Arundhati Roy

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To
never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of
life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to
its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is
simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try
and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.” - Arundhati Roy

Random & Misc.

While speaking to Angie she relayed to me that they didn’t ready their chicken properly for plucking last year and had to skin them. I asked her if that was like skinning a fish. Angie said that she imagines the two would lay differently.

My refrigerator is acting up again. Again with the odd things freezing, for example the orange juice is frozen but the milk is fine. I wonder what that means.

I’ve taken up a side job if you wonder where I have been. I can be found if you are looking for me.  I’ll be keeping odd hours for awhile. Right now I am adjusting to the new responsibilities and my new hours..OMG keeping to a schedule..wth is that???  I get tired around 10:00 now and if I don’t go to bed then around 5 am when I am supposed to get up I move really slow, almost not visible to the human eye unless you watch very carefully.

Ya know….how people say….oh I am a morning person…oh I am a night owl?
(waits for response)
I wish I was a wake up person. A person who can pop up and be awake. I like mornings well enough I just hate the part about getting up out of bed. I’d like to think I am a morning and a night owl person, but I’m just not a get out of bed person. Is there an existing word for this?

Gourmet Roast Peanuts Chili Limon = yummy

Looks like SL had a hard update today. =( Lots of blogging going on about it. I guess I missed the fray since I wasn’t home earlier…well that isn’t true, I tried to log in a bit ago and I couldn’t log in. I need to call the call in number for one of my alts…in my cleverness I asked myself the pet name question…which if anyone knows me I have a list of over 15 names that could fit that answer.. I wonder which one I had in mind when I made my security question. That totally cracks me up.

I heard a funny joke today. Let’s see if I can remember it. “I had a friend who was Mormon, we would go play -ding and ditch- but he would always “….. okay there we go that’s as far as it gets..then it was something about him wanting to evangelize when the person opened the door and the kid was supposed to be running away. It was really funny, trust me. If I remember it, I’ll post an update because I think you would like it too.

I went for a drive today on a dirt road into the endless fields of hay. I turned this way and I turned that way, then everything began to look the same. Everything around me was various shades of brown and yellow. I thought for a moment I was lost, maybe for that moment I was indeed lost. I noticed off in the distance there was something so I kept driving and saw some airplanes in a small airfield. I found a paved road and followed it back to town. I wish I had a horse and I was out there riding it.

I wonder if it would be fun to go horse camping, seems like it would be fun.

Only one spelling error today when I ran the spell checker. This doesn’t count things like OMG and SL and wth, those pop up on the spellchecker but in all it’s infinitate wisdom of spellcheckerdom it just can’t do slang I guess. OooOOO slang I am a slang typer. What does that mean? what does this say about me???????

*yay hands*

Thoughts about my dad

I had begun to notice how forgetful he was. The master of outdoor grilling now was serving his juicy wonderful hamburgers, dry. We had conversations behind his back and I spoke to her about getting him to the doctor for a check up, but I felt dismissed and told everything was fine, and that I was over reacting. I was certain he had Alzheimer’s.

September 23, 2003 I received a phone call from my mom and my father didn’t have Alzheimer’s. They had indeed gone to the doctor. My dad had a growth on his brain at that time but we didn’t know much more than that. The conversations leading up to the visit with the neurosurgeon were very surreal.

My father walked into the hospital, had a biopsy done on his brain while he was awake, he elected this. Apparently it’s not as painful as we would imagine, but still, I’d need at least a half dozen tranquilizers. Not my dad though, he was tough.

He had already prepped my brother and I in that if it was operable that he would not have the surgery if there was a possibility of it leaving him incapacitated. He didn’t want that burden on us. He didn’t want to live without his dignity.

The tumor wasn’t operable. My dad was weeks away from his 61st birthday when we found out.

My father and our family began the preparations for his death while planning what to do for his birthday. Everyday, every conversation became those that you want to have importance, as you knew they were going to be the last. You don’t get any do-overs from this point, it is final.

It’s not a time to be shy about what you want to say, or need to say, you don’t know how long you have. My fathers tumor was very unstable and grew quickly, and in the beginning I felt so afraid that any moment he would just fall over dead. It didn’t work like that though.

My fathers death came in stages, each one more horrid than the prior. First he couldn’t BBQ like he used to, then he couldn’t/shouldn’t drive, the chemo made him so sick, his mind began to soften and reality became more blurry he would drift back and forth..and he knew that.

I asked him one time, okay I asked him more than once to be sure, but I asked him while he was losing his mind if he knew what was going on when he wasn’t making sense, if he knew what he wanted to say but other words came out. He said yes. I can’t imagine how that would be but what I can imagine is how horrible that would be. Especially when people began to talk over him to one another about him.

Mom took the knobs off the stove so he wouldn’t burn the house down on accident. Shortly thereafter a family friend would come spend the day with dad, and then there was a nurse who came. The walkers, the wheelchairs, the big recliner my mom bought for him to be comfortable in. It was indeed a comfortable rocking recliner.

My mother and I had some pretty bad fights.

I can’t imagine what it had to be like to receive word from your doctor you are going to die, and then have to tell this to your family, to your kids.

My dad was my hero. He was always there for me, even sometimes when maybe I didn’t deserve it so much. For example the time my transmission seized because I …I forget..there was some sort of fluid I needed to put in or check and I hadn’t and it got messed up, and he fixed it for me. and that time I drive my car in the snow with bald tires and had an accident…guess who towed my car, and had it fixed? This didn’t come without a talking to of course, and I always felt so terrible and promised to be better the next time.

One time when I was little, I think I was about 10? maybe 9 but not very old at all. My little brother is five years younger than me….and my parents had this odd sense of humor and always playing practical jokes on us. I finally had thought of a way to get them back !! It was obvious…tell my brother to go hide and I’ll run in the house screaming that he had been hit by a car. *sighs* yeah I know now..but at the time seemed like a great plan.

I was in some pretty big trouble. Sent to my room. I felt bad, I was just trying to be funny, everyone needed to lighten up. My dad was quiet and went back to the garage and I was sent to my room.

HOURS go by.

My dad comes in my room and I have a swollen face from crying. I was really sorry. My dad handed me this really beautiful wooden doll bed for me to play dolls with. He had been making it in the garage prior to my running through the house screaming about my poor brother. Dad didn’t say too much. I sure felt small and full of love for my dad. I sure wish I still had that doll cradle. I know I still have the lesson, and that was of compassion and love no matter what, even when you have been naughty, that’s real love. Oh sure I was still in trouble, and any playing to be done was going to be from the confines of my room but I was still loved by my dad.

You know…I don’t think my little brother ever got in an ounce of trouble for that….they liked him best of course.

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