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.

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.

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.

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! ; )

A Finicky turtle and chocolate beer

Well, i just learned something today. Our box turtle who has been a member of our family for the past 3 or 4 years has taste buds...(yep, bet you didn't see that coming...for the past couple of weeks i have posting things about how i think Andrea Yates sucks and how Amish people are better then me and then i hit you out of left field with a turtle, and his taste buds)...which was a huge surprise to me, almost as surprising as finding out our turtle has ears...for what i don't know...i mean, he doesn't come when we call ("here Turtleturtleturtle"), but yes, he has those too, and that knowledge only cost 75 bucks, in "people money"...

It all started a couple of weeks ago when i noticed a huge lump on the side of the turtles face, he was looking at me and i was looking at him and i'm thinking "is that suppose to be there or what?"...his appetite for strawberries and grapes ended about the same time...the vet explained it this way..."a turtle can eat the same thing for years and years and then one day with no warning he will just stop eating it"...i wish that would happen to me...one day, with no warning, i just decide NO MORE CHOCOLATE...that's it...weight problem solved...which brings me to "HAPPY NEWS!"

CHOCOLATE BEER! : )
I think that rates a happy face, don't you?! It's being put out by Miller Brewing Company just in time for Christmas AND it will brewed with six different malts INCLUDING chocolate and dark chocolate...this being Wisconsin i can only think the idea started something like this with the collision of two rocket scientist;

"Sir, you have chocolate in my beer!"
"And you have beer in my chocolate!"

The beer is going to be sold any day now for $5.99 and i'm thinking me and the turtle are going to celebrate this Christmas in style...me with a pint of chocolate beer and the turtle with-i dunno, anything but my beer, now that i just found out he has ears, it would be my luck he has a liver too, and i don't have an extra 75 bucks for that...

Why the Amish are better then you and me...

OK...just me then...

Your probably better then me too, because there is just NO WAY i could have been that forgiving if someone had shot ten little girls in my community (and five of them died!) No way! I would have been madder then heck and i would have let everyone know it...you probably have heard how the Amish in Pennsylvania, on hearing that a local milkman-madman had shot and killed some of their neighbors, daughters and friends, promptly forgave him and lent their support to his widow and children.
Wow! What's wilder...that their forgiveness made major headlines...shows you how rare something like that is...

And i'm a little ashamed too...not at the fact that they can forgive and i, probably not as much...but at the fact that i always sort of, well, i didn't think i was better then them but i certainly didn't understand how they could stubbornly cling to the 1800's while the rest of us went wizzing by them in 2006...my son and i were driving towards Iowa one freezing January Sunday morning on Highway 18 when we passed several of the Wisconsin Amish on their way towards church...i had the heat blaring and the radio on and they were huddled together in open air wagons with blankets...my son had never seen Amish before and simply couldn't believe that they didn't have cars, and television and PS 2's..."they don't want to live in our world" i told him then...and today, who can blame them?

But the fact that they can forgive and continue to love after all that has happened to them...well, i'm not even in their league.

Is the whole world going CRAZY...or is it just ME...thoughts on Dog, the bounty hunter, and the pope

So let me see if i have this straight...you can be a rapist...CONVICTED of 86(!) counts of rape...but if you escape to Mexico...AMERICA isn't allowed to touch you...but if your a bounty hunter and YOU get CAUGHT catching the RAPIST...YOUR the one who goes to JAIL, in MEXICO...how stupid is this...or is it just ME...Honestly, i thought it was some kind of joke when i first heard this...IF YOU DO A CRIME...MOVE TO MEXICO...you can pay off the local police and live there and God forbid if anyone from America tries to bring you back...i'm making the story simple but honestly, check out what is happening to Dog the Bounty Hunter (Duane Chapman) and i guarantee your blood will boil...one of the girls that was raped has started a petition to keep Dog out of Mexico and i'm listing it here:

www.FREEMYDOG.com
(i'm number 3138 just in case your wondering...)

AND NOW, the POPE

I see the pope is apologizing to the Muslims again, and honestly, i'm starting to get sick of this...every night that i turn on the news...some RADICAL ISLAMIST is threatening America...calling us dogs and telling us how their going to kill us and blow up our cities...blowing up our Catholic churches...and this is EVERY NIGHT...and i don't see the Catholics or the Baptist blowing up Mosques...Of course the Baptist might be too busy protesting Planned Parenthood...(note: i'm Baptist...and i have never picketed Planned Parenthood myself although i will admit to burning a record or two in my day)

My point is, how crazy is it that the Radical Islamists have the freedom to say WHATEVER THEY WANT...but God forbid if you're the pope...is this world going crazy, or is it just me..?

Could you sign my petition for the Cowsills in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ?

I've been wanting to post something in my blog about Barry Cowsill...it's been about a year now since he was reported missing after Hurricane Katrina, and at that time myself and thousands of his friends and fans could never have believed that he would be found dead...it's still bizarre to me...he reminded me of a cat with 9 lives but somewhere along the way he must have used them all up...i first met Barry and his beautiful saint of a wife Debbie in the summer of 1996 when they moved here from Seattle...Debbie worked at the same radio station i did and Barry, well, Barry seemed kind of lost...but he was the sweetest, most charming "formally famous" person you could ever imagine...never one to talk about his past (AND WHAT A PAST!--he toured AND partied with Led Zeppelin AND his family was the ORIGINAL Partridge Family...until his dad messed it up) and always hopeful about the future...since he didn't have a job he would babysit Debbie and my kids when we headed out to various radio appearences...my kids adored him...he would gather them around him in a circle while he sang and played his guitar...and he would leave the best messages on my answering machine...he would never talk as he would sing them...Barry's heart was never here in Milwaukee although he tried to break into the music scene...he was a New Orleans boy and of course that is where he eventually returned when the hurricane hit...when you have a couple of seconds, if you wouldn't mind, would you please type in www.petitiononline.com/tchof05/petition.html. or click on www.Cowsill.com

I'm really bad with this internet thing and i don't know to put in a direct link yet, but as soon as i find one of Dan Kyle's interns...i'll fix it...until then...if your a Cowsill fan or know one...please sign the petition.

Thanks.

Remembering September 11, and an uncle who raised seahorses

It's Sept. 11 again and i'm stunned...FIVE YEARS ALREADY?!

There's times that it seems like it happened one hundred years ago, but really, it was only FIVE years ago...there was a world before that date and now...i'm really thankful i took my kids on an airplane ride to see their grandparents before that happened...before there were all those damn checkpoints..."look kids, there's grandpa and grandma standing right by the window waiting for us"...and really, there's no point in moaning about what use to be because it ain't going back...not with all these terror alerts complete in orange, red and yellow...so, tonite, my family is going to do the only thing we know how to do...

CELEBRATE.

That's right...celebrate life...as in how dare you terrorists THINK you can destroy us with fear..! Bite me you B%#st**ds!!! Today my family will celebrate LIFE...TODAY is a day we will share together...with love, with random acts of kindness toward strangers, maybe even taking some cookies to one of our elderly neighbors...just because.

Today i will FEAR the acts of GOD...but i will not fear the acts of man!

Cindy Huber

ps...geez...maybe i shouldn't have skipped my prozac before lunch.


An Appreciation of my uncle, ROBERT FALT

Tonite, i will also celebrate the life of my precious uncle, BOB FALT, who was a science teacher in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and before Type 2 Diabetes destroyed his health, a tennis instructer...he was a smart and brilliant man who raised seahorses in his basement...yes, seahorses...i mean, they won't even sell them to the general public anymore because they are so difficult to keep alive and apparently feel pain...but my uncle raised them...AND sold them to the pet stores...i never really knew how awesome that was...to go down in his basement to play with my cousin Jennifer and watch the seahorses...now when i think back, i'm totally in awe.

I was lucky enough to get a chance to visit him a few months ago with my mom...it was obvious that he was dying but he lived alone in a apartment complex, and sat outside on the porch waiting for kids to go by with their homework so he could offer help...he was also dying of loneliness so my mom came upon a compromise...if he would give up smoking, my mom would buy him a puppy...at the time i wondered about the sanity of the situation...my poor uncle, suffering from cigerette withdrawal while the puppy would be peeing all over his apartment...but my uncle said yes so out we went and bought my uncle a puppy...because that's what you do when someone is dying right?...you buy them a puppy...at the time i promised my uncle that if anything happened to him...i would take care of the puppy...and, well, you know where this is going to go, right..?

My uncle passed away this past Saturday...alone, but not alone...as several of his neighbors, who loved him very much, were keeping an eye on him...one knew that he was bad and begged him to let her call 911...but he said no...(actually he said "don't you dare" as he was terrified of having to go to a nursing home again)...he was found, probably a few minutes after he died by his new family of neighbors...with his dog by his side...

Oh yes, the dog...remember that promise i made?

Sempher fi, butterfly

My son and i were sitting outside Dominos pizza one late summer afternoon...(i believe it was on a Monday since that's the $4.99 large one topping special)...when we noticed this big beautiful butterfly fluttering around in the breeze when SPLAT,
a big red Ford truck hit it...

Man, isn't that kinda like life...Your kinda fluttering around on a nice warm breeze thinking about how perfect everything is when life slams into you...not less then 24 hours after our family vacation the phone rings and it's the MARINES on the other end, against my husband and my wishes our (then) 19 year old stepson signed up earlier and now it was time to go...it's not that we don't want him to go in as this is something my stepson has always wanted anyway, it's just that his dad and mom and i are worried sick about what's out there for him and have tried to talk him into waiting and taking some college...he didn't, of cours, cuz he's in a hurry to grow up and get out of the house-worried that he might miss something if he stays at home...weren't we all like that once...

And what is really weird now is that i can't remember a single bad moment that we had all though i guarentee you we had them...c'mon, i'm the "wicked stepmom" ok?...the one who put the "smack down" when he broke curfew or got a little mouthy...we weren't the Brady Bunch, that's for sure, but honestly...all i'm thinking about right now is his silly sense of humor and his belief in doing what is right by his country, and i'm incredibly proud of him...

So with a heavy heart and a giant lump in our throats, his dad, mom and me relunctantly set our butterfly free,

Hey Mark,

Sempher fi.

ps...and watch out for big red Ford trucks.

Summer's over, thank God

I'm tired of shivering through another August...think we'll have better luck in September? Here's a scarey thought...when i went to bed last night it was still August!

And i still can't get over the thought that Summerfest and the Wisconsin State Fair are over, sometimes i get so depressed...i went out and bought a pound of powdered sugar, i try to pretend i'm eating cream puffs and that i just misplaced all the other ingredients...

ps...i've gotten a few emails asking me if that grapefruit diet i was trying worked...it DID...Now, here's the deal...(according to the National Enquirer) you're suppose to drink 8 ounces of grapefruit juice a day AND at the end of the month...you should lose up to three pounds a month...just by doing that...but word of warning...unless you love love love grapefruit juice...spend a little extra and get the name brand stuff cuz otherwise you will be gagging all the time...however, and this i pray..."Dear Lord, if i can't be thin, please, at least let me be skinnier then my girlfriends"...(i saw that on a tee shirt once, worn by a skinny you know what)

The first "FAMILY" Vacation...

This is my family in front of the Corn Palace in South Dakota...
NOTE: There is no palm trees or beaches anywhere near there...it is a building covered with CORN!!! (at least the popcorn was good)

Last year my family went on our first "blended" family vacation...my husband and i had been meaning to do this since we got married a few years ago...but something always came up like...no money...kids who didn't want to go "WITH US"...and where to go "destination problems...like...i think vacations should involve a BEACH...and my husband thought a vacation should involve HISTORY; "hey kids, let's go see Mount Rushmore and learn something..."

Look, i love presidents as much as the next guy...but i'm not sure i want to spend precious days off staring at four dead presidents on a big rock...unless that rock is next to a beach...a big, beautiful beach...with sand and waves, and maybe a concession stand that sells hotdogs and Corona's...

I might also point out that i lived next to South Dakota for a while in the 80's...maybe not for a long time but LOOOOONG Enough...

And i thought that would be the end of it...until my husband got it in his head to visit South Dakota...for the last three years that's the only place he's wanted to go...i kept hoping he'd give up on it BUT much like Chevy Chase in the original Vacation movie...("the moose says South Dakota's closed but i say it's open")AWAAAAY we went...my kids and his kids and a dog who gets car sick...

How'd it go...?

Well, here's what we did and i'm gonna pass this gem to you because i like you...rent a car with a DVD player...

That's right friend....the SECRET TO A REALLY GREAT FAMILY VACATION ISSSSS...a DVD player...forget those old family vacations where everyone was forced to look out the window at scenery...(God's green earth "are you crazy?"..it's South Dakota--everything's brown(!)...and God forbid, talk to each other...family vacation conversation is over-rated anyway...i mean, growing up, our family vacation conversations were always the same: "Mom, Paul is pinching me again...hey, it's my turn to sit next to the window...i'm sick of this radio station, CHANGE IT NOW!... PLUS, the ever popular; "ARE WE THERE YET?!"...followed of course by my mom's..."ONE MORE WORD AND I'M STOPPING THE CAR AND BEATING YOU ALL!!"

No, there were no beatings on this family vacation! In fact, i can tell you where we were just by the movie that was playing at the time...for instance...the trip through the Badlands was perfectly accented by a Chuck Norris film called "A Force of ONE..."He (hhheehheeehhheee)hears the silence...he (hhheehhheehheee)sees the darkeness, and only he (hhheehheehhhee can stop the kkkilllling!"...summing up the absolute remoteness that is the Badlands...
The trip through the Corn Palace and Wall Drug was best summed up by the "Best of Friends" season four dvd--totally commercial...and then there was Mount Rushmore...drum roll please..."Napolean Dynamite"; What do you get when you combine a tiger and a lion...a liger, or course...that's right, the kids got a little education with their history...this is not to say that we played dvd's the ENTIRE time...no, there was that little unfortunate escapade through the "wildlife loop" that winds through Custer Park where we weren't sure if the bison were going to stampede through our Ford Expedition or not that the movie "Jurassic Park" didn't seem so appropriate, that was probably the quietest part of our entire trip...

Sooooo, the next family trip you decide to take, get a DVD player and thank me later, in fact, i have a few dvd's i'd be glad to loan you..."Jaws" anyone?...probably not if your making a road trip to Florida.

Rubiks cube...AWWWWW SHOOT!

I saw where the inventor of the Rubiks cube had a birthday the other day...my first thought was..."he's STILL alive?"...i would have thought that some crazy guy, fed up with trying to figure out how the darn thing works would have taken him out by now...i actually bought a rubiks cube--for the first time in 25 years--when they were celebrating their birthday last year and it only took a minute to figure out WHY i hadn't picked one up in 25 years...they stink!

I took my Rubiks cube out on my back 40 and shot it with my bb gun...it felt so good i went back in and brought out my chess set and got rid of that too...come to think of it, my Monopoly game has been starting to act kind of cocky lately...hmmmmmmmm.

Diets Suck!

...And this is coming from someone who is "technically" on a diet 365 days a year!

It's kind of frightening how it "all of a sudden" creeps up on you, one day, your jeans don't fit...(now, keep in mind your...ok, i mean MY jeans had been getting kind of tight lately BUT) ...then there's that awful day when even lying on the bed to zip up your jeans doesn't work...and then i'm like, "how'd this happen?!"

Has that ever happen to you?...No?...must just be me then...

There was a time a few years back where, out of TOTAL DESPERATION i wrote "NO" on the fridge in lipstick thinking that it would stop me during my late night raids...(under the logic that if i saw "NO" on my fridge at 3 am in the morning i would turn away and go back to bed)...i would have been better off writing "WASH ME" for as much good it did me, as the only thing i lost was part of my security deposit as the lipstick stained part of my fridge (darn you Max Factor!)

1. During my years as a professional dieter i have learned a few things...that drinking 8 ounces of grapefruit juice a day DOES work in helping you lose 3 pounds a month...(thanks to the National Enquirer for that information)...with the only problem, of course is it has to be the unsweetened crap and oh yeah, you have to ACTUALLY drink it...

2. I've also learned that you really don't have to exercise AS HARD if your willing to drink 64 ounces of water a day, which really wouldn't be that big of a deal except i never seem to remember to do it until 10 at night and then i empty out my 32 ounce cup of Code Red Mountain Dew from Speedway...(i'm trying to earn enough points for one of those free Applebee dinners)...then you fill the now empty cup with water and chug it down....SUGGESTION....if your not in "the mood" to chug a ton of water at one sitting it helps if you have one of those little packages of sour cream and onion potato chips...(you can get 4 for a dollar at most Pick N Save stores)..then you drink your water in two parts...grab a magazine and head on up to the bathroom...oh, and don't forget your pillow...your going to be up there for a while...

More summer emails...

My friend Cindy emailed me this and i just loved it...i thought you might get a kick out of it too...
I no longer need to punish, deceive or compromise myself...unless of course i want to stay employed.
A good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to the problem.
I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I will honor my personality flaws, for without them i would have no personality at all!

AND LASTLY,

Just for today, i will not sit in my living room all day watching tv...instead, i will move my tv into the bedroom. AMEN.

Summer salvation...i call it "the garden"

With all the crazy things going on in the world thank God, for the garden...mine isn't much...it's more of a "survival of the fittest" type garden...and so far the dandilions are doing fine, thank you...i saw a report in the news the other day that the green house effect is making the poison ivy stronger and more potent but i haven't seen an example of it in my garden as the "super deadly" crab grass has choked it out...

But i'm comforted to know that at least one of my friends as a "green thumb" and i live out my fantasy of super gardener through her emails;

"Oh, and by the way, my tomatoes are great! I marinaded them with cucumbers and onions from the garden along with my basil, parsley and cilantro in balsamic vinegar, dijon, tomato paste, kosher salt, sugar and olive oil...i served it over iceburg lettuce sprinkled with parmesan and a side of rye bread...yum! Love,
Pennyjo."

No matter how down i get about the world, i think about Pennyjo and her garden and i always feel better!

In memory of my grandma, Reba Davison of Mason City, Iowa

Christmas 1977...as you can see, we are a family that liked lots of pets!

I originally posted this in July, at that time my mom and i were discussing my grandmothers situation...you see, my mom had recently had to put her mom in the nursing home because my grandma decided she was no longer going to take her meds...that's right, grandma's off her meds...which you think would make a great situation comedy..."TONITE, on...GRANDMA'S OFF HER MEDS"...Grandma Reba takes on Hells Angels at Walgreens while waiting for her XANAX with hilarious results!"

O.k...maybe not...unless you knew my grandma and realized that she REALLY COULD take on Hells Angel if she wanted too...(as long as it didn't interfere with her bridge night with the girls)...my grandma chose instead, to take on everyone else...my grandma is a fighter...that is why she has lived so long (98! and still in her own home)...she was the eighth child of nine kids and has outlived them all...grew up in a very poor Quaker household with NO CAR...rode a horse to everything but that was, of course, when they were lucky to have a horse...they had very little food, heck, the depression was nothing for my grandma...she didn't even notice when it hit...but she survived to raise my mom and uncle and send them to college, and then SHE decided to go to college in 1962 when she was well into her 50's...something that was so unusual at the time that she was a front page article in the paper..."old lady goes to college" or something like that...she went on to become a nurse and then got hired by all her friends kids to take care of their parents when they couldn't take care of themselves, she was still doing private nursing INTO HER 80's when she was forced into retirement...because all her friends had passed away...

And, of my gosh, still driving well into her 80's...in fact, i have actually gone storm chasing an F 3 tornado and still was never as scared as when i went for a car ride with my grandma in her 1967 "boat"...one of those big giant gas guzzlers that was only driven by a little old lady to church...except that she drove over lawns and sidewalks to get there...(completely oblivious to her screaming neighbors as she HATED wearing her hearing aids)...there she was balancing her 86 year old hiney on TWO Mason City Iowa phone books (hey, it's a small town-you need two) so she could look over the steering wheel and see who she was flipping off..."stupid kids" she would mutter to 60 year old guys she cut off until my dad finally had to sneak into her garage and disable her car so she would stop driving...but i can think of no one tougher then my grandma...i will never have to fear growing old or stale thanks to my grandma...she started her life over and because of her example...when i turn 50 i'm going to run off and become a roadie for Stevie Nicks, or Heart or even Cher...we sisters are taking it on the road and doing it for ourselves!!!

But no my grandma is tired and wants to go home, on her terms of course...

God bless you Grandma Reba, i'll miss you,

Cindy

ps...before you go, could you please jot down your cinnamon-apple recipe...if you have time?

November 20, 2006...As it turns out, my grandma didn't have time...my grandma passed away suddenly Thursday, November 16, 2006 just a couple of months after her son died...my grandma survived just about everything but the death of a child...that's when she really gave up...but she kept her mind to the end, and i will cherish her memory to the end of mine.