Bite Me!

I am soooo very happy to say good-bye to this year. It has not been one of my favorites. Although living through it beats the alternative without laughter and love I would seriously think of embracing the alternative without a backwards glance.

This year we just can't seem to get ahead on anything. Not on bills, not on planning, not on payments, not on my graduate school, not on B's career plans, not on buying the house/property, not on buying a hunting cabin in Eastern Oregon.

We've misplaced our sync. The "we" in "we" has seemed to have gotten lost more this year than in any other in the past 20. We had it in Haifa and I think we left it there, just along the shores of the Mediterranean.

AND

I

WANT

IT

BACK!

So, until then, I preoccupy myself. Sometimes, I type my name into the search engine of Google to see what I can see. What I see is that I am a badass! Or a real nice lady! Depending on who you ask, LOL! At first it made me kind of mad to read what someone else was accusing me of and then I guess it was sort of a compliment. Sort of?

For this next year I want an adventure with my husband. A real and true, harsh "do you think we'll make it" type of adventure. I don't want that to be symbolic. I don't want that to mean "will this marriage survive?" I want it to be an adventure that when I write about it later, it will be like, "WOW, they lived to write about it?"

I am tired of manning home base and reading about the others "doing" something. This is my year. This is our year. I want everything to go smoothly and either the loan or the grant to go through for the school and then I want the time to get everything in order so we can be free. Maybe we will do that thing where we travel to the places that have a natural disaster and need help afterwards. B says he can get the info for that through his work. That sounds like something we could have a blast doing. We do international travel well together. At the very least, we can travel and teach here. I don't want us to put this off any longer. It just isn't getting any easier to go and do things unless we get into the habit of doing it, now.

Rather shamefacedly I must confess I like the phrase "Bite Me". It just says so much and can be used for so many things. Today, it is both my initial reaction to the person who was a bit of an ass, as well as what my husband can do most anytime he wishes! HAHAHA!

I WAS There!

So, I go at EXACTLY 3:00 pm and what I see is a pretty full coffee house with no place for a table of seven rambunctious bloggers to sit. I do not see boy wonder. I do not see mot's three and I have brought grandson with me. So, I am standing there, contemplating options when the barrista says, "Be with in a moment." And then, "Can I help you?" And I say, "Do you have a group coming in?"

He raises an eyebrow. A group of what? Ah, bloggers? I can't say it. I think I blushed. My family already gave me heck. Your going where? You have a play date with people who write online stuff? Like articles?

No, they write like an online journal. And its not a playdate.

That anyone can read? What is it?

Yes, anyone. Its coffee and talking.

Why, why would they do that? Talking about what?

Because, its a way to practice writing. Its a way to get good at it. Its a way to share. Its a way not to feel isolated. Its a way to survive here! Its a way not to drink the Koolaid! Its a way to make it through the rain! Its a way ... We'll talk about not making Koolaid.

Oh, so does that mean that since you were invited to go you also write about us, online, for anyone to read? What does drinking Koolaid have to do with it?

Yes, that's what it means. I write about "us". Koolaid is a term for people at the end of their rope, like I am with this conversation and the person talking to me.

Then, when the guy looks at me because I stammer out "a group" he says, "No, not that I know of." And I hang around a bit and of course how do I know if any of you are there besides wandering around saying, "Hi, are you a blogger?" I stomp back outside and decide you meant the other Astoria Coffee place (the Company). So, I go all the way down to the one by Geno's, which is closed until after the New Year's and, guess what? None of you are there! So, then I go all of the way back to the other one and then my grandson is sound to sleep in his car seat and I have lost the impetus to get him out of the car seat and back into the coffee shop as I circle the block four times trying to peer inside to see if I can see inside and suddenly be struck with an image that I must have seen on someone's website.

"I am pathetic," I mutter to myself. Then I decide that I have it on the wrong day and so I do my other errands and hurry home so I can check my email to see if I can still make it. Oh no! Not only was it the right day, it was the right time at the right place. SIGH! And now, insult to injury, I am getting messages of "sorry you couldn't make it" and "you were missed"! And while those are nice, I WAS THERE.

WHERE THE LELH were you all and did my family put you up to this?

ROTFLMAO!

We are trying this again! I pick the place and the time and nooooooo wende, we are not waiting a year!

Bumper Bumping

The fine art of bumper sticker reading! Isn't it grand? I can't even recall how many "almost" wrecks have happened because we are trying to read the small print on a bumper that ends up saying, "If your reading this your too close, get ready for a nose full of asslead"! My child looks at me rather dubiously, "Does that say what I think it says?" inquires the, at that time, nine-year-old manchild. "Yep," I reply. "What an insult!" he responds, "Are you going to tell?" I would looooove to go tell on the car driver/idiotic slogan slapper onner, but to whom do I tell?

Some of the all time guarantee to irritate bumper stickers are NRA stickers: Guns don't kill, people kill. Or My idea of gun control is using both hands to keep it steady. And, not necessarily NRA but many people with NRA also display this bumper sticker: IF GOD DIDN'T WANT US TO EAT ANIMALS, HE WOULDN'T HAVE MADE 'EM OUT OF MEAT!

I haven't quite figured out if bumper stickers of the cars in Clatsop County show the real mindset of its residents, what they want others to think about them or were just left on the auto from the previous owner. BITCHY WHEN PROVOKED and BITCH WITHOUT A CAUSE. Are these really statements I want people to know about myself? I think they just have to be examples of real laziness, not wanting to strip them off the old car. However, it still means someone, sometime, somewhere put that bumper sticker there. Maybe a vengeful ex?

There's the obvious Clatsop resident: Friends Don't Let Friends Eat Farmed Salmon Support your local commercial fisherman and Spotted owl tastes like chicken. But then there's the people who doesn't know who they are. They have a Save a logger, shoot an owl right along the side of a sticker reading Equal Rights for ALL Species. Visualize Whirled Peas rests atop America, Right or Wrong. I'm confused. Do I like the people at the stop light in front of me or don't I? Do I wave at the tot giving me the the semi-blow-your-horn signal or do I pretend I don't see him? For God's sake, people! If you don't understand the purpose of a bumper sticker, don't put it on your vehicle! How are you going to make new friends? Reaffirm old ones? Sheeeesh, there's responsibilities here!

I'm not sad about losing my mind, I'm enjoying every minute of it!

A Great Way To Endure A Storm

Laughter is good! Family coming together, of course, corny but true. We lost power from the very beginning until Friday evening at about 6:30 pm, right after having made up our minds to eat dinner at Goldern Star. Warmth and seeing people other than each other. Cabin fever in the dark but man the moment those lights came on! We ordered Chinese take out, ate in and watched Teladegga Nights on the movie screen.

While the lights were out we played Balderdash and laughed and talked and also played statute of limitations. You know that game? Its when adult children tell their parents things they did while growing up and we all judge whether or not the statute of limitations has run out on the crime or if punishment can, in fact still take place. As children punishment was swift and the crime, usually, forgotten. As adults the crime takes on disporportionate sinister overtones, as if it had to be worse than that or you would have revealed it sooner. There is never a statute of limitations on revealing that you hold the record for driving the wrongway down every street in downtown Seaside within one hour w/o getting a ticket.

I'd rather talk about Balderdash. Funnnny game. The way we play it is without the board. If you (the reader) hold the card you pick to read aloud either the word, or initials, or the name, or the date or the movie. The players make up a definition, what initials stand for, a bio, what happened on this day or a plotline and write them on a slip of paper containing their name while the reader writes the truth. The reader then collects all of the papers and reads them, convincingly, aloud. The players vote for the one they think is the truth. The more convincing that the reader makes the others sound the more likely the players will vote for one of them. If NO ONE votes for the truth the reader gets four points. If someone does pick the truth they get two points. Each person that writes a convincing fib that someone mistakes as the "truth" gets one point.

It is hysterical! Some of ours from the other night: NPBOA> Nanny's Problems Brought Out Assoc or National Party Boat Owners Alliance? Six Lessons From Madam La Zanga> A lovely 46 year old woman gives piano lessons to a student who learns to play perfectly until a freak accident involving a firetruck and a rubber duck leaves the student with amnesia. Can his teacher help him struggle to the answer? OR A Cuban night club owner causes a commotion on a cruise ship?

We had blocked the kitchen in with blankets, keeping the heat from kerosene and propane lanterns and our bodies contained to one area. At the outset of the dire warnings we had boiled water and put it in good hotpots and thermoses so we had tea and hot cocoa and made a few runs to the coffee stands. Later in the evening we wrapped in blankets and watched The World's Fastest Indian with the portable dvd player plugged into to the car starter.

The wind howled, the rain poured. We lost a little bit of wood off the house. We watched the wicked witch of the east sail past our window. We watched a 67 year old man with prostate problems and angina set a world record for the fastest streamlined motorcycles under 1000 cc that still stands today on a cycle he built himself! We held hands a little, quarrelled a little, laughed a lot, snacked a lot (couldn't let it spoil) and were sooooo happy the dang phone couldn't ring.

I hope the storm didn't cause too much damage or other's pain or loss. It brought some inconvenience here and a lot of fun and laughter.

Forty-five going on sixty-five

When I was 25 years old I found a lump in my neck. It itched. I had just left my husband of two and one half years, had two small children and for the first time in my entire life was living completely on my own. No roommates (other than the munchkins) like the first year out of high school when I was at community college, waiting to go to Udub (where I was accepted but didn't have the money). I was going to be a lawyer. Back in the day before we knew what financial aid was, since I was the oldest of five, we didn't have a clue what packages were and so if a scholarship wasn't offered we thought we had to pay for it all so we decided I would do the first two years at Clatsop and go from there. I made one half year at Clatsop before life sucked me away from the books. By the time the fourth child was graduating from high school my parents had a better grasp on the financial aid process. Now, out of their five children four of us have Bachelor's and one of us have a PhD. I start my Masters in this Winter. Pretty good considering my mother has yet to obtain her GED, my father has his high school diploma (last class to graduate from it when it was REALLY high above Columbia's waters).

So, I was 25 and already married and divorced with babies in tow. I was determined not to go on welfare (no one in my family ever had) but didn't want to have someone else raising my children and so I began baby sitting, condescending to enroll my children in the state health plan rather than leave them without any health insurance. Back then you had to go in and fill out reams of paperwork and take part in an interviewing process. I can see the woman to this day and have to strive not to loathe her. Three times my home was picked for "random" searches to see if I was hiding my husband there while accepting state help! The good part of it was that because of my income I was automatically enrolled with my children in the health plan as well.

I often wonder what would have happened "if". What if my first husband and I had not broke up earlier that year? I might never have got the lump on my neck even looked at, so many other things were worse than an itchy spot on my neck. Even if I had gone in to see the doctor his words to me were, "If this lump were on my wife I wouldn't even worry about it but given your history of cysts we should biopsy this and make sure this is benign." However, you can bet anything if I didn't have any insurance Dr. Patrick wouldn't have operated on me and wouldn't have found the cyst that was a tumor wrapped around my collar bone.

Fifty-four radiation treatments and 20 years later everything in the path of the radiation has since begun to falter and slip. My thyroid began giving me problems about four years ago but it wasn't until last year (and almost 100 lbs) that I was recommended to an endocrinologist who found the problem and gave me the correct medication. Finally, slowly but surely, I am loosing weight I found!

Exercise is still hard, with radiated muscles and organs not able to recover adequately, and the pain from esophagitis isn't encompassing me. Thank goodness for water and our hot tub.

So many of our friends have no idea that I survived cancer because I forgot about it. They know that I have had weight problems and have suggested every diet under the sun for a sluggish thyroid, however I just don't find my identity in a bodily function. I am not a cancer survivor, I am someone who happened to have survived cancer.

My oncologist warned us that my insides were 20 years older (where the radiation hit) than my outsides). It was scarier to me than hearing I had cancer. When I was 25 I knew it couldn't kill me, now there are days I wonder if it wouldn't have been better?

Selfish, my husband spits out at me, "That is a very selfish thing to say. " Yes, I acknowledge, it is. However, when it is late at night and once more I cannot sleep because my back aches soooo much and my legs feel like they are being pinched up and down, over and over I wonder if I can keep taking this year after year. My maternal grandparents lived well into their 90s and my paternal grandmother lived into her 80s. My grandfather died of massive heart attack when he was 48, brought on by DTs. I could shoot for that one, but that would realllllly piss my husband off and most of the time he and the grandson are my only friends! ;)

What I want for Kwanzaa because I can't wait for Ayyam-i-Ha

I HATE COMPUTERS!!!!
Crap, my little workhorse laptop has taken suuuuuch a beating. Rigt now I am trying to see past the red scribbles all over the screen just to see to post. I have dyslexia today,  I am missing half of my keys because by grandson lifted them off leaving them with just the white nubbies and I they all stick together. It is torture to type and yet I soldier on. AAAACK! You would think I had something worthwhile to say other than WAH!

So, dear souls who love me. We have agreed to draw names and spend only $20 on one person for the Solstice Night celebration (aka Christmas Eve). I think that, spontaneously you should all email one another (or call, its quicker) and pool your 20s and buy Wife Aunty Mom Sister Daughter Cousin Niece Friend a new laptop.

NEW, not her old one revamped. DO NOT bring her old one to any shop. It goes into the garbage, it has been recycled and cannabilised too many times and now deserves a funeral. She wants a brand new one with a CD/DVD burner. I want it to be wireless ready with mobile broadband! 80 GB harddrive and 1 GB memory would be nice.

Sigh. If I don't hit the backspace then my sentence will look horrible and it can get very frustrating hwen I do hit it constantly. Te other da I ws watching my gradnson type. he was copying meand he was ypin veyr hard and yellig athe kybaord! HA! Hope that doesn't keep him from writing when he grows up.

I do cringe when my children write, though. I hope none of them blog. If I start reading about a crazy mother who has an obsession with government auctions, leg warmers, knitting slippers and afghans but nothing else, and they were the only ones being homeschooled in the days of Christian support groups only so we were horrible parents, I will know one of them has only just begun their revenge!

Before it gets to the revenge part though, and I mean it, BUY ME A PLAPTO i anem a lappot er ppalto ISHT!

Making a list, checking it twice

I have a project which I MADE my father and my husband start for me. Yes, I MADE them build me a bookcase. They were not happy. I was looking at the beautiful book case in my grandmother's tiny study. The bookcase runs down one wall and els down the other. It is attached to the ceiling and feels as if it is to the floor, too, however it also has crown molding everywhere so you can't tell at ceiling or base or corners where it is attached at all. An adult could climb the book case and it wouldn't fall over. It has adjustable shelves. It is the only thing in this typical ranch style house that makes it in any way unique from any other Adair home of the 1970s.

Do I need to say the bookcase my husband and father built me was not built to these standards? I wanted down the length of one wall and a little onto another. It is barely five feet long. It is seven and a half feet tall. I am not, otherwise the bookcase that they built is shaped rather like myself, sort of literally, in a rather sloppy hour glass shape. When I went to put shelves into it we discovered the shelves will not be interchangeable because each shelf only has about a one foot area in which it can actually fit at the length it was cut!

I had the shelves cut at the lumber yard using one length taken from the middle of the bookcase, before I had noticed that it was shaped so, er, absurdly. It was just that, since it was built six months ago it has been covered and used as our movie screen. Now, with our study being used as a spare bedroom for an out of country guest, we need to have the books moved around so the "new" bookcase needs to be used. After the shelves have been recut not even a mouse will be encouraged to climb it until I use brackets to attach it to the wall.

As I was placing one of the shelves onto its "adjustable" mounting brackets my father came into the house.

"Who built that crooked monstrosity?"

"You and my dear husband!"

"Will, he must have done all of the measuring for it."

"What would measuring have to do with the wood bending in the middle like that?"

"I don't know, it just does. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't work with wood."

"It's hard to explain to someone who pretends to work with wood what a bookcase looks like, too, I suppose?"

"Guess when the next time your getting a free bookcase is going to be?"

"Right after the next time I ask for one?"



I don't know why he doesn't stop by more often.