When tropical storm Edouard was bearing down on us the typical thing happened. Everyone all of a sudden had to run to Walmart to get water, batteries, food, etc. Then they had to stand in line for up to 3 hours to check out. Some complained it was over six hours. Most non perishables were gone quickly. I did not run out into the bedlam. I save milk cartons and had filled all of them with fresh tap water. Enough for myself and daughters household to survive for a week. I then filled up the garbage cans-the plastic version that hold like 50 gallons of water. We had 3 around so there was 150 gallons of water ready to flush toilets with. We have been through the routine so many times. I have many shelves of canned goods and a lot of charcoal in case anyone wants to heat something up. I have batteries and the usual supplies. So I did not venture out.

There was a mother and her grown daughter who rushed to Walmart after they got off work. The daughter proclaimed to her mother that they were out of f***ing batteries already. A fire captain in his uniform overheard the daughter and mother talking. I guess he was looking for batteries also. He stopped the women and arrested her and issued her a citation. He even handcuffed her. Of course she and her mother were shocked since they had threatened nobody and were just casually talking to each other. They also were shocked because he was not a police officer and was a fire fighter.

First the mother and daughter kind of blew him off, not knowing if he was just a nut case dressed up in a uniform who had ordered the wrong uniform and got a fire fighter uniform instead. He was ordering the daughter out of the store with him to go to his car. So they tried to ignore him like a person would ignore someone in front of them hallucinating and saying crazy stuff. Now I don’t know if her saying f***ing was more of an insult to his sensitivities or if their thinking he was a nut case was more insulting. I mean what would you do if some big guy in a uniform wanted to arrest you and take you to his car where he claims he has his citation book and wants to put his handcuffs on you. There was a tropical storm coming and these people had kids waiting for them and stuff to do before the storm hit. Like feed the kids and buy batteries.

Anyhow as the deal progressed and he got demanding a crowd appeared. Well of course Walmart was already crowded so nothing had to happen for a crowd to form. Nobody was in danger and they were just watching. The daughter then started talking to him and he said it is a crime to swear in public (BTW it is not a crime) and he finally convinced her that if she continued disrespecting an officer worse things would happen to her. So she and her mother and the crowd followed him out to his car. Just a regular car not a police cruiser. She turned to the following cwowd and said to them…can you fu**ing believe this he is arresting me for saying fu**ing?

Since she swore again he decided she was dangerous and he handcuffed her to his car handle. He said she might have hit him over the head with her purse if he had not handcuffed her. Of course this is now better than cable TV. People are pulling out their digital cameras getting the picture to sell to CNN. I certainly would have been snapping away if I was there. Anyhow the fire department guy ruffles through junk in his car with her handcuffed to the car. He pulls out a citation book and fills out a ticket for her. He then unlocks her handcuffs and allows her and her mother to leave. He finishes his shopping goes back to the fire station.

So that is our 2^nd top news story around here. My question is with a tropical storm that is said to become a hurricane in a few hours does not the fire chief have something better he needs to be doing? Does he have PMS or something. Why did the crowd not start chanting f**k or some such thing to let him know he was pretty much over the top with his abuse of authority?

The biggest story was about the pastor and his wife of Lakewood Church in Houston. Lakewood Church is a non denominational church that is in the Summit. That is the 100,000 seat basketball stadium that was rented to the church. They pay 11.5 million a month in rent and paid 75 million to renovate it. They have 47,000 members and then another that many who have not drank the cool aid yet and signed away parts of their salary to the cause. Now Houston and the Houston area hosts some huge churches and congregations. Of the biggest 100 in the world Houston has ten of them. You can watch our church services on TV around the world and the pastor’s write books and become multi millionaires.

Anyhow, all that being said this is what happened. The  pastor and his  wife were flying back to Houston with their children. One of the kids threw up in the seat on the tray. Johnny on the spot stewardess hands wife some towels at which time wife becomes irate telling the stewardess to clean it up. Stewardess pretends she did not hear that command and then wife gets up out of her seat to exert her authority. Wife gets in stewardess face to tell her to clean it up.  Said other stuff but who cares.   Stewardess reacts like a deer staring into the headlights. So wife tries to get another stewardess in second class to come over and clean it up. That stewardess lives in my neighborhood. She runs off since she is not assigned to 1^st class. She does not want to get involved in it and she wants to protect her job as she knows who these people are.

Finally the wife takes the towels and wipes up the vomit. End of story you would think and just say "another day at the office".

Well staring in the headlight stewardess files a lawsuit for what she decides is 10% of the worth of the celebrity wife. It is $400,000. Stewardess says that she was pushed and traumatized. She had to see a therapist to deal with the trauma and it hampered her at work thinking another customer was going to assault her. She also lost her respect for pastors and churches and essentially lost her religion.

Anyhow, there is nothing really newsworthy about that story but it has been on the front page of our only newspaper in Houston. A paper for 4 milllion people.  I mean quotes of the actual proceedings and then news break-ins with breaking story updates on TV all week.

You see we no longer really get to find out what is happening in the world. Instead we get tabloid smut as news. Like I just turned on the TV and heard about John Edwards having an affair.  He is no longer even running for anything so what differernce does it make now.  Someone else pops in and starts talking about McCain having all kinds of affairs and sewing his ex wife and all kinds of smut.  I just wantto know what he is going to do about illegal immigration, the economy, the war, government corruption, and so on!

Anyhow that is the news from Lake Wobegone.

I dreamed last night that I bought a new camera. I can tell you the price and where I bought it. I was so into the dream that I did not hear my alarm clock. I woke a half hour late. I felt very happy about buying the camera and played with it for the hour drive to work. By the time I got to work I convinced myself that I was just a spoiled brat. I put it out of my head until I got home from work. I looked at my camera and then thought about my own retirement and wondered if I would be satisfied with it in a few years when I would not be in a position financially to just go out and blow that much money.

I then took the camera to the bay to snap a few pictures. It was hot and muggy but it has been a week since I have been out taking pictures. I took some mediocre pictures and then walked over to my neighbors to see if she made any dinner. She had plenty so I sat there and ate. I snapped a few pictures at her house and chatted for a while.

I don’t know if I am going to replace my camera but I might do it! It will get me back into photography and I need to switch my focus again from work. So now I am trying to justify this purchase. Looking at the health benefits because then I will be out walking miles a day. Right now I sit in front of the computer writing 12 hours a day. If I am not doing that I am at work telling everyone what and how to do this and that. I watched myself do that today as if I was out of my body. I wondered if I am sane and rational half way through a meeting.

I got a call on Saturday from our nurse saying one of the counselor’s took a client’s prescription and stapled a note to it that we were to not return it to the client or allow her to fill it. She was not letting the client have access to it and this client is a registered nurse. I told the nurse to over-ride the call and get the script filled since it had been 36 hours since she got the meds. She had hurt her back and the doctor gave her Vicoden. Not a good drug for an addict but that is something that the client and nurse needs to take up with the doctor. We do not have the authority to refuse medication.

I had written up this counselor six weeks ago for a similar situation with her refusing medication to a client. I immediately emailed the counselors supervisor and the counselor. I told the counselor to apply for clinical privileging as a medical doctor and prove she has the proper credentials and I would not report her to the state and would not fire her. If in fact she was practicing outside of the scope of her license she needs to quickly find alternative employment.

So today her supervisor was in the meeting and I asked her what she did about it. BTW the counselor emailed me back saying it was a lie and she did not do that. She blamed the client and the technician. The technician has been with us for about 10 years and had never tried to deny medical care for a client. So I called the technician yesterday and informed her that she was been accused of making that decision and refusing the client the medication. She freaked out and then two other witnesses came forward because they were on the speaker phone when the counselor called and ordered them to deny the client her medication.

Well I watched myself in this meeting as the CEO was trying to persuade me that the witnesses just misunderstood the phone conversation. I did not buy it and tried to get her to look at reality and how this is not a 1^st time situation. I got out the witness statements and gave them to the supervisor and told her to determine where to go with all of this. The CEO continued to try to get me to see that this was a really good person and yada yada yada. I put my hand up and said you are the boss so you decide what YOU are going to do about this. I divorced myself from the situation and handed her an incident report and told her to be sure and document her decisions and actions. I told her that the client who is a nurse is not stupid and surely is aware of her rights and the state would investigate. I left it there and then continued with my presentation. I just in that moment let it go.

So I was watching myself In this engagement and wondering why I was such an intense person and why I was reacting so much to this counselor lying and trying to set up others to take the fall. So right then and there I decided to buy a camera and begin disengaging myself more from the company. I told them I would not be in for the next few days since I had to much writing to do….

I should have listened to my dream before this. My dream was telling me to not get out of bed at 4:30 in the morning and go back to photography. I will but I will still have to be employed for the next 3 years. I don’t qualify for Medicare for that long and can’t be without health insurance. Three years is not long after considering I have been getting up and going to work pretty much every day for 48 years now. Three years is a walk in the park and I think I will get up early tomorrow to walk in the park… More pictures on the way!

The storm was not much of anything.  A lot of wind and 6.2 inches of rain.  No thunder or lightening.  No damaged houses or trees.  Consequently the only pictures I got were of the people watching variety. 

I sat with grandkids all day long.  We played Monopoly and watched the weather station.  Finally we ordered pizza and I took a walk down to the waters edge.  Nobody wanted to come along.  I did get a picture of a kid crossing the ditch with her bike and then a few of random people walking or playing on the beach.  No birds were around and there was just really nothing to take a picture of.  Tomorrow I will go back to work. 

I did get a lot of writing done today and I am almost done with my policy and procedure manual.  I am at page 539.  It is like a very boring novel.  We now have 9 different programs with 9 different funding streams and everyone of them have their own contract requirements.  I am still able to keep it straight in my head what I need to write for each program.  In a week or so I should be done with this project and then I need to get all my records in order.  I keep the safety and QA records and it is a whole lot of stuff.  I need to organize it and create a monthly report from it....  I need 12 reports.  That will take another week and then bring the state on for their inspection. 

Well that's it for now....

Over and Out!

Eudardo is coming for a visit. If you were planning on visiting Galveston or Houston then this is not a good time to come. Nobody here is leaving and we are not expecting company. The good news is that nobody is evacuating. The projected path is aiming almost right at my front door. It is expected that he will dump 10 inches of rain on us very quickly. Someone stole my raincoat at work but with that much rain what’s the point. He is supposed to turn into a hurricane before he comes ashore. If he comes in to the east of me that I am home free. If he hits me head on or goes to the west of me then I better button down the hatches. We will have 8 foot waves and high tide will be at 8 tomorrow morning. Weather permitting and if I won’t blow away I will get out there and get pictures. We are to have 60 to 80 mile per hour winds. At 8 tonight the ship channel closes and Shell Oil is evacuating their platforms out there in the bay. NASA closed at noon today so the employees could go home and get their property protected.

Eudardo’s storm bands will be coming in by midnight. Sea breeze thunder storms are popping up right now but those are not related to the storm. They happen almost every hot day.

So anyway I will try to update you all as this storm decides who to hit. My camera batteries are recharging right now and I just confirmed with a few news outlets that I will be here with my camera. I even charged up my Sony HDD AVCHD handycam. It is rare that I use it but I might for this storm.

I will be able to get online even if there is no power. I have a satellite card but the power on my laptop is limited so you will get brief updates with pictures maybe.

I keep saying I am going to retire but it is getting to be a far off echo. I keep writing grants and getting them. I thought I had a 50/50 get rate this year but suddenly that turned out to be 100%. That meant that we needed 450 beds and 500 outpatient slots. Then to my amazement we got a prevention grant so now I need space to serve 200 children. So at any given time after September we will have 450 to 500 residential women in treatment and about 600 outpatient clients. Over 1,000 women and their children in care every day of the week.

As soon as the grants came in and we signed them we went into over- drive and got space. We have secured 600 beds. We already had 250 of them and we pulled off a Coup Da'Ta of sorts. There is a large beautiful agency in town that opened up in 2005. I and my management team went to their opening back those years ago. I wanted to meet the people who laid out the millions to build the facility and I already knew who their CEO was and we all knew he would do something horrid eventually and end up in prison. He is on his way and as soon as I saw it in the newspaper we set up a meeting with the money donors. The main money guy had already donated several millions and was there daily trying to handle operations. He was the guy we needed to get to know….. We did get to know him very well. He is married and about 80 years old. His children are addicts and I treated his daughter when she was an adolescent. That was over 20 years ago. He remembered me. So since then he has been very committed to setting up substance abuse treatment centers. He dumped oodles of money in this place and it is beautiful. He is actually in the building architecture business and has designed many of the most famous buildings in the Houston area. That generates his multiple millions.

In the last few years he has been designing and constructing low income homes. He decided all parenting women need to own their own home so the clients who go through his program own their own homes after treatment. Well now it is our program. It was a fight between us and the Catholic Diocese. His son sits on the board of the Catholic Diocese. It goes to prove blood is not thicker than water…

About 8 years ago the catholic Diocese tried a Coup Da'Ta with our agency but we saw through it in time to deflect it. We were much smaller then and so they are really putting themselves out to associate with us now. The archbishop even is involved and so we invited him to be the speaker at our 50 year in business celebration. I was able to track down a nun who worked in our agency back in 1954. She was in a nursing home. We brought her to the event and I was able to update her on what has happened to the agency since she left in 1957…when I was 10 years old. She was interested but I don’t think she heard very much of it. I pushed her around in her wheel-chair and introduced her to everyone I ran into….Poor old gal! But it was a day out of the nursing home.

At this time we are the largest substance abuse treatment facility specifically designed for women in the country. Now the goal is to be the best!

So if I am missing in action now you know why…. (and another grant RFP just hit my desk) OMG!

As always I have been very busy. It is always the same…work and family. There have been no changes at work but there have been family changes. My youngest daughter and her family moved 969 miles away. This is new to her. She has never lived more than an hour away from me or her sister. The same for her husband. His parents are very upset with his decision to move. We pretty much went with the flow here but I will really miss her and the kids. Fortunately there are still airplanes flying so I have used a few of them of late. In fact I just got back last night.

They moved in a beautiful part of the country. It is in the far North West corner of Georgia. Near the Appalachia Mountains and near Berry College. Their town is called Rome. I believe Amelia Airhart and Georgia O’Keef went to that school. It is maybe 120 miles from Atlanta. A 90 minute flight so that is pretty good. They moved but my daughter had to come back and stay with me for a few weeks. The kids stayed with their dad in Georgia. My daughter totaled her car while here. She had to teach at a college on the north side of Houston as part of her master’s degree. She still finished teaching the course after she smashed up her car. Finally she has her masters.

So we had to rent a U-haul and get the rest of their stuff to Georgia. I also gave them a bunch of my stuff. I did not know how little they had in household goods. Fortunately I never throw anything away and now they are stocked up with plenty of towels, bed sheets, lamps, dressers, chairs, pictures, dishes, and you name it I had plenty. We filled a 17 foot truck and pulled another of their vehicles.

I enjoyed the drive there. It has really been a long time since I left Texas. Maybe more than 10 years. Many years ago I toured the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana. I wanted to get back there to listen to the people again and eat at Ma Mama’s Kitchen located in New Raods, La. I did not find it but we did find an eatery. These people that live there are dirt poor and live along the shores of the huge wetland basin. If you suddenly parachuted into the basin you most likely would die as it is heavily wooded and there are miles of wetlands between the shacks the people live in. One of the main towns (one with a gas station) is called New Roads. We headed to New Raods and had lunch. We were deep into the wetlands. No motorboats allowed…just old rafts and row boats. Everyone speaks French Creole there and I swear you cannot understand a word they say. I ordered the decadent Portobello topped with crawfish tails and hollandaise. My daughter ordered boudin balls which are basically rice dressing and pork rolled into a ball and fried in oil. It was a good lunch with lots of folks coming around to see the moving truck and wondering where we were going. Very curious funny dressed people with no shoes and you get the rest of that picture.

From there we pretty much drove straight through to what looked like the Appalachia Mountains. I found a few deer along the way and had to jump put and snap a picture.  It was a herd of them.  Maybe a pack of 40 running together.  We drove up and down those hills carrying a car on the back of a huge load of stuff. It was fun but I was sure glad to get in a real bed.

It was a great break from my routine life and I will go back frequently.

Of the grants I recently wrote we got one and did not get the other. 50/50. That is a really good outcome. I am still waiting to hear about the other one.

I hope you all are fine out there and hope to visit you. Right now I am doing laundry….lots of it built up around here. It is 90 something degrees outside and not yet 10 in the morning. I think we are in for a scorcher…. Later

It was cloudy and I knew I would not get a very good picture of Grandfather Sun this morning. I went down to the bay anyway and sat there doing a pipe ceremony. I knew I would be left alone since the weather did not look good. The only other humans I saw were three fisherman wade fishing. They were pretty far out and I doubt they saw me. I sat quietly on my usual rock after my ceremony was done. I did get a peek of Grandfather Sun but that was all. I don’t know why I did not get up and leave like I usually do but I just felt OK about continuing to sit and watch the seagulls and pelicans do their fly by’s.

I had been sitting for about an hour when I noticed an armadillo quite a ways away walking out towards the surf. I felt blessed to receive such a gift. I silently gave thanks and did not move. The Armadillo started waddling right to me. I have tried to take Armadillo pictures many times but they only come out at night and roll up in a ball if you get to close. The only thing moving as Armadillo approached was my camera shutter. He came within feet of me before he crawled under the rocks.

My Indian friends from Wisconsin are always asking if I will send the shell of an armadillo. We find them dead along roads and my grandchildren believe they must be born dead along roads. When a car approaches they hop up and get struck by the car. Most of the time they are to damaged to send anywhere. I have NEVER got a good picture of a live armadillo but here this guy was right in front of me. He was bringing the lesson of armadillo medicine to me. He is an ancient and primitive species.

Armadillo has very poor eyesight and depends on his sense of hearing and smell to get around. I knew if I moved my feet he would roll up into a tight ball under one of the protruding rocks. They look like miniature pigs with a shield of armor. The armor is bones that form jointed plates all around their body and only their head and tail are left out but as you can see in the pictures they also have armor on their heads and tails. It has big claws and they dig holes all over your yard with them. They dig burrows underground that the average burrow is about 9 feet long. They have quadruplet births and all the babies are always the same sex. Four females or four males at a time. They have short legs but can still run very fast and burry themselves quickly. I was not frightened by the armadillo since they are not known for attacking people and they do not have very big teeth but there are 30 of them. The only thing to fear from them is leprosy. Consequently I don’t touch them on the highways. Humans and armadillos are the only creatures that get leprosy. They say that many if not most of the wild ones have leprosy.

Enough of that…what is armadillo medicine or what does it mean. These creatures carry their shield with them at all times. Danger just rolls off their backs but with their poor eyesight they cannot see danger coming. Danger can sneak up on them and I could have reached out and grabbed this critter but he was about 2.5 feet in length and I would have had a pretty big load and been clawed to shreds. Anyway, he walked right into the most dangerous mammal ever created. A human…. Because the person with armadillo medicine always carries their shield with them they become too trusting of others and when in danger they panic. They jump up and roll into a ball. When they take their leap they are most vulnerable. They jump straight up 3 or 4 feet. They also can walk under water and do not need to breathe for five minutes. Usually they cross water by filling their stomachs and intestines with air and just floating. They live from 4 to 7 years.

To be brought this medicine means that I am out of balance. It means I need to participate in ceremonies which have been used for generations to help the people heighten their awareness. What teaches us to heighten awareness is prolonged periods of pain or discomfort which caused spiritual growth and gaining real safety. That is why I was sitting on that hard rock for over an hour. It was painful and yet I did not try to move because it was making me more aware of my surroundings.

As I have blogged about before, my grandmother participated in a Sun Dance the Lakota way when it was very rare for women to do so. Now it is common for women to do a Sun Dance and allow themselves to be pierced. I have no desire to do a Sundance and probably never will. Seeing it and the suffering is enough for me and I have seen it and the scars it leaves behind.

Instead I have merely participated in Inipi Sweat Lodges and Vision Quests. That is enough suffering as I am willing to do. I began participating in healing ceremonies by the time I was four. I am sure it saved my life as I was only getting sicker being treated by white doctors.

I did not participate in ceremonies between age 10 and 25. Then I intensely participated for 10 years and after moving to Texas I no longer had a tribe and participated on a weekly basis with people of other tribes. For the last 15 years I have done very little regarding engaging in ceremonies. Of course I have continuously participated in the pipe ceremony as I did this morning.

At my age I will not push the envelope but I will listen to the medicine messages I was so lucky to receive this morning. I will reset my boundaries and I will activate the invisible shield around my back. Danger again will roll off my back and I will be prepared.

So that it folks….

BTW these are the best pictures of an armadillo I have ever seen.

I got my camera back and it still does not shot well. There are dark spots on the sensor and maybe I have ruined it. I bought a Quantaray 2X tele converter while I was at the camera shop. I have now shot with it and without it. So I bought another problem is what I have done.

First the tele converter…… It does not let in enough light and only works at 400 or more ISO. That even lets in less light. When I walked down to the shore today I shot a few things in the new almost dusky light. They turned out black. Then it had trouble catching the rising sun. There was a lot of fog and haze in front of it. I tried a few more shots when I got back home and I can see the specks of dust or damage on the censor and they are not near my better work.

The only thing going good in my life is my job! I need a new camera and a there has been lots of crisis brought on by my previous son-in-law who is an alcoholic. Two weeks ago he was to have the kids. He picked 11 up on Friday night but 13 had a party to go to. He was going to pick up 13 the next afternoon. She had another birthday party at noon on Saturday so she would not be ready to go until about 5. At ten he began calling, saying he is on his way to get her. He was in a blackout and could not remember he had just called. He also was slurring his words and so 13 decided not to go to his house as when he is like this he tells the kids he is going to kill himself and they freak out trying to keep him alive.

I fell asleep when he got here but 13’s mother was here and looked him over. She decided he was sober. 10 minutes later 13 is making a frantic call to me with him yelling in the background to give him the phone. She is saying turn around, you are drunk, take me home, etc. I can’t get her attention to tell me her location. Then the phone goes dead.

I walk over to daughter’s house and the phone rings again. I can hear him in the background yelling for her to get back in the car. Daughter grabs the phone and is out the door. She found 13 a few miles away and grabs her. She follows him for 40 miles and then on the phone convinces him to pull over at a gas station because he just hit another car and ran a red light. 13 had called 911 and they were tracking him. After he gets out of the car he sees police surrounding him and he takes off but only gets a block away.

Off to jail he goes and the hunt is on for 11. He just moved and only 13 knows where his girlfriend lives. The police take 13 and they snatch 11 from a girlfriend. Back to the jail and finally home at 10 PM. Both kids are traumatized to the max.

I could go on with the yada yada, yada but in the end daughter decided to get an attorney and file a motion to revoke his parental rights and visitation. The motion cost another 3 grand. (so far) He will most likely end up having to visit the kids in a “safe house” and pay to visit. Daughter will have to drive the kids to the safe house which surely is nowhere around here.

After the divorce 10 years ago he bought the land directly across from daughter’s house. It has become the kids back yard. My house is right on the edge of the land. I dared not build on his space, knowing full well that land was just a way for him to continue to keep this family hostage. He played his trump card and put it up for sale.  Five years ago I gave daughter treated lumber so he could build a deck in the back. It is a 20’ by 30’ deck. All but 8’ is on his land. In today’s market that lumber would cost about 4 grand. He also took daughter’s 200’ back fence and moved it to the back property of his land. So now she will not have a back fence. It is to beat up now to move. Essentially there will be no back yard anymore. I will have to take the deck apart to retrieve the lumber. Daughter will just let him tear it up and does not want the lumber. Being in the mid 90’s already and being that I still have a lot of trouble with my broke rib…well it will be a hard feat at the present time. In about 3 weeks I think I will be able to begin on it.

My daughter is living with that man I talked about previously. He had moved his daughter in but sent her back to Florida. Now his mother is living with him and my daughter. There is nothing to not like about her. She is sweet and makes dinner every night. She is passive and does everything her son tells her to do. He is controlling and domineering and no longer speaks to me. I am not passive and cooperative. I told him I have not had anyone telling me what to do or trying to control my life since about the age of 16 and I certainly will not start now.

Now both my daughters live with domineering controlling men and I do not know what I did wrong. I don’t know what they find appealing about that. I only feel revulsion.

Anyhow that is the update on my life today…..Actually my daughter’s and grandkids life. I get up and go to work daily and I am glad to go. I posted pics my bad camera took! I am going to have to fork over some big bucks again for a new, more improved model.

Hope you are all well!

I have decided to go green. I do two loads of wash a week and it is such a waste of water and electricity. So I researched how to do my laundry without a washer and dryer. In my situation it would be very easy and cost very little to do it. I found a small pressure washer online and ordered it. It is on backorder so I don’t know when it will arrive. http://www.lehmans.com/jump.jsp?itemType=PRODUCT&itemID=1600

I have a great protected spot to put my clothesline and it will give me added protection from the sun which heats up the house. For a $50 investment my laundry needs are taken care of.

A water filtration system cost a lot more as I wanted one that did not use chemicals to filter water. http://www.lehmans.com/jump.jsp?itemID=4569&itemType=PRODUCT&path=1%2C2%2C539%2C542%2C149&KickerID=95&KICKER

This system will do 13,000 gallons before needing to replace the filter and will filter out bacteria and chemicals. It might not be big enough for the needs of a family of 7 but it will certainly take care of me and most likely my grandchildren who visit daily. I already have them working on their own vegetable gardens and an organic compost system. That is called a blender that I have had for many years. It is rechargeable battery operated and the purpose of it was to make milk shakes or be a blender. We have put it to good use.

To burn a 60 watt bulb 8 hours a day takes 60,000 gallons of water annually. So you might think you are energy efficient by limiting the time with lights on but you then must consider the water. Clean drinkable water is going to be a huge issue in the not too distant future.

I will probably never be off the grid totally but I can be off it most of the time. Much of my small device electric needs can be handled by rechargeable batteries. I am going to build my own solar powered recharge system. I downloaded instructions and noticed solar panels can be bought on the cheap compared to a few years ago. That recharge system will take one panel and I am going to splurge on a backpack system that recharges laptops, cell phones, PDA’s and other small electronic equipment. It has not been released yet but I have it on order for when it comes in. As far as solar panels when I am talking on the cheap I am talking under several hundreds of dollars. I just talked to a local rancher and he had several panels with the generators/batteries as he was using them for deer feeders, pumps, lighting, etc. My biggest goal is to get the refrigerator off the grid. I can do that. The next goal is eventually replacing my huge refrigerator/freezer for a smaller one. I surely do not need that much refrigeration space.

Moving right along, I use window AC units. That used to be very expensive but now they make them far more efficient. Like the refrigerator these units do take more power than a light bulb. They are VERY efficient. I have 2 of them. One is in the back bedroom which is a room designed to be off the grid. It is a small cozy room with a low ceiling. Everything in it is compact. It has dressers, a full size bed that folds into a couch, a computer station equipped with a full desktop computer, 19 inch flat screen monitor, scanner, printer, etc. It has an overhead light/fan and an AC unit. It also has a big screen TV. That room will be totally off the grid first. The TV will be powerede by the exercise bike, an inverter and battery.  If the kids really want to watch TV they will have to peddle about half an hour to watch it for 3 hours.  The AC unit is very small and the room is well insulated. That part of the house has a very low roof and that makes it very accessible for putting up the clips to hold the solar panels. It also has direct sunlight about 12 hours a day. Energy will be readily available during the day and stored for night or cloudy sky weather use. There should never be a disruption in service to that room. 90% of the time I use that room and when I do I continue to have minimal need for AC or power in the rest of the house. I can do what I need with the rest of the house on solar one appliance at a time. The small room does not seem claustrophobic because it has cathedral ceilings just like the rest of the house.

So that room will have it’s own solar system to plug the AC current into. Cost of that system should be less than $2,000. Well maybe a little more but not much.

The solar system for the refrigerator will cost about $500 and the same cost for the other AC unit. The microwave will be on the deer feeder system and then I will make a solar oven. You can buy them for a lot of money but you can also make them for half as much money. Solar ovens use the sun and special lenses that heat it up to about 350 degrees in Wisconsin winter. I figure I can melt the sidewalk if I want to.  As long as you have sunlight, you have the ability to cook without charcoal, wood or other polluting materials.  You adjust the lenses to adjust the temperature.  Anyone want broiled shrimp or steak? 

For under $4,000 I have a pretty good survival off the grid system. Knowing me I will pay much less than that for it. I am going to try to see how little it will cost to do this job.

I will cancel my Comcast service as I never watch TV. I bought a satellite card and can use that to get online with any computer I happen to be using. I was going to go with Verizon but decided to go with Sprint. Sprint has unlimited usage time for the same price. $150 for the card and $60 a month. Verizon charged the same monthly fee but you accrued more charges if you went over the time limit.

As far as TV you can watch TV online pretty much anytime. I have been downloading my favorite programs for free. I just downloaded the top 10 episodes of The Twilight Zone.  I am into history and science and I can get on the History and Discovery or National Geographic channels and of course all the news outlets free. I download the programs to view when I want to watch them.  I either can watch on the computer but more likely I will put them on my ZUNE.  It has a good little screen and I love watching programs on it, connecting to the internet to check my email, reading books on it and listening to books on it. It has 80 gigs of space and I shrink any program so much that I could load over 1500 hours of movies, books, audio, etc., on it and still check my email. The battery lasts about 30 hours before needing to recharge.

Food costs are going up dramatically. A month ago I heard that rice was rising in price 1% each day. Actually it has gone up much faster than that and I am glad I had already purchased a few hundred pounds before the rise in costs. I checked yesterday and the price doubled from a month ago when I bought my rice. They are rationing rice in Houston now. I have a big storage building so I have a place to store large quantities of non perishable food. My goal is that if a disaster comes we can live off the grid for over a year without worrying about food shortages or food rationing. I do hope the fishing is good but ocean fishing is much different than freshwater fishing.  You haveto be fishing without a net or hook to be skunked here.  I don’t know if it will ever come to that but I am prepared for shortages in any case. I have vitamins, water, medicines, food staples, tons of canned meat, vegetables and fruits, seeds, and other stuff one would need in the long haul. I eat rice and fish almost daily. It is a huge part of my diet and has been for years. One person can survive with 100 pounds of rice and a few veggies add some beans for protein and you have it made for over a year.

Since my accident I have not driven a car. I have found out I have no need for a car. Down the street is someone that works at the same place I work at. She is raising 4 kids by herself and so I pay half the gas and she drives. Gas costs about $500 a month. We go far. By paying half it is a huge savings to both of us. Across the street from where I work is a Walmart and other businesses. During my lunch break I go to get my daily groceries. It has worked great for the past two weeks. I have elderly neighbors all around me and so I told them if they are going anywhere to give me a call. Usually they are kinda lonely and I will always spring for gas costs or a free lunch. One of them is real lonely as her pharmacist husband recently died. She needs people to talk to and so I have set a few other drivers on her to chat with her and they do! She was going to the mall the other day which is about 20 miles from where we live. I hitched a ride and brought my camera in. The CMOS is dirty and it will be ready in 3 to 6 weeks. So I am without a camera for a very long time.

I have set up a taxi cab system not only for me. There are sailors that come off the ships everyday. They always have about 12 to 18 hours before they ship out again. They have no transportation and always want to go to fast food restaurants or to electronic stores. So we set up a board where they write down where they want to go and what they need. My neighbor then calls around when he has three of them needing to go in the same direction.  He works atthe port. There are three married elderly couples out here who get the call and charge $1 per mile for each passenger. So if they take 3 of them to the nearest fast food restaurant or Best Buy or wherever they want to go the driver is making at a minimum $60 a trip. The average couple is getting 10 jobs a month and they are averaging over $800 extra dollars a month. We have no cab service out here and all these guys getting off the ships have pockets full of money. Not a bad deal for some of these bored and lonely people out here. The rule is nobody drives alone or without a cell phone. Twice I left my name to be a tag along for the second person and it worked out really well. If you don’t drive you get no money but you do get a free ride and act as the second person.

I must sound like a nut with all this survival off the grid stuff. I probably am a nut and my kids think I am but they are the ones who will benefit from this. We have bad weather from tropical storms and hurricanes and are off the grid during these times. In the past we had to pay over $100 a day for an air conditioned motel room. They spike the prices during bad weather. I will only charge them $80 a day for an air conditioned room with free rice, internet and if they ride the bike they can watch TV. I have to get back to work cleaning my house and I hope you are all well…..

I am a lot better and I did finally go to the doctor. I had intercostal strains and rib bruising. It surely caused me a lot of distress. Still does of course but I am functional. My nightmares are gone except I keep seeing this strange image in my dreams. I see him over and over again every night.

There is a cat standing on the side of the road but he is standing on his hind legs like a man. His front legs have been cut off and he just stands there looking at me. It is like something out of a Steven King novel. I always wake up as soon as I see him. Now I am telling myself, before I go to sleep, to not wake up but instead talk to him to determine what he wants. He might represent something. Like maybe a past life. I was listening to something the other day about birth marks and past lives. They said that the birth mark you are born with is a previous injury form your previous life. When I was a kid and all the way up until I had my first child I had a birth mark all the way around my stomach and back. It was huge and everyone was impressed by it. I guess I got cut in half in my previous life.

Back to the cat. I found this in Digg so maybe I instinctively don’t like cats. It is a book Mike Wallace is putting together on famous scientists and spiritual leaders predicting what the world will look like 50 years from now. It is pretty interesting stuff and I found this tidbit about animals transmitting disease to humans. “Diseases ranging from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder will be shown to be caused by infectious agents that take advantage of genetic predisposition, says psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, president of the Treatment Advocacy Center. Researchers will be surprised to find that many of those infectious agents are being transmitted from animals to humans. As a result, it will be uncommon to keep cats, birds or hamsters as pets - but we'll still have dogs around, because they've been "man's best friend" for so long that we've already adjusted to their infectious agents”.

So anyway I am OK unless I cough, sneeze, breath, laugh or move. And I refuse to take pain pills. I am in much less pain if I am sitting. Lying down kills me. With that in mind I saw no reason to not go to work. I worked all week with the exception of the first 2 days after the accident. I don’t tell people that I have a broken rib because they would think I am nuts. There is no treatment other than pain pills and anti-inflammatory medicine. I do take that. The doctor said I had to take that and rest. If I am in bed I don’t rest. I am always moving. Trying to grab this or that from a bad position…lying down. So it is just easier to be sitting and I do not drive. I found that when you drive you do use a lot of muscles and you are always turning your chest to look behind you as you switch lanes, etc. Of course I don’t have a car to drive but I hired a nurse who lives a block away two weeks ago. We hired her a few weeks ago full time. Prior to this she has been working part time doing assessments, consultations, etc . So she has been working with us for about 4 years now.  I did not tell her I am injured other than claim I am really stiff.

OK, I’m going back to the recliner now…gotta find that remote control!  BTW...I am not in any of these pictures and when I am at work I just sit and talk to clients or staff...If I am at home alone I begin to get crazy and I find out I am mentally unstable if I only have me to talk to.

Monday our grant was due by 2 PM. I had it in my car along with my laptop, etc. I live 50 miles from my job. About 30 miles into my trip a bird almost flew right into my windshield. This has never happened here in Texas before and I thought it was a pretty bad omen. I thought about it for about the next 10 miles and then put it out of my head to review in my head the grant I was submitting. Just doing a last check. Three miles from work it happened. What the blackbird was trying to warn me about. Driving down the freeway a car on my right changed lanes into me. I never saw him coming and he clipped the side of my car on the passenger side by the front passenger door. We were in heavy traffic so only doing about 45 to 50 MPH. It was loud but I pulled out of it without hitting anyone else. I was drivable and so was he. I veered off onto the feeder and the first road off the freeway. He was right behind me. As soon as I stopped he rushed up to my car and I was bleeding but not serious. He started yelling that I ran from the scene of an accident and he was calling the police to report I hit him. I got out of the car and he had no real damage. I had damage. I calmed him down and convinced him to go to his car to get his insurance info and I would do the same.

You guessed it, he left without me getting any information.  As I was digging through my glove box which took a while because I was pretty shook up and trying to get control of my mouth bleeding. It was not actually my mouth but my tongue. When I got hit I guess I had my tongue between my teeth. I bit it bad and it was really going. I had an insulated cup full of ice so I opened it and filled my mouth with ice while I was digging through all the insurance cards. It was a confusing mess because I had the same insurance verification form in there for every 6 months from the last 8 years. All kinds of them. I just shove the new one in there when I get it in the mail and have never pulled out the old ones.

I finally find the current one as the police are driving up. I did not know how crazy the guy was and didn't know if the police wouldl believe the deal about me driving away from an accident and he might think it was my fault.  When I got in the car I had immediately called work to send someone to grab the grant and my laptop just in case the police hauled me off. They were only 3 blocks away.  I get out and he asks me if I am injured. I guess he saw the blood. I also notice the other driver is gone. So with my fat tongue I am trying to explain what happened and then an ambulance shows up. I can’t go to the hospital and I am trying to explain that I am not injured from the accident and that I have a grant due so I really have to go to work. The EMS guy checks out my tongue and announces I will live.

Three coworkers showed up to escort me to prison but instead I got a ride to work. We got the grant turned in with 14 minutes to spare. My car was towed and so I hitched a ride home after work. My ribs hurt, my knee hurts. It hurts to even lift my arms. My tongue is recovered for the most part, and I just feel stiff all over. I am not in killer pain but just feel like I was put in the dryer for a spin.

The worst part about this is I have trouble sleeping. I am a solid sleeper and since the accident I am not a sleeper. I am great at falling asleep but shortly after clunking out I see an accident. It is not the Monday accident but a different accident. I am zooming down the freeway and a truck in front of me suddenly stops. AS I am stopping and locked into my lane but traffic in the lanes to my left and right, I see the car behind me not stopping and know I am going to be smashed between the car and truck. It is a very rapid dream and I wake with a start and am wide awake. I have now had this dream 4 times and after I am worked up and can’t go back to sleep. I even had the dream while trying to take a nap yesterday.

Tomorrow I am going to work as I have to conduct an investigation. I am wondering if I should spend the money fixing my car. It is a wonderful Honda with 200,000 miles on it. Never have had a problem. I only had liability insurance so I cannot claim it or an accident. Besides I surely don’t want my insurance rates to go up. I have not had an accident or ticket since 1988. That was when I was almost killed by a drunk driver on Christmas Eve. Again it was not my fault and it took me many months to really recover. I think I had a ticket in 1984.

I suspect my current PTSD is related to that accident more than the one on Monday. At least I did not have my camera in the car.

Later….I am going to take a nap…maybe

I am loosing visitors faster than water seeping through my hand. I am so inattentive to other bloggers because right now my priorities are skewed. It is grant writing season and I have been more productive than any time in my career. I have written millions of dollars over the past three months and am into a huge challenge right now. I have a massive grant due tomorrow at noon. It was released less than 2 weeks ago and the CEO decided she did not want to go for it. Then last Wednesday she called and asked if I could put it together by the deadline. I told her that at my age I did not know if I could pull it off as I now require sleep every few days. Well I am almost to the end of it. I have 24 hours left and it is about 235 pages long. It had to be very detailed and I would post it but…well it is worth a lot of money and I am sure everyone would freak out….

It is most likely the best work I have ever done but then I am sleep deprived so filter that statement. I took two breaks during all of this. I think about taking pictures when I write. I have been thinking about camera settings and adjusted mine before going out at sunset last night. They are not what I want yet for evening shots but not bad. I left my settings for the sunrise today and it turned out better. I posted some of the pictures here. I shot in RAW and ..well ... I am working for perfection but not there yet!  Not bad but still need to learn a few more tricks..

Anyway, I was talking about the grant and my allocation of time. On Friday at 7 AM the state showed up to do a surprise investigation. I got to work by 8 AM which in itself is a miracle in Houston traffic and considering I was traveling 50 miles. The week before Easter we had a child almost die from a fall. They had in hand pictures of a mess the maintenance department made outside, they had written complaints from the criminal justice offenders saying the meat was spoiled, the staff abusive, the facility was dirty, the railing on room XXX was loose, there was mold on an outside window in room XXX the front window at room XXX was broke, a toilet was plugged, the staff does not show up for work, and the list went on and on.

The clients had loosened a railing on the railing on the landing in room XXX, and they broke a window which had been repaired the same day. The state found no spoiled meat, no mess in the back yard, the facility was clean, all the plumbing worked and they did find a spot of mold on an outside window. They showed me their pictures of the mess made in doing a repair and I showed them mine. I also had noticed the mess and sent the pictures to the guy who did it and his boss. I had him out there on a Sunday cleaning up his mess. It too all day to walk around with these people and find all the staff records, the maintenance records, make copies of over 2000 records for them to go through in Austin, and it was all very senseless.

It robbed me a day of writing. I got the CEO over there and asked her if she still wants me to write the grant/proposal because it would fund the continuation of the criminal justice program which we began in 2005. Since we began it the state has been called out on average four times a year and has never found anything. Prior to bringing in that group of patients we had one investigation in 12 years. We were both pretty distressed about it and I said I would continue to write and we would continue to talk.

I ran my numbers yesterday at about 4 in the morning. I found that our outcomes for these women are far better than our usual outcomes. Over 90% of them are still drug free. Only 5% of them went back to their life of crime. After being released from their incarceration program they come back. They compose 59% of our entire outpatient population and they come every chance they get. They have jobs or are going to school. The project proves that treatment works.

I sent the statistics to the CEO and she was crying in joy with the outcomes. Literally overjoyed. We put up with a lot from these people but in the end they get it together. The first three months when they get to us they act just like they acted on the streets and in prison. They prey on vulnerable people and try to set up sexual get togethers. They do all kinds of terrible stuff and that is why we decided to move them all back to prison and try to operate the program in the prison. I am writing a grant only for pregnant prisoners who we will put in a smaller facility and they will not have contact with our other clients who are not criminals. The impact of having these people in the same facility has caused devastating outcomes for the non criminal mentally ill and substance abusing women we treat.

So my new program will let them have medical care during their pregnancy, have their babies and keep their babies with them until they finish their sentence. They will be with us for 6 to 8 months in a locked facility and I am sure they will call the state every chance they get. At the state rate we lose $14 a day for each client in treatment. Last year we spent $384.000 over and above what we were paid for them. The state pays up less than they pay themselves for incarcerating them per day. They pay us less than staying in a cheap motel overnight.

This requires us to have to literally beg for money to make up the difference for these people. Nobody wants to support these families and I can’t blame them. You have to be crazy, like us, to do it….

With that I need to get back to my grant and I apologize for not visiting people but thank those who continue to visit me….

Update:

About the cult in Texas.  From this cult we have many young teens pregnant and taking care of infants and toddlers.  We have girls giving birth by the age of 13 or 14.  The boys ar