Notes from the Roller Coaster

A week ago today, my husband had a second heart attack. Needless to say, we’ve been in a tailspin ever since. And yet, here he is, safe and sound, after undergoing angioplasty and having two stents placed in one of his bypass grafts from 11 years ago. He is a lucky man to be alive in such a time.
Thursday morning he complained of chest pains; it was about 8 a.m. Knowing this was real, I immediately called 911, and within minutes, paramedics were here and a chopper landed in the field across from the house. He was airlifted after he was stabilized, to a hospital in Joplin, Mo. I had to get dressed and follow by car.
This was a scary trip. Before I left, I left messages on Twitter and Facebook, and called all the kids. I had no idea what I would find when I got to Joplin, but when I arrived, they gave me a name tag and told me that Larry was in the cath lab and they were cleaning out blood clots and putting in stents. In a few minutes, his doctor joined me in a room and told me the good news – he was going to be OK.
Larry is lucky; he had no heart damage from this and he is much better right now than he has been in quite some time. I, however, am suffering from post traumatic shock. When he suffered the heart attack, I was, of course, quite upset. In 1998, when he had his first attack, I was calm and collected and in control. This time I was not. I was in a daze, and unable to function properly. For one thing, Larry had been sick for weeks with a vague pain in his back that rendered him almost unable to walk; this was a very scary situation in itself. This situation must have been related to the heart attack, because his back is almost well now.
But I’m not well.
Today I went to the doctor and told him about my aches and pains and my crying jags. I simply cannot stop crying over every little thing.
He put me on Cymbalta.
I hope it works.

Thank Goodness it’s Over!

Yesterday afternoon my job at the retailer ended, as the contract was done and not yet renewed. All six of us were given walking papers, which is sad for the other five. I’m elated. Now, don’t get it wrong: I am a hard worker and love to work. I got up at 4 a.m. and have been working ever since, but on stuff I want to do.
The job was not for me. For one thing, you have this behemoth parking lot. Think the size of the parking lot at Six Flags, and double it. Yesterday morning I parked my Honda in the fifth row from the turnstiles, and walked the approximately quarter mile to the entrance. As I walked, so did others. It hit me that we were like the Eloi, marching into the underground where the Morlocks lay waiting to slaughter us. Not a pleasant association.
Now I can put my focus on myself and do the work I need to do. About two weeks into this temp job, it occurred to me that now was time to get into real estate full time and make some sparks. I’m experienced at it, and I’ve been doing it part time since 2004. I know how to market homes, and do it cheaply, and I know how to sell and how to list. So now is the time. I’m going to work at it in Arkansas and in Missouri, as I straddle the line and have licenses in both. I’m excited. I’m also continuing my Ph.D. work at the University. So, in essence, I have the best of all worlds here. Wish me luck, dear readers!

Working as a temp, revisited

I have been working as a temp for about five weeks now, and I hate it. I now remember why this type of work does not suit me well. In one respect, I feel like a bad child who needs to be punished: the money is not the best, but that is not the issue – the real problem is the job itself.
The hours are fine: I go to work at 7 and get off at 4, working an eight-hour day. No problem with that. My job is proofreading. I learned it in about three hours, and with some exceptional issues that come up now and then, that was all the learning necessary. There are six of us working in the group, and if we had enough work to keep us all busy, it would be great. But we don’t. Every morning we look in the queue for work, and there might be one or two things there. Later a dozen might come in. It takes 15 minutes to do one proof, and we end up fighting over the ones that come in, much like dogs over a bone.
When that is over, we sit and wait. The waiting is the hard part. I find my mind wanders, and I get extremely sleepy.
I would rather this job end and I collect my unemployment. There are other things I want to be doing with my life.

Working as a Temp

I lost my job in May, but found work almost immediately as a temporary employee. As a temp, a worker has no benefits and no job security, but often makes higher wages than one would make, say, at a fast food establishment. I make $13.50 an hour, which is not great, but it will pay bills. I can also work overtime.
My new “job” is working as a temp for a vendor who contracts with a very large, international retailer based in a city near where I live. We work on site, which is a behemoth area of such gigantic proportions I hesitate to even compare it with anything. Let’s just say it is huge, and contains many buildings, all strategically linked to each other with hallways and walkways. The footprint of this complex is protected by security that would make any high-level government operation proud. You can’t get in without a badge, and even then you are restricted to access during certain hours of the day; my access begins at 6:30 a.m. and ends at 7 p.m., but is only active from Monday through Saturday. And Saturday access begins at 8 and ends at 1 p.m.
My job is proofing labels. The company that I work for (through the temp agency – I’m not actually employed by them) is a marketing and advertising company that specializes in setting up shop inside a large company to take on certain tasks. Tasks such as creating packaging designs and putting them on the fast track for completion. The labels I’m currently working on are a redesign of the retailer’s house brand products. It is very easy work. Easiest job I’ve ever had.
I learned the job in four hours. They said I was the fastest person yet to be trained. I’m already outpacing everyone else in dong the work. and I’ve had no errors to speak of, yet. I’m beginning to realize that all the years of working as a self-starter, being out there on my own and having to create solutions on the fly, have served me well. The past nine years are a good example: I was thrust into a teaching position with very little training, and expected to carry a heavy load from the beginning. The second semester I was asked to add to my teaching load by taking on the school newspaper as an advisor; the advisor quit and moved out of town with very little notice, leaving them in the lurch. I did it, and it nearly killed me. But I did it for one semester while they looked for a replacement. Then I was given the job of creating a new major for the department, and teaching in that major, carrying a load of five classes a semester, with three to four preps – meaning three to four different courses. I was also asked to teach sections on the Internet. I did it.
So here I am, after my job was cut from the payroll, working as a temp for this company in Arkansas. Can I be blamed for being bitter? I need some time to regroup. I can’t just jump back into the water, not yet. The temp job is great for now. And it beats unemployment insurance.

Straight Talk on the Abortion Debate

I was a young woman in 1973 when abortion became legal in the United States, and I remember the horrible stigma that was attached to having or needing an abortion both before 1973 and afterward. The double standard was very much alive – men were expected to want sex and seek it out, but women were supposed to either wait until marriage or take charge of birth control to ensure that an unwanted pregnancy would not occur. The sexual revolution was upon us, but only the men were truly freed by it; women were still subject to society’s rules and social constructs. For example, a woman may want to have sex, and may enjoy sex, but were warned not to expect a commitment from a man if they offered sex without a contract; if they became pregnant, the burden was upon the woman to prove that a man was the father. DNA tests were not available, so most paternity tests were simple blood tests taken after the child was born. Blood tests were exclusionary only, and could only prove a man was not the father; they could not prove a man was the father. In most cases, women were on their own if they were single, had no resources, and wanted to bear a child to term. I knew several women who defiantly did this, either because they waited too long to have the abortion, or because they truly didn’t want to abort the child. But more women chose to avoid raising a child alone if they weren’t wanting to do this, and sought an abortion.

Abortion was never the easy way out. Unless the woman seeking to abort lived in a metropolitan area with clinics, and unless the woman could afford to pay for the service, which was usually two or three times what a person would make in one week’s wages, getting the procedure done required traveling far and borrowing big. As a consequence, shame was layered on top of shame, and usually the woman was left alone to deal with the issue, while the clock ticked along and the windows of opportunity threatened to close at any second. A simple medical procedure, abortion was not available easily, cheaply, or without shame and stigma. It was also not covered by medical plans. Secrecy was vital, because if a woman let it slip that she was having or had had an abortion, the social consequences were often swift and painful. It was a stigma that made an already uncomfortable decision even more uncomfortable.
After 1973, states began the process of restricting access to abortion, and public outcry, usually brought on by religious groups, increased the stigma of abortion clinics. A result of the anti-abortion groups efforts was to encourage most hospitals to stop having abortions performed within their walls. Most doctors stopped offering them in their clinics, preferring to have “abortion clinics” perform the procedures, instead. And abortion clinics began to close, as fear of retaliation by pickets and anti-abortion activists grew. In 1976, several clinics in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas performed abortions. Today a woman may go to Fayetteville, Ark., Tulsa, Okla., Wichita, Kan., Columbia, Mo., or Overland Park, Kan., or St. Louis, Mo., to have an abortion. For more information on abortion clinics in all states, go to this site: abortion.com
Ironically, abortion is still a safe procedure, even more safe today than in 1973, thanks to more streamlined procedures. Cost-wise, the price is about $600 for most services, which is about the same today as it was in 1973 in actual buying power. The stigma, however, remains. President of the U.S. Barack Obama has asked that we all sit down and reasonably discuss the abortion issue, and seek ways to make it less necessary. He suggests we work to make unintended pregnancies rare, offer better assistance to women who choose to carry pregnancies to term, and make adoption processes better and easier.
As for my opinion on this debate, I firmly believe that every woman should make their own reproductive decisions; I also believe that our society must make those decisions easier by offering low cost or free birth control to all women, along with reproductive health care. What I mean is, we should have free or very low cost clinics available to every woman of reproductive age, so they can manage their own reproduction without going through layers of paperwork or approval by parents, husbands and the government. This alone will negate the need for many abortions; I know of several girls who got pregnant simply because they couldn’t afford to buy birth control or couldn’t afford to go to the doctor to get birth control, or felt these options were not available to them because of parental consent, etc.
I also believe that abortion should remain legal, and it should be more available to women than it currently is, geographically and cost-wise. I do not believe that a woman should be subjected to “counseling” for this procedure that is greater than the counseling a person would receive for any other medical procedure.
Some will say that abortion is morally wrong. I disagree. It is more of a moral wrong to bring a child into the world that you do not want or cannot take care of. A child should not be unwanted or neglected. And women are also important; it is vital that we start caring about all people, not just the wealthy or elite. A nurse friend of mine told me that before abortions were legal, many women with means would have “D&C’s,” or dilation and currettage in the hospital, performed by their gynecologists, who performed this procedure for “other” medical reasons. The necessity for these procedures was rarely questioned, and it was never termed “abortion.”
Today this procedure is available for all women, but not without substantial cost and stigma. I say it is time to remove the stigma, and applaud President Obama’s efforts to reopen this debate for reasonable discussion and review.

My Raison d’être

What is my reason for living, for getting up every morning, making coffee, and traveling throughout the day? The truth is, for many years I’ve been wondering about that. I think for a long time I’ve been depressed, under a cloud of my own creation, not really engaged in any way with the world. Not that I’ve done this willingly, but it has happened.

I’m a great deal like my Dad, a man who lived to work. We kids always knew that we were not his raison d’être. He loved us, yes. But he was very involved in the world away from home, a world he lived in most of the time when I was growing up. In fact, I don’t remember him being home much at all for the first five years of my life, when he worked in another city and came home on weekends on the bus or train. Then for three years, we all lived under the same roof, when we moved to St. Louis and lived there. Dad was even home for lunch! And after we came home to McDonald County and he retired from the military, he worked in the same town again. But Dad always had a look in his eye of wanderlust. I always knew that if he had been given an assignment to go out of town, he would have gone with glee.

And I’m just like him. For nine years I worked at a job that required me to drive 100 miles a day. Now that job is gone. I knew it was going, and was trying to prepare myself for it, but now that it is gone, I feel totally lost and bereft. I don’t enjoy being a housewife; and my husband is retired and hangs out at the house all day, criticizing my every move. I need space. I need a new raison d’être.

McDonald County High School Graduates Seniors – Police officers keep crowds at bay

McDonald County's Finest Hold Back the Hordes

I’ve never been so pissed off in my life. Our granddaughter was graduating from MCHS today and the overflow crowd spilled out onto the football field and beyond, with no place to sit or stand. Three times we were forced back from a vantage point by gun-toting sheriff’s deputies, on hand to offer crowd control.  I noticed that they were being especially effective with us if we were Latino or looked poor. What are they going to do next year? Bring out the shields and tear gas? Ridiculous. It is time the high school expanded the football stadium to at least twice as many seats on the Home Side – in order to accomodate the crowd that continues to grow every year.

Congratulations, Graduates!

Members of the Board and Administration on the Dais

It was cool today, but the sun was harsh. Wise to shield the rays with umbrellas.

Graduates file in as Pomp and Circumstance plays over the loudspeakers

A lucky graduate is congratulated by some dignitary.

Another lucky grad!

Channeling the Dead – and Repairing My Louis Vuitton

The old sewing kit I found at an auction a decade and a half ago.

For most of my life I’ve been able to communicate with dead people. Now, before you get all weirded out, let me explain that it isn’t like you think. I don’t go around with a crystal ball or hold séances, or get booked on Oprah or Dr. Phil. None of that. I just talk to them in my mind and they tell me things, and it is usually mundane. For example, after I go somewhere different, say, like Paris, I might come back with people in my head who help me in the kitchen for awhile. I love to cook and I’ve had lots of help in this regard. How do I know I’m channeling the dead? Because I haven’t clue, often, how to cook something or do something, and I just open my head and let the “cook” pop in. They actually talk to me, and it’s not anything that I would have in my head to begin with. It’s usually a lot like Rachael Ray:

Me: “Ok, here we are, in the kitchen with the olive oil and the pasta and the special herbs, and I want to cook that luscious dish we had in Paris.”

Them: “Thought you would never ask! OK, let’s get started. First, do this. No, not like that. Like this. Take it easy there. Not too much garlic. What is it about Americans and their garlic!!!”

And so on.

I’ve written about this phenomenon before, and I know a lot of people don’t believe it. But I don’t care. I just know it is true. The only problem with the cooks I bring home with me is, they get bored and leave. I think my ordinary cooking is a turn off, and they go forth to better and more exciting venues. But last year, one of my muses came along and helped me get started on an herb garden, one that I still have and am embellishing at the moment with fresh seedlings. I had no idea what to raise or how to go about it, but with the help of this unnamed muse, we are doing great.  I’ve also been able to channel my grandmother on my father’s side (my mother’s Mom doesn’t seem to be around at all) and my husband’s mother, who has taught me how to make bread. My grandmother taught me to make soap and told me stories about how she made soap when she was young. She even told me about making lye, during the Depression, when they couldn’t afford to buy it. What is really strange is, during her lifetime I had very little real connection with this woman, my grandmother. We weren’t exactly close. But today when she comes by to help with the canning, for example, she often brings people with her, and we have a nice time in the kitchen or the garden talking about it all. And she loves to come by when I’m hanging the sheets on the line to approve of my method ( or to tsk! if I’m hanging one crooked!)

Today I had another experience with channeling, this time with a former Earth resident who owned a much-loved, but shabby sewing kit I bought 15 or so years ago at an auction. The kit was not for me, so much, because I have a strong (and I mean strong) aversion to sewing. Let me explain – in junior high we were forced to take home economics, and my teacher, a Mrs. Cleo E—- (I swear to God, her first name was really Cleo, but I’ll remove all but her last initial for privacy, in case she has descendants who surf the web), was terrifying. I was not fast, was clumsy, and hated the fact that as soon as I got my machine threaded, it would destroy whatever I was trying to sew. I swore when I got through the required two years of that torture that NEVER again would I sew. The thought of needles gave me shuddering, painful fear. My mother is an accomplished seamstress who designs her own patterns and sews her own clothes more often than she buys off the rack. She has a Bernina, so if you know anything about sewing, I’m sure you will be extremely jealous. I was told by one of my sisters that under no circumstances was I to think I would end up with that Bernina when Mom passes. Ha! As if! Just give me her food processor. But I digress.

The sewing kit was wonderful. My husband adores it (he does our sewing, buttons, etc.). It contained all this stuff – rhinestones in an envelope marked “sew on as needed,” a little paper sack with a bit of hard clay that I think is used to sharpen needles, an old powder box full of straight pins, snaps, girdle fasteners, hooks and eyes, thread, darning yarn, a wooden thing to put in the sock when you darn it, and all manner of other lovely things. If you like to sew. Well, today I was cleaning my old, wonderful Louis Vuitton, a purse I bought in Paris in 2004 and is beginning to show its age, but is still serviceable. For some time now, the zipper was messed up, coming apart at the end because the threads were pulled away. I decided to fix it, but I didn’t have a clue, so I went to the sewing kit. Here’s where it gets interesting: I knew that the owner of that kit was around, and accessible, but she really didn’t care for me. I had lumped her into the same box with my memories of dear Cleo. She preferred my husband, and helped him out a lot, although he never realized it. He always says things like, “This woman who owned this kit was really something,” after repairing a missing button and going through the kit to find what he needed. But today I opened my mind and the lady came to my aid.

“Here, we can fix this,” she started. “But be careful. Most of that thread is rotten,” and she proved it by having me break the thread from a spool, which almost disintegrated into dust. A skein of darning yarn, though, was fine and passed the test.

“Use a darning needle,” she said. I grabbed one. “No, smaller,” she urged.

Finally, with the right needle and the darning yarn, which was exactly the right color for the bag (go figure!) I stitched the zipper at the end and tried it out. Not only did it work perfectly, my “muse” showed me how to force the zipper down to the new “stop” and line up the tines so it was like new.

So, Mrs. Who-Ever-You-Were, thanks. And I know you are no Cleo.

The treasure trove inside the sewing kit has always intrigued my husband.

The repaired zipper (see the stitches on the far left)

Unemployment sucks

This week I was turned down on two jobs I applied for since getting my pink slip. Both times it was like getting a kick in pants. Not fun. When you know you are qualified, heck, even OVER qualified, it really hurts to not even get an interview. The only thing I can figure is, so many people are out of work right now that the competition is fierce. But I have heard such horror stories of people who have been out of work for months and months, that it is truly frightening to be one of those. I have only nine months of unemployment insurance, and after that I will be on my own.
Unemployment insurance is not a replacement income, especially in Missouri. Our great state is the lowest paid of all the states around here – $320 max. In Oklahoma and Arkansas, the top pay is $407 or so. In Kansas it is $360. So, what is with Missouri?
It makes me madder than hell to realize that Missouri workers are getting shortchanged. At least with Obama we will be getting an extra $25 a week. Of course, they never said a thing about that in the paperwork that came from the unemployment folks in the mail today. There was one letter that even pissed me off. They are asking me, a second time, what it was I did that caused me to lose my job, as though I lied to them on the online application.
I didn’t “do” anything – my job was eliminated. It is humiliating to have to go over this again with them, in tiny, tiny print. I think it is akin to being raped. Enough already! Can’t you see I’m in mortal pain here! Geesh!

Hello world!

I thought I would start blogging on here so I could say my peace. And just to make it perfectly clear, I am not a cow. Heck, I don’t even own a cow. But I saw this picture on the Internet the other day and stole it to use on my blog. I doubt if the cow will mind.

As this is my first post, I thought I would set the tone. I’m really ticked. No, I ‘m really pissed off. I plan to let the world know how I feel. If you don’t like it, then leave. Ha Ha Ha. Not really. Feel free to tell us what you are angry about. The world is full of ticked off people, especially the Ozarks. Let’s let it hang!