NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

Let us do a link dump, shall we?

This is bad news at Chez Coma as we go through about a gallon of milk a day.

Dairy economists predict the retail price of milk could rise as much as 30 cents per gallon – a 9 percent jump – by fall. The reasons include rising fuel and feed costs for farmers and increasing demand for milk products around the globe.

This is fun from the Knoxville Tennessee blog on Pirate Etiquette and habits to be a good pirate. My favorite is Pillage, then Burn.

I’m assuming this is giving Rudy Guiliani a headache this fine spring morning.

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik’s indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik’s extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake.

For you pop-culture vultures out there, K-Fed and Brittney Spears have reached a settlement. The Superficial says this which made me laugh:

Although $1 million still sounds like way too much. If they made things fair based on what they contributed to the marriage, K-Fed would’ve left this thing with two balloons and a tube of toothpaste.

Ivy over at Home Ec 101 gives these sage words of advice that are so incredibly helpful and absolutely wonderful I swear I’m kissing her on the mouth next time I see her.

So, tell yourself you are the kind of person you want to be. Then set yourself in the direction of becoming that person.  Like the saying goes, “God helps people that help themselves”. That’s exactly right.

Once your first positive affirmation starts working, start a new one, but keep telling yourself the old one. I’m on my third positive affirmation- I’m now working on “Money falls upon me like an avalanche”. It’s not working yet, but it’ll start, eventually.

Never give up. Never get discouraged. Dig in and get going, your life is awaiting you.

Ginger writes about being a blogger , what goes on deep inside of us and what she seeks in life as well in the blogging community.

With all of the noise and crosstalk outside of ourselves, I believe with all of my heart that there is a voice deep inside of each of us that longs to be heard, saying, “You are my beloved, on you my favor rests.”

Carpe Deim, campers. Talk to you later.

I’ve written on this blog before that my nieces call me Aunt Tick, or actually just Tick.

It came from when the oldest niece was little she couldn’t say Tracy. I would tickle her unmercifully and she also couldn’t say Tickle. Thus Tick was born. When I go to school events or softball games, kids will run up to me screaming “Hey Tick.”

I know blood sucking insect and all but I digress.

Anyway, I’m also Aunt Tick to Squirrel Queen’s nephews, fraternal twins who are so full of piss and vinegar it would honestly make your head spin. As you know, SQ’s father died last August and then her grandmother died right before Christmas. Sometimes it’s hard to get through times like these, and SQ’s sis and her husband decided they didn’t want to walk down the path of matrimony anymore. Things happened that I won’t go into here, but they decided to get a divorce a couple of months ago. Sometimes relationships don’t survive hard times.

While we were at work yesterday, SQ got a phone call and we found out her soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law had a heart attack. (He’s going to be okay.)

I am not a parent. I’ve said before that the plumbing just didn’t work but I adore children. Probably would have had a slew of them if it hadn’t of been that it wasn’t in the cards (maybe it’s why I have three dogs.) Anyway, the nephews needed some attention.

Right now, they are acting out over the loss of the grandparent. They are living in a new house. Their father sees them every other weekend. This was to be his weekend and the boys were trying hard to grasp that their father was injured.

They are learning about death and mortality which, at eight-years-old, is a crappy lesson to learn. In their world, when someone goes to the hospital, they don’t come back.

Good God that breaks my heart.

They’ve been through so much. SQ played video games with them while I talked to their mom, letting her vent and cry, knowing she was worried but also knowing that her world has changed.

When it was time for bed, the nephews really started acting out. I mean, you would have thought that these two adorable children had turned into fire-breathing komodo dragons. Understandably, they’ve been through a lot. It went on for a few minutes and then it sort of got out of control.

‘coma, who in this environment is Aunt Tick (all the hats we wear), had had enough.

“In bed,” in this low voice I get when I’m truly pissed off. Only squirrels and children who are in trouble can hear this voice. Well, and the Squirrel Queen, of course. This voice is honestly only used about twice a year.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” one of them said.

“Yes I can,” I growled. “And I just did.”

They looked surprised that their Tick could put some venom in her words and went on to bed. I went into their room and sat on the side of the bed.

“Is Daddy going to be okay?” came a quiet voice in the darkness.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry you couldn’t go see him. He’s in what they call CCU. You can see him tomorrow. He’s going to be okay. They fixed his heart. He’ll probably be home by Sunday.”

“Did he get to ride in a helicopter?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He’s going to be okay. But guys, you have to treat people the way you want to be treated, do you know what I’m saying?”

“Dang, I want to ride in a helicopter too. He’s so lucky.” The smallest of the two boys said, not realizing that the last place that their father wanted to be was in an Air Evac helicopter. “Things are weird right now, Tick.”

So I hugged him. Because he’s little and scared and is learning some hard lessons.

“Are you mad at me,” he asked.

“No, I’m not mad,” I said. “Just, you know, if your scared it’s okay. It’s okay to be scared. And, kiddo, you have to treat people the way you want to be treated.”

I know I repeated myself there. I wanted them to hear what I’m saying. Learning the Golden Rule is important.

We talked for awhile and they drifted off to sleep.

I have no idea if I handled this situation well. I do know that being a parent must be the hardest job ever. In an extended family, we all have our roles. Sometimes I don’t know what my role is.

And last night I saw these two precious children realize something my grandfather used to say to me when I was a child. “Mr. Right died a long time ago.”

And that breaks my heart because none of us want them to learn this lesson. But it’s our job to teach them that life isn’t always fair.

I don’t want them to lose their innocence.

It’s hard.

Bad day.

As I try to post everyday, so here is a picture for you to peruse

They are coming to Memphis, which is cool in many respects as long as they don’t eat my brains.  And after today, this is a blessing and a gift.

Maybe not.

That is all.

I’m going to go to work in a few minutes. The Groovy Chicks From Work have been very sympathetic to my headache from hell and the puking that has accompanied it. Puking is such a gross word. I may need to rethink writing it in the future.

What a sexy beast I am.

Anyway, I was thinking of activism. I used to aggressively pursue legislation in helping battered women and sexually and physically abused children. I’ve wrote the grant to bring Domestic Violence services to my little part of the world here. I’m very proud of this although after time my emotional well-being needed to be nurtured and I left after working in such a world filled with pain. I was burned out so I passed the torch. It’s now run by people who are fresher than I am. We lobbied to get laws changed where women and kids would have a fighting chance to get out of their homes safely. When I started in DV work, sometimes batterers would just be given a summons to appear in court. Then, he’d go back in and give his wife/girlfriend/partner another ass-whupping. Now there is a cooling off period.

We did work that I thought was of value. It helped people. I did this for years. Along with some other beautiful and wickedly smart men and women, we did get some things done in the legislature and I’m proud of what we did.

I say that to say this. I’ve noticed that the blogosphere is a wonderful place to present grassroots efforts. An example that comes to mind is the attention given to the Claudia Nunez case back last fall. On the other hand, anyone who puts their views out into the blogosphere is, in some cases on more controversial issues, immediately labeled. And that bothers me. One is automatically a wingnut or a moonbat if the issues even have a sniff of what “the other side (for lack of a better term)” believes is partisan.

In working to create a better world for battered women, it was always an uphill battle. We had to deal with labeling and prejudice. I was constantly told these statements from more people than I could even count. Statements like “They ALWAYS go back” (which is not necessarily true and although some women do return, I can write you a fifty page dissertation on why the emotions create lines of fear that make women return to their abusers. Another statement I’d get a lot of is “What did she do to make him so mad?”

Huh. Adults do not have the right to discipline another adult. That is crap, my friends. I still reel years later from that comment and sadly, I still hear it today.

Some fine men and women fought these stereotypes and worked for fair and equitable change that laws would be adhered to in giving these women and children a chance. The question we started to present for legislators to understand what we meant was one that we hoped they’d ponder. We talked about love. No woman I’ve worked with ever put in their dairy when they were 12 years old with romantic hopes of finding Mister Right that they hoped he would beat the shit out of her. Serial batterers are usually very charming during the opening of relationships. Many times, the abuse came later. And remember, batterers don’t always abuse. This is called a cycle of violence. And abuse isn’t just physical. Emotional abuse can be just as dangerous. When a woman is told everyday more than once that “They are stupid” or “Lousy in bed, “I’ll take the children” or “No one will ever have you” sort of comments, it creates deep wounds.

Why am I writing this this morning when I should be headed to work? Because I was one of those women who married a great guy who tormented me. He had a good job,always wore a suit and wined and dined me to the point my head swirled. I never saw any indication that he was abusive. He was Prince Charming.

Three weeks after we got married, I had a black eye. He swore he’d never do it again and it was a one-time thing. I thought I was in love. I believed him. About two months later, he started throwing dishes at me because, ironically, I didn’t load the dishwasher the way he thought it should be loaded, and one cut the back side of my calf open into the meat of my leg. I still have the scar. I left. I was shocked. I had no idea, saw no indication that this was coming. He told me all those horrible statements I wrote about above.

I thought it was me. Being that I had good friends and a wonderful family who cried foul when I FINALLY disclosed to them what was going on (I was so embarrassed and freaked out), I left the third and final time and this time I was issued a beating of astronomical proportions. There was some internal damage.

I left. He refused to sign the divorce papers. He said he owned me.

Over time (two years later when he finally signed them and Big Daddy threatened to kill him with me screaming that this jackass wasn’t worth it), I started to heal.

So, today, I’m asking you to put the labels aside. And, hopefully this explains why I do believe in the mantra of “Let’s talk about it.” People do things because of whom they are.

Not everything can be fit into a nice box. We all have our war wounds. And sometimes we fight because we don’t have a choice. We have to.

It keeps us sane.

For more information in Tennessee, go here:

Tennessee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
P.O. Box 120972
Nashville, TN 37212
(615) 386-9406 Fax: (615) 383-2967
(800) 289-9018 In State
Website: www.tcadsv.org
Email: tcadsv@tcadsv.org

Here’s chart that we used while I was training concerned citizens on how to start their own support group. I hope it will give some insight.

Thanks for listening.

The headache from hell has abated a bit. Now it’s setting in my jaws and I’m coughing like an asthmatic water buffalo. I know Ivy has this problem so I feel empathy for my sister.
I’m going into work today and do what I can which may consist of staring at my messy desk and the plethora of bacteria developing in about four coffee cups that I’ve been remiss about cleaning. Doing what I can for science.

I have a question for all you techies and smarter people than me out in the blogosphere. I signed up for Twitter. Umm … I don’t get it. Do you guys really care about what I’m doing? Is that it’s purpose.

So, if you could tell me why this is cat’s meow, I’d appreciate it. The only one I’ve read is Lynnster’s (she keeps it up to date and it seems to be working for her.)

Like I said, I’m not getting the big picture and need someone to explain it to me it’s fabulousness because, alas, I’m not getting it.

For all of you Ladies and Bruces out there …

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SQ created this wonder of wonders after the Lady Vols won over the Marist Red Foxes.

Lord, I snorted water out of my nose.

That’s hysterical.

Go Lady Vols.

I got an e-mail asking me why I constantly wrote about cancer. It was kind of snarky. I’m going to respond because … well … because.

Okay, this is going to be a long post. I will post about Bigfoot later and then you might feel some normalcy. Go here while I ramble if this isn’t your cup of tea.

When my mother was diagnosed with three tumors in her brain that had metastasized from lung cancer which we didn’t know about, it was one week before Christmas, 1996. The doctor said if she hadn’t come to the doctor then, she would have been dead within a month. I lied to my mother and said an ambulance was coming (it wasn’t) if she didn’t go to the doctor. I very rarely lied to her, but I did that day.

The doctor, who is a friend of mine whom I respect and generally like said it was bad after the MRI showed her brain was covered in a liquid mess of cancer. I remember blurting to him (I was comfortable enough to do this) and asked if she was going to die.

He didn’t say anything, but he nodded. He had come back from a Christmas party to tell us this. I remember that clearly. Homer and SQ were standing with me in the hall. Homer walked away. SQ went after her and I just stood there. Homer had a new child, the first one, that I call Corn here. I can only imagine what she was thinking. She didn’t want her daughter not to know this lovely woman. It was hard. I remember there were Christmas decorations in the hallway, but I didn’t see those things at the moment as they were peripheral. They pissed me off in retrospect.

“What do we do?” I said, my voice inside my head sounding like I was talking into an iron kettle where there is no oxygen. I didn’t cry. I didn’t react. I had just been told my mother was dying from cancer. For some reason, I remember a numbness that went so deep inside of me that all I felt was cold and dark.

I’ve worked with battered women and sexually abused children (seen things that would make your eyes bleed) advocated for them, became an activist on a small level and I’ve been in news.

Do you have any idea the amount of car wrecks I’ve been to? Burned bodies, compound fractures, holding IV Bags until the Air Evac folks showed up for kids choking on their own blood. It isn’t fun. I wasn’t a reporter then, I was a person.

So, when I was told my mother had terminal cancer, I didn’t react. I knew Big Daddy would be coming soon and I had to tell him that his love, his lover, his partner and his wife of 35 years was sick. I had to tell him she wasn’t going to get better. I knew that Homer and I had to do this.

And we did.

That, my friends, is when I cried. That night I went home and dreamed of burying my mother. I dreamed of funerals and pungent smelling flowers. I dreamed of her dying.

Over the next few weeks, there was radiation and chemo scheduled. At this time in her life, she had short hair. After the first radiation treatment, she was a bit disoriented as the radiation went into her head to combat the tumors. But the chemo, God, the chemo was the worst. I held her head as she vomited. I told my friend in local law enforcement if she wanted marijuana, By God, she could have it, because the sickness of the chemo was so horrible. They looked at me like I was crazy but dammit I meant it.Her hair drifted in the air like the pollen that you see now, but a hundred times worse. A kind woman in this town came to the house a couple of days later, a woman whose profession was as a hairdresser, cut my mother’s hair to the scalp.

But it was Big Daddy who shaved it down. It was choking her. It was choking all of us. It was so representative of the illness and I inhaled it. I sat and watched and after it was done, I cleaned up the bathroom.

For fourteen months, Homer and I were close to her. I remember going to see John Waters at the Daisy in Memphis and feeling so guilty I had left her for just a night, but she did threaten to kick my ass if I didn’t go (I adore John Waters.)

She went into remission. We took a breath.

Within three months it was back and she was in excruciating pain. I took a leave of absence from my job and then was offered a better paying one that did, so kindly, allow me flexibility to be with her. My bills had fallen behind taking care of her, but it didn’t matter. She was my mother.

It got worse. You know the story. So when I hear about cancer I flinch. My breath catches.

So, that’s why I write about cancer. Watching someone you love die who isn’t even 54 years old is so painful.

That, my friends, is why I have empathy toward the families of Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards and it isn’t political for me.

It’s a human thing for me.

So don’t send me another snarky e-mail about this. I mean it.

Now back to your regular scheduled programming of Newscoma.

I took a nap which was pretty healing this morning and some of the severity of the headache from hell has subsided. However, I woke up to see that Tony Snow’s cancer has returned, a spot found to his liver after having gone through colon cancer treatment just a couple of years ago.

This is so sad for him and his family.

Remission.

The cancer goes, and then it, in the worst case scenario, returns. This always makes me introspective. Twice in two weeks for public figures. Everyday in the lives of other people.

I wish him and his family the best as I did to the Edwards Family.

My final thought it that if you want to do something for anyone that lives, or has experienced the loss of losing someone to cancer, please volunteer at the next Relay for Life event in your community. Sponsored by the American Cancer Society, it’s a wonderful affirming fund-raiser that shows that through the efforts of caring people, we can all make a difference. The people that worked on Relay in our community helped out my family. In lieu of flowers at my mother’s funeral, we asked for donations to the ACS.

Just something that worked for my family.

Politics doesn’t matter in times like these.

MORE from C.E. Petro

Incidentally, before my brain oozes onto the floor from the death grip of my head exploding, I just wanted everyone to know that I’ve been added by BlogNetNews-Tennessee.

When I moved over from blogspot to wordpress, for what ever reason that I cannot figure out, I couldn’t get back on Lefty Blogs. I sent them an e-mail, but they never sent anything back and because I’m not the most technically savvy blogger in the world, I couldn’t figure it out. Aggregated blogrolls have always been a mystery to me

I’ve been added to their new aggregated blog network. I perused around there a bit and it’s sort of a neat concept. You have a breakdown of categories and you can rate blog posts. If you want to just see conservative blogs, you can have that. If you want to see Liberal blogs, there you go. They also have a media section. I also looked up some of the other states they have listed, and I found this is deceptively simple yet comprehensive. I haven’t figured out how to add my comments yet, so if any of you guys can tell me how to do that much as you would explain something to a four-year old, I would appreciate it.

I have Google Reader and Sharp Reader, but I do love aggregated blogrolls. This one seems like it’s going to be better than groovy.

Check it out here.

The Headache from Hell is entering it’s fourth day. Seriously, this is pretty painful. I’ve never really had a bad headache before but this one makes me feel gross. As SQ  has migranes, I’ve seen her suffer through some doozies, but I’ve always been pretty blessed.

When I woke up this morning, it was like rabid gophers had taken forks to my eyes, coring out what little brains I have left.

Last night, it ended making me sick.

Oh, headache, how I don’t like you. I’m usually not this big of a wuss, but I may lay around today. If it’s not gone tomorrow, to the doctor-we-will go.

It’s not a big deal. But the bottom line is that it’s making me feel all pukey.

Crap.

Julie Patchouli wrote an e-mail to The Rep Stacey Campfield.

Campfield wrote back.

I don’t know, call me nuts, but I’m really glad that my representative, Mark Maddox and Sen. Roy Herron don’t treat me this way. They have always been kind and generous even if they don’t vote the way that I want them to, but they always are, at least, civil to me. I’m at least allowed a dialogue.

Julie put the exchange up in it’s entirety.

It’s her story to tell. Go give it a gander.

He should really use spellcheck when he’s responding to constituents, but yeah, that’s just me being snarky.