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Monday, November 20, 2006

Looking for a sign and missing my grandma at Thanksgiving


I got the call from my mom last Thursday. My grandma, Reba Davison, had passed away at 2 am in her sleep. I don't know why i took it so hard, cuz after all, she WAS 98, but at first i was ok...i mean, isn't that how we all want to go...live to a ripe old age and then go peacefully in our sleep...plus, on the day my grandma died..there was a horrible tornado that killed 8 people, some of them children in North Carolina, so who am i to feel bad; my grandma almost made it to her goal of 100...

And i was fine, for a while, until last Saturday when i went to the funeral home and saw her in her casket...that's when it became real to me and i realized, "this is final, she is not coming back." I started thinking back to when i heard she was planning her funeral (over 10 years ago)...i was kidding her about it..."your not planning on going anywhere soon, i hope"...and she, in her very Quaker no nonsense way said that she just wanted to be prepared, just in case, but she wasn't planning on going anywhere until she was at least 100...which was how we refered to her age when anyone asked...my grandma was never ashamed to tell people her age...she was 50, then she was 60 until she got to 95, then her age officially became "almost 100."

So that's what i was thinking when i looked at her, so silent, in her very no frills casket which she personally picked out. They had pink lipstick and finger nail polish on her which made me laugh because my grandma would never have allowed that in her life but it did look very nice on her...i thought about all the trials and tribulations she had survived growing up in a very poor family of nine kids where they were lucky if they had horses, otherwise they walked everywhere, my grandma survived the great depression, the death of her parents and all of her sisters and brothers, 2 husbands, and every single one of her best friends but could not survive the loss of her child (two months ago)...they aren't sure what exactly took her out but i think it was a broken heart.

My grandma use to tell us grandkids about the one famous actress she had known and use to occasionally babysit for when she lived in Des Moines, Iowa by the name of Cloris Leachman. This was back in the early 70's when Cloris Leachman had just won an Oscar and was in a hit television show called Phylis...we had a hard time believing her, "OUR GRANDMA from Mason City had actually met some one famous?"...but sure enough, one day in the 90's my grandma actually wrote Cloris Leachman a letter and when Cloris was doing a show in Minneapolis she actually took my grandma to dinner and gave her a couple of tickets to her show...the picture of her and Cloris was displayed proudly in her front room til just before she died...just so she could show it off with a "i told you so"...it's one of the few pictures i have of her with a smile on her face...being a no nonsense quaker she wasn't the kind of person who would get in touch with her emotions...where i'm sobbing like a baby as i type this i already know how my grandma would handle the death of someone she loved...when her second husband died in 1968 my mother said she could come live with us for a while and grandma said no, she needed to go home and face her new life without a husband head on...and she did...she went back to school in the early 60's when most women didn't go to college at all...she was in her 50's and to give you an idea of how rare that was, she made the front page of the newspaper...she took on city hall in the 80's and took on members of her family when she thought they weren't acting the way she thought they should...which was often in those years...yeah, she wasn't afraid of giving her opinion and did to just about anyone who crossed her path, the mailman, the neighbors, cops, didn't matter...she was staying for a week with us when my dad once came home late from work and complained about how noisy he had been when he came in through the door and my dad said "that's where i got you Reba, i came in through the window."

But she mellowed out in her final 10 years and when you came to visit, she made it impossible for you to leave, she'd give you anything she had just so you would stay a few more minutes, and it got so you couldn't get out of there under an hour...and, i'm SUCH A MORON! REALLY, WHAT WAS MORE IMPORTANT THEN SPENDING SOME TIME WITH MY GRANDMA?! Here she was, in her 90's and i'm watching the clock thinking "here's that same story again"...but you know what...i'd give every last cent i had just so i could hear her tell it again, right now...after we went to her graveside service we went to a little cafe she would have liked and when i went back one more time to her grave she was already buried and there was fresh soil over her casket and just like that...my grandma was gone.

Since Saturday i've had moments where i just start crying like when i heard a Chrismas Carol played while i was shopping and then i got it in my head to ask God for a sign that my grandma was ok...maybe a bunch of robins could chirp out one of her favorite tunes out of the 70's like "knock three times" by Tony Orlando and Dawn or something bizarre like that...but i haven't gotten a sign yet...and i have to accept that i may never get a sign...although, in the past few years there has been some fighting in my family and certain members of my family haven't talked or seen each other in two years, BUT this past Saturday, our entire family gathered together in unity to say goodbye to grandma, and you know what, maybe that's better then a sign.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

VOTE

Today is election day and you know what that means...NO MORE ELECTION ADS TOMORROW!!!!!! : )

I still don't understand why the candidates run so many, because i haven't learned one new thing about Green and Doyle other then they're both "crooks" "dishonest" and "bad for the economy"---all three statements which came from their television ads about EACH OTHER!!!

Honest to God, if i didn't know better, i'd think Satan was running for governor!

Oh wait, he is...but he's running as an independent so he doesn't have a chance in hell.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Trick or Treats

Last night was a really bad night for me...because, last night, my husband turned on the light to our giant plastic outdoor pumpkin he had bought from the Hoooooe Depot (as he affectionly calls his favorite hangout), and the pumpkin would not turn on...he sent our son Seth to investigate and wouldn't you know...someone had cut the cord!!

As you might imagine i was FURIOUS!!! It wasn't enough that i had spent half a week in the hospital and was feeling like crap, but now, some insensitive A-HOLE had the nerve to come up on our porch and CUT THE CORD TO OUR PUMPKIN!!! WHAT KIND OF CREEP OR CREEPS DOES THAT?!!

I was so angry i wanted to go outside last night with a baseball bat and wait for the next enterprising delinquent who dared to come up to our porch! As it turns out, i won't have to.

This morning upon furthur investigation my husband found that it wasn't exactly as we had first thought. Yes, the cord had been cut...kind of...you see, when my husband had first bought the giant pumpkin--in order to save some money--instead of spending the ten bucks for sand or cat litter to weight the pumpkin down, he tried to save money by buying a few bucks worth of BIRD SEED. And from the looks of it, the late great chipmunk had had a wonderful, last meal.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Not again...another election?

Good heavens, i haven't had time to wash off all the mud from the last one...

Which election is it...hard to tell...there's news about John Kerry...oh wait, he's NOT running...this time it's over something he said...i'm not a democrat, but i am NOT offended by what he said--and i have a stepson in the marines...what kind of a world is it where a decorated Vietnam vet is accused of being unpatriotic by something he said...by an administration who got us into this mess in the first place...confused?...so am i and i AM a republican...or was...i don't know this time who i'm going to vote for but honestly whether my candidate wins or your candidate does, i think we can all agree on something that one candidate said two years ago;

"A vote for someone you don't believe in is a wasted vote."

Thank you Ralph Nader.

He's got my vote...whose he running against?

This just in; Monday sucks! (8 am in the emergency room)

Maybe you've noticed i haven't been in this week...that's ok, your very busy and i understand...this past Sunday night so was i...in fact, i was very worried about what i was going to wear on Monday morning because i was going on Channel 4's Morning Blend and i was concerned that i didn't have anything that would make me look "skinny enough". Then sometime after 10 pm while i was checking out the forecast on the Weather Channel i got what i thought was a backache...i took a couple of Advils and started to finish up the dishes...and then, when the backache got worse, i headed up stairs to take a hot bath thinking that would do the trick. Sometime after midnight when the backache started wrapping around my chest and i couldn't breathe because the pain was so bad, i woke up my husband and he took me to the emergency room. Sometime around 3 am (and one morphine drip later)the doctors were saying it was probably a kidney stone but they were going to do just one more test, which was alright with me because i was thinking i could still get home, get a nap, and then get to The Morning Blend...But then, sometime around 5 am the doctors started using the words "Pulmonary Embolism" and lung and i was like "WHAAAAAAT?!" I would have been far less surprised if the doctors had come back and said they found UFO's in my double chin...it was so far out of left field for me that i really couldn't take in anything else they had to say...didn't they know i had plans for this morning and i was too busy for this...in other words, "could i come back next week and take care of this?"

So it's like this on a Monday morning at 8am...i'm not going to be a guest on the Morning Blend AND i'm sitting in the emergency room waiting for someone from "transport" to take me up to a hospital bed...the girl from transport finally shows up and immediately starts complaining about how she hates Mondays and how it sucks for her cuz she has to work all day and i'm thinking, "man, i wish i was you."

FISH(Y) TALES

This whole tragic episode with the Crocodile Hunter and the sting ray really got me thinking...especially in light with another incident that involved a sting ray stabbing another man in the chest...why is it that everytime something like this happens we always hear animal experts describing sting rays as "docile"...getting stabbed in the chest by a fish doesn't sound too "docile" to me...

It really has got me thinking about other animal stories we might have missed...like the headline a few weeks ago that said "KILLER WHALES SETTLE DISPUTES LIKE HUMANS", and i'm thinking "oh great, now the whales have guns!"

Or; "SHARK THAT WALKS ON FINS IS DISCOVERED" "Oh great, next they'll want to move in my neighborhood!"

Or; OJ SIMPSON wants to write book entitled "IF I KILLED NICOLE" "Drop the "if" OJ and you could make it a "how to" manual."

What? OJ doesn't qualify as a "fish tale"...i'm not so sure, he sure sounds "fishy to me..."

And i took the road less traveled...

And let me tell you what a bad idea THAT was!

The whole road trip from hell started out as kind of a cool idea...i don't have the ("are we there yet?") kids with me on this trip back from Iowa, so maybe, just maybe, i could took the little side trip i have always wanted to do and take the side road that hugs the Mississippi river from La Crosse down to Highway 18...no kids griping about how much longer will this take and no husband to point out that we were wasting gas...just me and the dog...(the dog that gets car sick on any trip longer then getting gas at Speedway BUT i had already taken care of that little problem too with vet approved doggie car sick drugs...)

So there we were, me and the dog on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon enjoying the scenic route...well, actually just me as the dog was zonked out...i have a friend who always takes the road less traveled under the idea that there is less traffic and you can drive faster but NOT ME as i was there to ENJOY THE RIDE and what a ride(!)...the hills and beauty of the Mississippi was stunning...there were views that reminded me of coastal southern California...the mist coming off the river and the fishermen bobbing in their boats just a few feet from the cliff i was traveling on...not to mention the hills jutting out of the river--the colors, just past peak but still beautiful...plus, as an extra bonus, the excitement of watching a frusterated driver from Nebraska in a giant 78 Buick try to pass a slow moving hay wagon that was actually doing the speed limit(!) on our two lane road...there were also markers along the way that i would have liked to have slowed down and read (one i saw from the road said "Bad Day" as if a bad day was so rare along this river route someone actually put up a sign to mark the occasion) but there was a big semi on my a$$ that i suspected wasn't on this road to enjoy the scenery so i kept driving...

Somewhere around DeSota the dog woke up and started vomiting and i came back to earth...24 MORE MILES TIL HIGHWAY 18?!!!! Oh my God' i'm never going to get home at this pace...what the heck was i thinking?!! Had i taken the other route i'd be to the Dells by now! From now on, when i have the choice between the road less traveled and the other road, i'm taking the road going 65 mph! ; )