2008: reflections

teddy greybear is hammering away at the door, meowing and demanding, and that is enough to remind me that one thing i gained was him, and another thing i lost, which was thing. they aren't the same, but they are both alike in many ways. probably the biggest way is that they both consistently gave me comfort and loved me.

this year was good in a lot of ways, and then there were losses. besides thing, there was the death of my friend bette, and tom's dad bill. warnie has rapidly slid away into a sort of childlike twilight, and that is hard to see, but then again, it is acceptable. my brother certainly had a bad year, and the beating in september is scaring for everyone. but he did get a new dog, canyon, who has been a great good for him. for me, there has probably been more than a year long loss of me. i haven't been right for a long time. life has been blah sort of, nothing greatly exciting, although there were things that should have excited me. i am thinking now that most of that has been chemical, but i just didn't realize how much had been dripping away until recently.

so i am starting off the new year in a better frame of mind. i must add that it is chemically induced. my new doctor switched me to cymbalta to replace the lexapro. this is a good thing i am hoping. i am already feeling better, with more energy and more desire to do something. i am following through with plans, which i haven't done in such a long time. i am not just tired and in pain all the time. this is all good, and i hope that it continues. i won't know i guess for awhile if this frame of mind will stay steady, but i am hoping that the cymbalta and the mega doses of vitamin d will put me in some place where i feel like i have something to go forward for. i have just been plodding through for a long time.

there were a lot of positives in the last year. the 3 week REB trip certainly was the culmination of a gift of a lifetime. i saw so much that i had never seen before, but i was stressed out most of the time and fighting with austin. had i had the good drugs then, i might have had a better time of it, but i still got to go, and i still had fun.

shelley and bart came and stayed for a week during spring break and learned then that i can actually have people stay with me and not be stressed out. that was certainly a first. pam and i are planning to go to seattle this summer, so that is something to look forward to.

austin's life has been a series of peaks and valleys with baseball. in june we discover that he can throw an over 90 MPH fastball, but then he breaks his hand in a freak accident in the junior olympics. he is out of baseball for the summer, doesn't get ranking, but then comes the fall and all of a sudden, he is now on the radar. he has a grueling, but productive fall, goes to basketball out of shape and overweight. his high school baseball coach is disgruntled because he isn't working out off season with the team. the basketball coach is also disgruntled for the same reason. austin is playing basketball, but the team hasn't done well particularly and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why. and then yesterday, he broke his big toe. yet another pesky injury, just when he needs to start looking closely at the baseball. i don't know if this is another sign or what. there just seems to be no rhyme or reason to his being constantly close to being in the spotlight, and then out of it. it is almost as if god keeps pulling him and saying "wait a minute. chill out."

managing his "career" and watching over all he does has been a tremendous strain. combine that with a myriad of health issues for so long, and you have the flat lined me. but i am hoping i can get to a point where i can relax. i have already seen some improvement in that i have read 3 or 4 books since i have been home, have cleaned up and done things that i have put off for a long time, and have started back piddling with my jewelry. i have ordered books to learn how to use my computer programs, and i got through xmas relatively unscathed. i have slept more, and enjoyed my animals.

this last year seems to have been one of peaks and valleys, but none of them devastatingly awful or gloriously wonderful. it in many ways has been a growing year and a learning year. my job has changed, and i have let a lot of things go in that direction. i am watching austin grow up and out before my eyes, and i have had a lot of feelings about being left alone and in the dust by him. there has been a lot of argument between the two of us over the house and his doing what i expect him to do for grades. it has been a year where i can freely admit that i have no control over him, and i have felt very much hurt by him on more than a few occasions. bebo has been better and easier to get along with, but he can be guaranteed to do something that i can't anticipate. i have had a lot of jealously about austin's wanting to hang out at bebo's and i have been pretty open about that. i think if austin ever acted like he cared about me or my feelings, i wouldn't been so depressed about it. but maybe that will change. he has been with bebo for a week, but he has been ok to me when i have seen him. (i drove up to stanardsville two days in a row to watch one basketball game.) he did thank me for coming and hugged and kissed me. i have learned this year that i do need human touch.

i am thankful for good friends and comfort. i am thankful for the relative health of my family and the joy of watching my child be successful. i am thankful that despite setbacks, i am still alive and still have a brain. i am very thankful that they make good drugs...:)

happy holidays from the furry felines!

twas the day before winter break...

have managed to get to the end of this week with my brains intact and no visible signs of disease. since the stomach flu is going around, i consider that an accomplishment. austin has some of it on monday and went home early, and i felt a little icky too. but i went to bed that night at 7:30 and slept all the way through, so i think that helped.

it has been so far an interesting yet frustrating season of basketball. austin seems somehow to have gotten himself on the shit list of the coach. not sure exactly how that is, but i have to admit that from my standpoint, he has looked a little sluggish. he has done fine when he has played, but i think the asthma has become a problem. he is using the inhaler, sometimes twice or three times a game. i don't know if that has anything to do with it. i do know that austin has developed an attitude and is having problems with the coach's decisions. i can't say that i disagree. i haven't been able to figure out yet exactly what the coach is trying to do with the team. there is absolutely no consistency in the game plans and frankly, they don't seem to make sense. last night they played patrick henry and just nothing was working. in the second half he basically took out all of the starters, including austin, and put in the scrubs. they ended up losing by 2 points, which was good considering at points we had been down by 15. but it does make you wonder what might have happened if he had played the better players. i don't know much about basketball, so i guess i can't second guess what the coach is doing. but i don't think the players understand it either.

i bought the griddler for my brother today for a xmas present. it was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but i felt like he should have something nice for xmas since the parents aren't apparently doing anything. he has had a crappy year, no doubt about it.

there is snow in the western states and i am seeing that the temps are down in seattle and are staying down. they apparently have had snow, and i had a message from triest and rexburg has been pretty much inundated with it over the last few days. she said it was nice snow too, wet big flakes. i would kill for some snow and cold weather. we get a couple of days of it, and then boom, back to 50-60-70 degrees. it is very discouraging. no wonder everyone is sick.

i still have xmas stuff to do, in particular baking and putting up the yard lights. i am hoping that will get done this weekend. we'll see. i am ready for a break.

currently the month of december has been the month for reading about the undead. i have just finished TWILIGHT about vampires. i had to push myself through that one, even though it is the hot book right now. i read it because all the kids are reading it. i also started another one called WORLD WAR Z which george herring wanted me to read. this one is about zombies. then i read a manga japanese book, backwards, and that was all about monsters and killing and a notebook of the dead. i think it is time to quit with the dead stuff. time to catch up on all of my magazines and a couple of books i checked out for my own pleasure. i have done mostly reading of stuff that would be potentially for summer reading or new stuff in the classroom. i did read a book called WINTER RUN that i thought might be interesting to redneck boys. george seemed to think that the zombie book might be good for the boys. however, i have not found it to be engrossing since it has no plot.

making some progress in my MONK world

ONCE AGAIN, i have been graced with a week of off again/on again headaches. on tuesday i came home from school, took the excedrin and got a brief nap before i had to deliver austin back to school for his basketball game, which i went to. i slept amongst the cats, but didn't really sleep. so wednesday i did the doctor and slept in with the headache.

the new doctor, dr. woodson, took the time and seemingly the interest to talk to me. she had some ideas about fibromyalgia and does not believe that it is a mental thing. thank god. she agreed with me that the lexapro was probably not working and rather than jack up the dosage, she wrote me a prescription for cymbalta, the newest best thing. apparently, this is one that works well for people with fibromyalgia. she also gave me a prescription for midrin. unfortunately, the cymbalta has to be preapproved by my health insurance. i don't have it yet.

austin was at bebo's this weekend until today. i went and got him and we went to trader joe's and bought stuff for brenda, danny and olivia for their xmas gift basket. we went to whole foods market and ate a bunch of really expensive stuff, and then to kohl's, where austin bought amy a necklace with a square blue zircon on it. he had previously bought a silver chain, but couldn't find anything he liked to put on it. he and amy dragged out the xmas stuff, but it was too dark to put it up and she was not enthused about doing that. so it is supposed to now be put up tomorrow afternoon after school. we'll see.

i did have some energy this weekend and did some shopping yesterday for austin and got him done. i also bought stuff for the twins and jack online, cooked veggie beef soup and made some indian curry stuff with jasmine rice. i went to walmart and did my shopping there first thing in the morning, and i have been pretty productive. i also went to joey's hot dogs in the gas station on ridgefield parkway and talked to joey for a long timel. it turns out that he is the youngest son of the guy, tony, of tony's hotdogs in norfolk. when i was a kid, daddy used to take me there and i remember it a lot. maybe my love of hot dogs comes from that.

saturday night i decorated the xmas tree with lights and ornaments land put up xmas stuff. today i also finally spackled the wall on the stairs and sanded it down. all i need to do now is paint it. i made a list of xmas stuff and pretty much has most everything done sans cooking, which i will have to do later this week or on tuesday of next week when i come home.

my energy levels have been up a bit and i have felt like doing stuff. i took a bunch of pictures of the cats today and tonight, which i had been wanting to do. i also have been reading the TWILIGHT book which is all the rage with the kids these days and the rest of the world as well (the movie just came out.) i am having a hard time with it, as it is very slow and methodical and, frankly, boring to me. but i am reading it as part of the summer reading possibilities. i have watched a lot of stuff on the dvr, including a lot of old carole lombard movies (2oth century with john barrymore), and several MONK episodes, History Detectives, and general stuff i had taped like LAW & ORDER, ELI STONE, and i also have watched some more of THE OFFICE on the DVD player. i talked to MJ today in paris, and have kept up with meg and dr. trotti's surgery. he seems to be doing fine and was being moved to a real room today. they took about 80% of his stomach, and there is still some tumor behind it. however, they think they can kill what is left with chemo. i don't know when he will start that.

this week should be an easy week. i am showing OF MICE AND MEN for 4 of the days, and giving the unit test to the advanced kids tomorrow and tuesday. hopefully, i will get caught up finally on grading of papers. austin has two basketball games this week (highland springs and patrick henry, and both are away). sometime in there i have to make my stuff and pack things to be shipped out (linda, shelley and bart, maybe triest and joanna.) i could be a busy week...

everyone in india gets a wristwatch...

ok, it isn't politically correct to rail against foreigners in this country. land of the free, home of the brave, we all got here on a boat somehow, etc. however, sometimes it can get a little frustrating dealing with people who are "half-cultured" americans (or not, as the case may be).

last night i dropped austin and amy off at applebees for amy's birthday dinner, and i went to walmart. i was casually drifting through the store shopping when they called, unexpectedly early, for me to pick them up.

i still had to check out, and mistakenly picked a line with three hindu women. they were not dressed in traditional garb, but did have the cast marks in the middle of the forehead. while they spoke in their language, they were doing american things, like using a credit card. however, they put a new twist on shopping by checking out, and then UNCHECKING out.

sometimes you don't have enough money to pay for items, so you put them back. i can see that if you only have x amount of cash. but with a credit card? the first woman was finishing up when i dragged up. i should have suspected something was up by the growing mound of clothing that was gathering around the cashier.

the second woman unloaded her stuff (she has plenty of time since the first woman was lolly gagging along). then she decided when the total was flashed that it was too much. so then comes the slow process of digging through the several bags of items pulling out one, checking it back in, and then pulling a sub total. for some reason she just finally landed on a price and that should have been it. however, she had a pair of black socks that were apparently without a price code. this now involved snagging another employee to go back to sock world for a price check. while i was leaning on my cart with every growing exasperation, austin calls and wants to know where i am. i can't explain to him that i am in the middle of the mumbai bazaar, and there is no verbal explanation i can give him given my current "company" that would explain what was going on. finally, hindu chick #2 is done, although she doesn't do much moving away.

then i watch in amazement as hindu chick #3 unloads her cart, which includes 12 WRISTWATCHES. twelve. i counted them, thinking that everyone in india must be getting a watch. then, incredibly, the scene from chick #2 duplicates itself. Hindu chick #3 begins to dig through the bags and pull out various and sundry things, including 3 of the watches (oh well, someone won't be able to tell what time to move the elephants.) and we once again go through the arduous task of picking and choosing what to keep, what to pay for, again, with a credit card (which she didn't know how to use.)

it took me 20 minutes to check out. when i left, in a lather, the three were still standing there at the end of the counter jabbering and apparently in no hurry to go anywhere. at this point i have had my coat off three times because i am in such a sweat. it is raining outside, and the kids are waiting for me at kohls.

i wondered how it is that you could do something like that three times in a row. is that what they do in pakistan or india or where ever? did they think they were going to get to barter about things when the bill rang up? all i know was that if they couldn't pay for it, they shouldn't have rung it up. i also figure that if you don't know about money, and you are from another country and can't speak the language, how in hell do you get a credit card?

another ridiculous hair tale...

when you reach my age you have to accept one of life's little not-so-amusing jokes, which is woman face hair. in my case, i feel like billy goat's gruff. not only do i have it on my chin, but i am beginning to feel like i have swirly fur all over my face. and my eyebrows...well, some of the hairs have taken on a life of their own and i swear they are so long that you could braid them.

but i digress.

last night at the last moment i decided to wax my face with the little nail wax strips. i rubbed them between my hands until the wax was melted, then carefully peeled them apart. i went to put the side i wasn't using down, and damned if it didn't leap from my hands...and land on my cell phone.

don't ask what the cellphone was doing on the bathroom counter. it was just there, apparently begging to be waxed. the strip was stuck to the side of the phone, so i pulled it off as gently as i could and then put the strip on my chin. i then proceeded to rip hair out of my chin and noticed, of course, that i hadn't gotten everything and what i had gotten was sticking out of my face with little white wax pieces standing on the end. my chin now looked like a very short bristle brush.

i still had another strip left, i don't know what happened, again, but this time as i was trying to apply it to the other part of my face, it again was magnetized by the cell phone, and it came out of my hands and landed flat, this time, on the phone. i ripped it off, leaving most of the wax on the phone, put the strip on my face and got practically nothing off, and then went to try and dewax the phone.

the nail people give you these little wet packs that have a moist towelette in it, but this one isn't like the ones you get in the rib or chicken place. this one is soaked in oil. you use it to take the wax tips off you face and soothe the skin. well, i used mine to do that first, and then to try and get the wax off the cell phone. unfortunately, it didn't go quite as i planned. this time the more i rubbed the phone with the oily towelette thing, the more fuzz rubbed off of the towelette, so now the phone not only is sticky with wax, but art imitates life...the cell phone has a white fuzz growing all over it.

i tried to wipe the oil off (i had it all over my fingers and all over my phone) and the quickest way to do that was impulse...i rubbed the phone on my chest, now giving a perfect replica of the cell phone on my chest in oil...sort of like the shroud of turin for cell phones...so now i have a giant grease spot on my shirt, the phone has just grown another set of hair in the wax due to the additional fuzz it has picked up from my shirt, and i still have curly q's hanging under my chin...plus i now also look like my face has been burned in certain places. i have to resort to climbing up on the sink with my glasses off and trying to pull chin hairs off with a very uncooperative set of tweezers.

i finally just quit. i did go after the moustache, but gave up on that too. no attempt was made to calm down the eyebrows, which seem to have hairs that wave in the wind and wink at you. imagine a small peninsula of palm trees growing on you face, little tiny ones waving in the breeze, two of these hair islands, separated by the gulf of my nose...

body hair issues apparently are going to just haunt me. the good news is that the wax is off the cellphone and it has baby smooth skin. other good news is that i have absolutely no intent on ever getting anything (fire, wax, tweezers) in the vicinity of my crotch. between torching my head hair and ripping off my face hair, i don't think i want to do anything south of the border...

xmas tales from the foxhole:scheduled insanity

well, here we go...

how does one schedule insanity and place all the inmates?

i have been on the phone with the brother, the aunt and uncle, the cousins trying to figure out how to do the xmas schedule for xmas week.

things are not working out the way i would like. gee, some surprise there...

conflicts and problems for the week are as follows:

xmas day-thursday. must leave the beach and take austin back to bebo by 2pm. there austin will stay for who knows how long. he has to be with his father, but no one knows how long. more on that later

xmas eve-wednesday.family dinner at zia marias. xmas eve day may be the only time to get together with warnie, aunt grace and ted. previous years we have eaten chinese at warnies, but she doesn't live there anymore. not sure what will happen and where with that, but something will. but when? my suggestion would be to meet for dinner or food somewhere that day near her nursing home, but that is yet to be determined. toddy suggested that they come over on...

tuesday 12/23: when the family lasagna gets made and eaten. but ted is a vegetarian and the sauce has meat in it and meatballs. my mother gripes about aunt grace trying to make sure he has vegetarian before he gets there and this irks my mother. why, i don't know as i was a vegetarian for 10 years and it didn't seem to be a problem with me doing it, only ted. and ted is too nice to mention it. it is the fact that aunt grace demands it (in my mother's opinion.) it just irritates my mother and we already have tension in that area anyway.
also on tuesday is xmas dinner at brenda/danny/olivia davis' home...in richmond. can't be in two places at one time. we have always gone there for the last 5 years and i actually look forward to that one. but i think that isn't going to work out now, since we would only have xmas day down there and austin doesn't want to go for just one day.
monday 12/22: the cousins have suggested something new for the family, which is a progressive dinner starting with drinks/appetizers at uncle bert and aunt nancy's house. then the main meal at amy's house and dessert at susan's house. that doesn't have to happen, and depends a lot on when my brother shows up, another whole deal.

i called the bro and said make up your mind, so as of a couple of hours ago he was going to drive. that makes it easier for him to come and go when he wants, which may be that he can come home later and stay longer. if he stays longer, could the lasagna dinner be postponed until after xmas? but that also can be a problem, in that what amount of time is austin going to spend with his father and when? we know that xmas day he will have to be there, and that is ok. but what about the next day? the cousins can't switch the time for the progressive, we don't know when the bro is coming, i have the conflict on tuesday, and amy/todd and jack are leaving for tennessee and todd's family the day AFTER xmas.

it is waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy too complicated. and i haven't bothered to float any of this to my mother yet, which probably will be the usual disaster. as my brother said, it doesn't matter anyway what we do, because she likes to control xmas. he and i did agree that we would not fight with each other. that certainly is good considering the disaster of last xmas.

somewhere in here i have to decide if i am going to do anything holiday oriented here...sigh.