have asked me if I'm losing weight. I am. It is nice that people are starting to notice.
I have lost 26 lbs. since around Christmas. Of that 5 or 6 pounds is actual fat. The other 20 or so is all fluid. I carry alot of fluid because of my heart condition. Even though I have lost about 20 pounds or so of it there is still probably twice that on my body still.
Salt is my deadliest enemy! 
When we were kids we went on alot of vacations. Anytime we were in Florida we had a friend with a house in Kissimmee which is near Disney World and that is where we would stay. The house was on a canal and near a lake and one day while we were out playing we discovered the "beanie boat".
The beanie boat was little more than a raft. It was in the canal a short way from our house and me and Billy and Rhonda spent endless hours on that boat. (no I don't have any idea who owned it and from the state it was in I would say it was abandoned and we were lucky that it floated!) Nevertheless we floated up and down that canal like we were Tom Sawyer or somebody.
After having lived in Florida for a few years I know now that we were lucky not to have been eaten by alligators too! 
I would like to send out a message to all you thumbsuckers out there. Unfortunately most of you can't read yet. Anyway I can still remember the rage I used to feel as a pre-schooler when somebody would walk by and tell me to quit sucking my thumb or worse yet have the nerve to grab my hand and jerk my thumb out of my mouth! It made me more determined to suck away!
By the time I went into the first grade I could stick my tongue out while clenching my teeth together. A skill all my friends thought was really cool. (they didn't know I sucked my thumb because of course I didn't do it at school). Then of course my baby teeth fell out and all my permanent teeth came in beautifully. I never wore braces!
So to all you rude people stressing because your children are sucking their thumbs and trying all kinds of silly methods to stop it (like putting bad tasting stuff on the thumb - it doesn't work because the stuff sucks off in a matter of minutes!). Don't worry about it. At least if they quit before their permanent teeth come in they should be fine. Actually I sucked my thumb in my sleep until I was around 10 years old.
My mom tells me that she asked me when I turned 5 when I was going to quit sucking my thumb. I told her when I started school. She left me alone. I stopped.
The following blog is an example of one of my typical trips to the emergency room since I have developed heart failure. Thankfully I haven't been in 2 years although I definitely should have gone several times. I know the routine when I get there and except for shocking my heart I can do the samething for myself at home. This is just a reprint in honor of "Go Red for Women" month to raise awareness about heart disease.
Well I had to go back to the ER the other night and they kept me overnight. Basically it was the heat but it really messed with my heart. They gave me fluids, 12 potassium pills(10meq each whatever that is, but I know it is alot) and a magnesium IV that burned my whole arm. I was also introduced to the joys of morphine. I have always turned it down and I did that night too but they gave it to me anyway this time. It cured every problem I ever had and I spent half the night giggling to myself. I did not hallucinate which is why I kept turning it down. I thought it would make me hallucinate. I don't think I will ever turn it down again.
I have had 6 weeks of fun, doing whatever I wanted unless I was too tired. It was good to pretend I was normal again but 6 weeks is the usual amount of time that it takes me to wear myself out and end up in the emergency room. That has been the pattern of my life for 2 years now. The really sad part is apparently they cancelled my medicaid coverage. I thought when I got my disability that I wouldn't have this problem anymore. Oh well, I guess I will put it on my list of things that I can't do anything about and not worry about it.
I will call my dr. Monday. I am lucky to have him. He knows I pay will pay him as best as I can and he will see me without the medicaid. I need him to explain the results of all the tests that they ran. I am tired of them running tests and not giving me the results. They keep saving my life but I can't pry my test results out of them. The nurses just grunt or lie when you ask them a question and the doctors pretend that they don't understand English and smile for the 30 seconds that you see them.
One of my friends started complaining about the length of her stays in the hospital waiting room. I have never once had that problem. I walk in the front door (or arrive in an ambulance) and tell the front desk that I need help getting to the ER. They take one look at me and load me in a wheelchair and wisk me to the back. This time the ER must have been full because they brought a EKG machine out to the waiting room and checked me right there after they took my vitals. It wasn't too much longer I was in a bed in the ER. It took about 3 hours for them to get me to a bed upstairs. My EKG line was very squiggly and uneven this time, the worst I had ever seen it. I don't know what it means but I do know that it is supposed to be evenly spaced and uniform.
I was in New York City on my way to see the Lion King. It was freezing outside. All of a sudden 2 men jump out of an alley and grabbed me and my friend and dragged us back into the alley. I was covered with ice and snow from being dragged and Sherri was screaming her ass off! They were yelling that they wanted money while they were going through my purse and ripping my coat off. I was telling them to just take the purse and go while trying to get away. It was awful.
All of a sudden one of the guys goes flying backwards and slams into the wall and kind of just slides down to the ground. I look over to see a big black guy beating the living daylights out of the other guy. He looks and me and yells at us to run. I grabbed Sherri's arm and we took off slipping and sliding in the snow to get away. I got a good enough look at the guy-my hero-to recognize who it was though. IT WAS MIKE TYSON!
We ran to a nearby coffee shop and called the police. By the time they got there and checked the alley everybody was gone. I tried to contact Mike Tyson but there was no way for me to do it. So here it is - Thank you Mike Tyson for saving my life!
This whole blog was a lie. I thought Mike Tyson could use a little good publicity and I wanted to try to write a little fiction!
had to be the clubhouse we built one year. It was the summer of the 5th. grade and we had just moved into the new house that my parents had built and there was all kinds of scrap lumber left over. So me and Billy and Rhonda and Rusty and Sissy decided to build a clubhouse.
This was no ordinary clubhouse. It was a masterpiece of architecture (even though it actually looked like a shanty) We not only had a second floor but we had a balcony that extended over the riverbank. The actual house was about chest high to a fifth grader. We of course had a ladder (sometimes a ramp - but it kept breaking) to the second story. Part of the second floor was under roof also. We spent the entire summer building this clubhouse.
Even when we ran out of lumber we kept pounding nails into it. There was one board that was comprised entirely of nails. It looked like a sheet of metal. One day I was sitting on the balcony and it collapsed underneath me. It didn't go crashing to the ground though, it just kind of swayed to the side and I rode it down to the ground.
Then there was the infamous hammer incident. I threw the hammer to Sis one day and it hit her on top of the head. Luckily she lived although I still hear about it to this day.
The most awful day was the day my mom made us tear it down. I had scratched my back on one of the many nails that poked through the boards. That was all the excuse she needed to destroy the greatest thing we ever built! That was also another thing that I still hear about to this day because my back was the offending culprit that instigated the "big tear down"..
at least do it in a proper manner. I was working for a man who was a gawd awful crack addict. He was in the middle of a rant one day and the subject came up about my use of the word "y'all". Here is what he said to me:
"Y'all, what the hell is y'all. Don't you hillbillies know that the proper word is you'uns."
I could stand it no more. "You'uns," I yelled back at him. "What the fuc% is you'uns. If you're going to correct me then the least you can do is to use proper English, which by the way would be you. That is all, just you, singular or plural! You'uns! You are an imbecile!"
He was from Boston. Apparently they say "you'uns", which is short for "you ones." That definitely makes no sense to me - especially in the plural sense.
to the sweet, clean smell of Gain detergent. I stood there for a minute just letting the fresh scent waft into my nostrils...
IT MADE ME HAPPY!
i need to do a commercial for that stuff!
