Go and read his clever SALTINE CRACKERS

I don’t know why I thought things would be any better with my mom after my short visit to my daughter and her family. If anything, they’re worse. I’m not sure if it’s her hearing or her mental processing, but she never seems to know what I’m asking her or saying to her. I see now that I have to get her on a regular schedule so that she doesn’t sleep until noon and then stay up until midnight.
Every ten minutes, she asks me if I’m going out. If only I were.
she has something special for you she tells you. she has a beautiful dress, she says, that you can wear when you go out. you want to remind her that you never wear dresses anymore and that you only go out to the store. but something a friend recently told you made you realize that it doesn’t do any good to be logical to someone like that. “I’m a good mother,” she says and brings out a dress that you never liked on her when she wore it. “I never wore it,” she says. so you take it and tell her that you’ll hang it in your closet and it will be there if you ever need to wear it. that seems to satisfy her, as she continues to extoll the beauty of the dress and how you will look beautiful in it.
I wish with all my heart that things were different in this little picture in which I live.
And in the big picture? Well, Dean Landsman has the right idea, as he shares this hope for the future:

The moon shining through my grandson’s window is almost full. We turn off the ceiling light and watch it slowly move through the shadowy tree branches.
It’s been a day of hard playing — we march through the house playing pretend instruments, throw pillows at each other, sit on the floor and play construction site. HIs mom uses boxes from recent deliveries to build a connected series of tunnels and towers with window flaps that open and close. It’s his big rig cab; then it’s his secret bed; then it’s the wizard’s tower and he’s the Boy Wizard and I’m the Mommy Wizard.
Grammy, Grammy, he calls. Come and play.
Tomorrow I leave my full heart behind with an overabundance of toys to be opened on Christmas Eve.
I’ve already opened the gift to me from my daughter. It couldn’t be more perfect, and when I can take a photo of it, I will post it here.
Tomorrow I leave.

bIX finished my weblog redesign. There are still a few little tinkerings I want him to do, and my New Year’s Resolution is to update my sidebar stuff. Please let me know what you think, especially if it’s easier to read for those of us whose eyesight is not what it used to be.
I’m blogging from western Massachusetts, where I’m having fun playing pretend firefighter with my grandson.

SNOW SNOWPLOWS.
No mere snowmen for my grandson. If it’s not a truck, it’s not worth bothering with. I’m bringing my heavy duty boots.

They got buried where I’m heading tomorrow — off to see the little wizard who knows how to make me forget the stress I live with every day.
I’m packing the car with holiday presents, including a really nice cable stitched afghan I made for my daughter and son-in-law.
On may way out, I’m stopping at Sam’s Club and stocking up on bread baking supplies which I will split with my daughter, since we both have new bread baking machines. There’s nothing like a home made loaf of oatmeal and honey bread made from scratch, not a mix.
Baking bread and knitting. So much for my dance club days.
I bought myself a new mini digital camera that can also record video and voice. I’m hoping that b!X will explain how to upload that stuff so that I can post an actual “moving picture.” Of course, first I have to figure out how to use the camera; my daughter is usually a big help when it comes to that.
My sibling will be left to take care of my mother. If previous history is any indication, that means she will be calling me every day asking when I’m coming home.
But I’m going, come hell, high water, or even another snow storm.

From Randi Rhodes e-newsletter — a chance to see “BUSH WOMEN” in action.

This one’s my bible-belcher favorite. I hope that you can get to the video. It’s really scary.
Then, of course, There’s Ann Coulter. Seeing and hearing her on video , makes it hard to believe that there are people who actually think she’s not just a wacked-out self-serving publicity hound. I’m glad to hear that she got a booing reception at UConn.
On the other hand, as Rhodes also points out, there are down-to-earth women like Representative Cynthia McKinney, who embarassed the hell out of Rumsford with her direct questions about Dyncorp Sex Rings, Missing Pentagon Trillions, and 9/11 Wargames.

You just never know about families. I mean, who would have ever thought that I would give up my “golden years” to take care of my mother.
Then there’s what’s happening to the venerable doctor that I used to go to, back when I lived a lot closer to his office. Not too long ago, I got a letter in the mail from the young doctor with whom he was sharing a practice saying that Dr. Skiff had retired. Come to find out (from another patient of his who had spoken to the venerable doctor, who is 77 years old) that it’s far from the whole story. Apparently Dr. Skiff’s children from his first marriage (one of whose spouses works in the office) did some maneuvering to get him “fired,” after first slowly siphoning off his patients to the other doctor. I’m sure there’s a whole lot of resentment over the second marriage and second batch of children and a whole lot of other relative things going on, but it still sounds like a rotton deal for my ol’ GP.
In actuality, Dr. John Skiff, is a board certified internist who comes from a medical lineage. His father, Dr. J. Victor Skiff has a golf course named after him in Saratoga Springs. The Dr. John Skiff whose patients I and my family were for more than 30 years proved to be an excellent diagnostician, figuring out — after I had been to several specialists for a swollen knee that kept me on crutches for a month — that the swelling was due to salmonella poisoning from a bout of food poisoning I had several days before the swelling appeared. A dose of the right antibiotic, and the swelling immediately disappeared. Before I went to Dr Skiff, the specialists had coritsone-shot me, MRId me, tried to fluid-drain me, and finally gave up. Dr. Skiff was like a medical sleuth — he would keep investigating until he found the culprit.
Dr. Skiff’s patients either hated him or loved him. As he was diagnosing and treating, he would expound on what he was finding, why he thought it was what he thought it was, other similar cases he had had — or the lack of similar cases –, what the various options were for treating, etc. etc. etc. He also loved to try out new therapies and was always up on the latest.
My kids never had a pediatrician. I never had a separate gynocologist. We all went to Dr. Skiff for everything, and he never failed us. Except once, when I was switching birth control pills and he never mentioned that I needed to use additional birth control because I might become fertile until the new dosage took hold. And that’s how theonetrue b!X came about. So I guess he didn’t fail me after all.
It’s one thing to be able to continue to choose your own life’s path as you get older. It’s another to be manipulated by family.
And sometimes it’s hard to know whether you’re choosing or being manipulated.
you sit at the dinner table and she talks non-stop. she says that she remembers the first time she met you. you and some of your women friends were having dinner in her apartment. you have no idea what she’s talking about. you ask her if she knows who you are. she changes the subject. talks to you as though you were a childhood friend of hers, or maybe her sister. the characters from her life are all confused, confusing. are you my mother, she asks. no, I’m your daughter, you say. yes, she says and talks about the pretty dress you wore when you crowned the Virgin Mary in the May procession. she wants you to be that girl again, and you know that you were never the girl she thought you were to begin with.

I don’t decorate for the holidays. It’s just me; what’s the point. But I do put my mother’s Christmas decor up — the most important of which, for her, is the nativity scene. Next to it is a patchwork wreath I made for her many years ago, onto which she has strung lights and a bunch of little elves. As I was repositioning the little elves, well, a little irreverence is good for the soul, even — or maybe especially — during these stark winter holidays.

How do you blog, asks Frank Paynter, a huggy bear of a blogger I met at Harvard’s first BloggerCon.
Late at night, usually after midnight, when my almost ninety-year old mother is asleep and I’ve unwound by watching some mindless tv program I’ve taped, then I read my email, trash my spam, check out my son’s new blog. And the NY Times, The Progressive Review, Truthout. And then, maybe, I blog.
But first I turn on the full-spectrum light on the wall near my computer. It’s a blank wall that I face, a white wall with no windows. My big, flat-screened monitor is my window, and the light feeds my illusion of an open space. I sit in my chair, wheel back and forth to loosen my thoughts. It doesn’t always work; I seldom have much energy left for thinking. I wheel back and forth, get up to feed the cat, get a drink of water.
I sit and wheel and watch the screen without the full coffee cup that sustains most bloggers. I don’t drink coffee. I drink tea. But not when I’m blogging
I used to read other weblogs before I posted on my own so that I could join “conversations.” I don’t do that much any more because I don’t have the time and energy to fully participate. I used to leave lots of comments on others’ blogs. I don’t do that very often now either. I liked it when my blogging universe was small and manageable. There’s just so many bloggers out there now, so much, so many. It all overwhelms me.
So, instead, I just sit and blog what I think, what I think about. I blog for me on my own weblog.. I blog to continue putting out connections to family and friends I no longer see much of. I blog for whoever finds me for whatever reason.
I post right into the Moveable Type template that my son set up for me. If it were any more complicated, I wouldn’t bother; but MT and b!X makes it a cinch. I type while I think, without first doing a draft. I try to proofread, but at 1 a.m. or such, I usually miss all kinds of typos. So the next morning, before my mother gets up and needs to be fed, reassured, reminded, recreated, I go in and find and fix them.
And then I go in and trash my comment spam, of which there is a constant flow. Just one more way the blogging universe has become so overwhelming.
How do I blog, Frank Paynter asks. I blog wearily and wishfully. I blog isolated and interested and intentioned.
I blog the way I live.