A saint, I tell ya!

I have figured out what I did to get those flowers. Well, maybe not but I should certainly get points for patience!

My mother is turning 80 this year. She’s a tiny little thing who has emphysema and falls down a lot. I have talked about her before and our struggles as a family with where she should live and what would be the best situation for her.

She got divorced a few years ago and after a couple of false starts – tried having her live with me, then my sister, now she has settled in with my brother quite well. It seems to be working better for her as she needs to know there is a man in the house. If the water heater goes out, he will know what to do. If she needs something fixed, he will know how to do it. Trouble with her car – my brother being a man – will know how to take care of it. At least that’s what she believes and it is very comforting to her to live with a man, even if it is her son.

He however, is not a computer guy. So she calls me. Today she wanted to set up her profile on Etsy so she can sell some of her artwork. There is more to it then just setting up the profile, the shop announcement and shipping profile. In order to list items you have to have pictures and those pictures cannot be above a certain size. You also really want to have more than 1 picture of any item you are selling.

Two hours on the phone later – Mom had her Etsy profile set up and had resized maybe – oh – 4 pictures using Paint. TWO HOURS. FOUR pictures. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the phone? Yeah. Not to mention the fact that I had to repeat each instruction over each and every time she needed to do something, it seemed as soon as I told her – she would do it - and then forget it.

I really hope my daughter is able to be that patient with me and keep the irritation out of her voice for that long on the phone with me someday, because that’s MY future for sure. Or maybe I’m just going straight to hell right now for even BEING irritated with my elderly mother even though I didn’t let it show.

Right now I think I should sprout wings!

That's the beauty of it.

Just what did I do to deserve a bouquet of white roses?

Absolutely nothing.

...and one of the best things about it?


It's not unusual around here. :)

*Added: Have I said this before? If so, I apologize for showing off. Actually, I'm just happy.

I didn't aim or anything!

There are many indignities associated with going to the doctor, especially the gynecologist. I hadn’t been for a while – okay 2 years – and I needed to make an appearance. At this point in my life after having kidney stones, children, and a broken ankle that required a plate, screws and pins, I am an old hand at visiting my various physician’s offices.

The paper clothes they give you to put on in the examining room are always a great source of comfort for me. I might be lying about that.

Asking the nurse for a larger size paper skirt ( ? ) only got me a giggle from her and wrapping it around me and climbing up on the table – made it rip. Yay me!

The doctor had to review the normal things with me, allergies – no, first date of my last cycle – I gave her the date. On any meds right now? Yeah, and as I told her the first one, the second one made a really quick exit from my brain. Uh … it’s …uh … it’s a little blue one … I said hopefully. She was patient with me and wasn’t too condescending when she reminded me that there are a lot of little blue pills out there.

After getting the meds straightened out it was time to get down to it and my doc said the dreaded “put your feet in these and scooch down to the end of the table." It was at that point I realized that during my relaxing 20 minute wait in the paper skirt sitting on the table reading the book I had brought with me – I had been sweating. I had apparently made a perfect heat seal between me, the paper, and the vinyl cushioned top of the table. I wasn’t “scooching” anywhere without leaving a piece of me on the table or taking some extra paper down to the edge with me.

Sigh-h-h.

I’m starting to think that the older you get the worse the exam gets. It seems like they figure ANYthing will fit in there now – and they try to find random things from around the room to prove it. But the best part? She asked me to cough. Yeah, just like they do to guys but I got to cough with something akin to the kitchen sink in there. When I coughed the first time she looked at me like I was kidding and said “no, REALLY cough. Give me a good one.” And then - “again..”

So, yup – I peed on the doctor. I mean - sheesh – she ASKED for it, don’t ya think??!!!

Very disturbing

I’ve been watching what is happening in Texas with the children being removed from the FLDS compound there. Over 400 children. There are so many aspects of this that are disturbing and I am torn.

There is the aspect of freedom of religion and if these people want to live in a communal way and stay separated from the rest of society, they have the right to do that. But if their religion includes forcing young girls to marry older men and to have babies by them? Well, that kind of cancels out the freedom of religion part.

Still, knowing that all the children have been removed and are going to be placed with families they don’t know and who surely do not live as these children are used to living is fairly horrifying to me.

All the women in their long pastel dresses saying “we just want our children back” complete the surreal aspect of the whole story. These women are like robots or stepford wives or something. They sniffle a bit but I have seen no tears. The tape of one of them showing the press around their living quarters is scary to say the least. How is it that what they say is their religion seems to have stolen their souls?

Of course these women want their children back. They are mothers. They have most likely grown up in that atmosphere themselves and it is all they know. The fact that they are not reacting like you or I would if someone took our children – doesn’t mean they don’t feel. But boy oh boy it sure appears that way.

The sparseness of their existence, the absolute devotion to their beliefs is their right whether any of us think it’s bizarre or not. But they can’t raise children to believe it’s okay to force girls barely into puberty to marry men to become one of his several wives, and to be fruitful and multiply. That’s just wrong.

Still – I can’t help thinking about the trauma the children are going through. They are going to be placed in homes where there will be TV which they are not accustomed to, and people who do not dress like them, talk like them, and don’t worship as they do. They are not only used to having a mother, they are used to having several mothers. What kind of psychological damage is this going to cause them?

I know that what is being done is in the best interests of these children but oh my gosh – how much help can they be given before it starts to hurt?

I don’t have any answers. I have no idea what would be a better way to handle the situation. For the most part I am disturbed that the situation exists at all. But it does and I don’t think there is a way to deal with it without hurting someone.

I just wish it weren’t the children.

Dreams really DO come true ...

I haven't been blogging, I know. I got nuthin' right now. But -

I'm loving this version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Enjoy!

*

Something about this just makes me happy. :)

*

Bright ideas abound!

I was going to say that we all have times when we do things that are completely stupid but at the time we are doing them, they seem perfectly logical.

But maybe it’s just me.

At work one day a co-worker and I were trying to figure something out – I have no memory at this point of what it was. But since our jobs had to do with trouble-shooting in the I.T. sense, I am sure we were trying to duplicate a problem a client was experiencing.

I’m not dodging when I say I can’t remember which one of us came up with the really great idea because it was a long time ago and we have laughed about it since because whichever one of us thought of it – we both thought it would help us prove – whatever the heck we were trying to prove. We both thought it was a great idea!

We (one of us) said “let’s fax it to ourselves!” We (one of us) grabbed a document and we both raced over the fax machine expecting to be able to finally figure out whatever the problem was. We (one of us) placed the document into the tray to feed into the fax machine. We were practically spraining our arms patting ourselves on the back for being so clever in figuring out a way to solve our problem.

I don’t think we got to the part where we actually punched in the number of the fax machine – we were trying to fax FROM – before we realized what we were trying to do.

Generally faxing to the machine you are faxing from – uh – will not work. But for a couple of minutes it seemed perfectly logical and the answer to the problem we had been working on. I mean, for a minute there we thought we were the best trouble-shooters out there and that we were certainly smarter than the average bear. We always prided ourselves on thinking outside the box!

Er, nope. I think we laughed until we cried.

Last night here at home, I was finally able to achieve access to my company’s network through my work laptop, something I had signed away my first born for and promised undying loyalty to the corporation for the better part of the rest of my life – to receive permission to do.

I was excited – I was able to pull up and access the different systems I use at the office, check my email, all of the things crazy workaholic people do at home. I sent my BF an email and said “guess what I finally got?!” Meaning - this way cool VPN access. He answered me, and I started typing back.

After I had typed a fairly lengthy reply I was like “oops, I’m forgetting which laptop I’m on!” I decided that what I was typing wasn’t something I really wanted to send from my work email, but I also didn’t want to lose all I had typed.

Are you ahead of me here? You know what I did, don’t you?

I carefully “cut” before I deleted the email. I moved over to my home laptop, pulled up a new email, addressed it, put something in the subject line, and clicked on the body. Then – I clicked on paste. I must have done it something like 5 times. Paste. Gr-r-r… try again. Paste. Click. Click!!! What the …?

Yeah. Cutting from one computer and trying to paste into a different one – heh – doesn’t work.

But – it seemed so logical at the time!

Does anyone want to tell me that I’m not the only one who does things like that?

*Blink Blink*

It IS just me, isn’t it?

I want my May flowers, NOW!

It started raining last night. There was rain, thunder and lightning. Or, lightning and thunder if you want to go by the order you see and hear it. It rained all night. It rained all morning and all day. It is still raining. And look what we have to look forward to for the weekend! I am SO excited! NOT.




Snow. Can you believe it? I mean, I'm sure it won't be heavy, accumulating gobs of snow. But snow! I'm sorry, I know I'm being whiny and redundant. But it's the 2nd week in April, can't we be done with the snow already?


And to the guy filling up his car at the gas station on the corner yesterday evening just before it started to rain, yeah, that was me putting air in my tire. Yes, I had to go back into the car when I realized the cell phone in my hand was not my tire gauge and yet again when I re-discovered that I can't read my tire gauge without my glasses. I'm going to assume you were thinking what a wildly attractive woman I am - I mean - what other reason would you have for watching me so intently with THAT SMIRK ON YOUR FACE????



Yeah. Wildly attractive. I'm going with that.

Leave it to me!

You hear about people being guilty of “drunk dialing”. Making phone calls that are inadvisable when they are sober but in most cases – disastrous if they are drunk. I suppose in my younger days I might have done that once or twice. But I’m not a big drinker at this point in my life.

I had a frozen strawberry marguerite at dinner last night. It was fairly strong but then, I’m a lightweight when it comes to booze, so it might have contained enough to get a mouse inebriated for all I know. I could TASTE the alcohol. To me – that’s strong.

After getting home I felt sleepy so I lay down on the couch for maybe an hour and dozed. When I got up I had a headache. Okay, a baby hangover. Seriously. How sad is that?

There was an incident where I was caught “drunk emailing”. I had gotten some really bad news and was quite distraught, drank wine, didn’t eat, and then sat down to email somebody. Oh boy. The talk about that email! “…she didn’t even use spell check!” Yeah, that was me.

Now I have come up with a new one – shopping under the influence! Or something. A couple of months ago my doctor gave me some sleeping medication to see if I wasn’t getting a sound sleep at night. I took it every night for a month but then I starting getting headaches and felt sort of overall under the weather, so I stopped taking them every night. But I did keep them and have taken one here or there more on an “as needed” basis.

Last night having taken that nap I thought oh no, I’m going to be up till 3:00 or 4:00 am. I’ll take one of mother’s little helpers to get to sleep at a more reasonable time.

The last thing I remember is being on my computer while watching Jon and Kate plus 8. I know I saw the same episode more than once and they were answering viewer emails.

This morning (or should I say afternoon) when I got out of bed, fed the cats and made my tea, I sat down in front of my laptop to check my email. I had an automated order confirmation from Amazon. I’m not unfamiliar with seeing those, but this time I had no idea what it could be from!

Imagine my surprise –

"Multiple Blessings: Surviving to Thriving With Twins and Sextuplets"
Kate Gosselin; Hardcover; $13.59

And even better – apparently I pre-ordered – shipping date isn’t until December 2008!

And I have no memory of ordering it, what-so-ever. Hmm-m-m.

Amazing how long I can drag this out ...

~*~

~*~

Hunka hunka burnin' love...

~*~

So we had cake. Cake with candles and icing and wax drips on it. And I was sung to, while the front and back doors were wide open to coral the smoke out of the house when the candles were blown out. I blew every last one of them out but does it count when you don't really have the amount of candles which accurately reflects your years in total? Because if you do - and you blow them all out you will set off the smoke alarm even with the doors open! I ask the heavens to grant my wish - even though we fudged on the number of candles. Please?

Was really hoping nothing like this happened!

But that wasn't what I wished for. I'd let the cake burn to the ground if I could have my wish. You can't tell wishes y'know, or they won't come true. :)

It's all I've ever wanted!

So yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from my daughter who informed me she was on her way home from school “to clean the house!!”

???

She was coming home to clean the house as a birthday gift to me, being the starving college student and all that. I have been asking for this gift since I don’t know – forever maybe??? Mother’s Day, my birthday, Christmas – kids – don’t spend money on me – just clean the house. I’ll love it!

And now it’s finally happening. Sigh-h-h.

Life is good.

Time marches on

I didn’t read a single blog today. I feel like I should look around furtively and whisper that. Sh-h-h-h…


I’m really not sure what I was doing but obviously it was something else. Maybe because I have a few days off work coming, I know I can sit down and catch up. Because by now? I am sure my reader is up into the hundreds.


Monday is my birthday. I am not mentioning that to get birthday wishes, although gifts are always welcome. But – I usually take my birthday off work every year and this year I decided to make an extra long weekend out of it. I am taking Friday, Monday and Tuesday off. A nice 5 day weekend. Lovely!


The birthday? I am going to be thirty nineteen. Or as I am more apt to say – forty-freaking-nine years old!!!!! What happened? When did that happen, and how? I don’t FEEL like forty-freaking-nine years old.


I’ve heard that fifty is the new forty, so if that follows – does that mean I am really still in my thirties? Maybe I should stick with that.


I feel better. How about you?

Life of Riley

Must be tough being Riley ....

The only male out of 4 cats.


And he's fixed.


(April Fool's Day every day of the year.)