This spoke to me last week, and it spoke to me again today.  I'm posting it in the hope that maybe it will speak to one of you.   Autobiography in Five Chapers.   1) I walk down the street There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost....I am hopeless It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. 2) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I...

In the past year I've gained 20 lbs.  I've gone from 123 to 143, and whilst some of the weight gain was needed (I looked a little gaunt at 120-ish) and I got my curves back, I now feel like I've gained too much.  None of my pants fit.  I went and bought new ones when I gained weight, and now they don't fit.  A juniors size 11 is snug on me, and I don't like it.  I liked being soft and womanly looking, but I don't like that my belly jiggles when I walk and I also don'...

*kudos to NickyG for the inspiration for this article* Despite what we would like everyone to believe, everybody poos.  Everyone.  From the Queen of England to the bum on the corner, celebrities and rednecks and nouveau riche alike - we all poo.  The question is, where do you poo?  Some people can poo anywhere.  Public restroom, neighbor's bathroom, hole in the woods...some folks aren't fussy poo-ers.  They think nothing of dropping trou and going whenever th...

The Golden Rule: 'Don't bite the ice cream man's hand and expect him to give you more free ice cream.' That's JU's golden rule.  That's the creed bloggers here should try and adhere to.  Dissent is fine, the Ice Cream Man likes a good debate, but when it becomes a personal attack (or what he feels to be a personal attack).....that's where he draws the line. In the 2 years I've been blogging here I've seen a few people get exiled.  Not a lot, just a few...and those few had...

I'm done with hospice training.  Once my background check comes back I'll be assigned a patient and will begin helping people die. But I won't be able to talk about it.  At all.  Confidentiality rules prevent me from talking about anything here.  I can't even talk about events without mentioning names...the only thing I can tell anyone is that my patient died (when the time comes).  It's going to be hard, not talking about it.  My blog is like my journal; all...

After spending 8 hours in a training session for the hospice last Saturday and after doing a lot of reading and thinking, the enormity of what I'm going to be doing finally sank in yesterday. I'm going to be helping people die. Not in a Doctor Kevorkian sense; I'm not going to be giving them drugs and helping them overdose....but I am going to be helping people ease their way out of this world. I'm going to be there when they take their last breath, when their hearts stop beating and when...

Here's a question for all the Christians in the house: How comfortable are you with the thought of sharing heaven with a mass murderer?  A pedophile?  A person who delighted in torturing little children before they beat them to death?  How comfortable are you with spending eternity with people who rob and rape and kill and pervert and abuse?  With people who were so vile in life that they had to be segregated from the general population and imprisoned for the rest of t...

Last night I decided to tease Dave and give him a laundry list of what I wanted for Valentines Day (I already got a huge cactus that was supposed to be my V day gift but I wanted to act spoiled and tease him a little).  On it was a Fossil purse, some pajamas and an X Box game.  I wrote on the back that I was just teasing him and wouldn't be mad if he didn't get me anything else - underlining the 'won't be mad/upset' part so's he get the message that I wasn't being serious. When I ga...

I got the notification in the mail on Saturday.  I recognized the return address on the envelope as I scrabbled to open the envelope.  I hate envelopes, they seem to have a conspiracy against me whenever I WANT to get into them and refuse to yield to my fingers and reveal their contents. When I managed to pull the letter free I unfolded it and quickly scanned for my name.  There it was, halfway down.  I've been accepted for volunteer training at the hospice, the first part...

I've been blogging here at JU for 2 years today.  Coincidentally, this is my nine hindred and ninety-ninth article. Almost a thousand articles.  Wow. That's a lot of ado about nothing, huh?  Sure, there have been some decent articles in there, but like that dietary information on some of the stuff you buy at the store says, 75% of it has been filler. 2 years is a long time too.  When I first started writing, my husband had just gone back to Greenland after 3 weeks ...

My daughter picked up her new glasses last night.  She wore them home from the store and marvelled at how much she could see. I had been worried about her not liking them, but this morning she sais "y'know Ma, the more I look at myself in these, the more I like myself in them". I feel the same way.  She's always been a pretty girl, but in the past year....she's blossomed, and when I see her wearing her new glasses I see the young woman she's becoming breaking through the little g...

I'm done with the 'bad-ass baby blanket' project.  All I have to do now is sew up the booties and wash it all, then I'm delivering it to Reggie at work. I was going to make a 'bad-ass' blanket for Debbie and Brad's soon-to-be baby, but in my quest for patterns across the internet I found this: I think it's beautiful.  It's backed with a piece of fabric, much like a quilt, and it's hand embroidered with french knots and running stitches to keep the backing attached to the kn...

Our friend Reggie and his wife are expecting a baby next month, and I've been knitting them a layette set consisting of a blanket, a hat and some booties. I wanted to make it a little different, so I made the blanket with a red yarn.  It's a really cook blanket, and knitting it was good practice for Jill and Brad's layette (I'm making them a similar layette for their soon to be n00b).  I wanted to break free of the monotony of pastel colors that most baby items come in - I like my k...

Remember this guy? His name is Omar Khayam.  He was so offended by the cartoons depicting his god that he took to the streets of London dressed as a suicide bomber to protest. His actions caused one newspaper to go dig around in his past.  I'm not a huge fan of The Sun, but sometimes they're on time and on target, and it would seem that they've hit a bullseye with this one. Because all is not as it seems with Omar.  Mr Khayam has a criminal history.  F...