The Shack; God in me

I have finished reading William P. Young's "The Shack". I am absolutely blown away by this book. There should be an inscription in the front saying, "Dedicated to Jeanie [fill in your name] because I am especially fond of you. Love, Papa (God)."

This book touches my heart like no other. It answers questions about some senseless tragedies that have happened to me personally, to friends, to the world.

I will be participating in a book study with the newspaper blog, Huckleberries, on Monday. I have just finished the book and I'm ready to dive in for a second reading.

I encourage you to get your own copy and participate at Huckleberries.

Life as Dilbert

One of my favorite Brits MarmiteToasty posted at "I am surrounded by STUFF":

Does your new cubicle make you a square? LOL

Humpf. Funny, Marmite. I am getting used to my round body in my not-quite square box , and yes, I probably could be defined as a square. Haven't heard that term/slang in years. When my son came home from being in the Army for four years, he kept saying he would get something "squared away." The two terms for square meaning entirely different things, and having nothing to do with the Dilbert quality of my berth.

Well, I have made the initial move. I have taken the attitude of "simplify, simplify, simplify." Most of my personal possessions went home in five banker's boxes, including extra shoes, heating pad for my poor ailing back from all the packing and unpacking and filing and re-filing, my clock radio because it just doesn't fit anywhere logically unless I hang it by its chord from the ceiling, my fru-fru frivolous stuff that had nothing to do with secretarial work, cups and mugs that I have received over the last ten years. All my software books for Word 97, Word 2003, Excel 97, Excel 2003, and training manuals for each got trashed along with files that I had in my desk for "tips for working with your boss" older than two months because bosses change their habits at a whim and firms change your boss at an even faster pace.

I am "stuffed" into my rectangular, not square, box that is claustrophobic at best. I have been listening to two co-workers talk talk talk, who I really liked, before today, and now find extremely annoying with chit-chat, hogging the printer, mumbling under their breath, and generally invading the space I lost when I moved to this cramped cubicle.

I have concluded that it is wisest to have as little personal items as possible so that if I get totally disgusted with the whole situation, or my retirement age miraculously moves down a couple years, I can sweep my hands across the top shelf and toss everything in a box, grab my purse, and my exit check, run laughing all the way to the bank, and never worry about small dark places again. Ever.

Here's a tour of the top shelf: two plants (they can go into the garbage at a moment's notice); four rubber duckies – one a red hat duckie, one a dentist duckie to encourage me to keep on keeping on with my dental care, and a bride and groom duckie set from my son's wedding – they fit in my purse; a little glass kitty since I can't have a living one at this stage in my life (also fits in my purse); and a third plant (a "lucky" bamboo that I am thinking about tossing right now because it's NOT WORKING), and awaaaaayyyy I go.

So, I am spending much of my time praying for the social security gods to take pity on me and lower the age of retirement to 60 – I just have eight months to go. Woo Hoo.

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Some of my best friends are men

I have several groups of friends who are women. A prayer group. A red hat group. A group of women who have been meeting once a month for dinner for 30 years. And I have a few good men who are very special friends. All my friends support me and listen to me, but it is especially endearing and eye-opening to get input from my men friends on, well, MEN. You guys think WE are difficult to understand. Hoo boy. Anyway – my heart has a soul mate in a man friend who continually lifts me up and buoys my spirit and inflates my pitiful self esteem – and answers so logically my perplexing questions about what makes a man tick. I am blessed!

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I am surrounded by "stuff"

I have had to unload my desk at work to get ready to move to another, much smaller, cubicle on another floor. So, I came in this weekend and filled eight boxes of "stuff" from my desk. Half of it was work related, so I don't feel too bad about THAT. However, the other half was all personal – knickknacks, figurines, stuffed animals (so professional, don't ya think?), collectible tea cups, pictures, a wall full of ribbons that I have saved over the past ten years from every present and flower I have received. Stuff. Bits and pieces of things that have nothing to do with my job as a secretary. My life and personality lives on and in my desk and is now crammed into four banker's boxes. I have marked them "GO HOME" and am debating whether I should take them to my new cubicle, which is where I will be settled for most of my waking day, thus "home" away from home. Or take them HOME to my house.

The only drawback will be that nobody will know it is ME that sits in that cubicle – no signs of my passions, my possessions, my personality. The advantage will be that if I should {gulp} get a pink slip for whatever dire reason, I can simply pick up my purse and walk out the door. No packing! No having the office manager stand over me while I take four hours to unload my non-work-related "stuff."

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The Monster List

Contrary to "Happy Lists" (a great blog), I have Mad, Mad, Mad Lists. Actually I have one list on legal-sized yellow-lined paper. It's handwritten in different colors of ink: blue for normal-get-it-done-when-you-can; red for chop-chop need-it-yesterday; and green for whenever; I have a date at the top and then a whole list of "to do" items. Well, I go along with all I normally do in a day, and later I get out my list and add more to my list and a new date. Sometimes I will draw an arrow from one item (work on Smith file) to another item of a different date (work on Smith file).

What good does it do me to make a list of priority items that I need to do now but don't have time to do until tomorrow because I am too busy making up my list of projects to do tomorrow and then tomorrow I'll look at the list and see an item from ten days ago and I'll FINALLY get it crossed off, but there are so many arrows going to items that I spilled over to another day. I feel like Scarlett, chanting, "tomorrow is another day." Or like Orphan Annie, singing "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I'll do it Tomorrow" "There's Always . . . . Tomorrow!" And then my Clark Gable inner twin says, "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn."

My green items are colored over with blue. My blue items become red. My red items are catching fire.

I need a keeper.

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A New Kind of Wedding

This weekend my two sons and the younger son's wife will fly to San Francisco for an event that is historical in our family. Their father is getting married to his soulmate, another man. The times, they have been a'changin', that's for sure. I guess I did something right in raising my boys to appreciate their father as an intelligent and compassionate man and not berate him for choosing a different lifestyle.

What do you get for a gay couple's wedding if one of them is your ex?

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Is it just me???

So, when a lady just about my age calls me "honey," does it mean she thinks I'm a lot younger - or a lot older?

When reporters write about someone my age, do they say I'm elderly? I'm not a senior citizen yet and I guess 59 is waaaaaayyyyyy past "middle age." What am I?

But back to the honey lady. I've had women much, much older than me call me "honey." It's nice. It makes me feel like a little girl (and probably I am to her). But someone my own age? It just makes me wonder. . . is she blind? Or do I look a lot better than I think I do. Or does she think I'm old enough to be her grandmother?

When my mother-in-law had her stroke, I started calling her honey. Some days she knew her name and other days she didn't. It was just a lot less frustrating if I called her honey. She knew it was an endearment. If she was having one of her off days and I called her by her real name, she wondered who the hell *I* was, let alone why was I talking to someone not even in the same room. It just was easier to relent and call her honey.

However, when my significant other calls me honey - I am on alert. Because he calls everyone honey - especially women who are being nasty to him. Like clerks. When that happens I want to shout at them, "He's being SARCASTIC, you ninnie." But I don't. When he says it to me, though, I do a mental rollback in my head of anything I have said in the last five minutes that might be considered offensive. Granted, sometimes he is really being a romantic guy and calling me by a pet name.

If he calls me Chunkie Butt, I know he loves me.

Actually, I don't think he knows my name. In the last 22 years, I have never heard him say my name.

So, I was at a gift shop this weekend, when the clerk called me 'honey' several times. She looked to be about 60. I am still wondering which end of the scale she thought I was? Old? Young?

Have I become an old lady without any warning???

Hey! The rules totally change when it's a guy calling me an endearment. Then, depending on how hunkie he is, I immediately fantasize on my good fortune!! I blush, preen, bat my eyes, and feel twittery. Sean Connery can have me! George Clooney! Antonio Banderas! Yummy! I don't even question my age with those cuties.

But a Woman. My. Age???? Total turn off.

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The Despicable, Dastardly, Yet Desirable and Coveted Cell Phone

I am highly skilled at computer software and training staff members in Word, Excel, and just about any software that comes along. I do it well. I do it fast. I am excellent at it!

But, give me a cell phone, and I'm all thumbs. If I had to text an SOS I would be SOL, TU, and FUBAR. Don't ask.

I bought a cell phone for my Significant Other (S.O.) so he could call me when he is so engrossed in his job (restoring engines) and is in a dark place far, far away from a phone, to tell me he is going to be late(er) for dinner.

After two years of this, I finally got my own cell phone. For, you know, emergencies. But first, I needed to spend an hour with a magnifying glass to read the little manual with the teeny tiny print to see how to customize my phone. It was days before I learned how to leave an intro message that simply said, "hi, this is Jeanie. I am away from my phone right now…." No, wait, how can you be "away" from your cell phone when you have it duct taped to your right hand? "Hi, this is Jeanie. I can't come to the phone right now…." Same quandary. "Hi, . . . . I can't talk right now because I am already talking to someone else."

Finally settled for "sorry I missed your call, please leave a message."

That took about two weeks to figure that out. Then there was choosing the ringtone. I could choose New Age tinny sounds, rippling tinny music sounds, annoying indescribable tinny sounds. Or I could go online right from my phone and find sounds from movies, sounds from famous people, sounds from cartoons, sounds from Disney. . . and I immediately thought of "It's a Small World" and shuddered. Can you imagine? Just thinking of that song will cause an endless loop running inside my head for 48 hours. What would happen if it was my ringtone? I'd probably lose my mind by the end of the week. So I settled for the T-Mobile theme music.

I snapped a picture (with my cell phone after I figured out which button was the camera) of my cat and miraculously made it my "wallpaper." These things I can do blindfolded on my computer. It takes a little extra bit of time to figure this out on my cell phone.

All this is to say that it probably took me a year to figure out how to put names in my phone book, how to save my pictures, how to download sounds (at $1.99 each). And then my cell phone was pick-pocketed right out of my purse while I was at a little neighborhood store. In two minutes, my 14-month investment of brain cells trying to puzzle out the different functions of my cell phone was gone.

So now I have a new cell phone and I am having to start all over. It's not the same. My cat has since died and I no longer have his picture. My sons' numbers were in my lost cell phone and I didn't have their numbers anywhere else because they were, well, IN MY CELL PHONE. They change numbers so often that I have given up memorizing their numbers. I can't keep up. So, finally one son called and I immediately saved his phone number into my cell phone and managed to spell his name correctly – something I was never able to fix in the old cell phone. Andy was forever AmdY (I don't know how I did it).

I think my only solution is to take my new phone and go to a middle school and just hand it to the first 12-year old I see and have them set it up for me.

I also got a Blue Tooth to use while I'm driving so I won't be breaking Washington laws of not using your cell phone while you are driving (which is not being followed by the way). Only – I have this little tiny booklet with teeny tiny print. . . – So, how long will THAT take me to figure out????

I can always put the Blue Tooth on my ear (if I can figure that out), and jabber at all the idiot drivers, cursing their mothers, and look like I'm talking "hands free" on my cell phone.

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Clowns Rule!

For some reason, I have been thinking about clowns. I was sitting with a secretarial group this week, when one asked a question of all of us: Tell us something about yourself we never knew.

In the answers, one of us is a stock car racer on weekends. One was a police decoy for busting drug dealers. And one is a professional clown but she only performs for her grandchildren. (Keep in mind, these are very professional legal secretaries and paralegals.)

I've always wanted to be a clown. Inside I'm a clown. Outside I am a shy, quiet, legal secretary that dresses conservative and doesn't wear makeup (uh, maybe I should). Inside I'm also a race car driver with a bent towards demolition derbies.

When my boys were little, their aunt made them clown costumes, one-size-fits-all, which meant they were clowns from the time they were 3 and 4 until they were 13 and 14 and finally mutinied on the clown issue.

When I was 40, a coworker, Salina, thought it would be wonderful if a group of us came as clowns for Halloween at our office. (At that time, it was a manufacturing firm which made high speed printers.) She garnered two other "clowns" besides herself (yours truly and our marketing director) and supplied the costumes, the hair, and the nose. I traveled across town giggling the whole way to work, thinking how silly I looked and boy, I'd better not get in an accident. I made sure my underwear was brand-new looking just in case. (It would be the only semblance of dignity on my entire body.) I had visions of Mary Tyler Moore laughing helplessly and eternally as if I were Chuckles the Clown, crushed by an elephant because I was dressed as Peter Peanut. O dear.

I made it to work in one piece.

Then I heard all kinds of racket from the parking lot, banging on cars, snaky sounds, and spasms of giggles – and here comes the second clown, our dignified marketing director, ON ROLLER-SKATES. She hadn't skated since she was ten – so she was kind of like Bambi trying to move on ice. She spent the whole day on her skates – forever giggling.

And finally Salina arrived. She was sorry she was late because as she was getting in her car a county sheriff went slowly by and then backed up and rolled down his window. He looked at her very carefully and said in a very straight monotone voice, "We've been looking for a clown like you." And then threw his head back and barrel laughed all the way down the road – she could still hear him after two blocks.

We made it through the day, faithfully wearing our noses, and surviving all the stares and laughter at our expense, finally arriving at our homes in time to pass out candy to all the little clowns out there. (Oh, yeah, they were really awestruck!)

Since I've got the clown thing under my belt, I'm looking for a car. There's a demolition derby calling my name.

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To cell or not to cell, that is the question

I have been doing a lot of thinking about cell phones.

Are they absolutely crucial to own?

Since Washington passed a law July 1 banning using a cell phone while driving your car unless it is hands free, I have played a game of "Who's Talking on Their Cell Phone?" And it is just about every car that passes me. Are they hands free? The answer is a loud NO. They are NOT hands free. They are still holding the phone to the left ear with their left hand while they are turning left and NOT looking left. It drives me crazy!

And why is it that there is never a cop around when you see these little infractions one car after another? Drives me totally freaking nuts. Can I make a citizen's arrest? If I catch their eye (unlikely since they aren't looking this way anyway), I do the "I see you" motion with two fingers pointed at my eyes and then turned to theirs. Or I mouth "CELL PHONE!" and pick mine up and mouth "POLICE" except it would be my stupid luck to have a cop right behind me and arrest ME for being on a cell phone while driving, which means he'll pick out something else to go along with it because it is only a secondary offense. I'll have to hawk my cell phone to get out of jail.

Worse – jaywalkers doing the same thing: holding the cell phone over their left ear, with their left hand, crossing a one-way street where all traffic is barreling down onto the jaywalker's left side, while the jaywalker is going merrily along as if "what I don't see isn't there."

I really want to grab that phone and superglue it to their ear. Now, THAT's what I call hands free.

I have never understood the importance of having to talk right now, no matter what. In restaurants. On the bus. Walking along the street.

And then there are the good souls who have gone totally hands free, using a Blue Tooth in their ear. They always look like they are talking to themselves. When I first came across this phenomenon, I truly thought the person talking in normal conversation at "something" in front of him, while walking down the street was certifiably insane. Get the straight jacket! Get the funny bus! Save me from all these insane people – gaggles of gabbers talking to nobody. Then I learned about Blue Tooth.

When I got my own cell phone, I did it as a last resort. I don't talk on the phone other than to tell someone else that I will meet them at this place at that time, see ya. My sons have as their sole phone their cell phone. So I can never tell if they are nice and safe in their house when they call me, or illegally talking to me while they are driving their car.

I have used my cell phone during a couple emergencies – flat tire here. Flat tire a week later (same tire). Flat tire a month later (different tire). All late at night, all on a dark stretch of road. So there are benefits of having a cell phone.

So this weekend I was thinking about the pros and cons of using a cell phone, using one hands free, investing in a blue tooth headset. . . . and just before I was planning to sit down to write this, I had stopped at a little store near my house, bought a thing of ice cream, got home and saw that I had stupidly left my cell phone at my other house (I live with my significant other six days out of the week and come to my house Sundays to do the laundry). I drove back to the little store and used the pay phone (THAT is a whole other article about germs, gooey sticky stuff on phones, and other creepy crawly things that attach themselves to public phones that we are privileged to use at 50 cents a whack) to tell my SO that I had done it again – placed my phone down somewhere, the bathroom? The kitchen counter? The dressing table? He would look for it later, he said.

I went back and started another load of laundry when my SO shows up. He couldn't find my phone anywhere he said. So he called my cell thinking he'd be able to track it in the house. Guido answered! Then he passed it to Igor who passed it to Bubba. They are all joking around, being obscene, and my SO is giving the same right back until he finally hung up.

My phone had been lifted from my purse at that little store where I spent only two minutes.

Here's the timeline: I "lost" my phone around 7:50 p.m. Sunday night. SO called my cell at 8:15 and got Igor & Friends. SO speed bumped across the Valley to my home, kind of in a 'beam me down, Scotty, NOW' mode, and arrived at 8:45 (with a gun). I called T-Mobile at 9:00 (on hold for half an hour!!!) and the phone was suspended at 9:45. The mysterious new owner of my cell phone made one call to a house in my neighborhood at 9:00. He must have done something to occupy his time for 45 minutes and then made several calls up to midnight that were all aborted by T-Mobile. Heh.

Now – my first reaction was, well that's a bummer. Then the more I stewed about it, the ickier I felt. I have spent all morning trying to get a new phone. I'll pay. Boy will I pay. The operator asked if I had insurance on my cell phone and I kind of giggled and said "Heck no. What do I need that for?" And instantly I knew – that old adage, "it's not IF, it's WHEN" popped into my head. I'll have insurance on the new phone.

Anyway for someone who has so little to do with cell phones, this was a big huge deal. Hey - I also got a Bluetooth. Now, when I talk to myself, I will really be talking to someone else. :)

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Girls' Night Out -or- The Fire Up There

Tonight is my monthly dinner with four friends. We have been doing this eating thing for 30 years, monthly, religiously, unfailingly, devotedly. We save up our individual little daily "adventures" (single mothers (well, parents generally) have very few days that roll along without and "adventure") and then we share them at our dinner table, along with commiserating with each other on their unique adventures of the last four weeks.

This time we can hardly stand ourselves to sit by idly waiting for the minutes to pass until 6:30. One of our group lived through and survived the Spokane Valley View Fire of 2008, Thursday July 10. Last Thursday we had a fierce wind storm that whipped up a little campfire to a roaring frenzy, aiming it at an exclusive gated community of very expensive homes, with one single access road going north. The fire and the smoke were unbelievable, the wind insurmountable. In the end, the firestorm acted like some tornado you would see in Indiana. It twisted and turned and jumped any which way, striking one house, leaving another, and pouncing on the third. Eleven houses were burned. There was little carnage – it burned so hot and fast, that nothing is left except cement pillars, cement porches, cement foundations, and lots of ash. It spread over 1,000 acres, slipping through the locked community gate and indiscriminately changed lives forever. Fortunately, and blessedly, there were no injuries or deaths. Not sure about pets – but people came out from everywhere, strangers, and took in dogs, cats, horses, goats, while their human families were evacuated.

My dinner group friend lives in the middle of the fire zone. She and her sister (another of my dinner group) were doing errands on Thursday and noticed the smoke coming from the area quite a ways west of my friend's house. They both thought nothing of it - that it was just a small brush fire or maybe even a controlled burn. They went on with their chores. When she drove up to her house, though, a guy was parked by her driveway and she asked him why he was there and he said "Oh, I'm just watching that fire." She looked over and it was suddenly a lot of smoke - an awful lot. She still felt safe though - that the wind was blowing more northerly than southerly. However, when she got in the house, her animals were all acting totally nuts and she decided to take caution, even if it were too much, and started gathering important papers.

She is WAAAYYYYY more organized than I am. She was able to instantly put her hands on: a box of pictures; a box of bills and statements; and a box of all the receipts and floor plans for her house, which she and her husband built about ten years ago. She loaded the boxes into her car, gathered up the animals and stuffed them beside the boxes, and started down the road - only to come across fire on both sides - near the Pring house (a two million dollar mansion which would be engulfed moments after she passed). A little trickle of fire was running across the road and she floored it past there and drove until she reached a "meadow" which was a baseball field that one of the gated community residents built. There she waited with about 30 other residents, AND a fireman. They couldn't get down further because a larger branch of the fire was burning across the road. They sat there in pretty much a safe zone and watched the fire burn around them, sweep up towards her house, and crawl around and down the other side across from the baseball field. About two hours later, they all were led out of the fire zone. Her house was saved - but the two on either side of her were burned to the ground.

So I have been quite introspective lately. I could easily be jealous of my friend – she lives on top of the world, with a great view, locked safely in behind a key-coded gate, in a house that she and her husband built, their dream home, for half a million (one of the lower end houses).

There is much to be thankful for that we (well, I) take for granted. My house is paid for, is comfortable and fits me, has good insurance on it, in case a purple elephant should fall on it. I have a plethora of friends that fill my various needs for affection, caring, praise, love, empathy. I have a good car that is paid for and gets 34 mpg, a real necessity today with soaring gas prices. I have two adult sons that are my whole life! A house is simply shelter. A house can be easily replaced. My friends and family cannot.

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Never a Domestic Goddess Will I Be

I have decided that domestic talent eludes me. It is simply not a priority for me – it’s not in my genes. It passed me by on the conveyor belt of life’s attributes.

I should have a warning sign that goes with me wherever I wander:

WARNING: Failed home economics in college (a basic requirement course, Home Ec. 101); marry at your own risk.

I once was a wife. A good one. I know the qualifications and duties and job description. Now, I want one.

My husband often hinted that we should work it into our pitiful budget to have a housekeeper. Yeah, right, on an Airman’s salary. You betcha.

I have decided the only help for me is to get a wife. I am going to post my wish on eBay this very second: Wife Wanted. They should be lining up at the back door as I write!

Now that I am NOT married (and no we didn’t get divorced because of my cleaning skills), I still play the role of wife. I am in a relationship going on 22 years. He doesn't work. I do. He is an auto mechanic and a great cook. I am neither.

Housekeeping and cooking and decorating just weren’t up there on top of my list of amazing talents. Sweeping stuff under the rug had a unique meaning to me – like, really! I can do that? Okaaaaaaay.

Don’t get me started on my total lack of skill when it comes to cooking. O My!

Within five minutes of arriving home from a day of working (my significant other says I am just sitting on my tush doing nothing physically exerting), he asks the inevitable burning question, "What's for dinner." I silently groan. Ack! And then I run through my mind the three things I can cook – fried chicken, fried pork, or hamburgers. I suggest "chicken?" and he immediately says, no, that doesn't appeal to him. "What does?" I ask, knowing he won't have an answer other than "I dunno." I'll go to my next item on my short list and get the same answer. It's pointless.

Keeping the contents of the refrigerator on a constant rotating “freshness” scale was also beyond my skills. I have bowls and jars and baggies in my fridge that are camouflaging what used to be edible items. Sometimes, when I lift the lid to try and guess the contents, I think that it speaks to me. “Yo! How ya do’in?” said in a deep gravelly voice coming from leftover asparagus (maybe). The fridge is so big that things can be shuffled back and forth until the back row is two weeks to two months old. What is the shelf-life of leftover macaroni and cheese? They don’t teach that in Home Ec. Nor do they even talk about leftovers. The bane of my kitchen existence. Have you seen lettuce if it is stuck behind the cucumbers and onions and carrots and radishes for, oh, two months. I have to get a Hazmat kit out to remove it.

Then there is working with home grown vegetables – all good in their own right – except for cleaning them. Lettuce! Lettuce is filled with...... BUGS. I don’t like bugs. They are icky. I can wash them just fine but later when I put the salad bowl on the table, I can’t eat the salad because I know where each one of those lettuce leaves have been. With bugs. Eeeuuuuuu.

That’s just the kitchen. There’s the dusting, polishing, vacuuming, sweeping, and we haven’t even entered the bathroom yet – a gargantuan Petri dish if I ever saw one. Maybe my kids could use the bathroom for a science project – and get an “A”.

I want a wife! I want someone (other than me) to think of what to have for dinner, have all the ingredients at hand or magically appear at a snap of her (my wife's) fingertips, prepare the dinner, set the table, call me to dinner, and then poof!, go invisible while I eat. Then I want my wife to wash the dishes, dry them and put them away. I want a wife who will dust all the furniture as she walks by, multitasking as she goes – she is a miracle worker and can plan for dinner, dust the coffee table, and fix the tear in my significant other's jeans. Just.Like.That. The floor is spotless and shiny. The refrigerator is organized, clean, and everything is edible! The bed is fresh and made. My work clothes are clean, pressed, and laid out for me to just jump into.

My wife also does massages.

Yep, I want a wife! All applications welcome.
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Move Over Moose!

The summer between High School and College, I worked for Yellowstone Park, along with about 100 other young people from Spokane, Washington. That summer of 1967, half of the Park's recruits were from Spokane while the scattering remaining summer staff came from all over the United States. It was an experience of a lifetime for me, precious and protected daughter, oldest of four children, first one to leave the nest and the state of Washington for a whole summer on my own.

I trained at the famous Spokane Davenport Hotel although I was never a maid once I reached the Park. I, along with one of my best friends, Mary, and two guys from Ohio, manned the Laundry/Shower at West Thumb, the southern-most location in the Park, with a motor home park the last stop. West Thumb was the most primitive of all the locations in the park, with one-room cabins and wood burning stoves. No extra amenities, no kitchens, no bathrooms. Employees slept on the northern edge of the “village,” four to a cabin. Ten years later, the tv series, M*A*S*H, mirrored my life at West Thumb. We even had a small cabin that was our movie house, all of us crammed into one small room and watching movies on an old fashioned reel, like we did in grade school.

Back at the laundry, I was stapling a receipt to another piece of paper, when I accidently stapled my thumb, in front of about a dozen people picking up their laundry.

“You ok?” One of the witnesses asked. “o yeah,” I teared, “just fine. I’m fine.” And keeled over backwards and mere seconds later opened my eyes to several pairs of eyes looking back down at me. “Really, I’m fine.”

After my work-related injury, I was repositioned at the reservation building which was above the cabin area, across a man-made berm that divided a swamp, which housed a moose. Charlie. Charlie was a lone eccentric moose. He ruled the swamp and wandered back and forth in a sporadic pattern. He wanted to be pals and then he didn’t. If you made eye contact, he’d pause for a second and then charge at you because it just dawned on him that this was HIS swamp and you had trespassed on holy ground. His ground. And we would invariably have to streak as fast as we could to the other side of the berm to escape Charlie. Now – if we didn’t make eye contact (and after one day of this, you learned to never make eye contact), he thought you couldn’t see him, and he would continue his lazy grazing of whatever he was grazing in oblivious bliss and you were safe to walk at your leisure across to the other side. He was still king of all he could see. (I usually flat out ran.)

Every day I would look both ways before leaving my cabin – not for Charlie, but for bears and, you won’t believe this, weasels. Real authentic weasels are understated models of their cartoon prototypes. They are small, carnivorous (meaning MEAT eating = ME), sly and sneaky little animals that you do not want to mess with. I passed one once who was head first in a garbage can, butt in the air, rooting for something edible. I scurried past him as stealthily as I could manage, and then fended my way through the swamp, sneaking by Charlie who figured since I wasn’t looking at him then he was invisible. (Invincible?)

Upon reaching my final destination of the reservation building, I would prepare to meet creatures of the human kind. All shapes and sizes. And mentality.

I grew to meet people with giggling fits because they would ask such silly things like “When will you be turning on Old Faithful?” I couldn’t contain myself, I would giggle hysterically until one of my co-workers would take over. They would chide me for my unprofessionalism and I would really, really try to keep a straight face. Then someone would come in and say something like, “I’m rushing today and would you please turn on the geyser right away so I won’t miss it?” Out of my mouth would raise this muffled gurgling “murphphph” and I’d clamp my hand over my mouth and run to the storage room.

When I first applied for work at Yellowstone Park, the application requested I list any talents I have. Well, yes – I am talented! I sing, play the piano, and I sing, play the piano. Guess I'm not THAT talented. Yellowstone Park has a very, very short summer – it happens in July. Towards the end of August it is possible to get snow. The Park employees celebrated Christmas in August and we had a traveling tour bus of any of the "talented" employees. When I arrived at Yellowstone, I was given a song book of Handel's Messiah and told to practice my part (alto) of the Hallelujah Chorus. By myself. So I practiced my fa-la-las walking to and from the reservation building (stifling my la las when passing Charlie), and got on a bus on August 25 where I was joined by stragglers throughout the park who also had talent – maybe a tenor, maybe a soprano. We arrived at one of the bigger lodges in Yellowstone that was decorated to the hilt with Christmas lights, trees, decorations, and all things Christmas. About 40 of us gathered together and performed the Hallelujah Chorus in front of a fairly large audience of tourists. And we did remarkably well, having had no rehearsal with each other. It was amazing! And as we were traveling back to our various locations, it snowed.

I missed Charlie and have been collecting stuffed moose ever since which are displayed in nooks and crannies around my desk at work (very professional, don't you think?)

When Your Children Drive

There is an urgent need for rules for your child to get his first driver’s license.

Yes, I have rules. I have two sons 17 months apart and I knew deep in my heart that when it came to the driver’s license season, I would be in deep hurt with trying to pay for my sons’ driver’s training, license fee, insurance, gas, and, and, and….. not to mention the worry involved in keeping them afloat. You see, mothers have a DNA code that is part of their brain, where they must visualize their baby child driver-wanna-be actually driving safely, following the rules, and NOT talking on their cell phone because you are positive they cannot multitask at the young age of 16.

So – my rules were modest and simple:

Earn at the very least a C average per semester. I know - low, low, low – but it takes the pressure off so they can concentrate on all the busy roads, crazy drivers, and all the spontaneous combustion that goes along the highway – jaywalkers, sirens, road rage, elephants falling from the sky (it could happen!).

Have a job to pay for the gas.

Have a really good job to also pay for the insurance.

Do the grocery shopping for your hard working mother.

Never drive after dark.

Never drive with someone else in the car with you unless they are old enough to be your parent, and then only if your actual parent gave permission.

No girls.

No boys.

No food, beverage, or any other item that might take your eyes off the road and your mind off your driving.

So, both boys opted to just not get their license nor drive until they were well out of the house, in their mid-20s.

My oldest joined the Army right out of high school. This is another story – but all their life I teased them that they would have to join the Army in order to pay for college. I was TEASING! But my oldest took me seriously and of all things he went into the Infantry. Shooting guns. Tell me that I didn’t just ramp up my scale of worrying to a fever pitch. Bad enough I worried when they would be driving – now shooting guns! Anyway, I was slightly mollified by the fact that he still didn’t have a driver’s license and therefore didn’t drive. But his buddies in the Army talked him into buying a truck, which he kept on base and the buddies spent their spare time tinkering on it. They taught him how to drive and so he drove around the barracks until he ran out of gas. They would pool their money and fill it with gas and he would venture to the other end of the base and back. Finally got his license when he was 24 years old.

My youngest knew how to drive; he would sneak out to my car and drive it around the block, until I caught him one day and grounded him for the rest of his natural life. He finally got his license when he was 26 years old.

Now that they had their licenses and their own cars, my mothering skills hyped up a notch, and I had to mentally focus on their driving skills by osmosis. It’s a mother’s duty. Drive carefully, I would say. Don’t pick up hitchhikers. Pay your insurance. Follow the rules. Don’t speed. Don’t tailgate. Don’t pass or turn without your blinkers. Be courteous. Drive defensively because all the other drivers on the road are maniacs.

The boys would tolerate me. They would nod their heads in agreement and then peel off down the road.

Even today, however, I “worry” them to safety. I always, must tell them to drive carefully. It’s like a spell I put on them that protects them. If I forget to tell them, I am in a total panic mode that something terribly awful will happen to them (I also tell them they have to call me when they are safely home – to which one or the other will say, "Mom! I’m 35 years old!") And I say that doesn’t matter. Call me! I have to sit on my hands to NOT call them on their cell phone, because they might actually answer the cell phone and be driving their killer car in traffic while talking on their cell phone! My work is never done!

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Time to go Camping!!!

Camping is a lost art. You know, the kind where the only thing between you and mother earth is a tarp and a canvas tent.

When I was growing up, we were very hearty campers. Our one luxury was a little green Coleman two-burner stove. And that was one of our more current possessions; before that, our stove was a combination of rocks piled in a circle with a grill “borrowed” from our kitchen oven.

When we first started camping, I was maybe eight years old, the oldest of four children. Our “camping gear” consisted of all the blankets in the house folded into the well between the front and back seat, creating a long bed for the four of us kids to languish on as our dad piloted the car to sights unseen by human or car. We were the first to go “where no man has gone before.” This involved traveling on roads less traveled and taking the low road rather than the high. If we took the high road, it would routinely turn into a one-lane wagon trail along a treacherous cliff, and routinely again, dad would invariably get half way up the high road, only to have to back all the way down, around curves and corners, because the road really wasn’t a road at all but merely a pathway only mountain sheep could traverse. I spent the majority of these particular trips with my eyes closed and I am fairly certain that my unreasonable fear of heights has a direct connection to our trail rides.

Our “tent” was two tarps – one on the ground, where we laid out all the household blankets, and one tarp strung among four trees. We would sleep like sardines in a can, lined up oldest to youngest – therefore, I was smack in the middle between my Mom and my icky brother. (He has since outgrown the icky stage.)

Then one night a bear ran across our sleeping bodies and Dad hustled us all into the family station wagon, where we peered out through the windows to wait the bear’s return; only the bear was more afraid of us than we were of it. The bear spent most of the night up a tree near our tent, while we spent most of the night trying to sleep in the back of the station wagon.

Our next “tent” was an open-faced canvas shed. Again, the household blankets went on the floor and we all crawled in to our pre-assigned nook and there we slept. Oh! Going to bed meant, when the sun goes down, you go to bed. 9:30 most nights. When Dad was there (we often went for the whole summer to Indian Creek Campground at Priest Lake, Idaho, while our Dad commuted on weekends); anyway, when Dad was there, the bedtime rule was lifted and we sat up by the fire telling campfire stories that we made up. My Dad would start with a sentence, and then the next person around the fire would make up another sentence, and on around the circle. Dad would start off with a fairly good scary story and eventually it would morph to my little brother, who would give it a happy ending so he could sleep without nightmares. This was after it passed to me, who kept it pretty much in line with Dad, to my brother who loved to add blood, slimy worms, hissing snakes, roaring monsters, and screaming hapless victims (all in one run-on sentence); to my sister who generally went for the sliced throat, to my baby brother. The entire adventure would be accompanied by roasting marshmallows on individual sticks each person found on their own, to their own preference.

Eventually we acquired a huge army tent and six sleeping bags, where we could actually walk around each sleeping bag. We would set up our sleeping bag and then find something to decorate our area with sticks, stones, and pinecones. A little home away from home.

When he was at our campsite, our Dad did all the cooking. Breakfast was my favorite and he would go to great effort to disguise the bugs on our eggs with lots of pepper. We weren’t any wiser about this – just thought it was a lot spicier. Until my baby brother kept commenting about wings and legs. Eeeeuuuuuu.

We camped at Indian Creek every summer until I graduated from high school. Through the years we made friends with a Canadian family that came every summer. All of us kids were around the same age. They had a boat! So, we spent a lot of time skiing, traveling around the lake, and spending meals together. We even set up camp together so we had two huge tents facing each other with a tarp between, like a carport. If it rained, we would set up the picnic table and play cards – 12 of us or put together jigsaw puzzles. Great fun!

So, when you go camping today, do you use a tent? Or do you take a motor home, complete with running water and a working oven? Rent a cabin? Indian Creek still exists and has showers and restrooms and a little country store. Not quite as rustic as I experienced.

The family army tent is still in the family and resides with my baby brother, now in his mid-50’s. It has seen many summers and many sleeping bags over the last 40 years. (And it was used when we bought it.)

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At the Beach!

Really. I'm at the beach! So, no stories from me this week. I'll write them in my head while I'm on the beach exploring the little nooks and crannies in the rocks for sea life. In my younger days (like just four years ago), I was a death-defying adventuress and climbed cliffs, and hung onto trees while taking pictures of lighthouses from above the lighthouse lens. That is until the thought flipped through my brain that if I ever fell from one of these precarious perches (and I would do this with only my camera as my companion), I would never be found. Ever. Anyway - I'm off to the beach. And I won't be thinking about work, blogs, chores, duties, tasks, to-do lists, etc.

Friends and Soul Mates

Friendship is such a powerful thing. Do you ever think about it? Do you think about who your best friend is? Do you have one main special friend or several?

I have four friends that came together as an informal spontaneous "support" group. It started more than 30 years ago, when I was working two jobs to help ends meet and raising my two sons alone. I cleaned houses as a second job – I cleaned four police officers' homes and one of them was one of the first women on the Spokane Police Department. She is integral to this story because we all were brought together by her: She has a sister, and then an ex-sister-in-law (ditched the husband but kept his sister), and then her best friend whom she met while they were attending Alcoholics Anonymous for Spouses, and then me, her part time house keeper. (She hates when I introduce myself that way!)

We met because we all were single mothers; we were all around the same age (I'm the baby); our children were around the same age; and we were in-between relationships. We have religiously met for dinner once a month, and rotate who picks the dinner. We have individually only missed a dinner for whatever reason keeps us away, however, the group itself has NEVER missed a dinner in all these 30+ years.

We were front page news (well, Section C front page) of the Spokesman Review in 1992, where we were crowned "The Diners' Club" by the S-R writer, Rebecca Nappi. Thank you, Becky! The most amazing thing was the number of MEN who read and commented on our ariticle! {smile}

We are alike.

We are different.

We have been at each others' weddings and held each other through divorces; we have gone through teenage traumas with each of our children, together; we have taken on the ailments that pester people as they get older and we do it with aplomb and humor; we have supported our children in their struggles stepping into adulthood; we have survived all of our parents and now are 50-60-ish orphans. We cry on each others' shoulders, rant and rave about whoever is wronging us, share deep and private secrets that go no further than the table we are sitting at, laugh and giggle, weep, cry, commiserate, sympathize, and empathize – sometimes all of this several times in a two-hour period.

We started a "mad money" pot several years ago where we would pitch in $10 a month to fund something, anything, to get out of Dodge for a night or two. Our "mad money" pot has paid airfare, hotel, and food on two trips to Seattle, one trip to Yakima for the Spirit of Seattle dinner train that was stationed there (before it moved to Seattle); we spent a Christmas night in Coeur d'Alene overlooking the lake, with Santa's Village visible on the other side; another Christmas in Sandpoint for an absolutely magical snowy Christmas. We have a group Christmas card that got started in the mid-80s that we pass around on a rotational basis and we each take turns summarizing the year we have just finished; we have had pages added to it; I finally scrounged card shops for a new envelope to replace the frayed one. We each have had the card during a year that invariably is one of transition – literally – where the Keeper Of The Card is moving to another house and at the same time tries dutifully to keep in mind which box has "The Card." I personally would hyperventilate over it for 365 days until I handed it over to the next person at our Christmas brunch, with a huge sigh of relief that I didn't lose it. (Or throw it away.)

Our best trip by far was to Disneyland – twice. We saved enough to pay for several days in the Park. Our first trip, we piled into a taxi at the LA airport, five of us "old" ladies chattering and giggling at once and the driver fell in love with us. He happened to be going off duty for the weekend, but he "adopted" us and became our driver for the weekend. He got our plane schedule and then faithfully picked us up at 6:00 in the morning, took us to breakfast, drove us to the Park, told us to meet him here at this spot at 1:00 to take us back to the hotel for our "naps" and then drove us back to the Park for the rest of the day, picking us up at 11:00 at night and delivering us back to the hotel, watching us c-r-a-w-l up the steps to our room, only to start it all over again the next day. He figured out that our plane left at 5:00 in the evening and calculated how many play hours we could spend at the Park, and he picked us up and delivered us to the airport in plenty of time for our plane ride home. Thank you, John!!!!

We have talked about everything you can imagine from men, to menopause, to teens, to men, to independent women, to old age, to men, to ….. hmmm, well, MEN. We have all been through serious illnesses and without the support of each other, we would have flailed cluelessly through it all. One of us is a breast cancer survivor, one of us has Lupus; one of us has kidney disease; one of us has been diagnosed with Parkinson's. We hold each other up, lift each other up, and brighten each other's lives. I don't know what I would do without these four women in my life.

Where O Where is Spring!

Ok, we've had the winter from hell and then we have had flirtatious teasers of Spring. June 8, I wore my coat and turned on my space heater. JUNE 8! This is supposed to be pretty much summer time. We should be swimming and water sliding and baking in the sun.

My Spring is filled with moments of critters – tiny ones and big ones. No sun – just lots of other "live" things.

First - it was the bees in my bathroom (kind of catchy huh). I have a bees nest in a wall in my bathroom. The bees aren't healthy either - they are mutated, kind of like space alien bees. They are sickly and have a terrible time flying, usually hovering for a little while above the bathtub and then slowly winding down to drop dead on the bathtub floor. Every now and then, one will muster enough strength to make it to the living room rug (which is bee colored). I have gathered up about a dozen corpses from the bathtub in the last three weeks. eeeuuuu.

Then my mother-in-law's house where I have moved to, has ants. On the kitchen counter. Dozens of them. Searching on the internet for methods of getting rid of ants only tells me that I must be a very poor housekeeper. I took everything off the counter and cleaned like crazy and then put everything back. I repeated this about six times - they are coming up behind the cabinets and out from a corner at the back of the counter. So I did some more research and discovered a home remedy: 40% water, 40% alcohol, and 20% dish soap. Kills them on contact! That's fine - but they would still manage to straggle in sparingly. So - another home remedy was to sprinkle a trail of cinnamon along the little opening in the corner - and THAT stopped them. They hate cinnamon.

Then I came home a couple nights ago and my partner/Significant Other, said "I've had an adventurous day. I've got a marmot!" So he's spent the last two days trying to get the marmot to leave the area, short of pulling out his pistol. He has an airgun and has popped it at the marmot - but with each episode the marmot has gotten smarter. One morning the marmot was out between the house and the garden (a cyclone fence in the way). This little guy is about the size of a big house cat. Plump and fluffy - looks an awful lot like a rabbit (marmots are of the squirrel family - but they are also part of the rodent family (like, as in rat)). I prefer to think of him as a squirrel cousin. Anyway – my SO made one pump with the air gun and that little guy streaked through the cyclone fence so fast your head would spin. I don't know how he got his fat little body through the tiny opening in the gate. He ate all of our radishes that had JUST started sprouting. Little nibbler. He's kind of cute, though, and I am tempted to call "here, kitty, kitty." If only he wouldn't eat the garden.

So here's my Spring Song:

Bees, Ants, and Marmots, O My!
Bees, Ants, and Marmots, O My!
Bees, Ants, and Marmots, O My!

May summer just get here.

Motorheads "Fantasy Land"

On Saturday my SO (Significant Other) and I trekked to Monroe, Washington for the bi-annual mega swap meet held at the Fairgrounds.

We have gone to this event religiously, twice a year, for over fifteen years – our jaunts coming to a screeching halt three years ago when his mother had a debilitating stroke (coincidentally, the day after our last expedition three years ago this same weekend). His mother unfortunately passed away three weeks ago. We have spent the last 20 days kind of faltering around with our new freedom, not quite knowing how to spread our wings and fly. So Friday night we decided we would make it a day trip to Monroe, leaving at 4:00 in the morning.

Our trip was uneventful (which is great news for us because we have Murphy's Law happening on our road trips – another story). We arrived at about 8:45 and parked our car out in the toolies and trudged our way into the Evergreen Fairgrounds and acres upon acres of car and truck parts. This is a died-and-gone-to-Heaven experience for any motor head, of which my SO is right there in front of the pack.

My SO has approximately 26 classic cars in varying stages of disrepair that he says are "project" cars, and they are stored in many areas in Spokane, including my house, his house, his mother's house, the family's barn, and a couple friends' houses. When we go to swap meets, he has in mind all 26 cars in the hopes of finding that one particular missing piece/part for that particular car. So we are walking along and from a distance his eyes pop out and he drools and chants "I spy a 55 part…." And all I see are indistinguishable parts covered in black, sticky oil, dirt, and grass. He sees a polished, shiny, smooth piece of a part that will eventually be a front bumper for a 55 Dodge Coronet.

The day was sunny and hot, hot, HOT. On the average our voyages to the Monroe Swap Meet are challenges in the weather. I have a gear bag just for Monroe which is filled with coats, sweaters, rain jackets, ear muffs, gloves, umbrellas, and hand warmers - because it is usually very cold, damp, cloudy, and just plain miserable – raining or showering constantly as we walk up and down all the hearty, die-hard vendors and their goods that they painstakingly loaded into their trucks and then unloaded onto their little square "booth" on wet soggy grass or asphalt (good in the rain if you have a tarp for a shelter; bad on hot days when the tar gets stuck to your shoes). Normally, we will stand at the car and put on layers of clothing, hats, gloves, umbrellas, and I carry a tote bag (for goodies – but also for cast off clothes as the day warms up). As we are walking along – I am vividly aware that I, as the female of this duo, am also the pack mule – my tote bag fills up with this bit and that bit and I pray that all the bits are small bits. Once I had to drag a crank shaft back to the car because it wouldn't fit in my tote bag and I'll be damned if I was going to lug that greasy ugly thing around the fairgrounds for the entire day. As we warm up, he'll take off a shirt and I'll tie it around my waist, and then I'll take off a coat and wrap that around my waist, and I have done this to the point that I had six whatever-it-takes-to-keep-warm garments wrapped around my waist so that I looked as round as I am tall (5'2"). Eventually I crawl back to the car and unwrap myself.

There are miles of "booths" set up in a convoluted curly-q pattern in and around the Fairgrounds and my SO will eyeball each and every booth – looking for THAT part. I slowly lumber behind him, getting heavier and heavier after each booth. I have done this for years now and have finally discovered something wonderful at the Fairgrounds. In the middle of the Fairgrounds are several buildings and most of the booths surround these buildings – and inside the buildings are coveted booths of long-time vendors where they are guaranteed shelter from the weather, be it cold or hot. More importantly, for me anyway, in the buildings will be wives of motor heads selling their wares which include collectibles (bottles, Betty Boop, Coca Cola memorabilia, and glassware). Now I'm a nut for glassware, children's tea sets, and Betty Boop – so I will follow the SO for a couple hours and then when we finally get into the area along side the buildings, I make my escape. I have figured out that I can leave him drooling over some (fill in Chevrolet, Dodge, Chrysler, Ford, but never ever Buick) part, duck into a building, wander around and scope all the tables and find treasures just for me and come back out the building a door down from where I entered and, viola! SO hasn't moved a foot! Once I despaired of ever finding him again among the throngs of people milling around booths and tables – he is not distinctive – he's a large man with white hair wearing a plaid lumberjack shirt – and that describes about 2,000 guys milling around one booth. I can look right at him and lose him. But for some reason, God smiles on me if I go into a building; my SO sticks to the pavement where I left him. Never fails.

We did this for about eight hours, collected our stash and went back to the car and headed home, arriving at 10:00 Saturday night.

It's good to be back in the living again!

Love, Life, Living, and Dying

Well, I'm not writing real well these days – catchy title though, don't you think?

April 29 was my birthday – I am celebrating the last year of the 50s.

Unfortunately, that same day my mother-in-law died.

My Significant Other (I'll name him Lovey) and I have been together for over 22 years. He and his mother (Mum) were very, very close. He is a take-charge kind of guy and he did all the "manly" things around the house, checked on her every day by phone, fixed the sink, fixed the car, fixed the hot water tank, fixed ….. Everything. Mum was very independent and ornery. That's what I want to be when I grow up. She was a little tiny thing that was filled with dynamite. Always on the go, always into something, and most times into trouble of some sort.

She loved yard sales and garage sales and would spend her days going around the neighborhood where she lived for 60 years, scarfing up treasures that she would bring home, announcing, "Look! Just like new!" (And we would observe the stain here, the scratch there.) Later we could expect to receive the same item wrapped as a gift.

Mum collected things – all kinds of things – she collected coins, glassware, rocks, gems, beads, Garfield-anything, Depression glassware and any glassware that would turn color in the sun, bottles from the late 1800s and early 1900s. She lived in a little tiny cottage (kind of perfect for her) and she had shelves everywhere with bottles, glassware, vases, Swarovski crystal animals, and Garfield. When Lovey was living there, the people in the neighborhood called her house "the Bottle House" because all the windows were lined with bottles – whiskey bottles, medicine bottles, all kinds of bottles.

She got me started on collecting Duncan Glass – a beautiful, elegant bowl or plate with a graceful five-petal base, and the glass would flute out from the petals in a fluid wave.

Three years ago, she came home from getting her hair done and was getting out of her car, when the neighbor was leaving for work and thought she looked really odd. The neighbor drove around the block and came back to find Mum on the ground. Ironically – Lovey was at the neighbor's house, fixing her hot water tank. He rushed over and picked his Mum up – she said she couldn't move her legs – and took her into the house. Within 30 minutes, medics had arrived, rushed her to the hospital, and we both had been taken to her bedside because she was going to die any minute. She had a debilitating stroke, actually called an intercranium bleed at the base of her brain, severely affecting her left side and her memory.

Three weeks after that we found a nursing home for her, and the first night the nurses gathered around us and told us to prepare for the fact that she would not make it through the night. She was going to die any minute. This was about the third time we heard this and just brushed them off and hovered over Mum and sat vigil for hours at a time – taking turns doing eight-hour shifts.

Four months after her stroke we took her home to her house. Same little tiny house, now filled with hospital bed, oxygen machine, nebulizer, feeding pump, colostomy supplies, wheelchair. I remember sitting outside the nursing home the last night before she came home, thinking to myself, "Oh God! What am I getting myself into?" I'm not a nurse. I'm not even a nurse's aid. I'm a secretary and my skill is typing. Not nursing.

From then on we have been caring for Mum's every need. Lovey wasn't working and so moved in with his Mom and started the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-by-minute process of taking care of his mother. I worked during the day and then came home and relieved him and continued her intricate care until I left for my house at 10:00 at night. Then start it up the next morning and do it all over again, packing a little bag to stay there every weekend, and then take all the family's laundry home on Sunday night and wash and dry all the clothes for the next week.

We would go along fine, we had our routines: An hour to get her ready for the day, changing her diaper, crushing her medications, push them through her feeding tube, administer her breathing treatment on top of her continuous oxygen tube, make sure she was comfy, and set her up with a magazine. Then we would give her her mid-afternoon meds, spend a half hour on physical therapy, then bring her to her favorite chair and she would watch TV for the rest of the day. An hour getting her ready for bed – two if it was bath night.

We plugged along, each of us going on and on, like the Ever Ready Battery rabbit. Twice we had episodes where she had difficulty breathing and took her to the hospital. She was on a ventilator for five days the first time. And they told us she was going to die any minute.

The night before my birthday was a normal night, just like all the three years of nights before – and it was bath night. I was teasing her that I had her pink gown and pink socks so she would be "in the pink." We held hands, laughed; she told me I was a good kid. We bathed her, fluffed her, petted her, got her tucked in for the night. I went home as usual – with all the laundry. At 5:00 in the morning Lovey called me to say that Mum was having trouble breathing and the paramedics were there – that they'd probably be taking her to the hospital. So I jumped in my clothes and raced across town and just at her exit I decided to make sure they were still at the house or maybe at the hospital. Lovey said we wouldn't be going to the hospital now because she was gone.

We were both in shock. It couldn't be so! How many times had we been told she would die any minute and she defied them all. She couldn't have just slipped away quietly like that. A few hours later, Lovey and I sat in a small room at a funeral home on my birthday making arrangements for his mother's cremation, whom I had just dressed in pink so she'd be "in the pink."

So, now you know why I haven't written. And why I won't for a while. Life goes on – but I just have to slow it down a bit, rein it in. I'll be back.

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