GUEST BLOGGER: Share with me the touching musings of my friend Kallie.

Easter Musings

by Kallie Longest Lyons (Notes) on Sunday, March 31, 2013 at 8:03am

Nine years ago in the darkness of Easter Sunday morning, I received a phone call. In disbelief I listened as my sister told me they thought my Mom had stroke so they took her to the hospital. Instead it turned out to be a highly malignant brain tumor that would take her life just three weeks later at the age of 55.  



The hospital chapel had been filled with lilies when I got there so that smell still bothers me greatly. For a long while, I hated Easter. It was hard to rejoice each year on what had become one of the worst days of my life. My Mom was dead. Dead! I found out on Easter and so Easter was bad. That's how it translated in my head. I went through the motions each year, but the whole while, I hated it.  



Then several years later as Easter approached, a memory from the hospital came back to me. The neurosurgeon had come in to speak to all of us and at one point looked at my Mom and said, "I am so sorry, Laura, but there is really nothing we can do for you."



Mom just smiled at the doctor and said, "That's ok. I'm going home." Thinking is was the tumor making her a little fuzzy he said, "Laura, you can't go home today." She smiled indulgently at him and said, "Not that home..." and she pointed at the ceiling, "...THAT one!" There was nothing he could say to this and he just smiled and walked away.

  

When this memory came flooding back to me, I realized how silly I had been. My Mom was dead in this world yes, but very alive in the next because of the sacrifice Christ made on the cross all those centuries ago. She was ALIVE there and someday I would be too! I WILL get to see her again.




In that moment, Easter shifted in my head. It is even sweeter than before my Mom's death because in Easter, I have the assurance that I will be with her, my baby sister that I never knew, with my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, cousins and two nephews. What a family reunion that will be someday!! 



So if you are missing a loved one today, know as I do that they are alive in Christ. THAT is the promise of Easter! And that is why we celebrate today!!

My lovely Mom on one of our hikes.

Random Acts of Kindness

While glancing at the Channel 2 news, my attention was drawn to a story of pink ladies.  They were wearing pink hats, pink scarves, and pink shirts.  So I turned the sound up and learned they were celebrating one lady's 40th birthday.  The pink?  Let me explain.

One sister was diagnosed with breast cancer.  While in treatment, she begged her sister to get tested. Damn, if the tests didn't diagnose breast cancer in her, too.  So what were they doing in the news report?  Celebrating life!

In honor of Michelle's birthday, she, her sister, a friend or two, and their mother set out to commit forty random acts of kindness in one day.  Oh my gosh, the fun they had!  They visited an animal shelter and showered those babies with gifts.  While waiting at a stoplight, they yelled over to the woman in the car beside them and gave her money to take her kids to the movies.  The joy was contagious.  In response, other people committed RAKs.  And these women were happier and more celebratory than people turning forty usually are.  Especially people fighting breast cancer.

It got me to thinking.  Have you ever had the pleasure of committing a Random Act of Kindness?  I have.  And many years ago (pre the era of state testing and structured curriculum), many of my students did one or more RAKs too.

Once upon a time, it was another dreary February, and Valentine's Day was approaching.  Oprah had just done a show on a relatively new phenomena, the Random Act of Kindness. Since the best parts of education are often the holiday related activities, I built a unit around this theme.  I showed a portion of the show to my kids and got them started on a week to commit one act of kindness.  When they were finished, they were to fill out a heart-shaped piece of paper (I personally cut out at least 300 freakin' hearts) with what they did.  All names were optional. They went "krazy with kindness," and we filled a bulletin board in the main lobby with their hearts.  It was a fun, fun week.  I've even had former students tell me how that small unit spurred them on to a lifetime of being  conscious of unexpected opportunities to perform RAKs.  One particular student became the Queen of RAKs.  She was supposedly a "mean" girl, but with this unit she was free to show us all how big her heart really was.  And it was BIG!

Every March, the funeral home that buried my mom sends a reminder of her April death.  It stabs me in the heart (like I could ever forget).  The card suggests lighting a candle in memory of the loved one and doing a Mitzvah.  For those of you not well-versed in the Jewish religion (like me -the Jewish girl who goes to church), a Mitzvah is an act of kindness.  Performing Mitzvahs is an important principle of the Jewish religion.  I do a Mitzvah every year in honor of Mom.  Giving is the best way to honor her as she was a very generous woman.  This year, a sister blogger explained the importance of the Johns Hopkins Children Center to her and her family, so Hopkins received a donation from me in honor of my Mom.  It made me feel good; and I know, if Mom were here, she'd have matched my check. 

But back to birthdays and Random Acts of Kindness.  In a few weeks, I turn sixty.  No, I will not try to commit sixty acts of kindness in one day.  LOL  But, I have pledged to myself to do at least six anonymous RAKs.  Join me in the celebration!  Try one, just one, random act of kindness, and I know you will be hooked. 

I need nothing material for my birthday.  In fact, I spend a lot of time trying to declutter my house.  However, I need, heck we all need, a better and kinder America.  In the immortal words of Blanche DuBois from  A Streetcar Named Desire, "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Just for fun, let's all try to be one of those strangers sometime this year!  Blanche and I are counting on you.

So if cats have 9 lives, how many do dogs get?

The saying is that cats have nine lives.  I don't know much about cats, but sometimes I think Trixie the Dog either has nine lives or a very active guardian angel.

This dog willingly eats anything she can get her paws on.  I discovered that aspect of her dog-anality (personality? get it? ha ha ha) early in our relationship. She was home for a week when I realized all trashcans needed tight lids.  I've had to buy many new pairs of undies for my nieces because Trixie makes sushi out of them. No matter what the net vets say about chocolate, Trixie has never suffered any ill-effects from all the chocolate she's managed to steal from my stash.

But some of the stuff she eats is downright dangerous.

She loves shoes, summer sandals in particular.  The first summer she was mine, I learned the hard way not to leave my sandals on the bedroom floor.  They'd look fine until I'd pick them up and she'd neatly sliced the straps, separating them from the shoe. While this habit wasn't necessarily life threatening because of what she ingested, she was almost murdered because of it.  When my sister splurged on very expensive leather sandals, she had them a week before Trixie chewed them up.  I was furious!!!  It cost me $130 to replace them.  I was angry enough to throw them at her, chase her all over the house, and scream threats of killing her.  Trixie continues to indulge in her strange shoe addiction.  I hope she doesn't choke on a leather strap some day.  And I'm sure she hopes I don't choke her with a leather strap some day!

Some of you may remember what it was like to fly overseas in the old days.  Even in coach, liquor was unlimited and free.  The liquor came in tiny plastic bottles.  I rarely drank all that was offered, so I had a nice little collection of tiny bottles that I kept on a low shelf in my kitchen.  After a long night of parent-teacher conferences, I came home to find my dog lolling on the living room floor surrounded by empty airline liquor bottles.  She was stinkin' drunk.  (She'd also removed the label from a wine bottle, but she couldn't figure out how to pop open the cork.)  I was awake for much of the night putting her outside each time she appeared ready to ralph. Luckily, she did not die from alcohol poisoning. 

One summer night I came home to find that she had gotten into my travel bag.  She ate a chocolate flavored chapstick.  She gnawed on the emery boards.  She licked my blush. She even chewed my razor, but somehow managed to avoid slashing herself with the blade.  However the worse thing she got into was the dental floss.  People, dental floss is a danger to your pets!  She didn't come to me when I walked in the door.  She didn't surface when I called for her. Then I heard a terrible sound, and I found her lying behind the couch, choking on the dental floss she'd gobbled.  I started pulling it out of her mouth, and it unraveled and unraveled and unraveled - much like a magician pulling scarves from a top hat.  Her eyes were terrified, and I couldn't pull it out fast enough.  Finally a bloody gooey glob of floss popped out of her throat and she could breathe again.  I hate to think of what I would have discovered had I returned home a few hours later.

But the worse thing she ate, the absolutely worst thing, were the pain pills. She'd  recently hurt her back and the vet prescribed pain medication. I'd given her one out of a bottle of ten.  I came home from an exercise class to discover guilty Trixie and an empty bottle of pills.  She'd chewed through the plastic bottle and taken a Marilyn Monroe overdose.  I called the vet who told me to induce vomiting by feeding her peroxide.  We went outside and she willingly swallowed the first dose.  Nothing happened.  I wrestled a second dose down her throat.  Nothing again.  I thought that maybe my peroxide was too old to be effective so I jumped in the car, sped to the drugstore, and administered a third dose from the new bottle.  She fought me, but I got the stuff down her throat.  Nothing.  I called the vet and told her I was on my way.  She tried to talk me into going to the emergency hospital, but there was no way in my state of mind that I could drive that far.  Once at the vet's, they tried peroxide and it didn't work.  So, they had to pump her stomach.  Stomach pumping is dirty business.  It involves charcoal and lots of vomit.  (Now, I understood why they wanted me to take her elsewhere.)  Everybody involved with my dog was covered in charcoal black puke by the time they were done.  It was hard to see through the muck, but the vet found a few pills still relatively intact, so we were hopeful they hadn't had time to dissolve. 

Another sleepless night.  Another time my dog survived.

What's the moral of the story?  I'm not sure if there is one.  But this much I know.  Cats are smart, and they need nine lives.  Dogs are stupid, so I wonder how many lives they have?  Trixie has gone through three or four. I hope she has a few more left because I have no hope she'll wise up when it comes to eating things that smell good.  She's a lot like her mommy that way.

matchseniorsinglesfishinthesea.com

As I played Scrabble on my computer, I glanced over at the TV.  Inside Edition was reporting the story of a woman who'd been beaten almost to death.  Her assailant was a man she met on Match.com.  He finished beating her, and then left her to go kill a different woman he'd also been seeing.  He was apprehended and jailed, and he killed himself while in prison.  This was a "nice" guy with no criminal record. 

Why do I care, you ask?  Well, previous to playing Scrabble,  I'd been setting up my profile on various online dating sites and waiting for the winks and likes to start rolling in.  I haven't dated anyone in too many years.  Since all but one of my friends are coupled, I spend too much time alone, so I felt like it was time to start the dating thing again.  Hmmm...the television show, a coincidence or a warning?

I don't know what to make of the men on these sites.  In the past, I used the library computers on a regular basis.  So too, did many residents from Perry Point.  Since I could hear their conversations, I knew they were all registered on various free dating sites.  And oh, these guys were brutal!  I could not believe the way they spoke of the unfortunate women who answered their ads.  They used absolutely vulgar language while making fun of their weight, their butt ugly looks, ad nauseum.  I was often tempted to ask them if they'd like me to take a picture and show them how to post it to their site.  I'm sure these women would be very interested in their scruffy beards, toothless mouths, and dirty clothes.  Too bad there was no smell-o-vision or sound-o-vision available so these gals could enjoy the full appeal of these men. I could hear the guys discussing the best lies to tell these women to either get into their pants or into their wallets. On paper (or computer screen), they made themselves sound good.  How's a girl to know?

Do I really want to deal with that kind of nonsense at my age?

Most of the free dating sites aren't free.  You can set up a profile, but in order to see who checked you out, you have to pay.  Perhaps that helps keep out the "riff raff,"  until you remember the Match.com Murderer.  The free sites are something else.  One asked me to answer questions to enable them to better match me.  I answered over 100 questions until they started to border on the sexually revolting.  I blush to even consider posting examples here.  I didn't answer them, and frankly, I have no desire to date anyone who DID answer them. That site matched me with a man in his thirties only interested in casual sex.  Huh?  Did I do all that question answering for naught??  That site wants me to answer even more questions because, as they say on my page, "You are NOT popular," and I need more answers to be popular.  Oy veh!  It's either that site or the other one (I get them confused) that suggests possible matches.  You know you're in trouble with a match when they provide a column entitled "You 2 Have Issues."  Why are they even suggesting ultra-conservatives to me?  Oh, and married men.  Did you know there are married men openly advertising on these sites?  No matter how many questions I answer, I am not about to date a married man.

Pictures aren't much help.  These guys look so old.  And it's no wonder, since I'm looking in the 55-65 category.  Some of them make me laugh out loud; do these guys not understand you're supposed to post a photo of you at your best?  And if that is their best, well, there are some really scary guys looking for women. I've decided to look for men who resemble my girlfriends' husbands.  That way, they'll be old and they'll look old, but they'll be comfortable in a familiar way.  Of the many pictures and profiles I've studied, there are four or five potentials for me to consider.

Which brings me to my original question.  Am I really sure I want to do this?  As my friend Brenda says, what have I got to lose?  As Inside Edition points out, my life.

What's a girl known as barbe421 to do?  You tell me.

You are not the father...no matter what the paternity test says

Today I had the misfortune of catching part of a Maury Povich show before heading off to Zumba.  What is wrong with a society when determining the parentage of a child is fodder for a television show?

I do not get these people.  Not for one minute.  How can these women come to a public forum and debate over which of the six or so men they slept with is their child's sperm donor?  Where is the shame?  Where is the common sense?  Where is the birth control?  Where is social services?

One of today's women was a reasonably attractive lady who was determined to convince her thug boyfriend that he was the father of her son; after all, they had "planned" to have a baby.  Kevin was trying to blame his brother David for fathering the child. The woman was screaming, cussing, head shaking, finger pointing, and posturing like a  tough guy.  The man was sputtering about the slutty woman, that fat slob who was also sleeping with his brother.  David, the brother, looked bemused.  When the paternity test revealed thug boyfriend to be the daddy, David did a "Rocky-type" victory dance while Kevin dramatically stomped off stage.  However, the couple was soon crying and hugging, probably foreplay for the next baby they were going off to create.  I'm sure thug daddy is no closer to providing child support after the show than before the show.  And the baby? the poor little baby?  Frankly, I believe the child was just a tool for the drama of the "parents."  I am so disgusted.

It got worse!  A seventeen year old young man had six women claiming to have mothered his children. His mother was on the show defending her perfect son and engaging in a shrill screaming battle with the two mothers who skipped school that day to be on the show.  When  Baby Daddy was asked why these women were accusing him, he replied in words to the effect that he was so good looking they just wanted a piece of him.  Oh barf.  Of the three babies tested, "only" two of them were his.  However, there are three other babies out there that may be his.  The new grandmom's reaction?  Son, you gotta stop doing this.  Big. Fat. Duh.  Oh, and the lucky public will get to tune in to future shows when Maury DNA tests the other three young women. Do people get paid for being on this show?

Sigh, it got even worse.

Derrick, da man, was on the show to prove that Kathy's and Tammy's children were not his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth. Supposedly he preys on fat women with low self-esteem. Supposedly these women were helpless victims of his charm.  Supposedly these women believe he should be stopped by someone.  (Insert my derisive laugh here.)  Maury just loved toying with Derrick.  He referred to Derrick's penis as a weapon  of mass destruction.  Derrick puffed up at that comment. Then he teased Derrick about knowing the names of all of his children.  Derrick just chuckled and replied he knew most of them.  Well, Derrick may be a pig, but Maury is every bit as big a pig.  Irresponsible procreating is nothing to joke about, Maury.  And it certainly doesn't make "da man" any kind of a Real Man. Derrick turned out to be father to only one of the two children.  He is not financially supporting any of his twenty-eight children.  Not one.

With all the money Maury makes from exploiting these people, in my opinion, he should be forced to cough up some child support!

This show is disturbing enough, but what is really sickening is that Maury does this shame (pun intended) show five days a week. He's been on for years. And he doesn't seem to be running out of guests for his stage. Nothing changes.  Nobody learns.  No child is helped in any way. 

The next time someone says they don't believe sex ed belongs in the schools, watch a Maury show.  Is anybody talking to these young people about birth control?  Sexual responsibility? Anybody?  Schools need to get real about sex ed and deal with the issues facing young people today.  I don't think teachers are the best equipped to handle the emotional and complex societal issues related to teens and sex.  But that's what other organizations like Planned Parenthood are trained to do.  Bring them into the schools to talk honestly and openly with the kids.  Excuse your kids from the program if you find it so offensive to your values.  But teenagers are having sex.  Girls are having babies in the hopes of cementing a relationship or having someone to love them unconditionally.  Boys are making babies to show off their manhood or simply because it feels good. Abstinence is not working!

I think the Maury show is disgusting.  It glamorizes a situation that is far from glamorous.  In my opinion, it is child abuse.  What does it take to get him and others like him off the air? 

Shoes

I don't like to spend a fortune on shoes.  It shows.  I probably have a hundred pairs and most of them I rarely wear because they hurt. And they hurt, I'm sure, because they were cheap.

I try to buy natural materials.  I always do better with leather shoes.  They breathe and stretch to give my foot a custom fit.  It's getting a little hard, however, to find all leather shoes at places like Payless.  How many locals remember the Bel Air C-Mart?  They were a goldmine for good brands sold on the cheap.  I used to be able to find great shoes for under $40 at Nordstrom's basement.  Two of the best pairs of shoes that I've ever owned came from Nordstrom's.  Sadly, in the past few years, the selection in my size (6.5 - 7 W) has been pitiful.

Too many uncomfortable shoes was not a problem growing up.  I owned four pairs at the most: dress shoes, school shoes, sneakers, and a pair of sandals.  Every August, Mom would take us to Buster Brown to be measured and fitted for school shoes that lasted all year.  We polished them at least once a week, usually on Sunday night.   And when the soles and/or heels wore down, it was a cheap fix at the cobbler's.  The cobbler was a stocky cigar smoking man who made little conversation, but who was a Gepetto at turning a rundown pair of shoes into brand new footwear.

Are there no more shoe cobblers?  Have cheap disposable shoes driven them out of business?  Or, is the dying art of shoe repair actually dead and buried?

My absolute favorite black shoes need heels.  They could also stand to have the inside padding restored, but I'll settle for finding someone who fixes heels. I treasure these shoes,  taking special care to hide them from my footwear shredding dog. For the past year, I have tried to replace them, but no black shoe I've found in any way compares to the fit and classic beauty of those shoes. Tonight I went on the web to find the manufacturer and see if they carry anything similar.  I found Monro American shoes, and they started at $150.  Ha!  No wonder I never saw anything like them at Payless.  Thus, my need for a cobbler.  I'm done searching for another pair of black shoes.  The search for the cobbler has begun!

I'm willing to face a few retail truths.  Most women's shoes have ankle-breaking heels that I will never wear again.  If they are comfortable, they are probably expensive and butt ugly.  If they look nice and feel good, they'll probably cost more than a couple months of tuition at my niece's private school.  And, no matter how cute they may or may not be, a woman cannot live in Crocs alone.  No matter how comfy they are.