A COVEN OF BLACK WIDOWS

CHRISTMAS EVE

Never, by any stretch of the imagination, a traditional Christmas--much to my sorrow.
Eric is at work. He works every Christmas Eve, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, etc. My son is in Texas working. He works trauma in an ER. No hope of seeing him or the grandchildren this year.

Today, I'm wrapping a few little gifts for Eric to put out tonight. Tomorrow, I'm cooking a turkey breast and a couple of special little fixin's from recipes I got from Ruthie. She does an absolutely lucious cranberry relish and whips up a delicious whipped yams dish. The cranberry relish includes apple, celery, crushed pineapple and a scattering pecans. It is really quite incredible. I fix a turkey breast because there are only two of us and neither of us like turkey dark meat.

I'll be writing a long addendum to a report I submitted 2 years ago. There's a deposition scheduled mid January. All the research has evolved in the two years the defense attorney has stalled so I have to write an addendum to the original report. I don't have any time unscheduled between now and the deposition. So, I have to get it done and submitted over the Christmas holiday. I also evaluated a man yesterday with really high risk scores. That has to be written up and submitted by Monday. He's being released on the 5th so I have to get an entire report written and into the AG before the 1st. We'll have to go to court on him before the 5th. So, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Saturday and Sunday--I'll be churning out reports! I leave for Danville Monday to evaluate yet one more. Every single case I got assigned for December and January look really bad and I fully expect that I'll have to churn out reports on all of them and go to court and testify on all of them.

Oh well, it helps pay the bills and it helps keep sex offenders off the street. So, you just keep plodding along---doing the work, winning some, losing some, just keep pushing that boulder up the hill.

Memories and Carrot Cake

Many years ago when we were living in Austin, Texas, Mom and Dad were visiting. Apparently, I asked Mom for her carrot cake recipe. She had made it many times in her life and grabbed a Graybar Electric Company memo pad, which happened to be nearby, and jotted it down for me.

Today, I was searching through old boxes--throwing things away. I found the faded copy of the recipe in her own handwriting. Mom has been dead 30 years and yet, the minute I saw it, I recognized her handwriting.

Here it is:

Mom's Carrot Cake

1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. If I remember correctly, she used a Bundt pan or a ring pan.


4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Wesson oil
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 tps soda in some of the milk
3 cups flour
2 tps. cinnamon
1 tps salt (she always cut back on this)
3 cups grated carrots
1 tps lemon extract
1 cup pecan pieces


Put sugar & oil in mixing bowl. Mix. Add other ingredients in this order: eggs, milk, flour, spices & extract, nuts, carrots. Mix.

Pour into oiled & floured pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. I'd probably spray a pan with Baker's Joy, but that was not available 60 years ago.


Glaze with Orange Sauce:

1/2 cup orange juice
1 tps orange rind---nowadays we call that zest and use one of our fancy zesters
2 cups powdered sugar

Dreams

I’m a psychologist and I understand that dreams are made of distorted fragments of day residue. That means that we take tiny fragments of things that happened during our day and distort those fragments. Some times, we distort them until they are no longer recognizable. Some times we distort them into images, events, and fantasy that momentarily allow us to bear our pain a little more easily.

Yesterday on 10/15/09 at 5:40, I euthanized my eldest dog. I had known for many months that he was moving into death. Upon awaking every morning, the first thing I did was go check on the dogs. I fully expected that God was going to answer the prayer I was ashamed to admit I prayed every night. I kept praying to God that he would take him in his sleep to save me the pain of euthanizing him. I wanted his heart to simply quit beating so that Jake was never frightened or in pain. And, I wanted not to be forced to euthanize him. Sometimes, God says no.

What little I slept last night was fitful. I kept waking to the thought that he is dead and crying myself back to sleep. Finally, I slept to a dream of him running and playing in our backyard—young, healthy, a rascally little scamp with spotted Dalmatian like paws. The dream reminded me of his escape to the school soccer field and refusal to return home. I bought an entire meat lovers pizza believing I could toll him back with it. I couldn’t. He loved freedom more than pizza and he really loved pizza. The dream also reminded me of several escapes in Kentucky when he would charge up one of the Appalachian mountains and then stop, look back and wait for me to struggle a little farther up the mountain and a little closer to him. Then, he’d run higher. I awoke with all the hope in the world that he was young, healthy and vibrant still. I shook myself back to reality and tears. Every time I fell asleep, I awoke to memories of images like him strolling from my bedroom into the living room with one of my cigarettes hanging from his fleshy lips. He looked so much like Joe Camel when he did that. He alternated that entrance with him strolling from my bedroom with one cup of my bra perched on his head as if it were a beanie and the rest of the bra dragging along side. I remembered catching Jake having his way with a little fluffy white dog wearing a red sweater in our back yard. Didn’t matter to Jake that he was shooting blanks. I remembered him walking the perimeter of our backyard right up against the new privacy fence. The four of them together marched like ducks around the very edge of the back yard keeping weeds down and intruders out of their backyard. Every time I fell asleep, I awoke to the reality and to my tears.

I went downstairs to check on Savvy Jo. She was his litter mate and his incubator mate when they both had Parvo as infants. He was “over the hump” faster than her and the VET was afraid to send him home because they were so attached to each other. He kept Jake extra days so that he could keep him in the incubator with Savvy Jo. As adults, they each have their own beds, but they usually slept together. Sometimes, they played a game of musical beds. Savvy is very upset and won’t sleep in their bed. At some level, she knows.

Eric left for work and I went back to bed for a while. I went back to sleep and the dream was of Jake beautiful and alive except that we had removed his back legs. He had nothing wrong with his back legs, but he kept collapsing. I guess that is the distortion. Amputate his back legs and he won’t be dead. I told you dreams are distortions. Sometimes, they are so distorted they are unrecognizable and psychotic. In the dream, he had learned to get around the back yard without his back legs. He had somehow even learned to climb to the top edge of the privacy fence and perch atop it looking into the distant freedom.

I’m praying there is a Rainbow Bridge. I’m praying that my mom and dad, my daughter and Eric’s mom & dad are looking out for him. I’m praying he’s reached that distant freedom, that he has no pain, that he can run free without fear of cars or mean people, and that God has a lot of Beggin Strips on hand. He loves Beggin Strips.

I’m in so much pain, that I have got to believe in something.

GOVERNOR OF IDAHO

The Governor of Idaho plunked down his $11.75 cents so that he could go slaughter a wolf on 9/1/09. That's all a wolf life is worth---$11.75. I am sickened.

Wolves are social pack animals who mate for life, raise their pups in couples, and grieve when they lose a mate. When they lose a mate, they will attempt to raise any orphaned pups alone as single parents.

They have no chance against men and women with $11.75 and guns. If the slaughter is not stopped, their species will be wiped out. Only in the last year, has their species been brought back from the very brink of extinction by scientists. Only 2 years ago, did we have cubs that were sturdy enough to be released back into the wilds of Yellowstone.

Salazar and Obama have decided to allow the great white hunter to get their rocks off slaughtering defenseless father wolves, mother wolves and infant wolves. Palin is wiping out the Artic wolf and the polar bear. Salazar and Obama are wiping out the wolves in Yellowstone.

What if your life was worth $11.75? $11.75 will allow anyone to slaughter a wolf.

DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE desperately needs donations to mount a lawsuit to stop the slaughter. PLEASE HELP. Their lives are depending on us.

IDAHO WOLF SLAUGHTER

The great state of Idaho is aiming for an unprecedented wolf slaughter this Fall. On Monday, the department will begin selling 70,000 permits to hunt an kill wolves in Idaho. That's 70 guns for each wolf mother, wolf father, and wolf pup in Idaho.

The will be the worlst wolf massace in the Lower 48 since the 1930's. Hundreds of completely defnseless wolves will be shot, with many surviving wolf pups left to starve to death.

Idaho's wolf hunting season is scheduled to begin in just 14 days.

We must stop this slaughter. DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE is accepting tax deductible donations right now to help fund the legal fight and mount a national mobilization campaign to save the wolves in Idaho and Greater Yellowstone. No amount is too small. Anything, you can find to donate will help them fight this battle. Please donate to Defenders right now. Call 1 800 385 9712 to contribute over the phone. Please call and donate. The lives of each and every one of those wolves depends on us. They can't fight back and they don't have guns. PLEASE DONATE NOW!

By the way, Salazar and Obama paved the way for this to happen.

INCREASE IN INSULIN

My blood sugar has been a tad better. It's not good enough, but it has been a tad better. Two times, it has been under 100, but that was 2 hours after I'd taken my insulin. That is to be expected. Only once has it been above 200. That was not expected. That was related to "breading" a chicken breast in Special K and baking it in the oven in a pan sprayed with Pam. Except for the 100 calorie whole wheat Sandwich Thin that I've been having every morning, I've had no other bread, cereal, pasta, potatoe, rice, grain products for a week.

So, after a week, my food diary tells me that I have been able to keep my caloric intake to between 1,000 & 1,400 each day and equally as important it pinpoints relatively accurately the culprit in blood sugar spikes. Clearly, it was the cereal. The green beans and tomato don't cause blood sugar spikes and 4 ounces of baked chicken doesn't cause a blood sugar spike. Either it was the 1/2 cup buttermilk the chicken was marinated in or it was the 1/2 cup cereal that I used to coat the chicken before baking. I'm betting it was the cereal.

So, I faxed all the numbers and the food diary to Dr. Saltman. He told me to keep doing what I'm doing and to increase my insulin by 3 units (from 5 to 8 units before bed). If I weren't so miserable, it would be like hunting down the clues and solving a mystery. But, the misery outweighs the mystery right now. Maybe someday.

For non diabetics (people who don't know), blood sugar should be 115 or under. If it drops below 75 you probably need to eat something relativey rapidly. Over 200 will fry your kidneys and cause kidney failure eventually. Every single time blood sugar goes over 200, it does some kidney damage.