The crazy lady strikes again

The landlord just got off the phone. He didn't leave a very specific message - I was noodling around Blogit and was therefore unable to pick up the phone, so he left a message - but I know exactly why he called. I have a rent check sitting here waiting for someone to pick up. It isn't for as much as I actually owe him, but it's for some of what I owe him, and I hope to be able to make up the difference by writing a great deal between now and then. What helps is that I'm healthier than I was last... Sign in to see full entry.

The doctors decided to keep her a few extra days. The impression I get is that she might have developed an infection, or they're monitoring her for one. That's something of an occupational hazard for a baby this size. A normal infant's immune system has a tough enough time coping with all the new bugs it has to encounter; a preemie like this little gal has an even weaker immune system, which makes preemies sitting ducks for anything coming down the pike. I just hope everything's OK with her. Sign in to see full entry.

A little girl is being released from a Florida hospital on the day that I write this. Now, this may not seem like a major news flash to anyone reading this - until you understand that this little girl, only four months old, was a mere ten ounces at birth. She was born after spending only 21 weeks and six days in her mother's womb. Doctors were so certain of this because they knew exactly when she was put there; she was conceived by in-vitro fertilization. Although, as a Catholic, I wonder why... Sign in to see full entry.

I've talked before about my visits to sites like Pink Truth, which is a site run by a CPA and former Mary Kay consultant (which is what Mary Kay Cosmetics calls its sales reps). To recap what I've said about Mary Kay, Amway and similarly-organized companies (like PartyLite, Arbonne Cosmetics and Herbalife), most of them have products they sell directly to consumers. With Mary Kay, it's cosmetics and skin-care products (moisturizers, wrinkle creams and the like). Sales reps sell the products... Sign in to see full entry.

This is an expansion of sorts on my comments in my last entry, about Valentine's Day. It seems to me as if there is a certain subset of manipulative women out there that really do feel that way - that if the men in their lives do not live up to their expectations, out the door they go. At the very least, the men experience the worst attack of guilt they will ever get, at the hands of a very angry woman who wanted all this "stuff" for a given holiday, and didn't get it. If it's Mother's Day, she... Sign in to see full entry.

I think I'll brain the advertiser! I hate this time of year as much as my daughter Liz does, because there are so many women out there my age who insist that their men had better bring them chocolates and roses, and take them to a five-star restaurant for Valentine's Day, or else they'll end the relationship. I've thought about this, and I'm just grateful I don't work as a manager at an office. I wouldn't subject employees who said these things to disciplinary action, because these kinds of... Sign in to see full entry.

I write about organ donation issues in the blog I referenced in the title. I'm planning on emailing a few of you - a select group of you so I don't spam you unintentionally - so I can get some readership about this important issue. My entry in Organ Donor Awareness Week is about the new allocation procedures being proposed by America's official organ-allocation agency, the Organ Porcurement and Transplant Network, or OPTN. It's run by UNOS, which was started by a bill passed by then-Sen. Al... Sign in to see full entry.

One thing I learned during my undergraduate days - back when I was dating an abuser (and actively staying in the relationship, out of fear), while I was socializing with Protestant fundamentalists who were also undergraduates - is that it's easy to fool people into thinking you're conforming with the norms, as long as you obey a few simple outward rules. Those rules vary from group to group; they're different in a more skeptical group than if you belonged to a group of conservative... Sign in to see full entry.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how things would have turned out had I been allowed to run my life, my way. Here's the result of all that thinking. The most important thing that might have happened is - believe it or not - that we might have ended up in a cult, or at least a cult-like Christian church. In order to explain why, I have to give you some background. During my undergraduate days, while I was dating the man I talk about in my blog I am here and I am not silent, I also... Sign in to see full entry.

NASA. Whether NASA intended to do so or not, the agency did it again, when Ms. Nowak (the astronaut I described yesterday) got arrested after being caught spraying pepper spray at another female astronaut over a male colleague. Here's where the Fickle Finger of Fate comes in. Exactly two days after Super Bowl XX in New Orleans - the one the Chicago Bears won - NASA's space shuttle Challenger blew up just over a minute after launch, killing seven astronauts (including the first Teacher in Space).... Sign in to see full entry.