This little light of mine

This little light of mine
I'm gonna let it shine.

Yes, I'm singing gospel ditties from my childhood in my head. I think it's because I'm full. Here's a newsflash, when you have have major surgery they put you on a soft/low residue diet. and that's fine. when you have major abdominal surgery you tend to stay on that diet for up to two months. It's a lot of refined carbohydrates. If, like me, you dropped about 50 pounds having surgery, the refined carbs aren't the worst thing in the world as you (I) actually have a shot at gaining 5 or 10 pounds and leaving the 'anorexia/bulimia zone.'

but refined carbohydrates are really, really boring. how many pieces of bread can i really eat? i love steak and butter and green leafy vegetables. Oh, if I could video blog you guys would witness the way my head fell back and a peaceful, happy expression eased across my face as i thought about leafy greens. I love to eat.

I've also had insomnia, another by-product of a diet high in refined carbohydrates. I am so tired of greeting the dawn, that shit is played like a michael jackson record in 85. So, despite being two weeks shy of when you're supposed to be introducing new things to your diet, I'm getting off the carbs. this morning i had eggs and avocado. I walked a little bit. And I feel good. Not sluggish. Sustained. I need to plan something for lunch, maybe chicken and asparagus and the remainder of my avocado. I really want a salad. But i have to taste lettuce first to make sure i can digest it. I am not going to the emergency room over a damn piece of lettuce. Been there, done that and it's the main reason I don't eat bananas any longer. bitch-ass bananas.

And later today I'll attend a meeting a work to observe the goings-on in the wake of theft at the front desk. Should be funny. I wish I had a way to listen to music while it's all happening. I like listening to music and watching people. This would be a fantastic way to do it, but alas, I can't figure out how to make it happen. I'm taking suggestions.

Shine on you crazy diamond...

Oh very young what will you leave us this time?

Cat Stevens asked a good question with that. I'm back, and so much has happened. The biggest thing...and I cannot stress this enough:

Do not steal cash from your employer.

Really. It's stupid. You'll get caught. People always look at their cash, dummy, steal STUFF, not cash.

Someone in my office is stealing cash. So you know the person who handles the cash is the one who is going to get docked. No questions. Skip protocol, money goes missing, well, that's ur ass.

Now, I have taken everything but desks out of offices in my long, illustrious career. I've given employees computer, extra vacation, slipped them some cash...as a journalist I was a-ok with being given tickets, trips whatever by the person(s) i was dealing with. Ethic isn't really my middle name. But cash...never tempted. Not even a little bit. It's stupid. Just plain stupid.

So, what else? My girl prayer should have gone under the knife a couple days ago. She's probably quite drugged and sleeping right now, but shoutout to her anyway. I think all of my sisters are hitting the honor roll with a vengeance, they are sooo special!

Me, I spend my days gutting my house. I want all the stuff that has accumulated, that I'm not in love with, O.U.T. Of course, being post-op means I have to have patience while I do this. But, every day just a little more brings me a little closer to my goal. There was a time when I only made big, sweeping gestures. I'm glad to be over that phase in my life.

Well, that's all the stories I have to tell for the moment. I've been socializing up a storm lately and that's kept me from writing, but there is nothing like discipline and I'm the master of my own fate and yadda yadda yadda.

Ciao!

No rest for the wicked

Wow. I might have one-hundred views this week. c'mon readers...get on the stick!

I didn't write yesterday cause I went to sleep early. I'm lying. I didn't go to sleep all that early, 2-ish, but the night before I was up writing analog-style til 4 am. Guess who has let go of her prescription pain medication and thusly gotten her brain back (in fits and starts and mostly at midnight til 5 am or so).

I have my profile open on another tab and I'm really enjoying my jukebox. Does anyone else ever listen to it? It started out with Gilberto and now I'm on jay-z with UGK (minus one, now). One of my all-time favorite lines are in this song: "Go and read a book you illiterate sonofab*tch, step up that vocab." Hey, I'm all for literacy!

The other day I was on perez hilton when he broke about a young actor's death. It punched me in the stomach, much in the way Aaliyah's death did. There is a difference, this time I'm older than the person who left entirely too early and I'm happy about my life. When Aaliyah passed, I was miserable on a lot of levels and her death was a wake-up call, "hey bitch, tomorrow is not promised, get out of the misery." I thanked her every day for about a year for providing that inspiration.

H. Ledger's death, well, I looked at his age - 28 - and felt the loss in waves. Somehow I've seen most of his movies by default usually, and enjoyed them (unexpectedly). I haven't seen Brokeback due to my moratorium on anything that might undermine my blissful state of happiness. I watch a lot of Disney Channel and Anthony Bourdain. I spent 28 having 7 major surgeries trying like crazy to save my own life (literally and figuratively). To learn that this talented, intelligent spirit lost his as I am just gaining mine was stark and saddening. I heard about the media frenzy from a photog friend who happened to pop out in SoHo from the Subway only to enter a mob (on her way to do something totally unrelated). I was proud not to be a part of the media monster any longer, I have not liked what it was becoming for years and I'm pretty done with all of it at this point. It will swing back, I'm sure, but it will take time.

So, this is a boring-ass blog. Time to prep for bed...g'night and good living.

What’s a Nice Boy Like You Doing in a Place like this?

Watching Belle Epoque featuring a very juevenile looking Penelope Cruz. It's a wonderful movie, exactly what I have been looking for. A fantastic foreign film with quirky characters, plenty of women-tude, happiness and laughter and love and LIFE in extreme...

Right now the fantastic mother of the four girls who have been passing our protagonist around like a set of hair curlers is signing a glorious operetta in the front yard of the country house, to her thoroughly besotted husband and children.

The Mom looks like a white Celia Cruz..

I just realized one of my friends is a Scorpio. I don't know why I didn't pay attention to the many messages exchanged where he sang the praises of us Scorps...I just thought it was a strange fixation. I NEVER hang out with other scorpios, it gets too strange too fast. we are one weird group of people. Fast on our heels are virgos, geminis and maybe aquarians...maybe. Aquarians are just cerebral and I had a bad experience with one, but you can't judge an entire star sign by one person.

They are Free LOVING IT up in this movie...I LOVE IT!!!

Okay, back to cinema espanol.

Camille

It’s always dangerous

when everybody's sleeping and i've been thinking ~ Amy Winehouse

it's on right now and purrfectly fits my mood. I'm rather jubilant this morning, I'm at my house, planning to put all my stuff for goodwill or salvation army in the trash (in protective bags) cause it's cluttered my life for too long and no one is going to to move it if I don't - and I can't drive. :)

my homie jar is off entangling with some new lass, my girl prayer is out of pocket...change is happening. that is the interesting thing about winter - despite the appearance of death on the surface of the earth, there is all kinds of change, rebirth, and reconstruction beneath the surface. people do some major changing in winter but no one finds out for a few seasons, maybe a few years (same as seasons).

Oh dear. The NYtimes has a feature on "inside the ceremony for female circumcision." Can I ask why they wait until girls are older instead of doing it at birth, if it's going to be done at all? And the methods...well, if anyone else read Possessing the Secret of Joy and the stuff that came out around that time - broken shards of glass, high infection rates, seriously sickening business.

Now this is an interesting article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/weekinreview/20barboro.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
"Trading up" talking about masstige (mass prestige) or the trend of consumers to spend craploads of money on stuff they can get on the cheap just for the brand or label. Ah, but the economy is not so certain and the stock market is looking a little funny and consumer confidence is just not what it was since real estate bubbles have been bursting right, left and center. it's not a terrible thing, it's just you can't build an economy on credit and war.

(the writer lapses into her favorite fantasy, to be loaded with crown sterling, still american and on a private plane ride to dubai...)

anywho, that's my morning review. i think i'll take a nap now.

Give me a pigfoot and a bottle of beer

thank Bessie Smith for that jewel of a title - painkiller break...that Maroon 5 song "Sunday Morning" is playing in "Something's Gotta Give" which I am watching. Sometimes life requires comedy.

Give me a pigfoot and a bottle of beer - that's blues comedy, the rest of the song is hilarious, she sings about everyone in the club knowing they are going to get arrested, she curses the piano man for "bringing her down." It's a funny song.

"Something's Gotta Give" is a funny movie about a writer. I'm taking this week to get back to writing since my class is coming to a close and I'm about 3 weeks behind since I was down for two weeks feeling like hot murder and ice spasm and then hospitalized for a week feeling good but ahhhhh....having some major stuff flowing through my veins.

Anywho, SGG is about a middle-aged writer, Dianne Keaton who hooks up with her daughter's older boyfriend, Jack Nicholson ( a master of many trades) who has never dated anyone over the age of 30. I'm at the point in the movie where she has written a Broadway Play about how shittily he behaved the week they were together and she's told him he dies at the end of the play.

If that's not compelling argument for NOT SCREWING WITH US SCRIBES i dont know what is. Yes, we write about the losers in our lives. YES, you might recognize a version of yourself in what you read and FUCK YES, it might not be pretty. I'm talking in general, no one specific seeing as I'm as peace with the world (and getting more so as every moment passes and the pain medication dissipates into my bloodstream).

This stuff is headed for my brain, but I want to shoutout my girl Prayer, for whom I put together a whole photo album cause she's special and I hope she knows it. Big shoutout to Angie in Cairo, Hza in Cleveland, Kyle in SF and Jarrad in Instanbul. Love you muchly!!!

Oh, and MAJOR shoutout to my little sisters: Kezia: I LOVE THE NEW PHOTO. really, getting my gun license and sharpshooter courses, gonna have to kill somebody over you! Nyira: why the partial photo? Will I see you soon? I love you...Caddy: Physics - you only need to know three things (if it goes up it will come down, inertia, and potential vs. kinetic) you use all three in real life. For the particulars, why do you think I have all these friends who are brilliant engineers?

Kisses and hugs to the world!

I don’t want to write today

I have this cramp in my lower right quadrant of the abdomen. Probably my period. I just did my first *official* bag change as a colostomate (for life dammit!) I told you guys I was in the hospital, I had an emergency surgery, my granmda was with me - I may nothave mentioned that Kimmie, my little sister Caitlin, and Corny & of course the visigoth - stayed with me for some time too. Kimmie and Caitlin went out for acupuncture and "therapeutic" shopping. I coulda used some of that therapy and plan to engage in the online version as soon as I have a little breakfast (food will keep me away from bluefly.com, miu miu, Louis Vuitton and other things unaffordable and stupid).

oh right. did i tell Why i was in the hospital? I was getting a colostomy. Hurrah! I had an ileostomy before and they took it away and I suffered mightily and thought about killing myself if I wasn't going to die from the pain and illness of it quickly enough. And then day after Christmas I took a visit to the doctor and Two days after christmas I listened as they played Chingie in the operating room until my surgeon came in - sat down and gossiped with the OR staff and I fell asleep. I woke up with a portion of my large intestine encased in plastic outside of my abdomin - howze that for a fashion statement?

You cannot EVER afford a poor surgeon. Poorly trained, too young, stupid, egomaniacal - that person is not the person you want slicin' and dicin' you under any circumstances. Doctors learn what to say, but it's what they don't say that is often most important. Surgery is not a matter of price, it's a matter of value. You CAN get excellent work for affordable price but don't ever PUT your life on the line. When your life IS on the line, you often don't get choices (emergency room, helivac - you get whoever is on call be it the dunderhead or the wunderdoc) but regardless of whether you're having elective or emergency, ask for the best you can get. Demand it. Don't be an asshole or you will only get an asshole (generalization, I know great docs with wonderful personalities who get asshole patients, but they mellow them out or the patients move on...really)

Well, it's nearly time for breakfast and shopping. Gotta buy grandma a white coat, the Visigoth a black coat and the Camille things that will make her smile...art is a start.

Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la