Awkwardness a la carte

Falling

2011-10-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'm falling in love again.He's perfect. Just perfection personnified. We are like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; we fit together perfectly, each complimenting the other. He knows what I'm saying with my saying it. We are very alike but different enough to remain interesting to each other. He shows me things I would never see without him, and I introduce him to new and different concepts, thoughts and ideas.I'm falling in love again, and it feels fantastic.

Extremes

2011-10-02T05:07:00.001-07:00

Thursday morning was the best morning I've had since moving to Kansas. I spent it in the cemetery with a friend of mine who's forgotten more about stone than I'll ever know. We wandered about, him pointing out different stones to me and telling me how I can make some of the repairs myself. At one point we can across a stone that was face down in the dirt:Him: have you flipped this over to see what's written on it?Me: no, it's too heavyHim: Pfft. It's not THAT heavy.Me: you can say that 'cause you're 6'3" and a fucking monster. I, on the other hand, am 5'2" and...well, NOT a monster.(and he IS a big, big guy - not big as in fat, but big as in muscular. If he wasn't such a softie I might find him intimidating - but don't tell him I said that).I came away from our meeting with high hopes and feeling great.And then Hubs came home and I reverted back to my usual 'total fuck-up who can't do anything right and knows nothing about anything' role.*sigh*.....

In The Midst of Death, Life

2011-06-08T03:04:00.001-07:00

My cemetery restortation project has turned into a history lesson. In order to get grant monies, I have to research the people buried there and turn up something "significant" so the folks with the dough will be prompted to agree that yes, we DO need to preserve the place because so-and-so who did this-and-that I lies in repose there.

However, researching the lives of these people has made me think that they are ALL significant. From the babies who were stillborn because their mother experienced placental abruption (due to placenta previa), to the children who died in the cholera epidemic, to the man who was shot and killed in an argument over a woman to the elderly who succumbed to "senility" and "apoplexy" and even the two who lived to be 100…..ALL of those people are significant. Their lives have, and are touching me. I'm looking at their family trees, at their descendants – some of whom are still living in the area – and even before that, I'm looking at how they came to be here. There are immigrants from Europe, people from the East Cost (who I believe may have come to Kansas as part of the abolition emigration), people from the South (most likely pro-slavery folks looking to make Kansas the same – which is the same reason the abolitionists came here)…people from all over the world are here. These people saw America fight herself in the Civil War; some of them saw the nearby town of Lawrence burned to the ground by the notorious William Quantrill, they lived through John Brown's massacre of innocent people in the name of "freedom"….they were a part of history and they are in MY TOWN.

I've been asked recently why I want to spend so much time in the cemetery with "dead people". Yes, their bodies may have failed and ceased to work, but their personal histories let them live on. Every time I find information about someone, it feels as if I'm resurrecting them. I imagine them standing next to me as I read about them, saying "Yes! That was me! Read some more!"

That graveyard isn't really about death. It's about life.

Greenwood Cemetery

2011-05-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

Just up the street from my house is an abandoned cemetery. Greenwood Cemetery was established in 1863, but has graves from a few years before that. It's the oldest established cemetery in the state of Kansas, but it's in pretty rough shape. The city comes by and mows every so often, but that's about it as far as maintenance goes.

I walk in this cemetery often. I find my own kind of spirituality there; I don't believe in an afterlife or heaven or deity of any kind, but being in the cemetery reminds me that under my feet are the remnants of lives lived and that I exist BECAUSE of them, whether it be directly or indirectly. It grounds me, it calms me, and I enjoy the solitude and peace there.

So, I've decided to take on a clean up project. I talked to the City Parks manager and have his blessing to tidy the place up. I have plans to plot the graves I can find with a GPS - I have a list of names of people buried there, so I'm going to try and eventually map where they're at. I'd also like, at some point, to petition the State Historical Society to designate the cemetery a historical landmark or place of significance, but that's a long way in the future.

It's a big job. A HUGE job, really. I'm trying so hard to take it one step at a time; to not get ahead of myself, but it's difficult. It's not my style to be patient and methodical, I'm more chaotic and tend to do things with gusto. This is going to be a learning experience for me: an exercise in completing one thing before I start another and a chance to be dogged and methodical. I hope to spend at least three or four mornings a week in the cemetery and if I'm well enough I'd like to go up there every day. My health has not been the best recently; I spent a week as an inpatient with a gastric bleed and ended up firing my gastroenterologist. My new guy ran some different tests and got some new results that point to me having Crohn's disease. I'm on 10mg prednisone twice a day, which is really helping with the Crohn's symptoms, but has thrown me into steroid-induced diabetes so I'm having to test my blood sugars and adjust my diet accordingly. Hopefully it will go away when I come off the steroids in a few months. In the meantime, we're starting Imuran. I'm actually happy with the care he's providing; for the first time I feel like I can hand myself over to him and let him sort me out, rather than not trusting him totally and trying to help steer my care.

Life is good, y'all. It might be painful some days, and some days it's sad and I feel glum, but for the most part, I feel good. Life is good.

Ninja Medic is no more

2011-03-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not an EMT anymore. I let my license expire and I have no intention of renewing it. It was great fun whilst it lasted, but it's time for me to move on to something else.

So, I'm going to be a pharmacy tech. I started CPhT classes last week. It seems to be the perfect combination for me; I get to utilize the knowledge I have and I still get patient contact hours, just without having to lift and move bodies and people around all the time.

So, I'm not Ninja Medic anymore, and it doesn't feel right to continue to use the moniker when I'm not doing the job. Instead, I'm toying with the idea of Ninja Pharmer as my ID.

In other news, I nearly shot my husband this morning. He left the house before it was light to go to the gym. I heard him leave, then dozed off again...and an undetermined time later, I heard the front door open again. Nobody called out, so I flew out of bed, got my pistol and slid into the bedroom doorway to see who was in my house. Apparently the sound of a round being chambered made Hubs realize what I was doing and he walked from the kitchen into the hallway with his hands in the air.
He says that in the future he's going to yell "IT'S ME!!!" and wake the whole house. Honestly, I'd prefer he do that....it's a horrible feeling, realizing that you could have done your spouse some serious harm and I'd rather be woken up than feel like that again.

Kansas

2010-11-22T14:03:00.000-08:00

I moved. Everything came together the way it should, and we're settling into our new home nicely. We did a door to door move; we hired a Penske truck, spent two days loading it up, outprocessed housing in Illinois then hopped in and drove to Kansas.

There have been a couple of flies in the ointment, however. The house we're renting was occupied by the home owners until September. We are the first tenants; renting is a new experience for them and it showed. Within the first 24 hours we had to have a plumber out because the bathtub leaked, one toilet wouldn't flush and the other shower didn't get hot water; a HVAC guy because there was a heat pump thermostat on the wall when we don't have a heat pump and it caused the A/C unit to run constantly, and a refrigeration man because the fridge wasn't getting cold. The house was also dirty, so dirty that I felt I had to clean the shower before I could use it. The oven was the filthiest I have ever seen, and I had to replace the drip pans underneath the electric burners of the stove because the old ones were so dirty and rusty. I was more than a little disappointed that I had just got done cleaning one house to inspection standards and here I was, less than 12 hours later, cleaning another home.

The second, and more significant problem happened the week after we moved in. It started with a dimming of the sight in my right eye. Colors were muted and things just looked fuzzy. I waited a couple of days to see if it would go away, and when it didn't (and in fact got worse) I went to see my doctor. An hour later I was in an opthamologists chair, being diagnosed with central retinal vein occlusion. I won't regain any of the sight I've lost and there's a 50% chance I'll go blind in the affected eye. It's put my plans to go back to work on the back burner and I'm still trying to get used to not being able to see properly.

The boys are settling in nicely, and Hubs has started work. We're having one of the single soldiers he works with over for Thanksgiving dinner - he'll be the first guest in our new home.

I have to say that I like Kansas thus far. The town is small, but it has everything we need and the people are some of the friendliest I've ever met. The neighborhood we live in is wonderful; I can drive down the street without worrrying about unattended toddlers running out in front of me and when we go to bed at night we're not disturbed by other people's music pounding until 4am.

That alone made the move worthwhile!

Dear Doctor

2010-09-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Doc B,

I'm writing this in the hope that you remember me. I think that you might; you considered me a thorn in your side for a while.

I want you to know that I don't hold anything against you personally. You're probably a very nice person to interact with outside of the doctor/patient relationship. My issue is with your professionalism. Not your skill as a physician, exactly, but your listening skills.

I have a lot of respect for the education you've received. My hat's off to anyone who can make it through medical school and residency. Nursing school opened my eyes to the kind of rigors physicians are put through; those of you who make the grade do so because you're tough. My issue isn't with your level of intelligence, however; it's with your listening skills. Your HEARING skills, to be more precise.

Doc, you may have thought that you listened to me, but I don't think you HEARD me. You didn't take me seriously. You wrote me off, you told me that you didn't know why I was so ill intermittently but that I should just learn to live with it. You labelled me - not only in your own mind, but to other providers, too - as a hystrionic hypochondriac and also as a drug seeker. It didn't seem to matter to you that I wasn't asking for narcotics and that I made myself ill taking NSAIDs, you ignored the fact that I came to you asking for a medically managed withdrawl from narcotics after a car accident and subsequent surgery, you just saw me coming in complaining of pain and you made up your mind that that's what I was after. You even wrote it in my medical records. You ignored the times when I refused narcotic medications from yourself and from other providers, you ignored that I asked for you every single time I was seen because I wanted continuity of care....you ignored those things and you got a tunnel vision. Do you know how difficult it is to have something like that written in your chart, Doc? Every physician I've seen since you wrote that has initially looked at me with suspicion.

You're probably wondering why I'm writing to you now, years after we last met. I'll tell you why: I have Crohn's disease. I've HAD Crohn's disease for years, even way back when I was your patient. It's not only attacked my gut, it's attacked my joints and my kidneys, too. All that joint pain I kept complaining about? It was real. The belly pain and constant diarrhea I came to you with? That was real. The fatigue, the hair loss and weight loss and the depression that came and went? The recurring kidney stones and reflux, the gall stones and billiary colic? ALL OF IT WAS REAL AND HAD AN ORGANIC CAUSE.

It wasn't all in my head. It wasn't something I was making up. It was real, doc, and had you not been so determined to prove that there was nothing wrong with me, you might have seen the signs and symptoms that, according to my gastroenterologist, were 'blaringly obvious to anyone who cared to look' and you might have ordered the right tests and come up with a diagnosis.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found a physician who was able to put aside the bias you placed in my chart (based on a falsehood, I might add) and see me as a sick person desperate for help. Instead of taking the preliminary negative results of a colonoscopy and endoscopy as a firm indictation that nothing was wrong, he decided to investigate further. "There's another 1/3 of your gut that I haven't seen yet" he said. "Don't worry, we'll figure this out" he said. Those words were like a ray of light in the darkness, and they made me cry. It felt like finally, someone was validating the way I was feeling.

He took me at my word, Doc. He went and looked further, and he saw that the 1/3 of my gut he hadn't seen yet was eroded and ulcerated. He looked at the abnormal blood tests, at my lack of renal function, at my swollen and painful joints, at my weight loss, at my malnutrition. He took the time to figure it out instead of dismissing me the way you did. He took the time, and he got an answer.

I'm not saying that he is a better physician than you, or even a better person than you. I'm simply saying that you might want to re-think your bias; that you may want to try to put aside your cynicism a little more often when confronted with a patient who keeps coming back with the same symptoms, telling you that something is wrong. Perhaps if you had done that with me, I'd have better renal function than I do now and I wouldn't have been as ill as I was...I wouldn't have thought I was dying. I can't say with any certainty that your lack of concern led to my kidneys only working at roughly 30% of their original capacity, but I can say that they're damaged because of the effects of undiagnosed Crohn's disease that I had for YEARS. I can say that had you NOT insisted on seeing me as the pain in the ass patient you might have been able to help me.

I know how easy it is to become cynical when confronted with patients; I've experienced it first-hand. I've also had the cynicism come back to bite me in the ass. I hope that this letter and my diagnosis is YOUR bite in the ass, Doc. I hope that you don't just blow this off as sour grapes on my part; I hope that you take it seriously and that you use it as an opportunity to reassess the way you look at patients. I don't want anyone else to go through what I went through, and I don't want you to treat anyone else the way you treated me.

Now that I have a diagnosis and am being treated adequately for this disease, I'm doing really quite well. It wasn't until I started to feel better that I realized just how awful I had been feeling for so long. I know that it may not seem like it, but I harbor no animosity towards you. If you were still practicing in my area I wouldn't be telling other patients that you're a horrible physician, and I won't be campaigning for the AMA to revoke your license or penalize you. I simply want my case, my illness, to be a wake up call for you. I want you to learn from it, to learn from me.

Much love and many regards,

NM

Contrast

2010-09-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 5pm. There's a knock at the door; Hubs answers it and standing on the other side of the screen door is D, the little boy who lives in the other half of the duplex we inhabit.

Hubs: Hey, D! What's up, Buddy?

D: Mister F, I'm real sorry but my brother threw his ball in your yard. Can I please have it back?

Hubs: Of course you can. The dogs are inside, so just go on in and grab it. And D? Thank you for asking.

- - - - - - - - - -

Saturday, 5pm

Our house sits almost at the end of a cul-de-sac. There's about 15' of grass between the duplex we share with the neighbors and the house preceeding ours - where the family that likes to party a lot lives. I don't know how many children live there exactly, but today there are 7 of them outside. To the front are my flower beds, our driveway and a patch of grass that we call out 'front yard'. It's not fenced in, but it's our responsibility to maintain. I worked hard on my flower beds this summer; I have roses, azeleas, rhododendrons and a lilac bush, pansies, alyssum, violas and snapdragons. The centerpiece is a Queen Elizabeth rose I planted in memory of my dad, a lush, spicy smelling rose with red petals and dark green leathery foliage. To the back of our houses are baseball diamonds and soccer pitches, big wide open spaces of grass for kids to run and play on.

But they don't play there. At least, the ones that live next door to me don't. They choose instead to play on the strip of grass that separates the houses and they choose to play in my front yard. They're playing soccer there this afternoon, and I tried not to mind the ball hitting the side of the house; I tried not to mind them traipsing all over my lawn. I tried to ignore the ball landing in my flower beds three, four and five times, and I tried even harder to not mind them walking over my bedding plants to fetch it - without even asking or letting me know that's what they were going to do.

When they hit my dad's rose, though...that's when I couldn't ignore it any more. I opened the screen door and told them they needed to take their game elsewhere now. They all stood still, all seven of them, stared at me with open mouths. They didn't say anything - not a single word. I know better than to expect an apology, so I closed the door and came back inside.

I give it half an hour before they're back out there with their ball in my flower beds again. I also expect there to be some retribution from their parents; there will likely be snide comments made in my direction or loud music played until the wee hours of tomorrow morning.

It's quite a contrast.

Taking it back from whom, and to when?

2010-09-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

The Tea Party wants 'America back'. The problem that I have with that statement is that it wasn't ever theirs - white, conservative Christians - to begin with. Unless I have my history all screwed up, Native America peoples were here long before us caucasian Europeans came and took their land from them (which much force and great celebration, I might add). How can you 'take back' something that never really belonged to you in the first place?

Exactly what do they want back, anyway? What era is so attractive to them that they feel we need to turn back the clock? How many years? 4 years - back to when we had a President who wasn't a Democrat and a person of color and we were sending our young men and women to Iraq to die for a cause that was tantamount to a lie? How about 20 years, to the grand old era of Reganomics when cocaine from Latin America was king? Do they want to go back the era of McCarthy-ism, when the threat of Communism caused such paranoia in the country that we actually had an 'Un-American Activities' committee? How about the 30's, before the New Deal, where everyone had to fend for themselves their entire lives and if you were too old/ill to work, you starved or died? What time do they want to go back to, and what exactly are they trying to regain?

The Tea Party also wants you to believe that illegal immigrants are the source of all the problems in America today. Those dang Mexicans are sneaking across our border in the middle of the night, taking jobs away from hardworking Americans, getting free healthcare, dropping 'anchor babies' willy nilly and generally using up all kinds of resources whilst contributing very little to the community. Tea Party members seem to forget that unless they're Native American, they're descended from immigrants, too.

Then again, perhaps they don't. Perhaps they don't forget that; perhaps it's not so much about immigration as it is skin color, language and different culture. It's easier to use someone who looks very different from yourself as a scapegoat (which is why organizations such as the Arayan Brotherhood and KKK have lasted so long) than it is to turn against someone who's caucasian, just like you.

I'm an immigrant. I'm a Permanent Resident Alien in this grand melting pot of States. I've dropped three anchor babies here. I've worked here, gained an education here, used resources here....I have done all of the things that the Tea Party members are complaining about. However, I have blonde hair and blue eyes and fair skin and I speak English with an American accent. I'm not so obvious; I don't stand out in a crowd.

I can't say for sure that this is about race or skin color or religion or culture because I'm not a member of the Tea Party and I don't know what's going on inside their heads. From an outsider's perspective, though, it sure seems like it.

The final step to adulthood.

2010-08-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Hubs and I are considering taking the final step to adulthood (at the grand old ages of 41 and 38) and buying a home.

Leavenworth is likely our last duty station. We had plans to retire to South Dakota, but I think that Hubs skill set might be more suited to life in the Leavenworth area (he's been a Raven, a patrol cop, a detective and Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge of 2 military jail facilities, and by the time he retires from the AF he'll have a graduate degree in criminal justice). Leavenworth has 3 prisons in the locality...enough said, I think.

We also qualify for a VA mortgage loan. I looked at the interest rates and payment calculators yesterday and even at the highest interest rate (if we do this, we're going with a fixed rate. None of this fluctuating crap) over 20 years (instead of 30) we'd be paying LESS per month than we could for a rented property.

With that in mind....anyone got any advice for us? We've never bought a home before.

Thanks!

On the move.

2010-08-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

We have PCS (Permanent Change of Station) orders. We're going to Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. My husband will be the AF liason at the military prison, and we will be the minority Air Force family on an Army post.

We're also tired of living on base, so we're looking at either renting or possibly buying a home off-post once we get there. Lansing and Leavenworth are smaller cities with lower crime rates than our current location - they seem like decent places for us to finish raising our kids and this will probably be our last duty location before Hubs retires.

Speaking of kids, our eldest will not be coming with us. She'll be 18 before we leave and is in her last year of high school and is incredibly reluctant to leave. So, we're making arrangements for her to live with her friend and the friend's mom. It hurts that she's not going to be with us, but I was going to lose her to college next year anyway (that's what I'm telling myself, at least).

I had to withdraw from college; we're moving on Nov 1st which would have precluded my finishing the semester. I see no point in starting something I can't finish, so I withdrew, got a refund, and will try to enroll in classes at a college close to our new duty station.

Holy cow....there's a lot to do!

116

2010-08-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

It's hot.

How hot, you ask?

Try 116. ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN DEGREES FARENHEIT.

I have never been exposed to heat of this magnitude before. Ever.

I don't like it. I'd rather be cold. At least when it's cold, you can put more clothing on. When it's hot like this....well, there's only so much you can take off, ya dig?

It wouldn't be so bad were it not so damn humid. The air is incredibly heavy and just fat with moisture; it's like walking into a warm wet blanket every time you step outside.

Oh, how I long for the Great Plains of South Dakota. At least the air is dry there.

I am becoming my father.

2010-07-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

(incidentally, my dad died 4 years ago tomorrow).

One of the things I remember most about my father was his activism. If he saw something he thought was wrong or unjust, he let people know and more often than not, took action himself. He even threatened a 'sit-in' protest at a local hospital once - he'd been admitted for triple bypass surgery (a repeat) and the surgery kept getting cancelled as he got sicker and sicker. The doctors said that they didn't know when they were going to be able to do the operation, and that they were going to discharge him to home because they needed the bed for someone else.

Dad was having none of that. He told them that if they wanted him to leave, they'd best get the poilice in to move him because he wasn't going anywhere until he'd had the surgery. Then he called the local newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and even a national TV station to tell them about his plight. The resulting publicity (front page news in some publications) must have shamed the local health trust into taking action, because he had the operation 3 days later.

Whilst I haven't gone so far as to stage a sit-in protest, I have inherited my father's activist trait. I can't stand by and simply watch as events happen, and I also can't sit back and let someone else take care of it. My husband tells me all the time that some of the crusades I go on are none of my business and that I should leave them alone. My response to that is that I'm making it my business and that I'm taking care of something nobody else wants to get involved with.

A good example of this activism happened earlier this week. I was at the BX with Hubs, perusing the magazine rack, when I found a publication that was dedicated to the cultivation and use of marajuana.

It was all about pot. How to grow it, where to grow it, what kind of fertilizer, how to use it, where the good stuff comes from...it was pot, pot and more pot.

A magazine all about pot for sale in a store on a military installation.

For those of you not familiar with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it is an offence for ANY service member to grow, possess and use marajuana (or other illegal substaces). The penalties can range from dishonorable discharge to jail time, loss of rank and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. It's illegal in the civilian world, but the military holds it's personnel to a higher standard when it comes to dope, so to see such a magazine for sale in a military store? Inappropriate. Incredibly inappropriate.

I showed it to Hubs. He said that it might be inappropriate, but that they also sell porn magazines and those aren't exactly appropriate either. "Yeah, but porn's legal. This isn't" was my reply. He said for me to leave it alone, that it wasn't my business.

I couldn't. Considering what we've been through with our son, I simply could not walk away and do nothing.

So, I emailed the base commander, asking him if he was aware of this publication being sold in HIS BX and telling him I thought it was highly inappropriate.

I sent the email at 5pm yesterday. At 10am this morning, I got a call from the manager of the BX, telling me that she had pulled the magazines from the shelf and that she would make certain that they would not be making a repeat appearance. She agreed that they were not suitable for the facility and that had she seen them when they first came in she would never have let them out on the sales floor.

I have to say I feel very satisfied with this result. I saw a problem, I took action, and I got it solved.

Thanks, dad. You raised me well.

Now I know.

2010-07-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

I saw the GI doctor again last week. I had spent the prior Sunday in the ER with awful belly pain, vomiting, diarrhea and nausea. Whilst going gluten-free had helped, I was clearly still having problems.

She reviewed my test results (biopsy results and blood tests from the ER) and, after examining me, concluded that I'm gluten intolerant, and that I have Crohn's disease.

It all makes sense. The renal damage, the dramatic weight loss (I'm 120lbs now)the aching joints that come and go, the fissure in my natal crease that sporadically opens up, the "ulcer" that never responded to treatment but seemed to wax and wane ....everything that I've been dealing with for years all comes together in a single diagnosis.

I had wondered if I had Crohn's a while ago. I'd been trying to NOT make all my symptoms fit; I didn't want to be the kind of patient that reads about symptoms on the internet and erroneously diagnoses themselves. I had a feeling that it was more than Celiac disease, though.

So, I have a diagnosis at last. The good news is that it can be controlled. There are lots of medications available to put Crohn's into remission; I started taking one last night and have to go back in 2 weeks to report on how it's working for me. I'm learning about signs that a flare is coming on, and I'm also learning to mitigate my stress levels (stress doesn't help Crohn's disease and can sometimes lead to a flare).

The not-so good news is that I doubt I'll be able to go back into medicine (emergent or otherwise) again. It's quite a blow, to be honest; I'd always envisioned myself in EMS or nursing for the rest of my working life and now that doesn't look like it will happen. I'm having to reassess and think about where I want to go and what I want to do. I've enrolled in part-time classes this fall and am continuing my degree with an emphasis on sign language interpretership. I took a semester and a half of it some years ago and really enjoyed it (did well, too), so I'm looking to build on that. I can still use my medical knowledge (hospitals use ASL interpreters for their translator banks), but the stress levels will be much lower.

I'm just grateful and relieved that we've finally figured out what's wrong with me. I was starting to get worried that we'd never know - and I'd also started to doubt the validity of my symptoms. My husband and kids said that they were wondering whether I was really feeling as ill as I said that I was; if I wasn't embellishing a little to get attention. Now we have this definite diagnosis, I can leave the limbo I've been living in behind me and get on with life again.

Life is going to be good!

2010-07-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

You know what really drives me crazy?

People who have graduated High School/college but who seem to not know how to spell basic words or use tenses.

The ability to read and to write is essential. If you can't read, you're literally lost - you can't do something as simple as read the instructions on a box of cake mix, and if you can't write, filling out a job application is impossible. Why the hell more emphasis isn't placed on literacy and basic writing skills is beyond me.

Here are some examples I found in a 15 minute span this morning:

'You will be miss bro'

'Wen to da stoe to look at cloes'

'I was driven when someone past me doing there hair'

'What was I suppose to do? I didn no it was wrong'

'wat you wanna kno they hole life stroy?'

'people just wanna have sumthink to talq abut'

Not all of those quotes are from teenagers and younger people, either. Some of them are from folks in their 50's.

We're becoming a nation of idiots.

That's sad.

Concealed Carry Permits and the lack thereof

2010-07-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

When I first got a gun, I lived in a state that had a CCP law. It wasn't a 'shall issue', it was a 'may issue' law; you had to undergo a background check in order to be considered and if that came back clean then you were issued the permit. Ths particular state had reciprocity with many other states, meaning that I COULD carry in more states than I could NOT.

Then we moved to Illinois, and the frustration began.

IL does not permit concealed carry, period. In fact, you have to be granted a Firearm Owners ID (FOID) card in order to even touch a firearm in a store or purchase ammunition. The FOID card application and background check was just as comprehensive as the one for my CCP - in fact, it took longer to get the FOID card.

Basically, you can't carry a gun in Illinois. Chicago and it's draconian gun laws have tainted the rest of the state. I think that needs to change.

I live close to a high crime area; the local newspapers and TV stations are constantly carrying reports of people being shot and killed on the streets....and nearly all (I won't say 'all' because I don't want to talk in absolutes) of those homicides was committed by a person who was in legal posession of the murder weapon; they're all done with unregistered 'street' guns. When was the last time you heard of FOID card owner being involved in a drive-by? How about holding up a gas station? Mugging someone? Home invasion, perhaps?

Earlier this year, just across the river in MO, there WAS a report of a man who was shot and killed by a person with a legally owned, concealed firearm. The man was robbing his victim at gunpoint the time - he pointed an illegally acquired, unregistered 9mm at him and told him to hand over his wallet and phone. The victim was carrying a .38 special in a small of the back holster, and after he'd passed over his wallet he reached back as if to get his cell phone, pulled his gun and shot his assailant in the chest. It was a justified homicide; he killed his attacker in self defense.

I spent half my life in England, where guns are outlawed. The old adage of 'when guns are oulawed, only outlaws will have guns' is true, and outlawing those guns has done NOTHING to decrease the crime rate. People simply stab each other with knives now - and there was even a law in the pipeline banning knives with blades over a certain length. What's next, banning people from using their bare hands?

I understand that when the Second Amendment was written it's intent was to allow the citizens of the US to protect themselves from foreign enemies and invaders, NOT necessarily from each other..... but times they have a'changed, folks. Every law abiding citizen in the US, regardless of what state they live in, should be able to own and, if they so choose, carry a gun on their person to protect themselves from the thugs and criminals that seem to be breeding so prolifically.

Times have changed, society has changed, cultures have changed. . . and laws, more specifically IL state laws, should change, too.

It's time.

Lesson learned

2010-07-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

Any doubts I may have had about this NOT being Celiac disease have been removed. I made a huge mistake yesterday and I'm paying for it.

We were supposed to go to a friend's house for a cookout yesterday afternoon. Yesterday morning, I made some macaroni salad with gluten-free pasta to take with us (I wasn't going to tell anyone it was gluten-free to see if they would be able to taste a difference) and I decided to have a cup of it as part of my lunch.

I didn't read the ingredients on the jar or mayonnaise; I just assumed that it would be gluten-free. That was a BIG mistake.

Half an hour after I ate it, my belly started aching. All I could do was curl up in a ball on the couch - it was so bad I had to take prescribed pain medications and Hubs made what he called a 'command decision' and called our friends to let them know we wouldn't be attending the get-together. He asked me numerous times if I needed to go to the ER (something he doesn't usually do).

It wasn't just the belly ache, I felt lousy in general . . . just like I had been feeling before I got diagnosed. I had my kid read the ingredients off the mayonnaise and pickle relish jars:

Her: " Eggs, oil, vinegar....."

Me: " Does it say 'distilled vinegar?"

Her: "Nope, it just says vinegar"

Me: "Oh no....."

Today I have spent more time on the loo than I have off of it. My belly still hurts, I'm mildly itchy, my fingers, knees and hips ache and whilst I don't feel as bad as yesterday, I don't feel great either.

Lesson learned: when in doubt, don't eat it - and don't assume that something is safe. From now on, if it's got a label on it, I'm going to be reading it. If it's something somebody else made, I'm going to be asking questions. If there's any doubt whatsoever about whether it's safe or not, I'll just go without.

My doctor wants me to do a capsule biopsy test so he can visualize the rest of my small bowel (he wants to make sure I don't have a colitis as well as celiac and to nail down the celiac diagnosis. The biopsy results were 'highly suggestive' of celiac disease, but I was sero-negative)), but in order to do that and get accurate results I'd have to eat a full (meaning gluten included) diet for at least 2 weeks prior to the test. After yesterday's experience, I'm incredibly reluctant to do it. To me, it's pretty clear: I went gluten-free and saw a cessation of some symptoms, a minimization of others and a steady overall improvement. I ate food containing gluten (albeit inadvertently) and the symptoms came back. I don't want to go back to feeling like crap all day every day again.

Will the benefit of having the capsule scope outweigh the drawback of feeling ill and downright miserable again? If he suspects a colitis, can't we just start treating it? I really don't know what to do.

Anyone have some advice?

New name

2010-07-01T03:49:00.000-07:00

I've changed the name of my blog, as you can see.

It was time to change. Noodle Dawg is long gone, and I'm no longer working as a medic. My adventuring days are over. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with all of this and I still struggle with some aspects of it.

So, welcome to Awkwardness a la carte. Come join me as I stumble through this life.

2010-06-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

I've been gluten free for 5 days now.

My belly is calming down - I actually went out shopping with Hubs yesterday and didn't have to rush off to the bathroom once - my joints are less swollen and painful, I don't itch as much and I have more energy.

I've found some healthfood stores that have good gluten-free foods and have purchased a breadmaker. . . it's going to take some getting used to, but I can do it.

The one thing that I seem to keep coming back to is eating out - not as restaurants, but at other people's homes; at parties and get togethers and such. I don't want to be rude and NOT eat, I don't want to cause a scene by going on about how I can't eat any of what they've prepared and I don't want anyone to go to special measures to make me stuff that's gluten-free. I told Hubs that I thought bringing my own food would be the best thing, but that didn't exactly go over well with him. However, it's not his body; he's not the one reacting badly to wheat products - so I think that I'm just going to do what I think is right.

My mother doesn't seem to get it. She thinks that as long as I don't eat bread, I'll be fine (and she describes Celiac disease as "having your tummy upset by wheat", bless her). I've tried to tell her that things like pie and cake and pastries and pasta and seasoning mixes and batters and canned soups and breakfast cereals are all off the 'can eat' list now, but I don't think she's understanding that wheat is literally everywhere. It's a good thing I don't live with her, I'd probably hurt her feelings by not being able to eat 90% of what she cooks.

I will say that my food choices are much, much healthier now that I'm having to scrutinize what I ingest. In the past when I wanted a snack I may have grabbed a cookie or a Danish. Now, I have a piece of fruit or a yogurt. Instead of just shoving anything in my mouth without really looking at what I'm eating, I'm choosing more nutritious foods and I'm very aware of what it is that I'm feeding myself.

I know I sound negative about this gluten-free diet, but I'm really not. I'm kind of enjoying experiencing new flavors and textures and foods . . . I'm just frustrated with some of the people around me. I know there are support groups for people with celiac disease, but is there much information for relatives/friends?

Diagnosis

2010-06-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

I have the results of the tissue biopsies taken during a colon/endoscopy 2 weeks ago.

They are "highly suggestive of celiac disease".

So, there we are. Celiac disease.

No gluten for me.

This is going to mean a huge lifestyle change and I am, to be honest, a little intimidated.

sigh

2010-06-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

My mother goes home today. There was a slight panic in our house this morning when American Airlines decided that my mother's departing flight did not exist.

Me: Are you sure that's the right flight number?

Mum: (Showing me her itinerary that my brother printed for her when he booked the seats in DECEMBER) That's what it says on the ticket...

Me: There's no such flight number.

Mum: (shrugging) That's what it says on the ticket...

(at this point I'm feeling like I'm in a scene from the Grapes of Wrath, where the Joad family have a 'han'bill' promising them work in California and treat it as though it's a piece of ultimate truth)

Me: It doesn't matter WHAT your itenerary says, there's no such flight!

Mum: *shrugging and waving her hands* That's what it says on the ticket.

*sigh*

I called AA to ask what the deal was.

AA Agent: There's no such flight number.

Me: I know. I checked online and asked her, but she's insisting that what it says on her ticket. So, what flight IS she on?

Agent: The one leaving an hour later. Don't worry, she's got a reserved seat.

I got off the phone and wrote down the details for mother (why she wanted me to write them down I don't know; I'm taking her to the airport and getting her checked in).

Mum: Aren't they supposed to tell people when flights change like that?

Me: Yeah, and I don't know why they didn't.

Half an hour later, totally out of the blue:

Mum: I wonder if the new tickets your brother gave me before I left have the new flight number on them...

Me: Wait, what? What 'new tickets'!?

Mum: About a week before I left he rang to say there was a change. I was in town so he shoved the papers through the letterbox...I didn't really look at them, I just put them in with the other tickets.

She hands me a package of papers and sure as shit, the 'new' flight number is right on the front.

Mum: Oh. I thought that he meant it was the flight I came in on that was changed by 5 minutes. I didn't look at it, I just stuffed it in with all the other papers he give (sic) me.

Me: *sigh*

A tale of two women.

2010-06-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

I have two friends (I actually have more than two, but this story only involves two of them).

They're both roughly the same age. They're both married. They both have children. 'A' has one child. 'B' has two. B has a college degree, A does not. A relies on some public assistance to help her and her family make it through each month - not a whole lot, but some.

They both work for the same company, and have the same medical insurance through that company. The similarities, however, end there.

A decided that she wanted more children. When she had difficult conceiving, she had IVF - a procedure covered by her insurance. It worked, and she got pregnant with triplets. TRIPLETS.

A's babies were born at 25 weeks, which meant that they required lots and lots of supportive care in the NICU. One died after 10 days. The other two are still there. A got the hospital bill for the one who died and realized that, despite her insurance company covering 80% of the cost, she was going to have to file for medical bankruptcy because she can't pay it - and that's just for 10 days of care for ONE child. She hasn't seen bills for the two that are still in the NICU yet, but if she can't pay her portion for one there's no way she's going to be able to pay for the other two.

That's A's story. Now let's talk about B...

When B was 15, her mother died from breast cancer. She also lost a maternal aunt to the disease. Current research suggests that that increases 'B''s breast cancer risk by upwards of 60%. 'B' worries about developing the disease that killed her mother and aunt and wants to be tested (BRCA test) to see if she carries the mutated gene that causes the cancer. 'B' has decided that if she DOES in fact test positive, she's going to have a bilateral mastectomy so she can, as she puts it 'get on with my life without that shadow hanging over me all the time'.

Sounds like a good plan, right? The insurance company doesn't think so. They won't cover the cost of the BRCA test - $3500 - and 'B' can't afford to pay for it herself.

This insurance company will fork out literally millions on IVF treatments and neo-natal intensive care for premature babies for a couple who already have a child, but it won't cover a $3,500 genetic test for a woman whos family history puts her in a high-risk category for developing a potentially fatal disease.

What the fuck, America? Is it just me, or does this seem unfair and fiscally irresponsible?

Halp!

2010-05-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling like I've descended into one of the circles of hell.

I'm ill. My kidneys are damaged; I have stage 3 chronic/boderline stage 4 chronic kidney disease. I also have ascites, constant lower abdominal pain and nausea, am throwing up 3 or more times a day and sometimes feel like I'm going to pass out because it hurts so bad. I've lost more weight, I feel like death some days and people are starting to remark that I look ill.

None of those are good things. I've seen a nephrologist, who thinks that there's something more than simple kidney disease going on - so on Wednesday I see a GI doc.

If I had to put my money on a diagnosis, I'd be going with IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). Chron's, colitis....something in that family. It would explain the renal damage, the arthritis in my small joints that's suddenly flared up, the constant running for the bathroom (straight pipe), the pain, the weight loss the crippling fatigue...it would explain all of it.

I've gone through cycles like this before: I'll have weeks where I feel off color and my belly acts up, then just when I think it's time to go to the doc it starts to get better on it's own. However, this is the worst it's been. I can't ever recall feeling this ill for this long.

I've had to take a leave of absence from work. I can't even walk around the grocery store without needing to come home and lie down, so there's no way I can manage to provide care for 6 very dependent dying patients. I don't know if or when I'm going to go back, and that makes me really sad.

On top of all of that, my mum is here for a 3 week vacation. When she was last here in 2008, we said that 3 weeks was just too long a duration for her to stay, but time blunted our memories and emotions and when she asked if she could come visit for the same duration we agreed.

Never again. Never. She's a very sweet lady in her own right, but we are very different people, have very different lifestyles. She cripplingly polite, and seems to be incapable of making a decision about ANYthing.

I should interject here and tell you that when I don't feel well, I want to be left alone. I get short tempered and sharp tongued, and the best place for me to be is alone, away from everyone.

I can't do that right now. I can't be alone. I have acquired a shadow. A shadow that has no concept of personal space (which makes me really uncomfortable) with some habits that normally wouldn't bother me, but right now get on my last nerve. The only alone time I get is when I'm on the toilet or in the shower, and my patience is wearing thin.

The other day I got the urge to paint. It doesn't happen often, but when I get it I find that I need to run with it. Ignoring it ends up leaving me frustrated and annoyed.

Painting, for me, is a solitary exercise. Bob Ross I am not; I can't paint in front of other people and I can't paint and talk. I usually put my headphones in, some good tunes on and go off in a little bubble of creativity, and that's exactly what I did the other day.

Mum came and stood 3" from my elbow and watched me. *Pop*...creativity bubble burst. I figured it was a fluke and tried to blow it off. I put my stuff away.

This morning, I wanted to throw another layer of underpaint down, so I repeated the routine: headphones in, music on, paints and brushes in hand.

The same thing happened, except this time she tried to talk to me. *Poof*... again, the bubble burst, but this time I can't blow it off. It's eating at me....the whole thing is eating at me. Not feeling well, not having any alone time, not being able to paint....it's really getting to me and I'm finding myself constantly on the verge of tears.

I feel so fucking selfish for needing be be alone, for wanting to paint, for getting frustrated and annoyed. I've found myself counting down the days until she goes home, and I hate myself for that.

Halp. Really. Help.

Dio's Dead

2010-05-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

Ronnie James Dio has died of stomach cancer. Upon announcing this news to my husband and sons, the following conversation took place:

Son #1: What? What did he die of?!

Hubs: Being short...

Son #1: Har. Seriously, what did he die of?

Husband: I told you, being short.

Me: No, he died from having long hair. 'Twas a lethal combination...

Husband: Actually, his hair was normal length, it just looked real long 'cause he was so short....

*sigh*...it's going to be one of those nights a la NinjaMedic maison.

To blog, or not to blog....

2010-04-16T05:35:00.000-07:00

I've found myself with quite a dilemma.

Working where I do, doing what I do has given me lots of blog ideas. I have stories that are funny, some that are touching and others that are downright sad, and I am just bursting to tell y'all about them.

However, I don't think that I can. It's not just about HIPAA and patient confidentiality, because I could sanitize the stories and bleach out personal details. It's about intimacy and trust.

Death is a very intimate event. I've learned that being in the room or at a person's bedside when they die is to be regarded as an honor. The family is trusting enough of me to let me be there, to WANT me to be there . . . and I cannot violate that trust by posting the details of their very private moment on the internet for the whole world to read.

So, there won't be any stories of death here. There will be eulogies; tributes to the people I've cared for in the last days of their life, but I fully intend to leave the most private moments just as they are - private.

Not your fault, right?

2010-04-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

It's been really nice here the past couple of days; sunny, with temperatures in the 80's.

It's also spring break. Consequently, there have been lots of kids outside playing.

Most of them are great; they're old enough to know that the street is primarily for cars and vehicles and that if a car is coming they need to get out of the way and onto the sidewalk. There are some kids, however, that are new to the street and who are far too young to be outside with inadequate supervision.

Yesterday I saw a car slam on it's brakes and honk at one of them when they ran out in front of the driver. Today, when I came home from the grocery store, there were half a dozen kids, all under the age of 4 or 5, in the street in front of my driveway and in the driveway itself. I came to a complete stop in front of them, thinking that they'd see me and get out of the street, but they didn't. They just carried on playing. In the end my son had to tell them to get out of the road and out of the driveway.

Nothing frightens me more than a small child who has no concept of how dangerous it is to play in traffic left alone on the street. They're unpredictable, and should one of them get hit by a car, you can bet your arse that it would be the driver's fault. It would be the driver's fault, the gub'mints fault for not putting up enough signs, the construction workers fault for using concrete and asphalt on the street...it would be anyone's fault but the parents.

Hubs and I have been looking at houses in the area. With every summer that passes, living off base and away from a neighborhood looks more and more appealing.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

2010-03-19T07:53:00.001-07:00

A lot has happened recently.

I had a virus that wouldn't go away and was sick for nearly a month. Last week was the worst; I missed almost a week of lectures and labs because I felt so awful that all I could do was lie in bed and feel sorry for myself.

I also got a job. With a company that I really, really like, doing something that I really, really love – and something I'm good at. It's where I want to be career-wise and the opportunities for progression are literally unlimited. I love the people I work for, the people I work with, and my patients and their families….so far, it's been awesome and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been given this opportunity.

I'm working full-time – 40 hours a week – and my schedule is such that I'm not getting home until gone midnight. So, I'm going to have to drop a class. The way I see it, college classes will always be there, but the job offer was a one-time deal. I think that Chemistry is going to be the one getting dropped; I have labs and lectures at 0800 4 days a week, so it's the natural choice. I can make it to 10 and 11am lectures with no problems, but 8am is going to be a push, especially if I have to stay late. Consequently, Chemistry is the obvious choice (obvious to me, at least).

The place I work at is close to Midwest University I'm ultimately pursuing my degree at, so this fall semester I'm going to try and take classes there instead of at Small Town College. I'm hoping to be able to take late morning/early afternoon classes and just go straight into work after I'm done. It'll make for a longer day, but it'll save me a lot of mileage.

Things are shaping up nicely, and life is good!

I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or be pissed.

2010-02-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

*Hat-tip to the DrugMonkey for the photo*

I am sometimes ashamed to be human.

I don't know if I'm more ashamed to be of the same species as the people who are touting this, or the people who are fucking stupid enough to buy it.

This is charlatanism at it's finest; the modern-day equivalent of a snake-oil salesman selling panaceas to cure ALL ills. The people who buy this stuff...well, i'm keeping my opinions about them to myself. I'll just say that they're the same people who think that the internet is a series of tubes invented by Al Gore, that ghosts exist and that alchemy really is possible.

Gah.

To: NM’s body

2010-02-23T05:56:00.001-08:00

To: Head From: NinjaMedic CC: Sinuses; Nose; Throat; Temperature; Guts
Re: Inconsistency

Make up your bloody minds, will you? Either hurt, or don't hurt. Run, or don't run. Be hot, or be cold. All this hurt/run/hot one minute and don't hurt/stuffy/cold the next is getting to be a real drag and I've just about had enough of it (and you).

Oh, and you guts needn't think that you're off the hook just because I haven't mentoned you yet, because you're not: either reject food or accept it, and do it ONE END AT A TIME. Your current work ethic of BOTH ENDS AT THE SAME TIME is unacceptable.

Get your act together, all of you. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Toodles,

NM

2010-02-18T14:14:00.000-08:00

The Good News: the gate guard actually spoke to me when I handed him my ID card today!

The Bad News: he said " 'sup ". Nothing else, just a mumbled " 'sup " before he did the split-second-flip of my ID and handed it back to me.

*sigh*

Dear Gate Guards.

2010-02-17T10:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Airmen on gate guard duty at Scott,

I'm not sure whether this has been brought to your attention yet, but your appearance and demeanor MATTER. You are repesenting not only your career field, but also your branch of service when you work the gate; you are the first thing visitors to this base see. Ever hear the saying 'first impressions count'? Yeah. Apply that to yourselves. It's not a good idea to wear unathorized clothing on the gate, and it's also not a good idea to wear a uniform that looks like you just rolled out of bed.

It's also a GREAT idea to verbally ackowledge that you've seen a person's ID and it's okay for them to proceed. Grunting is not acceptable, and neither is total silence. I never know whether it's ok for me to go through when that happens, and that's why I ask you. I'm not doing it to be a bitch, I'm asking because I've seen the damage all the security measures in place at the gate can do to a vehicle, and I really like my car the way it is. I'm not asking for an entire conversation, but 'thank you' or 'have a nice day' would be nice.

The gate is not the place to conduct personal conversations when traffic is backed up for half a mile. Take today, for instance: there was a long line of vehicles waiting to come on via the Belleville gate, and whilst there were two of you standing there, only one was checking IDs and waving traffic. The other one of you was standing there, and you were both running your yaps. That's a bad image to present, fellas. Both of you should have been taking care of business; your conversation could have waited until the line wasn't so long and traffic wasn't so heavy. It's ok to chit-chat, but not at the expense of the people coming on base.

You might want to take the security aspect of your job a little more seriously, too. Some of you take my ID and don't even LOOK at it, you just hand it right back to me. Others take it, flip it in a split second and then hand it back. I know that you can't possibly have seen the pertinent information on it in that short amount of time. How do you know that it's me, that it's my ID card if you don't look a the photo? You may think that I'm being pedantic and that it's none of my business how you operate on the gate, but I disagree. It's very much my business: security is EVERYONE'S business. I LIVE here; my family relies on you for our security.

I also think that how you look is my business. I'm proud to be an Air Force wife; I'm proud of my husband and his colleagues and the things they do for this country. When you look like a big bag of shite, it reflects on him, and by proxy, on me.

Today it was just me coming through the gate and noticing these things. Next time you may not be so lucky - it might be a General who notices and who takes action, or worse still, it could be a terrorist. The consquences from the former can be unpleasant, but the consquences from the latter...well, it doesn't bear thinking about.

So c'mon, guys. Get your act together before something catastrophic happens.

Love,

A Proud Air Force Wife.

Overheard in the classroom…

2010-02-12T06:01:00.001-08:00

Student, to Professor: "where is your husband from?"

Professor: "He's from Spain"

Student: "Oh, so he's Eye-talian, then!"

Professor (glancing at me): *blink*

Same student, the next day: "I'm sitting here wearing this ol' thin tee shirt and I'm sweating, and you're there wearing a sweater and a vest, sayin' you're cold! I don't get it….I mean, what gives?"

*The student in question is very large. VERY large. As in 'need the FD for a lift assist' large. The professor is maybe 125 lbs.*

I wanted to say "what gives is that body fat insulates – much like blubber on whales. You clearly have a LOT of body fat. The Professor clearly does NOT" . . . but I didn't. I just made a mental note to blog what was said. I have a feeling that as long as that student is in the class, I'll have a nearly limitless source of blog fodder.

C

2010-01-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

She was the kind of broad I aspire to be.

I met her at the end of her life, when time had blunted some of her sharp edges, but her incredible intelligence still shone through. We talked, but it wasn't like the conversations I've had with other hospice patients . . . there wasn't much chit-chat with her, oh no. During our first conversation we talked about how deja vue is actually a disturbance in the temporal lobe of the brain.

That was the shape of things to come.

She was incredibly intelligent, but she grew up in a time when it wasn't socially acceptable for women to hold jobs outside of the home. They were expected to be housewives, and if they DID have jobs they were supposed to be clerical in nature. Teaching was the most skilled profession women were allowed to have.

So, she taught. However, she did it in her own way. She majored in Chemistry and Physics - both traditionally male subjects - and she taught first to High School students, then when she'd gone to graduate school and attained a PhD, she taught college students.

She said that she never saw her gender as a hinderance, that she saw it was a weapon to be deployed when she needed to use it. Her family showed me photographs of her when she was in her prime, and man alive was she ever hot. Smoking hot, to be exact. I can imagine her using her body and appearance to break down the walls that her gender created. I admire her for doing that, for not taking no for an answer and for working with what she had to get to where she wanted to be.

She married and had babies, but she still taught, right up until she was in her 70's. When she retired, she enrolled in some graduate classes and was very proud of the fact that she was 40 years older than some of the other students.

Usually there is a great deal of talk about the spiritual and supernatural at the end of a person's life, but she, in her typical style, would not entertain or tolerate what she described as 'nonsensical mumbo-jumbo'. She said that she was perfectly comfortable with the knowledge that life was all there is and that she didn't want any tears or talk of having gone to a better place. "I've done what I wanted to to and I've made my mark" she said "that's enough for me".

Time wore her down; it aged her body but her mind was still there. When she couldn't read texts because she couldn't see the words, she had someone dictate them to audio tapes and she listened to them instead. It seemed as if her headphones were permanently attached to her head; she was wearing them every time I saw her.

She died very quietly and peacefully after having lived for a century. She donated her body to a medical facility, which I find fitting: she loved science and in the end she literally gave herself to her cause.

Against her wishes, I cried.

$.02

2010-01-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

I have to say something about Haiti.

I'm in a unique position; The Hubs is directly involved in the humanitarian relief efforts and has been working all kinds of hours to get the job done. I get information that, whilst it's not classified, isn't common knowledge, either.

My initial reaction was that I wanted to go, that I wanted to go work as an EMT and help the injured. I speak French, I could at least translate...I wanted to go. When I mentioned that to The Hubs, he gave me a look that I simply cannot describe and he said "No. Absolutely not. Scene safety, K."

He's right. As medics, we are told time and again that if the scene isn't safe, we don't enter it. Haiti wasn't exactly stable to begin with; now it has no organized infrastructure whatsoever. It's literally anarchy on the streets there and it's not safe.

Imagine the largest mass casualty incident scenario your medic instructor gave you to triage when you were in class. Now, multiply that by 100,000. Now, try to triage that...triage that whilst looking over your shoulder for assailants, and try and treat the injured with minimal supplies. Try and do your job with literally nothing, in the midst of decomposing corpses and people who haven't had water or food for three days.

It's a horrible situation. It is a logistical nightmare, a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I've heard horror stories of combat medics coming across people with crush injuries to their limbs, who are developing compartment syndrome and who are in desperate need of surgical intervention....intervention that simply isn't available. I've heard it described as trying to treat patients with one hand tied beind your back.

It's so frustrating to see a need, know that you have the capability to help solve that need, but not be logistically able to render assistance.

The likes of Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh don't do anything to relieve that frustration, either. Why are they still on the air? How can any human being with even an ounce of common sense actually believe what they say? Why do we as a society tolerate such blantantly hateful statements? Pat Robertson is a doddery old fucker who is clearly demented, and Rush Limbaugh is a bloated, narcissistic, pill-popping tool who actually believes his own hype. It pisses me off that they breathe the same air as me....as far as I'm concerned, they're both wastes of human flesh.

It's supposed to be a three-day weekend here. The Hubs worked all day yesterday, came home to eat, went back until midnight, is working until midnight tonight, tomorrow night, monday night...there isn't any downtime slated for the near future for his section. They are all busting their arses to get the missions manned and get the aid where it needs to be, when it needs to be there.

Apparently we learned NOTHING from Hurricane Katrina.

She's Found.

2010-01-10T08:32:00.001-08:00

Annie had Alzheimers.

She was pleasantly demented; she wasn't ever combative or mean. . .she was agreeable and easy to care for an just a joy to be around. She was one of my favorite patients when I first started working, a sweet, funny, gentle soul housed in a confused little old lady body.

She wandered. Perpetually. Eventually, I had her tag along with me when I made my rounds. She was content to go from room to room with me and it was a win win situation: she was occupied and calm, and I knew where she was. Even if she wasn't assigned to me, she'd still tag along. The routine helped her.

Occasionally, she would get away from me. I'd hear a commotion from a room down the hall and I'd hurry down there to see what was going on. The complaint was always, always the same:

"She's in my bed!!!"

Annie was unable to differentiate between rooms, so when she felt weary or thought it was bed time, she'd enter a room, pull down the covers, take off her shoes and pants and get into the bed. She thought every room was HER room.

I tried all kinds of things to help her. First, I made a sign with her name on it and put it on her door.

"What does that say?" I'd ask.

"Why, that says 'Annie'! That's me, isn't it?" she'd respond.

"Yep!" I'd say "that's how you tell this is your room! Your room has your name on it!"

"Oh! I see! My room has my name on it!"

It worked for a couple of days and I'd think we'd found a solution to her wandering. Then, I'd hear a ruckus from a room and the familiar cry of "she's in my bed again" and I'd go retrieve Annie and show her the sign on the door and put her to bed in her own room....and 5 minutes later I'd feel a tug on my scrubs and turn and see her standing there, smiling at me.

When it became clear the the name wasn't working, I took a picture of her, enlarged it, framed it, and hung it on her door above the name tag.

"Who's that?" I'd ask.

"Why, that's me! Don't I look pretty?! Goodness, what a nice thing you did for me!" She'd say.

"This is how you tell this is YOUR room, Annie" I'd say "All you have to do is look at the door. Annie's room has Annie's picture on the door"

"Oh! What a good idea!" She'd say.

The photo idea actually worked for a few months. There were incidents where she forgot to look at the door and clambered into someone else's bed (once she got into a man's bed when he was still in it. It's a good thing he still had his wits about him and called for help - if he'd been demented who knows what would have happened) but for the majority of the time the photo was enough to remind her that she was in the right spot.

I went back to college and found working full time and academia were not a good mix for me, so I quit that job. I went to visit Annie occasionally - I don't think she remembered me, but she was always smiling and seemed pleased to see me.

The last time I saw her, she was in a wheelchair with a cushion tray in front of her and an alarm clipped to her blouse. It wasn't restraints per se, but it did prevent her from getting up alone. Apparently her wandering had become problematic and the staff felt the need to confine her.

She was wilted. She sat with her head in her hands, face slack and expressionless. I knelt beside her chair and took her hand in mine.

"Hey, Annie. . . how are you, my sweet?"

She made no attempt to resond to me. She stared at the cushion in front of her, a light glaze of drool covering her lower lip. I took a kleenex from my pocket and wiped it away. I craned my neck further downwards, trying to meet her gaze, hoping that another human face in her field of vision would stir some response in her.

My eyes met hers. . . and there was nothing in them. No recognition, no sign of life. Nothing.

She was in there, but she was unreachable.

I saw her name in the obituaries this morning and for a brief moment I felt an icy stab of grief in my chest. . . but it was quickly replaced by relief and a sense of joy. She's free now, you see. I don't know what happens to us after we die; I don't know if we go on to another place or if this, this world and existence, is all there is. All I know is that Annie is not here anymore, that the torment that was her daily existence has ended.

She's not lost anymore. However you look at it, whatever you believe, one thing is true: she's not lost anymore.

She's found.

I should have known better...

2009-12-31T05:10:00.000-08:00

...than to look at http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ first thing in the morning.

I often wonder if people look in the mirror before they leave the house. I mean, how can a person possibly think this looks good?! The sight of this put me off my breakfast.

Speaking of looking in the mirror before leaving the house, I also found this:

What the fuck? It looks like she put a coffee cup over her eyes and used it as a template - then drew on her face with magic marker. I don't understand how she can think that that looks acceptable. Does she not look at other people and think 'hmm. My eyebrows don't look like the rest of the human race's eyebrows. Maybe I should rethink what I'm doing'?

I guess that people staring and pointing was not enough to give these women a clue that their appearance is ridiculous.

I really don't get people sometimes.

2009-12-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

I have neglected you, gentle reader (I hesitate so say 'readerS' because I fear all but one of you have left me - and I don't blame you a bit!). I'm sorry - I have no excuses, so I'll just say I'm sorry and leave it at that.

Finals week came and went, and so did a nice gastrointestinal virus that the 'lings got. Nausea and vomiting and fever, oh my! I knew the littlest 'ling was really quite ill when I offered him a phenergan suppository and he didn't run screaming. My final grades were: Algebra C, Art A, English B, Philosophy B, Political Science B. My GPA is 3.37 - not bad, but I'd really have liked to have had a solid 3.5. I'll do better next semester. I'm taking Geometry, Chemistry, another English class, and Psychology this time - I was going to take a 5th class but was advised against it. Chemistry is a 5 credit class, and a 5th class would have pushed me over the 18 hr max. So, I'm sticking with 4 classes.

I have been knitting up a storm. In addition to knitting, I've started writing my own patterns. This is an example of one of my creations:

That's what I like to call a clog sock. I decided to put the cable on the back so that it's more visible when I wear Birkenstocks. It's knitted in worsted weight 100% virgin wool on size 3 needles.

That's what I knitted for Hubs' birthday. I also knitted my MIL a pair in a traditional Aran yarn for Christmas. I love the pattern.

Numbah Two is doing relatively well. He got on to the wrestling team (as did his brother) and I think that the physical discipline and the camaraderie of his team mates is incredibly beneficial to him. He sees a therapist once a week and no longer associates with the drug using crowd. The kid that was dealing got a DUI, among other things, and is in a world of trouble, and one of the other kids that was using got suspended from school for drug related behaviour.

The 'lings go back to school next week, but I don't go back until the 19th. I'm looking forward to having some time to myself and I think I'm going to make a trip up to Springfield to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house that's there. I'm also planning visiting the art museum in St Louis again - I love that place.

Watching 'Hoarders' on A&E has made me want to de-clutter my house. I am always amazed at how some people live and I wonder how they can think straight surrounded by all the detritus. It amuses me to hear them say that their homes are "messy" when they are, in fact, fucking filthy. I'm sorry, but if you have 4' high stacks of used adult diapers all over your house, your living room resembles a landfill, there are skeletal remains of cats in the boxspring of your bed and you have to camp outside because of the bedbug infestation then your home is WAAAAYYYY more than just 'messy', Jack.

Ew. Now I'm all itchy...

Neighbors from Hell – again

2009-12-06T15:12:00.001-08:00

Dear Neighbor,

Thank you SO much for ensuring my night was far from restful. I lay awake until 3am, listening to the 'thunka thunka' of the rap music emanating from your house. As a result I am tired and cranky today, which my family really appreciates.

We seem to have had similar conversations before, but you clearly have forgotten all about them. So, I'll remind you:

You have the right to do what you please IN your home, yes . . . but when what you're doing encroaches on what I'm doing, we have a problem. You don't live half a mile away from everyone else; we're in pretty close proximity – and so we have to respect other people's peace, quiet and privacy.

When your music drowns out my TV – despite all the doors and windows being closed in my house – then it's TOO FUCKING LOUD.

When your music is audible over the sound of a train passing by and blaring it's horn – then it's TOO FUCKING LOUD.

It wouldn't have been so bad if you'd have turned it down or off at a decent hour – midnight would have been good – but you didn't do that. Oh no, you went on and on until 3 o'clock in the fucking morning.

We went through this last year and the year before; around Thanksgiving you seem to lose your fucking mind and party every fucking weekend. Last year I called the police because you had left your 13 year old in charge of gawd knows how many kids whilst you were across the street drinking. She took a page out of your book and cranked that stereo up so loud that I couldn't hear The Hubs talking to me in a normal voice. I decided that rather than take abuse again (remember the last time I asked you to turn it down? I do. Vividly. You called me a fucking bitch) I'd simply call the Law Enforcement desk. I knew the cop who responded, by the way. He said that he could hear the music as soon as he turned onto our street and knew exactly which house it was coming from. Apparently I'm not the only one complaining about your noise.

You seem to have mistaken my tolerance for weakness and I feel that you're taking advantage of it. So, this is your official heads-up: I am implementing a zero tolerance policy regarding your noise. I'm not going to bother coming over and talking to you, I'm just going to call law enforcement and I'm going to do it every single time you disturb my peace. If it comes to it, I'm going to find out who your First Sgt is and I'm going to call him. I'm done with you, period. You think I was a bitch before? You aint seen nothing yet, assclown.

I want you to get a taste of what a pain in the ass you're being, so I hope you get hemorrhoids. Big, pulsating hemorrhoids hanging out of your rear end, so painful that you have to sit on an inflatable ring and can't shit without screaming.

Eat shit and die,

A rock and a hard place

2009-11-17T13:26:00.001-08:00

Well, now….this is about a bitch.

I have Bells Palsy. The standard treatment for Bells is acyclovir and prednisone. I can't tolerate prednisone orally, I have an ulcer and one dose of the oral stuff over the weekend set me off into belly pain hell. I have been given a choice: either take the oral stuff, increase the nexium I take from one dose a day to two and hope I don't develop a gastric bleed, or get admitted to the hospital for IV steroids.

Neither of those choices is an option for me.

Taking the oral prednisone puts me at risk of a gastric bleed, the consequences of which can be very, very bad indeed. Like life threatening bad. As in 'get an NG tube, endoscopic surgery and admitted to the hospital for a week' bad. Getting admitted at this point in the semester would mean I'd miss classes and would end up getting dropped and failing, and I'm not prepared to do that.

Getting admitted for IV steroids is not an option either – I'd miss lectures, would get dropped from classes and would fail. Not gonna do that; I've worked too damn hard to let that happen.

The other option that has been suggested by friends who are medical professionals is getting a PICC line with a heplock on it. I can still get IV steroids, but I don't have to be admitted – so I can attend lectures. I'm not sure how to go about getting that; my PCM has told me that if I can't tolerate the prednisone I have to go back to the ER. Do I ask for it there? Do I call my PCM and ask him about it? Do I tough it out and see what happens….and if I'm no better in a week ask to be admitted them (Thanksgiving break. I won't miss classes)? I don't know.

All I know is that I'm not failing this semester. Period.

Joking

2009-11-02T15:01:00.001-08:00

Why do people think that because they attach "just kidding" or "joke!" after an offensive statement, that somehow it negates the jackass-iness of what they said?

It's happened 3 times in the past 12 hours, all about the same subject.

First, it was some arse in Art class this morning making a joke about the "Chair Force. Har har. Just kidding….".

Then, some bigger arse (literally and figureatively)at the store said "them air force men and wimmin think they all that, but they aint never go nowhere". When he saw I was wearing a USAF hoodie and staring at him, he said "I's only jokin', huh huh…."

Finally another arse on Marko The Munchkin Wrangler's blog saying 'since when does wearing a USAF uniform make someone part of the military (joke!)' (or words to that effect).

Yeah, I get it. People think that the USAF isn't bas-ass enough to qualify as part of the 'real' military; that they never deploy anywhere or do anything dangerous. Of course, not all of them do. Just like not every Marine or every Soldier gets to be a door-kicker in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Some of them, however, DO put themselves in danger. Pilots, aircrew, Ravens, cops, medics, combat controllers, pararescuemen …all those guys put themselves in harm's way every day. The Army doesn't have the monopoly on deployments, either: there are squadrons on this base that have guys who deploy for 9 months, are home for 6, then turn around and deploy again for another 9 months. It's not 12 months like the Army deployments are, but it's more frequent.

To those people who think the 'Chair' Force isn't part of the 'real' military, that it's not dangerous and that AF personnel have it easy, I have this to say: enlist. Get a commission. Put on a uniform, and give some years of YOUR life to the service of this country. Then, when you hear some smart-arse who wouldn't know the meaning of 'service before self' if it jumped up and bit him on his incredibly small and altogether unimpressive penis saying things like I heard the trio-of-asshats saying today, maybe then you'll understand why saying 'just kidding' or 'joke' does NOT make it any less offensive, and it does NOT make it okay.

To those of you who have thanked my husband for his service in the past, I have this to say: thank YOU. Not for being grateful to him, but for understanding.

Apparently, not everybody does.

2009-11-02T11:49:00.001-08:00

Dr Grumpy told us about his kids getting shots their flu shots today. I feel for his wife, because I have had very similar experiences with my own children.

One incident that I recall pretty vividly was when my middle kid had to get his 3 year old booster shots. I took him to the immunizations clinic with his siblings in tow. I had told them all beforehand that Numbah Two was going to get some shots, and nobody, Numbah Two included, had a problem with it. When we were called back to the treatment room, Numbah Two clambered up onto the exam table and asked if he was going to get a sticker and a Marvin the Martian band-aid when he was done.

"If you're a good boy, yes" I said "and you can even have a sucker and a cookie if you're extra, super-duper good".

He was fine until the nurse pulled the first syringe out; when he saw it he started screaming and held on to the exam table so tightly his knuckles were white. His screaming started the other two screaming – even though they weren't getting any shots – and made other kids in the waiting area start screaming too.

The nurse asked me to sit him on my lap and roll his sleeve up. I managed to roll a sleeve up and pry one hand off the table, but had to let go of the free hand to try and get the OTHER hand off….and he just grabbed the table with the free hand. The nurse called in two male techs to come help. When we got him off the table he made a break for freedom and ran towards the door. One tech grabbed him before he could exit, but he caught hold of the door frame and clung to that like a drowning man clings to a life raft. The second tech had to peel his fingers away from the frame and it took the two of them to deposit him in my lap. I held his head against my chest and the techs held his arms still: it took 4 adults to give one 5 year old a shot, and I think we all lost some hearing that day. I don't know if you've ever been in an enclosed room with 3 shrieking, screaming kids, but it's LOUD.

Once the needle was in his arm, he held his breath for an alarmingly lengthy amount of time. I swear I have some hearing damage from the shriek that he let out; my ear was ringing for a day and a half afterwards. That frightened his brother and sister even more and they raised the intensity and decibel level of their screams to match those of their brother.

All 3 of them were given stickers and Numbah Two got his Marvin the Martian band-aid and TWO suckers, but there was no placating any of them. The screamed their way back into the waiting room shrieked down the hallway, cried on their way out of the front doors and sobbed as I strapped them into their car seats.

"Was it REALLY that bad?" I asked. "Really? It was just a little shot, it can't have been SO horrible…did it hurt that bad?"

"No, mama" said Numbah Two as he licked a sucker "it didn't hurted me at all, not eben one liddle bit!"

"So why were you screaming like that? You scared your baby bro and your big sister and other kids, too."

"I dunno, mama. Can I have my cookie now? Look FTS, I has a Marbin Martian band-aid on my owie!"

And just like that, the hysteria was over. All the screaming and shrieking was forgotten and all that mattered was the sucker and the promise of a cookie.

I made his dad take him the next time he had to get shots.

What did we do wrong?

2009-10-23T07:01:00.001-07:00

My son (Numbah Two) has effectively shot himself in the foot.

He's 15. He's medicated for bi-polar disorder, and when he takes his meds he's relatively stable. However, he's become a master of NOT taking them, and when he's not on them, it shows.

He doesn't deal with his dad being gone very well, so when The Hubs has to leave we try to be prepared for what we consider to be the worst. 2 days ago, however, the worst was surpassed in a spectacular way.

We've all had the flu. Numbah Two had been particularly restless on Wednesday and said he was going to his room to try and sleep about 1700. When I hadn't heard anything out of him by 1930, I went to check on him.

The door was locked, and there was no answer when I knocked. Alarm bells started ringing for me, so I popped the lock and opened the door. The room was empty, and freezing cold because the window was wide open.

He had snuck out.

I texted him to see where he was. He claimed to be in his room, and when I told him I knew that was a lie he said 'uh oh'. Yeah. Uh-fucking-oh, kid.

It took me 10 minutes to figure out where he was, and I had to threaten him with the local civilian PD (he was off base, in an apartment in a local township) to get him to agree to meet me. I thought he might be high, but it wasn't until I picked him up that I realized how loaded he really was.

I took his sister with me, and it was a good thing I did. As soon as he got in the car, he started threatening me – and her. He kicked the back of my seat, told me he was going to stab me in my sleep and then blow my head off with a shotgun. He threatened to strangle his sister and was cussing, screaming and generally being abusive.

It didn't get any better when we got home. I was on the phone with his dad when he attacked me. He threw my phone across the room, and when I tried to retrieve it he starting pushing and grabbing me. I tried to defend myself and get my phone (I wanted to call the police because I knew this wasn't going to end well) , and that just made it worse, so I starting yelling for help. His sister called 911, and his brother called his dad. I don't recall screaming, but both the 911 dispatcher and his dad say that I was; that I was yelling 'I am your mother! Don't you dare touch me!!" and "get your hands off me!! Why are you doing this?!!!?!!". The Hubs said it was one of the hardest things he ever had to hear, and I believe him.

When he realized that his sister was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, he stopped, told me I was a fucking bitch and that he hated me, and walked out the front door…..right into the police, who had their hands on their weapons.

One searched him, cuffed in, and made him sit in the back of the patrol car whilst three more came into my house and asked me what happened. When I told them he was high, they asked permission to search his room…and they found paraphernalia with cannabis residue on it.

We live in military housing. Having illegal drugs on base is reason enough to kick us out – and it's also enough reason to take The Hubs rank away from him. Numbah Two's actions could have fucked ALL of us.

The county Sheriff had to come out and I declined to press domestic battery charges against my son because I didn't feel it would benefit him OR us in the long run. Instead, I'm trying to get him into a residential drug rehab facility. When the Deputies asked him how often he was getting high and what he was using, he told them that he was high every day and that the list of things he HADN'T done was shorter than the list of things he had. Apparently, the only things he hasn't tried yet are heroin and meth. Everything else, he's used – sometimes on a regular basis. He has lied to his father and I, he has stolen from us, he has blamed everyone else for his problems…

…my son is a junkie. A bi-polar, violent junkie. I wish I could convey to you how much it hurts my heart to see that in black and white.

His dad had to drop what he was doing and come home early. We have taken Numbah Two's cell phone, T.V., Mp3 player and PSP away from him. We took the door to his room off its hinges, so he has no privacy there. He's not allowed to play Xbox or use the laptop for anything other than homework, and he cannot accept calls on the landline from anyone that we do not know – or approve of. Apparently some of the kids he hangs around with were present Wednesday evening and were also using. They are now persona non grata in our home and I have given their names to the base police and the deputies. They're on law enforcement radar now, and I am unapologetic and even glad about it.

He did the intake interview with a residential treatment facility yesterday afternoon and we're waiting to hear whether they'll accept him this morning. I hope they do; I don't think the outpatient route will work for him. He needs to go and learn a new way to live away from all of the kids he used with; away from me and his dad and his siblings. He needs inpatient, not outpatient. If they accept him, we'll drive to Alabama this afternoon. If not…well, we'll have more decisions to make.

I know that at the end of the day, I cannot control my son's actions…but that hasn't stopped his father and I asking ourselves what I am sure every parent in this situation asks themselves:

Where did we go wrong?

It’s more than a want

2009-10-21T16:38:00.001-07:00

I don't know of anyone in the medical field who is in it for the money – because, to be honest, there isn't much to be had.

I think, in general, we are all in this because we feel it is our calling. It's our dharma, it's something that we are meant to do.

I think that part of my dharma is to go work for Medecins Sans Frontieres – aka Doctors Without Borders.

Most of you don't know this, but I speak enough French to be able to hold a decent conversation. MSF is always looking for medical personnel (doctors, Pas, nurses, NPs etc) who speak conversational French. Right now they need people to go to Haiti, Niger, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast.

My husband thinks I am absolutely crazy for wanting to do this. So does my brother. We had a conversation over lunch on Saturday…my big brother is a corporate private investigator and is a pretty big deal in his profession. He works for some very big companies and he investigates fraudulent and counterfeit products and has been all over the world. Anyway, he, my husband and I got to talking about my desires to work for MSF and the countries I could potentially go to. They both got very quiet, looked at each other, and then turned to me and calmly explained that it would not be in my best interests to go to those countries. Haiti is ridiculously dangerous, they said, as is the Congo. Niger is less unstable, but is really not safe either. In other words, they wanted to put the kibosh on my plans.

I realize that these places are unstable, and I realize that I could be in danger if I go there….but I could just as easily get shot in East St Louis (a woman got shot in the parking lot of the hospital earlier this week, and there have been multiple shooting and homicides in the vicinity of Kenneth Hall this year). I would have been in more danger if I had been able to enlist in the Army…and yeah, I would have had the power of the flag behind me, but MSF is a big deal too. When was the last time you heard of a medical professional working for MSF being abducted or killed?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I realize there is potentially a great risk to this, but it's something that I feel I need to do. It's my dharma, my path, my way of being. It's in my nature to do this, despite the danger. I had hoped that my husband would understand; his career puts him into some pretty risky places and he's not always harmed.

I don't want to do this for the money, because there really isn't any, and I don't want to do it for the fame or the prestige because there isn't any of that, either. I want to do it because I feel I HAVE to. I NEED to.

We'll see what happens when I qualify, I guess.

Ravaged by a stranger

2009-10-21T15:49:00.001-07:00

He swept me off my feet on Tuesday…..he must have known my husband was gone and decided to make his move when I was alone.

By Tuesday night we had become intimately acquainted; he shared my body and my bed and had me moaning and groaning and sweating all night long.

He's using and abusing me and I don't even know his first name….I just know him as Mr Influenza.

Seriously, y'all. I feel like I ran a marathon and then got hit by a truck the next day. I ache, I have a fever, my chest hurts and I have no strength at all.

Get your flu shots. Please. You don't want this flu, trust me. It really, truly sucks.

The difference between new and used car salesmen

2009-10-04T06:31:00.001-07:00

Dear Used Car Salesman,

I will never step foot on your lot or buy from your dealership ever again. EVER. I was just browsing; I saw a Jeep that I liked the look of and was in the process of looking at the interior when you descended on me and started your poorly executed hard pressure sale tactics.

You didn't seem to understand why I'm not willing to drop over $25 grand on a used car when I can go down the street and get what I want BRAND NEW for less, and with a better financing deal. You also don't seem to understand that the more you push me, the more I'm going to dig my heels in and counter every argument you come up with. Both of those tactics were mistakes on your part, but your fatal mistake was treating me like I was some ignorant little girl who knew not much about the world of finance and vehicles.

For the record, I might be little and female, but I am far from ignorant. This is not my first time buying a car, jackass. I know how you motherfuckers work.

Introducing me to your floor manager was a bad move on your part, but his attitude smacked of desperation. When he asked me "what can I do to put you in that car today?" my response of "Not a damn thing" wasn't metaphorical, it was literal.

I'm sorry if you think I'm rude for walking away when you were both talking to me, but I just couldn't stand any more bullshit. It was starting to stink out there, and the water reclamation plant next door had nothing to do with it.

You'll never see me again.

Love (not really, but 'disdain' doesn't really work),

Dear New Car Salesman,

Thank you for not pressuring me. Thank you for helping me to decide how to get the most car for the price I want to pay. Thank you for NOT trying to talk me into the super duper deluxe model and being content to let me tell you what I want and working with that. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Call me when you get a manual transmission model in. I'll come down and test drive it, and if I like it…..well, Mr. New Car Salesman, we're more than likely to have us a deal.

Love (and I mean that)

Secrets and Shame

2009-09-27T13:35:00.001-07:00

I've long been a believer that if you're ashamed of something, the best way to work through it is to tell someone else.

I have something that I'm ashamed of. I'm going to tell you what it is.

It's my teeth. More specifically, my front upper incisors and lateral incisors.

They're discolored and chipped, and now they're slightly loose. The right lateral incisor is a crown that keeps falling out. When the airbag (I had a major MVA a few years ago and am still trying to fix what I broke) hit me in the face, it knocked some of the teeth loose and apparently I was mistaken in thinking they were healed. It's come back to bite me in the ass now.

I have to have some extractions. The front incisors are dead, which causes them to be discolored and fragile. The loose root has affected the crown, which is why it keeps coming out. I have to have a surgical removal of the root, as well as the front incisors extracted. I'm going to have cadaveric bone grafts in the sockets to create some good, healthy bone structure there. I can't have implants right now because of the bone issue (money plays a big part of it too, I don't have $6000 to drop on my teeth) and crowns aren't an option because of the roots, so I'm getting a partial denture.

I'm getting a denture. There, I said it. I'm getting a partial denture.

It's not going to be permanent, I'll get implants eventually, but I'll have a partial denture for a while.

I don't know if you're noticed, but none of the photos I've posted of myself show my teeth. I have this enigmatic smirk in all of them – it's not because I'm trying to be coy, it's because the discoloration is really noticeable in photos and I'm embarrassed.

I've been waking up at night, freaking out over losing these teeth. I know that I don't HAVE to have it done; I can leave them alone and let them fall out on their own or break and walk around looking like a jack-o-lantern or a hillbilly for a while before I end up having a partial anyway….I know this is the right decision, but it's a tough one for me to take. I mean, I'm only 40. I'm not supposed to be a toothless crone just yet.

The partial is what they call "immediate placement". That means that I take the partial to the oral surgeon, he extracts the teeth and then places the partial immediately in my mouth. I have to keep it in constantly for a few days; the pressure helps with the swelling and bleeding. I'll have stitches in my gums; the crown root is going to necessitate an incision in my gum to get it out and the other teeth are so fragile that they could snap off and need to be surgically removed too. I'm not afraid of the pain, I know it's going to hurt but I also know it won't be as bad as some of the surgeries I've had. I'm not taking any time off school, either: I get out of class at 1100, have the surgery done at 1300 (with the help of a little nitrous oxide and copious amounts of lidocaine) and go back to school at 0900 the next day. I figure my face will be swollen and I'll be on pain medications so The Hubs will have to drive me, but I'm determined to not miss any class time.

So, that's my secret, aired for the entire internet to see. Maybe I'll be confident enough to post photos of myself smiling after the swelling and bruising has gone down. Maybe I'll become a proud partial wearer and will give someone else the confidence to say 'yeah, I have a partial. So what?'

Maybe. Then again I could hate it and wish I'd never done it. I sure as heck hope it's the former.

Mission Accomplished

2009-09-26T18:00:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in bed, watching TV, when I see a news short segment flash on. To my amazement, I hear details of the mission my husband is on broadcast for all of America to hear. I'm stunned; I've been sworn to secrecy – and I don't even know all the details, but here it is on national news?!

So, I go to MSNBC to see if they're reporting it too. Sure enough, they are. I'm really tempted to post the link to the story here, but I think that The Hubs would be highly pissed at me if I did and I don't think it's wise. He flies these missions regularly, you see….and if I were to come right out and say what he does on them, then the next time he leaves y'all would have a good idea of where he's going and why.

I wish I could find the words to express just how damn proud of him I am. He's been an integral part of a mission that was important enough to garner national attention. He'll play it down and say it wasn't a big deal, but it was. It IS.

In other news, the two boys who beat the white kid up on the school bus have been expelled. As expected, the NAACP is 'reviewing' the expulsion, but Al Sharpton hasn't shown up yet. The Neo-Nazis did, though. They bought a rag-tag bunch (about 20) of slack jawed yokels and skinheads with homemade tattoos to 'protest' on the St Clair County building steps today (a protest that lasted less than an hour, I might add). About 200 citizens showed up to boo, jeer, laugh and other wise poke fun at this motley crew of rejects and losers. I was very, very proud to see this happening; it has renewed my faith in the citizens of Belleville and the surrounding area. Yeah, we may live in rural Illinois and St Louis may turn its nose up at our countrified ways, but dammit, we have some sense of right and wrong and we know idiots when we see them. We saw them in downtown Belleville today, and we let them know what we thought of them.

Mission accomplished, on both counts.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

2009-09-16T15:33:00.001-07:00

I can't embed this video, but you can go here to see it. Be warned, it's graphic.

On Monday morning, about 8am, a 17 year old young man got on the school bus to go to Belleville West HS (I live about 3 miles from Belleville, it's my local town). The seating was limited, so he sat on a seat next to a 14 year old black boy - who had his books on the seat next to him. As the 17 year old sat down, he knocked a book onto the floor.

That was all it took for the black boy to start punching the 17 year old in the head. I can't describe it anymore, it makes me cry...you'll just have to go see the video for yourselves. It goes on for over 6 minutes, then there's a respite. Then, for some unknown reason, the original beater's friend starts choking and punching the victim. At this point another boy wades in and starts pulling the assailants off and breaks the whole thing up.

The victim never fought back. He did not raise his hand once. He did not defend himself.

The whole time this is going on, there are kids standing up and laughing, cheering the assailants on and filming the attack on their cell phone cameras.

The attackers have been suspended, might be expelled and face criminal charges. The kid that broke it up has been hailed as a hero. The victim just wants it all to go away so he can go back to school.

I am at a loss as to where to start with this. This is wrong, so wrong on so many levels.

First of all, I am pissed that people are saying this is not racially motivated, because I truly believe that it was. If the roles were reversed and it was two white kids beating a defenseless black kid, Al Fucking Sharpton would be all up in this shit and I bet my firstborn that it WOULD be described as racially motivated. But it's a black on white crime - a FILMED crime - and all of a sudden it's not racial. Give me a fucking break. Jena Six, anyone? That was racially motivated. Oh that's right...that wasn't filmed. It was six on one, black on white....but wait, Al Sharpton was there then. Why not now? Oh Al, where are you?

Secondly, I am furious at the kids who laughed and stood around filming this shit like it was some kind of entertainment. Five of them got suspended from school, and one of their mama's went on TV to say 'I know it aint right, but he don't deserve to be suspended. It's cuz he black, thas why'. No, bitch, it's because your son, who is old enough to know better, watched the commission of a crime, a violent assault, and HE FUCKING LAUGHED AND DID JACK SHIT TO STOP IT. That's why he's suspended, and if you have any fucking sense, you'd take his ass home and introduce him to some serious fucking parental justice. And, you should be ashamed of him. If it were MY kids who just stood and laughed or filmed it I'd be all up in their shit like never before and they wouldn't see the light of day for YEARS - except for when they went to school. If it were MY kids who adminstered a beating like that, they would be wishing and praying they were in the custody of the Department of Corrections to get away from me and their dad. Hell hath no fury like NinjaMedic and The Hubs when their kids royally fuck up.

I want to scoop that victim up in my arms and tell him that it's okay, that he did the right thing by not fighting back, and that he is NOT alone, that he has hundreds and thousands of people who will stand with him and behind him. I want him to know that he is loved by people he doesn't even know.

The assailants can't be expelled by the school administration, that has to come from district Board of Education (the school can suspend for up to 10 days, but anything else has to come from the B of E). Have I mentioned yet that the perpetrators are members of the Junior Varsity Football Team? 'Cause they are, and I have a feeling that that's going to play a part in the decision to expell/not expell. If they DON'T get expelled, I am going to start calling and writing District 121 Board of Education and demand action. I've discussed this with some friends, and they're going to do the same. I invite you, gentle reader, to join us. I'll keep you posted on the happenings and let you know what the decision is. If they don't get expelled, I ask you to write, call, email and let you feelings be known. If they're not expelled AND they keep their places on the football team, I'll be there picketing the games. I've picketed before, and I'll do it again. What they did was wrong, and they don't deserve to be a part of the school team OR the school anymore.

No, you know what? I'm not asking you. I'm challenging you. I challenge you to watch that video - ALL of it - and be content to let those boys who punched and choked that other boy get away with a simple suspension from school. I can't do it, and I'll think you'll be hard pressed to as well.

I'll keep you posted.

I’m there to learn, too.

2009-09-15T15:34:00.001-07:00

I like to think that I'm a somewhat charitable person. If I see a person in genuine need I don't mind helping them out. Similarly, if I'm asked to help someone else out and I know that I can do it, I don't mind helping.

What I DO mind, however, is being taken advantage of.

I don't mind giving someone a hand up, but I don't give hand-outs routinely.

During the first week of Math class, my professor asked me to take notes on carbon paper. She didn't tell me why. At first I expressed doubt that she'd be able to understand my handwriting (My first Chemistry professor described my handwriting as looking 'like a spider fell in an inkwell and nearly drowned, but somehow managed to drag itself out and crawl across the page') but when she said she thought she'd be able to understand it just fine I agreed. It wasn't until the end of the second week that I found out the carbon copies were for another student who had less-than-stellar note-taking skills (coincidentally one of the students I had traded contact information with the first day of class), and when I realized I wasn't angry or irritated at all. Like I said, if he needs help and I can give that help then why not, right?

So, I went on taking notes quite happily…until today.

We had an exam on Monday. I revised on and off all weekend, practicing and practicing, making note of my mistakes and trying not to repeat them. Saturday morning I got a text from the student I make notes for, saying (this isn't verbatim) 'pls help, I need the answer to:' and giving me a math problem.

'Hmm. Do I give him the answer to the problem, or do I tell him how to figure it out?' I thought. I texted him back, giving him the answer. After all, it was the first time he'd asked me for help.

Five minutes later, I got another text, asking for the answer to another problem. This time I sent back the pointers he'd need to solve it for himself. Moments later I got a text saying 'but what is the answer?', and seconds after that, another text with another problem. And another. And another.

I saw a pattern forming. I sent back a few words saying that he had the same notes I did and that all the answers he needed were in those notes. Then, I texted and said that I was at the movies and that I had to go. I wasn't in the movies, I was at home, but he didn't need to know that.

Before class yesterday, he asked me for solutions to more problems. Luckily, the exam had commenced, so I didn't have a chance to tell him that I wasn't there to do his work for him.

Today, we started a new chapter. As usual, I took notes on carbon paper. Out of curiosity, I turned to see what this kid was doing whilst I was taking notes for him.

He was drawing.

DRAWING. IN A MATH CLASS.

I was sitting there, taking notes that are more comprehensive than I would usually take because I realize that someone else has to understand them too, and this motherfucker was drawing. He pesters me on the weekend and asks me to do his homework for him, and now I'm doing all of his class work for him too? Not bloody likely.

Have a mentioned that this kid can be a wee bit aggressive about some stuff? He can…which only added to my frustration and trepidation about confronting him.

So, after class, I spoke with the professor. I told her what happened over the weekend, what my reaction to it was, and that he's just drawing in class instead of making notes. She said that the idea was that MY notes were supposed to supplement HIS, NOT be his sole source of information for the class. She said 'you must feel a little used'…and she's right. I do. I feel taken advantage of.

She's going to talk to him. I don't know exactly what she's going to say and it's none of my business. As long as he gets the point that class is for EVERYONE and that EVERYONE should be taking notes to the best of their ability. After all, I'm there to learn, too.

Kanye West needs to STFU

2009-09-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

By now, I'm sure most people have seen Kanye West get up on stage at the VMA's, take the microphone from Taylor Swift's hand and pronounce Beyonce's video the true winner.

Just who the fuck does that man think he is?

If it comes right down to it, he is a product of a record company. A promoter promoted him, people gave him clothes to wear, publicity people made sure they got his name and his face well known. He is a rapper of questionable talent - and I say that because I can't stand the stuff he puts out. I'm sure that some people think he is a rapping genius. I, however do not, and as this is MY blog I can say that I think Kanye West's music sucks.

I can also say that I think Kanye West sucks. From his tirade at the benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims when he said that President Bush was a racist (Mike Myers must've been wishing he could be anywhere other than in front of a live camera with Kanye) to his breaking a photographer's camera at an airport (that was totally unnecessary) and now this. I think that Kanye is a Grade A asshole, a blowhard who thinks his opinion is far more relevant than it actually is. He is an egotistical prick and a self-important putz.

What he did last night was shameful, and no half assed apology on his blog will suffice. No apology of any kind, period, will suffice. He did what he did because he thinks he's important and what he thinks matters.

He's wrong. It doesn't matter. He stole someone else's moment, and he cannot give it back. Can you imagine how he would have reacted if someone else did that to him? I can.

I think that MSNBC's article of this morning put it best: 'It's said that it takes a village to raise a child. If that's the case, then Kanye West's village failed him'.

It absolutely did, and so did his mama.

If

2009-09-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

If: you are standing in a really, really long line at the checkout of a store,

And: you are going to be paying by check, you might want to fill out the pertinent information on said check before it's your turn to pay, instead of running your yap to the woman in front of you,

Because: whipping out your checkbook AFTER the cashier has given you your total and taking a whole 5 minutes (I timed you) to fill out the date, the amount, signing it, and balance your register is really, really going to piss the 9 people in line behind you right off. There will be much sighing, tsking and even a couple of 'really?!?" and 'lady, are you serious???' comments and you will get upset at 'people being so mean'.

If: you are driving on Scott AFB on the weekend,

And: you are not familiar with the fact that the stop lights along Air Mobility Drive are turned into yellow flashers for Air Mobility traffic and red flashers for cross traffic on weekends and holidays, you might want to read your 'rules of the road' or 'highway code' ,

Because: coming to a complete stop at a yellow flashing light will cause the driver in the Ford pickup behind you (who knows you don't stop at yellow flashers, only red ones) to have to slam on his brakes, which in turn will cause him to hydroplane and come awfully close to sliding into the side of my little car, causing me to have to do some pretty nifty driving to avoid getting hit and there will be much flipping of the bird and yells of 'moron!' and 'what are you, a fucking idiot?!' sent in your direction.

I'm staying home the rest of the day. It's dangerous out there.

Change.

2009-09-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

The first day I met him, I thought he was a great guy.

The second day, I thought he was a dick. An insufferable, egocentric prick.

Now, some number of days later, I have changed my opinion again.

My political science professor is an alright dude. Not a rad dude; not the kind of dude I'd go have a pint of Guinness with (that'd be my philosophy professor) or share some mushy peas and chips with (that's my English professor, the one who studied in my hometown)....but he's an okay dude. He's a great teacher and he makes sure we know what we need to know in order to not only pass his class, but maybe even decide to change our majors to Political Science (sorry, Dr Ault, I love what you're teaching me but I don't *love* it, if you know what I mean. Besides, the world needs more nurses and PA's).

I'm learning stuff in his class every day and I love it. I actually look forward to hearing him lecture now. The first exam is next week...depending on my grade, I may be back here telling y'all that he's an insufferable prick again, haha. Seriously, though, if I don't get a decent grade it'll be my fault, not his. He's giving us all the information we need to pass his class, it's up to us to use it.

This is a little off topic, but I want to leave you with this tough:
I've long said it, but someone else wrote it far more eleoquently than I ever could on Twitter the other day:

Nobody should die because they can't afford healthcare, and nobody should go broke because they get sick.

That's the bottom line, really. I'm not a politician and I don't know how to fix the huge clusterfuck that is modern American healthcare. All I know is I see a problem, and it needs to be fixed. Right now it's FUBAR.

We need to fix it. ALL of us. Not just a select few in Washington, ALL of us. I find it curious that the ones who are most qualified to make decisions about what works in healthcare and what doesn't (in other words, the docs and nurses in the trenches, the ones actually seeing patients) are not as involved in the process. Instead, it's left to stuffed shirts and fat cats who have 'advisors'. Puh-leeze. That needs to change, too.

Change. It's a good thing.

A driving lesson from your friendly neighborhood NinjaMedic.

2009-09-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

Okay class, settle down.

I'm talking specifically topeople who drive cars on Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, this afternoon. Anyone here not from Scott? You, at the back...what's that? No, this is not Philosophy 101, this is Driving with NinjaMedic 150. You want the class across the hallway....Professor Russell is the dude you need to see.

Okay. Let's begin.....
It has come to my attention (in a very abrupt way, I might add) that some of you seem to be unable to navigate crowded parking lots. Completely, totally and utterly unable. As in you seem to lose your motherfucking minds when you're in a parking lot, more specifically the commissary parking lot on base. I'm talking to you, little Asian lady in the white car. And you, middle aged man in the blue Explorer. Actually, I'm talking to all of you who were in said parking lot at the same time as me this afternoon.

Never fear, NinjaMedic is here, and I can help you!

Let's start with how you SHOULD navigate a crowded parking lot, shall we? Do you all have something to write with and something to write on? Yes? Good. We'll begin:

There is usually a main thoroughfare with rows of spaces running perpendicular to this thoroughfare. In the commissary lot, there are TWO thoroughfares, with the rows in between them. Each row is ONE WAY, meaning that you can enter from one end, but not the other. A good way to tell which way the rows are aligned is to look to see which way ALL THE OTHER CARS ARE POINTED AND GO ALONG WITH THEM. What you don't want to do is go against that; it causes problems and it's going to make getting into a space really very difficult.

Now, let's move on: does anyone have an idea about what you really, really don't want to do in a parking lot? What's the number one thing you shouldn't ever do? Anyone?

Anyone?

Anyone?

*sigh* Ok....well, I guess I'll tell you. What you never, ever, ever want to do is COME TO A SUDDEN AND COMPLETE STOP ON THE MAIN THOROUGHFARE SO YOU CAN SPEND 30 SECONDS PEERING DOWN ONE OF THE ROWS TO SEE IF THERE'S AN EMPTY SPACE.
EVEN WORSE, YOU REALLY, REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO THAT WITH EACH. AND. EVERY. FUCKING. ROW.

You know how insurance companies, particularly health insurance companies, talk about 'never events'? Events that shouldn't ever, under any circumstances happen? Yeah. Think of it like that. It's a 'never event' for the parking lot.

What's that? Why shouldn't you do it, you ask? Good question!

YOU SHOULDN'T EVER DO IT BECAUSE THE PERSON FOLLOWING YOU MAY NOT BE PREPARED FOR YOU TO STOP SO SUDDENLY AND WITHOUT WARNING, WHICH CAN RESULT IN YOUR GETTING REAR-ENDED.

Luckily, I'm an attentive driver and I half anticpated your actions today. Call it gut instinct or whatever you will, I just had the feeling that you were going to do what you did and I managed to react accordingly.

However, the person behind me wasn't quite so attentive and I nearly became the filling in an elderly/obese driver sandwich. Had I not taken evasive action and sounded my horn (yes, I know it got you all addled, but please understand that had I not done it and got your attention (and the attention of the person behind me), I'd have been rear ended and would have been shunted into you. My big ol' truck would have done your little car some serious damage. You would probably have hurt your neck and back. The police and EMS would have had to respond. Statements would have been made......and guess who would have been at fault?

Anybody?

I'll give you a hint: it wouldn't have been me.

YES!! IT WOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR FAULT, BECAUSE YOU CAME TO A HALT IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROAD WITH NO GOOD REASON OR ADEQUATE WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I know that you just wanted to see if there were any parking spaces 10' closer than the ones you just drove past. I understand that you have difficulty ambulating at times; I realize that it can be painful for you. I don't blame you one bit for wanting to find a closer spot (although I do have to question whether this habit has anything to do with your morbid obesity, middle aged man in the blue Explorer. Perhaps an extra 10' of walking every now and then might help reduce your overall jiggle a little, yes?). However, you have to understand that there are safe ways of going about finding a parking spot, and what you did this afternoon is NOT, I repeat, IS NOT one of them.

So, do any of you have any questions?

Anyone?

I'll take your silence as a 'negative'.

Class dismissed.....oh, and please, drive carefully. I'll just wait here until I'm sure you're all at least half a mile away....

I am queen of the world! Fear my mighty power!

2009-08-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

So, I got some Restoril from my doc yesterday. We were going to go with Halcion, but it's got a pretty short half life and we were afraid I'd take it, fall asleep and wake up an hour later. So, Restoril it was.

I left the clinic with 12 15mg capsules and instructions to take one, and if I was still awake an hour later, take another.

Last night I followed my usual bedtime routine (well, there was one very pleasant exception courtesy of The Hubs, but this is a PG rated blog. 'Nuff said.) and at 9:30-ish I took a capsule, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

An hour later, I was still awake. A little mellow, perhaps, but very much awake. 'Fuck' I thought. 'This isn't going to work'. I took the second capsule as instructed, and figured I'd wait another half an hour and if I was still awake I'd get up and clean the kitchen.

The next thing I know, I'm in a car with The Hubs and we're driving through the English countryside to go see the horse races at Stonehenge. "Don't forget the tea set" he said. "They won't let us in without one".

I turned to him to tell him that I'd remembered the teapot and cups but didn't have any saucers, and found myself looking at the bedside clock. It's glowing red letters said 4:37am.

'Woah' I thought. 'I slept! Sweet!'

I opened my eyes again (I don't recall closing them, to be honest) and the numbers had changed. They now said 6:18.

I got a good 8 hours of sleep (probably more, but I don't recall falling asleep) and even better than that, it was quality sleep. I feel almost superhuman this morning, like I can take on the world. I've made a list of cleaning that needs to be done - it involves some pretty ambitious stuff, like sorting my yarn stash (a monumental task, really) and I feel like I can achieve all of it and then some.

I didn't realize how crappy I felt all week until today. Sleep deprivation sucks.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

2009-08-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive. I don't really feel alive today, but I'm still breathing and I have a pulse.

My whole adult life I've experienced insomnia. I used to have occasional days when I'd be up all night because I simply couldn't sleep. When it came to EMS, being used to staying up all night and half the next day was actually a blessing at times, so I didn't really do much about it. I knew it would pass; I knew at some point over the next day or so I'd get so tired that I'd fall asleep on my own and would sleep well.

So, when I couldn't sleep Saturday night, I didn't think much of it.

Since Sunday morning, I have gotten an accumulative total of 11 hours of sleep. I have pulled every 'get to sleep' trick I have in my repetoire, but none of them have worked.

First, I make sure I don't consume coffee or caffiene after 11am. I also am not taking any narcotics, because those fuck up my REM sleep. I don't work at my laptop after 5pm when I'm experiencing insomnia because the light from the screen messes with my circadian rhythm. I don't like milk so I've stayed away from the milky drinks, but even on the occasion I've tried them, they don't work.

None of the usual rememdies worked, so I broke out the pharmeceuticals.

Benadryl made me doze for an hour and a half, but then I was awake again. Alcohol doesn't make me sleep well, it makes me restless, so I haven't gone there. Melatonin made me feel weird and sleep for 2 hours, but it wasn't a quality sleep - I felt like I was waking up every 5 minutes and never really got under the surface and down into a deep sleep. I tried Valerian root, which smells fucking horrible (it's named Valerian because of it's odor; 'valor' is Latin for 'strength'). It made my burps smell like (according to Urbaner, aka The Hubs) 'rancid hobo feet' and whilst it made me tired, it didn't make me sleep. Last night I tried combining a little of this and a little of that. The result was a very light sleep with a wake up every twenty minutes, which wasn't restful at all.

This morning, I stood with the coffee pot in one hand and my cup in the other, not knowing what I was supposed to do next.

Today, during art class, I started crying. For no reason. The tears just came, and I started crying. Luckily it was during a power point lecture and it was dark in the auditorium so nobody saw me. In algebra, I couldn't remember how many threes were in twenty-one. On the way to political science, I started giggling, again for no reason. I went to the bathroom to try and pull myself together and sat on a toilet in the stall with tears rolling down my face, laughing almost hysterically for no apparent reason. I was afraid to go to the lecture; it felt like I was losing my fucking mind. The only thing I can compare it to is an acid trip. I dropped LSD twice in my life; the first time I had a really interesting conversation with a tree, but it ended abruptly when I realized I was standing on grass and that my weight was impeding the growth of said grass. The second time I felt a general sense of disconnection with reality that was really very unnerving and enough to make me not want to do acid again. Today is getting to be like that and it's starting to scare me. For instance, I'm not sure right now whether I'm really blogging or not. Is it just that I think I'm blogging? Will I come back later and see that I didn't blog at all? Or is this a paper for English? We were talking about hallucinogenic drugs in philosophy yesterday, am I writing this for that? Why am I writing? Who sees this?

I have a migraine. I got it yesterday, and whilst I've been keeping it at bay with a triptan, it's not really going away.

I called my doc (my wonderful, awesome primary care doc who knows the career path I'm taking and is more of a mentor to me than a physician). She made room for me this afternoon. I think that the time has come for some bigger guns than my little bathroom-cabinet pharmacy has to offer.

Sleep, why don't you like me anymore? What did I ever do to you?

Feck, feck and double feck.

2009-08-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

First day of the semester today; first day of full time college for me in many years.

I am the eldest in all three of the classes I had today. Tomorrow remains to be seen, but I don't hold out much hope of being the youngest.

The classwork isn't going to be too bad, I think. I love my political science professor and I extra-soopah-doopah love my art professor 'cause he played Pink Floyd whilst we were warming up for class this morning. Math...meh. Ho-hum.

I'm formulating plans for mid-term and extra credit papers already.

I've been branded 'that hot hipster cougar chick' by boys who looked to be fresh out of training pants. Whatev, schweethearts. I'd take you seriously if you had a need to shave your faces...but as you don't, I'll just smile and pretend I didn't hear you.

Now I have to go shampoo doggie diarrhea out of the carpet upstairs. Thank you, Ruby.

He took the words right out of my mouth.

2009-08-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

I usually don't like politicians much, but watching the news this morning changed my mind.

I saw Barney Frank speaking to a constituent at a town hall meeting about healthcare. Mr Frank is a man after my own heart; he said what I have wanted to say to some people (patients, neighbors, acquaintances...even some family members. Yeah, Lynn, I'm talking 'bout YOU).

A woman who had defaced a poster of President Obama with a Hitler-esque mustache stood up and asked Mr Frank why he was supporting what she described as a 'Nazi' policy.

Barney's response was simply brilliant.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" he asked. "Madam, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it."

As if that wasn't enough (and it was enough for me, I was already smitten with him at that point) he went on to say that her being able to deface the President's image the way she had "is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated."

*sigh* Oh Barney, you smooth talking silver tongued devil...you took the words right out of my mouth!

Oh poop.

2009-08-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

I saw the surgeon again today, to get my stitches removed and talk about what he found on the inside of my shoulder.

The tendon tears weren't as bad as he anticipated, which is good. I had some scar tissue that needed removed, and the anchors that were placed during the capsule reconstruction had broken off, so he had to remove them, too.

"I did find the reason for your pain" he said "and it wasn't really what I was expecting". He showed me a set of photos taken during the procedure.

"This is what cartilage is supposed to look like" he said, pointing to a photo of a smooth, glossy white surface. "This is what the cartilage on your humeral head looks like..." and he pointed to a picture of a pitted yellow surface "...there's not a whole lot of cartilage left there. You have a significant arthritis, probably from when you kept dislocating and subluxating your shoulder".

'Significant arthritis', and I'm only 40. :-/

The good news is that I'm probably a candidate for a hemiarthroplasty in the next few years - instead of replacing the entire joint, the surgeon just replaces the humeral head and resurfaces the glenoid. From what I understand, it's a very successful surgery, providing significant pain relief with improved motion and function. I'm all about that.

Every time I have a surgery, I go into it thinking that this one will be the last one....and every time, there's always something else that needs fixed or tweaked. Just when I think that the accident is finally behind me, something else rears it's head and I realize that no, it's not behind me yet.

*sigh* Maybe one day....

Scraping the bottom of the barrell

2009-08-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

I discovered a new depth of stupidity today.

Woman has 2 little boys aged 3 and 2. Both boys have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Woman swears she did not consume alcohol or do illegal drugs at any time during each of her pregnancies. When asked how, then, did she explain the marked FAS in BOTH her children, her explanation was this (hold on to your hats, folks, 'cause this'll blow you away):

Their father drank and did drugs when they were dating, and was drunk and high when he got her pregnant. His sperm was infected with the alcohol and dope, and that's how her boys ended up with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Yes, you read that correctly: it was the father's infected sperm that gave the boys FAS.

Some people are so dumb it frightens me - but even worse, they're breeding!!

**The only thing I have heard that equals this in sheer ignorance and stupidity is a quote from Bill Maher's 'Religulous'. Bill is talking to some truckers at a truck stop chapel in North Carolina when the subject of the Shroud of Turin comes up. One of the truckers states that it's perfectly sensible for the blood on the shroud to be typed as from a female, even though Jesus was a male - because Mary, JC's mama, was a female and therefore "(female blood) was all that woulda been runnin' through her, and through him. Tha's how come that blood was shown to be female". **

*

I just realized

2009-08-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning will be the first morning I've gone without coffee in many, many months. Almost a year, in fact. Even when I was hospitalized with the ulcer, I had The Hubs sneak in some java (yeah, yeah, I know....coffee and ulcers don't play well together and all that. I know. Trust me, I've heard it before, and I understood fully the risk I took - and take - when I drink coffee).

The last time I had to go without coffee, things ended badly for a few people. See, when I don't have my coffee, everything else seems off kilter. Out of whack. Not right. I'm not a creature of many routines, but my one routine I NEED is the early morning coffee/dog ritual:

I wake up. I get up, come downstairs, let the dogs out, start the coffee, go pee. Wash my hands, let the dogs in, make a fuss of them and feed them their breakfast and grab my cup and a clean spoon. By that time, the coffee is done brewing....and I pour myself a cup, add the required sugar and ice cube and retreat to the living room to enjoy the solitude.

If I don't have that ritual - or at least the coffee part of it - I'm not a happy camper. I'm fussy and cranky and not nice to be around. Push me or irk me when I'm like that, and...well, it's unpleasant. People have cried, other people have not spoken to me for a day, and even more people say that seeing me without my coffee has given them a whole new understanding of what a bitch I can be at times. So, I'm going to try really hard to have a handle on myself in the morning and *not* be like that.

The worst thing about tomorrow? The Hubs will be having HIS cup of coffee and will even be taking some to go, but I won't get to have any. I'll have to make do with the aroma of it and be satisfied with that.

I'm trying to take comfort in the fact that I'll be experiencing a veritable smorgasboard of interesting pharmacology tomorrow morning. I'm really, really trying.....but nothing can take the place of my coffee. I'd rather have that than any Versed or Demerol.

I'm looking for an excuse to use the term 'Jackson Juice' tomorrow. In the past I've always used 'milk of amnesia' - in fact, the anesthesiologist said it was what I was mumbling about the last time I went off to sleep courtesy of Diprivan - but I like 'Jackson Juice' better. If I'm not too stoned, I'll try to remember to use it.

This will probably be my last blog post for a few days. I remember last time how bad it was to try and blog one handed, so I'm going to try and avoid that if I can. I will, however, have The Hubs Tweet for me when I'm slung and stoned. We'll see.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.....
(I *heart* Henry V)

This is why procreation should require a license

2009-08-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

This is Giselle Gomez. Isn't she adorable? All that hair, those big brown eyes...she's a cutie.

She's also dead. Her mother left her in a parked car for over an hour on Wednesday whilst she went into a business to visit with a family member. Giselle was strapped into her car seat, all the windows were rolled up, and there was no air conditioning in the vehicle. Medics said that when they got to her, she was covered in heat blisters. The autopsy performed yesterday declared hyperthermia as the cause of death.

Giselle has a sister, who's two and a half. Both she and her sister were left alone in the car, but the sister managed to unstrap herself, get out of the vehicle and go looking for the mom.

It was in the 90's here on Wednesday. Yesterday investigators placed the car back in the same parking spot at the same time of day, and after an hour they measured the temperature inside. It was 170 degrees.

What kind of fucking retarded halfwit idiot leaves a one year old in a car with no ventilation and air conditioning in the middle of the afternoon on a 90 degree day??!!?? This kind of idiot:

In case you were wondering exactly what that particular depth of stupidity looks like, it's above, on the left.

That poor little girl literally cooked to death. Her body was covered in heat blisters. The police officers who responded said they's 'never seen anything like it before'. I just can't imagine what that was like....nor do I *want* to imagine. I feel for the medics that took the call....I'm sure that it will stay with them for a while.
Her sister has been removed from the custody of the mom and the dad and is currently in DCFS foster care. When investigators went to the family home yesterday they found what they described as 'unsanitary conditions' and 'spiders and slugs in the bathtub'. Now I'm not the world's best housekeeper, but my GAWD...how the fuck do you get slugs in your tub?!?

Mom has been charged with a 3rd degree felony and is in the country jail on $78,000 bond. I really am having difficulty getting my head around just how fucking dumb she is. It's not as if she was running into the post office or making a quick stop at the convienience store, she was at an insurance agency, visiting with someone (and that someone should, IMO, have asked just what the fuck stupid halfwitted bitch up there was playing at, leaving those kids in the car).

This is why I think there should be a licensing process for procreation; there should be some kind of class that potential parents have to take before they're allowed to have kids. Topics such as 'why it's a bad idea to leave your child unattended for over an hour in the back seat of a car when it's 90 degrees outside' and 'Slugs and bathtubs: never the twain shall meet'.

I've been saying that the idiots are breeding for years. Here's the tragic proof of it.

You're gay. I get it.

2009-08-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

I went to my local Starbucks the other day to buy a bag of Sidamo coffee (it's my favorite). The young man behind the counter was chubby, had highlighted blonde hair, was wearing a sparkly headband and spoke in such an affected manner that I couldn't understand what he was saying.

Me: Can you grind this Sidamo for me?

Him: knnafillterr you gotsshhhh?

Me: Pardon?

Him: *tsking at me* kinnafiltuurrr you gotshhhhh?

Me: I think you're asking me about my coffee pot...if so, it's a flat bottomed filter.

He tsked again, then walked over to the grinder. His movements caused me to snigger into my hand; he held his left arm out with his wrist loose and hand dangling, and he clenched his buttocks so tight in an attempt to sashay that I could have sworn he was touching cloth and was trying to keep the turd in situ.

As he was grinding the beans he was boasting to another barista about what he and his boyfriend got up to the night before - at least that's what I think he said. Again, his speech was so affected that it was difficult to understand him. I did make out phrases like 'such a stud' and 'he was all over me' and 'kissed for like, HOURS'.

Why do some gay guys feel the need to talk and walk like that? I can understand that they're proud of their sexual orientation and want people to know about it, but that manner of speech is not natural and is clearly something that they have to work at. So are the walk and gesticulations. I'm not a homophobe (I believe that love comes in many shapes and forms, some of which are illegal) but it really aggrivates me when gay boys and men feel that they HAVE to talk, walk and behave that way.

I wanted to say 'you're gay. I get it. Can you please lose the lisp and try to speak clearly, because I can't understand you?' but I didn't. Instead I paid for my coffee and slunk out the door, shaking my head and wondering just what the hell possesses people to behave that way.

I wonder if he gets pissed off at being stereotyped when he literally behaves in the stereotypical gay boy way?

Tuesday Tune-age

2009-08-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

Spent the day cleaning and trying to get stuff squared away so that I'll be able to sit on my arse next week. Today's playlist includes:

CCR: Down On The Corner (incidentally, this was the first riff I taught myself the day after I got my first acoustic guitar at the grand old age of 30).

New Order: True Faith

Kate Bush: Wuthering Heights (I remember when that song first came out in the UK...I was 10 or 11, I think, and inspired enough to try and read Wuthering Heights. It took me 3 weeks, and I have had a crush on Heathcliffe ever since).

Bob Marley: No Woman, No Cry.

Johnny Cash: I've Been Everywhere (my favorite JC clip is the one of him playing Folsom Prison - he's swinging that guitar of his around and he's chewing gum and is so incredibly hot. June was a lucky chick).

Talking Heads: Once In A Lifetime (a very Buddhist song, I think. I see threads of impermanence in the lyrics).

Biz Markie: Just A Friend

Pink Floyd: Another Brick In The Wall (if any of you ever have the misfortune to be near me when I'm lit, see if you can get me to say "if ye don't eat yer meat, ye can't have any pudding! How can ye have any pudding if ye doan eat yer meat!??!!". Apparently I'm pretty good at it)

Dexy's Midnight Runners: Geno (Love the horns and bass on this. Have persuaded Littlest Ling to play the sax part for me).

The Real McKenzies: Bugger Off (seeing them play a live show is on my Bucket List. I want to be right at the front, on the edge of the pit, so's I can get a nice view of their arses when they flip their kilts and moon the crowd).

Jane's Addiction: Been Caught Stealing (Perry Farrell is incredibly cool - a little odd, but aren't we all?).

MCR: Teenagers (I still feel like it's me vs society in general some days. Especially around here. Military families can be really very conservative, and I....well, I'm not).

Radio Head: Creep (I love the start of the guitar riff in this).

Madness: One Step Beyond (British ska from the early 80's. Ska is what what I call 'fat' and Urbaner calls 'wet'; it's got a souped-up reggae backbeat to it and is horn-heavy. I *heart* ska).

Common: Universal Mind Control

Chuck Berry: Johnny B. Goode

ZZ Top: Legs

Fatboy Slim: Weapon Of Choice (If you've never seen the video for this, I highly recommend that you check it out. Christopher Walken does this dance routine that is just fab-u-lous.)

And with that, I must go cook some food-age. Untill the morrow, dear hearts....

Meme

2009-08-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

1. Do you like blue cheese? I'm English, so yes.

2. Have you ever been drunk? Are you kidding me with this? Fuck yes!

3. Do you own a gun? Me personally? Not anymore. I used to carry a Sig Sauer P228 9mm for a duty and personal protection piece, and before that I had a Glock model 23 .40cal. I didn't care for the Glock as much as the Sig...I loved that gun. Nowadays, we have firearms in the house, but they're not *mine*, strictly speaking.

4. What flavor of Kool Aid is your favorite? Cherry. With or without vodka.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Sometimes. Recently, yeah.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?I think that they're made of lips and snouts and buttholes, but that they're very yummy lips and snouts and buttholes.

7. Favorite Christmas movie? A Christmas Story. I *heart* that movie.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Sidamo or Verona blend coffee. Black.

9. Can you do push ups? Uh huh.

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? My titanium second wedding ring.

11. Favorite hobby? Knitting.

12. Do you have A.D.D. ? I'm not su......ooh! Bright shiny thing!

13. What's your favorite shoes? I have too many favorites to name just one pair. Besides, the other pairs would get jealous and might riot. Nobody wants rioting shoes.

14. Middle name? Same as my mother's, same as her mother's, and the same as my grandmother's mother's. My family wasn't exactly imaginative when it came to middle names, apparently.

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment? I wish to fuck that dog would stop farting, my nose is running, and it's fucking cold in here.

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Coke. Coffee. Rolling Rock.

17. Current worry? Pain and fear of more pain.

18. Current hate right now? Pain.

20. How did you bring in the New Year? Wondering where the fuck # 19 went.

21. Where would you like to go? To Oxford to see my kinfolk.

22. Name three people who will complete this? Damned if I know. I'm just doing this cuz I'm bored.

23. an unusual food you tried? Escargot that we had caught ourselves.

24. What color shirt are you wearing right now? Grey.

25. Do you like sleeping on Satin sheets? No. Did it for a week, once. Slid out of bed twice and woke up repeatedly every night as my pillow slid out from under my head and onto the floor. Everybody makes satin sheets sound all sexy n'shit, but there's nothing sexy about slipping around like a greased pig all fucking night. NOTHING.

26. Can you whistle? Poorly and tunelessly, yes.

27. Favorite color? Green.

28. Would you be a pirate? Arrgh!!!!

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Everybody's Talking - again, poorly.

30. Favorite Girl's Name? Nirvana.

31. Favorite boy's name? Jack.

32. What's in your pocket right now? I don't have pockets in my PJ's, but if I did there would be the customary lint and ... well, more lint in them.

33. Last thing that made you laugh? A Prairie Home Companion yesterday.

34. Best memories as a child? Going to London with my bro.

35. Worst injury you've ever had as a child? Got dragged along concrete on my knees and avulsed a silver dollar sized chunk of flesh off of one. It was hanging by a thread, but instead of taking me to the hospital my mum ran it under the tap to get most of the gravel out (still some in there) then flipped the flap of flesh back over and stuck a bandaid on it. It scarred.

36. Do you love where you live? No. I don't like the neighborhood, I don't like the area. The only thing that I like is that my in laws live relatively close by.

38. Who is your loudest friend? Okay, we have another disappearing question here. This is getting creepy.

39. How many dogs do you have? 2.

40. Does someone have a crush on you? Not that I'm aware of, but if someone does please do feel free to tell me about it.

41. What is your favorite book? The Grapes Of Wrath.

42. What is your favorite candy? Swedish Fish.

43. Favorite Sports Team? The All Blacks.

44. What is your favorite food at your favorite restaurant? There's a Chinese place near here that does some great sesame chicken.

45. What song do you want played at your funeral? Con Te Partiro - Andre Bocelli's version. It gives me goosebumps.

The Great Cherry Massacre, 2009

2009-08-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

I've become very interested in canning and preserving foods this year. Friday I made salsa with produce from my garden, and when I went to the grocery store yesterday I found some Bing cherries on sale for 99 cents a pound - that's really incredibly very very very cheap.

So, I bought some, and this morning I decided I was going to make some cherry jam with them.

It starts with destalking then washing the cherries. Then, you have to pit them:

I felt like a Civil War surgeon, and my kitchen looked just like a battlefield OR. There was dark red cherry juice everywhere; it was dripping off my elbows and all over my shirt.

This is the aftermath of the massacre:

I had to bleach the chopping board and the counter to get the stains out. However, this is what I was left to cook with:

Mmmm....cherries!

I added some lemon juice and a little secret ingredient, then added the sugar and started it on a boil. It has to cook for quite a long time; about a 90 minute simmer should suffice. You can tell it's ready when you drop some of it onto a cold plate and it forms a skin and wrinkles when you push it with your finger.

When it's ready, you ladle it into hot jars and put the lids on it. You can give it 10 minutes in the canner, or you can just put it up in a cool dark place....I'm opting NOT to give mine the waterbath canning treatment this time.

And voila! Cherry jam, the NinjaMedic way!

It's a sticky wicket

2009-07-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of days I've been reading a lot in the British newspapers about Theresa Winters.

Theresa is 36 years old, unemployed, dependent on benefits to survive and lives with her partner, Toney Housden. Theresa is currently 25 weeks into her 14th pregnancy. Yes, I said 14th. That's slightly eyebrow raising, but in an age where Jon and Kate plus their eight and the Duggar family and their 18 are mainstream TV stars, it's not as shocking as it once was.

What is shocking, however, is that NONE of the 13 children Theresa has given birth to are in her or Toney's custody.

NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM. NONE.

They have all been removed from their custody by British social services. Theresa says that until "they" let her keep one, she's going to keep right on reproducing.

That's not the thing that really disturbs me, though. I mean, it's bad enough, but....the thing that really bothers me are the reports that several of her children have PEHO Syndrome.
PEHO is rare, and is considered to be an autosomal recessive trait - so for several of the couple's children to be born with it is strongly indicative of it being their genetic material at fault rather than a random or environmental cause.

This has presented a rather sticky ethical wicket for me and has caused me to ask myself some questions:

Who is suffering here?

Ultimately, who is paying the price for this couple exercising their reproductive freedom?

At what point does 'reproductive freedom' become 'sheer madness' and 'abject cruelty'?

Does society (or even the gub'mint) have a right to step in? They already have, to an extent; they're removed EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of the 13 children from these people's custody.

When, if ever, is forced sterilization appropriate?

I don't have answers as yet. My knee-jerk reaction is one of 'stop the madness; get a court order to give that girl a tubal ligation and that gormless wonder a vasectomy and do it soon', but that attitude is, I think, the very top of a slippery slope - one that I can't see the bottom of. I resent that they can just keep on having babies, and I fucking hate that they're just having more babies when there's clearly a genetic defect and, consequently, a good chance that those babies will have little to no quality of life whatsoever....but again, where does that train of thought come to an end?

I just don't know, y'all. I just don't know.

Boobage, shoulders and arms, oh my!

2009-07-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

So, the mammogram this morning ruled out the possibility of the irregularity in my boobage being a cyst.

Okay, so it's not a cyst.

It's also not a "typical" malignancy.

Ok, so it's not "typical". So, what is it?

It's probably benign. It's either a microcalcification or fibrocystic breast tissue or scar tissue or there's a small chance that it could be something nefarious like a malignancy that's choosing to make it's appearance in a nontypical way.

So, I have to have a contrast MRI done to get a better look at it.

The only problem is that the first appointment I can get for the MRI is on August 13th. My shoulder surgery is going to be before that. I can't have the MRI until I'm 6 weeks post op.

Oh that's right! I didn't tell you what happened at the ortho surgeon's appointment, did I?

He made me cry. I swore I wasn't going to cry, but he got me going. I said that I'm sick of hurting every time I move my arm, I'm done giving shit up that I really liked to do, that I feel like I'm playing with fire being on narcotic pain meds for so long and that I gave myself an ulcer with NSAID's, that I want my life back - or at least a life with less pain back. I'd tried therapy, I'd tried conservative approaches and that I was done with them, too.

He said he couldn't guarantee that what he was going to try to do would leave me pain free, but that it would certainly help.

I said I didn't want guarantees, that I just wanted to try. If I have 2 or 3 pain free days a week or even just less pain on a daily basis that I would be happy.

He said he will trim and probably reposition my biceps tendon, decompress the shoulder process (shave my clavicle and other bone ends) tidy up the rotator cuff and perhaps tweak the bursal sac a wee bit. He's going to take a good look around and do what he can to give me a less painful shoulder. It might start as a laproscopic procedure and end up as an open surgery, but he'd try to keep the incisions small.

That's EXACTLY what I wanted.

Surgery will be sometime in the next week or so. I'll find out tomorrow when it is. In the meantime, I'm having a pain medication embargo. I recall how bad it was before *with* NSAIDs, and this time I won't have those. I sound like a junkie here, but I'm going to ask for percocet 10/325 instead of the 5/325's like I got last time - for the immediate post-surgical period, that is. I want off that crap, and soon. Fuck, that's part of the reason I'm having another surgery. I think that were I truly a junkie I'd be milking the injury for all it's worth.

So, back to the MRI: the tech said as soon as I know when the surgery is I'm to call her and she'd figure out a way to get me in there BEFORE I have the surgery. She's awesome, that girl. She's truly an asset to the hospital; she actually gives a crap instead of just saying that she does and then not backing it up. I love that.

*update* Surgeon's nurse just called. Surgery will be the week of the 10th; he's en vacance next week. The good thing is that I'll be able to start college on the 24th. The downside....another 3 month recovery period. However, I can handle that. 3 months is a relatively small amount of time.

Dismay

2009-07-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person in the US who thinks that there is something very wrong when:

a 40 plus year old man cannot spell basic words like 'lose' and 'divorce' (for the record, he used 'looze' and 'devorse')?

people seem to be unable to use the past tense of words and say things like 'suppose' instead of 'supposed', 'forgave' instead of 'forgiven' and so on?

a person who describes themselves as educated and intelligent spells 'gentle' 'g-e-n-t-a-l' and says that he likes 'ladys' instead of 'ladies'?

I am just amazed that middle aged people seem to be totally and utterly unable to spell at anything greater than a 4th grade level - and even worse, they don't seem to CARE that their writing is full of mistakes.

When did it become uncool to be smart? Was I asleep when that happened?

Coming Bounty

2009-07-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

My garden is blooming!That's one of the bees that are constant visitors to my plants these days. That guy there is so loaded with pollen that I could hardly see any of his black stripes!

Those are some of the pear tomatoes that I got as tiny wee straggly little seedlings about 5 weeks ago. They've gone from sickly looking things to thick bushy plants that have fruit on them. I've never eaten any of this particular kind of tomato before so I'm looking forward to tasting them!

Crookneck squash. I also have straightneck and acorn. FTS and I are both excited about roasting those bad boys with some butter and pepper and maple syrup.

That's the habanero pepper plant Ruby decided looked very tasty and ate the top of a month ago. It's recovered, and as you might be able to see, is now producing for me. FTS's boyfriend and his family are getting the goods from this plant; I don't think that I can tolerate habanero heat.

Beans! I have beans! That's a yellow wax bean, growing on a plant that I grew from a seed. There's a great deal of satisfaction in putting a seed in some dirt, watering and feeding it and then, a couple of months later, being able to pick produce from the plant that grew from the seed and eat it.

I'll post more photos as I take them!

Sometimes I wonder

2009-07-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

My father died three years ago this week.

I still find myself struggling with the concept of his simply not being here anymore. I see something and think that I must ring dad and tell him about it and I have the phone in my hand before I remember that he's not around to talk to any more. I usually hang up because I can't handle telling mum what I was thinking.

The silliest thought I have is that perhaps if I was there I could have saved him. He was in the coronary care unit of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford; one of the best teaching hospitals in England. He had great doctors treating him, but still the thought that if I had been there; if it had been MY hands on his chest, pumping his heart...that perhaps his body would have sensed the familiarity, that he would have known it was me, his child, trying to save his life. That the love I had for him would have somehow seeped into his cardiac muscle and restarted it....that my love would be enough to bring him back to life.

It's utter craziness, I know. I can step back from that thought process and see the sheer insanity of it; I know how impractical it is. I mean, he had some stellar cardiologists treating him and working his final arrest. I couldn't have made any difference to the outcome. Yet still that thought remains. I can't completely shake it.

The fact is that he was lucky to live as long as he did. He had his first MI when I was 15; I witnessed my own father dying in his bed. At first I thought he and my mother were in the throes of passion because he was groaning, but when I heard mum go downstairs and dad continued to groan I knew things were not right. I went into his room and saw him flat on his back on the bed, his skin a horrible clay color, drenched in sweat. I called out to mum to ring 999, NOW. She said he was ringing the doctor. I said bugger the doctor, ring the bloody ambulance - it was the first time I swore at mother and to the best of my recollection it was the last. She insisted on ringing the doctor. I swooped dad up in my arms and propped him up on all the pillows I could find and then sat with him, telling him just to concentrate on breathing in and out, in and out, that help was on the way and that it was going to be fine. Pleasedon'tdiepleasedon'tdiepleasedon'tdie was what was running through my head, but I didn't say that to him.

The doctor finally arrived, wearing pajama pants and shirt under his sports jacket. He took one look at dad and told mum to ring 999, then he pulled a portable EKG out of his bag o'tricks and stuck the leads on dad's chest. All these years later, I remember what that strip looked like. It wasn't until I became an EMT that I truly understood what those spikes and curved bits meant: tombstones. Occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery. He was throwing a widowmaker.

I lost count of the number of MI's he had over the years. I know that he had triple bypass surgery twice and was hospitalized five or six times after the final surgery. He was on so much Coumadin towards the end of his life that he stopped shaving every day because if he nicked himself he bled for three days. He was frail...my dad, the man who created shapes from stone with his chisel and trowel, the man who carried hods up and down ladder his whole life...my dad couldn't walk from the bathroom to the living room without getting out of breath and having angina at the end. He had strokes. He couldn't talk properly. He got a motorized scooter and went to town on it, but one day he got lost and was out for 8 hours before he came to, realized where he was and went home.

He was old, and he was done living. His heart was tired, and so was he. I believe he decided that he was done, and I know in my heart of hearts that nothing I could have done would have persuaded him to live. He was tired of existing.

I miss him. I still talk to him like he's here sometimes. It helps.

I love you, dad. I'm not mad or angry at you for going, I don't blame you. You fought for a long time, and you fought well. I just miss you like crazy and I don't think that will ever go away.

I think as long as I miss him I'll still wonder if I could have made a difference.

Dear Troll

2009-07-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have to thank you for stopping by my little corner of the blogsphere and really telling me how it is. Boy howdy, was my face ever red after reading your rambling, ill spelt and grammatically incorrect rambling! I mean, you sure put me in my place!

I know that it must be TERRIBLY disappointing for you now that Frank's been sentenced to A HUNDRED A THIRTY-FIVE FUCKING YEARS, but please don't take it too hard: they have visiting days in prison. You'll see each other again, I'm sure. I wouldn't hold out much hope of ever having anything other than a jail-house relationship, though. He's not going to be eligible for parole for sixty-seven years and six months. I should warrant that he'll be dead before that happens, especially if he happens to be unable to be placed in protective custody.

Would you like me to stop using words of more than one syllable, dear? I know how taxing it is for you to read above a 4th grade level.

There's nothing fake ass about me, dear. A bitch I may be, but I'm not fake. You did get one thing correct though: I am feeling pretty stupid. Stupid for letting Ashley into my home, stupid for letting him anywhere near my kids, stupid for letting him start to drive a wedge between me and my husband. However, I find solace in the fact that, stupid as I may have been, I am still married, still in love with my husband, still have a career, and oh yes....I AM NOT IN FUCKING JAIL, DID NOT COME OUT ON BEHALF OF A NOW CONVICTED PEDOPHILE, AND AM NOT REDUCED TO TROLLING THE INTERNET, LEAVING SEMI-THREATENING COMMENTS ON OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOGS. I do have to ask you this: if you are so unafraid of my knowing who you are, why are you signing in as anonymous yet again?

In closing, let me just say this: Frank was given a hell of an opportunity to save his own skin. All he had to do was undergo psychosexual (I know that's a long word and I'm willing to break it down for you if you like) evaluation and he'd have been given a lighter sentence. What did he have to lose? If he was innocent, it would have showed. If he was guilty, he could have probably lived to see the outside of a jail cell again...but he refused. He was given the chance to still maintain his 5th amendement rights and NOT have the results announced in court, but he still chose to refuse. I just cannot understand why in the hell he wouldn't help himself.

Oh wait, I do: IT'S BECAUSE HE'S GUILTY.

One more thing: if you think that a truly innocent man can be convicted on "storytelling" in this day an age, then you truly are madder than a box of frogs. But yeah, keep telling yourself what you need to in order to get some sleep at night. Whatever it takes for you to feel better about standing up for a child molesting fuck. Perhaps you should start drinking again; that worked for you in the past.

Kisses,

NinjaMedic.

P.S. If you are who you say you are, you know exactly where to find me. Oddly enough, I haven't gotten any phone calls or seen you in my area. I can't imagine why...*rolls eyes*

P.P.S. It's 'whore', not 'ho'. Get it right, stupid.

Better

2009-07-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

*listening to Lou Reed 'Walk On The Wild Side'*

The past couple of days haven't been stellar, but they've been better. Nobody has wanted to kill each other, and mama hasn't been eyeing the booze section in the store with quiet desperation, wondering whether it really *will* come to that.

I actually got to talk to my husband for 10 minutes one day, and the next day we had *another* 10 minute call with no cackling or interruptions. It was bliss, I tell you. Sheer bliss.

I feel bad for Urbaner. Not only is he being asked to work is ass off there, he's has issues to deal with at home. That's not easy for anyone. However, it's not fucking easy to left here dealing with the fallout of his absence, either.

*Goldfrapp, 'Strict Machine'*

Found out that Numbah Two hasn't been taking his medications as regularly as he said he was. It explains a lot, and as I explained to him this morning, it also means that I'm going to have to start dispensing them again. He had built enough trust with me and his pa that we had let him self dispense, but that's gone for a little while. I think that once his serum levels become adequate he'll stabilize and will be back on track, but that's going to take a couple of weeks.

*Cat Stevens, 'Wild World'*

Sat next to the head Brass at a dinner last week. Have promised him some tomatoes and peppers out of my garden. He says he's going to hold me to it. I believe him. I'm starting to notice a difference in the way brass talk to and interact with Senior NCO's....it's difficult to explain. It's not exactly familiarity, but it's something like that.

*David Bowie, 'Modern Love'*

I have found that the older I get, the more I need order and cleanliness in order to be able to operate. I used to be able to live in a proverbial sty, but I can't do that anymore. So, gentle reader, I am going to leave you for now and go about setting my house into some semblance of order.

*Play nicely whilst I am cleaning, please and be aware that if I come back and find my shit fucked up there will be consequences.*

Enough

2009-07-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

*warning: rant ahead*

Out of the last 90-ish days, my husband has been gone for 51.

That's over half the time. That's a lot.

It's not like he's had a whole hell of a lot of downtime when he HAS been here. For example, he worked in one capacity or another all last week, packed his bags on Saturday, and left on Sunday. He's working 10 hour days and is always fielding phone calls when he'shome.

I've dealt with the death of Urbaner's grandfather, our middle son's cry for help and subsequent hospitalization in the adolescent psychiatric unit, his grandfather's funeral, a tornado that shook the house a destroyed buildings a mile away from us, and the news that I will probably never have enough range of motion or strength in my arm to work as an EMT again - all by myself. He's been gone for all of those events....but he didn't seem to understand until I told him that those all contributed to my general stress level and my feeling totally isolated.

He doesn't seem to understand that our children NEED their dad; that he is an integral part of the family. Right now his presence is incredibly erratic and that bothers them.

He doesn't seem to understand that this thing with my breast bothers me, too. He was insistent on telling me everything would be fine and that I shouldn't worry. He didn't seem to understand that I NEED to talk about the 'what if's'...what if it ISN'T fine. What then? I NEED to talk to him about that. I'm scared. I know that it's probably nothing, but I'm still scared. He actually said ' so what if you lose a breast? If that's what happens, that's what happens'. I know he meant well, but for fucks sakes....how would he feel if I said 'Oh, so what if you lose a nut? It won't matter'. I don't think he'd like that.

It doesn't help that he's either sleeping, getting ready to go to work, working, eating dinner in some restaurant, or sleeping. Whenever I talk to him, there is always someone else in the background. I cannot tell you how much it bothers me to be trying to talk to him about things and hear some person cackling away behind him...or worse still, interrupting him. That's happened every fucking day so far. He says that he's in another room or away from them. I say I don't care, it still bothers me. I also find it incredibly annoying to be literally pulling my hair out with the kids and their behaviour, trying to talk to Urbaner about it but have him say 'I'm eating right now. Can I call you back?' or 'I'm getting ready to leave and they're waiting for me. Can we talk about this later?'. It fucking pisses me off to no end.

I have actually told him that if this continues it will be the thing that breaks the back of this marriage....and I meant it. He doesn't seem to comprehend that in 3 to 5 years, the Air Force will hand his retirement papers and a cake then wave bye-bye and tell him not to let the door hit him in the arse. If he takes care of it, this marriage has the potential to last for the rest of his life. He has made no effort to spontaneously volunteer to try to curb the TDY's and missions. He's in a position to negotiate somewhat, and he's not done that. That hurts me. I had to ask him to try not to be gone so much for the next couple of months. I can't tell you how bad that stung me.

He says he feels it too, that he's frustrated and it's not easy. Having been gone myself for periods of time, I can understand that. However, I can also understand how easy it is to forget about things when you only have yourself to care for and you get to eat out every night. It's not so easy to do when you're trying to separate two teenage boys who want to rip each other to shreds or deal with a petulant 13 year old who refuses to listen or cooperate or chastize the puppy who peed on the kitchen floor for the third time in an hour and then clean up the puddle or pick up the house after teenagers have trashed it or listen to whines about how we don't have anything to eat and why can't I go to a friend's house 5 miles away with a kid I met once for 10 minutes and why can't I go to the pool; being a turd to my brother and telling him I wish he was still in the hospital isn't a good reason to ground me and I hate you and I hate this family and this house and I wish I could live somewhere else ALL DAY. It gets really fucking old after a while when you have NO BACKUP. The boys have started acting out because they miss their dad, and I am left here to pick up the pieces.

I have tried and tried to be supportive over the years, particularly for the last 5 years. When I had the accident that nearly killed me I recovered alone. I've done my best to keep him deployable and when he deployed, to keep him there. The one time he came back was when I needed surgery to fuse my spine and was going to be in a back brace for 8 weeks. He came home, and then he left for another 6 weeks 3 days after the brace came off. I've done really well and tried really hard, but I'm about at the end of my rope and he just doesn't seem to get why.

The bottom line is that everyone feels his absence and he doesn't understand why. I NEED him. We all NEED him, and he's just not here and I can't even talk to him about it. Phone calls are simply exercises in frustration right now. That makes things even worse.

I don't know what to do.

*rant over*

Invictus

2009-07-14T21:01:00.001-07:00

That's my latest ink. I've been talking about getting it for ages, but the events of the last couple of weeks spurred me into putting my money where my mouth is.

Invictus is Latin. It means 'unconquered'.

I AM invictus, you see. No matter what happens to me, I will still be invictus. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head may be bloody - but I will never bow it. Ever. I don't care how many threats of hellfire and damnation are levelled at me, I have CHOSEN this path I am on and I am unapologetic for what I think and what I feel. I am being true to myself; I AM the captain of my soul. I refuse to give some petulant, sadistic (Job, anyone?) deity any credit at all for my life; I have steered myself to where I am now and I will continue in that manner, come what may.

No matter what happens to me; whether this mass I have turns out to be benign or malignant, whether I ever regain full use of my arm, whether I cannot complete the PA program I want to attend, whether I ever work as an EMT again...no matter what, I am invictus. I will not change my personal beliefs and convictions because of what life throws at me, if anything I will cling to them even tighter in the face of adversity. I will not give in, and I will not give up.

I am an athiest. A heathen. An infidel.

I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother.

I am a human, and I am invictus.

What the hell??!!??

2009-07-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to find our female rat, Brenda, perched atop a pile of squirming, squealing pink rat babies.

MORE rat babies.

The original litter are only 6 weeks old and are barely weaned, and now we have more. Brenda got put in the cage with Dale a few weeks ago so FTS and I could clean out the tank that's serving as a nursery - she wasn't in there for very long and they were supposed to have been supervised, but I'm guessing that the 'lings found playing XBox to be far more important than keeping an eye on the rats.

I don't know exactly how many babies are in there because I don't want to move Brenda to count them. I've seen 5 thus far, but I'm thinking that there are likely a few more that I haven't seen yet.

This is ridiculous. We're going to be overrun with rats if this keeps happening!

Please, in the name of humanity...

2009-07-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

*Ahem* Can I have your attention, please?

Thank you. I have a public service announcement I'd like to make.

Summer is upon us, people. That means it's hot. Not HAWT, hot....as in like an oven. Hot, and sticky. I know how uncomfortable clothing can be when it's this hot, but please, in the name of humanity:

If you are a big girl or a larger lady, please don't squeeze your fat arse into shorty-shorts like the ones Victoria Beckham wears. You may think you look great (you may also think that you're not fat, but you are. Really. Trust me, you are) but you don't. You look like you're in pain most of the time, and I'm telling you you're going to do yourself a mischief if you try to sit down in those Daisy Dukes. They also make you sweat in odd places and nobody needs to see your sweaty camel toe and wedgie combination.

Speaking of sweaty, can I just say this: DEODORANT IS YOUR FRIEND, but you have to bathe regularly. You cannot - I repeat, YOU CANNOT - just keep applying layer after layer of deodorant and thinking it will keep the stank at bay. It won't, and it doesn't. Soap and hot water are your first line defense when it comes to not smelling to high heaven. I don't care if you're a skinny-minnie or a Fat Albert who has to wash themselves with a rag on a stick, each and every one of you needs to expose each part of your body to soap and water at least once a day when it's hot like this.

Now, let's talk about boobage. Ladies, I know that it's hot and that bras can be uncomfortable, but if you have big ol' breastessessesses, you MUST keep those bad boys harnessed. Just as nobody needs to see your dimpled ass cheeks hanging out of your shorty-shorts, nobody wants or needs to see your boobage hanging around your waistband. If you've got perky ones then perhaps wearing one of those tank tops that has a shelf bra in it is okay, but unless you've got ones that are literally self supporting please for the love of humanity wear a freakin' bra. If you have to roll your titties up and out of the way so you can button your pants then YES, you absolutely need to wear a bra.

Men, you're not let off the hook here either. I know that some of you have moobs because I've seen them. Whilst I'm sure that some of you are proud of them, please understand that you don't need to flash the flesh and show the rest of the world your man-tits. Please refrain from wearing those tank tops with the sides that droop open, especially if you have not followed my advice and washed your arse. You are a double affront to society when you wear those things; you offend not only sight but olfactory nerves too. Unless you have a fetish for it, armpit hair is pretty much universally considered gross...and ladies, please for the love of all that is good in this world, shave or wax or somehow de-fuzz yourselves if you're going to be wearing shorts and tank tops. The only thing worse than a man's hairy pit hanging out for all to see is a woman's hairy pit (actually, I tell a lie. There IS one thing worse and I was assaulted by the sight of it last week: a fat chick wearing shorts that were far too small and who failed to realize that her *ahem* bikini line extended down her inner thighs. Excuse me whilst I retch....*gag*).

Ok, where we were? Ah yes, I wanted to talk about feet. They're concealed most of the year, but come summertime everyone wants to display them - despite having ignored them for a good long time. Some of you don't seem to comprehend that feet are in fact a part of your body and therefore need to be washed with the soap and water we talked about earlier. They also have nails that need clipped, corns and calluses that need shaved or trimmed, are subject to various fungal infections that make them nasty to look at and can emanate an odor that the majority of the population finds most disagreeable and even repulsive. Being a military spouse I have been privy to lots of advice given by respected and seasoned leaders, but the one piece of advice that I hear again and again and again is this: take care of your feet, and they'll take care of you. This doesn't just apply to military personnel, this applies to you, too. Nobody is expecting perfect trotters all the time and you don't need to get a pedicure weekly or have pretty painted nails: just try to make sure they don't stink and people don't gag, flinch or recoil in sheer terror when they see your footsies.

As the banner underneath the title of this blog states, you are not here alone; there are other people who live on this planet with you. Whilst I am all for people living freely and in the manner they see fit, I'm also all about courtesy for those around you. So please, before you venture out into this big wide world we live in, take a moment to think: will my body odor be offensive to my fellow man, and if so what do I need to do to correct it? Will people really appreciate seeing my boobs/moobs/ass cheeks/nasty feet? Would I want to see theirs?

There is a happy medium here, people...and it's not that difficult to find.

Please feel free to print this out and give it to your friends and relatives; the more people that hear this message the better.

It's probably nothing....

2009-07-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

...but my left breast hurts and has an area of thickening in it that's pretty noticeable.

I'm not panicking - yet, anyway. I had a lump develop in the same breast after the car accident; it was about the size of a hen's egg and turned out to be fat necrosis. For those of you who aren't medically-minded, I'll explain: injury to the breast can cause the body to create firm scar tissue when it repairs the damage. My seatbelt caused a lump of breast tissue to be sheared off, and my body created scar tissue when it tried to repair the damage. It didn't look normal on mammogram imaging so I had a surgery to remove it and have it biopsied. The peace of mind that came from that was wonderful.

Urbaner was gone for the whole thing. It only took 2 weeks from the initial appointment to the surgery, but it seemed like forever....and I think part of that was because I was alone and didn't have anyone to physically lean on. This time isn't going to be any different; Urbaner is leaving today. Apparently my ta-ta's like to act up whenever he's gone.

I don't know whether I should make an appointment with my doctor in the next couple of days to get it checked out, or whether I should wait for a week or so to see what happens with it. I don't want to make a fuss about nothing, but I also want to have some peace of mind.

For once, I really don't know what to do.

If all goes well..

2009-07-07T12:55:00.001-07:00

...I will be starting full time classes this fall to complete the degree I started many years ago.

All I need is the funding, and I can get that via the Air Force, in the form of tuition assistance for military spouses and as part of the GI Bill sharing that Urbaner is going to do with me.

With luck, I won't have to apply for student loans for at least 2 years and maybe not until I get into a post-grad program.

I might actually make a PA after all. Man....if that happens I will totally be living the dream.

Painting by numbers the NinjaMedic way

2009-07-06T12:10:00.001-07:00

Step One:

1: Gather your materials, in this case a Gesso treated canvas, 3" and 2" brushes and a bottle each of red and yellow acrylic paint:

2: Add appropriate soundtrack. In this case it included the Beastie Boys, David Bowie, The Smiths, The Stranglers, The Clash, Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Pretenders, The Jam and Fun Boy Three:

3: Turn music on, apply paint to canvas with brush (or fingers if you want a more textured look). If it looks too thick, add a little water. Don't be afraid, some of the best art comes from being fearless. Groove for half an hour or so or until desired effect is achieved:

4: Leave alone and let it dry.

Tomorrow we'll discuss Step Two, again with pictorial directions.

Hey, Ambulance Driver....

2009-07-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

....look what I found:

Yep. Chocolate with bacon:

Say the word, and a bar will be on it's way in your direction.

Everything's better with bacon, right?

SSG J Melton's funeral

2009-06-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

This is what I was a part of yesterday. Seeing it on film really brings home for me just how significant it was, and I am glad that our actions helped the family of SSG Melton feel that they're not alone, that we all care and are all grateful for his service and their sacrifice.

(At the end of the clip you see Urbaner, me, FTS and her boyfriend standing as part of the flag line. I'm wearing a black EMS shirt - I couldn't take a poster with everyone's names on it, so I felt like wearing that would be my way of representing for the EMS community and especially the people I blog with).

It's not the kind of event that I look forward to attending, but now that I've been to one you can bet your butt I will be going to more - especially if Phelps' sheeple decide to show up.

Fred Phelps, you've changed me.

2009-06-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, you have, but not in the way you think.

You sir, are a megalomanic egotistical delusional FUCK who is the most hateful human I have ever come across. I've managed to make it through 40 years on this planet without hating anyone, but I hate you, Fred. I really, truly hate you and everything you stand for, and I hate the spineless sheeple who follow you and parrot your insane ramblings mindlessly.

Today I went out to a funeral of a person I didn't know, in support of a family I have never met. I talked with people I normally wouldn't have spoken with, and I stood shoulder to shoulder with people I might never have met were it not for you. I came away with new friends and as a member of an organization I might never have had the opportunity to join had you not pissed me off enough to make me take action.

You gave me the opportunity to show my children how to stand up for something you believe in and hold true, even if that something is dislike for another person or thing. From now on, whenever I get wind that you or your sheeple will be in my area, me and my new friends are going to make it our business to be there to drown you people out. Just as you are exercising your constitutional rights, we will be exercising ours - right in front of you and louder than you. We will not let you disrupt anyone's funeral or church service, Fred. Not on our watch.

So thank you, Fred, for changing me...and for changing my daughter and my husband and all the other people who turned out just to shout you clowns down. You've changed us for the better.

Love,

NinjaMedic, Military Spouse and new member of the PGR.

Westboro Baptist Church and SSG Josh Melton

2009-06-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

I need your help.

One of our own came home in a casket yesterday.

SSG Joshua A Melton of Germantown, IL, was killed by an IED. His funeral will be tomorrow morning, Saturday June 27th at 10am at St Boniface church in Germantown IL.

Members of Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing his funeral. From their website (http://www.godhatesfags.com/schedule.html):

'St. Boniface Church - Mourn for your sins DOOMED america! 306 Munster St Yet a little while, DOOMED america. Yet a little while and all that you have seen and known will be destroyed. You have made it your life's work to defy the Lord's Commandments. He will have his vengeance. When you see your dead brute brat lying in a box (or worse - sent home sloshing around in a leak-proof Ziplock bag) you know that God hates you.'

I cannot stand by and let these hate mongering fucks do what they plan to do. I don't think that anyone's family should have to see these fucking halfwits and their signs as they bury their loved one. So, I'm going totry to go to Germantown tomorrow, and I'm looking for people to go with me. Help me line the funeral procession route, help me create a human shield. Stand with me in silent protest.

Email me if you think you can and we'll try to arrange something (dharmagirl69@gmail.com).

Canning, squirrels, bebehs and things that make you go WTF?

2009-06-25T13:32:00.001-07:00

In anticipation of my garden's bounty, I got myself a water bath canning pot and an instruction book today.

I've spent a very happy morning "ooh!" ing and "ahh!" ing over recipes for pickles of all kinds (sweet melon pickles sound AWESOME) and salsas (all I'll have to buy is the onion, the rest is growing in containers in my garden, yay!), jams (I have strawberries growing) and jellies and preserves and chutney, oh my!

Urbaner has already submitted a request for "hot pickles" like the ones his grandma made once and FTS and Numbah Two want salsa. Littlest Ling (who is 13 now) has a couple of watermelon plants he's growing and has already agreed upon a 'per slice' price with his siblings.

As I get older I see myself becoming more and more like my dad. He was an avid homesteader; he grew up in pre WWII England where everything was rationed and you either grew it/caught it yourself or you went without. Consequently he learned to grow lots of vegetables and fruits and we kept chickens for quite a time when I was a kid. If it produced fruit or had babies, he was all over it, and that's how I am too. It makes me incredibly happy to plant a seed in some dirt and see it not only germinate, but sprout leaves and then produce something I can eat and feed my family with. I like that I can step out onto my patio and pick something to eat - and know exactly what that food has been treated with (no commerical pesticides; I'm using a mild soap solution for bugs and it's working) and how it's been grown.

Even though he's been dead for almost 3 years, I have found myself wanting to pick up the phone and get dad's advice more this summer than at any other time in my life, mostly for silly things like how to discourage puppies from chewing on pepper plant leaves and what you need to build a really good pea plant trellis. He was always good for things like that: one year I had a MAJOR squirrel problem and he helped me solve it. I had planted over a hundred daffodil, tulip and lily bulbs in the front yard and the resident squirrels thought that I did it simply for their gastronimic delight. The little bastards started digging up the bulbs and eating them and were very daring and blatant about the whole thing, even doing it when I was sitting on the porch right next to the flower beds. Dad's suggestions were: cayenne pepper (the first snoutful put them off for half an hour, but they seemed to think of it as a seasoning for the bulbs after that), chicken wire (they chewed through it), urine (I peed in a pitcher and watered the garden with it. It didn't stop them and made the flower beds smell horrid) and finally human hair (I got it from the barber shop. It got tracked into the house somehow and was a pain in the arse to get rid of - and the squirrels used clumps of it as nesting material). His final solution: a pellet gun and rat poison. "Squirrel pie is really quite nice if it's seasoned right, and you can use the pelts to make a hat out of" he said. Had he been in town I'm sure I wouldn't have had any more squirrel problems, but as it was he was in England and I was not - and the squirrels were particularly well fed that year.

I really do miss him some days.

The rat bebehs all have at least one eye open now and are getting adventurous. They've been nibbling at solid food as well as nursing and will come and say hello to FTS and I when we open the cage door. It's going to be really hard to sell them to the pet store, especially as I know that some of them will end up as snake food. FTS is having a particularly hard time with that and has threatened her brother with bodily harm if he sells them to the reptile speciality store in town. Personally I think she'll arrange for a ratty kidnapping before she'll let that happen. "No, Numbah Two, I have NO idea what happened to your rat bebehs" she'll say. "P'raps they escaped and are hiding. Or maybe they ran away. Yeah, that's it, there was a rat-ling mutiny. They rebelled and went to live in an anarchaic society so they could stick it to da man." She's articulate like that.

I have another blog on the go, and I'd like you to help me with it, if you can. It's called 'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot' and is dedicated to things that make me (and you, probably) say 'WTF??'. If you see anything you think is worthy, email it to me at wtfery@gmail.com and I'll post it (you'll get credit for it, of course). As long as there are people and they have the ability to post things on teh interwebs, there will be fodder for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

As mum says, 'there's nowt as queer as folk'*.

*translation for non England-dwellers: people are fucking weird.

A tale of two patients

2009-06-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

Two of the three patients that assaulted me have died, and I am sad but glad that they are gone.

One had Alzheimer's. She had started on a gradual descent into dementia that increased into a much steeper slope when she arrived at our facility. She was lucid most of the time at first, but as the days went by she started to become more and more confused...and with that confusion came violence. She wanted to leave, she said that she was tired of staying at "this cheap hotel" and that she wanted to go home. We couldn't let that happen, and that's when we would get hit. She would be wheeling herself towards the doors, and when we'd try to turn her around away from the doors she would grab onto the handrails in the hallway and hold on for dear life. She would hit us and claw at our arms when we tried to get her back into the facility - she clocked me in the face with a roundhouse swing once. I have to say that I was impressed with her strength, she rocked me a little bit with that punch. She truly thought that we were kidnapping her or trying to accost her, and she fought us like her life depended on it.

When we would get her back to her room we'd take turns in sitting with her until she fell asleep. She'd lay in her bed and cry, confused and not knowing why we were keeping her there. She'd threaten to sic her son on us, saying "you wait until my boy hears about this. You'll all be in BIG trouble then". It was heartbreaking to see and hear her in that state, because when she was lucid she was an incredibly sweet, generous and gentle woman. If it was my turn to sit with her, I'd try to talk to her about her family and her husband and how she lived when she was younger. Sometimes it would work and she'd settle easily. Sometimes it wouldn't, and she would cry herself to sleep.

When I read about her death I was glad and sad at the same time. Sad because the world is a little dimmer without her presence, but glad because she's escaped the dementia that held her prisoner.

The other patient, however, is a different story. He was not demented, so the aggression and violence he focused on us was not the result of a confused mind, it was because he wanted to.

He was, to be blunt, a miserable fuck. I can nearly always find some redeeming qualities in people, but I couldn't find any in him - and I tried really hard. He fought us at every turn. Everything was a battle. EVERYTHING. Taking medications, bathing, emptying his uro-bag, changing dressings and pads, dressing, undressing, eating, sleeping....every single thing was a fight. He cussed at us, swung at us, grabbed us, hit us and kicked at us. One of the more assertive nurses told him once that if he swung at us again she'd be calling the police and pressing charges against him. That stopped the physical assaults for a day, but he more than compensated for that with his words. He was petulant and obstinate and I really think he enjoyed being a pain in our arses.

I thought about him often, wondering *why* he was the way he was. He had led a full and active life and was fiercely independent. He lived with some conditions and injuries that would have made other people take to their beds and stay there, but he never let it stop him. I can't decide if it was courage or sheer bloody-mindedness that kept him going, but I think it was probably the latter rather than the former. I think that was a huge part of his unhappiness at being in a long term care facility and that displeasure manifested itself in aggression and general nastiness towards anyone who came into contact with him. People that reside in places like that aren't there because they can take care of themselves, they're there because it's no longer safe or prudent for them to live independently. It's a very managed and structured way of life with not a whole lot of room for deviation; there's a schedule for everything. You eat when you're told to, you shower or bathe when you're told to, you go to therapy when you're told to, you can't get up out of your chair or bed without someone being there to help you, you can't go outside unless someone is there to watch you and unless you're lucky enough to have a private room, you have to share your living space with someone you don't know and may not like....it's not an environment a previously independent person would find easy to live in, and I think that was a huge factor in this guy's behaviour.

When I read about his death, I had an immediate sense of schadenfreude and said aloud "good, I'm glad he's gone". I'm slightly ashamed of that reaction, but I cannot deny that I'm glad he's dead - not because I hated him (I didn't like him much, but I never hated him) but because he is now free from the misery that engulfed him in his final years.

Two very different patients with two very different reasons for their aggression. I'm feeling their loss - but for very different reasons.

I'm crafty

2009-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't want plain white shoes like everyone else. I had originally wanted some white Chucks, but couldn't find any. So, I grabbed some cheap-o Payless canvas shoes and doodled on them:

I had originally thought about doing some tattoo styled ones, but with all the Ed Hardy doucheiness that's popular at the moment I decided against it and just went with what I thought the shoe shape lent itself to best.

I have some old-school Vans that I'm thinking deserve a Super Mario Brothers theme drawn on them. Littlest Ling's friend has some white DC's he wants me to decorate - he doesn't know it yet, but he's getting some musically inspired ones (he plays trumpet in the band with LL) with '*insert his favorite musician's name here* is my homeboy' written on the backs.

I haven't drawn or doodled in ages. I've never been what you could describe as an artist; I don't like working on a flat canvas and I don't do well with it. I'm better at drawing and painting on objects - a few years ago I painted saltbox scenes on a bunch of Mason jars I found at the thrift store, filled them with potpourri (again, I made that myself) and gave them to people for Christmas.

I listen to music when I'm crafting - those shoes were drawn on when i was listening to the Beastie Boys and Common. I can't help but think that had an influence on what I drew.

I have plans for a pair of old tatty jeans I have....they're Lucky brand, and I'm thinking that they need some shamrocks cascading down the legs. Maybe I'll listen to The Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly and The Tossers when I'm drawing on them and see what happens.

Anyone got shoes they want decorating?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, MICK!

2009-06-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

Yet more random what-the-fuckery from CriagsList:

*this is completely unedited, it's exactly as it was posted. I took out the email addy at the end, but that's all*

MICK !! PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS UNKINDLY FROM WHAT I SAY BECAUSE SO MANY FAKE PEOPLE OUT HERE TRYING TO DO BAD THINGS! ! BUT UNLESS YOU HAVE A PHOTO OF YOU! PLEASE DON'T EVEN EMAIL ME BECAUSE I WONT EVEN READ IT!!!!!!! I HAVE A KIND HEART BUT !! I WANT YOU TO KNOW I AM HONEST ON WHAT I SAY HERE!!!!!!!!! I AM A WHITE MALE 6'1 TALL AND 174LBS VERY FIT I HAVE STRONG ARMS TO HOLD YOU WITH,AND GOOD BODY FOR ONLY LOVERS LIKE US TONIGHT!! I DONOT DRINK OR SMOKE OR DO DRUGS I LOOK FOR PRETTY GIRL A WOMAN THAT WANTS SOME ONE TO HOLD HER IN HIS ARMS,A TRUE WHITE THIN BUILD FEMALE GIRL WITH THE SAME IN MINE FOR LOVE FOR LIFE ! A GIRL WITH A TRUE HEART AND SOUL A GIRL,A FRIEND,A WOMAN,A LOVER LIKE ME FOR HER ALL WAYS TO BE,FOR ALL WAYS ONLY YOU FOR ME FOREVER TO FALL IN LOVE LIKE STARS IN OUR EYES YOU FOR ME WILL BE IN A LOVELY OF SOFTLY BODIES IN SOME MOONLIGHT NIGHTS AS WE LAY IN LIFE AND WALKS IN THE RAIN WITH THE SUN SHINE FALLING DOWN ON US AS LIKE A RAINBOW OF COLORS IN THE SKIES FOR ALL WAYS OVER YOU AND ME THAT'S HOW WE WILL BE!! AND AS WE GO INTO LIFE FOREVER JUST YOU AND ME DOLL.***********/A/T/CHARTER.NET

My GAWD, there's so much stuff to work through on this post, I hardly know where to begin...

1) WHY ALL THE CAPS??

2) Why! So! Many! Exclamation! Points!

3) At first I thought that this was a letter to someone else. It starts with a name, as if the text is addressing someone else (but with an exclamation point, not a comma)....but then I waded through the rest of it and realized that it was, in fact, a personal ad.

4) 'You for me will be in a lovely of soft bodies in some moonlight nights'. If I didn't have the photos to prove me wrong, I'd have said that the author was Japanese, because that sentence is very Engrish-esque.

5) The photos. Oh, the photos...I think that he posted photos of his arms because he made mention of his 'strong arms' in the ad. At least, I hope that's why. The other photos....yeah. One looks like a scanned 80's WalMart portrait and the other....yeah, I'm not even going to go there. Not touching that one at all.

I would *love* to know what was going on in this guy's head when he posted this....

BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER.

2009-06-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

It was the best birthday ever, better than the one when I was little and we went to a safari park and monkeys piddled on the wing mirrors of dad's car and ripped the molding off the sides.

It started with posters that the 'lings made. I was greeted by them on the stairs when I got up and was tickled, but this is what I was greeted with when FTS and I came back from the DMV yesterday morning:

'FOUR T', get it??

They had tacked them up on the garage door so the whole street knew it was my birthday, and I love that!

Then, there was this:
The black balloons and the one that say 'Over The Hill' were a nice, touch, I think.

The 'lings gave me gifts (they chose them themselves) that were totally unexpected: Littlest Ling got me a silver heart necklace, FTS got me some organic lotions and potions, and Numbah Two got me Victoria's Secret perfumes (Urbaner really likes the way they smell, which is an added bonus).

Later, we went out to dinner at a hibachi restaurant. This is me and Urbaner right before we left:

He never smiles in photos. That's ok, I still think he's hawt. Like my dress? That's a $6 thrift store special, and I'm pretty proud of it.

Yeah, I have pink in my hair. That caused quite an issue at the DMV; the girl didn't know what to put under the 'hair color' slot on the form.
Future Trauma Surgeon and Numbah Two at the restaurant:
It was a really good time. I nearly drowned on saki, and Littlest Ling was really very impressed with the chef's skills, especially the onion ring volcano and the buring oils. Friends I didn't expect to show up were there, and Urbaner had apparently told the staff it was my birthday because they came out with drums and dragons and sang to me - they made me dance, and yes, there is photographic evidence of that. I don't know if it will ever see the light of day, but there IS evidence.
When we got home, Urbaner surprised me with a 'Mind The Gap' t shirt that he got when he was delayed in England over the weekend. I've wanted one of those for ages, and he made it his mission to get me one when he was gone. Not pictured is the matching thong....a mind the gap thong, indeed! LOL!!

There was a cake waiting for me when we got home (another surprise) and yes, there are 40 candles on it. A fire hazard, I know, but the smoke detectors stayed silent and I blew out all the candles in one go.

It really was the best birthday ever. Really. Urbaner got home Monday night after 11 days of almost constant flying (3 continents and too many time zones to count), so for him to be able to pull that off with NO notice...he busted his ass, and it showed, and I am incredibly grateful to him for doing it. I know he reads my blog, so...thank you, U. I'll remember that birthday for the rest of my life, and it's all because of you. I love you, I love you, I love you.

BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER.

FO' SHO.

I wonder if she remembers me.

2009-06-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

It's June 16th in England, so it's officially my birthday.

My parents are not my genetic donors; they adopted me when I was an infant. Mum has Rhesus negative blood and dad had Rh+. They managed to conceive one child (my big brother) but mum went on to have a ridiculous amount of miscarriages before they decided to adopt me when my big bro was 13.

They may not have made me, but they raised me. *They* are my parents, regardless of who's womb I was grown in.

I know a little bit about my birth mother. She was 21 when I was born; she wasn't married to my birth father, and he was married to someone else. She had complete renal failure when she was 22 weeks pregnant with me and spent the rest of her pregnancy hospitalized.

I was adopted when I was a couple of months old. I came with a little typed blurb about what my background was - mum and dad called it my 'pedigree'.

I know that I was under 7lbs when I was born and that I was a forceps delivery. I know that I was breastfed for the first week of my life. I know that my mother's name was Veronica Howse.

I did a search for her a few years ago. I needed a simple family medical history; I needed to know if there were any cancers or genetic nastiness in my background. I found her. She's been married 4 times, and I have a few half siblings. My birth father is deceased. Her last husband was incarcerated for child molestation. She's had a hard life, it seems.

I wrote her a letter, explaining that I was open to a relationship if she was, but that at the very least I'd like a medical history. I enclosed some photos of myself and told her a little about my family. I even added a self addressed envelope with enough money to cover postage.

I heard nothing back. I waited and waited and, after 6 weeks, I sent another letter, this time via certified mail. I asked again for a family history, explaining that I was having to have all kinds of tests done because my docs felt like they should assume I *did* have those diseases in my family and should be screened for them. I said that if she didn't want to have a relationship with me then I was okay with that, but that I really did need that medical history.

I didn't hear back from her.

It's probably a good thing; if that's how she is then we wouldn't do well together anyway. I can't tell you that it was without emotion, though; her silence stung me. I've kept tabs on her since then, once a year or so I'll go do a death records search to see if she's died.
I wasn't ever looking for another mum, I already have one and she does a spectacular job...but I would have liked some acknowledgment from Veronica. I just want to know whether she remembers me, if she thinks about me.

Because I think about her. Once a year, on this day, I think about her and I wonder if she remembers me.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

2009-06-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

I just HAD to share this with you. Of all the funky, effed-up, mangled writing I have seen on CraigsList, this one really takes the biscuit as...well, the oddest and most effed. It's not just the spelling and punctuation either, it's the subject matter:

realscumbag rontatooman - $160

im writing about aman ron who lives at 172lampman ave he took my money and left my tatoo undone on my back right leg my son had a tatoo don saturday he had to go to the hospital because he got a bad staph infection from it the docter had to put him on antibotic pill and a antibotic cream all so this man is a real scumbag and areal asshole to take advantage of a woman who lives on a fixed income if some one could call me at xxx xxx xxxx an make arrangemts to com tomy houseand finish it forme iwould liketo get acall all i have is theout lineof the octoupuss head and the tresserchest and astar fish inthe front he was goingto make it look like it was a underwater ocean seen i have the dolphin onthe in side of the rightleg and on theouterside there is a seen with asunset water palmtrees and ocean water and two dolphins one jumping over the other one i just need the octoupuss finished and all the tentekils puton colored with megenta and pink colors and the treasurechestdon and the scubadiver putonn so maby someone will call me but i would not recomend no to go to 172lampman ave and have eney work don by ron

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Oh my, where to begin...

1) I don't understand why some words - words that are supposed to be separate - are joined together, but other words - words that are meant to be joined together - are separate. For example: 'all i have is theout lineof the octoupuss'. What the hell?!?!

2) 'Tentekils'? 'Octoupuss'? 'Tresserchest'? C'mon, really? This is a grown woman writing this; a woman who has a son who also got a tattoo - that means she's at least in her 30's. How can someone that age make it through life not knowing how to spell basic words like 'doctor' and 'done' and 'scene'?

3) If she's on a' fixed income', how the hell can she afford to get an elaborate tattoo done? I'm not on a fixed income, and I can't afford to get inked like that.

4) I'm not so sure that advertising for someone to come to your house and finish your tattoo is a good idea. In fact, I think that that's what got her into this mess in the first place. I notice that she doesn't give a shop name for her ink man (for instance, I got my oroborous tattoo done by Matt Thrash at Black Hills Tattoo). That leads me to believe that she went to someone who isn't licensed and doesn't work out of a shop; it was probably a guy who happens to have a tattoo gun and works out of his house - in other words, he's one step above a jailhouse artist.

5) Everyone has staph bacteria living on their skin, so the infection her son got might not have been from the tattoo needle. If he wasn't keeping the ink site clean, wasn't washing his hands before touching it, was using contaminated lotion/protectant - or wasn't using any protectant or lotion at all - then he could be at fault for the resulting infection. However, if there were a cluster of folks who all got staph infections after being tattooed by the same guy....well, then that would tell me that the guy's sterilization techniques are not adequate.

6) I don't know about her, but I only have two legs - one right leg and one left leg. Every time I read 'on my back right leg' I envision a woman with smaller legs sticking out the back of her primary legs, much like Edison's chair that he designed so he could lean back without tipping over.

7) Finally, I don't think this woman ever met a comma or a period she liked.

(credit to www.yousuckatcraigslist.com )

Abundance

2009-06-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

I'm incredibly happy with the way my garden is coming along:

Those are Straightneck squash, a petite bell pepper plant, and FTS's eggplant.

Those are Acorn and Straightneck squash.
Peas, both Snow and pod varieties, and that's my home-rigged trellis system that I'm pretty proud of.
Tomatoes! Lots of tomatoes!

Beans, and another trellis system.
Yellow pear tomatoes, and next to them is the newest addition to the garden: an habanero pepper plant. I got it for Numbah Two, but I'm not sure how interested in it he is. It has flowers and a couple of pepper buds on it and already has that distinctive 'hot' smell that peppers have, you know?

That's one of the two honeysuckle bushes we got for Urbaner. It had a couple of blossoms on it that smelled wonderful, but it lost those a couple of days ago. However, there are many more coming and I think that sitting on our patio is going to be a wonderful sensory experience in a couple of weeks when it's in full bloom.
Thos are the other peppers. Clockwise from bottom left: jalapeno, fajita bell, orange bell and sweet banana.

That's a close-up of the fajita bell.
Those are cantelope and honeydew melons, and whilst you can't really see it very well there's a single, solitary watermelon seedling in there too. Littlest 'Ling planted some seeds a while back and was very disappointed when none of them sprouted. I planted a few more and only one of them came up, so we're taking extra special care of it!

I also have a whole container of different varieties of lettuce: romaine, arugula, endive, red salad bowl, oak leaf, radicchio, butterleaf and green ice. I only planted the seeds a day or so ago so they're not germinated or spouting yet.

If everything keeps growing the way it has been, I forsee an abundance of fruits and vegetables in my future.

Time to learn how to can, I think!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!

2009-06-12T10:32:00.001-07:00

I haven't done this before and I may never do it again, but I simply HAVE to share this with y'all.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dennis:

Dennis is 23 and is looking for love on CraigsList. I'm going to post his ad so you can read for yourself what horrible luck Dennis has had with girls, how they leave him for douchebags who beat them and blah blah blah, but I wanted to let you know what Dennis' profession is first.

Dennis is a MMA cagefighter.

Yes, you read that right. Dennis here - Dennis with the double chin and distinct LACK of musculature, cauliflower ears and with the very straight nose - tells us that he, at 6'5" and 310lbs, is a heavyweight MMA cagefighter.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!! He's a CAGEFIGHTER!!!!!!!

HAHAHHAHAHAHAAH!

Here, *hahahaha* read for yourselves. *Hahahahahaah*I can't stop laughing long enough to read it for you:

'Hi my name is Dennis I am 23 years old I am a mixed martial arts cagefighter, but I have a really big heart which may be my problem I have only had two girlfriends both took advantage of my good heartedness i gave them everything they wanted for example I proposed to my first girlfriend after 8 months she said yes then one month later left the ring on the front door step and said she didnt want to marry me because she wanted to go back to her old boyfriend (who beat her on a daily basis) because I was too nice. It took me five years to get over that, and now the most recent girlfriend dumped me because she stills has feelings for her ex who burnt down their house, killed her cat, and destroyed everything she owned because she left him for me, but she lied to me and told me she wasnt going back to him. Well as you can see I have bad luck with women. Im just looking for a normal girl who wont screw me over cause im tired of it. Im 6'5 310 lbs im a heavyweight fighter. I have brown hair and blue eyes my picutre is kind of old i look better than that lol. Well I know I wrote alot of my ex's but i was just dumped today and i dont want to wait 5 more years. hit me up if you want to know more '

Oh, my belly hurts from laughing!

Dennis, dear....the likelihood of you being a cagefighter is slim to none. I say that because if you WERE a fighter (or even just an MMA fan, like myself) you'd know that the heavyweight class you say you fight in has a weight limit of 265lbs. You far surpass that, dude. If you DID fight, then you'd know you're in the super heavyweight class.

By the way, Dennis, have you ever thought that your lack of luck with the ladies might be due to the fact that you embellish the truth/outright lie about stuff? I'm just sayin'.

Dennis is a cage fighter. HAHAHHAAHHA!!!!!!!

Tornadoes, First Sgts and babies.

2009-06-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a 24 hours, y'all.

First, I came home yesterday afternoon to hear the sirens going off on base, advising us a tornado was approaching and to take cover immediately.

I pulled all my plant container in from the patio (it's an emergent situation, but I take the time I get my plants. I know, I know....) then the kids and I grabbed the dogs, some matches and candles and went into the little tool shed/utility room on the ground floor. As the roar of the storm got louder the lights started to flicker and then went out completely, leaving us in total darkness. All we heard was the roaring and pinging as the hail hit the roof.

I was okay until the lights went out, then I began to get scared. I didn't want the kids to know, so I twittered from my cell phone where we were and what was going on and pretended that everything was cool for the kids. I'm not they bought it, to be honest, but nobody freaked out....not even when we felt the walls shake and tremble.

After 45 minutes or so the roaring and rumbling subsided and an eerie quiet came down on us. I sat there, telepathically telling Urbaner to call home, to please call home because I needed someone to talk to, someone to tell me that I did the right thing, was doing the right thing and that it would all be okay.

He didn't call. So much for my telepathic powers.

After about 15 minutes of total calm, I ventured out of the shed to see sunshine coming from the west and the blackest sky I have ever seen out to the east.

The yard was a mess. The chairs were everywhere, a two-thirds full bag of potting soil I'd been working with (it was a 2cu bag) was against the fence - not spilled, not upside down, just against the fence as if I had leaned it on there - and there were a couple of shingles and some styrofoam blocks from the construction site 3/4 mile away all over the lawn. In the front there was debris everywhere and people were out, picking things up.

We waited for a little while and when the power didn't come back on (the base is usually pretty good about getting us hooked up again) FTS and I decided to take the dogs for a walk.

Now is a good time to tell you about the neighbors and the trouble we're having, I think. It's relevant.

We have had out sleep disturbed regularly since the start of the year. There are three families in particular that think it's okay to sit in the middle of the road - with a firepit going - at all hours of the night, playing music and laughing and screaming. If they're not in the road, they're in someone's driveway raising hell. A couple of weekends ago they woke us up at 1230 with their noise. FTS went out the front door to see what happened and she got cursed at. She came and got me and I went out there - still on my own porch, mind you - and I got the same treatment. So, I called the police. Urbaner and I turned out the lights and sat inside in the dark and heard them - one in particular - daring each other to "go over there". I can't say for sure what the plan was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't to do good.
The next duty day, I spoke to the housing office and sent them an email detailing all the noise and the commotion. Apparently some military members got briefed about it, because the wives of the three families have made a point of making very loud comments about me whenever I'm outside, calling me a bitch and generally being miserable and rude. (the parties are still going on, btw)

Yesterday, as we stepped outside, all 3 of them were across the street. As soon as we became visible, the comments and snideness started, and this time I heard my daughter mentioned. We walked down the street, and as we approached them, the comments stopped. After we had passed by they started again, and again my daughter was a target as well as myself. They won't say anything TO me, they'll say it about me, but that's not the issue: they're now fucking with my kids, and mama don't play that game. Don't call my 16 year old a bitch and give her a hard time. Just don't.

I know that my confronting them will only end badly, so I decided to go a different route: I used the military chain of command EXACTLY the way it's designed to be used. I know that the ringleader's husband is a cop, so I went to the SFS First Sgt. I told him what was going on and that I didn't want to have to escalate it to an official level and get the civilian authorities involved, but that if it didn't stop, I would. I mean it, too. Whenever I'm in the yard I have my cell phone in video mode so that if shit starts I can record it and have evidence. I find it incredibly sad that I feel like I need to do that, but hey....I am NOT going to take this crap. I shouldn't HAVE to take this shit. If I knew who the other people's 1st Sgts were, I'd be in their offices, too, saying the same thing.

The 1st Sgt said he'd talk to the military member. I don't hold out much hope for any resolution.

It's not just us, half the other families on the street have complained, too. I'm starting to wonder what it takes to get these people either to stop what they're doing or asked to leave military family housing.

You want to know the REAL kicker for me? One of the very active participants has a home daycare in her house. Nice, huh? I wonder what the parents of her charges would do if they knew the crap that goes on around here in the evenings and on the weekends?

So, I am fully expecting there to be some repercussions from this. There were repercussions from my talking to the housing officer, so I expect the same again. This time, though, I am ready for it.

So, Numbah Two's rats, the pair that were supposed to be males? Yeah, not so much. I was sitting on the couch eating lunch and I kept hearing this really high pitched squeaking. I wondered what it was, so I went and peeked in the rat's cage....

...and saw Brennan the 'male' rat with a good dozen or so squirmy pink babies under her.

Brennan is a girl, and Brennan is now a mom.

I don't know ANYTHING about rat husbandry. Nothing. I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no rat babies, so I am slightly freaked out about this. I'm doing some reading and hoping for the best.....but I do know that we are NOT keeping them.

Anyone want a fancy rat?

Hurtling towards 40

2009-06-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

I will be 40 very shortly.

I've noticed some things about being this age.

For instance, things have moved/are moving south. I have scars on my belly form a lap-chole (gallbladder removal for you non-medical readers) I had done 10 years ago. They used to be in my right upper quadrant, but now they're a good 2 inches lower than they were originally.

My skin in changing. When I look at myself in the mirror I see subtle signs of my age appearing....crow's feet and a more pronounced naso-labial fold. My lips are getting thinner, too. My skin isn't as elastic and resilient as it used to be; I'm getting crinkles in strange places....like right above my knees and on my butt. They're not there all the time, just when I move a certain way, but they're undeniably apparent.

I'm growing hair in some very strange places....I have a wiry hair that keeps appearing next to my belly button. I keep pulling it, but it keeps comng back. Hair is also migrating to odd places, instead of shaving just my pits I find that I'm having to shave the underside of my arms, too. That's true for other places as well, but I'm not going to talk about that because we'd be getting into 'too much information' territory, I think.

Every time I see a doctor I hear "it's your age". My shoulder hurts? It's my age. I have a headache? It's my age. Cut my thumb with a knife? That's due to my age too. Apparently I am now the right age for lots and lots of things: breast cancer, ovarian cancer, frozen shoulder syndrome, colon cancer....apparently cancer likes 40 year olds. Menopause has reared it's head: I'm the right age for that now and everything gets blamed on my hormones (or lack thereof). Itchy skin rash? Menopause. Doesn't matter that I've been in contact with strange plants in the woods, the first response is always "menopause". Foot pain? Menopause. No matter that I ran in shoes that don't support my arches properly, it's my hormones that are to blame. Hair going all dry and strange and falling out in the shower? Menopause, despite my having bleached it and colored it and teased it.

I now qualify for official cougarhood. I am a full fledged member of the MILF club (although I didn't think you had to be 40 to join that organization; I thought that you simply had to be a mom), much to my children's chagrin. They get really very upset when we're out and strange men check me out. I don't see it most of the time, but they do. It actually makes me feel pretty good about myself; if I'm still looking good enough to turn a head or two my age can't show that much. Of course, the guys that check me out are all 50 something knuckle-dragging southern Illinois mouth-breathers with beer guts, hair shoulders and infarcted synapses, but hey...I'm still getting looked at (it actually makes my skin crawl to catch guys like that looking at me). Then again, they could just be looking at me the way people look at freaks in a circus sideshow. I have that effect on people sometimes.

I've been asked when I'm going to grow up and start dressing my age. The answer is that I am not. I refuse to. I think it important to state that I'm not dressing the way I do as an act of rebellion, I do it because I want to. I'm just not going to fall into the deep pit of conformity; I haven't done it up until now and I'm not about to start. I won't conform because it's not in my nature.

I'm also asked when I'm going to start behaving in a manner appropriate for a woman my age. the answer to that is, again, I'm not. It's just not in my nature to. I am who I am, I like what I like and I do what I do, regardless of my age. Physically I may not be able to do the things I could when I was in my 20's (stay up all night drinking like it's no big deal. I can't do that without paying the price for a couple of days now), but that's more matter than it is mind.

I feel lucky to be this age. Yeah, I have a few dings here and there and have had to be repaired a few times, but I'm still here and I have all kinds of experience because of it (or in spite of it, however you want to look at it). I like who I am, who I'm becoming. I'm almost 40, and I'm cool with that.

In closing, I'd like to share a poem that accurately describes my view on aging:

'Growing Old The Willis Way'

The day my great-grandmother Willis turned sixty-five
she decided that she would spend the rest of her life
wearing fishnet stockings and red lipstick.

Her place of dwelling became Big Larry's sports pub
not because she liked to drink
but because she was simply aware of the fact
that the world's most interesting flocked to Big Larry's
like seagulls flock to the dump.
What she didn't know
is that is was she who compelled them.
That in the hearts located directly about Boston's
biggest beerbellies
she took precedence over all things
bottled or draft.

It was she who taught the women of my family
how to grow old
the Willis way.

Now
her daughter, my grandmother
is sixty-five
and enrolling in ballroom roller skating classes.

She has become the old lady
she beats the Urkel-pants'd old men in the pool hall,
while discussing George W Bush
and how his presidency
will bring about the next apocalypse.

She is the old lady who paints pictures of Jesus on the cross
with money seeping out of his open wounds.
All the while fulfilling her lifelong dream
of becoming a fashion photographer.

She is the old lady who turned her one-bedroom apartment
into a homeless shelter.

And as my grandmother becomes a great-grandmother
to multiple great-grandchildren
my mother will grow old, remember her Willis roots
and get sudden urges to dye her hair fuschia
and buy a vintage Cadillac.
And as she reaches sixty-five
her vocabulary will consist soley of the phrase
"you go, girl!".

Around this time my doctor will tell me
I'm pre-menopausal
because apparently it runs in my family.

And I'll buy myself a cake
and imagine myself on my sixty-fith birthday:
streaking across the White House lawn, yelling "Save the Whales!"
with organic red lipstick smeared across my shrivelled little face
as I pull a bottle of malt liquor from my fishnet stockings
and toast my great-grandmother Willis:
"you go, girl!"

-Jamie Markus.

2009-06-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

FTS and I had come home from walking the dogs this afternoon when we found this on the porch:
It's a polyphemus moth, apparently. All I know is it was huge, and that it's a male because it has these big feathery antennas on it's head.

We have swallows nesting on the front porch and I was worried about them eating him, so with much squealing and squirming we transplanted him onto my fuschia in the backyard:

His family is named 'Polyphemus' because of the eyes on his wings (the cyclops Ployphemus of mythology). He's beautiful and ugly all at the same time....don't you think?

He's enormous. FTS says she's never seen a moth that big. Neither have I!

Sparkling and letters

2009-06-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

This whole 'Twilight' thing is pissing me off. I started to read the books last year and ended up putting the first one down, disgusted, after 30 or so pages. It was so bland, so sweetened up and nicey-nice cute that I couldn't handle it.

Vampires aren't supposed to be nice or cute. Vampires are the undead; they sleep in coffins and drink people's blood under the cover of darkness. They transform themselves into bats and other nastiness and to kill them you have to pin them to the ground with a stake right through their hearts.

THEY DON'T FUCKING SPARKLE IN THE SUNSHINE!!!

Vampires don't sparkle. Period. And they sure as fuck don't look like an traditional Eton/Hogwarts boy like Cedric fucking Diggory. Modern ones look like Keifer Sutherland in 'The Lost Boys' or like Max Schreck in 'Nosferatu'.

THERE'S NO SPARKLING IN VAMPIRE-ISM!!!

*Ahem* Now that I've got that out of the way, I have news from the homefront.

Littlest 'Ling got his first Letter yesterday, for his participation and grades in Band. He is the first member of my family or his father's family to letter in ANYTHING, period. He's not in High School yet (8th grade this coming fall) so he doesn't have a Letterman jacket to put his letter on yet, but that's okay. As soon as he's eligible, we're getting him one and he's going to wear that thing with pride.

MY SON GOT A LETTER. That's *tres* cool.

Well done, LL! We are incredibly proud of you!

How could you not love a face like this?

2009-05-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Some might say it's a face only a mama can love, but I disagree. Then again, I AM her mama (hoomin mama) so I'm biased.

Both the photos are kinda blurry because she doesn't sit still for very long when she's awake. Someone left a comment on a previous article and said that when he bought his second Boxer home there was non-stop play for 5 days....and that's pretty much how it's been here. When she's awake, she's either eating or playing.

I gotta tell ya, she's got me wrapped around her paw already. She's just so CUTE....she hasn't quite grown into her legs yet so she's got the clumsy, klutzy gait that just makes me giggle every time I see it, and she's interested in EVERYTHING. Everything is an adventure for her, and I love to watch her explore.

She's been pretty good about not tiddling on the rug (peed and pooped either outside, on her training pads or the tiled kitchen floor), is getting the hang of sitting on command (as long as there's a snack involved, she's all over it), is learning quickly what "NO" means and that shoes are not for chewing on, but you wanna know the absolute best part?
She's been sleeping in the crate with Grace, and she hasn't howled at night. At all. Not once. How awesome is that? It's FREAKIN' awesome, that's how awesome it is!!

SHE'S awesome. She really is.

GUILTY

2009-05-29T04:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2009/05/29/news/top/doc4a1ee36613f50546773144.txt?show_comments=true#commentdiv

It took a jury of 10 men and 2 women 2 hours to find Frank Ashley guilty of ALL of the charges leveled against him.

His daughter testified against him. Her half-sister testified against him and said she was abused by him too. His former girlfriend testified that she found his daughter in his bed three times and each time Frank tried to persuade her that she was sleepwalking or scared.

Sentencing will take place at a later date, but he's looking at 135 years....the rest of his life.

I'm glad it's over, but I will never forget how I exposed my children to him. He has shown them that monsters don't always appear monstrous and that you cannot trust anyone, not even a police officer.

Thanks, Frank - but don't let your narcissism run away with you and get all warm and fuzzy, thinking that I like you all of a sudden because I said that. I detest you and everything about you. It pisses me off that you breathe the same air as me, and it pisses me off even more that you called my home BEFORE your trial, telling my husband "I love you, bro" and saying how you miss us, but when it became obvious that we were not getting involved and had no useful information for your defence, you failed to call again. That's you all over, Francis. A manipulator who uses people for what he wants and when he has no use for them, he moves on.

By the way, now that you're convicted, I can hang the title of 'Pedophile' on you...because that's what you are. You garnered sexual gratification from your DAUGHTERS, Frank. That, pal, qualifies you to be called 'pedophile' and 'child molester' and even 'sick fuck'. Get used to hearing those words, because where you're going you're gonna hear them a lot.....hopefully as some big corn fed fucker with an anger problem and a hair trigger is shoving his cock down your throat or up your ass to show you EXACTLY how it feels to be someone else's sexual plaything.

I hate you for what you did, and I hate you for how you make me feel about you.

I'm glad it's over.

Ruby Tuesday

2009-05-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, Noodle Dawg had to go live with another family. She had this digging fetish which the gub'mint wasn't going to like, and as she got older she got more and more territorial. She snapped at me one day, and I can't have that.....because if she's going to snap at me, the hand that feeds and loves her, she'll snap at other people. Like my kids. Or other people's kids. I couldn't live with myself if that happened. So, she went off to live with other people who have no children and lots of room to run.

I was sad. Noods was my pal, my compadre...she licked my tears when I cried and kept me company when I was recuperating from surgery. Grace did too, but she's Urbaner's dawg, not mine.

My 40th birthday is coming up soon, and Urbaner asked me what I wanted. I said a dawg, preferably a Boxer. We've had such a good experience with Grace and really like the breed, so I said I wanted a puppy for my b'day.

I searched and searched the classified ads for a breeder and couldn't find many that I thought were a) reasonably priced and b) NOT a puppy mill. I'm sorry, but I'm not paying $500 plus for a pet and I don't want a puppy from a bitch who's whelped 3 times in 2 years and who doesn't ever get to run on grass and just be a dawg for a while.

I had all but given up hope....until this morning. I saw an ad in the local paper for pups priced very reasonably, but being as it was 6am I thought it best to wait to call. As I was washing my hair this morning I mentioned to Urbaner that "wouldn't it be cool if I call this number and it's the same breeder we got Grace from?"

I called at 8am, apologized for the hour, and asked where they were located. When she said "Marissa, IL" I knew that it was indeed the same breeder. We arranged to meet in a couple of hours, and off I went to look at her pups.

Within 3 seconds of walking in the door Cupid's arrow had struck and I knew I would be leaving with a dawg. The one I chose is a brindle female out of the same dam as Grace (different sire). She is 12 weeks old and she is not only cute as all get out, she's got a great temperament too. This was the breeder's last litter of pups, so we were lucky to get this dawg. I paid the money, and loaded up the pup in the car. 2 miles down the street she hurled into the center console cup holder, but that's ok. I cleaned it up - no harm done. I know now that she doesn't do well in cars.

I thought that Daisy Mae was a good name for a Boxer until I saw her. She just doesn't look like a Daisy, you know? On the way out there, I was listening to the Rolling Stones 'Ruby Tuesday', and to me, she just looked like a Ruby. Add to that the fact that she's my 40th birthday gift, and that the 40th wedding anniversary is traditionally the Ruby anniversary....well, I think you can see my train of thought there. So, Ruby is her name. Ruby Tuesday will be part of her AKC kennel name, but I still have to figure the rest of it out.

I haven't been able to get a decent photo of her yet, but I'll work on that this evening and will post one tomorrow for sure. She's adorable, y'all. Really. And, she's a good girl too. She's getting along great with her sister (literally) and she sure does love her food. It's a good thing I believe in putting puppies on a schedule and not leaving food down all day every day, or I think she'd devour an entire bag of chow in pretty short order.

So welcome, Ruby Tuesday NinjaMedic. Please try not to howl tonight...not too much, anyway.

How my garden grows!

2009-05-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

I did some planting a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say that I am incredibly pleased with the results.

First, we have the plant I am most proud of: my tomato!

It's a patio container hybrid (I have named it Eloise. Yes, I name my plants. No, I don't know why), and it produces small cherry fruit. As you can sort of see, there's a little green tomato on the bush there, and hiding behind it is another, smaller one. There are flowers all over the top of the plant, so I'm expecting a nice crop of love apples this year.

Next, we have FTS's eggplant that she has named 'Bernado':
She said that choosing it was akin to adopting a child: you have to make sure you can provide the plant with the conditions it needs in thrive. This one needs a fair amount of sunlight, and our patio is the perfect place for that. It gets sun in the morning and late afternoon/evening, but is shaded when the sun is at it's harshest in the middle of the day. I don't know why FTS is growing an eggplant because she doesn't really care for them, but I'll eat them if she doesn't.

Here we have Enid the sweet pepper plant:
Yes, that's a soda bottle in her pot with her. It's my DIY drip irrigation system. You take an empty plastic bottle with a screw top on it (that's important) and poke a few holes in the bottom with a pin (I used a safety pin I heated with a lighter). Fill the bottle with water - yes, the water will run out the holes your poked in the bottom pretty swiftly at first, but when you screw the lid on it'll slow down to a drip. Dig a shallow hole in the soil next to your plant, and put the bottle hole side down in the dirt. Replace the dirt and voila! You've got yourself a drip irrigation system. I fill mine in the morning and sometimes in the evening too, depending on how hot it's been during the day.

Here we have Bizzy Lizzy the Impatiens:

They were just little green plants with no flowers or buds when I planted them in this hanging basket. As you can see, they're blooming now! I call them Bizzy Lizzy because that's what my dad always called them when I was a kid. They were one of his favorite flowers in plant in the yard.

Last but by no means least, we have my fuschia (I have another but it's not blooming yet. I'll post a photo of it when it's got a few flowers):

Flossie is a red and pink fuschia who is hanging from a shepherds crook in the back yard. The gub'mint doesn't like us to dig up the yard, so all of my plants are in containers - besides, I think that fuschias look better in hanging baskets. It gives them a chance to really show off their flowers. As you can see, Flossie has her own drip irrigation system too...and it's working well for her!

I have a family of swallows who have set up camp by the front door and are busily building a nest and dive bombing anyone who dares to use that entrance, so we're all coming in through the garage or the back door. Yeah, it's inconvienient for now, but seeing the birds build and eventually have babies right outside our living room? It's SO going to be worth it!