Wednesday on my iPod

1. Bonnie Raitt, "I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again"
2. Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"
3. Death Cab For Cutie, "Someday You Will Be Loved"
4. Hoobastank, "Disappear"
5. Rich Mullins, "Be With You"
6. The Police, "Spirits In The Material World"
7. Rocco DeLuca, "Swing Low"
8. U2, "Miracle Drug"
9. Phil Collins, "Against All Odds"
10. Claude Debussy, "Arabesque #1"

Stuff I think is interesting

Here are a few things I've run across today on the web that you might find interesting.

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Send-A-Brick Project

Here's a project meant to send a message to your congressman. I like the concept behind this one. It's long past time to put a real end to the scourge of illegal immigration. I'm a big proponent of LEGAL immigration, mind you. I'm just sick of the lackadaisical attitude that authorities have had toward those who are breaking our laws and endangering our country.

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Divorce And Remarriage in the Bible

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Read it and tell me what YOU think.

I think that too many Christians have equated divorce with the unpardonable sin. Call me an infidel if you like. I'm just not convinced anymore that it's the worst thing in the world. Why should someone be doomed forever to a life with someone they mistakenly aligned themselves with? Is there no grace or redemption in such situations?

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Elderly woman refuses to pay property taxes until city gets the drug dealers and prostitutes off her front lawn.

Go, Jo, Go!!!

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Affirmative Action, Indian-Style

When I was in the eighth grade, we lived in a large South Texas city. I took an exam to determine possible placement in a gifted-talented high school and I scored very high. Unfortunately, it wasn't high enough, because they had a quota of Hispanics and Blacks to fill. The test scores required for those individuals was significantly lower than the test scores allowing Caucasian admission. As it ended up, we moved away before I could begin high school there, but I remember being outraged about that situation. It was unfair to me, and it was also insulting to the ethnic minorities because it assumed they couldn't meet higher standards.

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Just Say No!!

The Manolo, super-fantastic shoe-blogger, he agrees with me:


Say No To The Crocs!

Today's fortune cookie

Hmmm...

Relax... relax...

I went to my family doctor today, and while giving me a full once-over she noticed how tense I was. She has already scheduled me for a stress echocardiogram this Friday morning, but she also gave me some stretching and relaxation exercises and a scrip for muscle relaxers to use at night before I go to bed, to try to get me loosened up.

In the meantime, too, I've begun painting again. And I've dropped out of pretty much every single outside activity other than the blues band.

I'm actually a fairly solitary person by nature, and since dropping straight out of my usual life several weeks ago, I think I've come to the conclusion that (as weird as this may seem) if I have to be around too many people, it stresses me out. I need much more alone-time than I have been allowing myself. Some people are energized by crowds. I'm sapped by them. Too many things to pay attention to; too much external stimulation. I take a lot of my behavior cues from carefully observing my surroundings (much like a chameleon), so if there are too many surroundings, I have to work harder to lock onto one single dominant character and make sure I'm in line with them.

I asked Rick the other day, "If you could change one thing about me, what would that be?" His answer was, "Your ADD."

I then asked him what one thing he would change about himself. "My lack of social understanding," he answered frankly.

Whatever lack of perception he may suffer from, I think he has a very, very good point about both of them. Wish we could wave a wand and make them go away.

Poetry moment

Except the heaven had come so near,
So seemed to choose my door,
The distance would not haunt me so;
I had not hoped before.

But just to hear the grace depart
I never thought to see,
Afflicts me with a double loss;
'Tis lost, and lost to me.

--Emily Dickinson

Does anyone see the resemblance here?

I'm just askin', is all.

Call me callous...

...but this seems like a non-problem to me. Brain-fried junkies get hold of some bad heroin and assume room temperature. Isn't this a self-correcting issue?

Today's fortune cookie

A longtime reader of this blog was asking me earlier this evening where I was getting my fortune-cookie blog posts. No, I don't keep a giant stash of fortune cookies, nor am I making them up. Whenever we eat Chinese food (which is often, because we all love it), I just take everyone's fortunes after they're done opening them and I bring them home to use on the blog. I have always thought they were a fun source of humor, and RedFish suggested I blog them as a regular feature, so that's what I'm doing. Nothing serious about them, it's just a quirky bit of fun that I don't see anyone else in the blogosphere doing.

We ate at P. F. Chang's China Bistro today for supper, and I would've then brought home five new fortune-cookie papers for the week, but two of them ended up being the same, so I only have four so far. Guess I'll have to pick up some Chinese takeout for lunch tomorrow or Wednesday. I heart Chinese food, so that won't be too much of a sacrifice.

I have two fortune-cookie papers that I actually affixed to my laptop because I liked what they said. The first one reads:

People are attracted to your inventive and intuitive mind.

And the second reads:

Excitement and intrigue follow you closely wherever you go.

Tee hee! That one always makes me think of the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Yes, excitement does tend to follow me around, but it may just be because I'm something of a loose cannon...

A few quick pix for ya

Here's Beth and Brian at the rehearsal dinner. It was at Joe T. Garcia's, a really neat restaurant in Fort Worth.



This is me with my cousin Heather. She and her husband live near Nashville and have four kids. She and I grew up as best friends and are still as close as ever... I don't suppose there's any other person besides my own parents with whom I share as many memories from as far back.




Here's the happy family. This was taken at the church a couple of hours prior to the wedding.

Back in Iowa

We drove in around 7:30AM, fixed breakfast for the kids, and crashed-out. The trip was uneventful -- PTL! I like "uneventful"... sometimes it's boring, but sometimes you just need for things to be that way, yanno?

Soooooo much to blog about... watch this space for further posts.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Sleeping-in on a Sunday morning is certainly luxurious! I haven't done it very many times in my life.

We went to worship service this afternoon instead, at Mission Arlington. It's an inner-city ministry that holds church services in apartment complexes all over the area on Sunday mornings, and then on Sunday afternoons has a gathering for all the volunteers. My sister & her husband have been volunteering there for several years now, and I've never had the opportunity to check it out.

I'll be honest... I don't even want to have to go back to Des Moines. It's the first time I've really felt that way since we moved away more than ten years ago. As soon as I get back, I'm going to finish sending out resume's to the school districts around here. The only thing holding us back from moving down here now is whether I can get a job here... and the only job I do not want is the job I'm currently doing -- the behavior-disorder classroom. It's just far too stressful for me. I can handle lot of things, but that one tests my limits pretty hard. And it's not really the kids that are the problem! It's the attitude that administrators and other teachers have towards my students.

We're getting ready to leave and head back north. We're going to do the all-night thing again, since it seems to work so well for us. Regular blogging to resume tomorrow sometime.

Today's fortune cookie

This one's dedicated to my very bestest friend in the whole wide world. She has seen me through some of the hardest things in my life, and she has talked me out of doing a lot of unnecessary things. She gives the best fashion advice I've ever received and can cut through a lot of crap to get to the heart of an issue (because she understands that I'm easily distracted and that I don't always see things objectively). She makes amazing food. She loves my children as if they were her own. She's the only person I know personally who has been in top-secret government meetings and who's been questioned by a special prosecutor before a federal grand jury.

It's nice to have someone who automatically takes my side... who truly understands... who always has a shovel ready in case I need to bury the evidence.

Love ya, Cindy.

Caption problems

(h/t to FARK for this one)

Sometimes, just missing one little letter from a caption makes for something really, really bizarre.

We made it!

We left Des Moines at about 8PM yesterday and I drove all the way through the Iowa, Missouri and Kansas parts of our I-35 trek. I could've gone ahead and finished it out, but I could feel that I *could* actually sleep if given the opportunity, so I switched out with Rick for the Oklahoma section and slept like a rock for that couple of hours. When we crossed over into Texas, it was finally daylight and I had had my nap out, so I took over again and brought us into Denton to my folks' house at 7AM.

I also watched five Season 7 episodes of SVU on my iPod. No, I put it on pause during the thunderstorms in Kansas... but during the miles and miles and miles of dark nothingness, you gotta have something. Last time, it was the Naked Scientist podcasts. This time, SVU. God bless the inventor of the iPod.

Maybe it's because I'm getting old or something, but I just don't have trouble doing the all-night drive and recovering from it... dunno if it's because I don't need as much sleep as I used to, or what.

Myparents' house is FULL of kids and dogs, since my cousins and I have all descended upon it with our families. I'm the oldest cousin and have been married the longest, so my kids are the big ones of the group. My cousin Matt and his wife are here and they've just had Baby #4 a couple of weeks ago, so we have a 12 year old and a newborn and every age in between. Thankfully the house is nice and big, and Mom had a nice, dark, quiet, cool bedroom awaiting Rick & me so we could let the kids be awake and we could snooze as soon as we arrived.

Tonight's the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner... pix to come.

I love that my parents have wi-fi here at this place. What's funny to me is that they have no idea how to use it or even where it originates from. The house was set up for wireless before they even moved in and they didn't know it. The first time I visited, I fired-up the laptop and was shocked to find that I had internet access. Yessss!!! I think that if/when we move, I won't even have to sign up for home internet. I'll just come over here and bum it off my mom, just like I used to do with the washer and dryer when I was in college. heh

Today's fortune cookie

Travelin'

I'm gonna pull another one of my famous all-night driving sessions tonight, I do believe. We're headed down to Fort Worth, Texas for my sister's wedding. I'll be bringing the laptop along, however, because I CAN. What's the point of having a portable computer if you don't ever take it anywhere?

And we're leaving this afternoon so that it will be dark by the time we get to Kansas. That way, none of us has to SEE Kansas.

Got all kinds of podcasts downloaded to keep me awake.

Can't have caffeine anymore, thanks to hypertension. grrrrrrr Goodbye, Pepsi. Hello Sprite. [sigh] Blech.

Short people

Okay, I've always figured I had some kind of advantage, being four feet, eleven and a half inches tall. (All right, at the hospital they measured me at four feet, eleven and a quarter, but because it was eight o'clock at night, I'm going to attribute that quarter-inch to the "some settling may occur" principle)

Yeah, I quite often must ask for assistance to reach things on grocery store shelves and department store racks. But I don't have to do a human origami trick to get into my car, and my feet never hang off the end of a bed unless it's a toddler bed.

All right, cut the crap. Having to hem up every article of clothing I buy... pantyhose up to my chin... climbing the kitchen cabinets... high school students patting me on the head... [growl]... maybe that's why I'm blunt and confrontational by nature; otherwise, who'd even see me?

But hey, this vertically-challenged guy gets a pass from the pokey thanks to his diminutive stature:

Judge: Man is too short for prison

SIDNEY, Neb. - A judge said a 5-foot-1 man convicted of sexually assaulting a child was too small to survive in prison, and gave him 10 years of probation instead.

His crimes deserved a long sentence, District Judge Kristine Cecava said, but she worried that Richard W. Thompson, 50, would be especially imperiled by prison dangers.

Okay, back up a minute. This guy ain't just in danger of becoming everyone's prison beeyotch because of his SIZE. He's a freekin' pedophile. I hear they don't like his kind in the clink.

No, this guy does not deserve the extended probation deal he got. Put him in solitary, for pete's sake, but people who mess with little kids need to be locked up FOREVER. Locked up, castrated, maybe even executed. We don't need them on the planet.

And never mind that he probably goes for little kids because they're the same size as him. Doesn't matter. There are plenty of short women out there, some of 'em I'm sure wouldn't even mind his annoying child-porn habits.

PUKE. What a disgusting little man, and I mean that in every way possible.

Rotten little stinkers!!

My house is definitely not kitten-proofed. I just found some suspicious-looking bite marks in my iPod cord.

These babies have totally perked up in these 24 hours of living with us; they've begun mixing it up with one another gleefully, dashing through the house looking for bits of crackly paper to bite, and even chasing Bijou. Kaji is already totally happy eating canned cat food, while Nai-Yana wants none of it and still prefers kitten formula. Nai-Yana, however, is already quite adept at using the litterbox. Kaji hasn't seemed interested in that.

I need to take them to see my vet and start getting their distemper vaccinations and such, but it'll have to wait until next week when I return from the wedding.

Yay! I'm leaving for Texas TOMORROW!!!!

Two big pieces of pink tissue paper + Two lilac/tortie-point Siamese kittens = UNBELIEVABLE CUTENESS

Funny

But don't let your kids read it; it's chock-full of family un-friendly language. Get past the language and experience the laughter, the stupidity, the grotesquely dorky...

Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics

(h/t to my friend RedFish)

Today's fortune cookie

Stuff that makes me laugh

Anyone used to watch Hee-Haw? Remember the Rumor Song? A bunch of girls all hangin' out, talkin' about what was goin' on...

Well, we're not ones to go around spreadin' rumors
Why really, we're just not the gossiping kind
Oh, you'll never hear one of us repeating gossip
So you'd better be sure and listen close the first time!

There was some truly great low comedy that came out of that show.

Stuff from my iPod today

1. Some outstanding jazz piano work on Bonnie Raitt's "I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again" ... when I grow up, I wanna play like that. And sing like that, for that matter. Wow.

2. "Infidel" from Five For Fighting's The Battle For Everything.

3. "Lianna (Waltz)" from Dean McGraw & John Williams' Raven. Contemplative and heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

4. "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" by Ben Folds Five from Whatever and Ever Amen

5. "I Drove All Night" by Cyndi Lauper from Twelve Deadly Cyns... And Then Some.

Tonight as I'm doing laundry, I have iTunes Radio set to the Drone Zone for some lovely ambient fare. Good ambient music takes me completely out of my world and gives me a respite from the structure and expectations of life. I don't listen to it often, but sometimes it's the only thing that will do.

Some people hear the "still, small voice" of God

...others, like myself, require the Nuclear Destructo-Ray.

Names... I think...

I hunted around for some Thai names, since their long-ago ancestors came from there. They're both girls, so I chose "Nai-Yana" and "Kaji", both girl nicknames in Thailand. Kaji is pictured here:



I've been feeding them kitten formula (Wal-Mart had a plethora of supplies for orphaned kittens, to my surprise). Kaji is the more aggressive sister and keeps guard over the kennel entrance. She hisses a warning to Bijou whenever she gets too close and is generally peskier already. She's rangy, unlike her sedentary and somewhat rounder sister. Nai-Yana is quieter, preferring to sleep quietly at the back of the kennel. She seems to be the "sweet" one.

I like the names, but I don't know if the kids will like them or not. Rick is home and obviously did not listen to his voicemail, because he was surprised -- and not in a good way. He gets rather irritable at times like these. [sigh] Let's hope I can convince him to let them stay... maybe I can remind him that I'll take the kids and the animals and move south and he won't have to deal with them.

Today's fortune cookie

Rick is going to kill me

I have become a catblogger. Times two.

We have some good friends who found a group of young kittens abandoned in their yard with no sign of their mother anywhere. Of course they brought them over to "show them off," so to speak, and with the ulterior motive of farming them out to families who could help care for them. Think I have the ability to resist? Yeah, right.

Most of the kittens were Siamese-mix in appearance, and two were smoky-black. I had actually been wanting some Siamese-mix kittens, so I took two of them. One is a straight lilac-point, and the other has some cool extra markings on her face that give her a little more rakish look. They're both females and --holy moly-- they're talkative. Typical Siamese, for sure!

No names picked out yet.

Rick is really going to be pleased, I know. [ducking]

On the iPod today

Today I particularly enjoyed listening to Bowling For Soup's "Almost" on their A Hangover You Don't Deserve album, and Keb' Mo's "Dangerous Mood," and Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." I have a friend who's compiling a list of The Who's best works for me so that I can listen to the most definitive of their stuff. For some reason I never really was able to listen to much Who, so my knowledge of them is woefully inadequate.

Today's Fortune Cookie

This weekend

Early Friday morning we'll all be piling into the mini-van and heading south for my sister's wedding. I'm still hunting for something to wear; my fashionista friend has been scoping out possibilities and I'm going to have land on something super-soon.

I'll also go ahead and spill the beans; we're also going to be talking to a couple of people/places about some job prospects and home prospects.



Yep, you read that right. In all likelihood, we're moving back to Texas. (Cue up Bowling For Soup's wonderful song "Come Back To Texas")

Soon.

Chicken

I am officially swearing off chicken.

It's tasteless, and for me, it almost invariably comes back up.

Chicken just don't agree with me.

The Finals

As promised, here are photos of the 2006 Iowa Blues Challenge Finals:


Mikey with his beautiful sister


Huddle up






Mr. Dewey Cantrell, smoothest slider EVAH




The inimitable Don Brown, master of sax AND flute


Rod the Fantabulous Bass-Man, and me in my black leather pants


Fast Eddie, layin' out the smoovest beats in the house

Regardless of second place, let me tell you -- these guys are all a class act, and I love jammin' with 'em.

Haircut day

Haircuts for Isaac & Alice today. This next weekend is my sister's wedding (in Fort Worth, Texas) and we all want to look extra-nice and all cleaned up and stuff, y'know. I still need to go hunt down a dress to wear; I never could find something I really wanted to wear that was spiffy enough for a wedding and yet not so spiffy that I couldn't wear it somewhere else if need be.

I wish we were going to be able to be down there longer on this trip, but that'll come pretty soon. There's only a couple more weeks of school.

Why?

Why are there always throngs of people surrounding bombed-out cars in Gaza? Charles over at LGF always calls it a "Palestinian Car Swarm." Here's an example of a recent one.

Why do you only see weird stuff like this in Palestine? Why don't these people get lives, quit dressing up their children in bomb-belts, and enter the 21st century?

Even curiouser: why do western journalists continue to give these people credence?

Go ye, and vote for me!

The 100-Word Weekly Challenge has been posted. Click on the link, and then click on the little teeny phonograph icon on the left to listen to each of this weeks eight 100-word stories. Then scroll down and vote for ME. :) Oh, I'm kidding. Vote for the one you like best. I didn't even vote for myself; I voted for Andrew Ian Dodge's.

Apples and trees, part 2

Isaac has started his own blog.

Second place...

We played really well, but all in all, we were bested by the Quad Cities group, Juke Joint Sinners. I'm disappointed, of course, but when I look at how much I gained, I can't be too upset. It has been FUN... seriously fun, and seriously educational.

I'll blog again after I've had some sleep, and I'll share some pix of last night's 2006 Iowa Blues Challenge Finals.

This week's 100-word story

Here's my submission to the 100-Word Weekly Challenge competition this week. The theme? Horse racing (in honor of the running of the Preakness Stakes this weekend).

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"The End of Innocence"

I wandered around the facility in dazed silence. This isn't at all what I wanted it to be like, I thought.

I had been one of those horse-crazy girls all my life. I'd read every Walter Farley "Black Stallion" novel and I knew the racing world inside and out.

While I was in college, a racetrack was built in a nearby metropolis. At my first opportunity, I scurried over to enjoy my first real-live horse race. It wasn't Churchill Downs, but was the best I could do.

Imagine my surprise to be surrounded, not by magnificent Thoroughbreds, but wagering drunks.

***************

Coup de grace: An allegory

I'm going to be a little cryptic here; don't mind me. Sometimes there are things I'm just itching -- aching -- to blog about and I just can't, usually because of the privacy issues of the person(s) involved. Oftentimes when I do blog about it, I change the names to protect the guilty ... sometimes it's to protect the feelings of the person involved... anyway, you surely get my drift. This time I decided to make it into a little allegorical story:

Once upon a time there was a faraway land called West Runistan. In that fair country, the king held weekly banquets, and anyone in the kingdom could come and eat. The great hall was lavishly decorated each week by the most gifted artisans in the land, and those in attendance could enjoy a wonderful program put on in the king's honor by an enormous orchestra and a talented dance troupe.

One day, two dancers were chatting with one another. "I have something I need to talk about," said Bhodhran to his friend Khalimbo. He then proceeded to confess to Khalimbo that he often wished he could play in the orchestra instead of dancing, because he has discovered that he really loves playing the violin. In fact, he said, he never practices dancing at home anymore, choosing instead to practice playing the violin. Bhodhran, like most others, had signed onto the dance troupe as a very young man, before he had really come to know his true calling. He had spent many years suffering in silence; even though he was an incredibly gifted dancer, he yearned to perform publicly on the violin.

Few people in Runistan ever successfully made that sort of transition, however. It was considered a betrayal, and most people who chose to do it were no longer seen as "complete" people. Even though they may perform their second skill admirably, it never quite measured up to having spent their entire life performing only their first skill. In some areas of the country, people who left their first skill were not even allowed to take up a second skill at all. If they chose to leave their first skill, their lives were spent on the fringes of society, undeserving of the joy of performing the skill they truly loved.

Khalimbo often found that he was the recipient of the confessions of his friends. He kept them to himself, however, and never told their troubles to anyone else. He himself loved dancing and never wanted to do anything else, but he had compassion and understanding for his friends.

Khalimbo and another dancer, Oudistor, were also good friends and often shared choreography ideas with the Lead Dancer. One day Khalimbo and Oudistor were talking. "It looked like the guys in the orchestra last week were having a great time. They always do such a good job. I wonder what it's like sitting on that side of the great hall?" said Khalimbo.

Oudistor was shocked; did Khalimbo want to quit dancing? "Maybe you should take some time off from dancing to get some rest," Oudistor told Khalimbo.

"Oh, I don't know that that's necessary," said Khalimbo, not catching the significance of Oudistor's suggestion. Oudistor then said nothing, but went to the Lead Dancer to share his concerns. Khalimbo was immediately suspended from the troupe to examine his priorities.

Khalimbo was devastated by this; he had never wanted to do anything but dance, and had not ever even entertained the notion of quitting the troupe. He loved the king, and he loved making the king happy with his dancing and his choreography; nothing else had ever mattered to him.

He was summoned to appear before the Lead Dancer to discuss his commitment to the troupe. He was quite distressed by the entire situation, but agreed to meet with the Lead Dancer in a few weeks.

In the meantime, Bhodhran came to check on Khalimbo and to let him know that he had really missed seeing him at dance practice. Khalimbo chose not to mention the real reason he'd missed practice, not wishing to discourage Bhodhran, but instead just told him that he was taking some time off to rest. Even though he himself had been betrayed unnecessarily, he had no intention of either "outing" Bhodhran OR of causing him to be even more distressed about his own predicament. Right is still right, you know.

Khalimbo is a good friend of mine and has promised to let me know how his meeting with the Lead Dancer goes. I may mention it when it occurs, or I may not. Just depends on whether I feel I need to have an outlet to discuss it. I have been privy to this situation for quite some time now, and I just don't feel comfortable blogging openly about it because of all the different people involved... but I knew that if I could put it into an obtuse allegory form, I might be able to get away with it!

It's gettin' H.O.T. in here...

Tonight I practiced with Big Mike & Holdin' On Tight, and people, I have to say -- we sounded better... tighter... HOTter than we have EVER sounded. This was our final practice before Friday night, when we'll be kickin' it at the Hilton Gardens Inn at 9:30 PM in the finals of the 2006 Iowa Blues Challenge.

Tonight I felt something "click" for the very first time, and I began to FEEL what we were doing. It's starting to make more sense to me now.

I can actually thank Blue Fish for this. He lent me a book called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Improvisation" or something like that, and I flipped through 'til I found the "Blues" section. One of the suggestions the authors recommended was something I'd never thought of doing: they suggested that before you play your improvisation, you should SING IT. When I did that, I began to hear it in a way I never had before. My piano is an extension of my inner feelings in the same way that my voice is, and I should use it as such... particularly when I'm playin' and singin' the blues.

I am getting an amazing education here. What a terrific experience this is. I am so glad I'm getting to do it.

And society will eventually catch up...

Obesity has begun to find its niche in American marketing

At Freedom Paradise on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the chairs are wider and without arms, to prevent getting stuck; the beds are king size and reinforced, to prevent collapsing; and the beach is private and secluded, to prevent gawking and staring.

"You should not be embarrassed by how big you are," said William Fabrey, whose online business "Amplestuff" offers larger versions of everyday things from umbrellas to footstools.

"You can't just yell at someone and tell them to lose weight. You're already dealing with people who think they have no worth," he said. "They still have to sit down on a chair that doesn't collapse."

Like others in this small but growing group of businesses, Fabrey started his company after discussions with an overweight friend. "She was a big woman, and she said, 'There's got to be an easier way to get through the day.' "

To make living large a little easier, Fabrey sells lotion applicators and sponges attached to handles, enabling the user to reach all parts of the body; handbooks about hygiene with tips about dealing with odor problems, chafing and irritations caused by skin folds. His business provides links to physicians and medical services.

"We don't take any position on whether someone should lose weight," Fabrey said. "That's up to the person."

I once had a family physician who made such comments to me as, "You do a good job of keeping yourself clean," and who literally wouldn't treat my illnesses because I was overweight... as if every single illness stemmed directly from my weight and that I somehow didn't merit treatment. I don't remember now what the final straw was, just that whatever it was, it was shockingly obvious that he had a bias against me because I was overweight, and I never went back. He was our family physician, and I took our whole family somewhere else then and there.

Yeah, I realize that there are going to be issues that do stem directly from being overweight, but it doesn't mean that I shouldn't get an antibiotic for my sinus infection. Nor does it mean that I shouldn't receive treatment for a broken ankle, even if I got that broken ankle because I tripped on something because I'm overweight and have poor balance... or whatever... make sense? Treat people's medical needs or don't. It's fine for my doctor to recommend that I exercise and lose weight, but I know that she'll also treat my immediate need and not expect me to "deserve" it by losing weight beforehand.

Those who are overweight know full well how it feels to be sneered at, laughed at, pitied and scorned, but having a simple tool, such as a sponge on a stick or a sturdy footstool that can bear up to 500 pounds, makes one feel a little more human. And a little less demonized.

Joan Borgos weighed 350 pounds for 28 years, until she had gastric bypass surgery and lost 200 pounds. She began putting out LargeDirectory.com because nothing was available "that didn't look like a muumuu from Lane Bryant," she said.

From her home in Massachusetts, she lists clothing catalogs, bridal shops (for gowns up to size 32), plus-size dating services, counseling services, seat-belt extenders and lingerie. She recently added listings for teens, after desperate mothers told her they couldn't find stylish clothes for their overweight adolescents.

Even toddlers have joined the overweight ranks, with car-seat manufacturers offering the "Husky," 10 pounds heavier and 4 inches wider than the standard size.

"There are all kinds of theories that abound about why people are getting heavier," Borgos said. "People are more sedentary, people eat more junk food and get less exercise.

"It's a constant level of stress to live as an overweight person. You're always scoping out the environment, looking if you're going to be able to fit."

There's a vicious cycle in play here; you're overweight, you can't fit into normal life so you begin to experience the self-loathing and the societal rejection, and you find yourself in emotional paralysis. For some, they're in this state for so long that they're just unable to help themselves break out of it.

Let's at least accept people into the mainstream of society so they can begin to view themselves in a more healthy manner... which will empower them to make whatever changes they need in order to reach health and well-being.

Kelly Bliss, a self-described "chubby chick" in suburban Philadelphia, offers "plus-size fitness and lifestyle coaching."

Which means, she says, encouraging overweight clients to exercise as best they can, to eat more healthfully and not to focus on losing pounds.

"People cannot just stop being fat," she said. "It's prejudice when you say a fat person does not need things to make them comfortable.

"People crumble when you give them even more pressure on top of a life that's already not working."

Hear, hear.

Size bias

An interesting study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University showed that:

Nearly half the respondents of their online survey on obesity said they'd rather give up a year of their life than be fat. Many of them also said they'd rather walk away from their marriage, give up the possibility of having children, be depressed or become alcoholic rather than be obese.

Five percent said they'd rather lose a limb than get fat, while 4 percent said they'd rather be blind than be overweight.

I have battled a terrible self-image for most of my life. At some point in my childhood it occurred to me that although I was extremely bright and talented, I was a disappointment to everyone in my life because I was fat. This warped view of myself has, to some degree, clouded literally every adult relationship I have ever had. No matter how well-adjusted I have become, I can't make that little voice go away, the one that tells me to be as inconspicuous as possible, to hide, to enter a room quietly with my gaze averted because the first thing anyone will think of me is, Wow, she's fat.

It matters not that I've become a very accomplished musician. My IQ score is irrelevant if I'm ugly.

I love the magazine InStyle; fashion and design are fun and I like to see what's out there. I can never wear anything in there, however, because I'm four-foot-eleven (yes, that's what they measured me at when I was in the hospital last week) and I weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 200 pounds. They don't make pretty stuff that I can wear and feel comfortable in... hence, I wear t-shirts and stretchy jeans.

My best friend works in the fashion industry and tries to help me find pretty things to wear, but she has also come to see that the scales are far-and-away tipped away from me. The plus-size section of the store (why do we merit a separate section? nobody else has to creep in shame to the back corner of the store to buy clothes) is full of styles that are totally different from those cute things in the "better" sections of the store... totally different, and totally ugly.

The thing is, I know that many of those cuter lines of clothing actually do now run into larger sizes, but stores won't stock them. Why, I haven't a clue. They'd certainly get a lot more of my business.

Any-hoo, back to the size-bias issue.

I think it's a sad thing indeed that people of girth aren't people of worth. I am also a little distressed that we're somehow "classifying" imperfections; people who are fat are worse off than blind people, etc. It's ridiculous. When are we going to stop this and start just seeing people as people, regardless of their differences?

YOU AND I are valuable people; did you realize that? I haven't. Not always. Oh, you've been valuable, but not me.

Not anymore.

After my stomach surgery, I got to know lots and lots and lots of girthsome folks and my heart wrenches with compassion knowing their stories of ridicule and shame. A few years later, I met and made friends with someone who was thin (prior to this, I avoided thin people because I felt intimidated by them) and got to know her... and realized that she herself had as many or more self-image hangups than I did. In fact, she gets a lot MORE hateful comments than I ever did. What polite person would come up to me and say, "Wow, you're looking fat these days!" But nobody thinks it's a problem to come up to her and say, "Wow, you're looking thin." And it hurts her the same way the other comment might hurt me, because it implies you're noticeably different and that you're somehow not right.

And the light in my head clicked on.

You see, it's a crime that so many of us have our self-worth so deeply wrapped up in our appearance. It's wrong. I wish there were more I could do about it.

I can't change the world, but I can be determined to make my little corner of it brighter. The people that God brings across my path are there for a reason, and I can give them a smile and give them unconditional love -- since that's the way God loves us, and I'm sure He wants me to do that for them.

And at the same time, I need it from you. I need to be hugged, to be smiled at, to be accepted... and if you're not where you can do that for me, do it for those around you instead. In some cases, it could be life or death for the recipient; you may never know.

Jeff Gitchel rocks

There's a fellow who lives here in Des Moines who I've never actually met in person, but I hope to someday. He's a photoblogger. He takes photographs and posts one each day on his blog. I often admire his work and wish I could grow up to take pictures just like him someday... but today's photo is one of those that grabs me even more than usual. Probably just because I'm so moved by intense color. Anyway, go visit his site, Trainorphans, every day and see what I mean. It's addictive.

Leapin' Lizards!!!!

Sent to me by my own AngieDaddy, who says he got it from his pal Doc Dunnington, we have a hilarious video clip from the Channel Five news out of Dallas/Fort Worth. It's a segment about reptiles. Keep your eye on the lizard in the lower left corner of your screen as it comes into view.

I wonder if that guy had to change his underwear after that segment?

Another candidate for Mother of the Year

From the Toledo Blade:

LOST YOUTH: TEENAGE SEX TRADE

Bold teenage prostitute wanted out of 'game'

And the money quote comes from the end of the article, from Jessica's obviously high-class mother:

And Jessica said she's given up prostitution and is seeking other work. She's applied for a cleaning job at a hotel, she said.

Jessica won't say why she doesn't want to go back to selling sex. She just doesn't want to -- it's that simple.

Standing nearby, Ms. Klempner laughed at the question.

"Me? I'd like to be a high-price call girl," she said. "Sex with complete strangers can be fun sometimes. I'm sorry, maybe I'm too honest, but yeah. You know, the money aspect? I mean, why not?"

To Jessica's mother, transactional sex has its advantages.

"You marry a guy and you gotta give him sex and you're not even getting basically nothing out of it," she said.

"These ones I can send home when I'm done with them."

Mom oughta be prosecuted for creating the environment which allowed her daughter to get into prostitution. What a pathetic excuse for a mother... she's more likely to talk her daughter into going back into the business just so she can have the bennies of free $$$.

Yes! We have no bananas!

How in the world is it possible for bananas to go extinct when there are so many consumers of bananas all over the world and so much incentive for growers to continue producing them?

Well, when they've turned bananas into a monoculture, that's how. And what, pray tell, is the danger with a monoculture?

Why, that's right. DISEASE.

A Future With No Bananas?

11:00 13 May 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition

Go bananas while you still can. The world's most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop of any sort is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed.

Virtually all bananas traded internationally are of a single variety, the Cavendish, the genetic roots of which lie in India. Three years ago, New Scientist revealed that the world Cavendish crop was threatened by pandemics of diseases such as that caused by the black sigatoka fungus. The main hope for survival of the Cavendish lies in developing new hybrids resistant to the fungus, but this is a difficult and time-consuming task because the seedless modern fruit does not reproduce sexually and has to be bred from cuttings.

Now the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that wild banana species are rapidly going extinct as Indian forests are destroyed, while many traditional farmers' varieties are also disappearing. It could take a global effort to save the bananas' gene pool.

In fact many of the genes that could save the Cavendish may already have been lost, says NeBambi Lutaladio, a plant scientist at the FAO's headquarters in Rome, Italy. One variety that contains genes that resist black sigatoka survives as a single plant in the botanical gardens of Calcutta, he says.

Sounds like we could be singing this song in the not-too-distant future...

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!!!!

Mother's Day always means childrens' programs at church, and today was no different. The school-age children put on a production called "American Ideal," a nicely-done reminder that it's not all about "me," done-up American-Idol style with judges and people in the crowd holding signs, etc. Good stuff.

As the usual lead-in, however, was the preschoolers' program.

Okay, I'm accustomed to wiggly, inattentive preschoolers putting on cute little songs. That's a normal thing. So I wasn't enormously concerned at first when two little boys stage-right began intentionally stepping on one anothers' feet. I did wonder, however, why the teacher directly behind them allowed it to continue without separating them. If one of them had been mine, he'd have already been yanked off the stage, but that's just because I'm particularly strict with mine and I didn't allow that kind of leeway.

To my amazement, the tussling escalated (all of it was greeted with amused snickering from the audience). One boy was the instigator, while the other was glad to follow along merrily. Instigator grabbed Follower's arm and did a Three-Stooges "why are you punching yourself" sort of maneuver on him for a while. Then Follower did a two-finger poke-in-the-eye on Instigator. Instigator countered with a nasty rib-skin pinch through his shirt, which was met with instant pinch retaliation.

All of this while the teacher right behind them, who could not have missed their activities, ignored them completely. HELLO!!! There were a number of very well-behaved and well-prepared youngsters whose exemplary performances were completely missed due to the overwhelmingly distracting antics of these two little vermin. I'm quite sure no-one remembers the names of any of the songs the kids sang.

The two boys had finally just begun, as my students call it, all-out "whaling" on each other when another teacher from the end of the row came over and neatly picked up Instigator by the armpits and placed him at the end of the row. Instigator obviously isn't interested in obedience, however, because he promptly ran right back to his place. Instead of putting him off-stage right then, they LEFT HIM THERE and the two boys commenced "whaling" throughout the program until the end.

These were three- and four-year-old children.

I've done a LOT of work with groups of this age, and I can only tell you that I'm glad I don't have any more kids in preschool -- because if this kind of behavior is tolerated, I don't want my own kids in there. We can have disciplinary expectations without creating a prison environment; in fact, in the presence of structure, the kids often relax and allow their true creativity and intelligence emerge. When they're in constant fear of ill-behaved monster children, they're on guard and you never get good education.

I hate to rail on nice people, because I know all those ladies are kind and sweet and well-intentioned... but I also think they might need a little volunteer training sessions on disciplinary expectations and managing monster children.

Apples and trees

Apples don't fall far from trees, I'm discovering.

When I was a little girl, Granddad would spread a dollop of peanut butter onto a vanilla wafer, then put another wafer on top of it to make a little sandwich. We often had that for our afternoon snack; it's likely that it was as much for him as for us.

I bought a box of vanilla wafers yesterday and had just opened it. "What are those?" Isaac asked.

"They're called vanilla wafers," I said. "They're just little cookies."

He took one from the box and had a bite.

I told him about Granddad's wafers -n- peanut butter snacks. His eyes brightened up and he took a second wafer and headed for the peanut butter. "Mmmm! These are kind-of like Oreos," he said. Oreos are his absolute favorite snack in the whole world, so this is a huge compliment.

In other apple-not-falling-far news, he has also begun his own blog. More on this as it develops; when it's ready to announce to the world, I'll post a link. I'm sure it will be interesting to see what a six-year-old blogs about.

Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man Dies In Horrific Accident

Power Outage Causes Foam Flood At Local Airport

Now THERE'S a mom devoted to her son's memory

You gotta agree, Cindy Sheehan has gone above and beyond to make her son Casey's sacrifice count for something, right? She's used her obviously overwhelming grief and loss to bring attention to her opinions on the War on Terror.

Overwhelming grief... yeah, that's what I'd call it. Especially considering that she hasn't bothered to put a headstone at Casey's grave yet. Forget that it's been two years since he was killed.

Happy Mother's Day, Cindy Sheehan. You're right up there on my list of top-ten Monster Moms.

C'mere and pull my finger...

Fart-lighting is very, very dangerous, people.

A patient's "gas leak" is being blamed for bringing a hospital operation to a fiery end.

The man suffered minor burns in a brief but "dramatic" operating-room fire which is believed to have been caused by flatulence, The New Zealand Herald reported today.

The man was at the Southern Cross Hospital in Invercargill to have hemorrhoids removed and was singed in the "exceedingly rare" incident involving his own gas.

"This was thought to be flatus containing methane igniting," a health source told the newspaper.

"There was a sort of flashfire and that was it, but it was fairly alarming at the time."

Haemorrhoids are swollen veins in the lining of the anus. If they protrude outside the body and become troublesome, they can be removed by surgery, which in the Invercargill case employed an electrical "diathermy" machine. A hand-held tool for cutting tissue and cauterising to stop bleeding, it produces heat and can spark.

Southern Cross is releasing little detail other than confirming an "electrical fire" occurred on March 22 and that it commissioned an independent forensic scientist to investigate.

I should ask my AngieDaddy, who's an anesthesiologist, if this has ever happened in any of the surgeries he's ever attended.

By the way... did you ever stop to realize that an anesthesiologist actually gets to pass gas for a living??

Today's 100-word story

In honor of my eldest's birthday today AND in honor of Mother's Day:

*********************Mother*********************

Twelve years old on the twelfth of May. "This is my 'golden birthday,'" my daughter claims, "the one where your age is the same as the day."

Every year, on the twelfth of May, I pause and think of the other mother, the one who gave birth to my daughter. Today I wonder: does she remember that "labor day" twelve years ago? Does she count the years and imagine what her baby looks like today?

Her baby certainly thinks of her. She gazes at a blurry photograph every day and longs to know her original mother, the one I replaced.

Happy Birthday, Martha!

Today is my daughter's 12th birthday. This year she is particularly embracing her Hispanic heritage and asked for a Mexican flag cake. Here's some pix of the festivities:











I didn't realize until I'd already taken the pictures that I'd put the eagle on upside-down. The green section's supposed to be on the left. I'm such a doofus! Thankfully she didn't notice, not being particularly attuned to such details.

She's growing up so fast.

My birthday wish for her? That she could encounter the sweetness of academic success and desire more of it.

An early Mother's Day gift

Rick has never been known for his "celebratory acumen," shall we say. The first gift he ever gave me was a pooper-scooper.



I know, I know. But he was 37 years old and had never had a girlfriend in his life, so I realized this wasn't a deliberate insult, it was just done from a lack of understanding. Sort of like when a little kid buys his mommy a football for Christmas. He's thinking in terms of what he likes (practical gifts that someone actually does need), not what I like. So I began his training immediately.

A week later, he bought me a beautiful freshwater pearl necklace and earring set. And all was forgiven.

Unfortunately, he's not always been so good about keeping up his Women's Studies coursework. When we married, he was already past the best trainability years, of course, and had entered into the curmudgeonly bachelor stage. I was eventually able to wrest his polyester away from him, but only after some significant subterfuge.

*******************************

This morning, while I was in the bathroom getting ready for work, Rick was combing Alice's hair and putting it into the requisite ponytail. "What are our plans for Mother's Day?" he asked me.

I peered around the corner and looked at him quizzically. "I don't know," I said. "It's not my job to plan that sort of thing. That's for you and the kids to do."

He had a blank look on his face for a moment, as if I'd spoken in Japanese. Then the light began to dawn. "Ooohhhhh, you mean... oh, okay." Then the wheels began to turn. He went into the living room to consult with the committee, then met me in the kitchen where I was filling my ginormous mug with crushed ice. "How about we take you to the Olive Garden for lunch?" he said proudly.

"Is that where you guys would like to take me? I'd be honored," I said.

He thought for another moment, then said, "But Olive Garden doesn't take reservations, do they? What if we do Macaroni Grill instead?"

"How delightful," I said. "It will be fun to see what you guys come up with to treat me."

[HINT... HINT]

He began to machinate again. "Oh, I'm going to log onto the Wells Fargo site and check our account. Maybe we have enough money to buy you that new pedal you said you wanted."

My heart leaped, but I remained calm. "Wow, that's a great idea," I said.

When I got home from school this afternoon, the box was sitting on my computer chair.

HE DID IT!!! HE GOT ME A BOSS RT-20 ROTARY SOUND PROCESSOR PEDAL FOR MY KEYBOARD!!! MY VERY OWN!!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

I am so proud of him, though. This is a BIG step.

COOL!!!

Pipe Dream

Escapee

There's a gecko loose upstairs.

Rick was being a kind, wonderful Dad and cleaning out the gecko cage in Martha's room when one of the speedy little boogers got loose in the upstairs bathroom. We'll keep watch for him and hopefully we'll find him so he can return to the cage and dine on crickets with his wife.

I love geckos; I wish we lived in a climate where we could just have them running loose in the house. They're terrific pest controllers and they're fun, too. When we lived in Corpus Christi back in the day, we used to have house geckos. The only thing I do NOT like about that climate is the ginormous cockroach thingys... they're hideous.

Back to work

I went back to work today, and as you might predict, by the end of the school day my BP had shot up again. Thank the Lord for meds that can control it, y'know?

Wanna know something crazy? My six-year-old son is now constructing his own Excel spreadsheets. His daddy has taught him how.

The pathetic thing is that I have tried, but I just can't seem to get my mind to comprehend a spreadsheet and what it's good for. Don't even bother trying -- I promise, it won't work. I can completely, intuitively understand Photoshop and Gimp, but I can't understand Excel.

I'm okay with this, although it IS a bit humiliating that my son can understand it and that I have to ask him to help me when changing channels on the TV anymore.

State Pooch?

Why not? There's an official "state" everything else, seems like. Anyway, Delaware's legislature has a bill before it which would declare the pug its State Dog.

Of course, we all know what Iowa's State Dog would be, DUH. The CORN DOG, of course. In particular, the State Fair Corn Dog, y'know. Our State Fair is a Great State Fair, and our corn dogs are unequalled.

And of course, this got me to thinkin'. If every state had a State Dog, what do you think it should be? Hmmmm... Here's a list of the Fifty States. Suggestions from the Peanut Gallery are welcome as long as they're family-friendly, k?

1. Alabama
2. Arizona
3. Alaska
4. Arkansas
5. California
6. Colorado
7. Connecticut
8. Delaware
9. Florida
10. Georgia
11. Hawaii
12. Idaho
13. Illinois
14. Indiana
15. Iowa
16. Kansas
17. Kentucky
18. Louisiana
19. Maine
20. Maryland
21. Massachusetts
22. Michigan
23. Minnesota
24. Mississippi
25. Missouri
26. Montana
27. Nebraska
28. Nevada
29. New Hampshire
30. New Jersey
31. New Mexico
32. New York
33. North Carolina
34. North Dakota
35. Ohio
36. Oklahoma
37. Oregon
38. Pennsylvania
39. Rhode Island
40. South Carolina
41. South Dakota
42. Tennessee
43. Texas
44. Utah
45. Vermont
46. Virginia
47. Washington
48. West Virginia
49. Wisconsin
50. Wyoming

Confession

I have turned in an application to another school district.

Haven't heard from them yet, but it's only been a few days, so I don't expect to hear right away.

Which district?

I'm not going to say right now. But I'm in the process of filling out apps for several districts in the same vicinity as the one I've already completed. We'll see if I get a nibble from any of them.

And just to be on the safe side, if I do end up getting a teaching position with one of these places, I probably won't say the exact district and/or school this time around. I'll tell you generalities, though, if it comes to that.

I am not discounting the non-education job options that have presented themselves. But I would like to make sure I don't inadvertently prevent the best job from becoming available to me, whatever -- or wherever -- that might be.

Gotta love the irony here

Planned Parenthood doing a Mother's Day fundraiser? Eeeesh. An organization doing everything in its power to PREVENT women from becoming mothers and to cause women who are already mothers to become mothers of deceased children? Seems bizarre to me.

Mother's Day Challenge

Donate by Mother's Day and your gift will be doubled!

Donations to Planned Parenthood right now -- up to $50,000 -- will be doubled because of a generous matching gift from an anonymous donor. To take full advantage of this amazing opportunity, we need to raise $50,000 by midnight on Sunday. Can you help us get there?

After you donate, you can choose a unique e-card to send to a special woman in your life, telling her you've given a gift in her honor.

Planned Parenthood's resources have been stretched this year. We have rolled out our Stand with the States Campaign, while maintaining our key health and education programs. Millions rely on our services, and your support right now is critical.

I don't include the link because I know Stef and others will want to donate and I don't care to make it any easier to do so... but if you do wish to participate, please don't let me know because I find this entire organization to be as guilty of mass murder AND of protecting child rapists.

And then there's the Mother's Day letter from Blythe Danner and her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow supporting PP... ewww!! I'd like for them to take a look at a classroom full of kindergarteners and tell us all which ones should've been aborted. C'mon, what's the difference? I'd like to know. Mother's Day indeed. Idiotic celebrities.

Pharmacological Phluctuations

Well, it turns out that the entire class of SNRI antidepressants like Cymbalta and Effexor, which tweak norepinephrine as well as serotonin, can exacerbate high blood pressure. That, plus an extremely high stress job, plus losing that job, plus having a difficult pre-teenager who has constant struggles with behavior and schoolwork, plus having the teenager who did live with us leave us abruptly, plus financial disagreement with my husband, plus leaving SoulFire, plus a few other things thrown in there for good measure -- and as a final straw, having a sudden serious disagreement with another close friend -- apparently it all added up enough to send my blood pressure into outer space (and I have never in my life had high blood pressure, so I didn't even know to consider it as a possible cause for my almost constant headaches). Now that I don't have a headache, I can look back and realize that chronic pain really does have a terrible depressing effect on one's entire being. I wasn't able to think clearly, and all the old "demons" that had been conquered long ago (self-loathing, feelings of worthlessness, even mild paranoia) came dashing back in to take advantage of my vulnerability... like a fall-back position or a "default" setting. It all kind-of made a vicious circle, all the problems sort-of feeding off one another (did the headaches make me more irritable and cause me to have disagreements, or did the disagreements cause me to have headaches? It's hard to know).

My distress has subsided considerably already, just knowing that there's a medical issue to deal with. That, and having my BP be much much lower (like, a hundred points lower) so that I no longer have a headache NOR do I feel one coming on... it's like I'm a brand-new person. I have to admit that I still feel a bit light-headed when I'm upright, but my nurse friend says it may take a couple of weeks for that to completely go away and my body to get used to the lower BP.

And yes, we're going to deal with the emotional aspects of this whole thing, since obviously they're still around in one way or another.

They've switched me back to a SSRI-type antidepressant (Lexapro), and have put me on two different BP meds (metoprolol and Norvasc). Rick bought me one of those wrist BP cuffs that I can use to monitor it here at home, and I'll be seeing my own family doctor to decide what to do from here on out. I should hear in the next day or two just exactly whether they found anything unusual on the ultrasound of my aorta and renal system they took today.

It has been an incredibly stressful spring. I'm hoping the summer will afford me a bit of a respite from that... I'm PRAYING that it does. I practiced tonight with Big Mike and the boys, which lifted my spirits considerably. I think God knew I would need that boost of encouragement that they've given me; those guys have bent over backwards to be nice to me and have been more gentlemanly and professional than any other instrumentalists I've ever worked with (except Blue Fish, of course). They're real, they're fun, and they're all about getting the music right. Period. It's like a breath of fresh air.

I can't wait until the Blues Challenge Finals next Friday. I personally think we're on our way to Memphis for the international competition already, but even if we don't, I will have had a heckuva good time getting to know some outstanding people and I will have learned how to play a new genre of music that I didn't know before. It's been a great ride.

Home from the hospital

Just spent the past couple of days in the hospital; they could NOT get my blood pressure to go down, not even a little bit. Last night they gave me one more kind of medicine on top of the three or four other ones they'd tried, and it finally worked. They also gave me something to help me sleep (PTL! that first night was hell) so I didn't hear all the noises in the hall or stuff. Today they did an ultrasound of my renal arteries, kidneys and aorta, etc... and sent me home because I said I was tired of being up there and needed to go home. I suppose they'll call me if there's anything unusual going on with my arteries.

In the meantime, I'm going to lie in my OWN BED and take it easy. I'll blog more about my experience when I'm a little less light-headed from having my BP dropped a hundred points overnight.

Another one

Going to the doctor this afternoon.

Beautiful Sunday

Slept the entire morning, felt like I should probably never EVER take Ativan again because I remember very, very little about last night!! I checked this morning and discovered that I had blogged, but I don't remember typing any of that last post. Very, very dangerous... if I ever have to ingest such substances as that, I should be kept far, far away from the internet. NEVER blog while taking an unfamiliar medication. That should be a standard warning along with the part about operating heavy machinery, etc.

We went to lunch with Blue & Red Fish and his delightful little brood.

I believe I am now going to get off the computer (since no-one's e-mailing me anyway) and go sit in the backyard and get a little dearly-needed sunshine.

A little loopy, but doing somewhat better

Okay, we might have finally tracked down the headache problem. And be forewarned: I'm typing this while on a 2mg dose of Ativan, so if it makes no sense at all, wait a day or two and I'll come in and try to decipher it for you.

Back when I first made the switch from Prozac to Cymbalta, it was because the Prozac I'd been taking for five years was no longer having the effect I needed it to have. After I'd been taking it a couple of days, I experienced weird heart palpitations every so often, but I chalked it up to no big deal. Then things just progressively, imperceptibly escalated into secret thoughts of self-harm. I lived with this, along with overwhelming feelings of worthlessness and rejection from every direction.

Finally today I got home from the noon gig I was playing at for church, and driving home I had the distinct urge to drive off a bridge. My logical mind knew this was unsafe and took me home long enough to explain it to Rick. We decided I probably needed to go to the ER and get checked out. They discovered that my blood pressure was sky high (200 over 130).

They're switching me from Cymbalta to Effexor FX to see if we can get some relief. I certainly hope so; I can't go on living this way. They want me to be with someone responsible for the next several days just to be sure I'm not going to flip out; I myself don't want to be alone, either. I'm just not well. Pharmacologically-induced insanity, Rick called it.

Hey

I get a daily e-mail from CareerBuilder.com and have been doing so for quite a while (hoping, I guess, to find something serendipitous). I wonder -- is this it?

Pianist needed at First Christian Church in Waukee.

Waukee is the westernmost suburb of Des Moines and it's the home of Rick's printing plant.

Think I oughta apply for this one? I can easily meet all the qualifications. And the main difference is that this would be a paying gig... which could be a serious help to us in the coming year.

UPDATE:
Rick and I have talked about this, and while it looks absolutely "perfect" on its face, the clincher is this: would we want our children to grow up in this church? And our answer was, "No." He pointed out (and I knew also that this would be the case) that this was a business contract, that there was an endowment and that it would all be proper and official and formal... the very thing that we hate most in a church. It was just too ironic that the job opening came up like that, where it looked like an exact match for what I was wanting to do: be a professional pianist.

Again

Played at a beautiful wedding tonight, but just as I sat down at the bench to begin playing the prelude music, I realized a headache was fast approaching and that there was not one single thing I could do to stop it because I couldn't get up and leave. So now, even though I took drugs as soon as I was done, I have a raging headache because I just didn't catch it in time.

This is one of the ones that makes my eye twitch. Sometimes it's the nauseating kind, other times it's the get-me-into-a-dark-room-NOW kind, but tonight it's the muscle-twitch kind.

I still managed to make it through the piano music. The soloist for the Lord's Prayer had a lovely, lovely voice, but he was terribly nervous and came in early on every single pickup... so I began to anticipate this and get in under him -- and then he didn't come in at all on part of it, so I kept fooling around until he did -- but we finally managed to end up in the same place at the same time. It really was a beautiful wedding and a very sweet little couple, and I wish I could've enjoyed it more, but all I wanted to do was get into my van and go home. I found a side exit and quietly slipped out after I was done playing.

Yes, I know. I need to see my doctor about this. I will, I promise. I'm definitely tired of this. I have a significant suspicion that it's hormone-related, that I'm beginning the power-surge thing already or something like that. I wish there was a way to just do a shut-down and have it be all-done, rather than having to eke my way through it. I guess that's called a hysterectomy, but surely there's something less invasive and debilitating than that.

Blech. Good night.

Fake News

Gotta love it when Reuters picks up a story that's a steaming pile of bullpoop... can't these people check their sources more carefully? Makes you wonder why the MSM is so much more lofty and trustworthy than bloggers...

Snopes.com has snooped out an old legend that reappeared in the news today.

The "Cootie" Effect

Does it gross you out to know that someone else has touched something? Apparently it's a problem for clothing retailers.

The Cootie Effect

EDMONTON, Canada -- You can call it "the cootie effect."

Researchers at the University of Alberta School of Business said they have found shoppers are much less likely to buy an article of clothing if they think another person has already touched it.

Not only were shoppers much less inclined to buy a shirt if they believed someone else had already touched it, they also indicated that the value of the product had been diminished if they knew it had been touched.

In addition, the researchers determined that "disgust" was the underlying reason for the participants' opinions, and that the level of disgust increased as the perception of the extent to which the article had been touched or tried on also increased.

Dr. Jennifer Argo headed the study, which is published in this month's Journal of Marketing.

She said people just don't "outgrow the simple notion of cooties, especially when we are reminded of them."

I remember when I was in, say, third or fourth grade, we girls would cross our fingers and pretend it was a "cootie spray" and we would "spray" the water fountains or chairs or anywhere that someone "gross" had been... thereby magically sanitizing the area.

I've never been terribly bothered by just knowing someone else has, say, sat on the public toilet seat ahead of me. If there's something, er, left behind on the seat or in the bowl, however, I'm a little less enthusiastic. I do carry Clorox wipes with me for such occasions. BLECH! No, what bothers me much more than surfaces? SMELLS. I cannot go into a restroom that smells. It just gags me. The Quebec team found out just how grossed I am by smells as we were traveling through rural Michigan and meeting more than our share of hog farms. Now that is one of the most hideous, retch-inducing smells EVER. I was glad I'd spent the time to wash my pillowcase before I went, because I spent a good deal of time with my face buried in it. I owe the BOUNCE fabric softener people a debt of gratitude.

Thought for the day

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson