Ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps,
Cross eyed mosquitoes, and bow legged ants.
I am about
To tell you a tale I know nothing about.

Early one morning, in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
They stood back to back and faced each other;
Pulled out their swords and shot each other.

A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came and killed those two dead boys.
If you don't believe this lie is true,
Just ask the blind man - he saw it too.

This is an old poem; actually it's two old poems, sort of mashed together. The first four lines actually don't belong with the rest of the poem. But I learned it from Mark and this is what he remembers - more or less.

Hope I started your day with a laugh.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It's five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules ...

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don't edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Life is an interesting thing.

Some days, it's a bit like having a Facebook account - stuff that you know you didn't agree to pops up to surprise you. You run around in circles, trying desperately to fix what you hadn't actually broken. Hoping against hope that you can.

Other days, it's like dancing in the warm summer rain with someone you love. Nothing could be better. (I've been there, done that; it is incredible.)

Every day, we wake up not knowing what kind of day it will be. I guess that's what makes life interesting; or incredibly frustrating. It all depends, I suppose, on how you look at the 'gifts' that arrive with each new day.

Life is an interesting thing. Much better, I imagine, than the alternative; although there are days.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It's five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules ...

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don't edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

I suppose, as my bedtime reading has been the "Three Sisters" trilogy and I'm currently watching Harry Potter chase dragons, it's not surprising that I have magic and power on my mind.

For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of having 'special' powers, of being able to twitch my nose or blink my eyes and change what is. I would imagine part of that accounts for the popularity of Harry Potter and other magical stories. As children, we rarely operate from a position of power.

You don't have to come from a dysfunctional family to feel powerless, although that certainly helps. As parents, we tend to think we know what's best for our kids. If we, and they, are lucky, as they mature - so do we.

Children, in order to become healthy adults, need chances and opportunities to make their own decisions; to operate from a position of power, however limited that power might be. This is how they learn self-reliance and develop personal autonomy, the hallmarks of stable and well-balanced adults.

When those opportunities are missing at critical stages of development, powerless children can evolve into adults who constantly need guidance and reassurance.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It's five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules ...

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don't edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

It all started late in May of 2003. Mark came home, not feeling well, and went in to lay down. By the next morning, he had a fever of about 104° and the ambulance was at the door. He was septic and the doctors suggested we call the family; the beginning of, nearly, the end.

No one told Mark he was supposed to die, so he didn't.

By January 2004, he had been in and out of the hospital more times than I could count. He had HepC and his liver was failing. Shortly before his birthday, he slipped into a hepatic coma. Only 20% of patients ever come out of a hepatic coma.

No one told Mark he was supposed to die, so he didn't.

We celebrated his birthday, February 3rd, at the VA with his family present. He wasn't even remotely well, but he was alive and that was worth celebrating. (While all of this was going on, we were working our tails off to get his disability instated.)

No one told Mark he was supposed to die, so he didn't.

If I thought he was sick in January, by April I knew that we hadn't seen anything. Mark needed a new liver. The VA in Phoenix sent us to the VA in Portland for evaluation, in an attempt to get Mark listed for transplant. They nearly killed him; and refused to put him on the transplant list.

We came home and signed up for hospice care. The scale for measuring liver failure tops out at 40; Mark was at 38. They brought in oxygen tanks and tried to help me understand that he had about 2 months to live.

No one told Mark he was supposed to die, so he didn't.

Then, one day, I checked the mail. Mark's disability had come through, but no insurance coverage - until that day. An envelope in the mail held the hope for our future - the state was giving Mark insurance. We notified our contacts at the VA.

Immediately, we had to stop hospice; patients on hospice can't get on the transplant list. Before I could take a breath, we had appointments with the transplant clinic and a transplant surgeon. On the day we met Dr. James Cashman, Mark was added to the transplant list and admitted to the hospital.

My memory is a little fuzzy - but, as I recall, the surgery took place within 72 hours.

On July 2, 2004 Mark was released from Good Samaritan Hospital with a brand new liver. And that's an anniversary I will gladly celebrate.

No one told Mark he was supposed to die, so he didn't.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It's five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules ...

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don't edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

This has been a thrilling (insert sarcastic tone 'here') week.

With our updated and upgraded internet connection, everything has been a lesson in patience. Lesson learned? I have no patience.

I don't think I've been this peeved in a very long time and, trust me, I've been known to get pretty darned peeved.

Then, on Friday, if the week wasn't slapping me around quite enough – our cooler went out. Not a problem in June - in Montana. In Arizona, with triple digits rising higher and higher - it's a problem. So much of a problem that I had to shut down the laptop. Wouldn't work in the 98° that was our living room.

Since then, I've been trying to play catch-up, with limited success.

What got me going again today are the feeds for my blog. They validate, then they don't. They post through to NetworkedBlogs, then they don't. And I have absolutely no idea why.

I can change it to the Feedburner feed – it validates, except when it doesn't.

Frankly, I'm seriously considering moving the blog – and the website – onto WordPress.

Anyone know if they treat feeds better than this piece of … stuff I'm using now? Cuz at this point? Just about anything looks better than Thingamacrap.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Father's Day is difficult for me. I have 2 fathers and, at the same time, no father.

As an adopted child, I have one father who gave me up. As the adopted child of a suicide victim, I have one father who gave himself up.

It's difficult not to internalize those two situations. Difficult to not take it personally, especially on the day that celebrates fathers.

I did a post about the surrogate fathers I came to know through my first 2 husbands (wow, that sounds bad) and I truly meant exactly what I wrote. But somewhere in my heart of hearts, I really would have loved to have a father who chose me; who chose to stay.

Maybe in my next life.

For now, I simply have no choice but to try and understand that Father #1 did what he felt was best for me. And, heaven knows, suicide is not about those who are left behind. It is about the incredible emotional pain that seems to have no cure but by ending the life that holds that pain.

That one I understand. And battle with - every day.

God bless our fathers - they do the best they can. Some succeed; all leave a memory.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

I think I have a problem. And if I don't get a handle on it, there won't be any room left on my blog to ... well ... blog.

I have become addicted to widgets, whats-its, gadgets, and gizmos. Every day, while visiting other bloggers and wandering the WWW, I run across some other 'cool!' tool that I just have to try out. Then, I spend hours getting it to look and work -- just right! -- on my pages.

It's not like I have nothing else I could be doing; or should be doing. It's more that they're so shiny, and pretty, and fun -- I just have to have them.

I did learn something from one of my latest toys - a link I had put on a post had moved. Dozens of visitors (okay 5 or 6) had left the same page on my blog for the same page on another site. I had to find out why, which is how I found out that the page I'd linked to had moved.

It's now fixed; too late for those other visitors. But, anyone who follows can find the information I intended to share in the first place.

I also learned that I get a lot of hits for crochet information. Have to think about that one.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

There's a randomness to the things that happen in life that just can't be discounted. If not, seriously bad people would be the ones dying horrible deaths from cancer and AIDS. Good people would hit the lottery and fund humanitarian efforts to improve life for the rest of the world

Animals wouldn't be slaughtered by helicopter or taken off open lands to live crowded in tiny pens. Toxic waste wouldn't be filling whole regions of the planet and we would have given up fossil fuels in my lifetime.

But life is random and people have free will. Free will to maim and kill and pollute and destroy on a whim. Or create and nurture and save on the same whim.

On Friday, Jeff Conaway succumbed to a septic infection brought on by pneumonia and, undoubtedly, a weakened system. Just 8 years ago next month, Mark recovered from a septic infection brought on by a UTI. We had gathered the family; the doctors were worried.

I'm sure, in Mark's case, his stubborn will-to-live was mostly responsible for his amazing recovery. Still. Randomness can't be discounted.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

I lay in bed at night, okay in the early morning, with thoughts racing through my head – ideas for blog posts, articles, crochet designs. Hell, I've written whole novels between 3 and 5am. When I wake up, all those beautiful ideas, those tremendous word-pictures are mostly gone.

So, I've come up with the perfect answer for all those creative souls who have their best ideas in bed just before dawn.

It's a small, wi-fi earbud that will connect to the PC – any old writer software will do – and do a massive brain dump, as your subconscious, unconscious? barely-conscious? mind wanders through all of those tremendous ideas.

Then, the next morning, all you have to do is wade through your brilliance and sort the ideas into usable spaces. I wouldn't have to have an original thought for years – if I could just dump everything that runs through my brain at 4am into the computer.

Pretty neat – and I just know it would be a tremendous success. Just not sure I want to share my 'sekret' with the world.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

All I seem to want to do today is bury myself in a book. No TV, no writing, no working – just lose myself in someone else's life. Maybe, because this has been an incredibly frustrating week.

Things that were supposed to happen, didn't. Things that weren't supposed to happen, did – with a vengeance. Nothing turned out the way I expected, which – I know – is how life usually works. But it's so incredibly frustrating.

I don't know if it's really bad karma coming back around or just … stuff happens. Either way, we are in a place on this sunny Sunday that is not where we should be. And it's just a little scary.

Sure. It'll probably improve some, once I can get to the bank on Monday. But that doesn't take care of what we don't have, can't do, on Sunday.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

One of the things I've always loved about my heritage – though I'm trusting the adoption agency on that one – is the fact that I don't have freckles or, with the exception of a couple of spots, moles. (Got a cute little mole next to my belly button and on the left side of my jaw that are just … me.)

Well, that's changing and I'm getting a little nervous.

I have a couple of moles that are new (since I moved to AZ) and odd. Irregular in shape; varying in color. And getting bigger. The one on my left leg bleeds when I scratch it; the one on my back itches like crazy. And today I noticed a few more on my right leg that, while mirroring the Little Dipper, are not amusing.

It doesn't help that I just don't feel well, and haven't for a while now.

I'd like to think I'm just auditioning for the role of “Captain Paranoid” – and, since I have no insurance, I think I'll just stick with that one.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

I suppose, with all of the things running through my head today, the primary one – given that it's Easter Sunday – is traditions.

Years ago, when I was a kid, we'd have gotten up, dressed in our brand new Easter finery. Mom would have lined us up outside for pictures, before packing us into the car and heading off to church.

After church, we'd have gathered (probably at the grandparents) for a huge ham dinner, with all of the trimmings. There would have been brightly colored eggs and schtutzing - a major tradition in our family.

Each person picks an Easter egg, hopefully the toughest of the bunch. Facing off in pairs, we'd bash our egg against our opponent's. Loser gets to eat an egg; winner moves on to the next battle. The only rule – if you break it, you eat it.

I think my grandfather was more excited about all of this than us kids were. I certainly remember the grin on his face, as he just knew he was going to beat us all and be – king of the day. Oddly enough, he usually was.

Frankly, it was the greatest part of Easter for me – cracking eggs with Grandpa. Oh, don't get me wrong – baskets of chocolate and marshmallow chicks was great. But, looking back, it was the evil grin on Grandpa's face that just made the day.

God, I miss that little old German.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post to this week's here.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.