almost over

ok,so.....my eku class is drawing to a close....this week pregnancy and childbirth...next week aging/dying......and then the final which is not comprehensive.......i have personally learned a lot over the months of studying the textbook....probably things that i should have already known.....next semester it will all come easier off my tongue...the plethora of health information available....but i need not thinkof that until january.....i am due for a bit of a break myself......

ok, so this from the nytimes....Last week, a couple were threatened with fines of $25 a day by their homeowners? association unless they removed a four-foot wreath shaped like a peace symbol from the front of their house.

The fines have been dropped, and the three-member board of the association has resigned, according to an e-mail message sent to residents on Monday.

Two board members have disconnected their telephones, apparently to escape the waves of callers asking what the board could have been thinking, residents said. The third board member, with a working phone, did not return a call for comment.

In its original letter to the couple, Lisa Jensen and Bill Trimarco, the association said some neighbors had found the peace symbol politically ?divisive.?

A board member later told a newspaper that he thought the familiar circle with angled lines was also, perhaps, a sign of the devil.

The peace symbol came to prominence in the late 1950s as the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a British antiwar group, according to the group?s Web site. It incorporates the semaphore flag images for the letters in the group?s name, a ?D? atop an ?N.?

Other people have said the upright line with arms angled down, commonplace in the United States in the Vietnam War, especially, has roots in the early Christian era, representing a twisted or broken cross.

Mr. Trimarco said he put up the wreath as a general symbol of peace on earth, not as a commentary on the Iraq war or another political statement.

In any case, there are now more peace symbols in Pagosa Springs, a town of 1,700 people 200 miles southwest of Denver, than probably ever in its history.

On Tuesday morning, 20 people marched through the center carrying peace signs and then stomped a giant peace sign in the snow perhaps 300 feet across on a soccer field, where it could be easily seen.

?There?s quite a few now in our subdivision in a show of support,? Mr. Trimarco said.

A former president of the Loma Linda community, where Mr. Trimarco lives, said Tuesday that he had stepped in to help form an interim homeowners? association.

The former president, Farrell C. Trask, described himself in a telephone interview as a military veteran who would fight for anyone?s right to free speech, peace symbols included.

Town Manager Mark Garcia said Pagosa Springs was building its own peace wreath, too. Mr. Garcia said it would be finished by late Tuesday and installed on a bell tower in the center of town. 

mean.....

ok, so while i was walking (out the road and back on a break)with my coworker lana this morning she called me mean.......and immediately commented that she needed some of that meanness.....we were talking about how we (the married/collective we) decided that our youngest should earn the cash to buy an ipod herself.....rather than receive it for xmas.....for assorted reasons.....like the fact that her xmas wish list included not one shred of music....and she has never requested a download of any song...and her zippered case of cd's is not full...and the notion of spending $150 to store the bond theme songs, the soundtrack to anastasia, and an old shania twain cd on a 500 song electronic device seemed foolish for a child who has lost more amethyst jewelry (our shared birthstone) than i have ever owned......and when lana called me mean....she was feeling mighty guilty for buying her ungrateful grandsons pricey electronics for xmas....on her salary.....and i pondered her comments as i walked the halls with my pda playing my current downloads over the lunch hour(nelly furtado, defiance,ohio, damien jurado, the weepies, the strokes, mavis staples, artic monkeys, tom waits, pink nasty, ben gibbard, justin rutledge, the lemonheads, wilco, belle/sebastian, the chapin sisters, tori amos, andrew bird, spoon, imogen heap, the mountain goats, and sufjan singing come thou fount of many blessings....)....of course, i have to walk a long way to hear those songs out of my 96 song collection, which also boasts many by yoyo ma.....which aren't good walking songs....and billy collins poems....... ..but again i digress from meanness.....over dinner i read a passage from a memoir i ordered on-line..to the horror of my eldest...after the friday reading in lexington...this author was dismissed as precious...and to that i must object..the memoir about her growing up in woodford county is more than precious....and the piece i read about her aunt tott and the pink pantie girdle is hysterically funny.......she is a blogger in the best sense of the word.....a woman who jotted down the essense of her experience before thinking twice about how others would react, or who would be offended, or how posterity would treat the story.....and when i spouse and my youngest guffawed at the humor relayed in the piece.....it occured to me that if i wasn't so concerned with all of the above issues...there are quite a few older blogs that could be expanded upon...and knitted together into a literary work of some kind....could i just find a uniting theme.........if meanness were a theme i would be in business......

feeling sorry for the christian coilition.....

ok, so this from the washington post.....For the second time in little more than a year, the Christian Coalition of America has named a new leader and then removed him before he ever fully took the reins of the conservative political advocacy group.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a non-denominational megachurch in Longwood, Fla., said he resigned as the coalition's incoming president because its board of directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization's agenda. In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS.

"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus," he said in a telephone interview today. "They began to think this might threaten their base, or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there."

mm notes......much as i disagree with his stance on my womb.....i applaud this man for trying to take on the bigger picture of wwjd.....and the notion that this group prefers to stick to these dual issues rather than embrace the whole of the bibical message is troubling in its hypocracy........the pharasees of our own time......

richmond.....

ok, so i drove to richmond this afternoon to a 'staff' meeting for instructors of the health class i teach at danville eku......a politically correct thing to do....as i got a chance to meet the department chair who hired me sight unseen by virtue of a personal rec of his department 2nd-in-command...a dietitian i have known for over 20 years...who i also got a chance to see and catch up with......granted i haven't seen her recently, as i had to back up the conversation a bit when i mentioned the age of our third child......but i digress.....i have been asked about fall 2007....which assures at least 1 more trip to somewhere funded by my extra-curricular work......life is good......except for the driving to richmond part...i have only been there a handful of times...and had only mapquest-like directions that did me little good given that the directions were in my backpack and not where i could see them...i must have been stuck behind every tractor/graveltruck/slowpoke between here and.....richmond......and it really started to get old.....for someone who yearns to be on time...and i had to park in a sticker-lot....and hope that i wouldn;t get towed that late int he day........i was exactly 8 minutes late to this meeting...and i was horrified to be late.....not knowing anyone except for karen....and her not looking like herself given that she is recovering from thyroid cancer.....omg......thankfully, i did know the way home...and drove a completely unimpeded route back back to danville.....

white blouses not my own.....

ok, so in my dreams last night i was wearing a series of white blouses that i am certain are not mine, and aren't even things i would wear.....kind of like a model wears things and then gives them back rather than keeps them.....and the backdrop for this scenario was our house...only a mirror image with the stairs going the opposite way....with painting tarps everywhere......and throw pillows....thrown about.....huh!......and i was trying to hand out cookies i have made-only they were in bags rather than the boxes that i had carefully packed......no idea what all of this means.....i really could use a good white blouse, but none that i modeled last night is quite my style.....

from salon.com

ok, so this is everywhere on-line..."When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible"

Like father, like daughters: The Bush twins are having such a good time partying in Buenos Aires that they're rejecting requests from U.S. Embassy officials to cut their trip short, ABC News reports. Embassy officials believe that publicity surrounding the twins' visit has created a security risk, and they may also be peeved that all the attention paid to the twins -- they celebrated their 25th birthdays over the weekend -- may be upstaging "publicity plans" by the new U.S. ambassador to Argentina.

While it's apparently true that Barbara Bush's purse and cellphone were stolen out from under the watchful eyes of her Secret Service detail last week, hotel employees tell ABC that the twins were not seen -- as one Argentine tabloid reported -- running naked through the hallways of their hotel.

how was your day, honey?....

ok, so we agreed all around that a 7.5 hour day after 4 days off was un-reasonable....a half-day to readjust to reality would have been just the thing.....because the folks who straggle in after a 4-day closure are not going to be easy cases......i started out with a mamma who is convinced that her infant needs a special formula-one that the state folks will not approve because it is merely a namebrand difference rather than an appreciable difference in...formula.....and the next client is a mamma to a preemie who desparately wants to nurse her infant, but this baby is so small she cannot latch on well....so the mamma is pumping into a bottle after each attempt to nurse directly....and when i approved the doctor's request for supplemental formula she told me of her intent to feed this child nothing but breast milk by the time she gets to 10 pounds.....ya gotta love mammas like this one......and then there was the call from the w-mart person from ark. who lost the application i sent out....and could i send another......and then there was the mamma with the 3 screaming children pregnant with the 4th who let these children roll around on my floor...the 3 year old weighed nearly 60 pounds and had a hard time getting back up off of the floor...and when i mentioned to the mamma that smoking in the house and car can cause ear and lung problems she coughed...then laughed.......so glad i am home...omg...so glad i am home......

cybermonday

ok, so i did buy a few things online for the one child who has made actual christmas requests.....she will probably not like them, but that goes with the age, i suppose......those who fail to make requests will have to take their chances on the 25th.......and/or the 11th for that matter......

oy.......

ok, so after 4 days off i must drag my sorry self back to work......and start to look forward to having 10 days off at christmas.....which is coming up far too soon to suit my lack of general preparations.....

more billy collins.....

ok, so i like this peom..

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

drama......

ok, so it appears that our youngest had quite an altercation in the front door of the bike shop with the high school boy she swears she didn't meet on purpose at the library this morning........and the fact that she did all of her saturday chores yesterday so that she would have the morning free to have time to herself at the library looks mighty suspicious right about now......my eldest has played this to the hilt......with comments like.....'mom, you really don't think this was a planned meeting do you?...how could she possibly have known that this boy would be at the library on a saturday morning?'.....gentle readers, if i am not grey by the age of 55 then there really is a god......

dreams......

ok, so.....in my dreams last night we were traveling threw a series of muddy fields and connected barns...in some sort of refuge mode.....and i had a laptop in its case on my shoulder....and was carrying my vera bradley purse (black with chickens/a goodwill find!)....and at some point i didn't have the purse.....and i spent the remainder of the dream searching for it.....we had part of a garage as shelter...in back of a hotel with blue-painted ironwork trim with stone seahorses in the courtyard......and i kept going through the this bakery-type van searching for the purse.......i stayed in bed til 8:00, late for me, which i can only attribute to quest.......as dreams go i appreciated the details.....the mud was thick and interspersed with stoney outcrops where one could make a cleaner passage if one took the time....and making our way through the barns, i child laying beside a bed caught my leg, and i had to shake her off to continue on with my party.....the identity of my group was quite vague.....i really only recognized folks from my church who had set up a campfire by a tent...but by the time i saw them i was much too busy backtracking in search of my purse......thanjfully, the aforementioned purse was right where i left it when i got up this morning.....is the dream an omen?.....will i lose this purse soon?....must i be vigilant so as not to lose it?......

basking in the goodwill glow.....

ok, so when one does the usual round of goodwills....the haul can range from empty-handed to memorable.....and this evening, as we drove up to the poetry reading at black swan books on maxwell.....i had a notion that i would find the black wooly blazer that i already own in brown.....in my size.....and gosh darn if it wasn;t waiting for me on clay's mill road.....omg.....i just love this blazer.....with khakis, with jeans...for days when it is too warm for a traditional coat, and too cold for....well, you get the picture..the beaumont plaza goodwill was a bust...one can sense this sometimes when walking in the door.....and this evening the feeling of doom was palpable...as the staff had rearranged the sections and the clientele was in collective shock..... i did spend money on 2 pairs of fantasy pants.....a raw ombre pair of silk party pants and a pink silk check pair of summer pedal pushers...both with tags....an omen that i should have heeded...the original buyer(s) never found the right occassion(s)...and while these pants may languish in my closet for a few seasons, i will invest the tacit hopefullness in the purchase that came with the tags.....but i digress from the black wooly blazer...i had to stop the clerk from shoving it into the plastic bag.....and i immediately stowed my grey fleece vest in the trunk and transformed myself from casual matron into serious poetry-reading maven in an instant....the reading was serviceable.....hard to beat billy collins as a showman,and this reading was so informal that the poet (aka-my eldest child's independent study advisor) introduced herself.....her work has merit, and i will enjoy rereading the selections she read..one poem entitled my two daughters walking in a paris park...or somesuch.....i immediately read as my two sons walking in a paris park.....and my mind strayed to a summer's day in the bois, or the luxembourg, or monceau ( a park i may still visit...) not me in the park, but mes fils..chatting conspiratorily without a care in the world.......the second author, a story-teller, did not bring books to sell....which forced me to search on-line for copies of her woodford county memoir...as both poet and storyteller were from woodford county, the audience appeared to be from the versailles area.....the well-dressed lady to our right was either ben chandler's mother or aunt from the conversation she was having with...the lawyer from versailles.....but i digress again from the storyteller..who related a tale an unusually hot summer day when her aunt and her housekeeper were at odds about the aunt going to a bridge party in a dress too snug for such an afternoon, and about how the aunt tried to remedy the situation by putting on her pink panty girdle ...and the story was interwoven with commentary on women who really only dress up for their friends because their spouses couldn't care less about baby blue linen sheathes....the story was....precious...the concept of precious literature has already been dissected enough in this space earlier in the fall......curiously her work reminded me of a blog taken to the next level.......a level that i may have to reach one day when i take the time to develop my thoughts before i spray them into cyberspace......though i have no need to be precious...ascerbic, yes...precious never........

paint and poetry.....

ok, so i am heading off to lexington with andrew to hear one of his professors read from her new book of poems....now that i have successfully painted the back deck, and both sets of steps......life is good.....

ok, so this is a shot of the turkey going into the fryer......actually turkey done this way is quite tasty........ 

remembering single moms in iraq on thanksgiving....

ok, so few things make me cry, but a piece in the washington post with these words was just enough.....When war started in Iraq, a generation of U.S. women became involved as never before. More than 155,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan -- in a wider-than-ever array of jobs, for long deployments, in a conflict with daily bloodshed.

Among their ranks are more than 16,000 single mothers, according to the Pentagon, a number that military experts say is unprecedented.

How these women have coped and how their children are managing have gone little-noticed as the war stretches across a fourth year.

The notion that our economy and cultural setup is such that single mothers have no choice but to go to war to support their families is beyond words.....only tears can do justice to such a reality......when the army pays more than minimum wage, few reasonable people with mouths to feed will turn down the cash.....and at such a cost.......

all accounted for.....

ok, so now that the middle child has called, i can sleep deeply.......the phone calls of assurance are those that only parents can understand.....no matter if a child is away for weekend, the semester, the unforeseen future......the phone call that assures that everything is o.k. is a priceless gift.......

overdone.....

ok, so......i counted 9 television sets in my in-law's home.....nine......how does one respond to this fact?......other than to remind oneself just why we only own the one set......and have no cable hook-up......when one has less piped in entertainment, one finds better things to do with one's time......

alice's restaurant

ok, so last night onour drive south we listened to the full version of arlo guthrie's classic song.....and i had forgotten the part about how arlo escaped the draft because of the thanksgiving day massacre...if you have never heard this song...it is well worth your time,if for no better reason than to say that you have heard it........i also like the part about the twenty seven 8 x 10 color glossies of the 'crime' scene that the judge didn't see because he was blind.....