My fledgling entrance to social networking via Facebook has left me pondering the nature of the word friend.

The usual crowd of high school and college friends were no surprise, and Facebook does make it easier for me to keep up with what everyone is up to. Beyond that I have been able to locate a few long lost pals and reconnect with them, and that has also been wonderful.

But, the further I venture in, the murkier it feels. I have "friended" a number of people who were more like acquaintances from different eras of my life, and now I am getting requests from people who I don't think would have ever called me friend back in the day. Now, I've been told that etiquette wise, I am under no obligation to accept friend requests from these people, but I haven't had the heart to hit ignore yet. I think about all the playmates of my childhood who were too cool for me by high school who I have wondered about over the years. If I sent them a friend request, how would I feel if they just hit ignore? I wonder if perhaps these were people who I knew at one time, and my holey memory has allowed to slip through the cracks, if these were people who I meant more to than they meant to me, or if they are just friend whores who are just seeking the biggest friend number they can manage. And how does one know the difference? Do these people really care that I just made soup or that my Dad is flying in for Thanksgiving? And if they do, what does that say about them..? Do I really want the whole world to know these details about me? Not really....

I just used Facebook to offer an apology to a boyfriend from the distant past who I had hurt deeply. Now he wants to friend me. Oh dear. I was right to offer the apology, it was long overdue, but the consequences have me puzzled. Do I really want my former paramour to have a window into my current life? On the other hand, if I ignore his request, does that negate the apology I offered?

I think the 21st century is just too complicated for me. *sigh*

Ok, I finally joined the 21st century.
I'm now on facebook...

The recent snow is long gone and I was able to have the windows open today!
Tomorrow is supposed to be a high of 78!!
Yay!
What a great day to rake leaves!

Imagine, it's Halloween night, you hear a knock at your door.
You open it to find a 3 foot version of Death on your doorstep.
Instead of the usual: "Trick or treat!",
he says: "I had an accident, I tripped over my scythe..."
OMG!
It was so funny and cute.
ROFL!
Poor Death.
He's having a rough night.

Just in time for Halloween, my house is buried in 3 feet of snow.
It looks like January out there, not October!
I'm guessing we're not getting many trick-or-treaters...

Merry Halloween everybody!

Hey folks.
Some interesting monetary info has come my way. I feel like I need to share.
In the last 12 months the money supply in this country has increased 120%.
In general, the effects of printing money (inflation) lags behind the printing 1-2 years, so sometime between now and one year from now, the effects should start showing.

What's the big deal you ask?

To put things in perspective, in the 1970's the US printed money for 2 years.
Now, once the effects of inflation started showing, the Fed had to raise interest rates to slow the effect of inflation.
The idea is to raise interest rates so that when you pay back money you owe, you pay more dollars back to the Fed in order to pull back in all those extra printed dollars so they can be removed from circulation. Now between the effects of inflation (your dollar buys less) and the high interest rates (you have to pay back more) it got pretty uncomfortable for a while in the 1970's. Ask your parents.
Back in the 1970's interest rates were hovering below 20%, and it wasn't fun.
That was caused because the money supply increased 13%.

Um, wanna take a guess as to what kind of interest rates would be needed to fend off hyper-inflation with a 120% increase??
Projections have it at a MINIMUM of 30-40%!!
Ow, ow, ow, ow...

Seriously people, please shore up what you can, pay off unsecured debts, and be super careful about investments.

Well, it is officially slipping from fall towards winter.
It is snowy and slushy outside today.
I figure it is a perfect day to swap out the bed linens; from light weight pastels to deeper richer colored flannels.
I also figure it is a good day to catch up on my ironing. Not my favorite chore, but at least it's warm.
And to roast a chicken.
Mmmm mmm mmm!

Wow, this is really not how I was expecting to start this week, or any week for that matter.
Um, I don't mean to be all cryptic with you all, but I can't really share the details.
Suffices to say that the two of us are about to go through a really tough time.
Prayers and positive energies appreciated.

Life is largely as usual.

The fuel pump went out on our car, so we had to get that replaced.
Daemein got a raise, but lost his parking stipend and starting next year will be commuting farther, so that's kind of a wash.

Daemein has been enjoying worker appreciation week at work. There have been some events and contests. He came in third in the pie eating contest, and he gets to go to the Aquarium today.

A kind neighbor invited us over for dinner last night. It was lovely to have and evening with her.

We had our first snowfall yesterday. Nothing much. Less than an inch and it's gone already. We're expecting more this weekend.

I think that's all for now.

...on the second day of fall.

Yep, you read that right.
We are expecting our first snowfall overnight tonight, so on the first and second days of fall.

Ha ha!

So, not a whole lot going on around here. Just a string of small things.

Wednesday is the 70th Anniversary of the Wizard of Oz and I am going to go see it with my local vintage enthusiast group.
Daemein's Aunt and Uncle from WA are on a driving tour of the US and plan on swinging by here in the next week or two.
We've made our holiday plans.
We had a little car trouble, but thank God for AAA. Nothing serious, and it has prompted us to see about some car maintenance.

I have checked out a few books on altered book art and transparencies in art and I'm eager to give some of the ideas a try. I just need to figure out where I want to go with it. To that end I picked up a pair of Reader Digest condensed books at the Boy Scout rummage sale this weekend that I won't feel to bad about altering.
We also picked up an old hat, a pair of 1960's gold and sliver heels (that need the heel caps replaced, but at 50 cents for the shoes, I think I can afford that fix) 1965 Better Homes & Garden's book on photography (the pictures are darling), a 1940 copy of the Esquire Bedside reader (the essay on jiggling being my favorite so far), and a pin.

My sister just moved to Michigan and starts a new job soon.

The weather has turned cold and yucky. We went from the 80s this weekend down to the 50s today. Blech. How I yearn for long warm Indian summers. Sigh. It looks like an early winter this year. Too bad.

And that about covers it for now...

I thought I was doing a good job when it came to hand-washing and such, but I spent the last 2 days flat on my back with a stomach bug.
Take care out there.

On Wednesday, September 23rd it will be the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz.
In celebration TCM is sponsoring a one night only special screening of the movie in high def at theaters across the nation!
That's right, you can see The Wizard of Oz on the big screen.
Just search: http://www.ncm.com/Fathom/
for The Wizard of Oz for times and locations!

This last weekend I had such a successful shopping trip that I thought I'd share my luck with all of you.
If you need new clothes, especially summer ones, you might want to take a peek at your local J.C. Penney's.
Mine was doing a clearance blow out. All clearance prices were an extra 75% off.
I came home with 2 pairs of shorts, originally priced at $28 and $36 for $4.97 each. No kidding.
I saw clearance shoes marked at $9.97, clearance bags at $4.97, tops and bottoms at $4.97.
Clearance dresses were marked at $9.97. Clearance costume jewelery was marked $1.97.
I bought a necklace and bracelet originally priced at $28 and $24 for about $4 total!

If you need anything, it might be worth a look.

daemein 's company had a "team-building" activity yesterday. (Read, the economy is bad, so we're taking you to a baseball game instead of having a company picnic) And while my sweetie did remember to take a hat, he did not remember his sunscreen. He walked in the door last night as red as a beet. Legs from the shorts line to the sock line, arms from the T-shirt line, and even his face was burned.

He swore it didn't hurt, so I immediately attacked him with a bottle of vinegar. (Family home remedy for sunburns. Are we the only ones that do this?) And for whatever reason, maybe the vinegar, maybe because he's a freak, he reported no pain from the sunburns all last night. After a cool bath in the evening I used aloe on his sunburns, hoping that would help for the next day. I'm hoping that it worked. Poor guy. Slow roasting is for food, not husbands...

For the last 2 weeks, I was in California.
The first week was a vacation for daemein and I.
We attended a wedding, went down to Half Moon Bay, had coffee with close friends and discovered that a wonderful independent business had closed. :(
We also spent a few days with daemein's family. We went to the Marin Farmers Market, and out to visit daemein's Dad at the cemetery. Daemein got to visit with durodragon, and we had a big BBQ with daemein's family.

The second week Daemein flew home and I stayed to help my Dad go through my Mom's stuff.
That was hard.
Thankfully, my Dad was really cool with keeping a lot of stuff. He even took stuff out of my donate pile and put it in the keep pile.
During that week my Dad worked short days to come home and give me a hand or a break.
We went to downtown Pleasanton where he bought me a long overdue birthday present.
I also got to have coffee with some friends, breakfast with my "adopted" grandmother, and dinner with Tami.
These outings helped to keep me sane.
There were more people I wanted to see, but it didn't work out. :(
Oh well, maybe next time.
It sounds like Dad wants me to come out a few more times to help him. We'll see how that works out.

I just found out from a neighbor that a woman was raped about a week ago just four blocks from our house.
It's really weird because we live in a very nice and quiet neighborhood.
I guess that goes to show that bad things happen even in the "safest" places.
Everybody take care of yourselves and remember to be aware.
Anyway, creepy.

Of all the personal demons to face, this is one of the uglier ones.
And right now it seems to be my constant companion.
It's what is responsible for that last post that took us off the deep end.

I look back and feel a little silly.
It turns out to have a happy ending.
The root cause was actually a person who went on vacation, and I forgot.

But the root of my insecurity goes much deeper.
To start with, losing my Mother took away my sounding board, and a trusted confidante.
It leaves me feeling vulnerable and alone.
Beyond that, my Dad is already talking about dating.
And this may be entirely selfish and stupid, but it makes me feel like my Mom is easily replaceable.
And to me, the logic follows that if she is so easy to replace, so am I.
My Dad built his whole world around my Mom and our family. If he replaces my Mom, what happens to me?
Does he rebuild a life around some other woman and her family? And if so what happens to me?
He's already made joking comments about not knowing where his life will take him; that he may go live in Alaska or something.
It makes me feel like I may be shut out of his new life. Like I may not just lose a Mother, but a Father too.
Also, I've become dramatically estranged from the woman who was my favorite aunt.
I had always idealized her and was just crazy about her, but some really ugly things happened, and I cannot forgive her.
I never imagined that I could ever feel the way I do about her now.

I feel like my life is in a violent state of flux.
The things I thought I could count on and trust have been stripped away.
I don't know what I can depend on.
I don't know where the safe ports in the storm are anymore.
I am left with a deep feeling of insecurity that sometimes expresses itself in strange and sometimes inappropriate ways.

I hope you all will bear with me.

The last few weeks have left me in a very odd place.
I feel off balance, confused, wounded and unsure.

Around the time my Mother died, I was actually relatively ok. I had many things and people to focus on and I was alright. Since the funeral things have gotten progressively worse. I am hurting more and I don't seem to be healing. And people expect me to be better. It's been 2 months and seven days. I should be fine, right? Well, I'm not. And I am tired of people being surprised that I'm not.
I'm frustrated about being mired in my pain; seemingly unable to extract myself.
And in the midst of all this I feel more alone than I have ever felt.

I have a few friends that are ignoring repeated contacts, and I feel terribly insecure about it. I keep asking myself if I did something wrong, and I really don't know. I'll freely admit that I say and do lots of stupid things right now. I can't deny that I could have hurt these people, but to me the silence is deafening. I don't know if it's me or it's them. I don't know what I did wrong. And I feel like those safe places have been taken away.

I feel off balance and unsure.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

No really, I was told so.

Ok, lately I've been pretty on edge because I have something going on with my health. And even more frightening to me is that has had to do with my lungs. I've had a wheeze and a cough for around 2 months now. I've been seeing a doctor, but it hasn't gotten better; it's gotten worse. So today I had another doctor's appointment and they did chest x-rays for me. This scared the hell out of me, but they wanted to get a look at what is going on.

The results are that I have sexy lungs. The x-ray was good and dark where it should be indicating that my lungs are clear. The verdict seems to be that I have allergy related lung inflammation. It is possible that I have asthma, but she doesn't think it's likely. She thinks I have inflammation, but not constriction, so probably not asthma.

At any rate, sexy lungs. :D