Re: comments and contacts

So, how about someone commenting besides my own (smart-aleck) kids?  If google registration is a hassle, use the email address in the upper right.

I managed to email someone from my old high school class this week.  He managed to escape from Whitehall to Arizona.  He happened to mention that he discovered another 'classmate' has composed music when he helped his daughter do some research for an assignment.  I hit the google and found this man is an instructor and a composer-in-residence in South Carolina.  Nobody knew this at my 25th class reunion in 1996.

My son Thomas phoned tonight, and I mentioned this person to him since they were both trumpet players in high school band.  (Thomas actually pulled down a music minor in college, and sings with a church choir.)  After he scanned google on his computer, he had one thing to say:  "If you get ahold of him, Mom, would you ask if he knows Robert W. Smith?"  

Have you seen this yet, Jon? :)  I think you'd like my son, if you don't already have one like him.

For those of you not in the know,  Smith is a prolific composer of band music frequently inflicted on high school band students of Tom's age, just as James Ployhar was such a composer when I was in band 38 years ago.   

I am a band-o, the daughter of a band-o, and mother of a band-o.  Band-o's Rule!  (This was my reply to an orchestra kid who said "band-os s*ck" when I was substitute teaching.)  

Recipes welcome

I did name this 'cheesesteak' and 'shoofly pie'.  And I am a recipe collecting junkie.  I would welcome any contribution of vegan recipes in the Orthodox Christian fasting (lent) style.  Since my husband interprets the guidelines strictly - no vegetable oils, and everyone has to eat the same way he does. On the other hand my youngest loathes all vegetables except string beans and spaghetti sauce.  So I have war in the kitchen.   Kathy or Nikki, help?!

Computer School

For any of my old acquaintances reading my last post and wondering, "Accident??", I should clarify things.  I totaled my Caravan on the back of a slow-moving 3-axle dump truck west of Winslow, AZ, in 2006.  I now own a permanent handicapped parking placard, a cane, and enough hardware south of my left knee to sell to the Chinese for scrap, as my son Tom put it.

Because of same, I qualify for vocational retraining from the state of PA, since I can no longer tolerate standing in one place for more than a couple of minutes, or walk more than the length of a WalMart to get to the restrooms.  Goodbye skating, cross-country skiing, sledding, or even a good hike.  Goodbye lab tech, substitute teacher, or even librarian (I did interview, and was passed over).  Never mind I did volunteer library work for my kids' schools 14 years.

And it still hasn't dawned on my husband that MOM is not 'official' work experience, even though We Girls Know Better.  Roseanne was right, if the kids are still alive at the end of the day, mom's DONE her job.

So after so many dud resumes and applications, and my husband hiring on as a local bus driver - and being fired, I'm being set up to go to a local business school to become a Certified Medical Administrative Assistant.  Doctor's secretary, that is.

Once upon a time, i.e. when I was in high school, wasn't all one needed to work in an office were courses in typing, bookkeeping, and filing?  Now one needs Microsoft Certification, Intermediate, in Word and Excel, QuickBooks, an O-fish-al CMAA course,  course in HIPAA (those annoying privacy practices), insurance coding, and an online course in medical terminology.  And to think I never wanted to get good at typing because I was going to be a Scientist, not a Sexatery.  Who knew Bill Gates was going to overturn the business world so that the best businessman entered his data himself? (sexism intended here)

Prayers appreciated as I start this in February.  At least medical technology doesn't scare me; chemistry and geology have $1.98 words.  Try igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary; or our grad school favorite, biopelmicrite, which means petrified doo-doo from ocean bottom bugs.  Coprolite is the same, from dinosaurs. Or try pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which is a lung inflammation caused by inhaling microscopic silica particles blown from a volcano; e.g. breathing Mt. St. Helens ash. (If you are reading this, Bill R., smile, since you inflicted this word on Anne in 6th grade.  Yes, Anne got the extra credit. I can hear Tom laugh.)

If I can figure out a Schatzger 6 fracture (how my leg got wasted) I should spout gobbledygook as well as any doctor.

For Everyone I've gotten Away From

My son has always suggested that I write a blog.  Perhaps this is so he can just cruise a website rather than log into his email.   But maybe he also hopes to connect me to people I've left behind.

Jesus Christ, in the flesh, never traveled farther than 200 miles from his birthplace.   In contrast, my parents took me back to their native Michigan when I was 17 months old.  Thanks, US Army.  I've always been the one who got looks when I answered "Where were you born?" with "Texas", when the rest of the family said "Michigan". The next 'big' move occurred when they bought their first house, when I was 3 1/2.  I attended school at Reeths-Puffer Elementary, outside Muskegon.

When my dad's brother was killed in an industrial accident, my parents chose to move closer to his widow and 2 sons, in Whitehall.  The jump from elementary to junior high is a big deal, but when you change school districts too?  I had to start over with a new set of friends and acquaintances.  At least I graduated from high school with them.

The next move, at least, was my own choice:  college.  Michigan State was the big pond for this little fish.  Lyman Briggs College made a home-y corner of State for a lot of students besides me.  I followed one of them to California, hoping he'd change his mind about breaking our engagement.  How dumb of me.

So I've spent the biggest part of my life in California, first attending grad school at San Diego State University, working at the University of California, San Diego, and living in San Juan Capistrano as a professional mom. 

(My husband Bob, who I met at UCSD, was even more paranoid about moms staying home with their kids than I was.  I figured that since my mom ended up working when my kid sister hit kindergarten, I would be too.  But Bob thought women only work to buy luxuries.  Well, this move to Pennsylvania proved to be a luxury for which my wages should have paid.  He went into hock to do it while I was in nursing care for the accident, and we're still paying now.)

When Bob's  mother died in 2006, he inherited her house in Chester County, Pennsylvania.  Since it is virtually impossible for a family on one income to afford buying real estate in California, unless that one income is 6 figures, we thought that our standard of living would improve here by owning this house.  Ha Ha.

News Flash #1:  Medical insurance consumes a third or more of our income.

News Flash #2: Real estate taxes are billed for the whole year at once. (county, city, school)

                               If all three of them billed simultaneously, we'd lose the house.

News Flash #3: Food doesn't get any cheaper here during the summer, in spite of Amish farms 

                               being so close.  In the winter most of it still comes from California.  $4.00 gas

                               still applies?

Chester County itself is not so bad; there are Amish farms in the east and the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs in the west.  I consider "California east with snow" to begin at Downingtown, 7 miles east of us. 

 However, we live in Coatesville, which has made the national news lately with a rash of arson fires.  How many crazies are out there??   Plus this town has mixed ethnically and racially since business at the local steel mill tanked in the 1980s.  On my street are Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and whites.  A nearby cheesesteak restaurant is owned by someone Chinese - or are they Vietnamese?  I heard someone call Coatesville "Philly east".  We may get Philly TV stations, but Philly is 45 miles away - almost in another world.

So here I sit,  between remembrance and old age; between my daughters and my husband, who want different things (my son having stayed in California); between wanting a job because I don't have enough credits for disability, but wondering if the family will free up their demands on my time, cooking skills, sewing skills, and organizing this house which still bears the stamp of my mother-in-law.  Between Philadelphia and Lancaster, new and old, cheesesteak and shoofly pie.