Ending the week with hate e-mail

Poor neglected blog! I’ve been focused elsewhere these days though I thought posts often. Too bad I can’t do keyboard psychic writing!

Updates from the Small World:

Chick: my darling girl is doing very well. She’s now 10 weeks along, had her first visit this week with an ACTUAL OB (previous visit was with nurses, techs, nurse-practitioner), Snowy in tow. They cleared her of a momentary scare of possible high blood pressure, which is a good thing. It is interesting to watch the symptoms and progress of this adventure encompass her. It takes me back 3 decades! However, ‘back then’ we just didn’t know things like she does now. She knows so much science and detail and… I don’t think I realized it was there to learn.

When I was pregnant in Panama, I did ‘cattle call’ at Gorgas Hospital with mostly Panamanian doctors who told me, “You can’t go swimming because fish might swim up inside you and kill the baby. You can’t go bowling because your fingers might get stuck in the ball and drag you down the lane and kill the baby. You can’t ride horse because you might fall and kill the baby. You can’t go in Admiral’s plane to the States because it might crash and kill the baby…” ETC. I did know enough NOT to believe all that BS, and I did all those things (except bowling) and didn’t kill the baby.

Chick is starting to get her glow going, and it is so pretty to see.

Snowy: Snowy has had a pretty good week, interspersed with a few bad times and several lost times. She’s had times of being cute, funny, witty, sassy, playful, sweet, and precious. One of her happiest experiences was watching the Alabama-Clemson game that we recorded for her to see (much more exciting when you can zip through commercials and interludes), and how grateful I am that Alabama won and made her so happy.

Yet in the midst of watching all the Gustav-headed-to-New Orleans wall-to-wall coverage on TV, she was suddenly terrified and started crying. I went to her and hugged her and asked her what was wrong. She said she was so, so afraid the storm was coming to get us and we were in so much danger. Chick immediately changed the channel and we didn’t watch any more Gustav. I reassured her the storm was far, far away from us and that we were fine and in no danger. It took much hugging and murmuring, but she finally relaxed.

Other times in the week she would lose herself and seemed to “come to” as if she was in a time machine from her past, not knowing or understanding why she was here, where she was, who we were, because everything she knew was 80+ years ago and this “future” was something she could not comprehend or imagine. At one point, she told Chick in a soft voice that she was waiting for her daddy to come pick her up. Chick asked her, softly, how old she was. She responded, “I don’t know but I’m pretty young.”

Tomorrow Snowy and I make our weekly outing to the Beauty Parlor.

The Salt Mine. Work has been almost mellow. Supergirl is working a change in the kindergarten. She says she can’t see that she’s accomplishing anything, but I’m here to tell you that she has begun the sea change that has long been needed. Professionalism is creeping into the cradle, standards are being marked on the doorways (”must be THIS tall to ride this ride”), stupidity is being faced down with bright intelligence… And she is always laughing and merry which makes it hard for anyone to take her iron rule as anything but soft velvet fun. It’s a treat to watch it beginning. She is interviewing many people to replace the jailed Chihuahua and seeking a senior person to come in and start getting the mounds of work and challenges underway. She thinks Whiney is not going to last because she is not going to be able to do the work, meet the hours, cut the mustard, and she will beg to be ‘reassigned’ or…  And from very high sources I heard that the Brat has ‘mentioned’ to her that he thinks he will end up ‘moving down the hall’ to work with his Faw-ther and the Princess (who still has not let go of her palatial office suite and gone down the hall herself). There’s such a long way to go, but finally, FINALLY someone is being allowed to drive the bus and is turning it away from the precipice.

The Tribe: The kitties are THRILLED for 2 reasons: fresh litter box and …. I found more Bunny Rabbit NOMS! They will eat those FROZEN, they love them so much. They have a whole ‘act’ for mealtimes, with extras depending upon whether it is morning and they need to throw in WAKING ME UP by every means possible. But I love the circus (once I have GOTTEN up) and they are funny with their various roles. The Brownies are flying back and forth between the feeding spot in the bathroom and the top of the chest of drawers in the bedroom, bouncing into each other if they get their timing off. Earl throws in his plaintive “wow”s in his cultured melodious voice, Minnie might, “me! me!” a little if she gets really wound up. Mary Baby Mary is just sitting in the feeding spot as if she’s never moved from there since the last meal, and she stands up (without looking at me) and twirls her short little tail in curls and esses while looking high up saying a little prayer. And my darling best friend Pearl has progressed in her eating situation to the point where she would rather be with me, gliding along by my ankle as I wander from chest of drawers to feeding spot to my closet (where she waits) to any other place in the room I go RATHER than eat. She will only go on and eat if I stay by the feeding spot or leave the room.

The reason for the stops at the chest of drawers is that I have had to start feeding the Brownies extra kibble beyond the noms. Earl needed more ’stuff’ in his food to bring him back to his desired weight. He lost so much weight (even though shiney and healthy) that I could feel every bone in his skeleton and he was just hungry for some ‘junk food’. Yet I couldn’t put food down where Pearl could get into it because i’m afraid of starting up her problems again. The Blue kitties can’t/ don’t jump up and climb like the boinging Brownies do, so I cobbled together a secondary eatery up on top of the chest of drawers and every morning I fill a ramekin with Purina 1 hairball and other stuff formula kibble. It has turned things around and Earl is now SLEEK and shiney and healthy AND happy and filled out. And the Blues don’t even seem even to be aware that there is supplementary eating going on.

Charlie has been blue and depressed because with all of the raining and gray skies, he hasn’t been able to stay outside for the hours at a time he likes to spend on his zip line, and no lizards to watch. He needs to go to the beauty parlor for a shampoo and a haircut — he’s a fuzzy Scottie at the moment.

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I want to learn a new language, with Chick, so that we have a means of communicating that others can’t ken. I pondered, German? Italian? Tagalog? I really wanted something beautiful AND pertinent to our heritage, so my pondering brought me to Gaelic. I hunted and found a cool learning program, but unfortunately it doesn’t work on Mac. Sigh. But even in looking, I found a new dilemma. It appears that there are different versions of Gaelic and/or other related tongues. There’s Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, of course there’s Welsh, but then there’s Cornish, Manx… Who Knew over here on this side of the ocean? I wish I could learn them all. I’m afraid I won’t get to learn any. I think my brain may be over the hill and past the “No Gas For The Next 200 Miles” sign. But if nothing else, I am going to get the Video/Book for doing Signs with the Baby, and I WILL learn to early-communicate with my grandbaby! That would be best of all.

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And, to cap off an odd week, earlier today when I checked my Mac mail while at the office, I had one of those ‘forwarded’ emails that had about 5 or 6 email addresses, including mine, listed with the link “+150 more”. I clicked the link and looked at the list of the 150 names, kinda recognized some, didn’t know most, and looked at the sender and didn’t recognize that email address although it seemed familiar… The person didn’t sign it… So, I proceeded to scroll down to see what was so necessary that someone I wasn’t close to felt I needed to receive. Well, it was one of those hysterical “OH MY GOD HELP US SAVE US FROM THE END OF THE WORLD THAT WILL SURELY COME IF THIS PERSON GETS ELECTED PRESIDENT” type emails, with snippets extracted (or not — who of those people would actually do the research to validate) from writings of the hated person twisted, taken out of context, made up out of whole cloth, whatever, just to terrify a bunch of people who rev each other up with dire visions of the future. [aside, although I don't intend to get all political in this place, and essentially am a 'declared' independent, the present is so terrifying and spiralingly awful, it's hard to believe these folks want to embrace a semblance of non-change - which is more what they want than what either candidate is saying will happen, vying as they are to be the Agent of CHANGE....]

I was pissed that anyone who might know me would think it appropriate to send me any political drivel from either side of the election, and I especially was pissed that anyone would put my name in amongst 150 people who would see my name and think that I wanted to be included in mass hysteria and rampant hatemongering. So, restraining myself from saying what was really going through my head, I replied to the sender and said, I’m sorry but I actually support (the other side). I would prefer you not send me any more silly things like this to me.

And then I wrote Chick to ask her if she recognized the writer’s email address, for fear it was one of our old DAR gals… Whew, it wasn’t. But I got an email, still unsigned with a person’s name, BACK from the sender. And OH, it was SO stupid. Here, you judge

“I’m sorry to learn you have no interest in your own security, or that of our nation, than to vote for someone who has told you and me and every one who has listened to him that he is NOT going to be on the side of our nation when the time comes to make that decision.  I can only say GOD HELP THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA if he does get elected!  And, this is the last you will hear from me…I don’t want to waste time with someone as blind as you.”

I replied, simply, “Who are you?” and then thought to do a search of my inbox to see if I was right about the email address’s being familiar. It didn’t seem to be the one person who was my first thought. But deep in my email were 2 other messages from this person that were genteel and solicitous in tone and as I read through them and saw the actual signed name of the person, I had to laugh (relieved that it is no one that we are friends/acquaintances with). It was the older gentleman (I’d thought) who sold us the health insurance that told Chick she was approved for surgery and then after she had it decided to reject the costs thereof and left us greatly in debt and owing much money to a large hospital and its related doctors.

Oh, THAT guy. Pfft. My Mac mail has a feature called “bounce”, so I highlighted mr. man’s email and clicked “bounce” and HE will receive his hateful spewing back as if he’d used an invalid email address to reach me, and he won’t be able to email me again. I love my Mac. :-)

_______________ Now, having poured over 2,000 words into the hollow emptiness of the more than a week since I last hugged my blog, I think that is enough out of me. I’m wandering off to bed and being petted by my kitties.

May all who read be safe from storms, current and pending. There are quite a few!