no more junk room

the room formerly known as the "junk room" is no longer. It's a bedroom now, with a brand new king size bed. The whole family fits comfortably, and we all four of us slept together last night for the first time in... well, for the second time ever! Not only that, but the "toy room" also has a bed, though a much smaller full/double size, and will soon be transformed into a bedroom as well. I was slaying dust monsters all day yesterday. Not dust bunnies, these were huge, with teeth and attitude! I feel almost like, nearly nine years later, we are finally making this house, that used to be my parents' house, ours. Major decluttering has been happening, but we aren't anywhere near done with it yet. My insane attachment to things that only serve to remind me of an unpleasant past... well, that can't be healthy, and I'm really working on it.

swim suit dreams

hm... can I justify spending $30+ on fabric and sewing instructions to make my own swim suit? One that actually fits my measurements? I think the main reason behind the fact that I won't wear a bathing suit is because I have never had one that fit properly, not since I was in my 20's and happy in a two piece bikini, and would buy two different sizes for the top and bottom, and certainly not after having kids and my bra size exploded.

Now then, if price were no issue, and if I were built like a 15 year old boy just after a growth spurt, I'd get one of these... As far as I know, I never was a B cup size.

very interesting article

link "America's use of corn (maize) to make ethanol biofuel, which can then be blended with petrol to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, has already driven up the price of corn. As more land is used to grow corn rather than other food crops, such as soy, their prices also rise. And since corn is used as animal feed, the price of meat goes up, too. The food supply, in other words, is being diverted to feed America's hungry cars.
...
But corn-based ethanol, the sort produced in America, is neither cheap nor green. It requires almost as much energy to produce (more, say some studies) as it releases when it is burned. And the subsidies on it cost taxpayers, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, somewhere between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion a year."

hearing test

Littlest one failed her hearing test again yesterday. Then they cleaned gobs of earwax out of her ears and tested her again. She has normal hearing and all is well. No more doctors, please, at least for a little while!

thrift store goodies

Went thrifting Monday. Apparently so did the rest of the population that did not have to go to work the day after Easter....

so I got this fabric. Wait! Really, I did. I couldn't help it. There was this big pile of it, all rolled up with packing tape around it, for like $3. But it's a lovely shade of green. I wear lots of green. I don't have any warmer skirts, I generally only wear skirts in summer when it's too hot for jeans. This is lovely heavy-weight cotton (blend?) almost like denim but not quite, and velvety soft, too. I have these plans to make lots of totes and handbags, this fabric would be perfect for that, too. Have had those same plans for years, really. Ever since I began on a certain project something like four or five years ago.... (wait, there might still be a picture in my photobucket album) Okay, so yesterday I finished the tote I started way way back when I was pregnant with my second child. It's gorgeous! I never finished it because I botched the zipper on the inside pocket. So yesterday I ripped out the zipper and finished the pocket without it. So I got this lovely fabric home and it appears to be the bolt end, with some marks on it, but so what? It was really inexpensive, and I really like the color. Seems to be at least four yards of it.

And I found a Vera scarf. Bright orange poppies on a brown background with orange border. 99 cents. yup, had to take that home. Looks so very 70's with the orange and brown, but has the ladybug beside her signature which means it's probably early 60's instead. That woman was so ahead of her time! Justified the expense of purchasing a different scarf with a Picasso painting printed on it for $9 by telling myself I was going to sell the Vera one on ebay. HA!! I already have one Picasso scarf that I purchased in San Diego on my 19th birthday. This "new" one isn't as pretty, but it's twice as large and the colors would match the clothes I wear a bit better.

Did not find but one lone ancient Brother sewing machine (priced way too high, IMO), and no attachments or accessories of any sort for any type of machine. That was my whole reason for going thrifting in the first place. I figured, if Mom got my sewing machine at the thrift store, maybe they'd have the attachments that goes with it, too.



today, hopefully, is the last doctor visit for littlest one. It's just a hearing test. She failed her newborn hearing screen (most likely still had amniotic fluid in her ear canals), and pediatrician and I wanted her retested. She seems to have a slight speech delay to me, especially for a child who talks to adults all day rather than other little kids in daycare. Or maybe my perspective is a bit skewed because of how early big sister was speaking clearly. And she has a cousin with major hearing loss who wears hearing aids. So it's rather important we have it looked into, just in case.

Stephen Hawking

has a page on MySpace! link Okay, I am so not with it, still afraid to sign up...

...wandered over there looking for some friends who have lost touch. Randy and Claudia, pick up the phone!! Everyone has been missing you and thinking of you lots lately!!!

help, ideas needed!

Now then, J wants a birthday party, like, next week. UGH! I am so unprepared. Need to get on the phone but it seems nobody ever answers when I try, so I don't bother trying much anymore. Anyway, as I already posted, she's having a dance party, with music, and dress ups, and stuff of that nature. She's also inviting a few boys, which is where I need help. What sort of dress ups would suit little boys at a dance party? I have no problem with them wearing the tutus and skirts, but... Not only that, but I have no idea what day the party is going to be!! Saturday the 21st is her actual birthday, but Saturdays just don't work for our little friends whose parents are divorced, so she wants it to be before her birthday. At this point, I'm starting to think after would work best, give me that much more time to figure out what I'm gonna do! Especially since we are also excitedly anticipating visitors from out of town to stay here with us around the same time, and I still don't have anywhere for them to sleep (DH promised he's going to look into purchasing a mattress today after work). The music of choice is Dan Zanes. But my little DJ has also chosen a very eclectic mix of tunes ranging from "Funky Stuff" greatest funk/disco/dance songs ever to Vivaldis Four Seasons (which I do not have on cd). It promises to be quite interesting indeed.

too funny!

Detroit News reports that the president nearly blew up a Ford hybrid, and himself, when he attempted to plug an electric cord into the fuel tank.

this and that

Waynes this and that is a website I found last year while searching for information on bean innoculant (really). Oh, but there's so much more! This guy describes his website, "Wayne Schmidt's multi-topic site covering everything from kaleidoscopes to electric rocket engines (This site is viewed best in Internet Explorer.)" He has apparently changed things around a lot since I found the site last year. Click Come on, you know you wanna.

sunrise service

I got up before daylight, turned on the computer and microwaved a cup of left over coffee. It's very quiet in the house, everyone is still peacefully asleep. Quieter than usual, actually, since I turned off the filter in the frog tank to feed them. I hear the first birdies chirping outside, and I'm tempted to open the blinds and watch the sunrise. But maybe not, the neighbors might see me in all my early morning glory *snort* braless (not a happy vision when you wear the size bra I do), greasy hair, Marlboro sweatshirt, stretch pants, and all.

Big sister J was asking about Easter, had it confused with Christmas, since they are both about Jesus, I suppose. I told her that Easter is the day Christians celebrate Jesus going up to heaven. Upon further questioning by my very bright daughter, I explained to her that Christmas celebrates his birth, and that Easter celebrates his death. I'm glad I didn't have to elaborate on it much more than that. I think she's still a bit young to be told stories of torture. We already had an egg hunt, but unfortunately not before the weather turned chilly, and we have been celebrating Spring for some time now in many different ways. She wants to celebrate Easter, too. So I asked her if she'd like to get up before light and go to sunrise service at church. Needless to say, she did not find that idea very attractive, but it was a chance to talk about the symbolism of the sun rising and Jesus' ascent, which is what it's all about anyway, even if you aren't strictly Christian.

the significance of 4/7/47

My father was born 4/7/47. When he became ill...

back up a minute to elaborate...

Dad was drafted into the VietNam War. It was at his physical they found that he suffered from amyotrophic lateral schlerosis (ALS), aka Lou Gehrig's Disease. His father died way too young of "paralysis" as did many other men in the family, going way way back. He was labeled 4F and did not serve time in the war. That's a very good thing. Dad was often a violently tempered person, especially when he had been drinking, though terrified of firearms of any sort. I remember one time he screamed like a woman in an old B terror movie when a family friend had a handgun in his truck. Okay, so he had ALS, and the death sentence that comes with it.

He was also gay and so self-centered that even though he was married (in spirit if not on paper) to a wonderful man, it wasn't beyond him to give freely of himself to whomever it pleased him to do so. Like far too many other gay men in the 80's, he contracted HIV which soon exploded into full blown AIDS.

During a medical trial in which he participated, it had been discovered that dextromethorphan (cough syrup) not only stopped the progression of his symptoms of ALS but also made them go away. Apparently there weren't enough people who had this benefit from taking the medication, and it was never an approved treatment, though Dad continued to take it until he began AIDS treatments many years later. Stopping the dm, ALS quickly progressed, eventually affecting not only his speech and motor skills, but his heart as well.

He was a very sick man by the age of 46 when he passed away. From the time Mom left him up to the end, I spoke with him nearly every Saturday morning on the phone. It had been an ongoing subject of conversation between us that 47 was a magic number for him, and if he could hang on until his 47th birthday, he would beat the disease(s) plaguing him. He didn't quite make it.

My Daddy

So, in honor of his birthday, and perhaps in attempt to help hold myself together today, I'm going to post about Dad. He was an interesting character, to say the least. Far from perfect, his one flaw was his arrogance and self-centeredness (is that even a word?). But when he became terminally ill, for the first time in his life, he started thinking about other people besides himself. He learned humanity and compassion, there at the very end. And I think that makes it that much harder to not have him around anymore.

Robert Scott Coleman was born April 7, 1947 (that's 4/7/47 - this is important, pay attention) in rural Virginia. He was a very beautiful child, as he later became a very beautiful adult, and was also exceptionally bright, oh, and gay. Not a great environment for a beautiful gay boy to grow up in, I'm sure. His father died when he was very young, and everyone says that's why his mother was so crazy and abusive. I don't know, but I didn't know her back then either. I remember looking at old photos when I was quite small and asking him who the pretty little girl was. Dad and Gramma just laughed that loud horsey laugh they shared, and told me it was my Daddy. So, naturally, I thought my father must have been a little girl when he was young. He always got a huge kick out of it when I asked him questions that began with "when you were a little girl..."

I have no doubt that my parents really loved each other, as far as either of them was able. But they were very young, and it takes more than love to keep a marriage together. I remember sitting by my bedroom window every day there at the married student housing at Yale, looking up the hill into the parking lot, hoping Mom wouldn't decide not to come home. And every evening, I would see her headlights and know she hadn't been pushed past her limit just yet. What pushed her past that limit was coming home early and catching him in bed with his male lover, with us kids in the next room. To this day, she denies every bad thing that I remember ever happened in my childhood, and there was lots of bad. There was good too, and I remember each and every bit of good very clearly, but Daddy had a drinking problem and like I said, never thought of anyone but himself, and never knew anything about parenting except his mother's abusive style of violent punishment and hair-trigger temper.

So Mom packed the car and took us back to Virginia that night. It must have been very hard on her, being a single parent in the 1970's, but it couldn't have been as hard on her as it was on us kids when the parents of the other kids in school found out our father was gay and wouldn't let us play with their children (I still refer to that particular small town in Virginia, near Fredericksburg, as "bigot-town" - and they call themselves a village!). At that point, I still knew nothing about homosexuality, and "gay" was just a word, the worst thing you could call someone else, but I had no idea what it meant. To my point of view, the abuse suffered at the hands of other children was far worse than anything my parents ever did to me.

Dad continued his graduate studies at Yale Divinity School until he ran out of classes to take and they made him graduate... with a 4.0 average, no less! After we left, he and Doug had moved into a cozy little apartment over a small grocery store on Cumberland Avenue in New Haven. Dad worked as a ground's keeper for this creepy billionaire old dude who seemed to really enjoy watching him work without a shirt on, while studying about religion. He had been a Methodist minister back in Virginia, before moving to Connecticut to attend Yale. At one point, later in his life, when I was in college and contemplating studying philosophy or religion (I did eventually go back to school and earn a degree in philosophy after his death), he told me that the more he learned about Christianity, the less he agreed with it.

Upon graduating with the first of what would become three different master's degrees, he moved with Doug to Brooklyn to work at the Botanic Garden. While there, he took classes at the Bronx Botanic Garden (I think) and earned a degree in horticultural therapy, and had the job of keeping up the therapy garden for disabled visitors to the BBG as well as the children's garden. I think he also worked in the library there at some point, but my memory isn't so clear, maybe Doug worked in the library. My favorite part was that the therapy garden was designed to accommodate wheelchairs, with raised plantings, but also was made for blind people with plants that you could experience with your other senses such as smell, touch, and even hearing.

and that takes us up to about 1980, or maybe more like 1983 or 4...