I'm no Scientist

I don't know why it's ranging between 40 and 70 degrees in the middle of January, but I've heard every reason. Some of my friends say it's global warming, some say it's cow farts. One weatherman said it's El Nino, the other a reciprocal weather pattern with Alaska. This morning, the milkman told me it's because the sun is burning several degrees hotter than normal, just as it did 400 odd years ago before the plague.

I don't know who's right. What I do know is, the temperature got hotter when I started running consistantly. Probably, I did it. Thank me or crucify me, it is what it is.

New Years

I need some help finding a good New Years resolution. I already walk every day, I already have a healthy "private" life, I've already vowed to become smarter with OHM, more frugal with Tiarra, more organized with Delta and now I want something exciting. What shall I do? I'm open for suggestions. Post an idea, please, something easily attainable with 3 yunguns in tow. Preferably legal. Otherwise, I'm game.

Great Dream

I had a Great Dream last night.I Was riding through war torn Chechnya in back of a cab driven by a man who may or may not have been trying to kill me. I was naked. I looked over to right and realized that Brad Pitt was riding next to me, also naked, very sad.

"What's wrong, Brad?" I asked.

"I'm ugly."

"Jesus Christ," I said, moving a little bit lot bit closer to brad, "You're gorgeous. You're as gorgeous as...I was going to say Brad Pitt but since you ARE him..."

"You really think so?" (Puts his arm around me. I realize we are married - don't ask me how I realize this. It's my stinkin dream.)

Suddenly cab driver could have ak-47 trained on my forehead and it wouldn't matter. I'm about to DO IT in the backseat of a moving vehicle with BRAD PITT!!!!!

But then someone started licking my hand and I remembered why I hate dogs so. After evicting the stupid dog from my bedroom, I desperately tried to get back to that dream, but succeeded only in riding down an escalator, losing my hat in the belt, pulling it out and having every single hat ever lost in the belt follow it. Not quite Brad Pitt.

party at brothers' house was great. love all new sisters-in-law. Reminded of the fact that 1. if can be late, will, 2. if can get lost, will. Arrived at party 3 hours late after extended tour of Nashua NH. Was invited to NY Eve party at other new brother's house. Want to go but Delta wants to stay home. Must arm wrestle to determine winner. Also, must reciprocate to new family with party at this house. Must hire home decorator.

edit: also, today is the day I must end my grace period as quasi-eldest in father's line and assume my new grown up role completely. Ah, well.

Happy, Merry

We had a wonderful Christmas, thank you very much. We stepped in sort of gingerly, and I had a few moment s like when we lit a candle for my father at Fatima and when we stayed up late Christmas eve and of course, christmas morning. But the days were nice as a whole.

I inherited a cousin when my dad died. He's 57 years old and so like my dad it's almost supernatural. I'd never known him before but now we talk every day and he came by on Christmas with his girlfriend, brought gifts for the girls, stayed and talked with Mom and Superdad. It was almost like the old days.

Today we are headed up to my new brother's house for christmas with them. It's wierd becoming a family when you are all old enough to have families of your own, but I'm convinced it can happen. All it takes is practice.

Someone stole my brand new big, heavy, Scotch Tape dispenser. Someone in this house. When I find out who that someone is....Now I have to rip little chunks off the extra rolls. Damn it.

Today was Phee Phee's big winter dance production. I cried through the whole thing. And I forgot tissue, but that's ok, the important thing is how amazing my little pumpkin was. I'm always amazed at kids. Can you imagine getting up in front of an auditorium full of fancy dressed people and dancing around in a skin tight leotard? Me neither. Come to think of it, I think me in a skin tight leotard dancing anywhere is explicitely forbidden in the Geneva Convention.

Restructuring

Man it's been a while since I last wrote. Let's see, what's happened?

When I was in fourth grade (seriously, I'm going somewhere with this) my mammie moved me from Framingham to Ashland. The move, the fifth in my life, didn't sit well with me. Actually, to this day, I loathe Ashland. There's, like, 2 good things about Ashland and that's it. And I'm getting to one of them.

So, I was in Ashland and I was in the fourth grade. I was entering elementary school at an utterly inconvenient time when everyone else was adjusted already and settled with their best friends and state fair projects and what not. I don't know what kind of impression I was going for, but it involved itching powder, thumbtacks, and one rather unhappy teacher. At any rate, it garnered lots of attention, some good, some not so good. One day I was revelling in my newfound noteriety sipping some water at the bubbler and this amazon girl came over and shoved me face first into the cold steel nozzle. I don't know what happened next, the details are hazy. I think there was some sort of scuffle, a little bit of arguing, maybe a couple weeks of reciprocal sabotage and then, voila, I had a best friend.

I've been through many best friends. Some are now like family, some have come and gone, others are rekindling and some are falling away but through it all I never forgot my first, Sabies. I realize that sounds just a bit creepy, but it wasn't like that at all. Sabies and I covered a whole lot of life together.

We started out acting out scenes from our favorite series of books. (The Black Stallion) We would argue over who got to be Black and who got to be Flame. (One freakin word - one word about me being a big black horse now is all it will take for a punch in the nose. I still have thumbtacks too) We argued over who's dad (Both Electrical Engineers) was smarter. Her dad was also a detective, but my dad had better business cards, and that was tres importante.

Back then, parents weren't as good at parenting as they are now. Sabies and I were largely unsupervised. We learned how to do things like set the woods on fire, creep out the front door while my mothers boyfriend snored on the couch at midnight (in a VERY revealing bathrobe - GAG), put ourselves to sleep with Nyquil so we could have a midweek sleepover (never worked. Should have visited Mayo Clinic) and other less innocent things as time passed. For being so naughty, we were so very naive. I don't know how we lived.I don't know how we lived so dangerously and yet so chaste at the same time. (well, sort of)

Anyway, Sabies and I lost touch around the time I went in the Marines. I don't know why or how, I guess it had something to do with me being a Marine and all gung ho about that, but I never forgot her. Years passed without us speaking. Then, just a couple of days after my dad died, Sabies called. And we picked up our conversation where we left off. How can that be? How can so many years pass, how can so much life pass and yet I feel like she's been there all along?

Someone upstairs is really looking out for me.

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."– Sigmund Freud

Looking back thusfar, I can buy that. The only unadorned stories I tell are those of triumphant journeys back from terrible places, snapshots seared into memory by the flashbulb of intensity. The images I rotate on my brain's screensaver are memories of times when all "we" had was each other and the sweetest moments were tucked away innocently between the bookends of obligation.

I'm kind of hungry right now, and, as Delta pointed out just now, I am not a normal AM blogger, so all I can equate it to to is a bowl of raisin bran. I love raisin bran, all of it, but it's the raisins that make me keep eating.

Lately

Whew. It feels like both a million years and a heartbeat since I last blogged. Time has ceased to define anything for the last few weeks. Here's what I've gathered so far:

1. Grief is like sitting on your feet so long that they lose feeling. As soon as you try to stand up you realize that there's no feeling at all and that perhaps the two slabs of meat attached to your ankles are not yours at all to command. Then the blood comes rushing back all at once and hits you like a curveball. You can't move. Even the smallest movement of your littlest finger reverberates through your body down to your throbbing feet. You can't concentrate on anything but the pain. You're afraid the pain might never end. But it does lessen and you're left with pins and needles, still a bit shaky but able to walk around even if it is with a limp. I'm limping now. Grief is the single worst feeling there is. You know how when something really good is about to happen like Christmas or a date with that really hot Scottish guy in the band you've worshipped for eight years? You know how you get that little twinge of anticipation every time you think of it and the twinge makes you act a little nicer to everyone and makes even balancing your checkbook tolerable? Well, grief is the exact opposite. Grief is the grand wizard of all things crappy and the little twinges make you suck just a little bit more when they come, and they do. It's like sitting back down on your pins and needles for a little while.

2. My grandfather always told me to surround myself with people better than I am. Thank God I listened. If there's anything positive about this grandiose saga of shit, it's that when I fell off the tightrope because my two little slabs of feet wouldn't hold me up, I fell into a net. There is nothing I could possibly write that could express my gratitude to those of you who caught me. There has not been one moment, since the terrible moment of truth in the "family room" at the hospital till this one right now in front of my computer that I have felt alone. So many people have reached out to us... the fact brings tears to my eyes. I am so thankful.

So, tommorow is Thanksgiving. I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope you have something to be thankful for. Safe Travels and Tryptophan for all. (BTW - I just found out that one would have to eat more than one turkey for the tryptophan to put one to sleep. The sleepy feeling is really from the gross amount of food crammed into one's stomach.)
8-4

It's been 12 days since my father died. He was my biggest motivator for writing this blog. Every day he'd check and if there was nothing new he'd rag on me. The last two entries felt alien, like I was writing to no one.

The first ten days after his death I'd realize, out of the blue, that I'd been pacing. Looking out the window, walking across the house to look out another window, wandering upstairs and down. I didn't give it much thought, but later I read in a book about grief that this type of behavior is known as searching. Though a person's intellect understands that the missing person is gone, the subconscious does not and thus searches, endlessly. When I read that, I thought how sad that sounds - searching, wandering, hoping that next time you look, the person you love so much will be there. I guess you spend so much time being, well, conscious for lack of a better word that you don't even realize there's more to your brain than just that. I guess it's like, out of consciousness out of mind.

On Death and Dying

As I think everyone knows by now, I lost my father last week to sudden cardiac death. My father's heart simply died. Certain things have gone awry since then. I can't eat or sleep or write. I can't focus on one thing for more than 20 seconds. I spend the sunlight hours wishing for a sign from my father and the darkness terrified that I'll get one. I spent the last week wrapped tightly in the anesthesia of numbing shock. My priest, who is quite fond of metaphors, once told me that the road to healing is straight through the woods, one step at a time. Last week I told him that I'm afraid of that, afraid of the amount of grief waiting just beyond the tree line and he reminded me - one step at a time. If there's one thing I can offer, the first lesson I've learned thus far it's this: don't leave anything unresolved. Don't let anyone wonder if you love them or not. Cling tightly to the people you love. The people I love have carried me for a week now. Without that, I might have been lost, wandering about in the woods. I pray we never walk alone.

...here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

(excerpt from ee cummings)

i miss you

8-4

Tonight I pronounce a new ritual for Halloween. From here on out trick-or-treating supervision is the sole responsibility of the paternal figure. For this and all other Halloween's to follow, the mother shall stay home and drink wine with her friends. So it is written, so it shall be done. Oh, and CeeBeeW or Tiarra - post your pics.

Dear Everyone:

I have fat blood. I'm done for. I'll probably have type 2 diabetes by the end of the week and a heart attack soon thereafter.

On a scale of 0 - 150, my triglycerides are 203. There is so much lard in my blood that I am probably very flammable and/or slippery. No wonder my feet are always cold: all that frosting blood can barely squeeze through my "spidery little veins".

Dear Gods, you hit 30 and it all goes to shit.

Tommorow I will start my new regime of sleeping, eating brown rice and running. And that's IT.

This Weekend

is going to be great! We have some of our favorite family members coming in from NC! And they want to be spooktified. There is NOTHING I like better than spooky stuff. Of course, Delta will be out of town next week. Where will I leap when the hair on the back of my neck stands up? I'll have to be brave. Here is a list of all the things we are going to do this weekend. Lunch here, because that's the visitor law. Then, we are going to this person's party. Then we are going to this place for dinner. My nephew was particularly pleased with that idea since he saw the place on Haunted Travel Channel. We are headed over to this place because of this legend and then off to here for a tour through a very old, very haunted... Does anyone know of any spooky restaurants out that way, preferably on the water where we can eat dinner??

Phlebotophobia

"Dear God, Didi, you're THIRTY now, it's time we check your cholesterol," said my VA doctor yesterday at my physical. "It's just a blood test!"
I'd been called out over cholesterol. I mumbled something, blamed it all on Delta, and went home to fast for twelve hours.
This morning I waited my turn in line at the lab counter.
"Oh, a veteran," said the receptionist loudly, thus ensuring that I'd have to take the needle like a Marine and not like the needle sissy that I am. "Take a seat, we'll call you when we're ready."
While I waited, I did a couple of sets of one-armed pushups to show everyone else how tough I really am.
"Didi," called the phlebotomist.
I sat in the chair and she locked me in with that padded bar you rest your arm on and rolled around the four extra long emty vials that I was doomed to fill as if taunting me.
"Make a fist. Have you had anything to eat or drink this morning?" the vampire asked sweetly.
"No. Just a cup of hot water that I pretended was coffee."
"Oh that's so cute," she said, giggling. "little pinch."
Little pinch my ass.
I'm not afraid of needles. I have a million tattoos. I have no problem with vaccinations - not even the tetanus shot I have to get from time to time, usually after over-zealous chopping in the kitchen. On that note, I'm not afraid of pain either. I delivered three babies sans drugs. It's the sucking feeling, the sharp, cold steel of the needle, the rush of corpuscles that gets me. Allowing somebody to drain your blood, for whatever useful purpose, goes against the law of self preservation.
One year, I came up with the most brilliant idea for Lent. Since you're supposed to give up something you really care about, I decided to donate blood. Genius! I could condense forty days of self-denial in one morning. I tried, honestly I did, to be brave. But that needle is big. And the red cross laughs at blood vials - they want entire bags full.
"This will take about 11 minutes," said the nurse. "You'll squeeze this little thing, then when I tell you to stop squeezing, you just lie here until the bag is full."
I could feel my heart rate speed up.
"Little prick," she said.
My bag started to fill.
"Okay, sweetie, you can stop squeezing," she said.
Only, I couldn't. It was like I had rigor mortis. Even my grimace from the initial "little prick" remained frozen to my lips.
"Sweetie, let go," she said a bit more forcefully. "Let," she pried, "go!"
My hand, though empty, stayed in it's claw shape and I filled that bag in about two minutes thirty seconds. After that, they made me lie down a little while longer and drink some of their magical elixer known as Orange Juice.
Before I left they put a little "hero" sticker on my blood doner card. I thought they were trying to make me feel good but it turns out my blood is so clean and virus-free that it can go directly from my arm into someone who needs it. That combined with my rare blood type has turned me into a stalker victim. The Red Cross calls me monthly for more blood. Doesn't that just figure? The comedy of irony.
When I come home from the lab I must keep my right arm at an obtuse angle so that no one will bump the needle site. It will remain this way for the next 24 hours. The bandage will have to wash off on it's own because I will not touch it. My father laughs at me, so does Delta. I ignore them, and make my way to the fridge for a glass of oranje juice.

I love Lost. Jin is the Asian version of Delta. I also love Mr. T and I pity the fool who doesn't.

How many best days ever is a girl allowed to have? I'm far too tired to write more than this little expression of how grateful and happy I am to have such wonderful friends and a whole new family. I always wanted a big brother, now I've got 3. Of course, it was my mom and superdad's day, but this is my blog and so I can say that when one of my new big brothers called me sis tonight, and another one called us all family and then the other one said anyone who is a friend of mine is a friend of the whole family to CeeBeeW, well, how could I be any happier?

T-30 Hours till Mom and Superdad's Wedding

To have everything go according to plan implies that one A. Has a plan B. Comes equipped with an attention span. Sadly, I have neither. But that's ok! Twelve hours of full throttle last minute planning is wonderful excercise. And you should see the setup (if I do say so myself). So we're two plates short. We've got an extra dessert fork! And as for the forgotten coffee cups/water goblets/cake plates, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Wish us luck!

Have you ever watched the show To Catch a Predator? Delta watches it every week. The thing that baffles me, and I admit that's not a challenge, is how many pedophiles there really are out there. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, "respectable" people soliciting sex from young girls they meet online. To Catch a Predator might be the best show on TV. Never in the history of humanity has anyone done so much to air the dirty drawers of the loathful pigs who prey on little ones. Speaking of pigs, I think a cool ending for each episode would be if they corralled all the pedophiles in a little mudpit, smeared their vile genitals with kitchen scraps then unleashed a herd of underfed male boars upon them. That would both teach them a lesson and remove the risk of them forgetting what they learned. It's always good to multitask.

I read somewhere this week that "they" did a global study and found out that 70% of the world's women have been victims of domestic violence. My dad asked me tonight if I thought those sorts of people were always around or if the world was going to shit. I think they've always been here. For a long time the victims of bullies and perverts suffered in silence. My dear friend's mother has breast cancer. She didn't tell anyone because she was too embarrassed and I think that illustrates the mentality of so many women born before the seventies. What in the world could make a woman ashamed of herself for being raped, beaten or stricken by illness? God I hope I teach my girls right. If they learn nothing else from me, may they always find their voice and may they never forget what their thumbs are made for. (eyeball pluckers.)