That my clothes are always inside out when I take them from the washer or dryer?
I start with two wool dryer balls, and I ways end up with one or none. Have to find where they are hidden in sheets or underwear.
There are two ways to put in a plug in the outlet. I have a fifty percent chance each time, and each time I do it wrong.
It seems when I reached a certain age this little pea sized pain entered my body. Not a horrible pain, but an annoying one. Thing is, it moves around each day. Yesterday it was on the top of my left foot. The day before it was in my right knee. The day before it was in the base of my thumb. Doesn’t stay long. Likes to travel. Almost like a bad fifties horror movie.
Grocery prices are unbelievable. How does a family get fed properly? My two absolute necessities, ones I will pay whatever I have to for, are coffee and dog food. I can work around the rest. My huge bags of Starbucks coffee from Sam’s have gone from $15 to $21.99. I drink one big cup of coffee a day, and damn it is going to be a good one. lol
When I look in the mirror, which I try to avoid in the first place, my mother looks back at me. Sneaky bugger.
My mom at about sixteen years old….or maybe it was fifty…..I really don’t know
Tomato soup used to be my absolutely favorite winter food. I made it, I liked it from certain restaurants, (Tupelo Honey was my fav) and I used their recipe. I cannot even swallow it now. The thought of tomato soup disgusts me. I loved it.
I never thought I could miss someone as much as I miss Ann.
I think back to childhood and wish I had the wisdom of an adult then. I am sure everyone does, but it is a very interesting concept. Oh, the things I would have done differently, and not bad I would have made good. Just things I would have done differently. That is a whole book.
I love winter, but when it gets to about March, I am looking forward to warmer weather. Now, near the end of August, I am thinking of cool nights, colorful trees and waking up to a foot of snow. I know, I am crazy, but I do love winter.
Now in complete contrast, the thing about winter I am not looking forward to is having to be inside. I made that ramp on the front of my house into a porch, and Lu
(Does she not have the life!?)
and I literally live on it from late afternoon until evening when the bugs start to get me. If it is not raining, we are out there. Aside from my fire place, that porch has been the best investment made to this derelict house. Ok, changing the bathroom from the size of a closet was a good one too. I bring my beading table out to the porch and work for hours. I often have my dinner out there. I see people. I see dogs. I do have a covered back porch, but it is lonely back there. Ann loved the solitude of it. I do not at all.
Why does breakfast taste better in a diner than it does when I make it. Even if I make the exact thing? That is the thing I miss most living in this area of Michigan. There are very few breakfast places. One in Manistee, I think. Then a few further out. BUT, none….not one….even Cracker Barrel in Traverse City serves turkey or chicken sausage. I have not eaten pork for 22 years, and in Asheville, every place had an alternative for pork sausage or bacon. Cracker Barrel (which is over an hour away) has now switched to a disgusting plant-based product. I think it is made out of same thing the orthotics the foot doctor gave me. I have had decent plant based products, but that is not one of them. It would be so easy to just put some Johnsonville turkey sausage in the freezer and thaw it when ordered. It does not take up much room, and it would make me happy. Yes, I have written. Lol
This had turned into a rant. Sometimes that is my mood. Sometimes my mood is melancholy. I want silly back. I am working on it. I saw a glimpse of it when Florence was vising. A couple of times during that week I laughed until I lost my breath and peed a bit ( I know, TMI).
I do not know why, but most of high school is a blur to me. Jan Brenner Alpert and I hung around the most, and I certainly socialized, but it is time of my life that has not stuck. I only went to the first reunion, and never went again. Every time there is one, I promise Fran Tompkins and Diane Kaloustian Sproul I will attend the next one. Karen Sidley and I were very tight in high school also. I envied her because she had a tv in her bedroom and would often miss school because she was up too late watching old movies. She passed before I moved to the NYC area in 1980.
Our high school was not completed for our tenth grade year, so we had to share a school with another in the city, Bentley High. The Bentley High kids went to school from 7-12 and the Stevenson High kids went from 1-6. Correct me if I have the times wrong, but that is what I remember. The great thing about it was you could never be told to go to bed because you had school in the morning. It was the greatest schedule. I don’t remember extra-curricular activities though, but I bet I was well rested. It was an odd year because when moved to our own school, it really was still under construction and we had physical education in classrooms. Mattson and Schwedy (spelling, but she had a cork screw pony tail)….remember those teachers? She would not teach sex ed, but Mattson did.
The school had a pool by eleventh grade, and most was complete. I remember being kicked out of an English class and told to go and sit in a corner by myself in the library. Um, our library was round, and it was the center of a satellite style school. I walked back into class about ten minutes later, to the teacher’s horror, and announced there were no corners in a round room. Damn I was ballsy. Dodenhof was the name of the teacher, but not sure I spelled it correctly.
Senior year was supposed to be so exciting, but it was so socially troubling. Many of the boys were looking at Viet Nam in their futures. We have one or two on the Viet Nam Memorial for missing or being POWs. Martin Luther King Jr was killed in April of our senior year to be followed two months later with assignation of Bobby Kennedy.
This would have been a photo of our graduation except for the fact we had tonado warnings, and they had to hold it in the gym.
High school was not the favorite time of my life so far. I taught high school for over thirty years and loved the age level, but I would not put myself there as a teen again. Sure, there were a lot of malls and cruising Telegraph, State Fairs and Riverside Park, Plum Street and Bob Lo, but it was a pressure keg too. At least for me.
I do want to say I appreciate how supportive so many of you have been. It has been nice to get to know some of you I only knew by name back then.
Facebook is a great place to catch and keep up with people, and so many of my friends here are from Stevenson High School. I remember you, but we really did not have much interaction, or we did and that is part of the blur….lol…had not discovered that magic weed yet, so it cannot be that. Never had a drink before I went to college either. What a good girl I WAS.
In no order:
I remember tidbits about a few: Gary Sarut should have put you in the junior high section. Sorry. I will tell the story now though. Gary walked into my classroom in, I think, ninth grade, and we all thought he was the teacher.
Marsha Gardhouse Zielinski and I were Home Ec buddies. Do you remember that they let us make a pie with Crème de menthe in it? The teacher actually brought crème de menthe to class! We had a Shirley Temple kitchen also. Wonder if her picture is still taped inside that corner cabinet?
Leslie Bottle Garten and I probably go back to junior high also. In high school we used to go to Chinese restaurants a lot. I also remember we went to see Hair at a theater in Detroit. You were also on Coop so were able to leave school mid-day. I used to sneak out with you and we would go to that taco place on Telegraph. One time your dad passed us on the road.
Jo Anna Kolodziej, we actually met in elementary school. I have a picture of an early birthday party where you have a cast on your arm. JoAnna’s son wrote a wonderful book Sweet Girl, and I read and loved it before I knew that the author, Travis Mulhauser, was her son. Keep waiting for another.
There was my cheerleading group. I was an alternate, which seemed to be my place in the cheerleading life. I always thought that being a cheerleader meant your life was perfect, and that was a bunch of Schmidt. I did not even try out my senior year.
I headed off to Eastern Michigan University to become a teacher. What fun those years were in college. I learned to drink …..didn’t we all….and ironically I hardly drink at now. Did enough then. I lived in the dorm for the first two years, Jones Hall, and I loved every minute of it. I loved having all those people constantly coming and going, and I might have stayed there four years if it had been cool to do so. It was not. One downside for sure was that my father died during my freshmen year. Was glad for the support of my dorm buddies, for sure.
Jones Hall, Eastern Michigan University
Mary Parker Key, whom we called Ava, and still do to this day, and Pat Ryan Johnson were two roommates freshman year. We are still great friends, and we get together a couple of times a year. Pat raised her family in England, and now lives back in Michigan. Ava is in Ohio, after being all over the country. So we are now relatively close. Last winter we scheduled a vacation in Florida. Pat and I went for a glorious week, Ava had a run in with Covid. We are planning a week or so in New Mexico this winter, and we know the weather might not be great but we will have such a good time no matter what. Last winter Pat came to visit and we got snowed in for three days. We never ran out of things to talk about or wine to drink.
Donna Stanchina Parish was a friend of mine in high school, and then she lived across the hall from me in the dorm at Eastern. We became good friends, and then went on our young adult lives in different directions. We always kept a loose connect, but as grown-up adults, we have built a very strong friendship. She is one of my greatest supporters, and I do miss seeing her since she moved to Portland, Oregon. She will be joining us in New Mexico though, and we will all have such a good time.
There are others who have passed or just have removed themselves, and some I have lost total track of. Joan Birnie and Paula Alexander are two I have lost connection with, but would love to reconnect with.
Shout out to Cindy Gdowski Matuszak, a friend from the dorm. She doesn’t know it but she was a great inspiration to me. She also had the only winter wedding I have ever been to. Fur (faux) around the veil and bottom of the skirt. I remember that so well. Her husband Jerry, whom we all loved, passed recently, and he will always be remembered by me as such a nice guy, and someone who put up with so many of Cindy’s friends around all the time.
Have no idea how I was lucky enough to meet Ginny Patterson O’Brien my junior year. She was living in married housing at the time. I was in an apartment. I know we had some common friends, but do not remember how we got connected. To this day she calls me Chatty Kathie, or Chatty for short. Had some great times, kept up a bit and now have connected again. Good to have her around.
Well, that is high school and college. Next on to teaching. This one was not entertaining, I know, but I could not skip that part of my life.
Oh, lots of riots and SDS meetings. I thought being a member of SDS would come back and haunt me, but so far I have been safe. Lol I participated in the sit ins. Hell, that is my specialty. I will never participate in the weeding of the garden or the picking up trash in the swamp, but sitting in I can do.
Got pepper sprayed once during an altercation with Ypsilanti’s finest, and it was the highlight of my year. Seriously. Hahahahah
This is the Ypsilanti Water Tower, next to the EMU campus. It was said that if a virgin ever graduated from Eastern, it would fall. I believe it is still up. Looks like a penis doesn’t it. Do you think the designer realized that and said, “Let’s make the water tower look like a penis for all time. Think anyone will notice?” Duh.
I thought of a good blog topic, but it will be a long one, so I am going to post it piece by piece. I printed up my list of Facebook friends, and I am going to write about them. I divided the list up into times of my life, and certainly people weave around into and out of the lists. Some on my list have sadly passed on, and others just have left Facebook, I think. I will begin with an apology if I skip someone, and I will end it weeks from now with same apology. Some of you have made a greater impression on my life than I on yours, and that is really ok. I hate some of your politics, and that is ok too. I can get passed all of that. I would sit and have a beer with any and all of you. If it is good beer, that is. My preference is Pilsner if anyone is taking notes.
The first section is “First and Longest.” I was going call it Oldest, but I thought that would get me in trouble. Hahaha
Randi Schott Falle is the friend on Facebook I have had the longest. I think we go back to second or third grade, Taft Elementary. I think Randi says we met at Wilcox school in first grade though. She may be right. I remember being so envious because she had a canopy bed. She introduced me to ginger, honestly. We were in the general store in Greenfield Village buying candy sticks, and she bought ginger. I had never heard of ginger before, so I got one too. To this day ginger flavor and scent are among my favorites. I stood up in Randi’s wedding when she married Gary. Side note, and I am not sure I can really put it here, but Gary was the one who introduced me to that magic herb. Grin.
Jan Brenner Alpert and I became friends in fifth grade, Coolidge Elementary. Livonia was really growing in those years and I went to four elementary schools without ever moving houses. One year my mom had three kids in three different elementary schools. Jan and I were talking the other day about how many times we went to the Livonia Cinemas. One day we saw the double feature of David and Lisa and Lord of the Flies. We left so depressed that is a wonder we did not just walk into traffic on Seven Mile. To this day Jan and I get together a few times a year to laugh and do a bit of shopping. We are in constant contact via texts and email. Jan’s dad use to take us to Tiger baseball games where we would sit in the bleachers and watch the drunks more than we watched the games. Once a guy was so drunk he got naked, and it was the highlight of the summer. Lol Jan lost her husband Gary last August, within the year of me losing Ann. Linda Holton Little is a childhood friend who became my cousin. Figure that one out. Lol. The families were so close that we called each other’s parents aunt and uncle, and then my mom married her uncle, and we became actual cousins. So we became family, sort of, after being family sort of. Linda is in all the dancing school pictures I have posted on this blog. Once when we were children, we laid down on I696. It was just being built, and we knew we one day wanted to say we had laid down on a major highway. I was always jealous of Linda because she was the only girl in the family she had her own bedroom, whereas I had to share with a sister.
Linda Berry Hofmeyer is actually my sister-in-law Debbie’s cousin. Small world. Linda and Debbie’s aunt lived next door to me, and I got to know Linda when she would visit. She lived only five or six blocks away, so being friends was within walking distance. Her sister Lisa Berry Bobinski is one of my Facebook friends also. Linda, remember the winter hats we used to style as wigs? Lol I went on vacation with Linda’s family, and I had two of the best weeks of my life.
Judy Gothelf Dobranski was my seventh-grade physical education teacher at Bryant Junior High. I adored her from the moment I met her, as did everyone else. I am sure some of you reading right now are going, “Oh wow, I remember her!” I am not sure what it was, but think I would have taken a bullet for that woman. We have kept up all these years, and just had lunch together two weeks ago. She has not changed, and if you ran into her into her you would know her on sight. If I had to analyze it, I would say she was the first adult who really liked me for me when she did not have to. Make sense? And now we are about the same age. Funny how that happens. Judy lost her husband the month after I lost Ann. Love you Judy.
During those junior high years, I met other friends that are still hard-core friends today. Seems like in those years I connected so deeply.
Francine Tompkins….Fran oh Fran. How many detentions would we have missed had we not formed a fast friendship? When we were in eighth grade I woke her dog, and he bit my face. But that is a story for another time. By the time we were in ninth grade we were not allowed to be in any classes together. The school was successful in breaking up a beautiful, if not naughty friendship, and in high school we hung with totally different crowds. The school was better for it, I am sure. Once we pretended we were playing strip poker just to entice John Rice (even rhymes) through Fran’s upstairs bedroom window. Fran, it is also to be noted, had an air-conditioned sheet. Seriously. Fran has discovered she is an artist, and a great one at that.
Maureen Davidson Petrucci was the third musketeer with Fran and I. She never seemed to get in the trouble Fran and I did though. Why was that? I do not think Maureen is on Facebook any longer, so she will not see this, but she did make up a disease, Hanging Pelvisitis. We had the custodian convinced. What good times we had. Maureen was and is an artist, and for a project once, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when sugar cost a fortune, Maureen and I made a southern plantation out of sugar cubes. Heaven knows what it cost our parents, who would do anything if it was a school project. Diane Kaloustain Sproull and I were really close in ninth grade when we were hot shit cheerleaders. We were roommates for a while at Eastern Michigan University, but then drifted. In the last few years, we have reconnected, and we have a lot in common. She and her husband Greg Sproull have been great support.
I think that takes me through junior high. If I missed anyone, I probably put you in the high school section, which will be written next.
One last junior high story…and I will not mention the girl’s name. She was famous for two things…one she stuffed her bra so much that by the end of the day she had one big boob in the middle of her chest. Secondly, one day during the above-mentioned Cuban Missile Crisis, she jumped out of her desk, shouted, “We are all going to die!” and ran out of the room.
Another quickie. Helen Fowler, who left us far too soon, was getting frustrated that our algebra teacher was not coming to her desk, though she kept raising her hand. Helen was a good sized girl, tall and sturdy, and in that frustration jammed her fist in the air, at the same time the teacher was leaning down to her (neither saw each other), connecting fully with his jaw and knocking him out. She jumped up and ran out of the door screaming, “I killed him!”
That is what she would say about my choice of paint for the house. I put lipstick on a pig.
This is my house…our house I still say most of the time. It is not pretty, but we had grand plans to make it so. It is about 130 years old, and we can trace someone being here from about 1887 forward. One of the plans we had was to have the house vinyl sided, but they are asking near 25k here for siding, and it is just not worth putting that kind of money on this old house. The siding there now is asphalt siding that cannot be decently painted. I am sure there is wood under that, but who knows what condition it is in.
This is what it looked like when we bought it in 2018
I think it has more character now. The porch was actually the ramp that was built by Habitat for Ann to come home from the hospital. At my sister’s suggestion, I made it into a porch last spring, and this spring it was stained. Lu, the dog who does not know she is a dog, and I spend a lot of time out there.
It looks much bigger than it is. The upstairs on the left is a small sewing/craft room and a nice sized guest room. Those two rooms are only the size of the dining and living rooms, which they are above. The rest of the upstairs in attic, complete with odd and creepy things that would make a good separate blog.
This was a religious shrine when we bought the house. It now houses a hanging basket and a rooster brought from the mountains. We planted asparagus when we first moved because we were told the soil was so sandy that growing asparagus was a cinch. Bullschmidt. Some animal ate all but two….see them? I figured if they lasted through the carnage, they deserved to be left alone.
Another rooster from the mountains. They have both adapted well to the long and hard Michigan winters.
The blue in the distance is Lake Michigan, just three or four blocks away.
You can thank me. I had a very long continuation of this where I described, in detail, the layout of the house now and historically. (It has been added onto at least three times, making all the dang walls load bearing.) I deleted it because it even bored me.
I have a second topic to cover, but I will make that my next blog. I need to do it in the next couple of days because it is time sensitive. You see, I want to buy a riding lawn mower, and basically I want it to ride around town. Now you see why it needs a second blog? Maybe tomorrow.
We were a very unknown group of small sailors who fit nicely on small boats. We could sneak on a boat, do a job, and sneak back off….if you get my drift. We were wanted in eleven countries, and we had no fear. My cousin Linda, in the middle, was the ring leader. I was her right hand man/woman/kid, though I am actually on her left in the photo. I don’t remember the curly headed blond, but I bet we shoved her overboard soon after this was taken, as I think she might have been more annoying than even I was.
Ok, it is all a lie. It was dancing school, and believe it or not, we sang and dance to “There is Nothing Like a Dame” from South Pacific. Would they be allowed to do that now?
We’ve got sunlight on the sand We’ve got moonlight on the sea We’ve got mangoes and bananas we can pick right off a tree We’ve got volleyball and ping-pong and a lot of dandy games What ain’t we got? We ain’t got dames!
I think back, and I can remember doing the song, and at one point we all punched the air to the line “We ain’t got dames.” Someone find me a therapist!!
I also spent some time in the Pacific, just blending in with the natives. They reached out to the Gods and asked that my eye be replaced. I taught them ways of the new world, told them great stories of everything I could make up, and eventually hopped a banana boat and came back to Michigan.
Betty Johnson School of Dance, what were you thinking? I have absolutely no clue as to what this outfit was for, other than another dancing school costume. Maybe Linda will remember what this was. Were we part of Children of the Damned?
I know I posted this one last time, showing my mom’s photographic talents, but it fits here too. (I found these slides in the garage, so I think they got a little moldy.)
This little number was from “Hard Hearted Hanna, the Vamp of Savannah.”
Again, we sang and danced to a totally inappropriate song. I just looked up the lyrics and this song was actually written by Ray Charles.
They call her hardhearted Hannah The vamp of Savannah The meanest gal in town Leather is tough But Hannah’s heart is tougher She’s a gal who likes to see men suffer To tease ’em and thrill ’em To torture and kill ’em Is her delight they say I saw her at the seashore with a great big pan There was Hannah pouring water on a drowning man That’s hardhearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah G-A
Oh my goodness. It is not a wonder the convent would not take me. Well, that and the fact I was not Catholic….. Lastly, I want to share a childhood trauma with you all. The issue was treated, and I really have no residual problems, but at the time it was such an embarrassment to my family and friends. I do not remember the name of the affliction….
…but it caused me to have very large feet. Just riding in the car on a family vacation was such an ordeal. People would stare and make such insensitive comments everywhere we went. The surgery was a success. I really cannot even talk about it yet. Children can be so cruel.
This is my parents on their wedding day. They were married 24 years when my father died. She remarried and she passed in their 24th year. She said to me, “Damn, I just cannot make it to 25!”
She taught me many of the things I had to know over the years. She taught me to cook. My sister got the cooking gene, not me, but I don’t starve.
She also taught me the proper care of infants. You can see in this photo she was showing me how to safely pick one up.
She taught me how to be a good photographer. I think this might be the “do as I say not as I do” type of teaching. My whole childhood is filled with photos such as these.
She also taught me how to cut hair. If your bangs are crooked, cut more. If they are still crooked, cut even more. This is how my hair looked most of my younger years.
Looks like some kid from the Little Rascals, doesn’t it?
But most of all she taught me not to take Schmidt from anyone. I am like her in many ways, and unlike her in as many.
I know old is nebulous. You are what you feel. Age is just a number. I can come up with a dozen more platitudes like those. But I think I just got old.
I wore my slippers to the post office.
What is next? Wearing my underpants (I love that word by the way) over my clothes? Or my bra?
Calling my pants slacks? Eating dinner at four? Going to bed after Jeopardy? (Get rid of Mattea, she is driving me nuts) Putting tissues up my bathrobe sleeve?
I really cannot expect to grow old gracefully, and I never was graceful in youth. I stumbled through, and now I would like to go back and do it a different way. Running away to join a circus might have actually been a great adventure. Who knows where I would have ended up? I would not have met Ann though, because she did not like circuses. Actually, either do I, so maybe it was not such a good idea after all. I might have liked driving a truck back and forth across the country, with Ann and the dogs and cats. Ok, maybe that was not a good one either. I did love my adult life, for the most part. I loved my twenty plus years with Ann. I would not change that, only the end.
I went to college because it was expected I would. I became a teacher because I had a couple of teachers who made incredible differences in my life. I knew I was going to be a teacher when I was in junior high, just did not know what I wanted to teach. First I wanted to be a physical education teacher because I thought it would be fun to play games all day. Then I learned that it required a lot of science and anatomy, so that was off the list. I loved math, and I was good at it, so math teacher was my next choice. Then I got a C in geometry. I was so good in algebra, but geometry just did not make sense to me. It was not the distraction of having Fran in my class, as the school system and our parents had already passed legislation that we were never to be in any classes together ever, ever again . That is another blog!
I loved to read and thought English might be nice. I loved teaching, and I think I was good at it. I loved the literature part of it, but hated and I mean hated the grammar part. Like geometry, it made no sense to teach grammar from a book. Seemed to me it should be taught in reading and writing. I did like the kids though. They made it worthwhile.
Now I wear my slippers to the post office.
Maybe I should be ok with that, just like I should be ok the day I wear my….here comes that funny word again….underpants over my clothes. Superman did it. Some of the early photos of Superwoman shows that it was her style choice also.
If I have to get old, let me be a sassy, funny and clever old lady. Let me laugh at farts, cry at the cuteness of dogs, sing off key, miss people, and still take chances.
Let there be adventures and lots of laughs in my future. Hope to see you all sometime.
Be prepared to be shocked. It’s ok. I am an adult, and what I am going to describe to you was legal. But still, be prepared to be shocked. Sometimes I wonder if I have a brain in my head.
Michigan is a recreational and medicinal marijuana state. Who saw that coming? Not me. Anyway, I have been reading a lot about the medicinal value of THC…the part of pot that gets you high. For years CBD oil has been around, and that is in pot too, but it does not get you high, and most of what you buy is fake.
Let’s go back…waaaaay back. There are many of you on my friends’ list that have smoked with me years ago and not so many years ago. I never really liked to get high, just like to get to that 1 1/2 glass of wine mellow spot. Have not been a good drinker because it is too easy to run right over that mellow spot, if you know what I mean. I don’t like it there.
So, I have been reading about Rick Simpson Oil (RSO), and actually Ann and I tried to make it about five years ago, but that is another story. Damn, I sound like a pot head, but I am not. I do not like edibles because you never know when they are going to hit you. I do not like surprises. Remember, I am the one who reads the first chapter, last chapter, and then the rest of the book. So, I digress…..
RSO is a tar like substance that is made from reducing pot and then reducing it more. It is very potent,(“ RSO is a highly potent THC concentrate that may contain more than 90% THC” I got that from a website.) and it is used to cure many maladies. It is supposed to be very good for people with seizures, and some people say it will cure cancer. Thankfully, I do not….knock on wood…suffer from a serious disease other than some arthritis, and right now killer anxiety. From what I figured, I was a perfect candidate for RSO.
Called around and found that one of our cannabis stores has it, so I drove over to talk to them, and to buy some. I had it a week before I had the nerve to try it. The dosage to start is a quarter to a half the size of a grain of rice. It comes in a squatty syringe and you squeeze out the tiny amount you want. I decided that I did not want to try as large a dose as a whole quarter of a grain of rice, so I put a tiny dot on the end of a toothpick or on your finger. Kind of the size I would think ants poop.
(I think this is the size of whole grain of rice, and a photo I got off the internet of RSO.)
I made sure my afternoon was clear, and I went about doing what I needed to do, in the house. About an hour and fifteen minutes later a great euphoria came over me, and I sat down for a bit, just to enjoy it. It was nice. Might try it at night for sleep. Lasted an hour or so, and really did not get in the way of anything I wanted to do. But it was nice.
During last week, I did it whenever I had a free afternoon. Did not want to put myself in the position to be driving.
Then yesterday happened. I ran errands in the morning and got back about noon. I decided to try some RSO, just because. A relaxing afternoon seemed to be in order. When I pressed the plunger the syringe broke, putting the tar like substance on my hands. There was a dot, quite a bit larger than usual, on the end of the toothpick but I thought, oh what the hell. I think I might have licked my fingers too.
The man came to give me an estimate on a broken window. I went across the street to meet a neighbor. I had lunch. Then it hit. It hit like a shovel to the back of my head. It was so powerful that I had to sit down. And there I sat for four or five hours. Honestly. Well, to be totally truthful, I did not sit. I floated. At one point I thought I was floating on my back in water.
And yes, that is me. At least in my floating it was me.
I heard the dog bark and wondered where she was. I forced my eyes open and saw that the dog was sound asleep on my lap, all 61 pounds of her. But I could not feel her weight on me. Then I floated again, and I went here and there and never left my chair. I wish I had thought to put on Pink Floyd. as I think I might have enjoyed that. I have never in my life been that high or drunk. Not even after surgery, and I have done some strange things coming out of anesthesia. One time I kept taking that annoying oxygen thing off my finger and yelling “Code Blue!” That was nothing compared to how I felt yesterday.
Seriously. I am find today. Feel great. No RSO for me today or any day. I will NEVER , EVER, EVER ingest that stuff again. I will stick to my boxed wine. I actually do like this wine.
First…Ignore that it says not secure. That is the internet’s way to to get people to pay for a certain certification, people who sell things and take credit card numbers. I do neither, so it is not an issue.
In 2007 I started a blog to keep friends and family updated on the building of our mountain cabin. I blogged constantly and had many followers, until it was hacked around 2015. There was no reason for the hack. I did not sell anything so there were no credit cards or financial accounts attached to it. They took every photo and every word I posted for almost ten years. I now go through a hosting service, and I have owned this domain, Ann’s and Possum Manor’s for twenty years now. Time to bring at least one of them out of the cob webs.
I make no promises. I hope to blog at least once a week, sometimes more. You might get sick of my dog or my beads, but for the most part, I will try to keep things fresh. The posts that are here already were ones I did on Facebook, but stopped transferring them a long time ago. I attached them to the blog but never made the blog live. I am keeping them because they are there.
I think the way the comments go, the first time you comment I have to approve you before your comment will publish. Then after that you can comment all you want. It keeps all the junk people out, hopefully.
I will be adding lots of things to make the blog more interesting, but I am so out of practice that I am not sure what is available right now.
So on with the show!
I guess I will begin with my beading. Just before Covid, I taught myself to weave by watching YouTube videos. I made scarves by the dozen and dish towels in even more dozens. Then I got bored with it. I used to read book upon book upon book too, but I just found I could not pay attention. Then my friend Carrie gave me an old Cherokee weaving loom, and I just clicked with it. At first I was embarrassingly awful , but I have to say that I am now getting the hang of it. I loom bead lanyards and dog collars, but I have found beading Christmas ornaments had become very satisfying too. I am really rough with the earrings, so I doubt I will be posting any of those for a while, but I will share some of what I have already done.
These are dog collars, almost finished. The beaded portions are glued onto the collar and then they are sewn. I still need to sew them before they are wearable.
This is Lu’s collar.
This is one I am still working on, but soon to be finished.
I will show my ornaments at a later date. I don’t what to over whelm everyone the first blog.
This is my parents on their wedding day. They were married 24 years when my father died. She remarried and she passed in their 24th year. She said to me, “Damn, I just cannot make it to 25!”
