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Waiting

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 17, 2011| 6 Comments »

I know that in the Grand Scheme of things, my life is pretty insignificant, but… This week has been a hard week emotionally on me.

First, there was the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Things like that affect me very deeply even when I do not have emotional ties to the place or people, and this time I had emotional ties. All I can do is pray for the people of Japan. Well, I did a little more: I gave to Medical Teams International (From their Mission Statement: “To demonstrate the love of Christ to people affected by disaster, conflict and poverty around the world.”) Medical Teams International is one of the highest-rated charities, meaning what you donate to a cause goes to that cause and not to overhead. Every penny. My boss is (or was) on the board of Medical Teams International, too, so I feel like it is a very home-grown charity.

Then my son left for Iraq. I don’t pretend to think this is harder on me than it is on his wife. My heart breaks for Kaci, but she’s strong and she will manage somehow over the next eight months. I’m certainly not very happy with it, either, but it is what he does and he understands the risks.

Daylight Savings Time happened, too. Yes, I like the extra hour of daylight in the evening, but that alarm clock is killing me this week. I’m not a morning person and I drag all summer in the early morning. I’d be happy if we just stayed on Standard Time and I could sleep in a little every day. Oh, heck: I’d be happy if I could sleep until nine every day!

And then there’s the cloud of mystery that is hanging over my health. If you just popped in, I have what they call “hematuria“. When it started, back in January, it was gross hematuria which means pink pee. No pain, no injury. Just this new thing in the toilet (can I write that on a blog?).  I laughed it off the first two weeks: it’s a bladder infection, antibiotics will work…

It has now been 10 weeks. We have eliminated infection and injury, and now we have eliminated every organ in my body except my bladder.

I had a C-T scan and an ultrasound. Yeah.

So here are the results to date:

I have two very fine kidneys. The left one holds a teeny-tiny oval kidney stone that isn’t moving much, doesn’t cause any pain, and is not the source of any blood.

I have a very healthy liver, pancreas and spleen. Do you even think about having a pancreas or a spleen? How important are those, anyway? All I know about a spleen is this: my daughter had mononucleosis (twice) and the doctors told her not to lift anything over 5 pounds or she’d rupture her spleen and die. That’s what I know about a spleen (and I know that it is not a very large organ, having seen it in black-and-white on the ultrasound monitor).

I have a very healthy gall-bladder but there are four tiny, almost minute, polyps inside of it that I am supposed to keep an eye on. (Read: I should have a follow-up ultrasound in a year to see what the polyps are doing. I wonder if they will be having a tea party? The gall bladder looked sort of like a Hobbit cave…) Right now, I am hard-pressed to even care if I have polyps (are they stalagmite or stalactite in position? That is the only question I have).

(Do you, Dear reader, know the difference between stalagmite and stalactite? I do. I’ve been through Lehman Caves a bazillion times. Well, 20 times at the very least. I could lead a tour. I could turn the lights off, too. That’s really scary in the bottom of Lehman Caves because there is no dark darker than where there is no light at all. I love it. And my gall-bladder looked like a very dark cave.)

This news is supposed to make me feel better. I think. Except it doesn’t. It just eliminates every fail-safe possibility as to why I am bleeding and slowly narrows it down to the one cause that is not good. Is. Not. Good.

I suppose it could still be some benign bizarre bladder business, like a … umm.. a… (help me out here, folks!) POLYP. Yes, a benign bladder polyp.

I like that word: polyp.

Next installment of this bizarre bladder business will be after April 4. Just think: you get almost 3 weeks of not hearing about my bladder. Lucky you.

Wow. I can’t believe how much better I feel after making fun of my own body. This is actually very good therapy. For me. Probably not for my friends.

ttfn – love you all!

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Rambles

Posted in Uncategorized on March 16, 2011| 1 Comment »

Yesterday’s post was a rambling mess. I reread it this morning and thought, “I should have slept on that.” It needed a lot of editing and I could have pared several paragraphs off to make it concise. I was just too tired to do it.

I am truly concerned about the people of Japan, probably more than I am concerned with any other demographic of human crisis at the moment. We all have our “pets” and I will always have a soft spot for Japan.

I could do a whole “apologetics” post here, but I’d mess it up and I don’t have the heart or energy to try to edit something that massive. I love God. I believe in His Majesty, His Divine creativity, His love for mankind and this tiny planet in a huge Universe, and His compassion for the individual. I believe He loved me when I still hated Him (and all of His followers). And it is that passion that drove me to write what I wrote yesterday.

I am just sorry I left perfectionism at the door and hit “Publish” before editing the heck out of that essay. It looks like a windstorm plowed through and gathered thoughts before dumping them into paragraphs. It looks like the street out beside our house after yesterday’s wind-and-thunderstorms.

SO: note to self. EDIT EDIT EDIT. Sleep on it and EDIT, especially when trying to write about something I feel passionately about.

And please – do not repost that stupid video of that stupid, silly, naive girl celebrating that she prayed in death & destruction on Japan. She did no such thing and even if she had prayed that way, God would have ignored her. He set plate tectonics in motion when He founded the earth and He is no respecter of persons. If rain is going to fall, it’s going to fall on everyone.

End of story.

P.S. Thank you for all the comments on Facebook. Apparently I hit a nerve with a lot of people even though I was ranting out of control.

P.S.S. Has anyone ever researched Shintoism? My favorite theory is that one of the Lost Tribes of Israel settled in Japan.

OK. I will shut up now. I’m going to press the Publish button.

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Japan

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 15, 2011| 5 Comments »

I don’t have the initiative to scan photos from my time in Japan just now (and my scanner is buried under paperwork I need to deal with before next Monday). And the photos would be irrelevant anyway: I was 17, the year was 1974, and there was no earthquake. The only dramatic thing that happened was Richard M. Nixon stepped down from the presidency and I watched it on Japanese television, feeling a million miles away from home.

I didn’t feel sorry for the President. That was a long time coming.

I do not believe the Japanese people have changed that much. They are a resilient people with deep-rooted traditions and a moral code to make any hell-fire Christian blush.

I remember mentioning this to my son last Sunday as we watched wave after wave of tsunami crash over villages and farmlands on the available videos online. My daughter-in-law expressed surprise, but Levi understood what I was saying: there would be no looting or stealing in Japan. Everything would be handled in a very orderly fashion because: Japanese people do not steal. They do not loot. They believe they are all in it together and they are going to take care of each other first.

I was not surprised when the American media began to pick up on that anomaly. What should have looked like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami over Indonesia looked more like a very organized and calm queue of people waiting their turn for ten items in the only surviving grocery store, for five gallons of gas, for bottled water. The Japanese (who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki) are not about to lose face in the face of this newest disaster. They have their personal ethics and pride to maintain.

I was surprised at how quickly the hate rhetoric came out of the wood-work. God’s wrath. Heathen Nation. End Times. Judgment Day.

Wow. Really? Because the Shinto-Buddhist Nation of Japan puts the pseudo Judeo-Christian Nation of the United States to shame in how they handle a crisis. Kindness, order, and generosity are the order of the day in Japan. What do you think would be the order of the day if it was Portland, Oregon, that was just hit with a 9.0 magnitude earthquake?

If I was not already a believer in Jesus Christ, the rhetoric I have seen spouted from some of my Facebook “friends” would turn me off completely. Do we really think our non-believing friends and family understand terms like “End Times” or “Judgment” in any other context than WE are judging THEM? That our God is a hateful, murderous, spiteful God Who somehow has spared the American coast from a terrible disaster and has instead dumped it on an island people whose National moral code puts ours to shame?

There was the video (I can’t give you the link because YouTube has removed it) posted by some young girl who was “celebrating” because her fasting & praying had caused God to shake the earth and “wake up” the Nation of Japan to His Mercy. Babies, children, husbands, wives, sons, daughters – all dead because this kid fasted & prayed? Aside from the fact that a prayer like that is manipulative and all about “power” (and very unlikely to be answered by a loving God), just what does this sort of “witness” accomplish? Last time I read the Word, it said “pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows” not to pray God would create the fatherless and widows. James 1:27

Glenn Beck claims the earthquake is a call to Japan to “follow the Ten Commandments”. Another “wow”: There’s no stealing, looting, rioting, shooting at rescue helicopters, or even cursing God from the survivors of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan. If that is not “following the Ten Commandments”, what is? And did Glenn Beck forget that God sent Jesus to fulfill the law that we could not follow? The Ten Commandments are nice, but they are so Old Testament and were replaced with “love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Galatians 5:14)

I have another friend on Facebook who is ranting about nuclear meltdown, chaos, are you ready, and make certain you’ve purchased your stock of potassium iodine. All in the same breath, it seems.

Let me tell you about ready. I am ready. If Jesus comes back tonight or I find out I have bladder cancer tomorrow, I am ready. I am not afraid. I am not running out and buying a year’s supply of potassium iodine to protect myself from the possibility of nuclear radiation drift (thus leaving some more needy soul without because – heaven forbid – they did not think ahead. Besides, doesn’t this remind anyone of the Y2K hype?). I have made my peace.

I’m no fan of nuclear power (I celebrated the day Trojan Power Plant went down in a boom and a puff of dust and smoke, thus ending Oregon’s greatest threat to my health).  I pray for the people of Japan, that this is truly not a melt-down of Chernobyl magnitude (not like they haven’t faced something similar before, like around August 7-9, 1945). And don’t get me wrong: I believe the Enola Gay was the only answer to the war on the Pacific front in 1945. It was a horrific thing to have to do, but talk to any survivor of the Death Marches on the Pacific Islands and the cruelty of the Royal Japanese Army of the 1940’s – and their single-minded loyalty to the Rising Sun – and you can draw your own conclusions.

What I am saying is simple: I am a Christian. I do not waver in my faith. I do not believe God pulled Japan out of a hat and sentenced doom on the Japanese because they are a heathen nation. I do believe the laws of physics and plate tectonics had a greater role in deciding who  got the great 9.0 this time around. It could have been us and we were not spared because we are 1) a Christian nation 2) so very good  and always obedient to the Ten Commandments 3) we back Israel in all things (ha!) or any other “luck of the draw” theories. We’re due. It’s simple mathematics.

Is it End Times? How would I know? I don’t. I just figure every day I get up I should be prepared. And every day that I get up, I recognize that I know fewer and fewer people who believe the way I do. And I want less and less for them to suffer because they disagree with me.

Jesus was not a political creature. That was Judas. I think Judas repented of is decision and he went to Heaven, by the way. I have a hard time imagining Jesus sending one of His own good friends to hell, even if His friend stole money from the purse and turned him in with a kiss on the cheek. Judas was just a man with a political cause who thought he was getting sold out and then realized the ones who paid him off were the ones selling him out.

But I also believe God takes all of our animals to Heaven. And you should see the arguments you can get into on a “Christian” forum about that – even though the Bible specifically mentions animals in Heaven and Jesus riding a white horse!

In conclusion, I want to say this: I am a believer in Jesus Christ. That was a hard-won victory for God. I do not believe God just rained down judgment on Japan: I believe sh*t happens (apologies to my sensitive friends and my mom in Heaven as she just rolled her eyes at me) to the good and to the evil, equally. I believe we choose how we deal with it and we should all take a lesson from the irreligious Nation of Japan as they dig into their Shinto roots to deal with this latest disaster on their small island. I do not believe Japan is innocent. I do not believe WE are innocent.

I do believe we are all in this together and we better reach out, regardless of faith or creed or moral code and help one another.

postscript – I know there are some grammatical & spelling errors. I’m too tired to go look for them. You figure it out.  AND – I love you all. My heart hurts for Japan. I have friends there. I do not know how they are because I lost touch with them over 30 years ago. But they are my friends forever.

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Herding Cats…

Posted in Uncategorized on March 14, 2011| 5 Comments »

is easier than posing little boys for a family photo!

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They Are Home now

Posted in Uncategorized on March 13, 2011| 1 Comment »

We had a wonderful week with Levi, Kaci and the boys. Different boys than I usually blog about: these are my Colorado boys, Justin & Micah. Sadly, it came to an end today and I had to take them to the airport (in the “worst wind storm of the winter”). All I will say about that is that is was darn wet, the road mist from dualies & semis is always worse than the rain itself, and we made it safely to the airport.

Levi & Justin

Levi, Micah & Kaci

Micah

Giggling cousins. (No, this was not the spitting contest. Darn, I wish I had the camera for that! One boy would blow a raspberry and the other two followed suit. Then they dissolved into giggles. Boys!)

“Poppa” and the “twins” : Justin and Javan vying for Poppa’s favor.

Grandma and Justin.

Thank you, Kaci.

I meant to get a photo of all three of my kids together: Arwen, Levi & Chrystal. But I put it off, thinking I would get a second chance. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see Chrystal again (Levi & Kaci did, but not me with my camera) while Levi was here. Dang! I must remember to get photos the FIRST time they are all together, “just in case”.

 

I miss them already. Levi leaves for Iraq this week. 😦

But I am so very happy I got this week with them!!

ttfn (tomorrow I will post “Herding Cats” – a light moment in photographing grandsons.)

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House Guests Coming!

Posted in Uncategorized on March 7, 2011| 5 Comments »

I am about to call it a night. My house is as clean as it is going to be with the dogs and the mud/dust/hair that they create. My studio is as kid-proof as it is going to get. I’ve pulled out the inflatable queen-sized bed, purchased new guest pillows, located the sheets and blankets to put on the bed and cleared a place for it. I’ve been to the grocery store and stocked up on what I hope is enough food for four adults plus 1 toddler (at least). Don and I have arranged our schedules to take staggered days off.

And I am tired. Beat. Sore all over. I’m not sure if it was the two strenuous walks with Harvey in cold air or the mopping, but I sure feel like I’ve been through the exercise mill! Wiped out.

My son and his wife are coming for a visit!

Late tonight, my son and his lovely wife and two wonderful, adorable little boys will be getting off of a plane at PDX International and my husband will pick them up and bring them home. Don is taking Tuesday and Wednesday off from work. Tuesday because he knows he won’t want to get up at 4:00AM to go to work after the late-night airport run and Wednesday because he really wants to spend time with his son and grandsons.

I am taking Thursday and Friday off to hang out with my daughter-in-law, love on those babies, and hug on my son.

They fly back out on Sunday. And sometime next week – probably on the biggest American-Irish holiday of the year – my son will fly out to Iraq for 8 months. Yes, Virginia, America is still deploying soldiers to Iraq. Yay for “pulling out all American troops”.

I probably will not blog while the grandboys are here. I will, however, take a whole boatload of photos (I was going to write something else, but I don’t want to give my friend, Jodi, apoplexy because I said the “s” word twice in one month) (besides, my mother in heaven rolls her eyes every time I swear and I feel guilty for using words she did not approve of in casual conversation).

I’m a middle child.

I am also a very excited grandmother. I can’t wait to get to meet Micah, the youngest of them all, and become more acquainted with Justin (who is very close in age to Javan). I have stories to read the boys and hugs to give them.

And I hate to confess this because anyone who really knows me knows how much I hate any kind of monkey, but… since Justin loves monkeys… I bought him a stuffed monkey. It almost killed me, but what we do for our grandbabies…

ANYWAY –  I bought this monkey. And it is almost cute.

 

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Mary Denise

Posted in Uncategorized on March 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

We called her Denny. She was born on the 15th day of May, 1959. I remember the day, vaguely: my grandparents were there and they let me have a foot-long hot-dog (which my parents would never have allowed because I couldn’t eat the whole thing). I didn’t eat the whole thing, but no one seemed upset that most of it went into the refrigerator. I remember nothing of my sister.

What there is to write of my sister’s life, I leave to her children. They all loved her fiercely. None of them want to hear about the sadness, the addiction, the abuses, the crimes. They remember their mother and they defend her with all of their hearts and souls. She was their best friend.

My sister cut her foot on something in her yard. She never wore shoes, not even in February in Ely, Nevada, when the ground was still frozen. She didn’t think much about the cut.

She called my dad to tell him she felt terrible. Her leg ached, her stomach roiled, she felt like she was dying. She cried on the telephone.

Her husband took her to the emergency room in Ely. The doctors did not know what was wrong with her, why she was in so much pain, or how to diagnose her.

I don’t know the exact timeline. Two days? Less? On March the 2nd, 2000, my dad called to tell me that Deni was being taken by air to Reno. She was in a coma. She’d been ill, but no one knew why. It had only been a couple days.

At Washoe Medical Center in Reno, they knew exactly what they were dealing with, but Denise’s body had already begun to shut down. There would be no saving her.

She died of Necrotizing Faciitis. Flesh-eating bacteria. A streptoccocal bacteria that invaded a small wound in her body (in this case her foot) and began to shut down her vital organs. She died within 36 hours of cutting herself. The disease is so rare that the doctors in the small town of Ely had no idea what they were up against and by the time she arrived in Reno, it was too late.

March 3rd, 2000.

Ironically, our grandmother – my father’s mother – also died of a “streptoccal infection” at a hospital in Salt Lake City in 1930. The description of the disease in my grandfather’s journal is strikingly similar to the progress of the disease in Deni. I don’t know if there’s some genetic link. I merely find it ironic that two members of my family died of a bizarre disease, leaving small children behind.

It has been eleven years. Deni and I were not particularly close, but she was my little sister. I took her death hard. And for whatever sentimental reason, this anniversary of her passing is also hard.

I loved her. I miss her.

Her kids have grown up to be great kids. She would be happy with that.

 

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Paint Me! PLEASE!

Posted in Uncategorized on February 26, 2011| 2 Comments »

I was walking around Goodwill today, just looking. There’s always fascinating stuff at Goodwill and I like to drop in once a week to search for silk blouses (which I then cut up & use in projects as silk is the very best fabric for painting and creating things). It’s much cheaper to purchase an old silk shirt at Goodwill than it is to purchase new silk fabric.

In the back of our local Goodwill, there are short aisles crammed with things people discard: ceramics, wooden things, metal things, electronics, frames, toys.

I found this goose back there.

I picked her up and gave her a skeptical look. I tried to set her back down, but her pleading yellow eyes and the bad paint job just screamed at me.

PAINT ME! PLEASE!

“Pretty please? What happened to me was not my fault. It was a crime. You can fix me…”

The basic bones of the goose are good. She’s 23″ (58.4cm) tall and made out of 1″ (2.5cm) thick plywood. Not chipboard: plywood. She’s solid. Her feet (foot?) is screwed on with two screws. Her eyes are perfectly lined up.

I’m thinking I can make her one species of goose on one side and another goose on the other side.

It would have to be similar species, but I think I could pull it off.

I’ll be poring through guide books, trying to decide. Whatever I do, I’ll have to be very careful painting that foot (those feet?): some geese have black feet and some have orange feet. I want this goose (these geese?) to blend nicely.

I’ll probably get rid of that stupid hat.

Can’t you hear her whispering, “Save me…”??

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Winter

Posted in Uncategorized on February 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

With all the media-hype surrounding the February snow storm this week, I was pretty certain it would be a complete no-show. There’s a strange correlation between media panic and the predicted disaster being a complete flop (conversely, when the media doesn’t hype it up, it is a total meteorologic disaster). Sort of “Murphy’s Law” but I’d name this one “Tri-Met’s Law: If all of the Portland metro area buses have chains on, the weather will agree to not produce snow or ice. If Tri-Met deigns it unnecessary to chain up, there will be city buses sliding sideways down city streets.”

So I was a little more than pleased that we got enough snow to take some quick snap-shots.

I was less-than pleased with how they came out. I confess I did not take a lot of time choosing or shooting my shots, but when I had a chance to have my camera out, it seemed like I was being hurried along by some other force.

I used a little photo-shop to improve on the few photos I did like.

It was early morning & I just wanted to get in the car & down the road. I had no idea how slick the roads would be or what the commute was going to look like once I got out there. I snapped this of the Lodgepole pine tree in our front yard, framed by the taller Doug fir across the street as I was getting into the car. The snow was falling profusely, threatening to give us more than the inch and a quarter we already had on the ground.

It stopped snowing as soon as I left home.And the further I got from home, the less snow there was.

In the afternoon, I left an office where there was hardly any snow and drove home to a winter wonderland. Fresh snow clung to all the trees and grass, but not the sidewalks.

I really wanted to take this one. But I had a split second to do it before other shoppers stepped into my view-finder. Snap! No time to compose or think about it. I could only hope.

This was the only one I had time to work on: the daffodils in my yard yard, pushing up through the new-fallen snow. I had to boost the color for the contrast of yellow against the white of snow.

Next week, I get to pick daffodils & start a whole new season of fresh cut flowers. Now that is exciting!

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Commercial Interlude

Posted in Uncategorized on February 22, 2011| 7 Comments »

I try to keep my blog light and avoid “heavy” topics. For this reason, I was a tad bit irreverent yesterday when I wrote about where I am in the waiting game.

Trust me, I am not in the least bit angry at God.

I understand that many of my friends do not share the same faith I do. I never want to make you feel unwelcome.

That said, I have to say that it is my faith that is driving me these days. When this journey first began the doctors were bantering around the “C” word rather freely. It’s been 7 weeks this coming week & no one has diagnosed cancer. I keep getting put on the back burner (or so it seems to this rather selfish “about me” blogger).

I determined early on that I could either freak out or I could approach this from my foundation of faith.

I believe God has a crazy sense of humor. I know that people who survive the most adverse situations are people who are able to interject humor into them – or, barring laughter, an uplifting outlook on life. Humor (however twisted) is my defense.

I am not mad at God. I did ask Him if we could just fast-forward to the “I know what is wrong with me” part but I never seriously considered I would get a “yes” to that request. I figured it was right up there with “Never pray for patience – unless you want a lesson in patience”. (Can I get an “AMEN” from everyone who ever prayed for patience and then got a LESSON in patience?)

I also realize that the world is a huge mess right now and I am not exactly anyone’s prayer priority. For crying out loud, I don’t even know if I really have a problem or if the doctors all over-reacted. There are some real priorities out there: Christchurch, NZ; Libya; Wisconsin (did I just say that? Wisconsin? A priority? God love ya, cousins!); Somali pirates and murdered Americans and more on the world front. And in my own circle of influence, I have friends who are facing down the spectre of cancer – for real, not imaginary like me. God is pretty busy.

So here’s my commercial. I am sorry if I came off irreverent. I think God understands. I think God chuckled. I think God needed the laugh. He’s got some really depressing stuff on earth to deal with.

And to close, I want to quote my favorite bumper sticker (don’t read if you are easily offended – I just mean it to be funny):

“Jesus loves you, but I am His favorite.”

(As my dear friend in Auckland, NZ, would say: “Now I am ducking for cover in the bushes…”)

(For the rest of you: smile. God did. He thought it was cute. I’m sure He did because lightning did not strike me…)

(Life’s too short…)

(and no, noone said anything. I just felt guilty. How Catholic is that?)

(I’m Methodist.)

SHUT UP JACI.

OK. `ttfn 🙂

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