I still have my leg

Well, I managed to mail more packages today without severing my left leg.

I do, however, look pretty ridiculous with my toe bandaged the way it is...

At least I don't look like this:

And my husband doesn't like to lounge around the house in this:

Hot items from the 1977 JC Penny catalog

My son is on the roof measuring the eaves for Christmas lights. Hopefully, my next blog won't be highlighting the exorbitant cost of emergency room medical treatment.

Who's the bumbling idiot?

I can't believe what happened yesterday.

It was so gross.

I went to Wally World to get some packing supplies, and then to the UPS store to mail out a couple of packages (UPS is great for shipping, but hell on your wallet if they pack for you, too). Upon opening the door behind the driver's seat of my suburban, the large, tight, very heavy roll of clear shipping wrap fell out of the truck, right smack onto my big toe! (I had been wearing open-toed sandals since it's not exactly cold here in southeastern GA right now).

ARGH! I was in such a hurry, and my bubble wrap had also fallen out of and rolled underneath the truck. Not only was I in pain, but I also knew I didn't have time for pain... I was on a tight schedule! `;-) So, without hesitating, I grabbed the plastic wrap, bubble wrap and boxes, and ushered my two girls into the store so we could box and send my items. (items I had just sold on ebay... I'm sure my victorious auction winners would appreciate the extent to which I stayed on task!)

My toe was killing me... but I hadn't even taken the time to look down at it.

Arriving at the front of the store, as I lifted my foot to the curb, I didn't want to, but couldn't help but catch sight of my toe. It was a bloody mess! It was really gushing, too... and started puddling into my shoe.... I couldn't stop what I was doing, though, because I didn't have any first aid... so I just let it go, hiding my toe as much as possible from other patrons, so as not to gross them out, too... :-/ My daughters giggled and teased, while I secretly hoped I wouldn't bleed out :-! Now that would have been exciting! (It really wasn't that bad - I didn't leave a trail or anything)

Delightful, isn't it? It's nothing compared to the dream I had last night... I was a character in a SAW movie, in a woodsy sort of location. I've never even seen those movies! ... Just goes to show you how our minds cope with daily events!

Lucky for me, the SAW dude in my dream was a bumbling idiot ;-)

Part I

Sporadically over the next few days or weeks, I'll be sharing segments of something I wrote earlier this year. I'll title my work Part 1, Part 2, etc., so you'll recognize when I'm referring to my "official" writing. I'll continue to write as much nonsense as possible about my other shenanigans as a mother of triplet teenagers, and the 3 other darlings I decided to have - all within a 5-yr period (!....) - in the meantime, though. (I'm now in shock having realized what I've done! :-))

Part I:Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Disney & Humanity

We've heard it before, perhaps too often, those fateful words of Shakespeare from his play, As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players." In the book considered by many to be the greatest novel of all time, War and Peace, (which unfortunately is known more for its volume than the words within), Leo Tolstoy penned similar words through the thoughts of Pierre, "... perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were brought by force of circumstances, society, and race - by that elemental force against which man is powerless - to the condition I am in" (Maude, trans. 1942).

Words like these have a tendency to ring in our souls. As history reveals, many of us casually accept rolls in life directed by birth, while only a few create for themselves a new part. What ever the case of the individual, humankind has had to coexist in a political collective since before recorded history.

Whether we have lived nomadically or settled into relatively permanent communities, humans, for the most part, have recognized the benefits of living in cooperative groups with mutual respect being the ideal. Unfortunately, the concept of idealism and the reality of humanity rarely coexist in an unadulterated cooperative. Each of us usually struggle internally (and sometimes externally) with an innate drive for personal survival. As a result, for thousands of years, laws have been chiseled in stone, written on papyrus, scribed in Holy books, and inserted in national constitutions in order to protect society from the destruction that would come from raw, selfish ambition.

(to be continued... )

MY CAMERA!

I found my camera!

You'll never believe where...

In the newspaper recycling bucket, near the middle of the huge stack....

Of course, Nobody, Not me, and I Don't Know are the ones responsible. Sorry, Houdini, I was wrong about you... Next time I'll just round up the usual suspects.

Somebody at the recycling center would have been a very happy camper if I hadn't decided to go thumbing through the garbage to find the front page of the Statesboro Herald looking for the article I mentioned in my last blog (JAMA survey). Never found the article, but I gasped, gleamed and raised the camera high in the air, like Sponge Bob Square Pants when he found won the golden spatula!

Chiseling out more cogs in the machine?

I would like to thank my sister, Ceilon (http://ceilon.blogspot.com/), for getting me going this morning ;-) The following was taken from my comment to her blog, but I revised it as necessary and added a bit more:

Amen, Ceilon!

National media is dictated by the dollar - American newspapers and magazines are funded by the food, entertainment, pharmaceutical, etc. industries, so any potential threat to their profit is simply not allowed to be printed, or sponsors will extract their financial support. Newspapers and magazines have evolved into glorified marketing schemes with a few interesting articles between the ads just to keep our attention. This is why we don't see many of the scientific breakthroughs that are occuring behind the scenes.

For example, as revealed in the bonus material in the documentary, Supersize Me! (Morgan Spurlock), daily physical education for kids in middle and high school raised their overall math and science scores - Spurlock's highlighted school outperformed China in both math and science scores (on an international scale) as a result of requiring kids to partake in daily phys ed. Also highlighted was an alternative school (in or near Appleton, WI) for kids who had been expelled from the public school system for bad behavior. The alternative school provided organic food for the kids, sometimes grown by the kids themselves, which resulted in not only drastically improving their behavior (which, relatively quickly, became better than the behavior of many kids attending the public schools), but also significantly improving their grades.


As a homeschooling mother (homeschooling 3 with 3 in the public school system, whom I also continue to educate) who has studied sociology, I can tell you without a doubt that our "education" system is really bureaucratic basic-traning for chiseling out replacement cogs for the machine. (they teach, from kindergarten on, how to "line up," avoid questioning authority...) Schools don't teach what is vital for kids to grow up to become well-rounded, critically thinking adults, they train children in the status quo... in how to become cookie-cutter Americans. Only a "chosen" few are singled out and put on the fast track, like my daughter, for instance. Her intelligence and creativity were recognized as being untamable, so they stopped trying to make her conform, and put her in "accellerated" classes. Even in those classes, she doesn't learn what I teach her at home. Just basic stuff, people, like how to manage/budget their money (not taught in schools - but, now get this, schools do teach what a check is and how to write one properly), how to respect, but question authority, and know when the time is right to ask questions.... etc.


Wake up, America!

My anti-fascist alter-ego is about to sport a 'tude:

America is not a democracy, it is a well-disguised totalitarian oligarcy. It is controlled by big business, which perpetuates the illusion of democracy by instituting a virtually impotent congress, senate and presidency, and ensuring its control by making it possible for only the extraordinarily rich 5% of the population to run for "public" office (because it takes millions to run for the Senate, and scores of millions to run for the presidency), many of whom are extraordinarily rich because their money is invested in the food, pharmaceutical, oil, etc. industries. Therefore, our country will never produce adequately educated or healthy citizens. (Our only hope lies in the House of Representatives, where "average" Americans still have a chance to run for office. Even then, not many who make it there have the balls to stand against the big dogs. - The Supreme Court, however, ROCKS, really doesn't put up with anyone's shit.)

Controlling as many aspects of the average American's life as possible is an ongoing trend: I have no doubt that profit also drives insurance companies away from supporting the practices of natural medicine like chiropractic, holistic, orthomolecular, etc. It is more profitable to keep Americans sick than it is to promote the maintenance of good health.

I read an article in the associated press not very long ago (that somehow made it past the big business sponsors - thank God for small towns who are not yet locked within the vise grip of the -ahem - sovereign dollar) in my local paper, the Statesboro Herald. It reported on a survey posted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA - find the article in a Sept, Oct, Nov volume, can't remember which) - It reported quite significant results from a survey sent to administrators of 125 medical schools and other continuing education avenues for physicians - approximately 2/3 of administrators responded, and 2/3 of those who responded reported having a financial stake in the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries. They admit leaning in the direction of their heaviest pocket when they decide what medical students should study. - Hello! No wonder we're always sick. The sicker we are, the more meds doctors are compelled to prescribe, and the more meds they can prescribe in order to counter the effects of the meds that are making us sicker than we were in the first place (!), and the more ridiculous "procedures" they insist we need to undergo - in order to ensure an increase in their dividends. The hipocratic oath to "first, do no harm," seems to have been abandoned a long time ago. (I'm not an absolute antagonist, I do believe there is a vital place for pharmaceuticals, but not the way many doctors rely on them - it seems they're relying on meds to take care of business than they relying on them to take care of people).


I could go on and on.... Stay tuned, I think I'm going to get out some of my old papers and let it stir me a little more .... >;-)

Thanks for the jumpstart, Ceilon!

Poof!

Today was a great day... much better than yesterday...

Here are the possible explanations for the events that occured:

Houdini performed the greatest escape by exiting the afterlife and materializing in my house in order to perform one more disappearing act - "Pay attention, look very closely at my hands... Now you see the $300 digital video recorder/camera.... [poof].... now you don't. - Thank you... Thank you. I'll be performing here everyThursday and Saturday. If you know of any other potential gigs to help me get my name back on the bill, here's my agent's number" .... [poof].... Houdini then exits via a mystical, yet very impressive pyrotechnic display masking some sort of portal located in my living room floor. I'm still feeling around the carpet looking for it! I know it's there! It's got to be! (There was a portal located behind my dryer in my other house.... took exactly one of every sock I owned... It must be the portal to a monopod sector of the gallaxy)

or...

My three invisible children, NotMe, IDon'tKnow, & Nobody, conspired together this time (as opposed to separately, as it usually happens) transported my camera to the invisible realm in which they live. After all, they're the ones who do everything around here.

and after that....

NotMe, IDon'tKnow & Nobody conspired together again, to break my $400 electrolux without leaving any evidence as to how they did it. They are the most clever of my children. They have the ability to cause things not to work and make it look like they should work. There is absolutely no physical evidence to support that my electrolux shouldn't work... except that it actually doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's not working.... It should work, but it's not working. Work! Work! ....

What? Hmm?... Uh... OH!

Where was I?

I think it was Houdini that poofed my camera.

The Link between Thanksgiving and Scary Music?

I had a delightful, although exhausting, Thanksgiving.

We invited over a spicey assortment of friends: one who very merrily toasts the anniversaries of her divorce; a photographer who innocently and lovingly reminds that God hates divorce; his wife, an artist who beautifully wears her latest creations in the style and color of her hair; and my very A.D.D. friend who delights in having her toes sucked by the local Nextel salesman. Accounting also for their equally delightful children (11, 10 and 4 yr-old girls) my die-hard Cowboys fan/husband who got to watch his boys slaughter the Jets yesterday, and my six children (15 yr-old triplet girls, 1 13 yr-old girl, an "almost 12!"- yr-old boy, and a 10 yr-old boy), we had a total of 15 people enjoying a feast.... which was equally as interesting....

The turkey baked into a green color (I used thyme, sage, tumeric, etc. as spices.... didn't know it'd actually turn out green :-) ... My photographer friend loved my deviled eggs, I realized after I saw several mounds of seasoned yoke sitting on his plate - he'd eaten only the whites ;-j. Gotta hand it to him, he knows what he likes. I followed my greatgrandmother's advice and ate my desert first, since I knew I wouldn't have room for it after dinner (before the guests arrived - that actually curbed my appetite :-).

My eldest triplet daughter was stuck with dishes last night! What a mess! I helped her get all the food put away, so all she had to do was clean. She was soooooo hoping someone would have broken one of the kitchen rules before Thanksgiving... ("If Mom ever hears you complain, whine, roll eys [my friend pointed out that hearing eyes roll would be a phenomenal feat!], the death sigh, or anything else that goes toward DISRESPECT, you will have kitchen for the REST OF THE YEAR!!!!!!!!!! I'm pretty sure NO ONE wants that! So if I were you I would show some RESPECT and do as your told!" - Rule decided by me, but written, with flare and emphasis, by my 13 yr-old daughter ;-)

This morning, I had the urge to put on some Halloween music (I love Napster): Thriller - Michael Jackson; Puttin' on the Ritz - Taco; Ghostbusters - Ray Parker; Jr., A View to a Kill - Duran Duran; Spider Webs - No Doubt; Scary Monsters - David Bowie, Dracula's Castle - New Order, Monster Mash - Bobby "Boris" Pickett, Love Potion #9 - The Searchers; She Blinded me with Science - Thomas Dolby; Rock Lobster - B-52's; Time Warp - Raul Esparza; Boris the Spider - The Who; I'm a Mummy - The Fall; I'm Your Boogie Man - KC and the Sunshine Band; The Creature from the Black Lagoon - Dave Edmonds; Warewolves of London - Warren Zevon; Superstition - Stevie Wonder.... and an assortment of spooky Halloween sound effects. - Go figure.

I think I'm going to go get some banana pudding before it disappears!

Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice ;-j

My triplet daughters are 15 1/2, and my youngest daughter is 13, going on 40..... I'm now officially a moron, who knows absolutely nothing about life... was born in a butterbean and turnip green garden yesterday... no... last night!

I can't give adequate words to the way things are going around here. I'm tempted to leave the final stages of raising these children with my husband so he can be the one to deal with the negative characteristics he has fostered in our children. No matter how much I teach them how to be respectful of one another, control their temper, lighten up, or WHATEVER!!, he so very often is a shining example of the exact opposite! (Of course, I'm delightful, charming, carefree, pleasing, and all those other characteristics that happen to be seasoned with sugar and spice :-)

;-j

Oh, also, I have a little curl right in the middle of my forehead ~:-)



There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good
She was very very good
And when she was bad
She was horrid!

From Beowulf to Shenanigans

I'm reading Beowulf in the mornings with the kids. It's very good... a book I always thought would make a great movie, but only if it's done right. Can't wait to see the movie they're coming out with soon.

I've been reading every morning with the kids before school for the past 7 years. We've got a lot under our belt so far: We've read the entire Bible - not only read it, but studied it historically through the process. We've read Fast Food Nation, Food and Bahavior, Hinds Feet on High Places, War and Peace, and now we're reading the Harry Potter series (currently in the Goblet of Fire). It took us 5 years to get through the Bible, so there hasn't been time since then to get a lot of other books in. We've got a line-up of books waiting to be read.

Elizabeth and I are reading Romeo and Juliet during school. We each take on characters and are enjoying ourselves quite a bit. Our favorite character is Mercucio, who was just killed by Tibalt in our reading. Too bad. He had such great wit. It was fun being Mercucio. We're moarning his loss. - What idiots Romeo and Juliet are! Just goes to show you that teenagers should be taught to never trust their feelings. I mean, Jeezo Whiz! They can't think clearly with their heads because their groins are groaning so loudly! Educate those kids!!! Knowledge is power!

I told my most disruptive son yesterday that if he can't get his act together, I'm going to put him back into the public school. I simply can't tollerate his hooliganism. He is so firey hot! Almost literally on fire all the time! He's got to settle down. Maybe I should call Nanny 911.... but whenever the kids have watched that show, they've always commented that Nanny does what I do! If what I do with the boys isn't working.... Oh, dear Lord!

Maybe I can just fasten them to the wall with duck-tape. .... Not sure if that will work either.... the boys have duck-taped each other to chairs before and have always been able to work themselves free... Darn! - Seriously, I need to hire these boys out as special operations training specialists... at least then their shenanigans would generate a profit!!

What was I thinking?

I'm homeschooling my 2 sons and one of my daughters.

What was I thinking?

Actually, it's very fulfilling, until the boys start bickering.... and rough-housing.... and sneaking outside when they should be doing their spelling.... and chewing up their pencils in the electric pencil sharpener.... or swinging from the ceiling fans....

I've thought of how I can harness their energy for good instead of evil... perhaps hiring them out to Underwriter's Laboratories as destruction specialists... or to young couples thinking of having sex before they're married as a method of birth control.... or finding some other way to profit off of their insatiable appetite for destruction.

When my kids ask me where I'm going as I grab my purse and head for the garage, I answer, "Crazy! And you're driving!"

I'm late for November

My appologies, God, Your time is precious, I know... I realize now that my November appointment was scheduled to begin 13 days ago!

I must apologize for having realized that I've been late for my annual appointments as well . The other day I put 1997 on the date line of my check. I'm REALLY late.

When I figure out what's keeping me, I'll fix it right away.