Month in Review...

St. Louis' Record Blizzard of 1982, snowed in for a week!

I hate to sound like the old fogie that I am, but really, where has January gone?  It's been an eventful month. In fact, so eventful that I've barely blogged. (Eye roll!)

I came down with bronchitis this past week.  Now I'm on antibiotics and strict bed rest. I'm a bit grumpy because I had so hoped to start in on trying to declutter the house.  Darn it!  

However, I'm thrilled I got that pneumonia vaccine last year.  (And no, I don't get the flu shot, in case anyone wonders.)  I've had three occasions when my bronchitis turned into near-fatal cases of pneumonia, hence the vaccine many years ago.  My last bout of kinda-weak pneumonia last year reminded me that it was time for another pneumonia vaccine. Thus far, fingers crossed that the bronchitis doesn't go any further. 

My rheumy had warned me that I probably wasn't ready to get that colonoscopy I talked about in a previous post about "Cookbook Medicine."  Yes, the prep was easy (for me! we're all different!) but the aftermath was awful.  I already had the shakes and shivers to an alarming degree and they've gotten worse.  Now I'm adding the word "vibrating."  My whole body feels as if it's vibrating and that the house is shaking.  I have huge sweats, run fever then shiver: often it feels like what I imagine malaria feels like.  My mouth gets full of bumps and ulcers.  When I mentioned this to my rheumy and said I hadn't heard of anything about the after-effects, he started laughing and said, "Irene, they don't see the after-effects. I do!"  Yes, he was right. I probably did go in for that colonoscopy when I was still too weak from all those hospitalizations and ER runs in the fall, but I'm glad we can cross a problem with my colon off my list of red herrings.

Continuing along: as always in January, our movie-obsessed family has been following the award shows and we look forward to the Oscars, which won't be telecast until March this year.  Hey!  One of the only ways I get through the holiday season is because I know that the Oscars will soon follow.  You know: it's the dangling carrot.

I've seen one movie which really and truly moved me.  I'd never heard of it before, but after watching it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.  It's Dallas Buyer's Club and I think that anyone who has a chronic illness, which no one understands, will find the movie especially fascinating and on many levels.  Had I not seen it, I'd have thought all the accolades and awards which Matthew McConaughey has received thus far were because he'd lost so much weight to play the role.  I'd have been wrong.  He was incredible in the part.  Jared Leto hands in a marvelous and multi-layered performance.  The script, story and writing is amazing.  Need I say more?  Don't make me: I want you to be pleasantly surprised.  

Notably for me: I became a grandmother, finally!  (Excuse me as I do the happy dance - in my head, silly!)  To say we're delighted is an understatement.  After a very rocky few months, Baby Aiden was born.  Once he arrived home yesterday, and after a good quick nap by babe, mum and dad, hubs and I got to talk to Baby Aiden via Skype.  He's a nice, quiet baby - as long as he's not hungry and is not cold. But a funny thing happened. Whenever he's uncovered he starts to cry.  But once I started talking to him, he would quiet down. I hadn't noticed it, but my son had.  And - jumping for joy - my son was right.  Each time I stopped talking to the baby he'd start crying again.  My, my!  Aren't I the won-over Babushka! 

I did read a book this month that I really enjoyed and wanted to pass along the title. It's Fanny Flagg's The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion: A Novel.  I think it's her best book since Fried Green Tomatoes.  The best part may perhaps be that it's a very easy read for those of us who have a hard time concentrating - or remembering - because of brain-fog.  The story is involved but in a slow, sweet ice tea way on a hot summer day. You know how the outside of the glass gets iced and as your hand melts the frosty outside, the water streams down, zig-zaggy?  There's heartbreak but there are laughs, just like life. I'm not going to tell you what it's about.  Just check it out.  I don't think many will regret reading it.  

And I guess that's a wrap for January.

As always, I hope everyone is feeling their best - only better.  Ciao and paka! 



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The Hunger Games and Christmas Survival

A bit of the insanity of taking three little ones to visit a Santa display.....I'm not really as jaded as I sound! 

It's now officially that time of year again. It's finally December, the month I dread most. Why, you may ask?  

Well, I've long said that I think Christmas should be celebrated only every four years, like the Olympics.  After all, getting though the holidays is truly worthy of an Olympic event.  Your need of stamina is the least of the problems.  Remembering who should get gifts is the least of them as well.  

Anyhoo... that's the inside-my-head thing for the day!  I'm not proud of this feeling, I must admit.  However, it is what it is.  Truly, I must not be the ONLY person out there who feels this way all too often?  Does the word "humbug" ring a bell?  ;) 

It's been an unusual couple of days in a very nice way.  I'd realized that I'm probably one of very few who hadn't seen The Hunger Games - the original version - and  with all the press for the new installment of the planned trilogy, I suddenly started wondering if I was missing a huge global event, common to all.  I was suddenly reminded of the summer in camp when I (and my fellow campers) must have been the few in the world to have missed the moon landing.  To put me out of my misery (read: family feeling sorry for me because I'd just gotten home from the hospital) the movie appeared in my player. (Imagine the curses as I tried to figure out the newfangled system that I have yet to master, despite daughter-who-is-pitying-me trying to wrestle with the contraption.)  

Let me just say that to me (jaded soul that I am), the holidays also mean some pretty cruddy TV and so I realized that if I want to survive the holidays with any sort of sanity at all, I'll need to figure out how to watch movies on my "favorite mobile devices."  Yikes!  Seeing those words, "favorite mobile devices" put a chill through my body as I read this new way of watching movies.  But I've never cared for holiday specials which I find infinitely boring.  And I resent the fact that our favorite shows are held up.  Um ... Scandal anyone? Love, love, love the show.  (And the last few episodes have been fantastic!)

Back to topic at hand: I really loved The Hunger Games!  Yay!  (Daughter in the background finally said, "Exactly HOW long has it been since you've seen a movie?" getting a bit weary at all my oohing and ahhing.) The costumes were incredible.  Makeup: wow! The premise was gruesome, yes, but fascinating.  There's so much attention to detail.  I was hooked, right from the first moment.  The only thing that took me out of that world were thoughts where I wondered how a certain thing came to be, how it was treated in the book I'd yet to read.

And thus, a first-time experience: every five minutes or so I couldn't stop wondering what the full story was about this character or that, why life became the way it had.  I couldn't wait to read the novel.  Normally, I read a book and a couple of years later see the movie and, of course, I'm disappointed.  Or, if I see a movie first and then read the book, I wonder why the book had all this unnecessary information, background, plots. Too much clutter.

Thanks to Kindle I started reading the first of The Hunger Game series almost immediately and am now about two thirds of the way through the first book.  Yes, fascinating!  But I've gone a step beyond.  Suddenly I find myself putting down the "book" (it IS on Kindle so it feels funny calling it a "book") and watching the movie to the point where I am in the novel.  Bliss!  This is the first time I've ever "savored" a book, like hubs has a tendency to do.  Normally, I rip through books - especially since good old ME/CFS and fibromyalgia don't allow me to retain much and if I don't get a book down in one fell swoop, by the next day it is completely gone.  But with Hunger Games, I go back and try to figure out a scenario that fits the movie, book and my imagination until I'm in a good and satisfied place.

What's even better is that despite fibro-brain, I can understand all.  It's a young adult novel but I don't feel being catered to, being talked down to.  It may be in the same league as Ann Benson's novels, most especially The Plague Tales (taking place in the past as well as the future).  I've not read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in ages, nor Marge Piercy's He, She and It  but I'm truly enjoying this first book of The Hunger Games and am not sure the aforementioned books are too far superior.  There are so many layers to the book as well as the movie.  Yes, I'm jaded when I hear about "coming of age" books but the moral issues here alone keep me turning things around in my head.  I guess you could say I'm interested in the "coulda, woulda, shoulda."

For anyone who wants/needs another few recommendations to escape the holiday madness, I also recommend The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldo about a time traveler between now and the 18th century.  Just the medicine aspect kept me fascinated.  I made the mistake of bringing one of the books on vacation with me - and had to end the book before I'd go to see any of the sites I'd so looked forward to.

I'm not really a reader of science fiction but these books really do capture the imagination.  You might just thank me for these titles when TV is running the upteenth Christmas showing of Peanuts and/or the Muppets. And now, back to disappearing into the Games and avoiding the holiday madness for another few days! 

As always, I hope everyone's doing their very best - only better!  Ciao and paka.


Note: Sorry, I had the wrong link to Ann Benson's The Plague Tales. It's been corrected. Thanks! 


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Laughing about the price of being a girl...

Happy feet in flip flops.

I hope that this is the last of any reports on my "beauty adventure" from last Saturday - for a while.  I'm crashing badly although yesterday I finally got a chance to check out my new washer and dryer - the one that's been in the house for almost two weeks!  It was absolute torture not to try out those machines with their bells and whistles, finally delivered to the house and not be able to do a single thing about it. Understand, I absolutely love doing laundry - one of my many quirks.

I also wanted to slip out of the house to take pictures of the tulips which continue to come up, as well as the dogwoods in full bloom.  Frustration.  Hubby did this for me but, bless his heart, he forgot the trees.  He also couldn't get the hang of cutting down MASSIVE amounts of lilacs for vases around the house, perhaps the one tradition I have every the spring, a total must.  The smell of those lilacs in the house always triggers some primitive part of my brain that says, "hallelujah! we're in for some wonderful gardens now!"

But one wild adventure a day (a load of laundry in case you've lost count) is almost too much and putting in a load of towels - well, since they were all whites, I figured I couldn't mess that load up too badly.  

As I've already established, I'm still crashing  - badly -  from Saturday's beauty adventure but the results were great.  First I want to say: it was FANTASTIC getting out of the house.  Not fantastic getting ready, but after that part was over, the rest was pretty darn good.

I loved going to my "beauty heaven" for my hair, mani/pedi, and having my eyelashes and eyebrows colored - the brows shaped as well, into the newest form which calls for a softer arch, and I am loving it.  Everyone did a great job and thanks to all that teamwork - emphasis on "team," which actually felt very much like a "village" - I'm starting to look like a girl again - OK, "woman," but understand that we females of a certain age still have a really hard time saying that word about ourselves with a straight face!

The "fixing me up" feels so incredibly renewing.  The hair is quite short (think "pixie"), my usual, with good highlights and lowlights.  Diana found FIVE more balding spots but was able work her genius.  Shaving my head (really!) is starting to sound better all the time.  I think I could carry off the turban look but my BFF said that a friend of her's was really miserable when her hair started growing out.  More misery I don't need.

But I'm so delighted that I now have eyebrows and ones you can actually see because of the coloring.  Lan, the eyelash/eyebrow superwoman, really was surprised that I have a few more hairs in the eyebrow area and this allowed the brows to pick up a lot more color than usual (go brow-hair growth enhancers!) thus deflecting the eye away from the age spots I love to fight.  I love that I no longer feel as if I have an arrow pointing at them for all to see.  Come on, I need a hobby and who says fighting age spots can't be fun?

I'm trying to organize the products I used - a lot, and I couldn't find some of my old "stand-bys - reorganization and decluttering badly needed!  Actually moving back to my bedroom and bathroom is what is badly needed.  Living with remodeling is the absolute pits and soon it'll have been a year on this latest phase alone.  

Anyhow, as I try to make sense out of my beauty products, my wardrobe, I keep getting flashbacks of an old movie from the early 60's, "The Flower Drum Song."  This is rather unusual because so many of us with CFIDS, CFS/ME, fibromyalgia, insomnia and migraines (etc.!) are so sensitive to sound and the energy that it induces is hard on our neurological systems, giving us an artificial "high" which we then pay for later, in SPADES!  Nonetheless, I keep wanting to burst out with one of my all-time favorite songs, "I Enjoy Being a Girl!"  

I saw the movie back in the old days when there'd be a double-feature and you'd usually walk in to that first showing, caring not one iota as to which part of the movie was going on - probably because no one seemed to keep track of time back when life was slower in the '50's and early '60's, most especially in the South.  You'd watch till the end of the first movie, then enjoy (hopefully) the second film, usually leaving when you reached the point where you'd walked in with that first feature - or when your parents wanted you back home again, whichever came first, I suppose.  

Well, not me with "Flower Drum Song." I watched it three times!  That's a whopping six plus movies in a row.  How did my backside handle it?  I guess it was being so young, a nine-year old.  

But even back then, though I was an unrepentant and proud tomboy - I actually earning myself the nickname "Jane" (as in Tarzan's wife), after one episode of beating and scaring the tar out of the four older boys who were attacking my younger brother.  EVERYONE called me a tomboy (as well as "bookworm' but that's for many later posts) which I rather liked.  It was an identity I carried proudly, despite the ballet lessons I took each week.  But I ALWAYS knew I loved being a girl.  The words, "with a pound and a half of cream upon my face" from the song "I Enjoy Being A Girl" fascinated me and drew me in.  After "The Flower Drum Song," I wondered about all those "girly" things for days and days...if not years and decades!

Oh my.  I just took a break and returned from YouTube. I discovered that there was a book, as well as Broadway and West End versions, of "The Flower Drum Song" and the movie's hit song, "I Enjoy Being a Girl."  I'm so incredibly happy that it's not been forgotten.  It would be like forgetting "the Sound of Music."  Actually, I can envision Maria singing, "I Enjoy Being A Girl" from that mountain top!  I think I've been won over by the latest version of the song with its peppiness and gusto.  I don't usually go in for peppiness but when I have to do "the girl" thing, as when going out for a doctor's appointment, this may start my blood flowing and, what little adrenaline my body can still produce, to start percolating.  It's certainly worth a try.  

So, hands and feet, check...a huge consideration since I can't do these little jobs since the accident with "the claw."  Of everything, I miss manicuring the most - how crazy is that?  Anyway, eyebrows and eyelashes check.  Hair cut, highlighted and low lighted within an inch of it's life, check.  New skincare products to try and to enjoy, check. (More on those at another time too!)

"I Enjoy Being a Girl" from "The Flower Drum Song," thanks to YouTube, check.  Here's the link. I hope you enjoy the gusto even if you don't happen to be a person who cares for perkiness.  But it does get the adrenaline flowing and reminds you why we "women" love and need these little extras in our lives, despite paying the the price men just don't understand! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URlW5NK2doA 

(If this link doesn't work, simply go to YouTube and put in "Flower Drum Song" as sung by Lea Salonga.  I think it's worth it!)