I got nothin' but tatos.

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. Not much is going on.

I started jogging again last night, and am starting workouts in earnest.

I feel really good, and really focused. Now that I'm feeling good, my ADD was starting to get pretty bad, so my Adderall was increased to 30 mg twice a day, and it's made a world of difference.

I even have a new Hot Spot post up. Lol.

The only other thing that's happened is my kids surprised me with dinner last night--a giant soup cup full of homemade mashed potatoes:

They were delicious.

Spring Break

It's Spring Break here and it appears like Daytona is trying to steal back the college spring break crown.

First of all, this is a lie:

If you think you're going to relax and soak up some sun this week like the girl in the above picture, think again.

This is reality:

Apparently, the beach here has some magical properties that makes college kids insane and stupid. Oh, wait...that's alcohol.

Anyway, our emergency rooms are bursting at the seams. We have an elderly cancer patient that we've tried to get direct -admitted (so he wouldn't have to wait for hours in pain in a packed ER waiting room) for an impending hip fracture for the last FIVE DAYS, and there are no available beds at the hospital. We were just able to get him in yesterday. My heart breaks for that poor guy, because college kids are idiots, doing idiot things like dislocating each other's shoulders and punching each other in the face.

I need to go back to school to be an ER doctor in Daytona Beach, I think. I'd have all the excitement and money I want. And I'd get to lecture college kids on how their stupidity costs more than what their parents are paying for their ER visit.

I remember going to Daytona Beach on Spring Break in 1987, just out of high school and barely in college. I didn't drink back then, and neither did my friends, so we didn't experience any real insanity. We witnessed other kids being dorks and jerks, but we sort of kept ourselves separated. I remember we were right up by the front of the stage watching a newly popular Bruce Hornsby. I was impressed at how well he was able to play the piano in the midst of chaos.

I just found this picture online of the 1987 Bruce Hornsby Spring Break crowd. Maybe I'm in there somewhere.

Being the introverted person I am, I didn't go to Daytona Beach during Spring Break very often. In fact, that Spring of '87 may have been the last time I've been to Daytona Beach during spring break.

However, I would like to go over there this Sunday, when the crowds are disappearing, with my metal detector, to scoop up all the stuff those kids leave behind.

Not much else is going on. I've got a couple doctor appointments this week, then I should be doctor free for at least a few months. Woo hoo!

I'm looking forward to Fennboree, and really, really hoping I can pull everything together and go. I think it'll be a lot more tame than Spring Break in Daytona Beach, although I'm pretty sure there might be a few people who want to punch me in the face. Once they actually meet me, though, I'm also pretty sure they'll change their mind. I'm a nice person. Really. :)

I'm Sorry to About Ten People

This weekend was pretty much terrible. I had huge plans to go to that Robot furniture place in Cocoa Beach with Karen, and soak up some sun, and start jogging again.

However... Although my body fought off Joe's strep and flu, I still ended up with a nasty, sneezy, snotty cold that made my voice even weaker and two glands in my neck swell up like golf balls, and today is no better, because something is now also wrong with my eyes, which feel like they're about to burst from my head like champagne poppers.

Dang, does anyone know a non having to go to the doctor way of making swollen glands go away? This sick stuff is starting to make me mad.

Aidan got home from Arkansas around 2:30 am on Friday night, and had to be at work for 9:00 on Saturday, and she was sick as a dog. They sent her home, she went to urgent care, and her flu and strep swabs both came back positive. Aidan is a very tough girl...except when she's sick. I spent a good portion of the weekend taking care of her.

How quickly she forgets.

Joe is feeling a little better, slowly making his way back to wellness. He's lost ten pounds with this flu. Thank God he's smart and did a ton of extra credit, because he missed all his final exams and still ended up with straight A's.

When my kids are sick, they like to be near Momma. Which means they hang out with me in my room and take over my TV, making me watch reality cooking shows, which are pretty dumb. They were with me all weekend in my room, when all I wanted to do was sleep and blow the eight pounds of snot from my nose in privacy.

So my room, and probably the whole house by now, is incredibly germy. I'm hoping and praying that two kids will clean up their mess in my room and wash my sheets. I've been spraying antibacterial cleaner and Lysol all over the place, but it's probably only a matter of time before my mom gets it, and that will be really terrible.

And the Zuri the Tolerable Cat threw up like three or four times at different places in my house.

Anyway, I just could not keep up with texts and email this weekend, so I'm sorry to those people I might have left hanging. I'll try to catch up this week. I really wanted to write yesterday's post, and I was determined to get it done, but it still took nearly all day to actually get it posted.

I have lots of good ideas for new Hot Spot posts, but the next one may not make it out until Thursday or Friday, after all my doctor's appointments are over.

Oh man, I'm complaining so much I just want to strangle myself. Lol.

Sorry you all have to listen to this. But I try to post reality, and sometimes, life isn't all unicorns and rainbows and giant chocolate chip cookies. Sometimes the cookie crumbles, and you gotta pick up the pieces. But you always get to lick the chocolate off your fingers in the end. :)

In fact, most of the time, life is sorta hard, but during the hard times, you pull yourself together and make the best of it. Realizing that even the most trying times are temporary is a key to contentment and ultimate happiness. I know me and the kids won't be sick forever, so I look forward with a light feeling in my heart knowing that by next weekend, I'll probably be at the beach.

Really, one of my philosophies is as long as I keep taking two or three steps forward, a step backward once in a while won't send me into a tailspin. I just tell myself, "Okay, that was backward. Tomorrow, you're going two steps forward." And I usually do.

Action is also a key to progress in life. My wonky thyroid inhibited my activities for a long time, but my body is also rejoicing that it's gone, and I feel like I can conquer anything I set my mind to. And despite this horrible cold, I'm moving forward with my plans.

I'm going to post more eBay stuff for sale this week. I even did a little painting this weekend, but found that the only paints we have right now (acrylic) don't look really good on canvas, so I've got to save my nickels for some oil paint.

I had an idea for robots that nerd girls might like. My first painting I want to be a totally pink robot standing amidst a junkyard full of blue and red man robot springs and parts. Then I would print in robot font and paste it in the margin: "No one messes with the Pinkbot." And there would be yellow suns of power bursting from her head. Lol, I can't wait to paint that one in oil. 

Anyway, time to pull myself together for work. It'll be a good week. If I tell myself that enough, it will be. :)

5 Things That'll Make Aliens Say WTF and then Kill Us All (Because we're stupid)

Most people don't realize how fortunate we are that we aren't already galactic toast. There can only be four reasons why aliens haven't already vaporized the planet into oblivion:

1. Aliens aren't real.

2. They need something from the trash heap this planet has become.

3. They find our slapstick bumbling hilarious.

4. They pity our pathetic existence.

Fortunately for us, number one is the most likely.

If they were real, we'd be in serious danger, because we're stupid, wasteful, greedy jerks to our host planet. Off the top of my head, I can think of five things that would make aliens say, "WTF?" and then whip out their laser guns and just go to town on the human race (or at least, America).

1. Phone Books. 

Phone books are probably the biggest waste of time, money and paper in modern history. Every so often, some mystery person leaves a new phone book on my porch. Probably in the middle of the night so I won't catch him or her and tell them not to drop that piece of plastic wrapped piece of dog poop on my porch. 

You might say what? Mindy, you can't be serious; aliens would not vaporize us just because we still have phone books. 

Before you give me that SE grin, think about it. 

Every year, an estimated 650,000 TONS of phone books are delivered to over 100 million American homes. 

Out of those, the EPA estimates that only 117,000 tons of those phone books are recycled each year. The Product Stewardship Institute estimates the cost to recycle them is around $60 million a year. Sixty million dollars just to get rid of something nobody even wanted in the first place!

And that's just the financial side of equation. If aliens aren't real sticklers about money and the wasteful spending of it, they might think differently about the environment.

1,474,000 metric tons of CO2-equivalents of greenhouse gas emissions are created every year from producing those terrible "books." And who's the genius that started calling them "books?" There are no whimsical illustrations, no paragraphs, no delightful dialogue between witty protagonists, and no discernible plot, unless you call their very existence a plot hatched by our government to kill the planet as quickly as possible.  

There are other impacts of producing 650,000 tons of paper, like the 44.2 billion liters of water required, and other harder to quantify impacts like the loss of forests and the eutrification of rivers. 

Just so you can have your effing phone book.

So, phone books are stupid and may get us killed by angry aliens. 

2. The American Penny.

A couple years ago, there was a lot of hullabaloney about the US Mint announcing they would cease production of the one cent coin. It made sense--not cents, ha ha--to eliminate production of a coin worth one cent yet cost 1.4 cents to make (as of 2015). And that's just the cost of making them. Transporting the 9,155,000 million pennies made in 2015 to banks and ultimately to somewhere between your couch cushions is extremely expensive. 

She looks way too happy for the approximately 36 cents she just found.

Not only were pennies expensive to mint, but mining the metals required to make them are hazardous to the environment. Pennies are about 3% virgin copper and 97% virgin zinc. Zinc mines are terrible. There's a giant one in Alaska called the Red Dog Mine who made the news a few years back as being the EPA's #1 Polluter. Although it seems like the Red Dog Mine has somewhat cleaned up their act, they're still responsible for lots and lots of pollution so Americans can cuddle with their little circles of worthless nostalgia. 

Knowing aliens, they'll probably vaporize every single penny and make us watch before they melt the flesh off our bodies. 

3. The History Channel.

God forbid aliens land on Earth, check in to the nearest Hilton, and turn on the TV. Flipping through the channels, they might be initially delighted to find a channel called "History." I can imagine their horror while they gape slack jawed at an episode of "Swamp People." I can also imagine them laughing their a$$es off through an episode of "Ancient Aliens." And I can imagine them finally deciding we're really too stupid to live as bumbling rednecks stumble through an episode of "Bigfoot Captured." 

If this channel defines our "history," we are truly doomed to die by alien intervention. I love the way Cracked.com charted out History's offerings.

4. Donald Trump even being considered for President.

That;s deep. 

I won't go into this too much so as not to ruffle political feathers, but trust me, the aliens would kill us for this.

5. Our Utter Mismanagement of Our Planet

It would take about three nanoseconds for a superior alien race to realize we have bungled up life as God intended for us. We are a culture of excess and waste, and we've destroyed or are in the process of destroying things vital to the survival of our planet. Like honeybees, and water, and breathable air. 

Even Stephen Hawking said, "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," 

But there's a difference between those Native Americans and the Americans of today. Those Native Americans were doing things right, and Chris Columbus and his goons were worse than jerks and bullies, they were rapists, thieves and murderers. 

If aliens came to our planet today, they'd pretty much have a just cause to wipe us out. 

So, aliens, if you're reading this, please don't wipe us out before finding those of us who really care. 

Take us with you. 

Art and Stuff

My friend Karen stopped by my work yesterday and showed off some of the art she's been working on. She works with a variety of media, and she likes to recycle material to work her artistry magic mojo.

This first one is a real window, with broken bottles making up the "world." It was her first attempt with her "window glass" art, and I thought it was a neat idea, and pretty good. She has already sold this piece. She said she has lots of windows in her attic, and has invited me to do one of my own. I already have an idea of what I want to do. It's exciting...

I don't know why the reflection is sort of skewy (top left), but in reality, the glass pane is crystal clear, and the glass is no longer glass, but covered in a clear epoxy that makes it nearly shatterproof. You would never know by looking at it, though.

This next piece is entered into an art contest in Miami. While visiting a thrift shop, she found the owner getting ready to toss four mannequins into the garbage. Karen, always thinking about possibilities, rescued them and made them into "peekaboo" art. If you look closely, you can see the peekaboo in the following photograph. She aptly calls this "No Returns." LOL!

I'm impressed with her creativity to take what seems like trash and make it into a treasure for someone else to enjoy, and I'm looking forward to her helping me get started with some art of my own.

There's a new Hot Spot post up, by the way. :)

Happy Thursday...it's going to be a busy one for me!

Powerful Mojo and Really Terrible Art

Well, I took Joe to the doctor yesterday, where they did a swab for strep and a swab for the flu, and the flu came back positive. Because of his lingering fever and general feeling of being trampled by a runaway elephant, the doctor doesn't want him going back to school until after school break.

And my body, because of some powerful magic in me, known as the "flu shot," has prevented me from coming down with a full blown case of the flu. I feel much better than I did Monday.

I need to get some more stuff on eBay so I can go to Fennboree, and do other important stuff, like buy groceries. My next paycheck is going to really suck, because I'm trying to skimp on using my personal/sick time just in case they don't come through with my "Employee of the Year" thing.

I got a message from my friend Karen on Facebook last night about going to a cool store I didn't even know existed. And they're going to offer DOOR PRIZES.

Rockets and Robots. If I were to win a door prize, I might, like Chris Yates if he knew where the treasure was, "take off all my clothes and run around yelling assinine things." And then I'd probably sell whatever I won on eBay. Lol.

Heck, if robots painted like the one in the above flyer can sell, I can paint those. Maybe I should start painting nerd things and selling them. That's not a half bad idea. Whoa, I just Googled "robot painting" and found one I realllllyyy like. No, make that LOVE:

Orrrrrrr...what if I created a new fad, where I painted really terrible art, art so terrible that it's hilarious, and sold it as "Really Terrible Art to Brighten Your Day?" I think I've got a few pieces in my garage to start with. As I was going through a box of china the other day, I saw one and just immediately started laughing. Hold on...I've got to go get it and show you.

Before I reveal them to you, I have to explain something. In my early 20's, I decided I wanted to try to paint. I took zero lessons, and since there was no Internet, I  knew absolutely nothing about art or painting. It was a trial and error, just for fun kind of thing. I painted two really awful pieces.

However, all my life, I've been a really good "copier." I could look at a picture, and draw it freehand really easily, and so well some people thought I traced it. But I've never been a "tracer." I could just look at it and reproduce it pretty quickly. Like this quick and simple sketch of Winnie the Pooh:

Okay, now for the hilariously bad art. I am really putting myself out there with this, so those of you who think I'm arrogant and full of myself and only put forward my best foot, think again. I can trip over both feet pretty well. I'm an open book, full of imagination, light, fun, and really terrible art. I don't mind laughing at myself once in a while. As long as my good aspects outweigh the negative, I'm content.

So here we go, First, I'll show you the one that's not quite as hilariously terrible as the second. This is my concept of a princess surveying her kingdom. I think at the time I might of been thinking she was standing in that field waiting for her prince to arrive. Yes, I'm very much aware that a five year old can paint circles around me. No need to blast me in emails or comments, unless it makes you somehow feel better.

And then...there's this one. I think I started it as one thing, but then messed up, so I decided to add my husband (my first husband, Aidan's dad)...sleeping. Or maybe he's dead? Lol...I have no idea. And no, I wasn't under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

LOLOLOLOL!!! He's a disembodied head! Maybe that was an eerie foreshadowing symbolic of cutting him out of my life.

And yes, those are perfectly good and expensive oil paints I wasted. I sorta like the flowers, though.

Well, I hope this post has assured everyone that no matter what happens in my life, I'll never be a famous and/or talented painter. But, I really think maybe I'll try the folk art painting of robots and nerd stuff. Or other terrible art. Our society may just be messed up enough to go for it.

It's Out!

Well, the little alien body part that has been plaguing me for 21 years is out and gone. I forgot to ask the doctor to save a little bit in a jar. Rats.

I woke up in the recovery room with a 102.7 and rising fever, so they stuck ice packs everywhere--under my arms. my knees, my head, my eyes, my neck and alongside the side of my body. Honestly, I couldn't feel either one--I didn't feel hot and I didn't feel cold. It was a little baffling to me, but that's about all I remember. Lol.

Here's a pic of me heading into the operating room...

Yesterday, I stayed pretty constantly on the heavy side of loopy because I HURT. My voice is very weak, and I can only talk (more like whisper) for short periods of time because my voice either fades out or I need to breathe, and it's sort of hard to breathe. I'm on 2 liters of oxygen, so that helps. Mostly the back of my neck hurts where he was poking around in there. And the front of my neck, and my head and my eyes. I can't tolerate the light very well.

There is anesthesia crud in my lungs that I want to cough up, but coughing hurts too much. So I'll probably get pneumonia. Lol...I hope not.

I have drains in my neck which are constantly leaking blood into a little collection ball.

I have these things on my legs that inflate and deflate regularly to prevent blood clots. I like those things, but they kept me confined to the bed. After using the bedpan about 5 times yesterday, they taught me how to disconnect the wiring so I could walk to the bathroom myself. The first time I stood up, I almost went down, but I'm a Viking Ninja and even anesthesia overload can't knock me down. Lol.

I just got my morning dilaudid, so I'll be loopy and almost pain free in a minute. Whoohoo!

And breakfast is coming...some kind of liquid stuff I'm assuming because I can barely swallow water without setting my neck on fire. Lol.

Oh yeah, and the most wonderful thing is I have a wonderful, sweet companion with me, who never once left my side since I got here. We even shared the little twin bed with a mattress full of rocks and spiders and attempted to sleep.

Okay, I'm really sleepy and I need to shut my eyes awhile. Peace, y'all...