ABCs of Me

This was interesting enough that I lifted it...

ABCs of Me

A – Age: 38
 B – Bed size: Queen
 C – Chore you hate: Just one? Let's go with filing.
 D – Dad’s name: Kay
 E – Essential start your day item: Hot shower.
 F – Favourite color: Rusty-orange-brown.
 G – Gold or Silver: Silver (or white gold)
 H – Height: 5'3"
 I – Instruments you play(ed): Piano, flute, xylophone, chimes, bassoon.
 J – Job title: Administrative Assistant
 K – Kids: 0 human.
 L – Living arrangements: Rental with sweetheart & beloved feline.
 M – Mom’s name: Jo
 N – Nicknames: 'trina, Kat, KC, Mamakat.
 O – Overnight hospital stay other than births: None.
 P – Pet Peeve: Entitlement issues.
 R – Right or left handed: Right, mostly. I will use left if it's easier.
 S – Siblings: One half elder sister, 3 full younger sisters.
 T – Time you wake up: 6:10 am Tu-Th ... otherwise it varies depending on plans.
 U - Underwear: usually
 V – Vegetable you dislike: Peas
 W – Ways you run late: procrastination, oversleeping
 X – X-rays you’ve had: Lower leg.
 Y – Yummy food you make: ...a lot. I'm a good cook. I will go with mashed potatoes, steak and 'shrooms, and steamed asparagus, because it's my favorite, probably.
 Z – Zoo favorite: Hard to pick. Big cats, monkeys, otters.

Rock Band

If I was in a rock band, what would my instrument or role be? Hm. Well, I've played piano here and there, and can even remember the layout of the keyboard so perhaps I'd be a keyboardist. Then again, those take some technical training (especially on the electronic 'boards), that I simply don't have. I've played flute, but... I can only think of one rock band (Judas Priest) that ever employed one of those, and I've forgotten over half the fingerings. From theater, I had training in setting and designing lights, running a light panel, designing sets and building them, and even some stage managing experiences. So probably? I'd be a roadie. I'm even good at looking the other way when the lead and his girlfriend choose odd locations for hookups. Yup. Roadie it is. Too bad the only rock band I know locally doesn't need one. ^_^ (This post is in reaction to this writing prompt.)

Formspring Question - Answered!

Just in case that really good query about what my favorite blog is came from here - here's the answer copied over here:

Good question.

I really love Kung Fu Monkey at http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/ for when I'm craving some Leverage (television show) scoops. For general bloggage with a heaping scoop of art, gardening, and publishing kibbitzing, I like Tea with the Squash God at http://www.redwombatstudio.com/blog/ (though I read it over at LiveJournal, usually). For life oriented, personal essays, I like Sans Fig Leaf at http://www.sansfigleaf.com/ and for Buffy/Spike, alternate universe with original important characters, I like pretty much everything written here http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/ ... there are a lot more.

I'm a blog-a-holic, but these are my "squee!!! s/he updated!!" blogs.

Food memories...

During the summer, a lot of my friends go nuts over watermelon. I like it too, but if I eat too much, my stomach gets pretty serious pains. I've never been able to tell why, exactly. Cantaloupe and other melons can too, so I assume it's some sort of mild food disagreement, that isn't quite a true allergy.

Instead, during the summer, what I get crazy about is corn on the cob or dark cherries. This year, it's definitely been corn on the cob. I adore fresh picked. I like yellow, white, and the sweet varieties. I love drowning it in butter and just a bit of salt. I even love eating it directly off the cob, although I hate picking bits out of my teeth later. I like to smell it in the kitchen when I'm boiling it. I even like it roasted on a grill. I like feeling the kernels pop in my mouth and tasting the salty, sweet, buttery goodness.

It reminds me of when I was little, and dad was an associate dean of arts and sciences, and their office was adjacent to the Ag building. One of the professors there spread word that they'd had a much better crop of corn out of their students than they'd planned for. As a result, there was way more corn than the students and professors wanted. If we wanted to drive out to the fields, we could have as much as we could pick.

Mom told us "One paper bag full, that's all we need!" but I know we took more grocery bags out than one, and I know we came home with a lot. She was parboiling for hours that night, then bagging and putting them in the big deep freeze we had in the garage. We had corn on the cob, it seemed, all winter long. That meant we could have it with Thanksgiving dinner AND Christmas dinner. It was so much fun, and it was some of the best corn I've ever had in my life.

I don't know if I always loved corn that much, but I can definitely trace some of my current love back to that summer. So it's tied to my dad, and my mom in the kitchen, more or less permanently.

Great memories.

(cross posted from http://crescentdreams.dreamwidth.org - if you're interested in a journal there, ask - I still have invite codes at time of this post)

Writing thought + driving thought + cooking thought!

cross-posted from Dreamwidth/Livejournal

Although I never participate, I watch a Minute-a-Day writing blog, where they post a trigger to write on, every day. The theory being you set aside one minute to write on that one thing.

They don't always interest me, but they almost always have interesting responses.

Today, the trigger was: If you could tie a note to a helium balloon, and know it would reach someone who had passed away, what would the note say?

Well, if I could direct it to the right person - Dad - it would say: We miss you so much. That was my first thought. After that there was a barrage: Mom is doing okay, pretty good actually, we love you. There are grandbabies! You should see them! I'm doing well. The girls are doing well. Everyone is currently employed, which is a bigger deal than you would think. And.. I could probably think other thoughts, but it struck me that the visceral first thought was "We miss you so much." It would make him feel bad, and I don't want that, but it's true, just the same.

Other thoughts for this brief lunch post:
I think up dumb things in the car. Conversations I will likely never have. Revisited arguments and "I could have said that better, or said THIS instead!" Things I need to get done but am not sure how or when to prioritize. The usual "I think I forgot to turn the dishwasher on when I left the house" problems. And, slightly more productive, recipes.

Today, on the way to get a bad-for-me-junk-lunch, I was thinking of what to do with the leftover jasmine rice for dinner tonight. There will be chicken. There will be carrots. What to do to the rice to zest it up a bit? Well, I think I have fresh parsley and chives in the basket. And some onions. (Although personally? Chives are oniony enough, so I might skip one or the other.) I have chicken-broth-in-a-cube. I have mushrooms! Terry dislikes mushrooms... so I have to pull those back out of the sautee if I do those. But still: sautee up the mushrooms and onions in butter. Add some seasonings (like the fresh parsley and maybe chives... also some sage perhaps), pull the mushrooms back out and maybe the onions if I did them, then brown the leftover rice a bit, add in the broth with some liquid and let it soak it up and we should be good to go!

Sometimes I do this for the whole dinner, in my head, before I get home, but I had to pay attention to ordering lunch and stopped. So I'll probably just do the usual cut-breasts-into-medallions trick and season them and cook them up in the pan. It'll be nice and easy, which is good, because I'm so far behind on house chores it's NOT funny.

Okay. Time to eat, then go vacuum. Cleaning day at work is always so rushed....

Communication Breakdown

So... at a certain level of things, when it comes to communication, I really suck. And most of the time, I know this and try to compensate. Sometimes I don't do a good job at all.

Mom is having her eyes fixed. She's had cataracts, at some level or other, for years now. They finally got bad enough that we made an appointment, had her check and confirmed, and now they're being fixed. (I even got to look at them through actual doctor office instruments/microscopes!) She had surgery on her non-dominant eye on the 7th, and her dominant eye yesterday. They like at least a week in between, so that they can be sure the correction level they attempt in the lens implant they create and put in is good enough to work. It's not like contacts, y'can't pull 'em out and start over. Or at least, you don't really want to. She's doing very well, and today we go in for her first follow-up.

Now, MOST people, when they have this done, are corrected for distance. This is because it often happens to people later in life, who are used to wearing reading glasses anyway (or are at least mentally prepared for it) and they don't want to wear glasses to do other day to day things (like drive, play golf, go to the store, whatever). Now, mom has had to wear glasses since she was 10. Her range of sight is better than mine, which is truly dreadful, but she still had to get things pretty close to her nose to deal with them. Her hobbies include a lot of reading, computer work, cross stitch, cross word puzzles, and basically indoor stuff on tables. (Planting/potting houseplants, hanging baskets, etc.) She doesn't 100% hate the great outdoors, but she distrusts them a good deal unless many different criteria are in perfect alignment. So, the doctor agreed that it would be more comfortable for her to be corrected for close-up. (She always wears prescription driving sunglasses, cuz the glare is Evil^TM, so she's gonna have to wear something ANYWAY.)

So far, things seem to work really well. All this past week, she was having to remember to take her glasses OFF to read something, but other than that.. she can see much better, and the nasty sepia tone fog is basically gone. But it means her current prescription lenses are utterly useless. Which makes her feel trapped, because she has to ask for help with getting anywhere outside her own home. (Maybe down to the mailbox on the street corner, but no further than that.) ... It doesn't matter how much I reassure her, she's not gonna be happy this way, and until her eyes are completely settled down (3 weeks from yesterday), she really can't be fitted for her final progressive lenses. So, hopefully, after the follow-up today, she'll get a scrip for single-vision distance lenses. They'll be $70, but really, it's worth it to have the backup glasses for her in case she does something dreadful to her normal glasses. And, if everything goes well, by the 2nd week of May, she should be able to travel, which she really wants to do.

I've been updating my sisters by email (occasionally including other family members as it's seemed logical), of what's going on, but last night I twittered: Kinda almost exhausted after having mostly passed out at mom's app't. Why must I have this aversion to hollow needles intended for veins? Followed by: OTHER than that, very good day. Mom doing well after final surgery. Ate Kowloon's yumminess. Sipping jasmine tea now. Pretty quickly after that, I got a startled direct message from one friend, afraid I'd had surgery and done something bad with a needle, and an instant message in chat from another, also worried. So I had to correct perceptions. MOM'S surgery. MOM being punctured. Me fainting. Feh.

Sometime when I was pre-teen (or early teen) I developed a thing about needles, specifically them entering/leaving human bodies. (Sometimes even them being used on pets tweaks me out, but not as often. I think thick fur helps obscure what's going on.) I remember having absolutely no problem with needles when one of my sisters was getting allergy shots very regularly, and then sometime shortly after that? No good. I'd say that 60% of the time I get woozy and actually pass out. This can be affected by having eaten, not being dehydrated, being well-rested, and my body temperature being pretty level.

Yesterday I had eaten, drank fluids and slept well. But I was way way way too hot. And mom was in pain. That particular nurse was not listening to what she was being told, and kept trying veins even though mom had told her that her veins are tiny, roll, and move out of the way regularly. I saw the needle come out of mom's arm from the 2nd try, saw/heard pain in mom's voice, and started having that vague dark-fog effect at the outside of my vision. I'd been trying NOT to look, but it seemed like it should've been long enough and... I did. Dumb me. So I looked away, immediately, and tried to focus on what I was reading: 's gov't docs article, and... then the sound started getting fuzzy. And next I knew I was being held in the chair and coming to. It wasn't long. Less than a minute. Maybe even less than 30 seconds. I hadn't disrupted too much, thank goodness, but I still felt chagrined, frustrated, and vaguely guilty. Amusingly, when mom tried to tell me I should've put my head between my knees, the male nurse said "Actually, probably better she didn't. She'd've keeled forward and whopped her head on the floor. That wouldn't've been good." As it was, I just started sliding out of the chair/losing my grip on the papers in my hand. They made me lay down, take oxygen by nose tube (I have total understanding of my dad's grousing about those things now), and drink orange juice (which made me nauseous, but cold clothes helped with that). Luckily, my color was back long before mom even went into surgery, so noone gave me a hard time about being her driver. (For witnesses, I apparently go this really horrid shade of olive green in the face, which kinda makes sense, with my skin tone.)

So. THAT covers THAT. ;) I suppose I should cross-post this to the blog where my cousins read... for informational stuff on mom, and amusement factor on me. (Which this is... crossposted from livejournal)

Grief / Death / Dying

Interesting series of articles being written (this week's post might be the last, I'm not clear on that) over at Slate.com on Grief. The author is Meghan O'Rourke, and she lost her mother to cancer recently.

The first article, posted back in February, starts here.

The second article talked about metaphors for "where" someone is. In a physical way. And it was interesting to me, because... well, she's right. Daddy's in the light. Either in the way it streaks through rain and mist to make rainbows (sometimes complex ones in fact), or the sunrise, or sunset... or just the way the light feels in the mist and rain. Sometimes, everyonce in a while, he's in the sound of rain... but it's almost always light, to be honest.

Other bits and pieces of the series (there are seven articles in total), were interesting and resonated with me, but that one particular part really struck me.