Mah Buddy and I Now Share a Home!

For those of you who keep up with me on Facebook, you know that Buddy is due to go back to the vet on 7/26 for his follow-up on the heart worm treatment, but he has a few words he’d like to share with you guys!  He’s such a great dog!  Remember guys, get your pets their heart worm medicine!  If cats get it, there is no cure!

Tina

Hi everybody!

My mama Tina and Brian are now sharing an apartment because my old place has to get redone…I don’t know the right word fer it, but somebody out her does.  Mama’s been walking me twice a day and I get to go to the swimming’ pool and see all the kiddies!  They all love me and so does Mama’s land lady Angela.  I got to do some talking’ too, but Mama didn’t lemme play too much…She says until Dr. Bert says it’s okay to goof off again that I have to  keep resting and that is soooooo boooorrrrriiiiing!  I like Gizmo better now that Mama’s here because she makes him behave!  He doesn’t get to bite me hardly at all now!

Before I got to move in, Mama made Brian take me to this woman in town to get a good bath and I hate baths!  I hate water but I get me a drink from da pool!  I love it when the kiddies pet me too!  I like to listen to Brian play da piano but mama says it is getting a tune up! I thought only cars got tune ups! I thought pianos just get tuned I watch Brian work on cars when he does that!  I like to take his rags and make him tug ’em, but he laughs! I love playing tug of war sometimes–not all the time. I’d rather play fetch! I’ll go get the ball and make one of my humans come to me to get it! That’s more fun than bringing it to them!

And Mama gets me chicken meatballs! I love that! Brian gets me the jerky ones! If I hold still while mama picks up my nasties with a poopie bag, I gets more too!  Mama says I marked all the trees in the place already! I might share my other treats but I won’t share my chicken meatballs!  That makes Gizmo upset but Mama gives him the treats his human (Eric) says he can have.

I still get to sleep by Brian’s bed too! Does that rock or what?  Pumpkin and Socks (the cats) play with me and let me sleep by them too!  Mama is gonna put pics up of me again soon with my new bandana! It’s cool!

If I Had Written THIS as a Teen, I’d STILL have ended up in the counselor’s office…Guess why

Another corpse choking

on a Kaiser roll

while a solitary bookkeeper

keeps track of a soul.

When the ink bottle spills

over a yellowed page

some demon in a hallway

hunts me down in a rage.

 

 

It is only Mephistopheles

who is keeping the scores

while his old pal Leviathan

vents some anger in the moors

Then children born of ignorance

escape their gilded cage–

but not before the fool seeks

some wisdom from the sage.

 

Don’t ask me where this came from.  Some times ink escapes my pen just as in the fashion words escape my mouth when I really get on a roll…If done verbally, it’s almost comparable to “verbal vomit” because I’m usually purging a few old ghosts…I write monologues once in a  while too, but as a teen, I never let anyone see all of it…If they had, they would have thought I went mad…Maybe I was in a sense. I definitely trusted nobody and I certainly was a hermit…

I find it odd that people think that solitude is such a bad thing when it really isn’t.  It depends on what one does with that solitude.  I used it to create my own worlds, characters and such–much in the way women writers did in the days of old.

The Third Time Around…***Childbirth Au Naturale***

Look…I am all for natural childbirth and such, but I am not about to put up with a bitchy nurse or CNM (Certified Nurse Midwife) that thinks he or she is equal to a doctor.  Here is why.

On November 28, 1988, I went into labor with my 3rd son–Kevin.  My water broke.  After my husband came in, we went to the hospital.  First strike against “Nurse Ballbreaker”:  “Yes your water really broke.  Why didn’t you come in earlier?”

My response: “Get the doctor to ask me that.”

Hours go by after I was admitted.  I’m supposed to get the birthing room.  No way…Nurse Ballbreaker said that they didn’t have time to make it up after the Captain’s wife used it, but they had 8 hours to take turns hanging out at the nurse’s station gossiping between rounds.  I know this because a volunteer WAC told me about it.  By the way, this was at the Evans Army Community Hospital at Ft. Carson, CO.  If you are in the military, you’re better off giving birth in the barn rather than that place.  The  walls were some shade of OD green–which I detest as well.  The nurses were out of some type of time warp or something because they mostly wore all-white.  That was irritating as well.  Now they wear different colored smocks and such which is much easier on the mental state…They aren’t as intimidating.

Then I asked for the anesthesiologist–for HOURS.  “Well he’s tired and he’s been up all night. We can’t be calling him.” –per Nurse Ballbreaker.

Then the last straw came.  I knew Kevin was coming.  I was about to push.  She came in the room and instead of checking me she said, “Look , we can’t check you every time you feel like you want to push so you just need to breathe and deal with it!” she yelled.

My ex instinctively backed away from my bed.  “Look Bitch!,” I yelled, “Having a kid is like riding a f***ing bicycle! Once you’ve done it you don’t forget how so I suggest you get the mother f***ing doctor now!”

A female colonel entered my room almost immediately and asked, “Mrs. Thomas, what is going on?”  Nurse Ballbreaker tried to butt in but the colonel told her to be quiet.  She then put on a glove and checked me herself.  She looked at Nurse Ballbreaker and said, “She’s dilated and this baby is about to crown. Why the hell isn’t she on the delivery table, Nurse?!”

I swear to God that Nurse Ballbreaker was reduced to sounding like Porky Pig when she said, “Well we thought–”

“We’ll talk later.” the doctor said.  The doctor made her leave the area and got another nurse.  This nurse was very nice.  She told me not to push until I was told to and walked with me through the breathing bit.  I think my ex was traumatized by the encounter with Nurse Ballbreaker so he just held my hand.  The doctor was NOT happy with where Nurse Ballbreaker inserted my I. V. either.  She said once Kevin was born and after four hours, they’d remove it and not restart it.

In between contractions, I was put on a gurney.  They wheeled me down the hall.  I felt the boy coming alright…Ballbreaker didn’t even get me a local!  We got next to the delivery table, the doctor raised the sheet just in time to put her hands out to catch Kevin–and he came in kicking, screaming and raising hell, too!  She looked at me and I said, “Tell that bitch nurse I said “I told you so, will you?” and the doctor smiled and said, “She won’t be bothering anyone on my ward again.”

The next night a WAC (volunteer retired Army Nurse) came into my room and kept giggling. I asked her what was up.  She smiled, “Mrs. Thomas, that nurse you chewed out last night is in the geriatric ward now.  That colonel chewed her ass up one end of the ward and down the other after she had to deal with that delivery.  They didn’t have time to do an incision to keep you from tearing because of her.”

“Well the bitch is lucky I didn’t tear anywhere but down the old scar about a half an inch.  I’d have her ass right now.” I told her.

That WAC and said, “Yeah…When the colonel finished with her, the director got her again.”

Well, I can say this much, I have truly experienced natural childbirth but I humbly apologize to all the taxpayers now if they footed a bill for a birthing room and for anesthesia that was never even utilized in 1988!  I used to ditch lab slips for tests I knew I didn’t need–like that damned Rh Titer one  when both my ex and I were Rh+.  They didn’t like that either, but I don’t think taxpayers should be paying for unnecessary shit and will not deal with that.  Have a great week!  😀  Oh, by the way, he was born AFTER midnight so he was born ON November 29, 1988…

A Last Minute Road Trip Pays Off!

Oh my god! Where do I begin here?  I went to a couple of places this past week that totally blew me away!  Before I go into this bit of adventure, I need to thank LaurenVasil for inspiring me to get off of my butt and just freaking go, Go, GO!!!  I was reading her blog on her recent road trip from Brooklyn, NY to Los Angeles, CA…You can read about it here: www.fizgiggery.com

These posts inspired me to come out of my cave long enough to find out about some things in W. Texas I never took the opportunity to go see.  I found two places that blew me away.  One was Monahans, TX and the other was Balmorhea, TX.  I am putting the pics here as proof of how amazing these places are–despite their size.  These places are writer’s havens to me.  I can camp out under the stars by the sand dunes of Monahans, or I can stay at the motel at the State Park outside of Balmorhea.  Both places are so unique, and they posses a beauty all their own. The people in both places are very friendly and I had a couple of people already ask about my metamorphosis necklace this week, and it seems that when I go elsewhere–people are curious about it!  I got it from www.flaurena.com   folks.

I will also go into some info about both places, starting with my adventure in Monahans.  On a hot, miserable day in West Texas, I decided that while hanging out in Midland, I would go to the visitor’s center off of I-20 and see what they had to show me.  The two women working there were so sweet, and explained a bit of the History of each place they told me about.

Did you know that one of the authors of the James Bond books is from Midland, TX?  Well, if you didn’t, look up Raymond Benson.  Woody Harrelson also was from the area, as well as Carolyn McCormick (who played Dr. Olivet on Law and Order).  Little known trivia:  When Mother Nature isn’t on crack, like she’s been all year this year, Tommy Lee Jones also comes to Midland quite a bit–sometimes to play polo, but he has property that he owns in San Saba, TX. Kathy Baker (from “Edward Scissorhands”) was also from Midland.

Mezzo-Soprano  Susan Graham also hails from Midland, TX.  Those of you who live in San Francisco and frequent the opera will know who she is.

Now for my adventure!  It began last Friday when I got thoroughly bored to death in Big Spring.  I really got tired of the 111 degree weather (in the shade) and decided to take advantage of some time off–which I will do again next week!  Since I can’t seem to get to White Sands, or the Apache reservation to check it out in New Mexico, I decided that I was going to see if there is anything that strikes my fancy near here. My first stop was Monahans…It is not the White Sands Missile Range, but it’s cool!   Here are a few pics:

These look like regular bushes, but they are not. They are the tops of oak trees, which help to hold the dunes together. They come up about knee-high, but their trunks and roots can extend far into the ground–the roots sometimes going underground for miles.

Like I said, it is not the White Sands Missile Range, but the kiddies love sliding down these in a saucer. Some even bring snowboards!

This is one of the street signs in Monahans (5 miles up the road from the park)! I’ve never been to a town that had these toppers on them!  Other streets have different metal art on them, but they are cool!

Now for the second leg of my journey, I went to Balmorhea, TX.  This park has a HUGE spring fed pool.  It also has a hotel on the premises.  There are two hotels in town and a restaurant called “The Bear’s Den”.  This town is small–a smudge on the map, but the people are very, very friendly and it’s beauty lies in that it is a small, quiet place for a writer to hide out in, if he or she chooses to do so.  It definitely appeals that reclusive side of myself that I have kicked to the curb more than once in the past two years.   The spring runs parallel to the street on the south side.  There are little walking bridges that cross it as well as the street crossings.

As I said before, this water is so clear it is truly amazing.  If there is an oasis in the desert around here–this is definitely it!  Here are some pics from this leg of my trip also.  I fully intend to go back either tonight or tomorrow.

Hey! If you decide to check this place out–there are phone #’s on here!

Those big, black fish are catfish…I thought these were nocturnal. I guess not. Anyway, these are HUGE! They are actually about 15 ft. down. I am standing on the edge here. Just to give you an idea of what this is like, even at the 35 ft. end, you can see the bottom of the spring. It reminds me of the films I’ve seen of the reefs…One can snorkel and such in here. I didn’t know this prior to my departure, though.

Just another shot of the spring…I can’t believe how clear the water is!

Reed shot…This is a close up of the spring behind the motel that is at the State Park…

This would make an interesting screen saver, I think…What do you think? I decided to use my telephoto lens on the 2nd reed shot.

This is a shot of the motel by the state park.

This is a shot showing how the spring runs behind the motel rooms…It is prettier than it looks.You can get directions to this place and it is worth going to~! The food here rocks!

I knew there was something special….I thought of Margaritaville when I saw the parrot! LOL

This is the front of the Bear’s Den!

I am including a couple of shots of this simply because of the way this sits in the water…The spring flows around it. There is a church out behind it, but I thought this was simply “art”. I am not Catholic, but this moved me…It is simply beautiful. It is on the side of the road as you enter or leave Balmorhea–depending on the direction you take.

Another shot of beauty.

I found the people here to be so friendly, and the area itself to be so tranquil that I must return to this place.  It is every bit as sacred to me as my mountain now.  I truly hope you enjoyed this, and if you decide to go there, let me know!  The town may be small, but if one is looking for peace and quiet–then this is the place to visit!

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