WEST BADEN SPRINGS HOTEL

Recently my mom and dad passed away, and my cousin, Tracy, came to stay with me a couple of weeks to help get me comfortable and back on my feet. It just took a couple of days to convince me to start trying to venture out again. In an effort to have a day of normalcy, we drove up to French Lick, Indiana, which is just 25 miles from my house. There's a casino there, and the two of us, huge gamblers that we are, lost our $25.00 after a couple of hours and scooted up a couple of miles to see the West Baden Springs Hotel. It has been recently renovated and I knew there was a lot of hoopla associated with the place, and as close as it was, which is pretty common for people who live near a landmark, I had never seen it since it was done. The last time I saw that old historic hotel it was a shambles and renovations had not yet been funded.

The place is a huge draw for celebrities and I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to visit French Lick/West Baden, even if Larry Bird WAS born there and lived there, and occasionally does still live there. I have seen photos of the newly remodeled hotel, but until you walk in there, you cannot even imagine the beauty of that place!

Tracy and I walked in and the first thing we saw was a group of models doing a photo shoot, modeling wedding gowns and other more upscale clothing. After standing there with my little camera, in the midst of probably some of the most famous photographers in the Country, we wandered off to find our own chaise lounge to pose on. I won't post those photos. LOL!

But from the top:
Photo #1: A "few" of the rooms inside the dome. The lobby was so spectacular we really didn't need to look much further.

Photo #2: Looking up at the dome. Tracy had to put her hand on my back to keep me from falling over backwards while I took this.

Photo #3: Part of the huge front porch. We sat there in a rocker and had to force ourselves to get up and finish our own little walking tour.

Photo #4: The fireplace in the lobby. How magical, don't you think?

Photo #5: A woman graciously offered to photograph Tracy and me together. Aren't we adorable?

Photo #6: A view of the porch side from the gorgeous gardens.

There were more pictures and I'll do a separate blog a little later. Just wanted to share quickly!

HERE'S WHAT HAS HAPPENED - A SHORT DIARY OF MY DAY

Mom died in August. I wasn't ready for it, as children never are. But she did. There's nothing that can be done about that now, there never was, of course. God knew her day and God reached down and took her home where she can live without pain and sorrow and frustration. Where she can travel to and from at will.

Then God played a joke and gave my dad cancer almost three months to the day of Mom's journey home. Well, it's not a joke of course, and God didn't mean for cancer to be the definition of my dad's last days/months/years. And maybe God isn't finished with him yet. I told him that today as we sat on his bed at the nursing home and sobbed together. Dad wants it to be over, but we talked about the fact that there's a day written down for him, and that it's not his day yet...and we talked about the fact that we don't get to choose our days...and I cried as I told him how much I love him and that if Cancer hadn't come knocking, I never would have gotten to spend this precious time with him.

But here's what happened today that kind of rocked my emotional world: My Aunt Alice took over as my mother. I was driving out to see Dad after having gotten her e-mail, and I stopped...literally I stopped the car and THEN pulled off to the side. I didn't pull of and THEN stop...first I stopped, then I looked in my rearview mirror to make sure I wasn't about to get hit from behind, then I pulled off and sat there thinking about how life has taken these twists and turns.

I used to think that Aunt Alice just happened to be part of my family. She was like a surrogate mom to me growing up. I lived at her house as much as at my own. Tracy was the sister I should have had and lost. Aunt Alice was the person who healed my heart when nobody else had time. Heck, I'm sure she didn't have time, either, but she dropped everything and did. Anyway, looking back at the events of my 52 years, I realize now how important it was that she was dropped in my path. A stoic, loving woman who has always given of herself without asking for much in return, my own mother dead and buried for the better part of six months now, I realized today that I feel about her the same emotions that I felt about my mom. She's still here for me, still e-mailing, still praying, still asking, still consoling.

Some people never get the chance to have a mother in their lives, I've had the good fortune of having two.

STUPID...RELATIONSHIP

Okay, this story is just so weird and wrong on so many levels, that I can't really think of what to call it. "Relationships Gone Wild" just seems chill-inducing. I don't know who to blame for the "stupid" portion of this.

It seems that the chimp that attacked Ms. Nash and nearly tore her face off, might have been, well, jealous or something.

Okay, I have a link. You can see for yourself. I can't even bring myself to describe it here!

http://www.newser.com/story/51243/crazed-chimp-owner-acted-like-a-couple.html

Have a pleasant Wednesday. I'm not sure if that will be possible after you read this story, but, try, anyway!

STUPID MENTOR

Colorado is a beautiful state. There are mountains and perfect summers and gorgeous snowfalls. There are gorgeous fields of wildflowers that merge into cold, swift salmon-filled streams. There are mountain goats and grizzly bears and then there is the woman who was appointed by the Colorado prison system to mentor an inmate. Her job was pretty easy: Just watch him, get him to court, get him to his probation hearings and don't have sexual relations with him. She failed on the last rule.

This woman not only had sex with the man, she WROTE IT ALL DOWN.

Somehow word got out that there was an inappropriate relationship going on. Knowing how bright some criminals are I suspect he told his best friend and probably former cellmate how in luv he was and like most rumors that get started, it grew, until there was a knock at his lover's door and surprise! It was the cops.

"What did I do?" she most likely asked, as she kicked her detailed diaries and explicit photos under the nearest chair. "You've got it all wrong!! He's my soulmate!"

Stupid Mentor. Of course, we have to give kudos to the judge who sentenced the woman who likes to have sex with inmates to prison with, well, inmates.

Keep em coming. Send your submissions for "Stupid People" to me via e-mail or MySpace Mail and I'll get them on this blog. The above one was submitted by Tracy. Thanks, Tracy, for giving me this interesting Stupid Person heads up!

STUPID EX-HUSBAND

First of all, I could use breast implants so I could find a bra that fits, and because, let's face it, cleavage is nice. I finally found a bra that accentuates that, but I will definitely never be any Mary Carey. I wouldn't mind kicking it up a notch, but not to the point of going through a surgical procedure to get it. I'm just hoping in my next life that gets taken care of.

Anyway, there is a woman in California who had breast implants and her husband paid for those. Now, I don't know what happened between the time she got those and he probably started enjoying them very much, and the time he tried to perform his own surgical procedure to remove them, but I can almost bet it had something to do with her new, gorgeous boobs attracting attention from other people who wanted to also enjoy them.

She was going to visit her mother one day and now being EX-hubby, he decided to ambush her and just slice those saline implants right out and who knows what he wanted to do with them? Maybe he wanted boobs of his own or more likely, he was going to try selling them on the Boob Black Market to recover the substantial amount of money he put into them. It's pretty obvious he never got past the divorce and blamed those salt water-filled bags of plastic for all his troubles.

Stupid Ex-Husband! He somehow managed to stab his ex-wife in the head but the implants remained undoubtedly in place and now he's in prison, probably really glad he doesn't have those breasts, if you know what I mean.

STUPID ACTOR

It was a gorgeous day, blue skies, almost uncharacteristically blue, and the date was 9/11/01. My first granddaughter was due in a couple of months, and life seemed good. I was working in my home office where I had the TV on and suddenly I saw it: That first plane hit the World Trade Center. I was stunned and all I could do was sit with my hand over my mouth thinking what a horrible, horrible accident I had just witnessed, when I saw a shadow on-camera and watched in horror as that second plane hit the other tower, and I, like millions of others, realized this was no accident. America was under attack, and surely thousands of people were dying in front of my eyes. Suddenly another plane was involved, heading for Washington and my heart stopped beating for a few seconds as the implications of what was happening took me to my knees. I ran up the stairs, woke my son, turned on his TV and we sat there and held each other and cried, scared, shaken to the core, sickened.

Anybody who flies frequently knows how security changed immediately. First, every plane was put on the ground, and days went by without one jet stream visible, a surreal silence from noise we never even realized we noticed it was so common. Suitcases were searched thoroughly, I was pulled out of line often and wanded, probably because I was doing some flying one-way, with only a carry-on bag, but one thing was certain: I would not ever, in a million years, try sneaking even a toy weapon onto a plane in my carry-on bags.

January 15, 2009, at LAX. Not much has changed. It's still a royal pain in the ass to fly. Take off your shoes, bag up your liquid makeup and your toothpaste separately, remove your laptop computer from its case and be sure to take off your jacket, all to be put through x-ray. it takes three times as long to get through Security now even when things go smoothly and nobody causes any glitches.

Hopefully you don't ever have Johnny Knoxville in front of you with his carry-on bag with a GRENADE packed in it. He forgot it was in there. It was a prop from a movie and he just happened to forget it was in his bag because Security has become so much more lax since 9/11 that you might just think it would be okay to drop a grenade into your bag and then try to get through there.

The star of "Jackass" really made one of himself. Everything came to a screeching halt. People were held up even longer than normal and I am pretty sure most everyone behind him in line thought exactly what I am about to say here...STUPID ACTOR. Get a damned grip. Nobody cares you were in a movie, I've never even heard of that movie. Just because you are a stupid actor does not mean you are going to get the nod to take a hand grenade through Security at LAX. Jeez.

I don't know...I think it's going to take awhile for me to find someone to overtake this guy for the Stupidity Award.

IT WENT SO WRONG

This next few days, or weeks, or years, because let's face it, there are a lot of stupid people out there, will be dedicated to stupid people. We had the stupid princess a few days ago and now we have this story:

A man from Indianapolis was having some problems in his life. Wah. His wife divorced him, and for good reason, most likely, and he was in a little financial hot water like most of us have been and might be, given these tough economic times.

He probably could have gotten away with faking his own death. He was a pilot. He was just stupid. Somewhere over Birmingham, Alabama, he set the plane on auto pilot and steered it toward the Gulf of Mexico, which was a good idea, had it reached the Gulf, but it ended up falling a little short and almost into a group of houses surrounding a lake. At least that part worked in his favor, it missed the homes, thus avoiding murder charges for him.

Probably had he just parachuted out in Alabama instead of making a huge production of it, things would have worked out better, but diva that he was, he had to call the airport and tell them that his windshield had blown out and he was bleeding profusely. He underestimated how caring American people are. Immediately two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to try to help. The idea was for them to get next to him and try to orient him, wake him up if he was unconscious, and lead him to an airport to land. Boy were they surprised when they got up there only to find that plane empty. Of course, being the people that they were, they called the police, etc. They still thought the guy might be in the plane, but laying down from his injuries, and of course there was a giant bruhaha on the ground when the plane fell from the sky, and the police were not too happy when they got to it and found it actually missing a pilot.

To make a pretty long story short, this guy went to a hotel in Alabama somewhere, having told whoever took him there he had been in a canoe accident?? I mean, a canoe accident? And things sort of progressed from there. He had hidden a motorcycle in a shed in the woods there, so this was pretty well-planned out, just not very intelligently executed. And this morning they found him in a campground in a pup tent in Florida where he had slit his wrists. I guess he realized by then that things didn't quite go as planned for him. And he couldn't even kill himself right because they found him before he bled to death and fixed him and now he is in jail.

All I can say here is Stupid Pilot!

A VERY SAD DAY INDEED

Something very upsetting has happened.

Princess Beatrice had her BMW stolen in London. Wah.

The thing is, you see, is she and her bodyguard were shopping in downtown London, and the brilliant Princess Bea left the car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Now, she is "very shocked and upset."

Duh, you stupid Princess! It was a BMW! And you pretty much just yelled out, "Here, crooks! Come and get this BMW! I've left it unlocked for you...oh, and the keys are in it!"

Some princesses are very smart, some princesses not so much.

MY DOGS EAT POOP AND FOUR OTHER THINGS YOU PROBABLY WISH YOU DIDN'T KNOW

My neighborhood has cats roaming...lots of cats. And for some reason, they all seem to stop in my yard to take a dump.

I have Dachshunds, two of them, Missy and Annie. They are adorable dogs, all pumped up and full of energy. They sleep peacefully in a large kennel at night and in the morning our routine is always the same: Straight from the kennel to the yard for their morning elimination of waste procedure (pooping and peeing for anyone who doesn't understand that). The excitement as they go bounding down the steps is contagious. "Come on girls! Good morning girls!!" They dance at my feet, asking for belly rubs, then rush out into the yard which, this time of year, is usually wet and cold, to get their business done in a hurry.

The other part of our routine is, after I see them both go, I rush back to the back door saying things like, "Come on girls, brrrrrrr...let's get inside and get breakfast!" But they never show up behind me because they are off around the side of the house hunting up the latest fresh pile of cat shit. If the temperatures are above freezing, they gobble down this gourmet delight before I can get to them with the fly swatter, but if it's frozen up over night, oh the GLEE!! They pick up these poop-sicles and head for the back door with them, thinking that I might actually someday say, "Oh, you are such gorgeous creatures! Of COURSE you can bring that pile of frozen cat dung into my house!" They stop at the back door and look up at me with it propping open their mouths, wagging their tails, knowing the fly swatter is coming, then they drop it on the patio to save for later.

I was thinking this might be a nutritional deficiency but then I thought, not true. That is WASTE. There isn't anything nutritious in that. And then I had to come to the grim and embarrassing realization that they just like to eat cat shit.

The second thing you probably don't want to know is that I now have a burning desire to shoot cats that come into my yard. Discharging a firearm in the city limits is, of course, prohibited and frowned upon, especially by your neighbors and especially if you aren't a real good shot. But sometimes I think that a couple of days in jail would be worth it to take the Dachshunds' snacks away from them. It's that pesky court date after the jail time that would make me nervous. I don't do well when faced with irritated authority figures.

Every now and then I get out a hammer and want to start knocking the walls out of my house. Not all of them. Usually just the one between my dining room and the bathroom. I've always wanted a big bathroom with a stand-up shower and a bathtub (Jacuzzi), big plants, a place that I could live in if necessary...a TV, etc. But the problem is, people want to charge money for knocking out walls, and I don't have any.

I am living in fear that if my life doesn't settle down soon, I will be having to live by making tunnels through the clutter in my house, like the old man who they found lost in his own maze. Of course, I could never let actual garbage accumulate like that, but I'm tired, dammit, and I come home and drop everything on the nearest surface and think, "Tomorrow, clutter, tomorrow, you go." Then the phone rings and my plans are foiled.

And last but not least: I am addicted to the blog Fuck You, Penguin. It's hilarious and I keep coming up with my own animal scenarios in my head and say things constantly now like, "Fuck you, cat!" (Only I don't mean that in a cutsie way).

Back to work I go. I have 13 hours to make up this weekend from all the running I did all week, so as tempting as it is to say, "Fuck you, work!" I won't. Yet. Not until later this afternoon. Well, maybe I'll do it now, just to make myself feel good.

I FELL IN LOVE

When I was younger, I fell in love so much and so easily. I loved boys when I was supposed to, starting in about fifth grade. I loved guys when I was supposed to, starting in high school. I loved more mature guys when I was supposed to, starting in college. I have loved men throughout my life.

But when I was born, I loved one man who has continued to hold my heart and my hand. My dad. And I realized a few years back, that he was the only man who ever showed me what true love was, the only man who never walked away from me, and maybe the reason I never was successful in love was because I was trying to find that guy who was just like Dad. It never happened. I have never loved any man the way I love him, and now he's leaving me.

There's a difference, though, in losing a lover and losing a love. Only death could separate Dad from me and death has come knocking. I don't think we ever thought that would happen, and we're both fighting it pretty heatedly.

And so this blog is in honor of my dad who has loved me unconditionally according to the Webster's definition of that. A beautiful man with a big heart and a soul like gold. I'm gonna miss him but am going to hand him over to the angels so he can find Mom and find peace and watch every game all at the same time.

Peace to you, old man! And I love you unconditionally.

TERRORIST COWS

I awoke this morning to another day of pleasant news: There's a new Salmonella outbreak. Well, not really "new." They have pinpointed the dates to somewhere between September 3, 2008, and December 29, 2008. That should make it a lot easier to figure out what food has been sending hundreds running into bathrooms and slamming the door shut behind them.

Myself? I think it is really pretty obvious what is happening: Cows are just frickin' sick of being butchered. They have finally had enough and are plotting to take over the world. We have been chasing the wrong terrorists. The real culprits are those big sad-eyed mooers that we all point at and say, "Oh, look, COWS!" when we drive past their seemingly free-roam homes. (We seem to think that if we make the hot wire thin enough, cows won't realize it's there and will feel more free before being herded off and made into T-bones). Somehow, they have developed a Salmonella gene that is heat resistant.

That's my theory.

Well, that or the rocket scientists working at McDonald's don't heed the little warning sign in the bathroom: "All employees must wash their hands before leaving the restroom." First of all, if you have to have a sign reminding them of that, then really, now...you know what I mean? And second, do you really think that big bad sign is getting sharp teeth and growling at them as they get up off the toilet, forcing them into submission at the sink? I doubt it.

Then, though, if that sign IS working, you have to wonder if there are cameras maybe hidden in the bathroom...criminy, I'm never eating or peeing at McDonald's again!

7 THINGS

I've neglected my blog for a long, long time, and my cousin has dragged me back with one of those question and answer things I think I'll never get involved in but do anyway. This one is called 7 Things. Here's what I'll be doing: Telling you 7 things about myself that people might not know. So here goes:

1. I believe in ghosts.

2. In 1976-77 I played on the men's tennis team as the sixth seed at my junior college. They didn't have a women's team (how progressive was THAT??) and though they tried to find every possible loophole to find a rule denying me, they couldn't.

3. I am addicted to TV. My favorites are "Brothers and Sisters," "Heroes," "American Idol," "New Adventures of Old Christine," and "The Big Bang Theory."

4. One of my favorite places in the world is the Sault Canal at Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. I could stand for hours and hours and watch the ship traffic in and out of the canals.

5. My biggest dream is to someday make a living by writing.

6. I am petrified of the dentist.

7. I was chosen to sing in the Illinois State Choir three years in a row in 6th, 7th and 8th grades. The first year I was a second soprano and the other two years I sang alto.

And that's it. It took me hours to come up with this and so I'm passing the torch on to a few other people.

Here are the rules: * Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog. * Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird. * Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. * Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter and/or Plurk.

I got this from Cousin Tracy and here's the link to her site: http://makemelookfat.blogspot.com/

I'm going to tag my daughter, Jamie, my son-in-law Shane, my friend Syra and my friends Barb, Betsy and Robert.

MESSING WITH THE DNA

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, about our children. AF and I discuss our kids on an almost-daily basis on the phone, and we both end the conversation with a heavy sigh.

Errant kids seem to be more the norm than the exception anymore. Children with no sense of direction who, even as adults, scream, "Mommy!!!" when they have a tummy ache. I don't know about all you other parents out there, but when I finally closed that front door on the last of mine leaving the nest, I expected to go entire days without hearing from them, maybe even an entire week.

But something happened. You know how the DNA strands are all pretty and perfect? Well, it seems that we totally fucked up the pretty colors and now have a huge chunk of gray where the pink was or something. And I think I have figured out what happened: Lead paint and mercury.

This revelation came to me as I was sitting in the bathtub recovering from my ten-hour workday, sigh, trying to talk my 27-year-old son into believing that he probably was NOT going to die from the cut on his pinkie finger, when I flipped to an article in my magazine about Mattel Toys once again pulling products made in China from shelves because of high levels of lead paint. We ate too much lead paint before we procreated. Not only eating lead paint, but breaking thermometers and rolling the mercury around on tables, as well as playing in the waste bins behind physicians' offices to see who could find the most used needles, most likely were not good choices, but who knew?

Just as not knowing how a new drug is going to affect everyone in the long-term, we did not know that gnawing on wooden toys saturated with lead-based paint was going to alter the DNA strands and effect a change in evolution. It only takes a tiny, tiny, TINY portion of gray replacing the pink to screw things up. Not only did we not know then what these hazardous materials were lurking around doing in our bodies, now we have to deal with the fact that we do not have the slightest idea what suddenly removing lead paint from the diets of children is going to do a couple of generations down the road.

When you hear me yelling, "Put every one of those grandchildren back in!!" you all will understand my concern. Hopefully my granddaughter will not be sitting at a computer blogging about what happened to cause her children to have metal heads, because hey, something has to replace the lead, right?

What My Dog Watches on TV

This past Monday night I was busy around the house after work, doing dishes, some light housework that had not been done over my busy weekend of sitting around drinking coffee and shopping, and earlier that evening I had turned the TV on in the living room to keep my four-year-old Dachshund company. She was looking at me with those sad, lonely eyes, the same way my boyfriend looks at me when I have spent too much time working on the computer and not enough time sitting by him while he watches TV. Annie was begging for some company in there, and I was determined to finish what I had started, which is a very rare occurrence for me.

In the kitchen, I was washing dishes, carefully drying them all and putting them away, when I heard domestic violence in the living room. Rushing in there, I found Annie sitting in the recliner facing the television, her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, and one foot on the remote. She tried to regain her composure quickly enough to turn the channel back to the Animal Planet, but I caught her watching "Wife Swap."

Have you not always wondered what your dog watched while you were gone or otherwise occupied? Well, guess what? They apparently are watching "Wife Swap," an embarrassing, obviously sometimes violent and demeaning little reality show that no adult human should watch, much less the home's four-year-old! Okay, okay, she IS a dog, I know that. And when I wrenched the remote away from her, she actually, I swear, cried. I guess that might have been because I got her toenail caught in one of the buttons, but it had the proper effect on me.

What choice did I have then, but to sit down with her and watch the rest of the show, right? I made us a bowl of popcorn and never took my eyes off the TV screen. This was the conversation going on with myself, oh and with Annie:

"That's disgusting! That jerk! He doesn't DESERVE a wife! WALK OUT ON HIM, WALK OUT ON HIM!!"

Annie was very satisfied with herself. I think she knew all along what she was doing. If you cannot get the human's attention with the sad eyes, get her with "Wife Swap."

That crafty little dog! She even set the DVR to record the show! Dogs are definitely smarter than we give them credit for.

Household Appliances

About a month ago the belt on my clothes dryer broke. I cannot imagine why this happened. The dryer is only twenty years old and twirls about three loads of laundry each week, or more, since my children still think they have laundry room rights even though they have long ago flown the coup here.

With a load of jeans in there drying for about an hour, imagine my surprise when I quickly ran downstairs to fold them and hang them up before working, only to find that they were warm but undeniably, without question, still very wet. No amount of standing there feeling them and trying ton convince myself that they had not dried completely simply because the load was heavy, made them any less wet, and I finally resigned myself to the fact that a trip to the laundromat was in my future.

Having spent everything I had on a mid-winter vacation with AF to Miami, knowing that there was not going to be enough money to cover a repairman, I began the routine: This will be FUN! I love people-watching at the laundromat! It will save me tons of electricity at home! It will be like old times, like college, when...and this is where the downside of reality crept in...I was dirt poor and could barely find a dollar's worth of quarters to even DO my laundry. Sigh.

For a month, though, I carried a basket of wet, heavy clothes to the car and drove to the nearest laundromat. I made a couple of friends there; an old woman who seemed genuinely concerned about my welfare on the slick streets and in the bitter cold, and a Hispanic girl and her child. We could not understand one another's verbalizations, but we bonded over the rather boring task of throw it in, feed it money, take it out, put it back, feed it more money, take it out, put it back...finally folding it damp and getting out of there quickly.

Finally, after about the fourth trip to the laundromat, the newness wore off and all I could concentrate on was getting the dryer fixed. Boyfriend told me if I would order the part, he would put it on, so after a trip to Home Depot, only to return with the card with the 800 number for ordering parts for archaic out-of-style appliances, the belt was ordered. It arrived on Wednesday and I met Don at the door with it, threw it toward him and said, "You put this on and I'll go to McDonald's and buy our dinner."

To make a long story short, I returned home from the drive-thru line from hell to find that the dryer, after ten minutes, was repaired.

There is a God!! There was load of wet laundry sulking in the washing machine that I quickly transferred to the dryer. Standing there listening to it tumble around in the heat filled drum of the dryer, the dryer whirring and spinning happily after its long hiatus, my arms wrapped firmly around it, kissing it, there were tears in my eyes.

I sniffed and went upstairs to have my Quarter Pounder with Cheese and fries and was nestled next to my boyfriend on the loveseat when the dryer's buzzer sounded, and did not stop. No quick reminder that the laundry was dry, but a constant, consistent, loud, annoying buzz that would not stop.

Don looked at me and said, "Hmmmm...guess I'll have to fix that this weekend." And I was consoled and happy once again!

Behind Bars

When I go on vacation, generally, being stuck behind bars is not part of the plan, of course, but AF and I spent about an hour in that exact predicament on the second day of our sabbatical to South Florida.

At the desk of our hotel, we learned that parking was definitely not free and that the lot they used was down the street and to the LEFT. Now, one of us heard "right" and one of us was not paying a bit of attention to the directions. We will leave that distinction to the imagination, but anyone who knows the two of us, probably knows which was which.

Day two: Move the car from the prime parking space that was available in the front of our hotel, to go look at cadavers, come back after venturing into the bowels of Miami, Florida, try to find the parking garage our hotel uses.

"Turn here, turn here!" I was only the driver taking directions, so I turned there. The gate to the obviously private garage would not open, and as I was preparing to back out onto the busy street, of course, someone who WAS authorized to use that lot trapped me in from behind. He used his nifty little private gate opener and opened the gate, at which point I was forced to enter the garage and at which point, after his entry into the garage, the gate slammed closed.

We asked the guy how we could get out and his reply was a very friendly, "You can't."

He was cute, we laughed, he did not smile, and we realized we were stuck in a parking garage. He finally told us if we would go sit in front of the gate in our car he would call Security, which he failed to do, and he told us that the security people in that building were "Not nice about this sort of thing."

Finally, sitting in our blue Toyota Corolla with about forty miles logged the odometer, a very comfortable and cute car that we were starting to panic about never getting out of, AF got out and began posing and waving in front of the security cameras, which I am sure caused much laughter and probably people reaching for the nearest firearms, when another resident finally showed up and clicked the gate open so he could enter the garage.

This blessed event caused AF to run to the car and try to get in so I could pull out, but I had the doors locked and could not find the button to unlock them. Thankfully the windows were down and she was able to climb in as I pulled madly out into the street before we were trapped again.

When we called her husband and said, "Guess where we are?" and he replied, "Jail?" we just looked at each other and drove off into the sunset to the parking lot on the LEFT side of the street with no gates and no pesky and nasty security.

Behind bars now has a whole new meaning.

Looking at Fifty

One minute you are wrapped up in a quilt in your living room, drinking hot coffee, wishing for summer, poking at the fire in the fireplace, and the next you are in a sexy Victoria's Secret bra, a gauze island shirt, flip-flops and shorts wrapped up in a Burmese python on a street corner in South Beach Florida.

Life at fifty totally rocks so far!

After a busy day of communing with the cadavers at the Bodies Exhibit in Miami, AF and I boarded a bus for South Beach to have some dinner. It was at the point we began to salivate at the sight of a McDonald's that we realized how little we had consumed in the way of actual, usable calories in three days. Beer at the airport notwithstanding, we had eaten very little.

Standing in line at McDonald's to order Big Macs and Quarter Pounders with Cheese and fries was no easy task. We looked weak and starved, and we looked in the back of the line. Elbowing our way toward the front, really waiting until some mom had to chase her kid and then taking her spot one up in the line became a desperate game, and the food could not get to us soon enough. It was when we had consumed gigantic burgers, Cokes and fries, and AF went back for a second gigantic burger that I realized we were going to have to start eating on that trip.

We strolled Lincoln Mall and shopped at the street vendors' shops and enjoyed the warm, breezy South Florida night. It did not take long for one of us to mention the fact that English did not seem to be the language of choice there and decided to pursue the study of Suskatsusanian, our own private language. We coined terms such as "palm woody," "rundo," "squaro" and our favorite, "whoopsa!" and we spoke it for enough hours that soon we understood each other...and nobody else could. That came to a screeching halt when we ran into the man on the corner with the six-foot long Burmese python that he ceremoniously shoved in our faces. We were talking English pretty quickly after that with such well-known and accepted terms as, "Get that fucking snake out of my face!!"

But after a lesson about the nature of these creatures, we soon had the guy wrapped around our necks and were posing for a couple of fifteen-dollar Polaroid One-Step photos to commemorate our first encounter with what's-his-name.

A few days later, sitting in the relative safety of my own home, I began to ponder the ease with which that animal could have swallowed one of us, especially when he smelled those McDonald's burgers on us. Yikes!

And that was the first day.

New York City by Way of Kansas City

I have a friend, who shall remain anonymous, who decided that in celebration of my fiftieth birthday we should travel to New York City. Never having been there, I am, to say the least, excited about getting this trip underway, even with the threat of noxious gases and bombs in the air.

We leave in a few days, and so this begins the chronicle of our journey. This is Story Number One. How can you tell a trip is going to be eventful? When the person responsible for getting you to your destination tries to route you from your airport in Louisville, Kentucky, to Kansas City, Missouri, to meet her.

Let's do the math, okay? First of all, I have to drive east of where I actually live, ninety miles, to my home airport. East, which is toward New York, and my AF (Anonymous Friend) has to fly from the West, one thousand one hundred and forty six miles west of my airport.

Stay with me here.

So, I drive ninety miles toward the city we are flying to. At first, AF wanted me to meet her in St. Louis. Well, okay, I agreed, even though I was going to go almost three hundred miles backward, small price to pay to meet my best AF for a four-day trip to the Big Apple.

But by the next day, something had happened. I guess because St. Louis and Kansas City are in the same state, she felt that it could not be too much further for me to meet her in KC instead. And her heart was in the right place, God bless it. She decided to fly me eight hundred miles in the wrong direction.

I had to put my foot down. I mean, I love her, and she is going all out to make sure that I remember the commencement of my second half-century of life, but I AM fifty. There are days when it is a bit of a struggle to go outside and get the newspaper, much less fly for ten hours to go a thousand miles. I want the memories to be which of us could spit the furthest off the top of the Empire State Building, you know, real grown-up stuff, not which of us cannot get out of bed because we are so tired from flying.

When I think about this flight plan she mapped out, it makes me wonder if she has maybe been living in her world a little too long. Her brother-in-law wanted me to "drop me off" in New Orleans on my way from Louisville to Albuquerque, New Mexico, once. And I just realized what I need to buy AF for HER birthday! A MAP!

Next installment soon...

My God, I've Turned Into My Grandmother

Growing up in a small town in Illinois, with all my cousins and aunts and uncles firmly rooted to the same spot, too, was, as I look back on it now, a wonderful era. However, being in the midst of it, especially during that awesome, wonderful, incredible (someone else's words, not mine) period of new-womanhood, I would be restless and bored and unhappy, thinking the grass most certainly WAS greener on the other side, and if someone told me once more that it was not, I was going to come unglued!

We were all spread out in the area, as I reflect back, sort of in a circle surrounding my grandmother's apartment building, and again, as I reflect on it, that was probably part of the Grand Plan.

Grandma was incredible. If someone needed a baby-sitter, she was there. If someone needed a few extra bucks, she was there. I didn't appreciate her then.

Being in the middle of her children really is a snapshot of what she meant to them, but she had one habit that pretty much drove everyone over the edge: Ambulance run phone calls.

From where she sat, perched high above the city, she had a bird's eye view of the comings and goings of every ambulance. My family lived east of the city, so the second she knew an ambulance had left the hospital and was headed toward our house, she would call to make sure it was not coming to rescue one of US. If we were okay, she would then call the relatives that lived a little farther east to establish nobody was dying there, and on and on, until she had touched base with every eastward relative. The next ambulance run was similar. But one thing was for sure, she had raised her children under very harsh, sometimes penniless conditions, and it was only fitting that she spent a lot of her life perched up there in the crow's nest of her ship with her binoculars, keeping watch over us all. Those were good days.

I think that, after she passed away, we all expected to find some elaborate tracking system hidden in her closet with dials and compasses and those voice-enhancing satellite-looking systems that you point toward someone and can hear what they are saying from several feet away. There were no tracking devices, however, of course, and I had to just accept the fact that she loved us so much that she had developed her own radar for keeping track of us.

Everyone needs a grandmother with that radar, so I seem to, unknowingly, have taken that on with my crew here. I hear the ambulance, I immediately want to call to make sure it is not going to pick up a child or grandchild or stepchild or boyfriend. The difference is, I stifle the urge.

Land of the Shrunken Heads

During our getting-to-know-you period, you remember that, right? The time when you had so much to talk about that there was never any silence between you? The time that, after ten years or so, became marked by saying, "Shhhhhh, I want to hear what penalty the ref is calling!" Anyway, during that period in the first ten years of our relationship, Don and I learned that we had both always been fascinated by the idea of going to Mt. Rushmore. Every year when we received our new geography books, we learned that we would both thumb through and find the Mt. Rushmore picture.

So, now having a partner in crime to visit South Dakota with, off we went.

We saw some amazing sites during our trip to South Dakota: Huge rock formations that would take anyone's breath away, and we saved Mt. Rushmore for last, knowing it was going to be the highlight of our trip.

After running to the hotel to drop our bags and get checked in, I drove to the parking lot, which in and of itself was massive and very enticing, and we started the trek to the mountain carving that had intrigued us since our youth. The walk to the seating area was impressive. They had a huge walkway with a flag of each state hanging above it, and that was breathtaking. Don said, "Oh, my God, this is going to be soooo awesome!!"

Suddenly in front of us, there it was. The object of our affections. And it was very, very neat. Just listening to the history of it, learning about the carving process, was amazing. We sat there with a couple of hundred other people and listened and waited, and at dark, the lights were turned on to illuminate the presidents and show them in all their majestic glory!!

We were pretty quiet heading back to the hotel. The conversation was a little lulled by what we had just seen. About the only thing we said was, "Was that not just cool?" And "Yeah, that was cool."

Months passed. We were back in our respective routines of working, eating and sleeping, and then one day, as we were watching a show on TV describing the wonders of the world and they came to Mt. Rushmore, I could not keep it in anymore. I said, rather quickly, "I wasn't as impressed with Mt. Rushmore as I thought I would be...I was lying."

Don let out his breath and said, "Oh, GOOD! I thought I was missing something! The whole thing was cool, but the heads...they were...I don't know...like shrunken or something, just not as big as I was expecting."

So forever more, Mt. Rushmore will, at least in our household, be known as The Shrunken Heads.

And there is a moral here: The things you think are so huge when you are young, really ARE just anthills. Take it from me.

The Scottish Terrier Next Door

Yesterday morning I got up early and shuffled to the kitchen counter, poured my ritualistic cup of hot coffee and then raised the blinds and surveyed the small area visible to me, of my neighbor's side and back yards, also ritualistic as I've been standing in that same place every morning, pretty much, for the last twenty-two years. They have a hot tub I can see, a garden and a garage I can see from that vantage point, and a beautiful golden retriever named Rikki, who is, by that time of the day, wandering around the side yard surveying HER surroundings, too.

I never realized the neighbors owned a Scottish terrier, but there it was, standing quietly near the garden at the back of the house, apparently happy, staring off into space at something my human limitations would not allow me to see. I blinked and rubbed my eyes and looked again, and it was still there, standing perfectly still, it's little pointy ears straight up, it's little bobbed tail not wagging.

Rikki just ignored the intruder, as a matter of fact walked right to it and through it, like it was not even there.

Recently I have been watching a lot more TV, since it's cold and I am cooped up inside a lot, and one thing I always seem to tune to are the ghost shows. The haunting investigations. So when Rikki passed through the terrier in her back yard, I became excited and ran for the camera!

Quietly I propped the side door open with my right foot and balanced precariously on the step with my left foot, squatted to get the perfect angle, decided to change the setting on the camera to the "close-up" mode, to insure the picture was as awesome on paper as it was in my head.

Rikki passed back through the apparition doggy and disappeared into the garage, leaving me a perfect shot.

You can see the Ghost Dog in the photo. It really IS there! It really IS there! I probably am the first person in my neighborhood to see it, much less photograph it!

Boy, it sure stood still.

I continued to watch, sipping my coffee, and soon noticed that the little dog was changing shape as the sun began to travel across the sky.

Sighing, I rinsed my coffee cup and headed for the shower, very pleased with myself. I had taken a picture of a shadow in my neighbor's back yard. If I am lucky, the media will never find out about this. We all know how they would pounce on this on a slow news day.

Tomorrow I am going to start photographing UFOs.

Arm Flab and Skin Tags

My paternal grandmother, may she rest in peace and God bless her soul, was a fun-loving and energetic woman well into her nineties, even when that ultimate trick of dementia was played on her. She never lost her sense of humor. And when she was a fun-loving, energetic woman, I was a young stupid one.

After spending an entire Christmas Day viewing Grandma's arm flab unashamedly exposed by a sleeveless house dress, I remember saying to my boyfriend: "If I ever get flabby arm fat like that, shoot me."

At the age of fifty, being her one and only beloved granddaughter, I've realized I am destined to share traits with my grandmother. One, of course, is the sudden appearance of the beginnings of that arm fat. Not only that, but God has played an added bonus joke on me and has blessed me with a couple of skin tags under my boobs.

I can almost see Grandma and God in Heaven sharing a Budweiser and a high five as we speak.

Communities

This is a bit of a change from my usual blogging, but I just had to say this...

There are so many people on the Internet, at some of these community sites, who have so frickin' much time on their hands! I just joined a community called StumbleUpon. You rate websites, basically, and whenever you like one, you give it the thumbs up and it connects you with a group of people who liked the same one.

Today I was humming through websites and ran across one about making chihuahua shaped snowflakes. The guy was on there apologizing, "Oh, I'm sorry that it's not BLUE like all the normal snowflakes, but I lost this program and that color scheme and had to download all sorts of potentially virus-laden crap to get it to look just the way I wanted it..."

I thought, dude, the only thing sadder than hanging around a website making Internet snowflakes and getting that involved in it is...well, sitting here reading about your damned Internet snowflakes and enjoying it.

Well, I'll go stumble around a little bit more and see what else catches my eye. I don't think I'll be adding myself to this guy's little community of Snowflake Makers, though. I really DO have work to do.

Academy Award

This year's nominees for best dying act are: The kid on "House" that saw aliens and the wasp in my kitchen window. And the winner is...THE WASP IN MY KITCHEN WINDOW!!! Applause!! Cheers!

"Oh, man, what a surprise! How thrilled The Wasp will be! Unfortunately, he couldn't be here tonight so accepting the award in his honor is the Academy Award winning actress...ME!"

I have never seen such a poignant death-grip scene in my entire life as the one I experienced this morning. My Dachshund, Annie, was doing her prairie dog act in the kitchen, sitting on her very generous-sized butt, staring first at the window then slowly, so as not to get off balance and fall over on her generous side and not be able to get up, turning her head to look at me to make sure I understood her gesturing, then turning back slowly to the window.

On one of Annie's head-turns in my direction, The Wasp she was pointing swooped out of the window and toward my head. Annie yelped and quickly abandoned the pointing position and just concentrated on getting her little short Dachshund legs and fat little Dachshund ass into the living room, leaving me behind to spray wildly in the direction of the flying Wasp with wasp and hornet foaming spray.

I knew I had won when The Wasp took to the blinds and started stumbling down the plastic rungs one by laborious one, but I covered him with the foam, just to be on the safe side, expecting instantaneous death, which did not come.

Spray.

Stumble.

Spray.

Stumble.

The Wasp began stumbling around on about the seventh rung up. At one point he was hanging on with his front legs, his back legs and thorax dangling, madly rubbing his little waspy eyes with his antennae. Thunk. He landed on the next rung down, on his back, his legs pumping in the air, and he rolled toward the side and thunk. Onto the next rung. He got up, shakily walked toward the edge and thunk. Down to the next rung, this time landing on the edge and rolling immediately off onto the next one.

I, the Wasp Condemner and Murderer, stared with horror as The Wasp gasped for air, his thorax thumping during what I was certain were his last few seconds of life, but no! He buzzed a little, fell to the cabinet, righted himself and started walking toward me. Armed with the hornet and wasp spray, all I could do was watch in total awe as this damned thing clung to life.

He tumbled into the sink where I knew the end was near, then got up and climbed onto the dishcloth, slowly dragging himself back to the cabinet. He fell off again into the sink, and this time I was prepared. I knocked him into the garbage disposal with an apple core, certain that I had finally won the war.

WHIRRRRRRRRRRR...grrrrrnnnndddddddd!

As I turned to the cabinet to find a cloth to start wiping all the leftover death foam from the window, the blinds and the cabinets, I noticed a slight movement in the sink drain and stood, appalled, staring as the battered little insect struggled to the rim of the disposal, at last lying down to die.

I shook my head and washed him down the drain, totally aware that the stinger that was going to be aimed at me while I slept some dark and stormy night was about an inch long and protruding like a medieval jousting sword as he finally went down the drain for the last time.

Looking at the directions on the killer foam can, I read, "Instantaneous death..." I tossed the can in the trash and dug out an old shoe to keep handy for the next attack.

The Robin on the Wire

See that speck there? It's right in the middle of that picture of wires and clouds. That is a robin.

This morning I stood up from my desk and stretched and looked out the window into my back yard and was surprised to see probably one of every bird species that exists in my yard. It was probably my imagination that they were all in orderly rows on the lawn, staring intently at the house, waiting for food to appear. That really is not too far off the mark, though.

The winter birds are back. They do not forget which houses are notoriously generous with the food supply all winter long. They might have very tiny heads, but they must have big brains crammed into that little space.

It took years to give up the old film cameras and move on up there with everyone else and purchase a digital camera. I now have what I refer to as my "practice camera," and while the neighbors all suspected I was a little strange all along, now that they see me taking a hundred pictures of the same tree at different times of the day, in different kinds of light, with the sun shining, during a thunderstorm or even just against that dark blue sky, stopping and changing the setting from "landscape" to "sunset" to "dusk/dawn" to "fireworks" to the "night landscape" exposure, they are scratching their heads and moving the children inside. There is absolutely no doubt that this house will be considered the Strange Old Woman's House at some point soon, the house that the children take dares to walk in front of.

By the time I had gotten the camera and turned it on and selected the setting I wanted to try to photograph those birds, they were all gone. They got tired of waiting, most likely, or maybe they decided to just play a trick on me, but it has been two hours now, and despite the fact that I have put out piles of bird seed in strategic places all over the yard, they have not so much as landed to take a crap in the yard. That, in and of itself, is bizarre, since usually they hit my blue chair from 500 feet, several times a day, just in the process of flying over the house.

Anyway, I might go steal all the food away soon to show them who is boss, but in the meantime, that photo in the upper right hand corner is the closest anyone is going to get of a bird today, so enjoy that!

How Things are Changing

Last weekend I had two of my grandchildren visiting. David is a year-and-a-half old and Kaylee will be five in just a few short days. In the living room, pushed back in a corner to try to maintain some semblance of this being a grown-up home and not a daycare center, is a plastic box full of toys. Several of them are things my own children played with growing up, and nine times out of ten, those twenty-five-year-old toys are the first ones dragged out of the box and into the living room. What a joy to realize that some things will always stay the same.

But don't get too comfortable with that idyllic scene, because in my office sits the five-year-old computer whiz. I used to think that she was playing secretary back there. She would have her cell phone wedged between ear and shoulder, her fingers flying on the keys of the keyboard while she carried on a very detailed fantasy conversation with the person connected somewhere by satellite, explaining why she could not accommodate their requests, usually. Kaylee is Little Miss Control Freak. We all know it. We just are a little wary of what she might be like at the age of, well, six or seven, much less the attitude she will exhibit when she hits puberty. The thoughts of Kaylee having PMS are frightening, to say the least!

Anyway, I used to think she was playing secretary, now I realize she was the President of the United States during all those hours of multitasking.

To my right, I was watching my little grandson play spaceman with a 25-year-old plastic rocket that belonged to his uncle, and on my left was my granddaughter saying, "Hold on a sec, will you? I'll look that number up for you."

Wanting to play, too, I went to my desk drawer and pulled out the big old phone book and told her I would look up the number for her. She spent a few seconds looking at me, then the phone book, then back at me, sighed a sigh of tolerance and began to frantically key something into the computer. Then, watching me like she was concerned I might explode any moment she said into the phone, "Uh, oKAY, I have that number for you, sir. It's 555-5555." Then she clicked Delete, terminated her call and ignored me.

I am perfectly aware that things are changing but when did THIS happen?

Break in the Clouds

Just when you think you'll never see the sun again, THIS happens! HELLO SUN!

Trees and Churches

Profile of a Chinese Throwing Star Smuggler

Would you like to know what a Chinese Throwing Star is? Evidently it is one of those star-shaped sharp Kung-Fu contraptions that superior martial artists can zing through the air at lightning speeds, piercing an enemy's heart from a hundred yards. You have probably seen those used in movies. The scene is usually about the same: A dark alley in a very unsavory section of some large city, graffiti on the walls in the background, a single streetlight shining a yellow glow in the rainy darkness. There are always gang members forming an unbreakable line of defense against a rival gang, and just when it looks as if World War III is going to commence in that alley, someone dressed in black leaps from the roof of a building and throws those Chinese Throwing Stars into one and then another of the bad guys' chests. When the scene ends, we see a
business office in China where men dressed in high-priced business suits are given the news that the deed is done.

Would you like to know what a Chinese Throwing Star smuggler looks like? According to the TSA, she might look quite a bit like the woman pictured above.

My cousin and I were leaving Phoenix to make the short 45-minute flight to Burbank, California, a couple of weeks ago. We had two goals in mind after a wait in a two-hundred person line to check our luggage: Drink a beer.

Being the avid reader and rather compulsive person I am, I had packed my little one-quart zip-lock bag of carry-on toothpaste, make-up and perfume in less than four-ounce bottles for inspection by the security folks, had remembered to remove the bag from my backpack and place it in a bin by itself for x-raying and was very proud that they complimented me on getting that right, so imagine my surprise when, after heaping the praise on, they asked to see me in the secure secure area.

"Something in your backpack is upsetting the screeners," the rather large man with the weapons attached to him said.

"Well, you can go through it," I said in my most confident big girl voice.

"Stand against that wall and don't touch your bag," he said, smiling a terse smile. I could almost hear him thinking, "We've got you now."

Tracy had zipped right through security and was partway to the gate before she realized I was no longer with her. She wandered back into the security area to find me standing with my hands in my pockets, trying not to grab the backpack and empty it out and go through it myself.

"What happened, Cousin?" She smirked at me.

The TSA official said, "Do you wear jewelry? Maybe a broach?"

I said, "The ring on my finger is the only jewelry I ever wear. No, there's no broach in there.

"Well," he repeated, "Something in your backpack caught the attention of the screeners. Are you sure there's not a broach in there?"

Finally, after it was already too late to get that beer that I REALLY needed now, I remembered what was in that bag that was making the "screeners nervous." The proverbial light bulb probably popped on over my head. I giggled, the officer still did not find anything funny about the fact that he had a five-foot tall, one-hundred-twenty-nine pound grandmother of three under suspicion for trying to smuggle a weapon onto the plane.

"I know what it is. It's in that birthday card, sealed up. It's a pewter flower-shaped rear view mirror ornament. It's a gift for my friend's fiftieth birthday. Go ahead, you can open the card if you need to." I was not sure if I preferred he open the card or if I prefer he not, since the card not only contained the pewter ornament but also a picture of a nude man.

He said, "Okay, no, I don't need to open your card. I'll just take it and x-ray it."

As I was preparing the bag to go again, being released from the grips of the TSA at last, I quipped, "I'm sure glad I didn't ask if I could bring my cross-stitch onboard with my little sewing scissors." I laughed a condescending little laugh and the security officer said, "Well, that would have been okay. You can bring scissors onboard."

My cousin smirked and said, "Well, isn't that special? You couldn't take your Chinese Throwing Star on there but you could take a pair of scissors. What a joke."

Out of the side of my mouth I was whispering things like, "Shut UP, please."

Mr. Security now seemed to see the humor in this, though, as he explained to me that yes, a pair of scissors no more than four inches long from the pivot point, would have been allowed.

Does anyone else see the stupidity in this?

The mystery was solved, but the rest of the time spent at Sky Harbor Airport was a fantasy for me. I had always wanted to be the bad guy. I had always wanted to smuggle Chinese Throwing Stars into Burbank, California. I was bad. Everyone knew I was bad. Screw the airline, they could wait for us to board the plane because we were really bad characters and in the movies, they always wait for the criminals.

I corralled Tracy into the nearest bar, slapped down my money and ordered us drinks. Then I took a long swallow of my Corona to wash down my Xanax. It was proving to be a long memorable ride to The City of Angels.

The Tree in My Back Yard - Winter Approaches

Relaxing Hobby

My daughter is a huge dolphin fan...the animals, not the football team. It really is important to make that distinction because if you happen to mention the football team, she gets agitated and starts to mutter things about the Tennessee Titans.

She has loved dolphins for as long as I can remember. School shopping was simple: Every notebook, binder, pencil bag, shirt, towel and watch had to have a picture of a dolphin. If she had to settle for just a plain-jane ring binder because we waited too long to go shopping and all the good pre-decorated ones were sold out, she would draw her own dolphins on the cover. Christmas shopping for her was simple, too, until she had a houseful of kids and pets and ran out of room for cute dolphin sculptures and make believe aquariums. Now I am back to square one on that one.

This past weekend, though, the two of us made the journey to what I lovingly refer to as Hell, what most people probably call Wal-Mart, to do our weekly shopping. For some reason it is simpler with two than alone. With two hormonal women on the loose in the store, one of them most likely is not going to take that stopping in the aisle and visiting with your sister-in-law you see at least three times a week at work, Sunday dinner and next door behavior for long and will get a hot flash and ram into the crowd with their cart, effectively opening a passing space for the other one.

While we jockeyed for space in the crafts aisle, I heard my daughter's breathing quicken and she grabbed for a cross-stitch sampler kit with, you guessed it, beautiful dolphins playing in moonlit waves, handed it to me and said, "You are so good at doing these! Could you please make this for me?"

After all these years, she can still look at me with those big eyes and long lashes and pouty mouth and get whatever she wants.

"Well, gee, sweetheart. I've not really done any cross-stitch for years."

"Please?"

"I work 45 hours a week and that really doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies like this."

"Pretty please?"

"Sigh...okay, yes, give it to me."

I have to admit, it was rather exciting to me, the thought of having my old hobby back. I started recalling cold evenings in front of the fire, cross-stitching the night away; remembering the satisfaction of completing a project, framing it and hanging it in my guest room.

When I got home with the little kit, the little "fast, easy cross-stitch project," I ripped it open, excited to relearn. They had enclosed a "handy thread color sorter" and a tangle of threads, all blues. I thought, "Okay, minor setback, no problem. I'll just take my time and sort the thread."

About an hour later, I was cussing. All the blues were looking alike. I was supposed to have five strands of light blue purple and three strands of pale blue purple and eventually decided NOBODY CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE!

Finally, the stitching could begin. I opened the other little envelope to remove the fabric to find that it was black. Before even attempting the first stitch, I went to my closet and dug out the handy little magnifier that hangs around your neck I purchased when my eyes first started failing me, for projects like this one, hung it around my neck and sat down to count the squares to the middle. By now two hours had passed and I had yet to make the first stitch. One, two, three, four, doorbell. One, two, three, four, five, the phone. One, two, three, the dog jumped up and knocked all the sorted threads into the floor.

I turned on the football game and had a beer and contemplated the fact that my eyes were really, really getting bad.

When finally a stitch had been made with the very dark blue, and yes, there was also a dark blue and blue and light blue and pale blue), I discovered that I could not even see the stitches in the natural sunlight, with a sunlamp bulb directly on the fabric and with a magnifying glass so sexily poised around my neck and resting its little legs against my belly or my boobs.

Calculating my losses, I tossed the entire project in the trash. I will take up another hobby that is not quite as stressful as this one, get a little relaxation going in my life for my after work hours, like manufacturing a hydrogen-driven automobile for GM. She wants dolphins? I am pretty sure I can find that little picture premade somewhere on the Internet, order it, have it delivered gift-wrapped to my front porch, give it to her for Christmas and take credit for it. Trust me here. The hydrogen-fueled car will be a piece of cake compared to that cross-stitch project!

The Microwave or the Smoke Detector?

I never really believed that as people aged they became more forgetful. It seemed pretty apparent to me that what happens there is that people get older, get sick and tired of playing stupid petty games and just simply choose more often to toss the information out instead of cluttering up their brains with it. Seems I have been wrong about that, in a way.

Last week was a pretty long week. The work just kept piling up, I had to put in a fifty-hour week and my daughter kept needing "days off so I can have a whole day to myself without having to go to work or worry about the baby," which translates into, "I know you're tired because you work fifty hours a week and keep your house and cook for yourself and sometimes for us, but my life is so much more difficult than yours, could you please take the baby for a few hours?"

After one of those phone calls, I shuffled out of my office, still in my blue bunny slippers and the red, white and black polka dot PJs a friend had given me for Christmas the year before (comfort clothes; and do not look at me like that...you all know you would love to have a job where you could wear your jammies all day if you wanted - jealousy does not become you), I shuffled out of my office and into my kitchen, poured a half-day old cup of cold coffee and stuck it in the microwave. I set it for one minute and shuffled back to my office, yawning, and settled in to type a couple of more reports.

After the first report was finished, I kept hearing a beeping noise in the house. It was annoying because it seemed perfectly timed to beep just about every half-minute or so. Now please keep in mind that a whole three minutes had passed since I put the coffee in the microwave, not to mention a ton of medical information had gone in my ears, through my brain and out my fingers in that three minutes.

BEEP!

I stopped typing, turned my good ear toward the door and listened...BEEP!

A report later, I could still hear the beeping off in the distance and then, laughing at myself, I finally realized what it was: The battery probably needed changed in the hallway smoke detector.

"I'll do that as soon as I do this next report. Ha-ha, what a relief to have figured THAT one out!" BEEP!

Finally, the workday ended. BEEP!

I stood up, stretched and started digging through the office drawer where all the batteries are kept. BEEP!

There was not one nine-volt battery in the drawer and it dawned on me that I was going to have to wander out in the rain and go buy a battery for the incessantly beeping smoke detector. It is just bad karma to take the battery out to stop the beeping and vow to replace it the next day. If there is one thing my mother taught me well it is that fire is just lurking around in the walls of the house waiting for the moment when the smoke detectors are malfunctioning, and I did not want to take that chance.

BEEP!

One of my rituals daily is to grab my cup of coffee, even if it is cold, and walk out the back door and onto the patio with my dog, to survey the back yard, especially at the end of the day. If it is raining, we scurry into the Beach House and listen to the rain thumping on the tin roof. It is relaxing for us both.

BEEP!

"That's funny," I thought. "My cup of coffee is missing! My cup of coffee is NEVER missing!"

BEEP!

I stood, then, underneath the smoke detector in the hallway, watching it, daring it to beep, when I heard it: BEEP! The insane beeping was not coming from the smoke detector at all. It was coming from the kitchen. It was coming from the microwave oven. It was, of course, the alarm on the microwave, which I had set three hours earlier, reminding me my coffee was hot and ready to be consumed.

Sighing, and looking around hoping there were no hidden cameras in my house with tapes of these escapades that could launch me to stardom on some home video show, I punched the thirty-second button on the microwave and went back into my office to put away my reference books. One caught my eye, and I sat back down in my chair and began to read an interesting article about DNA and in the distance heard BEEP!

My feet propped up on my desk, reading glasses employed, I kept reading and heard BEEP!

About a half-hour later I thought, "Wow, the battery must be dead in the smoke detector. I better change that."

And so it goes.

The Dead Guy's Fridge

A month or so ago, Don's Uncle Lawrence, also Don's Godfather, passed away. There was a lot of family involved, of course, so like all deaths, it was sad and emotional. I paid my respects to Uncle Lawrence alongside my boyfriend, but I have to tell you, having been in the medical field my entire adult life, death is not a big deal to me. It is the next step of life, and believing that, I do not have a horrible emotional response to an old person passing away when his time has come, instead choosing to realize that life will go on for him in some form. Death has never really bothered me much within those parameters. At least, it never did until the old dead guy's refrigerator took up residence in the middle of my kitchen.

My old refrigerator, also a hand-me-down, is pretty much at the end of its term. All the food in the bottom freezes solid, which can be very annoying, and when it kicks on in the middle of the night, it wakes me up with its protesting whining. I knew it was about to blink out. It was fun going to Home Depot and shopping for a new fridge! And I picked one out. Unfortunately, my bank account groaned and moaned and refused to multiply by five overnight so I could afford the bright, shiny new refrigerator with ice and water in the door. At almost fifty years old, I had never had an automatic icemaker of any kind, and that became a big selling point.

Miraculously, as I returned home from one of these wishing trips, my phone rang and Don asked, "Hey, would you want Uncle Lawrence's old refrigerator out of his house? It's almost new and makes the little tiny one you're using now look like a midget."

I thought it through for about one second before asking, "Does it have an icemaker?"

Don said, "I don't know. I can go over and look, though."

Again there was a short pause from my end, "Okay, if it doesn't have an icemaker, don't bring it home."

An hour later Don called back and said, "It has an icemaker but just in the freezer, not in the door."

The important fact that I had demanded my next fridge have an icemaker and ice water dispenser in the door, flew right out the window with the next comment from Don, "It's free."

The next day Don's brother told him he could help bring Uncle Lawrence's huge, practically new Whirlpool fridge to my house, and when they offered that I said, "Oh, GREAT! I'll get in there right now and clean out the old one so you can take it away at the same time!"

Deafening silence emanated through the phone, and then Don informed me that they were just bringing the new one over, not taking the old one away. They would take the old one away in a week, on Saturday, when they weren't so tired from working.

"No, then, don't bring that over here because I..." Click. "Don't have room in the kitchen for it."

Within thirty minutes, the dead guy's refrigerator was planted in the middle of my small kitchen, and it IS big, trust me on this one, still full of whatever the dead guy was eating before he kicked the bucket. I could not believe that people actually eat Banquet TV dinners. Totally. I mean, as their complete diet. No wonder the guy passed away.

At least a dozen times a day I am forced into the kitchen with that monstrous box. Honestly, I have to turn sideways to get the coffee started, and it is necesary to step over a chair and onto the linoleum breakfast nook floor to get to my nightlight to turn it off and on. After two days of that I learned my lesson and just left it on. How much electricity can that little tiny bulb use, anyway?

I have that refrigerator plugged in and have transferred my meager contents from the other one into it and have learned that one of the biggest advantages to having it in there is that the grown children, who usually head for the kitchen and the food in the refrigerator like they have bungee cords attached between them, the second they show up, are a little put off by the comment, "Sure, go help yourselves to anything you'd like to eat out o the Dead Guy's Fridge." My grocery bill just dropped by about half!

Cheers, Uncle Lawrence! Come visit your kitchen appliance anytime you'd like! After all, it is yours. Grab yourself a beer and visit for awhile. Just don't get any ideas about taking the fridge back anytime soon. If it goes missing, I will definitely know there's a party going on somewhere and as soon as I get invited, I WILL find my refrigerator!

Define "Social Group"

Once a year my employer encourages that each of us attends "Wellness Week." They kicked this off when it became apparent that hospital employees, faced daily with the stress of tending to the needs of physically and mentally ill patients as well as the more stressful stress of dealing with their concerned, frightened and sometimes just rude, family members, might be, themselves, becoming mentally ill.

Ten years ago, the Wellness Week took a couple of hours out of one of our days and consisted of going to five different booths where we were weighed and educated about weight loss and offered a ton of brochures as well as the support of the dieticians on-staff to help us maintain a healthy weight in a setting where the only entertainment one gets is stuffing one's mouth with candy bars and Little Debbie snack cakes from a vending machine and washing it down with a can of Diet Coke on our massive ten-minute break. We looked then, and still do now, like addicts, huddled together in the break room, our eyes showing the strain of some tragedy or other that has befallen us that day, eating massive amounts of sugar and consuming gigantic amounts of caffeine to insure that we can head back into the battlefield for another four or six hours.

Another booth taught us stress management. That one was always the one with the line. Frazzled-looking healthcare workers dressed in scrubs with beepers attached to their pockets. More often than not, three of those would be going off at the same time and almost always while we were in the stress management line. It was almost like they were watching and finding the perfect time to page us, like an experiment using people instead of rats or monkeys. As the paged person shuffled out of the line and toward the door, the entire stressed out line would turn and watch him go with looks of empathy and sympathy on their tense faces. It was usually the most depressing part of my day, just watching those people leave accompanied by, "Beep, beep, beep, beep..." You could hear it even as they went out the door at the end of the hallway and approached their hell. But, if you were ever able to get to the head of that stress line, there was a social worker, looking well rested and happy, who would sweep you into the solitude of her cubby and reward you with cartoons and a quick five-minute counseling session before shuttling you out and into the next line.

That next line was usually a smoking cessation line. It, too, was pretty long. Nothing like having the nurse taking care of a nauseated, vomiting sick person while saturated with cigarette smoke. It did not take long for the hospital to realize there just was something not right about treating lung cancer patients who have smoked for fifty years, when your healthcare workers stunk like Camels (the cigarettes, not the animals...although there WAS a personal hygiene line for the people who tended to smell like the animals).

By the time I would make it to the smokers line, I needed a cigarette. Never having so much as taken the first puff from a cigarette myself in my entire life, I fully understood it's calming properties just the same. I would stand in that line for five minutes and just take deep breaths to give myself the motivation to move on to the blood pressure booth.

Blood pressure BEFORE the needles. That always made sense. By the time people had spent an hour in lines worrying about the final one, which was the vampire line, they really were stressed, blood pressures were high, emotions were boiling over. There were times I thought they should probably reverse the order; get the pain out of the way, take care of the fainting and needle phobics, then send us out to those other lines so we could relax and get something out of them. Yes, healthcare workers are big babies.

Now, the Wellness Week takes ten minutes out of the day. Most of the work is done as a preliminary packet of information that takes a month of investigation. Make a note of this: Always know what your LDL and HDL values were at your last physical exam. We hand this packet in as we go in the door, they give us a keychain for participating, and like a blur...weight and weight counseling two minutes; blood pressure check times three three minutes; Count Dracula one minute, two if you have bad veins.

But the paperwork you do before even entering the room...priceless. One of the questions that gave me the most trouble was, "Do you have a social group?"

I called the Wellness Wagon: "Would you define 'social group,' please?"

She said, "Do you have a group of people you hang out with on at least a weekly basis?"

I answered, "Yes, do they have to be real or is an Internet group okay?"

The lady answered, "These are the times we live in, an Internet group is fine. Do you like the people?"

"Some of them."

"Most of them?"

"No, just some of them."

"Well, do they like you?"

"Not much."

The interested woman asked me, "Does it make you happy to communicate with this group?"

And I had to be honest, "Usually."

"Does this group of people make you laugh?"

"Oh, yeah, all the time."

Then she threw out the bombshell: "Do you feel less stress when you talk to them?"

I sat there quietly and reassessed all the information Ms. Wellness Person had given me concerning the meaning of "social group." Okay, they have to like me, I have to like them, they have to make me laugh, I have to make them laugh, I have to be able to communicate with them and not need a Xanax at the end of the conversation to calm me down.

Quietly I hit the big red X and closed the messageboard down and popped a Xanax.

Back to Yahoo. There has to be a social group out there for me somewhere, and I am going to stay up all night and drink caffeine and find it, dammit! My Wellness papers are due tomorrow!

Canceled Trip to Pluto

Everyone needs a hobby. Some people play music or grow flowers or buy clothes...I travel.

There was a time, when I was much younger and had not learned how to tap into my brain and make wise decisions, that I traveled constantly, which sometimes interfered with that other hobby, eating. It was nothing to book four round-trip tickets to Los Angeles a year, a couple to Phoenix to visit my cousin, a couple to Texas to visit the same cousin, another one to Phoenix to visit the SAME cousin (she finally decided on Phoenix and has stayed there, thank God, well, so far, but the year is young - I hated Texas with a passion), one to Rhode Island to visit with my friend, one to New Mexico to visit with the SAME friend (see a pattern?) and one to Boston to visit the stable friend in my life, who has stayed put...so far, but then something happened. One day I woke up and the passion for cramming everything I own into a suitcase and heaving it in and out of the trunk of my car, off the baggage carousel and past fifty whining kids, five barking dogs and three hundred rude adults at an airport, not to mention the four huge, camouflage-clad men carrying assault weapons, the whole time sweating and pushing my glasses back up on my nose and my hair out of my eyes and dragging my ass out of bed at two o'clock AM to drive 90 miles into the later time zone to make a seven AM flight, was undeniably gone. The very things I embraced about traveling became more my idea of visiting Hell, so I stayed put for several months, content to make a trip to Wal-Mart the most harrowing, crowded and longest trip into the bowels of rudeness I was willing to make. Everyone knows there are two places in the United States that rival one another for jerks of any kind: Wal-Mart and any major airport.

Then, I began to miss the whole idea of packing and that feeling of excitement the day of a long-awaited vacation, and dipped my big toe in to test the water by flying off on a vacation to the mountains with my boyfriend. Prior to the mountains, though, we visited Roswell, New Mexico, and learned all there was to know about alien abductions, alien visitations and UFOs. The study of space escalated for Don and me and probably the one statement I will forever be known for among my circle was, "I can't wait to book a trip to Pluto someday!"

Well, guess what happened next. They took Pluto away. That's correct. Scientists have now decided that Pluto is not part of our Solar System. There are a lot of ramifications to that declaration: First, they will be able to charge more for the flight since it is to a foreign solar system, and the little phrase that has been drilled endlessly into Baby Boomer's heads: My very educated mother just served me nine pickles, is totally obsolete. What now? My very educated mother just served me nine, just does not make any sense.

So I am putting away my solar suitcase and rethinking my Star Gazer's Weekend to Pluto. I am pretty sure I will not be able to afford it now, and I'm sure the language will change and they will no longer speak English there, adopting their own Plutonian gibberish, Plenglish, that only Generation ZZZ will be able to understand.

Goodbye, Pluto, it sure has been nice having you as the pickle! I wonder what I could wear to Neptune.

The Dachshund Chronicles

I challenge anyone to live with a Dachshund and not smile at her constantly or go insane. There is no in-between emotion with these dogs. They are little leaping frenetic tubes of pure, unbridled energy who want to start their days at six o'clock every morning even if their "masters" (that would be me, by the way...it's just that none of us know it, least of all the dog) had to baby-sit another nonstop but taller tube of frenetic energy (from here on out referred to as a "grandchild") until midnight the night before.

The routine is always the same:

Me: Sleeping soundly.

Dog: Pouncing all over the bed at five-forty-five Sunday morning, putting her nose on my nose, climbing onto my pillow like she's dragging herself up a fourteen-hundred foot peak in the Rocky Mountains, using those little front, short badger-digging legs to claw at my scalp, winding her little nicely-pedicured toenails in my hair then removing them in one strong tug, burrowing under the covers and touching that wet, cold nose against my back, then running the last five feet of the Boston Marathon back up onto the pillow to plop her twenty-five-pound miniature Daschshund body onto the top of my head until, at six o'clock, I cry uncle and extract myself and get up.

Those are our roles and we have rehearsed them for the past four years, everyday, and are now just waiting for our big Hollywood break.

There is one rule that is mine, that Annie has to respect, only because she cannot reach the doorknobs...I WILL have a cup of coffee before we head to the back yard to chase birds.

Mother Nature provides a virtual Pandora's Box of creatures right in my own back yard, who can keep Annie amused for five minutes, or until her attention span wanes, whichever comes first. Birds are her challenges. Ever since a cat allowed her to play with a bird that he had caught and dragged into The Beach House a year ago, which Annie immediately took proud credit for, which is probably why she has no friends, she has had the idea that she will catch a bird to play with.

Every time we go outside, the first thing she does is attempt to sneak up on whatever birds are eating bugs in the grass. Now, I have watched this sport of hers for years, and believe me, so have the birds. They have impeccable timing. Just before Annie reaches them, the flutter off unceremoniously and say to their pals in the tree, "That stupid dog." I can almost speak the language well enough to understand that now.

Open the door, out runs Annie at six-fifteen in the morning. The first two or three birds are chased to the fence or the tree by a black and brown, overweight, floppy-eared imitator of Sneaky Snake; Annie acts indifferent and tries to not look embarrassed, then rushes the fence to see if possibly, this time, she might be able to somehow persuade the big red male cardinal to lose his mind and land at her feet so she may claim victory at last!

This morning was no different as far as the routine, right up to the point when Annie caught her first bird (here on out known as a large butterfly). She was so excited! She was barking and telling the entire neighborhood that she had CAUGHT A BIRD!!

I can imagine her telling the story to her grandchildren, her hair gray, toothless gums withering with age, " Yeah, children, I caught a bird once! It was just teasing me, making fun of my short, stubby front legs and my long, lithe, perfectly toned body and I chased it around and around and around! I wouldn't give up, kids...no I would NOT give up! I chased and swiped my tail at it, growled ferociously, barked, drove it INSANE, I tell you! Then, after an hour of playing its game, I went in for the kill!"

This is where the grandchildren would gasp and jump back a little, then move back in, hungry to hear the rest of the story.

"With all the energy I could muster, I made one final leap and took...him...down! So the moral of this story is, don't you EVER give up on your dreams!"

I glanced up from my cup of coffee, still in my early morning stupor, to see Annie taunting the poor unsuspecting prey, then gobbling it up wing by wing to prevent me taking it away from her, like there was any chance I was going to touch a wet-with-dog-slobber, half-mauled butterfly. I started to say, "Hey, Annie, sorry to disappoint you, girl, but that's just a butterfly you've captured." But then I smiled, patted her on the head and shuffled back to my chair.

If she wants to believe she finally, after four years caught a bird, who am I to kill the mood?

For Susan - Writing Crap

Note for my friend, Susan: I was writing this whole thing in third person because the constant use of "I" seems so self-serving. Then I realized, "Hey, it's MY book. What can be more self-serving than writing a piece of literature (or crap, as my Aunt Helen will lovingly call it) with my name plastered on the cover?" So I'm changing the format. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some crap to write...

Addiction

The day started a little blandly. At eight o'clock in the morning, the white hot heat was already an issue. The thermometer hanging on the outside of her Beach House read 84 degrees, but with that all-important heat index needle buried way at the right side of 100%, the term coined by the local News and Weather Geniuses in the Midwest, the "feels-like" temperature, was reading 99 degrees.

She was feeling a little sluggish. The window unit air conditioner was running in the dining room, to at least try to thwart the "feel-like" temperature inside the house somewhat, keeping it at a crisp, cool 83 degrees, but when she walked out the back door, onto the patio, and peeked at the electricity meter spinning wildly out of control, she ran screaming back inside and turned it off, hoping to reap the benefits of at least the lower humidity level inside for twenty minutes, long enough to save herself about five bucks on the utility bill.

Work was going rather slowly, her fingers sticking to the keys, when she remembered her stash in the fridge. Her eyes lit up, her heart raced a little. Her addiction awaited her in the kitchen, and she made a point of putting off retrieving her little reward, trying to make it seem even more exciting after the hour-long anticipation.

When she could no longer stand it, she jumped up and sauntered to the refrigerator, slowly pulled the door open. She nearly had to put on sunglasses to protect her eyes from the glow she perceived there, the bright sun-like light causing the kitchen to seem absolutely heavenly from its rays! Slowly, she reached in, wrapped her hand around a cold, shapely bottle of Coca-Cola Blak, caressed it against her cheek, was within seconds of making love to it on the kitchen floor before finally unscrewing the cap and pouring it ceremoniously into a large mug full of ice.

Music was playing all around her as she hurried back to her office and tipped the cold glass to her lips. The first sip was, she was certain, like stepping into the Kingdom of Heaven. Her eyes lit up, a smile formed on her lips, her heat-reddened face cooled instantly, and then she gulped, only slightly aware of the fact that these little six-ounce bottles of pure carbonated caffeine were going to finally eat up her paychecks, that she was going to need more and more to keep her alive.

After consuming one, she almost went for a second, but at the last minute, her heart rate increased to about 120, her pupils became huge! She could see the light! She could type twice her normal rate, could hear sounds she never heard! She could hear the ching-ching of the cash register ringing up this little beauty at a whopping $2.00 a bottle! And when she realized that the sounds were her ears ringing, she closed the refrigerator door and made the decision that a conscious effort to consume only one Coca-Cola Blak per day would be her goal.

A toast to fusion drinks. A toast to caffeine. Feeling like this, she headed to her employer to ask for a raise to cover her new habit.

Everything worth being addicted to is expensive. GOOD MORNING WORLD!