dandelions are life

Slowgoing

2009-01-08T22:51:00.012-05:00

Winter break inched by, faster than I would have thought with the entertainment at hand. That included hearing my kids repeatedly play Eye of the Tiger on Rockband, finding new, innovative ways to make fun of my ex-husband’s mustache, and watching Stevie Nicks interviews on Youtube. I found her inanity mildly fascinating.

What I needed was some snow to romp in. Just when I had the time and didn’t have a virus that made me want to sleep, the snow all melted.

One day during break, just to mix it up a little, I took the boys to Detroit. We whisked through the Detroit Historical Museum and then went to eat at Slows BBQ which was really good. I am telling you. Between the three of us, we had okra split pea fritters, hoppin’ john, mac and cheese, green beans, bbq wings, some kind of bbq chicken sandwich on big toast, cornbread, waffle fries, and chocolate ice cream with a warmed brownie with nuts and caramel sauce. I drank a Lindemans Frambois. Then I waddled my ever-expanding winter break muffintop back to the swankmobile, parked across from Slows near this bleak, stark beauty:

The Michigan Central Station, which operated as a train station from 1913 until 1988. It’s like an immense ghost, a desiccated, desecrated, crumbling ghost that isn’t that old but seems ancient and out of place.

We had stuffed ourselves silly as we sat across from this gaunt, elegant stranger dully looking on. I just want to feed it. There's been some talk about restoring the building, but so far it's just talk. Such a shame. Here are more photos.

Winona on Colbert

2009-01-05T10:18:00.001-05:00

I was trying to find information on the 2009 Indigenous Farming Conference and came across this on the Native Harvest website:

Wrap

2008-12-20T11:03:00.004-05:00

Here we are, the semester has ended and I made it through. I need to catch up with cleaning and organizing the house, but I am one semester closer to achieving my goal of becoming a mercy killer. Woohoo! Nursing school is pretty tough, I must say. You folks out there, I will tell you right now that nurses are actually required to know stuff. They're not dumbing anything down just because of some projected nursing shortage. You may now be hospitalized with full confidence in your nursing staff. Just watch out for those nosocomial infections!

My clinical was very cool. I was at Chelsea Community Hospital, and our instructor let us do other things besides work with patients on the med-surg floor. We got to spend a day in the operating room, the emergency room, and the ICU. The operating room was interesting but I think it would be boring to do every day. I liked both the ICU and the ER, there's just lots going on. Fascinating stuff... not just physically/medically, but with family dynamics, the whole thing. People are so interesting.

Wrapping it all up was a little rough. Last weekend I had one kid in five Oliver Twist shows, I had parental volunteer obligations for that, I was stressing about my last exam, and we all got sick. As soon as my exam was over, relief set in but not too much relaxing because then I had to catch up with kid appointments and start getting ready for the holidays.

I did indulge myself in some celebratory shopping at my new favorite store, the Getup Vintage on State St. I was building up the static cling in my hair there when my phone started going off with repeated text messages from my kid "I need Rockband 2" "I need Rockband 2" "Pleeeeaaassse Rockband 2". I sent back... you have to wait for Santa.

One of the appointments I had to deal with was with the oral surgeon to get two of Luka's teeth pulled as part of his braces prevention program. We did that yesterday and he was not too happy about it. The procedure went fine but afterwards he had some pain in his mouth when the anesthesia wore off. To ease the whole experience, I reminded him--the Tooth Fairy gives bonuses for surgically-removed teeth!

Of course my kids are onto the Santa/Tooth Fairy ruse but we play the game and it's more like I'm the spokesperson for United Mythical Workers Local 1011 now. Evan says, did you "talk to Santa" about Rockband 2? I told him that Santa had no comment. Luka says, I wonder why the tooth fairy left my teeth under the pillow? I said, the tooth fairy thought you might like to keep those teeth because they still have their whup ass roots hanging on them!

I knitted a few things along the way, too, the major one being a lace wrap that I worked on all summer long. I have to take some pictures and post those.

Ahhh... life is good. I love a feeling of accomplishment.

Tart Varietals

2008-10-12T23:01:00.007-04:00

I cleaned the top of my stove, just for this picture

There are two things that I have noticed that kids go apeshit over, and those are automatic pencil sharpeners and mechanical apple peelers. The kind of apple peeler where you impale the fruit, and then rotate a handle and it cores, peels, and will also cut the apple up in a spiral if you want it to. That is a handy device to have, but I did feel a twinge of guilt over buying the battery-operated pencil sharpener. I mean, really... can't we just manually rotate the blade? But no, I bought one and kids beg for pencils to sharpen.

I personally go apeshit over my food mill and slow cookers, especially after making two bushels of apples into applesauce. You don't even need the apple peeler, you just chop the apple into quarters or so, throw the whole thing in the pot and then grind it up in the food mill. I put no sweeteners in mine, just apples. I started out with the kettle on the stove, but then I brought in the slow cookers and they work fantastic for making applesauce. I haven't gotten quite through the two bushels yet, but my projection is that I will have about 24 quarts. I got a deal, half-off, from a farmer at the Ypsi Farmers Market. He put together a mix of tart varietals for me. He gave me seconds, so I got all the apples for $18. There's Jonathans, Galas, Red Cort, Granny Smiths, and a few other kinds that I forget. That works out to about 75 cents a quart... not bad! I'm putting them in my freezer as part of my winter Avian Flu/Great Depression food stash.

Bad Medicine

2008-08-20T23:28:00.023-04:00

It has been a long day.

I ran around doing a bunch of errands this morning, including getting last minute pirate garb for Evan's play that starts tomorrow. The appliance repair dude shows up early... then there's kidsitting in the afternoon which was pretty mellow except getting them ready to go to the pool which was like herding cats and I ended up with extra neighbor kids. I forgot to even eat until about 5. I ran Evan's costume up to the church where the performance will be, and then worked on alterations until water polo time. Then after last week having over 20 players, there were only seven of us for water polo tonight, and that makes it tough. The deep end looked like a population map of North Dakota. That translates to more distance involved in going after the ball, and we're quickly winded, though I do get to work a little more on my new ankle-grabbing move. It's especially effective on the bigger dudes who are hard to dunk. If I am able to get a good hold on their ankles, I latch on and become a resistant weight as they're hauling towards the goal. Then they can only swim in place until they have to throw the ball or someone else comes and fights for it.

It's so gratifying.

After water polo we went to get Evan at 9:30 but they're doing dress rehearsal and it's running late so Luka, Juniper and I sit waiting in the van until 10:30 for him to get out. In the meantime the woman who's car always runs out of gas and needs some money comes by. She must have asked me with this same story at least 5 times in the past couple years in various parts of Ypsi. Luka also entertains himself by asking me to relay stories of the stupid things I have done in my life. Uhhhhh... there's plenty but it's hard to come up with some G rated ones. Well, there's the time I let my cousin give me the "sissy test" and scrub at the back of my hand with an eraser until it bleeds. I was determined to let it bleed to show how tough I was, but it hurt so bad that I had to stop. I did end up with a good portion of my epidermis removed, and it hurt like hell and scarred me. That was stupid! There was the time I was learning how to ride a dirtbike in the backyard and once I got going I blanked out on how to brake, so I didn't stop until I crashed right through the door of our playhouse. Yeah, that was stupid too!!

We get home and on the way in to the house, my dog goes apeshit, smelling around and chasing something. We hear her acting ferocious in the dark by the fence and I sternly called her back... but she doesn't listen. Until she gets sprayed square in the snout. NOOOOOOO.... That's when she came running back like "help me mama!" It is awful smelling, I never smelled skunk so intimately it is such a burnt awful smell. I have to give her a bath immediately, I read on the internet to mix a quart of hydrogen peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of soap and douse her. I do it, but I think she mostly got hit on the snout so it's tricky. Ugh! I'm doing this, getting soaked myself with Luka babbling a million questions next to me. The skunk sprayed so close to the house that everything smells and I don't even know what's from the dog and what's just in the air. It is headache-inducing, bad medicine. I dry the dog off and read the nightly chapter of The Long Winter to Luka.

And I am reminded that whatever is going on with me, it doesn't compare to the trials of the Ingalls family. They never even got to play water polo.

I am tired, though. These are the moments that I am grateful for screw-cap wine bottles.

Splendor in the Gas

2008-08-18T22:52:00.007-04:00

Six years ago, on August 19th, I donated my left kidney. Every now and then I think about it and it startles me, because I forget.

A friend from the Native community, and a fellow tribal member, had a husband that had failing kidneys. We would talk and she would tell me about what they were going through. Several family members had gotten tested but for whatever reason they couldn't donate. So Luis was on the list for a cadaver kidney. Being on the cadaver list means you carry a beeper around and are ready to go into surgery when you get the call. You have to be ready to drop everything, and everywhere you go, you have to take the transportation and timing involved into getting back into consideration.

Luis was at the point where he was getting dialysis and it wasn't going so well. He was constantly tired and he was getting infections from the port in his arm. I had only met him a couple of times. I felt really bad for them, he and his wife had a teenage daughter and I knew them to be a clean-living, really tight family. I started thinking about getting tested, knowing that my O negative blood type makes me a universal donor. I would have felt guilty if he died, knowing that I may possibly have been a match.

I got checked out. All I remember is a physical where I got to tell about my drug using history, and it still didn't disqualify me. I must have given blood so they could match up the antigens and whatnot, and I had a scan where hot-feeling dye was injected into me, and then a picture was taken to see if indeed I did have two kidneys.

I didn't start feeling nervous about the surgery until just a couple days prior. It's freaky to get the obligatory "you could die" speech from the doctors. The plan was to take the kidney laproscopically, but if for some reason that didn't work, I could have woken up to see that they took it "the old way", which means slicing up the side of my body for direct access to pluck the kidney out. Much more invasive and requiring a longer recovery.

As it turned out, I ended up having three punctures in my belly: one for the camera, one for light, and one to put some dealie in that pumps in carbon dioxide that inflated me so my innards could be lit up and make room to move around. An instrument was inserted into a larger incision at my so-called bikini line (yeah, right) which traveled up through the inflated region to snip the kidney and then escort the ruby filtering wonder back down to be removed. It was all done with a robot that was operated by the surgeon. The kidney was then attached to Luis in the next room.

He felt better right away. I remember that the family was so excited that he was peeing on his own, because before he had to take medication to be able to pee. The whites of his eyes cleared up immediately.

I felt fine. One of the techs that dragged me from the gurney to the bed after surgery told me I look like Natalie Wood, so I got to bask in that compliment through an anesthetized haze. The incisions weren't so bad, I think the most painful part was how the carbon dioxide would cause this intense crampy-type of pain in my shoulders when I sat up. But that was how the gas was eliminated, so I had to sit up for awhile, take a break and then sit up again to make it go away.

I felt like such a modern woman, having a robot extract my kidney. I felt satisfaction in helping this person get a few more good years of life. It felt like somewhat of a vacation, getting to spend a couple of nights in the hospital doing nothing, since I had a two year old and seven year old at home. I also felt some satisfaction that I could give something without expecting anything... that it was pure. I hardly knew Luis, and he is very different from me. A Latino-American Catholic with pretty conservative/traditional views. It wasn't about how much I personally "valued" him as a family member or friend, or a judgment at all on how he went about his life. We are all just people, eh?

Their family moved to San Jose and last we talked, Luis was doing great.

I Need Parmesan Like the Sun

2008-08-17T08:04:00.012-04:00

Things are happening in my garden. I put some more raised beds in my backyard this summer, looking to benefit from the extended sunlight that happens towards the back of my yard. It's already been shady, but it's been worse thanks to my next door neighbor who is letting an oak tree grow snug right up to the fence. It's doing the limbo under his other trees to get the sun from my yard. I am possessive of the sunlight, I need it.
View from the deck

Peppers behind the fence
Eggplant fetus, second trimester
I planted pole beans, radicchio, red cabbage, basil, eggplant, four kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, butternut squash, turnips, scallions, broccoli, onions, dinosaur kale, two kinds of chard, sugar baby watermelon, red beets, and I just sowed some chiogga beet seeds. I am determined to keep up with it! I've been using cucumber in tzatziki made with Greek yogurt. I'm going to grate and freeze zucchini in one-cup increments for baking. Greens, tomatoes and green beans will be frozen. Whatever we can't keep up with will get frozen. Which will happen because I insist on growing this stuff and then I make what I think what is a fabulous meal out of it, but macaroni and cheese always goes over better. Although I did make these zucchini chips that the kids ate. I sliced them, dipped them in buttermilk (recipe said skim but I didn't have it) then dredged them in bread crumbs and parmesan and baked them crisp. What would I do without parmesan? I need parmesan like the sun.

He'll Also Act Like He Doesn't Know You

2008-08-16T21:39:00.006-04:00

After making his acting debut as a drunk in The Tempest earlier this summer, Evan is doing yet another Shakespeare production. He's playing Dogberry in Ypsilanti Youth Theater's production of Much Ado About Nothing. If he knows you as my friend he'll be glad to see you but probably play it like he's too cool to show it. Come on out, all are welcome.

Little Rainforest

2008-08-13T22:25:00.019-04:00

I have three new additions to my family. They are little dart frogs, otherwise known as Dendrobates Tinctorius 'Surinam Cobalt' frogs, but for short you can just call them cute, cute and cute.
My frogs look exactly like this.
I was hooked up with these fine babies by one Donn Stroud, Master Vivarium Architect and Amphibian Aficionado. You could have a dart frog vivarium, too! I bet he'd make you one. He seems a little obsessed with it, actually. If you click on that link, don't be put off from commissioning a vivarium by how he's sticking his fingers in that guys mouth. In all my dealings with him, he didn't try that once with me.
Here, you see the tank but the critters are not out and about yet. I had a better picture with the frogs out but my kid had taken the memory card out of the camera.
Here is the tank that was skillfully crafted to recreate a glowing little rainforest. What's cool, too, is that this thing never has to be cleaned. That's reason alone for me to want my whole house to be made into a vivarium but I guess it doesn't quite work that way. The plants within are now just getting their roots down but they'll keep growing. Before long this glass box will be filled with lush flora and fungi in which the frogs can frolic. I just have to dose it with a mini rainforest-sized water misting every other day, and feed them fruitflies and everyone's happy.

The frogs have been here a couple days, and they seem to be settling in just fine. They like to explore their environment by day, and then hunker down under some leaves at night and I turn the lights out for them. I don't know if I have males or females, but if it's a co-ed bunch than they will do some occasional amorous buzzing as they get older.

I did have a couple neighbor boys tap on the glass and otherwise try to startle the frogs for their entertainment. But then I drop-kicked them back to their own houses so I think they're with the program now. All good!

The first day, Luka mused, "I wonder if they're happy in there?" I said, they probably wonder if we're happy out here. I wouldn't mind living in a vivarium. Just put in a swimming pool, a brewpub, a thrift store and a Mexican restaurant. I'd be all set.

Good Night, George Carlin

2008-06-28T12:06:00.003-04:00

Breaking the Surface

2008-06-26T23:48:00.013-04:00

The boys and I got back tonight from our trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. We had appointments to enter the earth's crust on Tuesday and Wednesday for some cave tours along with our friends that accompanied us, Robyn and her boys. We left Monday and stayed at a cabin in Cave City, right outside the park.

I felt ambitious and had signed us up for what was described as the difficult, three hour tour by lantern light for our first day. I figured that we could negotiate any steep hills the cave would present us, and if it really was difficult, that it would be good for us to push ourselves a little bit. It turned out to be fine, there were some steep hills at the end that had us huffing and puffing, but it was totally worth it. It was fascinating to see the remnants of saltpeter mining from the War of 1812, ancient moccasins left behind, and even a pile of 2,000 year old poop that we got to gawk at by flashlight.

Our cave guide was informative and funny, and we were lucky to be in a small group, about 15 of us. It was kind of freaky thinking about all the things that could go wrong so far from help. We were nearly without incident until Luka decided his shoe was gouging his foot so he had to bandaged up so he could keep walking. Actually, I let him go barefoot until we were busted by the second ranger but then he was fine after he got the national park band aid on his foot. I also found it comforting to have this big guy with a Kentucky accent drawling, "you'll be okay, son".

The second tour we took was the New Entrance tour, which was shorter, easier, lit up with electricity, and led by a ranger that was just as affable as the first. The fun part of this one was going down, down, down through the twisting, narrow stairs through the dripping formations to the bottom. It had a gothic, eerie feeling about it. At the end of the tour was the part of the cave that's called the Frozen Niagara because the stalagmites and stalactites look like a frozen waterfall.

The other adventure we went on occurred on Tuesday, our first full day in Kentucky and after our first tour. We ate lunch at the Mammoth Cave Hotel and then piled into the van to go to the Kentucky Action Park. As soon as I sat down to leave, Luka let out a piercing scream from the back and the kids were all saying his eye was bloody. I feared the absolute worst as he took his hands off his face, but his eye was intact, only a bloody gouge scraping directly under his eye. I was stunned to see him with blood running down his face and onto his sweatshirt. A metal sign holder had apparently been jiggled as he was buckling in, and the pointy end twanged right into his face.

Every step I'd taken for the previous three hours had been guided by a competent park ranger, where was my guide now? I had been let loose in the parking lot with nobody to give me helpful instruction or warn me about the next hazard around the corner. I was just staring at my bloody kid and trying to turn back time with mind but that didn't work.

I took him back into the visitor center. Nice people in khaki uniforms cleaned him up and recommended that I get him checked out at the hospital because it was so close to his eye. They gave me directions to the nearest hospital in Glasgow, and we all went.

We checked in, did the triage thing, did the registration thing. Then we waited, and waited and waited. People who had been waiting before us left without ever going in to be seen. I asked how much longer, the check-in lady said one more before us. Okay, we can handle that. Pretty soon I had Evan howling at me like I was personally responsible for making us wait that long. We were all antsy. So the check-in lady comes over and says, I'm sorry, there's actually four people ahead of you. And those with life-threatening conditions have priority. There was only one physician. She told me that people left every day because the wait was so long. I began feeling resentful towards the people that were inconveniencing me with their life threatening conditions.

I really wanted to leave but it kind of freaked me out, too. I wanted to get a really good look at the wound so I went into the bathroom and started wetting down toilet paper to try to wash it out. I began telephone discussions with my Medical Professional Friend who advised me to stay... then called to say that he'd seen the picture Evan had sent and thought he might be okay to leave under certain conditions.

We were there for four hours before we finally left without seeing a doctor, bought some topical antibiotic and went to do some Alpine Sliding with Luka still wearing his bloody shirt.

A four hour wait is not so unusual i suppose, for an ER waiting room. But, the more I think about it, the more I am fired up to file a grievance when they send me a bill for the nurse services. There was a warning posted at registration saying that if you leave before seeing the doctor that you will still be billed for the nursing services. But taking his blood pressure didn't help him. And if they already knew that the wait could be really long, which they did, the nurse should have given Luka some basic first aid, like clean his injury and give him and ice pack along with taking his blood pressure. How ridiculous that I was cleaning it in the bathroom with toilet paper.

I found out the next day back at the park that the Glasgow hospital had a pretty bad reputation. A park ranger I was talking to had heard about Luka's injury, and when I told her about our hospital experience she said that she was from California and that she had been in Kentucky for 12 years and still saw things that surprised her.

So there you go. Be careful in Kentucky! With such poor health care, perhaps it's good that we were in a dry county. I really could have used a drink after that day, though, y'all.

Another Shot

2008-06-19T21:50:00.012-04:00

Got into nursing school at EMU again for fall, this time I'm going to do it right. The boys' dad is coming back to live in Ypsi this summer, hopefully it will make things easier. Going to vacation at Mammoth Caves, reserved a a three hour tour, a three hour tour. Looking forward to doing some tacky stuff in Cave City, like the Alpine Slide. Saw cowbirds in my yard. Saw Drew Barrymore walking around downtown Ypsi. Saw the Robert Plant~Alison Krauss show at the fabulously ostentatious Fox Theater. Learned that one is not supposed to wear brown with black. Got Blanche tickets for July. Getting a tricked out aquarium and I'm going to house some dart frogs in it. Don't like too many choices. Spent too much time on Etsy. Ate some dandelion jelly, it has a light herbal taste, made of the flowers not the leaves or root. Scored five goals in water polo, kept my arm in its socket. My girlie's patella is fixed, she's using all her legs now. Discovered Scout Niblett while shopping for dresses at Star Vintage.

My Little Pupa

2008-05-20T07:08:00.007-04:00

It's hard to believe, but I am the mother of a teenager now. I guess it shouldn't be that hard to believe, because technically I could be a grandmother. But still, it only seemed like last week that he was a baby. I can still envision the startled look on his face after he was born, opened his eyes and looked around the bright world while still safely tethered to his placenta. But my boy turned 13 yesterday, May 19.

We celebrated in low-key fashion. His dad had sent him an M.C. Escher book, he got lots of money from family folk that he'll be able to spend a little of, but he'll have to save most of it. He picked going out to eat for dinner at Potbelly. He's going to have some other pupas over on Sunday and play Settlers of Catan and eat cake.
My pupa, in his natural habitat.

Luka and I gave him a chia pet ("new", found at the Salivation Army), a Swiss army knife that he has been instructed to keep away from school grounds, and a square, decorative rayon sarong/shawl-type item to replace another similar type accessory that was worn into oblivion. He had adopted it at one of my Naked Lady parties and I called it his blankie but he didn't like that, I was supposed to call it a cape. Whatever it is, I bought him another one because every well-equipped pupa needs a cocoon.

My little pupa exhibits peculiar behavior. He will eat preposterous amounts of food. He's recently started shooting withering looks my way, meant to convey how embarrassing my behavior is but I am immune because I know how cool I really am. He will sneer at the younger folk, but then put on his bathing suit and leap around in the sprinkler with them. With his shoes and socks on, which I don't understand but I choose my battles around here.

I am fortunate. I've heard of other pupas who scream "I HATE YOU!" to their alphas and go around slamming doors but he doesn't do any of that.

I also gave him a can of Spam, inspired by the Spam-like bricks on the Settlers of Catan resource cards. It reminded me of how I used to eat Spam at my Grandmere's house, but my kids had never had it. No great loss for them, I know, but I thought Evan would appreciate the World War II connection, as it was the food for American soldiers. It also seems appropriate and symbolic for a birthday gift, as opening a can of Spam is kind of like a birth when the can is opened and the form drops out, all covered in a gelatinous goo like vernix. We will ignore the eating it part of the metaphor.

I'm going to call my Grandmere later today and ask her how she prepared it. If I remember correctly, it seems like she chopped it up into a sandwich salad, with pickles and mayo and stuff. I've heard of frying it up, or doing something to it with ketchup. Feel free to post your family's favorite Spam recipe in the comments section.

Happy Birthday, Evan and to Malcolm X too!

Purge Fix

2008-05-08T21:19:00.012-04:00

"It feels good," he says.

Oh my head!

I was slammed with an overwhelming feeling of overwhelmedness a couple days ago. I couldn't function... I looked at my disgusting mess of a house and couldn't bear to clean it again. I dreaded the daily arguing with my younger child. Arguing about turning off the television, arguing about getting up in the morning and moving fast enough to get to school on time. The endless dealing with bodily fluids. Two nights in a row he had meltdowns about his dad being gone, crying and asking me why he left and there's nothing I can say. One of those nights, I laid there with him while he was crying and told him about how my parents didn't raise me, that my mother didn't want kids and so my sister and I went and lived with Grandma Terry. I told him how after that, as kids we hardly saw or talked to my mom but we saw our dad on weekends. He never really heard that story before, and it distracted him from crying about his dad. He asked, why didn't my dad divorce my mom? Well, someone had to take care of her, she couldn't really take care of herself.

As usual, when he has a meltdown like that, it makes me feel completely, helplessly shredded because there's nothing I can do about it. Then I feel the anger of wanting to fucking throttle his dad, and it struck me the other night how incredibly unfair it is that some people just get to decide that they want to pass off their responsibilities to somebody else. My parents, then my kids' dad-parent. Leaving the responsible ones to be uber-super-responsible. And I wonder, how did I get myself in this situation? I thought I was smarter than that... but no I am not, I did this all to myself. I am stupid, stupid, stupid.

And now I'm completely responsible for these people that I brought into this world. I am responsible for their physical, emotional, mental, and intellectual well-being. I am not equipped for this and I cannot take the pressure. I can't do it, I want to start my life over, I want to run away but I can't, and I'm going to cry.

So the day after our talk, which was yesterday -- another day of non-functioning where I slept all day-- Luka told me on the way home from school that a lady at the school told him that if he gets upset about his dad, to tell his teacher and she'll let him come talk to her about it. I thought, great, our family has been red-flagged by the school social worker now. Although it was actually kind of a relief to think that somehow a professional was involved. So I questioned him. What did she ask you? What did you say about me? Hoping he didn't rat me out for something, like... I don't know, like using my cell phone at Wendy's compound to call our pre-teens on their cell phones to bring us beers in the yard.

Well I didn't get to hear the whole social worker story because he decided right there he had to pee, jumped out of the van the second I pulled in, and then proceeded to spray me with pee as he tried to go in the yard because he couldn't make it in the house.

This morning, I woke up and felt like I had a lava lamp operating in the top half of my face. I thought aha! sinuses! That's my problem, that's what's been fucking me up and making me non-functional! It makes sense. I decided it was time to try out a neti pot, so I bought one at the Ypsi Co-op.

I tried it this afternoon. It didn't take long to get the hang of it. The worst thing that happens is that if you don't have your face at the right angle, like if you're tipping your head too far back, then the salty water drips down the back of your throat. But if you tip forward a little, it's really weird. You can feel your sinuses filling, and then it drips out the other nostril. Cool! I was disappointed, though. I was hoping for really gross, green, nasty stuff to come out of my nose and make me feel really cleansed. It's the bulimic in me, looking for a purge fix. But it was all clear. I don't think I feel any better, but I can see how having a neti pot around to irrigate the sinuses every now and then can come in handy.

I tried to get Evan to do it, because he's been clogged up but he wouldn't. Luka did, though. He insisted on trying it and then he stood over the sink for a good three or four minutes and drained the entire pot. It reminded me a bit of when I gave him an enema not too long ago. That was some fun family fun as we bonded over some water and an orifice. He was waiting for me to get the enema ready, and when he saw that the enema bottle had an orange cap he said, "It's ORANGE! That means it's POISON!" And I said, "bwa hahaha!! That's right!! It's been nice knowing ya, but we've had enough of you now!" And we all had a good laugh as I emptied the bottle within. Family enema togetherness. Come to think of it, I'm glad he didn't share that with the social worker.

So I'm disappointed in the lack of neti pot grossness, but I was talking to Stephanie today and she told me about ear candling. I've heard of it, of course, but I've never tried it and she was telling me about some heavy duty grossness that she's seen with it. I think that may be the next thing on our family fun agenda, trying to get some grossness through ear candling. Woohoo! Anyone up for some ear candling with us?

The Girl with the Golden Patella

2008-04-27T13:23:00.010-04:00

My little black velvet painting of a girlie had patella surgery a couple weeks ago on her back passenger leg. Holy crap it was expensive! Apparently her back driver side leg also has a luxating patella, but not as bad. The orthopedic surgeon at MSU Veterinary Hospital said that she may eventually need surgery on that knee as well, if it becomes clinical. Not since nursing school has "clinical" seemed like such an ominous word.

It was all worth it though for my favorite daughter. She was gone two nights and we missed her terribly. Evan kept muttering, "I miss Junie" and Luka bawled when he found out she was gone overnight. The cat just did not console. Lulu is pretty cute but she can be an asshole. She doesn't really give me the respect that I deserve as the alpha mama. One redeeming quality she does have is that she's entertaining to watch as she waddles after critters in the backyard. The wildlife is safe, though, because she's a poor excuse for a predator.

I just have decorative livestock.

Here Juniper is, cowering because the camera clearly is an instrument of terror. I made her pose next to the bloodroot in my garden, one of my first flowers to bloom in the spring. I hope it symbolizes a new spring in my girlie's step. Interestingly, about three feet northeast of her as the crow flies, my hellebores is blooming. I planted it several ago and this is the first year it's bloomed.

Her ears come back after I ask her if she wants a chewie.

Last night Brooke and I took the kids to Detroit Roller Derby. The Detroit team, the Motor City Disassembly had a bout with Killamazoo. It was great and the kids loved it! They were much more crash 'em up than when they play the other Detroit teams. I love how the trashy cheerleaders make it child-friendly by bringing the kids in to dance and play with hula hoops during intermission. They also passed out Miller Lite necklaces and action figures to the kids. Luka got a Lavagirl but he didn't want it and so he picked out a matchbox car instead. I decided to put Lavagirl in my garden, here she is riding a cricket. She fits in well with the rubber snakes that I got from The Rocket and coiled around rocks and branches in my yard. I'm liking the action figure fairy in my garden.

Thank goodness the flowers are finally blooming. May they bring you a spring in your step as well.

Your Mind for a Hairdryer

2008-04-22T21:00:00.008-04:00

Happy Earth Day. Here are some John Trudell nuggets of wisdom for you, as a present. The first is a snippet from the documentary Trudell, the second a video of Look at Us from his recording Tribal Voice. I listened to this song over and over again on the drive to and from Lansing when my dog had surgery. Most of the lyrics are below. But not all, so you have to listen. Please?

This man freaks me out, in a good way.

We see your technological society devour you before your very eyes we hear your anguished cries exalting greed through progress while you seek material advances the sound of flowers dying carry messages through the wind trying to tell you about balance and your safety. But your minds are chained to your machines and the strings dangling from your puppeteers hands turning you, twisting you into forms and confusions beyond your control. Your mind for a job your mind for a t.v. your mind for a hair dryer your mind for consumption with your atom bombs your material bombs your drug bombs your racial bombs your class bombs your sexist bombs your ageist bombs. Devastating your natural shelters making you homeless on earth chasing you into illusions fooling you, making you pretend you can run away from the ravishing of your spirit. While the sound of flowers dying carry messages through the wind trying to tell you about balance and your safety.

Trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness leading us into the trap believe in their power but not in ourselves piling us with guilt always taking the blame greed chasing out the balance trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness economic deities seizing power through illusions created armies are justified class systems are democracy god listens to warmongers prayers tyranny is here divide and conquer v trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness greed a parent insecurity the happiness companion genocide conceived in sophistication tech no logic material civilization a rationalization replacing a way to live trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness.

Look at us, we are of Earth and Water. Look at them, it is the same. Look at us, we are suffering all these years. Look at them, they are connected. Look at us, we are in pain. Look at them, surprised at our anger. Look at us, we are struggling to survive. Look at them, expecting sorrow be benign. Look at us, we were the ones called pagan. Look at them, on their arrival. Look at us, we are called subversive Look at them, descending from name callers Look at us, we wept sadly in the long dark Look at them, hiding in technologic light. Look at us, we buried the generations. Look at them, inventing the body count. Look at us, we are older than America. Look at them, chasing a fountain of youth. Look at us, we are embracing Earth. Look at them, clutching today. Look at us, we are living in the generations. Look at them, existing in jobs and debts. Look at us, we have escaped many times. Look at them, they cannot remember. Look at us, we are healing. Look at them, their medicine is patented. Look at us, we are trying. Look at them, what are they doing. Look at us, we are children of Earth. Look at them, who are they?

Wink

2008-04-18T07:11:00.004-04:00

This guy winked at me. This is actually kind of cute, but I don't even own a hoodie so I don't think it would work out:

"I would love to find a "woman-bud". Hunt out of a camper upnorth or tipin a few golfin or reelin in a bass. She has to love morning lovemaking. She would hafta mabey throw a cap on an grab a hoody an go. She cannot be non-effectionate. An hopefully have little wrinkles by the sides of her eyes or edges of beautiful lips. Love being in the presence of two girls at times. My daughters 11 an 14."

Shaping Up

2008-04-08T12:01:00.007-04:00

I think I’m stinking with bitterness over this sweater I knitted. And reknitted. It’s the Jane crossover sweater, from Perl Grey, knit with Ottawa yarn from Fleece Artist. I love love love the yarn. I encountered numerous problems with the pattern, though, and now I may just have to transform it back into a ball. I thought this would be a good sweater to experiment with, since it’s not that fitted. But I guess that turned out to be the problem. I am liking the bangs, though.

I started to knit the larger size, thought for sure I would run out of yarn so I took the whole thing out and knit the smaller size and figured I’d just block the hell out of it to make it fit. Then I made the front panels too long and took those back and redid them. Now that it’s all attached, it doesn’t quite fit right. It has these big gaps at the armpits and it’s much too boobslingy. I feel like a boob marsupial when I wear it.

I successfully knit another hippie hat. This is the Ana Bandana pattern also from Perl Grey. Knit in Woolie Silk from Fleece Artist.

The hat helps me be one with nature. Here I am cuddling a chipmunk I found in my yard:

I finished the bandana hat in perfect time for buying 2008 Dunegrass Festival tickets. The place where we arrived last year and Evan scanned the horizon and said, “This place is overrun with 98% hippies.” He apparently was okay with it though, because he’s been asking to go back. I also made reservations for a cabin at Mammoth Caves for the end of June. Toss a camping trip or two in there, a whole lot of swimming at Rutherford Pool and Murray Lake and the summer is shaping up. Luka’s soon getting started with soccer, but Evan is resistant to organized sports. So I’m steering him towards some slacker sports. I signed him up for a summer geocaching camp. And I’m going to learn disc golf so I can take my ducklings out and play. Hey! There’s another bandana hat wearing opportunity.

I got a little preview of summer yesterday when I found myself repeatedly saying “BECAUSE I SAID SO!!” I have a plan, though, to deal with these children who constantly ask why why why to every little thing. They’re not really looking for reasons, either, they’re trying to antagonize me. So here’s my plan. One day soon, when I tell them to turn off the tv, for example, and they say WHY I’m going to sit them down and look up articles about the detrimental effects of excessive television viewing. We’ll read it all together and then I’ll require them to write little book reports about it that they can refer to the next time they want to know WHY. And I will find other topics for them to research for any other questions that they have for me. And then they will know why.

She Said He Said

2008-03-25T19:29:00.005-04:00

She complimented the man from Georgia on a nicely done profile on a well-known online dating site. She said, you looked at me so I looked at you. You live too far away and you’re too conservative but your profile was well-written and entertaining when so many are predictable and kind of boring. Good job! Good luck!

He said:
“You are freshly divorced, you stink in bitterness, photos and profile. Give yourself the time. Do not judge people for their politics when you yourself describe yourself as being a fleeting leaf on the wind. You have no basis. No foundation, bitter with God, don't believe in anyone or anything. You need time. I will include you in my prayers despite yourself. It will take time for you to cycle out.”

She said, noting that in the very first line he stated that since his friends include felons that he’s clearly non-judgmental:
“Non-judgmental for sure!”

He said:
“The kettle calling the pot black? lol ;)

No, but really, an observation, if you have never been divorced before, or never really noticed, the first relationship after a divorce NEVER works. It just doesn't probably because the person never gives themself enough time to heal. Just an observation, not judgment.”

She said, even though she swore she was going to drop it:
“Well! At least you don't sound so sadistic this time.

And I never said that I'm non-judgmental on my profile... like you do. Everyone is judgmental in one way or another, and the entire basis of this site is to make judgments. Right?

The nature of romantic relationships is such that it may include a wide spectrum of possibilities... and what does it mean to have something "work out?" That you're together until your dying day, and if you're not that it's unsuccessful? That's a rigid view, in my opinion. I'm not necessarily looking for the love of my life and I'm sure other people feel the same. That's not a bad thing, it's recognizing that we may need/want different things at different points in our life and if things change it doesn't necessarily negate what we had.

These are rhetorical questions. You don't have to answer.”

He said:
“I will share, placing an emphasis on hope.
I believe that we are challenged, we are here to learn things that we cannot learn very easily in the spiritual realm.
Yes, we existed before this time, we are temporarily robbed of those memories due to the profound psychological impact during our stay here.
We are immortal, but we did have a finite beginning.
We volunteered to come here, actually a gift to be accepted or not.
Sort of a lotto ticket.
The goal is to channel our hearts and minds to be constructive, positive, creators of sorts, trying to physically fabricate our lives to good positive things.
The reason for this is because when we arrive back into our true home environment, after the death transition, our thoughts become manifest, here we actually have to physically make things happen.
So we take what we learn here back with us to create, to share and instruct others and do things in the positive.
Those that do not have a handle on that positive thought process are self-constricted to be within an environment that is the most comfortable to them.
So the saying “A self-made hell” may be a heaven to that one within the hell.
To others it would truly be hell…..lol
The hope is that, even then, everybody has the opportunity to improve and extract themselves out of a self-imposed hell.
So now, as we move through our trials and tribulations, we are being prepared for our next journey, like clay on the potter’s wheel.
Then that would place our relationships as possibly the most formidable tool with which to shape us.
At least for me, and hopefully those things will make me wise beyond my years.”

Okey dokey then. Why didn’t we let the South secede when we had the chance, I ask? I give this thing a few more weeks.

Little Slaughterhouse in the Big Woods

2008-03-17T13:06:00.002-04:00

I am so very excited! I have moved beyond reading the torturous Scooby Doo books to reading chapter books to my youngest goober. A couple years ago I bought the entire set of Little House on the Prairie books, which were a huge favorite of mine when I was growing up. I am a total sucker for pioneer frontier stories. And I tried to get Evan into it, but he never got past the first book, Little House in the Big Woods which I paid him a dollar to read, thinking that maybe he would be drawn in enough to keep going on his own.

I’ve been reading chapters aloud to Luka, and I’ve been so thrilled that he’s interested. After the first night that I read the first chapter, though, I was shocked to see him crying. He was upset over the graphic descriptions of Pa hunting and slaughtering a pig. I just couldn’t believe it. Evan never showed any animal-eating sensitivity whatsoever. When Evan went to daycare when he was about three years old, I would supply the caregiver with meat alternatives, but I told her that it was okay to give him the meat version if that’s what the other kids were eating and if that was what he wanted. We talked about how the meat came from animals, and Evan was fine with it. He was all, “I don’t care.” I cook vegetarian, for the most part, but I’ve always felt the boys need to make their own decisions about being a vegetarian or not.

I told L that if he was that upset than maybe he should stop eating meat, and he told me that he tried not to think about where the meat came from when he was eating it. I've heard people say things like that before, and I guess I find it kind of odd. We talked about how, during the Little House times, that their survival depended on killing animals, they made use out of the entire animal, but that we don’t have to do that now.

So the goober has been looking worried when I’m reading and appear to be heading towards a hunting scene. He was enormously relieved during the part that describes where Pa decided to spare the lives of the animals that he’s watching instead of shooting them. Now, it’s going to be interesting to see if he eats any more meat.

Raising Sand

2008-03-08T00:09:00.005-05:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve been excited about new music. The last time I bought something that I couldn’t stop playing was the new disc from Blanche. But the other night I was flipping through the free videos on cable and I came across a Robert Plant/Alison Krauss concert and I was blown away.

It used to be that I would mostly catch new things while I was driving around listening to the radio. I listened to Martin Bandyke when he was on WDET and that’s where I first heard music from Blanche, Feist, Beth Orton and the Eels. I also discovered Howard Stern as I drove to UM to public health school and I was hooked but I had to stop listening when the kids were around. Which was all the time. I tried to get a Howard Stern fix once while driving but I couldn’t flip the channel fast enough when it got raunchy and next thing I know my kid is asking me, “Mom, are you wearing panties?”

I bought Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and it’s fantastic. These are two talented people that can obviously belt them out, and they do sometimes, but more often hit the songs with restrained wistful achiness. With T-Bone Burnett on guitar and producing, which I guess is really good because all the reviews mention it. But I’m just name-dropping.

Here are two videos from the concert. The first song is on the disc and the second isn’t but I wish it were. It's a traditional called The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe His Corn that is on another Alison Krauss record.

And in a nod to positive ageing, I would just like to say that Robert Plant is looking quite fine in all his non-surgified cragginess.

I Just Saw The Most Asinine Bumper Sticker

2008-03-03T15:45:00.002-05:00

It said, “SMILE Your mother chose life.”

That is so wrong on so many levels.

First of all, I was born in 1965, when abortion was still illegal. My mother didn’t get to choose anything. She became pregnant the first time she ever had sex. She didn’t finish high school but she did “the right thing” and married my dad at age 17. She did, however, choose three years later to have another child who is my sister.

For as long as I can remember, my mother seemed depressed and unhappy in a hostile kind of way. She kept my sister and I in an upstairs bedroom and interacted with us as little as possible. She brought us meals in our room unless my dad was home to eat with us. We were sent to our aunt’s or grandparents on weekends and summers. Now that I’m a mother, I can’t believe some of the things she did. Things like send us by ourselves to eat at a restaurant which required crossing a major road. My sister and I now wonder if she may have hoped that we would get hit by a car or something. For real. Finally, we were sent away to live at my aunt’s permanently when I was just starting the 7th grade and she told us then, “I just can’t live with kids”.

She suffered the ups and downs of depression for years, was a closet alcoholic and self-medicated in various ways. Now that I am a mother, I can understand to a certain extent what she was going through. She was really just a kid when she got pregnant, and at that time it was expected that the women were all housewifey. Not so much from my dad, but more like what society expected from women in general. Personally, I hate housewifey and if I were expected to comply with that role I would probably resent it and lose it, too.

When she started having a hard time breathing and lost a lot of weight, she refused to go to the doctor. It was nearly three years ago that, at age 57, she died of a lung hemorrhage in her bathroom while my dad was away on vacation. The autopsy showed that she had tuberculosis and that it had slowly eroded her lungs until it destroyed a major vessel. She died as a combination of blood loss and drowning. My sister and I watched her covered body rolled out of her house to the medical examiner’s truck before we were allowed in to clean up the blood she had spilled. As the medical examiner later reported, she’d had tuberculosis for “a long, long time.”

No, my mother did not choose life. But maybe I would SMILE a dumbass smile if I walked around with a patronizing simpleton’s view on extremely complex and personal issues.

Frog is the Messenger

2008-03-01T20:35:00.016-05:00

"Change will come when the white men in this society realize the chemicals in the environment are causing their testicles to shrink. Then the money's going to flow like water to the environmental movement." Native American author and activist Winona LaDuke, quoting Indigenous Environmental Network founder Tom Goldtooth.

A certain frog maniac friend recently sent me an e-mail about the year 2008 being the Year of the Frog. I would recommend taking a look at this site to become informed about what is happening worldwide to, and the importance of, these little amphibians. What I found particularly telling was this information about amphibians as environmental health indicators:

Amphibians’ thin skins help them drink and breathe, but also make them susceptible to environmental contaminants, particularly agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical chemicals. For example, atrazine is the most widely used herbicide in the US with an estimated 61 to 73 million pounds used per year during the 1990s. Scientific studies have found that atrazine may cause a variety of cancers and act as an endocrine disruptor, mimicking the feminizing hormone estrogen and harming human and animal reproductive and hormone systems. Atrazine is generally applied in spring and can accumulate in amphibian breeding pools.

According to this fact sheet from the Natural Resources Defense Council, it’s not only frogs that are showing alarming signs of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Fish in the Great Lakes, which are contaminated with PCBs and other human-made chemicals, have numerous reproductive problems as well as abnormal swelling of the thyroid glands. Fish-eating birds in the Great Lakes area, such as eagles, terns, and gulls, have shown similar dysfunctions. And since all vertebrates, including humans, are fundamentally similar during early embryonic development they (we) are similarly susceptible to chemically-altering changes that occur.

How fitting it is that amphibians, whose thin skins and weighty little bodies make them so testicle-like, are serving as indicators for changes in the environment that are known to affect reproductive health. And that is the somewhat known part of the equation. Who knows what else is linked to the pervasive use of chemicals that are manufactured and applied and disposed that invariably end up in the environment and bioaccumulate in our bodies? We can imagine the impact of these renegade chemicals and we know it isn't pretty.

It’s the year of the frog. Perhaps, for many, it is a stretch to feel a connection to this strange-looking species that span this planet. So here's a little spring peeper to put some perspective on this issue and why you should care. All you men out there, just think of your testes as your own thin-skinned, bulbous and weighty frog that you keep warm and carry with you everywhere. Women, we are all mothers, daughters, sisters and friends to someone who carries a life-giving frog.

Clearly the money is not flowing like water to the environmental movement yet, so the message hasn’t gotten out to the white men and everybody else about those shrinking testicles. Major changes still need to happen, at many different levels. To some extent I know I’m preaching to the choir here about supporting the work that is being done and reducing your own chemical load, because you know what to do. But we can all do a little bit more, try a little harder. Listen to what the messengers are telling and do your part to protect those frogs.

This Bloggable Life

2008-02-25T19:31:00.004-05:00

A friend recently e-mailed me to see if I was doing ok. We hadn’t talked in awhile and she wasn’t seeing any signs of life from my blog. I wrote her back and assured her that things were fine but there was nothing going on with me worth blogging about. I thought my next blog post would be a picture of the x#$@&!! sweater I’ve been knitting but I keep encountering problems with that and have to redo parts of it.

I wrote her that I had taken advantage of the warmish day and replaced the wiper blades on the van and that I had knit for awhile by a fire in my backyard of brotherly love. She seemed impressed by that and seemed to think that was bloggable so here I am trying to think of some other regular old things about me that might be a little bit interesting. Here you go, an assortment of little info nuggets about my dandelion life:

Info nugget #1 I pretty much dance party at some point every day. By myself. Lately I’ve been thrashing about to the Minutemen and it got me thinking about the eighties music I listened to. A lot of the popular eighties music sucked but I think I listened to the good stuff and I’ve been pulling out some of the things I still have around. The good stuff includes Bad Brains (I against I, which I used to have on vinyl but it warped), REM, Pylon, the Replacements, Black Flag, XTC, Camper Van Beethoven, Elvis Costello and the Style Council. That would be great if anyone has any of these on CD that I can copy. I just have Minutemen “Double Nickels on the Dime” on CD.

Info nugget #2 Eldest boy’s voice is changing and he’s getting himself a little cilium mustache. Hormones, they are a-surging. The most incredible thing about all this is that he seems to be more conscientious about helping around the house. Seriously. I busted him wiping the counter the other day – without being told to do it. People, it brings tears to my eyes. I remember when I first got Junie as a puppy and I trained her to do things in one or two sessions and it was then I felt validated as a parent. I realized that the training frustrations I was experiencing as a parent wasn’t about me, it was more of a reflection of the shortcomings of my students. So anyone out there with boys that seem a little dim, I just say to hang in there and you will see the results of your work when they’re about 13. Yes, it sounds like a long time but if you already gave birth to said child than you have no choice other than to wait.

Info nugget #3 I’m still a little bored. I’m exploring volunteer opportunities, and I have lots to do at home but I realize that my day is kind of like the mall. I need a big anchor store, i.e. something big and important in my schedule, to force me to walk by and deal with all the piddlyass stores. Or else I’ll just stay in the food court. So I am pondering if I should just get a job in the public health field and forget about the nurse thing or what. I don’t know what to do. I just do not know. I like to have a problem-solving aspect to my life, it's what keeps me going and it's kind of missing right now.

Still, There is Blue

2008-02-10T20:03:00.001-05:00

Perry Junior Youngblood was born at home on November 9, 1926 in Farmington, Kentucky on a farm, the second oldest of 5. As a boy he walked to a one-room schoolhouse, and then had to walk to a different one-room schoolhouse a few miles away when his mom got mad that he and his sister got paddled too much and he kept being dangled down the well by an older boy.

His family moved to Detroit in the 1930s, because they were poor and were lured, like so many, to the booming automotive industry. In school, he went as far as the first day of 9th grade when he went to class, sat down, decided he wanted nothing more to do with it and he got up and left.

He was stubborn and did things his own way. He was driving at thirteen, and my grandmother didn’t realize that he was younger than her until they were married. She had just turned 18, and she didn’t realize he was 16 then because as she said, he worked at the DeSoto plant and you had to be 18 to work at the DeSoto plant. They were married for more than 60 years.

They had three daughters in three years, and he was a veteran of World War II. When he returned from the service, he and my Grandmere opened a Dipsey Doodle restaurant on Telegraph in Southfield, one of those old car hop greasy diner places. My Mamaw and Papaw had one on 8 mile across from the state fairgrounds and my great aunt Treva had one in Ferndale.

He also worked as a carpenter.

Later, after the restaurants were sold, the family ran a parking lot next to the Detroit Zoo. He was the flagger next to the giant elephant on 10 mile, while my Grandmere and great aunts worked at the Village Flea Market on Woodward. Those properties are now covered by I-696.

I spent many childhood summers with them, and we ate out after weekends working at the parking lot and the flea market, usually at some place like the Rialto on Woodward or someplace on Telegraph and he would say the food was “just like downtown!” They liked to take trips down south, and they took my cousin and me to places like Gatlinburg, TN and back to Kentucky.

He used to smoke, but I never heard him swear and I never heard him yell or saw him angry. Once, as a kid, I saw him drinking a Blatz but when he saw me walking up he quickly hid it. He never talked badly about anyone, the most he’d ever do was a shake of the head and a tsk tsk. He was a nice guy that managed to stay in good favor with the wackies in the family that would have nothing to do with anyone else. He would always start conversations by saying, “So, ya workin’?”.

He had blue eyes like myself, the only one of my parents and all my grandparents. In fact, he was way into the color blue. He only wore blue clothing, and he bought blue vans, had blue houses, and did everything blue.

In the past decade, he battled cancer and many other health problems. He was never the same after being treated for a brain tumor 2 ½ years ago, right after my mother died. He was still stubborn though, and he would still drive around even though he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t complain, he always insisted on doing things himself. Too much, though, because he was frail and unsteady and he would fall. He didn’t like to ask for or receive help.

He was simple and humble, very salt of the earth. That was my Granddaddy. He died last night, the last of the five brothers and sisters, and just two weeks after his sister Treva died.

There’s one less democrat, one less good man, one less person to tell me that drinking pickle juice will dry up my blood.

Still, there is blue.

I'll Take Being Single Any Day

2008-02-09T16:41:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Julie for bringing my attention to this one.

Something Better

2008-02-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

It is absurd to live in a cage.

I love this Marianne Faithfull performance. This and Taj Mahal are my favorites from Rolling Stones Rock 'n' Roll Circus, 1968.

So Inclined

2008-02-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

I went sledding this morning. I had a sled in the van already, so I thought why not? I dropped the 2nd grader off and went to Rolling Hills. It was just me and the hill. The hill is barely covered with snow, and it's not quite icy but there's kind of a sugar crunch going on to make it slippery. Kind of like a streusel topping. It turned out to be excellent conditions for sledding, I went really far and hit the snow fence a few times.

Here, take a ride with me.

Snowshoe

2008-02-03T09:38:00.000-05:00

The boys and I went for little hike in Highland Cemetery yesterday. Luka and I wore our snowshoes, more for the fun of it because the snow wasn't really deep enough for them. On the edge of the cemetery, there's a path that leads into the woods and is guarded by deteriorating lions. I never walked back there before, because in warmer weather the real deterrent to pass those lions is the lush growth of poison ivy in which they are surrounded. Yesterday, we passed the guards and marched single file until we found ourselves down in some sogginess and then turned around. Good times.

The lion on the right gets to smell Evan's new deodorant. Axe!!

Sunday Comic

2008-02-03T08:33:00.000-05:00

Click on the comic and it will miraculously enlarge so that you fallible humans can read it.

More god-man here

Mary Beth Doyle Preserve

2008-01-31T23:31:00.000-05:00

The following is an e-mail that was sent out by Scott Rosencrans. Mary Beth was a dear friend and fierce environmental advocate with whom I'd worked with at the Ecology Center of Ann Arbor. She was killed in a car crash in November, 2004, and I still can't believe it. The following refers to former Brown Park that is located on Packard Rd. across from Buhr Park. The park has an easy-to-miss-if-you-blink entrance, which wasn't like Mary Beth at all. She had a gigantic personality. The woods there are beautiful and loaded with trillium and more trout lilies than I had ever seen before in the spring.

I am pleased to let you know that the memory of our dear friend MB will live on in our community in another, permanent, form. On October 16, 2007, along with my fellow committee members: Council Member (now former) Robert Johnson, Fellow Parks Advisory Commissioner Gwen Nystuen, and, David Borneman, the head of Natural Areas Preservation, we presented a resolution to the Parks Advisory Commission for the creation of a new category within the parks system called "Preserves". The resolution passed unanimously in PAC and was subsequently approved by City Council.

The resolution was the fruit of months of work from which we developed universal cooperation and it provides protection to designated natural areas within the system because of their superior floristic quality, or quality of wildlife habitat, and prevents these areas from being developed for any other purpose. If maintenance of existing underground infrastructure is needed, the area must be restored to its original condition. There has never been stronger protections within our Parks system.

In addition to the natural areas within Mary Beth Doyle Park (formerly Brown Park), which will be named The Mary Beth Doyle Preserve, their are eight more designees which are sections of Furstenburg Nature Area, Gallup Park Wet Prairie, Barton Nature Area, Bird Hills Nature Area (which Mary Beth helped to create), Cedar Bend Nature Area Woods, Dolph Nature Area, Scarlett Mitchell Nature Area, and, Black Pond Woods Nature Area.

It should be understood that MB Doyle Park is land that is used by the City, but, owned by the County and that, if for some reason, the County should decide to use it for another purpose there is little we could do about it. However, the hope is that the designation as a Preserve would be meaningful to that body. Current utilization and planning indicate a continuation of the current status.

There is a mechanism within the Resolution that allows for additional areas to be designated as "Preserves" and the hope is that such protection of our natural areas will grow over time.

MB Doyle Park is currently undergoing maintenance which will allow it to serve as a natural processor of storm water run off; something that would excite MB herself. The park will re-open this summer and I hope you all can take advantage of this beautiful resource while remembering our dear friend.

Then There is That Little Matter of My Sanity

2008-01-31T14:29:00.000-05:00

I have been bored out of my mind. I feel like have no purpose. I have been working towards nursing school for the last two years, I got what I wanted, then wham. I had to admit I was in over my head. Now I'm just at home, and I go crazy with the household routine, I feel like I'm a hamster in a habitrail and I get less and less productive. Thank goodness for my friends, because I don't have the social outlets that one gets through work or a partner that goes out in the world. These are the times that I find myself having heart-to-hearts with cashiers.

I think I came up with some things to patch me through and help me feel like a productive member of society until I see if I get into nursing school when I reapply for fall. I want to check into learning Spanish, for one. The other idea is to do something that links local farmers/food with Ypsi schools. I'm not sure what yet--maybe a food tasting event, or possibly a day where the school lunch is prepared with local foods. Something... I was on the Wellness Committee for the schools a couple years ago, and I think there would be the interest there to do something, it would just be a matter of money and making it happen.

Feel free to toss some ideas my way. Kate suggested checking into Slow Food of Huron Valley. I have a Farmer's Market Advisory Committee meeting later today and I'm going to talk to the folks there, too.

Like Quicksand, It's the Small Things that Bring Us Down

2008-01-24T08:59:00.000-05:00

I quit the nursing program. Yes, you read this right. I've been having nervous breakdowns, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I wasn't being a good mother, not keeping up the house, not keeping up on the reading for school. All these little things that add up, like taking care of vehicles, shopping for food, paying bills, keeping things running around here. I could not do it.

All is not lost. I still have Florence Nightingale ambitions. I'm going to reapply for the traditional program that starts in the fall, taking 2 1/2 to 3 years which would have taken 16 months if I would have stayed in the accelerated program. The thing is, I had to decide which program to apply for earlier last year before I knew the kids' dad was moving to California. I knew we were getting divorced at that time, but I figured he'd be around to help with the kids. It was too much, and it felt crazy for me to feel like I was hanging by a thread myself and then think I was going to go out and take care of sick people.

I could only have done it if I would have neglected my kids for the next year and that is an insane trade-off.

I realized that having people step up to help me out by watching my kids for me was fantastic and it helped enormously, but it's not the same as having other people around that are are actually invested in their well-being. I felt like everything was a transaction, and it was taking too much of me away from the kids just when their dad left, so...

Woohoo! Free time! I am purging my feelings of guilt and failure for quitting (we'll just call it "putting it off") and I'm going to clean and organize. I could try to learn my mandolin again. I can be a person. I can keep up on what my kids are supposed to be doing for school. I need something else to to do, though, I should volunteer for something. One of the things I'll look into is hospice care. I'm intrigued by the idea of being a death doula. Like the experience of birth, I feel like there are some experiences of dying and death that should be reclaimed from the medical industry. That's something I'd like to explore. Yes, indeed, I willl stay busy. But Nurse Ratched will be back!

Dr. Martin Luther King Bean Dip

2008-01-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

Nerf bullets are whizzing around me. The boys have the day off school and are in the house playing war with the neighbor kids. I'm preparing a steaming hot bean dip, a dish to share that integrates humble beans, sweet corn, local peppers and onions, salsa and olives. White cheese and black olives mingle together harmoniously. To honor the slain civil rights leader, and wishing all weapons were only Nerf artillery, on top it says "love".

Nurse Barbie

2008-01-12T22:41:00.000-05:00

I finished my first official week of nursing school, and was it ever tiring. I have Art and Science of Nursing I and II, which includes two days of clinical, two days of skills labs, and a lecture, and a health assessment class that takes a big chunk of Friday but only goes for 7 weeks. That's enough for me, but most others are also taking Pharmacology. I sagely took that already, last year.

I'm not used to this kind of schedule. I've been spoiled. This program is moving in double-time. At the beginning of the week, some of the other students were saying how the instructors keep commenting on how intensive the program is, and how it seemed fine. By the end of the week we were all wiped out.

It'll be fine, I just have to get organized and I didn't have the time during the week to do it. It was if a baseball throwing machine was loaded with my books and syllabi and checklists and instructional videos and all this other paperwork and then it started chucking it all at me. I also thought I was done buying supplies but I still need a penlight, white shoes (Danskos, I'm getting the best), and a nursing diagnosis book. This is a way expensive program.

I like it. So far, so good. The instructors and students are nice but kind of badass, too.

I got to dress up in my new hunter green scrubs and report to the hospital on Wednesday and Thursday. I felt like Nurse Barbie putting on my uniform at some ridiculous morning hour, marching through the hospital doors with my official identification badges with absolutely no idea of what I was doing. Fortunately, they ease you into any real responsibility but I did get to shadow a nurse around one day and we were running! There wasn't time to adopt any pieta poses like the one above. You will not see us in flowing robes, gazing out picturesquely as we clutch unidentifiable bundles.

In other news, I got to see Whitey Morgan last night for the first time in a few months, which has already been reported on Visions of Ypsi. It was a late night last night, and I won't be able to do that for awhile. It was good to get my Whitey fix. I chatted with the sitter for a bit when I got back. She's just a couple months away from finishing nursing school and is working as an aide at UM Hospital. She told me some of her stories, like working with the mentally ill prisoner who had swallowed a toothbrush, razor blade, and light bulb to get out of prison. It is going to be interesting out there.

Then I found out today that my grandfather has been hospitalized again, this time with pneumonia. He has been in and out of the hospital with so many problems within the last few years. I was trying to figure out if I could spare the time to visit him tomorrow when my aunt called back and told me she found out that he has MRSA in his bloodstream. WTF. The nurse told her that it wasn't a big deal because it's not in a wound, but I read up on it and bloodstream infections can cause septicemia. My aunt didn't know if his pneumonia was caused by the staph. So...I guess I'm not going there. I feel bad about it, too, but I just can't take my kids there. My kids that will take any opportunity to smear their faces across the closest disgusting surface.

My grandfather's sister, my great aunt Treva, is also doing poorly. It makes me think a lot about death and how all of our technological and pharmaceutical advances have extended life for many people, but not necessarily a good quality of life. It seems that most people fear death and will make that trade-off, but maybe I'm wrong. If someone dies suddenly without any chance to treat an underlying illness, then it is seen as tragic. I see the real tragedy as those that continually suffer the effects of somewhat-mediated illness with false hopes of recovery.

Yes, it is going to be very interesting.

Scary

2008-01-01T15:58:00.001-05:00

My niece was in a rollover accident yesterday afternoon. Apparently the driver lost control of the car when he tried to avoid hitting a squirrel. Koty was ejected from the car but she's fine and nobody was seriously hurt. The car stopped just a few feet from the house, and the picture below shows how it landed. Scary, scary, scary. No, she wasn't wearing her seatbelt.

The Art of Threats and Bribes

2007-12-30T18:14:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to get Evan to clean his room for, I don't know, months and months. He says he won't do it, he says it's his room and he knows where everything is. It's disgusting, though. Wrappers strewn about, an old science project growing mold in a petri dish. The thing that really irks me is that, for some reason, he can't keep a fitted sheet on his bed. The boy can work a computer, he can do all kinds of complex tasks but he seems to not be able to stretch some elastic over the corner of a bed. I tried to speak his language. I pleaded, can you pretend that the bed is an enemy soldier, and the fitted sheet is your weapon, and if you encase your enemy in the sheet you will win the battle?

Today he wanted to go to Games Workshop and I told him not until he cleaned his room. It worked. He cleaned for a few hours and I saw some real results. Observe:

Before:

After:

Parenting, it is the art of threats and bribes.

Solstice Skeleton

2007-12-24T23:28:00.000-05:00

The presents are wrapped. It's Christmas Eve and I'm finishing up the night drinking wine and listening to Uncle Tupelo. We spent the evening at my dad's house. Me, my kids, my dad, my sister Cara and her husband Dan, and their two teenage daughters Koty and Kiley. We had a nice dinner--my dad grilled salmon and asparagus. I brought a mushroom galette and Cara brought cheesy potatoes and chocolate chip cookies.

I had given Cara my stethoscope to bead, and she made it all fancy for me for Christmas. It's awesome. I hope my clinical skills will be as dazzling as my stethoscope. If not, then I hope my stethoscope will serve to distract my patients from my incompetence. This picture does not do it justice, I'm going to try to get a better one.

My dad gave us typically tasteful gifts, plus some cash which is always welcome. A nice little sweetgrass basket, a harmony hollow cranberry plant knicknack, which was the kind of cute little botanical thing my mom was into, a fancy candle. He gave my sister and I these Minnesota Ojibwe dictionaries, so if any of you start talking Ojibwe smack to me I'm going to be able to look up what you're saying.

I gave my sister and dad handmade leather purses that I bought at the Shadow Art Fair. With Cara's I included a wine bottle vacuum sealer. In usual eerie fashion, it turned out that she had bought one of those for my dad as part of his gift. I didn't buy him one because he finishes any bottle of wine that he opens and I didn't think he'd start drinking less so he could vacuum seal it. Now we figure he can keep drinking more, maybe one and a half bottles and vacuum seal the rest. Cara and I are always doing weird synchronous things like that. One time near Christmas she called and I was making cranberry white chocolate oatmeal cookies, and at the same time she was making the same cookies for me. It wasn't like those cookies were some tradition, either, it was out of the blue. Freaky!

When we got home I got the kids straight to bed so I could get down to serious Santa work. It used to be that I would wrap presents in the basement while Gerry managed the kid situation, but last year I remember being really tired and just doing it in the living room. Luka had been told about the realities of Santa because I'm not going to lie if he asks me about it, but still he acted startled when he was faced with a half-hidden pile of gifts in the living room. He had been coughing all night, and had gagged himself into throwing up all over the place. So we had gifts to wrap, vomit to clean, and a kid that would not stop coughing. He ended up coughing all night long and there was no reprieve until I called for some narcotic cough syrup the next morning. It was awful. Anyway, I thought last year that we had established that I was Santa.

So this evening he kept getting up and I had to usher him out of the room several times. He started bawling and saying something about Santa not existing!! I was like--please!! He said, why did you say Santa existed. I told him that I am Santa, and that I do exist. I feel like I'm living Groundhog Day but it's Christmas instead.

With classes finishing up so late, I didn't get a chance to get a tree until right before Christmas so I said forget it. I just didn't have the time to go running around looking for one, so I bought some cedar garland in which to wrap our skeleton and Evan decorated that on the solstice. The cedar makes it look more tropical than I really like, but the cedar can burned when I'm done. Burning cedar smells really good, a fact that I am including here for my pyro readers.

Luka wasn't into the skeleton idea, so he decorated my little fake tree. Amongst the traditional decorations he hung some fondue forks he found in the kitchen. He put up a sign that directed Santa to put Luka's presents there.

Christmas morning. I think they made out pretty well. Evan got some Warhammer 40K, a soft and sparkly severed unicorn head, again from the Shadow Art Fair (which he said he LOVED), a holy toast stamp where you can press the image of the Virgin Mary into a piece of bread and then toast it. Luka got a gel ant farm colony, some sour cream and onion crickets to snack on, and some Beatles stuff. They both got IPods, books, maps, the movie HELP, the Wii game Big Brain Academy. When Luka opened that he stood there going hmmm... with a doubtful look on his face. I ordered--"look excited for Santa!" and he gave me the reaction that I was looking for, a little overkill actually. The kid is so opinionated.

I Think I Molted

2007-12-08T06:38:00.000-05:00

Thanks to those who have offered up help and suggestions for winter semester childcare. I think I have the afterschool situation covered, and backups, and now all I need is the two early morning shifts covered but I have some leads to follow up on.

This past week has been interesting. On the day that my divorce was final, a knot developed in my center that I carried around for five days. It was the weirdest thing, as generally I'm not a gastro-stressy person. Then it disappeared. It just went away, and I felt great. Really great, like I've been carrying around this sublevel anxiety that was suddenly released. I have just as much to do, but it doesn't feel ominous anymore. Instead of this nebulous feeling that the things I have to do are a gray sky above that I'm trying to clear by making wind with my hands, they just became a canopy of fruit that needs to be picked and I can just reach up and grab it.

I feel like I gained Deep Understandings of Life, without reading any Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I can focus on schoolwork, but then feel okay about setting it aside for awhile to play games with the kids or laugh with Evan over hilarious headlines from his book of compilations from The Onion. Six Flags Killer Still at Large, Says Souvenir-Bedecked Police Officer.

I think I molted. Perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood my crunchy shell is lying amongst this year's shed leaves, unseen for the cloak of early snow.

It's Crunch Time

2007-12-03T08:52:00.001-05:00

Oh my goodness. It's the end of the semester, holiday obligations are making themeselves known, and I need to line up winter semester childcare. Help!

Starting in January, until the end of April, I have clinicals starting at 7 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday mornings at St. Joes and I need someone to help me with my kids. I would like someone to be here around 6:30, and the main thing would be to get my kids up, fed and off to school. My younger son (age 8) would need to be driven or walked by 8:30 a.m.

It also means that if there is a problem, if Luka is sick and I'm already gone, that the sitter would have to deal with it the best they can. They would have to make the calls to find someone to watch him, construct a velcro wall and stick him to it with some food and videos, or stay themselves...because attending clinicals is mandatory. They've assured us that if we miss a clinical, that those hours will have to be made up and they will find something even more evil than usual for us to do. And when you're talking human bodies...hoo boy, I don't even want to go there.

I will also need afterschool care on Mondays until 7 and Thursday and Fridays until 6:15. It wouldn't matter if it were my house or not.

So...are you interested or know anybody? Let me know and we'll talk money. Contact me at sfallis@sbcglobal.net

Or feel free to suggest places to go to recruit some help. EMU Childcare Institute is one place that's been mentioned, I have yet to do that.

Glad, where?

2007-11-29T17:40:00.000-05:00

What a day. After a 6 month process, I showed up in court on my appointed day of today and then waited for what seemed like ages for a courtroom full of people to sign in. I then gave my testimony when called, which took about a minute, and I was done. I held up my right hand, swore in, and answered a battery of questions asked by my attorney with "yes yes yes yes yes yes yes". And now it's over.

Georgina accompanied me for moral support which was super fab of her because it was all pretty boring really. It could have been less boring if we could have knit, but we couldn't take our needles in. We talked about how strange it was to wait with all those people, all knowing that they're going through the same process. All these random people end up in this one spot on one day for the same reason. Like when you're waiting for a mammogram, and you know everyone there is going to get their boobs smooshed. Or when I saw an eating disorders psychologist years ago, and if there was someone waiting in the waiting room when I came out I felt like I had this automatic bond with them, that I knew that they were messed up, but I didn't know if they were throw-uppers, or anorexic or what. And I was curious about that. But your eyes don't even meet because that would be weird, because we wanted our screwed-upness to be anonymous. How things have changed, because here I am posting about it on my blog.

Now I just feel exhausted.

I got a message from the ex today that said that he was thinking about how the last time he told me he loved me, and that I told him that he only thinks he loves me. And he said maybe I was right.

What is love anyway.

I'm so tired, I can't even function right now. My dog keeps looking at me with concern. Or maybe she just wants to get fed. I think I've secured my dog's love with food, but that sure doesn't work with people. That's just a pile of empty gladware containers.

Jive Turkey

2007-11-24T10:11:00.000-05:00

It's Thanksgiving weekend.

Our usual Thanksgiving gig was cancelled due to the stressiness of my aunt that would have hosted. My grandfather broke his hip and had surgery, and she's been the one helping her mother out and getting her back and forth to the hospital. When she called on Sunday to tell me, I was similarly stressy from the party that was shortly due to start at my own home to celebrate Luka's birthday. His birthday was the Sunday before but I just couldn't do it then, too much going on. So when my aunt called, I shrieked, "I know where you're comin' from sister!"

So the boys and I spent Thanksgiving at home, and I rather looked forward to it. I like to hang out with my family, but it's been so chaotic here that I was glad to be able to just come to a screeching halt for a second. I planned a beta-carotene Thanksgiving--I was going to make stuffed acorn squash with veggie sausage, smashed potatoes, turnips and baby carrots with faux chicken gravy, and carrot soup. For some reason I bought what seems like a bushel of baby carrots at Costco for Luka's b-day party and I have to use them up. I figured my kids wouldn't be thrilled with the pervasive carrot theme, but we all like fake meat. Boca makes good stuff, and so does Tofurkey. I don't really like their fake roast, but their sausage is good and I was going to chop up some of their Italian sausage to put in the squash.

Late afternoon, I took the boys to see Bee Movie. I am not a huge fan of going to the movie theater, and became less so when I had to fork over $21 for the three of us. I thought there was a discount for getting there early, but I think they were gouging us for the holidays. I brought my knitting and two little flashlights to knit by that turned out to have dead batteries, so for a good portion of the torturous movie I was holding up my knitting to be silhoutted against the screen so I could see what I was doing. We discussed the movie afterwards, and I taught them a new word--"formulaic".

I was starving by the time we left, too hungry to go home and cook the planned dinner that they probably wouldn't appreciate anyway, so we decided to search out an open restaurant. I figured our best bet was Asian, but Tuptim and DaLat weren't open. We stopped at Pita Pita and ate there. I'd been there before, but I never noticed how dirty it was. I took Luka to the bathroom, and started immediately telling him "don't touch that! don't touch that!" He grabbed the door handle before I could wrap it, and so I made him rewash his hands. I know from Microbiology what would grow on some agar if any door handle were swabbed and cultured, and normally I don't make a big deal about it but this place was gross! Then I noticed everything that needed to be cleaned and I started getting a headache thinking about how disgusting the kitchen might be. I guess that was kind of a depressing Thanksgiving dinner. We went home and had a nice time playing board games, though.

Yesterday I took the boys to their Grandma's and they're staying for two blissful nights. There is so much I want to get done, but unfortunately I discovered that the furnace wasn't kicking it out as it should. I had a heating and cooling dude out and found out that the fan is broke and it can't be replaced until Monday. Well, it could have if I coughed up an extra $100 because the supply house was closed for the holiday and they would charge extra to go open up. Thrifty as I am, I said nah, I'll wait. So it's currently 51 degrees, calm wind, barometer steady in my living room. When I was drinking coffee, I could see my breath. Now I just want to sit here swaddled on the couch, but I can't let some good freedom go to waste so here I go. I'm going to try to warm up this place with some cleaning energy and I suppose it's a good time as any to fire up the oven and cook that squash.

Turn 42, First Tattoo

2007-11-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

I turned 42 last week.

Georgina threw me a party at her house, which was loads of fun. We ate delicious food, including a pesto pate thingie that was demolished and a roasted veggie soup that Brooke made. I know there was a can of Campbell's soup in there, and according to Brooke, that was the magic ingredient. Andy brought a cake that eventually was blazing on its entire top surface. We also demolished a case of Dark Corner.

I missed Julie, who didn't make it because she was sick. I guess the upside is, as I decided to wear something lowcut, at least she wasn't there to steal my boob thunder.

We danced! Thanks to Brooke and Shawn for providing the tunes, as well as entertaining us with their dance routines. A highlight of the evening was reenacting Tara's fourth grade dance routine to Devo's Whip It. We did that twice.

I also did double duty in the spanking machine. It was supposed to be a progressive spanking machine, although the first time it didn't work out that way so we redid it. I ended up with elbow burns since there was some low-clearance areas that required some elbow-shimmying. It was an all-ages spanking machine, and there were some young 'uns that were more challenging to get through. Our parties are family-friendly, after all.

I felt lucky to have such great friends to celebrate with. I am glad to have the vim and vigor to make it through a spanking machine. I hope to still go through spanking machines when I'm 82, truly.

The day after the party, I got my first tattoo. I met up with Leo Zulueta of Spiral Tattoo, and he proceeded to draw the design on my wrist. I had been into his place before and looked at this portfolio, and I loved the wrist tattoo that he had done on another woman. It's not his usual style. He is known for his work in tribal tattooing, the big bold Polynesian style tattoos. Another thing about Leo is that he draws the tattoo freehand, which apparently is unusual because a lot of tattoo artists use stencils. That's my understanding anyway, but like I said, this was my first one.

I spent a probably a total of three hours there, and I'd say that it took two hours to draw, and one to actually tattoo. Leo was meticulous, and kept redoing the art. Other than starting to feel a little hypoglycemic, I really enjoyed the whole process. Leo is very knowledgeable about the history of tattooing, and talked a lot about that. His partner, Diane, was there, a tattoo artist herself and photographer, and they were the cutest thing together. She oohed and aahed over my tattoo, and they smooched each other when they crossed paths, and he told me how she was his biggest supporter. He told me how he thought tattoos are a sort of rite of passage, and that those are missing in our society. He told me he thought the tattoo would help me, and how he knew they helped Diane. I asked her in what way, and she told me about how it's helped her claim her body and herself, no matter what society tells her is appropriate. She showed me something that she had framed on the wall, that was attributed to Nelson Mandela but when I looked it up I found that it was actually written by Marianne Williamson, and it goes like this:

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Other than the God stuff, I can relate.

I love my little tattoo. I like that I can see it, because I do think of it as a little ritual that is marking this time in my life. There are a lot of changes going on with me now, and it's kind of a hard time because I'm juggling a lot with home and school. I look at my tattoo, and I think--I can do it, I have to do it. I like that there was pain involved in the process. I like that the design is evocative of water and feathers, and that it encircles my wrist, one of the toughest parts of my body on one side, and one of the most vulnerable on the inside. The two dots on the inside represent my babies, and I didn't think of this at the time, but I think it's fitting that they are on the side where the skin is thinnest and you can see the vessels that carry my blood.

The Big Four Two

2007-10-31T08:44:00.000-04:00

From Gerry.

I Ran Away Today

2007-10-30T23:00:00.000-04:00

I'm losing it.

I ran away. I couldn't take it any more. My kids arguing with me. I said fine, watch tv, eat as much candy as you want. I'm not making you dinner because I don't feel like it and you guys don't do anything you don't feel like doing. I have a test tomorrow so I went to the Corner Brewery tonight and studied.

I thought they might be a little taken aback by this, but they were like, wow, you're a cool mom. To me, it felt really extreme, but apparently not to them. I was hoping that they would realize that I am the structure in their life, that it's all a swirl of chaos without me, but apparently 2 1/2 hours at the brewery didn't exactly convey that.

I feel a little decompressed, though.

I did have two good things happen to me today. I had my hair trimmed by my hairlady, Tara, at Salon Luminescence. She was up at the front counter when I crossed the parking lot and walked in. When we went back to wash my hair, she told me that another stylist at the counter kept saying to Tara how beautiful I was as I walked up to the salon, without knowing that I was there for an appointment with her. How nice to hear, as I'm going to be 42 tomorrow and I feel like a middle-aged vomit and feces encrusted scuzz of a dishrag.

And I received this, from Gary, Andre's dad:

"The day was Halloween,the year sixty-five,
ghosts and goblins of today were not even alive;
and, on that day there was a blessed event,
for Stacey came to us, heaven sent!

From crying and crawling to talking and walking,
she grew into a lovely young girl, a full life ahead,
her elders revealed that she is unique, a treasure
a blending of traditions, heritage and culture.

The promise of youth is now fulfilled in this woman,
in the caring and nurturing of her young blessings,
in the friend she is to many, such a treasure,
in the dignity she adds to our traditions and culture.

So we gather this Halloween day, not to say boo!
Not to play tricks, not to beg for treats,
but, to celebrate her day
to stop and to say to shout as one,
HAVE A HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I don't know how well I nurtured my young blessings today, but I'll take it. I am so touched. Such a nice present.

This is Mama Love

2007-10-28T10:26:00.000-04:00

It's a busy time of year. There's Halloween, which means parties and cobbling costumes together, Luka's birthday is coming up, harvests are rolling in and its the last chance to preserve anything if it's going to be done.

Yesterday turned out to be more hectic than I had planned for. Wendy and Pete hosted Pumpkin Day at their barn, plus Evan had a birthday party to go to, and I decided I was going to make a pumpkin chili as well as some homemade applesauce to bring to Wendy's. I've been making applesauce for freezing from apples I picked up last weekend from Lesser Farms out in Dexter. I bought two bushels of Ida Reds for the sauce (I prefer Jonathan's, but I missed the season), a peck of Granny Smiths for cooking (they became an apple crisp), and peck and a half of these delicious apples called Arkansas Black that are dark as plums and super crispy and sweet in a green perfumy way. Soooo good. I also bought a gallon of their honey and a hunk of beeswax that I'm going to transform into votive candles.

From Lesser Farms I had driven my kids and E and O out to Rodgers Corners, a family farm out near Chelsea that we go to every year for our pumpkins. I just have to say that every one of us were munching on an apple varietel as we left one farm for another when Fiona APPLE came on the radio. I kid you not.

So yesterday, I had multiple projects going on when I received a call from my neighbor that their child that Luka plays with had lice. I've been battling the lice monster with Luka, and I had treated him last week for it. I've been checking him every day to see if I should reshampoo him, and sure enough, after the call I checked and he was reinfested. Or, infested still. I have no idea but I am sick of those little fuckers.

So, here we go again. Wash his hair, coat him with Nix, wash again. Make sure nothing's burning on the stove. Plead with him to sit still so I can comb through his hair, he resists, cries, complains. Get all the laundry downstairs and get all that going--pillows, sheets, stuffed animals. Make sure the main bedding is done first so I can get his bed remade before we go out. May as well clean the bathroom since there are telltale signs that my no-standing-and-peeing rule has been violated. Take out the laundry from the day before when he stood in the hallway and threw up because the cough that he has sets off his gag reflex. He had been covered in vomit, it was all over the floor, splashed on doors, trim and walls. I had him step onto a towel, get undressed, wipe off his feet so he can walk straight into the shower while I start the laundry and clean up.

So last night, we get in late. We had fun. I was exhausted. I had to decompress at the party after rushing around all day and thankfully when I picked Evan up from his party and held my breath as I checked his scalp AGAIN he was still clean. If he weren't that may have sent me over the edge. So Pumpkin Day was a nice little break from it all. I could sit, talk, dance, eat, drink and that was all I had to do. And I did it.

Four a.m., Luka calls me and he had puked all over his bed while sleeping, so he was matted with puke on one side of his head. So I get up, get Luka up and just shut the door to his room because there is no way I was dealing with that at that time of night. Thankfully, it was all contained, and the kind of situation that's going to have to have an initial decontamination in the backyard before it goes to the laundry.

So I wash off the little goober, give him the hard stuff cough medicine that has codeine in it, and get him settled in my bed and rub his back to get him relaxed until the medicine takes effect. He falls asleep, his little head on my pillow, still with a faint aroma of vomit. And I think to myself--I will battle lice for you, clean up gallons of throw up and contend with all the other bodily fluids, too.

It won't always be like this, but until then I will just keep doing it. This is mama love.

My Friends Are Like Cabbage

2007-10-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

The season is wrapping up. Just one more week to go for vegetables from Box Elder Acres, but in part I'm looking forward to it because with just the three of us, it has been too much. I've frozen what I can, but jeez. It's bad when you shove green stuff into your fridge with one hand and close it with the other, like an overstuffed suitcase.

We got a storage cabbage yesterday. I love those words together, "storage cabbage". It sounds so firm and solid, like a storage cabbage is. I was musing upon the goodness of storage cabbage. It's there for the long haul. It'll take you through the winter, ready to nourish when it's needed. It's so versatile, it'll make a sturdy, hot soup, or a funky salad.

My friends are like storage cabbage. They have been there for me, especially lately with so many changes going on, like adjusting to school and single parenthood. Providing childcare so I can get to class, listening to me complain, and offering up help whenever I need it. Being fun. It's still overwhelming at times just because there is so much to do...I wish someone could go get a mammogram for me.

It's allright though.

And there you go. Comparing my friends to cabbage is about as sentimental as I get.

Finally, I Made Something I Can Wear

2007-10-24T10:41:00.001-04:00

I've been knitting more, in part because the weather is such good crisp knitty weather, and also as part of my vigorous efforts to avoid studying. I made this hat from handspun that I bought at the last Shadow Art Fair. I made another hat from Noro Iro that didn't turn out, it was the detective hat from the Tracy Ullmann book. It just looked wrong so I ripped it out and I'm going to make a scarf.

Music, Sticks, Cans and Kittens

2007-09-23T08:09:00.000-04:00

I was seriously questioning my parenting skills yesterday. I was seriously questioning my decision to get cable. I thought it could be a nice little addition to our household, something to round out our busy lives in controlled doses of educational programming. But really, it's one more thing to power struggle over with my kids. I am sick of the arguing and whining, and worst of all, the glassy-eyed stares of my little media junkies. If there was a parrot in the house, this is what it would have learned to shriek by now, "Turn it OFF!!"

I had banned video games from this household, but recently let my kids buy a Wii with their own money. The Wii is pretty cool, at least it involves moving around and there are no shooting games with it. But Evan had borrowed a controller and a Mario Kart game and we've been fighting over that, too. The game is fine, but when it's time to switch it off, you'd think that I'd told Luka it was time to cut off a limb. The crying, the carrying on. The fury.

It is ridiculous.

As usual, I was trying to get some cleaning done yesterday and trying to get my kids involved with that. Evan will help, but he typically does things half-assed and has to be told each individual task. You can't just say, "clean the living room". Never mind that there is visible litter that can be thrown in the trash. Speaking of trash, it's Evan's job to take the recycling and garbage out and the empty cans back in. I typically find the garbage can and recycling bin IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR BACKYARD. Why? Why not take it all the way to the garage? He must get halfway back there, and think that it would just be too thorough to keep going.

Luka resists every little thing, and I'm constantly issuing threats. Yesterday there was packaging from a cheese snack on our coffee table and I told him to throw it away. He refused. "That's not mine, that's Solstice's". Give me a break. I have to expend way too much energy to get these kids to do stuff. That's the problem with our cushy modern American society. Natural selection would have eliminated this gene pool years ago if it were up to hunting and gathering to keep us going.

There are times I just need a break from these kids. Just get out of my way, let me clean. I fantasize about stringing them up a pole for awhile, like those bear poles that are out in the forests where people camp so that they can suspend their food out of the way of bears. I would do it humanely, of course. They would have a nice comfortable jacket that would would hold the line, and it would be worthwhile because I would give them some reading to do. Maybe some Jane Austen, and maybe they'll grow up and put a bumper sticker on their car that says "I'd rather be strung up on a bear pole, reading Jane Austen"

After the stressful morning, we had Luka's soccer game and things started looking up. The kids were excited about going out to Dexter to see a barn show featuring Chris Buhalis and the Hummingbirds. Actually, they weren't so excited about the show, but they love playing out on the wooded property of the folks that own the barn. So Shannon and I took the kids out there. I love seeing shows there, I had seen Uncle Earl play there before. The sound quality is great, and I love the down-hominess of the barn. Toddlers wandering around, each matched with a dog staring them down waiting for them to drop food. One dog would meander around on stage during the show and then plop itself down. There were lots of people I know, but don't see very often.

Chris sounded great, he played with Dave Keeny on dobro and Dave Sharp on stand up bass. I particularly liked the song Whiskey Six which apparently will be on his next CD. The Hummingbirds played with John Latini on bass, Jim Latini on drums and a pedal steel guitar player that I don't know, but Shannon was familiar with. A fiddle player was up there for a few songs but I didn't catch her name. I bought the new EP by the Hummingbirds, so now there will be some new Ypsilanti music for the IPod.

My boys occupied themselves outside for most of the night, running around with sticks, until the last hour or so when Evan cozied up with a kitten and listened to the music. Luka knew a boy from school, and they entertained themselved by kicking a can around outside under some lanterns strung around the trees.

An interesting day, starting with some high tech frustrations and ending with good relaxing times with music, sticks, cans and kittens.

I don't think cable is going to last very long around here.

I Have to Rave

2007-09-21T10:49:00.000-04:00

I signed up for a membership at Washtenaw Community College's new Health and Fitness Center a couple weeks ago, and I finally went today to swim after I dropped the kids off to school. The place is fabulous! I was hooked in because I love to swim, but I usually don't swim indoors. Indoor pools usually seem so clammy, and I feel crispy just thinking about winter chlorine skin immersion. The lap pool that they have, however, is surrounded by windows and filled with natural light. I had heard that they don't put chlorine in the pool at all. The lifeguard there today said they may put in some but it's mostly salt. I could tell, too, by the difference in buoyancy. They played music in there, too, which always helps to get me going.

The place is like a spa. It's all new, and environmentally friendly. The toilets have two different flush modes, one for Number One and one for Number Two. The bathrooms have saunas and whirlpools. In the locker room they have something called a Suit-O-Matic, where you put your wet bathing suit in and press down on the lid, and the machine spins it dry. As an Amish wannabe, I was like, GOLLY! I love it when appliances have "O-Matic" in their name. It couldn't be better unless they detailed my car while I was in there.

They supply shampoo, conditioner, soap, hair dryers, towels, deodorant, hairspray, mouthwash, q-tips, all kinds of crap. And that is the deal that will tip me over to actually going on a regular basis because I hate packing all that stuff. It's like camping, I want to be there but I abhor getting all the stuff ready. It's because I'm lazy. I guess I wouldn't really make a good Amish person after all.

Ypsitucky Kernels

2007-09-16T09:50:00.000-04:00

Last night I met Shannon at the Corner Brewery to throw down on some Sacred Cow IPAs. We've been talking about meeting for a beer for awhile, and finally it worked out. Greg was also there and he bellied up to the bar with us, disappearing periodically to have a smoke outside after being reminded that he couldn't light up inside, which he kept doing. So, I got to know these folks a little better, the way that one does over fermented beverages, that I'd really only known before as acquaintances.

I brought with me a big honkin' tomato from my garden for Shannon. As the tomato beautifully squatted red before us, it served as a focal point for some interesting discussion about food preservation methods and the undigestibility of corn.

Nostalgiac '70s music was playing last night, so I must have said "I love this song" at least five times, but I only said "I wish I could smell gas right now" only once. I can't remember exactly why, maybe it was because the corn discussion led to talking about ethanol exhaust. That had to have been it. I love the smell of gas and garages.

Anyway, the beer and nostalgia led to a flurry of Itunes buying when I got home. This is what I bought:

The singles Killer Queen and You're My Best Friend by Queen, Siren by Roxy Music, Goats Head Soup by Rolling Stones, I deliberated over buying Tommy by the Who, but I thought I might only listen to We're Not Going to Take It so I'm waiting on that one, and The Gospel Spirit: Loretta Lynn. I'm an atheist who loves old country gospel, go figure.

One of the songs that played last night was one that I always liked, but I have no idea who sings it or the name. Can anyone help me here? It goes like "Sign, sign, everywhere a sign...do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?"

Revelations

2007-09-11T22:10:00.000-04:00

from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran Khalil

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter
rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup
that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit
the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart
and you shall find it is only that which has given you
sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in
truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow,"
and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you
at your board,
remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between
your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at
standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh
its gold and silver, needs
must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Crazy

2007-09-06T21:11:00.000-04:00

It's been quite the week so far. The kids started school yesterday, and thankfully they seem happy with their teachers. L says he want to do two years of second grade, he likes his teacher so much. I also started classes. I have Microbiology on Mondays and Wednesdays, Micro Lab on Thursdays, and Pathophysiology on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Interesting subjects, but I will have to do a shitload of studying in order to do well.

I'm trying to get into my groove. I'm up at 6 to have time for shower and make coffee before making sure E gets up. He's off at 7. Get L up with plenty of time to argue about whatever we're going to argue about that morning. Today it was shoes, but it will be a different topic tomorrow.

Get them off to school, then come back, clean the kitchen, do laundry, get some reading done for class. Maybe make some food for dinner so it's ready right after my class. Yesterday, I invited Andre and his kids over to help plow through some of my produce from Box Elder Acres. I made an eggplant pasta dish that I thought was pretty good but it was looked on with suspicion by everyone under thirty. Nobody gagged, though, so I count that as success.

I got an estimate to get trees trimmed away from my house. I'm getting a half-bathroom put in my basement, and that should be done over the weekend. It should be cool, too, Chris is going to put in some slate tile and knotty pine walls. I also ordered three double-hung windows, and in a few weeks Chris is going to replace my front picture window with the casement windows on the sides, that crank out and which I discovered funnel all the noises I make into the neighborhood. Screaming at the kids, singing along with my records. I'm sure it's been entertaining over the years.

Chris has been working with these two other men, Barry J Fixall and his son, Barry. The Barrys have been doing the plumbing and gas line work in the basement. Barry J Fixall really does fixall. He's been finding different things that need work, like my screen door, and he asks if I mind if he fixes them. I love it. I guess L told Barry the son that "Usually my mom's friends don't charge her for doing work, but I guess you guys have been doing a lot."

I got cable this week. I've never, as an adult, had cable. I'm not sure I like it. Of course, the kids are giddy over it and it has come to good use as a babysitter when I need to run out for a minute. My kids are obsessed with screens, unfortunately. They will watch ANYTHING. They'd be the kids standing side by side in Bed, Bath, and Beyond, mouths agape, watching an Orange-Glo infomercial video playing in the aisle. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices and the preponderance of absolute crap that constitutes television programming. I checked it out a little bit the second day we had it, and it was too much, it made me feel like someone was gripping me by the arms and was shaking me, my head banging around my shoulders. It's depressing that there are enough people to watch some of those shows to justify putting them on the air. I'm just going to find out which shows are good by polling my friends, and ignore everything else. I'm not television savvy, that is for sure.

Today is the 130th anniversary of the death of the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, born 1840 - died September 6, 1877.

He would have hated cable.

This is My Life

2007-09-05T08:48:00.000-04:00

Ahh...

The kids are off to their first day of school.

I'm decompressing.

I'm starting this blog after taking down my MySpace page. I found that there were things going on with me that I would write about, but I wasn't comfortable doing so in that forum. I used it as more of a social networking kind of thing, a public facade, a diversion when I was looking for an escape. Now, as a single mom taking nursing classes, I need to focus and remove the distractions. I guess this blog is also a bit of a distraction, but I look at it as keeping my right brain going, whatwith all the left brain stuff going on as I take Microbiology and Pathophysiology this semester, plus try to keep this house running in smooth order.

More to come.