April's Ramblings,Scrambling&Amblings

I have moved to a different blog.

Now mind you I paid for this one.

Nearly all of my friends and  some of my other acquaintances  are  non-tblog peeps and their comments  were unceremoniously dumped the other day.

Not by me.

So I have moved on.

Thanks for the good times tblog, but we have reached a fork in the cyber road.

For those who want to keep up with me check out my links on the left side .

See you there dear ones !

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Tom would  have turned  53 yesterday if things were different.

Instead , he's been gone for  4  anniversaries , birthdays , Christmas and  New Years.

It's strange how time has muted so much of the searing pain for me .

The 1st year was savage in it's intensity , the 2nd year was  strong melancholia tinged with  sharp pains around the edges,  and now at  the 3rd into 4th year  it's  an undercurrent of  sadness  that flows through my waking moments that also lives in some of my nightmares .

I loved this man for so long , and I still love  the man  that was here  with me for over 20 years .

At the same time though, I cannot cling to a dead man  .

And yet  the tear in the fabric of my spirit bears his name.

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It's here !

My crazy tinsel tree from UrbanOutfitters is sitting on top of our  TV console .

Take a gander at this off -beat beaut :

I almost got the pink version  ....

It's big enough  to enjoy , and yet whack enough to give  normalcy  a kick inna pants.

Hang some of our favorite mini ornaments off it , and there you go. Shiny Instant  Christmas.

Ma woke up  today and decided  that she wanted to bake cookies and sell them on her E-bay shop.

She was waving one of my German cookbooks around , with $$$ signs  in her eyes going on about ,

"Homemade specialty  food is where it's at !"

Now I take responsibility for making her think of the food angle  by making homemade scones for tea  the other afternoon.

She liked them so much , that after she scarfed nearly every last one ,she  then wanted me to start  baking/selling them  off  E-bay.

Well, I do have a catering degree from Harcourt Learning Center* 

Which Ma kept  pointing to  during conversational intervals  .

That was a real waste of my  500 smackers back i n the day .

Do you know that my  Ma hasn't baked anything in 30 years.

She uses  her oven in Germany to store pots .

~This won't end  well~

* You know, the commerical that use to have Sally Struthers from "All in the Family" hawking  the school*

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On Thursday afternoon after school  , Steff and I headed off to a lunch at this  South American restaurant in Clear Lake  called "Chabucas".

Basically  you  get to choose hunks of assorted roasted carcass with spices and sauces plus  some  fruits  that arrive at your table with the spit still attached carried by dark haired  friendly faced waiters  with  assorted Latino accents. 

I never eat enough of the meat for the amount they charge ,  so I didn't get the Full Rodezio ( as it's called), just a sampler plate with salad bar.

A few minutes into our meal these  cops come inside in  full regalia :

black uniforms, leather coats, and bitch boots  .

As they wandered  over to the salad bar with plates and no coats  , I noticed that one of them had an absolutely  exquisitely rounded ass.

I have never seen a man in real life  with such a fine looking peach of a rear end.

Nearly made me drop my manioc cheese biscuit.

I pointed  it out surreptitiously to Steff and we  giggled appreciatively  ...

Yesterday  I was recounting the restaurant  incident ( I don't know why I chose  my parents  to recount this to , momentary idiocy  is all I can claim ) , and my Dad  was sitting there sort of glazedly staring at his coffee cup  in his robe and PJ's.

Of course I wasn't crass or anything like that  , I just noted the  nice  "roundness" of this  steel riding warrior's, em, hiney .

Now comes the reaction , from my Dad the  Bathrobe  Philosopher :

" That's the problem with men and women's relationships these days.Too much emphasis on physical appearance." We talked a bit back and forth after that  , but I am certain he noticed my Mom's  cute figure back in 1962, and he  is just a hypocrite  if he doesn't cop to it !

As the day progressed, Steff and I tackled the issue of gay marriage  with him as well.

* What were we thinking *

We are all certified flaming heterosexuals  in this house,  and  they   spat out the same basic contra same-sex marriage rhetoric , while we tried to  show what we believed .

Then my Dad drags out this old rat maze study  out to try and support his ideas.

Maybe you have heard of this one :

A  study about of this bunch of rats  , who after  becoming  overpopulated  began to "turn" gay  and then ultimately eat each other.

"A sign of the end times for sure ", he said  with alot of emphasis.

He kept citing incidences in nature, and I just  realized that I have come a long way from just a few years ago in this  arena of thought .

We  are free religious in our beliefs here , so we usually handpick and chose  what we   believe to be true for us.

I was always uncomfortable with homosexuality , and didn't understand it.

However, there have been gay people and  cannibalism for thousands of years , so how that  all ties into the upcoming Apocalypse-  I just don't get somehow .

Sometimes  you just have to accept that something just is.

One day I put myself into a gay person's shoes for a few minutes , and it just made me see things differently.

* Although I think cannibalism is totally unnecessary, and very gauche*

 In the end we each held stubbornly to our own beliefs and could  not sway each other, while  labels  were  spewed; they called us "naive" and we called them "close -minded".

I liked the verbal sparring with the parents, because  it's good to  talk about things  that are not tied to everyday life  in particular.

Get the gray cells  churning, stir  up  those lazy molecules.

Also  I like to remind them  that although they have things to teach us being our elders ,we also have brains of our own, and are in fact adults and not their clones. 

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Since 1999 I have been designing my own holiday cards on my various programs on the computer.

Every year I have to top myself  with crazy graphics and  clip art/photo  fusions.

This year I came up with the   loopiest  bunch of scenes yet.

I need to get it all sent out before  the  end of this weekend or peeps won't get  their  slice of my whacked out sense of humor in time .

I both love  and  hate it, I crave the creativity  and  I use to just make  a handful of them, but now I do a few more  as I offered to do a few extra for my parents.

This year  I was prepping  for exams  slowing me down.

Last year I got them out a bit earlier despite  being in a class, but school ended earlier  last year.

Rita left her mark on not only our psyches , and homes  ( no damage thankfully ,stuff still hasn't found it's way out  of several upstairs closets) , but extended our school semesters  , and shortened what we learned by 2 weeks to boot .

I am actually angry when I realize how much I pay for the  books and we  get less than halfway through any textbook at this college.

I don't know if that 's  normal.

This weekend we are putting the lights up outside.

Dad and I do that .

He loves the lights, but it takes two to untangle  them ( no matter how hard you try to keep them  in order) and set up the extension cords and whatnot.

 Mom and Steff  don't get involved   .

Maybe we'll take pictures this year once they are up.

We like multicolored flashing  bulbs the most  around here.

I remember so vivdly how sad  Christmas 2002 was.

It was  so empty feeling.

My husband 's birthday was Dec 13th , and so the whole month we were  dealing with him and Christmas for the previous 20 years.

My husband loved getting together with family ( mostly mine  was who we saw) .

A huge  feast  was heaped on our best  table with some  roast ginormous hunk of  carcass, multiple side dishes , gravies, and stuffing ( with giblets *blarg*).

I made some of the  side dishes , and dessert  then usually my Dad  would bring the wine.

I took every holiday for granted , it all seemed so predictable  .

The same players, pomp and circumstance, and  the same  drowsy faces filled to capacity ,fighting the dog for the best seats in the house in front of the boob tube.

Complacency had become my middle name.

I still have the table , and a few nights a week those of us left  gather at it .

This is the  4th Christmas without him, and it gets both easier and harder  every passing year .

I still look through crowds of people  to see if I just lost him in there  somewhere ...

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    You Are A Lily  

 You are a nurturer and all around natural therapist. People see you as their rock. And they are able to depend on you.You are a soothing influence. You can make people feel better with a few words.Your caring has more of an impact than even you realize.
  I am half German, and traditionally  lilies are for funerals, so that result is  a little  off-putting for me.Granted , that 's sweet stuff they are blathering on about , besides it being a death flower and all ... 

What Flower Are You?

  

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My last name starts with a "Y".

The past  35 years have consisted of me waiting until the last name called  for anything  in classes.

Except for my  sophomore PE class  in Tampa with that Cuban guy  whose name started with a "Z" after me .

He was quite the  Latino hottttie as  I  fondly remember.

* End of Flashback*

 I waited with trepidation for my philosophy test today , I saw my "A" tanking downhill and bursting  into flames , as I felt I had  seriously flubbed my essay question .

  "I think therefore I am"  -Cogito ergo sum -( Rene Descartes )

An explanation of  how he had arrived  at this  quote was  asked of us.

I had thrown around  a few big words , i.e . Descartes  ruminated  on the question of thinking and being , then something about  sentient beings and well you can imagine the pile of wordy goo that followed in my effort to not  just regurgitate what was in our notes.

  I felt I had so horridly missed the mark  that I should  lower my gaze shamefacedly  if he looked directly at me  while returning my test..

To my utter amazement, it said excellant on the top of my paper and  I got the full points allowed ( huh?), but I  mis sed  an "A" by two measly  points.

Instead I had missed a few simple questions , and  misread my notes to boot on a few  questions as well .

Then I also missed  writing some stuff  down  ( which is strange as I transcribe every  single  utterance this fellow says to us and I missed 1 day the whole semester).

Let me add  this pertinent info to this  potent  mix of  dufus- is -too -kind- of- a -word  and tomato slices  on the eyes  ...this class only gives open book/notes tests.

I had a solid "A" until now .

I haven't made a "B'" in over  21  years , "A's" dominating since I started  school again last year .

If you're looking for me , I'll be the one in the corner  with the "L" on my forehead  muttering something about "Cogito ergo Loser"...

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So I am at Wally-World  yesterday and decide to get myself a musical Christmas album.

Maybe that would  make me feel somehow more festive...

I reached  into a sales bin  and pulled out a  CD for  just under 4 smackers.

I caught  the word "dulcimer ", and thought  of something stringed,being the savvy musical expert that I am ...

As I opened  it up to put into my CD rom drive once home  , I notice  that it says "Hammered " Dulcimer.

Several musical scenarios pop into my brain:

1) This beautiful woman in a  flowing chiffon gown , hammering a harp.

2) The same woman drunkenly plucking  a harp and knocking back rum toddies .

Either way would be a break from the  Christmas carol norm, so what the hay.

I google it , while  the sweet plucking fills my living room with holiday  ambiance.

It's great to  create my Christmas  cards by  , then suddenly I click on a  link...

it's just a zither :!:

http://members.aol.com/kitchiegal/hdulcimer.html" title="http://members.aol.com/kitchiegal/hdulcimer.html" target="_blank"http://members.aol.com/kitchi...

Oh, well another illusion shatterd...

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Seen on a billboard  just before  the turn onto  Beamer Rd  to our college campus:

Good Deal-Good Feel.

Cracks me up everytime.

It's for a car dealership, not a strip club advertisement...

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