Well, no, this isn't my photo. It's one of the ones that comes with Windows XP, I think. BUT I have stood in this exact spot and taken this exact angle of the Golden Gate Bridge myself, and if I ever manage to get my photos organized, there will be actual proof.

We lived in SF from 1973 to 1980, when we moved here. I really loved living there, the weather (barring a little fog) was great all year round, there were a million things to do, and we had a nice place, close, to live. The problems? Well, along with a million things to do were a million people trying to do them too. We left before the story of AIDS broke, which I understand devastated much of the cultural and artistic aspects of city life. We were told when we lived there, that World War II ruined the city, when all the servicemen saw how great the place was, and came back with their families after the war was over. I mean, if you compare SF with LA, is there any comparison? I was stunned by the cost of housing (and it's 10x higher now), the cost of boarding my horse, and the overall rudeness of the people there. I guess if you tick off a customer, it's no big deal, since in a couple of minutes another customer will arrive and buy whatever, no questions asked. It was like everyone enjoyed telling you "no", no matter how trivial whatever you wanted. And the traffic was unbelievable. Any hour, any day, 6 or 8 lanes in each direction, wall-to-wall cars. I was back there in 2000, and had to drive from SF to Danville, and if it weren't for the master designers of CA's signage on freeways, I'd probably still be there, a dessicated corpse languishing in some forgotten side road. I know I wasn't in the car 10 minutes before someone flipped me the bird. So friendly, those CA folks.

Bumper Sticker for today: "I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe."

Uninspired

Once I took a writing workshop, and the teacher had writing exercises for us to do that banished that deadening of creativity brought on by a grim determination to simply write. One of the exercises was to write two pages of apologies. My reaction was "EEEEKKK!" but it turned out OK. Here is what I remember of what I wrote.

I'm sorry I cut that driver off when we both headed for the same parking spot from opposite directions. My justification was that I really needed to get to my meeting on time, but what did I know of the other driver's equally urgent need?

I'm sorry that I didn't speak up for the little geeky guy in drafting class, the one with the thick thick glasses. I know it was as bad as verbally abusing him myself. I hope he grew up to be a gazillionaire in the dot.com boom, and got out in time.

I'm sorry I worried so much about how shy I was, that I never looked around to see other shy people and reach out to them. We would both have enjoyed the gathering that way.

I'm sorry for all those times I used my sarcastic wit to put other people down, never thinking of how it would hurt once it (inevitably) got back to them. I was trying to funny, not cruel, but that's the way it turned out.

I'm sorry I never told certain people how much they meant to me, either as a teacher, a friend, or co-worker. It just always made me too self-conscious, thinking how meaningless MY little compliment would sound. Now they're gone, and I am left with only regrets.

I'm sorry I never had the sister that I wanted and needed, someone to share the burden of helping our elderly parents, instead of adding to their problems. I never felt I could express how selfish and mean-spirited she was without starting a fight that would put our parents in the middle. I'm not sorry she's gone.

I apologize to the pastor's daughter, the one who tried to counsel me not to marry the man I married anyway. I wasn't very polite to her, and she called me only at my mom's urging. This year we celebrate 39 years together, and I wish I could tell her so.

And this isn't two pages, but I apologize to both of my faithful readers for my shortcomings.

Bumper sticker: "Lord, help me be the person my psychiatrist medicates me to be."

Veteran's Day

Of course, it used to be called Armistice Day, back when. My family has always served in the military: Mom in the Navy as a Pharmacist's Mate, Dad in the Army in the Quartermaster's Corps, Aunt Nina in the Navy, husband Norm and his brother and his father all in the Air Force during the Vietnam war. Norm's brother is now disabled, from Agent Orange, and wounded by shrapnel. Norm's Dad was air-flighted home after a heart attack in 'Nam. He had already retired from the Air Force after one stint in Vietnam, but a critical shortage of airplane mechanics had them call him back the second time. He died of metastasized skin cancer, Parkinson's disease, and was blind from macular degeneration, all of which were most likely a result of serving in the Air Force, all the toxic solvents, as well as the Agent Orange thing.

So that's two generations pretty fully represented in the military. Time was, when juvenile delinquents were given a choice between jail time or joining the Army, many chose the Army. Of course the Army didn't appreciate being the dumping ground for all sorts of anti-social misfits, sociopathic or psycopathic or whatever. And now there would be some sort of law against compromising their civil rights in such a fashion. Me, I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but it was a fairly successful alternative for immature 'wild' boys who left the service with a different slant on things. Except for Vietnam, where they tended to come home with a drug habit, malaria, PTSD, and in pieces or a box. The year I graduated from high school is the year the draft was done by lottery based on your birth date. Boys born Jan 24th, 1951 like me, were, I think, second in the draft, so a good many enlisted or traveled to Canada. Either way you sliced it, a hard hard road. Bless them all.

I know there is a certain man hereabouts who pretends to be a Vietnam vet "in intelligence", and I'm sure he isn't the only one. If real veterans find out, they can be really nasty to the pretenders, I've heard. Funny (not ha ha) when you think how the returning Vietnam vets were treated when they came home, that now the ones who didn't even share the ordeal pretend to be what they never were.

So a big thank you to all who served, either in combat or support roles, either during a war or in peace, for doing whatever you could to keep us all safe. And if you, the civilian, have never really been cognizant of the roles they played, a short visit to Arlington Cemetery on a quiet sunny day will give you something to contemplate.

Peace.

Remembrance

Until lately, I've always had a very good memory. Almost eidetic, I could remember who stood where in a conversation, and what was said, nearly word-for-word. This is one reason it annoys me when Norm sums up a 45 minute phone conversation with his sister in 3 sentences, and then later (days later) tells me, "Didn't I tell you about... ".

Anyway, my memory now is shot to hell. I and my therapist think it occurs because I'm dissociated at the time. I've bought things I don't recognize. I've told people information that would better be kept private. Just last week I mailed Norm's sister a card, with "something" inside it, but damned if I can remember what. We had just seen her in Gassaway (she lives in Kentucky) so did she ask me for something? A photo? I don't remember hunting up a photo out of my multi-generational boxes. What else? Genealogy information? I am too embarrassed to ask her, hoping it will come to me.

When I worked, near the end I was training my replacement, who had worked at the Med Center for 25 years, but always for the same person. I had worked there 25 years, for 6 different researchers in 3 different departments. We would go to a lab, and I would say, oh, this used to be Dr. Smith's lab. And she would say "huh? Who?" and it always surprised me. You know you've worked in a place too long (or lived in a neighborhood too long) when you call places by the names of people who long ago moved on.

I have always, though, been bad at remembering names after an introduction. In the horse or dog world, I would remember the horses'(or dogs') names forever, but the owners? Zip. Go figure.

Even more perplexing is when people that I see on a daily basis call me by the wrong name. One lady I corrected 'Virginia" to the correct "Marilyn" said offhandedly, oh, I knew it was one of those states. One faculty member who called me "Joyce" all the time we worked together I never did correct. What would be the point? I always reacted to being called my sister's name, after all.

But the worst thing is when your loved ones forget who you are. My FIL, toward the end, thought I was my mother, and I felt sad, but I let it slide. He didn't recognize his grandchildren, and once asked why his daddy didn't come to visit him. My own father, placed in the same nursing home in which my mother had died some years before, put up a real fuss about wanting to see her. Finally convinced she was dead, he demanded to know why I never told him. I described the funeral, the pastor, the graveside service where one of the deacons sang "Amazing Grace". the dinner at the church afterward, NONE of which he remembered. Near the end, he forgot where he was, who I was, and why he was there. It was anguishing, even though I knew it was very common.

Please, don't let me go like that, tarnishing every ones' memories of what a funny, smart, generous, irreverent person I really am.

Today's bumper sticker: "I'm marching to a different accordion."

Is it just Me?

I've been having trouble today with the blogger web site, just getting into the member area so I can surf. It keeps just sitting there, while the green bar at the bottom gets about two blocks and freezes. Don't you hate that? Shouldn't it say something like, I'm stuck here, could you please rescue me? then a button that says "OK". That would make the whole "OK" thing more bearable, to have the button actually do something worthwhile. So many times when it pops up, I shout "NO!! It is NOT OK!!" but it doesn't help, and annoys my family. Not as much as it does me when it drops me in the middle of Word with only half my file saved.

If you are a reader of Dooce, the original Mother of Blogdom, granted her by being the first person to be fired for what she wrote in her blog, just skip this part. Her post Dooce where she talks about her daughter wanting her dad to dress up as the prince to escort her trick-or-treating while she dressed as the princess tickled me. I once heard an interview with one of the illustrators of Sleeping Beauty who said that drawing the scenes with the prince were the very worst work he ever had to do for Disney. I think he used the word "odious". I must admit, the prince did seem insipid, while the witch was bold and dramatic. As a kid, I was never a big fan of Disney, and preferred Looney Toons (Tunes?) cartoons any day. I've been pleased with the new computer generated animations you see now. For a few years there, the original cell-by-cell artists were retired, and it was thought to be too time consuming and thus too expensive to train artists that technique, so they did that lame-o stuff where they stuck up a crude character and moved the background behind him. Very crude. I still think some of the anime` stuff is crude, and gods know the story lines are hopeless. Yet they remain very popular in the States. Weird.

Today has been yet another laundry day, it is so pervasive I'm surprised all of you can't smell the soap suds and fabric softener rising out of your keyboards. I pointed out to the Handyman Husband that the rack on which I hang shirts and stuff just beside the dryer, has two supports in imminent danger of collapse, just as one of the bars in our closet did a few months ago, but so far no remedial action taken. Who would think that clothes on hangers are so heavy? Moving mine from rack to closet takes several trips, and hanging them on the upper bar in the closet ranks up there with pull-ups, I'm sure. Pinches my fingers too.

Speaking of fingers, do you think the photo of my hands below is trite and boring? I'd like to point out that somewhere in blogdom is a page that shows "My toothbrush", which looks like any toothbrush, and the counter reads hundreds of thousands. I'd link you to it, but I can't find it; instead there are pages and pages of where people actually write about brushing their teeth, can you imagine? Makes reading about what they had for lunch absolutely riveting by comparison.

Have I bored you utterly? Probably your 30 seconds are long gone if you made it to here, so you are dismissed for today. I'll try to think of something challenging to write about tomorrow.

Today's bumper sticker: "God was my co-pilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him." (Apologies to all the religious wing nuts.)

Handy (wo)man

It's an overcast windy cold day here, and both husband and I are feeling rather poorly. I suspect we have merely caught a cold, but it sure does take the starch out of the sails. I've been trying to get my hands in better condition, so today I did a hot wax immersion thing followed by gloves that massage and heat, and my hands look great! For a while anyway. The thing is, you have to take your rings off, because being metal, they conduct heat rather too well from the hot wax. I could barely get mine off, which means they won't be going back on, either. For some reason, a ring I can't remove irks me, like a hangnail, and I can't bear to slide it on once it's off. Most of my rings are oversized, and in fact, my wedding band falls off in the shower, clang! So I can't risk it going down the sink drain, and have left it off as well. (Have you ever had to remove the sink trap to retrieve something, and seen all the yuck in there? Were you tempted to leave whatever it was that went down?) Anyway, ringless for a while.

Handy

Today's Bumper Sticker: "This is just a STUPID BUMPERSTICKER but you're still squinting to read it."

Letting it slide

Food in Lab

This is the sort of thing I looked for when I audited labs at the WVU Health Science center for OSHA and safety code violations. Do you watch NCIS? Do you remember seeing Abby, the lab tech, always has a big cup of soda/slurpee whatever that she drinks in the lab? And that Dr. Mallard sometimes is eating his lunch in the MORGUE (Ewww...)? These two violations alone would close a lab, lose Abby her job, or at the very least mean a fine and/or a visit from OSHA, if reported to them. It really is a BAD idea to eat or drink in a lab; labs have usually been in use for decades, with dozens of workers spattering who knows what where. Once you touch some chemicals, all that stands between you and death is not putting your finger in your mouth. Some chemicals will penetrate directly through unbroken skin and kill you long before help can be gotten; I used to routinely use such a chemical, called DFP, which is a protease inhibitor. I was very very careful with it, more even than with isotopes.

Anyway, I am very tired tonight, so this is a post only in so far as NaBloPoMo goes, so I don't miss a day. If it's boring, move along, nothing to see here...

Bumper sticker: "It's as bad as you think and they're out to get you."

Moving along

I recently ran across a web site which posted "found" photos in an effort to re-unite them with their owner. At the time, I was just curious, and read the notes on successful postings, but I didn't bookmark it, and when I tried to find it, I couldn't. So here is my story:

I bought my Sony dsc 5 mpxl camera from a pawn shop here in WV. It had a memory card, but showed "no photos" other than the ones I took at the shop. But I knew the memory card should hold more space, and yet it gave me "full" when I tried to put more than 2 or 3 photos on it. So I did a download to my computer, and all was clear. The memory card held some 150 photos taken in San Francisco (we used to live there) in Nov. 2006, and featured mainly two men who were sight-seeing. I have no idea who they are, but for the sake of serendipity, here is a sample photo:

Look familiar to anyone?

New bumper sticker: I may be slow, but I'm ahead of YOU.

Tick-tock part two

As you may remember from This Post , I recently bought a wind-up chiming wall clock on ebay. It arrived in less than pristine condition, so I sent it off to the local clockman, and after a few days, got it back. He told us a bit about the clock, that it dated to around 1900, was made in Japan for export to the USA, and that prices for these clocks has not gone up like those from, say, Germany, although in some cases they are the same mechanism inside. I've never pretended to understand any part of the antique market, and I knew when I bought it, that this clock was a small unpretentious specimen. What I wanted it to do, was run. Thus the clockman, and $85 later we have a functional clock.

Except it wasn't. Functional, that is. We tried three different places to hang it, since few if any of our walls are truly plumb, and used all manner of shims to make sure the clock was level in three dimensions. But alas, it failed in the fourth dimension, and thus a call to the clockman again. He had it for a day or two, and then called us to come get it. When we asked what was wrong with it, he asked, "What side of the road do the Japanese drive on?" and Norm said, well, like the English, they drive on the left. Clockman, he say the clock will work now that it has been wound. We had tested the winding CLOCKWISE like any sane person would do, and it was tight and we opted not to force it. However, it actually winds COUNTERCLOCKWISE, which would have been a nice thing to point out when he was giving us the history of the thing. It is now hung satisfactorily on the wall, and every Sunday night I wind it, along with the chimes (which do wind clockwise, go figure), and everyone is happy. If somewhat embarrassed.

Bumper sticker for today: "Not always right but never in doubt."

Election Day

AT last election day has arrived. I am so sick of hearing all the rhetoric I could scream. Of course now, we'll have to listen to post-election analysis of what went right/wrong and what this will mean for the country, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

I kind of like the new voting machines we have, electronic but with a paper copy generated at the same time that you can read to verify for yourself. I remember the first time I voted, in 1972, it was those huge old mechanical machines, you stepped inside these musty old grey curtains and pulled a lever, and the curtains closed and the ballot choices were revealed. For each selection you flipped a little lever, like a flapper, and when you were all done, you hauled on this big 'ole handle again, the curtains opened, the votes tallied in the innards of the machine, and it was ready for the next voter. The only refinement this year from last, is that instead of touching the screen with your finger, they give you a little rubber gizmo that reminded me instantly of an ear syringe, used to touch the screen more accurately. I can imagine the finger active screen being a real problem, especially in our area, between crippling arthritis and industrial accidents making hands less than fully functional.

The ladies who do all the work at the voting place must have the patience of Job, repeating the directions over and over. We had to wait about 20 minutes to vote, unheard of in our little precinct, so the turn out must be huge state-wide. It always makes me feel more content when there is a good turnout, thinking of all those people exercising a choice that few people in the world have the luxury of doing. I wouldn't want it to be compulsory to vote, though, like it is in Australia, having all these voters just going through the motions without ever even getting informed about who they were voting for or against.

I sure was sorry, though, to hear abour Obama's grandmother passing today, win or lose I'm sure she would want to share it all with Barack.

Bumper sticker for today: " I'll procrastinate tomorrow."

Cleaning up

Just about this time a year ago, the three stall barn with tack room and workshop was finally finished. We had stored all the tack gear in a u-store-it place because we dismantled the old barn and tack room to re-use a good bit of the wood in it. I had fully intended to clean everything, either while it was at the storage place, or as I put it away in the new tack room. Such a dreamer! It all just got sorted a bit and then shelved. The saddles all got a new saddle stand that held three saddles, one on top of the other, free-standing, but that was it. Imagine how I felt when I took the saddle covers off (those I did wash), and saw this:

Before


After

The second photo is, as you can see, the other side of the saddle, as it was only half clean at this point. It took ages. And this is the easy saddle; the other Western one is carved, not smooth leather, and every inch has to be cleaned with a toothbrush and leather cleaner, before oiling it. And it is sterling silver trimmed, and a lot of the the trim is in the form of lacing, which means being careful to not get silver polish down in the holes where you can't reach to polish it out. You'll notice I haven't put up a photo of that one. I'm still debating whether cleaning the silver is even worth the effort; no showing any more for me.

Anyway, the third saddle is a Wintec English all-purpose saddle, made of something sort of like neoprene, and you can clean it by (can you believe it?) hosing it off. Not that I have ever actually done that; it, of course, was not dirty after storage anyway.

Saddles are just intrinsically lovely, don't you think? All handmade, a dying art in the USA, good for virtually forever with care, so much skill and centuries of refinement in the structure. Not much that's made by hand like this anymore in our use-it-then-discard society.

Bumper sticker: "Come the Rapture, can I have your car?"

Kitten update

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we made a poorly thought-out trip to the local animal control shelter (aka the pound) and came home with two kittens, one a very small black? dark brown? female, and a mixed Siamese female. But I kept having thoughts of another cat there, and I kept calling to see if anyone had adopted her, or if she was nearing her "expiration" date. Monday I, against even my own better sense, went to the shelter and brought her home. We call her Dottie, because other than a grey smudge between her ears, she is an all-white cat with polka dots.










BC is on the top







Mellow is in the middle
















This is Dottie on the bottom. Don't those ears look like satellite antenna?








So today's Bumper sticker is a button instead: "I smile because I have absolutely no idea what I am doing"

(Such a friendly clerk today at the store. Clueless, but friendly).

it's November already!

So I'm lying here in bed, noodling on about the stitchery I'm doing, and suddenly it hits me! November! And that means, as all you NaBloPoMo followers know, that means I need to post every day for the month of November. I tried to come up with a list of topics beforehand, so I could just pick one, but they all sounded so trite or were about subjects that I knew nothing about ( which is a topic in and of itself). So I decided to write about football. I only attended one of my high school football games, at the Orange Bowl. As I recall, all our games were played at the Orange Bowl, the local schools were so huge (our school had 4000 students). The only thing I remember about the game is shouting "first and ten let's do it again!" without the slightest idea what that meant. The other main impression was seeing the dolphin jumping out of it's pool near the scoreboard. I never saw the Miami Dolphins play, but we did go to the Orange Bowl game once after I was married. It was Notre Dame and Alabama, and we rooted for Notre Dame (the quarterback was Joe Montana, I think) and we were seated in a sea of red, and not very popular, especially with the kids seated behind us. I swore then and there I'd never attend another game, the benches were excruciatingly painful and dumb me had no idea that the 15 minutes per quarter would take 45 minutes or an hour to play. Each. And I never have gone After all these years watching (reluctantly) on TV, I really can't understand why anyone would bother to go, you can see so much better on TV, it doesn't cost you the GNP of some small countries to attend, you're warm, comfortable, don't have to stand in line to use the bathroom, can make your own snacks instead of patronizing the local roach on wheels, and best of all, when the game is over, your only responsibility is to hit "off" on the remote, and not fight traffic for three hours getting home again.

But then, i don't understand NASCAR either, all those cars going round and round and round; wouldn't you think they should have pop-up targets or something to liven things up a bit? I can see a race like Le Mans, but Nascar?

Anyway, I've stretched my limited wit around something I know nothing about, so tomorrow it will be onward, onward, to a new topic.

New bumper sticker: Buckle Up! It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car.

Question

OK, I'm sure there is some simple solution for this. I want to save all my posts to this blog (about 200) to a file on my computer (or a thumb drive). Other than using "select all" and then "copy" to Word, one page at a time, is there any way to do this in one, so to speak, stroke? So many pages this way.

Any suggestions gratefully acknowledged.

My Evil EBay Addiction

Well, first I need to explain that I began EBaying in 1997, back when I still had to explain how it worked, and the response would invariably be "What, you send them money and THEN they send your stuff??!!" But as we all know, for the most part it does work. Or maybe I've been lucky, or naive, or too cheap to spend much over $45 for anything. Anyway, even after all this time I am constantly amazed at what you can find for so little effort.

As an example, I wanted a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, you know, the three ring binder one with the red and white checked cover? But not just any version, I want the one I have, tattered, spotted, missing pages and broken spine. I check ebay and there it is, apparently unused, sitting on someone's shelf all these years (1972). Naturally I was high bidder, and it arrived Friday. I'm having the pages with my favorite recipes laminated and punched, they'll be easy to find and won't tatter so that tsp looks like Tbsp. My version looks so-- so-- abused in comparison.

But it is all getting out of hand now. I bought a wind up chiming wall clock, and then spent $85 (so far) and it still won't run, just sits there dinging sullenly on the hour-- but which hour? It needs rehab.

I bought a lovely winter jacket, even though I have 5, not counting the mink, which we won't if I have any say and I do. It was so lovely, and so cheap! Who could resist?

I bought cartridges for my fountain pens; three silk blouses; one pair of Tencel pants so the blouses would match something; a set of king size sheets; two other shirts, a loony tunes mug for N after he left his on the car roof; an embroidered jean jacket, a suede jacket, underwear, oh the list goes on and on. All the above is just for Oct.

So the only way to control myself is to NOT LOOK. Well, I do need to do feedback, but that's IT.

Though I've heard Ruby Lane has a good bit in the way of antiques....

Bumper sticker: "I bet Jesus would use His turn signals!"

We've got to stop meeting like this

It's 1 AM again; still tired; drugs soon. I spent most of yesterday painting N's bedroom, now that the stinking carpet is gone. Since all the furniture is gone, we might as well paint the ceiling, too, right? Only I ran short of ceiling white and had to get more. N was out of town (DC! As if they DO anything there that couldn't be done in a conference call, saving 7 hours on the road.) but before he left, he selected and bought the paint. No ceiling paint, didn't bring in the ladders, didn't hunt up the paint roller handle, OR even more critically, the extension pole for the roller handle. No little hand held bucket for using with paint when cutting in around windows, ceiling, etc. No brushes hunted up by me that didn't look like green enamel, including the one I bought just for this job. He bought wall paint (and left it in the car!) and 4 roller covers, bringing the household total to around ten. So needless to say, I was off to a slow start. I got the ceiling painted, one wall including trim, and one wall almost finished (slowed down by window trim). I'm feeling pretty puffed up, 'til N call to see how it's going. I honestly think he expected it to be all done; but the way I see it, I painted 3 sides of a six sided box (we will paint the floor too, to seal out kitty effluvia). So I've done my part, assembling all the tools = taking the place of the little bit of the second wall not finished. With extra credit for reaching over my head for hours to do the ceiling, once I bought a new pole extension for the roller.

So my plan today is to stay clean until after my therapy session at 11:30, and then "help" afterwards, while N does the heavy lifting.

oh yeah, and he picked the paint. It had been a blue-gray color, but he bought a teal bedspread etc., so he wanted a more aqua shade. I suggested the first one he picked was a little dark? don't you think? The color he chose is bright robin's egg blue. I think it sucks, but I won't have to look at it much either. The many benefits of separate bedrooms. At least it is covering the cat piss sprays and coffee slop. When all the old rug came out, it apparently was a record-breaker for the crew, smell-wise. What a claim to fame. N, natch, has almost zero sense of smell, and couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

Meanwhile he is sleeping in the LR, and none too pleasant in the morning.

Bumper sticker for the day: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

Wish us luck...

One A.M.

I am so tired I can't sleep, because I ache like a sumbitch. Two nights ago, I took double Ambien before bed, just so I'd finally get a solid night of sleep. But I got up to use the bathroom, got dizzy and fell on my butt. This would have been merely embarrassing, but I fell on top of a large ceramic pot (like an old style chamber pot) and smashed it into smithereens. In addition, it contained clean kitty litter. I got shapnel in my butt too, and BIG bruises. It was a Christly mess to clean up. The cats were Thoroughly Entertained. Me, less so.

Yesterday I worked on cleaning out the computer room, most especially the desk that sits just inside the door, so handy for dumping whatever papers or receipts or whatever, until the desk disappears and everything is slithering to the floor. The computer itself resides on a "cockpit" desk (I don't why it is called this, when the user can scarcely be called a pilot) which is corner shaped, with the big desktop being a drawing-board sort of thing that tilts. We built it from a kit in this room, which was empty, and I know that it will never make it out of here except with the help of an axe. But the desk--it goes. I want a double doored metal cabinet for supplies, on wheels, but I had no idea they were so expensive (to me). $300 dollars and up! For $300 I could buy a lot of Banker boxes and store them on the floor, of course I wouldn't be able to find anything, that's not too different from now. Have to check out used office supply places. Meanwhile I'm campaigning to get the desk off to Goodwill before our possessions expand to once again occupy the space. It COULD happen. I do have a metal lateral file cabinet shoved under the stairs, but I think we'd have to demolish the stairs to get it out. Such are the perils of living 28 years in the same house.

Meanwhile N has been clearing everything out of his room in preparation for the removal of the most stinking carpet I have ever seen. I don't in god's name know how he could sleep in such a stench and NOT NOTICE. We had a cat, you see, who... well, you get my drift. They rip up the old stuff tomorrow, then put in hardwood flooring on Friday, giving us time to paint, most particularly, to paint the plywood subfloor with polyurethane to seal the stains, since they resist any attempt with any solvent except gasoline and matches to de-gag them. It should improve the air quality in the house immensely. There are also new shades and new curtains and bed linen, although one comforter will need to go to a commercial laundry to be washed. This weekend has been one wild and wonderful time, rest assured.

New Bumper sticker: My mind is like a steel trap. Rusty and illegal in 37 states.

And watch out for those pollsters, they hide behind every phone pole and leap out at the unwary. That's why the call them "POLEsters".

Doing better, touch wood

My psych. dr. started me on Abilify last week, and by gum, it really seems to make me feel cheerful. Only one crying spell, talking to my manicurist (or as I call her, my second therapist). I have been going to the same lady for, oh, I don't know, 20 years? We know each other well. She is having a pretty tough time financially, fewer people do an every-two-week, it is a luxury, and her daughter and grandchild live with her. She's had to take a second job, she works as a private duty caregiver for two elderly women. I know for damn certain I couldn't do it.

Also, I went yesterday to the neurologist the G.P. referred to me, and I think I've come up a winner in this too. He told me much more about my migraines, and that the med I was taking (MaxAlt) to try and kill them at the beginning of an attack wasn't being taken as I should, they should work better now. He emphatically told me he would not give me any new 'scripts for new treatments, as I am taking too many for too many conditions as it is. He did give me a cortisone shot on my left neck for my neck spasms, which he said are directly related to the migraines, and a short (10 day) course of prednisone to hopefully stop the "rebound" headaches that lay me out in bed with a dark hot mask, no noise, no bad smells, no food, for hours. He said the sensation of an "ice pick" pain is very common in migraine sufferers, showed me a description in a med textbook that I could have written--who knew? I thought I had a brain tumor! Anyway, if any of you out there are migraine-ous, I'd see about checking with a neurologist.

And finally, we adopted two pound kittens on Tuesday, we call them Mellow (siamese) and Monet (long hair black or chocolate kitten), both females already spayed. They are supposedly 12 and 9 weeks respectively, but I'll eat the kitty chow myself if Monet is over 5-6 weeks. She is half the size of Mellow, and not too good with the litter box yet. Peed twice on my bed (sob). Confined both in the bathroom last night, and since Mellow uses the box consistently, we're hoping the little one will learn what her mama didn't have time to teach her. Photos soon.

We didn't "need" these kittens since we already have 4 house cats, but two of them are very old (not sure exactly as they were strays we took in) and the other two are getting up there age-wise, so these new ones should infuse a little playfulness and variety. Once they finish hissing and running away, that is.

That's the news (such as it is) from here.

New bumper sticker--
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Tick tock

For a long time (30+ years) we have had a chiming wall clock in the living room, nothing fancy or expensive. We stopped winding the chimes because N found they drove him crazy (a short trip at the best of times). Recently the clock has been losing time in a major way, maybe 10 minutes a day, causing us to miss the first 10 minutes of NCIS, obviously a serious oversight. So I decided to look into getting another clock, and bid and won a nice clock of similar type on ebay. And THEN! in a lightning moment of insight that has long been the hallmark of my cerebral faculties, it occurred to me that a pendulum clock can be slowed by lengthening the pendulum, and sped up by shortening the pendulum, and for this very purpose, there is a little adjustment screw on the end of the pendulum rod, to move the weight up or down. So viola! the clock now keeps perfect time again.

But the new clock...when it arrived, the minute hand was unattached, the top of the case was broken, and the whole thing is, well, a mess. How do people get photos to post on ebay that make their stuff look BETTER than it really is? When I take photos for similar purposes, the newest slickest most perfect condition item looks like I unearthed it at the dump, dusted it off, and put it up with a reserve bid of $$$ dollars! Anyway, there is an actual CLOCKMAKER locally, who didn't bat an eye at the battered clock, and in 8-10 days I should have another, smaller, sweeter chiming clock, which I will try out in the dining room. The clock guy says this one dates from 1900 or so. Will post an "after" picture, but here is the photo for the eBay "before" listing:






Favorite bumper sticker: "CAUTION I swerve to hit cars at random"

Little Progress

This post is going to feel a little different from those in the past. My therapist and I decided to drop our sessions for a while. I have been drifting, just visiting while I am there, and while that is enjoyable, it didn't really get me any further along in my search for peace and ---could it be?? ''a modest modicum of happiness?''

Currently, my major problem seems to be finding the get-up-and-go to accomplish anything, and for the first time in my life, I can't blame the pressure of my professional career work. Indeed, the lack of structure of any given day seems to lead me to take long naps while the laundry is slowly gaining sentience, I think, as it does bulk. Granular white powder seems a weak defense. Dinner has become a fairly slap-dash affair, we fill our plates with what's on offer, and scatter to the four winds to eat it. Lots of paper plates to follow, then to be stuffed into bags and hauled out to the curb to disappear quite early in the morning. We frequently seem to run out of spoons and table knives, i don't quite know why.

The dogs, all 200+ pounds of them seem to revel in the fenced area they share with the horses. I do wish they would stop splashing in the water troughs,making them too mucky for the horses to drink. In retribution, the horses occasionally leave a fecal decoration in their water buckets, so I guess it works out fair.

As far as golf goes, N decided we might benefit from a home pitching cage to practice driving. The kit arrived, but we are to supply the metal supports for the frame. N and son went to Lowes and had them cut to length, but alas! The Subaru Forester was a wee bit shy in the length department, and so the metal poles broke the windshield. $200 repair. I"m sure the neighbors will be endlessly entertained. N is pretty good. But I keep thinking of all those years I bowled on a ladies league, week by week. I even came in on weekends to practice. I think my all time high game was 135. My average at the start and the end were the same...105.

I think I may just be the cart-driver.

New bumper sticker: Draft SUV drivers First!