Halloween, Embarrassment song, and garden update

Happy Halloween tomorrow. I hope all will be safe and get treats without tricks. I already posted my pumpkins for weekend snapshot and I decided not to carve. The photograph above is one I took in color of a blue sky with wild looking clouds but I decided I liked the half tone version, particularly for the time when the witches ride. Halloween also seems like a good time to post a windows movie I made with one of my original songs. The song title is Embarrassment and I recorded this in 1998. Since Halloween is the night of the bizarre, I give you my bizarre, and yes embarrassing song about embarrassment. But first an embarrassing picture of me taken sometime around 2002. Even I'm not quite loose enough to find embarrassing pictures of myself to accompany the music, except for the one above. I can't use embarrassing pictures of family and friends as I know some of them follow my blog. Besides, I'm not that mean. So the song is sung and written by me and the photographs are from Funpics. There are reasons I think the photos I picked go along with the song but it may not always be obvious why I thought that. So without further ado, Embarrassment song made into a windows movie below:



Update on my autumn garden, photo below of my babies all tucked in for the first night of freeze warnings which was last night:

Don't they look snug as a bug in a rug. I bet there are a few bugs joining the plants for a warm cozy bed.

I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween Wednesday!

Tagged for 8 questions

I have been Tagged by Trinity. This internet tag game is 8 questions you shouldn't ask or say to me. Trinity and I have some similarities as far as this tag goes.

1. I didn't know you were expecting another child. When are you due?

A girl I went to elementary school with organized a get together of the girls in our small Episcopal elementary school class. The get together was at her country club for lunch. This was 1994 (26 years after we completed our elementary school years). I was in the process of getting a divorce and not only was I not pregnant but I had a radical hysterectomy when my daughter was 3 because I had such severe endometriosis. My answer to the question was, I'm not expecting another child unless it's an immaculate conception because I'm in the process of a divorce, I'm not dating anyone, not to mention the fact that I don't have a uterus, fallopian tubes or ovaries anymore. Pardon my irreverent reply, no disrespect to Mary intended.
2. What is your due date? (13 years after the first time I was asked that question)

I was flattered the last time I was asked that question because it meant someone thought I was young enough to have a baby. It was fairly recently and I was on a walk and an elderly man who lives around the corner from me asked the question. He's not a neighbor I've ever met so I was kind when I answered.

3. Doorbell rings, hello, I'm cleaning some of your neighbor's gutters and noticed your gutters are full. You will start to damage your house soon. Would you like to set up a time for me to clean your gutters? Me, I already have a gutter cleaner, thanks for reminding me to call him. I don't like to be made to feel as shabby as I am for being so slack about my home maintenance. For the record, I did get my gutters cleaned.

4. Would you like me to replace your siding while I'm in your neighborhood? I probably should do that and since most of my house is brick it's only a couple of places that need replacing. Even so, I'm sick of having people ring my doorbell to ask if I want that done.
5. Would you like me to trim your bushes? 6. Would you like me to resurface your driveway? 7. Would you like me to paint your door? Note- I painted my front door myself and it's obvious. 8. Would you like to hire me for home repairs?

Notice a theme starting to evolve. Don't try to fix my house or offer to drive me to the maternity ward. If anyone wants to play, consider yourself tagged. It's too hard for me to chase down anyone else and tag them since I'm so close to giving birth (NOT).

Internet Tag

I have been tagged by Miss Melanoma to list 8 random facts about myself. Lori requested that the people she tagged post random pictures in addition to the other rules of the game. I like random pictures so I'm following that rule. You are supposed to put all of the rules of the game at the beginning of your post. Which brings me to number 1 of my random facts about myself.

1 - I don't do well with rules.

2 - I was kicked out of brownies for setting up the benches in the cafeteria where we met to be horse jumps. I led the little brownie-horses over the jumps. Although this was before the leader arrived to start the session, I was kicked out of brownies.

3- I went to a private elementary school which was owned by the Church where my Dad was the Rector. The 6th grade girls got to be angels in the Christmas Pageant. There weren't enough angel costumes for my class so the teacher asked the class to vote on the best behaved students and those with the most votes got to be angels. My best friend and I weren't going to get to be Angels until my Dad got wind of it and borrowed two costumes from another Church. Because we were tall for our age, we were able to wear adult size costumes from that Church which were showier than the others so we ended up looking like lead angels. My Dad painted the angel's in waiting which I am including. The painting isn't cut off to the right, that's the photo I took of a print of it.

4 - When I was growing up we had a dog named Shannon who lived outside. One night during a storm, my brother and I went outside to sleep with Shannon in her dog house. We loved Shannon. Our parent thought we were very thoughtful but convinced up to come inside and as I recall Shannon was brought in to sleep on the screened in porch.

5 - I am pretty messy, even as an adult. Make that very messy. I am not entirely comfortable with how messy I am so I do try to straighten up from time to time. It's been a while since I organized my shoes.

6- I married the boy next door and our landlord let us knock a hole in the wall in between the studs between the two sides of our duplex. The first 5 years of my marriage we had two kitchens.

7 - One of the jobs I held when I took some time off from college was as the seamstress in a laundry. I got to let out the pants of the infamous Senator from NC, Jesse Helms. No it wasn't me who embroidered, I'm a jerk on his pants in thread which only showed up when he was being obnoxious.

8 - I like to draw, paint, scribble on blank paper in the style of a child. I still do this for fun and it's almost as much fun to laugh at what I've created and toss it in the recycle bin.

That's it folks, 8 random facts about me. If you are interested in finding out what the rules of the game are you can visit Miss Melanoma's site and view her post with her 8 random facts.

I've done it now

I've gone and done it now. After joking in my post yesterday about how my blog was PG rated by a rating service and how silly that was for a G rated lady like me to have my post rated PG, all it took was me joking around in that post to get an R rating. Yep, I'm now rated R. Why you may wonder (or not but I'm telling ya anyway). My sins are I am now up to the following offenses: pain mentioned 11 times, crap 7 times, hell 6 times, hurt 1 times. So I guess it follows that if you have chronic pain, deal with the crap following a melanoma diagnosis, say crap because you are somewhat restrained and don't want to say shit, and mention that you hurt, then you have an R rating according to this service. Yep, I'm still on this silly topic. Maybe it's time for me to jump back into a flower or two.
Oh crap I got bit by a mosquito taking that picture. Ouch, that sure hurts. Oh hell, can't I even play in my garden without getting into trouble. My poor flowers may die if we don't get another shower soon. Warning, what follows gets serious and possibly depressing so if anyone is reading this and wants to stop with the joking part this is a good place to stop.

This whole subject started me thinking about how an adult blog which in part deals with some of the less fun things about cancer isn't suitable for children except for the sad fact that people of all ages are affected by cancer. Children themselves, parents with young children, and all ages upward. My father lost his mother to cancer when he was in his early teens (actually I guess he was a pre-teen with his mother) and he lost his father to another disease when he was around 14. I remember him telling me what a relief it was when his children were grown up because one of the scariest things to him about being a parent was fears about his own mortality and not wanting them to go through what he went through.

I know that one of the hardest things for some of the brave parents I've gotten to know through the MPIP who are dealing with a melanoma diagnosis has been fears for their children. Then there are parents who are caregivers to their children who have late stage melanoma which must be the hardest thing any parent can face (their children's mortality whatever the cause). I guess all this got me thinking about how, no matter what we do to protect our children, we can't always protect them from what's way beyond our control. Cancer is sadly one of those things.

I guess I'll play the rating game

I've been to a number of blogs that have joked about their blog rating. I got curious and went to the blog rating site to see what my blog rating was. The reason my blog received the above rating is because of the following: pain (6x), crap (2x), and hell (1x). For some reason it totally cracks me up that a soon to be 50 year old woman's blog which deals primarily with flowers, melanoma, and neighborhood walks would be PG. Heck fire, sometimes I write a post and think to myself, when did I turn into Mr. Rogers (bless his soul)? I probably never was the wild child I aspired to be for far too long but lets face it, if my blog isn't G rated what is? Even this post, with its trip down memory lane, is so typically old lady looking back that it alone should make sure I get a G rating.

The funny part is that when I was 13, if I'd kept a blog it would have been at least PG rated. There I am with my Godmother trying oh so hard to be cool but mostly being 13. Even so, I wouldn't have wanted a child to read my blog as a child.
When I was 16, my blog, had there been an internet, would have deserved its R rating with a pretentious or trying too hard thrown in. Yep, that's me below at 16.Even when I was in my twenties and married I might have pulled off an R rated blog or at least PG. There I am being pensive.One last look back. This picture was taken in my thirties when I was already a Mom and performing songs from the cutting edge of compost. Note how I had already started saying compost instead of shit, even back then.Moving to the present, or not so long ago when I started this blog. Below is a shot taken shortly after my groin lymph node dissection. Is that a G rated lady in front of her blueberry bushes or what?
So in conclusion, I don't care how many times I say pain, crap, or hell, I deserve a G rating. Pain, crap, hell, pain, crap, hell, pain, crap, hell . . .

If laughter is the best medicine . . .

If laughter is the best medicine, might I recommend the med blogs. I stumbled across this category of blogs by accident and have formed an instant addiction. What pulled me in is not the medical issues (some of which are thoughtfully addressed) or the human stories (some of which are poignant and sensitive) but that aside, what drew me in is the laughs. One of my personal favorites is a lawyer who has a blog titled: Addicted to Medblogs and in addition to her witty posts, she has a great list of med blogs she reads. A subject which came up in the comments on her blog has me off on a whole new track of possibilities. There was a discussion about how some of the medblogs by doctors are suspect and possibly not doctors at all. I've heard on a health board I participate on that sometimes there are people who pretend to have diseases that aren't patients at all. It hit me that the obvious solution is for the pretend doctors to give medical advise to the pretend patients and for good measure a pretend lawyer could vociferously defend the doctor if someone suggests that his advise is risky. Only in the world of blog.I don't mean to make light of a potentially sad situation. I have made friends through the MPIP who I have in some cases met. There are bashes where people get together for fun and also have memorials for those no longer with us. Although I've never attended one of the large bashes I have met a few melanoma survivors in person who participate on the MPIP. With a group like that, it is sad when people have to be cautious and remember that everyone isn't always what they seem on the internet. Then again, everyone is not always who they appear to be in any group; it's merely magnified when you have a large group where in most cases you never meet the people in person. I prefer to take everyone at face value and take reasonable precautions. I think this post is a good example of why I'll mostly be an audience versus a participant in witty exchanges. I just can't stop from putting a serious spin on the most absurd topic. I start with my inspired idea for pairing the poseurs and then have to mess it up by getting all serious.