Life's Lesson, Literally

I was helping the kids do their homework. The spelling lesson included the word "judgment." But the teacher's wordlist gave the correct spelling as judgement, with no mention of alternate accepted spelling. I told the kids that most dictionaries list the judgment spelling first, which means it is the preferred spelling. Then I said to the kids to file that information away as generally teachers do not like to be corrected in their classrooms. I remembered the time when I was in school the teacher wrote the word "aspern" on the board, and I told her it was spelled wrong. She erased the word and wrote "aspirn," and I corrected her again. I'm pretty sure I thought she would be glad to know the correct spelling. My brother told me later that was not the case, and then I felt embarrassed. Many years later, I was on vacation in New Orleans, and attended a play called "Nobody Likes A Smartass." It was a good play and I think a true title.

Dancing----Singular Focus

World Peace is the first to go, Chaz dances (not badly either) through his pain, the wounded war hero soars and then loses momentum, Nancy loses her top (didn't see that coming), lovely Chyna is not appreciated: all that drama and I don't really care. All I want is to watch Derek dance.

Ex-Factor

First judge comments that the performance was spectacular, beautiful, worthy, unique. Second judge was moved beyond anything ever experienced, was in awe of performance. Judge #3 got goose bumps, became choked up, proclaims it the best audition ever, sees stardom ahead. Last judge says it's the reason the show exists, annoints the performer as true talent and worthy of 5 million dollar prize. THEN they vote, and performer acts surprised when the judges vote yes to the performance. The suspense was unbearable. Repeat this scenario about 4 to 5 times per hour, interrupted by the comic relief segments, such as a judge having to run into the bathroom to vomit after witnessing "apparent" full frontal nudity of an exhibionist contestant. His act was, strangely enough, allowed to play out his entire routine. Next day, all the live (unscripted) activities will be reported as news and be the day's topic for the talk shows where they have nothing else to talk about. No wonder other countries hate us.

Medical Advances

Next time you visit your doctor, or hospital venue, try asking your health provider about matching your skin tone to that color-coded gown. You might be anemic, and in need of i mmediate treatment. What that recommended treatment would be would probably fall in the category of psych-eval. Yet funding was granted for that inane study, and the media faithfully reported the study as newsworthy in their healthcare segments. Reporting is not what it used to be.

MOSQUITOES

I wonder what the mosquitoes in my yard feed on when I stay inside my house. Obviously they don't have any other nearby source of food because when I go outside, they swarm and attack in a feeding frenzy, thousands of them. If I stay inside, will they starve to death, or leave for bloodier pastures. They must have to eat something, don't they?

Boots on the Floor?

Today I had a biopsy------nothing to be concerned about though. It was just a troublesome little cyst type warty thing on the back of my leg. The dermatologist, dutifully outfitted in his sanitary gloves, and armed with scalpel and specimen jar, injected the site with novocaine and scraped off the suspect area. Then he dropped it on the floor, bent down, and used the curette-y instrument to scoop the sample of skin from the floor to the sterile collection jar. It will be sent to the lab for testing, and then the office will call me with the results. I hope cow-doo DNA doesn't turn up in the lab tests. This did take place in Vermont.

Three's you say?

Ben spilled some Klondike Bar chocolate on his shirt.  I washed it off and went to dry it with the hair dryer when it smoked and flared up.  I put  it in the sink until it cooled off and then dropped it in the garbage.  I was talking on the living room phone and it went dead.  Later in the day, the kitchen phone went dead also.  I called Dave at the T's and that phone was dead.  A package I had mailed on August 18 was returned today.  The Return to Sender label cited reason as "other" with no explanation.  My right leg will not bend. 

Christmas NRA Style

It's that time of year.  Christmas catalogs and sale items are arriving in the mail box every day.  The other day the mail brought me an advertisement for "The Perfect Christmas Gift:  The 100th Anniversary of the 1911."  That would be the firearm designed by John Browning, and made & engraved in the USA.  The slogan that seals the deal---"Life's too short to shoot an ugly gun."   Aren't you proud of your heritage?

Oops, My Bad

There may be more to the story than I have access to at this time, but if true, it is a terrible thing:   The patient is recovering from an illness that has left him with a swollen gland in his neck.  He undergoes a biopsy, calls for results, and is told the finding is benign.  He and his family are greatly relieved.  A day or so later, when he returns to the doctor's office for his F.U. visit, the doctor asks him if he has chosen an oncologist yet......

Oblivious? Well, just maybe

"Let them eat cake."   Marie Antoinette or some other member of the French royal family may or may not have uttered these words, but doubtless the saying reflects how unaware or uncaring or both that the privileged were of the plight of the poor.  The poor are ever with us, you'd think most people would be conscious of today. The doctor, treating a sick child who is presently homeless, has been informed of the child's status, for payment purposes since the health insurance is pending.   He deems the child patient not seriously ill, strep test negative, and advises a plan of treatment.  He tells the temporary guardian that she may be given Tylenol, and tea with honey and lemon for her sore throat.  Not bad advice certainly, but for a child who has been sleeping on the floor with only blankets (no sleeping bag), in 4 different locations over the last 4 weeks, a cup of tea with or without honey and lemon is about as unrealistic a scenario as telling  the starving French to substitute  brioche for bread. Whenever I hear of a quicker or more comprehensive discovery that will improve physicians'  access to a patient's medical history, I think what a waste of time and money. As a patient myself, I have been in a doctor's office where I have filled out a multiple page information sheet about my medical history, but when I entered the examining room, the nurse asked a few questions, and jotted the information on a small note pad, just a few lines.  When I remarked that I had already filled out the extensive form, she answered that the doctor didn't have time to read those forms.  Big surprise, huh?

Numbers

     When my mind still needs to think, but I have run out of words, I resort to numbers.   I know there must be  a logical answer to this, but I can't think of what it is:    when you are going through the times tables, why do the numbers in the 9 set alone  add up to 9?    9x7=63, with the 6 and the 3 adding up to 9, as do all the 2 numbers you multiply in the 9 times table.  It's not true of 1 through 8; what's so special about 9?

Sex and Manslaughter

A child of say 12 years old accidentally shoots and kills a friend wile they are playing with a gun that an adult made it possible for them to find and did not provide supervision for their activities.  The child is charged, brought to court, interviewed, found to be responsible to some extent and is sentenced to  probation.  Fair enough----he's old enough to be held responsible for careless behavior that causes someone's death.  But a child of the same age, or older, who is caught up in sexual misconduct with an adult, even though sometimes only a few years older, is advised that he or she has been preyed upon, and is never to feel guilty for any part of the misbehavior.  The child may have deliberately and consciously gone against what the  parents have taught and expect, have knowingly broken the rules of household and society, yet is told he or she is completely blame-free.  Sexual exploitation of a child is always the fault of the adult.   Of course.  But shouldn't children who disobey, break the rules, and cause a problem or a tragedy be taught that they are to some extent responsible for their wrong-doing, and not given  a free pass for dangerous behavior just because the subject was sexual in nature.  Assigning responsibility could  be a life-saver in some instances.

The Good Mother

The mother tells her 16 year old  daughter to come home.  It's a school night and she has homework, so she cannot sleep over at her boyfriend's house.  The daughter protests because it will be her birthday, and promises she will do her homework.  The mother agrees because it IS her birthday, and reminds her to do her homework.  A mother's work is never done. 

It's that Time of Year

We had moved to Valley Falls in the summer. So fall came. The first (and only) clue that I was starting school was that my mother was boiling something on the stove in a quite large pot. I asked her what it was and she said it was socks. She'd thrown all my socks, mismatched, well-worn whitish and once pink socks, into a pot of clorox-laced water in an attempt to get a pair of decent socks for me to wear the first day of school. I don't remember what else I wore that day, but I do recall I wore socks.

Still time......

Did you know you can buy a two-story high inflatable black cat from Hammacher Schlemmer for $349.99 plus shipping. You could have the best Halloween decoration in town.

Hoist on My Own Petard

I started working at my present part-time job in September of 1996. Every year starts off with the entire staff meeting in Herkimer. This year, I did not want to attend for the 16th consecutive year, so for the first time, I emailed my regrets, citing a previously scheduled appointment. This morning, I received a call saying the meeting had been postponed until a later time, due to the flooding roads. So now, I still don't want to attend, but have used up my excuse. I knew there was a reason to avoid devious behavior. And tomorrow's regional meeting in Albany may have to be postponed as well. Who would have expected weather issues in September, of all months.

Trilby

Now, Svengali was a fictional character, right?

Time Flies

I was away from FaceBook for a while, but didn't realize it was such a long time. During my absence, one of the teens I used to work with has evidently fallen out of love with the sworn love of his life, fallen back into love with another, and they are expecting a baby. Wow, things sure happen fast. But other circumstances remain the same-----a constant is filling out job applications.

Summer's End

Today continued the ritual of going over to the Fairgrounds to retrieve the entries and collect the revenues. I'd had no entries this year, so I just drove the boys over, after picking them up at their piano lessons. (That seems odd to write.) As always, the fairgrounds looks depleted and sad after having been the center of so much activity for the past 6 days. Almost everything is gone, only a few local vendors packing up amidst the sparsely scattered debris. The kids don't notice, or feel sad, having already moved past the event of the fair, and on to thoughts of school which opens tomorrow, and to soccer practice, scheduled for tonight. Their mission is to pick up their stuff and then go to the office to find out how much prize money they've won. One collects $29 and the other the grand sum of $35. They vow to next year submit more entries and earn as much as $50, wait, make that $100. They seem happy at the thought: I envy them.

As we enter the Arts and Crafts section to gather most of the kids' entries, we pass through The Cottonwood Shop, for the past 6 days home to a million jillion craft articles of every type under the sun, all offered for sale. We had to make 2 trips, one at mid-day and the other in the late afternoon. Noontime found 2 women packing up the fancy embroidered and decorated and embellished quilts and spices and dolls and towels, carefully and diligently folding and sorting and packing and boxing each item. The women looked tired and deflated. When the kids and I returned some 4 hours later, there were the women, still working at what looked to me to be a neverending task. I hope they sold enough of their wares to have made it all worthwhile, though it didn't look that way to me.

Freihofer's Fruit Cookies and the Schaghticoke Fair

Time was when you attended the Schaghticoke Fair and walked through the Freihofer Building, a person would be standing next to the old Freihofer wagon handing out free cookies, individually wrapped fruit cookies, really good with lots of juicy raisins. We walked through and we each took the offered cookies, all except Danny, who then didn't care for raisins. The next day, before we entered the building I told Danny to take a cookie anyway: I liked them. But when the Freihofer person asked Danny, "Would you like a cookie? " he declined, saying no, thank you. When we left the building, I asked him why he didn't take one, and he said that the man asked him if he liked the cookie, so he had to say no, he didn't. And that boy is just as honest to this very day....

Assignment: Eat this!

I know it's a good thing, but somehow having a supply of fruits and especially vegetables in the house reminds me of homework. You know you need to hurry up and take some action before it's too late, or there'll be a penalty to pay, either in the form of deducted credit or spoiled produce. It's such a relief to hand in that term paper, or eat that last tomato of the season. Oh, the guilt.

Fickle Blog of Mine

Sometimes I can find you, sometimes not. But I hear I'm getting a new computer, needed or not, so I suppose I'll have to break in a new hard drive. Oh, change is coming.

I just wanted to tell her.....

In doing the NYT Sunday Crossword, I came across a reference to an Irish band called Gaelic Warning. They have a recording of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." Dorothy had a meltdown when Adam Lambert sang his India-inspired version of that song. She hated it with a passion, as she always loved Johnny Cash. I wanted so badly to tell her about the Irish version. I actually liked Lambert's take on the song, but I you tubed the Gaelic Warning recording, and it is truly awful, as bad as bad can be. I want to know what she would have thought of it.

Really glad rags

There on the kitchen counter was a new package of soft and pretty cloth squares in pastel colors-----green, blue, pink, yellow. I assumed they were face cloths until someone far more knowledgeable than I told me they were cleaning rags, bought for that purpose. Now I'm not a cleaning expert but I know what dustrags are and where they come from. They are torn-up tee shirts, old towels cut into pieces, worn out washcloths, flannel nightgowns that have seen better days, even packs of industrial-looking cloths if you run out of household rags. But packs of new and delicately hemmed soft terry cloth fabric squares freshly used to clean up dirt and grime signals to me the decline of civilization as we knew it. Are we, in cleaning up after ourselves, so out of touch with real life that we have to buy sterile rags to handle the mess we make? Wrapping our garbage in attractive packages does not make it any less garbage. I can see fine cleaning cloths for valued antiques or collectibles, but regular household cleaning should not require that we buy pretty little cloths. There is some form of denial involved here that I can't fully articulate at this hour. I just know it's wrong.

Identity Crisis

Our hard-drive was replaced with our former hard drive. I can't remember why this happened in the first place, or if it was before I started to blog. I couldn't locate my blog until now, and felt a little deprived of my past. I had to enter a new password for some unknown reason, so I suppose it's possible I'll never pass this way again.