Since my brother arrived with his 75 lb. dog, brings the total amount of animals in our house to 5 cats and 4 dogs. Four cats belong to us, one to my brother, two dogs to us, one to my brother and the pomeranian puppy to my daughter who is getting married next year.

And since no one seems to be paying any attention to anything I have to say, I am posting these rules here in hopes that someone from this house will read them and it will sink into their brain.

Inside Rules:

1. No cats on the counter at any time for any reason, this means you, Zeke.
2. No cats are to be fed next to the dogs...self explanatory.
3. The puppy is not to be fed near the beagles or the Huge Dog as the puppy will starve.
4. The beagles are not to be fed near the Huge Dog or there will be a Big Fight.
5. Do not leave any food in any dishes on any surface for any time or you will lose your food. Tony and Lexie are getting very fat.
6. No cats are to jump on my head in the middle of the night ever again.
7. Zeke is not supposed to be on top of Daphne, biting her in the neck. You are fixed, Zeke, apparently you have forgotten this.
8. The screen door in the patio is not to be left unlocked because two of the five cats have learned how to open it by inserting their claws into the screen and pulling on it.
9. Make sure the front screen door is completely shut or Zeke will push on it and let all the animals out.
10. No cat is to jump up on my computer desk while I am trying to write in my live journal and put their paw on the delete key. This means you, Daphne, you stupid cat.
Additional Inside Rules with regards to big metal gate between dining room and living room:

1. Huge Dog is to remain on the living room side as he pees on the carpet by the patio door. I have no explanation for this but it will never happen again.
2. Beagles cannot be in the living room unless Huge Dog is outside because they get into big fights over imaginary food.
3. Puppy cannot be alone with Huge Dog. She's looks like his favorite chew toy.
4. Cats can go into any room they want but I want to make it clear it's at their own risk.
Helpful Hints: Since the gate is hinged in several places, you can swing the gate to allow the non-huge dogs access to the hallway and bedrooms, then close them off and open the other end to let the Huge Dog access to the dining room so he can be let outside. Think sheep herding and you'll be fine.


Outside Rules:
(this only applies to the backyard)

1. Puppy cannot be left alone outside with Tony. He has already broken her tail in 3 places and likes to drag her around the yard by her back foot. (she torments him by chasing him and biting him in the rear, though)
2. Tony and Lexie can be left alone outside together but only if Tony has on his barking collar as he will bark continuously at birds, squirrels, neighbors, neighbor's dogs, neighbor's children, neighbor's relatives, neighbor's relatives' dogs, neighbors on riding lawn mowers, bunnies in the garden or stray cats.
3. Lexie can be left out alone as long as she wants which is usually about 5 min.
4. Tony can be left out alone as long as he wants which is usually about 5 hours.
5. Tony is not to be running around the backyard with a baby bird in his mouth. (note to baby bird: so sorry. R.I.P.)
6. Tony is not supposed to be digging holes in my flower beds.
7. Tony is not supposed to have the grease catcher cup from the grill.
8. Tony is not supposed to be running around the backyard with a big geranium from one of my flower pots in his mouth.
9. Huge Dog cannot be left alone outside with any dog or any cat.
10. Huge Dog cannot be left alone outside to his own devices because he will find things To DO.

These last few rules apply to Huge Dog Only:
1. Do not fish my waterlily out of the pond the kids got me for Mother's Day and play toss and catch with it in the yard.
2. Do not fall into the pond and get all stinky so that people have to give you a bath.
3. Do not rip up those garden kneeling pads.
4. Do not bury all my dogs toys behind the tree.
5. Do not dig huge holes and spray the dirt all over my wooden swing and into the pond water.
6. Do not dig huge holes where we are trying to grow wildflowers.
7. Do not pee on my flowers.
8. Do not pee on the grill.
9. Do not pee on the picnic table legs.
10. Do not pee on my herb garden.
11. Do not pee on my downspout.
12. Do not pee on my wooden swing.
13. Do not pee on my back steps.
14. Do not pee on my dog while he is trying to pee.

Try to imagine the above title said with sneering sarcasm. I happen to own three stores (actually four if you count the one I have with Jigsaw Pig). These are not ordinary stores, these are virtual stores with virtual merchandise in an online virtual reality experience platform called "Second Life". About a year and a half ago, I was shocked to find out that I could actually earn a pretty good real life living from the sales these stores generate. The only trouble with owning a store, even a virtual one, is that it comes with all the trials and tribulations of owning a real life store, including Customer Complaints.

For the most part, my customers are sweet, polite people who are looking for textures to make things so they can sell their own creations. They take the problems in the game with a bit of salt and are patient when things don't get "delivered" or when things go missing from their inventory. I, in turn, like to treat them with the same courtesy I would like if I were them and everything works out well for the most part. That is, until this week.

I don't know if spring fever has hit people square between the eyes and turned them all into greedy, unreasonable brats or something else is afoot but I have had a sudden surge of trouble in paradise.

Consider this conversation I just got done having with a customer in IMs, spelling mistakes hers:

Her: I bought some textures from you for $250, the Real Paint with Boarders, the 82 colors and they never got diliverd. Can you help me?

Me: (I check my account history first and see that indeed she did buy something for $250) Sure, can you tell me the exact name of the item you bought and I will get it right out to you.

Her: The paints with the boarders.

Me: I need to know the real name, I don't have anything for $250 for sale in the Real Paint Series with Borders so I'm not sure what you bought. I only have the different border sets available for $100 each.

Her: I want the paint with the boarders. Thats what I bought. I allready have the 82 pant color.

Me: The 82 Paint Colors are the only thing I have for sale for $250. Did you accidentally buy those again?

Her: I don't know I will go back to the stor and see.

Time passes while I wait.

Her: I see now. I must have boght the same thing agin.

Me: Ok, I am refunding you $250. Here it is.

Her: That makes no sense that you don't have the 82 colors with the boarders for sale in one set. Why don't you sell them?

Me: I do sell them but they are in individual color sets.

Her: Why don't you sell them in one big pack like the paint colors?

Me: Because most people don't need 164 different wall colors with borders and it would cost $1,640 just to buy it which is way more than most people want to spend.

(At this point I should explain I make a point of selling my textures for what it cost me to upload them, $10 each)

Her: I don't think that's right that you don't sell them like you do the paint.

Me: Well, it's not cost effective. No one would pay that much.

Her: You sell the plain colors for $250, why can't you sell the ones with borders for the same amount?

Me: I am selling 82 paint colors for $250, which is about 1/4 of what I paid to upload them here. I discounted them down from $820 to $250 because they were easy to make and as a favor to my customers so they could match the wainscot and border walls with the same color paint.

Her: But I wanted the boarders.

Me: You can still get the border textures, you just have to buy each set individually.

Her: But then I have to pay $100 for a few of them insted of $82 dollars for the whole set!!!!

Me: They cost $100 for 16, that is still a very good value.

Her: Not as good as value as 82 for $250!!!

I hear nothing from her for a while.

Her: I think UR wrong in not making them available for people to buy.

Me: They are available, you just have to buy them in the individual sets.

Her: But why are they so much more than the Real Paint colors?

Me: Because they require a lot more work than the plain colors, I had to resize the wall texture, make the wood borders, fit them to the texture, add drop shadows, etc.

more silence

Her: So you just put them into Photoshop and added the borders there?

At this point, since I could tell which direction her thoughts were taking her, I decided to stop talking to her. Plus, the fact that I now was getting Very Irritated. I really didn't understand why a person would need 162 different wall textures anyway but I assume she would now download my Real Paint Colors to her own paint program, add some borders and reupload them. She will be surprised to find out it will cost her even more to do that then I was charging her.

The other customer problems I had this week included a person who bought my textures and was reselling them in her store. Another customer was kind enough to tell me and when I confronted this girl she first told me she had put them out by mistake because she had assumed they were part of a free pack she had received. This might have been believable except for the fact she had used the same packaging and had cut my name off the top of the box. The next thing she told me was that she had searched my online store (this is different than the in game store in that it's more like catalog shopping but it's the same merchandise) and found the ones that had not said specifically that they were not for resale and had bought those and only used those because she "was not a thief". I could have argued with her the point that since I made them, perhaps I should be the only one to profit from them but instead I just told her to please take down any with my name on it, they are not to be resold. Later that night she IM'd me and said, "It doesn't matter that I'm selling your stuff accidentally anyway because I'm leaving the game and taking my whole store down. I'm totally leaving the game!!!!" The next day I received a link from another customer to a forum where they had been discussing her stealing my textures long before I had ever contacted her. She had been defiant and unrepentative in the thread, even when told by other residents that I had signs everywhere that said no one was to resell my textures. In fact, she told the other posters in the forum that she refused to "take down my textures unless I personally got in touch with her."

The day after that I was sent another message saying another person was selling my textures at another store and I investigated that one and found it to be true. I really hate having to track down these people and confronting them is even harder for me. It's just all so depressing and demoralizing to me. Again, I sent a message asking this new person to please remove my textures immediately, they were not to be sold by anyone but me. I received a flurry of French that came so fast I couldn't cut and paste into Babelfish fast enough to keep up with her. Plus, she would switch back and forth from French to English and I soon realized she knew enough English well enough but only When It Suited Her. I just kept telling her I wanted her to take my textures down from her store and she called me "Inconsiderate" and that "I Didn't Understand Her". That "It Must Be The Language Difference" why we couldn't understand each other. I'm not sure why she couldn't understand me, I had sent her the message "Please take down my textures, it is illegal to resell them." in both French AND English, in several different ways. I think my dogs could have understood this. There was the usual lapse of IM silence of which I have learned they are usually winding up to deliver some Zinger of a statement and she didn't disappoint me. Her last message to me was that "I was cruel" to make her take them down, she was only trying to "earn a little extra money" because she had three kids.

This brings us to the Egyptian Dancing Pavilion Incident. When I first joined Second Life, I made a gazebo-like structure out of my Egyptian textures, added some floating sheer curtains and torches and offered it for sale. After almost 2 years of selling this in my stores, this week I received an IM from a man who wanted full permissions on the pavilion so he could sell it on his island. What this basically means is that he would make money on something I had designed and built. There was no talk of what I might expect out of the deal. I argued with him over the fact that I had made it and was quite proud of it. He said that was why he wanted to sell it, because it looked so great and he could make a lot of money from it and it would sell well on his island. I pointed out that if people really wanted to buy it, they could see my name on it and come to my store. Then I offered up the suggestion that he try to build his own creation and sell that, that he could use my ideas and come up with something all his own. He IM'd me back saying he wanted me to send him all the textures I had used on it. I said you can't copy me, that wouldn't be right, you need to use different textures. He said, "Ok, how about this? You sell it to me with full perms and then you take it down from the sale floor in all your stores. Then I will just sell it at my store." Umm, no, don't think so.

The last one is another language barrier one, only this time from a German man. Here is the exact message:

[0:57] Subzero Schumann: rear did not keep textures Jewelry making bought however

Me: Do you mean you didn't get something you paid for?

Since I have become quite good at deciphering fractured English, it sounded to me as if something he bought did not get delivered or he lost it. Now the only trouble was trying to figure out what it was.

To my amazement, I received the next message:

Subzero: Yes, I didn't get the box I paid for.

This new command of English sounded much more promising.....at first. The whole conversation went something like the example below.

Me: Subzero, what was the name of the box of textures you bought?

Subzero: Finally no can do light park.

Me: Sub, I can't understand what you're saying. I need to know the name of the box so I can send it to you.

Subzero: Box is alone sometime everyone.

Me: Sub, let's just talk in German. I will use a translator.

Sub: Ok

and then came this long long sentence in German and I thought to myself, Finally, this will be over. I've been trying to understand this guy for almost an hour. I eagerly cut and pasted it into Bablefish and the German turned out to be as unintelligible as his English had been.

Me: Sub?

Sub: Yes

Me: I'm just going to send you all the boxes I have in that category since I can't understand what you're trying to say. (which I then proceeded to do)

This was followed by a polite "Thank You" followed by aa few minutes of silence. I had a feeling it wouldn't end there.....and it didn't. He started in English again or something that resembled English. "For why please sky does under in basket around near?" Finally I said, "Sub, maybe you can find someone who speaks both English and German and have them interpret for you because I can't understand what you're saying. I have to leave now."

I signed out of the game without waiting for his reply, knowing the only real reason I had to leave was so I wouldn't go stark raving mad.

See what retail has turned me into?

There is a very funny comedian making the circuit and his shtick is that he starts out every routine saying, "I Was Just Trying To....." and then he adds whatever that routine is going to be about. Such as "I was just trying to eat my cereal one morning, that's all I was trying to do. I had my head down, not looking around and all I wanted to do was eat my cereal. Then my wife sat down across from me and let out a big sigh. All I wanted to do was eat my cereal but I knew if I said nothing, it would seem like I was insensitive so I knew I had to at least ask if something was wrong but all I really wanted to do was just finish my cereal."

He goes on to say he reluctantly asked his wife, "Is anything wrong?" to which she sighed again and said,"I'm so fat." Of course this leads into a hilarious bit where he tries to figure out what would be the least "get him in more trouble" thing to say and of course, he has no idea so he says the wrong thing again and again which gets him into even more trouble. He also does a bit about "I was just trying to walk across the room to get the remote....that's all I was trying to do..." and it ends up with him getting in the middle of something going on between his two kids and so on.

Well, as part of my Big Spring Cleaning Project, I was trying to clean the carpet in the living room....that's all I was trying to do. In fact, I hadn't even thought I would get to the carpeting, I thought if I finished the upholstery on the chair and the couch and washed the tapestry runner rug my daughter bought for us two years ago, that would be a job well done and I could tackle the actual floor carpeting tomorrow.

I couldn't find the rug steamer at first which is surprising seeing as its quite large but I finally found it in the basement in back of the litter boxes. When I get the basement cleaned up, I must remember to make a Steam Carpet Cleaner Docking Area. Anyway, there I was in the basement trying to wrestle it out from behind the litter boxes (think very large heavy upright vacuum cleaner) when I heard this rattling noise coming from the dehumidifier. I found out it needed emptying and since I was emptying it anyway, I decided to use the nice soft water from it in the washing machine and run a load of laundry. That accomplished, I dragged the steam cleaner up the basement steps one at a time, backwards, since that was easier on my back. Once I got it to the top, I noticed that someone had left water in it from the last time they used it so I opened the patio door to go dump it outside and two beagles ran out and half a cat. Got my brother's cat, Zeke back in the house and now the Pomeranian puppy, Piper, was trying to go out too since she thinks she's a beagle now and has to be with them all the time. I lift her down and my daughters say they will stay outside and keep an eye on her so I can go work.

Back in the house, I noticed the end of the steam cleaner, the part you put the water in is quite dirty so I spend some time making sure that's all clean and then replacing it and finally, I find the steam cleaner soap and fill the dispenser on the back. Things are going well now, if a bit slower than I would like. This would not last, the going well part.

i spend some time clearing shoes and puppy toys off the runner rug and making sure it's all straightened out and clear of any edges of furniture then decide to plug it in and then wheeling the brute of a machine into the living room where I terrified the puppy. Tony the boy beagle knows what's going to happen and he's scared now and jumps up into the chair to avoid the scary steam cleaner but he misses and falls backwards and lands on the puppy who squeals in pain. The girls take care of this problem and I am ready to connect to some electricity. Now, the Electrical Outlet of Choice is the just inside the bathroom door. This is because it is in a central location to the rest of the house meaning you don't have to unplug and plug in again every time you leave a room and also it is on its own circuit which means you won't trip any breakers by overloading the already overloaded living room circuits. I step over the small Keep The Puppy Out of the Bedrooms Gate that leads to the hallway where the bathroom is and I think to myself, "Doing anything in this house is liking going through an Army Obstacle Course" and plug in the cord and back down the hallway and back over the gate. Finally comes the moment I have been waiting for. I press the POWER button on the steam cleaner and begin to move the steamer back and forth. I stop and peer suspiciously at the rug since it doesn't look a bit wet. Hmmm, what could be wrong?

Just then my husband calls out to me, "Do you care if I play Softball with the church this year?" I reply, "No, not at all. Did you sign up yesterday when they announced it?" What was really running through my mind, in a kind of warp speed sequence was the image of him on a stretcher in the emergency room about 6 years ago with a concussion from tripping over first base and hitting his head on it when he landed. Also going through my mind was how he played softball last year and came home after every single game mad and upset at how the coach only played his best buddy and not the guys who were there for all the practices but heh, if you want to go through that again, go knock yourself out. (maybe that's the wrong choice of words)

By now, I am wondering if any water is coming through the end of the machine at all and since I have to stand behind it to press the water release button, I ask my husband who is standing in front of the machine by the front door to see if he can see any water down that way at all.

"I have to go to softball practice in a minute," he says. "Can't you just look quick like when I turn it on and tell me if you see water at all?" I reply.

He observes for a minute then he says, I think the very bottom plastic part is all clogged up. We take off the water reservoir that I had cleaned out and peer at the next part which is like a hollow clear guard running along the front of the machine and sticking out a bit on both edges. We ponder a bit on how it is supposed to come off and I go to find some screwdrivers before I sit down to start working on the thing. I find my tool kit out in the garage in the midst of cobwebs and take it inside to wash it off and dry it before I proceed to the living room.

For some reason, I assumed my husband had left already and I sat down in front of the machine to see if it needed a Phillips screwdriver or Flathead which I then started to remove from my handy dandy tool kit. All of a sudden, out of the blue comes a big tennis shoe clad foot and then another one stepping over me and grabbing for the machine, jerking it around, which caught it on the edge of my tool kit and cracked off the whole front plastic thing I was just trying to take off. This part is a really important part as it's the part the dirty water gets sucked up through, you can't just do without it. I look up to see my husband with his cordless drill in his hand and a crazed look in his eyes and said, "What are you doing, I thought you left for practice!" I am quite peeved since this is his usual method of fixing things, banging on them, jerking them around and cranking on them until they break.

He peers down at the totally useless machine and the cracked and broken part and says, "I guess we'll have to order a new part. Bye, I'm going to softball practice."

I just wanted to clean the carpet.....that's all I wanted to do....

We watched The Prestige last night and thought it was quite entertaining although slow. For those of you who don't know, The Prestige is a new movie just released on DVD which stars Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johanson and Michael Caine (oh, and David Bowie). The plot goes as follows, two friends, circa late 1800's, work with Michael Caine to do magic tricks and illusions. One of their tricks goes horribly wrong and Hugh Jackman's wife dies and he thinks his friend, Bale, is to blame. The rest of the movie is spent with them trying to steal each other's tricks and secrets, decode cryptic journals and generally outdo each other in every performance.

After watching them perform some standard magic tricks, I looked up a few of them on the internet to see just how magicians did them. I found a great website complete with magic tricks you could do yourself at home and found one I thought might be fun.

You take 12 small pieces of identical paper, 2 different color markers and a glass. Then you tell another person that you are going to read their minds as they answer 6 questions. The six questions were, 1. name your favorite sports team or sport 2. name your favorite car 3. name your favorite singer or band 4. name your favorite animal 5. name a favorite movie 6. name a vegetable. After the person writes down the answer, folds the paper and puts it in the glass, you ask them to tell you what they wrote, then move on to the next question. The trick is that you write "carrots" on the first card, not the name of the favorite sports team. Studies have proved that most people will write carrots for the vegetable. This way, you are always one answer behind.

This is how it went:

Me: Ok, Lindsay, what is your favorite sports team?

Lindsay: I'm going to write down a favorite sport instead, ok?

Me: Ok. I can read your mind no matter what you put on the card.

(we both fold up our cards and put them in the glass, I have written "carrots" on mine)

Me: What did you put down, Lindsay?

Lindsay: Why do I have to tell you?

Me: Because that's part of the game.

Lindsay: Ok, I put volleyball.

Me: Oh good, that's what I guessed too! Now, Lindsay, I need you to write down your favorite car.

(I make a big show out of trying to guess her answer, she's still impressed at this point. Ashley is on my computer apparently working on something in silence. Lindsay and I both write down our answers and put them in the glass)

Me: What did you put down, Lindsay?

Lindsay: I said Firebird. (I, of course, had written volleyball on my card)

Me: Next we need to write down your favorite animal.

We both bend our heads and she writes down her favorite animal while I write down "Pontiac Firebird".

Lindsay: My favorite animal was a Flamingo.

Suddenly, Ashley, who has been silent up until this point, shouts out, "I know how you're doing it!!!"

Me: Doing what, we're not even done yet.

Ashley: Lindsay, she's listening to what you're saying and then she's writing it down!!!!

Me: How is that possible, I didn't know what she wrote down the first time. She hadn't said anything yet.

Ashley: You're always one behind!! That's how she's doing it!!

Lindsay: Well, that's not fair!!

Me: So how did I know what to write on the very first card?

Ashley: I don't know, you wrote on two cards or you left one blank.

Me: I did not, you watched me. I only wrote on one. Lindsay, let's finish the trick. Write down your favorite movie.

Lindsay: I'll write it down but I'm not going to tell you what it is. You're cheating.

Me: I am not cheating. This is supposed to be a magic trick. We can't finish the game if you don't play it right.

Lindsay: Well, I'm not telling you. If you can read my mind, I shouldn't have to tell you. You should know what the answer is already.

Ashley: Yeah!!

Me: Sigh. We might as well quit then because I can't finish the trick unless you tell me what you wrote.

Lindsay: I wrote down "National Treasure". (then she gives me an evil grin)

Me: Are you lying?

Lindsay: No, of course not. (another evil grin)

Me: You are, too. What did you really write?

Lindsay: I left it blank.

Me: Oh sure. Come on, what did you write and don't lie this time.

Lindsay: I left it blank!!

Me: Ok, ok. Let's just skip to the last one then. Name a vegetable. Any one will do.

(I make a great show out of writing on my piece of paper when I really had to leave it blank. We deposit both our last cards into the glass)

Me: Ok, Lindsay, now you take them out and match them up and see how many I got right.

Ashley: She was guessing them one behind, Lindsay. Because you were telling her the answers. You watch.

Lindsay: Is that what you were doing, Mom?

Me: Just match them up.

(to my surprise, Lindsay HAD written down carrots as a vegetable so every card matched up, even the blank ones, lol. In fact, you could see she had started to write Peppers and had crossed it off and wrote carrots instead.)

Lindsay: How did you do that!!! That all matched up!!

Me: Ok, I'll tell you the secret. You are writing down what the person says, only you're writing it down one behind.

Ashley: I told you!!

Lindsay: That's cheating!! You were cheating!!

Me: For the first one, I just guessed CARROTS because they have proved that the majority of the people in the world will write that down for their vegetable.

Lindsay: You lied to me!!!

Me: I was trying to do a magic trick!! That's what a magic trick is supposed to do, fool you!!

Lindsay: Well that was the dumbest trick I've ever seen. I'm not playing with you anymore. You lied to me.

Ashley: Wow, Mom! That was REALLY hard to figure OUT!! (rolls eyes) That's got to be the worst magic trick ever.

Lindsay: And you're the worst magician ever.

Me: Well, it said on the website that everyone would be astonished and think the person doing it was very clever.

Lindsay and Ashley as they left the room: Right, hahahahahaha

Me: Come back, don't you want to see my amazing rubber band jumping trick??

Lindsay and Ashley: NO!!!!!!

Sigh.

I suspect that the way I've been feeling lately about Second Life has more to do with my own past insecurities and that's even more disturbing to me then ever having the insecurities to begin with.

It all started when I first joined and had the ability to control every part of my body's measurements, even down to how much cleavage and gravity I wanted my VR breasts to have. I chose a generic-looking type of avatar, stuck a blonde wig on her, dressed her in jeans, sandals and a nice top and I was good to go.

After every tenth or so male avatar leered at me when I was standing by my closest female friend in the game, who was also blonde, I decided some changes were in order. The reason for the leering was they thought we looked like sisters but it was a smarmy type of looking, not just an observation. They would say, "Oooooooooh, sisters! Yummy!!" as in "Oooooooh, sisters, let's have sex." I promptly changed my hair to dark red and that solved that. No one looks at my avatar now.

The feelings of insecurity started out insidiuously enough. I would be standing around with my friends, having a nice chat about world politics, gardening, graphics work, etc and suddenly one of the males standing about would coo, "Ooooh, Arabellamia (not her real name), what a lovely dress!" (Arabellamia dresses her avatar much better than I do mine, I simply don't have the time or patience to search through the 30,000 items in my inventory for something to pretty to wear. Another male will say, "Ooooh, nice hair, Arabellamia, what a pretty hairstyle and color!" Yet another will say, "I love that new standing animation you have, Arabellamia. So sweet, so cute. It's just adorable!! Where did you get it?" I usually stand there and wait for the accolades to finish so that we can go on chatting. I don't begrudge her the compliments, she deserves them. Her avatar looks very, very pretty and she has spent a lot of time and money making it look attractive.

What bothers me is I am suddenly thrown back to high school in which I would be standing around with a group of friends (ok, this happened in college, too) and the blonde, flirty, pretty girls would get all the attention and after a period of time, I would quietly fade into the background and just watch them operate in awe. I guess I should have picked up some pointers from them but I mostly remember thinking: "if I had to do that eye-batting, empty-flattery, hip-thrust-out-to-the-side-pouty-lip sort of thing just to get a boyfriend, I would rather go without." I distinctly remember accidentally ending up in a conversation with a very popular older jock type guy in the hallway during lunch and having him say to me, "Wow, you're so much fun. How come I never knew that about you?" He promptly asked me and my best friend, Juniper, to go driving around town with him and his friend that weekend, which we did. It soon became apparent, after the first 15 min., that "driving around town" meant a lot of kissing and things you don't want to do with someone you don't really know.

The one incident I remember in college is of sitting around my roommate's (now my sister-in-law) brother's apartment with all of his upperclassmen friends and watching our gorgeous friend, Chatty-Cathy, do the Batty-Eyed, pouty-lip, laugh-inanely thing on the other side of the room. It seemed to be working as she had all the men there swarming around her like bees to a honeypot (for lack of a cleverer idiom). I remember sitting on a ledge of some sort and my sister-in-law's brother, Thomas-the-Popular-Senior came to sit down beside me. I was greatly shocked because, although we had been friends for a while, I was sure he was interested in the vivacious, giggling girl across the room and wondered what he wanted.

"What are you looking at?" Thomas-The-Popular-Senior asked.
"Cathy. She's so pretty and fun. Everyone loves being around her," I didn't say it in a jealous way, I don't think. I don't remember being jealous of her, just resigned that I could never be like that.
"Yes, she is beautiful," he said, as he sipped on his coke.
"She makes everyone feel important," I sighed, "I wish I could be more like that, but I just don't know how."
Thomas-the-Popular said softly, so soft I wasn't even sure I had heard him right, "Well, you could, but you just don't give a guy a chance."

Never-mind that his sentence didn't really fit what we were talking about, I sat there in shock. I glanced up at him to see if he really said that and our eyes met in a meaningful glance. Desperately I searched my memory for any indication that he had ever expressed any kind of interest in me other than as his sister's friend. There were the times we walked his student-security guard route with him at night, mostly listening to him complain about his current girlfriend. The times we had sat at the same table in the Student Center doing our homework and complaining to him we had eaten too way too much at suppertime and we were probably going to gain 10 lbs. overnight.
Even in the one class we had together, Anthropology, all I could remember is him and his brother appointing me The Person Who Woke Them Up When the Movie Was Over So They Didn't Get In Trouble for Sleeping person. Nope, there wasn't a single incident where he had ever shown me that he had the slightest bit interest in me.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," I replied carefully.
"Nevermind," he said and went over to take his rightful place beside the much-flattered, Chatty Cathy. They ended up dating for several months after that.

The point of all this is, Second Life had suddenly transported me to an uncomfortable place I thought I would never ever again have the occasion to revisit. Part of me wants to screech, "It's just frickin' pixels, people!" while another part of me wants to help the men avatars gather up their eyeballs and put them back in their head.

I contemplated this whole, strange, insecure feeling for an entire day. How odd, I thought. To feel this way because of what's essentially, a silly cartoon. How utterly ridiculous, how shallow, how juvenile. I went to bed secure in my womanhood.

Yesterday morning I found myself all alone in the game, none of my friends had logged in yet and I gave seriously examined my avatar. Hmmmm, I thought, and clicked on "Appearances". Then I went to the "Torso Tab", to "Breasts" and increased them from "45" to "55". Satisfied, I went back to working on a Snowy Woods Background to put up for sale.

No, I don't want to think about what I just did. It hurts my head.

I didn't buy the Naked Book on purpose. When we got home from our Thanksgiving weekend trip, my daughter told me I had received a hardcover book in the mail. I was very excited as I had purchased this book from Half.com for a low price and was going to be using it to further my education in the world of human animation. I had been figuring out how to pose and animate figures for Second Life by using myself, sitting in the computer chair but now I would have photos of real people in action, photographed every 10th of a minute, to have for reference.

The description of the book had read as follows: "196 Plates, containing over 4,700 individual photographs from the famous Muybridge collection, chosen for their value to Artists, Doctors and Researchers (and hopefully Second Life animation students) by Eadweard Muybridge".

It seemed to be just what I needed. Photos of people doing normal things: sitting, climbing and running with views taken from the back, sides and front every few seconds of the movement. The price was right and I knew it would help me immensely as I tried to work out animations for the furniture I was making.

I opened the package expectantly and there was this excellent-looking book, written in the late 1890's
by Mr. Muybridge who had moved to San Francisco from the UK where he had developed an interest in motion photography, going so far as to invent a technique that would eventually become the forerunner for motion pictures.

What I didn't realize is that almost every picture in the book is of a stark-raving nude person which was immensely amusing to my daughters. I guess it was smart of Mr. Muybridge to photograph people in the nude so that every muscle, sinew and ligament could be seen but for the lay person just thumbing through the book, it was very hard to keep from laughing. There were men in the nude fencing, boxing, jumping, running and smoking, along with other things which made for a very comical group of pictures. I tried so hard not to be juvenile about the whole thing, after all, models have been posing nude for artists for decades and I was really doing ok until I reached the page with a very hairy man in a Fez hat, totally naked as well, running along at a brisk pace. I could just imagine the conversation that took place back then,

Muybridge: "Well done, Charles, are you getting cold? No? Excellent! Now we need to illustrate a naked man running. You'll be running to the end of the room for this one."

Charles: (as he hops from foot to foot to warm up), "Ok, I'm good to go, but can I leave my hat on?"

Muybridge: "yes, of course. We don't want you to catch cold."

Another thing surprising to me is that the many of the male models in the book were instructors at that time for the University of Philadelphia where this whole photography thing was taking place. Most of the naked women were paid models, not teachers. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this. Apparently they had to pay the women to be naked but the males were more than eager to show off their shortcomings. I believe they mentioned in the Introduction that the men who were illustrating the fencing poses were the real fencing instructors there at that college. I'm not sure if things were more free in the 1890's but I don't think there was a single professor I ever had at college that I would want to see naked in a book. In fact, I'm quite sure of the fact now that I think about it some more.

One interesting thing I noted is that all of the female models were rather plump, with imperfect features and disproportionate attributes. It was quite reassuring to know that there was a time in our society when looking normal was perfectly acceptable, even considered beautiful. It also made me reflect sadly on the state our society is in now with so much emphasis placed on trying to "look" a certain way in order to be considered beautiful especially with our increased ability to change what God gave us with surgery. It would be an interesting study to find out when things began to change since that day over 100 years ago when Mr. Muybridge told a woman model to hop over a hurdle naked.

While I was at my brother's house, my sister had brought over a stack of magazines for us to read, mostly People Magazine. In one of the recent issues, it showed a picture of The Reunion of Charlie's Angels. There were Kate, Farah and Jaclyn with their arms entwined, posing for pictures at one of the recent award shows. They had mostly the same shapes, ultra slim and clothed in sparkling gowns. My eyes were drawn there first, then I looked at their faces and was shocked. I guess I expected to see gracefully-aged beauties but what I found were three women who had obviously had extreme face lifts. Their eyes were drawn up like cats, their cheekbones so taught you could bounce a quarter off them and an odd stretched look about the mouth so that their chins looked pointy. Jaclyn looked the more normal of the three. I remember sighing sadly. If these three very successful, famous and gorgeous women have to succumb to doing such drastic measures in order to feel good about themselves and have society still think they're beautiful, what chance do we mere mortals have?

A few years ago, I went back to my small home town to spend a week with my extended family. The town had one major attraction during the sleepy summer months and that was to become the very quiet and very private playground for the rich and famous from the Chicago area. Surrounded by as many as twelve pristine lakes along with the opportunities to fish the teeming waters, jet ski, or just enjoy the sandy beaches and clear waters, it was the perfect area to have a summer cottage, near enough to Chicago to get there within a few hours by car or an even quicker trip by private plane.

In a round-a-bout chain of events, my aunt became the caretaker/housekeeper/friend to two wealthy and famous men from Chicago and watched over their cottages during the work week while they were in the city. Often times they would come back on the weekends to have parties, barbecues and provide entertainment for their friends.

One day during the particular week that I was visiting, my aunt had to inspect their cottages to make sure everything was ready for the men and their family's arrival on the weekend. She asked if my sister and I would like to tag along and see how the "other half lived".

As my sister and I waited for her to check the linens, check the door locks and water the plants, we became quite intrigued by their eclectic decor. Their house was filled with eye-jarring vibrant colors and bold patterns in oranges, bright blues and neon greens. We had really never seen anything quite like it in our humble parts and wondered if it was because of their African-American heritage or the fact that they were from Chicago.

As we wandered about the living room, we noted with interest the pictures of him with various celebrities and also the plaques for the awards he had won over the years. We finally came to the fireplace mantle and stopped there in bewilderment.

"Now, that's interesting," I said as I beheld three large empty frames, each one smaller than the other. They weren't hanging on the wall above the mantle, they were tilted against the wall and sitting inside one another.

"Why did they just leave those empty frames there?" my sister asked.
"I'm not sure," I replied.

With puzzled faces, we peered closer at what were apparently very costly, antique frames just sitting there empty.

"I bet those were very expensive," she remarked.
"I bet they were, too. Why don't they have any glass in them?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," she said, "Maybe the wife is going to get them professionally fitted when she has time," she answered.

We stood there in silence a bit longer.
"Do you think she's going to get some oil paintings to put in them?" my sister asked.
"I don't know. Why would she buy the frames before she bought the pictures?"
"Yeah, that doesn't make sense, how would she know what size frames to get?"

"Maybe they're supposed to be that way? Do you think?" she ventured.
"No way," I said. "That would be weird. Three empty frames just stacked there?"
"No, you're right, that is too strange," she said, "Why would someone do that? Leave three empty frames just sitting there as a decoration?"

We both stood there in silence, contemplating the three mismatched, leaning frames, all nestled inside each other, reminding one of those dolls from Russia.

Just then my aunt came by with her keys, finished with her inspection.

"Are you guys ready to go? I'm all done," she said and then noticed what we were staring at, "Oh, those," she said as she leaned in closer to look at them, too. "I don't think they're done unpacking everything yet. I think Ruth just stacked those there for now until she gets some pictures for them."

"Ahhhh," I said.
"Ahhhh," my sister said.

We smilingly filed out of the house, secure in our beliefs, satisfied in our conclusions.

A few months later, I was thumbing through Harper's Bazaar at my doctor's office and I will let my readers guess what was adorned the mantle of one of the richest homes in L.A, decorated by one of the most highly acclaimed interior decorators in the country.



In other news, my husband and I decided that canned soup was very bad for him since it had so much salt, and went to the store to get some things to make homemade soup. I decided it would be a good idea to use my new crockpot for this as I could let it sit and simmer all day.

In our local grocery store, we found some dried barley, dried split peas, navy beans and a soup mix called 15 Bean Mix. The latter was just a mix of 15 different dried beans and came with it's own "real ham" flavoring mix.

Later on, as I was holding up the bags of beans and standing behind him, I asked, "Which type of soup do you want me to try first? We have Split Pea, Beef and Barley, Navy Bean or 15 Bean Mix."

"15 Beans!!" he spouted, "Why do I need 15 bean soup?? We're not going to buy fifteen different kinds of beans and make soup out of them, that's just ridiculous! Just make one kind of soup with one kind of bean. You're going to a lot more trouble than you have to. No one needs fifteen beans in their soup, where did you get such an idea?"

At that moment he turned around to see me silently holding the bag of 15 Beans Mix like a waiter holds a tray.

"Oh," he said.

"Exactly," I replied.

Whenever I am put on a new medication, I usually scan the little piece of paper that comes with it for common side effects. Since drug companies now have to cover their butts in case of someone filing a malpractice lawsuit against them, they have to include almost every side effect known to man and the little piece of paper has in most cases, turned into a small book. Most side effects are very common to any new medication; nausea, vomiting, upset tummy, dizziness, headache, dry mouth, etc. Down at the bottom they usually list the rare side effects including everything from spontaneous combustion to the loss of private part sensation.

Earlier this year, I went to the doctor for a refill on my blood pressure medication and he asked me how I was doing. I admitted I thought that I had suddenly developed a crippling case of full body arthritis and was waking up with heart palpitations in the middle of the night. He did some blood tests and could find nothing wrong and wondered if I might have a mild case of depression and would I be willing to try a new drug, Cymbalta, that not only helped depression but arthritic conditions. At that point I was willing to try anything just to feel like my old self again and began to take the medicine and seemingly felt much better.

Over the last few months, I have been complaining about various aches and pains that seemed to come out of nowhere. I wondered if turning 50 was some kind of rite of passage and I was doomed to feel this way the rest of my life. The problem was, I attributed everything I was experiencing to a natural decrease in female hormones, tried to do the best I could with the hot flashes and sudden sweating and decided to just tough it out until it passed.

I began to have terrible nightmares, not only did I have terrible nightmares, I had nothing but nightmares. I remember asking several people, "Do you ever have good dreams because I haven't had one in a long time. I'm almost afraid to go to sleep." They would assure me that yes, they had a mix of both and I was driven to Google to see if I was some of freak or had some deep-seated problems that were coming out in my subconscious. I couldn't find anything constructive so chalked that up to stress.

Off and on, I would notice my tongue and lips felt tingly, as if they had gone to sleep and wondered if I had had something to eat that I had suddenly grown allergic to. The tingling would pass after a half hour or so and so I would forget about it.

Within the last year, I've also developed something called dysphasia where you will be talking along and know the word you want to say but a totally different word will come out instead. Sometimes I would just stop in mid-sentence and have "lost" the word entirely. While my kids thought this was all hilariously funny and at times aggravating, it deeply disturbed me to the point that I felt I was developing early Alzheimer's.

Other odd symptoms developed such as I noticed the arch in my right foot ached whenever I stepped on it, soon it spread to the heel and then to the other foot. At times it was difficult for me to walk after I had been sitting for a while and I would even sit in the Lazyboy chair with my feet up and almost cry with the pain because it got so bad. I tried ice and wearing good shoes, expensive arch supports but nothing helped. Sometimes my lower legs throbbed and ached like they had never done before and I worried that my health was deteriorating quickly.

I also noticed my stomach sticking out in such a way that I could not suck it in without a lot of effort. This even happened after I lost 15 lbs. and was eating less than ever. I chalked that up to old age and reminded myself I would have to start doing situps religiously.

Early this morning about an hour before it was time to wake up, something disturbed my sleep and I woke up and was suddenly aware of an odd sensation I had only experienced once before. I felt like my brain had been hit by a small jolt of electricity and it worked its way down my face so that my lips and tongue went numb again and then it continued down my arms to my hands and even all the way down to my toes. Being half awake, I knew something really strange was happening to me but didn't care enough to really wake up all the way and closed my eyes only to find myself staring at geometric zigzag patterns flickering back and forth where there should have been only dark. I remembered this had happened once before around the same time of the night and at that time it had alarmed me enough to try to seek out the cause which I had attributed to taking my medication too close to bedtime. This time it really worried me, especially the seeing the patterns waving about when I closed my eyes. I had been having more trouble with my eyes lately anyway so wondered if I was developing diabetes. My mom had developed it about my age and it was always in the back of my mind that I might, too.

Being a nurse and naturally curious, I would from time to time try to research the different things that were happening to me but never connected any of them beyond the slight suspicion of diabetes. I even went so far as to buy a Freestyle Flash Blood Glucose checker (it was very cheap and on sale) and tested my blood sugar a few times but it showed up as perfectly normal no matter when I tested it. Last week I was cutting up onions to put in a dish I was making and my hands began to shake so bad I thought I was going to cut myself. I put the knife down and decided I would take my blood sugar because surely it had dropped to a dangerously low level. I was quite surprised to find it within the normal range.

I am by no means a hypochondriac and have always tried not to dwell on aches and pains too much but obviously something odd was going on. The only other thing I could think of that would make my hands shake was caffeine and I had had a Diet Coke earlier so I attributed it to that.

After the tingling incident this morning, I knew something was not right so I went to Google and typed in "body tingling" which was not a smart thing to type in. I finally put in Cymbalta tingling and hit the mother lode.

On several different forums and websites I found warnings about Cymbalta from people of every age and walk of life. The main symptoms of taking it and withdrawal from it were:

1. Brain "zaps", sometimes occurring every few minutes even to the point of severe pain
2. Facial tingling and numbness
3. Marked reduction in sight acuity
4. A feeling of being bloated and "fat"
5. Sudden bouts of extreme sweating and thirst
6. Crippling pain in the bottoms of the feet and especially the heels
7. Horrendous, vivid nightmares
8. Shakiness and other low blood sugar symptoms
9. Slight epileptic-type episodes where words are forgotten during speech
10. Dizziness, a feeling of not being right in the room

I sat back in stunned silence. Almost every message and complaint listed the above things. There were other more severe symptoms and some that didn't apply to me but for the most part, these were the main side effects. As the truth began dawning on me, I read about the even worse side effects if you try to stop it.

Now I am faced with a dilemma. I know doctors cannot know how each person will respond to every medication and my entire extended family is notorious for being sensitive to almost every kind of drug. I feel I need to get off this medication as soon as possible but do I go cold turkey or taper it off gradually? Do I tell the doctor or just do it myself? I really don't want to make an appointment, tell him I've decided I'd rather have the occasional arthritis pains and pay him $36 on the way out.

My aunt says to take myself off it, start eating only healthy foods, take some good vitamins and make sure I get fresh air and exercise everyday. Lol, I'm sure I remember my grandma saying the very same thing to both my mom and her years and years ago. Some advice is timeless.

I read withdrawal from this drug can take up to six weeks. Merry Christmas to me.

In recent years, I have seen a direct rise in church "message signs" as opposed to signs just displaying the name of the church, the pastor's name and the time it meets. I guess this is useful if you want to announce special programs or more personal messages such as "Welcome home, Pastor" or "Congratulations Graduates" but more often times than not, these signs just come across as sounding silly, stupid or downright confusing.

The following are signs I have actually seen driving to and from home to pick my daughter up from school. The most recent one, since today is Halloween, said:

"Trick or Treat!
This is no trick,
God's forgiveness is a Treat!"

I don't even know what to think about this one. Forgiveness is a Treat? Like the flimsy diamond ring you used to get from the dentist if you were good and didn't wiggle around? Like your mom would give you ice cream if you ate all the broccoli on your plate? Somehow I just can't imagine God saying, "You know, I sent my son to die for you, now isn't that a nice treat?"

This next one is just plain confusing. I drove by it several times before I finally realized what the real message was.

"The less you have, the more you
realize how much you can get

from Him Pastor David Gibbs
Youth Pastor Henry Murdock
Morning Services Sunday 11-12"

For the next few days, I actually thought this church was promoting greediness until I finally saw the "from Him" way down on the next line scrunched along with the name of the pastor. The way they had the letters arranged, you would have never known that one line went with another.

This next one is from this same church and I happened to notice it a few years ago and I'm still dumbfounded by it.

"Jesus is better than the Super Bowl"

I understand what this church was trying to say. They were saying that instead of staying home on Sunday night to watch the football game, you should come to church for the evening service instead. I just have to wonder what possessed them to put it this way? Saying Jesus is better than the Super Bowl is like comparing two things that have absolutely no relationship to one another. It's like saying, "My kidney is better than a moon rock" or "World Peace is better than a Happy Meal at Mcdonald's". There are just some things in this world that should not be compared.

Here's one that looked ok the first time I saw it. In fact, it was on our very own church sign.

"We Support Our Veterans On Veteran's Day"

However, the more I drove by it, the worse it started sounding. It became more like "WE support our veterans," (stressing the WE) as in "unlike you other people who don't". Or, "We Support Our Veterans, unlike the rest of you heathen, flag-burning reprobates who don't." Finally, it sounded like: "WE Support our veterans on Veteran's Day because since it is Veteran's Day, we feel it is only fitting that we should support them. We don't really worry about supporting them at any other time." Moral of this story is, never put anything on your church sign that makes out like you think you're better than the community around you. Especially when your church sign sits on a little hill.

Here is another tip for church sign messaging. Don't try to fit all the names of your high school graduates, mission trip kids, people who helped redo the roof or any other group of people on the sign if the total number of letters exceeds the sign's capacity. It looks ridiculous. For example:

"Congratulations DebbieChrisAshleyJudy
JoeAudreyBaileyJustinGregJonandBob"

I won't mention who's church sign this appeared on but Ijustthinkthatitwouldbeagoodideaifweinvestedinalargersignifweexpecttoputallthosenamesonitatonce.

My final entry is a set of signs I pass almost everyday during the holiday season since they are in front of a Charismatic Catholic Church down the road from my house (I'm not even going into what that church must be all about). I should correct that to say I see the signs during the holiday season and then for the following six months since it usually takes them that long to take them down and store them until the next Christmas. I suspect the only reason they finally do take them down is because they have to mow the grass.
The signs are individually painted plywood letters with lights and sparkly garland outlining them. They stagger them along the road front and it ends up looking something like this:

"C O M E
L O R D
J E S U S
C O M E"

I feel I must tackle the message of this sign first because I'm not really sure what this church is trying to tell the general public. I'm just surprised that during the very holiday that we are supposed to be celebrating Jesus's birth, they put up a sign that says, "Come, Lord Jesus, Come". If Christmas is Jesus's birthday, he already came, didn't he? Did they somehow miss that fact? The phrase does sound vaguely familiar as if it might come from a hymn or something but I cannot place it.

The other problem with this sign is the tendency for the lights to stop working on one letter or another and it's usually a few days before anyone comes out to fix it. We have seen all kinds of variations of this over the years such as: "Come, Lor Jesus, Come" and "ome, Lord Jesus, Come" but my favorite so far as been:

"COME, LORD JESUS, COM"

I would have thought he would have gotten a .org at least.

Monday - Notice Mirror Really Needs to be Cleaned

1. Assess tools needed: Windex and paper towels.

2. Realize you are out of paper towels because your brother was visiting last week with his 4 month old "The shelter told me this puppy was potty trained" puppy. And he wasn't.

3. Ask daughters to buy some paper towels because they are going to Walmart.

4. Ask daughters where the paper towels are when they come back.
"We forgot," they say.

Tuesday - Notice Mirror Is Getting Even More Smudged

5. Ask daughters to pick up paper towels if they go to a grocery store.

6. Ask daughters where the paper towels are when they come back. "We didn't go to a grocery store," they reply.

Wednesday - Go To Store For Groceries

7. Realize halfway home that I forgot paper towels.

Thursday - Try to Ignore Dirty Mirror

8. Youngest daughter asks where the Windex is so she can clean something. I wave vaguely in the direction of the cabinet under the kitchen sink.

Friday - Husband Goes to Store

9. Husband comes home with the largest pack of paper towels I have ever seen. Eight double rolls, $8.99 for the package which measure about 2 feet x 1.5 feet.

10. Huge pack of paper towels sits on table while I contemplate where I am going to try to store it.

Saturday - This Mirror is Finally Going to Get Cleaned Today

11. Get a handful of paper towels. Realize how nice it is to actually have something when you need it.

12. Try to get to cabinet under the sink which involves trying to get around oldest daughter and middle daughter who are trying to make orange frosting for cupcakes for a Halloween party at their friend's house tonight.

13. Realize Windex is not in the usual Windex-Designated Area. Realize how annoying it is to not have something when you need it or in the place it's supposed to be in.

14. Walk all over the house looking for the Windex.

15. Ask everyone you see if they have seen the Windex.

16. Particularly ask youngest daughter if she remembers where she put it after she used it and she doesn't even remember asking for it. Realize you should have known she was going to say that.

17. Walk all over house trying to pretend you are not getting perturbed.

18. Finally spy Windex on the table behind the enormous pack of paper towels that your husband brought home last night.

19. Start down the hallway which leads to the bathroom with both paper towels and Windex in hand. Hear bathroom door shut and lock being turned just one second ahead of you.

20. Wait patiently to get in bathroom. (This is a lie, in reality I let out a strangled "arrrghhh" sort of sound to which my middle daughter came out of the bathroom and replied, "What is wrong with you?" and walked off towards her bedroom with the clothes she was going change into.

21. Finally clean mirror and admire how shiny and clear it looks. Sigh in satisfaction at a job finally done.

22. Leave bathroom to throw away paper towels and hear someone go in the bathroom and turn on the water full blast which with our water pressure means water flying everywhere.

23. Remind myself it was the thought that counts.

24. Sit down and write it all in your online journal so family and friends can see how long-suffering you are (and laugh at you).

Background to the story:

Around the beginning of August, we called the Sears dishwasher repairman because our dishwasher was not draining the water out of the bottom. I had tried everything, including unhooking the drain hose and blowing forced air through it. After having to drain the bottom of the dishwasher at least four times by hand, I finally decided this was beyond even my great repair skills.

The repair guy came, watched it run through all of its cycles and the stupid thing never missed a beat. It worked perfectly and drained every time! He said there might have been something in the draining mechanism and it might have dissolved since we first had the problem. He then charged us $124 and left us a piece of paper saying if it stopped draining again in the next 90 days, we could call him back and not be issued a house-call charge.

Well, the other day, it stopped draining again. I thought maybe I had messed up the computer timer by not turning it far enough or turning it too fast but no matter what I did, it did not drain. I ran it through about four more complete cycles, basically just sloshing the dirty water around to see if it would finally kick in and drain. No such luck.

This dishwasher is only about 1.5 years old so I think it has been messed up from the start and I'm afraid it's going to turn out to be a computer problem. I'm not sure if the Sears basic warranty covers computer problems but we won't worry about that yet. (and before you ask, no we did not buy the extended warranty for this appliance because this was the appliance we said, No more useless, money-wasting, scamming warranties, we are finally putting our foot down.)

So Monday, I say to my husband, we need to drain that dishwasher, would you do it since I am in the middle of this huge cleaning the basement project with our daughter. He has this week off so he has time. He walked over to the dishwasher and turned it on.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Running it through a cycle," he replied and walked away.

"How is that going to help? I've done that four times now. I told you that."

"I'm just seeing for myself that it won't drain."

"You're just going to be sloshing that dirty water around again and it's going to smell up the house. Don't you believe me that it won't drain?"

My daughter, who is standing right there says, "It won't drain, Dad. She's already tried it a bunch of times."

He mumbles something unintelligible and wanders off in the direction of the TV because there is a rerun of Gilmore Girls on and he likes Lorilie. I bit my tongue and went over to work on my computer graphics.

Today I walked over by the dishwasher and smelled a horrible smell radiating from it and said to him, because I have now hurt my back lifting boxes, "Will you please drain that dishwasher today? That smell is horrible. I can keep working on sorting out this stuff from the basement."

This is where he goes into what I like to call the "hands on the hips" attitude. He doesn't actually do it, but he adopts the tone and vocal loudness of someone intensely irritated and standing there with their hands on their hips.

"Well I'm not going to drain that water until you find that paper and call the repairman."

I resist the urge to say, "So are you saying if I don't call him for the next five years, you won't drain the water until then?"

I say, "What does calling the repairman have to do with draining the water out of the dishwasher?"

"Because I don't have an extra $100," he says irritatedly.

Huh?

"Why do you need an extra $110?" I ask blankly.

"TO PAY THE REPAIRMAN!!!" he shouts.

"What?" I say, "Why would we have to pay him $100?"

"BECAUSE YOU WON'T CALL HIM!!!!!!"

"I CAN'T call him until you drain the water out. He won't work with all that stinky water in the bottom. What if they schedule it right away? We need the water drained out."

"Well, there's no sense draining it until you make sure he's coming!!"

I finally realized I had not switched on my Husband-Speech-Decoder-Ring and promptly did that.

I ran the last sentence through it and got this response: "I'm mad that we bought this dishwasher only last year and it's never worked right from the start and all appliances should work at all times and never break down and cause me trouble and we've already called the repair guy once and he should have fixed it that time even though it was working fine when he got here and I really don't want to get down there on the floor and drain that stinky water because there is a rerun of last week's Nascar race on TV."

"Well," I said, "No matter if he ever comes or not, we can't leave that water in there, it will start to mold."

"Ok, Ok, I'll drain it today sometime but you have to find that paper. We can't do anything until you find that paper....that you lost."

I need someone to design a device that fits between the tongue and the teeth to keep me from seriously injuring myself. It could be called "The Most Useful Marital Appliance You Will Ever Own."

For three weeks now, my daughter and I have been taking our two, year-old beagles to Doggy Obedience Class every Thursday at 5 p.m. She usually has Tony and I usually have Lexie although we have traded off when we get too frustrated with one or the other.

The first week went rather well, after our dogs greeted all the other dogs there with ARFFF!! Arrrff!!! ARFFF!! and Arrrrhhh-wwwoooo!!! Arrrrhhh-wwwoooo!! Lexie has that distinctive deep-throat beagle bark which must carry at least 15 miles with a good back wind however Tony's is more a regular, annoying dog bark.

Once they looked at all the dogs there, which included a very laid back Rottweiller, a mixed Australian shepherd/spaniel, a miniature pinscher, a 4 month old Black Lab and several other nondescript dogs that I can't remember because I haven't seen them since the first class, they pretty much went about their own business. The problem with this dog class is that if you miss your day on Thursday, you can attend the alternative class on Saturday and vice versa. So last week we had a new dog show up that belonged in the Saturday class. Our two dogs made a huge racket over this new dog because they knew he "didn't belong" since he hadn't been there the first week. None of the other dogs minded and kept heeling obediently but mine had to sniff, bark, Arrrrhh-wwooo all the way around the perimeter of the large area we walked our dogs in. This was a little embarrassing but not unfixable and we left class when it was done with high hopes for the next time, congratulating ourselves on being able to teach them to heel, sit and stay.

Then we came to tonight which would be Week Three. Everything started off calmly enough with just a few barks and Arrrhh--wwoos and soon we got them under control and sitting correctly while we waited for the rest of the class to show up. There were only 4 of us there and the teacher said, "That's ok, I can concentrate on the 4 of you more closely now." But that was all to change in the next 15 min. In walked a team of large Golden Retrievers, my dogs went nuts, lunging, barking, whining and somehow I got positioned between both of them. I had Tony at this point and he either wanted to lunge ahead and sniff the dog ahead of us or he was looking behind him to see how close the big one in back was getting. Then in walked a lady with an overgrown "Benjie" type dog and she proceeded to join the rest of us but then for some reason, she left the line of dogs and owners going around and around and decided to position herself just off the path on the cobblestones and teach her dog to sit and she WAS USING DOGGY TREATS!!! Each time my dogs passed that area, they lunged toward the dog or the treats, I'm not sure which, in between barking and Arrrrhh-wwoooing. The teacher said, "Well, you have beagles, you didn't think this was going to be easy, did you?" and we both laughed (on the outside).

Then, about half past the hour, in walks another new dog, this time a little Yorkshire Terrier
with an elderly lady with her knee in a brace. My dogs went berserk again and I wondered why anyone would show up to class when it was half done. Somehow this lady got in front of me. We now have around 15 people and dogs in the procession and my dogs don't know which dog they have to keep any eye on anymore. Their heads are swiveling around so fast, they have no idea what they are doing and they are certainly not listening to our commands half the time. I am growing a little cranky.

Suddenly, the lady ahead of me, the one with the brace and the Terrier, stops, turns and says to me, "Please don't follow me so close." I stop, glance back and suddenly I have a Golden Retriever with it's nose up my butt (well almost) and there is a congested line of impatient dogs and owners behind him. In fact, the whole other side of the room was empty and we were all squished behind this one lady who then says to me, "You know, I can't walk that FAST." I mumbled something that might have sounded like "I'm sorry," but I was trying to understand how she thought she was going to keep up with everyone else with a bulky brace on her knee. The fact was, we had been going at break-neck walking speed all night and I was ready to fall over. I blame it all on the big dogs.

Meanwhile, because this doggy training area is in a vet clinic, we are situated between their exercise yard and their kennels so that means that every dog that is being boarded there has to cross our area in order to be taken out to be exercised. There was a nice young man there who was doing this on a regular basis. First he hauled a big white dog across the paved area, then a little while later, he hauled it back again only to emerge with a Chow which he paraded across our training area and then back again. My dogs did not miss this. In fact, they wanted to bolt away and follow the disappearing dogs out the backdoor. I was getting tired.

Then came the time to teach the dogs "a new thing". This usually happens after a good half hour of walking, turning, stopping, sitting, heeling and staying. She had us all line up against the far wall, toes on the inner cobblestones and we were told to make our dogs sit and stay. Tony was ok with that part. He was more concerned about "Pseudo Benji" panting next to us. Sandy, the teacher took "Benji" and used him to demonstrate the new technique which was to make your dog sit, stay and then you push down on the shoulder blades, pulling up with the leash and force your dog down to a laying position, firmly and gently. Everyone beamed at cute Benjie and she took him back to his owner. "Ok," she said, "We will all do it one at a time starting on this end." That happened to be my end. Benjie was first and he performed it perfectly but I decided it wasn't fair because he had prior knowledge of the procedure. Tony was next and everyone looked at us expectantly. "Sit, Tony!" I said encouragingly, "Now Stay, good boy!" "Ok, now down," and I did just as the teacher demonstrated, pulled up on the leash, pushed down on the shoulder blades and ......nothing happened. He didn't budge an inch. I tried again. Same results. In fact, he was beginning to look annoyed. I hunkered down next to him and this time put all my weight into the push this time and he moved maybe an inch and sprung right back up. I began to use all my best wrestling holds, I twisted, I pushed, I pulled and this little thirty pound dog was able to resist me at every turn. By now, the teacher had moved on and was almost at the end of the row. I glanced up to see every dog laying down calmly. I then hefted Tony in my arms, turned him on his side and forcibly laid him on the ground where he stayed about 2 seconds before he popped up. When I reached for him the final time, he let out a very nasty growl and snapped at me which shouldn't have surprised me. I looked up again to see all eyes on me, including the teacher's and all dogs watching with interest except the Golden Retriever on the end who was trying to chew a piece of the potted plant next to him.

The teacher came over and said, "That's ok, we are trying to teach him the dominant "down" and he doesn't like it. He has to learn. I hope you're going to work on this at home this week." I muttered something like, "Of course, every minute," and she laughed.

I got home and collapsed in exhaustion wondering why they didn't just let 6 or 7 cats loose in the room with us while we're trying to train them. It couldn't hurt.


By the way, Spell Check tells me a good substitution for Arrrghh-woooo, is WWII. I agree.

Came home from church today to find a house finch sitting on my front walk. He didn't fly off like the birds normally do when we approach so I suspected something was wrong. This was confirmed by the fact that I could walk up in back of it and pick it up.

After barricading myself in the bathroom with the bird, due to the enormous interest of 4 cats and 2 dogs, I proceeded to give it a health assessment and at the same time pause to think how fragile it was, how helpless and scared. Its little heart was beating so hard underneath my thumb that I thought it would die of fright before I was able to help it.

It immediately became clear that it had an eye stuck shut and that's why it was having trouble flying. Birds must need both eyes to fly because I have seen this same thing in years past, always with the same breed of bird. I got out a Q-tip, soaked it in some contact saline solution and proceeded to gently coax the eye tissue open. The minute the bird had both eyes clear and free, it started protesting loudly which was immediately followed by intense scratching and lunging on the other side of the bathroom door.

I couldn't figure out what to do with it next because it clearly had some sort of eye infection and needed some medicine and then I suddenly remembered my husband had a problem with red eyes a while back and the doctor had given him some steroid eye drops so I got those out and treated the bird with that. The minute I took him back to the front yard and opened my hand, he took flight and flew over our roof, straight and sure.

There was something clearly going on with house finches that seemed to be getting worse. I had not noticed this eye infection in other kinds of birds so I decided to investigate further on Google. The problem with investigating these types of things is that you're never quite sure what to type in the search field. I typed in "stuck eye in bird" with horrible results. I'm sure anyone who has used Google understands what I mean. I got various people with stuck eyes who owned a bird, birds who were stuck somewhere and people who were eye witnesses to it, birds who were stuck in the eye by a twig, etc. Jigsaw Pig tells me I must put quotations around the words in the search field if I want to get more specific results but I've found that most of the time, this ends up with zero results. I finally hit upon the winning combination of "infected eye in bird" and found out there is a whole official study being done by Cornell University's Department of Ornithology on this disease. It's causing the House Finch population to dramatically decrease as it moves progressively westward. They are quite concerned about it spreading to other species and say they need help in tracking the occurences.

So I am now an Official Bird Feeder Watcher of Mycoplasmic Bacterial Conjunctivitis in House Finches (Project Feeder Watch, is its title). I have an official ID number and everything. I have also been warned to "take this seriously" and "report more than once or it will look like 100% of the entire House Finch population of Flushing, Michigan has this disease".

I feel all important and stuff now.

I was working on images for my Second Life store and decided I needed a little company so I switched on my little tv I keep next to my computer and saw that Mystery Theater was on. In case you don't know what Mystery Theater is, it's a program with episodes of different UK "mystery" or "detective" type shows and presented on Public TV. I admit I haven't had the time or inclination to watch many of them in the last few years but this one caught my eye because I faintly recognized the man in the lead role. It took me a while (and the help of Google) to realize that this was none other than the power-tripping manager of Whitney Houston in the Bodyguard. Also, I had picked up a DVD at the rental store the other day called, "Wide Sargasso Sea" and he had the lead role in that as well so it was no wonder he seemed familiar.

I said to my kids, "Look at this man here, he's the guy who was the manager in The Bodyguard."
They peered in disbelief at his face and said, "Oh, that can't be! That guy is sooo old!!!" Personally, I thought he had improved with age, in acting ability and the way he looked so I left it on the channel, watched the entire show and found it quite enjoyable. The plot was the often used, "The killer is calling you from somewhere inside the house!! Get out now!!" The plot wasn't what interested me so much as the dynamics between the two lead characters, especially Barbara. In this particular episode, a man with a gun was taunting her about how scared she was (Lynley was on his way, having seen the killer's face in a picture they had enlarged using digital imaging) and when he was distracted for a moment, she throws a glass at him and then jumps him even though she's only about 5'2". She knocks him to the ground and continues to punch and pound him until Lynley pulls her off and then she dissolves into tears in his arms.

The next day I mentioned this show to Jigsaw Pig and he said, "That woman sidekick always looks so cross," and "The show is easy to watch, I guess. It's very popular here." He made a few other comments I found intriguing and filed the information away in the back of my mind as being "something I might want to watch more of" and promptly forgot about it until I got to the library yesterday.

As I was waiting for my daughter to finish looking at the videos, I happened to glance up and see an entire row of "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries". "Well what do we have here?", I said to myself. Three entire years worth of episodes in twelve DVDs. That amounts to four episodes per DVD and I promptly scooped up the first four videos and went to check them out with the books I had picked up.

So I've watched the very first episode and found out there was a reason the Miss Havers was so cross, she had a nutty mother and her dad was dying in the hospital. Besides that, Lynley was a LORD and kind of looks down his nose at her and some of her ideas and she has the strongest disdain for the upper class.

The first episode centered mostly around a boy's school and I found out I might as well have been watching the episode in Chinese. I'm not sure if this is just because a British boys school has its own private language or what but I couldn't make out half the words they were saying. There was talk of a game called "fives". "Let's go look on the FIVES court," they would say and then they would walk around these little cement cubicles that looked somewhat like the cement shower stalls you would find at a primitive summer camp. I still have no idea what the game of "Fives" is. Even more confusing was the word "pastoral". "We make sure all your boys have their pastoral needs met," the school claimed. Hmmmm, what does that mean? They mow their fields so the boys can sit out in them and be quiet and reflective? I was so confused. Moving on, I found out some of the boys were called "specs" and could tell the younger boys when to brush their teeth and turn out their lights, among other things. Here in the US, "specs" is an old fashioned name for eyeglasses. Finally, they interviewed someone they thought was responsible for the schoolboy's death and he told them he had parked his van in the graveyard that night because he had just come from the pub and he wanted to get his "kit" off. Hmmmm, ok, this one was a puzzler. All I could deduct was that he had to stop to take a pee. What else could it be? Isn't that the most logical reason for stopping in the wee hours after a night of drinking?

I am sure it will all become clearer the more I watch these shows but for the moment, I'm just glad that the boys in the UK can have fun in the Fives Court (which doesn't even look large enough to even be playing Ones on, if you ask me) and that they are well looked after by bigger boys with excellent eyesight and that if they need to go out to a pasture, there is one provided for them and while they're there, they can even get their kit off.


In further developments today, my fifteen year old has just informed me that she had turned in a paper to her English teacher with a word spelled wrong and she was concerned about it.

"We were doing word definitions," she explained.
"What word were you trying to spell?" I asked.
"Pathological Organism," she replied.
"How did you spell it then?"
"Pathological Orgasm."


Sigh. Next time I see the teacher, I will just have to tell her that that particular daughter is adopted.

I recently joined my three girls, ages 22,19 and 15, together with the youngest ones friend (I'll call her Mindy), on a shopping trip to the "Valley" which is the term used for the general area in which all "cool stores" reside. As we neared Borders Book Store, they began talking about sex and I, being the prudent mom that I am, kept my mouth shut and just listened with amusement.

I have always been very open about sex with my kids, but I think in a moderate, informative way without revealing anything of my own personal life. I remember how I felt about knowing my parents had sex and how I would have rather died than even imagine it so I've purposely never talked with them about that.

As the conversation wore on, the daughter who was planning on getting married in a couple of years announced to the group, "I'm sorry, but the thought of doing "that" with "him" on our wedding night is just yucky, I love him but, I'm sorry......it just sounds yucky."

I thought that this seemed the perfect opportunity to be the calm voice of motherly reason and encouragement. I didn't want my poor daughters worrying about something that should be a wonderful experience. I plowed ahead with the knowledge that I was imparting wonderful and valuable information upon them.

"You know," I said, as I maneuvered the car into a parking space and put it in park, "I think you'll change your mind once you actually have the experience. The thing is, God made sex to feel really, really, really good." I thought throwing God in there gave it a little more validation and was a stroke of pure genius. I smiled in pride.

There was a moment of stunned silence and then I was flooded with sounds of car doors opening and "Oooooohhh, YUCK!!!!!" "I Can't Believe You Said That!!!!" "Ewwwwwwwww!!!!!!" "It was the 'Really, really' that got to me!!!!" "Yuck, Yuck, Yuck!!!!" "Gross, gross, gross!!!!" "How could you, Mother???"

"What? What did I say?" They were exiting the car faster than a gang of teenagers in which one guy in the back seat had eaten five Bean and Beef burritos a hour before.

"I don't want to hear anything about your sex life!" one said.

"I didn't say anything about it," I protested, "I was just talking in general."

"I can't believe you said that with Mindy in the car," said the youngest.

"Well, she was talking about sex, too!" I said.

"That is just the most disgusting thing I have ever heard!"

"I was trying to reassure you!"

"Well, we don't want to hear that kind of stuff from you,"

"Who better to tell you this stuff than your mom?"

"And don't ever say really, really really again."

"Ok, ok, ok," I said apologetically, "I won't ever mention it again," and followed along behind them into the store, looking properly chastised, hoping they wouldn't turn around to see the small smirk I was trying to hide.

Recently I was at a family gathering and a couple of my relatives asked me if I had ever heard of something called "ear candling or ear coning". I replied in the negative and they went on to explain it is used for people who have problems with ear wax and other debris in the ear. The procedure is as follows, you insert a special tightly rolled cone, preferably rolled by a left-handed person so that the "spiral" is right, into your ear. You then light the other end on fire and the vacuum created by fire is supposed to pull all kinds of softened and melted junk out of your inner ear that you could never reach with a Q-tip. One of them said, "You wouldn't believe the junk that you have in your ears and that comes out with this thing."

I stared at them in disbelief and then I asked, "You what? You light something on fire In Your Ear???" They assured me it's a well-known and ancient technique and that you could buy these ear cones or "ear candles" in the health food store. I sat there for a while trying to figure out how to match up my medical knowledge with this bit of new information because I couldn't understand how a person could have a boatload of gunk in their ears without having diminished hearing or even worse, an ear infection. Ears were designed to be automatically self-cleansing and for years and years we have been warned by our moms or warned our own kids to not stick anything in their ears or they could puncture their eardrums. When I mentioned this conversation to Jigsaw Pig, he helpfully pointed out the dangers in having fire that close to your head. (Actually he said something like, "Chessie, That Would Not Be A Good Idea!")

Today I remembered I wanted to look this up on Google and find out if it was a hoax or not and found out there are entire professionals who do nothing but candle ears for around $35-$75 an hour. I think they called themselves Auditory Conologists. They base their practice on the fact that ancient Chinese and Hindu people used this technique for centuries with amazing results. They say it will: "soothe, heal and calm" the ear, sinuses and "promotes spiritual and emotional health".

I read through various sites about ear candling, how they make the cones from unbleached muslim since ear canals don't like bleach and how they use natural beeswax to coat the cones with (since ear canals also don't like manufactured paraffin) and infuse the linen and wax with various herbs and other holistic remedies. They claimed it cured everything from impacted sinuses to chronic ear infections and one lady even professed that it "cleaned your brains out" to which I will refrain from commenting on.

I finally came upon a website where a medical doctor described the dangers of using this technique on your ears and I read with mounting horror about "burned ears, burned hair, melted wax having to be scraped off people's eardrums, infections, ruptured eardrums, etc. One poor lady tried to do this to herself, lost control of the cone, it fell onto the bed and caught the bed covers, the curtains and everything else in the room on fire, she had an asthma attack and died later at the hospital.

A few smart people went home after being told ear candling would cure all their woes and rigged up a test whereby they collected what melted from the cone separately from what came out of their ear. And what came out of their ear, you ask? Absolutely nothing. All the debris so proudly displayed by the candlee after their ear candling was nothing but melted beeswax and the chaff that was in the beeswax to begin with. As everyone knows, bees don't strain their wax. In another side-note, the vacuum that was supposed to be caused by the smoke and fire as it used up oxygen in the cone wasn't even strong enough to lift dust out of the ear canal, let alone sticky wax. In order to lift sticky wax out of an ear, the vacuum would have to be so strong, any attempt to use it would completely rupture the ear drum.

So if anyone ever mentions ear candling to you and it strikes a chord of curiosity just remember what your mother always told you about sticking sharp things in your ears and if she had thought about it, she would have included Fire in that sentence. But if you absolutely must try it, always remember to do it with a friend.

In the continuing saga of trying to get my 15 year old daughter's medical problems taken care of, the lab results for the fasting insulin came in and the doctor herself called me last week. She informs me that Loopy Lynn's blood insulin level is "highly elevated" and then mentioned "pre-diabetic condition" and a host of other things. I was not surprised, it was just as we had always suspected and the doctor insisted she would like her to see an endocrinologist as soon as possible. I agreed and told her I already knew the name of a very good one here in town and would call her immediately. This is a shortened version of how those phone calls went:

1. Called Dr. Highly-Recommended.

Receptionist: Yes, we take your insurance, yes, the doctor is taking new patients, no, she doesn't take anyone under the age of 18.

Me: Sigh, ok, thank you.

2. Looked in phone book for other endocrinologists, find out there are only men pediatric endocrinologists in our area. I want a woman.

3. Did another more specific search for Pediatric Women Endocrinologists in Michigan and finally found one about 40 miles from our house. Not bad. Looked at all the listings for the doctor on Google and found out she seems like a good doctor.

4. Called the Dr. Hard-to-Find.

Receptionist: We take children but we need a referral. How old did you say she was? You know we're not a Pediatric Endocrinologist but we do take children. What type of insurance to you have?"

Me: Totally Useless Insurance

Receptionist: Ok, we take that kind. Hold on. (puts me on hold) Yes, ok, we take that kind of insurance but we need a referral. Can you get one of those? We won't see her without a referral.

Me: Yes, call you right back.

4. Call Dr. For-Women-Only.

Me: Hi, I need a referral for my daughter to go to Dr. Hard-to-Find.

Receptionist: What is her name? How do you spell that? What is her address/phone number/social security number/preferred coffee brand?

Me: (rattling off info)

Receptionist: Can you hold for a moment?

Me: Yes

Receptionist returns: We can't do an insurance referral for you to that doctor because with your insurance you should be able to go to any doctor you want to. You don't need a referral. Perhaps you can ask your Primary Care Physician for one. Hold on, here's Dr. For-Women-Only. She wants to talk to you.

Dr. For-Women-Only: Hi, I would be glad to give you a referral but I don't know what they're talking about. Why did you want to go to her? I don't know her. You should be able to go to any doctor you want. Why don't you call Dr. Primary-Care-Physician and ask him and then call them back and if ask them specifically what they're talking about and what they want. I'm just a Dr. For Women Only, I don't do referrals but I'd be happy to tell them Loopy Lynn needs one.

Me: Ok, thank you.

5. Call Dr. Primary-Care-Physician. His nurse answers. I explain to her what I need.

Nurse Betty: What? What are you doing? Where are you going? Why did you pick her? Why didn't you pick one affiliated with Dr. Primary-Care-Physician's Hospital? We don't have any of her tests results, we don't know what's going on.

I explain it all once again.

Nurse Betty: What's the endocrinologist's name/address/phone number/blood type/choice of Best Supporting Actress for the Academy Awards last Sunday.

Me: I provide all of the above.

Nurse Betty: Well, I don't know why they would want you to have a referral. Tell them that's ridiculous. You don't need one with your type of insurance. Call them and tell them that but they should already know that.

Me: ok, thank you.

6. I call Dr. Hard-to-Find again.

Receptionist-Different-From-First-One: Hello?

Me: Hi, I called both the Primary Care Physician and Dr. For-Women-Only and both of them insisted I don't need referrals with the type of insurance I have.

Receptionist: Can you hold for a minute?

Me: Ok, thank you.

Receptionist returns: Ok, what Receptionist #1 was TRYING to EXPLAIN to you was that you needed a Doctor's Referral, not a Doctor's Insurance Referral. Dr. Hard-to-Find won't see anyone unless they have been sent here by a doctor.

Me: Ah (but what I was really thinking was why didn't Receptionist #1 inform me of that in the first place?)

Receptionist 2: You need to call your doctor and tell them to call us and make the appointment for you, then they will call you back and give you the time. Make sure Dr. For-Women-Only sends the lab results to our office.

Me: Does it matter if I get the referral from the Primary Physician or Dr. For Women Only?

Receptionist 2: No, just pick one, it doesn't matter. Probably the one who wanted you to see the endocrinologist.

Me: ok, thank you.

7. I call Dr.-For-Women-Only back and explain what I need:

Receptionist: What's her name/address/phone number, email address and My Space name?

I provide the above.

Receptionist: Hold on. Here's the doctor.

Dr. For Women Only: They want what? a personal referral? Why do they need that? Oh well, I don't do those, I have no way to do them. I mean, yes, I could call them and tell them I want her seen by them but I don't have any way to refer her. Maybe you could get one from Dr. Primary-Care-Physician.

Me: Ok, thank you.

8. I call Dr. Primary-Care-Physician.

Receptionist: You need a personal referral? To whom? How do you spell that? Ok, what is their address/phone number and do they brush their teeth sideways or up and down?

I provide all the info.

Receptionist: You know what, you had better talk to Nurse Betty.

Me: ok, thank you.

Nurse Betty: Ok, now what do you need exactly?

Me: I need a referral for Loopy Lynn to Dr. Hard-to-Find.

Nurse Betty: (letting out a big sigh) Are they in now?

Me: They were a few minutes ago.

Nurse Betty: Ok, who is the doctor? How do you spell that? What is her address/phone number/date of birth/does she take your insurance/and did she vote Republican or Democrat in the last election? Make sure you send the lab results from Dr. For-Women-Only.

Me: Would that be to you, to them or both?

Nurse Betty: Them, Ok, what I'm going to do is call them right now, can you hold on?

Me: Yes

Nurse Betty returns: I just missed them, they close at 4:30. Ok, tell you what, I will call them tomorrow, not tomorrow morning because I have a meeting at the hospital I have to go to. I will be here in the office from 7:00 to 8:00 am but they won't be open that early but then I have to go out to the hospital for that meeting so I will be here after lunch and call them then, will you be home after lunch?

Me: Yes

Nurse Betty: ok, wait, I didn't get the name of your daughter! (laughs and laughs) Ok, what is her name/birth-date/age/phone number? Wouldn't that have been funny if I had called them and didn't know who it was I was referring to them? (laughs more)

Me: Yes, hysterical.

A day or two before Christmas I received a letter from my daughter's doctor saying she would like to run a fasting blood sugar on her and she was enclosing the lab slip. On the back of the lab slip were several affiliate lab locations we could go to to get this done. On January 2nd, we tried to get the lab work done but discovered that January 2nd was considered a holiday because New Year's Day had fallen on a Sunday and that the lab was not open. I have no idea where the lab slip went after that and subsequently, decided to call the doctor's office today to get another one.

"Hello, you have reached the offices of Kulkarni and Mahahlalala. Press 1 for Mahahlalala and 2 for Kulkarni"
(I press 2)
"Hello, if you want to schedule an appointment press 1, if you want to refill a prescription, press 2, if you want to check on lab results, press 3, if you want to make a payment, press 4"

(a few moment of panic ensued because I didn't recognize anything I wanted to do. I decide to go with "lab results".

"Hello? This is Chessiegirl, calling about my daughter, Loopy Lynn. I was sent a lab slip to have a fasting blood sugar drawn on her and I have lost it and wanted to know if I could come in and get another one."

"What?"

"I need a new lab slip for my daughter, Loopy Lynn. Can I come by and pick up another one?"

"You can just drop by the office and get one. Why are you calling?"

"Well, I wasn't sure if I had to call ahead of time. Sometimes doctors like you to do that."

"Yes, you should call first. When are you coming?"

"Today at 3:30 or so, it's 2:30 right now."

"Ok, when you are ready to pick it up, just call ahead and we'll get it ready for you."

"Uh, I'm going to pick it up in an hour."

"That's fine, just call ahead. Call the office ahead of time and we'll get it ready for you."

"I'm leaving to get my daughter from school and then I'll there right after that to pick it up."

"Ok, great, just call our office first so we can get it ready."

Sigh.


Maybe it's me.

One December, about twelve years ago, my children handed me the JC Penny's Christmas Catalog informing me they had circled everything they wanted for Christmas. This is a time honored tradition among many American children and parents usually find everything in the book circled with a big red marker, as I did and they in turn, smile indulgently at their kids and laugh.

However, as the days grew nearer to Christmas, my little princesses became even more and more demanding, even to the point where I despaired that I had raised semi-polite children at all and instead, a group of grabbing, selfish brats who would never know it was better to give than to receive.

I thought fondly back to my own childhood memories of Christmas, as one usually does when one's children are misbehaving. We didn't get a lot of presents but we decorated the house, baked goodies and played games and were generally happy with whatever we received. One tradition my mom had started (I suspect, fueled by our own displays of "The Gimmes" at Christmastime) and that was to read Luke 2, the passage of the Bible where it tells of Jesus's birth. I think she did this more to remind us what Christmas really meant since we already knew the story backward and frontward. We would normally read it right before we opened presents and after a while, we didn't have to read it anymore, we knew it by heart and recited it together which I think we learned from watching Linus recite it in "A Charlie Brown's Christmas" which came on TV every December. I still remember the warm glow I felt as we sat there grinning at each other, waiting for someone else to mess up the words as we said it altogether. It was a wonderful, heart-warming memory or so I thought.

I pondered to myself, a tradition like that shouldn't die, I need to do this with my own abnormally self-centered children. Help them to remember what Christmas is really all about, that it is a time to think about giving and not getting. At that moment, I heard my children yelling from the living room where they were watching yet another toy commercial and arguing over who wanted it the most for Christmas. I sighed and my resolve hardened even more to undo whatever I had done to turn them into these greedy Grinches.

Christmas Day arrived, all the presents were piled under the tree and my three little girls were jumping around them, arguing over who was going to get theirs first, one of them already had already pulled the largest one with their name on it onto their lap and was hugging it for dear life.

"My dear little children," I said kindly, "Before we open presents this year, I would like to do something my family used to do before we opened presents."

"What is that, Mommy?" the oldest one asked. (She was around ten years old at the time and the middle one around seven and the youngest around four.)

"We used to read the story of how Jesus was born,"

They looked at me blankly.

I picked up my Bible from next to me.

"So this year, before we open presents, we're just going to read a little bit of the Bible so we can remember what Christmas is really all about. It won't take long at all. If you know some of the verses already, you can say them with me. This will be so much fun."

There was a moment of complete silence while they all looked at me in abject horror and then the middle child spoke up:

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!" and she threw herself face down on the carpet.

The youngest one looked over at her sister and then looked like she was going to burst into tears, "Nooooooo!!!"

The oldest one put her hands on her hips and said, "Well, we don't want to read the Bible, we want to open presents!!"

I said sweetly, "We will open them in just a minute, let's read about Baby Jesus first. Let's try to remember what Christmas is really all about."

Middle child looks up from her position face down on the floor: Nooooo!!!! I don't want to read about Baby Jesus!!!!! Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Oldest Child: We heard all this at church already, I don't want to read about Baby Jesus, either!!!!

Me: But you love Baby Jesus, Don't you want to try to say the words altogether like Mommy did with her family when she was little?

Middle child: I don't care what you did when you were little!!!!!! I don't want to read about Baby Jesus!!!!!!

Youngest: I don't want to read about BABY JESUS, either!!!!! Bawwwwwww!!!!!!

Oldest: Noooooo, I don't want to say it together, it's stupid!!!! We already know about the Bible, I want to open my presents NOW!!!!!!

Middle Child: Yes, NOWWWWW!!!! We want to open our presents NOWWWWW!!!!!!

Youngest: Noooowww!!!!

Me: It will only take a minute, I'll read fast. It's only 14 verses.

Oldest: You're so mean!!!!! BAwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Middle: The meanest mom in the world!!!! Bawwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Youngest: Bawwwwwwwwwww!!!!

I looked at the three of them, finally sighed and put my Bible down, "Ok, ok, we don't have to read about Baby Jesus, we'll just open presents."

I was quite crushed. Had all my years of teaching disappeared in a flurry of wrapping paper and commercialism? It was all quite depressing.

Some years later, I was chatting on the phone with my aunt, my mom having passed on the year before and we got on the subject of kids and Christmas. I told her about the time I-Tried-to-Read-the-Bible-Before-Present-Opening and bemoaning how my children had reacted. She started to laugh and I wondered what she found so amusing as I happened to look back on that episode as evidence of my failure as a mother.

"Why are you laughing," I asked, "It was so sad, they didn't want to carry on that wonderful tradition. We kids loved it so much when we were little."

"Oh, you did not," said my aunt, "You all hated it."

"What?????" I stammered.

"Yes, you all had a fit every time your mom tried to do that. She used to get on the phone with me after you opened your presents and complain about it." She chuckled merrily as if she found it all tremendously amusing.

"I don't remember it that way at all," I said, "I just remember it was so much fun to try to say it together and us all sitting around smiling at each other."

"Yeah, maybe when you were in your 20's," she laughed, "not when you were little kids. You kids made her so mad, she said you were all going to grow up to be just a bunch of godless heathens."

I sputtered and started laughing and I never again tried to suggest reading the Christmas Story before opening presents.

The longer I wander through life, the more I don't feel a part of it. This isn't anything new, I've always felt this way, like a stranger peeping in. There's probably some deep-seated psychological reason for this but I'd rather not know what it is. I'm sure it can't be something normal and nice.

I will try to explain this feeling further.
It's like getting on a bus and seeing every seat filled with two people and knowing no one is going to scoot over to let you sit next to them unless you directly ask. Even worse, when you do directly ask, they say no, sorry, can't sit here. Then you make your way off the bus again, because you don't fit and stand on the curb as the bus full of laughing, talking people pulls away, no one even noticing you're standing there all alone.

You pick up your things and wait patiently for the next bus. You know the same thing will happen again and again but still you stand there and wait. Hoping that eventually you'll fit.