Decluttering

Mother and child

We have lived in this house almost 28 years. The kids have moved out but much of their stuff remains. I finally was able to have Naomi go through all her drawers today and decide what to keep (and take to her place) and what to give to Purple Heart tomorrow. I have about twenty bags of stuff, some of it is my clothes but a lot are sheets that we'd probably never use again. Although now I have almost two dressers free of clothes and now half a linen closet, there is much to be done. Josh's room is full of sports stuff from both Naomi and Josh. I still have many of his toys though I guess the grandkids can play with them when they come. The boys will be here in early May to be baptized. I hope to see them before then.
Ms. Maya is becoming more and more co-ordinated grabbing everything within reach. She's becoming more fun.
The place where Steve works is quite a bit different from where we worked (yet so close!). Hardly any equipment! He went home early as he needed some material that still is on order and can't work without it.

As it is slippery outside, back to the Y for a double workout: running and then weights

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's off to work we go...

I am using the pronoun 'we' loosely here. Actually only one of us is off to work..first day on the job.

Pluses
Money
Doing something useful
Not far to drive or park
Work when someone feels like it
Quit if it gets too boring or stressful
Might be interesting
Minuses
Money but not much versus our former salaries that probably won't be matched by anyone for this type of work
anywhere. Some of our former colleagues are there trying to support their families on this.
Time drain..could be used for fixing up this house.

I was hired almost 36 years ago for the job I eventually 'retired' from 3 years ago. I was not an experienced interviewee having only two professional jobs before that (and many other 'little' jobs: babysitting, tutor, part time sales help, dorm dining room worker, fast food worker, waitress, lab manager for a physical chem lab, cell counter in a hearing research lab). I did read up on hints for making a good impression: smiling, appearing confident by making eye contact....
But my interviewer, head of the research group, refused to look at me.  Was he painfully shy? Probably. Did he come from some culture that thought eye contact with the opposite sex was akin to a marriage proposal?
Not sure. He did repeat several times that a woman had never worked in his group before (aside from his secretary) and he wasn't sure if a 'woman' was suitable for this line of work. This was before EEOC. In high school, I was specifically told that McDonald's only hired boys. Those were the days. Anyway, I was too nervous to ask what he meant by the work being unsuitable for a woman. He hired me anyway though.
Later I asked the Human Resource person also involved in my hiring and who was in my carpool what he thought was meant by his reservation about women. He said that the work potentially involved  some physical strength but at the time I looked unusually muscular for a woman (and I am tall), they decided to take a chance on me. Plus I had graduated from a 'better' school versus the other candidate.

In this lab, we had technicians to do the menial aspects of our job and they were unionized. If I ever was caught 'doing their job', the union would slap a fine on the company and I am sure this would impact my review. So I wasn't allowed to do anything terribly physical anyway.

Another irony about this job was the research head. From time to time, he would invite me into his office to give me advice and to tell me about himself. Still he wouldn't look at me. In his spare time he was a volunteer policeman for his suburb. One of the tools he developed for the local police was a method for determining on the spot what illegal drug a perp may have in his possession. This is the irony:, one widely abused drug at the time (haven't heard about it in years..so many other drugs) was synthesized first by himself. He did not set out to develop a drug that caused immediate psychosis but that's what happened.

I later requested a transfer out of his department. He was very angry at that and refused to even say good-bye to me though years later, he did apologize.

Snow all over the place. Although it is probably less than 2 inches, it looks slippery. Maybe today will be a rest day though Josh's weights are still here.

What do I smell like today?

Fig and brown sugar lotion. Sounds strange but it actually smells quite good and at $3 a 8 oz bottle, quite cheap. And as a bonus, it moisturizes too! This was one of my purchases from yesterday.

Back in high school, I thought Muguet des bois was the best smelling perfume. It maybe cost $15/bottle..alot when you are babysitting at 50 cents/hour. Sadly the scent was quite weak and would wear off in less than an hour. I also liked this stuff from Yardley that Jean Shrimpton was the spokeswoman for. I had to borrow that from my friends. Some time in college, I discovered Shalimar. A friend said that stuff made her feel like a bitch in heat. This stuff was quite pricy, especially as I was living off a minimum wage job. A housemate used to sneak into my room to borrow some while I slept but I could smell it and wake up irritated because I had next to nothing whereas she was supported by over-indulgent parents. For many years, Shalimar would be the only thing I'd wear (aside from clothes). In 2002, some of us moms found ourselves in Paris. Many of the women smelled very good and seemed to be wearing the same perfume. But what? Could I ask them? I formulated the question..Quel odeur avez vous? or maybe Quel parfum portez-vous? Would this be rude? Finally in line for security in Amsterdam, a British woman standing near me had marinated herself in it from the nearby duty free shop and told me it was Jean Paul Gaultier Classique. World-wide, it is quite popular but not so much in the US. Still it was available at Hudson's (now called something else)and I had been wearing it almost every day until I was in Cancerland. Either my tastes have suddenly changed or I am just tired of it.

Chemo killed my apocrine glands. Of all the possible side effects listed, this was not one of them though others have noticed that they no longer needed deodorant. I was always worried whether they indeed had stopped working or maybe my sense of smell had changed and I just stunk without realizing it. I used deodorant anyway just to cover my bases. But after a year, they came back or maybe just my sense of smell returned.

I have seemed to stop losing eyelashes, which I seemed to do every few months AFTER I stopped chemo. My tight chemo curls morphed into soft curls then into waves. Now my hair is almost straight again. I have to use plenty of 'product' to ensure it doesn't hang limply. Who knows what the color is now? It was whitish-blonde before chemofest but grew back black and white. After someone had overestimated my age, I finally had it dyed. My roots look awfully dark.

I didn't wait for the salt to wear a clear path and went to the gym today and battled all those fresh with new resolutions. It will take a month or so for the gym to clear out. Then I treated myself to a New Orleans lunch with a friend..very yummy.

I picked up a new country today..Cyprus. Someone wanting to read about Castelvecchio which for some reason has surpassed 'donkey stew' in hits. Also popular..hummingbirds and their impostors. For cancer related posts, what color is your tumor? Mine, for the record and its insides at least, was white with little streaks of red.  I was expecting it to look more meaty.

Local news

Since the demise of our local newspaper, local news is hard to come by. We do receive the WSJ for national, financial, and world news (not my first choice but you learn to pick your battles). Every Tuesday, the WSJ features science news, which I appreciate. Today's subject, a drug for advanced BC derived from a black sponge. Although the headline made the drug sound new, reading further showed that  the drug has been around for years and increases life spans around 3 months on average (which many things do) but the company feels that it might be effective in early stage BC. The article then went on to remind readers that many of today's drugs are from natural products but large companies no longer mine them for potential drugs, just small companies. Taxol, derived from the Pacific yew, is most familiar to us in Cancerland.

As for local news, there is an on-line paper that publishes hard copies twice a week. Every day though, it can be accessed on-line. A story will be published and then many readers comment. Some of their comments are so ill thought out and reactionary, I find them depressing.
Big stories today:
Who will be the head coach at Michigan next year?
Speed limits in Ann Arbor violate some state guideline and thus will be raised. (Yay)
3 boys have killed themselves at a local high school..speculation?
In the past few weeks:
Ann Arbor water chock full of Chromium 6, which they call a dangerous isotope. No, not an isotope but a wrongly designated oxidation state (should use Roman numerals). What is a safe limit? No one knows and it is not clear how many samples were tested. Chromium 6 was the villain in the movie Erin Brockavich.


Ann Arbor teacher suspended and soon to be fired for having a relationship with a 23 year old woman who once was his student. A mom, with an obvious ax to grind, uncovered some old communications in which the then student was suicidal and the teacher wrote her saying that both he and Jesus loves her so please stay alive. This teacher is very popular and the present students and parents want him to keep his job.

Numerous crime reports concerning Naomi's old apartment complex and the complexes surrounding it. I am so glad we got her out of there.

Today at freezing will be the warmest of the week. I did find a small window in which the roads were relatively dry before snow flurries started up again. Steve and I went shopping, a rare event, and I actually bought some sale items.

I finally agreed to donate more clothes this week to Purple Heart. I have to learn to part with things that I will probably never use.

Gingerism redux

If one is a red head in England, one is called a ginger. As ginger hair is a sign of being possibly Celtic (Scots have the highest incidence of redhair-12%) some groups there think it appropriate to launch such Facebook pages as "Kick a Ginger" and have greeting cards saying Santa loves all kids. Even ginger ones. Ginger is an anagram of a very offensive mainly American epithet.
Another group that historically was linked to having red hair was the Ashkenazi Jews. During the Spanish Inquisition, redheads were automatically assumed to be Jewish. Did the Ashkenazim acquire red hair from other peoples? Maybe, but presumably there are Hebrew redheads; Esau and King David both were described as having red hair in the Bible. In art, Judas is often portrayed as having red hair but as he is usually associated with evil, it could be another sign of gingerism. Not all artists treated red heads as evil. The beautiful women in Titian's paintings had red hair, thus Titian being another name for red haired. Red heads during the Middle Ages were sometimes regarded as witches or vampires and treated accordingly.
Naomi used to hate when coaches from other teams would shout Get the Red Head though as I pointed out to her, this would be better than You got the Big Girl, which I have heard also.
So Ms. Naomi acquired one allele from the Scottish side; one from the Ashkenazim. In strong light, there are bits of red flickers in Ms. Maya's hair though the gene frequency for red hair is really low among African-Americans and Native-Americans which contribute to her father's ethnicity.

I went out in the cold but thankfully dry air this morning trying to recover from various holiday excesses. My cold is disappearing but still I think it has slowed me down.

The pain of being a red-head

What price does this beautiful hair have? Putting together the puzzle....

Recently I was reading an article on the Olympic skate board champion. It said that he experiences more pain than most people. Because he is always falling? No because he is red-headed. The gene for red-headedness, MC1R is linked to a gene for pain perception. Red headed people are more sensitive to pain and do not respond as well to narcotics. They do not respond at all  to kappa opioids (though neither do men). There is a stereotype of a 'red-headed personality' and it is not good. Perhaps being in pain more often makes them so crabby.

My first roommate in the hospital when I had Shanna was a red-head from our LaMaze class. She had characterized childbirth as 'no big deal'. I had expressed how shocked I was to experience so much pain when in class, contractions were described as 'tightenings'.Was I just a whiner? Did she forget in the last 24 hours of how much pain she really was in? Soon she began whimpering and crying. What was going on? Her milk was coming in and she was finding that painful beyond belief. I asked the nurse if this would happen to me. She said probably not, just that red-heads are always so super-sensitive.

So do red-heads have completely different perceptions of different types of pain? Both she and my own red-head seemed to feel almost nothing in childbirth (and no drugs either..not that they would have helped according to the articles I've read) but have an exaggerated  response to other pain. My father, a red-head, whined about everything. His father, however, was quite stoic despite being a red-head.

I was the first to break the chain of multigenerations of redheads reaching back to 18th century Scotland. My father by marrying a non-Celt put an end to it. But other groups carry the red-head gene too and thus Naomi.

I wasn't sad to see my red-headed roommate leave the hospital. I had a 'complicated' birth so I was there for 4 days. Soon I had a new roommate who now is one of my best friends.

1/1/11

Another year out of Cancerland! Repeating please don't come back!please don't come back! seems to be working. And cancer has taken a backseat to other more pressing issues though I know in a blink of an eye, that could change.

50 degrees today when I finally awoke! The tropics. I actually ran in shorts while the temp steadily dropped. I still have my cold. My voice is a low croak and I  have coughing spells but otherwise I felt good. I no longer sneeze or have a runny nose but my chest is congested.

Resolutions? Fix...this body..this house...some lives. Plenty of improvements that could be made in many aspects  of my life.

Happy New Year out there to all whom I love!