The OMG Moments Of Life

I didn't have a number 340 painted on the side but THIS is the color and look of my Baby. The finish was a dark metal flake green that would look black or navy in some light. It didn't have a 340 engine it was a hopped up 318 V6. On my only outing as a street racer I blew away a Pontiac Bonneville on a short drag. He ran out of road before he could overtake me. The Bonny had a bigger engine, it didn't have my hop. 

It was the most reliable car I have ever owned. Although one of the most unlucky. While it never failed to start, it attracted more than it's share of unusual problems. My parking space was next to this big old tree that lost a huge limb one hot humid August night. We'd just gotten home from visiting friends, walked into the house and weren't home more than 5 minutes when we heard this horrendous crash. Walked out front to see what it was and didn't see a thing. A neighbor came running out of her house to tell me my car was wrecked. She was right, that huge limb was standing upright in my trunk on top of the spare tire well. Held steady by the side porch roof which was also damaged. Not a breath of air stirring anywhere and a tree drops it's biggest limb into my car. Figure that one out.

I remember how devastated I was and the police officer trying to keep me from falling apart. He never knew how close he came to getting slapped upside the head when he told me he wasn't sure how to write the report. How does one report that a tree attacked a car anyway? 

My insurance covered it and a couple of years later Baby lost her gas tank while I was sitting in the parking lot at Hancock Airport in Syracuse. It was strapped under the spare tire well, which probably was damaged when the tree limb fell into it. A couple more winters of snow and road salt did it in. We used a tire iron wedged across the spare tire well and wrapped a chain around it and the gas tank to drive home. The friends sitting in the back seat, who were the reason we were there to start out with, probably prayed all the way home.  My mechanic, the wild and wooly Mike found a tank and mounted it to the frame since there was nothing left of the spare tire well when it rotted out. 

The following year it was totaled while my then husband was driving home from a meeting. He was T-boned at 55 mph. Both cars were traveling at that speed. The driver of the other car ran a stop sign. That accident was the end of my car. In a way, it was also the end of my marriage. During tests made necessary by his injuries, it was discovered that he had inoperable cancer of the brain. 

There were times in the next few months when I would have killed to have that car back. She had been my refuge when my world was falling apart. I could just hop in, turn the key and purr on down the road. Today's cars handle better than she did, but nothing will ever equal the feeling of piloting a muscle car like the 74 Duster with the pedal to the metal on the open highway. It's a high you just can't duplicate. One I will never have the pleasure of again. 

Good Things Are All Around Us

So, my doctor was right about shutting off the computer and the TV. With much less online time I'm doing much better. Even managed to recover enough to sit for 20 minutes at a time instead of only 10. I'm still limiting my online time to 1 hour per day. I have a common kitchen timer I set to the amount of time I'm going to spend goofing around and I close out whatever I'm doing when it alerts me. With only 10 minutes a stretch, I wasn't really capable of doing anything, but now I can sit for 20 minutes, it's much easier to keep up with what I want to pay attention to. 

Withdrawing from the smoke and mirrors of the internet has been extremely beneficial to me so I don't plan on returning to my old habits. I'm painting again which is a much more positive pursuit. This month I've completed an order for someone of three pieces. I didn't charge as much as I should have, and I don't care. I'm having more fun painting for me, doing what I want to do rather than doing something for someone else. I made enough off that order to purchase some replacements for paints that didn't fare well when I wasn't using them. 

I hadn't realized how often I have been focusing on the negative. I'm certainly not going to say that is caused by the internet, but I can say with some surety that it contributes. Less of it has made me a much calmer person, and my blood pressure is again coming and staying down. My physical pain has been reduced through less sitting and over all I'm beginning to see that having a positive attitude is part of the improvement.  I am seeing the good things in life rather than sitting here arguing politics and wondering where that mess will leave me next month or next year or whenever. 

A Lesson Learned From "King Of The Modifieds" Richie Evans

He was a friend of my Husband's family having spent the first 16 years of his life living down the road from them. He was typical of most of the farm boys I've met. Laid back, good hearted, helpful people, with a wild streak that makes you want to shake your head at their antics and wonder whether there's something in the air on top of that hill. Maybe it's learning to drive tractors at a young age, or possibly the aroma of cow manure they're exposed to, but they all seem to have a need for speed. A need which life seems to lessen as they age, except in Richie's case.

He left the farm, learned auto mechanics and opened his own garage in the city I lived in some 12 miles from his home. By the 1970's when I first met him, he was an established stock car driver on many of the short tracks found in New York State and surrounding areas. I knew him and his future second wife through my place of employment. They were customers there. She was a flight attendant. I saw more of her than I did of him, but he would come in when she wasn't in town to pick up their things.

I wasn't a NASCAR fan. I'd been to the Utica-Rome Speedway once in the late 1960's, and thought it was ok, but nothing I'd ever find myself following. He was just a customer at the dry cleaning establishment that I worked in. I blame the fact that my first car was a muscle car on Richie. I've also often told my Hubby it was probably all Richie's fault that we married. My brief experience with Richie taught me that there were some very desirable qualities underneath all that country boy craziness. Things like honesty, loyalty and a willingness to help when needed. Of course, you do have to hang on to those qualities for dear life when you're traveling at 90 miles an hour on the fast lane called living. Those country boys give the phrase "misspent youth" a whole 'nother meaning.

It was September of 1978 and I had decided I was going to buy myself my first car. I'd gone to a local auto dealer who sold used vehicles and was looking at both a 1974 Plymouth Gold Duster and a Ford Torino. I didn't make a decision about which one I wanted because while I trusted this particular auto dealer, I knew very little about cars. I had decided to ask my Dad to look them over and was discussing the situation with a fellow employee when Richie came in. He'd overheard enough of the conversation to know what I was planning and he knew the mechanic at that particular dealership. Richie suggested I speak to the mechanic there and see which one he would recommend. That's what I did and I wound up a single 20 something owner of a fast car. I LOVED that car.

Getting married to my first husband and changing jobs took me away from any opportunity to get to know Richie in any other manner. I never became a fan of his and never considered myself to be anything more than an acquaintence for whom he did a kindness. I know so much more about him now. Partly due to stories told by Hubby's family and friends, and mostly due to his induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame this past Friday. I had no idea he was as important to the sport of racing as that.

"Rapid Roman" Richie Evans won 9 NASCAR National Modified Championships including 8 in a row from 1978 to 1985 when he was killed running a practice lap in Martinsville, Va at the Martinsville Speedway. He died from a skull fracture after hitting the wall on a turn. So far he is the only Hall of Fame inductee that never drove in the top NASCAR cup series.

This past weekend there's been much laughter and a few tears taking place in the hills of Westernville, NY. For many it isn't the honor bestowed on him by NASCAR that is what holds him dear in their hearts. It's the barn dances and the gas stolen from his Dad's pump with his Mom's collusion. It's the rides at breakneck speed over the hills and in a few cases through the pastures and the woods. For some it may be the knowledge of who it actually was that saw to it that paint from the City of Rome's Highway garage found it's way to Richie's to be used on his first number 61 stock cars.

Since 1987 when I first met my husband, my life has overlapped Richie's life in ways that I would never have imagined back in 1978 when he helped me choose my first car. I've met guys named Speed, Stubby and Cubby who were friends and relatives of his. I've heard their stories and marveled at how he managed to live until adulthood. I bought my current car from the man that taught him auto mechanics.  My Oldest step-son owns 13 acres of what was Richie's boyhood home. The barn is directly across the road. I took this picture from the front door of step-son's home back in 2007 I believe. I planned on painting the scene, never got around to it.

Richie was 44 when he died. I didn't really know him so I don't know how he dealt, or if he dealt with the knowledge that every lap he drove could be his last. What I do know is he grabbed onto everything that life had to offer and he wrung from it everything he could in the time he had. There's a lesson there that I think we all ignore in life. We only get one go round, we need to make the most of it. Can't be doing that when we dwell on everything that could go wrong. You know? Maybe I better start that painting. Might not do justice to it, but I'll never know until I try.

Anybody Need A Cat Bed?

Some of my friends from other places know we acquired Demonkitteh on December 31, 2008. Some of my friends also know why he's nicknamed Demonkitteh, however, since both he and my house have survived these last 3 years, we decided to commemorate the day with a gift. He steals Hubby's shirts to make beds out of so we decided to buy him one of his own. I ventured out on an ill advised trip to Walmart after my case this morning and purchased a SmartyKat CATNIP Cat Lounger.

The instructions say to place the catnip into the cloth bag that comes with the bed and zip it into it's place on the bottom side of the lounger. I did that and set the lounger on the floor. Demonkitteh promptly flipped it over and tried to destroy the bed in order to get the catnip pouch out of it's rightful place. I unzipped it and gave him the pouch to play with so that I didn't have bits and pieces of cat lounger strewn throughout my house.

He played with the pouch for 5 minutes, had himself a light lunch, went and sat in the lounger to take a bath and then wandered up the hall, I thought, to use the litter box. He was in the bathroom for 5 minutes during which time I heard the clothes hamper come crashing over and Demonkitteh reappeared with one of Hubby's quilted flannel shirts.

He dragged the shirt to the cat bed, laid down on the shirt and placed his head in the cat lounger. You know? Maybe I should have spent my money on a sturdier hamper? One that he can't knock over quite as easily?

I have work to do, if I don't get back into Blogger later today, have a safe and Happy New Year.

Making Hard Decisions Doesn't Come Easy

There is a lengthy and rather convoluted path we travel in life. For some of us that path is smooth with few bumps and for others it's a mountainous climb with many missteps along the way. For most of my life the path has been relatively smooth. Mountainous climbs have usually been of my own making since making mountains out of molehills is a habit of the Type A personality. Another Type A trait is that we dismiss things we should pay attention to and obssess about things we should dismiss.

I was diagnosed, in my middle 20's with ankylosing spondylitis. That was back when doctors were demi-gods and one didn't ask questions. Had no idea what it was and since all I heard was "arthritis" never bothered to ask what it was. It's a form of rheumatoid arthritis that affects the spine's sacroiliac joint. Which accounts for all the lower back, hip and leg pain I've been experiencing for the past year.

It's not that I didn't have pain before, it would come and go periodically. Much of the time it would exist at a level that I could and did ignore. It wasn't until I did a music post about Motley Crue that I encountered the term again. Mick Mars has it, and had a hip replaced so he could rejoin the group when they tried to reconcile around the middle of the last decade. Once I found out what it was, I decided there wasn't anything I could do about it since I don't have health insurance, so I resumed ignoring the problem. That reality check bounced. Fortunately, this time I have a doctor who can guide me through this flare. Good thing, because it's lasted more than a month.

I'm having trouble writing blog posts since I can't sit for long periods of time. I've maintained my Twitter account by posting a couple of things and then moving away from the computer to do things that will keep me from stiffening up too much. It's not humanly possible to move constantly, but if I'm not moving, I'm supposed to be lying down to keep everything straight. That too is pretty difficult.

During a conversation with my doctor at my last appointment the subject of internet usage and TV watching came up. She believes that there is a correlation between what happens in the mind and ones level of health. When we expose ourselves to unresolved negativity, it will effect us one way or another somewhere else in our bodies. Her view is that we'd all be farther ahead if we shut off our TVs and limited our online time to less than half an hour a day.

I'm not sure what I will do about any of this. That half an hour isn't much and won't allow me to be as social as I might like to be. I thought about closing my blog and just spending my online time in Twitter. I'm finding that Twitter is a major source of the negativity that may be having an effect on my problem. I finally decided to step away from the computer for her suggested 30 days in favor of other things until I can make up my mind. There's just too much garbage in, garbage out going on and I need to concentrate on me and not obssess about what possesses others to behave so badly.

Today's Society....FAIL!

I don't know what to rant about first. The GOP Fail which is self evident in their presidential candidates or the Penn State Jerry Sandusky/Joe Paterno Fail. Better yet, maybe I should rant about a society FAIL!

The words that come to my mind are "morally bankrupt." What are we doing to ourselves? Next question...WHY? How have we gotten so far away from doing the right thing and into doing that which is expedient? What part of sticking your head in the sand is going to correct this mess?

How did I end up living in a society where politicians think it's OK to steal from the poor to give to the rich? When did sexual harassment become an excusable offense because the perpetrator is in a position of power? Why was it fine for people in positions of authority to condone the abuse of children in the name of having a winning college football team? What part of treating women as if we're chattel is acceptable because it's being done in the name of religion?

For some strange reason I keep thinking about something I read back in 2007. I was doing music posts for my Blogstream blog and had been listening a lot to Dio. I was trying to find a way to do a post about a song of his called "Killing The Dragon". It didn't really make any sense to me until I found an interview he did about the album that song was on. He wouldn't use a computer or much by way of what we call technology these days. He referred to all of it as "heartless little Gods." Said some day we'd be sorry we worshipped at the altar of technology. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe he wasn't right.

We used to know that not everything we want to do should be done. We used to understand that as a human, we had baser instincts that were best not indulged in. Now it seems that anything goes. We can do anything we want to entirely because it feels good to us. If it doesn't feel good to you, then too bad, I'm the only one that matters to me. Apparently for some it feels good to debase women in the name of sexual satisfaction. And for others it feels good to corrupt children and make their lives a painful experience. One that will damage them, in many ways, beyond repair.

I have far too many questions and no really good answers. I just know that I am glad I don't have my whole long life ahead of me. I'm afraid to see what the next 50 years is going to bring. If the changes I've witnessed in my lifetime are any indication, we will have entirely lost our souls by then.

Undercover at Smithfield Foods, Supplier Of The Pork For The McRib

My grandfather was a farmer. Born on the family farm and as an adult went back to work on a farm after losing his factory position during The Great Depression. He was a beef eater, which is probably why he died young, but one thing he would not eat was veal. He couldn't stand the method by which the calves were raised for the veal market. He believed that putting an animal in a box, not allowing it to roam was inhumane. I wonder what he'd eat now since we seem to have moved the veal box into mainstream meat raising?

The more I learn about farming methods today, the less appetizing the products look to me. I can get my eggs from local farms, and my beef, pork and chicken as well. I've been on these farms, seen their operations and they are a far cry from the accepted practices that take place before our meats go to market.

I can no longer afford to eat meat on a daily basis since local farmers charge quite a bit more, but at least I know that what I'm eating wasn't tormented and tortured for my dining pleasure. Besides, a few meatless meals makes for a healthier human. I think Grandpa would be very proud of me. He helped raise a child that is willing to stand up for what she believes. Same as he did.