owning the star

There is a certain cachet in using the first name of a celebrity, it implies familiarity with 'george' or "lindsey" or "Lyndon" and suggests that yes you do rate the privilege to safely refer to them by just their first name in public, trusting that other folks who are not in the ingroup will be impressed with your close ties.

yes, it annoys me. are we surprised.

Cleaning the Attic

This is an old house. When we moved in, the attic was stuffed and I do mean stuffed with the detritus of nearly two hundred years of broken toys, books, missing puzzle pieces, games without instructions, and mice nests in every box of woolen goods that had been stored for future braided rugs. We took thirteen (13) truckloads to the dump, and that was it.

38 years later our own layers of detritus have become so overwhelming that last week, when I decided the occasional chairs stored in the front room had to go back in the attic, I realized the reason they were IN the front room was because there was no place for them up there. So for this week I have been sorting, tossing, hardening my heart over broken this and fractured that, and coming across things that I never remember buying or getting and neither does the mister. We seem to have an attic where ur-burglars are sneaking in and deposting things from their overcrowded attics...and as I said to him tonight, if neither of us remembers this stuff, why do we have it?

Gravity, apparently, is suspended in old houses. All you own floats upward, from the dining room to the upstairs hall, and then into the attic, one slow step at a time and all the chairs and bits of furniture that are gradually moving us out onto the porch will go up into the newly arranged attic, and for a little while at least there will be space.

Balance on the edge of a knife

For a year I have been taking Prevacid, which is heavy duty Reflux medication, in an attempt to heal a lesion on my esophagus (known as Barrett's Esophagus). Apparently it worked, the doctor said to see him in three years.

What I found out directly, by looking this stuff up on the net, is that if you take it for over a month you are at risk for osteoporosis. it you take it for longer than a year and don't have osteo, you will probably get it, because this thing is a proton pump inhibitor, and inhibits calcium from entering the body. sigh.

So you take twice as much calcium and hope. I already have osteo, so this year has been one of Being Careful and keeping my fingers crossed.

I have since stopped the Prevacid, partly because of that, but partly because I was on a diet for a year, a careful, serious diet, and gained four pounds. Aha, I thought. Maybe it's the Prevacid, mucking about with my metabolism. In the two months since I stopped taking it, on the same diet, I have lost seven pounds. Aha, I thought. Lookit that. And of course the weight gain distorts the esophagus and makes the Reflux worse.

It has been a year of trying to balance two very different problems, each of which counters the other, since calcium needs stomach acid to work properly, and prevacid does it's very best to reduce the same acid to do its job properly. The people I feel sorry for in all of this are the women who took this stuff when it was being tested, some of them in their forties and fifties at the time, and suddenly found themselves looking at the rest of their lives with osteoporosis in it.

Happy Equinox, Vern

Three days ago we put out three new bluebird houses to replace the very old, dilapidated ones that had been in use for over twenty years. The next day the bluebirds arrived, and one of the males spent the entire day going from house to house, possibly looking for 'his' house...

Today we put up the other two, in new spots, so they may or may not get used this year, but they're up and ready for business.

Unseasonably warm for mid-March, not that I'm complaining, no no no, but 60-70 is warm even for April. I'm sort of waiting for the snow-laden axe to fall, spend enough years in northern new england and you get that way. Nothing is permanent, predictable, or a sure thing, when it comes to weather.

Addictions 'r' Us

addiction is a strange event. It's often hard to face, harder to admit out loud, and even harder to quit. In thinking about it, it seems that most of it is in the mind. You hear the click of a lighter, you want that cigarette. Or the light turns red, and you always, always, reach for the pack. Action, reaction.
I don't know what sets off a drug user, but Im sure its as much a sound, a smell, an image of Something Happening, as it is a physical craving.

I just quit an online game Ive been playing for maybe six months, one of those 'runs in the background' things, which are lethal, since its always going whether you're there or not, so of course you have to check in for a few hours to see to your money, your troops, your armies...they become love/hate objects, and you find yourself enjoying less and less of it.

There are only two ways to quit, one is get truly angry with the entire process, and storm out get mad and stay mad, the other is to hand the game over to a friend and say, it's yours. I'm done.

The hardest addictions to overcome are those that are socially acceptable by either society or the group you hang out with. Smoking became a lot easier to let go of when it became less approved anywhere.

And in a way isnt falling in love it's own kind of addiction, as well?

Staggering Into The Wilderness

He left this morning, laden with enough gear to supply a trip to the summit of Everest. Snowshoes, crampons, a camera with case slung around his neck, 20lbs of toys and goodies in his backpack, the coat, the gloves, the gps and cellphone, a tripod and telephoto lens in special case, special snow walking sticks...

He's a happy happy man. Go forth, my dear, and conquer something.

You'd think I'd know better

I am thinking about downloading the latest version of Yahoo Instant Messenger, since mine is V.6 and the latest one is V.10. Might be time. However, I wanted to be sure I could still connect to Yahoo Games with it.
Stupidly I went into a forum there and asked that simple, simple question. Yes or no answer. One little dolly told me I might be underage and would need parental permission, or maybe I was not the administrator of this computer, and I thought, don't they even read the question?

Doesnt anyone these days read for content? No one seems able to answer a simple one braincell question with a simple one braincell answer. Nod once for yes, twice for no.

Soapbox

Last week a 12 yr old girl was arrested in her school room, handcuffed and marched across the street to the police station where she was booked and charged with lord alone knows what. probably 'inappropriate use of a magic marker".

What she did was, in a moment probably of 12 year old emotion, write the names of her best friends on the desktop. The teacher called the police and they arrested her.

This was not a troubled kid, not a problem child. She had perfect attendance and good grades. She is now suspended from school.
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Two or three weeks ago a little boy of about seven was removed from the classroom and his parents called, because the teacher found a Lego marine (with rifle) belonging to him. He may have been showing it to a buddy. It was suggested he undergo therapy. By now, he may need it.


In Pennsylvania the school sent home special laptops for the kids so they could do their homework on them. What the kids and parents did not know was that each laptop came with a small camera that could be activated remotely by the school. They activated it a LOT. The school is now having its doors sued off by parents.



this is one side of the coin.

the other side is, the schools no longer hold kids back if they cant do the work, and they all graduate with their class (it looks so good on the record books) whether they can read or not, so as not to damage their tender psyches. When there is a death of a dog, rockstar, hamster, or grandparent the school holds grief counseling sessions, thereby nailing the grief to the wall forever for those kids, rather than letting them deal with it their own way...


does anyone else see a huge discrepancy between the first part and the second part?

Old Timer's Disease

The only thing more annoying than starting a book and realizing you've already read it, but also realizing that you know this only peripherally--some of the names seem familiar, but you have no clue as to what happens next. Sometimes you don't like the book almost as much as you did the first time, when you bought the first copy; but it takes you fifteen chapters to realize you are plowing through old ground...

what really scares me is the total lack of any sort of memory of either the first reading or what I liked/disliked about it. Gone. Just gone.

Guy gadgets

And the cellphone was lonely, so he brought home a GPS handheld to keep it company, and then so he would be able to mush out into our frozen wasteland and play with the GPS (which is really kind of neat) he got a pair of those new skinny aluminum snowshoes.

At this point, I don't mind. It gets him out walking, it gives him a hobby, and since he wants to go climbing next summer, I do not have to go with him now, and I do not have to worry about a 66 year old man stravaging all over the White Mountains for the first time in decades.

It does seem that when men embark on Adventures like this, they are no longer content with a stout stick and good boots. They need compasses that cost a week's wages, a better camera, walking sticks that do everything but play the bagpipes, special backpacks to hold all this stuff...if he ever falls over with that new backpack on he will be immobilized until someone can get him unhitched from it.

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And the calendar (picture those transitional calendar page effects from forties movies) is whizzing past February, the days lengthen noticeably, and in 27 days it will be spring. Mud, snow, glop, and all. Not a hard winter, necessarily, but a winter, and I may just go stand in the mudsnowglop when the time comes, just because it's there.

Zero and beyond

'Twas zero this morning, with what can only be called a hearty wind. Zero is one of those temps that make you grateful it wasn't colder, and hopeful that it will get warmer soon. And Monday is the first of February. oh snoopy dance of joy

Fox Tracks

yesterday afternoon, late, I happened to look out the kitchen window to see a fox trotting by...it was just after sunset so I only had one real chance to get any kind of worthwhile photo, and luckily I got this;




then early this morning he happened by again, since apparently he had found good hunting in the garden the previous day--All of this, of course, less than twenty feet from the edge of the porch...

The difficult childhood

There has been a new and truly disturbing study in this state, suggesting that abuse of children is far more widespread than has been previously realized--but somewhere along the way 'child abuse' has been expanded to include discipline (ever try to reason with a two year old on a rampage?), sibling rivalry, bullying in the schoolyard, on and on and on. anything and everything that negatively impacts a child's safe cocoon-like existence.

The problem with this kind of viewpoint is that it ignores the realities of kids needing to learn how to deal with life as it's handed out to them. A kid in a large family is going to confront friction, arguments, fistfights and sibling rivalry. They have to learn how to handle it, just as they really have to learn their own way through the treachery of school yard bullies and those teachers who have their own agendas. If we spend all our time laying down cotton wool for kids to walk on, when they finally leave the nest they will have no idea how to function in the real world where people yell, sometimes push back, and will often fire you without considering the damage it might do to your psyche.

If you have ever watched a chick struggling to hatch, you know how hard it is to watch and do nothing, and how hard it is for the chick to hatch. But if you help it along, by making the hole a bit wider, easing the path, what you end up with is a worthless and damaged chick, unable to walk, fly, or breathe. This is what we are doing to kids, by denying them the chance to fight their own battles. Too many adults remember their own childhoods as being nightmares (and often rightly so), and want more for their own kids. But to make it too easy harms them later on, because they have no inner walls built up to support themselves.

Nearly every creative person I have ever met, with few exceptions, has had a 'difficult' childhood in one way or another. they have had to confront those walls on a constant basis, and learn their way around, or over, or through them. And we look back and shake our heads at what this one or that one endured, and say, it's a wonder he or she became what she did.

Actually, I think the struggle made the person what they became.

whodunits

people who read mysteries tend to have favorites. Two of mine are Sue Grafton (the alphabet lady) and Robert Parker. I have recently noticed, however, my increasing irritation with the style of both of these writers and I'm beginning to wonder (meaning, it may be time to read for writing style as well as for content) if other mystery writers do the same things; one, the excessive and annoying use of the personal pronoun--i.e., "I walked to my door, went out, down my front steps, shrugging into my jacket as I went, out to my new car, etc etc" and, at least in Parker's case, there seems to be a dearth of semicolons. Only once in the first fifteen books did I actually find one, and that seemed to be unavoidable, so he used it.

That, and the fact that any time you write a first person mystery there is a necessity for backstory, (or appears to be), partly to explain the references for new references, but it also is a neat way to pad the pages.
Maybe it's unavoidable, I dunno.

book stores

Today in the local mall I found out that our resident (and only, actually) bookstore is closing in about a month. It's a Border's, and while I don't always agree with their choice of books that they allow us to read, it is still a bookstore, and the only one, incredibly, between the seacoast and Concord, a span of about 80 miles.

The clerks were angry, and sad. I am too.

spel chek

spell check is humbling to a touch typist who learned on an old office machine, and is now confined to a plastic monstrosity referred to as a keyboard; it's like trying to perform Swan Lake in a closet.

you have to wonder

last week we became the parents of a cellphone. Wednesday of this week we had a large snowstorm. About 9 AM I got a call from him, saying he had just been in an accident on one of the back roads. He was fine, the truck was bunged up a bit, and they were waiting for the wrecker to drag him out of the ditch he had landed in, to avoid someone slewing around the corner at him on a very steep hill. It's a treacherous spot even in good weather, and in a snowstorm it's like Russian roulette.

I suppose without the cell he'd have ended up at home eventually and told me about it, but there seems to be some kind of strange connection in my head with "have phone/need phone" at this point. In other words, the folks who Watch Us with great glee and sniggers wait for things like this, and then twist the dial a bit, just to make it more interesting. "After all", they reason, "he's got the phone..."

cellphones

The mister went out and got himself a cellphone. As long as I don't have to deal with the mysteries of one, im cool with that. He wants to continue this hiking thing he (we) started last summer, and I realized very early on that my dislike of trudging up mountains and then coming back down has solidified into loathing, partly because the body no longer will tolerate those kinds of stresses. And with only one eye to work from, there is no depth of field, no way to judge just where the ground is when you step down from a ten inch rock. ow.

But he has gotten wistful, saying he'd like to go but he knows I don't. With a cell phone, he can go without feeling uncomfortable about being out there alone, and if he gets in trouble he can call for help. And I won't have the guilts about any of it.

Turkey update

I seriously do not know what part of the brain functions with the Fish & Game people here; after our two summer turkeys disappeared into what I can only imagine is someone's freezer, the other day there were ten turkeys all milling about in a great huddle. Now they seem to have sorted themselves out, and the three that have taken over our field are behaving suspiciously like half tame, hand fed, newly released into the wild turkeys, with all the cunning and wild turkey skills of a baby duckling.

When I drove up into the yard this afternoon there they were, chowing down not ten feet from the car, never even looked up. I got out, slammed the door, one of them looked up for a minute and then went back to eating. I suspect if I offered them grain out of a pail they'd mob me.

I think turkey season is over, so basically what we're getting is free meals for the coyotes, at least the ones who don't mind talon marks and being beaten to a froth by enraged turkeys...

Positive Note for the Dark Days

Vitamin D helps. Lots and lots.
And the realization that the days, as always, have been getting shorter since last June, but we had the good weather and warmth to balance that. It didnt really start to show until late October, and then the yearly axe came down with the end of daylight savings time.

However. The winter solstice is only a month away, and then, by golly, the days begin to get a bit longer every day. In the middle of January with blizzards and ice storms and gharstly cold weather, you can say, yes, but the days are getting longer. There is that.


We have begun the search for the next kitchen stove. It's amazing how many wood stoves are out there, and how strangely delicate they all are. Glass fronts, ceramic plates that need to be protected from damage inside, fireboxes with grates that barely function, and while most of the stoves look very nice, with lovely soap stone surfaces or really chichi designs, I look at them and think, these are "company" stoves. "We're having the Hendersons over tomorrow night, it would be nice if we had the stove going. It creates such a lovely ambience"...

But, then, we have till next summer to find one. This is not the time of year to break in a new stove, heck, it's not even the time of year to have one delivered.