My mother died on Sunday morning. She tried to make it easy for us. She wanted her body to go to the University of Utah's Medical School. But they refused to take her. How bad of shape do you have to be in to not get the job of, "cadaver"?
So we had to come up with a plan B. Thank you Jenkins-Soffe Mortuary for having someone in the building on Sunday morning.
But then, we have no where to place her cause there are no more niches for cremains in the Murray City Cemetery. Until later this spring. And they WON'T take a deposit.
Deb is creeped out by having mom's remains in the house so what are we going to do with them? Thankfully, Jenkins-Soffe to the rescue again. They will store them for us.
My cancer doctor's office calls me on Monday. They don't like my last urine sample. Well, it WAS bladder cancer. They want another one. No problem, I'll be happy to give you one if it will keep me alive.
I had to write my mother's obituary today. And then when I take a copy to the mortuary? They would rather I go home, and email it to them. It's easier to work with that way. So I did.
I've been fighting a cold since last Thursday, and last night, I took the last Ibuprofen cold/sinus pill I had and forgot to go get more today. Those things are AWESOME!
So tonight, I'm worn out, my nose is running, and I'm tired. Tired of dealing with all the shit.
My son and his friends will move his grandmothers stuff home and out of Canyon Creek this weekend. And we don't have to sell the condo any time soon. So I got THAT going for me.
But I'm worn out. I'm taking Thursday off from life.
I'm going to sleep as late as I like. When I do get up, I'm going to shower, but I'm not going to shave. I'm going to stay in my pajama pants and a tshirt all, damn, day!
I've got a couple of movies on the DVR that I've never seen before, and I'm going to watch them. I'm not even going to TRY to answer the land line phone.
And if my cell phone rings, and it's a number that doesn't come up with a name attached to it? Fuck em. Leave a message. I'll get back to you later. Maybe.
So if I ignore you today, don't take it personally. I need a day off. A day off from real life. It's been kicking my ass for a week or so now.
Good bye, Mom. Lots of folks miss you. And thank you for making it as easy as it has been. It could have been a lot worse. You never asked for too much. But we've done the best we could for you, even when your original plan didn't work out. So this week could have been a lot worse. You were the best.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Connie's Chili
My mother passed away early this morning, resting in the arms of Morpheus to ease the pain of a body racked by Cancer. Connie Stickley actually checked out sometime between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. But like an engine that knocks, the body kept running for a while.
I went to see her yesterday afternoon. On Friday, she was responsive, and we talked. Yesterday, she couldn't speak, and couldn't hold your hand. My mom was no longer with us at that point, so it was just a matter of time.
Per her wishes, there will be no service or funeral. Her obituary will run in The Salt Lake Tribune next Sunday.
There is some humor in this situation, but you have to know the back story. When I was a kid, my mother knew I liked comedy. She bought me, Bill Cosby records. And the only time I was allowed to stay up late enough to watch, The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, was when there was a comedian on the show. Joan Rivers, David Steinberg, George Carlin, Flip Wilson. I loved them all. She even let me buy George Carlin's, Class Clown album, the one with the, "seven words you can't say on television" when I was only about 14. Yeah, it's not for kids, but she knew how much I loved comedy.
So she would find this really funny. She wanted her body to go to the University of Utah's Medical School. She didn't want a funeral. Well, she was so sick, they wouldn't take her. Man, in how bad of shape do you have to be to get rejected for the job of, "cadaver"?
When I say something that makes my friend, the comedian laugh it makes my day. But when I say something that really strikes a nerve with her, I'll just hear her say, "That's funny". I think if Lisa were here, she would say, "That's funny."
My mom had a lot of friends. Most people, even my friends, liked her much better than they like ME! She was a wonderful lady. And she always treated my friends like gold. And the thing they all remember most about her was her chili. Connie's chili was a legend. Whether it was my friends and I coming home after a cold winters day of hunting in the desert, or at a tailgate party, she would knock people dead with her chili and corn bread. I don't know where she got the recipe, I assume it was from a cook book. She was not a, "wing it" kind of a cook. But it has stood the test of time.
She gave it to my friend, Jami to include in a cookbook for St. Vincent's church years ago. I think the book was called, Angel Food. I have a copy somewhere. But it's not been widely distributed. Until now.
Years ago, the comedian, Ron White did a joke about the city of Cincinnati calling itself, "The Chili Capitol Of The World". The punch line was that he thought a Mexican with an onion and a goat could come up there and kick their ass. Especially if the Mexican didn't need to ride the goat home.
Well, Cincinnati, Ron White, his fictional Mexican and the goat would quake in their boots if they ever met Constance Ione Durst Stickley and her crock pot! So here it is.
Three pounds extra lean ground beef
One large can tomato soup
Two jars of your favorite salsa
One large can of Hunt's chili beans (this is OPTIONAL. REAL, "Connie's Chili" is all meat. My wife can't eat chili without beans. She is a mutant! She grew up in California, for crying out loud!)
Chili powder to taste (mom said three table spoons, Deb and I like to use four. You can play with this)
Salt and pepper to taste (keep in mind, there is salt and other things in the salsa you use. When I make this, I don't add salt or pepper)
Brown the meat (and since I don't have a huge grill like at a restaurant, only a frying pan. I brown a pound at a time to make sure it all gets cooked). Put the ground meat in the crock pot with all the other ingredients and let that sucker cook over night.
It's amazing.
So, enjoy this (I'm talking to you Dennis Winslow!) and if you knew my mom, remember the good times.
To tell you how long we tailgated with my mom, our first tailgate pass in 1983 was $8.50. What do they cost now? I'm just sayin, it was a LONG time.
Good bye mom. You and your chili live on.
I went to see her yesterday afternoon. On Friday, she was responsive, and we talked. Yesterday, she couldn't speak, and couldn't hold your hand. My mom was no longer with us at that point, so it was just a matter of time.
Per her wishes, there will be no service or funeral. Her obituary will run in The Salt Lake Tribune next Sunday.
There is some humor in this situation, but you have to know the back story. When I was a kid, my mother knew I liked comedy. She bought me, Bill Cosby records. And the only time I was allowed to stay up late enough to watch, The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, was when there was a comedian on the show. Joan Rivers, David Steinberg, George Carlin, Flip Wilson. I loved them all. She even let me buy George Carlin's, Class Clown album, the one with the, "seven words you can't say on television" when I was only about 14. Yeah, it's not for kids, but she knew how much I loved comedy.
So she would find this really funny. She wanted her body to go to the University of Utah's Medical School. She didn't want a funeral. Well, she was so sick, they wouldn't take her. Man, in how bad of shape do you have to be to get rejected for the job of, "cadaver"?
When I say something that makes my friend, the comedian laugh it makes my day. But when I say something that really strikes a nerve with her, I'll just hear her say, "That's funny". I think if Lisa were here, she would say, "That's funny."
My mom had a lot of friends. Most people, even my friends, liked her much better than they like ME! She was a wonderful lady. And she always treated my friends like gold. And the thing they all remember most about her was her chili. Connie's chili was a legend. Whether it was my friends and I coming home after a cold winters day of hunting in the desert, or at a tailgate party, she would knock people dead with her chili and corn bread. I don't know where she got the recipe, I assume it was from a cook book. She was not a, "wing it" kind of a cook. But it has stood the test of time.
She gave it to my friend, Jami to include in a cookbook for St. Vincent's church years ago. I think the book was called, Angel Food. I have a copy somewhere. But it's not been widely distributed. Until now.
Years ago, the comedian, Ron White did a joke about the city of Cincinnati calling itself, "The Chili Capitol Of The World". The punch line was that he thought a Mexican with an onion and a goat could come up there and kick their ass. Especially if the Mexican didn't need to ride the goat home.
Well, Cincinnati, Ron White, his fictional Mexican and the goat would quake in their boots if they ever met Constance Ione Durst Stickley and her crock pot! So here it is.
Three pounds extra lean ground beef
One large can tomato soup
Two jars of your favorite salsa
One large can of Hunt's chili beans (this is OPTIONAL. REAL, "Connie's Chili" is all meat. My wife can't eat chili without beans. She is a mutant! She grew up in California, for crying out loud!)
Chili powder to taste (mom said three table spoons, Deb and I like to use four. You can play with this)
Salt and pepper to taste (keep in mind, there is salt and other things in the salsa you use. When I make this, I don't add salt or pepper)
Brown the meat (and since I don't have a huge grill like at a restaurant, only a frying pan. I brown a pound at a time to make sure it all gets cooked). Put the ground meat in the crock pot with all the other ingredients and let that sucker cook over night.
It's amazing.
So, enjoy this (I'm talking to you Dennis Winslow!) and if you knew my mom, remember the good times.
To tell you how long we tailgated with my mom, our first tailgate pass in 1983 was $8.50. What do they cost now? I'm just sayin, it was a LONG time.
Good bye mom. You and your chili live on.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Moving The Prison Is Dumber Than A Homemade Radio
Here we go again. Al Mansell and the rest of the powerful Realtors who are still in the Legislature are at it again. They want the prison moved so they can profit from the land.
Moving the prison will cost something like three times what the state could get from selling the land it's on now. And they claim that a new prison will make up the money in using less staff. Bullshit.
Anyone who says that has never worked in a prison.
We have a perfectly good, totally serviceable prison right where it's at.
And on top of that? Most of the folks paroling OUT of it have all their family, support systems, treatment options right in Salt Lake County.
Now, I admit, I retired six and a half years ago. But back then, 80% of everyone on probation and parole in the whole STATE was supervised in Salt Lake County.
How does it make sense to have a prison in Tooele County, or down by Gunnison if you have to transport all your prisoners to and from Salt Lake County?
It does not. Unless you are a rich, realtor.
Follow the money to see how crazy this idea is.
You want to live in Bluffdale, but you don't want to live by a prison? Tough shit! Live somewhere else. The prison has been there since 1954. It's not like is snuck up on you!
We already have one of the lowest staff to prisoner ratio's in the whole country. How much lower would it have to go to make a billion dollars disappear? I can't imagine.
And no one seems to be counting the hours spent by Parole Agents transporting violators from SLC to Gunnison, or Tooele County, when 80% of those violations occur in SALT LAKE COUNTY!
And the countless hours prison transport officers will spend bringing prisoners back to Salt Lake County for medical treatment, court hearings and other things.
And what about the family of these folks? After all, we're all about family in Utah, are we not? If 80% of the folks in prison are from Salt Lake County, why would you make their family travel to Gunnison or some other obscure place to visit them? Seems kind of anti family if you ask me.
This is nothing more than a land grab by the monied rich, who will rip off the state. And make life a lot harder for anyone working in Corrections. But the Legislature doesn't care about that. They only care about how much money they can make for their supporters.
Moving the prison will cost something like three times what the state could get from selling the land it's on now. And they claim that a new prison will make up the money in using less staff. Bullshit.
Anyone who says that has never worked in a prison.
We have a perfectly good, totally serviceable prison right where it's at.
And on top of that? Most of the folks paroling OUT of it have all their family, support systems, treatment options right in Salt Lake County.
Now, I admit, I retired six and a half years ago. But back then, 80% of everyone on probation and parole in the whole STATE was supervised in Salt Lake County.
How does it make sense to have a prison in Tooele County, or down by Gunnison if you have to transport all your prisoners to and from Salt Lake County?
It does not. Unless you are a rich, realtor.
Follow the money to see how crazy this idea is.
You want to live in Bluffdale, but you don't want to live by a prison? Tough shit! Live somewhere else. The prison has been there since 1954. It's not like is snuck up on you!
We already have one of the lowest staff to prisoner ratio's in the whole country. How much lower would it have to go to make a billion dollars disappear? I can't imagine.
And no one seems to be counting the hours spent by Parole Agents transporting violators from SLC to Gunnison, or Tooele County, when 80% of those violations occur in SALT LAKE COUNTY!
And the countless hours prison transport officers will spend bringing prisoners back to Salt Lake County for medical treatment, court hearings and other things.
And what about the family of these folks? After all, we're all about family in Utah, are we not? If 80% of the folks in prison are from Salt Lake County, why would you make their family travel to Gunnison or some other obscure place to visit them? Seems kind of anti family if you ask me.
This is nothing more than a land grab by the monied rich, who will rip off the state. And make life a lot harder for anyone working in Corrections. But the Legislature doesn't care about that. They only care about how much money they can make for their supporters.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Double Standard
I've had some friends post that they are going to fly their American Flags upside down for the foreseeable future because they can't believe what is happening to their country.
For those of you who don't know, flying the American Flag upside down, from a ship, in the days before radio, meant you were in trouble and needed to be rescued. So my friends think, "Their" county is in trouble.
After all, we've added a bunch of jobs in the last four years. The stock market has climbed back above 13K. We averted the, "fiscal cliff" with a little bipartisan cooperation. GM is still alive, and Bin Laden is dead. The needless war for oil in Iraq is over. The needless war in Afghanistan to get Ben Laden is winding down. Millions more Americans will have access to health care than have ever had before. The housing market is improving, gas prices have fallen. And last October, we had our usual, every four year, "regime change" without a shot being fired.
Man, this place is FUCKED up!
After all, some nut ball used a military grade weapon that NO one who is not in the military or law enforcement NEEDS to slaughter 20 six year olds and some teachers in minutes, so the SANE people in government think it's time to talk about changing our gun laws and our gun culture.
Oh HELL no! It's violent movies/video games/TV! It can't possibly be the fact than anyone who can pass a background check, even if they are crazy, or crazy people who have access to already, legally purchased guns, have better access to assault weapons than to mental health care! That's it!
In the 50's, they blamed juvenile delinquency on comic books.
We will not eliminate assault weapons from our society in my life time. Probably not in my children's lifetime. But it took a long time to give women the vote, pass civil rights legislation, do something about our rivers that would catch on fire and our air that you couldn't breath. It took a long time to end child labor, and company stores and other abuses of big corporations. But you have to start somewhere. And now is the time to start.
We need to change a culture that leads people to believe as they grow up, that they can't be safe unless they possess such fire power. And that is just wrong.
It's my country too, and I'm going to take it back from the folks who don't read newspapers. The paranoid, and the just plain stupid.
And by the way? If I had shown up flying my American Flag upside down, while carrying an assault rifle to a speech given by, "W" while he was invading Iraq on false pretenses, much more false than President Obama's birth certificate, what would you have called me?
I bet it wouldn't have been, "Patriot".
For those of you who don't know, flying the American Flag upside down, from a ship, in the days before radio, meant you were in trouble and needed to be rescued. So my friends think, "Their" county is in trouble.
After all, we've added a bunch of jobs in the last four years. The stock market has climbed back above 13K. We averted the, "fiscal cliff" with a little bipartisan cooperation. GM is still alive, and Bin Laden is dead. The needless war for oil in Iraq is over. The needless war in Afghanistan to get Ben Laden is winding down. Millions more Americans will have access to health care than have ever had before. The housing market is improving, gas prices have fallen. And last October, we had our usual, every four year, "regime change" without a shot being fired.
Man, this place is FUCKED up!
After all, some nut ball used a military grade weapon that NO one who is not in the military or law enforcement NEEDS to slaughter 20 six year olds and some teachers in minutes, so the SANE people in government think it's time to talk about changing our gun laws and our gun culture.
Oh HELL no! It's violent movies/video games/TV! It can't possibly be the fact than anyone who can pass a background check, even if they are crazy, or crazy people who have access to already, legally purchased guns, have better access to assault weapons than to mental health care! That's it!
In the 50's, they blamed juvenile delinquency on comic books.
We will not eliminate assault weapons from our society in my life time. Probably not in my children's lifetime. But it took a long time to give women the vote, pass civil rights legislation, do something about our rivers that would catch on fire and our air that you couldn't breath. It took a long time to end child labor, and company stores and other abuses of big corporations. But you have to start somewhere. And now is the time to start.
We need to change a culture that leads people to believe as they grow up, that they can't be safe unless they possess such fire power. And that is just wrong.
It's my country too, and I'm going to take it back from the folks who don't read newspapers. The paranoid, and the just plain stupid.
And by the way? If I had shown up flying my American Flag upside down, while carrying an assault rifle to a speech given by, "W" while he was invading Iraq on false pretenses, much more false than President Obama's birth certificate, what would you have called me?
I bet it wouldn't have been, "Patriot".
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