Tripping, Tipping on Tips...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...Too many places online tell you that no matter how shitty the service is that you MUST tip! I don't agree!

If a waiter or waitress wants to keep their customers, keep their job and keep their employer in business they need to do their damn job!

I've gotten really tired of the, "but I'm OWED a Jooooob!" whine by whoever is making the current whine. I've served at counters. I've done my time at fast food. And garnered tips! which is harder than hell! I've served bar at pizza places! I've sold jewelry on commission. I've had some pretty crummy jobs to make ends meet and to help pay my way through college and I get that waiters and waitresses don't get minimum wage. Thus it behooves them to serve their customers.

Because you want to know a secret? Lean closer....MOST CUSTOMERS FEEL DAMN GUILTY IF THEY DON'T TIP! So if we aren't tipping, there is a good reason! And it's not that our panties are in a twist, or that we're in a bad mood! Normally it's that we've gotten such crappy service that we just can't justify laying down any more money we really can't afford to reward such crappy behavior. I don't reward toddlers' crappy behavior; why would I do it with adults? They don't learn from it either.

So here are the rules I learned from my Dad about tipping (this was a while ago, but my income hasn't gone up since 1996, so my tips probably won't either. Your income probably does, so you can adjust for income!)

Excellent service:
20%+
Fair service
10%-15%
Borderline
5%
Maitre de: (bribe for seating)$50+ depending on snoot factor of place and maitre de
Note: doesn't normally work for females, females either have to dress the part, or end up by the kitchen door, or equivalent. just sayin'
Chefs or Bus boys 5%
Bellhops $1-$10
Maids $5-$20 depending on length of stay
Bar waitresses the change from next closest denomination or 10-20% of round
Hairdressers, box people, door men, valets $1-$10 depending on location

VERY BAD SERVICE, so bad you want to tell them you would have tipped, but their service sucked!!  $0.01

But nowadays I always feel like everyone has their hand out for a handout. I'm on a fixed income and I compute a tip into the cost of my meal when I go out. But it also means I go out much less frequently. Those dollars are hard to come by in my life.

So when that time is ruined by shitty service. I don't take it quietly, or lying down. I only have about 4 or 5 restaurants I can even still eat at with my medical conditions anymore since most of them use food with additives or preservatives I can't physically eat. So the few I CAN eat at, I work into my schedule selectively.

I know I'm probably a dinosaur. But this dinosaur has a very limited food supply and a limited budget like the rest of the world is coming to, and gee, maybe if more people valued their pennies and realised that the single penny they saw on the table was actually the message of one MIGHTILY PISSED OFF customer, they might mend their service and keep their restaurant, their job, and the economy going.

I've been told by friends of mine that women are the WORST tippers so they get the worst service. Especially women in SUITS. It always makes me giggle. Because I would probably be one of the better tippers, if I'm treated decently. But when I'm ignored or treated rudely, watch the f* out! I will be in your face. I will take my cane and my drink up to the drink station and fill it. I will tell your manager I had a crappy meal AND I will report it on the website. Because I am just THAT fed UP with SHITTY service. So the next time you think you have this little old lady with the cane in the corner with her book pegged. Think twice! of course, they might be spitting in my food? who knows?

just my 1 or 2 cents of a tip...ped off goddess....

It's done so I can share a Midsummer Knight's Comic....?

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

Text for the Herald
Let it be known that We, Thorin, Dread Sable Lion, and Dagmaer, Fair
and Gracious, Sable Lioness have Created to the Rank and
Dignity of a Knight Our Trusty and Well Beloved,
Lourenço de Compostella and have made him the same on
account of his Chivalry and Prowess upon the field. Let all An
Tirian hearts rejoice as a new made knight and member of Our
peerage stands forth.
In witness of this day do we set our hand and seal on the  __________
day of August Anno Societatus 46.

The scroll design was done by HL Sannan the OneEyed of Hauksgarðr
Design based on the Galician  13th Century Manuscript Las Cantigas de Santa Maria Chansonnier
primarily elements from Codex E but elements from Codex F (the Florentine Codex) were  used as well as both were similar stylistically 

The reduction in size from the original 35X50cm or 14X20" was due to the size of hot press paper I had on hand.

 The color choices were based on manuscript color choices/schemes for borders and non-story elements
Other color choices based on reality and or arms of individuals involved. ;) M.Graham designer gouache was used for paint with colors being matched as closely as possible to those seen online in the Cantigas. Metals used were all sumi ink by yasutomo and were applied first and burnished.

This manuscript is considered by many to be one of the earliest forms of comic 'book' and as such, tells many 'stories' http://anthropro.blogspot.com/2010/11/medieval-comic-las-cantigas-de-santa.html
the story of this scroll is Lourenço's SCA journey to this point from the OP and his own words.

The first two frames are the AWW  July 2003 where he and the now Sir Godric ap Rhys (colors Sable and Or) held a bridge against an overwhelming number of opponents from the West. Lourenço was known as n and was awarded the Fury of the Lion for their courageous last stand at the bridge.

I messed up the order of the frames a bit when I was doing my cartoon under-drawing for this...but light boxes are wonderful things...

Next Ejulfbjorn makes the journey to 3 Mountains from his home in Glyn Dwfn, where he learned under the tutelage of Duke Sir James Greyhelm (the blue dragon wings on the boat to guide him and the 2 silver spears and the silver and blue shield in the viking boat) and Sir William Brennan (the black and red shield in the boat). Lourenço's own axe and shield are in the boat as well. Everybody I consulted liked the waves under these boats that were a very dark indigo with white swirls. But, of course, as Ejulfbjorn, was NORSE when he first got to 3 Mountains before his personna change, I HAD to have him arrive in a Norse ship with the proper warlike accoutrements from the people he had been learning from.

Next Lourenço is seen as his incarnation as a Stormgod, the Barony of Stromgard's defender, (with the white horse of his knight William Brennan in the background.) he is shown in the Eric in his own armor of his colors with his inspiration watching. In my cartoon above, this is in the second square. In the final it is in the 4th square. On Facebook I posted the pictures Lourenço sent me of his armor, himself, his lady and his banner so I had a chance of making some of it match his actual stuff. I checked the armorial for the James Greyhelm listing and Lourenço sent me the information on this first knight, William Brennan, so that his horse, and colors, could be added to the scenes. He sent me the link on Godric ap Rhys as well so I could add his colors to the bridge battle.

Checking the OP, I discovered when he was awarded the King's Favor and his AoA and so could try my hand at small likenesses of Tiernan and Miranda. They aren't great, but hopefully aren't insulting and they get the spirit of the point across. The last panels are Lourenço after he received his King's Favor from King Tiernan, also receiving his Award of Arms from King Tiernan and Queen Miranda.

And in the final panel, Lourenço is put on vigil and is seen in a vigil chapel with his head bare and his weapons outside the door. The shield division was taken from Lourenço's device that is in submission, as are the colors of the surcoat. The surcoat style is from the manuscript. The wolves and bears at the box crossings are from his proposed arms. The banner on the historated initial is similar to one he carries in reality as a war banner.

I sent a few links with the information about the scroll so if the recipient was interested he could do more research:  http://www.edilan.es/hojas/0002e.htm
http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/illuman/12_08.html

And I added a few cautions from scribes I've learned over the last few months. :D

This scroll is hot pressed paper and a water soluble paint with waterproof ink, 

BUT please,

realize  over 20 hours of research went into its creation, 

                       plus 6 hours of calligraphy

                       plus 15 hours of underdrawing

                    then an additional 70 hours of illumination (painting)

That is over a hundred hours of an artisan's time. THIS artisan's time...Whether you like, hate or are indifferent to the product, 

please don't:

fold, roll, or sit on it where other scribes, or I, can see you do it....it discourages us all, and makes us all feel unappreciated

sweat, drip, cry, or let rain hit the paint. It will smear and ruin the painting and all those hours will be for naught.

Please don't store it on a dashboard in the sun, the wax on the seal will melt...but it will ride home there fairly well. ;D

Please do: hold it by its edges, keep in an envelop, and if you don't want to frame it...give it to your mother....maybe she'll want to frame it? 

Nothing made me want to wince more than seeing original works of art thumbtacked to a wall, or folded and slid under the recipient's rear for safe keeping.

Congratulations Sir Knight, and I hope you enjoy,

Lady Sannan the OneEyed of Hauksgarðr

I'd already managed to bung it up enough just because of my constant fight with depth perception while I was working on it. Just 2 more weeks would have been a luxury. I'm feeling whiny. My eyes are a constant burn and ache now. So bad I can hardly sleep. And my left arm, the one I haven't been able to afford the surgery on yet, was holding my ink bottle and managed to spasm into me juggling the ink bottle right over the top of the scroll in the last two days of production. Not just once, but twice.

I know it's just that I take on commissions as if I'm not disabled anymore and then act like I'm not and my body rebels. It's rebelling now. The pain hasn't climbed down the scale far enough for me to really sleep since I finished.



And here, my covering paper slipped while I was doing the flourishing Batarde Initials...The paper that is SUPPOSED to protect from stuff like this...and caused this by slipping into wet paint and carrying it into the margin. That little red blotch. There were a few other blotches by the calligraphy, but I expect those, cause I'm not so great at calligraphy. So one of these days I'll have a perfect product and have to find something else to bitch about. ;D

 I know better. I just felt so honored to be asked. I don't seem to get asked to do things very often so I hate to say no. But I need to learn that my body can't live up to these kinds of demands. My eye gave out 2 days before the scroll finished and so I had no depth perception trying to finish. Luckily the main calligraphy was done or I would have been toast.  As it was, the hand spasms caused some bobbles that wouldn't have happened it I hadn't been so tired that I had to push it. If I hadn't had to wait so many days up front to start. If I'd known even 2 weeks sooner it would have been much cleaner all around and I would have been much happier.

This has the ugly black ink bobble at the lower corner.

This is the same spot. It didn't clean up that well. Hopefully it will be matted and framed.

The worst of the bobbles he probably will never notice unless he, or someone else looks. They will be under a frame or matting edge. Others, I will always notice, I'm a scribe....gee, I will always wish I just would have had time to do that....

In this one my pen came down into the ship caption from above.

The pen marks, the ink, the paint..the bobbles, it's all part of it and there are ways to fix almost all of it so I didn't have to start over luckily, because I didn't have the almost 100 hours of time to devote to the project again.

The red splotch cleaned up fairly well.

I got thinking about it....how many armorers devote 100 hours or more to how many suits of armor they build? How often?  I know many scribes who put in this amount of time in research and honing their skills regularly. Others who don't as much, who just trace and paint, not as much researching into the era of the client, but wow....we're insane....   Maybe some of it is I just don't paint or draw that fast. ;D

My FB portfolio
My FB charters- medieval illumination I have done on other's designs

from an insanely puzzled goddess

The hands are it.

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
Really. Luckily the black plague only visited for a few weeks and left awhile back.

If you are squeamish about stuff, you might want to stop reading now. This is a gross pictures alert. But truly, it was like a train wreck that got worse every day. I couldn't hold anything, and I couldn't stop poking at it or taking pictures.

The first few days the itching and "hives" or whatever you want to call the reaction weren't too bad....then it got worse. I've had this before when I was taking narcotics long-term, which I am now. It's why I take benadryl with the narcotics, to cut down on the hystamine reactions. I know when there is too much morphine built up in my system because the small blisters will start to form under my skin in my hands and fingers and itch like crazy.

I end up with larger almost pimple like blisters elsewhere, but my hands are awful. The blisters will get so big, from little pin heads to where they grow together and make my fingers like overcooked and water logged sausages.

I've always just popped the edge of the big blisters and wrapped the fingers up and tried to keep them from getting to where I can't use them. WRONG thing to do as I was told by MULTIPLE medical practitioners.

Well, this reaction was MUCH worse than usual. It started out like normal. And progressed like normal.  I stopped my morphine, thinking it was the culprit. It kept getting worse. I stopped the other new medication I had just increased the dose on and checked with the pharmacy...it would take at least a week for it to clear my system. I took the new flea collars off the cats and dog as well. Quadrupled my benadryl and even tried it topically. It just kept getting worse.

That is NOT a shadow, it's a blood blister and the color of the skin.

Eventually, about the time that the entire finger sized blood blisters made it look like I had the black plague, that was not a joke, and I had a red line climbing up the OUTSIDE of my arm which was strange. It looked like a blood poisoning line, crawled up my arm like a blood poisoning line, but I've had blood poisoning in the past and it was on the inside of the arm...hmmm. I marked the spots and watched it progress up my arm and took some Aleve for the 103 degree fever.  The fever didn't drop below 101 within the next 4 hours while the line went up my arm another 5 inches and I waited for my husband to come back from the meeting he was at in Portland.

I checked the emails I had been exchanging with my doctor's office and discovered that they wanted me to go into an ER or Urgent Care if I broke a fever...ooops...I was starting to think it might be a plan.

I don't think the ER doctor knew whether to be disgusted or intrigued. He did tell me that in a possible drug reaction like mine that I COULD react like that all OVER my body and have swollen, blistered skin that would squirt liquid every time it was touched and break and oh, gross....just about what my hands had been doing for days...all OVER....yuckies....

This was my neck

My mistake had been opening the skin. The blister here to the right on the thumb? It's infected. And so is the on under the ring finger. The blood blisters are caused by all the pressure the liquid filled skin puts on the underlying skin as it swells. I was "just like a burn victim," as the doctor said. Believe me, I felt like it!

It was bad enough that my neck, face and chin had gotten into the act...Even my eyes were involved.

The ER doctor wrote orders that I was to go to OHSU and get an URGENT dermatology appointment and have the skin biopsied to make sure there was nothing more dangerous happening there. He even called the orders to my internist, who got the orders to the Dermatology department.  This was on Wednesday night/morning around 4 am.  I called my internist the next day and was told the "urgent referral" had been put through. I then called dermatology, this is Thursday mind you, and was told that the earliest "urgent" appointment I could get was 2 weeks out.  I LMAO and told the receptionist no thank you, but by that time I would have either molted, died of the plague, or needed to go back to ER, or been healed enough that what ER would have wanted the dermatologist to see would be gone. Her response to my snippiness was her own snippiness...I can't give you urgent appointments I don't have. LOL

So then the next afternoon, Friday, after I have left an email for my doctor, explaining that I'll keep the shedding skin for them since the dermatogist's receptionist considers 2 weeks urgent enough and that I'm not going to bother to waste my time or money when by that time most of the symptoms will have gone under ground and be invisible or so bad I'll be back in ER long beforehand....well...Friday I get a call from Dermatology ....a different receptionist....saying my urgent referral has been called over and can I come in that afternoon? LOL this is at 3:30 when I live 45 minutes plus away from OHSU. Which is the reason I didn't go to their ER in the first place. I tried, they said if I could make it by 4:15PM they would see me. With traffic I couldn't do it, but I DID get to see them the next Monday at 8:15am...hmmm....guess there IS such a thing as an URGENT appointment after all, huh? And the Dermatologist agreed that I should have seen him the week before, but that the first he had heard of the problem was on Friday...hmmm strange....

This is after a week of treatment by the doctor.

Then the skin was sloughing and hurting, just like a burn victim, but at least I felt like I was healing.

All parties then agreed that the biopsy wasn't really necessary. That it probably was a drug reaction to an increase in effexor and that my long term narcotics could be re-started and I should continue to take the benadryl and the tagamet the ER doc had started me on. Weirdly enough, tagamet has something in it that is a H2 Histamine blocker and was stopping a great deal more of the itching than even the benadryl. The dermatologist also gave me some ointment.

The upshot is no antidepressants whatsoever for the last month and a half and it has been a nightmare because I tried my old ones in the middle of this and they seemed to increase the itching.

Though as of this week, the first of August, I put the flea collar back on Mystique and MY HANDS EXPLODED within 3 days and the pinky on my right hand even went to blood blisters....so...off with the flea collar and back to the dermatologist's ointment, and maybe I can go back to the antidepressants that were working? We'll see...

from a chronically depressed goddess who is ALWAYS puzzled

Pain full thoughts...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I've had low blood sugar, migraines, colitus, acid reflux, back problems, and high blood pressure since my mid teens. Fibro in my late teens. Chronic fatigue, hyperthyroid, thoracic outlet, and carpal tunnel in both hands in my late twenties. I got pregnant and my migraines went to clusters and then daily clusters. Then they gave me drugs that made me obese. I developed high cholesterol, hypothyroid, high spinal pressure. Now finally diabetes, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and uveitus.

Now by the luck of the draw the pain isn't upping my blood pressure, it's lowering it.  Which I didn'..t know could happen. So now if I bend over at the wrong time or move too fast I pass out. Orthostatic Hypotention...? WTF?  Sounds fun, huh? Wee.... yes, that's sarcastic. One more weird ass thing to explain to people that doesn't kill me,  or put me in more blinding pain than I've been for the past 17 years, but one more time my body triumphs over my mind.


I watch others who I know are in so much pain, and I try not to make it a contest about pain. Just getting through each day is a miracle, so how can pain become a contest? But when you so constantly feel like you have failed at all life has thrown at you, it's hard not to see it as one more in a long string of things you've failed at...pain tolerance....you just don't measure up there either....no wonder you just can't take any more...

Knowing that I'm going back to biting, grinding, soul numbing pain that never ends, of the sort that if you were an animal and could bite a limb off to it stop you would and that there is no medicine or trick or activity or meditation or THING that I can do or NOT DO in my life to stop it from coming back to me scares the hell out of me. The medication is not as effective as it was...soon it won't be effective at all...again

The pain doctor, and the psychologist she sent me to, think I'm giving up, and that I have a negative outlook. I don't think that's the case, or I would have swallowed a gun long ago. I just don't think either one of them intimately knows pain. Most of the people who try to regulate it I don't think have ever known or lived with much real pain in their lives or they wouldn't really give a rat's ass about the small percentage of people who abuse medication and would have more compassion for those who have to live in the pain. If crawling into a bottle or a bottle of pills would give me back some of my cognitive function or reasoning powers around the pain, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I'd do it if only to get a teensy break from unrelenting agony occasionally.

But I'm not dying and so I have to live on in unrelenting agony because my government wants to be my mommy and knows what's best for my body...even better than my doctors...and they've known so well what is best so far....

yeah...from the sometimes goddess of sarcasm and pain

Eye strain...and growing tolerant to modern meds

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I'm getting tired of posting these updates...and I'm sure others are tired of reading them. But it beats having to tell you all ad nauseum in person all the health woes of the woefully insane who has Hashimoto's (Fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, diabetes, arthritis, and, and,....bleck).

For those who haven't looked it up yet, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis is another cute imune system disorder that doctors can't really treat. It normally starts with attacking your thyroid, thus the name, but when it's under control in the thyroid arena, it can chose other organs of your body to attack, just like lupus and sarcoidosis are known to do.

Some of the people that I know that have it, are theorizing that mine chose my left eye to attack.

It's as good a theory as any other, since this is exactly the theory the doctors came up with...they were just trying to assign sarcoidosis to it...it seems that the doctors at Casey Eye haven't met Hashimoto's yet. Doctor Dreamy meet Hashimoto's Thryroiditis, Hashimoto's meet Dr. Dreamy. otherwise known as an escapee from the cast of "Grey's Anatomy." (I swear to God it is true! LOL.) I think the doctors up on the hill need to pass a casting call as well as an IQ test and medical school in order to work there. Hmmm! I wonder how that's included in the job anouncement?

But, back to the serious stuff of updates...the vision is at a blurry 20/60 now with my corrective lenses and isn't going to get much better. I can see to do close work illumination and such without my glasses much better than with them. It seems pretty solid that I will end up having the laser outpatient surgery to correct the rest of the blurry vision. I still have a seriously weak eyelid on that side and the eye muscles get VERY sore very quickly with use, but I am trying to push them in order to get the peripheral vision back.

Other than the eye, the meds for the cluster migraines have pretty well stopped working on a daily basis so I am back to most days being at a 8 or 9 on a pain scale. It will probably take me a while to adjust again to that level of pain and the associated lack of conscentration and cognitive function it allows me. I'm trying to avoid the snappiness and grouchies that I know go with the chronic pain in the head.

Been there, done that, I own a closet and dresser full of those tee shirts. It just gets tiring not to be able to think or form a sentence and to have the people around you talk over you and complete everything you say.

One bright spot on this~! with the migraines back I can't really feel the arthritis in my back and the joint degeneration in my neck. LOL

So unless we go 4 wheeling in the woods, or I'm sleeping too long my head is out screaming my spine. The silver lining to every cloud. I still need the meds to get around when my head drops below a 7 or so...cuz the back pain is above that...gee, doesn't THAT make me a fun date at Christmas? LOL And to think my daughter is cringing because she's looking into a possible future...

Love and kisses and blessing to you all from the poster child and goddess of
it doesn't kill you it just makes you wish you were dead

Just a quick eye on it

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I had a call on Sunday from the on call doctor that I went to see on Saturday for the decreased vision in the eye with the cataract replacement. I guess I was the subject of a confab of doctors.

General consensus ended up being that I was to continue to double up the steroid eye drops for the rest of the day but then taper off that evening. But I needed to get to a pharmacy and pick up a prescription for systemic steroids. We ended up leaving the fighter practice and social time at Vindrbek a bit early, but we had to rush to the pharmacy before they closed 'cuz I had to get a whole lotta dosage in my stomach THAT night. Yuck!

I like that the doctors are on top of it, but when they move that fast, it's kind of disconcerting. Especially since I was seeing her the next afternoon.

I have now been told that the pressure in my eye is WAY down (good, good news for someone with the steroids shot in it). But I also now know that the cornea is swollen, the cells are floating in the front, and I have and area of cloudiness that formed with the cataract behind the lens as the cataract was forming that they tried to abrade off of the area during my surgery, but had no luck clearing. So I still have a cloudy layer in my eye and may need another surgery to clear my vision in 6 or 8 months. Again, if we can get the swelling under control.

I also found out why they went for the steroid shots instead of the systemic steroids to start with. THIS doctor actually answers questions. Systemic steroids are known to mess with diabetics blood sugars and to shoot them sky high and so they were holding off on using them as a last resort. They also wanted to have a last resort.

Okay, this treatment finally makes a little more sense. It still sucks that the treatment causes the blindness, but if you don't treat the edema in the back of the eye, you end up with damage to the optic nerve, which they can't treat at all. Permanent darkness.

Think I'll take the white cloud...but I sure wish the doctors had been more forthcoming about things. I've had as much if not more schooling than most of them and I get damn tired of being treated like a mushroom whenever it comes to my healthcare.

from the goddess of mushroomland

Not so Eye to Eye...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
Today I got the scare of my life...my vision started to decrease again in the eye they just did surgery on. I spent 4 hours pacing and rereading, or failing to read, the same set of letters.

I finally called the on call opthamologist. We had to go down there and meet him at Casey Eye. He was a sweetheart and looked up and down and all around in the eye, looked at my chart and the notes and let me and the hubby know that it looked like some pigmented cells from them cutting around the pupil and freeing it to dilate were floating in my eye and obstructing the vision worse than it had been on Friday.

I also had a shocker and learned that my uveitus doctors hadn't bothered to tell me that one of the times they were treating "swelling" in the back of my eye they were actually treating me for a cyst on my retina. I HATE it when doctors don't tell me shit. This is a prime example of why I trust doctors SO MUCH! (Feel the heavy sarcasm?)

I'm home. I need to double up on the steroid drops I'm using and use them twice as often, and I have a whole new set of scarey symptoms to look for, but he really reassured me about how the eye was doing. And the pressure in the eye is down to a normal level from 30 on Friday to 16 today which is WAY good news.

from the two eyed goddess

Eye again...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

No, that is not a pretty starry planet...that is the starry form the retinal scarring took in my eye as of last February. The picture was kindly supplied by Casey Eye for me so I could show the few people who are bored enough to read my blog what it looked like. ;D

The next one down is what it looked like in November. Uveitis and the associated infections have definite effects on the retina of your eye, and in this case on the pupil and iris. It actually scarred the pupil and built up scar tissue that glued itself to the lens.

I've also had to have all the explanations made to me about the swelling (macular edema) in the back of my eye, and they take pictures in cross sections across the plane of my eye socket to keep track of how swollen it is compared to what it should be, or what it was the last time.

This one with the colors is almost like a thermal shot showing the swelling as higher topography across the back of the eye in November. And then a cross section through the actual swelling.

They did the same cross sections in December before they did more of those lovely steroid injections into my eye socket.

You remember. The ones that carried a risk, but that I didn't realize would CAUSE a cataract. Gee! Learn something new all the time...and doctor, why didn't we go with the systemic steriods? I still haven't gotten a good answer on that one.

These pictures in December were just before shot number 3, or was it 4? The cataract was now bad enough that everybody is pretty well admitting they can't see squat through it.

Got the good news on the 9th or so of February when I started writing this that the eye doctors are willing to totally disregard all their own guidelines for macular edema and go ahead with the lens replacement for my cataract after only 2 months of the swelling being reduced in my eye.

My surgeon obviously is worried enough about the edema coming back quickly that she scheduled me for as soon as I could clear my schedule...she wanted me in there the next week.

Somehow it's not as reassuring as I would like it to be. But I guess they are realizing that if they can get the lens replaced while the swelling is quiet at all that then they can keep injecting the steroids into my eye socket as much as they want without further damage to the lens...the synthetic one won't cloud like my real one is what I've been told.

The cataract has gotten bad enough that there is only one machine they can photograph the back of my eye with, and it's the new machine that is only available up at Casey Eye Institute itself. The doctors can't even really see to the back of the eye much any more, and they are even admitting it to me. ;) Go figure. More later....I've actually done it...

from the goddess who sees....

Totallus...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I was told that I had to post. Something about keeping people updated and making people feel like I'm including them in my life...Not that I don't want to include people in my life, but I just don't dwell well on stuff. That big white wall of Dodge Ram pickup truck I still see in my head every time I close my eyes...yes, I totalled my van, or rather, I had some help totalling my van.

I was doing great in the snow, I LIKE driving in the snow, even nowadays...I kept from taking my pain meds, so I'd be alert and was taking it slow and steady and this NICE (heavy sarcasm here) young man, decided that he needed to lose control of his pickup that was travelling in the opposite direction. He SAYZ he was going about 25, like I was...my airbags and body bruises and memory think more like 45. The impact from the front even crumpled the doors down the side of the car, and you can't see it, but the whole engine compartment is askew with the hood sticking out on the driver's side weirdly.

If it had been a sedan that had spun out I could have steered and avoided it. As it was, I avoided his truck cab. But it was the choice of his truck or the oncoming traffic...so I chose the white wall of his truck and I remember making the choice consciously and how time suddenly speeded way up again. It sucked. Until I made that decision, while I was maneuvering and avoiding traffic I had all the time in the world.

I love cell phones. First call I made was to my hubby. After 17 plus years it just seems the natural thing to do. He was absolutely wonderful, but it drove him nuts not to be there to take care of everything for me. Him and my sister. She called every half hour until I agreed to go to the emergency room to be checked out. I swear to God, no lie. Every half an hour. My mom had NOTHING on her when it comes to persistence.

The accident was before dark but I ended up spending 3 hours on Tuesday night on the side of 99E in the snow, with no heat or light in my van waiting for the tow truck. The kid in the pickup got to drive away. Hooray for me.

R met me in Oregon City to get me home from the tow yard, but the traffic advisories said no to going up to see my doctor at OHSU at the top of the hill, suckage. So we stopped at an emergency room on the way home. By that time it was about 10pm and even with my normal load of meds I couldn't lift anything with my right arm, couldn't walk on my left leg and was so stiff that R said I was walking like I was over 100.

They took some scans after we realized that I couldn't lay back and support my head with my neck. All the muscles in my body decided it was time to rebel on me. After telling me I had some good bruises and strains and sprains and giving me some IV pain meds I was sent home to the Gorge, on the closed I-84. Three hours later we made it home coming up SR-14. I finally crawled into bed at about 7am and got a call from my car insurance company at 8am. I wasn't coherent enough to answer. So here's the scoop, the pictures and what went down.

I've slept for 2 days straight. I still can't lift much with my right arm and my bruises are a colorful addition to the winter white of my skin. I've had ice on my left knee for 2 days on and off and have been pretty much taking my pain meds and muscle relaxants with some anti inflamatories. I figure by tomorrow I should be able to go back to some of my PT routines and my chi-gong.

I'm going back to bed to nurse my poor abused body...happy new year to all...

from a puzzled goddess who wishes she could get her van back

No, he didn't hit me in the eye.

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

To those who have been following the progress, or lack thereof...the cataract surgery is a no-go, at least until after Christmas it looks like. Not like I was really looking forward to somebody that looks young enough to almost be my daughter at this point approaching my eye with a laser and breaking up the lens in the back of my eye. Then inserting a new lens through the incision and letting it unfurl in the place the old one was in before it was liquified by the laser...yeah, sounds like something I want to experience on a daily basis...not...for those who didn't catch the sarcasm that was dripping from those words. And the rank fear.

But, sight for the one eyed is not to be. In the photo eye scans they took two weeks before they would be doing surgery (it was scheduled for tomorrow originally) the doctor discovered that the uveitis is causing inflamation and swelling at the back of my eye again. The weird line drawing to the side is not a child's rendering of a hank of hair, or something else strange... ;D

The top line represents the normal shape, kind of, of the back of your eye in cross section.

The second line down is the original swelling I saw on the photos they took of the cross sections of my eye.

I still had some of the non-swollen area left in the back of my eye. My eye stayed free of any swelling for over three months after the initial injection of steroids into my eye socket to reduce the swelling.

Of course, this injection caused the cataract on my lens, which was kind of glossed over as a possible side effect...glaucoma was mentioned, and other effects were mentioned, but not the fact that the steriods themselves in that quantity would fog the lens in the eye and make it necessary to replace it. :}

The lower line is representative of the line the doctor drew for me this time of where the swelling is now that my immune system has decided to attack the eye again.

So, I got to go in and get another injection of steroids into my eye socket on monday.

Yes, fun and games boys and girls...it was almost as much fun to look forward to and experience as the actual cataract surgery, and now I still have that to look forward to as well. But now, I have even less sight in the eye until I can get the new lens in.

For those who are wondering, the reason they won't put the lens in while there is swelling at the back of the eye is because the surgery itself causes swelling at the back of the eye. The combination of the two can make you lose the sight in your eye permanently. Not something that I, or the doctors, want to risk. Even though I'm impatient to get back my depth perception, peripheral vision and all that.

Until then I'll just have to be...
the goddess of the lovely eye patch

My disability is better than yours? say what?

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
I heard a conversation recently that somewhat amused me, because I've heard variations of it before and the absurdity of it just struck me to the bone in this sense.

Two writer gentlemen, circling around each other all day and not really acknowledging each other, lol, amusing in itself, then, right before exit, one approaches the other and says the usual, "so, how have you been doing lately?"

"Between the cataracts, liver problems and congestive heart failure I've been doing fine, and you?"

The other, quick as a teenage boy's erection fires back in the same vein, "yeah, between the cancer, kidney failure, and blah, blah, blah I'm doin' okay."

I have to admit that I stopped listening in the middle of the second man's list to ponder the absurd aspects of the moment.

I've commiserated with people over their illnesses. You reach a certain age, and the talk has a tendency to run to kids and ailments for a bit of the time. And I've had people try to one-up me when I've talked about things that are wrong with me....normally I just try to let it ride and figure they're either right, and MUCH sicker than I am....or they should be. (Don't I wish I'd always been that sane? My DH has helped me in so many ways see the light. lol)

I've also had the other response, "oh, I know your headache pain is MUCH worse than anything I've ever had..." That one makes me grind my teeth as well. I know they think they are validating my pain by saying it. But it comes across as patronizing my pain.

I sometimes wish I could get a stage and the world's attention for 20 seconds and just say, "have compassion, pain is subjective, love each other." But I'm sure there would be much to fight over in the interpretation of those phrases as well. ;D

Pain is pain, sick is sick, limitations suck and you deal and go on with or without your friends and relatives help...pissing contests really don't have much of a place in the mix, but if it's what gets you through one day to the next, who am I to complain? My humor helps me out there.

from a mildly amused goddess of pain, in pain? causing pain? you get it anyway...

Levelling the energy

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

This is pretty stream of conciousness. It's the morphine and the temperature of 102....it tends to make me free associate weird thoughts...

People talk about energy levels all the time as if they understand them. As if energy would miraculously appear out of thin air and pump them up and they could go on and do more and be more. The say things like, "I'm getting my second wind." Or, "I hit a wall." I drink in the chi of the universe. Feel the energy flow....

Most of the energy flow I feel is right out of my body...and of course it bites me in the ass on the way out.

I remember my disability insurance company trying to send a private investigator to investigate my claim quite a few years ago. It was soon after my dad died. Karmic timing as usual.

It was laughable in retrospect. At the time, I found it far from funny that this physically active 20 something single guy who had never had kids, a college education, tried to be supermom, been a computer professional, or been any kind of professional for that matter since he couldn't even keep a scheduled appointment, was the one that was putting the hammer of judgement down on my life.

He looked around at an overweight mom, who barely had insurance to pay for her medication to keep her disability under control and her meds that would keep her alive, that couldn't do much housework and had 2 children under the age of 7 in an apartment 1/3 the size of the house they had lost in the bankruptcy the disability had forced them through. The apartment might as well have been used to shoot a scene from "Cops" in it. A husband that was fighting his own disability issues, but working full time.

The investigator met with me once or twice and cancelled one appointment. Then told the insurance company I wasn't cooperative and obviously wasn't disabled because I wouldn't meet him on 2 hours notice when he rescheduled an appointment in a town 10 miles away and I couldn't drive. But I was a flake in his mind because I had broken teeth and couldn't afford dental insurance and spoke of only having so much energy in a day to get me through.

When you look ill, or run a temperature, people expect you to go lie down. When you look....say it with me....JUST FINE! People make all sorts of judgements. They'll expect you to remain self-sufficient and when you aren't, they'll ask what they can do to help, but God forbid you actually have worked out an answer or call on them for help. That's when the excuses come out.

I guess I've been lucky? I can count the times my immune system has been healthy enough for me to run a temperature in the last ten years on my fingers. You'd think, because it's so rare, that I would immediately lie down and try to get better. Wrong! If I'm running a temperature I'm actually probably in BETTER shape than I am normally, at least my immune system is fighting.

I was running a temperature of 102-105 degrees the 10 days we had to move out of our home while it was being foreclosed. I didn't have the luxury of checking into the hospital. Luckily, my sister and niece helped my husband and I a bit and my parents watched our kids a bit or we would have lost everything else we owned. No one else could help. I still remember how dark that time was. I was very bitter about it for a long time. I felt like I had failed my family, lost our home, and lost all our friends all at once. I collapsed into bed in the den of my parent's home for about 3 months after we loaded up and moved all our stuff and got through the bankruptcy hearings. I don't remember much from that time but physical and emotional pain.

I'm only dwelling on this now I think because I'm trying to put things behind me and move on with my life. The bitterness is doing me no good. With the new meds, I'm out of the pain haze enough that I'm thinking again so I'm remembering more than just the day to day which makes me sad for all the people that I thought I knew. Because I'm dealing with the pain clinic again, I'm required to go into therapy, again, even though the therapist doesn't seem to think he has much to teach me. I'm sure there is...I've had 47 years to screw up this psyche...there's got to be something in there for him to fix! He's another one that I want to introduce this book to tho'. He seemed so absolutely floored that I could speak coherently and string two sentences together. And if I'm what he thought of as being a very cognizant and highly intelligent patient who had all my faculties....I'd hate to see what he deals with the rest of the time.

There are so many holes...so many holes were the pain has eaten through my brain and the cobwebs just can't spin to close them fast enough.

I'm running temperatures again, which means my immune system is the healthiest it's been in a year or two. Viva narcotics! I had so adapted to living with the pain and the lack of energy that I had forgotten why I wanted to live a life.

I have good days and bad days. The bad days had way started to outnumber the good and when I was delegating most of my living...I didn't really feel like I was living... I don't wait to recover anymore, I guess that's the biggest lesson I've learned. It's the lesson my husband hates the worst. He considers it giving in. I consider it adapting to the new situation and moving on.

It's time to adapt to the new pain level and move on. Luckily, the current level of narcotics allows me a breather for awhile to do that....3 months ago I didn't feel optomistic enough to have that option.

Now it's off to see what my fever induced dreams want to tell me....
from the goddess of night sweats or day mares

It's all in your head.... Really!

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

Just Fine....

"Since family or friends cannot see the illness, how can it exist? And how can someone believe that the illness is real if everyone around them doubts or scrutinizes it?"

Same book, different quote. I lived this quote for so long. With every migraine, every paralyzing muscle ache I couldn't explain, until even I wondered if I was causing myself to feel the pain and started to blame myself for putting myself through this rats' maze of doctors, doubts, and debillitating illness. I thought I must be mentally ill or I wouldn't want to be sick like this, right?

I remember the same kinds of reactions when I was a kid and finally got diagnosed with a "nervous stomach." Now I just live on immodium, preperation-H, and peppermint tea. Then, I always assumed I was at fault, hmmm, I guess I kinda do now too, lol...guess I haven't grown up as much as I'd hoped, huh?

[if you have a little know illness or condition, and if the symptoms are not visibly apparent, the reactions you receive can change dramatically. "Those with hidden illnesses are often treated with disbelief and thought to be hypochondriacs, whiners, malingerers, or difficult patients," says Higgins. {Bejai Higgins} They can sometimes receive dismissive medical treatment. These discounting reactions from health professionals, and sometimes the patient's family and friends, can begin to generate self-doubt. Self-doubt, left unchecked, can lead to depression and isolation.]

Hmmm, that self doubt thing always sucks. I always have to wonder, do I REALLY want to spend the majority of my life in pain and struggling just to get out of bed?

.....HELL NO! Days like the last few are a good way to answer that!

I finally have a bit of pain relief with going back to one of the old anti-seizure meds I was on years ago that I became accustomed to (so it stopped working) and they added some slow release narcotics to the mix. While I prefer to be in control of the narcotic release so that I can use them only when I really need them, I have to say that I'm getting more done today housework-wize than I have done in months. But I have to constantly counsel myself to be careful, not to overdo just because the pain is in the background.

A good day does not mean a cure...all these litanies have now become part of my internal mantra, because otherwise I try to fight all those doubters and all those judging eyes and push myself WAY past what I should do and pay for it for weeks to come.

For years I listened to the people, and my own head that said, "if I think healthy, then I'll be healthy. If I don't think about my depression, it will go away." This may work to some extent to help me summon energy, and it's helping me do chiqong to try to get the nerve impulses rerouted around my damaged disks in my neck, but I also need to deal with the reality.

The years I've spent fighting this have actually made this so much worse and made my illness so much harder to deal with.

If the energy I'd put into pretending I wasn't in pain or was well had been put into healing or increasing my energy like I did very early on, before I stopped trusting myself, I might have come to an accomodation with this and been able to balance my energies instead of spiralling into depression and starting to believe the sarcastic and mean things that people whisper.

For some reason, the more things that you have wrong with your body, the less sick you are thought to be...somehow that's a medical community correlary. It holds true in the real world too. Maybe it's just that people expect lies to be complicated and so if you're really sick and it's complicated they think you must be lying? I don't know....just trying to think of some excuse for the crappy subliminal attitudes over the years. ;D

I've gotten to where I don't want to say much of anything to anyone because they'll have that long suffering look that says, "here she goes again, another laundry list of symptoms. What is it NOW?"


[They feel that the illness is their fault, and this is often a belief that is confirmed by others. Even their doctors can sometimes not locate a reason for their pain or discomfort or the array of symptoms they are experiencing. And sadly, sometimes their spouses do not and cannot understand the illness.]

The blame game and being at fault, oh boy do I understand that one! Wow, how many times have I offered to give my husband a divorce? Not because I hate him and our kids, far from it, because without having to deal with all the issues of my disability and medical problems their lives would be much smoother. Luckily, Rick is more understanding than I probably would be in his position, though I hope I would be better than some I've met. (Maybe I'm paying back Karma for being a judgemental bitch in another lifetime? hmmm?)

So often it comes down to a choice, would you rather mom did this, or that. Went to this game, or was with the family for a weekend. Medicated herself to attend your school concert, or had a family picnic with you? Did the laundry, or made a family dinner?

I and Rick have worked it out to a fairly good degree. And we are pretty well aware of the realities of living with this thing called disability that tries to suck so much life from our family. I am lucky in that we both believed in the vows we took. We're still waiting for the "in health" part to come around....

The kids have learned responsibility, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. They have compassion. They have also learned impatience for having this alien THING that takes over part of their family whether they want to allow it or not. But the kids actually get more quality talk time with me than I ever did with my parents. This may not be a good thing according to them. ;D They actually have told me that they appreciate me keeping an accomplishments/pain level chart up on the fridge because it gives them some idea of what I'm dealing with and they don't have to be detectives to figure it out.

In 1996, with a toddler and a newborn, with Rick being a house husband, having a doctor refuse to sign a return to work order for me was the worst wake up call I have ever gotten. It destroyed my sense of self worth. We lost our home, went bankrupt. I lost my career, my livelihood, my friends, my social life. Hell, I even lost the ability to balance a checkbook! (I still struggle with that monthly. No wonder they didn't want me managing multi-million dollar projects....hehehee!)

So much of my sense of self-worth was tied up in my career, and now I can't even solve simple problems in life without anxiety attacks. If I push to do more than 2 or 3 hours of ANY activity per day, I have to recover for multiple days....those are the ones other people don't see.

Yet there are still many people who are convinced that I can just, "get up off my fat, lazy ass and get a job and support my family, and I would be just fine." Yes, that's a direct quote. It was only said to my face once, but God, I've seen it in so many eyes over the years, heard it in so many questioning voices, in so many insincere offers of help....

The person who said that to me is reaping what they sewed. I personally am hoping that all of those that have had those kind of non-compassionate thoughts about a situation they really know nothing about don't ever have to live in this kind of agony to learn their mistake. I can't even wish this on them.

Our family time and leisure time has been totally hamstrung to cater to what mom has energy to do. I have to be careful and remember to not overdo things when I'm medicated because I'll pay for it with the exhaustion when I come down.

It's taken me years and I'm still only now overcoming the guilt that it was my body that failed my family this way and that I'm the one that has to be constantly accomodated.

Can we please go back to it being all in my head?

from the puzzled goddess of painful truth

Just fine.....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

That which doesn't kill us?

I picked up a new book a few weeks ago. I normally refuse to read books about illnesses, etc. and the latest, 'new cure.' Been there, done that, and have way too many versions of that t-shirt.

I keep up with research in the diseases that I know are eating away at my immune system and other parts of my body and follow various newsletters over the internet. I gave up on books awhile ago, as the information lag behind the treatments I was already receiving was just too great.

But this one is a bit different. And I've been approaching things a bit differently lately. It always seems like I have to once more let myself cycle down through the very depths of feeling like absolute crap and being in an amount of pain that is uncontrollable at an intolerable level before either: a.) I get up the gumption to tell the doctors that they better do something about it and we need to try something new, or b.) they notice that I'm particularly suicidal and decide we better do something different and try something new.

Why I'm in a different head space this time I think? is that the number of weird conditions that Western medicine doesn't really like to explain that are effecting my health are now being added to with all those sucky conditions of old age that Western medicine recognizes and seems willing to treat. The doctors keep shaking their heads and adding a new weird diagnoses for every 'normal' condition they add though. I'm up to 10 or 12 now that I'm fighting and trying to balance.

I pretty much try and only worry about the immune system ones that are actively trying to attack my organs and eyes and glands. And the ones that will actively kill me or really make my life go through major suckage by making things be amputated or worse if I don't keep them under control. You've got to have some priorities, right?

We have three or four names for the immune system crap. Chronic Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Myofacial Pain Syndrome, Hashimoto's thyroiditis....any others? Something else will probably jump on the band wagon. It's not like they have any great tests for these. They go on symptoms. So they theorize that my immune system decided sometime in my late teens or early 20's that it didn't like my body. Western medicine still lacks tests for most of these to find them before they start harming the body, and even after they do, they can only treat the symptoms.

Huh, makes me sound like I fit in with every other person in this book. The subtitle? "Unmasking concealed chronic illness and pain." Not that the pain is all that concealed...not from ME anyway! and based on how bitchy the family says I can get when I'm not making the effort to be nice...

Well, golly gee, Mr. Wizard! Organs being attacked and stopping working gets painful sometimes and when you don't have much of a metabolism because your thyroid barely works...and what does work seems to be under attack it's kinda hard for your body to function with what the diabetes leaves you....hmmmmm....I guess I just got no excuse. One of my new doctors didn't even look up what Hashimoto's was and what it had been doing to my endocrine system/digestive system before she decided that I make poor nutrition choices and have an improper diet.

Actually, I eat keep track of my diet better than most skinny people or dieting people I know. I eat 1000 calories less a day than I should to maintain my weight most days (to a diabetic a carb is a carb is a carb nowadays and I eat WAY more veggies than I EVER did before!) Yes, even on those awful days at Izzy's when I punk down the HUGE amounts of carbs because they don't have much on their menu but deserts that isn't loaded with preservatives and chemicals (and even those are borderline....yeah, yeah, you all know the rant...) I STILL manage on those days to come in under 12-14 carb units which is at the upper end of the scale of the diabetic diet I've been following, pretty religiously for, oh, about, 6 years. It's not like it's hard. At my size, I'm allowed quite a bit of variety to maintain my body weight and the big change lately has been the huge increase in fiber and veggies for me to balance all the weird things the meds are doing to my system.

But my Hashimoto's thinks I'm starving anyway.(this thyroid crap started back in about 1990 for my body, yippy yay!), but my diabetes thinks I'm not." And anyone who knows me, or has seen me eat knows I'm not starving ;D You'd be surprised that the meal I'm eating may be the only real meal of the day, but I do eat right.

....and the judgements? from other people? keep going on, and on. This woman was a doctor. What chance to I have against the judgmentalism of other people? I've gotten so tired of the lectures from the people who have all the answers because their brother's cousin's wife's aunt, or their family, or they... compassion is lacking in these people in that they even think to judge or lecture. This book is for people like them. And for me, to help me remember to take a deep breath and walk away. They aren't worth it anymore. My energy is too scarce. People who are going to judge me on whatever criteria they've made up in their head, for whatever reason, whoever they are, I can skip knowing.

Maybe if more families or friends or doctors read it, they would remember compassion when they were dealing with other people and stop judging. Maybe more relationships could be saved.

Recently I finally put my foot down and told the doctors I need better pain management. Yes, I look "just fine." I look like some healthy, middle-aged matron who has over-indulged all her life and is now paying for it.

Goddess, don't I wish. I see that judgement in the eyes of even my friends and I want to tell them to walk even a few hours in my shoes, let alone a few years in unrelenting pain that is blinding and doesn't allow thought. To add in my thyroid system that has been shutting down for years and struggling to have to place one foot in front of the other or bend over to pick up a paper dropped on the floor. I still do those things. It just takes a lot more time and a lot more effort and many more days.

I am digesting this book slowly, because it is written about people like me. People who don't want pity. People who are just tired of being judged. If I had a nickel for every offer of help I'd gotten from those same friends and family that then had some excuse for not being able to be there for me when I really needed it, I would have been able to pay for the specialist my neurologist wanted me to see in San Fransisco! lol

I can remember so well always running here and there to do this or that for this person or that and never having time to catch up on anything for myself...I still don't, but now I don't have any energy for anything for myself either, so it balances, sorta. ;|

There's a quote here on page 31 that resounded with me:
[ 'It is very frustrating when you are raised to be active, and you have talent, but you are no longer able to do the things that you enjoy.'
People with chronic illness or pain are survivors, and accepting limitations is in conflict with the code that survivors live by. No one wants to be sick. No one chooses to give up those things in life that bring joy. Yet at some point, people with chronic disorders need to learn to say no to many things that have always been part of their lives. Being told to look on the bright side by well-meaning friends and family members simply adds insult to injury. Positive platitudes and quick fix suggestions trivialize pain and symptoms and cheapen the impact of these difficult and relentless challenges.
Chronic pain is real yet it becomes difficult to talk to friends and family about it. Not only do people want to be free of chronic pain, they do not want to feel like a burden. "It's a large part of who I am. I just don't want to be pitied by my friends or to be known as 'the suffering one' to those I love or the people I work with,"...." Everyone becomes tired of hearing about how much I hurt, incuding myself! Some people think I am making it up or exaggerating my symptoms. But chronic pain is very real. Even the medical community doesn't always take my pain seriously." ]

I could so relate to this. I just don't want to talk about my health all the time. That's why this blog is about other subjects: my kids, tea, fashion, the sca, films, weird stuff, things that strike me as funny. Quotes from books I'm reading.

This book just happened to hit a particularly strong cord, and it probably doesn't help that they are changing my meds, and I'm feeling mental and whiny. It's father's day and these days, when I miss my parents I always realize how young they were when they died. I look at I and my siblings, my cousins and realize how young we all are for the kind of things we're already facing. I never expected to be under 50 and sharing the "old lady" symptom and medicine comparing conversations over the phone, you know?

Today I have to realize that my dad and my husband are probably the two people who have come the closest to understanding what I live with on a daily basis. I thought my dad was overprotective.....I think my husband is most of the time as well.

So, what does that say for my sense of judgement?

Probably means I picked the best possible father in the world, who I miss a whole lot today, and that I couldn't have married a better man, huh?

from a puzzled goddess who looks just fine thank you

I thought I already passed this class....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

Why do moms get their stomaches all tied in knots when their kids have a problem, or are having trouble with a class? Is it just me? Or do all moms do this?

This is pretty typical of how the kids are sleeping this week.

We've been able to revisit Romeo and Juliet this term...term paper editing tomorrow night!

I told the boy and girl about a year ago that their science homework was to the point that I couldn't really help explain things to them anymore....it doesn't seem to matter. I hated physics in high school and hated it more in college...so guess what they were in Washington, DC while it was being covered and sick for the explanations? Right. Physics. Laws of motion. Newton and crap. Ugh!

I know how important some of those concepts are, but it's the last week of the term and all work has to be in by Thursday. Guess what the boy is having trouble with? Yep. My favorite subject!
The dear hubby hates math and I get stuck with explaning those concepts to the kids, why can't he explain the science? Oh yeah, he didn't take that much science either! Crap!

The kids were both sick with high temperatures the week before spring break and missed a week before that because of their trip so it's crunch time. They only have a few days to get their work done and caught up, and now mom is running a temperature and has been for 2 weeks despite all the anti-inflamatories I normally take. :(

I guess it's nice that I finally have a temperature to break...it means my immune system is finally trying to fight the illness. But my lungs were much happier a few weeks ago. Now coughing hurts, thinking hurts (what's new?) and hell, even sleeping hurts.

Since this is the last week of the term, hubby and I also became grandparents for the last few days to obnoxiously robotic plastic dolls that have a VERY high creep factor. Ick! If babies looked and acted like this, the human race would be dead within a generation!

The girls little 'boy' was Jack, and no, the eyes don't close, it's always got that creepy Chucky stare.

And the boy's, "little darling" girl was Jill...told repeatedly and often to shut up.

This excercise seems somewhat futile for my children. They already got the point. They are in no way ready to be parents and don't want to be.

Mom and Dad have had some fun, though. Telling them all those grody infant stories of when they were babies!

At least this way they've heard about the joys of exploding diapers and 4 am feedings before they had to experience the fun for themselves.

from grandma puzzled goddess