MY MIND WANDERED — and never came back!

I’ve been thinking about my blog lately and I’ve decided to make some changes. The reason for these changes is because I’ve been reading a lot of  ”mommy blogs” lately and I’ve noticed that the ones I keep going back to are the ones where the blogger gets intimate with her readers. (and no not that kind of intimate. tsk, tsk!)

It’s just that they are open and sharing with their lives and they post lots of photos of themselves and of their kids and other family members on their blog and when you read them you feel more like your reading a real person. (and also they don’t write these run-on sentences that are a mile long, the way I do)  However there is one small problem.  These women are all young and attractive.  I’m neither of these things.

But I’ve decided to stop hiding behind this computer screen and come on out of the closet. (no not that closet. tsk, tsk! Although I don’t see anything wrong with that closet either, if that’s your thing.)

So without further ado, here is a photo for your enjoyment.

Yes, that’s my foot. Actually, its my favorite pair of sandals.  Yeah, they’re old, but they’re comfy and cool and I like them.

Here’s a side view that shows the sole of the sandal:

Now that you’re more familiar with my foot, I hope this will bring us all closer together.

xo

PS: I really need to scrub those baseboards and that door.  WTH! Where did all that dirt come from and why did I just now notice it.  I think I need to clean my glasses.

**

Spring has finally returned to our neck of the woods.

I love spring time. I look forward to it more with each passing year. I usually start counting down the days right after Christmas; winter doesn’t seem that long if you do it that way.

Yesterday the temperatures were in the mid-seventies, so I decided to shed my jeans, put on my bathing suit and start to work on my tan.

That’s when I discovered that a horrible crime had been committed sometime during the long winter.

When I looked at my reflection in the mirror I screamed like a panther.

Somebody had stolen my legs!

They had been replaced by a pair of legs that, I swear, belonged to a chicken at one time. The thighs were covered in cottage cheese and there were tiny blue and purple lines running every which way. It reminded me of a page out of a road Atlas.

I ran screaming to Wayne and he immediately began to map out our vacation on my left calf.

“These aren’t my legs” I sobbed. “I’m calling the Sheriff. Somebody broke in the house and took mine while I was asleep.”

“Now, calm down,” Wayne advised. “they’ll look fine once they’re tanned.”

(The man never gets excited! I could tell him the house is burning to the ground and he would say, “Okay, let me get my shoes on and I’ll go have a look…”)

“But honey, I can’t walk around all summer with these lumpy, blue veined, chicken legs. There’s no way that I am going outside until winter!”

I pulled on my ragged sweat pants and slunk away to the kitchen, feeling like a scolded dog.

My daughter would be back from the beach in the morning. I couldn’t wait to tell her what had happened. I knew she would be sympathetic! She knows all about legs and how important they are. The next morning I was waiting on the porch when she drove up.

I noticed it the moment she got out of the car!

I should have known!

She was wearing a pair of Daisy Duke shorts and MY LEGS! I recognized them right away cause they were tanned and shapely and there was nary a vein in sight! And not one cottage-cheesey lump could be seen anywhere.

Kids! Why do they think they can just take anything they see lying around, without even asking?

I was all set to give her a good shaking and demand that she return them immediately, but then I noticed how happy she looked. So I just sighed and decided not to let on that I knew she’d taken them.

And, after all, the children WILL inherit everything we own, after Wayne and I are gone.

Oh well! I might just as well let her enjoy her inheritance while she’s young.

And I’ll have to admit…they do look great on her!

Like Wayne says, these legs might not be all that bad. Once they get some sun.

Incidentally, I’m once again hangin’ with dufus this week. Yes! I won the weekly caption contest at his blog again. I’m just awesome that way. Bahhha! If you haven’t already been there — go now.

Wayne bought me a new coffeemaker last week.

Turns out — it’s a Bunn!

BAH!!!

Have a great weekend everyone.

*

I hope all of you mothers had a great Mother’s Day. Mine was good. I got cards, cash, clothes and flowers from my two sweet children.

I love cards. They are my favorite things. I save every one I get. I have cards that date back 30 years or more. (I’m not a hoarder. Well maybe a little.)

Here are my Mother’s day cards. The first one is from Shannon, my step-daughter. That’s the first time I’ve admitted that on this blog. I know that those of you who read my blog regularly have probably wondered how Wayne and I could have a grown daughter with two kids who are 17 and 11 but we’ve only been married for 13 years. I never think of her as a step-child. She is MY daughter. Nothing less. She is sweet and caring and funny and generous to a fault just like her dad.

One time I introduced her as my daughter to a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in years. He said, “she is beautiful, just like her mother.”

I said, “Yes, her mother is a very attractive woman,” and he looked at me like I was crazy or conceited beyond belief until I explained that Wayne’s first wife is her mother.

This card is from her. Inside was the most beautiful handwritten message of love. It made my eyes tear up.

This next card is from my son who I adore beyond words. He has a sense of humor that is amazing and he can joke his way out of almost anything. When he was a kid I could never stay mad at him for more than a few minutes, no matter what mean thing he had done. He has always been the very light of my life since the day he was born. I was a teen mom and to be honest, he and I sort of grew up together. I didn’t know much about being an authority figure. But I must have done something right because he has turned out to be a good person in the end. I still worry about him and want nothing more than for him to be happy and safe.

Here is his card. It made me laugh. It is so typical of him.

So that was my Sunday. I’m not bragging, I’m just sharing my two wonderful blessings with you all.

***

Here’s wishing all of my blog friends a very Happy Mother’s Day this Sunday. Whether you have kids, dogs, cats or some other pet, this still makes you a mom. Loving, nurturing and caring for another living creature is what being a mother is all about. So have a wonderful day. You deserve it.

In other news, here is a video of my favorite song. I love Neko Case. She has the most rockin’ voice ever.

***

I’ve been looking back over my blog (don’t ask) and I just realized that for the past few months I have been so whiny and sickly and apologetic. My posts have been a total whine-fest. Add a chunk of cheese, a loaf of bread and a blanket to this blog and it’d be a picnic. It’s a miracle that I have any friends left, much less a dedicated readership like all of you. You, my dear readers, deserve so much more.

So as of this moment — no more whining and complaining. From now on, it’s onward and upward, the sky’s the limit, no mountain’s too high, the early bird catches the worm, no holds barred, I’m going to pull myself up by my boot straps, think outside the box, throw myself under the bus…and all those other clichés that make us want to stick a knitting needle in our ear so that we never have to hear them again.

Speaking of knitting needles, I love to crochet, which I know is an entirely different thing, but stay with me here. My first ex mother-in-law taught me to crochet a long time ago. It was kind of difficult to teach me (she said) since she was left-handed and I am right-handed, which gave her one more reason to despise me. But I eventually learned and I enjoy it, especially in the winter.

This is the last project I started and I haven't worked on it in years.

Over the years I’ve crocheted several afghans (the throws, not the people) which I gave away. I wish I had taken photos before I gave them away. The prettiest one was a peach and cream colored one that I crocheted using the shell stitch. (I gave it to my mother.)

There’s nothing more cozy on a chilly day than sipping a hot cup of tea while you’re curled up with a good book and an afghan spread over your lap. (insert joke here.)

Here is one that I kept for myself and I’ve used it for years. It is the simple granny square. The colors didn’t show up as pretty as they do in real life. (I can’t get the settings on my camera right. I hate this new Nikon. I wish Shadow hadn’t broken my Kodak easyshare which was a point and shoot.) Anyway, this afgahn is around 25 years old. It was one of the first ones I made.

Loving the loud colors! I wanted it to look like a field of Marigolds.

I might make covers for my throw pillows out of some pretty tan, green, and white varigated yarn that I found in my crocheting basket yesterday. It would give Scratch hours of enjoyment tearing them to shreds. If I ever finish crocheting the covers, and before the cat destroys them, I’ll take some photos to post here. Especially since I’m sure you all are screaming and rending your garments in anticipation of this project after reading about it.

Scratch bite your face off! is MY yarn! You no touch. I vaporize you with my eyes.

Oooooh, ooooh and this just reminded me of something hilarious. Now I know that this is probably way inappropriate for this blog, but I just have to share it with you. My son has always loved cats. (which is weird since I’ve always been more of a dog person) He has a beautiful cat that is solid snow white. There isn’t a speck of color on it anywhere and of all the things he could have named her…he chose to name her “Cumdrop”.

Which makes it kind of awkward when I have to ask his girlfriend how their cat is doing. He could have been a little more thoughtful and named it Semen or Spermatozoa or something.

Okay, that’s all. That yarn’s not getting crocheted by itself.

I’ve been trying to make a few changes in my life lately. I’ve found myself very dissatisfied with the way life has been drifting along aimlessly for the past several months.

I remember a time when I was full of dreams and plans for my future. Now I am living that future and I’ve taken stock of where I am. A part of my life is good, other parts — not so much.

If you are one of my real-life friends, or one of my facebook friends, you already know that I am no longer working at my job with the newspaper. And the sad thing is, I wasn’t laid off, nor was I fired. I made the decision to resign.

I didn’t want to quit. I loved the job and I loved all the people I worked with and at the risk of sounding immodest, they all loved me as well. And I was told often that my work was excellent. I resigned because my health would no longer allow me to meet the strenuous schedules of following up on leads and chasing down a story, doing interviews, covering local government meetings (which would often run late, forcing the reporters to rush back to the office and write the story with only a few minutes to spare before the paper went to print.) and also keep writing my regular humor column.

In my heart and in my mind I loved all this hectic scheduling and the short deadlines. In fact, I mentally thrived on the stress. However my body didn’t. It began to betray me and I found myself having to miss meetings and have coworkers fill in for me and this simply wasn’t fair to them or the editors. Ours is a small local paper and everyone must do their share of the work and pull together as a team in order to keep the publication afloat.

After a few trips to the emergency room, the doctor finally diagnosed the episodes as “silent migraines,” which if you read the post from March 2009 I told you that my doctor had explained it as a migraine without the headache, but you still have all the other symptoms — the weakness, the nausea, the overall feeling that you are going to die, faint, throw up, collapse, or something, you just don’t know what — and the only thing you can do is go lie down in a darkened room with a cool washcloth on your forehead until you feel better. It’s literally impossible to drive yourself to a meeting or an interview or cover a breaking news story when you can’t sit up.

I have still had a few of these episodes since I quit work, but they are less frequent. Apparently, stress plays a major role in the condition and the frequency and intensity of the episodes.

The bad thing about all this is that being a journalist was always my dream for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I imagined traveling the world, covering everything from wars to natural disasters, getting that one fantastic breaking story that would win a Pulitzer. (I remember longing to be in the middle of the bombing during Operation Desert Storm and being allowed to report the stories firsthand, to feel, see, smell and hear what it was like there, and to report on it from a personal perspective.)

However, because of several poor decisions during my youth, and because I allowed love and other things to cloud my vision of the future, and basically because I gave up on my dream, I took an entirely different path. A path that would eventually return to overlap with those original dreams.

But only after I was too old to make it work.

This is what a silent migraine and being too old looks like...sort of.

I don’t know which is worse: the ignorance of youth or the weakness of aging.

I’ve been abducted by aliens.

I have been held captive since January and made to visit all manner of public places, all the while being forced to endure the sounds of voices assaulting my ears. I’ve even been compelled at times to make words come forth from my own mouth in response. These aliens refer to themselves as Real Life People (RLPs) and the thing they do with words is called “Conversation”.

It has been a harrowing month for me.

Oh, how I have longed to be back here in cyberspace, safe in my virtual world where I’m not forced to get dressed, comb my hair or wear jewelry.

Lucky for me, as I was being dragged away from my desk by these RLPs I was able to grab the escape key from my computer’s keyboard and I have been using it to dig a tunnel and free myself. The going is slow and it may take a while. I can only dig at night while the aliens are sleeping.

I have to go now. I hear them outside my cell and they are doing that thing with their voice. I think I heard the words shopping mall, dinner, and movie. That means I’ll have to shower and get dressed. Again!

I’ll be back. There may or may not be pictures.

Good Morning . This is your Raving Reporter coming to you live from somewhere in the middle of  Weirdville.

We kick off today’s segment of  The Raving Reporter with a story from Miami, Florida, concerning a group of teenagers, a couple of dead dogs, a dead senior citizen and a bad trip.

According to the reports, five teenagers in Marion County broke into a woman’s home and stole jewelry, electronic equipment and two urns which contained the ashes of the woman’s cremated father and her two Great Danes.

The teens then snorted some of the ashes, believing it was either cocaine or heroine. Once they realized they were sniffing human and canine remains, they threw the urns in the lake.

The report didn’t reveal exactly how the teens came to realize that they had snorted old man and dog ashes instead of drugs, but I’m guessing that when they failed to get a buzz — and instead felt the urge to bark at the neighbor’s cat and wear black socks with bermuda shorts — that is what tipped them off.

The urns were later recovered from the lake, but the teens’ street cred may never be recovered.

In other news of “candy for the nose” today, the latest trend in recreational snorting would appear to be Bath Salts.

According to reports, addicts are sniffing, smoking and even shooting up bath salts. The bath salts contain complex chemicals mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV. According to authorities, the chemicals can cause hallucinations, paranoia, rapid heart rates and suicidal thoughts. Several deaths have been linked to the abuse of the bath salts.

As stated in a most recent report:

“Authorities are investigating whether a man charged with capital murder in the December death of a Tippah County, Miss., sheriff’s deputy was under the influence of the bath salts.”

Lawmakers in several states have begun considering a proposal that will ban the sale of the product.

I guess we should just stop using bath salts. Soaking in them doesn’t seem so appealing or relaxing now after this information. This kind of brings a whole new meaning to the advertising slogan, “Calgon Take Me Away.”

Dear World,

Please stop the hand basket and let me off. I know where you’re headed and I don’t want to go.

Do any of you ever get (spam) comments on your blogs that are irrelevant to the post and are some of them often posed as questions? I get these a lot.

Also if it is in the form of a question is it still considered a comment. Or is it a quemment or maybe a commestion?

In the interest of good blog etiquette I thought I should address a few of my latest commestions and provide them with answers.

1. How tall is tyron leitso?

He’s about yea high. In heels.

2. What makes people be so rude? I made a simple comment and Jimmy88 takes my head off? Wowsers…

It’s probably your fault. Maye your comment had nothing to do with the discussion taking place. Maybe it was so out of context it made no sense…kind of like this question you just asked. Maybe you should just SHUTUP ALREADY!

3. Good article and right to the point. I am not sure if this is truly the best place to ask but do you guys have any thoughts on where to employ some professional writers? Thank you.

No. Since I’m only a journalist and author of two books, I have no idea where you could find a “professional writer.” (Air quotes).

4. Does anybody here at leeunafoster.com have a mirror or another source?

Why? Do I have lipstick on my teeth? Is my hair sticking up on top? pffft! (I know you meant a mirror site. Calm down. And no we don’t).

5. For some reason I didn’t get the point of the post.

For some reason I didn’t get the point of your comment. So that makes us twins, I suppose.

6. How much money would I need to save for a holiday in the Caribbean?

I’d say, roughly, a lot more than you plan to spend on a holiday in the Caribbean.

7. I have a Yeast Infection and I am looking at these sites to appreciate if I can cope help. Is there in unison that you power be acquainted with that can cure me?

I think it’s too late for that. Apparently, the infection had spread to your brain. Or did I just have a stroke?

8. What is the purpose of this post if you don’t mind me asking?

I don’t mind you asking. What is the purpose of your question?

9. Well, this should be printed and thrown from airplanes over major cities.

I’ll get right on it as soon as I finish this post.

10. What a waste of time. You’re poor english made this article hard to read. Learn to write.

I’ll get right on it as soon as I finish this post.

Seriously, spammers, do I look like a search engine to you?