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  1. Danny and Mr Tolkien

    April 8, 2013 by rox

     

    The Quest, fulfilled.

    Once upon a time, the June I turned 19, I moved clear across the United States from my Southern California roots to Alabama and then Kentucky to be with my helicopter flight school attending husband. For us and the other young couples in the air cav, time together would be measured in months, before they all shipped out. We lived in the present, there was no future that we could see from where we were standing.

    I didn’t mind being away from home. I was more fascinated than lonely and I didn’t complain when my pilot husband was off for days training to go to Vietnam and fly, he loved helicopters and the army. For me, there was too much to experience, see, do and understand in this new alien place. I was an Air Force brat and the military lonely lifestyle was something that was second nature in my family.

    My chariot of choice in my explorations was a black and yellow, brand new 1967 Barracuda convertible with a huge engine and straight pipes. Gas was 25 cents a gallon and that car let me explore old towns, old cemeteries, and all the history I could find within a day’s drive. I hated the muggy weather, the daily rain and the snakes, but still…. driving down a tree lined street with houses looking like Tara on either side made up for a lot.

    In November, we moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, assigned to the 101st Airborne. The winter actually came in Kentucky, with snow, ice and cold. I bought boots and a black furry coat with a hood and even a pair of long johns. Because it was too cold to explore for the California Kid, I discovered the base library and changed my literary life forever.

    I was hunting through the shelves and found a book called ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien. The end papers were maps and it looked like a giant fairy tale. I checked it out and devoured it. I discovered there were four books making up the cycle, and the Hobbit was just the beginning.  I trekked back to the library and the only one on the shelf was the second book. I read it anyway. I went back and this time I found the last book and read that. In weeks of waiting, I never found the first book and I remember being so frustrated because there were such gaps in the story. There were no bookstores close enough to either buy or order the book and time was moving on. My husband was shipped out and I was shipped home, back to California.

    Danny took this photo of me in 1969

    I was 18 when I got married, right out of high school and in a haze of doomed romance. I married someone I really didn’t like and I knew it. I even tried to get out of it, but my mother had already paid for the wedding and I was going to go through it dead or alive according to her. The best thing about that marriage was finally escaping my mother’s claws and her influence. She went on to completely destroy my brother’s life and my sister’s, but my trajectory was up and out and I never looked back. I left the pilot, I couldn’t do it anymore. He returned in one piece and went on to remarry and have a good life in Oregon.

    Art car, Sausalito, 2005

    I had my life back and the summer I was 20, I went on a long camping trip, again in that Barracuda, up the California coast with my friend Danny. Danny’s fiancee Brenda had just dumped him, becoming unengaged after a full year, and running off with a guy who was wanted for punching a cop in Dallas. Hey, it was the 60s and we were young and full of angst and hope and upheaval. I was half in love with him, he was still half in love with her, it was the stuff of bad novels and it made for a memorable trip which included skinny dipping in the Russian River, exploring Big Sur and every inch of highway 1 before it was a heavily traveled tourist trap.

    Hippie Harbor, 2007, Sausalito still has its soul

    San Francisco was heaven and Sausalito was even better. In 1968, Sausalito was a sleepy, hippie, fishing town. It is now big money but there are still patches of that vibe and I love going back and finding it to this day. Sausalito also had an amazing bookstore and in that store I found on 9/23/68 all FOUR volumes of the Lord of the Rings plus the Hobbit. I will never forget that store, that moment, or that day. Danny bought those four paperbacks for me and as our budget was small, it was an enormous gift. The books were the Ballantine Books authorized editions, each one was 95 cents.

    Art Car, Sausalito, with a message for me

    That was the cherry on the top of the trip for me. We spent a few more days exploring and camping and resisting returning, but jobs were calling us home and funds were getting low. We made it to Eureka, California before we turned around to drive almost straight through 12 hours to Redlands and home. The real world came back with a crash and life went on for us, but those weeks out of time were magic. It was the start of our relationship and we wound up with marrying and having three amazing sons.

    Sausalito mailbox

    Our marriage didn’t last forever because I am very bad at the art of marriage, we even tried twice. We made it through the bad parts and our friendship was close and it was forever.  I thought someday we’d wind up rocking on a porch and arguing about politics.

    Dan Snow, taken in Palm Springs, 1968

    Dan died on April 9, 2002, after a recurrence non-Hodgkins lymphoma surrounded by his sons and his wife, Dorothy, the real love of his life.  I’m glad they found each other in time because if anyone deserved to be loved, it was Danny. I still miss him and when I look at my boys, I see their dad so clearly. Corey looks most like him and the resemblance is startling as Corey gets older. Joel moves most like him, he has his father’s physical gestures and joy in living. Josh is the passionate one, Danny could argue all night long and drill you into the ground when he cared, Josh can do the same thing and does.

    As for me, I’m the one who remembers him as a young man, the twenty-four old with the longest eyelashes I ever saw and as much curiousity as I had about what was around the next corner. We had fun, we really did, and the best years of our lives were spent together. For a very long time, I religiously read all four of the Tolkien books every September, the anniversary of fulfilling my quest to read the last book, and perhaps to remember a magic moment in my life when everything was as perfect as it ever gets.

    The books are now getting tattered and fragile and yellowed, they have obviously been loved, and one had a fishbowl break in its vicinity years ago, but it was saved and dried out.The Fellowship of the Ring had a corner land in a coffee cup, but that too passed, and nowadays my quest for the fourth book filled, they are on my shelf of best loved books and most cherished memories of There and Back Again.

     

    Category Life, the Universe and Everything, Rabbit Remembers, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Saint Paddy’s Pie

    March 17, 2013 by rox

    When I was a kid one of my favorite things on the planet was that dopey Bing Crosby song that goes, “Who threw the overalls in Mrs Murphy’s chowder, nobody spoke so he shouted all the louder, its an Irish trick that’s true, and I can lick the mick that threw, the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowwww-derrr!” I  hated chowder and clams but I loved what my mom called, “Mrs. Murphy’s Potatoes.” Translation: twice baked potatoes stuffed with crab, cheddar cheese, and onions. Along with butter, garlic, salt and pepper and milk.

    One of my other favorite things was Shepherd’s Pie, the old standby made with mashed potatoes, ground beef, onions, gravy and vegies and of course, cheese. Two recipes I am happy to share if I hear requests for them. My chef son touts his version made with ground lamb and parnsips in place of mashed potatoes, exotic no?

    The ingredients, and dig the beautiful vintage Tupperware vegie steamer. Coolest toy. Ever.

    Last night I wanted Mrs Murphy’s taters, but I was too lazy to put on going-to-the-store clothes to procure potatoes. Those clothes being   something besides a paint splattered tee shirt and equally paint splattered sweat pants so I poked around in the pantry and came up with the brilliant idea of Mrs Murphy’s Pie, a cross bred tasty treat. Today is Saint Patrick’s day so the nomenclature fits like a cheap tiara on a prom queen. Perfect, but don’t look too close…

    To make this lovely tasty dish you will need:

    A 13X9″ baking pan or something somewhere close in size. Smaller pan, deeper pie, its all good.

    An onion minced fairly fine

    About 2 tsps of garlic powder, adjust the level to your own garlic love

    About 1.5 tsp of salt. If you cook some bacon and toss it in for fun, lighten up on the salt.

    Pepper to taste

    3 packages of those great Idahoan mashed potato mixes, inexpensive and easy. (Substitute 6-8 cups of any other mashed potatoes made according to package directions.)

    2 cans of crab. I used Trader Joes, the size of large tuna cans.

    1 stick of butter, more or less, again, ask yourself how much do I love this butter? Room temperature or melted.

    2 eggs

    Some milk, 1/2 cup or so

    1 package of cheese shredded or about 2 cups ground up by you.

    Asparagus, you could substute peas too. Cook the asparagus tips and mid sections, to medium done, not mushy.

    Grease/spray grease the bottom of the pan and spread two cups/one package of the potatoes made according to the package on the the bottom of the pan. This is your ‘bottom crust’

    In a large bowl, mix up another package of mashed potatoes, (drain and rinse the crab) toss in the crab, asparagus chopped small, garlic, onions (minced) and about 3/4 package of cheese along with the butter. Crack the eggs over the top and mix the whole mess together. If it’s quite thick put in up to 1/2 cup milk.Salt and pepper to taste, use a light hand here.

    Dumped in a bowl and stirred up good, what good be easier?

    Put this layer on top of the layer you already put in, it doesn’t matter if they mix a bit. Spread it with a spatula. Mix up and spread the last layer of potatoes over the top. Spread the last of the cheese over all and pop in a 425 oven for about 30 minutes. It should brown up and the cheese will get all nice and melted. If it is isn’t as brown as you like, slide in the broiler for a few minutes.

    Slice into squares and serve with a green salad. This was so easy to make. I think it may become one of those pantry fall backs, where you always have some ingredients handy and toss in everything else that you find.

    The finished product, easy-peasy and sooo good!

    I’d love to hear your ideas for other versions too.

     

    Category Rabbit Food: eat/drink/cook/love, Uncategorized | Tags: , , | No Comments

  3. The Boyscouts and I Tackle the Art Question

    March 11, 2013 by rox

    Is graffiti art? There’s a whole other discussion. Graffiti bees on an Olympia bridge.

    I was recently privileged to be asked to talk to a pack of boys, okay, a small troop of Webelos on their way to becoming Boy Scouts. The last thing they had to accomplish was to talk to an artist and complete an art segment in their ‘road map’ to scouthood. I found it interesting that art wound up last on the list, but I’m grateful to the Boy Scouts for including it all. The meeting was at a local Catholic church, upstairs in a small room. I dragged my clothes basket of art up the stairs and found six fresh-faced boys and two parents seated around a table, all chattering and working on a word puzzle. They looked quite interested at my covered clothes basket, with good reason more interested in the basket than  me, the lady artist, old enough to be their grandmother. They were amazingly engaged and polite and reminded me so much of my own son’s scouting days at the Lutheran Church. Ever notice Scouting is always at a church?

    Knowing I would be talking to the boys and their age, I actually sat down and thought for quite some time about What is Art? It’s one of the universal questions in society, like Why Am I Here? –and just about as easy to answer. The good thing about the art question is that there are actually some fairly good answers, consensus if you will, in our society, here and now, about what art is.

    When does a photograph become art? Can a flower be art?

    1. At is on purpose. It must be consciously created. It cannot be just a beautiful flower or a beautiful mountain, although artists are inspired to include those things in their art. It doesn’t have to be beautiful to everyone, or anyone, but it often is. It can make you think, it can make you angry. It is made on purpose by the artist to convey meaning. It is not accidental, again the flower is beautiful, but its beauty is both accidental and incidental. Nature created it because that is what nature does, we see it and judge it beautiful because that’s what we do. Art is conscious. It is made with intention.

    2. Art must be original. An artist can even take apart something and reform it into something entirely new. Witness the artists who show their work at the wonderful Matter Gallery in Olympia, me included. That work is all upcycled and repurposed. It was all something else, a piece on the wall used to be a sail on a ship, or bicycle parts, a sculpture might have been screws and washers. One of my pieces was a birdcage and now its a birdcage that is a metaphor for a way of looking at life.

    Winged Victory, standing now in the Louvre

    3. Art is intended to convey meaning. We may not understand the language or even like it, but the artist is telling you his/her thoughts, beliefs, feelings or attitudes towards something or about something. Think about how much public art we love or hate, are bronze statues of generals on horses art? I’m not sure, but for me they are simply memorials. The Winged Victory of Samothrace standing in the Louvre, is definitely art. In its time, it may been a memorial, that’s a thought worthy of more discussion for me. What was the original intention?

    4. Art must be recognized by society as art. It doesn’t have to be good or appreciated but it must be recognized as art. Two ends of the spectrum come to mind here. All the rotten paintings I have seen of Mt Rainier or even worse, bad ocean scenes, is one end of unappreciated and Robert Mapplethorpe’s inciendiary male nude photographs were at one time (for many in America) the other. Mapplethorpe stood the world on its ear in his time although now he is recognized as a 20th master of the photograph. Often great art pushes boundaries and makes people very uncomfortable, especially when it is in a shared space. Public art, there’s another discussion!

    Incredible tramp art shrine, from folkartisans.com, for sale on their site.

    Which brings up a whole other set of things: when does a photograph become art? I may need to chew on that a few days and do some reading up to refine my thoughts.

    5. Art is not craft, but art is crafted, and craft can become art. Tramp art for example. Its heyday was the Civil War through the 1930s, and it was not art for the most part when it was made/created, but definitely a craft using whatever was at hand by some very clever hands. Today, it is sought after and has transcended craft to become art.

    I construct both art and craft, and for me the difference is very clear. The boxes hidden under the tablecloth I showed the Boys to their delight, were art. I consciously intended to tell a story of Lost Childhoods. Thinking of the icons of my life, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Sam, the Grim Reaper, King Neptune, and so many more, I wanted to tell the story of what their childhood’s were.  They were definitely crafted but their intention was to tell a story.

    Father Time’s Lost Childhood, a constructed piece from my series Lost Childhoods

    When I create a garden ornament with an old salt shaker  or a piece of tin, my intention is to bring pleasure and joy to the new owner. They are one of a kind pieces, but they don’t tell a story, they fill a function and are definitely not art. The same is true for those who make work in multiples and sell it. The first piece may indeed be art, but the multiples become craft, fine artisanal craft but they cease to be art because they are not original.

    Metal garden art made from a ceiling tin

    The Webelos and I had a lively discussion and they loved the two pieces I brought, especially the more macabre ‘Grim Reaper’. In the end, I felt like I took away more than I gave because of the thought process involved. Ihope they retain a scrap of the discussion as they grow up and it gives them an ha  moment some day. I’m still having ah ha’s around here after this experience, what more could I ask for?

     

     

    Category Art is a tart, Life, the Universe and Everything | Tags: , | No Comments

  4. Trajectory

    February 15, 2013 by rox

    I’m not sure I want to share this post, but I definitely want/need to write it. I am headed back to California in the morning, most likely for the last time to ‘visit’ my family there. My dad died in the fall, I miss him terribly, and my 93 year old mother is going off the rails slowly but surely.

    Its odd how normal she sounds when I talk to her, but there are breaks where she yells and screams at me for what  she assumes is criticism or comments on her life and how she is living it. This is a woman who has never had a single happy day in her life as far as I can tell. The analogy for my mother is the kid on Christmas morning with too many presents who rips through all of them and looks for more. She has never taken the time to enjoy being in the moment. There is always another prize to acquire, another Thing to get, hold and hoard.

    I did have a really happy childhood in many ways, probably because I am the antitheses of mom. I seized every single joyful moment and relished it like another one was never coming. I’m still that way.

    I fight my weight and the idea that there is never another good thing coming is what informs a lot of my ingrained behavior.  I may never completely get my own mental garden completely weeded.  I had parents who had Rules for Them and other Rules for Us, my brother and me. My father was like the spoiled oldest son, mother kept him in line by indulging him ala Life With Father. Best porkchop, heart of the watermelon, only the best for dad and ultimately my brother, the Golden Child.

    I think my dad died to escape. My father was no angel. He was charming, weak and spoiled and he loved my mother more than life itself. They yelled, screamed, threw things and fought incessantly. I didn’t know some families weren’t like that until I was old enough to spend the night at friend’s houses.

    They kept boxes of candy in their dresser drawers and didn’t share them. My mom was always working on a Whitman’s Sampler. We were adept at looting the lower layers invisibly. She turned us into sneaks and thieves and liars because we were so afraid of punishment. My brother lost his moral compass then and he couldn’t steer true north, even after we were grown up.

    We weren’t allowed to eat between meals. I can remember as a teenager earning my own money in a part-time job, starving after school but afraid to be caught eating. I could wolf down a burger and a coke in the space of two blocks in my friend Gayle’s Volkswagen. My mother was always dramatic, violent anger and sweetness in the same ten minute period, it was crazy making. When she hit menopause she got a bad case of violent crazy and the happiness pretty much left us, I spent my teenage years at home being yelled at and belittled and hit with hands and a belt. The psychological abuse from the person who was supposed to love me unconditionally was the worst of it all.

    There was a level of crazy there that I still don’t quite understand. I know why she is the way she is and a lot of what happened to her but I still can’t quite grasp it even after all these years. We had some insanely happy times, camping in the desert, going on fishing trips in Colorado and decorating for holidays and so much more. I have wonderful memories but I think they are more intense and lit up because there was always an undercurrent of fear running through the good parts.

    My brother never escaped her orbit. He is now 63 and a complete failure at everything. He put a business up his nose in the good old cocaine days, destroyed two marriages and families, and got deeply into street drugs. He has cleaned up the drugs but the addition of an alcoholic stupid girlfriend iced that cake. He has lost every job he has managed to land through his own actions.

    Both he and my mother have never been able to accept responsibility for their lives and actions. He lost his last job and his home a few years ago and landed on the street with two big dogs and the drunken girlfriend. They showed up on my parents doorstep and never left. My brother has never been able to escape his mother’s barbed wired apron strings. He lives in the same small town where the police know him by name and his reputation precedes him. He is so emotionally crippled he can only talk about what he’s going to do and where’s he going to go, but he can’t make it happen. His mouth is foul and so is his temper, he is unemployable in part because every job interview he gets my good old mom calls the business and says don’t hire my son the drug addict. She does it from pure malice but she won’t ever admit it.

    Just like she won’t admit the 33 phone calls to the police in the last few months since my dad died. The police are now so tired of her and her fabrications that they are threatening to lock her in an old folks home and confiscate her estate. She doesn’t understand this. She doesn’t understand a lot of things.

    Her house is completely wrecked, her yard and property are trashed and fouled beyond belief. She has had a string of ex junkies who “helped” her,  helped carry off everything of value is more like it, while selling drugs from the guesthouse. This is what I’m having to walk into. I am not looking forward to this trip.

    I feel like owe this last trip to my dad. I left the house on bad terms two years ago and said I would never be back. My dad’s last words to me face to face were, “Next time you see me I’ll be planted in the ground.” We were both sobbing at the time. He was right. I don’t want to go but as the only sane member of my family of origin I feel compelled to at least understand and try to make some decisions that will affect my mother’s ability to live her life. She just turned 93 and I can say truthfully, I do not love her, I do not respect her, but I do respect what a mother is and that these people are family, like it or not.

    I escaped when I was 18 years old. My trajectory was up and out and I never looked back, I hate having to do this with all my heart but my own moral compass says I must give it this one final effort before I let go of the rope on their sinking ship.Yesteerday, I fielded 13 insane phone calls from them all, I have no idea what today will hold. I have to give it to God and the universe to keep me on course through this.

    We are planning on camping in the yard because the house is so awful. God bless Terry, he is going with me for the one to two weeks, depending on how much I can actually stand.

    I will be writing posts from the war zone. Stay tuned.

     

    Category Rabbit Remembers, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  5. TBI: Coming Back From the Edge, Caring and Cared For 2013

    February 14, 2013 by rox

     

    Its hard sometimes to see the need for support for a TBI victim, they can look comepletely normal but still feel so lost, navigating a changed landscape.

    Tonight Terry showed me an email from a list he belongs to, his Traumatic Brain Injury Support group. The man who wrote the entry posted this quote from a dear friend of his. I think it is so true and so telling and it speaks to the TBI survivors point of view, one that us “normal folk” may sometimes miss.

    “Brain injury at best is one of the harshest most sinister life changing disabilities a person can experience. It is not fair how it strips pieces of who we once were to the point where we must recreate ourselves, leaving us many times trying to navigate this hell. All the time those who we need the most cannot even see it, and by the time people get this figured out we have caused so much damage to the infrastructure of our lives.

    So here is this completely new person, with no support, no understanding. Many times they are labeled bi-polar, on drugs, crazy. All that is happening is this reformation, relearning of any of the  skills we lost, and on many survivors’ minds is this unfairness of how people treated us along this journey. Resentment, anger and even hate and rage have come from this.

    TBI victims can be called bi-polar, or crazy–mad as a hatter– or on drugs, when what they really are is re-inventing and re-learning themselves with little or no help.

    The time is now, that we the survivors of the world need to let new survivors know what could be in store, we need to connect our disability community to pose it in a position of power, not one of division and weakness. 65 million of us.

    Together we can achieve anything!

    Together there is nothing we cannot achieve. Alone we get lost in the corners of society.”  I believe a man named Peter Hoecherl wrote this and truer words were never spoken.

    I am caught on one side of the chasm that is TBI, and being the one left to try to pick up the pieces and lend support to a survivor has been the hardest thing I have ever done. I don’t regret a minute of it and Terry and I are damned lucky and we know it. Lucky because Terry was a firefighter with truly excellent insurance that paid for his care in a rehab facility like the Centre for Neuroskills in Bakersfield.

    Its been a crazy ride, getting back from there to here.

    Not very many Americans have access to that level of care. Without it, Terry could easily have lost the forward momentum he fought so hard for. He made it all the way back. Today he is about 95% of the man he was. Here’s the odd part, he’s a different man now. Its like being married to his twin. Brain trauma does some weird shit to people.

    I saw the lost part, the angry part, the confused part for myself as Terry came back from the edge. Again, brain trauma is truly crazy-making because the victim can look completely normal outside and be lost in the woods inside. Marriages break up and families shatter because care givers are as lost and confused as the traumatic brain injury victims.

    Sometimes we don’t even know who we are and that’s a terrible feeling.

    When Terry recovered and returned from his traumatic brain injury and returned to his job after less than a year of recovery and rehab, a miracle in itself,  he was welcomed warmly. Yay..round of applause…and then a lot (not all)  of his co-workers treated him like a crazy leper because he had been injured and they knew about it, they seemed afraid to give him back the work he had done before and avoided talking with or spending time with him. He felt like a charity case and it was maddening and frustrating.

    He felt isolated, alone, and like the only one in the world for a long time.

    My advice was to give it time and give his work his best because something would come along and eclipse his accident and it would be forgotten. Sure enough, it took over a year and he worked his arse off, but other things came along and the community memory faded. He is a fully-functioning team member and very much appreciated as one of the best in the business at what he does.

    I still  take a lot of the extra load off around here for him, I’m now the bill payer and the banker and the paper pusher because I can do it. Terry gets tired. That’s a side effect that will never go away. Rebuilding all those brain cells and neural pathways will take always take extra energy and I seem to have enough for both of us.

    Just because I pick up the slack doesn’t mean I’m a saint, I get tired and cranky and resentful of the fiscal hole we’ve had to climb out of after a major accident like Terry’s. I could still kick him on a regular basis for getting on his motorcycle at night in deer country and doing this to us, but I think the price he has paid has been high enough.

    That’s the thing to remember, the price TBI folks pay is never paid in full.  I think that’s why I started to write this blog, to pay all the love and care we got forward. I thought of all the families lost in the dark without a candle or a match and wondering what is going to happen to us? What could  happen? What comes next? How will I cope?  What’s out there in the dark?

    One day at a time is how we take it.

    I remember right after Terry got back to Olympia, he was in medical rehab for a broken neck, broken ribs and broken wrist and his short term memory was gone. I was home by myself and I googled Traumatic Brain Injury Support in Washington State. I didn’t find much, but I did stumble into a chat room of traumatic brain injury survivors and friends. I will never forget one 20 something girl telling me not to take more than one day at a time, she assured me it would get better. She told me her dad had been brain injured and her parents were still together and happy ten years later. At Christmas her mom bought and wrapped a present for her dad to give her mom and the giving and opening of that gift was special to both of them every year. It does get better, nothing is static, everything changes.

    She was right. It did get better. That’s the thing that a lot of people don’t realize about brain injury. If you keep challenging yourself you just keep getting better. There is no stopping point and you set your own speed limit. We made it. I’m not exactly sure how, but its Valentine’s Day now and Terry and I have a lot to celebrate. I’ll go back to the Chronicles and the Adventure of how we got from there to here tomorrow but right this minute, I’m celebrating us!

    Today, we celebrate us. Terry now.

     

    Category Down the Rabbit Hole:TBI, Life, the Universe and Everything, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  6. TBI and Philosophy, Keyhole Moving

    February 6, 2013 by rox

     

    Before Bakersfield, Terry looking sad and lost with wonderful John Neff. John went to bat for Terry and believed he could make it all the way and saved his job for him. John died last year and we all miss him terribly. I’m glad Terry got to prove John’s faith in him was justified. John Neff, my angel number one.

    11/20/2006 We must have done something right. Terry has been accepted at the Centre for Neuroskills in Bakersfield. We leave right after Thanksgiving in a borrowed motorhome with two wonderful firefighter friends at the helm. I will pay for the gas but that’s the easy part. I finally have hope.

    It’s time for a little philosophy.  I know everyone is saddened by the changes in Terry. He’s not the same proud independent guy we remember and its hard. It takes me down at strange times– grocery stores, pieces of music on the radio, driving down the road–I try not to cry and to just put one foot in front of the other but more than that, I always come back.

    I think I am an odd breed of cat and it helps me cope. From the time I was a little kid I can remember getting up every morning and thinking something wonderful would happen that day. I used to call it my butterfly feeling and it actually physically tickled in my chest like feathers or bubbles. I never lost it. Every day is new and special and wonderful things happen.

    It may be just seeing something with new eyes, finding a penny on the ground, making someone smile or better–laugh out loud. I have my tattoo that says Hope is a Thing with Feathers (Emily Dickinson) and my featherbracelet to remind me too. Yes, I get down but I don’t stay down and you shouldn’t either. I appreciate all of you holding us up with your wings–I can feel the breeze from all my angels out there every single day.

    To help you understand Traumatic Brain Injury and why I have to fight so hard to make sure Terry can stay at the Centre until he has made all the progress he can, I give you the following:

    In America we expect to take a pill, get an operation, or apply a cast, bandage or something orthopedic and impersonal to fix people. We look for the magic bullet and the magic gun and we have a hard time understanding that with brain injury the magic is in the hearts, hands and heads of the people who understand how to help. The magic is the depth of education and study they go through to even begin to be able to help.

    The brain is the last frontier, internal space rather than external, and I am so glad the Centre for Neuro Skills is full of intrepid “explorers  and rocket scientists”, so to speak, who will help Terry back from his long dark journey. If it can be done I think they can do it.

    With brain injury the only thing that can help is humans. Humans have to be the medical devices and their brains and hearts are tools of equal importance.

    Terry and Jerry Warnock, a firefighter EMT and the man who called me to break the news of Terry’s accident. The two of them and their motorcycles went way back. This was at the fire department a day or two before we left.

    To help someone with TBI is like moving all the furniture in a house that’s been in an earthquake through a keyhole. When the helpers arrive, the lights are out most of the time in the house and even seeing into the windows is problematic. When the lights are on everyone moves fast and does as much as they can. Moving furniture this way is hard, and the owner of the house is exhausted by all the racket coming in the keyhole and he retires to sleep and get away from it frequently. The helpers know this, and they take the dark time to plan strategy for the minutes they have light because moving furniture in the dark through a keyhole is really hard.

    As time goes by they help the owner of the house find the lamps one by one and get them turned on; whether it takes rewiring the fixture, putting in a new bulb or just turning the switch. That’s the assessment part.  After the lights stay on most of the time they can peek in the keyhole and see the house is a mess. They have to go about figuring out how to pick up couches and chairs from where they were knocked over and it’s hard. Sometimes it can’t be done and they just have to go around the overturned furniture.

    With luck and perseverance, the owner of the house can learn how to turn the key from the inside and open the door. When the door is opened, sometimes the helpers can help the owner go into other rooms and find furniture that will fit. It’s not the same but the couch works with the wallpaper so they go for it and it works out, a new couch is much better than no couch. At this point friends can come and sit on the couch and talk and find out how to go forward together.

    With God’s help, time, and the help of a lot of human furniture movers who are seriously trained specialists in Keyhole Moving, Terry will have a house/brain that is a home again and you will all be there with us when he does come back to Olympia.

    Nola and Terry. Nola is angel number two for me. She handled paperwork, ran interference, answered questions and was there every step of the way for fire department insurance issues and questions.

    Keep those wings beating my angels–we love you all.

    This was written just as we left for Bakersfield to begin the next Chapter of Terry’s story.

    Category Down the Rabbit Hole:TBI, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | No Comments

  7. The Bureaucratic Bridge

    February 4, 2013 by rox

    The Bureaucratic Bridge-or how we got Terry from here to There. October 2006.

    This is the guy I married, Christmas time delivering toys with Santa on an antique fire truck.

    Where was I? I think I left off with our turn in the psych ward at St Peter’s Hospital.  Somewhere around there I hit the point of desperation, and blessedly due to a chain of prayers and circumstances we found Dr Joe Moisan, my personal angel.

    Terry’s sister Penny had Dr Joe as a visiting faculty lecturer in a college psych class. She gave me his phone number and begged me to call him, she thought he could help us. He agreed to see Sherry and me the same morning I called. We drove the hour to Grapeview out on the Hood Canal to his home on the water.  We were there so long his wife had to make us tuna sandwiches for lunch.

    Dr Joe cut through more malarkey in one more morning than I cut through in two months. Amazing. Joe called and had an appointment with Social Security set up, even though Terry didn’t qualify because fire fighters here are self-insured, just one more hoop to jump through.

    He  made a phone call to Bakersfield, California to the Centre for Neuroskills because he thought the facility might be the perfect place to help Terry. That turned out to be a life changing call. We got an appointment set up in the Seattle area with a neuropsychologist to assess Terry’s level of cognizance and exactly where his injury was causing problems.

    I dreaded the drive to Seattle with a crazy guy who might jump out of the car any minute, but I would have walked and carried him to get the help we needed. I wrote out a check for the down payment on Dr Joe’s service and thanked God for good insurance and a great ombudsman.

    He guided me through the next few weeks and made the drive to meet Terry one evening. Doctor Joe gave me excellent advice on techniques to deflect some of the head-on battles I was running into with Terry. The care and information we give caregivers is abysmal, no wonder they burn out and fall apart, me included. Just knowing about how to handle things with deflection or distraction was wonderful and made life so much better.

    This is what I had at home. A truculent, cranky, crabby man I didn’t know any more. This doesn’t even look like Terry.

    In the middle of hoping we could get Terry into a facility dedicated only to brain trauma rehab, I still had hoops to jump through every day with mountains of disability paperwork to fill out. Duplicate statements had to be gathered from a raft of doctors, policemen, caregivers and our medical insurance providers. I quickly filled an entire drawer in my filing cabinet with paperwork .I still have it. It amazed me how many times I had to send the same stuff to the same bureaucrats.

    I have to say our medical insurance people were wonderful; we have two companies because Terry is a retired fire fighter. Both providers gave us an ombudsman which helped a lot and it’s something I recommend anyone dealing with a huge medical issue. Insist on your own person who is a point of contact.

    The Social Security disability interview was hilarious. The lovely young lady doing the interviewing insisted Dr Joe and I sit in the back row while she spoke to Terry and asked him simple questions. He got his name right, but not his birth date. Then she started on the hard stuff, like his mother’s name and where she was born. We were off to the races and I had to fight to keep my mouth shut. Doctor Joe laid a restraining hand on my arm and signaled to let them flounder away. Terry was great; he made it up as he went along. I learned along my way through the brain trauma swamp this is called confabulation. The brain takes snippets of information that may be correct and just pastes up anything it can find to make whole cloth. It was fun to watch as she just got more and more lost before she finally put her pencil down and sputtered to a bewildered stop.

    We got a form letter from Social Security two weeks later saying he didn’t qualify for Social Security Disability because he was a self-insured fire fighter, which I promptly sent along to the disability people, checking off the just one more exercise-in-stupidity-box.

    Sherry and I took Terry to Seattle  on a damp fall day to see the neuro doc, carefully making sure Terry couldn’t get the door to the car open from inside. Thank you for childproof locks, Dodge Company. It took hours and he flubbed almost everything. The doctor was able to pinpoint where the injury was and what was going on which was more light shed than we had had to that point.

    Before we knew it, the Centre for Neuroskills had sent a caseworker all the way from Bakersfield to visit us at home. The poor guy arrived on a soaking wet pouring-down-rain day from sunny California. He looked like a drowned cat but he knew his stuff and he told Dr Joe and me he thought Terry would be a good candidate for CNS. Except. Except that Terry’s birthday made him a week too old for the Centre.  Thankfully, they bent the rules and accepted him as an inpatient for as long as it would take, they thought about a year. For the first time I could see a light at the end of the tunnel that wasn’t the headlight of an oncoming train. There was help on the way and I felt like crying but didn’t have time.

    I have to say, TBI care is seriously expensive help. If I had been the one who killed a deer with my head I would be stashed somewhere local, degrading into an inconvenient brick around the family’s neck. Once again, being a fire fighter is a wonderful thing. In return for running into burning buildings and pulling people in pieces out of cars after accidents, the fire department takes care of their own, and does it well. I’ll say it again, I am eternally grateful.

    Category Down the Rabbit Hole:TBI, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  8. Get the Flock Out- Show Off Your Collections for Christmas

    December 13, 2012 by rox

    Loving the sparkly lights, crystal and my sheep collection for Christmas

    I am sitting here in front of my computer, writing and listening to Percy Faith and Mantovani”s Orchestra playing the Christmas music of my childhood. Thank you iTunes for not letting this wonderful stuff disappear from my life. I got a new photographic backdrop this week and I was just dying for a free morning to play with it.

    Between Instagram and my new gradient background-winning! These are my first two sheep, Germany and 56 years old.

    I love what it does to ‘product’ pix!  For fun, I got my two sheeps, yes sheeps, out and took their portrait. That reminded me of childhood Christmas memories of being a kid in Germany. There is no place more magical during the holidays than a German city. Its like every old fashioned Christmas card ever printed. To this day the smell of coal burning almost makes me cry with nostalgia. I loved living in Europe and I still miss it every day. that being said, I’m lucky I have so many amazing memories of Christmases past–including my sheeps.

    These two funny looking animals are made of plaster or clay with cotton flannel ‘wool’, painted faces and wooden legs, circa 1957. We got them as a gift from Saint Nicholas, one each for my brother and me. They always had pride of price in the manger when we were growing up although they didn’t match anything else in that elegant Italian manger.

    Tiny Wade sheep and English sheep and Japanese sheep mix it up.

    I have to hand it to my mom, she knew how to entertain kids. She would hand us a giant enameled tray and send us outside to build the landscape for the manger each year. Moss, trees, sticks, rocks and hours of labor went into the building before it was carefully carried inside and installed. Then we got to put the actual pieces in place. Three wisemen, a camel, a cow, a donkey, Joseph, Mary, the baby Jesus, a shepherd, his sheep and our sheep.

    Not sheep, but I love, love, love what happens when  you cover little trees with glue and roll them in glitter. So pretty!

    The years rolled by and I left home and sheep behind. Over time,  I kept looking for the right sheep to replace those two funny looking sheep of memory. Sheep became one of my first collections and mostly they live in a cabinet these days.

    I couldn’t resist these goofy sheep from a thrift store. They remind me of my youngest son’s favorite story from his childhood, “Sheep in a Jeep”, although this is definitely a sled.

    I never found a sheep to replace the first two, but last time I was home I found THEM. They were abandoned in a drawer in my mother’s antique desk. I tucked them in my suitcase and now here they are, Christmas again, 56 years later. Holy crap, how did that many years pass me by?

    Pretty and romantic.

    I decided to bring the flock out and use them to decorate for Christmas. After all there were sheep in the Holy Land when Jesus was born right? I highly recommend to anyone, if you have a collection you love, bring it out and integrate in your celebration decoration.

    vases are pretty with crystal garland wound into arrangements, light catchers!

    I mixed my sheep with little bits of crystal, perfume bottles and spheres, because they do such a great job of catching and reflecting light.

    The fat sheep in the background was made by a famous Dutch artist who lives in France, I got to stay at his bed and breakfast and buy this little sheep treasure.

    There are my two old faves and a charming china doll, tiny, along with a crystal jar that has an enameled lid. Sparkle!

     

    If my brother ever finds out I liberated his little sheep, in the foreground, I’m in trouble. It needed a home and now it has a whole flock!

    Category Art is a tart, Christmas Bunny, Rabbit Remembers | Tags: | 2 Comments

  9. Big, Warm, German Pretzels Step-by-Step

    November 29, 2012 by rox

    Yummy pretzels, big crusty and warm!

    There are a few secret recipes in my family that I would be drawn and quartered if I shared. This is not one of those,  but it is by far the most popular thing I have ever made, far outpacing both the secret gingersnaps and the secret peanut brittle, which makes me very happy.

    Every Thanksgiving we share the day with friends and have an old school pot luck T-day. I brought warm pretzels and halfway through dinner someone stood up asked who brought them and would I share  the recipe?. So here it is in all its tasty glory. I have included photos and a step-by-description for those who would like to give them a try but have not yet ventured into the land of making bread with yeast in it. I also put the full recipe at the very bottom for those who are experienced and want to skip over the handholding part.

    These are great fun to roll out with kids and the recipe doubles and triples easily, just write down the new measurements before you start, experience speaking there.  Try them with hot sweet spicy mustard or just slathered in butter. They are best warm but that’s fine because the whole batch will disappear before you know what happened.

    Ingredients and recipe ready to roll.

    This recipe makes about 12 large pretzels. Begin by making your “sponge”, that’s what the pros call the wet mixture with yeast and yeast food in it. In this case,  open 2 packages of yeast, (I always use dried yeast because its easiest) and sprinkle it in your biggest mixing bowl. Add to that 2 cups of really warm water. Warm not boiling hot, you want to start the yeast not kill it.  Add 2 tablespoons of sugar (that’s the yeast food)  and whisk this mixture well. Add 4 tablespoons of salad oil and 3 cups of unsifted flour. You can whisk this mixture but you’ll notice its starting to get pretty thick and not whiskable about now.

    Getting gooey, time to shake out the whisk and oil up the hands to mix in the rest of the flour.

    Take the whisk out and prepare to get your hands dirty. Anything that will get gooey–like your diamond ring, you might want to remove until this part is over. Add about 2-4 cups more flour and mix it in well with your hands. You are creating a kneadable dough by mixing with your hands, much easier than a spoon, trust me. I always wind up with the full four cups of flour myself and just work harder to work it in.

    The dough isn’t very pretty when you dump it out to work the rest of the flour in to make a smooth dough. You need to knead.

    Sprinkle some flour on your counter top and dump the dough out after you have made most of it stick together by working it with your hands. It is going to stick to you like crazy and glob up on your hands, until you get enough flour in to turn it into dough, at which point it sticks to itself not you.

    I’m so short I have to stand on a stool to knead dough. My fantasy is a shorter counter in my kitchen but I’m pretty sure the reality is keep a stool handy. Kneading dough is a zen thing. All the books say ten minutes, but if I kneaded dough for ten minutes I’d be so tired I needed a nap. The goal is to turn this lump of warty looking stuff with bits falling off of it into a smooth elastic ball.

    It should look smooth and elastic after being kneaded.

    Put the lump in front of you, lean on the front of it with all your weight on the palms of your hands. Push the dough away from you with that weight on it. Turn the lump a quarter turn and go back and do it again. Keep turning and pushing, developing a kind of rocking motion. Its very zen and after a few minutes it feels pretty rhythmic and and accomplished. When you can roll the dough into a ball and it doesn’t pull apart into pieces but stretches like dough elastic, you are there, usually around five minutes, maybe more for beginners until you figure out you do have rhythm.

    Trick: Get another bowl out, oil the bottom and the sides, use your hands, you are already covered with flour up to your elbows. Dump your ball of dough in the bowl upside down. Roll it over and you have just oiled the dough and the bowl and they won’t stick to each other as the dough rises.

    Cover the dough with a clean dish towel and put it somewhere warm away from drafts for an hour or two. I have been known to heat the oven to 200 degrees and then turn it off with the door open putting my dough in there to rise, just don’t forget its there. Now, go find a beverage and relax for an hour or two. That’s the end of  phase one.

    Grab a beverage and relax until its time to roll out the pretzels. A couple of hours downtime while the dough rises.

    PHASE TWO: Pretzel Prep.

    If you don’t have a Silpat get one or two,they are a baker’s best friend, a kitchen miracle!

    Get out your cookie sheets. If you don’t have a Silpat, you should buy one or two. They are horrendously expensive, like 20 bucks each but they will save your life and make you happy when it comes time to clean up.. My cookie sheets are six years old and so are my Silpats. The Silpats look like crap now but still work great. The cookie sheets look like I bought them last week. NOTHING sticks! Nothing, seriously.  Sadly, if you are Silpat-less, oil the bejeebers out of your cookie sheets.

    Go get your dough and admire it one more time before you punch it in the middle with your fist. It will deflate but it will rise again when you get down to rolling it out.

    All raised and ready

    Meanwhile back at the ranch, put the deflated dough aside and get a good-sized STAINLESS STEEL pot out. Not aluminum. Measure about 8-10 cups of water into it and add one tablespoon of baking soda for every cup of water in the pot. Heat this to boiling while you roll your pretzels. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and let it get up to temperature while you roll out the pretzels.

    Soda is the secret to pretzels

    Take your sad deflated dough and yank a chunk off of it. I am not sure how to describe the amount that works best in terms for publication. Experiment to find out what works best for you.  Roll it out into a very long ‘snake’. I have included a how to fold up a pretzel chart because the first time I did it I was really confused. Your ‘snake’ should be about 16 inches long the thickness of a kid’s fat Crayola crayon, not the regular skinny kind. Do the pretzel roll and put it the finished pretzel on your prepared cookie sheet.

    By now the soda water should be boiling, set the heat to just maintain a boil. When you have two full sheets of pretzels (one for each rack of your oven) get a slotted utensil, spatula or spoon both work, and lower a rolled pretzel into the boiling water. Ten seconds on one side, flip it over in the water and give it another ten. Fish it out put it back on the cookie sheet and do the same thing with all of your pretzels. The soda boil is what makes a pretzel a pretzel and not just a piece of bread.

    Boiled and beautiful

    When they have all had their bath–which is what gives that wonderful pretzel flavor and color as I mentioned, sprinkle them with salt or poppy or sesame seeds. I love pink Hawaiian salt so that is what I used for these.

    I love pink salt for its flavor, that and I can actually see what I’ve already salted.

    When they are salted and ready to bake, slide them into the oven. I always pull them out after ten minutes and switch racks. Bottom goes on top and the ones on the top move to the bottom, this makes sure they all come out the same doneness on the tops and bottoms.

    Ready to bake

    Another 4-6 minutes and you can get the hotpads and fish out the goldern brown pretzels out to cool while fighting the clan off at the same time. Move them to a rack to cool just a little and dig in.

    Pretzel perfection, crunchy, warm and fabulous!

    If you have doubled or tripled your batch, after you pull out the first batch and moved them to cool, do the whole thing again. Just keep on rolling  and baking two racks at a time until you are done, stopping to enjoy a few tasty morsels on the way.

    Try these with soup in the winter for dinner. Slather them with butter and serve with a big bowl of homemade soup, yum. Alternatively, bake them while everyone is out of the house and eat all twelve. Yes, they are that good. Best of all? These tasty treats are  stupid easy with no sifting and very few ingredients.

    THE RECIPE: PRETZELS

    2 pkgs dried yeast, 2 cups warm water, 3 cups flour, 4 tablespoons salad oil, 2 tablespoons sugar.

    Approx 2-4 cups more flour as needed, rock salt or sesame or poppy seeds. 8 cups water, 8 tablespoons soda, STAINLESS STEEL pot/pan for boiling pretzels (note: you can use more or less water, just use 1 tablespoon of soda for every cup of water).

    Whisk yeast, warm water, sugar, and salad oil together in bowl. Stir in 3 cups unsifted flour and mix thoroughly. Work in 2-4 more cups flour (as needed) to make kneadable dough.

    Turn dough out on floured surface and knead until smooth and pliable. Put in an oiled bowl and let rise in a warm place, about two hours.

    When ready to proceed: Put water and soda in pot/pan and bring to a boil, preheat oven to 425 degrees.

    Use Silpats or thoroughly grease cookie sheets.

    Punch down dough and pull off pieces and roll into long (approx. 14″) rolls, twist into a pretzel shape and place on prepared pan. When two cookie sheets are filled (12 pretzels)  put each pretzel into the boiling soda water for ten seconds on each side. Lift and drain and place back on cookie sheet. Do this with all pretzels until sheets are filled. Sprinkle with salt or seeds and bake in preheated oven for a total of 12-15 minutes until golden brown. If doubling or tripling recipe, simply repeat process until all dough is used. Serve warm.

     

    Category Directions for making cool stuff, Rabbit Food: eat/drink/cook/love | Tags: , , , , | No Comments

  10. Project Snowman Conversion

    November 28, 2012 by rox

     

    Snowmen formerly known as Salt Shakers

    I can never resist a saltshaker, especially those big heavy glass ones that no one uses anymore. Glass bottles make me happy too, especially little ones. But what do you do with a batch of bottles? In this case Snowman conversion.

    I started with this idea last week and made a batch of heads using Celluclay, a papier mache mix that comes pre-packaged. Add water, squish until its the consistency of butter and shape. I keep bamboo skewers around and they are the perfect head handle. Macabre, I tried not think of a head on a stake… I dried the heads for a few days and then got to work.

    Saltshaker, German glitter, paper mache head made of celluclay papier mache mix, great stuff!

    The next step is to wash and dry your containers–save the tops, especially the cool metal ones. I decided I wanted to put something inside my containers.

    I like words in the bottles

    I couldn’t find quotes I liked so I wrote snowmen haiku and printed them out. I printed my haiku on silver paper in landscape format, that’s lengthwise, because I knew I would be cutting them out in a long narrow strip.

    Haiku for Christmas

    Meyer Imports on line carries exquisite, gorgeous, fantastic German glass glitter. Its the stuff that is made of glass, shiny and old school. I like that for sparkly outsides but I have discovered glitter inside a jar can cloud the walls with a static electricity cling. The answer? Tiny glass beads. They are available in the glitter section of your local craft store and come in a ton of colors, Martha Stewart makes my favorites in color, but Meyer Imports gets my vote for buying a large quantity.

    Glass beads, just enough for a “pop” of snow and a haiku in place.

    I carefully rolled my haiku around a pencil and worked them into the bottle necks, using a skewer to help them untangle and unroll. A quick pour of about a 1/4 inch of beads for effect and a few pearls for pretty and the bodies were done.

    I took the heads and fitted them on each bottle because each one has its own personality and it was fun to decide where they looked best. Before they got glued down with E6000 killer glue, I used my dremel to make a hole for the nose, a toothpick in its original life. I trimmed the toothpick to fit for length and put on a quick coat of paint with a Qtip.

    I made small holes for the eyes and mouth.

    I used my pointy tool, which is really for starting nail holes, to ‘drill out’ a little opening to set each small black piece of coal in the face, aka tiny black beads.  I put a good dab of E6000 in each hole and set the beads and the nose piece. I glittered the face at this point to make sure the glue got covered. Voila, sticks to the excess and I don’t have to go back and glue paint the details of the face. Smart me.

    Finished face before glittering with my pointy tool and glue tube.

    I let the eyes and mouth set for about ten minutes before I went back with white glue and a small paintbrush to coat each head thoroughly before dipping it in my glitter box and sprinkling glitter all over.

    Glitterbox

    To keep my studio from looking like I just murdered Tinker Belle, I keep the glitter I am working with in a wooden cigar box, I use a piece of sandpaper for a scoop and pour it over the piece. When I’m done it makes it easier to collect and save the unsued glitter and it keeps it from spreading everywhere like fairy dust.

    drying time again.

    I leave the heads on their skewers to make it easy to work with them until I set them in place on the bottles. While they dried I cut out scarves.

    felted sweater bits, handy to have around.

    Old wool sweaters that are felted and shrunk are wonderful things for a lot of reasons, they cut just like material and don’t fray like woolly is wont to do.

    teeny little scarf, cut and measured.

    These tidbits from last year lent themselves nicely to become tiny snowman scarves. I wrestled with them and tied them down first, then lifted and dabbed glue on to hold them in place.

    Next task was to set the heads on with E6000, I resprinkled the heads and necks with glitter to disguise any excess glue, being careful not to tip the bottle and lose the head.

    Ready for my hat!

    The most fun of all is selecting which salt shaker lid works best for a hat, who knew these little doodads would make such charming helmets? I even put rhinestones on one snowman in place of a scarf, making it a snowgirl with a lot bling.

     

    Snowpack

    Snow couple finished and ready for Christmas.

    These are a complicated project and there are a lot of specialty bits required, that being said, if you wanted to tackle something like this everything you need is easily available and not expensive. What are you going to make this Christmas?

    Category Art is a tart, Christmas Bunny, Directions for making cool stuff, Rabbit's Makes Art, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments

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