At Eight Months - 1/22/09

Yesterday marked the 8th month anniversary of Warren's passing.  I think it was coincidence that I had no energy and felt blah.  I took some Airborne this morning when I first woke up just in case I'm working on getting a cold.  How do you sort out what is grief, what is illness and what is just the dead time of winter?

Maybe that's just what grief is anyway, a dead time for the body and soul to lie fallow for a season.

Happy Birthday Jenny - 1/14/09

Today is the birthday of my firstborn Jenny.  Happy Birthday Jenny!!!!  What I remember about that time was I got the flu when I was 9-months pregnant and couldn't take anything except Sudafed for the symptoms, which was sort of like sticking chewing gum in a hole in a dam.  Didn't much work.  It was cold, cold, cold and we had lots of snow piled up.  I started labor about 6:00 a.m. on a Monday and she was born at 3:02 a.m. on Wednesday.  I woke up from the anesthesia with a black eye.  Back then the anesthesia used didn't really take away the pain, it just made you forget it so you didn't remember having it (I don't know if they still use this or not).  Anyway I had a theory that I was cussing like a sailor and one of the doctors or the nurses just got tired of it.  The official story was I kept banging my head against the side rails on the bed.  When they first brought my baby to me in my room, the nurse said "Here's your little boy!" to which I replied, "I thought I had a girl."  She did a double take and checked the baby and sure enough it was a girl that they'd just wrapped in a blue blanket.  I remember being wheeled out of the delivery room and my then husband saying "She's beautiful, she looks just like me." 

The pediatrition came to the hospital to examine the baby but when he came to see me I was in the shower.  He later called me on the phone (on the phone!!!) to tell me my baby had hydroencephalitus (water on the brain).  I spent that day in hell believing that my child might be brain damaged or might die.  My Mother had had a daughter with that disease that died at birth and one of her aunts had as well so it was an easy theory to believe.  That night when my OB/GYN came in to make rounds, he told me there was nothing wrong with the baby when he delivered her.  A neurologist had been called in and the next morning when I saw her, she was a little miffed and couldn't figure out why she'd been called in as there was nothing wrong with that baby.  Needless to say we didn't keep that pediatrition.  My then Mother-in-law was a  Christian Scientist and she brought some of her church members over that first night to pray over the baby so she thought they had cured her with prayer, and who knows maybe they did.  I'd be the last person on Earth to say it was outside the realm of possibility.

Hope your Birthday is a happy one Jenny.

This Will Make You Feel Smarter - 1/6/09

 If you ever feel a little bit stupid, just dig this up and read it again; your confidence will be restored!

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(On September 17, 1994, Alabama's Heather Whitestone was selected as Miss America 1995.)

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: 'I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,'

-- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest .

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'Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.'

--Mariah Carey

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'Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life,'

-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign .

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'I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,'

-- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward .

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'Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,'

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'That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it,'

--A congressional candidate in Texas  

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'Half this game is ninety percent mental.'

--Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark

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'I love California . I practically grew up in Phoenix .'

-- Dan Quayle

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'We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need ?'

--Lee Iacocca

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'The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.'

--Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst.

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'We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.'

-- Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor .

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'Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.'

--Department of Social Services, Greenville , South Carolina

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'Traditionally, most of Australia 's imports come from overseas.'

--Keppel Enderbery

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'If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed, and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record.'

--Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

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Feeling smarter yet?

Send it to your brilliant friends.  I just did !!

"The Sixth of January" for the Sixth of January 2009

"The Sixth of January," by David Budbill, from Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse (Copper Canyon Press).

The Sixth of January


The cat sits on the back of the sofa looking
out the window through the softly falling snow
at the last bit of gray light.

I can't say the sun is going down.
We haven't seen the sun for two months.
Who cares?

I am sitting in the blue chair listening to this stillness.
The only sound: the occasional gurgle of tea
coming out of the pot and into the cup.

How can this be?
Such calm, such peace, such solitude
in this world of woe.

Happy New Year - 1/1/08 - Oops I mean 2009

I wish you all a blessed and prosperous New Year and I thank you for all your love and support throughout the last several years.