Month: May 2007

Yesterday, my dog Piper was incessantly barking in the back yard. She’s a pretty vocal dog, but this was a different kind of bark, so Libby went out to investigate. There, coiled on the ground, was a snake. The snake was trying to stare Piper down, but when your head is the size of a large thumb, you aren’t as effective as a lab/rottie mix. Libby decided that the dog needed to be inside the house and that she needed to alert somebody else to the presence of the snake.

Up walks Frank from the mailbox, oblivious to the fact that he has walked within a foot of this snake. When Libby asked if he had seen it, he seemed dumbfounded that he’d missed it! Being of the male persuasion his first instinct was to get a stick and poke at it. (Um… for those of you who don’t realize that I live in Maryland, we have poisonous snakes called Copperheads here!) The snake, who was trying to stare down the dog previously, decided that a 6’5″ man with a stick was too much for it, so it slithered up into a line of trees between my house and the neighbors. So, what is the next logical step for snake eradication?? CALL IN THE MARINES!!!

Our neighbors are both in the military. (Granted they both play in military bands, so their weapon of choice is a woodwind or a brass instrument, but they are still military!) They also have two small children and this was the second time we had heard tell of a snake in the area. We didn’t want them to look over and see their little daughter nose to nose with a snake!! So the two men decided it was time to go Snake Fishing…

What exactly do you need to go snake fishing? I guess a pair of gloves, a pillowcase and a very long pole. (Thankfully, we had recently gotten one of those to wash the house with!)

The guys poked the pole through the bushes and tried to loop the snake to pull it out. Over and over again, the snake slid off the pole and quickly moved back into the cover of the trees.

Finally, the Marine was able to catch the tail end of the snake and pull him out of the trees; note that this is no small snake! While Frank pinned the head with the scrubbing end of his pole, the Marine went in to capture the enemy…

And here is the trophy shot!

The victors put their foe into a pillow case and zip tied it shut. I’m not really sure what the Marine did with his catch, but I hope he took the prisoner to the park and let him go in the woods up there. That would seem to be the right thing to do.

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Just got home from the ER. Libby woke up and started thrashing and crying and asking me questions like, “Why can’t they hear me?” and “Tell them to stop looking at me!”. Then I left the room and came back moments later to her wailing that I hadn’t come and “there was something scary on the ground trying to get her.” She was radiating heat, but refused to let us take her temperature. She just was not with us and not happy wherever she *was*. Of course, this meant an immediate trip to the ER, where they found a fever of 103, gave her a bag of meat and taters and drew some more blood to be sure all was well. Her previous strep test came out negative, but they said all signs point to that being the problem, just to try and keep her temperature down and STOP the nausea meds. Apparently it is infamous for making people loopy. All are home and all are doing well now.
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Libby is sick. She’s running a fever and so far has had a negative strep test, but they are sending off a culture to make sure. In the meantime, they have given her some antibiotics and some anti nausea drugs. She sleeps like a rock anyway, but now she’s so zonked out that her phone- on full volume by her ear- won’t even wake her up. If you know Libby, (or any teen aged girl anymore), you know that’s the ultimate test of whether they are playing opossum or if they really are asleep!

I was supposed to go to a party this evening- some friends INVITED Frank and I – but I decided not to go so I could stay home and keep an eye on Libby for a few reasons.

1. She’s my baby and she’s sick.
2. Graduation is on Tuesday and I don’t want her to wake up and decide to go to one of the many parties she was invited to.
3. She wanders around and talks to things when she’s not feeling well.

When Libby runs a high temperature, you really aren’t too sure if she’s just going to sleep sleep sleep, which is what I want, or if she’s going to get up and wander about. The last time she was running a high temperature it was freezing outside. She got out of bed, wearing just her jammies, and walked right past me, down the steps and out the front door. I was calling to her the entire time to find out what was wrong, but she never answered. Instead she started having a conversation with the bushes out front. Frank had to run outside with a coat and try to bring her back inside, but the whole time, Libby was babbling to the bushes. We eventually got her inside and discovered she was running a fever which meant we took her to the Doc In A Box and found out she had strep.
This time, I brought Libby home from the Doc In A Box and sat her down at the kitchen table to eat some lunch. She had said she was hungry, so I had gotten her a sandwich from Burger King. (Not very nutritional, but it’s what she asked for!!) Traditionally, a trip to the Dr.’s office means a Slurpee, but I didn’t trust her to not wander out of the car. Anyway, I set her at the kitchen table to eat and went outside to check on the progress of the trash can corral we have been building. Within that short amount of time, she had eaten her food, followed me outside onto the deck, (in a jacket) and had plopped her butt into one of the chairs in the sunshine and passed right out!! Now, tell me why a person with a fever of 102+ would go and sit in the sunshine on a humid 90 degree day? I had to wake her up and convince her to go to bed, where she has been knocked out for the past 5 hours… poor baby.

In the car she asked me if I would come out to college if she were sick. I told her that if she needed me to, of course I would. That little moment did my heart good. It gave me a quick flashback to when she was a little girl and we would cuddle up and tell one another how we loved each other more than the other one did. Up to the moon and back, little nutbrown hare….

Found this on Neatorama!!

A hang (pronounced \u2018hung\u2019 or \u2018hong\u2019) is a melodious percussive musical instrument, similar to a steel drum. It uses many of the same physical principles to operate. However, since it is struck with the fingers, the sound is generally much softer than a steel drum, and can be played in many ways to produce a large variety of sounds.

Well, we have run our course and we have no more performances. Now it’s simply grunt office work to do.

On Thursday, I have to go to New York City. For years I REFUSED to go to NYC because I just KNEW it would blow up once I got there. As soon as 9/11 happened I no longer felt that way. Anyway, I have to go to settle on the sale of the condo there. I’ll be happy to be done with it. What I won’t be happy about is going to NYC by myself. Everyone I know has to work that day or has other issues. Not that I can’t go places by myself, it’s just that I can be directionally challenged at times and don’t really want to be both LOST and ALONE in NYC. I was considering riding the train up to Penn Station. With the cost of gas I thought it might actually make sense to try that way.

Big plans are underway for the graduation party we are having in June. This ends up being a multiple child, multiple event. Sean graduated with class of 2007!!! YES.. he got is GED!! Liberty turns 18 and graduates as well. Anytime a moonbounce is involved, you know it’s a big event!

I got my name in lights with notcelebrity.co.uk

My son is sitting on the back porch, in the lovely new patio set I got for Mother’s Day, enthralled by an ancient bug zapper that still works after being exposed to the elements for at least a year. The distinctive pop and zzzzzzt of the freshly hatched bug population on my back porch, delighting his ADHD as little else can. Hoots of joy come from him when a particularly large beetle provides a spectacular spray of sparks.

We really are not rednecks, although this delight of carnage makes me wonder sometimes.

He asks me if I like the bug zapper and I think for a moment. Do I? I find the sound disturbing and the concept distasteful, but I do hate being bitten by bugs. Generally, bugs are free to live unmolested in my life unless they cross the boundaries into my living quarters. Then they usually don’t survive long. Something about being lured to your own demise is uncomfortable and that’s exactly what a bug zapper does…. ooooo pretty light…zzzzzzzttttt!!

I hope the bugs will forgive him… because cosmically, he’s just a bug to something bigger… let’s hope *he* doesn’t get distracted by the Sean Zapper anytime soon.

Been thinking of my mom today. Today was her birthday, she would have been 71. I had dreams last night, none of them really clear. I didn’t see my parents, but the only part I can remember was that I was supposed to clean up yet another household where someone had been sick for a long time and died. I went into an unfamiliar room, where my parents were supposed to have been staying while they were very ill, and saw bedding (sheets and blankets) strewn around… I seem to remember white sheets a green blanket, but I could be wrong about that. Someone handed me a navy blue jacket and skirt combination and I remember thinking that it looked like something my mom would wear, then I remembered that it was the outfit she had picked out to be buried in. (Not in real life, but in my dream) In my dream she wasn’t dead, just not where I was.

Between that snippet of a dream and getting a phone call about more legal crud with Heather, my day didn’t start off so well. I did go to the bank and pet store, where I really wanted to go lovey all the kitties. They were looking for volunteers to come in and love the animals now and then. I think I’ll see how I can do that.

At least I got out in the sunshine for a bit.. that’s a positive!

Quick blog tonight.. or should I say this morning.

Great concert- maybe I’ll be able to make a link to it when Dave figures that out.
My schedule is just very busy right now and I’m such a control freak that I want to make sure I have everything I can possibly have covered, covered, or some kind of contingency plan in place. That takes a TON out of you. No wonder I exhaust myself.

My daughter has prom tomorrow night and I have performances. My son promised to come pick me up from Meyerhoff so we could race over to the hotel and take pictures.. that way I at least get to see her in her gown.

I also have a chance to spend an hour at Flower Mart, which I’ve never been to, and since it’s on the doorstep of the my work, I guess I’ll take advantage of that.

Sunday is the performance of Carmina Burana and the final concert for our Towson campus, hours apart from one another. Saturday is the opening night for Tosca. The picture above is Frank in his robes on stage with the processional… hehehe… gotta love it.

I saw that Jesus Christ Superstar is coming to the Lyric in a couple of weeks with Ted Neely as Jesus. That means that he’s been portraying Jesus in that role for almost twice the amount of time that Jesus walked the earth. Ted is a 64 year old man portraying a 33 year old. Gotta love make up. I’d love to go, since it’s billed as Ted’s “Farewell Tour” heheheh… I guess 65 is just too old to play a 33 year old!!

Watch out, Dave.. you won’t be able to pretend much longer!! 🙂