Be it hereby known by those here present that on Tuesday, 23 February 2010, I completed the entire New York Times crossword puzzle in the Houston Chronicle by using only the clues in the Across column.
And got it all right.
As you were.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
News flash! Plant bites dog!
Okay, so the schefflera didn't actually bite my little barker dog, but she certainly thought it was about to when it chased her across the den a little while ago.
I have no idea what has been making the Alpha Bitch as testy as she has been lately, but she has barked at everything that moved outside and growled and snapped at Pointer Dog at every opportunity. PD is typically not one to make a fuss over things, but he's been unusually likely to join in the noisemaking over the last few days; I'm beginning to think they both just may have serious cases of cabin fever because of the yukky weather in our backyard (including a dusting of snow for a little while a couple of nights ago), and they're just letting off steam.
At any rate, AB headed for the windows a while ago to explain property rights to something moving in the neighborhood of our front yard when she managed to brush past the schefflera in such a way as to snag her collar on the handlebar of the little tricycle-like potholder it has occupied for the past several years. I'm pretty sure AB thought she was headed to the back door to continue her argument when she was surprised by the plant chasing her across the room and attempting to strangle her.
I, of course, was in my lounge chair under a layer of warm blankets and my laptop, so I couldn't easily hop up and disentangle the collar from the handlebar. Instead, in my usual hysterical mommie fashion, I yelled at her to Stop! Sit! Wait a minute!
She looked up at me frantically as she continued to drag the plant—now on its side and strewing dirt, leaves, and a stream of nasty water in a twisty trail—behind her, up to my chair, and into what she expected to be the relative security of a space under the end table next to me.
By the time she ran out of space to run any more, I had disentangled enough from computer cords and blanket to reach down and slip her collar off the end of the handlebar and to see that she had come out of the battle unscathed. Somewhat remarkably, I thought, the plant appeared not to have lost any of its live leaves and the pot didn't show any signs of cracking.
The floor, of course, was a bit of a different matter. This plant grows in a "self-watering" pot that typically has at least a little residual water in the base (and that may explain some of the somewhat stale scent in the room over the past few weeks while it's been inside, away from the bad weather). Since I had such an odd lot of parts to clean up—a remarkably small amount of lost dirt, an assortment of dead leaves and twigs, mostly collected from the summer and fall outside, and a trail of water—I grabbed my handy Swiffer "broom" for the cleanup.
It turns out that the "heavy-duty" class of Swiffer pads is just great for dry stuff but not sufficiently absorbent to make much headway with water. I'm too cheap to use up a lot of disposables for a mess like this, so I grabbed an old washrag out of the cleaning supplies, punched it into the mop head, and Bingo! Much easier than down on my hands and knees and much more effective than the "official" Swiffer pads. A quick rinse in the kitchen sink on the way to the washer appears to have pretty well recouped the usefulness of the rag.
What remains to be seen is whether AB has learned her lesson about picking fights with plants.
I have no idea what has been making the Alpha Bitch as testy as she has been lately, but she has barked at everything that moved outside and growled and snapped at Pointer Dog at every opportunity. PD is typically not one to make a fuss over things, but he's been unusually likely to join in the noisemaking over the last few days; I'm beginning to think they both just may have serious cases of cabin fever because of the yukky weather in our backyard (including a dusting of snow for a little while a couple of nights ago), and they're just letting off steam.
At any rate, AB headed for the windows a while ago to explain property rights to something moving in the neighborhood of our front yard when she managed to brush past the schefflera in such a way as to snag her collar on the handlebar of the little tricycle-like potholder it has occupied for the past several years. I'm pretty sure AB thought she was headed to the back door to continue her argument when she was surprised by the plant chasing her across the room and attempting to strangle her.
I, of course, was in my lounge chair under a layer of warm blankets and my laptop, so I couldn't easily hop up and disentangle the collar from the handlebar. Instead, in my usual hysterical mommie fashion, I yelled at her to Stop! Sit! Wait a minute!
She looked up at me frantically as she continued to drag the plant—now on its side and strewing dirt, leaves, and a stream of nasty water in a twisty trail—behind her, up to my chair, and into what she expected to be the relative security of a space under the end table next to me.
By the time she ran out of space to run any more, I had disentangled enough from computer cords and blanket to reach down and slip her collar off the end of the handlebar and to see that she had come out of the battle unscathed. Somewhat remarkably, I thought, the plant appeared not to have lost any of its live leaves and the pot didn't show any signs of cracking.
The floor, of course, was a bit of a different matter. This plant grows in a "self-watering" pot that typically has at least a little residual water in the base (and that may explain some of the somewhat stale scent in the room over the past few weeks while it's been inside, away from the bad weather). Since I had such an odd lot of parts to clean up—a remarkably small amount of lost dirt, an assortment of dead leaves and twigs, mostly collected from the summer and fall outside, and a trail of water—I grabbed my handy Swiffer "broom" for the cleanup.
It turns out that the "heavy-duty" class of Swiffer pads is just great for dry stuff but not sufficiently absorbent to make much headway with water. I'm too cheap to use up a lot of disposables for a mess like this, so I grabbed an old washrag out of the cleaning supplies, punched it into the mop head, and Bingo! Much easier than down on my hands and knees and much more effective than the "official" Swiffer pads. A quick rinse in the kitchen sink on the way to the washer appears to have pretty well recouped the usefulness of the rag.
What remains to be seen is whether AB has learned her lesson about picking fights with plants.
Friday, February 12, 2010
In search of the 29-hour day
I can't figure out where the hours in my day are going, but I'm pretty sure I need about 5 more of them to sort my life out the way it's supposed to be.
I know I got a little off the mark last week when my sister's heart attack ate a rather serious chunk out of what my week was supposed to look like, but I was hugely grateful that my scheduled sick day allowed me to get my own health reviewed and to spend some time at the hospital with her. (My checkup suggests that my own chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years is about 1%; that does not, of course, reduce my chance of being hit by a bus. Her prognosis is excellent.)
I've become somewhat absorbed by the computer lately, spending probably way too much time playing the Mah Jong game that came with my new operating system and following several of my professional friends on Twitter. That foolishness has cut way into my newspaper reading and crossword puzzle time, although I do try to follow at least several news items online so I don't feel totally in the dark. Still, my laptop almost never cools down if I'm in the house. I'm thinking that may not be a good thing; I don't think "surfing the web" counts as "heart-healthy" exercise, and I'm thinking that's at least some of what I need here.
I have tried working out a bit. After Christmas I acquired a "wave," a supposedly hot new exercise toy that I could stand on and rock as I did some fairly common routines, but that fizzled because (a) it was obviously for persons a whole lot of years—or maybe decades—younger than me and (b) about 90% of the workout was little more than what I had been doing on a homemade exercise step for several years. So I took that back to Wally World, dragged out my old exercise videos, and managed to work in one or another of them a couple of times a week for the past couple of weeks. Still not exactly what I think the heart association folks expect of me, I think.
I've been cranking out nominations for professional organization awards at work, and that has taken hours out of my evenings; my mornings are usually filled by grading papers and my afternoons often involved counseling students on how to write or revise assignments. That sticks me at the office after hours to work on the nominations, or I wind up bringing some part or the other of my job to do at home.
I sort of like the idea of helping Number One Son fix supper around here, but that doesn't work well if I'm catching up on work, and weekends are going to be packed for a while now with a consulting project that I need to crank out. I like the money, but I do miss being able to sleep in now and again!
I think 5 more hours a day would just about get it. I don't like the sound of 6 because that would be just too many, and the 30-hour day just sounds so wrong to me. That extra hour would no doubt just be extraneous.
So I'm off in search of the 29-hour day. And maybe whatever it is that's making my "m" key stick.
I know I got a little off the mark last week when my sister's heart attack ate a rather serious chunk out of what my week was supposed to look like, but I was hugely grateful that my scheduled sick day allowed me to get my own health reviewed and to spend some time at the hospital with her. (My checkup suggests that my own chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years is about 1%; that does not, of course, reduce my chance of being hit by a bus. Her prognosis is excellent.)
I've become somewhat absorbed by the computer lately, spending probably way too much time playing the Mah Jong game that came with my new operating system and following several of my professional friends on Twitter. That foolishness has cut way into my newspaper reading and crossword puzzle time, although I do try to follow at least several news items online so I don't feel totally in the dark. Still, my laptop almost never cools down if I'm in the house. I'm thinking that may not be a good thing; I don't think "surfing the web" counts as "heart-healthy" exercise, and I'm thinking that's at least some of what I need here.
I have tried working out a bit. After Christmas I acquired a "wave," a supposedly hot new exercise toy that I could stand on and rock as I did some fairly common routines, but that fizzled because (a) it was obviously for persons a whole lot of years—or maybe decades—younger than me and (b) about 90% of the workout was little more than what I had been doing on a homemade exercise step for several years. So I took that back to Wally World, dragged out my old exercise videos, and managed to work in one or another of them a couple of times a week for the past couple of weeks. Still not exactly what I think the heart association folks expect of me, I think.
I've been cranking out nominations for professional organization awards at work, and that has taken hours out of my evenings; my mornings are usually filled by grading papers and my afternoons often involved counseling students on how to write or revise assignments. That sticks me at the office after hours to work on the nominations, or I wind up bringing some part or the other of my job to do at home.
I sort of like the idea of helping Number One Son fix supper around here, but that doesn't work well if I'm catching up on work, and weekends are going to be packed for a while now with a consulting project that I need to crank out. I like the money, but I do miss being able to sleep in now and again!
I think 5 more hours a day would just about get it. I don't like the sound of 6 because that would be just too many, and the 30-hour day just sounds so wrong to me. That extra hour would no doubt just be extraneous.
So I'm off in search of the 29-hour day. And maybe whatever it is that's making my "m" key stick.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I'm not ready for this!
My sister Job had a heart attack yesterday.
Okay, her name isn't really Job, but I've often thought that is the "right" name for her. She hasn't suffered the losses that Job did, although life has dealt her probably more than her share of disasters and disappointments, all of which she has weathered with strong faith and good humor and love.
Even the heart attack didn't change that. By the time I saw her—five hours after the attack and surgery—she was alert and cheerful, reveling in being alive even though she was ticked off about being stuck on her back in a hospital ward where she couldn't do much but lie flat.
It had started around 11 o'clock in the morning, when she told her husband she felt nauseated, then she felt pressure around her heart, then pain running down her left arm, then a blurring of vision. The Alka-Seltzer and the aspirin her husband brought her didn't make it go away, so he called the doctor and the hospital before whisking her away to the nearby emergency room.
By the time I got to the hospital several hours later (feeling pretty guilty about having had to go to work for a while first), she was "having a procedure" somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, and her husband was taking a lunch break in the hospital cafe. He told me the story so far, including that the doctors had Roto-Rootered and vaccuumed out the blockage in what they called "the widowmaker" artery, inserted two stents where they had removed two clumps of extreme damage (one of which had ruptured), and gotten her functioning again.
When we got to go in to see her, she was already in remarkable shape for a person who had been through the experience she had had: her skin was sallow and she looked really vacant without her makeup, but she was warm and friendly and spent the next several hours chatting and joking with me and her husband.
Before I left, she was alert enough to make jokes about the hospital food she was getting (although her supper last night was clearly better than her meals in CCU today), but she was decidedly resentful about having had a heart attack. Aside from the fact that she has tried for some time to take better care of herself, her health focus has for years been on the breast cancer that killed our mother and has manifested itself since then in our sister and her daughter; heart attacks, as Job said, are for the men in our family—they killed our dad at 56 and our brother at 64.
She relaxed a little when I reminded her that our grandmother had had a pacemaker installed at some time in her 102 years. Although neither of us could remember when, we were both convinced that Nana event was probably in her middle 60s, which we recall in our grandmother as much older than Job, who is 63 herself. But that, of course, didn't seem to either of us to equate with Job's major heart attack.
I am hugely grateful that she is still alive, and I am equally hopeful that she will come through this will relatively little damage and great promise for a long, bright future. But I hate seeing her hurting, even though she insists the pain is only local where needles went in and nowhere near the heart.
But I'm just not ready for this!
Okay, her name isn't really Job, but I've often thought that is the "right" name for her. She hasn't suffered the losses that Job did, although life has dealt her probably more than her share of disasters and disappointments, all of which she has weathered with strong faith and good humor and love.
Even the heart attack didn't change that. By the time I saw her—five hours after the attack and surgery—she was alert and cheerful, reveling in being alive even though she was ticked off about being stuck on her back in a hospital ward where she couldn't do much but lie flat.
It had started around 11 o'clock in the morning, when she told her husband she felt nauseated, then she felt pressure around her heart, then pain running down her left arm, then a blurring of vision. The Alka-Seltzer and the aspirin her husband brought her didn't make it go away, so he called the doctor and the hospital before whisking her away to the nearby emergency room.
By the time I got to the hospital several hours later (feeling pretty guilty about having had to go to work for a while first), she was "having a procedure" somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, and her husband was taking a lunch break in the hospital cafe. He told me the story so far, including that the doctors had Roto-Rootered and vaccuumed out the blockage in what they called "the widowmaker" artery, inserted two stents where they had removed two clumps of extreme damage (one of which had ruptured), and gotten her functioning again.
When we got to go in to see her, she was already in remarkable shape for a person who had been through the experience she had had: her skin was sallow and she looked really vacant without her makeup, but she was warm and friendly and spent the next several hours chatting and joking with me and her husband.
Before I left, she was alert enough to make jokes about the hospital food she was getting (although her supper last night was clearly better than her meals in CCU today), but she was decidedly resentful about having had a heart attack. Aside from the fact that she has tried for some time to take better care of herself, her health focus has for years been on the breast cancer that killed our mother and has manifested itself since then in our sister and her daughter; heart attacks, as Job said, are for the men in our family—they killed our dad at 56 and our brother at 64.
She relaxed a little when I reminded her that our grandmother had had a pacemaker installed at some time in her 102 years. Although neither of us could remember when, we were both convinced that Nana event was probably in her middle 60s, which we recall in our grandmother as much older than Job, who is 63 herself. But that, of course, didn't seem to either of us to equate with Job's major heart attack.
I am hugely grateful that she is still alive, and I am equally hopeful that she will come through this will relatively little damage and great promise for a long, bright future. But I hate seeing her hurting, even though she insists the pain is only local where needles went in and nowhere near the heart.
But I'm just not ready for this!
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