My Birthday Gift!

I'm using my birthday gift as we speak, or uh, read! I was hoping for jewelery, (OOOh, cubic zirconia set in gold anyone?) hint, hint, but to no avail,. .. sob. On the other hand . . . my sister gave me a brand new washing machine!!!! No more spending my Mondays, hand washing everything. No more wondering if I was going to get some sort of infection from not getting all the soap out. And it's really fast machine. In under the space of one hour, I have washed a comforter, my colors, and am now on my whites. Yippee, I am happy.
Spent the day cleaning up, filled the trash can. Washed dishes for two hours, but still so many left , (yes, this is the ADD effecting my life). So I wouldn't be horribly embarrassed when the Sears guys came. Well, I was anyway. Just couldn't get it all done in the amount of time I had to do it in. .
I am now 50. I worked at the florist on my birthday, and wore a little rhinestone crown ALL day. My co-workers made me a slash that read "Its my 50 Happy Birthday". I wore that while I was working. Didn't help. Only one person figured it out. Here's a little word of advice, you want to get weird looks, have shop people hesitate to help you? Wear a CROWN, and carry a purse made out of a stuffed animal. Guarantee to get you negative attention.

Baguette On My Table is gone!

This is, or was, one of my favorite blogs. It was Wendy's blog. She was an English teacher in France, (for some reason , I read a lot of English teacher's blogs), until she moved very recently to London to live with her boyfriend, Martin. She met Martin though her blog, as he also has a blog, (SeaandSands.blogspot.com) and they met through the comment box. Her blog is one of the reasons I started this one. Martin replied in the comment box to a commenter who asked, (thank God), that she is fine, she is just concentrating on non-blog writing. But she just didn't stop writing the blog, she deleted it. All the posts are gone, just the banner remains. I know that she is going through a bad spell, new life, strange country, missing her boys, but wow, to delete like three years of posting! I never got the guts up to tell her I though she had ADD, and one of her sons too. Or that I thought she should branch out to become a graphic designer. The stuff she made for her blog was just incredible. I'm going to miss her blog so much. Damn.

Mixed Messages

Sorry this is such a crappy picture. I was in a real hurry to make my next timed delivery. But, ya, this is a bigger than life carved wooden statue of a buck naked man holding aloft the severed head of a man with one hand, while in the other hand, he holds the sickle he did the deed with. Well he's not completely naked. He does have a strap over one shoulder that has another head hanging from it. Such is the incredible detail of the carving,that you, (or I could), tell that he's not circumcised. . .

On the plus size, the owners have placed one of those cute, kicthie hand painted WELCOME signs on top of the sickle! I just bet this is one of those Greek myths. You know, I WELCOME you, but, beware, across the line and you will end up on my strap like the others. Or, maybe, that's the owner's message.

The statue had a nice butt too.

Stats Counter

It has become obvious to me that I am getting some visitors. Not family nor friends, however. I think this must be a "rule". The people you are closest to will have no interest in your blog unless you live far, far away from them. Maybe, THEN they will have an interest in it. . . So I have installed a stat counter. It's suppose to be free unless you get like 500 visitor's a week. I think I'm pretty safe in that regard.;).

I was very bad this week and saw two movies. 1st., LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, the second ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE. LARS AND THE REAL GIRL was extremely enjoyable. I expected it to be a total comedy, but no, it was sensitive and I teared up at the end, when Bianca was "buried". I also liked how his brother "looked" at himself and saw how he had contributed to Lars's mental illness. It also made me think about what a person is, and whether they are real or not keeps them from being a "person". Certainly, Bianca became a real person to the town's people, not just because she had a real physical present, but because of the way they were required to respond to her for Lars's sake. I also spend some time trying to figure out whether Lars was delusional, or pretending to be. I mean he knew she came in a box. Living people don't come in boxes. But he gussied himself up, while stealing glances at the box that held Bianca. Never came to a firm conclusion either way. I just accepted the doctor's diagnose.I truly enjoyed how this movie made me think about the perception of personhood is determined by the viewer. [As in slavery, where the slave can think of himself, or herself as a person all they want, but to the owner{s} they are property, a thing, not a person, and that's how the owner{s} treat them. Notice how I'm placing this in present tense, we are not rid of slavery yet.]

Today I saw ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE. I understand why it has not done so well. It was not focused. The story line was divided into two, the A. story, Walter Raleigh, and B. the Spanish Invasion. Neither was told well and both were truncated. Elizabeth was portrayed as an ageing woman obsessed with finding true love before it was too late, who has to be shot at, before she awakes to the danger to herself and her country. Yaa right. . . Elizabeth had several romantic interests during her life, Raleigh was just one of them. Like she wouldn't have married him if she wanted. One of her attachment was her horse master. She raised him to the nobility (and supposedly she almost married him). She was also dotty for his son (grandson?) as well. So, I really don't think she was that desperate for man love. Angry, yes at him and Bess for disobeying her, but not totally out of her mind desperate, like the movie betrays her. Nice costumes, and Clive Owens, yum. Clive kept it from being a total waste.

Navi

Navi has won a costume contest! He wore a store bought costume. It was a fire engine with soft foam wheels attached. All the other dogs had home made costume, which the sister said were fabulous. The sister thinks why Navi won, was because of his size, and that the nieces has already trained him to the leash. All the other dogs were carried. Of course, there are no pictures. The sister left the camera at home, and her cell phone is full. She says that she has not decided what photo's to keep. This may translate as 1: she doesn't know how to delete them. 2: She's not aware that she can send them to her e-mail, or transfer them to her computer, via cable or bluetooth. After all she really is a neo-Luddite.
Sometimes I wonder if the niece is as good as the sister thinks she is. Certainly WE weren't. The sister really wouldn't be able to check cyberwise what the niece is doing. And then I remember, a. she's on the volleyball team. b. she shows her dogs as part of her 4-H project.c. she volunteers at Petco. She raises meat rabbits year around (4-H), as well as a lamb, pig and turkey during the summer. She also shows chickens. d. She does Honor classes. She also does other stuff as well, (saxophone!). And then I relax, because, she is that good. Then I worry about how she will do at college with out my sister structuring her life. We will see.

The niece with navi.

Navi, the guidedog to be.

Trying to fix comments.

I have realized that my first post had comments (not that I got any, I think), but after a certain point, this disappeared. I really don't know why. I think I have fixed it, let's see when I post this.

Blogging against disability

Apparently that was a couple of days ago, but I just heard about it. So, I'm going to blog about MY disability. I have ADD, and Discalculica (probably misspelling that) , and in case you haven't noticed, a problem with spelling. I always knew something was wrong with me. I mean I didn't learn how to tell time until I was 21. I couldn't hold the concept of the two hands in my head at the same time. Instead what I did was memorize a list of 30 minute shows from the TV guide and to find out exactly what the time (5 minute + or -) was to turn on the TV and see where the plot development was. I spend three years trying to figure out how to spell "the"., you know, hte eth, teh, the. When I would run into the right combination I would recognize it.

I could walk from one end of the house to the other and forget WHY I was there. Walk back, remember, walk again to the other end, and poof, forgotten again. I would do this 4 or 5 times before I finally kept it in my head long enough to get to the other end of the house to do what ever it was.

Numbers, dates, they mean almost nothing to me, and my credit rating reflects this. In fact, once again I have to call up Verizon and tell them I made another payment on my old account number [What's really shitty about it, this time is that I called them up before I made the payment and didn't think to ask if I had the new account number or the old one.]

No one at school ever noticed. Oh they made a lot of noise about me being lazy, I was reading above college level before I was eleven. Why couldn't I spell. . .? They were firm in their belief that that reading and spelling are handle by the same system in the brain. Which they are not. It really wouldn't made any difference anyway, since people in the 60's knew nothing about learning disabilities, and teaching really wasn't my school's focus . The schools in this valley were all about keeping the student on campus until noon, when they were assured of getting the state money for that day. I am not kidding. I'm asked other people about this and that's their impression too. Half my high school ditched every day. The office was back logged until August in telling the parents their child was absence from school on a particular day.

I didn't figure out what was wrong until I was 32, when the local paper had an article on learning disabilities. At last I saw myself. (before, I thought I was mentally ill and did my best to conceal by not interacting with others. I was very lonely). But I was diagnosed until I was 39 when I went back to college. I forget why I went to the disabled student office, was it a teacher recommendation or my need for a tutor? I actually forget. But anyway, I was tested. The Dr. councilor told me I had minimum brain damage. OOO EEWEE, like I didn't know that. . . let's reflect, shall we. . . Mom spend the last five months of my pregnancy in bed because she was hemorrhaging, I was born a month early, the placenta was half gone because it hemorrhaged, and I weighted a quarter oz short of three pounds. I was the smallest baby born at that hospital to survive at that time. They stuck me in a shoebox sized incubator for three months until I hit 6 pounds and then they let me go home. Brain damage!! NO!! Actually they told my parents I wouldn't live [baptist her, Dad ,"Fuck you! She isn't going to die!"] and when I did live, they told my parents I wouldn't be even capable of tieing my shoe laces.

I wasn't aware that minimum Brain damage is an old term for ADD until I went to CSUN and the disabled student office person gave me some literature on it. I actually resisted this for about a semester until I remembered when I went to the store five times in one day to buy toilet paper. Oh, each time I would come home with stuff, but not toilet paper which was the only thing I was going to the store to buy. Never did buy it that day. Then I accepted that it was ADD.

I'm getting really tired and I need to start doing my chores (one day off a week, remember?) so I'm going to post this. I will write some more about how ADD effects my life and my work, okay?

SOME MORE VIEWS OF THE VALLEY.