Cluex4, sold here, for only 19.95

There are people in the world who Do Not Get It.

Some of these people never will Get It. Ever.

Some have to be hit with a very heavy Cluex4 to Get it. Even then, they may have trouble with Getting It.

There are those who just haven't heard it put the right way, and so do not Get It but have a good chance of both Getting and Retaining It.

For those, here is a short, quick and dirty primer.


1. The world does not revolve around you.

2. No matter how hard you try, the world will never revolve around you. You're a person, not a red giant.

3. Attempting to force others to treat you as though the world revolved around you will only leave you lonely, bitter, and living with many many cats that will feast on your flesh when you die lonely, bitter, and forgotten.

4. Attempting to force others to treat you as though the world revolved around you will seriously Piss People Off.

5. Nobody likes a busybody. Really. Remember Mrs Kravitz? If you're too young to remember, we're too old to give a fuck. Walk away, m'kay?

6. The world does not revolve around you.

7. Approximately 99.9999999% of the world couldn't possibly care any less about your saga. No matter how you dress it and apply makeup, save the drama for your mama because everyone else is basically already bored shitless with hearing you do the same song and dance every fucking single day.

7b. You can only do the same thing so many times and still have someone believe it. People do talk. People do remember. It's called a Reputation. I know that's a big word. It means something important.

7c. Two or three different faces in public just makes you look stupid. Saying one thing on one front, then something entirely different on another, and saving a completely different face for another -- while keeping all public -- not only makes you look stupid, but everyone will eventually catch on that you're just about as sharp as a sack of wet mice because you can't keep your story straight.

7d. Lies don't get better with more embellishment. You will get caught.

8. "No," really means "No." It does not mean Yes. It does not mean Maybe. It does not mean "please whine at me till I change my mind." It does not mean "please stalk me and follow me everywhere and give me no rest at all until I finally tell you yes out of sheer fear for my life, or change my name, face, and phone number to avoid you."

No means No. No. N-O. Look it up sometime.

9. The world does not revolve around you.

10. The world does not revolve around you. I cannot stress this point enough.
Say it with me. "The world does not revolve around me."

Knew you could do it.

Cabin Fever

Thing 2 has been repeating "Hokey Pokey" over and over and over and over with no other words for the last half hour solid. Try to imagine this in your head, in total monotone, with no pause for breathing.

Thing 1 is screaming like someone stabbed her in the foot and pulling her hair and throwing paper because her sister won't shut up to let her do homework. Had Thing 1 come home and done her homework instead of running off for "rehearsal" for the talent show that I was basically told I couldn't attend (ahem), this wouldn't be a problem. Now it's after her bedtime, and she's still screwing around AND fighting with her sister.

DG won't stop screaming at the kids for not shutting up, but otherwise goes right back to his game without actually doing anything other than screaming.

Me, I'm looking up plane flights outta here.

Is this what you call Cabin Fever?

Wonder Fiend Powers, Activate!

Thing 1: "Mom, when she goes to school next year, will I have to walk her across the street to kindergarten?"

Me: (brushing Thing 2's hair) "Well, Daddy will probably help walk her over at first, but yes, you'll be walking together."

Thing 2: (turning in mid-brush) "I don't HAVE to go to school. Not with HER."

Me: (sigh, here we go again) "But honey, you need to go to school to learn so you *can* take over the world."

Thing 2: (sighs, rolls eyes at me) "Duh, MOM, I have SPELLS that will do that for me!"

---

Thing 2: "Aha, I was co-rrect!"

Me: "You're a fiend."

Thing 2: "I am a co-rrect fiend!" (squinty evil eyes) "Cuz I am SMART!"

Epic!

I have a confession to make.

The Pooka does have a vast weakness for epics of a grandiose scale. Nay, not even a weakness for that is too simple, too mild. It is a passion, one carried from womb to now when the womb used and worn out is my own.

(The Pooka hath also benefited somewhat from the merits of a good stiff glass of Tully tonight, so bear with her.)

Epics indeed, on the scale of the greats like Tolkien, of movies grand and limitless like the Great Escape, or Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or even the humourous epic of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. My tolerance for such vast visions is limitless. I am the watcher, the subservient idolator ready to cast my soul to the wind to earn the favour of yet another epic narrative to capture my attention.

It has been a night to encapsulate such visions. A young Clint Eastwood, grim, impassive, but with that subtle impishness in those blue eyes that drags you merrily into the full grasp of a true rogue at work ... to the brother of that same vision, as the Cooler King denies his imprisonment with every bounce against concrete walls.

For the novice, for the poseur: I am their Bitch. Period.

Give to me the illustrative epic. I do not wish for a trite happy ending, but for the ending as it is written for the stars and not for the frail psyche of a human spirit. Give me death, give me life, give me the grandest of struggles to both surpass and embrace them both.

I submit, I surrender.

Good night.

A Look Back - A Pooka's Retrospective

I remember the exact day in my life when I knew that something was really, really wrong with me.

My Junior year of high school, my insomnia and nightmares hit a real peak for me. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't pay attention, my grades slipped. I was miserable. I was also confusing the hell out of everyone. I couldn't sleep, but I was always exhausted and trying to sleep. To me, that made sense. If you can't, you get tired, and you try, but you can't, so you get worse and so on.

Friday night is prime time for high school teens -- no school the next day, and the week is over.

Me, I came home around 3:30, took off my clothes, and crawled in bed. This time, I was so painfully exhausted (everything HURT) that I actually fell asleep.

And stayed that way.

It was around 9 that night when they finally found me. The door to my room had been slightly closed, but open enough that you could see most of the room and that obviously the lights were off. They'd found my books, so they knew I'd at least BEEN home.

No one ever thought of looking in bed.

My boyfriend was in a total panic (I remember him trying not to cry when he found me, yes, HE looked, not my parents), and my parents were, not surprisingly, mad.

I got yelled at for it. By my parents. For being home where I was supposed to be. Hello, Houston? We have a problem.

But I knew then that something really had to be wrong. I wasn't crazy. All the weird aches, weird reactions to medications, the insomnia ... something had to be there.

It took them another 15 years to give it a name.

Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgic Syndrome. FMS. Fibrositis.

It has a lot of names, but the symptoms are all pretty much the same. Only the severity changes. Each one of us handles the disease differently, each one of us has our own magical combination that will ease it and make it roll over and behave. Not all of us find that combination. Not all of us are taken seriously -- some never are.

It's a disease that affects mostly women, women in the child-bearing "Valium" Stepford years. Think of how long it took pre-menstrual syndrome to even be acknowledged, much less accepted as a reality. In a field where men still dominate, if you can't see it, smell it, or taste it, it's not real. When you can't stab someone with a needle or take an x-ray of it, it's not real.

I faced a lot of that. I faced even more of it before I got to the point where even an idiot could see that something was painfully wrong with me.

I was a hypochondriac. I was just lazy. I just wanted attention.

No, I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up like every normal person on the planet. I wanted to be able to go and run and climb and play without hurting, without knots tearing at my limbs and making them spasm and cramp. I wanted to be able to be with others without catching some virus that someone they were in contact with had, and they only passed it on without becoming sick themselves.

I wanted to be normal, and I never was.

Throw being massively hypoglycemic into the blend, and you get a real mess. My blood sugar was the cause of SO much pain for me and those around me. I would wake up with morning readings of 30 and 40. I remember a reading of 19. Damn near enough to kill a person.

I don't remember a lot of what happened during those swings. I faintly remember a lot of anger, tantrums, hysterics. I remember a lot of bruises from fainting, a lot of laughter and hard looks when I'd pass out in class, or stagger into a doorframe because I was too dizzy to keep my balance. I remember having a lot of arguments with a lot of people, and I know I wasn't even remotely coherent or logical. I just don't remember any of the details. They're lost to me.

I only remember that half an hour or so after someone finally stuffed food in my mouth, I felt better. Logic returned. I'd cry and apologize and never know why.

Cocktail for a maniac. Recipe for a broken heart.

Or classic early fibro symptoms.

The doctors were close, though. They had the right idea over the years, they just never managed to find the right solution. I give them a lot of credit for that. Some of the doctors really did try: Unfortunately, none of the results fit the bill.

I've been tested for lupus more times than the scar on my arm cares to tell. I've been repeatedly tested for rheumatoid arthritis, for Epstein-Barr (mono), Lyme Disease, Multiple Sclerosis.

I've endured wave after wave of miserable tests including a colonoscopy because they were determined for a while that I had Crohn's Disease, or colon polyps, or tumours, or ...

You get the picture.

Only when you start to piece everything together does it begin to make sense.

In the meantime, I watched my self-esteem and confidence dwindle to nothing. *I* knew there was something wrong me, and I knew it wasn't just in my head. There was too much proof that I wasn't crazy, but none of it matched up.

I bruise terribly. I rarely feel an injury, but I will bruise up black and purple and it definitely hurts then. After surgery, (or even my tattoos) I bleed more than I should. I've almost died in childbirth due to massive hemmorhaging. I've had a blood transfusion to keep me from dying.

My bloodwork is all clean. There's nothing in it to explain why my body doesn't want to heal. So I must be imagining it, even when the bruises say otherwise.

I've got more than enough proof that I don't sleep, and when I do, it's restless and harsh and full of nightmares. The list to affirm to that is a mile long.

Is it really surprising that no doctor has ever done a sleep study on me?

The most I've been able to get out of a doctor until recently was the confirmation of Raynaud's Syndrome/Phenomenon. I have abnormally cold hands and feet. Even now, my entire body is quite warm, but my hands are icy and ashen, the skin sagging around the bones and tendons. If I try to warm them, they will change colours from red to purple and back again, and I will be in serious pain. Touching ice, or even a cold glass is agony.

My feet do the same thing. Showers are sheer hell. By the time the water is warm enough on my feet, they hurt. Socks only marginally helps. My feet can be cold inside two pairs of socks and in boots.

All the little things add up. My husband was slowly watching me fall apart, and I know even he thought I was crazy for a while. He might deny it, but you know The Look when you get it, particularly if you've seen it time and time again.

The first real help came on a visit to his mother.

You see, my mother-in-law has Fibromyalgia.

Those little things made perfect sense to her. She's lived with them, too.

To be honest, at the time I didn't think much of what she had to say. I'd been told too often that it was all in my head. Here, take this pill and you'll be fine. Here, go see this shrink, this doctor, this ... whatever. There's nothing wrong with you that I can find, so go away.

And the little things kept adding up. Like having to cut all my hair off because I couldn't keep raising my arms above my head long enough to wash it, much less keep it braided so it didn't knot while I slept. I could not raise my arms above shoulder level. I'd get dizzy, they'd feel like they weighed a thousand pounds and it would HURT, oh God, it would hurt.

I've never, NEVER been comfortable with having my blood pressure taken. It can bring tears to my eyes, it's so painful. I get bruises and strange skin tears from cuffs.

Know what?

There's an FMS Trigger Point there. Go fig. You get a gold star.

Hugs became more and more painful. My hips wouldn't always want to work, they'd lock and send bolts of pain down my legs and into my back. My fingers would suddenly start shaking wildly. I'd drop things. I've never been known as clumsy, but that's certainly what I was turning into.

Then a weird series of events managed to turn my world around and give some sanity back to it.

My labor with Thing 2 was relatively normal by all standards, especially compared to the birth of Thing 1.

The next day in the hospital, however, scared all of us.

My bloodwork came back strangely. I started hurting after dinner, severe, sharp shooting chest pains. My blood pressure spiked, 02 levels dropped, and suddenly I was hooked to EKGs with oxygen going and people basically freaking out on me.

The next bloodwork apparently scared them worse. I was taken off food entirely and set up for an ultrasound.

My, look at the gallstone totally blocking the tube. Maybe that's why her liver is starting to fail.

I'd been in the hospital almost a week when they finally told DG he couldn't come in and stay most of the night. He asked why.

"Because she's no longer on the Critical Care list."

Ahem? Oh hell. Yes, they should have told us I was considered a Critical patient. I'm VERY glad they didn't. That would have just been more stress to handle in an already stressful situation.

I think I knew on some level how serious it was, though. Some of you reading this were around during that period, and possibly remember the letter I wrote in the hospital that DG posted for me. Even though they were trying to keep the new mom calm for Thing 2, I knew, and was scared.

Three months and 60 lost pounds later, after Thing 2 was a little more situated, I went into the hospital.

My gallbladder *had* to come out and my tubes had to be tied because I can't take most birth control and having another child probably would have killed me. We did all that at once to minimize side-effects. I still have problems with scar tissue from the gallbladder, and lots of "echo" memory pain.

But this is where the downhill spiral started. I was tired more often, suffered insomnia worse than before, and occasionally hurt for no apparent reason.

My arm was another *had* to. By the time I reached the surgeon, I'd lost all feeling in my hand and it was totally unusable. A knot of tendon near the TP had looped around my ulnar nerve and completely strangled it. They went in, removed the knot (and the nerve and muscles entirely), and totally rebuilt the inside of my arm to try to prevent it from happening again. I have some permanent nerve damage up in the arm itself, and the scar isn't pretty, but I have my hand back. Recovery time was actually shorter and I pushed myself enough that I have full use of my hand without having to endure the abuse of physical therapy.

My immune system joined the "abandon Pooka" bandwagon after this one. I can catch damn near any virus that even looks at me from a distance.

Just in time for my tonsils -- which had been taken out when I was 18 months old -- to decide to make another appearance. They didn't entirely grow back, but a particularly nasty case of strep hit me, and settled into the new growth and BAM. 9 months solid of hell. I had strep a confirmed 4 times during that 9 months, plus pneumonia, and I was never NOT on an antibiotic. Pneumonia and strep really really SUCK when you're an asthmatic.

I developed my new deadly allergy to penicillin during this time, as well as widened my sulfa allergy to all sulfamides and cephalosporins. No antibiotic ever worked. I stayed sick a solid 9 months. I was in the middle of full tonsilitis when they said to hell with it and took them out.

There weren't any ways around them. Each one was sufficiently traumatic on its own to contribute to the fibro, together, a real mess.

This leaves us where we are today:

-I am often very scatterbrained, unable to retain information I've recently heard or read, sometimes unable to concentrate at all without tears and frustration at the inability to do so.
-I am often incapable of holding my children, or playing with them, or even meeting basic care needs.
-There are days when I physically cannot crawl out of bed, even to use the bathroom, without assistance.
-I cannot sleep. I am alternately exhausted and insomniatic (did I just make up a new word?).
-Sometimes it is all so bad that I wish they would find something fatally wrong with me, just so I know that it would be over soon.

The good news is that fibromyalgia won't kill you.
The bad news is that fibromyalgia won't kill you.

This brings me back to the original purpose and point of all my rambling.

You CANNOT do it alone.

Tomorrow, DG and I will have been married for eleven years.

I never could have made it this far without him.

We have been together through the bad, and the worse. We've seen death up close and had too many personal encounters with him, and together we've won past it.

There are days when we truly loathe each other, but beneath it is still what has brought us and kept us together. You just can't survive this much together and have something relatively small tear it apart.

And I could NOT do it alone. Not without him.

Thank you, honey, for eleven years.

You know why I leave "wonderful" out of that. We aren't perfect. We never will be. And neither of us pretend that we are, either.

Thank you for being there, even when I wasn't.
Thank you for being here for us now, even when I can't.
Thank you for trying to close the gaps that I make out of fear.
Thank you for making me hate you every now and then to bring things back into perspective.
Thank you for not letting me run away.

In shorter words: "Eleven years, and we haven't killed each other yet."

I love you.

~pooka

Out of Context

Still awake.

Fingernails are still flamable.

Mice can hang upside-down for extended periods of time. This appears to do no damage whatsoever to their little mousey brains -- they're still as utterly butt-stupid on return to your regular upright position.

Carpet should not be kitty toilet paper.

Oh look! Carbon paper!

Tootsie Roll power, such a chocolatey chew.
Tootise Roll, I think I'm in love with you.

"He doesn't wear a zoot suit!"

"It's true. If I really cared, I'd dress like a dead man, too."

For every leap forward, we take three steps back. Progress is only an illusion. Evolution is a curious lie. Now we walk forward into the late past, regressing from humanity to be boiled down into the most primal primitive beast to walk the earth. Violence is not a solution, it's a symptom.

If your life was to accrue finance charges, would you still be in the black?

My Christmas tree is still up. For at least one shining evening, All was calm and Bright with the world. Removal of the tree is a sad task, one I never eagerly embrace.

I think I want to be young again. I'd need different parents, of course, but I want things to be simple. I'd like to have no more to worry about than what jeans go with which sweater, what flavour lipgloss I really liked, who was dating who, and getting homework done.

There's a new Eeyore PEZ dispenser out. I want it. I haven't seen Pooh or Piglet or Tigger, just Eeyore. He's cute. I like my Eeyore.

Still can't find the top to my Eeyore PJs.

Sometimes, you really just don't want to swallow.

Isis is an Isis is an Isis. Loves her, yes we do.

Movie trailer tonight. They've remade "The Time Machine." Lots of remakes these days, Ocean's Eleven, Planet of the Apes, Time Machine, other movies I can't possibly remember the titles to because I'm a doofus. A trend? Sign of more troubled times, searching desperately for some anchor in a sea of insanity.

The moose on the bookshelf is looking at me funny.

"This retro thing is pretty silly. I mean, I'm wearing a snood."
"I was trying not to notice."

Mmm, fun foam. Fun foam. Yessire, I'm having Fun now.

Maybe my life is little more than a cheaply built grafitti wall.

"You gotta help me make a stand.
You just got to see me through another day.
My body's achin' and my time is at hand.
I won't make it any other way."

Sybil is starting to make very scary noises. I'm afraid they're hinting at a meltdown to come. It's a weird low hissing gurgling sound from around the processor/fan side, kinda like the noise soda (especially ginger ale) sometimes make after the bubbles have clung to the sides and then spontaneously broached the surface.

I'm having difficulties with my Ks and Gs. Perhaps they are trying to tell me something.

.
.
.
.
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Black Hole

Giving the Beast a face

Monthly Medications: $140 of copays.
Monthly Office Visits: $40 of copays.
Knowing You Aren't Crazy: Priceless.

I got "lucky" (yeah, right) when I was down in Houston and out with klash.

My arm decided to do one of the Wonder Spasms, the full debilitating FMS blowout. My hand, trembling and quaking, turned purple and went ice cold because the spasm took away full control of my arm.

And Klash and her daughter got to see it happen from the beginning to end.

Times like those when you not only KNOW you aren't crazy, but so does everyone around you, are priceless. And all too rare.

Fibro is so often a faceless demon. You can't see it, smell it, touch it or taste it, but it controls you nonetheless. That lack of solidity makes it a true demon, one of which has managed to convince all too many that it doesn't exist at all.

Proof ... is priceless.

My fibro wasn't too bad until I had to endure multiple surgeries, childbirth, pneumonia, and 5 confirmed cases of strep all within a 4 year span.

I still have nerve damage where my arm was rebuilt, and since it's after the "regeneration" point, I know it's permanent, along with the ugly thick purple scar.

I had my tonsils removed for the second time after enduring 9 very long months of being constantly ill. I lived on liquids, period. I ended up in the ER repeatedly to get shots that would bring the swelling in my throat down so I could even breathe. I developed a violent and deadly allergy to penicillin after 30 years of being able to take it, as well as new allergies to codeine, and I completed the allergies to all forms of sulfa meds.

I've spent too many hours weeping hysterically because I Just Don't Know ... and half the time am too fogged to know what it is that I can't put together. I've had to learn to live with being "Stoopid" now, to live with hearing my husband say "Man, you should have seen her ..."

This is not me. I am not this broken shell. I am not this lost mind.

But if I am not ... who am I?

I am a mother. I have two children who I sometimes cannot even name properly, going through the "Ka, uh, Cha, uh, oh, WHOEVER you are!" stumble to call one onto the rug. I cry inside when I have to tell the eldest that she has to ask her father for help with homework because I simply can't remember HOW to do addition or subtraction at the moment.

I cannot pick up my youngest and cuddle her in my arms because she's too young to understand about avoiding trigger points, and she cries when she realizes she's hurt me again. Too many days I'm unable to hug my children at all, because my skin revolts and even my clothing is painful to wear.

I am a wife who cannot remember the last time we were able to have sex. The agony of after and during can't make up for what small pleasure I could receive. It's no fun for my husband to watch me burst into tears during it because it hurts. He's afraid to touch me at all, never knowing when it will hurt. And then of course it hurts more, because I WANT to be touched ... but even I don't know when it will and when it won't be painful.

I am a writer that has forgotten how to finish a sentence. I begin ... and the little surge that is supposed to connect one thought with another short-circuits and I'm left to stare blankly, wondering what it was that I had set out to accomplish. The story of my life, always to remain incomplete.

I am a woman, and I am so much less so. I cannot love, I cannot feel, I cannot nurture on call, but instead my life is run for me by a beast with no face and an ill-fitting name -- Fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia. It, too, is like me, a thing that cannot be easily defined. It is all, and it is none. It is husbands, wives, children, parents, friends. It is sly, subtle, forward. It is control, and it is the loss of the same.

It will never ever go away.

The hardest thing for us to do, when we're in so much pain, when it hurts to even exist, is to remember that WE ARE NOT ALONE.

Sometimes, that makes all the difference in the world.

This is why parents go grey early

"Do NOT hit your sister! No, I do NOT care if she hit you first."

"Stop running in the living room!"

"Put the cat down before she bites you."

"Your father is TRYING to sleep in there. Be quiet!"

"Haven't I told you before that we do not throw fireballs at the dinner table?"

"Omnivore does NOT mean that you can take a bite out of your sister!"

"That's it, 2 minutes for high sticking. Put the hockey stick down and get in the corner and you, go get a bandaid and stop blubbering."

"Sorry, Mommy can't hear whining."

"You are going to fall and get hurt if you don't get down from there."

"See, I told you. Now don't climb it again."

"No, you can't levitate your sister and make her go away."

"Put the spellbook down and stop trying to turn your sister into a frog."

"I don't care what spell you're trying to cast, for the last time, I am NOT getting you chicken blood!"

"If you can't play nice, I'm turning the computer off."

"I don't care who had it first, it's mine now."

"How many times do I have to tell you to pick that up?"

"If I have to tell you to stop fighting one more time, both of you go to your room."

"For the last time, cover your mouth when you cough!"

"Do you WANT to be grounded?"

"Some Assembly Required"

DG has discovered words more horrifying than "Some Assembly Required."

"Made by Mattel."

Thing 2 wants her toy. DG sets out to accomodate the Thing.

Half an hour later, he's still trying to remove ... THE PACKAGING. I've seen less restraints in S&M clubs. This might even require power tools.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Zamboni is in cardboard heaven. Boxes! Everywhere! Oh bliss! He has snurfled and flopped and writhed in them all, even the ones that are impossibly too small for him to do it.

Zamboni is a fruitcake. With nuts.

I'm getting "swish and flick"ed by Thing 1.

Thing 2 is trying to make me walk the plank. Aaargh, Matey!

Harley has gotten distracted from her mousey by DG's Eddie the Eagle. She keeps tryin to steal the puck, eh?

Felimid, having grown tired of trying to set the new land speed record, has settled into a perch of dominance over the heathens below. Of course, getting there almost shattered the patio door, since his massive bulk sent the 5' tall cat tree a'rocking.

Oh god, the Things are eating more chocolate.

Oh god. I just discovered that Thing 1 knows most of the words to "15 Men on a Deadman's Chest." I do not want to know how or where she learned this.

No, Mommy does not want to walk the plank.

No, DG cannot come search my treasure chest.

No, Mommy is not going to explain that one to you.

Kids, cats, sack the wives...

Thing 1 leaves for school. Mommy is asleep. Thing 2 is asleep. DG left 15 minutes before she did, will be back after he finishes walking heathens across the street.

Thing 1 does not close the door entirely.

The wind is blowing, it is very cold.

When DG returns an hour later, the door is wide open.

Zamboni is missing.

The other two cats, being far more intelligent, realized that it was way too cold and wet to even consider a trip outside. They are in bed with me, where it's warm.

Through sheer luck, nothing other than the cat is missing.

DG leaves to search for stupid.

Almost an hour later, he's found ... peeking out from the porch next door, dry and cold, but safe. And sheepish. And whining.

Thing 1 will get a talking-to.

Zam is home.

But don't think this will change his mind about the next escape attempt.

---

Thing 2 walks out of their bedroom with a blue plastic steak knife in hand and a maniacal grin on her face.

Thing 2: "Wookit me, I the doctor an I gotta CUT KAIWEY OPEN to see whats wong wiff her!!"

Me: (knowing that Daddy and I both have had surgery and this is a semi-logical conclusion) "Honey, doctors don't always have to cut someone open to find out what's wrong."

Thing 2: "Good ones do! CUT CUT CUT! Kaiweeeeey, come heeeereee!"

Run, Thing 1, Run.

Whose kids are these, anyway?

Thing 2: "Daaaaaaddy? Will you PLEASE stop Kaiwey from whining? She is SO bitchy!"

I'm anticipating a Lina fireball any moment.

Thing 2: "Daddy, do you HAVE to go bring Kaiwey home? It's SO much quieter here wiffout her."

---

(door opens, enter the Squealer)

Thing 1: "Mama, Heather accepted a sword fight with a bunch of boys and then she got hurt and so now she's going to come inside, m'kay?"

Keep in mind that Thing 2 will be 5 on Tuesday (dur), and is smaller by far than most 2 year olds.

Thing 2: (she's doing fine, not even crying, until she sees me) "MOMMY!! I was fightin wiff this boy an I was kickin his butt an we was sword fightin an I went WHAM WHAM HIYAH pow an I was kickin his butt (yes, she pointed this out at least twice) an then his brother got mad an he came an HIT me an Oh Mommy lookit my finger!"

So now she's beating up boys to the point that their big brothers have to come defend them from the pint-sized terror.

She, of course, after bandaid, is ready to go back outside.

Thing 1 was bleeding worse than her sister. Apparently she "fell down."

I had to emphasize the point repeatedly with Thing 2 that if she insists on fighting with boys, she's going to get hurt eventually. I think she's ready for round 2. I feel sorry for those boys.

Score:
War Wounds - 1
Sidewalk - 1
Thing 1 - Zip

Misunderhearings

Thing 2 and I are watching Cartoon Network, and they show a commercial for the Barbie Nail Studio.

Thing 2: "Mommy, how do you get them off?"

Me: "It's just glue, honey, they come off easily."

Thing 2: "You mean you don't gotta use a knife and cut off your fingers and wipe the blood clean so those will stick?"


Now me, I wanna know where the hell she got THAT idea from ......

Wasn't there, didn't do it, you can't prove anything

It's lies, I tell you, all lies. Don't believe DG, he's just making it up!

Oh. Shit. Wait. You mean he didn't say anything?

Uh. Nevermind, carryon.

Apparently ... and this was after I opened my eyes and realized I'd passed out cold onto my laptop and it was cussing at me at binary ... after I went to bed, DG shifted, and it startled the sleeping me.

Apparently ... I snapped upright and screamed, one of those throaty warpath everyonedies screams, and turned on him. "Feral," and I quote.

Apparently I scared the shit out of him.

And then, some minutes later, without ever focusing on him or answering him, I laid back down and went back to sleep.

*I* don't believe this. *I* don't remember shit. I'd honestly believe he was making it up ... if he didn't look so freakin startled while he was asking me about it.

(Jon says I looked like this every time he woke me up, however, his memory must be faulty and therefore he's not an acceptable witness for the prosecution.)

The leg is HURTING him today. Right on schedule.

He tried getting up, didn't last long, so I had to get up and make sure he was fed so we could dump pain pills into him.

Of course, that means I still haven't gotten nearly enough sleep, so we're working ourselves into some serious fucking sleep deprivation now.

I need an assistant.

America: Land of the free, Home of the Carnivore

Frozen dinners are designed with the carnivore in mind.

Look at them.

Look at the vegetarian dishes while you're at it. "Mock meatloaf." "Tofu corn dogs." "Meatless Vegetable Burgers."

90% of them have some sort of Meat Substitute.

There are times when the fibro has me in too much pain and too incoherent to "create dinner." If I want to get fed, I'd better hope there's something easy I can nuke.

And there are lots of things that LOOK good out there.

9 times out of 10, I pick what passes for meat in them out. There's a saucy noodle thing with BIG chunks of carrots and peas in it. Lots of noodles, the sauce is pretty good .... but then there's this CHICKEN in it. Urgh. Pause to pick chicken out. It's mindless, so I can get that part right.

Michelinas has a pretty good stroganoff. I gotta pause to pick the meat out.

I finally found a chicken minestrone (Stouffers) that doesn't make me gag. No, I take it back. I ADORE it. Lots of zucchini (proof that God really exists), and BIG chunks of chicken (not mystery meat), so it's even easy to pick out if I can't stomach it at the time.

Mexican dinners usually aren't as bad about it, by the time they've processed the ground beef THATfar (IF that is indeedy what it truly is) and mixed it with all the goop, there's nothing TO pick out.

And have you ever stopped to pay attention about proportions? "Rice and chicken (turkey, whatever)." You get all this goop, lots of meat, and a bare-assed spoonful of rice. Huh?

Meat, tons, check. Sauce, tons, check. Cool, that means we can skimp on the noodles and veggies, Americans LIKE it this way!

I don't make claims to be a vegetarian. It's not a principle thing. I am firmly convinced that we are mostly carnivorous by nature -- at the very least, true ominvores. There are times when I just oooooooze over a really good steak -- and it better still be mooing on the way to my table. Bloody, please. A good vet could still save it.

But meat just doesn't like my system very well. In anything more than mild doses, it reacts badly with my fibro and then I have to spend the next few days dealing with a total gastrological riot. Dairy is pretty bad about it too, so I must do without cheesy goodness and yummies like ice cream and cheesecake and even milk except for sparingly.

America: Land of the free, Home of the Carnivore.

When Cats Err

Zamboni is a very large cat. Zamboni is a very large very FLUFFY Maine Coon cat.

Zamboni decided that while he was sniffing at the table, it would be fun to sit in Thing 2's forgotten waffle plate. Full of syrup.

Now we have to catch the Elusive CactusTailed CowCat, complete with bits of paper and string for camoflague, to either bathe or shave.

Important Notes:

Cats and syrup don't mix.
Thing 2 needs to be retrained.
Laughing your ass off with a sore throat is a Bad Idea.
Bathing a Coon is JPG worthy. Drowned rat, anyone?
Zam has a opossum tail under all that fur. Eeeeww.
Zam does not like baths.

WOW, can he yowl indignantly. Wow, he's loud. Wow, he's mournful.

He even has Harley and Flea seriously upset. Harley tried to come over and give him a consolation bath while I was holding and drying him. Poor kitten about gagged on the mouthful of fur. Zam doesn't particularly allow the other cats to groom him, so this was quite an experience.

All three are now hiding under my futon, plotting the demise of DG.

Babes in Fearland

We think that they're too young to understand, that it rolls right past them.

We think that they're not listening.

DG and Thing 1 just left to try to get food -- not that any of us have really eaten at all the last few days.

Thing 2 just came running out of her room in DG's floppy jester's hat and a striped dress, jingling away ... to see only mommy.

Thing 2: "MOMMY! Where's my daddy???????"

She's shaking, eyes wide.

Me: "It's okay, honey, he just went to go get dinner."

Thing 2: "Oh Mommy, I worried. I thought he was dead!"

I hug her, try to soothe the kid. Then there's a pause.

Thing 2: "Where's KAILEY???"

Me: "Honey, it's okay, she went with Daddy. They're all right, I promise."

Thing 2: "Oh good, Mommy. I was SO worried."

I'm trying not to cry.

Shots in the Dark

Sleep eluded me last night.

No, incorrect. Let me not be guilty of false information, however inane it might be. It's certainly relevant in this case that I be accurate.

While sleep managed to find me, the quality left a great deal to be desired, sporadic and poor as it was. Nightmares stalked the world behind closed eyelids, nightmares that I honestly thought I had put behind me.

And in those nightmares, a gunman with an AK-47 stalked the halls of our hospital. This time, I didn't cancel my appointment for the day. This time, I was there with the infant Thing 1.

This time, my family didn't escape.

I attempted to go to sleep around 1 am or so. Lesson learned for the moment to not even try it without being utterly exhausted. At least then the dreams have to fight overwhelming coma to affect me.

There was a sound, somewhere between 4 and 5 am that had me sitting upright, even more panicked. I hadn't set the alarm last night, but even without that, as I startled out of yet another nightmare, I heard the quiet "snick" of the front door.

DG came very close to getting a baseball bat in the head.

I was grateful that he was home. I know that some of the fear in my dreams came from real enough worries about his safety, but the early presence spawned all new concerns. Why the hell was he home early?

I know he had a good response, (because he couldn't possibly have really told me that "I just didn't want to be there anymore" -- RIGHT dear?) but my brain seems to have misplaced it. I stumbled somewhat dully back to bed.

I shouldn't have been all that surprised when I had what little sleep I might have returned to violently disrupted by the ring of the damn telephone every half hour.

And in between, more shots in the dark.

Good morning, America

"Good morning, America, how are you ...."

Drained. Crawled into bed somewhere after 4 am. Finally was talked into attempting food around 3ish, I think.

Worrying about DG, standing out at crossing guard. All right, worrying a lot. See, DG is dark, very dark, skin, hair, eyes. So much that especially in Hispanic strong areas, people have walked up to him and started speaking in Spanish, expecting him automatically to understand.

It's not a far leap for some minds to assume he's something else. So I'm worried. In the small town we call home, it's not TOO much of a worry, but elsewhere ... I can't help but worry about my husband.

It struck me some time yesterday evening just how very old are our souls becoming, and at an early age as well.

I was born during Vietnam.

I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the USSR, and thinking "It will get better now."

I got married during Desert Storm. My in-laws lived in Saudi at the time. They were issued gas masks and chem gear.

I clearly remember the first WTC bombing. And the Sarin Gas attack in the Japanese subways.

We were stationed at Fairchild when a gunman, ex-AF, walked into the HOSPITAL and opened fire -- on everyone. My husband worked in that hospital. He came home with blood on his uniform. My eldest daughter was born in this hospital. I knew most of the dead. One was my doctor.

The same week, a B52 went down on our base with half the flight command staff on board. My husband was on Search and Recovery when Fairchild AFB lost the BUFF. We distantly saw part of the crash from our front yard. We could see and smell the smoke from our house.

At our next base, we felt the shudder when the Alfred P. Murrah Fed Building was bombed in OKC.

Bosnia. Serbia. Yugoslavia. Israel. Palestine. Northern Ireland. Afghanistan.

I watched yesterday as the World Trade Center fell. As the Pentagon burned.

When is it supposed to get better?

I saw so much anger and hatred yesterday -- both directed, and aimless. After a few of the worst, I kept to reading posts from people that I knew to be, on the average, reasonable and intelligent instead of knee-jerk extremists.

Being an ex-military family -- DG was an instructor for Red Flag, the field hospital school -- as soon as the initial shock was over, he was on the phone, making calls, volunteering if needed. We're far away, but it's instinct. Many of my friends are either military, ex-military, or grew up in military families.

There's a saying about military spouses. If you think the soldiers are tough, look at the ones they leave behind.

We have to pull together. It's a pack instinct to the greatest degree. When one is hurt, we're all hurt and work together to solve it.

There's no other way to survive.

The skies are still silent today. There's not a cloud in the sky. The blue is rich, innocent, forgiving. There are no contrails. There is no roar of engines, no flashing of lights.

It remains an eerie silence.

Christ.

The building is GONE. The south tower has collapsed amid another explosion apparently.

All those lives .....

God.

The second tower has fallen. The World Trade Center is totally gone.

90-odd passengers/personnel on the planes. Thousands in the buildings.

Hundreds of police officers and firemen trying to rescue survivors.

The silence is deafening.

We live 5 minutes from the DFW airport. Airplanes -- and low ones, coming in on approach -- are a 24/7 fact of life.

There is nothing in the air right now but birds, and it is very, very quiet.

The local world has come to a screeching standstill. Things have changed forever, in a very dramatic way. The innocence, the shelter that we lived under is gone.

The grass is still green, children are still playing, and the skies are still blue.

They are also silent.

The innocence of the country is gone, wiped away in flaming moment after flaming, smouldering moment.

It is possible that we will never know the entirety of what has happened. We may never learn the names of all that have lost their lives today. Many of the missing will remain missing, with no body to grieve over, and only memory left in their place. Recovery can never be complete. There will always be guilt, horror, anger and grief.

So many lives lost.

The shoe, as they say, is on the other foot.

What has been Real Life for the rest of the world has now been made real for us as well. We've joined the victims of mass destruction, become the newest children of violence, become another statistic.

Will we cope as well as they have? Will we come together and go on?

Will anger win out? Revenge? 'Justice?'

The dying, I fear, is only beginning.

.....

Oh. My. God.

Kinda makes you think about that recent Infocom data seizure, doesn't it?

Fuck.

And with passengers on board.

I'm going to go throw up now.