hi

@ work

letting you know you are not being ignored ... back later

Off topic

Susan <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Nope, not exactly weird. I think you hit the nail right on the head with "perceptions".

And that is what I was trying to say about Pep. It was my *perception of her* that may have caused me to feel disconcerted. (So it was really not about her but about me and in my head). <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

Susan <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

My style, is to read and think a lot before posting. It may take me two or three days to respond, but not always.

Sometimes the things I think about make it out of my head, sometimes they don't.

You don't have to respond when questions are asked of you. Much of what we ask about are very personal things. Introspection can be painful, but it can also bring about helpful thoughts.......understanding thoughts.

I like your humor - please don't think we don't appricate your talents.
More on all that later, but thanks for sharing. It's the wonderful parts of you, the talents, and the sharp mind that brought me to post here. If we bring up things that worry us, it doesn't take away all the good we see.

SS

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> I was afraid of this!!! Worried that if I explained what had been stirring in the recesses of my hyperactive imagination, people would think I was a delicate flower that had to be protected from stormy winds and too much sunlight. Let me say again, I am not a gardenia! (My petals don't bruise easily.) I am not a hibiscus. (I last longer than a single day.) I am not a rose. (They don't have enough thorns.) I am not a glad, daffodil, crocus, lilac, or iris. (I bloom more than once a year.) I am not a snapdragon. (I don't get leaf rot if too much water rains on my "parade.") I am a dandelion.(Even pesticides can't get rid of me.) <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> It's OK. I don't feel ignored. In fact, I'm going away now, too, since so far the only thing I've managed to do on my list for today is to move the sprinkler. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Maybe I should expand my list to include, "Spend as much time as you like on the computer." THEN I'd be accomplishing my goals, wouldn't I?

Can anybody help me? Do you have a copy of Technology for Dummies? I'd like to be able to scan some pertinent pictures to include at times on this thread, and need to know how, if the pix were in my computer (either home page, or in one of those memory thingies) I could get them onto my thread. I know how to get them into my email, but that's it. I'd like to buy a clue. Thanks

t&l

Your are much more than a dandylion ... and your cover has been blown ... YOU are a delicate flower ~sometimes~

and so what?

aren't we all?

For a picture to be availible on a thread, you have to link to it somewhere on the web. That is, it has to be on a web server that can be accessed from anywhere once the link is known. Many people link from private servers (business, or friends that have space to loan) and some use public photo storage like this the MB photothread
Link to thread:
Mb Photo Thread

Link directly to Yahoo photo site where it's stored:
Yahoo Site for MB photos

Of course, you have to have a way to scan the photo's in to your home computer so that you can download them to one of the storage sites. See the top of the Yahoop page where it says "new users" on how to set up a private page if you desire.


If posts show concern about your feelings - it only means people care about you. The way it's shown may not always be perfect, but the underlying concern is real.

SS

A Dandy Lion? Dandy! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I've managed to keep secret for YEARS that my family "name" of Tough Broad is just another facade. If you guys keep blowing away my false fronts, pretty doggone soon I'm going to be standing out here in the sunlight, stark naked!

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Even MY magic fingers aren't big enough, nor do they work fast enough, to cover that much exposure at once!

t&l

Use lots of sunscrean.

SS

Well, please don't post it when you figure out that photo site! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Susan <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

t&l, you put into words my feelings about my LIFE! My DS is disabled if you didn't know, I have great loss, great sadness in my life BUT everyday I have joy. God is with me everywhere and I feel Him/see Him everywhere. My DS is my sadness, loss and ultimately JOY as well.

btw, SS and Susan you made me snort over the nekked stuff. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

SS ... you are so sweet to cover my [censored] for me this way <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

My overbearing and forceful way is NOT your fault ... mine alone! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

>My overbearing and forceful way is NOT your fault ... mine alone!


yeah. But I dunno 'bout the others...I like your overbearingness...and your faults (not that you have many) are endearing.

I'm allowing myself 30 minutes exactly to write whatever I can in that length of time. After that, I'm turning into a pumpkin and going to the bank. So if it ends in an odd place, we're just going to have to live with it.

When I was 4, my parents moved to Hawaii and I grew up there. In a previous post, I told you a little about my life, or at least my perception of life as a young'n. Every 4-7 years, the missionaries were allowed paid furloughs home, and for us that involved returning to the mid-West. There everyone thought how exotic it was that I lived surrounded by water, in a tropical paradise. I thought how exotic they were living where there were so many cows, had falling leaves in the autumn, and snow in the winter. The summer I was 14, on another of those furloughs, I met a boy my age, and I fell in love as only a 14-yr. old can. After feeling so ignored by the local boys, I adored him for thinking I was special, and we hit it off very well. During high school, we corresponded quite a lot as friends, although I dated other guys and was even engaged briefly (to the spreader of nectar mentioned earlier) my freshman year in college. But through all of this, my admiration for my teenage crush survived intact, and even while I was engaged I never mentioned it to him, nor wanted him to find out.

When we were 20, I was in college and he was drafted, and his route of travel to Viet Nam took him from his home state through CA on his way to the war. He was able to get a weekend off on the way, and made arrangements to spend it at the college where I attended school. Have to admit I felt rather superior by then. I was a college woman. (OK, I realize NOW what a snot I was, but you're hearing about THEN... Did somebody think I called it the Sad Saga of Susan the Stupid because I was smart?!!!) He was a soldier from a little farming community in the boondocks. I figured I'd show him around the school, have some nice chats for old time's sake, and see him on his way.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men,,, <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> When he (let's call him My Soldier) walked off that plane, I'm surprised that he didn't hear my heart as it leaped from my bosom and went plop at his feet. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> We had a wonderful weekend (and very chaste, too, let me tell you--this WAS a church school, after all, and for all that I lived in the 60s, I certainly never participated in its, um, opportunities) and when I took him Monday to catch the plane to meet up with his fellow soldiers in SF (that would be the geographical SF, NOT the MB SF!) I was as broken-hearted as any girl could be. We wrote faithfully through his tour as an unarmed combat medic, and towards the end, when he was eligible for some R&R in HI, we made arrangements to meet there. It was all going to be highly chaperoned by friends of my parents; and one of my nursing classmates who was engaged to his best friend was going along with me to meet the two of them there.

About 2 wks. before the trip, I got a call from his mother. It's my only experience with the psychiatric state (I forget the exact name) where you totally block from your mind something bad...but when she said to me, "Hello, Susan, I'm Mother **," I knew instinctively that it was bad news...and I couldn't remember who he was, who she was, nor why this stranger might be calling ME. It took me a minute or two to get to the place where I understood what she was saying or why I should care, but she told me that MS had been badly wounded multiple times in a battle with the Viet Cong, during which time he had refused repeatedly to be treated until he had taken care of all the other wounded. He actually got a medal for this, and I am proud of his bravery, but I would much rather have had him!

He was evacuated to the military hospital in Japan, and while he was there I got to talk to him by phone once for $50 worth of talk (at 60s prices, that was a LONG time!). But when he finally made it home, something had gone wrong between us and I couldn't initially figure out what it was. If you'll let me digress briefly, I'll tell you what I finally figured out was the problem, and which I had (at least 25+ years later) confirmed to me that this was indeed what was wrong. MS had a genuinely (not possibly exaggerated, like mine) bad childhood. There was physical, mental, and emotional abuse over the course of years, and when, at age 12, he was sent to boarding school, he bore a lot of inner scars from what had happened to him before. A couple of examples... At school, he would hoard food so he'd be sure not to be starved again. He was mocked by others for bedwetting. How hard is THAT for a pubescent boy, that everybody in the community is gossiping about your personal shame? (And how do you think I found out about it?) But around about 16 or 17, something interesting happened. His problems resolved, at least externally. He got tall, filled out, and became an extremely handsome young man...and instead of being mocked, he was noticed with admiration by the girls, and admired by the boys. So much of his self-esteem became tied up in his amazing good looks that when he was wounded, and this nifty physique of his became scarred, he was unable to accept what had happened to him. And because he couldn't accept it, he couldn't believe anybody else would accept it either. Now bear in mind that, once he had recovered, except for a small shrapnel scar on his lip there are no external signs of his trauma that can be seen. Unless, of course, you have a wife who will see you uncovered, and look at the scars you can conceal from everybody else. Although we were openly in love with each other, he (now back at a hospital near Chicago) began to withdraw communication with me without ever explaining why. When I graduated from nursing that summer, I went back to the Chicago area and got my first real nursing job while I waited to be the maid of honor in the wedding of the friends who DID get to go to R&R in HI, that MS and I missed because of his injuries. Such happy days. I'm so glad they're over!

By now he was well enough to be working at the military hospital while he finished his tour of duty, and one morning when I hadn't worked the night before, I got up very early and drove the 50+ miles to where he was so I could see him. He had no idea I wasn't still in CA. As bad as my memory is, and as hard as it is for me to recall a lot of things, I still remember the little black two-piece suit I wore that day, with the short skirt and the neat heels. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Talk about an ambush. When I got to the clinic, somebody woke him up and said he had a visitor and he walked out to find me there. A cherished memory, to be sure, and one of the few bright spots for that whole summer!

We went and sat in an office and talked for quite awhile. I don't remember anything that was said, really, (although he made it clear that "we" were over, without ever saying why) except for the very last thing..."I will love you the rest of my life. Now go away and leave me alone." And so I did. What else could I do? I saw him at the wedding and we spoke briefly, and saw him maybe 2 or 3 times at public events (through the protective barrier he had erected against me). Eventually, though, I gave up and returned to CA for good. BUT I NEVER BELIEVED HE REALLY MEANT IT. And for the next 2 years, I pounced on the phone whenever it rang. I lay in wait for the mailman every day. I watched for him, for his car, every place I went, every single time I left my house. I'm a doofus about car models, but let me tell you, I could pick out a Pontiac Bonneville by day or by night, by profile or by headlights, with the quickest glance. And I cried. My goodness, I cried. You'd have thought I was a garden hose for the amount that I cried. It would've been one thing to have had him find somebody else. That's unpleasant, but it happens. It was quite another to know that the person you loved so desperately, loved you back, and still didn't want to be with you...

I typed 15 minutes over schedule, and I've got to leave. Don't know when I'll be back. Obviously this is not something I'm going to be typing when HP is lurking over my shoulder, so if I can't escape his eagle eye for the whole weekend, it may be Sunday night before I have a chance to continue, and then only if it's quiet at work. We'll see. I still feel funny telling this to everybody, and worry about being boring or coming across as too self-important--to be chewing on old wounds this way,when there are so many people on this site with fresh ones, and more than that, fresh ones that can be healed. Why are we wasting time on me, and a past that can't be changed? I'm a worrier. Can anybody tell? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

t&l

I am a merciful and compassionate woman, and wouldn't think of doing that to you. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> The other night at work, one of the nurses said something about strippers. I told her, "You and I could never make it as strippers. We'll have to be 'dressers' instead--you know, we take our all clothes off and people pay us money just to put them back on again!" <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

t&l

This pisses me off ... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I get to decide if you are wasting my time .... This "I'm not worth it" bulls**t???? knock it off!

I did know, and looked up your poem on the net and read it. I'm not much on crying (it clogs up your nose and makes your head ache...and when you're all done you feel crappy and whatever was wrong before is still there for you to deal with! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />), but your poem brought tears to my eyes. I am glad to hear that, even in this, you still have joy.

t&l

Did I say I'm not worth it? Or could you possibly be extrapolating here? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> Let me attempt a re-phrase, since my communication skills have apparently abandoned me. We shall hope the abandonment is temporary. This has nothing to do with intrinsic worth. I have sufficient worth, thank you. Anybody who wants to read is welcome. But there are certainly many threads I have seen on this site by people whose problems seem much more possible to solve than mine seem to me. Besides, they all WANT their problems to change. I'm not sure I do for me. Old and dull works for me better than new and strange, and after decades of having my shins barked, my knuckles scraped, myhead bumped, my nose pinched, and my knees knocked by HP's door slamming to the entrance of his inner sanctum, I'm not sure there are any body parts left for me to spare, or to risk.

t&l

P.S. If you're having trouble with urination, may I suggest Pyridium? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

t&l, you are a talented story teller.

Why are we wasting time on me, and a past that can't be changed? I'm a worrier. Can anybody tell?

It's the future.......spread out before us. The empty tapstry, waiting for the artist.

If you are not an artist, I've never seen one.

You are important enough. It's nothing to do with us, you'd be important anyway. Now you have some new friends, that know it and want to listen. Worry, but don't let it stop you.

Most of us are in and out a lot. Pauses mean we are out, not that we don't care.


SS

PS Pep, I was covering my butt too.