Let me know if you do, so that I can come over to look - ok?

And so … here goes …

1. Do you like blue cheese salad dressing?

I don’t like blue cheese dressing … I love blue cheese dressing. *drool*

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?

Smoked heroin? Is that what you’re supposed to do with it? No, I’ve never smoked heroin … or done anything else with it, for that matter.

3. Do you own a gun?

Yes … more than one. After last fall’s burglaries, I sleep with one. Hubby works nights, and there’s no way to secure this old house.

4. Your favorite drink at Starbucks or other specialty?

I’ve never been to Starbucks … and don’t normally go places to buy drinks.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?

Emphatically yes. Pathologically, in fact.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?

Not my favorite, but I really do like an occasional steamed dog with lots of stuff on it.

7. Favorite Christmas song?

Minuit Chrétien (Oh Holy Night, in French)

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?

Perked coffee - strong, hot, black and unsweetened.

9. Can you do push ups?

Never. Not in my whole life.

10. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?

Not into jewelry. I wear a cheap Walmart watch for convenience. I (very) occasionally wear earrings. I do, however, wear toe rings all year long. No favorites, though.

11. Favorite hobby?

I have a lot of “favorites” … depending in the season, and other things going on.

I love gardening … blogging … Tunisian crochet … creating areas for online MUDs … playing on online muds … etc. … etc. …

12. Do you have A.D.D.?

I really don’t think I do.

13. What’s one trait that you hate about yourself?

My inability to communicate verbally with certain people.

14. Middle name?

I’m a Franco: Jeannine-Marie

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?

1) Wondering if I should be doing this.
2) Wondering how forthcoming I dare be.
3) Wondering if I’ll actually click “Publish” when I’m done.

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink?

There are only two: perked coffee (both hot and iced) and Moxie

17. Current worry right now?

Ummm … you don’t wanna go there, believe me.

18. Current hate right now?

Officials who are dishonest.

19. Favorite place to be?

Camp - up in Acton, Maine

20. How did you bring in the New Year?

I slept.

21. Like to travel?

I love to travel. If I could afford it, my next stop would be India. :o)

22. Name three people who will complete this?

Absolutely no clue - whoever’s as numb as I am, I guess. *LOL*

23. Do you own slippers?

Yes, but my bare feet are a lot more comfy.

24. What color shirt are you wearing?

I’m not - I’m in a nightgown. ;o)

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?

No. I like the feel of nice soft jersey better - or even just plain cotton. Not into satin.

26. Can you whistle?

Oh my goodness! The poor birds would fall from the sky in mid-flight if tried! (Make that a NO!)

27. Favorite color?

Cobalt blue - particularly clear blue glass.

28. Would you be a pirate?

heh … Dude! I am a pirate! LOL

29. What songs do you sing in the shower?

I don’t sing in the shower. I’m sure I would drown if I tried.

30. Favorite girl’s name?

If I’d had one more girl, she would have been Dawn Althea.

31. Favorite boy’s name?

Hmm … Doug and I had to bust our brains to come up with a name for the third boy. I think I’m out of boy names.

32. What’s in your pocket right now?

My nightgown doesn’t have any pockets. ;o)

33. Last thing that made you laugh?

Watching my son Dougie’s antics … *rolls eyes*. He was a GREAT kid … but he saved all of his mischief for when he became an adult! Now he’s bigger than I am, so I can’t spank him! ;o)

34. Best bed sheets as a child?

… ??? … eh? Bedsheets were bedsheets. I didn’t know one from the other. They were all white, clean, and smelled nice.

35. Worst injury you’ve ever had?

Busting a kidney when I fell down a flight of stairs as a toddler.

36. Do you love where you live?

No. No. No. No. No. No. … ad nauseam …

37. How many TVs do you have in your house?

1 … which is seldom turned on.

38. Who is your loudest friend?

Fr. Bob G.

40. Does someone have a crush on you?

Omigod. Poor deluded souls. I should hope not.

41. What is your favorite book?

Don’t have one. Haven’t read anything but text books in years.

42 What is your favorite candy?

Baking Soda Candy

43. Favorite Sports Team?

I cannot abide sports. My eyes glaze over at the mere mention. I don’t know one team from another. I don’t believe there’s been a sport on our television in this house - ever. None of us watch them.

44. What were you doing 12 AM last night?

Talking to Hans Engel on Skype, I believe … while also holding an IM conversation with SmallTownDoc. I don’t multitask well at that time of night, but I do enjoy talking to both of them.

45. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up this morning?

That I was already nearly at the end of my vacation … :o(

Okies! That’s it! If you read this - consider yourself TAGGED! (YO! Vijay!!!! *cough*)

First of all, I want to share that I’ve had the amazing experience of growing closer to some of my blog friends even when I wasn’t actively blogging. Last November, I posted about online friendships … and life promptly went on to confirm my thoughts. Over the months when I wasn’t able to blog, I still chatted with some of you quite often … daily even. It’s been wonderful, warm and uplifting! Not sure what I would have done without the companionship. Thank you.

I guess the next thing I should share is just a bit of newsy stuff. The son who was missing last fall is home now, and seems to be pulling his life together. I guess that the problems he was facing last fall have eased, and he’s been able to relax just a bit. He just graced me with wild roses in a glass two weeks in a row. Motherhood has its perks! ;o)

Another positive event … a neighbor showed up about a month ago and harrowed our garden area. We have a garden for the first time in 3 years. I’m spending the better part of my time pulling weeds. The garden is between 8,500 and 9,000 square feet, and there’s mostly just Doug and I working in it, so the weeds are really getting ahead of us fast, but I think we’ll still have a decent load of veggies at the end of the summer. I hope to have time to make salsa this fall … mmmmmm …. I’ll blog about it, if I do. Also intend to post photos of the garden as the season progresses.

In another month, we’ll be heading for camp. I will be having quite a bit of company almost as soon as I get there, and I hope to have time to take photos and share the adventures with you. An old friend from PA and his family will be joining me for a few days, my dear friend Joanie and her Mum will be visiting me, and hopefully, a very good friend from my ministry days will visit for a week. I’m really looking forward to it!

Finally, a patient blog update. When I saw my primary care doc a few weeks ago, I found out that I’m creeping toward stage 5 kidney failure, and unless it bounces back up a bit for a while longer, I’ll probably have decisions to make about dialysis the next time I see my nephrologist. I knew it would come to this eventually, but being faced with the prospect isn’t quite the same as anticipating it from a distance. Things could improve again for a while … it’s a see-saw with a mind of its own.

In the next week, I intend to post some garden pics for all of you out there with a green thumb. Need some sunshine though … we’ve had a lot of roving thunderstorms. Think SUN! ;o)

Both of them were comments that were forwarded to me from the blog.

Pattie’s comment:

Ok….it’s been a month since my last comment….A Month!

Are you coming back? I miss you *sniff*

And Vijay’s:

A little more than a month since my last comment.

Anyone see a parallel here? Maybe a theme, even? I bet they discussed this on the sly before posting, eh? I mean, DUDE! Three minutes apart, even! If it were a baby, it would have been born seconds later! ;o)

Seriously though … I apologize to everyone for being gone so long. In the past, I’ve written some starkly honest posts, but the really intense posts, full of raw honesty, dealt with things that happened many years ago. Time had dulled the edge of the associated ouch, and I could write about the horrible events of the past from the perspective of someone who’s seen how the story ends, and has gone over it so often that the area is largely numb. I could use my past as a tool to perhaps free someone else in the present, because it was a course I’d already graduated from.

However, the position I find myself in right now is not quite as cut and dry, and I’m not at all removed from the situation by the anesthetizing ministrations of time. Worse still - I have no idea how it all ends.

Being that I’m not as brave as a certain Australian doc we all know and love, I haven’t got any real revelations to share. I will just say that the events of last fall, which piled up on top of some rather difficult ongoing circumstances, followed me like a pack of pertinacious black hounds into a long, dark, cold, and paralyzing winter. You would seriously not have wanted to read anything I’d written over the winter, believe me.

The gentle, but vibrant, hues of summer, and the sun’s healing warmth, are bringing me back to life a bit again. It’s like taking a long drink of cold fresh water after crossing a seemingly endless desert. As affective as the summer is, however, I know that it’s only a partial (and temporary) reprieve from some very serious and ongoing situations. Blogging with any regularity would be very difficult for me right now. Please continue to be patient with me - I don’t intend to be gone forever.

Thank you all for your concern. It’s been a shelter from the cold for me, even when I couldn’t reply.

Next week I have finals in my current course, and the week after that is one of the two free weeks the school gives us every year. If possible, I will take a bit of that time to do some patient blogging.

I’ve been receiving emails asking if I’m OK, if all is well, etc. Yes, I’m here, I’m alive, and as a dear friend used to say: “able to sit up and take nourishment.”

From the previous post, my readers know that last fall was a doozy. I will eventually finish my detailed posts, but for now, I’ll just give you a brief outline:

In August, I ended up in the hospital with an infection that I probably caught while swimming in the lake at camp. Within two weeks of my discharge, my oldest son vanished under really suspicious circumstances. We spent the next two weeks in the surreal world of wondering if he was dead or alive. He turned up alive later, but in trouble. That situation is ongoing.

About two weeks after we found him, our home was burglarized. We were still up at camp, and had put off moving back home for a week for unrelated reasons. That was the last week of October. At that time, I was taking finals in my current course, and preparing to begin my next course. My laptop died unexpectedly during that first week in the new course. Because of that, I was in a real rush to move back home where I could use one of the many desktop computers we had at home to continue my classes.

That was not to be, however. That very next week end, the first week of November, we were burglarized again. That time, they not only kicked in doors, and added to the mayhem caused by the first burglars (drawers emptied, etc.), they also took everything of value that we had left in the house - practically everything of use that we didn’t happen to have with us up at camp.

No more computers at home. I had to withdraw from school, since I no longer had a computer for attending classes.

Over the next month or so, many other unpleasant things happened, both in relation to the events I mentioned, and in unrelated addition to those events. Some of them are quite personal, and I’m not ready to be that “out there” about them, yet.

In mid November, my sweet son, Dougie, bought a laptop and a computer with the last few paychecks he received from a job he was leaving, and let his dad and I use them. I reapplied for the next session of school.

By late December, I discovered that my identity had been stolen during the burglaries. One more concern to add to the heap.

On January 7, school started again. I had to double up on the courses in order to not lose my school loans, and found that I’d chosen my courses very poorly. Both were amazingly intense writing courses, and during some of the weeks, I was spending 12 to 17 hour school days. Really, it was a bit of a nightmare that I wasn’t quite ready for. Those courses just got done last week, and now I’m taking one simple gen ed course which requires a great deal of reading, but I feel as if I’m on vacation, all the same.

And so, my friends, that is a very brief description of the blur of the last 7 months. There hasn’t been any space for doing anything that takes more than a few minutes at a time.

I want to thank all of my Facebook friends for the Scrabulous games which have given me brief “vacations” from the here and now … those few moments of word puzzle solving have helped to keep me sane (I think.)

Although I’m a person who shies away from “drama,” this last stretch of my life has had enough drama in it to last a small town of people for a lifetime. I promise that I will share as much of it as I can with you, however I find it hard to share things that are emotionally intense as they’re ongoing … it’s easier to do so retrospectively. Still, I do have a lot to share - just please be patient with me, let me keep working things out, and eventually I’ll feel more able to be open again.

Please forgive me for unanswered emails … they’re still in my inbox (yes, even those from before the Holidays,) and I will reply to them. Thanks for your patience.

There has been a lot going on - some of which I shared with you, some of which I haven’t, but many of you are aware of anyway … and some that I’ve kept rather private …

The last time I gave everyone a real update was at the end of August when I ended up in the hospital. On September 23, I told you that there was a lot going on, and that once it was over, “I may have a real good story for you,” but that for the time being, I needed “to be a good little Moofie and keep a low profile.”

Well … here’s the promised story - plus some, since things didn’t end there. I’m probably going to have to write all of this out in several installments. Let me pick up where I left off …

Once upon a time there was a little Moofie …

… who really hated to have to leave her nice summer camp, and travel home for any reason whatsoever.

However, on Friday, September 7, about a week after my discharge from the hospital, I had to make a run home to get some lab work done. Whenever I have to go home from camp, I almost always make a day of it. If Dougie, my chef son, isn’t working, he and I will travel together, and pick up my Mother-in-law for a threesome. We then take care of whatever business is at hand, and once the duty is done, we treat ourselves to dinner in a restaurant. Home is only a minute or two from my Mother-in-law’s house, and I decided to stop there quickly to see if there were any phone messages to deal with, or mail to pick up. I was surprised to see a calling card balanced on the doorknob, and a bit wary when I saw it was from a detective from the local police department.

My first thought was: “Oh geeze! Darian’s in trouble again.” My oldest son has a long history of friction with the local police. They’ve nicknamed the “curbside lawyer,” and he’s nicknamed them … um, *cough* … never mind. I entered the house, and promptly called the police station to inquire about the card. They told me that there was a court date on the following Monday, and they wanted to deliver a summons. Darian’s apartment had been broken into, and many of his belongings destroyed earlier in the year; he was supposed to testify against the perpetrators. I assured the officer that I would give Darian the message before heading back up to camp.

I immediately went out to the barn. Yes, my son really did live in a barn. He’d made a little apartment for himself in the back of the barn, bought a furnace, a small fridge, and had things set up quite comfortably back there. During the winter, he was warmer in the barn than we were in the house. There was a big enclosed bay for working on his cars which was separate from his living room and bedroom, and a huge field just outside the back door, which was perfect for big loud parties with huge bonfires. His place was normally busier than Grand Central Station.

This time, it was ominously quiet … and empty. The door to his private area was wide open … and not a soul was in sight. Odd. Darian has a rather crippling case of paranoia; of course, he would be quick to tell you that it’s not paranoia, and that he has good reasons to think the way he does; to be sure, where some issues are concerned, he’s right. But, suffice it to say that he’s not one to run off and leave the door to his apartment wide open. I called out to him from the entry, but there was no answer. I made a mental note that he had the barn lights on although it was daytime, and felt irritation at his lack of concern for the cost of electricity.

Thinking that he might be in the apartment area asleep, I ventured into the work area … trying hard to not trip over the tools and the rest of the amazing mess which was scattered from one end to the other. He’d never been neat; in fact, my last communication with him had been a rather angry note left on what I could still find of the kitchen table, telling him to pick up his mess in the house. This was another story, however! It looked as if a compression bomb had gone off in there! I went into his “living room,” and saw that it had been ransacked … as was his bedroom. I shook my head in disbelief, and wondered what sort of party he’d had in there. It looked as if a pack of marauders had given the place a thorough going-over. Darian was nowhere to be found.

I returned to the house to write him a message, and then went back to thumbtack it to the open door. As I was doing that, I heard a car pull up to the front of the barn. Relieved, I called out his name - but a different voice than the one I was expecting hollered in reply. Darian’s good friend, Ryan, came through the barn’s large front doors, and made his way toward me with long strides. The conversation that ensued didn’t answer many questions … in fact, it only served to pile on more. Darian had made plans to meet Ryan there the night before, but hadn’t been there when Ryan showed up. The circumstances Ryan related were odd …

Darian had been working on Ryan’s truck, which sits in our yard to this day. Darian called Ryan from a store, and told him that he was in the process of picking up a brake cable, and asked Ryan to bring the brake fluid. They were supposed to meet at the barn at 10 PM. When Ryan got out of work, he went to the barn with the brake fluid, but there was no Darian … everything was wide open, things were upside down … just like it was when I saw it.

A sick, queasy feeling started rolling around in the pit of my stomach. As Ryan and I made our way out of the barn, he told me: “Don’t worry! Wherever Darian is, I’m sure it’s not a bad place.”

I replied: “Ryan, with the way Darian lives, that ‘bad place’ could happen any time.” Ryan’s eyebrows flew up, as he nodded in acknowledgment. To call Darian a risk taker … is to be mortally guilty of understatement.

We locked up the house, picked up my Mother-in-law, and ran our errands. After a nice dinner, and an otherwise pleasant afternoon, we ran back by the house to see if Darian had shown back up. Nope.

At that point, Dougie and I decided that we couldn’t leave the barn wide open, with all of the lights on. We went out there together, and started turning off the lights, as we gingerly picked our way through the disaster. As Dougie was shutting down Darian’s computer, I checked out a small box which was sitting on his bed, hoping to perhaps find a clue as to where he was. In the box was fresh food - a hamburger patty, several pieces of pie - the type you find in fancy restaurants, a loaf of bread, and a number of other ready to eat goodies. The hamburger patty was the only food item that needed cooking. It looked as if he’d brought the food in, left it on the bed, and never had a chance to eat it - or store it, although he had a little fridge in the very next room.

Fresh food on the bed, computer still running, all the lights on in the middle of the day, doors wide open … and missing an appointment he himself had made with Ryan the night before … something was wrong … badly wrong.

Fighting panic, I went back into the house and called the police. I asked if they had any information about Darian that I wouldn’t have known about (they didn’t,) and told them what I had found.

Did I want to report him as missing? No … not yet. I decided that I would wait until Monday. If he didn’t show up at court - a court we were all pretty sure he wanted to be present at - then that’s when I would report him missing.

We had a very busy week end. My childhood friend, Joanie, along with her Mum, came to spend the week end with me. Our original get together had been planned for the last week end of August, but on that Friday, Joanie had ended up in the emergency room, and had been admitted with a question of heart problems. On that Sunday morning, after a horrible night, I had been admitted through the emergency room for my own little problem. It was just one those things: our get together wasn’t meant to happen on that week end. We were both pretty wary of setting a new date, but our September 8 & 9 meeting worked out fine. On Sunday, my son, Daughter-in-law, and brand new grandbaby also came to visit … as did my Mother-in-law. It was wonderful to have them all there.

However, I couldn’t get my missing son out of my mind. A feeling of dread had settled on me like a layer of ash, dampening the joy of our little get together.

And that’s it for this installment. In the next day or so, I’ll pick up from here, and continue …

Here are some photos taken on September 9:

As much as I’ve neglected this blog, and found it difficult to do keep up with the blogs I like to follow, two very kind souls have nominated me for another blog award. It was really kind of them, and I must say that I’m feeling both humbled … and guilty … for being gone for so long.

Vijay, over at Scan Man’s Notes, gave me the Be the Blog Award yesterday, and this morning, Ramona of Suture for a Living gave me the very same award.

Here’s the description:

…created by Mark at Me and My Drum for bloggers who make their blog their own, stay with it, are interactive with their readers, and just plain have fun.

And here’s what the little beauty looks like:

Vijay and Ramona have nominated a lot of the people that I also would nominate, and there are a lot more of you that I would like to nominate … if I started, my list would go on and on. All of my blog friends on Pownce, and all of those on Facebook … and so many of the rest of you who keep blogging, sharing, giving yourselves to us so unselfishly …

For those who don’t know …

When we were moving home from camp this year, we were burglarized - not once, but twice! The buggers took off with everything of value that wasn’t up at camp with us … including all of our desktop computers at home. Meanwhile, between the first and second burglary, my little lap top died … so without my desktop computer waiting for me at home, I had to temporarily withdraw from school - and it was also a challenge to get online at all.

About a week ago - on the 13th, UPS pulled up to the door, and dropped off a big box for my husband. In the box was a brand new desktop computer! My son, Dougie, had bought his Dad a computer to replace the one that had been stolen. I was dumbfounded! His last day at work was that following Friday, and he was buying a computer for his Dad!

My surprises weren’t over for the day …

When he got home from work that night, he handed me a package. I opened it and found a brand new Toshiba Satellite lap top! And that’s not all he did … he had a sheet of paper in his hand on which he’d written everything he thought I would say when he gave it to me … he was right on all counts! I ran through his entire list before he handed me the paper!

I don’t really have time to blog today - since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I’ve still got to dig out the dining room so that we will have a place to eat dinner tomorrow. We’re not really going to “do” the holidays this year, because things at home are still in such disarray … but at least I’m facing the Holidays with the knowledge that I’ll be able to continue blogging, and that I’ll be able to be back in class again in January … thanks to my son.

I think I’ll keep him … ;o)

Would any of my kind and generous readers already belong to a social program named Jaiku? If so, I would dearly love an invitation! I will do your (virtual) dishes for a week! If you’re a dude, I’ll make (virtual) dinner for you! ;o)

If you have an invite, or know someone who can invite me in, please email me at: moof@blogsplot.net

Thankee!

In Rob’s post yesterday, he alluded to the diversity of his online friends: “I have friends who are from all over the country - even all around the world. I have Hindu, Jewish, Atheist, and Agnostic friends, where I would have never had such an opportunity to get close to people across so many faiths […]” Rob is right. Not only have we found diversity in our friendships, those friendships have developed real depth. Here, in our little corner of the blogosphere, we’ve done what the world needs to do if it wants to survive: we’ve built deep friendships irrespective of culture, race, or religion. Our differences have only been a source of wonder and enlightenment … and have expanded us beyond who we were before we stretched ourselves enough to become one thing only: good friends.

Now, I would like to think that we’re exceptional … in fact, in many ways, I do think so … but it appears as if this is a real movement which is picking up momentum as begins to span the world …

This morning, my son sent me a link to an article on SlashDot … “Over-50s Invade the Social Networking Scene“. I laughed when I read it, and quickly chased down and read the full article: “Face it - oldies want chums, too“. It made think … there’s more to all of this than meets the eye …

It’s not just an unprecedented amount of older people making a rush into Facebook … it’s people of all ages making a rush into friendship. Getting to know people … where nothing matters but who you are - not your looks, not your sex, not your age … simply who you are, and how you give yourself to your friends.

I have a sweet friend that I met in the spring of 2006. I’m sure a lot of you remember him: Dr. Hans Engel. He has the In a Doc’s Mind blog. We were in the process of developing a warm, wonderful friendship, when he had a catastrophic stroke just over a year ago. It damaged his reading and writing abilities, and since that’s how we were communicating, I was afraid that we would lose each other. But we haven’t. Our friendship continued to grow, and now we talk several times a week. We’re improbable friends … but oh, how we enjoy our little chats, and each other!

That’s an example of what these friendships are. They don’t end at the keyboard - although some of us haven’t explored them beyond that point, yet.

We’re living in an age when we no longer know our next door neighbors … we have no clue of who lives down the road … or a half dozen doors away. We’re all pressed together like canned sardines on elevators, in restaurants, checkout lines, church and temple benches … but we no longer know one another. The more tightly pressed down we are with the teeming masses in our daily walk, the lonelier we seem to become. The internet, the blogosphere, has provided a way for us to rebel against the aloneness … and here, we find that our hearts are not as solitary, and some of our deepest thoughts, loves, fears … can be shared in this little haven of ours.

Here, it’s not our bodies doing the talking … it’s our souls.

I actually made 4 posts before that time, but those were not really meant for public consumption. I wasn’t actually “blogging,” I was journalizing. My first official, public post, made with the idea of maintaining a public blog, was on November 1, 2005

The first blog I ever read after I started blogging in earnest was Dr. Bob’s blog, from The Doctor Is In. From his blogroll, I found Kim from Emergiblog, and from Kim, I found our dear Dr. IBear from Doc Around the Clock … and on it went! I was addicted! In early March of 2006, Vijay contacted me for the first time; and our little blog family was growing.

I wanted to write about how the people I’ve met through blogging have touched my life, but … someone beat me to it. One of my very best blog friends, Dr. Rob over at Musings of a Distractible Mind, has an especially wonderful post today - he talks about building blog friendships, and he does a far better job of it than I ever could have. Please go over and take a look if you haven’t read it yet.

Here’s to another year of blogging! :o)