Heather's Musings on Life

Homeless and sick? C'mon over. I need someone to talk to.

2011-12-06T02:39:00.001-05:00

It's not that I don't want to sleep or that I'm deliberately doing things to stay awake - it's that I simply have a brain that's set on nighttime. That's when I'm most awake and functional. I obviously work at night, every other night at a minimum actually, so I guess on the nights I don't work my brain runs wild with all the things I don't have time to think about when I'm working or spending time with my child. Sometimes I do chores, sometimes I pay bills, sometimes I watch television, sometimes I read, and lately I've become ever so slightly addicted to an iPad game! What I need to be doing is shopping. I've got the tree up, with Hal & Sarah's help. Already had lights up outside. Probably need more. I even put a little decoration on my door. When you have a 7 year old little girl, you just have to be in the Christmas spirit. There's really no getting out of it. Not that I've had a ton of trouble with it this year but I've struggled in the past. (We watched the Disney version of A Christmas Carol this afternoon just as a safeguard!).
It's hard to get excited about spending a lot of money when somebody's out of a job, or there are huge bills looming and needing to be paid. A lot of people are suffering right now. I meet people in the ER who desperately need basic healthcare, food, clothing, and shelter. But not every homeless or desolate soul is there from simple bad luck. Many people actually choose to be homeless, to live a free and unencumbered life, and to take advantage of the resources that are available for the poor. That was hard for me to understand when I first met someone like that. But think about that. You trade a potential big house with big debt and live in the woods with others in a commune of sorts - and you don't have to work. You get free meals from the local churches, and "free" health care from local clinics and ERs. Heck we even give out donated clothing at our ER. I wonder how bad being homeless actually is: until the weather gets wet and cold or you break a foot or really get sick. How much sympathy do people deserve when they've put themselves in that position? But this is a question that can't be answered tonight. Here's what lies in my mind in the wee hours. Got a show about a serial killer on television in the background. All I need now is a stiff drink and some pretzels.

I like these Apples.

2011-11-26T15:05:00.000-05:00

I have a new toy! It's an iPad and right this very second I'm trying to use the on screen keyboard - feels like keyboarding class all over again. I am not one to spend a lot of money on myself but I couldn't resist the black Friday deal offered by Apple. I wanted one of these last year, of course, but I couldn't justify the expense versus our financial obligations and bring home pay. Thankfully this year is much different for us - and let me say again how very grateful I am that Hal's three year stretch of unemployment and underemployment ended early this year. We don't have an incredible excess but we have enough to pay all of our bills on time, eat well, and get the things we need - and that's enough for me. I am reminded of my father actually. We lived a very humble and frugal life when I was a child, and he in fact still does...but he believed very strongly in the power of a proper education so we had a Apple II C desktop computer with a dot matrix printer attached! Our house was very small but that computer had a front-and-center place right in the living room where my brother and I were encouraged to sit and play with the educational games, type papers and projects, and bask in the discovery and the cool things it could do. Now this iPad has a coolness factor that has exponentially blown me away but here I am in my house, sitting on my 14 year old scratched up leather couch, typing away. In this case the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I worked my way through school enough to be able to have a few things but more importantly, I have a true appreciation for the things I'm able to have. Thanks Dad.

Lindsey Buckingham rocked the house!

2011-10-08T01:01:00.001-04:00

Hal and I went to the Lindsey Buckingham concert at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta - and wow it was totally worth it! The traffic, the ticket price, the broken parking meter that resulted in all of us getting parking tickets...he was amazing! That man can SING and can do all sorts of things to a guitar. He's a true musical genius and it was left brain mania to hear him for 2 hours!

Start Something That Matters - read this book by Blake Mycoskie

2011-10-02T01:22:00.003-04:00

Currently half way through this book - it's the really neat story of how Tom's shoes got started. If you've ever thought about your own start up, this is a great guide with lots of awe-inspiring stories built in. Blake Mycoskie is one smart dude. I now own 3 pairs of Tom's shoes and Sarah has one. We love 'em. That means my dollars put shoes on our feet and the feet of 4 kids without shoes. That's awesome! Conscious buying.

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Something-Matters-Blake-Mycoskie/dp/1400069181

The Madison County Fair

2011-10-01T21:19:00.003-04:00

This Wednesday night Hal and I decided to take Sarah to the Fair - notice the capital letters to give the word emphasis. When I was a kid, everyone looked forward to the Fair in the Fall. Popcorn, pizza, corn dogs, and funnel cakes and all sorts of dizzyingly fun rides - plus a night out with our friends! I don't know about you, but I never got to go out at night! This was one of the funnest things to do all year and lots of times we even got to go on a school night. There you go. Until that one year when I sat down in someone's puke. I can't remember the exact ride but "the whirly bird" comes to mind. All I know is I sat down in the seat and felt an oozing warm wetness and then smelled that horrible puke smell, stomach acid, half-digested food, and nasty green bile. It was a yucky disaster. My dad got so bent out of shape, and we pretty much had to leave because who in the heck brings a spare set of clothes to the freaking Fair?! Ugh. It was awful and I've been trying *not* to remember that night or the Fair ever since. But last week Hal started talking about it, and then Sarah started talking about it, and then I found myself pretty much being coerced into to going or facing the fact that I'm probably a crappy mother. So I went.

The smell of hay and cows and popcorn all mixed into one was the first sensation besides the colorful lights that I experienced upon getting out of the car. There was the Boy Scout who was supposed to be helping us park but was instead more interested in playing with the gravel on the ground at his feet. His mother kept yelling at him and I laughed in sympathy at her frustration. Four bucks to get in wasn't bad - we had almost $40 in cash after raiding the kiddo's piggy bank. I decided that this was a good opportunity to teach Sarah a little bit about how spending money works. She got to buy tickets, food, and go on 4 rides all by herself. She saw someone she knew and got so excited that she lost herself in telling us rather than saying hi to the person she'd spotted. Hal tried the boiled peanuts while we listened to some live country music - I snapped a few pictures and just took it all in, and wasn't terribly focused on avoiding puke. I guess the ER has softened me a bit where vomit is concerned. Can't avoid those sights, sounds, or smells in the ER! I visited the cows and tried to figure out whether or not I appreciated the showing of cattle and had a whole ethical debate in my head about whether or not I really should be eating meat. I guess at my core I really am a nerd.

There is one thing that stuck with me though: one of the fair tents had merchandise for sale - almost all of it cheap cheesy crap from China but I took a look anyway (it's a woman's right to shop no matter where she is). There was a hanger of flags and I looked all the way through them. There were military flags, POW MIA flags, and rebel flags but not one actual American flag. I understand pride in where you come from but the rebel flags need to go. To me they are a sign of ignorance and hate nowadays rather than anything resembling pride. They are simply outdated. Fortunately there wasn't a long line of people hurrying to buy them. It's funny to me that the same crowd of folks that would buy leather bracelets with christian fish symbols on them would buy the rebel flag as well. There's a reason why that particular collection of merchandise was in that tent for sale. Consumer demand. Sad, but true.

Otherwise enjoy the pics!

Eight bucks for this?

2011-09-13T00:39:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago while walking back through the hospital from taking a visitor upstairs, I stroll by the gift shop. Through the glass wall I see this and I have to go in for closer inspection. I'm all for reduce, reuse, and recycle but I must admit, I'm not for this. This $8 "recycled" plastic coke bottle just takes the proverbial cake. Eight bucks? For this? Seriously? Even if I carried a purse, I cannot imagine ever having one of these in there to "store" things. I applaud the sentiment behind this product but come on. Eight bucks? Maybe $3 would be more reasonable but I still wouldn't bite. Would you?

Whoa! Why haven't I already found this?

2011-09-06T18:54:00.000-04:00

Read this now. Ever wondered what happens when you die? Who hasn't? This book is fascinating! Thanks Carla Baron for suggesting I read this!

Dear Virus, please expire.

2011-08-26T02:51:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday night I spiked a fever, then got the sweats, then threw up, then got the squirts. It was hell, and I felt just awful. So now it's more than a week later and I have to come home early from work because I'm running a fever again. In fact, I've pretty much had a fever almost every day since last Wednesday. I think there should be an automatic "you've suffered enough" expiration date on all illnesses. I've also decided that besides the death of a loved one and perhaps a nasty break-up with the love of your life that vomiting is one of the worst human experiences. I could live a thousand more lifetimes and not ever need to do it again. Every time I throw up another food item gets scratched off my eat list. This time it was Zaxby's chicken (that I'd pulled out of the fridge, leftover). Once before it was spaghetti - I still remember puking so forcefully that whole noodles came out my nose. Red Lobster was crossed off the list when I was 21. What will it be next? However, I must say that this virus - this god awful bug - prompted me to eat something I probably haven't eaten in 20 years...Campbell's chicken noodle soup. I have no idea why except that I lost more than 5 pounds in one day and was starving so bad that my stomach was about to digest itself...and I was at work and desperate. I kept it down. Healthy and cheap my dad would say...if I gave him the satisfaction of telling him! :)

Visitation

2011-08-15T04:10:00.004-04:00

You all died so suddenly,
even when we knew it might come.
I see people die now.
I know that pain in the eyes of the ones they leave behind.

I've felt it eight times before,
and it's awful.
A great big elephant sitting right on my heart,
and he won't move to save my life, my mind.

During the days when I think of you I ask you to visit me.
I tell you that I love you, that I miss you.
That I'd love to just sit and talk.
I wish I'd come to see you more when you were here, like you asked me to.
I say this out loud.

But in the night, in those wee hours and my half conscious slumber,
this is when you come.
Your face shines through and I recognize you.
Rocking in the chair, standing in the corner, sitting on the couch.

There you are!
Sometimes you only smile.
Sometimes you tell me something I might need to know.
I say I love you.
You say I know.

Love lives on, and does not die.
The body, yes. But only.
My soul and your soul, connected forever.
You have work to do now, and I've gotta finish this life.
But please, come see me anytime you can.
I love you.

Read The Borrower.

2011-08-14T05:02:00.000-04:00

I just stayed up 3 hours extra to finish reading this book. You've got to get your hands on a copy and read it. Really great story - and yes, it's actually fiction. On rare occasions I will pick up a promising fiction book - I bought this one a few weeks ago at Borders and just recently had the time to read it. It's about a librarian and a little boy. Read it as soon as you can.

I'm just smurfed.

2011-08-11T00:31:00.001-04:00

Ah. Time alone. Quiet time. And I can think of nothing to do. I'm so tired I don't even want to read. I did read my daily cnn.com and was moved to tears reading the bios of the soldiers killed in the chopper crash. So sad that we are still fighting a stupid war, and spending billions upon billions to do it. I support our troops and the sacrifices they are making but don't like the war and the fact that our guys and girls are dying over there. I'm really not one to discuss politics often though, because opinions obviously vary widely. I'm just one person.

Jennifer and I took the kiddo to see The Smurfs movie last Friday and now we've become obsessed with collecting those little smurf happy meal toys. Generally speaking I don't like happy meal toys because of their environmental effect, but these guys are just plain cute. And they make me remember playing as a child with my friends and my own little smurf figurines. Those are selling mad now on Ebay too. It's quite funny. Kind of like NKOTB, those toys take me back. I also bought Sarah 2 of the old Smurf cartoons for her iPod touch and she loves them. She can now talk just like Gargamel. It's really funny. She's always been quite the dramatic actress, so I've signed her up for an acting class this fall. Even though it's gonna cost me $60 a month, I can't wait for her to have an outlet for all of her natural born creativity, and I can't wait to see what she does on stage! Hal and I were avid movie-goers before she came along - for 8 years we saw lots of movies! She's now into movies too and I think she'll beat the socks off her friends in a few years when somebody breaks out a movie trivia game. We shall see.

What to do now? I've got this Smurfy game on my iPhone I might play for a while. It's rather mindless and I love watching those little Smurfs grow crops. Speaks to the granola mom, tree hugging, hybrid driving, smurf lover in me. :)

Heading to Jacksonville to see the Jacksons!

2011-07-28T01:56:00.000-04:00

In a few hours we take off for Jacksonville, Florida! I haven't seen my family down there for almost 2 years. We were supposed to have Thanksgiving dinner there last fall but things didn't work out and I wound up staying here and having Thanksgiving with my Aunt Barbara. Thank goodness I did, because by February she was gone. In fact, most of my father's family is now gone. At least half. Florida has always been the home of my mother's family and even though I didn't see them near enough growing up, I've tried to see them more as an adult. But obviously when you're an adult you have jobs, kids, responsibilities that get in the way. So I don't get down there enough still, but when I do the whole clan usually comes to visit. It's quite fun and I'm really excited to see them all! And little Sarah is really pumped up too! Pictures to come of the Jackson clan! :)

Sad day for book lovers.

2011-07-26T03:50:00.000-04:00

Borders bookstore's liquidation sale makes me so sad - I was in there yesterday on my day off and books were scattered everywhere. Some people were still grumbling about the prices, even though some things are up to 40% off now. I'm going to miss the brick and mortar store. I loved going there with my family or even all by myself. It was a great way to peruse all the latest offerings from the literary world - I found many great books that way. I have a busy life and don't always have time to read all the news snippets about new books coming out. That's why when I found a good book I liked to post them on here to share with you all. My father always said to me that if I could read I could figure out how to do anything else. I found that to be true in college when I virtually taught myself Physics by reading my textbook. I think putting textbooks in digital format is a good idea - but only if there's significant cost reduction. Textbook prices are ridiculous. But the novel, the non-fiction book, the memoir, even the trashy romance story - those need to be printed on paper and bound as books and displayed at the local bookstore.

I wasn't one of those people who just went to the bookstore and treated it like a library - sat and read the book then put it back on the shelf without making a purchase. But I was someone who bought books at Borders with the coupons they gave Rewards members. I didn't like paying full price - not because I don't think books are worth it, just because of my own finances.

I will really miss my Borders bookstore. And I truly feel awful for all the employees who will very soon be out of a job. I talked to one at the checkout the other day who was nearly in tears. Soon she will have no health insurance and the place she's worked for 11 years will be gone. The friendships, the relationships with coworkers, the frequent customers she liked seeing...gone or at least damaged. It's sad. I really hope the print book industry doesn't go out. There's nothing quite like curling up in my bed with a book in my hands while a thunderstorm rages outside. Nothing like it at all.

What I'm reading now.

2011-07-21T01:50:00.000-04:00

If you are fast you can read this in a day and if you work with anyone at all besides yourself, it is bound to benefit you! I'm starting it tonight. Read some snippets in the Border's bookstore today. (I'll not go into the teary eyed hissy fit that I could easily muster up right now due to Border's going out of business - it's a sad time.)

Books in my hand make me happy. I'm not sold on the ebook idea yet. I've read one book on my iPhone so far. It was a fine experience, but doesn't match holding the book in my hands, turning its pages, and the smell of the paper and ink. Laugh if you want, but I like to get my senses involved when I'm reading. Except taste. Eating a book would be gross...but it would probably be enough to get me on that "My Strange Addiction" show!

Thoughts after a long night in the ER.

2011-07-20T04:36:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking there must be a bunch of introverted folks reading my blog - or - I'm not saying anything worthy of many comments. I can always depend on Brandy, my long-time friend and trusty side-kick all through my school years. She had the unfortunate last-name-starts-with-a-B problem which meant she sat right beside me for what, 12 years? Whether she wanted to be my friend or not, she was stuck with me. And I love her for it. Isn't it about time for a high school reunion? Brandy, let's do dinner!

Tonight in the ER was long and hard. Some icky sad things happened, and there were more than the usual odd assortment of strangeness. Strange patients with strange situations that sometimes have strange endings. I love calling a spade a spade and being right about it. I was hitting the nail on the head so much tonight that I felt slightly psychic...and no, there were no tarot cards involved. Not even my magic 8 ball. Sometimes I joke with my coworkers that I seem to have left my magic wand at home - there are some problems even I can't solve. Ha!

I've had a number of nurses tell me that they couldn't do what I do. Well, let me be very clear - there's no way I could do what they do either. Nurses put up with a lot of crap, on a daily basis. If you are a nurse coming on for a 12 hour shift you can count on being yelled at, puked on, at fault whether it's your fault or not, and probably stressed to the core. You can laugh till you just about pee in your pants (and why shouldn't you since you haven't had a bathroom break in 8 hours?) and you can cry because your heart genuinely hurts for this patient and his/her family that you've never even met before. It's like jumping on an emotional roller coaster every single day and praying for the best. They do it because they love helping people, because some nights it can be exciting, and because they know deep down they are making a difference. I really have a lot of respect for what those guys go through. I could never be a nurse. But that's one of the few things I've figured out I don't want to be when I grow up. It takes all of us to make the ER run smoothly, and in a larger sense, it takes all of the greater collective us to make the world go round. There's something out there for everyone. It makes me sad to see people come into the ER high on narcotics or illegal drugs or alcohol just living for the next high. There's intrinsic value in each one of us - but it's up to us to make the most of what we're good at and do something for the greater good of society. If I can make a small difference for even one person, then I can feel good about that. But take this guy Blake Mycoskie who founded TOMS shoes - this guy is making a difference for millions of kids who didn't even have shoes on their feet. That's a big deal. And now his company is trying to help those same people in 3rd world countries or areas affected by devastation and natural disaster see better too. You buy a pair of sunglasses from him, he helps give someone their sight back. Now that's helping. That's making a difference. That's living your life to its fullest potential. I wish I had an idea that great. We all have a purpose here - what's yours?

Comments are welcome here.

2011-07-19T01:59:00.001-04:00

I just checked my Google Adsense account and see that you guys are actually reading my blog!! I'm blushing over here...along with sweating. It's hot in my bonus room! This thermostat hasn't worked right since we moved in. I need an exercise bike up here!

As usual, every other living organism - including the fish, is asleep right now. I'm awake. I climbed in bed and gave it the good scout's try, but then Hal started snoring and I got a text, figured out Jordan Knight was on George Lopez tonight and then all efforts to sleep were off. Just finished watching that and his online interview with Jordan right after the show. He's very cute but he was never my favorite. His new album is quite good though and even you NKOTB haters should give it a listen if you like pop dance music. It's sexy and fun.

I've been thinking of making some changes lately. I've mysteriously started to study for the LSAT - that's the Law School Admissions Test. I honestly cannot tell you why I'm doing this. I guess it's sort of fun (shut up Jennifer Aaron, I know you think I'm nerdy)! The test is based mostly on analytical and logical thinking - and those things are mostly what I'm good at especially in the PAC job that I have. I'd imagine that if the 11 of us sat for that test our scores would be very high collectively. And if there was a way to test how quickly we can walk into an unknown emotional situation in a room and size it up successfully we'd all be winners. That's why I love my job (most days) - because you never know what's coming through the door. So I don't know if I actually want to be an attorney or not. If I did I'd probably want to do higher education law or healthcare risk management or maybe even social justice stuff. I think I might take the test in December. That gives me a few months to study. And even if I suck at it or don't go to law school, studying this stuff might help me stave off alzheimer's disease!

Then there's the birthday that I've got coming up. I'll be 37 soon and I think I should have accomplished something by now. For 24 years, I've wanted to WRITE A BOOK. So far I've scratched out an unpublishable manuscript - unpublishable because it's too honest, too revealing, too fraught with controversy. At least my trusty advisers have told me so. Some people are lauded for sharing their darkest secrets. For being brave and bravely writing. But oh well.

So I need to write more but I don't know what the story should be. Being a published author would thrill me, but the last few years have been tough economically and it's hard to work full time and write. Now that the man of the house is working full time again it's easier, but still there's lots of bills to pay down before I'd have the money to hire an editor or an agent. And then there's the lingering doubt that plagues us all - "am I good enough to write a book that anyone would want to actually read?"

Only time will tell.

Get busy!

2011-07-17T15:34:00.002-04:00

In an hour I'll be about ready to leave for another night at work in the ER. I need a vacation something fierce. I need several days in a hotel - maybe in a big city somewhere - where there's a big fat bed with big fluffy pillows I can sink my head into. I don't even need a television. All I need is a box fan, a bucket of ice with some Diet Dr. Pepper nearby, and some sleep. Precious sleep. Quiet. Nothing but me and dreamland. For maybe 24 hours.

Things you guys should do while I'm away:

Buy Tom's shoes: They are really comfortable and yes they start at $44 but a needy child in a 3rd world country (and even here in the States too) gets a new pair of shoes. Their giving model is One for One. They've been giving away shoes since 2006 with over one million pairs given to children. Now they've started with eyewear as well. Sunglasses start at $135 but you can help a blind or nearly blind person get cataract surgery, glasses, or just give sunglasses with UV protection to someone who needs them so they won't get cataracts. I bought myself 2 pairs of the TOMS shoes and even got Sarah a pair for her back to school shoes. I wear mine on my 12 hour shift in the ER and my feet do not hurt! And by the way, I've yet to actually pay full price for a single pair. Check out Kinnucan's.

Sign up for Swap.com: Seriously, who among you could stand to get rid of some CDs, DVDs, games, or books that are sitting on your bookshelves collecting dust? If you're like me, your music is now all loaded onto your computer and therefore on your iPod or iPhone. I very rarely read a book more than once so they sit silently day in and day out on my shelves. Your kids outgrow or get tired of their x-box games, and the DVD you thought you had to have has now retired to the entertainment center because if you see that movie again you just might stick a fork in your eye.

BUT that doesn't mean there's not more books, CDs, DVDs, and games out there that you're not interested in! So sign up for swap.com, put in to their system all the things you have that you'd like to trade, then select all the things you'd like to have and viola! - trades will start to appear. All you have to do is mail your stuff to the next guy and watch your mailbox for your new (slightly used) stuff to appear! Cool huh? And it'll keep the US Post Office going for a bit longer. Trading is cool. Why didn't I think of that site?

Okay. Must get dressed now and go face reality. Another day, another dollar. Here are your links. Now get busy!

www.toms.com

www.swap.com

Getting reaquainted with the 15 year old me.

2011-07-01T02:32:00.000-04:00

Today I had the sudden urge to retrieve some boxes stored at my father's place. I was looking for my old yearbooks mostly, but I forgot that in the same box was an armful of Mead Five Star spiral bound notebooks, in a rainbow of colors, in which - over time - I'd poured out my heart and soul. In December of 1989, the 15 year old Heather decided to write in a journal every single day for a year. And so it went. Every day, usually 2 whole pages long -- and I didn't have that curly bubbly girly hand writing that many of my friends did. Small text, print, in pencil. So after my stroll through yearbooks from 6th grade through graduating UGA - I picked up a notebook and began to read.
Oh teenaged angst! Boy was I full of it. I want to get to know myself again, from that youngster's perspective, and perhaps reassure myself all over again that life is full of ups and downs but that I'll survive. She did. I do. I will. I used to smile when I heard the words "inner child." I imagined a cute little pixie girl riding a bicycle all up and down my rib cage, resting on my stomach, before diving down to pedal through my intestines. Inner child? What the hell is that?
Well, here she is. Even though I thought I was grown at 15, I was still very much a child. Let's see if I can remember what the world looked like through her eyes. Let's see what I've learned in the last 21 years. I wish I could hop on a time machine and give that girl a hug because she needed it. If I could, I'd try to grab her young body - thin thighs and smaller butt. But I'd totally forget the zits.

Well, I'll be. We did it.

2011-06-13T23:58:00.002-04:00

One week ago we decided to not eat out. Sounds simple, but for us, it was a huge change from normal. And guess what: we did it. All I wanted to do was make it for a week, so a half-hour ago I hit the mark. I could have gone running out of the house to grab a quick Reece's Mcflurry at McDonald's or a pepper supreme burger at The Grill - but quite honestly I think there's been a total change in perspective in this house. There were even a couple of times I could have given in rather easily: once when I found myself in a Starbucks with Jennifer and this very afternoon when my dad came over and unknowingly brought a vegetable plate from The Ila Restaurant. Now that was hard to resist. But it was really important for me to stick to the one full week and not give in.

Things I noticed:
It's not that scary to grocery shop.
There are very tasty things in the grocery store that I can make very easily at home. Assemble, I'll say.
There are definitely things that I crave from a restaurant: sushi & frozen yogurt for sure. And maybe the cheeseburger from McDonald's...and definitely the steak and cheese from Subway...ah!
One week has gone by and I haven't starved to death (not that there was a chance of that anyway-I have lots of fat reserves - the Adams hips I call 'em).

I ate turkey and cheese sandwiches, chips, lean cuisines, lots of fruits, broccoli, yogurt, smoothies, cereal, cookies, pop-tarts, and home-made spaghetti. One week is not enough time to really get creative in the kitchen, but it is time to see that I could be if I invest the time.
In some ways I felt like I was returning to something simpler. When I grew up, we ate whatever my grandmother put on the table, whether we liked it or not. There was no going out to eat. I mean, talk about local food. We grew our vegetables in the summer, canned them so we'd have plenty all winter long, and grew chickens too. We bought milk from the lady up the street who had a small dairy - literally about a mile and a half away. We bought hot dogs, chips, flour, Dr. Pepper and novelties that would have been hard to make on our own - but I'd say at least half our food we grew. And we ate mostly vegetables. I had to try everything, including those nightmarish chicken livers my grandmother loved so much, and a bite of a pickled pig's foot once too. OMG. But I survived and never struggled with my weight growing up. I still remember the smell of my Granny's freshly cut fried potatoes. I could have eaten those every single day. I remember "looking" through the pinto beans before we cooked them, to weed out any bad beans. I helped peel onions, tomatoes, and apples. I stirred the soups, and the chocolate for her famous chocolate pies. I even know how to make buttermilk biscuits.

I guess I abandoned that part of me in favor of convenience and because I'm married to a guy whose only vice is restaurant dining. Over the years it just became normal. We even convinced ourselves that we could eat out cheaper than eating in. We don't eat leftovers, we reasoned. And what about all the time we'd have to invest in food prep and cleaning up?
What goes with a meal, but conversation? What goes with grocery shopping, but an activity together? One of my coworkers called grocery shopping "kind of a date" with her man. Who's ever stood at the sink washing dishes with their mate and put their wet hand on his or her butt for fun? All this brings opportunity to be together, even if it is just standing in the kitchen sharing a laugh or a tease. It sure beats running to a restaurant, having dinner, and then returning home to solitary activities or television.

Now restaurants have their place for sure...and I'm not all of a sudden a hater. It's good for when there's no time for cooking a proper meal at home, when traveling, or in some sort of crisis situation - like the time I became so depressed all I wanted was french onion soup from Bennigan's. And what about celebrations? Sometimes we just wanna go out. That's perfectly okay. But it shouldn't be what we do for every meal and it shouldn't be the standard. Eating out all the time gets boring, monotonous, and extremely expensive. I think I'm gonna try to stay the course with this, and try to figure out how to slowly and thoughtfully add restaurants back into my life. But right now, I'm gonna go downstairs and raid the fridge!

No Restaurants: day one.

2011-06-07T02:29:00.001-04:00

I hate grocery shopping - have pretty much avoided it since I was pregnant with Sarah and couldn't stand the smell of food anywhere at any time - even the sight of certain foods bothered me! But today we literally almost had no food in the house, unless you count pretzels and ketchup, Dora yogurt and pickles.
Anyway, I finally got up the gumption to go to the store specifically to buy food. We walked around tossing food willy-nilly into the buggy and wound up with a $210 tab at checkout. (props to the store for printing the receipt on front and back!)
Standing there watching our cashier ring up all of those items made me wonder if we could actually go without purchasing anything from a restaurant for a month. When I suggested this to Hal, the eternal restaurant-goer, he said maybe we should shoot for a week instead. So here we go. Gonna try to make it until next Tuesday without purchasing any food or drink from a restaurant, snack bar or vending machine. I suspect it might teach us a thing or two - how to cook at home, how to eat better, how to do the dishes! We're spoiled. Even when we're near broke we can afford McDonalds. Cheap food adds up though - it takes a toll on our bank account and our bodies. And it's not so cheap either...eating out during the last 30 days cost us a whopping $578.68! Something's gotta give. I encourage you to add up what you've spend eating out during the last month. It's crazy how much you can spend on food, beverage, and tips. Anyway, wish us luck. Wonder what I'll crave the most?

The Price of Everything - very interesting book!

2011-05-31T03:42:00.001-04:00

I just picked this up last week and already I'm sucked into its pages. It's non-fiction of course (that's my style) and full of facts but written in an easy prose that can be followed even if you flunked economics 101. I never had a course in economics! But this book is fascinating and really does look at the psychology behind prices and how what we're willing to pay for things sort of defines who we are. Pick it up at Borders or Amazon.com. Speaking of prices...I used a 50% off coupon at Borders when I purchased this!

Craft hour at the Posey house.

2011-05-19T02:13:00.001-04:00

Tonight I almost lost my mind. That's right, I did something domestic and crafty with my daughter - who was so excited she was beside herself! And, to make matters even more strange & spectacular, her father (who has no craft skills that I've ever seen) participated in this rare event with the kid. It all started when I began drinking beer. Now, this was weeks ago - but I decided to start trying "new" beers as a sort of taste test. This takes forever because I can at most drink probably 3 or 4 a week. So one day I pryed the bottle cap off a British beer and liked the design on the cap...so I sat it on the bar in the kitchen (not unusual for an odd assortment of things to be on the bar). And then over the past few weeks I kept adding bottle caps. Now, the bar isn't too far from the refrigerator...where my little 6 year old artiste puts her MULTITUDE of drawings. Inevitably she runs out of magnets to hold up said drawings. So one day when my eyes saw the bottle caps and the drawings I thought, *eureka* *holy moly* I've got a solution! So today we spend a ton of money at the craft store buying all sorts of things to help us make these magnets, including a very cool (uh warm really) hot glue gun and a (super awesome I love it) 1 inch round circle punch. And when Sarah saw a unpainted wooden treasure chest that needed paint and decoration...well she of course had to have it...and I looked straight at Hal and said "um, that's all you." I wish I could say our little craft hour was cheap but it wasn't! But it was fun and I hope all these supplies will keep the kiddo busy for the next 100 or so days until school starts back. Tomorrow is Day 1 of summer vacation!

Osama's death not a reason to party.

2011-05-03T18:07:00.003-04:00

So Osama was killed Sunday by U.S. forces. That was kind of good to hear...and when I say kind of, I mean it. Images on television of people rallying in Times Square New York, and in front of the White House shouting U.S.A. and "hey hey, goodbye" totally surprised me. Are we really, as a people, celebrating the assassination of Osama bin Laden? Yes, he was a monster. Yes he killed many, many people through his commands, his subservients and his terror. I get all that. I still remember the exact moment I heard of the horrors happening on September 11, 2001. I did not know anyone personally who died in those attacks, however I felt the grief in what unfolded during those hours and days. It forever changed my perspective, maybe in the same way D-day or the Kennedy assassinations did for those generations. But no matter how I shake my head, I can't understand cheering for someone's death.

Is that the Christian thing to do? Regardless your religion or spiritual beliefs, is celebrating the killing of another person truly what you're supposed to do? I can agree with a collective exhale, with a sigh of relief, even with a desire to see a picture of his dead body just to be sure. But hooting and hollering and singing and partying doesn't seem right.

The mistakes that man made in the name of his religion, his mental illness, his unique and awful badness - those mistakes will bite him in the tail one day - karma is real and it really can be a "bitch." But us celebrating might bring on a bit of bad karma too. It feels good to shed the world of evil - and he was certainly evil in this lifetime - but we are not the judge, and whether or not we like it, his life did serve a dreadful purpose that might just be too big for us to understand, let alone agree with.

I feel good for our servicemen, for the victim's families, for our government...but I do feel wary of what may come. What will Osama's followers feel when they see footage of us celebrating in our streets? We need to calm down and treat this situation with the grim respect it deserves.

Story of (my) stuff.

2011-04-21T04:25:00.001-04:00

Today my husband and I spent hours cleaning out the garage - and it's FAR from finished. We got rid of a lot of stuff. It's sitting out by the curb waiting on the garbage truck that comes in a few hours. Of course there's a nice windy storm of the century brewing up right now that may blow our garbage all over the neighborhood...but at least it's not in our garage anymore.

Isn't it neat when you find stuff you thought you'd lost? You're so excited - I literally heard myself squeal when I spotted my timbuk2 bag in the bottom of a box. Hal found some iron tool and shouted "hey!" Sarah was all over the place rediscovering toys she hadn't seen in a while...some she'd outgrown but still wanted to keep. We found clothes we'd forgotten but would still love to wear, clothes we can't fit into anymore, and lots of things to give away. Hal's SUV has several bags in the back of it now, headed straight to the Goodwill donation center tomorrow.

Ah. Feels so good. Too bad it doesn't happen very often.

See, Hal and I are messy, disorganized, pack-rats. Plain and simple. And we've moved a lot. All over Athens in the beginning, then up and down the Eastern U.S. When you're moving either quickly or with a toddler and 2 cats in tow, you tend to just throw crap in a box and make a run for it. And if you're already disorganized to begin with, you get a hodgepodge in each box. It's kind of like, what's behind door number # 2 Al?

Every once in a blue moon (like that old Southern adage?) we both get sick of the mess at the same exact time, and we actually make progress clearing out and cleaning up. But there are still things we hang on to, despite knowing that we'll never actually use them. Like Hal's bag 'o karate videos - VHS tapes! We don't even have a VCR anymore! Or my collection of coffee cups. I will never have 40 people in my house at once all drinking coffee. But yet, the stuff persists.

I even read a book last year about getting rid of stuff...called The Story of Stuff.

I rarely invite people inside our messy house. Yet I'm a social person! You think that would be enough of a motivator. I don't know what the right combination is. Today I was both sick, and tired, yet we worked for a long time and got rid of a lot of things. I wish I knew what magic spell brought that on. I'd be more apt to bippity boppity boo if I did.

Earthbound Spirits?

2011-04-20T04:36:00.001-04:00

This is a whole new idea for me to take in - this book is fascinating - it talks about ghosts who are Earthbound - which are different than the ones mediums can talk to, because Earthbound spirits haven't yet crossed over into the light. Huh?
I'm currently almost half-way through. The author is the woman who inspired the television show The Ghost Whisperer. Cool!

Learning the Tarot

2011-04-19T00:37:00.000-04:00

I have discovered Tarot cards. Before you read any further, allow me to state...
*no, I'm not a devil worshipper or a pagean
*yes, I believe in God, read the Bible, and attend Church occasionally - currently looking for a church closer to home

Right now, I'm on a quest for understanding, both Spiritually and Literally. It's not enough for me to sit back and let life happen to me, although there have been periods of time where I've done just that. I want to be an active participant in my life - directing it at will if I can. That said, I still hold the belief that everything happens for a reason.

The Tarot cards (in the traditional 78 card deck) leave nothing out in our human experience here on Earth. In the meanings of the individual cards you can find every form of human suffering, joy, fear, challenge, and fulfillment. It speaks to all of the things that oppress us, hold us up, hold us back, and what we have inside of us that can propel us forward. They go back at least as far as the 15th century, AD.

Here's how I think it works. We all have a conscious mind - that's what we use daily - it's the conversations we have with ourselves all the time. Then there's the more mysterious yet unusually omnipotent subconscious mind. This is the part of our higher awareness, our higher self, that can guide us through situations where our conscious mind gets bogged down in emotion and facts. The higher self can recognize these events for what they are and steer us through by saying, no - here is the direction you must go. The Tarot is a tool for uncovering the thoughts and perceptions of the unconscious mind. It's what our soul already knows on a deeper level but our brain just can't figure out on its own. Some people go to therapists, some meditate, some use dream interpretation or hypnosis even - all of these are designed to help us get to the core of the matter. The key is helping your self figure out your life.

*this does not mean I don't pray - it's absolutely possible to believe in God, pray for guidance, and use the Tarot at the same time.

I've been practicing for a few weeks now and have definitely had some success! It's amazing how much more SELF REFLECTION I'm able to do once I consider what the cards are trying to tell me on any given day. And I've freaked out a few friends too! The Tarot always has something to tell you.

If you're interested in learning more, check out www.learntarot.com.

Big Daddy Starbucks wrote a new book!

2011-04-12T00:16:00.000-04:00

As you all know, I'm a huge fan. Reading this right now and it's so neat to see what went on behind the scene when SBUX stock toppled and Howard took the reins of the company again. I was actually working for the company during this time and remember very clearly attending the 3 hour retraining that he describes in Chapter 1. If I could I'd work for them again today because he's such an inspiring leader, because the company is founded on strong guiding principles, and because I believe in what Starbucks has created. Great reading!

Don't squash the caterpillars.

2011-04-07T01:34:00.000-04:00

"Something traumatic happened today," the kindergarten teacher told me as she walked my 6 year old to the car. "She cried - she'll tell you." Sarah was already frowning mightily when I asked her what happened. "Diego killed a caterpillar on the playground!" she shouts at me - arms crossed, lips pursed out as if she might cry again right then and there. "He squashed it with a stick!" I asked her what she did and her response was that she'd thrown her jacket down and stomped away crying...with much drama if I know my little girl.

So this makes me think. Sarah went to the butterfly exhibit at the Florida National History Museum a couple of weeks ago. She learned all about the life cycle of a butterfly - knew the stages before the beautiful creature gets its pretty wings. She knew that caterpillar lost it's chance to become a beautiful butterfly. She probably didn't have the wherewithal to explain all this to poor adventuresome Diego, who probably felt awful after Sarah's dramatic display of emotions. But what one does not know, one cannot fully judge.

There are many situations that present themselves in our lives as we go through each day, month, year, as time passes on and on and we grow older and experience more. When we are children, most of us have a natural wonder - eager to see and experience all that we can. As we grow older and things don't turn out the way we planned, some of us close ourselves off to what could be lurking around the bend. Everything doesn't work out the way we want it to. No one can tromp through life without taking a misstep once in a while. It happens. If you live, you hurt. But joy can be and is found every day.

Caterpillars aren't cute creatures. In fact, they're quite ugly, unless you're watching A Bug's Life! Looking at that caterpillar crawling in the dirt, all hairy and nasty, I can see why Diego might want to get rid of it. Just end the poor thing - get it out of its misery. But see, if he'd only given it a few more days, he would have witnessed just how beautiful that little guy would become.

When something in your life seems ugly, doesn't fit just right and right away, or just doesn't measure up to your expectations - when the going gets tough and you're sure you should end it - that's when you have to hold on and wait a minute. Give it some time. Let the thing grow a while undisturbed save for any nurture you might want to give it. Feed, water, and hold the thing in your palm, close to your heart. You just don't know if that thing you're thinking about squashing could become something to behold if left to develop naturally.

Inhale. Exhale. Have patience.

Cocktail, schmocktail.

2011-03-24T02:14:00.001-04:00

What the heck is a cocktail dress anyway? I'm about the most unfeminine woman I know, and this very Saturday I have to come up with a DRESS to wear to my brother's wedding. Yes, my baby brother is getting married. I distinctly remember changing his diaper a time or two and winding the crank on his swing when it stopped and the little shit started crying. Ah, but he was cute. And I was so happy to hold him and play tricks on him when I was a mischievous 9 year old and he was a gullible 3 year old. I quite happily convinced him that my feet could talk one day. I tried to play with his "boy" toys even though I was girl(ish). And I used to watch him walk around the yard with a stick in his hand pretending to be He-Man - making sure he didn't wander out of sight. On our tire swing that hung from a very high limb on one of our dad's 200 year old oak trees, Josh could really swing dangerously high. We were always afraid that thing would break and he'd go sailing into the yard smashing every bone in his body. I think my father really believed Josh wouldn't live to be 10 years old. But he did. The little guy is now 30. And he's getting married. Ah...but forget nostalgia. Now the pressure's on for me to find a stinkin' dress to wear to his wedding and I haven't the foggiest idea of where to start. What the heck is a cocktail dress?

Read this book by Jessica Jewett

2011-03-07T16:29:00.001-05:00

I read this in ONE NIGHT! If you have a Kindle or Kindle program on your iPhone it's only $4.99. Amazing narrative from an amazing lady about her past life as Fanny Chamberlin (wife of famous Civil War soldier Lawrence Chamberlin) and her reincarnation to her present life. Very inspiring story. Open your minds and your hearts to the possibilities, and support independent publishing at the same time. Definitely grabs the reader from the first page to the last. I didn't want it to end! Two great things to compliment the book, only after you've read it, are to watch the movies Gods & Generals and Gettysburg. I have always been very interested in the Civil War since being exposed to it in my 11th grade U.S. history class. I was in the theater the first night when Gods & Generals came out (even though I had my wisdom teeth out that day)! I have also visited the Gettysburg battlegrounds several times - which is something everyone who lives in America should do at some point in your life. It doesn't matter where you're from, North or South, a lot of tragedy took place there, and you kind of have to see it in person to understand how huge it really was. Put it on your bucket list.

Hello Grief, come sit a while.

2011-02-24T07:53:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I totally lost myself in sorrow. When three of my relatives died within a 4 month period, I just got so sad that I looked so hard for a diversion that I couldn't see straight. I made mistakes. At some point in time in life I guess we all do. We all screw up and we can blame it on whatever makes us feel justified, but what I know now is that I wasn't justified simply because of the pain I felt. That was then - this is now. Now I feel the onset of that same overwhelming sorrow. What I think I have learned is to just SIT in it. Let myself feel the pain each day until it begins to lighten up - that is, not to try and escape it, but to feel it wash over me, acknowledge it for what it is (grief) and then try to release it each day.

I lost my aunt, as you know, about 11 days ago. Yesterday I found out that a new friend, a person I'd recently tried hard to help and then strangely gotten attached to, died in the wee hours of the morning. Someone reminded me that death comes in "3's." I'm trying to ignore this superstition because I don't know that my heart can take another loss right now. Normally I'm chatty, feel pretty okay about life, despite my sometimes stressful job. Right now, I don't want to talk. I don't have anything to say but a simple question to the Universe - "Why?" I know that death is a part of life. And if I didn't already get this notion, my job would have taught me well over the last three years. But lately it seems that people are dying in middle age - in their 40's, 50's, and 60's. And a lot of people are dying. I'm sure it's proportional to the population - maybe a result too of our toxic environment. The Bible says that our days are numbered from the start - that God knows when each of us will go. It's predetermined how and when we die. I don't know about that necessarily because some things just seem so freakishly odd that I just can't figure how or why it should have gone down that way. But then, I don't have that supreme understanding of the way the world works. I wish I did.

Right now I guess I'm gonna concentrate on being sad. Sounds weird doesn't it? 6 years ago I was doing everything I could to distract myself from the sadness, but that lesson is learned. There's no escaping what the heart truly feels. An old adage tells us not to wallow in sorrow or self pity, but I say that you should - at least for a time. If you don't feel it, sort through it, try to understand and come to terms with it - then it will eventually catch up to you anyway. Like that day in 2005 when I bit down into an old lady's teacake cookie and cried for half an hour. The taste of that cookie reminded me of my Granny whose loss I hadn't fully mourned. Grief sneaks up on you throughout your life. You'll never really be finished with it. It does get easier though, as I finally learned once I let myself know that heavy-hearted, there's an elephant standing on my chest - feeling. Sooner or later the elephant doesn't feel so heavy, doesn't take your breath away quite as bad, kinda backs over into the corner of that room in our minds where we store the painful stuff that is quite definitely part of living a full life. The heart takes chances we sometimes can't help. We love when we do - and there's no choosing who we love and when that love takes hold of us. That love that we feel, that genuine concern for another person above and beyond what we feel for ourselves - that is where the grief comes from. But as another old saying goes, "tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."

Mothers

2011-02-17T01:50:00.002-05:00

Steve Harvey is a great comedian. I vividly remember watching him on Kings of Comedy tell a great story about how women really needed to "build a man." One man simply cannot do all the things that a woman needs, so she must build a man using about 4 different types of men to get satisfaction out of her life. One had to be rich, one gay, one old, one vibrant and sexy...and the joke went on. It was really funny and I still smile when I think of it. Not such a crazy idea really.

The Indigo Girls wrote a song years ago called "Kid Fears." It's about having a tough childhood, and there's a line in there about how we should "replace the ones that we love." This is what I had to do.
I was very young when my mother and father divorced, too young to remember the loss on the day it happened. I have no idea what my parents argued about, how it all went down, the looks on their faces, the things she packed when she left. All I know is that the loss I can't remember, the thing that changed my life forever, has hurt me all these years. I hardly ever heard from my mother after she left. But in that empty space, there was a soft spot for me to fall some days - most days even.

If Steve Harvey could tell the story, he'd say I built myself a mother.

My Granny was there almost everyday as I grew. I lived with her part of those years. She cooked for me, took care of me when I was sick, talked to me and instilled values in me. When I was sad she'd hold me close in bed beside her, tell me stories, pat me on the back. She was a gift to me all the years I had her. Then she was gone.

My Aunt Sharon was my oh so cool aunt. She took me school shopping when I was little, let me spend nights at her house with my cousins, took us to the mall when we were teens, and she thought I was smart. I loved that she called me for my opinion when I got older. She was the one who told me when I was 21 that I wouldn't know who I was until I was at least 30. She was right. I'm 36 and I'm still baffled by some things. Two months before Granny died, we lost Sharon to a hard-fought battle with cancer.

My Aunt Barbara was the last in my trio of mother figures. She was a lot like Granny in that she was a great cook, and tried her best to keep our family grounded after so much loss. She was very funny, had strong arms and gave tight hugs. Just a few weeks ago she brought a bunch of clothes over for my daughter. She'd been shopping and found a deal. She thought of me like another one of her own. I can't tell you how many weekends I spent with her as a child. I always felt safe and loved in her presence. I remember that she gave me a lot of touch - held me in her lap, ran her fingers through my hair, hugged me tight every time I saw her. And tragically, she is now gone too. We lost her on Sunday. My family will never be the same.

The sadness I feel right now might not be temporary. It might be permanent. I'm in a dark place for sure. When I was in my 20's I remember Hootie and The Blowfish had a song about a "motherless child." I always identified with it because I felt like when I was small I wore a big banner that said, hey...here's a kid whose own mother didn't love her enough to stay. But all these years later I know that isn't how the situation actually played out. Their divorce wasn't my fault. My mother's love for me isn't easily understood by me or anyone else. People have flaws. Myself included.

But now that it's all said and done I realize I wasn't a motherless child. Even though they didn't give birth to me, they were all three mothers to me. They all loved me and helped me through my life. If I had truly been alone I wouldn't be able to feel such pointed sorrow right now. I guess it is better to have loved and lost than to have never felt that love at all. I'm going to try to remember the good times, the times we laughed so hard we couldn't even talk...and when we went on crazy adventures together. When you're young, and even now, you never know when you might be building a memory that will stand the test of time, that you'll hold close in your darkest hour. That memory that might circulate in your brain over and over and over again and hopefully bring you some peace.

So as you continue to live your life, don't just go through the motions. Take time to say I love you. Make time for each other. Build your house with memories, and fill your heart with love. These are the things that matter.

Criminal Minds: how did I miss this?

2010-11-13T15:37:00.002-05:00

I never watch television. I mean never...until recently. You see, my new roommate Jennifer introduced me to a show called Criminal Minds. Holy Cow! Last night, I watched 4 straight episodes of this show - now you must understand that my husband was conked out asleep on the couch (sitting up, quite impressive), Jennifer was at work, and I was holding Sarah and carefully monitoring her out-of-control fever outta nowhere that cropped up in the wee hours of the morning Friday. But passing the time watching really smart sexy people use their cunning brain skills to catch the bad guy made for a whopping good time!
It isn't that I have anything against television, it's just that I don't like fiction. I don't like sit-coms or reality shows or cartoons or infomercials. I don't like re-runs of old-ass shows that weren't good the first time around either. I used to like Days of Our Lives but then the plot got so slow I could keep up by watching a half dozen episodes a year so I just quit altogether. I don't like to watch sports, save Georgia football, and I don't like MTV or VH1. I certainly don't like wrestling or obscure documentaries about tools used thousands of years ago by early ape-like humans.
However, I do PAY for television. Odd as it may seem, my husband is a television addict (certified) and I've enabled his nasty habit for years now by shelling out the cash to subscribe. It's too bad he hasn't taken the initiative to go on some t.v. trivia gameshow to win some money. Anyway, in the last couple of weeks since I've starting watching this totally amazing show, I know he dreads seeing me come into the room with that "lemme have that remote mister" look on my face. Too bad. I'd say fifteen years of getting to watch whatever he wanted is enough. It's time I finally felt like I was getting my money's worth on my cable bill!
If you haven't had the time or energy to catch this show, do yourself the favor. It's pretty darn cool. Also in it's 6th season, so I am embarrassed to have not caught on to this until now, however excited that I can now spend hours upon hours catching up on all the action! I even checked out the online store for cool stuff but only found the DVDs and a t-shirt that I wouldn't wear. I'm not buying the DVDs because while it would make sense to watch them in order to follow the storyline a bit better, I finally can justify spending mucho dollars on my cable service. C'mon now. Let's all breathe a big sigh of relief. I know I feel better.
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/criminal_minds/

Halloween 2010

2010-11-02T02:18:00.000-04:00

I've decided that Halloween is my favorite holiday. Prior to today, and considering that yesterday - Halloween day - was actually somewhat miserable, I've never had a favorite holiday. But there's a first time for everything! Allow me to preface this by saying that I've been a TOTAL slacker lately. But a couple of weeks ago Hal started working on weekends, so even though I work two 12 hour shifts back to back on Thursday & Friday each week, I've got to be ready to entertain our 6 year old at the butt crack of dawn on Saturday morning, just hours after I've gotten off work and maybe three or four (if I'm lucky) hours after I've passed out asleep.
The first thing Sarah asked me on Halloween morning this year was if she could have pink hair. My cousin gave us a hand-me-down rock star costume that is pink, I purchased a little pink skull bucket for her to collect her treats in so I guess she figured her hair ought to be pink too. All day long she begged me to carve the pumpkin. Granted, I should have already had that done - but alas, I am a slacker. So just before noon I gave in and we carved the pumpkin, which she immediately made me start calling the "jack-o-lantern." Later I forced her to take a nap, which she whined about. When she awoke we made her take a bath, which she also whined about. Then Jennifer glittered and glammed her hair and face to make her a pretty rock star, and she whined some then too. Then she whined about the sun not going down fast enough so she could go trick or treating. When it finally was time, after nearly 12 hours of pure parental torture, we headed out the door and walked straight to the neighbors house. Not only did Sarah refuse to ring the doorbell and say 'trick or treat,' I had to PUSH her to walk up the sidewalk to their door! This continued for the next ten houses until she finally asked to go home. She might have mustered an audible 'trick or treat' once or twice, and maybe a 'thank you' too amongst our threats of never ever taking her trick or treating again if she didn't.
When we arrived home, we grabbed our bucket of candy, turned on the porch light and lit the jack-o-lantern. This is when the child came alive. She had a blast giving out candy to all the trick-or-treaters that darted our door. We still had to remind her to say "you're welcome" but at least she seemed like she was enjoying something after such a long day of begging and whining. Tis better to give than to receive I suppose. At least she gets it honest.

In my renewed enthusiasm, I scooped her up after work today and drove her to the day after Halloween sale at Target where we bought lots of candy and a spiffy new costume for her to wear next year. Only 363 days left. Let the whining begin!

Cancer sucks.

2010-09-28T15:47:00.001-04:00

Alas! I am a terrible blogger lately. Believe me, it isn't for lack of things to say - it is mostly for lack of time to write, because of me putting other things and people first, and for general happiness all around.

The move back to our house generated quite a few other changes as well. We have a new roommate - Jennifer - who came with her two feline children Omar and Poncho. All in all, it's been a pretty smooth adjustment that has meant more love and friendship in my life.

In a few days it will be October - the leaves will start falling and everyone will start wearing pink again. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and it always makes me sad. Usually at some point I come to tears. You see, I lost someone very special nearly 6 years ago now - my sweet Aunt Sharon.

She was first diagnosed at age 31 I believe, in 1989, and went through lots of chemo, radiation, and a full mastectomy. Awful for her for sure, and awful for my 14 year old brain too. Fifteen years after her first diagnosis, her cancer comes back as osteosarcoma (probably a result of all that radiation) and turns deadly. We tried to save her - including two trips to Houston's MD Anderson hospital, but she couldn't withstand the chemo regimen they needed her to go through and she stopped after only 2 or 3 treatments.

When she died my grief was immeasurable. I plowed my face into my pillow and screamed - beating the bed with clinched fists in my heart's utter torment. It was just awful - she was only 48 years old. She had grandchildren she wanted to play with, and she had children who still needed her even though they were grown. I still needed her; we all did.

I finally got up the nerve to go back to her house this past Sunday - to visit my cousin there where she now lives, to be in that space again where I always remember my Aunt Sharon living. Her touches are still there, very viable - still very present. But I did not feel her spirit there anymore and I can only hope that means that she is at peace with her passing, that she is carefully watching over us from beyond what we can know about yet.

Several days before I dreamed of her - she and I and my cousins sitting in that very living room. Perhaps she is the one who visited me in my dream and suggested that I go ahead and go. She must know that I have grieved a million times for her, have cried oh so many tears because of the injustice of it all, have wanted to ask her a thousand questions, and have wanted to show her my child.

So I went, and I didn't even cry. I took Jennifer with me - and she was up to the task of being just the ears I needed to hear my thoughts that day. And I hope, through all of the space and time, that there was another soul out there hearing about how much I still love and miss her. This one's for you Aunt Sharon!

Reflection.

2010-08-30T02:22:00.000-04:00

My commute is now about 7 minutes. It used to be a minimum of 25. You guessed it, I'm back in my house in Athens. Thank God. Today I visited the little country house nearly one month after we left and the only thing I found that I missed was the feeling that my grandmother's spirit might be out there amongst the trees. She loved that little spot - it was the best thing she ever had. I wonder if this spot here in Athens is my little place, my nest, my refuge from life's storm. Could be. All I know is that the instant we got things cleaned up and began to put our things back in the house, hang our pictures back on the walls, cut the grass, and cook a meal - I felt better all over. A quiet sense of peace.
I really don't miss the country. Maybe I miss the proximity to my father's place and his gigantic oak trees that must be 200 years old. Or the sounds of the creek below my grandmother's house. The baby geese that we got to watch grow over the course of the Spring. Maybe I miss that feeling of really being in the place where I grew up. But here it is my life I'm living, starting fresh and new, but not forgetting all that I could have lost in those spaces in between - the place I always belonged. I'm really thankful for that time I had to spend out there in that tiny little hot/cold house. I'm thankful for all of the memories I regained while in that space: the way my Granny looked standing at the stove with her apron on and her spatula in hand (I can smell the bacon frying), the ancient echos of my childhood laughter when my Uncle Keith and I used to squirt each other with the water hose, Granny reciting the poem about leaves falling in the wind, and all of the times our family gathered there to eat and laugh and love.
No life is perfect. No life is without pain and sacrifice. But I've also found that no life is without tender moments of real peace and love and laughter and minutes you'd like to bottle up and save for later so you'd never forget what it felt like when they happened. What I would give now to lay my head in Granny's soft lap and feel her long slender fingers course through my hair. What I would give to be a child again swinging mightily on the tire swing my father hung from the limb of that giant oak tree. What I'd give to hold my baby brother in my arms again. And wouldn't we all love to know then what we know now?

Leaving

2010-08-17T02:05:00.001-04:00

Things are not always what they seem.
Your face in the shadows, once in the moonlight, now gone.
Sometimes I still see you there when you want to be.

What is this mess we've made?
It is like a pink rubber ball bouncing rapidly down a steep, dark slope.
Fresh at once then losing speed until it rolls no more.

You have been my heaven and my in-between.
But as you fade away I know this will not be
everything I thought it could.

Still I reach for you in the night.
Someday I hope you may return to me
and be a warm welcome against my cold skin.

My soul awaits yours and I will try to live fully.
Surely it cannot be much longer
until we finally get it right.

It is you my love.

2010-08-15T03:22:00.001-04:00

I knew you a hundred years ago
I saw you walking on those cold
grey cobblestones which fit so perfectly together.

You walked there in the crevice of my mind
and in the years since my longing for you deepened
into something I shall know as love.

When I saw you again I did not know you.
It was my soul that whispered, he's here.
After all this time, I know it is you.

Easy to smooth the painful cries of long ago,
tears that fell on cold window panes
and handkerchiefs not embroidered with loose change.

Easy it is now to look into your eyes
beautiful, brown, knowing who I am from the start.
I am limp when you reach for me underneath the stars.

It is okay my love. No need to wait any longer.
This time we will not be denied what we could not have then.
Let us live a thousand more years warmed in the light of the sun.

I Will Come To You

2010-08-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

When you have no light to guide you
And no one to walk to walk beside you
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

Sometimes when all your dreams may have seen better days
And you don't know how or why, but you've lost your way
Have no fear when your tears are fallin'
I will hear your spirit callin'
And I swear I'll be there come what may

When you have no light to guide you
And no one to walk beside you
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

I will come to you

'Cause even if we can't be together
We'll be friends now and forever
And I swear that I'll be there come what may
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

We all need somebody we can turn to
Someone who'll always understand
So if you feel that your soul is dyin'
And you need the strength to keep tryin'
I'll reach out and take your hand

I'll reach out and take your hand

Oh I will come to you
When you have no light to guide you
And no one to walk to walk beside you
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

Oh I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

I will come to you,
Oh I will come to you

Hanson

The Recession's long shadow.

2010-07-13T01:01:00.004-04:00

The Atlantic Monthly had an article about the recession and unemployment in America. I hope everyone will read this article. Hal has been out of meaningful work for over 2 years now. It's very hard on families when one of the couple is involuntarily out of work. Depression and divorce sky-rocket. Here's the link: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/how-a-new-jobless-era-will-transform-america/7919/

Of cucumbers and mid-life crises.

2010-07-05T02:29:00.001-04:00

I've felt cramped lately, like I need to escape my life. Wonder if this is normal? I am after all, 35. Isn't it time for a mid-life crisis? Is this where I'm supposed to make some dramatic change to keep up the inertia that will take me to 70?

Pickle season is nearly over. The cucumber plants are slowing down, but justifiably so since they've born hundreds of cucumbers. They are nice long round pretty things. I held one in my hands the other day and marveled at just how pretty it was. Sarah had an especially gigantic one in her lap the other day, a little cloth wrapped around it. I asked, "what are you doing?" She replied, "Mama of course I'm holding my baby's baby." Duh. I suppose her actual baby doll off to the side had given birth to this here plump cucumber, one side cream-colored toward the sun.

My job is wonderful. I am working too many hours, which I think is the reason for my hum-drum, but damn what a satisfying job I have. Too bad I cannot write about it here. The range of emotions I feel in a 12-hour shift would jolt most of you for days. It did me at first too. But now I thrive on it if it doesn't kill my spirit. It's a delicate balance, you see.

My child is growing up too fast. When she was a baby I dreamed of the day when she'd be big enough to do things own her own, and now that she mostly is - the whole thing scares the shit out of me. I threaten to go off to college with her. Hal gives me weird glances. He knows I actually could do that if I wanted to. I could get some job at her college and watch over her there but I won't. And besides, that's 13 years away. But the first 5 flew by. Especially those dark and dreamy nights when I just held her in my arms and rocked her to sleep; the smell of her soy milk breath wafting under my nose. Her baby sighs. Gosh.

And marriage. Isn't that a hard one to figure? The yo-yo up and downs of life that you try to pull through together. Sometimes our bond feels like cement, other times it's more like silly putty. Perhaps that is the way it was meant to be. No one can be head-over-heels in love 24/7 forever. I am, but I'm not. He is, but he isn't. We are, but we cannot be, not all the time. Sometimes when he sleeps I run my fingers through his hair and kiss his forehead but he doesn't know it. Sometimes I stare at him and envy the fact that he can sleep so easily, but I cannot.

In a few hours I think I'll take off somewhere. Blow off some steam. Lick my wounds, chase my tail, and just drive like a bat out of hell. Perhaps to the ocean. Maybe I'll even jump in.

Legos!

2010-06-29T03:58:00.000-04:00

This thing is so awesome! It took hours to put together but I loved every minute of it, sore neck and all. Hal totally called me out on having more fun with it than Sarah but I rebutted with a "she can't have fun unless it's assembled!" If you've seen Toy Story 3 - and the other Toy Story movies - and you've ever played with Legos as a child, this thing is for you (and your kid of course)! Sarah loves it! She's always been rather fascinated by trains so I knew she'd like it. Over the summer she's become a night owl like me and we went to Wal-mart (dare I say the word) at 5:00 in the morning yesterday - she perused the toy section and found this. It's not cheap, but it is a lot of TOY and it highlights the opening scene in Toy Story 3. Hal and I had always thought of buying her a train set since she showed such interest, but never did...so this was a great compromise. I think there is something rather therapeutic about putting together an intricate Lego model. The instructions had over 60 pages in two booklets. I think there were a total of 584 pieces too. Really a well thought out design. Even Hal was impressed! But most satisfying was watching Sarah in the floor playing with Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and the Evil Dr. Porkchop! She was so funny! Definitely worth the money and I'm not one to spend a lot of money right now. So there you go!

Hodge-podge.

2010-06-22T00:41:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks have been heavy with responsibility, work, and pickle-making, and I haven't had a lot of time for writing, nor have I been in the mood to write. Actually tonight I'm not either but I know that this writer's block can go from temporary to semi-permanent if I don't do something to shake it up - so here I am clicking away at the keys.

There isn't much new to report except that our pickles have been met with rave reviews! It's really exciting to see everyone smiling when they crunch on one of our pickles the first time. They really are very good and we're actually starting to make a teeny bit of money. Plus Hal has something to do everyday now - harvest and wash cucumbers and get them ready for pickling. He's also now made a few dozen jars by himself after learning the uber secret recipe!

I've also been reading and musing on a whole lot of things - the awful oil that's gushing into the Gulf of Mexico courtesy of BP, the prospect of moving back into our house in the suburbs in a mere 4 months, and I'm thinking of making us a one car family. That's right! I don't know if my husband will ever agree to that idea, but as long as he's not working, and when we're back in our house that's only 4 miles from my job (if that), then it makes no sense to have more than one car. I can bike to work. Plus, one of our vehicles is paid off so if I can sell the one I'm making payments on, then that's major extra money every month! We shall see.

I had one of those extremely nifty 40% off coupons from Border's bookstore tonight and it was burning a hole in my hands so I picked up a copy of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. I took the online test and got a overall score of 74. I'm assuming this is out of 100. So, got a ways to go! Apparently if your emotional intelligence is high enough, you can make lots more money in your work life. But that's not why I bought the book. I like to be self-aware so I thought this might help. Plus, I know I'm not perfect so I like to constantly be on the prowl for new information that can make me a better person. There you go. Get a copy of this book and we'll share scores! Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Pickles!

2010-06-10T08:38:00.000-04:00

Got in the kitchen last night with our first batch of homegrown organic pickles! We were able to make 7 quart jars of pickles - and we're super excited and hope that we get lots more cucumbers in the days ahead. Hal still doesn't have a job so we're hoping this can be his summer activity and that we can sell our pickles for a small profit! I spent a good bit on the spices and jars so we at least want to make back that money and have enough cucumbers to use up all the spices.

I made these pickles by tweaking a recipe given to me by my former supervisor at Clemson. She is an awesome cook and can make anything by hand! She even makes her own tortilla chips! But I haven't made these pickles in almost 7 years because when I first got pregnant with Sarah I couldn't stand the smell of garlic. Kinda funny huh? They'll be ready to eat Friday at midnight - can't wait to try them again! Now what to call them? Heather's Amazin' Dills or Posey's Pernicious Pickles? :o)

Living on little.

2010-06-07T05:05:00.001-04:00

So it turns out that it was NKOTB-not-to-be. Just couldn't find the cash to go this year unless a large sum of money befalls me before June 19th that is, or I'll make a last ditch effort to see them in New York. I feel childishly pouty about the whole thing, but this is life. I'm nearly finished with a wonderful book called The New Good Life by John Robbins, the would-be heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune. Rather than spend his life wanting for absolutely nothing, he gave it all up to live a simpler, more aware, and earth friendly existence. This really is a good story, and a good manual for making the financial hard times more palatable. For me it really is sometimes very difficult, because I work full time but my husband is still not able to find work at all. So the American consumer in me feels that I ought to be able to reward myself by using my money to purchase something for myself. This book brings home the point that there are much more rewarding ways to spend our time besides shopping for things to clutter up our houses. But it doesn't necessarily speak to buying "experiences" like a NKOTB concert. It does talk about other ways to have fun though, and that'll have to do for now. So this next week I'm going to get outside more and spend more time with my daughter and less time in front of a computer or a book. There are cheap ways to have fun. I should know, I lived cheaply for most of my life. Tomorrow maybe we'll find some free fun somewhere.

I am not really a material girl. If I put all of my true wants on a list, I doubt it would equal a hundred thousand dollars. Seriously. The most expensive thing would be an Airstream camper! It would be super fabulous to have one of those to pull around to all the state parks and camp out. I could take some awesome pictures. Perhaps I'll start saving now!

Here's the link to the book - I'm definitely going to keep this one on my shelf for reference. The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less

Toddler dictionary, part two.

2010-05-23T22:26:00.000-04:00

A few more Sarah-isms to add to the toddler dictionary. Too cute not to write down.

Na-kin: the thing you wipe your mouth with after lunch. Unless you forget and wipe it on your sleeve.

Ploma: the rolled up piece of paper with a string tied around it that they give you at graduation.

Fee-ater: large building where you go pay out the nose to see a movie.

Impossible situation.

2010-05-18T00:50:00.001-04:00

I really don't want to write about this because I don't like to immortalize bad things...but this is worth writing about. My grandmother always said I was "tender-hearted." I think she was right.
Last Friday night I was on my way home from work at 3:30 in the morning. Everything was dark blue-black except my headlights and the little pair of eyes shining back at me there in the road. After I saw the little cat curled up in a ball in the road, clearly still alive, I had to stop. I turned around and pulled into that lane with my hazard lights on so that no one would run over the cat again. Three thirty in the morning is when all the critters are out. It's the absolute worst time to try to drive home. Every single night I'm dodging animals in the road. I'd rather fight rush hour traffic than dodge animals. But alas, there it was. Someone rushing along this busy highway had obviously hit the little grey and white tabby cat and the poor thing was just in the middle of the road curled up, bleeding from the mouth and trying hard to breathe. Coughing up blood, meowing at me. It was just awful. It was so dark and there was no one out there but me and the kitty. I paced around for a minute. I'd just ended a 36 hour period where I'd worked 24 of those hours and I was really tired, but I could not just leave the cat. I called the local sheriff's office and asked them to come. They never did. I called the 24 hour trauma vet but they told me that if I brought the cat to them I'd have to take financial responsibility and it would more than likely cost me around a thousand dollars. Then several minutes later an off duty cop pulls over, still in his uniform. He shines his light on the cat, who has now made it to the side of the road all by itself and tells me not to give up on the little guy just yet. He might make it the cop told me, "but you need to get your car off this road because you and I are probably the only two sober people here." Three times, three different ways, he told me to get back in my car and get the heck off that dark highway. So I did. It was an awfully impossible situation.

The next morning I was still upset about the cat and I told my family what had happened. Sarah asked, "did the cat die Mommy?" I told her I didn't know. She then said, "well, it's okay Mommy - she'll just go to Heaven and be alive again!"

After Sarah's pre-school graduation ceremony (where my camera batteries died right at the start), we went back home taking the route by where I'd seen the cat. I looked all over but it wasn't there. I'm hoping it made its way back home to someone who could afford the thousand dollar vet bill...or made it to kitty Heaven the way Sarah suggested.

It's too bad the trauma vet wouldn't just help the cat. I would have been willing to pay something, but that price was outrageous. In the Emergency Room, we take whatever walks in the door - especially when you've been hit by a car! It's not the best deal for the hospital financially, but in the end it's the right thing to do - to take a legitimate someone who is seriously hurt and do our best to save their life. For a brief moment I actually considered taking the cat back to the ER where I work, but I knew I'd get some strange looks and maybe a "get the hell out of here with that thing!"

My own cat is an extension of my little family. I feed her well, I give her medicine for fleas, and she can sleep in my bed if she wants (although most days she doesn't). I don't understand how someone can hit an animal on the road and not stop - as if that life was disposable.

To make matters worse, tonight I get this email on a list-serv I'm a member of:

"Anyone looking to adopt an animal? Paulding county Animal shelter (GA)
will be closing May 28th for construction. All animals are being
adopted out for $20 each. This includes shots, spay/neuter, and
micro-chipping. All animals not adopted by May 28th will be euthanized.
This is a great opportunity for anyone to give an animal a second
chance on life"

An animal shelter is closing for renovations and will euthanize all animals that aren't gone in 10 days time? My goodness.

I plan on making a donation to the Humane Society in that little cat's honor - hope you will too. www.humanesociety.org

Shhhh! Quiet! Mama bear is sleeping.

2010-05-13T04:42:00.001-04:00

My husband is perhaps my number one deterrent when it comes to sleeping at night. For one, he snores. This is a relatively new-ish thing. He didn't snore until about two years ago. It isn't constant...just once in a while as he sleeps. But here's the thing that really gets me...I go to sleep early some nights and he stays up late. But when he comes to bed he steps on the squeaky wooden floor and it wakes me up! So tonight I've been amusing myself with pogo.com. Goodness gracious what a total waste of time. But I suppose a little mindless balloon popping never hurt anyone! Now, off to bed. Should I whack him on the head? :)

National Fibromyalgia Awareness Day.

2010-05-12T17:39:00.000-04:00

The last few days I've been feeling kinda crappy. It all started last week when I stopped taking Lyrica. You see, I've been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia - 3 times in the last 10 years! Most recently my very awesome doctor prescribed Lyrica which actually worked pretty good - but it made me kind of fuzzy headed and worst of all, it made me gain weight. Which clearly I don't need to do! Just the opposite, I need to lose weight to the tune of about 40 pounds. So, because of that, I decided to titrate down on my dosage and completely go off of it. By Saturday afternoon I couldn't move my head. Fortunately my dad had some Loritab and he gave me two of them so I could move around on Saturday and Sunday. Today I went to see my doctor and he said that he's more convinced than ever that I do indeed have Fibromyalgia. And it just so happens that today is National Fibromyalgia Awareness day. I was given a new medicine to try that doesn't cause weight gain, so I've already taken my first dose. Even though it hurts I'm going to continue trying to get out of the house and move around, take a walk. In this vein I had the following conversation with my daughter just now:

Me: Hey I've got a suggestion.
Sarah: What is it?
Me: We can walk down to the creek with the binoculars and see if we can spot the geese and their babies or we can play our new Scrabble game (just got it today to practice building words with her).
Sarah: Um, how about we do both? (smart kid - get everything you can, right?)
Me: Uh, okay. Which one do you want to do first?
Sarah: Let's get the 'vernaculars' and go see the baby geese! (I love being her mommy!)

So if you are one of the millions that suffer each day from the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia, don't worry, just keep moving. And talk to your doctor. I believe you. It's definitely real - and it has causes and symptoms. For more information, go to www.fmaware.org.

NKOTB or not to be?

2010-05-10T23:39:00.000-04:00

I'm loving the extra blogging for Skirt! that I'm doing lately, but alas I have neglected this blog! Right now I'm trying to cook up a way to go to a New Kids on the Block concert this year. Now last year I totally indulged myself like never before, but I will also say that last year I had a really good time and came home very happy each time. This year the closest shows are 12 hours away (gasp)! But, I really want to go. We have a moral conundrum here. Hubby still has no job but I still want to go. What to do, what to do? This is what's keeping me up tonight!

You must read this book...

2010-05-06T21:32:00.000-04:00

Seriously. I'm more than halfway through it and it has made me re-think the food I eat. I'm on a streak of personal development lately! :)

I was not aware of all the toxins that are in our food, and only subtly aware of the mistreatment animals endure while being raised in large factory farms for food. Having grown up out in the country and regularly seeing cows carelessly grazing in large green pastures sort of made me see the meat I eat through rose-colored glasses. I'm not saying that everyone should be vegetarian or even vegan, but reducing the amount of meat we eat would do a lot towards helping the global environmental crisis get a little bit better. I had no idea that agriculture actually emits more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry! There's a lot of methane in animal poop. And there's a lot of fertilizers used in the foods we raise to feed all those animals with.

I don't expect that a few of us can solve these problems, but what we all can and should do is make ourselves at least aware and educated about what the problems are. Why leave this for our children to worry about? Yesterday I ate no meat by sheer coincidence. Today I ate no meat on purpose. Tomorrow maybe I'll have a hamburger or maybe I won't. But at least I'll know more than I did yesterday about what the issues are.

One step closer to seeing my name in lights!

2010-05-06T02:26:00.002-04:00

I'm now a blogger for Skirt! - a national and local magazine (print and online). So check me out - go to www.skirt.com/heatheraposey! That will be "my other blog." I'll try my best not to replicate content too much. Yay me! Can you tell I'm excited. No extra money here, but definitely extra fun!

Well, it's your hair!

2010-05-02T21:49:00.000-04:00

Today I woke up with that undeniable urge to get half my hair whacked off. You women out there know what I'm talking about: it's the I'll find whoever has some scissors and this god-awful hair will come off today. You will drive to the nearest hair cut facility and you will find someone who can cut it off so that the dreaded blob of hair on your head will not look like you just dunk your head in a toilet everyday. You're absolutely completely sick of it and should there be some apocalyptic reason why all the hair cut facilities are closed today, you'll take the darn kitchen scissors to it if you have to. It's coming off.

So there I was, in Great Clips of all places, with that desperate look in my eye. I know those women know that look. That, I don't give a damn what you do, just cut it off, look. This lady calls my name after only a few minutes of waiting and takes me back to her chair. On the way I'm taking a mental note-to-self that her hair looks pretty awful. It's not even close to being styled. My stylist is African American, and I've seen some really awesome locks on my African American friends at work so I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she can do better than simply straightening her not-even-shoulder-length hair that's sticking out at approximately a 45 degree angle from her head.   Another mental note occurs to me: this is the site of the terrible, awful, no-good very bad haircut that I got just before moving to Maryland in Fall of 2008 and quite frankly, I'm never going to forget that. I've had about 5 really bad haircuts since I was born and that was the 5th one.

So I sit down in her chair and she's literally muttering something under her breath about not talking at work anymore and how she's got a new attitude which immediately leads me to believe that she got in trouble recently for something she said. Great start. She finally says hello to me and asks the inevitable question that always makes me cringe. "What we gonna do with it today?"

The last haircut I got from my dear friend and the one that can no doubt cut my hair better than anyone else in this world (but she's off on Sundays and I was having an emergency), but my last haircut must have been the result of a communication error on my part. Normally I just let her have at it and make my head of hair her personally sculpted work of art for the day. Last time she gave me what my work friends called a shag - but I (being a child of the 80's) felt it was a bit too close to an actual mullet so it bothered me this entire last month. Plus, I was getting those side flaps of hair back over my ears that made my head look like it could become a propeller at any moment and take flight. In my imagination I could hear small children saying from down below as I was lifting off, "look Mommy - that lady is flying with her hair!"

Alas, I digress. I tell the lady to leave the top of my hair alone, cut it at the ear, and cut off the back leaving just enough over the collar for it to flip out a little. She immediately begins to argue with me. What? she says. Mmm Mmm, I don't think that will be good. Now she insults my judgement, or perhaps I'm being over-sensitive, but regardless she's telling me that what I've suggested and thought about for a year and a half (this was the haircut I was trying to get when I got the really bad haircut) isn't going to look good. Now, if you know me, you know that I could mostly care less about what I look like. I'm not that vein. I don't wear make-up at all, don't pluck my eyebrows, never change my earrings, and if I spend more than 5 minutes on my hair - I'm having an unusually great day.   I tell her that is what I want and she proceeds to reply that she's going to cut it like she thinks it will look best. She does, pushing down on my head and neck like I'm the bride of Gumby (hold your head down!), leaving the top alone as I've asked, getting rid of the propeller blades over my ear, but leaving the length on the back. She paused and asked, "now doesn't that look good?" She sees my reaction and incredulously asks, "you really want this cut shorter back here?" "Yes I do," I tell her and she shakes her head and says, "well it's your hair! It won't look very attractive, but I'll cut it like you want it."

When I get up from the chair I tell her that it's taken me a year and a half to get that haircut and only because of that fact do I tell her thank you and give her a paltry $2 tip. So if any of you see me in the next few days and my hair looks really that bad, just smile and nod and know that at least I fought for what I wanted and won. I believe there's value in that.

Beginning of the end for Happy Meals?

2010-04-28T21:45:00.002-04:00

Today in Santa Clara California, county supervisors voted 3-2 to ban prizes from meals containing more than 485 calories. From May 11, restaurants will have only 90 days to get rid of the toys in kid's meals or more famoulsy, McDonald's happy meals.

"McDonald's is built on the Happy Meal," said one store manager at a local McDonald's that I spoke with today. Oddly, none of the employees in that franchise (here in GA) had even heard the news. They were concerned though. The manager added, "we sell about 100 Happy Meals a day here." What's more is that of all the Happy Meals for kids that are sold, lots of shuttling parents also buy a thing or two to eat. Happy Meals are a big draw for kids, and hungry parents can hardly stand the smell of those salty, fatty number one french fries either. I know from experience. Usually I have to have at least one of Sarah's fries. She's 5 and a half, so for at least 2 years we've been purchasing Happy Meals left and right. Do we do this every night? Absolutely not. Do we do it every week? Probably. It's an indulgence for her and us. She loves the food and actually eats the meal, and we don't have to worry so much about begging her to simply eat. No messy kitchen either.

I have mixed feelings about Happy Meal toys. The plus side is that they make Sarah happy, and she usually thinks I'm a very cool mother for taking her there. There's an article on the McDonald's website that is aimed at dispelling the "happy meal rumor" and asserts the claim that the food is actually quite healthy. The article quotes a professor from The University of Georgia, my alma mater! That article is here: http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/students/did_you_know/dispelling-rumor-about-mcdonalds-usa-happy-meals-march-2010.html

The down side is, what happens to all those plastic toys? According to the McDonald's website, there are about 13,000 restaurants in the U.S. If the store I was in happened to be a typical store, that's an estimate of 1.3 million plastic toys per day just in the U.S. I know that my child will grow up and abandon those toys - she usually loses interest in them within a couple of weeks or until the next set of toys comes out. Eventually they'll go in the trash because they can't be recycled. Are there enough holes in the Earth to hold all this trash? If McDonald's would make the move to having their toys produced with sustainable materials, that would be better, but until the toys go away, we've got major garbage added every day to our already growing heap on the planet.

One other issue is this one: I'm a mother. I should be able to decide what my child can or cannot eat on any given day, or at any given mealtime. In the end, I think a better option for Santa Clara, CA would be to lead a health education campaign aimed how parents should moderate high-fat food consumption for their children. For the parents who wish to feed their kids McDonalds food from time to time, such as myself, I doubt I'll let that stop me. I'm quite sure there are more McDonald's right across the county line that will be happy to serve children a toy with their Happy Meals. But as a parent, I cannot imagine driving thru at my local McDonalds and Sarah not getting a toy with her Happy Meal.

I know you have an opinion. Let the bickering commence!

I'm a changed woman.

2010-04-26T21:46:00.005-04:00

I've been working hard at trying to finish The Story of Stuff book, and I'm almost there. I can probably read the rest of it tonight. Having said that, I must say that shopping is a totally different experience with this new knowledge. Today I found myself at the Mall of Georgia. I held an Apple iPad and thought, oh cool I can see the whole web page - but what's the point? I ducked into Old Navy and even tried on a pair of khakis. My thought used to be that I could never have too many khaki pants. Now, I'm thinking mine don't yet have holes in them and I no longer feel the need to have one in every color. We went into the Disney Store. Now, I love all things Disney, but did you know that Haitian workers in Port au Prince who sew Disney garments only make $3.75 an hour? I was able to buy two shirts for Sarah for $7.50 each. Where's all that profit going? The CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner made 8.3 million in 2005. So those poor Haitian working mothers who don't even get home in time to see their kids go to bed are paying the price. It's not fair. With almost all of our goods in the U.S. being made very cheaply overseas, things break down faster and easier than they used to. And why don't we repair them rather than buy a new one? I'll tell you why - because many times it is actually cheaper to buy a new one than to have your broken one fixed! That's planned obsolescence. We should be making things here, making them durable and right, and then having them fixed when they break instead of throwing them in our landfills, or worse...shipping them overseas to pollute someone else's country. Repairing things here has another bonus: more jobs!

Here's another interesting fact: in the U.S. 12.9% of all municipal garbage (that means the garbage that you and I throw away) is FOOD SCRAPS! Yet poverty is rampant all over the world. We have the smart brains to figure out how to put a man on the Moon, how to design an iPhone, how to perform life saving heart surgeries and brain surgeries - yet we can't solve our poverty problem? Did you know that 30.9% of our municipal garbage is containers and packaging for all those things we buy? I'm as guilty as anyone else. I like stuff. I've been trained to like stuff all of my life. By the time we are 20 years old, the average American has viewed nearly a million ads. In 2006, $276 billion was spent on advertising. One year we buy khakis with a straight cut, the next year, a skinny cut, the next year a super flare - ads tell us what we should want, and then we do want it, and then we buy it and then next year, we're on to something else. Again, planned obsolescence. At age 35, I've already seen fashions from the 80's make a comeback (god help us). What will it be this decade? We think all these new things will make us happy. But research says they don't. They make us feel better for a couple of weeks, and then poof, we get that credit card bill and start feeling bad about our debt.

How do we find a way out of this work-shop-spend cycle? How do we buy less and therefore, decrease the demands on our planet? I don't yet have the answers to those questions. But what I do now have is a different feeling when I shop. If I need it, I'll buy it - but only if I can justify a need or a super-duper want. A super-duper want for me consists of thinking about something for at least two weeks before finally giving in and making the purchase. And having been raised with the old adage, women are born to shop, this might be difficult and painful at first. With Hal not working these past two years, I've already had to tell myself no many times...but this will be telling myself no every time and then reconsidering on a case by case basis. I'll help myself in the end. We don't have as much money as we used to anyway, so to stay out of debt, we need to learn to consume less. This is a good thing.

Even the car I drove around in today was an unnecessary purchase. I didn't have to have a brand spanking new hybrid Honda Insight a year ago. My 2005 Volkswagen Jetta worked just fine. It got 29 miles per gallon. There's no doubt that my Insight gets better gas mileage, at 46.1 mpg average. And yes, I have saved money on gas and have used less gas. I feel good about that. But how much energy and natural resources did it take to produce my new car? Had I traded in a 20 year old gas guzzler, I'd have made a better deal - but the car I had was only 5 years old. I probably shouldn't have bought the new one, even if it was a hybrid. The only thing I can do at this point is drive it 300,000 miles or until it falls apart, so that I know I've used it up. Then it should be scraped and recycled into new parts for a new car. We need to produce things in a closed loop and stop draining the Earth of all it's natural resources and filling it back up with garbage and toxic chemicals.

It's a lot to take in. You all owe it to yourselves to read this book. You don't have to buy it. I'll loan you mine! :) But if you're too far away and you want a copy, here's the link: The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Happy Earth Day!

2010-04-22T05:52:00.000-04:00

To celebrate Earth Day, I've got a few things going. For one, we planted our garden on Tuesday because that was the day my father decided was the day that it must be done. Since his garden is pretty much great every year (unless we're in a drought), I believe him. Here he is showing Hal how to drive his tractor to make the rows exactly right. We planted cucumber, squash, corn, cantaloupe, and zucchini seeds. I'm re-launching my dill pickle business this summer and we're stoked. Hal still doesn't have a job so this will definitely keep him busy. When I did this several years ago, it went really well - this time I think we're much more ready, especially since we're growing our own cucumbers. The other thing that I'm doing this week in honor of Earth Day is giving up meat. Growing animals for food uses tons of water and chemicals so for a week I'm going veggie! Good for me, good for the planet. Did you know that you should only eat 4 ounces of meat per day anyway (that is, if you eat meat at all)? Hopefully I'll find some time to finish reading The Story of Stuff before the week is out!

Bumps in the night.

2010-04-22T03:59:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting here in the dark, and both of my sweeties are asleep. The kitties are roaming around outside somewhere being cats. P.P. returned home yesterday morning with a whole dead mouse. She'd rather eat her cat food I suppose, yet there's still an instinct to wipe out the mouse population, one by one. Tonight she's back on the hunt, happy as a cat can be I guess, roaming the dark deafening woods. The only thing to hear around here at night inside the house is the low roar of my box fan - a household staple since my duty in the freshman dorm at Georgia. It really does help me sleep because when I'm asleep it drowns out all the other noise in the house. However, when I'm up like this, and wide awake, I sometimes hear footsteps in this house. For the first few months that we were here I heard absolutely nothing...and I was listening too. Boy, let me tell you. I was a little more than completely freaked out when we first started living in this house. Two people died in this house and it's also the place that my grandmother always wanted to come back to in her last years when she was staying with my aunt and uncle instead of being able to live in her own home. This little house was all she ever really had, and she worked hard for it, so she valued it more than anything else.

It was just when I'd stopped freaking out about it all and had pretty much forgotten about the spirits that could linger when I started hearing the footsteps. At first, I ignored them and chalked it up to some other thing, like maybe the front screen door was banging, or maybe the cat was on the porch jumping down off the rail. But last week it was so obvious that I literally felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I'd always heard other people say that and thought oh what an odd thing to feel, but now I know. It's kind of spine tingling. Seriously. Here's how it went.

I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep. I've already gone through my normal routine of twittering, emailing, blogging, and surfing the Internet to wind down from a long twelve hour shift in the ER. Sarah was on the couch asleep (because she refuses to sleep in the back room of the house where all of her stuff is). Hal was in our bed sound asleep too. I was curled up on my side when I heard the footsteps. My first instinct was that perhaps Sarah had awoke and was coming to get in the bed with us. I opened my eyes and watched for her, but didn't see or hear her. I laid back down and waited a minute and then heard more footsteps. This time I raise up on one elbow and really look hard for her silhouette in the dim light. Nothing. So I get up and go check on her and lo and behold there she is on the couch still very much asleep and in the exact same position as I left her earlier. That's when I felt the shiver up and down my spine. Seriously. For a moment I was afraid. But then I realized that if any of my family members who have gone on to the other side were here for a visit, they'd mean no harm to me. Or maybe it was just a "place memory." I don't know. I heard them again tonight, but didn't bother getting up to check on anyone. I guess now that they know we're back in the house, they're coming around to make sure we're okay. My grandmother is probably trying to send me hints to clean up the place. Or Keith would just try to freak us out and have himself a good laugh. My grandfather, who collapsed right in the bedroom that I sleep in a full four years before I was born...well, I don't know about him. Hopefully he's moved on by now into another life.

I asked Hal if he'd heard anything and he slowly let out a "yes." I think he's probably a little freaked out like I am. He thinks something is also messing with the cabinet doors in the kitchen. I don't know about that. But I do hear the steps. Loud and clear and absolutely out of this world. Maybe when we move back to our own house, my grandmother's spirit will follow us there. I think I'd like that. :)

Do you know a child in danger?

2010-04-20T03:22:00.000-04:00

My Thursday-Friday back to back 12-hour shifts in the ER are like a one-two punch in the noggin for me. It knocks me out for a while but when I wake up I feel alright. I just returned home from a couple of whirlwind days that began right as I awoke from my post-shift slumber Saturday afternoon. It all began with a kiddo birthday party that my child was invited to, then straight to the Great Southern Stampede Rodeo, and then straight into a late-night drive to Warner Robins where my mother-in-law lives. Once there I can commence my vegetative state that I often slink into upon arrival because it's very quiet, the focus is absolutely not on me, and I can sleep uninterrupted. So tonight I'm rather fresh and while not necessarily inspired, I do have something on my mind.

In the last few days, several headlines on cnn.com have bothered me.

'Pediatrician faces more sex charges'
'Sex-offender admits killing teens'
'Haleigh's dad told to make funeral plans'
'Man admits to killing [his] family'
'Toddler beaten so badly that intestines had to be removed'

Believe me, this is just a sampling. As you all know, I'm a mother of a perfectly happy, healthy 5 year old little girl. From the moment she was born I've been taking care of her. I've dealt with stinky diapers, colicky crying spells, repeated ear infections, a totally messy house due to toy take-overs, constant talking slash singing, and now, bouts of arguing for independence and games of 100 questions. There have been days when I come home in the middle of the night after working 12 hours and she pops out of bed and wants to play. There have been days when she wouldn't take a nap or wouldn't go to bed before midnight. I've lost amazing amounts of alone time with my husband, and I've stayed up at night worried about how I can possibly mother this child for the rest of my life. I worry about the boys she'll date, about the clothes she'll have to have, about the grades she'll get, and about whether her preset mode of happy will change during those moody teenage years. I worry that she won't want to talk to me or that she'll cry under her covers at night when someone breaks her heart. I have worried about how to make her life the best it can be from the moment I saw those two pink lines on the stick. I'd barely pulled my pants up and flushed the toilet when they shined like a beacon at me, professing my upcoming motherhood. This child I have has completely changed my life. In a good way, despite the bad days. I have never not-wanted her. Oh sure, I joke with her about how I'm going to inflict bodily harm if she doesn't do what I'm telling her to do. I have also popped her a few times. I've lost my temper and yelled at her - but I have also always come back to apologize to her and tell her I shouldn't have shouted like that. I'm human, and I make mistakes. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand how any human being can really *harm* or kill a child. I also cannot understand how anyone could turn a blind eye to a child who is suffering through abuse.

Every parent out there understands how easy it is to lose your temper. You've worked all day, they won't do what you're telling them to do. They refuse to potty-train, eat their vegetables (or anything at all for that matter), they won't pick up their toys, they've colored on the freshly-painted wall (again), they won't stop picking on little brother or sister, they've gotten bad grades at school. Kids have a zillion ways to get into trouble. And parents have a zillion things to worry about besides the misbehaving kid. This sometimes, obviously, fuels disaster.

There is absolutely no reason to hurt a child in any way, whatsoever. I'm not saying that discipline is bad - I'm saying that children shouldn't be neglected, beaten, raped, sold, martyred, starved, or killed - ever. And I know that you all agree. Most of the time all it takes for a parent who is struggling is simply someone to listen, a few basic parenting tips, or maybe an anger management class. Sometimes people who have children simply cannot take good care of them and despite intervention the children need to be placed with another family member or a foster family.

If you know of anyone who is struggling, please refer them to the Georgia Parents Helpline at 1-800-CHILDREN (244-5373) or helpline@pcageorgia.org. If you think you know of a child in an abusive situation, please call your local DFCS office or call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (www.childhelp.org).

Lose the stuff, material girl.

2010-04-15T01:57:00.004-04:00

That's my little girl, beaming unsolicited, because a caterpillar was crawling on her hand. Have you ever noticed that it doesn't take much to make a kid happy? I was actually kind of surprised by this when Sarah was a little bitty thing, crawling around getting into things and being constantly amazed by all that she came into contact with. I remember her first real Christmas, when she was a little over one year, that she cared much more about the wrapping paper and the bows than the toy inside the boxes. She had no qualms about wearing anything I decided to put on her. To this day, at almost 6, she's not picky about what she wears though she loves dresses. She plays with anything. Bubble wrap, crayons, figurines, un-sharpened pencils, pots and pans. She likes her toys, but she's largely not a materialistic girl. This begs the question: at what point in our lives do we begin to long for things most of us cannot afford? Why do I want an Airstream camper and a cool SUV to pull it? I could settle for a cheaper one, or just use the tent I already have...but for some reason I'd like to have the nicest camper made. And why do I have to have an iPhone with it's expensive data plan? Why do I look at the Tiffany & Co. website late at night to see what's new? Why do I, and most of us, feel the need to keep up with the uber-rich fictional Jones' that my grandmother used to talk about? The thing is, I'm actually *not* that material, because when I grew up, we had virtually nothing. I didn't have nice clothes to wear, a nice car to ride in, a horse in a pasture or lavish birthday parties. My father did the best he could as a single parent (at times working three jobs) and my grandmother kept us fed with the basics and the huge vegetable crop we worked on every year...ruining last year's shoes in the Georgia red mud. In 1985, when I was 10 years old and Madonna was crooning about being a Material Girl, I was helping my father pick up dead chickens on our chicken farm. And the more I was around the "haves" at school, I realized quite certainly that I was a "have-not." So my expectation for Sarah as she grows up and goes to school is that she'll learn to want more and more when she sees other kids with other things that she doesn't have. Already, the television commercials she watches tell her that she needs the coolest new toys or the hottest action figures, the doll with the dress that changes colors, or the waxy stringy Bendaroos. She's begun to want to be like the rest of her classmates - and she's only in pre-school. But that's not how she came out. She came out simply happy to be alive. Happy to look at the blinky lights on our first Christmas tree, or happy to hold a simple burp cloth and fling it around in her hands.

Look around. Look at all the Stuff you have. And even though we've shed a lot of our own stuff as we've moved around the country, Hal and I still have BOXES of Stuff that is sitting in an extra bedroom not being used at all.

Americans work more hours than people in any other industrialized nation and the two main things we do in our off time is watch television and shop. We go to work, come home, watch television and hear about all the things we need via the never-ending barrage of commercials and then we drag our butts off the sofa and go out to buy them, creating more debt, which we then have to work more hours to pay for. It's a cycle. I think if I stood on any street corner and asked people if they'd like to be out of debt, most would shout a resounding "YES!" but there we are in the stores, buying another sweater, another pair of shoes, a new television, more toys for our kids who have too many toys already - you get the point.

Even though I've been fully indoctrinated in this American consumer, materialistic-must-have-society, I'm going to focus on trying to not have so much again. If I buy something new, I'm going to try to get rid of the thing I have replaced responsibly. I'm going to donate clothes I can't wear anymore to people in other nations who are lucky if they have shoes on their feet to walk the three miles to get clean water every day. I'm going to try to buy only things that have been made with some inkling of responsibility for our planet in mind. I'm going to see if I can teach my daughter as she grows that it's okay not to always have the latest, greatest thing that advertisers are telling her she needs.

This is just a tiny start. But it's something.

RIP to Hal's sleek black friend.

2010-04-11T21:26:00.003-04:00

On Monday, my dear husband dropped his iPhone 3G in the toilet. Of course, he was all in a panic so he woke me up from my day slumber to tell me this. This is the third time he's jarred me awake to give me terrible news - once before it was when he didn't get "the" job - and the time before that I thankfully can't remember. The water was clean he said - but he was still frantically drying it off, pushing buttons on the white flickering screen. Nothing happened. I took one look at the phone and gave it its last rites. It's dead I tell him, and follow the call to the toilet that I get after waking up so suddenly. After I flush, I walk out and Hal is pacing around the house trying to figure out how to save his beloved friend - his pocket companion since last year. This little dead iPhone is actually his second. The first he dropped on the ceramic floor of our bathroom in Maryland and busted the screen but fortunately the great guys at the Apple store there just gave him a new one, no questions asked. But everyone knows they're not going to give you a new one when you drop yours in the toilet. He called Apple, relayed every detail of his sad tale of woe, and they very affectionately said "we're so sorry." Then he called AT&T who offered to upgrade him right away to the 3GS for a nice price of $199, which we don't have. The whole time, he's trying to figure out how to save it. I keep reminding him, "honey, I'm pretty sure it's dead." "I was trying to catch it - I saw it falling," he said to me as his voice almost cracked. Poor guy. Part of me wanted to call him a dumb ass and part of me wanted to hug him and cry with him, offer to have a ceremony for his sleek electronic friend. Just when he'd started using Facebook too.

We make the trek to the AT&T store, and I'm silently cursing under my breath - this is not how I wanted to spend my afternoon. We get him the cheapest little Go Phone made by Nokia and now I'm going to save $30 per month because I no longer have to pay for his iPhone data plan.

When we arrive home, Hal is still devoted to the idea of saving the phone. We research this problem on the internet, typing in the Google search bar "iphone dropped in toilet" and get all sorts of tutorials on how to revive the little guy. So we bury him in a Tupperware bowl full of dry white rice and proceed to just wait it out. A few days later, when I'm up at night all alone, I realize that the phone is still in the rice. I get it out, put my SIM card in it and try to power it up. I tell myself that if the thing comes on, I'm waking his ass up - even if it's four in the morning. But alas, it doesn't do anything despite me pushing the power button. In an instant I move on, and being the money-grubbing entrepreneur I am, I decide that perhaps I can make back the $30 I spent for his Go Phone by selling the water-logged iPhone on Ebay for parts. The screen is perfect right? Somebody out there has a cracked screen and a hair of ingenuity so I figure he'll want to fix his own iPhone. I turn on the lights, take a picture of the phone (sans all the rice) and list it on Ebay with a starting price of 99 cents. A few hours later a guy offers me ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for the thing! I change the list price, he bids, and I end the auction early. Unbelievable! I feel kind of slithery inside because Hal's sorrowful misfortune has now saved me thirty bucks a month and made me a hundred extra dollars and I can't help but smile and laugh out loud. A hundred bucks I squeal!

I've got a nice piece of woods and a dumpy little house connected to a swamp. You interested?

Lessons from the emergency room.

2010-04-08T00:04:00.001-04:00

I have so much on my mind tonight - after sleeping for most of the day, I'm having a hard time connecting the dots in my mind. Last night's shift in the ER was slow, steady, smooth, except for a couple of blips on the radar. I'm recalling a lot of blips from my time there so far - and I have a few things to share. When you see the sorts of things I and my coworkers see on a daily basis, you either get a real sick sense of humor, or you learn things about people and life that you never thought you would - you gain insights that you never knew you could see. Many of us do both. This is a short list of some of the things I've learned or as Oprah would say, things I know for sure.

Whatever divide there is in your family, close it up. There's nothing quite so final as death, and death can come at any given moment for any one of us - seriously - so if you've done or said something along the way or even if someone you love did or said something horrible to you, now's the time to forgive and try to move forward. You cannot do that indefinitely. Do it while you can. I've seen several people cry and wail and scream because things didn't end right with them and the person lying on the gurney. That's a horrible scenario that can be avoided if you can get past the small stuff. Decide what's more important - your love for that person and what they once meant to you, or the thing that's wedged between you.

Drugs are bad. Very, very bad. Drugs destroy individuals, families, societies. They cost a lot of money and you'll wind up losing everything that's important to you, if anything is. There are folks out there that literally have nothing left in their life - no one who will have anything to do with them anymore - no house, no money, no car, no job, no nothing - not even their own teeth, and their free fall started with drugs. I realize this is simplistic, but seriously - stay away from drugs of any kind.

Suicide is never an answer. Even if your life sucks, having your body autopsied and shoved in a casket will suck worse. Most importantly please realize that life can usually get a lot better for you if you only realize that you're in control. If you can control things enough to pull the trigger or to take a handful of pills, then you can control it enough to dial the U.S. National Suicide prevention help line, 1-800-273-8255. But should you decide to take your own life anyway, please do not call your family first to tell them what you are about to do. That is THE most selfish thing you could ever do, even more so than killing yourself. Think about the people you will leave behind and what they have to live with.

If you feel funny, off, sick, or just not "yourself" lately, please make an appointment with your doctor and get yourself checked out. Do not ignore the warning signs of an impending heart attack or stroke, like left sided chest pain that radiates down the arm or into your jaw or super high blood pressure. If you have a lump in your breast or a funny looking mole, please call your doctor. So many people wait until the last minute, until it's way too late to do anything other than give you a couple of radiation treatments and some morphine - or until you've had a heart attack and die or you've had a stroke and your quality of life is now forever changed. Don't wait. That feeling in your gut that's telling you that something isn't quite right - listen to it, that's your survival instinct talking to you. Don't put that burden of "making" you go to the doctor on your family. Be a grown up and do it yourself.

Stop smoking now. I don't care if you've smoked for 20 years, stop now. Have you ever seen the fear in a person's eyes when they can't breathe? Can you imagine having a pillow over your face and smothering to death? Seriously, there are lots of ways out there to quit. And, think of all the money you'll save. Smoking causes cancer and people DIE from smoking every single day - close to 1,200 every day in the U.S.

Get an education. The more you know, the better your life has the chance to be. You're much less likely to die in a knife-fight, or go to prison, and you'll be able to depend on yourself for facts and information that can make or break you. Stupidity does not pay. Find a meaningful way to spend your time on the planet. Finish high school and go to college if you can.

My rant for the night. Leave comments if you agree, disagree, or have sumthin' to say!

Answering the happiness questions of Ariel Gore.

2010-04-05T02:23:00.005-04:00

Bluebird is the second of Ariel Gore's books I've read. She was the one who convinced me that I wanted to be a famous writer via How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead. Bluebird takes a totally different route by exploring what happiness to a woman really means. In the book, she poses seven questions which I've decided to try to answer. I'm not sure why. Just an exercise in futility or self-exploration? I guess so, but I haven't thought about what truly makes me happy in a while now - here are my answers. What would your answers be?

1. How heavily do you weigh your own happiness when making life decisions?

Before I had Sarah I guess I did things to make me happy, but that was something that had to happen gradually - my family used a lot of guilt to manipulate each other into doing things the others wanted, and as much as I love my grandmother, she was very good at guilting me. After therapy, when I moved beyond some of that, I still find that I have to give myself an ego boost from time to time to remind myself that what I want does matter - that it's okay for me to smile, be not-so-serious all the time, find value in playing. Sarah has taught me that. For now, I find that I put her first, but with the knowledge that if I get too miserable, she'll be unhappy too - so I have to find time to take care of myself.

2. What could make you happier?

More money in my bank account, not living way out here in the country, but rather, being back in my little house that I picked out 5 years ago. This will happen in a few months, but it would certainly be great now. Also, I'd be happier if my husband had a job. His seemingly endless unemployment is making all of us stressed out and irritable. It's hard to have hope sometimes. One other thing that would really pump me up is if this blog totally took off! Or if I achieved my dream of publishing a book.

3. What is your fondest memory?

I shouldn't have to think so hard about this one. Maybe it was helping my grandmother shell peas when I was very little and mostly in her way - maybe it was the first time I saw Sarah open her eyes, maybe it was my grandmother making ice cream out of freshly fallen snow? Maybe it was the moment I realized that my college education would be completely paid for? Maybe it was getting married to the man I love in Jamaica? Maybe it was getting my Master's degree or moving into my new home? Or maybe it was riding back from Six Flags one summer with all my cousins in the back of my daddy's truck exhausted, happy, and singing at the tops of our voices, "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog" - hard question!

4. Do you think you're happier or less happy than your mother was at your age?

I didn't know my mother when she was my age, but considering the life path she chose, I'd say I'm happier, despite all the things that contribute to my daily angst. Today, even though we are attempting to have some semblance of a relationship, she admits she's miserable. I'm much more in control of my life path than she ever was.

5. What's the best thing that happened yesterday?

Yesterday was Easter. Even though I'd rather have jumped in the car for a day-trip to the beach, I sucked it up and went to church with my family partly because of, you guessed it, guilt - and partly because Sarah wanted to participate in the big Easter Egg Hunt. But afterward, the best moment of the day came when she was running around the yard with her pretty dress and shoes on blowing bubbles in the wind. She was so happy - and her sheer innocent happiness has always been able to project itself right into my heart.

6. When was the last time you felt inspired?

I'm not sure. I was definitely inspired three years ago when I hammered out a manuscript in a little over a month, but that inspiration was borne out of utter despair, so I'm not sure that counts. Lately I've been inspired while reading books and articles on life, how to write, issues our country is facing, and even while writing my blog. Sometimes my co-workers in the ER inspire me - the way they hunker down and push through the sometimes impossible situations that can happen where we work.

7. Are you happier than you were this time last year?

Absolutely. I listened to my heart when I chose to quit Student Affairs and do what I'd learned to love in the ER. It was a big deal to move to Maryland just to survive, prove something to myself. It was an even bigger deal to figure out a way to honor the way my life's passion had changed by being true to what I needed to do rather than what seemed logical at the time. You can make a career out of anything, almost anywhere, but happiness isn't sold on every doorstep. Most people didn't understand me moving back to Georgia - but I'm definitely better off for having done just that.

Eggs, eggs, everywhere!

2010-04-04T14:28:00.002-04:00

First there was the Easter Egg Hunt at her school. Since she had a basket full of eggs, we then had multiple "egg hunts" around the house. There were eggs between the couch cushions, eggs on my desk, eggs in the bed, on the bookshelf, under the table. She would hide them, then find most of them, then hide them again and make us find them. Today was no different. The church had an Easter Egg Hunt and Sarah brought home all sorts of eggs: multi-colored, pastel, clear, glitter, even eggs with fluffy hair were sent to her from Aunt Kim in Florida. So we had to hide eggs, find them, and hide them again. Sarah wanted to hide some, and when she did she jumped around like the Easter Bunny. One of the hazards of hiding eggs around outside is that there may be one or two that never get found! At least back when I was young, we had good old hard-boiled eggs that we'd carefully decorated by dipping them in dye. Granny never let me down on the Easter egg decorating - we had plenty of eggs and decorating supplies every year, and right here in this yard is where most of my eggs hunts were as a child. Leaving one of those real eggs out in the wilderness wasn't so bad - it could biodegrade on its own. Or maybe a possum would find it and thank her lucky stars. But now that plastic has taken over the world, I wonder how many plastic eggs will be left out there today having never been found? I know of at least one!

Mooove it!

2010-03-31T20:46:00.002-04:00

I lost the perfect opportunity for a great photograph today. Didn't have my camera! It would have been so cool. Let me set this up for you: Right now we're living out the country - I mean way out where nothing else is except cows and chickens, a few houses, and a whole bunch of trees. So many trees, in fact, that my cell phone doesn't have a signal! Anyway, one of the things I liked about living in the suburbs for the last 16 years is the way I could just take a walk. You know...just take a walk on the sidewalk, wave to the neighbors, hey how ya doin' - the whole deal. Get a little workout, socialize, walk the animals. Great fun.
It took me nearly six months to remember that when I was a child, I used to take walks out here too even without a sidewalk or streetlights. There's a creek that runs alongside my grandmother's property and it's just a short walk down the road. The woods are too thick to take that route. So in the last week or so, I've started taking Sarah out for little walks down the hill to the creek and then up the hill along the pasture where our neighbor (a third cousin) owns a whole bunch of cows. It's a gigantic pasture that spans both sides of the road after the trees end. There are gates right across the street from each other that allow my cousin to let the cows walk back and forth between pastures so they can graze on fresh grass every couple of weeks. So today, as we were walking up the street, one of the mama cows spotted us just as we were crossing over the creek and started mooing at us. I didn't know or remember all the stuff about the gates connecting the pastures, so I looked down at Sarah and said, "see, that cow's saying hello to us!" Sure enough, a few more cows close to her took the lead and started watching us and mooing too! Before long, they started following us as we walked up the hill on the roadside, just a few yards away in their pasture. By the time we topped the hill, the whole herd was right there mooing at us! We walked a little further and they very excitedly walked too, some of them ran! It was so weird. Then I noticed that they'd all bunched up right there in front of that gate - staring and mooing at us. It was so funny. Just a bunch of cows mooing all at once and looking right at us. There must have been 30 or 40 cows! Some of them were babies too - with their cute little baby cow faces. That's when it hit me. Where's my camera? Oh what a cool shot that would have been! Just then the cousin drives up with his truck and I quite stupidly ask him why they are all staring at me and mooing that way. "Oh yeah, he says, they wanna go over to the other side to get that fresh grass! I'm gonna move them over in a couple of days." We stand and talk for a minute - I have not seen this man since I was a child living at home.
Later, we go out to run an errand, and what do you think is in the middle of the road at the top of the hill? All those cows crossing over to the other pasture. Apparently they decided they weren't going to give up the mooing and just stood right there until their owner started feeling sorry for them and let them on over where the new grass was. So the grass is greener on the other side! Just ask the cows!

What does happiness mean?

2010-03-29T22:27:00.001-04:00

I'm about 55 pages into this new book I bought the other night, Bluebird, by Ariel Gore. It's a non-fiction book of course - that's mostly what I tend to read because I'm so in the here and now, so concrete. My brain simply cannot process fantasy or science fiction. I rarely watch television, although I've started watching Kirstie Alley's Big Life on A&E on Sunday nights. Great show for anyone who has ever struggled with losing weight!

Anyway, this book about happiness has me wondering how I define happiness as a woman? Is it 2.5 great kids, a cat and a dog, a great big house with nice furniture? Is it working full time or being a stay at home mother? Is it having a fat bank account or just having enough to meet basic needs? Is it a 100% thrillingly satisfying marriage or just moments along the way that are thrilling? Is it having a close knit family or being able to get away and be free from family ties? Is it helping others or having others serve you? Is it being single with no kids?

What does happiness mean to you? If you don't mind, leave a comment below and let's start a conversation!

Oprah!

2010-03-29T05:05:00.000-04:00

Wow! I just read this month's issue of Oprah magazine cover to cover! Dang! When have I ever devoured a magazine like that? Get it if you dare. It's good. And I don't yet subscribe! And I'm not making money off this! I liked every single article. Part of me wishes I could write for magazines like that. Whatever...I really enjoyed reading this one.

Life in slow motion.

2010-03-29T01:34:00.008-04:00

I'm rather sick of being sick. I've had four straight days off and all I've done is lay around, sleep, and whine - well I did make one trip to the bookstore...since reading books doesn't require much physical exertion. I picked up two hopefully good books: Bluebird and The Story of Stuff. And I bought the latest Oprah magazine. Should be enough reading material. Thinking about renting another movie via iTunes - so simple. I don't have to go to the video store, and I won't lose the video or forget to take it back because it spontaneously deconstructs all by itself! We watched The Blindside, and even my 5 year old liked it! She didn't quite understand why "it went away" after the 24 hour time period expired. How do you explain the whole idea of something deleting itself to a 5 year old? It went like this:

S: Mommy, I wanna watch the Big Mike movie again.
Me: It's gone honey.
S: Mommy! Just let me show you! (grabs at my iPhone)
Me: (handing it to her) Sweetie the movie isn't on there anymore.
S: Where is it?
Me: It disappeared.
S: Why?
Me: (looking at the ceiling trying to figure out an answer) Because it just did. We finished watching it so it's gone.
S: Mommy, I didn't finish it! (her little cheeks are red from frustration)
Me: Um, well. Sorry.
S: Mommy can we get it again? On your phone?
Me: I really don't want to buy it, that's why I rented it.
S: What's rented?

You see that? I think this flu is affecting my brain. Now it's going to affect her brain because I can't answer all of her one thousand questions in a day. I distinctly remember my ex-step-mother making me write the word "why?" a hundred times one day when I was 6 because I absolutely would not stop asking, Why? Good to know my daughter fell off the same wagon - but how oh so annoying. Raising Sarah has proven to be one of the most fun, terrifying, tiring, expensive, sweet, memorable, wonderful, fattening, prideful, and worrisome things I've ever done. I love that child, but some days I just don't know what to do with her. I say this on the eve of her Spring Break week. Must think of something fun and tiring for her to do tomorrow. Must drag myself out of this house.

In a conversation with psychic Carla Baron when I was trying to decide whether or not to return to Georgia last year, she perfectly described my job in the ER. You'll have to think fast on your feet, it's really stressful, you won't get much sleep she professed. Perhaps she was talking about my life as a mother? :)
Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

Twitter dee, twitter dum.

2010-03-26T03:55:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite movies of all time is Breach, starring Ryan Phillippe. He has a Twitter account and I've been able to say a few words to him that way - and he's replied. This is why Twitter is so darn cool. It is a great way for celebrities to keep in touch with their fan base without the negativity of paparazzi. It also can be a 2 way conversation if they want it to be and they can promote, like all of us, their new favorite things. Messages are limited to 140 characters so it's challenging for those of us who are wordy, like myself! Twitter is pretty darn awesome - wish I'd thought of it! If you're a non-believer, give it a try. It's really easy and free. It's not as personal as Facebook, and basically is just like the "status update" portion of Facebook. Sign up for an account at www.twitter.com and get started. You can "follow" people and they in turn can follow you. When you log in you'll see a "feed" of what everyone's saying (just those you follow). You'll also see a list of topics that are "trending." That basically means these are the topics that everyone is discussing worldwide. It's pretty fun. Let me know if you get started and I'll follow you. :)

Not my day.

2010-03-25T18:25:00.004-04:00

Today has just not been my day. I'll give you some history. Exactly one week ago, I woke up one night to discover a scratchy throat and a slight fever - this situation rapidly turned into the flu - a new strain! I'm exposed to just about every infectious disease known to man in the ER where I work; however I always expect my own personal immune system to defeat those germs like bands of little green army men. So all weekend, when I had three straight days off, I basically laid around and did nothing since I felt so cruddy. Then I worked two twelve hour shifts in a row Tuesday and Wednesday night - not so much patient drama, thank goodness, but still long hours and little sleep. This morning, instead of sleeping in until 2, I had to report to traffic court. I say 'had to' but I could have just paid the fine for my school zone speeding ticket. If you know me, then you know I cannot just accept this $200 insult to my already meager financial situation! So I go to traffic court at the municipal court in Athens-Clarke county. There I'm greeted by about 200 or so other various members of the public who are also carrying their little crumpled tickets. Some of them are afraid, some of them are annoyed, all of us are impatient. I get there early because one of the police officers I interrogated in the ER one night about how I should proceed with this situation said I should. Did not help. The judge was late so we got started late, but a mere two and a half hours later I was done.

You see, the unfairness of my particular ticket is that I got it in a school zone, but I feel that the school zone is not marked well at all. There are three 55 mph signs on the side of the road, all in a row in about a three mile stretch of road. Then all of a sudden there's a tiny 45 mph sign with two small flashing lights hung from a line stretched over the road. Not where you're used to looking for the signs right? And there are no warning signs for the impending school zone either. Add the sun in my eyes and my visor down and you get recipe for destruction! I did not see that sign!

We sit in the courtroom and I am shushed twice by the deputy for talking - one other lady gets in trouble for reading a book: "there's no reading in the courtroom ma'am!" We are herded in like cattle, then herded back out. There are deputies working the line shouting, "does anybody want to just go ahead and pay their fine now?" This can get you a spot in the front of the line! Cell phones have to be turned off, lest you pay an additional $25 fine. So we are all sitting/standing there in various stages of deep thought, panic, and boredom. Everybody has that defeated look. Just shoot me, we'd say if we could. After an hour and a half of waiting, I get to the front of the line where another lady in a business suit tries to talk me out of taking this matter any further by telling me that the solicitor won't do anything to help me because my ticket is in a school zone. My grandmother always said I was rather "bull-headed" and I display this trait perfectly today by politely insisting that I would still like to speak with the solicitor. I am told to go back into the courtroom and sit. A few minutes later I realize that they are now printing off my driving history to give to the solicitor. A few seconds of horrible thoughts flash through my mind: when was my last speeding ticket? Will all of my Warnings be listed? I imagine myself as a dead duck with $200 cash splayed out in my hand for anyone to take. No! I shake it off. Even with the flu, I'm gonna push forward, undeterred. Finally the small woman in a suit who is the solicitor calls my name, pulls me out into the hall because she says, "I don't normally reduce these fines so I don't want anyone to hear us talking." She's actually quite nice. I plead my case in my weak, congested voice - tell her I didn't see the sign - tell her I actually shot video of me driving that stretch of road again but the cops at the courthouse entrance wouldn't allow me to bring the camera in. (I think about telling her that I'm blind in the eye on top of my head.) But I don't have to; she seems sympathetic. I mention taking my child to a play date that day; going the different road that I'd not taken in a while. I know the mention of a child will stir her - I've already heard her mention her kids. She knows that stretch of road and feels my pain. She lowers my speed so that I won't have any points on my license and she lowers the fine by $50. For a quick second I consider a jury trial, but she's being so nice that I take the deal. I am escorted to the cashier and I pay my fine and leave. Thankfully when I got back out to the car I didn't have a parking ticket even though the meter was expired! I go home not feeling victorious but not feeling quite so stepped on either. These speeding tickets are a CASH COW for the county. I'd love to know how many millions of dollars they take in every year.

I get home, crash in bed and sleep. Hal and Sarah arrive home from school and the doctor's office (yea, medicine!). Sarah is so excited to see me that she wants to jump in my arms. We usually say 1-2-3 and on 3 she jumps and I pick her up and we exchange those sloppy all over the face kisses that mommies and daughters do. But today she was so excited she did not wait for the count of three and jumped the top of her head right into my bottom lip. So I'm out money for the ticket, money for the medicine and doctor's visit, and I have a busted, bloody sore lip to boot. At least I have the next six days off.

Sigh.

Tris addict.

2010-03-22T11:59:00.005-04:00

Oh how I love to arrange those colorful falling blocks! This is a recent problem. You see, I hadn't really played Tetris much before purchasing my iphone. Shortly after I bought the iphone, I downloaded a free game called Tris, which is a Tetris knock-off that's (of course) no longer available. Lately, sparked by the insomnia I sometimes experience after working my twelve hour shifts in the E.R., I've started playing this game. You might ask, how does playing a game help you go to sleep? Well, truth is, I'm not sure. I mean, Tetris is action-packed! You have to be alert, on your toes! You have to rotate those blocks to fit them in the grid just right because they keep getting faster and faster! Oh the excitement. Obviously I think it clears my mind because I cannot think about anything else while I'm doing it. Unlike writing, and unlike scouring the internet for anything I haven't seen yet. Tetris does have a few drawbacks though: makes my eyes hurt from the strain, is totally addicting, and something I'd like to call iphone finger...the aching of an overworked pointer finger. You know what I mean? Such a tell-tale sign that you've got a problem. Why Tetris? Why not PacMan or Frogger or Q*bert? I've got all of those games downloaded too. I am a true 80's girl. I admit I have a problem. But right now, I'm not gonna do a thing about it. :)

Mailbox marvels.

2010-03-21T03:02:00.009-04:00

Well, wouldn't you know it? It's three a.m. and I'm wide awake again. Something about this time of night and my urge to write. I guess it's the peace and quiet. Tonight is one of those nights that I can't condense the streams of thought in my head down to one central idea that I can then write about. It's just a mixture of junk. Some call it writer's block. I call it messy thoughts. I think everyone can get into that funk at one point or another, even if you aren't a writer. I mean, don't you just have days where nothing quite makes sense? Or things happen that just make you stop and stare?

Today I got a letter in the mail from my mortgage company. They are reducing my payment by over half starting in May. I opened the letter standing by the mailbox and just stood there - I have no idea how long I stood right there in the road. Then I walked up the hill, like I've done a thousand times since I was just a little girl, and stood in the yard. (I can still hear Granny's voice telling me "run and get the mail now honey, your legs are younger than mine!") I walked in circles and wondered who I should call. News like that needs to be shared. Instead I walked in the house and sat on the couch. I'd received two packages in the mail too - but I didn't even tear into them the way I usually would. I just sat there. I felt the weight of the world slowly lift and roll off my shoulders. I took a deep breath.

The very reason I had to move my family to Maryland in cold November 2008 was because my husband lost his job and I was then working three. I couldn't work all the time and I would have had to if we didn't want to lose the house. So I had to find a job that would support us and save the house. I was lucky enough to find a job in MD that included housing and then was able to lease my house to a great family, but when the hospital unexpectedly offered me a full time position to come back to Georgia nearly a year later, I accepted. I missed that work so much I had to return to it. That's why we are now camping out in my grandmother's home until their lease is up in November. But we've been back for six months now and Hal still hasn't found a job. You can imagine that I might be going a little nuts over this.

Not anymore. I'd been speaking with the mortgage company about refinancing my loan, but since I'm not actually living in the home right now, they were reluctant to help me. But now this. I'm amazed.

Eventually I walked back out into the yard so that I could call Hal and tell him - he and Sarah were on their way back from visiting his mother. I had a blissful 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep after work last night because they weren't bumbling around making noise. We wound up talking for a half hour, both of us just stunned. I realized that we can afford to get our house back now, even without him working.

Wouldn't it be funny if, come November, I am sad to leave this little old leafy house in the country? I think I will be. Not because I like living here, but because I feel such a deep connection to my grandmother here. Sitting in the kitchen now in the dark I can almost hear her standing at the stove frying sausages or pulling bread out of the oven. I see her back in my mind's eye, her floral dress, her apron strings dangling from the knot around her waist. In the wee hours of the morning like this I imagine her lying in bed planning what she might have for breakfast, and then getting up and rattling every pot and pan she had to wake us all up! You know, about three days after we moved into the house, a letter arrived in the mailbox we'd just installed. It was addressed to her which strange since she hadn't lived here for more than ten years, and since her address had been changed long ago to reflect her move to my uncle's home where she stayed until she died. Anyway, the letter was some sort of survey for her to fill out, and folded up in the letter was a crisp new dollar bill. It was so odd - this letter with my grandmother's name on it, the dollar in my hands. It was as if she was somehow telling me to stay here and save my money -- that in the end I'd be alright. I cannot bring myself to spend that dollar - I guess that's silly, but I just can't.

Night-gift.

2010-03-19T03:33:00.007-04:00

Oh how I love the crisp three a.m. air,
my silent walk into the dark.
Drive under the trestle and hear the low pitch roar of
the freight train overhead,
look up and see it gliding grey-blue-black
against the moon lit sky.
I strain to hear the clank, clank, clank of steel
over the sounds of my favorite song.
This is a moment all to myself,
no whine, no worry, no soothing, no tears.
No one needs anything, but me.
The night gives me it's gift of silence and peace
until the morning sun sheds light on society's ills
and mine too.

Where oh where has common sense gone?

2010-03-18T02:35:00.003-04:00

Just woke up from a short slumber, but my internal clock is set to this time so whatever, I'll work with it. You know how the most important, nagging, worrisome, or wrath-inspiring thoughts hit you first when you wake up? Well, my first thought moments ago, after the oh man let's go pee thought, was again how much I despise the Department of Motor Vehicles. It doesn't even matter what state you live in. I've done this song and dance in four states - I know, it's my own damn fault (just decide where you're gonna be Heather!) but still, sometimes a big fat dose of common sense would be nice.

I'm sure those ladies and gentlemen behind the counter are of average intelligence, it's just that they don't display that when talking to the general public!

We moved back from Maryland a few months ago. If you are a long time reader of this here blog, you might remember what a total expensive mess that was, so you might understand why I haven't made the effort to go to the Georgia DMV until now. I should be honest and say that there's one other tiny reason I needed to do it now also - I was the very proud winner of one $200 speeding ticket almost a month ago and the oh so nice officer gave me a 'warning' about my inaccurate license and tags. Since I plan to go to court to fight said ticket, I at least need to show a good faith effort to get this other detail worked out. I calculated this in my head of course. Should I just pay the stinking ticket and drive real slow until next January? Yes, that would have cost less money. But, this is stubborn me we're talking about here - the ticket thing I view as unfair, so naturally I am going to fight it. Therefore, I had to go to the DMV and get this changeover process rolling.

I am from this area right? I even remember my GA license number. A couple of weeks ago I changed my address with my bank and ordered paper copies of my statements so I would have the required proof of address. So today I grabbed my MD license, my social security card, and my bank statement and headed out the door with Hal to drive the 20 miles to the DMV. We get there and of course I do NOT have what I need. The girl flatly tells me that I need to prove my U.S. citizenship. My Maryland driver's license won't do, despite the fact that I had to show them everything under the sun last January to get that fine piece of plastic. To add insult to injury, I also need to show why I've changed my name from my original maiden name, i.e. I've got to show them my marriage certificate. I tell her that I haven't been gone that long - I still remember my number - couldn't she just look my up in the computer? Nope, they have changed everything she says. Hal asks the girl if it will be a problem that our certificate is from Jamaica and she asks if it is written in English. He says sure it is, they speak English in Jamaica - and she says oh yeah they just have an accident...uh accent right? (you see what we're dealing with here?)

He gets his license because all he needs is his birth certificate, proof of address, and MD license. I sit over in the uncomfortable chairs with the kiddo trying to calm myself down. Mostly the Zoloft I take keeps me relatively even keel, but today I had to summon a little something extra...so I just thought about how the producer of Forensic Files (my favorite show on television) said yesterday that he liked my blog. Over and over I chanted inside my head...forget the license, that guy loves my writing! He says I have talent!

When I'm calm I start to wonder where in the world these documents are that I have to bring back. I need to get this done today because thanks to Georgia's dire state of financial affairs, the workers at the DMV are furloughed tomorrow. Hal, Sarah, and I make a mad dash out of there once he has his dinky new paper license and we high tail it home to find what I need. Luckily, despite our best efforts to be as unorganized and sloppy as we can be, we find the stuff in about 5 minutes and we go as fast as reasonably possible back to the DMV and get there less than an hour before they close. I wait ten minutes before they acknowledge my presence, and then successfully give me my license. The agent working behind the counter this time asked me for all my documents, takes a CURSORY look at them and gives me my license. Then he says, hmmm - you were already in our system as Heather Posey so you shouldn't have had to bring that marriage certificate. My license number is also exactly the same as it always was. I ask the man where common sense has gone. He gives me a phone number to call to complain. It did amuse me that another lady a couple booths down was giving them all sorts of hell about her license, even though she already had it! I guess working at the DMV simply requires patience and politeness rather than just good ole run of the mill walking around sense!

I'm wearing green for you Keith.

2010-03-17T03:52:00.012-04:00

A worry floating around in my head right now is that my blog lacks focus. I'm an average person like the rest of you out there - I have a sense of wonder for many things - so some days are more interesting and thought provoking than others, but there are days when I'm dying of boredom - even though I work in an ER. Often I don't know what I will write here until I start typing, but tonight when I saw the date on my friendly Mac, I knew right away that I must say something about this particular day.

My grandmother, whom you all probably feel like you know by now, had six children: 4 boys and 2 girls. The last of them she called Keith and he lived right here in this house with her until he got up for work one day at the young age of 28, stripped off naked to get in the shower, and then boom - DIED right there in the bathroom. In fact, the sink is still crooked on the wall from where he knocked it down as he fell. Keith was only 28, but he was big and tall - he had beautiful blue eyes, thick black curly hair, and a full beard. He was overweight to a degree, but not that much, and he constantly was trying to figure out ways to return to his slim high-school figure. He wore a hat that said, "It's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way." He loved singing in the church choir and playing basketball with his friends. One day he shaved exactly half of his beard off and walked around for a while like that until Granny and I and my cousins who were here were rolling with laughter at his antics. He was a nut!

I was 14 years younger than Keith, so he made it his mission in life to aggravate the hell out of me! I remember being a little girl and sitting in his lap. We'd play this stupid game where I'd sit there and he'd take a feather and run it slowly along my lip line. The game? Whoever laughed first lost! Then he'd scrub my face with his beard and listen to me squeal with laughter. There were sunny days out in the front yard when he'd decide to wash his new navy blue 1986 Thunderbird. He was so proud of that car! I'd always be recruited to help, since I was generally always here on the weekends. Every single one of these car washes involved listening to Keith's music and me getting soaked with the water hose at the end. He would insist on the final rinse and I'd try my best to hide but really there was no where to go. I'd make a break for the front door of the house but I'd get soaked every time. He was unfazed. He'd aim that hose right at the door and the stream of water was so hard and fast that it would come right through the screen...which would illicit screams from me and a bit of yelling from my Granny! I know she thought it was funny that we played the way we did. It wasn't that Keith was childlike. He just knew how to have fun. He knew how to laugh and make up silly games and tease me into giggling even when I was mad. Like the time he woke me up out of my mid-day summer nap on the couch by pouring ice cold water in my EAR! I was mad for a minute, but he wanted me awake so we could talk or play a game of crazy eights. When I was 13, Dad gave me a little Panasonic radio/cassette player. Now this was 1988 when it was cool to have huge radios with detachable speakers that ran on battery power so you could carry them on your shoulders and walk around with your friends blasting your favorite music and therefore ruin your hearing...alas, I digress. Regardless, my tiny little radio was cool. It took 4 D batteries and had a handle so I brought it with me over to Granny's. Keith had an old turn-table in his room, but no cassette player - so when the world shifted to cassettes, he made use of my little radio. The weekend before his death 21 years ago today, I spent a Saturday night over here in this house - we listened to his new Fleetwood Mac tape. At the time I was annoyed because I wanted to play my New Kids on the Block tape...but he just looked so happy sitting there in his rocking chair with my radio on his lap, singing along to Little Lies. Even my immature 14 year old self couldn't deprive him of that kind of joy. The next morning after church, we washed his new truck (he accidentally crashed his car after he had a seizure while driving) and as usual he soaked me with the hose! Now in March, it's not too warm even in sunny Georgia - this illustrated his unmerciful side! I ran squealing in the house to the sounds of his laughter and Granny's admonishment, "Keith you're gettin' water in the house!"

And that is my last memory of him. For some reason I didn't see him the rest of that week, but on Friday morning Granny made a chilling, panicky call to our house. I answered the phone and she immediately said to me, "tell your Daddy to come over here quick. Keith's had another seizure. He fell in the bathroom and he's knocked the sink off the wall and he's not waking up. He doesn't have any clothes on and I need help getting him out of the floor." Stupidly (and I've regretted this statement since) I told her that I was sure he'd be alright; I'd tell Dad and would call her after school. Dad slid on his flip flops and ran over there, muttering something under his breath as he went out the door, and I got myself and my brother on the bus to school.

Keith didn't wake up. He stopped breathing right after a few tears rolled down his cheek. They thought it was just another epileptic seizure. He used to have these awful grand mal seizures and doctors diagnosed him with epilepsy at 18. Dad tried to do CPR - Granny called the ambulance but they got lost on the way to the house. When they eventually found it, he'd been down for a while, and my Dad and Granny were frantic with sorrow, rage, and worry. How could such a young man full of life just fall down and die when all he was trying to do was get ready for work?

They picked us up at school that day. I cried like a baby. I was too young to understand death. Losing Keith was mostly like losing a big brother, my weekend companion, my oh so silly friend who involved me in the cool adult stuff he was doing. He was my big uncle who would sing church hymns in his awesome baritone voice at all hours of the night and day. And then he was gone.

That summer I woke with cold sweats during the nights when I dreamed of him. I missed him so much, but Granny's sadness sort of came first, so even though we were all stuck in grief's stupor, we looked after her.

I didn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day again for twenty years. This year though, I've decided that I'll wear my Kelly green pants not to celebrate the day Keith died, but to honor the memory of him and all the fun we had together - right here in this house. And maybe I'll crank up my car stereo and send a blast of Fleetwood Mac through the trees too, because they've been one of my favorite bands for years now. Afterall, I named Sarah after one of their songs.

So to my sweet Uncle Keith, wherever you are, I want you to know that I love and miss you today as much as I ever did all those years ago. Yours was a life unfinished and I'll always wonder what you would have done with it, where in this world your heart would have taken you. You never had a home of your own, you never met 'the one' and had a family - you'd barely gotten your feet on the ground, but even if you'd stayed right here that would have been fine with me. I hope you'll visit me today in my dreams and I hope I'll meet you again someday although I'm not ready to join you just yet!

P.S. I remember that your favorite color was green! :)

Husband for hire or rent, you pick.

2010-03-14T22:01:00.004-04:00

There's a man living in my house. He's good-looking, tall, and strong, and multi-talented. But apparently none of the two hundred or so jobs he's applied for are seeking the qualifications he has. This is frustrating to him and to me on the level of a gnat stuck in our ears constantly buzzing - we're broke, we're broke, we're broke! He's looked for jobs in Georgia, and while we were there, Maryland. He's found one temp job, due to a referral by a family member, but it lasted 8 weeks and paid a meager $7.75 an hour. In Maryland, he had a part time dispatcher position at the college I worked for, and I'm sure he got that because I knew all the folks there and they knew he was close and easy. Not that I'm taking credit for that at all - it just seems that the trick to finding a job these days is being incredibly lucky and knowing somebody. Sadly, despite Hal's many talents and his wealth of knowledge, let alone his years of work experience - he's gone virtually unnoticed in the sea of resumes and applications collected in response to each job opening. For instance, he worked 19 years for Proctor and Gamble on a rotating 12 hour shift and never, ever missed a day of work. Not one sick day. He can fix just about anything that moves, he has owned and operated his own screen printing business, and he's even very good at accounting and tax preparation (a skill he gained by default while he owned his business and got so interested in that he pursued further study with some graduate courses and an IRS tax prep class). He can make things with wood too, like the two solid work benches we had to sell when we moved to Maryland, and the swing set for Sarah's second birthday. I see all of his skills because I live with him. He's my man around the house. If something breaks, he repairs it. If something needs to be put together or installed, he does that too. He paints, sands, wires, fuses, saws, hammers, and he even kills bugs! He's also the man when it comes to rocking our little girl to sleep...and boy oh boy did he change some diapers and make some bottles a few years back! He's got a strange sense of humor, can beat just about anyone in movie trivia, and has never once smoked pot. How's that for an accomplishment? He doesn't drink or smoke but he does have three black belts: one in tae kwon do, akido, and judo. You can see why I'm dumbfounded about why this man hasn't been able to get a job. I see all of his talent, inside and out. I guess I'm rooting for him - hoping someone in the business world can see the man that I see one day.

A few things I'd forgotten about living in the country.

2010-03-02T02:41:00.004-05:00

As you all know, I've been living in the country since early September, in fact I'm living in the house I grew up in. Right now there are tenants in my house in the suburbs, so I can't have it back until November 1st. While I love the fact that I'm free of my mortgage payment right now, I'm *not* loving the fact that I am here in the wilderness once again. I've noticed that I'd forgotten a whole slew of facts about country life. After all, I'd been gone for 15 years! Here goes...

Everybody knows everybody either personally, via family, or they simply know "of" a person. And if you don't know someone in the community, you don't admit it. You smile and wave like you remember everything that could have potentially occurred between yourself and the actual stranger. Also, when riding down the road in your car, you throw up a hand and wave to everyone...no exceptions. **side note** Once I was in the mall in town 35 miles away, and a complete stranger walked up to me and named my father and pointedly asked if I was his daughter. Um, yes. I was shocked. Crazy but true.

Raking leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. Thousands of them, quite possibly millions of them. Rake them into a big pile, jump in them until you're exhausted and dirty, then burn them and risk setting fire to the entire county.

It's dark. There are no street lights. None. You can pay extra for the power company to install a big light on a pole in your yard, but the city provides nothing because there isn't a city! You're in the country, remember?

If you don't go to church one week, expect to get a phone call from the pastor asking WHY you were absent. Yes, this really happened to my dad.

Burning trash. Yup. Got trash? Get a big steel barrel and light a match. Done. Toxins in the air? Never heard of them. On any given night on my way home from the ER I can smell something burning when I get close to the house. Less likely to be caught burning without a "burn permit" in the dark.

Higher prices. Everything is more expensive way out in the country. But if we want to avoid higher prices, we have to drive way in to the city. Everything is at least a 15 minute drive. Unless you get behind a tractor along the way, then it takes longer.

High school sports. The last time I felt Raider Pride was when I was in high school. Now I drive down county roads and see all these little signs in yards professing their love for the local team. Kinda sweet!

Help when you need it. If your car craps out and you're stuck on the side of the road, someone will stop to help you. They really want to help you, and they probably know you or know someone in your family. If you talk long enough, you'll find that you're 6th cousins once removed, and now, who wouldn't help a family member?

Cicadas, tree frogs, bull frogs, cows mooing, roosters crowing, geese honking and dogs barking. These are the sounds of a night in the country. Kind of cool except for the dogs & roosters. Sometimes when I walk up the steps at 4 in the morning I can hear roosters crowing off in the distance. It's still dark at 4 AM!

Oh I almost forgot septic tanks! What you ask? It a big tank in the ground where all your poop goes. I have no idea how it works, but I have seen the big "honey wagons" riding around. Apparently they need to be pumped out every now and then. Gross!

I'm sure there is more...I'll add as I think of it, but you're welcome to add here too!

10 things to like about winter.

2010-02-15T03:40:00.003-05:00

In absolutely NO particular order:

If you're struck with a intractable bout of nausea - run outside and breathe in some ice cold air. Somehow it helps.

Sledding in the snow. Even though I've only done it once, it was really fun. Also, skiing and making snowmen. And really, doesn't everything look cool all covered in white?

Layers of clothes. Yup. For all you clothes horses that love to wear stuff, winter provides a great opportunity to wear all of your favorite pieces under the guise of "layering."

Increased visibility. With all the leaves now off the trees, it's easy to see into your neighbor's back yard. Now you know what he was building all summer long or what his yappy dog looks like.

Fire. All the pyro-maniacs and wood cutting macho men out there now have a justifiable excuse for making fire. It's freaking cold outside!

Winter is a great excuse to be lazy. When your health nut friends are off exercising at the park's track, you can say "No way I'm going out in this cold! I'll get sick!"
Then, you can relax on the couch and eat bon-bons.

Down. Like goose down. I love all things with down feathers in them, especially down jackets and down comforters. Cozy, soft down!

Scented candles. I know - you can really have these any time of year, but in the winter you can be environmentally friendly. You can tout to all your friends that you're saving on your heating bill and making your home smell good at the same time! And there are so many smells to choose from!

School closings! It's snows, or sleets, or ices, then you can hold out hope that you'll get a Get out of School Free card. No more lessons, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks!

You don't have to cut the grass. Mother Nature's gift to all you folks who must have the perfect yard: a nice long winter break.

Snow in Georgia!

2010-02-13T14:00:00.002-05:00

Still stuck on worry.

2010-02-11T02:29:00.003-05:00

If I got paid a dime for every minute I've been worried about money, the economy, my husband finding a job, our health and stability, and my child's future - I'd be set for life. I've been trying to cheer myself up, but I only get hours of contentedness at a time. Inevitably, I sit at night awake worried about everything. Now, one thing you must understand is that I've always been a worry wart. I'm the type to pace around the room waiting for something to happen even when I know in my head it's not going to. I'll watch a pot with water until it boils. I'll watch my bank account thinking about how I can make it stay higher longer. I'll watch the schedule at work looking for how I can get as close to 40 hours a week without going over. I remember when I first started to worry. I think I was around 13 years old. I stayed up all night one night with just the darkness, my dog's occasional, shrill bark and my own head. Just me staring up to the top of my pretty little canopy bed. I think I was worried about a test, about a boy, about my mother not being there. I guess I was worried about typical things that teens worry about. But that's when it started. Thirteen was also the age that I decided I wanted to write a book before I died. I'm still trying to decide how I can write something that will mean something to the population. I feel like I have something to contribute but I'm so scatterbrained most of the time with this worry that I can't consistently get my thoughts to coalesce.

I'm reading a book right now that is giving me some ideas though - it's titled The Working Poor and if you haven't read it, go to your library and check it out - or if you're a friend of mine then I'll loan you my copy. I think everyone who gets into politics should read this book first. It's about good, honest, hard-working people who are only trying to SURVIVE. None of us asked to come into this world, but once we are here, it's sink or swim. I give my father a lot of credit for teaching me that. He was fierce in a lot of ways - dramatic, staunch, strict, frugal - but he taught me how to survive. He taught me to have a plan B. I've held grudges against him for not helping me more when I most needed help...but he helped me to help myself. I don't always agree with him or his logic - I'm not quite as frugal as he is because I don't believe in too much self-denial, but in hard times like now, it's his example that gets me through the rough patches.

And my job gives me reasons to like being myself and living my life every night that I work. You don't know how good you've got it until you see someone else suffering through something worse. My marriage has taken some hits over the course of our 14 years together, but two weeks ago when I saw a woman just a few years older than me lose her husband suddenly and without any warning - I am reminded of how much I love my husband and how devastated I would be if he weren't here with me. I try to teach Sarah that everyone struggles, that everyone fusses once in a while, but that you have to remember how to say I'm sorry and I love you. I've apologized to her several times for snapping at her, or for getting onto her too much, and I've apologized to Hal in front of her too so that she can see two people work through what ails them. I know she's young, but we're all in this life together and I'm doing the best I can. My mother was absent and I don't hate her - so my hope is that Sarah will know I was the best mother I knew how to be.

I try to think of what my grandmother would do or say when I get stuck, and I've been able to resurrect her thoughts and actions many times in my work in the emergency room. Things that she would say or do ring alarms in my head and come to me just when I need them to. When I have no words I hear her whispered voice somewhere in the back of my mind, and usually I can feel tears begin to well up - of course I fight them back. I have a rule - no crying in front of patients. So far so good.

In this time of my own personal need, I'm trying to think of ways to give back when our cash flow improves. I've got a few ideas so far - we'll see what happens.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

What have you given up?

2010-01-24T18:31:00.002-05:00

My financial life sucks right now. I mean, it just sucks! Poor word choice I know, but I cannot think of a better way to phrase the situation I feel myself in. I work full time, right at 40 hours a week - but we can't really work overtime. My husband has worked only a few weeks at low-paying temp jobs since he lost his "good" job back in June of 2008. I just read an article on US News about things people are giving up because money is tight. Most things didn't surprise me at all. Lots of folks gave up Starbucks, home-phones, new cars, tech gadgets, vacations, even comfortable temperatures in their homes. I gave up lots of Starbucks too, and I haven't bought much in the way of clothes either. No Christmas presents for myself or my husband, eating out a fraction of the times we used to, but most of all I've noticed my comfort level waste away. Even though I'm paying my bills - even paying some of them OFF, I still find that my financial worry meter is at an all time high. I know I'm not alone. Just curious, what have you given up?

A lifetime of love.

2010-01-21T00:22:00.004-05:00

Here it is: the entry to the Real Simple writing contest that DIDN'T win. Boo hoo!

The first memory I have of my mother is when I was four years old. I think she had asked to visit me, but she and my father had such a contentious divorce that he didn't trust her to be alone with me, and since I'd only been 18 months old when we were separated, he may have been worried about how I'd fare when I saw her again. All I have now is a vision of us walking up a path in the mountains holding hands. After that, she left again, and only appeared sporadically in my life. My father and my grandmother raised me together, even though their houses were 4 miles apart. Granny did everything for me. I followed her around the house all day like a little shadow and as she used to say, "hung on her coat-tails and got into everything!" In the summers I helped her shell peas, shuck corn, pull weeds and peel tomatoes for canning. In the winters, we'd sit by the fire and watch Wheel of Fortune and The Golden Girls. The commercial breaks were her opportunity to tell me stories, and that she did, one after another all of my life. She taught me the Lord's Prayer when I was three, taught me to iron when I was only ten, expressed her disapproval when I wanted to shave my legs at thirteen, took me shopping for maxi-pads that same year, and helped me to learn to drive when I was 14 and she was 71. When I was ten and came home from school with tears in my eyes because I'd realized that the knuckles of my middle finger was bigger than the other knuckles she patiently explained that I had pretty hands, my mother's hands in fact, and that my knuckle was just the way it should be.
Granny was a simple woman. She wasn't very social. She didn't "keep up with the Jones'. She wore no makeup, had very little money, and lived in a tiny house that cost all of seven thousand dollars to build. But she taught me to believe in myself and in what I could do and experience in the world. Herself a retired seamstress and homemaker, she still believed that I could find my way in life, my own path to success, by never letting anyone else get me down. She rarely went to church in her older years, but she was a Godly woman, often quoting the Bible or simply sitting quietly in her chair reading it.
Her youngest son died suddenly when he was only 28. He had lived with her up until then, and kind of taken care of her as much as she took care of all of us. But when he was gone, I think a light went out in Granny. An inevitable sadness came over her and settled in. She stopped eating enough and grew frail. At sixteen and at the urging of my father, I packed up my room and moved in with her. For the next three years we were two peas in a pod. We'd cook supper for my dad and brother and afterward all of us would sit around the table and talk about our day. When night fell over our little house in the country, and it was just me and her and the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall, she'd sometimes ask me to crawl in the bed next to her. She'd whisper old bedtime stories in my ear - ones that she had used to get me to sleep at night when I was a baby. Or she'd tell me about how much she loved me. She told me over and over again to never forget how much she loved me.
When I graduated high school I earned three scholarships, which was lucky considering how poor we were. My freshman year I commuted to the university, making the 30 mile drive back and forth each day. Every afternoon when Granny heard the sound of my car in the driveway, she'd push open the screen door for me -- eager to have me home safe and someone to talk to. Some nights I'd sit with stacks of books beside me on the couch desperately needing to study, but Granny would be slowly rocking in her chair a few feet away, interrupting me every few minutes with a question or comment. Somehow even as a high-strung nineteen year old, I never grew weary of this. It was as if all my life our hearts had beat in sync with one another. My mother had gone away, but Granny was right there to take up the slack in every way I could imagine, even graciously accepting the crayon decorated Mother's Day cards I'd made for her in elementary school.
A cashier job at the local grocery store had occupied my weekends since I was fifteen and it ws one of those Saturdays while I was scanning groceries for $5.75 an hour when it happened. Granny had gone out the back door of her house to throw out a pot of old beans when she tripped over an exposed tree root and fell hard on the red clay ground. I came home to find the front door wide open, a spot of blood on the floor, and not a soul anywhere who could tell me what in the devil had happened. When I finally got the call that she had broken both a hip and a shoulder I sped to the hospital with tears in my eyes and struggled to see the road in front of me. She was loopy on pain medications and it was hard not to laugh at the crazy things she said, so I laughed and cried all night. It was a lonely couple of weeks before she could come home. She had pretty severe osteoporosis anyway, so taking care of her would be a struggle. Our family got organized really fast. We had a schedule of people lined up to do shifts. We had day people, night people, and weekend people. Just as my sophomore year was about to begin, my father suggested that I move to an apartment in Athens so I could have a more normal college life. There were enough of us to still take good care of Granny, so I took his advice and moved out. My only possessions were the bed frame that my mother and father had shared, a simple bookshelf and desk, the cassette player I'd gotten for my sixteenth birthday, my clothes, and my computer. It took only one trip with dad's truck to move me into the small apartment. My scholarships were enough for tuition and rent, but in order to pay for utilities and anything extra I'd have to work more than just weekends. I found a different job that was closer, scanning groceries of course, and began my life on my own. The first two weeks after I left home I cried every night. I'd get home from class and run straight to the phone to call Granny. She'd talk and I'd cry. She told me I'd be alright. She told me to come home whenever I wanted. I went to class full time, I worked evening and weekends at the grocery store, and as soon as I had a free hour or two I'd drive out to Granny's house and send everyone else home. I'd pull the night shift with her alone so that I could talk to her and be with her in the same way we had been together all of my life. Except now I came home with an arm full of all her favorite foods, Dr. Pepper and cheese puffs included, so she'd eat more and build up her strength. I helped her bathe, transfer in and out of a wheelchair, and I woke up in the middle of the night and fought back tears at having to see her so broken. If I moved her the wrong way she'd holler out in pain and I'd feel my blood pressure rise with the stress and helplessness that permeated the situation we were both in. All my life she'd taken care of me. When the tables turned, I felt a growing sense of responsibility in my own life - to take care of her, to take care of myself, and to take care of my friends and family. This is when I first felt all grown up. Granny is gone now, but I have my own little girl following me around the kitchen hanging onto my coat-tails. I can only hope to do as well by her as Granny did by me.

If only I actually played the lottery...

2010-01-19T01:42:00.002-05:00

I've been waiting for my head to clear out, but I think I'm just going to have to make peace with the brain fog that is hampering my ability to feel my way out of the funk. I wonder if this is a common thing? People start the new year by looking back and thinking about all they didn't accomplish last year. I feel good about most things, but would like for my financial picture to be a bit brighter. It would help a ton if the husband would simply get a job. Turns out, trying to get a job in the middle of the biggest recession he's ever seen is harder than we both thought it would be. So instead of worrying about money day in and day out, I'm trying to focus on all the good things that have happened. I love my job, I've got a great kid, our health seems to be okay, and I'm making new friends. Now if I could just win the lottery!

I've never considered myself a material girl. I'd probably donate most of the money to charity! First I'd pay off my house, then car, then any other assorted bills - I'd be debt free. Then I'd pay off my family's debts (most of them, anyway). I'd have to continue to work because I love my job too much to quit, but I might reduce my hours. I'd give money to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and to some local charities around Athens. I'd set up a college fund for Sarah. I'd buy a pair of pugs and have my yard fenced in so they could run and play. I'd get a gym membership so I could finally lose this 40 pounds that I've been trying for 5 years to get rid of! And I'd pay someone else to remodel this cold, drafty, moldy, spidery, house in the woods! :)

Messy thoughts.

2010-01-07T03:09:00.003-05:00

Have you ever been in that place as a writer/thinker that you have so much to say that you don't know what to say? That's where I am right now. I'm awake in the middle of the night, as ususal, and I have so much on my mind. I love this quiet space in the dark - just me and the cats and my glass of wine and my head. I've been waiting for the ghost of my grandmother to show up and give me some encouragement with regard to my life, and this darn cold house...but she hasn't showed up yet either. Perhaps I should turn out the lights more?
Today is the 2 year anniversary of my employment in the Emergency Room. I have to say that even though other aspects of my life suck at the moment, my job does not. I love it there - I'm sure I've said this before. I recently read a book about how just ONE person can make a big difference in the world if she takes a moment to look around and care. That's what I am trying to do. But at the same time I have issues pressing on me, like how to pay the bills with a husband who's usually unemployed. Or how to survive these next few months living in a place that is full of odd feelings and cold drafts. Or how to balance being a mother who works at night with all the things my daughter wants to do in the daytime! And then there is the new interest my own mother is showing in my life - I'm lost on how to suddenly have a mother after 35 years of not having one. My head is a jumbled mess right now and I'm trying to sort it all out. Hopefully I can make sense of it sometime soon. I'll let you know.

Who needs a resolution?

2009-12-31T23:27:00.004-05:00

Getting ready to ring in the new year. Can't believe this one went by so fast. Lots of changes again this year, but I have to say, the end was better than the beginning. Even if I'm living in a cold, leafy house in the woods. Only a few more months!
I didn't get very far with my resolutions last year, so rather than lay out a matter-of-fact resolution tonight, I'd like to simply say that I want to make progress this year. Progress at work, at home, with my marriage, in raising my child, in becoming more spiritual, and with friends. Right now, I'm going to make some progress with this Canadian Club & gingerale...see ya tomorrow!

Um, is that thing real?

2009-12-14T01:40:00.002-05:00

Nevermind whether or not Santa himself is real, Sarah seemed more interested in whether his beard was real. This pic was too cute not to post. A co-worker of mine in the ER told me about this event at her father's store - Santa and 4 of his real live reindeer came to see all the little boys and girls in Homer, GA today so we decided that we would brave the cold and threat of rain to go out and see Santa. I haven't taken Sarah to see Santa yet. Not in all her 5 years! Mostly because she didn't seem to want to. Today I think she was excited but she never said one single word to Santa, despite his persistent questions! She didn't think twice about copping a feel of his beard though. Too funny. No charge for the pictures either. And I got one of those cool huge pickles that you can only find at old country stores like David & Katie's Amish Store!

Family.

2009-12-07T23:53:00.003-05:00

Today was a frustrating day - as a matter of fact, I probably shouldn't even be writing this blog right now, but as of late I've felt guilty for not writing more. I went to Florida to visit my mother's side of the family. This usually screws me up for weeks. That sounds weird I know. It seems like I'd come back feeling better for having been down there to see everyone, and in many ways I am very glad I went, but old habits and feelings die hard I suppose. When I was a kid I looked forward to going down there. It gave me a break from the hum-drum routine of my childhood in the Georgia country, and provided me an opportunity to see my mother, which I coveted immensely. I used to believe that if my mother would just come back to Georgia and live near me that all my problems would be solved. I never wanted my parents to "get back together" because I couldn't even remember what that was like to begin with, but I did want my mother to be in my life more. But that wasn't the plan for my life I guess. So about once a year, and sometimes less often, I'd go down to Jacksonville for a week and try to pack all I could into those visits. I love my family in Florida. I really do. And that's the very reason it hurts to see them still. Because I wish that I could have loved them more all along. I wish I could have spent real time with them. I wish my mother could have been a mother to me for all those years. But she simply couldn't. I forgive her for that but still cannot shake the dull ache that surfaces when I drive down, but most especially when I drive back.
I've noticed something. In the hustle of everyday life, of trying to make ends meet, of trying to raise my child - I sometimes forget the power that comes with adulthood. I'm free to go down anytime I want. I am free to write cards, send emails, have relationships now that I couldn't have before when I was only 6 hours yet an eternity away. I was young and I didn't understand. My father wasn't crazy about me getting attached to my mother, and all that came with her. He had his reasons. In some sense, time healed this wound. My mother will never be the one I wanted when I was small, but everyone else is still right where they always were - and even my mother is harmless now. I want my daughter to know them better than I ever did. Our family is our family. It's no accident the way our lives unfold...things happen they way they should when they are supposed to happen. You're a grown up when you can see that for what it is without throwing a tantrum. I love these guys too.

Grandma Sayings.

2009-11-10T21:25:00.003-05:00

There is a torrential downpour in my part of the country right now. My home phone service isn't even working! Tropical Storm Ida is drenching the Gulf Coast and the Southeast part of the US. That's fine with me. I remember Georgia's drought back in the summer of 2007 that was just awful! A little extra rain is alright.
Today when I left the hospital, where I been all day while receiving an intravenous iron infusion, I spotted a middle-aged woman in running shorts and a tank top out running in the rain. The first thought that went through my head was, "Huh. Even a dog's got sense enough to get out of the rain." Now, you must understand, this was not my original thought! My grandmother was essentially my role model, since my mother wasn't around. And, by default, my grandmother was old. Old folks tend to have built up a store of useful, and usually correct, information and they very often want to share it. My grandmother said so many things to me over the course of my life, but she had some sayings that she went back to over and over - simple illustrations of her understanding of the world. Since I've been working in the ER, I haven't met an old person yet who wouldn't tell a story right off the cuff - that is, if they were in their "right" mind you know. So, I've decided that since I only know what my grandmother's sayings were, I'd like to know all of yours. Leave comments here or send an email to grandmasayings@yahoo.com!

Why high school?

2009-10-29T01:49:00.002-04:00

You all know about my sleep issues...but perhaps not about my dream issues. You see, I have this recurring dream/nightmare that I am back at my high school because I haven't finished something. I graduated 16 years ago! Why in the world do I keep thinking that I need to go back to MCHS to finish something left hanging so long ago? It is so strange. I see my teachers in the hallway, I feel myself walking into the front office because someone is calling me in to tell me what I'm missing. They might revoke my diploma which could somehow undermine my bachelors and masters degrees! It's just the strangest dream. Once I thought I'd finished it. I had a dream a couple of years ago that I met with a panel of teachers and they signed off on my last assignment. I remember one of them saying, okay that's it, you're all done! When I woke I felt instant relief. But now, a couple of years later, the dreams about not finishing high school have started anew. Does anyone out there have any idea what this is all about? Sometimes it's a math problem I need to solve, an english paper I still need to write, or some kind of standardized test I still need to take. I just can't figure out what this dream sequence means for my subconscious. I've actually taken my diploma out of the drawer of my nightstand to look at it and verify that I finished high school! Hmm...let me go find that thing right now and I'll just sleep with it curled in my arm. Maybe that'll help.

I'm awake.

2009-10-16T02:12:00.003-04:00

My sleep is all screwed up, much to the chagrin of my family...but the work I do is paying the bills right now so they can't complain too much. Had an interesting visit with my doctor on Monday. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and shift work sleep disorder, and given some medication to take that might help. We'll see how it goes. No doubt I've had chronic pain since about age 20 that started in my shoulders and became widespread in my late twenties. The problem with fibromyalgia is that many people don't buy it as a real medical condition, even though it now is recognized as such. The FDA has approved medicine used to treat it and it is a actual diagnosis. The first time a physician suggested to me that I might have fibromyalgia was in the summer of 2003. I did not want to even think about it then, so I just brushed it aside. Over a year ago, my current doctor told me he thought that's what I had, but again, I didn't want to listen. Finally I reached such a point of achy despair that I went to see him about it. Hopefully the medications will work. Maybe they'll make me more creative and I can write that bestseller I've been thinking about!

Book Review: Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

2009-10-06T00:38:00.004-04:00

Published in 2009, this debut novel has won some awards and is a bestseller. It's about a girl who runs away from home, in NY no less, and tries to make it own her own. Drug addicted and always broke, she meets a whirlwind of characters along the way: some who help and some who hurt.

I read this book in about 24 hours. Now, after saying that, when I finished the book, I was left with a clammy taste in my mouth. It was good, but the story just didn't seem complete. I'm not sure where the "glimmer of hope" was that they mentioned on the back cover. Written by a Korean girl who grew up in the Bronx, and about a Korean girl who grew up in the Bronx, there were several points that had me thinking that it was some sort of James Frey type memoir where parts of it were true and parts were not. It was written in first person with sparse writing, which I actually like, but very disjointed as a whole book put together. Still, it had me wanting to know more enough so that I kept picking it up on my day off until I finished it. In the end, I don't think I know any more about this flawed character called Joon except that she's several years older and still quite confused.

Check it out at the library for a rainy day like today, but don't purchase your very own copy. That's my take.

Yoo Hoo! It's 2 in the morning.

2009-09-24T01:57:00.003-04:00

It's 1:57 AM and I'm wide awake drinking a Samuel Adams cherry wheat beer. Does this make me a lush? My brain and body have been reset to nighttime hours, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't a difficult thing for my nightowl predispositioned self. It's not that I hate early mornings per se, but I'm virtually non functional before 9 AM and damn it's only when work calls that I can snap myself awake enough to do what I need to do. The mother part of me worries about this however, because now that I have a school-aged child, shouldn't I be getting up and simmering her a hot breakfast in the frying pan at the crack of dawn? Of course, I'm now sitting in the very kitchen I grew up in, and it's easy to remember my grandmother cooking breakfast. She'd make buttermilk biscuits, sausage patties, scrambled eggs, gravy, grits, and sometimes we'd even have home-made jelly and fresh sliced homegrown tomatoes. I keep thinking I'll see her when I'm up late at night like this, which is practically every night now. Husband and child are asleep but I'm wide awake. Tomorrow night I'll be in the ER cruising the hallways, problem solving or creating comfort for sick people, and some not-so-sick people. I have a job that requires me to be wide awake, alert, ready-to-go at the first sign of a "code" coming in to a trauma room. I'm not a nurse though. My job is so unique. I feel so blessed to have it; to have somehow maneuvered my life to this point - albeit there have been some slippery slopes in the process of getting here.

Excuse me for a sec while I obliterate a mosquito. Die you son of a gun! One of the hazards of my new living quarters is the bugs & spiders. Yesterday we even had a frog hop through the back door. After several days of hard rain it was too soggy outside even for him!

Life is a journey isn't it? You think you have a passion, and then you find you're not so passionate anymore. You think you have a friend, and then you're not friends anymore. You think you have a home, but then you don't live there anymore. You think you have a plan, but things don't work out the way you thought. The best part is that somehow, sometimes, the things you create by stumbling along, keeping on, is the very thing that brings the delight and joy back onto your horizon. We don't always know what it is that we are put here to do. We don't know who we are supposed to be with, who we are supposed to work for, who we are supposed to help or ignore. But there is always choice. Free will. The ability to rework the puzzle so that it fits for the here and now. Have you ever noticed that most elderly folks are so damn wise. They've already made their mistakes, fallen off their own proverbial cliffs, sank and risen again. But when you're in the thick of life change, you cannot always see through the smoke filled lenses to the light on the other side. It's coming though.

Right now, I love my life. And somehow, even though I thought I had things figured out several years ago about what my life path would be, the best part of all was the not knowing. The very stressful hanging on for the ride, the uncertainty, and the way my soul is now wiser for the journey I've taken so far.

Moral of the story: when life is darkest, open your eyes the widest!

Why I love sweatpants.

2009-09-14T00:04:00.004-04:00

You can wear them when you're cold or just running a fever. They'll warm you up.
You can wear them after hernia surgery. Nothing else fits.
Your black cat can rub all over you and you won't notice the cat hair. Really it's just more insulation.
It almost doesn't matter how big your ass is. You can wear sweatpants.
People don't look at you funny in grocery stores or Target. They envy how comfy they know you are in your sweats.
You can wear any sort of shirt with them except a button up flannel. That would be weird.
If you buy designer sweats everyone will ask you where you got them.
Sweats are a great way to showcase your sports loyalties. Mine: UGA sweats.
You can sleep in them and roll out of bed, take a pee, tousle your hair and head off to coffee with a friend. Sweats are so versatile.
If you're wearing sweats you don't have to shave your legs. And they won't itch because you're wearing something soft.
Sweats are a self esteem builder. Only real women will go shopping in sweats.
Sweats compliment flip flops big time.
Even in the summer, sweats are cool.
You can wear sweats after you give birth.
You can wear sweats during holidays.
Sadly though, you can't wear sweats to work. That's why it's called work. If I could wear sweats, I might be inclined to take home less pay.
Long live Sweatpants!

Night in NYC.

2009-08-07T13:11:00.007-04:00

Wednesday I had to attend a conference in South Orange, NJ so I couldn't resist the temptation to hop the train to New York's Penn Station and walk around the city for a while. I wanted to visit the New York Hard Rock Cafe again (last time I was there was a couple months before the September 11th terrorist attacks). Here are some pics that I took with my iPhone - not too bad if I say so myself!

I gave him crabs for his birthday!

2009-08-02T20:51:00.005-04:00

Hal's birthday is tomorrow so today we tried to celebrate a little. He wanted to go to Baltimore's Inner Harbor to tour an old Civil War era ship called the USS Constellation, so he did that while I drug Sarah over to the Hard Rock Cafe's merchandise shop. Finally joined the All Access Club which is pretty neat! Hal was able to leisurely tour the ship without a gazillion questions or comments from the little tot, and I frantically chased her around and talked her out of a Hard Rock teddy bear. After a while longer in the Inner Harbor, we headed back to Westminster. On the way back I suddenly was hit with the idea of taking Hal out for crabs. Here in Maryland, eating crabs is a big deal and I don't see how we've been here so long without having done this. So we pull into the Full Moon Pub and order a bowl of crab dip, a bowl of cream of crab soup, and then our nice waitress bops over and asks us if we'd like the $1.50 crabs. We both get blank looks on our face and explain that we're not from 'round here and if she was willing to show us how to eat them, we'd be happy to entertain the idea. She happily obliged and we waited for our crab extravaganza. Her name turned out to be Sarah Jean so she and our Sarah had a chat about their names while she patiently showed us how to hammer open the shells and pull out the crab meat. I have to say, it was very strange. I felt sorry for the little crabs. I felt a bit cannibalistic too. I mean, it was a whole crab, eyeballs and all. When you go for a steak, you don't have to break apart the cow, and when you go for chicken you don't have to break off its legs and scrape out its innards. So I did this for the experience of having done it, but I probably will not ever do it again. Sarah Jean explained about how the crabbing industry works, and also about the social crabbing culture up here. She was the best waitress I've had in a long, long time. She hovered nearby even though she was busy just so she could help us if it looked like we might eat something we weren't supposed to! Hal very much enjoyed his early birthday present. I'm glad because that man stresses me to no end each year as I try to come up with something unique that he doesn't already have.

Unfinished Business

2009-07-31T01:06:00.004-04:00

You must read this book by James Van Praagh, no matter what your religious or spiritual beliefs are. It's simply amazing - I read this book in a 24 hour time span - with work and a 4 year old distracting me! It literally made me gasp a few times. There are many good lessons in this book, and many good tips for living, whether you "believe" or not. Wish I could write more about it but I'm exhausted from reading.

Third place.

2009-07-25T11:34:00.002-04:00

Lance will take 3rd place in the Tour de France, with teammate Alberto Contador snatching the famed yellow jersey. Sucks. But the good news is that Lance is forming his own team next year and Contador won't be on it. Texas based Radio Shack will be one of the sponsors. Here's to next year Lance. :(

What's wrong with my torso?

2009-07-24T11:25:00.001-04:00

Okay. Now I have a hernia, that I actually diagnosed myself but got my doctor to confirm. What the heck? First gallbladder surgery and now I have to have surgery for this? Moral of the story? Avoid childbirth. (oh, and that was a surgery too) :)

My first published book!

2009-07-21T10:14:00.002-04:00

All you NKOTB fans - check out this full color glossy photo book at http://www.lulu.com/content/7425653. Get yours now! Lovies, Heather

In a funk.

2009-07-20T16:59:00.002-04:00

I'm in a super dooper major huge funk lately and I'm not sure why. I don't feel like writing, working, playing, or reading. I want to sleep. A lot. But I don't get enough sleep at all so that actually might be the problem.
The New Kids on the Block wrapped up their year of touring this past Saturday and I'm sad about that - believe it or not that was a major source of fun and distraction over the last year. There are many sad twenty and thirty-something women out there!
Lance Armstrong is now in a decidedly second place in the Tour de France behind Alberto Contador - and I don't think he can win at this point. This is also majorly disappointing.
My child is growing up too fast. She's getting ready to start school and I still have much weight to lose.
I'm still in the middle of my career crossroads. Thinking I might be done with Student Affairs. Very little money in it and it's much less fulfilling than the work I did in the ER. Funny how we stumble upon something that changes everything we thought we wanted to do. I'd also like to go back to school and pursue creative writing and journalism - like I wanted to do way back when I was 19. Dad wouldn't allow it - said I'd never make any money. So that dream got put on hold. I started writing stories when I was only 13 years old. I've always wanted to write and publish a book. I think 34 is too young to be having a mid life crisis!

New Kids on the Block concert on the web!

2009-07-10T14:44:00.001-04:00

Go to www.nkotb.com and click on NEWS to read all about it. July 17th! Can't make it to a concert? This is your ticket! :) Only $12. Great show - won't be able to record it, but just seeing it will be worth it!