jmh123

I am listening to my Ultimate IT CD. Thank you for your recommendations jmh. I forgot how much I loved it. A fun walk down memory lane.

Thanks. We probably had as much clack for the whole tour then as we do now for one concert, and didn't have all the fancy dancy stuff. Mimefan's NAT full concert audio is pretty fantastic, if you want to venture down another branch of memory lane. I'm sure CU has those. Greensboro, Houston, and a few more? Anybody remember?

Thanks jmh, I'm looking and Clack Unlimited and Clayversity vaults and I'm not finding it. CV had some audio compilations at one time, but when I click on that it just takes me back to the parent directory.

CV is moving to a new vault server so the files probably aren't there now.

Here's the CU folder for Houston: Houston. They're right in with the video. Greensboro, Raleigh afternoon and evening. Seems like there's another. Ah, Greenville. Just click on mime_fan in each one.

eep

HAHA. Love you too couchie. :F_05BL17blowkiss:

So, anyone out there up for talking some sense into me?

You mean talk you into going to Vegas or out of going?

I am listening to my Ultimate IT CD. Thank you for your recommendations jmh. I forgot how much I loved it. A fun walk down memory lane.

Thanks. We probably had as much clack for the whole tour then as we do now for one concert, and didn't have all the fancy dancy stuff. Mimefan's NAT full concert audio is pretty fantastic, if you want to venture farther down memory lane. I'm sure CU has those. Greensboro, Houston, and a few more? Anybody remember?

Sigh, now I'm going to be a dog walker forever. (kicks self for not posting imaginary posts)

FCA

BWAH!! Now you'll have to post 50 times. Haha. Great SN!!

JMH. I'll go to Shanghai with you! When's the best time?

Well, not right away, but let's do it. Shanghai and HongKong.

eeee, it's CG!!

I don't think couchie has all this stuff, y'all. Hat and gloves and maybe a scarf are probably more important than the Warmest Coat Ever. See about whether you can borrow any of these things from any of your traveling buddies or a local.

Yeah, footwear with a grip. Good sneakers will actually work if you have those, especially high tops. A shoe that covers as much of the foot and ankle as possible.

Oh Merrieeee, I hear you. I would describe myself and this situation exactly the same way. The best thing for me so far, the thing I keep coming back to, is the limbo, that I have to learn to accept an ever changing situation and roll with it. I tend to worry a lot, try to figure out how to deal. Seems like there's always something new happening to adjust to and work through. At some point I guess one arrives at a never changing situation, and that's what wandacleo's world sounds like to me.

So wandacleo, you may be so into the routine that you don't realize how amazing you are, but you are. And I hope you're getting all the help you can, because you should have lots of help.

I cannot imagine myself bathing my mother and tending to her personal needs either, but I expect I will end up doing some of that. I have no experience, no training, which is why I think we need an aide. Still a little scared that my sister will object.

I was able to realize this week that I have had already a positive effect on several routines that have improved her situation: medication (just by buying one of those little box sets with the days of the week, which my sister fills and my mother does great with), and eating--we've just done a lot of things, tried a lot of different things, until we've found a routine that keeps her with a decent diet. So now, incontinence & bathing--that's next. And routines of house upkeep. I need to give myself some credit instead of being overwhelmed by how much more there is to do. My sister and her husband do a lot too--we all do. It's just there's a lot to be done. My sister was all on her own with this for two years, when things weren't quite as bad, but she did all my mother's shopping and took her on all her errands, helped with getting the bed made, dealt with all her doctors.

I had a dream, really too long to relate. Cliff's Notes version: my mother was driving and we were in the car, and she tried to drive into the door of the store we were going into, and we were yelling, "stop, stop, stop". (trans. - we just can't let her drive her life anymore.) The other part caused me to feel what her world was alike, in a repetitive scene that just keep looping and looping, and the emotion of it was horrible. Cliff's Notes: I'm looking for my family and keep going from room to room in this store, passing a service area where people who work there say, "Can I help you?" And I would just keep going, but every now and then I'd accept the help and they'd take me out of the loop, but then off I'd go back into it. The rest of the time I was in this deep fog that I just couldn't find my way out of. Once I did, the sensation was amazing, such a relief. Just to be clear-minded. I think I need to give her simple encouragement, holding her, talking to her, so she knows she is safe and connected to her home and family. And keep beating her in Scrabble. And yes, she really is more docile than she's ever been in her life for the time being anyway. It's odd. She was always fiery and bossy and dominating.

Welcome, Desertrose. We don't object to wordiness at all and you sound like an interesting person. Come post, we won't bite.

Thanks for being the catalyst for many great friendships. jmh123

Hey--I can do better than that. You can download it from here: http://www.findingclayaikenmedia.com/audio/independent04.htm. Scroll down just a little to "Ultimate collection."

Doesn't sound easy at all to me wandacleo. Not at all.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm in prison.

See, that's how my situation is easier. I have to wrestle with decisions and learning how to deal and adjust and how to get my mom to do things she doesn't want to do without taking away her dignity, but at least I can go home and am away from it all far more than I'm there. My mom still has some faculties, and there are three of us sharing responsibilities. They may be recalcitrant about some things, but at least they're in there doing some of the things that need doing. She can still be alone part of the time, but gradually she'll need more and more caretaking. We'll just have to take things as they come. There's no room for my mom in my apartment and besides, anywhere she moved she'd probably lose all memory pretty fast, and I'd hate for that to happen. We're fortunate that she can afford assistance, and with some help, gradually increasing with the need, I hope we can keep her in her home as long as possible. But I have to get a job, can't afford not to work, and the rest already work. And the one self-sacrifice I just won't make is to move into that house, because I'd be taking on the house as well as her care, and the house just needs too much. There is room for a live-in, three rooms and a full bath upstairs, maybe a student with limited finances who could just keep an eye on her and do a little housekeeping.

It's helpful to know that this hygiene issue is typical, because it sure is a pain. It's good you have a sense of humor about the yelling over bathing and changing clothes. Unless my mother becomes more malleable, I couldn't do that at this point, because I'm not big enough to force her to do anything, but if she becomes more obedient as she loses mental capacity it's possible. My sister's always been in charge of doctor's visits and medication and I'm not even on the list of people who can ask questions at this point, but it's obvious she's got some form of dementia and it's getting worse. I'm going to make some more calls tomorrow and hopefully be able to find someone to come in starting with couple of hours a day several days a week pretty soon, and make that decision unilaterally if I have to. I had a thought last week my mom might accept a man as a nurses aide and I talked to her about it and that did resonate with her, she was the most open to the idea of an aide she's ever been. Odd, but it's just her age and the way she thinks. I found a male CNA, an older man who seems interesting and creative about treatment, and he sounds like a real advocate for the patients he has taken care of, so I'm going to call him and see if he's free, if she likes him, if the family approves of him, and so forth. Like play says, finding just the right person is so important.

Mom & I had a good talk about diapers Friday, and the bath was voluntary, which was why it was a good day. I bought the wrong kind of diapers so I've got to go get the pull-ons. You have to be an engineer to get the belted kind on--who knew that there were different types anyway? and that some of them were so hard to use for Pete's sake.

Hi--best of vibes to CarolinaClay and family. Yup, we're on baby watch. Another 12+ hours to go. I woke up at 7am today and did a lot of straightening up in the house. A year almost, and I'm still not fully unpacked, and still in limbo as to whether I'm going to stay in this apartment or move again in a few months >> year from now, whether I just need to get rid of a whole lot more things, or get a bigger place that can accommodate all my stuff, or get a job with an office where I can put some things. Limbo, limbo limbo rock. Limbo, limbo limbo rock. Anybody else remember that song?? Anyway, Scarlett's Shanghai Museum mention really struck a chord, so I went rummaging all around last night looking for souvenirs and tore the place up a bit, and after working hard today I'm closer to being able to rearrange the living room and get some things unpacked that all of a sudden I really miss. Tonight I had the Clay friend with whom I went to Asheville over for clack watching and CD burning. She's never made her own audio CDs before, so we had lots of fun. We must've burned a dozen CDs--she also wanted to make some for her friend's mother who likes Clay but can't get out to his concerts anymore, so we burned a modified JBT and an ATDW show for her. We thought of cool combos that my friend might like, like my old Ultimate IT collection, and a collection of duets, a couple of CDs that her mother might listen to in the car on the way to the beach next week if she doesn't know it's Clay till she's sucked in--that kind of thing. While burning CDs we watched a Chautauqua DVD that sylvie had burned for me. Nice to relive that concert, that whole 3 fer. It was a really special series of concerts and time with friends.

Spikesmom, I hope you will post more cause boy can you write. It would be a shame to deprive us of that!

ClayAikenLUVR__15, Brooke, welcome. A year and a half would around the time of the AI 5 finale. Is that when you became a fan? Glad to have you here.

I just swung by because I was out all last night (no, not Montrose. The Houston Museum of Natural Science had a preview of a new exhibit from the Shanghai Museum)

OMG OMG OMG OMG - I spent four days in that museum, I mean all day each day for four days. It's the most amazing museum ever. I stayed in a hotel where I could look at it (it's shaped like an ancient Chinese bronze vessel), so when I wasn't there I was looking at it. I'm obsessed with that museum. Totally.

Wah! I wanna be in Houston.

Shanghai Museum website

I do have a long and tight history with several of the other newbies here and I never thought about the fact that sometimes our inside conversations were being exclusionary to the established posters already here. I'll try to rein that in.

Nooooooooooooo (speaking strictly for myself). I like it when people are friends. I like it when they address one another on the board. Sure, it should make some kind of sense to other people so they're not left wondering what y'all are talking about, but don't stop!!

Lilyshine said:

Well, I think my tractor's sexy! Oh, all right, so it's not really a tractor, just a huge honking Riding Mower.

Heh. I've seen her tractor. It ain't sexy, but that iris garden might be.

Beg your pardon, but that is one sexy tractor!!

I've never felt protective towards him

Here we prefer to objectify him and look at photos of his....

O face.

jmh said:

stayed at lilyshine's with the Claywhores

Go ahead, rub it in *sniff*

Hey--you could've gone--your loss babycakes. Hope you've learned your lesson!

ETA: Uh oh, I'm at the top of the page. I forget why that's bad, but we're talking about chocolate so it can't be too horrible!

Back when the board was much slower, a post at the top of the page could sit there for hours and hours all alone. That's how the tradition started.

Muski, you are baddddd.

Days Mom gets a bath are good days for me too. I can relate.

Ah, another one in the club. :F_05BL17blowkiss:

I always thought I belonged on this board.....you know like minds and all but today I feel like an alien. Where did my board go? I think I just don't fit in any more! You see I only like Milk Chocolate and it has to be only Cadbury's imported from England! None of your Hersheys' wannabee or Godiva stuff.

When I went up to the NY 3fer and stayed at lilyshine's with the Claywhores, our friends from England brought some Cadbury's along with them. That is some good, good stuff.

Here's a pic I took in Pala:

Thank you! That's hawt.

Oops, I overshot clearing out the excess in quotes, but I *think* this was.....

psst - the two quotes you quoted after saying this were both from meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

I loved the original Iron Chef, because how the translators talked, and what the judges said, had the absolutely perfect air of seriously lunatic Japanese TV.......I still dislike Bobby Flay for jumping on top of his cutting board, and have not watched it since - is it still insane?

The charm of the original was that the judges mostly were from the kinda shallow pool of Japanese TV personalities, and they really said some inane things.

Oh I did too. It was my favorite show in Japan besides a couple of nighttime serial dramas and SMAPxSMAP*. Thing is, you didn't need to speak any Japanese, or even any subtitles to enjoy Iron Chef. It was so campy and wonderful.

SMAP is a Japanese "boy band" that's been around a very long time--not boys anymore. Some of them became very successful comedic and dramatic actors, and they also had a variety sketch & singing show called SMAPxSMAP that was really entertaining. Every week one of their sketches was a parody of Iron Chef using some really wacky ingredient, but they actually cooked and made the dishes each week!! One episode was filmed in California and their special guest was Whoopi Goldberg, whom they all idolized. They cooked pork chops and mashed potatoes for her--don't know if it tasted good, but it sure did look good.

JennaZ, gareem and I had a Clay talking, smutting, ooohing aaaahing, fun old dinner the other night. On topic, we shared this amazing dessert that had the word chocolate in the description four freaking times. Our kind of dessert. Sorry Clay sweetie- you are missing out big time.

Thank you for your consideration today. :F_05BL17blowkiss:

You folks have me so close to getting in my car and going to find some good chocolate right now!!!

Thank you for caring enough to want to work it through.

:F_05BL17blowkiss:

First, and most importantly, my favorite "everyday" chocolate is Dove dark, in the little bite-sized pieces, but I'm gonna check out y'all's favorites too.

Second, most of you would probably not have wanted to be me today, from the unpleasant cleaning chores to the psychological hoops of parenting a parent, to the 2 1/2 hour, 30 mile drive home in the rain and flooding roads and the bumper-to-bumper traffic. However, my mom took a bath today, so it's a good day.

Well I'm in these camps...

Camp we don't know everything that has happened

Camp if I have to choose who to believe I'll most likely believe Clay

Camp I think Clay's response & tone was directed more to the fans

Camp maybe fans could butt out of Clay's business for a change

& last but not least

Camp

---

As to why I'm here and the tone of what is said here....

<snip>

For me what makes this place different and I've said it many times is the way these things are handled. Here, I am treated like the adult that I am. Allowed to discuss how I really feel but also expected to bring an adults perspective to that discussion.

Jamar is someone I've been getting to know here at FCA for the first time, although I've been aware of the board name for a long time. Have to say, I'm a fan.

Have you heard the latest?

Iris have beards.

BWAH--and beautiful flowers. My mom used to grow Irises and sent us off to school with flowers for the teacher. Didn't make Mrs. Allen love me any more, but generally, it was a very effective bribe.

I tried to think through this post very carefully. I think I did alright. Hope it is taken as intended.

It was by me, and I'm glad you took the time to express yourself. Stick around and you'll feel less of an outsider, I hope. And, BTW, I don't think you "started" anything at all! Thing is, getting used to there not being some kind of official smackdown from the mods, but the absence of that shouldn't encourage rampant bashing either, and it never has.

I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few days. As a collective group Clay fans have taken a lot of hits from all different forms of media. Most of the time I have felt that the descriptors of "us" as fans has been unfair, but when I take a look at what has happened in the past few days, at the shitstorm that was made out of something fairly insignificant and only rumored to be true, I'm starting to wonder what kind of other crap have some of these people spouted off about and to whom. I wonder too, if the predudice that seems to exist toward Clay may have more to do with overinvested fans that don't know where to draw the line between support and interference.

Exactly--that was pretty much my thought after the first day of the boards melting down. I think I really, really got it for the first time--how obnoxious the "fandom" as a collective entity (which means no one in particular--just the general vibe) can appear to others. It isn't pretty.

I thought I was asking a clarification of rules.

We have rules? How come nobody told me?

---

Seriously...a good time to mention, if you haven't already, you can always check out the handy dandy

Board Philosophy

:F_05BL17blowkiss:

eta...but of course...them's more like guidelines than actual rules [tm Captain Barbosa]

See--told you! Go jamar!! We try to avoid rules, as a rule, and also modding.

Well, I've ruminated (don't you just love this word) about this considerably, and this is what I think. I, and some others, are sort of wandering refugees....and I don't know a lot of you so I have no history (well, except with many of the newbies).

And vice versa. I don't have much of a history with a lot of the newbies, but a lot of y'all seem to know each other. So yeah, a lot of getting used to each other for everyone. One of my favorite things about FCA is that there are posters from a lot of different boards, each bringing a new flavor to the table.

The thing is...we want to have a board that is about fun.. We want to have fun. We do not want to be your parents...your warden and your censors. We do not want to tell you what to think. We want to moderate as little as possible. To make this work we need everyone's cooperation. With more freedom there is more responsibility.

Can I just say this is brilliant, Ansa!!! This should go in the guidelines.

I'm glad you didn't feel trashed but on the outsider thing - at least on this board, it's not strictly up to us to make you feel not like a outsider, because there is an adjustment both for newbies and "oldies" and middle children. We'll work on it and trust you work on it as well.

Don't let Ansa and couchie fool ya - we are lazy as hell. We are the type of mods/parents/older sibs that will make everyone else work.

What she said.

Whilst making yet another link to the board philosophy thread, I read it aGAIN. The last time I was there I mentioned being struck by the words that couchie chose to bold

FUN. COMMUNITY. AFFECTION

(hee...FCA...I just got that. I'm so sloooooooooooooow.)

This time I noticed this was also bolded.

Not another message board!

Now I know that what she probably meant at the time was ... Not ANOTHER message board...but today I read NOT another message board. Which sort of sums up my feelings. This, to me, isn't just yet one other Clay fan message board. It's different. It has it's own vibe and it's own feeling and of course it's own history. If you appreciate this place, as such, it may help to remember that things aren't always going to happen here in just the same way that they might at one of those other places. And it will take all of us, doing our adult best to maintain the atmosphere that has helped to make FCA unique. It isn't always going to be easy, but I, for one think it is more than worth the effort.

See, I tell ya, it's like a love affair I've got going here!!

God do I miss Whole Foods Market.

I'll bet you do! I live a short walk from one, and I do almost all my shopping there now. There's one near my mother's house, and I often stop by and pick up our lunch from the food bar there as well. They make eating healthy enticing, and I've grateful for that, for me--and for her, because I know if I pick up something nutritious from there, she'll eat it and enjoy it. So yeah for Whole Foods, and I feel for ya big time. (And I'm sure the Lexington-style barbeque on the hot bar today was a mistake and won't happen again.)

Woo, Sharyn McCrumb's If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him had me giggling through the whole thing. I've never read anything else by her, but I do remember really enjoying this one

I've read almost everything she's ever written. Some of her books are funny and some are more serious. Dale by McCrumb is a great read if you've ever known anyone who was obsessed with auto racing. I'd call it serious/funny. Her earliest books were really odd/funny: Bimbos of the Death Sun and Zombies of the Gene Pool.

Another book I just loved is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff. It's another serious/funny book. The author, Christopher Moore, has written some other funny stuff, but his books are not always equally good. All of the above are fiction. Sorry, too tired to go pull up blurbs, although I love it when people do that.

Like couchie and others have said, absorbing more than a hundred members in less than a month for a really small board is not easy. We did well up until now, and handled some challenges, but tonight was not good. I think some people haven't been able to get what is different about this place. It's not the lack of colored ink, it's not the ability to speak freely, say CAP, or talking about the boards on the boards. It's listening to one another and respecting each other's opinions, even if you don't agree, and accepting each person for who that person is--a unique individual who is different from you, handles things in her own way and thinks in her own way. And isn't always perfect, and neither are we. This board will be what you make it.

Night all.

What's the one tragic thing he avoids?

Love the ditty Diva!! Hell to the yes.

3 times at top today. sigh.

Lucky you (on top)!!

Ditto on the Diva

He didn't call his sister back in time.