Music Makes The World Go Round

My earliest music memories were from Sundays. We didn't go to church so my mother would stack the stereo with albums from Broadway musicals, TimeLife, and stars like Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell. I didn't know the Lord's Prayer but I could sing the entire songbook from Camelot, Sound of Music, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, 1776, and many others. I remember going across North Dakota singing "Dakota" from the One and Only Original Family Band. Then when I was a freshman in college, I sang to myself on the way home from the state championship playoffs, I stopped when I realized people could hear me. One of the teachers said "Keep Singing, you put everyone to sleep." Imagine in 1974, teenagers being out to sleep by the songs from "Camelot". It happened. Tonight I found myself wide awake and listening to one of the those Time-Life infomercials touting songs of the 60's. I must have known 95% of the songs from my childhood and KOOL-FM. I had teenagers on each side of me when I was young and I know I learned a lot of songs from their record players. And when I use to go to see Peter, Paul and Mary, I always saw one of the Collins kids there too. I love the oldies. They are the goodies. And I love ITUNES because if I wanted to I could go on right now and order a bunch of these songs. IPODS are great for that but the music makes my world go round.

Sunday nights we watched Ed Sullivan and bless his heart (in a good way) he had the best singers and bands on his show every week. He didn't care what color they were or where they were from he just wanted to have the musicians there to play their hits. I can watch the Ed Sullivan specials on VH1 all day long if they are on...

A Day of Rest

I realize I haven't said much so far so you don't know anything about me right now.
I am a baby Boomer and a Sandwich generation care taker. And just as I lose my older generation caree, I get my husband to watch out for. He was victim to Tramatic Brain Injury (TBI) when he was seven, and through most of his life his ability to learn new things were challenges. Compounded with the legacy of mental illness and Post Tramatic Stress Disorder from being stationed at the DMZ in Korea during the Vietnam War, he is one mentally ill fellow. It wasn't such as issue when we were dating or even the first few years of our marriage, but in the last two years it has become more difficult to help him. He remembers what dirty deals were done to him thirty years ago, but I can't send him into Circle K for milk and soda without him coming out to ask me what he was supposed to get. If it wasn't for Travis, my son, being here, I think I'd have gone of the deep end long ago. Not that he doesn't have a good heart, and he can work. His work is simple and his route to work and church are easy and a habit. Anything new puts him in the ozone. And we do have fun when we go somewhere, but I have to do all the work to get us there. I am the cook, bottle washer, financial manager and crazy person. I need breaks. I take a few. I do things outsude the home because I need to have something that is mine. So now you know what I go through daily. I worry about him everyday and every way. AND IT SUCKS...

Saturdays

The dogs got me up early with help from the cats. They think its time to get up because we get up early during the week. So I let them out, I feed everyone, make coffee, and take a hot shower. I want to catch up on all the shows I DVR'd so at 6:00 a.m. I am watching True Blood, then Hawthorne, and now Pretty Little Liars. And I tried cross stitching. I have so many things I want to stitch and I can't seem to count, or the thread seems to suck. So I blog. Blogging is like telling the world your problems with out talking. I jsut want to be able to cross stitch something without missing a stitch or having the thread break, knot up and jsut shred in the needle. I think Ill try to work on it again since there isn't anything else to do but housework...

Baseball

When I was a senior in high school I got dumped four months before graduation so I looked for something to do on Saturdays. I bowled in the morning, then spent the rest of the day at ASU watching track and baseball. The players were handsome and they were good that year. Daddy loved that I embraced baseball even if it was for a reason I chose not to tell my dad. It was cheap and easy. And they won the College World Series. We even went to the airport to watch them arrive from Omaha. The next year I had a season ticket with some friends and learned to keep score in one of the those scorebooks you buy.

For the next Twenty years I followed the team. In 1994 when the coach was dying of cancer, I never dreamed as I sat there with my dad watching the Sun Devils play, would Coach Brock outlive him by one month, because we didn't know leukemia was destroying his immune system. He died on May 13th, and I went to the ASU game that night. I didn't have anywhere else to go, but where we would have been that night. I was on the treadmill at the "Q" when I heard ASU win the regional and they were headed to the College World Series again. Brock went with them, but he wouldn't last the week. I cried. I remember Oprah was on the bank of television while I listened to the radio and I hope no one thought I was crying because of what was going on on the television. ASU only lasted two games, and Brock died the day after the series was over. I don't remember who won, and I didn't go to the memorial service because I couldn't go to another funeral.

I got to go to the College World Series in June 1998. I was named ASU Fan of the Year that year too. I had wanted to go to the CWS since 1977 and there I was. I saw two games that week. USC beat LSU and then USC beat ASU. But I can say I was there. I saw a college champion crowned. I wished my dad was there too. I think maybe he was for a while.

I gave up baseball after that. I'd done what I wanted as an ASU fan and even politics can spoil college sports if you get too close to the inner circle. And I had other things to do with my life. But now I'm sitting here watching the MLB All Star game and writing this blog. I think of all my baseball memories, and remember all the good people I met...hell, I even met Pat Tillman at Stanford because his brother played on our team and he sat next to us at one of the games. I miss him, but I won't go into that...

I've had my at bat in the ninth, hit a home run and retired to the bench.

Long Week Already

My husband has a corn on his right foot. Doesn't seem like a big deal does it, but the doctor told him to stay home for the week and where a cute little foot brace. What all does this mean to me you may ask...well...when he is off for anything, he stays up with me each night. I'm use to him going to bed between seven and eight and then I get some peace and quiet before I go to bed. I get to watch whatever I want to watch and work on my novel without someone trying to talk to me all evening. Last night to keep him entertained we watched an X-Men movie and Jaws. Now I love James and Jaws for that matter, but I look forward to those three to four hours of me time. I feel like I could use a whole week at home myself. A week where someone isn't commenting on every single gunfight, pointing out that some one doesn't know how to drink a glass of wine or smoke a cigarette. I don't care what kind of gun or what liquor Brody and Quint are drinking, I just like the scar scene. Speilburg said he had them get a little drunk for the scene and it went well. Too bad two of the three actors are dead. They made a good trio. Jim did like the shark. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was on next but it was ten o'clock and I needed to go to sleep. Took the pups out and watched the cat try to get a drink out of the toilet like the dogs sometimes do...he had to stretch to do it but he did it...a proud moment...while Harley just stands over it and dips his head. Always proud moments....any ways when Jim is off and I am on, all I can say is "I think we need a bigger house!"

Guilty Pleasures

I went to Spout's to get some cracked wheat sourdough, granola, and fruit, and I did. But on the way home I stopped at QT and got my half Coke-half Diet Coke drink over crushed ice, and they had Hostess Chocolate Pudding Pies. Those little pies are so bad for anyone but the thick creamy chocolate goo and the flaky pie crust with a thin layer of frosting taste so very good with a hot cup of coffee while reading the Sunday New York Times. BUT I was good in the fact I only bought one...and they had four or five on display...

Once though when I ate one, I found out how many people don't know about their decedent goodness.

I was having what some would call "female troubles" and because I am an idiot, I tried a new insurance that year so I couldn't go to my OB/GYN without paying a fortune. I kept telling my regular doctor something was wrong, because I bled so much I felt like I would faint each and every time I got up to do something. He kept treating me without ever doing an exam. I wasn't happy. Not that I let it stop me from going to work, school board, or class. I just made sure when I rose from a sitting position there was something to grab onto. This went on from October through the end of the calendar year when I switched back to my regular insurance. I made an appointment that day with my OB/GYN. He took a look as they do, and had some blood work done. The next morning I had a chocolate pudding pie for breakfast, and at 10:00 when he called me the first thing he asked me was if I had eaten that day. I told him and had to explain what it was. Then he told me to meet him at the surgery ccenter across the street from Good Sam hospital at one. He needed to do some surgury to correct my problem. When I arrived there, they asked me about what I'd eaten that day, again I had to explain what a chocolate pudding pie was made of and who would make such a thing. As I made my way from the waiting room to the gown room, and into the room where you wait for the drugs to take affect, I heard the techs talking about the chocolate pudding pie and wondering what it was. At least, I thought, I had something to laugh about while I waited to have my insides sliced, diced, and scraped out. Later my doctor told me if I had lost anymore blood, he would have had to give me a transfusion. Thank God for open season... BUT now everytime I eat a chocolate pudding pie....

the First Time Only Hurts A Little

They talk about beginner's luck. This is my first attempt at blogging. I don't know if anyone will read it, since no one comments on my Facebook "on my mind" baby blogging. But I don't care.
I'm fifty and I'm turning fearless. I do what I need to do and then I do what I want. I make sure everyone has something they can fix to eat, and then I might eat bread and butter with a large glass of ice tea. I'm short, and stout and love to say "Screw it" when I feel the need to conquer a bad memory. Like the tape running in my head "She never did her homework" boy that seems to sum up my childhood, teenage years and even college years. "She never did her homework..." "She never did her homework..." but the kind thing to say would have been "She never did her homework, but she got great grades, practically a straight A student, because maybe, just maybe she didn't have to work hard on home work. She was smart. Really smart.
Now it's just thank you very much because when I hear the tape I hear "She never did her homework but she got good grades."

I turned 50 on a boat in the middle of Matzalan's Harbor. We stayed on the ship, ate, and read on the deck, and had dinner in the dining room. I had my cake and ate it too. It was chocolate with chocolate icing. I had an international choir of eight waiters, head waiters and foot waiters sing to me. Then I went to bed early and let the ship rock me to sleep. We spent a week on the ship. So we ate, we read, and we saw a lot of the "Mexican Riviera" in November. I love the fact you are spoiled rotten the entire trip. You can go to shows, gamble, drink, swim, and just read. I am not one to pay a lot to travel and just relax, but I've learned to sit and listen to the waves crash against the shore, watch for the dolphins, and let the wind mess up my hair until the sun goes down and the stars replace the glistening ripples on the ocean while the waves continue to crash against the slick black lava frozen in time by the ice cold ocean water.

Now I work, I keep a house in disarray and I write. I write because there is so much I want to say. I have stories in my head, a committee of characters debating daily whose turn it is to take the podium and dictate my day. Then its my job to write it down as they wish it to be told.

They beckon me now as it is late and I am off to see the Wizard.