Bette Davis was right!!!

That Bette Davis, now she was a woman you didn't mess with! Talk about feisty and gutsy. I bet her middle name was Feisty. Bette Feiste Davis. That looks about right.

Anyhoo, so Bette Davis is famously quoted as saying "Getting old is not for the faint of heart, or wimps, or wussies, or something". It has become crystal clear to me what she meant by this. I turned the big 5 - 0 in December, so that makes me 50 years and 5 months give or take a day or two. And since that time menopause has kicked my memory's ass. Kicked it down the street, around the block, up in the air and slam-dunked it into the trash. That is how bad things are getting. If I was faint of heart, or a wimp, or a big fat wussie I might be considering getting in bed, pulling the covers up over my wimpy head and staying there.

You might be asking yourself, "Self, what the hell is Lisa Pie going on about". The answer to that is this: Wednesday I loaded all sorts of crap in my car to take to Goodwill. I got in the car and drove off realizing I had my cel phone in my pocket and reached in to put it in the cup holder that doubles as my cel phone holder. This is when I found NOT my cel phone, but my house phone! Which was by the by, searching desperately for the base. I did say to myself at that time, Lisa Pie you Gomer, what the hell are you doing? After successfully giving the items to the Goodwill guy and not giving him all the rest of the stuff in my car, I went around front of the store and thought I might just go in and see if they have anything that is on my "wish list". I reached for my purse and it dawned on me that I had grabbed the wrong purse. This purse was a cute, small purse that I had used on my last roadtrip but had nothing in it but some change. No license. No credit cards. No $$$$$. Nothing. Zip.

I was driving around without a license! I have not done that before. Ever. So I very, very carefully went back home to leave the house phone and pick up the right purse before I headed over to Super Target to do my regular shopping and not bothering with Goodwill Wish List shopping.

Yesterday, I kept running around like a hummingbird flitting from one thing to another, never staying on task or finishing a damn thing. At some point I got something on my pants and decided to just take them off and find a few like-colored things and wash them. So I dropped my pants and tossed them in the sink and then hit them with the Stain Stick and ran a load of light colors. Later on I was at the computer, like I am now while typing this, and looked down to my right where I always have my cel phone, house phone and a cup of tea and there was the tea and the house phone. No cel phone. Where the hell did I leave my cel phone? Immediately I remembered going to my closet to change and thought "Oh, I bet I left in the closet for the 1,423,456th time". It wasn't there! So I got the house phone and started calling it so I could hear it ring. Straight to voice mail, but the caller tune wasn't playing. That's very odd. Why would that not be working? Shit, on top of everything else I am going to have to call T-mobile and ask what is up with the damn caller tunes. Then a horrible thought occurred to me, and it wasn't a bolt of lightening thought, it was more like a slow oozing molasses in winter thought that washed down from the top recesses of my brain. Holy Moley, I bet the cel phone was in my pants pocket when I doused it in the sink and threw it in the washer!! O. M. G.

This was not a happy thought for me. This is something I would make fun of other (cough, Rachel Pie, cough) people for doing. I opened the washer and there it was on the bottom underneath all the damp clothes. Washed, rinsed and spun-dried. Can you believe that? I couldn't.

I do know that I have read that if your phone ever gets wet, damp, excess moisture you are supposed to take the back off, remove SIM card, battery and let everything dry out really well. So that is what I did. Except every hour or 2 I would put it all back together to check it and see if it was working. It wasn't. Are you surprised? I wasn't.

Today, I put it back together and guess what? It is working again! The screen is not as clear as it was, but if you didn't know this story and looked at it I am willing to wager you might not know the difference either. This phone is 4 years old and I have been thinking seriously about upgrading for a long time now. But now, I am not so sure. If a phone can go through what this one did, and still have the ummpphh to keep working, this might be a phone to stick with!

So, I am thinking I may have to go see some sort of doctor, accupuncturist, herbalist, something to help manage my hormones so I don't keep losing my marbles. Or purse. Or house phone. Or cel phone. Or whatever else I have misplaced and just can't remember yet!!

I think this is why older women act like they don't give a shit about what other people think. They have already got too much on their minds as it is without having to be concerned with whether their shoes match, or the young cute girls in the store think they are laughable, or whether they picked up the right purse.

Raise a glass and toast Bette Davis. Now, she is a woman worth emulating!

New t.v. shows, series, cancellations, etc.

Ok, what gives? Every time I turn around there are fabulous shows that are smart, witty, well-written and just plain good being cancelled and yet ANOTHER Real Housewives of (fill in the blank). Does anyone actually give a big hairy rat's ass about these clueless rich idiots? Why are they cancelling My Name is Earl? And Pushing Daisies? Is it not the most clever show that has ever been put on the air? It's a sad day in t.v. land that is for sure.

New stuff I have found and am making it a point to watch this summer:

Weeds - technically I have watched every episode, but it's the new season that just started up. I give this series **** (that's 4 stars)
Nurse Jackie - brand new series starring Carmela Soprano as an oxy-snorting nurse with questionable morals. Could be a good one, hard to tell just from one episode. ***
True Blood - I just started this one. I am late, I know. But I wasn't sure I wanted to see a vampire series. I have seen several episodes and I am still on the fence. Any thoughts?
In Treatment - ***** 5 stars right off the bat. How freaking awesome is this show? Someone needs to be commended for this.

Other summer stuff that has started back up again:

The Closer - I love this show. I love Kyra Sedgwick. I love Brenda Lee! I love all the characters, especially her parents. Now, those 2 are a hoot!
Raising the Bar - not sure I love this show, but I am watching it to give it a chance and see what happens. It's hard to watch Malcolm's mom being the bad ass judge and yelling at Zack from Saved by the Bell! :)

More summer stuff that hasn't started yet that I am looking forward to:

Saving Grace - this is some fine television. And who doesn't love some Holly Hunter? ****
BIG BROTHER - I haven't heard a word anywhere about when, who, new twists and turns, nothing. This is the grand daddy of all the summer trash shows and I stay glued to the prime time shows, the Showtime after dark shows and the online feeds. Big Brother is a time in my life when I get very little sleep. : )

I also have a guilty pleasure of watching the Real World and the Real World-Road Rules Challenge shows and Sex with Mom and Dad, Parental Control, True Life, some of those shows on MTV. Remember when MTV showed what they are named for, Music Videos? Kinda like when TLC was The Learning Channel, not the Let's Exploite Weird Families Channel.

You have to have a little mindless rubbish to mix in with all the good stuff, right? The problem is they keep cancelling all the good stuff and adding more rubbish to the mix. Any shows you love being cancelled? Any new stuff coming on that is worth the watch? Can you imagine how much stuff I would get done around my house if I didn't have cable?

Me, neither!

Rambling on the last week and such

I have *got* to get in the habit of carrying my camera around on my person so that I can post pictures here! I love blog photos, so what is wrong with me not doing it? If I had been photo journaling my tea stash each month end it would be a much better thing to follow. Plus anyone who looks at it will immediately notice what changes have been made from the previous photos. Yep, I need to be photographing what my posts are about. I am a HUGE visual learner anyway, it would probably make a bigger impact on my results if I had the photographic inducement (if that is even a word).

I do appreciate all the suggestions on how I could be handling this tea hoarding better. And I am almost thinking I should do Kristin's suggestion of donating tea and starting over fresh. But on the other hand it seems like I am learning something about myself by seeing the tea stash going down and even more, learning to resist the temptation of the Siren's Call of the Tea Aisle! And in case you are worried that I am drinking old, crappy tea that has lost it's flavor; fear not! I am still drinking tea that is in tins and not too old yet. The much newer tea is from a now-defunct teapot and tea store that is sealed in those heavy pouches like coffee beans come in. As soon as I get done with all the other tea I will open one pouch of this tea at a time and put it into the tins I am saving on the top shelf of my pantry. I think as long as those bags are still hermetically sealed that tea should last forever. The bags look like something that goes into the Space Station. I will do my best to get in there and photograph each shelf of the tea space in the pantry and I will also try to finish off one tin before moving on to the next rather than skipping around and never using the last bit of tea in any of them!

Last weekend Rachel Pie and I went on a retreat with lots of doulas and just spent the weekend either in swimsuits or in pajamas. It was so relaxing and exactly what I needed. Even if I couldn't get any of them to put their brains back in and play Mah Jongg with me! : ) Maybe another time . . . . . . Then we got back home and Rachel Pie started cleaning out her room and we have a huge donation stack for Goodwill. Two big thumbs up for that! Tuesday she left me and went back to school for a job interview. Summer jobs trump staying at home with Mom and playing cards all night for some reason. Sad, sad, sad has been my mood. Even if the small Rachel Pie girl wasn't my own daughter, my very own flesh and blood I would still want to know her and hang out with her all the time. She is just flat out one of the most awesome people on the planet. Yea Rachel!!! I say Hooray for Rachel Pie all the time and I have all her life. She really is the best.

Then I went to see my sister to help her prepare for her daughter (my niece Katie Pie) to graduate high school and all the festivities with family. The weather was beautiful, the company was the best, and the food turned out really good. I see great things ahead in little Katie Pie's future. She has a great head on her perfect shoulders! My sister has done an awesome job raising her kids.

And as much fun as it has been making all these little jaunts around the state to see people graduate and celebrate them and their accomplishments, it is so nice to come home and get back to a routine. Plus when I am gone I don't get to sleep with 15 cats and one fat dog! Don't get me wrong, I missed Mr. Big Ed too. But I missed my furry creatures! Niece and nephew dogs and cats are fun, but you don't have the intimate knowledge of which one likes scratching behind the ears vs. the one that wants it under the chin. You know what I mean.

Now I am back to my glamourous life of doing laundry and cleaning up furr balls. Oh. the. joy.

End of May Tea Hoarding Report

Doesn't that tea shelf unit thing look nice and organized? Mine is similar, but I have those stairstep things that sit on your shelves so that the back stuff is higher than the front stuff and you can actually see what is back there and use it! Can you tell that that is leading in to say that there is still oodles, gobs, pletheras and hosts of teas in my pantry? (By the by, those are all words used in the obits about how many friends and relatives the deceased has) You gotta love an obit that uses the word "oodles", don't you? :)

Back to the tea - yep, here we are at the end of month 5 and I STILL have not run low, run out or bought more tea. I have bought tea, just not for me. I bought tea for my husband to drink and I bought some to take to my sister's house. That's just something we do when we visit each other. As far as tea for me and my very own consumption, nope I am still using up the old stuff.

Not really much to report. I could just cut and paste the last couple of month's reports and used them. Maybe I won't bother doing this again until there is something to talk about?

Back to your regularly scheduled programming . . . .

Birds

You know, it is funny. Strange funny, not ha ha funny, I never really considered myself a "bird person". One of those people with a bizarre attachment to birds in cages in my house, that kind of bird person.

But I started noticing all the birds every time we moved. Each place had its own unique wildlife, birds included. Our first move was to Guadalajara and I was so entranced with the trees, flowers, houses and all the color I never really noticed the birds. We had boatloads of squirrels, that's for sure!

Then we moved to Monterrey, Mexico (not to be confused with the beautiful Monterey on the coast of California). Monterrey is a Beige city. All the mountains around there were strip mined so they are beige, there is massive pollution and the air is beige, and the complete opposite of Guadalajara where people wanted their homes to stand out, these houses were all various shades of beige. Did I mention that the beige polluted air smelled to high heaven? It did. I remember clearly lying in bed and my first waking thought was, "What on earth is that smell???" It was the air. Gross.

Anyhoo, back to birds. So in the midst of all this beige nonsense, we had a huge gigantic pecan tree in our back yard. And every day we had a flock of small green parrots who would fly in from heaven only knows where and come to collect pecans. It was like they all left home at the same time, came to get food and then in the late afternoon about 5-ish they would all fly home with pecans in their feet. Some of them would squawk really loudly so you would remember to look up and watch them, and some of them would be morons and drop their pecans. So you better be looking up so that you don't get beaned with a falling nut! They would hit the patio with a resounding THUD! I loved those parrots!

In South America we had loads of birds in our various locations, but I didn't know the names of most of them. It was when we moved to Mexico City that I became fascinated with the hummingbirds. We had more hummingbirds than I can ever remember seeing! Let's put it this way, there were almost as many hummingbirds as there were VW Beetle Taxis. Ha! Now, you know how many I am talking about. I spent a lot of time buying hummingbird feeders, making up the solution and sitting at my window watching them. They are so beautiful and unbeknownst to me, quite feisty! I like them!

At our home in Minnesota I was so in love with the Canadian geese. People kept telling me I would get sick of them but no, I can't imagine that happening. They were so beautiful and such good parents to the little guys.

Here at our current home we live in an area with tons of birds! I love watching them. I was picturing myself the other day dressed up like Miss Jane from the Beverly Hillbillies when she was birdwatching with Wally Cox. The big hat, the khaki shorts with tons of pockets, the big binoculars and cameras, books, etc, all at the ready. I already have the binoculars and a hat, so I am on my way!

I like to watch the birds but I don't want to put any feeders out or anything to attract them. I do have 5 cats and 3 dogs that have all shown their penchant for bird killing. Right now I most enjoy the cardinals and the hawks. We also have blue jays, woodpeckers, various sparrows, dove, nasty grackles, mockingbirds, and some really slow type of bird that my cats keep getting and I have to take to the Wildlife Rescue place. I forget their name, I think it is phoebe.

But my favorite is the big hoot owl that roosts outside my bedroom window at night. He is supposedly a giant barn owl and goes like this, "Whoo, hoo, hooooo. Who, who, whoooooooo". I love to lay in bed at night and read and when the house is really quiet and Mr. Big Ed is not snoring his head off, I listen to the hoot owl.

This is why I make sure all my cats are in before dark. The Wildlife Rescue place said that owls can carry off huge housepets. They also said that the owls will decapitate their prey and pull their guts out of their necks. Now, who wants to wake up and find Fluffy all headless and gutless on the front lawn? Not me, that is for sure!

In the grand scheme of things, isn't it karmic that after the cats are busy killing off the smaller birds during the day that the owls get a crack at them after dark? Hmmm?? This is why I try my best to keep my critters out of the food chain, the circle of life, and all that.

Do you have birds in your neck of the woods? Do you like them? Do you like wild birds or the kind in cages in your own home?

The more I learn, the more I realize I need to shut up

Yes, that was me who was complaining about the holiday being on the wrong day. And as my friend Kristin pointed out it was ME WHO WAS WRONG!!!! This is exactly what happens when you think you know something. It turns out you don't really know as much as you think you do! And in my case, what I did know was flawed and bad information. And this is a prime example of why I need to learn to keep my big mouth shut.

Everytime I learn something one of the most important lessons I take away is that I need to learn to listen more and shut the hell up. This is why we have 2 ears and only 1 mouth, so we can listen twice as much. Right?

I find this is really important to me in my birth doula work and my massage business. Both of these things require me to be an empathetic listener and just tune in to my client's needs. Can't do these things when you are running your mouth and your own agenda.

I bet by the time I am 80 or 90 I will have learned this lesson (after a million wake up calls) and finally consider myself a quality person worth knowing. Crossing my fingers and hoping this is the case.

It is said that you get the same lesson over and over until you get it right. Let's hope now that I am 50 I can get this right and finally move on to the next lesson!

So if you read my previous mis-informed post bitching about what I apparently know nothing about and you wanted to tell me I am a big wiener, consider it done. I have told myself that and hope to increase my character.

Lying Liars and Holiday Movers

Why are the lying liars lying about Memorial Day weekend? Isn't Memorial Day on May 30? Hasn't it ALWAYS been May 30? Why is this weekend being billed as "Memorial Day weekend"? Aaaarrrrrggggghh!

I positively HATE it when "they" whoever they are, move holidays. Why is this weekend more appropriate to celebrate Memorial Day rather than the actual day? Hmmmm? I ask you.

Oh, and guess what? Remember back at President's Day (another lame attempt at moving perfectly good holidays) when I complained about how someone seemed to think the best way to remember Washington and Lincoln is to buy a new mattress? Well, guess what? The mattresses are on sale again! And so is furniture! You can get a whole bunch of new furniture to go with your new Memorial Day Mattress. Woo Hoo!! What better way to honor our dead than by buying a queen sized mattress and a coffee table. (Note the dripping sarcasm)

Why does every flipping holiday that comes down the pike have to mean a shopping trip? Wouldn't a parade be more appropriate? Wouldn't a neighborhood event like a block party cookout be fun? Wouldn't these holidays actually MEAN something to the children when we explain what we are honoring if they were held on the date designated? "See, Billy we set aside a day every year to honor and respect the men and women who have died for our country. That day is always May 30. But we are not actually going to do anything that day. We are going to go buy mattresses and coffee tables on May 23 instead." "Oh yeah, and we get Monday the 25th off from work". If you were little Billy in this scenario would you grasp the whole Memorial Day concept? No? I didn't think so.

I am unhappy about moving national holidays. I am unhappy about turning national holidays into a sale on unneeded items. Mostly I think I am unhappy about all of us blindly following along with this and not asking why is it happening. Who is in charge of doing this? How did this person get that job? How do we fire that jackass and put things right again?

I would like some answers. Short, clear and concise. No long-winded bullshit either.

Can't wait to see what they have in store for us on Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, etc., etc., etc.

I am asking you to take this opportunity to take back the holidays and celebrate them in the manner befitting. Have a parade with you, some kids and dogs in a wagon. Set up a bbq grill in the front yard and a few lawn chairs and talk to your neighbors about Memorial Day. Hang a flag. Do whatever feels like you are honoring the day. And I highly doubt it will involve new bedding or a trip to a furniture store.