Wednesday Hodge Podge

1. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL? The NFL is back in action along with all the college teams. Are you a fan? Who do you root for? If you're not a fan what do you do while the rest of America watches Saturday, Sunday, Monday night, and now Thursday night games?

I don’t watch much college football. I’ve never been anything more than casually interested in watching college sports. The super college sports fans that never went to any college turned me off at a young age. I do enjoy the NFL and will watch games early in the season if there isn’t baseball on, but baseball will always win with me if there’s a choice unless one of my football teams is playing and my baseball teams are not. That’s not so common, but it has happened. I never really followed football because, well, I was born a Lions fan and as an optimist those two usually conflicted. When I got married “Forsaking all other teams and taking The Patriots” was in the vows. (don’t you dare even think about changing my baseball teams was in the prenup) So I follow a little closer now because David supplies the necessary information. I still want to see the Lions win, but I cheer f0r the Pars.


2. What's something I'll always find in your closet?

My other pair of shoes.


3. Share one of your earliest memories.

I have a few brief episodic memories from before I was 5 years old and 4 snippets. The snippets include my Noni slapping my hands for dipping my sucker in the sand, I’m told she’d taken a few suckers away already and the slap was more of a tap, and my very pregnant mother bending over and saying something to me, but I don’t remember anything that was said. My only brother is 14 months younger than me; it’s possible I didn’t understand some of what was said.

One of the other snippets may be from the same day, but I have a flavor and texture memory of a round lime lollipop with a gritty texture rubbing on parts of my mouth that didn’t have teeth yet. It's a weird memory, even for someone who has crazy ancient episodical memories, because there is no visual, except that I visualize the inside of my mouth when I think of it but I know that is not an actual part of the memory; it’s just sort of the index card in my brain for the flavor and texture memory.


4. What circus act best describes your week so far?

Um…I was at the circus once in my life when I was a kid. I remember three rings, a guy in a top hat and a lady in a short sparky skirt…and cotton candy. (But I don’t remember if I ate it or watched someone else eat it.) Never watched a circus on TV, so all my circus knowledge comes from Dumbo. Which the way Dumbo and his Mom were treated is possibly why I never asked to go to the circus as a kid. Hmmm…

Some days getting up and down the stairs to do laundry seems as magical as making an elephant fly, so I’ll say Flying Elephant in the laundry room. :D


5. What's a food you disliked as a child but you love now?

I liked fried calamari as a kid and hate it now; part because it’s fried and part because it’s squid. And I hated lima beans as a kid and still hate them now. Loved green beans as a kid, still love them now. Hmmm… disliked as a kid, like now. I can’t think of any. It’s not that I have a boring palate no, quire the contrary, There are a lot of new things I like now that I never tried as a kid, middle Eastern food for instance, I might not have liked hummus, but I don’t know. But I did eat calamari as a very young child. I also tried veal and prosciutto, neither of which I liked and neither of which I care for now. I do use prosciutto in soup, but that’s not new and its no-t new that I like it in soup. I’ve disliked steak since I was a kid, always liked ham. If I come up with one that’s changed, I’ll add it as a random thought next week!


6. Describe your summer in three words.

Too darned COLD!

(Remember that I’m pretty much a shut-in during the week right now. The air conditioned temperature is killing me!)


7. Where were you on September 11, 2001? Will you do anything special to mark the day this year?

I was a job seeker in 2001. I signed on to my email account and started checking for the days postings when I saw the news photo on my sign-in screen on AOL. At first, I thought it was about the bombing a few years earlier, slow news day. Yeah, anything but a slow news day. I spent the rest of the day glued to the TV. I remember being scared when the Pentagon was hit because I wasn’t sure how many places were targets or by whom. I was horrified as the towers fell on live TV. John called me as soon as he left work. His first question was “Are you home alone?” when I said I was he said "I’ll be right there." He knew me well enough to know I’d be going nuts.


I hope it’s not too selfish of me, but I read articles of remembrance and looked at memorial graphics on facebook, but I was thinking about John and missing my friend. He was my strongest comfort that day when our world was falling apart.


8. Insert your own random thought here.

I’ve been worried kitty-mommy all week. I said Monday that there was no way we were getting that medicine into Kaline and her eye was getting better. And it is better too, but now the other eye is draining and inflamed. She seems more annoyed that I want to look at it than any problems with it. Her appetite is fine, she runs and plays with Carla fine and Carla is showing no signs of catching anything or acting like she thinks Kaline is sick, so I am sure that it’s allergies. Her left eye still looks good and her right eye is looking better now. I think we need to make sure we aren’t irritating them trying to clean the drainage, no matter how awful it looks to us. When she was on the ointment last year, we didn’t touch the dirt that collected because I thought cleaning the corners of her eyes was what infected it. Leaving them alone this year has really seemed to help the problem pass quicker.

She seemed to start having problems when it got a little cooler and we had open windows. The problem doesn’t happen in the spring or summer if the windows are open, just in the fall. She became a housecat at 5 weeks old and the vet had said she was weaned too early. I bet tha6 has everything to do with developing allergies to something that comes in the windows in early fall. If her eyes drain and get irritated but not infected and she doesn’t get sick without medication, as long as she isn’t showing any indication that it hurts or even bothers her, I can deal with a couple weeks a year. Even knowing she’s not in pain or discomfort, I still hurt inside for her when I see the dark streaks in the corners of her pretty eyes.