13 Snowball Moon
1. Snow looks out of place on a sandy beach and some sand on beaches looks like snow.
2. Sometimes while driving downhill on the winding Blue Ridge Parkway, my car feels like a pin ball falling down the bottom of the game. Then, as if being flicked by a flipper, I’m back climbing up a hill.
3. I grew up playing pinball machines and still remember when the machine would TILT, sort of like a computer freezing up today. I also remember Pong and Pacman, two of the first video games.
4. Winter on Nantasket Beach: The ice cream truck is a snow plow.
5. The best place to pick up the internet in my mother’s house (where I’m helping out while she recovers from shingles) is in the middle of the bed in my father’s room. He passed away in 2005.
6. I had a dream that my brother Danny (who died in 2001) was dying again and we went to be by his side.
He died in the afternoon but continued to move around and seem alive. We were told that it was just a reflex reaction, and even though he was supposedly dead we didn’t want to leave him while he was still acting alive. In real life we left my brother’s body too soon after he passed. He was technically dead buy I knew more was still going on.
7. I’m easily disorientated when out of my own surroundings. Packed in plastic bags for easy travel, my tryptophan capsules that I take when I can’t sleep look just like my multi-vitamins. All I have to do is take one tryptophan instead of a vitamin at breakfast and I’m napping by10 a.m.
8. The only thing I can figure as to why walking the beach in winter isn’t as much of a high as when I do it in summer is that in winter I have shoes on.
9. Stuff we’ve tried to ease the pain of my mother’s shingles: DMSO, apple cider vinegar, jewelweed lotion, and Benadryl lotion. Everything helps but nothing cures as well as time.
10. Curious about the two kinds of shingles, the disease and the roofing material, I did a little research and learned that the first shingles—the inflammatory skin disease caused by latent Chicken Pox virus – comes from words that mean girdle (cengles, single, chingle, cingulus) because of the rash that tends to extend around the middle of the body. Roofing shingles comes from scincle (1200), a small piece of wood, or shindalmos, a splinter.
11. A Simpson snowball fight game is HERE. My best score was 25.
12. My directorial debut: I wish snow shoveling was THIS easy.
13. On Monday the almost full March moon in Massachusetts looked like an oversized snow ball in a wintery mix but the next day when it warmed up and the snow melted the moon did not.
If you play 13 Thursday, honk HERE.
March 11th, 2009 9:30 pm
I hope your Mom gets better soon…shingles is just so miserable!
March 11th, 2009 10:00 pm
Sending healing vibes your Mom’s way, Great list. Happy T13!
March 11th, 2009 10:02 pm
Great list! Thanks for sharing. Love the pics in the previous post too.
March 11th, 2009 11:02 pm
Just catching up with your past few posts. Love all the photos of Nantasket–especially the one of you walking down the beach with your laptop. That would be me. My mother had shingles eight years ago, but they were misdiagnosed so she ended up with post-herpetic neuralgia. Glad your mom is getting such prompt and good care.
March 11th, 2009 11:04 pm
That’s interesting about dreaming about your brother. Do you feel any resolution from it?
March 11th, 2009 11:05 pm
I sound like the bore at the party who likes to repeat myself. Delete me if you can!
March 12th, 2009 12:33 am
I remember Pong and Pacman too! And how modern they seemed to us at the time!
March 12th, 2009 1:48 am
Just the thought of shingles scare me. I hope your mum gets better soon!
March 12th, 2009 3:48 am
hey – buy your mom a lotion called “sarna” at the local drugstore for good relief. (I like the original formula much better than the no fragrance one.) when i had shingles and was told about this i bought it and found excellent relief. i am now never without it. it is so soothing to the skin and good for itching, too. i love it and even keep a small amount in a little medication bottle in my purse for “on the road” applications “just in case.” tell her i send my good wishes for her full recovery.
March 12th, 2009 5:57 am
I remember our kids, both of them, how they sat for hours playing pac man!!!
My thirteen is now posted…come join me? Happy Thursday.
March 12th, 2009 7:03 am
Oh, I was a big pinball player, too! And Pong and Pacman. Gosh.
I hope your mom is feeling better.
March 12th, 2009 7:28 am
Have you ever thought of compiling your thoughts into a book? For instance, #2 here…sort of a la Erma Bombeck 🙂
March 12th, 2009 8:31 am
I’ve never seen a beach in snow. Cool. Hope your mom feels better soon.
March 12th, 2009 9:08 am
I hope your mom is on the mend. You have interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
March 12th, 2009 9:14 am
Remember our Jim being a pro on Pac-Man. He could get to all the levels…..I believe it was the keys.
PS I think we should try the “Sarna” that Sky speaks of, unless of course the patch came through. xo
March 12th, 2009 10:27 am
Great post..I downloaded pacman on my phone..lol. Loved centipede
March 12th, 2009 12:02 pm
I was once dating a guy whose father passed away and he begged to sit with him the first night in the funeral home but they discourage it saying that the body still may have some reflex reactions with bones settling and it can really be unsettling to family members. They didn’t want to tell him that but he just wouldn’t leave.
March 12th, 2009 12:28 pm
Oh, I never knew that. I tend to believe it may take some time for the spirit to leave the body and if I had it to do over again I wouldn’t have left Dan’s body so soon. The hospital had someone (priest or counselor) come in and escort us out but it felt too soon to me. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamt this dream of Dan moving as if he was alive after he died.
We now have my mother on a lidocaine patch and it seems to be really helping. From what we’ve learned a percentage of people get post-herpetic neuralgia even if they are properly diagnosed and treated. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that my mother won’t have to deal with that.
March 12th, 2009 5:52 pm
I miss you.
March 12th, 2009 5:59 pm
XO
March 12th, 2009 7:32 pm
An ice cream truck as a snow plow sounds interesting. I hope your mom recovers quickly.
March 12th, 2009 8:26 pm
First of all, you’re not the only one that remembers pong… how about “hockey” and “hand ball”? Pac-Man was a HUGE leap forward! 🙂
As for shingles/shingles… first off, I do hope your mom doesn’t suffer too greatly… and there’s a goodly TT on it’s own… Words with Two Meanings!
March 13th, 2009 3:58 am
and I wished there were no snow anymore at all !!
March 13th, 2009 5:40 am
I hope your mother is soon well. She is blessed to have you take care of her.
I like to walk the beach in winter, but it is very different from walking there in the summer. No shoes, no smell of lotion, no hot dogs!
Your dream about your brother was touching. Quite an enigma.
March 13th, 2009 11:07 am
I had wondered about the relation but didn’t pursue the etymology.
Dreams can reawaken memories and feelings to uneasy realism.
March 14th, 2009 12:30 am
#8 is so right on! Sorry for your mom – my mother-in-law suffered through shingles herself this past summer.