Gloomy

I didn’t work my restaurant job today. I really needed some money, but I had lots of errands to run, so I gave it up. I wound up with a little time left over, so I took myself to lunch thinking I could knock out some reading while I was there.

In the end I was able to. But at first all I could think of were two similar events. One is a scene in the movie The Idiots. In an introductory scene a woman, dining alone, is ridiculed by her server for being cheap. In the last minutes of the film it is revealed that she was dining out to have time to her self, an attempt to do something nice for herself after the recent death of her infant son.

The second happened a month or two ago while Casey and I ate at The Omlettry. A woman unexpectedly flew off the handle when she was told that she couldn’t serve herself. It wasn't that she was receiving poor service - actually, its a little complicated. I was irritated with her for quite a while before I understood what was going on. The Omlettry is cash only, and she had not remembered this when she arrived. She wanted to serve herself so that she wouldn’t be taxing the servers because she didn’t have money for a tip. So, being told that she wasn’t allowed to do so frustrated her, and she quickly began to quiver, yell, and then sob. With fragments of speech, sandwiched between sobs, she told the manager that her husband had recently died. It was raining and she was sad. She kept repeating that she had just wanted to have a nice lunch. They had frequented the place, she said, and he had proposed to her there. The situation made me extremely uncomfortable, and extremely sad. The manager did the only thing that could be done and listened while she spoke of him until she was calm enough to go home.

It's been swimming around my brain all day. I had to write it down before I could get any studying done.

****The Omlettry is another of my favorite places here. I think I need to make a huge "Guide to Austin - Through The Q's Eyes" post. This would be a huge undertaking. Do not expect it any time soon - I'm reading Chaucer.****

Corley [kor-li] - proper noun

or, events and such that define my being - 5-10

(I would like to be able to tell you why my father is such an amazing person, like the entry I wrote about my mom. However, my father has a fairly high profile job, and I'm fairly searchable. I don't know that he wants his co-workers to know ALL about his past.)

I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I very clearly remember the night that my father told me and my little sister that he and my mom were separating. I remember telling him that I knew that it meant they would be divorced, and he told me that it wasn't that at all. It turned out to be the case. Sara was about three, she had no idea what was going on. I remember being extremely angry with her in the following months because she would cry at night. I knew that she didn't understand why she was crying, really. She had separation anxiety and she really did miss my dad, but she didn't understand what was going on.

The divorce was final right around February of the next year, I think. I remember thinking it was that much more sad, being close to Valentine's Day. In the end it was the best for everyone.

My parents didn't fight when they were married - they're actually still very good friends - but had they been forced to parent in the same house once I became an adolescent things would have been much different, and they would have fought quite a bit. Looking back I can say that I believe that my father's depression was the biggest contributing factor to their divorce. His sister Becky was diagnosed with cancer and subsequently died, his mother had died of cancer a couple of years before that, and earlier in his life he lost his sister Sally and his father. My dad had dealt with grief much differently with his father's death as a kid, and Sally's as a young adult. He couldn't use the same methods to cope. The way I see it is that he just had so much to work through that he couldn't work on a marriage. Sometimes love is not enough. I know that they continued to love one another; my father cried when he found out my mom was going to re-marry.

Because of the divorce I had two wonderful experiences:

:::Time with Poppy::My grandfather, Poppy, came over every Thursday night to babysit. He'd arrive with a brown paper bag with four frozen treats in it - one each for me and my sister to enjoy that night, and one for later in the week. We'd watch TV, play games - once we put sponge rollers in his hair, only to have mom come home early. She says that he looked like Clem Kadiddlehopper when they all came out. When he put us to bed he'd sing us songs from hit parade. I was the only 8 year old singing Perry Como's "Prisoner of Love."

:::Horses::: My dad set me up with riding lessons with a girl he worked with. We'd go on Wednesday nights, a.k.a Dad nights, and I'd sit atop 'Nomad,' an old flea-bitten grey Arabian, and try to keep my heels down. Claire, his owner, gave me my first horse book and gave me the horse bug that's been draining my bank accounts ever since.

Thank you, NewYork Times, for making me cry at work.

Taken by the Tide
By BILLY SOTHERN
Published: January 10, 2007

"Last year’s total of 161 murders probably made New Orleans the deadliest city in the United States by a significant margin. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the violence touched my life directly."

This is why all of my pets are rescues. They either find me, or I find them in a shelter - but there is no buying.

Tiny Tim
"He was one of about 30 that were rescued late last week from a local puppy mill by the Brown County Humane Society, Animal Control, and the All Texas Dachshund Rescue out of Austin. There are still about 100 more dogs at that location, but due to the lack of enforceable legislation, they had to be left behind."

To see what a puppy mill can do scroll down. It's an awful image. Worse than anything I've ever seen on Animal Cops.

Corley [kor-li] - proper noun

or,

events and such that define my being 5-10

- When I was very young I had very high fever, and because of it I had a seizure. When treatment was all over I was the youngest person in my family to have had a drug addiction. I don't remember it, but apparently withdrawal from phenobarbital is a bitch.

- Looking back at how the mind develops through childhood, I particularly like the time I had to get stitches in my forehead best of all. I was in the passenger seat of my dad's truck, I was waiting in it, parked in the driveway, while my dad had gone into the house to get something. During this time the balloon I had been playing with, made its way over to the floor boards of the driver's side of the truck. My little 4 year old brain couldn't realize that I could just move to the driver's side, reach down and grab the balloon. I had only ever been on the passenger side, through the passenger door. I had only ever seen my dad on the driver's side, and he got in through the driver's door - follow my logic? I got out and went to run around the back of the truck, only, I didn't realize the tailgate was down and I hit it hard. So hard that I fell over and gashed my head open. One way to learn to just scoot over.

- About six months later my Grandmother, Annie Tannie, died. Her funeral was the on the same day me pre-K class talked about the letter C. Can you see how this was confusing, too? I had been so excited - C! My name starts with C! There is a very nice watercolor sketch of a white cat next the the C! on the wall! I like cats! I was there for A and B, and the - D? Scarred for life. Now we all know why So-so Def (my ex's cat) and I never got along. After a few months, my parents were finally able to convince me Annie Tannie wasn't ever coming back. One weekend we went to the house where she and her husband had lived to visit him, Poppy Tom ( As the first grandchild I got to be the kid calling the shots. I like titles made up of two names.), and I was so confused! There she was - sitting in the living room! She was talking to Poppy Tom, my parents, and me - and she was NEVER coming back! ? The little wheels in my head first peeled out, and then came to a grinding halt. It was way too much for me. And then she leaned over and said in the sweetest way you can possibly tell a small child that you are not the one person that they want to see most in the universe, "Corley Ann, I am not your Annie Tannie." She wasn't. She was Tannie's sister, Sara. This is where I believe I began to cry. And if I didn't then, it is where I begin to cry every time I tell the story (even right now). I really wanted it to be her. I had been wishing on every shooting star, in every night's prayer, I still wish it had been her. That moment is vividly burned in my mind, I can see Aunt Sara's silhouette (it was kind of dark), and I can hear her Southern sing-song voice - that sounded just like Annie Tannie's - saying "Ah" instead of "I."

I have to limit it like this to keep from over burdening myself emotionally. This is not what I originally expected to write! I was think of something much more brief - oops!

Maybe next time I'll do 5-10 years, if I can take it.

I am predicting my death, which will occur later this evening : homework related asphyxiation. I'll suffocate in a 6 foot deep leaf-litter of notes.

And I almost made it through NaBloPoMo! Hopefully I'll post from the afterlife tomorrow - that is, if I make it to Heaven. I know that all (my) hell is, is a bar with WiFi, accessible computers, lots of beer/booze, cigarettes and ashtrays, but no matches or lighters, and a page that never finishes loading.

Or the piece of popcorn kernel that is stuck between my teeth RIGHT NOW.

That said, check out this piece of ridiculous bull shit I was directed to by Finnegan's Wake-Up Call.

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- A homeowners' association in southwestern Colorado
has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath
with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of
Satan.

Too Many Things Went Wrong...

... to lay the blame on any one person. Here is the story in print. I suggest seeing the AP Video version as well.


And when searching for that I found these other horrifying things: "Raw Video: Police Chase Ends In Crash"

And another horrifying story: "Teenager tells of her eight years as dungeon sex slave"


I guess that's one way to get you started thinking about what you'll say tomorrow night when you have to tell your family what you're thankful for before chowing down.

Maternal Mortality is determined as a pregnancy related death when pregnant or within 42 days of termination of the pregnancy.
An estimated 529,000 women die annually from maternal causes. For each woman who dies approximately 20 suffer injury, infection or disibilty.

So that is... 10 million women affected each year?

Most often women die because of post partum hemorrage, but along with that, sepsis, abortion related complications, obstructed labor (the same kind that causes Obstetric Fitsula), and even hypertansive disorders related with pregnancy.

Death could be prevented if obstetric care and equipment were available so that a C-section could be preferomed, or a hemorrage stopped.

Women at a higher risk have stunted height from malnutrition in childhood, are Anemic, or have undergone female genital mutilation. The same factors affect the survival rate of the child, resulting in an estimated 8 million infant deaths each year.


www.safemotherhood.org, "Maternal Mortality"

According to Reproline, Every Minute:

380 women become pregnant
190 women face unplanned or unwanted pregnancy
110 women experience a pregnancy related complication
40 women will have an unsafe abortion
1 woman will die from a pregnancy-related complication.

According to www.UNFPA.org, a woman living in sun-saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in childbirth or pregnancy. A woman in a developed nation's chance of mortality is only 1 in 2,800. Of those previously mentioned 529,000 deaths annually, 95% of those were in Africa and Asia.

UNFPA.org's suggestions for progress in reducing maternal mortality:

Meeting the existing demand for family planning services would reduce maternal deaths and injuries by 20 per cent or more.

According to reproductive health benchmark set by the ICPD+ 5, by 2005, at least 40 per cent of births should be assisted by skilled birth attendants where maternal mortality is very high, and 80 per cent globally.

Targets for the percentage of assisted births have been set at 50 and 85 per cent, respectively, by 2010, and 60 and 90 per cent by 2015.

Evidence shows that maternal mortality can be reduced without first achieving high levels of economic development. In fact, maternal mortality itself constrains economic development, because of its severe impact on the lives of young children, the family and society in general.

Dia de los Muertos

I will spend the next two days thinking of you, Jen. I'm building you a modest shrine - I will get you some Inari. I will drink, light candles - especially those you gave me, listen to all of the music that remind me of you, and remember what a strong, vibrant person you were. It is getting close to two years and I still miss you like hell. I wish I'd had a chance to say goodbye. I love you.
I read in an article yesterday that in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos there are three kinds of death: one when your body ceases function, a second when your body returns to the earth, and a final one when no one remembers you. You will never die your third death.