Day by Day (mirrored frm Blogspot)

November 26th, 2011

Lately, when I say that I’m living day by day … I really mean it.  Sometimes it feels like hour by hour or minute by minute, cause I have no idea what my body … or, for that matter, my emotions are going to do or be like.

I really hate this.  One minute I have all this energy and feel on top of the world …  and the next, I’m so drained and cry at the drop of a hat … or snap at someone for something stupidly small.  Those who know me, know this is Not me, but what about those that don’t.  They must think I’m this horrible person that flies of  the handle or lazy, cause I need to go somewhere and just sleep.

Yeah … the perpetual insomniac that curls up and just goes to sleep … no matter where she is.  She could just sleep for a few minutes and be refreshed, or stay that way … in and out … for a day or two.  Now you know why you will see me … then I will suddenly disappear for a while.

I will be sooooooo glad when this Crap is over!!!

Need to get off for a while … cause it seems my body thinks it’s naptime or something.  Maybe I can write more later.  Till then … Peace … and don’t forget to tell someone you know how you love or care about … how you feel.  Who knows … maybe it’s a bad day for them and they need a reason to smile …

I’m at a Crossroads …

October 23rd, 2011

***irrored from my Anything Goes Blogger Acct cause I couldn’t get on here (Thanks for fixing it Del & Co.).  It’s a sorta update and sorta rant.  Either way … laters … 8^D ***


I’M AT A CROSSROADS

I really don’t know if I want to laugh or cry.  Then, at times, I just wish I could hang a punching bag from one of the trees outside.  Hell, (I mean) Heck, if they won’t let you even have a clothesline (cause you can’t afford a dryer) outside, do you really think they are going to allow you to hang a punching bag?

 

You see, I live in a senior complex with some really nice (and a few not-so-nice) ladies … and a couple of gentlemen in a very small town in NE Texas … where the population has shrunk by about 230 people from 2000 to 2010.  Mostly because the old people die and the young ones leave, cause there’s no place to work (unless you drive an hour away … if you’re lucky enough to have a vehicle) and nothing to do … except the football games or fishing.  Every once in a while, people will come in from other counties or states for the Big Bass Tournaments a the big lake nearby … and around the county for the Old Settlers Reunion (a week of carnival rides, Gospel Music and Bluegrass Music) at the hottest time of the year.  Oh yeah, this is also the County Seat, so ya might wanna call that our “County Fair” … minus the livestock shows … they save that for the one in the next county, when they have the big NE Texas Fair … or go to the one in Dallas (With the giant cowboy that waves and says “HOWDY”) … or go to the Big Balloon Fest in July in Longview … a couple a counties to the east.

Either way, if you don’t have wheels, ya might as well forget it … your stuck.  Which brings me back to my first thought here … I really need to find something to do to bring some life back into these people … before they all die off … or I do … either from boredom … or this damn (oops) darn cancer that’s eatin’ away at me from the inside out.

That’s what I need the punching bag for, cause this thing is really pissin’ … errr … makin’ me mad!!!  And this Big City West Coast/East Coast/been -around-the-world Girl is about to go nuts .. havin’ ta watch my language (we have the “Real Church Ladies” here) and Ima startin’ ta talk like ‘em and dress like’em and I’ll be danged if Ima goin’ ta start thinkin’ like ‘em!

YIKES!!! See what I mean?  Maybe what I really need to do is take a trip back to California, or maybe back to the Gulf Coast of Florida.  I have good memories in both places.  They fed my creative bug … expanded my artistic talents that seems a bit stifled here.

I don’t know what to do right now.  I can’t really think or dream about anything right now.  I don’t even know if I will be in any shape to do any traveling after they get done with all their radiation and who knows what else.  I already know I’ll never be able to sing again, though I was real happy I could at least still talk … till I found out they had to scrape what they could from my larynx and inside my windpipe, but couldn’t get it all without taking all of that out and leaving me with a hole in my neck to breathe with.  As it is, the radiation may kill my larynx anyway.

I do know one thing … I’m not quitting … no matter how long it takes … or what BS I have to go through.  It’s just … right now … I’m in Limbo … with no where to go, nothing to do … AND NO DAMN PUNCHING BAG TO HIT!!!

Hmmmm … I wonder if momma will let me put one up by her house at the lake … hmmmm.


*Putting on thinking cap of where to find old duffle bag, sawdust and chains*

 

Cancer Update – 8-10-11

September 11th, 2011

Last month we found out I have cancer (which we could’ve found earlier if Medicaid had ok’d the cat-scan w/contrast last March) and was supposed to have surgery yesterday (Fri the 9th), but the last minute tests before surgery showed that a growth off the one in my neck has started to wrap itself around my trachea.  Now they are going to sent me to UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas cause they may have to cut out part of my windpipe.
Now this doesn’t mean I’m going to quit … are you kidding … because of all the crap I’ve been given so far … like they didn’t want to pay for the biopsy that proved I have cancer because “the MD’s office didn’t put the Right Code and show the ‘Medical Necessity’ for the test.” Yet, they told the office that my “Medicaid Benefits had Maxed Out” … nope, as long as I can type … I’m not quitting … ;0

There are so many things surrounding this that really pisses me off … which also triggers my fail-safe mechanism … humor.  Yeah … remember when I filled the pages w/ jokes and stuff … like around the time Dad was dying … or all the time my daughter was fighting for her life and her children … laughter was my medicine.  Now I’m fighting for my own life, so why should I be any different?
I also have a couple if Angels who are letting me use their laptop, so I can take it with me and record what goes on … and I pass it on to you … even if it looks like I’m the only one reading it (which may be true) … but I don’t care, cause at least I get it off my chest.
What  I would really like to do is get a hold of the surgery order, cause I noticed something about them going to check something else while they had me open.  The nurse explained that they wanted to check a possible mass at the base of my skull and connected w/my spine …somehow connected w/the pain I’ve been feeling behind my left ear and would move to my head on the same side … and the base of my head would also hurt.   It’s one of the things I told them about since last March.  Dr M ordered 2 C-Scans, both w/contrast (usually iodine that would show up as a darkening agent, but only certain areas).  One was for my head and the other was for soft tissue in my neck.  They (Medicaid) ok’d the one for my head, but not the contrast for my neck.  The one on my head (w/contrast) was “inconclusive” and the neck (w/o contrast) was negative.  He also ordered a sonogram of the neck area.  That’s where they found a “small unidentified mass.

And so the chain starts … to an appt w/ an ENT to a new sonogram at the hospital he was out of in the next county north.  That sonogram (taken a couple of months later) found a much larger mass, enough to alarm the Tech into getting an order from Dr. S (while he is in the middle of surgery) for him to be able to do a more extensive sonogram.  It wasn’t long after this that I had an appt for a biopsy.  I had to cancel that one, cause I was vomiting (turned out to be a 24 hr virus, though I thought it was just nerves) so we made another one.  That one went ok … that is until, no matter how many shots of a local anesthesia they gave me, the deeper they went, the more it felt like a hot poker was burrowing in my neck.  They finally stopped and rescheduled me for one w/ stronger anesthesia, placing me in a semi-unconscious state.  The first one swelled the bottom part of my neck to where some said I had a Goiter … and the second one (there were able to do that one) left more parts of my neck to swell … the headaches to become worse and finding it harder to swallow … which eventually worsened and sometimes feels like there’s a ball being forced  in the part of your neck they do tracheotomies (so you can breathe) instantly blocking my windpipe for a micro-second, then releasing.  Very scary.

The next week, he told me I had cancer.

Ok … I’m tired and need to get some sleep so I can go to church in the morning.

Until next time … keep your heads up and your bellies shakin with laughter.  The rest of the time … just keep smilin … 8^D



Walmartians

September 10th, 2011

My friend Laura sent this to me … good thing too cause I was feelin down and it picked me right up!

 
WalMartians


Sometimes I Wonder …

August 24th, 2011

Sometimes I wonder …

What have I not done that needs to be done …

Like my walk-in closet …

Full of clothes I may never wear …

Shoes in need of repair …

Boxes full of who knows what …

A small dresser with dusty drawer handles …

Stuffed in a corner behind my blouses …

The shelves just inside the door …

Filled with boxes of gloves

I wore to Galas and such

While wearing gowns and high heels

I no longer have

From a gloreous life in a far-a-way land …

Sitting beside …

Above …

Under …

Unfinished crafts …

Materials to make more …

All my artwork in a box on the floor …

Waiting for frames I can’t afford …

Next to bags I’ve used on trips

Around this great country of ours …

From California to New York …

Colorado to Florida …

North…

South …

East …

West …

As I turn out the light …

Close the door …

I realize what I have to do …

It matters not

The material things it holds …

It’s the memories I hold in my head …

Triggered only by these material things …

Piling up here and there …

No one knows

But me …

So …

If I let my memories

Out of the Closet

By putting them here …

I can get rid of the Material things

Cluttering up my life …

So my children won’t have to

When I’m gone.

Sometimes I Wonder … 

Do You? 

What’s Old, What’s New, What Stays the Same …

August 23rd, 2011

WHAT’S OLD

Still using op’s computers, but after the first of the month, I will have a friend’s laptop for a while and be able to get on more often.  This is good for many reasons, but at this moment, I’m glad I will have this outlet …

WHAT’S NEW

If I ever needed a safe place to go to get stuff off my mind … it’s now.  I just wish I was able to write all the thoughts that have been going through my head this past week … and hope I can get out what I can today before my friend comes back for this one (it belongs to another friend of his and brought it over here last night to use my high speed internet).  If not, I’ll be giving updates from time to time.

For those who have read what I put on my FB page, you already know.  For anyone else … I found out last week that I have Thyroid Cancer.  Weird, seeing as how some idiot doctor in FL supposedly killed my Thyroid in ’99 with Radiation cause I had a “lumpy Thyroid” … and almost killed me by giving me the wrong medication.  Now I find out that he did kill the one on the right side of my neck, but I seem to still have the one on the left side … and that one now has a not-so-small hitchhiker … called Cancer. 

This is where it gets sticky.   I’m scheduled for surgery on the 9th of Sept with my ENT Dr.  My daughter called the Cancer Treatment Center of America, but they don’t accept Medicaid.  They did however, tell her NOT to let the ENT operate until I have seen an Oncologist first.  Today, I have an appointment with my Primary Dr (I call him Dr Rick, so you know who I’m talking about later) so he can give me a referral to an Oncologist.  The lady also said that she couldn’t understand why Dr. S. (the ENT) hadn’t already sent me to one first, before he scheduled surgery.  Another red flag for them was all the swelling and pain ( both of which keeps getting worse and more pronounced) that he says is not related and they say it is.  He also said that the cancer shouldn’t be hurting, but if it hadn’t been for the pain in my neck and the occasional headache starting behind my ear, we wouldn’t even have known about the cancer.

WHAT’S THE SAME

Another thing … if Medicaid hadn’t denied me for the CT Scan w/contrast on my neck, they would’ve found it a couple of months sooner!  This is nothing new for the State of Texas, but I will say more about this after I get my other friend’s laptop out of the shop … and will have it on my “Just My Opinion” page.

My other thoughts (and emotions) will be on this page.  Right now, I need to rest before I get out in the heat, get into my care w/o AC and go to the next town to see Dr. Rick.  If you are wondering why I didn’t go to Dr. S for the referral … he’s on vacation this week … O_o

Our Amazing Planet: Top to Bottom

April 19th, 2011

Y’all … this is an amazing graph from the edge of our atmosphere to the Mariana Trench.  (I hope this works)

Our Amazing Planet: From Top to Bottom

Well, I guess the link will have to do, cause I seem to have forgotten how to “Embed”

 

Anyway … check it out.

 

Growing up without a cell phone …

April 9th, 2011

If you are 36, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking five miles to school every morning…. Uphill… Barefoot… BOTH ways…yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of forty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.  You’ve got it so easy!  I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

1) I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet.  If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

2) There was no email!!  We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there!  Stamps were 10 cents!

3) Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!

4) There were no MP3′s or Napsters or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

5) Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!  There were no CD players!  We had tape decks in our car.  We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless.  Cause, hey, that’s how we rolled, Baby!  Dig?

6) We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting!  If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that’s it!

7) There weren’t any freakin’ cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn’t make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your “friends”. OH MY GOSH !!!  Think of the horror… not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!  And then there’s TEXTING.  Yeah, right.  Please!  You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

8) And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!  It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent… you just didn’t know!!!  You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

9) We didn’t have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We had the Atari 2600!  With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’.  Your screen guy was a little square!  You actually had to use your imagination!!!  And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen.. Forever!  And you could never win.  The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!  Just like LIFE!

10) You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing!  You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!!  NO REMOTES!!!  Oh, no, what’s the world coming to?!?!

11) There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning.  Do you hear what I’m saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

12) And we didn’t have microwaves.  If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove!  Imagine that!

13) And our parents told us to stay outside and play… all day long.  Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort.  And if you came back inside… you were doing chores!

And car seats – oh, please!  Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on.  If you were lucky, you got the “safety arm” across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling “shot gun” in the first place!

See!  That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled rotten!  You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 40 Crowd

It’s Almost Over!

April 9th, 2011

I first wrote this on 10 Nov. 2009.  Because of the delicateness of the situation (namely … her still being under their shackles at the time) I set it to private, thinking only registered could read it.  When I found out that I was the only one that could see it, I decided to keep it that way until it was safe.  I will update on the other end …

I’m setting this post to registered only because of what I’m going to talk about.

Those of you that have known me for quite a while, have known that I have been dealing with some pretty heavy things concerning my daughter and my grandchildren … and the “holier than thou” CPS (Child Protective Services … or as I call it … Child Punishing Sickos). I don’t have much time right now, but I will go more into detail later …

But …

It’s almost over!!!

My mom, daughter and grandson are with my youngest grand daughter (the last one in their clutches) right now … and the court has (finally) ordered a “home Study” at my daughters home … in preparation … for Lil’ M’s return home … where she belongs … and have told the court that’s where SHE wants to be!!!

The CPS … in their fallible non-wisdom … still deem me “a danger to my grand daughter welfare” … because of something that happened 30 years ago to my daughter during my drug and alcohol days (gee … my daughter has forgiven me a long time ago and I no longer live that lifestyle … why can’t they let it go) … but are actually going to allow me to visit with here for 4 hours on Christmas Day (jumping up and down, doing flipflops and smiling reeeaaallll BIG)!!!

It was so great seeing her today … the last time I saw her … she was just a little girl … now she is 15 and growing into a beautiful young lady. She was able to hug her grandma, mom and brother while the lawyers met with the Judge in her chambers (oh I would’ve LOVED being a fly on the wall). She was smiling and laughing … then she saw me and … said “Mema!” … and we both started to cry … but we couldn’t go near each other. We both mouthed the words “I Love You” to each other … and we know …

It’s almost over!!!

A lot has happened since then.  My youngest grandchild is living with her mother and we can finally have what we haven’t had in years (since 2003) … holidays with the whole family together!!!  The only thing to stop us from that is what everyone goes through … the dang gas prices!!!  But that’s another story for the “Just My Opinion” page … :)

Just Poppin’ In …

October 17th, 2010

Just thought I’d pop in for a few minutes to say … HOWWWWDEEEEE!

Still don’t have my PC fixed and not really sure when  I can … it’s the usual thing with everyone … just a matter of money.  I’m sure there are plenty others out there with the same problem … in one form or another … so, no need to dwell on any of that right now.

Off to better things, thoughts, adventures … plus a whole lot of out and out mischievious nonsense … hehe   If I can get back to another PC soon, I’ll relay a few things … or not … heehee