I get letters nearly every day from people with MRSA, due to my work with MRSA Resources. So many times they are just heart wrenching, from people who just lost their parents, spouse or child to people with no insurance and no one to help them find the help and the expensive drugs that they need to battle their illness. You really can’t imagine how hard it is to write those people back sometimes.

Anyway, I just got the kindest letter:

God Bless You and all that your family has endured of
late.

I happened across your story about Marshall’s illness,
not because of anything MRSA related in my life. I
was just wanting to read what it was about.

What is truly incredible here is your devotion to your
husband Christina. What an incredibly inspiring story
you have told thru your keeping this diary of what has
been going on in your lives. Your attention to the
details and management of his care is astounding.

I just had to write to tell you what an wonderful
person you are for all the love that you have showed
your husband and your family.

May Marshall’s journey with his health continue on
this path of wellness. You both have so much life to
live for at such young ages and with so much going for
you.

Thanks for the inspiration your family has shown.

How touching was that? I do absolutely adore and worship my husband, and to have lost him last year would have been a possibly truly unbearable situation for me. I wrote down and published his story online because I really felt the need to let other people know that there is hope, and more importantly the exact details of his treatment (well, as exact as I could get them with my brain shutting down). I am not sure what this has to do with the situation I whined about earlier today, but I feel there is a lesson to be learned there. I hope I get it.

I am not sure why I deal with people sometimes. I moderate the FlyingInTexas group at YahooGroups, which is a statewide hub for followers of Flylady.net. I know it sounds a bit cultish, but Flylady has really made a huge difference in my life in regards to getting off my duff and getting organized and really making some worthwhile changes in my life. She is very positive and has no tolerance for negativity and whining.

ANYWAY, there is a member of our group that is a young widow of 5 years. The anniversary of her husbands death is this Sunday. Every year (this is the 3rd year), she starts in before Thanksgiving about how wretched and horrible the holidays are, and how she is glad that we are all so happy, but she is miserable because her husband is dead. It truly is very sad, but it goes on incessantly through Valentines day. When I say incessantly, I mean incessantly. It goes on all year long, but is especially intense through the entire holiday season. Over the years we have had countless people leave our group because of it. Well the first year, anyway. The last 2 years we have wisened up and put her posts on moderation just before Thanksgiving so we can delete the depressing ones before they come out to the group. And boy does she get mad and just spit venom at me every chance she gets. She tries to slip every jab she can into her posts, so I have to read each one very carefully before it goes through.

She thinks I am some wretched, insensitive bitch, but I wish she would see how hard we try, or have tried, to convince her that she has got to take all of this grief in a healthier direction. Her mother recently passed away, and I feel so bad for her, but I just can’t even explain how negative she is. She also recently found out she has a lump in her breast. She mixes up the grief and the breast problem and anything else she has to complain about in one post and then gets angry when “everyone but her can get support from the people in this group.” The only reason we haven’t kicked her out of the group is that we know that this is a life thread for her. She needs to let it go and get a real life, but so far, it isn’t happening. So year after year we coddle her, and I guess through moderating her and responding to her angered letters, we are showing her the attention that she needs. I have such a hard time with holding a grudge against her from last year, when MY husband was fighting for his life through the holidays and I had to deal with her. I wish she could see that we care, and I surely do wish she would get some professional help because it really gets to me every year. I really do feel terrible for her, but geez. I can’t stand someone who won’t help themselves. And it is impossible to do anything to help them.

Rock is Shadrock’s featured friend of the week over at my friend Kim Bloomer’s Bark-N-Blog! Go check her out if you are a dog lover, you are in for a real treat if you haven’t seen her site before. She is awesome! She is also the US affiliate for the Bella Moss Foundation, which is a UK based group founded to raise awareness and help pets with MRSA (which is obviously how I met Kim). Anyway, enjoy it! And, if you don’t like dogs, don’t bother going there and making crappy comments, it just isn’t nice!

This is my cousin Kevin’s daughter Chalea in NYC where she was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade with a large troupe of cheerleaders from all over the country.

Here is a shocker:

Mother of Jackson accuser is charged with fraud.

The woman whose son accused Michael Jackson of child molestation in a trial
that led to Jackson’s acquittal was charged with welfare fraud Tuesday in a
five-count complaint alleging she collected $18,782 in payments while
making false claims she was indigent.

I just hate the way so many people in the US are sitting around waiting for their Golden Ticket to arrive. I’m glad it didn’t work for this woman (again). And how on earth is her child going to grow up thinking he actually has to WORK for a living?

BTK Killer Sentencing from Fox news: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166072,00.html

I have a hard time with my feelings about the BTK killer (Dennis Rader), and I am not sure why. I have never felt this way about anyone who has been convicted of a crime like this (or killing anyone, for that matter).

He is, by his own admittance, a monster. I know he is crazy, he is very, very guilty of everything he was charged with and prison is where he belongs. I understand that there is no rehabilitating a person like him.

Why do I feel sympathy for him then? I don’t think sympathy is the right word, but I cannot come up with the right one. I don’t feel sympathetic for him in any sort of way like I think he should have a light sentence, or that he is not deserving of the most harsh punishment that could be given to him. In fact, I think it is a real shame that they did not have the death sentence as a possibility for him. I don’t feel any sense that he did not do what he has admitted, and been convicted of doing. What he has done is truly horrible and inhuman and completely psychotic, and I don’t believe that people like this have a chance in the world of being rehabilitated. Why then do I feel this way?

I feel like he has tried to fight his psychotic homocidal urges. He held a marriage together for 25 years. He was the president of his church congregation. And I think he got himself busted because he was about to lose control and kill again. Maybe some of the sympathetic feelings I have come from the fact that he was Lutheran (like me). I really don’t know, or understand why.

I can’t even begin to imagine what goes through your mind when you are a serial killer, but for some reason, I see him as more than just a monster, but a man who has fought the Devil for his whole life, and finally admitted defeat. Thank God he did, or there might have been even more killings. Maybe this makes him a more horrible monster than any of the other mass murderers in history. I just don’t know, and I probably don’t want to know.

I pray that he will be taken from this world soon, and that wherever he ends up, that he will be freed from his madness.

Oh the fabulous Shai Coggins is at it again! Check out this article by Shai at About.com about Texans getting married via weblog. Thats HOT. That is SO Texas!

At one point my husband and I were a little unusual because we met online–I guess that is just old stuff these days!

This is one reason I really love blogging: When things in our world, or my life, irritate me, I love this platform to get it off my chest. Who knows who will read it, but it just doesn’t matter, the point is, it is off my chest. And if it doesn’t quite get all the way off my chest, I can blog about it again!

Martha Stewart. For the life of me, I do not understand why “they (whoever they are)” have tried to make such an “example (of what?)” out of her. I have never been a Martha Stewart fan, I always thought she was about as cold and out of touch with reality as they come. I did make a VERY cool wreath out of overgrown okra in my garden one time that I saw in her magazine, but that was years ago, and that was about the extent of my interest in her.

Ok, so “they” put her in jail. Thank goodness–I feel much safer now with Martha Stewart in prison. Was she guilty of a crime? I guess she was. I think a much more beneficial punishment would have been to have her fined out the wazoo, rather than PRISON. How many dangerous criminals are on the streets that need to be in prison, and they are wasting their time/prison resources with MARTHA STEWART??? How many dangerous criminals are on the street that “they” are just leaving on the street because they are scared of them, are getting funded by them (or for some other dishonest reason)? This makes no sense to me, at all.

My respect for Martha Stewart has grown over the last year, I think she has taken all of this like a true American should. She has been dignified, has not used her status for sympathy and favors, not whined about it, and basically just took all of this mularkey like a champ.

So today, I read an article from USA Today, informing us that Martha Stewart has had her house arrest extended for 3 more weeks. Oh, thank goodness again, that will be another 3 weeks that the world will not be subjected to the fear of MARTHA STEWART running around free in the streets. What did she do? Take an unauthorized yoga class??

Does any of this make sense to anyone???

I really hope that Martha’s career blossoms after this, but I really have a feeling she is finished. That Apprentice show she is doing is a bad idea, in my opinion. I really think if she is going to continue her success that she needs to get back to her roots, and try to create some warm fuzzies again (this was never her forte to begin with) with a nice crafty/cooking show rather than a business oriented, Trump-associated show like she has chosen. But who am I to say. She is/was Martha Stewart Omnimedia, not me. I know I won’t watch it, it is just not my cup of tea. If she had something warm and fuzzy coming up, I would watch just to give her the support.

Good luck Martha, I am afraid you are going to need it.

As you might have found, if you have explored my goings-on, I am deeply involved in the “cause” of informing the public about the dangers of MRSA, and helping MRSA patients find relevant information (see my site, MRSA Resources for more info…).

Today my mission is to contact some people in my community that might be interested in Tony doing a speaking engagement with them while he is here to interview Marshall for his documentary of his US visit. He is driving way down here to central Texas from NYC, and I surely do want to make his visit worthwhile! That is a HUGE drive!

Tony is a former financial advisor, from the UK, who acquired MRSA from the hospital following two consectutive hip replacement surgeries. He has been left on crutches, and is lucky to be alive. He is the chairperson of the MRSA Support victims advocacy group in the UK. Every time I meet somone who has fallen victim to this horrid bacteria, it once again makes me so very thankful that my husband has been spared (so far, anyway) of any crippling repercussions from his illness.

I am going to call: Dr. Daftarian (who I hope will appear with Marshall in the documentary), BVCAA Health Clinic, Dr. Lemos (Infectious Disease), and the Texas A&M Health and Science Center in the School of Medicine. This is NOT my forte– I have emailed Tony’s group, MRSA Support, this morning, to see if he has a CV available that might give me a little more confidence in this area! I think I best call Denise as well, I bet she has all of the info I might need…….

Ok, I guess I am not the only one that doesn’t think that Oprah was “discriminated” against by Hermes Paris. Here is an article that just about says it all. http://www.tvgasm.com/archives/miscellaneous_tv/000886.php

The astounding gall of celebrities is mindblowing sometimes. To read things like this makes me really wonder why so many people put these people on a pedestal, when they obviously do not deserve it. Why do we care about the opinions of these people so much, people who are so out of touch with reality? I just don’t get it. How can a sob story from Oprah who was not allowed in a luxury store that was CLOSED even be compared to the discrimination that some people have been through in their lives? Please. Wake up Oprah, if you want to shop after hours, do like Puffy does and make an appointment, and do not cry about it when you are turned away, that is ridiculous, and just makes you look like a self centered, spoiled brat.

Shall I even address Tom Cruise? Nah…..not worth the time.