I mean, the media has made schools out to be breeding grounds of the swine flu. News flash! Schools are breeding grounds for all sickness- they're kids. Tell me the last time you saw a child sneeze all over themselves. Pick their nose? Cough on a friend? Puke without warning? And all this without washing their hands afterward.
Swine flu or no swine flu, bring hand sanitizer.
I’ve decided to “go green” for the winter. No, I’m not buying a hybrid car or recycling my grey water. I’m simply bringing as many plants inside as I can. I'm greening up the pad, if you will. The only problem is my track record as an indoor gardener is a bit rough.
It’s a love hate relationship, really: I love the plants, they hate me. A bit of a bummer to someone who enjoys indoor plants a whole lot, but this time I’m going to get it right. I can feel it.
Perhaps it’s the hour-long conversation with the gardening experts at Algren Appliance that boosted my confidence; their no nonsense advice in potting soil and fertilizer feeding really revved me up. But whatever the catalyst, I’m happy to have started this journey into purification of air and just plain lushness to contrast with the barren, disgusting bleakness of winter.
It all started with an inherited spider plant that has been around since I can remember. It sits in the corner of my kitchen, long overgrown tentacles drooping to the floor and mixed in with the growth are little spores just waiting to be plucked and potted. So I did just that and plunking them into pots, I eagerly waited for them to grow.
They died. No matter how much I cooed and coaxed the little buggers to fight, they just kept losing their green and started sagging in the leaf department. It was quite disappointing, really. But I did walk away with a lesson learned: Too much water and not enough sun is a bad combination. Duh.
So when I went to the local farm stand the other day and saw that herbs were 3 for a dollar, I just couldn’t resist. I mean, who can pass up fresh herbs in the kitchen, right? Maybe herbs would be the revival (or creation of) my green thumb!
After potting and planting, fertilizing and watering, transplanting and arranging, I’ve created a little green oasis in my home. I have herbs aplenty, spider plant spores galore, relocated outdoor plants and even some clippings of a Hydrangea tree from my mother-in-law I’m attempting to root and plant as my own. Now I just hope this thumb turns green, otherwise I’ll have quite the mess on my hands.
It’s still raw, the fact that I lost my mother. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I think I hear her calling to me, the way she used to when I took care of her. Other times I lay in bed, haunted by things I should have done better, could have done better, and I cry. It’s this overwhelming feeling of guilt, not because I’ve done something wrong, but because there was nothing more I could do.
She passed away. Moved on. Whatever you want to label it, the truth of the matter is that she is, in fact, gone. I can’t touch her. I can’t smell her. I can’t complain to her, laugh with her, cry, cook, clean, dance, bitch, yell or share with her tangibly. All I have is her memory, and I’m scared of it fading.
My heart hurts—literally hurts—with a longing to see her again, to have a spare second, another moment… anything. I wrestle with my emotions, try to put them in check to my current reality, but grief always seems to seep in unannounced and pungent.
When I was living and taking care of Mum this past year, I ran in the mornings. I ran to relieve the pressure; to take a breather from being a caregiver. The mornings I’d slack, not wanting to put on my sneakers and hoof it outside, she’d nudge me out, reminding me to go because she knew I needed it. And truthfully, she probably needed it as well, to know I was doing something for myself and coming back to her refreshed. It was an important part of our new relationship, those morning runs.
This past Sunday I ran. I ran for my mother as part of Team Black Socks, fourteen friends and family members banded together in honor and memory of her, participating in The Dempsey Challenge. A walking, running and bicycling event, it’s in support of those fighting cancer, those who have survived it and the families of those affected by the disease.
The air crisp and the sky overcast with a blanket of grey, it was ideal weather for a 5k run. I started out with the hundreds of other participants, my pace steady and my breathing only slightly labored, and as another hill rose on the horizon, I dug in, determined to finish the entire course. At times tears swelled up and that hurt, that hurt in my heart, made it difficult to go on. Memories flooded back to me, grief bubbled up, but I continued for her: For every smile she gave in the face of grave diagnosis, for every joke she made to deal with her pain, for every bit of fight she tackled the illness with bravely and courageously and for everything she was and always will be.
The quiet rhythm of feet on pavement was broken by a woman behind me as she shouted encouragement to herself: "You can do this! Only one more mile to go! My father went through three years of pain, I can go through 3 miles. Dig! Dig in!” It struck deep inside me and through her words, we came together as mourning daughters, fighting the road under our feet just as our parent had their battle with cancer.
Crossing the finish line, tears streamed my face. I was both relieved and saddened that the race was over. I had been dedicated to this event for the past five months, a way for me to keep my mother alive in my everyday thoughts, to keep her memory from fading. No what?
As I found a spot near the finish line, I watched as my brother and his girlfriend, my friends, mother-in-law, my mother’s college friends, my husband and father-in-law crossed the finish line, each proud to have completed the course, each touched by the reason we were united today.
Our team raised over 5,900 dollars for the Dempsey Center, a lifeline for me during my mum’s illness, and in total the event raised more than 1 million. Generous donations from friends and family to our team over the past five months inspired us on a daily basis. But more than money, the donations remind us of how loved our mother was, how she touched peoples’ lives. We will never forget that. We will never forget her. Ever.
I’ll keep running.
Whoa, whoa. whoa… Wait just one darn minute as I wretch in disgust —is that a scrotum hanging from the rear of your rusted out, 1995 Chevy truck?
(Image from Your-Nuts.com)
I try to follow behind in my car at a safe distance, but the mesmerizing rocking to-and-fro as the Chevy accelerates and decelerates with the pace of traffic has the oddity swaying, hypnotizing me into a trance and I find myself drawn to it, unable to look away.
I get it, alright. You’re tough. You’re rugged. Your vehicle “has balls”. But to actually go all the way and adhere faux testes to the trailer hitch or undercarriage of your vehicle in an effort to communicate that with the public? That takes, well, balls.
I’m both disgusted and intrigued by the person who would commit such an ocular crime.
Where does one even go to purchase truck/car testicles? Can I just waltz into the local V.I.P. or Pep Boys and pick up a pair? Does one saunter down the accessory aisle, scanning the shelves in hopes of locating the gem? “Let’s see there’s coconut-scented air fresheners shaped like sandals, metallic dolphin appliqués, your choice of Taz or Tweety car mats and, oh, here we are, plastic testicles. Look honey, they have them in blue as well.”
Or even better, were they given as a gift? Perhaps at a casual birthday party at the double-wide? “Hey Tom. I know you’ve been working real hard on that there Chevy truck o’ yours and, woo-wee, does she go like hell! Thought of you when I saw these.” I can only imagine Grandma’s delight as the unwrapped box makes its way over to her for viewing.
Aghast from my near-scrotum experience, I found myself slyly eye-balling rear-ends of trucks recently. Was it in hopes of seeing another? Was I just so hypnotized by the bobbing pair I followed that I had become one of the scrotum minions, forever doomed to notice “trucks with balls”?
It’s amazing once you realize how many of these anatomically correct genitalia grace the backside of vehicles, the actual societal breadth that has been touched. I saw an especially impressive stringy-haired, Pall Mall smoking, sloppy T-shirt wearing class-act of a female driving a Jeep Cherokee with plastic enhanced hairy white nuts bobbing behind her vehicle. I also noticed a Toyota with a plank board bed sporting a pair of chrome ones, a station wagon complete with children in the backseat with a not-so-discreet pair of hot pink danglers, and a teal blue colored Cavalier proudly oozing the testosterone that comes with owning a pair of vehicle testes.
Out of utter curiosity, a quick internet search lead me to find that there was several types of balls to be had: “Bull’s Balls Style” “Big Boy Style”, chrome balls in 1st AND 2nd generation, solid colors, metallic colors, balls for a keychain, balls for a motorcycle – Oh, the balls!
At one particular site, http://www.truck-nuts.com/balls.html, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the semantic tango attributed to each particular design. Here’s a sampling from the website:
“Black Tuxedo Nuts
SHOW UP TO THAT BLACK TIE AFFAIR IN STYLE. A SHARP DRESSED TUXEDO NUT. THESE ARE POWDER COATED IN A GLOSSY FINISH. PERFECT FOR SPECIAL OCCASIONS.”
…Yes, perfect.
It appears that a strong following has developed for the visual flexing of machismo. But not everyone is a fan. In Maryland and Virginia bills were passed to the senate to make the dangling duo illegal. They were also given the shaft in Florida where a small fine was notched on for anyone seen flashing a pair. But apparently, not where I am.
We’ve obviously got big balls. Do you?
Same-sex marriage rights have been a hot-button topic of late with California passing Proposition 8 and nullifying the 2005 same-sex marriage bill, Iowa and Vermont legalizing gay marriage this past month and now New York and New Hampshire considering their own state laws in support of gay marriage.
The call for action has not gone unheard in Maine. Equality Maine, based out of Portland, is the state's oldest and largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy organization and the only political advocacy program in the state. The group rallied statewide, calling on supporters to attend the April 22 hearing that took place at the Augusta Civic Center for Democratic Senator Dennis Damon's bill (LD 1020), which if passed, would provide legal protections for same-sex couples in Maine.
"It has been our mission for 25 years to affect public policy in Maine," said Betsy Smith, Executive Director at Equality Maine. They are working closely with the Maine Freedom to Marriage Coalition, a group of 34 Maine based organizations in helping to make this bill a reality, and to offer protection to same-sex couples.
Two groups of participants were organized in support: those who testified in front of the Judicial Committee, and the much larger group of people who came —dressed in various shades of red clothing — to show their support. "We've asked couples who will be effected by this law, who currently don't have protection to raise their families in a healthy and secure way, to testify. We also have what we call content experts," she continues, "including child welfare advocates and the AACP." The content experts stressed the benefit marriage has on children, regardless of the parents' sexual preference, while other testimonies were based on personal experience.
Opposition was also on hand to voice their disagreement to the proposed bill. Many from religious backgrounds quoted The Bible as deeming homosexuality as a sin and same-sex marriage as unholy as their main arguments.
Other religious leaders noted the danger in quoted The Bible too closely. Casey Collins of the Lewiston Methodist Church was quoted in the Lewiston Sun Journal as saying, "If the Bible is taken word for word as it is written, adultery would be punished by death by stoning as would a woman getting married who is not a virgin. No one to my knowledge has recently been stoned to death for adulterous acts."
In a country whose Forefather’s wrote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
It seems that the answer to whether this bill should or should not be passed was already answered on July 4, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence states that “…all men (and women) are created equal…” Then why should a minority lack the same protections and rights from their government than the majority? That is not equality, that is discrimination.
The argument that The Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and is therefore wrong should be completely disregarded in a political arena based on the saying attributed to Thomas Jefferson in regards to the First Amendment of The United States Constitution: Separation of church and state. If church and state are to be separate, then why bring religion into the argument at all?
April 28 is the earliest the Judiciary Committee is expected to vote. If approved, it still needs to go to the Senate, the House and then to Governor Baldacci.
Here’s to a tolerant America.
Hey, when you’re hungry, you’re hungry. But is anyone really hungry enough to eat a 4lb burger?
The Fifth Third Ballpark in Grand Rapids, Michigan has decided to offer up this heinous meal-time choice. Maxing out at a whooping 4,800 calories (that’s more than double the FDA’s daily caloric recommendation), this gargantuan burger defies a one-person consumption. Or does it?
We’ve all heard our mothers and our mother’s mothers groan on about the hungry children in Ethiopia when we’ve been forced to sit at the kitchen table for not finishing our peas, but those are a few measly peas. Think if we could pass this on to them! The joy! The celebrations that would ensue. I mean, this has the potential to feed a family of five— easily. Maybe even an army! A village!
Unfortunately, I think that if any of those poor starving children even attempted to eat this monstrosity, he or she would surely drop from the shock to the system that the reported 300 grams of fat, 10,000 mg sodium, and 744 milligrams of cholesterol would dole out. Obviously this age-old adage doesn’t work with this monstrosity. Sorry starving kids, I fear that this’ll freaking kill you.
Now keep in mind that this isn’t your normal burger. This puppy is loaded with oddities like corn chips, salsa and a cup of chili. Part of me wants to plead with them to stop the insanity. For crying out loud, corn chips? Frigging corn chips? Come on, that’s obviously just to up the ante on it’s disgusting unhealthiness, isn’t it?
I can see the cooks standing around the kitchen, each in stained aprons, hands wet from spreading chili over the five patties, hemming and hawing over the magnificent creation they just assembled.
“It just doesn’t look finished,” one cook says to another as he scans the shelves of food in front of him.
“Well, what else would you put on it, Jim*?”
“Screw it,” says the first, “let’s just throw whatever the heck’ll make this baby the most ridiculous thing people have seen in a while, and watch them flock!” Enter the corn chips to the equation.
And the funny thing? The funny thing is that people will flock to Fifth Third, just to try to the damn thing. Just as they did in Clearfield, PA to try the "Beer Barrel Belly Buster" or "The Big One" at Mama Lena's Pizza House in McKees Rock, PA (what’s up with your over-sized foods PA?). People big, bigger and relatively small will walk into the stadium with high hopes of ingesting the atrocity and waddle away bloated and full, perhaps even with the misguided idea of topping the whole thing off with the signature deep-fried Twinkie. (oh, yeah. They have those there too.)
This is one giant leap for obesity, and one small step for the evolution of the burger. I’m full just thinking about it.
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