(One of my biggest regrets in life is that my mother never met Beloved…I don’t know if they’d have adored each other or spent all of their time trying to bitch-slap each other into next week.  Either way, it would have been extremely amusing to watch.)

It wasn’t until recently that I realized that my love of all things Anne Taintor is because her stuff reminds me of Mom.  As far as she was concerned, you could – and should – think what you want, but you better be goddamn careful how you express those thoughts and even more careful about the appearance you presented the world (sometimes I wonder why Mom and The Ex didn’t get along better).  Not that she was the kind of woman that wouldn’t leave the house without makeup or perfect hair – she wasn’t sloppy or slovenly, but pearls and heels definitely weren’t her thing – for Mom, appearances were all about the kind of person you were and the kind of life you led.

Or, considering she the fact that she liked nothing better than toking up in the evenings after work (in the bedroom, so we wouldn’t know what she was doing – yeah, right), it was all about the appearance we presented to society.

It’s really no secret where the idea that appearances mattered came from.  My mother grew up in a very matriarchal household, too.  My grandmother was the epitome of the Genteel Proper Southern Lady, but my grandfather personified the Strong, Silent Man Who Left the Child Rearing to His Wife.  And although my mother had been Rebellious Growing Up, she absorbed a great many of my grandmother’s values which, like so many of her generation, centered around “What would the neighbors think?”

Oh, how things have changed.

Every week, my immediate family has two questions for me:  Are you doing a Random Tuesday Thoughts post and What’s the Spin Cycle about? This week, I’ve been laid up with a fairly nasty bug (as of this writing, Wednesday evening, I’m feeling a little better, but still pretty crappy), that has pretty much hindered the progress of this post.  Because trust me, I begin thinking about it the minute Jen hands out the next week’s assignment every Friday morning.  This week when The Young One asked me what the subject of the Spin Cycle was and I told him “Appearances” he naturally asked (he is, after all, a teenager), “You mean how you look?”

“Sure,” I said.  “In fact, some of the bloggers who are participating have written excellent posts along those lines.  But I think mine is going to be more about how the world perceives us.”

He looked a bit confused, so I said, “When my mother was growing up, and even more so when my grandmother was growing up, it was very common for people to worry about what other people thought of them.  If something bad happened to them or their families, they often didn’t talk about it – sometimes they went to great lengths to hide it.”

I regarded the incredulous look on his 15-year-old face, and considered the fact that he is living in the age of Jerry Springer and YouTube and 24-hour news channels that seem obsessed with what is going on in the lives of Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock and apologies being issued by the Vatican.  In a world according to Nancy Grace, nothing is private.

Some very ugly and traumatic things have happened to me and those close to me in the 47 years I’ve been on this earth, and I don’t for a minute excuse the way some members of my family have glossed over and out-and-out ignored those ugly and traumatic things, but I also strenuously object to how every detail of our lives has the potential to become public property.  Does it all have to be on the evening news and/or splashed all over the internet?  Aren’t we allowed to say “Yes, we’re human with all the faults and foibles that humans possess, but we should be allowed to work this out in private, with some sort of dignity?”

What do YOU think?

I know a few of my readers are educators, and even more have children that are either school-aged or have graduated from public schools and I’d really like your thoughts on this.

Texas was the very first state in the country to have standardized testing, which means that our kids were among the first to be put through the grist-mill. Beloved and I have very serious issues with standardized testing – as the parents of five children, we can tell you there is absolutely nothing standard about them.  Couple this with the fact that OGT testing – the standardized test here in Ohio that a child must pass in order to graduate – is being administered this week (and has completely disrupted The Young One’s schedule AND education), well, I’d like your opinions.

Standardized testing – what do you think of it?

I have been plagued with periodic bouts of insomnia since about the time I turned 40, and the problem doesn’t seem to be getting any better.  If anything, it’s getting worse the older I get.

It’s really disconcerting, because when I was young I slept like a rock – boom!  Out like a light and I generally stayed that way until someone or something dragged me out of bed the next morning.  But now?  Well, most nights I don’t have too much trouble falling asleep and will wake up briefly two or three times.  Once in a great while I’ll have a night of genuinely deep, uninterrupted sleep but those nights seem to becoming fewer and fewer, just as the periods of insomnia seem to be increasing.

I’ll go weeks, sometimes even months, with what has become my normal pattern of sleep, then I’ll go through a period where I can fall asleep with little or no problem, but once I’ve wakened – for a drink of water, to go to the restroom or, gawd help us, with a lovely hot flash – I can’t just go back to sleep the way I normally do.  Sometimes it’s just an isolated incident, but more often than not it heralds the onslaught of 3, 4 or even 5 sleepless nights spent on the sofa dozing through a movie.

Last night, it was the good old antacid coupled with a mild anxiety attack (another little menopausal gift that just keeps on giving) at 3:20 in the morning.  Off to the sofa I went, with my pillow and the afghan, so I wouldn’t keep Beloved up with my tossing and turning.  This morning, as we got ready for work, he said, “Next time you wake up and can’t go back to sleep, try to match your breathing to mine.”

I’m not real bright at 7 a.m. after a largely sleepless night.  “Huh?”

“You were breathing so rapidly when you got up last night,” he said.  “You were almost panting.”

“Yeah, well, an anxiety attack will do that to you,” I replied.

“Well, try matching your breathing to mine next time,” he suggested again.  “It might help you calm down enough to get back to sleep.”

Again, I’m not at my mental best under those circumstances so it didn’t occur to me to tell him that part of the anxiety attack was caused by me remembering (and I don’t know why) the truly creepy ending of Paranormal Activity coupled with the thought of the huge pile of paperwork sitting on my desk at the office, so I said, “Gee, dear, I don’t think it’s going to help me get back to sleep by going ‘SNOOOOOORKGURGLESNOZZZZZ’ at volumes that could wake the dead.  But thanks for the suggestion.”

He was not amused, although it made for a good story while gathered around the coffee pot at the office this morning.

So, do you suffer from trouble sleeping?  And what do you do for it?

I’m afraid I may be the lone, dissenting voice this week when I say:

Uh…no.

Don’t get me wrong – I  would love nothing more than to believe that there are spirits or ghosts or that we can divine the future.  I was in my early 20s when I saw the picture of the little girl with fairies that so captivated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and was really disappointed (although probably not as disappointed as he was) to find out that it was a fake.  Who needs Photoshop?

Another big disappointment came when I read the re-released, unabridged version of Stephen King’s The Stand.  On page 536 of the paperback version (yes, I looked it up) one of the major characters brings up a study done in the late 50′s by a sociologist named James D.L. Staunton.  According to the story, Staunton did a study that shows that, due to precognitive flashes by ordinary human beings, full planes and trains rarely crash. Oh, my! I thought.  That’s simply amazing. Alas, a quick search of the internet will turn up the fact that there is no sociologist by the name of James D.L. Staunton, and – needless to say – no study of the capacity of planes and trains that have crashed.  It is merely a plot device (and my hat off to Mr. King, because I am apparently not the only person who wanted to buy that little tidbit hook, line and sinker).

I could go into my gullibility over the years and how it’s all been debunked in more depth, but A) it would take more space than I care to dedicate (or you care to read) in this blog and 2) I don’t want to bore anyone any more than I absolutely have to.  Let’s just suffice to say that I’ve wanted to believe.  Really, really wanted to believe.  And every time I’ve found some bit of rationality that has proved it all to be either a hoax or something that can be explained by science.

Every single time.

The whole concept really came crashing down when, after my divorce, my ex came to me and claimed that Oldest Son was sexually molesting Darling Daughter.  To say I was perturbed was putting it mildly – as unfair as it was (and it was), I depended on Oldest Son a great deal to help me with his younger siblings; it was just one of the ugly but often necessary parts of divorce.  When I asked The Ex how he knew this, he said the woman he was living with at the time – we’ll call her Really Crazy Bitch – told him so.

Not only concerned but confused (as far as I knew, my kids had very limited contact with Really Crazy Bitch), I questioned him further.  No, let’s be honest here – I grilled him like a cheese sandwich.  How did Really Crazy Bitch know this?  Had Darling Daughter taken her into her confidence?  Just what the HELL WAS GOING ON HERE??

You can only imagine my disdain surprise when I found out that no, Darling Daughter had not come forth with this information, but that Really Crazy Bitch had found out by “divining” it – according to The Ex, Really Crazy Bitch was clairvoyant.

Let me just point out that Really Crazy Bitch also convinced The Ex to shoplift several high dollar items for her (promises of sex!), leading to two arrests (that I know of) AND had The Ex park a car and watch over her while she stood on a street corner begging for money and pretended to be homeless.  All for some sort of “study” she was doing…never mind she was a good 15 years older than The Ex and not attending school.

Yeah.  And this is just some of the stuff that I know about.

I’ll just finish this off by saying that “The Sixth Sense” is just one of many things I’d love to believe in, but I can’t.  There simply isn’t anything in my personal experience (to say nothing of being backed up by empiric, scientific evidence) that gives any credence to it.

But it’s still a really rockin’ film with Bruce Willis.

Since this week’s Spin Cycle is “confessions” I’ll jump right in and give you one.

Yes, the vertigo is persisting.  No, I haven’t been to the doctor.  And it’s very likely I won’t unless it becomes something more than a minor irritation, which is really all it is.

I don’t LIKE going to the doctor.  I rarely find them helpful.  They are almost always too busy to really sit and listen to what I have to say, or they are unremittingly patronizing.  (You want to get on my bad side and stay there?  Treat me like I’m stupid – and I’ve spent a LOT of time being treated like a moron by doctors, who seem to think their M.D. negates the IQs of the rest of the populace.)  I have had very, very few good experiences with doctors.

I could carry on all damn day about the drama of dealing with doctors over the last 20 years or so – including the misdiagnosis of my mother’s aeortal aneurysm and the abysmal treatment of my nephew since he was initially released from the hospital three years ago after the shooting and especially in this matter of the severe burns on his foot – but I won’t.  Let’s just suffice to say that NONE of them have been in the least bit helpful with my anemia, Seasonal Affective Disorder, my menopause symptoms, my IBS or my chronic fatigue – I can’t even get one of them to TALK to me about that last one.  As for the rest of it, they’ll fucking diagnose till the cows come home, but won’t offer one bit of helpful advice on how to DEAL with any of it; that’s apparently what the internet is for because that’s where I discovered light therapy to deal with the SAD.

So do I trust them to help me with this vertigo?  NO, I do not.  Because I’ve researched the causes, and since I don’t have any symptoms for something horrid like a stroke, this is what I’ve found:

If it’s Meniere’s Disease, there’s precious little they can do about it (I got that one straight from the horses mouth; I have a coworker who suffers from Meniere’s).

If it’s a virus, there’s precious little they can do about it (except let it run it’s course).

If it’s a symptom of menopause (and a LOT of menopausal women complain of vertigo), there’s precious little they can do about it.

If it’s stress-related, there’s precious little they can do about it.

If it’s Benign Positional Paroxysmal Vertigo, there’s precious little they can do about it.

Since these things tend to come and go, if it still hasn’t gone away in another week I promise I will go see the damn doctor, be dismissed, patronized and told there’s precious little they can do about it.  Cross my heart and hope to refrain from punching someone in the nose.

Where do I begin?

There are plenty of people who are complaining about the butchering of the language, especially this new “texting shorthand” – the use of things like “u r” for “you are” and “ppl” for “people” – so I won’t add to it; let’s just suffice to say that it irritates me to no end.  The same goes for the proper use of “they’re”, “their” and “there.”

Beloved will tell you that his biggest pet peeve when it comes to the English language is the use of “good” in place of “well” and he WILL correct you on it.

Mine?  When people say they are going to “up” something – their medication, their contribution to their retirement plan, their budget for something, whatever.  I have news for you – UP IS A DIRECTION, NOT A VERB.  You’re not “upping” something, you’re increasing it.  Drives me absolutely bananas.  The only concession I’ll make to that is the phrase “upping the ante” – not only because that’s most likely where the substitution began, but because saying “increasing the ante”, while proper, sounds stupid.

And that’s all I have to say about that subject.

I could say something about males who do not seem to know how to close kitchen cabinets, don’t remember to run the disposal before they turn on our ancient dishwasher (or the bottom will fill up with dirty water), leave full mugs of cold coffee sitting in the microwave and tell me they don’t care when I ask them what they want for dinner, but I won’t because then it will be open season on me (and I have far more irritating habits).  So we just won’t go there.

But lately, my biggest pet peeve is this whole mess with my photographs.  Did you see that I have now started watermarking the small images that accompany my non-recipe and non-photography posts?  Because I found people hotlinking to those, too!  ARRRRRRGH!  Look, people – my images, my blog, my bandwidth.  Mostly my bandwidth.  That I PAY for.  Out of my own pocket.  With a very few exceptions, every picture on my blog has either been taken by me or is stock photography that I have paid for.  The few times I have taken a picture off of the internet, I have saved it to my computer and uploaded it to my web server.  I hate it that so many people have no problem with linking an image onto their website or blog or, heaven help me, their bulletin board/forum comment.  I understand that some people might not realize that this is stealing, but does it not occur to people that the internet is not just one big free-for-all?  Everything on it cost someone, somewhere, something – their money or their time or their skill or their intellect.  You don’t go into the store and just pick things off of a shelf and walk away with them, and you don’t go on to someone else’s website or blog and take things from it, whether it is an image or the content or the bandwidth used to display those things.

Stealing is stealing.

It’s that time again folks – so grab the funky purple button (what’s with that ham, anyway?), link up to Keely and play along with Random Tuesday Thoughts.

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Today’s edition:  The Annual Groundhog Rant.

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So, here it is…February.  My least favorite month of the year – for all sorts of reasons, but mostly because it’s going to be at least six weeks before I see the sun or any sign of life around here.  No matter what the stupid groundhog says.

Because while it is PERPETUALLY GRAY here in my neck of the woods I imagine it’s sunny as all get-out in Puxatawney and I bet the rotten little buck-toothed rodent is dancing around going, “See?  My shadow!  It’s my shadow!  Six more weeks of winter!  Bwaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaaaaaaaa!”

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Going a little crazy?  Not at all.  Why do you ask?

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But Phil the Weatherman was right…it’s all the groundhog’s fault.

Puxatawney Phil needs to die.

I don’t care how well he drives for a quadruped.

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Oh, PETA is going to be after me now.  Have you heard?  They want the organizers of Puxatawney’s Ground Hog Day Festival to replace Phil with a robot.

Does this organization not have one thinking member that looks at their press releases and says, “Hey, look guys – this is pretty damn stupid.  Do we really want to publish this?”

No, I didn’t think so either.

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Ah, well, at least we know what we’ll be watching this evening.  I don’t think The Young One has ever seen Groundhog Day.

There I go again – I’m just racking up the votes for that Excellence in Parenting award that I know is just waiting for me somewhere.

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“You want a prediction about the weather, you’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” — Phil the Weatherman

Have a lovely Groundhog Day, y’all.

We have some lively discussions, and we don’t always agree with each other.  Which is fine; it’s my firm belief that if two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.  Everyone has opinions; everyone is entitled to those opinions.

Unfortunately, some opinions are dangerous.  Even deadly.

I wrote about James Mammone, the local man on trial for the murder of his two children and former mother-in-law, murders he committed to “punish” his ex-wife for divorcing him, last week.  Two days after that post, he was found guilty on all counts.  Yesterday, the penalty phase of the trial began – Mammone could be sentenced to death.

Let me just take a moment to express my opinion:  I hope they fry the fucker.

During the guilt phase of the trial, the defense called no witnesses and made no arguments in Mammone’s favor.  Indeed, they began the trial by saying they had no intention of denying that he slaughtered his innocent, helpless children and their grandmother.  In fact, the only thing they disputed was the least of the charges – that he was in possession of a gun when he entered his ex-wife’s home, because no one saw him with it.  Considering what he did to her mother (he shot her in the face before bludgeoning her to death with a lamp), I’d say that Marcia Eakin Mammone was quite fortunate that she didn’t see him at all.

In something of a reversal, the prosecution rested without calling a single witness during the penalty phase.  I guess they felt they didn’t need to, and I don’t blame them.  The defense called Mammone himself to the stand, where he spoke for five hours but NOT under oath, so the prosecution could not cross-examine him.  Contrary to what he told police during his confession after his arrest, he claims that while the murder of his former mother-in-law was motivated purely by revenge, he killed his children was because he didn’t want them to grow up in a “broken home.”

It is his opinion that his children would be better off dead than living with divorced parents.

It is his opinion that the hideous slaying of these two innocent lives was justified if it kept other couples from being divorced and helped them lead “good Christian lives.”

It is his opinion that when he dies, he’s going to go to heaven and will be with his children.

I don’t think anyone really wants to hear my opinion about that.

Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

However, I DO want to relate this interesting little story.  I don’t often talk about very personal matters here – it’s just hard to when just about everyone I know in real life reads my damn blog.  But I HAVE to make an exception for this, even if it gets me in trouble.  If it does, so be it…but for cryin’ out loud, I’ve rarely heard anything quite so completely and totally STOOPID in my entire life.

Jolly, Fiancé and Little Guy are now officially back in Ohio, and only 3 hours away instead of across the country.  Yippee!  They have moved into an area where Fiancé has a lot of family, friends and acquaintances.  Well, apparently one of these  acquaintances has taken a dislike to Jolly.

Among other remarkably idiotic things, this person has told Jolly that Little Guy is – and I quote – “an ugly baby.”

They let people like that roam around loose on the streets, y’all. *shakes head*

Have a lovely weekend, everybody.