night. nurse checked on her at 2 am, and she was sleeping peacefully. checked again at 4 am, and she was gone.

anyway, the dizziness was my mom's ONLY symptom. and it was predominantly light-headedness. this is important. they decided to admit her, so they could do more intensive testing. that afternoon, a neurological med student came up, and got as much info as she could about what happened. the neurologist came thenext morning, and we found out that it wasn't a TIA. apparently, she'd had an incident a long time ago, and that was what they'd found in the cat scan. it's not uncommon in people my mother's age (80) to have those kinds of things. we never knew because she'd never exhibited any symptoms. so, now what? she'd been hanging shower curtains, and had gotten dizzy after looking up and putting her arms up several times. problems with carotids or vertebral arteries? neck ultrasound it is. however, that wasn't it. then, the nurse noticed that when my mom was resting, her heartbeat was normal. when she'd move around, her heartbeat would double. hmmmm. call the cardiologist. they say she'd better stay one more day, and they start discussing meds. they tell me 50 mgs of a medication used to regulate her heartbeat. i'm confused. no, supposed to be 150. so they double check the chart. they called walgreens for the doses, and walgreens told them 50.

it seems there was a mixup between the cardiologist's prescription, and what walgreens interpretted it as, and she'd been short-changed since JANUARY. some days. so they upped it to what it had been before, and things went back to normal. she went home saturday morning, and we even went and wrestled witht he bank about a fuck-up they did.

except. as i age, i see fewer generations ahead of me. it's always felt like the older generations were a barrier between me and time itself. my grandmothers have been gone 7 & 16 years, respectively. my grandfathers died in 67 and 78. in my father's family, the only one left is my aunt frances, and she's 90 and in the nursing home. my mother is an only child, andall her cousins are either aging, or gone themselves. as the youngest granddaughter in my generation, i have several cousins who have retired. the oldest 2 are 78. the barrier is slowly dissolving. the only things standing between me and that vast abyss of time are my mother and aunt. and the aunt is standing on ice with one foot, and a banana peel with the other. my mom is doing alright, but she's got a laundry list of heart-related problems, as well as a laundry list of medications.

today pushed it a little farther along. she called me again this morning, and said she had a cut, and wanted to see the doctor. she's on blood thinners, so this concerned me. she had been folding up a card table last night, andit got away from her, and smacked the back of her right knee, and cut her. she had bandaged it, and gone to bed, not thinking muchof it. she got up this morning to find it bleeding again, and blood on the sheets. i didn't know what was going on, so to the ER again, we went. they removed some torn skin, cauterized the bleeding, bandaged it, and sent us on our way. she's fine. we even went grocery shopping this afternoon (and she's a power shopper, lemme tell you. $105 later, we went on our way).

except. i'm terrified of losing my mother. but i know that i will be the one on the front line when it does finally happen. the brother who truly cares is in georgia, and the other one is too involved in his own life to even bother coming to visit on a regular basis (he goes for months without calling or visiting, and then, visits when it suits him, and he's only 1 1/2 hours away). some day, i will get a call, or find her, or get more bad news. i know it's inevitable.

Instructables

2008-05-14T11:08:00.006-05:00

Ok, first off, to let you know, i'm a BzzAgent. That means i try things out, and sometimes get free stuff. Click here to get more information about it.

Meanwhile, I wanna tell you about Instructables. It's this really cool site where people can load instructions for just about anything. I clicked around on some of the food ones, and found some interesting recipes. They run the gamut, though. I saw one that would teach you to make a CD player from an old Gameboy!

They usually come with 5 steps, and each step has a series of photos to go with it. Prime example was the one i clicked on about making authentic Texan flour tortillas. The last pic in the series for one step shows you the texture of the dough! How cool is that!

I'll be scanning it for some fibery stuff, too, but, of course, the food stuff grabbed me first, lol.

Go check it out!

Lookee what i did!

2008-05-12T08:47:00.005-05:00

While I'm a bit late to the party, Claudia is doing this BAT/KAT thing, where you replace car trips with walking or biking. Since my bike is out of commission right now (it needs brake work, sigh), I'm walking. I've never officially signed up for it, but definitely did my thing yesterday.

As many of you know, hubbie and i each own a house. Since there is no garage or shed at my house (and i've had one lawnmower stolen from the back yard already!), we keep the lawnmower over here, and transport it over there every week. Yesterday, I took Liam over, and got him started mowing. I needed to go get lawn bags, so i had planned on driving back over to Walgreens, when I realized it would be just as easy to walk to No Frills (local grocery chain) which was a little closer, and I could hunt for aluminum cans as well, as the Florence Days parade had been the day before. So, I toddled my fanny over to the store, bought lawn bags and mother's day cards (don't ask, i never remember until a day or two before, even though i KNOW i'll need cards whenever i'm near a cheaper source), and walked back. Net results? A nice walk on a nice, sunny day, a BAT/KAT, and 6 aluminum cans!

Now for a pet peeve, where the cans are concerned. People. There are better ways to deal with your cigarette butts than popping them in an almost empty can. And the culprit lives very near my house. I regularly find diet mountain dew cans with butts in them. this time it was one DMD and one pepsi can. i shake them out as best i can. hope the can recycling place doesn't mind, lol.

And, for Tikabelle, my review of the laminaria pattern i've been knitting, from knitty. Admittedly, i'm not even halfway done, but so far this pattern is INCREDIBLY EASY. i think the toughest part so far has been the 3into9 stars (go look at the pattern, lol), and the 2into9 stars. that and when i'm purling back, i have to pay special attention to those, because it's easy to catch 2 loops together (even the 2into3's and the 3into3's have that tendency, lol). and yes, i'm doing it in a variegated yarn. It's my birthday yarn from miss v and carin, who dyed it especiallyfor me, lol. while i think the pattern would have stood out more in a solid, i like how it's coming out in this. it makes me think of that iris painting (but i can't remember who painted it, lol. monet? van gogh? i'd have to look it up, lol)

and a pic!
Laminiaria! I'm tickled pink, that i got the texture to show. i'm all the way through the transition chart, and into the first blossom chart, but it's kinda hard to tell, as once you get so far, lace just looks like a bucket of boiled ass, to quote my favorite cuss-creator . Want a close up?

This shows a closeup of the beginning of the blossom chart. Doncha just love the colors? I think the one thing i would change about this if i did it again, would be the direction i did the 3into3's. i did them the same direction for both halves, but i think next time i would do mirror image. I don't do ssk, i do knit in front or back loop, and i get the same look. since i knit so differently from everyone else, i doubt anyone else could replicate it, lol, so don't do like i do, lol.

and, just because i told her i'd post this pic:

this is tara, who, besides miss v, is our local ~~pusher~~ fiber ~~enabler~~ purveyor. She had been reskeining some of her stuff, and we thought this skein of henrietta matched her bandana, so we made her model it. Wheeeee!

ok, i'm off to knit some more on my laminaria, just cuz i love it so much!

this is interesting

2008-05-07T08:23:00.002-05:00

Go read this article. I am an unrepentant bare-footer. Even as a small child on the farm, I refused to wear shoes, much to the chagrin of my father. He had a cousin who had to have a large splinter surgically removed, because she went barefoot. Now, I find out that I was right. Being barefoot is better for you!

Mark's doctor told him he should probably never go barefoot again, after his surgery 2 years ago. However, I've noticed something. Mark, as most of you have noticed by now, is incredibly tall. As in, he's the same height as Michael Jordan. He's 6'8". That's standard door frame height. Yes, he barely misses doorways, and if he's not careful, he'll hit his head. The boots that the shoe doctor recommended add an additional 2" to his height, which means he's ducking through doorways.

But, he's awkward. Never played basketball, even though he was this tall at 16. He just has no grace. Unless he's not wearing shoes. He will wear socks non-stop (even when he sleeps; he has calluses that catch t he sheets, and drive him batty, and yes, we go through a lot of socks), but if he's in the house, the shoes come off. While he's still not Mikhail Barishnekov (and i know i didn't spell that right, lol), he's much more comfortable moving around the house. It's almost like watching long, leggy birds, like cranes or herons. A long, lean grace that's beautiful to watch (and trust me, i like watching, lol).

Any way, this has made me decide something. I'm going to walk barefoot much more (although i do a lot as it is!). the biggest hazard is broken glass. So i'm thinking about investing in some of those "barefoot" shoes you see. I was at parent-teacher conferences in march, and one of the band moms (who is a physical therapist) was wearing a pair. So I know where to get them. I think I may be checking them out tomorrow. And the thought of wearing them? Bliss.

I know, I know

2008-05-07T06:52:00.003-05:00

It's been two weeks. And guess what? No real post, but i thought this meme was interesting!

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (have it at home, might read it)
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The IliadEmma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984 (although i read it for the 2nd time on my own!)
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

ok. i don't feel like such an airhead, after all. i've read some of the tuffies, and many of these (like watership down and 1984) i'd read on my own (we covered 1984 in school AFTER i'd read it the first time. gotta love a school librarian who keeps the classics in a school library)

random Wednesday

2008-04-16T09:33:00.002-05:00

1. My local post office station put Darth Vader and Emperor stamps on tax returns yesterday. RAWK ON!

2. Sean was in shock yesterday morning when he found out that shi'itake mushrooms are real, and not just a veiled way to say "shit."

3. Sean does not like shi'itake mushrooms (we went to Mt. Fuji for my belated birthday dinner, and had sukiyaki)

4. I am knitting. Buttloads, in fact. Just not posting.

5. Will i ever blog regularly again? Don't know. there's so much out there to take my attention elsewhere, particularly since i post regularly on the daily chum.

6. I taught myself a new spinning method yesterday. Cableing. I was inspired by the article in the latest Spin-Off. I like how it looks. I used Party Dress from the December Spunky Club, and this definitely toned down that bright ass lime green. It's a lot of work, though. The hardest part? Running the plied yarn through the wheel again to get extra twist for the cabling.

7. Head colds suck. majorly.

this is kinda cool!

2008-04-05T20:15:00.001-05:00

for those of you who think spring isn't happening fast enough.

click anywhere in the black, or better yet, drag your mouse around.

i done seen it all

2008-04-03T22:30:00.002-05:00

it's a freaking mouse pad. bad boy!

ok, so it's cheesy

2008-03-29T22:14:00.002-05:00

i'm watching the hall of fame induction ceremony for the WWE. yes, wrasslin'.

however, you have to realize, i grew up with this stuff. my dad loved it. he was always talking about "them sumbitches" that were the bad guys. have you noticed, there were always bad guys? when i was growing up, it was nick something or other. i don't know what it is now, i've kind of lost touch with it.

but i bet, if my dad was here now, he'd know what the rock was cookin'.

good times.

Meme me

2008-03-27T22:23:00.003-05:00

no, this is not all memes, all the time. i just keep finding ones i like, lol.

this one has you using the letter from your middle name, and as before, you can't use your middle name for the name portion

1. Middle name letter: R (for my grandmother)
2. Famous artist/band/musician: Rembrandt
3. 4-letter word: Rats!
4. U.S state: Rhode Island
5. Boy name: Robert (my brother's name, lol)
6. Girl name: Rebecca
7. Animal: Raccoon
8. Something in the kitchen: Rolling pin
9. Reason for being late? Road Rage!
10. Body Part? Ring Finger
11. Drink? Roy Roger
12. Something you shout: Rah! Rah! Rah!
13. Something you eat? Radish
14. A movie you've seen? Return of the King

not gonna tag anybody, b ut feel free to swipe this!

Another Meme!

2008-03-21T22:09:00.008-05:00

I saw this meme at Deb's and thought it sounded fun:

The rules:

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie (or get them out of your capacious memory).
3. Post them on your blog for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. Looking them up is cheating, please don’t.

And here we go!

1. Whoa. (Jen, you're close with guessing keanu reeves, but which one, lol?) The Matrix - Carin (and yes, i know that he says it a lot of times, but this is the movie i was after, lol)
2. When I was your age, television was called books. Princess Bride - Michele
3. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. Star Wars - Michele
4. The ring cannot be destroyed, Gimli, son of Gloin, by any craft that we here possess. Lord of the Rings - Michele
5. On your wedding night? Ay hija, no. You need room, to maneuver.

My daughter can trace her roots back 400 years to the best families in Mexico.

Talking between men and women never solves anything. Where we think, they feel. They are creatures of the heart. yay! i knew i could count on Ina to come through. A Walk in the Clouds.

6. It's better to burn out, than fade away. HYAH! Highlander (the movie, not the series) - Sarabeth (and i'm amazed nobody got it until now!)
7. I won't be going alone, because believe it or not, someone's asked me! And I said yes!
Bloody hell. She's lying, right? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Michele
8. Ah, you're missing a picture, Mr. Gray.
And you don't miss a thing, do you, Mr. Quatermain?
Oh, sometimes. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Michele
9. It's only one fly in the serum. I can't reproduce it. Medicine Man - knitfink
10. And when were you hoping to dine with us?
Two years from tomorrow. The Lake House - knitfink

have fun!

ETA: And here I thought I'd picked some hard ones! Michele got 5 of them!

ETAA: i added a couple more quotes to #5. come on gang, you can get it!

and a hint. most of these movies either have keanu reeves or sean connery, lol.

A Meme

2008-03-21T14:19:00.002-05:00

hey, i'm super happy for easy posting

Grab the nearest book more than 123 pages long.

Turn to page 123 (duh!)

Read sentence 5:

Book: Krystonian Adventures

Quote: "Get lost hogface!" shouted Poffles."

This was a book given to me, but swiped by Sean. hence the reason it's the nearest book to the computer, lol.

Tag 5 people.

Consider yourself tagged, i'm way late to the party. Thanks to Erika for posting it though.

i have to admit it

2008-03-19T21:36:00.002-05:00

i've always said that there's too much reality in my life to watch so-called reality shows (i don't count anything on the discovery channel, learning channel, or any of those. they are real life shows, not created reality). however, i do have one guilty pleasure.

Dancing with the Stars.

I just watched the second half tonight, and I have to say i am in AWE. Marlie Matlin is a well-known deaf actress. AND SHE'S DANCING! and dancing well! Brava!

so, you know, with my mom being deaf, that i gotta root for her. unfortunately, i won't be able to vote this go-round because i watched it too late (i wouldn't vote for her if she had danced badly), but i'll be giving her all my extra votes!

woot!

and back up again!

2008-03-05T21:32:00.002-06:00

The House and Senate are working on a mental health bill that will require insurance companies to cover mental health issues equally with other health issues. speaking as someone who has had to use the insurance this is HUGE! sean's deductible for regular stuff? his mental health deductible is TWICE that. i owe his psychiatrist $150 for his last visit. i figure by the end of the year he won't have met his deductible, but i'll have a huge psychiatric bill, even though we have insurance. maybe this will help that.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

2008-03-05T21:22:00.002-06:00

Patrick Swayze has pancreatic cancer. yeah, some of the movies he made were goofey, or hokey. but, man, ya gotta hope for him. he's 55. too young (isn't it always, though?)

OH MY EFFING GOD!

2008-03-03T22:46:00.002-06:00

ok, i know you're not all yarnies that read my blog, and many of you may not have heard of the Mystical Creations Yarn scandal. but i gotta tell the world. shortly after Gigi, of Socktopia fame, passed away, it came out that Danielle Glunt, of MCY infamy (crappy yarn, poorly dyed, lousy shipping (if at all)) had been in the hospital for a month, (then six months) and was dying of leukemia. and the family was "trying" to fill her orders, and offering all kinds of crazy stuff, because they didn't know what she was doing, and "come buy it all so we can pay her medical bills" and crazy stuff like that.

well, apparently, it was a lie. an employee has come forward and outed Danielle and her husband, Zach. If you've been burnt by this heinous pair, contact the New Mexico Attorney General, and file a fraud complaint. Let's keep this, this, this, gah, ihave no words, and you know that's saying alot, PERSON and her husband from burning anyone else.

meme me

2008-03-03T09:36:00.002-06:00

i love memes. instant post!

this one is for books. do it if you wish, no tagging here. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you're interested in, and leave the ones you don't care about.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye(J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner(Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91.The Skin of the Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) New

interesting list, eh?

oh no!

2008-03-03T06:00:00.002-06:00

Jeff Healy passed away yesterday at the age of 41. if you're a patrick swayze fan, you've seen him in Road House as Cody. I loved his stuff.

it amazes me

2008-03-02T22:15:00.007-06:00

just for those who haven't read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (and i know there are a few, who are actually still interested at this late date), this is a spoiler alert!

i decided to re-listen to the books on tape again, and i'm on the last CD of HBP. it always seems so sad to me when Dumbledore dies. However, i've read this several times. but when Harry tells all the house heads and professor mcgonagal that the kids would want to stay for Dumbledore's funeral so t hey could say goodbye, but was unable to finish the sentence, and professor flitwick finishes it for him, i teared up. gets me every time.

on a happier note, i finally saw the stepford wives, with bette midler and nicole kidman. a bizarre concept, but oh my god, at the end, it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO funny! i loved it!

so, i suppose i should s how some crafting finally, eh ?

This is a stack of 10 navy blue squares that i knit/crocheted for AC4C, for a woman who puts together POC (point of contact) afghans for Ships' Support. She does them in navy and maroon. I was getting together the stack of bright squares that i'd done earlier in february for another woman who is joining squares, and found another navy square, lol. i think i'll send this one to the POC woman, as the second one is supposed to get brights, and these definitely are NOT bright.

This lousy picture is the fingerless mitts i made for my FIL for christmas. the reason why there's only one is because he has the other one, lol! I had washed them, then asked Liam to get the laundry out of the washing machine, and i took them over to steph's and threw the load in the dryer. when i went back over there to get them, i only found one. so he got the one i had, since i KNEW i'd thrown them in the washing machine. needless to say, i found the other in the washing machine when i went to throw another load in the next day. unfortunately, it's still here, because the last few times we've gone over there, it's been forgotten here. the last time wasn't my fault, though, cuz mark was supposed to bring it, as i was picking up my mom to take her with us, as it was mark's mom's birthday celebration. maybe i'll just put it in the mail, lol!

this little set, and another one that looked pretty much like it, were sent to BPP, who send baby things, as well as older children's things to South Africa. The baby things go into a pack for new mothers, while the older children's things go to a safe house, where children (and sometimes their mothers) go to escape cruelty, abuse, etc. there was a story that a 12 year old girl showed up with her 2 younger siblings, because their parents were both dead, and she had run out of resources to take care of them on her own.

this hideously blurred shot is of the same sweater, with a ruffly hat. i used up all my pink yarns here to do both, which is why there's no booties. the booties i did with the r/w/b sets were crocheted variations on the knitted stay-on booties. i may just write one or two of them up, lol.

I also sent 4 bags, but i'm only showing you this one because i made this one up as well. it's backpack styled, with a flap, and a crocheted cord drawstring. i might just write this one up as well!

well, with all these blurry shots, i wonder if i should take my camera in for service! could just be the crappy light, though. this house is incredibly dark at night (it's so small, and the furniture is dark, too).

speaking of houses, we're selling mine. just as soon as steph and ashlie move out, and we can fix it up. i've spoken to my mom, and even though i owe her some money, she's willing to let the amount slide and we can roll all of the equity into a new house. mark's wanting to move out in the country, but those are hard to find, and i want to stay close to my mom. on top of that, if we move out of the county, it would mean starting over for the boys, and for sean in particular, we can't let that happen.

and i really do need to stay closer to my mom. last week, she had a doctor's appointment, but hwen i called her to tell her when i was picking her up, she didn't answer. after the third time, i had a panic attack, and ran out the door without dealing with my lunch dishes or anything. when i walked in, i found all her mail on the apartment hallway floor in front of her door. (she gets more mail than would EVER fit in her mailbox, so they just leave it in front of her door. since it's a secured building, and the complex manager is 3 doors down, i'm cool with that). that worried me as she's usually pretty good about bringing it in. i unlocked the door, and found her washing her dishes. WHEW! apparently, her TTY (a machine that lets her use the telephone through a relay system) had quit working, and she was unable to let me know. i looked at it, and realized that she'd spilled something sticky on it, so i called the service #. they told me to mail it in, and they'd let me know what was up with it. i should double check on it, because i mailed it monday. the bad part, is that those life alert thingies? you know, the old commercial "i've fallen, and i can't get up!" won't work for her. because they're sound activated. trust me. i've looked into it. admittedly, it was a few years ago, i should probably check again. you'd think, with as many older people who are hearing impaired, that t hey'd have some sort of system that doens't rely on sound, but they don't. growl.

anyway, i need to close this thing up, i gotta get up in the morning!

what to do

2008-02-29T23:48:00.003-06:00

I don't know what to do. This is Joplin. You may or may not have seen her here before (i can't recall right off hand, she isn't out much). Joplin is 12. I don't know if you can tell from this bad flash picture or not, but she is extremely fat. She weighs at least 15 pounds, if not more. She has breathing problems. She even gets out of breath cleaning her front paws, which is about all she can reach at this point. She's extremely skittish. This has gotten worse as she's gotten older. The vet says she's part calico, and they get crochety when they get older. She hisses at everybody, even mark. yesterday, he reached out to pet her, and she had such a panic attack she almost fell off the sofa (mark has owned her for 11 years, and she was always "daddy's girl."). he told me she hissed at him again this morning. i have watched her hiss when sean gets UP from the sofa, where he's been sitting quietly next to her. she refuses to move, unless it's to eat, drink, or use the litter box. except lately? she's not been using the box. for a while, she was peeing in the dining room. the vet told us to make sure the litter box got cleaned daily, and to put bubble wrap where she'd been peeing, cuz they don't like the feel on their feet. this worked for a few months (once we got her past peeing on the bubble wrap). however, she's taken to peeing in FRONT of the litter box. and i don't think it's an accident, because she's picked the exact same spot three days in a row. even though we've cleaned it up every time.

so, it's come down to a decision. do we put her to sleep? we've tried to get her to exercise (cat toys, cat nip, even a laser pointer, which she chased for 2 days, then refused to do so after that), and tried to get her to lose weight. the hard part of that is that we also have jimi (i know you've seen him here, he likes to get in on my shoots!), and can't put him on diet food without him losing too much weight, and feeding them separately is impossible. it's been the main discussion around here for the last 2 days, and frankly, i'm the only one who doesn't dissolve into tears everytime it's brought up (it's not that i don't love her, but i'm the one who deals with her messes, sigh).

but when she is in one of her rare good moods, she's so lovey. purrs so loud you can hear her across the room. cuddles, and rubs her face on you. but they are rare. i wish i could get in her head, and ask her what she wants.

but i'm tired of walking into the house, and getting hit with that nasty ammonia smell, and i'm tired of getting hissed at when i have to move her to get at the remote for the tv (she will lay on it, and sometimes i think it's spite). she's never bitten me, but i'm waiting for it.

i think that mark and i have decided what to do, it's just him getting to the point where he's accepting it.

and i sit here and listen to the poor thing snore loud enough to hear over the harry potter cd i'm listening to.

i was asked

2008-02-22T06:13:00.003-06:00

last night who shared my birthday. now, you have to understand, i probably have the world's worst birthday, beyond halloween or christmas. here's what i found. otto von bismarck? gordon jump? abraham maslow?!?!? interesting company, indeed!

sigh

2008-02-20T10:17:00.002-06:00

ya know, i think 5 days off for liam is too much. he's grounded from video games because of his grades. he lost tv for 2 days because he didn't bring any homework home, even though he knew he'd have a 4 day weekend (the 5th day is because the kids ended up with no school because it's SEVEN FREAKING BELOW ZERO!)

so, i'm on a quest to get off my ever-spreading ass. i bought sean dance dance revolution for his birthday last year, and the kids enjoy playing it. i had him bring it out, and he and i played (and i broke a sweat, yippee!) liam got to watch, mostly because itwas in the living room, and i'm trying toget him to come downstairs more. so, when sean had had enough, and i was sweating heavily, we quit playing. sean went back into the spare bedroom to play a different game. liam asked if he could watch sean play, and i told him no. he got mad. he said it didn't make sense to not let him watch sean in the spare bedroom. he said "i never get to spend any time with my brother (sean just earned his games back yesterday)." then, finally "IT'S NOT FAIR!"

drama queen

hey!

2008-02-19T12:34:00.000-06:00

Tonya, were you my #3 on my Pay It Forward thing? I can't remember, and I've lost your new email! ack!

funny man!

2008-02-17T22:54:00.002-06:00

we decided to have breakfast for supper tonight (since neither mark or i were motivated enough to get up and make breakfast this morning, lol). i was in the kitchen working on the eggs and pancakes (my brother and SIL gave me an extra large electric griddle, so now i can make FIVE decently sized pancakes all at the same time (i'm so excited, lol!)). I had just taken the bacon out of the oven, and had put the sausage back in to brown a bit. because i do bacon on waxed paper, sometimes it smokes a little bit, especially with the bacon/sausage grease tossed in. I had just pulled the sausage out when i heard a fire truck run by the house, blowing it's horn for all it was worth. (we live on a semi-busy street).

Mark yelled from the living room "They know you're cooking!"

sigh

i'm at it again!

2008-02-12T10:31:00.001-06:00

I've been making easter eggs. No, not the kind that turn into egg salad.

These:

Do you know how hard it is to get good pictures with 6 inches of snow on the ground? the eggs aren't quite THIS bright, but they are pretty. go, check them out! the link is over there----->

is it random wednesday . . .

2008-02-06T10:49:00.001-06:00

if there's a theme, even if each thing on it's own is random?

anyway:

1. i would like to cancel the rest of winter, please. Mother Nature, please note that you've ruined way too many yarn experiences (meetings at the new Personal Threads, cancelling S&B, etc) this season, and it really needs to stop.

2. What logic is there in dashing in front of a moving vehicle that has already started its turn, on a snow-packed street? Seriously. I was turning onto Dodge St downtown, and some young idiot (male, of course, they all think they're bullet proof), decided that, even though i had already started turning onto dodge, and was just mere inches from the crosswalk, that he needed to come running out of the parking garage, and dash in front of me. thank god i was able to stop in time. i don't understand. 175# man versus 4000# vehicle. sigh.

3. I was in Starbucks fetching life juice for eliza, and they were playing "too darn hot." irony, much?

4. Explain to me this logic. Liam was sick last night, to the point of barely eating dinner (and he can absolutely pack it away), and sleeping all afternoon, and night. when he got up to go to the bathroom around 1030, he could barely speak. this morning? eager as a beaver, ready to roll, and telling me he'll throw anybody who tries to stop him from going to school in a snow bank. in the next breath? griping about someone at school who jinxed them getting a snow day. huh? (again, young male logic)(is it testosterone poisoning?)

sensing the theme here? we got about 4" of snow, and i'm sick of it.

Silent Poetry Reading

2008-02-02T22:11:00.000-06:00

Ok, this is a slight cheat. it's the lyrics to one of my favorite songs. but those start out as poetry, don't they?

A long time ago when the Earth was green
There were more kinds of animals than you've ever seen
They'd run around free while the Earth was being born
But the loveliest of them all was the unicorn
There were...
{Refrain}
Green alligators and long-necked geese
Some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees
Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born
The loveliest of all was the unicorn

Now the Lord saw some sinning, and it gave him pain
And he said, "Stand back, I'm gonna make it rain"
He said, "Hey, brother Noah, I'll tell you what to do
Build me a floating zoo

And take some of them...
{Refrain}
...Don't you forget my unicorn

Old Noah was there to answer the call
He finished up making the ark just as the rain started to fall
He marched in the animals two by two
And he called out as they went through

"Hey Lord, I got your"...
{Refrain}
...But Lord, I'm so forlorn / I just can't see no unicorns

Then Noah looked out through the driving rain
The unicorns were hiding, playing silly games
Kicking and splashing while the rain was pouring
Oh them silly unicorns

There were green alligators and long-necked geese
Some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees

Noah cried, "Close the door, for the rain is pouring
And we just can't wait for no unicorns"
And then the ark started moving, it drifted with the tide
The unicorns looked up from the rocks and they cried
And the waters came down and started floating them away
That's why you've never seen a unicorn to this day

You'll see...
{Refrain}
...You're never gonna see no unicorns

(i've got me irish up)

a new program

2008-02-02T21:27:00.000-06:00

if you click here, it will clean the inside of your screen

Tips for ladies in year 2008

2008-02-01T09:36:00.000-06:00

1. Aspire to be Barbie: that bitch has everything.
2. If the shoe fits, buy one in every color.
3. Take life with a pinch of salt, a wedge of lime, and a shot of tequila
4. In need of a support group? Cocktail hour with the girls!
5. Go on the 30 day diet. (I'm on it and so far I've lost 15 days).
6. When life gets you down, just put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
7. Let your greatest fear be that there is no PMS and this is just my personality.
8. I know I'm in my own little world, but it's OK. They know me here.
9. Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself.
10. Don't get your knickers in a knot; it solves nothing; and makes you walk funny.
11. When life gives you lemons, turn it into lemonade then mix it with vodka.
12. Now smile and send to any girl wasting time at work, suffering from a hangover (or just suffering from work) who might need a reason to smile.

there are days

2008-01-25T12:06:00.000-06:00

i don't feel good. i hadn't planned on doing anything more strenuous than going to the post office to mail some packages, and buying stuff to make rice krispies, because i'm a good band parent.

steph's roommate just called, and asked if i could bring her some gas. and she's just outside of fort calhoun, so that's a 15 minute ride. if that's what's wrong with her car. she doesn't remember when she last changed the oil. damn.

this is the same girl who has randomly tossed my stuff around my house, because it's in her way. i'd say she's got some gall about her, except i'm not sure she's smart enough to realize it. sigh.

ETA: it was gas. i put $5 in, and after a few minutes, it did start. however, when i checked her oil, it was below minimum. so i chewed her out for not paying attention to it (an oil change at walmart is only $18, and even as much as she drives, it's 3 paychecks at $6 a paycheck to pay for the damned thing!), and told her to buy a quart of oil as soon as she got to civilization, and to borrow some money from my daughter and go get her oil changed tomorrow morning! damned kid. (apparently, the state patrol didn't think she'd pulled far enough over (even though she was past the white line) and gave her a warning ticket! good grief. about as sharp as a sack of wet mice, i swear!)

commercial

2008-01-23T21:14:00.000-06:00

i'm finally watching the sarah connor chronicles, that i'd dvr'ed from 2 weeks ago. i usually speed through the commercials, but happened upon this one:

Man steps around the corner, with a phone in his hand, and says "the domino's lady says we have 30 minutes." he has a lascivious grin on his face.

the woman, holding a coffee cup, looks at him, and sees him in one of those sexy silky short robes (red, of course) and says "what are we going to do with the other 28 minutes?"

snort!

I was gonna . . .

2008-01-22T21:07:00.000-06:00

post 2 days ago. but mark got up and wanted me for something, so i shut it down, postless.

a couple of things. last thursday was my 3rd blogiversary! so i'm having a contest. sooooo, here goes. tell me a joke. a good joke. a CLEAN joke. here's the kicker. you have to base it on one of my pics from the last 3 years. the best one wins. i don't know what yet, but you win!

hard to believe i've been blogging for 3 years. good times AND bad. oy.

there's a meme running about wher eyou post the first sentence from each month from last year (feels odd to say that). dunno where i've seen it, but here goes!

Jan: if you came here looking for three stooges, you thought wrong (although i did give liam 3 stooges pj bottoms for christmas, lol!)

Feb: I had entered a contest over at the Loopy Ewe.

Mar: i've been extremely laggardly about posting.

Apr: this is the incredibly fast post.

May: i am slated to get an afternoon to myself, and i have to forgo it because mark has to work late.

June: ok, for those of you who intend on reading the book, or watching the movie for the first time: the book is "The Friday Night Knitting Club" (anybody know the html to put in underlines?)

July: it's been pointed out to me by certain, ahem, people, that i haven't posted in 2 weeks. sorry!

Aug: apparently, somebody's got their heads up their asses.

Sept: Today, while a blow for freedom of speech has been struck, a deeper, more heartfelt blow has been struck for prejudice, and inequality.

Oct: I'm feeling odd today

Nov: Three men - a Canadian farmer, Osama bin Laden and a Texan are all working together one day

Dec: this post is gonna be picture heavy.

actually, quite funny to read these out of context. of course, there are people who would say they're quite funny in context, as well, lol.

how's about some pics?

This was the coldest day we experienced while we were in Georgia. It never got above 50. lovely day for sight-seeing, eh? anyway, i could not resist taking this pic. my brother's name? Bob. (although he goes by bubba at work, roflmao!)

Yes, these stairs are as steep as they seem. River Street actually runs right next to the river, with limited access by vehicles. you can also park in parking garages farther away and walk (which is what we did, after driving around for half an hour trying to find a place to park! we even drove past the square where they filmed forest gump. unfortunately, the bench he sat on had to be moved to a museum, because people were taking hunks of it for souvenirs!) I have a picture of my mom with these stairs as well, but she's so tiny, she makes everything look huge. these stairs actually led up to a palmistry shop (although i didn't indulge).

This is what really amazed me: people actually live in apartments above river street! i, personally, would love it, but mark is too much of a hermit.

We had decided to go visit Ft. Morris, which is an earthworks fort from Revolutionary times. This is what we saw on a good part of the trip there (about 1/2 hour from bob's house). i could swear i heard dueling banjos . . .

First stop for my mom once we got to Ft. Morris was the bathroom. apparently, fast food doesn't agree with her, even if it's salads. anyway, i saw this while she was "busy," and had to snap a shot. what is it? a MOSQUITO! on december 27th! i think it dropped below freezing ONCE while we were there. (considering the high here today was 19, and was actually warmer than it had been since last thursday, mark laughed when i asked if we could try to convince his parents and my mom to move to georgia).

This was a floor loom from the 1800's, in the museum. I was amazed at how big it was.

There were live oaks everywhere, and every single one had spanish moss hanging in it. i was completely fascinated by this.

Here's mark & the boys at the sign just outside the museum. you can't read it, but it tells some interesting things about the fort.

Sean, at Tybee Island. This is the picture i was talking about. Just a simple boy, enjoying the surf and the sun, with nothing more on his mind than what he's going to have for lunch. You can hear the rush of the surf, and cries of the gulls. (and otis redding in the background, lol)

ok, the fingers are getting tired (and cold!), so i'll save the rest for another time.

Well

2008-01-17T08:20:00.000-06:00

Something happened Monday that i've been trying to do for 4 years.

When Sean first left my brother's, and went to foster care in douglas county, he was placed in agency-based foster care. (basically, the agency finds him a home, rather than the state) his case worker through the agency asked me shortly after he was placed, if i had ever had him tested for Asperger's. i told her no, as i had no idea what it was. all i knew was that sean was socially awkward, and, at that time, very troubled and depressed.

so i went to the internet. did a ton of research. went to relatively reputable sites like webmd and different college-based sites. and discovered the truth. half the symptoms they were describing fit sean to a t. ADHD, depression, ODD, OCD, the inability to figure out social cues, and body language, a disconnection with humanity in general. all of it. wow. now i knew!

the trouble, then, was convincing anyone else of this. his first psychiatrist said there was no point to a diagnosis, as there is no cure for it. all they can do is treat the symptoms, and the meds he was on did that already. we eventually switched psychiatrists (not because of this, because the first one had been situated for sean's first foster mom, way the hell and gone from me.), and while he agreed with me, that sean did have several of the symptoms, that, again, it was being controlled by meds.

until the firecracker incident last fall. i can't recall right off hand if i told y'all about that or not. sean found a firecracker on school grounds, and rather than turn it in, put it in his pocket. it just didn't occur to him. he was found with it later in the day, and gave it up when asked for it. however, according to OPS policy, this is considered a weapon. he was suspended for 5 days (the lightest they could give him, because they could directly attribute his behavior to the reason why he is in the resource room to begin with), and we had a meeting. i asked both his resource teacher, and her supervisor, and everyone else there, about their thoughts of him having Aspergers. They all agreed, and, something i did not know, have a different treatment plan (educational plan, what have you) for "autistic" kids. yes, asperger's is a high-functioning form of autism. so we agreed to have him re-evaluated for school, and since i was going to be taking sean to see his psychiatrist for a med check, i was going to talk to him again about having sean tested.

it took the school getting involved to finally get the push for testing. so we did. we finally got the results on monday, and yes, sean has aspergers. i was stoked. finally, vindication of what i'd been saying and thinking and feeling for 4 years! and, some good news, as well. while sean is socially awkward in public, he has learned to read the family's social cues. he knows how to react to me, and mark, and liam, and even steph (even though she hasn't lived with him for 2 years). the evaluating psychiatrist says this is a good sign, that now we have to teach sean to read people he doesn't know as well, or at all.

now we can get him some real help.

but i've been doing more reading. most insurance companies won't pay for the intensive therapy, and the help that he needs. luckily enough, the psychiatrist sean sees is on the short list of doctors covered by our insurance, so that isn't such a financial burden. however, the list of therapists is amazingly short (my therapist had been trying to get on it for 10 years!), and while i haven't explored it yet, i'm sure they've all got hideous waiting lists.

he's 13. they say autism is best dealt with with early intervention. they usually like to start with preschoolers. i know that sean will always be different, but i want him to be able to get along in life. i know he will probably never shop in a mall, and always avoid large crowds. if he can live with that, so can i. however, if he HAS to, i want him to be able to cope with the situation. he barely can now, and only if he's with mark or me. we won't be here forever. i'm just afraid that this will be too little too late.

kick me

2008-01-13T23:30:00.000-06:00

i swear, some day i'm gonna put up my vacation pics! don't worry, you won't get them all, just the really good ones (there's one of sean that is almost artist quality, and i'm gonna get that one printed and put it up, it's that good).

you will note on the sidebar thingie, one of my favorite innerwebs t hings:

Knit Wars. because of this, there isn't a single day that i don't pick up SOMETHING and work on it. i'm trying really hard, as you can see. i'm in 2nd place, and i CAN'T CATCH THAT WOMAN! vacation killed me. i did log my points, but even with the 2 19-hour trips, i still didn't get as much done as normal. something about sleeping in there, so that i could take over for da hubbie when he got too tired. and, believe it or not, i get less done on the weekends than i do during the week. something about the kids and hubbie, and all that stuff.

i promise, a craft related post eventually, as well. and don't worry ladies, those of you who i have promised pressies (that PIF thing). i'm thinking about what to make you. Ina, i think i know what i'm going to make for you, and you'll love it! Stacey, can ya help a girl out? i'm running clueless at this point. Contestant #3? apparently, i've seemed to have deleted your email, and i can't remember who you were! ACK! leave me a comment, an email, a kick in the pants? Thanks!

and on that note, i must flee and fly, 530 comes awfully early!

ok, still not

2008-01-13T01:42:00.000-06:00

a real post.

that's ok, i've been doing it again. somebody put up a link to a youtube video, and i've spent the last 2 hours listening to a hugely eclectic mix of stuff. right now? linkin park, in the end.

what got me started? dan fogelberg, auld lang syne.

does this cement the "god woman, you are totally insane" ideas?

*giggle*

i've listened to dan, then kansas, then sarah brightman, then celtic woman, then josh brogan, then christmas music (mary, d id you know, my all time favorite one), then seal, and now, LP.

my oh my

and since i've been extremely dilatory about this:

What I've been Reading

Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon (book tape in house)
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (what's the big deal? i'm over 100 pgs into this, and i still can't figure out why the ayatollah decided that this man needed to die in the worst way possible?)
The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose. recommended by Crazy Aunt Purl. woman has taste, i'll tell ya that!
History of Hand Knitting by Richard Rutt (book tape in the car.) but wait, you say? it's not out yet? the joys of having someone near and dear who gets preview copies! wheeeee!

i've also started keeping a book list on google documents, cuz i end up reading the same stuff, and i wanna know what i've read. (also want to know how long it takes me, because if it take s along time? not gonna go for it again, fer sure!)

TTFN!

yeah, yeah, i know

2008-01-11T11:01:00.000-06:00

i still owe y'all a real post.

however, some good news. i requested the new Cat Bordhi book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters, from the library. They're going to buy it! woohoo! sooooooooooooo, go request it, if you have an omaha public library card!

a bit of fun

2008-01-04T09:42:00.000-06:00

ok, ok, i have not fallen off the face of the earth. we were on vacation from dec 22 to dec 30, and i've been running like a maniac ever since.

to distract you from this bloggers lack in posting skills, here's a little game.

just so ya know, my record is 316.6!

the day the music died

2007-12-16T20:51:00.000-06:00

A lot of people ridiculed Dan Fogelberg, but I adored his music. In an era between the death of disco and the Amazing Hair Bands! he was a breath of fresh air. He will be missed.

Serendipity

2007-12-13T14:08:00.000-06:00

ok, for all you firefly fanatics, move on. there's nothing to see here.

Christmas shopping sucks. Big rocks. Nasty, grime covered, slimy rocks. I hate it. I delayed this year though, so I'm in trouble.

I stopped at Game Stop to find a couple games for my sons. They had one, but the other one was at Oak View Mall. Oak View Mall is 144th & Center (like 3000 South block). i live around 8000 north block, and much further east than that. it's a huge trek. but they couldn't send it to a closer Game Stop, so i sacrificed. The really bad part? Neither guy at this store knew where the other one was in the mall. So i was gonna have to hunt.

Have I told y'all how much i hate malls? (and after last Wednesday, i'm particularly creeped out). I hate trying to park at them, i hate walking around in them, i hate the noise, and they're usually situated in inconvenient places for me. blech. But i went, cuz i love my sons, and this is what they wanted for Christmas. I parked by Dillards, walked through, and found a directory. I gotta go down stairs. Oy!

so i find an escalator, and as i'm going down, i realize it ends directly in front of a Bath & Body Works, which is my SIL's favorite store of all times (she loves malls!). I had planned on getting a GC for her for her birthday, which comes shortly after christmas (doesn't htat suck?), so i figured, hey, this is fortuitous! I go in, and buy the GC, and discover that they're giving away sample bottles of a new scent of lotion! too cool! my mom is travelling by air next week, and needs to carry lotion with her, so this is a good thing! i'll just give it to her to use.

I walk out of the store, look directly in front of me, and there's Game Stop, directly across the hall.

Is that good, or what?

struck

2007-12-13T00:18:00.000-06:00

i've been renting the earlier seasons of Grey's Anatomy, just so i know some of the back stories a little better.

inevitably, every single episode makes me think, and possibly tear up a bit.

tonight, it made me sob.

a woman was accidentally put on life support, due to missing paperwork. the daughter showed up, and signed the paperwork to have her taken off. just before they shut off the machines, the daughter kissed her on the cheek and said, "good-bye mommy." i immediately lost it.

when my dad died 6 1/2 years ago, i never got to say good-bye. i hadn't even been to the hospital that day. i've regretted it ever since. i should have been there. i should have said i love you more.

God, i miss him.

rock & roll died tonight

2007-12-12T17:54:00.000-06:00

the man who was credited with the first rock & roll song, Ike Turner, passed away in his sleep this morning.

you can think of his personal life what you wish, but the man could play a lick.

i cannot BELIEVE this!

2007-12-08T20:30:00.000-06:00

The Westboro Baptist Church is famous around here because one of the members was recently charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor because she allowed her 10-year old son to violate nebraska law, while stomping on an American flag which had been taken from the parade route for another soldier's funeral, in Bellevue. This caused enough of a disturbance, that the city council of Bellevue has actually denied them permission to do so at another funeral

There is a purpose to this.

As many of you know, a tragedy occured on Wednesday at Westroads Mall. I'm not going to go into all the details, because i don't want to give this kid any more press than necessary, but i gotta tell you guys this.

They picketed Westroads tonight, because they believe that this happened as God's retribution against Nebraska for allowing the charges to be filed against this woman. Obviously, according to them, this means that Nebraska, and Omaha in particular are supporting gays, and lesbians, and is using our own, "A brat you raised for the devil himself*" to kill a few of us idolators, and punish us all. It's our fault that this kid did this, because we don't believe in GAWD (the way i think these assmonkeys say it), and that this is just the beginning of GAWD raining destruction down on us, and this is just an appetizer.

all i can say is this:

WHAT THE FUCK?

There are 9 families mourning, and 5 more with family members that are injured, some perilously so. And these amazingly ignorant dirtwads are telling us this crap? and PROTESTING? it's only common sense, but i so desperately wanted to go down there and counter-picket. I don't talk religion very often, but my god is not a vengeful god. My god is a loving god, who is weeping tears over this whole mess.

I couldn't be more upset.

*this was a direct quote from their website/blog. however, i'm not going to dignify or give them ANYTHING by posting their web address. It's entirely too offensive to me. It even makes me feel dirty to read such vitriolic diatribes. ugh.

to let you know

2007-12-05T23:59:00.000-06:00

since it's widely known i live in omaha, ne, i just wanted to let everyone know that me and mine are ok.

while we are all horrified by what happened, what it does say is that reforms are needed in several different sectors. gun control. mental health. juvenile "delinquency" for a better word.

a sad, sad day, today.

p.s. if you don't know what happened (and if you don't, what rock did you crawl out from under?) leave me a comment, and i'll fill ya in.

ok, here we go

2007-12-04T13:47:00.001-06:00

this post is gonna be picture heavy.

This is THE hat. this hat was made with 2 skeins of lamb's pride worsted, in regal, and creme. Liam wore this hat to the Central football championship game. He claims to love the hat. he chose the pattern, and he chose the colors. it's lost. needless to say, i'm a wee bit upset. he claims to have checked the lost & found, but i'm seriously tempted to call the school myself.

These are the ships' support socks that i sent off last month. They're a wee bit too big for liam, but that's ok. liam wear's a men's size 10 1/2 wide, so they should fit up to a size 12 if they don't have duck feet.

and for Michelle, the Pineapple Circular Blanket. This is adapted from the Pineapple Circular Shawl that i saw on her blog. I got the pattern from http://www.crochetaustrailia.au/. wheeeee! amazingly enough, i ordered this on a monday, and had it the next monday! this is up to round 35. i'm doing this from stash, hence the darker middle, lol. it's still going to be very pretty, if i can ever finish the freaking thing! it ends up doing 2 rows, then frogging one. i forgot to measure it before i picked it up off the floor, but i think it's about 4 feet across. good thing my mom has a queen sized bed!

i gotta scoot, but i'll give ya another real post later!

a meme

2007-11-29T23:25:00.000-06:00

thanks to Natalie for posting this on her blog, and offering to come read mine. iknow, i know, i owe y'all a real post, and you'll get one, but not just right now.

Four things about me that you may or may not have known in no particular order. The directions are at the end.

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Customer Service Agent
2. Short Order Cook
3. Cashier in a Nuclear Plant kitchen
4. Salad & Dessert Chef in a Steak House (that job was tasty!)

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Princess Bride
2. The Matrix
3. Highlander, Director's Cut
4. Any of the LOTR series

Four places I have lived:
1. Omaha, NE
2. Blair, NE
3. Tekamah, NE
4. Ord, NE

4. Four Shows that I watch:
1. Pushing Daisies
2. Private Practice
3. Grey's Anatomy
4. Dancing with the Stars (shhhh, don't tell anybody)

Four places I have visited:
1. Atlantic Beach, NC
2. Depoe Bay, Oregon
3. Rochester, NY
4. Loveland Pass, CO (i climbed the mountain there, it was so cool!)

People who e-mail me (regularly)
1. Eliza
2. Lori
3. Aunt Ruthie
4. My sons' teachers

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Lemon Shrimp @ Imperial Palace
2. Cafe Breve @ Starbucks (hey, you still ingest it!)
3. Bacon
4. Chocolate

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. At S&B ( i always end up leaving just when it's getting good!)
2. Borders, with a good magazine
3. in the tub with a good book
4. in bed with my honey & a good book (which is why i'm wondering why i'm still up?)

Things I am looking forward to this year (2008 I assume??):
1. selling my house (it's become an albatross)
2. Having a venture i'm in come to fruition
3. christmas knitting being done!
4. watching my boys become men (sniff, where's the tissues?)

If you decide to do this meme yourself, please leave me a comment so I can go check out your answers!

bow your heads

2007-11-26T21:28:00.001-06:00

the riot, indeed, has been quieted.

Pay it Forward

2007-11-23T22:05:00.000-06:00

I'm a dork. I'm an idiot. I'm also hugely forgetful. There's this thing going around on the innernets. It's called Pay it Forward. Here's the deal.

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.
So, if you'd like to Pay It Forward, just be one of the first 3 commenters on today's post.

I'll be needing snail mail addys, too, lol! And i don't care if you're here in the states, or in timbuctoo! i love international mailings (always confuses the post office ladies, lol!)

Thanks to Noricum for showing me the way, and thanks to anne for reminding me that i'd forgotten this!

p.s. with the holiday season fast approaching, i have to put the caveat in that you prolly won't get your thingie until afterwards!

well, here goes

2007-11-20T21:08:00.000-06:00

my mom is in congestive heart failure. which isn't as bad as it sounds. she has to go on a low sodium diet (which she was predominantly on anyway), exercise regularly (which she already did), and watch her weight. apparently, they want her to weigh herself every day, and if she gains more than 2# ina day or 4# over a week, then she goes to the doctor.

her heart valve is in relatively good shape. both the leaflets are moving like they are supposed to, consdiering the dang thing is 21 years old. they've got her on diuretics, which is making her pee like a racehorse.

they did say she's in atrial fibrilation off and on. however, there are two schools of treatment for this. the doctor thinks that it may have been happening for years. according to her records, when she had the valve replaced in '86, she was in a-fib. it didn't s how up when she got her pacemaker in '05, but it could have just been behaving, as she was only in the hospital for 4 days over that.

anyway, there is one theory that they medicate the piss out of her to control the fibrilation at any cost. however, the medications they use can be toxic over the long haul, and she comes from a long-lived family (grandma was 3 weeks shy of her 97th birthday when she gave up). also, while her kidney function isn't bad, it's not the absolute best it could be, which is typical for a woman of her age, and those types of meds make that worse.

the other school? leave her be. deal with the heart failure, and let the a-fib slide, but watch it. apparently, they did a study a few years ago, and discovered that the people they didn't medicate lived as long as the ones they did, with little ill effect, and none of the side effects from the meds. the doctor who checked her pacemaker is of the second mind. why give her drugs that could cause scar tissue in her lungs, especially when they have to watch her lungs because of the heart failure.

sooooooooooooooooooooooooo

i don't know. lol. we're supposed to talk to the cardiologist tomorrow morning. but the prognosis is very good, considering her age, and that damned valve.

as for the rest of us? mark is maintaining the homefires while i'm doing all this hospital/doctor stuff.

thanksgiving? dunno, but i don't expect her to be home by then.

the christmas trip? still dunno, but i have higher hopes for it than i did before. wheeeeeeee!

and thanks to everyone for the tea & sympathy. it is hard, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and between you guys and the folks over at the L&V message board, plus the local yokels doing what they can for me, i'm feeling a lot less hopeless, and a lot more hopeful.

it's tough

2007-11-17T22:58:00.000-06:00

this time of year is not easy for me. the joy of halloween has passed. sunset comes before 5 pm. thanksgiving, to most people, is a time of family gathering and happiness. for me? lots and lots of work. i've worked a lot of thanksgivings, and all i can think of is how much work it is. i hate thanksgiving.

add in a # of factors, to include huge amounts of stress over the boys' grades, my mother's ongoing medical issues culminating in her admittance to the hospital, and money has been tight, and i feel like i'm in a pressure cooker.

i was watching private practice earlier tonight, where a woman, whose police husband has died, has rigidly scheduled everything involving the birth of her child, whom she was pregnant with when her husband died. in the middle of labor, she started screaming about being alone, and that her husband was dead. i bawled like a baby. it struck me that i felt alone.

mark stayed home with the boys today while i dealt with my mother's stuff. i called my brothers to let them know what was going on. my one brother lives here in nebraska, but has little to do with me, because of differing religious choices. little, as in, he didn't come to my wedding. he came as soon as he found out what was up. to say the least, it was awkward. he was polite, we did talk, but the white elephant in the room was definitely there.

i felt alone all day. i've felt alone in this whole thing. this has been going on since the end of august. the doctor's visits have been weekly, if not more often. from november 1st to november 9th i took her to immanuel hospital for doctor's vists 5 times.

here's the thing. she doesn't drive. my brother, who only lives an hour away, never volunteers to take her to anything, except the occasional dinner out. my other brother lives in georgia, but everytime he comes, they take her to the store. they take her shopping.

the people who could help me, can't. mark knows no sign language. he's tried, but he has no talent for it. liam and sean, who do, can't transport her, and frankly, are too young. stephanie, who can, works full time.

i'm it. i've always been the family interpreter. i'm the oldest child. according to my mother, i started signing when i was 2, when my brother was born. both my brothers do little more than fingerspelling, which means you spell out each word. exhausting, to say the least. i've been interpreting for my family for a very long time.

when my grandmother in wyoming passed away on a wednesday, i was unable to leave until sunday. my parents drove out there on thursday, as well as my brother (yes, THAT one) and his family. no one in his family signs. when i showed up on sunday, he told me he was so glad i was there, because the signing for the last 3 days was wearing him out. he had no idea. my father was also hard of hearing, and actually met my mother at the Nebraska School for the Deaf, although they didn't marry until 20 years later, and was as comfortable with signing as he was in listening. in fact, as he had aged, his hearing was failing rather rapidly (he was 75). i immediately took over.

you know, being needed is nice. i'm a firm believer, though, of too much of a good thing. I'm being "needed" to death. My mom needs me. Mark needs me. Liam needs me. Sean most definitely needs me. The cats need me. Even steph & her roommate and their dog &cat need me.

i sit here, and watch sean, and wonder if he will ever grow up enough to take care of himself.

I know i do alot of this to myself. My sense of duty and obligation outweighs any objections or denials. I'm a caregiver.

But who's going to care for me?

/end whiney post

mixed feelings

2007-11-16T22:10:00.000-06:00

My son went with the pep band to the state finals for football, as his high school was playing. They won, which is fantastic.

I'm sure Liam will be incredibly hoarse, and unable to sleep when he gets home (lincoln is an hour a way, and i just watched them taking the drums out of the stadium 10 minutes ago). I'm thrilled to death for him.

I got to watch the game on the nebraska PBS station (they run all the championship games on tv, which i think is great). However, i saw something that was, to me, a bit disquieting.

They do a medal/trophy awards ceremony. For both teams. The opposing team, Millard North, were not playing with their regular quarterback. He hurt his knee in the last game, and was unable to finish. The quarterback they brought in? A 15 year old sophomore, who had never started a game. It's a hell of a thing to have your first starting game be the state finals. He played with heart, and fortitude, and considering the circumstances, did well.

The disquieting part was that they made all the boys on the Millard North team, as the runners up, go across a stage and receive a medal from their coaches. I sat here in tears watching boys who had literally played their hearts out, with stolid looks, or tears, on their faces, wishing they could be anywhere but there with the TV cameras in their faces. Frankly, i think they would have been happier to go to the locker room, and ride their busses home. The truly heartbreaking part? watching that sophomore quarterback cry on the regular quarterback's shoulder. you could just hear him saying "man, i blew it!" i will say t his for the older boy. he patted him on the shoulder, and gave him a hug.

this is why i find it disquieting. the tv cameras. this is probably one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to them. let them grieve in peace.

it's why i hate state funerals. the one that comes most to mind is when ronald reagan passed away. at the very end, when they placed the coffin in front of the library, and nancy finally laid her head down on the coffin and cried. i will watch all that goes on before, and as public figures, i expect to see some of the family, but i did not need to see that. let her grieve in peace. the cameras should have been turned off, or turned away, or something.

same with these boys. this was not dignifying. i can remember the heartbreak of watching my team lose a big game in high school. the tears on the boys' faces, as well as the fans. leave them alone, dammit.

ok, i'm off my soapbox now.

i'm off to fetch my raving maniac, lol!

why

2007-11-15T13:22:00.000-06:00

i just watched the movie "nell," with jodi foster, liam neeson, and natasha richards.

why can't life be that simple?

tick tick tick

2007-11-13T08:05:00.000-06:00

it's coming

Thank You

2007-11-12T06:43:00.001-06:00

Yesterday and today, we celebrate Veteran's Day (and the Marine birthday was yesterday as well!)

Xerox is running a program where they are printing up postcards to send to the troops in Iraq, saying thank you. It's free to us, and will give them a boost. Go. Whether you agree with the war or not, these folks deserve our support.

paging doctor mom OR knitting needles aren't just for knitting

2007-11-10T22:00:00.000-06:00

just a caveat. this is not for the squeamish.

liam has had an ingrown toenail for a while. he's been verging on it getting infected for a while. well, for about 2 weeks now, his toe has been puffy, and painful, and purple. he's been trying to deal with it on his own, and i've been letting him, because he's 15, and he needs to learn.

however, tonight, he came down and asked if it was normal for his toe to turn brown. so i looked at it. it's not brown, but it is pretty tender & puffy. enter doctor mom.

i happened to have a metal sock needle near by, so i made him fetch rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and a couple of cotton balls, and a bandaid. i rubbed the tip of the needle with rubbing alcohol to disinfect it. the goober went & got a rag to bite, because he was afraid of waking anyone up, lol. i made him sit on the floor, and was actually able to get the toenail worked out. then i took a tiny bit of cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide, and tucked it under there. the doctor had told him to do that when he'd gone for his physical , and had mentioned his toe. he hadn't been doing it. then i took him in the bathroom, poured some more hydrogen peroxide on it, then put some neosporin & a bandaid on it, because it had bled a little bit. i'll make him soak it tomorrow in epsom salts, and d o it again. and chewed him out for not cutting his toenails square. some days.

oh, by the way? he didn't scream. liam is a drama queen, lol!

the red pill, or the blue pill?

2007-11-09T23:44:00.000-06:00

if you like the muppets, and the matrix, check this out. too cool.

i suppose

2007-11-07T06:37:00.000-06:00

it's time for a real post, lol.

i did take halloween pics.

wanna see?

I gotta ask. does that look like a harry potter costume to you? his grandmother, upon seeing the picture, said "ok, i give. is he a professor?" sigh. note the wand in his right hand, and that smudge in the middle of his forehead? a scar. we had a wee bit of trouble (he touched it before it was dry, the stinker) getting that right, but everybody who saw him wednesday night knew who he was. sigh.

The pumpkin to the rear is my evil looking one. the one with the chunk out of it's face? Sean's. totall his design. waht you can't see? there's a skeletal hand crawling out of its mouth.

The guys with the yard decorations. mark had all this stuff in the basement behind the furnace, so we put it all up, and the boys had fun with the glow in the dark sidewalk chalk. they traced mark's boots on the stoop, and wrote "home of bigfoot," and liam wrote "yard is mined" at the end of the drive, right next to "come and play." gotta love my kids' warped sense of fun on halloween, lol.

i have pictures of the ships' socks, but apparently i haven't downloaded them yet. hmmmm. i have been knitting, too! honest! and spinning! and crocheting! i've started my mother's christmas present (i'm not showing it because i don't want to give myself away to my secret pal, lol, i got the pattern recommendation from her), and my MIL's. i'm also going to make liam a pair of socks.

why? i fell down and went boom at personal threads. joe (the pusher) had a special bag of sale koigu, and it has the same yardage as the claudia hand paint fingering, and i got a pair of socks that fit him out of 2 skeins, and it's a color he'll like, so i'm going to knit him socks for christmas. am i mad? maybe. but his feet have definitely slowed down in their growth, and he may have hit his max (i hope so, he's already a 10 1/2 wide, and may have to move up to an 11, soon. if so, he's got the biggest feet my family has had, barring his cousin who is a monster, anyway, lol) i also bought a skein of WAH purple lamb's pride, and a skein of white, because Central's school colors are purple and white, and liam wants a school hat. he actually wants 2, but i'm making him pick, lol. he wants the rasta hat from Men who Knit, and hewants an earflap hat. i may look up the jayne hat and see if he likes that, lol. i'm also going to make an earflap hat for sean from it, cuz sean will be attending high school there as well (at least we hope so!)

and i got some good news when i took sean for his med check last week. i had been told by the special ed supervisor that if sean had an actualy diagnosis for asbergers, he would get a different type of IEP which might help him more. both his regular teacher and i have done some research on it, and we both agree that he shows several of the symptoms. so, when i told the psychiatrist that the teacher thinks he has it, and i think so too, he said he could see some of the signs himself, and filled out the form for authorization to get him tested for it. whoopee! now let's hope they get it done before the end of the year, cuz i've got that damned deductible hovering over my head, and too damned many medical bills as it is!

what i'm reading:

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon (book tape in the car)

Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan (book tape in thehouse)

Nicolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett (book in the bathroom. this book is actually speeding up, and getting interesting)

City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin.

i will say this. i need a break from the wheel of time series. the next book is not available in book tape form, and i think i'm gonna listen to something else, and finish these two books up first before i even attempt to take the path of daggers on. sigh.

ttfn, cuz i gotta haul teen butt to school!