Muses from the Manlove-Armstrong Clan

Funnies between us often amuse the hell out of us but there is no one else to hear it but the dog.

So Crash composed what he thought was the 5 best anecdotes of the year:

1. Me: "You had me wrap my own present, and your present didn't come here on time, and we have to go eat terrible food at a house with your father's in laws who are horrible people, christmas sucks."
Chris to the dog: "Don't listen to mommy, she also killed santa and ate the easter bunny."

2. Chris: "What time did you set Hello Kitty for?"

Me: "I set it for, time for Chris to get a pair of glasses, and go to bed earlier so he didn't need two alarm clocks."

Chris: "Is that around 6:15?"

3. 3AM I am awake and saying "Fear is the mind killer, fear is the little death, I will not fear."

Chris: "Fear is waking up at 3AM to your fiance talking to herself...go to sleep!"

4. Chris from the bathroom. "Hunny?!"

Me: "Yes?"

Chris: "Um, Can you come in here and get Billy? I need some privacy."

Me, walking into the bathroom. "Sure, why?"

I walk in and see Billy standing on the sink staring eye to eye with Chris seated on the bathtub.

Chris: "I think h wants to intimidate me and I need to, um, take care of some things and I don't think I can do it while he stares at me."

Me: "Why? We look at them when they go?"

Chris looks shocked: "I would never watch them go potty, that is private you are depraved.

Both men look at me blinking and staring. I roll my eyes and leave picking up Billy.

5. While shoveling outside Chris had me bring the dog out. It was 4AM when we had to go outside and clear snow off, and shovel out the drive. After clearing the snow and drive and sidewalk and came back inside and crawled back into bed where I cuddled up to my large black cat and told him "Billy you are lucky you are a kitty, you didn't have to be Cold, and outside helping Daddy shovel snow." Chris heard me mutter this before I passed out to sleep and laughed about it all week.

Now he teases me each morning that its time for Kane and I to get up and go outside to be "cold and outside helping"

We are not amused.

Happy Holidaze from the Manlove Armstrong Krew

KJ, Crash, Kane, Billy, Ani, and Jayne

In fondest memory Of Samsara Rose 2005-2009

Million dollar ideas...

In times of great stress we seem to find out thing about ourselves and others.

Things we didn't want to know.

In great sickness we find out who are friends are. here are friends who send e-mails. Then there are friends who follow around with a shop-vac.

In our worst hours there are friends who hold a mirror up to us and make us see our deep dark truth. In we either repay that kindness by facing that darkness and wrangling that dark passenger. Or we smash that mirror and turn our back on the friend who had the courage to call us on our bullshit.

In great sadness we find the person who knows that place you go to hide when you say you want to be alone, but you really shouldn't.

And again you will find the person you call with trembling hands, and weakest resolve who tells you quite honestly they just don't have the time for you right now.

It is both eye opening and heart wrenching the things that we find out when life decides to make things interesting for us.

There must be millions of dollars of research and man hours spent trying to find that one curative fix that would replace the healing effect of simple human kindness.

Thinking about the worst times in life, heart wrenched, broken, mind numb, body aching, mind all jumbled yet unable to focus on anything.

The urgency to be alone, yet the craving to be consoled.

The need to have someone say something to make everything make sense, and the wish that everyone would just stop talking.

Imagine if there was a pill, or a drink, or a patch. In your worst moment you pop it, slap it on, drop it under your tongue and suddenly your entire being is filled with the sense that everything really does happen for a reason and things really will work out and you are ok, and everything will be ok.

Suddenly you are calm, you can handle everything and you feel comforted and safe and assured that everything will be taken care of.

Someone would be a millionaire.

Part of me wonders if that is what alcoholics and drug addicts are seeking. However after questioning them as to how they feel when they do drugs they say it just makes them forget about how hard life is for a while.

But thats just it, what a poor drug or alcoholic I would be. I want something more. I already have a hard time remembering things and I need to remember things so that I know if they are working out.

I've tried a lot of things to reach this state of calm. Hypnotism,Meditation, Yoga, running, Martial Arts, Tai Chi, Fasting, even a sweat lodge ceremony.

Several times I have seen things I cannot explain. Several times I have felt closer to the earth and nature and closer in tune with my body.

Never have I felt that calm assurance that everything was going to be OK.

The reason I seek it out so diligently is that I am told that I appear to have it.

I am not a stranger to death. I saw my first animal corpse while hiking through the woods near my house. We came into a clearing and found a cat that had been nailed to a stump and gutted.

I had enough sense not to touch anything sent my friend back to call the police and stayed put.

I was the one who listened as the officers asked if anyone recognized the cat, saw any collars, or knew of anyone who hung out here a lot. I calmly told them about the neighbor who had three cats whose yard was adjacent, the kids who came down here to smoke who I'd seen the other night hanging out in the cemetery, and retraced our steps and showed them cigarette butts and shoe treads.

I felt angry about the cat because it was innocent. My friend threw up in the bushes and never spoke to me much after that.

A few years later my brother killed himself in our basement and I was the one who found him. I was 14. I remember waking up to my grandmother yelling hysterically.

I was screaming for 10 seconds. Then Nana slapped me and told me she needed me to be strong because she couldn't go into his room again. Something slid into place and I just handled it. I called 911,checked his pulse. I took the shotgun out of his dead hands, I unloaded it, I put on the safety and put it on the floor. I led the police down the stairs and showed them the body. I remember feeling calm. Like everything was OK. Like he was there behind me walking me through each step.

I remember washing linens for the company and making sure we had pillows. I remember my Nana telling me thank you because she just couldn't have gone into that room again.

We never talked about it after that.

I have seen hundreds of dead bodies and seen thousands of medical emergencies and life threatening situations and I still snap into that calm. I just do what needs to be done.

Its the afterwards part that is becoming a problem and I wonder if it is something that more people suffer from than just myself.

We learn to self soothe from example. In times of great trauma in my family they threw their hands up in the air and argued until I handled the situation. As early as 9 years old I was soothing over arguments, helping a drunk mother drive a car, and calling the police on a fight between my brother and my drunken parent. While consoling my bereft grandmother.

I don't remember what happened after I fixed things. I just remember that after things got out of hand, I would fix things even in college if my Nana and my mother were fighting I would come home and soothe things over. Because I could remain calm and not rise to anyones bait.

Even now people throw tantrums and things get insane and people get hurt and I am detached and making a list of how to best smooth things over.

But after its over and everyone else feels better. I don't know what to do.

How does one self soothe if they were never taught how? How do you learn to let yourself when everyone around you is telling you to take care of them?

The immediately pragmatic list making, name taking and sensible side says get over it. You may never learn to self soothe, you may forever bite your nails, have ulcers, and insomnia but you will always be calm under pressure. Count your blessings.

Yet the other side of me thinks after a half life of taking care of everyone else, I can still learn new tricks. Yes, I can be absolutely rock solid and calm under pressure. Learning to self soothe doesn't mean I am going to weep if someone has a heart attack in front of me instead of starting CPR. It may just mean that later I may give myself permission to be a little shaken up. To need extra hugs from my fiance, or a call from a friend.

Perhaps I will never invent the magic pill, and I won't learn to "get over" the strong after currents that come with emotions. But maybe by taking some time to learn some positive self soothing I can be even better without one.

Yet we still try to work against the whales

http://www2.wdcs.org/blog/index.php?/archives/258-Orcas-and-fishermen-working-together.html

Tietze's syndrome

Finally an answer as to why I keep getting chronic chest pain. My doctor says it is also called Costocondritis and with patients like me who have Fibromyalgia and Syringomyelia it can occur for any reason.

He thinks mine was brought on because of infections in my bladder and sinuses. (Coughing, sneezing, and peeing a lot I guess?!)

He said it can take between a week to 6 months for it to go away.

I am back on prednisone and antibiotics and on a schedule of pain medication. I was able to sleep for a while last night in bed and today upright in my chair with a down comforter wrapped around my ribs.

I only woke when the dog nosed me in the gut to go outside.

Crash (fiance) wants to tape pillows around my ribs so he doesn't hit me in the ribs by accident again and make me wake up in tears!

He also got me a new buckwheat pillow for my neck it smells like lavender and works great on my neck.

KJ

The only way I will watch Single Lady's by Beyonce

http://music.todaysbigthing.com/2009/08/24

Mother Amy

OK. So after Amy Winehouse's complete debauchery and addiction some moron said "I know! I am going to have her be my child's Godparent and let her sign then to her label and mentor her!"

YES! Because what a roll model for a easily influenced 13 year old girl!

F.F.S.

KJ

Man Screw Cancer

My dad has Stage Two Lung Cancer

His Oncologist says he has about 98% chance of success in radiation successfully getting most of if all of the cancer but because it went undetected and spread to his brain he had a high chance of relapse.

His stats are:
3 and 5 year life expectancy if they can't remove all the cancer from his lungs or it metastasizes to his lymph nodes.


Distant metastasizes as first failure were noted in 38 patients (39%) with brain metastasizes....
This is important because my dad had a brain tumor removed.

If he relapses there is a 45.2 and 37.3% chance they can eradicate the cancer again. This time with only a fifteen (15.3%) percent success rate.


In laymen;s terms this means They can't operate so they have been radiating him. If radiation doesn't work, he has between 6 months to a year dependent on how long he can stand radiation and chemotherapy. Because his original tumor was found in his brain there is a higher chance that despite taking out the brain tumors and using radiation therapy on his lungs, that he will relapse.

If he relapses and the cancer comes back, his prognosis is even shorter.

Seriously, Fu*k cancer.

KJ

Associated content

New Article coming up soon

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/499923/kj_callaway.html

OK maybe there is hope for the human race

See we really can all join in harmony

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

P.S. I got to meet Bobby McFerrin The guy is just hella cool.

KJ

awesome spoken word on love

Kane Micheal, wounded baby

Kane was attacked by a third pit bill.

This one was ALSO off its leash.

This ones owner was also useless in helping separating the dogs.

He stood there watching us trying to separate the dogs waving his hands and calling for his dog over and over instead of just going and getting his dog like Crash and I were trying to do.

Kane had a muzzled leader on and in the fight somehow put his canine tooth through his front lip.

I got him upstairs, got the tooth out, stopped the bleeding and then closed the wound with vetbond after cleaning it with surgical scrub and hydrogen peroxide.

Kane was a trooper and only snapped in the air when I pulled his lip off his tooth and not at anyone just in the air because it hurt.

But since it was 9 PM on a sunday no vets were open and we had no where to take him.

I gave him 30 MG of Tramadol suspension I had left over from when I was in the hospital and His first dose of Cephalaxin.

I've been cleaning his mouth wound, giving him clean water and having him eat fish and eggs to make it easier to eat and to speed healing.

His wounds are pretty much closed up this morning. He came away pretty much unscathed except for the tooth.

The other dog had a snapped harness and not a scratch.

It was off its leash in a SCHOOL PARK wit a 5 foot by 3 foot hole in the fence.

This is the third time a pit bull off its leash has attacked Kane. Where as Kane who has been deemed an "aggresive dog" has never attacked another dog.

Look: here was my sweet boy just hours before his walk:




Then this morning when I had to clean his wound, bundled up in bed with mama after pain meds:




Here is an up close view of his mouth:



Poor guy, I hate jerks who don't keep their aggressive dogs on leashes! Mine wears a muzzle and NEVER goes off leash and has never GONE AFTER another dog. He is RE-ACTIVE not proactive. He doesn't go looking for fights like these dogs did.

KJ

When the spring goes stagnant

Now that I am writing articles that are possibly going to be read by people whose opinions I am concerned about, suddenly things such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling become extremely important. More important that those is having a topic that people want to read about.

I can talk about my dog, my cats, my collection of Simpsons and Vintage my little ponies. But unless you are a American Bulldog lover or a 5 year old I have already lost your attention.

SO what brings the reader in? What draws us to the perfect article?

The fact is we all want to hear something that makes us feel better. Either about the world or about ourselves. Whether it is about the three legged dog that can detect cancer, or the hooker who now managed a hospice for people with AIDS. Sad stories with tough but happy endings are usually goldmines.

I have some of those. Actually I have quite a spring of those. In my life it seems friends have gathered themselves to me who have come from the same stock as myself and we have come together and cobbled ourselves into a semblance of toughness.

The rpough point being, while we have tough stories of obstacles overcome and hardships averted to sell, we're not selling even if they're buying.

So our pool runs stagnant at times for fodder for the mill.

A fellow author and co-patriot of this "Land of misfit kids" from whence I sprang and I discussed our lack of selling our stories despite the public seeming to devour the personal story of trauma overcome.

We tried to rationalize it to one and other. Just to see if we could, to practice in a way in case the question ever came up from an editor. Oddly enough it never has. We have been good enough at finding stories however obscure as to not dig up our personal dirt and lay it out for the public to feast on.

Neither of us could rationalize why we couldn't or wouldn't do it. We just knew that it was never going to happen. It wasn't shame, or fear, or protection. If I ever did s memoir or a bibliography it would be a comic and it would be free with a donation to Hoenwald elephant sanctuary.

I would tell my story to a friend over beers in a bar or during a camp out. I have and probably would again.

But I would not feel comfortable knowing somewhere soccer mom's were having an Oprah's book club about my childhood and how it related to their upper middle class existence.

It would not be OK with me, even if it paid my rent.

My friend laughed at me and said. "That is all you would have to say."

More stories up on Associated Content soon, Keep checking please.

KJ

The agony of da feet- confessions of a shoe nut

Persons with neurological disorders such as syringomyelia and neuropathic pain will tell you that there is nothing worse than aching hot feet.

So when a person with serious neuropathy and foot pain goes out to find shoes it is not a quick trip to payless BOGO or a cute little boutique window that hd the most darling little sling backs.

Oh no dear reader. When we go shoe shopping, you should bring a book.

First off there will be our regular haunts. The AJ Wrights, Marhsalls, TJ Maxx's, and DSW' shoe stores where we will first scope out and handle every single possibility in footwear before even trying anything on. The first day is rarely successful.

It usually ends with lunch in a food court where the we the shoe nut will bring up gladiolas or turtle food. Leaving you the victim to stare dazed and confused as visions of shoelaces dance in your head.

That night will find the shoe nut online and on the phone talking to customer service agents and shoe specialists (yes there are shoe specialists!) asking them what new things have been brought to the forefront for persons with foot pain.

Comparing with the notes the shoe nut has already compiled (Yes she has notes!) She will look for the brand names of these specific shoes and see if she can talk to consultants from those companies or go to stores that feature that brand.

After all this work she will narrow it down to the top three shoe styles under 100.00
Because having done the research she know that she wears her shoes out in an average of 6-10 months and refuses to spend more than 100.00 on a pair of shoes that she very well may have to replace again before the year is over.

Now she goes and tried on the three pairs of shoes. She jumps, walks, squats, she repeats with each shoe.

Then she goes home and sleeps on it.

Finally she decides which shoe she is going to buy, buys it, takes it home, carefully seals and waterproofs it, puts in her orthotics, and begins to break them in around the house.

Another pair is born. Until its time to retire them to the Rescue mission or the garden working pile.

KJ

Some indoor fun on rainy days

So its dark and gloomy and my after school kids are going insane because we haven't gotten them outside.

So today on a whim I downloaded some templates for some paper planes.

You remember those don't you? The ones you did in class that were perpetually confiscated and put into the teachers drawer next to whoopie cushions and MAD magazine Never to be seen again?

Well for all of you who still are kids like me, or who have kids ( like me) here is a little fun for those days you just can't go outside to romp in the sun.

http://www.funpaperairplanes.com/index.html

KJ

For fellow freebie lovers and bookworms

I just found this from a fellow Bibliophile and went SQWUEEEE! and vowed to print out one in every color on cardstock for my personal use and my nephew!

These are so damn cute!

(http://jinjerup.blogspot.com/2009/04/freebies-chick-chic-bookmark.html)

I never heard of this lady before but when accidentally stumbling upon her post via reading a friends bibliophile post I went over board cooing over her chick bookmarks when I noticed she had made them!

So get your spring craft on and share and share a like! Make one fore your fellow Bibliophile and Also she recommends laminating with contact paper which is a pretty good idea. But you could also just slap a coat of Mod podge on.

KJ

4/20/2009- Family Guy Bag Of Weed Song

Family Guy: Bag of Weed song

This song had me laughing so hard I nearly had to change my pants. Happy 4/20 everyone who knows what that means. Not that I partake but I still find it hilarious.

And D Minor makes Three?

So recently Crash and I gained a minor.

Our godson/nephew moved in with us.

So far its been the honey moon stage, eating together, playing games, getting ready for school. But the thing is, we have all been living together and he has been staying here or sleeping over for almost an entire year anyway, now his crap is here.

In short, the only thing that changed is his mom has to call and ask me to speak to him or come up and knock if she wants to talk to him.

I got phone lists, change of address forms, additional guardian forms, and sworn lawyer statements with legal agreements stating I am a legal guardian and he is my minor. I am now even able to claim him as a minor and able to make doctor's appointments! Which let me tell you is BIZARRE!

This came about because my sister said that she couldn't handle having two children and neither custodial parent wanted to take him. They were planning to send him to an unfit situation in Las Vegas with a family member and when I found out Crash and I put our foot down.

Changes were made immediately.

So now, despite all my efforts. I am a parent of a 10 year old.

Summer is coming up and I apparently don't have work and Crash got a job that is stellar. "D minor's" other guardians want him to visit family in Nevada, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Canada. The D has a younger brother who can't fly alone because of emotional issues and medication needs so they asked me if I would fly out with the boys, stay for a week in a hotel, and then fly back.

I have family in Nevada and Minnesota but Hawaii?! ALOHA!? I also want to take D' minor camping because he has never been. I don't want the entire summer spent inside playing computer, reading, and playing video games. Granted we will be traveling a LOT but still.

This weekend was spend with D'minor and his smaller emotionally disturbed brother whom I had to physically restrain numerous times this weekend. I am so mentally and physically exhausted from this boy I can't even go into detail the amount of time, energy and patience he sucked out of D'minor, Crash and myself.

By the time we got home and saw his mother was there we piled out of the car, clomped upstairs made tea and sat on the front porch in silence just being quiet.

Then D' minor said "Next weekend, we run away where they can't find us and stay until monday!"

I luaghed so hard my sides hurt!

Its still the honeymoon phase, maybe more likely we are the odd couple and were meant to be together all along.

KJ

Fancy Cheese Man and Cougars

OK, so this story had me laughing so hard I almost had the wee's.

http://open.salon.com/blog/tequilaanddonuts/2008/11/24/mom_goes_to_wholefoods

IRS: time to cause my brain to implode

SO I gathered my shoebox full of random slips of paper. Gathered my calculator and went on Tax cut to fill in my 2008 taxes.

Thinking this would take at leas an hour if not longer I was set with snacks, a cat, blanket, music, even a slinky.

20 minutes and 1,000 bucks later I was not only done but transferring my 401K over to a new 401K that would allow me to actually keep adding money to it!

It saved my copy of this year and last years Taxes, I immediately burned them to a disc and stuffed them into my shoebox.

I then rewarded myself with 2 episodes of "Private Practice" the crappiest show on ever and I love it.

KJ

New Bough on the Money tree

SO I did my taxes. I should get about 800 bucks back.

I have a loan I am going to pay off.

With whats left over I am going to put some in savings, get one pair of jeans, two pairs of plugs (wood) a kilo of henna (from Henna Sooq to last the year and its 60% cheaper than buying small quantities every month when I get paid)

I am also getting my scootie puff junior back on the road so I can take it to work, the library, the store, and around the neighborhood.

I need to renew my motorcycle insurance (50 bucks) and get my license (75 bucks)

Also my Scootie puff might need some work done later, but I am going to have my friend Adam take a look at it down the street.

Viva Spring!

KJ