My Favorite Season

As a side note, I must update that Norman was found after we returned from Baton Rouge two weeks ago. However, when Jim found him with his girlfriend on property behind the golf course, Mr. Debauchee did not want to come home...so Jim left him. He dragged in two days later (limping for effect) and yes quite thin from not eating...love will do that to a dog, don't you know. He had lost probably ten pounds and I had no sympathy for his useless self. As a matter of fact, I did not speak to him for a couple of days, mature person that I am. And as that did not seem to faze him, I took up with our regular conversations.


Norman is a queer duck. Have I not told you that his breeder got rid of Norman's mom? Her name was Odie...big surprise, and she never bonded with her litters so I imagine that is where the little feller got his loving manner. He's not a licker, nor does he get all hyper when we come home at night. He's not excitable unless you have tires on your body and go 30 mph. He loves squirrel and bird but will force Purina dog chow down his throat if he has to. Enough...how did I get off on this again?


Fall is my favorite season besides spring and summer. It was a cool 67 degrees this morning and I had occasion to open the front door at work and let the cool breeze in. I can't wait to light the bonfire in the backyard of pine needles and fallen limbs from earlier this year. We don't have a bonfire until we need the space again to put pine needles and fallen limbs. By the way, Cousin Calvert from Baton Rouge had spoken of a pine needle baler earlier in the year and had promised to experiment on my lawn. Where are you Calvert? He is an attorney and his precious wife, Neila, is one of my favorite bloggers.

We're headed to Lake Sam Rayburn this weekend (see above Lake Bistineau for why we boat in Texas). For the first time in Rayburn Point's history, it is first come, first served in the fall. However, as veterans of Rayburn Point, we know no one will be there this weekend. Nice cool evenings, Saturday night LSU vs. Georgia game. Pray for me folks. Mr. Ruffin will be animated. Maybe I will be too.

I'm asking a special prayer from y'all this evening. I'm at a crossroads for many things in my life. Please pray that I may prevail in my future as to my job, or new job as you would have it. I also need some prayer for weight loss and am very grateful to my Prayer List Gang out of Arlington, VA.

Ruffinism for the day:

Anger and resentment can stop you in your tracks. That's what I know now. It needs nothing to burn but the air and the life that it swallows and smothers. It's real, though - the fury, even when it isn't. It can change you... turn you... mold you and shape you into something you're not. The only upside to anger, then... is the person you become. Hopefully someone that wakes up one day and realizes they're not afraid to take the journey, someone that knows that the truth is, at best, a partially told story. That anger, like growth, comes in spurts and fits, and in its wake, leaves a new chance at acceptance, and the promise of calm. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. - Popeye Wolfmeyer, The Upside of Anger

Weekend Update

Baton Rouge again

Norman missing

left without him

new faster route

poolside rv site

complicated audio/video system

FINALLY CATV!

but no LSU game

laptop running

Lightroom2

Corel Draw lesson book

Saturday afternoon mexican/Margarita blowout

finishing South of Broad by Pat Conroy

Sunday brunch with Clif at ACME

long ride home

white crocheted afghan near completion

finally home!

Norman found on Oxford road with girlfriend

refuses to come home

stupid dog

rv needs washing

stupid Emmys

night night

Taking Another Tack

Sometimes the old way of going at a particular problem gets to be tedious, as in sailing upwind. However, I'm not a sailor and don't know a jib from a boom. It wears you out and takes your breath. My life at the office is getting a little off-kilter these days, dealing with some exhausting circumstances. I've been navigating a minefield of squalls and there's no lake or ocean within hundreds of miles of our little piece of earth on Madison Street in downtown Mansfield. I want to jump from the sinking ship and catch an ocean liner. But as a masochist, I'm partial to the sinking ship and it's got some buried treasure somewhere in it. However, that treasure may only be accessible after the sinking has occurred. Stay or go?


So, as I was ruminating over what to do, I came across MckMama's website (whom I read at least once a week) and she had a really good post. It's simple but deep. "I am the way" is the answer and I forget to ask for His help all of the time. I hold my own church in the shower every morning (complete with specific prayer requests, the Lord's Prayer, Doxology, Apostle's Creed and the Gloria Patria - but no organ accompaniment), and ask for guidance once in a while but forget to call on him for myself all of the time. I stopped what I was doing and specifically requested His help in this circumstance and felt so uplifted when I finished. Float, Susan, float.

Ruffinism for the day: Jesus, it does a body (and soul) good.

Laptop Blues

It's an admitted inadequacy of mine. Laptops suck. In 1981, I was a pioneer learning a Wang word processor. It was a rather large station connected to the HUGE computer on the second floor of Western Geophysical on Richmond Avenue in Houston, Texas. I'm 55 or I will be on Nov. 8 (I want a porcelain dutch oven in case anyone's listening-Ina Garten cooks in a dutch oven all the time and I adore her.) Laptops have a mind of their own. Sometimes they turn off on their own, and god forbid if you don't shut them down properly.

I worked at the library in 1995 and like to think I got in on the ground floor of learning the internet. I ended up teaching database courses for the State Library in 1999 and made good money doing it. Yet last week when my laptop would not boot up I had to call Clif down in Baton Rouge for instructions. I've been left behind, stranded in the dust, marooned at the dock. He told me to push the Fn button and sure enough, it came on. WHAT THE HELL IS THE FN BUTTON? I don't care, I don't really care anymore. I only use my laptop when we go camping or out of town so I don't want a PhD in laptop computers.

We're here in Baton Rouge for the LSU game this weekend and yesterday for no reason at all my mouse stopped working. I did all the button pushing on the USB and underneath the mouse and changed the battery yet nope, nada, nothing. The laptop even said it did not recognize the device. Oh come on Mr. Laptop, you don't recognize your old cousin Mr. Mouse? And miraculously when I booted it up this morning after it had it's fit over not being shut down properly, suddenly Mr. Laptop and Mr. Mouse are all up in each other's arms like old friends. Sheesh!

Very cozy, eh? And unlike a PC which you can type strokes (read: get your frustrations out), a laptop makes you feel like a pair of brown shoes in a world of tuxedos. I think I can do 20 strokes per minute on my laptop.

We came to Baton Rouge for the LSU game against Vanderbilt (LSU won.) Driving in Friday afternoon was a nightmare. It started raining in Alexandria on the way down and did not stop until the weekend was over. I guess there was a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico or something but I'm totally waterlogged. We took the fifth wheel to the KOA campgrounds in Denham Springs just east of BR. However, it took an hour and a half to get from the foot of the Mississippi River bridge to Denham Springs (15 miles.) Along with laptops, Baton Rouge driving sucks. There's nothing like putting an interstate through the middle of a city and then not building any other major roads through it or around it.

HEY BATON ROUGE CITY COUNCIL, EVER HEARD OF A LOOP? You know, something that looks like U.S. Highway 190 but does not have 500 stop lights on it?

The KOA campground has putt-putt golf and a swimming pool and pool tables and a $5 breakfast. I felt like I was in the midwest. A real vacationer.

We got to see Clif and Megan a couple of times. We hit Don's Seafood in Denham Springs which was super and ACME in Baton Rouge which was great too. Clif had to spend most of the weekend at the fraternity tailgate site. Along with being pledge educator this semester, he's also tailgate chairman (mainly because he is the construction management major in the frat.)

It took my boss, Mr. G, 7 years to get his undergraduate degree. Clif is working on year 5. Ah-hem.

Super weekend. No pictures, it rained, and rained, and rained.

Ruffinism for the day: Megan sent me an email with this People of Walmart website. Some of the pictures are hilarious.

overeLABORate DAY

Ho-hum, another weekend at the lake. Actually it was nice and quiet. No pictures, even though I charged the camera up. The weather was rather cool. The new air conditioner in the fifth wheel humming along. Site 34, a pull through, exceptional but for the biting flies you have to pry off your body with a pair of pliers. They draw blood like vampires and you walk around with little pools of blood all over your body. Off! is the only way to keep them at bay. It's like when you pull in, they all go, "The new people are here, let's get 'em!" And by the time you've sprayed your whole body down toxic agent, they're off to the next victims.

The LSU game, even though the team sucked persimmons, was a success, and you have NO IDEA how that maintained the weekend on an even keel. The rabid LSU fan I am married to has been known to jump up and down, turn red-faced and scream expletives at the television. Not to mention throwing his cap, the kleenex box, the couch pillows, anything in his line of sight. It's the g..d..... defense! DON'T YOU FOLKS KNOW THAT? We're predicting an early demise for Coach Les Miles. Of course that does not roll off the tongue as easily as LOU TEPPER, LOU TEPPER, FIRE THE BASTARD...or DINARDO RETARDO YOU BASTARDO...

And Norman accompanied us to the lake, lucky dog. I happened to find him Friday afternoon off the Metcalf Road hanging out with the trailer trash female pit bulls. Our little subdivision is in a rural area off the Oxford Road. Approximately one mile south of our subdivision is the Metcalf. It's where some very poor people live, you know the actual people who throw their trash out of their trailer and let it stay there for life. It's also one of the many roads outside of town that people dump their unwanted dogs. Well, Norman has discovered it and now has a harem of female pit bulls whose titties hang to the ground. You dog you. He has an appointment with the vet this week, the one who said, "Once a traveller, always a traveller." But now the traveller will not be an unwed father traveller.

Sometimes the best part of a holiday is coming home, getting back into the routine. Our ride back yesterday was a hoot. Or should I say a poot...Norman "broke wind" the whole way home. And not just any wind, the kind of fart that everyone in the truck hangs their head out the window. Because of a dog...who will sit there and look you right in the face while he's farting...and enjoy it. Panting with his tongue hanging out. You could have lit a match and the whole interior of the truck would have simultaneously combusted...as in massive explosion. We rolled the windows down and up maybe ten times before we decided to forgo the air conditioning in favor of a breath or two. And he looked at us from the backseat with a straight face.

Next weekend we're off with the fifth wheel to Baton Rouge for the first LSU home game. Staying at the KOA in Denham Springs. Catch me in my bikini by the pool. And no I'm not going to the game even though we have two tickets and have paid for chairbacks for the whole season. The seats are this high (yellow circle upper left): And my equilibrium does not go that high, nor my body. So I'll be back at the KOA with the other campers watching it on TV.

Ruffinism for the day:

I Found Edward A. Charlesworth, Ph.D.

But was he missing? Terribly...from my life, actually since 1992. As Vivi Walker said in the The Devine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, "I dropped my basket." Well, I dropped mine in 1989. As in...I went in the looney bin. Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX.

Clif was 2 years old, Jim was laid off from his 15-year job in the oil industry and could not find another one, and Jim's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We had also lost all of our money on Black Tuesday in the fall of 1987. There was a lot of pressure and tension in the Ruffin household.

It started with a 911 call and an ambulance ride. Clif and I were in the condo alone one afternoon (we lived in Houston then.) My left foot started buzzing, the creepiest feeling I've ever had in my life. And like a slow, very slow wave, the buzzing started going up the left side of my body. Well, I'm a panic attack person anyway so I'm getting a little spooked. I physically felt the buzz like a vibrating through my hip, my left side, my arm, my shoulder and then it got to my head. All I could think of was Clif being stuck alone so I got the phone and dialed 911 as it started buzzing in my brain. Yikes...

I told the operator about my symptoms and about Clif as I was shaking like a leaf. However, anyone who has panic disorder knows that everything is magnified a hundred times when you're in panic mode. I tried to calm myself down but NO WAY, this was a full blown conniption and all of a sudden I could not speak. BDUH THUK QUAP THO PUADDO...Oh my god. I run out to the driveway and hail the guard (we lived in a gated community), Johnny and I'm making all these unintelligilbe sounds and poor old Johnny is freaking out, Clif is screaming...I'm such a calming soul. I could think clearly at the time (or maybe not) but just couldn't talk. And then the buzzing started down the right side of my body. Defeated, I grabbed my address book out of my purse, sat on the steps, pointed at a phone number and kept trying to talk in some kind of cave man language. And I had a migraine to beat all migraines.

Clif got to ride up front in the ambulance, and I was eventually transferred to Methodist Hospital. I was diagnosed with a Vetebro Basilar Migraine, not a stroke as they originally thought. So they put me in the behavioural unit (read lock-up) for a day until my neurologist convinced the psychiatrist that I was not in danger of hurting myself or others. Hey guys, I was a mom with too much stress, a nutso yes, but a civilized nutso.

This is where Edward A. Charleworth, Ph.D. comes in. The two weeks I was in the hospital, they ran all kinds of tests on me and then I got to work with a doctor, Dr. Ping (I love that name and yes he was Asian and funny and great.) He put me in a room with a recliner and a pair of headphones and my whole world changed! They called it biofeedback then but I'm sure it's got a fancy meditation name now. I listened to a tape of this man talking to me in a very calm voice with music in the background teaching me how to "make my brain go fuzzy" for want of a better term. In two weeks, I learned to relax my body part by part, inch by inch until I could physically, yes physically, lighten my brain and make it go blank, totally relaxed. It's much better than xanax or cocaine or alcohol or any other drugs I've done in my sordid past.

Dr. Ping let me take the tape home and I kept it until my cassette player ate it in 1992. I still used biofeedback with soft music but it was never the same! And today, YES TODAY, I was playing around on Amazon.com and I found Edward A. Charlesworth, Ph.D. Turns out he's got lots of tapes but I found his imagery tape and downloaded it to my ipod and I'm ecstatic again! Orgasmic! This man's voice released me from my insanity(or maybe not). I used to get kicking, screaming, throwing up migraines and he fixed me. Look at him:

And I know you're dying to go buy his 18 minute relaxation tape so you must go here to do that. At least listen to his voice and try not to laugh...I'm serious.

We're headed to Sam Rayburn tomorrow and Edward A. Charlesworth is going with us. However, Norman is missing again.

Ruffinism for the day: "What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it." - McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest