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 |  My Blog....Pearls of wisdom and/or foolish mutterings.....You be the judge.... |
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A little of this, a dash of that......epic mood swings.......A LOT of foolish mutterings and occasionally a few words of wisdom. It's a crapshoot. You never know what you'll find in here... |
| I've been a bit out of touch lately, although I have popped in on occasion to read a few blogs and post a comment or two. I've missed being here, but I am on a long-delayed and eagerly anticipated week long escape to my sister's house in New Mexico. Kathy's house is where I go when I need to regain my sanity or when I need to recharge or - and this is the best part of all - when I just want to be completely ME. There is no other place in this world that I can relax the way I can when I'm here with my sister. (This statement will take on much more import in a few paragraphs, trust me.) Everyone should be so lucky to have a sister like mine.You'd love her - I promise. We laugh - A LOT. We shop. We talk, and talk, and talk. And then we talk some more. I don't know how she does it, but somehow Kathy always helps me remember who I am. I can be lost as a goose, crazy as a bedbug, and a week with my sister will set me back on course. If I could bottle her, I could make a fortune curing all the ills of the world. I'm crazy about her, in case you haven't figured that out. We've spent some time this week letting our creativity flow. We made some extremely funny refrigerator magnets (I'll post pictures of some of them later on) and went bead shopping, because Kathy makes incredible jewelry. We sat in the middle of the square in Old Town Albuquerque taking pictures of ourselves and cracking up over the really bad shots. And then there was the RANDOM ACT OF CUPPING. It was really just an innocent accident. Really. Kathy, my niece Alyssa, and I stopped to grab some lunch at a Mexican food restaurant in Old Town Albuquerque. They have great chips and salsa at this particular restaurant and Kathy and I both like lots of salt on our chips. So, our table top kept getting covered with runaway salt, which I kept brushing off at random intervals. At one point, I carefully brushed all the spilled salt into a pile. It was a little hill of salt - not quite a pillar, just a little hill. Since my purse was sitting on the floor beside me, I didn't want to brush the salt off the table only to have it fall into my purse, so I cupped my hand around it and brushed the hill of salt off the table with enough force to send it far, far away. At that precise moment, unbeknownst to me, a waiter was walking up behind me, making his way to the patio to the left of where we were seated. I swear to you, I couldn't have timed it any better if I had tried. Just as my cupped hand left the table and swung down and away, the lucky waiter walked right into my cupped hand. I don't know who was more surprised - me or the waiter - but my perfectly cupped hand came up and under his perfectly positioned right testicle and rested there for the briefest of moments. Alyssa called it right when she said that my arm had the perfect momentum to cause my cupped hand to lift and gently weigh, as it were, the waiter's testicle. He never broke stride. Just kept walking, uttered a quick, "excuse me" (as in, 'oh, how terribly rude of me to hit you with my testicle') as I jerked my arm back and practically shouted to his receding back, "OH! I'm sorry." Of course, all three of us immediately dissolved into giggles which continued unabated for the entirety of our lunch. I don't know how any of us managed to choke down any of our food; we were so damn busy laughing. The first few times the sexually-assaulted waiter had to pass our table again, he stayed far to the left and moved quickly. But, finally he stopped by our table, stood there and laughed. It was all a little surreal (is that an understatement, or what?) because none of us made eye contact when he did that. He just paused, laughed and then walked on. We finally finished our meal and made ready to leave. Kathy told me that she wasn't sure of the protocol when a testicle cupping has occured - should she leave an extra tip? I told her, hell no - he already got his tip. He wasn't our waiter, anyway. Although, I did notice that there was a steady stream of waiters passing our table after a while. I'll be here for two more days. I'm hoping to make it back by the Mexican food restaurant before I leave. I just have to make sure they seat me where I can get a good swing at the LEFT one this time. |
| Well, I finally did it. I went to see my doctor and .... DISCLAIMER**** Any men who may be reading this might want to avert your eyes. I'm going to talk about the dreaded and mysterious Wimmin Stuff. ****END OF DISCLAIMER Okay, now where was I? Oh yes, I remember. (mmm hmmm, see, it's helping already!) I went to the doctor and grabbed her by the lapels on her cute little doctor's coat and growled in my best imitation-of-Satan voice, "Give me hormones and give them to me NOW! She was a bit taken aback by my approach, although I have to say that if she expects me to believe that's the first time that has happened, I'm not buying it. No way. But, I digress. So, Dr. MissPriss adjusted her prissy doctor coat and looked me square in the eyes and said, "Well, we don't really like to do hormone therapy here." Streams of fire shot from my eyes and lit her hair on fire (as this was not a "weepy" day, it was a "murderous rage" day.) As she set about dousing her head in the sink to put the fire out, I told her, "Look, I've already suffered through almost three years of hot flashes and my husband sleeps in a bullet-proof vest. Unless you've got some hormone-sprinkling fairy up your sleeve, "we" need to rethink that policy." I have to give her credit. It had to be hard for her to try to salvage her dignity as she sat there with smoking hair and a crumpled lab coat with permanent creases in the lapels, but she gave it a shot. Studying my chart, she officiously said, "Let me check your chart. Hmmm, Mmm-hmm. Okay, we'll do it. Give me a minute." She scurried out of the room, never turning her back on me once. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. "Come in," I called. The door stayed closed. "I'll just stay out here," Dr. MissPriss shouted through the closed door. "Now, is there any history of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer in your family?" I answered a quick "no, no and no," and heard a shuffling sound by the door. I glanced in that direction to see pieces of paper being pushed under the door. More shouting from the other side, "Okay, here is your prescription, an order for a mammogram and bone density test, and one for some blood work." "You can come in," I tried again. "Really, it's okay." "No, no, that's fine. Just give me two minutes to clear the hall and you can find your way to the front. Oh, and if you need anything else, just call - really, no need for you to come back in." I gathered my papers and the precious prescription for hormones from the floor, waited the allotted time and then made my way out into the hall. There was no one in sight. I knew Dr. MissPriss was lurking somewhere nearby, though, because I could smell burnt hair. That was six days ago. Maybe it's psychosomatic, but I swear I'm feeling better already. ***NO DOCTORS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG*** |
| Hi, Honey! I'm home! What a BIZARRE summer this has been. I feel like I wandered off into an alternate universe and got separated from the pack. Something like that. In actuality, I sort of did exactly that. I wandered over to Open Salon for a while and created a blog there, with every intention of posting there and here, as well. Yeah, so much for "the best laid plans of mice and men." I kinda, sorta got stuck over there, due in part to my stubborn nature (more on that later.) However, recently I've been completely wordless when I try posting to my blog at OS. More often than not, I find myself drifting back to WDC and wistfully reading the blogs of my friends here. I've been trying to write a new post for the last couple of weeks and ... NOTHING. It's been like a log jam of words and thoughts when I sit down to write. I HATE that. And maybe I really don't have a lot to say right now, but at least I've been able to get a few words down today, so that's progress. I found a couple of very nice, "where are you?" emails when I came back here on occasion and I want to say thank you to those of you who wrote to me. (You know who you are - and you're the best!) I kind of feel like I've been on a long journey and finally made it back home. And - ahhhhhh - it's so peaceful here. Just what I was missing. I have a lot of catching up to do with a bunch of you. And that's what I'll be doing over the next few weeks. It's been a rocky few months all the way around. I need a warm, welcoming place where I can write about it. I'm sorry for just disappearing without so much as a "fare-thee-well." Good friends deserve better than that. I hope you'll all forgive my lapse in thoughtfulness. I think that's enough for today. I must read - lots to catch up on. I'll be back. |
| While Charles and I were gone on vacation, Eli took over the job of taking applications and screening potential tenants for the house in LaPorte. I'm happy to report that he did an excellent job and our new tenants signed a lease last night. They move in August 1. YAY!!! That's the good news. The bad news is that now we start on the next house. Can you hear the excitement in my voice? |
Sooo, it's been a while. I have been working on "building a platform" to give my book some credibility when I query agents. Let me tell you, it has been a full-time job. But, I'm happy to report that it is beginning to pay off. I have submitted story after story to magazine after magazine, e-zine after e-zine; I have entered contest after contest; and I have read everything I can find on building a platform as a step toward getting published. I'm very well-versed on this subject now, thanks to all my research.  I got an email on Thursday night from one of the e-zines I submitted to that they have accepted one of the short stories I submitted for publication. It will appear in one of the fall issues (not sure which one yet, but they said they will notify me of the exact one soon.) I also uploaded my novel on to authonomy.com and have been tirelessly monitoring its progress and networking like crazy to get my novel to rise up in the ratings. So far, it has gone from number 3786 when submitted to number 1384 since June 25th. The goal is to get you novel into the top 5 (which is the HarperCollins review shelf) and keep it there for a certain amount of time in hopes of it being selected by HarperCollins for an editor review. I also went on that much-ballyhooed white-water rafting trip that I impulsively bid on at an auction last year and won. I HAD A BLAST! It was in Idaho on the Salmon River - five days, four nights - class 3 and class 4 rapids - camping at night - the whole nine yards. The company we went with - Action Whitewater Adventures - is first class, all the way. I can't say enough good about them. It was a wonderful vacation and I'm so glad we did it. The group we went with was very interesting and Charles and I had a great time getting to know everyone. Oddly, there were five doctors in our group - a kidney doctor, a PCP with Kaiser, and 3 internists (is that the correct term? I think it is.) There were people from New York, Washington, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania (and of course, Texas!) The youngest person in our group was 10 years and the oldest one was a 73-year-old retired high school English teacher. I'm ready to go on another trip now. It was way out of my comfort zone and I had such a great time. Just goes to show you, you never know! So, that's where I've been. Now I need to go read and comment and try to catch up with everyone.  |
| I'd like to ask a simple question. I consider myself to be a happy person. I like to laugh, I like to joke and I like to make people laugh. I like to make people happy. I don't go around looking for people to pick fights with (although I'll admit, there was a time when I was pretty well-versed at that - I wasn't very happy then.) But that was a long time ago and I've grown up a lot since then. Now, most of the time, when I got out in public - to the grocery story, the post office, the hardware store or any number of other places, I keep a smile on my face, I speak kindly to people - and more often than not, they return the favor. Somedays it just seems so easy to have a happy, not-too-stressful life. Even when problems arise, I'm a problem solver and I can usually come up with a solution that, while it may not be a total fix, it at least makes them better. So, why then, I wonder, does this same strategy not work so well in my own home? I'm big on attitudes - I think they are very important. A good attitude goes a long way toward making situations more bearable. A shitty attitude, or more precisely, a confrontational and critical attitude does nothing except make those around you uncomfortable and creates a palpable tension in the air. I learned a long time ago, that when we engage in biting teasing or critical comments that are passed off as "jokes," the only person we are fooling with that kind of nonsense is ourselves. No one else finds it humorous or endearing. And when one person in the household is determined to behave that way, it throws the whole household off balance. I understand stress. I understand not being at one's best because of situations. What I don't understand is making those people who care about you the most "pay" for the shitty day you may have had. I'm not a mind-reader and I've learned that asking too many questions is a sure-fire way to set a match to a smoldering fire. I get tired of this kind of bullshit. I think it's very immature. And I'm not one to keep my mouth shut or hold back. I'm even less likely to keep quiet about my feelings now than I ever was before. Hopefully, I'll have the day to myself tomorrow so that I can get my bearings again and not go into the weekend with tension levels set at detonate mode. That remains to be seen. I'm pretty tired of being accommodating. And I think life is too short to go around with a burr in your saddle most of the time. But that's just my take on it. I could be way off base here,. But no, I really don't think so. |
| First, Ed McMahon, then Farrah Fawcett and now Michael Jackson. It hasn't been officially announced yet about Michael Jackson, but TMZ is reporting that he could never be revived after suffering cardiac arrest at his home and now some of the news stations are starting to pick it up. Isn't it bizarre how it always does seem to happen in threes? Weird. |
| Way too much introspection in this here blog lately. I need some lighthearted banter or just some plain old nonsense. As my granddaughter, Olivia, says, "Fewph!" I'm glad I snapped out of it before I naval-gazed myself into oblivion. (Olivia just says the "Fewph" part, not the rest of it. That other part was me. Just to clarify.) Olivia will turn five on Sunday. She asked me for my address and phone number at church last Sunday. I said, "Do you really need my address or just my phone number?" She said she definitely needed my address, too. Okay. So I got out a pad of paper and wrote my name on it (well, I wrote Mimi) and then my address and cell phone number. I gave it to her and she looked at it and asked me if I could write my name smaller because she doesn't know how to write it big like I did. Huh? I told her that was just the way I write and she could write it any way she wanted to. She looked at me for a long minute and finally shrugged her shoulders and walked off to find her other grandmother to get her contact information. Last week on Friday, I was driving to a school where my grandson, Aiden, had a science workshop for the last few weeks. It was the last day and all the kids were presenting their projects. Aiden made Viking ships. Anyway, I called my daughter to confirm the directions she had given me. As Breeann was telling me the street I needed to turn on, I could hear Olivia pipe up in the background, telling her mother, "Umm, Mom, you're on Fairmont." Except she still has a little trouble pronouncing her 'R's', so it's the cutest thing when she says anything with an R in it. She gets really frustrated when you can't understand what she's telling you, though, so you have to listen carefully and decipher quickly if whatever she's saying has a lot of R's in it. She really is adorable. When Aiden was two-and-a-half, he watched Teletubbies (I know, I think the show is creepy, too, but babies love it.) Anyway, he was learning his colors at the same time and for the longest time, his word for the color red was "Poe" and he called yellow, "Lala," because the red Teletubby was named Poe and the yellow one was named Lala. I hated when he stopped calling them poe and lala because it was just so cute. It's funny now, because he's such a particular little guy. Everything has to be just right. He has a very large vocabulary and he won't hesitate to correct you if he thinks you have used a word incorrectly. Especially if his sister uses a word wrong. He won't let anything slide. We had a big family gathering at my house on Saturday. All the kids and grandkids were here. With so many people around, Baby Ray (who is 18 months old) took advantage of the pandemonium to eat as many marbles from the Hungry Hippos game as he could get his hands on. His mother discovered him walking around sucking on something and when she checked, he had one of the white marbles in his mouth. She took it away from him and gave it to me. When she set him down, he walked straight into the playroom and a half-second later, he came straggling out of there with his eyes bugged out, making a choking sound. Kristen ran to pick him up and when she grabbed him up, he managed to swallow whatever it was and he stopped choking. I'm quite sure it was the last of the Hungry Hippo marbles. I went in the playroom after that to make sure the game was put up so he couldn't get to it anymore and I didn't find a single marble. I have a feeling Kristen will be finding them for a while!  I can't write about all of my grandkids without mentioning the baby, Isaiah. He's eight-months-old now and he is the most adorable little roly-poly guy you ever laid eyes on. He just sits and smiles at you. I hope he stays nice and calm like that, and that he doesn't follow in his big brother's footsteps. Baby Ray comes into the room (when he's not busy gobbling marbles) and just starts sweeping stuff off tables. Then, while you're picking everything up, he makes a break for the front door, and if you haven't remembered to lock it, he pulls that handle and takes off out the front door. The kid is fast, too. But back to Baby Isaiah. He's at the age where he gives you those big, sweet, open mouth kisses. He'll grab you by the hair on the side of your head and pull your face toward him and give you the biggest kiss. Then while you're still smiling and thinking what a sweet baby he is, he leans in like he's going to put his head on your shoulder, all sweet and nice. Then he finds that muscle on the top of your shoulder and chomps down on it with all four of his little teeth. It's his version of tough love, I guess. Ahhh, I feel much better now after the Grandkid Report. And now.... a link to pictures of the aforementioned adorable grandchildren;http://picasaweb.google.com/kayspage/KidsAndGrandkids0609?feat=directlink |
| My brother is forty-nine years old this year. The reason this is significant is because for forty-nine years, more or less, I have been in the business of defending him, taking care of him, bolstering his self-esteem and, essentially, doing whatever I could to make his life better. I've also spent a large amount of that time either worried, terrified or depressed because of him. We grew up in the same dysfunctional home and neither of us had a fairytale childhood. I was his defender then and I never laid that responsibility down. As my brother (we'll call him M.) and I grew up and began making choices on our own, we chose different paths. I chose the road that would take me as far as possible from the life my parents lived; the path that M. chose anchored him not only to that life, but also to the pain that accompanies it. The life my brother has lived up to this point has been filled with heartache and failure; he has known few successes and even fewer happy times. Over time, I have wondered what made the difference. Why did I choose to rise above my upbringing, so to speak; while M. set his life's path on self-destruct and stubbornly refused to veer from that decision? I don't have an answer to that question, not one that satisfies me. For years at a time, M. and I went through periods of sporadic communication, as each of us lived our separate lives. It was easier for me during those times, to imagine that M.'s life was improving, that he was making better choices. Always those illusions were shattered by calls from my dad with news of M.'s latest crash-and-burn. I would then monitor (through phone calls with my dad) M.'s climb back up to a semblance of "normal" life. I was content to leave M. and his family under the watchful eye of our dad during those years. It was less painful to watch from a distance and I chose to believe that "no news was good news." My dad had the unenviable position of being M.'s keeper. On occasion, I would call M., or he would call me, and we would talk as we had when we were kids, with M. telling me his version of the events that had wrecked his life, things that had been done to him, and all the reasons why his life was so out of control. I listened, encouraged, cajoled, provided answers and did my damnedest to rescue him, always convinced that I could save him. I remember the panic I felt when my dad died four years ago and I realized that it would now fall to me to pick up the pieces the next time M. crashed and burned. As panicked as I felt initially, I faithfully began the process of becoming M.'s caretaker.Although he had been married for over twenty years, and had two grown sons who lived with him, I was the one they all turned to when a problem arose, just as they had turned to my dad for all those years. How was it possible, I wondered, that the level of dysfunction in my brother's family was even greater than that of our own family's during our childhood? Against the advice of my husband, I took an ever-expanding role in the "care and feeding" of M. and his family. The more I gave, the more they took. My efforts to show M. that life had different answers than the ones he had found so far, only caused him to cling ever tighter to the drama he was accustomed to. As a result, I found my self-assigned job of caretaker to be an ever-tightening noose around my neck. Determined to "save" my brother, I became the poster-child for co-dependent behavior. As M. clung to the helping hand I had extended, I wasn't able to pull him up. Instead, he pulled me deeper into the craziness that had ruled my childhood. I'm learning, slowly, that no one can help my brother except my brother. As much as I want his life to improve, I can't want it for him. I have to let go. I can't be the one with all the answers; I don't have his answers. I do good to have my own answers on a semi-regular basis. I'm learning to stop being his rescuer, but it doesn't come naturally. |
| This is not a test. But how many of you know the song It's Bad You Know by R.L. Burnside? If you don't know it, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzC_rGX-XyM It's an awesome song. The reason I bring this song up is because when I decided on the subject for my blog today, this song immediately popped into my head. So I wanted you to get the full effect. I hope you all were good little automatons and clicked on the link so you now have the song in mind as you read my confession. Okay, here I go - out with it. Just like that. On the table for all to see..... You know how I bitched and moaned about Facebook a while back? I'm here to report that it has totally sucked me in and I have gone over to the dark side completely. See? It's Bad You Know I now have Firefox set to open two pages when I click on it - one is WDC (the first tab, I might add) and the second one is, of course, Facebook. Sometimes I even forget to open my email because I'm so caught up in what is going on in Facebook. I have even gone so far as to have a little online tiff with a very rude young man who posted a ridiculously inappropriate comment after one of my son's perfectly innocent posts about relaxing in Austin. Stupid little twit! (The rude young man, not my son) But, I digress. I could lie and say that I'm using Facebook to promote my blog by posting links to my port on a regular basis, but that would be... well, a lie. Oh, I do post links to my port on Facebook, but truth be told, I'm usually so busy playing around on there that I forget to post a link to anything. Yes, it's true. The dark side has enveloped me. In fact, I have it open now and keep jumping back and forth between WDC and Facebook, even as I type this. God forbid that I miss something. Evidently, I am one of those people who never learned to "never say never." I'm still eating crow over my bravado last year as the third most destructive storm in US history churned toward Houston with a vengeance as I wrote blogs and told my concerned sister with a sneer in my voice, "Oh puh-leaze, it's just the stupid media playing this up. It's not going to hit here. We're perfectly fine." My credo is something a little more to the tune of "Always speak (or write) with extreme conviction." It should be, Just hang around and watch for a while. I'll have egg on my face in a short time - guaranteed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On an entirely different matter... Today is my youngest daughter's 29th birthday! Happy birthday, Kristen! I don't know how she got to be that old all of a sudden. I distinctly remember being 29 myself, just like it was yesterday. How can it be that my youngest daughter is that age? It's a mystery! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm reading a book by Rick Bragg called All Over But the Shoutin'. If you've never read anything by this man, get one of his books. He is a genius. First, he's from the south and he writes that way. So his writing always brings a smile to my face and makes me feel like I've just paid a visit to my family back in the Panhandle of Texas. (He's not from Texas, but it's the same all over in the South, trust me.) Second, when I read his writing, he inspires me. I want to jump out of bed and go write something, anything. I just want to get words down on paper as soon as possible. So I fall asleep composing a blog, an article, a short story, something in my head. I love that. And third, the man is a seriously talented storyteller. He writes the kind of books that make you want to crawl inside of them and live there. He writes the way I want to write. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry.... I was gone for a minute. I had to sneak over to Facebook and add a comment. Actually, I think my time here today is done. I hear a game of PathWords calling to me over on Facebook. |
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I'm so far right the Tea Party looks like a bunch of hippies!