I'm going to kill my son.

Any of you out there with a teenager know this feeling. I don't really think this should be a prosecutable crime. I kind of feel like...if you actually had a jury of your peers; parents of teenagers, and they heard your testimony, they'd be all "Awwwww... let 'em go."

It's not as if he's done anything in particular. This morning (call the Vatican, it's a miracle) the kid is up about 9:30. Since we are leaving on vacation this weekend, I asked him to get together the outfits he wants to wear, get the ones that are dirty and put them in the laundry, blah blah.

Well.

There are at least ten thousand reasons why this is a problem right now: I'm going somewhere with my friends at one, I wanted to play the Wii for a while, I gotta take a shower, I'm all a-dither about the Sara Palin resignation, blah blah blah. So he comes out with a shirt and a pair of shorts and is heading to the laundry room.

"What's that?" I asked.

There was a ponderous, sonorous sigh. "It's what I want to wear this afternoon."

"Well what about the other things?"

"What other things?"

(This the part where I do the neck out, head-cocked to the side thing that literally screams: DUH!) "The other clothes that are dirty that you need to take on vacation?"

Sssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh. Back into the room. He returns with two more shirts and two more shorts. "Now. Are you happy?"

"What do I care? It's your vacation too. If you want to wear the same thing every day..."

Apparently this signals the Parent Rant and he went on to the laundry room.

Did you guys in other states hear that sigh? The Army has plans to use it for acoustic warfare.

Back From the Mountain...

Well-

I spent nearly a week at ASU in Boone NC for the NC Teacher's Academy. I had looked forward to it but when I got up there I was having so much trouble with back spasms that it was miserable any time I had to walk up hills. And there's a little more than hills in Boone: it's mountains. Anyway...

I went with Kim to the store on Monday night and as we were coming back we got caught in the biggest, most fierce storm from Hell... Jesus! At first the rain was so hard that visibility was ZERO, then it started hailing. I have never driven in hail before. I was freaked out. Hail was drumming on the roof and bouncing off the windshield. Kim was laughing hysterically, I was just hysterical! I guess the little bits of ice were about the size of English peas, maybe a little larger. I didn't find any damage on my car, but when we pulled into the lot of the dorm where we were staying, there was quite a raging little stream of muddy water coming off the side of the mountain behind the building. It wasn't a big deal for the Trailblazer to cross, so we parked and ran in. Within five minutes that little creek had turned into an honest to goodness fast water incident! Some of the smaller cars parked in the first rows had water dashing up to the windows. It was still pouring rain and I ran upstairs to get my camera. Maybe tomorrow I'll post a pic or two - they aren't very spectacular as by the time the 5000 year old elevator took me up and brought me down the water had subsided. Presently there was nothing left but a mudslide and a lot of trash that had come floating down. I drank a few shots of Tequila Coco in it's honor and moved on.

Thursday Amy and I took off into the higher mountains in hopes of getting some pictures. We finally got on the parkway but once again it started raining and lowered the visibility: not due to the intensity of the rain but the clouds. We approached a very sharp curve at one point that appeared as if the road just ended and you would sail out into the clouds. I remarked that we'd found Heaven but I doubted that either one of us would get in. Just the "Snide Comments" sections of our Book(s) Of Life are probably four feet thick with Post It's hanging out everywhere.

Needless to say, no award-winning shots were had that day, either. Feh.

Trip home was uneventful. Introduced Amy and Kim to the joy that is Tom's Bacon Cheddar Fries. Had some laughs. I slept 12 hours last night and took two naps today recovering.

It's bad to get old

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Saturday, Caturday... Oak Island, Charleston, and more

... if you've spent any time looking at LOL Cats, you'll recognize the Caturday thing.

I spent most of the day yesterday being wretchedly sick with some sort of gastronomic atrocity. I think chicken fries, no matter how much I love them, are the enemy. Both times I've eaten them recently I've had stomach problems. Yesterday's episode wasn't typical nausea; oh no, it was screaming hot seething pain in the guts Viet Nam disemboweling-with-a-bayonet agony. That having been said (vividly, I might add) it waxed and waned until I fell asleep about three and woke up to the "thing" having vacated the premises. Thank God. I'd sooner have been in labor again. (Scratch that.)

I find myself longing for the ocean more and more. Remembering rising in the morning and walking out onto the walkway to see what the sea was up to, going out after dinner to throw leftover bread to the gulls and to watch the sun set and little Ghost crabs race down to the surf...it brings an almost physical pain to know I will never do those things from 720 Caswell Beach Road ever again. It's like some sort of cosmic punch in the stomach. Seems to be a common theme today, eh? I am grieving, as surely as I would if a person had died. This year marks four since Daddy sold the house and I last visited it as a 'resident'. I went back one summer after 'Long View's' transformation into 'Birds of a Feather' (psshyeah...) and found it distasteful. Painting the gorgeous knotty pine exposed beam ceilings white, and the paneled walls ice cream Key West colors. Turning a closet into a bathroom? I stood on the front porch and peered down to the driveway where I fell and fractured my skull that last day: January 15, 2005. It wasn't my house anymore. Still, I kissed the wall in the den before I left and said I still loved her. And I do.

The picture above is of my son when he was a little kid, washing the sand off of his feet on our walkway. Our, what was our walkway.

So, in a few weeks we are going to go down to Charleston SC to visit and vacation. Tripp's mom is from there, and of course Folly Beach is nearby to give me an ocean fix. It is just never the same. It's like never being able to eat real chocolate again. Substitutes pale in comparison.

Today I'd like to go out and do a little cemetery photography. Especially at Cross Creek downtown, I don't like to go alone. The neighborhood is a little too dicey around there for a woman alone who is distracted by her hobby; forsooth, holding a very expensive camera in her hands. What a tasty little Saturday robbery that would be!

Dr. lectured me. I don't test my blood often enough, and I don't keep a log. I know I should, but-damn, it gets tiring having to think "diabetes diabetes diabetes" all the time. I'll have to dig out a log, I suppose. I have to test four times a day, and in the summer especially I am not on any kind of a schedule like at school.

Speaking of school, I heard some disconcerting news today. It isn't necessarily about me, but it affects someone close to me.

When I came home from the doctor's office, I had this big box of supplies for my pump. There was also a notice that the quick sets I use to connect the pump to my body are recalled, and now I have to box 'em, up and ship them back to the Medtronic people. Well damn. If the tubing was defective and I wasn't getting the right amount of insulin, maybe that's why my sugar runs high!

After that I sat down here at the computer and fell asleep. Man, I've been asleep for about three hours! I haven't eaten all day, except for a banana on the way to the Dr's office. Oddly, I don't get hungry; I just go and go until I am literally shaking from the need to put some fuel in the tank.

Lotta stuff turning over in my head, stuff I can't really write in a public forum. I'll have to leave this at a boring "what I did on my summer vacation" type entry until I get green-lighted about anything else.

From the mouths of babes...

Paris Jackson made me weep at her Daddy's memorial. To hear her say her Daddy was the best father in the world...as a Daddy's girl, that really broke my heart.

Good morning, new blog!

I am not new to the blog thing. I have had a Livejournal since Hector was a pup ( yes, that is an obscure, odd cliche to indicate 'a long time') but I frankly got a little tired of the cheesy-feel of LJ. And I kind of didn't want to pay for it anymore! So here I am.

The Michael Jackson funeral is on right now. It just started. I have changed channels a few time and finally landed on CNN's coverage. They're showing a set up in Raleigh where there are large screen TV's to watch the proceedings. I am kind of surprised that there's something set up here in NC. I guess it's in the Civic center or some such.

Actually, freaking nothing is going on right now. Smokey Robinson came up and read some apology stuff from other celebrities, but there's been a lag of about ten minutes now. Apparently, people are still filing in. You can see steady movement in the aisles of the Staple's Center.

I remember when Elvis died in 1977. We were at the beach. I was in the bedroom reading a book when my sister came in and told me Elvis was dead. I thought she was kidding, but obviously she wasn't. That was a private funeral, even though the streets were filled with people watching the funeral procession. This televised memorial service stuff is a more recent development. I know Princess Diana and Michael Hutchence (in AUS) were televised. Now you have memorial videos at the service, sometimes even memorial videos in the cemeteries (Hollywood Forever comes to mind). I will say this: the camera flashes are going off in the arena every few seconds. That's kind of tacky. It isn't a freaking concert, folks. It's a funeral. Wait 'til they bring in the casket. It'll be like a lightning storm.

Of COURSE I am watching this. I ain't a card carrying ghoul for nothing! :D