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I am a BIG fan of . . .

I love this girl.
Bless the designer - may he/they prosper.

There is a little Emily in us all.

-*-


"

A Baaaad Feeling

I have a bad feeling about this.

My dear friend the Lady Diana is on her 4th of 6 chemotherapy treatments.
Her treatment is changed now and a new drug/poison is coursing thro' her veins.
The side effect this time is muscle pain and general achey-ness. The nasties have been amplified by an evil flu bug taken residence in her home. Having kids in school is a risk right there. Alas the flu has got her in it's grip. Last week when her eldest came down with the flu she could not hear me when I suggested she go stay at her parents. This week she has decided this must be the answer should this happen again.

And the bad feeling?


I am rubbing bright red eyes and feeling every bone in my body.
-sigh-

Things of Import

At meetings we discuss matters deemed to be of importance.
Sometimes the irony factor outweighs all.

My favourite ironic moment was years ago when the concern au jour was a clients drinking habits. Shame on the client for taking control of her own life and boozing it up! Of course it was an older woman client that was of such grave concern that it warranted 30 mins of a regional meeting, and not the much older man in the same area who routinely swilled down his medications with a double scotch.

It set the stage for me.

This time around we are concerned about fleas in a household. Just the one household mind you, where we are taking charge of the flea situation. The other thousand homes we enter with cleansliness issues from rats to bears we are overlooking. But ooo ahh to the fleas.

Things to remember

Note to self:

perceived versus concrete
Difference between the right to refuse and the requirement to report
The happy bright things that people think appropriate to say when not seeing the point
Having someone you care about in Iraq
Dreaming in colour

16 year old madness!
and other things discussed

At last being in a meeting with predominantly pro health people who say what they mean.

huzzah
dont forget p

Not a Mystic

Perhaps in former or parallel lives I am atop a mountain contemplating, or healing with my mighty mind always on the side of light and love, but I am no mystic. An intuitive yes.

Someone I enjoy reading is Carolyn Myss; particularly the "Anatomy of the Spirit". Today I picked up "Sacred Contracts".

Altho I take issue with some of Ms. Myss' credentials, (not that it would matter to her), she does have some wisdom to impart.

Seduced by the Dark Side

I succumbed to the lure of 3 tier cable television.
I later succumbed to hooking up my mini television UPSTAIRS in my sanctuary.

Being evil feels good.
Oh dear.

Valentines Day

Happy V day.
-------
>


My inbox contained a Valentine from my diamond, - my motorocycle riding kite building longtime crush.

Life is strange. I long ago gave up trying to make sense of things. Somw of the best times I ever had were in the company of my diamond. The bugger of this all is that timing is everything.

---

Pressies to me:

My tiny little condo is now home to cable television. To celebrate I went out to buy a big ass tv. Being cheap, I bought a 37" Sony trinitron from the thrift. Weighs a ton. Works great. And did not fit into the corner built in. Naturally.

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Oops -

Lady D came over to help me connect up my new little furnace that Dad bought me. Its a Sun Cloud and it is not really difficult to set up= it is more that I get freaked out when assembling things electrical. After we got it working Diana decided to put the wheels on my other closed oil type electrical heater - oops. 3 out of 4 are broken.
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>

Progress ?

Tucker and I walk in the darkness of the early morning. Being myopic I see only the walkway. The building site preparations up the street from me continue and as I drive past on the way home I notice it looking more residential and less and less parklike.

This morning I walked up the way in the full morning light only to see a large machine ripping trees out of the ground and chewing them up. The nice stand of everygreens along the perimeter that we had thought safe are being taken out one at a time.

Overhead there are dozens of birds flapping about trying to figure out where to go.
All the local trees are already taken. It is a sad thing to witness.
--sigh

From the Beach - early morning post

Ahead of schedule. Oh those devout Catholics! Off to early mass almost before I can finish my little morning task. '

My sheltering cedar is two trees down from the eagle tree where this morning a crow and gull share the top branch. It is daylight - barely. The waves lap deceptively gentle against the driftwood. I don't believe them. A band of pink eastward across the visible Islands indicates something other than dawn.

My tree stands just between the sidewalk stroll and the parking. One particular Kayak rental company somehow coerced the Town into designating two spaces here. This seems hardly fair as this is PUBLIC parking on PUBLIC land and they are not the only Kayak company in town.

The crows finally give up on any crumbs being flung from this vehicle but I know if I but open my car door to stand for a moment two dozen gulls will magically appear, greedily hoping. Sorry boys. Not today.

Sometimes a seal plays in the shallows, more often ducks and shorebird glide in groups 100 feet offshore. It feels like Spring beckons and I am part of it. A month or so from now the herring fleet will share the bay with a few barking sea lions. For now it is just the waves.

Now comes the gentleman who walks past my car every Sunday at this time. I see him looking in trying to figure out what I am sitting here doing. In the summertime my uniform and government ID badge show but in the winter I am just some broad sitting at the beach alone in the early morning. I like watching. Walking the stroll does not quite appeal to me before noon.

Our stroll showcases this community. Up the hill the Village sits with it's faux English countryside appeal. The quaintness belies the incredible inaffordability for the average person here to own an average home. It is of no concern to the residents, this has always been an elitist community. No chain stores and very limited beachfront developement. My little city that sits next door is losing the water views to massive development of luxury condos. In five years it will be another Palm Beach or Malibu. Perhaps it already is.

This morning however, the beach is still free. And my illusions are preserved for a little longer. One more glass flower to cut.

God Bless Hospice

After posting that terrible sad story of a woman dying alone it seems only right to insert in this place a cudo for Hospice.

The person who made the call trying to ensure that someone connected to the dying woman be present at her end was clearly a Hospice person. I too am a Hospice person. I too believe that no person should die alone, or in pain, should they so desire.

God bless Hospice for all that they do all over the world. All those who work and volunteer and all who take training with a Hospice society.

God bless you all.

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People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in; their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

THE MOST EVIL WOMAN ! (all caps)

THE most evil woman who ever lived.
The correct quote was:
"She was the wickedest woman I ever met. THE MOST EVIL ! She was mean and nasty and manipulative and utterly horrible."
Imagine embuing someone with that title.

Those sweeping statements of the absolute make my blood chill.
Admittedly people are at their worst when I meet them professionally, but it has been my experience that most people are pretty nice under the skin. A few prickles on top for some, but scratch a little deeper and generally there is decency. The exceptions tend to be those in severe pain. Mental, emotional or physical.

Funny thing about that awful wicked woman - I knew her fairly well.
Difficult - yes.
Strong-minded - yes.
Domineering - yes.
But evil? That is in God's skill set not mine. I am a strong believer in:
"As you judge so will you be judged."
It seems like an apt companion to the Golden Rule by my measure.

In a small town like mine, even with mass immigration of the wealthy newly retired, people know each other or know OF each other. The woman telling me this was a friend ( or so I thought) of a former elderly infirm client of mine. She was a tough old bird - 92 in a wheelchair and just a hair over 350 pounds. I knew this because the sling we used that had a maximum load of 350 broke under her.

Now comes the tragic bit of this tale.
The woman doing the telling told me with great animation how the facility in which Madame Wicked lived called her as her only next of kin/friend on record to tell her that death was imminent. They wanted to know if this woman would come and sit with her as she met her end. To their credit they told her that it was their policy that no person die alone.

And she said:
"I am not losing one moment's sleep over her. Trust me, she wants to die alone. If you or one of the Nurses want to sit with her so be it but I wont be shedding a tear."




How angry do you have to be to say those words?
Or to repeat the story?

Once again I reiterate:

Our resentments will kill us.
------------ +

Never mind Mrs. S. You were a righteous shit at times but I liked you.

A Tylenol Post

Dental work of any kind makes my head hurt. This weeks root canal is still thundering i my head. It hurts!

In the words of Spooner I am a Witty Shiner.

Rollin' rollin 'rollin' -OR- How Bess lost her Nerves

Bess is in her early nineties. We see each other one to four times a week. Bess is a Islander born and bred. She was born in Nanaimo and worked her early years at home with her father, clearing the land. By hand mostly.

When Bess got a bit older she was snapped up by the love of her life and lived happily up and down the Island as work went. Work did not go much for many years in spite of the forestry and fishing industries. Jobs were hard to get and temporary in nature.
Housing was sometimes a tent pitched on Crown Land. Finally things settled down a bit and her husband found a more permanent job. They negotiated with the holder of a tree license to build a cabin near the logging road just outside the woods. As long as the home was on skids, they could do it.

Bess talks about going to the lumber yards and buying "B" grade lumber by the truckload for $5 per. She and her man built their cabin for a grande total of $95.00 . It sat about 30 feet back from the road, at the start of on upslope of a big hill. One of the charms was a huge boulder 9 feet long and 2 1/2 feet high that sat in their front yard as a natural boundary. Her two tiny sons would run their toy cars along it as she gardened.

Bess and her family knew every one of the truckers that went past their place. They could watch the loaded trucks as they came down the big hill. Loaded in those days meant some first growth superlogs. Sometimes the loads were only 2 giants. This paticular day Bess heard the truck blaring on its horn around 3 in the afternoon. She had time to grab the boys and watch as the driver set the steering wheel towards the forest and away from the cabin and jump out to safety.

The boys had no idea that they might be in trouble. Bess calmly told them that if the truck swerved they must run as fast as they could into the woods behind them. All looked well until just before the bottom of the hill, a small rock on the road changed the course of the runaway. It missed the cabin but as it roared past, Bess saw the logs loosening. To her horror, as the truck went off the road, the load spilled down and the giant logs came toward the cabin. Bess put her faith in the boulder. She and the boys ran to the woods. She turned to take a last look in time to see the monster log roll calmly OVER the boulder, crush her front garden completely and stop 2 feet from her front window and door.

I asked Bess if they stayed there much longer.
"No", she remembered, "My nerves were shot - still are- and I could never live near a logging road again."

I guess not.

Panamaian Root Canal

There are times when I view the Universe as finite and dental horrors as endless.
Such as today when my latest dental adventure involved a root canal.
Interestingly, a dentists needle is the only one I do not faint from. This could be because I am already reclining or it could be that I have spent so much time in the big chair that the terror has worn down a little.

When checking for a dentist in Paradise a decade ago, my criteria included giving good needle. The man recommended to me turned out to be a gift from heaven. My dentist is amazing. Prior to Dr. Louis' tender ministrations, I had had a double root canal on my two back molars. Then crowns were put on. It was never for one day without pain afterwards, and some pretty awful oral surgery ensued. The next time I faced a root canal in my new Dentist's chair, my body almost levitated from fear. Despite losing 5 pounds in sweat that day, it was an all right experience.

Today, after finishing my dentistry, I wanted to know how many teeth in my mouth still have roots. Not many. Sometimes I feel like I am shovelling my way across the panama one little spadeful at a time. I just want it to be DONE ALREADY.

And the tooth that had the work today? It was the one that got moved extremely in the dental rearranging. Apparantly it could not take the stress. Since it enflamed I have been unable to wear my night appliance and in a few short weeks that tooth moved so far that the appliance no longer fits. *grrrr*

Research has shown that instead of being what we eat, we are more likely what our mothers ate. Pre-natal nutruition counts for alot in the development of healthy bones. My mother was anorexic. Explains many things. Mom's long gone. Like my bank balance.

Horrors!

All righty my elder sister who fancies herself the dog whisperer of Paradise/West Coast, and who does NOT read my blog as she considers my writing churlish, pendatic and badly punctuated, put my dog on Dogster. I thought it a bit of a lark. Until moments ago when, clicking on Tuckers page I noted Tucker had a diary.

A diary???

I suppose it could be worse. She could be a cat lady. All the signs are there!

haha this one's for you Peter, I know you agree. And you'll note my comments are turned OFF precisely for this reason (*wink)