A Quiet Home

Eldest Son is home from school for the weekend.  We parents, it seems, have survived our first week of having our first hatchling out of the nest.  The quiet of this event is much more profound than when our children are away on sleepovers.  And our kids have gone on many a sleepover.  In fact, all three of them were off on sleepovers last night.  Yes, even Eldest Son, who is only here for a limited time, ditched us.  We knew this whole moving-out-on-their-own thing would happen eventually with the kids and of course, it’s partially our fault.  We’re the ones who trained them to be independent thinkers who didn’t have to depend upon Mom and Dad to decide what they should do with their lives.  What were we thinking?

In all seriousness, it’s a sad business, but necessary.  It just takes a rethinking and rearranging of our lives.  What I keep clinging to is something that my mother-in-law often says.  “Even when your kids become adults, they still need you.”  All they need to do is send us the bat signal and we’ll be there.

News of the Day

Eldest Son and Hubby both started back to school today.  Eldest Son is attending a school away from home, so that means he had to move into a dorm, which happened yesterday.  The school is a great opportunity and should be fun for Eldest Son, but our family is very close, so this isn’t an easy emotional transition for Hubby or me or Daughter or Young Son #2.

Hubby bought the books he needs for class.  The cost – $375, I think he told me – always takes my breath away.  You’d think I’d be used to it by now.  The crazy thing is that the books are always needed the first day or week of class, but financial aid doesn’t get applied until 2 weeks into the semester.

I was back at work on my website today and had more success with it than last time.  I’m becoming familiar with the sometimes capricious features of the program.  I managed to get a workable template created and, using it, started all the main pages.  I have to compose text for most of these main pages (the home page is done), plus create the secondary pages.  I’ll draw myself a map, so I don’t get confused.

As I type this, I am listening to music from Madonna’s album “Ray of Light.”  It’s hypnotic and I think I’m slipping into a trance.

Hotdogs with Ketchup

I have a crazy, but insignificant, question for you.  If you like to eat ketchup with your hotdogs, do you prefer to put the ketchup on the hotdog and eat it that way, or do you prefer to put the ketchup on your plate and dip your hotdog into it?

Me, I prefer the latter and I don’t really know why.

And Speaking of Ohio . . .

My husband spent the better part of a week traveling to Ohio and back.  He left last Monday to give friends a ride to their home in Ohio.  The friends have health issues that prevented them from driving.  When Hubby agreed to drive them home, they offered to fly him back to Minnesota.  Hubby hates planes, but loves riding his motorcycle, so he hatched a plan to trailer his bike to Ohio and ride it back.  After doing some price comparison, he discovered that renting a trailer from U-Haul and the cost of gas to return came out to about the same amount as a plane ticket.  Our friends were game, so the plan was put into action.  Two days there, one day in Ohio, and two days back and Hubby arrived home yesterday with a sore butt and windburn.  But he got in one looooong motorcycle ride, which has been one of his goals.  He took a total of five pictures on his trip.  Here they are:

Buckeyes Stadium

Hocking Hills, Ohio

Hocking Hills, Ohio

Hocking Hills, Ohio

Honda Plant, Marysville, Ohio

The final photo is of Hubby’s motorcycle at its birthplace, the Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio.  He only got one picture because the woman working at the guard station was a grouch.  “No, you can’t take any pictures!”  That’s no way to build brand loyalty, Honda management.  You might want to get somebody friendly in your guard station and set up a special area for those who want to visit the birthplace of their vehicles.  Could this be part of the reason your Marysville plant’s future is uncertain?

Winesburg, Ohio

A few weeks ago I spoke at my church about my Greenville book and how it was a series of linked short stories.  One of the audience members was a lit professor and afterwards he told me that I was working in what was a long tradition called a short story cycle.  He suggested I read Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” which is just such a short story cycle.  I finished the book a few days ago and here are my impressions.

Upon reading the first story, which is called “Hands,” a sense of familiarity struck me.  The form, the linked short stories, each ostensibly about a particular character, but also following a common character throughout, was exactly what I tried to achieve in Greenville.  “Hands” features a character named Wing Biddlebaum who, if he forgets himself, has hands that flap out of control.  His hands caused him considerable trouble in his previous locale, so he works hard to keep them tucked in pockets and contained.  In the story, not only are we introduced to Wing (great name!), but we meet George Willard, who appears in almost every story.  George is a late teen who is working his way toward manhood and all the responsibilities that implies.  He works as a reporter for the Winesburg Eagle.

The entire book takes place in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio, although there is a real Winesburg, Ohio, that the author admits in a compiled preface that he had no knowledge of when he wrote the book.  “Winesburg, Ohio” was first published in 1919 and those who read it – especially those from the real Winesburg, Ohio – thought it was scandolous.  A town library board even burned copies of the book.  As I read, I kept thinking, Where’s the titillating spot?  What’s so scandolous about this? I found it to be staid, at least in comparison to what I’ve read from the current day.  Sherwood admits that the mere mention of sex at the time of the original publication was enough to cause the uproar.  He says, “The book was widely condemned, called nasty and dirty by most of its critics.” (pg. 17)  Because people thought that the author was perverted for having written about sex as a normal part of everyday lives, Sherwood said that this judgement caused “a kind of sickness [to come over] me, a sickness that lasted for months.”  (pg. 17)  Eventually, the book came to be considered a classic.

I noted a number of similarities in the stories, in addition to the fact that George Willard appears in all but one.  (I wasn’t sure what that was about.  The story, called “Godliness,” could have been left out of the book, except that it was set in Winesburg.)  Sherwood often described his characters as tall and thin.  Many of his characters had names that started with W’s, including Wing, White, Willard, Welling, and Wash Williams.  Each of the characters was sure that he or she was the oddest person in town, that he or she didn’t truly fit in Winesburg.  Finally, the stories all ended on an unsettled note, leaving me quietly jangled.  It’s worth the read if you don’t require nice, neat conclusions.

You can find the entire book online at bartleby.com.

The edition I read was from The Viking Critical Library and was edited by John H. Ferres.  It included criticism with the text and was published in 1966.

No Longer Smothering the Goddesses

A couple of days ago, I posted about women in Pakistan being burned on purpose and expressed my horror over the practice and the cultural complicity that seems to condone the practice.  Deeply ingrained cultural practices can be very difficult to change, but not impossible.  Yesterday, MSNBC served up a current example of a cultural change in Nepal that is taking place because enough people decided the situation had to change.

In Nepal, there is a practice of worshipping “living goddesses,” virginal young girls who are picked by Buddhist priests.  These living goddesses, some of whom are 3 or 4 years old, are confined to temples, where people come to worship them.  When they reach puberty, the goddesses are returned to their families.  While in the temples, they don’t receive an education or, as seems to be apparent from the article, proper health care.  The Supreme Court of Nepal has decided that these goddesses have a right to basic human rights such as health care and education and has ordered the government to provide them to the girls.

Even though the living goddesses appear to be pampered, too much pampering can be as detrimental as some forms of abuse (although not on the same scale as being burned by acid).  Let’s here it for the Nepal Supreme Court and its ruling to prevent the smothering of living goddesses.

OMG – LeRoi Moore Dead

I was just checking my Google Alert for Dave Matthews Band and had a shock.  LeRoi Moore, saxophonist for the band, has died.  I can’t believe it.  He was only 46.  In June he was in an ATV accident and from the updates I had seen online, he seemed to be recovering, albeit he had a few complications.  The article on MTV.com reporting LeRoi’s death yesterday said that it was unexpected.  Waves of disbelief keep hitting me.  I can’t imagine DMB without LeRoi.  Because he was the quiet member of the band as far as interviews were concerned, I always imagined him to be this deep and mysterious guy.  He sure could communicate through his various instruments, though.  He could make his saxophones and pennywhistles speak.  As the thought of his death sinks in, I’m feeling sad – sad for him, sad for his family, sad for the band, and sad for his fans.

Rest in peace, LeRoi.

My sincerest condolences to his family, the Dave Matthews Band, and all the fans.

Burned on Purpose

I found a story on MSNBC yesterday that was horrifying.  It’s about women in Pakistan who have been purposely burned, usually by abusive husbands or jilted lovers, although one was burned by her father when she was a child merely because she had been born a girl.  The women are typically burned using acid.  To get the full impact of the story, you need to view the slideshow.

I can’t tell you how incredibly angry this makes me, both at the perpetrators of this crime and at the culture that allows this to happen.

Bah! Web Design!

I’ve spent the majority of the day attempting to design web pages for woowooteacup.com.  Bah!  What a frustrating experience.  I was going to try Dreamweaver, but I took one look after opening the program and decided it was too difficult to tackle – and this after having gone through a tutorial.  Of course, I did the tutorial months ago, so none of it stuck with me.  I have a fairly simple design, so decided to try KompoZer.  I managed to get a template done, mostly, only I’m finding that there are certain things I can’t do easily with the program, like getting the links to show up without the automatic underlining.  I’ve also got to learn how to use the template correctly.  I can’t simply take the template and save it as another file.  Bah!  Frustrating.  And it’s too warm and my shoulders are seizing up and my eyeballs are fried.  Bah!  I need more web design practice.

Okay, enough complaining.  I’m taking a break.  If I have time, I’ll come back and do a less-complainy post.

Sneeze Question

Why don’t people sneeze when they are sleeping?

Shit from Shinola

Hubby and I took The Boys to the Twin Cities yesterday.  After an over-night at Hubby’s sister’s house and a meeting for me and a visit to Como Park for the gentlemen, we headed home.  On the drive, a phrase from my childhood snuck up on me.  Shit and shinola.  I didn’t have the entire phrase in my head, just a couple of words “shit” and “shinola.”  I remember my dad saying those words, but I had no idea what shinola was, or even how to spell it.  In my mind, I had vaguely thought of shinola as a place.

I told Hubby what I was thinking and he popped off with a whole sentence:  “You don’t know shit from shinola.”  That was it!  Exactly what my dad used to say.  Until Hubby had said it, I thought of shit from shinola as something only my dad said.  Because Hubby is so worldly and knows all kinds of offbeat things, I asked him what shinola referred to.  He said it was shoe polish.  That was perhaps the last thing I expected him to say.  Shoe polish?  Really?  Makes sense, I guess, except that I would have spelled it “Shine-ola.”  For confirmation, I googled “shineola.”  Good old Urban Dictionary didn’t have “shineola,” but is sure had “shinola,” including “shit from shinola” in the definition, along with the fact that shinola was a brand of shoe polish popular among GIs.  Isn’t my Hubby smart?

Neti Pot Stand-in

Around the end of April, I developed a cough.  I couldn’t shake it and I attributed it to the rainy weather we had all spring.  When we finally got a string of sunny, dry days in June, the cough died out – for the most part.  It seemed to return while I was at work or whenever it got rainy out.

On July 5, I woke with ringing, plugged ears.  This was the day after fireworks and I assumed that this was because the fireworks were too loud as I’ve had trouble with my hearing being affected by loud noises before.  With this assumption, I used cotton balls and Wally’s Ear Oil to treat my ears and wait for them to get back to normal.  A week later, I was still having difficulty hearing, so I went to the doctor.  My ears tested fine – no fluid behind them or anything.  The physician’s assistant told me that I was probably allergic to mold and that my sinuses were affecting my hearing.  She suggested that I take an over-the-counter decongestant for a couple of weeks.  It worked.  My ears unplugged and my cough, which kept returning when I went to work after having a weekend of not coughing, also eased up.

Not wishing to stay permanently on an over-the-counter med, I wanted to try something more natural in keeping my sinuses clear.  I had heard of Neti Pots from Dr. Mehmet Oz on Oprah.  A Neti Pot is a small plastic pot (it looks like a little plant-watering pitcher) that is used to irrigate the sinuses with warm salt water.  One of our local stores sells Neti Pots – for SIXTEEN DOLLARS!  It’s an exorbitant amount for a little plastic container, especially seeing as how I wasn’t sure if it was going to work for me.  I decided to look for a cheaper alternative.  Here’s what I found:

Cooking oil dispenser

As a Neti Pot stand-in, it works pretty well, although there are a couple of things I have to be careful of in using it.  For one, it’s glass, which makes it slippery.  For another, see that metal tip?  If your hands aren’t steady (especially the non-dominant hand), it could cause a serious interior nostril injury.  I’m just saying . . . .

I put in a quarter of a teaspoon of salt and fill it with warm water up to the point where the bottle starts to narrow.  I don’t use the whole thing in one sinus-flushing session.  It takes a while to empty the bottle and the water cools to room temperature after the first use, which makes it feel cool to my sinuses.  I use it twice a day and wash the metal tip after every use.

My sinuses stay fairly clear while using the Neti Pot stand-in regularly, but it’s not a cure-all.  Last Thursday, I woke with a headache, which turned into the Mother of All Headaches that couldn’t be tamed by ibuprofen.  It felt as though I had a giant rubberband squeezing my head around the area of my eyes.  It lasted all damned day.  (I hate headaches.  Can you tell?)  I wasn’t sure of the cause, but I talked to a friend who said that she, too, had awoken with a headache that day.  The next day, my ears felt plugged again.  That’s when I knew that the headache was sinus related.  The weather was gray and we were expecting rain, so it seems that either the dampness brings out the mold, or my head is a great barometer – or maybe both.