Woman in the Middle

I mentioned before that a friend and I am starting a new writing adventure. We will now be writing a local history column for our daily paper the Press-Enterprise. A couple of weeks ago we had to get our photo taken for the paper and I went all out, getting my hair done and getting a make over at the local Clinique counter. Well, the Press-Enterprise put a good-sized ad in the paper today announcing the new column which starts this Sunday. I am SO SO SO GLAD I went to the hair and make up trouble! I can not put enough SOs in front of GLAD to express how happy I am that I had enough female self preservation sense to fix myself up for that photo. Yes, in an ideal world I would have liked to lose 50 pounds before that photo was taken as well, but that wasn’t going to happen in a week, so hair and make up was the best I was going to do.  The picture looked pretty good. They put a sepia tone on it which hid the extra chin nicely (I am going to remember that) and I smiled and looked friendly. I don’t know if I looked like I knew a dang thing about history, but that is for others to decide! Almost makes me want to go put on make up right now. Almost, but not quite. I don’t think I need to look too glamorous to take the bottles and cans to be recycled!

I crawled out of bed this morning, had my breakfast, and then headed over to the computer to check my email. When I pulled up AOL they had a photo of a pensive President Obama and a headline announcing the Supreme Court had come out with their ruling on the Obama healthcare initiative. I decided to read what happened and as I was reading I came across the following sentence:

 The court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined Roberts in the outcome.

I had to do a second take…did I just read three women’s names???? I did just read three women’s names! Really, I don’t live in a cave somewhere. Of course I was aware in some vague sence that a Sonia and an Elena had joined Ruth and the guys on the Supreme Court. But to see that in print that way…Wow! Blew my mind at 8:56 a.m.!

You see, and I may have mentioned this before, when I was in college I was still being asked if I was pursuing my MRS degree.  So, the change that has occurred  blows me away.

However, my Youngest Daughter just witnessed the graduation of the mechanical engineers at her school. Out of 150-200 graduates, only four were girls. Hum…so almost as many women are on the Supreme Court as graduated with mechanical engineering degrees from Cal Poly Pomona this year. To young women out there, if you are so inclined, please consider a mechanical engineering degree. As those four young woman graduates prove, you can do it!

I want to say “thank you” to the four of you who followed me at my other site and have moved on over to my new site. I have to say it is very scary to move the site, to have to change things around, and hope your followers will follow you! So thank you, all four of you! I know many of my other followers will move on over and just haven’t had a chance to do it yet. But I apriciate you proactive types.

By the way, I haven’t gotten to go see the rock yet. I didn’t feel well on Sunday so now the family is planning on going either on Friday or Sunday. I want to take advantage of the free admission at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this week. However, it has been all over the news both print and television so if you just can’t wait and you NEED to see it now, I am sure you can find it in many places, including the LACMA website.

I love books and I love to read. My idea of heaven is every book I could ever want to read and reading until my eyeballs pop our of my head! But it was brought home to me again yesterday how wonderful books are when you are trying to take your mind off of something unpleasant. I am warning you right now that the following may be a bit “TMI.” Sorry about that. I can’t help that it isn’t my arm or my foot that is bothering me….

I woke up yesterday feeling fine. But by 10 am I realized I wasn’t so fine. By 11:20 I was headed off to Urgent Care. That is how fast a bladder infection hit! Fun times! I dragged a nice thick book with me, thinking that it would see me through. Ha! I was in urgent care three hours before I saw a doctor and, as my bladder reacted more and more violently towards the infection that was taking over, I became less and less enamored with my book selection.  As a distraction a book about the Bush family dynasty, even a gossipy one by Kitty Kelly, just didn’t cut it!

Fast forward and I finally got home at about 3 pm. I was happy as can be to be back to my own house, my own bed, and my own bathroom. I started taking the various drugs that Hubby rushed out to get me from the pharmacy but I still needed a distraction while I waited for them to work their magic. That was when my eyes fell on a book that Youngest Daughter gave me for Mother’s Day. It was called “True Mom Confessions” and it was just the kind of light, humorous, and easy to read book I needed at that moment.  I read the whole thing yesterday afternoon and about the time I got done the medicine kicked in and I felt….better. Not fantastic, but better.

I will be keeping that book around for a while, if for no other reason than out of grateful appreciation for its help yesterday afternoon. Thank you, “True Mom Confessions.”

The infamous rock from my fair city is in place in its new act display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and will officially be revealed this Sunday June 24th!!! To celebrate the museum is giving the residents of all the cities the rock passed through , including mine, free entrance into the museum for a week starting Sunday. I plan on taking advantage of the opportunity to see the rock and I will take photos, of course! Let me know if you hear about the Rock(someplace other than here). I think the amount of publicity this boulder has gotten is hysterical!

I have a new addiction, to a television program that is. It is a nice change of pace from the crime shows (or blood, guts, and gore) that we usually watch. Many of you will be surprised that we hadn’t found it yet. I am happily settling in to watch Big Bang Theory every night this summer. It makes me laugh. While we are not theoretical physicists as are some of the characters, their nerdiness does hit a bit close to home and probably makes it that much funnier to us.

By the way, I doubt I will be watching it every night. I do have to share the TV with the rest of the family and they probably will want to watch something else occasionally. Sigh. On the Big Bang Theory website they have lists and lits of quotes from the show. I picked out a few that made me laugh and posted them below. Happy Thursday!

Sheldon: Ah, gravity – thou art a heartless bitch.

Sheldon: Why do you have the Chinese character for ‘soup’ tattooed on your right buttock? Penny: It’s not ‘soup’; it’s ‘courage’. Sheldon: No it isn’t. But I suppose it does take courage to demonstrate that kind of commitment to soup.

(The guys are playing Dungeons & Dragons, with Sheldon as Dungeon Master.) Sheldon: The entrance to the dungeon is a moss-covered door. You manage to open it only to find yourself face-to-face with a hideous, foul-smelling, moss-covered ogre. What do you do? Howard: I say, “Hey Ma, what’s for dinner?”

Sheldon: I think that you [Leonard] have as much of a chance of having a sexual relationship with Penny as the Hubble telescope does of discovering at the center of every black hole is a little man with a flashlight searching for a circuit breaker.

We just spent the weekend in Las Vegas. Hubby and I were just there last November but the girls hadn’t been in a while so we had a little family get away. Las Vegas is an interesting place. On this trip the “interesting” started on the way there! Here are some highlights/comments on our Vegas get away.

1. Four young men in a car heading to Vegas. In one of the side windows a handwritten sign read “Show us your boobs.” Dream on boys! Since I had two young ladies in my car (the age group the sign was directed at) I gave them a dirty look as we drove by for good measure!

2. Once we got to Vegas on Saturday Youngest Daughter went to meet up with some friends who also happened to be in town. One of the girls saw her sun glasses and asked, “Are your sunglasses Fendi?” ”No,” my Youngest replied, “I got them at the 99 cent store. But they were originally $15!” I am still laughing about that one!

3. We stayed at the Monte Carlo. It is in a good location on the strip, isn’t too expensive, and we have had pretty good luck there. We ate at the buffet Saturday night. It was yummy! In the past it was just called the “Monte Carlo Buffet.” They have changed the name, I kid you not, to the “Big Belly Buffet.” It was there in huge letters along with a cartoon drawing of a cook with a HUGE belly. Seriously? Who thought that up? Who wants to eat at a buffet with a name that reminds you that eating there will just make you fat?

4. The Time: Midnight. The Place: A crowded and hot elevator in the Monte Carlo Hotel.  The Incident: An Asian gentleman whips out his cell phone and starts talking on the elevator in his native tongue and in a loud voice. I refrained from yanking the phone from his hand and screaming “Oh no you don’t!” But only just.

5. Speaking of elevators, they were always hot, even the ones inside the buildings. Why oh why?

6. We went to the Penn and Teller show at the Rio. I highly recommend it. The whole family enjoyed it!

7. The best part was getting to spend time together as a family. I have a very funny family and we had some good laughs along the way.

I was born in 1961 and I had a very traditional dad. He did the yard work while my Mom did the inside housework. The only time (or at least almost the only time) he cooked was over a grill. He took care of the cars. He paid the mortgage. My mom bought the groceries…anyway, you see how it was. But the one way he wasn’t traditional was in his plans and expectations for me. He expected me to go to college and told me I could be any thing I wanted to be. He did not put any restrictions on my future because I was a woman. I am very grateful for that. Because of that I have a bachelors and a masters. I have worked in fields where I was often only women in the room. They say that girls need a dad in so many ways. In my experience I can see why.

My girls are very lucky that they have a dad who also encourages them to do what they want, regardless of their gender. That is why one plans to be a high school English teacher and the other plans on being a mechanical engineer.  Obviously, in our house we like to cover the gambit of possible careers!

A belated Happy Father’s Day to all of the wonderful dads out there, including the ones in my life!

A few updates on some of the things that have been going on lately:

1. I survived my picture-taking today. The photographer insisted on taking some with me smiling with my lips together. While not as bad a making me put my chin down (thus creating even more chins)  I still don’t think that is one of my best looks. Hope they choose one where my teeth are showing!

2. We have survived six days with the repaired window and thus far no golf balls have come near it. Oh boy! The weekend is coming!

3. I was back in my local 99 cent store a couple of days ago and I am happy to report that no one showed me their bra or other undergarments. As a matter of fact all the other shoppers ignored me. I liked it that way!

4. That blog post I started, the one I titled “That’s Creepy” but I couldn’t remember what I meant? I still don’t remember. Oh well. I am sure there are lots of other things I don’t remember, but I don’t remember that I don’t remember them….do you think I can get one more “remember” in this sentence? What was I supposed to remember?   I think I just like typing remember….

The good news: I have gotten a freelance position with the local paper to do a twice monthly column on local history. It starts in July.

The bad news: They will be taking my photo which will run with my column. This photo will show up in the paper at least TWICE a month.

Oh lordy! When I look in the mirror I keep expecting to see my 30-year-old self at least 50 lbs ago.   But that is not what I see when I actually look in the mirror. Sigh.

I have put in a call to my hair dresser. When you have had the same hairdresser for 26 years you can count on her in emergency situations such as these.  I  made a visit yesterday to the Clinique counter in my local department store. There a kind woman named Eva made me over and I bought an obscene number of products designed to show me at my best, or at least what passes for best when you are 50.

I have my clothes picked out as well. Nothing new, just something from my closet. I have enough office type clothes around that coming up with an appropriate top and a pair of black pants was not a problem.

Now I am just praying I don’t get the news photographer that makes his/her subjects always tilt their chin down. I can always tell when someone in the paper had their photo taken by that photographer. When I tilt my chin down multiple chins appear so it might result in a show down if any chin tilting is requested.

Whew! I feel like I have been preparing for battle and now I just have to wait until dawn…Actually I have to wait until 10:30 a.m. on Friday. We shall see how it goes. I am comforted by the fact that the picture will be very small when it appears in the paper!