Sunday, July 28, 2019






I am not dead.
We received a mail from my cancer doctor's affiliation, to the next of kin of ME. There was an email problem and it may have compromised something, so they sent a post snail mail to my next of kin warning them to check to see if anyone had started a new me thing. Because I was dead.

Contrary to what they think, I am still alive. Mean, disgruntled, pissed off, angry, but breathing regularly and working with my brain.

The more recent photos of me are ugly, hospital and dental things that do me no great justice, but be it known the world over...I am alive.

And intend to stay that way.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Hot time in the summer sun

Last week, here in New Jersey, it was hot. How hot? It was so hot that the water in our pool reached 92 degrees F.

I had to rely on tales told by my daughters and friends and, of course, the news, as I was not in NJ. I was in NC.
It was hot, there, too.

Okay, I only went out of the vacation house a couple of times, into the car, into the grocery store, back in the car, back in the house. That was enough.

Yes, we have had hot summers before. We've had them without air conditioning, also. We survived, but it was most unpleasant. One year, it was this hot when I got chicken pox. My mother cut my hair as short as my brother's. They put an exhaust fan in an upstairs window, closed off all the other windows but for an inch or so, and that was how we made it through the long, sweaty night.

Not actually made it...we probably just sweated ourselves into a stupor that passed for sleep.

To quote my grandmother, "it's so hot, even the cold water is hot."

She was right!

BTW, the water on Emerald Island in NC tastes gross and, yes, even the cold water was hot.


Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Lost to history

Yesterday, I learned from someone I ought to trust with the truth, that: some famous Roman guy was poisoned by his wife/lover/maybe mother by a poisoned fig. 

At 3:am, I could not find any real reference to this when I Googled "Hey, Google, who poisoned every fig on the tree?"

We all know the hand gesture where the person bites her/his thumb which is really nasty and means something like "Pull a fig out of an ass's butt". I learned that first year of college. It stayed with me while I can't remember who told me that and in what book it was.

However, it deals with a fig.

Possibly, this fig thing goes with the poisoning of the guy.


The coolest part is that, while I can not remember where this was quoted from, I do remember this, and it has become something I will never forget.

In order for the woman to get to poison this guy, she

POISONED EVERY FIG ON THE TREE.

We're talking a very angry, vengeful woman here.

The Romans were famous for poisoning enemies. Kids. Grandparents. Politicians. There's a big read on Wikipedia about how this poisoning was going on...quite the thing.

Their poisons weren't all that powerful. They knew about Hemlock, thanks to the Greeks. They knew about some mushrooms. Other than those things, they just probably put any old thing into someone's food and hoped for the best.

Since their favorite condiment was garum, which is distilled rotten fish guts, it might have been hard to disguise the bad taste of a poison anyway.

While this story will stick in my head...it has definitely put me off Fig Newtons.

Friday, July 5, 2019

Ahh, to be trolled!

I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

It goes something like this. 
I remember Bobby Kennedy made it popular again, but someone important said it before him.

Someone yesterday burnt me on my patriotism. 
Pissed me off righteously, but that was her prerogative. 

I felt no need to defend myself about my love of country.

What I do not possess is a blind love for the current regime and I have said so repeatedly. Not liking anything he has done, or they have destroyed of my beloved country's laws is appalling, yet it does not make me any less patriotic. I love what this country always has stood for...what my fore-bearers risked their lived crossing the Atlantic to give to me.

So, if this troll was so upset that she intends to burn my books, all I can say is "if you have the Kindle versions, please don't blow up your Kindle."

As Alfred E. Newman often opined, "nuff sed".