Margo Said...

you

will always have windmills

reflections on the mental health care system

Last night at work we had a sober guy rocking in his room back and forth shouting weird things. He had covered his body with obscenities (via a black permanent marker.) On his bed were two sheets of paper covered with his handwriting....full of Nazi swastikas, a devil pentagram, and more obscenities and homicidal/suicidal rants.
With gentle maneuvering we convinced him to get into the car and we drove him the 600 yards to the emergency room. Once at the hospital the psych eval team came in and they decided he was not a risk to himself or others and allowed him to leave the hospital.....in spite of his having admitted violent anger issues.
How is it that a psych team thought he was in his right mind? He was stone sober BTW and not under the influence of any Detox medications. A short while later he called from his girl friend's car and wanted to know if he could return to our Rehab....
How is it helpful to this poor man to have him released into society...still covered in obscenities?
Did I mention we do not yet have the new security cameras installed or that although all our outside doors lock, the alarm system no longer works on them nor has it since November?

Summer is coming!

Me and the Cardinal and all the rest!

April Vacation

How great to finally feel Spring! The sun has been out for almost a week now and although it is still technically too cold to have the screen door open and the windows up, we do anyway.
My Corey is back from his first year away at college. He has already managed to break the automatic "shut the door" arm on the aforementioned screen door. Hockey equipment, Rock Band paraphernalia, and piles of clothes are strewn about, the remnants of dorm life.
His buddy Andy spent most of the weekend sprawled out on our living room couch but we finally booted the boys and all their debris down cellar to Corey's room.
The room is currently a three walled, no heat affair down in the cellar between Julie's bedroom and the laundry area. Back when Corey was certain his life was miserable (when he was 17) he bemoaned his lack of a room of his own. We agreed to split the cost with him and have Don set him up downstairs. We kept up our end of the bargain, Corey however has yet to gather the money for his fourth wall.
He certainly does not complain about the lack of wall...although he cannot understand why his father would not hang up more shelves. I showed Corey a couple of shelves and small bookcases (out in the shed) that could be cleaned up and hung up, with a little Corey- sweat -equity. But Corey was quite surprised that I would even suggest such a thing. "Mom you know I am lazy, let's have Dad do it."
My college boy did however go up to reapply at Shaw's and he has happily entertained the younger kids and all their friends with raucous street hockey games and joyfully chaotic Rock Band video challenges.
The younger kids have a week of playmates scheduled to come over....at least until I have to work at weeks end. Baseball and softball and track season are underway with all that goes along with that: Constant drop off and pick ups at various fields, dinner that has to be perfectly timed between games and practices, extra money gotten from somewhere to cover the extraneous equipment no athlete can do without. (Why must EVERY sport have special must have shoes, cleats, etc?)
Today I am going to try to carve out some time to put the onion sets in the garden and plant some cool weather crops like peas. I also have a seed starter tray that should be filled with tiny warm weather crops like tomatoes. I meant to start those in March, but somehow never got around to it. Life is full tilt here but oh it feels so good to feel the sun's rays.
We had a small tragedy when Patchy The Pirate brought home a tiny live wild bunny. That cat is better than a Beverly Hillbilly for bringing home game. We tried to keep it alive, having some domestic rabbit experience, but the poor little thing did not make it.
It is buried near the compost pile, along with a robin, two moles, and a field mouse. I believe we hurt Patchy's feelings when we bury her thoughtful gifts that she lays on the front steps. I would try to keep her in the house. (If you recall a coyote made off with her sire.) But the front screen door has that broken keep shut mechanism and besides, who could keep a steely hunter inside on such lovely spring days. Luckily for her the coyotes have moved on, their den bulldozed by the bog guys.
Just finished cleaning the chicken eggs, one poor hen has been very broody and she keeps trying to tuck everyone's eggs under her! The full moon is still in evidence so we will have to find time for some rabbit breeding.
Maybe, just maybe I can steal a little time to hideaway, like the broody hen, and get in some reading out in my garden. Happy Spring everyone!

Julie the 60's girl

Julie used acrylics with a sharpie for the outlines.
She was inspired by the Peter Max paintings of the 60's.
This is a for real Peter Max!

Cardinal O'Malley and the Blaussy Bunch

The Cardinal had patiently posed with groups of couples celebrating their 50th or 25th wedding anniversaries. A photographer for The Pilot was taking the group pictures, that everyone could purchase later from their website. After all the group shots of wedding couples His Emminence was suppose to leave for another engagement. But he posed for a few more photos when requested. He needed to sit due to in injury to his knee. Yet he remained humble and friendly to everyone. His Deacon however was getting nervous that the Cardinal would be late and tried to shoo everyone along.
Donnie tried to catch the Deacon's eye to see if we could get a family shot with the Cardinal. I grabbed Joe in front of me and Nikki next to me and looked particularly hopeful and when the Deacon caught our eye he started to laugh and said...go ahead go ahead but make it quick.
Well Blausses know how to get in and out of a photo shoot quickly. We lined up, the Pilot photog got his shot, and then Louise managed to capture us as well!

Jubilarians

The Cardinal called us Jubilarians, I liked that. I shall blog more about it after dinner. But I wanted to post a couple of photos quick that Louise and Mary took. We even talked the Deacon into letting us have a private family photo with Cardinal O'Malley just before he left for another event. Having cute well behavd children helped!

Silver Wedding Jubilee

My namesake

These are the twins Susie and Sam, born of Sally and an unknown father. (But what father is ever truly sure they are HIS kids anyway?:>) They were born at Plimoth Plantation, part of their heritage breed program and now live at Ripley farm.

My Birthday present

Well I got to visit her for my birthday. She actually lives at Mr Ripley's farm. Her name is Laurel and I can visit her whenever I want!

Small Town stuff

So my neighbor (I shall not name names ;>) is now known at the town hall as the Penis Lady..... that word is funny to look at in print and the story is even sillier.
It seems the town has been plagued by a couple of graffiti artists who have been defacing property. Apparently they spray painted a very large and very obvious phallic symbol on a business that is on route 58, the major road through town.
This symbol has been up for a few weeks and was noticed even by the school children who giggled about it on the school bus. Let me stress (much to my disappointment) I never noticed the aforementioned graffiti.
My neighbor got fed up with seeing it every time she drove by and fired off a carefully worded email to the town hall asking them to do something about it. Now in her email she mentioned that due to the filters on her work email she could not name what the picture represented only that it was inappropriate and wasn't there something that could be done to remove it.
She quickly got a response from a town hall employee who is himself facing sexual harassment charges. In his equally carefully worded email he commented that he had driven to the property to view the graffiti, agreed it was not appropriate but that the town could not exactly solve the problem.
Then after some discussion (wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall for THAT meeting of the minds) it was decided that the board of health guy and zoning board guy would politely go to the business and ask that the owners cover up the phallic symbol.
Why the board of health guy (who is in fact a lovely man) is a fun mystery to ponder. I suppose a zoning board guy makes sense because he would be in charge of store signs, and we must have rules about phallic signs correct?
Well the business is owned by a nice family with young kids and the wife was there when the town hall guys showed up. In addition to the problem that the town cannot make the owners clean up the graffiti there was also a slight language barrier as the wife is from another country.
She was under the impression that when the cops caught the illegal artists the wrong doers would be required to paint over the defacement.
Now I am not privy to the word choices that these two men, already uncomfortable in their role as art critics, used to explain WHAT the symbol appeared to be, to a woman whose English was a second language.... But by the time they finished their visit, they left with the assurance that the husband would be painting over the graffiti IMMEDIATELY.
The very next night my neighbor had business to attend to at town hall and both she and the guy she emailed carefully avoided eye contact. Nothing was said about the graffiti or emails, but she is certain she will forever be known in the hallowed building of the Carver Town Hall as the Penis Lady.

An Important Announcement

Jamie has been accepted to Old Colony Technical High School!
He has been into cars since he was a tiny toddler and Old Colony has been his dream school. Now we just have to get him through the rest of eighth grade with passing marks, no easy feat!

The Dress....The Shoes

David's Bridal a wedding inspired dress. In a size smaller than I expected which is always good. And look I indent a little in the middle. Julie says it makes me look tall. I can hardly wait to get married again.

These are the most perfect shoes and a gift from my Mary. I love having a grown up daughter. Going for my dress reminded me of the fun of picking out her wedding ensemble.

What to wear to a Wedding Renewal

If you look online to get ideas for what to wear when you renew your vows all this information comes up about the Elvis chapel in Las Vegas or wedding renewals in Hawaii. Now if I was having the Mass performed by an Elvis impersonator or having my vows renewed on a tropical island I would so know what to wear. But at a Mass officiated by the cardinal? Now that calls for something understated and elegant. (and no cleavage.) What to wear, what to wear....

25th Wedding Anniversary

Anyone free on Sunday April 13th, around 11:30 am? Want to come to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and watch Don and I renew our wedding vows? We can go for ice cream afterwards.
The Cardinal is having a Mass for all couples celebrating their 25th or 50th wedding anniversaries this year. As of August 27th that will be us... hard to imagine, twenty-five years of wedded bliss.
I had no idea, when I married what hard work it would be sometimes. But I also had no idea how fun, exciting, maddening, silly, spiritual, sexy, or relaxing it would be either.
Being one of two is not always easy...especially when you are as stubborn as I am. (Or as stubborn as Donnie is for that matter.)
When a high maintainance woman marries a supposedly low maintainance guy it is bound to be a lively exchange. But here we are 25 years later, still standing, still laughing, and yes on occasion still fighting. But still together at the end of the day....(he still hogs my side of the bed.)
If anyone wants to caravan to the cathedral or meet us afterwards let us know. Sullivan's is still at Castle Island, lets go there for ice cream.

Dancing in the New age

Saturday night we went to check out a new band in Halifax. They sounded great and it was fun watching all the people dancing and having a good time. What was strange to see, many women danced holding their beer bottles in hand.
Now I have been to hear country bands (a few years ago) and the only women holding their drinks and dancing were VERY drunk ones. Yet none of these women looked particularly drunk (and after 7 years at the Detox I can spot the intoxicated person a mile away;>).
I could not figure out why a lady would want to dance, beer bottle in hand. Then Eileen made a comment that it was still hard to get use to seeing people dancing with their bottles but she supposed it was better to be safe than sorry.
That is when it all clicked into place. Single woman dance holding their bottles so no one puts anything into them! Unbelievable!
As Eileen and I got up during the last set to dance I happened to glance over at our table to see Donnie sitting there, watching the band. Eileen tried to guilt him into getting up but I made her let him be. He really does not like to dance and while he is willing to do the occasional slow song, I do not have the heart to MAKE him fast dance.
Anyway he caught my eye and gave me a smile, for while He may not enjoy dancing, he does get a kick out of the fact that I do. That is when it hit me. All the women on the dance floor need a Donnie to guard their drinks...