On Saturday my SO (Significant Other) and I trekked to Monroe, Washington for the bi-annual mega swap meet held at the Fairgrounds.
We have gone to this event religiously, twice a year, for over fifteen years – our jaunts coming to a screeching halt three years ago when his mother had a debilitating stroke (coincidentally, the day after our last expedition three years ago this same weekend). His mother unfortunately passed away three weeks ago. We have spent the last 20 days kind of faltering around with our new freedom, not quite knowing how to spread our wings and fly. So Friday night we decided we would make it a day trip to Monroe, leaving at 4:00 in the morning.
Our trip was uneventful (which is great news for us because we have Murphy's Law happening on our road trips – another story). We arrived at about 8:45 and parked our car out in the toolies and trudged our way into the Evergreen Fairgrounds and acres upon acres of car and truck parts. This is a died-and-gone-to-Heaven experience for any motor head, of which my SO is right there in front of the pack.
My SO has approximately 26 classic cars in varying stages of disrepair that he says are "project" cars, and they are stored in many areas in Spokane, including my house, his house, his mother's house, the family's barn, and a couple friends' houses. When we go to swap meets, he has in mind all 26 cars in the hopes of finding that one particular missing piece/part for that particular car. So we are walking along and from a distance his eyes pop out and he drools and chants "I spy a 55 part…." And all I see are indistinguishable parts covered in black, sticky oil, dirt, and grass. He sees a polished, shiny, smooth piece of a part that will eventually be a front bumper for a 55 Dodge Coronet.
The day was sunny and hot, hot, HOT. On the average our voyages to the Monroe Swap Meet are challenges in the weather. I have a gear bag just for Monroe which is filled with coats, sweaters, rain jackets, ear muffs, gloves, umbrellas, and hand warmers - because it is usually very cold, damp, cloudy, and just plain miserable – raining or showering constantly as we walk up and down all the hearty, die-hard vendors and their goods that they painstakingly loaded into their trucks and then unloaded onto their little square "booth" on wet soggy grass or asphalt (good in the rain if you have a tarp for a shelter; bad on hot days when the tar gets stuck to your shoes). Normally, we will stand at the car and put on layers of clothing, hats, gloves, umbrellas, and I carry a tote bag (for goodies – but also for cast off clothes as the day warms up). As we are walking along – I am vividly aware that I, as the female of this duo, am also the pack mule – my tote bag fills up with this bit and that bit and I pray that all the bits are small bits. Once I had to drag a crank shaft back to the car because it wouldn't fit in my tote bag and I'll be damned if I was going to lug that greasy ugly thing around the fairgrounds for the entire day. As we warm up, he'll take off a shirt and I'll tie it around my waist, and then I'll take off a coat and wrap that around my waist, and I have done this to the point that I had six whatever-it-takes-to-keep-warm garments wrapped around my waist so that I looked as round as I am tall (5'2"). Eventually I crawl back to the car and unwrap myself.
There are miles of "booths" set up in a convoluted curly-q pattern in and around the Fairgrounds and my SO will eyeball each and every booth – looking for THAT part. I slowly lumber behind him, getting heavier and heavier after each booth. I have done this for years now and have finally discovered something wonderful at the Fairgrounds. In the middle of the Fairgrounds are several buildings and most of the booths surround these buildings – and inside the buildings are coveted booths of long-time vendors where they are guaranteed shelter from the weather, be it cold or hot. More importantly, for me anyway, in the buildings will be wives of motor heads selling their wares which include collectibles (bottles, Betty Boop, Coca Cola memorabilia, and glassware). Now I'm a nut for glassware, children's tea sets, and Betty Boop – so I will follow the SO for a couple hours and then when we finally get into the area along side the buildings, I make my escape. I have figured out that I can leave him drooling over some (fill in Chevrolet, Dodge, Chrysler, Ford, but never ever Buick) part, duck into a building, wander around and scope all the tables and find treasures just for me and come back out the building a door down from where I entered and, viola! SO hasn't moved a foot! Once I despaired of ever finding him again among the throngs of people milling around booths and tables – he is not distinctive – he's a large man with white hair wearing a plaid lumberjack shirt – and that describes about 2,000 guys milling around one booth. I can look right at him and lose him. But for some reason, God smiles on me if I go into a building; my SO sticks to the pavement where I left him. Never fails.
We did this for about eight hours, collected our stash and went back to the car and headed home, arriving at 10:00 Saturday night.
It's good to be back in the living again!
5.19.2008
5.08.2008
Love, Life, Living, and Dying
Well, I'm not writing real well these days – catchy title though, don't you think?
April 29 was my birthday – I am celebrating the last year of the 50s.
Unfortunately, that same day my mother-in-law died.
My Significant Other (I'll name him Lovey) and I have been together for over 22 years. He and his mother (Mum) were very, very close. He is a take-charge kind of guy and he did all the "manly" things around the house, checked on her every day by phone, fixed the sink, fixed the car, fixed the hot water tank, fixed ….. Everything. Mum was very independent and ornery. That's what I want to be when I grow up. She was a little tiny thing that was filled with dynamite. Always on the go, always into something, and most times into trouble of some sort.
She loved yard sales and garage sales and would spend her days going around the neighborhood where she lived for 60 years, scarfing up treasures that she would bring home, announcing, "Look! Just like new!" (And we would observe the stain here, the scratch there.) Later we could expect to receive the same item wrapped as a gift.
Mum collected things – all kinds of things – she collected coins, glassware, rocks, gems, beads, Garfield-anything, Depression glassware and any glassware that would turn color in the sun, bottles from the late 1800s and early 1900s. She lived in a little tiny cottage (kind of perfect for her) and she had shelves everywhere with bottles, glassware, vases, Swarovski crystal animals, and Garfield. When Lovey was living there, the people in the neighborhood called her house "the Bottle House" because all the windows were lined with bottles – whiskey bottles, medicine bottles, all kinds of bottles.
She got me started on collecting Duncan Glass – a beautiful, elegant bowl or plate with a graceful five-petal base, and the glass would flute out from the petals in a fluid wave.
Three years ago, she came home from getting her hair done and was getting out of her car, when the neighbor was leaving for work and thought she looked really odd. The neighbor drove around the block and came back to find Mum on the ground. Ironically – Lovey was at the neighbor's house, fixing her hot water tank. He rushed over and picked his Mum up – she said she couldn't move her legs – and took her into the house. Within 30 minutes, medics had arrived, rushed her to the hospital, and we both had been taken to her bedside because she was going to die any minute. She had a debilitating stroke, actually called an intercranium bleed at the base of her brain, severely affecting her left side and her memory.
Three weeks after that we found a nursing home for her, and the first night the nurses gathered around us and told us to prepare for the fact that she would not make it through the night. She was going to die any minute. This was about the third time we heard this and just brushed them off and hovered over Mum and sat vigil for hours at a time – taking turns doing eight-hour shifts.
Four months after her stroke we took her home to her house. Same little tiny house, now filled with hospital bed, oxygen machine, nebulizer, feeding pump, colostomy supplies, wheelchair. I remember sitting outside the nursing home the last night before she came home, thinking to myself, "Oh God! What am I getting myself into?" I'm not a nurse. I'm not even a nurse's aid. I'm a secretary and my skill is typing. Not nursing.
From then on we have been caring for Mum's every need. Lovey wasn't working and so moved in with his Mom and started the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-by-minute process of taking care of his mother. I worked during the day and then came home and relieved him and continued her intricate care until I left for my house at 10:00 at night. Then start it up the next morning and do it all over again, packing a little bag to stay there every weekend, and then take all the family's laundry home on Sunday night and wash and dry all the clothes for the next week.
We would go along fine, we had our routines: An hour to get her ready for the day, changing her diaper, crushing her medications, push them through her feeding tube, administer her breathing treatment on top of her continuous oxygen tube, make sure she was comfy, and set her up with a magazine. Then we would give her her mid-afternoon meds, spend a half hour on physical therapy, then bring her to her favorite chair and she would watch TV for the rest of the day. An hour getting her ready for bed – two if it was bath night.
We plugged along, each of us going on and on, like the Ever Ready Battery rabbit. Twice we had episodes where she had difficulty breathing and took her to the hospital. She was on a ventilator for five days the first time. And they told us she was going to die any minute.
The night before my birthday was a normal night, just like all the three years of nights before – and it was bath night. I was teasing her that I had her pink gown and pink socks so she would be "in the pink." We held hands, laughed; she told me I was a good kid. We bathed her, fluffed her, petted her, got her tucked in for the night. I went home as usual – with all the laundry. At 5:00 in the morning Lovey called me to say that Mum was having trouble breathing and the paramedics were there – that they'd probably be taking her to the hospital. So I jumped in my clothes and raced across town and just at her exit I decided to make sure they were still at the house or maybe at the hospital. Lovey said we wouldn't be going to the hospital now because she was gone.
We were both in shock. It couldn't be so! How many times had we been told she would die any minute and she defied them all. She couldn't have just slipped away quietly like that. A few hours later, Lovey and I sat in a small room at a funeral home on my birthday making arrangements for his mother's cremation, whom I had just dressed in pink so she'd be "in the pink."
So, now you know why I haven't written. And why I won't for a while. Life goes on – but I just have to slow it down a bit, rein it in. I'll be back.
.
April 29 was my birthday – I am celebrating the last year of the 50s.
Unfortunately, that same day my mother-in-law died.
My Significant Other (I'll name him Lovey) and I have been together for over 22 years. He and his mother (Mum) were very, very close. He is a take-charge kind of guy and he did all the "manly" things around the house, checked on her every day by phone, fixed the sink, fixed the car, fixed the hot water tank, fixed ….. Everything. Mum was very independent and ornery. That's what I want to be when I grow up. She was a little tiny thing that was filled with dynamite. Always on the go, always into something, and most times into trouble of some sort.
She loved yard sales and garage sales and would spend her days going around the neighborhood where she lived for 60 years, scarfing up treasures that she would bring home, announcing, "Look! Just like new!" (And we would observe the stain here, the scratch there.) Later we could expect to receive the same item wrapped as a gift.
Mum collected things – all kinds of things – she collected coins, glassware, rocks, gems, beads, Garfield-anything, Depression glassware and any glassware that would turn color in the sun, bottles from the late 1800s and early 1900s. She lived in a little tiny cottage (kind of perfect for her) and she had shelves everywhere with bottles, glassware, vases, Swarovski crystal animals, and Garfield. When Lovey was living there, the people in the neighborhood called her house "the Bottle House" because all the windows were lined with bottles – whiskey bottles, medicine bottles, all kinds of bottles.
She got me started on collecting Duncan Glass – a beautiful, elegant bowl or plate with a graceful five-petal base, and the glass would flute out from the petals in a fluid wave.
Three years ago, she came home from getting her hair done and was getting out of her car, when the neighbor was leaving for work and thought she looked really odd. The neighbor drove around the block and came back to find Mum on the ground. Ironically – Lovey was at the neighbor's house, fixing her hot water tank. He rushed over and picked his Mum up – she said she couldn't move her legs – and took her into the house. Within 30 minutes, medics had arrived, rushed her to the hospital, and we both had been taken to her bedside because she was going to die any minute. She had a debilitating stroke, actually called an intercranium bleed at the base of her brain, severely affecting her left side and her memory.
Three weeks after that we found a nursing home for her, and the first night the nurses gathered around us and told us to prepare for the fact that she would not make it through the night. She was going to die any minute. This was about the third time we heard this and just brushed them off and hovered over Mum and sat vigil for hours at a time – taking turns doing eight-hour shifts.
Four months after her stroke we took her home to her house. Same little tiny house, now filled with hospital bed, oxygen machine, nebulizer, feeding pump, colostomy supplies, wheelchair. I remember sitting outside the nursing home the last night before she came home, thinking to myself, "Oh God! What am I getting myself into?" I'm not a nurse. I'm not even a nurse's aid. I'm a secretary and my skill is typing. Not nursing.
From then on we have been caring for Mum's every need. Lovey wasn't working and so moved in with his Mom and started the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-by-minute process of taking care of his mother. I worked during the day and then came home and relieved him and continued her intricate care until I left for my house at 10:00 at night. Then start it up the next morning and do it all over again, packing a little bag to stay there every weekend, and then take all the family's laundry home on Sunday night and wash and dry all the clothes for the next week.
We would go along fine, we had our routines: An hour to get her ready for the day, changing her diaper, crushing her medications, push them through her feeding tube, administer her breathing treatment on top of her continuous oxygen tube, make sure she was comfy, and set her up with a magazine. Then we would give her her mid-afternoon meds, spend a half hour on physical therapy, then bring her to her favorite chair and she would watch TV for the rest of the day. An hour getting her ready for bed – two if it was bath night.
We plugged along, each of us going on and on, like the Ever Ready Battery rabbit. Twice we had episodes where she had difficulty breathing and took her to the hospital. She was on a ventilator for five days the first time. And they told us she was going to die any minute.
The night before my birthday was a normal night, just like all the three years of nights before – and it was bath night. I was teasing her that I had her pink gown and pink socks so she would be "in the pink." We held hands, laughed; she told me I was a good kid. We bathed her, fluffed her, petted her, got her tucked in for the night. I went home as usual – with all the laundry. At 5:00 in the morning Lovey called me to say that Mum was having trouble breathing and the paramedics were there – that they'd probably be taking her to the hospital. So I jumped in my clothes and raced across town and just at her exit I decided to make sure they were still at the house or maybe at the hospital. Lovey said we wouldn't be going to the hospital now because she was gone.
We were both in shock. It couldn't be so! How many times had we been told she would die any minute and she defied them all. She couldn't have just slipped away quietly like that. A few hours later, Lovey and I sat in a small room at a funeral home on my birthday making arrangements for his mother's cremation, whom I had just dressed in pink so she'd be "in the pink."
So, now you know why I haven't written. And why I won't for a while. Life goes on – but I just have to slow it down a bit, rein it in. I'll be back.
.
4.17.2008
Does Hillary Clinton Exemplify Women Today?
Question: Does Hillary Clinton Exemplify Women Today?
Absolutely not. Most women my age have moved past Junior High and no longer participate in girlish antics of gossiping, whispering, badgering, lying, brow beating, haggling, sniveling bratty behavior. Hillary Clinton does not represent the average woman!
I am a middle class, college educated, single woman in my late 50s. I am four years younger than Ms. Clinton, so we are kind of like sisters – of the same generation. I clean my house, fix meals, wash dishes, take care of my own clothes, run errands, put out familial fires regarding my adult sons, change my own flat tires, work for three attorneys and their paralegals, manage bills, have a growing 401(k) plan, paid off my house and my car, volunteer for different projects, and I am a caregiver for my bed-ridden mother-in-law when I'm not at my real job. I have no body guard, no limo driver, and I don't care to take apart Obama's speeches because I agree with him – that the elitist people, like Ms. Clinton herself, are NOT listening to me! And there she goes again, being juvenile and being the pot calling the kettle black.
I came into adulthood in the middle of the so-called "feminist movement." I vividly remember the company I worked for having a fashion show the summer of 1968, on pantsuits. Until then, women wore dresses or skirts. Most women got married and had children and then thought about having careers; but the standard of the day was still having the wife/mother stay at home and the hubby was the breadwinner. Very few women opted to have careers first and then start families after they were established. Ten years later, I was a newly divorced, single mother of two toddler boys, trying to earn enough to support us and make a go of a new stage in my life – that of a single woman in a work force predominated by males. Now, thirty years later, I am a fairly well paid secretary with a substantial financial package to enable me to retire comfortably in about six years. Through these years, I have gone from a daughter and then a submissive wife, to a struggling single Mom continuously trying to make ends meet, to an independent, successful woman with some smarts, talent, and wisdom.
More and more women are going into careers that were once male dominated. More women are becoming doctors, lawyers, firemen, police officers – and are just as successful as their male counterparts. It is therefore a natural course of events to have a woman run for president. The country seems riveted on the fact that we have a first-time deal here: a woman running for president for the first time, and a black man running for president for the first time. However, the criteria for being president shouldn't be because the nominee was a first time record breaker for any category. I think someone running for president should have a couple "running for president" periods under the belt before they actually get the Gold Crown Award.
The women who are my friends and co-workers today are focusing on their families, as they leave the nest, as they bring back little chicks of their own. We are focusing on our lives as wives, friends, mothers and maybe early retirement if the economy would just slow down to a low roar. We watch world events with great interest and concern. We do not engage in petty bickering and sniveling – we are problem solvers and goal setters.
I don't have the time or patience for Hillary Clinton. I want Change. I want Compassion. I want Leadership!
.
Absolutely not. Most women my age have moved past Junior High and no longer participate in girlish antics of gossiping, whispering, badgering, lying, brow beating, haggling, sniveling bratty behavior. Hillary Clinton does not represent the average woman!
I am a middle class, college educated, single woman in my late 50s. I am four years younger than Ms. Clinton, so we are kind of like sisters – of the same generation. I clean my house, fix meals, wash dishes, take care of my own clothes, run errands, put out familial fires regarding my adult sons, change my own flat tires, work for three attorneys and their paralegals, manage bills, have a growing 401(k) plan, paid off my house and my car, volunteer for different projects, and I am a caregiver for my bed-ridden mother-in-law when I'm not at my real job. I have no body guard, no limo driver, and I don't care to take apart Obama's speeches because I agree with him – that the elitist people, like Ms. Clinton herself, are NOT listening to me! And there she goes again, being juvenile and being the pot calling the kettle black.
I came into adulthood in the middle of the so-called "feminist movement." I vividly remember the company I worked for having a fashion show the summer of 1968, on pantsuits. Until then, women wore dresses or skirts. Most women got married and had children and then thought about having careers; but the standard of the day was still having the wife/mother stay at home and the hubby was the breadwinner. Very few women opted to have careers first and then start families after they were established. Ten years later, I was a newly divorced, single mother of two toddler boys, trying to earn enough to support us and make a go of a new stage in my life – that of a single woman in a work force predominated by males. Now, thirty years later, I am a fairly well paid secretary with a substantial financial package to enable me to retire comfortably in about six years. Through these years, I have gone from a daughter and then a submissive wife, to a struggling single Mom continuously trying to make ends meet, to an independent, successful woman with some smarts, talent, and wisdom.
More and more women are going into careers that were once male dominated. More women are becoming doctors, lawyers, firemen, police officers – and are just as successful as their male counterparts. It is therefore a natural course of events to have a woman run for president. The country seems riveted on the fact that we have a first-time deal here: a woman running for president for the first time, and a black man running for president for the first time. However, the criteria for being president shouldn't be because the nominee was a first time record breaker for any category. I think someone running for president should have a couple "running for president" periods under the belt before they actually get the Gold Crown Award.
The women who are my friends and co-workers today are focusing on their families, as they leave the nest, as they bring back little chicks of their own. We are focusing on our lives as wives, friends, mothers and maybe early retirement if the economy would just slow down to a low roar. We watch world events with great interest and concern. We do not engage in petty bickering and sniveling – we are problem solvers and goal setters.
I don't have the time or patience for Hillary Clinton. I want Change. I want Compassion. I want Leadership!
.
4.15.2008
I want the Facts, Man, Just the Facts
I hate spam email. Particularly this time of year when it is mainly political and mainly in opposition of a candidate. It is a rumor mill gone amok!
Does the opposing side think up these things in the middle of the night and then surreptitiously send them out in batches to unsuspecting people, in the guise of friendship? "Hey Jeanie – long time no see! Did you know that your next door neighbor was looking at porn last night??? I saw him through the window!" Then pretty soon, you start looking at your neighbor like the Monster from Hell and wish death upon him a thousand times. You took that email as FACT! You didn't check the facts (the neighbor was actually watching CNN) because, after all, a friend sent it. Would a friend make something like that up?
The same is happening in the presidential campaign. Put aside the fact that the real contest is between two people in THE SAME PARTY. When stuff like this happens, it almost forces voters to go to the other side and avoid this juvenile behavior altogether. McCain might just win out of default because the Democrats can't make their children play nice.
I have just about had it with Hilary Clinton and all her jealous jabbering. She claims she has more experience (being a wife – duh!). She claims she is the one to answer the white house phone at 3:00 in the morning – and we only have to worry about her diving under her bed to hide from what she perceives as sniper fire. She tells her husband to put a sock in it. Put aside the fact that her husband is a philanderer, womanizer, cheat, adulterer, etc., ad nauseam, and she couldn't control him then – how is she going to control him when she is busy answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning? Then she takes out of context a statement her opponent made at a private fund raising function and blows that all out of proportion. She is a spiteful 12-year-old brat having a tantrum and resorting to maligning gossip as her leverage.
Now there is this particularly evil email that goes round and round and round about Barack Obama not putting his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. I've seen it before when he first announced his candidacy. But in studying the facts of the case – it is noted that it wasn't the Pledge of Allegiance, it was the National Anthem. There is no note saying he just put his hand down before everyone else or that he was not reciting the Pledge. He is pictured with Richardson (who supports him) and Clinton – all three with their backs to the flag. Further, the picture itself is taken out of context and if you want to attack Obama on not being reverent to the Pledge and/or Anthem – what about Clinton with her back to the flag??? O give me a break!
Check out Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/anthem.asp
It is very troubling to me that people receive this email, believe it as factual (and who is to say who started it – did Clinton in the middle of the night and then pass it on as Jane Doe?). They are sending it to their family and friends; they are spreading it around their churches. They will not vote for Obama based on this one frivolous egregious email. And they won't bother to check the facts either because they want to dumb down.
I pray for the intelligence of the people!
.
Does the opposing side think up these things in the middle of the night and then surreptitiously send them out in batches to unsuspecting people, in the guise of friendship? "Hey Jeanie – long time no see! Did you know that your next door neighbor was looking at porn last night??? I saw him through the window!" Then pretty soon, you start looking at your neighbor like the Monster from Hell and wish death upon him a thousand times. You took that email as FACT! You didn't check the facts (the neighbor was actually watching CNN) because, after all, a friend sent it. Would a friend make something like that up?
The same is happening in the presidential campaign. Put aside the fact that the real contest is between two people in THE SAME PARTY. When stuff like this happens, it almost forces voters to go to the other side and avoid this juvenile behavior altogether. McCain might just win out of default because the Democrats can't make their children play nice.
I have just about had it with Hilary Clinton and all her jealous jabbering. She claims she has more experience (being a wife – duh!). She claims she is the one to answer the white house phone at 3:00 in the morning – and we only have to worry about her diving under her bed to hide from what she perceives as sniper fire. She tells her husband to put a sock in it. Put aside the fact that her husband is a philanderer, womanizer, cheat, adulterer, etc., ad nauseam, and she couldn't control him then – how is she going to control him when she is busy answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning? Then she takes out of context a statement her opponent made at a private fund raising function and blows that all out of proportion. She is a spiteful 12-year-old brat having a tantrum and resorting to maligning gossip as her leverage.
Now there is this particularly evil email that goes round and round and round about Barack Obama not putting his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. I've seen it before when he first announced his candidacy. But in studying the facts of the case – it is noted that it wasn't the Pledge of Allegiance, it was the National Anthem. There is no note saying he just put his hand down before everyone else or that he was not reciting the Pledge. He is pictured with Richardson (who supports him) and Clinton – all three with their backs to the flag. Further, the picture itself is taken out of context and if you want to attack Obama on not being reverent to the Pledge and/or Anthem – what about Clinton with her back to the flag??? O give me a break!
Check out Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/anthem.asp
It is very troubling to me that people receive this email, believe it as factual (and who is to say who started it – did Clinton in the middle of the night and then pass it on as Jane Doe?). They are sending it to their family and friends; they are spreading it around their churches. They will not vote for Obama based on this one frivolous egregious email. And they won't bother to check the facts either because they want to dumb down.
I pray for the intelligence of the people!
.
4.11.2008
And now for a commercial break……
Sometimes in the evenings, after I have finished all my tasks, I truly enjoy just cuddling next to my significant other, sitting back, and watching something good on television. But then we have to endure the commercials. Is it only me – are commercials really deep down stupid and idiotic? I mean, don't they just beg you to leave the room and get something to eat or drink, or just get out of the room! Or hit the mute button – and then they really look moronic.
My all-time waste-of-my time commercials are for Erectile Dysfunction Disorder. I'm sorry, guys, but I just don't care! And I'm an equal opportunity discontent commercial watcher – I don't care about tampons, feminine lubricant, leaky bladders, or stress headaches, either. But the Cialis commercials are on top of my make-me-shudder scale. The music for one thing. The obvious sexual undertone for another. (I'm not letting my 85 year old mother-in-law watch THAT crap!) And what's with the two individual bathtubs???? You're telling me that the couple gets hot and heavy, has sex, and then they go down to the beach and climb into two separate bathtubs and hold hands and watch the sunset? That's romantic? Personally, I think it is far more intimate and romantic to share ONE bathtub. You might even just toss that Cialis away. The warm bubbly bathtub filled with musky scents and oils will perk you right up! Guaranteed.
So, I'm in the back room, folding clothes and I hear the familiar Cialis melody. Ignore! Ignore! Ignore! And then a voice is saying something about getting a "bigger package" and I'm on alert. Are there any "little" ears watching this? And the voice goes on to "warn" you of the amazing benefits of upgrading to an even "bigger package" and "my wife has never been so happy," and THEN, "my neighbors are really impressed!"
Say what?
So I run out to the living room to hit the mute or smack the off button or just toss the television onto the floor – when I see STARZ filling the screen and realize it's on cable – promoting and upgrade to Starz. And as the camera pans across the screen, there, are those same two bath tubs, overlooking the city lights below.
{sigh}
.
My all-time waste-of-my time commercials are for Erectile Dysfunction Disorder. I'm sorry, guys, but I just don't care! And I'm an equal opportunity discontent commercial watcher – I don't care about tampons, feminine lubricant, leaky bladders, or stress headaches, either. But the Cialis commercials are on top of my make-me-shudder scale. The music for one thing. The obvious sexual undertone for another. (I'm not letting my 85 year old mother-in-law watch THAT crap!) And what's with the two individual bathtubs???? You're telling me that the couple gets hot and heavy, has sex, and then they go down to the beach and climb into two separate bathtubs and hold hands and watch the sunset? That's romantic? Personally, I think it is far more intimate and romantic to share ONE bathtub. You might even just toss that Cialis away. The warm bubbly bathtub filled with musky scents and oils will perk you right up! Guaranteed.
So, I'm in the back room, folding clothes and I hear the familiar Cialis melody. Ignore! Ignore! Ignore! And then a voice is saying something about getting a "bigger package" and I'm on alert. Are there any "little" ears watching this? And the voice goes on to "warn" you of the amazing benefits of upgrading to an even "bigger package" and "my wife has never been so happy," and THEN, "my neighbors are really impressed!"
Say what?
So I run out to the living room to hit the mute or smack the off button or just toss the television onto the floor – when I see STARZ filling the screen and realize it's on cable – promoting and upgrade to Starz. And as the camera pans across the screen, there, are those same two bath tubs, overlooking the city lights below.
{sigh}
.
4.08.2008
The Winter of Quebec
It's raining right now and it is pitter-pattering on my air conditioner just outside the window I am sitting next to. Maybe the rain is trying to wake the air conditioner with hopes of summer even as we hear of another snow coming our way. (ok, high in the mountains – but I can see the mountains from here.)
When I was a young Air Force wife, we were stationed in Val d'Or, Quebec, a little village about a thousand miles north of Detroit. To get there we went from Peru, Indiana, just south of Chicago, east to Toronto, next to Montreal, and then a wide circle north and back west on a little national park road until we rounded a corner, and there was our new home for the next two years. In the “bush” as they called it – kind of like in the jungle or in the wild or in the plains. In the bush.
Moose sightings were more common then pets. And everyone spoke French and the French didn't like the English-speaking Canadians, like they were somehow traitors in this province squashed on two sides by English-speaking provinces. And the French made a new policy that year, 1973, to from this day forward only speak French. They tolerated English-speaking Americans I guess because we couldn't help it that we came from a primitive land where French was only taken in high school to fulfill the college entrance requirement of two years of [any] foreign language. I didn't know a word of French.
I learned to only mix with the English-speaking – whether from America or from Canada. I discovered a Newberries a mile away in downtown Val d'Or and near it a Kentucky Poulet Frit. I would survive by saying the few words I could muster, poorly, like merci. I was the politest foreigner they ever saw.
Ah, the title – Winter – well, you see, we all complain about one.more.snow in the Pacific Northwest and you ain't seen nothing yet! It started snowing in the middle of October and we were told that was late. It continued to snow, and snow, and snow until the snow came up to the bottom of our balcony of our second floor apartment. Earlier my toddler would have great fun tossing toys one by one into the yard below and then watching either Mummy or Daddy scurry down the stairs and gather them up again. In Winter, we only had to reach over the railing and pull them in.
Everyone had snow blowers – and paths were made from front doors to the street, from back doors to the cars. After a few months of this activity, hallways would form that were ten feet tall. Every car was parked next to its own individual electric post that connected to a little heater that was placed in with the engine so the engine wouldn't freeze. It was regularly 30 below zero for weeks on end. The car always started but all the tires would have a frozen flat spot and the car would wobble slowly down the road until they thawed, like some wintery Disney ride.
There was a large meadow (maybe, I never really saw the ground) between my apartment building and a tiny French grocery store. I would walk across the field on top of the snow – the ice crust was so thick.
People decorated their bushes and trees with big old fashioned Christmas lights and then poured water over them and had instant sculptures with fuzzy lights blinking inside. It was magical!
Snow mobiles and moose abounded – and some literally bounded – leaping across the “hallways” built up by the snow. So – when you left your apartment, you looked both ways right off the bat for the meandering moose or the roaring snow mobile.
My second child was born April 30, 1974 and we were back home a couple days later (nice nurses kept me longer because I already had a baby at home and they said “she needs her rest” in broken English to my Air Force husband, who really, REALLY wanted baby sitting relief – another story). Snow still piled high, roads still packed a foot higher.
In June, this fantastic “parade” started in front of my house. There was a truck/tractor going down the road, chopping at the packed snow on the road. Following that gizmo was another truck with a plow that scooped up squares at least a foot thick of packed snow and lifted the blocks up and over itself to be dumped into a third vehicle behind. This continued for several days and on June 10, 1974, I was able to take my baby out in his stroller for a “spring” walk.
I always wondered if there weren't some igloo mansion being made just outside of town.
.
When I was a young Air Force wife, we were stationed in Val d'Or, Quebec, a little village about a thousand miles north of Detroit. To get there we went from Peru, Indiana, just south of Chicago, east to Toronto, next to Montreal, and then a wide circle north and back west on a little national park road until we rounded a corner, and there was our new home for the next two years. In the “bush” as they called it – kind of like in the jungle or in the wild or in the plains. In the bush.
Moose sightings were more common then pets. And everyone spoke French and the French didn't like the English-speaking Canadians, like they were somehow traitors in this province squashed on two sides by English-speaking provinces. And the French made a new policy that year, 1973, to from this day forward only speak French. They tolerated English-speaking Americans I guess because we couldn't help it that we came from a primitive land where French was only taken in high school to fulfill the college entrance requirement of two years of [any] foreign language. I didn't know a word of French.
I learned to only mix with the English-speaking – whether from America or from Canada. I discovered a Newberries a mile away in downtown Val d'Or and near it a Kentucky Poulet Frit. I would survive by saying the few words I could muster, poorly, like merci. I was the politest foreigner they ever saw.
Ah, the title – Winter – well, you see, we all complain about one.more.snow in the Pacific Northwest and you ain't seen nothing yet! It started snowing in the middle of October and we were told that was late. It continued to snow, and snow, and snow until the snow came up to the bottom of our balcony of our second floor apartment. Earlier my toddler would have great fun tossing toys one by one into the yard below and then watching either Mummy or Daddy scurry down the stairs and gather them up again. In Winter, we only had to reach over the railing and pull them in.
Everyone had snow blowers – and paths were made from front doors to the street, from back doors to the cars. After a few months of this activity, hallways would form that were ten feet tall. Every car was parked next to its own individual electric post that connected to a little heater that was placed in with the engine so the engine wouldn't freeze. It was regularly 30 below zero for weeks on end. The car always started but all the tires would have a frozen flat spot and the car would wobble slowly down the road until they thawed, like some wintery Disney ride.
There was a large meadow (maybe, I never really saw the ground) between my apartment building and a tiny French grocery store. I would walk across the field on top of the snow – the ice crust was so thick.
People decorated their bushes and trees with big old fashioned Christmas lights and then poured water over them and had instant sculptures with fuzzy lights blinking inside. It was magical!
Snow mobiles and moose abounded – and some literally bounded – leaping across the “hallways” built up by the snow. So – when you left your apartment, you looked both ways right off the bat for the meandering moose or the roaring snow mobile.
My second child was born April 30, 1974 and we were back home a couple days later (nice nurses kept me longer because I already had a baby at home and they said “she needs her rest” in broken English to my Air Force husband, who really, REALLY wanted baby sitting relief – another story). Snow still piled high, roads still packed a foot higher.
In June, this fantastic “parade” started in front of my house. There was a truck/tractor going down the road, chopping at the packed snow on the road. Following that gizmo was another truck with a plow that scooped up squares at least a foot thick of packed snow and lifted the blocks up and over itself to be dumped into a third vehicle behind. This continued for several days and on June 10, 1974, I was able to take my baby out in his stroller for a “spring” walk.
I always wondered if there weren't some igloo mansion being made just outside of town.
.
4.02.2008
The Ugly Brown Shoes and the Belly Dancer
When I was very little, my mother tells me that I had a "small" case of polio. Now, I'm not sure that wasn't a fabrication on my mother's part or if indeed you can have a "small" case of polio. Anyway, when I was in Fourth Grade, we experienced one of the first mass physical examinations in the state of Washington - all of us ten-year-olds, boys and girls, in our jammies, in the school gymnasium, entering one at a time, into the "doctor's office" (formerly known as the coach's office), to get a physical exam. I have no idea why this was done, but they discovered I had curvature of the spine and was extremely pigeon toed; and my mother said it was a result of my small case of polio.
I went to the Shriner's Hospital (for children mainly with orthopedic problems or polio). I was told I would never dance - but that's ok, said the doctor, "she's only ten." I had to wear what I can only call "ugly brown shoes" from 4th grade to 7th grade, at which time my doctor ordered my parents to get me out of those shoes before my psyche was totally ruined. He said I might have problems as an adult, but nothing compared to the bruised self esteem I was experiencing. I hated those shoes. They were, well, BROWN. Ugly brown. And they went up past my ankle like a baby's boot. ugly.brown.shoes.
Funny - I happened to google "ugly brown shoes" and I came up with a whole LIST of sites that were all post-polio survivors and each person was describing their shoes exactly as I had. So much for being unique.
These UBS, as I nicknamed them, cost my parents a small fortune. They had steel plates in them and they were probably ten times more expensive than a normal shoe. So they were held above my head (metaphorically but just as heavy) like a sign. Something like, “Here stands Jeanie in her UBS because she had a small case of polio.”
They were ugly. They made me feel ugly. I was ugly. They were just hateful, nasty, ugly, brown, shoes.
But revered by my parents......
*****************
We went to a local lake one summer and (this tells you how old I am - but just look to the right and I tell you how old I am!), the dressing room just off the beach was a large, two stall, out house. My mother, sister, and I went in there to change into our swimsuits. I can still picture this - I undressed and carefully placed my folded clothes on the bench between the two "holes." And then I just as carefully and neatly put my UBS next to my clothes, and poof, down a hole they went, to the dark, murky, icky abyss below. I debated for about two seconds on making an announcement to my mother – dollar signs flashing in front of my eyes. And when I did, the expected all-hell broke lose. She went to my Dad who was in the other side of the long dressing building.
To my horror, Dad found an opening outside in the back of the outhouse and he crawled in there and rescued my dang UBS, washed them off, handed them to me, and told me to never, never, never, ever, drop them in the outhouse hole again. Ever. {sigh}
*****************
A couple years later we were on vacation when my Dad shouted his infamous "I Know A Short Cut" and away we went to places where no man has been before. Well, no vehicle had been before for a long, long time. It must have rained heavily in the area, as we found ourselves on a mile long road with swamp on either side of it. Dad fishtailed a few dozen feet and narrowly missed going into the swamp on one side or the swamp on the other side, when he got mired in an unbelievable sticky, mucky, muddy mess. My mother, my three siblings, and I all got out and pushed the station wagon as far as we could, whereupon Dad would take off again, fishtailing, narrowly missing getting swamped, and then again getting stuck, and we would start all over again, muttering things like "short cut, my tush."
When all of a sudden one foot was FREE! The mud had sucked the UBS right off my foot. Immediately, without taking a breath or a pause, my mother said, "Get that shoe right now." So – almost saved there for a second.
*****************
I was sorely embarrassed by those ugly brown shoes. I hated them with a passion. I would close my eyes really, really tight and visualize them being white, or better yet, girly girl pink! I'd open one eye, and there they'd sit, two ugly brown shoes each with an ugly brown tongue sticking out at me in a neener neener kind of way that you would expect from your bratty little brother – these were simply SHOES, I'd tell myself.
I was turning 13 and got to go see my doctor by myself. I was thrilled because I just got a new bra that I was hoping someone would notice instead of my UBS. (ok, training bra, size AA.) Well, he was kind. A grandfatherly sort – he knew right off the bat that I didn't need a bra but he humored me anyway. When he got to my feet, he asked how the shoe thing was going. I wailed and wailed. “Don't you see?? They are Ugly.Brown.Shoes!!!” He called my mother before I got home and that was the end of the UBS. I took great delight in standing as far away from the garbage can as I could and chucking each shoe into the garbage can as if I were a ten-foot-tall star basketball player.
So, I'd grow up crooked, with inward toes, trip a lot, and not dance.
Then I got to high school and the Junior Class (my class) was putting on a two-hour play and I wanted to be in it. They were casting for dancers. Well, I've always done what I'm told I can't. There is a button on me somewhere that toggles off or on in opposition of negative presumptions. Nobody has told me I can't fly, so I haven't attempted it. So, I timidly and shyly tried out for the chorus line. It was just like what you see on the movies – a whole crowd of dancer-wanna-bees jumbled together on stage, trying to follow directions and listen to music at the same time. (Not really my talent, but hey.) Before I knew it, the instructor was weeding out flat-out-no-talent from maybe-can-dance, to Can-Dance. And I ended up in the final twelve. I had to go buy a bikini so I could fit some gauze on it to look like a belly dancer. (Still iffy on filling out the upper part of my costume, but never say I don't give it my all.)
Mom told me later that Dad, who was in the third row to watch his “baby” on stage, covered his eyes. He may have laughed; he may have wept. She couldn't tell - he just shook his shoulders a lot.
So now you know the story about the Ugly Brown Shoes and the Belly Dancer!
I went to the Shriner's Hospital (for children mainly with orthopedic problems or polio). I was told I would never dance - but that's ok, said the doctor, "she's only ten." I had to wear what I can only call "ugly brown shoes" from 4th grade to 7th grade, at which time my doctor ordered my parents to get me out of those shoes before my psyche was totally ruined. He said I might have problems as an adult, but nothing compared to the bruised self esteem I was experiencing. I hated those shoes. They were, well, BROWN. Ugly brown. And they went up past my ankle like a baby's boot. ugly.brown.shoes.
Funny - I happened to google "ugly brown shoes" and I came up with a whole LIST of sites that were all post-polio survivors and each person was describing their shoes exactly as I had. So much for being unique.
These UBS, as I nicknamed them, cost my parents a small fortune. They had steel plates in them and they were probably ten times more expensive than a normal shoe. So they were held above my head (metaphorically but just as heavy) like a sign. Something like, “Here stands Jeanie in her UBS because she had a small case of polio.”
They were ugly. They made me feel ugly. I was ugly. They were just hateful, nasty, ugly, brown, shoes.
But revered by my parents......
*****************
We went to a local lake one summer and (this tells you how old I am - but just look to the right and I tell you how old I am!), the dressing room just off the beach was a large, two stall, out house. My mother, sister, and I went in there to change into our swimsuits. I can still picture this - I undressed and carefully placed my folded clothes on the bench between the two "holes." And then I just as carefully and neatly put my UBS next to my clothes, and poof, down a hole they went, to the dark, murky, icky abyss below. I debated for about two seconds on making an announcement to my mother – dollar signs flashing in front of my eyes. And when I did, the expected all-hell broke lose. She went to my Dad who was in the other side of the long dressing building.
To my horror, Dad found an opening outside in the back of the outhouse and he crawled in there and rescued my dang UBS, washed them off, handed them to me, and told me to never, never, never, ever, drop them in the outhouse hole again. Ever. {sigh}
*****************
A couple years later we were on vacation when my Dad shouted his infamous "I Know A Short Cut" and away we went to places where no man has been before. Well, no vehicle had been before for a long, long time. It must have rained heavily in the area, as we found ourselves on a mile long road with swamp on either side of it. Dad fishtailed a few dozen feet and narrowly missed going into the swamp on one side or the swamp on the other side, when he got mired in an unbelievable sticky, mucky, muddy mess. My mother, my three siblings, and I all got out and pushed the station wagon as far as we could, whereupon Dad would take off again, fishtailing, narrowly missing getting swamped, and then again getting stuck, and we would start all over again, muttering things like "short cut, my tush."
When all of a sudden one foot was FREE! The mud had sucked the UBS right off my foot. Immediately, without taking a breath or a pause, my mother said, "Get that shoe right now." So – almost saved there for a second.
*****************
I was sorely embarrassed by those ugly brown shoes. I hated them with a passion. I would close my eyes really, really tight and visualize them being white, or better yet, girly girl pink! I'd open one eye, and there they'd sit, two ugly brown shoes each with an ugly brown tongue sticking out at me in a neener neener kind of way that you would expect from your bratty little brother – these were simply SHOES, I'd tell myself.
I was turning 13 and got to go see my doctor by myself. I was thrilled because I just got a new bra that I was hoping someone would notice instead of my UBS. (ok, training bra, size AA.) Well, he was kind. A grandfatherly sort – he knew right off the bat that I didn't need a bra but he humored me anyway. When he got to my feet, he asked how the shoe thing was going. I wailed and wailed. “Don't you see?? They are Ugly.Brown.Shoes!!!” He called my mother before I got home and that was the end of the UBS. I took great delight in standing as far away from the garbage can as I could and chucking each shoe into the garbage can as if I were a ten-foot-tall star basketball player.
So, I'd grow up crooked, with inward toes, trip a lot, and not dance.
Then I got to high school and the Junior Class (my class) was putting on a two-hour play and I wanted to be in it. They were casting for dancers. Well, I've always done what I'm told I can't. There is a button on me somewhere that toggles off or on in opposition of negative presumptions. Nobody has told me I can't fly, so I haven't attempted it. So, I timidly and shyly tried out for the chorus line. It was just like what you see on the movies – a whole crowd of dancer-wanna-bees jumbled together on stage, trying to follow directions and listen to music at the same time. (Not really my talent, but hey.) Before I knew it, the instructor was weeding out flat-out-no-talent from maybe-can-dance, to Can-Dance. And I ended up in the final twelve. I had to go buy a bikini so I could fit some gauze on it to look like a belly dancer. (Still iffy on filling out the upper part of my costume, but never say I don't give it my all.)
Mom told me later that Dad, who was in the third row to watch his “baby” on stage, covered his eyes. He may have laughed; he may have wept. She couldn't tell - he just shook his shoulders a lot.
So now you know the story about the Ugly Brown Shoes and the Belly Dancer!
3.30.2008
Single Mothering, or, The Art of Parenting Boys
Now that my sons have grown into men, I am satisfied that all my fears and worries that I wasn't prepared for single motherhood are laid to rest. Like something I baked in the oven, they turned out “just right.”
Since they were two and three years old, my sons and I have been like a little package tied with ribbon. It has been a wild ride with ups and downs and twists and turns – but we eventually arrived at their adulthood in one piece.
I don't think it is any different to raise children alone or with another parent. It is still a bittersweet, sad, beautiful, terrifying, rewarding experience. However, through the years, I have experienced prejudice and discrimination as a single parent. I'm not alone – all the single parents I met have felt the same thing. Parent teacher conferences would always spiral downward to the teacher expressing her concerns about my sons coming from a "broken" home. If they acted out or were disruptive in school, it was blamed on one or the other being from that ubiquitous “broken” home. For a while, I listened to this and reluctantly bought into the idea that indeed any bad or inappropriate behavior was entirely my fault because I was a single parent. After a good deal of time, and after observing several children with two parents, I breathed a sigh of relief to find out we were all normal. It didn't matter if a child had one parent, two parents, a whole gaggle of parents – the mischief and mayhem wrought by any child was simply an equal opportunity gift, having nothing at all to do with the parent(s).
Heck, I've known households with two parents and one of them was always fishing, out hunting, drinking with buds, or just plain not there, or worse, there and having a negative impact on children with rants and raves and tantrums – from the parent. Who made up the rule that being a single parent means the children are going to grow up to be unsuccessful?
****************
We've had our moments. Being a "girl" has its disadvantages when raising boys alone. There is the whole issue of bathroom stuff. When they were finally taking care of business by themselves, I pondered how I would teach them how to stand at the toilet. I mean, I'd spend hours trying to figure this out without getting totally outrageous and embarrassing all three of us to death. They'd look at me like I was from Mars.
Then a little friend came over to play one day and the natural order of life played out and suddenly both boys were thrilled beyond words that they could do this marvelous standing up trick. And before I knew it, a contest began: He who could stand the furthest away from the target (the toilet) and still hit the center, won. I tolerated this to an extent and added a rule of my own: He who lost acquired his own mop and cleanser. Then there was the tandem game – crossing streams from ten feet away – same rules applied. The last time I discussed bathroom etiquette and personal hygiene with them was when I asked one if he wiped. He was aghast! "You don't wipe!" he said incredulously, "You shake."
****************
Cub Scouts was a test of my durability and persistence to stay the course, since most of the parents were men. Actually most of the men were reliving their childhood and building the best stock car for the derby ever made by man, er, boy on record. The rules specifically said that the boy was to carve, whittle, and smooth his block of wood into a mean lean racing machine. I followed the rules. I took the coveted block of wood home with my son, with instructions that he was to do all of the work himself. I borrowed a hack saw from the neighbor, who also offered to help, but I thanked him, saying, no, the child is supposed to do all the work.
My son bent over his nothing-shaped block of wood and proceeded to sweat over it, saw at it, chip at it, shave it, sand it; all the time I'm standing there trying not to interfere, sitting on my hands, or biting my fingernails, in a very strained effort to let him do it himself.
So – it gets done and vaguely resembles a stock car, slathered in yellow enamel paint. All to the specs and requirements of the Cub Master. When we arrived at the Derby – nearly, and I mean 99.5%, of the cars there were CHERRY. (Tell me to my face that a 10-year old boy made that!) Perfect little miniature stock cars, sleek, smooth, and fast. I fully expected to find a tiny little motor inside. When it came time for my son's turn “at the wheel,” he placed his precious home-made car on top of the race ramp
..... and .....
It wouldn't move.
One of the fathers kindly and imperceptibly tapped the Yellow Bomb repeatedly to the finish line. Sad!
Then there was the cake bake sale where again the boys were supposed to “do it on their own.” I had learned my lesson THIS time. I mixed it; I baked it; and then my son helped me decorate it. A plain white cake with white frosting and a crudely shaped yellow “happy face” with chocolate piping for the eyes and mouth. It looked kind of cute.
We arrived and there were cakes that were perfect! Flowers, piping, stars, and one that was shaped and looked like a beehive, complete with bees made out of licorice frosting and yellow frosting for the bumble bee effect. Perfect bees.
We left and never looked back.
***************
One of our pastimes was to go for drives. It was cheap (gas was much cheaper in the 70s.) I love to drive in the country and they loved to be passengers. Somehow, my seat created a division, like a wall, that turned into a “confessional” of sorts. They would share everything to the back of my head. Everything. They had no secrets from me and so they shared their joys, wishes, mistakes, outright sins, goals, dreams, fears, anger, hope. . . . . And I listened. Quietly, with no conditions. We would spend hours upon hours driving country roads while they spilled their deepest heart thoughts to me, Mother Confessor.
Their father left our family for another man. This I note not for any sympathy, but just to understand the boys' viewpoints. Their father is a good and decent man, highly intelligent, and very compassionate. His decision involved a long drawn out soul-searching and self discovery.
The boys discovered this fact about their father ten years after he left. I simply told them that he was a “good and decent man, highly intelligent, and very compassionate.” But on our drives, I realized that this new piece of information was a constant niggling in their minds. They wanted to know if it was contagious. Is it hereditary. Is it biological, ecological, atmospheric, scientific, analytical, or what? Would it happen to them, they pondered. The “birds and bees” conversations that parents handle with their children is very over rated. We spent miles and hours discussing the boys' father and their own identities. I kept wondering if they were getting the right message or even if this was just too serious for a developing pre-teen, when suddenly my youngest, who loved to use big words even if he didn't know their definition, announced, “I know! When I grow up I'm going to be a nymphomaniac!”
Oh, yeah, every mother's dream child. :)
The “boys” are in their mid-30's now and I love them more today, even though I absolutely doted on them when they were little.
When I see them walking towards me I think, not bad, single mother.
Since they were two and three years old, my sons and I have been like a little package tied with ribbon. It has been a wild ride with ups and downs and twists and turns – but we eventually arrived at their adulthood in one piece.
I don't think it is any different to raise children alone or with another parent. It is still a bittersweet, sad, beautiful, terrifying, rewarding experience. However, through the years, I have experienced prejudice and discrimination as a single parent. I'm not alone – all the single parents I met have felt the same thing. Parent teacher conferences would always spiral downward to the teacher expressing her concerns about my sons coming from a "broken" home. If they acted out or were disruptive in school, it was blamed on one or the other being from that ubiquitous “broken” home. For a while, I listened to this and reluctantly bought into the idea that indeed any bad or inappropriate behavior was entirely my fault because I was a single parent. After a good deal of time, and after observing several children with two parents, I breathed a sigh of relief to find out we were all normal. It didn't matter if a child had one parent, two parents, a whole gaggle of parents – the mischief and mayhem wrought by any child was simply an equal opportunity gift, having nothing at all to do with the parent(s).
Heck, I've known households with two parents and one of them was always fishing, out hunting, drinking with buds, or just plain not there, or worse, there and having a negative impact on children with rants and raves and tantrums – from the parent. Who made up the rule that being a single parent means the children are going to grow up to be unsuccessful?
****************
We've had our moments. Being a "girl" has its disadvantages when raising boys alone. There is the whole issue of bathroom stuff. When they were finally taking care of business by themselves, I pondered how I would teach them how to stand at the toilet. I mean, I'd spend hours trying to figure this out without getting totally outrageous and embarrassing all three of us to death. They'd look at me like I was from Mars.
Then a little friend came over to play one day and the natural order of life played out and suddenly both boys were thrilled beyond words that they could do this marvelous standing up trick. And before I knew it, a contest began: He who could stand the furthest away from the target (the toilet) and still hit the center, won. I tolerated this to an extent and added a rule of my own: He who lost acquired his own mop and cleanser. Then there was the tandem game – crossing streams from ten feet away – same rules applied. The last time I discussed bathroom etiquette and personal hygiene with them was when I asked one if he wiped. He was aghast! "You don't wipe!" he said incredulously, "You shake."
****************
Cub Scouts was a test of my durability and persistence to stay the course, since most of the parents were men. Actually most of the men were reliving their childhood and building the best stock car for the derby ever made by man, er, boy on record. The rules specifically said that the boy was to carve, whittle, and smooth his block of wood into a mean lean racing machine. I followed the rules. I took the coveted block of wood home with my son, with instructions that he was to do all of the work himself. I borrowed a hack saw from the neighbor, who also offered to help, but I thanked him, saying, no, the child is supposed to do all the work.
My son bent over his nothing-shaped block of wood and proceeded to sweat over it, saw at it, chip at it, shave it, sand it; all the time I'm standing there trying not to interfere, sitting on my hands, or biting my fingernails, in a very strained effort to let him do it himself.
So – it gets done and vaguely resembles a stock car, slathered in yellow enamel paint. All to the specs and requirements of the Cub Master. When we arrived at the Derby – nearly, and I mean 99.5%, of the cars there were CHERRY. (Tell me to my face that a 10-year old boy made that!) Perfect little miniature stock cars, sleek, smooth, and fast. I fully expected to find a tiny little motor inside. When it came time for my son's turn “at the wheel,” he placed his precious home-made car on top of the race ramp
..... and .....
It wouldn't move.
One of the fathers kindly and imperceptibly tapped the Yellow Bomb repeatedly to the finish line. Sad!
Then there was the cake bake sale where again the boys were supposed to “do it on their own.” I had learned my lesson THIS time. I mixed it; I baked it; and then my son helped me decorate it. A plain white cake with white frosting and a crudely shaped yellow “happy face” with chocolate piping for the eyes and mouth. It looked kind of cute.
We arrived and there were cakes that were perfect! Flowers, piping, stars, and one that was shaped and looked like a beehive, complete with bees made out of licorice frosting and yellow frosting for the bumble bee effect. Perfect bees.
We left and never looked back.
***************
One of our pastimes was to go for drives. It was cheap (gas was much cheaper in the 70s.) I love to drive in the country and they loved to be passengers. Somehow, my seat created a division, like a wall, that turned into a “confessional” of sorts. They would share everything to the back of my head. Everything. They had no secrets from me and so they shared their joys, wishes, mistakes, outright sins, goals, dreams, fears, anger, hope. . . . . And I listened. Quietly, with no conditions. We would spend hours upon hours driving country roads while they spilled their deepest heart thoughts to me, Mother Confessor.
Their father left our family for another man. This I note not for any sympathy, but just to understand the boys' viewpoints. Their father is a good and decent man, highly intelligent, and very compassionate. His decision involved a long drawn out soul-searching and self discovery.
The boys discovered this fact about their father ten years after he left. I simply told them that he was a “good and decent man, highly intelligent, and very compassionate.” But on our drives, I realized that this new piece of information was a constant niggling in their minds. They wanted to know if it was contagious. Is it hereditary. Is it biological, ecological, atmospheric, scientific, analytical, or what? Would it happen to them, they pondered. The “birds and bees” conversations that parents handle with their children is very over rated. We spent miles and hours discussing the boys' father and their own identities. I kept wondering if they were getting the right message or even if this was just too serious for a developing pre-teen, when suddenly my youngest, who loved to use big words even if he didn't know their definition, announced, “I know! When I grow up I'm going to be a nymphomaniac!”
Oh, yeah, every mother's dream child. :)
The “boys” are in their mid-30's now and I love them more today, even though I absolutely doted on them when they were little.
When I see them walking towards me I think, not bad, single mother.
3.28.2008
Transplants - Redux
Well, will wonders never cease! I'd like to be selfish enough to think my last blog post had some effect. The insurance company relented on their waiting period stipulation - Mr. Watley is now back on the transplant list. Good luck to you and God bless!
See Spokesman Review article at http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=14307
See Spokesman Review article at http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=14307
3.26.2008
Transplants, Waiting Periods, Insurance Gods, O My
Dying for a transplant
John Stucke
Staff writer
March 26, 2008
Fred Watley is missing his chance for a liver transplant.
A new organ may have helped the 59-year-old substance abuse counselor steer more teens away from drugs and booze; may have helped him raise his 10-year-old son into a young man; may have helped him grow old with LiAnne, his wife of 11 years. . . .
I was dismayed when I read this article in the Spokesman Wednesday morning. The intertwining of transplants and health insurance coverage is a sticky subject. It is beyond comprehension that the government would support waiting periods for insurance companies on transplants. I can hear their little wheels turning: "gee, if we have a waiting period of six months, the chances are good the patient will die before we have to fork money out for a transplant."
Not only do potential transplant recipients have to go through their insurance company's waiting period, then if they are fortunate enough to get a match with a new organ, they have to go through the surgery, and once home, they have to jump through the Medicare hoops for post-transplant care which includes the very expensive anti-rejection drugs a transplant recipient must take for the rest of his or her life. The catch here is that Medicare will cover an organ transplant for only three years – not for the lifetime of the organ recipient. Again, the governmental mumblings can be heard, saying, "well, we only expect the transplant recipient to live an additional three years, once they have received the new organ. Then they die." So the recipient finds themselves in a position three years after having a successful transplant of paying $3,000 to $5,000 a month for the drugs they must take to keep their organ viable.
It's a matter of life and death. With a transplant, Mr. Watley would have a chance of living 20 years or more. (The down side of transplants is that the new organ will start to fade out after 20 years.) Now he isn't even going to make the six month waiting period.
I have a familial kidney disease, Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), which is the most common genetic disease even above diabetes, however the public is much more aware of diabetes than PKD. April is Organ Donor Month. We are hearing ads all the time to encourage people to list themselves as organ donors on their driver's license. Just recently we read about a customer at a Starbuck's in Seattle getting a new kidney from her barrister. Her disease: Polycystic Kidney Disease.
My sister had a transplant eight years ago from a live donor; my brother had a transplant two years ago from a person who had an organ donor card. Both are alive and active and productive. Both were "lucky" in that they lived through the waiting period. My sister was let go from her job (ironically in a transplant center in Seattle) because she was out sick a lot. The problem is that transplant recipients not only have to take 10-20 pills every day to keep from rejecting their new organ, but their built-in immunity is wiped out and they are susceptible to anyone's common cold or flu or other contagious disease and it negatively impacts the organ recipient. She went on Medicare but only received three years of coverage. Being well under 65, she couldn't qualify for Medicaid coverage until her and her husband's income was down to a minimum ($40,000 for a married couple, $2,000 for a single person). My brother is self employed while his wife has excellent insurance coverage for the two of them – so he has a double-sided "good luck" coin: he has insurance through his wife, and, he works alone so he isn't bombarded by sniffles, coughs, wheezes and the cubicle neighbor who has to confide to anyone in breathing-in distance their blow-by-blow latest crud.
As for me, I am living on the hope that I am "status quo" and that I can live to old, old age with no problems with this disease. My alternative is dialysis – even Mr. Watley hasn't had that option. Or a transplant.
Have a spare kidney??????
3.24.2008
4,000 Souls
So, Easter Sunday marked another anniversary, but not of the resurrection kind. The news headlines announced boldly to the world that we have met the 4,000 mark of soldiers who have died in IRAQ. Four thousand! Four thousand sons and daughters; four thousand moms and dads; four thousand best friends; four thousand children. I read the headline and my first thought was, "what? Am I supposed to applaud?" Is this a milestone number that I am supposed to celebrate?
This country went to war because of events from September 11, 2001. It is significant I think that we have lost 1,000 more in Iraq than we did in New York, Virginia, and Philadelphia in a terrorist attack meted upon us from Afghanistan. Have we proved anything other than exacting our revenge? Sure - we were able to execute Hussein - something we should have done in 1991. Had we done that, we might have had more operative intelligence to focus on the new threat of Bin Laden.
My sons are the ages of the soldiers in Iraq. My oldest was in the Army during the beginning of Desert Storm, getting out four years before September 11. I scoured the papers and tv every single day for news of Desert Storm and the various skirmishes all over the world that weren't making front page news. I was a wreck! My heart would bleed for the Moms and Dads in the loss of their child. When he arrived safely home, I wanted to kiss his feet!
Now this. We've reached four thousand losses of our children that has affected parents, teachers, children, friends in the multiples of thousands.
I'm not going to memorialize this so called achievement. I will memorialize instead each soul, each child, each friend that has been taken from this earth far too soon.
This country went to war because of events from September 11, 2001. It is significant I think that we have lost 1,000 more in Iraq than we did in New York, Virginia, and Philadelphia in a terrorist attack meted upon us from Afghanistan. Have we proved anything other than exacting our revenge? Sure - we were able to execute Hussein - something we should have done in 1991. Had we done that, we might have had more operative intelligence to focus on the new threat of Bin Laden.
My sons are the ages of the soldiers in Iraq. My oldest was in the Army during the beginning of Desert Storm, getting out four years before September 11. I scoured the papers and tv every single day for news of Desert Storm and the various skirmishes all over the world that weren't making front page news. I was a wreck! My heart would bleed for the Moms and Dads in the loss of their child. When he arrived safely home, I wanted to kiss his feet!
Now this. We've reached four thousand losses of our children that has affected parents, teachers, children, friends in the multiples of thousands.
I'm not going to memorialize this so called achievement. I will memorialize instead each soul, each child, each friend that has been taken from this earth far too soon.
3.17.2008
Memories of Dad
This past weekend I chanced upon an article about a Dad/Daughter Dance. And the memories of my Dad whooshed in on me.
I have learned over time that a lot of daughters do not have the wonderful heroic image of their father as I do. It is very sad to me to realize not all daughters are the apple of their father’s eyes.
My Dad was my hero and my Prince Charming. He was the root of my self-esteem – he always said I could do anything, be anything I wanted. When I was a young adult he said, on my dating, you can BE an attorney, a doctor, a teacher, a leader – you don't have to marry one. (Of course, he would have been quite content if my sister and I remained pure, sweet, and innocent for our remaining days – a convent would not be disappointing to him.)
I was the light of my Dad’s life; my sister and I held a special place in his heart, making our brothers take a back seat. Sorry guys.
When I was in 8th grade (at one of the last eight-grade schools here in Spokane), we had a Father Daughter Tea. I was beyond thrilled to have my Dad, suited up, attend this tea. (So, that’s probably why I like men in uniform; a suit is such a class act!)
My Dad was ten feet tall to me. I would place my feet on his and he would dance me around the living room. He was everything to me and I to him. Once I sliced open my hand on a broken glass milk bottle (remember those?) He was just sick with grief for that little injury. The emergency room staff made him leave because they didn’t want to deal with a fainting father. His hand hurt…. Later when he broke his leg, my leg itched. We joked that it was too bad that when I scratched my leg, it wouldn’t relieve the terrible itching he had under his cast that ran from his foot to his hip. (I was 16 – in fact, he broke his leg the day before my birthday and that was a time that hospitals limited visitors to 16 and older.)
Funny, years after I became a mother and had two sons, I was walking out of the building I worked in, a bank, and this cute little man held the door open for me. I blinked, thinking he looked familiar when I realized that it was my ten-foot tall hero-Dad displayed as the real human being he was - only a couple inches taller than me. :)
In March of 1994, I wrote a short article that was picked for “Your Turn” in the Spokesman Review, titled “Happy Father’s Day.” It wasn’t Father’s Day; it was a memorial for my Dad who died December 19, 1993.
It was a thank you to my Dad; I had turned it into a speech for my Toastmaster’s group and it went something like this:
Thank you, Dad, for all the memories.
The time you made sling shots for all of us kids out of wooden clothes clips and rubber from inner tubes. Good for zapping little brothers.
The time it snowed so deep that you made an igloo for us that lasted for two whole months!
The same year, you made the fantastic toboggan run behind our house that was so sleek and fast that it would propel our six-man toboggan down and around the barn, and whoosh back up to the top – we only had to walk it over to the starting point and do it all again.
Making up the rule not to sing at the kitchen table or the window would fall on our heads. (Says something about how happy we were that you would have to make up a rule to keep us from singing at the kitchen table!)
Making up the Quiet Game (again at the kitchen table) where the game was lost at the first peep from a child, so we would spend delicious minutes making faces and sticking out our tongues at hapless siblings until one would burst out laughing. It only would last maybe five minutes before one of us would cave.
Coming up with titles for the book you never wrote. Naming the cats after events like Sir Odd Leigh Waffled (the result of making waffles that were, well, odd) and Precious Horace D, or PhD, the only doctor in the family.
The time we were camping at Priest Lake and our beach ball got away from us in the cool morning hours and you rushed in after it in your underwear – boxer shorts! How totally embarrassing to a 13-year old daughter when you came back with the beach ball, shorts plastered to your skin, and an audience of all the campers in the area. Clapping.
Sunday drives, especially ones where you would shout "I know a SHORT CUT!" that always turned out very obviously to us in the back seat - NOT! Like the time we got stuck on a flooded muddy road that went on for at least a mile and we (meaning your four children) pushed the car the entire way.
There are more wonderful memories. But the Dad-Daughter Dessert has to be right up there on top.
At the end of my Toastmaster’s speech, every guy in the room who had a daughter came up to me to thank me for reminding me of their most important duty as a father.
A father’s love for his child is the foundation for that child’s future. And a father’s relationship to his daughter is unique and the force behind her self esteem, growth, life, decisions.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you greatly!
I have learned over time that a lot of daughters do not have the wonderful heroic image of their father as I do. It is very sad to me to realize not all daughters are the apple of their father’s eyes.
My Dad was my hero and my Prince Charming. He was the root of my self-esteem – he always said I could do anything, be anything I wanted. When I was a young adult he said, on my dating, you can BE an attorney, a doctor, a teacher, a leader – you don't have to marry one. (Of course, he would have been quite content if my sister and I remained pure, sweet, and innocent for our remaining days – a convent would not be disappointing to him.)
I was the light of my Dad’s life; my sister and I held a special place in his heart, making our brothers take a back seat. Sorry guys.
When I was in 8th grade (at one of the last eight-grade schools here in Spokane), we had a Father Daughter Tea. I was beyond thrilled to have my Dad, suited up, attend this tea. (So, that’s probably why I like men in uniform; a suit is such a class act!)
My Dad was ten feet tall to me. I would place my feet on his and he would dance me around the living room. He was everything to me and I to him. Once I sliced open my hand on a broken glass milk bottle (remember those?) He was just sick with grief for that little injury. The emergency room staff made him leave because they didn’t want to deal with a fainting father. His hand hurt…. Later when he broke his leg, my leg itched. We joked that it was too bad that when I scratched my leg, it wouldn’t relieve the terrible itching he had under his cast that ran from his foot to his hip. (I was 16 – in fact, he broke his leg the day before my birthday and that was a time that hospitals limited visitors to 16 and older.)
Funny, years after I became a mother and had two sons, I was walking out of the building I worked in, a bank, and this cute little man held the door open for me. I blinked, thinking he looked familiar when I realized that it was my ten-foot tall hero-Dad displayed as the real human being he was - only a couple inches taller than me. :)
In March of 1994, I wrote a short article that was picked for “Your Turn” in the Spokesman Review, titled “Happy Father’s Day.” It wasn’t Father’s Day; it was a memorial for my Dad who died December 19, 1993.
It was a thank you to my Dad; I had turned it into a speech for my Toastmaster’s group and it went something like this:
Thank you, Dad, for all the memories.
There are more wonderful memories. But the Dad-Daughter Dessert has to be right up there on top.
At the end of my Toastmaster’s speech, every guy in the room who had a daughter came up to me to thank me for reminding me of their most important duty as a father.
A father’s love for his child is the foundation for that child’s future. And a father’s relationship to his daughter is unique and the force behind her self esteem, growth, life, decisions.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you greatly!
3.09.2008
Is Being a First Lady Really "Work Experience?"
Daschle: First lady experience doesn’t count for Clinton
By Aaron Blake
Posted: 03/09/08 01:41 PM [ET]Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on Sunday questioned Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (N.Y.) pitching of herself as the most experienced candidate in the Democratic presidential race, suggesting her years as first lady do not add much to her foreign policy credentials.
I have been wondering when someone would comment on this. For weeks now, Clinton has said she has more experience than Obama. How is that, when he was elected to the Senate several years before Clinton?
So, if I am the wife of a neurosurgeon, then I can put that down on my resume and lift up a scalpel and slice open your brain? I'm qualified, right? After all, my husband's experience should automatically become mine through marital osmosis.
And that brings up something else.... If Clinton is claiming her years as the president's wife as "experience" then she is also stating that we should view the spouse of the president as an elected position of leadership. So - do you really want to elect Bill Clinton again?
Think about it.
Here's the rest of the article:
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Daschle, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), pointed out that Obama has served in elective office longer than Clinton and suggested her time as first lady does not have much relevance to the office she seeks.
“I worked with her; I know what a good first lady she was,” Daschle said. “But it would be hard for me to draw some degree of connection between being a first lady and having the experience to be the
commander in chief.“I don’t think anyone can look at her experience as first lady and say, for some reason, that qualifies her to run for president of the United States.”
3.07.2008
Nursing Home Care
Just noticed this in the Spokesman Review headlines (http://www.spokesmanreview.com/):
Alliance aims for more money for nursing home workers
This is an issue that is very, very important to me. When I'm not at my day job, I take care of my mother-in-law who had a terrible stroke almost three years ago. Her care requires intense 24/7 dedicated time from her son, who moved in with her. We had her at a nursing home for three months. What an eye opener for me.
Alliance aims for more money for nursing home workers
This is an issue that is very, very important to me. When I'm not at my day job, I take care of my mother-in-law who had a terrible stroke almost three years ago. Her care requires intense 24/7 dedicated time from her son, who moved in with her. We had her at a nursing home for three months. What an eye opener for me.
Statewide, 13,000 nursing home workers earn less than $10 an hour, Jimenez said. Some 1,100 of them are in Spokane County. The alliance’s proposal calls for up to a $2-an-hour wage increase or healthcare benefits, she said.
Residents are only allowed by the state to get three hours committed one-on-one time from an aid or nurse. It is pathetic! The aids are paid miserably (or miserly) for back-breaking work. They lift, carry, turn, clean, change, dress, empty urine bags, change colostomy bags, change bedding, give baths, feed our beloved parents and grandparents for a paltry sum which does not include hugging, listening, encouraging, petting and all the salient, vital emotional needs. For $10 an hour!
I know how burdensome this is because it is what I live when I’m not at my day job. Nursing home employees are NOT paid nearly their worth. And we, as children who place our parents in nursing homes, cannot expect quality “caring” of Mom and Dad. That $10 doesn’t give them the tender loving care they would thrive on and survive on.
My humble thoughts.
3.06.2008
Women, Rights, Presidency
I have recently been observing, and sometimes participating in, a blog at the Spokesman-Review website, http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo/. The discussions get very intense and political and sometimes out of my league, hence the observing. But every now and then, I am stirred by the topic.
Of course, lately it has been Hillary Clinton. First - I have no particular party affiliation. I go with my heart and my head; I study each candidate and form my opinion based on fairly intricate research. But Hillary Clinton? uh, no.
The statement was heard at a caucus meeting recently by a proponent of Hillary: "I think she should be nominated because she's a woman." And more than likely, someone at another caucus table said similar words about Borak Obama, that he should be nominated because he is black.
This shows a serious lack of intelligence on the speaker's part. It shouldn't matter one whit whether the candidate is a woman or black or Chinese or fill-in-the-blank. What should matter is that person's credentials. How will that person perform as President of the United States? The highest job in the country. The most sensitive, critical position in America. What is that person's history and how does that person's resume read? Education? Voting record? Does that person mirror your views? For instance, both candidates are favorable towards stem cell therapy and research; as a person facing the possibility of a kidney transplant, that issue is close to my heart. It doesn't take a "woman" or someone who is "black" to go to bat for me.
Not only does this person make decisions that can send us to war, but this person is on a pedestal for the entire world to observe. What is going to be the first impression of the rest of the world? How will other government leaders accept what our candidate has to offer?
How will a new president heal our nation that has suffered horrific terrorist attacks and the outrageous death toll of our young people serving in Iraq, Afghanistan?
The president needs to be a person of high ideals and integrity, with an inner strength and poise. I do not see H Clinton and integrity in the same sentence. When a candidate starts doing the "bash the opponent" thing, my ears close up. I don't hear that person anymore and they have just fallen off my radar - I focus on the other person. A person who lowers themself to the level of sniping at the opponent, dredging up gossip and portraying it as fact, attacking them for a middle name (come on!), or drums up a tawdry tidbit from the other's past, is no longer portraying the image of what I want in my President.
I am seeking a President that embodies professionalism, integrity, compassion, intelligence. And you will note that I didn't just describe Hillary Clinton.
As a woman in my late 50s, I have been right smack in the middle of the growing independence of women. We have made great strides over the years. We no longer have a glass ceiling. Most of my friends are the sole wage earners in their families, while the husband stays at home. I am pleased and kind of embarrassed when a man opens a door for me - but I don't get on a platform and brow beat him with my burned bra until he opens the door.
Women's liberation does not mean we must have a woman in the presidency but it is definitely in our future. Voting for a woman for the sake of "making history" is just plain stupid.
Of course, lately it has been Hillary Clinton. First - I have no particular party affiliation. I go with my heart and my head; I study each candidate and form my opinion based on fairly intricate research. But Hillary Clinton? uh, no.
The statement was heard at a caucus meeting recently by a proponent of Hillary: "I think she should be nominated because she's a woman." And more than likely, someone at another caucus table said similar words about Borak Obama, that he should be nominated because he is black.
This shows a serious lack of intelligence on the speaker's part. It shouldn't matter one whit whether the candidate is a woman or black or Chinese or fill-in-the-blank. What should matter is that person's credentials. How will that person perform as President of the United States? The highest job in the country. The most sensitive, critical position in America. What is that person's history and how does that person's resume read? Education? Voting record? Does that person mirror your views? For instance, both candidates are favorable towards stem cell therapy and research; as a person facing the possibility of a kidney transplant, that issue is close to my heart. It doesn't take a "woman" or someone who is "black" to go to bat for me.
Not only does this person make decisions that can send us to war, but this person is on a pedestal for the entire world to observe. What is going to be the first impression of the rest of the world? How will other government leaders accept what our candidate has to offer?
How will a new president heal our nation that has suffered horrific terrorist attacks and the outrageous death toll of our young people serving in Iraq, Afghanistan?
The president needs to be a person of high ideals and integrity, with an inner strength and poise. I do not see H Clinton and integrity in the same sentence. When a candidate starts doing the "bash the opponent" thing, my ears close up. I don't hear that person anymore and they have just fallen off my radar - I focus on the other person. A person who lowers themself to the level of sniping at the opponent, dredging up gossip and portraying it as fact, attacking them for a middle name (come on!), or drums up a tawdry tidbit from the other's past, is no longer portraying the image of what I want in my President.
I am seeking a President that embodies professionalism, integrity, compassion, intelligence. And you will note that I didn't just describe Hillary Clinton.
As a woman in my late 50s, I have been right smack in the middle of the growing independence of women. We have made great strides over the years. We no longer have a glass ceiling. Most of my friends are the sole wage earners in their families, while the husband stays at home. I am pleased and kind of embarrassed when a man opens a door for me - but I don't get on a platform and brow beat him with my burned bra until he opens the door.
Women's liberation does not mean we must have a woman in the presidency but it is definitely in our future. Voting for a woman for the sake of "making history" is just plain stupid.
Tornado (or Tomato) Warning
When my children were in day care, about age 4 and 5, we had a very rare occurrence of small tornadoes touching down. This just doesn't happen in Washington. I had picked up my children and knew they were really hyped about something! They were chattering at once, eyes wide with wonder, as they explained to me that we had a "tomato" warning today. I just thought it was hilarious to have these two little boys visualizing tomatoes falling from the sky.
It was one of those blustery
windy
gusty days.
The sky was black at noon,
the wind pushed you across the street.
The day care huddled all kids inside
safe
warm.
Parents picked them up
one
by
one.
I picked up my two.
Wide-eyed, saucer-eyed.
Such an exciting day today, they said.
Both talking at once,
quite in awe.
They asked if I had heard,
too,
of. . . .
The Tomato Warnings
windy
gusty days.
The sky was black at noon,
the wind pushed you across the street.
The day care huddled all kids inside
safe
warm.
Parents picked them up
one
by
one.
I picked up my two.
Wide-eyed, saucer-eyed.
Such an exciting day today, they said.
Both talking at once,
quite in awe.
They asked if I had heard,
too,
of. . . .
The Tomato Warnings
3.05.2008
Dare to be Exceptional
Definition of Exceptional: Far beyond what is usual, normal, or customary: exceptional, extraordinary, magnificent, outstanding, preeminent, rare, remarkable, singular, towering, uncommon, unusual, standout, awesome, out of sight.I am a legal assistant – by definition. I multi-task a myriad of projects, I am a travel agent, booking countless flights and then changing those same flights and rebooking new flights and generally circumventing all the rules made for booking flights. I do everything but fly the plane.
I am capable of reading minds and foretelling the future. Case in point is filing. Filing is about 98.99% of my job. (just kidding – but because I love filing so much I like to save it and spend one whole day doing nothing but filing. This is no reflection on my organizational abilities.)
I am adept at finding files, categorizing files, sorting files, opening new files, filing files, re-filing files, and {sigh} closing files to archived files being sure to have a reference card on file so I can retrieve the archived file to file with the ongoing files because the attorney changed his mind about closing the file {double sigh}. I also keep track of the files in my attorney’s office that he keeps in his own peculiar order according to date worked on, cases referred to, and other methods I have not quite zeroed in on, although they are absolutely never ever filed alphabetically or numerically. These files are in various places: on the table, under the table, on the couch, under the couch, in boxes, on the credenza. Very rarely are two files for the same client filed in the same chair/table/floor/cubby hole — together. If I suggest putting in a filing cabinet in his office, his face falls and he says “but I would never FIND anything!” So, every morning I do a walk through his office and memorize where all the files are that we are working on right now. I have two attorneys that file the same way. I do not have a photographic memory.
I prioritize all my jobs so that each attorney thinks he is number one or the only one. At the end of the day, I sleep well with my conscience clear, and the next day I put on a freshly ironed Wonder Woman Cape and do it all over again.
Communication
Communication
I talked with my son this morning,
eye
to
eye.
I know that he was shorter yesterday.
Age 6
Polycystic Kidney Disease
Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is actually very common but hardly anyone knows about it. It is more common than diabetes. It affects 500,000 people in the United States and is a genetic disease that will affect whole families for generations. My Dad and his brother and sister all died from it. Their mother died from it. I have a brother and sister, as well as me, diagnosed with PKD. Both my siblings have had transplants, my sister from a live donor, my brother from a cadaver. Both have been very successful, particularly for my brother.
I urge you to consider being an organ donor. Having a transplant is a life saver!
I urge you to consider being an organ donor. Having a transplant is a life saver!
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