Cauldron

Writing Under Pressure

2010-12-05T02:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve been working on my comps for about an hour and need to take a break. I started Friday at 1:00 and hammered out nine pages all at once on the big question that I have to answer. Then, I slept for a couple of hours, and yesterday, I finished the answer. This morning, I am looking it over. I’ve selected my second question and have done an outline and have the books needed for my support. I just don’t see how I am going to make it. I have until 1 tomorrow but I teach two hours in the early morning. I guess, from 9:30 until 1:00, I can hammer out what I need to finish. Damn, I hate working under pressure. Back to work.

Soups on

2010-11-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Best Damm Cabbage Soup

I don’t know if it was because all I had was end of the month vegetables wilted in my refrigerator or because it was cool outside and the leaves were falling and I wanted smells coming out of the kitchen, but yesterday, I made, without a doubt, the best damn cabbage soup in the world.

So I started with some left over from breakfast bacon grease, enough to cover a soup pot bottom. I threw in some chopped up bacon, a bout a half of a large yellow onion minced, one garlic clove (also minced), two wilted carrots trimmed, peeled, and diced into very small pieces, a small piece of very wilted but not molded bell pepper, and one large stick of celery chopped, Then, I let them cook in that hot bacon grease for a few minutes, then I washed the hell out of a big cabbage that I bought at the market and forgot that I had,, and peeled off all the big leafy pieces that looked bad and then I chopped it into long strips and put in the hot pan on top of the other vegetables and bacon and bacon grease. Immediately thereafter, I poured enough water over the cabbage to just cover it and let it get hot. When it started boiling, I added about a half of cup of apple cider vinegar, some fresh ginger that I grated over the pot—probably two tablespoons of that—I keep my ginger in the freezer so I always have fresh, then I added about a fourth to a half cup of brown sugar and let it cook down. When the stuff was well tender and smelling like heaven, I added a couple of meat finds that I had cooked the day or two before like one half of a small steak, I cut into strips, and a hamburger patty that I had made hamburger steaks out of and it was nice and easy to crumble. After the meat had a chance to get all good in the cabbage soup juice and all hot, I salted and peppered it all one more time and served it over nothing cause it was so fucking awesome by itself.

Money

2010-09-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

Not having money really sucks. And, what money I have goes to things like bills, food, gas, and more bills. So, I've been looking at ways to cut down on my household expenses and have decided that over the next year, I am going to cut out buying detergents. These items are my biggest expense and are necessary but can be made cheaply at home. So, when I run out of laundry soap and household cleaner and dish soap, I am switching to home made and see what's up.

So, over the next few months, I'm going to treat this blog like poverty journal or a surviving poverty journal and talk about things like how to make it on little to no money. Coming soon, soap instructions but not until I actually make the soap and try it. Then I'll blog. For now, here's what I do when I am getting close to bare cabinets, soups.

My favorite soup recipe is more like a goulash recipe because I use hamburger meat, onions, bellpeppers, carrots, potatoes, and tomato sauce. I usually have all of these ingredients.

1. cook hamburger and drain off grease.

2. Sautee onions, bellpeppers, and if I have it garlic and celery.

3. Add cooked meat to satueed ingredients and pour into a big pot with some water.

4. Add carrots and tomato sauce and diced potatoes and anything else I have lying around.

Cook until all the ingredients like potatoes are done and let simmer on low for a few hours.

I serve with cornbread.

When I have money, I use stew meat or round steak chopped up.

Professional Development

2010-04-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

I am at the PCA in St Louis. I presented a paper on Dora The Explorer and loved it, thought I did well, and had a lot of feedback from the audience. But, here’s the deal: This is the third conference in three weeks. I have driven to all three conferences and next week, I am presenting yet one more paper at one more conference. When I did this, I swear, I did not noticed they were all back to back. Consequently, I am at my wits end, highly emotional, and wanting to leave. But, I’ve learned a lot. Like when I was at the C’s, I learned how to do kick ass proposals. When at the CEA, I moderated for the first time, and here at the PCA, I attended a professional development seminar on putting together the employment package. They actually went from the CV, to the phone interview, to the contract letter. And it is getting close to that time of leaving the comfort of graduate school and entering the job force. I really am not looking forward to competing because I am older than probably all of the new PhD folk and that, I think, puts me at a great disadvantage. So, for the last four years, I have worked my ass off getting published, getting service credit, presenting at conferences, and doing whatever I can to make my CV more attractive. The cost: no rest.

today

2010-01-09T06:02:00.000-08:00

Sadly, I have neglected my blogging. I have been so distracted by finishing my course work for my PhD, writing for publications, and working as an adjunct to support my grandchildren. So, blogging has fallen way down on the list of things I need to do before I go to bed; however, this year, I am going to try and update monthly. Besides, I am in the hospital getting giant doses of IV steroids and feel like I could move a mac truck with one hand. Yep.
Academically, I trudge on. I seem to fall in all the old traps that I see my students falling into: fast writing and slow to no revising. Also, I am so overbooked that months in advance my calendar is full. I booked to present at three conferences and am, to say the least, strapped for time to get the actual writing done for those projects. I am still studying for my comps, which, at the rate that I am going, will be a disaster.
I want to do the weeklong WPA conference training this summer but am going to have to kick my ass in gear to get a paper so I can get funding. Geeze. And, I am seriously thinking about starting a new literacy project here on the hill. Yeah, I know. But there are poor kids here too and poor kids who could use a good book to read and talk about and a place to hang out and do that reading and talking. I’m going to talk to one of the churches and see if I can use their space and let them help me sponsor it. That way it’s mine and I can do with what I want. Right? The Fort would be an ideal spot for a literacy project and I am sure I could get help from the community and I may go that route too. The smartest man in the world once told me to work in my community; help my people, and the work will be easy. Yes, that is what I need to do.
Okay with the chatter. Hope you all had a great holiday. Now down to business.

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T19:09:00.000-08:00

In a few short hours, I will be 55. Fifty-five, I’m finding out, is not as hard to take as 50 or even 30. But, there are some serious consequences to living this long. I suppose the most worrisome is that I am having these little fantasies about the end of my life. Now mind you, that end is far away and I’m at least one hundred and I have many loving grandchildren who are fawning all over my death bed. I guess the natural order of life is the older you get the more real death becomes. Nonetheless, I am still here and am still working hard to get my PhD. So Happy New Year and hopefully the end of this decade will be the beginning of great things for all of us.

It has come down to this

2009-09-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

So, I am studying or my PhD comps. I figured, originally, that I’d take them around November; however, I, now, am setting a more realistic goal of around January or February. That way, I’ll have the rest of this semester to re-read the material and maybe do a little more outlining of my stuff. Hopefully before the end of spring semester, I will be ABD. Then, the matter of setting down and putting together my dissertation from what I’ve already written into a document to see what I need to add and if I need to add and where and how and so forth.

I came back to school around 2004, I think. Maybe the spring of 2004 and by the spring of 2005, I had my BA in English. I began my MA in Comparative Lit/Cultural studies in the fall of 2005 and finished around the same time I finished my course work for PhD. I know, very weird; however, I didn't really take thesis hours and instead, took classes for my PhD. So, here I am some four years or four and half years later and have become a Bachelor, a Master, and hopefully, soon, a PhD. What does all this mean? Not sure yet.

My Son

2009-06-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

So when Elvis died, I was pregnant with my son. I had been having a lot of morning sickness and spent most of the time in the bathroom. I had also just been transferred into the labor and delivery unit at our hospital and was happy but that day, we had no women in labor and rather than paying us to sit around and do nothing, we were pulled out on other floors to help the other nurses. I liked being pulled out because I was never assigned my own patients; rather, I just helped. The nurses on the floor appreciated our help and it gave me more time to get to know the patients that I helped with. That day, I was helping with a man who had two broken legs and a broken back. I think he was in a car accident. I was telling him that if he must smoke, he had to drink two four ounce cups of juice to replace the vit c that the nicotine destroyed and for some reason, I looked at the TV and they said it, the king is dead. Not one time did I think the King meant some king of some country. I remember almost falling to my knees and getting this awful taste in my mouth before I turned and threw up in the trash can behind me. The guy said, are you okay. I said, I’m sorry, I’m pregnant. I then heard the nurses in the hall running to an empty room to hear the news and some were crying and others were saying oh no. How ironic that I was pregnant with my son when the king of rock and roll died and he, my son, called me to tell me the king of pop had just died.

What I've done this semester.

2009-03-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

What I've accomplished: wrote reading journal, reading history, encylopedic entry on sociolinguistics, part of a chapter in a book for esteemed professor in the book of famous to me guys, wrote a fresh conference paper, and am writing a paper for the class that I am taking. Plus, I've read a ton of books.

Finally, I’m heading to Ohio for a literacy conference. This week, I’m fine tuning my paper to make it fit more nicely with my panel member’s stuff and going shopping for a conference outfit that should not be loud, made of jean material, or shout out that I’m from Arkansas. I also need new black shoes, since kitty ate the straps off of my only pair of dress black shoes. And, I’m thinking while I’m shopping, why not get a new bag to go with the new shoes?

Oh, I’m getting my comp list together for a little summer reading. By September I will be ABD. That’s my hopes.

Hub Cap Burgers

2009-01-31T06:48:00.001-08:00

So, Comma, my friend and colleague who is helping me in the Delta, and I went to the Delta to set up our month long project, talk to the students at the local high school, and get the English teacher and principal on board for our upcoming projects.
We left the City on the Hill at the best possible time. The entire town was covered in ice with falling trees and most houses without power. The four and something hour trip was good. The roads, for the most part, were clear of ice and debris. We stopped in Conway and had a shamefully gluttonous dinner. Then we stopped for a designer cup of coffee for the road, and all was good. The rest of the trip went quickly as we talked about our project and how we can do this and that. Comma is young and in tune with what kids like, so I’m happy she agreed to help me with both the Feb literacy event and the summer academy. We spent the night in a little town thirty minutes from the impoverished town where I do these literacy events to bring the town’s folk into opportunities to read and write. The hotel was full but they had one room, the presidential suit, and that is where we stayed. I might add, it was nice and warm and the room was large and even though Comma and I shared a King Size bed, we both felt that we were bathing in the lap of luxury. The next morning, I bathed in a huge ass tube with jets and whirlpools and big bubbles. It was all televisionesque. Then, we went to the town.
Here’s the thing, the town is dying and there doesn’t seem to be much any one can do. The main street has huge empty buildings, and all through the town there are houses condemned. The town sits on the bank of this big lazy river and while we waited for our appointments, we parked on the bank of the river and watched huge trees, fallen from the ice storm, float by. We also admired the house boats and old renovated homes that were at one time plantation owners’ homes or the summer homes of absentee landowners.
In this town, people are set in their ways and there are racial divisions that have such strong historical roots that racism is often blatant. The school has, in the last few years, consolidated with the African American community a few miles away and that has increased racial tension to the point where many have taken their white kids out of school and sent them to private schools in the town up the road. And the really sad thing is that those kids who came from the black schools and those black students who were already at this school are now being whitened, which I will write about later.
But, while we were there, we couldn’t find a place to eat lunch, but then we saw this sign, hubcap burgers and we thought, wow, that sounds good. NONONO. First off, the woman who cooked our burgers played video poker between flipping and dressing our sandwiches. She didn’t wash her hands and she smoked—right there under the misspelled sign that said, We cant smok cuse the governer said no smokeing inside of public establismints. Do you see what I mean about the town? Oh, and the hubcap burger place is right next to a motel where you rent by the week and those people came in and with dollars and played video poker and from their constant video playing and rotted teeth and exaggerated movements, I assume them to be tweaking on meth. I mean, in a town where literacy is at the lowest possible mark, and jobs are scarce, and money has to be tight, there are dollars for video poker and money for drugs.

Do I Look OK?

2009-01-24T09:01:00.001-08:00

After teaching at the Fort on Friday, and, btw, I did get my employee ID and it does say FACULTY, I ran down to Charleston to pick up my grandbabies. My daughter is spoiled to me getting them every other weekend. I oblige because when my children were young, I had no one to give me a little break, so I do that for her; plus, I am one of these grandmothers who needs to see her grandchildren on a regular basis. Anyway, we headed back up the mountain and the wind was blowing hard—I struggled to keep the car where it was supposed to be and The Boy, who talks a lot and loudly, is telling me the story of not getting a library card—mental note: get The Boy a library card—and I’m trying to think of what I am going to do in the Delta and I say, wanna listen to my Ipod and he says, yeah and so he listens and is singing, although the wrong words, and I’m thankful for the reprieve from having to answer a four-year-old’s whys and whens and all of that and then he says, Nana, I gotta pee and I say, didn’t you pee at the house, and he says, yeah, but I gotta pee again and I smell smoke and see the fire on the mountain, a control burn, and I say, this isn’t a good place, and he says, but I gotta pee and by now he’s holding his himself and bouncing. So, I pull over with big trucks passing and big wind blowing and he and I get out and he starts to pee and admires his arch and says look at that and I say, ouch as the wind blows the pee on my pants leg and I get behind him and use my jacket to block the wind off of him and it might seem as though I am peeing but don’t care and when I get him back in the car, I see that two cars have pulled up and after I get him buckled back in, the thought of serial killers and perverts send chills down my back and I rush behind the car and hold my hand up to let them know that we are fine, and I get in the car and lament the fact that I didn’t wear a belt and my damn jeans are falling off and the new panties are even more lose than the old ones, and just as we are about to pull out, a cop walks up to the car and says, is there a problem and the Boy says, is that a real gun and the cop’s chest swells and I say, officer, my grandson here had to go pee and there are no bathrooms in sight and he is only four and I had no choice but to let him use the side of the road as his own personal bathroom. The officer smiled and said, just making sure everything’s okay. As I pull out on the highway, I wonder about okay and appreciate that while everything in my life isn’t okay, it is tolerable.

Sabotage or Success

2009-01-19T05:25:00.000-08:00

After this semester, I will be one course away from completing my course work for my PhD. I realize that I have only been in the PhD program two semesters, but instead of doing thesis hours during my masters, I just took the extra composition, rhetoric, and literacy classes to apply to my PhD. This semester, I am nailing down how I’m going to do my dissertation. I’m also seeing the light at the end of this long academic tunnel. If all goes well, I may be Doctor Bitch real soon, or at least before I turn 55. Which brings me to my latest conundrum: I have noticed that when I get close to reaching my goals, or at least in the past, I seem to do this sabotage thing. I'm hoping that old habits are not creeping back. This semester I am teaching five classes, taking two, writing a book, writing a chapter for the esteemed professor, chiseling out the Literacy Academy, and writing a conference paper. Have I bitten off more than I can chew? I certainly hope this is not the case. If I make it this semester, know that I am woman hear me roar.

Back to work

2009-01-09T05:28:00.001-08:00

The new semester is upon us, and I, for one, am happy. I’ve done my policy and procedures and am half way finished with one of my day to day syllabi. I also finished my grant proposal for the summer camp and am winding up the memorial book for the vets. I bought books and materials for the classes that I am taking, and I feel really confident that I will get my conference paper ready, the book chapter for the Honorable and Esteemed Professor’s book, and will manage to pull off all the grading and other assignments. The bad news, it’s early and I am out of coffee and don’t want to get dressed to run for a cup, and my belly wants food and I’m not in the mood to cook.
On a good note, I bought my books, like I said; I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I buy my new books, I feel like a kid with toys and I cannot leave them alone. I’m the same with my school supplies. I just want to run my hands over the paper, and admire my long pencils with the sharp points and the pens with their tops and full selves. Yep, I’m definitely a nerd when it comes to school stuff. Oh and crayons are on sale again and I bought ten boxes. One can never have enough colors,right?

Is it my buisness?

2009-01-02T03:47:00.000-08:00

I suppose I'm old fashioned. I don't mean to be, but I am. For instance, I don't like seeing old women showing their C U next Tuesdays or old men in spandex. But, I also don't understand why a man and a woman in a committed relationship must have boyfriends or girlfriends. Why is it okay for those men or women who have outside relationships to bring the children into it too? Is that okay? My mother's first husband took his older kids over to his girlfriend's house and my sisters still talk about how upsetting it was for them to see their father showing attention to this woman, who, by the way, wasn't a stranger. I remember when my first husband and I divorced. Two years past before I started seeing anyone and I didn't bring him around my children becausee I didn't want to parade men in and out of their lives until I was sure. But, one day, the children and I were on our way to the movies and the man, a very nice man, drove past and stopped and came up to say hello. When he got ready to be on his way, he kissed me on the cheek and my children were upset about this man touching their mom. Later, when they were much older, I started seeing Mr. Zelda and at first, they were weird about it all. Maybe that's just my children and others are luckier to have children who are not bothered when mommie bangs her boyfriend in the room next to where they are sleeping or mommie goes on week long visits to see her boyfriend while leaving child and father at home. I'm not liking this and really it isn't any of my buisness. But when it is put out there in the blogsphere for all to read and see and form opinions over, then I must respond. It just cannot be good for the kids is all I'm saying.

Another year

2008-12-27T08:56:00.001-08:00

When my children were young, I would begin my shopping early because I had to do it that way. I would buy their many gifts and hide them in my closet and when the day came, I wrapped the small ones, the even smaller went into the stockings, and the big ones, like bikes and such, just went under the tree. But, now that they are older, much older, I give them money and their children get lots and lots of toys. In fact, I buy all of my daughter’s children’s presents. For her two younger children, I am the main source of support, so I am Santa. This year, though, Mr. Zelda has been sick, I have been sick, and we literally put shopping off until Christmas Eve. I know, very bad for my nerves. Well, I got up early and armed with my most comfy pair of sweats and my red card, I headed to all the stores. I bought and bought and bought and when I thought I could buy no more, I stuck the red card in the atm to see what I had and low and behold more shopping potential. I made two more stops and headed home. Mr. Zelda and I wrapped all the gifts that we could and then headed to the daughter’s for some turkey and dressing. I, of course, did the most cooking. We allowed the kids one gift that night and the rest went under the tree or in the closet. Of course, we came back up the hill but bright and early Christmas morning, the grandson called to tell me what Santa brought him. Then he said something so cute. He said, “Nana, Santa wraps like you and he used the same paper and he forgot his bows too.” Yep, his reasoning is kicking in so I suspect it won’t be long until he joins his brother and the many ranks of kids who cross from believing in magic to figuring it all out. It makes me sad; although, I’m happy that they grow up. Until next year, Peace and good fortune to all

AM I NUTS TO WANT THIS?

2008-12-11T05:21:00.000-08:00

Oh man. 44 papers to grade, and test to make and give and grade and two papers to write. I must be nuts. I've not started any of this. Today, I will get it done. Man oh man. Why did I wait so long. Okay, first make the test, second get the copies, third do the analysis of the eight pages of my primary text, fourth, start the final paper of my literacy class, five, make two pies, six, edit and do final drafts of the two papers that I will hopefully write, seven, make cookies for party, eight, go to party, nine, take hubby to hospital for test, ten, give final, eleven, grade some of the final papers, twelve, grade one set of finals thirteen, finish grading papers, fourteen, give second final, fifteen, grade rest of papers and final, sixteen, prepare for next semester. Am I nuts?

Greetings!

2008-11-27T06:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

kinky sex?

2008-11-15T05:35:00.000-08:00

So, I’ve been sick. I ended up with bronchitis a few weeks back, and my doctor gave me antibiotics and steroids. Well, I did two weeks of both and a day after I finished my last dose of steroid, and I was weaned off, I felt like crap. Mr. Zelda went to work, and I went to bed. Apparently, while I slept, my oxygen level dropped way low. When I woke up, I was confused and disoriented. I didn’t know how to use the phone to call, I couldn’t get out from under my blankets, and all I could do was call for a woman who has been dead since 1968. My friend came over to watch a movie, and she has a key, so when I didn’t answer the door, she let herself in and found me in a bad state. Eventually, Mr. Zelda came home, then there were these hot, and I mean hot firemen giving me oxygen, which kind of improved my state. I kept thinking why is only one in bed with and how can I get that one, the cute one, in on the other side of me, and if this is a kinky sex dream, I don’t want to wake up and why is it not hurrying up to the actual kinky sex part. So, into an ambulance I was put and it sped away at a fast speed and loud sirens and I got more oxygen and they started an IV and talked to a guy at the hospital who told them to give me strong IV drugs to bump me up.
The short of this story is my oxygen level had dropped to 68 and normal is 95-100. They kept me for a couple of days and gave me more oxygen, IV steroids, and breathing treatments and antibiotics and pain pills. So, I improved, came home, and, after a week, developed huge fever blisters, and they scoped me because the fever blisters were also in my mouth, throat, and they thought my stomach, and they found out that my stump or stoma of a stomach has attached itself through this really rare condition to my freaking chest cavity and is very close to my right lung, which is also where the freaking heart is. So, I’m, after I get rid of bad chest infection, going to have a very minimally risk surgery to put esophagus and stoma back into the right place and they are going to make it where this never happens again. So, that’s my update. Otherwise, I’m good.

She's gone

2008-10-06T05:40:00.000-07:00

So, the step daughter left for home, and I breathe. My stepdaughter is 38 and is the biggest prescription drug addict that I have ever. Let’s just say that within two weeks, she tried every drug seeking tactic known to drug addicts. Every day there was a new health tragedy consisting of needing pain medication. By the way, she took, without asking, all of my pain medication, which really pissed me off. In the course of two weeks, she had severe joint pain, a severe headache, massive cramps, fibroid pain, a huge toothache, and severe cramps again. In addition, she thought she had breasts cancer, uterine cancer, and crone’s disease. Yeah, my life sucked as I listened to her many complaints and tried to avoid getting sucked into her hypochondria. In the mean time, she basically ignored her three-year-old son. Her idea of parenting consisted of her staying up all night playing online, while he wandered the living room until he dropped. When I tried to put him to bed, she went in and woke him up. Because, she wanted him up all night so she could get him to sleep all day with her. And, when he didn’t sleep all day, he was left to his own devices until I came home. At her home, her mother-in-law lives with them, and she, we figure, takes care of the baby during the day and the eleven-year-old daughter picks up when she comes home from school. From what we gather, the step daughter just exists to eat drugs, drink vodka, and play on line. By the way, Mouse, the booze you left, she so bogarted. I’m sorry and will replace it soon. But today, I’m free, free, free at last. I can actually leave my purse and my pain meds out again. Yeah!!!

When a tail is a tell

2008-08-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

So I attended the GSE dinner and membership drive. Now there’s this thing about Karma and how it always comes back. Well, about three decades back, I was sitting with my friends in Taco Bell and a very nice looking older woman pulls into the parking lot, made a bee line to the bathroom, and after a time, came out and walked back to the door. My friends and I laughed and laughed at her long white toilet- paper-tail that she had acquired in the bathroom. Oh, over and over we laughed and told the story. I know I’ve told it millions of times. I’ve never wondered why I didn’t take the woman aside and tell her she had a toilet-paper-tail; it certainly is something I’d want to know. Anyway, last night, my belt was cutting into me and so I went to the bathroom to fix the problem. It’s a belt my husband bought for himself and it is greatly too small for him, and when I figured out that my new pants were never going to stay up on their own, I utilized the belt. It’s been years since I’ve worn a belt, and I had forgotten that if it is too tight, it can eat at my skin. So, I undid the belt, and while there, I peed, and when I was pulling my pants up, something must have happened because later that night, I was walking past my Indian friend and he says, Zelda, you have toilet paper. I reached back and found a long tail of white toilet paper hanging from my belt. Oh horrors of horror. So, I’m thinking which was worse, being told that I had a tail, or not telling and my tail amusing people the entire night? BTW, if this had happened to me even ten years ago, I would have died of embarrassment; last night I grabbed the tail rolled it up and said, I should be embarrassed but not so much.

The Kitty is in the house

2008-08-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

So, I my kitty has lived with us for twenty four hours. I went to pick her up and she was a t very nice foster home. There were a lot of cats and baby kitties and giant cats and a big horse, and she seemed to be lost in all the confusion. When I tried to pick her up, she ran. I know it will take time but I'm sure she will be a really friendly kitty; although, right now she is playing hard to get. Go meet her at http://ginger-zelda1.blogspot.com/

Normal

2008-08-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

School will be starting soon and I must say that I take great pleasure in knowing that my routine will resume. Over the summer, I have taught Summer school, wrote a thesis, studied for comps, and have chased after my grandbabies. I am ready for morning coffee in my office and, while there, greeting the various faces that are essentially strangers but familiar. I also need to learn. I’m at this age where I question every single move that I make. For instance I question this entire coming back to school thing. Here I am in the PhD program and I keep asking, am I too old? WTF, I know I’m old but does it matter. Okay, this can easily be a high jacked post so back to what is normal. So, I’m ready to hear the clappers going up and down the hall, see the fresh scrubbed faces of my freshmen, and smell the nice fragrance of youth. Oh, and I do really really miss my office mates. Maybe, just maybe this year I’ll get a female for our office. We can then put up posters of flowers and cats and other silly girlly things. NOT!

World Lit Comps.

2008-08-10T13:22:00.001-07:00

So, I’m doing my reading for my World Lit Comps. I’ve chosen the Greeks, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and some Sophists. I’ve also chosen two works by Ovid, two by Homer, Gilgamesh, Genesis, and Exodus. I think that will cover the Classics; although, technically Gilgamesh, Genesis, and Exodus are not really classics. For Eighteenth century: Oladauh Equiano, Lady Montague, Evelina, Joseph Fielding, Frankenstein, two works by Pope, two works by Swift, Hume’s Dialogues, 2 of Austen, Rousseau, Wilmot, and Wycherley. That should cover both areas.
I’m doing Psychoanalytic theory and Orientalism and will throw in some feminism and trauma theory. I think I can do this.

A Breath

2008-08-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

I finished my thesis, which was actually finished, but I re-read it and found things and worked on the things; finally, though, I turned it into the three. I had hoped to get it over with but understand that the doctors have a life and plans and that reading my thesis and marking it up good will take time, so I’m looking at the end of this month or the beginning of next before I can defend. In addition, my World Lit. Comps are on hold because the three who are on that committee are scattered abroad. So, I’m looking at the first of September for the comps too.
Having turned in the thesis, well, I feel lost. I mean, I’ve been researching and working on this thing in some form or another for over a year and now I’m thinking I should feel guilty for writing on my blog instead of on my thesis. When does the haunting stop?
I did put all the research in one corner of my living room so that when I revise, if I need, I’ll have the books and articles on hand. I think I’ve had Foucault’s prison book checked out for over a year.
There are these caterpillars all over my big tree and they are eating the leaves and the birds are going crazy eating the caterpillars. I wonder if it hurts really badly to be eaten by a robin? And, I wonder if the tree leaves fill the pain of the little holes left by the caterpillars?
Geeze, I need something to do.

I see the light

2008-08-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

So, I’m sitting here waiting for the chicken to cook so I can make soup. Of late, I’ve been trying to cook large amounts of food that will last a few days so I won’t have to have the stove on or waste time cooking. So, I made large amounts of spaghetti, this casserole stuff, and today soup. If all goes well, I won’t have to cook again for a week. Also, I’ve been living in my pjs and yesterday, I realized that the pjs had quite a few food stains on both bottoms and tops, so I actually had to wash clothes. If I had money, I’d pay for services so I don’t have to interrupt my studying for the world lit comps. Sigh. Soon, this will all just be one of those academic memories like end of the semester crunch or walking in the rain without an umbrella. Okay, back to work.

These piss me off

2008-07-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

The heat, cicadas, slow gawkers, long weeds, blood sucking insects, arrogance, men who scratch their balls in public, women who play dumb around men who scratch their balls in public, screaming kids, email assaults from right wing fucktards, and ingrown toenails.

Firsts

2008-07-15T12:43:00.001-07:00

You know, sometimes I get all nostalgic about the first time. You know, the first time I rode a bike; the first time I kissed a boy; the first time that I voluntarily had sex. So, I’m remembering Gary. He was this blond curly haired boy who drove a maroon colored 63 Chevrolet. He and his uncle had rebuilt the engine and it didn’t always start. He took the automatic transmission out and put a standard transmission in and made the gear shift in the floor and he had this huge fist for the shift knob. There were bucket seats and an eight track player and no air conditioner. We met at my friend’s house and were sort of set up. He was my age and cute and not vulgar like other boys who were always staring at my chest and making crude remarks about sex. So, Gary and I dated and we both loved CCR and we loved cruising and he smoked Marlboro cigarettes and pot and I liked pot, and we ended up dating all the way through high school and he asked me to marry him and I wanted to but I couldn’t just marry right after high school, so two days after I got my diploma, I gave him back his class ring.
I had lost my virginity when my mom’s boyfriend raped me, but I had never gone all the way with a boy. Over that fist summer, Gary and I made out. WE made out a lot, but I would never let him take my clothes off nor would I let him do it. He tried, oh did he try, but I would say no. But then my friends were all talking about having sex and how it was so nice and I had only been raped and so I thought I’d do it. Gary and I were going to see some John Wayne movie and I say, let’s go parking and he looked at me and I say, you wanna do it. He slammed on his breaks and turned the car around and drove like a bat out of hell back to the dirt road that led to an isolated area past the coal mines. Years later, Gary’s uncle bought that land and Gary talked him into filling in the land and planting a cherry orchard. Gary always had a sense of humor.
So, we’re in the country, parked behind a little grove of trees and he is like this child who has never seen toys and then toys are there and he’s taking off my clothes and his clothes and we’re like breathing really hard and I am thinking of backing out but for some reason I am not able to control myself and we do it. It lasted only a short time and I don’t think it was all that good. I mean I’ve had much better lovers, but in all my life, I’ll never have a sexual encounter as hot or as sweet, or as erotic as that first time.

When it rain,....

2008-07-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

Since I’ve been in graduate school, July has always been the financial nightmare month for us. I mean, we, like many others, get loans and grants to go to school and we use that money to get us through school and to help us through the summer. By July, though, we begin to run out of money and are living on hubby’s earnings, which are okay if we only had one rent and were not taking care of my daughter and her children. So, this summer, I taught, hoot hoot, and we were thinking how nice it was going to be that we were not going to have to stand in line for free soup. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the teaching did make it possible to give the four-year-old a wonderful birthday party. Well, July is here and we have just enough money to get us through until we get our school money and then I see this email about tutors being needed at the University. So I email; they hired me, and I’m now tutoring and getting 10 bucks an hour and will get a pay check every two weeks, which will help us tremendously. Then, hubby is looking on his school account and sees where he has money that he didn’t sign for, so he runs over and signs and we got near 2000 bucks to get us through. So, yesterday, I ran to the grocery store and bought a shit load of good food, you know fruits and vegetables and sugar free cakes and many grains. Remember, on my other blog, if ya read it, I’m going to get healthy. Yeah right. Okay, it can happen.

when I'm bored

2008-07-11T03:38:00.000-07:00

So, I tried to upload the video here so you could see what I do in my spare time. Not the dance. So, go here http://www.zefrank.com/invite/swfs/index2.html and laugh your ass off.

Here it is.

2008-07-09T08:12:00.001-07:00

Okay,
As you guys may have noticed, I have another blog titled Here. While I set it up to be used as a tool for my students, I didn't know how to block them from reading my real blog and so I cancelled the idea and here I am with Here. So, I've decided to use that blog to try and document my improvement of health. Many of you know that I suffer from overall crappy health and have made little effort to fix it. So, with my blog, I'm going to document goals and success at reaching said goals in hopes that I will stay focused on getting healthy.

A soon to be doctor in the house

2008-07-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

Last night, I learned that I am now in the PhD program and have been awarded an assitanship for four years. Oh yeah. All that's left is to turn in my thesis, which is finished, and to take my world lit comps.

Really, was it really meant for me?

2008-07-04T11:44:00.001-07:00

Today, distinguished professor and other distinguished professors are having a big thing at the first distinguished professor’s house and so we, hubby and I, are invited. They will grill, have drinks, and shoot fireworks. Okay, at first I was looking forward to going. There are other grad students attending; I know of maybe five of us. I’ve had lunch with these guys numerous times and have been out drinking with them and to their homes and I wonder when does it ever get easy being around my professors. I was never uncomfortable around Delagar because I met her before she was my professor but these guys hold chairs and make decisions about grad students and those professors waiting for tenure. So, I’m nervous and will drink a glass of wine and will calm down, but fuck, when does it get easier? Oh, my biggest fear is that I’ll get there and find out that I am at the wrong party, that I got the invitation by mistake. Fuck. Yep, fuck.

Zelda's Rants

2008-07-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, some updates:

Why do we care that a transgendered woman to man had a baby? I mean, he still has a uterus and a vagina and ovaries and PMS so that’s not a miracle; now if a transgendered man to a woman got pregnant then I’d be impressed!

And why is it that a judge awarded a man millions for losing penis because of a medical mistake and not once has there been even an apology for all the breasts and uteruses that have been yanked out. I mean, really, do you know how many breasts were hacked off during the sixties and seventies and there was no cancer and no money. I know the penis is important and yes it is worth a lot but so are our reproductive organs.

Okay, I hate when the political people, Rightwing nuts play with the public using hostages? I mean really, how many times hostages get release during the election process so that some rightwing nut can take credit. Do they think we are ignorant? I hate that they wait so long and make the hostages wait so long before they actually do something. I know, I know, they were doing something, but it just came together election year. Yeah, right. I’m bitter.

And finally, who the fuck cares about the fucking baby bump. I mean really, half of those baby bump suspects are truly pms or tma (too much alcohol), or tmc (too many carbs) do we really need to sit on the edge of our seats to see who is having the next designer set of twins. And please, someone stop the use of third world children being used for arm jewelry.

One Gay Man

2008-06-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

I am courting a gay man. It’s not what you think. I have always had gay men friends and have loved them and they me. Well, when I moved back to Arkansas my only gay friend was not out of the closet and so when we were in public, our fun was restrained and then he came out and started getting shit about it from his employer and family and others so he moved far far away, and I got hit by the fucking drunk driver. So, my life was more about living and less about having meaningful conversation with others. Then I began to walk and started back to school and became to busy for finding friends and now, well, I have found that I have time.

So, there’s a gay man and he is so sweet and has this really smirky sense of humor and he is smart and reads and while he works at a little neighborhood store, he still has time to do his nails and keeps his hair so cleverly styled. So, I’ve taken to stopping by the little store on my evening walks and he has gone from saying hello to hi to what’s up and now we are talking about things. If all goes well, I’ll have a gay man to hang with. I can’t wait. I know this sounds a little fag haggy or even a little mean and I don’t mean it that way. I love gay men and I think I may have been a gay man in another life or am a gay man inside this middle aged woman’s body. And I know Mr. Zelda is going to be all pissy about me having a man friend because in this society men and women are never friends--only fuck buddies.

You know why I love gay men? They don’t give a fuck. Yes, that’s it.

Hillary

2008-06-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

I'm truly sad that Hillary didn't get the nomination. I will, however, support Obama.

update

2008-05-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

I hope the little bed and breakfast where I'm staying will have wireless. I'm thinking probably not. Anyway, after class tomorrow, I'm heading to the far side of the state to work with oral story tellers. I'm excited but wished that I could do it after summer I.

I am now using webct and it isn't such a big deal. Actually, it is easier than trying to run copies or email my students all their stuff.

Students

2008-05-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks, I have been running into a lot of my students. Eating out, they are there; shopping, they are there too, and I decided that they just might be stalking me and my friend says no, it’s a phase and you may never ever see another one. And so, I threw caution to the wind and went to this thing. Okay, so I don’t really have Tina Turner’s moves. Okay, it’s true, I don’t really sing like her either, but in the world of karaoke, no one gives a fuck. But, I was busting the moves and getting down and thinking that I might be moving to the beat of the music and I feel this body next to me and I look and the body is making connection and I look up and the young man says, “Ms Zelda, is that you?” Okay, they are everywhere.

So, Furry, Things

2008-05-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

Hubby, the grandbabies, and I mowed the lawn. Apparently a mother rabbit decided our front yard would be the best place to build her little hovel. So, hubby didn’t see the hovel and ran over it. One of the babies died and one was tossed from its nest and the third was safe in the hovel. I put them in a bucket until we finished the lawn and then rebuilt their nest, replacing all the soft rabbit fur and piling grass and leaves around the hole to conceal it from predators. I was so afraid the mother would not come back to her mowed down nest but she did. Anyway, yesterday morning, I was sad that the baby rabbits were gone; however, last night, I came home from the store and right there in the front yard was my mother rabbit and her two bunnies, which brings me to the question: why do we find baby rabbits soft and cuddly and rats not so much?

Fucking Bugs.

2008-05-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

You know, I love winter and I sorta like spring, but summer I hate. I hate that the air is thick, that I sweat, and that I get bit by those damned mosquitoes every single time I dart out the door. Back before I had chemo, I was constantly taking these strong antibiotics to combat this fucking lung disease and so when insects got near me, they never landed cause I was a huge mound of toxic human flesh. Now, though, they think I’m a tasty morsel and they bite and bite and bite. Plus, they swarm. I hate those little fuckers. Another thing I hate, cicadas, and they will start crawling up the trees ready to turn into bugs and then they fly around haphazardly banging into anything in their way and they screech and screech. Oh my fucking god, the summer is coming and my misery begins. Oh, one more thing I hate, I hate those black bugs that swarm at the lights and they have that crusty outside shell and they have long hairy legs. Ewwey, I want to move.

Patriarcy in your pants?

2008-04-26T05:42:00.001-07:00

Lately, I've been looking at plastic surgery. You know, my eyes are drooping, my arms have wings, and my thighs sound like a thunder storm. So, I's looking around and I see that women can have cosmetic surgery done on their labias. That's right, if the labia is large, they will cut it down; if it hangs, they will perk it up; and if it doesn't look like what a man might find appealing, they can make it look pretty. Really. Now, I want eye surgery because my lids impair my vision and the bat wings and thighs, well, in the last ten years, I've lost over 300 pounds so you get the ideal that I have skin issues. But to run out and have my most sacred to me parts butchered in the name of the what....yep the p word. hell no.

Oh yeah, women ask for it, we know this is true!

2008-04-19T06:15:00.001-07:00

Women do not push buttons to get beat, they don’t do it, they don’t I swear. I know that sometimes in Hollywood there are these movies where some women will just be like these little yappy dogs running behind the strong silent men trying to get them to hit them, but that is a patriarchal stereotype and it is there to convince men and women that some women deserve to be beat. In real life, men who hit don’t need provocation and women who are hit don’t want it, don’t like it, and learn behaviors to try to prevent it, but sometimes you just get so damn tired of being shut up and bullied that you do say something like no or stop or shut up or I didn’t do that you did or supper was ready hours ago and it’s three in the morning, or I ironed that shirt. You see it’s these men who bully women and they bully them and after a while the woman can’t take it and says something back or blows her top and does counter attack.
I remember waking up and hearing him in the bathroom. I looked at the clock and it was two and I pulled the blanket around me and tried to get my breathing back to the deep sleep breathing. He tapped my shoulder and told me to get up and I played asleep and he tapped harder and I said, what. He said get up. I did get up and I did fix him supper and I did join him at the table. He said the food tasted like shit so in my anger and not thinking about what might happen, I grabbed the plate and dropped it and its contents into the garbage can and I said you wake my ass up and I make you food and you don’t like it, fix your own damned food. He said something like you fucking bitch and I said something like you sorry son of a bitch and he slapped me and I slapped him back and that’s when it began.
Later, my arm was dangling; you know how they dangle when the bone has been snapped in to two pieces. My eyes, yes both, were already swelling shut, because you see, I was more concerned with protecting my pregnant belly than my face. My gown was soaked with blood and was sticking to my back from the rug burns on my back caused from him dragging me across the living room carpet. One cop took him outside and the other stood with me, waiting on the ambulance. He kept telling me to sit down but I didn’t want to get blood on the sofa so I stood and if my arm hadn’t hurt, I would have not gone to the hospital.
The cop didn’t ask me what happened, but when the EMTs were loading me in the ambulance, the cop that had talked to my ex said, he really feels badly and I could take him to jail but he’d lose his job and I can’t see how that would help you guys. I’ve seen this stuff and know from experience, it’s just best if you bite your tongue—don’t set him off. Yeah, that’s it, I set him off, I wanted to push his buttons, I wanted to get my face knocked in and my arm broken and my skin peeled off my side, yeah, that’s why men abuse, they are really the victims, they are just so fucking tired of being pushed around that they have to defend themselves. Do ya think?

literacy

2008-04-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

I’m involved in a program to increase literacy in the Delta. So, yesterday I head over to the far side of the state, over many roads that were under repair after being washed out from the flood, and landed in the middle of the town with no life. It is the most depressing area that I have ever seen. The woman who is trying to get a literacy council activated has no office and has no education. She is going to teach literacy but has like a year of college. I went to the library and it is a small room with metal shelves. They have computers and while there were young folks there, they were sending emails and not utilizing the books. The town is predominately black, yet most of the blacks are underrepresented in any of the dealings of literacy or, for instance, with what I am doing with the war veterans and their oral stories. I think that in the sixties there was a lynching there too. It is so sad and so depressing and I am hoping that by improving literacy the children of this town have half a chance, but I am skeptical. So, I’m back in my office, and I’m conferencing students—students who have educated parents and have libraries in their homes larger than the library in the small town. Disparity makes me sad.

Books

2008-04-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine a home without books but there are many such homes. The really sad thing is that in these homes live children. I wish there was a way to get the state to buy books and put them in the homes of children. Books should be like free lunches. I know we have libraries but not all kids have parents who like going to the library. But if we could put books in their homes and if we advertised how well students who read do in school and college and if we allow them to see reading as important as brushing their teeth, well, I think literacy in our state would zoom.

Some Facts

2008-04-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

I voted for Hillary and love Bill and if their daughter should some day run, I will vote for her too. I am not opposed to Obama on any ground other than his lack of experience. There are other things, like I don’t like the crawfish. Also, I think our underwear needs to be kept under our clothes, under…wear. I also am not a big fan of sports and when my students try to get me to understand the concepts behind making a goal or touchdown, I glaze over. I am happy that I don’t care that my butt is big and I never pull my shirt down to cover my ass. I don’t wear deodorant or perfumes because I am allergic and, surprisingly, I don’t stink. I like sugar free Jell-O and tried to mix it with peanut butter and made a huge fucking mess. If I could be any animal in the world, it would be an elephant…any bird, well that would be the hawk…any fish, well, that would be stingray and I suppose that if I had to choose an insect, well, it would be the butterfly. I like flowers but they belong outside and I love mountains and will never live on the flat lands again. I freak out when I go over large bodies of water and am afraid the bridge will fall. My only wish is that I would have had more time with my mother, I miss her. The only time she ever said she loved me was the day before she died and she only said after I, feeling her end to be near, said, Mama, I love you. I, on the other hand, tell my children and grandchildren on a daily basis that I love them more than life, which I do. If I could change anything about me it would be lungs, I need new ones. Oh, and living in Alaska, I think, would be cool.

There Will Be Dollars

2008-04-10T05:37:00.000-07:00

I’m teaching over the summer. Yeah! This is especially good news since I was thinking that I might have to do something really crappy like greet at Wal-Mart. Yeah, getting to teach over the summer. I asked for comp I and an early morning class. Who knows what I will get but I will not complain. Happy, happy am I.

I'm home

2008-04-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

I drove to New Orleans for the conference because of the tear in the lung and not being able to fly or scuba dive or deep sea dive or jump out of a plane or go deep into a cave. Now when the doctor was telling me all of these things, I thought he was crazy. Do I look like a risk taker? But, the flying was a bummer, so we drove to NO and I had a blast. I loved the parties, loved the food, loved the conference, and loved it all. By the way, the paper that I co-wrote with the esteemed professor with many credentials, many books published, and holds a fancy chair, went well. Afterwards, the questions were all directed at us and after the questions stopped, many people came over to discuss my work in the Delta. Afterwards, I went to another panel's presentation and then had many drinks, which I did between sending Mr. Zelda off in search of food. Yep, sneaky drunk that I am, I managed to drink muchos and hubby not even know, well, not until we started back to our hotel and I kept stumbling and saying things like, my face is numb and do I have my shoes on. Oh, and on the way back, we almost took a tour through the swamps, but, alas, I had a hangover and when I looked at the water before stepping onto the boat, I became ill. The man laughed and said something like, "Oh, you not like the water?" I smiled and thought, nope, not the water, the mixture of rum and coke, wine, and some drink which was so good that I asked for two at a time. So, I'm home now, and working like a mad woman on my thesis and trying to get my papers for my classes done. I can do this, I know I can.

Productive weekend?

2008-03-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

So, the thesis is coming along, I've coauthored an article with one of the esteemed professors at the University On The Hill to present at the three Cs. I also downloaded a shitload of music and organized groups, and with IPod blasting, I walked a good three miles.
It's rainy, cold, and the air is allergen filled and I want to go back to bed but the silence chapter is coming along so beautifully. Oh crap, why not a nap.
By the way, last night I ate toast and dip and became very ill and went to bed and dramed that I was a kissing whore. What the fuck.

missed it

2008-02-17T05:34:00.000-08:00

I have strep throat. I thought I was getting the stomach flu again. I was nauseous on Wed and Thursday and so I had a conference to attend and was so excited and packed, got my hair cut, even bit off the jagged edges of my crappy nails. Yep, grooming Arkansas style. Anyways, so I went to bed the night before my plane w as to leave and woke up confused and disoriented, thinking it was a day later and I had missed my plane. Hubby and son calmed me down and convinced me that it was not a day late and so I took Tylenol for a hot face, which was a fever, and went to bed but I couldn’t get to sleep because I knew that my belly was revolting against the Tylenol and yep it happened, the porcelain god called and I spent the night in and out of the confessional. I was so freaking sick. So, I cancelled my flight and planned to fly out on Saturday but went to the doctor to get something for my belly and get there and he looks at my throat and says, oh you have a throat and sinus infection and he swabs it and comes back and says no stomach virus but you have strep throat. A shot in each cheek and a shit load of antibiotics to take by mouth and told to do bedrest and no going to the conference. I cried and cried. My first real conference and I get fucking sick. Imagine that? So, I missed it and have this beautiful conference paper that I am going to present to somefuckingone. Maybe my writers group, yeah, they should listen to me rant on Austen. Oh, today, my throat not sore, my belly not sick, and all I have is a back ache from lying around for three or really two days. And, what the fuck, was anyone surprised that McCain supported torture, he is, after all, a fucking bushwacker or close to it. Waterboarding not torture, what the fuck. Let’s put plastic wrap on his face and pour water and make him think he is going to suffocate or drown and let’s see what he calls it.

Good Bye

2008-02-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

Boy From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks died. He was 55 years old, the father of two girls, and had survived an abusive father, the sixties, and a tour in Vietnam. What he couldn’t survive was his wife walking out. He shot himself in the head, fell over into the bathtub and died long before his abusive father found him. Boy From The Wrong Side Of The Track dated my best friend and many nights we drove down dirt roads drinking rot gut and smoking pot. Sometimes he was my champion, treating me like his sister and not letting his drunken friends treat me disrespectfully, and other times he wanted to touch my breasts and even tried to force kiss me. After the drunk driver ran me down and I was left in the wheel chair, Boy From The Wrong Side Of The Track built me a ramp and came over with offers of good pot and conversation, and in his rough exterrior, I knew it killed him seeing me immobile. While I haven’t talked to him years, I will miss him.

Peeking out

2008-02-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

When sadness comes, it's just too hard.

I live to tell the tale

2008-01-22T12:23:00.000-08:00

It was my grandson, he gave it to me. I tried not to kiss him but he told me that my good germs would kill his bad germs, sort of my small lesson on immunity back a few months ago when he was worried about getting sick, and he was so cute and so I kissed him and he felt better and I was sure I was immune, you know the flu shot. I guess the flu shot only covers the respiratory flu. Who knew? I thought I was going to die. It was Sunday night around 10:00 and I was feeling a little icky. Anyway, I say I’m going to bed and hubby says okay and he comes up to the office to read. I toss from one side to the other and think that my tummy is really hurting and I’m feeling a little dizzy like I drank too much cheap wine but there was no wine. After an hour or so of this feeling, I realize that I am going to hurl and run to the bathroom where I can’t decide if my urge to hurl is stronger than my urge to have the dreaded diarrhea and so I sit and I yell, “I’m sick.” And Mr. Zelda says, “I can tell.” Actually, I didn’t hear the response because I fainted and fell smack dab into the floor head first of which I have two big bumps and a huge abrasion. So he comes in and revives me and later tells me that I was turning blue. Later, like an hour later, I was back visiting the porcelain god and he was there to make sure I was okay, and I passed out again. It was a night of hell, I thought I was going to die and if I had felt one bit better, I’d gone to the ER, but I felt so badly, that I couldn’t be bothered. Today is the first day that I have eaten or drank anything and what I ate wasn’t much; however, I am now not so horizontal and am feeling a little better, weak but better. Is there a lesson to be learned, no, I had my flu shot and eat lots of good stuff and try not to breathe any germs.

who needs a heart when a heart can .....

2008-01-15T12:18:00.000-08:00

So, my husband has been really, I mean really good to me. Okay, not like sexually or that, but for Christmas he bought me a new laptop, yep really nice one; also, he bought me a really nice bag for said lap top, and a really nice day planner and a really nice other thing that I don’t really know what to call it; he also got me a scanner, a new photo printer, and finally, drum roll please, a new IPod. Yep, it is, as Mr. Delagar so adequately says, a new penis, or in my case a penis. I have this really nice case and new earphones but no one can mistake what is in that case and I see people looking at it and shaking their head with approval, or maybe they have Parkinson’s disease, but my point is, I am not a name brand kind of girl, but let me tell you, having an IPod is like no other thing I can describe and having my favorite tunes keeping me moving, yep, I move when I hear music and I try to sing but that’s like fucked. Anyways, that’s how much my hubby is trying to buy my love or maybe he is just being nice. Or, maybe h e has given up on telling me No so that when I say I want, he gets to avoid me going to get it. I don’t know but I like. What’s love but a second hand emotion…yep jamming right now.

Poor Little Girl

2008-01-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

I feel sorry for Brittany Spears. I mean really, all her life her mother has shuffled her from one lesson to the next, one audition to the next, and finally when she is nine she is contracted to play a kid but is really never a kid. Now she is losing her children, and the media bombards her yet report it’s her making a scene. How sad. I know she signs up for this when she chooses the spot light, but really, how can a little girl choose?

Meeting My Guppies

2008-01-15T05:16:00.001-08:00

Mr. Zelda and I get to school and he keeps assuring me we have time to get upstairs, make my coffee, drink a little of that coffee, and get my shit together. Who knew one of the two only elevators in the building would be broken and I’m on the seventh floor. Finally, elevator gets there, I run get water, grind beans, make coffee, look for poem that I wanted to read, grab stuff, get a cup of coffee from the pot while it is still dripping, burn hand. OH FUCK.Get to the elevator at exactly 7:25, bounce up and down and say shit I’m late and oh shit and tell Mr. Zelda it’s all his fault because he insisted we didn’t need to leave the house at 6 but at 6:45. Elevator opens, I hit floor two and tell hubby he is going to ride down to 2 and then back up to four because I don’t have time to stop, but it does stop and he smiles and off he goes and a young girl in pointed shoes gets on and wearing lots of noisy jewelry and much makeup and smells like strong stuff and she says she is late and I say me too and we began going down the shaft, and how sexual does that sound, but anyway, hoping that it doesn’t stop on three and it does and I say shit, I’m late for the hundredth time and drop my pile of books and say fuck and finally we are on two and I am running down the hall and leaving pointy shoe girl in my dust and I get to class, walk in, and see my students and when I’m at the front, I say, I sometimes say bad words, I don’t mean to, but they just pop out so if you get offended easily, you might want to consider dropping my class and as an after thought, I say, I rarely say the F word and about that time pointy shoe girl walks in and says, really, only if she drops her books. There you have it, day one with my guppies

Too old to give a fuck

2008-01-01T07:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all! By the way, Ms Zelda has now added another year to her many. Today is her birthday. She is 53. 53! It doesn't even feel like me writing it. I mean, really, who in the hell is at 53 years-old still going to school, still hanging out with people young enough to be her children and, in the most cases, being at least five or ten years older than those kids' parents.

So, I am old as dust, wrinkled as a prun, but the good news is, I am old enough to not give a fuck. Really, and I have to tell you that over the last three or four years it has felt great, that not giving a fuck. I don't worry if my pants make my butt look too big, or if I have a zit on my nose, or if my legs need shaving.

So, again, Happy New Year and for those women who do give a fuck, trust me, you'll feel so much better if you just release it and practice the art of not giving a fuck.

Soup and Memories

2007-12-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

Today, I decided to make soup, so the first thing I did or that I ever do when I make soup is cut a stalk or two of celery and dice up an onion and chop up a bell pepper. I usually put these three things in some olive oil and let the onions sweat and when they are all tender and have filled the house with a really nice smell, I’ll add some garlic and let the garlic soften and then fill the pan with water. While the water is coming to a boil, I add raw potatoes and carrots. In another pot, I’ll cook the meat. I use either stew meat or ground round and on occasion, I use chicken or turkey. Today, I used ground round. After the meat cooked, I drained the grease off and put it into the pot with the vegetables and then I added green beans, corn, broccoli, cabbage, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes. After a couple of hours, the vegetables and meat married, that’s what the cooking shows call the mixing of flavors, so the marriage occurred, and when the cornbread was cooked, Mr. Zelda and I each enjoyed a big bowl of soup.
When I cook, I always manage to leave a mess, and so after we ate our soup, I went to the stove and began cleaning up and the celery ends lying there on the counter triggered the memory of the first real meal that I ever cooked, it, too, was soup.

I must have been about eight, maybe nine. The snow had begun falling the day before and all night long the snow fell until it covered everything. I could hear Bullet, our dog, under the house, his tail tapping the pipes. “Can’t we bring him in?” I begged.

Mama, lying on the sofa, raised her head. “Put some old sheets and towels around the door and the windows, try to block the wind.”

I got another quilt and put on top of her, she had been getting radiation for cancer and was burned really bad so that she spent most of her days trying to just be still. “Here,” I said. “Let Kathy get under there to help keep you warm. I’ll fill the hot water bottle.”

While the water heated a little, I opened the back door. Bullet hurried out from under the house and darted in the door along with snow and the cold. He turned three times one way and three times another way and flopped his big body down and the light tapping of his tail on the pipes was replaced by the thumping of his tail on the old hardwood floor.

The wind blew most of the day and finally by evening, the snow stopped and the wind died down. We were hungry and the roads were too slick for my sisters, who were all married and who had taken over the task of feeding us, to make it over, so Mama told me to go try and get something going, maybe some beans or a pan of cornbread.

I had seen her make dinner a million times and I knew beans took all day and I knew, sorta, how to make corn bread but not enough to really cook. In fact, other than oatmeal and popcorn, I had never cooked, and Mama, in her post cobalt state, must have forgotten.

I opened the refrigerator and moved a half empty carton of milk out of the way, and scooted the condiments around, and found a wilted stalk of celery and some left over fried potatoes. In the freezer was plenty of frozen foods, and since I knew nothing about cooking, everything there seemed complicated and mysterious.

Finally, driven more by boredom than real hunger, I took Mama’s big pot from under the cabinet and put it on the stove, I added a picture of water and some lard and while the lard began to melt in the hot water, I put salt and pepper and the left over potatoes and the wilted stalk of celery and dried out onion. The water came to a rapid boil and I cut the heat back. When I went back into the living room, Mama and Kathy were sleeping. The rest of the evening, I minded the concoction that boiled slowly on the stove.

I was reading when she finally woke up. “What smells so good,” she said.

I went to check on the food, that did smell good, and the stalk of celery had turned to mush and the onion too, so I mashed them with a fork and what didn’t blend up, I dipped out and fed to Bullet. In the cabinet were three bowels and three glasses and I found three spoons, nothing matched. I dipped the soup into our bowels, found some crackers, and carried the bowels and drinks one set at a time to the living room where I put them on the coffee table. We ate our soup in silence and after Mama had eaten a few bites, she got back under the covers, I heated more water for her hot water bottle, and Tippy’s tale pounded the hard wood floor.

Home Alone

2007-12-22T12:21:00.001-08:00

I’m home alone and the silence sounds pretty damned good. For the first day in months, my sofa is a sofa again, my corner where I sat and look out of the door at the squirrels and birds is now mine and not the huge toy box’s. (is that how you make box possessive?) I can drink hot coffee without worrying about tiny hands knocking it over, burn candles without my beautiful grandson thinking they are meant to be blown out, and run, if I wanted to run, through the house naked, well, I guess that would be a pretty depressing sight, but I could. Oh and did I mention, no cartoons and I can now watch all those movies with subtitles, yes. Here goes. Oh, and I can leave my laptop out and my briefcase open, and if I wanted, smoke pot, if I wanted. Yeah, I’m free, I’m free, thank the gods, I’m free at last.

My First

2007-11-23T22:18:00.000-08:00

I share an office with five guys, we have our desks arranged where we are pretty much all facing each other. The first day of school, we were all nervously awaiting our time to stand in front of a classroom filled with freshmen. At ten before the hour, I began walking down the corridor rehearsing what I was going to say. My name is Zelda, you may call me Zelda or Ms Zelda, whatever feels comfortable. I thought about trying something funny but decided against it and then I was in class and there they were all sitting there in their new school clothes and new back packs and hair combed and new shoes without wear and I realized they were as nervous as I.
“Hello,” I said. “It will get easier.” They laughed and for the first time ever, I felt like I was home. Today, I began making the final test, so I have survived my first semester teaching comp. I. I am dreading the Christmas break. How many people can say that they love their job so much that they dread the holidays?

Still here

2007-07-14T05:12:00.000-07:00

I'm still here, just busy. I swear, even when I am taking it easy, I am still studying. Now, it's for comps. I know, not until November, but I need to be ready. I have been getting a little pleasure reading. I re-read The Good Earth and a few other books that I had read years and years ago. Later today, I'm going to the library for fun reading. I have managed to go swimming a couple of times. My daughter, she is living with us, here in our too small apartment, but, that gives me many restful nights. Her baby is due in a few weeks and it's a girl. Yeah, a girl. I think we are getting along better, she is off of dope, so that makes it easier and I'm learning to just keep my fucking mouth shut. I want her to be productive but if she wants to live on welfare, then who am I to yelp about it? I hear my grandson.

....update....

2007-05-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it through another year, yep, get to take my comps in November and on to the PhD program. I am trying to decide if I want to stick with comparative lit/cultural studies, or go into the English PhD program. Decisions, decisions. On the one hand, the English program is well funded, which would mean an automatic TA position; but the comparative lit/cultural studies is a more valuable program and I more than likely will get a TA position there too. I don’t know.

Oh, I brought my bike from our house. We aired the tires and I took it for a quick spin and I have to tell you, I like the bike riding. Saturday, I am going to expand my riding to up hill.

Good news, my last lung test, the one where they use valium to put me in a nice daze, came back with some good news. So, I am now, using almost all of my lungs capacity and the fungi that has invaded has been shoved back to almost nothing. I can, the doc says, have one more round of antifungal and chemo but I say, no. If I am not better by September, then I'll go another round, but for now, I am liking feeling so good. By the way, I now have hair about 3/4 inches from my scalp and while most gay men hit on me, until they notice the girls, I am thinking I look quiet hot, well, not hot as in that's hot, but hot in not so old looking. I may keep the skin head look.

So, I'm still here.

2007-05-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

So, I'm still here, just busy. I have one more paper to write, and I can join the world. It's not that I haven't had time, it's just that I have been thinking. Sometimes I sit for hours and think. One of my favorite thoughts is what if I had sextuplets. I know, crazy, especially since I am through menopause and, get this, had a total hysterectomy a couple of years ago. So, why am I thinking of babies? Another thought that reoccurs: winning the mega lottery. I know, like I would, like I even play, but I think about it and how I would not be a rich snob. I also think about Gary, you probably don't remember, but he was my first real love. In the back seat of his chevy, during the heat of the summer, with the windows down, and the frogs and crickets singing and me trying to say no, but never quite getting the strength. And, I think about age and how it just crept up on me and one day I was twenty something with perky bouncy breasts, small waist, and a tight butt and then, well, gravity won and now all that firm and perk, well, it's not firm and perk. Plus, while getting old has its perks, you know like doctors that really enjoy making us old folks happy with good doses of good drugs, there's that other side. Sure, getting legally high is great, but facing the last couple of good decades that I have left and knowing how fast time flies, well, I have to admit that it's just a little irritating. Damn, my neighbors are getting high again. Oh well, hopefully soon I'll have something to say.

I see the light

2007-04-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

And so it's that time of the year. Seems like just yesterday, I was standing in line at the bookstore buying my used books and wondering how in the hell I was ever going to get that many books read in such a short time, but alas, I did it, read them all and some. Now, we are in the home stretch and the end is near. One more class, that's all I need before I am scheduled to take my comps. My degree, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. yeah!! they added that cultural studies because I've takens some cultural studies stuff. Anyway, now it's time to get my stuff together for the phd program and truthfully, I'm going to switch to the English department, not because I really want to abandon the comp lit, but because I am so frustrated with the head of the department and the lack of funding and the lack of everything; plus, a degree in English will allow me to take rhetoric classes.
So, onward and up and soon summer will be here and I'll toss the required reading on the shelf and conentrate on studying for comps and maybe getting in a little fun reading and fun writing.

Sex!!!

2007-03-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

I have been watching them, they don't know. Sometimes to get a better a view, I retreat to my bedroom, upstairs, where I can see better and hide better. She sings to him, yep, and he, well, he gets so close to her that I doubt there is room for a single hair to pass between.

When I first saw them, I was delighted, finally, I thought, something to watch besides reality TV. So, my son comes over and I'm sitting looking out the door and he says, what are you looking at, and I say, shhhh, they'll hear, and he says, who, and I say, Lee and Loraine and he says, who, and I say, my neighbors. He says, you know their names, and I say, no, I named them. Don't you think he looks like a Lee and she a Loraine? My son says, you're crazy.

This evening, I hear them, well, I hear her, she is singing, so softly and he is there petting her and I keep watching as he touches her breast and kisses her face and I am sure this is the moment, the very moment that I have been waiting for, anticipating, and he does it, he climbs on her and does his thing and afterwards, they get real close and they put their heads together and I hear them. Coo, coo, they sing, so softly and the other birds go about their buisness of building their nests, but my friends, Lee and Loraine, their nest is built and soon, they will have eggs and eventually, there will be dove chicks and if all goes well, I'll be able to watch out of my bedroom window as Loraine and Lee tend to their family. Ahhh, and life goes on.

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

2007-02-28T19:06:00.001-08:00

So, here's the thing. A lot of things are happening to me, you know; like, well, there's the stomach problems that were supposed to be resolved with my surgery, and there's the coccidio, and the medicine for the coccidio, and of late, I'm losing my hair. Two big bald spots right in the front, and then this morning I got out of bed and felt a bit of a draft, on my head, and ran my hand through my hair and lost the entire right side of my hair. I had class and had to work in the lab, so I went with my hair all weird looking, yep. So, after class, I went to the hair cutting place and said, shave it and he did and then he washed my scalp with a very hot towel and rubbed my head with this stuff, it tingled all over. Anyway, I truly didn't think I was going to be affected by the bald head, really. I know, I've had long hair for a few years and started cutting it off a few months back, so really, I just thought I'd get it shaved and be done with it, but I wasn't prepared for other folks' reaction to me being bald. You know, people who don't know me and automatically think, because of the no hair, that I am dying. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and thought about my perfectly formed and round head. It's okay, I like being bald, it's sort of liberating, but, to be honest, I hope I get to quit the medication soon and I really hope my hair grows fast.

It's my blogday, oh yeah.

2007-02-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

Soon it will be my blogday, and I think it will be my second or maybe my third year. I think my second year, anyway, I wish I had time to reflect but I am so busy, this being the semester from hell, so I will just say, in case I am not on on my blogday, that I can't eat cake but I can eat fish, and while I have had to give up drugs and alcohol, I still remember how they made me feel, and I think when I stand up straight, I can see my boobs before I see my belly, and finally, I am going balder but don't really care, in fact, I think I may do a Brittany, just shave it all off.
On a brighter note, I am teaching ESL and will be getting a high school class really soon. I like that it is voluntary, just in case it really sucks. I also am working in the computer lab and feel somewhat important when students ask me where things are or how to do things like turn on the computers, even I can do that. I have found a really good soap that doesn't make me itch and I am loving my new rocks, the ones that came from the Diamond crater. So, overall, things are okay, here in the university town that I call the city and I am studying for my comps and hopefully will get them out of the way next semester. In the meantime, I wish I could get high, just a little.

blah, blah, blah.

2007-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

So, I thought this semester was going to be an easy one, you know, not much going on. I was wrong. It is for sure going to be the one from hell. I don't mind all the reading or the papers or anything else, it's just, well, it's that there is something every week, something important that has to be done.

Plus, I'm fucking going bald. Now, right in the front of my head, there is a huge bald spot. The doctor says it's because I am not digesting protein so they are making me drink protein that is partially...well, forget it, it's just too damned gross to think about. I have cut my hair twice and it is about an inch long all over, and still falling out. Next, I will shave the head and be done with it, but there is good news, that chin hair, the big black one that just pops out without warning, well, he is alive and doing well and not about to fall out, no sireee. So, my thinking is to just take the chin hair and do a wrap over, like, well, those really old men who think we don't know they are bald.

Today, I got a call from an old friend. Some day I'm going to blog about her, but today, I am just too damned tired. In fact, I am too tired to do anything. Tomorrow, I go back to the surgeon's office and am hoping that he can tell me that I am going to get back to normal, that I will be okay and not feel so tired all the time. That is what I am hoping.

So, I was hoping to see a naked man. No, not my husband, I don't hope to see him, but there was a naked man who has been streaking around town and I saw a man running, in a rain coat, and I could see his legs and I thought, oh boy, here comes the naked man, but nope, he was a man in shorts with a rain coat. Damn, had my hopes up. I mean, a naked man might make me feel better, especially if he is a good looking naked man. I should watch porn.
Well, all these weeks and I am still not blogging great things. Oh fuck it. I think I'll take a nap.
Oh, I can eat raw oatmeal mixed with plain nonsweat low fat yogurt. Yippie.

Who made up these rules?

2007-01-04T07:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, my grandson, the eight-year-old, and I went to the library. As we were going in, he takes his cap off and says, I know that I am not supposed to wear my cap in the library. I say, that’s great that you know the rules of etiquette and he says, why? I say, because it is good to have manners and play by the rules, and he says, I know that but why do we have to take our hats off? I say, well, it’s a tradition, like the way we shake hands or the way we greet each other or keep our hair combed. Then he says, it’s silly and I say, yeah, it is silly. But, when we got off the elevator, he took his cap off and I held on to it while he sat in the chair and perused the book that he was going to check out.

My Uncle's Lover

2006-12-31T05:49:00.000-08:00

So, I had a gay uncle. Well, he wasn’t my blood uncle; he was the uncle of my seven older siblings. But, he never made a difference between the three younger children and the seven older. So, he would come to visit during the holidays and always came to our house first and before he left town, he would spend at least one night with us. He smelled like spice and cherry cigars. His clothes were always perfect. Every year, he brought his friend, a man that my mom loved. She loved him, I think, because he sat at the kitchen table with her and drank coffee and smoked Pall Mall cigarettes. They talked about bread making and cakes and when he asked, which he always did, she would unravel the quilt frame from above her bed and she would show him her newest project. He even quilted with her and we all thought that was so funny, a man quilting.

My uncle and his friend always brought real gifts to us kids. By real gifts, I mean expensive and nicely wrapped gifts. Like one year, they brought me a walking doll that was as tall as I, and had a suitcase with lots of clothes. They also brought us boxes of oranges, grapefruits, and tangerines. They lived in California so they would pick up things there and bring to us, things that Mama might not be able to afford, and in return, Mama loaded them down with canned vegetables and homemade jellies. The year my uncle brought me the walking doll, he did a French braid in my hair and his friend jumped on him and said hair that long and dark needs to be braided like this, so he took the braid out and did braids down each side. He said I looked like Pocahontas. Mama scolded him but she let me keep the braids.

Anyway, as I grew older, I realized that my uncle and his friend were more than friends and after my mom died, and when they came to her funeral, my uncle had to be physically supported by his friend and that caused some of our other relatives to talk and soon I heard the word fag and gay and while I didn’t know what those words meant, I knew that it must be awful because of the way my other relatives said those words.

Then, when I was in my thirties, my uncle became very ill. He came back to Arkansas for his last visit and he looked awful and I knew that he must have aides. His friend came and I came to realize from that visit that the reason they came to Mama’s house and had so much fun there was because Mama treated them well and enjoyed their visit and enjoyed them. My other relatives, well, they were not so kind to my uncle or should I say uncles?

Their last visit caused a huge reaction in our family, and many of my cousins refused to bring their children around and I was scolded for allowing my uncle to hold my daughter and my son and I thought how freaking stupid. My uncles took me on trips and my brother and never was there anything inappropriate.

Well, my uncles went back to California and a year or so later, we learned through an attorney that he had died and all his possessions had been sold and the money split between all of us nephews and nieces, even the ones who were not blood related. It was a few months after the money came that I realized that my uncle’s lover had been forced out of the house by blood relatives. My uncle left a will, that was why the three of us non-blood relatives got a portion of his estate, but the part that left his lover the house, the business, and most of the money, that part was not enforced.

I still think about my uncle’s lover and wish things had not been like that for him. I even tried to find him, but no one knew where he went or who to contact. I’m sure he is dead by now, that was over two decades ago and he was old then. That’s why, every human being, who is of age, should be able to marry and have the protection of the laws both federal and state. I tell this to my fundie sisters and they all say the same thing. For some reason, they have forgotten that sweet friend of my uncle’s, the one who brought us nice gifts and made our mother happy and played games with us and was a part of our lives; the man who was the lover of my uncle.

I saw the baby.

2006-12-27T05:31:00.000-08:00

It was touch an go. I got a call on Christmas Eve afternoon from the Good Son that my daughter was going to meet him and he was supposed to bring The Baby's gifts. My first response was yes, he will get his gifts, but then, I thought how tired I am of her calling the shots so I told the Good Son that he could tell her that I would bring his gifts, watch him open them, and spend some time or I would have to decline. Now, I knew that she might possibly say no and that would mean the Baby would not get his gifts, but I also know her and she more than likely has no money to buy gifts for the Baby, so I gambled and it paid off. Mr. Zelda and I drove to the Fort and stopped for coffee and waited on the call. She was going to meet us at the Good Son's friend's house. Time passed and I grew anxious. First, I still had to take the Eight-Year-Old grandson his gifts. I called and told him that we would be there later and waited and waited and finally she calls. She can't bring the Baby to the Fort and I was about to cry but she says for us to come to Paris a good hour away and I left my coffee sitting on the table and off we went. On the way down to Paris, I had to stop once and hurl and hurl and hurl. Mr. Zelda thinks it was nerves, I think it was the coffee and the tiny bite of pancake. I am still not handling most foods well. Anyway, we stopped in one of the little towns and watched the Eight Year Old open his gifts and he hugged and hugged me and wanted to join us on our trip to Paris, but his father reminded him that Santa was coming that night and so he didn't cry and we left him looking through his telescope, his last year's gift from Nana, for Santa.
Okay, here is something you guys may not know about me, I am a germ phobe, and I had to pee really urgently. Mr. Zelda kept telling me to stop and pee on the side of the road and I kept thinking of splash from the road and what if I got staph on my butt. So finally, I kept trying that trick where I am going to meet the president and not Bush but the new president, Clinton, and I am tricking my bladder and it works and then we see a light in the sky much like that star that the wise men claim they saw and I followed it and yes it was a Citgo station and it was open and it had a restroom and it was clean and I unloaded the coffee that I did not earlier hurl. Then, with bladder emptied, we were back on the road and soon we were pulling into the driveway of my nephew's house. Before I could even turn off the key, she calls, where are you, she says. I say, here and she opens the door and the Baby sees us and begins to scream, Nan, Nandad, Nan, Nandad. She grabs his arm to keep him from running off the porch and he begins to cry and kick and I leave Mr. Zelda in the rain, and run to the porch and The Baby jumps in my arms and holds onto me so tightly with his little hands. Not even Mr. Zelda could pry him loose nor the offer of gifts. I sat on the sofa and he kept hold of me and finally after all the gifts, and there were many, were brought in and he saw that I wasn't going to just leave, he began opening the presents. After he finished, I began picking up the paper and he says, stay here, don't go. I told him that I wasn't going anywhere for a while. We enjoyed him for three hours and then he began to get sleepy and we announced that we were leaving. The Baby grabbed as many toys as he could and says, take me home too. It broke my heart to leave him, and he did cry, but I promised him that I would be back, and his mother told him that I was coming back. His mother was not high and looked pretty healthy, so maybe she is finally going to grow up. Anyway, I am going back in two weeks. I think now that the door is open, she will allow him to come up here for a visit. We still have our lawyer on retainer and if I have to, I will start the custody battle back up. For now, though, she seems okay. It was a great Christmas eve.

Not the final chapter.

2006-12-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Wow, I did it, I just updated to the new beta thing. I don't like changes and when something works, well, I want to stick to it, but all of my blogger friends have updated and I felt left out, so I did it.
It's the end of the semester and I am feeling some of the post traumatic shock syndrome of having survived another semester and narrowly making deadlines. I wonder if that was what Freud had in mind when he wrote about trauma and latency in trauma? Who knows, it is working for me, getting me out of a lot of activities that I would otherwise be forced to go to like, well, shopping, laundry, shopping, and all of that and I am just not a shopper, never have been, never will be. I hate crowds, rude people, and fast moving children. So, I avoid the mall and the other stores as much as possible or go so early that most people are still in their jammies. But, I have to go out soon and buy gifts for the people in my life. What I want is to go buy me a thick gooey dessert but I am afraid of getting high blood sugar and having to get insulin, yep, so I am being extra good, not eating a lot of carbs, well, not eating a lot of anything to avoid all the problems that came with me getting well, and I'm wonderering all over what it was that I wanted to get well for? Oh I know, to get rid of the pain, that was the reason, but, I could eat gooey desserts.

Liberated

2006-11-24T03:58:00.000-08:00

It was a good day. No outragious discussions on religion or politics, no sexists, racial, or homophobic discussions. It was a good day.

I'm free.

2006-11-19T05:29:00.000-08:00

I did it. I told my sister that I am not coming to the family Thanksgiving feast. I admit that I did it over email, and I might have lied just a little to keep her from insisting, but at least I am not going there and won't have to put up with smart ass brother in law who is a raciest and sexists pig. Plus, my older sister won't critique my every move and remind me that at 51 I should either get a job or enjoy my age and not work so hard at going to school. I mean, what is her deal? Then there is loud mouth niece-in-law who talks and talks and says nothing, plus she shows way too much cleavage for my comfort. Then, my great nieces will be there and running and yelling and crying and all of that, so I am getting out of it. So, I am making a turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, and greenbeans and sweet potatoes. I will bake one pecan pie for hubby and son, and will make me a sugar free pumpkin pie. I'm leaning toward rolls but might make a loaf. I don't know, I'm just fucking happy that I am not going to the valley. Maybe my daughter will come and bring my babies. For the first time since 1989, I will have Thanksgiving with my family. The Good Son, Mr. Zelda, and hopefully The Evil Daughter and two perfect grandchildren. All is well on the hill.

To feed or not

2006-11-15T03:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15720339/ If you found the article then you will see just how crazy our world has become. A woman can be kicked off of a plane for breastfeeding her baby. Now, how many women do you suppose get kicked off for say, shoving their over-siliconed breasts in the faces of the passengers on the plane? I hope the woman sues for herself and for her infant. Both should get millions. The very idea.

Allan

2006-11-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

I was so young back then and worked labor and delivery, but one night, things were slow and they needed me to go to the floor and start an IV on a young man. They said he had some kind of infection, and that he was on isolation. I was told to gown up, wear goggles, double glove and not to stay long, they thought it was that disease that gay men were getting and they didn’t know how it was spread. I went into his room. No one, not even a mother sat at his bed. He was so small. I smelled urine, even through the mask and so I looked around and hanging on his bed rail was a urinal full with ripe piss, and so I emptied it and he thanked me. He hadn’t been shaved, and he hadn’t been bathed, and his teeth hadn’t been brushed and he was in a dirty bed, not dirty from crap or piss, but clearly the same sheets had been on his bed for days.
“Can you get up?” I ask.
“If you help me. I’m so weak.”
I put a blanket in the chair and he leaned on me and I put him in the chair. His arms were covered with red Kaposi Sarcomas and he had bruises where someone had unsuccessfully tried to start his IV. I changed his sheets and filled a pan with water and washed his back and his arms and cleaned his bottom and he cleaned his private area and I got more water and cleaned his legs and his feet. I shaved him and helped him brush his teeth. Nurses came to the door and warned me about being in the room for so long and I shot them dirty looks. I took off my mask and he smiled and said, “Aren’t you afraid of getting sick?” I was but I felt so sorry for him. Never seeing faces and I didn’t care. So, I helped him back to bed and he told me that he was gay, that he had lived in San Francisco and moved back home when he became ill. That his mother came to see him in the mornings before she went to school and his father couldn’t forgive him for being gay. I started his IV on the first stick. I pushed his call bell and ordered the nurse to bring me fresh ice and sodas and I filled his water picture. I sat at his bedside and we talked and he told me that he was probably going to die and I told him that it was probably something like polio and they would find a cure.
After that, I visited him every day. I brought him flowers and homemade cookies. The other nurses teased me that he was gay, what was I trying to do.
One night, the nurse from the floor called me and said he was acting weird and I went down and he didn’t know me. We called his mother and he didn’t know her and he had to be put in four points. Someone stood at the door always watching him and by the end of the week, his mother called me and said they were saying he was dying and for her to call everyone. So, I went back to the hospital and gowned up and went inside his room and with his mother holding one hand and me the other he died. His name was Allan and he was 24 years old.

A mother's worries

2006-11-05T02:03:00.000-08:00

When I was in the hospital, I met a woman whose son was in Iraq. She told me one morning when I was there and The Good Son and Mr. Zelda were gone to get breakfast. She was one of the staff pulled from another floor to administer medication in my IV. She said, how are you, I said, fine. My son's mess was on the sofa, and my husband's was on the recliner. She looked and I said, my son and husband, they are camped out. She said, I see. She cleaned the end of the port to my vein and began giving a saline push, which burned a little, then very slowly, she injected my thyroid medication and another saline push and a big dose of stomach medication. It took a while. The news was on and they were showing soldiers in Iraq and they were doing some acts of community work with children. My son is there she said. I said, I'm sorry. She said, me too. I tried to get him to run, you know go to Mexico or somewhere or even go to jail. He didn't want to go. I said, he's probably okay. She said, yeah, he is not a fighting soldier but he is still there and I worry every minute of every day. I said, I would too. I don't know but I felt obligated and I said, my son wanted to join, when he was out of school, and the recruiters were everywhere and I was going nuts trying to talk him out of it but then I mentioned the shape of his knees, bad knees, and they gave him a physical and he flunked. She said, you are lucky. I said, when he was having all the knee pain and surgery and not getting better, well, I thought it was a curse but it turned out to have kept my baby home. She said, we count our blessings where we can. I said, I'll be thinking about your son. She said, thanks.

I am thankful for:

2006-11-05T01:58:00.000-08:00

This is the count-our-blessings month, so I thought I would give a little of what I have to be thankful for: I am so thankful that I never have to say my son is in Iraq or anyother country fighting a rich man's war, or any war for that matter. I never have to say that he was wounded or that he came back maimed or that he has nightmares. I can go to bed and sleep knowing that he is safe or as safe as any 28 year-old single man living alone in a relative calm city can be. I hear from him daily and sometimes more than daily and I see him often, he is in my life. That is what I have to be thankful, the Good Son and his safety and his love.

I love the cold

2006-11-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

Today is a good day. Mr. Zelda is at work and I have been up since long before daylight. I even took a trip to the river, the White River, and looked around for rocks and drift wood. It was cold, very cold and windy.
I am feeling so good these last few days, minus the lack of energy, well, it’s not like I have no energy, I just don’t have all the energy I had previous to surgery. I am, though, able to stay up all day, go to class, and cook. So, I’m better.
What I don’t have is that gut wrenching pain that comes from the digestive tract digesting itself. Yep, that pain has been with me for so long that I had forgotten that it wasn’t supposed to be there, so for that I am very happy.
I love this cold dreary weather. I love that the sun is hidden and that no sweat anywhere can be found on my body and that my breathing is easy and unlabored. I have started crocheting, yikes, what is that all about? It has been days since I have had anything for pain and other than my back, I’m good. So, today is a good day.

Breathe.

2006-10-31T04:52:00.000-08:00

I had surgery Wed. I should have known things weren't going to go well. From the beginning, I had problems. They couldn't start an IV, so they do a subclavian which is an IV in my neck, I should have said, hold up, but I so wanted the belly thing to go away, so they start to put me to sleep and the doctor and the anesthesiologists and my pulmonologists are arguing about the Razorbacks, what the fuck! I'm not in Arkansas. So, I feel the medicine, say it is so good, hear laughter and when I wake up, I hear no laughter, but male voices, loud and demanding, She's not breathing, folks. Get that tube back down and I feel this huge scraping on my throat and I try to gag but don't have the energy and then someone looks into my eyes, a woman, someone I can trust and she said, you are getting transferred to ICU, you are having a little trouble breathing. I don't want you afraid, I'm your nurse. A man yells, B/P 230/180, I know this is not good, and another man, one with gray hair, I can trust, tells me he is giving me something to drop my blood pressure. The woman wipes my tears and says don't try to breathe and I hear the ambu bag that she is squeezing and I don't feel the air and I think they are not giving me oxygen and I try to tell her but then I feel the pulse ox monitor on my finger and I was a nurse and know if I wasn't getting oxygen, it would beep and it hasn't beeped, so I try and relax and then they knock me out.
I wake a few hours later, but I think it's days later, I hear the ventilator and the same nurse says, you're awake. Here's what has happened, you couldn't breathe. Your lungs are in bad shape, but you know that and you are going to have to get weaned off the ventilator. Right now, it's breathing for you, but later we will match your breaths with the vents. So, began my twelve hour ordeal of making my lungs work. It took all of that time and reruns of the Adams Family to get me from zero respirations of my own, to eighteen. I finally did it and they took the tube out and I spent a few more hours on the heart monitor and then they moved me to my room, where, my son and husband were both waiting anxiously.
The end result, my stomach problems are fixed, I'm probably not going to like the dietary restrictions, but I don't have the pain, it's gone. Today, I'm weak and feeling icky, but tonight, I am starting on vitamins. I hope to make it to class tomorrow. I hate set backs. I hate when things don't go as planned, but I am happy that in spite of set backs and wrong outcomes, I am still sitting here blogging and able to sit and not fall off my chair. So, she lives another day.

My life updated and still sorry.

2006-10-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

And so, it's time, yes time. I am doing it, having that pesky ulcer fixed. It's been over a year and since they found it, they have scheduled me time and time again to have it removed but I have either been busy, or my lungs were messed up or I was taking those pesky drugs to force that coccido back into remission, but alas, my gut hurts so much. Pain anytime it is empty and i can't eat all the time, and even though I try, I am gaining weight from all the food. It's so bad that I am even drinking milk and mylanta trying to stop the burning. So, Thursday of last week, they looked at it one more time to see if we can wait for the holidays and nope, almost to the bleeding stage and the ones in my upper small intestine are spreading. I suppose they are like fucking roaches, once you get them, they keep on reproducing. Anyway, as it stands now, I am going to lose a slice of my lower stomack about the size of a sixteenth pie cut, and about four or five inches from my small intestine. You now, after my hysterectomy, I thought, alas, no more removable parts. Everything from here on out is needed and can not be removed unless, well, there are parts to replace them like my heart, well, bad heart, new heart, bad liver, new liver, but I was so wrong. Nope, you can still have things removed. CAse in point. Stomachs, don't need them, so they can chop them out, same with intestines, up to a point, then they have to do the entire rerouting of the digestive track and that isn't pretty. So, to avoid having a colostomy and a feeding tube, they are going to start the whacking early. The doctor says that this should remedy the problem. I'm hoping that he is right. In the least, no more pain. So, the day, Wedensday. I am going to have it lappy which is laser through tiny holes in my abdomen. And, should only be laid up a day or two or three or maybe until next Monday. I'm psyced cause we all know what surgery means, good drugs. Yep, good drugs and anesthesia. I can't wait. I'm hoping for a young anesthesiologists, cause they know, and they make it slow, and they make it rememorable. yes, I want slow and to remember. I want to go far out man, groovy, and way cool, and dig it. Yeah. I'm an old hippy with too many memories of the good old days when drugs were safe and addictions low and now, well, you have to be so careful. DON'T DO DRUGS. Cause that would be so wrong and so bad and can do bad things to your chromosomes and you could have five headed kids and green haired puppies. Okay, I'm rambling, I'll stop now.

Who's keeping score?

2006-10-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

The woman who watched my children, well when they were too young for day care, her name was Barbara and she was a grandmother and a retired school teacher, she was also my neighbor. She and I became friends the moment I moved into the house next to her. She had a little dog that loved my children and would bark and bark until my children and I went outside and she would waddle over to the fence and try to stick her nose through so the kids would pet her, they, my kids were one and two. Before her, one of my ex husband’s nieces had watched them, and while she was good to the kids and a good child care provider, she married a man that I just couldn’t trust, so, in came Barbara.

I had known her for a few months and a couple of times she had watched the children for me while I ran to the store, or while I paid bills, and my children loved her. So, one day she and I were talking and I asked her if she would watch them while I worked and she jumped at the offer. That’s how it happened and soon, she moved in with me, into the extra bedroom and she and I and my children became a family.

Barbara was a horrible cook, yep, she knew how to make a couple of things but over all, I did all the cooking, I also did all the laundry, because she just couldn’t carry the baskets of clothes to the wash room. Really I did everything but I didn’t care, as long as she doted on my babies and that she did all day and up until they went to bed and even then, she would get up and go peak in on them.

Her moving in with me gave me a lot of freedom to run, and I did do that, for a while. So, I would get off work at eleven and call and tell her that I was going out and did she mind and she would say of course not, go and have fun, your young and so, only on the weekends, I would go run and play with my friend K.C. that’s how I got by with so much bar time, only gay bars, well there were a few times we went to straight bars and fought over the men. I usually won but sometimes, he won and that would just piss me off to no end. K.C. liked red necks, go figure. He said that rednecks are one step above ballet slippers and two steps behind cross dressing, he was pretty much right on that one, or the red necks we met in Bakersfield California.

One night, we were at a bar called the Red Rooster, I know, there is a Red Rooster in every town and they play country music and the place smells like new boots and back in those days, high karate cologne. So, we go to this bar and K.C. bought a new cowboy hat and boots and we practiced doing a line dance that was pretty much all the rage with the red necks and we were out there dancing around and around and he was twirling me and waltzing me and no one on the floor could dance like us and then it happened, he dipped me and his eyes looked at me and he smiled and I looked at him and smiled and we both looked at the man next to us and we both lost our minds. Oh my was that man pretty. K.C. almost dropped me and I wanted to kick him and we both began to stutter and it was all so juvenile and the man asked me to dance and I dropped K.C. like a hot potato and went straight to the dirty dancing and K.C. was pissed, oh was he pissed. I still have it, I thought. So we go back to the table and he buys me a drink and joins us and we are talking and K.C. is putting on his charm and it is so gay and I’m giving him the look that I always gave him when we were among red necks that meant for him to pull in the gayness and exhibit some studliness, and he was so overwhelmed with this man’s beauty as was I, that he just didn’t pull back and soon he was fanning with his cowboy hat, and I’m rolling my eyes, and so I as carefully as I could unbuttoned the top button and reveal a little cleavage, that was a certain eye pleaser and for sure I was going to up the fanning flame and then K.C. pulls out all his artillery and begins talking about head, yes he did and how there is nothing like good head. Well, there you go, I will not talk about head on the first drink, or dance, but I am not trashy like my flaming, fanning, friend, and so I am out of my league because Mr. Good-looking-redneck-stud is intrigued and loses his senses when someone begins discussing the art of a good blow job, and since I am not jumping in on that one, K.C. hits a home run. Later, when K.C. came back to the bar, he sits down and says, what did I miss and I look at him and say, was it good, and he says, nope, my dear, I just saved you from a boring asshole, and I say, hey, don’t talk like that, you know that I’m not into assholes and he says, exactly. He bought me a drink, we toasted, we finished our drink and decided to go to the gay bar, the music was so much better, plus, the men there could at least dance and had better clothes and were not so easy, well, they were easy, but not like the men in the straight bar.

And then I knew

2006-10-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

Delagar’s post about her daughter’s new books, the ones about puberty and such, well it got me to thinking about my own lack of education in that area. I had older sisters and they were never given the talk, or so they say. My mother never gave me the talk and when I was around eight or maybe nine, all three of my older sisters became “expecting” as my mother so careful called it, in fact, when one of my older sisters said pregnant, my mother shushed her. So, because I was so nosy and wanted to know what it was that was making my sisters so big and round and all the talk about new babies, I went to the library and looked up pregnant, and after reading all of that, began to search each of the words that I had read, like fallopian tubes, ovaries, uterus, and even menstruation and that is how I learned about the birds and the bees, right there at the table in front of the encyclopedias on a huge oak table that smelled faintly of Murphy’s oil.

So he said.

2006-10-10T04:17:00.000-07:00

So, I'm writing a novel, well it's more like a collection of short stories about characters I have known. Mingled in with each of these stories, will be other stories, kind of like a story within a story. Not a frame story and a story, but different. Anyway, I am writing about my first gay friend, or first openly gay friend. When he came out of the closet, it wasn't a good time, it was during the early eighties and most gay men were targets for all kinds of shit because of aides. Even in California, tolerance was at an all time low, and so, when he came out of the closet to me, I asked him to keep it quiet but he just couldn't do it. One day, I'm sitting in the cafeteria drinking nasty hospital coffee and I hear him long before I see him. I sipped the bad coffee and watched the door and here he came all 6'6" prissing past the tables of shocked visitors and hopsital staff. "Girl," he yelled. I looked at him and just shook my head. It was the first time that I ever saw a man wearing makeup and so much makeup and his nails were so lee press on pink and he had freshly pierced ears with little butterflies pressed into his swollen lobes and lipstick so bright it made his teeth look whitter than snow and he had bangles and rings and necklaces and his hair, yes, it was teased and puffed up. "Well, here I am," he said. "I see," I said. "You like?" he asked. "I'm at a loss for words," I said. He sat down and daintily sipped his coffee. And after the shock of seeing a man with so much make up and with so much flamboyancy, I found my friend, and we started talking and then I liked his eyeliner and his blush and his lipstick and his hair product and all his gold and silver and rhinestones and even his new walk, it was catching, made me more aware of how my hips moved. That was the beginning of my friend allowing me to see him, really see him and not that person he had tried to be. His favorite line, "Girrrrrrrl, let's go gettem." And we did, some nights all night long and other nights we chose to sit in the parking lot and smoke our liquor and watch the show from the parking lot. When my friend and I moved from San Diego to El Paso and he abandoned me for a cute little hispanic with a gold tooth and left Texas to wonder aimlessly around Mexico, he had tested positive. I asked him to stay, get the best treatment but he said that he was going where booze and living were cheap. So, he and I parted company and until he died, we semi kept in touch. The last time we talked he said, "You know, every man I ever took from you, I did to keep him from hurting you." That was what we did, we fought over straight or supposedly straight men. I thanked him and told him, "Well, if you must know, all the men you took from me, well, they were men I didn't want." He laughed, "Bitch," he said. I laughed and then we said our goodbyes and a few months later, his little number with the gold tooth called and said, "K.C. wanted me to call you and let you know he was gone." I thanked him and cried. This collection of short stories about K.C. will be hard, harder than writing about Betsy. K. C. was just so fucking funny. He gave my children salamandar eggs from a river and we put them in a tank and watched as they developed and one day, I came home and my little swimming things were now land things and were running around my apartment. We liked to never have caught all six of them and then we took them back to the river and turned them loose by the bank and he said, "I wish life were that easy. You know, if you don't fit somewhere, you could be gathered up with others and taken to the place where you do fit, like here and that new place was perfect right from the beginning, no surprises, just perfect. That's all I want a place where I fit."

Conversation in Zelda's House

2006-10-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

Me: No tea.
Mr. Zelda: hmmm
Me: I need tea, I done gave up the coffee, need tea.
Mr. Zelda: You just replaced one caffiene for another.
Me: So.
Mr. Zelda: You ain't gonna cook.
Me: No tea, no energy, no food.
Mr. Zelda: I guess I'll go to the store.
Me: Wake me up when you get home and fix tea.
Mr. Zelda: Anything else.
Me: Good fruit.
Mr. Zelda: What if the fruit is bad?
Me: Better find a fucking apple tree.

The first time.

2006-10-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

Twenty minutes the baby lived and then he died. His skull empty, except for a large amount of fluid, and the tiny brain stem that had developed, nothing else worked, no frontal lobes, or temporal lobes or parietal or occipital, only the brain stem, breathe in and breathe out, the brain stem said, lubdub, lubdub and on and on for as long as the baby could live, kept alive, given fluids, kept warm, touched and nurtured, but then, what?

I went to her room, it was dark and her eyes were swollen and her husband was asleep. “I took a picture,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.
“You might want it someday,” I said.
I put the envelope with the picture that I had taken on her night stand, the envelope sealed.
“Did he suffer?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “he went peacefully and quickly.”

How could I tell her he was thirsty and cold, that he wanted milk, that he wanted to feel, how could I tell her he died in a crib in the corner of the nursery, alone, away from view, give the one new nursing graduate who sat by his side and touched his tiny fingers.

That night, was the first callous, one of many that I developed to help me get thorough those rough times when babies died, or mothers died, or both died and those emotions of happiness soon became immense sadness. That callous, though, was one that I never forgot. Like the first sweet kiss, I will forever remember how I felt when that baby drew its last breath

Moving On.

2006-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

If you must know, in another life, I was a nurse. I worked in labor and delivery, and when I needed extra money, I worked for an agency that supplied nurses to short staffed hospitals, or for home health, and one time, I was given a contract with the state of California to go around to the migrant farm worker’s homes and vaccinate their children, sorta do a well baby check up on all the babies and small children. Plus, we had things to pass out, like soap, how arrogant of the state to assume the migrant farmers were not clean.

The man who was driving us down one farm road to another and to another until all I saw was miles and miles of farm land filled with tall stalks of corn, or tomatos or whatever else that particular piece of land was growing. We ran out of roads and started down tractor roads and then we were driving on a levee and right in the middle of a huge and I mean miles and miles of corn was a tree, a big truck, and a small house. They were waiting on us, someone told them and they were ready.

Five families, I learned, lived in this house, they were somehow all related. There was a large living room with two sofas, a kitchen, and two bedrooms; each bedroom, held one family and the living room was divided between three families. The younger families got the bedrooms, the older used the living room. It made sense.

I never learned their names, but knew that one man spoke broken English and he told me that at night, they bring out sleeping bags, for the floor, and the two older women slept on the sofas, while he, and the other men, slept on the floor next to their wives, the third couple slept together on a roll away bed that was folded neatly and was covered with a blanket and had things sitting on it, like it was a table. There were four older children who also slept in sleeping bags, only one girl of the four and she, her father said sleeps at the foot of the sofa by her mama.

The younger couples had younger children, and one of the women was pregnant. She had not been to the doctor. I put my stethoscope up to her abdomen and heard the rapid beat of the soon to be neonate, probably in a day or so. The baby was in place, she had dropped. This was her third baby and she said she knew what to do when the pains came, but, she was there alone with the other small children, the rest of the adults and older children worked the fields, they had no phone.

It’s not true, you know, what they say about how they live in filth. The floor was so clean you could have eaten off of it, and the kitchen was spotless, not one dish out of place. Even the porch was scrubbed down clean.

I asked through a translator when did the children go to school, and they lied and said that the older children go during the week. I knew they were lying, they looked away from me, and I didn’t see any evidence of school, no notebooks, nor school books, not even one pencil in sight.

It was time for me to check the children. No lice, no sores, and I gave them their shots to keep them from getting measles, mumps, and chickenpox. They drank the polio vaccine and I gave them their first of three hepatitis shots, and while the children screamed, the mothers and fathers were all touching their babies’ arms and legs and holding them and soothing them in their language.

I hated leaving them, and hoped that I got to come back. I worried about the young woman about to give birth. The man who spoke English invited me back for a party on Sunday afternoon, I smiled and said if I could find my way back, and he said he would meet me at the crossroads and lead me back, for me to bring my family. I couldn’t tell if he was being nice or if he really wanted me to come for food. I wrote my name and phone number down and told them where I worked and told them to bring the young woman there when she began her labor.

It was the next afternoon, I was coming out of the nurse’s lounge and a man came running toward, me, “Senora,” he yelled and pointed behind him at his wife, the young woman from the migrant camp, being pushed by an ER nurse.

Nine pounds that baby weighed, and she did fine, and the entire migrant farmers from that house stood in the waiting room, now I was obligated to go for Sunday dinner, I had, after all, delivered one of their own, and to honor me, they gave the baby my name. That Sunday, my children, my friend K.C. and I met one of the migrant farmers at the cross roads and followed his truck back to their place. My towheaded children played with the migrant farmer’s children and in spite of the language barrier, they were able to do what children do best, play.

They buried the pig in a pit, that is what they did, and when it was cooked, they lifted it out and we ate ground roasted pig, and had tamales, and fried cactus, and refried beans, and potatoes, and home made tortillas’, and when we were finished, the young man played his guitar and they sang and I didn’t understand a word, but I felt the music and it was happy and I hated for the day to end, but it did end. Before I left, I gave them clothes that my friends and I had collected, and a portable crib, and I found a sling so she could keep the baby next to her, and plenty of diapers and I hated to go, but I did, and the next time I went to the migrant farm house to give shots, a new group lived there, and my old friends had moved on, they, my guide said, were up north picking peaches.

Before Girls Dreamed of Mt. Everest

2006-09-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

When I was ten, my friends, there were three of us; decided we wanted to hike up a mountain. My mother, already stricken with cancer, dropped us off at the foot of the mountain and promised to pick us up at the top.

We began our hike through tall grass and soon we were crossing through black berry bushes and wild grape vines, but we trudged on, our reward, the crystal clear spring fed waterfall and clear rock swimming hole at the top. The cicadas were so loud and the mosquitoes were swarming to get a taste of our tender flesh and grasshoppers, big fat grasshoppers jumped from one blade of grass to the other. “We might get lost,” Cindy said. “Nope, we can only end up at the top, someone would find us,” I said. “If we do, we can eat grasshoppers.” “Yuck,” I said.

Each leg of the journey became more and more difficult and Rosie cried, she wanted to go back, but Cindy and I told her she was going to have to go alone, because we were going to climb this mountain. We ran, trying to out run the mosquitoes and at one point, I looked down and my legs were stripped with welts from the stinging Johnson grass. We stopped for a rest at the bottom of the mountain, and we began to scream at the discovery of seed ticks crawling on our legs. It took us at least thirty minutes to dust off our socks and shoes and wipe the tiny things off of us and we still missed some, before we could actually start the journey upwards, but finally we were on our way, hot, itchy, and feeling creepy crawly things on our arms and legs.

For the most part, the mountain was a series of rather steep cliffs that were not too treacherous. They were more sloped so that it was easy enough to climb up and there were rocks that jetted out and made for easy grabbing and pulling ourselves to the next ledge. I was first and when I got to the safety of the ledge, I helped Cindy, and then we both pulled cry baby up, and that went on for a couple of hours. Before we made our last dangerous ledge climb, I noticed a huge nest and said, “Oh look, an eagle’s nest.” Well, it wasn’t an eagle’s nest because the farmers had pretty much killed all the eagles with their pesticides and it’s probably a good thing it wasn’t because we would have been too stupid to get a way from the angry mother. As it turned out, it was a hawk’s nest and she had some fledglings, if that is what they are called, and when we started up the ledge, she began to circle around us and dive at us and she was protecting her young, but we were determined and when she came toward us, we swung at her and she never made contact. Her nest was on the ledge, and it was huge, maybe even an old eagle’s nest, but she and more hawks banned together and were diving at us, putting the fear of sharp talons and strong beaks into us, but I just had to look in her nest, and so I did and they were so ugly, those fledglings, and I hurried up and moved on and the mother continued to circle above our heads.

We finally made it to the top of the mountain, not even a half a mile from the water fall. I jumped and danced and yelled, and soon the other two joined in the victory dance. Mom was waiting at Clear Rock with hamburgers and an ice chest packed with cold drinks. As we ran toward the water falls, we began stripping off our clothes, preparing to jump into the water, and Mom was standing there smiling, “We did it,” I yelled.

I jumped into the water and swam to the other side, followed by my friends and we decided there that we could do anything. Rosie said, “Let’s climb Mt. Everest.”

Well that was the first and last mountain we ever climbed together. Cindy was hit by a car on her way to school and lived only a week before her heart gave out. When my mother died, Rosie and I were separated by 30 miles and I never saw her again. The other day, I ran into a mutual friend who told me Rosie was in prison for manufacturing meth. I wonder when she gave up her dream to climb Mt. Everest.

I still can’t look at a soaring hawk without remembering the little girls loaded with our brother’s canteens and pocket knives and rope walking toward the mountain that warm summer’s day.

Racist Pigs

2006-09-26T04:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know racism exists, I hear it every day. But, I thought such overt displays of hate as seen at the site below, well, it just makes me more ashamed today than I have been in a long time of being from this place where cross burning is still going on, and not just in a round about without the fire kind of way.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12677315/?GT1=8199

The Nerve to Tell the Truth

2006-09-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

So it’s that time of the year. Already, my sister has called and informed me what we are having on Thanksgiving and giving me ideas what to bring and frankly I didn’t have the guts to tell her that I am not coming. I’m not. I just can’t do these family things any longer. I have pretty much severed the ties with my three sisters who live in one town, but the sister who raised me, well, it’s harder and she is like a mother to me. But they are so fundamentally Christian and staunch republicans and racists and homophobes and war mongers that I hate being around them. For instance, my sister’s husband, Mr. Know It All, well, he tries to bait the educated fool that would be me. You see, while I am in my last year of earning my masters, I am the most educated in our family, of all our family, including in laws, cousins, and everything in between. Of my siblings, besides me, only my sister who raised me, Mother Hen, has even graduated high school, so they see me as an educated fool, thus the baiting.

Most of the day is spent, prior to forcing too greasy of food down my throat, smiling when the women, including me, prepare, serve, and wait on the men to finish eating before we actually sit down. The men retire to the living room, while we clean up the mess and keep running around officering pie to the adults and chasing after the kids, who are hyper from so much sugar. They watch ball games and discuss politics and religion and I just want to say, no that is not what the Bible says and I used to say that and then they would drag out the Bible and I would prove my point and they would say that I was taking it out of context and I would say, no, I’m not.

The conversations, of the last couple of years, revolve around liberal fools, illegal aliens, and why not just drop a bomb on the Middle East. I look at them all and just want to scream but I am always too doped up to do anything but count the minutes that are required after eating before I can leave, according to Ms. Manners.

This year, I am cooking a nice turkey and making dressing and maybe sweet potatoes and probably long green beans and asparagus. I will make one pie, maybe a cake and invite friends over. This year, I am calling Mother Hen and telling her that I am just not able to come down, that I think it is time for me to have my own traditions begin. And those traditions are going to include, my immediate family and my friends. I just hope I don’t chicken out and tell her I am sick. That is my usual get-out-of-family-free-card.

Grateful? About what?

2006-09-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

Per Oprah's five things to be thankful for:
1. I have a roof over my head when so many haven't and the roof is sturdy.
2. My underwear are finally in style, you know, the staying in the crack thing.
3. I have a new computer and am no longer sharing my laptop with Mr. Zelda.
4. I have The Good Son.
5. My grandchildren.

I really have to work at finding good things in my life. Hmmm, I mean, yeah, I breathe, and yeah, I eat, and yeah I have comforts, but there seems to just be this crap that falls in my lap every fucking day. Crap like stupid ass freshmen who speak before thinking, yep; and sophmores, who just think the world owes them space, so they take it and won't fucking move out of my way when I need space; and the damned juniors, who are almost there and strut, yes they do; and finally the fucking seniors, who are just weird. Now, what about the other ones, you know, my peers, the graduate students. I would need a fucking book.

Suffer, I say.

2006-09-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

So, I'm trying to translate and Mr. Zelda is driving me nuts. So, I just put the books up and am sitting here playing, now he falls asleep. Geeze. The thing with transaltions, for me anyway, is that I just can't jump in and translate. I have to be in the groove, it's sorta like writing. I have to be there mentally and have my favorite pencil, eraser, and all my books just so, and if there is an interruption to the flow, I'm pretty much fucked. So, he is asleep and I'm thinking how he would feel if I pulled that long hair out of his nose. It would burn, sure, it would wake him up, sure, but how would I feel. Let me see. Yep, pretty much made my day.

Homophobes doing well here on the hill.

2006-09-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

There is a climate at the university, a fearful climate. It started with the letters to the editor. Two students gay bashed, not just gay bashed, they talked about how that gays shouldn’t have rights, that they should have their children taken away, that they are an abomination and are going to hell, they said that we should lock them up. I mean, it was so scary to think that our young folk are so filled with hate and rage to write such venom. But, as I hung out around the lobby, waiting for my class, some of the other students were reading the comments out loud and saying things like, right on, or it’s about time the Christians had a voice. You can not reason with them. It’s a really sad day when are youth are so filled with hate that they can not see a person for who they are, but instead, identify them by their sexual orientation, nationality, color, religion, and sex. We are living in bad times.

The Heat Is OFF

2006-09-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

So, the weather is changing. We have left the triple digit heat behind and our seeing more days the eighties and rare nineties at night, fifties, yes. It is cooling off enough for a sweater a couple of mornings and today, we are having a thunder storm. It looks like a typical fall storm. Mostly loud thunder and the rain is a drizzle with a threat of a down pour. I noticed the pear trees are turning and some of the leaves on the sugar maples are turning. Even the oaks are getting their tent, that almost golden edged before the entire tree goes to a golden glorious sight.

We are eating fresh pears and apples, the fall fruit, and even the fall peaches are ripe and good. And we are also drinking fresh apple cider, and no more melons, I am tired of melons.

Last evening, hubby and I went to a dinner hosted by the head of the comparative lit department and the cultural study staff was there as well and it was so nice, for a change, to be the minority white. There were Arabs from all over the Middle East, and Latin America was well represented and it felt so good to have these people introduce us to their culture via their dress and their food and it just felt nice. It was the first time in a long time that I was happy that I chose comparative lit. Plus, I think I scored points with the head of the department. While I don’t judge others, I think he has judged me as a middle aged white woman choosing to fill her bored days by hobnobbing with the minorities and for once he saw that I don’t look down on him or any one else, that I am truly interested in their cultures, their literature, and their lives. I believe he saw that I was in deed sincere and maybe he will now recommend me for a position. Who knows. He did spend a lot of time talking to me, and his wife and I talked almost the entire time about recipes, child rearing, and of course my favorite subject, the classics. She, too, likes the classics. Go figure. He was really happy that I am taking two more semesters of Spanish so that I can take the class that I want and the instructor only teaches in Spanish. Okay, I’m off to clean my kitchen and figure out what to cook for supper, maybe the girls, the graduate students that I have adopted, will make steaks. I am letting them come over and cook. HEHE.

Always in hiding

2006-09-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

Some of us had these people in our lives who felt compelled to remind us that we were sexual beings, even when we were children, they were on this mission to keep us aware of our sexuality. That we were developing and because we had breasts now, we should hide them and while one of the biggest observers of my development was my mother’s boyfriend, yep that one, well there were others, and like many other women today that have had similar scripts, what they said and did caused me to have this retarded view of me and it makes me wonder why they do it, why the very people we love and are supposed to protect us, do these things.

For me, it was two of my three older sisters. They were older than me by over a decade, and as it happened, when I started puberty, they were married with children and always seemed to have children on the way. Okay, that’s okay but two of my older sisters well they lived next door to us, one on either side, and they were over our house day and night, which means that their husbands were there too and their babies. Since my sisters were still young women, in their early twenties, I realize now, they were jealous of me for a lot of reasons, but the main one, I wasn’t spitting out babies every nine months nor was I tied down with those babies; they were also jealous of how their husbands responded to me. They weren’t perverted or anything like that, but they joked with me and flirted a little, it was innocent, or I think it was innocent.

Even when my sisters weren’t pregnant, they were shaped differently than I, not that I had huge breasts, but they had none, nope, never more than an A cup, and they had no waist and a flat butt and when the babies started coming, they developed little tummies. I, on the other hand, was normal breasted, had curves, and had that butt that was perfect, no, it really was, it complemented my sway back just enough and not too much. Plus, I played ball and had a musculature body, hell, I had to have muscles, I was the only girl in a neighborhood of twenty boys. There was never doll playing for me, it was softball and kick ball and bike racing and all of that, even up until my mother died and I had to move away from my life long friends.

So, I didn’t know it at the time, it was always jealousy, but unfortunately for me, I thought they just hated me. How did all of that influence me? As soon as I began to develop breasts and a waist and hips, well, my pregnant, always pregnant, sisters were right there telling me my shirt was too small or my pants too tight or why don’t I put some clothes on or even yelling to my mother that I was boy crazy and would she make me put some clothes on. I remember my sisters and how mad they got when their husbands looked at me. I was thirteen and they were afraid their husbands saw me in a sexual way and instead of taking it up with their husbands, they took issue with me, it was my fault, I was the little slut who was walking around trying to seduce these over sexed men. Yes, little ole me and now all these years later and I still feel the need to hide behind shirts that are way too big and pants that don’t show nothing of my real body. One day, a few years back, my one sister said, “You know, you always stayed in your room and read. I remember you locking the door and not letting anyone in and when you finally did open the door, there were always open books on the bed.” I said, “I was hiding.”

Those fucked up people.

2006-09-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

So, I’m at the University, and I’m studying Latin, and I hear them, even with my hearing aides turned off, I hear them, and what’s worse, I see them. Who are they? They are young men and women who are members of the on campus religious group, that’s who they are, and what they do, they pass on their love, loudly, overtly physically, and annoyingly.
Why do they always have to hug, not male to male or female to female, no their damned repressed sexual selves have to do the mixed sex hug, the one that is trying so hard to restrain but their bodies can’t restrain and they hug a little too long and some grinding happens and they are sick, fucking sick. Plus they talk loudly, they want everyone to hear about how god has blessed their lives and how they are so happy and content and right where they want to be, fucking through their clothes and hoping no one knows it and, well, it’s all just way to sick to even talk about. Today’s discussion, that Rosie from the View who was talking about fundamentalists’ Christians being as dangerous as those Arab people, yes that is how they said it, those Arab people.

A MEME

2006-09-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

Meme
How Long Have You Been Blogging?

Hmmm, soon to be two years. Thanks to Delagar for giving me yet one more addictive behavior to occupy my time.

Self-Portrait:
I am one of those people when children and dogs see, well they are instantly my friend. Long gray and black hair, more gray than black. I suppose you would say that I am darker than most white folks, green eyes, if that’s important, and I am not one of those women who worries over clothes, never have been, never will be, just have way too many other things to keep my mind busy. I’m portly, or do they just use that with men? Was thin, but gained a lot of weight when I was sitting for ten years in a wheel chair and why do women, especially, feel the need to justify being overweight. I’m overweight, no big deal. I’m short but believe it or not, I’m the next to the tallest one in my family. Now, my children are giants, taking after my father and their father, both jerks, the fathers, I mean. I have bad eye sight for up close so I wear triple bifocals. Yep, without my glasses can’t see to read or write or even cook. My best feature, I’m not so sure I have a best feature, I suppose if I had to pick my best feature, it would be my eyes. Not brown, not green, but sorta in between.

Why Do Readers Read Your Blog:
Like a train wreck, maybe, they just want to watch it crash. Hell, I don’t know. Sometimes they are entertaining, but most of the time, they are just fucking depressing.

What is the last search phrase someone used to reach your blog:
I don’t know what that means either.

Favorite way to find blogging material:
It’s my life, that’s where I get it.

Favorite blogs:
Waiterrant
http://delagar.blogspot.com/
http://writingasjoe.blogspot.com/
http://thedeesdiversion.blogspot.com/
http://ogblay.blogspot.com/
http://amousehole.blogspot.com/
http://thedeesdiversion.blogspot.com/
http://www.pandagon.net/
http://geekymom.blogspot.com/
http://dmorgen.blogspot.com/
I have more but got tired of copying.

What blog did you read last:
That would be waiterrant only because he is so damned entertaining.
Why am I so technologically fucking useless:
Well, I think it is because I click before I think, much like my mouth, talking before I think, well in this age of blogging and communicating via the computer, my fingers do the talking, thus the click before I think. So, when I am trying to do something, I get hasty and click and then it’s all fucked up. So that’s what I think.

Who do I tag:
Oh mouse, where are you? I tag mouse.

2006-09-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

Mr. Zelda and I spent the weekend rock hunting. I have to say that the place where we hunted was on a Peninsula in the middle of the White river way up in Missouri. The cliffs along the side are made from granite, marble, and there are veins of flint, so, it was a place where the Native Americans spent a lot time. They probably made tools there and over the years a great many spear heads and knives and arrowheads have been found. So, Mr. Zelda and I drove down the sand bar and we got out and sat in the sand and I sifted through pounds and pounds of white sand. I found a tool, it’s what looks like a tool used to make the arrow heads. I don’t know much about tool making, but I found some like it on the good sites for arrow heads and mine even has the little markings that indicated it was used often. My big find was a huge petrified root rock. It’s a huge piece from a much larger piece. The roots are so perfectly petrified, they almost look alive and there are other markings around the roots like small animals may have been scratching and eating on the roots. The man who found them said he had an old tree that he couldn’t get up so he used a big tractor and when he was scraping the dirt out, he came upon this huge rock and he broke it up with his big dirt digger and piled them all in a huge rock pile. He gave a few of them to my friend and she gave one to me. She thought the tree he cut down was the tree that left the root pattern on the rock, not so according to my research. That tree wasn’t nearly old enough to have petrified roots. Any way, my weekend rock hunting paid off big time. Next time, I’m going for rose rock. A friend or someone I emailed and will probably be my friend before it’s all over is letting me dig in her pasture where there is a huge vein. So what happens when I have more rocks than room?

The Destruction of Iraqi's people

2006-08-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

My friend is from Iraq, and he is in this country to get a Masters degree. Last year he and I became more than just casual friends, meaning, we talked about our families and other things, but this year, we are confidants, as much as we can be with our cultural and linguistic differences. He understands about 75 percent of my English and I understand about 95 percent of his English. I don’t know if that is good or bad. Today, I saw him and he looked like he has lost weight, and he certainly had an air of worry to his facial expression. I asked him about his family and he began to tell me how worried he is for his family, how they can’t leave their home, not just because of the fear of what the radical right wing religious groups would do, but also what the American soldiers would do to them too. He said that while Americans think we are over there creating a democracy, we are really over there stirring up trouble between the religious zealots, the Iraqis, and the Arabs, all who want control of the country. Those citizens who just want to live are caught in the middle. I asked him when he goes back will he teach and he said that all professors, scientists, and any other professionals are being killed. He said his brother’s neighbor, who was the major, was cut open with large swords and left on his family’s doorsteps and a warning was given to leave the body or more would die, so for days the body lay in the desert heat, decomposing while his family had to go about business as usual until finally they were allowed to bury him. My friend is very sad and worried about his family and his country. He is also being harassed by ignorant ass holes around here who think he is a terrorist because he is from Iraq. He was even told not to discuss the conditions in Iraq that there are too many students at our university who will rat him out and he could face deportation or his family could face repercussions. When we were talking, I realized that his is probably the first time that I have truly been so ashamed of the country of my birth, that I am ashamed of what we have done to his country and his people and if folks in this country are so damned ignorant to think that we are creating a safe democratic country over there, they need to talk to people who are from there, who still have family members there, and get the truth. My heart is so heavy for my friend and I am going to have him over for food at my house and have some of my friends over and let him know that we are not all ignorant in this country.

What the fuck, I'm eating potato soup

2006-08-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

It’s here, no they’re here. Yep, saw them, ran into them, they ran into me, saw them on the street, at the school, and even, yes, the food court at the mall. Man who dresses these kids and how old are they? So, having said that, no further explanation needed, right? Anyway, bought my books, love buying books, no matter what, and don’t care if they are text books, love it. Mine, over 350 bucks and almost all are used. No biggey, that’s my new thing, no biggey. If I say it enough, I might believe it; plus I’m getting manic, the cycle must go on. My mom used to believe that babies were marked while still fetuses, hell even embryos and she swore that when she was just pregnant with me ( that meaning only a few months or weeks), a wolf chased her, which I doubt, probably a collie, but then I read about Lyacon, and maybe she was right, maybe my bi polar is really a mark, you know, the metamorphosis from depressed to normal to manic and my all time favorite super mania. Yep, that’s what I cycle when I cycle and it ain’t fun, I ain’t having no kind of fun.

So back to my point. Here on the hill, well it’s like going to New York to some of these folks in rural Arkansas, no shit. So, they bring their funky kids to the hill for college and the entire fucking family tags, yep, cousins, siblings, grandmas’, and everyone in between, and they get their little freshmen all settled, yep, settled, that’s what it’s called here in Arkansas, moving is settled, and then they all go to the mall because everyone fucking knows that J.C.Penny’s at this mall is so much better than the one in the Fort, or down in the swamps; or even Wal-Mart, so much nicer stuff they have on their shelves here on the hill so let’s go disturb the town’s folks who have to shop on Saturday and let’s walk around looking at the bright lights, let’s allow our children to go nuts and run up and down the escalators almost knocking down the locals until one of the locals fear that one of the children might actually fall and get hurt, lose fingers, and she (that be me) says in a mean tone, stop that running before you fall and lose your fingers on those stairs that move. So I ruin their fun. Am I bitter? Nah. I will wait, things settle down, and soon, those little freshmen will acclimate, they will assimilate, they will be one with their new home.

Where is the line

2006-08-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

Jo(e) did a really good post on abuse and what is being done to fight for the survivors of spousal abuse. I, for one, know that abuse is a terrible way for men and women to live, and men, too, come out of abusive relationships, we sometimes forget that. But, there are those relationships where no one hits, or screams, or rapes, or does any of those violent acts, but do things that are controlling, like trying to alienate their spouse from friends and family, or try to stay so involved in every aspect of the abused one's life that soon they are going every where and doing everything with that person, the abuse person. I guess what I'm saying is, there is a fine line between a concerned spouse and a spouse who is trying to control and sometimes, especially during crisis or during moments where there are a lot of things going on, that line gets crossed and once crossed, it is hard as hell to go back. I don't know if you can even go back, I mean, can you go back? Can you get that control back and say stop it, I don't need you to follow me here or go with me there or why are you doing this to me? I mean, do abused women, or are abused women marked, do they, do we, attract only men or women who either want to hit us, rape us, emotionally rape us, or control our lives to the point of suffocation? Life is so hard.

I'm tagged

2006-08-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

I was tagged, the first time ever to be tagged. It was Chica Mama who did the dirty deed so here goes, not sure I can put my best foot forward, but here goes.

1. one book that changed your life?
The first book was Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess, that was the book that I learned to read and it was my very first and only book that I owned, well, when I was a preschool. The next one was Anne Frank’s Diary, I was young and it made me see things differently. Gave me a view of how crazy man can be and how cruel man can be. There are so many but another life changing book was The Odessy, it gave me an interest in mythology.

2. One book that you have read more than once?
Oh my, I read so many more than once. I have read Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove at least four times. I never tire of Little Women, or Little House in the Big Woods, or The Good Earth. The Clan of Cave Bear. I can tell you there are so many, but those are a few.

3. One book you would want on a desert island? Probably Lonesome Dove, silly I know, but it is so entertaining and his characters are so life like.

4. One book that made you laugh? Carmello by Sandra Cisnero. Very funny and true to life.

5. One book that made you cry? Lonesome Dove. Of Mice and Men

6. One book you wish had been written? Pride and Prejudice

7. One book you wish had never been written The left behind books.

8. One book you are currently reading? Ovid and The Popol Vuh. I know, what am I thinking

9. One book you have been meaning to read? There are too many.

Tag 5 people to do the meme: Mouse, you’re it, Delagar, you too, Mike, if you are here, do it, Dragon Fly quit your lurking and get busy doing this thing, and finally Otrgirl. Go, I say, and do the meme.