Do you remember that show from the late 80’s/early 90’s called “Thirty Something”? I remember watching it back then and thinking those people were so old and wishing they had a show called “twenty something”. Now I am thinking a show called “Eighty Something” would be too old for me. What was wrong with me in the late 80’s/early 90’s? How could I have ever possibly thought thirty something was old? I’d give my eye teeth (what the hell is an eye tooth anyway?) to be thirty something again. Why does happiness depend on a number? I don’t know why but it does. If I were thirty something I would be happy. But because I am forty something I’m too old to be happy or have a rich fulfilling life? Makes no sense to me. Damned numbers! I guess it’s the thought that you life is half over that hampers me. I know it doesn’t have to be downhill from here but damn I feel old. Oh to be thirty something again.

How odd that yesterday, just 30 minutes after I posted my blog entry, I should get a knock at the door from the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor. She stayed for an hour, then had to leave to pick up her daughter from school. I thought I was safe, but she ended up coming back at 3:30 with her daughter in tow and stayed until 6:30pm. During the course of the conversation I made mention to her (again) that her black dog was touched in the head since she seemed to bark at the breeze. She admitted (again) that the dog was annoying, but what could she do. She did tell me some new info that I didn’t know. It seems that one of the main reasons the 2 girls, that lived in the house next to her, moved was because of her black dog barking non-stop. She actually has two dogs. Dog #1 (Abby) has been there about 5 years now and rarely barks. Dog #2 (Sasha) has been there only since last summer and is 2 years old. Sasha is the non-stop barker. The faith healer neighbor stated that she was so glad when those girls moved because they were coming up to her almost every weekend begging her to stop the dog from barking non-stop and claiming that the dog was keeping them awake at night. The nerve of them! She told them they needed to get ear plugs like she wears, then they would be able to get a good nights sleep, like she does.


She also told me that her sons girlfriend gave the dogs steak bones last Saturday. They immediately got into a very serious dog fight over the bones. Her husband tried to separate them by hitting them with a board but that did no good. Running the hose on them did no good either. They had to wait until the dogs stopped fighting. By this time Sasha had a tear in her tongue and Abby had bite marks on her neck and leg and was limping. My regret is that the dogs didn’t bite the faith healer and her husband. Maybe that would have sunk some sense into them. So did these upstanding citizens take their dogs to the vet? Of course not. It is God’s will whether the dogs should live or not. And since they are recovering nicely from their wounds God obviously meant for them to be okay. She did tell me that she was thinking about giving the dogs some shots since they had bit each other. Neither dog has ever had any shots. A trip to the vet you say? No, a trip to the local farm and home store for something she called a shot kit that costs $5. But first she has to save up for it.

Why can’t the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor just pull out $5 right now and buy the shot kit since she doesn’t have a mortgage payment or car payment like most adults have. (Her elderly mother bought their house for them, paying cash and bought Deb a mini van as well). It seems that her husband hasn’t worked since last September. He has his own construction business and she tells me that no one is building houses anymore. News to me and I am sure it is news to all of the other construction workers I see building houses and office buildings each day. Deb is even on the payment plan at the local video store for her late fees. She owes $48 in late fees (because she keeps forgetting to return movies) so she pays them $2 a week towards the late fees, all the while renting 5 or 6 movies a week. It’s all about priorities you know. Meanwhile she has to save her pennies so she will someday be able to afford the 45 shot kit. People like that should not be allowed to own dogs. The dogs have even chewed all of the bark off of the one tree in the back yard. They either think the tree is one big chew toy or else dinner.

The faith healer’s daughter is ten years old, soon to be eleven. My granddaughter is six soon to be seven. The two girls enjoy playing with each other. I mentioned to the faith healer that my granddaughter would be spending the night Wednesday night and perhaps her daughter would like to come over and play Wednesday afternoon. She said that would be great, but to make sure that the girls don’t do anything strenuous like ride bikes or anything because her ten year old 175 pound daughter has high blood pressure and she is afraid that if she does anything too strenuous she might have a heart attack. Hello, that is called exercise and it usually helps a persons blood pressure go down, not up. The mind of a hill-billy is a scary thing.

If you hear a blurb on the news about a middle aged homemaker going off the deep end and murdering her neighbors dog and then the neighbor, that would be me. I haven’t done the deed yet, but I am certainly thinking about it. I might add another neighbor’s dog in the murderous act as well. All day long yesterday I sat at the computer trying to do some work but unable to concentrate for all of the barking. I barely even checked my email. All because I could not think straight with the damned nonstop barking coming from the self proclaimed faith healer neighbors dog. I have discussed this with her several times before and each time she sighs and says it drives her crazy too but there is nothing she can do about it. She freely admits that the dog will bark at even a falling leaf, but what can she do? How about putting a muzzle on that mutt you inbred hill-jack? How about actually taking the time to give the dog some food and water so it isn’t barking for help all of the time? What the hell does she expect when she gets a dog and throws it in the back yard only to ignore it. The only time this dog ever has any human interaction is when her husband (the self proclaimed prophet) throws some food over the fence every morning. If he was such a great prophet he would have been have to prophesized that the new dog would drive the neighbors nuts and would have told his wife not to bring it home. And once this dog starts barking all of the other dogs in the neighborhood follow suit. I must live in the loudest neighborhood in Indy.

The odd thing about all of this is I am a dog lover. Hell, I even have a dog of my own. I do not, however, love hearing a dog bark nonstop for 2 hours. I even have to shut all of the windows in my house in the spring and summer because of these damned dogs. It is so frustrating. And I have to blame the owners because they are the ones that won’t take 5 minutes to train their dogs or to teach them that it is unacceptable to bark at the air floating by. Maybe I’ll just muzzle my self proclaimed faith healer neighbor just to show her how it’s done.

So if that didn’t put me in a bad enough mood yesterday the hubster added to it. Our bedroom ceiling fan has a light on it. You can turn the light off at the actual ceiling fan so you just have the fan running. But since I don’t like to stumble in the darkness in the bedroom I don’t turn the light part off. Therefore when flick the wall switch the light magically comes on and I can see. That didn’t happen last night. It seems that the hubster thought it would be nice to have the fan going while no one was in the room. So he turned off the light part at the fan itself. I flick the switch and no light. So I have to stumble in the darkness to switch the light on at the fan. I slammed into the blanket chest at the foot of the bed on the way to the light. Now I have two huge black and blue bruises across both of my legs. I am not a happy camper. I know exactly how Nancy Kerrigan felt now. I don’t understand why the hubster does stupid things like that. He does a lot of stupid things lately though and he is driving me crazy. Fortunately (or unfortunately) it doesn’t take much to drive me crazy these days.

I am so angry I could spit nails! My doctor is a stupid bone-head. I went to the world renowned pancreatitis God, Dr. Lenham, and he said one of the things that was causing my flare-up of pancreatitis was my blood pressure medication. So Dr. Lehman had me stop taking the current medication and said he was going to send a “strong” letter to my doctor telling him what blood pressure medication I need to be taking, among other things. My doctor decided prior to getting the letter that he would just pick a medication out of thin air and hope it didn’t cause pancreatitis. Well guess what? Yes, it causes pancreatitis. I could have been on the road to recovery by now. It seems to me that going to doctors is causing me to get sicker, not better. I think I’ll take care of my own medical care from this point on. I am sure I could do a much better job than the bone-head I currently go to. And to make sure I am a legit doc I will even make myself wait for 30 minutes before I’ll see myself. I am busy after all.

Nothing I wrote made any damned sense at all did it? See what happens when I take pain meds?

It’s Thursday and you know what that means... Girls night! Yup, my granddaughter Jas is coming over after school this afternoon to hang out. We try to go out to dinner every Thursday night with each other as the hubster works until 7:00pm every Thursday night. I have no idea what our plans are for pre-dinner entertainment as Jas hasn’t told me yet what we will be doing. She likes to keep me in suspense. But somehow I am sure our activities will include shopping, it always does. But no matter what the activity or meal it is always nice to spend time with her. She’ll be seven in a few short months so she is growing up too fast. Before long I will go from being one of the smartest people in the world to being the dumbest doorknob on the planet. So I like to hang out with her as often as I can while she still thinks I am the smartest person ever. I figure I have at least 3 more years before I become a dumb doorknob.

I have been trying to keep busy while I battle this pancreatitis and thus have begun a little project. Since I can’t really eat many foods I decided to write about the foods I wish I were eating. So I am writing a cookbook of my favorite recipes. I’ve also started gathering recipes from others to put in it as well. If you would like to have your recipes in my cookbook email me your recipe, and a little comment or story about your recipe. So far I have 82 pages completed on the book. I hope to have it ready for the publisher in about 2 more weeks. I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, it’s a shame that it took pancreatitis to nudge me into actually doing it.

This brief intermission is brought to you by our sponsor Pancreatitis. Don’t be the last one on your block to get pancreatitis, get in line and be the first one in your neighborhood to have violent vomiting, loss of appetite, extreme gut pain and everyone’s favorite friend, constipation! Don’t delay, get your pancreatitis today, I did!

We will return after the commercial break.

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Last night I had Girls Night out. My 6 year old granddaughter, Jas, spent the night. It’s like a hurricane hits the house when she blows through. I’m not sure how it happens but it does. We started off our evening with a shopping trip to Kohls to procure an Easter dress for Jas. I held up all sorts of pretty frilly pink and yellow dresses but she was having none of it. She is very much like her Auntie Brooke was at that age. She has a different fashion sense than what I would want for her. So for Easter she chose a black dress. She marches to the beat of a different drummer, that’s for sure. But it is a cute black dress so I can’t complain. It’s a little large in the top though so I need to take a tuck in that today.


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After the dress she HAD to go to the shoe department. I swear she is her Auntie Brooke all over again. After much looking she finally she chose the cutest pair of white shoes that has a little charm on the strap. And after seeing the joy on her face as she modeled her Easter clothes for her Pop Pop I was glad that I let her pick out her clothes. There is nothing worse than having to wear something you don’t like. I am still haunted by the monstrosities I had to wear as a kid. (shiver)

For dinner Jas had her heart set on going to BW3’s because they have mini corn dogs and fries in the shape of smiley faces. Oh joy. When we got there the place was packed. It didn’t occur to me until after we had ordered that this is the week March Madness started. There is nothing worse than being in Indiana during March Madness. This is a basketball state for sure. I heard that if you don’t like basketball they actually ask you to leave the state.

On the drive home I asked Jas to call her Pop Pop at work and ask him what kind of sandwich he wanted from the deli for dinner. (Corned Beef on Rye) She called his place of work and the hubster’s co-worker answered. Jas seemed a bit confused as she was expecting her Gwanpa to answer the phone. She timidly said “You’re not my Pop Pop. Where’s my Pop Pop?” The co-worker said it was all he could do to not laugh on the phone. I am sure that today they are all calling the hubster “Pop Pop” at work.

After Jas put her Easter finery away we baked Easter cookies, ate Popsicles, made jewelry with her beading kit, played computer games, read books, did homework, watched the Office on TV, tried on lip gloss, painted, made cards and finally went to bed. Is it any wonder I am worn out today? Whew! If only we could somehow bottle the energy of a 6 year old.

From the history of time Indiana was one of those states, like Arizona, that didn’t observe daylight savings time. I liked that. I never had to worry about changing the VCR/DVD clock, time on the car radio or anything. It was fabulous and a definite perk for living in Indiana. And believe me, if you’ve ever been to Indiana you know we need all the perks we can get. Some bozo in a minor position of power decided that he wanted to cut his grass while it was still light out in the evenings so he proposed that Indiana observe daylight savings, and the rest is history. We started changing our clocks in 2006. So this morning when I woke up my befuddled mind had to stop and ponder is it 9am or 8am? I’m still not sure what time it is. And not to mention how this impacts my conversations with my daughter who is in a different time zone. Is she 6 hours ahead of me in Germany now or 7? Maybe 5 hours? And this is all so some bozo can cut his grass at 8pm without having to use a flashlight. And what really gets me is he can afford to hire a gardener to do it for him. Stupid legislators! Meanwhile I’ll be walking around in a daze for a week before my body adjusts to the time change. I am going to find that particular legislator and set his lawn on fire.

I have to come up with 5 pages of writing by 7:30pm tomorrow and I am sweating bullets. I have 4 or 5 stories in various states of creation and I hate them all. What to do? Start a new story maybe? I sit at the computer to write my little old heart out and the next thing I know I am playing Bud Redhead or Bejeweled (similar to Tetris and totally addictive). I don’t know how people who write for a living do it. I am thinking maybe I need a change of venue. It’s such a beautiful day outside, so perhaps I need my laptop to an outdoor table at Starbucks? No, I’d end up people watching instead of writing. I need to get myself in discipline mode. I’m sort of talking out loud aren’t I? Sorry about that. I love writing and I have many stories in my soul, the problem is getting them out of my head and onto the paper. That’s what it all comes down to isn’t it.

Speaking of writing, my local writer friend just had her 2nd book published. I thought the first book was good and anxiously awaited the release of book 2. I bought book 2 last week and now I have writers envy. She really is a good writer. If you are looking for a good read check her out. She is writing the “House of Pendragon” series. She is hard at work on book 3 right now. Book 1 is “The Firebrand”. Book 2 (her best yet) is “The Recruit”. If you like tales of the Round table, Sir Lancelot and King Arthur this is the book for you. I can hardly wait for book 3 now.

I think I’ll go out and enjoy this sunny day now. And God help them if they don’t get my no fat, no foam, latte right this time. Heads will roll!

(click on image to enlarge my lovely cherry shoes)

If you will recall my rant about the most perfect shoes on the planet and how I coveted them, but sadly did not purchase them. Guess what I did? I bought my dream shoes!!! I know it is silly to fall in love with a pair of canvas shoes. I mean if you are going to go ape over a pair of shoes it should be a $700 pair of Jimmy Choos, not a $30 pair of Self Esteem canvas shoes. But for whatever reason I did fall in love and now 3 weeks later I finally succumbed to the temptation and bought them. Actually I put it in fates hands. I said to myself “self, if those shoes are still there and they have a pair in my size it is meant to be and I have to buy them. Self, if they do not have those shoes in my size it wasn’t meant to be and I will mourn their loss for the rest of my life.” Fortunately they were there and they had one pair left in my size. Sigh… it was meant to be.


My 6 year old granddaughter, Jas, and I had “girls night out” last night. We went to dinner at her favorite Chinese barfette and then went shopping for girly stuff like fake nails and lip gloss. We had a great time. On the way home a rock song came on the radio which involved several parts of the lyrics being screamed. Jas looks at me and says “That’s heavy metal Gwanma because they scream. If they just scream softly and only a little then it’s just rock.” I pondered what she had said and replied “well do you like heavy metal or do you like rock?” She thought a minute and said “I like heavy metal because I’m a kid and we like screaming.” I guess you can’t argue with that logic.

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This weekend I found myself regretting that I didn’t buy more cupcakes from Sprinkles while in LA last week. In fact, it was just a week ago today that I was sinking my teeth into the most delectable red velvet cupcake with melt in your mouth cream cheese frosting that I have ever in my life tasted in my entire life. It was sheer heaven I have to say. Thus the search for the almighty cupcake recipe began. Someone wrote in the comments about Williams Sonoma selling the afore mentioned cupcake mix. Oh delight! But alas they were a whopping $14 and only made a dismal 12 cupcakes. I would have gladly paid that however, but I read many reviews online and they all said that the cupcakes were disappointing and no better than any other cupcake recipe out there. What to do, what to do?


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AHA! The answer came to me when I was shopping in my local “Fresh Market”. For $7.99 I could get Ina Garten’s (the Barefoot Contessa) coconut cupcake mix, which included frosting (after you supply cream cheese and butter of course). She even had a packet of coconut shreds in the box. Count me in! I made them yesterday and I have to admit that after smelling them baking I didn’t wait for them to cool. Yes, while they were still hot I frosted one and the hubster and I scarfed it up like a hungry pack of wild dogs on steak night. The cupcake itself was so delicious that you didn’t need frosting. But to miss out on pairing that creamy, melt in your mouth frosting, with that delightful moist and light cupcake would be a sin. Now if only Ina would create a Red Velvet cupcake mix. Diet? What diet?

While driving through Santa Monica last weekend, we couldn’t help but notice there was a large number of homeless people inhabiting the street corners there. Some would stand at busy intersections holding signs that said “Help, Need Money”. We saw many homeless people all throughout LA but none so much as in Santa Monica. There were even scores of homeless holding “gimme money” signs on the Promenade. Therefore I have made an executive decision. I am going to move to Santa Monica and stand on a street corner with my own cardboard sign that says “Help, Need Pancreas”. If the public outpouring is anything like what I saw with the homeless people, then I should have a new pancreas within the first 15 minutes. Silly me, why didn’t I think of this before? With all of the celebrities there who say they want to help mankind, well they can just pony up and give me a pancreas damn it. Put your money where your pancreas is!

I guess you could take from the above ranting that my appointment with the worlds leading pancreas specialist did not go well. Actually it did go well, I just didn’t want to hear that my pancreas is a shriveled up, diseased and useless organ. Dr. Lehman gave me 5 options for a course of treatment. He spent 45 minutes with me discussing the ins and outs of each of those options. One option was basically going to my pancreas with a scope (via the throat) and shooting a needle full of numbing medicine in a nerve behind my pancreas. This is called a EUS Block and would give me pain relief for approximately 2 months, and no I didn’t choose that option. Another popular option was giving my pancreas a vacation for 6 months to a year and getting a feeding tube in my stomach. I looked at Dr. Lehman in horror and exclaimed “but you don’t understand, I’m a good cook!” He gave a little chuckle at that one. And another option is removing the pancreas altogether since it is useless to me and causing me pain. I didn’t choose that option either. The option I did choose is short term at best and involves medicine changes and small portions of bland food. Dr. Lehman told me that somewhere down the road I would have to have my pancreas removed anyway, but why not wait in hopes of finding a pancreas to replace it with. Sounds good to me. Meanwhile I am stocking up on oatmeal and baking potatoes, with an occasional trip to Skyline Chili. I never said I was an angel. But if I were, I'm pretty sure they eat Skyline Chili too.

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I have never been so glad to be home from a trip in all of my life. There were fun parts of our trip to LA but there were horrid parts as well. Such as the horrible LA traffic. I never want to see traffic again! And then there was the night the hell raisers moved in the suite above. After the manager gave them their 3rd warning to quiet down I called and asked to have our room moved but they were full up. Fortunately the people moved out at 3am. We weren’t able to see some of the things we wanted to because of the Oscars. They had areas roped off so we couldn’t get to certain places in Hollywood.


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But we did have some wonderful parts of the trip. Such as hanging out on the famous Santa Monica pier (I was chilled from the wind so I wore TWO jackets), finding Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills (Thanks to Secret Agent Josephine), finding Pinks Hotdogs (just before the lunch rush hit), seeing the Chinese New Year parade in China Town and even having the “dragon” come in the restaurant and set off firecrackers while we were eating, touring the Queen Mary in Long Beach and even doing the Ghost tour (I was the annoying person that screamed every time someone so much as sneezed), seeing a few celebrities, going into the Louis Vuitton store on Rodeo Drive and pretending that I was going to buy something, discovering Farmers Market and getting lost in the maze of shops there for hours, eating at the famous Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, getting a fake Dooney & Burke purse from China Town (which I have received many compliments on), and many more memories which are just too memorable to remember right now. All in all it was a nice trip but I have to admit, I am an East Coast girl. The west Coast is nice and has it’s own unique vibe, but give me the East Coast any day. I guess we long for the familiar.

If you would like to see our vacation pictures you can head on over to my Yahoo photo album and check them out.