Football hero bully and high school icky

And no, I wasn’t shy. When I looked in a mirror, I saw someone acceptable. When I walked down the halls of the high school I was expected to attend, the reaction I got was that I was not acceptable. Noises, hoots and hollers, volleys of spitballs. On a good day it only happened a half dozen times. I became…gun shy. Relatives asked me if I had a boyfriend. I guess that was important. I had an uncle who was very proud of his daughters. They dated football heroes. One ended up marrying a coach. A football star and wrestler took to picking on me between classes. He and his friends would gather in the stairwell and torment me as I walked to social studies class. My only hope was that I could follow a teacher up the hall and then they were less bold. I did complain once to my parents, but they reacted so badly, wondering what was wrong with me, what I could do to improve myself, that I never mentioned my situation again. One day, I took a squirt gun to school and I aimed it at the football hero, got in trouble, got my squirtgun confiscated. He was a year older than I was, or maybe two, and I was grateful when he graduated. For years I would look at his photo in the annual, and a chill went through me. I thought he looked like a gorilla.

Fast forward thirty, forty years. I’m on a social network called Facebook. One day I search in my hometown’s section and there he is. I add him as a friend. What I am going to do is unclear to me, but I have an impulse to make him aware that I do remember him. Usually when I add someone as a friend and they don’t know who I am since I use an alias, the action remains pending for weeks and months. Not so this time. Within 24 hours he has removed me, clicked Ignore on my request to be added as his friend. I post something on Facebook to the effect that he is still an asshole, after all these years.

I might add, he still looks like a gorilla. An old gorilla.

pipes

I learned from a speaker at the Unitarian church service I attended with a friend that the pipeline running just a half mile from my house will carry not regular petroleum but benzine. I knew the tar sands were in a diluent but I didn’t know what it was. He said it’s not a question of it if will leak, but when and where and how much. The old people on the reservation have been having dreams about a great conflagration. Benzine is far more toxic and flammable than petroleum. Removing the tar sands has already caused problems for the people in one of the Canadian provinces (can’t remember which) including two tribes of indigenous people. It also takes a lot of energy to process it, so it doesn’t add anything to the total supply. The pipelines goes under the Mississippi in this area, in several places. It also affects two other major rivers that supply millions of people with water.

We’ve already had problems with that pipeline. But that’s another story.

A Dollar Tree in your Town?

If there’s a Dollar Tree store in your town and you are an avid reader, you might be pleasantly surprised. I have found gift quality books at Dollar Tree: hardcover and quality trade paperbacks of short story collections, mainstream novels, bestsellers, mysteries, historicals and thrillers. It’s pretty much a grab bag selection. I have not found much of interest (to me) in their nonfiction and reference book selections. Today I bought a novel about Charles II and I passed up a true story about how the stolen painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was rescued. A true life thriller. Maybe I’ll go back tomorrow and see if it’s still there.

Piggy Slippers and Lounge Lizards

Blue Pajamas/Bad Dream

It was like one of those dreams people claim to have, where they are naked in public, or wearing pajamas. I was at a ballroom in pajamas, and curlers in my hair. And piggy bedroom slippers. In spite of how bad I looked, a gentleman asked to dance. He wasn’t put off by my appearance. He said we could go upstairs and he could show me what was under his clothes. The words that came to mind were “lounge Lizard” although I don’t really know what that means. I excused myself. I don’t really care for men in white tuxedos.

syren, syringa, lilac

I had a great aunt named Selma Serena. I thought Serena was a beautiful name and I thought it meant lilac in the Nordic languages. When visiting Swedes sang a song about lilacs, I thought they were singing about a flower, and a girl, named Serena. It was only very recently I realized that the word for lilac in Norwegian, Swedish, etc. is syren (or syrena) which is close to our syringa, the scientific name for lilac. One learns something new every day.

I love everything about lilacs, the scent, the colors (lavender, white, purple, pink and primrose), and the fact that they are hardy enough to thrive in our northern winters.

Veggie Fritters

natural health forum

This is a site I discovered that discusses all manner of alternative and conventional approaches to health issues. What caught my eye was the recipe column, and a recipe for veggie fritters that I am dying to try. The recommended vegetables include sweet potatoes, carrots, zucchini and green peas. Other ingredients are almond meal, egg whites, and coconut oil. These look to be a tastier version of the veggie burgers you can buy in the store. I think that if I make these I would like to add some partsnips.
If they taste good it would be an easy way to sneak more than one of the recommended five servings of vegetables into someone’s diet.

The Moon in SecondLife

March

Hallelujah

I found my file! I have been searching and searching. Folders, lists, online storage. So much depended on that file. My writing career, my daily activities, my life…just weren’t the same. I needed that file to go on. Yes, I did carry on. I went on to the next thing on my list. I worked hard. But in my subconscious, I knew I was being held back by my inability to locate that manuscript. Then I decided to start at the bottom of the list rather than plowing through from the top. And wouldn’t you know, there it was. My file. The words that would propel me through the project I longed to begin.

how much am I worth?

There is no one-on-one correlation between the work I do and how much money I earn. I am in retail and freelancing. Sometimes my activities are a complete bust . So I have decided, beginning Jan. 1, to assign arbitary values to my work and to make the numbers add up to …who knows? Taking care of myself, my Nnumber one priority, is worth $100 if I do an hour of doctor prescribed exercise per day and if I remember to take all my medications. Completed creative works in any genre are also worth $100. Writing is worth five cents a word. Blog entries, $25. Linking and networking details are $10 each. And items posted on my website are valued at their sale price.