Happy Birthday, Carolee

 

Big O's grandmother died a horrible death from breast cancer.

When people wear pink ribbons? It's because some beautiful brown eyed boy has one less source of unconditional love to draw on as needed. Buy the stamps. Lick the yogurt lids. Because the next blue/brown/green eyed kid to lose might be yours.

Oh, the horror....

I am the great Satan of the fishbowl.

I may have finally killed Floaty.

Today we went to the Japanese Obon Festival.

My favorite quotes from Little O?

"Mama, why are there so many Japanese people here?"

As the traditional dancers were up on stage, she leans over and says,

"Mama, this is NOTHING like "I survived a Japanese Game show."

Little O actually got the coolest gimmicky prize ever--a fortune telling fish. It's a little red cellophane fish that dances on your hand. I wish they offered those at Chuck E Cheese instead of one more plastic ring I'm going to step on in the middle of the night. This thing is cool!

If only we had stopped there.

The horror came when Little O actually GOT the frigging ping pong ball into the bowl.

Fish in a bag, anyone?

shit...

So I looked it up on line, and it says that goldfish and bettas can peacefully co-exist. Great! I dropped our non-descript silver-white-see thru goldie into the bowl and it seemed fine. For a while. But the goldie started freaking out trying to swim through the glass and THAT excited Floaty, and it became apparent that Goldie was not going to live long and prosper.

We decided to put Floaty into the wee small bowl we use for cleaning until a different bowl could be purchased for Goldie, but the damned fish net had disappeared. I'm sure it will show up at some point as the catapult in some Littlest Pet Shop of Horrors scenario, but Little O swears she has no knowledge of its whereabouts.

Friends, using a slotted spoon to catch a fish is a bad idea even in expert hands.

In the hands of a klutz, it is, apparently, a deadly weapon. My pretty pretty betta flopped right out of the slotted spoon, onto the entertainment center, then onto the floor. In my hysteria, I dropped him/her again on the way up to the temporary housing.

I have stated repeatedly that I'm not much of a pet lover, but sweet lord tiny baby jeebus, I hope this fish lives. The goldfish? meh. But my pretty Pink and Purple Rainbow Floaty, please forgive me for trying to spike you into the berber. Twice.

**************************

To cap off our evening of horror, Little O just ran smack into the back of our breakfast nook, splitting her bottom lip right open and giving her upper lip that nice swollen/bee sting look.

School starts Tuesday.

Sweet.

Once again, speaking out of my Ass.

I totally stole this from Bulletproof Bracelets. Montel Williams fought the good fight. Has Daniel Day Lewis struck anyone else as a little odd? Because I think Heath Ledger's death is a damned shame, and a tradgedy beyond measure for his family, but is this just my cold hearted cynical nature getting the best of me? DDL dedicated his SAG award to Ledger? I get expressing shock, horror, and sadness upon learning of his death--it was obviously news to him when he appeared on Oprah. Days later, to still be bringing it up seems wrong to me. I think I would feel differently if they had known each other--then dedicating a win would seem a little more natural.

Perhaps I just don't have the patience required for the artistic temperment. I identify a lot more with what Montel had to say than with any bizarre tributes to Heath Ledger from a man who admits they never even met.

Another reason to rue the day...

blink-red-dress
Originally uploaded by dicesix.

Blog friends are a strange phenomenon. Most you've never met, and never will. But they have let you into some small part of their lives, and even if you are a shy lurker, they affect you with their writing and (for me) their humor.

This red dress is in honor of Greg Beck, a man I never met, but whose writing made me feel like I had. I feel like a dork for getting misty eyed over someone I never met, but there ya go. I will miss his wicked, profanity laced take on every day stupidity, his ghost stories, and his insight.

The girl in the picture is moving out of the frame--hopefully on to something wonderful. Here's hoping Greg has done the same.
Rest in Peace

The Legend of Baby Hush

Derek worked with me at B&N, he was a receiver in the back. He was short and just pure muscle, and covered with tattoos. It took people forever to realize that he was hilarious, because he was pretty intimidating and scowly. He hung out with a hipster crowd who did the whole retro fifties rockabilly thing, and I loved watching the pompadours and Betty Grable dames come to visit him.

I was the kid’s supervisor, so I spent a lot of time in the back room, and Derek was such a doll. After years of avowed bachelorhood and no limitations on himself, he had found a girl going to college down south that amazed him, and who he was willing to see exclusively. We were talking about how amazing this was for him just before he left to go see her for a long weekend.

You make no money selling books, in the front room or the back, which is why Derek was driving on bald tires in a rainstorm, and on his way home he hydroplaned through a red light. He lingered in a coma for like a month and a half.

Derek's Funeral was huge, and afterwards we (the B&N contingent) went out for a salutary drink in his memory. We ended up calling in drunk, way too hammered to go back to work. I guess it was a good thing the store manager was hammered with us, hmm?

Another of that hipster set, Galen, was the one who had convinced Derek to come to work at B&N, and was really close to him. Galen dated the snootiest, prissiest, most obnoxiously Martha Stewart at her worst, WASPY twat ever, and she had the balls to question my presence at the funeral, because she had never seen me at any of their parties. I still loathe her five and six years down the line.

Mexican Wrestling is coming to town and Derek would receive in his wrestling mask some days, scaring the hell out of the UPS guy when he opened the door. He also one day was bitching at Galen, and wrote BABY HUSH across his fingers, prison style. When Galen came to the back next, Derek asked him if he wanted some Baby Hush, and a legend was born.

He was smart and funny, totally crass and obnoxious, crazy and on the verge of big things. Useless Twat Steph was right; I was never in his inner circle. But I think the world could still use a little Baby Hush.

Buy some stamps-eat some Yogurt

pink ribbon
Originally uploaded by Lynxy.

Carolee Wallis was my mother-in-law.

She was a tiny woman with sparkly brown eyes, and she was soft and squishy and tender hearted. I could not have asked for a more perfect grandmother for my son. She was kind of fluttery and really should have been in a fifties sitcom. She was a very fifties kind of mom.

The ironic thing is that Carolee was a survivor.

She survived her childhood, with family issues that no one talked about at the time. She survived the death of her first husband, left with three small children to raise. She survived the abandonment of her second husband, in the midst of her second pregnancy with HIM, leaving her with five kids under ten. She even managed to survive the next two disastrous marriages.

She found true love when she least expected it, and by the time I met her had settled into domestic bliss, taking care of little independent seniors in her community. They were her "ladies" and she gave them companionship and transportation, and made sure that they weren't living out of cat food cans.

She was the very definition of a caregiver.

But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wasn't cared for. The doctor treating her was undergoing treatments for a wasting disease himself, and weeks after her mastectomy, he passed away. Carolee had faith in the system and was sure that if something more needed to be done, someone would be calling her.

She fell through every crack like alice through the looking glass. By the time she insisted that she needed to be seen, she had a festering wound. The woman who took care of everyone else died with a gaping black hole in her chest . It's been six years and I am still incredulous and angry. The woman who had survived so much just couldn't survive this.

Carolee died surrounded by her family, at home, and we worepink ribbons at her funeral. I have my pink ribbon, still held together by the angel pin she gave to us at christmas, up on the wall at my job, to remind me how lucky I am to be here and how precious it all is.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Support it any way you see fit-but support it.

Carolee Wallis was my mother-in-law.

A Good Death.

So I’ve mentioned it before, but let’s address it—what constitutes a Good Death. I grew up in a medical family. Hospitals are not scary places for us. Death is a natural progression, and while it sucks, I think we are sort of fatalistic and clinical about it. It happens, sometimes in spite of everyone’s best efforts, and there isn’t anyone to blame, there is just so much you can do. My paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother both died while in the hospital, under the best round the clock care, of complications that essentially amounted to old age. It was their time.
My Ex-husband’s family, on the other hand, has had several members die well before their time. The thing that their family does differently is that they bring them home to die. Someday I’ll write about who they were and how they died, but today’s point is that they died at home--Surrounded by family, cared for by the people who loved them best. Everything ground to a halt, and their death was the focus of every family member. In my family, everyone continued to go to work each day, and they fit their visits in around the continuation of life.
I’m nauseated just thinking about it, but when the time comes for my folks, I want to make sure that we change that cycle. I want to give them the kind of loving care that my in-laws received. I’ve talked to my mom about this, and she does not want to die in a hospital room. She would like to pass on surrounded by family, not staff.
I know that it’s not always possible, that life happens, but if I can do that one thing for my mom, it seems so important to try. My brother’s wife is a nurse. I won’t expect her to step into that role (although I know she’d be perfectly willing—she’s a doll), it’s something I’d like to do for my mom, when the time comes. My dad? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how he feels about it all. But the fact that my mom has said it out loud to me means that I have to make sure it happens the way she wants.
My folks are spry and in their mid-sixties, and I expect that the Honey’s mom will be the next to pass. She will probably be in a hospital bed when it happens. She and I don’t have that kind of relationship where I could take care of her—aside from the whole language barrier. I find myself at a loss each time she goes into the hospital—I just don’t have enough medical knowledge to be helpful. I feel that lack keenly as I contemplate the day my folks are in that situation. I don’t want to force all decisions onto my brother and his wife. That’s a heavy burden. My parents have been the medical experts in my life—who will guide me when it comes to their issues? I know that they will have relationships with medical professionals that they trust and respect, and ultimately, I’m sure I will lean on those people, and be grateful that I can know that my folks respected those people.
I suspect that often the quality of medical care is a crapshoot. The doctor you get is determined by your HMO rather than any firsthand knowledge of their skill level or professional reputation. I don’t want to even think about my parents dying, but I want to be ready to step up when the time comes and make sure that their death is a good death. I hope I have that chance.