Saying yes...

I am a product of Indiana...

Yes... I am...  a state I remember fondly, a state I also wanted to leave and not because it was terrible, but because I heard life's call elsewhere. Every time I hear someone bash on Indiana I think of all of the opportunities I was given there. Every time I think of Indiana, I think of a state where my eyes were opened and I was allowed to see the world outside while given the safety and comfort to explore.

By all accounts I should have been raised in a narrow fashion. My parents, both from Indiana, raised their family there, but, my parents, both of inquiring minds, realized there was a world beyond. My parents, of humble beginnings, eventually became a surgical nurse and an art dealer with both traveling the world and expecting the most from their children whether raised in Indiana or not. Indiana was not an excuse to set our sights low. Indiana was a beautiful place to rest in between mental and physical travels.

My parents worked hard and we had many comforts and luxuries. We could have been happy where we were, but we were also taught about the world at large... . The world came to us in the form of many exchange students and business colleagues, but also in the form of trips over the border.

I also attended a state school! Yes, I was ambivalent about colleges when the time for my enrollment came so I went to Indiana University. It was a beautiful campus, but it was also there that I found my world view enlarged even more! Yes, a college in Indiana was capable of teaching diversity and complexity... more so than I had even touched in my diverse and complex home... Indiana raised and educated an open-minded and diverse person.

I am grateful to Indiana... always will be. It was where I got my start... a safe place where I was able to slowly checkout the world at large. Indiana has some large, ugly spots as well, don't we all... but I won't deny her. She is a part of what made me what I am and I am forever grateful.

My husband says my experience was the exception and not the rule. He's probably accurate... but you know what? We exceptions exist and if there are exceptions, the place can't be all that bad.

I've broken my blogroll...

I realized yesterday that I had not added a blog to my blogroll and since this gentleman has been kind enough to link to me in a handful of posts, I thought it would be polite and fitting to add him in my mix. When I did, he automatically went directly to the top even though my blogroll was arranged alphabetically and not by date added. This blogger has admitted he's entitled. Maybe he felt entitled to be at the top of my blogroll no matter what. I really wouldn't have cared and should have left it, but noooooo. I had to meddle. I had to go back in and see if I could rearrange. TypePad has reworded their arranging options and none clearly say, "ALPHABETICAL". I've tried them all and just get a variety of mishmashes.

OH NO! My blogroll is all kattywampus! AHHHHHH!

Seriously, suggestions are welcome... all except, "TypePad sucks! Move to Blogger!"

I've been bitten by the meme bug...

Kathleen of Diary of a Heretic: Memes, Reviews and Books, has bestowed upon me the chance to play. It's an easy one, too. One word answers! Lots of room for negative space! It's really more like word association, so let me find a comfy couch and channel Dr. Freud...

Off we goooooo!

Yourself: Creative
Your Partner: Detailed
Your Hair: Crazy
Your Mother: Complex
Your Father: Ditto
Your Favorite Item: Pillow
Your Dream Last Night: Silly
Your Favorite Drink: Coffee
Your Dream Home: Peaceful
The Room You Are In: Office
Your Fear: Failure
Where Do You Want to be in 10 years: Here
Who You Hung Out With Last Night: Truman
What You Are Not: Neat
Muffins: Huh?
One of Your Wish Items: Room
Time: Gift
Last Thing You Did: Drive
What You Are Wearing: Dimples
Your Favorite Weather: All
Your Favorite Book: Lots
Last Thing You Ate: Strawberries
Your Mood: Expansive
Your Best Friends: Missed
What Are You Thinking About Right Now: Projects
Your Car: Un-Me
Your Summer: Promising
What’s on your TV: Nothing
What Is Your Weather Like: Mellow
When Was the Last Time You Laughed: Earlier
What is your relationship status: Married

Go check out Kathleen M's as well. She's got a wonderful post up about the woman who tagged her and although I could write about it as well, I'm not going to reinvent a perfectly good wheel.

I now tag... Oh! It doesn't say how many!??! Maybe I missed it. I'll just wing it. I will tag some of the usual suspects.

Snag
TLB
fish
Mary Jane
johnny rotten of sunnybrook farm
Shayera

For Kathleen...

Kathleen shocked us all last week with the confession that she once was given no choice other than to go to the bathroom in her office wastebasket during a lengthy conference call. It was this very confession that had Kathleen asking us to share our own "Peefessions" in her Peefessional.

Kathleen felt she was onto something. Well, I did a little research this weekend and found out that Peefessionals have been around almost as long as man has had toilets and has not been able to get to them on time.

Behold! Located deep in the bowels of Vatican City was this oil painting entitled, "Relief is Within", circa 1215AD. It seems that man has never been able to hold it and therefore has also needed a place to rid himself of his guilt.

My feet are such blabbermouths...

What Your Feet Say About You:

You are pretty average in your expressiveness. You can express yourself well, but you don't always want to. You are a very passionate person. You are highly charged and easily inspired. You are an assertive person at times. You'll pull out all the stops to get what you want, if it's worth it. You take a while to fall in love, but once you do, you stay pretty attached to your partner. You are not afraid of anything. You are brave and courageous, even when most people would be terrified. You are intellectual and philosophical. You are more concerned with thoughts than action. You are a fairly hard worker, but you are also a little spoiled. You like indulge yourself every now and then. You are easily influenced by other people. You're quite impressionable, so you should only be around people who are a good influence.

What Do Your Feet Say About You?

The Peter Tork Years

I have a soft spot in my heart for Peter even if he didn't write most of his songs and did very few of the lead vocals. While young girls were swooning over Davy, I liked Peter. Some of this may have stemmed from the fact that he seemed familiar to me. I saw myself in him. No, literally... I went through a number of years looking like Peter Tork. It was that androgynous hell some girls go through right before adolescence. I was no longer a cute little girl and hadn't yet sprouted those female-defining breasts. On top of this, my mother thought my hair was unruly so I was kept in pixie cuts or worse, the dreaded bowl cut. Michael York, Peter didn't take your haircut... I did!

At some point my Peter-likeness started to fade. My chest grew bigger and my hair grew longer as I entered that Jurassic wasteland known as adolescence... a time when noses rarely fit their faces. I exchanged one hell for another and suddenly looking like Peter didn't seem so bad.

Thoughts on spring cleaning

I must not be allowed to order from Amazon when I am tired. I can justify buying books at any point in time, but while sorting through my bursting shelves, I have come to realize, I buy a lot of stupid stuff if I am tired.  I will not even admit to some of the stuff I have found on my shelves, spines not even cracked, but I know that at some point, during a weak moment, probably at 2am when I couldn't sleep and I was convinced that the man on channel 34 had all of the answers to the black mold that was making its way to my house,  I have purchased lame books...  Grizzled refers to them as "my books". Actually, he uses my nickname... he'll pull a book off of a shelf and no matter how esteemed the author, no matter how well-researched the book, he'll get that smirk on his face and will say, "Oh, this sounds like a "X " book."

I could return the favor... I could grab any bottle, tube, or container of glue, smirk, and say, "Oh... this looks like Grizzled glue...".  Grizzled is addicted to glue. How much glue does one man need? While cleaning out his precious glue covey, I found at least 7 varieties of glue. That doesn't even count the glue that is lurking in the man-space in the garage. I’m guessing that the next time he has a need for glue, none of these will be specialized enough and he will head over to the glue department at our lovely Home Despot. Yes, we call it Home Despot.

The Hoover Windtunnel Bagless Vacuum sucks... and not in a good way. People who do not like to vacuum should not buy a vacuum that has a filter that easily blinds after 1½ rooms. This filter must then be washed and air dried (The first person who suggests I buy a back-up will find a Hoover Windtunnel Bagless Vacuum hurled at their person). It takes at least 11 hours. A person who does not like to vacuum, but finally decides there is a need to vacuum, should not be made to wait 11 extra hours. Trust me, the urge to vacuum or even the need to vacuum will pass. “I like living with the dog hair… it lets me know what this place would look like if it were carpeted!”

One final thought… Remind me next year, or anytime I am resisting a major purge in household items accompanied by massive cleaning, that resisting for 9 days is not a good idea and that once I get in the groove, it’s like working out. You hate the thought of it. You hate it for the first 12-17 minutes you’re doing it, but then you get that stress-reducing sweat and all of a sudden, you could workout forEVER! Until you drop of course, because no one can work out or clean forever.

I need to go check my vacuum filter…

Sighing Trees

We had a glorious weekend of weather in the 60's and plenty of sun. Everywhere I went I swore I could hear the sigh of trees as their bud cases burst and little green baby leaflets popped out. They're not what you would call a leaf yet, but many of the treetops look as if they are cloaked in a spring green haze.

I am happy to see the leaves returning. I don't miss them in the winter, but in spring, I find their absence unsettling. Part of me always wonders if this will be the year that the leaves won't come back. For that matter, I find spring unsettling. Spring, although welcome after a long, hard winter, is my least favorite season.

I love all of the flowers, love the greening up of everything, but I don't care for the coolness emanating from the earth. A 60 degree day in April is not like a 60 degree day in October. In April, the earth is still cold, the bricks on the outside of buildings still retain their winter chill. For as long as I can remember, spring has made me think of tombs. Even though we are moving into the warmth and into the full blossoming of life, death is still dragging one little finger up and down our spines, making us shiver, reminding us that it is never far away and that at one point, the warmth will not return.

Our ascent out of early spring reminds me of running up the basement stairs when I was a young girl. I always felt that if I did not move fast enough and get to a certain point that somehow, something sinister in the basement would pull me back. Yesterday, with the popping of the buds, I felt even though the earth still has her chill, we had gotten to the crucial spot on the spring stairway and we were safe. The trees gave a mighty sigh and the earth said, "I'm not dead yet!"

I would have preferred the Ralph Covert video of this song, but embedding it was not allowed. We are left with Styx... Oh well, at least we get to look at Dr. Who.

There's a light at the end of this viral tunnel...

This morning is the first morning since 3/14 where I have woken up and actually felt like health might be my co-pilot. It's been an up and down route for the past 10 or so days. Some days were a total loss, some days gave the illusion of wellness being around the corner. But today... today I feel like I might actually have oxygen circulating in my brain again and although I'm far from being springy, I don't feel quite as much like death on a soda cracker.

One should never underestimate the benefits of oxygen and health for clear thinking. Oh sure, I may have thought I was constructing normal sentences over the past week or so, but looking back with a newly clear mind, I realize the light may have been on, but no one was home.

I'm guilty of poor thinking when distracted, tired, or sick. Grizzled has been a witness to many mind-boggling comments to come out of my mouth when in these situations. They kind of scare him since he believes he married a capable, thinking person.

This past week only added to my cache of "Oh no... did I say that out loud?!?" comments and while they made perfect sense to me at the time, I know they'll be used to tease me for some time to come.

These thoughts rank right up there with the dreaded time I asked aloud in the car which gas station had a shell for a logo. Hey, I was distracted... and tired...

This week, topping the list of insane comments caused by the viral plague are, me telling Grizzled not to throw out the Sunday paper (I was in bed for most of Sunday ) because Easter fell on a Sunday this year and I wanted to see what was in it!

The other topper of the week would have been when I was slumped on the couch, trying to watch something with Grizzled, when an ad for Two and a Half Men came on with a very busty woman and a leering Charlie Sheen and I said something to the effect of, "I wonder if men liked breasts before advertising became so overt or if advertising caused it... I mean, I wonder it there was any interest in them before boobs were put in our faces!?!"

Grizzled calmly responded... "Oh no... men have never been interested in breasts in their faces before advertising told them to be. For centuries, men haven't cared the least about breasts... only recently...".

I'm feeling better though and think I can actually think. If any nonsensical comments were left at any of your places over the past 10 days, I was not myself... I do believe though that logic and oxygen have returned.

My Nod to Brando and March Madness

It's March Madness time and Brando is all a'twitter...

It is the holiest day of the year...the start of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I have been distracted from posting because, as usual, I am poring over basketball stats in the hope of making a bracket that doesn't suck. I will also be using my combined powers of wireless Internet and working at home to attach my office to the couch today and tomorrow. For the record, I have North Carolina, Wisconsin, Memphis, and UConn in the Final Four. Upset special is Davidson over Georgetown in round two, and Marquette getting to the Elite Eight. My bracket should be ruined by 4:15 Eastern today.

There was a time when I loved basketball. There was a time when I got caught up in the fervor. I went to a Big 10 school known for its team and then moved to a city where Michael Jordan ruled. I like basketball, I just don't follow it anymore. Now when March Madness rolls around, instead of pouring over the brackets, I think back to a time, long, long ago when a certain chair-throwing coach and I had a brief meeting.

At the end of my roller coaster college career, I was in need of one credit to graduate. I was fried, I was done, I was not going to take a 3 credit class at that point now matter how much I valued learning. That left me one choice, I'd be taking a Phys Ed class. My options were limited, only 2 classes were offered at this time. I could not take scuba diving, but saw a light at the end of my educational tunnel when I noticed they were offering "Bait and Fly Casting".

I had gone fishing once in my life when I was around 7, but I thought, what the hell... I'll take it. I was the only female and it was painfully obvious that everyone else had spent plenty of time fishing.  We actually did very little fishing in class, but spent the majority of our time in the gym casting weighted lures at hula hoops. I did learn my blood knots though and my muscles memorized the 2/10 or 3/11 or whatever positioning of cast and release it was.

At the end of the session, my glorious one credit in sight, we were told we were going to have a special guest. It seems an esteemed member of the university was not only good at throwing chairs, he was also good at throwing out a variety of lines. Yes, our famous coach was an avid fly fisherman. He was also going through a divorce, one of his many crises, so he was throwing out lines to many young women on campus.  I happened to be on the receiving end of one that day. He asked me if I might like to go fishing with him. I said thanks, but no.

I caught no fish in that class, but I did briefly snag a basketball coach and while I admired his basketball abilities and what he could coax out of a team, he was still kind of scary. I did not want to land this man, so I cut bait, scooped up my one credit, and ran.