One of the people I have met is this lovely elderly lady (I believe she’s 86) named Helen. Mrs. Helen is quite simply a doll. I don’t know much about her background, but I bet it involved some struggle, but what makes her so delightful is her attitude. She has determined she will see the best in people, and look at things as an adventure, not see the fears and the gloom. I want to follow that example.

Now, Mrs. Helen is probably worlds apart from me in preferred reading material and from others, but she has never failed to show anything but interest and curiosity about the books our varied members have brought up. When we turned ourselves into a book club, she was the first one of us to have finished the book. Not only does she have a wonderful attitude, she’s quite sharp.

I think I want to Mrs. Helen when I grow up! I also want to get to know her story, but I’m not rude enough to ask

In other news, Nor’s tumor is back, and he goes to the vet. He apparently has the worst sort of cancer a cat can have. There is only one result; everything else is to prolong life. However, I know part of my heart will break when I must let go of my first cat baby.

School has started, and things go along as usual, but perhaps if I apply Mrs. Helen’s attitude, I will feel better and thus, cope better. We shall see.

I do know this, the whim of joining that book group is paying off quite nicely.

A few weeks ago, he started hiding under the bed a lot. So we started looking closely at him, and noticed his cheek was swollen. A week later, there was some blood, and so to the vet he went. So he had a tooth pulled on Sunday (two Sundays back). Doctor pulls tooth mentions cancer. We freak out a bit, but give Nor his medicine. we go back the following Friday (last Friday) for a follow-up. Vet looks at cat for two seconds and says cancer, and starts telling me about it. What I get is scared and a feeling of no hope, and basically “you might as well put him down now.” Vet does mention referral. I barely get home, and then promptly burst into tears. Michael, who has a cooler head at the moment, calls the vet and gets the referral. I cry most of the weekend. So Thursday of this week, Nor went to a specialist vet. He undergoes surgery, the vet tells me it was a nasty tumor and invasive, but they think they got 90% of it. Friday, I bring Nor home, and at the moment, I have a purring sleepy, cat on my lap. I call back this Thursday for biopsy reports, and I guess we’ll work from there. Wish us luck.

I met my doctor because I have an insulin check-up overdue.  So today, we did blood work.  Next week, I’ll go back for the results.  I know this, they have to be better than they were!

If it’s going to be like this all day, I’m going back to bed.

Sister-in-law will be 22 in a couple of months, and I am not sure she will make it to that birthday because I may very well kill her.

“Why, Rosa, would you kill her?” you ask. Let me explain.

A) Said young adult will not wake herself up. She always wants someone else (namely me) to wake her up.  Now since I Have been perfectly capable of waking myself up since, oh I don’t know 10, I don’t get it.  I am of the opinion one really ought to be able to drag their own sorry butt out of bed by the age of 21. THis means there are days I don’t bother to wake her up.

B) When said 21 year old does bother to get up, she will stay in her room for hours before making an appearance, and then will whine about needing a nap.

C) I do not trust 21 year old to actually complete a task given to her.  Laundry will be started, but left to sit int he washer until someone (guess who) takes it out, puts it in the dryer, and then folds it. Carry this over to all other tasks. Now granted, she will ask if I need help, but 90% of the time, by the time she asks I have finished the task at hand.

The advice I need is well, plentiful. The problem I’d like to work on most is the last one, but any advice  on any of these will be most helpful.

That said, quiet time does wear thin, so I’ve been busy.  I do my exercising–45 minutes of treadmill time and at least 30 minutes on my Wii Fit. I’m doing housework and maintaining things.  I am reading, I am watching tv.  I’m not writing, and I wish I were but my brain just doesn’t know where to go or what story to tell.

Since I’m not writing, I’m doing the other thing I do well–editing.  Mike wrote a column for our town paper, and he has gathered a bunch of them up and wants to put them in a book. I think he just wants some sort of smallish thing for family and friends.  But I am not sure what he wants,  nor am I sure he knows either! However, it’s been fun revisiting some of these things, and I had forgotten how much I liked doing editing (which is much easier than the related task of grading papers).

The editing has me revisiting and old project that I really want to get up again–the idea of an online literary journal sponsored by the college. I have a title and I have a built in graphic-artist (or two, if I look at the school). So I really need to get that going. I want to bring it to the whole community not just the school.

Also, today my new phone arrives. It’s an HTC Aria–their Android phone for ATT.  Mike’s jealous because I will have the cool phone–at least for a while.

And now, breakfast to eat!

Show me that freaking Dawn commercial where they are washing oil off the animals, and I start to bawl.  Show me a news story about someone working to overcome a physical issue, and waaaah tears. Lord, don’t tell me a celebrity died because then it’s tearville.

Now, I have always been sentimental.  I remember when AT&T long ago came out with that series of commercials about kids calling long distance home, and the parents would get all mushy.  Yeah, I’d tear up a little at that, but now, I’d probably be flat out bawling.  I don’t get it.

I think it’s hormonal.  It’s been worse within the last week, which was uh THAT week, but really it happens much more frequently than it used to. I know I am getting into the mid-late 40s and all that jazz, but please, tears could you just stay the heck away, or at least show up when it’s reasonable!

Now, I will freely admit that this view grows stronger as I teach Intro Philosophy more and more.  Since my approach to that class is that it’s about defining and refining our personal belief systems not learning names and theories, it makes sense that my own philosophy is in the process of refining itself.

I digress, personal responsibility is the topic, and by that I mean taking responsibility for your own choices and actions.  The idea for this comes from a discussion on the main page about who is responsible for an obese woman’s being asked to get of a piece of equipment.  It seems that the woman is painting herself a victim of fat discrimination by the gym, while glossing over her choices to ignore the plan made by the gym and to ignore the warnings that she might be too big for the equipment.  It’s the painting herself as a victim that has worked my  last nerve.

Now it’s not that I don’t believe in victimhood.  Certainly, it exists in many ways.  We are often victims of place, victims of gender, and so forth, but we are also more than just that.  We can choose to stay the victim or we can take control of our choices.

This is in part why I became an educator, too.  Because how can you make the choices that will take you out of victimhood, if you don’t even know those choices exist.  This is where things tie into liberalism for me. If our government is to be truly effective and work, then it needs to provide the services necessary for its people to make choices–and to know the whole spectrum of choices they have.  If you don’t know that you can be anything other than a farmer, how do you choose something else? If you don’t know that you can get off the welfare system, how can you choose to do so? A good government should be providing the information needed for people to make those decisions.

This doesn’t mean, however, that all people will choose the best route.  There are always going to be people who make poor choices, but they need to recognize that these were choices.  This is being personally responsible.