the year in review....

yeah...I sound as ancient as Chet Huntley or Walter Cronkite or old Life magazines here! But...out with the old, saddest year of my life.

Best friend of about 30 years...gone...too bad...but a best friend is supposed to make you feel better, not worse...and if you tell me my life is immoral...this year, that's honestly not what I needed, to be judged like that.
Hooked back up with two of my best friends from the drunk years and life's a lot smoother. Nice talking to Mouse more, she told me the other day that I'm one of her friends she's had the longest, mainly because her local friends from high school told her she's not bouncy and happy anymore, and I seem like the only person that can understand why...holy crap...THAT'S LIFE!!! Am talking to Joe again, he's living with his mom & divorcing from his wife of 15 years...he misses his kids a lot, but sees them a couple times a week. He's also had some health problems this year....as a matter of fact, I called his cell phone once a couple weeks ago, he didn't answer, but called me back about a half-hour later, and told me thanks, I STILL have my good timing, he had been in the middle of a prostate exam...and all of a sudden, his pants across the room started ringing! HAHA!! Sorry, but ya just can't help but laugh...but, it's probly not a good idea to startle the urologist at that moment...
Dad died this year, I didn't see him all that much, but I did talk to him on the phone more than I had been, and we were getting along better than we had in years...I missed him a lot on his birthday, Dec 27th.
Psycho has actually proven himself to be just that...he's done some shit that, well, is just over the top that I haven't even dared to write in here...because I'm ashamed of it! He's not...he brags about it...
Stuff's happening here on the home front that I haven't written about either, nor will I...I just pray for life to settle down to near normal...
Mom's got the stage 4 lung cancer, and getting chemo for it. She usually says she feels fine, but lately hasn't felt as good. Still praying for her all the time too...
Kevin's spinal fusion he had years ago still hurts bad every day, and he still hates his job...'nuff said...
Tif is doing incredibly well, I am SO HAPPY for that!! If I had to choose one person in my life to be doing well, it would be her, hands down, no choice!! I had my chance at 23...now it's her turn!
My ms still sucks a big one, but...well, I guess it could be a lot worse...at least I haven't lost anything else this year...except my happiness and positive attitude...I'm calling this "the year of the tear"...
DrOoPs!! Goodbye 2006, thank God you're gone!!

LibbY!

recovered from Christmas....

....yeah....it honestly DID take me a good two or three days to get moving after Christmas!! It was better than all the former ones, though! Every year it just seems like it's better than the last...how long can that possibly happen?
We all went to Bro's house on Christmas Eve for dinner & presents...and we had a lot of fun! Even Psycho was there with Mom, and he was actually being rather sociable! (odd). He actually talked to people! And when Kev, Tif, & I left, Bro, his wife, and all 4 of his kids & his son's girlfriend came up (from the sunken living room) to give us all hugs...and all of a sudden, Psycho popped out from the other living room around the corner, and was shaking Kev's hand, then he hugged me so tight that I thought my whole top half was gonna pop off and bounce down into the fireplace!! They have 2 dogs, one of them is, umm, well, kinda, a regular dog, but she only has 2 legs. She is SUCH a good dog! And their other dog is a teeny little purebred Yorkie or something...and she is the MOST lovable dog (except Jenga!) I've ever met! Even Kev had her on his lap most of the night, and usually the only animal he likes is Truman!
So when we got home, it was about midnight, and Tif took off upstairs to bed (she said she was tired, but I think she was afraid Santa wouldn't come if she was awake! heehee!). Kev & I finished everything (cuz, of course, there's no presents under the tree until Santa comes in the night!), and got to bed about 3 am...but I felt like a little kid myself!! I don't think I slept AT ALL that night!! Luckily, Tif didn't let me down...6 am on the dot, she was crawling in bed with us, "C'mon, guys!! It's Christmas morning!!" Keep in mind...she's 23!! But, ya know, I wouldn't have it any other way. When she was 10-ish, it wasn't just crawling in bed, it was jumping on the bed!!
We went to Kev's mom & dad's about 10 am, and were there all day, probly til 8 or 9 at night! Tons of presents for everyone, and over there, we open presents one at a time, and of course, the 5 year old twins were there, so that was a lot of fun to watch them!!
I called Mouse yesterday, and she said her Christmas was good too...she has a 15 1/2 year old daughter, and she told me that her girl has been nagging & bugging for a brand new car for Christmas. Which in itself is kind of funny, cuz #1, she can't drive by herself, & #2, Mouse is like us, not even close to having that kind of money, for heaven's sake! So, Mouse said she got a set of car keys, and was gonna put them in C's stocking with a note that said "Your car's in the garage", and was gonna buy a Matchbox car & put it in the middle of the garage. Ouch! But she didn't, cuz she thought about it, and figured that her daughter would start crying, and she'd feel like shit, so she didn't. I'm proud of her for not doing it...but I'm prouder of her for thinking of it! I think that makes me mean, though, doesn't it?
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!

Hey, everybody...look what I just found!! http://www.familywatchdog.us/ShowMap.asphttp://www.familywatchdog.us/ShowMap.asp

Tiffany Tuesday...

Well, I made it through the 17th...now I'm in a great big hurry to get/give Christmas presents!! Woohoo!! I'm just now watching a movie I forgot to ask for!..."So I Married An Axe Murderer"! I LOVE this movie!!
So today, obviously, was 'Tiffany Tuesday'. It was fun, they were doing a contest by playing a movie line and you had to call in & tell what Christmas movie it was from...the prize was some chocolates from a candy store in town. Tiff immediately announces "Mom! I hope you know that! Call, cuz I want those peanut clusters!!". But, of course, I didn't...it was 'Scrooged', and I never saw that.
And at the end of the show, they had the city's fire inspector on talking about fire safety around Christmas and all. He was saying that candles are very dangerous, and, especially if you have a real tree, keep all heating stuff (including candles!) at least 3 feet away from it. So Tiff busts in with "Does that mean I shouldn't use my candle-lined tree skirt?" :-D!!
Anyway...so is everyone ready for Christmas?? Huh? Huh?? Oh, wait, I have one more question....we never send Christmas cards anymore (a quaint old custom, is what I call it...but that's just me...), but....is it my imagination, or are lots of people not doing them anymore? Like, is life too busy to do Christmas cards anymore? I have absolutely no business saying that, since I don't do 'em anymore, but I just don't do them cuz I can't write anymore...but what's your excuse? haha! But I remember when I was a little kid, Mom spent almost all month doing them, and we'd get probably 50 or more a year. I used to send cards every year, and was pretty good at keeping up on it. I do remember one of the first years Kev & I were married, we were getting Christmas cards almost every day in December. One day, I had just gotten home from work, come in, shut the door, and all of a sudden somebody's knocking. I turn around and open the door, and it's the mailman. He hands me a Christmas card envelope, I take it, and he says "I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's twenty-whatever cents postage due on it...they forgot the stamp, and I have to collect it...". Talk about embarrassment for that guy!! And talk about more laughter about it....the card was from Kev's mom!!! That's gonna be family history forever!
Well, I did order one/two more things yesterday, but I'm totally not even hoping they'll get here before Christmas...I got one pkg yesterday, but, damn, there BETTER be a whole lot more here in a day or two!
Okay...gotta go start making the list of gift cards we still need for people so Kev & Tif can get them before Christmas eve at Bro's! Don't you LOVE when people say that all they want for Christmas is a gift card to XXXX place?? I know some people like presents to be more personal, but..well, you know, if it's someone who doesn't know for sure what they want right now, but they know where they want to get stuff, well, what's better than to give something you know they want?? BTW...Bro & his wife's 30th anniversary was on my birthday, too!
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!

Friday, Dec 15,1006

...and, dammit, I turn 42 Sunday! That so sucks!! Ya know, I think what is the worst thing about that is that the next important birthday is 50! That's going to crush me, more than 30 or 40! I figure 40 is at least halfway through my life (maybe it's more than halfway through...some days lately, I really hope it is!), and, what've I done? Yeah, I have a great daughter...but, I did that when I was 18! I guess I'm always here for her...but, what if the best parts of my life are already over?? I honestly don't want to live so long that I need to be 'taken care of', I went through a couple years when I let Kev do that, and it didn't work for either of us, until I finally decided to do everything I still can. And I never, ever want to get to that point again, where I just kinda give up on everything! After 12 years, I should know better than this! Well, I'm on the third & last day of my iv steroids today, and that's helping my mood a little...no, I guess it's helping a lot. Oh, I found a cool website, probably not something anybody without someone in their life with ms would be real interested in, but this guy is funny...http://multiplesclerosissucks.com/...

Yesterday was 'Tiffany Thursday' on WDCM...she couldn't be there Tuesday, cuz she's been sick since Sunday...went to the dr Monday, and he told her to stay home til Thursday and take antibiotics for 10 days...tested for strep, but she didn't have it (good! me getting steroids kills my immune system, and I don't need any extra germs!). So, she decided last week that since they had a 'people party' at the station, they had to have a 'pet party' this Thursday! About 6 or 7 people showed up with their dogs, + Tif with hers and Zak's dog, Jenga, the Papillon. Or, as Tif calls her, 'Princess Jenga'! She really is the best dog, though! Even though I'm not a dog person, I LOVE her!! One of the people brought his Jack Russell...Tif said it didn't even look like a Jack Russell terrier, it was so fat!! The guy that owned it told them, in a bragging way, that it weighs 35 lbs!! Tif said it actually looked like a footstool!! The pet store here in town had donated lots of doggie treats and presents for the dogs...there were pig ears. Gary tried to give Jenga one, and Tif threw a fit on the air! "Don't give her those! I don't want her to have those! The pig might've had a disease or something, & I don't want Jenga to catch anything and die!!" Meanwhile, the Jack Russell is chomping away loudly on them...but he had a whole lot more weight than Jenga...she's like, maybe 12 lbs!
So I'm in a better mood today. Besides being on steroids, I actually ordered most of our Christmas presents yesterday...web shopping is the BEST!! And Kevin got big stuff yesterday too. I told him, "See? We do our best work under pressure"...after all, we dated for 4 months before he asked me to marry him, then we were engaged for 62 1/2 hours before we got married! And our 17th anniversary is in February.
Okay...I hafta go find a few more things for Tif on the web...today's the last day I wanna order off here...
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!

Wed. nite to Thurs whenever I get up!

And Our Friends...
Tiffany on TuesdayOur "official" morning show hair stylist---and our newest "Queen of Morning Perkiness" Listen Tuesday mornings for Tiffany's Celebrity News Flash...and Trash!

How cool is this?? This is on the WDCM website where it introduces the "good morning show" team! But...queen of morning perkiness?? I beg to differ...haha!
Anyway...more bragging, since the radio station only reaches this county...the lead morning guy, Gary, told Tif that he knows she's 'the most popular', because they get the most phone calls when she's on the air with them! Actually, this week, I was the first person to call them at 6:10 am, because Gary was joking on the air that they were gonna fire her cuz she was almost late. I called, Gary answered, and I said, "Gary, how can you fire her?? SHE'S A VOLUNTEER!!" He laughed, then patched me through so my phone call was on air too...and he was making fun of her cuz the first thing they had done when she got there was have her gargle and sing a Christmas song! And she's never actually gargled before, so she was spitting water all over the place...the guys were soaked!! Actually, he jumped all over me, because, as her mom, why did I never teach her how to gargle?? I said, 'I was afraid she might choke...obviously, it WAS the right decision, huh?' He laughed and said yeah...it would've been a mess! Then they played another Christmas song, "Walkin' Round In Women's Underwear", and I got off the phone. Then Tif was talking about how wrong that song was, it gave her goose bumps! My mom also called to say that her brother had the record with all that guy's songs on it, but she hung up before they could put her on the air. Then Kev's mom called in, to give a "public service announcement" about her church's upcoming play this weekend. Then Kev's sister called in, and they ended up talking about how over the weekend, she & Tif were talking about a George Foreman grill, and Tif called it a 'George Michael grill'!
Then they were asking Tif what she took at the Career Center high school, and she said, well...cosmetology was her first choice, but it was full...then she tried horticulture...but it was full too...so she took culinary arts...but to this day, she HATES to cook!! She told everybody about the time she was making Christmas cookies for the Rotary Club meeting, and it called for a teaspoon of ground cloves...she used (by mistake!) a teaspoon of WHOLE cloves!! And she told everybody about the time she 'caught on fire'! They used gas stoves out there, and her oven mitt caught fire, but she didn't see it until one of the guys walked past and said, very calmly, "You're on fire, Tiffany.". She started screaming, and running around, waving the hand with the oven mitt on it around in the air! Why in the hell she didn't take the mitt off, nobody knows! Then her chef jacket caught fire too and she really started screaming!! Gary & Sean were laughing, and asked "Hasn't your mom ever told you 'stop, drop, & roll' either?? She said YES! But you really aren't thinking when you're BURNING!! Luckily, the guy that told her she was on fire got a wet towel and threw it on her! So, thankfully, I still have a daughter!! Then Chef H. , her old teacher, called & said she was coming to their Christmas party at the station Friday morning...but only if Tiffany didn't cook the breakfast!!
So, Tiffany's official morning Christmas song is "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas"...they'll play that every Tuesday morning for her.
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!

...a blue Christmas...

Yup...I was looking all over for Truman this morning, and I finally found him!! Doofus cat! He decided yesterday that this is his favorite place to be, cuz he can see everything and I hafta get on the floor to see him!

Tiffany always puts the tree together now, and puts all the lights on it, and everything...if even one light isn't in the right place, or one branch isn't bent the right way, she's on it immediately! She and Kevin are both so precise and perfect when they do this...I wouldn't have the patience to be that exact about it, but I'm happy they do! Cuz pretty much, my hands are so clumsy, and shaky, I can't do it anymore. Boo! The southwestern border at the top of the wall...well, the blue parts of that are my pride and joy, because Kevin and I did that in 1993, before I knew I had ms, or had any symptoms, and my hands weren't shaky, and I was standing on top of a freakin' ladder with absolutely NO balance problem, and, obviously my hands were steady! Grrrrr....oh well...I know God never gives you more than you can handle...(but he has to know I'm weaker than this!).

Zak came over while we were putting up the tree, and we were telling him about funny stuff that's happened since we've lived here...such as...

The girl across the street that lived there for the first 5 or so years we were here, that was at one of Tiff's b'day parties, that we had mini pumpkins hidden in the yard with numbers I wrote on 'em,and when the kids found them, they'd run up on the deck, and give them to me, and I'd give the the prize with that # on it. So that girl, she was kinda "big" (around), and she found the first pumpkin, and came running up the steps with it...Kev had the camcorder & was taping the whole thing, and you saw her start up the steps. All of a sudden, she tripped on the top step, and in the tape, you see her running, yelling "yay!", and hear footsteps on the steps "thump, thump, thump" and all of a sudden you heard "ooof" and she disappeared! She was ok, but it was funny as hell! (to us, anyway!). That was like, when she was 6 or 7.

A few years later she had an ongoing feud with a girl on the next street, and they got in a fight across the street, and Tif pushed her over backwards off a brick sidewalk wall, and the 'pummeling' ensued! By both, mind you! This is a good middle-class neighborhood. Two cute little blonds, beating each other up in someone else's front yard! The next day, a "Crime Watch Area" sign was put up by the curb...in front of our house! And, 15 years later, it's still there!!

One of the coolest things was when 'Uncle Ken' used to come over in the evenings in the summer & play "Go To Court" (I have no idea how that's played, but it kinda sounds like tag/hide-&-seek type of thing) with all the kids around here, probly about 10, at that time. I actually miss hearing all the yelling & screaming outside in the evenings when there used to be little kids in this neighborhood. I never thought I'd say THAT!!

And when it was Halloween...we made a haunted porch, with all kinds of scary stuff, fake spiderwebs & all...and Kev's brother & sister & their girlfriend & boyfriend used to help, so when kids got up on the porch, there was a 'maze' of cut up trash bags to separate some parts...and there was a different monster-type behind every one! One year we had a microphone on a stand and Jill added some screams in there every so often! Now THAT was funny, cuz the next day at work, customers at the store I worked at were asking me "Did you HEAR that last night?" And those people lived blocks away!

And the first or second year we did it, it was so scary that Tif wouldn't walk through it to go pee, I had to take her around the house & in the back door, and then back out the back door! Of course, she was only 7 or 8...but it was all her relatives, and she had been watching us getting ready!

Or the year that I told her she could hold a bowl of cooked spaghetti behind a stand and tell kids it was where the candy was...she did that, and everybody stuck their hand in and said 'eeewww'...except one little boy, who took a handful and put it in his bag, and said "Thank you!".

Okay...maybe I'll continue this in the next few days...remember, everybody, tomorrow is

Tue, Dec 5
Tiffany Tuesday & Fred Rode, Tri-Rivers

That's cool, it's now on the website!

BoUnCeS!! LibbY!

Friday...rabbit, rabbit!

More Christmas stuff...




Okay...it's colder & windier than, well, I guess it wouldn't be hell out...but holy crap, it sounds like the shutters are gonna blow off the house! At least it's not as bad as it was a few hours ago...then it was like, 30 or 40 mph with 50+mph gusts!
I've found the very best Jell-O puddings in the refrigerated section...they're the ones that are chocolate pudding layered with something white (kinda looks like spooge...but let's not go there...). I finished a cup of it, and was walking out to the kitchen to throw the cup away & asked Kev, "Do they sell these in like, a 5-gallon size, do ya think?"
The lead morning show guy on WDCM told Tif the other day that she's so good on the radio, she could take one of the tapes from one of the two morning shows she's been on, and go to Columbus, and probably get hired immediately! Said he's jealous, cuz he's been doing this for 25 years, and she's better than him after two 3 hour shows! I actually worked with him and a lot of other dj's at another station when I was in Junior Achievement in 10th grade.
Truman's acting like a total fruit loop lately! He always follows me in the bathroom when I go pee, but lately, I blow kisses when I get up from this chair & say, "Come on, pretty boy, let's go have a pee party!" And he hurries up & gets up from wherever he's lounging and hurries in there! Yes, I swear, he IS a cat!!
Well, I'm done, nothin' else is goin' on...
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!