Needed: One Fat Lady

It seemed a safe bet. The child needed money to move, and doesn't save very well. She needed cash to have the kitten spayed and declawed. I figured once I reminded her that it would be wise to do both surgeries at once and save the expense of two anesthesias and the cat the agony of two separate recoveries, she wouldn't have the funds to get the kitten taken care of before she moved.

After all, she is already in the process of moving, right? She took a few things out and has been sleeping in the new apartment while she paints it.

It seems that now, after all these years, she puts the budgeting skills to use that I taught her. The kitten is recovering upstairs in the child's bedroom.

No problem, you say? The child is at work, of course. Nurse Mother here is the one who has to keep checking on the kitten and being sure it's recovering nicely. The poor baby has a scratch collar on which just isn't the best accessory to wear this season. At least it's clear so the baby can see where she is going. My dogs are going bonkers and my poor old cat will soon wake up and join the dogs.

I need that Fat Lady to sing. Soon!

Comfort and privacy

Sometimes I have help being embarrassed.

I live alone (generally) and like to be comfortable in the privacy of my own home. This might lead to some interesting outfits for me to hang around in. I might wear an old sweatshirt, pj bottoms, funny-looking socks and my usual clogs for slippers. My hair will be either hanging all over or in a ponytail. I do not feel a need for a bra in the house. I don't much feel a need for one ever, but I don't wear one around the house by myself.

So I like to slob out. That is my bad habit. My daughter has a bad habit of bringing friends over without warning. We have discussed this over and over. I have met most of her boyfriends when I look like a bag lady. They are always polite, but I am guessing they start to howl with laughter before they get back to the car. They should, and I wouldn't blame them.

I thought we got that through her head when she brought the last boyfriend here and caught me in capri pj's and socks. It was pretty bad. There was almost blood shed over that one.

Last night she asked me when I would be home today. I said I had a computer class from 9:30-11:30 am, and would be in and out after that. She had been in the house while I was gone, so I figured she was gone for the day, since she is in the process of painting her new apartment.

Apparently, "when are you going to be home?" means "I am bringing in a guy you have never met so we can move some of my things out of the house."

I have on a blue Oshkosh top, little girls' purple sweat pants, socks with flowers, and pearls. Sigh. I won't change my ways. It's my house, and I am entitled to do this. Maybe if she does it again I will make her go out in public with me dressed like this. That might cure her, if I could survive it.

Does Oshkosh go with Prada?

How I embarrassed myself THIS time

A long time ago I dated a man who provoked me to say, "I don't need you to embarrass me. I can do well enough on my own."

Our family is having dinner at my brother's house on Easter, in the thumb of Michigan. I asked last weekend, while at another nephew's birthday party, what my sister-in-law wanted me to bring. She said dessert. I asked if she wanted anything else, she said no.

Yesterday I confirmed to her by email that my darling daughter would not be able to attend due to work, as I had expected. She responded and asked if I could make my macaroni salad also, since I make the best in the world. I said sure.

That meant a grocery store trip because I was lacking one ingredient. I had hoped to avoid the grocery stores this weekend, but it wasn't to be. Since I was going out to dinner last night, I decided to go after dinner for the item to avoid crowds.

The store was fairly empty, but busy enough for my prophetic words to bite me in the bum. I didn't think anything of it. I grabbed the seedless cucumber and headed for the checkout line, noticing smirks on some shoppers' faces.  

I guess it has some silly double meaning when a single lady buys a large seedless cucumber, and nothing else, late on a Friday night. Who knew?

Verbing

Last year I wrote about picking my dogs up from my friends' house after a trip. The dogs rushed the door and jammed me into the doorjamb, which I referred to as "doorjambing." It hurt, I remember that! My Rolex was bent out of shape and I had bruises on my neck.

My darling daughter doesn't know yet if she will be able to watch my dogs when I go to Toronto in a few weeks. She is about to learn what "staplegunning" means. To the wall, girl.

She will be partly moved to her new apartment by the time I leave, and she isn't sure she wants to come back here for a few days and beagle-sit. I don't remember being sure I wanted a non-paying, non-assisting houseguest for two months, either.

Sigh.

Mother Nature needs a manual

Yesterday it hit 45 degrees. It was mostly sunny and there was no wind. I took the hog dogs for a long walk and saw the first poop drop of the season to be a harbinger of spring.

Mother Nature, however, opted to disagree. Today it's 28 degrees, windy, and it's snowing. Yes, snowing.

Where is that Calgon when I need it?

Go ahead, make my day. Tell me how nice and warm and sunny it is where you are! I can get into vicarious warmth, if nothing else.

Privacy

I may need to go private for a period of time. If you read this journal and would like to stay, please leave your screen name for me. Some of you are regular readers and I know who you are. But if you read and don't usually comment, please either leave a comment or email me.

Nothing is wrong. I just may want this private for a while.

We are going up to 42 degrees, it's sunny, and no snow forecast until tomorrow. This is progress for people who live north of Canada.

I have a trip in the works, although this probably surprises no one!

 

 

 

 

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who has expressed concern for me. I plan to take that second opinion letter of recommendation for treatment to my regular internist and work from there, once I get the letter.

Doctors have mentioned lupus as a possibility to me in the past, but I have always brushed it off because they never said for sure, and my ANAs (anti-nuclear antibodies) have always been in the normal range, except one test, about 15 years ago. I get the ANA test about once a year, at my request.

As I understand it, fibromyalgia is not a disease. It is a syndrome. There are several symptoms, and if you have enough of them, you get diagnosed with fibromyalgia. There are no real medical tests for it. It's similar to chronic fatigue syndrome in that respect. My symptoms are pain, tiredness, and insomnia. My insomnia I think was earned due to childhood trauma and has nothing to do with any other syndromes or diseases. I have learned to live with it. I think I am tired because I don't get enough exercise and I have gained some weight. I was used to being a 'hardbody' and do not do that level of training any more.

The pain. Well. I do have arthritis, which usually is not a big issue. I have never had to stay home or in bed because of it. I don't limp around or expect others to do for me. I also used to teach martial arts and spent many years flying through the air and landing hard on mats. When men are used to throwing each other and then pick up a 90 lb female, they forget they don't need to use as much strength. I used to hit the mat and then bounce a few times. Surely that took a toll on my body.

Maybe I am justifying, but I will rely on the advice of my internist. I do trust him as a medical practitioner. We do tend to trust those who tell us what we want to hear, but he came well recommended and I have been seeing him for several years.

Oh, I forgot. Memory loss is also a symptom of lupus. Well. I am not going there, but I will admit I forgot how to use photobucket. I was going to add a picture here......

 

I have what now?

1997 was the last time I got sick. I had a sinus infection, bronchitis, an infected throat and a high fever. The doctor insisted on an X-ray, telling me he thought he heard something in my lungs. I said it was likely a Kleenex. I have had nothing contagious since. I spent years after that in CPS with snotty kids, kids with lice, sick kids and parents hugging me and kissing me, hours in schools, hospitals, courts, police stations. I got nothing. Not even the lice. Go figure.

However, since then my white blood cell count has gone up and down. Most of the time I am tired. I can't sleep, but I am tired.

Due to arthritic pain, I was sent to a rheumatologist. He said I have fibromyalgia. That is a syndrome which includes pain and exhaustion. The pain is deep towards the bones, not just the joints. It's an ache that doesn't go away. He said if my blood tests were different he would think I might have lupus.

Thursday I saw a different rheumatologist who looked at me and suddenly said, "you have lupus." No warning, no lead up to it. Just, "you have lupus." I told him I am tired most of the time, and he said, "Of course you are tired. You are sick." I looked at him, and said, "No. I am not sick. I am healthy." I wanted to add, "You old coot," but did not. I think attitude counts, and I think I am healthy.

This second-opinion board-certified rheumatologist asked me what pets I have, what breed my dogs are, and how much they weigh. He asked me if my red hair is natural. He felt my ankle for the pulse in it, then took off my sock and just sort of held my foot. Ewww. He did not ask me how my endurance is, how much I sleep, where I hurt or how much. He did ask me which school I got my master's degree from and in what field. I told him my daughter is a waitress and he said he was sorry that she is a disappointment. I never said she is. I am proud of my daughter. She is a bright, happy, healthy, beautiful, cheerful, if messy, daughter and I love her very much. She drives me nuts sometimes, but she is in no way a disappointment.

So I have spent the last few days thinking about what it means to have a diagnosis of lupus and if I want to take Plaquenil as he suggested. I don't think I do. He said it would stop the pains, stop my hair from thinning (you have seen pictures of my hair, I still have plenty), and help with my tiredness. It is a medication for malaria. It can have serious side effects.

I am starting to consider either a third opinion or just ignoring the whole thing. I don't get sick. I find it hard to believe my immune system is compromised. Perhaps I don't understand the issue, but I don't feel sick. I feel pretty damn healthy. I think he is wrong.

 

Freedom

Happy St Patrick's Day to all!

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions on gifts for my little nephew. I ended up finding a toy ATM machine. I also gave him some cash to put in it. It does use batteries, but it isn't mindless, and he seemed to like it. It even has an ATM card. Sure beats candy cigarettes, I guess! Another nephew, this one age 3, has a party this weekend. Sigh.

The reason for the title of this entry is that the Ungrateful Child has found a roommate, an apartment, and is moving at the end of the month. I am not losing a daughter, I am gaining a bedroom, bathroom, and full use of my own phone. I think I will miss her a little, but she won't be that far away. We get along better at a slight distance.

A chuckle for everyone: Earlier I was chatting online with someone, and had to get ready to go walking. I just unplugged the laptop, and took it upstairs with me while I got ready. We managed to continue the conversation without interruption and I was rather proud of my multi-tasking abilities. I put away a load of laundry, changed my shoes and socks, took out my pontail, brushed my hair, and flossed my teeth, brushed my teeth...with the blue toothbrush. Mine is yellow. Ewwwww.

Wild nephew

My brother has five children. Three are his, two are from his wife's first marriage. I adore all of them equally. Three of them are married and have eight combined children. One of the youngest, age 5, is having a birthday party today. I always enjoy going and seeing the family, catching up on news.

The hard part for me is the gifts. What does a five year old hyperactive, intelligent boy need? His parents and grandparents buy him every toy ever created. I tend to get things that require imagination. When my daughter was younger, I refused to get her toys that used batteries. She is very self-entertaining, artistic, and creative. I think this is at least partly due to the fact that her toys were not the kind that you turn on and they entertain you. She could play for hours with a shoe box and a few shoulder pads. She would make a house and people.

Anyway, I tend to buy the kids things like play-doh, notebooks, markers, crayons, flashlights (one exception to the no-battery rule), magnifying glasses, books, jewlery kits, tools, and things along that line. Last year I gave this nephew a set of plastic golf clubs and a bug kit. The parents always look a little nervous when I show up, ever since the ant farm incident. This year I am at a total loss of what to get.

Lots of you are parents of young children or have young siblings. Any suggestions for me? I am just sitting here looking out at yet another 3 inches of new snow and trying to come up with an idea. One time I wanted to get him a pencil box and fill it with quarters, but my daughter said that was stupid. This derision comes from the child who used to play with my silver dollars for hours.

This is the same nephew whom I watched for a few hours before Christmas so his mom could go shopping. When she came for him, I was literally cringing in my chair, the dogs were whimpering behind the chair, and he was flapping around the living room on my exercise ball. I was telling him that we do not bleed on the carpet and he should be a little more cautious. I was so glad to see my niece! I had to give him a plastic fork when I fed him because he kept deliberately scraping the fork across the plate and tapping it, making horrid noises. He is an extremely busy child.

Sigh. What do I know about little boys? I raised a girl. She is afraid of spiders and thinks camping out is the Holiday Inn. Last week I came home and she was in the bathroom screaming over a little house spider. She was standing on the toilet seat and refused to move until I got the spider out of there. I considered either leaving it or taking pictures, but I was laughing too hard to hold the camera.

Home identity crisis

I am having another home identity crisis. My ex and I had this house built for us. We intended to stay in it for five years, then move on after making a bundle on it. This area was exploding at the time. The cost of the house doubled in the five months from when we signed for it and we moved in it.

That was 1977. I am still here. When we divorced, I gave him the pharmacy, as that was his means of support, and I kept the house, to raise our child in. I wanted to give her the security and stability of growing up in the same home and neighborhood.

So I find myself here, with billions of memories, and way too many rooms to clean. Too much yardwork, too many major repairs need to be done. High taxes. Does a woman living alone need four bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a formal dining room, and almost half an acre of landscaping? Plus the architecture is such that I have three flights of stairs to deal with daily. But the memories here - I find it hard to walk away from that.

I planted the trees that now shade my home. I brought some flowers from our first house that still bloom here every year. My daughter cut her teeth on my window ledges. Literally. The marks are still there.

But assuming it's time to move on, where do I go? Sometimes I think condo. I would love to give up yardwork. Having neighbors closer by might be nice. Big rooms, less of them, ranch style. But a whole wall with no windows?

Other times I think I want to live in the woods. Either option is available within 10 miles or less of my home. In the woods I can have peace, quiet, let my dogs out in a fenced in yard so they can sniff out some rabbits, maybe get a third dog. No condo rules.

Then I think about moving out of state, some place warm. Some place where no native there has ever seen snow. I have deep roots here, but I could tell myself to move to a condo or home in Florida, Las Vegas, or Phoenix for two years. My friends would visit. After two years, I could decide if I want to return to my frozen home city north of Canada or not.

If my daughter would agree to go with me, I think I would leave. As much as I crab about her antics, she is the love of my life and I would not leave her behind. Usually when I ask her to move away, she says no, not now. The last time I said let's move to Florida, she said, "What city?" Progress! This neverending winter is getting to all of us.

Pictures, finally

I simply do not have the patience to Photoshop these pictures tonight but I want them posted and done with. So here they are, untouched, unsized, as they were taken. I might edit some later, but here are the basics. Monica could do beautiful things with these pictures, especially the glass flowers from the Bellagio. They blow up nicely.

These are some of the pictures from Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Montreal.

I can tell you, I am ready to pack for another trip and I haven't even unpacked everything from Montreal yet. Anyone need a grateful houseguest who will close and lock doors, put toilet lids down, read quietly late at night and likes to bake cookies? I will also walk dogs 5 miles a day if the weather is warm :)

Living vs staying

My daughter has cleared up some important facts for me.

She is not living here, she is staying here. This means she has no responsibilities to do anything useful for me. No housework is to be expected, no food will be purchased by her, but I should be grateful that she finally cleaned the shower that only she is using. It was clean when she moved in. I mean started staying here again.

Watching my dogs who live here with her, I mean live here where she is staying, was a terrible inconvenience for two whole days while I was gone and she had the house to herself. Besides, look at all the money I saved by not having to pay a dog sitter. Truly I was astonished that she did not ask for money for watching the dogs.

My house rules are horribly cruel. I expect the toilet lid to be down. I expect the dog gate to be up blocking the hallway where her room she is staying in is not available to my dogs. I do not want them in there where there is not one inch of floor space showing. I do not want my dogs injured, nor do I want the backlash if they damage something left on the floor that interests them. This could include about 12 partially empty bottles and glasses of soda and water. On the floor. I also get upset when I get up in the morning and find that she again came in at 3 am and did not close or lock the front door.

The suitcase still sitting in the foyer was a gift to her. Well, no. The one I gave her about 5 years ago is still sitting in the garage where she abandoned it about 3 years ago. The one in my foyer is mine which I loaned her about 2 years ago because she didn't want to use her own. I let her borrow it when I took her to Las Vegas with the hopes that she would quit smoking while not with her smoking friends. I took her 3 times. I paid for her nicotine patches out of my pension checks. I still hope she will quit one of these days. No parent should outlive her child.

I also should not be concerned about the money she borrowed from me over a year ago to cover a test she had to take for the job she had then. After all, I have money in the bank and I can use that. She will just be out that cash, if she ever pays me because the company did not pay her back. I suspect she did not turn in the proper papework to get reimbursed. Besides, she forgot she owed it to me so it doesn't count. I reminded her a month ago. I am still waiting for the first dollar.

I should not mind all the furniture, clothing, papers, cell phone charger, shoes, hair products, books, and other things all over the house. She plans to move out in a month because it is just horrible staying here with someone who doesn't thank her for anything.

She can't pay me back because she has to pay for her own car. Well, yes she does. I paid for the first 3 cars, although I only agreed to the first one. How is she going to pay rent when she is having trouble paying just a lease on a car and the insurance? Got me. That will be her roommate's issue, not mine. The rest of her income pretty much goes to entertainment.

I am a very mean mother. I am glad that was pointed out to me tonight. She was very glad that she was going out because she sure didn't want to be here with me.

So I am working on my travel pictures. Quietly and calmly. I need to plan another trip, ASAP!

 

Mountain?

McGill University in Montreal is on a mountain. At least they call it a mountain. I think it's a big hill. I will have to look up some stats on that. I walked up it yesterday, because it was there. It was maybe 15-20 degrees, but it was sunny so I survived it. When I got back my legs were bright red and numb from the cold. The rest of me did pretty well. Climbing uphill gets things warmed up pretty fast. In all yesterday I walked 14 miles. I have a blister to prove it.

I will write more about Montreal later. Suffice it to say for now that I had a great time and hope to go back when it's above zero. The nights are brutal when it's really cold, as if I don't already know that from living in a part of Michigan that is north of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

I ran into a man in the bar in LaGuardia airport today who tried to impress me by telling me that he lives north of Canada. I told him I do, too. Turns out I am about an hour farther north than he is, so he lost some wind out of his sails.

Pictures will be posted from Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and now Montreal. I need to do this before I get any farther behind! I had a note from my daughter when I got home to call her. She asked if I want to go to Las Vegas. I told her to show me her money, first. Then we can talk about it.

This morning we left the hotel at 7 am. I arrived at a party near my house directly from the airport at 9 pm. Yes, I am tired....layovers are only acceptable when they are some place like Las Vegas. Three hours in Montreal airport and three and a half in LaGuardia was just boring!

Did I mention that due to issues with checking in to leave Detroit airport on my way out I got to the gate less than 10 minutes before the flight? So much for relaxing with a sandwich and a beer first.

xoxo