It's alive! It's alive!

I am alive, although I have felt better.

Changing meds, a week ago.  You know how that goes.  It takes awhile for it to get out of your system and then, when it does, it may cause a different feeling.  Dehydration.  Then blood tests every other minute to see what's going on with the electrolytes.  It all leaves me dizzy and disoriented and generally feeling punk.  But, my friend Trudy sent me an e-mail asking if I was all right, so--I thought I'd better post.

We have had a break in the weather.  50 degrees when I woke up this morning, so it feels cold...especially after having temps in or near the 90's and humidity of 79% for the past week.  So today, would be the perfect day to get outside and trim the bushes and cut back the straggly looking perennials, if I thought I could stay upright.  

I finished the baby afghan last weekend.  This is the one I ripped out 7 times before I could figure it out.  Even then, near the top when I was on my last few rows, I found another mistake and had to rip back 10 rows.  It turned out fine however, and such a fascinating way to crochet that I have never done before, that yesterday, I started another one--different words.

=====================
Aretha Franklin.  Living only 60 miles north west of Detroit, my news channel is filled with tributes and interviews and on and on.

"She" arrived in a white Cadillac hearse at the place for her public viewing.  In a gold casket, full open casket, dressed in a red gown and red high heels.  That was Tuesday.

Wednesday, much to every one's surprise, she was dressed in a powder blue gown with blue sparkley heels.

I haven't yet heard what she is dressed in today or for her funeral tomorrow.

This means, each evening after the public viewing, the funeral home production team, takes her back to the mortuary, changes her gown, redoes her make-up and restyles her hair.

Now--if that doesn't creep you out--nothing will!

She is a big, heavy woman.  I know that her gowns are cut in the back, so all they have to do is "re-wrap" her gown around her and tuck it in under her, but..........they still have to lift up that body and reposition it and....................it's dead!!!!!!!!  

It's not a plastic mannequin.  It's a heavy, cold, hard, dead human body.

ARGGH!!!  

They say that's what she requested be done.  Can we say, Super-ego, vain, haughtiness here?

To me it's just macabre and the public goes back every day to see what she's dressed in for that day.  The whole think smacks of D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T to me and has turned into a media circus.

It would not surprise me if for her funeral, they have her strapped, upright in a golden throne chair as if she is sitting there witnessing all the performers paying her tributes!
=====================
On the other hand--John McCain.  I have respected this man for years and years.  What a servant to our country he has been.  Given a chance to get out of the POW camp, he declined unless they released all his fellow prisoners.  He is not without minor scandals in his life, an affair, or two.  The end of his first marriage.  To me, that doesn't take away my respect for what he had done in his time in Congress.
What politician hasn't had scandal?  Maybe not the Bush men or Obama.

There he lays.  In his flag draped simple casket, as it should be.  Not to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where he certainly should be, but buried instead on the grounds of the Naval Academy, where he wanted.  A long way from his home in Arizona.  Not easy for his family to make the trip to visit his grave, if they want.
==================
I have started work on another genealogy.  Which means I need to feel better and have my full mental capabilities.  My client supplied me with a lot of information her family had already found, but it is laid out in such a manner, that it is kind of confusing--trying to find where one generation stops and the next beings.

Pedigree charts that list not just a person, but all their children, and children's children, and aunts and uncles, and cousins and friends.  I don't get that specific, because the book I make would be 500 pages long and much too difficult to decipher.

I stick to direct ancestor's...except...occasionally I will happen onto a great grandmother who has an interesting family and trace that.  Usually genealogies deal with the father first.  As we all know, men are the most important because they are the sires of the family "limbs".   

Bah Humbug!  There are some pretty interesting great grandma's out there who also have interesting family lineages and by gosh!  they are going to have a few pages in the genealogy book too!!

Like the lady whose 5th great grandma was the last "witch" hung in Salem, Massachusetts.  She needed to have her story told and printed out and included in the book.

Well, you know how obsessed I get when working on a genealogy.  I have no idea what time it is and will hear the cuckoo clock tell me it's five in the afternoon and realize,  I've been sitting here for three hours and had no idea.  

At midnight, Tuesday night, I found something interesting to search for.  If I had waited until morning, I may have forgotten, so here I sat, into the wee hours.  I told my Face Book friends that I got this mental picture of me....sitting high in a tower in the dark of night, candles lit, my quill dipping into the ink well, scratching my findings on the parchment paper, which of course was dotted with ink splotches.    Sort of like those photos we see of Nostradamus, except I am not predicting the future, but rather sorting through old census reports and military records and the like.

I rather deem myself a detective, not a prophet.  HAH!!

Anyway--if I don't post regularly, you will know why.  I have used all my mental strength typing genealogy material and have no strength left to report on the boring life I normally live.

Love to all--Toddles.