Police Reunion Set List

Like the good fan-girl, I've been stalking Police sites for a setlist. So here's the one from their premiere show! There are a few sunrises and disappointments, but it could certainly change by next month. The reviewers report that the set was 2 hours long and was absolutely flawless. Three seasoned musicians revisiting a body of work from their youth, sounds like the makings of a great concert.

The Setlist:

Message in A Bottle
Synchronicity II
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Voices Inside My Head/When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around
Spirits in the Material World
Driven to Tears
Walking on the Moon
Truth Hits Everybody
Wrapped around Your Finger
The Bed’s Too Big Without You
Murder By Numbers
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Walking in Your Footsteps
Can’t Stand Losing You
Roxanne
————-
King Of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
————-
Next To You

Misc. Stuff

I haven't been blogging much lately. I think the whole thing with having to delete my old blog and having my mom still find my home address has freaked me out. But, we've had loads of fun times and great things happen. So, I'm going to try to get back to focusing on those things and not let the intrusions into my privacy change my life so much. Here goes...

We've been able to swim some. It's still not quite warm enough for every day, but it will be soon. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do for daily exercise when I can't walk or swim. There's a Curves about 3 blocks from our house, but from the description it sounds like too much stress on for my joints.

I've got a brand new rheumatologist and finally a plausible diagnosis. She thinks I have, among other things, psoriatic arthritis. I started a once a week dose of methotrexate last week. Today, I'm up to the full dose! I've felt much better in the last week, but she also prescribed prednisone. so it's hard to know if that's the reason for the improvement or not. I've gained five pounds in the last week. It's almost certainly the prednisone. I've stopped it today and hopefully my weight will go back down soon. The rheumatologist has threatened to take it away from me all together if I gain weight. Five pounds or not, I'm so grateful to have a doctor who will listen to me and not just follow along with what the others have done in the past. She says the new medication has a good chance of working too! I do have to find some way to get my anemia under control. I'm going back to the hematologist to see if he will do the infusions again. I've been taking iron supplements for a week, but I won't last much longer.

We went to see the new Pirates movie over the long weekend and liked it very much. It was a little too long for me. I had to get up and walk around a few times, but I loved the Johnny Depp/Keith Richards scenes. It was great fun. Later we went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants. We sat on the water and watched all the sea birds come and go. Great fun for a post Pirates dinner! This was our postponed anniversary dinner. For several reasons, the 15th just didn't work, so we did all our celebrating over Bill's four day vacation. Everyone has been going around the house saying Arrrr, avast, seadog, bilge rat, ....... Very much fun.

Suggestions?

A few months ago, most of you know, I had to shut down my old blog. I'd never worried very much about privacy because the kinds of stuff I post are too boring for anyone to care. Knitting a new pair of socks or seeing a new movie are not likely to generate outside interest from creepy strangers. What I didn't factor in was it might make it very easy for creepy relatives to find me.

On my old blog, I talked a few times about being an adult survivor of child abuse. As far as those things go, my situation wasn't as bad as many. I wasn't ever sexually molested and the outlandish stuff like kids being starved, locked in cages, etc. didn't happen either. But my house was full of violence. My parents were violent toward each other and my mom was terribly violent towards me. She is mentally ill and used me as a place to vent her rage for years. I was beaten, stabbed, choked, bitten, smothered with a pillow, cut, pushed down in the bathtub in an attempt to drown me, had guns pointed at my head, etc. This went on right up until the day I married Bill.

So why am I blogging about this now?

When we moved home, I didn't give my parents our new address. We made sure all of our phone numbers were unlisted too, and I felt kind of safe. My parents were able to get Bill's number at work, but there's a limit to the trouble they can cause from that. He's on a federal facility and the laws about how things are done there are very clear. Even crazy, I don't think my mom wants to mess with the feds. I know for sure they could never get any information about where we live from Bill's work.

Then, last night, a Mother's Day card arrived in the mail. It was from my parents. How did they get my address? Every few months, I search online phone books, etc. to make sure we don't show up. Even though they know we are in Houston, it's a city of more than four million people. So, how did they find us? I'm so freaked out about this. My son goes out to play in the cul-de-sac every afternoon with his friends. They could just drive right up. I guess that an unlisted phone number doesn't keep people from being able to find an address, but how? I'm also totally freaked out by them sending a Mother's Day card too. Of all the things to send, why would they send their daughter a Mother's Day card? It said something about my kids being their "little angels." The last time I let them near my kids, my mom beat M. with a coat hanger. We called the police, and it was a whole horrible thing. Now my kids are their angels?????

I don't want to over-react or scare my kids, but I feel so weird about this. Any of you with stalker suggestions?

A Very Blessed 31 Years

When I was a girl, getting married the day after I graduated high school seemed foolish to most everyone who knew Bill and I. We caused something of a scandal and almost everyone thought I was pregnant. Since we didn't have our first child until 14 years later, I assume most were reassured that ours was not a "shot-gun" wedding. In addition to our youth, many of our friends and family were scandalized by the fact that Bill and I our cousins. Our parents were appalled. An uncle declared we would most certainly have terribly deformed, idiot children, and my brothers-in-law were completely freaked out that their brother was going to marry one of their most annoying girl cousins. Bill had a semester left for his BS and I hadn't started college. Our educations were also declared to be ruined by getting married. We put ourselves through school, earning masters degrees and post-graduate certifications.

Today, our 31sth anniversary, I think we take some perverse delight in having proven everyone so very wrong. In fact, we know few couples who have shared so many happy years with one another. Since today is a work/school day, we will save our big celebration for Saturday. We're going to see Shrek 3 and eat at Bill's favorite restaurant. Perhaps not so romantic to some, but a celebration well suited to us. The pool is beautiful, and weather permitting, we will have dinner outside and swim tonight.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie!

Summer Stuff

We've officially opened a swimming pool and are back to having a joint-friendly exercise for me. I've had to be careful of which stroke I used because of my sholders and neck. Still, I'm moving and that feels good.

We have 7 weeks to go till our Police/Sting fest. I broke down and admitted to my bff (who lives in Austin) that we were going to be spending the last week in June following the band. She's always given me a hard time about my major rock star crush. When I told her, she laughed and said, "You think I didn't know what you'd be doing? I'd already crossed that off as a week for us to meet." Do people ever really grow up? M. says she'll be taking me in my wheelchair to see Sting perform in his. Maybe?

We've made the perfect plan for our 50th birthdays in 2008. Suzanne's family and ours are all going to Disneyland. B's birthday is on Sept. 9, Suzanne's is on the 10th, and mine the 19th. Before we both had kids, we did big vacations every September to celebrate all the birthdays. Since then, our kids were either too little, in school, I was teaching, etc. and we gave up our tradition. But for year 50, we are going to bring it back for good. We've all been to Disney World, but B's the only one of us to have gone to Disneyland. We're doing a car trip with a stop at the Grand Canyon for the kids then on to California. For some reason she also thinks spending our 50th birthday in Disneyland is hilarious. She says she doesn't plan to get old, and I have to remind her she'll always be 9 days older than me! Oh, and I'm sure Suzanne would want you to all know were aren't actually as old as Disneyland itself. We're a full four years younger.

I haven't done any Sting facts in ages so here's my proposed set list for the concerts. I've been looking everywhere to find the real one, but no luck. Plus, it's almost certainly going to change after the first few concerts.

Play These Please!
Bring on the Night
Next to You
Hole in my life
Walking on the Moon
The Bed's too Big Without You
Can't Stand Losing You
Synchronisity II
Walking in Your Footsteps
Roxanne
Don't Stand So Close to Me
Voices Inside My Head
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
Spirits in a Material World
Every Little Thing She Does
Invisible Sun
Demolition Man
Rehumanize Yourself
King of Pain
Wrapped Around Your Finger
Murder by Numbers
Message In a Bottle
Every Breath You Take

Fear, PTSD, and the Dentist

About two weeks ago there was a hostage, murder, and suicide at my husband's work.

I got a call from B. at about 11:00 that morning. He started out with, "I know you are going to get news very soon from someone and thought you would want to find out from me......" My heart started beating so fast I couldn't think. He went on to tell me the whole center was locked-down, and there was at least one gunman on site. No one had been able to learn what the armed man wanted, shots had been heard, and there were at least two people missing.

The lock-down was about 5 hours long. We got conflicting information from B's office, the local/national news, and the center public affairs office. The Virginia Tech. incident was running through my head along with all the safety training I had been given. B, on the other hand, was calm and almost casual about the whole thing. I worried he would take unnecessary risks, and I kept calling him back with instruction on what I wanted him to do, making sure he was still there, etc. I most likely scared the crap out of my kids as I started calling all of our friends to make sure they were safe too.

The following Monday, when B. went back to work, I couldn't stop crying. I finally called the doctor and went in because I was a wreck and didn't want my malfunctions to spill all over my kids any more than it already had. She tells me I have post traumatic stress disorder. During the day of the incident I broke my bite-guard and shattered two molars. I've spent most of the time since then at the endodontist and/or dentist repairing the damage I did from the stress. Both of them told me their offices were full of similar patients.

I feel like such an ass. Suzanne's baby sister was in the building, had to run for her life, knew the hostage, murder victim, and murder/suicide person. She's back to work in the same building and has been so amazingly brave. She found out the murder had no family in the area and even went to his funeral to make sure he had someone. But Suzanne, big sister and my best friend, reacted the same way I did. What we saw on the TV was not what we were trained to do. She also started calling friends in their offices or on their cells to remind them of center processes. Everyone we talked to on-site said they were doing exactly what they were supposed to, but it looked very different on the news. Suzanne's mom is the early stages of Alzheimer's and had to be shielded from the news until D. was able to get there hours later.

B. never believes anything bad will happen and was very calm throughout. On the other hand, both of my kids have had horrible nightmares and even the 17 year old has had to come and get me to lie down with her after bad dreams. Our 12 year old slept next to his father 2 nights holding on for dear life. I can't help but think my reaction had to have made their situation much worse. I'm just not built to sit, watch, and wait. I've always been at work when danger was near in a big way. I had things to take care of, people to protect, procedures to follow. When did I stop being the calm and capable leader and turn into a trembling Victorian female with a fit of the "vapors?"

I finally had a chance to see my wonderful friend, Carol, today. She was on a mission trip to Honduras while this was all happening. I made poor B. call over to her husband's office and make sure they were following center protocols. Poor B. He wasn't happy to have to make that call. Even though Carol and I are very close, both of our spouses are pretty much of the nonverbal engineer variety and don't make "Hi, I'm just checking on you...." type phone calls to anyone.

All of this stuff happened shortly before I quit my job and really made me impatient with anyone disreputable. But, I also lost my temper with my dishonest employer and can't help but think that was part of my whole over reaction to the events of the previous week. I'm still trying to collect myself. Seeing my girlfriends face-to-face has been a big part of getting back to normal. The kids and I have talked through things. The doctor had great advice for talking with them. My total dental disaster has finally calmed down after two root canals and a new bite guard. B. still seems so sure he was never in any danger. It makes me mad that he's so laid back. Is he trustworthy to act carefully if he's in danger? I also keep thinking of what the world is going to be like when my kids are my age. Raging murders, terrorists, child abusers have me all feeling very pessimistic today.

I'll try to find something more positive to write about soon.

Disappointment

I wrote some about my tutoring job and then got so busy with work that I couldn't post at all. Sadly I had to quit the job two weeks ago. I was having a great time with my students, but the company I was working for was not honest. It's sad, because; I had to leave my students with no warning or explanation. Once I realized what was going on all I could do is quit. The teachers aren't allowed to talk with parents, so no one is likely to ever know their kids aren't getting the help they promised. If you ever decide your children need tutoring, make sure that you hire a professional educator and are allowed to speak directly to the teacher concerning your child's progress and needs. Parents are paying thousands of dollars to essentially have their child sit for hours filling out worksheets.

On the good side, my kids are glad I'm not working, and it's finally warm enough to swim. It's been great to use the pool and have a great time with the kids and the poodle.