Trapped

I just had an interesting "person" in my shop.  "He" goes by the name Anna and is in early 60's.  Somehow in our conversation it came out of him that he is a transgender.  Was married for 30 some years and has at least one son that he mentioned.  From here on I guess I should say her.  She has written the manuscript for a book if she could find a way to publish it.  She mentioned how hard it was growing up with parents that didn't understand and she didn't understand herself why she felt like she did.  Her father would beat her and tell her she was a boy and better start acting like one.  So as a young man he married to prove the was a man.  When he finally "came out" just a few years ago, she decided that they should divorce.  Her wife said she always thought that maybe "he" just didn't love her and in truth she/he did but not in the right way.
The big dilemma is that this person has had so many things happen that just leaves her practically homeless.  I sent her to someone I thought might help at least in the short term and she has some things in the works to get back on some medical care.  She has been on hormone therapy for several years.
This is the second time she has been in the shop and I sort of felt this about her the first time I met her.
I loaned her a book that I read this past winter called "Middle Sex"  Which was the name of the town in New York where the story took place but also it was about a girl who was born with sex organs of both male and female. The male part being very small.  At about 14 her family was going to have her surgically altered to be a girl but she felt she was a boy and always had.  Anyway it was a good book, written in his words of what it was like growing up and then running away to find his own way as a man.
So I just wanted to write about this person.  I can't imagine what it must be like to be trapped in a body that is not who you perceive yourself to be.  What a tragedy,  she told me many times these folks end in suicide because they are so misunderstood. Then on top of all that to be in poor health, and living day by day.

There but by the grace of God go I.

Blog cheating?

I think I been cheating on this blog site.  Been posting too much onto my other blog as I mostly been writing about my weaving.  So I will post one picture here of the latest project.

This is my floor loom that I got this spring and have set it up with my second warping.  Made 3 rugs on the first go around.  This one is set up pretty wide, 28 inches.  I am using denim to weave with.

Just joined the YMCA  today again.  Looking forward to going back and doing a little strength training and maybe do the pool class.  I always feel better when I exercise a little and right now my treadmill is all "tied up"  Really!  Been draping extra warp (string) from my weaving and there is no room to lower it to use for right now.

Not much to grouse about today,  just wanted to get a post done.  Oh, Goody!  Gas is down to 3.12 today.  Like an hour after I filled up at 3.14.  But hey  it sure beats the 3.69 we were paying last month.  Sneaky don't you think?  Get it so high that we think 3$ gas is a bargain!

So guess I did have a little grousing in me after all!

 

No other words needed here

Had to borrow this from a fellow blogger

10 PIECES OF ADVICE TO BE PASSED ON TO YOUR MOM, DAUGHTERS OR GRANDDAUGHTERS, NIECES, AUNTS, GIRLFRIENDS, ETC.


1. Don't imagine you can change a man - unless he's in diapers.

2. What do you do if your boyfriend walks out? You shut the door.

3. If they put a man on the moon - they should be able to put them all up there.

4. Go for the younger man. You might as well, they never mature anyway.

5. Men are all the same - they just have different faces, so we can tell them apart.

6. Best way to get a man to do something is to suggest he is too old for it.

7. Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.

8. The children of Israel wandered around the desert for 40 years. Even in Biblical times, men wouldn't ask for directions.

9. If he asks what sort of books you're interested in, tell him check books.

10. Remember a sense of humor does not mean that you tell him jokes; it means that you laugh at his.

Now I think only a real man would have posted this on his blog site.  What do you think? 
Actually I think most of them are pretty true.
But here is one other that I found somewhere and have been saving it.  Seems it fits right here:

A profound quote worth reading

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot lift the wage earner up
by pulling the wage payer down.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man
by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage
by taking away people's initiative and independence.

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them,
what they could and should do for themselves."



Abraham Lincoln

The Power of Love

I borrowed this joke from someones blog.  I thought it was pretty funny but I wanted to share the REAL thing with you!  So the next picture is one I actually took of the real thing 2 years ago in my back yard.  Yes it was daylight and they were going at it.  Well I assume they were.  It was sort of hard to tell.

I thought it was rather sweet that she was so shy!

Another great grand daughter arrived safe and sound

Big sister is holding her baby sister, born yesterday.  As you can see her little face is rather beat up as she weighed 9 pounds.  Mom and Dad worked as a team and he got to do the delivery with Dr. standing by.  It will count for his paramedic program.  Sneaky guy!

Puppy/Donkey love!

http://www.youtube.com/user/domgmbh2305

Gotta watch this video.  It is just to darn cute

Big sister loves baby sister

My second great grand daughter is due any day!  Isn't this just a precious moment! My vote is for another little red head!

Here's to old friends

Have been on vacation, more on that later, but just wanted to jot a few lines while I remember my waking thoughts.  Do you do that?  Wake up with something really brilliant on your mind then by the time you have breakfast it is gone in a puff of steam off the coffee.

What do Rosemary, Linda, Suzanna, and Maggie have in common?  ME!  These are old friends I got to reconnect with in Carson City this past week. Rosemary and I went to nursing school together, Linda is the one who taught me how to set up and run my book store, Suzanna is an old friend of my SIL and I thank her for her kindness, Maggie and I used to work together at the prison.  So a well rounded bunch of friends.  It was great to yak and catch up and make sure we will stay in touch with our computers now.

Last one......maybe

As you can see, they are all beady eyed now and getting feathered out.  Will be gone a few days so they may be gone when I get back.  Next year we will put a basket under the nest right off and let them have at it.  Our little house wren is back and has decided to nest in the gourd that I hung just inside the carport.  They are happy as can be, and singing up a storm.  Have another one hanging in the tree, but I think we just have the one pair so far.  I sat on the deck last pm and let him/her sing to me from across the deck.  

One last picture till later........

23 Adult Truths

(Just a little something I sort of borrowed from a friend)

1 Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How on earth are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind-of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

15. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

16. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Light than Kay.

17. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

19. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

20. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

21. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

22. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time.

23. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.

Ladies.....Quit Laughing.

Their nest runneth over!

We got 3 inches of rain over the weekend and as a result the back side of the robin nest was sagging badly and the kids are getting pretty big, so of course we had to mess with Mother Nature.  I used a bag that avocados came in and we pinned it up behind the nest, then pulled the back down under the nest and tied it off.  Hopefully this will help.  Someone told me that they helped their robins by actually using a small basket and putting the nest in it and fastened  the basket to the tree and the Momma didn't mind at all.  Ours are working hard to feed the 4 babies.

Been keeping an eye on a the pair of crows that live nearby.  We have seen them carrying baby birds in their beak with a flock of robins squawking their heads off, chasing the crow.  And you know they weren't taking the baby birds to adopt! DANG Crows!

When you look do you really see?

This is a video site that I wish to share.  I was very moved by it and hope others will take a few minutes and watch it.  The photography is beautiful and the message is timeless!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ&vq=medium

Oh, babies outgrow things so fast

They are either 4 or 5 days old here.  All mouth!  Mom and Dad are hard at work now trying to keep them full.

Are you bored yet?  Sort of like watching cement dry huh? 

We have babies!

Just hatched baby robins!  Mom and Dad are staying close by and feeding these little babies.  So guess you will have to see pictures of them as they grow up.  Won't take long!

Look Hard!

See anything about in the middle?  Look hard now!

I bet you see now!

Awesome huh?  This nest if just off my front porch.  Since I didn't lay the eggs you have my permission to take this picture.  If you enter a contest with it and win lots of money I strongly encourage you to share,  it would be the right thing to do!

Out of body experience

Thought I would share this bit of info that I read recently and I felt I could relate to it.  Maybe you will see yourself here too. The following paragraph is copied from the article.

Ever get the bizarre feeling that you're floating out of your skin?  It can happen as your brain is transitioning to sleep and the temporal-parietal junction (area responsible for synthesizing a sensation of position, gravity, motion,k and vision) turns off while you're still conscious.  Without all that information, a person can feel as  if she's detached from her body, looking back at her physical self.

I don't exactly feel detached, but often just as I start to doze off I do get a strange sensation of floating or detachment.  Sort of like when you are given that injection that sends you into sleep when you have a procedure or surgery.

Thought for the day:  If you are never the lead dog, the scenery never changes!

More serendipity!

Looks like Spring/Summer is here to stay.  Lots of mowing and gardening going on!

I just finished a very good book that I will do a review on for my newspaper column but just wanted to mention it here. 

You know that I believe in serendipity! (An apparent aptitude for making accidentally fortunate discoveries)  Or coincidences (  An accidental occurrence of related or identical events, ideas, etc. at the same time)   Actually I don't really think there are coincidences.  I think that is just our higher self guiding us to see things that will help make us more aware.   All that said, the book that I just finished is called: Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum. 
For some reason I have been drawn to read historical fiction this past year or so.  I like a good book with some sustenance to it that actually make me think.  I frequently find my self going to my Atlas to see just where the story setting is located, or to the Internet to learn more about a real person who was mentioned in the story.  This book goes back and forth from the mother in the late 30's and early 40's during WW 11.  And her daughter in a more modern time of the 90's.  The mother is a young 18 year old in Germany during the uprising of Hitler.  She falls in love with a Jewish veterinarian and ends up hiding him in her attic, till months later her father finds out and turns him to go to one of the "camps"  She runs away and finds refuge with a Jewish woman who is a baker and stays with her and delivers a baby girl.  Fast forward to the 90's and this girl is a professor of German history at a university and gets involved in a study of how the German population dealt with all that happened in Germany during these years.  Over the years her mother has very closed mouth about how she survived.  Toward the end of the book there is a quote with the title of : those who saved us, (those who shamed us).
I found this to be a wonderful read, and recommend it to others of my age who were born just after this war and really don't have a very good understanding about what all has happened.
Now for the serendipity part.  Just as I finished the book, I got an e-mail from a friend and it was a commentary (to long to post here) I did a copy/paste of the heading, so maybe you can google the article.

(ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan.15, 2008. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world.)

It is very good reading and compares what happened with the Jewish population and with all the political correctness now, the Muslim population is exploding in Europe and it compares the accomplishments of the 2 nationalities. 

So that's my story for today. I don't really intend this all to sound political, but just stuff to ponder. If you need some deep thoughts I offer these things to read.  Will copy this for my other blog too.

Afternoon sex

Afternoon Sex




The only way to pull off a Sunday afternoon 'quickie' with their 8-year old son in the apartment
Was to send him out on the balcony with a Popsicle and tell him to report on all the neighborhood activities.
He began his commentary as his parents put their plan into operation:

- 'There's a car being towed from the parking lot,' he shouted.

- 'An ambulance just drove by!'

- 'Looks like the Anderson 's have company,' he called out.

- 'Matt's riding a new bike!'

- 'Looks like the Sanders are moving!'

- 'Jason is on his skate board!'

- After a few moments he announced, 'The Coopers are having sex!'



Startled, his mother and dad shot up in bed! Dad cautiously called out..

'How do you know they're having sex?'



'Cause Jimmy Cooper is standing on his balcony with a Popsicle.'