Jersey Joke

As a former Jersey girl, I have to laugh at an episode of the Simpson’s: Marge tells Homer to stop kissing her in public on vaca in Jersey because people are watching. Homer, “Oh yeah like people in New Jersey have never seen a fat guy making out; it’s on the freakin’ state flag!”

Swimming Lessons

I took my girl to the public pool today and there were a couple of boys from her class their friends there. One of the boys said he was her boyfriend and was so excited to see her. She looked right at him and said, “My name is Kaitlyn (not her name), I’m from Australia. I don’t know who you are talking to.” And walked away. This boy followed her around all afternoon, well as much as he could because he’s not allowed in the deep end. The older third grade boy who was allowed in the deep end came over introduced himself and off they swam. I sat on the side of the pool to lifeguard (because the two they have there are not enough - overprotective much!) and heard him ask her later, “Do you kind of like me because I kind of like you.” I almost choked. Then the other one got out of the shallow end and walked around the pool to come and talk to her. She talked to him for a minute and then swam right off.
The third grader swam up jealous, “Is he really your boyfriend?”
My sweet girl, “I’m too young for a boyfriend. Right mom?”
“YES” (whew, thank goodness)
Then he screams over to the shallow end, “No, you are not her boyfriend.”
Causing the boy from her class to get out and walk over to the deep end, “Are you mad at me?”
OMG are you mad at me, these tiny people are too fast, much too fast. The lifeguard was laughing too. It was craziness. She looked over at me and said, “You are in so much trouble when she’s older.” I know, I know. Perhaps I should tell her that boys have cooties. Whatever happened to cooties? They kept us away from boys for sometime in elementary school. They should be reintroduced; in science class would be nice. They can look at some under the microscope.
Bless my baby’s soul she told them both that she was going to swim with her mother now, alone with her mother. She didn’t even have to ask me to get in - I jumped right in. Wow, so much for chasing boys, she kept swimming away and they kept chasing her. Were we all born knowing that? Is it an art, the thrill of the chase? Will she forget when life zaps her self-esteem, gives her acne and puberty? I hope not. I wish my teenage self had known what she already does. All that time I wasted chasing boys, when I shoulda been swimming away...

Loving the new website

I love the www.sparkpeople.com. I have lost three pounds since I joined up. Although I lost that three pounds a couple of weeks ago too, and it came back, grrr. I hope now that my TSH number was a 1.7 that I can start to lose weight now. Because losing a pound for an hour and having it come right back, is not really losing it! You can join a bunch of discussion groups at sparkpeople and they actually have a thyroid group and a hypothyroid group. I joined both. People actually are very into this website and discussions are fruitful. There are not professional doctors just other people going through the same or similar things that you are. Or there are groups just by your age or occupation, I joined a teacher group too.

I’m such a joiner now, when I was young I never wanted to join in with anything. Interesting.

Insomniac thought processes...

It’s 1:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I turned on my laptop to my blog to listen to my music. My music is awesome! I think it is a lovely mix. Props to playlist.com for allowing me to create my own playlists. If you want to listen to some classical flip over to my nothryoid blog, that playlist is great too but all classic classical.

I have joined another internet group www.sparkpeople.com. It is a weight loss, exercise. living right support website. It is free you can record your daily diet or follow the one they give you. You can record your daily exercise and they give you exercises to do. There are many, many discussion threads to jump in on. It is free because whoever runs it said on it that they made a lot of money on eBay when it first began and they wanted to give something back. So check that out too.

Okay the celebratory news for those of you who have been following my health. My synthroid thyroid medicine levels are finally level after 11 months!!!!! Yay! I am so excited. I hope I can lose weight now. I thank you all for your support. To put a damper on my great news, I spent the morning in the imaging center at the hospital having two mammograms and an ultrasound. They have found a bunch of cysts, which are fine, but one something that they found is not. They do not know what it is but it is there. I have to go back for a biopsy on the 11th. Crap biopsy, just the word is scary. Besides I did all of the “C” stuff last summer. I am not entirely ungrateful to the Universe however, I understand that I am lucky to be alive, I am lucky I even had a mammogram at all not being 40 just yet, and if it is something it is early. What will be will be, and I will deal with it. I have a little girl, I have to. I also know that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. The ungrateful side of me however would like to know just how strong I need to be and would like to jump up and down in frustration. It’s taken now exactly 11 months to get over the first tumor removal and I should be celebrating that my synthetic medicines are working not having my boob squished in a Lucite box. But those thoughts are ungrateful and unproductive. Counting blessings: life 1 daughter 2 family 3 friends 4

Okay, reality check. I’d like to send out a healing prayer to our friend Claudia, who is recovering from a triple bypass. We’re thinking of you!

If you read about my car exploding this winter, I finally purchased a new car! Well, new to me anyway. It is a 1999 Oldsmobile Intrigue. Candy apple red so I am screwed for more speeding tickets. I bought it for $3,000. It is not in my possesion yet as we are awaiting the title and my mechanic has to do some work to it before it is good to drive but it’s nice. And it has AC and a CD player, two novelties for me. I’ll post a pic.

Whatever happened to Loverboy? I remember Mike Reno was the lead singer. Just wondering. I should have been a rock star! I have the attitude I think I would love that. Too bad I can’t sing and I‘ve forgotten how to play the instruments of my youth, piano and trombone. I hope my daughter is a rock star or a famous actress, she wants to help people, and it seems to me that the only people who can afford to be philanthropic are celebrities.

Do you think that out there somewhere is a girl in court for property damage or vandalism on her cheating boyfriends car telling the judge, "I did it because Carrie Underwood did it to her boyfriend and wrote a song about it and didn't get in trouble, so I thought I would do it?" It could be like the Underwood damage defense on damning dear dogs.

Ok 2 am. Good Night all. Perhaps if I curl up in front of the AC I will be able to sleep. If I was a cartoon character I would bonk myself on the head with a hammer made by the Acme company and go right out like a light. What if I really am a cartoon? What if we all are cartoons and some alien planet watches us for entertainment like a cartoon soap opera? Hmmm.

Monster©

Just looking out the window, procrastinating, at my lovely neighbor at the playground and I thought I'd post a poem I wrote one hot night last summer:


Behind the flawless
hedges and flowers
that decorate the
lawn, lives the monster.

You can’t see it, just
lipstick and a smile.
But late at night in
the heat, screens open,

listen and you can
hear the monster rage;
shouts, insults, slammed doors
and smacks on skin echo.

If nothing’s said, does
it think we can’t hear?
Perfect mother,
perfect life.

Monster lies.

Walleee - Eevaa

We saw Wall E today at the movies. I noticed Stephen King’s name on the opening screens and got excited, but I can’t find that he had anything to do with it. The first scene in the movie is a city where the piles of garbage were higher than the buildings. What a thought. It was horrible, yet even though it was a movie, it was somewhat believable. King’s influence it would seem to me, although perhaps I’m nuts and it was someone else. It really was a good movie, and it made some serious points. Yes, we are a wasteful society. Then it had all of the humans in hover chairs drinking their meals, with computer screens directly in front of their faces. They were waited on hand a foot by bots. They did not see anything beyond their screens. Sound familiar? To me it does, I get lost out there in cyberspace. They were all so overweight and lazy that they couldn’t even get up if they fell out of their chairs. What a statement on our inactive overweight society. They had stopped thinking and just listed to the politician in charge, you can imagine where that leads.

I won’t give away the movie but it was really cute. There was hardly any dialogue. The robots only said each other’s names, but you knew by their actions exactly what was going on, wonderful characterization. I thought the lack of dialogue was beautiful. I kept saying to my daughter, “See that is what happens to people who don’t eat right.” “See that is what happens when people don’t clean up.” “See we need to take care of our Earth.” (I might be annoying to go to the movies with, haha.) In the end love wins, of course, it’s a kid’s movie. That is one of the perks of being a parent though, you get to go to all of the kids movies! Although I would say this was more than a kid’s movie. Don’t we all want someone to chase us across the galaxy?

Now I know what marvelous is...

I finished the Life of Pi and let me tell you the ending was the best part of the entire book. It was so amazing I want to read it again. My brain is dancing! I can’t even pick up another book now; I have to let my brain marinade in this one. It was so incredibly brilliant. When you read it, don’t neglect the extra chapter at the end, it will toy with your mind, make you wonder, and remind you why we read and why a story is a story. Yann Martel is a genius, an absolute genius.

Finally - sweet summertime!

I am so excited; I don’t even know what to do. Enjoy the moments is what I figured out so far. Yesterday for my first day off, we went to the pool for a bit, visited a friend, cleaned the house, and went back to the pool. (We have a city pool nearby, it's wonderful.) Then it rained. So after supper, we went for a lovely walk and jumped in all of the puddles. While we're splashing, my daughter looks over and asks if I am enjoying reliving my childhood. Yes I was, those moments I was just in the moment. I am trying to work on that and it is hard to stop the endless stream of worries, list making, and what should I do next in my brain. I am reading Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth; okay - honestly, it is one of the five books I have been reading for a couple months. However, I would like to be enlightened; I would like to help the world be a better place by dealing with things in a calm Zenlike manner so others can emulate me. The first thing is staying in the now. I am going to try to stay in the now, although I have to fly in the beginning of august and I can’t help worrying about that, and then I remember I’m not supposed to worry and push it away. Well with all of those thoughts going on, how can I stay in the now?

Another book I am chipping away at his Anna Karenina, a classic, it is my second time around but the first time was twenty years ago. I have spent these first two days of vacation after my child is in bed finishing Life of Pi. Again brings another question for Tolle, how can I stay in the now when I prefer to slip away into someone else’s reality or story. If you haven’t read this book, you will love it. Pi ends up in a lifeboat on the Pacific with a Bengal tiger. Who even thinks of that, well Yann Martel I guess. This book is so wonderful, I was up until 1:30 in the morning reading, and I couldn’t put it down until my eyes started shutting. I recommend this book to everyone. I do admit to my book addiction and admitting it is the first step. The second step is scoring the best edition of Life of Pi with illustrations by Tomislav Torjanac. The illustrations are pictures of incredible paintings the vivid colors, and the depictions actually match what you see in your mind’s eye as you read. Books like this remind you of the triumph of the human spirit and even though it is a novel the reader questions what he or she really has to bitch about in life. I'm thinking I'm good!

I have Water for Elephants and Sea Glasson deck, finds from a yard sale for 50 cents. Yard sales rock to buy books! Ooh, and I want to read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and then I will have read everything she’s done. She is absolutely transporting. I have Teaching a Stone to Talk as my pocketbook book right now. Short stories are excellent for pocketbook books or car books. Before that, I had Andre Dupuis, his short stories are modern and realistic.

Okay so summer goals, love my kid, write my book but not stress about it, and read books as I did when I was a teen. I remember I used to take two brown bags full of books from the bookmobile at the beginning of every summer and give them back read at the end. They would park at the school the first week of summer vacation. It was in a coverted jetstream-like camper, silver and tubular, and inside was like heaven, books, books, and more books. My folks knew that it would take me a while to pick out what I wanted, so I always got to go alone. Although carrying the books home was a bear, I remember trying to run so I could start reading faster. Every year the books changed too, so you could never read through the whole bookmobile. If I won the lottery maybe I would start a bookmobile somewhere in the world where kids need more books. The bookmobile and summer, wow. It is funny how the older I get, or maybe it is just because of what I’m experience this year, that the more I remember about my youth. I remember gardening with my dad, so we planted a small garden outback (the landlord hasn't commented yet. I remember joy. Pure joy at the littlest things, a new book, running in the hose, building a bike ramp and jumping, playing kickball in the street at night with all the neighborhood kids. Joy because there was no tomorrow to worry about and no what I said or did yesterday or today to dwell on. This summer (when I'm not writing my book) I will play games, jump in puddles, paint pictures, read books, take nature walks, make crafts, dig in the dirt, and watch my child smile. I will strive to stay in the now and let the now be play and joy.

I wish you all play and joy this summer as well. Smiles on rainy days are as warming as the sun!

Does anyone think Entwistle didn't do it?

Although people as supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, I think everyone thinks that this Entwistle is guilty. the information that we are getting on the news is so strange, it seems like he did do it. After he saw his wife and baby dead, he covered them back up with a blanket... and doesn’t know why. I think this guy needs a psychological profile. He’s shady looking too. And flying right off to England, what was he doing. He said he didn’t know. I have been listening to the news briefly trying to follow the trial and I just don’t see how he didn’t do it. It would be very surprising his he isn't convicted.

It has been rather busy closing up my first year of teaching, Yay. I’ll write more after finals are finished next week!