Monday, February 10, 2014

Dear W,




Though I think of you constantly, we are apart for awhile because I needed some space. Please understand, it's not you, it's me. I think. I got with you on the advice of mutual friends. I am now regretting my choice. I am afraid my aversion will grow and we will have to part ways very soon. I have tried to give it time but a few sleepness nights have worn me down. I no longer feel that I have a life. My time and thoughts are totally spent on you and your wicked, wild, and wiley ways. I suspect you are simply too much for me to handle.



I avoided you at first for many reasons. Too many to list here. The list is growing by the hour. Truthfully, not all of the people I listened to were your friends. Some are your mortal enemies. I had this feeling that you would be no good for me. I won't repeat to you what bad things so many people have said about you. Some of the words used should not be repeated. It actually frightened me to imagine even being in the same room with you. Never, I said, over and over. Never!!! You are not for me. No Sirree.....



They said you are difficult. Impossible to live with. That you would make me crazy in no time. I would cry myself to sleep and want you gone before an hour was up. Then some converts showed up. People that had allowed you to wheedle your sneaky way into their lives. For whatever reason. They said you are not so bad. We were wrong. Why not give W a try? Don't judge W by what others say. They are stupid, nonadventurous, stuck in their ways, and have no patience with a genius such as you. Try something different. You will love being with W. W is actually a lot of fun. Different but fun.



I began to think, why not? If I don't like W, I can always break it off. It has been 3 long miserable days (and longer nights) of worry and stress and you keep luring me back. I cannot seem to break it off with you after all. I end up breaking down in tears and rueing the day I ever met you. I am miserable but seemingly stuck with you. Godammit, Windows 8. Why did I ever think I could live with the likes of you?



JSH, the weary, teary, and leery one 2/10/14


Thursday, August 8, 2013

HOW WAS YOUR DAY?

June Gardens gets credit for the idea for this story.  This is what could have happened, Joooon. 

This morning the weather was perfect so I took a walk in the park. There was a man doing some filming and he hollered at me to do something funny. So I fell down on the grass and played dead.

I felt a lump under my back and I reached around to see what it was. My hand was smeared in dog poop. I jumped up, took off my jacket, and flung it on the ground.

Then I wiped my hand on the damp grass to clean the poop off. I accidentally rubbed my hand in a fire ant nest. Before I knew it they were in my pants and biting my legs. I tore off all my clothes and ran like hell.

Then a bunch of dogs began to chase me. The faster I ran, the faster they ran. I saw a yellow cab so I leaped into the back seat and yelled, get out of here quick. The driver jumped out of the cab and ran away.

The traffic was backing up because the cab was blocking the street. Horns were beeping and people were yelling bad words so I climbed into the front seat and attempted to move the cab out of the way. But there was no place to park, so I had to keep moving.

The other cars were on my bumper urging me to go faster and so I did. We were zooming through town when one of my tires blew. I ran off the road, through a bakery window, landing behind the counter.

I had not had breakfast so I reached in and grabbed a handful of donuts with my clean hand. While stuffing them into my mouth, I looked up and saw seven cops with guns drawn.

 I was charged with filing a false report by playing dead. Disturbing park wildlife. Littering. Being a public nuisance. Dog theft. Disturbing the peace. Public nudity. Disrupting traffic. Cab theft. Driving without a license. Speeding. Reckless driving. Robbing a bakery. I could be out in 30 years with good behavior. How was your day?

Friday, July 26, 2013

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

I went to see my favorite doctor in the world, Dr A.......... ENT. Such a sweet old man. I went because of the ear wax in my ears, not only because of my Primary Care Physician's report to my insurance company about said wax but I could no longer hear very well or hardly at all when listening to TV or YouTube. I had to turn the volume up extra HIGH and still could not understand what people were saying.

I put peroxide in my ears for two nights before the appointment as this cuts down on the time spent there while they wait for the peroxide to soften the wax. No peroxide, no flushing, no waiting.....WAIT! That is a lie. There was a very loooooong wait indeed. All because a patient with a personality showed up.

OK, so I am waiting and waiting in the "waiting" room because an old guy was saying what must have been very funny stuff to the lady interviewing him in TRIAGE. Triage.....I know. I could not hear what he was saying, hello, ear wax. Anyway, she was laughing and giggling so hard, she obviously was having a hard time getting the needed information entered into the system. Finally.... she releases him to return to the waiting room.

Before he could even sit down, he was beeped into room 1. Why did I have a bad feeling about this? I went into Triage and completed my interview in 2 minutes or less and went back out to the waiting room. And waited and waited, reading the same ancient Good Housekeeping mag over and over. I kept looking at my beeper for some sign of life but it lay there doing absolutely nothing. Finally I was beeped into room 2. Where I waited forever and a day re-reading the same magazine a few dozen more times. In case you don't know, GH is 99% ads so you can imagine what fun I was having. Re-reading an old magazine is somewhat better than nothing, I suppose. Well, I am sure because twice I simply looked at the white walls and it was even worse.

Then the doctor appears. Apologizing (but obviously not very sorry) before he even shuts the door. He had been totally enraptured by a patient who told the most amazing stories and he could barely tear himself away. He did not want to leave this patient to continue his rounds. I was surprised he didn't slap me upside the head for even being there. No, he is too sweet and gentle for that. I forgave him with no problem (he will never know the rage that simmered within, just kidding, kinda, no really...kidding). In fact, I somewhat understood. His life must be a bit boring cleaning ears, peering into noses, etc. all day long. And he does not drive more than 3000 miles a year. Just like me. My life is even more boring. My mileage for the last 12 months was 2700 miles.Twenty-seven hundred miles. In a year.

He is elderly and semi-retired. The bosses may want to get rid of him he says because he is very slow and (I don't recall what else).  I told him they had better not get rid of him because I WILL WRITE A LETTER. Obviously my letters can be quite potent at times so they had better watch out. He seemed happy (or fearful?) about my promise of a letter.

Anyway, he told me that he had added up the ages (including mine) of 8 patients he had seen so far this day. To find the average age. He said, guess what the average age is. I said 80. Noooo...81. So at 76, that makes me a baby in the group. OK, now I feel better.

I won't go into detail, but the gobs of wax he extracted from my ears with the pointy metal pic was astronomical. Hideous stuff. As I said, no peroxide, no flushing, just apickin. He only hurt me once. Not paying attention, I think. We were talking about the old days of 21 cent a gallon gas compared to today and OUCH! He is also from the era where on Sundays the whole family piled into the sedan to "take a ride". That was our family's pastime too. Town or long country roads, it did not matter as long as the scenary was moving. (No TV at that time may be a clue.) For hours or all day sometimes. Although people did not make as much money as today, we never ever worried about the price of gas or the usage thereof. Why was that? I wonder.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

WATER AND ME


I have always seemed to have a love/hate relationship with water. Not in the bathing sense and I should drink a lot more of it but this issue boils down to the fact that water seems out to get me.

The love part of it started when I was about four. Maybe as young as three. There was a creek behind our house in Flint and I spent many hours down there, broad-jumping across the creek, of course always landing in the middle. Oh bother. Fishing with a stick, string, safety pin, and worm was one of my favorite pastimes. Catching polliwogs. Watching the water skimmers skate across the surface. Examining a dead muskrat trapped in the ice where I was sliding around in the large bowl my mother loaned me. Loved, loved, loved that water, and ice.

Then there was the ditch we kids swam in when we moved temporarily to the scrawny sandy treeless suburbs of Detroit. Dirty ditch water and dirty kids having a great time.
Then back to my creek in Flint for a couple more years of fun and frolic.

Summers were also spent at Buell Lake where my mother, brother, sisters, and I lived for 2 or three months every summer from my age of 3 thru 9. Dad worked during the week and spent weekends with us. I loved and lived in the water from morning to night, only coming out for meals (after which I was forced to wait a grueling one hour) before returning to my blessed water.

I spent my time in the lake mostly alone. On weekends the crowds arrived and it was very congested then. I preferred the solitude and spent hours sitting under an overturned rowboat that was tied to the dock. No one ever came to check on me that I know of. The water and I were friends.

At about age 5 my dad taught me to row a boat. I was so proud. On the Fourth of July weekend I decided to use my new skills. The beach was packed with families. It was not hard to herd a group of small children into my rowboat. As I remember they were all younger than I, probably between 2 and 4. I loaded them up and started rowing for the middle of the lake. It was a tour and an adventure for them, I thought.

Suddenly when we were about 30/40 feet from the shore, I heard screaming and crying. Surprised, I turned my head toward the beach and there was a great number of women and men all making un-Godly noises. It about scared the bejeebers out of me. I could not imagine what the problem was. Thankfully my crew was sitting nicely on the seats and the floor of the rowboat, behaving beautifully.

When I saw my mom frantically waving me back to the shore, then, and only then did I get a clue that all was not well. I slowly and reluctantly used my giant oars to turn the boat around and head back to the mommies and daddies, and my own very upset mommy. Tears and panic and anger and chaos met me on the shore. I don't even remember getting a spanking but it would have been a miracle to escape that.

When we moved north to Boyne City, there was a river running through it. Right into Lake Charlevoix. I was thrilled. More wonderful water. Swimming in the lake and river was great fun but for the first time in my life, I found water to be a tiny bit dangerous. I could swim fine. I had spent too much time in the water for that not to be. But the unthinkable happened when at age 10, I accidentally stepped off the drop off from shallow warm water into very deep cold water.

One step behind me were about 5 friends but I went straight down out of sight and they just stood there, up their waists in safety. I came back up and though I was only a few feet away from them, I forgot how to swim. I sank again. I came up and reached out my hand but they just looked at me with big round eyes. Somehow I managed to save myself and reached the ledge again and got my footing back. It was a shock I would not soon forget.

We also spent hours swimming in the river. We swam with slippery eels skimming along our bodies and bloodsucking leeches that we had to pick off periodically. The summers were spent in the cool confines of lots of water. Sometimes we would leave the city limits and walk upriver to more secluded river swimming. There would be groups of 5 to 10 kids. So why was I alone in the middle of the river late one afternoon when the S.O.B.s opened the dam further up river? Why was I, alone, struggling in a giant wave of water that washed over me, raising the water level from five feet to ten feet deep in seconds. Wild and furious rushing water trying to sweep me away to parts unknown.

Again I am crying out for help and again I simply have an audience and I am the show. Yelling HELP! HELP! did not help at all. They say one usually goes down about 3 times before drowning. I must be a real fighter then. I don't know how it occurred to me but I finally stopped fighting and let the water carry me downriver as I struggled closer and closer to the bank. Dirt never felt so good as it did that day.

I made it for many more years, in Florida, swimming in 40 foot deep rock pits, (even in the dark of night), the deep blue ocean, pools, and anywhere else I could find the blessed blue stuff. No more problem with water trying to do me in. (Well, a few, but I will pass over those for now.)

Until many years later in North Carolina in a place I think is called Deep Creek. My second hubby, my 8 year old granddaughter, and I went camping and tubing. It was not the first time doing this but it was certainly my last time. The water was very cold, the sun very hot, and tubing was great. The tubes were large, truck or tractor tubes, not skinny little automobile tubes. Yes, automobile tires used to have inner-tubes.  Pop-pop held to Granddaughter's tube as they floated gently along. I was right behind them. There were lots of other people tubing at the same time. The water was shallow in places and very deep swirling holes in others. There were small rapids where one would float recklessly over and hope one could keep one's balance and not tip over. This particular one was not successful.

Hubby and GD were a ways ahead of me when I went over my very last small rapids. My big tube flipped over and landed on top of me in very deep water. The current was churning and I was trying desperately to get my head out of the water. Every time I tried to come up, the tube bonked me down again. I was taking on water for the last time, kicking and fighting to survive but finding no way out. I remembered a woman about my age had drowned there a week or so earlier. I suddenly realized my fate and actually began to accept it.

Suddenly someone grabbed my hair and pulled me out. It was a man that was standing in shallow water and had simply reached over to the deep water, moved the inner-tube, and yanked me out. I looked downstream and saw my hubby and GD hanging onto the bank and watching helplessly. My legs were badly bruised and bleeding from the rocks that I had been kicking against. However, it did not take me long to pull my tube out of that damned killer water. Then I limped all the way back to the campsite dragging my tube behind me, while Hubby and GD finished their tubing adventure in peace and quiet.

 
 
 

Thursday, January 3, 2013

CRISIS

I like this.  Said by President Kennedy:

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters.  One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. 

BOB

I was thinking about Bob one day a few years ago and the story of BOB popped into my head in verse.  I quickly wrote it down and I kid you not, this is word for word the way it was dictated to my brain by.....what? I do not know.  I am not a poet by nature, though I have written a few sonnets when the mood strikes about every decade or so.  This is a guy I started dating about six months after my separation from my husband of 17 years.  Yes, I openly dated this widowed guy (who had been my boss 20 years earlier but had no memory of me at all) while still married because I could not bring myself to visit another attorney who would tell me to forgetaboutit for various reasons, such as finance, danger to me, etc.  After dating Bob for nearly a year, he drove me to an attorney and insisted that I proceed with what needed to be done.  I did, it was quick and easy.  But the very night of my divorce, Bob proposed.  Read on:

Love is For Another Day

He saw in her a future wife
But that had been another life.
She left the first so she could grow
To a second union she must say no.
He begged and pleaded and ultimated
He wined and dined her til she was sated.
He said, promise me, maybe, in future years
When she refused, he was in tears.
She said, I can't promise, I may never
But let's stay lovers and friends forever.
Goodbye, he said, as he walked away
If you change your mind, call me
Then I will stay.
A few months later, as she enjoyed her life
She saw him walking with his brand new wife.

He did call again about a year later.  He called me at work and said he needed to talk to me right away and could I meet him for lunch.  No mention of his marriage.  So I tried to bring the fact out in the open by saying I could not get away for lunch, how about dinner?  No, he said, I can't do dinner but I need you to meet me for lunch.  I said, no, sorry, I can't.  He said, disgustedly, OK, be that way.  Then he hung up. 

I did finally remarry.  I had wanted to be single for ten years.  Before ten years was quite up, my new husband appeared.  We lived together for awhile and when we married, I had been happily single for 10 years.  

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

We Are Protected From Ourselves

Thoughts From a Broad by maggie

In the early nineteen hundreds, Coca-cola contained cocaine.  People loved it.  It made them feel good.  Sales soared and it became the most popular drink ever, besides booze, of course. 

Nowadays, people are sent to prison for using cocaine or selling it. 

When marijuana came along, people loved it.  It made them feel good.  It became increasingly popular.  Soon it was outlawed. 

People are sent to prison for using it or selling it or growing it. 

Of course, the cat is out of the bag and people are still using these drugs for various reasons.  Some medicinal.  Some for sexual enhancement.  Some to increase appetite.  Some for the calmness and well-being that their lives lack.  Some people say it helps them to cope with everyday problems.  Some say it increases their mental alertness.  Great writers have written great books while using these substances.  Great artists have created great works of art, great song writers have written and sung the best music ever, while using these forbidden substances. 

There have been years of study on these drugs.  There has been great controversy.  Is it harmless?  Is it harmful?  Is it addictive?  Is it habit-forming?  Just when we think we have all the answers, some new study will raise more questions.  We do know one thing.  Both these drugs are derived from plants.  That is probably all we know for certain. 

So what are the store shelves now filled with?  Ginzing to enhance sexual experience. Maybe it does not say that on the bottle but that is a well-known expectation.  We have St. John's Wort to calm you and help you to cope with everyday worries.  Ginkgo Biloba to increase your mental alertness.  It has also been heralded as a sexual enhancement. 

These herbs are, of course, derived from plants.  There has not been years of scientific study, at least in the US, on the effects of using these products.  They are available with the vitamins at your nearest pharmacy.  People love them.  It makes them feel good. 

Now, I am totally against doing illegal drugs.  This is not to say that I don't think at least one of the drugs above really should be legal.  Most likely, if this was 1902, I would be drinking four cokes a day.  And if it was 1929, I would be enjoying a reefer.  After all, it would not be illegal and everybody else would be doing it (much as they are today).  Since no studies would have been done yet, I would not know any better.  I might even think it enhances my sexual pleasure, calms me, helps me to cope with everyday worries, maybe even increases my mental awareness, who knows, because this is 2013 and I cannot partake. 

My question is: if I take a daily dose of Ginzing and St. John's Wort or Ginkgo Biloba, am I, in fact, taking the illegal drug of the future?  Well, I have heard that the Federal Government, who believes that marijuana is more dangerous than cocaine, is considering removing some dangerous substances from the market place, such as Vitamin D3 and Vitamin C among many others.  Under their dogmatic protection, I think we will be OK, don't you?