I have just finished making a scarf

Okay, so I haven't finished making a scarf. But I am finished except for adding the fringe.

Sorry I have not been around. I am still very busy. Took most of the day off, except for finishing a scarf.

To my friend in the great white north: after you get my email you will have to reply at an alternate email address as my mailbox is full and bouncing stuff and I just don't have the time to fix it right now.

Off to get some sleep before it's back to work tomorrow.

What the hell was I thinking?

Today is the first day of a very busy week at school. Somehow, I had thought that it was next week, but it isn't, it's this week. This week is the last week to work in clay that is at the green stage or the wet stage.

Not that the clay is green. I don't know of any green clay, though sometimes unfired terra cotta has sort of a greenish look compared to other clays. Unfired clay that has been slip-cast is called greenware, and sometimes any unfired clay work is called greenware. After is has been fired once it is called bisque.

Anyway, even the smallest pieces need at least a week to dry properly, so this is the last week to make anything. And really, this is only the last week to make anything if the stuff you are making is terra cotta that isn't going to be glazed, or something that is going to end up being a mixed media piece and painted instead of glazed. Anything that needs to be glazed fired should have been completed last week. But I think that he'll let me glaze some stuff that last week and pick it up during the summer or fall semester.

I hardly have anything finished. The 18 inch pylon-vase is completely finished, though it did end up with a bit of a crack at the top, but I'm hoping that a bit of black ink will make that less noticeable. The other vase is finally in the kiln, so I should see it today or tomorrow. The relief sculptures are nearly dry, and I'm not worried about when they get fired. The plates and bowls have been bisque fired and glazed, and some of them are in the kiln and will be taken out today. Despite my original plan to dip and pour glaze on the plates and bowls, I had to brush glaze most of them, which took about six hours. So using that time to glaze was a mistake, since I could have done glazing during the last week, but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time and was just wanted so much to get something completely finished.

Which leaves just an enormous amount of work to do this week, even if I go to all seven classes and the extra lab time on Friday afternoon. I am nearly finish this stage of the Triffid, but now there are cracks appearing all over it. I'm afraid that's going to happen with most of my projects, since I have been working on them too long and they are getting too dry to work the clay properly. I should make a fork and a spoon and a ladle to go with it, but I haven't started them yet.

I have the bodies of two Martian crickets, but no heads or arms or legs. Not only are they too dry, but I now think that they are too big and should be made in three or even four parts, with the heads being separate from the bodies, and the arms and legs being attached to a third piece. The pieces that were meant to become the heads did not dry properly, and I may have to start over with them.

The Alien egg is mostly going well, though it still needs some work, and I didn't even start the face-hugger dish that I meant to go with it.

And while all of that is going on, at home I've been trying to work on a couple of sleestak, and the teacher still wants a dragon instead. The dragon I have started, but only just. I've started the jaw, but I haven't even put any teeth on it yet. Since he really wants to see that dragon, I suspect that he will allow me to work on it that last week and have it fired later.

It's all quite silly anyway. I don't need the credit for anything, and as much as I hate to get a bad grade, the odds are that I will never really need to worry about my GPA in the future. But I hate to get a bad grade, just in case. But regardless of the grade, I did want to have some nice pieces finished. I hate to get this far and then have to give up on something or have an incomplete set or whatever might end up happening.

This is too much to get done. What was I thinking?

Drama over the student art show

I believe that today is the opening reception for this year's student art show. Early this evening, the school will be handing out awards for best student art and this year's art scholarship winners, and a few honorable mentions will get gift certificates to various restaurants and art supply places. And people will walk around and talk about which pieces that they like best while eating fruit and cheese and such.

But I won't be going this year. Mainly, this is because I've been so busy that I need a night to myself, so I'm not going to drive to school on a night that I can't even get into the lab. But I'll admit that a bit of sour grapes also figured into the decision not to go.

I won't be getting any awards or honorable mentions or anything like that. Yesterday, I was told for sure that I wouldn't even be in the show, unless maybe I would like to complain to the head of the art department myself. No, I don't think that I would like to do that.

Last week we were deciding which pieces we would want in the art show. I hadn't really given it much thought. There's always an art show going on, but I'm not always in it. I was in the first one this semester, since my teacher was in charge of that one and got to pick whatever he wanted to go in it. I think that he picked three of last semesters projects. Anyway, I knew that there was another show coming up, but I hadn't really paid much attention to it. Most of my stuff was still in the sculpture lab, and he could pick any of that for the show, or if he wanted something that I'd already taken home he could ask for it.

So I happened to ask about it, and he said that he didn't want things that had already been shown and asked what I liked best of what was left. And I asked which semesters I could choose from, since we'd already shown most of the good stuff from last semester, and most of this semester's stuff hadn't been glaze fired yet. He said that wasn't supposed to use stuff from last spring, but I could use some of that since that stuff wasn't fired in time to be in last year's show. Then he gave me a form to fill out.

The deadline was yesterday.

But all your stuff was already here, and you're just turning them in to me anyway. Just decide which two pieces you like best.

Now, until I saw this piece of paper, I'd forgotten that this show was the one with the awards and the gift certificates and such. Maybe if I had remembered I would have given it more thought and asked more questions and such, but I didn't. Anyway, I picked the paper castings of sea life and the glass dragon, since despite what he'd said I didn't want to break the rules and enter something from last spring, and he didn't want the stuff he'd shown before.

Okay, so I signed the paper and thought that was that.

Last year, we put all of the sculpture and ceramics in the sculpture lab and someone came by and looked at everything and decided who was in the show and who got awards and such. And my stuff was already in that room, so I didn't think that I had to do anything else. But I asked when people where coming to look at the pieces, and he said that this year the teachers were picking what went in the show, but someone else would come and look at the show and decide the awards after the show was up. Probably, that would be Monday.

Okay.

He said that my stuff was all ready, but he was hoped to get someone else's stuff fired before he started taking things over.

Okay, whatever.

Anyway, that isn't what happened.

If you were trying to get a scholarship, you were supposed to take your artwork over to the main building to be judged, and then after that you were supposed to take your artwork to be judged by someone else on Saturday. There were only three of us who had ceramics and sculpture who hadn't tried to get a scholarship, so apparently our stuff didn't even get looked at.

And, our teacher was told that the student art show has already been organized and that there is no room left for the five pieces he was going to put in. After a lot of arguing, they allowed him to put in one piece, not one of mine.

It is all nonsense that they do not have room for the other four pieces in the show. Our pieces would go in cases, which we have several of, and right now only two or three are being used. But I don't want to argue about it. Getting my pieces in the show at this point just isn't important to me. I can't win anything. It's too late for me to get a gift certificate to Trinity Ceramics or anything like that. And when you put something on display there is always the chance that it might get damaged or even stolen. So I don't see why I should risk that happening.

Last year I went and watched my fellow classmates win awards and such, but I don't think that I'll go this year. My classmates and I won't be getting anything, and only one of us will even be in the show. I know that it is partially my own fault, that if it had been important to me I should have found out what was going on last week, and when something didn't sound quite right I should have gone to the main building and asked more about it, but I didn't.

It's just one more annoying thing to deal with.

Today I am unbelievably tired for no good reason

Today I went to class for three and a half hours. I had many things that I hoped to get done. I was going to do a bit of touch-up work on the Triffid and then glaze the bowls and plates before working on the Alien egg, and then if I had the time I'd roll out some slabs and get things ready for what I'd have to work on tomorrow.

Only that didn't happen. I got everything out and then saw a bit of a crack starting on the Triffid, so I put some slurry on it to try to fix it. Then I mostly forgot about it while I moved on to setting up for glazing the plates. I thought that since I'd decided there was only time to glaze everything solid black that I'd quickly get all of that done buy pouring and dipping. There were three pint sized jars of black glaze, so I was pretty sure that would be enough. But after looking at the glaze only one jar seemed to be pourable. Rather than risk mixing in water and making the glaze too thin, I decided to pour glaze inside of the bowls and brush glaze onto everything else.

The inside of one bowl had some little cracks, so I put that one off. The other three bowls have been glazed on the inside. Brushing on glaze requires three coats. So three coats each on the outside of the bowls, and three coats each on the outside of four plates, and three coats on the inside of four plates. And after the slightly cracked bowl is dealt with, three coats on both the outside and the inside.

So, after three and half hours, I am not even done with the stupid glazing. I still have to brush on another fourteen coats on various things. And I forgot about the touch-up work on the Triffid, which means I am still not finished with that and it might still have a bit of a crack. And I didn't work on the Alien egg at all. And I certainly didn't roll out slabs or anything else.

But I am so tired. I am exhausted. I am exhausted from just brushing on some silly glaze. And it wasn't even anything complicated, no little detail work, just endless medium brushstrokes of the same color glaze. I shouldn't be this tired. I didn't do heavy lifting or walk back and forth from the car with supplies. I didn't do anything that required either much physical work or mental concentration. Yet I am just about ready to call it a day and go to bed.

I suppose that I could do that. The teacher has offered to let us in the lab for two hours tonight while he does something, but that isn't enough time for me to waste time driving or gas money. I won't go in again til tomorrow, maybe not even til tomorrow night. I'd like to work on a few things around here, but I guess that's nothing that can't wait a bit longer.

I just can't believe that I'm this tired over nothing.

My computer sucks

For the most part, the computer is a toy. I know that there are all kinds of useful things to do with the computer. Like I can look at my bank account online and I can get maps online and email is a good thing to have and all that. And once upon a time I did some real writing on the computer. I used to spend several hours a day on the computer trying to get that novel published.

But let's be truthful. We don't spend that much time on the computer doing anything useful. Or, at least, we don't spend that much time on our home computers doing anything useful. We surf the net, we blog, and maybe we download episodes of TV shows that we missed. The useful stuff takes up maybe half an hour a day if we have a lot of emails. The rest of the time is spent having fun, or at least wasted doing things that are supposed to be fun.

So I suppose that I could do without the computer. I could tell my friends that I don't have one and if they really need to contact me that they'll have to use the telephone, and I could actually write down the amounts in the checkbook, and I could just buy a regular map. And on occasions when that just won't do I can borrow a computer or use the one at the library. If I gave up blogging and downloading TV stuff, I could probably do without a computer and in the long run this would probably save me time and money.

But I don't really want to do that, do I?

Even before I was having serious problems with my husband, there was always the computer to argue about. Not serious heated arguments, but he was always spending too much time on the damned thing, and he was always wanting to spend money on the damned thing when we had actual necessities that needed to be paid for first. And of course he is always wanting to buy a new computer, and he broke our agreement not to buy another one when he bought this one in 2002, after we had bought two used laptops the year before. And he wants to buy a new one now, but I won't have it, because he still owes my mother a lot of money and I will not discuss buying a new computer until he pays her back.

But he wants to buy something to replace part of this one, which isn't going to cost as much as a new computer, and I'm thinking about it. If it would actually fix whatever is wrong with the thing. Maybe fixing this one wouldn't cost too much.

And lately it is even worse. Whatever it is that prevents those stupid pop-ups doesn't seem to be working this week. Sometimes, when I type in an address, I get that message that the address cannot be found and I should check my Internet connection, etc.... Except that it appears in a pop-up screen over the very thing that I was looking for, so why the message? And there are other pop-ups. Some of the pop-ups seem attached to particular web addresses. Whenever I go to read the blog of a certain British lady, I get a pop-up for Horny Singles. Not what I was looking for at all. I'm not typing in the wrong address, and the British lady's blog is still there, but I have to close a page about naughty twenty-one year-olds before I can read it.

So I have about had it with this thing, and I guess that I will be going to the electronic store in the near future and watching some of our money get spent on a replacement part for this toy.

Either that or just give up on the thing for a while.

Forgive my absense

I feel like I am very busy, even when I am not really doing anything. I am up to my eyeballs in...uh...clay.

The projects that I have been working on for a while are probably too dry and not going to work at this point. The Triffid isn't what I'd hoped for, and the Martian Crickets are just bodies with no heads or arms and legs. The newer stuff is just sitting there while I wait for it to get dry enough to work with. My relief sculptures are going to warp a bit, and I think that it is too late to do anything about it. For my sculpture in the round, I want a sleestak, while the professor wants a dragon. I haven't started either one yet.

My first vase is finally fired. It has a tiny crack in it, but I'm still pretty happy with it. The other vase is still waiting to be fired, since there aren't enough other pieces to fire the kiln at that temperature.

I had to pick two things to enter in the student show, and since I haven't finished anything except one vase this semester I had to pick stuff from last semester. Professor didn't want it to be anything I'd already shown, so it's going to be my glass dragon and the sea life paper castings. I'm not too crazy about the paper castings. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but after they were done I thought why did I do that? I'm sure every tourist place near a beach sells something just like it. For the amount of time I put into them I could have made more dragons instead.

From last year's show my friend K won a $25 gift certificate from Trinity Ceramics. He gave it to me so that I could buy a screen. I have been so busy that I haven't used it yet.

It's very sad, but things are not going well, and this is probably going to be my last class. I can't picture much changing over the summer, so I probably won't be going back to school in the fall. Maybe not going back in the fall wouldn't bother me so much, if I thought I would be going back in the spring, but I doubt that I'll have money for that sort of thing then either.

Anyway, I don't think that I'll be posting much for a while. My sleep is disrupted so that I don't often wake up early enough to blog in the mornings, and I can't see wasting much time with it in the afternoons and evenings when I might better use the time on artwork and gardening and such.

And of course now that I've said that I'll wake up really early tomorrow morning and have to think of something to write about.

Monday Morons--You're a teacher?

Okay, so I was at the ceramic supply place, and I had ordered some clay and some casting slip and paid for it, and I was just sort of looking around the store to see if I should get something else before I had the supplies loaded into my car. And this woman comes in and talks to the cashier, and the store part of the place is small and I heard what they were saying without really trying.

It started out normal enough. The woman came in and said that she was a teacher and that she had spoken to someone on the phone. So I'm thinking that she's already ordered stuff and that the cashier will ask if she has a tax number and then ring up whatever the woman ordered and send her around to the back. But that isn't what happened at all.

The woman says that she needs to buy some stuff for her students. And she says that they are using some red clay that I'd never heard of. But the cashier knew what she was talking about, and I've only used maybe six clays so far and I'm sure there are a lot of clays that I've never heard of. But I was thinking red stoneware, which is a cone 6 clay and uses high fire glazes. But the woman wasn't using red stoneware, and the cashier took the woman over to the low fire glazes. And the woman says that she needs a few colors and probably some clear. And the cashier says that the low-fire glazes are all on this wall.

And the woman says, "What's low fire? What does that mean?"

Okay.

So the cashier says something like the red clay that the woman is using is fired at the lower temperature ranges and that these are the glazes used with that kind of clay. And then the cashier shows her where the low-fire underglazes are and tells her that the underglazes also come in pint sizes, but those are kept in the back and she would go and get them if the woman needed that size instead.

So then the woman says that she'll probably need to see the pint sizes and wants to know how much they cost. The woman hasn't picked out any colors, and the cashier can't just be expected to go and get all of them in the pint size. The cashier tells the woman that the price depends on the color, but the average is about twelve dollars.
The woman seems to know nothing about ceramics. She doesn't know what low fire means. She doesn't know that colors all have different prices depending on what minerals are used to make the glazes and underglazes.

What is this woman a teacher of anyway?

The woman says that whoever she talked to on the phone had said that something was eight dollars. She wanted to see the eight dollar stuff. Some of the low fire glazes are eight dollars.

The woman then goes on that she has about six students and that they have been using this red clay because they were studying Greek pottery with the black figures on red clay. So the woman ends up buying only black glaze. She didn't even buy any clear glaze to go over the parts of the clay that are to be left red. You'd think that she'd at least have bought the black underglaze and then the clear glaze to go over it.

Anyway, it all sounded very odd to me. So I'm wondering what this woman is teaching that she has to go and buy supplies for an art that she seems to know nothing about. And I'm just imagining all sorts of problems that her students are going to have with their artwork if they don't know more about ceramics than she does. And who is going to fire the ceramics? If they are studying Greek pottery, do they intend to go out and have an open pit firing too? I can picture this woman just starting a fire out in the middle of a field somewhere, or worse, next to a school or someone's house. And does she know not to glaze the bottom of the pots or they will stick to the kiln? And if she's having someone else fire this stuff for her students, will the know that they are using a lowfire red clay, or will it look like red stoneware and get melted in a cone 6 firing? The woman didn't even know what lowfire meant, so I doubt that she will think to mention it.

The best that I can hope for is that this woman teaches an art history class and that she got this idea to have some of her students make pots for extra credit. Hopefully someone else at the school who actually knows about ceramics told her to use this low fire red clay and will know exactly what to do with it once the student finish their projects.

And today sucks too

Yesterday I did almost half of the stuff that I wanted to get done. I cleaned just a little bit, washed a few dishes, got started on an art project, and half watched some TV while I was doing laundry and cooking and such. My husband has to eat out all of the damned time, which is a waste of money, so I was going to cook something with lots of leftovers so we would eat the leftovers instead of going out the rest of the week.

After deciding to make something that he really might like and spending about fifteen dollars at the grocery store I started cooking. And after I finished cooking I tried to keep stuff warm until it was time for him to come home. And then I thought that he was going to be late, so I'd be better off putting the whole thing in the fridge for later. I moved some stuff around in the fridge and made sure that there was room for the stuff without moving everything into different dishes, and then I went in the other room to watch TV while I waited for the thing to cool. And then I most have nodded off for a bit. Then my husband came home, and I told him that I'd already put the food away, which I thought I had, cause I remembered moving things around in the fridge to make a space for it.

And this morning before I went to school I found all the food still on the stove. So I had to throw everything away. So of course I was late for class because I was throwing away food and trying to clean up a bit in the kitchen, and we had to waste more money going to Burger King for lunch, and I've been in a really bad mood all day. And the computer didn't work this morning either, so before I found the ruined food I woke up at the usual time and spent two hours in bed wishing that I could go back to sleep.

Yesterday, before I knew that I was going to have a bad day, I agreed to do grocery shopping for my grandmother so that my mom wouldn't have to do it. So I thought that I could at least get that over with, or find out that she didn't need anything or whatever. And I call my mother, right when I said that I would, and she's like, where are you? I'm at home, where else would I be if I'm calling to find out what you need? She's like, I haven't had time to ask what she needs yet. I'll call you later.

Later, when all the idiots pick up milk on their way home from work, right when I said that I did not want to go out. This is why I don't do stuff like this very often. One silly errand that should take about an hour ends up taking the whole afternoon, or maybe the whole day. I should have just said no when she asked yesterday, but it just seemed like a simple enough request. Really, I am going to go to the store, if you need something, after lunch. Not before lunch, and not after dinner. So maybe you could write the list before lunch so you can tell me what you need.

Sometimes class is such a disaster that I feel like just going back to bed and watching TV or something. And that is what I feel like now, but instead I'm waiting for my mother and her mother to decide if something is needed at the grocery store. And I can't really try to do anything useful now either. Like I can't get out the clay, or right then my mom will call and I'll either have to tell her to wait while I put everything away, or I leave everything out and hope that stuff doesn't dry too much while I'm gone.

My professor really, Really, REALLY wants me to do a sculpture in the round dragon. I don't want another dragon. Not that I wouldn't like another dragon, but this one is going to be too much work. I don't think that I have enough time left, and I'm not sure that I'm up to that skill level yet anyway. I should just turn in a sleestak instead and get a bad grade and be done with it. I'm too tired for this stuff right now.

How I hate just sitting here

I have nothing exciting to write about today. I overheard an odd conversation the day before yesterday, but that seemed like a Monday Morons kind of post. I've already written the draft for that, and now I'm just sitting here.

It's not like I don't have plenty of stuff to do. I recorded three hours of TV yesterday. I could watch that, except that the TV is in the room where my husband is asleep, so I can't do that. Over the past two days I have managed to make these armatures out of stuff like newspaper and balloons and Styrofoam cups, but I'm not working on the clay yet because I have to clean up a work area first, and that might make noise. And I should probably clean the kitchen so I can cook something later, but again that would make noise. And the sheets need to be washed, but someone is sleeping on them at the moment.

I haven't even had a bath yet. That makes noise. Not that I don't sometimes do that anyway when I have to go to school or something, but when I don't have anywhere that I have to be in the mornings, it seems rude to take a bath or a shower when it might wake him up for no reason.

This really sucks. I have so much to do today, and I won't get started on any of it for at least another hour while I wait for him to wake up. And I probably won't do much of the rest of it til after lunch while I wait for him to go to work. Which means that I will probably get about four hours of real work done before I have to make dinner and decide whether or not to go to a night class.

I brought this other bed in here so that if we had such different schedules that one of us could sleep in here and not disturb the other one. But we don't have different schedules. He has his schedule, and except for art classes half of the week, I just sort do things around his schedule. But I don't guess that would have helped me much today. Even if he were sleeping in here I couldn't do much. Well, if I kept the volume down I could maybe watch some TV, and I could go ahead and wash those sheets that he wouldn't be sleeping on, but the rest of it would still have to wait.

It's going to be a long day.

A bit of a puzzle

Yesterday I was told that I had especially good blood pressure. Like it was 120 over 80. It used to be like that all of the time. I paid no attention to it.

But yesterday I'm thinking, that can't be right. Maybe the thing is broken? Maybe 120 over 80 is the baseline reading and my actual blood pressure is something else entirely?

My blood pressure has been high for about two years, but I don't think that it's been high for the whole two years. I think that it goes up when I have an argument, or when I have to deal with something bad, or when I have to go to see a doctor. Going to the doctor and such used to be no big deal, but now it is very upsetting. So two years ago I was told that my blood pressure was high. And it had never been high before, so they waited a while and took it again. Still, they thought that it might just be some odd thing that would go away. I didn't think anything more about it.

The next year when I saw a doctor who made a big deal out of it and gave me some pills for it. Blood pressure was something I'd never paid attention to before. So I went and found one of those machines at the drug store and took my blood pressure, and it was a bit high, but not as high as she said. I hadn't felt good in a long time, but I just thought it was because of everything that was going on. Then I thought, well, maybe everything that is going on has made my blood pressure go up, and maybe that is what is making me feel bad. So I took the pills for a while, but that didn't make me feel any better.

I quit taking the pills. The blood pressure just seemed to go up whenever I had to go see a doctor. The pills didn't seem to be doing anything, so why take them? And for all I know the pills have side effects that would make me feel worse.

And I didn't go on a diet or do any of the other things that I was supposed to do. The fifteen pounds that I lost came back. A bit of the weight came back between the summer and the Halloween party, and now the rest of it is back. I am now back at pre-tragedy weight. I don't like it, and now that I'm a grown-up gaining weight does not make me feel good, but it didn't make me feel especially bad either. I have other things to worry about.

So I went into the clinic yesterday thinking that they were going to mention high blood pressure and then they would say something about the weight gain. But they didn't say anything about the weight gain. Maybe they thought that last year's number was written down wrong. And since my blood pressure always seems to go up a bit whenever I'm actually having to deal with medical stuff now, I thought that it would be high yesterday, but it wasn't.

120 over 80?

Okay, so what is up with that? You don't have better blood pressure when you gain weight, do you? And I know that chocolate is supposed to be good for your heart or something, and I had some chocolate before I went to the clinic. But the chocolate that is supposed to be good for you is the really dark almost inedible stuff, not the stuff that I usually eat. And certainly the leftover milk chocolate and carmel Easter candy that I was eating yesterday is not supposed to be good for you.

So I just don't get it.

Monday Morons--Do I have Chlamydia?

If you are a woman and you are having any kind of problems below the waist and have to go see a doctor about it, the doctor will usually say that you need a pelvic exam. You might have appendicitis, so you'd better have a pelvic exam. Why? I mean, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not sure what they are looking for, but I'm pretty sure that my appendix isn't in there guys.

I sometimes wonder if guys have a similar problem. If you have the stomach flu or are worried that you need to have your appendix out, do they check your prostate?

I suppose that they are looking to see if the woman is pregnant. Not that you can always tell be looking. And not that they ask to see if you could be pregnant before they start looking. Sometimes when I haven't missed any periods, and it's been a while since I've even had sex, I'm pretty damned sure that I'm not pregnant. But I don't think that anyone has ever asked me before they told me to put my feet up in the stirrups.

Several years ago, my mom was having some problems. Eventually she went in and had a barium enema to see if she could have diverticulitis. But having a barium enema isn't a lot of fun and it is expensive, so they wanted to rule out a few other things first. This was obviously something wrong with her stomach or intestines, but apparently it is cheaper to rule out gynecological problems first. Better have pelvic exam first. In fact, better see a specialist first. The specialist proceeded to talk to my mother about all sorts of serious gynecological problems that she might have and that she might need a hysterectomy. I don't think so.

And my sister had a lot of problems when she was younger, though a lot of those were actually gynecological and did require pelvic exams. But she was having so many pelvic exams, she should have gotten frequent flyer miles or something. A couple of times she was taken to the emergency room, just to make sure that she didn't have appendicitis, and they did a pelvic exam. After they were pretty sure she didn't have that they gave her antibiotics and pain meds and such and sent her home with a note that said she should see her regular doctor the next week. So of course the regular doctor also did a pelvic exam and such.

Among other things, my sister did have endometriosis and she was treated with laparoscopic something or other. My parents asked that they look at her appendix while they were in there. The doctor said that she had a weird appendix and that it was at an angle where he couldn't see it, which left my parents wondering if she really did have a weird appendix or if he just made that up because he forgot to look at it.

While all of this was going on, my sister had some other problems like the rest of us often do. She had a few UTIs and some stomach troubles. Possibly some of the stomach trouble was because of stress of having to see the doctor so often about the other stuff.

On one of the doctor visits, the doctor decides that in addition to the endometriosis my sister probably has chlamydia as well. I'm not sure that we'd ever heard of chlamydia before, or at least we weren't sure what it was, and we looked it up and found out it was an STD. The doctor hadn't done any tests for this when he decided that was what she had, he just thought that she had the symptoms and chlamydia was a very common problem, so my sister probably had it.

Sometimes chlamydia has no symptoms, and it is so common because there are all these people spreading it around because they don't know that they have it. So that was kind of weird that a doctor decided that she must have it because she had all the right symptoms. But it is a problem because it can cause infertility and can make people more susceptible to other STDs and such, so even when chlamydia doesn't have any symptoms it shouldn't be ignored.

At the time this was going on my sister was a teenager and she'd never had sex. Not only did we believe that she'd never had sex, not only had she already told the doctor that she'd never had sex, but the doctor had given her a pelvic exam not on that visit but about a month before. On the previous visit he had advised that my sister should consider having her hymen surgically removed because of the frequent pelvic exams. I guess he forgot.

Anyway, my sister did not have chlamydia, and you have trouble taking the doctor seriously after something like that. But she did have endometriosis and she did have the laparoscopic thing to try to deal with it. It didn't help as much as she hoped.

A few years ago I took Adolescent Development in school. It was a really interesting class, and I'm glad that I took it, though it ended up being wasted credit since I ended up not getting a teaching degree. But I remember that we had a test and that we had a section on STDs and on the test we were asked what was the most common STD. And I'm pretty sure that the answer was chlamydia. I don't think that based on that you should just start telling people that they have it without doing the lab work first. And now I'm wondering if I remembered it wrong, or if maybe they weren't counting HPV as an STD when I was taking that class. 50 to 80 percent of women have had HPV, though most of us don't seem to have had anything bad happen as a result. And since we do not get it from toilet seats, and most of us are not lesbians, I would think that we were getting the HPV from say 50 to 80 percent of the men. So that's a lot of people who have had HPV. Have more people than that really had chlamydia? That's a lot of people.

Go shopping

And take a coupon.

I love free stuff.

A few more things

Despite what it says on the TV listings link below, the FOX site says that tonight they will be showing BONES and Canterbury's Law. BONES is definitely a re-run. I don't think that there have been enough Canterbury's Law yet to be showing re-runs, but I could be wrong.

Again, I did not win the lottery. I see in my future a job that I probably will not like. Possibly one in which I say, "Would you like fries with that?"

I have finally made an appointment for my annual exam. So I will get that over with next week, almost a month later than I should have.

Freaky Friday's is on hiatus until further notice. I have too much to do, and I shouldn't be blogging much, except for what I do in the mornings while I wait for a certain person to wake up. Freaky Friday's usually takes up some of my time on Friday afternoons, and I've decided that I should spend that time working on school projects. Today I intend to bring home some terra cotta and work on my relief sculpture. That is, if the bookstore hasn't run out of clay again, and in that case I will spend my afternoon making a trip to the ceramic supply place.

The memorial service for my friend will be a week from Saturday. I have plenty of time to find something suitable to wear and buy shoes. The service is in Dallas, but in a part of Dallas that I don't have much problem driving to, because it is off of I-20. The problem will be afterward, trying to decide if I should drive to the wake at his home. The drive from the funeral home to his house would take me right through a part of Dallas that I don't care for. Maybe I can make some excuse to go home first and find a safer way to drive from there.

Enough. Time to go to school.

More Random Thoughts

My husband came home last night at almost midnight, and despite the fact that I went to a night class, I was already asleep when he got home. I woke up for a bit, but not enough to say anything coherent. Just sort of mumbled something about him being home and me going back to bed. I think if I was going to be that late that I would have just gotten a room. I worry about long drives at night, but he doesn't think about that sort of thing.

Having gotten used to the idea of him not being here for a few days, it was then odd for me the first night he was home. Woke up in the middle of the night, remembered he was there, and then tried to go back to sleep because I can't watch TV or get up and eat ice cream, etc....

At school I finally got around to spraying glaze on the leaf vase (or the "tree" as the professor calls it). I am not comfortable with the spray gun and might have made a big mess of it. We shall see.

The glaze contains "substances which are known to cause birth defects and cancer in California." Lucky for me that we're in Texas. I'd almost forgotten about my cut fingertips, but then I got glaze on them. That rather stings a bit. I still have three or four boxes of rubber gloves left, but I'm not sure where any of them are at the moment. I should have taken a box to school last time I had them out.

I finally got a plate and a bowl from my molds. The professor is quite happy with them.

I have just realized that there's only like a month left for school. And I've been told that this week's Friday afternoon session has been cancelled. And I can't go next Friday because of my friend's memorial service. I don't think that I'm going to get things done on time. I need to decide if I should drop the class before the 12th of April. I still need to clean the glaze off of the bottom of the "tree" so it can be fired, glaze the tall vase, pour and finish at least three more bowls and plates, finish the Triffid, finish the Martian Crickets, and I haven't even started the relief sculpture, the dragon sculpture, or the Alien face hugger. And I had meant to do extra stuff. I at least have a design for the relief sculpture. Maybe I should roll out some terra cotta and take that project home over the weekend.

I have just looked at a blog that I used to read. The author said that she needed a break and was probably going to give up blogging. I reminded her of all the time she had put into the thing and she said that she wouldn't delete the blog, just that she might not write in it anymore. A while back a couple of us checked on it, and for some reason instead of seeing a month old post we saw a post that was a year and a half old. Now it is even stranger. There's not a post, but a bunch of drug ads. It is very strange to see someone's thoughts on life replaced by drug ads. I hope that she is alright.

Time for me to get ready for school, even if there is someone in the next room who is still trying to sleep.

Some Random Thoughts

Before I write anything else, let me remind everyone that tonight is the last Jericho. Not the end of the season, but the end of the show. That's it. No more Jericho. The end.

I have spent a week out of town with my husband, and now I'm going to spend a few days at home by myself. And I have decided that I'm going to enjoy this time by myself. I usually don't deal with it very well. I don't like sleeping alone and such. Mainly, this is because I don't get enough sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night, realize that I am alone, hear some stupid little noise and panic over nothing.

I am determined that will not be the case this time. There are good things about having the house to myself. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I can watch TV or listen to the radio or get up and eat ice cream. I can do anything I want. There's no one else here to disturb. I don't have to be quiet.

And with that knowledge, and one little sleeping pill, I got a full night's sleep. I don't remember the last time that happened. I fell asleep a bit after ten and slept til nearly six. And then I actually got out of bed and had a bath and turned on the lights and everything. And I watched the episode of Medium that I taped last night. I never get to do that. I wake up early and wait til five or six and then I come in here and blog until he wakes up which usually isn't til seven or eight. Cause blogging is the only thing that I can do without waking him up. Sometimes I think that I would have mostly given up blogging a year ago except for the fact that I needed something to do in the mornings that didn't make noise.

A full night's sleep. Unbelievable. And that was after an almost three hour afternoon nap too.

I was thinking about when I was a kid and we had these big Easter egg hunts. Someone took thousands of eggs and hid them in the park while we were in church. That must have taken an hour or two. And then we would spend time in the park finding the eggs, and then we would go to lunch. Some of the eggs were those candy eggs that were partially made of wax. Some of the eggs were actual hard-boiled eggs. Hardly any of the eggs were anything cool like chocolate or a plastic egg with something inside it. Just almost rock hard candy eggs and real hard-boiled eggs. So the eggs must have been out of the fridge for like three hours or so before we got them home. And then we usually didn't have the sense to put them in the fridge then either. And we usually ate a couple of these eggs. And then usually by the end of the day one of our parents would take the eggs away from us and say that if we wanted to eat anymore eggs we should eat the ones that we'd made ourselves that were in the refrigerator.

I just can't think that anyone would do that now. Obviously, eggs that aren't refrigerated go bad and shouldn't be eaten. But it seems like we ate some that had been out for several hours, and I don't remember anyone ever dying from it.

I read a few blogs, not because I care about the writers, but just because I've been drawn into the whole soap opera. My favorite one has ended. After two or three years of writing about her life and wondering why she can't seem to find that one special guy while she's having threesomes and such, she decided that writing the blog wasn't the thing for her anymore. Now, a lot of us say that, and then we change our minds after a few weeks. So I suggested that she leave the blog alone for a bit, and not delete it, and maybe after she'd had a rest she might change her mind. And, if she was mostly worried about the blog being so public, she could make the blog private and keep writing. So, after about a month, that is what she decided to do, make the blog private. And, not being one of the few people given the password, I was not able to read the blog for a month or two, but once or twice a week I would type in the address to see if the blog was public again. This morning I typed in the address, and the blog has been deleted. Oh, well. I hope that she made a hard-copy for herself first.

I had some computer access during the week I was away, but I spent most of my computer time writing my own blogs posts and checking my email for news of my dying friend. Now that I'm home I'll try to catch up on reading other people's blogs.

I used to read more blogs regularly than I do now. Something in my life changed, or something in the other blogger's life changed. There's one that I hardly read at all now, but to be fair, with the different things going on in her life, she rarely posts anything now. But she does stop by once in a while, and about a week ago on her own blog she posted some pictures of her recent weight-loss. And it looks great. And she got a haircut, and that looks great too. Unfortunately, my own weight-loss of fifteen pounds from two years ago is no more. I'm back at my pre-tragedy weight. It stayed off for like a year and a half, despite everyone telling me that the weight would come right back on. But it is finally back. I need to go eat some broccoli. And I think this week I'll get my hair trimmed. But I won't look as good as my fellow blogger, even though she probably still weighs a little bit more than I do.

I brought home a bunch of clay to recycle about a week and a half ago, so I would have some clay ready to use when I got back from spring break. But, of course, I didn't do anything about that when I should have. I didn't even look at the stuff until the day before yesterday. So yesterday I decided to push most of it through a kitchen strainer, and now I have these little cuts on the tips of two fingers. And I cannot find the antibiotic ointment, so I shall have to go and buy more. That's just one of those things that I can never find when I need it. Someday, if I ever move away from this house, I am going to find several dozen tubes mostly full tubes of antibiotic ointment. And then I'll find all those other little things that hide from me like safety pins and emery boards and socks.

Today in school, at least three of us were rather aimlessly wandering around the lab, trying to remember what it was that we were supposed to do. Having a lot of time off just messes things up for me. I vaguely remember what I was doing before I left, but I can't seem to just pick up where I left off. I'm supposed to glaze the tall vase, but I'm still waiting for a test piece to be fired first. I'm supposed to glaze the other vase, but that one requires using a spray gun, and I knew that I'd feel bad afterwards and decided to put that off til later. I should work on either the Martian cricket or the Triffid, but right now I just can't seem to think how to get back to doing whatever it was that I'd been about to do before I left. I don't want to do anything with the Alien face hugger until Friday, because I think it's best to work on it for several hours in one day, and Friday is the only day that the lab is available for that length of time. That pretty much left the Sleestaks, which are technically not school assignments and I'm only supposed to work on them after I'm finished with school work. And then I remembered that I'd left the plaster molds to dry, and that they should be ready to start making bowls and plates for my series of Halloween dishes. So I poured slip into those and worked on a Sleestak while I was waiting for the slip to set up in the molds. So I've mostly finished one Sleestak now. In a day or two it will be ready to be set out to dry, and I'll at least be able to get something off of my shelf. The plates and bowls are going to take longer than I expected. The plate mold works very well, except that the clay is too soft right out of the plaster and the plate didn't hold it's shape. I put the clay back into the mold and will let it set overnight. The bowl will just have to wait.

Home again, and, oh....

I came home Sunday morning still feeling a bit anxious. The drive was pleasant enough. We listened to the rest of an audio book by Larry Niven that we had listened to last week on the way to Tyler.

I felt a bit rushed when we were packing. So I thought that maybe my husband had some plans for the day, but apparently not. He just wanted be home for a bit. He has to leave again for a couple of days, but it is no big deal.

One of my fears was that I would come home to find the place flooded. I opened the door, and there was a bit of a smell, but I didn't see anything that couldn't be explained by just the fact that I didn't clean up before I left and that I might have knocked over a few boxes as I walked out with the suitcases and such. The smell wasn't that bad, and if it was due to water coming in the house it should have gotten worse at the back of the house, but the back of the house seems fine. So either the back of the house is fine and a tiny bit of water came in the front of the house, which is highly unlikely, or the bit of smell was due to us forgetting to take out the trash last Saturday or something else that is not flood related. We lit a few candles and such and expect that to be the end of the problem.

While I was away, one of my plants died, but that's alright as it was not a big plant and can be replaced for three or four dollars. Ten of the eleven asparagus plants emerged. So I think that I will call that a success and do a bit of weeding before adding more sand and such. Next year it shouldn't need any work at all, just harvesting and eating. And I have volunteer cilantro plants, and I love cilantro. I need to do a bit of work before getting pepper and tomato plants, but I think that I'm going just going to clear out a few old beds and not do any real work on the gardening this year.

While we were away I had my brother stop by once or twice to check on the mail. There were two packages left from the company my husband works for. One of the packages was his new camera. I'm afraid all the companies are a bit daft like that. They send important packages when they know he won't be home to receive them. It doesn't appear to be rain damaged or anything, but we shall see.

So that is all a bit of a relief. After having a look through the mail we went to lunch, and then my husband took me to see my dying friend in the hospice. He doesn't really know my friend, and he doesn't really want to sit around talking to other friends that he really doesn't know either, much less the friend's family he doesn't know at all. So he said that he would read a book. And I thought that he meant he would take a book inside with him, but no, he meant that he would wait out in the car and read a book. Oh. Okay.

So I went inside and used a code that I was given to get use the side door, and I found the room easy enough. And of course my friend was asleep, which I was told to expect if I went for a visit, and that I would mostly be talking to other friends and family more so than my sick friend. So his wife and parents were there, and another friend I probably haven't seen in ten years. I remember him very well, but he only vaguely remembers me. After a while some people I didn't know who'd come from out of state came to visit. They had been here most of the week I was gone, but were planning to take a plane home later that day.

So my friend wasn't awake much, and I didn't talk to him when I arrived. I took him a silly thing. His wife wanted to decorate his room a certain way, only at this time of year she was having trouble finding the things that she wanted, and I just happened to have one of the things due to one of last semester's art projects. But then after I dropped off the silly thing and everyone had a good laugh about it, I wasn't sure what to do next. I mean, if he had been awake I would have gone in to say hi and then talked to his family a bit before leaving, but since he wasn't awake, how long should I stay? Especially with my husband waiting in the car?

I went out to the car and suggested that he go find something to do and then come back for me later. Only with it being Easter he wasn't sure that anything he would want to do in the area was going to be open. He said that he didn't mind, and I could either stay for a while or we could go home and I could drive back in my own car and stay all day if I wanted. Staying the rest of the day seemed a bit much. I don't know. I gave him the code to get in the side door and told him that he should just come and get me whenever he was tired of his book.

About an hour later he woke up for a bit. I don't even think that he opened his eyes, but his wife told him that I was there. A bunch of us just sort of wandered into the room and said hello and then wandered back out again. The doctor wanted to talk to his wife about something that they were planning to do to make him more comfortable. That's really all that they do at this place, try to make people more comfortable. Another couple of people I didn't know wanted to talk to him, so I talked to his wife a bit more and then left. I said that I didn't have school Monday so I could probably stop by then and maybe after school on Tuesday. And she said that would be good and I and went home. The way the emails we worded, I thought that they expected him to die by last Thursday or even sooner, but I guess that it could go on this way for a bit.

This morning there was another email saying that he died very early this morning.

Well, okay. Not really unexpected. But I had mentally started to divide up the week between cleaning and going to school and going to visit my friend. Scratch that. Okay, I still need to clean and go to school, but now I need to get out a suitable black dress and probably go and buy some suitable black shoes, etc.... Do I need to cook something? It seems like people always cook something. When my dad died the church brought us ham and potato salad. Is there a church that's going to bring ham and potato salad? Does the club need to do that instead? Does his wife and family even like ham and potato salad?

I'm the grown up now. I have to do funerals and such now. But I still don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing.

And is the funeral going to be in Dallas? I hate Dallas. Maybe some of us will carpool from Irving if it isn't in Irving?

Are those people who just went back home out of state going to get on a plane and come back for the funeral? I think visiting a person before they die is more important that going to a funeral, but it seems like people judge you if you don't go to the funeral. I think that the out of state people should just send flowers and stay home.

Oh. Flowers. I guess I'm supposed to get flowers too.

I'm not that upset at the moment. I was sort of the new person in the little group, and I wasn't as close to him as some of the others were. But I think that I was close enough that I'm supposed to being doing something, but I'm not sure what.

The trip so far Part 3

My husband goes to Tyler so frequently for his job he knows where most things are without looking at the map. We had a coupon for a Super 8 Motel and figured that we would probably spend the week there. But right next to the Super 8 Motel was a place called Stratford House Inn, which we like, so we decided that it wouldn't hurt to ask how much it would cost to stay there instead.

We were in luck. The weekly rate was two hundred and fifty dollars, so that would not only fit into the budget of what the company will pay for a motel room but also it would also cover the two extra days that the company wasn't going to pay for.

You have probably never heard of Stratford House Inn. So far as I know the little chain does not exist outside of Texas. But I have been lucky enough to stay here a few times. The free breakfast is only cold cereal and occasionally a danish or a banana, but the rooms all have whirlpool tubs.

A whirlpool tub at no extra charge. Life is good. And it's even better with some aromatherapy stuff.

Before settling in for the night we go out to get frozen custard at Andy's and then buy some frozen dinners and sodas to take back to the room. After we eat we try out the tub. If we leave the bathroom door open and turn the TV just a little bit we can even watch TV while in the tub. Cool. But we probably won't do that much because it's hard to hear the TV while the whirlpool is on.

The next day go to the rose garden. If you're not from Texas, you probably don't know that Tyler is known for it's roses. Unfortunately it looks like the rose bushes all just had their major pruning for the year and there really weren't any roses to look at. But while we were there we picked up a map of historic homes and then we went for a drive. At the end of the month there will be tours of some of the houses, but we'll miss that. And we'll miss the guided tour of the cemetery, but we went to look at it and take pictures anyway.

Next, we went to Rudy's BBQ for lunch. After all the people who have come to my blog looking for Rudy's nutritional info and such, I thought while I was there I would ask for one of those little charts. They didn't seem to have one. I thought that it was the law now that everyone make that information available to anyone who asks for it. No luck. Maybe I'll email them later.

So we got some sandwiches and some creamed corn and enough extra meat for the husband to take sandwiches to work all week. And he also had some of the green chili stew. He's been wanting this stew all year, but I guess the different locations have different recipes, cause he didn't like this at all.

After lunch we went back to the motel room to put the meat in the fridge, and then we headed north to visit Tiger Creek wildlife refuge for exotic cats. This place is not a pretty zoo. They hope to make it into a pretty place one day, but for now they only have the one nice looking enclosure, and the animals have to take turns with it. The rest of the time they spend in regular cages that are about the size of my bedroom, or maybe some are a bit smaller. Most of the animals are tigers. Some were taken from other zoos and animal parks, a couple came from Michael Jackson's Neverland, some bobcats were rescued from a construction site, and several used to be pets from places that changed the laws so that their owners couldn't keep them anymore.

It costs ten dollars to get in. If you are bringing kids, look for coupons at tourist info places and you may be able to get a couple of them in free. And, if they have a public restroom I didn't see it, so you might want to go before you get there. The tour didn't take too long, and I think we were there less than an hour. And they have a gift shop with the usual stuff.

Tuesday we didn't do much, because my husband usually has extra work to do on the first day of a new assignment. Wednesday we were going to go to the zoo, but it seemed cold and damp. Not for long. It turned into a beautiful day. But by then we'd already decided to just do a bit of shopping and not do much else. We found a reasonably priced seafood restaurant around the corner from the motel. And there's a Mazzio's Pizza in town, which we don't have at home anymore.

We were doing fun things and mostly having a good time, but I still felt anxious. My skin hurts. I can't seem to relax much. I've taken to leaving sleeping pills out so I can take them when I wake up at three in the morning.

Thursday we went to the zoo. This used to be the best little free zoo, but now they charge $8.50 each to get in. Again, we had coupons from the tourist info place, and one of us got in free. This is the first time I've been since they started charging to get in, and I can't see that they've added much to the place. What really was special about this place was the African plain that looked like all of the animals were all together. Some of the exhibit has changed. I think that maybe there were some accidents. But it still looks pretty good, and it still looks like the lions are out with the rest of the animals, even though there really is a place that keeps the lions from getting out. There used to be a similar thing where the wild dogs and cheetahs were behind a glass right next to the deer. The deer would go right up to the glass and stick their tongues out at the cheetah. The last time I went, there was cracked glass between the dogs and the deer. That part of the exhibit was changed, and I didn't see any dogs this time.

I heard something on the news about flash floods near Dallas. If it rained a lot near my house, water might have gotten inside. I have a pump, but sometimes the hose gets tangled up and it doesn't work properly. Since no one was home to check on it, there may be a big mess to deal with when I get home. I've decided that I don't want to know and I'm not going to call and ask about it. If there's a problem I can't do anything about it til Sunday anyway. I'll find out soon enough.

I've spent a lot of time trying to knit. I wanted to do a couple of baby blankets and a scarf. Apparently, baby blankets require more yarn than I had imagined. I'll have to do them some other time. The scarf is taking longer than I thought, and now that it's finished (except for the fringe) I'm not sure that I like it. First, I misplaced the tool that I needed to do the ribbing. I went to Hobby Lobby to try and buy a new one, which they didn't have, so I bought some other gadget that I may never use and a crochet needle. I used the crochet needle for a bit, and then I found the other tool. And then I went a bit overboard with the ribbing. I'm not sure that I like it now. Anyway, it took most of three days on the machine, and a normal scarf takes about three or four hours on the machine, so I haven't got time to make another one. I'll just put fringe on this one and hope for the best.

Friday we were supposed to go to the mall, but my husband said he was tired and didn't much feel like doing that. He couldn't decide where he wanted to eat, so he said that we should just get in the car and go for a drive around the loop. We took a wrong turn someplace and ended up downtown. He didn't see anything interesting and we ended up back at the seafood restaurant near the motel.

My friend is still alive and has been moved to a hospice. From the earlier emails I thought they were expecting him to die on Tuesday or Wednesday. He seems to be asleep most of the time, but they have managed to bring in his dog to visit him. Maybe I will see him tomorrow. If not, that's okay.

The trip so far Part 2

So after an anxious two hour drive, we get to Tyler Sunday morning. The reason that we are going Sunday morning instead of sometime Monday or even Tuesday morning is that we wanted to go to the ren fest. Most years we go to Scarborough Faire that is in Waxahachie (about thirty minutes south of Dallas) and we went to Hawkwood (now closed) near Fort Worth once or twice, and we've been to the Kansas City ren fest three or four times, and we have even once been to a small faire near Pittsburgh. But, unlike many of my friends I have not been to the large rest fest near Houston, or the small one near Tyler.

We arrived at about fifteen after ten. Near perfect timing. The place opens at ten, and we probably missed an opening ceremony or something, but that's okay. I'm starting to feel better.

The good feeling was short-lived. The Four Winds Reniassance Faire does NOT take credit cards. As I said before, we have been to a number of ren fests and know to bring cash money to tip people and cash money for food and some of the vendors only take cash money, but we had never been to one that refused to take credit or debit cards for the tickets to get in the place.

We so rarely use cash anymore. We are so used to using the debit card for everything except for lottery tickets that we often forget to take any cash with us at all. Since we knew that we would need cash for food and tips, we had about forty dollars on us. The tickets would take twenty-four dollars, and that would only leave us sixteen dollars, which would pay for lunch but not much else. Was there and ATM in the park? The larger festivals have ATMs now.

No. No ATM in the park.

Well, we couldn't think of anyplace nearby where we could run and get cash, and the lady at the ticket booth didn't suggest anything. I can't believe that we are the only people to have this problem and she didn't have a suggestion ready to direct us to the nearest gas station or something.

So we thought about it for a moment and decided to go ahead and buy the tickets. We would just have to be very careful not to spend any money til after we had paid for lunch and not have any snacks and not tip anyone. Not tipping is just awful. I don't even know if the acts get any of the ticket money. But we would just have to explain about the front gate not taking credit cards and that we weren't able to tip anyone. And then maybe the acts would complain and the front gate would get a credit card machine.

The faire was even smaller than I had imagined, and there weren't many people there when we went in. I stopped to say hi to someone I knew from the club, and then we walked on, and the place was almost empty. There was a puppet show near the entrance, but not much else seemed to be going on.

We wandered over to where there would soon be a knife making demonstration. He was having a bit of a late start, so when we got there he was just starting to light the fire and such. He was not having an easy time of it. Too much sulfur. Great big ugly smelly clouds of smoke. Poor guy.

But we stayed and he eventually got the smoke and such under control. I don't usually stay and watch much of this sort of thing, but there didn't seem to be much else going on. And my husband liked to watch this, though he likes watching glass blowing better. No glass blowing at this faire.

At the end the guy pulled someone out of the audience to make some small thing of the non-weapon variety, and we did not stay for that. And we did not leave the guy a dollar as we should have.

Next we wandered over to the next stage where someone was already in the middle of a juggling act. And the guy was funny and ended his act with juggling torches and eating fire. And then everyone was leaving money in the guy's hat, and I can't take it anymore.

The guy ate fire for crying out loud. How can we not leave him a dollar?

So we left the guy a dollar and decided to leave the faire for a bit and go have lunch somewhere else and see if we could find an ATM.

On the way out we ran into someone I went to school with in like 2004. We had planned to go to this place together back then, but we had to write a paper on the only weekend that she wasn't working at another faire, so we ended up not going. She was giving out flyers for an even smaller faire in Hillsboro. I don't think that I've ever been to a one day faire. I may still not go. We'll see.

So we ended up going to the small town of Troup and buying gas and eating lunch at Diary Queen. An hour and a half later we were back at the faire with almost forty dollars in our pockets and not having to worry about lunch anymore. Just as well that we had lunch elsewhere, as I heard someone complaining that they had run out of turkey legs, and the beef stew didn't look that great to me.

Next we listened to the singing talents of Breaking the Habit. Not quite as funny as Hey Nunnie Nunnie from Scarborough Faire, but silly nuns are funny whatever they call themselves.

Then we were off to watch the belly dancers. I think that most ren fests have belly dancers. The odd thing about these dancers was that about half of them weigh more than I do. Now, I don't think that I look that bad, even after these last few months when I've gained back the fifteen pounds that I lost two years ago. But I don't think that I would ever wear a belly dancer outfit in public. But here were about a dozen women on the stage who just don't share my opinion on the subject. Not all dancers are young and pretty, and the thin cute ones aren't always the ones who really know how to dance, but I usually don't see that many overweight dancers. They didn't seem to care about it one little bit.

There was a guy roaming around in a bear suit. I don't think that I've ever seen that at a ren fest before. The actor in the costume was good, and he really does act like a bear. I can say that on the authority both as someone who spent a week in the Easter Bunny costume, and as someone who spent part of a summer helping out a bear trainer.

We saw other odd costumes. A woman came in on stilts. I believe she said she was riding a sasquatch chicken. And there were a couple of guys in wizard costumes. Wizard costumes are to be expected at a ren fest, but these guys wore hats so big that they could probably be used as tents.

We saw some other show, but I can't really remember much about it except that they would pull people out of the audience, dress them in silly stuff and have them read lines in a play. While most of that was going on, I was with the guy in the bear costume.

And then we decided to stay for the joust. I don't usually watch the joust. I watched one the first time I went to Scarborough Faire, and it was a bit of fun, but how many jousts do I need to watch anyway? But we stayed to watch this one. Besides the bit where the knights put on armor and try to knock each other off of their horses, there are games of skill involving catching rings on lances and spearing heads of lettuce and such. One of the knights was a woman. But she skipped the part at the end and did not put on armor or try to knock anyone off of his horse. She tied for first in two games, and then she tied for second in two games. So she ended up with the highest total score that day, even though one of the men did manage to knock someone off of his horse.

There was about an hour left, but we were tired. We bought some incense and some lotions and such and headed off to find a motel for the week.

The trip so far Part 1

I am so into art class that I don't think about stuff like Spring Break. That's a week that I'm not allowed to go to school, rather than a week that I don't have to go to school. Since it is an art course and I do not need the credit, I suppose that all weeks are weeks that I don't have to go to school. Right now I just like going to school.

So I was like really looking forward to doing anything this week, and just asked my husband if he happened to be scheduled for anything interesting this week. Turned out that he was scheduled to work in Tyler. Tyler is a place that we've been to so many times that it really is no big deal. We like the place, but we've already seen and done most of what we would care about.

Still, once I had the idea of going away for the week, it seemed like a good idea. I started to look forward to some time off.

Last year was rather the opposite. I was looking forward to spending time away with my husband, but I was also a bit concerned about leaving for the week. There seemed to be a zillion things that might go wrong. I wanted to go, but I worried about going for the two or three weeks before that. And I had this awful feeling as we drove away from the house. Nothing bad happened while we were away, but it took me awhile to relax and enjoy the trip.

So this year I was planning this trip that was no big deal and not that far away, and while I was looking forward to having a rest, it wouldn't have really upset me to stay home either. Until the week before, we hadn't made any special plans. And then a few days before we left we decided that there were a few things that we wanted to do and decided to leave a couple of days early.

And then the day before we left little things started to go wrong. The house is always a mess, but it seemed to be more of a mess than usual because I'd kind of tossed a few thing around a bit while I was looking for something. So now instead of stacks of boxes and piles of clothes, it's more of a big heap of clothes and boxes and other stuff all together. So I meant to at least straighten that out on Saturday, in case there was some emergency that would require someone to actually go inside the house, but that didn't get done. I remembered that it was a club day and that I was expected to be in Irving. So I thought that I would just make an appearance at the meeting and then only stay for an hour or two and not go to dinner or a movie or any of the usual stuff. Just say hi to my friends and see what was going on and then duck out early. Only that didn't happen because one of my friends was taken to the hospital. So I stayed for the whole meeting so that I could go with the group afterwards to visit the friend in the hospital.

After I got home I got a call from my brother inviting us over Sunday to watch the Stargate DVD. Only we can't go Sunday cause we'll be out of town already. So we go over Saturday night. And I had to tell him about the friend in the hospital anyway.

So I ended up having a full day on Saturday and not getting anything done except for packing.

Sunday I have this awful feeling that I shouldn't go on the trip. This is stupid. We're only going to Tyler. It is no big deal. But I feel awful. I actually say the words "I don't want to go." But that's really stupid. I put my stuff in the van and we go.

We drive for a couple of hours, but I feel anxious. I often feel this way now when I leave the house. I keep thinking things like I've left the stove on. It doesn't matter that haven't cooked anything on it all week and that my husband used the stove the day before and must have turned it off and properly put everything away then, I still keep thinking that I might have left the stove on. Or maybe I left the water running, or maybe I didn't lock the back door. Something.

But this time it seems worse than usual. My friend is dying, but I don't really think that's it. My friend has been dying for a long time, and now that he's probably actually going to die, I think it's okay that I'll be out of town because I got to see him the day he went back to the hospital. It seems like I don't usually get that opportunity. Someone dies while I'm out of town, and I didn't even know that the person was sick, or a person dies suddenly in an accident before any of us are told to get to the hospital. So I got to see him Saturday, and some more people will go to see him Sunday and Monday, and if he dies while I'm gone, that's okay. I got to see him before I left.

I still feel bad during the drive. I don't really know why.

A friend of mine is dying

Someone I know will probably soon lose a four year battle with cancer. I've have been hearing that he is about to die for two or three years now. But he was in remission for a year, and then it was sort of up and down. Whenever I would see him, he was more up. He can't really be dying if he's up walking around and such, right?

I have not kept up with the details of his illness. At this point, I don't even remember where the cancer started. Between the days that I wasn't really paying attention and the days when I just thought that he shouldn't have to repeat the story for the hundredth time, I haven't heard a lot of the gory details. I saw him several weeks ago, and he was eating and he didn't look too bad. He was thin, and he looked tired, but he was talking and laughing and such. He was mostly himself.

He was talking about some procedure that he was supposed to go into the hospital for, but there was some snafu and it either wasn't going to be done or it was being postponed or something. So he got to spend the weekend with his friends instead. Not like he was really looking forward to another trip to the hospital anyway.

Okay, so a few days after I saw him the doctors got their act together and did the procedure or a similar procedure or whatever. I wasn't really paying attention and I didn't go visit him in the hospital. And it was in Dallas anyway, and I hate Dallas. So that seemed to go okay, and he was home before I even knew what they were doing whatever it was that they did.

Only Saturday he went back to the hospital. He's dehydrated and he couldn't sleep. He'd had the hiccups for like three days solid. He's not eating much. With all that going on he's having trouble talking, and when he talks sometimes it doesn't make a lot of sense.

So Saturday I was going to meet some of my friends and we would usually go to dinner and such, but I was going to leave early because I had to go home and pack and such before going out of town for the week. Only before I tell people that I'm leaving, we find out about our friend being back in the hospital, so we end up going there instead.

I met some of his family. His family is a very religious church going bunch, though not of the same type of church as mine. And then after a while they left and it was just us and the friend's wife. His wife was telling us that she didn't think his family was really dealing with it. They had put him on a prayer list and just expected him to be healed or something. When that didn't happen, they said it was God's plan, and now they are waiting for a miracle.

So the friend's wife is talking about this stuff and she's just rolling her eyes and such.

So that was all a bit weird for me. Especially since one of my friends who has totally different religious beliefs than these people would sit next to them and talk that she was one of them, and what she is really thinking is that these poor people are delusional.

I pretty much know what his family is thinking. They aren't really expecting a miracle, or at least, not in the sense that his body would be healed. They hope for that kind of miracle, and I have seen that happen and probably they have too, but they do see that the odds are against that happening. They just think that this is happening for a reason that they aren't aware of yet. And there are other things that they pray for besides healing his body. Since my friend is no longer in their church, and I'm not sure how young he was when he left, they may in fact be praying for his soul. They might be praying that he gets saved before he dies if he wasn't already saved, or that others would be saved during this time of crisis, or something like that. It would certainly be nice if the cancer could be cured, but at this point I don't think his family really believes that is going to happen.

So the situation of going to visit a dying friend is weird enough, and I never know what to say. But here I really don't know what to say. His wife is talking about his family's religious beliefs and rolling her eyes and almost making fun of them, and everyone else is standing there nodding their heads. So I can't even say the usual stuff that people in my church would say like he'll be in a better place and such. If he isn't saved, he won't be in a better place at all. And I certainly don't want to upset his family by asking if they think he is saved. But I do think that their prayers have more to do with his relationship with God than with his physical health.