Three Choices

Anita's Facebook status

It is easy for me to let “stuff” define me.   Even good stuff.  Years ago when GE was a teen, we  participated in a teen spiritual retreat called Youth Encounter Spirit (YES).  One of the hardest things for the participants to do-adult and teens alike- was to describe themselves without using labels.  Who am I? 

“I am…”  What?  A student.  A parent.  A wife.  A Sunday School teacher.  An estimator.  None of those were the right kind of answers.  Often WHAT we were was how we described WHO we were.

I am very much a work driven woman.  I  have let my job give me substance.  That has defined me more often than being “John’s wife” or “Georgie and Jack’s mom.”

When my friend Anita posted the saying from Woman to Woman on her FB page, I did a double take.  Bad things can define, destroy or strengthen me.  Things.  Stuff.  It’s a choice I’ve made in my life.

W. H. Auden said that it’s a “Choice of attention – to pay attention to this and ignore that – is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.”  I added the italics because knowing that I have a choice in this and that I have the responsibility for the consequences of that choice is important to me.

I’ve let Them and Their Choices define me.  There have been plenty of times when a painful event has defined me as a Poor Suffering Woman.  I became frozen as the PSW.  She’s a miserable victim, a martyr.  All conversations with friends lead back to the reason why I am a martyr and what They did.   Being defined as the Poor Suffering Woman is exhausting, but it was the way I let life define me at one time.

After I got sober, I dropped the PSW from my repertoire of roles most of the time and defined myself as the Woman of Strength.  That woman doesn’t ask for help even if her hair is on fire.  People say things to the WOS like “You are amazing” and “I don’t know how you do it.”  I let them reinforce that definition and that definition left me scared at night and paralyzed with doubts. I couldn’t have  asked for help even if I wanted to because I AM THE WOMAN OF STRENGTH (and I just can’t admit that I needed help).

If the PSW kept me drunk and full of self pity, the WOS  kept me full of self-will and nearly got me drunk.

And that’s how letting bad things define me can ultimately let them destroy me.  I never lost a husband or a home or a child or a job when I drank.   In the end, I was a terrible wife, a slipshod homemaker, an undependable parent, and an irresponsible worker, but I still had all the “stuff.”  I thought that it wasn’t that bad, that I wasn’t that bad.

The truth is that whatever well that people can reach into for strength when the going gets tough was dry.  Open the cupboard of my soul to pull out a cup of moral courage and the canister didn’t even have dust.  I didn’t have anything left.  I have no strength or courage of my own.

I know that but it took a crash and burn to remind me that my Higher Power whom I choose to call my VBFF  is what gives me any illusion of strength and moral courage.  I count myself lucky that I got that crash and burn when my hair was only a little singed.  You see, I was sure that if I quit drinking, things would get better.  And they did.  But life has a way of slapping you into the reality that life is LIFE.  No guarantees of roses, pussy cats, and rainbows.

"Sometimes the Lord rides out the storm with us and other times He calms the restless sea around us. Most of all, He calms the storm inside us in our deepest inner soul." -- Lloyd John Ogilvie

When my son died, I didn’t have the choice between being destroyed or not being destroyed.  My friend, MK, says a choice is a decision between 2 viable options.  God didn’t leave destruction on the table as an option.  If I couldn’t see the face of God for awhile, I got to see the faces of family and friends whose love and support mirrored God’s face.

Over the past 1,009 days, I have learned that I can let that tragedy destroy me by letting it define me.  Trust me, it is easy to sit in sadness, alone in my home.  I feel a low thrum of pain all the time and I can choose to focus on it to the exclusion of all that is around me.  In time, I will have the exclusive title of “The Woman Whose Son Died.”  Being defined that way, shaping my life around that definition WILL destroy me.

Will Jack’s death eventually strengthen me?  Jury is still out on that.  There are days when I feel that it has done all three: defined, destroyed, and strengthened.  For today, I will be alive.  Not the strongest woman.  Not the most pitiful woman.  No definitions.  Just me.

Moderation in ALL things?

“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Oscar Wilde

I was going to write about moderation.  I don’t do moderate.  I say that I am a nice, calm middle of the road woman but that isn’t true.  There’s a part of me that will always push the limit.

Politically, I nod and smile if you don’t agree with me, but I rarely tell you how stupid I think you are if your opinion disagrees with mine.  When I exercise, I end up with pulled muscles.  I took an aerobics class when I was younger and thinner and turned so red from exertion that I looked like a beet with feet.

I don’t diet unless it’s the crash variety.  I have learned that it isn’t necessary to dare the electric or water companies to shut off my power and water.  I can pay the bill BEFORE the death date.

I have never found too chocolate or too sweet.  I am an alcoholic so you can rest assured that I never met a drink I didn’t like nor did I think it was a good idea to quit when I could “feel it.”  Numb.  That was the goal.  I smoked cigarettes like I drank; when I quit smoking, I was going through 3 packs a day.  And I didn’t just burn them in an ashtray because I got too busy.  I smoked those suckers.

In sobriety, I recognize obsession when it leaps at me.  If I don’t, I have enough sober folks around me to ask if I “obsess much?”  Moderation isn’t natural for me; I make a point of noticing extremists.  Must be a you spot it, you got it kind of thing.

A day or so after my birthday which marked the birth of me AND Adnan Nevic, the 12-year-old Bosnian who is the 6 billionth human born on this planet in 1999, I read that the 7 billionth person  will be born around Halloween of this year.

Nothing is moderate about the population growth over the past couple of hundred years.  It took from the dawn of humanity to 1804 to achieve our first billion population mark.  By 1927, the world population was 2 billion; 33 years later, in 1960, the population stood at 3 billion.

• 1974-4 billion
• 1987-5 billion
• 1999-6 billion
• 2011-7 billion

Notice how the billions are closer together.  Originally, 2013 was the guess for when Baby Seven Billion would be born. 

The world fertility rate is dropping in developed countries; not so in the underdeveloped ones.  Like the estimated life span, it various widely from country to country.  In Niger, where the average life span is 44, women bear more than 5 children on an average.  Statistically, it’s 5.5 but I keep picturing half a baby.  In Japan, where the life span is 83 on the average, the average is less than 1 per mom. 

In the U.S., Utah moms bear an average 2.6 babies; Texas rings in at #4 with 2.3 babies per mom.  The teen birth rate in Texas is #3, just behind Mississippi and New Mexico.  Immigrant moms generally have more babies; their children and grand-children usually have fewer.  Generally, the more educated the family, the more likely the couple to have fewer babies.

With the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, family planning clinics have closed in Texas which may give us a baby boom.   In 2010, the Hidalgo County’s eight clinics provided family-planning services to 23,000 patients. The services included contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and wellness exams for both men and women but not abortions which the federal government will not fund and hasn’t since 2,003.

When state cuts to family planning took effect in September, the Hidalgo County network was forced to lay off half its staff and shut down four of its facilities.  Patricia Gonzales, social worker and clinic administrator, estimated that the closures would affect approximately 16,000 low-income men, women and teens in the Rio Grande Valley.  For many of them, Planned Parenthood is the same for them as it was for me:  the family doctor.  Face it, there are many of us who do not have adequate insurance and do not qualify for Medicaid. 

Does it worry me?  It does.  At least enough to renew my membership in NARAL and Planned Parenthood and to make sure that my voter’s registration is up to date and ready to ride with me to the voting booth.  One more thing that sobriety has taught me is that I am responsible for doing my part.  It may not take me to Occupy Wall Street, but it does make me participate in life.

Oh!  And thinking about H.B. 358, the so-called Protect Life Act, which states that hospitals may refuse to terminate a pregnancy even if to do so saves the mother’s life. In late 2009, an Arizona bishop excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, because she authorized an abortion for a woman who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from a potentially fatal case of pulmonary hypertension.

“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement.  The Diocese of Phoenix sharply condemned the hospital’s decision to abort the baby, saying in a statement that the mother’s life should never take precedence over the baby’s.

Which brings to mind the question:  What is the difference between stupidity and genius?  Even genius has limits.

Nothing moderate about that, huh?

Things you can do with a hunter

After 8 weeks of working 7/12’s, Bob’s project went out on a barge and he got 3 days off.  In a row.  I worked Friday while Bob recuperated from an 18 hour day.   On Saturday morning, we got up at 4:30 a.m. and went to Bayside so Bob could try out his archery skills and possibly kill a big buck.

I have mixed emotions about killing animals.  The only time I ever killed a deer was with my 79 Chevette and the deer got the best of the car and me.  I have no such mixed emotions about spending time with Bob.  I am always glad to do that.  Bob, for his part, made sure I had coffee with half and half and a reading light that is invisible to cervids. 

We arrived in the field about 5:15 prepared to grocery hunt.  At least Bob was.  I brought a book (The Camel Knows the Way) which I got for my birthday.  Lorna Kelly’s self published book is an incredibly good read.  Like all good books, it just isn’t long enough.

I also brought my drawing pad and did some sketching.  In a small deer blind, there’s not much to sketch so Bob was my model.  He’s not much for sitting still but he did accommodate me by reading the newspaper. 

Deer feeder: We thought the deer weren't buying the corn, but I found out that I'd set the timer wrong. Operator error. Again.

As the light got better, I could do some sketching outside the window.  I brought my camera but the deer were like a 10 month old child:  very cute until you get the camera out. 

It is very difficult  being still and quiet for 2 hours.  I also nearly got a bladder infection until I said something to Bob and he exploded with laughter.  (“OK.  Maybe if that big buck were out there, I might want you to hold off on going outside, but really, Margaret.  Oh! Oh!  I’m having a heart attack but Bob might need to kill a deer.”)  I got the point.

Bambi 1; Bob 0

Bob didn’t kill anything at all.  We saw a whole bunch of deer, but evidently, you use stealth if you want to shoot a deer with a bow and arrow.  Bob read a statistic that archery hunters usually don’t expect to get a deer on their first outing.  It generally takes 5-6 stalks before you land a deer according to bowhuntinginfo.com so Bob’s got a few more visits to the hunting grounds to get his deer.  And I’ve got a few more books to read.

Magic pumpkins

Pumpkin seeds---possibly not magical

I had never heard of magic pumpkin seeds until this year.  I don’t think TAMU had invented them until recently.  When we went camping at Yogi-land Park near Waller, Sophia and Travis were given magic pumpkin seeds.  Most likely, there was an exchange of currency between the parents and the staff, but that was not evident to the kids.

Sophia poses with the pumpkin and Travis over-rides GE's pumpkin pick

At 11 a.m. on Saturday morning, coveys of small children with pumpkin seeds tightly grasped in the hands rushed the pumpkin patch, a hay covered space, where they carefully, delicately placed the seed on the ground and covered it with a smattering of grassy dirt.  The hard part was getting Travis to settle on a spot to plant his seed.  He kept covering, digging up, moving, and covering again. 

When we returned 3 hours later, the pumpkins covered the patch.  Magic!  The kids selected the perfect pumpkins and we took them back to the campsite.  We had the option of painting the pumpkins but Sophia had one of those pumpkin carving books with tools and wanted us to carve the pumpkins. 

Sophia instructing Dawson in the Way of the Pumpkin

I had never actually read the pumpkin carving directions.  Sophia had selected Vampire Kitty from the book and she graciously selected Two Little Ghosts for Travis.  One thing that I learned was that the pumpkin access hatch is best if made at the bottom of the pumpkin.  For all of you who know that, pooey!  It came as news to me.

The bottom access permits the candle (or flashlight) to rest on the ground and directly on the pumpkin.  It also leaves the top intact and allows the pumpkin to sit up straight and make removing the seeds easier.  The seed scooping and removal was partially made with the handy plastic scooper that came with the book.  I’ve used an ice cream scoop and that seems to do better. 

Our cheerful pumpkin scooper

Enthusiastic 5 year olds make short work of the job.  After drawing the designs on our pumpkins, GE and I had a carving contest to see which of us could finish first.  I think there are better tools than the ones that came with the kit, but those tools work if you don’t rush.

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to bully knives and glass grinders, pushing them to chop or grind faster than they may want to go.  Invariably, I end up wounded.  Shoving glass into the grinder results in thumb cuts or slips and knuckle grinds.  Speed chopping just results in a mess or the need for Spidey band-aids. 

Vampire Kitty

Those little serrated knives that came with Sophia’s book do fine.  Just have to take it easy.  Funny how that works with most things.  Don’t ask somebody or something to do something they aren’t designed to do and the job gets done quicker. 

Two little ghosts

When we finished, Jonathan got the little flashlights and set up our handiwork.  There were lots of beautifully carved and painted pumpkins but ours looked pretty good. 

We didn’t save the seeds for toasting.  It’s early in the season and I bet both GE and I will carve more pumpkins.  But I found some helpful hints for pumpkin seed toasting in Sophia’s book, too.  Since the hole at the bottom worked so well, I’ll probably (Do you hear that?  Probably.) follow those suggestions, also.

Seeds with yuck anyone?

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds Recipes

• One pumpkin
• Salt
• Olive oil

1.   Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut open the pumpkin and use an ice cream scoop to scoop out the insides. Separate the seeds from the stringy core. Rinse the seeds.

2.   In a small saucepan, add the seeds to water, about 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds. Add a half tablespoon of salt for every cup of water (more if you like your seeds saltier). Bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.  (I had never boiled them in advance of toasting.)

3.   Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil over the bottom of a roasting pan. Spread the seeds out over the roasting pan, all in one layer. Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown, 10-20 minutes. When browned to your satisfaction, remove from the oven and let the pan cool on a rack. Either crack to remove the inner seed (a lot of work and in my opinion, unnecessary) or eat whole.

October 12!

Me at 9 months (already thinking about the b'day)

Throughout my growing up years, I started this day with my mother waking me with the words, “On this day, your daddy and I went to the hospital where at 6:20 in the morning I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces.”  There were more details but that was always the start of the story.

In our family, we got to pick the dinner menu and what kind of cake Mother would bake.  A usual present was a new church dress which Mother had made in secret while we were at school.  Often there would be a little pin to decorate the dress or a necklace.  The best present I got was a tablet of drawing paper.  A whole tablet.  I usually drew on whatever pieces of paper were left by the mimeograph in our dad’s school.  To this day, I treasure drawing paper like it’s opals. 

Just before Nikita banged his shoe

On this day in history, there were several notable events.  I’m only listing my favorites since it’s my birthday.

• 1492 – Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached South Asia.
• 1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Poland.
• 1773 – America’s first insane asylum opens for ‘Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds’ in Virginia
• 1823 – Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
• 1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many schools (without “under God” which was added in 1956) as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage.
• 1915 –WW I nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium
• 1960 – Nikita Khrushchev protested  the Philippine complaint about the Soviet Union’s colonial policy in Eastern Europe at United Nations General Assembly meeting by banging his shoe on the table
• 1999 – The Day of the Six Billion: The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. ~Ogden Nash

I share my birthday with a whole bunch of people, but my favorite is Wolverine, Hugh Jackman.  I wouldn’t know that if my son Jack hadn’t brought that to my attention a few years ago.  I also share my birthday with Max, my current boss.  He, Hugh and I are birthday triplets.  We are celebrating our birthdays by going to lunch with Max’s wife Diane at P.F. Chang.  Hugh might not be able to fit us in, but we’ll save him a place at the table.

My worst birthday ever was my 40th. It was in my last drinking years and I was quite the Queen.  If I had been able to enforce “Off with their heads,” the body count would have been scary.  By the end of the day, my family fell into bed exhausted from trying to meet my unreasonable demands and I sat alone with my glass of vodka, resenting them.  I stunk that year!

Believing hear, what you deserve to hear: Your birthday as my own to me is dear...But yours gives most; for mine did only lend Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend. Martial

My best birthday was my 50th. Georgie, Jack and I climbed Enchanted Rock, had a picnic, and spent the day laughing.  I treasure that day as a priceless gift.  It was a landmark day and I felt younger than I had for 20 years.

I got to start this birthday last week-end, camping with Georgie and family up in Waller, Texas.  Don’t know where that is?  It’s about 10 miles east of Hempstead where they have a great small town Walmart.  We were at Yogi-land park.  Just hanging out with that little family is a celebration. 

I got a great b’day kick-off with a text from Savanna, my middle grand-daughter, who named me Gaga before Lady Gaga claimed it.  She was the first of the texts and has set the mood. 

I am so blessed with family and friends who have circled me with love and cushioned me when they could and picked me up battered and broken when they couldn’t.  I have been given so many gifts in this life that I am in awe of God’s grace!

Predictive Text

I started texting in 2005 in self defense.  It was the way I could communicate with my son.  Few of my contemporaries used texting.  I frowned in dismay when my friend Vannessa, a few years older than Jack, said that she texted and drove.  She said that she would rather have unlimited texts than talk.  That was a sentiment echoed by Jack and Nina.   I didn’t see it. Not then.

I found that Jack would respond to texts when he might not answer a phone call.  I probably made his eyeballs bleed with my texts when I was angry with him.  (“Where are you?  It’s midnight.”) “bcnu l8” (“Seriously.  Do you realize that it’s NOW 1:00?  Where are you?) “l8r.” (“JOHN. DAVID. RUSSO.”)  “arnd th crnr”  (“YOU ARE NOT AROUND THE CORNER IN THIS TOWN.  THAT WAS AN HOUR AGO.  IT IS 2:00.  I AM GOING TO START CALLING HOSPITALS.”) :-&  Front door opens.  “Taadaaaa!  I was around the corner in Corpus!”

I text like I write my blogs and that is with full punctuation and relatively correct spelling.  There’s a reason for that.  I think my mother was enlisted by the Punctuation Police to keep the written English language pure in the Coleman family.  Neither of my sisters is good at text-isms or not so I’ve noticed.  My kids and grandkids are much better at it than we are.

My phone is a cheap LG T-Mobile phone.  I am hard on phones.  I’ve dropped them into wastewater manholes (much worse than the toilet) and driven my car over them.  It does not make sense to carry something that costs more than my computer.  I didn’t start using predictive text until last week.  Til then, I did tap B tap–tap l a tap-tap c tap k  tap tap c a t.  Georgie borrowed my phone to text Jonathan and ended up throwing the phone across the room.  “Why on earth wouldn’t you get a phone with a keyboard?  This is horrible!” she said, laughing.

Now, I’m getting clever at using what my phone calls T-9.  It allows words to be entered by a single keypress for each letter as opposed to the multi-tap approach in which several letters are associated with each key and selecting one letter often takes several taps on the key.  I am a recovering multi-tapper.

T-9 is just one of the patented predictive text programs for messaging.  The most widely used predictive text systems are T-9 (Tegic), iTap (Motorola), and LetterWise/WordWise (Eatoni).  T9 and iTap use dictionaries, but Eatoni Ergonomics’ products uses a process to recreate words from keystroke sequences. All texting systems require a language database for every supported input language.   And all this is on my cheap cell phone (at least for English, Spanish and French).

I started using predictive text partly because I like learning different ways to do things to test my possible onset of Alzheimer’s disease.  Our dad died from that disease and I live in fear that I will inherit it.   I am pretty sure I don’t have it today, but I probably won’t know it until I’m wearing my bra as ear muffs.  Then, I’ll just think that’s normal and you guys will know I’ve got it.

There’s a genetic test that determines the propensity for Alzheimer’s disease but it isn’t a sure thing and I don’t want to find out I could maybe, possibly get sick with it at some indeterminate date in the near or far future.

I like doing things my way.  I memorize lists of phone numbers, poetry, and devise different ways to do repetative tasks  in an effort to stave off or identify the disease in my brain.   It isn’t fool-proof but it is more interesting.  No more multi-tapping for me.   Maybe I’ll try to learn more text-isms.  And since I work in an office where English is a second language for everybody but me, I might try learning some Spanish text-isms.

So for the Spanish speakers (mostly Savanna) in my life:  a2 y b7s  😉

Living forward, looking backward

Bob’s sister Shelley posted the You Tube of Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford commencement address.   It was insightful, well worded, and concise.  If you haven’t seen it played on FB or via email in the past few days, I’d be surprised.   It left me thinking which is something I like doing after I shut the book or turn off the computer.   I’ve been considering the phrase “connect the dots” and thinking how it applies to me.

Jobs was speaking about his experience as a lurker in college when he sat in on classes.  One of the classes he informally audited was Calligraphy and it was that class that inspired the creative, beautiful fonts I enjoy on today’s computer.  He had no idea what that class would lead to; it was something he liked and it was later that its purpose came into play.

Soren Kierkegaard said that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  Could that be what connecting the dots means?  Living forward and looking backwards, I mean.  Hard not to trip myself up if I did that too much.

Sophia connects the dots in pre-k.  If she connects the dots in a specific pattern, she gets a picture.  At 5, that means 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C.  It isn’t random; it’s exact.  If she deviates from the expected, she doesn’t get the expected result.  Steve Jobs went off the planned path.  His parents planned for him to finish an engineering curriculum and go to work in the engineering/architectural field.

The unexpected yielded fresh results.

Does that mean that I should look at past dots to find a pattern?  How will I know which dots are really dots and not a dead gnat or paper imperfections?  How will I know which dots are relevant?  Will understanding the pattern help me figure out how to move forward?  What if it’s like one of those ink-blots that look like a butterfly unless you are some pervy nut case and think it’s a body part?

Let nothing upset you, let nothing startle you. All things pass; God does not change.

I’m coming up on a birthday and the realization that I’m not immortal is a little daunting.  A little daunting?  Ha!  Knowing that I’ve lived more than half my life, statistically about 75% of my life, is a little weirding.   I’ve been non-conformist on most things but I will probably be right on the money with that lifespan thing.

So, what if I am?  One of the 9th step promises in AA is that “we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.”  I’ve found in sobriety that my past is one of my strengths.  It helps me know that nothing is permanent.  Not love, not anger, not pain, not youth, not sadness, not joy.  No job or marriage will last forever.  Somebody’s going to say goodbye eventually.

Do I need to examine my life to find the dots?  I think I might.  I think I will.  And maybe instead of an ice cream cone, I’ll get dinosaur teeth…or an accordion.  Even with a few dots, the possibilities are endless.

Found time

I love found money.  Money I didn’t know I had but that just appears.  Sometimes it’s in the form of a rebate or a refund.  I have been part of two class action lawsuits in my life.  One was for a water heater, the other for a health insurance company.  The water heater manufacturer went busted and I stayed in the bankruptcy loop for a few months.  The insurance company settled with the plaintiffs.  After an exciting announcement from the lawyers, I got my part of the settlement:  $17.86.  We dined at Whataburger that night.

I love found time, too.  Those are times that put me together with people I love.  Times when I thought I was going to have to work but got reprieve or when I re-shuffle my priorities and see who, not what, is on top.  There have been mental health days with the kids where we snuggled and read, watched sit-com re-runs and snacked all day.  Jack and I started out for the hardware store one Saturday and ended up at the San Antonio Zoo.  That was in sobriety and the day is a snapshot I like to pull out and admire.

Chiltipin Creek-In early days the creek flowed with fresh water and abounded in fish; however, by 1990 the freshwater seeps were gone, and saltwater discharges from oil wells had contributed to erosion and pollution problems..

I got found time with Bob on Saturday.  He was feeling puny, at the tail end of stomach flu, and came home early from work.  After a few hours of rest, he and I headed to his friend’s place near Bayside to load deer feeders and check the scenery.  The creek provided a natural boundary for the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company after 1871. The name of the creek comes from chilipitín  (from Mexican Spanish chiltipiquín),  the small, wild red peppers that grow in my garden and at one time, along the creek, too.

We found deer tracks crossing alligator tail drags in the mucky slough.

The drought has affected wild life in the area.  Most of the sloughs are dry.  There were animal tracks evident in the muck where prey and predator searched for water.

Bob loaded the deer feeders, replaced batteries, and set timers to get the poor deer attracted to an area so they could be shot.  I was raised in south Texas and never heard about deer feeders until I was an adult and GE went to a hunting lease with her dad.  (“Oh, how nice.  You guys feed the deer.”) “Mom.  They feed them so they can kill them.”

Oh.

Sinton Feed Store has a deer nursery license that permits them to raise fawns until they become yearlings.

Just about every place in south Texas sells deer corn, even Stripes and O’Reilly’s.  I’d never needed to notice that fact before last year.  The cost of corn  has increased from last year to this year.  It’s about $11 a 50 lb sack at H.E.B.’s.  Bob ran out of corn and we went into Sinton to buy more.  The man at the Sinton Feed Store said he expects the drought to push prices of deer corn up to $15 a sack.  (It’s cheap still at $11.80.)

When we pulled around to the back of the store so the man could help Bob load the deer corn, we made an interesting find.  Let me say that I would never make this kind of interesting find left to my own devices.  Bob, however, is a friendly fellow and starts conversations with any likely prospect.  I would say that he would make conversation with a statue but that would only be true if the statue had a compound bow or possible insider hunting savvy.

His friendliness is how we found out about the rising deer corn prices and how we got to visit with the baby deer that they are raising in a pen at the back of the warehouse.  They have 3 deer now.  One of them came out of the wild, her mom killed by a car.  The other two are part of TAMU genetics study and their moms rejected them.  So the 3 will live for a few more months in Sinton.  In time, they will release the wild deer into the local brush country.  The other two will go back to the deer breeding program.  Interesting note is that they are all about the same age, but the bred deer are noticeably bigger than the wild grown deer.

Hey, Thelma. Can you believe it's almost hunting season?

It is so dry in south Texas that the alligator are bunking together.  There were 17 gators that Bob counted in one little pond. 

Of the state’s 3,700 streams, 15 major rivers and more than 200 reservoirs at least seven reservoirs are effectively empty and more than half of the streams and rivers are at below normal flow rates.  The drought has a domino effect on the wildlife here in south Texas.  Drying ponds reduce fish populations, animals migrate to find water, fewer plants mean fewer insects. 

Yeah, Bob. I see you. So do the alligators.

Lynn Cuny, the founder of the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation, said on a San Antonio news report (WOAI-TV) that  “(animals) don’t have the water sources they had some months ago, and they don’t have the food sources…They are thirsty right now, so you can imagine walking and walking and walking and there’s just no water.”  The animal rescue has saved 7,000 animals this year, housing baby squirrels, doves, and pigeons that their mothers abandoned. Cuny said more than likely the animal mothers went to search for food and starved to death.

The day ended too soon and we got back to the reality of meetings and housework.  I know that I can sit still, though, and watch wildlife with Bob.  I with my camera and sketch pad; Bob with his weapons of mass deer-struction.  (Thanks for the pun, Bob!)

Paranoid me

Somebody...someBODY stole my trim!

Last Saturday I looked at the front of my Mazda Tribute and saw the chrome trim on the hood missing.  Completely torn off.  “Ohmygosh!  That looks terrible!  Why would someone steal a part from my car?”

As I raced out the front door, my thoughts were running ahead of me.  “This is what I get for parking on the street at Bob’s house.  I should never, never park my car on the street.   Horrible little vandals.”  No doubt about it.  The chrome piece was gone.  Bits of it still hung to the little screws that had kept it in place.

It was after I had finished a cup of coffee that sanity began to return.  Why would anyone want to steal that part?  How would they have done it without breaking into my car?  The nuts that hold the bolts in place are inside the hood.

Wait a minute.

The car wash!  I’d filled up my car and run it through the automatic car wash last night on my way to the Restitution Center for the AA meeting.  Sure enough, the power wash had washed my chrome trim off; the piece lay abandoned beside the vacuum cleaner.

No vandals.  No trim thieves.  This is where I have my problem.  I immediately speed think a bad motive when there’s no motive at all.  What kind of a jackass thinks someone tore a piece of chrome off their car?  Who on earth thinks that someone would steal that particular piece of that particular car?

That would be me.  Paranoid me.   Webster Online defines paranoia as (1) psychotic disorder characterized by delusions of persecution, often strenuously defended with apparent logic and reason; or, (2) extreme irrational distrust of others.

Nobody’s thieving, hiding, vandalizing, or otherwise putting obstacles in my path.  Except me, that is. It usually comes down to that.  In all things.  It comes down to me.

I have repeatedly been certain that someone deleted my Excel spreadsheet or lost a computer file when I was the one who forgot to save my work.  I’ve been determined that a gremlin has messed with computer settings when I’m the only one at home.  How many times have I thought something had been thieved when I am  the one who put it in an eclectic, obscure place?

Except for the computer gremlin which could turn out to exist, I’ve been proved wrong 99.76% of the time.  I have a key holder by the door.  Empty.  The hangers for hats and dog leashes?  The cute hummingbird hook on the door for my nightshirt?  Empty and empty.

There are screwdrivers in my kitchen utensil drawer.  The hammer’s in the warranty paperwork drawer.  If they consistently stayed there, that would be fine.  I will use the hammer today to hang some pictures and it may end up in the warranty drawer or with the kitchen utensils or some other place entirely different.  Quién sabe?

A little paranoid?  I can almost guarantee you that the first thought when I can’t find my hammer or screwdriver will be:  “Who could have borrowed my tools without asking?”  And I will have to have a mini-conference (with myself, of course) to determine that N-O-B-O-D-Y did.

I heard the latest NRA justification for supporting any living human rather than Obama and I laughed.  At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, NRA’s president Wayne LaPierre said, “They’ll say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone…In public, the president will remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the old Clinton ban, that he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws…The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment. But it’s a big fat stinking lie!…It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country…Before the president was even sworn into office, they met and they hatched a conspiracy of public deception to try to guarantee his re-election in 2012.”

I see his logic.  I don’t agree with it.  I think it’s nuts.  I think it’s so convolutedly crazy that it….might….work.  Hmmmm.

As a conspiracy theory paranoid ranter myself, I am embarrassed for him.  His diatribe is the kind that I usually just have when I’m alone in the bathtub.  His remarks have played out all over the news media.

When my kids were younger, we played a game on road trips.  We’d see someone at a Dairy Queen stop and make up a story about them.   (“Maybe they dressed up for a funeral.”) “They could be going to a business meeting.”  (“He’s alone.  I bet he’s going to meet his girlfriend.”) “Girlfriend?  He looks too old for a girlfriend.”

Harmless fantasy but when it has that under-current of paranoia, it is the stuff that TSA profilers use.  I  haven’t flown often since 9/11.  That’s more because of circumstance than fear.  The paranoia that cuts into my fantasy life on a daily basis went into overtime the last time I travelled by plane.  I have great compassion for those security people, but they didn’t search everybody that I thought they should search.  The secret profiler in my soul wanted to whisper to one of the guards:  “You didn’t notice how guilty that guy looks?  I think you should search him.”

986 Days

My son, Jack Russo, died on January 15, 2009.  It is nearly impossible for me to write that without getting tearful.  I’ve celebrated 2 Christmas holidays, his birthday twice.  I’m designing this year’s Christmas card.  I started putting Jack in the card the first Christmas after he died.  It was hard to draw his face without a sense of abject loss.  As I drew, I talked to him.  That helped.  Easier the next year.  And this year?  Hard again.  Funny how that happens. 

There are so many things that have changed since he died.   

My pink house with the angel address plaque

He has a new baby nephew, Travis, who was born on his birthday in 2009.  The house has been re-painted.  I had been planning the paint job before he died.  I wanted the house painted pale pink or blue.  He said that would be okay but it would look like a Smurf house.  It’s pink today, but no Smurfs have come looking for a room. 

His cat, Ginger, died in November, 2009.  She was a 6 toed long-haired calico who showed up at the house the November after John died and claimed us as her own.  She used to curl up around his nappy hair and groom him as he slept. 

His lab mix Jewel (Jewelly-bug) died in May, 2010.  He brought her home as a puppy in 1997 with the words, “A man’s selling her for free.  Can we keep her?”  I was newly sober and sure that John would say no, but he said a little boy needs a dog.  It had been her habit to wait up for him, sit with him as he networked on the computer, lie next to his chair on the back porch.  I think she mourned him until the day she died.

I got into a relationship about a year or so after he died.  I’d made a pig’s breakfast out of relationships as a single parent when Georgie was young.  In sobriety, I was more careful about introducing him to my dates.  I got nearly instant feedback.  (“Him, Mom?  I sure hope you aren’t thinking about getting serious with HIM?”)  The exception was my friend, Bill, but I think that might have been partially because he liked Bill’s daughter, Mary.  (“If you married Bill, we’d have a fun family.”)  I’m not sure what he would have thought about Bob.  (“I guess it’s true that women like bad boys, Mom.”)

"Jack-leen" - Halloween 2006

Jack’s favorite celebrations-Halloween and April Fool’s Day-have come and gone, shadows of what they were when his silliness heightened the days’ fun.  No food coloring in the shower head, no rubber banded kitchen sprayer to shower me with water when I filled the coffee pot on April 1.  I didn’t have to go re-sale shopping to help him put together a costume on October 31.

There were, of course, downsides.  Jack was 20 when he died and not perfect by any means.  I can’t romanticize the life of my child, but I would go through every problem we had multiplied by 1,000 to be able to go through every problem we had again. 

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. ~From a headstone in Ireland

I visited his My Space site yesterday.  That was social networking for him in 2009.  I compulsively went there in the few months after his death.  Do people remember him?  Do his friends still post to his page?  Yes and yes.  I got a little obsessive and I stopped.  Until yesterday.  I had forgotten his self-styled persona:  Jack the God-King.   His multiple choice description of himself:  Jack is…(a) pure sex; (b) beautiful; (c) sugary goodness; (d) all of the above.  His home town:  “Part of me wants to say……your pants.” 

Not necessarily for Mom’s eyes. 

I realized that my birthday, October 12, is the 1,000th day since Jack died.  That seems like a significantly huge number.  How can time have passed like that?  The day looms larger than my birthday.  When  you lose someone you love, you think time should just stop.  No more holidays.  No week-ends.  No time off.  Grief is a full time job.  I don’t know when it became part time.  

Jack at Nina's McDonald birthday

I stopped waking every morning with a sense of dread that the sun could rise in a world without my child.  I still have days when I’m surprised that the world continues to exist.  Today, they don’t usually come back to back.  I have to take myself out of those days.  There’s no work or play that can distract.  Nor should it. 

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” (Kahlil Gibran)