Travels and Rambles

Furnace Mountain

2012-02-12T06:33:00.002-05:00

Well, I am trying to find some motivation to finish my novel. I know people who can sit down and write a novel in a month or two and while I admire that, it's just not my style. For one thing, I like to live with my people for awhile. I like to get to know them, spend some time with them, play with them a little bit. I assign them songs and favorite colors, and even play around with scenarios in my head that will never actually make it on paper just to see what their reactions would be like. I also spend a lot of time researching. I like things to be accurate.

inspiration for my book: a small town, mountains, and a train!

There comes a point, though, where you just gotta get a move on.

I think my book is good. I am happy with it. In fact, I am happier with it than with anything else I have written. I have characters that are interesting, a plot that is different, and I've been very careful with my word choice. I've spent a lot of time playing with setting and making the place a character within its own right. My ensemble have engaging personalities and nuances and are realistic to their time and situations.

Plus, I think my story is very relevant to today's events. It might be set in the past, but the story itself could very well take place in any small town across the country right now.

So I need to finish it. It might be wrong to be this excited about something you've written yourself but I am happy with it.

A friend of mine from high school had two short stories published in anthologies this year. They're not my genre but I am glad to see him being successful. (Yes, JR, I keep up with you writing.) I am also glad to see that someone in a universal genre get published and find some success.

Sometimes, being around other authors who write in a similar genre can be inspiring. Other times, it's not. It can feel cagey and overwhelming. That's why many of my writer friends are from different genres: Kellie Tayer writes romances, Jonathan Lampley writes a little bit of everything, Keven McQueen writes unique non-fiction, and Amy Partin-Elliot does amazing poetry.

So now, I must focus on getting my book written. I figure that the whole brain surgery thing can be my cut off point. I installed this little gadget here on my blog to keep track of my process. If other people can see it then it means that I am more accountable for my actions, or lack thereof.

It's been difficult because since writing is my fulltime job, finding the time to do "fun" writing is tricky. By the time I get a break I want to step away from the computer.

Shame on me because I have had multiple agents and publishers interested in my book. I just can't get it finished to give it to anyone. So, here I go. It will be completed!

Better do it now, anyway. What if, when they hack into my skull and spine, I forget where I was going with the story? Then I'd have to start the durned thing from scratch! :-P

Let Me Say that Again…I’m Having BRAIN Surgery

2012-02-11T05:16:00.002-05:00

I know, I have bitched about people for a year and a half now but this is really the final straw.

I told my friends the other day about the Chiari Malformation and the brain (and possibly spinal) surgery that I will be having. I must say, the reaction was pretty supportive. People were surprised (none so much as me!) and some people asked a lot of questions. This was good because some of them were great questions that I wrote down to ask the neurosurgeon.

Then, of course, there were the others.

Let me say, I did NOT complain about this diagnosis. Not to anyone but Pete. I did not do the whole “whoa is me” thing or anything else. I made jokes, I brushed off the severity of it, and I tried to be lighthearted about it.

Yet there were STILL people accusing me of not being positive enough. I was chastised and criticized for not being positive about having a brain malformation. And when someone wrote me and said that I would probably be okay because their dog had spinal surgery and came out fine and I joked about it I was CHASTIZED for my reaction because, after all, that person was just trying to help.

Let me say this again…

I am having BRAIN SURGERY. My brain is malformed. My brain is leaking out of my head. Someone is going to shave off my hair, cut into my scalp, and remove part of my skull-and they’re not going to put it back. The average scar is around 6 inches.

Let’s see, and then when I told Sam that Mommy was just so smart that her head couldn’t hold her brain anymore…I was chastised for THAT.

This is beyond insane.

I have joked, I have laughed, I have hidden my feelings and emotions for the past several months because the attitude that I have gotten from so-called friends about how I need to be positive.

Now, I’m going to say, what the hell is wrong with you people?

I have listened to people complain about their never-ending colds and flus and aches and pains. I never once complained about any of the symptoms that lead up to my MRI. Not once. And then, when I get a diagnosis, I tell people and I get flack for not being positive enough and complaining about it?

For some God knows why reason, there seems to be people in my life that are here to make it a point to criticize me, chastise me, and point out everything that I am doing wrong. I can’t win with these people. They’re not even reading what I write or listening to what I am saying. They are glossing over it and using their preconceived ideas about the situation to form their own conclusions and then they’re going with that.

Well, screw that. It’s not me, it’s them. They might be good people, but they’re terrible friends.

When I say I am having brain surgery and you tell me that I need to be positive and not overreact that is NOT helping me. In fact, that is diminishing my fears and making me feel a lot worse. They did it with Toby’s death, they did it with Dad’s heart attacks, they did it with Iris’ seizures, and now they’re doing it with me. I am done with this nonsense. If I am not entitled to worry or express my concerns or have feelings about anything then I don’t need these people around.

Oh, yeah, and for the person who told me that we should keep it from Sam…well…this is a picture of what my head will look like. Yeah, hide THAT. Moron.

http://carolynschiari.blogspot.com/2010/08/recovering.html

For those who were awesome and are supporting me, much thanks. I appreciate it, I really do. Thank you.

A woman who has gone through this posted the following on her website. I really liked it. I think it applies to a LOT of people and situations, not just the brain stuff.

30 Things About My Invisible Illness You May Not Know

1. The illness I live with is: Chiari I Malformation, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (Autonomic Dysfunction), Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Cranio-cervical instability/Functional cranial settling

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: Chiari in 2002, the rest in 2003

3. But I had symptoms since: 1998-ish

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: giving up on the idea of having a career; getting used to a drastic reduction in ALL activity

5. Most people assume: that if I look like everyone else, I must feel like everyone else. That if I put a smile on my face, then I’m doing just fine.

6. The hardest part about mornings is: Facing another day. Knowing it will feel like 10,000 days. Feeling like I weigh 10,000 pounds. Feeling worse than I did the night before. Feeling more tired than I did the night before. Feeling like my life currently holds such little meaning—why should I force my body out of bed just to watch TV all day?

7. My favorite medical TV show is: House

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: My laptop…connection to civilization

9. The hardest part about nights are: Being all alone with my pain and my thoughts, and unable to sleep, over and over and over again.

10. Each day I take __34__ pills & vitamins (Plus fish oil and any as needed meds, like pain meds). (No comments, please)

11. Regarding alternative treatments I: generally stick to what a doctor recommends, with a couple recent exceptions. I believe in empirically-supported medicine. I love massage therapy!!!

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: I think I’d prefer a visible illness, because then people would understand immediately that my smile does not come easily. It is a gift for them.

13. Regarding working and career: When I thought I was getting better, around 2007, I had a piano studio of 24 students. But it was really a ruse. I was living off of stimulants and narcotics. I couldn’t keep it up. My body started protesting with narcoleptic episodes. As soon as I slowed down on the meds, my ability to work slowed down, too. I’m now down to about 3 half-hour lessons/week. And even that is a challenge. I don’t even know if this is the career I want to stay with. It’s just the only career I thought I could pull off as I was going through college. I have no idea if or when I’ll be able to work more. And I have no idea what job I would have chosen without limitations, or if I'll ever find a different one.

14. People would be surprised to know: that I never have a moment that is symptom free or pain free. I cannot remember what it feels like to live without pain. Also, the severity of everyday fatigue.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: My lack of independence and loss of social life. They do go together.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: Graduate from a 4-year college. At one point, I also got into really good physical shape. I hope to do that again when my body allows.

17. The commercials about my illness: n/a

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: Gymnastics, Exercising, Singing, Performing on stage in some way.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: Driving…I need to drive again for my sanity. I feel so confined.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: I started a support group, but then became physically incapable of running it. I read a lot of books, but that’s not new. I watch endless hours of tv, but I’m not proud of it. I guess I’ve learned to relax. I always used to be so busy and stressed in high school and younger.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: spend it doing all of the things my fiancé has always wanted to do with his partner, but can’t with me. He deserves that day of normalcy even more than I do. So it would be his choice. I think it would involve skipping and jumping and running (for me).

22. My illness has taught me: how to relax. How to listen to my body. How to revise my expectations for myself in life. How to accept myself as I am now.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: if you just stay positive 24/7, you’ll be better off. That’s not necessarily true! Okay? We need to live in the real world, and we need to accept our circumstances as they are in order to cope with them. Not just pretend that everything is fine and put on a happy face. No one should have to pretend to be optimistic 100% of the time!

24. But I love it when people: Care, Listen, Learn about my messed up brain. Especially doctors.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” –Lao Tzu. Because what can we really do, other than persevere.

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: Allow yourself to grieve, time and time again, over everything you lose to this illness. It’s the only way you will learn to accept your new self.

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: How ignorant the entire medical community is about all of these illnesses. The number of times and ways they have let me down.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: Lay next to me, without touching me, when my skin was too sensitive to be touched. Just because my skin hurts, doesn’t mean I don’t want to be held, just that I can’t be.

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: n/a

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: Heard.

I'm getting brain surgery

2012-02-07T03:14:00.001-05:00

Well, you always know that a week is going to go well when the first thing you hear on a Monday afternoon is that you need brain surgery. Apparently, I'm so smart that my head can't even hold my brain anymore. It's actually leaking out of the bottom.

Of course, this has a real name. It's called Arnold-Chiari Malformation. Don't know how I got it or how long I've had it but I have had symptoms for years. They were passed off as being other things: pregnancy related, depression, epilepsy, etc. Finally, someone looked for something else in the MRI and found that my brain is actually protruding into my spinal column.

This is no "cure" for this, only the treatment of the symptoms. Hence, the brain surgery. That's the one and only option.

I hate that I have to get my head shaved.

I actually feel pretty good about it. Nice to know what is going on.

Not everyone has symptoms with this but if you do have symptoms they can get pretty bad. Mine are pretty bad. They include:

· Balance issues-leaning to one side while I try to walk sometimes

· Weakness- weakness in legs and in arms

· Difficulty closing hands-hand wants to form a claw

· Tingling in left hand and arm-feels like pins and needles

· Crawling sensation on skin

· Itching all over body

· Spasms in legs and lower back

· Tremors in left hand

· Fatigue

· Memory problems (can’t remember words, where I am, what I was supposed to be doing)

· Pain around my waist

· Sudden, painful cramping in bowels with no bowel movements

· Blurry vision

· Eye pain

· Increased headaches

· Lower back pain

· Dizziness

· Problems with the cold (can’t stay warm)

Sometimes, these happen all at once and that's not fun at all.

So, I'm meeting with the neurosurgeon to see what can be done. Never a dull moment in our household.

Drugs or Jesus

2012-01-30T06:19:00.000-05:00

I live in an area that is rife with drugs. I like to pretend that this isn’t a fact, but it is. We have more problems with drug addiction here than we do in most parts of the country. Everyone passes the blame off on someone else. It’s the doctors’ faults for giving out pain pills. It’s the government’s fault for giving out welfare. It’s the schools’ faults for not providing better drug education classes. Rather than blaming these agencies, organizations, and institutions, however, why don’t we approach this from a different angle: Why are people addicted in the first place?

Getting high is not new. Since the beginning of time there have been substances that were able to alter the mind. Over the course of human history, we’ve used everything from herbs to manufactured substances to elevate our feelings and senses. Some of these substances are legal and some are not. Although they become banned and monitored on occasion, like with Prohibition, there’s always something out there inducing people.

So what’s the difference now?

Is it the inexpensive nature of prescription pain pills and crystal meth?

I don’t think so. If you have a prescription for pain medication and you have insurance then you’re paying anything from $1 to $10 for a bottle of Lortabs. That’s pretty cheap. However, if you don’t have a prescription and you want them then you can pay as much as $25 per pill or more. That is not so cheap, especially if you’re addicted to them.

Marijuana is much cheaper. Heck, even a small amount of cocaine is cheaper.

Crystal meth could possibly be cheaper since it’s homemade. I know the approximate recipe for it, though, and it’s certainly not inexpensive if you’re making it. As far as what it sells for, it can get pricey too. There are other drugs that are cheaper. Of course, meth works faster so maybe you’re not paying as much for it in the long run but we’re still not talking pennies here.

Is it the availability?

Some people would argue yes. That doctors give pain pills out too freely and that many people make meth. I disagree. If you have been to a doctor in the past few years you will know that getting a pain pill is akin to getting Chase Bank to give you a home loan with no income or credit history and zero percent interest. As someone who had to beg for pain pills after my hysterectomy I am here to tell you that they are not handing them out left and right. As someone who had to plead with my doctor to give me something for anxiety two days after I lost my child, I am here to tell you that they’re not freely dispensed like cokes in a soda machine.

As far as meth goes, sure you can get it. Even I, someone who is usually in the dark, could find it. But that’s not new. I’ve always known where to get marijuana, cocaine, moonshine, and other mind-altering products. And I am not the hippest cat in the neighborhood. So I do not think it’s the easy availability of either one of these that is making the drug problem rampant.

So could it be the type of high you get from them?

I don’t know. I have never tried meth and never will. I have a thing about putting battery acid into my body. So I can’t speak on the highs of that particular substance. I have had pain pills, of course, but from an addiction standpoint don’t “get” it. I know everyone experiences the highs differently but for me I suddenly get about an hour’s worth of detailed clarity, particularly where numbers are involved.

I highly doubt everyone is getting high so that they can balance their checkbooks.

I have spoken to addicts about the highs they get and have gotten different responses. One told me that she liked the sleepy feeling it gave her. That is made her body sleepy and relaxed but kept her mind alert. Another person was agoraphobic and told me that when she took a Lortab she was able to go out I public with her kids. She could go to the park, go to Wal-Mart, and attend school functions without the paranoid, panicky feeling she ordinarily got. To be honest, it was hard to fault her on that.

So I think that comes a little closer to my answer.

But what is the question again? Oh yes, why are more people addicted than ever before?

In the novel I am currently working on, I am exploring the mentality of a town during the Depression. People are, well, depressed. They lack desire and motivation. They don’t know where to go or what to do. They feel like their livelihoods and choices have been taken away from them. They’re at a loss. My people don’t turn to drugs, but I wonder if the people around me NOW do.

I post a lot about health issues and how they concern me. They concern me because I am sitting back watching healthy young people, my own age, start becoming their health problems. I have watched many 30somethings proudly list off a list of diagnoses and symptoms that are a mile long and then similarly list off a long list of things they can’t do because of them. These are young, formerly vibrant people, who have let their health problems define them and become them.

Why?

I believe we are starting to lack direction and focus. We go to high school and are full of ambition and dreams. Then, somewhere along the way, we get lost. The details of everyday living get in the way. You know the Statler Brothers’s song “Class of ’57.” “Living life from day to day/Is never what it seems/Things get complicated/When you get past 18.” I think that’s true. For whatever reason people are starting to lose sight of their goals and what they want so they try to find other ways to define themselves.

Are they defining themselves with drugs? I don’t think so. But I think that lack of hope and encouragement might be creating a society that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Lack of jobs, few opportunities, and ennui is creating an almost perceived hopelessness that people don’t want to do with.

In the novel I’m writing, things start to get better for my town when an upcoming event makes everyone band together to work for a common cause. (I call my book a “Stone Soup” set during the Depression.) I wonder if that would really make a difference in real life. If people were able to feel useful, productive, and like good things could happen to them again maybe things would change?

The title of this entry is “Drugs or Jesus”, taken after what I thought was a pretty good Tim McGraw song. I called it that because a trend that I have noticed fairly recently is that while the outside world around me seems to be filled with drug addiction my Facebook world is filled with Jesus. It’s getting to the point where it’s becoming almost just as uncomfortable as the drug world. The fighting on statuses, the different people deleting each other for not agreeing, the people who try to “out-Christian” one another, the inherent boastful claims of being Christian shouted from the newsfeed (part of being Christian is living your life by example, the best Christians I know are not the ones who tell everybody that they are every 5 minutes), and the prejudice and hatefulness that keeps showing up online in the name of religion. It’s more rampant than ever before.

In fact, when a friend of mine wrote the other day that she was proud of Obama, the first response she got was, “What??? He’s pro-abortion and for gay marriage. I thought you were Christian!!!”

So some days I feel like I am caught in the middle of a religious-drug war. On one hand, it doesn’t look like they should have anything in common. Yet they seem to.

My point is, instead of trying to figure how these people are getting the drugs in the first place, how about trying to figure out why so many people feel the need to take them?

I speak from experience here. My favorite cousin is an addict. He is a talented, good looking guy. Iris looks at Sam the same way I used to look at him. It makes me sad.

Drugs or Jesus

In my home town
For anyone who sticks around
You're either lost or you're found
There's not much in between
In my home town
Everything's still black and white
It's a long, long way from wrong to right
From Sunday morning to Saturday night

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

My whole life
I've tried to run, I've tried to hide
From the stained glass windows in my mind
Refusing to let God's light shine
Down on me
Down on me

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
There's not much space between us
Drugs or Jesus

Everybody wants acceptance
We all just want some proof
Everyone's just looking for the truth

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

Iris and Sam

2012-01-28T04:05:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Fun, Part II

2012-01-06T04:33:00.000-05:00

I always think it’s funny to see how people find my blog. Some days I get as many as 200 hits and more than half of them are really random things that I swear I haven’t written about (like Elvis’s favorite sandwich, for one).

So…let me try to help you out in your quest that landed you on my blog…

1. “People that have opposite effects”- Hmmm…okay, so the first one is a bust. Were they searching for people that have opposite effects of horses? Skyscrapers? Aliens? My answer would have to depend on the rest of the question.

2. “Angry all the time female singers”- The plural form of this throws me off, but as far as I know Kelly Willis is the only female singer of the song. She sings back-up to her husband, Bruce Robison.

3. “Pancho and Left Meaning”- I get at least one person looking for this everyday. There are many interpretations to this song. I just talk about a few. You can find that entry here: http://krumlovgirl.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-interpretation-of-pancho-and-lefty.html

4. “Sids grief products”- Either they are looking for a guy name Sid that sells grief products or they are looking for products concerning grief due to SIDS. I have managed to find some of those car magnets for SIDS awareness. There are also a few books that have been helpful to some. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot out there.

5. “Facebook timeline death”- Okay, I have gotten a bunch of hits on this. Nobody died due to my actual timeline, as far as I know. Has there been a death blamed on the timeline? Now I must investigate.

6. “SIDS but death certificate says something else”- Yes, dear searcher, this can happen. Some states don’t like to put SIDS as a COD. Some put SUID while others put “natural causes” or even “unsafe sleeping conditions.” So far, there isn’t a cohesive way of reporting SIDS or a federally mandated one. Unfortunately, this could be the cause of SIDS deaths supposedly declining. Because different states and even different localities vary in the way they label SIDS those deaths are not counted in the statistics, even though they are, in fact, SIDS.

7. “Blogs of grieving parents”- You can find mine at www.lifeaftersids.blogspot.com On my blog I also link to many other parents who have also lost children. Sorry you had to find us.

8. “Coopers playhouse”- I am so afraid at this point that the blog entry that I wrote about this controversy is going to be taken in the wrong way. So, let’s get this straight: I think the playhouse should be allowed. Please keep that in mind when reading the actual entry.

9. “ gilmore girls season 5 i feel like he'd be a larry’- I love the fact that so many people search for random GG lines and find my blog.

10. “Tom Traubert’s blues meaning”- I love this song! And I loved that blog entry.

11. “Baby died of SIDS in halo sleep sack”- Yes, it does happen. I know of at least two it’s happened to.

12. “SIDS and placenta”- As far as I know, no conclusive studies have been done on this. I had a complete abruption and when that happens the baby has to be taken right away. I haven’t met any other SIDS parents that happened to, though. You can find my entry about it here http://lifeaftersids.blogspot.com/2010/11/lets-talk-aboutplacenta-abruption.html

13. “SIDS risk miscarriage”- Hmmm…if you miscarry then your infant has departed and therefore can’t die of SIDS. Or, the person could have been trying to figure out if having a miscarriage in the past increases their risk of SIDS. It’s possible, but only in the way that ANYTHING could increase a risk. I would personally say it’s probably not a factor, considering that miscarriage rate is quoted as high as 40% and could bigger since some women miscarry and didn’t know they were pregnant.

14. “what to say to parents who lose a baby to SIDS”- Man, I hope this person knew someone who lost a child and is trying to find the right thing to say. Good for them for caring enough to choose their words wisely.

15. “the Historian movie”- You and me both, sister (or brother). I long for the day this actually sees the silver screen.

16. “where do the Duggars get their skirts”- Beats me. I live in Eastern Kentucky and have done my fair amount of shopping and I am still trying to figure out where the Pentecostal Holiness women get those long skirts.

17. “celebrities that lost a baby to SIDS”- I know that Robert Redford did. There was also a singer in a popular band that did but I can’t remember who it was.

18. “female Americana singers”- Yay! This is my number one hit. Bringing attention to my favorite gals, one surfer at a time.

2012

2012-01-03T03:00:00.000-05:00

For 2012...

I hope that Becca and Rob have a nice wedding. I’m guessing we are not supposed to be allotting money for that trip now, but I bet it will be a fun time and a nice ceremony for them.

I hope it snows so that we can sleigh riding at Ashley's.

I hope clients get their acts together and pay on time. Or at least by a reasonable amount of time.

I hope one of these hospitals can get their act together and figure out how to treat Iris.

I hope Sam doesn’t completely freak out when he starts going to school. He’s already scared of it and hide when we mention it.

I hope Sam makes some new friends. He needs friends that respect him and treat him well.

I hope that Pete and I are able to get out more. I miss going to the movie. Being ‘po stinks.

I hope I am able to get my horses this summer. Of course, that will mean keeping at least two stalls clear in the barn.

I hope my garden does better this year. I want to do a big one and I am not moving off and leaving another compost pile.

I hope Dad does better. Four heart attacks in a year and a half are not good things.

I hope to finish my novel. I’ve worked on it more in the past two weeks than I have in a year so at least it’s moving along.

I hope the rude people leave us alone and forget about us.

I hope to be able to go to Lake Michigan this summer and go camping.

I hope that we can get some of the biggest debts paid off so that I can actually turn on my phone again.

Movie Reviewers I Actually Trust

2012-01-01T22:19:00.001-05:00

I don't put much stock in movie reviewers. If I want to see a film then I see it, regardless as to what someone says. Of course, really bad reviews might mean that I wait til it comes to the discount theater or Redbox, but I'll still see it eventually.

With that being said, there are two reviewers (one a pro, the other just someone with good taste) whose judgements I tend to trust. They would be Jonathan Lampley (my friend from Nashville) and Silas House (my friend from Berea). Jonathan used to review movies for a living. Silas reviews them for the fun of it. In the past two years it's been rare that I have seen something that I really liked, or didn't like, and haven't bounced them off of him. His personal page has dozens of "What did you think of..." from me. Pete and I don't know anyone else who sees as many movies as him, and since we see a lot of the same ones we like to share opinions.

So, both guys have done year end opinions of what they saw and how they felt. I have added my own 2 cents in parenthesis.

Here you go...

From Silas: (You can see his entire entry, plus video clips, at his blog. http://silashouseblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/favorite-movies-of-2011.html )

1. The Tree of Life. This is a love it or hate it movie. I loved it. I was sometimes frustrated by Sean Penn stumbling about the city, looking up at the sky for unknown reasons, but everything else in it--even the dinosaur scene!--is perfection. I can't remember the last time I saw anything so profoundly moving and beautiful. I love that it's nonlinear and image-driven and music-driven. What images, and what music. And I think it's incredibly brave to make a film that asks questions about God and grace and nature in a time when so many choose apathy and mindless entertainment over true thought. Favorite moment, among many many such moments: when the mother floats.

(Sounds good, but still not completely sold yet. I would need some time to process this one and with two little ones that's not easy at the moment.)

2. The Artist. Magical, and the production design is incredible. I love the dog-love-story, especially. And the scene where the actress slips her arm into the jacket of the man she's pining for is maybe my favorite movie moment of the year. And I especially loved the dance scenes. Go in knowing that the melodrama is intentional and you'll love it, too.

(Okay, really want to this see this now.)

3. The Descendants. I'm usually not a huge Clooney fan but I really loved his performance, and especially that of Shailene Woodley, who plays his teenage daughter, giving the most realistic performance I've seen all year. I also loved seeing Hawaii as a place where people live instead of simply being shown the tourist version of it.

(Heard great things about this from a lot of people. Worth giving a shot.)

4. Beginners. This movie is sad and charming (Melanie Laurent!) and stars some of my favorite actors . The performances of the dog and of Christopher Plummer are worth the price alone. I love the way it looks at the complexities of parenthood and being someone's child.

5. The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This was the biggest surprise of the year. I went into it for my daughters, thinking it would be a fun escape movie. But I found it to be a deeply moving, intelligent, and profound look at animal--and human--rights. And the special effects are pretty amazing, too.

(Heck, even Anne Rice liked this one! I am waiting for it to show up at Redbox so that I can see t myself.)

6. Of Gods and Men. Another movie that not enough people saw is this French film based on the true story of a group of priests who choose to stay in the Algerian village with the community they have come to love despite their knowledge that they will certainly be killed by approaching fundamentalist terrorist. It's a brave movie that looks at what faith is and how fundamentalism distorts--and destroys--true belief. This is a quiet, slow movie that movies like a meditative prayer.

7. The Conspirator. One of the least-seen movies of the year is also one of the best. This fact-based story of Mary Surrat's role in the Lincoln assassination is just as timely now as it was when the real thing happened in 1865. Robert Redford directs and explores the way the government can distort the truth for their own gain and how guilt and innocence are more complex than they might appear. Robin Wright deserves and Oscar for her unflinching and deeply moving portrayal of Surrat.

(Okay, I tried to watch this. I was excited about the story. I just couldn't get into it.)

8. Jane Eyre. I loved every brooding, shadowy, and decidedly British moment of this underrated film featuring incredible cinematography and great performances from Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska.

(Love the story, didn't see why we needed a remake. Watched it and liked it anyway.)

9. Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen movies are either totally hit or miss for me but this is one of his best.

(I've heard that this is similar to my favorite movie "Before Sunrise." That's enough for me to give it a chance.)

10. Hugo. Another Paris-set movie, and just as magical as Allen's. I loved the book and thought the movie was a beautiful adaptation.

(This looks great, too. A lot more interesting than "Tin Tin" or some of the other animated ones that are out right now.)

And, in no random order, other films I loved this year:

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part II concludes my favorite film franchise ever, but my favorites of the lot are The Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Part I.

-Sarah's Key brings new life to a movie we think we've seen before. (We saw this and enjoyed it a lot. It definitely held our attention and garnered a long conversation afterwards.)

-The Ides of March. Ryan Gosling is great, and I can't help but love that so much of it is set in Kentucky...could have been a truly great movie if released ten years ago, when it was more timely. Felt very dated. (I wish it had been released earlier, too, but I still really enjoyed it. It was gripping and I was hoping that it would just go on and on and on. I wasn't ready for it to end.)

-Crazy, Stupid Love. But why did none of the character react to situations the way people do in real life? That bothered me. But I still loved a lot about it, especially the actors, and the twist at the end.

-Contagion looks exploitive and manipulative in the trailer, but is actually moving and terrifying. (These kinds of movies scare me. I can't deal with them.)

-Bridesmaids is laugh out loud funny, even if it is sometimes completely infantile and crude (do I need to see a woman defecate in the middle of the street in a wedding dress? No, but I couldn't help but laugh). (Oops. We differ here on this one. Pete and I just could not figure out what was supposed to be funny about this movie. We felt awkward and embarrassed watching it.)

-Young Adult could have been great, but isn't. Charlize Theron, however, IS.

-Rio. My favorite animated feature of the year. Very, very funny and intelligent. (Oh, man, at first I thought you meant "Rango" and I had all kinds of things to see about it. Now I see you meant "Rio" and I didn't see that one.)

-Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud. A little pretentious but still moving and insightful. (Don't know how I feel about 9/11 movies but I've been assured that this is tasteful and not exploitative. And I do love Sandy Bullock. I'll give it a shot.)

-And my biggest guilty pleasure of the year: Paranormal Activity 3. I wasn't crazy about the first two. In fact, I thought they were boring and lame. But this one was genuinely scary, inventive, and smart. Don't judge me. (Cannot watch this film. I love horror movies more than anything but can't do this one. For an explanation, see blog entry entitled "The Paranormal Activity Franchise is Messing with Me.")

And now, for Jonathan's...

I only count films released in the calendar year, which means a lot of the "Oscar Bait" hasn't made its way to the Nashville area yet. You will notice I have seen only 19 movies, two of which I only saw on DVD;this may be a surprisingly low number of movies when you consider I am a film teacher and a former film critic. However, I must say that other factors contribute to my relatively few movie outings (I am not counting trips to Nashville's Belcourt Theater to see revivals: I did attend screenings of PIECES (the 80s slasher movie) and the Leslie Nielsen film festival, but obviously those are not new releases). The high cost of movies today--over ten bucks for an adult admission in Nashville--is a major factor; so, too, is the fact that my current GF isn't much of a movie person. The ease and convenience of Netflix, and the relative rapidity with which new movies come out on video, is also a contributing factor. But the single most important reason, I think, is that so few movies are being made these days that really intrigue me--particularly given the high cost of theatrical releases. When I could go to a matinee for five bucks or so, it really didn't bother me if a movie was mediocre or bad; now, however, I am apt to leave the multiplex in a pronounced state of vexation if the movie isn't very good. Hell, even a very bad movie is something to see--but the merely average film that is immediately forgettable is not worth paying anything for (but such films do justify the Netlix account, I think).

But enough Preamble. Keeping in mind that some later releases that I might catch in early 2012 would perhaps change the rankings, here is my list:

HUGO (****)--A truly excellent film, another of Scorsese's period masterpieces, and a valentine to the early days of cinema. It's the one modern film that truly deserves to be seen in 3-D. And Christopher Lee has a nice role! Obviously my favorite film of the year.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (*** 1/2)--In a year saturated with superhero movies, FIRST CLASS does something unique: it accurately captures the feel of its period setting (1962) and functions as an excellent prequel to the X-MEN franchise. Clearly the best superhero movie of 2011.

(I don't do comic movies often and never got into the X-Men fanchise, although I do love me some Hugh Jackman.)

EVERYTHING MUST GO (*** 1/2)--Will Farrell plays an alcoholic office drone who loses his job, his car, and his wife all on the same day. When wifey throws all his stuff out on the yard, Farrell decides to set up house in the grass. This dramedy is an interesting change-of-pace for the former SNL star and indicates that when he wants to, he can actually act. A fine indie picture unfortunately lost in the crowd of summer blockbusters, EVERYTHING MUST GO is definitely worth a look on Netflix.

(Pete watched this on Netflix and was excited about it because it reminded him of our move and a story idea that he'd had.)

FRIGHT NIGHT (*** 1/2)--This remake of the classic 80s horror film flopped at the box office, a victim, apparently, of the public's exhaustion with vampire films (other than the TWILIGHT franchise, sad to say). Too bad, because it is actually a very respectable effort, with Colin Farrell doing excellent work as Jerry, the bloodsucker next door.

(We watched this the other night and loved it. Even Pete can't deny Colin's hotness. I thought it was just as good as the original.)

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (*** 1/2)--Robert Downey, Jr. returns to the role of the Great Detective, with able support from Jude Law as Watson and a particularly memorable turn from Jared Harris (of MAD MEN fame) as Moriarty. No, these films aren't particularly faithful to Conan Doyle; Downey will not replace Rathbone, Cushing, or Brett in your affections in the role, but the film was a lot of fun. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one--how often can you say that about a sequel?

(Hmmm...I tried. I did. I couldn't do it. The action just throws me off. Pete likes them, though.)

BAD TEACHER (*** 1/2)--Cameron Diaz is the English Teacher from Hell in this raunchy comedy which delivers pretty much what you expect. Chances are this one will work better for you if you've spent time in front of a class. I've always thought Diaz was a wonderful comedienne (and a great beauty, too--a rare combination), and I think this picture allows her to demonstrate those comedic chops very well.

(There were some definite chuckling at our end when we watched this. Justin Timberlake rocked.)

CAPTAIN AMERICA (***)--I was very worried that this Marvel effort would be an irritating, revisionist PC version of the legendary superhero's efforts--and it is in parts, particularly with regard to the female lead. Otherwise, though, it's not bad at all, with a great performance from Chris Evans as Cap and the always welcome Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull.

INSIDIOUS (***)--A young couple move into a house that seems to be haunted. Unlike every other young couple that experiences this phenomenon in the movies, this couple gets the hell out of there--only to have the ghostly ghouls follow them to the new abode! From the makers of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and SAW comes this very moody, very atmosphere, very low-gore shocker (notice how many successful horror films are not gory these days? That may be worthy of a MIDMAR article, come to think of it). A bad ending mars but does not destroy one of the better modern horror films.

(Wow, this one really freaked me out. I watched it first with Sam and later with Pete and Mom. I found it genuinely creepy and it's definitely going to be added to the collection. I do think it kind of fell apart in the weird sequence at the end that went on too long but the rest was awesome.)

HORRIBLE BOSSES (***)--Another raunchy laff-fest that pretty much delivers what it promises. Jennifer Aniston as a sexually harassing dentist is completely unbelievable, but she's still pretty hilarious (and pretty, period).

(Not a Jennifer Aniston fan at all, but this was incredibly funny. I've worked fo a few people that this reminded me of.)

BRIDESMAIDS (***)--Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph have been praised for showing audiences that the girls can be just as raunchy as the boys. I'm not sure that's anything to brag about, but the film is pretty amusing in parts, and MAD MEN's Jon Hamm is great as a sleazy friend with benefits.

HALL PASS (***)--Owen Wilson gets a "break" from marriage in order to experience some of the sexual adventures he's missed. Yes, it's a pretty trite idea, and the film doesn't even deliver on the promise of nudity. But what saves the film is the cast's sincerity; the whole idea is that middle aged marrieds can relate to the dilemmas in the film, and the idea is successfully conveyed. I saw this on Netflix, and I consider it to be the perfect Netflix movie--not great, but certainly worth watching once.

GREEN LANTERN (** 1/2)--The long gestating DC superhero project is well intentioned, and Ryan Reynolds is a very good Hal Jordan, aka the Green Lantern. However, the film doesn't quite capture the cosmic sense of the comic books, and the final confrontation with the villain, Parallax, is so quickly wrapped up that it feels like an afterthought. Somehow I think GL will work better in a Justice League movie rather than as a stand-alone franchise.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (** 1/2)--the latest in the long running pirate franchise is about like the rest, only this time slightly shorter and very slightly less over-the-top--which makes it a better movie than its predecessors (though that's not saying much, perhaps). Johnny Depp continues to delight, and the guest appearance of Rolling Stone Keith Richards is worth the price of admission--to me, anyway!

(Finally, a Pirates movie without Orlando and Keira-the two main things that kept us from liking the other ones.)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (**)--About the same as the previous films in the series, PA 3 delivers some very effective "found footage" shocks, but the more effort that is made to "explain" this franchise, the more tiresome it becomes. One mildly interesting aspect of the film is that unlike most modern movies, where the best scenes are given away in the trailer, here almost none of the footage in the trailer is in the actual release print.

INTO THE VOID (**)--A very strange art film, shot completely in first person POV--which gets really interesting after our protagonist is killed and his wandering spirit becomes the POV. However, this interesting idea is undermined by an unfortunately overlong running time (more than 2 1/2 hours, as I recall). As a short subject, this one would have been a masterpiece. As a feature, it's kind of tedious.

(I hadn't heard of this one but now I am intrigued.)

THOR (* 1/2)--The worst of the Marvel superhero movies so far, THOR is too long, too loud, and so by-the-numbers that it doesn't bother to hide the fact that it exists merely to introduce the character for his appearance in next summer's AVENGERS movie. Like THE HULK a few years ago, THOR demonstrates what a bad idea it is to get a critical darling of a director (in this case, Kenneth Branagh) to helm a popcorn movie.

PASSION PLAY *)--Lovers of bad movies will dig this vehicle in which Mickey Rourke plays a musician on the run from bad guys (led by Bill Murray, of all people) who discovers a girl with real wings (Megan Fox). It rips off everything from Rourke's own ANGEL HEART to Ambrose Bierce of all people, and in its attempt to merge neo-noir with magical realism, it fails utterly on all counts. Even Ed Wood could make a more coherent movie, particularly with the obvious resources squandered here. This one went straight to DVD--what does that tell you about its quality?

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS (*)--This inane modern romantic comedy starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis--two of my favorite younger performers--is terrible. It's neither very funny nor particularly sexy, and none of the characters are remotely likable (though Richard Jenkins as Timberlake's dementia-addled father comes close). To give you a sense of how bad this film is, I admit that it's the first movie in nearly 30 years that I literally walked out on (granted, at Melody's insistence, for she hated it even worse than I did). Simply wretched!

(I've heard this same sentiment from a lot of people. So it's not one I'm giving a chance.)

I replied to Jonathan. Here are out exchanges:

Rebecca: I always enjoy your film opinions. For 2012 I am excited about "The Woman in Black." I've read the book and watched the stunning stage production in London years ago and it remains one of my favorite ghost stories. Nothing else is calling to me at the moment. My fingers are crossed that the greenlight will eventually go on for a movie version of "The Historian" and that the American remake of "The Orphanage" (done by Guillermo del Toro) doesn't suck too much.

Jonathan: Actually, Rebecca Patrick-Howard, I am also excited about THE WOMAN IN BLACK because it is being made under the banner of Hammer Films--Hammer Horror is back after a long hiatus, but their first few productions, including the excellent LET ME IN, have not done well at the box office. I hope WOMAN changes all that!

So, there you go. We haven't seen many films this year and most of them have been from Redbox. My favorite night at the movies was a trip to the Kentucky to watch "Rosemary's Baby," We do love all movie night invitations out there so if you're going and don't mind company, send us a line. Sometimes we get tired of rehashing things between us and value other people's opinions.

Some movies that I liked this year include:

- Sarah's Key (had some problems but I still liked it)

- The Ides of March

- Insidious

- Source Code (I thought this was a lot of fun and I'm really into time travel movies)

- The Way (A quiet movie that totally made me want to pack the backpack and go to Spain)

- The Smurfs (Sam's first movie! Only wish they had left them in the village and not taken them to NYC.)

- Rabbit Hole (Took me awhile to watch it because of the subject matter, but it was very real and tasteful)

- Jane Eyre

- The Help (I ca't help it. I thought it was fun.)

- The Lincoln Lawyer (Love me some Matthew. Another fun movie that I forgot about a week later but still liked it.)

- Hanna (Weird and a little confusing but different.I dug it.)

Disappointments:

- Bag of Bones (How could they ruin such a wonderful story? It went on waaayyyy tooo long and took too long to get into it. Then, they took out the best parts. It's not like they didn't have room for them. The begnning alone could have bee parred down.)

- Water for Elephants (Okay story, pretty actors with zero chemistry.)

- Scream 4 (eh...we knew who it was from the trailer. Not even a fun slasher film.)
- Super 8- (Liked it in the beginning. Felt very Stand by Me. But then it kind of fell apart for me.)

Movies I MIGHT See if I Can Watch them for Free:

- War Horse

- 50/50

- Crazy Stupid LOve

- My Week with Marilyn (finally, a movie that understands that Marilyn found a lot more commonality and acceptance with the "common people" than she did with the stars that she was surrounded by-I'm a big Marilyn History buff)
- J. Edgar

Movies I Still Want to See:

- Take Shelter (Although, with my end of the world paranoia this might not be a good idea.)

- The Muppets

- Into the Abyss

- We Need to talk About Kevin (One of my favorite books. Disturbing but you'll be thinking about it for years.)

- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (although I've seen the Swedish one and it was fine)

- Anonymous (I personally don't care if he wrote the stuff or not. This movie just looks SWEET!)

Sammisms

2011-12-31T22:07:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine encouraged me to create a page about all the funny things that Sam says or does (he prides himself on being a comedian). I did this a few months ago. You can find it at:

Sammisms
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Samisms/247849531923717

Entertaining everyone he encounters since 2007...

In 2012 it's All About Accountability

2011-12-31T06:54:00.000-05:00

The end of 2011 is upon us and what a last week it has been.

Of course, there has been Internet drama. Oddly enough, it didn’t have anything to do with me! This time, I was a bystander and sadly watched it unfold. I say “sadly” because it was hurtful on many levels. The person doing the lashing out was obviously hurting and really beyond the help of family and friends. The people they were lashing out at were victims in more ways than one. Astoundingly, at least in one individual, they felt more compassion for the person trying to hurt them then the anger I would probably be feeling.

The whole incident put some things into perspective for me, though, and it’s not an altogether bad way to leave this year.

One of the individual’s rants was that nobody was “helping” her. That she had to do everything on her own and that she’d had to make hurtful decisions due to the lack of “help.” Boy, have I been there. Anger and hurt about the people who abandoned us soon after Toby died. Anger and hurt about the people who were more than willing to give me advice on how to pack when we had to move at the end of my pregnancy but were unwilling to come over and actual offer any real assistance. Anger and hurt at the lack of interest when Toby was born and again when Iris was. The ones who claimed to be so worried about Iris when she was in the hospital yet never once came to visit or called to check on her.

Oh yes, I am no stranger to these feelings.

But after reading similar things from someone else’s perspective I realized something: it’s not their problem. Yes, we should feel a certain amount of compassion and even social responsibility to our fellow people when they are in trouble. After all, that’s why we have charities and support groups and, heck, even friendships to begin with. But at the end of the day, you have to help yourself.

Nobody is going to do it for you and you can’t expect them to. Help is awesome but if we don’t start taking responsibility for ourselves then we’re just not going to get anywhere. The feelings of entitlement can get dangerous because they can eventually lead to anger that’s just unhealthy. Yes, I feel a little angry that people post pictures of what I can only imagine were fun parties that we didn’t get invited to. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a good time on our own. Sure, I get my feelings hurt that Iris hasn’t had the visitors I’d hoped would show interest in her-but that doesn’t mean that we don’t love her.

In short, what other people do or do not do really has nothing to do with us. People will come and go out of your life but it’s what you do with your own life that’s important. Frankly, at this point, I think I’m happier to look back and say that I did something on my own or that Pete and I did something by ourselves than to say we had to rely on a bunch of others.

There was a catalytic moment earlier in the week when I was talking to someone about somebody in my life and they asked me, “Why on earth do you feel obligated to keep them in your life? You don’t owe them anything!” and I realized that I was back on that dangerous ground again. I made the mistake of believing that I DID owe someone something if they had been good to us in or time of need-to the point where it was becoming unhealthy.

So this works both ways. We need to start taking responsibility for ourselves but we also need to stop thinking that we are emotionally and forever indebted to people even after the relationship has run its course. (Heck, I’ve been treated like an exhibit at the zoo, had Toby’s memory thrown in my face, and had my kid treated like crap and still put up with it because I thought I owed the people something for treating me with kindness in the past.)

So I think that if the world doesn’t end in 2012 this is an excellent time to start standing up, being firm, and making the decisions that are best for our families. In the world of Facebook where you can get approximately 142 opinions on whether or not you should eat your breakfast first or brush your teeth and have every feeling, meal you cook, and errand commented on and validated I say we get back to our own lives and being responsible for ourselves.

At the end of the day, we're still making our own decisions. We can blame other people for reasons that we are unhappy, unsuccessful, or uninspired but when we do that are we not really making the subconscious decision to blame them because we don't want to admit to ourselves that it's really our fault?

Good decisions, bad decisions, mistakes and all-let’s be accountable.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T05:16:00.001-05:00

Click here to view these pictures larger

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T05:13:00.002-05:00

Click here to view these pictures larger

Revisiting the Cooper's Playhouse Controversy

2011-12-21T07:19:00.002-05:00

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the controversy surrounding Cooper’s Playhouse. If you’re not familiar with this controversy, here’s the scoop: Cooper has cerebral palsy and he and his family live in an upscale subdivision in Lexington. His therapist suggested them getting him a playhouse. (I’m not sure why.) So, they spent a couple grand on it and put it up. Problem is, they live in a subdivision with an HOA. Their HOA prohibits the construction of an unattached building. So now, they have to take the playhouse down. They also have to pay a fine every day that it is up.

This has spurred all kinds of anger and controversy in the area. Facebook pages have been created to “Save Cooper’s Playhouse” and the phone numbers of the board’s members have been posted so that they can be harassed. People are outraged that they would make the family remove a construction that is used for a little boy’s therapy.

In the beginning, I was enraged as well. It’s a beautiful playhouse. It’s one of those expensive ones that’s probably in better shape than the farmhouse that Pete and I lived in. An eyesore it is not. And if it’s good for his physical and mental health then I am on board with having it.

However…

There is a reason that we don’t live in a neighborhood with an HOA-they’re kind of stupid. Yes, they prohibit people from putting up ugly structures, not mowing their yards, and not filling said yards with cars on cement blocks. They supposedly keep the neighborhood attractive and the property values high.

They are very, very restrictive though. In order to live in such a neighborhood you have to abide by certain rules. They can be extensive. You actually pay a certain amount every month to have other people enforce these rules. You know that when you move in. Heck, we looked at some rental properties and turned them down because we wouldn’t have been able to plant the flowers that we wanted or have outside toys in the yard or colored lights at Christmas.

So what are some other rules of HOAs?

Pet Policies

HOA rules may indicate whether pets are allowed in the community. If pets are allowed, the rules will state which types are acceptable, including breeds, and any size restrictions or limits on the number homeowners may have in their homes. Since it's the homeowner's responsibility to care for his pet, HOA rules also may list cleanup and leash requirements.

Lawn Maintenance

Some communities offer lawn care services for their homeowners, while others expect homeowners to maintain their yards. HOA rules may list how tall grass can grow before it must be cut. The rules for lawn maintenance also may require residents to contact the association before adding gardens, trees or bushes to their landscaping. Rules on pesticides, mulch or other lawn care solutions also may be listed in HOA rules.

Maintenance

Homeowners' association rules list which maintenance repairs are the responsibility of the association. From pest problems and leaking roofs to appliance problems, HOA rules try to eliminate confusion about homeowners' responsibilities.

Parking

Parking rules and regulations may indicate the number of parking spots each resident receives, how many cars may be parked on a driveway, location of visitor parking and information on parking uninsured or out-of-commission vehicles in parking spots. The rules may specify where cars will be towed if parking regulations are violated.

Home Modifications

Whether they're painting the exterior of a home or adding a pool, building signage on the front lawn or adding shutters, homeowners covered by HOA rules typically have regulations and guidelines to follow. With the intent of preserving a uniform appearance throughout the community, some associations don't allow members to make unapproved modifications to the exterior of their properties.

Of course, they can get very detailed. Some people like this. I do not. Maybe when I am older and living I a retirement community I might reconsider. But with young children that want pets and playhouses and swingsets I know it’s not the right place for me.

So, was this HOA out of line for not allowing a detached structure? I don’t think so. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Unconstitutional? No. When you rent a home and the landlord tells you not to paint the walls or have pets or build on a garage then you don’t. If you want to do those things then you don’t move in.

I know that the family filed a motion with the Americans with Disabilities Act and they were denied. But really, this isn’t a problem for the ADA. They are not discriminating against him because he is disabled. They are discriminating against the playhouse because it broke their rules.

So…here are some of the arguments:

“Other people have swingsets in their yards.” As I understand it, the HOA specifies the problem as being a structure with 4 walls, much in the same way that they would regard an addition to the house. (Which, by the way, you have to get a permit for.) So a swingset would not fall under that category.

“They let other people do it.” Well, now that’s a problem. If they are singling this family out for some reason then that’s a whole other ballgame. I don’t know this for a fact, though, so I won’t go there.

“They should let him have it because he is disabled.”

Now, there’s my problem. Call me the Grinch but I do not believe that he should be allowed to have the playhouse just because he is disabled. As a parent myself, although I would sympathize with his disability, if he got to have a playhouse then my child should as well. Exceptions are necessary in some cases. I do not believe this is one.

Actually, I don’t think it should be a rule at all. I think every child in the neighborhood ought to be able to have a playhouse if they want one, whether they have a disability or not. If I lived there and they let him have one then they should let all of them. I could only imagine the tantrums that Sam would have if one kid got to have a puppy or a cat or a swingset and he didn’t.

When we moved into the house in Lexington we were not allowed to have a dog or cat, even though Sam is still grieving and pets are supposed to help that. We knew that moving in, though.

In short, I think it’s a stupid rule. Let the poor kid have his playhouse. Let all of them have their playhouses…But is the HOA wrong in enforcing a rule that they already had in place and that the family agreed to upon moving in there? I don’t know.

One thing I do know, though. With all the news coverage, Facebook activity, and controversy I bet they wish they hadn’t created that rule now.

First Food for Iris

2011-12-20T03:57:00.000-05:00

Well, our 4 year old has bee addicted to soda since he was a year old and now it looks like the little one is following close behind with her own new love. With her parents' love of ice cream, was it any wonder that this happened?

Other Blog

2011-12-18T05:34:00.001-05:00

I don't usually link these two together but decided to do it this time. My latest post is what I learned about Toby's death by looking at my Facebook timeline. http://lifeaftersids.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-i-learned-about-tobys-death-on.html

Videos

2011-12-14T00:23:00.002-05:00

Iris plays airplane

Early Christmas

2011-12-04T19:17:00.000-05:00

Yes, we moved. No, we no longer live in Lexington. Taking care of health issues, moving, and trying to get ready for Christmas has made for a hectic few months. But...we're getting there.

Here are some pictures of the yahoos.

The Reason for the Season

2011-12-04T03:20:00.001-05:00

It’s getting closer to Christmastime. I know this not because the weather is getting colder, the music has changed on the radio, or the store aisles have more doorbusters than they know what to do with but because my Facebook news feed tells me it is. I can always tell that Christmas is coming because, suddenly, the status updates of the people I know start getting defensive about the holiday season.

“Jesus is the reason for the season!”

“Put the CHRIST back in CHRISTmas.”

“Obama is not going to have a nativity this year at the White House. Repost this if you’re angry!”

“If you’re not Christian then why the HELL are you putting up a tree or celebrating!”

These are just a few of the things that get thrown my way on a daily basis. It happens every year but for some reason it seems to be particularly harsh this year. Now, #3 just flat-out isn’t true and this rumor goes around every time we have a democrat for president so I usually chuckle a little when I see it. On the other hand, heck, if he doesn’t want to lug out the nativity this year I don’t have a huge problem with it. I mean, think about it…the people usually complaining about this are the same ones that complain that nobody can remember what the holiday is all about anymore. Because, really, NOTHING says the birth of Christ like a plastic, neon manger staked in the ground.

As for #1 and #4, well, those are things that I take issue with.

If I’m not Christian then why am I celebrating? Well, why don’t you ask the Jewish that? They’ll probably tell you that they are celebrating Hanukkah. Or ask the Muslims while they are celebrating Ramadan. Or ask the pagans while they are celebrating Yule. The fact is, there ARE other holidays during the month of December and while Christmas is one of them it’s not the only one. While Jesus is A reason for the season and certainly the Christian reason for the season, he’s not the ONLY reason.

I was deleted by at least three people (that I know of) for saying that there are several holidays that different religions and cultures celebrate during December and that we should be respectful of the fact that not everyone might share our beliefs. Yes, not only did I get deleted but I also got a few pointed status updates thrown my way, too, from these so-called “Christians” who were outraged that I would be tolerant of another’s beliefs. (Seemingly forgetting that Jesus was about acceptance and tolerance.)

I could go on a rant here. I could go on a big one. Why would I be putting up a tree, singing carols, decorating with greenery, or hanging the mistletoe when I’m not Christian? How about because none of those things were even associated with Christianity until fairly recently? They were used by Nordic tribes, Celtic tribes, and in some cases, even Native American tribes long before Christianity came around. Most the of Christmas traditions that we associate with the holiday today have histories that pre-date Christianity by years that we can’t even put a number on.

When someone says something to me like, “Why are you putting up a tree? You’re not even Christian!” my first instinct is to be ornery and to retort, “I’m celebrating Yule. Why the heck are YOU putting up a tree? You’re not even pagan!”

But that would be hypocritical because then I would be showing intolerance to that person.

Silly things like people fussing on Facebook about Christmas decorations might seem petty and unimportant but I think it covers a bigger issue. When did we get so intolerant of what each other believes? When did it become so acceptable to belittle each other and turn our noses up at one another and their beliefs?

In the past, religious intolerance has lead to much bigger things that didn’t go so well.

Another status that popped up the other day was that “America was founded on Christian values, let’s keep it that way!”

My bad. I thought that the Pilgrims (not the founders, of course, but this status popped up on Thanksgiving) came here seeking religious freedom and safety from persecution. So what is it? You can have religious freedom as long as you believe what everyone else does?

Many people like to quote the “Pledge of Allegiance” to back up their argument. They say that the line “One nation, under GOD” sums us up and is what we should remember.

Yeah, well, I say that they are forgetting the last line of the pledge:

“With LIBERTY and justice for ALL.”

If you’re up for a drive out in the country this season then feel free to drive by our house. We will be the heathens that have the nerve to fill our yard with inflatables and neon candy canes.

Iris Grows

2011-11-30T02:23:00.000-05:00

She gets a little bigger everyday.

The Duggars vs the Browns

2011-11-28T04:43:00.002-05:00

Sitting up with Iris every night has given me views into worlds that I had never considered before, namely the world of late night television. It’s sad that the only time that I really have the TV to myself is the only time that nothing seems to be on. Except for TLC. There is always something weird on TLC. Heck, even the infomercials are entertaining.

Obviously, I have known about the Duggars for awhile now. The Duggars: the fundamentalist Christians with the mama uterus that keeps on giving. The Browns, though, are fairly new on the horizon although they are getting just as much attention (if not more). So, the all important question is: Where do I stand on the issues concerning these two vastly different families?

To be honest, I used to be a fan of the Duggars. Okay, “fan” might be a little strong but I didn’t dislike them. I wouldn’t have, for instance, put them up there with the three layers of Hell that is Jon and Kate + 8. The Duggars, despite their conservative beliefs, seemed to get along well and liked each other. Around here we would call people who only wear skirts, don’t cut their hair, and go around spouting Bible verses all the time “Holy rollers.” (Do you ever wonder about WHERE they buy all of those ankle length blue jean skirts? I’m serious. WHERE do they come from?) The Duggars have a “home church” so I can’t pick on their religious choices. I don’t get them or understand them but they don’t seem to be hurting anyone and the kids are kind of cute. You know, as cute as 19 (soon to be 20) kids can be.

The Browns have been much more controversial. Kody Brown is infamous for having four wives and a bunch of kids. Of course, polygamy is illegal but since he’s legally only married to one of them (Meri) it’s more of a technicality than anything else. I have little tolerance for conservative, polygamist groups that marry young 13 year old girls and force them to wear Shakeresque clothing, live in isolation, and turn them into slaves.

However, the Browns are nothing like this. They are normal, middle class, fun loving people. A couple of the wives work, they wear nice contemporary clothes, and they’re all adults who have chosen to live that lifestyle. Kody might be the husband but they give him heck a lot. They also gang up on him. His is a role that is not always to be envied.

So…where do I stand?

I have to say, the Duggars are starting to come up short. In many ways, they are starting to resemble that polygamist sect that I was just talking about, minus the marrying. I’m cool with families that want to home school. I would do it myself if I had the patience. But the fact is, there appears to be very little learning in their household. While Michelle does try to teach them, she has admitted herself that she’s not very good at it and that their schoolwork centers on the Bible. Watch a few episodes and listen to her and her husband talk for a little bit. You’ll cringe at the things that they pass off as facts.

The girls are not allowed to go out in public without a brother present. They are not allowed to date. They “can” go to college but it is not encouraged. The girls and boys share bedrooms with their younger brothers and sisters. That means that the 20 year old is sleeping in the same bedroom as the 1 year old. How are these children ever going to be socially adjusted adults that can work in regular jobs, run their own businesses, or even have a healthy adult relationship?

Not convinced that there is a problem? Consider the fact that after a few months of breastfeeding, Michelle stops. She stops because breastfeeding makes it difficult to get pregnant again and they don’t believe in birth control. She then gives the infant over to an older girl, or a “buddy”, to take care of. These older girls are parents to about 13 children. They are responsible for washing them, feeding them, parenting them, and “training” them. Once the infant is out of newborn stage, Michelle has very little interactions with them. She’s on to the next one.

When she gave birth several months prematurely she left her barely a week old preemie infant in NICU to travel hours away to protest at an anti-alcohol rally. Later, when that same child was barely a toddler and obviously unhealthy (just look at her) she carted her off on a 3 country trip for a couple of weeks. And then was shocked when she got ill and a physician had to fly back to the US with them on a plane to administer care. And did Michelle cry for her poor, sick child? Oh no. She cried because she was going to be separated from her husband for awhile.

While in Scotland, Jim Bob actually went up to a street performer and started witnessing.

The children are all expected to carry on the lifestyle. No choices there.

Now, let’s look at the Browns. Yes, they are polygamists. But do they want their kids to carry on the tradition? Not if they don’t want to. Are they trying to convert other people? No. In fact, Kody specifically said that if any of his friends told him that they wanted to live that way he would try to talk them out of it.

Kody has a lot of kids, but with Meri he only has one. She has been unable to carry another child full term and that makes the other wives sad. Actually, it’s the wives’ relationships with each other that’s the most entertaining to watch. I think my favorite “couple” on the show is Janelle and Christine. The women are funny, intolerant of Kody’s frequent goofiness, and are not afraid to speak their minds. When he married new wife Robyn and the women found out that he helped pick out her wedding dress Christine snapped, “As if you cared what I wore!”

For a girls’ night out, the women all went out (pregnant Robyn in tow) for a night in Vegas. Kody had to take care of all 17 of the kids alone. You never see the Duggars do that. The kids attend school, are encouraged to join extracurricular activites, and are strongly encouraged to go to college. The parents take them to colleges for tours if they express an interest.

In the latest episode, Robyn told Meri that she would surrogate for her and Kody if they wanted to try to have another baby. As odd as it sounds, it was kind of sweet. Reality TV or not, even if half of this is scripted I believe that the feelings amongst this family are genuine.

In the end, even though I find both families a little strange, I have to say that the Browns come out ahead. Their relationships with each other seem healthy and fun and the kids are exposed to lots of different opportunities. Plus, I think I could have fun with them. As long as I didn’t have to put up with Kody for very long.

Playing Victim…Or Not

2011-11-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

Playing Victim…Or Not

We weren’t going to make any kind of official announcement, although most people know by now: we no longer live in Lexington. There were several reasons why we moved but in the end it was the right decision for us and we both feel like it was the better decision for Sam and Iris, too.

I’ve had a hard time dealing with a lot of people making comments about our move. I didn’t feel like our reasons were any of their business and after getting so many opinions regarding Iris’s health, my pregnancy, and a host of other things I didn’t feel like we needed to justify our decision. Some people jokingly made comments about us moving again while some comments were not so humorous. I realize that the moves were close together, but the one from Irvine was very traumatic for us. We didn’t move because we wanted to. We moved because our landlord decided to move into our house himself. It was traumatic because I was pregnant and very sick and that house had almost all of our memories of Toby tied to it. We would never have left if given the option and eventually planned on buying it. There were lots of tears and panic attacks about leaving that place and it wasn’t a choice but a necessity which made it even worse. So the joking about us moving so much really rubbed me the wrong way. We didn’t have control over that move. Much like people who are being foreclosed on in this economy, we HAD to do it.

With that in mind, making the decision to do what was best for us was really empowering. In the past 15 months we’ve had a lot of things happen to us. We couldn’t save Toby, we couldn’t save Pete’s mom, we couldn’t save our dogs, we couldn’t stop my dad’s heart attacks (all three of them), we couldn’t stop my pregnancy from being so awful, we couldn’t stop a lot of the negativity that was coming from the other side of the ocean, we couldn’t stop the owner of our house from wanting it back, and we couldn’t stop Iris’s genetic condition from giving her seizures and what would have been a poor prognosis just a few years ago. It seemed like a lot of things were happening TO us and that we had very little choices in the matters.

And then, one day, I stopped and took a look at some of the things that were going on around me. People were complaining so much. Granted, I complain a lot. I think a good pity party now and then is a pretty good morale booster for the most part. But I noticed that the things that people were complaining about seemed changeable. Someone complaining that they didn’t have money, although they refused to get a job for various reasons. Someone constantly complaining about not having health insurance and were terribly sick, yet refusing to go to the one clinic that takes patients on a sliding scale. Someone complaining that they are always being taken advantage of because they are such a “nice” person, and then turning around and blasting someone to the point of defamation of character on Facebook. It just seemed to be one thing after another.

Then, we got more news about Iris’s health and I decided that I, for one, was not going to sit around and be a victim anymore. I was tired of things happening to us and just kind of, well, taking it.

My immediate family is generally not known for being very reactive people. We talk, but we’re not very action motivated. If we’re in a job and our boss is horrible to us, we’ll stay there. We’ll get stomach ulcers and develop panic attacks, and lose sleep and get depressed but we’ll still stay in the job. If we’re friends with people that treat us like crap then we’ll complain about them and talk about them, but we’ll still stay friends with them. It carries over into our physicians, too. We’ll know that they’re not treating us well and that they’re misdiagnosing us and we’ll even get to the point where we won’t go in when we’re sick because we don’t like them-but we won’t change.

I’m a little sick of that.

Right before I had Iris there was a guy that I was barely friends with overseas and hadn’t heard from in a few years who suddenly started chatting with me. He started pouring out his problems to me in a way that was almost a little disturbing. These were not small problems, either. These were therapist-worthy problems. He totally took advantage of me. He would tell me all of these problems and completely disrespect anything that was going on in my life. For instance, I tried to get offline with him and repeatedly told him that I was on my way in for my C-section an yet he kept talking. I finally just signed off. His reaction? He deleted me to punish me. He then sent me another friend request. I stupidly accepted, figuring that it might have been a mistake. He continued this trend for the next month. I would tell him that I was in the hospital, at the hospital with Iris, trying to help her as she had a seizure, and yet he STILL kept sending me messages. If I ignored him then my phone would nearly blow up. And if I went too long without answering him back, he would delete me-only to send me a friend request a few days later.

Why did I keep accepting it? I obviously have a problem in this area, walking away from things. (Not that much, though, he’s gone now.) When I got to the end of my rope I finally fired something back to him, telling him exactly what I thought of his attitude and disrespect.

And that’s the way I felt about moving. It was time to stand up and do something for us and for the good of all of us. It might not have made sense to a lot of people but it sure felt good to stand up and say, “That’s it. We’re making a decision and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”

I really think that when it comes to your life, if there is something that’s making you unhappy or isn’t benefiting you, you can either make the decision to change it or you can live with it. And that’s kind of the end of that.

The last two entries in my SIDS blog pertains to the disgusting ad that's up in Milwaukee, showing the baby with the meat cleaver. One is my opinion on the whole thing and the other is some research showing the benefits of co-sleeping-something you rarely see.

Fall

2011-11-17T01:46:00.001-05:00

My Experience with "The Help"

2011-10-27T05:14:00.002-04:00

A few days ago, Mom and I went to the movies and watched “The Help.” I had read the book, and read a lot of it aloud to her, so she was familiar with it and I knew what was coming. I was also familiar with the controversy surrounding it and many of my friends were choosing not to read it because of said controversy.

Controversy usually just makes me want to see something even more, except in the case of most Michael Moore projects. But that’s just because I find a lot of them misleading and downright boring, even if I do agree with him on occasion. I figure that I can’t take a stance against something (or for it) unless I experience it myself.

One of the biggest complaints about the book/movie is that the whole concept is a white woman telling a black woman’s story. Okay. I can get on board with that. That would be similar to a Californian coming into Kentucky and writing a book showing the plights of Appalachians. We wouldn’t be too thrilled about that, either, unless it was very well-done and even then we would take issue just to be ornery.

I don’t necessarily see “The Help” as being that, however. I don’t completely see it being a white woman telling a black woman’s story. I see it as a white woman telling a story about a white woman ‘s experience with black women and that’s very different. If the Californian in my example came to Kentucky and wrote a story about being a Californian living in Kentucky that would be very different than them writing completely from the perspective of the Appalachian. Kathryn writes from both perspectives so I will (mostly) give her a pass on that.

Another controversy is that the book’s light tone and stereotypical characters oversimplify a very complicated time. Well, maybe. But darn it, does everything have to be so gritty and serious to have greater meaning? Has nobody read Dr. Seuss? Some of the best children’s books took complicated issues and simplified them, giving them a greater meaning. I’m not saying that the civil right’s movement should be reduced to that at all, but sometimes by using a different tone and approach you make more people stand up and listen.

Next, we have the whole racist thing. That, I’m having trouble with. Is it considered racist because of what Minnie did to the pie? I thought that was clever (and I don’t fully believe she did it). I mean, if you look at the characters it’s the white women who are mostly mean, insipid, and stupid. The black women are strong, witty, loving, and courageous. Pete pointed out that stereotypes don’t have to be BAD to be wrong and I guess he has a point there. But if I was going to choose my character in the movie or book I would much rather be one of the black characters than one of the white ones. I even had trouble with Skeeter at times.

As far as the story itself goes…this is where I ran into the real meat. I absolutely loved reading the book. It flowed well, the characters literally jumped off the page, and I was beyond engrossed. As we drove to the hospital to visit Dad (yet another heart attack, poor fellow) I literally read aloud from it until it got too dark to see and even then I kept trying to continue on. It might not have literally been written for the screen but it was so visual that I had no trouble seeing the characters and their actions.

Some problems that I had might have had to do with the writing itself, though, and not the actual story. I know that Skeeter was supposed to be well-liked, brave, and a square peg in a round hole but there were things that didn’t set well with me. For one thing, she stirred up a bunch of trouble in her naiveté and then left the women. Yeah, so her future was in New York but she got a good job and a new start in a glamorous city for her trouble. The other women, however, literally put their lives on the line. Skeeter risked a boyfriend that was a jerk and friends with women that she barely liked to begin with. The other women risked…their lives. (This was more apparent in the book than in the movie.)

While Skeeter’s character was supposed to be the one that was ahead of her time and disgusted with the way that the world was going, I still maintain that it was Celia Foote that was the real hero. Skeeter still managed to blend in for the most part and still played her social role when it was called for. Celia, on the other hand, had zero inhibitions. I honestly do not think her character saw color. I think that Celia was probably the unintended heroine of the story and I am just sorry that the movie didn’t devote more time to her. The relationship between Minnie and Celia was complicated, loving, and crossed all color boundaries for the time period. Yet she’s almost used as a side character with little attention.

I did think that the movie lacked in many places, although it was still very good. For some reason, it didn’t quite convey the humor that the book did. There were some scenes (like the Crisco one) that were really funny in the book. By changing just a couple of words from that same scene in the movie, the exchange lost something. There are always things that the movie is going to leave unexplained just or the sake of time but I never understand why they leave in some things and take out others. The whole Stewart storyline, for instance, was unnecessary.

One of my favorite scenes in the book was when Celia’s husband found out about Minny. Or rather, when she found out that he knew. That scene was still in the movie but it was glossed over and not nearly as funny as it could have been.

What I did like was the expansion of Sissey Spacek’s character as well as the growth of Allison Janney’s. Having Skeeter’s mother come around at the end was a nice change from the book, even though it was implied.

The actors all did outstanding well. Emma Stone is probably one of our best young actresses right now and Bryce Dallas Howard was almost unrecognizable. Jessica Chastain channeled Julia Roberts and really brought the character to live in every way that I imagined. Of course, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer were wonderful. Viola could do more with her eyes than most actresses can do with their entire body.

As I get older, I am finding that I am becoming less intellectual about some matters. I used to spend my time reading the classics, being caught up on current events, and getting into social and political discussions. After seeing so many bad things and feeling like I am living with my head and chest under the water most of the time, though, I’m starting to mellow out. Now, I just like a good story. I still get riled up and upset and as anyone who has read my blog before knows that I get on my soapbox more times than I need to, but mostly I just like to be entertained. “The Help” entertained me and made me think a little bit. And besides, you have to respect a woman who was rejected 60 times and just kept re-submitting.

Did I Just See a Ghost: Notes on the Traditional Music Festival

2011-10-20T05:32:00.003-04:00

So last weekend Mom and I decided to come out of our hermitage and venture to the big city lights of Berea. Because, obviously, since we now live in Lexington we can’t find a thing in the world to do here. Berea College was hosting the Traditional Music Festival and we were excited that Caroline Herring was going to be there.

I must admit, that as crazy as I am over Americana music I had never heard of Caroline Herring until a little over a year ago when she performed at LMU’s festival. In fact, Pete and I almost didn’t go to her concert because we didn’t know who she was, my feet were swollen, and he was craving Subway. We went, we were hooked, and we have harassed everyone on Facebook with her songs ever since.

So, upon finding out that she was doing a show in Berea I decided to rope Mom along with me this time. The only problem was, everything I read gave a conflicting time of her performance to the point where I wasn’t even sure there actually was one. No problem, I figured. I’ll come out of Facebook hiding and send my friend a message, asking him when she’s coming on. After all, he is running the festival. No reply. What? You mean he couldn’t take the time off from running an important festival and catering to famous people to send me a text telling me what time one performer would be on stage? I obviously need to work more on my divadom. At any rate, we thought we had figured it out so we went.

Since almost all of my clothing that is currently out and easy t o get to is maternity I had limited options. I settled on something I swear I had never seen in my closet before-a floor length skirt with a sleeveless top and a cardigan. When I stepped into the living room, Pete immediately declared, “You look like a Berean!” Oh, good. Always nice to fit in!

On the drive down, Mom filled me in on everything that had happened on Facebook during my absence while I hungrily thought of the garlic bread that awaited me at Papa Leno’s. When we got to the Square, however, the only place to park was in Boone Tavern’s lot. Since they apparently have bellmen now Mom felt awkward about parking there and not going in so instead of just walking around the corner we had to make the pretense of walking through the doors, through the lobby, and out the other doors to apparently fool the doormen into thinking that Boone Tavern was really our destination. On the plus side, we did get to read the Thanksgiving menu on the way and it looks promising.

Alas, the line at Papa Leno’s stretched to the doors and we knew that we wouldn’t have time for a manicotti, slice of garlic bread, or even turtle cheesecake from there. Berea Coffee and Tea ignored us while we stood in line so we walked out of yet a THIRD restaurant on the Square and continued our tour of local eating establishments and wound up in the Main Street Diner.

We hadn’t been there before since we tend to stick to the same places in Berea so we didn’t know anything about it. They did have quiche on the menu, though, and after a few lame jokes about getting a quickie we were seated next to some very freakishly well-behaved children and ordered our food. A Bluegrass band was playing there that night and that was kind of nice, but I was a little surprised that for a BLT, quiche, key lime pie, and two iced teas our bill was $23. My quiche was very food though.

So then we headed out to find the place where the concert was. It was then, in the middle of the dark college campus, that we realized we had no idea where we were going. We thought we might be able to follow people, but there were no people. Then we thought we might be able to follow the music that we heard, but it turned out to just be an air conditioning unit.

Finally, a nice couple helped us along and then helpfully told us that there was a fee to get in. Oops. We had spent our cash on my quickie. I decided that it would be really lame to call Silas over to the table and ask him if I could borrow money for the entrance fee but at the last minute Mom found the $10 and we were in.

It was money well spent.

The night started off with the Berea College Bluegrass Ensemble. Of course, these guys are as good as any professional musicians and better than some. They were doing a tribute to Jean Ritchie and I was glad to hear some of my favorites, like “In the Cool of the Day.” It was actually at this point that I had my “duh”, slap me on the side of the head moment.

In college, I had a night class with Dr. Winther. Loved the man, dreaded his classes. Not only would he never let us out early, but some nights he wanted to keep us an hour longer. Well, one night Jean Ritchie was playing on campus. I actually used to be friends with her granddaughter way back in the day and played with her (as well as Deborah Payne) but that was before I knew the Magnitude of Jean. As an adult, however, I felt her power and I wanted nothing more than to see her performance. Winther would not let me go early. Finally, I stood up and was like, “I’m sorry, but she’s old and she’s going to be dead some day and I am going to regret not seeing her” and I stomped out. I was glad I went. He laughed about it later at my graduation party.

Last year, Jean had some major health setbacks and as I was watching the ensemble perform her songs, I started feeling very proud of myself for going that night and watching her. After all, she WAS dead now and I wouldn’t have that chance again. So there I sat, feeling all righteous and prideful in the audience, bemoaning the fact that we had lost a legend…and then I looked over to me left. About ten people down from me, there she was-Jean Ritchie. She had chosen that moment to look my way, too. I jumped about ten feet into the air and looked around like, oh my God, is anyone else seeing this?

Not sure that I was seeing what I thought I was, I turned to Mom. “Mom, Jean Ritchie is looking at me!” Mom, as confused as I was, replied, “Didn’t she die?” So we both looked back over and nope, she was very much alive and well and in the same row as us.

A quick Google search on my phone right there in the auditorium showed us that it was Hazel Dickens that had passed away. Good Lord. And I was about 10 seconds away from asking Silas if he could get Hazel for next year.

Watch Eddie Pennington and see Jean as I saw her.

Gazing around the audience, I was happy to see some of my writing friends dispersed here and there and after the initial shock of discovering that Jean was still amongst us I settled back and enjoyed the show.

Some good Bluegrass, some good square dance music (or contra, I prefer), some nice waltzes…and then Caroline. Mom did her best to resist the urge to give her the ultimate welcoming-the Arsenio Hall Show whoop-which might not have been the most appropriate sounds in that crowd. We were kind of a mild mannered, polite bunch.

Luckily, thanks to the women behind me, I had a running commentary on every song that was played. It went something like this:

Woman 1: What are they playing?

Woman 2: It’s a waltz.

Woman 1: What kind of waltz?

Woman 2: What do you mean what kind? There’s only one.

Woman 1: Not according to “Dancing with the Stars.”

I should add that these women weren’t a day over 75. Remember them. They’ll be important later.

Caroline was amazing. She sang “Paper Gown” and one that I hadn’t heard before called “The Dozens” and now I had to break my bank and buy even more CDs. Before I left Pete told me that I might hear someone new that I liked but I was kind of feeling like my roster was already full and I didn’t have room for anyone else.

That might have changed with Eddie Pennington.

I figured that following Caroline would be tough. After all, a classy powerhouse like that, what are you going to do? You’re going to bring on a dude that has a sense of humor, can play the guitar like mad, and has an entire festival named after him.

One of the highlights in the show was when he got the audience to sing “16 Tons” and I looked over and saw Jean Ritchie singing along. There was just something whimsical about that. But I love how you can get a bunch of us Appalachians in the room and there are just certain songs, regardless of the genre, that we are all going to know. It’s kind of comforting.

Betty Smith was the last to perform and I could tell Mom was getting antsy at this point. After Caroline and Eddie she felt like she’d seen all that she had come for. I pointed out that it takes talent for someone to get on the stage and play the dulcimer in front of Jean Ritchie so she sat back and hushed. Betty actually reminded me of Nana. You know, if Nana had played the dulcimer and hadn’t sounded like a man. I thought she was sweet.

At the end of her last song, we all stood up to leave when suddenly Woman #1 behind me called my attention. There was a $10 bill on the floor by my feet. It was not mine. After asking several people around us if it belonged to them the woman was sufficiently sure that it was mine by default and handed it to me with a pat on the back. Our admission price!

While Mom went to the bathroom I decided to seek out Caroline Herring. I (literally) ran into her in the foyer and aside from being struck by how tall she was, of course she remembered me as being the pregnant one at LMU. Because I am always the pregnant one at LMU. I did my best to be cool and positive and not squeal or ramble or gush. I thought I was doing alright.

Then, I went into the bathroom to tell Mom that I needed some air and was going to step aside. So I’m standing there, talking to her stall, and generally holding up the line for those who had waited nearly 3 hours to pee, and when I turn around of course Caroline is standing behind me.

So much for being cool.

Watch this. Her voice will haunt you. This song is about as fine a piece of literature as I have read.

The Dozens
By Caroline Herring

I had a few more questions
I never knew to ask
You were feeling downhearted
The last time we parted
With a shock of white hair
Life has changed a lot you know
And I’m kind of scared of that
It bottoms out in seconds flat

You said you had a good friend
He died so needlessly
Knocked over by a garbage truck
They threw him down
Then they picked him up
And your son was back home again
Your little boy and his children
He’s fighting off a mean disease
That’s killing off his faculties

Tell me a little joke
Let’s play the dozens
Say something about my mama
In a veiled quadrille round
I’m just a white girl from a segregated town
And I’m looking for some answers
That I haven’t found

I remember Memphis
Like it was yesterday
And a Ford station wagon
So full of us it was dragging
With your books in our grasping hands
We heard you speak
We made our plans
To hoist the flag and rule the world
All the hopes we had unfurled

Tell me a little joke
Let’s play the dozens
Say something about my mama
In a veiled quadrille round
I’m just a white girl from a segregated town
And I’m looking for some answers
That I haven’t found

I want to be just like you
I want to love first, I do
Look people in the eye
Make them feel good
Then I’ll make them think
Just like you would

Y’all were off on a night stroll
Down the capitol boulevards
You were emboldening another son
Of this grand nation
I would vote for you for president
But you’re floating with the butterflies
Soaring with the seagulls
Or the eagle as he takes the skies

Let’s eat some democratic soup
And Eastern Market cheese
Meals with you and Cornelia
Were my most precious memories
I don’t know what the hell to do
Please give me a little tap
Tell me I can take it
That I won’t bottom out in seconds flat

Sam and Iris

2011-10-19T02:03:00.002-04:00

Music that’s Been Important to Me

2011-10-13T05:17:00.002-04:00

I was listening to the radio the other day and heard a song that I hadn’t heard in years and it brought back good memories. They say that scent is the strongest sense but I have virtually no sense of smell so those long ago scents of childhood have passed me by. I couldn’t tell you what my nana’s kitchen smelled like.

I CAN, however, tell you what she had on the record player. Yes, folks, I am that old. We had an 8-track player in our car until I was about 10 years old and I didn’t even own a CD player until 1999. I had been out of high school for a few years by then.

Since I like music and I like my music-related blogs, I thought I’d do one on some music that’s been important to me. Figured I would do it chronologically.

1. Baby’s Got her Blue Jeans on- Mel McDaniel

According to my parents, the first song I learned to sing was Hank William Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends.” Although my memory is very good, I don’t remember that. I do, however, remember learning to sing this song when I was about two years old. I was about fifteen before I understood what it meant.

2. Country Roads- John Denver

It is no secret that John Denver was my first love. I saw him on a Christmas special with the Muppets when I was three and fell head over heels. Although the song now confuses me (I always associate the Shenandoah Valley with Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains with Tennessee-not West Virginia) it still evokes such pleasant memories that I won’t nitpick. One night, driving back from church, I saw on Ruth Walter’s lap while Tommy drove and we changed the words: “Hazel Green roads, take me home/To the place I belong/Wolfe County, Eastern Kentucky/Take me home, country roads.” I still sing it that way. Ruth passed away when I was in Wales and Tommy was a pallbearer at Toby’s funeral.

3. She’s Like the Wind-Patrick Swayze

Oh, Lord. Robbie and I wore this movie out when I was seven. You know what movie I’m talking about. In fact, there are times when I still fondly look back on that summer that I spent in the mountains with my family, only to realize that, no, Jerry Orbach was NOT my father.

4. Cathy’s Clown- Reba McEntire

I think I’m technically getting out of order here, but who cares…Although I was nine and had wanted to be a country music singer since I was born this was the song that set it over the top. I used to make a stage out of my bed, do my hair and makeup, and pretend that I was on the Grand Ol Opry singing this. I think it was the video that did it. I loved Reba’s big hair.

5. Young Love- The Judds

C’mon, it’s the Judds! As a little girl, this was the ideal love song. Especially if you lived in the country. Don’t know why that made a difference, but it did. As a teenager, I can still remember the last words that Chris spoke to me. He was sitting on someone’s car and hollered, “Hey, Rebecca! Look! I’m sitting cross legged on the hood of a Ford!”

6. Cradle of Love-Billy Idol

This song evokes every memory I have of being at the Inez Public Swimming Pool. In the 80’s, if you lived in a small town in Eastern Kentucky there was nothing bigger than going to the local pool. I lived there one summer. Got as brown as a butterbean. I’m sure it’s not as 1950’s as I remember it being, but I have images of teenage girls in bikinis flirting with the lifeguards, slathering coconut oil on my legs, and eating hot dogs from the vendor. This song played at least twice a day.

7. Don’t Stop Believing- Journey

Not all memories are good ones. A very bad man that I knew that did some very bad things and should have been punished for them, but wasn’t, would sing this song a lot. There are times that it comes on and I would like to throw whatever I am listening to out the window. Now, thanks to “Glee”, it seems to come on all the time. Moving on…

8. All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You)- Heart

Had no idea what this song meant at the time but Heart ruled and still does. My girlfriends and I used to pretend that we were in a rock band and sing this through our hairbrush microphones. I’m still not real sure what it means.

9. 80’s Ladies- KT Oslin

This was one of those weird songs that even at the time I knew that it would make more sense when I was older. I liked it then but felt sad when I heard it, but it was like a preemptive sadness. Now, looking back, it reminds me of my best friends Lori and Bobby Sue. I’m still trying to figure out which one I am. Probably the borderline fool.

10. Blue Moon with a Heartache-Rosanne Cash

I do believe that this was probably the first sign that I would eventually have good taste in music. I didn’t know what I liked about this song, but I knew that it was different.

11. She’s in Love with the Boy-Trisha Yeardwood

As an impressionable eleven year old with her first boyfriend (I totally Facebook stalked him the other day and he looks EXACTLY the same) this song was the bomb! Look for its sequel on down the list…

12. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone-Brooks and Dunn

I can’t believe I have a Brooks and Dunn song on here, but there you go. I spent the summer on a farm as a fifteen year old and had a weird romance with about four different people, all from the same family. It’s as weird as it sounds. It felt less weirder after reading the book “My Antonia.” This was our song. I ended up writing a book (fiction) about the experience and named it after said song. So it must be added.

13. Good Old Boys Like Me-Don Williams

As a lifelong Don Williams addict, I still firmly believe that this is the greatest song ever written. As a seventeen year old who had been away from Eastern Kentucky for a few years I was feeling homesick and missing nana and feeling very displaced. I went back and listened to some of my old tapes and rediscovered this gem and it said everything I was feeling. I still feel like that. God bless Bob McDill.

14. Ain’t Even Done with the Night- John Cougar Mellencamp

My high school boyfriend heard this on the radio and ran out and bought the CD because he said it reminded him of us. I had never heard it before so he played it for me. Although it doesn’t remind me much of him, it does remind me of all the summer nights I had as a teenager in general. The good stuff.

15. Wonderful Tonight

I realize that this one is way out of order. There’s no way to explain this one without sounding silly. Let’s just say that it involves a live show, a dude I was head over heels for, and a serenade in the audience.

16. Angry All the Time- Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis

My first introduction to Americana music. I wondered what had happened to all of those country artists that I liked in the 80’s. I was so glad to find out that I had a choice besides some of the crap they were playing on the radio.

17. The Wild Ones-Waylon Jennings

I was writing a novel set in the 1930’s and this song came out at about the same time. (In the ‘90’s, not in the ‘30’s.) I loved the images and some of them fit my story so well that it became the thing song for that book.

18. Leaving Train- Gillian Welch

In my early twenties when I started backpacking Europe alone I got less homesick for my actual home and more homesick for the music. This was before iPods and toting around my portable CD player was even too much. I heard this song and it reminded me of home and all the people that I met and then left in my travels.

19. Closer to Fine- The Indigo Girls

The longest trip that I took could have been summed up in these lyrics: the doctor (the surgery I had before I left), the mountains (Slovenia), the fountain (Karlovy Vary), the children (Croatia), and the lookout (Sarajevo). When I want to remember that trip, I pop this song in.

20. Georgia Rain- Trisha Yearwood

The fact that Trisha is the only one to pop up on here twice is just a coincidence. I think of this as the unofficial sequel to “She’s in Love with the Boy.” I kind of grew up when I heard this song and listening to it now is about the only time that I let myself think about the One that Got Away. I had no idea that there was a video to it until now. It’s not as good as the one in my head, though.

21. My Hometown- Bruce Springsteen

As you get older and start reflecting more, I think a lot of us just want to go back. I get homesick for Hazel Green on a daily basis, but of course it’s not the Hazel Green that’s there now. Springsteen understands a lot of things.

A Little Bit of Knowledge

2011-10-11T02:04:00.006-04:00

You know the old saying about how a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing? This is true and the Internet has reinforced it.

I finally shut down my Facebook account. It wasn’t like in the past when I got angry or upset and deactivated it, only to get on again a few days later. This time, I felt depressed and resigned over the fact. While there was one incident that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back, there were lots of other things that lead up to it.

I touched on this in a previous entry but it bears worth repeating. One of the problems with sites like Facebook is that by reading a little bit of information you think you know a lot. Instead of taking a post, a status, a tweet, or even a blog entry and seeing it as a small portion of a whole, people are looking at it as THE whole. I’ve been trying to explain that for awhile now and finally figured out a better way to vocalize it.

I write a lot, obviously, and as my 600^th entry into this blog I think this is a good topic to touch on. When I blog, it’s because I have something on my mind. It might not have been something that I was dwelling on for days. Then again, it might have been. At any rate, it’s what was on my mind at the time. The same goes with status updates and tweets. The internet encourages us to act within the moment. We write and post and then have leisure to process it and think about it.

This is not always a good thing.

Because of the frequency of posts and interactions people sometimes get the impression that they really know you, or know things about you, when they don’t. Things can be taken out of context, information withheld, and even embellished depending on what’s going on at the time. We don’t write everything that we are thinking or feeling, nor do we write about the events that lead up to that and the details surrounding it. We couldn’t. We’re only allowed a few characters at a time.

I noticed this in my pregnancy. I wrote less about Iris’s than I did Toby’s because it was tiring. It seemed like a repeat of the last pregnancy and people had already been through enough with me. When I did write about things, though, I tended to spend most of my time explaining what I meant and that seemed like it was worth it even less.

I might, for instance, have been in the hospital for a few days and then released. Upon going home, I might be feeling miserable and write something like this:

Me: Ugh. Will this puking ever stop? I’ve already lost 15 pounds and I’m shrinking.

That status would be met by the following replies:

Comment 1: OMG-go to the doctor NOW!

Comment 2: That is NOT right. You need to go to the ER.

Comment 3: Are you trying ginger? That should help!

Comment 4: I can’t believe they’re not trying to help you!

Comment 5: Just try eating small meals.

Of course, I would then have to turn around and say something like:

Me: I just spent the last three days in the hospital. Just got home today. They’ve got me on Reglan, Phenegrin, Pepcid, Vitamin B6, and a patch behind my ear. I spent most of my time on an IV to get nutrients because I can’t hold down any food. They’re doing the best they can but this looks like it’s going to be this for the rest of the pregnancy.

Why people assumed that I wasn’t doing anything about it in the first place is beyond me. Just because I didn’t post all of my business right away didn’t mean that I wasn’t getting care or that I was ignoring it.

You can't assume to know what a person's musical tastes are just because they upload a few videos to their Facebook page. You can't make assumptions about a person's mental health by looking at a few pictures.

Last year when Pete’s friend’s girlfriend got on here two weeks after Toby died and wrote that I was messed up and it wasn’t because I had lost my son I ended up scratching my head. I had met her one time. During that time, we had exchanged a total of 5 words. I had to even remind Pete who she was. How could she make such a statement? Because her boyfriend told her? And he knew because he had spent so much time with me? Nope. That couldn’t be it. I had been in the dude’s house several times and to this day neither Pete nor myself can remember him saying a word to me or even acknowledging my existence. Because another one of their friends knew me so well and passed the information along? Nope. Because they had read my blog? Maybe. Because my blog is obviously an accurate portrayal of what I am like in “real life” all the time.

I’m not sure at what point it became acceptable to tell everyone what we really thought. I think that online relationships have definitely made it easier, at any rate. Pete says that the whole idea of Facebook is so that we can scrutinize one another and dissect each other’s tastes in music, books, friends, and lives. That’s why he got out. That’s why I am.

It’s managed to magnify the good and the bad and lately, I’m just seeing the bad. I guess people are seeing that in me as well. There comes a time when you have to step back and say, “You’re just not allowed to see into my life anymore.” A little bit of mystery is good, but people aren’t seeing the mystery anymore. They’re seeing a clue and thinking they’ve solved the whole puzzle.

I Loved These Songs…When These Songs Weren’t Cool

2011-10-09T03:13:00.002-04:00

A few days ago I got to thinking about how country singers are notorious for recording songs and releasing songs that have already been recorded and released and didn’t do well the first time around. There are many breakout hits out there that were previously recorded and never saw higher than #40 on the Billboard charts. In most instances, I find myself liking the originals better. In almost every case, the singer that takes the song eventually to the top barely changes a note, making it even more confusing as to why it didn’t become a hit the first time.

Okay, so it’s really not that confusing. I stand by the fact that it has nothing to do with the subsequent singer’s voice or talent and everything to do with marketing and the money spent pushing the song.

So…here we go!

1. Title: Broken Road/God Bless the Broken Road/Bless the Broken Road

Artists: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Melodie Crittenden, & Rascal Flatts

Artist that Took it to the Top: Rascal Flatts

I heard this song for the first time in the mid-1990s when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded it for their acoustic album. I liked it then. I liked it even better when Melodie Crittenden recorded it. I had the privilege of hearing her sing it live at a radio event in Indianapolis in 1998. It struggled and floundered but never even made it into the top 30. In 2002, Rascal Flatts released it and it became not only their biggest hit but one of the biggest hits in country music. By the time they brought it back to life, I had already been loving it for almost 10 years. Of course, by that time it had also changed names three times.

My favorite version: Melodie Crittenden While I like Gary and the boys I just can’t help but think that Melodie’s is just more…melodic. Hee hee. Unfortunately, it has become synonymous with a “Dawson’s Creek” episode, or so I hear. I never really got into “Dawson’s Creek” (I was a little too old when it came out) so I have never seen said episode.

Comments on You Tube:

“Thank You so much for posting. This is far superior to the Rascal Flatts version”

“THIS is my favorite version of this song, I have been in love with it since Dawson's Creek aired it in the season 1 finale. I even bought her cd. When Rascal Flatts re released this I was like "OMG..This is my DC song!!" But this one out beats theirs everytime.”

“This song made it's debut on a episode of Dawson's Creek. I fell inlove with it immediately and bought the tape then couldn't find it. RF's version was disappointing and although I love RF, he sounds like Kermit the frog when he sings.”

2. Angry All the Time

Artists: Bruce Robison (with Kelly Willis) & Tim McGraw (with Faith Hill)

Artist that Took it to the Top: Who do you think?

I first heard this song in 1998 when CMT was actually playing videos by Bruce and Kelly. Unfortunately, I had only heard a few things by Kelly at that point and the ones that I’d heard had been kind of “Shania-lite.” Nothing stood out about her and she seemed like another flash in the pan. When this song came out, though, I was hooked. It’s not a NICE song, but it’s a beautiful one. The video absolutely mesmerized me. I did not know who Bruce Robison was, much less that they were married.

At that time, I wasn’t aware of the Americana/Alt-Country genre of music. Country has always been my favorite but I was limited to what I heard on the radio. It wasn’t until I moved to Nashville that I found out that my dissatisfaction with mainstream country could be rectified with listening to the “real” country artists that fell into the Americana category and were not being played on country radio, a la Bruce and Kelly.

Of course, their version didn’t do well on the charts. When Tim and Faith recorded it, though, it went straight to the top. Ironically, they didn’t change barely a note. Other than the fact that they were the golden couple of country there was no reason why their version should have done better.

My favorite version: Who do you think?

(Note: Kelly wrote me after Toby died. I love this woman. She is part of my Holy Trinity of Americana Singers.)

Comments on You Tube:

“SOOOO much better than the Tim and Faith version. It's a crime that Bruce and Kelly get so little respect from the Nashville establishment and radio.”

“This is the best version of this song. I wish they would have gotten the credit they deserved.”

“I don't understand how this only has 87,000 views.”

“amen on the comments above...so much better than the remakes!”

3. Title: Please Remember Me

Artists: Aaron Neville, Rodney Crowell & Tim McGraw

Artist that Took it to the Top: Tim McGraw

I am a huge Rodney Crowell fan and when this song came out in the mid-1990s I was a big fan of it right away. Considering Rodney’s personal experiences with alcohol and other types of addictions the song is very fitting for him. Plus, he wrote it. I bought the CD (Jewel of the South) and played it over and over and over throughout my teenage years. I never heard it on the radio. Of course, when Tim brought it out in the late-1990s it went straight to #1. Interestingly enough, even Tim’s video is slightly similar in some parts. Once again, barely a note has changed in the remake.

My favorite version: Rodney, of course

Comments on You Tube:

“There is no way Tim McGraw sings this better.”

“I think he does a better job at singing this. If he wrote it, then He's the one who put the feeling into it. Great Job.”

“time mcgraw can kiss my ass”

4. Title: Wrapped

Artists: Kelly Willis, Bruce Robison, George Strait

Artist that Took it to the Top: Well, this should be a no-brainer.

“Wrapped” was written by Bruce Robison but it’s Kelly Willis’s version that I heard the first time. I was late in the game by the time I heard it since I discovered her later on in life. (Not that she’s that much older than me, of course.) It SOUNDS like it was written for a man to sing so that makes Kelly’s version a little more interesting. As far as I know, it wasn’t released as a single by anyone but George.

My favorite version: This is hard. I loved Kelly’s first but it just seems wrong to say that I don’t like George’s. I’m going to call this one a tie. I will point out, however, that George didn’t change much in it.

You Tube comments:

“Just heard George's version, he is so boring, Kelly has all attitude when she sings this lovely song, Yay!!! Kelly”

“The totally amazing and talented Chuck Prophet from 1980's band Green On Red performs the guitar solos... wicked, wicked music... this is the kind of country that SHOULD be on the radio. That is, if country radio didn't suck!”

“Wikipedia says ... "Wrapped" is a single by country music singer George Strait. It would be nice if they gave credit to the people who actually wrote & performed this song for a decade or more b4 G. Strait.”

“i'll bet they are glad george recorded it , i know i would. if he does one of your songs you can take it all the way to the bank. what's better than getting paid for something you love to do???”

Note: the video Is jumpy so you might not want to watch it, but you should definitely listen to it…

5. Title: The Thunder Rolls

Artists: Tanya Tucker & Garth Brooks

Artist that Took it to the Top: Well…

Tanya might have recorded it first but not only did it not go anywhere, few people are even aware of the fact. Garth reached notoriety when he had the video act out the entire song. CMT had to eventually take the video off air and country radio refused to play the song in its entirety. (This was before “Gunpowder and Lead.”) As a result, it became one of Garth’s biggest hits and sent him to the Garthdom that became his legacy.

My favorite version: Tanya Tucker I am a huge Tanya fan. I love her voice, even when she does sound like a billy goat. To be fair, though, I don’t HATE Garth’s version and for the time it was pretty amazing that he tackled it. I just think that it works better from a woman’s perspective and Tanya makes it sultry.

You Tube Comments:

“HOLY CRAP this is BETTER than the version by Garth!!!! I'm literally blown away! Why haven't I heard of this before?!?!?!?!?”

“I like Tanya's rendition better. A WORLD better than Garth!”

“god i love that womans voice”

“Wow, I've never heard this version before and I've got chills.”

“Tanya does have a thing for controversy, like the pic on the TNT album, the Would You Lay With Me song and her personal life...I totally agree though this song would have been a HUGE hit for her..”

“It's great that two artists have such unique versions of this song.”

The Opposite Effect of Bringing People Together

2011-10-05T02:12:00.002-04:00

I’ve heard many Facebook advocates talk about how social media sites help bring people together, encourage communication, and help you open up dialogues with those that you might not ordinarily do so with. In the future, Zuckerberg hopes to make timelines, or bios, out of your information so that when people access your page they’ll be able to get a more comprehensive idea of who you are.

I am seeing the opposite effect. In fact, the longer I am on Facebook the more I want to be a hermit and live far, far away. Pete and I are house hunting. We would like to buy a property relatively soon and have looked at a few in the past couple of weeks. We are not looking anywhere in town. In fact, we want something with acreage. A lot of it. One property we looked at had 21 acres while the other had (in totality) more than 300.

Mom used to say that she wanted to live in downtown Chicago. Now, she wants to live out in the middle of nowhere.

With the comment forms and the “like” button and so forth, sites like FB encourage users to share their opinions with ease. Needless to say, this isn’t always a good thing. Somebody says something you don’t agree with, you tell them. Somebody posts a picture you don’t like, you tell them.

It goes further than that, however. A friend of mine told me that they don’t understand why people have to be so opinionated about my life and I am starting to agree. There are days that I feel like if I wrote that the sun was warm I would get 15 replies telling me that it wasn’t.

I try to post about a doctor’s visit, just giving an update on Iris because people asked me, and I get everything from advice on how to handle the next one to long-winded rants about the healthcare industry. And I didn’t ask for either! (Sometimes, it can be helpful and when it is I thank the person.)

People act like I’ve never been to the doctor, never made an appointment, never changed doctors, or never made a decision as far as my healthcare goes. It’s all very strange.

Then you get the people who use your statuses to tell their own problems and stories. This is called “hijacking” a status. You start out writing something about yourself and then moments later the hijacker comes along and almost completely disregards what you wrote and writes about themselves. No matter what you write, there they are. I see this on other people’s stuff, too.

Of course, the negative comment leavers are the worst. A friend of mine was pregnant last year and although I didn’t know any of her friends I wanted to go off on most of them. This was her first pregnancy, and probably her only one, and she was rightly excited. Every time she would post something, though, someone would have something negative to say. For instance, she was excited about an outfit that she bought for her son so she posted a picture. The first comment? “Just wait until it’s covered in poop and throw-up.” Another time, she wrote about how excited she was to be going baby clothes shopping and someone (and I actually knew this chick) wrote, “Just be careful how much you spend or else you might have to get a job yourself.” Hell, let the girl shop! If she has the money, who cares?

It seems to bring out sides of people that you might not ordinarily see.

There were a lot of people who were pregnant at the same time as me and most people were really supportive. There was one, though, that really went out of their way to assure me that I was being paranoid and a drama queen. Of course, when they were in the same situation then it was a completely different story.

I wonder sometimes what people would think if I did to them what I see them doing to me and other people. If I went around on their comments and told them how to raise their kids, how to provide healthcare for them, what I really thought of their choices in friends or houses or jobs, or my opinions of their religion. I am sure that all hell would break loose.

A Hilarious Letter Re: Leviticus and "Rules"

2011-10-03T03:00:00.001-04:00

One of my friends posted this on Facebook and I had to share. I've been arguing some of these points for years.

In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. ...I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination .... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your adoring fan, James M Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia (It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian.)

Search Engine Shenanigans

2011-10-02T12:50:00.000-04:00

Every day, I get at least 20 hits from people typing the following into Google: "Signora distinctly wrote, "south rooms with a view and close together." Apparently, my blog is one of the first choices.

If you're like me, you're typing this sentence into Google because you just watched an episode of "The Gilmore Girls" and you want to know where in the heck that line is from.

Well, folks, I am here to make your life a little easier. It's from the movie "A Room with a View."

Thanks for visiting!

My Hometown

2011-09-28T05:21:00.001-04:00

Last weekend we went to West Liberty for the Sorghum Festival. I’ve been going to it for 31 years and have only missed a few years here and there. It’s a small festival, as far as festivals go, but it’s a lively one. They have a good number of booths that don’t all sell the same crafts, food booths that have the standard funnel cakes as well as pinto beans and cornbread, and live entertainment.

What I enjoy most about going, however, is the same thing that I enjoy about Irvine’s Mushroom Festival-it brings people downtown. That’s just not something you see much of anymore.

West Liberty is my adopted hometown. Although I never lived there, it was the town that we went to when we lived in Hazel Green. While I claim Hazel Green as my home, let’s face it-it’s not much of a “town.” It’s down to one gas station now. To go grocery shopping or eat at a restaurant, we had to go to West Liberty. They have even maintained their one screen cinema on Main Street-something that almost no other Eastern Kentucky town can claim.

I’m a big fan of downtown and I am old enough to remember a time in West Liberty (and other small towns) when Main Street was thriving and strip malls were rare. These days, it seems like Main Street is mostly home to boarded up stores with “For Rent” signs and dusty windows. It makes me sad. I don’t think it’s progress to take business away from the heart of the town and place it in a souless lineup on the side of a Bypass with 15 other storefronts surrounding it that look exactly the same.

When its festival time, though, people come back to the downtown areas. The booths and activities bring in out-of-towners and locals alike ad at least for a little while you can imagine what it might have been like in the town’s heyday.

I have what I call my “Small Town Trinity” of songs that I like to listen to in a row. They make me sad and homesick because each one reminds me of West Liberty, and Irvine to an extent, and they all resonate with me.

In Tift Merritt’s “They Laid a Highway” the line about “sometimes I sit and watch my hometown die” really gets to me. I feel like I’ve been watching my hometown die for years and it’s a slow, torturing death that nobody seems to be trying to stop. People talk about how awful it is, but nobody seems to be doing anything about it.

In Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” I always latch onto the line “last night me and Kate/We laid in bed/And talked about getting out.” What draws me to that line in particular is the fact that almost everyone who has lived in a small town can commiserate with it. Who hasn’t lain in bed (alone or with someone else) and talked about getting out? The last lines talk about the narrator’s son and how “last night I sat him up/Behind the wheel/And said ‘Son take a good look around’/’This is your hometown.’” You get the feeling that despite the fact that he and Kate had talked about leaving, and probably more than once, they weren’t going to make the trip. He’s too tied to the place, as evidenced by the fact that he passes it on to his son.

And boy, I can relate to that. I still get homesick almost everyday and lately it seems to be worse. We’ve talked about moving far away or even not so far, but the pull to the area is just too strong. Although Pete doesn’t feel any real ties to England (I know, I find that strange too) my pull to my home is extremely strong.

And lastly, we have Iris Dement’s “Our Town.” Unlike the other two, she DOES get out of her town. But it’s not the joyous occasion that one might expect. In fact, she doesn’t want to leave at all and says that “I’m leaving tomorrow but I don’t want to go/I love you my town you’ll always live in my soul.” This song is one of the reasons why we named Iris what we did.

Sometimes I think that we from Eastern Kentucky have stronger ties to our homes than people from other places. I’ve heard it said that we spend half of our lives trying to leave and other half trying to get back.

Bruce Springsteen My Hometown Lyrics

I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
Id sit on his lap in that big old buick and steer as we drove through town
Hed tousle my hair and say son take a good look around
This is your hometown, this is your hometown
This is your hometown, this is your hometown

In `65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown, my hometown, my hometown

Now main streets whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there aint nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they aint coming back to
Your hometown, your hometown, your hometown, your hometown

Last night me and kate we laid in bed talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
Im thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good
Look around
This is your hometown

Laid A Highway

This was a town took care of it's own
That's what me and my children have known
I worked the mill the way my parents did
I remember this town when I was a kid
Sitting through the movies twice
Open windows late at night
Slipping out in the summer heat
To meet John Miller in the middle of the street

They laid a highway a few years back
Next town over by the railroad track
Some nights, I'm glad it passed us by
Some nights, I sit and watch my hometown die

I'm fifty-five and when the mill burned down
I wasn't much past a pretty young gal
Boss lit a match in the oily night
Cops never had enough to set it right
So while the company traded with our lives
We were busy watching that slow moon rise
Dancing on the dry grass bridge
Making love down by the Cedar County Bridge

They laid a highway a few years back
Next town over by the railroad track
Some nights, I'm glad it passed us by
Some nights, I sit and watch my hometown die

They never came to tear that old place down
They roped it off, but you can walk around
See the rust on the painted doors
Watch the rain fall through the burned out floors
This was a town took care of it's own
This was a town doing fine all alone
The mill got out a quarter to five
You could eat supper with any family you liked

They laid a highway a few years back
Next town over by the railroad track
Some nights, I'm glad it passed us by
Some nights, I sit and watch my hometown die

Our Town

And you know the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

Up the street beside that red neon light,
That's where I met my baby on one hot summer night.
He was the tender and I ordered a beer,
It's been forty years and I'm still sitting here.

But you know the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

It's here I had my babies and I had my first kiss.
I've walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist.
Over there is where I bought my first car.
It turned over once but then it never went far.

And I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa.
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall.
I bring them flowers about every day,
but I just gotta cry when I think what they'd say.

If they could see how the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly.
But I can't see too good, I got tears in my eyes.
I'm leaving tomorrow but I don't wanna go.
I love you, my town, you'll always live in my soul.

But I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on, I gotta kiss you goodbye,
But I'll hold to my lover,
'Cause my heart's 'bout to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.
I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town,
Goodnight.
Goodnight.

Funerals…Cultural Differences?

2011-09-26T23:05:00.002-04:00

We’ve been to a lot of funerals in the past few years: my niece Christina, our friend Gladys, our friend Delmer, Ashley’s mother, Jim, Toby, and Alison’s memorial. Then, there were Uncle Willis’s and Uncle Junior’s funerals, neither of which we were able to attend. Thinking of these funerals has gotten me to thinking about the way that we approach funerals here and wondering if there aren’t some cultural differences that others don’t share.

It really confused me when Pete’s family didn’t want Sam to come to his grandmother’s funeral because it wasn’t the place for a young boy. It confused me because around here, we don’t hide death from our children. At the age of 7, I had already been to many funerals and I actually picked out my own grandmother’s casket. At the age of 5 while I might not have understood the mechanics behind death when my beloved Uncle Jimmy passed away, I did understand that he wasn’t coming back and that it was a sad thing. In Sam’s case, he had just been to his own brother’s funeral and had given visitors tours of the dead body (“You want to come see Baby Brother?”) so I highly doubt he would have been traumatized by the memorial service of someone that he didn’t remember.

At any rate, I think we do view death and funerals here differently. I think it might be much more of a community and open event. Of course, I haven’t been exposed to funerals outside of my family and friends, but I do believe my attitude about it has been healthier because of the way that they are handled.

First, we have the visitation. Now, I have heard it said that the visitation is for everyone while the funeral services are reserved for close family and friends. We have never treated it in this manner. Nana was beloved in our community. So much so that as the ambulance drove her to the hospital, when people saw Mom speeding behind it they immediately knew that something had happened to Nana. Some came on to the house to await the news while others got in line behind Mom and followed to the hospital-all without the use of a telephone.

From the morning of the visitation to the afternoon of the funeral, everyone and their brother came to pay their respects. We had it in the church and many of us spent the night there, sleeping on pews. There was no division between family, friends, and even those who barely knew her at all. Everyone was welcomed.

Then, we have the pictures. I don’t know how common it is anywhere else, but we take pictures of our dead. I know, it sounds morbid and faintly Victorian, but there you go. We whip out our cameras and take pictures of our loved ones, right there in their coffins.

When Jim died and we went down for the funeral nobody took any pictures. At first. Then, at the end of the visitation, Mom asked Ashley if she could take one and he said yes. The minute she pulled her camera from her purse she immediately heard 15 other people doing the same. Everyone was just waiting for someone else to start!

I have pictures of Toby in his casket. I have a lot of pictures of him in his casket. I also have one of him in the hospital, after he had been gone for many hours. That is not a pretty picture, but I wanted a reminder. Since taking that picture I have been glad on many occasions, especially when it came to determining suffocation and ruling it out. Although it’s a gruesome picture, it does show discoloration which, without a doubt, rules out accidental suffocation. I’m glad I have it.

I do NOT have a picture of my niece but there were so many teenagers and young people gathered around her coffin mourning her that I wasn’t able to get alone with her and I didn’t want to be rude. I wish I had that picture, though. She looked really beautiful with her long red hair almost down to her waist and her perfect complexion. Kind of like the Lady of Shallot.

There’s also the music to consider. While it’s customary to include some religious songs (whether the deceased person was religious or not) it’s also usually okay to throw in a couple of non-religious ones as well. We had “Silent Night” at Toby’s funeral, even though it was in August. While it is a religious song, I know that Jim would have been proud of Jennifer Hudson’s “My Eyes are on the Sparrow” that played at his. We like live music as well. We will go out of our way to find a fiddle player, pianist, or band. The former superintendent of Wolfe County Schools did the singing at Toby’s funeral.

I always think that it’s kind of rude to preach at a funeral, because not all of the attendees are of that particular denomination, but some people like it. Wheeler didn’t preach at Toby’s, but he’s not very preachy (not fire and brimstone anyway) and that’s one of the reasons why I like him.

Children are always welcomed and, indeed, expected in most cases. I’ve never heard a person complain about a child be there, or heard someone say that the child shouldn’t be there because it wasn’t appropriate. I didn’t actually go to Nana’s service because I chose at that moment to stay in the church basement and play with Ian and Nick, but I wasn’t kept away by any means.

The graveside service is the only thing that I’ve really seen that varies. Some people go to it and others do not. We always do. Sometimes, the staff waits until everyone leaves before they lower the coffin into the ground but sometimes they don’t. We waited for Toby and Nana and didn’t leave until the graves were covered.

After the funeral, we like to gather. It’s almost always at the family member’s house although after Delmer’s funeral we all went to Jerry’s. I think he would have approved. People bring loads of food and drinks and stay until late at night. You can normally count on having enough food for at least a week when it comes to leftovers.

Unless there is a headstone already in place, it usually takes months before one is installed. The ground has to settle and in a place like Kentucky where there is lots of rain and snow, depending on the season, it can take a long time for the ground to settle. It’s not uncommon to wait six months or more.

I don’t want to generalize this too much, but I think it’s safe to say that, when possible, we bury our loved ones in cemeteries where we know other people. We almost buried Toby in Hazel Green but I decided to have him put next to Nana. While that’s not a family cemetery, there are so many of our family buried there that we are slowly taking over. I, myself, have trouble deciding whether to be buried there or in hazel Green. The funeral director’s wife told me that she had solved that problem, though. She is having her body buried in Campton but having a headstone erected in Hazel Green that reads: “My body might lie in Campton, but my heart is here.”

If given the choice between having our loved ones buried close or with family, most of us will choose with family. We might move, and thus be far away from the grave, so it’s nice to give them company that we know.

One thing that I particularly like is that after awhile, when everyone goes to visit the grave together, we talk about the other headstones and graves as if they people are still there and alive. For instance, we might point to the grave behind the one we are visiting and say, “Now that’s so-and-so’s daughter. She lives over on the Ridge.” When we visit the graves, we’re actually visiting everybody.

Lastly, there is the annual pilgrimage of Memorial Day. This has been a yearly event for me for all of my life. It takes all days and on short years we only visit 2 or 3 cemeteries. Sometimes, it’s been as many as 5. We load up the car with flowers and go through Montgomery, Menifee, Wolfe, Morgan, and Magoffin Counties, placing flowers where needed. My Aunt Patricia is buried on top of a mountain that no longer has a path to it. It’s not marked and you basically have to know where on the side of the road to pull over at and start walking up. It’s best to bring a stick because of the snakes. But, you know, it’s what you do.

I really like learning about other people’s funeral and death rites because I find them interesting. It’s funny, but growing up I almost enjoyed funerals a little bit. Funerals meant that my family all got together and, let’s face it; my family doesn’t get together often. And despite our bickering, I like my mom’s family. (I don’t know my dad’s, outside of my Aunt Carol and cousin Timmy.) Funerals meant that people were nice to each other, most of the time, and that we all got to spend time together.

I don’t think I was ever warped by attending funerals as a child. Even in the case of Nana’s death, which up until Toby’s was my most traumatic, I have fond memories of the days that followed and the fellowship that was shared.

Goodbye to the OBGYN

2011-09-22T03:28:00.000-04:00

So a little over a week ago I had my hysterectomy. It came just two weeks after getting my gallbladder removed and eight weeks after my C-section so my poor stomach has kind of been through the ringer.

I sort of knew what to expect going into the surgery, no thanks to my doctor. He provided us with zero information and when Pete tried to ask him questions about it he told him to look on the Internet. No, I am not kidding. Of course, we would have done that anyway and luckily I found a very helpful website at www.hystersisters.com I should also give a shout out to my ladies at Daily Strength in the Endometriosis group because they kept me sane as well.

Anyway…Pete couldn’t go in with me because he had to teach so Melissa met me at the hospital and stayed until after I got out of surgery. Thank God. Because things did not go as planned.

It all started out well enough. They got the IV in on the third try and prepped me and even took me in early. Once we got in the OR, though, things started to go awry. First of all, I think they should knock you out BEFORE taking you in the OR. They have done that for every other surgery I’ve had. I was fine until I got wheeled in there, was told to get on the table, and saw all the instruments. Then I started freaking a little. Of course, once the anesthesia went in I was out but there were still about 5 minutes of unnecessary panic.

When I woke up, holy hell! The pain I felt in my lower abdomen was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. After 20+ years of dealing with endometriosis, adenomyosis, ovarian cysts, and three labors I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I could tolerate. I was wrong. This sharp stabbing pain was excruciating. I came out from under anesthesia screaming. The nurses immediately tried to quiet me down and told me that it was the vaginal packing making me “uncomfortable.” No, it wasn’t. I could feel that, too, and it didn’t feel great but this pain was higher and a lot more intense.

I am not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby. One nurse helpfully told me that they couldn’t give me anything until they got me upstairs and that they couldn’t take me out in the hallway “carrying on like that.” She snapped at me, too, which did not make me feel better.

When they did get me up in the room Melissa and Pete were waiting for me. I kept crying. The pain would not go away. I thought I was dying. They told me that they had just given me Demerol an hour before and couldn’t give me anything for another two hours then they told me to stop moving because I was going to hyperventilate.

After a few more minutes Melissa finally took charge and demanded that they call my doctor and give me something else. She told the nurses that she had never seen me in so much pain, that she had never seen anyone in so much pain, and they agreed. They got on the phone with my doctor and he ordered some Diludad.

Later, I found out that the reason I was in so much pain was because during the surgery whenever he tried to clamp or move the soft tissue it ripped and even disintegrated in his hands. He said he had never seen anything like it before and that it was highly unusual. He asked Pete if we were vegetarian. We have no idea why my tissue is in such poor quality but I’m thinking that it had to do with how sick I was with my last two pregnancies. More than likely, I have severe vitamin deficiencies and that has weakened my tissue. I know had deficiencies with Iris and perhaps my body just hasn’t had time to repair itself.

Anyway, Melissa said that for the next little while she had to leave the room a few times and cry out in the hallway because of how awful I looked. When I woke up again she said that the image of me in pain will never leave her. Well, me either. It was like being in the middle of a god awful nightmare.

So things should have gotten better at that point but instead they went in another direction. Apparently, I don’t take to Diludad well. For the next hour Pete and Melissa had to keep waking me up to remind me to breathe. My oxygen level dropped to around 50% and Pete said several times my lips went blue. Melissa finally went back to the nurses and got them and they gave me oxygen. THAT, my friends, is why you need to take a self-proclaimed hypochondriac with you to the hospital. (Her words, not mine.) They are on the ball and get things done!

Didn’t wake up again until the middle of the night and by then Mom was there. She said that the buzzer went off frequently throughout the night as my oxygen level dropped. Finally, we got me sorted and they took the oxygen off the next day.

Sometime later that morning (next day) my doctor came around and talked to me. He said that my uterus was enlarged and would be biopsied and that I’d had a lot of adhesions inside from the endometriosis. (Which is a complete change of tune from what he said during my C-section when he claimed not to see anything at all.) We talked more about my tissue and the pain. He said that due to pain management they were going to keep me a little while longer.

The rest of the hospital visit was fairly uneventful except for the fact that my nurses couldn’t seem to get it together. I was supposed to have my pain meds every 3 hours but instead of keeping an actual schedule and keeping up with it they made ME keep up with it. So, every 3 hours I had to page them. Of course, it would take them about 30 minutes to get to my room ad by then I would be in horrible pain again and it would take forever to get me situated.

Finally, in the middle of the night I called them and it was almost 45 minutes before they came to my room. Mom and I were mad. The nurse was very defensive and snapped, “Well, I’m sorry you’re in pain but I have rules to follow.” I said, “Yeah, but I’m supposed to get my medicine every 3 hours and I shouldn’t be punished just because you can’t get your act together.” The next time the other nurse came in she slammed the medicine down on the table and stomped out. Didn’t even look at me. Ironic, since the medicine was a narcotic because the next morning when the nurse brought me my iron pills she asked to see my bracelet and made sure I was who I said I was.

Anyway, I was ready to leave. Sam visited me and we went for a walk down the hallway a couple of times and looked at the babies and Melissa came back and brought me flowers. Although I was in Richmond I didn’t get any other visitors but I ended up sleeping a lot.

Another funny point, though…They put me in the maternity ward. I mean, I just got my reproductive organs out and they put me in the middle of a bunch of women with babies. I was there because I wanted to be and I am finished having children but what about the women who want more children and are getting hysterectomies for other reasons? I think that’s mean.

Sure enough, when I got ready to leave I asked the nurse when I could go home and her reply was, “Well, first the pediatrician will have to check your baby and make sure he’s okay.” Mom snapped, “She’s not here for that! She just had a hysterectomy!” I mean, she could have at least read my chart. She didn’t even apologize for it.

It’s been rough since I’ve been home but a week later we were able to go to the Spoonbread Festival and Pete and I read from the books that we are writing at the annual Kentuckians Reading Kentuckians event. There are times when the pain is still sharp and almost unbearable and the effects that it’s had on other things, like the digestive system, are not nice but I’ve had worse surgeries.

Mostly, it’s just made me really tired. I feel like I could sleep all the time.

I’m still a little sad that I definitely won’t be having anymore babies but I am glad that I no longer have to see my OBGYN anymore. Oh, he didn’t even talk to Pete in person after the surgery. He called him. And I know he wouldn’t have come and seen me if I hadn’t thrown such a fit. I ended up taking out my own stitches so that I wouldn’t have to go back. And I would have to say that the nurses that “took care of me” at Pattie A Clay were subpar this time around. But I never have to go back to any of them again.

Thank God.

(When One Blogger Went Too Far)

2011-09-19T03:19:00.003-04:00

I thought about posting this under my SIDS blog because that’s really what started it but I decided to post it under this one because it’s really more general.

If you’ve read my SIDS blog then you’ve seen the entry about the blogger that really rubs me the wrong way. The other day, however, she posted a blog entry in which she used the word “fuck” in reference to her dead son several times. As in, fuck him for dying. It upset a lot of us. Not because she might really be hurting but because, in her usual way, it just felt like she was trying to be provocative. One blogger in particular was upset about it and wrote his own entry. You can find it here…http://colinstuart.blogspot.com/2011/09/unimaginable.html

Now, I’ve been angry at a lot of people since Toby died but I can’t say that I have ever felt any of that anger towards Toby. I have felt angry on his behalf. I have felt angry at other people for disregarding him, both in life and in death, and I have felt angry at people telling me how to grieve in regards to him. But I never felt angry towards him. My instinct is to want to protect him, Sam, and Iris and while I might get frustrated at Sam sometimes I’ve never been angry at him. I couldn’t imagine getting that worked up over Iris.

Another fellow SIDS parent wrote me an email and said that they started their SIDS blog as an outlet to let out the anger that they were feeling. I totally understand that. I didn’t have anywhere to direct my anger to at the time and the blog was the best place for it. I know that people have said that I should just keep a diary-and I do. You should see the stuff that I write in it that never makes it to the blog! I would have to say that 90% of my blogging experience has been good and the other 10% has come from people that I was responding to.

I don’t like feeling angry but I sure have felt a lot of anger this year. I was angry at the doctors for not listening to me when I told them that I thought Toby was having seizures. I was angry at myself for falling asleep that night. I was angry at my friends who didn’t care enough to even try and meet Toby when he was alive. I as angry at most of those same friends who hung around for a few weeks or months after he died and once they felt like they had put their time in took off. I was angry at my in-laws for finding it perfectly acceptable to say anything that they wanted to me and Pete but all hell broke loose when we tried to say anything back. I’ve been angry at my father-in-law who, in the past year, has not one single time inquired about his grandchildren but on an almost weekly basis still somehow finds the time to send Pete messages filled with hate and anger. I get angry that my kids, who have never hurt anyone and are the sweetest things, aren’t even treated like garbage-they’re treated as though they don’t exist. And never in my entire life have I been angrier at anyone than Pete’s “friend” from England who came over here and acted like such a pretentious little prick that if I could have physically lifted someone up in the air and flung them across the ocean I would have. To be fair, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Some of my friends detested his attitude so much that they came up with descriptions that were so colorful and outrageous that Andrew Dice Clay would be proud.

But I never felt angry at Toby. I know that in books and movies the one left behind sometimes gets angry at the one that died and left them there, but this didn’t happen to me. I felt sad, but not mad. There was no one to be mad AT in the end.

News

2011-09-11T13:41:00.001-04:00

A quick bit of news:

I had my hysterectomy. It was not pretty. More about that later.

Iris has a "smile button" located on the tip of her nose. When you push it, she smiles. It's cute.

We found a house that we are interested in buying. We've looked at it and are talking about it lot. It comes with 30 acres and that's a good size for us. It needs a lot of work and renovations but they're not overly huge projects and we like fixing things so it could be fun.

Pete has changed his blog address. It's now to be read by invitation only. His old blog will no longer work. I have also decided to stop posting pictures and personal lengthy updates on mine.

Sam is doing great. He can't wait until I get better so that we can go camping. We've been promising him all summer.

A letter to my kids

2011-09-07T04:18:00.001-04:00

Dear Sam and Iris,

I usually get a little sentimental before any surgerybecause a part of me is always afraid that they’re going to screw something upand I won’t come out of it, no matter how minor the procedure is. Tonight, however,it seems especially fitting that I write this letter to you.

This is more of a promise letter. In the past two weeks yourdad and I have been talking about what will happen to you if something happensto us. That was always one of my fears when I was growing up so I want you toknow that we have chosen good people that will love you and take care of you.Of course, you’ll live with your Nanny unless something happens to her, too,but it seems unreasonable to think that we’re all three going down at once so Iwouldn’t worry too much about it.

But there are other promises that I want to make to you,too.

No matter how upset, angry, or frustrated I might get withyou from time to time, I promise that you will never be a disappointment to me.Whether you choose to live with me for the rest of your life on the compound oryou move 2,000 miles away, I will still love you. I will love you whether youbecome a doctor, an actor, or even a roadie for Kenny Chesney.

I will always be on YOUR side. If your friends get upsetwith you, your teachers treat you unfairly, or the whole world seems to schemeagainst you, you can count on the fact that Mommy and Daddy will be on YOURside of things. You will ALWAYS get the benefit of the doubt from us.

Although you are my children, I do not expect you to supportme. In my times of need I would like for you to be there because I love you.But you are the child and I am the parent. I am supposed to be there for youand kiss away the hurt-not the other way around. I will never make you feel asthough you failed me because you couldn’t make it.

Your wife, husband, and children will always be welcomed inour home. It doesn’t matter if we are going through a death, a crisis, or the apocalypse.I understand that once you make a commitment to someone you become a packagedeal. I will never turn any of you away.

There are many people in your lives that don’t deserve you.Thankfully, they live far, far away and in some cases in other countries.Although it makes me sad that they don’t see how wonderful you are and theirhearts are ugly and filled with hate, rest assured that this is THEIR problemand not yours. The people who don’t want to get to know you are the ones thatare missing out on you. You, on the other hand, are missing out on nothing.

With that being said, you can rest assured that I will neverintentionally let anyone into your lives that might bring you pain and neitherwill daddy. We will change our phone numbers, move without forwardingaddresses, and even change our names if we have to. Just because you’re not inthe womb anymore doesn’t mean that we won’t still try to protect you. Iunderstand that someday you’ll be out in the world and I won’t be able toanymore, but that day hasn’t come yet.

I promise that you will get to know your family. You don’tknow it yet, but you already love your grandpa. He might not always make sensebut he has the best intentions and he is so proud of you. He calls and checkson you and buys you things and carries your pictures around. One day, you’llappreciate him a lot when you realize how indifferent other grandparents canbe. You will also appreciate his cowboy boots. You have a ton of otherrelatives in Texas, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. We’ve got Cajuns,rednecks, cowboys, Indians, and yuppies and although we might all argue fromtime to time, you can bet that they will look out for you.

I also promise that I will never back down in terms of yourhealthcare. If I piss off everyone in the state and nobody will help you thenwe will simply move on to the next state. My babies will ever suffer fromanything that can be fixed. I will never take no for an answer and I won’t backdown. I will push and ask and prod until we get to where we need to be.

We will always come up with fun things to do, too. We mightnot always have money but when we do we’ll spend it and enjoy it. When we don’t,then we’ll make up things to do. The one thing I have learned this year is thatwe might have 50 more years on this planet or we might just have 50 days but Iwill do my best to make sure that all of them count.

Lastly, I will always make sure that you know that you cancome to me no matter what the problem is. It will be a sad, sad day when youleave but I want you to know that you can always come back.

A Farewell to the Reproductive System

2011-09-06T18:06:00.002-04:00

September 6, 2011

Tomorrow will be the last day that I am attached to my reproductive system. I go in for my hysterectomy on Thursday, just two weeks after I had my gallbladder removed. Losing two major organs in less than three weeks is a lot, although I doubt either one of them would fetch much on the black market.

Oh, uterus, it’s been a good run for the most part. I first became aware of you on the fateful day when I was nine years old and square dancing with my class in my school gym. At first, I thought I had peed on myself. I was wrong. Nothing like having your (young) male teacher insist that the blood running down your leg was a “beautiful thing.”

Over the years we had many disagreements. I disagreed with you when you thought that you should be pacified and dealt with with bottles of over the counter drugs, bulky diaper-like pads, and heating pads. You, on the other hand, were a jealous organ and always wanted to be invited to important events like first dates, the wedding night, and vacations to countries that had never heard of tampons with applicators.

We shared a few chuckles along the way, though. Remember the time at the Munich airport? The only available feminine products were OBs in boxes of 100. Because I couldn’t possibly use that many in 2 days and I didn’t want to waste the other 90 I pulled them out and stuffed them in the front zipper of my backpack. When that guard insisted on jerking open the zipper, despite my warnings, they shot out like little bullets, covering the floor and the people in line around me. We both giggled a little as we watched grown men on their hands and knees, guns pushed aside, trying to pick all of them up.

You’ve played tricks me on me and the medical profession, too. They told me you couldn’t have children. Boy, were they wrong! You gave me three good ones and managed to hold most of them in full term so I thank you for that.

But despite the surgeries, the medications, and the natural remedies we just couldn’t save you. And let’s face it, the world isn’t ready for another one of my pregnancies. So it’s time that we part and say goodbye to one another. It was a good run and I’m grateful for the time that we spent together. You were full of scar tissue and adhesions and tilted so far back that most doctors had trouble finding you, but I knew you were there.

Rest in pieces, good friend.

How Much You Don't Really Know

2011-09-01T03:11:00.002-04:00

August 31, 2011

This isn’t so much a Facebook rant as a look into Internet identity. Of course, most things eventually lead back to Facebook…This one, however, at least didn’t start there.

I don’t participate in my freelance marketplace’s website’s forums often. I like reading the messageboards because I learn a lot but I don’t get very involved in the discussions because, frankly, I don’t often have things to add. I have participated from time to time and “know” a few of the regular posters and throughout discussions have disclosed things about myself on occasion. I’ve never felt uncomfoable about that because, let’s face it, a lot of my life is an open book and a simple Internet search will yield both of my blogs. I’m not hard to find. I don’t hide behind a username, use different usernames, or pretend to be someone else. I think I’m honest to a fault sometimes.

Yesterday, however, it bit me in the ass-as it sometimes will.

The thread was actually about free samples and why you shouldn’t provide them. As a freelance writer I have a portfolio filled with samples pertaining to ebooks, SEO articles, random web content, reports, itineraries, blog entries, etc. When I apply for a writing job I usually pick out a few relevant samples and attach them to my proposal and bid. Sometimes, though, a client will attempt to get free work out of you by asking for an unpaid free sample which basically comes down to them asking you to write something for them for free.

There are times when the client does this to pull one over on the providers. After all, if you need 20 articles and you get 20 people to provide free samples then your job is done. There are times, though, when I feel like I should give the client the benefit of the doubt. Once, a client had a lot of files of interviews and was trying to find someone to put them together and make a book. I took about half a page and showed them how I would do it. I got the job and it lead to a lot of work for me. I thought that was fair. Sometimes, too, the client intends to pay for the samples that they are asking for and just forgets to ask and a simple reminder is enough to get the ball rolling.

One poster in particular, though, was adamant that a good business owner NEVER gives out free samples in any situation. They made the comment that “you don’t expect services or businesses to give you anything for free.” I disagreed and gave the following examples:
• Baskin Robbins gives out free ice cream samples
• Gumbo Ya Yas gives out free Cajun samples to help you pick out your meal
• Catering services will let you sample some of their food when you’re trying to pick a company for your event
• Some hair stylists will do sample hair styles for brides to be
• You get free cheese samples at the grocery all the time
• Interior designs will often do a mock up of a room for a client to see if their vision is compatible

I then gave some personal examples of instances where I have received free goods. These included:

• Working for a non-profit organization and getting a local hotel to donate shampoos for the troops overseas
• Getting a local lumber company to donate extra wood for art projects for a children’s organization
• A local hair stylist that heard about Toby and did my hair for free
• The funeral home that only charged us their overhead expenses for Toby’s funeral

The reply that I received was shocking. The guy said that I sounded like a “scammer” to him and that people like me made him sick. He also said that he had other words to describe me but wouldn’t use them in fear of violating the website’s policy.

I was shocked. A scammer? Me? Wow. I was stunned and hurriedly wrote back a reply. Something about living in a small town and how we helped each other out and if that made me a scammer then I guess I was right up there with people who scam little old ladies out of their retirement funds over the telephone.

What was equally shocking to me was that some of the people who replied, instead of coming to my defense, chided me for providing too much personal information on a professional website.

Later on down the post the same guy accused another provider of something else and the dude wrote back and said that he didn’t know him and therefore couldn’t make character judgments or judge his motivations.

I agree about that.

The dude that called me a scammer can kiss my ass. I am glad that I live in a place that will donate to charities and help someone out when they are having a rough time, whether it’s poor business practices or not. I hope to never live in a place where that doesn’t happen.

On the other hand, it does strike a chord in me on a different level. Thanks to messageboards, status updates, tweets, forums, blogs, and comment forms we have loads of ways to interact with one another on the Internet. Some of us do it on a daily basis while others do it more sporadically. We “meet” people that we might not have met under other circumstances and after following each other for awhile through the various methods we might even start feeling like we know them.

But do we?

Although I am very, VERY honest with what I do and probably give too much information most of the time, I’m still only giving a short glimpse of a small moment in my life. That struck me again tonight when a friend of mine (someone that I DO know offline) made the comment that she knew that we “ate dinner late.” No, actually we don’t. Once in a blue moon we will eat around 10:00 pm but that’s usually if we have been out during the day, Pete is teaching a night class, or we got involved with something else and time got away from us. So I wondered why she thought that. Then I realized that when I post on Facebook about eating dinner, I’m usually posting it at around 11:00 pm, probably making it look as though that’s when we were eating. (When in actuality it might have been hours sooner.)

My cousin wrote me last week and said that she would like to come and visit but that it seemed like I was always either sleeping or at the doctor’s. I hadn’t had a doctor’s appointment for weeks and I sleep about 6 hours a day-no more than anyone else. But then when I thought about it I realized that I DO post a lot about going to the doctor because right now that’s on my mind. Plus, nobody wants to hear about the mundane things like doing the laundry, puttering around in the garden, or my latest sewing project.

My point is, what people know about us and what they think they know about us is skewed. And we’re usually the ones doing the skewing. To my angel mommy friends they probably think that I am always feeling suicidal and angry and depressed over Toby’s death. To those that feel uncomfortable when I talk about Toby, they probably think that I don’t miss him at all and that I am doing fine because I never mention him. So which one is right? Both! To my angel mommy friends I talk about my feelings regarding Toby and SIDS and my depression because they understand. And much of the time I AM sad. TO those who aren’t comfortable with that, I talk about other things that are on my mind.

There are millions of pieces that work together to make us up. I try to remember that what we show online are just fragments of those pieces. To the guy on the freelance board, I’m just a scammer. That’s what he saw from that short response. I certainly wouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion if I had read what I wrote and even if I had wouldn’t have said it, but there you go.

I try to find a balance when it comes to things that I write about. I know that there are people who think that I only talk about health problems. There are those that think I only talk about SIDS. There are others who never hear me talk about either one of those things and only hear me talk about music. In many ways, I edit myself depending on who I am talking to. I have friends that I could talk about music with all day. (SD and Jason, I’m looking at YOU!) There are others that are so pushy and opinionated and almost nosy about it that I feel uncomfortable even broaching the subject with. We let different people see different sides.

Both Melissa and Karen have written blog entries about two different situations that they were in with me. I love reading them because I like to hear other people’s versions of things. (I am NOT being sarcastic. I truly find it interesting.) What they see, what they hear, and how they interpret the exact same thing is very very interesting to me. We bring our own interpretations to situations and events based on our past experiences, our feelings, and other influences that the rest of the people in the situation may or may not have.

There is no grand message to this blog entry. It’s more of an observation. If there is some nugget of advice that I can offer it would probably be that you shouldn’t always assume that you know exactly what is going on. What you’re seeing is just a glimmer of a bigger picture. Take it with a grain of salt, maybe give someone the benefit of the doubt from time to time, and maybe use it as motivation to ask more questions and gain more knowledge.

But don’t ever assume that you know everything that’s going on, just from following someone’s status updates or messageboard replies. Or even their blog entries. Heck, I can’t even remember writing most of mine!