Todd, if I may be so bold. There isn't anything wrong with your brain. Nothing at all. I'm no doctor but I've seen huge improvements in you.

Except for the fact you seem to think it's Saturday down here. It's actually Tuesday evening.

To confuse you even further, we are entering the wonderful season of Spring. I have daffodils in my garden, the weather is warming up (sort of) and it will soon be summer. If I look outside right now it is dark and there is a moon, which could possibly mean it night.

We haven't heard from DD and b/f for nearly a week. They said they would be out of contact while they are on the yacht in Croatia with the outlaws but I miss hearing from her.

When they arrive in the States I will put her emails on here in full. She writes wonderfully and I'm sure you'll all be interested to see how she sees the good ol' USA.

If I may be so bold, there is nothing wrong with his brain that wasn't pre-existing. That seems more accurate.

It is not springtime here but fall has arrived. Instead of waking up to 32-33C, we now have a pleasant 26-28C and the highs are all the way down to 42C from the summertime 55+.

brrrrrrrrrr

Not to be outdone. My sweet DD and her b/f. Click to enlarge.

Jen's DD

I agree. Anyone who is a physics major definitely has something wrong with their brain.

LOL somebody asked if I was an English prof before. Wish I was. Or is that wish I were.

Where ToddAc comes from, I believe the correct usage is:

"If'n ah beed uh engleesh perfesur"

LMAO. No comment on DD???

You mean other than she looks just like you??? All I can say is you are lucky she didn't get her looks from Rob.

The b/f I am sure I have seen in a post office somewhere....

LMAO yet again.

Yeah, I tell Rob that all the time - lucky the kids take after me.

I often tell the story of when my mother, me and DD were struggling around the supermarket about 3 days after my dad died. We were all completely spaced out but needed to shop. A woman came up to us and gushed all over us that we were all so alike and how sweet it was that all 3 of us were identical.

Poor woman, I don't think she expected the stony silence and grimaces that greeted her.

B/f has a very smart mouth but he's maturing all the time. I worked with him long before he met DD and asked him one day if he'd ever been punched in that smart mouth of his. I also told him that if he ever met my DD and laid one finger on her I would have his *$#% on a plate.

We still laugh about that. Er, no we don't actually.

It's funny how personal experience affects your perception of things. The third time I read that, I came to understand you had run out of food in the house. The first two times I read it, I took a completely different path. Funny how gemela influences me still.

LOL - I meant we had to provide food for ourselves - as you finally realised. We were like zombies but we pushed ourselves out the door. My mother still doesn't even know how she managed to walk down the aisles - she barely remembers it.

If I may be so bold again, the change in you since gemela has been gone has been breathtaking.

It's funny because a lot of my coworkers tell me I take their breath away - then they ask me to shower. I just haven't really had the need for the past two weeks.

Seriously, as each day goes by, I wonder if it isn't getting to be that much harder to ever consider getting back together with gemela. I am having a good time. I am not stressed wondering what she is up to. My costs are WAY down. I really struggle trying to find her "value added" any more. I have not read HNHN yet. Maybe that will give me a clue. I know it isn't SF. I have not enjoyed that with her for over a year. I dunno. I need to just stop thinking about it. I do dream about emptying her things out of the closet though. I would have so much space.

I would rather think about the fight I am going to have with DD2 this weekend. She IS going to learn to use her rollerblades or ELSE.

There is one problem. My annual air freight shipment is about to leave the USA. What on EARTH am I going to do with $6000 of scrapbook-making supplies and machinery? Do you know that gemela almost convinced me to buy a $600 Dyson vacuum cleaner just because my sister had one? I tried it and it was really nice. It did a fantastic job on the maggots. Then I thought - I don't vacuum - and NEITHER DOES GEMELA! So why would I go out and spend that much money on a vacuum cleaner just so the maid can break it trying to suck up Barbies? I spend a small fortune replacing belts on the vacuum we have. I wish I could convince the maid that the vacuum should not be used to fold towels and sheets. Must be the language barrier.

Speaking of language barriers, the maid called a bit ago and said "tonahdo". I asked "WHAT?". She repeated over and over "tonahdo" getting more animated all the time. I raced out of my office and sped home and threw the DDs into the bath tub and got a mattress to put over us and waited for the tornado to pass. While we are there, the maid comes in and is extremely angry and has a salad bowl in her hand that she is pointing to and she is screaming "TONAHDO TONAHDO". We were out of tomatoes.

I agree, gamela should be proving why you should choose to reinvest in her as a life partner. I don’t even think you should have to look for the reasons; the onus is on her to demonstrate them to you. She lost her entitlement…and should become the “I merit marriage martyr”…in order to regain that privileged place of trust.

(As to the container....with the amount of true need in the world, I can imagine a lot of things you could do with that money in the future rather than buying more scrap booking stuff!! So, hey if you need any ideas…)

I thought "scrapbooking" (it galls me that is a verb now) might give gemela a non-destructive use of her time. She is very creative. I guess I can learn to "scrapbook".

But you are right. That is pretty much how I view it. Gemela will have to convince me I should let her back in because I can't be bothered any more. If she is not willing to put out that little bit of effort, she knows where the door is.

Since someone got me onto management this AM, I have been googling like crazy for this. It took awhile because "flog" is not something in my normal vocabulary. Maybe it should have been. Oh well...

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount and walk. However, management often tries other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buy a stronger whip.
2. Change riders.
3. Say things like, "This is the way we have always have ridden this horse."
4. Appoint a committee to study the horse.
5. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Rewrite the standards for dead horse performance.
7. Compare the state of dead horses in today's environment.
8. Change the specifications, declaring that, "This horse is not dead."
9. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
10. Harness several dead horses together to increase speed and pulling power.
11. Declare that, "No horse is too dead to beat."
12. Provide additional incentive funding and stock options to increase the horse's performance.
13. Do a Commercial Activities Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
14. Purchase a software product to make dead horses run faster.
15. Declare the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead.
16. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
17. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
18. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
19. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
20. Establish benchmarks for industry dead-horse leaders.
21. Put together a PowerPoint presentation to get planners to double the dead-horse R&D budget.
22. Get the horse a website.
23. Declare that the horse is not in fact dead, but poised for growth.
24. Declare that since horse is dead, we must now ride smarter, not harder.
25. Declare that riding is not a core competency.

BTW, I had really been wanting a planer/jointer. I have never had one. I have lusted after planers/jointers for years. I even bought the "biscuits" hoping for the day I would own a planer/jointer. Well, I spent so much money on scrapbook stuff that I hardly spent a dime on the things I had planned to get for me. I didn't really need most of them anyway in that I can still live my life. But I needed that planer/jointer. I'm pretty sure it was an EN.

Well Thanks Jen but trust me, I am painfully aware of my cognitive and memory deficits. It is troubling to me. Apparently, I cover it well.

Sounds to me like your Plan B is the metaphorical emotional "planer/joiner": removing all that rough excess that gamela brought in...allowing you to rejoin the pieces of your family.

OMG. I have a headache now! Are you telling me that all we have to do is eat biscuits and we will be okay?!?!?!?

No. I am telling you to go scrap book this weekend with your girls. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Oh...

Hi Todd,

I'm glad to see you're back.

Before I catch up on the thread I wanted to share this with you.

One of my very good friends also had a brain tumor. She's an artist & has a website on which she talks about her experience. I thought you might be interested in looking at it. She appeared on 20/20 because of her experience & she has a link to that on her site. It's in the Temple of the Soul area.

google Sandi Gold & you'll get directed to her site.

If you check it out I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

I won't be back until later. I'm gallery sitting at the coop Sandi started (I sell my work there) & will probably be having lunch with her today. I'll see what's up with everyone later.