I drink juice at work now

Becuase I have enough caffiene jammed into myself and I think maybe some cran-something will purify me. So I buy one and drag it into myclassroo, where I can take dainty little sips, whenever I want to.
Mr. W asks every day if he can have my juice container. He almost salivates when he talks, ever so quietly at my desk. I can almost see him rubbing his hands and clicking his heels with glee. He wants them because I can get them and he cannot.

He can't get them on the yard or at canteen, so they would be quite a sought after commodity. Yes, he could make hooch (we call it pruno) and the be able to individually bottle it and sell it packaged quite nicely. Or he could judt sell this really great container and let others worry about what it would be used for. The golden rule here is grab the gold and don;t get greedy or caught.
So after 2 weeks of :Are you done with that juice? Boy, it sure takes you a long time to DRINK that juice....I am disqualificating myself from the 2008 Juice olympics and ratting him out.
The setting is right at the door....the doorway is filled with the bulky bodies of the sarge and my officer, while Mr. Juice is cooly trying to unobtrusibly slip past them, I, in my best Donna Reed impersonaltion say,"Oh! I am so glas all three of you are right here! Perhaps you could clear up this little question I have." Pick up my cranberry bottle and turn it so that the sponsers label is clearly scene. Mr. W has been asking me for weeks no if I would give him my bottle when I am finined. Is that going to be okay or it that against the rules.
The two c/o's did this immediate ugly face at him and he attempted to tell them "oh, she craazy! I never said that!"
I gasped and hissed "¡Mentiroso! ¡Usted perro de mentira! ¡Ahora no le creería si vino su lengüeta certificado ante notario! ¿Que usted puede INCOMODARME y después mentir sobre ella? Eso apenas prueba que una mentira y la verdad son interchangable para usted. USTED, mi amigo, me ha demostrado su carácter verdadero hoy. Usted es no mejor que un cur, un perro salvaje pero usted finge ser un hombre, usted es un niño de mentira. Me lavo las manos de usted y limpio el polvo de usted de mis pies."

It loses much of it's veneom in English but roughly, I said " Liar! You lying dog! I wouldn't believe you now if your tongue came notarized! That you can BOTHER me and then lie about it? That just proves that a lie and the truth are interchangable for you. YOU, my friend, have shown me your true character today. You are no better than a cur, a wild dog and yet you pretend to be a man, You are a lying child. I wash my hands of you and wipe the dust of you from my feet."
Then he got slammed and spent the rest of the day in a cage. We take manipulation very seiously here,

Up in the middle of the night

Got a headache last night...poor pathetic me. Marji got one, too. All she had was aspirin. I had a whole crazy hot mess of things, which I threw up. Even puke stop. Couldn't keep 7-Up down. We were watching ER (one of the many seasons we have) and I was looking at the mayhem that goes on and was thinking, nope, I hurt more than that. Hurt more than that. Sure hurt more than THAT.

So I'm up in the middle of the night, trying to decide if I need to go to the ER or if I can just take what I have and keep it down. I HATE going to the hospital in the middle of the night. You never know how long you are going to have to wait or if you are going to get some jerk of a doctor who thinks some tylenol is going to work. Hey! My head is going to blow UP. If tylenol worked, I would be at Rite Aide.

Marji can't get drugs and I think I know why. She has that competent, educated librarian face that looks like she has it all under control. Her husband has that competent,unruffled engineer face that looks like he has it all under control. They look like thoughtful, reasonable people.

I, on the other hand, look like a dandelion on crack with huge black circles under my eyes. I am crying and Darling looks like a bad Johnny Cash who has been up for 100 years. Huge bags under his eyes and he paces like a caged bear. WE look like a couple who not only does not have it together; we are rapidly spiraling out of what little control we have. And my blood pressure is something like 250/190 (which usually makes the nurse dash out of the room with a stricken look on her face) and then it is big ass needles and vats of drugs.

The first time that happened it REALLY scared me. I mean, medical personnel are supposed to be able to calmly handle everything, no matter how icky. So when your nurse says something like,"Hmmmm" you can think, well, maybe this is a tad odd. However, when she says, "Jesus, Mary and Baby Jesus!" and whirls out of the room, it makes you think....well, by that time, you aren't doing a lot of thinking besides "YIKES!"

Once upon a time, I was in a huge pile up in the fog and I ended up under an 18-wheeler with the top of my car peeled off. Upon impact, I crawled into the foot well of the passenger seat, since i knew for a fact that I was going to get smacked more than once, since this truck was across the road and there was another car jammed underneath it on the other side. It took six hours to cut me out, mainly because the kid in the other side was in a really bad way. I was just cold and scared.

During that whole thing, the EMTs and the firefighters and the cops were calm, calm calm. Someone was with me the whole time. Somebody gave me a phone so I could call work and my folks and my kids, but I wasn't alone. And I never got that sense of urgency that i was in trouble. (And besides having to get my car cut apart to get me out, I WASN'T). It was almost surreal, it was so calm.

And if I can manage to hang on and go in to my regular clinic, it is pretty calm, too, since they know me.

It's going to the ER that I hate. Especially over here. I know where it is but Darling doesn't. Well, he knows where it is in the daytime but not at night. So I am just at that little balance point where I'm looking at the clock and wondering if I can hang on until around 6:30 or if I am going to have a stoke right now.

Because this 250/190 shite is nothing to fool around with, Which is why I have drugs and Marji has a headache and Tylenol.

My long weekend (spelling fixed)

I brought a big basket of mending and managed to get it all done. My usually meticulous stitches. (Not the same ones I was trying to do the other night, I can tell you. Those were done by a big dog who lacked an opposing thumb. Terrible job and no color sense.) But everything is all ship shape, now.
Reading I don't know what. A book from the pile I keep here...you know, just in case I finish the REAL book I read at night or the REAL book I drag around in my handbag. If I finisihed and didn;t have something to read....well, then there I would be, stuck with my own thoughts. Not a good place to be.

Knitting Lisi's cat hair afghan. I still don't like the color (chocolate milk) OR the alpaca. But I want to get it done whist I can still knit. And I might be able to knit circles around every one, once I get my head fixed.

Not to brag, but I used to knit like a fiend when the kids were little. They had more hand knitted sweaters than sweatshirts. We were always buying yarn...crazy, whack yarn and knocking out crazy whack whatever they saw can you make this mommy sweaters. And I didn't have enough sense to even know it was hard. Sketch out the sweater, take a few measurements...heck, sometimes, I would just have them lie down on the floor and make a sketch.
You want a big fish and bubbles? Gotcha,
A dinosaur? Big Bird? You bet.
A sweater that looks like a cow? Sure.
A sweater that starts in the middle and spirals around. No problem.
Ruffles? Buttonholes? Steeking? Turned up, tidy hems? Okie Dokie.

No idea that there were rules to follow or that this was hard stuff. I was the Debbie Bliss of the Tot Lot park, where I spent most of my time.

Not like now. That person was somebody else. She might come back, at which point the knitting world had just better watch out. There just may not be enough fiber for me and the rest of you all.

I'm serious.

I'm going out on the boat tomorrow, to knit, get some sun and watch the birdwatchers. All the different birds are nesting because now is when there are lots of bugs and little fishies to eat. The water at the Marina is just cluttered with all kinds of critters.

Next weekend, we're bringing Ben so he can shoot and fly his airplane. Next week, I'm pruning my Princess Diana rose bushes and taking them into the prison to propagate. (It's a 50-50 split).
I have the front garden that serpentines around the front of the house. I'm putting my 5 million bulbs in (they have been sitting on top of the dirt, getting chilled), rooting pothos (green and NOT ivy) and ordered my baby blanket roses as ground cover. With a little night blooming jasmine for the smell. Honeysuckle on the fence. (This is all not much harder than a dog burying a bone. If it was more complicated, i wouldn;t do it.)

The hill...well, I'm putting Mermaid roses on the fence at the top of the hill and planting the rest of it with lavender. I found some really pretty stuff that looks almost like fat sticks of chennile sticks. It grows at the zoo in Fresno, so it should grow just fine here. Yellow and purple and gray green. Sounds pretty, doesn't it?

I have a load of sand to put into one of my garden boxes for my asparagus. Rhubarb on the fence with hollyhocks and morning glory. Lettuce. Herbs. I'm putting two kinds of grapes on my old clothes line...the vines will crawl on the old wires and provide shade for my potting bench.

I threw out grass seed so that it will have to be mowed, but since the old fence is coming down, that won't be much of a problem.

And this is not time intensive. Just something to do. Actually, it is something to do to get out of cleaning the house.

When we move to the hotel. I'll have some plants in pots on the veranda. I have a little garden over here at the beach (one of those 20 minutes worth of weeding when you feel like it gardens), so I can get into the dirt at least a little. I think we are going to add on a deck and then screen it and then window it in and then knock out an interior wall to open the whole place up. There isn't enough room here for me to sew. And if we have company over, it is wall to wall people. I want to put some sleeper sofas in there. And one of those Japanese soaking tubs. Just outside in par boiling water, watch the moon and the stars and the waves roll in. Have to figure out how I want it to look because the patio part will be lost and the soaking tub will be where the little gardening shed is now. The gardening shed will be on the 'tother side of the electical meter.

Two years. I have to sell the big house first.

Okay, so I'm a wee bit late

I've had a little bit on my mind....but I've had a pretty good week so far, so I thought maybe I would CONSIDER THE REVOLUTIONS.

All around me people made their resolutions for the new year, promises to do this or commitments to do that, setting goals and making new plans.

Sort of like Monday morning for me, since I haven;t managed to screw the week up yet. Except they are thinking THE. ENTIRE. YEAR.

I am not sure how I feel about resolutions.

I could say, "Today is the rest of my life starting NOW." and resolve anything at any time, which is usually what I do. Okay, to be truthful, I try to do this stuff on a three day weekend, so it can sort of creep up on me. And then the number one change on all 52 of my lists is always "Clean the office" followed by "weed the hill". They have a permanent spot on my do-over list.

So why does the new calendar in my wee little planner seem so hopeful?
Mine resides in an index card sized address/planner book that literally keeps my brains in it. And yes, I have a PDA but since I can't take it into work, it sort of defeats its little purpose. Plus, my little planner never runs out of power.

I make these sweeping, grand plans, and then I peter out with them when life gets hard or it gets hot or my head hurtsl and it's all I can do to hang on by my fingernails. I end up feeling like a total failure and that's not a very nice way to end the day, the week or even the year. (Can you tell I'm humming the theme from FRIENDS?)

Maybe the trick to it, for me, is not in making the huge, new changes.

Maybe rather than focusing on goals and the finish line, I'd get more of a sense , oh, I don;t know.. WINNING?... if I just looked at how certain situations and things have changed in the course of a year.

So here are my revolutions:

1. Clean out the office (#1 for the last FOUR years)
2. Weed and plant the hillside
3. Do something Martha Stewart-ish in my vegetable garden (usually worked on until it gets hot)
4. Keep the kitchen table free from laundry. (That would mean I would have to find somewhere else to put it).
5. Actually take all of my books and but them up in the library in some kind of order
6. Wear lipstick and perfume every day
7. Get a hole drilled into my head and stop complaining about my headaches

Here it it..the Wednesday riots

Level 1 went off and before the word got over to my yard to lock it up, MY yard went off like a rocket.

It was too cold to fight for very long, so it was all over in about 15 minutes. Violent minutes, but none of the guys in green got hurt and except for the sheer number of guys fighting, I don't think anyone got hurt on their side, either. No ambulances at least.

It is so crazy that this is normal for me...here I have lived my quiet, uneventlful little life and then I toss myself into the belly of the beast and spend my days with literally, the worst of the worst.

Some of them aren't worth saving and prison is a great place for them-their mamas don;t have to worry about them being dead on the side of the road, they aren't making more babies and they have someone to tell them what to do every minute of the day.

Some of them, though, really work on their reading, their math and take the tests seriously...and their scores show consistent improvement. They actually have a plan for when they get out (EPRD..earliest possible release date).

others..well, others think that Felon Boy who has never held a job and can't read is a DANDY package for a young EMPLOYED woman who wants a family.

And when I ask them what it is that they are bringing to the table for this educated young EMPLOYED woman, they look at me like I have just jumped off the roof. They can sing, they can quote poetry, they can play basketball ....what else would a woman want?

Dude. A dude with a job.
Don't you guys ever watch Judge Judy?

Yesterday and today

That's the house across the street.

There are the four cars in my driveway, taken from the front porch.





Here is the backyard; the pool and the summer cottage. The hill with the fruit trees is on the other side of the pool. The chicken house is just on the other side of the hill.

And here is my garden, taken from the back deck. You can't see the lettuce, but it is there. You can;t see the wheel barrow or the potting table either. In fact, right now, you can't see ANYTHING.


It is dense, heavy and wet fog and we are supposed to have it for the rest of the week and then get some rain. Here, in the Central Valley, we can have WEEKS of this weather. And it is COLD.
Like freezing and damp and miserable. And if it isn't raining, we get this fog. And if it's not foggy, we get the rain.

Of course, we are locked down in the mornings because the gunners can't see to shoot. (Really. They inmates have to be watched and if you can't see them, not telling WHAT they'll do.
And the gunners shoot wood blocks (they sting) or rubber bullets at their feet (the rubber ones sting, too) not REAL ammunition). Just in case you were wondering.

I am stuck either in class or in the main office..well, I can go up front to the Admin, but am not allowed to go wandering around....since no one can see me. My clerk is escorted over and we got a LOT of paperwork/lessons/lesson plans caught up, getting ready for my two visits to UC/SF. I will actually have a sub for most of the time I am away and I want to get things in order so that none of my collegues bad mouth me for being messy/unorganized/slacking off.

So Monday, I only had class for about an hour...which felt like an eternity.
We did quotation marks, apostrophes and the five times tables.
Quotation marks--how simple is that? It was an absolute battle and I was GIVING them the answers.
Apostrophes---ownership and contractions, right? THAT was the Tet Offensive.
And the five times tables? (you know, 5 X7=35? Counting by fives?) Well, evidently counting by fives means something else to these guys. Like guessing. Or counting by 4 and adding 3 at random points. And evidently, there are a LOT of teachers out there who are teaching the multiplication tables in an absolutely whack manner, because this.....THE SIMPLEST OF ALL OF THE TIMES TABLES....is one crazy bag of wet weasels.

And I have to talk my head off to get my point across to these guys.
So I started out with nickle bags and IMMEDIATELY, they get all huffy. "Did I think they were all drug dealers?"

Hmm.
Well, I know about nickel bags.
So I bet THEY know about nickel bags.
(And since they are in prison, they probably weren't much good at figuring out how to sell dope and make some money). But that is beside the point.

So I have five round tables, and I have four guys at each table. How many guys are here?
They have to do a head count about five times to come up with 5X4=20.

At least my job is secure.
I don't see these guys getting out of school anytime soon. Actually, I don;t see them getting out of PRISON anytime soon.

Although I have one student who went from a 1.3 to a 7.9 in six months. And it wasn;t my supreme teaching skills. It was just him waking up.

And I managed to knit one whole row on the ride home yesterday. I can't knit in the morning because it is too dark in the fog to see what the heck I'm doing. But I have a three day weekend coming up and I plan to knit, knit, knit. I want to get this aphgan done for Lisi before I go into the hospital. The next one is for Ben.

I'm still working on the baby sweater but have come to the realization that baby Jack will be four before he gets it.

Scared in the middle of the night

Waiting for me was this huge envelope from the mighty micro/nuerosurge's at UC/SF.
Huge. Like an IRS audit.

Lots of questions about everything.
Diagrams of where it hurts and how it feels.

I have an equally hefty envelope filled with my medical records and I have to go to the MRI place and get my film....only so they can compare it to the super duper MRI film they will take there. (And point and laugh at all of us who do not live in SF and have first generation MRI machines).

Oh, and expect to spend four hours MINIMUM.
MY appointment is at 3:30, so we can drive up that day, sit in a hospital all afternoon, spend the night and drive home the next day. Well, I"LL be sitting in the hospital. Mike will be pacing like a caged bear. I am going to send him AWAY as soon as we talk to the doctor (I disremember all the crappy things that happen---like the horses in the ER, the side of the road in flames.....those kind of details). After that, he has to LEAVE. Find a hotel and some real food. I can deal with a lot of things, but being poked and prodded and MRI'd (I hate MRI's. They are like being in a garbage can with apes banging on the outside)....well, I can;t tend to him. It's San Francisco. He can find something to do. It is across the street from the park. He'll be fine.

Oh, here is what I found on the website.
Totally more scary than what I had previously managed to scare myself with.

Brain arteriovenous malformations (BAVMs) are an infrequent but important cause of stroke, particularly in a young population. Current invasive treatment strategies are varied and include endovascular procedures, neurosurgery, and radiotherapy. All of these treatments are administered on the assumption that they can be achieved at acceptably minor complication rates, decrease the risk of subsequent hemorrhage, and lead to better long-term outcomes.

Procedure: invasive therapy [endovascular procedures, neurosurgery, or radiotherapy, alone or in combination]

All interventional procedures are standard of care for the treatment of AVMs. They are not experimental.

Endovascular procedures involve specially designed catheters/tubes position in the small arteries feeding blood to the AVM. The tubes are inserted into an artery in the groin and threaded up through the artery into the brain. Once positioned, the physician injects a special material that changes from liquid to solid very quickly. Once it solidifies, it blocks the artery that is feeding blood to the AVM. (I think it might be Krazy Glue).

Neurosurgery involves the opening of a portion of the skull and the brain's outer lining to get access to the AVM.

Radiosurgery involves high energy radiation (like X-rays) carefully targeted at the brain AVM to shrink it and, in the best results, eventually eliminate the artery-to-vein links and the risk of bleeding.

WHO THINKS THIS STUFF UP?

Sunday at the beach

We did all the little housekeeping chores this morning while breakfast was cooking, so it is all clean for our next visit. (Hoping for next week). The weather is really pretty...sunny and bright with just a little breeze. I'm sitting out on the patio, BAREFOOT, eating apricot pie and knitting.

Later, we'll take a nap (I am officially old, I guess) and then empty out the fridge. The freezer is wonky, so I am going to let it defrost and the switch it out with the one at the shopyard. The guys only use that one for sodas, so it should work out just dandy.

I am reading A Deeper Sleep by Dana Stabenow, one of the Kate Shugak series, which I just love. Dana just cannot put a foot wrong (like Dick Francis); you can always count on a tightly written mystery that doesn't have massive holes in it.

BIG SECRET
I love me a Danielle Steele (the equivalent of marshmallows and melted Hersey bar bits) for a non thinking read. I'm glad she has the recipe and has managed to work it so well---and I like reading about a world where the women don;t have unshaven legs, money problems, cold sores or ugly shoes.
The one book she wrote about her son, Nick, made me a fan for life, simply because it is HARD to parent a child with problems.
Shoot, it is hard to parent any child, money or not. But Danielle has done her best, which is waaay more than Brittney Spears has managed, even with all of her money. So Danielle has my respect, even if she has a lot of money---because children are hard.

It was so pretty, coming into Morro Bay yesterday

It was around 4 pm and the rock (that's it, at the top of my blog) was wrapped in fog. It was one of those beautiful things that simply doesn't translate into a photo...I tried and it looked just ordinary.

The fog was incandescent with a bright sun behind it, so it was whiter than white, thick and wispy at the same time.

The wind was blowing rather snapishly, so the whole coastline was just soft and bright and beautiful. No fog in town, about a quarter mile up from the beach. And today it is clear and bright and warm...barefoot weather.

So I am curled up, knitting on the patio, thinking how lucky I am to be me.

I was going to fix all of my spelling mistakes today

But then I though...well, it sort of adds to the adventure of reading my blog, since my inventive spelling makes you kind of have to think what the hekc I'm talking about.

Then I thought of all the missillions of mistakes I have made..I spent most of yesterday doing spell check on my data base. I used to be able to spell-really-and the Spell Check guy was a paen to my spelling espertise. Now, he is busy all day long tsk-tsk-tsking at me.

Work was cancelled today....probably something dangerous. They certainly don't me cluttering up the place, since I was driving by myself (never a good thing) and I was having trouble staying on the road. I usually drive with another teacher but he was sick today, so I was flying solo. These country roads are narrow, have no signs (so I am never quite sure where I am) and have either huge trees or huge firlds on one side and then (hang on to your hats) great big car-swallowing sized ditches on the other.

No problem when my brain is working right, but when I need two lanes AND both shoulders, the second to the last thing I need is a great big ditch filled with cold muddy water on I road I don;t know the name of.

Yeah. Sounds like a recipe, doesn;t it?
So I am home, parked all crooked in the driveway, since I wouldn;t figure out where the middle would be and wasn;t sure I could miss the fence.
Makes you sorta glad I'm NOT driving.

Have ye no homes of your own?

Singing this with my family in a pub...in Ireland, in Mallow down by the roundabout...doesn;t get much better

i WAS ON A TEAR TODAY

Battling with my report cards/mail merge/computer. Digging thru files. Furiously writing mean teacher-like comments on said report cards. Using my white board markers to write notes on tables. ("Mr. L..you may not sit here any more. This is not a rest stop on the side of the road. You can work or not but the NOT choice will move you out of here and end you up in your cell 23/7. Your choice. Non negotiable.")

I am still trying to get my report cards printed (they were dur on Monday..oh, well). I have a limited time in this classroom and I want to cram as much information in their heads as I can. The yard is flippsing ( every one is leaving but we don;'t know when) and I may or may not return to work or the classroom. Litagations will take me (not inmate contact), even with half my brain. BPT will take me if I can still translate, so most likely I will return to doing something.

I go in on the 31st and the 6th for evals in San Francisco...and after that, I am not in charge of all of this.

Poor pathetic me

Here I am...pathetic, isn't it? I spent THOUSANDS of hours in emergency rooms this year...something like 28 visits, two in the back of an ambulance. ( Yes, I know there are only 52 weeks in a year.)
I also spent thousands of hours in the waiting room at my clinic, all for my migraines. (28 visits in AUGUST alone.)
This is pretty much how I look. The longer I have to wait, the more hot blankets I would get.
So when I say
YIPPEE! I'm having a hole drilled in my skull, you can sorta kinda get where I am coming from.

And this is not the worst I have looked.

THAT would have been the 9 hours I spent in the ER, laying on the floor (well, not ON the floor....I would have been silly to do that. Boy-o got some hot blankets for me to lay down on and then got some to wrap around my head and to cover me up. He made me a nest under the chairs in the waiting room so I wouldn't get stepped on.)

Grand Canyon

I love the Grand Canyon. I love sunrise at the Grand Canyon because it is perfectly beautiful. I can find one spot and watch the colors and angles change, even when it is really, really cold.
I manage to meet the most interesting people from all over the world (because I'll talk to anyone.) One family was here from England because the pound sterling was so strong. I met another gal who works for the SLO County ED Office and while she doesn't knit, she does crochet. We're getting together at the Cotton Ball the next time I'm in MB.She had on a gorgeous hooded Wuthuring Heights cape...it was really beautiful. I need one of those. Covers up a multitude of sins and it was so heavy and warm.
Anyway, here are the best of the photos...taken from around 7 am until 8:30 am.

Up in the middle of the night and my decorating

I think it has been 8 days...or maybe four since my head hurt, so naturally, I am up in the middle of the morning, awakened by some porcupine living in my head. Why he just doesn't use one of the many holes IN my head to leave is beyond me. What woke me up (besides Spikey trying to leave via my left eye) was the sound of running water. Just another thing in my head I guess, since my dogs and I went to investigate. It is not raining. I didn't leave the shower, tub or faucet on. The Laundry Fairy isn't here, yet. Nothing is leaking.
So this new noise is in my head. Sort of sounds like a nature tape, so it is not too irritating. Could possibly be the whooosh of the wind thru my head, too.

On to important stuff.
HERE is the fabric I have for the guest bathroom curtains and maybe perhaps the skirt for the vanity. I totally fell in love with it for this part of the project. The bathroom is THE FIRST in our town...I have the original clawfoot tub. I'm not crazy about the tile Darling put in but since I am going to cover it up with an oriental rug, it makes so little difference, I won't mention it again.
This blush fabric will be part of the curtain...not sure exactly how/what/where but I really liked the way it with with the big flowers. (Remember, I'm doing all the soft sewing....upholstery, pillows, drapes, duvet covers....
I'm not sure what I am going to do with this green...it might end up on the pleated ruffle on the vanity skirt or just the piping. Not sure. But I liked it.

This cherry will be shirred on behind...stay with me here...black wooden doors that will hide the super duper Joan Jetson shower. I haven't gotten the woodwork design worked out for the doors yet but I want it to be open enough that the shower doesn;t end up being on display OR all steamy. This is sorta kinda what I am thinking of, painted such a dark green that it looks almost black and with the cherry fabric shirred behind it. Without the stupid plain top, of course.

Since we redid the woodwork (all faux grained and not by these hands), the walls have (oddly) hand prints and fingerprints all over them, so I am going to change the color of this bathroom to a soft green to go with one of the greens in the lobby. Nice touch, eh? (The lobby is sort of a dark green base, with dried bay leaf and Spanish moss greens rag rolled over it, with the eensiest bit of clear glaze rag rolled over the top layer so it will just barely catch the light. Sounds ugly but it is really pretty. It will actually be sort of one that green of the flipped over leaf in the flowered fabric green....not so obvious that it looks like Walmart but right enough that it looks like I gave some thought to it.

I think the vanity (remember, this is a guest room) will be skirted (so I can go with a cheapcheapcheap one from a yard sale or the shop yard) and I think I can go with the sink mounted on top of the vanity, like a bowl. Not sure, but I like the look.

I have an old (like my Grandma Martha old) jam cabinet we got out of her house before it literally fell down. I am thinking I'll paint the bead board (not green) and put hide glass in the glass part for the pretty parts of bathroom-ese stuff.

Bath towels will have these fabrics as trim (bias trim on inexpensive Target/Walmart/Kmart towels) and put in a Chinese laundry basket. A real one we found in the opium tunnels. (Which sound way cooler than they physically are. That opium must be pretty great stuff to persuade ANYONE to go down into the tunnels, even when they were new.)

So can you SEE it?
This bath is off the lobby but connects with the guest bedroom/sewing room....which is a whole nother post for a whole nother day. The greens in the lobby and bathroom make them fit together.

But I just have a real need to get ONE ROOM DONE...and since this is the smallest one, I thought I'd start with little bites. Plus, all the big stuff is finished, so we're only talking about maybe 2 days of somebody else doing the parts I don't want to do.

I love the internet

I love ebay the best.
You can wander around and find something that the seller knows nothing about and the snoop around the internet to find out something about it. Usually, it will just take you back to ebay, where said seller is simply trying to get rid of stuff. So one's snooping skills must be honed.

I still mainly end up knowing nothing about what I was looking at, but it is better than football.

Just a note for my friends

I DO read your comments and I have tried to respond but evidently there is some little tic in my head that is keeping me from doing so. I so appreciate you and as soon as I get this 404 fixed, I will be back to posting like a regular person, instead of whining.

I mihgt even post in English, lol.

Boy-o is coming over today to post photos of the Grand Canyon trip.

I love this one, too

Sorta puts things into perspective for me.

Did i post this already?

http://www.clermontyellow.accountsupport.com/flash/UntilThen.swf
I just love this song

Boy-o takes such good care of me

Picked up my check, went to the bank, picked him up at his work so he could babysit me. He wakes me up EVERY HOUR and makes me drink cran-something juice and 7-up. We were able to get all of my affairs tidied up....he will be the one who stays with me through all of it, just because we are so the same. only he is not as high strung. We worked on the deep Zen breathing today and I know I can do it if he will just count for me. (When he was little, I would do that count to three thing and he would always toss his little hands up in the air and say "Don't count on me, Honey!") I guess things change.

Of the bunch of us (and remember, he is the schizophrenic/autistic one), he handles it all the best and I feel safest with him. Darling is like a caged bear. Girlie...well, she is just the Princess of Denial.

The ER is backed up

And it is Friday morning. And my own personal ER doc is not on duty. (Dr. Benydryl is, though. Hope he can stay busy). So I am drinking coffee, only because I can't keep my meds down and I am going in at 8 am for ONE BIG SHOT.

Good thing I didn't have any big plans for the day, besides picking up my check. That is at 7:30. Handy, huh?

And WHY does urgent care only start at 8am? In a town this size, wouldn't you think there would be enough minor emergencies to have a 24 hour UC?

I know an hour away there is one...of course, by the time I got there, my own clinic would be open, which would sort of cancel the whole process.

Well, at least they let me talk to the ER nurse and she can tell me what is going on.

I'm hitting a nice solid 9 right now and it is 5:26.

0406 in the morning

I backed up my blog, just in case. It is on a WORD doc and a thumb sitck, too. You can never be too careful.

Girlie rented a storage unit and I am going to unload some of this stuff...which I love but is totally cluttering up my life. Most of it will end up on ebay but right now in my life, it has got to get tidily stacked and labeled somewhere I do not live.

The housing market SUCKS and I have to stay here until the prices go up and I would rather pay for storage than to tend to these things. And I even have a guest house I have not stepped foot into in three years.
There is such a thing as too much.

Plus...and this could just be part of my head problem...I'm not all that sure I want to stay with my husband. I'm not sure I want to leave him but I am SO. NOT. HAPPY.

And my head hurts, which is why I am up...just figured THAT out. SO it could be me, or him or my head. BUt my head hurts so bad...a nice solid 8...that THAT is going on the back burner for a little while until I get my head fixed. Then maybe it won't matter.
So.
Go to work, pick up check.
Empty out car from trip.
Give dogs their presents.
Go to Clinic. Sign papers for records to go to US/SF.
Get shot. Get something for the horrendous fever blisters I have developed in the last 5 hours. (Always after a bad, bad headache. Probably the worst part. Not only do I feel awful, I look awful, too. Like Melanie Griffith. Maybe she can ignore that trout pout but it is not a good look for me.)
Sleep all day.
Sleep most of tomorrow.
Get ready for work on Monday.
Or not.

NeutoSurge

I guess this whole thing has actually started. I got a call yesterday right after I got home fromUC/SF. I am still on the wait list but a DIFFERENT wait list....sort of like being moved from the "need to clean under the bed" to "must do laundry" list, I guess.

Records being sent today (Friday) and I may be able to get in as early as Wednesday.
Have already told Darling that he can drive me (or I will take my own self), and he can be in the room for the whole symptom discussion, plus he can smoke like a chimney and pace the grounds like a caged bear but if i send him out of the room during a test it is because is A) doesn;t hurt me and will freak him out or B) DOES hurt me and will freak him out.

Most of the things they do don;t hurt and I know to ask for extra hot blankets and to have the mirrors adjusted so I can see my own self. (I don;t see well enough to have the mirrors adjusted so I can see the nurses in the hallway, so I like looking at my own scared blue eyes.)

The gallon or so of blood-pffft. Nothing. The only problem I have is when they blow thru a vein and it looks like we had an ax battle in there. Doesn't hurt, just looks bad. (I have one good vein).

I have three dozen things things to do tomorrow before noon and then I am taking a nap. It is supposed to rain like crazy for the next four days and I am driven out...no more car driving, please!

I'm not done yet

http://www.members.shaw.ca/grandmafaiths2/boogie.htm

Home again, home again

And I am ever so glad to be on MY laptop in MY chair with MY dogs. Tomorrow, Girlie will clean out the car, do the laundry and take me in to work to pick up my check. She had a NYE party while we were gone and while she DID do a good job cleaning, there is still confetti here and there. So it looks like she will be up close and personal with the vacuum cleaner in the morning WHEN IT GET UP....which is an entirely different time than she gets up.

I did learn that it is entirely possible to sleep and listen to a book on tape and pretty much know what all is going on.

I found the PERFECT theme for the guest room at the hotel (Paulie, you will love this). I have several antique Chinatown pieces so I am going to finish sanding the two twin beds and have twin bedspreads made in some kind of Chinese flowered fabric. I have a friend who has one of those huge quilting machines, so she will do all the squiggly quilting part. I FOUND an oversized lipstick back love seat, which will also be recovered in something that will go with the spreads. This room is HUGE, so I can have my grandmother's chair recovered as well. This room will be my sewing room, so the armoire will be sort of Chinese-y looking.

(I have no plans to die today).

THEN, I once we are up there and it is all decorated, I will open it up for fund raisers. All the fundraisees have to do is have it cleaned before and after and I get to keep all the leftover food.
They also have to have a volunteer in each room, so my things don't walk away.

My first open house will be for our customers (except for the toxic ones) and then I want to do one for the SPCA...the "ticket" will be a bag of dog or cat food.

I AM NOT DONE YET.

On the Road Again

Leaving o dark right now for home, with hopes that I am far enough up on the list to go in for a couple of days; clear out my desk and go fight the good fight. Well, actually, I plan to sleep thru this battle and leave it up to some gladiators, lol.

I did learn that two ball of yarn is NEVER enough to take on any vacation and said yarn in said color will never be available.

I have had time to notice a lot of litttle...quirks? tics?.. that are going on in my head, that have evidently been going on for some time. My aphsia is getting worse, but don;t worry about it...I eventually WILL come up with the word, Days later out of the blue and I'm the only one who is tickled I remembered what it was. My dyslexia is worse, so spell check is pretty entertaining. I have almost stopped driving because the concept of left. right andf stop have become completely foreign to me. I am useless as the map reader because I get caught up in the names and the driver actually WANTS. TO. KNOW, where we are.

So off across the desert we go today; hopefully all the way home. I miss my children SO MUCH. I need to remember to pack my favoritite photo of my mom and her sister...I always take phtos of the kids and my dad,, but never my mother. This time I need to remember her.

I am still planning on opeing my eyes and pretending that I think my husband is Johnny Cash though. Not the Joaquin Phoenix Johnny Cash...the dragged behnd a wagon for a hundred miles Johnny Cash.

I THINK IT WILL BE AMUSING.

Not so sure he will.

Oh, well. He'll get over it.

It is almost five (IN THE MORNING), so the last few things get dragged out into the car and off we go.

If you ever need to make reservations at a Best Western, call the Prescotonian in Presscot, AZ and ask for Emmy. Tell her I sent her. She can set you up right AND the breakfast buffets are really good. ( I still had to pay for my room, but she is just a doll.)

Now to find my shoes.

Prescott Valley, AZ and New Years Eve

Spent a great day at the Grand Canyon..one of MY FAVORITE places. Stayed in the park, saw the sunrise, had breakfast and went back to the park for MORE photos. Leisurely drive back to Prescott, looking for wild lfe (elk and those pigalinas they have there), knitting peacefully away on an afghan for my daughter. (Sort of an cafe au lait color (not my favorite) alpaca wool. Alpaca is French for "sheds a lot".)

At 10:30 my head started to hurt ( like final labor pains); took all of my rescue drugs and by noon I was in the middle of one very bad headache. I have a doctor here in town (New year's Eve..go figure how that was going to work). Instead of going to to nearest ER, which had a 14 our wait ( and I had a juice card from a DOCTOR), I went to Prescott Valley.

I waited 6 hours with a solid 10 headache, but even though I wanted to go have some serious teacher talks to the racing-in-the-hallway children. I did not.

And even though my head was exploding, the security guard brought me regular hot towels and put me in a quiet room with all the old cranky old ladies, it wasn't too bad. The triage nurses were darling and kept checking my BP and once it got up to 200/150, they took me right in. I couldn't have asked for better care.

It is the 2nd now and besides just being tired, I am fine. Finished all the knitting I brought, so I found a used paperback "Eventually Everyone Will Die"...sort of cheery thirller, don't cha think?