ladykatza

In the coming New Year, I present you with a challenge. I challenge you to participate. I challenge you to find a way to become more closely tied to the community in which you live or actively involved in. This is a challenge to myself as well, as I always feel that I would get satisfaction out of this. I want you to post ideas that you have for doing this.

Some of the ones I have thought of in the past:

Work at a Soup Kitchen
Read to children at a shelter
Read to kids at school (you can volunteer to be a “mystery reader”)
Help with a community clean-up project
Go to Town Meetings
If you are involved with a local religious organization, help them with charity work (just don’t preach to me)
Volunteer at a Home for the Elderly (some old people just like to talk)
Volunteer to help the local SPCA

Even if you do this only once the entire year, you can feel you did something more than you did the year before. If you already do these things, then good for you and keep it up! Giving money to a charity is never bad, but its hard to tell where its going or how its helping.

Current Mood: civic minded

i woke up in pain early this morning. i remember crying out, mostly a whimper and the saying “honey?”.

“do you need some pills?” he asked.

“yes please.”

he got me the pills and about half an hour later they started working and i fell back to sleep. the alarm came all too soon after that. i was able to get up with great effort and stiffness to take my shower and then purturbed to find that there was no coffee to be had in the house. tea… yes tea would be good. i took the time to do this because school is out and i didn’t have to rush simon out the door. i haven’t turned on any of the overhead lights, the house is lit with the ambience of the christmas tree and fish tank. my angel fish i didn’t feed. they, like me, don’t seem to like mornings.

all through this i’m trying to ignore the pain. its an ever-present annoyance that is prohibiting my living a normal life. it was good for about 4 weeks, no pain. then one day i go and vacuum, not watching HOW i do it and BAM. i’m down. i’ve had another epidural and i’m back in physical therapy. i have a better therapist this time, i feel, but the therapy itself is only marginally helping. granted, i’ve only gone once.

people do not understand how much they take their bodies for granted. i always thought i had empathy for those with chronic pain problems because my i grew up with a mother that had more major surgeries than some doctors do in a lifetime. she is what they call a “chronic pain patient”. she keeps her pain meds locked up because they are just that strong. now i know much better what she had to deal with on a day to day basis to be the mother she was to me.

i may have to have surgery, and at this point, if it will make the pain stop i’m all for that. i will need to do special strengthening exercises for the rest of my life, but that’s not really a bad thing. but, i can’t sit at a desk very long. even now i’m having trouble sitting and well, lets just say my sex life has been hampered a bit. lowest disk in my back is herniated… think about it and it will make sense.

Current Mood: in pain

John McCain has had some pretty hairbrained ideas, but this one just irks me, for several reasons.

First of all, lately all I have been hearing is how the internet is full of stalkers and child pornographers and OMGWTFBBQ!! L33T speak that is used to confuse and scare parents. They way they make it sound, as soon as you log on a million predators with nefarious purposes are going to descend upon your poor helpless children, or steal your identity, or whatever.

OK, people, like anything else its about common sense. You don’t give out sensitive information to random strangers, and you teach your kids how to navigate safely just like you would in real life. Look both ways before crossing the street, don’t take candy from strangers, don’t believe he’s really 18, and whatever you do TELL YOUR PARENTS WHERE YOU ARE GOING! Even before the internet and when I had already met the man, I would sometimes bring a friend along.

The thing is, anytime someone is against legislation like this they are instantly labeled as supporters of child pornography and that is a red herring. The internet and its ability to give people a voice is what scares our right-wing nut jobs and they have latched onto this “child pornography” band wagon as a way to scare people into agreeing to whatever legislation comes through. Its to the point that its become a freakin’ witch hunt.

Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT condoning child pornography. I am a mother of two, and I want to keep my children safe. However, I also want to be sure that when they become adults the society they live in will still be one in which they may express their views without the fear of retribution of a paranoid government and rabid lemming populace.

Current Mood:  aggravated

i and my living room look like i’ve just murdered a purple polyester poodle.

say that 10 times really fast

Current Mood:  creative

last night was the annual christmas party at kip and jennifer’s house. its always a fun time because they plan and stock up for months to have lots of food and drink. then there is games and media of all sorts. there’s another couple there that had a daughter around the same time i had felicity. seeing her last night, we commented on how we shouldn’t be surprised about how big she’s gotten, but we were.

cynthia passed along a bit of wisdom from her grandmother, “the years are short, but the days are long”. its true, i think. when you are raising children you take everything one day at a time and some days it seems that it will never end and that sleep and peace and quiet are elusive dreams. then one morning you wake up to find that your children have fixed their own breakfast after dressing themselves and brushing their teeth. sometimes they want to make breakfast for you too, and despite the disaster that awaits you in the kitchen all you can do is smile and hug them. to their confusion you start to cry and say “when did you grow up?”.

there are a couple songs that set me to bawling whenever i listen to them. “Time” by Pink Floyd and “Old and Wise” by Alan Parson’s Project. i don’t like to think of myself as sentimental, but i am. i cry during the sad parts of songs and movies, i get nostalgic.

i realize that i miss my grandmother. while she was rarely physically around, she was present in her daily emails and her dispensation of advice and recipies. i feel the need to remember her by baking traditional holiday treats. she was always good about keeping up with christmas cards and thank you notes. hand written, just a little note, but it feels like a tradition lost that needs to be kept alive.

Current Mood:  thoughtful

Current Music: Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Alan Parson's

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
- Kurt Vonnegut

The quote was on my homepage today. This comes after I realized this morning that my employers do not care that I’ve not had any sleep for three days because my entire household has come down with the flu. They do not care that I have medical issues that I need to take care of, they don’t want to hear about it. I am an employee that has been hired to perform a job and I am expected to do that job no matter what.

The law requires that they allow me to take care of my health and family. And no matter how much they pretend to care, I am an adult and therefore ultimately responsible for myself. Only my immediate family and close friends care about the problems that come after the hours that I work.

Current Mood: bitter

*warning: contains language that may be considered offensive to some people*

or to quote neil gaiman: Warning, Contains Language!

so at some point, i remember the group of people that i sat with at highschool getting a hold of a book of Georgia laws. most of them were ones that were very outdated. being that we were highschool students, the first section we flip to is the section on “sex”. of course.

so… as we are reading we find out that oral sex is a felony. a FELONY? WTF? (by the way, this is before WTF was invented, k?) this caused us to go into a long discusion on HOW someone is going to know that you were going down on your significant other. the sex police? oh, ya, vouyerism is a misdemeanor. in fact… necrophilia, public ludity, and beastiality are also all misdemeanors. my boyfriend at the time had this to say:

“wait a minute here.. are you telling me that i could fuck a dead donkey on the court house stairs and the maximum sentance is 10 years, but going down on my wife i get 10 to life?!”

Oh yes, and when parking your car at the Capitol in Georgia, don’t forget to tie it up to the provided hitching stations. its the law! (or at least it used to be)

Current Mood:  nostalgic

tuesday i got a call from the school telling me that simon was breaking out into hives all over his hands. they couldn’t give him anything because a release form hasn’t been signed and they don’t stock any sort of medicine. this irked me, but they said they would call back if it got worse. i got a call five minutes later.

so, i left work to rush up to the school and give simon benedryl. i signed the form and everything was ok. the swelling had gone down before i got there, so i didn’t worry overly much. last night, however, i had gone to lay down to rest my back and fell asleep. i woke to hearing this horrible crying and wheezing noise coming from simon. he was red and wheezing, and trying to throw up. the throwing up was mainly from the coughing, in retrospect. i was worried it might be anaphalactic shock, so we gave him some benedryl just in case and put some clothes on him and headed out to the hospital.

once simon calmed down, he was breathing much better. i had thrown on a shirt over my pajama pants and put the first pair of shoes on i could find and we were in the car and headed for the ER. they have a pediatric section where we went, which was much nicer than the regular area. did i mention i was panicking? i was trying not to, and was very glad that daecon was level headed. anyway, simon was doing better, the nurse gave him some motrin for his fevor and then we waited for the doctor. the woman looked like she had been on her feet for 12 hours and running ragged. she said it was croup, which is a virus and can cause hive breakouts, although that is unusual. they gave him an oral steroid medicine to help the breathing and a popsicle. i was surpised at how quickly we went through, it wasn’t very busy at that point.

so, simon is ok, but my nerves are fried. i decided to sleep in and come into work a little late and found out that i wasn’t the only one that had a long night with sick child. i’m glad i work someplace that understands these things.

Current Mood:  relieved