News From the Facebook Break

Overall, I think taking a break from Facebook has been a good thing.  Clarifying.

I had to login last night to find something and I found one friend in the midst of a cryptic meltdown, another left us hanging saying he'd gone to the ER with chest pains, and another had lost her sweet little dog.  I left sad.  I was sad that these horrible things are happening but even more I was sad that Facebook is the only way I know anything that's going on in their lives.  It made me wonder if we are really friends or something lesser with that label on it for lack of anything else to call it.  And if that's the case, it's just not good enough.

Time away has been educational.  The class I was dreading, I actually like.  And the one I had been looking forward to with some excitement, I really despise.  At least this term is half over now.  I'm still set to graduate at the end of August.  It only took 5 schools and 30+ years...

I've been doing some other than school reading, too.  And I think if you'll read these articles you'll walk away a bit smarter citizen of the world.  They might challenge your views and make you mad but sometimes truth comes to you in weird places.

• Yes, he says “magical” way too often.  Yes, it's an insult he directs at the liberal viewpoint in this piece about the Parkland shooting.  And if you are conservative, especially in deep on the right, you can wipe that smug smirk off your face.  Your side does the same damned thing.  And this kind of exploitation is morally corrupt.  Y’all need to just stop it!
• I would put a $5 bet that a majority of naturopaths and every traditional Chinese medical practioner on the planet is smacking their head and saying “Duh… ya think?” about this discovery of a new bodily organ.  
• The unintended consequences of getting it wrong run really deep.  You do need to read about China's former one-child policy.  If you're at all like me, what you think you know isn’t even scratching the surface of the political and social ramifications.

Jacky has been sick for about a week.  His sublingual lymph glands are hard and swollen, he's been packing on the pounds lately, and he feels so hot when I touch him.  Sometimes it seems like he wheezes but it's hard to call that a new symptom because he's always been breathy and melodramatic.  When he really needs to go potty, he's the one that will get right in my face and do a full body wiggle while he vocalizes "hhhhhoooooooouuuuuuutttt" like he's trying to say "out."  It's pretty hilarious but when he's such a goofball it also makes it hard to pick out behaviors that say this is what makes me think he's sick.  And the internet is no help.  The swollen glands could be anything from an allergy (we already have trees pollinating) to an injury (like from chewing on a stick outside) to a random bacterial infection to a thyroid problem like mine to cancer that would leave him about 6 weeks to live.  Sadly, I don't have unlimited funds to spend at the vet...  And he's eating, drinking, going potty, and sometimes playing with the other guys so I'm giving him a couple of baby aspirin night and morning to help with pain and inflammation and just trying to keep him active and comfortable in hopes it will work itself out.  And like chicken soup helps us feel better, chicken broth slurped from my big cup seems to do him good.

Reading about dog thyroid problems, which is somewhat prevalent in Dobermans, I learned they are treated with the exact same drugs I am.  But vets recommend breaking the pill in half and giving in two doses, morning and night, to keep blood levels more consistent. Makes sense.  And once again, veterinary medicine seems more advanced and patient-centered that people medicine.  I always said about our vet in Georgia, if he'd see me I'd go to him over my own doctor!

I’ve learned some new words, too.  Here’s a couple of them:

Pes (say w/long “a”) is a pretentious way to say foot, like that part you have running from ankle to toe.

Prepuce is the skin that covers your boy dog’s winkie.  (BTW if your groomer leaves a styled little frond of hair at the tip, and calls a Merkin, make them trim it off! It can cause all sorts of health problems like getting “it” stuck “out” which is a very bad thing and will require action from you that’s potentially quite disturbing. A Merkin is really a thing, a weird thing but… a thing, for people. If you want to know more, you’ll have to Google it for yourself. )

And I learned a couple of kitchen tricks!

If you are roasting cherry tomatoes, like for a salad, a very very slight dusting of powdered sugar preserves their bright red color and keeps the dish pretty.  Thanks for that tip, Alex Guarnaschelli!

Keep your plastic wrap in the freezer and it will come off the roll without sticking to itself.  You can actually get it to cover the dish just like Valerie Bertinelli did on her TV show.

That Year End Wrap Up Post

2016 started out hopeful... kind of went straight to hell from there but ended on a decent note.  I gained many experiences.  I'm going to trust that the ones I didn't enjoy and don't see the reason for are truly needful in some plan bigger than me.

So just what did I do?

I started saying "YES" to the adventures that presented themselves.  I went out and explored myself instead of waiting for a human companion.  I took more pictures because this world is an icredibly beautiful place.  I talked to strangers and listened to their stories of how life led them from where they were to where they are now.  I healed my soul a bit more and got a little closer to actually being me again.

I experienced some firsts. Even at my age there are lots of first times left!

• visited 13 states - AL, SC, VA, MD, WV, and PA for the first time
• tasted hominy, sauerkraut, bok choy, fish sauce and persimmon
• tried some new combinations of food - kidney beans and potatoes fried together, turnips cooked with beef, potatoes, onion, celery and carrots in a pressure cooker (I'd always eaten them raw from my Dad's garden before), a Pennsylvania Dutch dish called Slippery Pot Pie, and Vinegar Cake
• lived without running water or electricity for 3 months in a semi-remote mountain setting
• showered at a truck stop (I didn't even know you could before this experience!)
• drove a box (moving) truck
• had to ask for a jump when I ran my car battery out
• gave a jump to a stranger who was stranded alongside the road having done the same
• made blueberry jam (never lived where a bush grew in the yard before and I'm too cheap to buy them!)
• got the car stuck, and luckily unstuck, in the mud a few times
• learned to clip the dog's nails by myself

I also did some things again that I hadn't for a long long time...

• bathed in a creek
• pooped in an outhouse
• shot a pistol
• observed wildlife up close - mostly deer, wild turkey and a variety of other birds
• blogged a bit more regularly (at least toward the end of the year)
• picked enough wild blackberries and black raspberries to make jam
• experienced a Ward/Stake split/reorganization at Church
• took a course where I struggled hard to learn the material (thinking I will go out of  my way to avoid using it forever more - it was that hateful!)
• read the Book of Mormon
• forgave someone who was very hard to forgive

And I even did one thing that I'd sworn never again... moved to a place where winters are cold and snowy.

I've marveled repeatedly at just how adaptable, accepting, and forgiving my dogs are... troopers through thick and thin. They amaze and inspire me daily to try harder and do better and grow up to have their attitude about just taking life as it comes.

I failed friends.  Circumstances changed suddenly and I didn't/couldn't do what I promised and I'm still scrambling to get that set right. And friends failed me. Different ones in different ways. It hurts but I still love them and want them in my life so I'll get over it.

I've been scared. And sad, And lonely at times. I've had people worry about me. And I've wondered myself if I'm ever going to get me put back together and rebuild an entire life and future.

I've also felt peace and love and hope and connection.

And, again, declared the coming year to be THE YEAR OF ME!

Elizabeth

My next door neighbor, Elizabeth, was the first real friend I made after moving to Georgia.  It struck hard and almost unbelievable when she was diagnosed with cancer this past summer.  And then when treatment went poorly and she came home with hospice care, we all thought there would be a few months to visit and let her get things in order.  While her death is not a shock, that it happened now is very much a surprise.

I know that she was in pain.  And I'm happy that she's not suffering through the special kind of hell that lung diseases so often offer to those unfortunate enough to contract one.  She's in a better place, happy and whole and reunited with her loved ones that had gone before.  It's the people left behind that are sad and lonely and walking around a little lost without her presence.  Although... her funeral is going down as the most memorable one I've ever attended.

Ever!

Elizabeth and Danny, her husband, were never followers of any particular religious doctrine so as it became clear that planning this funeral was imminently needful, they asked the Chaplain from her hospice provider to lead a simple graveside service.  I'm guessing the format was Baptist with a few prayers, a few scripture selections and some short remarks about his impressions from visiting with her at the beginning of her time with hospice.

In north Georgia it's been raining for most of the past two weeks.  The red clay soil is completely saturated.  Crossing any low spots in the lawn are like walking on a soggy sponge.  And it's been raining all day today.  Mostly just an annoying drizzle, but with periods of what you'd have to call real rain.  What I'm trying to get across is the ground is wet.  And soft.  Very wet and very soft.

So picture this:  A smallish group of mourners huddled under a couple of those blue tents that funeral homes set up to protect people from the elements during those graveside moments.  The rolling countryside around the cemetery is lush and green.  The only background noise is the evening song of a few birds gathered in the nearby trees.  It's beautiful and peaceful and about as close to heaven as I can imagine.

The Chaplain is reading a passage from the beginning of Psalm 103...  He's half way through verse 4. (Please click the link and read that far before continuing on here.)  Almost on cue, one side of the grave collapses and the coffin slides partly off that scaffolding-like thing that holds it elevated over the vault and.. pit.

Almost like she's telling him "I ain't goin' yet, dammit!" it's headed right for the Chaplain.  His eyes were about as wide as saucers and there's a collective gasp of disbelief!  And the men from the grave digging company and from the funeral home leap in and are belly stretched over the astro-turf covered mound of dirt trying to keep it from sliding all the way off while the Chaplain concludes much more quickly than I think he'd planned.  And we are all sent to wait safely by the hearse while the workers got the grave walls reinforced and everything back in order before the coffin could be lowered.

Not something a grieving family needs, or wants, to see.  Terrible.  Stressful.  Surreal.  Those would all be good words for the moment.  But pretty soon the giggles set in... and we were all crying for a different reason!  Her daughter, Kari, finally choked out "I knew Momma would just have to get the last word in!!"

After that kind of ending, Elizabeth, who could ever forget you?

Rest in peace, my sweet friend... you were kind, generous, and funny in life.  And also in death!  I love you and I will miss you so very much!!

Elizabeth Karen Bryant Robinson

June 30, 1964 - October 1, 2015

At Kennestone Hospital shortly after being diagnosed with multiple
cancers in June 2015.  You didn't like that Kari snapped your picture... but I'm
sure glad she did!  This is how I'm going to remember you!!

Welcome To My Home

I wrote a short poem today.  Well, actually bits and pieces of it have been floating around in my head for a couple of weeks, but today is the day I got all the parts down on paper and decided it said what I wanted it to say.  And actually I'm kind of proud of it!  One of my great grandfathers was a superb poet and I always wanted to have inherited a latent poetry gene...  Maybe I got lucky and that wish came true?

Welcome To My Home

Welcome to my humble little home!

It’s not fancy, just some sticks and stone.

It’s known poverty and a bit of wealth,

And sheltered me through sickness and in health.

I've filled it with thoughts and people and things I love

As I begged for God’s blessings from above.

I’ve tried to learn from the bad to simply enjoy the good

And found it’s not about could, or should, or would…

But taking whatsoever I do have and sharing,

That is the best way to show my caring.

So come on in - you're fine just as you are

Friends always welcome from both near and far!!

My plan is to print it in a pretty font and put it in a $1 store frame that I've decorated with flowers and ribbons and such to make a rectangular wreath for my front door.  I think it's the perfect accompaniment to my 2015 goals, don't you?

Naomi's Song

I've said a few times that life needs a soundtrack.  And I've noticed that people who sing have one.  They frequently comment about seeing life as music... about finding their voice or singing their own unique song.  Some of those songs are happy little ballads about sweet and good and pleasant things.  Some are classical and maybe only understood by like-minded and deeply-spirited kindred souls.  Some would be best described as non-melodic cacophonies of discordant head banging.  And some are like the formulaic country songs where 'somebody done somebody wrong.'

Me?  I love listening to all kinds of music and I have definite opinions about what makes a song 'good' but I don't sing.  Trust me... if you ever heard me try you'd be happy I've given up the attempt.  Once I heard a TV character who was now profoundly deaf, but had been hearing as a child, explain her singing this way: "God created a lot of different notes and I intend to use them all."  I tried that.  But it made the cats cry and the dogs howl.  Even my best friend once said I could only sing two parts:  Solo and Tenor.  Meaning:  Solo - so low you can't hear it.  And tenor, as in ten or fifteen miles off-key!

It's good I can laugh about it.

Or we might not be such good friends...

But in all seriousness we each have a soundtrack, a song that we sing to the rest of the world telling them how we feel about our lives.  I've been following along loosely on a short Bible study about Ruth and by association, her mother-in-law, Naomi.  And Naomi has quite the song.  It's so familiar that we can add our voices for a rousing chorus without even realizing it sometimes.  Naomi, while she's in that self-absorbed mode, has the lead vocal on the pity party anthem... oh poor lil ol' me!

From Wikipedia's entry on Naomi.  Painting by
William Blake of Naomi telling her daughters-in-law,
Ruth (hugging her) and Orpah (leaving) to return
to their fathers' houses in Moab.

To quickly review her story:  Naomi lived in Bethlehem with her husband and family. There was the threat of a famine and so they left and went to Moab seeking to avoid the destitution they thought was coming but fell into even more trouble away from home.  Her sons married Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah.  All the men died and when the women returned home they were truly destitute.  Naomi convinced Orpah to go back to her father but Ruth insisted on being a faithful companion to Naomi.  Naomi, a name that means "pleasant," asked to be called by Mara, meaning "bitter" though no one ever really does.  She goes on to say she'd left Bethlehem full but returned empty and blames God for making her life bitter.  But reflecting on that... things were not as bad as she'd thought.  Ruth finds favor in the eyes of a kinsman redeemer, Boaz.  And in the end they are saved.

Yes, I know... I left out a lot of details and nuances to their story.

The point, however, is that despite Naomi getting caught up in self-pity and blaming God for bringing bitterness into her life she is still redeemed through Boaz.  In her story, he is the 'type' or 'shadow' of Christ's redeeming love for each of us no matter how much we complain and try to lay the blame for our troubles on Him.  His love is all encompassing and forgiving of our mistakes no matter how deeply we dig ourselves into an awful situation.

And we'd all do ourselves better to make our life's soundtrack a song about that!

That 70's Bathroom

I'm pretty sure I've whined about having bathrooms straight out of the 70's before...

But it's true!!

There's Harvest Gold fixtures and everything!  In the hall bathroom anyway (the master has the ever-lovely Avocado Green) which is one of the rooms I've been working on the past few days as I start to get stuff in shape for a visit from a wonderful friend I haven't seen since about the time we both graduated from high school 30 + years ago.  Sadly, for now we're stuck with the Harvest Gold so... I'm doing my best to rock that shade of awful!

Here's a couple of BEFORE photographs of this little bathroom I've all but ignored for the last 5 months.

I started with a good cleaning.  The bathtub, toilet, and sink are actually in pretty decent condition with all the muck scraped and scrubbed off... they're just uglier than sin.  Which is kind of funny since it's almost the same color as the bedspread in the bedroom that this bathroom services.  Once the tub and tile were clean, I hung an ivory shower curtain liner ($1 for the rings and $1 for the liner panel at Dollar Tree) and used some of the extra drapes from the bedroom (the windows at my old house were a LOT bigger!) around the bathtub.  It was tighter than tight getting the drapery panels on the shower curtain rod!!  But for a free fix, I can expend a little effort.

Better Homes and Gardens it's not, but I think we can live with the Harvest Gold a while longer now...

You can't see it in any of the pictures but we also traded out the wimpy little showerhead for a nice big rainfall style one.  And I spray painted a neon green mesh trash can (gotta love the stuff you can find at Dollar Tree!) white for this room.  Now to fresh up the towels, parcel out the wall decor between bed and bath, get some cute soaps and stuff and put down a fluffy rug to make this room ready for its AFTER shots!

Everything is pretty simple and basic still at this point... but I'm repurposing things we already own and the FREE part helps me appreciate what beauty there is.  The liner makes the shower functional and the curtains do add privacy and the beginning of some sense of the room being put together.  There's a fluffy rug on the floor that matches one of the shades of gold in the curtain that makes for a nice spot to step out of the shower.

Not too bad for just using the extra curtain panels from the bedroom?

Fresh clean towels are also out.  We're short on towel bars so... in both bathrooms the clean ones are just folded and kept on top of the toilet tank.  It works because we're also not flush on towels so all we own fits in that spot.

What's funny about these tan towels is that when we first looked at the house, the lighting in this bathroom was so bad we thought the tub, toilet, and sink were tan.  It wasn't until we'd moved and replaced the scary old light fixture that we realized everything was harvest gold...

I decorated the corner of the counter with shells from all over the world:  The conch and abalone were my Grandma Clarke's from a trip to the CA coast in the late 1940s.  The sand dollar posed on the lip of the conch and the smaller similar shell up front was collected by a cousin taking an adventure and travelling as an itinerant worker all around the country during the mid-1980s.  Most of the small tan and brown ones my dad gathered on the beaches of the Mariana Islands when he was there as a soldier during WWII.   And the really tiny shells and bits of coral on top are things I picked up relaxing on the beach in Antigua.

At some point we do want to re-do this bathroom with white fixtures and a smaller simpler vanity cabinet.  Not fancy even then, just brought into the current century.

Things That Might Have Been

They say that you walk past a thousand opportunities a day without ever seeing them...  Usually you hear that in respect to financial pursuits, but I think it applies to many things.

Today a friendship died because the opportunity to understand each other and reach out with love and respect was left unseen.  It just degenerated into name calling, insults and misunderstanding.  That's a sad thing.

I take responsibility for the part I had in that happening.  I was bored and I knew in the back of my mind that this person would react negatively, maybe even purposely misunderstand to justify his reaction, because of the topic and yet I brought it up.  On some level I might have baited him looking for an argument to ease the boredom.  That wasn't my conscious intention, at least not in the beginning, and I'm not especially proud of myself for it but one thing I am is honest.  Quite often brutally honest.

Copied from an unattributed Facebook post

Take up the argument he did!

He came out of the corner throwing punches and told me over and over that I only pretend to understand an issue before I pronounce my opinion as a gospel fact... that what I think about current events is a joke... that I will never understand where he's coming from and therefore have no right to speak...  and that anyone who agrees with my point of view is, basically, a sellout.  Insult after insult was hurled at me.  Until I said I didn't want to be friends any longer because he was being such a hurtful jerk and not contributing anything useful to the conversation.

I still don't know where he stands only that in his mind where I stand is wrong, wrong, wrong and WRONG!

What were we fighting about?

Something you'd think would be easy to agree on... the tragedy a family feels when a child is murdered.  I think that is a horrific thing for every family that has to experience it.  He felt it was a different ballgame if the murderer was not punished the way he saw fit and that those times deserved a stronger outrage from all of society.  And if you didn't react just like him... well, then you just are too dumb to 'get it.'

I'm a little sad it's over but I also think it's the best thing that could happen given the situation.  I don't think it's salvageable and even if it was, being so negative, I'm not going to put in the effort to patch it up.  I'd always be wondering when he'd verbally attack me again.  I don't trust him any longer... and can there be a real friendship without trust?

So I'm choosing to just let it go and move on with loving the people around me better.

And for the record... I still say every child that is killed or molested or otherwise abused is a tragedy.  Not just the ones that meet someone's narrow criteria set, but EVERY CHILD.