In Memoriam

I have a good friend who has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). She is a member of my Red Hats group, the Scarlet Snickerdoodles. She put in a request today. She is planning her Memorial Service and wants to be sure that we attend in all our Red Hat Glory and plethora of red and purple garments, hats, gloves, pins, and whatever else red and purple we can drape ourselves in.

It socked me in the stomach and left me breathless. She's dying. She's not just terribly sick; she's over the top sick with a disease that there is no cure for. She is going to leave us soon and wants to plan a last big bash where she won't be attending.

If you were planning your own memorial, what would you do? What would you say?

Here's to Lois - my friend. Here's to a special person who is a friend to all who meet her, who has a daughter and granddaughters that adore her, who has a husband who thinks she's just tops; who is part of a group of nutty women who like to wear purple and big flamboyant hats.

Here's to Lois who only desires to make memories, lots of memories, everlasting memories.

Here is to my vibrant, living, breathing, very, very, very good friend. Lois.

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Write-in for Vice President

I am trying to figure out why I don't like Sarah Palin. It's not that I don't like her. I don't like what's happening with the 2008 election process with so much focus on this one person because "she" is a "woman" and, yada yada yada.

Am I jealous of her? I don't think so. Maybe it's because on the list of qualities for her, I can say the same things about myself. I don't see myself as Vice President material. So is it a low self esteem issue? What?

I don't wear lipstick. Not for any fashion statement – I just find it kind of yucky and will chew it off by the time I hit my desk. So I simply do not wear it. Since I am 59 years old and could have been wearing lipstick since I was 16 (in case my parents would let me), I could have saved enough money in not buying lipstick over the last 43 years, that I could have developed a huge 401(k) plan (moot point – with the stock market dropping 500 points and all the other recession nastiness we are experiencing right now). But hey! I could have saved a lot of money.

So it's not the lipstick. That's on her list. It's not on mine.

Here's my list.

• I'm a mother of two boys;
• I change my own flat tires (maybe that's not on her list)
• I change my own light bulbs, fix my house when needed (repair windows, paint, replace worn siding, clean out the pipes under the sink, catch and dump dead mice, catch and release all other living creatures).
• Not on my list: I don't shoot living breathing Bambi's or Bullwinkle's.
• Not on my list: I don't fish – worms hate me
• I was a single mother for most of my sons' upbringing (not on her list)
• I have made financial decisions by myself without a husband; I bought my own house under my own name; I paid cash for my car; I have friends to repair my car.
• I work at a day job; I work as a parent; I work as a homemaker; I am my own wife.
• I am experienced in time management, project management, child management, career advancement for my children, nurse and fireman for my children, chauffeur, cook, bottle washer, and home schooling in the evening after the public school gives them enough homework to keep them in a coma for a week.
• I am not a hockey mom – it's not in my budget; I am a cub scout mom which entailed more hand's on, dig in the cupboard and garage and find everything you need to help your son build a cherried out stock car out of a small piece of wood.

Ok, back to this question. Why does it bother me so much? I said the same things about Hillary that I am now thinking about Sarah.

I think it is all the hoopla over her lipstick statement vs. Obama's lipstick statement and then McCain saying Obama wasn't being specifically offensive to Palin in his lipstick statement (totally avoiding saying that he, McCain, was the first one to say the lipstick statement months before Palin even arrived). So all the news blips are all about who said what about whom and nothing about what.

I blame the media on this big time. They snatch a phrase or even a burp and blow it way out of proportion and sidestep substantive issues – like taxes, stem cell research, health care, social security, world peace.

Ok – I think my list is longer than her list. Should I run on the independent ticket? Can I run as Vice President or do I have to have a President run with me?

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Walking for a Friend

It was a beautiful sunny morning, perfect for a walk with friends. I arrived at 9:00 and donned my ret hat, took my sweater off to show my purple shirt and made my way to Mirabeau Meadows to join my other Red Hat friends from Scarlett Snickerdoodles. Whenever we gather, we have fun, we laugh, we giggle, we act silly, and we make a show of ourselves. People take our pictures, thinking we are some kind of circus act or parade performer. We are the Red Hats. We are getting up there in age and we are going to dance the whole way. We are not following rules and we are not going to be polite little old ladies with simpering smiles. We are going to wear purple – and pink and red and green and orange and we will do this with the most clash we can manage. We will wear feathers in our hair, jewelry on our fingers, wrists, ears, necks. We will wear lavish red hats with gaudy pins and plastic flowers and long fluffy scarves. We will laugh loud, hug long, and love deep. Most importantly, yesterday we were walking for a cure. A cure for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). We were walking for a fellow Scarlett Snickerdoodle – Lois.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a motor neuron disease, first described in 1869 by the noted French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Although the cause of ALS is not completely understood, the last decade has brought a wealth of new scientific understanding about the disease that provides hope for the future.

Lou Gehrig first brought national and international attention to the disease in 1939 when he abruptly retired from baseball after being diagnosed with ALS. Most commonly, the disease strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. | http://www.alsa.org/

The first thing I noticed was everyone laughing and hugging and the air of festivity rang through the park. There was a live band playing very good music and coffee and hot chocolate and krispy kremes were enjoyed by children, adults, people in wheelchairs, volunteers. It was a party! It was a celebration! This was the Walk to Defeat ALS, held at Mirabeau Meadows, Saturday morning, September 13, 2008. Three miles along a portion of the Centennial Trail. I estimated 400 walkers. Maybe more.

There were 12 of us from Scarlett Snickerdoodles. There were several groups of people walking for their loved one – some walking for two or more special people in their lives. There was Team Jason, Team Watts, Team Chicks for Chuck, and many, many others. One team “40” looked like it had 40 participants. I mention Chicks for Chuck because I loved their t-shirt. They loved our hats. I told one that “our Lois” would be arriving soon and she leaned into me and said their Chuck had passed on but his wife was carrying on his fight by helping organize their Chicks for Chuck for the annual Walk to Cure ALS.

We were a wonderful beautiful crowd of people filled with hope and love and anticipation. The cure for ALS is becoming a reality!

Lipstick on a Pig

There it is, that ominous phrase. Kind of like "When Pigs Fly."

I do not for one nanosecond believe that Obama made that statement as a slam against Palin. It has been said before by several politicians. By McCain himself. How can that possibly relate to Palin? I am thinking the Democrats protest too much over nothing.

The glorification of Palin is a rather bleak outlook on our society in general. If you have good looks, are female, represent Mother Earth, pro-life at all costs, hunt and kill dinner for your family, and are nicknamed Barracuda, you have just qualified to run for Vice President of the United States with the 150% chance of being President within 100 days of inauguration. O boy!

How can this happen???? Does being a mayor of a small community and then governor of a sparsely populated state really give you the credentials to be, by all accounts, the President of the United States?

When we vote this fall, in just eight weeks, we really need to look at the ballot. If you are voting for McCain – think again. You are actually voting for the Vice President because his life expectancy has been greatly reduced and is much shorter than you realize.

So this morning, the news is all about the innocuous phrase, "lipstick on a pig," where Obama is referring to change in America. Not once inferring that it was directed towards Palin. But the Dems are spending all their time and energy trying to make it so. This is the stage of politics that I really truly hate. It is enough for me to not want to bother with the elections. We are in for a huge, huge change in America no matter which way we go. But I fear for our country and our soldiers in Iraq if we go McCain/Palin. I fear for our President's own life if we go Obama/Biden.

I fear for our women, too. We have just back-pedaled 30 years where exploiting women was the rule of the day. Once again we will have posters in garages, not of models in swimsuits, but politicians in high heels and - - - - - lipstick. All the news and all the blogs are covering Palin and underscoring good looks, beauty, etc. as the proof positive that men still see us as sex objects, better if we are barefoot and pregnant. We have grossly erased the impact of Roe v. Wade and will eventually lose the right to our own bodies. Again.

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Little Toes

I have been going through boxes of old clothes, toys, books, and dishes, all neatly packed over years and years of living in one house since my mid-30s sons were toddlers. O, the treasures I have found! Every box I open is like a looking glass to the past, when the two boys were small and almost identical even though they are 17 months apart. I am able to go through their childhood, layer by layer, grade by grade – I'm going backwards, you see – from 12th grade where my son bought and paid for with his own money 36 graduation pictures, wallet sized, still sitting in the box they came in. That is somehow sad. I remember his face falling when I told him he was responsible for the pictures. What I hadn't figured on was the circus salesman attitude of the photographer – guilting my poor shy son into buying 36 pictures for "all those girls just clamoring to ogle you in the privacy of their own bedrooms."

Then on to a box full of headless G-I Joes. Now there's a story! I just don't exactly know what it is. I remember the boys playing with their G-I Joes, mixed with a huge bag of rubber Army soldiers, a third smaller than Joe, and a mismatch conglomeration of Star Wars characters and one Weeble. Here they sat, most without their heads, laying spent on the floor of the box, their masters having gone off to bigger things like getting married, buying a house, paying bills.

I lifted up another box and found every stuffed animal my two hunkie men would not part with. Not for the bully next door. Not for money. Not for a new razoo Big Wheel. Here lay the loved, cherished, treasured fuzzy creatures that kept the two safe from boogeymen at night. They'd been everywhere. They'd been in the bathwater, in the tree house, dragged behind their Big Wheels, tucked in with the neighbor girl's doll carriage, tied to the back of the patient and long-suffering family dog. They had no fur. Some missing eyes. Some with big safety pins holding buttons where eyes used to be.

One more box was in the kindergarten layer of memories. Those wonderful days when the boys were still my babies, still fat, still eat-em-up chunkie. Here were finger-painting drawings of Mr. Sunshine, the [same] family dog, Stick-Mommy, and Stick-Brother in front of a little house with eyes for windows and a smiley face for a door. I used to have this and 30 or 40 others taped to my fridge – rotating as the boys moved up in grades.

And finally – the little red hand print of my oldest, done in felt, backed by lace paper, the shape traced from his fat little hand. And underneath it all a Plaster-of-Paris plaque of my youngest son's fat squatty foot, delicious little toes formed in the plaster and the instep painted in glittery gold. I sat back and instantly could see the 20 little five-year-olds running around barefoot in the kindergarten class as the ever patient little kindergarten teacher (not much taller than her charges) was orchestrating the procedures for memorializing all their precious little feet. Sweet memories!!! The days go by way too fast when it comes to our children. I can't hold it clenched to my chest hard enough – they continually travel by, memory by memory.

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Attack of the Killer Kidney

I've been KO'd by a little kidney. Well, not so little – probably huge. Just what you wanted to read about over lunch: my bulging, growing, cyst-filling kidney(s).

I have Polycystic Kidney Disease, which is the most common inherited disease in the world (beating out diabetes!) and the least known about.

So Friday I woke up feeling like one of those commercials for Nyquil – tired, achy all over, sneezing, fever, backache, whopping headache, and nausea. I know you empathize with me.

I went to work anyway and then had to turn right back around and head for urgent care. Three hours waiting, I kid you not, and I headed to the pharmacy for antibiotics, pain killers, packs of Jell-O, and home and straight to bed. I mean, my significant other had wind burns as I passed him in his comfy easy chair, NOT working. (I'm the breadwinner in this family.) Seriously, I was hoping the doc would say, "You have a really bad and very contagious cold – go home, go to bed, stay off your feet." But, nooooooo.

The last time I had a kidney infection, May 22, 2002 (you don't forget these things), I had a CAT scan. The assistant fussed around with me to get me just right and then started this thing that can only be described as a metal cylinder that looks like the back end of a jet – and it will confirm this vision once the engine starts and I mean – you think you are going to take off into space. It's a huge rumbling spinning sound like a whole bunch of loose ball bearings are charging around and around inside that tube.

I was laying there thinking "be an appendix attack. be an appendix attack. be an appendix attack." But when the assistant came out, her eyes were huge, huge pools in saucers; "Wow, you have really HUGE kidneys." They are NOT supposed to tell the patient that. The radiologist himself is supposed to tell you that. Not the 19-year-old, gum chewing, zit-faced KID.

Now here I am again, waiting for the diagnosis of (cross your fingers), a COLD.

Nope. I had a kidney infection.

See, I hate the word kidney infection because it means that my kidneys are getting attacked again and they just don't need any more pressure from the outside world. They are deteriorating just fine all by themselves. This just adds salt to the wound – oh, but I can't have salt. Just in time for the three-day Labor Day weekend. . . . . . . . . . woohoo.

Now, I'd rather give birth than have a kidney infection. (I've heard the same about kidney stones, too.)

The thing is, you see, I pride myself on my happy attitude. I'm up! I'm positive! I'm cheerful! I'm always going forward! And here I am flat on my back with not even enough energy to flick the power button on the computer, let alone SIT there and try to think of something to write and my fingers and my brain are NOT communicating with each other at all. I'd just as easily hit the delete key as the save key and not know the difference. Maybe I'll have an already-made cup of Jell-O.

It's not that I like to dwell on my disease. We all have some cross to bear. I just don't like to go on and on about it. I like to think that my attitude, my positive thinking, my happy thoughts will slow the decline. Most people with PKD end up on dialysis or have a transplant. I should be very fortunate (and lucky) to just go along as I am now with the occasional kidney infection and sometimes the [very painful] explosion of small blood-filled cysts bursting inside my kidney. I tell myself that as long as I am keeping a good look on things, keeping a positive attitude, then these nasty little interruptions too shall pass into oblivion and I can go along like everyone else.

Still, when it knocks you out, you lie there in bed thinking, gee, could it happen to me? Will I have to go on dialysis? Will I have to have a transplant?

Well, I'm back at work – still climbing up the wall of feeling good. And back to my positive attitude. I will not be ruled by my body today.

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Bicycle Summer

I have raised my kids since they were two and three years old. We have had adventures, disasters, comic relief, and endless days of fun. We have had slumber parties underneath the dining room table. Built forts out of boxes in the back yard. Gone for lots and lots of drives in the country and told each other our deepest, most private secrets. Like, “I ate a worm yesterday.” “I hate Betsy; she’s a GIRL.”

Our wanderings and travels usually cost only gas for the car (very cheap then – five dollars would fill up my car that got 40 mpg). We would go to the airport and watch the planes land. We would go to every single lake within a 30-mile radius – there are lots!!!! We would go for drives that ended up with picnics along the Spokane River or in the woods of Nine Mile.

My youngest son had a spirit about him that Just.Would.Not.Quit. Their grandfather was about ready to bust his britches when we moved back to Spokane and they were about four and five years old. He brought them each a bike to ride – and their little legs wouldn’t even reach the peddles, let alone the pavement.

The youngest one persevered. He’d drag the bike over to the front porch and then leap onto it from the top step – only his momentum would propel him to tip over on the other side of the bike. But he persevered. Then he started running along the sidewalk with the bike at his side and take a flying leap to the seat and coast for ten feet until the speed slowed to a point of wobbly tires, and tip over. Finally, various neighbors would feel the daddy genes kick in and often I would see one of them racing along the street with my youngest ensconced on his precious bike, arms spread wide, grin from ear to ear, that he was actually riding a bike. (It never came with training wheels, you see.)

My oldest child waited until his legs grew long enough so that he could practically walk the bike while seated.

The youngest loved his bike. The oldest hated his; “it’s ugly baby poop brown, Mom!” or “It’s dorky!”

Then there was the summer of the bike thefts. The younger son’s bike was stolen - - - frequently. Once we found it right under our noses – on the side of the house where bamboo grew wild and created the perfect hiding place. Once returned from another little friend who was mad at him last weekend but not today. And finally gone forever by a nasty little kid on the other side of the school.

I eventually got him a new bike.

The older son wailed, “Why can’t they take MY bike!!!!”

“Because it’s dorky,” said the younger.

So it was with little surprise that one day I arrived from work to see the dorky, poop colored bike hanging on our fence with a sign “take me.”

There were no takers.

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Is Forgiveness Overrated?

Well, the verdict was made. The evil Duncan has been sentenced to death and now we will sit on our hands waiting for the outcome of the automatic appeal and hope that he will waive his rights.

I have just finished reading William Young's The Shack and the theme throughout is forgiveness and being filled with God's love. The main character, Mack, is asked by God (Papa) to forgive the man who kidnapped and murdered his daughter. Mack could do this, with 100% help from God.

On this side of reality, can Dylan's dad forgive Duncan, who not only kidnapped him (and his sister) but sexually tortured him for more than 37 DAYS, and then shot him twice, in front of his sister, and then burned his body to the point that investigators were only able to retrieve a hatful of pieces of bone and hair?

Could you, as a parent, FORGIVE this man?????

I could not. As much as I walk with God, talk with Him, try to give everything to Him - asking me to forgive my child's murderer and the methods of the murder is too much. I hope I never have to walk down this path.

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Dinner with Friends

I have mentioned my group of friends before – we are "sisters of the heart." I think we are like a marriage but even better – our divorce rate (I mean us, the "sisters") is a whole lot lower than for all those other married couples. We have been a loyal group of five for just endless years (around 30) and we have never sought out a younger, firmer replacement, nor have we had illicit and clandestine meetings with anyone we would think were filling our needs better than the other four members of our group. We have occasionally had a sixth person – usually a daughter, sometimes a mother. Our mothers have all passed away and now we are running through the daughters as our sixth.

The five of us are J1, J2, J3 (me), S, and C. I say their initials only because they would freak if I publicized our antics for strangers to read and they would slap their hands over their mouths if someone actually knew who I was talking about. So – a lot of subterfuge going on.

We meet once a month for dinner and our conversations are laced with gossip, sex, sagas, episodes, tears, laughter, and on into the night. We choose different places throughout Spokane for our monthly gathering. We tend to forget that there is anyone else present in our space – like the waiter or waitress. Waitresses seem to understand what we are talking about; waiters always come in at the very end of a topic or at the peak of a topic and walk away thinking we are discussing all the steps in making love to our mailman without our husbands getting the drift, only we were actually talking about our dogs being bred to raise pure bred puppies. Like I said – men tend to get a small piece of the whole story and walk away with a whole new story on us. Out of context. Really!

We share intimate details of our lives while enjoying each other's company for these monthly trysts.

For example, J1 had breast surgery, which she paid for herself, to make her more endowed. We individually went with her to the restroom at one of our dinners to have a viewing. It caused quite a lot of heads turning, people buzzing, what's going on – and hard to explain that NO we aren't doing an imitation of Larry Craig. After all the ooing and ahhing, we settled down for dinner and J1 passed a sack to me of her cast off bras, which slipped in the hand-off and spilled all over the floor of the bar we had decided to eat in. So – here I am, blushing the color of a tomato, gathering up various "practical" bras for someone who obviously doesn't really have a use for them. But there you have it.

We get along fairly well for being almost sisters. We have our moments of sibling angst. But we work through it. One of us usually has some major trauma/event to discuss at dinner and we are fairly decent about sharing our two hours together so each of us has a chance to spill our hearts – whether for five minutes or for 30 minutes, whatever we need. We have no rules. We aren't judgmental, well, rarely. I'm sure when two of us get together away from the others a little judgment might happen.

To be continued, for sure. . . .

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Evil Incarnate

These are my humble thoughts on the Duncan Trial. Taken from Community Comment. To those not from this area (Washington and Idaho), this is from a case where a predator, who has spent most of his life in prison for rape of children, stalked for children to kidnap, who he referred to as "flowers", and premeditated down to the bitterest detail, their kidnapping, torture, and murder. On May 16, 2005, he found two "flowers" in northern Idaho, by watching them from the freeway past their home. He brutally bludgeoned and hacked their mother, brother, and mother's fiancé to death, then kidnapped them and went on a 46-day rampage with them, torturing them, molesting them, raping them, threatening them, and eventually killing one of them before returning the survivor to safety. The jury today found unanimously that he is qualified for the death penalty, and will now convene on Monday to decide whether he indeed will get death or life.

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This is giving me nightmares. Honest. Every night I lay in bed and I rehash all the "twitter" news I learned during the day. When this first got to jury selection, I was remarking even then that our justice system is way too lenient and nice for the likes of Duncan. And THEN the trial started..... Every day there was something more cruel or more gruesome. When I got to the day of the video and learned that Duncan shouted to DG that he was himself (Duncan) the devil; the devil has come; meet the devil. And suddenly DG was MY little 9-year-old boy. He was MY little sprite that loved to discover bugs in every curled leaf; who made friends with every dog he ever saw; who would take an hour to walk the one block home from school because of all the things he had to take time to discover! He was MY little boy who shouted Mummy, I'm home! and curled up in my lap to share his latest adventure. He was MY little boy who never knew a stranger; never knew evil; never knew anything but unconditional endless love. I weep for DG and his little boy days; for his sister who witnessed and watched; for his Dad who was helpless to do anything at all to save his son.

Maybe the jury will believe as we do, that a death penalty would be too understated. It is NOT an eye for an eye.

I know - maybe we can call for the death penalty anyway - and every day he walks death row, gets buckled onto the gurney, gets poked with a needle and when the curtain opens, nobody is there to watch. The guards decide to send him back to his cell until they get some people to watch his ending. The next day they start the whole ordeal over again, over and over and over. I hope, in that case, he lives to be 100.

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Psalm 139, God's Love Letter to Me

(Papa's version, thanks to The Shack)

1 Honey, I have searched you
and I know you. I know your name.

2 I know when you sit and when you rise;
I can pick out your thoughts from afar.

3 I discern your going out and your lying down;
I am familiar with all your ways.

4 Before a word is on your tongue
I know it completely, honey.

5 I protect and surround you, behind and before;
I have laid my hand upon you.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for you,
too lofty for you to attain.

7 Where can you go from my Spirit, Little One?
Where can you flee from my presence?

8 If you go up to the heavens, I am there;
if you make your bed in the depths, I am there.

9 If you rise on the wings of the dawn,
if you settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there my hand will guide you,
My right hand will hold you fast.

11 If you say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"

12 even the darkness will not be dark to me;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to me.

13 Honey, I created your inmost being;
I knit you together in your mother's womb.

14 You are fearfully and wonderfully made;
My works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

15 Your frame was not hidden from me
when you were made in the secret place.
When you were woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 My eyes saw your unformed body.
All the days ordained for you
were written in my book
before one of them came to be.

17 My thoughts toward you are precious, Honey!
How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When you awake,
I am still with you.

23 I have searched you, Honey, and I know your heart. I know your name.

I love you, honey. I am especially fond of you.

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The Shack; God in me

I have finished reading William P. Young's "The Shack". I am absolutely blown away by this book. There should be an inscription in the front saying, "Dedicated to Jeanie [fill in your name] because I am especially fond of you. Love, Papa (God)."

This book touches my heart like no other. It answers questions about some senseless tragedies that have happened to me personally, to friends, to the world.

I will be participating in a book study with the newspaper blog, Huckleberries, on Monday. I have just finished the book and I'm ready to dive in for a second reading.

I encourage you to get your own copy and participate at Huckleberries.

Life as Dilbert

One of my favorite Brits MarmiteToasty posted at "I am surrounded by STUFF":

Does your new cubicle make you a square? LOL

Humpf. Funny, Marmite. I am getting used to my round body in my not-quite square box , and yes, I probably could be defined as a square. Haven't heard that term/slang in years. When my son came home from being in the Army for four years, he kept saying he would get something "squared away." The two terms for square meaning entirely different things, and having nothing to do with the Dilbert quality of my berth.

Well, I have made the initial move. I have taken the attitude of "simplify, simplify, simplify." Most of my personal possessions went home in five banker's boxes, including extra shoes, heating pad for my poor ailing back from all the packing and unpacking and filing and re-filing, my clock radio because it just doesn't fit anywhere logically unless I hang it by its chord from the ceiling, my fru-fru frivolous stuff that had nothing to do with secretarial work, cups and mugs that I have received over the last ten years. All my software books for Word 97, Word 2003, Excel 97, Excel 2003, and training manuals for each got trashed along with files that I had in my desk for "tips for working with your boss" older than two months because bosses change their habits at a whim and firms change your boss at an even faster pace.

I am "stuffed" into my rectangular, not square, box that is claustrophobic at best. I have been listening to two co-workers talk talk talk, who I really liked, before today, and now find extremely annoying with chit-chat, hogging the printer, mumbling under their breath, and generally invading the space I lost when I moved to this cramped cubicle.

I have concluded that it is wisest to have as little personal items as possible so that if I get totally disgusted with the whole situation, or my retirement age miraculously moves down a couple years, I can sweep my hands across the top shelf and toss everything in a box, grab my purse, and my exit check, run laughing all the way to the bank, and never worry about small dark places again. Ever.

Here's a tour of the top shelf: two plants (they can go into the garbage at a moment's notice); four rubber duckies – one a red hat duckie, one a dentist duckie to encourage me to keep on keeping on with my dental care, and a bride and groom duckie set from my son's wedding – they fit in my purse; a little glass kitty since I can't have a living one at this stage in my life (also fits in my purse); and a third plant (a "lucky" bamboo that I am thinking about tossing right now because it's NOT WORKING), and awaaaaayyyy I go.

So, I am spending much of my time praying for the social security gods to take pity on me and lower the age of retirement to 60 – I just have eight months to go. Woo Hoo.

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Some of my best friends are men

I have several groups of friends who are women. A prayer group. A red hat group. A group of women who have been meeting once a month for dinner for 30 years. And I have a few good men who are very special friends. All my friends support me and listen to me, but it is especially endearing and eye-opening to get input from my men friends on, well, MEN. You guys think WE are difficult to understand. Hoo boy. Anyway – my heart has a soul mate in a man friend who continually lifts me up and buoys my spirit and inflates my pitiful self esteem – and answers so logically my perplexing questions about what makes a man tick. I am blessed!

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I am surrounded by "stuff"

I have had to unload my desk at work to get ready to move to another, much smaller, cubicle on another floor. So, I came in this weekend and filled eight boxes of "stuff" from my desk. Half of it was work related, so I don't feel too bad about THAT. However, the other half was all personal – knickknacks, figurines, stuffed animals (so professional, don't ya think?), collectible tea cups, pictures, a wall full of ribbons that I have saved over the past ten years from every present and flower I have received. Stuff. Bits and pieces of things that have nothing to do with my job as a secretary. My life and personality lives on and in my desk and is now crammed into four banker's boxes. I have marked them "GO HOME" and am debating whether I should take them to my new cubicle, which is where I will be settled for most of my waking day, thus "home" away from home. Or take them HOME to my house.

The only drawback will be that nobody will know it is ME that sits in that cubicle – no signs of my passions, my possessions, my personality. The advantage will be that if I should {gulp} get a pink slip for whatever dire reason, I can simply pick up my purse and walk out the door. No packing! No having the office manager stand over me while I take four hours to unload my non-work-related "stuff."

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The Monster List

Contrary to "Happy Lists" (a great blog), I have Mad, Mad, Mad Lists. Actually I have one list on legal-sized yellow-lined paper. It's handwritten in different colors of ink: blue for normal-get-it-done-when-you-can; red for chop-chop need-it-yesterday; and green for whenever; I have a date at the top and then a whole list of "to do" items. Well, I go along with all I normally do in a day, and later I get out my list and add more to my list and a new date. Sometimes I will draw an arrow from one item (work on Smith file) to another item of a different date (work on Smith file).

What good does it do me to make a list of priority items that I need to do now but don't have time to do until tomorrow because I am too busy making up my list of projects to do tomorrow and then tomorrow I'll look at the list and see an item from ten days ago and I'll FINALLY get it crossed off, but there are so many arrows going to items that I spilled over to another day. I feel like Scarlett, chanting, "tomorrow is another day." Or like Orphan Annie, singing "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I'll do it Tomorrow" "There's Always . . . . Tomorrow!" And then my Clark Gable inner twin says, "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn."

My green items are colored over with blue. My blue items become red. My red items are catching fire.

I need a keeper.

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A New Kind of Wedding

This weekend my two sons and the younger son's wife will fly to San Francisco for an event that is historical in our family. Their father is getting married to his soulmate, another man. The times, they have been a'changin', that's for sure. I guess I did something right in raising my boys to appreciate their father as an intelligent and compassionate man and not berate him for choosing a different lifestyle.

What do you get for a gay couple's wedding if one of them is your ex?

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Is it just me???

So, when a lady just about my age calls me "honey," does it mean she thinks I'm a lot younger - or a lot older?

When reporters write about someone my age, do they say I'm elderly? I'm not a senior citizen yet and I guess 59 is waaaaaayyyyyy past "middle age." What am I?

But back to the honey lady. I've had women much, much older than me call me "honey." It's nice. It makes me feel like a little girl (and probably I am to her). But someone my own age? It just makes me wonder. . . is she blind? Or do I look a lot better than I think I do. Or does she think I'm old enough to be her grandmother?

When my mother-in-law had her stroke, I started calling her honey. Some days she knew her name and other days she didn't. It was just a lot less frustrating if I called her honey. She knew it was an endearment. If she was having one of her off days and I called her by her real name, she wondered who the hell *I* was, let alone why was I talking to someone not even in the same room. It just was easier to relent and call her honey.

However, when my significant other calls me honey - I am on alert. Because he calls everyone honey - especially women who are being nasty to him. Like clerks. When that happens I want to shout at them, "He's being SARCASTIC, you ninnie." But I don't. When he says it to me, though, I do a mental rollback in my head of anything I have said in the last five minutes that might be considered offensive. Granted, sometimes he is really being a romantic guy and calling me by a pet name.

If he calls me Chunkie Butt, I know he loves me.

Actually, I don't think he knows my name. In the last 22 years, I have never heard him say my name.

So, I was at a gift shop this weekend, when the clerk called me 'honey' several times. She looked to be about 60. I am still wondering which end of the scale she thought I was? Old? Young?

Have I become an old lady without any warning???

Hey! The rules totally change when it's a guy calling me an endearment. Then, depending on how hunkie he is, I immediately fantasize on my good fortune!! I blush, preen, bat my eyes, and feel twittery. Sean Connery can have me! George Clooney! Antonio Banderas! Yummy! I don't even question my age with those cuties.

But a Woman. My. Age???? Total turn off.

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The Despicable, Dastardly, Yet Desirable and Coveted Cell Phone

I am highly skilled at computer software and training staff members in Word, Excel, and just about any software that comes along. I do it well. I do it fast. I am excellent at it!

But, give me a cell phone, and I'm all thumbs. If I had to text an SOS I would be SOL, TU, and FUBAR. Don't ask.

I bought a cell phone for my Significant Other (S.O.) so he could call me when he is so engrossed in his job (restoring engines) and is in a dark place far, far away from a phone, to tell me he is going to be late(er) for dinner.

After two years of this, I finally got my own cell phone. For, you know, emergencies. But first, I needed to spend an hour with a magnifying glass to read the little manual with the teeny tiny print to see how to customize my phone. It was days before I learned how to leave an intro message that simply said, "hi, this is Jeanie. I am away from my phone right now…." No, wait, how can you be "away" from your cell phone when you have it duct taped to your right hand? "Hi, this is Jeanie. I can't come to the phone right now…." Same quandary. "Hi, . . . . I can't talk right now because I am already talking to someone else."

Finally settled for "sorry I missed your call, please leave a message."

That took about two weeks to figure that out. Then there was choosing the ringtone. I could choose New Age tinny sounds, rippling tinny music sounds, annoying indescribable tinny sounds. Or I could go online right from my phone and find sounds from movies, sounds from famous people, sounds from cartoons, sounds from Disney. . . and I immediately thought of "It's a Small World" and shuddered. Can you imagine? Just thinking of that song will cause an endless loop running inside my head for 48 hours. What would happen if it was my ringtone? I'd probably lose my mind by the end of the week. So I settled for the T-Mobile theme music.

I snapped a picture (with my cell phone after I figured out which button was the camera) of my cat and miraculously made it my "wallpaper." These things I can do blindfolded on my computer. It takes a little extra bit of time to figure this out on my cell phone.

All this is to say that it probably took me a year to figure out how to put names in my phone book, how to save my pictures, how to download sounds (at $1.99 each). And then my cell phone was pick-pocketed right out of my purse while I was at a little neighborhood store. In two minutes, my 14-month investment of brain cells trying to puzzle out the different functions of my cell phone was gone.

So now I have a new cell phone and I am having to start all over. It's not the same. My cat has since died and I no longer have his picture. My sons' numbers were in my lost cell phone and I didn't have their numbers anywhere else because they were, well, IN MY CELL PHONE. They change numbers so often that I have given up memorizing their numbers. I can't keep up. So, finally one son called and I immediately saved his phone number into my cell phone and managed to spell his name correctly – something I was never able to fix in the old cell phone. Andy was forever AmdY (I don't know how I did it).

I think my only solution is to take my new phone and go to a middle school and just hand it to the first 12-year old I see and have them set it up for me.

I also got a Blue Tooth to use while I'm driving so I won't be breaking Washington laws of not using your cell phone while you are driving (which is not being followed by the way). Only – I have this little tiny booklet with teeny tiny print. . . – So, how long will THAT take me to figure out????

I can always put the Blue Tooth on my ear (if I can figure that out), and jabber at all the idiot drivers, cursing their mothers, and look like I'm talking "hands free" on my cell phone.

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Clowns Rule!

For some reason, I have been thinking about clowns. I was sitting with a secretarial group this week, when one asked a question of all of us: Tell us something about yourself we never knew.

In the answers, one of us is a stock car racer on weekends. One was a police decoy for busting drug dealers. And one is a professional clown but she only performs for her grandchildren. (Keep in mind, these are very professional legal secretaries and paralegals.)

I've always wanted to be a clown. Inside I'm a clown. Outside I am a shy, quiet, legal secretary that dresses conservative and doesn't wear makeup (uh, maybe I should). Inside I'm also a race car driver with a bent towards demolition derbies.

When my boys were little, their aunt made them clown costumes, one-size-fits-all, which meant they were clowns from the time they were 3 and 4 until they were 13 and 14 and finally mutinied on the clown issue.

When I was 40, a coworker, Salina, thought it would be wonderful if a group of us came as clowns for Halloween at our office. (At that time, it was a manufacturing firm which made high speed printers.) She garnered two other "clowns" besides herself (yours truly and our marketing director) and supplied the costumes, the hair, and the nose. I traveled across town giggling the whole way to work, thinking how silly I looked and boy, I'd better not get in an accident. I made sure my underwear was brand-new looking just in case. (It would be the only semblance of dignity on my entire body.) I had visions of Mary Tyler Moore laughing helplessly and eternally as if I were Chuckles the Clown, crushed by an elephant because I was dressed as Peter Peanut. O dear.

I made it to work in one piece.

Then I heard all kinds of racket from the parking lot, banging on cars, snaky sounds, and spasms of giggles – and here comes the second clown, our dignified marketing director, ON ROLLER-SKATES. She hadn't skated since she was ten – so she was kind of like Bambi trying to move on ice. She spent the whole day on her skates – forever giggling.

And finally Salina arrived. She was sorry she was late because as she was getting in her car a county sheriff went slowly by and then backed up and rolled down his window. He looked at her very carefully and said in a very straight monotone voice, "We've been looking for a clown like you." And then threw his head back and barrel laughed all the way down the road – she could still hear him after two blocks.

We made it through the day, faithfully wearing our noses, and surviving all the stares and laughter at our expense, finally arriving at our homes in time to pass out candy to all the little clowns out there. (Oh, yeah, they were really awestruck!)

Since I've got the clown thing under my belt, I'm looking for a car. There's a demolition derby calling my name.

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