Tha's nae ordinary rabbit

Take one lonesome mom, season well with middle-aged health woe, marinade in lachrymal fluid, then let stew in her own juices for several hours and you either have Easter dinner ... or the legendary Rabbit of Caerbannog -- "the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on."

I miss my mom and her amazing Easter baskets.

I miss my son at holidays.

It sucks that Ev has to work on Easter.

I don't want to clean up the kitchen.

Come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth.


Kwach

What Easter Means To Me

You know how it is...people like to complain. If there was nothing to complain about, I'd complain about that.

So...it's Easter Sunday at the hospital. We do a rotating holiday schedule, and I apparently rotated my way into Easter this year. Which would be fine, since I'm not a Christian and I worshipped at the alter of the Dove chocolates already before work, but I'm getting sleepy from inactivity. Apparently most Southern Illinoisans have opted to stay home with their families instead of keeping me productively engaged today.

Selfish people.

Lori cooked a big roast beef-and-vegetable meal, which I politely ate two enormous platefuls of (I was willing to throw myself on those 10,000 calories to spare the others. I'm noble that way.), and then I immediately came to work. So now I'm busy resulting one paltry CBC an hour and watching the clock like it's a television showing a double feature of Lassie Come Home and Boy's Town.

By the way...is anyone else amazed that Roddy McDowell was such a cute little boy and grew up to be such a creepy, fussy man? I think his acting peaked with Lassie.

But the problem, of course, is that the less work I do, the sleepier I get, and the less work I want to do. Which means that when I get to the pinnacle of sleepiness, the zenith of somnambulance, we'll have a massive 12 car pileup on the highway and someone will expect me to spring into action and save some lives or something.

See? Selfish.

"Microsoft Billionaire Charles Simonyi" blasted into space this morning on a Russian rocket. He was accompanied to the launch (for which he paid $25 million) by Martha Stewart, his current girlfriend, who planned the gourmet menu for the Soyuz flight.

It all sounds so very selfish and wasteful ... such a bastardization of the purpose of space exploration ... celebrity space travelers ... Martha Caters Soyuz ... $25 million joyride ...

But before you get whipped up over all that ego-driven conspicuous consumption, let me introduce those of you who don't know him to Dr. Charles Simonyi:

He isn't quite the "billionare thrill-seeker cum Martha's boyfriend" he's being made out to be. Dr. Simonyi left Hungary in 1968 and was part of the legendary Xerox PARC team, where he developed the first WYSIWYG word processor. He holds a degree in mathematical engineering from Berkeley, a PhD in computer science from Stanford, and a multi-engine aircraft pilot's license. He holds a special place in my heart for two reasons:

1) After leaving Xerox PARC, he headed the development team that created the Microsoft Word program ... and I love Microsoft Word.

2) He was a little Hungarian boy looking at the stars and dreaming about being a cosmonaut at the same time I was a little American girl lying in the grass in my backyard, looking at the stars and dreaming of being an astronaut.

Over on his blog, www.charlesinspace.com, you can read about his adventure in space. You can also read a variety of "Ask Charles" questions, many of which were written to insult the guy for his multimillion dollar joyride. I especially liked his response to whether such frivolous pursuits can be justified in the face of world poverty.

"We should not try to eliminate poverty by eliminating those things that people strive for."

So, Charles, here's hoping you have the flight of your dreams, and that it's everything you ever hoped it would be. If I had 25 million bucks I'd be on the next flight.

Woooooohooooooooo!

Kwach

Look Dad!

On my way in to work today, I was walking down the main hall of the hospital behind a father and his young son. The father looked like a typical Southern Illinois dad; camo Carhartt jacket, camo ball cap, blue jeans and muddy boots. Son had a bright orange t-shirt and a buzz cut, and was waving his arms above his head in ethereal slow motion.

Since I walk a lot faster than six year olds with gently waving arms like flower petals in a breeze, I caught up to them in time to hear this exchange:

Son: "Look, Dad! I'm a ballerina! I have purple flowers in my hair, tucked behind my ears."

Dad: "Well, don't."

And I thought, that's going to be a difficult relationship in a couple of years.

The Price Is Right

Today was the confluence of several events: A cold and wintry day, my day off, and Katie's spring break. All of those events collided this morning, like the Titanic and it's iceberg, to cause us to watch The Price Is Right on TV.

I haven't seen The Price Is Right in 20 years, and I noticed a couple of things. First...Bob Barker is OLD. Ancient old. Museum mummy old. He looks like my grandma right before she died, and she was in her 90's. Is Bob Barker in his 90's? Shouldn't CBS have some type of pension plan for him by the time he's...oh...85? Aren't they going to be embarrassed when he drops over dead in the middle of his show?

Imagine how this would look for the network. "CBS released a statement on the death of Mr. Barker. 'Bob died doing what he loved'." Bad. It would look bad.

Would they have made Dan Rather report the news until he was 90 and died in his chair? Maybe he was lucky to have reported about Bush's Vietnam War dodge and gotten fired. Otherwise he might be in indentured servitude to CBS for another 30 or 40 years.

Bob Barker has that wispy white hair that anciently old people have, and a creepy orange tan-in-a-bottle that's probably supposed to make him look outdoorsy, in the way that pumpkins and carrots are outdoorsy. I suppose he seemed healthy, but ungodly old.

Secondly...there's a lot of hopping and screaming on that show. One woman shrieked and wept her way to a new car. Men tend to mostly hop as a form of Price Is Right self-expression, women mostly shriek and flap their hands. I decided that I'm not a good choice for The Price Is Right, since I hate both noise and excessive movement. It might ruin the ebullience if I had to shoot myself in the head.

Thirdly...I don't have any idea what things cost. None whatsoever. I realized that when I couldn't even get close to correctly guessing the price of a stove, a mop, a box of granola bars, or a Ford Mustang.

Clearly, I'm not a good choice for The Price Is Right. Between the head-shooting and the bad price-guessing, I've decided to skip it.

So that was helpful. In just one short hour, I was able to determine that appearing on The Price Is Right is not a good recreational option for me, which frees up more of my time for fishing, sitting around in the yard, and drinking beer.

Knowledge is power.

Go Greyhound, and Leave the Driving to Them

As most of you know, I work in the lab of a small-ish regional hospital. We have a full service blood bank, but we get our blood products primarily from the American Red Cross in St. Louis, about 120 miles away.

In general, that works just fine. We get two courier shipments a day and anything we need shipped later in the day comes on the Greyhound bus in the evening. And that's where the process gets a little hairy.

The Greyhound bus driver, who Lori affectionately refers to as "Penishead" because of his unfortunate choice of winter hats, is a smidge psychotic. We've seen him throw a variety of people off the bus hundreds of miles from their destination for a variety of perceived infractions, including the vaguely defined crime of "mouthiness." We suspect that he takes an ungodly amount of amphetamines to stay alert on his route at night, and that that might contribute to his edgy temperment.

So, anyway...Penishead drives the route that delivers my blood at night. A hospital security guard meets the bus, picks up the blood and brings it to the lab, where I process it, crossmatch it, and send it up to the patient, who is presumably saved by this miracle of cellular transportation.

The only glitch to that process is that if the security guard is 30 seconds late Penishead calls the lab, bitches me up one side and down the other, and threatens to take my blood to Paducah with him. Paducah is the only stop with a 24 hour bus station between here and Nashville, but it's still two hours away. Usually when that happens, I lie and tell him the security guard is on his way, then I call security in case I might have accidentally been telling the truth, then I throw on my coat and go pick up the blood myself.

But last night, he outfoxed me. At the appointed time, he called the Red Cross office in St. Louis instead of me, and told them that he wasn't going to wait. We could either meet him at his next stop, 20 miles away, or he would leave the blood in Paducah.

Red Cross called me, and I called Security. Security told me, "I plumb forgot! I'll go get it. Where's the next stop?"

(Plumb? Do people really still say that?)

So I called Red Cross, she called Greyhound, she called me, I called the greyhound station, I called Security, then I called the Greyhound station again. I begged him to stay open a few extra minutes, and laid it on thick about the patient, the open heart surgery, saving lives, etc., etc.

I asked the Greyhound station manager where the station was and he told me it was in a motel parking lot next to the Dairy Queen, just past the freeway, across from the V.A. hospital. Classy.

He told me he'd stay open an extra half-hour but no longer. I subsequently found out from my informant at the Red Cross that he actually lives at the motel that doubles as a Greyhound station, so it's not like he had a long commute home from work and he had to get on the road.

Anyway, the security guard made it in time, picked up the blood, brought it back to me, and we saved the patient...I think. I actually go home at 10:30, but she was still alive when left, so I'm going with the happy ending.

Oh...and in a bizarre display of karmic humor, while I was watching this drama unfold, I got a e-mail from...Greyhound! They wanted me to know that they would be lowering their fares. No doubt to correspond more closely to their level of service...

But the moral of the story is that if you're planning to have a medical crisis that requires uncommon blood products, please try to remember to do it between 9am and 4pm, or call ahead and notify the blood bank of your forthcoming crisis. Thank you.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Daniel

Yesterday was the birthday of my long-lost brother Daniel. He turned 46.

46?? How is that possible? In my head he's 20. I think I've seen him less than five times in the last 25 years, and not at all for the last 15 years. My sense is that he's become what the rest of us have become...sort of uneasy hermits...but far away from the midwest, so his hermitude is even more isolated.

I read something a while back that said that we should all make peace with our siblings, since that's the longest relationship of our lives. Longer than our relationship with our parents, which typically lasts 50 to 60 years, longer than a spousal relationship...siblings are forever.

I think I'll send a special psychic birthday message out to him:

Daniel...call your sister. I still love you, even if it's been years since we've talked. That's the good thing about family; if you skip a decade or two, all the ties still bind.

What's In Your Wallet?

While I was out bonding with the neighbors the other day, standing in a circle in the driveway with beers in hand (me with good beer, them with Busch), we got around to the subject of what things cost, and debt and student loans. My neighbor sells motorcycles, which he loves, but carries a student loan on a degree he doesn't use. His two buddies, who were standing around drinking and chatting with us, also have student loans on degrees they don't use.

I have five...count 'em, five student loans...but I actually work in the field for which I was trained. But the price I pay for all that quality public education is about $550 a month until...hmmm, let me think...until I die.

That's not Harvard Business School degrees we're talking about. That's a couple of state universities with in-state tuition.

I've reconciled myself to the fact that I'll be making easy payments on my student loans in perpetuity, but I'll be goddamned if I'm willing to make that kind of commitment to any other financial institution. So I don't have credit cards, and we pretty much try to pay cash for everything as we go.

When is it time to stop spending? When the cash is gone. It's easy. If we want it, we have to save for it.

But as I look around lowly Southern Illinois with it's poverty level wages, I can't help but notice how many people are driving around in $40,000 pickup trucks and Hummers and Escalades and building brand new $300,000 houses, and I keep wondering, "How in the world do they pay for that?"

I suspect that they pay for it by taking on a massive debt load that's only sustainable if everything goes exactly right. And since things never go exactly right, I'll bet there are a lot of people spending sleepless nights worrying about how they're going to keep their head above water.

My goal is to be able to retire someday. In order to do that, I need to not be in debt up to my eyeballs at age 65. So as I was talking to my neighbor, whom I love, I realized that our life strategies are completely different. He keeps encouraging me to stop tinkering with my 40 year old John Deere and buy a brand new one. I keep explaining that this one meets my needs, it's fun to tinker with, and it's already paid for.

To me that's a no-brainer. It's equally obvious that he's scratching his head over why I'd continue to mess around with that old thing when I could have a sleek new one with a radio and a cup holder for my beer.

But I'm at a point in my life when the coolest toys aren't worth the hassle of paying them off for decades...and by the time they're paid for, they're not cool anymore. My life strategy is to putter around my yard, go fishing, grow tomatoes, make wood projects and generally underachieve. If I have to work 80 hours a week to support my lawn tractor and Escalade, I'll be considerably less happy.

And isn't that what all that crap is supposed to do? Make us happy?

It takes a small group of three or four houses ...

... to raise a one-year-old labrador retriever.

Ev was out bonding with the neighbors the other night, and in between fishing stories and beers she got the full scoop on our auxilliary dog, whose name is Sydney. She belongs to the house behind us, but she isn't housebroken so they don't let her in ... and they don't believe in chaining her ... so she wanders around freely, visiting several of us. She spends the night with our landlords from time to time and has bonded mightily with all their children. When they aren't available she comes down the hill to sleep in our cars. She's managed to make friends with our old dog, so they visit a little every day.

The problem is, we live right on a fairly busy road that people use to commute to Carbondale, and they drive fast. Lots of pets lose their lives on our road. Sydney has been known to chase the landlords car for a half mile until they stop and let her in, and she runs right up the middle of the road to do it.

So, when our landlords move in June, they'll be going further out in the country on more land and her owners have encouraged them to take Sydney when they go.

Don't tell Ev, but I'll sort of miss her.

Kwach

Along the Old Snake Road

Sunday's Adventure ...

A stroll between the Pine Hills bluffs and the Larue Swamp and otter ponds, along the Snake Road. Our only encounter with wildlife, for the first mile or so, was confined to millions of tadpoles and a herd of feral teenagers, who assured us they had seen "at least a dozen" snakes just up ahead, sunning themselves in the trees.


Now, I'm no herpetologist, but I was pretty sure cottonmouths don't sun themselves in trees.



Sure enough, "just up ahead" we came upon a middle-aged couple (like us, but heterosexual) circling a baby cottonmouth who was posing for pictures on the road ... not sunning himself (herself?) in a tree. We took several shots, but this closeup is our favorite, and makes this look like a much bigger snake than it really was. Impressive, huh? After several other people arrived to take pictures, with no movement from the snake, we were beginning to wonder whether it was a) a rubber snake planted by the teenagers, or b) dead of a little snake heart attack.




Some friendly poking with a stick did
elicit rapid movement on the part of the snake, as well as the young man who was crouched in front of it. As it made its way to the protective foliage beside the trail, it paused to show off it's claim to fame ... the cottony mouth.



The rest of the hike was much more productive, as we decided to follow the people who were actually finding snakes, which paid off nicely. While in their company we encountered a newborn Ringneck snake (displayed here, for purposes of perspective, in the hands of the other photographers wife, who spent the rest of the hike on her cell phone calling people to tell them she held a snake).


Having "bagged" our personal goal quota of one snake sighting per person, we felt we could bid our companions good-bye and strike off again on our own. We found another baby Ringneck without help, and came upon a family group passing a green snake around from kid to kid. I didn't get a good picture of that one, because the kid who was holding it was squealing and flailing, and his older brother was trying to rescue the snake before the first kid burst an aneurysm or smooshed it.


All in all, another very successful outdoorsy day. It wasn't the teeming, writhing, slithering mass migration of venemous serpents pouring across the road (and my boots) I had been led to believe it could be, but really I'm just as happy about that. Wading through puddles of tadpoles is probably as wild and out of my comfort zone as I should be, considering my age and cardiac risk factors.


It was a gorgeous day, I got lots of pretty closeups of wildflowers and mushrooms, we bonded with the other pale-skinned snake migration enthusiasts, we did see snakes ... and as we headed home across the Pine Hills, we pondered again the good luck which brought Ev and Lori-Fred together, like goofy bookends at either end of the Audubon collection.


Later, back at the rental farm, there was the grilling of ritual meat products and the telling of tales to the young ones
around the backyard bonfire, where we sacrificed a futon and a few beers to the gods and gave thanks for another perfect rural white trashy asshole-y kinda day.

: )

Kwachie

Pretending to Do Something Important, While Really Just Driving Around

Our objective for yesterday was to go see The Old Slave House. It's been closed to the public for the last 11 years, but we wanted to drive out and see it from the outside.

So we packed up the camara and the iPod (which plugs into the radio for maximum tunage) in the little truck and headed east.

I had the vaguest idea that it's in the eastern part of the state, somewhere near Equality and Old Shawneetown, so that's approximately the direction we headed in.

We stopped at the overlook at the Little Grassy Spillway to enjoy the water and wind. It was impressively wet and spilly, but too chilly to delay long on our way to a cholesterol-laden breakfast at Bob Evans.

With our arteries hardening gently in the spring air, we got back in the truck and continued in the general direction of Harrisburg, or "Hearseburg" as it's known to the natives, no doubt because of some ancient ritual involving hearses.


We didn't actually see the hearses, but we did go to a store that sells an ungodly array of things needed to shoot woodland creatures faster and deader than before you owned them...which is like hearses, but for small animals.

So we finally got to Equality. No Slave House. We drove around, studied the map, and finally decided it must be closer to Old Shawneetown.

In Old Shawneetown there was, once again, an appalling lack of Slavehouses, but we saw a nifty old Texaco station that looked like it had time-warped directly here from the 1950's, and an enormous stately old bank, befitting a town with more that 200 human residents and 200 more stray dogs.

At that point, we were pretty much out of brilliant ideas for
actually locating the place, so we decided to ask for
directions at one of the two thriving businesses in Old Shawneetown. There was a biker bar and a package liquor store, and we opted for the liquor store, which seemed like a place where we were less likely to be raped, murdered, dismembered and deep-fried into bar snacks.

And indeed the woman at the package store (which carried a selection of beers ranging from Bud to Miller and back again), knew where it was and gave us directions after reminding us that it's closed to the public.

So armed with instructions to..."Go back to the
highway, then go back to the crossroads, take a left, then it'll be a little ways down, on your left."
When I got back in the truck, Lori said, "Which crossroads? The intersection of what and what? I would have asked her exactly which crossroads."
And I reminded her that since she sat in the truck and I actually went in, she gets the instructions that I ask for. Next time you go into the liquor store and ask for directions. You risk being dismembered and frittered for directions.

So we headed back up the highway, found the crossroads, turned left, found the house pretty much where she said it would be, noted the "Keep Out" sign, and then, like the scofflaws we are, drove up the long drive to get a better look at the house. The house, as you can see, looks like a pretty, old house from the outside, and not like the Chamber of Horrors we know it to be from reading about it's history.



Someday the State of Illinois will reopen it for tourism, and we'll check out the inside. But yesterday's treasure hunt was an excellent way to while away a rainy Saturday.

And now...off to the Snake Road to see the migrating snakes. We can't decide if we actually want to be successful at this or not. I'll no doubt let you know later.

Revelation 1 and 2

I believe it was Jesus who said, "If thy hair offendest thee, cut it off."

And who am I to reject the teachings of the Lord...especially when I haveth PMS?

Just think of all the heathen children around the world who could be fed by the uneaten brussel sprouts of all the bad children, and who haven't heard the Good News of Hair Empowerment!

THAT'S really why we invaded Iraq. You're welcome, heathen children.

One Year Ago Today...

Katie and Dane just left to go on a date, since it's their one year anniversary. Katie has to work tonight, so a lunch date is pretty much the only choice. Other than, you know, sitting around their respective bedrooms and seething about what an inconsiderate asshole they've each hooked up with.

Luckily, they didn't choose to go that route.

Anyway, while Katie was doing the girl's Secret Date Preparation Ritual, Dane and I were talking about when they first started dating. He said that he came over and I made fun of him, and after they left Katie said, "My mom really likes you! If she didn't, she'd be polite and distant. But if she's already mocking you, that's a good sign!"

So I guess I see where Carrie gets it.

One Good Thing, And One Terrible Thing

Two interesting things happened at work last night. One was nifty and heartwarming, and the other was incredibly sad.

First the good one.

Carrie and Robbie's favorite elementary school teacher came into the lab last night, nine months pregnant. We instantly recognized each other and had a chance to visit while I drew her blood. She's about to have her fourth (!!) child. She asked about the kids, and I had a chance to tell her that she had a huge impact on the kid's lives and their love of books and of learning.

I'll bet teachers need to hear that sometimes to offset all the times they feel like they're beating their heads against a wall.

Okay...here's the second. The bad one.

A kid from the local high school was struck by lightning and killed instantly at the high school stadium during a track meet.

This is awful on so many levels. First, he was, by all accounts, a good kid. Well liked, good student and good athlete. Second, several hundred other kids had to witness it, and they'll be stuck with that image in their heads forever. Third, he was so instantly cooked by the lightning that none of his organs were viable for donation.

But this is the worst part. The part I couldn't stop fretting over on the drive home. His parents were at work, living their normal lives, and didn't know that their lives were going to be destroyed. At some point, someone called them and said, "Your son is dead." Their healthy, beautiful, vibrant, Nintendo-playing, squabbling-with-his-sister, grumbling-about-chores son. Dead.

And a stadium-full of people and then a hospital-full of people knew about it before the parents did. That's the really awful part to me. That a thousand other people knew what they were going to be faced with before they did.

I'm not sure why that makes it worse for me.

I feel sick thinking about it.

The Old Slave House

Years ago, my family visited a historic old place called The Old Slave House, which was a secret holding location for northern blacks who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. I wanted to take Lori to see the place. It's fascinating and horrible, and you can't help but imagine how awful and brutal it must have been for those kidnapped people.

It appears that the property was bought up by the State of Illinois in 1996 and has never reopened, which is too bad since it's an important piece of our history.

Ev

From Haunted Illinois:

Hickory Hill was built by a man named John Hart Crenshaw and became a blight on the history of Illinois. In those days, it was illegal to own slaves in Illinois but because no man would work the brutal salt mines of Saline County, it was allowed that slaves could be leased from other states to work. Crenshaw owned several salt tracts and quickly took advantage of the law.

He built Hickory Hill in 1842 and began a new scheme that would bring him even more money than the salt mines could. He devised a plan to kidnap free blacks and put them to work in the salt mines. He also sold these people back to slave owners in the south, creating a sort of reverse "underground railroad."

Once the house was completed, Crenshaw added a few finishing touches like a carriage door that opened directly into the house so that slaves could be taken up a secret passage directly to the attic. In was in the attic that the slaves were imprisoned during the night and some say, subjected to brutal torture. According to the stories, there was also an underground tunnel that led from the basement to the river, where slaves could be loaded at night.

Crenshaw devised another plan, this one to create slaves of his own. He selected a slave for his size and stamina and set him to breeding more slaves with the females that could bear children. This man, known simply as "Uncle Bob" was said to have fathered as many as 300 children. He lived until the age of 112 and died in 1948.The attic at Hickory Hill was a chamber of horrors. A dozen cells opened off a wide corridor. They were small rooms with bars on the windows and with iron rings where shackles could be bolted to the floor. The attic had only a small window at either end, so the air was stifling. A whipping post was also constantly in use and many of the valuable slaves were said to have died at the cruel hands of Crenshaw and his men.

In 1842, Crenshaw was brought to trial for selling a free family into slavery. The case could not be proven until after the trial and by then it was too late. The prosecutor would try again in 1846, the same year that one of Crenshaw's slaves attacked him with an ax, severing his leg. His slave trade days were over and his mill was burned to the ground. He died in 1871 and he and his wife were buried at Hickory Hill Cemetery.

Many years later, the house was opened as a tourist attraction and it was no secret that strange things were going on in the house. Tourist were reporting hearing strange noises coming from the attic. . .noises that sounded like cries and whimpers, and even rattling chains.The legends say that on one could ever spend the night in the attic of the house, especially after an event in the 1920's that got the attention of ghost researchers all over the country.

An "exorcist" from Benton, Illinois named Hickman Whittington wrote an article about the house in a local newspaper. He was in perfect health when he came to visit the old mansion but took ill later than same night and died just hours later.

As the years passed, no one dared to spend the night in the room. In the late 1960's, two soldiers who had seen action in Vietnam ran screaming from the house after being surrounded by ghostly shapes. A year or so later, the owner stopped letting people in the house after dark. A small fire had accidentally been started by a lantern.

In 1978, he finally relented and a reporter from Harrisburg named David Rodgers was allowed to spend the night. Despite hearing a lot of strange noises, he managed to beat out 150 previous challengers to become the first to brave the night in the former slave quarters.

Today, the Old Slave House has been closed down. Because of poor health, the owner, Mr. George Sisk, cannot continue the operation of the house. He tried to get the state of Illinois to step in and take over the location but negotiations are still at a stand still.

The house was closed down at the end of 1996, possibly never to reopen.A few years ago, I asked Mr. Sisk if he believes that the house is haunted. He told me that he never goes to the attic and if he does for some reason, he leaves as soon as possible. He has never encountered a ghost in the house. . .but his wife hasn't been so lucky. She refuses to set foot in the former slave quarters.

The Old Slave House is located near the junction of Highway 45 and Highway 13 in Southern Illinois. It is 14 miles east of Harrisburg.

Busy Little...Beaver?

We're up to our armpits in Spring.

So my project for today is to buy a new battery and ignition switch for the John Deere, sharpen the blades and knock down some of that Springtime goodness. It's part of that festive Midwestern tradition of identifying beauty and then clipping it off at the knees.

I may end up with a reprieve, though...It's been 75 degrees and sunny since Saturday, but since I have the day off...it's dark and rainy. If it doesn't improve some I may end up spending the day in the house, reading. :-)

Also:

The Snake Road is closed for the annual spring snake migration, and I'd like to get out there and see them this weekend. The snakes migrate down from the bluffs at Pine Hills to the LaRue Swamp, and if you can get there at the height of the migration, it's pretty impressive to see. There's a bunch of different species but a couple of them are venonous, so I don't want to get close enough to interact, particularly since I had a nightmare about big snakes last night. I'm going to take it as some sort of omen and avoid snake handling today.

There goes my career as a Pentecostal preacher. Good thing I have a fallback plan: Love-slave. Generally there's very little snake-handling in the Love-slave industry.

Why can't Pentecostals handle something pleasant to show their devotion to God? Like kittens or something. I'd be willing to hold up a handful of little kitties and drape them all over myself and speak in tongues if it would inspire God to send good things my way.

Oh...and our new faux-pet, Big Grinning Lab, came back last night to sleep in Lori's car again. He was a little disappointed that all the windows were in place and closed, but ended up sleeping in the truck again. Maybe I need to get him a dog bed to lay on. That hard metal truck bed can't be comfy....and everyone knows that we're all about pet happiness here.

MelonKiwi

This is my Soulmate, MelonKiwi, with his best friend, Mr. Yarnball.

I don't actually have anything to say about them. MelonKiwi's specialness should be obvious to the discerning viewer, even without a clear view of his pretty pink nose.

If it's not obvious to you...well...I hate to say "emotionally defective"...

Car Ride? Car Ride?

Oh...and pretty much the only fun thing that happened yesterday...

I got home late-ish...at about 11:30...because Lori had left her purse at work and I went to pick it up from her coworker's house. I parked alongside of her car, which has had the top down, since the back window is gone anyway. When I walked past it to go into the house, I heard a little noise. I went back and looked inside the car, and there was a enormous black lab sprawled out on her passenger seat. When he saw me, he sat up alertly, in case I was planning to take him for a car ride. I laughed and petted him and told him that he was very handsome.

Lori came out to see who I was talking to, and she didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did. I opened the door and tried to encourage him to get out. He was very friendly, but pretty much committed to the car ride. He wagged and thumped his tail and grinned at me...but wouldn't budge.

Finally, I reached in and dragged him out while Lori raised the top and closed the windows. He was so sad looking that I put down the tailgate to my truck and he jumped up in there.

This morning, when Dane arrived to pick up Katie for school, he said, "Do you know there's a big dog in your truck?"

I wonder when he'll realize that the car ride probably isn't going to happen?

A Day in the Life

God. What a day.

I pretty much spent all day alternately seizing and recovering from seizures, and I is wo' out. I have temporal lobe seizures, which aren't the same as generalized seizures, where you fall on the floor and twitch and flop and urinate. I used to be that kind of person, but now I have smaller seizures, confined to one side of my brain.

On one level, it's easier. Generalized seizures are exhausting and require a spare set of clothes. And I always felt the need to apologizing to people who saw me do it. It seemed socially inept to sprawl on the floor with your eyes rolled back in your head, muscles clenched, making grunting noises and peeing.

Maybe I was thinking it looked like a bad temper tantrum.

But I don't do that anymore. Now I look fairly normal...as normal as I ever look, anyway. But out of the blue, I'll start smelling something that's not there. Lemons or tar are my usual favorites. That's followed by a cascade of unpleasant symptoms that leave me rattled and fearful. I avoid people as much as I can afterwards, because all the movement and sound that people make stresses me out even worse after a seizure. I just want everything to not move or make noise for a few hours.

So yesterday, after I'd struggled through the morning and went to work in sort of a edgy, Zombified state, I told Cory that people scare me when I'm in this post-seizure state. He said, "Me too. People are scary and unpredictable, and you should be afraid of them."

This is why gay guys make the best girlfriends. They always know what to say.

And just at that moment, Dr. Padma comes around the corner trailing about 20 high school students from some organization like the Illinois Gifted Science Nerds or something like that. They were touring the lab, and she was looking for volunteers to give them a speech that would make them all want to be Medical Technologists when they grow up.

Cory and I hightailed it to the bathroom to hide out.

Luckily, Lisa volunteered, so we didn't have to spend the rest of the day in there, which was extra good because I hadn't even thought to bring a magazine or anything.

But today is a new day, and I'm hopeful that my brain has reset itself in my sleep and I can bravely face the world. But if not, the bathroom is right down the hall.

Confusion

I woke up sort of duhheaded this morning. I feel that vaguely anxious, unfocused feeling that comes from having a seizure in my sleep. Afterwards, I usually end up with a kind of internal thread drift that sounds something like this:

An extra Sirius radio costs $38 for six months. That's not bad. There are 38 ATPs produced with each complete cycle of the Krebs Cycle. I wonder if that includes the ATPs generated in the glycolytic pathway? I ought to look that up, that may be important. Why would that be important? I'm out of school now. I wonder what department I'm working in tonight? I wonder if there's a standard energy production pathway for bacteria? I doubt it...remember Clostridium klyverii? Weird energy metabolism. Lithotrophic or chemotrophic...I can't remember. I should work out. It'll help me focus. Where did I used to work out when I lived here before? Oh...the Rec Center. Li's name is on the wall in the weight room there for her record Olympic lift. I wonder if Li is still lifting? I wonder if she still works for the University? I wonder if Nancy does? I wonder what kind of surgery she had?

So instead of trying to generate a coherent blog entry, I'm just going to point out that I added several new links to our "Blogs We Like" sidebar. I found most of them on BlogHer.org, which is a place to find blogs by women, including ours.

I'll be back when my brain comes back.