So F and the bf left about 30 minutes ago. She's to call when she gets home - it's about an hour and 15 minute drive. They are in separate vehicles. Don't care for her driving by herself at night like that but she's all grown up. Yeah.

Had a good day. The tree is decorated and looks very nice. Some of the more serious ornaments didn't get used so it's kind of a light-hearted tree this year.

We listened to some Brian Setzer Christmas music and ate beef stew. I sent some home with F also. (The beef was very tender and good; I marinated it for an hour before browning it and starting it stewing.) And F brought a card game called "Apples to Apples", which the four of us played. It was a lot of fun.

It's raining, and the temperature is finally dropping just a bit. Maybe you want sleeves when you go outside, although if you are active at all you won't want them.

Our town had its Christmas parade last night. I brought a lawn chair to work on Wednesday, and Kristina put it out on Thursday morning with her family's chairs on a sidewalk lining the parade route. This town is so backward that you can actually do that, and your chairs will be sitting there waiting for you when you leave work and go to watch the parade. Places like Memphis are way too sophisticated for that - anything that isn't nailed down disappears before you can turn around.

It was a very pleasant evening for parade-watching. Floats, marching bands, etc. Next to me sat a dad with his little girl on his lap. He'd bought her a gun that shoots bubbles (lots of vendors with shiny schlock before the parade; I had some cotton candy) and she shot bubbles at everybody who walked by. Just calmly hosed them like she was Al Capone with a machine gun. Hilarious.

Tomorrow F is supposed to come over, maybe with the bf, and decorate the tree we've had up for a week. She doesn't think she will attempt to have one at her apartment, because her young cats are still in their destructive stage. We'll have beef stew, which I'll need to start in the AM, and I'll serve it on the Christmas china that I've had since before she was born. This will be nice, b/c it's been a really stressful week at work - I asked R on Wednesday to get me some rum so I could have a rum-and-coke - I was so tense I thought I would fly into bits. I think things are going to be OK now - I think. But we'll have a nice weekend, regardless.

So what do we think about the new breast cancer screening guidelines?

I've had a few false positives. In 2005, when we were in Memphis, I had to get a diagnostic mammogram b/c the screen appeared to show "something" in both breasts. The report from the diagnostic mammogram + ultrasound was that there were "somethings" but that they were not cancer.

(BTW, there's normally a lot of stuff in there, so they do have to be read by experienced radiologists. And the tech told me that the reason women don't get mammograms before 40 is that the tissue typically isn't fatty enough to get a good picture before then. She said that mine hadn't turned to fat yet, but give them time, ha ha.)

The next year the screen was positive again, but this time when I went for the diagnostic, the radiologist said that she didn't see the need; she saw the stuff but it hadn't changed in the years I'd been having mammograms.

After we moved to Florida I delayed getting a mammogram, which was stupid given my mom's history of breast cancer, b/c I didn't want to deal with that again. I did have a screen last month, and of course, had to follow up with more views. Got the films from Memphis to compare but had to do it anyway. Once again, a clear report.

It's a pain in the butt (well, not the butt,) to have to repeat these things, but a screen needs to err on the false-positive side if it's to do any good at all. If the concern is that women are made anxious when they have a positive screen, then that concern is easily addressed if they are told at the time of the screening mammogram that X% have to get a second look, most of these don't turn up anything, so if it happens to be you, don't freak out. If the concern is that women are being irradiated and the data show that lives aren't being saved, that's probably a valid argument. If the concern is that it would save money to not do the mammograms, that ticks me off. And no one need argue with me that delaying mammograms until age 50 is only a guideline - it's a guideline today, a mandate tomorrow.

They don't start pap smears in the UK until age 25. Here, it's 21 or at onset of sexual activity, whichever is earlier. So is it that pap smears don't save the lives of young women under 25, or is it that the NHS can't afford to spend the money? Hello, government-run healthcare.

I went to Kissimmee yesterday to visit F.

She had a cold last week. It's better now, but her supervisor is home with her kid, who has swine flu. So I brought my Dutch oven with me, and F and I went to the grocery store and bought some chicken, vegetables that she picked out, and a jar of hot salsa. We made a big pot of soup in her kitchen and I left the soup in her fridge, in single-serving tubs that she or her roommate can heat in the microwave.

She laughed when I told her what my plan was for the day - "did my distress signal reach the mothership?" Yes, it did, I told her.

De-boning the chicken after it had cooked turned out to be a little bit too gross for Miss F. I think I'm going to tell her she can try canned chicken in her next batch. It won't taste the same but the tradeoff might be worth it. I can't say that's my favorite part of the soup-making procedure, either. My favorite thing about making soup is that I can put into it whatever I feel like at that time. Every batch is different.

I've ordered a Dutch oven and a set of cooking knives for her, from Amazon (I heart Amazon!), and when her soup is eaten up I think we'll do a pot of beef stew. Probably make some cornbread to go with.

Another weekend, another dollar.

Yesterday we went to Kissimmee for various reasons, one of which was for me and F to practice driving to the airport in Orlando b/c her visiting Memphis friend goes back Tuesday. That didn't go real well. I will be taking off work Tuesday to pick her friend up and take her to the airport. To make a long story short, due apparently to amblyopia that didn't get totally resolved despite our best efforts, F can't see well out of her left eye and therefore can't see cars coming up alongside her in order to merge into traffic and so forth. We discovered this first in the midst of trying to make that drive, then with her sitting in the parked car and me walking around it - at the crucial spot I could see her face but she couldn't see me. She's been knowing that she wasn't using that eye a lot of the time but we didn't realize that her vision was so negatively affected. So this is kind of a drag. It does make her driving phobia more understandable, of course. F will be working with her sideview mirror to take up the slack, but in the meantime she will have to not drive on the expressway.

And then she's got some other stuff going on too, and is fairly stressed; so her friends having eaten pizza during our driving-to-the-airport ordeal, R and I took her to dinner at Abuelo's. In addition to her delicious chicken fajita salad, F had the first margarita of her life. She ended that meal very relaxed and perhaps a bit giggly, so that was a plus.

Had a lazy day today. R and I ate popcorn and watched "Supernova".

I guess I will duck in here to say that things appear to be straightening out. F has her car ... she has driven it to work and back by herself, without incident. We continue to run across things she needs to have, so not one but two trips this weekend; R went by himself today. You'd think we'd have this down pat after moving her to school and back so many times. Well, today I made up a care package for her and L too, so not just things we didn't think to pack or take.

I made a pot of soup today, and cooked enough chicken for sandwiches as well. You know how you slice the chicken after it's chilled and make a sandwich on whole wheat bread, with black pepper and just a bit of mayo, and maybe a lettuce leaf. I've been thinking about sandwiches like that and I think that will be some good lunches to take to work next week, with baby carrots, etc. Okay, enough with the mundane.

We are at the 40th anniversary of the moon shot. I remember 40 years ago tomorrow. I was eight years old, running little trucks around in our gravel driveway, when my mother made me come inside and watch Neil Armstrong's "one small step for [a] man" on TV. "This is history," she said. I stood on one foot, as it were, waiting for it to be over so I could go back out to my trucks.

Now with the space shuttle program nearing its end, plans are being made to go back to the moon as a preliminary step to going to Mars. I want them to get this done while I am still alive to see it. I would be part of the Mars mission, if they would have me, even if I knew I would not be coming back. We are going to have to get off of this planet. We're too vulnerable here - another such asteroid as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and there we'd be.

The next step - well, maybe next after some of Jupiter's moons - will be a generational ship that will go beyond the Solar System. I will not live to see that. But it's been thought about, dreamed about, written about, a thousand times. I have to believe it will happen.

We'll take human nature with us, of course, with all of its strengths and terrible flaws. God knows what fashions people will be wearing - now that's a fun one for the SF writers and lots of them have had ideas. Will the various ethnic groups have intermingled by then so that our eyes and skin and hair will all look alike? Racism and sexism and all the other isms- will they still be talked about and fought about? How much of our brain functions will we have outsourced to technology by then - I'm kind of surprised every now and then to see how much I already have. What music and what literature will be considered to be classics? And what will language be like?

Without something cool and totally theoretical like hyperspace or warp drive, those hypothetical generational-ship people will be permanently cut off from Earth. The closest star is 4 light-years away, so if they end up somehow setting up a colony there, everyone who could possibly remember them will be dead, and their children, and their children's children, and so forth. And communications will take 4 years to go each way. That sounds like an impossible thing to ask humans to undertake ... until you think about explorers and pioneers and such. A young family could leave home in a covered wagon, travel a couple hundred miles, and never see their extended family again, ever. Or travel further than that with not much idea of what they would experience and having to make it up as they went along, and live or die by their strength and their wit. Of course, one can think back to the Mongols who crossed the Bering Strait and came into this continent and even South America thousands of years ago, and moved all through it and made it their home despite the very different climate and geographical regions and plant and animal life. So we've got it in us to do it.

And then, think how determined the life force, or whatever you want to call it, is, here on Earth. There are organisms that find a way to exist and even thrive in just about every conceivable environmental niche we have here. I can't believe that this happened only once and that we're it, in the universe. I want to know where everybody is.

Another happy late night driving through the wilds of Central Florida.

I left out a lot of stuff that we have gone through trying to get that car for F. We nailed down a 4.99% interest rate but that obviously was not done at the dealership, so there's been a lot of phone calls and emails and faxing - you'd think no one had ever arranged their own financing before. Friday we thought it was taken care of, but no. R had left me and F there b/c he had to get to work. Somebody swears she faxed something - somebody else swears he didn't get it - no, we couldn't take the car yet. The salesperson who had sold us the car was kind enough to drive us the hour it took to get home - she lives on the way and was coming into town anyway. She was fairly mortified that we weren't able to drive away but is new at the dealership and couldn't budge them. On the way we stopped at her place and picked up her spouse, an electrical engineer, and he and I had a happy convo about science and numbers all the rest of the way to my house, so it wasn't all bad.

But we thought we'd get the paperwork squared away today, and after a bunch of back-and-forth I think everybody just got worn down and said, come get the damn car, we'll work it out.

So F and I did. I left work at 4:30 or so and drove the 1.25 hours back to her apt and picked her up. We went to the dealership and signed the rest of the papers we had to sign, and then she followed me back to her apartment. Let me interject that F had a terrific wreck about four years ago. Totalled the car. Even though she walked away, it was somewhat traumatizing for her. She could drive a few blocks at a time after that, in little or no traffic, but it was always a heart-pounding experience for her, and she's only done that about five times in the last four years. So for her to follow me home in Kissimmee, driving this new-to-her car, in multilane traffic and unfamiliar streets, took a great deal of courage. F is one tough cookie.

We got back to the apartment, and had something to eat, and she got hold of herself, and then I was going to sit in the passenger seat while she drove the 35-minute drive she will have to her workplace and back. Then I was going to follow her to work, and then come home myself.

So we got a short distance away from her apartment ... and the car died. Shut down. In traffic. F sat there and quietly freaked.

"Stop the car," I said, "and turn it off." We happened to be in the right lane, at a traffic light that quickly turned red, which gave her a little cover to get hold of herself.

There was a BP station on the corner, so I told her that when the light turned green she was to turn the car back on, and pull into that gas station.

"I can't," she said.

"Yes, you can," I said.

She was seriously shaken up. It would have been so easy for me to go around and get in the driver's side and take over, but no can do.

"Nothing has happened," I told her. "We're all right. You can do this."

The light turned green, she turned the car back on, pulled into the BP station, and parked it. And I called the dealership, they sent a tow truck, F and I were dropped back off at her apartment, and I took her to work. L will pick her up in the morning. And tomorrow I'll start calling AGAIN to try to figure out next steps.

Sick of this. But as I told F, this kind of thing happens, and sometimes the only way past it is through it.

I'm about to empty-nest again. F and L have signed a lease on an apartment in Kissimmee. It looks like a nice place. The apartment is cheerful and attractive and has about 3 times as much room as they had in the dorm. We also located a car that F likes and will do a bit of research before we (probably) buy it tomorrow. Saturday we'll probably move the girls' things. And that will be that.

Checked out a Curves today.

(I was careful about my shoulder, which does seem to be responding nicely to ultrasound treatment.)

I had a 30-min workout and I'll have another on Friday and then I'll decide if I want to join. Probably will. It's not so much for weight loss but rather for muscle tone - we middle-aged women have to watch it or we lose muscle mass, and bone mass too. It was actually kind of a fun workout, and the location is right on my way home.

Next week I'll be in Norfolk from Sunday through Thursday.

Hm, what else ... F's on night shift by herself now, which is kind of quick IMO. She's not supposed to be, but the other person on that shift hasn't been showing up. There are a lot of other employees there at night and apparently they're being kind to her - she feels that she is being too slow and not getting enough done, but they know she's new. She's doing lab work and also taking samples out in the plant. When she gets around to updating her resume I think she'll be shocked at all the stuff she can now put on there.

Had a nice weekend.

Yesterday the girls and I went to the mall. L needed some job interview clothes and we had a wonderful time shopping. She picked up some nice stuff, on sale of course. (I suspect a lot of the "on sale" and "clearance" stuff was always meant to sell at the reduced price. So you have to make sure you really are getting a deal.) F got some wonderfully nerdy t-shirts at Hot Topic, including a yellow one with a Star Trek emblem, which she wore today. Shoes, etc. We ate at the food court and had a nice girls' day out.

Today it rained and rained. We made chocolate chip cookies and ate them, I made stir fry for supper (beef, celery, bell pepper, carrot, onion, mushroom, snap peas, soy sauce; angel-hair pasta; orange Creme Saver yogurt for dessert) and then we watched "2001 A Space Odyssey".

Tomorrow, back to WORK.

...My shoulder is kicking up again, for some reason. Range of motion is still OK but it is aching a lot, hurting suddenly when I reach for things like light switches, and that is a horrifyingly familiar feeling. I don't want to go back through all of that. I mention it b/c I need to keep track of this, I guess, so I'll add that I started the daily ultrasound treatment back up day before yesterday. Well, we'll hope for the best.

Been a few days since I posted.

The girls and I went to Coquina Beach last weekend. It's a little south of Bradenton. Different from Clearwater - different sea, different sand, different people. The ocean was several beautiful shades of green. F made a little sand sculpture of a sleeping cat, and suddenly was surrounded by three or four tiny girls "helping" her with it.

I'd like to go to either Clearwater or maybe Cocoa this weekend, but we've entered the rainy season (as in it rains EVERY DAY) so we'll have to see.

... And F is weighing ... a job offer. Yes. She got a call from a headhunter before she even graduated, and had an interview just about as quick as we could get back here. They were really looking for someone with experience, so the fact that she got an offer must mean she blew their socks off. The hours aren't ideal and the pay, while not abysmal, isn't astronomical either. But it's in her field, it's NOT A MOM-AND-POP, and she'd get some specific experience (GMP, HACCP) that would be really good for her resume. Whether she accepts or not is her decision. I'll support her either way. It's still cool that now, with the job market as it is, she got this offer.

OK, we got back last night, and as Mrs. Who says, it is a treat to have our daughter back home.

We rented a Toyota Tundra with unlimited miles (good thing, b/c we ended up putting 1700 miles on that sucker). It handles nicely and was very comfortable, but since we weren't used to it, parking was just a bit stressful. But it was fine, we didn't dent it or anybody else's vehicle or tear up any trees or anything.

We drove up through Florida and into Georgia on Hwy 75, took 82 through Georgia and Alabama to Birmingham, then 78 into Mississippi. Apparently we blew through Jasper several hours before a tornado struck and did some damage. That is a strange feeling.

Nice visit with my parents on Wednesday. Thursday we drove up to Memphis and visited R's folks. Friday we drove to Columbus to see F for the first time after her finals and all. R started looking at her stuff and thinking how to pack it all in that truck. (Roommate came back with us too, but she only has clothes and such - if she and F find jobs and get an apartment together as planned, her parents will bring the rest of her things.)

We went to the Star Trek movie (and I have a funny story to tell here) and then I visited with my parents, who'd come down to Columbus to spend the night so they'd be there for the Magnolia Chain at 8:00. R and F went back to the dorm and spent quite some time studying her things with tape measure and wrinkled brow, figuring out exactly how things were going to fit together in the truck bed.

We spent the night in the motel and then arrived at campus the next morning for the Mag Chain. I'll probably have some pictures and maybe some short video clips to put up. Graduation was next. My parents were there, and my sister and her husband and two boys, and my SIL with her husband and their four kids, and my other SIL. So F had a good turnout of supportive family to see her graduate with honors, which was nice. Then F's roommate and I went for takeout lunch while F and R started putting her stuff in the truck.

It took 2.5 hours and was a work of genius. If you saw what all had to go, or saw it after it came out, you would have said there was no way in hell all that stuff could travel in that truck. But it did, and R lashed a tarp over it and there we were. F and her roommie went on to the motel and got their room and lay down for a bit.

The Memphis folks had to leave right after the ceremony. R and I visited with my folks a little longer and then they had to go too, but my sister's family and the four of us went to the Little Dooey and had dinner, and a fun time laughing and visiting before they had to leave too.

Then back to the motel for an early bedtime, but of course another tremendous storm system came through with lots of rain and scary wind, and battered heck out of that truck with all of F's stuff in it. Her daddy stood at the window and fretted, but there was nothing to be done - he'd put the tarp on with sufficient care or not, and that was it. It turned out that the tarp held and her stuff did not get blown around or wet at all.

We got started later than I wanted on Sunday but that was kind of inevitable. R and I were in the truck, and F and her roommate L in L's car. We decided to go back by a different route because there were still storm chances all through that area. We took 45 down to Mobile, then 10 across that bit of Alabama and then the Florida panhandle until it ran across 75, then 75 south to home. At some point still on 10 the girls got sleepy, so F got in the truck with R and I drove L's car the rest of the way. Got in late last night. The cats were mad but they've gotten over it.

Offloaded the truck this morning and took it back to the rental place. R tried to clean the lovebugs off of it but it re-acquired mashed bugs between home and there anyway. Then we tried to watch the shuttle launch but clouds, alas. Now we've got some things to do and I have to try to put myself in mind for work tomorrow.

Funny Star Trek movie story: F changed into the vintage Star Trek t-shirt her dad had bought as a teenager when the original series was airing. We didn't see anybody in Spock ears or anything for that particular showing - I think the trekkies must have picked out a different one to go to. Anyway, she sat between her dad and me. There were about 20 minutes of tedious and repetitive commercials and previews before the movie (and after the scheduled start time) and after a while R and I started complaining audibly. I asked F if we were embarrassing her.

"I'm at a Star Trek movie with my parents," she said. "I can't be embarrassed."

I laughed about that through the entire movie - which was very good, by the way. We'll probably see it again, and take L this time.

So that was that. Glad to get the kid through school, glad to be home with the girls and all their stuff intact, ready for the next thing.

Happy 22nd, F!



and happy 21st to Bunny. I guess she can drink now ... she most likely needs it.

So.

Yesterday I got a call from F with some really great news. She had to take an exit exam which would determine whether she gets to graduate with her B.S. in May. We didn't have those in my day, and I think it's kind of horrifying that you can invest 4 years of your life, not to mention tuition and so forth, to get that degree, and be prevented from getting it by not doing well enough on a single test that you take in your last semester. OTOH, having met people with science degrees who were pretty horrifying in the lab, I understand what the school is trying to do. They're trying to fix it so that if you have a diploma saying that you have a B.S. from that school, you have at least a minimal knowledge base. The test she had is given to senior Biology majors at various schools and is nationally normed. She had to score at the 20th percentile at least, meaning that they don't want anyone who would be in the bottom 5th nationwide to have that degree.

She scored at the 70th.

Way to go, F! I am so proud of my girl.

Chip off the old block, if I do say so.

*sigh*

Okay. So.

I had to work both Sat and Sun last weekend b/c my 1/2 tech is having unspecified health issues. So I had no time to prepare, really, for our trip to Memphis last week. We went on Tuesday and came back on Thursday. My family and R's family took care of our daughter's transportation to Memphis. (Her professors have been very kind about her missing school, and due to her grief, not expecting her to do her presentations and tests even when she was there. This is what you get when you always attend class, are always prepared, participate in discussions, have your assignments ready on time or early, and are generally pleasant and respectful.)

Our experience in Memphis was about what you'd expect when the matriarch has gone.

While in Memphis, we learned that F's roommate was able, last-minute, to get tickets to come here to Florida for spring break ... to arrive Friday. We knew this was a possibility, and we're pleased to have her b/c we like her, but there was NO preparation b/c we got in Thursday evening and I had to work on Friday. So she had to go into the closet to find sheets to even put on her bed. But she's cool. F flew in Friday as well. Had I had a moment to think I could have arranged all this better, but I didn't and that's that. F missed her flight connection in Atlanta and that was kind of traumatic on top of everything else that's happened but she managed to get on another flight and we all ended up where we were supposed to be.

So we've got the two girls here. Yesterday we grilled hamburgers on the patio, went downtown to Lake Morton to look at the birds and all, and spent a little time at an outdoor mall before coming home so R could do his evening shift. This afternoon we're going to try to get to Jetty Park on Cape Canaveral in time to see the shuttle go up. We can see it from here but we'll get a much better view.

F found a bag last weekend when she was shopping with her suitemate and she HAD to buy it because, she said, it looked like me! Here's the pic she sent before she popped it in the mail.



Isn't it cute? It came today (along with some tootsie rolls, Hello Kitty lip gloss, and peel-and-press tattoos) and it is the bees' knees. All of my bags to date have been boring things that got the job done. I'm going to enjoy carrying this one.

The house is very quiet without the running commentary. If anyone had told me I would miss that INCESSANT MEOWING I'd have thought they'd lost their minds.

Gold, Brother of Silver







1991 - 2009

Good night, sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

CAVE FELEM

New Years Eve housecleaning

The princess is home for winter break. I picked her up at the airport in Orlando this PM and she is now ensconced on the couch, reading and eating popcorn, with the cats studying her.

I am proud of my girl. F has a well-developed sense of self-preservation, and while this has saved R and me many anxious moments that other parents have to go through, it is inconvenient for her at times when it manifests as a little extra apprehension before a new experience. When she and I flew to Florida last year to find a place to live, she became white-faced and had to sit down in the airport in Memphis. Maybe a bit of a panic attack? She didn't say anything about it but just gritted her teeth and rode it out. Today she flew by herself from her college town in Mississippi, changed planes in Atlanta (a very large, busy airport) and arrived at Orlando cool, calm and collected.

Many of F's friends in Memphis stayed there to go to school, some moving to dorms and some continuing to live at home. I told her starting in middle school that she would have to go away to college. She is such a homebody and her dad and I are happy to have her around, and it would have been very easy to shelter her too much, solve problems for her that she should be able to solve, and so forth. Her first semester at school, a 3-hour drive away from Memphis, wasn't the easiest thing in the world but she got through it. Last year and this year she volunteered for the welcome week team, to help incoming freshmen get situated and figure out how to live apart from mommy and daddy.

At 21 you're supposed to be all grown up. It's not that at 21 you know everything and won't make mistakes. It's that you have the tools and also the self-confidence to take responsibility for yourself. Of course we're not going to shove her out in the cold the minute she graduates next May. But I think she has what it takes to make her way in the world.