Talk Thursday: Long Time Gone

Warning - self indulgent post ahead

The older you get, okay let me rephrase that; the older I get the more I think about the moments of my past. And yes there are a lot of regrets. I regret I wasn’t a better daughter. I regret I wasn’t a better mother. I regret I’m not Super Woman who can balance both family needs and job demands seamlessly. I’m not sure Super Woman exist; I based my vision of Super Mom on my mother. And while she was everything I aspired to be, she didn’t have a full time job outside the home. So I have endlessly battered my head against that brick wall of comparison and fallen short.

What I do not regret are my three husbands. Why? From each I have garnered invaluable lessons. From ex-husband one came the lesson that I am strong enough, that I can endure, that I can over come, that I am a survivor. Yes, you are going to argue that I also have a fine daughter from husband one, but puuuulllllleeeease remember I was pregnant when I got married. Ergo, the wedding didn’t have to happen for me to have a great kid. But then I’d have missed out on other things as well. Marriage to husband one has been a long time over, having divorced in 1978. Wow, how often do you get to say in your life, I remember thirty years ago.

From husband number two came several realizations. First you can make yourself into what a man wants, and it won’t be enough – or it wasn’t what he really wanted in the first place – joke’s on me. You can lie to yourself, work to make everything right, and it won’t be enough by a long shot – stupid me. You (okay, yes I – but I hate using the word I all the time) can give yourself over to a man and a marriage and it will blow up in your face – I’m sure idiot was marked on my forehead in invisible ink somewhere.

This isn’t to say I didn’t have my problems too. My family suffered from my PMS, and before you think I’m making this up -a few PMS facts (Google it.) I was diagnosed with PMS in the late ‘80s. This is what I learned. 75% of women on the face of this earth suffer PMS in one form or another – for up to three weeks a month, twelve months a year through out their child bearing years. It can be physical symptoms – bloating, headaches, breast tenderness, acne, weight gain, and let’s not forget cramps. And those are just a few of the physical symptoms. It can be psychological symptoms (this is where the fun comes in) as many as 50-60% of women with severe PMS have an underlying psychiatric disorder (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). Or it can be both. Oh us lucky women.

Ten percent of the world’s women stricken with PMS are either suicidal or homicidal.

Aren’t we just lucky? Now consider the luck of my family. I usually just suffered the physical symptoms. But for about five years running my family suffered the psychological symptoms approximately once a year. In late August or early September just at the onset of ex-husband’s nine month hunting season. Nine months. I know, you think I exaggerate, but I was married to a bow hunter – September to May he was gone scouting, hunting, tracking – Long, long, time gone. I would explode. Go literally insane – screaming, rant, rail, everything short of my head spinning and me puking green Jello. Don’t believe me, ask Psam.

Now you might say, no wonder he went hunting nine months out of the year. I will fire back, that my PMS didn’t come into play until several years into this scenario, and totally disappeared with our divorce. Well, not true, it reoccurred with one short-term boyfriend’s incessant jealousy and idiotic acts of domination. My PMS ended with a good diet, exercise, and better men in my life.

While it took me decades to get over my divorce from ex-husband number two I learned I don’t need a man in my life. I will not be a doormat anymore. And more importantly I learned the extent that I went in my life to keep him around and that you can’t make a self-indulgent superficial person happy, whose not happy from within in the first place.

From Ducky I’ve learned I can be loved for being me. That my laughter is the best response, but I’m more than willing to yell back these days. That he really is my best friend and partner - That I am loved.

Years ago I had my numbers done. A long time student of astrology I knew a bit about myself (I don’t believe in horoscopes – I do like the power and insights of natal charts.) But I learned several new insights from my numbers. Maybe the most important was my life lessons. I need to conquer anger. While I’m only at the middle years of my life, I think I’m learning that lesson as well as the ones life is teaching me.

Isn’t it amazingly sad that it takes a lifetime to learn the most important lessons? While we are born with the tools to learn, we are not equipped with a roadmap to mental health, physical well being, and a divining rod to take us to the people who are right for us – friends, family, employers the first time. But if we weren’t learning our lessons the entire time why would we be here? Life is learning – when I quit learning please scatter my ashes to the wind at the water line of my Pacific.

In these years a long time gone, I have learned that I am amazingly blessed.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: Superstitious

Athletes are considered (blind, blanket indictment) the most superstitious people in the world. If you doubt that take a look at David Wells game day cap. One Cleveland Indians player was so fanatical about being touched that the umpires literally halted a game to tell the Yankee players to quit touching him. Crap, even playing Farkle I won’t roll after hitting 300 if one of my two or three dice comes up a six – but that’s just common sense.

For the most part I’m not superstitious or at least I wasn’t before football. I have no fear of Friday the thirteenth (but I do harbor distrust of Saturday the fourteenth.) I understand black cats are popular familiars. Cracks in sidewalks happen over time (or from earthquakes, large trucks coming to a stop where no truck was meant to drive, or from tree roots.) Rings around the sun and the moon are caused by moisture in the atmosphere; “blood on the moon” is caused by pollutants in the atmosphere (so maybe the death superstition thingie has a shred of truth.) Itchy fingers or palm to me means I’m about to pop a blood vessel. Mirrors break frequently without the end of all things good as we know it. What rabbit’s foot was lucky for the rabbit? And, while I wasn’t born in October I adore opals (okay my rising sign is Libra but I don’t think that really counts, despite what I tell my mother.) So there!

But let my Ducks wear white helmets on to the football field and crap they are doomed. They started the season with a loss in white helmets and no one believed me. I have become much more believable since the Rosebowl. I prefer that my Ducks not score first, especially if said score is a field goal. Crap, talk about doomed. Oregon needs to suck it up and follow a few superstitions before game day.
1) Sacrifice the opposing team’s mascot to appease the football gods.
2) Eat chicken before hitting the gridiron.
3) Walk the warning track seven times counter-clockwize on game day.
4) And, never, under any circumstances talk arrogant smack – that’s just asking to be jinxed. (That and the whole pride goes before the fall thingie.)

And, finally - Yes, I believe in the pie god. Hell, I enjoy crop circles too, call me loony.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: Ambiguity

Late and out of order, my apologies.

2010 – has become my year of setting the record straight. I am completely fed up with mass emailings from “Friends” filled with the latest recycled lies. I’m usually all for recycling, but really people get a life, get a clue, get out of my life.

Several weeks ago a “friend” sent me an email filled with a bunch of crap. Sadly, I have long deleted the email and my reply, complete with the truth and links where they can find the supporting stats to support my “facts”. I then sent email out to not just the idiot who sent it to me, but also to the other fifty or so people he’d mass mailed to. I actually got one thank you back. Whoa, dude. Delusional, I thought that was it.

Then about a week later a “friend” sent me a mass emailing filled with crap about President Barack Obama. I’m now on a mission. It took me, maybe, fifteen minutes to find the information I needed before mass emailing back to her and those she’d massed mailed. This time I kept my emails just for this post.

Please, note the link to Snopes at the bottom of her post, I love how all the bad emails encourage you to check it, but none ever do or they’d have not sent the email (maybe) in the first place. Idiots. And I’m tired of being told I’m not a Christian, because I disagree with Pat Boone and his tribe of Uber Christian Sheep.

I am a Christian (Quaker by choice, raised Presbyterian). Which leads me to sorrow that I didn’t ask her why in this case bearing false witness is an acceptable Christian action – en mass?

Here is my reply –

From: Cele [mailto:cele@celebrindal.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 8:22 AM
To: Rabid Uber Christian
Subject: Re: The President Without A Country. 6

Rabid Uber Christian,

I don't know if the truth about the following makes a difference to you, it certainly does to me. So, annoyed as hell at getting these emails (from many sources) spewing half truths and lies I've decided to wage my own truth campaign. Please keep reading. If you want more information
about the truth, check out FactCheck.org it is a non profit, non partisan fact check organization. Then go to snopes.com - the website that is posted at the bottom (of your original email) for verification about what I am posting as the truth.

In each case the quote was either misquoted or taken out of context and cannot stand as presented by Pat Boone. I can deal with the fact that many Americans don't like our current president enough to give him a chance (gosh at least more than 365 days) but really hatred should be based of fact not blind ignorance – or worse, ignorance by design and
choice.

Pat Boone's commentary shouldn't be read by anyone, unless they are studying how to twist or omit words in a campaign of deceit and lies.

Cele

Note: The following addresses only Mr. Boone’s misrepresentation of President Obama comments, the actual editorial from Pat Boone has been redacted, but can be found online at World Daily Net. The Snopes link only validates the attributions of the editorial as being from Pat Boone, but can find no documentation validating his claims. Words in bold below are Pat Boone's or misquotes from his email - aka - his first post at some news blog.

The President Without A Country
By Pat Boone

"We're no longer a Christian nation." - President barack obama, June 2009

What the president said was this...
Obama, June 28, 2006 (prepared remarks): Given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
Fact Check

"America has been arrogant." - President barack obama
What the president said was this...
Mr Obama said: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. "Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
Telegraph

"After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals."- President barack obama
What the president said was this...
"And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles. 9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year."
Huffington Post

"You might say that America is a Muslim nation."- President barack obama, Egypt 2009
What the president said in an interview with a French journalist was this...
"Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples."
Fact Check

Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president. I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/patboone.asp

Here’s Rabid Uber Christian’s reply,

----- Original Message -----
From: Rabid Uber Christian
To: Cele
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 11:05 AM
Subject: RE: The President Without A Country.

With or without Pat Boone's commentary, I have felt that our president is leaning towards a one world government. I can not quote a direct comment, only that I feel he is not the patriot that I was taught to be. I have fiercely loved America since I was a grade schooler. In Obama's early schooling he wasn't even in the United States. Time will tell us what his plan is. In the mean time, I will respect his office as president in this great nation (Christian).
I do realize that the internet is a cesspool of miss information.
Wishes for a great new year.
Rabid Uber Christian (yes I was nice to remove her name)
P.S. I didn't mean to step on toes


I love that she has a problem because he wasn’t even in the United State when he was in early schooling. She on the other hand has no qualms nor questioning her vote for a man who was born in Panama (which she shouldn't, but really fair is fair when questioning in ignorance) and a woman who is an international policy expert because she thinks she can see Russia from her house. (The distance from Wasilla, in southern Alaska and Russia is 749.963 miles.) Good eyesight. I on the other hand can not see Russia it is over 3,000 miles away and my vision gets blurry.

God bless the blind ignorant Uber idiots of this world (Christian, Pagan, of Self-Righteous,) because they need all the help they can get. This is my war for 2010.

Cele

Talk Thursday: Favorite Proverb

My husband is a worrywart, the wet mud hen of western civilization as we know it. When Psam and Misery were dating he’d make their dates come in the first (and usually only) time stand up, turn around and then ask them to pull up their pants and if they had gang aspirations or a current affiliation? Then he’d promise to kick the ass of the hick-in- the-sticks- wanna-be-a- gangbanger if he EVER hurt his daughter. The Standonthegrass family traditional meet and greet date inspection grill service usually ended something like this…

“Be home by 9:45, and don’t date with hard candy in your mouth.”

Psam and Misery would go camping in the dunes with the admonition to not camp with hard candy in their mouth. Going to the movies, is it R-Rated? Lots of blood guts, and violent mauling? Good, don’t watch the movie with hard candy your mouth. And anything I do, you got it, no hard candy.

“Honey, I’m driving to the store.”
“Don’t drive with hard candy in your mouth.”

“Do you have laundry hidden any where? This is my final load”
“No, you’re not doing laundry with hard candy in your mouth are you?”

And the hot-tub and hard candy – fuggitaboutit.

Sadly this is not the only twisted proverb my family lives by. Ducky and Burp abide by the time old male standard, “if it’s not in front we don’t have it.” For years I thought it was just Ducky – I mean really folks after eighteen years he has just come to realize that soy sauce and syrup go in the cupboard, taco sauce goes in the fridge. In the fridge everything goes in the door or in the front, because God forbid it gets hidden behind something and we run out. He has literally failed to see the milk container because it was “hidden” behind a lunch bag. No I’m not talking a quart container, I’m referring to the large, white, they say you can recycle it but do they really? gallon container with the bright green lid. If it’s not in the front, we don’t have it.

Cupboard space in my kitchen is probably standard, but I feel it’s limited. A cause not aided by my ability to pack rat away hundreds lunchmeat containers and gallon upon gallons of plastic water bottles. He has no clue because they are all stored in nice neat towers behind the boxes of lunch bags, Saranwrap, and tinfoil. I cleaned out the cupboards last weekend in a winter cleaning frenzy. I had boxes of old vases (I recycled back to my florist), trash bags of filled with liter water bottles and Reynolds stackable containers that his lunchmeats come in. And boxes of baking tins, like the angel-food cake mold I have never used, to take to the Salvation Army. He was pretty boggled trying to figure out why I’d want to keep that stuff and where did it come from?

No, honey I regained acres of lower kitchen shelf space, by cleaning out the cupboards. But he will never know where his extra commuter cups are, because they aren’t in the front – so we don’t have any.

Sith,
Cele

Bathtub Inanity

To quote an ex husband, “I felt like a hundred pound sack of hammered assholes” an extremely over weight sack at that. I know, graphic, but gracious that is exactly how I felt. So I started a fire, fed Arlo, and then squeezed my ample butt into our standard size bathtub – running the water as fast as I possibly could.

I know you’re saying, “But Cele you have a hot tub.”

Yes I do, it rained over two inches here yesterday and we have neither pergola nor canopy over the hot tub. Have you noticed bathtubs are skinner than they use to be? When I was a kid my grandmother had a French Tub. Wow, what a luxury. I would fill it up and go for a swim. Now I have to use a come-a-long pulley system to get unstuck. Holey Moley. Besides the nice molded spots for my behemoth tushie, my tub does not have endless hot water, nor a timer that tells me when I’ve been in for thirty minutes.

Maybe I have mono. Can you get mono at 53? Under the weather? I can’t say sick, but defiantly not right – as you know, for weeks. I feel pretty good when I get up, but as the day grows long I wear out, feel as though I’m running a low grade fever, and by 9pm I am ready for bed.

My Grandmother (the one with the French Tub) had this God awful name, Effie Frances Shonhardt Cowie Reynolds. Really, you can’t make that up (she hated me.) My other grandmother’s name was Calista Dena Yerky Furby –serious you can’t make this up. My mom goes by a middle name that wasn’t even hers when she was born. Why? Her middle name was Ross. Who the heck names their female baby Ross? Well they changed it after he was tried for treason (and found guilty.) So my mom changed her middle name to Victoria and has ever since been called Vickie. My aunt on the other hand was given the middle name Hughes (after my great grandmother’s maiden name,) she thinks this makes her a Hughes (yes folks she is really that dense.)

So when Psam was born I had this really kewl name figured out – I didn’t want her saddled with a crappy name like FeeFee (and that whole sentence is filled with an inside family joke.) So I decided to name her Bryanna Sky or Elyce Danielle. I did, I thought they were both great names. Her dad was livid. Now when I was preggers I was 100 percent certain I was having a girl, so when butthead threw a fit I said, “Fine, if the baby is a girl I name her. If the baby is a boy you name him.” He chose Joshua Amos. I can feel my family ghost crowding around – aroused at such a fine name.

He went off to the Proving Grounds for AIT, I laid in a hospital bed screaming for 36 hours. When it came time to her name. We were mid Olympics. In 1976 the German team had a down hill(?) skier named Krista Hess. The rest is history. Except Psam’s still annoyed.

More hot water.

Weird names run in my family, Pinecone has a fairly common name for a child of the sixties, but apparently I had this undying need to change it. Now my mom doesn’t go by her first name, I don’t go by my first name, why should Pinecone? So I kept coming up with these nicknames for her. It could have been worse, she could have been named after a beloved aunt – Addie, Lillian, Frieda, Mary, Barbara, Jackie, Hughes. Lord I named Psam with a great middle name, Doniene, she goes by her first.

I on the other hand go through changes constantly. So now the question begs, which name do I use when I get my numbers done?
Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: My, My Times Flies

I should feel like I just came home from vacation, except that seems as though it was years ago instead of three months ago. As I put away my Christmas tree Saturday afternoon it was with some shock, because I’d had my run up to Christmas planned out. None of that happened. None.

After coming home from Vegas October 2nd, I knew it was just a week until Halloween. Two weeks until Thanksgiving, and I had a whole three weeks until Christmas. WTFarve happened to Thanksgiving? I have no memory of turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin pie.

I had begun filling out my Christmas cards November 1st now suddenly it was the weekend before Christmas half my cards were still in the box. I had one batch of kahlua made (one batch does not a case make, let alone two.) Only one of my packages (to this day) had/have gone out. Crap, I still had presents to buy.

Our family Christmas weekend went off with nary little a hitch. But now it was the run up to Christmas. Psam and Burp were home for the week, Ducky’s vacation began Christmas Eve. I thought I had everything under control – that is I thought I had everything under control until it all began to unravel.

I’d begun taking Ally again in my non-ending effort to control my weight. I’d lost 20 pounds before but had begun feeling less than 100 percent. So I’d stopped taking the pills. Darn I had really liked them. What the heck they’d been helping, lets take the pills again.

Now I try to be truthful. I try to do all that is asked of me, and if possible I try to do it at the best level I can possibly do it. And do it now. I feel no one is indispensable (especially not me,) but darn I try to be as close to indispensable as can be. Not feeling one hundred percent, still not completely over whatever bug I’d brought back from Vegas, and not living up to the pressures of life and job I was beginning to drown – no treading of water, no paddling of dog, no, this was full blown going down for the second count drowning. Wednesday before Christmas a 4-minute programming failure ruined what should have been perfect holiday programming. I became physically unglued, emotionally unglued, and bat shit crazy. Yes, I am my worse enemy, but really I was ready to quit my job or have a heart attack. My boss talked me down.

Then Roger talked me down.

Then Burp gave me one of his glorious hugs.

After a beautiful Christmas morning with my favorite people and then Christmas dinner, I suddenly became so sick I was in bed by 7 o’clock and slept past noon the following day.
Assuming I once was, I am still not right. I have no energy, can tasted the poison in my system, but the headaches and sore throat have gone.

Radio Auction and the birthday days will be here in a week or so. The Home & Garden Show in three weeks. Easter will be here in a flish of a flash, and Rhody Weekend, oh crap time is flying by and there isn’t enough of me, neither mentally or competently to go around. I have set my level of action and reaction so high my overload is constantly overwhelmed.

I desperately need time to slow a bit or a clone, crap I probably need both. While I may have high mental health numbers, I am relatively certain neither will happen. So I will face each day, one at a time, and in moments of blue funks and high mental health numbers I will put on a pair of my Christmas socks and work at having a bit of quite time and better day.
Sith
Cele
Thank heavens for Christmas Socks.

Happy New Year - New Decade - Same Ol' Me

Happy New Year - y'all.

So here's the deal. 2009 ended with high mental health numbers, even higher digital scale nubmers (I realized during my proof reading this was an appropriate typo it stays - maybe a new word for 2010), and low self esteem. Yesterday I was asked... of course on air in a quick in house survey , what is my New Year's resolution? I almost went with my old stand by - blog at least twice a week, write more poetry. And then I opened myself and said.

and I quote, "To be a better me."

Now, where the Farve did that come from (ha ha made Fii laugh?)

I fail miserably (and annually) on the iddy biddy liddle resolution I make to write more blogs, and crap I do have two or four poems to finish. So now I'm going to fail miserable (but a first) at being a better me? Maybe this is the year of change. And I need new scales.

So as I sit here watching my Ducks take on the Buck-eyes (they perform better when they don't have my complete attention) and tell myself I am going to do better this year. I will get back on my cross trainer, eat better (not that I eat bad when I'nm not binging), be more positive, and take more for myself. Which means my part-timers will be taking on more responsiblities, because there is only so much of me to go around.

I'm looking forward to another year of good blogging, Talk Thursday, pouring my heart out and being as truthful as I can stand to be right here. Thank you my friends, to those who happen to read my ponderings and revelations. Here's to 2010.

Go Ducks!

As to the osterich, my nickname in high school, it was suppose to be derogratory but I embraced the Osterich, made it mine - and darn he's so cute. I just thought I'd share a smile to kick of 20-10. hmmm 2,010, 20-10, 2,010. Heck, I'll figure out how to say it later.

Sith,
Cele