The Lynnster Zone

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The Required Michael Jackson Post

Posted by Lynnster on June 26, 2009

There were several things I wanted to write about and get out of my head before what’s to be a long work weekend (except for Sunday when I get to hang out with KathyT, yay) gets cranked up. One of the things I was planning to write about was NOT Michael Jackson.

And even yesterday after the news hit that he’d died, I still wasn’t planning to write about it. But after 24 hours of reading various convos of all kinds in many places, this getting brought up and that getting brought up, the wheels kept turning in my head and, next thing I knew, I was writing about Michael Jackson.

Since it’s music-related, I posted it on my music blog instead of here – and I know not everyone that follows the Zone follows that one as well – but if you wanna read it, it’s here.

Posted in celebrity other crap, in memory of..., michael jackson, music | Leave a Comment »

I Might Be Typing This in My Sleep, But Probably Not

Posted by Lynnster on June 15, 2009

Thursday was an odd day. First and foremost, it would have been my father’s 67th birthday, if he were alive.

The annual big Relay for Life event was in my hometown over the weekend, and the paper has been publishing the list of donations for luminarias as they come in for about the past month – donations made in memory of those who died from cancer or related illnesses, in honor of cancer survivors, and this year, in honor of caretakers. Well, Thursday was also the day that my father’s name appeared as one of those donated in memory of (by a relative of mine). Not so surprising, though somewhat ironic as far as what day it was.

The paper also publishes snippets of news from bygone days frequently – 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, and sometimes earlier. What was really kind of odd was that 50 years ago, on that same day, the paper showed him and a group of other young men from the county preparing to leave for Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon to attend that year’s Boys State session.

I don’t know. It was just kind of an odd day all around.

I want to thank everyone for the kind notes they’ve been leaving; I could never put into words how very much they are appreciated. There are several of you I have been meaning to e-mail personally for days now, but the kinds of hours I’ve been keeping, and time I’ve been spending lately scrambling around as I have trying to slow down this impending disaster – I sleep at weird times, and when I’m not asleep I’m usually snowed under, and my actual working schedule is usually overnights, so I’m usually awake when everyone else is not and vice versa. Except I also will just (when I’m not doing shift work) go for several hours, pass out for two or three or four hours, get up and go some more trying to get stuff done. But many of you will hear from me personally soon, I promise (and KathyT, I did e-mail you and hope you got it, sorry it took five days before I heard the voice mail, oops).

And thanks to many especially for the kind words about Dobie. He was here for so long, and still my “baby puppy” even when he was old and his health failing, and it’s still very hard to believe that he’s really gone. I have a very nice picture to share that my mom took at Christmas when I had to take him with me because of his failing condition, which has wound up being the last taken of so very many that were taken of him over fifteen years. But I can’t really look at it much yet, so I’ll save it for a day when I can.

I probably need to write some more about all the horrible stuff that’s going on and why things have disintegrated to the disastrous point they have, but I’m not really sure how to put it into words here because there’s really only so much I can say publicly – and for good reasons. But it sucks, because for those same reasons, I’ve sort of been stuck fighting this battle on my own almost, and with no one I could really be open with about the details other than my very closest family and friends.

But I will do all of that soon. Unfortunately a good bit of this week is going to be focused on probably selling what little I have left that is worth anything at all (not much, but a little) that is truly just mine – a few things that would have been, I guess you’d say, family heirloom-type stuff if I were leaving anything behind one day. Not that I’m likely going to have children or anything like that at this point, but you know – stuff I never dreamed I’d ever be forced to part with, not like this. I guess if I outlive my mom (doubtful), there’s still a houseful of family things – but nothing that’s just mine, except these few things it looks like I’m going to have to part with.

It’s not much – I guess that’s the worst joke of all about all this stuff, I’m not dealing with thousands upon thousands here and it’d probably be a whole lot easier to swallow if that were the case – but no, there’s only about a grand or two standing between me and complete disaster. Much less than 2K, really, more like about 1.5. That’s the part that really stinks, that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really all that much. But the problem is now I’ve run out of time is all.

In trying to think things through – and coming to the conclusion there were really no more options anymore but the one thing I have tried for over a year now NOT to have to do – it’s occurred to me that no matter how tough things might be right now, that really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about how I’m going to feel about it all a year from now, or two years from now, or five or ten years from now – when presumably things will probably be better, but stuff that meant something to me – things bought with me in mind and given to me for very specific reasons – will be gone. And I just can’t even let myself think about all that right now.

Anyway, this week will be busy busy – and I need to get going now as it is, much to do and much to finish – but I’m going to try and keep at the blog again, even if it’s just stupid stuff. Aside from all the awfulness of late, there’s also some really funny stuff I’ve been saving up to share. And I’ll be trying to get some personal e-mailing done this week and next too, some of you I’d been meaning to touch base with anyway and either the constant need-to-do-this or constant passing out cold from exhaustion kept waylaying. So will speak to many of you soon, and will definitely be back here shortly, as soon as I wrap up one big project that has tied me up for months. ’til then…

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, blah, blogfolks, dobie is a dog, dogs, friends are good, in memory of..., my luck sucks, my so-called life, west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

Here We Go Again

Posted by Lynnster on September 26, 2008

Things will get back to “normal” here soon, September has been the busiest and craziest month full of stuff and I am real annoyed about not having had time to get back to things, especially the music blog because I’ve got a couple of big announcements to make.  But hopefully next week.

My mom’s 20+ year old cat Snow – the one who took a little vacation this summer for a couple of weeks and scared us to death – died quietly in her sleep almost two weeks ago.  So it had been a rough month already.

Then this morning my fluffy white angel left us.  He was about 17 years old, so not all that unexpected, but I would have liked to have had a little more of a break after his buddy Schuyler, who hasn’t even been gone two months yet, and Miss Snow.  And of course Lulu, my Beagle-Dachshund, earlier in the summer and Rocky earlier this year.

I know I was very fortunate to have had these last eight years with him because, for one thing, he was actually almost near death when I took him in in 2000, when he had to have basically a facelift because some dog or cat had gotten hold of him outdoors and nearly torn one side of his face off.  Once his fur grew back, you never really could tell what had happened and he was all gorgeous and white and fluffy once again.

And he almost died again two or three years after that when he stopped eating and developed fatty liver disease.  For a couple of weeks he was barely conscious, and I babied him and force-fed him food, water, and medicine from the vet until he finally started getting better again and eating on his own.  I can tell you in no uncertain terms that once he started staying more conscious and alert again and improving, that whole force-feeding thing did NOT go over too well, and he probably started eating on his own again not so much out of really wanting to eat, but wanting me to cut that foolishness out and stop bothering him with it.

And we kind of just went through that again this week on a lesser level with me trying to get water in him to keep him hydrated and comfortable.  He was so sick, but not so sick that he wasn’t getting mad at me for repeatedly bothering him with that nursing kitten baby bottle full of water.

Anyway, I know we were fortunate to have had eight pretty good years together and especially considering the two other times he almost died, which were now both so long ago.

Which now leaves me with just the two elderly ones – Dobie will be 14 in November, which is really old for a bigger dog, and Little the cat at 16 or 17 (I can never remember).  Both of whom already had frightening stroke-like episodes this summer, but are basically doing fine.

Though Maggie, the black and white cat on my shoulder above, is not so young herself now at 11, and Missy’s not too far behind her in years now.  Everybody here’s old now, really, except the “puppies” and Quincy and Tojo… and Quincy is approaching middle cat age at this point too.

I feel pretty old today too.  2008’s been a pretty exhausting year, in lots of ways.

I’ll be taking Audi up to Mom’s tomorrow, and lay him to rest in her gorgeous back yard next to his buddy Schuyler, and Miss Snow.  I’m so sorry now that I didn’t take Rocky and Lulu up there too, and Audi’s old best friend my best cat ever, who was also old when he left us and has been gone several years now.

My mom saw a black cat with green eyes around the neighborhood that she had never seen before shortly after Schuyler left us.  It would be really weird if she started seeing white cats she’d never seen before too, fluffy or short-haired either one, or both.  Or all three, a black cat and two white cats.  That would be really weird.

I will miss my fluffy angel kitty.  He rested all morning curled up in my arm with his head on my shoulder while I slept, and I woke up again right when the time came, and he left just like that, curled up with his head on my shoulder.

Now Tojo’s out here this afternoon aggravating everyone else, like most days.  Life goes on.

Posted in * cat photos, cats, dobie is a dog, dogs, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, updates to the zone | 13 Comments »

I Don’t Have a Title for This Post

Posted by Lynnster on August 6, 2008

One day a little over ten years ago, a nurse who used to work at the surgeon’s office where I would eventually have wound up spending 14 years of my life – and who was an animal lover like me and another woman we both worked with for a long time (this nurse, in fact, was the owner of the killer Schnauzers I wrote about a few posts ago) – called my co-worker up and announced there was this stray cat in her neighborhood who was declawed and was getting beaten up a lot by the other neighborhood cats. She was, of course, less concerned about the other cats than the possibility of a dog getting a hold of the cat. In the meantime, she and her next door neighbors had discovered this cat was very friendly and sweet, and had obviously come from a home but had been lost for a long time, as he’d been hanging around their yards and their street for some time at that point.

My co-worker immediately volunteered me, and I immediately said no. I had Dobie and his mama, three older cats (including cranky miss Little), and had just rescued Maggie and her sister Molly from the parking lot of a convenience store that used to be up the street (and almost probable roadkill) the year before. At that point, my co-worker and I had pawned off a few foundlings to everyone we could possibly talk into it over the past several years, so there was really no one left but us. And at the moment, my co-worker had more pets than I did, so I lost the argument pretty quickly. Not that I was arguing that much.

There have only been a few periods in my life that I didn’t have a green-eyed black cat around since I’d been about 8 or 9 years old or thereabouts. One of the longest was just prior to this episode, when Sox, who was the brother of my very best cat of all time who lived to be 16, died of feline leukemia in 1991. He and his brother had been some of the last kittens born at my parents’ home, and the last of a long line of cats going back to when I was a sophomore in high school. They were the first cats I had as an adult living away from home; when I moved into an apartment by myself for the first time, back in Murfreesboro in 1986, I picked the two of them to bring with me, and they were the only pets I had until the ex-then-live-in talked me into agreeing to get a puppy a few years later.

So I went about seven years without a green-eyed black cat in the house, until I got talked into taking Schuyler so he wouldn’t continue being terrorized by a bunch of Bartlett cats with claws.

So I brought him home to get terrorized by my little demons, though it didn’t last long because, for one thing, he was a lot bigger than all of them. He was always a big, strapping, stocky boy, and it really was probably a good thing he didn’t have front claws because he could have done some damage at times, though most of the time he was too good-natured for that. Other than Little – who basically has always hated almost everybody – he won everyone else over quickly, especially Maggie and Molly, who were still pretty young at the time. My orange then-kitten Rocky came along not too long after Schuyler and Molly promptly adopted him, so Maggie was kind of always Schuyler’s.

But then again, all the cats (except Little) were fine with Schuyler. He was so easygoing and laid back, and never really fought with anyone. In fact, he spent most of his time cleaning and grooming everyone else, which is why I always called him my “hairdresser cat”.

I don’t have a whole lot of pictures of Schuyler because black cats just generally don’t photograph well – or I’m just not a good enough photographer. I have almost none on this computer, though I think I have some more on the hard drive of the dead old one.

This above was a pretty common scene the last few years since the white cat decided he would leave the guest bedroom he insisted on living in for years (now home of Tojo, the psycho cat) and come out and live with the rest of us. These two have been big buddies, and the only two declawed cats I’ve ever had – both declawed before they ever came to me. And both big cleaners and groomers, so they were constantly grooming each other too. That’s probably what they were doing either shortly before or right after I took this picture.

And this looks odd to me, because for the last couple of months he was getting so frail and thin, I can’t believe how big he looks here compared to what it’s been like the last few months. Really he’s been in sort of a slow decline with the old age kidney failure ever since Rocky died of the same thing in January. But Rocky was kind of unexpected, because he was only ten, it usually hits them later than that. Schuyler was at least 15 or 16 or 17. Maybe even older. He wasn’t a young cat when he wound up with me, but he wasn’t terribly old either.

Last week, he was looking and seemed to be doing better, but I guess that happens a lot, they sometimes get better before they get worse.

And yesterday morning he was no different than he had been, other than I noticed he didn’t eat as much, but he was still eating and drinking water. Then he didn’t want any more food the rest of the day, whereas the past several weeks he’d have eaten 24/7 if I’d have let him. Then he stopped drinking water sometime last night.

I know we were lucky this time. Just like with my last green-eyed black cat now so many years ago – when it was time, it was pretty quick. No spending agonizing days and days in a coma like with Rocky, and with Sox’s brother Dare before that, which is what I was preparing for and was dreading. He was resting and mostly comfortable, right up until the very end. I just kept petting him and telling him what I’d been telling him all night – that it was okay to go, and that Rocky and Lulu and Baby and Molly and Dare would all be there waiting for him. And then he was gone.

I haven’t had any sleep, but this time I’m doing what I wish I’d done with Rocky, with Lulu, and taking him to my mom’s. He and Mom’s cat Snow (she of the recent adventure/slash/disappearance and subsequent return) have always had this weird thing, whenever Mom and I were on the phone, the two of them would always be in our laps, usually nudging the phone in Schuyler’s case. My mom’s got a great back yard with lots of nice trees and I just think that’s where he should be. I wish Rocky and Lulu were too, but I guess in a way I can pretend they are now.

See ya later.

Posted in cats, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo | 6 Comments »

Dobie’s New Little Friend

Posted by Lynnster on July 25, 2008

Not been a real good week for animal issues, both near and not so near to me, like one particularly horrible issue of animal cruelty noted in one of my most recent posts.

This next was a little bit closer.

One afternoon last week, Dobie and the young demon spawn and I were outside on one of our usual afternoon breaks in the back yard. There was a sudden commotion at the back fence with all the dogs barking like mad, so I walked back there to see what was up.

And found a puppy, who was of course barking right back at them. I had heard him, but not seen him before. He, I’m sure, belonged to a young couple with a kid (or two, I’m not sure how many kids they have) who has lived in one section of that house for some time now. I figured he was theirs because the husband asked me if I knew anyone who had any puppies a while back.

My four younger dingbats finally got bored with barking at him and I rounded them up and sent them back inside, but Dobie wouldn’t budge from the fence. He’d bark. The puppy would bark back.

He was the cutest little thing, probably about four or five months old. Definitely was going to grow up to be a smaller dog than Dobie, but a few things about him reminded me a lot of when Dobie was a puppy, especially his head and his ears. Pretty much the same goofy looking floppy triangular ears, and a too big for his face clown nose, same as Dobie.

A little darker in color than Dobie; actually he was about the same color one of Dobie’s brothers who I called Jaws had been, who had been such an odd darker shade, more brown but kind of strange, that he was almost a dark green. The puppy was was brown and lighter, but sort of in that same odd shade zone.

I really wanted to get back inside but Dobie just wouldn’t budge, and I finally gave up trying for a while. They just stood and barked at each other for a while.

Then this game of sorts started between the two of them. The puppy would edge up closer and closer to the fence. Then Dobie would bark, and the puppy would take off running away and go zoom around the yard two or three times, then run right back up to the fence and start edging slooooowly up closer again, and the cycle would start anew.

This must have gone on for 20, 30 minutes, maybe longer. Even though I’d wanted to go in, I didn’t mind too much because Dobie was obviously having fun (though he wouldn’t want anyone to know that), and being 14 years old and having slowed down tremendously the last several years, he doesn’t get a lot of “fun” and “playtime” anymore, especially since his young nephews and niece are such attention hogs.

The ease-up-then-run-away-when-Dobie-barks-and-come-back-again game just went on and on, and I laughed and laughed. And kinda got teary-eyed too, several times. I didn’t mind staying out anymore, I was glad he was obviously having fun, my old guy.

Toward the end of our time out there the puppy had stopped the running away and was obviously no longer terribly concerned about Dobie – not surprising, because that’s usually what happens. Dobie might scare another animal for a minute or two but it doesn’t take long for them to realize he’s nowhere on the scale of being a threat. Having been the only puppy among three older dogs the first couple of years of his life and having had a mother who would only let him eat when she decided he could for the first ten years of his life – well, Dobie’s just never really gotten much respect. The four young goofballs who wound up (begrudgingly) as his charges when their mama died kind of defer to him as an elder, but they’re never frightened of him (I think I saw Petey look concerned all of once when Dobie was mad at him about something), and Dobie’s never been anywhere even remotely close to being an Alpha.

Anyway, so we hung out at the fence a little while longer and the little puppy even came closer and I petted him a little bit. He was really sweet and friendly and, you know, just full of puppy-ness.

It crossed my mind at the time that it was a little worrisome that apparently his owners were just letting him run around – that yard is not fenced in at all, other than the neighboring fences at the back. There’s no enclosure, and he was just running free.

I think the run-away-zooming-around game must have just completely worn me and Dobie both out just watching the puppy zoom around the yard over and over and OVER for as long as he did. I was getting really tired, and Dobie was either tired too or just bored with it all, so when I made a move to head back to the house, Dobie came along this time and we left our new little friend at the fence. And came in and both took a very long nap.

I had to call my mom a couple of days later and tell her about Dobie’s new friend, and we just laughed and laughed some more. We didn’t see him any more the rest of the week, really, except for one day when we were all out and the puppy was out and way off to side of their house, but Dobie and the four dingalings could see him so they all barked at each other for a little bit, and then we came back in.

Monday morning, we went out at our usual time for the first potty break of the day. There was another commotion at the back fence, so I walked over to see what was going on.

The young ones have always had a habit of barking at inanimate objects that were not previously there before, whether in our yard or in the neighbors’ yards where they can see; in fact, my next door neighbor just a few days ago started parking her car further down the drive and right next to our side fence, so they barked at the car the first night it was there. Dobie’s never really done that habitually like they do, but he will sometimes.

So I got back to the back fence to see what they were barking at. And then I saw it, though it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at.

Just a foot or so from my fence, there was a stick, about the size of a croquet stake, sticking up out of the ground, with a small bunch of yellow plastic flowers tied to it. And a small blue plastic dog food and water bowl placed at the bottom. That bowl’s what really took me a minute to register what I was seeing.

I just burst into tears, couldn’t help it. Daisy and Buster and Bruiser and Petey finally got bored with it, as they usually do with inanimate objects that weren’t wherever they are previously, and went elsewhere.

Dobie wouldn’t budge again. Just kept standing there barking at it with his increasingly hoarse as he gets older bark.

And then it occurred to me that he apparently knew, that he wasn’t just barking because they were previously-not-there objects. So then I started crying even harder, at which point I knew without a doubt that he knew the puppy was dead and buried there.

I don’t know what happened, though I would guess he probably either got run over by a car or was killed by one or a pack of the roaming dogs I sometimes see around. It wouldn’t have taken much, he was so little. I’ve got cats bigger than he was.

And I was so heartbroken. Because of the needless loss. Because my old dog that I helped his mama birth, who probably doesn’t have all that much time left, had such a nice day the other day messing around with that silly puppy zooming all over the yard. And now here his new little friend had gotten run over or killed somehow, and probably because he’d been left to run around unattended. And I know Dobie knew, and that broke my heart too.

Dogs – and cats – know stuff. When Rocky was dying – Rocky who’d always been “Dobie’s cat” – Dobie laid down next to him and stayed there until 20 or 30 minutes after he was gone.

They don’t forget things; well, most of them. The four young’ns were really too young to remember their mama very much and I don’t know that they do. But when I mention Lucy or Dez or Batman or Dare or Molly or Satin, the young one’s mama & even though she wasn’t with us but for about eight or nine months – any of the cats and dogs we have lost since Dobie was born nearly 14 years ago – there is recognition in Dobie’s eyes.

And especially if I bring up his mama, who has been gone about four years now. I call everyone “baby” from time to time, but he knows when I’m talking about his mama, whose name really was Baby. And he looks sad, and I wind up crying enough for both of us.

But I know he knew where the puppy was. Maybe it was the scent, even buried in the ground, but I know he know he knew.

I guess otherwise I would have never known what happened, but I can hardly stand to see that tiny little grave back there, right almost up against my fence. I’ve avoided going back that way most of the week. It just makes me so sad to see it.

God, this has just been an awful year, though I guess it makes sense since I have/had so many all reaching elderly stage at the same time. Losing Rocky, losing Lulu the Beagle, Dobie and Little both having their freaky stroke-like episodes at almost the same time while Lula was still sick. Now Schuyler, my formerly big and strong black cat now just skin and bones and weighing nothing; it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when.

I’m so tired.

(PS I have to add this because it’s kind of funny in a not funny but really funny sorta way. In Schuyler’s decline, one thing that has happened is that he is not controlling his bowels very well; he just can’t make it to the litter box most of the time, though in recent days I have been able to see it coming and grab him and get him there.

Unfortunately one of the spots he goes to the most is a place where Audi is, more often than not, laying around. Can I just say of all the cats in the house, the one I would like LEAST for Schuyler to be pooping on is my VERY long-haired white cat?!?!?!

Cleanup has been excruciating. Oddly enough, Audi doesn’t seem to mind or notice – I don’t know why!!! He’s old too, 16 or 17, maybe he’s gotten senile and just doesn’t care. Ugh.

We’ve gone a few days now, though, without Schuyler pooping on Audi so, fingers crossed. Heh.)

Posted in cats, dobie is a dog, dogs, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, sad stuff | 2 Comments »

Father’s Day Marketers Beware

Posted by Lynnster on June 11, 2008

My pal CeeElCee brings up a good point about all the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Father’s Day (and for that matter, Mother’s Day, for the same reasons) that I’ve been thinking about myself in recent weeks, and have in the past.

We are all mostly taking it in stride and being tongue in cheek about it over there in comments, but obviously all of us whose fathers are deceased have had pretty much the same thoughts about it all, as I’m sure folks who have lost their mothers thought the same in the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Mother’s Day.

My mother’s alive and well, thanks (and a frequent reader & commenter here, and regular Internet user).

But what if she weren’t? Not to mention the fact that HER parents have been gone for ages; one for nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

I had a long conversation for the first time in several months with my former longtime co-worker, who lost her very elderly and extremely ill dad last summer. One of the things she and I have always had in common is that our fathers’ birthdays and Father’s Day always fell on the same week (as does her birthday). So this year, she is experiencing the June double whammy I have been for the last four years.

I get that it’s all about marketing, I understand it. And I know you can’t please everyone. I mostly – like I said – take it in stride and just overlook it. Normally it doesn’t bother me THAT much.

But it ALWAYS gets my attention, because of the circumstances – and it’s NOT the kind of attention marketers are striving for with those Mother’s Day and Father’s Day suggestion e-mails.

And I guess what kind of bugs me is that it seems like those holiday marketing e-mails are greater in number at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day than most other holidays, even Christmas. And while I do realize it’s all about the marketing, and I understand why it’s a necessary evil – it just seems like it might be a little better if many of these e-mail marketers scaled back their holiday marketing pummeling for those two holidays for the very reasons I bring up.

You hit someone like me on a bad day in a bad year – last year, not so much; this year, every day is a bad day – and tick them off, the results are never going to be good.

Again, I don’t have that big a chip on my shoulder about it, really. Generally, I’m pretty laid back and easygoing and not all that touchy about most things, I just have to work a little harder at it when it comes to this. And for the most part, the ones that come from Amazon and places like that, I mostly just overlook and hit the delete-delete-delete without much more of a thought.

Though the point is, there IS a thought… and it’s not the one they want me to have, that they’re intending with their marketing campaign of those holidays.

I have many, many e-mail boxes so I get TONS of these mails, and even more tons that aren’t coming from more traditional Internet marketers and are coming from the mega-spammers.

So it’s there that I take out my frustrations when I feel like it – which, this year, has been rather often. So depending on what kind of mood I’m in at the moment – well, let’s just say there’s several e-mail spammers that have been getting “My father’s been dead for almost four years, go away” e-mails back.

Not that they care, the mega-spammers. I can’t really say I haven’t thought about doing the same with some of those Amazon and other e-mails though.

Marketing’s marketing, and there’s no simple answer, I know.

But fair warning, marketing e-mail spammers and marketers of the non-spammish kind: Today would have been my father’s 66th birthday, so I might be a little less nice than “go away” today. Apologies in advance.

Posted in a family thing, blah, holidays, in memory of..., spam spam spam | 3 Comments »

Bye Bye, Sweet Old Girl

Posted by Lynnster on June 1, 2008


I never knew how old Lulu was. She was already middle aged or more when I found her seven or eight years ago, or however long ago it was. So she was probably at least 14 or 15 now, maybe more.

She had been resting and calm again when I went to sleep. When I woke back up, I thought she was gone, but she turned her head to me when I called her name. I went over and moved her out of the puddle of drool she was laying in – she probably thought I was mad, I hope not.

The young ones hadn’t been out since early this morning and were going berserk to go out, so I let them out and tried to hurry them up. Daisy and Bruiser got too involved in some greenery at the back of the yard and were taking their time and driving me crazy over it, and FINALLY I herded the four young ones back inside.

But she was already gone.

I’m going to go clean her up now.

Posted in * dog photos, dogs, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, sad stuff | 20 Comments »

It’s Tornado Time in Tennessee

Posted by Lynnster on February 6, 2008

So did Super Tuesday actually happen yesterday? Because there was no talk of anything on the news here yesterday except this tornado, that tornado, the next tornado, and the one after that, and etc., etc., etc. Starting about 4:30 pm and well after midnight, on at least one local station that was virtually it.

Living in the center of the city, I’m usually protected ‘cos the main danger zones in the Metro Memphis area tend to be out in the ‘burbs. Still, I didn’t sleep last night because nowadays, when the sirens start going off, my adrenalin rush just gets out of this world (and if you’ve never been here before or have forgotten, this is why).

There was some damage not too far away though, out in the airport area; lots of damage out in the eastern suburbs and across the state line in DeSoto County, Mississippi; and probably the most stunning, for here, was the 50-foot chunk of wall taken out of Hickory Ridge Mall down in Southeast Memphis. Kid sister and her hubby lived not too far from there, just south of Germantown, until they moved a couple of years ago, so for once, I was actually happy they are now living in Nebraska. Otherwise last night would have been even more horrifying and frightening.

Though there was plenty going on here last night to freak out about, I found myself much more affected by the news of the tornado that blitzed the north part of Jackson, Tennessee, about an hour northeast. The damage was huge in many spots up there, most notably the demolition of a/some dormitory building(s) at Union University.

Why would that affect me so much more than what was happening right here in my own back yard? Because when I got caught on the road in my car during the 2003 tornado that hit Jackson, I was pretty much right there by Union University. No matter that I was basically safe at home an hour away, last night in my little house in front of the computer, listening to and watching the live stream of the continuing weather update on one of the local stations. When they said a tornado had touched down in Jackson and said where, I knew exactly what it looked like up there at that moment, ‘cos I’d been there, right there in it.

I guess I’m always gonna be a little more freaked out by bad storms and the sirens, but for a moment or two, that really, really bothered me last night. Glad I wasn’t out in it all, here nor there, but just hearing about them now in places I know – and especially that one twister in particular, striking right there where I was that night in 2003 – it’s just kinda bone-chilling.

On another note, thanks to everyone who stopped by and left such kind words about Rocky yesterday, including some I haven’t heard from in years and years. Very much appreciated, all of you. I left out one little part yesterday I meant to throw in there, so bear with me a sec and I’ll stop talking about it soon enough.

Like most of my zoo, Rocky was a foundling. My neighbor who lived here for years came home from work one day a little over ten years ago, and when he got out of the car, there was this little tiny orange kitten in the small tree right above the driveway mewing at him. So of course he immediately knocked on my door, orange ball of fur in hand.

And because there is an invisible sign on my forehead that only cats and dogs can see that says “SUCKER”, the little orange furball never left. Seems like only yesterday, and when he was so sick and old and leaving us, that’s really all I kept thinking about, that day years ago.

Well, that’s it for the moment, I’m so tired I’m about to drop dead, so I’m off for now. Tomorrow maybe I’ll write about my Christmas adventures. It’s not a pretty tale.

P.S. Again on tornadoes – does Knuck have the right idea? ‘Cos what if the tornado hits your house, but doesn’t really blow it up and just does some damage but nothing fatal to you or the house, and then you ARE wandering like that, and then you’re, like, this naked guy wandering around Nashville post-tornado, and…

It’s really still too early in the morning for me to ponder this. Smiley will have the punchline I’m too exhausted to come up with right now, I just know it.

Posted in about the weather, blogfolks, cats, i never sleep, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, memphis, middle tennessee, nashville, natural disasters, near-misses, politics schmolitics, scary creepy stuff, tennessee in general, updates to the zone, west tennessee | 11 Comments »

Hello, It’s Me

Posted by Lynnster on February 5, 2008

Well, time for my once a month post again, I guess. Except I have kinda sorta made up my mind I’m going to start blogging daily or almost again, even if it’s not much of nothing but a couple of sentences or even if it’s just – whatever.

As for me & what all’s going on with me, things could not possibly be much worse than they are right now and have been for a few months now. I guess there’s a few things that could be worse but really, comparatively, at this point most of those wouldn’t make much of a difference. I’ll spare you and me both the gory details for now because it’s just too icky to all get into, and since I live with it day after crummy day after crummy day, I’d just as soon not infect my blog with it the way it has everything else in my life. So for now, let’s just say it’s pretty bad and just move on from there.

In other news, Rocky left our happy little zoo a few weeks ago. He was ten years old and this more often affects older cats, but he had been in old-age kidney failure for some time and when a respiratory bug hit most of the felines in the house in January, he was unable to withstand it. I have another older one also in declining health who is still struggling a bit with the bug (she’s 16), but she’s improved and back to her usual grumpy and neurotic self now.

Anyway, here is one my favorite pictures of Rocky with his dog, Dobie. I never really knew whether Dobie was Rocky’s cat or Rocky was Dobie’s dog. The night Rocky passed, two of the other cats (”little sister” Missy, and Schuyler) and Dobie stayed right by his side until he was gone.

Posted in * cat photos, * dog photos, blah, blogstuff, cats, dobie is a dog, dogs, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, my luck sucks, my so-called life, updates to the zone | 5 Comments »

Rocky, 1997-2008

Posted by Lynnster on February 5, 2008

Posted in * cat photos, cats, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo | 9 Comments »

To Everything There is a Season

Posted by Lynnster on June 5, 2007

I have another – and the hardest – one coming up in about a month, but today is the birthday of one of my most special and favorite and closest friends ever.

Once, we were the same age… well, except for me being three months older.  Now I’m 41, but he’ll never be anything but 17.  Permanently.  Forever.

How almost a quarter of a century can pass pretty much in a blink of an eye, I’ll never really understand.

Posted in ancient history, in memory of... | Leave a Comment »

A Small Town Tradition & A Lack Of Time

Posted by Lynnster on February 27, 2007

One thing I usually do every morning, since I have extended family all over Northwest Tennessee – not to mention all the friends and their families back in my two hometowns up yonder – is check The Jackson Sun’s obituaries, because you never know when something might have happened like that that you really probably do need to know about. Now that I’ve gotten to “that age” where things like that seem to happen more and more – no longer just people’s grandparents passing away like it once often was, but their parents, siblings, sometimes themselves – I try to stay on top of it all, and have ties to several counties up there to check up on. A couple of my friends are good about calling when it’s somebody or their parent or whatever that we know really well, but a lot of times someone’s mom or dad will have passed away or something that they won’t think to let me know about, and I’d like to send a card or whatever – that kind of thing – so I just try to make sure to check the Sun as well as my hometown paper’s websites daily (or weekly in the one case).

This might just be a Northwest Tennessee thing (or a rural group of towns kinda thing), but I find that since I’m scanning the obits real quick at a glance every day, it’s quicker for me to scan down the column list of funeral homes rather than the towns themselves. I guess it’s odd that I know the names of all those small town funeral homes so well that it’s quicker for me to look through the page that way, rather than reviewing the towns themselves – but again, I think that may just be a Northwest Tennessee, or at least rural-ish, thing. I know Karnes is in Dyer, and Shelton’s in Trenton, Stockdale-Malin in Camden, and so on and so forth all over the northwest part of the state. Sometimes I have wondered if Newscoma and Squirrelly do somewhat the same thing, or if it’s just some weird quirk with me, but it seems I just process the information much more quickly looking down the column of listed funeral homes than the list of towns on the page. I dunno why.

OK, so yep, that’s kinda weird. I’m well aware of that.

I also get e-mail obituary notifications from one of the funeral homes back home. Which is really convenient, but it’s also kind of a source of amusement for me because, well, if you’re from that particular town of my two hometowns, who’d have ever thought something like that via the information superhighway would EVER be available, you know. Until a few years ago, that town had all of one – ONE - traffic light. Things seemed to be getting really progressive when the OTHER, and first, funeral home in town put in a recorded obituary line you could call to see who’d passed on and was laid up there at the moment. Which that in itself is another source of amusement to me, because the fact that my little hometown is even able to support TWO funeral homes is just crazy to me. But apparently they’re both doing well, both the original and long-standing one as well as the newer kid on the block (which, admittedly, is really not so new anymore, I guess it’s been there about ten years now, but it’ll always be “the new one” to me and half of everybody else back home).

Now, in my other hometown, there have been two funeral homes for as long as I’ve been around and way before me; in fact, technically, there’s three, maybe even four (not sure about that). But the two main, large ones – they’ve always been there pretty much. And every family in town, no doubt, has their preference of where their people will go when the time comes.

Or you have families like mine where one side of the family (my grandmother’s) were all laid to rest by one funeral home, and my grandfather’s side of the family all had their preparations and funerals at the other. Nowadays that the older folks are all gone and it’s just the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I think we’re all pretty much sticking with just the one for those needs (the one my grandfather’s side always went to). The family that runs that particular funeral home includes folks that grew up with, went to church with, and/or went to school with both my parents, my uncle, cousins, etc., so it’s just kind of natural that in the end, all the “younger” generation has gravitated towards that one for all burial and funeral needs. I don’t know, nor do I know that I ever have known, the people that run the other one, and it’s been going on 30 years since we’ve had a family funeral there, my great-grandfather being the last one. So when the time comes for my Mom hopefully way far off in the future – assuming I outlive my mother, that is – I’ll be calling Leon (or his son), and they’ll do what they do, and there ya go.

The fact that everything I just wrote is so convoluted and complicated is actually one of the things I love about being from the South, or at least the more rural parts and small towns of the South. There are probably very few small town anecdotes you can tell or subjects you can try to explain that are specific to Southern small towns without it getting all complicated and convoluted like that, all those little details and stories and tangents.

Oh, there’s much, much more besides the funeral home deal, and I’m sure I’ll write about a lot more of it in the future, not enough time for that right now. But that stuff just cracks me up, plus I’m glad of it, I really wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s just the kind of stuff you just don’t find everywhere, just in Small Town USA, and some of it’s so very specific to small towns in the South.

Anyway, guess what, none of that’s really what this post is about. Not exactly, anyway.

As I mentioned above, I get the e-mail notifications from the one funeral home back home. So yesterday afternoon during my lunch break, as I’m trying to catch up all the conversation and lots and lots of clamor that was the local-ish blog world yesterday, my e-mail beeps and I go see what I got.

And it’s from that funeral home, and I look at the name. Which is not exactly a terribly uncommon name, even though this is a small town we’re talking about. There’s actually several people in town that share both the same first and last names in this case; in fact, two of them with the exact same name graduated with me, even though I graduated in a class of only 160-odd folks. They had different middle names though, so one was “Firstname D.” and the other “Firstname K.” – or “Big Firstname” – when you spoke of them.

Anyway, I saw it, and immediately said, “No…” And clicked on the link to go to the website and looked, where the birthdate confirmed yes, not no.

Look, this wasn’t someone I was particularly close to or knew that well at all. Just a few days ago I wrote about being a little shell-shocked recently over friends’ brothers and sisters, both older and younger than me, having recently passed away and how weird that was to deal with. Well, this is the older sibling of another one of my friends, one of my gang from school days. Again, not someone I knew well, even though his brother was one of my crew – but kind of ironically, someone else I was in school with myself, and someone else I shared a lunch table with for an entire year. And someone else who, though I didn’t know so well, was always pleasant and super nice.

It’s really kind of unnerving and is definitely sad and depressing in any case, but especially since this is the third time since the first of the year that siblings of friends have died, they’re all around my age, two I was in school with myself. It’s not the big city; it’s a really small town. And people that are 44 and 42 and 39 years old within less than two months in this really small town – it’s flabbergasting as well as depressing.

And I’m further bothered because in small towns like where I come from, when someone dies or someone’s people pass away, what do you do? You go to the funeral home for visitation, or the funeral, or both. But you don’t NOT go. You ALWAYS go. I am just not close enough to go every time something happens, which I know people understand. But even though I’ve been a city girl for many decades now, the small town girl in me wants to be able to go every time something like this happens, and pay my respects. And this is about the forty millionth time something’s happened and I can’t go. Yes, that’s an exaggerated number, but it’s certainly no exaggeration as pertains to what it feels like.

So in the course of all that yesterday, I just kind of took the night off last night from anything involving the online world, save for a big project I’m working on right now, and you can probably see why stunt legislators and their circuses and any other big major things that I was acutely aware of yesterday suddenly seemed very insignificant and small in the great big grand scheme of things. The fact that someone I know and think very highly of and like a great deal, and literally grew up with, lost his older – and only – brother, who was only two years older than the friend and I… that was much more important, as well as dealing with the disturbing fact of these other recent losses. It all bothers me a great deal as well as being, naturally, sad, so I “took the night off” to reflect and ponder. And talk to my mom since I hadn’t in a few weeks.

So basically what I’m saying, in a very roundabout way, is I am still in the middle of working on this huge project in my off time and suddenly yesterday the e-mail and everything else got really backed up, and all of that was even before this bit of bad news that kind of knocked me out of commission for the rest of the day. Then my big project kind of took an unexpected (read: taking more extra time to correct) turn last night, and the rest of this week is looking pretty busy for freelance work so there goes a lot of my catch-up time. So bear with me a day or two or three while I get caught back up, if you were waiting on something or if I’m slow to respond, that’s why… thanks mucho grande bunches.

Posted in a family thing, getting older sucks, in memory of..., specifically southern, west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

A Slice of Life

Posted by Lynnster on February 15, 2007

I didn’t write about this at the time because there was a lot of other stuff going on, but the older sister of one of my best girlfriends from high school died several weeks ago. When I say “older”, I mean 44 years old; would have been 45 this year. I actually thought she was a little bit older than me than just four years, but no, she was 44, and died after a long battle with cancer that I wasn’t even aware was going on, since I don’t live locally and I guess nobody thought to tell me until it was too late.

Our overall gang of gals was pretty large and we all hung out together and with various ones of the other separately, and granted, I went to high school in a small town that was oddly not very cliqueish, so everybody just kinda hung out with everybody. But there were 15 or so of us that were really tight, and then that was further kinda divided into smaller core groups of two to five people.

My little branch was the group of five, you rarely saw one of us without at least one, or more, of the others. And it just so happened that all the other girls in my little core group had one older sister apiece, so I sort of inherited four big sisters by default. Only one of them was I particularly close to, and she is still alive and well and we still see each other once in a while today; but I certainly was fond of all the rest, and all of the older girls not only tolerated all five of us teenagers, but were actually really cool with us and hung out with us quite a bit. We got to go to lots of bachelorette parties, quarters sessions and parties at a lot of the older college crowd’s apartments in Jackson and Martin, “adult”-ish functions like barbecues, and all kinds of other stuff (usually involving a fair amount of underage drinking) thanks to the big sisters.

This one that recently passed away, however, I was always especially fond of because she was just so sweet. Everyone adored her, and you never heard her say a bad word about anyone. Her best friend and former neighbor also worked with my dad for many years, so he knew her pretty well and was fond of her, too. It also just so happened that my high school sweetheart, at the time we started dating, was her brother-in-law, though she had just begun the process of divorcing his older brother then. Still, she and my boyfriend were buddies and remained friendly, so there was that tie to her, too.

A few years ago, the phenomena that has now become an ongoing and continual thing of many of my friends’ parents passing away began. As another friend and I discussed shortly after there had been a one-two-three hit of three parents in a row dying one right after another, we said we guessed we were just getting to that age, and it was likely going to happen more and more.

And so it has, though it really took some getting used to in the beginning, and since has included my own father. With me living far from home and not seeing or being in regular contact with a lot of my friends from home these days, it seems like the only time I talk to or e-mail with some of them is when someone else’s mother or father has died, whether I’ve called or e-mailed to tell them, or vice-versa.

I wasn’t really prepared for a rush of people’s siblings to start passing away, though. I know 40 years old sounds old to some people and, granted, technically it is indeed middle-aged (ugh). And granted, too, I am certainly no stranger to loss, which Kathy T. recently managed to chronicle so well in the latest installment of her Wrinkles series. How she did it, I don’t know, because I am a terrible interview – it’s got to be like listening to a person with the worst case of ADD in the world – but Kathy is an excellent writer/reporter and somehow managed to make sense of all my babbling. There is a REASON why The Lynnster Zone has been “babbling since 1997″, and not “intelligently blogging in clear and concise thought since 1997″, yep.

But I can handle, and have come to expect, news of friends’ parents’ deaths. It’s always sad, but never such an unexpected shock and surprise anymore like it was at first.

People’s brothers and sisters passing away, however, is starting to freak me out a little bit. And much, much worse – someone’s younger sibling passing away – that is freaking me out even more.

Almost all my friends had kid brothers or sisters, many of whom often came over to my house to swim in the pool, or that we took to Opryland with us when we went, or Lisa and I (who saw at least two if not more movies a week) would take along with us to the movies, or my high school sweetheart and I would load up in the back seat and take along to the movies with us.

It was just that way, small-town way I guess. Our friend Angie’s house was on the way to Waverly and the walk-in theater, so we’d drop by on the way out of town (we all practically lived out there anyway), as we did when we were headed over to Waverly to see Sixteen Candles. Ang’s kid sister was having a slumber party that night, they begged to go, so we squeezed a half dozen seventh grade girls into my boyfriend’s car and toted them along.

So the thought of any of my friends’ younger brothers and sisters, all of whom are younger than 40 – these are kids I babysat, took to the movies, fed them peanut butter and jelly and tuna fish sandwiches in the summers when they came over swimming, played countless board and card games with, all kinds of stuff – the thought of something happening to any of them is just terrible and not something I want to see happening. Sure, they’re grownups now. But anything happening to any of them, it just horrifies me and takes my breath away, really.

And so it does.

The other day I flipped thru the Jackson paper’s website, as I usually do most days, and spotted a familiar name in the obituaries. For a second I really didn’t think about it, because the name is kind of a common one, and I thought, “No, can’t be.” But then I glanced at the age, and clicked on the link to the actual obituary that listed family member names and such, and my heart fell.

Honestly, I didn’t know this boy as well as I did many of the others, and while I knew his older brother fairly well – he had dated a girlfriend of mine for some time when she was in high school and he in college – I was not as good friends with him as I was many others in the same general crowd and age group. But yeah, I knew both of the brothers. They were both very nice, and very quiet, guys.

This one particularly bothers me, though, even though I didn’t know him as well as many other friends’ siblings. I spent an entire school year having lunch with this guy, and the memories are not only very clear, but very specific.

My junior year in high school, all five of us girls in my little core group had lunch at the same time that year, so we sat together every day, and early on commandeered on one of the two tables that were in adjoining room to the main room of the school’s cafeteria, a little side room where all the vending machines were. Convenient for me, since I spent most of that year either not eating and having a Coke for lunch, or maybe I’d have a Coke and a Twix bar, or a Whatchamacallit. Or I’d be filling up a cup of water and mixing in Cambridge Diet powder – this was before Slim-Fast – which I didn’t need at the time but thought I did.

I was never a good eater – still not – and the only days I ever ate cafeteria food, usually, was when they were having pizza. I LOVED school pizza. My friend Chris’ mom was a teacher at the elementary school, and she used to buy big boxes of school pizza to keep at home, which I would raid any chance I got an opportunity. That year, he and I were arguing and not on speaking terms more often than not, especially after I threw my drink in his face when he tried to make nice and kiss me on the cheek at midnight on New Year’s, which resulted to full-out war for a few months afterwards. In any case, my access to school pizza outside of school and school hours became severely limited that year, so that’s probably why my hitting people up for their pizza on pizza day in school became so exacerbated. Like a crack addict begging for drugs or money, I was hitting people up for their school pizza.

Then for a while, one of the two arcades in town started buying it from the same place and selling it at the arcade, which was wonderful. If not for school pizza, I’d have starved to death that year, or at least been down to probably 70 lbs. from the 95 lbs. I already was and thought was too fat. Sixteen and seventeen-year-old girl’s brains operate in an entirely alternate reality from the logical and reasonable world most of the time, in case you didn’t know.

Anyway, back to my junior year and lunchtime. We girls shared the table that year with a group of mostly freshman and some sophomore boys, most of whom were football players. We sort of big-sistered them all year long and there wound up being some kinda good fringe benefits for them, because (A) we all had driver’s licenses, and (B) seeing as how my girlfriends and I threw a large number of the outdoor parties every year, they had an in for not only those but other parties around town by virtue of hanging out with us.

Lucky for them it was our junior year, when we had something going on somewhere nearly every night of the week, rather than our senior year, when we all had boyfriends and didn’t have near as much fun as the year before. Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time that year being taxi service for not only my girlfriends who didn’t have cars yet, but a large number of younger guys that hadn’t turned 16 yet, including our lunchtime crew.

Three of those boys were really, really funny and had us cracking up the entire lunch period. A couple of the others were just really good guys.

And then another one who was generally pretty quiet and just listened to all the jokes and babbling and cackling and such at the table and laughed along with us all. But when he did have something to say, it was always really hilarious. He was the one whose older brother moved in my crowd of friends and dated one of my girlfriends.

My near-anorexic habits were always a big joke around the table, but then would come pizza day. I’m pretty sure (because I can think of no other reason why I would have been hounding people every pizza day for their pizza, so it must be true) that they limited everyone to one slice of pizza, probably for fear of running out; otherwise I would have just bought a second slice. Plus we were the first lunch period that year, so they were probably even more strict about it; third period lunch, if there was still plenty left, you probably could have begged and paid for another slice.

In any case, come every pizza day, I was always scoping out who I could maybe talk into giving up their pizza, because even though I ate next to nothing most days, on school pizza day I had to have two slices whether I was really hungry or not, I just loved it so much. I remember always paying special attention those mornings, looking around the halls and in class to see who all had lunch at the same time as me that was sick and not feeling well – because more often than not, somebody who wasn’t feeling well (or hungover, whatever the case might have been) could be easily talked out of their pizza.

The guys I was friends with in my own class that had lunch at the same time sat at another table in the main room of the cafeteria, and they were always greedy with their pizza; unless I got lucky and one of them was sick, they’d see me coming and shoo me away on pizza day before I could even ask. Same with the senior boys, except they’d at least be polite and friendly about it; still, no amount of flirtation or bribes ever got me a single slice of pizza out of that table.

Most of the time I wouldn’t even bother with any of the girls, because too many of them either brought their own lunch or, like me, were on a Coke or Diet Coke diet and weren’t having pizza anyway. Sometimes I could get someone to go through the line for me and get an extra tray, and I’d take the pizza and distribute the rest among the guys at our table. A lot of times I wouldn’t even have to go beg and be a pizza pest; someone would just walk over and voluntarily give theirs up. Yep, that’s how much I loved school pizza.

It was always a fair trade, I’d make it worth their while. You want four bags of potato chips out of the machine for that pizza? Okay, here you go. Two Twix bars and a Dr. Pepper? Right here. Since I worked at the hospital, I always had money and change, which many kids didn’t generally have because they didn’t work, so vending machine bribery was always an option for me. And, I can still tell you today, could make a list of names, of who would never give theirs up without a trade and who would toss me their pizza out of the generosity of their hearts.

I rarely hassled the boys we sat with, because they were mostly pretty big guys, football players, and would often be eating their whole school lunch tray AND a brown bag lunch from home. If one of them was sick (or hungover), sometimes they’d offer on the front end, but I just didn’t bother them otherwise usually. I had my three or four tables in the main cafeteria I’d go hound, and rarely came away emptyhanded.

The one quiet guy at our table was probably the one that most often volunteered his slice, though, and would never accept anything in return, even though he was the biggest guy at the table – not fat, just big, football-player big. He’d push his pizza over to me, then say something hilarious – because like I said, what little he did talk when he managed to get anything in edgewise in the rest of the noise at the table – when he did say something, it was always very, very funny.

Maybe he just wanted to see me eat, as most of those folks at our table were always trying to get me to. Laughing and cracking jokes about it, but there was always kind of acknowledgement of my all-too-apparent budding eating disorder under the surface.

And he was just a nice guy anyway, a really good kid. Not unlike his older brother, who also a very quiet and nice guy, and whom I knew.

So it kind of bothered me the other day to see that this guy, someone else’s kid brother, had passed away. I don’t know what happened – from the way the obituary read, I assume illness of some sort. He was 39, had a wife, some kids, and now he’s gone. Someone else reads the paper and thinks, maybe, it’s sad that this 39-year-old man died.

I read the paper, and for me it’s So-and-So’s little – LITTLE - brother has died. It just seems so not right.

I don’t like it. I don’t like being a grown-up. Not this week.

Posted in ancient history, getting older sucks, in memory of..., other obsessions, west tennessee | 4 Comments »

Seven Best in 2006

Posted by Lynnster on January 1, 2007

I got tagged by Newscoma almost a couple of weeks ago for this, so I saved it for New Year’s since I thought that would be a good topic to reflect on for the holiday. However, I think it would have been a lot easier for me to come up with the seven worst things I did in 2006 than the best. But still, I’m willing to give it a go, boring though it may be. 2006 just wasn’t a real great year. Funny, almost all of my “bests” have something to do with blogging or bloggers or something otherwise online. Guess that makes sense since this is where I spend most of my free time.

By the way, my favorite number is seven. Just in case you didn’t know.

So anyway, here – The Seven Best Things I Did in 2006.

1. I ditched cable TV. I got tired of paying almost $70 a month (not long before that, it was $90 a month) for cable I never watched and ditched it forever. With the exception of the first year or two I was in Memphis, this is just about the first time in almost all my life I have never had cable. My grandparents’ house was the first home in Paris, Tennessee to get cable when it was available there, and my house was probably among the first dozen. The ex and I did without it for a little over a year when we first moved down here, but then some plant started getting built up the street a ways and the more that got built, the worse our reception got, so we broke down and got cable again.

Cable was reasonable when I was in my twenties and it was $15-20 a month. $70 and $90 a month for cable is ridiculous, I don’t care HOW many channels there are.

The other best thing in relation to that was opening my Netflix account, and once I cut off cable, I upgraded my Netflix account. And am STILL paying less than half of what I was for cable, only now I can watch what I want to when I want to, and stuff that’s been long gone from current television. I am very happy with this tradeoff. Between that, YouTube, and networks themselves finally getting smart and airing many of their shows online, who needs it. Screw cable.

2. Traveled to Texas and hung out with old friends. I spent a couple of days in Houston and renewed some bonds with old friends, most of whom I talk to often but hadn’t seen and hung out with in over two years because we’re spread out all over – Houston, Memphis, Florida, Brooklyn, Boston, and eastern Canada. It was too short a visit, but it was worthwhile and an extra special couple of days. Also my first visit ever to Texas.

So that was fabulous, and the only real traveling I did in 2006. The only other places I went last year were to Birmingham and otherwise all in Tennessee – Jackson, McKenzie, Paris, and Chattanooga – none of them except the last really count as “travel”.

3. Opened my MySpace account. You may laugh, but while MySpace as a whole is kind of silly (and I swore for years I was never going to have one), if you’re as much into music as I am, it’s an AMAZING resource for musical interests. I have found new “local” music from around the globe that has just been incredible, and likely stuff I never would have known about otherwise. And not only have I gained a lot of new contacts and acquaintances in the music world, but I have renewed communication with an unbelievable number of old music contacts and friends, some of whom I’d thought dropped off the face of the earth and I’m sure some thought the same of me. That’s been really cool.

It’s also been quite a humbling experience, like when I found that a kid half my age who’s newly become a Replacements fanatic had a link to my old ‘Mats pages along with other more “academic” (for lack of a better word) links, or the occasional commenter or mailer who says they remember my old Hoodoo Gurus page. Or when someone whose work I have had a huge amount of respect for, for years – when I said I was pleased to finally meet “the famous (name)” – replied that I was more famous (LOL, don’t get excited, only in Australia and only among circles of a certain music genre). I was simply taken aback by that. Come to think of it, not really sure why I never made an effort to make a career out of it.

On the other hand, I do know the answer to that. I have never made a dime from efforts helping to promote other people’s music that I like, but I’ve spent a significant amount of my free time over the years doing it, online for the most part in many online mediums. I’m not sure it would have all been anywhere near as much fun and as satisfying if it were a job rather than a labor of love.

4. Volunteer work and trying to be a little more charitable in general. Hopefully the volunteer work I have involved myself in the last several years helps folks, at least I hope so – I’m really not at liberty to speak publicly about it because it’s generally an anonymous organization, and I do a lot more technical work these days rather than personal involvement, but it’s one of those situations where I figure if I helped one person make a good decision because I knew the answer to their question, or helped one person find the information they needed because of some tech work I did, then I feel like I’ve done something good.

I also did a couple of other things I generally never have much done. In 2006, I started donating a small part of my monthly salary to an Episcopal church in Mississippi that could use it as a way to honor my grandmother’s memory, after she passed away right before Christmas in 2005. There’s a reason why I picked this church in particular that I won’t go into here (not that interesting of a story), but given the fact I have been a severely lapsed Episcopalian for many years and the fact that this would make my grandmother happy, it’s pretty significant for me. I also did some more donating I don’t generally do to some stuff I strongly believed in. So that was all cool.

5. Started blogging regularly again after a really long mostly-break. Pretty soon it will be ten years since I started “journaling online” and whew, that’s a long time. For about five years, though, I took what was mostly a long break and was really haphazard about it, especially the three year period from 2003 to 2005. I skipped 2004 altogether.

In January of 2006, I finally left behind HTML hell for good and started moving all my old archives to Blogger, with a mirror on LiveJournal, and wow – how much easier was it to do after that. I started blogging more often and before the year was through, I got back into almost daily blogging (mostly thanks to the kickstart of pledging to do so during NaBloPoMo). Apparently that was the kick in the butt I needed to get back in the swing of things again.

And then in December and sick of the hassle of Blogger Beta, I jumped to WordPress for good, which is the other aspect of this best thing I did in 2006. In retrospect, I wish now I had just gone to WordPress to begin with. It ROCKS.

But it’s been good to get back in the regular blogging habit again and loads of fun. A little bittersweet for me since some of my old longtime peanut gallery is gone (actually, sometimes that’s a relief depending on the day’s blogging subject matter, heh). But having not only gotten back into it, but also becoming involved in a fabulous blogging community of other Tennesseans has been terrific and great fun. I’ve made a lot of good new friends this past year, and maybe a couple of enemies, but one can never have too many friends! And, speaking of, another of the best things I did in 2006 was…

6. The best dinner date I ever had. Getting to meet Hutchmo in person and getting to know him, with an extra bonus being that we both share a longtime mutual friend we just recently found out each other knew, was terrific. We had a fabulous and fun dinner at one of my fave Mexican restaurants in Memphis in December, and the two guys just had me laughing till I almost cried all night, and John is just a really good friend now who I absolutely adore, plus it’s extra cool that we share so many of the same musical interests. Like I said, friends are good, can’t have too many of them!

My post-Christmas tour plans to meet some more Middle TN bloggers got waylaid by my post-holiday tardiness getting on the road, but I hope in 2007 to meet everyone else I’m dying to meet and hang out with and feel sure I will meet most everyone, at least. Planning to make many trips to Middle Tennessee in the coming year, and anyone who may be coming to Memphis (like Newscoma in a couple of weeks, matter of fact – can’t wait to see her and her Squirrelly sidekick!) – let’s do BBQ, Mexican, veggie pizza, Huey burgers, or whatever!

7. I didn’t cry. Nope, I didn’t cry when my kid sister and brother-in-law left Memphis, after being here for five years prior, moved to Nebraska for good. At least not where they could see. Granted, they were in Florida, then northern Ohio, then Rhode Island for years before they moved down here for a while. But that was different. Even though sometimes we’d go months without seeing each other, for five years they were right across on the other side of town, and now they’re in freakin’ Nebraska. Sigh.

But right now in freakin’ Nebraska with 14+ inches of snow. Heh heh. I am trying very hard not to say “I told you so” right now!

Well, OK, there’s my Seven Things. I’m not tagging anyone, but feel free to tag yourself by proxy if you get a mind to do so. This one was kind of hard; like I said, I could have probably easily come up with The 100 Worst Things I Did in 2006 in comparison.

Posted in BBQ, a family thing, about the weather, aussie music, blogfolks, blogger sucks, blogstuff, friends are good, hoodoo gurus, in memory of..., memes go here, memphis, middle tennessee, my so-called life, nashville is talking, television, the internet is..., the replacements, travelin', west tennessee | 7 Comments »

Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Girl

Posted by Lynnster on November 30, 2006


Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Girl
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Yep, that would be me, as rendered by my mother, the artist. That would also be my first dog, a black Lab mix named Snoopy (who the puppies’ mama, Satin, kind of resembled a lot, actually). Yep, I had so little hair at the time I kind of looked like a boy. Actually up to this point in my life, I pretty much had almost NO hair, so that was an improvement. Even tho I have long hair nowadays, there’s still not much of it. My mother has thick, easily stylable, formerly blonde hair. My dad had thick, wavy, jet black hair. Why I was cursed with baby-fine, thin, straight as a stick hair that won’t do anything at all, I’ll never know. I don’t get it. Obviously, I DIDN’T get it. Or at least not much of it.

I guess I am feeling a little nostalgic for my childhood today. Yesterday brought the news that one of the fellows in the Nashville blogging community’s grandmother had passed away. I lost mine a year ago today.

I guess I was pretty lucky to begin with – when I was born, two of my great-grandparents were still alive. It had almost, very narrowly, been three, because one of my great-grandmothers died a week or two before I was born. One of my great-grandfathers died a month later, and my maternal grandmother passed the month after that. But a lot of people, at least back then, didn’t have great-grandparents alive at all, so I know I was pretty lucky to have two of them. And not only that, they both lived well into my teens.

I practically lived at my paternal grandparents’ house growing up, I was there as much as I was at my own house. Being first and only grandchild for many years had its privileges, I did whatever I wanted when there and was always the star of the show. My grandfather and I would play Yahtzee at night and eat a bowl of Rice Krispies together before bed. My grandmother and I would put jigsaw puzzles together, and I taste-tested and ate the leftover batter of thousands of batches of fudge, cakes, pies, and every other dessert under the sun. And I probably ate four million of my grandmother’s grilled cheese sandwiches, which try as I might, I can’t replicate. They never taste as good when I try to make them.

My great-grandparents on my grandmother’s side might have been the only family in Henry County in the Thirties who had a movie camera. Certainly if not the only family, they were one of the few. They were kind of characters anyway; Al Capone’s men were running liquor through Northwest Tennessee during the Prohibition era, and my great-grandparents often visited one of the speakeasies that had sprung up over near Martin, no doubt also fronted by Capone family members. And they were also doing other things probably not that many people in rural Northwest Tennessee were able to do and afford at the time, like taking their daughters to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Which I have video footage of, as well as a fair amount of footage of my grandmother and her sister when they were teenagers, and that’s probably a relative rarity for someone my age to have.

My great-grandfather was really something. He bought this awesome purple Chevy convertible in the Forties that my dad and uncle both later drove, and my dad drove it again for a while when I was a kid. I wish we still had it, but my great-grandfather sold it in the late Seventies, purportedly so my father and uncle wouldn’t fight over it after he died. He was also frequently, and often secretly, doing things to help those less fortunate around the community; my mother found out about one of those occasions just last year when my grandmother died, over 25 years after my great-grandfather’s death. My great-grandmother was this Great Southern Lady who everyone just adored, and was quite striking in pictures and on film, before her illness which eventually took her life. I wish I had known her. I hear she was quite excited about my pending arrival, but I arrived a week or two too late.

I think the story of my grandparents’ marriage is funny as hell. My grandparents eloped, running off with another couple to New Concord, Kentucky, when my grandmother was 16; my grandfather was already in his twenties. They returned home and went back to each other’s respective homes with their parents. And stayed that way. I don’t know exactly how much time passed before the secret marriage finally came to light, but it was a fair amount of time, and no doubt my great-grandparents were less than thrilled. Instead of doing what she was probably supposed to, like her younger sister eventually did – going to a “good” all girls’ college and getting a degree, then marrying a Tennessee state senator – my grandmother was a child bride at 16. My grandfather went in the Navy during WWII, and my grandmother gave birth to my father a little over a year after she’d graduated from high school.

And she’d have had it no other way, I think. My grandfather was the love of her life, and she loved being a mother and a housewife, though she did work in the family drugstore now and again. She loved babies, and would have probably kept having them if my grandfather hadn’t put his foot down and put an end to it after #4. Ten years after that, I came along, and then later my cousins, so she had babies and kids around again and was thrilled. She would have adored being a great-grandmother, if only any of us – my cousins and I – had ever bothered to get married and have kids, so I’m kind of sorry she wound up missing out on that. But at least when she remarried, she wound up with a slew of step-great-grandchildren.

My grandfather died when I was in my twenties, and I was living in Memphis by then, but would get back home more often than I ever am able to nowadays. Spent a lot of those weekends over at my grandmother’s house too, drinking wine coolers and playing Scrabble with my mother and grandmother until nearly sunup.

My grandmother got remarried in the early Nineties and moved to her new husband’s home in Nashville, and I didn’t get to see her as often. She loved her new life, but she always missed our little hometown terribly, which was almost the only place she’d ever lived.

Her husband was quite a bit older than her, so I always expected that if he went first, she’d be back in Paris in a flash. When he passed away early last year, by the very next week she had found a house back home to move into. She had missed her life and friends back home so much over the years, and her husband had been ill for some time and had required so much constant care, so I had hoped she would be able to spend at least several years back in Henry County, having some fun and enjoying herself.

She had about two good months back home, socializing and spending time with my mom, and her two kids that were still in town, and my youngest cousin, who was in high school at the time and still at home. And had even picked out Husband #3, so I’m told. Except he got sick and died a few months after her return to her hometown.

And she was diagnosed with cancer a couple of months after her move back home last year. Shortly after Thanksgiving – a year ago today – we lost her.

I’ve lost a good number of my friends, too many, including some of my closest. And all my grandparents, great-grandparents, and a few years ago, my father. So it’s not like I don’t know how this whole thing goes – the grieving, the getting past it, the going on.

This one has not been so easy to get past. I keep telling myself I’m 40 years old, and this is ridiculous to still be missing her so much, and that I was lucky to have so many grandparents and great-grandparents in my life as long as I did. And to get over it. I’ve lost some of my best friends in some of the worst ways imaginable, and a parent. So I should, logically, be able to get past this, too.

Well, maybe someday. It won’t be today, though. Not quite there yet.

And since I can’t, I hope maybe if you still have a grandparent and/or great-grandparents around, you might pick up the phone and call them and say hi and tell them you love them. You really should. I’m just sayin’.

Posted in * lynnster photos, a family thing, ancient history, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, my so-called life, sad stuff, west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

The Spirit of One Moment or Place

Posted by Lynnster on November 23, 2006

In my lengthy daily blog travels this week and last, I’ve come across a lot of remembrances and essays and other stuff about the JFK anniversary, including the “Where were you…” remembrances.

I, of course, was nowhere and wasn’t even thought of at that moment in time. Well, possibly thought of and considered, I guess, but it would be 1966 before I would arrive on the scene.

I have always liked my Dad’s “where were you” story.

Dad was in pharmacy school at the time, and I guess it must have been a nice and warmish November day in Memphis, ‘cos he and some friends were laying out of one of their classes that day and playing football on campus.

Suddenly, someone else appeared. It was the professor whose class they’d skipped. They thought they were in trouble.

They weren’t, and the professor’s the one who told them what had happened.

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, in memory of..., in my head | Leave a Comment »

She Talks to Angels

Posted by Lynnster on November 17, 2006

Late last night (early this morning actually) I asked for extra thoughts/wishes/prayers towards East Tennessee for the Oak Ridge family of GAC/BJ, AT, & their two little boys at Atomic Tumor, as things had taken a turn for much worse overnight.

Very saddened to report that this morning, she is gone.

Even though I never knew BJ personally, I am honored to have been able to get to know her thru AT’s words. As well as so many wonderful things I heard about her, and them both, from others that knew them, some of whom are my own friends, acquaintances. I am grateful to have had this all too brief opportunity to learn about her and her – again, all too brief – life. 29 years old is too soon to have to leave, especially with two young children.

This tragedy has touched so many hearts all over the country, all over the world now. BJ will live on through AT’s love for her and through their sons, most definitely; and through the memories of their good friends and family. But she will also live on through the hearts of all the hundreds, thousands of people who have been witnessing this electronically over there the last few weeks as well, all those with whom AT shared her in his grief and pain. I think it changed the world a little bit and has made it a little bit better place today.

I think it would have anyway, even if it had had a happier ending, if she was awake and with her husband and her boys today instead. I wish that’s how it had turned out. I wish there were more I could do.

AT, their sons, and all their many family & friends could use your prayers, thoughts, wishes, whatever it is you do, more than ever now and in the coming weeks, especially with the holidays afoot. I thank you for whatever it is you choose to do, if you do so.

Posted in blogfolks, east tennessee, in memory of..., lend a hand, sad stuff | Leave a Comment »

Two Two Two for My Family and…

Posted by Lynnster on February 25, 2006

I fairly recently found out – well, this really started almost a couple of years ago but let’s just say the brunt of it has come about in the past few months – that some of my relatives that I just really had no idea about are pretty cool. This is kind of disconcerting to be finding this out this late in the game. Who knew?!

OK, let me start over here and provide a little back story. I have practically zero family on my mother’s side; I’m the only child of an only child (my sister’s not really literally my sister) and pretty much everyone on that side of the family that’s not dead is really, really old, save for my mom and me; and even when there were still more living, there just weren’t all that many of them and they were all old. There are some extremely distant cousins, most of whom I’ve never laid eyes on and most don’t live in this area, but there’s not even really that many of them. So when I talk about family, and when I’m not talking about my mom and me and my sister who’s not literally my sister and my godmother and my brother-in-law, I’m referring to my dad’s side of the family. ‘Cos that’s the only extended family of any number I’ve ever had, really.

Anyway. I grew up as probably one of the most spoiled rotten children on the planet, mainly because I was the only one for a long time. For the first six years of my life, I was the only child, the only grandchild, and the only great-grandchild. That makes for a whole lotta spoilage, yep. I was not a bad kid by any means – actually I was a pretty good one and in many ways a miniature adult, which doesn’t really explain why I’m so obnoxiously immature and regressed in my thirties, but I digress… but yeah, definitely spoiled. I got everything I ever wanted and, most importantly, all attention was on me at all times.

Then my cousins started getting born – first as well as some seconds, all around the same time with the first wave. Now, I won’t say all was lost as far as my reign as Family Princess (heh) went. There are still certain and many advantages to being the elder and more established, yup. But all these babies started coming along and I had to share the limelight a little bit with all these drooling infants and wobbly toddlers. Which was okay – I wasn’t ever jealous or upset about it, that I recall – plus I still got most of the attention anyway. Plus now there was a host of other toys I could play with and toyboxes I could pillage besides my own.

In any case, my point is that I am five/six years older than the cousins closest to me in age. One set moved off to another state when they were still pretty young; the other set, I moved with my family to another town when I was 13 and they were still pretty young. Now, in the grand scheme of things, they’re not all that much younger than me – but in childhood like that, even a few years is a vast difference in age, of course. So really, I only knew all of these cousins as little kids. Had seen some off and on – and VERY rarely – as the years passed, but really, my experience with all of them, they were all very, very little. I’ve never really known any of them as anything BUT little kids.

I actually only had one cousin really close in age, and he was actually my dad’s first cousin, the youngest of my grandfather’s sister’s kids, and two years older than me. We were buddies but also only saw each other once a year if even that, because his family also lived pretty far away in another state. So for all purposes of this discussion, he really doesn’t count.

And when I was an older child, and a teenager – really didn’t have any interest in any of them or want to have much to do with them. You get to that point where you don’t really want to play with little kids anymore, you know. Although I’d still play with their toys anyway…

Then you have my second wave of cousins – one born when I was close to graduating from high school, the other when I was nearly 23 years old. Now, these two I saw quite often; one in particular, when he was little, I rather tended to try to spoil to death just like one of my aunts did me when I was little. Bought the child cool stuff, whatever his heart was desiring at the time – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles swag for a while, then there were the Mortal Kombat years. My then-boyfriend and I took him to the zoo once when he came to Memphis. But both of them, these two, I had a moderate amount of contact with.

But again – little kids. And with these two, even though technically they’re my cousins, because of the truly vast age difference there, it’s really been more like they’re my nephews and I’m their old maid, eccentric but slightly cool (I guess), aunt.

My contact with them was not so much as they went thru their preteen and teenage years, just due to different stuff going on within the family. My mom and I started spending our Christmases with my godmother and pseudosister and their family back around 1994, and though I did see the rest of my family at other times, not so much and so regularly as before. But enough so that I witnessed my little blonde towheaded cousin that used to sit in my lap and get read to grow into this big hulking teenage football player, and other such stuff that made me feel ancient.

Still, this one and the younger one – my contact with them as they got older was much more minimal. And every time I’d see them it was just so disconcerting. The other one grew to be very tall and big, much taller than his parents and certainly taller than me, who’s 5′2″. But both of them, again – to me, in my mind – should be little kids. That’s mostly what I knew them as, just as with the older ones.

Starting with a family funeral almost a couple of years ago, and then much more recently brought to light to me during more recent family funerals – though the times have been brief – suddenly I’m starting to get to know all these “little kids” as the adults they now are. Which is neat, but weird.

And I mean, heck – for one thing, I’ve got to stop thinking of them as KIDS – after all, the first cousin closest to me in age is going to be 34 years old this year, for crying out loud. The youngest of the first wave of cousins will turn 30 next year. The other two, one (the former great big hulking football player) is in his early twenties and is a great big hulking Marine now, about to get out this summer and planning to go to college now and later, hopefully, law school; the other will graduate from high school in May and is starting college in the fall.

One thing that makes me proud about this whole bunch is that the music genes of my dad, my uncle, and my dad’s cousin are strong, strong, STRONG. My Marine cousin seems to have missed that gene somehow (dunno how that happened) although he does seem to have some appreciation of music in general, and a couple of the others I think have only had some minor interest.

But on the flip side, you’ve got me and my completely out of control music junkie habit, and the guitar, and various other instruments in the past. One cousin that recently got his doctorate in music and is now a professor at a small Midwestern college. His sister has the music gene as well and was involved in music throughout high school and college, as has my young cousin about to get out of high school and who picked up the guitar this year much to my utter joy. And another who has been an accomplished drummer most of his life and has played in some pretty cool bands around West and Middle Tennessee, nowadays in Murfreesboro band AntiSense Therapy. I just listened to a few of their tracks on MySpace and I approve, much – they’re pretty cool. Kind of remind me of the Gin Blossoms or Jimmy Eat World or something.

As I keep getting to know them – what little I get to – after all this time, as adults, I find that all of these previously-little-kids are neat and interesting people. The ones who have been grownups a while, they’ve all kept good, mostly steady jobs and/or aced higher education, stayed out of trouble, just all done really well at whatever they’ve been doing. One’s the mom of the most adorable, curly-headed red-headed little girl you’ve ever seen. My other female cousin who is just brilliant and has this really cool, interesting, and refreshing view of things and personality. My big hulking Marine cousin who fully admits he loved playing football because he loved to just go bashing into things – underneath that knockabout exterior is a thoughtful guy with a really good heart who is also (kind of like somebody else I know) intelligent enough to have done virtually anything with his life, and hopefully he will. Really all of them have grown up to be pretty cool, levelheaded adults, and the one that’s just technically starting adulthood has always been pretty mature for his age and extremely intelligent.

He’s also the one that I usually buy music for at Christmas and birthday (which are only a couple of days apart). Since he was a young teenager, he’s always had an Amazon wish list, so that’s where I head when it’s that time of year. I always buy him whatever’s on his list that I can stand to, because although his tastes have evolved rather nicely in recent years, there’s still stuff on there I just refuse to. And I will admit – one year I did break down and buy him a Britney Spears CD. But it’s gotten easier and easier with him. This year it was Weezer and Green Day, and I can certainly deal with that.

Honestly, when it comes down to it – they’ve all shown me up. Me being first and only for the longest time, and also a rather precociously smart little kid – there were a lot of expectations regarding me and my future when I was young. We could be here all night if I really started talking about all that, but suffice it to say in some parallel universe somewhere there’s probably another me that kept getting straight A’s throughout all school, got multiple degrees from several prestigious universities and am unbelievably powerful and wealthy and successful in that parallel universe, as well as making all kinds of excellent and appropriate life decisions. Instead, I got tired of being the smart girl, realized I really just didn’t like school anyway (though I kept trying to give it a halfhearted try for a long time, really I did) – and made every possible bad decision and worse that ever came down the path, and now – well, here I am. Heh.

Anyway, in that regard, it’s all kind of ironic how things have turned out. But I certainly don’t begrudge any of them for showing me up, not in the least. Very, very proud of all of them – especially the two that I got to have a hand in raising, the two that now literally tower over me and outweigh me by about 100 pounds each.

But to bring this back on track, here’s the coolest thing of all to find out for me, in all this getting to know these previously-little-kids as the adults they now are. My male cousins are funny. Well, most of them anyway. They’re hilarious. And you know me – I appreciate a good crack-up more than most, and god knows I amuse myself enough, even if no one else is amused. (And I do have official credentials, says Miss Wittiest of 1984…)

I dunno, this shouldn’t all be a surprise, really. My uncle and my dad’s cousin both have terrific senses of humor and are just plain fun and interesting people, and my dad could be pretty fun most of the time. None of us cousins look much alike – not even the brothers and sisters, really. But obviously the music and the humor genes have passed on down the line.

I didn’t get to spend much time with any of them, all these brief funereal moments that have brought us all together recently and a couple of years ago. But since then, I have found myself wishing there’d be more opportunities and occasions to get us all together – preferably not another funeral, I’ve had about enough of those for the time being.

But yeah, I’d like to get to know all these strangers, who aren’t really strangers, a little better. Get to know who they really are and more about them, these adults that in the back of my mind should all be babies still. Hang out with them for more than just a few minutes. Be – undoubtedly – entertained by them, laugh a lot. They’re all really neat kids… oops… I mean, really neat people.

Of course, everyone gets so busy – including me – free time is always so limited nowadays. And the irony – I guess since when I was an older kid, I had no real interest much in any of those little kids – well, except for the one – probably most of them are too busy and into their own things to have much interest in hanging out with their approaching-middle-age cousin/”aunt”, and it’d probably serve me right.

All this weird reflection and introspection lately, it’s probably just part of a mid-life crisis or something. But yeah. Family. It’s a curious thing…

By the way, the Marine and the other young one have to put up with me whether they like it or not. Unless the boyfriend and I lose all sense of reason and intelligence and decide we’re gonna have kids in our forties… well, I’m pretty sure those two are smart enough to have figured out which side of the bread that butter is on…

Posted in * top serious babble, a family thing, ancient history, in memory of... | Leave a Comment »

Nothing Has Changed

Posted by Lynnster on February 1, 2006

Well, today has been a kind of bittersweet day for me – three years ago today, and the same day as the last space shuttle explosion, my whole world changed when three of my best and oldest friends were killed in a freak car accident together. In a life where I have now lost so many friends I have lost count as to how many exactly unless I think hard about it, in everything from accidents to suicide to AIDS to drugs to other illness to being at the wrong place at the wrong time during a robbery – in a way you get a little immune, but some have been harder to deal with than others, and they don’t really get better, it just changes. And losing all three at the same time three years ago, three of my best and closest – the rug really got yanked out from me there, and, in fact, was a good excuse not to blog/journal much for years as they were such an interactive part of my doing so, for years.

I think I said at the time I felt like I had a hole in my heart as big as the Grand Canyon. Well, I still do. It’s not much better, just different is all. There were twelve of us – thirteen if you count JJ – who were together forever, since college days – in mine and KC’s case, we’d been together since I was 7 and he was 8 years old – but yeah, twelve or thirteen. There’s six of us left now. SIX. Less than half, really. And the oldest one of the bunch is just now soon turning 42.

And in moving all the old blog entries I have thus far, one thing that really jumped out at me was the fact there are just paragraphs upon paragraphs and reference upon reference to KC, Greg, Duncan. A little of Scot, a little of Evan, probably a whole lot more of Jay S. because he was still around for a lot of it. Not much of Joey I’m sure, but he’s been gone so long that was like another lifetime ago.

But KC, Greg, Duncan – yeah. Anyone who’s been a relatively regular Zone visitor over the years, all knew of KC pretty well, he even had his own section on my site for a long time. There’s so much sprinkled throughout old blog entries of all three of them. Some even written when one or more of them were here at the house – a particular one that made me laugh when I came across it moving it last weekend, Greg throwing ice & other things at me from the other side of the room as I tried to type and barely could from laughing so hard.

Not too very long ago, Greg’s ex-wife Beck, who I was actually pretty close to at one time and lost touch with after they divorced, called to catch up. We laughed about KC and his acid tongue and rapier-sharp wit, and how he was always right all the time and it was so infuriating because you never wanted to admit that he was right and you were wrong because you’d never hear the end of it. Because KC and I carried on this “hate/hate relationship” most of our childhood, teenage, and adult lives, one of my favorite jabs was to outline in detail how he was going to die an old, lonely, grumpy man. Of course the truth to that was, had he lived that long, he would have died old and grumpy, curmudgeon that he was. But one with a heart of gold. That was always supposed to be a big secret but it was one everyone knew – especially me.

And Beck and I chuckled about poor brain-dead, blissfully ignorant and stupid Duncan – think Michael Kelso from That ’70s Show but prettier, blonde, and much more dense and ditzy. Exacerbated by some old habits in college days, yeah (heh); but his older brother Evan spent his entire and also too short life feeling guilty that he, Evan, was responsible for making his baby brother slightly retarded because he dropped Duncan on his head when he was a baby (he really did). Duncan used to drive me insane, tho in later years it was just more of a mild annoyance. One of my favorite memories of him is documented here on the Zone in a 1998 entry:

“…dipping into the viewer mailbox and Duncan, bless his psychedelically burnt out little brain, writes: ‘Are you still stewing? Because I have a favor I want to ask you but I don’t want to ask if you’re still stewing.’” Giggle.

And then Greg. My “little brother”. Possibly the man I should have married? Nah, probably not. Probably the most telling aspect of all about the relationship between Greg and myself, as well as probably the most telling of all dynamics of everyone in that whole group of twelve or thirteen, is in a short story I wrote about – matter of fact – the trip the whole gang made for Greg and Beck’s wedding, now all those years ago. So I’ll hold on to that for now, but for the record, of all the unfinished works, the one that is stories of the whole gang is probably the one closest to ever seeing the light of day of getting published.

It was good to have someone who knew them all to share all those memories with – there are fewer and fewer of us these days. I was glad Becky called.

Anyway… well, if you haven’t really been here before and get to thumbing thru old entries… meet my friends. They are all over the place in those old entries. And, today anyway, very much in my heart and not so far away. Ciao for now…

Posted in * top serious babble, friends are good, giggles, in memory of..., sad stuff, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

I’m Working So Hard, Oh Yeah

Posted by Lynnster on January 29, 2006

Well, I have succeeded in moving more of the ’90s over here… but it’s liked to have killed me doing it. I had forgotten that once upon a time I really did actually write & update EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN’ DAY… ugh, this is going to take forever. Anyway, I moved thru August ‘98 and moved February ‘97 as well too… everything in between is just gonna have to wait, I’m gonna have to do like a month at a time or something. This is a great big major pain but I’ll be fine once it’s all moved and done and over with.

There wasn’t really any more major news to report except that both of my grandmothers died in November… one I was exceptionally close to and that loss is still proving to be somewhat difficult.

And, I’m still working the same full-time job, but I’m also doing freelance transcription for a couple of national companies, so all that’s been keeping me busy busy busy… not a lot of spare time, but I’m determined to make more of it (spare time, that is) ‘cos frankly I’ve been wiping myself the hell out lately, no real days off for months except for a couple and being so exhausted that I’ve frequently fallen asleep sitting up right here at the computer. Yeah, I know… not good.

Anyway, more when I get some more of this busywork done… I really want to get everything moved over here and shut down the old site very shortly. I hate unfinished projects so hopefully that won’t take so long… see you soon.

Posted in a family thing, in memory of..., updates to the zone | Leave a Comment »

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