It's fixed?
2004-11-05, 11:04 p.m.

Hmm. Third entry today. Either I�m chatty or I have no life. Er�

Praise be to TheDevlyn for a working �link me� button! Hopefully it now shows up on your screens in the proper font and letters less than two feet high. Sorry �bout that. HTML newbie here, remember. Beware my codes, they may eat thy computer.

I had to go to the grocery store today, roundabout by way of a couple of yard sales across town. One was a Japanese yard sale, and those are irresistible. There is a large Japanese automotive parts manufacturing plant in town, and families are sent here from Japan to work in 5-year cycles. They are fabulous people, friendly and extraordinarily polite and jump right in to the American culture with gusto. While here they buy the best of the best, and then sell it for a quarter when it�s time to leave the States. It�s too expensive to haul it home. Everything looks like brand new. And organized! Just their yard sales put Martha Stewart to shame. It�s worth going just for the sheer motivation: if they can have the clothes hangers in straight piles sorted by material and color, darn if you can�t get your sock drawer in shape. A little shame is a good thing when it spurs you to positive action. Anyhow, my favorite things are the stuff they�ve brought over peppered with Americanized jargon that we fondly refer to as either Japlish or Jinglish. Either way, it�s a hoot.

Japlish (the preferred term of my wonderful half-Japanese friend for the combination Japanese/English she uses to converse with her mother) is the completely massacred English phrasing that the Japanese emblazon on absolutely everything. Clothing, toys, books, tote bags, cooking implements, you name it, it�s got a really bad round of English gobbledygook on it. Today, I found the quintessential Japlish jacket. I need another jacket like a hole in the head, but for a buck, this was irresistible. It�s a basic white jacket (meaning it will probably last a whole weekend in this house) and the brand name is �PERSON�S�. It�s coated with embroidery and patches relating, and not-so-relating, to the brand name. Now for the fun:

The front: Taking up the top half of the left side are �A flag was waving in the wind�; It is necessary for you to have the power to create� (patch); �PERSON�S a suspicious character� (patch); and �We are fighting for justice against brute force�.

Left arm: �PERSON�S there was a small secret chamber behind the hall�.

Back: �PERSON�S SINCE 1976� in big honkin� letters; �PERSON�S happiness consists� (patch); �P since 1976� (patch); �PERSON�S SINCE 1976 I was asked an opinion on it� (patch); and then the clincher, embroidered in big blue letters. �Her heart fluttered with excitement at the thought that she would be able to see him the next day. The next morning she awoke in the bright sunshine.� Yes, that soliloquy is embroidered larger than life on the back of a jacket. Must. Wear. It.

Makes me think of all the Japanese symbols we hip �n� trendy Americans display on our clothing and home d�cor. Perhaps many of us do not suspect that our nifty new t-shirt is telling the world �Purple gibbons gain wisdom from butt,� giving them the same glee as they do us. Gotta love it.

I tried to buy a small Japanese child at the yard sale for a quarter but her mother wouldn�t give her up. She was just old enough to toddle, and she waddled right over and wrapped her adorable chubby little arms around my knees and hung on. Then her mom came and corralled her. Drat. Oh well, if I feed my two on occasion then they can be relatively pleasant also. Food and video games, their basic sustenance.

Little kids like to hug me. One friend�s daughter would latch on to me nearly every day after school. Her mom is built like your basic sharp twig and I am, well, let�s just say a bit padded here and there. One day she popped out with her huggy reasoning: �I like you, Miss Sally. You�re comfy.� So THAT�S it. Must be the matching pillows.

I chauffeured a carload of tweens to Girl Scouts after school, and took Son to the grocery store. We�re out of cereal. Emergency, Will Robinson, Emergency. No cereal=how do we eat? Anyhow, in the middle of Kro*ger�s, I began to get that familiar feeling. That familiar feeling that I really do not like.

Migraine.

Made it home. Whew. Then I couldn�t remember what time Girl Scouts was over. That�s one part and parcel of these damn things, mental confusion. (More so than usual, thankyewverymuch.) I honestly thought it ended at 5:30. After all, it�s only been every other Friday for a year and a half, I ought to know by know shouldn�t I? 5:15 the leader calls, meeting�s over, where am I? Sitting at the other end of the phone line with PROOF of idiocy, that�s where I am. She offered to bring Daughter home. Thank goodness, as I was in no condition to drive, and probably sounded that way on the phone. GS Leader is also a doctor, so when she arrived and came in I was able to get out that I have basilar artery migraine and�am�um�um�having�um�one� (Another aspect is I will lose my speech for 10-15 minutes at a time.) Being a physician, she understood completely. It came back rapidly and I told her very few people have seen me with symptoms. I�m good at hiding them or hibernating, most of the time. She said laughingly that I need to inform people I�m around regularly or else they might think I was on drugs. Great. I was hoping I didn�t come off THAT badly, but apparently I do. And I didn�t even have most of the symptoms that I usually do. Conscious? Check. Headache? Medium. Nauseous? Dissipating. Foot Drop? Negative. Speech? Variable. Hands Functioning? Check. Thought I was doing pretty good. *grumble*

So, I�ve been a useless pile of painful goo for the remainder of the evening, but I made it through a phone call with Mama. She called at 7:08. We talked about everyday things, the usual, no mention of the occasion. That�s good, I think. Time is arbitrary, a human-driven dimension for the sole purposes of organization and helping us to make sense of our small existence in this vast universe. It also spurs memory. I have good memories. I�m cherishing them tonight.

Must go. My window of opportunity is closing, as the lights are once again bothering my vision and the aura encroaches. Hope everyone out there in D�land has a decent evening.
Sallydallydo

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