Hi One or All (hope I have more than one Blogging Baby reading this :---),

Okay, so tonight I have more intricacies to reveal about five-year-old Laura and her Devil dig. She recalls,

I also envisioned the Devil to look exactly like Mr. Moose on Captain Kangaroo.

Can't you just so easily imagine Mr. Moose's head popping up during the alley excavation? I can see his somewhat bewildered friendly face looking around, all interested in the new locale, his eyes squinting in the bright Florida sunlight, gray moss hanging from his antlers, a big toothy grin. Then he would spot my sister, spit out a ping pong ball or two and squeak very kindly, in his thin, light, airy voice, Hello little girl, what is your name? To me, Mr. Moose was a most happy, affable soul. Wonder why she associated the wretched Devil with the lovely Mr. Moose, of all people. I'll have to ask.

Then Laura goes on to confess her true purpose for all her hard labor,

Oh, and I was digging for the Devil because I had very vivid pictures in my mind that when he popped his head out of the hole that I was digging, I would hit him on the head with the shovel (poor, dear Mr. Moose, KEM says sorrowfully). I would be on the front page of the St. Pete Times and basically the HERO of the world. That was my motivation.

WELL! Can anyone argue with that?? Probably the neighbor man could. I wonder if she had her shovel in hand when she posed the question of his life, Are you the Devil?, ready to bop him over the head and rid the world of all evil should he answer in the affirmative. I think what he did was turn stone-faced and keel over. And I can't fathom why my sister singled out this particular man. Perhaps his wide perpetual smile was a dead ringer for Mr. Moose's? Maybe his hearty laugh was just a mite boisterous? Was it his tallness or his jet black hair? I don't know. I'll have to ask.

Laura was all frustrated today because when she tried to post a comment on the blog, it didn't do right, it didn't post (well, that figures, computer literacy runs ragged in our family, except not with DTD and her cousins, let's get real). She's blaming it on Cream of Wheat. She thinks she will start blaming C of W for everything from now on. Ha, serves Nabisco right, she snorts. That is quite the original alibi, eh? But wait a minute (did you eat Original or Minute C of W?), Cream of Wheat seems such an innocent, wholesome product of the field, but don't be deceived. It is addictive at the very least (read what CDW has to say below), and brain mushifying (original word) at the very most, and most likely all kinds of things in the middle. When one carefully considers the texture of C of W, one can certainly make some sort of reasonable connection that if you consume enough of it, which we have established my sister most certainly did, in excessive amounts, it will likely result in brain damage. Your brain will gradually morph into a ball of congealed C of W. My brother probably did call her C of W Brain, too. (This is all in jest, lest anyone be troubled.

So, CDW pipes up with the following: KEM Dearest, I grew up on Cream of Wheat, too . . . and my Grandpa A. ate it forever when he found out he had an ulcer. In fact, that's all he ate until he remarried right before I was born. My Grandma A. died in the 50's, and he married my step-grandma, Isalone, (how does that name grab you?) . . . anyway, she was responsible for weaning him off the good ol' Cream of Wheat and feeding him good food . . . vegetables included. :)

I'll tell you how that grabs me, I'm happy that Isalone wasn't alone anymore. And also, more telling, especially since I don't want Nabisco to sue me or anything, I'm thoroughly elated we can now deduce that C of W is the proud possessor of at least one virtue, Ulcer Calmer. Of course, Isalone brought down C of W sales by depriving in TOE-TAL her poor new husband his three-meals-a-day-and-snacks-in-between of C of W, so I'm in deep water any which way you slice your congealed C of W. But I report truth (exaggerated), and truth (varnished) alone, so Nabisco will just have to live with it. Wonder if Isalone (just had to get this interesting name on paper one more time, never heard of it, have you?) ever allowed Grandpa A. another tiny taste of C of W his whole live-life long? Wonder if Grandpa ever had to sneak some . . . maybe in the garage? It occurs to me that my sister and CDW'S Grandpa are surely related somehow. That would be spectacular because then CDW and I would be related, and I could come and visit her like all her other relatives are allowed to do, and we could lounge around watching old movies and eating multiple bowls of piping hot C of W drowning in half-n-half and brown sugar.

Do you want to know something? Since I've started blogging, I've entirely lost track of lesser things . . . things like how many nights in a row I've worn my pajamas, or if I ever even go to bed or how many times we've used our bath towels. Or how many times I've eaten today, or showered (that would go along with towel usage) . . . whatever.

STRONGLY disliking giving the Devil so much publicity,

KEM

Hello. I'm going to stun you by writing a short blog tonight. WHY? I IS POOPED! I is so pooped that this is what happened last night. It's unbelievable, but true anyway. When I was talking about my sister digging for the Devil and she asked the neighbor, Are you the Devil?, 'cause she needed to know so she could quit digging, 'cause if he were the Devil, then she was digging "pointlessly"? 'Member that? Well, I really wanted to say she was digging IN VAIN, you know, to no avail, without effect and so on. But when I looked up that "V" word in Webster, V-E-I-N talked about tubes and lines and layers for blood and leaves and rocks, and other weird definitions, like how you act. So THAT, I told myself, was certainly not the correct spelling. Therefore, I looked up V-A-N-E, and that was all about weather and scientific gobbledy-gook. GONG. Well, I thought I was going C-A-R-A-Z-Y. I flipped between those two spellings millions of times and each time I stared at the definitions . . . nothing had altered . . . surprisingly. I was COUNTING on the CORRECT definition to mysteriously insert itself in-between one of my flips. But it didn't. SO FRUSTRATING and MIND-NUMBING. So I changed the word to "pointlessly," even though that word was a shabby substitute for conveying my point, ha, and I didn't even bother to look it up I was so put out. Also, I was on my last brain cell by then and needed to save it for pushing PUBLISH POST. But still, I knew that the "V" word used to mean what I still needed it to mean, even it Webster didn't say so, and that it would fit what I was trying to express about the futility of digging for the Devil when he was standing directly before you. And also that Webster was pretty dumb and uncooperative.

So today I "edited" the blog. My mother is smart and very good with words. I called her and said, How do you spell the word, like someone is doing something to no avail, like digging for the Devil in the alley? V-A-I-N, she says. Can you even believe that VAIN completely, COMPLETELY, eluded me last night? SAD. And THAT, my friends, is why I tell you I am too pooped to write much more tonight. Not to mention the English language must be nuts! Three different and distinct spellings of "v, long a, n." There are only a couple of pages of "V" words in the dictionary, and they're all wasted on "v, long a, n." SHEESH!

So, I will leave you with my sister's response to my Happy Birthday Laura blog. First she comments on her pure lack of intelligence for, yea, so many long days. Don't believe her! She is a brilliant tutor to dyslexic children, with specialized training and everything. She is very ept, which is the opposite of inept, but Webster doesn't seem to want to mention that either -- ept, that is. Webster is not my friend anymore. No more tea parties! Anyway, she says, and I quote,

I am living proof that Cream of Wheat doesn't stimulate brain cell growth.

Nonsense. Cream of Wheat should replace the little man on the front of the box with Laura's little girl angelic face. I have the image in mind, her one year old baby portrait. She looks old and wise in it. Think of the sales increase for Nabisco. Their new sales slogan could be,

LIVE ON CREAM OF WHEAT AND YOU, TOO, WILL NEVER HAVE TO TOUCH A
HORRID VEGETABLE AGAIN

Well, that's a little on the long side for a slogan, but, hey, what did you expect from me?? OH MY WORD! I just Googled (I LOOOVE Google) Nabisco's Cream of Wheat. I wanted to verify my memory of the C of W logo and, sure enough, there is the wide-smiling chef of my childhood holding the delicious steaming bowl of C of W. Hmmm. It WOULD be hard to do away with him, he's an American institution no doubt, like Aunt Jemimah and Betty Crocker. But this is what snagged my attention. Nabisco bought out Cream of Wheat in 1962, the very year my sister was born. Oh, rats, now you know how old I am. But that's okay, I sacrifice my VANITY for the sake of literary integrity. It's QUITE essential that I relay the marvelous coincidence that C of W became more widely distributed in the year of her birth, and in fact, is responsible for her love affair with it.

Short-Winded KEM

Welcome, and remember the other night when I said I was going to blog something sweet and delicate, to counteract the unrefined subjects of late? Well, tonight is the night. It's my sister's birthday, and she is a VERY sweet and delicate item. In just a sec I'm going to tell you some fun things about her, but first I have a special surprise.

I have a MARVELOUS friend, don't you just completely cherish your marvelous friends? Aren't they just SOOOO delicious? Her name is CDW. She is the one who is lazy, but is NOT. Listen to me, not her. But right now you HAVE to listen to what she emailed me. When I was talking about the hot pink sticky gooey ball DTD won, then wasted no time plastering it on the ceiling, remember that?, well, that triggered for CDW her very own personal sticky, slimy ceiling story. It tickles me pink, or should that be red??, to share this with you.

KEM Dearest,
I so know what you were talking about with the sticky, slimy things that leave marks. One of Lauren's friends from her freshman year in high school had a "sticky red rat" that he would swing by the tail and then let go...it stuck to my dining room ceiling and then slowly unstuck and splat on the floor...leaving behind an ugly red scar on my ceiling and floor. He quickly cleaned up the floor...but the ceiling... if I hadn't loved BG so much...I would have killed him. That place stayed red for a long time until I eventually covered it up with white paint...maybe a year later. :)

LOVE,
CDW

Well, it is very gratifying indeed to know that I am not the only victim of slime. It just slays me that the red rat ended up on the ceiling, too. What a COMFORT to know that dealing with sticky things and the like is not peculiar to me alone. I mean, sometimes I do say, Woe is me and nobody else. In fact, this is one point of my blog, to blend our humanity together, to soothe, to make us all feel that we are not isolated and pitiful, a single sufferer in a sea of favored human beings who could never possibly have a rat land on their ceiling. While I write MY stories, they're really YOUR stories, too, it's all about LIFE. You just may not have time to write/blog your stories (although think about it, it's fun!), so you can read mine instead, if you want to, and go, PRECISELY!, just like CDW did. You can plug in different names and unique twists, and we're all on the same ceiling, aren't we? THANKS, CDW! And this proves that CDW is not lazy, but I am. Her ceiling had the red spot for merely one year, while mine remained pink for no less than seven years. Case closed.

Laura Linn is my sister. I, Kathy Linn, am her sister (whoa, that was BRILLIANT!). See how both our middle names are Linn? Wasn't my mother clever? Or something? It is a family name and long live it. Whoa, that didn't sound quite right, either, but I've been blogging my brains out and I'm too pooped to revisit anything tonight. Possibly my mother gave both of us Linn because it's not an uncommon practice for parents to name 'em the same? I'm asking, 'cause I really don't know. OR, since Laura's due date was on my birthday we were twins of sorts and sharing a middle name would be . . . precious? (not my favorite word, I use it entirely sparingly, but it fits here). OR maybe my mother's imagination had dried up, as might be expected of exhausted expectant (KEM suffers brain fade) mothers, and it was a recycle of Linn or squat? OR . . . maybe I should ask her?? DUH! FYI, since my family data is so critical to your life, my brother's middle name was another family name, Lloyd. Lloyd, Linn & Linn. Sounds like a law firm.

Okay, so my sister is extra special. Truly. She is wonderful and nice and all that, but I shall tell you some unique, interesting things that reveal her personality from when we were the little Linn twins, two years and 13 days removed (she was a late baby). As a young child she had a penchant for licking bicycle tires. You'd find her in the garage licking away, happy as a clam. YUM-EE! Wonder what was lacking in her diet that road rubber evidently supplied. I know what was not lacking in her diet. Butter and Cream of Wheat. Those were her staples. You could also find her in the garage with a stick of butter in hand, happily licking away as though it were an ice cream cone. (I think the garage was her cozy spot, where no one would see her indulging in her delights, plus the bikes were parked there). Licking was a great pastime, yes, she was engaged most agreeably. She didn't like her vegetables and subsisted on Cream of Wheat. My mother read a book to her, The Little Rabbit That Would Not Eat, millions of times, to no avail. The Little Rabbit in the story, Nappity-Nip, would not eat his hateful vegetables either and gradually became so pale, weak and sickly that he could no longer play outside with his cousins and had to just lie limp and listless on the bed and nap all day while the others had all the fun without him. Laura felt badly for the Little Rabbit -- and continued right on with her exclusive Cream of Wheat menu. My brother used to kid her, You eat so much Cream of Wheat that your hair is Cream of Wheat. You look like Cream of Wheat. You ARE Cream of Wheat. Like she cared. The Little Rabbit learned to eat his vegetables, even like them, and became strong and healthy and could go outside once more and play with all the other little rabbits again. He was such a happy Little Nip then. Laura loved the story, she just didn't waste time applying it to her own little self. No need. She was a perfectly sturdy little girl, let the Little Rabbit be the silly one to eat his nasty vegetables.

We grew up in a circa 1925 neighborhood. All the blocks had dirt alleys. People used to find Laura diligently digging away in the alley. Why are you digging?, they'd want to know. She'd look up and blankly answer, I'm looking for the Devil. (WHAT ELSE? Honestly, if adults don't ask the darndest things.) And then she'd turn her face to the earth and resolutely shove the spade in and flip another spoonful of St. Petersburg's sandy soil. She was fascinated by the Devil. Once she studied a neighbor man, a jolly, good-hearted family man. I can see her cute little Cream of Wheat wheels spinning, working up the nerve to ask him something she HAD to know. At last, intensely, Are you the Devil? Maybe the Devil was already amongst us, and she was digging in vain? The neighbor said her sincerity did wonders for his self-esteem. Don't you just have to appreciate a little girl who digs for the Devil?

My mother liked to dress Laura and me up in dainty little smocked dresses and patent leather shoes and fix our hair with ribbons and bows (I like to say we were born in the tail end of the good old days). Once we were invited to an elegant tea in the grand old Vinoy Hotel, a spectacular St. Petersburg landmark. We wore gloves and everything and were instructed to conduct ourselves in a ladylike fashion. Laura wanted to know, How does a lady pick her nose with gloves on? Good question . . . and so much for high society.

She was generous. Compassionate, too. She felt sorry for poor old Peter, the yard man across the street. His eyes were always yellow and bloodshot, but he was a kind soul. Something about Peter must have grabbed Laura's sensitive heart, maybe she believed he was sick, tired and weary, like Nip, because he was always either raking in slooooow motion or leaning on the rake staring off into a far away place, usually the latter. One day she walked across the street and handed him her ten dollars. He took it, too. Wanted to turn his eyes a deeper shade of yellow, I'm afraid.

Laura has always had an amazingly pleasant, laidback disposition, it must have been her diet. See, I never licked bicycle tires, and that's what's wrong with me. People have always loved Laura immensely, she's a people magnet. She is a darling, caring person in every way, and I have benefited deeply from her kindness. I am so fortunate to have such a sister.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURA, I LOVE YOU,
KEM

Hey, guess what? TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA! Today my ENT came busting into the examination room and shouted, So, do you think you're better? I liked his pep so, after a moment's consideration, enthused a resounding, YES! He hurried me into a show-off room where my high resolution scan was on display. He said, LOOK! You're all cleared up, it's perfect! WHAT??? And sure enough, my botched right cheek sinus looked as clean as a whistle, just like the left side. NO BURSTING INFECTION! NO INFLAMED SINUS LINING! NO SURGERY! NO MORE MEDS! NO MORE AOL ARTICLE! YA-HOO!!!!!!! Thank you, all of you who prayed, thank you, Lord! I could barely register the GREAT NEWS that I did not have the big scary "M" before he dropped the bomb, You don't have frontal sinuses. WHAT??? Those are the ones in the front of the forehead above the eyes. Whoa! Wonder what else I don't have up there. I ventured, wide-eyed, Is that unusual? The answer to that is, About 5% of the population doesn't have them. Okay, I've always said I like to be different (I have my mother to thank for that, she always preached, Don't be afraid to be different.) Just a year ago my GYN asked, Has anyone ever told you your uterus is tipped backward? As a matter of fact, NOOO. But should this surprise me? I rather think not. When I was 5 years old my feet bunionized (not in dictionary, but should be, 'cause that's what happened) themselves (don't laugh, it's not funny, who ever heard of a 5 year old with bunions?). When I was 12 I had teeth braces to fix my mouth (recessed lower jaw) and a hefty, HORRIBLE back brace to straighten my curved spine (scoliosis). Then came the acne (self-explanatory) and whiskers (electrolysis). Let's not forget that I developed TMJ (crunching jaw syndrome) at age 21 and had to wear a bulky disgusting mouth piece the year I was engaged. T'wrn't I a beauty? For crying out loud, it's a wonder I didn't run away from myself. No wonder my mother told me not to be afraid to be different. (Eeegads, my husband doesn't know all this, I'm gonna scare him off BIG TIME, he's my Number One Blog Follower :) It was so bad and sad to have all these defects. PLUS thunder-thighs. And the methods of correction left A LOT to be desired. I can't emphasize A LOT enough. But I'll save that for another day. Right now I'm just delirious to have escaped the knife. I really, really, super-seriously didn't want more sinus surgery. I mean, I watched on the Internet (dangerous) how they do sinus surgery, and they remove bone and make holes bigger and scrape out infected tissue. I was wondering if a second surgery would leave anything to hold me up, what with the bone removal, etc. I guess in this modern day and age bone is obsolete. Yeah, the bone removal was freaking me, you should have seen the cartoon of it, they showed tweezers (with which I'm VERY familiar) jauntily plucking away pieces of bone that supported the sinus shaft. This bone resembled a ladder of sorts, and the tweezers efficiently removed it rung by rung. The operation was executed in a quick rhythmic pulse: pluck, pause, pluck, pause, pluck. They kept plucking until no bone was left . . . at all. My nose is already over-sized and abused, no way do I want to deliberately annihilate its support structure. Well, ENT might be forced to give me a new nose if that happened, which might not be such a bad idea, he does do nose jobs. Just add rhinoplasty to my resume. Of course, if I got plastic nose, my grandparents would turn over in their graves (see below). I'm thinking that right about now you are SO GLAD you are not I. See what a favor I'm doing you by writing this blog? Every day you will be joy-jumping for the sheer knowledge that you are WONDERFUL, BEAUTIFUL PHYSICAL SPECIMEN YOU, as opposed to freaky me!

Hey, guess what? I forgot to ask the doc if I didn't have a FB after all. Wow, that was the main question. I think learning I was missing body parts (not the "learn-something-new-every-day" I was aiming for) kind of distracted me. Maybe I'll call his office tomorrow. I mean, a NORMAL person would ASSUME a clean scan meant there was no FB after all. But I can take no such chances. I need to hear the doc say in plain, doubtless English, You DO NOT have a FB -- PERIOD. Okay, I'm really getting disgusted with my computer tonight. You have no idea how badly it's acting up. It won't let bold and italic go away. Grrr. I also hit a key by error which served to nix all my corrections in one easy second. Bad old computer.

Let it be said (goody, regular font) that my grandparents would be most happy that the surgery is not happening, even though I didn't really have to say, NO!, no surgery. My grandfather, the butter-the-baby one, said, If they told you your head was on backwards, you'd let them cut it off and turn it around. They did not believe in doctors or medical procedures WHATSOEVER. Their disgust was not intended to be disguised. It was perfectly awful and fearful to think of facing my grandparents whenever I acquired some new accoutrement (questionable usage of the word, but, hey, let's live with it, oh!, I got that spelling right, what do you know -- actually, Webster lists two correct spellings and mine is second, the first one is accouterment, which I think sounds really dorky) in the name of improving the piece of work called me. I could only avoid them for so long, I mean my mother ran out of excuses. So I mastered the art of dodge and acquired a few new talents. Like ventriloquism -- had to learn to talk with zipped lips so as not to reveal the braces on my teeth. Had to learn to wear turtlenecks year-round in Florida to conceal the metal bars and chin piece of the back brace. A super challenge was when I had the double bunionectomy. How, at age 16, do you hobble around in fuzzy footies with a walker and escape notice? When you figure that one out, please let me know, even though it's a little late. THAT, I believe, was D-Day. I had to reckon with their fury. Which reminds me, this morning I had an unwelcome "awareness" moment. I confess I did inherit another family gene besides the Scream Gene. And that would be the Bad Temper Gene. Well, is it any wonder, having just read all of the above? And just maybe DTD and I do share that one gene?

I like it when the doctor's receptionist does not staple my debit card receipt to the doctor receipt. The Bible says to not set your affections on things of this world, where moth and rust doth corrupt. Staples rust. They are not pretty. I do not set my affection upon them.

FB-less KEM PS I give my neti pot lots of credit for new, improved sinuses. I want to sing, Oh neti pot, oh neti pot, how lovely is your nozzle (to the tune of Oh, Christmas Tree). Or, to the tune of Oh, Shenandoah, Oh neti pot, I long to hold you. Okay, I'm outta here.

Hallo,

One of my friends wrote me that she is making a note to herself not to read my blogs at lunch. She was relieved that she'd eaten her jello BEFORE she "got into the thick" of reading all the sinus jazz on yesterday's blog. I have to agree with her. When she mentioned jello, I instantly thought how I could have described my FB as a see -thru thin membrane ball full of a greenish yellow jello-like substance, not unlike those interesting soft malleable (sheesh, took me a long time to track down malleable in the dictionary, strictly guesswork) gooey balls schools give as prizes (torture devices for parents) for fundraisers when a child sells X amount of candy bars or rolls of wrapping paper. I have to say, I'm SO glad those child peddler days are behind me, aren't you, if they are? One year, DTD, before she was a T, sold so much of whatever that she won a very nice bike. I was proud of her entrepreneurial (oh for Corn's sake, I have looked up how to spell this word and its cousins MILLIONS of times, ev-a-ree time I get it grossly wrong) spirit, but not so thrilled that we had to hit up our same neighbors over and over and over. OH NO!, neighbors cry, not cheezy Christmas ornaments AGAIN. Gads! My grandfather was a sensational salesman, Proctor & Gamble's top salesperson. He could SMILE, shake hands and say, How DO you do?, his merry blue eyes all the while closing in on that sale. He was the perfect gentleman, except for the times he'd lose his temper. It wasn't often he lost it, but you and I getting out of town was the best option when it did happen, because what he lacked in rage quantity he made up for in quality. During the depression my mother, a little girl at the time, asked for more butter at the breakfast table. That lit Grampa's fuse, he grabbed that butter and rubbed it all over her face, which made no sense whatsoever, as the butter was wasted one way or the other. Granny said, THAT'S IT, I'll have to divorce you. But she didn't. Grampa could repent in great sorrow, Oh, I'm such a wicked man, oh, Jesus forgive me. How COULD I have done such a thing to my precious little darling?, I'm SO ashamed. So, anyway, he maintained employment with P& G throughout the Depression, because I guess everyone still needs soap no matter what, at least I hope so. I, however, could not sell peanuts to an elephant. I'm telling you, I'm just missing so many ancestral genes. DTD got that sales gene, she's certainly sold me on anything she's ever wanted. But seems all the genes are skipping a generation - me. DTD and I are diametrically opposed on EVERYTHING. Well, this makes sense, when I think about it, if we don't share any of the same genes, which we don't. I say God has a tremendous sense of humor, to have created this mother/daughter pair. We may be a sight, but we are never bored with each other. Furious, maybe, but bored? Never. So, when Grampa eventually quit P & G, they begged him to come back. They regularly gave him new cars, and he would make it a point to see how fast he could wreck them. FINALLY, P & G said, NO MORE CARS FOR MR. BOWYER. On one family transit from Michigan to Florida, my grandfather drove off the road, and my mother remembers her mother screaming, WE'RE ALL KILLED! Another car saw the accident and the remains strewn all over the place and was CERTAIN that no one could have possibly survived. But they all did, and I'm hear to vouch for that. Life is SO interesting. If they had not survived I would hardly be sitting here jabbering on a blog.

So, those gooey balls, they're composed of the same material throughout, which I'm really searching here to figure what it is, it's like shaped slime. They're quite smooshy and roll and squish in the grossest gel-like fashion but always spring back to a perfectly round ball in the end -- it's unreal -- but also exactly how you would imagine a FB to behave. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? DTD, when she won one of those, she promptly tossed it up to the ceiling and the ball came down but the pink color stayed up -- sticky is another of the ball's attributes. We had a big bright hot pink spot on the living room ceiling for years, it was a smeary spot as slime ball must have skimmed the ceiling. My dad, who is very particular and notices everything, and others would come in and look up and say, What's that? Of course I had to confiscate the hot pink gooey ball. I envisioned hot spots all over the house -- a new look, big irregular polka dot paint job. Which reminds me of the time my former husband and I came home from church one Sunday evening. I went in the den and noticed a black round smudge on the wall, approximately the size of a tennis ball. I made a mental note, What is this? Then as I walked through the house, I saw black round smudges everywhere. Hmmm, clearly these weren't here two hours ago, so what on earth? I'll tell you what on earth. Because suddenly a big black thing with a webbed wing span whizzed by me. It was a flying rodent, a bat of the earth, to be exact. I'll tell you what else. I am PETRIFIED of bats. They are just below roaches on the Totem Pole of Horrible Earth Things. When I used to swim in my parents' pool in South Carolina, we'd swim at dusk and every night the same exact drama played out. A bat, then another, etc., would come whishing (made-up word, but it fits) out of the trees and swooping over the pool, skimming the water, and I would scream BLOODY MURDER (I have erred, I DID inherit one gene, the Scream Gene, my grandmother and mother could have been professional screamers for the movies. DTD did not inherit it, that would be impossible since we do not have any of the same genes, as stated above, so when I scream her disgust is profoundly profound). So, I wasted no precious time by hastily swimming to the edge and climbing out like a civilized person, I would just shoot straight up out of the water like an Olympic synchronized swimmer and lunge for the pool deck, I didn't have to suddenly sprout powerful thunder-thighs for this maneuver, I was born with them. I turned into a sort of human waterspout. It wasn't graceful, I was a clumsy lunatic, but, hey, it worked. Then I would throw a towel on my head to prevent a bat from building a nest and race for the house, ducking low to the ground, hoping against hope to avoid contact with the little nightmares. Hey, don't say a hair nest can't happen. If I'm involved, it not only can, but WILL happen. Once we were spending the night with friends and the hostess was so gracious and showing me my room, this was in GA, but just barely over the FL state line. Unfortunately, a flying roach visiting from Florida winged by. Now, isn't that just par for the course?, it only happened because I was in the house. The lady was so embarrassed and ran to get something to do away with it. A few seconds later she came back but now no one in the group, because where there's excitement a group forms, could locate the roach. Hmmm. I casually ran my fingers through my long hair because I thought I felt something. Oh boy, I felt something and there ends my story because you have figured it out.

Now I shall end the bat story. It didn't take long, .02 seconds, for me to decide that if a bat were careening all over my house, which, make no mistake, it was, those black smudges didn't just invent themselves, then I was no longer in the house. I tore out of there faster than fast and ran two long blocks down the street, never with a backward glance (I could have taught Lot's wife a thing or two) and trembling like a leaf. Husband called church friends who arrived shortly in their big automobile, armed with a giant butterfly net. They thought the whole thing was hilarious, and thereafter referred to their car as the Batmobile. I'm glad they had fun, I'm glad someone did. I didn't. They did capture the bat, which must have entered the house through the chimney, and then I had the un-fun of scrubbing off the bat smudges. I told my jello friend above that not all my blogs are gross, she just happened to read the sinus one first because there it was. But I'm afraid maybe my blogs ARE edging perilously close to the gruesome side. Hmmm. I shall have to think of something sweet and delicate to blog about tomorrow.

I like to learn something every day, don't you? Every night I use a nose watering pot (neti pot, if you must). It's a fun little addition to my already crowded Things Necessary to Advance Life Routine. But with chronic sinus, the watering pot has preserved me thus far, not particularly well, of course, but better than Life Prior to Nose Watering Pot. If you don't know what nose watering entails, please Google SinuCleanse, because if I detail it for you, you can rest assured my jello friend will be reading it while she's trying to drink her lemonade or something. What I found out last night is that it doesn't work out real well to water one's nose while laughing uncontrollably. Drowning comes close. Just another little jewel for my Crown of Knowledge.

'Til We Meet Again,
KEM

Good night. As in, Good evening. NOT as in, Good Night!, you have got to be kidding me! And NOT as in Good night, sleep tight, although that would probably be appropriate for all of you, but certainly not for me as I stay up 'til dawn. But since it's now night and the evening, which was QUITE eventful, has long waned, I say to you, Good night, such a charming night to make your acquaintance.

I DO want to thank you for reading this mess of a blog. Also, after consultation, I'm told it would be appropriate to mention to you that it is fine with me, welcome, actually, if you want to pass this drivel along to any of your friends who might not have enough twaddle in their lives. How about that? TWADDLE. This is a brand new word for me. Has anyone ever heard of this word, or is it just I who is a total ignoramus? I found twaddle because I had to look up drivel in the dictionary, to make sure I spelled it correctly. Now that I'm blogging, I don't want to continue to spell like Martha Washington, who I understand was a very poor speller and mainly sounded out words to determine their spelling, at which I'm figuring she wasn't so hot. She has been my model, lo, these many years. I figured if bad spelling was good enough for Martha Washington, it is good enough for me. I have a dear friend who insists that she is L-A-Z-Y, even though she is in the upper echelon of busy wives/mothers/homemakers/homeschoolers/mothers-of-the-bride/volunteers/perfect spellers/you name it. I have no earthly clue why she considers herself L-A-Z-Y. She is NOT. Overwhelmed at times, maybe, but L-A-Z-Y, NEVER. So, I decided to demonstrate to her a REAL meaning of L-A-Z-Y and thus never check my spelling in my emails to her. It's been quite interesting, because, like I've said, creating new spellings is FUN. But now I have to be a savvy, serious little blogger, and the dictionary and I are holding sweet little tea parties together lately. A dictionary is quite a chummy friend, really. Back to TWADDLE. In case you are, which I doubt, as ignorant as I, it means . . . drivel. And together they mean, "silly, meaningless or tedious talk, thinking or writing" (Webster). In a word, "NONSENSE" (also Webster). In more words, "a foolish waster, childish and idiotic" (Webster again). Oh, and while we're at it, it also means PRATE, which flatteringly means "to talk excessively and pointlessly: babble. To utter in empty or foolish talk." (Webster, of course). I'm afraid I am guilty on all counts because the definitions seem to focus on talking and I've been told I write like I talk, so, wowsers, can this be GOOD? Well, I guess we all need in our lives a little driveling, twaddling PRATTLE, "to talk in a simple-minded way, chatter" (hey, that's the mildest description yet, whew - Webster, who else). I mean, I do need mindless, 'cause life can be so SERIOUS sometimes. So, go ahead and share this with your friends, if you dare. And thanks, if you do :))

Okay, the above paragraph was supposed to be about two sentences. I just don't know what happens. I take no responsibility for it :-- Just kidding.

I had things to tell you tonight, but now I must tell you other things instead. This is a FORCED change of blog, because sometimes the timing in life is just too exquisite, and one MUST step aside and behold the beauty. Except in this case it's unmitigated HIDEOSITY. Restated, what follows could ONLY happen to yours truly. And it's going to start up my migraine again, in conjunction with the nightmares I'll be having all morning (morningmares?), 'cause that's when I sleep.

Some of you know I have SUFFERED ungladly with severe sinus problems for, to wear a thin cliche thinner, lo, these many years. I am currently undergoing evaluations/treatments with an ENT involving CT scans and heavy meds. If the meds don't knock out the infection, even though they've about knocked me out in general, I may require sinus surgery . . . again. Oh, joy. TOMORROW I am going for a high-resolution CT scan to find out what's what. So, here is the kicker. TODAY I was cruising about AOL, since you won't let me read the newspaper anymore, and what do they display as a feature story, for TODAY? Here's what:

"SINUS INFECTION ALMOST DEADLY - ALMOST DESTROYS WOMAN'S FACE."

Do you think that snapped me to attention in a flat-out 1/10th of a second?? You know it. I went on to read the whole article and ensuing comments. I unearthed little gems like, "Sue's cheek got so swollen it burst, leaving a crater," and "How routine sinus problem turns serious" (see, I TOLD you life was SERIOUS). Then guess what? I found out that this poor Sue was EXACTLY MY SAME AGE when her face blew out. Are you even believing this? By now I'm hyperventilating, because I've seen the scan of my sinus, the one that made my doc put me on the Big Time steroids, etc. Oh, did I mention Sue was on Big Time steroids, too? Human cheek and forehead sinus cavities are large, like eggstra large eggs large or something, you'd be surprised, I was. They are supposed to be lovely, cavernous vacuums, merrily doing their little thing without interference. Me? My whole right sinus cavity, minus a space the size of a man's shirt button in the center, is filled with inflamed sinus lining. It's a wonder to behold, let me tell you. AND NO WONDER I feel like incredible crud my whole life long -- BECAUSE my head plumbing DOESN'T WORK RIGHT. Doc said, You have a sinus infection right now. I said, I DO? Because I honestly didn't think I did. I USED to know when I had an infection, but apparently my body has "become accustomed to my face" being filled with, to attempt delicateness, unpleasantness. The effect of all this is my immune threshold/wellness standards have just hit the scum of the bucket. So, the article goes on to tell me that Sue is still alive, you can watch a little video of her to prove it. Her doctors wanted to remove her whole cheek, even up around the eye socket, but she refused, which turned out to be the right decision, yes, Sue! Instead, she had "30 surgeries to remove bits of infection/tissue at a time, 60 visits to a hyperbaric chamber, extensive work on her upper jawbone and palate, which the sinus infection had basically eaten away." She, of course, had a weakened immune system, probably from all the antibiotics she'd been taking, ding-a-ling-a-ling, I LIVE on antibiotics. In fact, GAD gave me probiotics for my birthday to counteract the antibios. Poor Sue's body couldn't fight off the fungus and, at the risk of shutting down my blog permanently due to zero readership, because when you read this, you will be repulsed forevermore and never click on Living Dust again, ever, my doc wonders if I might have a FUNGUS BALL (FB hereon out, because typing those two dreadful words once was once too many. Perhaps "fungus" and "ball" used independently of each other would be passable, but joining them as a unit, I can no handle, I am outta here). My face fell on the floor when he told me that, because I can hardly imagine anything grosser, unless he tells me maggots are feasting on my FB. But then when he stuck the horrible little telescope up my sinus, he said he didn't really see any old FB. I hope he wasn't just saying that because he determined he had an emotionally fragile, disturbed nutcase patient on his hands. I SINCERELY hope he really didn't see a FB. But what if there IS a FB tucked up high in the secret regions and the naked eye can't find it but the scan will?? He quickly addressed my horror, bless him, by assuring me that I am not a gross, unclean person if I have a FB (I almost felt compelled to tell him, But wait, I am a Detailer, I clean the molding with soaked Q-tips). He said that EVERYONE (that means YOU) has fungus (just made your day, didn't I?) but the NORMAL person can manage a little everyday fungus by swishing it away with their properly functioning microscopic sinus sweepers while poor KEM is all broken down and CANNOT swish, and that's why things go crazy, and she is just UNLUCKY enough to have taken up permanent abode in Sinus City. Don't ever go there, not even to visit. Sue was diagnosed with Mucormycosis, which is merely the bone eating, flesh eating infection mentioned above. I'm striking the letter "M" from my alphabet when I go see the doc on Wednesday to read TOMORROW'S, Tuesday's, scan. So, this poor, dear Sue went through ALL KINDS of torture including not eating or sleeping and having to wear a fake palate, held in place with magnets, hope you didn't read that maggots, which was an improvement over the first fake palate, which she held in place with her tongue. And two years later she can eat only soft food. I, who am a legit sinus basket case, cannot even imagine Sue's intense agony. But she is miraculously here with us today and looks REALLY GOOD. Not only that, she has a FABULOUS attitude and is THANKFUL that because of her case doctors have developed new procedures for sinus sufferers. WOW!!!!!!!!!!! I am floating-out-of-my-socks-impressed because my response to my sinus, when it's bad enough, which is more times than I care to remember, is to simply ball my little eyes out. Hey, do you think the tears would somehow flush out the FB? It's probably too big, I picture it the size of a beach ball, the texture of one, too, with a little air let out, you know, with a slight give -- it prob'ly ain't budgin' without a scalpel nudgin' it along. Oops, getting a little slaphappy here.

Sorry, but have to finish the job I started here. Don't go away! I HAVE to share a couple of the choicest reader remarks following the article. "Eat garlic crushed with a meat tenderizer." Next person, "Don't eat garlic, what are you crazy, go to doc and get antibiotics!" Someone else evaluated that most of the comments were obviously made by people who "hadn't finished the fourth grade." Another shared how a hole was drilled in his head to drain infection from his brain. Okay, fading away here. I'm sure if I kept reading, I'd learn how sinus surgery caused people to become blind, deaf, dumb, lame and more. An interesting post was how we need "broad-based anti-microbials like olive leaf extract because, after all, the dove brought an olive leaf back in his beak to Noah on the ark." But my very, very favorite was by a person who summed up their sinus misery with, "My face looked so swollen and red and black that I looked like . . . (are you ready?, KEM asks?) . . . a gorila." Their spelling. THEY don't consult Webster.

I had something to close with, but the content of this blog has caused me to become discombobulated, which I'm beginning to believe is my usual state of being. Oh yes, wait, I have it! Just as I was finishing reading the deadly article above, deadly to my confidence, anyway, my mother arrived to watch a movie with me starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor, two exceptionally gorgeous creatures who never knew sinus grief. Mom and my sister had been raving about and viewing this drama multiple times, lo, these many months (phrase for the night). My dad recorded it for me for my birthday, and my mother couldn't wait for us to see it together so she could register my reaction. Well. If you want to be DEPRESSED FOR LIFE, then just be sure to see Waterloo Bridge ASAP.

To end on a positive note and erase from your memory everything you just read, I am sure you will be delighted to hear I'm going on a spinach hiatus this week due to nigh unto OD'ing on it last week.

Promise Breaker KEM

Note: The Webster Dictionary definitions and AOL article above are rather loosely quoted but pure in intent.

Hi Everyone,

It took all my time tonight to "launch" the blog, because what do I know about launching a blog besides ABSOLUTELY LESS THAN NOTHING? So here's a quick one. I do want to suggest you scroll to the bottom and click on OLDER POSTS and start with the first entry, August 28, and read your way up to the current post, which I guess would be this one :-- This is because I keep referring to things in previous entries, which maybe wasn't such a hot idea, but such it is. (Sorry, can't get the bold type to disappear -- because I am such a computer genius, don't you know.) Once you get "caught up" it won't be so bad.

I'm still learning and I AM SURE I need a tutorial on how to rein it in, meaning I MUST find a way to post shorter daily entries :)) I can do it, I know I can! So, in the meantime I apologize for the too lengthy posts to date and shall begin meditations on the virtues of brevity immediately.

By the way, Mike is in awe that I would write for so many days without FIRST LETTING YOU ALL KNOW FROM DAY ONE. Now . . . why WOULD I do such a thing? Beats me. So now I am in this jam of having to ask you to read bottom to top. Rats.

Left Out the Logic,
KEM