Thankful Thursday–spring snow

Indeed it snowed

Indeed my teenage daughters built a snow fort (the second of winter! after many years of no forts!)

Indeed it is spring

Indeed my m key is sticking

Cat Walk

black ice boot tracks

footprints in the snow

sidewalk running

[now a line that rhymes, but I HATED and therefore deleted it. You can figure it out because you are so smart!]

ipsilateral/contralateral

cat gait trot pace

howling at the moon

crust snow, rust snow

pink blue

glow

Read Full Post »

the other kind of 2 male cardinals

And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God

Matthew 19:24

In chess, we all know the bishop by the shape of the bishop and that it indicates a bishop’s hat.

Priesthood sounds wrong, but maybe that’s because I know what they’ve been up to. Then here’s the disturbing culture of repressed sexuality and misogyny, not to mention the rampant, hypocritical, life-damaging cover-it-up-to-protect THE PRIESTS AND NOT THE VICTIMS pedophilia.

I have seen the film The Magdalene Sisters and so should you. Since it’s a work of fiction, I urge you to google Magdalene Laundries and see what you come up with, all on your ownsome.

Of course, there is the Inquisition and the Crusades, but this post isn’t about the old-style tortures and abuses. I’m a modern woman, capiche?

We talked the other night at dinner about who makes the vestments and hats for the Catholic celebrity class—popes, bishops, archbishops, cardinals. I did find this, which is sort of interesting, but he is a collector, not a milliner.

When I see vestments that indicate a person is of rank within the Catholic church, I typically have a piss-poor reaction. This happens less here in Western Mass than when I lived in Ohio. When I grew up, you’d see the occasional group of nuns out to a restaurant or at the grocery store. I even used to work in a Catholic orphanage one summer when I was home from college. Yeah, me.

I did not set out to write this post today. Punning on the two cardinals set the ball rolling. Rolling right into what I have long pondered: how how how. I don’t mean to insult any of my Catholic friends. I want to respect your religion, but alas, I can only respect you and trust that you know how and why. That I much I got in me.

Now witness:

Is it real? Do these come in pink silk? That is something I could get behind.

I also like the hats that look like yarmulkes, the history of Catholics and Jews marrying each other in such great numbers right there (maybe you don’t know a lot of Catholics who married Jews, but HELL YES I do).

A fleet of pink silk hats with tassels—like pasties, you know.

And why aren’t the nuns allowed to wear bright colors like the rest of the clergy? Penguin suits, my god.

Read Full Post »

scale

When I was a little girl in the ’70s, I did not have a scale like the one pictured above.

We seemed to have had the one same bathroom scale forever. It was green, rectangular, and the numbers sort of looked like the ones above, but their little window was rectangular, not ovoid (oval?). But maybe that is wrong. The scale was made of metal. I am sure it didn’t work with any accuracy for at least the last 20 years that my mother had it.

After my father died, my mother moved from a place they had in Toledo to a condo in a suburb of Detroit. After she lived there for about 8 years, she moved again to a condo near us in Stow, Ohio. All this time, she still had that crazy green scale. The mucilaged laminate-covering was starting to peel off at the edges.

It was completely wonky, but I would still get on it every time I used the upstairs bathroom in her condo. I loved the sound it made when I got on it, metal and weights, mechanical movement. I loved the way the numbers took their time going around and finally came to center and I loved the way it was completely wrong. I don’t remember what I weighed on it, but it was not correct. I weighed between 138 and 142 my whole adult life after college and before kids. That’s what I do remember. Maybe my mom’s scale read 135. Maybe it read 155. Who knows, who remembers these things, and why?

I know I had a scale in Kent because that is where I had my pregnancies and babies and I know I weighed myself a lot at that time. I just don’t know what scale we had. Did it break? Did we move it to Massachusetts with us? Did I throw it out, donate it?

Right now, we don’t own a scale. We had one that I really liked, a sort of minimalist glass thing with digital numbers. According to Paul, the thing never worked. I must have bought it at Target, but was it here in Massachusetts or back in Ohio?

it wasn’t this model, but you get the idea

I had to ask the company to send some part for it because it didn’t work right. I think I did that twice. It needed a little watch battery in order to function and I replaced it often, or as often as I thought I should according to the fact that Paul said it didn’t work.

The great thing about the scale not being accurate is that it measured low. So I always thought I weighed less than I really did. What a shock to get to the doctor’s office and weigh around 5 pounds more than I did at home. I always attributed this to being clothed, but we know clothes only weigh about 2 or 3 pounds, maybe 4 in the winter, at least for someone around 5′ 5″ like me.

In each of my pregnancies, I gained 25 pounds. Textbook. I noticed that the very tiniest women gained the most weight. I knew one gal who gained 80 pounds. But that stuff comes right off on those teeny gals.

I took all of my pregnancy weight off after Violet in one week. That is because I was very dehydrated. I slowly gained 8 pounds back and eventually took it off again.

After Annie, I gained a lot of new fat. So even though I eventually weighed 142 again, I had fat on my hips and thighs that remains today. I have never liked it.

Eventually, I got my flat belly back, even after Annie. Until I became anemic in 2006. That was the end of my youthful belly.

When I was anemic and I was seeing my old acupuncturist, she told me that the Chinese say a woman should gain 10 pounds after the age of 40. Is this something I wanted to hear or not? I think about it often. She also said you should never try to lose weight after the age of 40 because you need it as you age and start to waste. This is exactly what Susun Weed says. I saw it happen to my grandmother and I have seen it happen to my mother.

My acupuncturist at that time also told me that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, you don’t weigh yourself. Your weight is none of your business.

I think the point is to use food as medicine and to live a healthy life full of natural movement, warmth, and fresh air. Oh, and sex. I don’t think I’ve ever been to an acupuncturist who didn’t ask me if I was having regular sex.

I know it’s creepy to post this image after talking about sex. My job is not to keep you comfortable.

tres moderne, n’est-ce pas?

The thing that was creepiest about other people’s bathrooms when I was growing up was if their bathroom toilet had a semi-circle of shag carpet on the floor in front of it. Then, a matching toilet seat cover and a matching scale cover. Usually, these were a very dark green. You know of what I speak.

This was the same time that Harvest Gold, Avocado, and Burnt Orange were the most popular kitchen colors.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but since pee tends to splatter to some degree in any bathroom, weren’t those shag fibers simply pee-absorbers? And why wouldn’t you do the German thing and wash your bathroom once a week on your hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water and rags instead?

I don’t know why I am being so confessional and nostalgic, but all week, I have been thinking about that green scale.

This may be the scale that comes closest to the one in my memory. I probably would have killed for a pink one.

All the scales I find at Target in the last 6 years or so are crap. Made in China of crap, by crappy companies who don’t know anything about Traditional Chinese Medicine anyway. I know I’d have to order a doctor’s scale for about a hundred and fifty bucks if I wanted an accurate scale. But even the doctor’s office nowadays has given up the beauty of metal weights for digitized numbers. You even have to plug the thing in.

I found photos of a neon pink scale on google images. And I found lots of photos of naked pregnant women and let me tell you, that is a wild ride.

Read Full Post »

a circuitous Music Monday by way of another So Cal post

magnolia pods

beautiful horsetail (an ancient plant, reproduces by spores like ferns do) hedges landscaped into a rock-and-water garden in front of a (multi) million-dollar ocean-front home

jade hedges; rosemary hedges; bougainvillea spilling out over garages and porches and clay-tile roofs; hummingbirds; shore birds; harbor seals; cormorants and the white streaks of their excrement all over the rocky cliffs on the beaches in La Jolla; the black-crowned night heron fishing off of the ropes at the Maritime Museum; the beautiful black-and-white spotted feather with a bright-orange rachis that I brought home with me but still haven’t identified (anybody?)

ship’s ropes

I got all fancy-schmancy and used the digital switch-over function for b & w, something to which I’ve always been quite resistant. With my old Retina camera, b & w was de rigeur, but with digital, it always feels like cheating. What is wrong with me? Am I so pretentious that only 35mm b & w photography is good enough? Yeesh.

dummies in the ship museum (who still uses these guys? CREEPY and his hand looks bloodied!)

same dragon, different angle:

You know I’ve said I think boy pee has a stronger odor than girl pee, due to the testosterone and all. That was before I visited one of the San Diego airport’s women’s bathrooms at 9 pm on a Saturday and one of the Atlanta airport’s women’s bathrooms at 6 am on a Sunday. These loos smelled very strongly of pee, BOY pee. YIKES!!! Maybe our hormones are equal to and/or greater than theirs? (I’m baiting you, you know).

if this were a b & w photo, you might be confused as to who should use this john

They may talk big in the South about manners and all, but let me tell you, they don’t seem to know how to clean a bathroom.

Today’s song has nothing to do with So Cal except that our pal George sort of half-played it for us and we sort of half-sang along (as if we could it at all because the Feelies don’t really sing their lyrics, they sort of mumble them)

In Coronado, an uber-white, wealthy (or just wanna-be wealthy, for the clueless tourists?), tacky, less-cultured-than-La Jolla (if that’s even possible), gazillions-of-SUVs type community, there are a few places on the sidewalks and at the curbs where quarters are glued to the pavement, I kid you not.

First, it’s illegal (not to mention un-American) to deface American coins. How is it that in one of the most Republican counties in the US, this is allowed?

Second, it’s cruel. What, Coronado, you have so much money, you sit around on your xeriscaped patios watching the lowly plebians try to pick up quarters all day? What about the little barefoot ragamuffin getting run over in the street as he tries to pick up that coin he needs to buy a can of beans for his family’s supper? Have you no mercy?

So, Coronado Beach, keep your money glued to the sidewalks. We don’t need your stinkin’ quarters.

Look what this little New England street urchin found, not glued to the sidewalk:

Look what I saw when I came home:

I know this is not a great photo, but at least I didn’t make it b & w, right? I never saw a sunset like this in So Cal. Chalk one up for New England!

Read Full Post »

Once in a while Wednesday: tough stough/tuff stuff

A recent photo of me on our trip to San Diego. As adorable, sexy, beautiful, and fascinating as I am, I hope you can still tell I’m saying don’t fuck with me.

I will tell you the sordid detail now, why I am bleeding and won’t stop, why I bled last year for 67 days out of 90, why why why and why I didn’t know the full story of my own blood loss.

2 days after my ER visit in January, I had an in-office vaginal ultrasound (hey, buck up readers, did you think I wasn’t gonna mention my vagina?) by none other than the OB/GYN who had me in the stirrups in the ER.

Fast-forward to about 6 weeks ago when I went to the OB/GYN’s office, yet again, due to menstrual flooding (refusing to see the Offending Doctor, of course). When I was in the office talking to yet another doctor, thankfully not in stirrups, what did I find out? That back in January, on that very ultrasound, a 3+ cm fibroid tumor was found at the back of my uterus, embedded in the lining in such a way that I WILL ALWAYS END UP FLOODING WITHOUT CESSATION until I am on the other side of menopause and it goes away or until some hormonal or surgical intervention takes place.

Why my body was able to not bleed for almost 6 months (completely off of progesterone but under the loving care of my acupuncturist), I do not know. But once I started, I haven’t stopped. I’ve been able to cut back the progesterone to a more reasonable and less interfering dose, but I can’t go off of it until I undergo one of 4 options, each of which is fairly traumatic in scope to me.

It took me a while of reeling from the information (appx 3 weeks) that the OB/GYN, the office staff, the nursing staff, the radiology department (does that about cover it?) NEVER told me I have a tumor (fibroids are benign btw) before I could conceive of a plan. I have been under my acupuncturist’s care, but I was not in a place where I trusted the gynecologic practice I was with. The impending week away to California also meant that I had to wait until our return to deal with the fibroid.

I spoke with an MD in the same practice at 5:30 am a few Sundays ago and was very pleased with his attention, information, ability to listen and answer questions, and apparent intelligence. I will be seeing this MD on Monday and I will be discussing a few different options so I can make a decision and get off the progesterone and see what my body does in response to whatever choice I make.

I am scared and tired and sad and I got really sad news about my mother yesterday as well. Her health problems are myriad and long-standing, but she has been in a dramatic memory decline for several months. So, I am dealing with that as well, her only daughter and her primary caretaker.

It’s hard. Harder than I could ever have imagined. And I thought having babies was tough stuff. I don’t remember this part being explained to me. The sandwich years of my generation. Can I get a witness?

someone would like you to believe this is what women look like when they need to use the toilet

this is not what I look like

ever

Read Full Post »

twinklysparkles’ Wonderful World of Animals: pinnipeds and a spider that looks like it has a walnut on its butt

“…in Sweden, it is illegal to train a seal to balance a ball on its nose…” (Wikipedia, Pinniped)

♦

I  think I took this photo last October and never shared it with you.

If you look at it too much, it will probably give you the creeps. But I am a fan of spiders and have taught myself not to be completely terrified of them like when I was a child (and teenager and college student). I save most of them when possible and I taught my kids to do so as well. We are almost pathological about it.

It was all so long ago, when my friend taught me kill a spider, kill a thousand Buddhas. That was all it took.

The photo quality is horrible so you won’t be able to click and get a close up. It’s from my old camera—water spot, &c. (Even my new camera does not have great resolution when you use the close-up feature on my blog. Next stop? SLR. I know SLR sounds kinky, and maybe it could be, but it just stands for single lens reflex).

I am aware that that might be a bunch of baby spiders or some sort of eggs on its backside. I remember looking as closely as I could at it at the time and thinking, no, this is just the shape of its hiney.*

*aka abdomen or opisthosoma, which sounds Greek (and you know they are kinky).

Do you wish you had an anal tubercle or are you happy with your body the way it is?

I can tell you that I do appreciate spinnerets. What a cool feature.

He may not remember it, but the same friend who taught be about spiders and Buddhas said he wished he had the same type of nostrils as a pinniped so he could close them (or, you might say seal them off, ha ha!) at will; when necessary; in water.

♦

I was not a good mom today. Send me good

♦

Long, long ago, early on in my blogging, I thought a regular feature might be to re-tell some of the stories from our local newspaper’s police blotter. But it didn’t last because mostly there is domestic violence between moms and kids or siblings and siblings or boyfriends and girlfriends or people arguing over money or texting fights and drunk driving and drunken violence with thrown objects and homeless people and urinating and bike/car collisions. And you don’t want to hear about those things, do you? I know you have your own problems.

However, last week’s blotter brought this lovely tidbit:

SUNDAY, SEPT. 23

ANIMAL COMPLAINTS

• 10:26 a.m. — A loose dog wearing a pink scarf was found on Columbia Drive.

There is so much to recommend that news item. It’s so heartening. I feel almost redeemed. And what do you think they mean by loose? Because when I was in high school, that had a particular meaning, if you catch my drift. Wearing pink? It all starts to make sense.

I could not find a good photo of a good dog with a pink scarf when I searched google images, but wouldn’t you know, I found a cat?

Fluffy

♦

Wait, I found one! Who’s a good dog?

 Max (or Maxine)

Read Full Post »

something fishy

(This Is Not My Fridge)

(this fridge costs 2700 smackaroos)

Something smells funny in my new fridge.

All of these not-made-to-last appliances are overpriced. Every one of them. Already, the handle to the freezer door won’t stay on and the freezer-light mechanism does not always properly activate.

But that smell. I have not yet put a box of baking soda in the fridge. Maybe that will help.

My friend back in Kent, Ohio said they had a bad smell in the house.

She was playing the Ouija (©) and it said something about kitchen sink or sponge and kitchen cabinet or sponge under sink (I’ve never played, so I don’t know how much it can spell out). Or maybe she asked a psychic what the smell was and the psychic told her remove the sponge that is under the kitchen sink.

Anyway, she removed a sponge (which she says was new and odorless) and the smell left the house.

Maybe my refrigerator is cursed or haunted. I had a weird haunted goat-walking-man dream last night. Maybe that is why my fridge smells.

This goat-man is scary, but also a bit debonair. My goat man was very evil and was trying to walk upright and not doing a very good job of it. He was wearing blue jeans. He really couldn’t pull off the human walk. He didn’t fool me, but the little goat he was abusing who followed obsequiously behind was under his evil power.

Why does fridge have a d but refrigerator doesn’t? Learning to spell in English is so trying!

I think I better get my facts straight on that smelly house story. It was told to me only once and at least 20 years ago. I’ve undoubtedly embellished.

If I had a pink 1950s fridge, I don’t think I’d have this problem. Then again, remember those ice cube trays that were such a pain-in-the-ass (these lasted up into the ’60s, maybe early ’70s even)? What a mess, all the ice shattered all over the counter and it tasted like metal. No wonder women wanted to stick their heads into their pink ovens with the gas on.

Still, one has nostalgia for these kinds of things.

It never occurred to me that Ouija is OUI and JA: YES YES. Not only that, but it seems to imply that the French and the Germans are very agreeable.

I thought the Ouija is always answering yes and no. A OUINON board would probably be too close to the French for onion (l’oignon). Or NEINJA would be too much like Ninja.

If anyone out there has any suggestions about my fridge smell, please leave a comment. I need all the help I can get. I don’t even have a job.

Read Full Post »

the tiny visitor

When I was a kid, I had a book about a tiny woodland family that a little girl finds and brings home. She makes them a little house and uses a little wooden spool for a table for them and all sorts of things. I still have the book. It’s all banged up, a small paperback without acid-free pages, obviously. When I found the book a few years ago and read it to my daughters, the story was not as good as I remembered. I loved that book so much. Probably because of all the cuteness of the tiny objects the girl uses to welcome the tiny family. I think that is the name. The Tiny Family. It is by the same guy who wrote the Clifford books, Norman Birdswell. Okay. I did not look any of that up to check for accuracy. I will though because you know how compulsive I am about accuracy.

I am so glad I looked that up. I’m leaving all of my inaccuracies up there, though. Aren’t you proud of me? I got the last name wrong, as you can see. 50 cents, can you believe it? That is how old I am. Why doesn’t my computer have a cent symbol? You don’t like pennies Steve Jobs (RIP)? Oh, crap. I found it. Here: ¢. You want me to do that again? Here: ¢. I could do this all night. Look: ¢. WordPress, all is forgiven. twinkly forgives you for all of your faults. At least for now.

My point is that I haven’t had a period in 5 or 6 months. Mostly because of my fabulous, life-saving, bleeding-stopping acupuncturist. The ONLY person who had a real solution last winter when I was suffering from anemia and wouldn’t stop bleeding for ever and ever. Not the standard medical approach which just kept me bleeding and bleeding and losing more and more blood by the minute the minute I went off of progesterone (You’ll get a period, only it will probably be lighter and won’t last as long MY ASS!).

Well, yours truly started bleeding 11 days ago and I haven’t stopped yet. I’m starting to get anemic. I can feel it. It’s been a few days coming on now. Headaches, dizziness, sore throat, weakness, breathlessness (not the good kind). Yes, of course I take extra iron. But now I have to start eating red meat and more kale (I eat kale about 2ce a week year ’round anyway). Now I have to cook in a cast iron pan (Wait. I already do that regularly too). Now I have to ? See? I have been without my period for so long, I forgot what to do. Wait! I know something….¢

My tiny visitor is back. She is red. She does not wear a tiny flower for a hat. She does not sit on a thimble when she eats her breakfast. She is the same one who visited last year for 67 days out of 90. She is the one I love but who should only be here for a couple of days and then leave me the fuck alone.

Needless to say, I started taking my Yunnan Baiyao TODAY. 11 days is enough. But I’m not in menopause so there’s always that gift. You should see my boobs. LIKE A TEENAGER, I tell you! I will miss them when all of this stops. I really haven’t had boobs like this since my 20s. I won’t miss my other plumpness, though. Fuck you, you midsection bloat.

Sigh Sigh, Tiny Visitor. Sew and Flow, beautiful red flower in my underpants. I hope not to see you for a while. But thanks for the boobs. It was fun (and somewhat painful fer chrissakes! these babies hurt!) while it lasted. One day I’ll kiss you good-bye for good, I just won’t know it until a whole fucking year goes by. Haven’t gotten there yet.

This chart is bullshit. Fuck this chart. It is totally inaccurate. It’s not even red or bloody.

Read Full Post »

how can you mend a broken heart?

(click on photo for close-up of sign)

if I can stand the pain, you can stand the pain

Read Full Post »

twinkly on the Cape, June 30-July 7, 2012

Provincetown: a pair of little dogs in a pink doggie stroller being fed ice cream by their owner. Egregious behavior? Not until she licked from the same cone and then tried to force feed one of them when it roundly rejected the ice cream. Other details available, just ask.

Window at one of my favorite galleries. On my way to a body and hair like this? Time will tell.

3 flying seahorses grace the handles of the Lipton Cup in the Provincetown Library. The cup was awarded to the great sailing ship the Rosa Dorothea, a reproduction of which is on the 2nd floor. When I say reproduction, I mean half-size, 66 feet long. Part of it is lit in pink. A Cape Cod must-see.

living sculpture:

Advertising for a show, The Naked Boys, I think. After you walk past these guys night after night, it’s awfully hard not to pull that terrycloth down and see what’s going on under there. And such pretty legs. Dang.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

Yes, this is the pool that I loved. High tide was often on either side of my poetry writing workshop. The Bay beaches lost a lot of shoreline a couple of years ago in a severe storm, so when the tide is high, there is just water next to a fence; this is why I jumped in the pool morning, noon, and night, naked when possible (also hot flashes are abundant ’round my these parts). I want to go back to the same house. I want to live in the pool.

The full moon last week. It makes me think of the nursery rhyme boys and girls come out to play, the moon doth shine as bright as day….I swear I’ve posted that song here somewhere, but I am too lazy to find it. Perhaps a video is in order?

4th of July, fireworks on the beach. This was a kick, fireworks dotting the shore as far as the eye could see with the closest large display in the harbor at Provincetown. The great thing was that everyone was happy and running around in the cool windy air. Beyond Ptown, on the ocean side, we could see lightening. What a night. Here you can see what someone was shooting off right next to us. Tide coming in, but look how wide the beach is still…

All the girls (lucky man, that Paul):

Back to Ptown: Hubby and my mom, in front of Puzzle Me This, the best store in the world for games and puzzles

a very bold woman or a lost extra from the set of Lord of the Rings:

This is from our last night in Provincetown. We want to laugh at first, but it’s not funny, you know. It reminds me of the Jacques Brel song about the sailors and the whores.

Can you imagine?

Read Full Post »