Randomish

Last week, on the window of a hair salon, I saw this sign:  BIG IS BACK!

Right. Today I saw two women who believe it. I'm talking BIG HAIR.
So start watching for it.

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Can you tell me how my house increased in value by $40,000 since last year? I mean, my house did not get a year newer, you know.

So my property taxes went up by $800. I am assessed $4,049, due December 20. I'm mad. So I called and have an appointment with the appraiser Tuesday. She'll come and actually look at the house and measure, as if that will do me any good.

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I have a resident squirrel. He hangs out in my back yard. You may know I don't like squirrels, but a) I don't have the heart to kill one, and b) he is kind of fun to watch. No. I don't spend much time at it. I have a life.

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Visited my friend yesterday, my friend who has Alzheimer's Disease. I have written about it at some length in my journal. Maybe I'll post some of it on The Widow's Chronicle. Maybe. It makes me cry to see her. But I'm glad I went.

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I am thankful for my children. I bet they don't know how much I love them.

And their children.

 

How fast the mind works

Lots of pain in my left hip/lower back. Months. So yesterday I went to the pain clinic for a shot in the left lower back. See if I could get some relief.

Lying on the treatment table, face down, face in a donut pillow, in fact, I could not see the dr or his lovely assistant. But I could hear them.

The assistant pulled my pants and undergarments down, revealing about half--upper half--of my buttocks, and the dr began immediately to speak. He said, "That looks like . . . " I assumed he was speaking to me or about me and something he was seeing there might be important, so I listened carefully.

". . . the lady from Montana . . . " I thought Wow! What?! Weird.

". . . sitting out in the waiting room."

I know, it's not much, but it's on my mind

Not so many years ago there was this certain idea that pretty much was accepted as a universal truth. It was that the east is better in every way than the west. We here in the west endured plenty of ridicule from those folks living in the east. The great, grand, smart, cultured, wonderful, we-know-everything and we-have-everything EAST.

You poor backward, ignorant, un-everything important people who live in the west just don't know, they would say. Just don't know much. You don't have the important artists and writers and newspapers (not many folks care about a newspaper these days, by the way) and orchestras and history, that we have in the east.

Well, I never accepted that. Hmph, I always thought, "those eastern snobs."

And now for proof of their wrongheadedness, I say consider this. My daughter, who grew up in the west but now lives in the east, cannot buy a can of diced green chiles in your great eastern supermarkets. You probably don't even know what diced green chiles are.

There. I think that settles it.

Oh yeah, it all has to be memorized

I sing with the Boise Choristers. I don't want to guess at the average age of the women, but it would be kind of high. That's okay. I know that. Besides, I'm one of the old ones.

But it's not as fun or--can't think of the word--as I thought it would be. I've stopped being green-eyes critical of the director, although I would do things differently. And I like most of the music (working on Christmas now). So what's the big deal?

1. I sing 2nd alto. I can do it, and that's what they need, so I am doing it. But it's not me. I grew up a soprano, mezzo soprano, actually. So some of where we sing is uncomfortable for me--you know, my middle range--and F below middle C is pushing it.
2. We have to learn the choreography for the Sugar Plum song. My instruction time is next Monday. Okay. I will hold my mind at least half open.
3. We have to wear the official costume. I now have it--someone's from some other year. I have to pay $50 to use it. I'm not crazy about the outfit: red turtle neck, black vest (WHY?), black pants with tuxedo stripe sewn down the side seams. Long dark blue dress with some kind of scarf in the front. No, we don't wear the dress at the same time as the red and black outfit.
4. It costs $25 dues for half of the year.
5. The woman I sing next to is a fine musician, but she sings flat. That's hard.
6. I hear a lot of things the director doesn't, apparently. Some I mention, Most I don't.
7. We have a long Christmas program at Centennial High School, not for the school, but in that school's  auditorium on Friday, the 13th of December. Did I want to do something else that day? Maybe.
8. We also have eight, so far, other singing engagements here and there throughout the city in December. Am I not busy enough at Christmas time? 
9. Wait a minute. I just read the thing again. That's 11 or 12, two of them outside the hockey game on the 7th and 11th. I don't even like hockey.
10. Long program. Lots of music.

That's only ten reasons. On the other hand, that's 10 reasons.

I have said--to myself--"I said I'd do it, so I will. But after Christmas I'll probably quit."

Check with me then.