Wake up Hillary!!! It's all a dream. You just don't have the delegates.

From my flickr file.

(Apologies to Sageweb.) I Found this ad in a McCalls magazine from 1952, and I couldn't resist. It seemed so eerily timely!

I have to admit, it's getting better

Hello my dears, just wanted to give a final health-of-the-husband update, and then I hope we can put this all behind us and get on with more frivolous fun.

It appears that his stomach and esophagus have begun to work again. He's still on meds to force them to work, but has forgotten the meds a couple of times recently, and the food went down happily. So now he has to try and get his weight back up - to go from concentration-camp skinny to regular-old-him skinny. So, after all I've been through, this poor middle-aged woman has to endure watching him force himself to eat ice cream, buttered toast, cookies, whole milk.... The illness, the ten-hour surgery, the ICU vigil, I could manage. But this .... is torture.

He gets on the scale every day and comes downstairs bitching about how hard it is to gain weight. Well that's what happens when you send a man in to do a woman's job. I can gain weight on a moving tread mill. I can gain weight with my eyes closed AND my mouth closed. I'm that gifted at it.

So you can see that the world is slowly settling back on it's axis and my priorities are slipping back toward self absorption. I still feel like one of those stuffed animals our dog disembowels all over the living room carpet; floppy with just a little bit of fluff left inside. I haven't had anything remotely resembling a deep thought in ages. Don't want to think. Just want to garden and watch things grow during the day, and pursue escapist piffle at night. In the words of the immortal John Lennon, "Whatever gets you through the night." Right?

Nearest book meme

J.B. at My Grey Gardens tagged me for this. Here are the rules:

1..Pick up the nearest book.
2.Open to page 123.
3.Locate the fifth sentence.
4.Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5.Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

So, the book nearest at hand (well, the book nearest me that has a 123rd page. LOTS of kids books around.) is Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen. Here's the text. (The speaker is Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennett's best friend, who is about to marry a complete boob.)

"I am not romantic you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable
home; and considering Mr. Collins's character, connections,
and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness....

(Oh Charlotte, how can you? He's such an utter nincompoop!) MY GOD, I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!! I've read it countless times, seen every movie of it (a pox on the Keira Knightly version), and it never grows stale. Time for me to get off the soap box and start tagging. I'll tag Doralong, Miss Janey, Sageweb, Yellowdog Granny, and Susan at One Woman show. Ladies, simply ignore this tag if you want to, or play, if you like! (It's easy and actually kinda fun.)

Kids say the darndest things....

Riding in the car, the other day, my youngest piped up from the back seat and said, "Look mommy! Vietnam!" (Her oldest sisters were adopted from Vietnam). I looked where she was pointing and saw a bumper sticker that said "Vietnam Vet."
"Hmmm...." I said, noncommitally, basically ignoring her.
Then she said, "So that person's a veterinarian?"
I said, "I don't know. Why?"
"Well, that's what it says... Vietnam Vet."

Vietnam Veterinarian. It's been making me smile for days. Don't you wish we lived in a world where hoards of young men and women were trained as veterinarians and sent abroad to heal other country's ailing animals? I think we might actually have achieved peace in the Middle East by now if, in Iraq and Afganistan, we had squads of people going house to house saying, "Open up! We hear you're harboring a sick goat in there! We're here to help!"

It's a great day in America, well in California anyway

I just heard the news that the California supreme court ruled same-sex marriage legal!! The NPR reporter described the scene outside the court - elderly gay and lesbian couples hugging each other and weeping at being allowed, at last, to have the marriages of their hearts recognized legally. I'm so happy that right has won out today in California.

Abrabarak Lincobama

CONO, originally uploaded by dingler1109.

Saw this wonderful graphiti stencil on flickr. Thought I'd share it with all of you.

Hey there, I'm still alive!

The first time my husband had surgery (six years ago) I couldn't read any fiction for two years. And I'm a person who normally always has a book going, otherwise I feel insecure. This time around, I can still read, but I don't seem to have much talk in me. Again, as you all know by now, normally I'm a big blabber, words just flowing out like beer at a keg party. But now I can't think of anything much to say to anyone. My wonderful family calls on the phone and I just say, "Well, his stomach's not working on his own yet, so we're just waiting. That's about all that's going on...." I have thank you letters to write to the many friends who were so kind and generous, and generating even more than "Thanks" seems impossible.

I guess I'm just worn out. I know, this too shall pass, and I hope some of you will still be there when I remember how much I love words and how fun they are to put together into sentences. Till then, much love to all of you.