NEW DAY; NEW DIET

I’ve been thinking a lot about this blogging thing lately.  (I hear it’s really catching on with the young folks.)  Mostly, because my friends have been thinking about it and I like to steal their thoughts and make them my own.  (Insert maniacal laugh here.)  The whole process seems to have lost something for me lately, but damned if I can put my finger one what.

I started my first blog about…six? seven? years ago.  I a friend (Hi, Jim!) started one when he up and moved to Beverly because he thought it would be an easy way to keep in touch with people.  Over the years I’ve changed sites, learned a little HTML (yep, I’m that old-school), expanded and condensed my content, and I find that my “purpose” still appears to be keeping in touch with friends.  Some have blogs of their own and update frequently.  Some have blogs of their own and never update. Some just lurk.  They are small in number and include several people I’ve known almost all my life and at least one person I’ve met because of my blog. 

Although, I like the way I write - and have been told others like it too - my life is pretty normal and boring.  It’s also been a long time since I’ve put any amount of real effort into cultivating an audience.  (At one point I had 45 subscribed readers.  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure that was the peak of my audience.)  And, like many things, I may have jumped on this train a little late in the game.  I think personal blogs might just be on the downward slope of what’s cool.  (I mean, doesn’t everyone have one, now?)

Part of my problem has been a desire to keep my blog “safe”.  I’ve pissed off a couple of friends, almost lost my job and had my husband in tears over things I’ve written online.  I tend to censure myself in an effort not to piss people off.  I know how easily people get pissed off.  I do it just about every day.  That’s also why I don’t comment as much as I once did.  You don’t need to necessarily know that you’ve pissed me off.  Nine times out of ten, one of us has misinterpreted something to begin with.   One of the reasons I know I’m keeping it a little close to the vest is that I don’t attrack a lot of Troll activity.  How can a reader say anything mean?  I’m not at all controversial.

I’m also envious, though, of those people with the big, big readership.  The ones who are the glitteratti of the blogosphere.  The ones who are loved and adored and paid to speak on television about their daily lives.  They’re not all pretty and thin and young and rich.  What makes them tick?  What makes the stories of their sleepless nights so much more compelling than mine?

Part of the problem seems to be that I have no niche, no point of view, no statement I’m trying to make.  Hello, I’m normal!  My kid is almost grown (too old for the mommy blogs), I live in a pretty unglamourous place, I don’t party like a rock star and I hate fashion.  My career is boring (which I love, and would like to keep that way by not blogging about my co-workers), my marriage is fine (and we aren’t going there anyway), I don’t think I have any childhood trauma that anyone else would be interested in exploring.  (Although, from the way the girls at work plop their dirty laundry on their desks, I could be wrong.)  This stupid thing started as a weight loss journal, but then I didn’t lose any weight.  So there. 

Just like everyone else, I struggle with relationships, career, money, vices.

Am I just here to hear myself type?

I’m going to have to ponder this one.

So I’m thinking about branching out and seeing if I can fall in love with the internet again.

I just spammed everyone in my mailbox.  Damn.  Those internet imps are getting tricker by the minute.  Preying on my need for attention.  Grrr.

My apologies to all.  But if I haven’t seen you in a while, where have you been!

Back at the beginning of the year, a friend of ours asked me if I would be interested in teaching a class on scrapbooking for the local community education  curriculum.  I was thrilled that she would think of me.  Of course, my first reaction was, “I can’t do that!”  But then I kind of got into it and decided to jump on board.

Then my gall bladder conked out on me.

And my grandmother died.

And part of the requirements for this job are having fingerprinting done, which I stopped to do one morning and was told could only be done between hours that are a very small window.  I’m at work during that whole window.    But I thought I could arrange it. 

Oh, and there’s a fee for that.

Then they told me that the classes for summer would only be in the daytime.  When I’m at work.  But I thought maybe we could arrange it if we had the class during the week we’re off work.  It would mean totally reworking my original idea of the class, but that would turn out better anyway.

Then they told me that there would be no classes that week, because of the holiday, so we cancelled the whole thing and decided to put it off until the fall.  (Which is now, in printing time.)

But I’ve decided I don’t want to and here’s why:

• I don’t want to commit to something and have some other part of me fall apart and leave me unable to attend.  Until we have completed the whole “Fred” project, I don’t feel like I can commit.
• I put together a scrapbook for a friend of mine.  She bought all the materials and provided the pictures and I spent a couple of long weekends putting it together.  And by the time I was done, I was pretty sick of scrapbooking.  If that was a labor of love and I found it annoying, what if I turned my hobby into my job?
• Who needs a class to tell them how to scrapbook?  Don’t they know there are a zillion free resources out there for the taking?  There are half a dozen magazines and at least three TV shows on the subject alone!  What would I have to offer someone that’s going to be worth my half of the class take?
• It would involve getting up off the bed, and I don’t really like to do that much these days.

So I emailed the contact and told her, “Thanks, but no thanks.” and emailed my friend and thanked her for the opportunity.  She emailed me back, saying, “No problem.”  Which I hope is true.

I finally found the group of missing pictures from our weekend.  They are uploaded to my flickr account and include the following:

1. The total hilarity of the “Wild Animal Safari”.  I was adamant about going here until I realized that a safari usually includes something more entertaining than moose, bison, deer and alpaca.  It funny and sort of sad at the same time.
2. The Marblehead lighthouse.  There’s a great view of Cedar Point from the grounds.  Beautifully kept and gorgeous shoreline full of jagged rocks and twisted trees.
3. Cheesehaven!  88 kinds of cheese!  Candy, meats, wine and hotsauce!  We came away with a huge block of 3-year-old cheddar.  Yum.

I have to admit, this has been one of the more enjoyable weekend trips we’ve taken.  Maybe it’s because we’ve had such a rough year, we’re just grateful for the time to be together and enjoy things like…cheese!

So, yesterday ‘Fred’ and I went to visit the Dr. with the nice wallpaper.  (Really, it’s this gold damask stuff that makes the room seem all warm and comfortable.  So warm in fact that my hindparts stuck to the paper they roll out on the exam table.)  (TMI?  Oh, we’re just getting started.)  After waiting half an hour in the waiting room and half an hour in the exam room (sans pants!), he came in and proceeded to try to do a biopsy of some cells in my interior regions.  Unfortunately, Dr. Wallpaper is the second person this year wearing a white coat to tell me that my anatomy is “challenging”.  He tried this way and that way and another way but just couldn’t get there.

So I get to go have a D&C, which is just great.  Another surgical proceedure.  I’ll again be visiting the fine staff at the AGC next Wednesday.  (Which also screws up my plans for a day off to myself on Tuesday! Urgh.)

I am not sure how to feel about this.  I went from a doctor who told me just about everything was “normal” and “probably nothing” to doctors who want to “fix” things.  With scapels and IVs.  I wonder if my insurance company thinks I’ve thrown a cog.  I wonder if I’ve thrown a cog myself.

In the good news, Dr. Wallpaper says ‘Fred’ is not the cause of my back/foot pain that makes me limp like my mother.  I guess that’s good news.  Cause unless the biopsy comes back bad - which he says it hardly ever does - we’ll probably just leave ‘Fred’ where he is.  (BTW - I misheard him.  “Fred’ is 6cm and not 14cm.)  What it also means, however, is that if my foot doesn’t get better I’m going to have to see another doctor.  (But I think I might have found a way to help it.  We’ll see.)

In other  - not so icky - news:

• my neck, back and hands hurt from sitting at this computer all day and working my tail off. 
• Two more days of work and then we’re off to the shore for our anniversary.  17 years!  And they said it wouldn’t last.  (Really, they said that.  A lot.)
• Boy got his glasses and looks so handsome I can’t stand it.  He’s enjoying being able to see.
• Boy caught a cold and passed it on to Husband.  Knock wood, I haven’t been inflicted yet.
• Dancing with the Stars ends tonight and the final round of singing takes place on AI.  (Please, tell me they’re smart enough to vote for David C., although it can’t really matter.)
• I’m making Ravioli and walking the dog tonight.  Both.

So I should get going.

This is the day.  The day of the month where if I weren’t on medication, I’d spend the entirety curled up in a ball on the bed mainlining macaroni and cheese.  Ugh.  (And, of course, the very knowledge of the existence of “Fred” means that I now feel the pain 10-fold.)  This is also the day where I totally misunderstand everything that comes out of my bosses mouth.  Mmmm-hmmm.  To the point where I just had to stuff a Jolly Rancher in my gob and call it a day rather than get into it with her as to whether or not she told me to do something or implied that I should do something.  (The latter, of course, being too complicated for my hormone-addled brain to figure out.)  It’s not just her, though, because when Husband answered an email with , “Yes”, I had to go back to him and state, “Yes, What?”  Because in my head I had asked him about four questions and in reality I had only asked one.

Oh, well!

Good things are happening.  Really.   To people who really, really deserve it.  And that makes me happy.

Speaking of happy… the whole clan is moseying over to the high school tomorrow night to watch my Boy get an award.  I don’t know what it’s for, but it seems like kind of a big deal.  I’m all tickled.  Better than that, he’s tickled! 

I was trolling the internet looking at mortgage rates.  I think it might be time to put the petal to the metal and refinance.  We’ve got this weird home equity loan that we need to wrap into our mortgage payment before too much longer or there will be a ginormous balloon payment due.  Can’t deal.  So we’ve been puttering around waiting for the rate to drop.  But the rate isn’t dropping nearly as fast as the value of our home, so I think now is the time.  One bank had a suggestion of a lower interest rate than what we’re paying now, with a payment just slightly higher, and a much shorter term.  That seems pretty attractive right now.  The only problem is if the payment continues to rise each year, like it has been, we’ll be screwed.

And, yes, I just realized that using the word mortgage has made a spam-magnet.

Oh, look.  Time to go sleep and eat.

These holiday weeks get me all confuddled.  I’ve alternately thought it was Monday and Thursday today.  It’s not.  It’s only Wednesday.  But then it feels like Tuesday because I had Monday off. 

Whatever.

 Where I work they give us Good Friday and Easter Monday off.  They do not pay us for these days, but we don’t get to come to work either.  Now that I make a fairly decent wage, I don’t mind so much.  But I’m not trying to feed a family of six on my salary alone, either.

Friday was fun.  I spent a good chunck of the day with BF and her daughter.  We sandwiched lunch between shopping excursions and I popped my sushi cherry at Sushi Zen.  It’s a wonderful little place that I can’t wait to get back to.  I really surprised myself by how much I loved the sushi.  (Did you know that you don’t have to eat raw fish to have sushi?  I didn’t either, for a long time.)  Aside from the pickled ginger, which tasted a lot like furniture polish and is still repeating on me when I least expect it, I enjoyed everything I sampled in my little Bento Box.  We polished off the meal with Ginger, Red Bean, and Green Tea ice cream scoops.  I was partial to the Red Bean and liked the Green Tea, also.  Alas, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel the same about Ginger.

The rest of the weekend failed in comparison to Friday’s fun.  With the possible exception of Easter Dinner with the SIL, that is.  Any time spent in the presence of my grand-niece is appreciated.  And my Mom came along this year as she would be otherwise orphaned.  She seemed to enjoy herself.

The rest of the time I have spent doing crossword puzzles.  I had picked up a book from Grandma’s things and when I finished that one, I bought two more.  As with all new projects, I became completely obsessed.  I even brought them to work to keep me busy during the down time.   They aren’t the difficult New York Times- type puzzles, but they’re fun.  I like the way the pen feels on the paper and enjoy the tiny bit of vocabulary building they bring.  (Last night I rocked the catagory on Jeopardy that consisted of 3-letter answers.)  Mostly, they are a mind-numbing time-suck that made me feel more productive than the PC game that I usually use for that purpose.

What I would truely like is a vacation from myself and the day-to-day of my life right now.  This has been a sucky year so far and with the endless details involved in the death of a near-and-dear, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be picking up soon.  My mother is at loose ends, understandably, and her previously needy behavior has turned to clingy and completely dependent.  (And even when she isn’t, I worry about her and seek reasurrance that she is okay.)

Last weekend we borrowed a friend’s truck to move the remaining furnishings from Grandma’s apartment to various places about town.  Even though Mom insisted that this would be the last time I’d have to deal with the apartment duties, I could tell from the git that wasn’t going to be the case.  While she had moved things around here and there, in the two weeks since my last visit to the apartment, it didn’t look like anything had been removed.  All of the bags for charity were still there.  All of the things we were going to throw away.  Some of her coworkers had come by to get a few odds and ends (matress and dishes), but the things she was supposed to take care of herself were, in fact, not.  Even the furniture we were taking that day had to have the clutter removed from the top before we could lug it out the door.

I do not want to blame her.  She feels the same way I do.  She doesn’t want to it.  I don’t want to do it.  What she does want to do, however, is keep going back to the apartment.  There she is stopped in the hallways numberous times by the white-haired communers to ask if she is “okay” and to tell her how sweet and cheerful my grandmother was.  I, on the other hand, want to never set foot into the place again.  It makes me sad to go there and see it empty, to not see her brighten when she recognizes me at the end of the hall.  I feel like I am trespassing, whereas my mother feels like she’s come home.

 I will be glad when this part of it is over.  I guess, I will.  Until the next part, at least.

I’m feeling better this week.  Well enough, in fact, to take my dog for a walk last night.  I tend not to write when I don’t feel like I have anything positive to say.  I don’t want this to be the place where I come to whine all the time.  (Once in a while a person has to vent, but constant negativity wears on me.  I get enough of that at home.) (more…)

Please forgive me for not updating.  I know it makes at least one of you worry sometimes.  Last week was just a very, very bad week here in geebaland.

The funeral went as well as can be expected.  We had about 20 people (more or less), 17 of which came to the nice luncheon.  My Dad did the service in his full “motorcycles for Jesus” regalia and scared off some of the older, out of town relatives.  (more…)

Grandma did not get better.  They kept her in the hospital - where it was almost 30 hours before there was even a bed available - and she seemed to be getting good care.  We had stayed with her in the ER until late on Tuesday.  She kept telling us to go home and Nana needed her rest, still recovering from her own illness.  Spending hours in an ER waiting room at this time of the year is hazerdous to one’s health anyway.  She received good care there, but we felt awful leaving her.

Wednesday, she seemed better but tired and confused.  She struggled to talk and was coughing a lot from the pneumonia.  I didn’t go Thursday, but Nana said she was feeling better and had her crank on, which is usually a good sign.  They were going to do some tests that had been overdue while they had her in there, which made sense and meant that they wouldn’t street her before she was recovered.

Friday afternoon I got the call from Mom that they had moved her to ICU and we should come.  It was bad.  She had arrested and with no DNR on file (something we were going to discuss with her “later”) they revived her.  I will spare you the details, but will say that it is not something you want for your elderly loved one.  It might have been different if she were younger, but in this case we wish they had just let her go.  Instead they put her on a respirator and told us to give her 24 hours to see if the brain damage that occurred would reverse itself enough for her to come out of the coma.

It’s odd, the way medical personnel behave.  I’ve had more than enough experience dealing with them lately, thank you, but I’m fascinated by what one can learn just through their actions.  There were three doctors, all of them being hopeful and saying let’s wait and see, give her 24 hours, etc.  Behind each doctor was a nurse shaking her head and looking at us to let us know that the 24 hours would make no difference.  And, in the end, it didn’t.  She was gone as soon as they removed the tubes.

ICU nurses and doctors must be some of the strongest people in the world.  I do not know how they do this every day.  Grandma had one main nurse who was so wonderful and strong and caring and gave wonderful real hugs (not the air hugs that one of her doctors gave).  They were constantly cleaning her up and making her look as normal as possible (which is impossible).  They explained everything and answered all of our questions in the kindest way possible.

On Friday, I was the first to arrive, which was good.  I got time alone with her and was able to prepare my mother.  We offered the Boy his chance to say goodbye and he surprised me by wanting to.  It shook him up because it is not like it is on television.  It is not pretty and clean and rosy-cheeked.  But he has been strong and supportive.

And, me, I am tired.  The arrangements are almost made.  I wish to do nothing but sleep, yet I don’t sleep well.  I worry about my mother and make lists.  We decided that Nana would continue with her scheduled minor surgery tomorrow as it has already been postponed once and we easily worked the funeral around it.

I wasn’t going to write about it, but the words are here inside me, wanting to come out.  I’ve run out of people who care to listen (and who get my twisted black sense of humor), so now is just the waiting and then the getting on with things.

I loved my grandmother very much.  She was the one person in the world who thought I could do no wrong.  Everything I did was a wonder and a thrill for her.  She made sure I was immune to the struggles that would have plagued my childhood had I been aware.  She was a rock for me and I will miss her.