Smoother Sailing

Babies have gone home, heart-breakingly early, but for the best. Best for them, best for me, best for where we all are in this crazy life.

Supposed to be taking my ailing daughter to the hospital to apply for their financial assistance program so she can get her gall bladder out before it kills all of us. She hasn't wakened yet -- sleep is a  healer and a small cessation of pain.
Anybody wanna bet the first thing she says will be "Why didn't you get me up?"

I could, of course. Make her start hurting again, make her NOT have to take responsibility for her own needs, for her own health care.
I think not. She needs to learn independence, something that she has somehow failed to learn.
She also needs to make her own medical decisions, because that is the law of the land.

Did she not learn, or was she not taught? I've thought often about this and have no definitive answer. Not teaching would be my failure; not learning would be hers.
It doesn't matter, anyway. That's in the past, and we -- I -- must go on from here and keep trying to get those lessons across.

Not easy, with her daddy's nurturing helpful dispensing of the knowledge that "Your mom knows how to do that."
I learned by doing, as everyone must.

Dad has an appointment with his pulmonologist this week. We have questions about headaches and a tickle in his throat.
Anybody wanna bet I'll end up being the one who asks the doctor about these issues, because he won't speak up? (I'm going to try, if I must, just reminding Rex he wants to ask about these things.)

This issue annoys me because it makes me sound like a bossy managing dictator, and not in a good way.

Yes, I'm bossy. I'm the oldest of eight, and I know no one in that situation who isn't bossy. It's part of the job description of oldest child ( of a multitude.)

Yes, I'm managing. Someone has to take care of things.

A dictator? Possibly at times. Waffling on decisions has to stop somewhere; decisions need to be made.

But I only look like one of those militant fat-ass Battleship Broad!

That said, I have had some sleep and feel capable. I hope that I can remain so, even when the sailing once again gets rough. As it will.
As I well know it will.

I'll be ready.
I hope.

At least, for a while, I'll be rested.

Mammaws are Only Human, too (Even me)

Today, I feel like the worst Mammaw in the world.
Because the baby cried all night.
Because In  yelled at him.
Because I pushed  Hailey off him.

Because I am going to have to take them home early, and I never, ever want to take them home early. I wish they could stay, longer and longer. This is Hailey's last weekend/week to stay here as OUR  Hailey. Next week she meets the world; she'll be becoming a different child. (She starts school,)
I wanted this to be a long lovely time to enjoy with her.

But she's anxious about school, wants her mommy for every head-butting dispute, is weepy and whiny and singing the ABC song, incorrectly and incessantly.

The little guy is teething. Yes, young as he is. He has not one but two teeth just below hid gums and the pesty things won't come through. Poor little guy.  Mammaw can give him pain med -- not really a good idea -- and rub numb numb on his gums (very carefully) but all these things wear off way before they can be readministered.
He has chewed bigger holes in his nipples so now he drowns himself in milk and chokes. That is 4 nipples in about 36 hours.

Then there are the residents of my home. Rex is chronic, and Tracy is having a crisis. She's had intermittent gall bladder problems, and in this last week it's become constant. She went to the ER twice in the last ten days, but it's not quite bad enough for them to be able to help.

Took her to the doctor yesterday, kids in tow.
They were astonishingly good in the boring old waiting room for almost two hours. (Maybe that's why they had problems later on. They used up all their ability to be good.)

Anyway, Tracy is still in pain and trying to learn to deal with it, but in the meantime she wants cuddling and soothing that should be the babies' purview. (We all want our mommies when we're sick, even if they never really did anything for us. Such an odd facet of humanity.)

Anyway, the nine hundred bazillionth time I had to get up with Fussy Baby, in the wee small hours of the morn, I sat and cried with him in my arms.
When that didn't help, I put him in the playpen and I went outside on the porch to cry alone.

Baby Warren yelled at me, and I yelled at him. He can make quite an astonishing amount of sounds now.
It would have been funny if it wasn't so heartbreaking breaking.

I hope the little ones and their parents know if it were a necessity they could of course stay. That I would expect them to.
I hope they all know the little ones will always be welcome here and understand that some Times are just a little more difficult to live through.
I hope I hope I hope.

And still I feel like the worst Mammaw in the world because I am having such a hard time coping.

I feel so old and inadequate.

Crisis at Mammaw's house, I am ordering you to pass.
Mammaw just wants to be Mammaw again.

Rent-2-Own hosts Back to School

The owners of the Rent-2-Own in Georgetown hosted a back to school festival. They combined a generous community giveaway with fun and play, and the result was a lot of fun.

They provided school supplies for children in the county, and they made it a party for parents and children alike.

Who can do that? 

Even when they can, how many people take the time to actually put it into action? 

There was food, there was music, there were (sorta) rides, some with water. I never knew you could take a ride in a bouncy-house. 

Guess I got some schooling, too.

I don't know what the employees (I assumed) thought of the day. Many wore tags saying "Volunteer." The day was humid, the crowd was crowded. Kids pushed and shoved and cut line, tattled and pushed and shoved.

They also held hands to run together, jump together, climb together. Grown-ups walked around trying to keep track of children. There were lots of "Mammaw" and "Hey, Mom" and "Daddy, lookame!"

Through it all, I never saw any of these volunteer/employee/ helpers lose their patience. In the heat and the humidity and the hollering, the personnel kept their cool. Every one of these people should be recognized and awarded with, at the very least, a smile and a heartfelt "Thank you. You made our day."

From the owners of the venue, who have made this community giveaway a shining example of "Charity Begins At Home" to the Church across the street that allowed its parking lot to be used for parking, to the many many WONDERFUL people who were there before after and during the event -- it was a fantastic experience. 

A lot of work and a lot of fun.

Thank you all.

(And thanks for the notebooks, too.)

Not Quite "Christmas in July"

We are enjoying a lovely bout of October weather here at the end of July. It's not quite a "Christmas in July" but I'll take it. I think it's pretty darned nice!

I'm not quite sure what the technical situation is . The weathermen on the TV have been talking about "record high lows" and "record low highs". All of this makes sense to me while they are explaining it, with little charts and diagrams onscreen, but my understanding disappears with the charts. Somehow, I don't think a record high low is a record low. That would be a low low, to be a new record.
Am I wrong about that?

I am surprised at their surprise. For the last several years, the weather seems to have shifted somewhat. Spring blooms earlier, summer dies off earlier. The key is not in the calendar, but in the wildlife. We've had daffodils in February, redbuds at the end of March, black-eyed Susans and Tiger lilies in July. Daffodils used to be "Easter lilies" to us as children, the redbuds are more familiar in mid to late April, and the susies and tigers should only now be coming into full growth. Both of these are part of the transition to September.

September and October should be foxtails and goldenrod and grass (hay) drying in the fields. The last few years, we have had the goldenrod before school starts in mid-August. This year it looks as if the same thing will happen. We'll see the first snowflakes in late October or early November. The "January thaw" will be near Christmas.

But, NO.
Not necessarily.
Here I am, doing the same thing as the weathermen and meteorologists -- trying to put Mother Nature and her business into neat little cubicles (dates on a calendar.)

When will we learn that nothing not man-made fits into our neat little boxes?
Just because it's usually gold and orange in September doesn't mean it always will be so.
Just because it has always snowed in February doesn't mean we can't have sunshine and warm southern breezes that month.

There are plenty of people ready to blame man-made sources for the changes in the weather. Plenty of them, but their 'proof'' is that the weather has changed. That really doesn't prove the why.

Weather has never been constant according to Modern Man's demands. The constancy is vague and steady,  seasonal; not date-to-date, not month-to-month. Weather just won't fit our convenience.

Maybe the solution to our (not a) problem will end up being the time-honored tradition of updating the calendar. That is what our species has done historically when the seasons and the dates have become out of sync.



I say let's keep our calendars loose and flexible, and let us not bind ourselves too closely to what our little blank calendar boxes and our record books say we should expect from the weather. Because, no matter how many blacks we draw for time and nature, these things will not co-operate with the corporate mentality.

Above all, though,  let us enjoy  this October weather in July. 

They Think You're Stupid

One of the worst things about not working has got to be daytime TV.

One of the worst things about daytime TV has got to be the commercials.

Lately, these seem to have gotten worse. Many of them sound like they are talking down to you, some just use bad grammar -- and bad English, too!
There are some, I'm sorry to say, that seem to be actively looking for stupid people as their main source of customers.

This may even be true; I don't know. Maybe that is who they look to for a customer base. How hard can it be to confuse stupid people and get their money,after all?

The worst offender, commercial-wise, is LoanMax. This is a company that makes title loans on cars. Their main clientele, I think, is people who can't get a bank loan, even using their car as collateral. Banks don't want to make small loans, for one thing, and for another, they don't like older cars.
Title loan businesses know two things banks refuse to acknowledge. 1)People will generally pay to keep their car when it's all they have and 2) if it runs, they will likely get their money back at auction, if it should go that far. Maybe not all their (outrageous) interest, but at least the original loan.

The procedure is similar to a bank loan.  You get a loan using the car as collateral. If you ever try to sell the car, you have to pay off the loan/lien first.

Loan Max ads feature a woman who was just so relieved she didn't have to give them her car!  She got to keep her car! Imagine that!
Lady, if you didn't get to keep your car, it would be a/k/a selling your car, NOT a loan. How the blankety-blank did you ever get a car in the first place?

There's also a man who can't keep driving on tires with 'plugs' in them -- I was told 20 years ago they don't make tires you can put plugs in anymore. If that's still true, this man is driving around on excessively old tires, and I don't want to be on the road with him anyway. (I could, however, be wrong and someone somewhere did figure out a way to make plugs for modern tires. In that case, I'm the stupid one.)
There's a woman who doesn't want to drive around on bad rotors. I guess she can't plug her tires anymore and has no wheels.
And there's a guy who got a loan to get tattoo training -- not so bad, but you'd think they might go for something classier in the eyes of society as a means of going into business. And a fellow who buys storage units at auction. Maybe he'll be on TV someday!

There's a lawyer who "Gets answers done." Okay, I want answers, and I want a lawyer who gets things done. I don't want my answers done.

Then there's one of those infernal schools, with one-class-a-month, or one-subject-at-a-time classes. These people are really annoying. It's too bad the schools have no better representations than people who can't speak properly.
These women have their dreams accomplished.
How the hell does that happen?
I (or they) can accomplish a dream, but the dream doesn't accomplish. This person needs to speak with the lawyer who gets answers done.

This woman also talks about how the school 'accomplished' or 'created'  "new dreams for me and new opportunities for mySelf."
Only you can accomplish or create things for yourself.
The school can create or accomplish things only for itself
Only I can do things for myself.

Do intelligent persons want to go to a school that doesn't see basic communication skills as a selling point?

Do you? Will you?

I don't.
I won't.

Not even to get away from the inanity of daytime TV commercials.

Welcome the Weather, Whatever it is.

Finally, a break in the weather. Like all good things, it didn't come without a price. Parts of our northern 'Border Country' was torn apart with severe storms. Lots of wind damages, lots of uprooted trees, property damage. This was all in a part of the country where this type of storm is a little unusual.

But, oh the pay off! Lower humidity, softer air. And, the rest of us are beginning to feel that same relief, as if our weather-break is trailing in the skirts of theirs.

Today, here in Winchester, Ohio, it has been raining all day. Nice, gentle, cleansing, healing rain. There are flash flood watches and occasional storm warning, but for the most part our transition has been fairly nonviolent.
That's a good way to be.

The heat and humidity will return. It's still July, and there's August to be lived through, and the first few days after Labor Day. It would be odd to not have a week or so of hot-and-humid after back-to-school and Back-to-school -after-the-first-holiday.

I like the rain.
If Hailey were here, she'd be liking the rain.
She'd even be allowed to go out in this rain. Pappaw doesn't let her out when it's storming. She doesn't like that.

People are always complaining about the weather. If it's raining, they want sun. When the sun is shining, it's too hot. When it's hot they want cold. When it's cold they want snow. When it snows they want the roads cleared and cleaned and wish for the hot and humid summer.

We'd change things if we could, and once we have it, we start wishing it was what it was earlier (in the year, season, month, week, day).
We need to take the time to enjoy the weather we have while we have it. It's going to change soon enough, and we are very lucky if it changes without upheaval and terror.
Let's be happy with what we get.
After all, it could just -- blow away.

I'm as bad as others. We all are. We all think we wish for prescribed weather, for perfect weather. The problem with that is --

We can't even agree on perfect weather!

Some DO like it hot!

Food for Thinking

My new grandson is approaching the 4 month mark. He is also drooling, pushing the nipple around with his tongue, stuffing anything into his mouth, and seeming unsatisfied with just his milk.

In a less enlightened age, these would have been seen as signs that he's ready to try solids.
Nowadays, the doctors usually will not recommend feeding until six months of age, unless weight loss starts to 'trend' in the child. A calendar and a magic number are, of course, more rational guidelines than individual development. They are a better indicator than common sense that says if the baby is getting hungry, try feeding him.

I have an objection to the recommended feedings, too. Back in the dark ages, when I was growing up and helping with an endless stream of younger siblings, the first things we offered were fruits.
Now, historically, or maybe I mean evolutionarily, this makes sense. Humans started out as hunter-gatherers, and when our babies were ready to start solids, over ripe fruit was probably the softest thing available for gathering.. Thus, babies would start eating with fruits, and that practice remained at least to the 1970s.

Now, they want parents to start the infants on cereals -- grains. A food that, even at its purest, has to be ground and/or milled before it can be prepared for a toothless mostly sucking infant.
This just doesn't fit the needs of a hunter-gatherer society. Prepared foods would come a little later, logically.

Now, before someone tells me about the delicate process of sensitizing (or not) the baby's delicate digestive process, I'd like to offer a couple arguments.

1) gluten intolerance
2) celiac disease.

We didn't have these  runaway rampant allergy/digestive problems back in the days when we fed our infants by using common sense and instinctive traditions, did we?
Yes, there were some; proportionately, not as many.

Babies with delicate systems largely did not survive. It's good that we can now compensate, sometimes, for these problems, but maybe we should take a serious look at how they are started. Somewhere there should be alarm bells ringing that we are creating the problem by circumventing the evolutionary process.

Many people point at processed foods. Well, that well may be part of the problem, but is it the start of the problem? Maybe someone needs to investigate the possibilities that mothers have for eons been right and the scientists, in just a few decades, have created problems with their charts and calendars and thinking that "how it should be" is "how it is."

Those of us who have fed children out in the real world know that they don't live, grow, or thrive under laboratory conditions.
Ever.

Mourning this Morning

Today I look around my house and the many things I see bring a deep sense of mourning to me.

The baby's playpen, bought four years ago for Hailey, now in use again for another sweet baby. Will I see him again in there? Will I be around to see him stand and peep over its side and laugh at me? Will I hear him say "Mammaw, Mammaw"?

Hailey's doll house that I just bought for her, furnished, at a yard sale. Last time she was here, she played for hours sitting in front of the TV, but not even paying attention to the programming. Will I be around to enjoy her enjoying what Mammaw got her?

No, I'm not ill, and I have no current plans to do away with myself.
I don't want to do away with myself, just the mishmash disappointed and never ending duties duties duties my life has become.

I don't mind taking care of my chronically ill husband. But why in hell won't he do his part to take care of himself? He is NOT bedridden.
Is it my fault? Have I taken such good care of him that he no longer takes any responsibility for his own well-being? Have I put up with so much, too much, and has my caretaking crippled him more than his multiple illnesses? Have I solved so many problems and fought so many battles for him that he no longer feels any need to solve or fight?

Something has to change here, and I'm afraid that it will, once again, be me.
However, I will try.

For the sake of the beautiful babies that light up both our lives. They need the refuge that grandparents' homes  can be -- every child needs that.
They need grandparents -- a Pappaw as well as a Mammaw.
Mammaw needs Pappaw, too.

Will she ever have those things again?
Will she ever enjoy those things again?
Will anyone else cherish or change things?

What to do if the answer is "NO!"?

I wish I knew.

News from the bucket list

There's another story in the news about someone skydiving and checking it off their "Bucket List."http://www.local12.com/news/local/story/Two-Local-Paraplegics-Skydive-From-13-500-Feet/edn9aifvi0ylJxOHi28BHw.cspx


If the media is to be  believed, every person on earth has an overwhelming desire to plummet to earth. News, movies, songs.

I just don't get it. I never will, so don't bother explaining. It's something I truly do not wish to understand. If the epitome of your life is to do something expensive and foolhardy, then I'm not sure I know you at all. Or want to.

I blame the media for a lot of this foolishness. Some 97 year old woman, once upon a time, fulfilled her lifelong desire to jump from an airplane, and the story was an immediate hit.
This was probably in 1934, when airplanes and 97 year old women were rarely paired. There was no instant news, no sharing everywhere, and only her friends knew, even after word got out.

In those days, skydiving was news.
97 year olds were news.

Nowadays, there are skydiving clubs around every city, and 97 is peppy if elderly. Neither item is news.

But, for some reason, this is consistently treated as "NEWS."

You want to know about bucket lists?
Visit a nursing home.
Visit the oncology floor in the local city hospital.
Heck, visit a veterinarian, where pets are freed from pain as loving companions linger near.

None of these people are mourning the fact that they didn't get to jump out of sn airplane.
None of them are regretting that they never jumped from an airplane.
None of them see that as a legacy to be treasured in any sense.

There's a saying about nobody having his tombstone engraved with "I wish I had worked more"
No one has asked that be put in his obituary.
I'm pretty sure no one has engraved, "I wish I had jumped from an airplane."
I'm pretty sure no one has put NOT-skydiving in a loved one's obituary

Please stop treating this as a legitimate news story.
It isn't.

Playing Games

I just recently started playing games on Facebook beyond Words With Friends and Scrabble, both which allow you to choose your opponents, one at a time.

Now, I have had those annoying posts about someone needing keys and maps and send a chicken and whatever.  I have been over-zealously invited to become an inhabitant of innumerable "--world"s. I've been Facebook notified that I have 50 new notifications only to find 45 are game related. That's so disappointing.

So, before I ventured into the gaming world, I promised myself (and my 'friends') that I was not going to be that player.
That's easier said than done.
I have had to quit  two games because they demand that I make demands on my friends.

I made my brave venture with the Criminal Case game. It's mostly finding objects in a scene, but there are also puzzles and maze-y things and fill in the rest of the number.
The best/most interesting aspect of this game is that they kind of toss you in with people from your own friends list. For the most part, you get to play with people who are already playing, even to the sending of energy and cards and things. Criminal Case has a nice little list of who you know that already play.
Later on, you do get a list of everyone to send requests to, but it's easy enough to edit that list. And it happens at intervals, not after every play.
BUT -- right now, Criminal Case keeps trying to give me free stuff. To get all this free stuff, I just have to give them my banking or credit card information.
How stupid are people?
The game can still be played though, without the incessant nagging to add or invite. I do enjoy playing.

So, I ventured to Candy Crush. I played to level "youneedkeys" and had to quit. I will not send to every single person on the list and I have no idea which of my friends are playing that game and which aren't. Well, I do know 2 of the people. One is a friend, the other is someone I'd rather not play games with.

So, there's an end to that.

The other game that I have almost quit playing is Words of Wonder. Talk about a nightmare!

The game itself is fine, and enjoyable, and challenging, but it has turned into pages and pages of friends sending energy and gifts. These generous givers include absolute utter and complete strangers!
Not only is the game letting people I don't know know something about me (that I play that game), it is still insisting that I send similar generous gifts to everyone on my list (and their lists, too, I suppose, if they come to look at the game.)

Nope, not doing it.
Not sending or accepting anything else, because the game makes that part of it work -- picking and choosing from the donors -- before you get anywhere near the game itself. And then again between levels or chapters or episodes.

Listen, Facebook Game Designers: Games are supposed to be FUN! Not work.

Definitely not work through many lists many times a visit.

If they could all be like Criminal Case --I hope it stays that way. (I'm only at level 20 or so.)
List the friends who  already play, offer the option to invite others only at certain times. If they did that, fewer people would complain, and a few more might even actually play, if they can do so with relative privacy and no nagging.

Then we could all just play the games that interest us, and we could even -- GASP -- have fun doing so!