Good News, Finally Good News.

I have good news, real good news. The judge signed the order for me to be The Baby’s temporary guardian. They filed the papers today and by Monday, I should be able to go pick my copy up. As far as getting The Baby, I’ll get him after I get my copy of the guardianship papers. I am so excited, knowing that he will have a safe and normal life, but at the same time, I am so sad. I know that my daughter will never forgive me for this, even if she ever gets off of the drugs, she will not forgive me, but that was the sacrifice I had to make to make sure the Baby is safe. It’s like that dream, I’m in the water and I can only save one. I had to save the Baby. We are going to finish child proofing our little apartment, and we are going to get him new things. I know she won’t give us the many things that we have bought for him and that’s alright. I will just buy new stuff.
I am so happy, I could drink a beer, that is if I liked beer.

A busy summer.

I have two more semesters left, and I will have my masters. Yahoo. I am going to summer school to take classes, not that I need them, but I want to gain a certain skill in Spanish and to do so, I need to finish my studies that I started, so I am taking Intermediate II and advanced Spanish. I am also taking this really cool cultural studies class and in Summer II, I am taking Shakespeare. Everyone wants to know why I need Spanish. Well, there is a professor coming here, and he is going to teach the PopoVu and he only speaks Spanish, so for me to take the class and understand it, I have to read, write, and speak Spanish. While the Popovu isn’t exactly Latin, no not at all, but it is ancient, real ancient and perhaps is one of the first really good ancient texts, so I am going to make ready to study it. IN addition to teaching the Popovu, he is going to teach a few other ancient Aztec writings. No matter what culture, Roman, Greek, or Aztec, it’s all about what they left, their writings and how it affects us today. So, summer I and II will be occupied with more language.

Every once in a while, I remember and miss it.

I was a nurse, that is, before the accident. I worked Labor and Delivery and in my life time have seen more babies born than I can remember, and, in fact, I have delivered more babies than I can remember. I miss nursing; it was a place where I fit. You know, I was able to go to work and make women and their families feel at ease. For whatever reason, from the time I was first out of nursing school, I had confidence and my patients trusted me. Lately, I have been dreaming about being a nurse and forgetting important things like forgetting to give my patients their medications, or check their IVs or be there when their babies came out. It’s too weird. Maybe it’s this move forward, the getting my Masters or the idea that I am feeling less confident because I am not teaching, yet. Last night I dreamed that I had a patient who was paralyzed and he slept all night and I had to go in and wake him up and tell him he was never going to walk again, but I didn’t want to do this terrible thing. I kept remembering my legs and how I felt when they told me how I was never going to walk again, and how little by little, over an eight year time period, I began to heal. I didn’t want to tell him. When I woke up, I was sad, not that I hadn’t told him or that he was paralyzed, but that I was no longer a nurse.

Every once in a while, I remember and miss it.

I was a nurse, that is, before the accident. I worked Labor and Delivery and in my life time have seen more babies born than I can remember, and, in fact, I have delivered more babies than I can remember. I miss nursing; it was a place where I fit. You know, I was able to go to work and make women and their families feel at ease. For whatever reason, from the time I was first out of nursing school, I had confidence and my patients trusted me. Lately, I have been dreaming about being a nurse and forgetting important things like forgetting to give my patients their medications, or check their IVs or be there when their babies came out. It’s too weird. Maybe it’s this move forward, the getting my Masters or the idea that I am feeling less confident because I am not teaching, yet. Last night I dreamed that I had a patient who was paralyzed and he slept all night and I had to go in and wake him up and tell him he was never going to walk again, but I didn’t want to do this terrible thing. I kept remembering my legs and how I felt when they told me how I was never going to walk again, and how little by little, over an eight year time period, I began to heal. I didn’t want to tell him. When I woke up, I was sad, not that I hadn’t told him or that he was paralyzed, but that I was no longer a nurse.

A couple of things that really piss me off

Our insurance. They are getting harder and harder to please. Show me, they say, that you are dying, and then we will pay for the expensive medication you need to keep you alive.

Paula Abdul: So symptomatic.. Cries, speech slurred, rambling, and inappropriate touching of her pal judges, ie. Slapping, hitting, leaning onto. What’s wrong with her people.

Cats that are just roaming, no home, no one to love, and no one trying to make their life better. Who does this thing, turns cats loose to live or die. And the same is true of dogs. Why?

Poor children who are locked out of places they need.

Women who do things to their bodies for the approval of men. No explanation needed.

My daughter’s drug use, and what it is doing to her, and what it is doing to her children.

My son’s depression. It has to be his heart medication or his heart disease, but he is fast losing the laughter that once just bubbled out of him.

My husband. Sometimes I wonder why?

Rich kids.

Men who hate women so much that they feel the need to humiliate us or make us objects of one thing only or they just simply dismiss us as inconsequential.

Women who feel the need to back stab their way to the top.

Rude and ill mannered people.

Diddling can make you fat.

I am itching to write, not like academic writing, but creative writing. I have two novels started but I think with one, I have written myself into a corner and with the other, well I need to research, so, I am shelving them, or for a while. My Nanny story will continue but it will not be my focus. So, I’m writing the first story, one of many in this compilation, if that is even a word, but lest I digress, I was writing this story and suddenly all these things that Nanny said to me came rushing back and they were right there in my story about my prostitute friend. Things like you are judged by the friends you keep, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and boys are after one thing. Well, you had to know my nanny. My favorite was don’t look your enemy in the eyes, they might hank you. See, she was nuts too. Her favorite was don’t diddle, it’s what makes women go crazy. For years, I didn’t know what diddle was, and I’m still not sure if diddling requires a partner or is it something you can do alone, the only thing I know for sure is that diddling has something to do with gratification of some sorts. I know this because she described it in terms of urges. Standing at the kitchen sink, a new item in her house, it was porcelin and had replaced the huge aluminum pan that she filled with heated well water, she gave me advice about life. One particular day, she was filling the sink with water, and I was stacking the dishes up in order that she preferred, first the glasses, second the plates, third the silverware, fourth the bowls, fifth the pots, and last the skillet. “Never scrub the cast iron,” she warned. “Just rinse it out, save the flavors. See, it won’t stick. It’s seasoned just right. Never dry it with a towel, heat it on the stove and rub a little grease in it and put her up. Needs special care.” That was an example of her advice, but one day, she said, “If you get urges, I don’t want you to be like these other gals. All hooched up on diddling. Wearing all that paint, and showing too much skin. It’s them girls you’ll see standing with their bellies all sticking out.” I felt embarrassed by her advice and only after she began telling me how the neighbor stole our turnips that I felt comfortable enough to ask her what was diddling. She said, “Just you never mind. If you’re diddling you’ll know it.” So, I grew up not sure if diddling was a single person activity or could there be multiple players, was it a spectator activity? Who knew, but for sure, I knew diddling could lead to a fat belly. So until I was well into my teens, any sign of a fat belly made me think my diddling was too much and I cut back. Yes, my diddling was never in excess and even though my belly does stick out, I am not overdosing on diddling. My nanny would be real proud of me, yep, that’s a fact.

I need a pet.

I miss having animals, well not counting my husband who falls somewhere between a baboon and a slug. My precious Boots, who was third on the hierarchy of importance in my life, one being my two grandsons and two being my two children, and three being Boots, and four being Mr. Zelda. I can’t help it, he came after the cat, so naturally the cat had more history and was almost loved as much as my children and grandchildren. Anyway, I miss having animals. It has been almost two years since Boots was put to sleep. I am getting itchy for a kitten and for a puppy and as soon as I get my house sold and buy one up here, I am going straight to the pound and getting me a kitten and a puppy. Yes, and then I am going to go my friend and hopefully her little Chihuahua will have puppies then and I am getting one of those tiny little fellows.
I might even buy a huge tank and get me some really nice fish. I know keeping fish seems cruel but I never over crowd my tanks and I get really large tanks and put only a few and keep their happiness in mind by feeding them live food from time to time and making their home clean and safe and if they swim in nature in schools, I get schools of them, like neons. Yes, I never get bully fish. I would get a bird, but I have tried that and it is just too cruel, unless you have a room where they can move about, not fly about, but move about. I like my birds outside, in the trees singing.

The most unusual pet that I ever had was a desert turtle. I thought he was a he, but one day, I saw him digging and digging and then a few months later, a bunch of tiny turtles emerged from that area, so I found out he was a she and the digging was for depositing her eggs. That was when I lived in Bakersfield, California. I kept them for years until one day I realized I had way too many and didn’t want to turn them loose, they were so tame, and I called the wildlife man and he came and told me just how illegal it was to have those turtles in captivity and when I explained that I found the female in my back yard and just left her there and fed her and gave her water, he smiled. He took all my turtles and promised to keep them in a nice animal reserve place. Later in the years, another huge turtle popped back into my back yard from under a crack in the fence. I fed and water her/him too and when I moved, I gave him to a friend. I also had a pet cricket, not because I wanted him, but I didn’t want to kill him or touch him so I just let him live in my closet. Every once in a while I saw him but mostly I heard him. Chirping away.

My Big Fat A

Okay, I did my presentation for Many Book Published Doctor. Yes, he is head of everything and his word is like a god’s. He teaches Lit. Theory and SciFi and other things and has a say whether you get a TA position, or if you even get into the English degree program, not that I have to deal with him that way, since I am in the Comparative Lit graduate program, but he is a good man to impress.
I am also a one drafter, and usually spend a lot of time thinking about a paper before I write it, and I usually get up the morning the paper is do and whip it out, like in an hour or sometimes a little more sometimes a little less. I do, have my research done and usually have research notes or know where the information is, but for this presentation, I was freaked. I didn’t think he would give me a good grade. I keep having these feelings, thanks to Dr. Dick who made me feel like I was this stupid old woman and needed to be back rocking grandchildren and baking pies, these feelings, yes, well I keep feeling like I don’t belong, that I am out of my element, that I was a really good undergraduate but not a good or really good graduate student. Well, Tuesday, I woke up and whipped that paper out in less than two hours, and went to class and read it and fell apart thereafter. All my friends told me that spent at least ten hours writing on their paper, and I just knew that I had bombed. He had emailed everyone their grade by Tuesday night and by Wed. afternoon, I knew what everyone made but not my own grade so that fed into my-what the-fuck-am I doing here attitude. Finally I emailed him and he sent me back the email that he had sent and it must have gotten lost but I got an A, not just an A, but one higher than the other’s in my group. I got a good A, one that is not a slope down. I cried. I know that is silly, but Dr. Many Published Books, gave me an A and said in his comments that my presentation was excellent and that he enjoyed my presentation and the only thing he would change is more focus on either language or culture. So, there you go. I did, as he noted, use Bhaktin for my theorists and he, as you all know, is a language/culture kind of guy. So, he, Dr. Many Published Books, agreed that I did well in reading Bhaktin and applying it to Rushdie. Okay, that’s it, I’m finished. I have arrived.

Remembering When the Conservative men had their way.

Our group presentations finished up yesterday. I was the 2nd one to go and everyone said I did well. Blue Veined Breasts, who if you all remember drove me nuts to change places with her, didn’t show, didn’t email the professor, and didn’t come. I’m thinking she got a big fat F. She, according to all the other graduate students, hasn’t turned in one paper or done one presentation in any of her classes, and she has a coveted TA position. Do you know how that pisses me off?

On a better note, they said I did really well. So, three of us from the group took off to have a reward ice cream but became side tracked by Chinese food. We spent the entire afternoon from 2 something until almost 5 eating and talking and drinking tea. I know the staff was happy when we finally ran out of stories to tell and left, we did, however, leave a huge tip. Most of the time, I forgot that I was decades older than they are but every once in a while we would have a huge communication gap, like 9 inch nails. Well, to me they are really large nails that might be used in big boards. Not so. But most of the things that we were gapped about were things like days before computers, hell, I remember days before there were electric typewriters, wrote my first novel on a really bad electric one, turned in many research papers using a non electric portable typewriter that I carried around like kids today carry their laptops. They just couldn’t picture it. HA! I told them that I remember before checking accounts had numbers on the bottom of the checks identifying them to a certain account, before ATM cards, before ATM machines. And when we talked about birthcontrol and I told them that my first trip to the gynecologists to get birthcontrol pills, I had to have my future husband go with me and sign a form that it was okay for me to take these pills, they almost died. I told them about my two older sisters who each had five children because their husbands wouldn’t sign the birthcontrol permission forms, that one of my older sisters had two miscarriages before she finally got her husband to sign for her to have a tubal, only after she almost died and the doctor said one more pregnancy could kill her and I, by that time a teenager, stood in the hospital waiting room screaming at my dumbassed brother in law telling him that if he didn’t sign that paper, I was going to talk her into running away with me and hide her from his dick. Yes, I said that and my family scolded me for interfering in their bedroom affairs. HELLO he was killing her. Yes, I remember when women could be beaten, children could be beaten, could be raped and no one did anything as long as the man who was doing it was the acting man of the house. They just couldn’t imagine a society like that and I told them if the conservatives have their way, women everywhere will be right back where we were in the 60s barely able to get out of the bedroom or kitchen long enough to take a breath. In addition, I told them about all white schools and how the first African American that I ever saw frightened me and not because he did anything wrong, but my family had told me awful stories of razors and lusts and all sorts of nonsense. Imagine how surprised I was when years later in a small college in Bakersfield, Ca. I learned in a Black History class that the murderers of children were not the African Americans but the white heathens and bankers and mayors of our fine cities across the South, men by the way, like those sitting next to me in church on Sunday morning. I can not tell you how angry that I was to learn that I had been duped by my family. All those news reports, and there were plenty, were not about protecting the virtues of white women and children, it was never about that, it was about conservative ass hole men wanting to keep everything in their possession.

But, I’m happy my presentation is over. YEAH! I think I did a good criticism of Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. A good book if you are in to ScFi. Reall good.

Lard, Porcelain dolls, and coming home

Okay, I must confess, I am a dieter, I know that is not cool, especially at my age, but I do, I go on these little food changes to lose a few pounds, that all it ever is since I can’t exercise, but anyway, yesterday, as you all know, was the big C. holiday, the one where the man died and rose from the grave and all of that, so following the tradition of my family, we all get together. I take deviled eggs. Normally, I bake a couple of pies, and make a few other dishes, maybe dressing or something, but this year, I rebelled, just eggs. They were packing eggs, you know loaded, not your every day run of the mill devilled eggs, a little Emeril, a little Racheal and tadah, great stuffed eggs, a meal in their own right. So, I really don’t want to go, it’s traditional and I hope that my daughter will follow tradition and bring my grandsons there, because she doesn’t hate my sister and doesn’t think she is a fat fucking whore. Yes, that’s what I am now, every time she calls, it’s not hi mom, it’s you fat fucking whore. Okay, I’ve kind of grown accustomed to my new name, and can deal, but, I was hoping she was going to be there, that’s why I went, why I bought baskets and toys and carried huge bags of candy down to the river valley. My sister’s darling grandchildren, all girls, were there in their little frilly dresses and shoes and purses and hats, and we waited for my grandsons, traditional pictures and when they didn’t show, we snapped the girls and let them change and we ate. I think my sister puts like extra lard in everything she cooks and if you don’t eat it, she gets really pissed off, especially if I don’t eat it. “What, you on a diet?” “No, no diet.” See if she thinks I’m on a diet, well she will send every leftover in her kitchen home with me, ham, cakes, pies, candy, turkey, dressing, yams, everything. “No, I’m not feeling well.” My famous last words. So, I choke down a huge helping of every thing and eat the fruit salad and covered it with cake and whipped cream, not out of the can either, the real deal. Then my husband rolled me outside and bounced me down the stairs and propped me in the chair and we watched the girls hunt the eggs. I wonder if their parents think about the pagan ritual that egg hunting represents and if so, what they think about their little girls running around looking for fertility promises. HA!
So, I watch as the girls empty their plastic eggs of money and candy. We use plastic eggs, filled with goodies, mostly money. This year, the little Tiny Freckle Porcelain Girl found the most money, $19.40. Yes, I was rooting for her, she never wins, and she always gets the least amount of money. ( in fact, I watched the egg hiding and gave her and the youngest little girl tips) My seven-year-old grandson or my sister’s 10 year-old granddaughter usually gets the prized eggs or the eggs with the most money in them. But not this year. Yeah for Porcelain girl. I call her that, because all my sister’s granddaughters, all four of them are extremely white with beautiful red hair, and these huge sky blue eyes, the Porcelain girl, is more fair than all the rest, her skin is like white porcelain and she is so beautiful but the biggest tomboy you will ever meet. She has broken her arm twice falling off the monkey bars at school and she, according to my grandson, is the toughest girl he has ever seen.
Well, after sitting there watching the girls run and scream and dance, they love to dance the three older girls take ballet and so they put on a dance for us. The baby, well, she is too little to do anything but fart and smile. They kept telling me they wished my boys were here, they needed a boy to dance with, and I reminded them the seven-year-old always refuses to be their ballet partner, then the Porcelain Girl says, but he likes to play catch. There you go.
Finally, I say good bye and head back up the mountain. I’m tempted to go in search of my daughter but know it would end in a fight, and like the lawyer said, “I’ll get The Baby.” On the way up the mountain, we see a herd of about 25 deer. I pull off the road and watch them for a while and my husband, who is nearly blind, keeps saying where, and I say there and finally I just say oh wait, they’re cows and drive on. Geeze, my life.

Homesick

Last week, when I was down changing the locks on the house and boarding up the broken window, I walked through the house and thought about the first weeks, when we were making it our home and how it had this smell of wood and old cedar and then after a while it smelled like us. Garlic, onions, beans cooking, cornbread, and cookies and of course, my son’s socks, his testosterone leaking from every pore, especially when my daughter’s friends danced around the house, the smell of my daughter’s experimentation with so many hair styles and perfumes and make up and finally her candles she burned to hide the smell of drugs. It’s all there, no secrets. IN the closet behind a little shelf, my daughter’s love notes, I found them. I tied them up with a ribbon and slipped them into a box of her things. I wanted to read them, but they had the familiar curls and inexperience of a little girl and I knew they were for her only. I hope she keeps them and doesn’t throw them away.

The door facing where I scratched in my children’s growth gave me a flashback of his 12 year old self standing there, so proud to be getting close to 6 feet tall and then when he shot up to 6’4” and me not able to measure him because I was too short and how he smiled when his sister stood on a stool to get the right mark and he held his breath while we did the math to convert the inches into feet. That seemed so tall.

Then I found the pictures of my son and our neighbor, a childless couple and he, my son, was going to the prom and they called for him to come over and get his picture taken with them, and they gave him ten bucks to buy his date a coke. I was in a wheel chair by that time and looked out of the door as he drove off and thought that I was not going to get to see him and the girl together but in thirty minutes he pulled back up with his friends and their dates and they all took turns getting their picture made with me, the good son’s mom.

I know that I will always have those memories, but when I am in there and everyone is outside looking around or taking more boxes of our things out, I just feel this incredible loss. It’s sad that a home is so hard to find and so hard to leave. I have had many houses in my adult life, but I have not a home since my mom died until this one and leaving it is so hard. Maybe, I won’t sell it, maybe I’ll keep it and someday I’ll move back in it and everything will be okay. I’m not sure.

Light! I see light.

One more presentation and two more papers and my semester ends. Well, I still have the final in my Latin. So, slowly I’m seeing light at the end of this tunnel. This semester has been long and tedious. I’m so ready for a nice break. Did I say that I was going to summer school? Oh yeah, back to the old sawmill before my bones get rested.

Good news, bad news, and a really fucked up legal system in the town with no name.

Yesterday, Mr. Zelda, the Good Son, and I went to the attorney, the one that is going to get me custody of my grandson. He feels confident that he can win this case; in fact, he just had a similar case and won custody for the Grandmother. I am feeling much better. He said the judge will give us 3 months of emergency custody and in that time, they will investigate her, make sure she has a home, is drug free, and has a job. Well, I know my daughter; she will keep putting off getting it together, and will probably show up to court high. Even if she goes three days without drugs, my attorney can ask for a hair test, which will prove her meth use. So, I’m feeling optimistic as can be. Also, my son and I make extremely good witnesses since we have seen her on meth and we know the signs and symptoms real well.
He said the judge will want to know why we just now started seeking custody, and I told the attorney that she, my daughter, has always either lived with me or my son, which meant the baby was safe. Now, she is homeless and moving from drug house to drug house with the baby, he is not safe. I’m getting more and more optimistic that I am going to have him by the first of may, maybe the end of this month. If he can get the paper work served before the end of this month, we might even get in front of the judge in less than two weeks. How cool is that?

As a side bar, she broke into my house, into my garage and vandalized my property and took some of my things and left a huge note that said, “Fuck You.” While she was doing this, I got a call from several people, so I called the local police department; they said it was a civil matter. She broke into my house and vandalized and the stupid cop said it was civil. He saw her there, talked to her and let her go. When I talked to him, he went nuts, started yelling at me. I asked him for his name and he hung up on me, but called me back and when I reminded him that I was the victim and he had an obligation to investigate this as a crime, he hung up on me again. I was at my house until 8 pm trying to get the police to take a police report to turn over to the prosecuting attorney. Finally one took the report. The little prick that was so rude is getting reported to the mayor and to the chief of police and to the dear editor of the local newspapers. Oh yes, I have learned that the pen is quicker than the administration in that town, so he will have his day in the paper and shortly thereafter, he will be looking for another job.
Here is what really pissed me off about the cop. Now mind you, I wasn’t yelling, I was saying more than two syllable words, which could account for his confusion, but nonetheless, he became angry when he told me that he couldn’t do anything until the chief came back from vacation. I said, “You mean, if there are crimes committed, you can’t arrest the criminal without the chief being in town.” That’s when he really got pissed. But when he called me back, he demanded to talk to my son, like I was a raving woman. I said, “I own that house, I pay the taxes on that house, and the crime was committed against me, not my son. You will talk to me and talk to me in a civilized manner.” That’s when he hung up. OH, I forgot, he even asked me where I was so he could talk to me face to face. He said it in a really threatening manner, like he would throw me against the wall and handcuff me. I’m sure he has seen that on law an order or one of those cop shows that I’m sure he watches and hangs on to every cop detail. I hate small town politics. This is a dumber than dirt kid, who got the job because he was related to the old police officer, and now he is this big bully who, like Barney Fife, walks around yelling at those people he thinks he can and those he can’t yell at, he cowers down to. In fact, my son worked for the dispatcher’s office for years, and he said this cop was the one all the other police officers make fun of. So, that is what I’m dealing with. Now, we changed the locks again, and boarded up the windows to keep her out, but I bet she goes back in and finishes what she started. She is trying to get the stove, refrigerator, and dryer out. Those are mine and she is knocking holes in my walls. She is cranked up and when she is that way, she doesn’t care. I had antic light fixtures, yep, they are gone. She has ripped the carpet to shreds and I don’t know why, unless he was just doing it to be mean. Plus, she spilled red and green crap all over the floor in the kitchen and in my old office. She is just going in and destroying crap. Yep, that’s what she is doing and the cops, well, they say it’s a civil matter. How fucked up is that?

Gotta love the pool

Yesterday, I took The Baby to the pool. He fit nicely in his coastguard-inspected-able-to float-in-the-Pacific-for-days vest that Mr. Zelda insisted he wear. I say to Mr. Zelda, You do understand that this is a wading pool? MZ. Yes, but he needs to wear the vest for protection. Me. Against what. MZ. Drowning. Me. I’m not leaving him alone in the WADING pool.

So we go to the pool and all the other children had these things on their arms, and I’m sure The Baby felt left out, but when I decided to take him into the big pool and his really safe life jacket made it where he was able to have more independence, then he and I were both happy that MZ or to The Baby, Granddad, insisted on the life jacket.

We played in the pool for hours, until we were both pruned up sufficiently. At one point, he was lying on his back, and I was moving him around in the water, and he was looking at me, and I saw my daughter, that look, just like her when she was his age. He smiled at me and I leaned down and kissed his nose, like I did hers so many times. Then he almost went to sleep, so I decided we best get dressed and head home.

The real treat was getting home and watching him telling Granddad about his adventure, which involved jumping and moving his arms and jabbering and every once in a while a word like water and jump and kids and bus came out. He saw a bus and that rates right up there with swimming and jumping in the pool and going under the giant water fall.

He goes home today. I’m not looking forward to saying goodbye, but it’ll be okay. The cuttings that I brought from my house are rooted and need to be planted in the boxes that I bought. I think before he goes, I’ll have him help me plant ivy and moss.

The Baby is here!

Yesterday, when I arrived home from school, my son had a surprise for me. While I was at school, my daughter called and told him she needed a babysitter while she went to look for a job. He met her halfway down the mountain and while she wasn’t dressed for a job interview, who cares, we have The Baby. I was having a really bad day and then saw my son carrying The Baby to me and my entire outlook changed.

The Baby was dressed in dirty clothes and dirty socks and worn out shoes. He has new shoes that we bought him, but she has lost them as well as the clothes that we have bought over the last few months. It happened that I had picked him up a few short and shirt sets and when he was in the apartment situated, I gave him the sack. He said, “Ooooooh, uncle see.” He was so happy and immediately began taking off his old clothes. Since we were going out to eat, I washed him up and put him one of his new sets of clothes on and off we went to eat out. Then we landed at Penny’s where I bought him more clothes and some really cool shoes that look like race cars and they light up. He was pleased with the new shoes, so much pleased that he had to wear them out of the store. We then made a run to Wal-Mart to buy him some of those baby diaper swimming trunks and a life jacket vest thingy and sun screen and his special soap and lotion and socks and sippy cups and all of those things that she never sends back. So, we are set. Today, we are going to the boy’s/girl’s club where we are members and let The Baby swim.

By the way, I have an attorney, who is friends with the DA that is prosecuting my daughter and with all the previous arrests records and all of that, he is confident that I will win custody. So, the battle officially begins Tuesday. So this may well be my last visit until I get custody. I just hope she doesn’t run with him, but she is facing criminal charges and it may be that our custody will occur when she is sentenced. I’m not sure, but for now, he is playing on the patio, The Good Son is rolling a ball to him, and we are all just happy to have him. He is so happy. For breakfast, his favorite food, cooked apples with homemade biscuits and gravy, it was worth it to see him smile, even with it all in his hair. Next week, I’m getting the Seven-Year-Old.

A fart is a fart no matter where it comes from.

When my seven-year-old grandson was between one and two, he learned from my son and his friends that passing gas was laughable. So, one day, my precious grandson and I were at the library and we were picking out books for me to read and there were children and parents everywhere and he, my then baby but now seven-year-old grandson, passed an obnoxiously loud and smelly toot. He looked around and began to snicker and said, “Nana, I sarted.” I tried to ignore him, but the other children were laughing and one of the other children, maybe five or six years old, farted also. Then they all began to laugh louder and louder and the parents began to snicker. Well, I tell you this because yesterday, I was at Harps buying a few things and the woman in front of me had a toddler, maybe two or a little over, and the toddler’s face turned a bright red and then the explosion and he began to laugh. I looked at his mother and said, “His uncle.” She said, “No. His father.” Please, can someone tell me why men, or young men, find gas expulsions funny? And of those men who find humor in scataology, why is it they want to teach it to the little male toddlers. Now, my seven-year-old grandson is proud he can fart with his armpit, another talent contributed to him by my son and he even told me he can make his belly look like a butt. Geeze, will this ever end?

Too much work and not enough time.

I have two presentations due over the next two weeks, plus two huge papers due in two weeks. I can do this, I know I can. I have a Latin test, big test, tomorrow and I need to make an A; why you ask? Because there might be a TA position open up in the Latin department and I might get it before I get my Masters, that’s why. So, I’m probably going to study Latin all day and all night and tomorrow after Latin, I’ll take a nap and then get busy writing my presentation that is due Monday. Yep, Monday.
What does all this mean? It’s crunch time and I can’t play. I hate that, not being able to play. But on the bright side, a friend gave me a book of poetry that I have been reading, you can read poetry even if you are crunched for time, and it’s absolutely amazing how plan, yet elegantly this man writes. Love it and Love that I can spend a few minutes each day reading and rereading his works. Well, in case I don’t stick my head out of my shell for the next few weeks, well, it’s not that I’m being a bitch, or crazy, or a snob, I’m being a student and doing student things.
By the way, Blue Cheese woman told me that I always had to have things my way. I wonder if that’s true, if I do have to have things my way, or if I just want things done when they are due and not five weeks or four months late.
Who is Blue cheese woman? She is a thirty something woman who thinks she is 20 and who has had a really bad breasts augmentation, which left her with huge varicosed veined breasts, which she proudly displays for the rest of us graduate students to be repulsed by every single day. In addition, she dresses like a slut and is really ugly. You know, butt assed ugly. I will include her from time to time in my posts as she has suddenly found me to be her public enemy number one. The good news is, I didn’t even try to insult her, it just happened with me being honest. More on that later. I think I will call it Blue Cheese Woman goes to graduate school. Yep, that’s it. All for now.

Just putting this out there in hopes one of my group sees it. Ha!

Last night, our writer’s group met. It’s nice, that is, nice to have friends who do what I do. We meet, some read, we critique, and then we visit. It’s almost always about the writing. Sometimes we discuss books, but for the most part, it’s what works best and when should the chapter begin and where and how to develop those characters and creating real dialogue. There are, however, a couple of folks in our group who don’t write, or they don’t write often. They come and sometimes have good comments, but otherwise, they sit and drink beer and see this as a social club, did I tell you they don’t write? In fact, one never understands anything that is read. She wants to know on chapter one the entire plot, characters, and why is this being done. Development dumb ass is what I want to say, but the more refined members just answer her question with brevity and move on. I want to dismiss these dead weight members. You know, get writers in there. I’m seeing three that could easily be replaced with three really good writers. Writers who will produce and participate and understand—is that too much to ask? At one time, our group was a hodgepodge of people and some of us grew and some stayed behind, and then we added fresh faces, academic faces, and we all have this opportunity to learn and grow as writers, but they stay behind doing nothing. In addition to the educated, and I include myself in that category, we have a couple of folks who are high school graduates, and they write fine; one in particular is a mighty fine writer and learns and improves through our guidance. That’s what keeps a writer’s group fresh. Maybe in a few months, we can come together and make those hard decisions to ask those who are not productive to move aside and let us get real writers in there, folks who are goal oriented and want the same thing we want, to get our novels and short stories and poems published. Do I hear an Amen Sister?

Sometimes you just have to say, shut the fuck up

Okay,
I am hard of hearing, in fact, almost deaf. So, I’m calling my pharmacists to reorder my meds. It’s not that I actually talk to a pharmacy person, but I put in the prescription numbers and all of that. I have to listen really close to the recorded messages to know what to do. I should have it memorized but I don’t. It never fails. Here is what happens.
Me. I’m calling the pharmacy. Do you need anything refilled.
Mr. Zelda. Nope.
Me. Okay, I’m calling now. (to prevent interruptions, since I can barely hear and need no interruptions while I’m on the phone)
Pharmacy recorded voice answers and begins to tell which buttons to push for what.
Mr. Zelda as loud as he can speak, begins telling me something.
Me. Shhh!
Mr. Zelda continuing to talk as loud as he can.
Me. Shut up
Mr. Zelda again talking loudly.
Me. I’m on the fucking phone, shut the fuck up.
Mr. Zelda. Well, why didn’t you say so.
Me. Irritated and pissed. I did!

I am having rock withdrawl.

I’m getting an itch to go looking for rocks. The other day, I found a rock that is filled with little holes. They are, after I examined it closely, worm holes. It’s a sedimentary rock probably some kind of sandstone. It has these really tiny holes and some are quite deep. I will wash it and look at it under the magnifying glass and maybe find other fossils. These find has me itching for more. I’m still eager to examine the creek bed near my house. It’s a gorge that has about seven or eight feet walls on either side, and I’m thinking that deep of a gorge will have fossils. Plus, they dug through the mountain to build the freeway and there are areas of coal that have been exposed with the top and bottom layer of shale, and you know what comes from that time period, lots and lots of plant fossils that will be in the shell. Yep, so, I’m going to stop on the side of the road and dig around and hope I don’t get a ticket for disturbing the rocks. HA! But today, I’m headed down the valley to do some work on my house. I plan on bringing some more plants for my patio, for sure some ivy to grow around the fence that separates my noxious neighbors from me. These people, well that’s another post. But the ivy will give me more privacy and block out some of their gross smoke. Yes, they are smokers and since this is a smoke free apartment place, they smoke outside either near their car, which is in front of my front door, or on their patio. Their smoke comes rolling on to our patio, into any open window or vent, and into my lungs. They also play really loud music. Boom, boom, boom it goes all night and all day long. I’m lucky, I can turn off my hearing aides, but Mr. Zelda, well he has to hear it.

We've come along way baby; or have we?

In my Englightenment class we were discussing The Turkish Embassy Letters by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. There are many letters where she describes things like the clothes and the mannerisms of the people in the many different cities where she visited. We began discussing the corset and why women wore the corset and how when Montagu showed her corset stays to the naked women. These women so perceptive knew that Montagu couldn’t even get out of her own clothes without the help of another, and that the corset was so binding and so damaging to the woman that it was surely the ideas of a man to make a woman dress in such bondage of clothing. It was at this point our esteemed professor, Dr. Very Smart, sat back and let the graduate students have an opportunity to discuss this passage he had just read. At first, everyone looked around, hoping someone would begin. I am not sure if a guy said something or not but then I said, that’s how it’s always been, men deciding for women what looks best on them and how it must compliment them, the men that is. How this poor woman, traveled through deserts and over rough terrain in this corset that impaired her breathing and her digestion and she was pregnant at the time, and these tight contraptions were horrible on circulation, the musculature of the ribs and abdomen. Sorta like the rings on the neck of the women. The muscles eventually weaken and depend on the rings to hold the neck in its rightful place. No different, I said, than breast augmentation, or liposuction, or nose jobs, or all the other things women do to their body to achieve that look. I assure you, I said, that those women are not doing that to appeal to the appreciation of the women, no, it’s for men, all for men. After beginning, I realized that I was sitting on a soap box, spouting my feminist’s views and there are young girls in my graduate class, who think they are empowered but really are no more than little girls looking for a way to lure men. Not all, but a couple. One, for instance, has these really huge breasts, not real, but filled with silicone, and they, the breasts, are put on display by her wearing these tiny corset like tops that should only be worn under other clothes. Even in the winter, she wears these revealing clothes, putting her chest right out there for the world to see. And then there’s one girl who wears these pants that are so tight they have to cut off her circulation and she has worn shoes that elevated her up to two inches.

We, I’ve decided, or the collective we, are no different than the corset wearing coquettish women of the Englightment, or those who painted their faces with lead based paint, or those that had their ribs removed to make their waist smaller. We are, in fact, still slaves to men. The next time you go to the store, don’t buy an outfit for anyone but for yourself. Does it feel good, I mean can you move around and it not feel confining. Don’t wear those shoes that make your body hurt, get a pair of nice comfortable shoes. They dress for comfort why can’t we????

I never knew that nutritonists could be so much fun!

You know, I’m so tired of the naughty food. You know the good protein versus the bad protein, the good fat, the bad fat, the good carbs, the bad carbs. My god, you have to have a Masters in nutrition just to know how to eat. How do I know this, I went to see a nutritionists, yes, because I have that blasted pernicious anemia that has caused me to drop in blood cells both in quantity and quality and even in their ability to carry oxygen to my body parts. Now you all know, if you know me, that I am oxygen deprived from having so many complicated diseases in my life. So, all of this is to help my lungs, believe it or not. Really, the antibiotics that killed my stomach, yes, they, too, were for my lungs. Now, the good food, well it’s to build up my blood so I can have this surgery to remove a wedge of my stomach so that I can not be in pain and not have a cancer festering potential in my stomach and so that I can be ready for the next bout of pneumonia that I get and be able to take more of that poison that while it kills the pneumonia bacteria, it also is killing me, stomach wedge at a time.

But I really like this nutrition woman. She had all these little plastic pieces of food on her desk and was really impressed that I knew what serving they were and how many calories and fat and carbs and sodium. I told her I was a lifer, and she says a lifer and I say, yes a lifer of dieting. HA! She then told me that I had small hands, do you think she was hitting on me? Nah! I always thought I had huge hands. But back to the nutrition woman who is really nice and if I were gay, I think I might have a crush on her, hell, I’m not gay and I have a crush on her. She gave me her home phone and email, I gave her mine, and we agreed to meet for coffee and discuss, Latin. Yes, it is everywhere I go.

Okay, I have to eat over 100 gms of protein a day. That’s what she said, and she gave me this powder that I can sprinkle on my food to enhance the beans with red meat iron. I asked her if it was made for animal parts and she said no. I believe her. So, I can continue to eat food without faces, although I do back slide and do eat face food, but I make sure they are range raised face foods, and are killed humanely. She suggested over the next few weeks, that I just eat meat, no beans, they are not the really good protein for building up blood by way of all the amino acids and peptides and she used a lot of digestive words that I don’t remember from anatomy.

So, my question is, is it too soon to email her. I mean I just met her and don’t want to seem eager to have a friend. If I email her say Monday, it will seem like I am not eager but still interested in being her friend. What do you all think?

Oh, she also told me that while celery is a good food for constipation; it really takes up to much room in the stomach and keeps the other essential nutrients from getting to first base. I like that, essential nutrients getting to first base. WOW! She could be a writer.