Happy Birthday To Me

October 8, 2008

Happy Birthday to me…..

Happy Birthday to me…

I feel like I’m twenty…..

But I’m really fif   tyyyyyyyy……

One….

 

I’d like to thank Rocky, for having me, MDH for standing by me even though I’m certifiably insane, The Buddha and Princess Bella for not hacking me up with an axe while I sleep, and Possum for not reversing the adoption.  I’d also like to thank the Academy, only because whenever you hear someone giving a speech and they are thanking people, they always thank the “Academy” whoever that is.  Also I would like to thank “God, Jesus, The Lord” or whatever name is the current favorite for the year, just because that one always gets tossed in too, either right before “The Academy” or after.  Like Jesus is an acting coach or sumpin.  Sheesh!

I can see him now, in his long flowing robes, beautiful hair flowing in a breeze that only blows for him, light emitting from his very being, love and compassion dripping from his every pour, sitting in his director’s chair screaming “CUT CUT CUT Dammit!  That is NOT how I WANT it!  Let’s take 5 and see if MISS THANG can pull her head out of her ass and get it together here!  Water!  I need water!  Thanks….  Moses, you bastard!  How am I supposed to drink a bottle of parted water!  Smart ass.  Everybody’s a comedian” 

Yeah, getting a mention must just make His day!

Intyways……I’m fifty-one!  Yip-fuckin-ee.  My face is melting like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, just without the bucket of water and the flying monkeys.  I have jumping dogs….does that count?  I am starting to look a little bit green, though.  It’s beginning to concern me a little bit.  Not enough to actually DO anything about it but I notice it, you know what I mean?  Hmmm….is that green right there?  It is, isn’t it?  Yep, it’s green alright.  Oh well, at least it’s in a wrinkle.  Until it creeps outside of that, no one will see it but me.  I’m good!

I have this neck brace that I use when I have to ride in the car for a long time.  (another story for another time)  I was trying it on the day I got it and when Buddha saw me he asked “What is THAT for?  Did you hurt yourself?” I told him, “No, I just got tired of holding my head up.”  It took him a few seconds, but he got his patented disgusted look on his face and stomped off telling me, “Stop doing that!  I believe you when you say that stuff!” 

*sigh*  All in all it’s been a fun fifty-one years!  I hope the next fifty-one are half as good!

 

P.S.  Please feel free to send money, cards, gifts and ponies!  I ain’t shy and I ain’t got no shame!  Gimme!


On Why You Should Eat Dirt

October 7, 2008

I wrote apn article one time on Helium about my Multiple Sclerosis being caused by me being so clean my immune system had nothing to do.  Being an honest, hard working immune system, it decided that in order to earn its keep, it would therefore attack me.  Ha Ha, right?  Apparently, not so much.

I just read an article saying pretty much the same thing.  It stated that research recently done has found that it’s possible that people not exposed to the usual round of childhood illnesses and diseases, combined with the pathological (my word not theirs) cleanliness nowadays, has caused immune systems to delvelope differently.  Holy crap! 

So, eat some dirt!  Let your kids play with the kid that has a cold.  And for God’s sake PLEASE stop running around with those damn hand sanitizers!  I just want to slap those damn things out of people’s hands when I see them! 

You are weakening your immune system to the point of non-existence by doing that.  You have an immune system for a reason.  It fights off disease, and immunizes you against further attack against the virus in the future.  If it has nothing legitimate to do, it WILL find something, take my word for it. 

And in case it hasn’t blipped your radar, children who have had measles don’t require a booster case of measles at college age in order to keep from contracting it then!  That immunization lasts a lifetime.  Which means that the pseudo-immunization that you get from vaccinations doesn’t exactly count.  My guess is that the reason for the booster is because a vaccine is a mild version and your immune system creates a mild immunization to a trumped up virus.  It responds in kind.

MS and other autoimmune diseases are much more common in women.  They’re not sure why but, you guessed it, I have a theory.  It’s because men spend much more time outdoors and get much more dirty.  It was a man who invented the five second rule.  Men eat with dirty hands.  Men don’t contract as many autoimmune diseases because men have developed their immune systems much more naturally than women.  

Unless you’re in the sewer and you drop your sandwich, or it falls in a pile of buffalo poop, lose the terror of the germs.  They’ve been here longer than you.  They’ll outlast us all.  Forget about the segregation idea, you can’t live separate from them.  You can’t get rid of the germs!  They live on you 24/7/365.  They live IN you.  They live all around you.  They aren’t going away. 

When human beings first started being human beings we ate dead animals that weren’t even cooked.  We slept in the dirt.  We wore…well probably nothing for a long time, but after that we wore animal skins,  we sat on the ground, our tools were all made of stone, we didn’t have soap.  And we lived in that state for thousands and thousands of years.  We had no Ebola, no MARFAN, no black plague, no influenza.  If we had, humans would have been wiped out.  Or if we did, we had some kick ass immune systems that kept that wipe out from happening. 

What does that tell you about dirt and about being dirty?  Something to think about while you’re tossing out that freaking hand sanitizer.


BooYa Baby!!!!

August 24, 2008

Today I bow down and worship each and every Superior Being in each and every Heaven that exists everywhere for tomorrow school begins. 

 

I have my kids totally convinced that every year on the first day of school we parents hold a big old throw down.  I call it “The Parent’s Party.”  I tell them that after they get on the bus and that first bell rings, parents from all over the county start leaving home for the party. 

“Where is it?”

“Oh no way, Baby!  I’m not telling you THAT information.  You’ll start trying to look all hot in front of your school friends and spill the beans.”

“Come on!  You’re lying if you won’t tell.”

“Okay, sure.  I’m lying then.”

“What do you do?”

“Wouldn’t YOU like to know!  Basically we celebrate the fact that you heathens are someone else’s problem for a few hours a day for the next nine months.  We sing, we do the “Holy Mother Of God We’re Free Again” dance, we eat.  You know, we just celebrate school starting up again.”

“Gammie, you ain’t right, you know that?  You just ain’t right!”

Well, they might be correct on that.  But come tomorrow morning at 8:05 am eastern daylight time I’ll sure be a whole lot closer to right than I’ve been in a looooong time!


Another Female In Military In North Carolina Missing*UPDATE*

July 11, 2008

What is it, open season on female military personnel in North Carolina?  After Cesar Laurean murdered Maria Lauterbach and Christina Laurean helped him escape, you’d think that would be enough, but noooo. 

Next comes some nut job claiming to be a serial killer who murders another pregnant marine, Megan Touma.  Megan was found dead in a hotel room after failing to report to her unit.  Now mind you, the people at Fort Bragg did not immediately go looking for her.  She had been missing for nine days before being found…..by a maintenance worker at the hotel she was staying at!   She was not declared AWOL by her unit commanders at Bragg.  Because, for some strange reason, each unit commander has the discretion of when to declare a soldier AWOL!  How bout that?  In the military, the most regimented place you can be, (pun intended) and they have no set rules about when to declare someone AWOL.  By declaring her AWOL they would have begun the paperwork,  therefore allowing both military and civil authorities to search for her.  That might have been the difference between life and death for Megan Touma.  There had only been a “Do Not Disturb” sign on her door for four days when she was found.  She might have been found alive if they had looked for her.

One more little side note here: The killer wrote a letter to the police admitting to her killing.  They have a “person of interest”, but have not put that person in custody.  Wanna know what they said about him?  “He’s not considered a flight risk.  And anyway, if he runs, we’ll just go pick him up.”  Um….WTF did they say?  Is there an echo in here?  Didn’t they say the same thing about our old friend Cesar Laurean?  And they STILL haven’t gone to pick HIM up!  My advice for them is this:  GET THE MAN IN CUSTODY NOW BEFORE YOU LOSE ANOTHER ONE.  Everyone is a flight risk when it comes to a murder charge.

 

NOW we have a third military female missing, Holly Lynn Wimunc, an army officer working as a nurse at Fort Bragg.  The apartment she shared with her husband had been set on fire but had burned itself out before anyone noticed it.  (I am stunned at this.  I wish MY house fire had burned itself out before anyone noticed it!)   Holly Lynn had filed for an order of protection against her husband, John Patrick Wimunc a marine from Fort Bragg, on May 17th, 2008 stating that he had thrown her around their apartment, thrown her to the floor, choked her, held a loaded 9mm to her head and threatened to kill her, then held it to his own head and threatened to kill himself.  Holly Lynn failed to show up at her job so people from her unit came to check on her.  I guess the folks at Bragg have learned something from the first two.  STOP WAITING FOR WEEKS BEFORE YOU DO SOMETHING!

 Someone needs to send a battalion of psychiatrists down to Fort Bragg and make everyone take a mental physical.

 

 

UPDATE

Holley Lynn Wimunc’s charred remains were found in a shallow grave near Sneads Ferry, NC on Sunday July 13, 2008.  Her husband John P. Wimunc has been charged with her murder and another marine has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder in connection with her death.  They are both charged with arson as well.  Both are in custody at this time.


2nd Hand Alcohol

June 19, 2008

I’m about to gag myself to death with the latest California brainstorm wanting to ban smoking in apartments and condos. 

Before you EVEN start let me say that YES I smoke.  Yes I know it’s bad for me and you and everyone else in the universe.  I have no problem with not smoking in a restaurant.  I will gladly wait to light up after we all get done eating.  I have no problem not firing up on the airplane.  I get it, OK?  I understand that my choice to smoke is just that…MY choice.  I understand that I have no right to impose MY choice on YOU.  By that same token, you have no right to impose your choice NOT to smoke on ME. 

  I happen to have the opinion that the OWNER of an establishment should have the choice of whether said establishment is smoking or non-smoking.  And that we as consumers have the option of choosing whether or not to patronize that establishment based on that, or any other criteria we want to employ.  If the owner makes his establishment a smoking environment and we choose not to patronize it because of that and his profits then go down, he must either bow to the bottom line and change his mind or he must accept the loss in profits.  On the other hand if his profits do NOT go down, then the opponents of smokers must then suck it up and go off to find a cleaner environment to plot the reduction of rights the citizens of this country can call their own.

I find it cosmically frightening that the citizens of America are blithely watching their rights being whittled away without so much as a whine.  The fight against smokers is only one example, but it is a glaring one.  In the scheme of things I can think of a dozen more rediculously obvious dangers than second hand smoke.  But millions of dollars in cash as well as matching amounts in time and effort are spent making good, decent people feel like second class citizens. 

I, as a smoker, have never driven down the road on a nicotine high and killed innocent people in a head on collision as a direct result of over consumption of cigarettes.  I, as a smoker, have never smoked a six pack of cigarettes and beaten my children because I can’t handle my nicotine anymore.  I, as a smoker, have never given my child brain damage that will last a lifetime because nicotine makes me angry and vindictive and violent every time I light up a cigarette.  But you be sure to ban me from smoking in a BAR!!!!!!!!  We wouldn’t want all those bar patrons who will be out there “drinking responsibly” to suffer from second hand smoke, right?

What am I missing?  I see on the news with sickening frequency stories about multiple teenagers in alcohol related accidents.  Dead, maimed, brain damaged, crippled for life.   And let’s not forget the innocents.  Those folks whose only crime was being on the road at the same time as someone who was drinking and driving.  Not one suggestion of a ban on drinking in apartments and condos.  Not one mention of bans on alcohol anywhere.   Could it be that there are far more lawmakers that drink than smoke?

I have six….yes I said SIX cousins who are orphans because their parents and their oldest brother died from second hand alcohol.  They were killed by a drunk driver as they were returning home from Christmas shopping.  I guess we should be thankful that they didn’t die from second hand smoke, huh?


ADD and ADHD – Or “Boy Do They Have It All Wrong”

May 28, 2008

Princess Bella has “ADHD” or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. 

Let me take a pause here to decide just where to start this blog, because I have so many things to say and I’m not sure just what order I want to put them in.  Hey there’s a bird out there picking on the dogs!  Cool!  Anyways, as I was saying, I think they totally misnamed this stuff. 

People with ADD and ADHD do not have a deficiency of attention.  What they have is an overabundance of attention.  Their attention is captured by EVERYTHING at all times!  They don’t miss anything at all.  There is not one thing that goes on in this universe that they miss.  It might not make the top 10 on the list of important things they give notice to, but they didn’t miss it, I guarantee you! 

What happens is, they don’t focus on the things that other people  want them to focus on.  This is not a deficiency.  This is a failure to come to an agreement on what constitutes the most important thing.  That is a whole other ballgame.

It is my own personal opinion that ADD and ADHD are old ……..  for lack of a better word…..conditions.  And I use the word condition here NOT in the sense that it is something that needs to be “fixed”, but that it is possibly outside the norm.  I believe that we can lay our very existence at the feet of someone back in the misty long ago who was blessed with ADD or ADHD.

I say this because…..imagine this:  Our little cave-group is sitting around the fire in our pitiful cave, noshing on a few ptarmigan, all happy and stuff.  All of a sudden…..GROWLLLLL…..SNARLLLL!!!!….and whatever other mean nasty things happen when a sabre tooth tiger comes skulking out of the dark.  EEEKKKK!

Now!  Who do you want in your midst most: The cave-dude with ADD/ADHD who’s gonna whack that sabre tooth over the head with a big ol club, or the logical thinker who is going to weigh all the consequences of his actions before he does anything?  MY vote goes for the ADD/ADHD guy!  I believe with all my being that it was those people who acted first without thinking it all out, whose attention was on everything, who were watching it ALL and not missing anything,  that not only kept us alive but advanced us to the point that we can now consider their gift a problem and chastise them for it.

Because it is only now, at the advanced point our civilization has reached, that the gifts of ADD/ADHD become a “problem.”  Only now do we have to sit un-naturally still for hours on end as small children day in and day out for months at a time.  Only now do we have jobs that require us to be indoors all day long every day all year long.  Only now does the watchfulness and quick action inherent in ADD/ADHD become unnecessary.

Instead of calling ADD/ADHD a problem or making people with it feel broken, we need to name streets after them, have a national ADD/ADHD holiday, and celebrate the fact that it exists at all.  Because without it, we very well might not be here at all!

 


On Being “Nice”

May 14, 2008

I think people today have the wrong idea about what “nice” is. 

I cannot convince my kids that setting boundaries with other people isn’t mean.  Let me give you a hypothetical conversation to illustrate.

Daughter: We split up.  I feel bad about it because he really wants us to stay together but I just don’t love him anymore.  Now he won’t leave me alone.  He calls me all 50 times a day, he comes to my work and causes trouble and I’m about to get fired, I just don’t know what to do.

Me: It’s my opinion that any contact you have with him at this point is only encouraging him to believe that there is still a chance for the two of you.  Are you sure that there isn’t?

Daughter:  Absolutely NO chance.  I really tried.  I don’t hate him, but I just don’t love him anymore. 

Me:  I think the best thing right now would be just to tell him that you have to stop having any contact with him.  There isn’t any reason to talk to him.  If you’re done, it’s only dragging out his agony to continue.  Simply tell him its over and stop taking his calls.

Daughter:  But that’s so mean!

Me: What’s mean about telling him the truth?

Daughter: Well it sounds so harsh.

Me: It’s not harsh, it’s called honest and to the point without alot of superfluous crap added in.  Set your boundaries and stick to them.  The sooner you do that the sooner he will get it and move on.

Daughter:  It just sounds so mean to drop him like that.  I don’t want to be mean to him, I just want him to go away and leave me alone!

Me:  And you think that the way to accomplish that is to continue talking to him?  As long as you do that without setting limits, he will think that you’re doing it because there is still something left for him to say or do to get you back.

Daughter: I don’t want him back, but I don’t want to be mean to him either.

< insert the sound of me banging my head against a brick wall here>

 

Since when is honesty mean?  Since when is setting boundaries mean?  Since when is setting limits mean?

Why is it that people suddenly believe that they should sacrifice their own peace of mind on the alter of someone else’s hopeless dream?   That doesn’t make sense to me.  That kind of “nice” is inherently dishonest.  That kind of “nice” is meanness in its worst and most underhanded form, because it delays the inevitable and holds out false hope.  What it really is, is the refusal to stand up and take the heat for your own feelings now, by putting the other person off until they end things themselves because they feel the dishonesty and can’t tolerate it.  It’s cowardice. 

 

My definition of being nice is being honest even if it isn’t the most comfortable thing at the moment.  It saves hard feelings later on down the road. 

If I know what my limits are, but I refuse to tell you, then I have no room for complaint if you cross them.

So how is setting limits mean?  I just don’t get it.  What’s so “nice” about  dishonesty?


Random Thoughts May 2, 2008

May 3, 2008

MY LIFE IS SO BORING   BUSY I HAVE NO TIME TO WRITE. 

That’s the excuse I’m giving myself for having nothing to say. 

I hate politics.  Just vote for the liar who’s ass you like best. 

Every time a political ad comes on TV it reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live show.  Dan Ackroyd was the Jimmy Carter-like president who was just elected.  During his inaugural address he tells the nation that, due to becoming privy to information he was NOT privy to before becoming president, he will no longer be able to keep ANY of his campaign promises.  ROFLMAO!  

Privy.  What an odd word.  That’s an outhouse, right?   I need my OED for some background info here.  I love to find out the origin of odd words or phrases that we use all the time but never really think about.  For instance: “In cahoots with”  Back during the old days, criminals lived in shacks down by the river.  They were called cahutes(French) or kajuits(Dutch).  When crimes were commited, the POPO knew that all they had to do was go down to the river and the culprit would most likely be there.  They were “in cahoots” with all the other criminals!  I love this stuff!  *sigh*  I’m such a nerd.  A word nerd.  Dang!

WTF is up with the Austrian dude who kept his daughter and his incestous offspring (some of them at least) captive in the freaking basement for 24 years?  TWENTY-FOUR YEARS!!!!!!!!  And, not to make disparaging remarks about the intellect of the mother here, but how the hell did she miss that????  I mean, the guy was taking food to them daily!  She and the “children” were forbidden from going near the area where the door was located.  Huh?  I mean, just how smart do you have to be to figure out something is wrong?  Here he is telling her that the daughter ran away.  Okay, not so suspicious there.  But sometime later, she “drops off” three of her kids.  No contact with mom, only dad.  No bells yet?  How old were the children when he brought them out of the basement?  Why didn’t they ever say, “Hey grandma, can I go downstairs and say hi to Mom?”  That is a perfect case of someone being deliberately obtuse! 

Obtuse.  Another favorite word of mine.  Look it up, Muttonhead.  I’m not doing ALL the work for you!

So, my neurologist ran away and didn’t tell me.  I get my meds through one of those online thingies.  I was up for a refill, which required my neuro to re-authorize my scripts.  No biggie, we do this all the time.  NOT!  The online meds thingie sends me a message saying that they cannot renew my scripts.  I have to contact my Dr.  Okay, a little strange, but I’m about due for a visit anyway.  I call up and get no answer.  No answer, no answering machine, no answering service, no nothing.  For days on end.  I have no idea what’s up, but I’m not really stressing too much because I never liked the jerk anyway. 

So I talk to some other doctors, trying to get a few referrals so I can find a new neuro.  One of them tells me that my neuro has moved to the mountains.  No shit?, I say.  Yep, she says.  He sent a letter to all of his current patients telling them that he was leaving and to come get their records.  I never got my letter!  *insert sad face here*  This is the point where I start to feel a little ……..um…….well, left out.  I mean, just because I’m not at his office once a month, that doesn’t make me chopped liver!  I really  never liked that guy. 

I’m now on a quest for a new neurologist.  *sigh*  I hate this medical crap more than I can tell you.  I can’t remember things well enough to be coherent when it comes time to give a timeline/symtom list.  Luckily, MDH comes with me most of the time.  I can’t remember because I have scar tissue in the memory centers of my brain.  Whatever that means. 

It’s fascinating to listen to MDH tell about it, though.  I have no idea about alot of the things he tells them.  I am apparently very different from what I used to be like.  I don’t remember who I used to be, so it’s like listening to a story where part of the time I was the main character and part of the time my understudy took the stage for me.  She had a lot of fun times!  They sound fun, anyway.  It makes me sad that she got to do that stuff and I didn’t. 

I get all emotional about it because I wonder how people see me now, compared to how they used to see me.  I don’t feel any different.  But I must be really  different, because I used to have lots of friends and now I don’t have any.  I guess people get tired of seeing that blank look on my face every time they talk about something we did and I don’t have any idea what they mean.  I understand that because it frets me something terrible when it happens.  I feel like a partial amnesiac.  I remember just enough to know that I don’t really remember much.  I had a whole other life that I have totally forgotten. 

The cool part is that at one time I was a pretty cool old broad.  I wish I had had a video camera on me at all times.  Then I could see me doing all that stuff and maybe I would remember it then.  I wonder how sad it makes MDH, having to keep the memories alone.  That frets me too. 

This is why I hate the medical stuff.  Because I am confronted with the stranger I used to be whenever I have to go.  It gets me all emo.  I used to tell people that I lost the eighties.  They thought it was a joke.  It wasn’t.  I don’t remember the music, the television, the movies, the major events in the news.  They are gone. 

Most of the time I can sit up here on the hill and be whoever it is that I am now and not think about whatever it was that I lost.  But I think that mostly I sit here and don’t think at all.  Most of the time I run just beneath the surface and I’m not really all that aware of what’s going on around me.  I try to be, but it’s hard to do because I have no idea what I’m missing.  I don’t know what I’ve forgotten that I’m supposed to be remembering.  Whenever I go into town, people that are complete strangers to me always wave, stop and talk, and I have no idea who they are.  I smile and nod my head and I have no idea who the hell they are or where they know me from.  It’s creepy in the extreme.

Sometimes I think that I should go out and make new friends that didn’t know me before.  Then I remember that I don’t know who knows me and who doesn’t.  Makes it kind of hard to do. 

Anyways, that might explain why sometimes I’m HERE and sometimes I just have nothing to say. 

Anyone else out there have something like this going on?  How do/did you handle it? 


LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen

March 29, 2008

WTF?

Did LeBron or did LeBron not POSE FOR THAT PICTURE???????

Was he not aware that he had a basketball in one hand and a woman in the other?

Was he not aware of his posture?

Dear Lord where do I start?  Is there some organization I’m not aware of whose main goal is to sift through every single  shred of print or video and make up stupid idiotic things to bitch about?

Now, as near as I can tell, and I looked very very closely, LeBron is black.  That’s right.  I went there.  Don’t you think that if there was going to be a problem with this photo, LeBron might have been one of the FREAKIN FIRST people to notice it?  I mean, he WAS there afterall.  He participated!

I get so pissed off when people start screaming “racism” on be-freaking-half of OTHER people. 

Here’s my opinion, for what it’s worth(which is basically not a damn thing):  If LeBron didn’t have a problem with the picture, then no one else has one iota of buisness saying a damn word about it. 

How about this fantastical idea?  Let’s save the cries about racism for an actual case of racism?  I fail to see how a man at the top of his game, looking like he stepped right out of a marble statue, with his arms around a beautiful woman is in any way racist, demeaning, or off .

The end.  Where is my valium?


Easter Bunny Slapstick

March 26, 2008

Broke Down Easter Egg                                                                                                                      

My kids are skeptics when it comes to holidays with XXL sized animals or even humans in velvet and patent leather outfits leaving them unearned gifts in the night.  This breaks my heart.  Aside from the fact that their disbelief means that they are getting older, which in turn means that I am therefore getting older as well, I really hate to see the end of their childlike wonder at the mystical and magical events of childhood.

This disappoints me mainly because, despite my hard assed nature, I am a child at heart.  (this could explain many, many things if you think about it)  I love the excitement, the anticipation, the wonder, that little bit of angst about whether it will really happen and the extreme relief and renewed belief that comes when it does happen.

So, in order to drag it out for just a bit longer, purely in self interest I assure you, I devised a plan.  We would trap the Easter Bunny in mid-delivery.  THAT would prove to them that said bunny really existed!  We set up a “string with noisy stuff attached to it” trap.  The bunny would get all caught up in it and we would have his fluffy ass! 

I get all tingly just thinking about it!  They were skeptical but I kept them going.  By the time I got done they were all vigilantied up and everything.  They were all ready to make Easter Bunny lined bedroom slippers if we got him. 

Come Easter morning, what they got was an Easter basket filled with all kinds of yummy edibles, cool toys, and this broken Easter egg that ( I explained) the Easter Bunny must have dropped while making his extremely skillful escape!  They didn’t care one whit that he escaped.  They loved the chase, they loved the baskets, they ate candy till their momma spit up, and it was all good. 

The picture is actually DeeDee’s new babies.  Put your ears on because I’m just about to ring my own bell here.  Her second baby was stuck.  She was exhausted with pushing and nothing was happening.  I was very worried about her so I decided to assist.  I pulled the stuck puppy a little bit and it popped lose and she was able to push it out the rest of the way by herself.  But she was remarkably uninterested in it.  She literally turned her back on it.  She wouldn’t pull the caul off of it or anything.  I knew that it only had a little bit of time before it would be too late so I took the caul off myself.  I put it in front of her and she finally chewed off the umbilical cord, but that was all she would do.  She refused it.  It wasn’t breathing.  I picked it up and gave it baby puppy CPR.  When it started breathing on its own I wrapped it in a cloth and took it to the other room and fed it warm sugar milk.  It loved that and when I decided that it had had enough, it started to cry.  DeeDee came running into the room and took her out of my hands, back to the birthing box, and has kept her and taken care of her ever since.  (DING DING DING)<——–My own bell ringing.

I named her Ditto.  The runt is a boy and his name is Dash.  The largest and last puppy born was also a girl and her name is Dot.  I had a thing for D’s that day.  In the top picture, from the left is Dot, Ditto and Dash. 

Everyone who sees the pictures of them tells Rocky and me that we have way too much time on our hands.  HA!  Not even!  But it was fun and we had a good time with it.   

                                                                                                                        imgp6302-copy.jpg  

Now I’m on chocolate overload……one of my favorite states of all time.  It’s my version of legal speed.  I like to take a hit about an hour before bedtime because the crash is a cheap and happy substitute for sleeping pills.  Win-Win.  The only possible drawback is the odd dreams I sometimes have of Willy Wonka.  But I don’t know you well enough to tell you about those. 

Sigh.  I love holidays that involve XXL animals that bring unearned gifts in the night!