Sing with me...Everything's up to date in ...

go on... you know the rest...

now that I've planted that ear worm in your head...

Took a road trip this weekend to see Art Boy - and had his aunt and uncle with me for company!
Good times! HOT, but good!

Got to see his new studio/loft combo (which isn't air conditioned - because the cost for 4000 sq feet of uninsulated space on the top floor of a warehouse would be astronomical in this summers record breaking heat),

do some antiquing, eat GREAT Mexican food (thank you, El Patron) and, as usual the visual inspiration will sustain me for weeks to come!

Oh, and no, we didn't stay with him in the loft... we wimped out and chose the Westin!

Even lucked out and scored an invitation to the fall Evil Monkey BBQ - from one of the original Evil Monkeys! (It's a KC thing...)

More images to come tomorrow...

Let it Go

found a quote recently which I LOVED - attributed to Jane Wagner.
Thought I'd share it with you... 'cause that's just how I roll!

Called it!

The night before I went for a nuclear heart scan and yet another stress test, I told a friend that the only thing they'd find is a clot of loved ones I've had to say Goodbye to too early; people I promised would be in my heart forever.

The 'official' diagnosis was mild ischemic changes consistent with a previous 'cardiac event' for which there was no basis - no blockage, no obstruction, no narrowing of the arteries etc. EKG, lab work and muscle changes - with no reason... beyond 'broken heart syndrome'.
A phenomenon noted by the AMA in 2005.
 (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/health-and-the-broken-heart/)

Apparently, I'm a prime example!
Told you so!

Several years ago, I also called it when I predicted that a friend of mine would go far in the church.
He's wicked funny, smart as a whip, irreverent when called for and has a deep and genuine love of the Lord and of humanity that makes him a powerful leader.

This past weekend, I threw my 'summer going to church clothes' into a bag, headed 9 hours south and watched him become a Bishop!

In a service combining ancient traditions, gorgeous sacred music and Southern hospitality complete with fabulous food, it was a wonderful celebration of his new ministry.

I sat in a Cathedral filled with hundreds of people (of which I only 'knew' 9), yet I also recognized them all in my heart as brothers and sisters.

I am SO glad to be part of the Episcopal church.

Don't believe all the reports you read in the press about 'mainline denominations' being on the decline!
What I saw and participated in on Saturday was anything BUT...

It was a glorious weekend!

smallness

Mentor

This is my friend - a young, talented, creative, mom, wife, photographer, blogger - and all the etcs that go along with being a crazy busy, engaged working woman these days.

I took a class 18 months ago in which she 'taught' me the basics of how to get my camera off auto and I've never looked back... it's been manual all the way since then.

Saturday I had an adult play date at my house while Jodi taught another aspiring photographer...

and I finally confessed that I've NEVER understood fstops and how to set shutter speeds~

ALL the pictures I've loved in the past year and a half have been total flukes!

Here's Jodi realizing the depths of my ignorance and trying to be gracious!

I'm from the generation of 'fake it til you make it'... and, after 3 decades in health care, I've also learned that, sadly, people are easy to fool - if you have an attitude of knowing what you're doing, they think you do!

So, after confessing - more like being outed, actually; I'll spare you the details - I'm now back to Square One... really pre- Square One since I have to unlearn certain bad habits!!

Thanks, Jodi...
the pictures are better already!!

Thanks for not giving up on me!!

Just another day in the hood!

Warning: prepare for a high 'ick' factor!


It's not bad enough we had to deal yesterday with two 6yr old boys having been sodomized and raped by older 'cousins' but, in the midst of that whole debacle, I get pulled to another room to see a 10-yr old female who was brought in with the chief complaint of a 'rash' on her whoha.

Inwardly fuming about needing to see someone with probably a whopping case of 'prickly heat' - do docs even diagnosis THAT anymore? - which a good sprinkling of cornstarch would cure in a nano-second - come on, who doesn't know THAT?! - imagine my surprise when it turned out to be yet another disclosure of sexual abuse - actually another rape.

(With a twist...'cause God apparently doesn't want me to get complacent and think I've heard it all before.)

When talking to mom, she said she first thought her daughters complaint of irritation was due to her and her lesbian partner teaching 'their' daughter how to shave her pubic area!

WHAT???

Run that by me again!

We're not talking an adult woman who wants to trim the foliage for better traction here...
she's a 10 yr old little girl...how much bush can she have and why would you want to sexualize her in this way?

And I'm sorry but, gay or straight, no life partner should be coming at your daughters 'pocketbook' with a razor!!
That's just pervy!

What the hell are you thinkin'!?
Thankfully, my head was too full of amazement at peoples lifestyles to be grossed out by the details of the kids rape!

Some days my head really does feel like it's going to explode!

but it never does... 

how can these cases just keep coming?

Going out on a limb...

Have you ever had one of those moments?
The moment you throw a statement into a conversation that you think is perfectly 'normal' – only to be met with a wall of stunned silence.

A silence so concentrated and polite it’s as if you ripped off a gianormous fart while curtseying to the Queen – and the whole court is waiting to see what her response will be – which, of course, is total denial and a stiff upper lip.

Anywhoooo…

Several of us were talking about sleep disturbances and how we just don’t seem to be sleeping as well as we used to.
As the conversation veered into ways of lulling ourselves into sleep, either shortly after we turn off the lights or in the middle of the night as we try to go back to sleep, I offered, “There’s always the old standby of pretending you’re dead, in your casket and thinking of what individuals would say as they came up to offer their respects. That’s worked for me since I was a child.”


OMG – they looked at me like I was something out of the Adams family -
I mean, honestly, none of you have done that?
Just picturing a line of former loves filing by, abjectly grieving and FINALLY recognizing what a treasure they passed up, reminiscing about all the laughs I provided them (OK, so some of those laughs were during intimate moments when that shouldn’t have been my primary response but ..whatever!) it’s enough to keep me entertained for hours…or until I drift off contentedly back to sleep, which ever comes first.

And the funniest part of all is that I have NO intention of being trapped in a box for all eternity.
Our family’s “post earthly vessel” tradition is cremation and being tossed into the Atlantic Ocean and riding a wave, or sadly now, an oil slick out beyond the horizon.

The only thing that might make me reconsider that option is the ultimate craft project – a personalized, collaged casket!

But I doubt there’s enough Modge Podge in the universe for that… and besides, what would people say about THAT as they passed by -which would totally take the focus off ME and onto the craft project which would then defeat the whole purpose of the visualization!

Nope, we won't be having that!


Any chance you think I don't sleep well because I'm over-thinking things?

No doubt,

it was meant to comfort me...
"Womens hearts are falsely positive all the time".

Brother, you don't have to tell me!
Any woman who has ever loved the wrong person thinking, of course, that they were the right person knows the sad wisdom of THAT statement.

But the cardiologist meant something different...
he followed it up with "I'd recommend going nuclear".

Again, redundancy for anyone who has had a reaction to the discovery of exactly how falsely positive their hearts message was!

When he'd said earlier he would have to administer a stress test, I told him if he was going to be looking for stress, today was his lucky day because he'd surely find some; I had plenty...
I never honestly thought the next step would be nuclear!

That comes next week.

Hearts... sometimes they work, sometimes they don't... especially, a woman's.

Law and order

Our part of the equation was small and quickly accomplished, but the situation raised larger questions which have lingered.

A two year old child was found in a nearly empty apartment; bare feet bleeding from several small lacerations sustained while walking through broken glass.

‘Home’ had no beds, no furniture to sit on, only crates, and a blanket thrown on the floor on which to sleep.

There was NO running water and no food in the house: not in the cabinets, which were barely attached to the walls, nor in the refrigerator.

The only thing close to being edible was a tin of herbs, probably left over from the last tenants attempt to add some spice to a bleak and marginal life; completely redefining what a culinary ‘reduction’ must mean in this kitchen.

How much more 'reduced' can you get?

A physical exam was the easy part.
He was quickly cleared for placement in a foster home.

The reason MOCD and police had been called to the home in the first place, however,was to search for a baby’s body.

Mom, a paranoid schizophrenic, had been cleared by a mental health agency as being ‘fit’ to live on her own. Then an unplanned pregnancy intervened and she had gone off her meds.

When she called her therapist yesterday to check in, the therapist asked about the pregnancy and how Mom was feeling. Mom replied “things didn’t work out”; going on to say she delivered a baby at home 5 days ago after waiting for EMS for over 6 hours.
The baby “wasn’t doing so well”, so Mom put it in the bathroom trash can.

Later that night, when she was feeling better, she emptied the trash can and put 'it' in the dumpster.

(Reality checks: police DID recover bloody sheets from the scene with DNA on it - not moms but sharing her gene pool, suggestive of a baby/birth; EMS was never called to the scene at any time; police have medical confirmation of a pregnancy.)


The questions now facing law enforcement are worthy of Jack McCoy and an episode of the Law and Order franchise.

Can you charge someone with murder if you can’t find a body?
And, how crazy is crazy enough to excuse someone who can give a full account of what they did?

The police are still looking for the body and, while law enforcement goes searching in trash fills all the time on Nancy Grace looking for missing and presumed dead children, how many limited economic resources should we, as a society, devote to finding a pre-term baby when the reality is that, had Mom gone a few blocks away to a clinic, she could have aborted a baby the same gestational age and it would have been disposed of for her?

Glad I don’t have to formulate the answers to all the questions I’m faced with on a daily basis.
I just have to deal with the emotional turmoil and sadness that they raise.

Trust me, that’s enough.

walkin' the walk... together

Diagnosis: pants on fire

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
Scottish Saying

and can I just add... from histrionic, hormonal, spineless, drama mamas!

In pediatrics, we're trained to believe children - and it serves us- and them- very well.

In a truth smack-down, give me a child's spontaneous utterance over an adults calculated lie any day!

But then there's adolescence...
and they're crossing the quicksand, having one foot in adulthood.

You still want to believe them, but you're never sure who you're dealing with...
which is why 5 professionals lost 5+ hours of our lives yesterday...
time which will never be recovered.

When a teenage girl stands by and lets another girl tell a school principal that she was raped by her stepfather, action will be taken.

To ignore that information places the principal, the school and all child protection agencies at risk of ignoring serious harm to a child.
And when the alleged victim is pregnant, it further ups the ante.

So when the alleged victims mother comes in to the ER pretty pissed off and indignant, we're tempted to write her off as being in denial and unwilling to protect her child.

But there was this niggling 'something' that rang true about what she was saying...
yes, there was domestic violence between the parents;
yes, father (not stepfather as previously claimed) is an alcoholic and a less than ideal partner and parent and yes, none of them are going to win any "Citizen of the Year" awards...
but those "yeses" don't necessarily add up to 'rape'.

So, when the 'victim' recants hours later, is it finally the truth?
Or just her way of trying to have the whole thing be over?

And when she then spins a story about the other girl making the allegation because SHE (the 'whistle-blower") had been raped by a 40 yr old guy in a motel is THAT the truth or just more adolescent bullshit?

And how does a whole segment of our society get so screwed up that drama and lies are the only way they know to exist and function?


I'm sorry; if you're old enough to get pregnant and go to your high school Prom as a soon to be mama, you're old enough to understand that actions and words have consequences.

I think they should both be charged with making a false police report...
or would THAT just add to the drama which they clearly feed off of?

It was a LONG, murky way to start the week!!

Dear Blogger,

you have either seriously over-rated your importance or under-rated my frugalness.

I got your message last week that I have nearly exceeded my free photo allotment for this site, informing me that I can purchase additional storage space for what you consider a nominal fee.

Thanks, but NO!

I started this blog for the exact reason it's called a blog - a web log - a journal; an electronic version of 'Dear Diary'.

I did not do it to become famous or to discovered by some big name publishing house.

Most of my observations are time specific or memories held since childhood... they certainly don't need to be cluttering up the world wide webs for eternity!

I have therefore had the first 18 months of the blog made into books - on the off chance that my sons will someday choose to see how I felt about my life -and if they don't - that's OK too since I'll be dead and beyond worrying about it.

I will be going through the blog this week and purging the first two years, possibly more, of the posts. In fact, I've already started - and it's very freeing!

Thanks for your efforts in helping me enter this next stage of my life - travelin' lighter!

Random weekend thoughts

I feel awful being so materialistic but I have to say it, 

I do love my new rug!!

Can anyone explain to me the lure of 50 Shades of Grey?

Harlequin romances have been around for decades 

and they were ridiculed (rightly so, actually) 

as being formulaic soft porn...

where have all these women been all these years?

Need your eyebrows to sweat while grabbing a laugh at the same time?

Pick up one of these babies!

Really Hobby Lobby??

Christmas decorations the first week in July?

I haven't even taken my summer vacation yet...

The display just made me  terribly depressed;

 it seems to be yet one more reminder 

that folks in this country are being expected 

to buy an endless supply of crap 

and spend our way out of this country's recession.

Only made me want to boycott the store entirely!

                Hate to see the toll this drought is having on my garden... and that's just decorative...

                worried more about the farmers in our surrounding communities and the food supply!

                 Experiencing solidarity with people of the sub-Saharan desert is not easy!

           Trying not to be either a wimp or a whiner -

 but when the average temp 

for the past 10 days 

has been 104 -

you know it can't be good!

Travelin’ lighter as I get older…

Things don't go on forever, and the quicker you accept that change is inevitable, the happier you're gonna be. 

Trey Anastasio 

Well, dude, let me tell ya, I was pretty happy.

You know when I told you I spent part of the weekend in the basement cleaning and getting things together for Good Will and our Fall Boot Sale?

Well, the part I left out was that meant accepting certain realities – and I wasn’t even totally aware that’s what I was doing at the time.  (Don’t you LOVE the ability to reflect - to look at your seemingly simple actions, see a deeper purpose or meaning and amaze yourself with the interior work you’re doing – unbeknownst to even you!)

The deceptively simple act of cleaning out closets and storage space = accepting that I am not a size 8 anymore. In fact, the month or two of my entire life that I was was such an aberration of body shape that I can barely remember what it felt and looked like but, boy, did I shop during that time... and I had hangers of clothes that I haven’t been able to wear for more than a decade to prove it!

It also meant clearing the decks of all my ‘affair underwear’ … and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.

Those wispy, colorful, not at all practical for working days, girlie things we wear when we think we might get laid lucky… with a new or current Mr Right Now.

Without getting all TMI on you, I’ve accepted that’s NOT where I am and, if I’m ever there again, we’d both deserve better than leftovers from previous trysts.
I’ll admit that didn’t stop me from having a GREAT time remembering the various Misters ‘you can’t be first but you can be next’ I bought them for!! )As slutty as that sounds - it isn't; not like it's double digits or anything... anyhoo...)

It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again in my life – how bogged down I can get by hanging on to what I no longer need; what no longer fits my life.

I remember telling a therapist once that everything I ever let go of had claw marks on it; apparently not so much anymore!
This was so easy!

I love that the healthier part of myself took control, got my not a size 8 butt down the stairs and purged – but in a good way!

I’m not giving up on getting healthier; I’m not giving up on the possibility of having another partner again at some point in my life.

I’m giving up on feeling badly because that’s not where I am now – and it feels great!