PaPaYa Art

http://http://www.papayaart.com/category.jhtm?cid=2

my find of the day...papayaart.com. Love them :)

Long time no see!

I'm really sorry bout that, I've had a lot of catching up to do at home, and it's still not caught up. But I am still around somewhere, though not here too much. How's it going?

Me, I'm good. I've come out of the rough patch that was the summer of 09, and two months later, am in the 'looking forward to the winter of 09' stage.

We got our passports renewed! We're going on vacation. A real vacation, which includes a plane. The kids are beyond excited- they've never been on a plane, which is cool that we can do this. We talked about it for the past six or seven years, but never could go. This year, my husband booked our trip. We'll be spending Christmas on an island, and I may even hold back on the SPF a day or so, just to come back to the tundra with a wee bit of sun. :)

We needed to counter the stress with something happy, and I'm thrilled.

My transmission is going out on the jeep. It stalls out at red lights and stop signs so I have to crank it back up when the light turns green. I went on Autotrader looking up minivans, with the common white honda odyssey being the ideal, then going downhill from there. I found a Nissan Quest with not too many miles, and called about it. The trade in value on my jeep is $500!

My husband said he'd sooner but a brick on the gas and roll it off an cliff somewhere. (We won't). But then, while looking up used vans, I just glanced a wee bit at the Volvo XC90- what I would drive if I could just click my heels. "Why don't we just get that?" he says. He's sweet, and perhaps overly optimistic.

Dr. Oz was on this week, with his audience member assistant. Where is the triangle of death? he says. Turns out, it's your nose. Picking it is bad- he went on pretty convincingly, but I am too tired to elaborate. Already, I am aware I spend too much time in there, so I am going to do my best to cut back.

Dr. Oz. ha.

I've noticed little things since I've had surgery, and for those of you who read this that are about to have a craniotomy, I'll throw it in.

A few times a week I'd bump my teeth really hard with my coffee cup. Sometimes I just turn the cup before I get to my teeth and pour my drink on my shirt. I think this is common and no big deal, so if this happens to you just bring the cup to your face more slowly, or buy a mouthguard. I'm kidding about the mouthguard.

I'm a little dopier, but I'm trying. I haven't taken any kind of medication (including over the counter stuff like advil) since about two weeks after surgery, and I'm doing great!

I painted my toenails for the first time since I had surgery this week. Essie Rock the Croc Red.

Great color. (Essie makes awesome nail polish. It does not chip. Ever.)

Well, i just wanted to drop in. ;)

my love

my love

Random thoughts...

I'm having difficulty getting my 10 year old to go along with our Halloween plans. She thinks she's absolutely too grown.
"Can't I be a witch or a fairy?" she tells me. No. No, No, No. This year, we're going as a group project, we're building a special memory. Her trick or treating years are limited, isn't it a great idea to start building a special memory? And perhaps it's the toil of '09 that's made a family changed, we've been given a new sense of urgency & appreciation; Appreciation for things we would never do, and also things we said we may one day do but never took seriously.
We're in a way now forced to take life less seriously, because the fact is one of the greatest parts of taking life more seriously is taking it less so. (Yes, there you have my thought for the day. In order to take life more seriously, you must take it less seriously. It makes sense after awhile.)
Because sometimes folks stifle their joy in order to be serious.
So I believe we're going to have to pay her. She says she'll do it for $100, but we think it's steep. I have a month to talk her down to $25. Honestly though, if Steven can agree be Tinky Winky, then what's she got to worry about? (That's right, baby, there's four of us & four of them.)
With insurance and hospital bills, brain surgery and its after effects, is it so wrong to want to have one trivial afternoon? One day to be silly? Hmmm.
I had this strange dream last night. I was out with friends, shopping or hanging out (which is strange, because I do not have friends with which I shop or hang out. Not one, let alone 3-4. I'm honestly not that friendly. And perhaps living in the South, when someone fails to convert me to their religion, I get frequently sacked. It's no big deal.)
Oh! So anyhow, these friends and I go to an Indian Restaurant. I'm a huge fan of Indian food, so this is pretty normal. But then I'm glancing over the menu, and notice a strange item.

Raccoon Curry

"Is that actual raccoon?" I ask the waitress. "Yes," she informs me, "it is real raccoon in a curry sauce." Oooh, I am thinking and discussing with my friends, about to order the exotic feast! "I've never had raccoon before!"

Then I woke up.

Completely the end of my raccoon tasting experience. They say dreams are suppose to teach you something, or maybe they're symbols. I wonder what Raccoon Curry means, and for some strange reason the idea of it doesn't completely offend me.

My mother mentioned today she wants to read my blog. "How do I get to it?" she asks. Hmmm.

My sister brought us supper today (thanks, you rock!) and sat next to me at the table while mom repeated her eloquent reading of David Sedaris, this time a chapter from Holidays On Ice. That's where her money be, I tell her. Sedaris books on tape in her priceless accent. It's a money idea. Though this chapter ended with a baby named Satan Speaks washed and dried in a machine. Not very holiday friendly, Mr. Sedaris. Just plain wrong! Hope the next chapter, entitled Dinah, the Christmas Whore, is easier for my mother to read. :)

Thanks for stopping in ~ Have a really great day...

Rest in Peace Halle

Hello!

Just wanted to stop in for a moment. I'm still recovering, but better each day. My left eye, still gimpy. I've informed my husband he's now in charge of shaving my left armpit, I just can't see it. I go back to my NS next week, and he may possibly clear me for driving. It scares me a little since my vision is so bad, and they tell me it may take three months for this eye to heal. But I may be back in traffic next week (?) . Part of me needs to, I'm out of canvas, and no one will buy it.

When I look in the mirror, the hair sorta reminds me of when Naomi cut the ponytail off the front of her head. Like a childs first do it yourself haircut, lol! It's okay.

We're having a funeral for our cat today. She was sitting in the lawn watching the birds at the birdfeeder, and a pit bull and another dog came and killed her. She'd been our cat for almost seven years. I've had a sick feeling in my stomach all day. I'll miss her big orange moony eyes, and I suppose now it could be you'll think I'm one of those weird cat people, but here's a video of my sweet cat from last year on YouTube-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro2L_7lj1j0

I just don't feel well. Rest in Peace, Miss Halle Berry.

You were a good cat, and black cats are highly underrated.

Home Again

I'm home!

Can't say I'll be extremely productive, as I have a gimpy eye for a while, and typing with one eye is currently challenging. Seems they cut certain muscles in your face when you have brain surgery, and these include muscles that connect to your jaw and make chewing and yawning painful, and muscles to the eye on that side that make your eyelid funny and the eye is in a painful mode right now, but in another month I've been told it'll all be normal again.

The hair surprisingly doesn't bother me in the least. My mother tells me the scar is a 9" question mark across the top of my head. Funny. If anyone were to have a question mark carved into their scull, it figures it would be me. It's okay.

Today I get to shower.
For the first time.
Since I left. I have been able to sit in a shower chair a couple times and clean myself, but the idea of running water on my head wasn't possible until today. Friday they pulled the staples out of my head. I brought a sandwich bag as I felt it was necessary to keep them.

I'm eager to be myself again. I'm eager to shop, and drive, and paint. I'm eager to put my makeup on though my husband tells me I don't need it. Considering I cannot leave the house for another month, I guess I won't stress about the makeup too much. I'm not able to read at the moment, but my mother has been humouring me, reading David Sedaris books to me outloud in her perfect for books on tape French accent. Everyone should be so lucky. It's especially funny when she reads words like 'fucking', it makes me happy to hear my mother read this out loud, and my husband even snuck in and sat listening, commenting how funny it was that she read those words out loud. She tells him she can't leave any words out.

This is how precious mon mere is.

I hope that I'll be talking about something else soon, trust that I'm as eager to get over this consuming mess as anyone. I can walk myself to the bathroom. I had to get to this point, as there was a time people were holding bendy straws to my face and feeding my with spoons. I've made lots of progress. I can open both my eyes, but one gives me vertigo.

Sleeping is strange as I cannot turn over on that side. The nurse told me it was fine to wear a scarf in the event that I would be out in public and may shock people. I never considered the other people as far as this matter; I don't care much if I shock someone. My husband tells me that's a benefit of having a giant scar on your head. He's funny. I think soon I may have to paint a self portrait with my question mark head. I was painting a geisha before I went to the hospital.

I don't talk about the painting too much, as I am not the most confident in that area...but I enjoy it and will come back with crazy vigor when I can see.

I'm okay. & I'm getting better everyday. Thanks for stopping in :)

so I'm off

One thing I noticed about hospital parking decks,
the rear view mirrors full of raggedy stuffed animals.
Car after car of them.
& sick people.
& today before I leave I resent both the sick people
and the rearview mirrors with their tigers
and kittens and doggy plushies.

I feel a wave of hostility and I cannot explain why.
& I cannot imagine 5 days in a hospital.
How am I gonna crap when I'm not in the comfort of my own
sweet john?
I'll be so stopped up. Stopped up, stapled. bald.

Steven says going in the hospital is just like having the girls.
"sure, I say, but without the baby."
I have to leave now.

The baby brings me her pink elephant plushie
& I'm taking it with me, loved & holey, ketchup stained.
But that doesn't make me the rear window lady.

I have to go now.

Stay Salty, Stay Funky. (that's the Kettle Chip logo, but I likes!)

Full Moon

Hello, people!
I'm having a wee bit of brain surgery Thursday, August 6th. Full Moon.
I came to write my passwords down in case I don't remember them.
I think the other night I heard deer hooves on the driveway.
Nasty flower eating creatures.
I couldn't sleep, I just sat up waiting to hear them again, or maybe just trying to see if that's the thing I was actually hearing.
I'm feeling really sad.
I'll be home next week but not home online, just home.

Wish my awful week away. Wish me to blink and be here again, recovered.
And if you've stopped in by accidentally Googling Brain Aneurysms or brain surgery,
feel free to comment with any questions you may have.
By then I may have some answers.
It'll pass.

We ate out food Steven brought home. I got a Dr. Pepper, a fountain Dr. Pepper. It's been years since I'd had one. "How come you get a drink?" The wee one asks.
"I have Princess powers this week. All week." The looming cranial cracking grants me wishes, red shimmery Dorothy slippers that come with a heavy price.

but There's no place like home.

I discover that I don't really like Dr Pepper anymore.

& I bought some banana republic jeans for $9.99.

much love, yt

Retrospect, Monday, November 21, 2005

My blog readership has hit its all time low, and we all know my mind is on other things than blogging at the moment. With what's looming ahead I just can't focus.

So I give you a time when I could. Here's Monday, November 21, 2005

Hurrah! Hurray! Harumph! ?... I don't know exactly why I decided to start that way, but it felt right at the moment. Shouldn't we all begin things with a hurrah & hurray sometimes?
(Actually I had a great first sentence, but it was lost in the typing of Hurrah...)

Steven hooked up my dishwasher yesterday! As I still don't have the rest of my kitchen, the dishwasher is probably what was the most necessary thing at the moment. Dishes were on every surface in my home, piling up in my tub, my sink; the cups stacking and teethering, pots and pans and their friends gaining strength in the army that I foresaw overthrowing my home. We were digging through papers on the tables. Where did all the spoons go?
Ah, but I've loaded them, filled my dishwasher with ammunition, and faught and won the was at last. There is not a dish (in sight) in here no more...unless you count the one in my fridge. You know the one, that one bowl that completes my set, but has been in there covered in aluminum foil since, I'm guessing May? July? I stood in contemplation, staring at the bowl, then closing the door. I'm too scared. I have no idea what it ever was, but likely it will see the can one day.
What else is new?
We went to a Baptist funeral this weekend, which I thought was going to be excruciating. You know how the Baptists are always trying to convert you at the funerals. Naomi cried real tears, but didn't know who they were for. Shanna smacked her gum and wanted to go home.
Afterwards, theres a dinner, and we followed along. Turns out I met this interesting man. An incredible, interesting man. (Yes, I remember I'm married.)
An incredible, interesting, 84 year old man. Happy Lee was the son of sharecroppers, went on to college, then to become one of the most outstanding democrats I've met. He worked under a few presidents (JFK & Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter) worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, and in 2004, was the first recipient of the Gandhi Foundation Lifetime Acheivement Award. At the same ceremony, Coretta Scott King won the Gandhi Peace Award.
Now in the early stages of Alzheimers, he looked at my husband in shock when he told him his name. "Steven Lee? Steven Lee?" Walking him to his wife, "Look, this is Steven Lee!" We found he'd had a son that passed away named- Stephen Lee.
"He died at 40 from a brain tumor, but before that he was a veterinarian, and you know, he invented this contraption..." With pride, he told us about this thing that tied (?) to a horses vagina (yes, he used that word...about 6 times, hee hee) and when the horse went into labor, the cord broke, and it automatically called three people and told them which horse was having her baby. They use this all around the world, we learned. If you can find a copy of Happy's book, I recommend it.
Man, I haven't even covered yesterday at church yet. I know I don't have room or time, but it was bread communion. (Everybody brings bread or soup). Steve Bell brought Matza ball soup. The Matza are all different sizes, he said. He went on to tell a story. (Here goes)
There were these two old women who only got one meal a day, and today there was this pot with broth and two matza, a big one and a small one. They stared at the soup and faught over who would go first. Finally, one goes first, and ladles out the big one. The other woman looks on in disbelief. "I can't believe you took the big one! How selfish!" Ranting and raving about the others large ball, the woman with her bowl full said, "Well, which one would you have taken?"
"The small one!"
"And that's what you got!"
And the moral of the story is before you go complaining about getting the short end of the stick, maybe thats what you asked for. (I think. I'm not quite as eloquent as Dr. Bell).


Oh! And the whole thing about him calling Irene! I have to tell you this, then I'm done, promise. Okay, he turns to Irene.
"Good. You got my call you bring soup or bread."
"No, you didn't call me."
"I did. I left a message on your machine."
"I don't have a machine."
"Isn't your number XXX-XXXX?"
"No, that's not my number."
"Oh."
about 20 minutes later...
Woman walks in with a covered dish.
"Where is Steve Bell?"
"I'm Steve."
"Did you call me?"
"Did I call you?" laughing, "Is your number XXX-XXXX?"
"Yes!"
"Yeah, I did call you. Who are you?"
"Gracia. I don't know who you were, but I thought maybe I just didn't remember. So I brought the soup." Okay, it doesn't translate to be as incredible as it was, but it was awesome. There are no coincedences. Irene looked over, "But I know her!"
Gary looked over, "Me too! She used to be in my Tai Chi class!"
Gracia was a wonderful addition to our day. So full of life, and did I mention she speaks 6 languages? Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, English, & Turkish! Wow. She is going to come back to our Hannukah, and she's Catholic (On her way to UU?) :)
And little did I know we'd be discussing the items we brought in front of the congregation.

There I was, the first from the left, starting with...the Left. I brought Wheat Thins. (I have no kitchen! Who knew. I'll do better next time)


Happy turkey Day! Much Love as always, Kat Lee

this is Steve Bell :)

How to Survive Your Cerebral Angiogram!

My doc made the cover!!! Woo hoo!

Also, I lived through the cerebral angiogram, and after my experiences with the damned thing, I'm going to suggest ways it can be better for you if you are needing to have this same procedure done.

Dr. Frank Tong at Emory was the Doctor that performed my C.A., and after we got home, my husband's words-

"I've never met a nicer doctor in my life."

I believe that Tong makes an uncomfortable procedure better because of a kind nature that put me at ease. Palpable integrity, easily put.

Jeff Steinig, Karen Patterson, & Norma Jeans confirmation name is Kathleen... :) hello!

Here are a few steps to make your Cerebral Angiogram a tad easier :).

1. Forget your new panties at home. You will not get to wear them. (I know, I wanted to wear my new panties too. forget it.) They don't call it 'groin' for nothin. However, during your procedure, you are on a heated table, and are covered, um, mostly. When you read other more medically stout sites and they say thing like, "they will shave, scrub, and sanitize the groin area" this does not mean your entire groin area. Actually, you can stick those knees closed tight if indeed it makes you feel less exposed. The ' my ass is in the air' fear is the very least of your worries. (although, I have to tell you that the guy before me that was having the same procedure was pulling the side of his gown trying to cover his exposed ass- but unfortunately, was pulling it the wrong way. I sat horrified watching his naked ass all the way down the hall. Horrified because their were tons of people there, and yikes, that could be me.)

2. Schedule your procedule as early as possible. Things happen. My C.A. got delayed by almost 4 hours, due to a hospital emergency. Scheduled for 2 pm, this means I did not eat since the night before, and the procedure didn't end until nearly 7. Then, you have to lay flat for 4-6 hours, so you have an opportunity to be extremely weak at that point. I could not wait to go home, yet when the nurse had me walk down the hall and back before I could leave, I passed out cold. I had to stay an extra 45 minutes while they got a new bag of IV fluids in me. Personally, I think they should have given the IV bag when I got in the room while I waited the 4 hours. If you are scheduled at an earlier time you may not need this, though. Just in case, bring a big bottle of gatoraid and a bendy straw. In retrospect, I'd get an earlier time, but I'm hoping this won't be something I'll have to go through again. So this is just a suggestion for your sake :).

3. They can put a mild sedative in your IV bag. But not unless you ask for it! I was extremely nervous, but did not actually get the sedative. They forgot. But it was okay, I survived, it really was not so bad. But I say go ahead and ask for it for comforts sake. Also, I closed my eyes almost the entire time- the spaceship technology, hospital atmosphere, and bright lights can be daunting- but you can zone out if you close your eyes. Pretend you are lying in a tanning bed, ha! Chit chat with your Doctor. You'll be fine & it'll be over before you know it.

4. Don't move, don't breathe, don't swallow...This is what they tell you when they shoot the dye in your head. You hold your breath, then they repeat this as they film your arteries. I don't know if explaining the exact feeling of this would be a good or bad thing, because my description will make it sound worse than it is. You'll see some little white lights in your eyes. You'll feel a 'fizzy' feeling in your neck. And you head will feel like it is being filled with hot fluids? It's just strange. I personally feel that all med students should have this done for personal experience sake before they are allowed to perform this procedure on someone else, but that's just me.

5. The worst part of my experience was-A. The fear of the thing. and B. The IV needle. The fear. I'm chicken little, so the idea of it was scary. But the idea of lots of things are scary. My IV needle was poked in my wrist at an angle and I felt it scratching me the entire time, especially with movement. But I have crappy veins for IVs, and you'll do better for sure.

Good luck to ya :)

My Etsy Find of the Month

My Etsy find of the Month is by artist Treasure Frey...I think she's amazing.

I just ended up running across this and felt it really relates. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=24006939

I'm not really in a letter writing mood so much.
I initially thought I'd quit blogging until fall, then resume my blog when I felt better. But then, probably from googling brain aneurysms and surgery so much, I figured I'd document some of the little events that led up to my lovely summer of brain funk & maybe it will help somebody, or even guide someone through what they may themselves experience when diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.
It started when I got a severe allergic reaction. Which led to all sorts of other things, including severe headaches. My doc decided we should get an MRI. The MRI is not so scarey, just expensive as hell. And the MRI man tells me I have terrible nonexistant veins, so he stuck me twice in the first arm, then when he started sticking the second arm, I was slightly nervous. But it's okay.
Initially, they said they thought I had a congenital AVM, which is a abnormal vein you are born with. Another MRI & MRA later, they called my husband and told him i had an unruptured brain aneurysm. My uncle died at 44 in his sleep from a brain aneurysm. My aunt died from a brain aneurysm as well. Two of my mothers siblings. It makes me worry for my mother a bit.
Our neurosurgeon happens to be Dr. Barrow at Emory, and I feel like he's a good choice. I hope he's a Jew, you know your good and safe with a Jew. But who knows. (I'm just being silly...that's the Kat Lee in me coming out. "Look for a good Jew name!" I tell my husband. "Like what?" "You know, something that ends in Man or Berg or has Stein in it..." Barrow doesn't sound Jewish, but his first name is Daniel. So it's a toss up.)

The neurosurgeon tells me my syptoms are completely unrelated.
It's just an extra little thing to work out.
They don't actually cut your brain, they go in between the left and right brain somehow.
That is comforting, I think.
Atlanta traffic is a nightmare.
Steven's trying to work his way in, and he's partly in and a suburban rushes past, doesn't let him thru. He yells Cocksucker, rolls the window down, and he spat on the car. I'm looking at him like he's crazy. Who is this man? It's his birthday. :)
He comes to sit down on the sofa when we're home. I'd put my lawn chair under the giant oak, the one with all the moss, and I sat there the other day, half napping. I left my chair under the oak, and his was still on the patio.
"I moved my chair," he tells me. "It looked lonely and I don't like your chair being so far from mine." He'd gone out and dragged his chair across the field. Every day should be his birthday.
He needs my keys to turn the airbag on. I can't find them.
"Look at my purse!"
"What?" he says. The giant orange bottles are taking up too much space.
"It looks terrible! I don't want to be one of those ladies with pill bottles filling their purses..." and I gripe and complain until I'm not anymore.
I try to blog, then give up. I then reread my little letter and wonder where the symmetry went. My flounce. My swagger. (That makes me laugh! I keep hearing that term, & was just waiting for a chance to use it...though I'm not exactly full of literary swagger.) Where was I? I just ran downstairs to hit the timer on dinner, talked to my friend, took a valium, and now I'm back.
No fussing with me about the valium, people. I firmly believe that valium helps me with the whole little 'aneurysm thing'. Though I don't take them everyday, only on days where I have to talk about it. If your doctor calls you and say that you have a brain aneurysm, go on and request your valium then. Preferably the 10's. I have 5's currently, and only take them when I'm forced to talk about it or get too curious and google brain surgery.
(Could be how you got here...Don't Google. It'll only make you feel bad. Look up something completely separate from your issue...Like new tile flooring or Etsy.com. Googling will only make you cry.)

Talking about it is much harder than having the damn thing. It's like having a giant freaking mole on your forehead, it doesn't get away from you, but you surely don't want to have to talk about it. And it can start with your mother or sister knowing, or one friend. Then, you're getting calls from your sisters ex-husband and old neighbors, and they want to know how your doing. Which is nice. But mostly, you don't want to talk about it. You want to talk about Michael Jackson and if it'll rain and the stupid but out of the blue status reports on Facebook. You want to talk about stuff other than it.
But today, I guess I thought I'd talk about it. Get it out in the open.
I'm so happy I found it.
I'm so lucky too. I know. Happy & lucky. :). But a wee stressed.

My friend told me on the phone she'd shave her head when they shaved mine.
"What? They don't do that, do they?"
(That was the trigger that led to me taking the above valium...) I am not yet sure about the head shaving thing, but I will keep you informed.
Next Tuesday, I go for the next test, where they run dye into the artery near my groin, into my brain, and it gives them a 3-D scan. One doctor called this a Angiogram, another a Cerebral Arteriogram. While not interesting, I'll probably blog next week about that, because Googling it made me feel slightly ill, and I had hoped I could read someone's simplified version of what it's actually like. I'm hoping it's no big deal. Also, I'm hoping they drug me heavily.
They said my aneurysm surgery could be done as early as the following week after that.
I would kind of like to take the kids to see the new Harry Potter first. I've read about people not remembering things, not being able to spell afterwards...I figure I'll blog and we can see how it turns out.
I'd like to focus on Fun soon. Some sort of vacation maybe. Steven says I can pick where we go, which is cool. He wants water; I'm not so much into water, & prefer Historic things, like the Parthenon, but cheaper. A nice Euro garden, which my kids would not be thrilled with.
Maybe Barbados. I hear there are monkeys there. Who doesn't love monkeys? We save our change in a big water bottle. It won't get us the parthenon, but I'll be happy with a monkey or two!
My Ravi Shankar ringtone is playing but I don't recognise the number. I don't answer.
More later. Kat :)

DON'T LET TROUBLE FESTER

It is a good rule to face difficulties at the time they arise and not allow them to increase unacknowledged.

Edward W. Ziegler

One's objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over.

You see, your problem won't improve with age.

Warren Buffett

i was thinking perhaps my aneurysm was insignificant enough that perhaps it could

remain in its spot, unperturbed...These were today's quote's of the day in my email box. ?.

I'm hanging in there! :)

Debbie Downer Day

I was sitting here thinking about how salty my tears were, slobbery faced,

and, yikes, it has been a while, hasn't it..

So I go to open this email that has little recipe things but I only open them to read

the little quotes which are usually really cute.

Today's Quotes Were

When you get into a fight with a bear, you don't get tired until the bear gets tired.

Coleman Young

Only fitting, I s'pose.

Today I was told I have a brain anuerysm.

I've discovered MRI's and MRA's, and needle happy people that scare me. I can tell you I have had a crippling headache for days on end. I can also tell you that I'm gonna eat the hell out of some gluten when I get over this mess. (Turns out my sickness was never a gluten allergy.)

I think I'm supposed to see a neurosurgeon tomorrow. I'm not even sure; my husband is in change of all the doctor stuff. I did yell out while he was on the phone with her that I should get a mandatory supply of valium with any news like that and, Wee, my wish be granted.

Is that how to spell Wee.. Like the Wee when you get pushed on a swing,

not the wee my kids do in the pool. I just blew my nose on my shirt. There are no tissues in here and I'd have to drag my ass downstairs, so the shirt is making do. And it doesn't actually bother me to say the fact out loud. I'm too old to care about snot on a shirt, I guess. Or maybe it's just that I feel like shit.

Mind you, snot on jeans would be a completely different story.

Sorry I haven't been blogging. Frankly, I've just not been well. Please hang in there and wait for me to be back to my old self soon. :).

(It'll happen. And I'll be funny again.) much love, yours truly

oh, hey, today's my 100th post! um.. yeah. lovely.

Race Car Bed

I was looking on Craigslist for used furniture and I saw

that someone was selling a Little Tykes Racecar Bed in Full Size.

I have no sons nor a guest room, but if I ever were to have a guest room,

perhaps when I'm old as hell, I shall buy the little tykes full racecar bed

and subject grown friends and relatives to sleeping on it whenever they stop in to visit...

I'll act like I don't notice that it may be odd or unfashionable,

but in fact, I'll go to sleep in my own bed smiling.

Sick Day

I could actually feel that you were missing me?
It be a palpable thing, and though I'm not having an all that interesting week,
I thought I'd check in. How are ya?
I've been covered in hives this week due to some sort of food allergy. My throat is choked as though an invisible hand has me by the gullet, could be some red twizzlers are to blame. I'm itching and scratching and debating the last momentous words I'll utter, because, when I have a food allergy, I become kitten in the ocean, thrown; anxious and surely dying. With the driven in knowledge my grandmere gave to mon mere, and she to me, I go about getting dressed. I choose carefully my underpants, heaven forbid I arrive in an emergency room in my neon yellow with fuschia ribboned thong, or worse those God awful time-of-the-month panties. My smart but ill mind thinks it best to wear a black or pale flesh toned boy short underpant, just in case.
I stand before you (make that sit before you. Slumped, for that matter, in a backless chair...) and try to make sense of the world. I imagine my dead self visiting loved ones with the invisible power everyone wished they had but not to the extent of the dead ghost kind. The thought quickly creeps me out, so I start to envision a less 'dead' power, like say, hovering three feet over the ground in a yoga guru pose.
So I'm in guru mode, and all I can think of is what a great idea it would be to have full length mirrors on the inside of the doors of bathroom stalls. I wonder about my guest bathroom, and why I couldn't have thought of that sooner, a full length mirror directly opposite the john, that your guests may watch themselves lay eggs in the moment.
I enjoy the idea, then decide it's too vulgar for my imaginary guru self. Were my true self able to hover, I'd teach a class- because hovering would make me worthy, right?- and all bathroom stalls would be equipped with mirrors.
"Why mirrors?" Pupil says to teacher. I'd vary my answers on a day to day basis, with quotes like,
"To know self, pupil must see humble moment," or ,"Man can not know what chicken go through without first seeing his own eyes lay egg," and it would all fly because I could hover. Without being dead. Ah, yes, I should write the Mah Jong fortunes :D.
Toilet eggs turn in my mind, and I'm then thinking of corn and how Food Lion had corn on the cob ten for a dollar. Corn on the cob and watermelon are two of our favorite summery things, and I jump off topic from one end of the...um, spectrum, to the other.
We watched a great zombie movie this week, called Fido. I highly recommend this one. If you can find it, it'll be a treat! Take the kids to see it. (It's harmless, really). I think it's on the independent film channel or sundance. I readily admit I watch too much of these channels. Can't get enough. Who doesn't want to sit down with a few slices of supreme and watch Rickie Lake give birth? The Business of Being Born- seriously, watch before you give birth. I especially love when they have very foreign numbers; not your standard French or Japanese film, but those rare Greenlander moments, when characters are trudging through waist high snow.
My gluten free withdrawals are making me cranky, as I'm on week three now. I wrote this short story about this cranky old woman, only to discovered cranky comes way too easy. (But I feel any emotion at all beats ambivalence).
I took the girls on a playdate to a friends, which is rare for me. My good friend lives in a palace with labyrinth corridors, and every time I visit, the home seems to have grown a room or two. Several types of doughnuts sit atop the kitchen bar, and my kids pass the bag of powdered.
"Guess you won't be going to Daylight Donuts everyday after swim this summer?" No. No daylight donuts. I smell refined carbs and see myself licking the powdered sugar off the wee baby's fingers, were my friend not two feet away; and of course, were the baby not known for scratching her booty with her nails when she wipes. So the thought escapes, and i don't miss the donuts too much.
I watched as my friend thawed chicken in the microwave, then stuck it directly on the grill. No fancy marinade, not even a shake of pepper. The little ends are nuked white. I cringe. There are hundreds of ways to cook chicken. This is one I'm fearsome of. I feel the French superiority gene rise the hairs on my nape.
"I'm having a girls night out party Saturday, you want to come?" Mojito's, she tells me. I watch the chicken and feel concern for my friend, suddenly volunteering to cook for these unknown ladies. Later, safely in my right mind, I think of excuses. The idea of complete strangers is a crippling one, and Hermit Kat has a social circle of approximately four. Two of these are my children. Party? Me? My eyes took turns swelling shut last week and it could likely happen at any moment. So we'll see.
I'm feeling proud as I've not yet succumbed to Twitter. I jones for Facebook in the mornings and hearing Oprah toot the Twitter horn made me curious...but I didn't go. Like my friends halls and secret dwellings, I fear I'd get lost there, and I only have so many hours in the day.
Here are twenty minutes, just for you, my friends, my wee internet social circle.
I'm sorry I haven't written more, but I'll try and do better...

ReRoute

Steven left a giant salamander in a casserole dish in front of the coffee maker this morning. Like the hunter men of old, I can only hope it's not 'What's For dinner'...and if so, please email all of your scrumptious but gluten free salamander recipes over to me, hell, just write them in the comments, that would be excellent...

I'm rerouting you to this blog I read today because it's just that good, and since I really am not in an entertaining mood, here's a blog entry from Petunia Face, one I only wish I'd written myself...

http://petuniafacedgirl.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-time-and-impermanence.html

enjoy :)

Retrospect (Thursday, May 18, 2006)

Still covered in hives. Still itching. The cat came back home.
So another Retrospect day for ya. (Don't be bummed; I am actually having to type the thing in.)
Stacks of old stuff. So here's Thursday, May 18, 2006

Sitting here with a bowl of sour cream and a side of microwaved burrito, I decided to say hello. I wasn't going to write today. Actually, I haven't felt like writing in a while, but I got a sign.
There was a man standing on the side of the road with an empty milk jug, turned sideways, on his head. I didn't know if I was seeing correctly, because sometimes, I don't. But most definitely, a milk jug, bent into a little milk jug hat.
"This must mean it's time to write my friends," because when I see a man on the side of the road with a milk jug on his head, I'm compelled to tell someone. So I go into Food Lion, and the old man that usually bags my groceries is in the meat department.
"Good Morning," he says.
"There's a guy with a milk jug on his head out by the road," I tell him.
"Does he have a long white beard?"
"Yes!"
"Yeah, that guy comes in the store sometimes. He seems pretty normal when he speaks, you know. One day he came in and was telling me how to plant my turnip greens."
"Wow."
"He may just need some medicine," he says.
"I bet that's it," and I push my cart to the dyed red cherries.

A thought popped into my mind that perhaps I'm as screwed up as the milk jug guy if I have to talk about him. I'm feeling guilty for gossiping; guilty for thinking I may be in some way superior. Perhaps God is testing me. I think when we talk of others downfalls, we do it out of insecurity...'I'm not so great, maybe I can talk about how screwed up this person is and take the spotlight off of myself.'
You know, you can never take the spotlight off of yourself. You know that, right? The brightest spotlight you will ever see will always be your own. So here I am, writing to you about Milk Jug Hat guy, but revealing that we are all just milk jug hat guy, we just ain't all wearing the same hat. I didn't know when I began this that I would come to this conclusion. You see what rambling does to me?
The young grocery store manager smiles at me and says Hi when I'm leaving. I've had a cold and feel raggedy and tired. I wish I had dressed for the store. Why is it, when a handsome guy smiles at us, we wish we looked better? Even if you're married or have a buggy full of screaming rugrats, or you're 150,000 years old, the young store manager smiles, and you want to look better. What for? I want to get over that. I guess it's the spotlight thing again. I want to be able to smile back, knowing I have spinach in my teeth, and laugh about it.
That's what I want.
So I haven't been writing in the book either. After asking my mother and Steven if they would read the first 80 pages, they said they would when they had time. Months later, they still haven't found a time slot, and discouraged, I wonder if maybe I should take it back before they find the time. I don't know if I ever fully make sense.
The other day, I was driving over a little bridge, over a little creek, and saw something out of the corner of my eye. My first instinctive thought was that it was a tiny beached killer whale (like Orca, just wee tiny). My second thought was to tell myself that I'm completely out of my gourd. More likely it was a white plastic bag. Why on Earth was my first instinct to think there was a killer whale in that tiny creek? Strangely, I saw a man walking down to that creek with a fishing pole the other day, and I laughed to myself.
"He's going to try to catch that killer whale." God help me. Now you are probably wondering if the guy really had a milk jug on his head. I'm telling you, he did. But I am less and less sure of the fact that I make any sense; I can only ramble and write what I know, and hope that you can pick out something that you can relate to.
I gotta run, Shan is having an ice cream picnic & I'm in charge of Reddiwhip and cherries!

Much love to you always~ your truly

Not much today. Covered in hives.
My eyes took turns being swollen this week, Thursday left,
Friday Right, Saturday, under eye right...
Giving up bananas this week to see if that's the culprit.
(Off gluten 2 weeks!)
I guess I'll eradicate everything until I'm living off of
Starbucks and apples. (Kidding!)

Hm. So nothing of interest here. Oh! Saw two guys playing tennis outside the court yesterday, I thought because the court was too full. (Which it was.)
"They are not playing tennis," Steven tells me, "They're playing birdie."
So we drove past the two grown guys playing 'birdie' on the lawn, next to the tennis court.
"I think it's sweet," I said.
"Yes," my husband says. "Two men involved in sweet activity." We're laughing now, and he tells me sweet isn't the word. Sometimes you can use a word that isn't exactly the right word and it can work. (For instance, my husband's odd use of the word 'birdie' in lieu of badminton. Personally, I prefer it.)
Something else happened yesterday, and I remember saying, "I'm gonna blog about that!"
Unfortunately, I no longer remember what it was, only that it seemed blogworthy.

And the cat ran away.

I'm itching and so I'm gonna leave you with that. I'm really glad you stopped in~

Have a sweet day!

Retrospect- Monday, April 24, 2006

Another Retrospect, you say? Well, I could tell you that I've been nursing a cold cup of coffee for the past hour listening to the umpteenth day of rain, but it's not so interesting.

so yep. I give you Monday, April 24, 2006

I woke up this morning and opened the deck door. Something about the day called me to garden, something I love to do. Maybe I can get some weeding done! Pulling tangles of wild strawberry vines up from under the roses, I was bit by a spider.
"Let me explain," he said.
"Go on,"
"I've been watching you uproot plants. You can sit there and uproot a small plant, and yet you lovingly work around the larger one that you've decided to befriend. What makes you the judge of what is good?"
"I was just pulling weeds," I said.
"Ah. How do you determine which plant is the weed?"
"Well, usually the one I didn't plant. Are you through now?"
"I'm just getting started," said the spider. "This morning I had two friends. We had a nice breakfast in the undergrowth, and your large filthy hand appeared." I looked at my hand, and indeed, it was filthy.
"I watched you encounter my friend earthworm. You carefully cradled him up in your hand and moved him to safety."
Ah yes! This morning while weeding, I found a little earthworm, trying to escape the newly sunlit ground I uncovered. He slid across my palm, and I wondered, 'Do worms feel love?' As a child, I would pick them off the city sidewalks after the rain, trying to save their drowning little bodies from the afterlife. Even now, when the rains come, I pick them off my driveway, setting them in pots. My husband fishes with them, insuring me that they stay on the hook better if slid on lengthwise, hook through their little worm mouths, the sideways and again. If worms feel pain, do they also feel love? Is it better to feel neither than both? I watched him slip under the landscape timber that borders the garden.
"I remember Earthworm."
"Then I watched you encounter my friend grub worm."
Grub Worm? I didn't remember. I told him so.
"You don't remember GrubWorm because you smashed him with the flat end of your shovel."
"Oh." I did remember that.
"What makes you think you can be the judge of what is good or what is beautiful? I have never met a larger hypocrite than you! Do you take on this God Complex in every aspect of your life? GrubWorm had a sweet, juicy inner core...but based on your opinion of what was good, you disposed of his little grubby life! Hypocrite, I say! Long live your gushy spirit, Grub friend!"
And with that, I smashed him with the flat end of my shovel. (Hey, that way, they can be together, right?)

My spider bite is still sore. (Yes, there's a real spider bite. It all happened, just like that. Although walking back to the house to get some mango tea, I thought I heard a little spider voice, telling me that the spiders wre going to band together. They would hide where I least expect it! I think this voice was Steven's, ha ha...)
One of the things I've learned from Steven over the years is to shake my shoes upside down before I put them on. Spiders, he tells me. Once when he was little, he had cowboy boots. After summer one year, he went to get them out of the closet, and there was a dead rodent inside one. So not only does he shake his shoes, but he also sticks the pair he's going to wear the following day up high on a table. I don't go that far yet, but I do shake, and YES, I have shaken out a spider in the past couple months. (Steven also won't get into bed without checking the sheets & under pillows for spiders. Would you say he has a phobia?)
I was really going to talk about my weekend. My mother, trying to make a lemon meringue pie, saw her crust cracked. Irritable, she went home. Steven, thinking we were having pie, brought his sweet tooth home from office depot, and stood staring at the cracked crust. He decided he'd make scratch brownies. After working on them for twenty minutes, the last ingredient was flour. There were two recipes, side by side, and instead of using 1 cup of flour, he used 2.25. His dream of watching Kill Bill One (again) and eating late night brownines was ruined. No more sugar meant there were no more second chances.
"There's half a pear in the kitchen. If you want, I'll put some chocolate syrup on it." He didn't see any humour in what I'd said. I got a kalhua White Russian out of the fridge and sat with him, watching the hansou sword scalp Lucy Liu. Again. Hmmm.
If I ended this with "I went to the kitchen and got that pear half that the kids had left; sometimes you just have to appreciate the little things" that might sound good. But in truth, I threw it in the trash the next day, so that would be a lie. (Like the spider story is not a lie? you say? Hey, I'm even writing your dialogue in here! No, the story is not a lie, merely the dialogue. Perhaps not even that, but spiders talk much too low for me to be able to understand them.

I love you all so! Have a great morning!

Oh, and Congrats, Shannon~ Your baby is too precious.

Saturday, Actual Exchange

This past Saturday, it was raining, and my husband, children and I sat in the parking lot of Starbucks, the girls drinking green tea frappaccinos, Steven & I with Latte's. I was sitting on the side with the street lamp, looking up at the rain.
I hadn't remembered the rain ever looking like that. Soft, like hair. Strings. Bouncing off my hand like rubber ball snowflakes. Moonlit and majical.
This is the actual exchange between my husband and I as I held my hand out the window marveling at this newfound discovery of rain.
ME- "Look! The rain- it's like moonlit hair; floaty shiny strings of somesort. Amazing..."
HIM- "I wonder what kind of mushrooms they put on your steak."

HA. :D

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Random stuff...

Is there no better finale to a huge deal of a show than a
cringe worthy inspirational song about reaching your dreams?
That's right, I'm talking about American Idol.
And that yearly CRINGE WORTHY ballad at the end.
This year Kara wrote the song. I think she were a wee uncomfortable, but the judges were trying to be nice. "Let's not judge you by that song, let's say you had a great year."

Riding the train of thought for a moment.
Train of thought says
I hate ignorant people.
then, doesn't everyone hate ignorant people?
then, what if ingorant is just a point of view...
To somebody,
I'm probably ignorant.
Hmmm.

I'd prefer not to be.

But maybe,

I don't hate ignorant people.

Maybe I just feel sorry for their lack of intelligence.

then,

well, I never went to college,

and my manuscripts are returned so heartily

perhaps I am not the one to judge

who's ignorant and who's not.

Perhaps no one is.

"Where are those nasty crackers?" he says. What nasty crackers? The nasty seedy ones, and he's digging through the cupboards. Oh, I say, those were my moms and she took them back.

"They were gluten free!!!" he says.

"Yes, and she took them back to spread fancy french cheese on them." They are probably better with cheese, he says. They were so nasty. Taste like burnt up roaches, he tells me, still glancing in the cupboards. :).

"You know," he says, "my stomach and head haven't felt good for a couple days. You think I quit gluten too rapidly?" Um, no. Why, you wantin to eat bread?

"No, I was sorta wanting the beer in the fridge."

(No gluten=no beer, although they make a few gluten free varieties not sold in our tiny town...)

La bave du crapaud

n'atteint pas

la blanche colombe.

Yesterday

You know when you're a child, everything looks better, seems bigger. You eyes magnify things and your memory wanes, til you think things are grander than they actually are. One example is the time my husband was very excited that we were going to Gatorland, a place he visited as a kid.
"They have a 50' swinging bridge over this swamp filled with alligators..."
Well, they don't. They have a little boardwalk, maybe 10-20 feet, over a park area that has no gators. 10-20 feet is probably big for a kid, and children can imagine an empty marsh full of alligators easily. People haven't squashed all the creativity out yet. His mind had to grow the sight he'd seen in order to make it still awe inspiring for the grown mind.
Because the things that we think are great when we're small may not seem so as we get older.
I experienced this yesterday.
Yesterday, I made an old familiar dish my mother made every week growing up. We ate it often, so I didn't remember it to be out of the ordinary.
Boiled chicken hearts & gizzards. You boil em, then dunk them in ketchup with hot sauce. (I told you, my mother said as a kid, I'd eat whatever she cooked. She was right!)
So I boil up hearts and gizzards, and my 10 year old is walking past.
"Taste this," I tell her, and I hold the fork out. She eats it. "Pretty good," she says.
So she walks in circles, talking, eating bites of hearts and gizzards. Fifth or sixth bite in, I hold a little heart up on the end of the fork. "Look! BaBump, Babump, Babump..." (Okay, babump babump is my heart beating sound).
She gives me an odd look. "What? Is that what it is?" Then she spits the bite in the trash, runs out side and starts to spit in the yard.
"You said the first five bites were pretty good," I commented. There'd been a running joke that one day I'd cook em, and my mom was coming over, so I did yesterday.
"I made your favorite," I tell my mother. She responded that we were poor and ate that stuff to make do- when we weren't eating the free Denny's food on the days she worked. Funny, in my mind, Denny's is still this fabulous place, too. I still have an old collection of paper Denny's masks, not even cut from the original sheets. Maybe I could frame then and hang them in the playroom. :D.

That was Yesterday.

What i Give to You

What I give to you is 30 to 45 minutes of my day,
not everyday but sometimes, when I'm

a. bored or

b. not so boring.

Sometimes I go days collecting the non-boring bits for you,
trying to gather little pieces or ordinary that you may not notice
but are not that ordinary after all.

What I give to you is akin to Fallon's giving choice bits to his cats,
A bite here and there yet not the bulk of my day.
The bubbles on the bath, shiny and lovely
but I never go near the water.
There aren't moments where I slip and go deep;
Writing this is like writing to myself.

It's a one-sided sandwich; I am the speaking and the listening.
I am the bread folded over hiding my peanut butter, honey and bananas inside.
There is no second slice of bread in blogging.
:P.
I do not let you view bruised banana chunks
But the big nutty bits are too much of me as a whole!
So you have to eat them
Hope you like them
If you're here you're probably full of nuts yourself

thanks for dropping in :)

Because because because because because!

Because of the wonderful things he does!

I must first apologize for the little coconut story in case its too vulgar for my sweet readers of prudent ears. I actually toned it down to get it here, but I don't know.

Maybe apologizing is the wrong thing to do.

Maybe I cannot ever be the same person twice in a row, twice in my blog even.

Or maybe, I'm the same person in every single blog if you read far enough to get to know it.

And you just stick with me anyhow. (If so, Thanks for that!) Eventually, maybe you'll find me back at the place where you liked me best, and I'll be once again a welcome sight. It'll happen.

We ate some gluten free chocolate chip cookies last night. The dough taste funny, familiar but indescribable. Made from some sort of bean flour. Yum!

My husband and I were watching the movie Baby Mama with Tina Fey the other day. It is so strange and funny what different creatures a man and woman can be. I just kept watching the movie, wondering, "What color is that living room in the apartment? And what about that color? I wonder if it would work in the bathroom or hallway?" So everytime they show the apartment, my brain is in paint chip mode.

So then, my husband shouts, "Hey! Did you see that?" Huh? I say. He grabs the remote and rewinds. Very important indeed for my husband to rewind!

"The park bushes. You see that?" and he has it paused. "The park has been planted to look like a womans genitalia! See that?" Of course, he reasons, they have purposely planted the hedges in the film to look like a giant green, um...bush. Purposely?

I don't know, I have my doubts. But I felt that one person would definitely know-

Jimmy Fallon, of course! Fallon is the one who could bring back that Late Night Letterman feel. I couldn't click with Conan, but Letterman was sarcastic love for me. As a preteen, he was the one that made me laugh, the smart snarky guy who'd hang with the likes of Fran Leibowitz and Bud Melman, and he made television classy and raunchy and lovable. I bought his top ten book and dreamed of him, in a weird way he made me imagine myself not the geek i was, but cool. And trust me, I was a geek.

Fallon now has that chance to make late night right again.

Who doesn't just adore Jimmy Fallon, he just looks like the cute little neighborhood kid...

but he's not- So I email Jimmy Fallon my questions about the paint chips and the vagina park, but no response. Not from his people, nothing. Not a 'Thank you for your email' from the lady in housekeeping, nothing.

Certain of course that Fallon has the answers, I wait. But I feel that probably Jimmy Fallon sits among all his 42 cats, cats over and under his bed, they are scratching on papers like the ones you see on animal detective, then jumping on the bed for bits of cold cheese sandwich. On white bread. Even though white bread is not hip and trendy Manhatten grub.

No doubt Mr. Fallon is reading my blog (right, he's one of the five of ya) sitting on some old star wars bed sheets with cats cats cats. I do however give him the benefit of the doubt, as I imagine he would give them the center bits of choice, and eat only the crust for himself.

As I do you. ?.

"No! No! Don't take my cats!" he'd say tp the pet detectives, crying and covered with hair, but as a young celeb, his cats are safe. I've heard that when he's feeling kinky, his wife goes up to broadway and rents an old Cats costume including full makeup. But with a skirt, no undies, just a Cats top half then the skirt and some orange leg warmers. Cause that how Jimmy Fallon gets happy.

But don't tell anybody you heard it from me!!!

Ha.

So I've got tons of gardening to do...

If you purchase roses from mail order own root sites, often they tell you to snap off the buds to stimulate root production. (I know, I really need a separate blog for this. Otherwise, one minute you care, the next you don't)...I really have a hard time snapping off the pending flowers on a potted plant about to bloom. I want to see them. I wait too long, so I can see them, but then their scrawny asses stay scrawny too long. So my gardening tip for the day is pinch off the buds on new mail order own root roses.

(this rose is called L'Ingenue)

Thanks for stopping in-

Irritable Me

Long time no see! (okay, just a few days.)

I'm not my cheery self this weekend. Could be a few reasons for that, like...

1. Due to some recent unpleasant gluten allergy discoveries,

this week we removed all wheat and gluten items from our home. Three big boxes full.

This would include cereal, pasta, muffin mixes, brownie mix,

an unopened pack of cookie dough, noodle soups, of course.

This also includes the Wasabi Almonds we love so much, and

I'm trying to find a Wheat free soy sauce we can mix with wasabi for California rolls...

This will also require some diligence and will power.

Not that we go to Red Lobster more than 1-2 times per year,

but the very idea of telling the Red Lobster folk to hold the bread basket is disturbing at the least. No more blogging on my love for the Cap'n, as I ate my last bowl of it a few days ago. The box of pumpkin bread mix I hid a few days ago, my husband found. "It's all going," he says.
Bare with me as I go through my gluten withdrawals.

2. My bathroom floor. This week, I noticed something on my floor. I've tried scrubbing it, but no luck. (Okay, I'm going to show you a couple pics of my bathroom...Woo Hoo!)

(No decor jokes. Remember, I revel in being boring.)

Okay, now look closer! Ack! Yellow stains on my marble!

I read that I need to make some sort of poultice out of peroxide and gypsum to fix this, which I'll be trying out, then I'll be resealing the floor.

I tell my husband my findings. "You can do it," he says. I can?

I should've titled this 'my frou frou Martha Stewart day', as I feel quite weird talking about a marble floor or admitting the possession of one on my blog.

But like a dog with its mind forever on some squirrel, the marble tile stain never is too far from mind. Floor, floor, floor.

Though currently rotated with passing thoughts of some sort of glutenous item I can't have.

I have to thaw some chicken today, and we'll boil red potatoes (no gluten there) and,

wait, what's that? A spot on my floor? A giant spot on my floor? And it looms overhead.

3. I wasted 1.5 hours watching a TiVoed movie called The Breed. Stupidest movie ever. The cast didn't seem so bad- Michelle Rodriguez, Oliver Hudson, Hill Harper. They could have done worse. But the movie was just completely awful. First of all, these folk are supposed to seem like frivolous college students, but yet they look like intelligent 30-somethings. Old ass college students. So they fly to this island they inherit from a dead uncle. On the island are they dogs with perpetual rabies. When the folks get bit, they can sense the dogs.

At first, I thought that maybe the people bit would turn rabid and get some special effects. No such luck. The dogs are not so scary. The movie is scary bad. Make note that if you need an office gift for someone you really don't like, buy the DVD and wrap it up. (That's evil of me; go ahead and get them a nice movie. Good Karma will reward you. The little devil in me says the wrong thing sometimes...)

I apologize for being so irritable. I think I need some fresh air.

If this is your first time visiting my blog, go to the list and click on something in 08. I don't think there's too much 'cranky Kat Lee Reader' in 08.

If you are here because you Googled 'Toilet Seat Alarms' (one third of all folk that have stopped by got here by googling toilet seat alarms! true. It's because of a previous blog somewhere)

thanks for stopping in!

And good luck to you with your toilet alarm review search.

I'm happy to have helped you in that way :).

Much love, yours truly~

My husband's ride has air conditioning,

Which is awesome!

If only I didn't feel as though

I needed a booster seat to drive it.

Today I saw a long brown piece of tape from an old cassette stretched out and blowing in the wind in front of the grocery store. It's been a while since I'd seen one of those.

I also saw a box of CoCo Wheat at the grocery.

And a bottle of Geritol beneath the vitamins.

It made me think of Lawrence Welk.

Do you know who Lawrence Welk was?...

I wear a little bracelet.

It says

You can Never go down the drain. -Mr. Rogers

Now that I started that durn rainbow of bits,

I felt slightly obligated to come up with two more things...

Have a sweet sweet day.

Really Quickly!

(The family napping on a Disney bench outside the now Defunct Space Mtn. I took the photo.)

Okay, I'm home!
But my to do list is long, too long for the days limited hours, and I should NOT be here.
Really. But I am, so I'll be very quick.
My 13th Anniversary today! Definitely, I should be blogging about how awesome my husband is, but instead, I'll blog about his and my favorite things during the trip.
So we got home late last night, and after getting all our stuff unloaded & kids to bed, we sat and watched Ladies #1 Detective Agency, then went to bed ourselves, exhausted.
The light went out and Steven says to me,
"What was your favorite thing on the trip?" & I'm drifting off already. Huh? I say.
He asked again. I already know what he's going to say.
"You wanna know mine?"
"I know already. You're gonna say breakfast."
"Not just breakfast, you remember the-"
"The ladies who thought I was crazy. Yes. I knew you were going to say that."

In order to keep the girls surprised, we said we were going to Kentucky. We got lucky when they never saw us cross the Florida state line, and checked into the hotel that night. But the next day at breakfast, Shanna mentioned to the waitresses it was her birthday.
"Are you going to Disney? Epcot?"
The kids didn't hear her and I panicked. (Interesting, panic has a k when you add ed...)
"H-huh?" I'm stuttering.
"Are you in Florida for the Birthday?" they ask.
"We're not in Florida, W-we-we're in Kentucky," I get out. Steven is staring at me across the table and in that moment, I know this is coming back to me. The waitresses look afraid, as they back away from the table slowly. I'm nuts.

"Do you know what my favorite thing was on the trip?" I say.
"Hmmm?"
"When we were at that raggedy backwoods Captain D, and I ordered the salmon plate, and you asked the little hillbilly girl if the Salmon was caught in the wild or farm raised..."
He did. He did it, and I just stared at him.
"Are you for real?" the girl asks, "Is he jokin?"
"No, he's not joking."
When they start to holler back to the folks in the kitchen the origin of the fish, people were getting in line behind us. I went to the table with the girls because I didn't want them to think it was me.
"I should've pinned that on you," he says. "I should've said 'My wife wants to know!' "
That would have been completely like him. For those of you that don't have Captain D, it's like McDonald's but with fish.
His question would be the equivalent of asking the origin of the beef in a big mac. Um.

I really do not have time to blog today though.
And there are things I'd love to blog about!
Like-
Accidentally getting on the email list for Freecycle.
Every other email is about guinea pigs, guinea pigs taken, free guinea pigs, but the other day, somebody was giving away their control top hose. 14 pairs. Various colors.
And
I sold the naked cucumber painting! (There's a photo on this blog somewhere, but I don't know the exact location/day of it. I think it was early 2009, if you are wanting to see it.)
And the time alloted for blogging
And Jimmy Fallon didn't answer my email
So I'll probably have to blog about that as well soon
but not on my anniversary,
which also happens to be the last day we can work on my daughters project
which is far from finished. Argh.
More later. Have a really good day!

yours truly :D

2 Cone Day!

2 cone day

Jame & Lucy were playing when jingle ring! The ice cream man!

Then Jane gave Lucy the money to get hers.

After the long long long line, Lucy got back

but Jane was riding off with her mommy & daddy.

"You can eat mine!" Jane yelled!

A 2 Cone Day! Yippee! WoW!

But Lucy counter her chickens before they hatched!

She didn't keep her eye on the prize.

But somebody always is &

By the time Lucy opened her eyes,

Unseen forces that be had gobbled them up

& All Lucy had was sticky fingers!

I got a lot of stuff to do & won't be back with you til Monday or Tuesday-ish...

~Til then, have a great weekend~

& Keep your eye on the prize :)

Please Check Out BlackandMissing.Blogspot.com

Today, Blogspot featured a eye opening blog I believe everyone needs to read.

http://blackandmissing.blogspot.com/

Black & Missing but Not Forgotten. I saw the name and clicked over. Blog after blog of children, missing. Children I'd never seen on the news. Child after child, some missing weeks. A missing 12 year old girl that was 8 months pregnant, but not even reported.

Enough about Octomom.

I want to hear about this young child/mother. Is she okay? Surely the government doesn't assume that since she's black she was promiscuous at 11?

Does it? If someone deserves a protector, let it be her.

From toddlers to teenaged honor students, these missing children have never gotten media attention. How many mothers out there would be freaking out if their child was missing one day? Why doesn't someone bring attention to these babies? How could this be?

It could be, because:

1. This is not your average hillbilly stuff we're dealing with. This is the media & our Government shortcomings.

Even in northern states, major cities. I'm not scared of Hillbilly Racism. The stereotypical hillbilly is frowned upon in general, not as a matter of race, but for everything but race.

(I'm not referring to all Southern caucasian folks as hillbillies. The hillbillies I'm talking about are, um...they are children left to fend for themselves behind the trailer while their parents lit old cigarette butts and bleached their mullets. Children that were not correctly parented, let's say, and now they've grown up. But they don't scared me. And Thank God their votes for scarey Sarah Palin didn't frighten me either.)

The issue of racism is not a imaginary weight on the shoulders of the African American community. Racism is real. It's real, and so intertwined into daily life that you can go without even noticing it. If you're white.

When Adam Walsh went missing years ago, John Walsh said the police didn't even know how to make a poster. The strides that have been made to find children are immense.

Halfway up the ladder you are higher up. why stand halfway?

Maybe someone could come up with some sort of letter writing campaign to make it mandatory for every missing child to be posted on the news. Even as still photos & descriptions. You can comment that it would take too long to do that. Is that because you have to get your weather three times during a one hour news broadcast? (If so, sacrifice one of those and flip over the The Weather Channel afterwards. Every 8 minutes, there.) Replace the traffic reports?

You can then say that posting a photo doesn't mean we'll be able to do anything to help that child. Maybe you're place is not to help the child. Maybe you're place is to CARE about the child. The media has a such huge impact on our view of the world...

Make room for all children as though every child were your own. Make the world care because those children are our own.

I don't know what I can actually do, except refer you to that site.

People underestimate their capacity for change.

There is never a right time to do a difficult thing.

A leader's job is to help people have vision of their potential.

John Porter

perhaps the five people that click on my blog today will in turn click on that blog.

And maybe they have blogs, better bigger ones.

And then maybe they'll write about BlackandMissing.Blogspot.com too.

today maybe you're the leader those missing children are looking for.

~Thanks for stopping in~

In Retrospect 1.30.06

I've got these stacks of old emails I used to write to my friends. Piles of them. And since none of my friends see my blog (really! & no one in my family even knows I have a blog, except my husband, who peers over my shoulder occasionally)

this old stuff is new again. ?. But I thought maybe a couple times a month I'd throw one in.

Here's Monday, January 30, 2006 for you.



"Horsie!"

"Horsie!" she said, pointing out the window. It's a concrete stretch of 41, right where the interstate meets the highway. I look over and there it stands. It's the giant Budweiser horse, sitting in front of a gas station. Or shall I say standing. Really, it wasn't standing; I mean technically it was, but to be honest, somebody just pulled it off a rig somewhere and put it in place, a clump of metal or clay or whatever. Large and statuesque, it's the Trojan horse of our generation hiding some sort of message deep into its underbelly. My child loves it, and if I could, I would steal it for her and set it up in the backyard. She could ride it all day and we wouldn't have to feed it or wipe its steaming turds of off the soles of our shoes.
I'm sure the store would sell as much beer without it. I don't really know what the horse has to do with beer anyhow. What is the message they are trying to convey?

This is the only horse big enough to haul your fat drunk ass home.

Yikes, I'm terrible. So what else is new? I read the Essay that beat out mine in a contest I entered, titled "What Would You Do If Someone Gave You An Old Saloon?"

"This one just sucks," I tell Steven. He tells me they were probably related to the judge. He's biased and I am too. I try to tell myself that God probably thought they needed the money more than I did. Maybe they were on the verge of getting evicted or something? I mean, how else could something along the lines of, "...And everyone who passed through the archway would start off with a clean slate," beat out my organ grinding monkey in a red feather boa and the Asian spa girls setting up hogs in the beds of the passed out drunk patrons?

Maybe I'm a victim of reading too many Bukowski novels, and all those Divine movies I watched in high school I'm sure didn't help. I'd go to some sort of tent revival if I thought it would help, but all that talk about hell makes my stomach ache.

I don't personally believe in hell, but it's funny the way you hear some talk about it. I think some folks truly think that Jesus is going to announce his coming on some sort of universal speaker, take all of His people, then leave monsters to eat the rest. (You know, the rest that don't fall into the molten lava when the Earth cracks to bits). For those people, I secretly hope that when they meet Saint Peter, he turns out to be Sikh or maybe even a hasidic Jew. Even funnier, you get there and Jerry Garcia is standing at the gate in all his tie dyed glory.

"Where's Saint Peter?" you ask.

"Oh, he's brushing up on his golf game. I'm filling in today."

I'd better change the subject before lightning strikes.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"What you just did. I hate it when you do that." My spouse has a pet peeve because I used the hot sauce, then licked the top of the bottle before I closed it.

"What are you talking about?"

"When you lick the bottle. That's disgusting."

"No it's not. You and I are the only ones who use it."

"It doesn't matter. It's unsanitary."

"No, really it's not. If I just leave the hot sauce like that, then it dries up and crusts at the cap. That's unsanitary."

"Just don't do it. I hate it when you lick the bottles."

"I don't lick any other bottles...You don't see me licking the ketchup, do you?"

"Not the ketchup, but you lick all the other ones."

"Name one."

"Well I can't think of one just yet, but you do."

"That's what I thought!" but then yesterday I caught myself licking the cocktail sauce bottle. Luckily, he wasn't looking. Geez!) I can tell you this because you are my friends and I know you would never judge me. Mmmm! Nothing like the sweet taste of friendship! It's easy to be honest through email.

I hope everyone of you are doing marvelously. May you have the greatest Groundhogs Day of your lives! I'll blow out my Groundhogs Day birthday candle s and wish that you were all with me. Maybe one day you will be!

Shall I include the monkey essay? Ah, why not...

What if Someone Gave you an Old Saloon?

Once, when I was ten, we flew to California. My aunt lived there and she took us to all the places that tourists like to visit. One of those places was called Fisherman's Wharf. Fisherman's Wharf was full of interesting things I'd never seen before, pelicans, sea lions, and well, the ocean, of course. But there is one thing about the Wharf that sticks with me to this day.

At one point we came across the loveliest thing, a tiny monkey donned in a little vest and hat, dancing along side an organ grinder. I had never seen anything so sweet.

"What's his name?"

"Tito," the organ grinder told me.

I reached my hand out and tried to give little Tito a quarter, and things quickly turned ugly. With a screech and a lunge, that sweet wee monkey was on attack mode, and had I not moved back, I'd have been bit.

"Tito don't take change," replied the organ grinder, and they grinded away.

Well, you may think I'm a little off course, but here's when I'm headed. If I was given the great opportunity of having a saloon given to me, I feel fully that every saloon needs a Mae West. Since I couldn't pull off a feather boa or satin dress, I would search the world over and find Tito and his organ grinder. Tito would fit the bill perfectly. I already know he looks good in red. Also, I'd be able to pay him in singles and peanuts, which would save on entertainment.

At the bar, I'd place an old mare, back facing customers. When someone leaned on the bar, a prerecorded voice would ask "What'll it be?" I know it would be pretty difficult to have a horse mix margaritas, so I'd serve only brew and whiskey to keep it simple. In a hidden room on the side, I'd hire a rugged old rodeo star, or hell, a rodeo clown would do, and he'd pass the beverages through to a conveyor belt. I'd give him cable and a cot, and pay him in singles and peanuts too.

I'd rent the upstairs rooms out to drunk patrons, and allow an Asian spa company to take over. rather than charging the massage therapists to use the facilities, the only condition would be that once the men were passed out, they would have to help drag tranquilized hogs into the beds with them, laying one drunken arm lovingly across the pink beasts.

In the mornings, after hearing girlish squeals from upstairs, we would all have a good laugh with some really fresh bacon or ham sandwiches.

I know this sounds more like a petting zoo than your typical old saloon, but who doesn't love a petting zoo? Just don't get too close to the monkey, he's a live one.

Okay, so I can see now why I didn't win. But the memories this brings of poor tiny Tito!

I don't eat Pork.

Unless it's Bacon.

Then I'll have seconds.

hope you enjoyed my 'Retrospective'...