Menopause plus a teenager equals wine
Mmm uornin moooom.
No mom.
Mom?
Yeah mom.
Mom? Never-mind.
Wait Mom!
Mom?
I dunno mom.
Maawm!
Maaaaaaom?
Yes mom.
Mom?
(sigh) Maooooowwwwwm!
Mom?
Mom?
Mom?
Mom?
(sigh) Nite mom.
Mom?
Until next time-
C
“Mom, why do I keep getting hurt in football?”
“One word: FOOTBALL!”
Until next time -
C
There are 4 drafts of posts just sitting in the back-end of this blog, waiting for me to finish them.
I just haven’t had a free moment. My son has given me much hilarious teenage fodder for this blog, but time has not been my friend in allowing me to complete my posts.
Just to give you an idea of what my life has been like, I leave you with these -
Could you say no to that face?
Thus he keeps me crazy busy.
Until next time -
C
http://www.aweekinthelifeofaredhead.com
Photography by Ray Mabry.
“How’s school going?”
“OK.”
“Like it?”
“It’s OK.”
“Got a girlfriend?”
“No – mom.”
“Do you wish you had one?”
“Kinda.”
All across the world the sound of a pin drop could be heard from within the brain of this mom as time stood still.
Until next time-
C
To see the full photograph series on this actual bear visit Dan & Lynn Wolaver’s site by clicking here.
Until next time -
C
http://www.aweekinthelifeofaredhead.com
“Wow Brian, tomorrow is the first day of high school.”
“I know.”
“Can I walk you to school?”
“Ha! Mom you’re kidding RIGHT?”
Well … kinda …
Until next time -
C
As busy as our lives can be, sometimes objects of our affection become sick right before our very eyes, leaving us wondering how, and when it started to happen.
It happened for my mother, who witnessed my dad’s upset stomach for years before finding out it was esophagus cancer, with an extremely high mortality rate. She was so used to saving people. It was difficult to understand how this could happen in her own home, right under her nose.
When did he get so sick?
In the Spring of 1992, my ex-husband and I stopped at a local heath fair while enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon. As we approached the entrance there was a woman with a calico tabby cat in a cage and a sign, which read, “Free To the Right Owner”. She was interviewing candidates for this cute calico cat. My ex-husband (who could rescue every animal in the free world if he could) naturally stopped out of curiosity. I hung back because once I touch an available animal, I own it.
Thus how I got married to my ex-husband.
This free cat stretched her paw out of the cage and hooked the sleeve of my ex’s shirt – holding on for dear life. The cat owner spins around, smiles and says, “She wants you!” “Oh good lord,” I thought, as 15 other people shoot my ex and I dirty looks. He comes to me, “Want a cat?” “We have a dog,” I respond.
As it was, I was the one walking the dog every night, feeding and bathing her even though he had brought the dog into our relationship. “Louise (the dog) loves cats!” he answers. ‘Really?’ I thought. Louise the dog loves to attempt to kill skunks, moles, birds, possums, and raccoons with great zeal so I can’t imagine her loving a cat.
I tell him we need to talk about it since I don’t like making snap judgments, so we walked away to enter the fair. I said, “If she is there when we leave – it was meant that we take her home with us.” I was sure she would go to one of the people in the crowd that gave us evil looks. Cat people are weird.
My ex-husband never hurried through so many booths in his life. Upon leaving (which I swear was no more than 10 minutes), the cat was still there. The woman was contemplating giving her away at the moment as my ex-husband shouts, “We will take her!”
People turn, as the owner smiles with delight and answers “She is yours.” Cat people are glaring. I want to yell, “IT’S JUST A CAT PEOPLE!” Instead, I cuddle Annabel the kitty up in my arms and smile. She was as soft as a cloud with a LOUD purr. She sounds like a hot rod engine.
This is how Annabel came into our lives.
Annabel the kitty entered our home when she was just over a year old. The woman gave us food, a bed and a carrying cage. She wanted to find Annabel a home where she could roam outside. We just happened to live in a cottage in the country . . .
When Brian was born, Annabel changed to sleeping under his crib, as if protecting him through the night. If he started to fuss, she would get up, come into our bedroom and meow telling us we needed to wake up and tend to Brian. As Brian became a toddler, he would often carry her butt side up. Her hot rod purr would play, as if to say, “It’s ok, he’s just my boy.”
In the most painful times of my divorce, Annabel often crawled into my arms as if to say, “I know your heart hurts” and would purr loudly until I forgot my troubled thoughts. She likes to sleep with Brian, always wanting to protect him through the night.
After my divorce, when I could no longer afford the cottage in the country, it was time to move Brian in town so he could have more of a city life with friends. My ex-husband agreed to retrieve Annabel while I moved and set up the new place. I never thought moving would upset Annabel. When he went back to the cottage to retrieve her, Annabel disappeared. We tried for weeks to find her, leaving food out – even to the point of setting traps, but all we ever caught were raccoons.
One Christmas Eve came and I had a strange gut feeling. Christmas Eve has always been a magical night for me for as long as I can remember. I told Brian, “Did you know that Santa grants wishes on Christmas Eve?” “He does?” Brian asks, wide-eyed. “Oh yes Brian, he does. Let’s close our eyes really hard and wish for Annabel to come back home to us for Christmas.” We closed our eyes, made our wish, and at sunset got into my truck and drove over to the cottage. We got out and called and called her. I began to think that I may have set Brian up for an awful Christmas Eve disappointment, and was about to become his great Christmas liar mom, when out from the field comes this thin version of our Annabel.
I cautioned Brian, as she had not seen us for a year and I wasn’t sure if she turned wild, so I gently approached her, but she would not come to me. Instead, she went to Brian who scooped her up, kissed her, and she started to drool. We brought her home on Christmas Eve, back where she belonged.
Ever since Christmas Eve those 5 years ago, Annabel has been happily making friends with everyone who comes to visit this little complex we now all call home. Different neighbors feed her treats; others give her loving pats and some even let her into their home. We have called her the ambassador, because she never lets anyone leave the complex without a meow and some love.
But lately our Annabel has become very thin, thinner than is normal for a pet that always has food available. She is 14 years old, but is looking 18. I had to sit down this week and really watch her. To my shock (with all her loving, acting much the same, going in and out) while examining her close I can see she is painfully thin. Her breathing is heavy and her purr sounds like an asthma attack. I have been through this enough to know…
Our Annabel is dying.
I told Brian that I feel Annabel is very ill. Brian cried, and I explained that Annabel has lived a long and wonderful life. I called my ex and told him my thoughts and asked him to come examine her. He came over this morning after Brian was in school and we watched Annabel together. Her breathing is heavy and hard. She is so thin that the act of breathing makes it appear that her ribs might break with every breath. This doesn’t stop her from getting up on his lap and drooling her love all over him.
My ex looks up at me as he feels her body, “Damn she is so thin.” “I know.” I am feeding her three times a day, but it changes nothing. He looks me in the eye “I think our Annabel is very, very ill” I nod as tears roll down my face. I have seen this before with the pets I grew up with. “Have you prepared Brian that she might be dying?” he asks, holding back his own tears. “Yes, and I told him we need to take her to the vet to see what is wrong – and sometimes they don’t come back home from the vet. Brian wants to be a part of the decision.”
If the Vet says that she has to go I hope we can bring her home and bury her in the garden, where she loves to lie amongst the burial memorials of the dead goldfish, tadpoles, hermit crabs we tried to raise without success. It is under this little clearing where the flowered branches meet, next to my pink rose bush, just under Brian’s bedroom window. There is a Celtic cross statue that sits toward the back, against a flowering lily of the valley. The afternoon sun warms this spot upon the ground and Annabel loves to curl up there like a rounded rock in the garden. Of course the bird bath is not far to the left as she dreams of a bird wandering into her paws, but not motivated enough to actually hunt them.
I am still not able to wrap my head around the idea that we may have to decide to put her down. I have never thought of Annabel leaving us. She is a cat who has reinvented her life several times now, and most of all,
She’s family.
Until next time-
C
Fall is early this year. I can smell it in the soft warm breeze that moves the bangs about my face. The breeze teases my nose with touches of mesquite, dried grasses and falling leaves. It feels more like October than September.
Walking, ones shadow falls like a lazy dark friend revealing the distance of the sun’s movement away towards winter.
Usually in Sonoma County, summer runs July, August, and September with an Indian summer from September to the week of Halloween. This year has not followed the normal fall weather pattern, thus the grape harvest is late.
The grapes do not have enough warmth to sweeten on the vine. Growers are standing around waiting to pick. This is a scary time for wine growers, and the harvest fair celebration is just around the corner, the first weekend of October.
The vegetable gardens are thin and bare, as if in honor of those that suffered in the wake of Katrina. There is no abundance waiting in the bending green branches, summer has ended. These are the last weeks for kids to enjoy the evenings. Soon, daylight savings will have us in total darkness as we prepare our usual evening fare.
The weather will turn cold, frost will greet us in the wee hours of the morning, then the rains come.
Halloween costumes hang in the shops beckoning alter egos to come out and play, dress up and eat candy for two weeks. Firewood and rolled logs appear on every shelf reminding us that our heaters will kick on soon. Hibernation begins as we shut ourselves inside our homes and internet chatting comes back to life.
There is a type of quiet that comes with fall, a quiet, which seems to slow the rhythm of the day. It is as if time stops for small moments, takes a deep breath, then continues. Large gusts of wind burst forth – shaking trees of their dying leaves, spreading them about the air like large colorful snowflakes.
As suddenly as the wind appears, the gusts subside in mid-wind, hanging leaves in the air like vultures hovering prey, before dropping suddenly like a soft stroke of a paint brush. The landscape takes on the colors of redheads, hues of burnt reds, orange, pumpkin, chestnut and squash. It is our time of year.
Sounds of the whistling winds weave through the trees now replace the sounds of lawnmowers and swimming pools. Bikinis and shorts disappear to the return of leather and soft soothing sweaters. Comfort foods of casseroles, soups and chili spring up from the summer corn-on-the-cob, barbecued chicken and strawberries on sponge cake.
Lawn chairs are folded, outdoor place settings boxed for the attic and blankets are folded on the edge of the couch ready for use.
This year’s New Year resolutions are long forgotten while vacation photos sit in a top drawer and hot tea replaces the last glass of red wine. Football cheers fill the living room and next years Super Bowl champions are born. The holidays loom teasingly over the next horizon.
Before us looms the time of the year we are all forced to be around people we may or may not miss, throwing us into tight mingling around too much food and drink, hoping for the best. We wish for Santa to bring us back to that spark of a child’s innocence, and this will be the year that our long-held dreams come true.
Fall opens like a soft well-choreographed ballet, dancing lightly about us if we dare to notice. Act one finished, and I am ready to carve pumpkins and give out candy to the neighborhood. How I love this elegant autumn ballet produced by Mother Nature.
Brian will turn another year older. Be still my heart.
Until next time-
Tonight I enjoyed a dinner date with my son. We decided to walk to a Japanese restaurant at the shopping center about a mile from our home. Brian loves sushi or really any type of seafood.
So we dawned walking shoes and chatted our way there. Brian always tells me interesting things when we walk together. He tells me that I had better “keep up” with his walking pace (I was in labor with you boy you have no idea just how well I can keep up). He tells me of his plans for his future, what he sees for us, his favorite friends and stories of Pokemon. I can listen to him talk forever.
We have tempura and some sushi at the restaurant. It is a sweet dinner out. The service is top notch and I take this time to begin training Brian on how to take a girl out to dinner, although he wrinkles his nose and looks at me like I am nuts – girls? Ew Mom.
When dinner is over he cons be into going into a small bookstore because he knows I am a sucker for books. He heads straight for the Star Wars section while I find my way to the health section. I intend to buy nothing. Really. We leave with a Star Wars book along with a star Wars magazine. So much for a cheap night out.
We walk back through the center and passing a clothing store as I realize Brian has outgrown his sweat pants and could use some for his weigh in at tomorrows football game. I tell Brian it will be a quick trip in and out. That so called quick trip involved a new pair of tennis shoes for him, sweat pants and a youth football (as in the kind you throw). So much for a quick in and out and just sweat pants.
Will I ever shop for me again?
We walk back as darkness begins to fall. Brian runs ahead throwing the football back for me to catch one-handed because naturally I am carrying all the bags.
Will he ever carry his own things?
We return home as Brian exclaims he is tired. He asks for a bedtime story. No wonder I am too tired to date. How does someone do this with more than one?
Until next time-
C
http://www.aweekinthelifeofaredhead.com
Today I am asking people to support stem cell research.
It could hold a cure for auto-immune diseases such as Hashimotos disease. I offer my reason why -
The following is excerpted from Johns Hopkins “Health Insider,” interview with Robert A. Brodsky, M.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine -
“Rebooting” – A Promise For Autoimmune Diseases?
Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed a new technique in treating autoimmune disease patients which reboots the immune system with results that have cured some patients while dramatically improving the health of others. This is a new approach to the use of stem cells in treating autoimmune disease.
Autoimmunity occurs when the blood’s lymphocytes, which are designed to defend the body against infections and foreign agents, actually attack one or more of the body’s organs. Researchers in the past have focused on ways to destroy the disease-causing lymphocytes and replace them with normal ones. That attempt has not been successful. Bone marrow transplantation is now being used by many medical institutions worldwide. One attempt to get rid of the misdirected lymphocytes has been the use of high doses of cyclophosphamide, a chemotherapeutic drug. This method also calls for a blood stem cell transplant since it has been thought, incorrectly, that cyclophosphamide in high doses is destructive to the bone marrow’s ability to make new blood cells.
Stem cells, present in both bone marrow and blood, regenerate marrow and blood after chemotherapy. In stem-cell transplants, stem cells are harvested before chemotherapy by drawing some of the patient’s own blood or bone marrow. After the chemotherapy, the blood or marrow stem cells are returned to the patient’s body. However, patients who do go into remission after the procedure usually relapse after a time. This is thought to be the result of the “bad” lymphocytes returning to the patient along with the stem cells. How can pure stem cells be isolated from other blood cells?
Now Johns Hopkins researchers have found a way to circumvent the problem.
According to Robert A. Brodsky, M.D., assistant professor in oncology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, “…stem cells contain an enzyme, called aldehyde dehydrogenase, which detoxifies cyclophosphamide. Like most blood cells, lymphocytes have very low levels of this enzyme, so cyclophosphamide destroys them but not the stem cells. That means it is not necessary to do a transplant to preserve the stem cells.” He further states, “Studies have shown that after chemotherapy–as the stem cells turn into the specialized blood cells that have been destroyed–those that become lymphocytes are normal and do not attack the body. The immune system has been repaired.”
This system was first tried with aplastic anemia patients. Seven out of the first ten patients treated by this method have remained disease-free for 10 years–and, in some cases, more than 20 years. The system was later tried with 27 other patients with autoimmune diseases, the majority of whom were lupus patients. Dr. Brodsky reports, “Most are still in remission, and some are off medications two and three years later.” He continues, “All the patients we’ve studied have, at the very worst, remained stable: Virtually all have had major reductions in their immunosuppression medications.” Dr. Brodsky cautions that, before this can be called a cure, the patients must remain disease-free for ten or more years.
Dr. Brodsky offers the comment that “When we have more information about the long-term effects of this treatment, and as more physicians and patients learn about it, the technique could well become standard protocol for autoimmune conditions soon after they are diagnosed and well before the diseases progress or become debilitating.”
All we can do is hope. And let stem cell research move forward.
Until next time -
C
Yesterday was Memorial Day, the day we honor all who died in War. I usually think of it as Red Poppy Day. Each year, I walk up my street, cut through a business parking lot, dash across a busy street to the Calvary Cemetery. My father is buried there. He died in July 1978 from Esophageal cancer. I just turned 18.
The cemetery sits on the side of a hill overlooking Santa Rosa. It is quite the climb getting to the top where my father’s grave is located. Usually I am out of breath – yesterday was no different – as I sucked in the warm air and looked down upon the stone marker. It is marked with a small American Flag. My father was in the Army and served in Korea.
My mother already laid roses over the headstone, she obviously had been there for the early service held to honor the dead. I sat down staring at “ELDON EUGENE HUGHES” like I do each year. It seems like a lifetime ago, and yet it also seems like yesterday. As I sit staring at his name I am transformed back to being a teenager, and the years spent dealing with his cancer.
A soft breeze hits my face and I remember the day he died. It was a beautiful sunny day just like this one. My boyfriend at the time, Steve, was driving me to work at Round Table Pizza. We were on the freeway when my father’s voice came through my head “Cathy come home – hurry”. I turned to Steve and said, “Take me home NOW”. “What? Why?” he is irritated, “We just left there” “Turn the damn car around and take me home. Its my dad!” Without another word, he takes the first exit and speeds me back home.
My father died in his favorite leather recliner. The cancer had gone to his brain and throughout his entire body. He died after watching his favorite movie, Spencer’s Mountain. He loved Maureen O’Hara and the Grand Tetons. My mother hugged me and placed a cloth over my dad’s face. And that was it. This larger than life man, who I adored was gone from me in an instant. I was in shock.
The wind across the fresh cut grass brings me back to the present moment and I cast my eyes about the graveyard. Other families are visiting lost loved ones too. We are a bonded community in silence, each understanding this type of pain. It never leaves you. You adjust, go on with life, but you are never the same, never that innocent again.
In different years this tradition doesn’t bother me and often fills me with peace, but this year I am unusually sad. My dear online friend “Yoda” says its the menopause…ha!…he would say that. Bless his heart. I think at different stages of my life I miss having a father. He was my foundation, my rock, the person I could always count on. Now, during these troubled times for me, I can’t call him and say, “Dad….”. He always gave the best advise.
I also miss his hugs, the way his large arms would surround me and I could bury my face in his chest. I felt safe, and loved. I loved the way he smelled after putting on his after shave. He smelled like a dad should. Every now and then when in a store that still carries that brand of aftershave, I open one and take a whif and remember what a dad smells like.
I walk back down the hill after having a small chat with his headstone. I wish I could hear his voice one last time, but instead there is only the sound of the wind and the birds. Would he be proud of me? What would he say about my life? How different would my life be if he were still alive?
He would have been crazy over my son Brian. Speaking of which, he comes back to me this afternoon. So enough of this sad talk, it’s time to get ready to see my living love.
Until next time-
C
We single parents don’t date, we just instant message and text our way through the dating mine field -
js: you are just getting the message from me?
js: and i am just reading your joke now…
me: yeah but he’s gorgeous, and drives a beautiful car and I wasn’t impressed with the date, he wasn’t up in my face teasing me like he did before
me: I just forgot that my computer was left on
js: who are we talking bout again?
me: the J___ comment
js: ahh…
js: so what was wrong with this one??
js: can you just get the car, and give it to me ????
me: lol
me: do I have to suck his dick for that?
me: he didn’t inspire me, and made everything all about him
js: depends on the car right…
me: some sort of 4 door leather seat sports car – I don’t know the type
js: ahh.. i like bmw
me: and I don’t like the way he kissed me…not strong enough…too wishy washy
me: and he wasn’t strong enough personality wise for me…I thought he was at first, he was so exciting, but after sitting with him and teasing him like you know I like to he just couldn’t keep up…
js: well thats a given… *laugh*
js: how many men have you known that is strong enough personality wise besides me?
me: Great question
me: You, Mark and maybe Chris, but he drinks too much.
js: list ‘em out…
js: can’t include your dad.
me: lol…damn
js: where is mark and chris ?
js: and who is chris… ?
me: that was insightful…my dad was fun and larger than life
me: Mark is now in Bakersfield and married, Chris is in Fresno and prolly drinking in a bar right now, or drinking on the toilet, or drinking out of a straw on his way home from work…
me: and JS is now married and in Houston – you know him?
js: that cocksucker… !!!
me: lol! I think I will just date my dog.
js: at least you can see her fleas
me: exactly
Until next time –
C
http://www.aweekinthelifeofaredhead.com
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