Road Trip

Keeping my fingers crossed... I should be travelling to Dallas with Cathie to pick up Eve by Friday. At least, I hope so. I think I'm in the mood for a little break, and some time with Cathie. I haven't told much about my children, so bear with me while I take a quick tour down Memory Lane. It'll be necessary, in order to relate this piece of history to my life now.

Cathie is my youngest offspring. She has been a trip, herself! Youngest of three children, too young to remember her parent's divorce. She found out very early how powerful a winsome smile and twinkling eyes were, then tried very hard to keep people from figuring out how smart she really was. Admittedly, Eve was a tough act to follow -- she's one of the smartest people I know. So Cathie chose a different path. She's been a real challenge, but like her brother and sister, she has always known she has my heart at all times.

So now Cathie is a sergeant in the US army, a medic, but not yet a doctor or a nurse. She enlisted during her senior year of high school, intent on becoming a doctor, and wanting to join the army. Although her stepmother was against it and hoped I would put a stop to it (her dad mysteriously stepped back and let the women sort things out -- smarter than I thought!), I gave Cathie my support. I had seen her pursue whims and have brief infatuations with ideas before, but this wasn't one of them.

Cathie left for basic training before her eighteenth birthday. She's 25, now. Cathie has been stationed in Germany, Kosovo, and South Korea. She is not in an infantry division, but she's a sharpshooter. She can administer an IV or deliver a baby. She can drive or work on the engine of a Hummer. And she saved someone's life in a tragic situation, although she has never been in battle.

In February of 2003, Cathie was stationed at Fort Campbell, the army base nearest to our home. Her brother was in Fort Hood, Texas, awaiting his tour of duty in South Korea. As is common for deploying military, he was selling, giving away, or storing several belongings, amongst which as a very nice sofa. Cathie decided to drive down and get it, using the trip as an excuse to see him before he left. Her friend Tina offered to accompany her. Cathie didn't tell me, she she knew I couldn't go, and since she didn't plan to be gone long.

In the early hours of Saturday, February 1, Cathie was following an 18-wheel tractor-trailer truck on a highway in Texas, not far from Texarkana. Only an hour or so before the descent and crash of the space shuttle Columbia, there was another tragic crash and loss of life. The truck ran into a bridge over a creek. It veered and then stopped, hanging part-way off the edge of the bridge. Its load, a 5-ton industrial lathe, flew off the truck and struck Cathie's Dodge pick-up truck.

The driver of the large truck was dead, wedged behind the steering wheel, dangling above the creekbed. Cathie remembers hearing the screams of his passenger, a woman who was thrown when the truck went off the road. The woman was taken to the Texarkana hospital, where she laspsed into a coma. She never awoke.

Cathie had tried to respond to the screams, but she couldn't move her leg. Instead, she tended to her friend Tina, who had turned very white and seemed to pass out. Tina had suffered from a mini-stroke and stopped breathing. Cathie kept breathing for her, keeping her alive, while two men in another pick-up truck found them and contacted help.

I can only imagine how Cathie felt, waiting in the hospital for news about Tina. I know the television sets and people were certainly abuzz with the news of the space shuttle. Cathie said she knew Tina's chances didn't look good. When she called me from the hospital, her voice was shaking.

It's been two years and ten months. Cathie found out her ankle was broken, but not till she got back to Fort Campbell and was still in excruciating pain.
Tina had extensive surgery and then surprized everyone by waking up able to speak. She had suffered some brain damage that affected her eyesight and several other functions. She could not read, or name attributes like colors, at that time. I am not sure how she is doing with those abilities now. In addtion to requiring heart surgery, Tina had to have a tear in her liver repaired from the airbag inflation. She is still raising her two little boys, but she will need help and medical attention for the rest of her life.

In 2003, Cathie said that she never wanted to drive again. I understood, but I knew she would. It would be something she'd have to do in order to heal.
She now drives another Dodge pick-up truck. She has driven on that same road again more than once. For the most part, she seems to have faced her demons from that day. Her retelling of the event usually makes her feel stronger, whereas it makes me feel a little shaky.

This trip to pick up Eve in Dallas and come home for Christmas is going to be a pleasant trip, though, where we can talk at our leisure, play CDs on her stereo, and sing Christmas songs. (Yes, we do silly things like that on road trips.)

Maybe soon I can face my demons again, too, and revisit the place where I lost my sister Cathy. I hope to do them both proud.

Lorilei

...and I knew it was going to be...

Oh, you know the story. In the course of a day, something happens to you. It's kind of bad, but not earth-shaking. Certainly nothing that anyone else wouldn't just shake off so they can get on with life. Yeah. But that event begins to attract more little problems, more disappointments. Suddenly it's like a snowball running down the hill. What happened? How did the situation get out of hand?

One of my favorite books to read with kids, aside from some of Dr. Seuss's classics, is Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Yes, I must confess. I think I was Alexander in another lifetime. Only now my past has caught up to me. The chewing gum of life has stuck itself in my hair, and my double-decker strawberry ice cream cone has hit the floor. It has probably left gooey pink splashes all over my new plain white sneakers, too.

It just seems that one thing after another keeps happening. Not in a day, but cumulatively. It just keeps building. You really wonder when this is going to end.

I don't even want to discuss the CafePress boards. If you've ever been a moderator in a public forum of culturally diverse people with varied opinions, you know it can be a challenge. That's probably enough said.

I own several name domains, mostly in conjunction with my CafePress stores. I know some folks with over 100 of them, but I'm not competing for the honor of domain-name princess. These are just very handy tools for getting around the world wide web.
One of my domains was born of an idea triggered by my annoyance at the neverending supply of unsolicited emails. And what do you call it? What the US government, Monty Python, and the rest of the cyberworld calls it -- spam.

On my site, the subject of this annoyance became not only a proud but fictitious foreign country, where everyone was deposed royalty trying to regain their rightful fortune, but also home of a camp for the underprivilged children. These children, of course, have the time of their young lives, while being trained to love life's greatest pleasures -- composing sad sob-stories in email, and revering credit card information and small greenish pictures of dead presidents. This very tongue-in-cheek site was called Camp Spam. Products bore phrases such as "I already gave all my money to budding scam artists at campspam.com" and "We {heart} George" (Washington). It seemed obvious it was all about unsolicited emails, many of which are specifically targeted to online shopkeepers.

Unfortunately, the people who sent me one email were not amused. They did not think the connection was obvious enough. They were a law firm. They did not contact CafePress, but came straight after me. I received a PDF and certified snail mail (with my name misspelled). This prestigious law firm said their client wanted me to cease and desist. Who was this client? Hormel, makers of SPAM.

I made changes. First, I changed the graphics to camp sp@m. This did not make them happy. I put in disclaimers. These have finally evolved into the following statement: "This store is NOT, never has been, and never will be affiliated with Hormel® or any of its products. "

They are still not happy. The legal department at CafePress has tried to intervene on my behalf, but the H. lawyers can't be bothered long enough to look at my site and see what changes have been made. It sounds like they want the happy, smiling faces of the Sp@manian campers to be against the thing that is their own livelihood. Ah, the irony of people who do not get irony.

All my campers are now hidden online (though I have a Camp shirt I still wear with pride). I even hid the "We {heart} George" shirts for now, though I'm thinking of bringing those back. I could add "We {heart} Abe," " We {heart} Andy," " We {heart} Ulysses," and "We {heart} Benjy" to them for an interesting section.

An example of my old designs:

I have just one design there now. The store section (and its parent basic store) now contain a lot of informational text and that design. I am adding the white tee as well, to give variation. Choice is good. Oh, I'll just make it six shirts. That's a nice number.

The new t-shirt design makes it clear what my designs are about: the CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003. I know this is really what Hormel wanted all along, so people would know what it is for which it stands. Oh -- I mean the US government act, not the little can of meat.
http://www.campspam.com

Ain't freedom wonderful?

Time for me to get ready for work. I'll have to tell about the other weird things another time.

Lorilei

Sneaking back in...

*gulp*
You caught me. Just when I thought no one would notice... okay, so six months is a bit long to be absent without leave. But I have an alibi, your honor....

Where to begin? This summer and fall (or autumn, for those of you who might think I fell) were crazy. My computer has crashed -- twice, I think? The last time required disc formatting. Several art files bit the dust. I could blame this on my tech support guy Paul, but -- well, why not? He'll never read this. He's my son. My blog would have to be the most boring thing on the face of the earth, to him.

Yes, it's Paul's fault. Because the airport security when he returned to the US from South Korea (US Army) damaged the video card when they dropped it on the floor. And he gave the video card to me. And it damaged my motherboard so it eventually blew up. And Paul hadn't hooked up my Drive A (Ron, my floppy drive) or helped me get a program for Drive E (my CD burner) so I could back up my work. I do have all the diskettes from older work, but practically nothing from the last year or so. But I will survive. I've managed to salvage a few things here and there. Some things I have recreated. And I will make new things, too.

But I spent literally hours working on a row of adorable little people for my Teachers Pets business cards, and they are gone.

I bought two packages of the goofy things, which were on special, but they looked terrible. I thought it was my own fault, and I haven't given them out at all. But in looking at the template online, I see it was not my fault. I wish I could get a reprint of them -- or at least get a copy of my artwork so I could get them done else where. I think what makes me the maddest is that I meant to upload the high resolution version of my little people to CafePress for t-shirts, but it got fried when the motherboard died.
(... so, bye-bye, Miss American Pie....)