The Attic Of Dee

Today a friend came over and wanted to know where I went to get my H1N1 vaccination because she has been trying to get one since she heard that I was able to get one. It got me to thinking, I wonder if everyone in my family has gotten theirs. This vaccination became very important to me because of a family history of death due to influenza. I had a great-grandmother that I became very interested in; there was just something about her that ate at me that I just had to know. Here was a woman that I had never met, my grandfather, who I also never got to meet lost his mother when he was a small boy and he still kept a picture of her. She still held a place in his heart. I have no idea if he remembered anything about her.

People question if the vaccination is safe or not. Was it rushed out too quickly, so many questions. There are myths about vaccination all over the internet, media, and television. Countless times I hear people saying that they got the flu vaccination and then got ill. I have gotten it for many years and never gotten ill from it. I have gotten the H1N1 vaccination and I am still here able to blog about it.

I want to tell a little about great-grandma May and why she has become even more important to me. I started doing genealogy when I was about 12. I would draw out family trees on brown grocery bags, trying to see how people were connected to me. I was trying to figure out who I was and where I came from. A few Christmas’ ago my mom dug out some photos and I copied them on to a disc and took them back home with me. One of them was a picture of May. It really stuck with me and my mom tried to explain how she died and left a house of four small children. A cousin called and told me her version of the story. I knew I needed May’s death certificate. I ordered several possible death certificates and none of them were a hit. I thought I had exhausted all attempts. My mom gave me a post card with May’s picture on it and it had more information, written on the old post card. It gave me a different area to look in. I sent again for several death certificates. I finally got Iola May Lee’s death certificate. She was called May because she was born the month of May. She was born on May 6, 1888, in Ohio. She didn’t die from complication of childbirth or not even shortly after childbirth. No, May died of Spanish Influenza, she died from the 1918 flu pandemic. May had no history of any other illness, she was most likely a healthy woman. She died on November 27th 1918. She first saw the doctor on November 23rd. In four short days she was gone and four small children had lost a mother. My great-grandmother only got to walk on this Earth for 30 years, 6 months, and 21 days, not long enough to raise her own children.

I wanted to know what her last days were like. I needed to know what she might have felt. I researched the 1918 influenza. I saw that it killed many young healthy people. We know that flu kills every year. It doesn’t usually take healthy lives and end them.

I want May’s death in my own family to show a valuable lesson. Today we have tools to help us, medical advancements and somewhat of a choice. Ask me again if the H1N1 vaccination is safe and I can tell you what the other option could be. I realize that right now you might have to call around and search for a place that has vaccinations. That you might have to take time out of your busy day and it might be a pain in the ass. I went 140 miles out of the county for mine. I sat in a clinic waiting room, I had to state my case why it was important for me to have this vaccination. Before I could finish giving all the reasons and take a breath I had been given the vaccination. Every year since I have known about May’s death I have taken one in the arm in her honor. This year, I took two, the regular flu shot and the H1N1. I don’t want my family to lose May’s story. History will repeat itself unless we make a conscious decision make a change within ourselves.

If I stayed silent and accepted all the ignorant excuses people give for not being vaccinated then I would not be honoring May. The facts are the vaccines are not live, that means they will not give you the flu. You will not get the flu shortly after getting the vaccine due to the vaccine. People, you are not wicked enough to raise the dead vaccine, you can’t wake it up and breathe life into it, no matter what anyone tells you. I am very sick of the ignorance that has been spread. If you could avoid any illness would you not? The H1N1 vaccination is free! Getting the vaccine is a responsible thing to do. Going without it is irresponsible.

I always wanted Sea Monkeys. I would see them on the back of comics and they would show them with bows in their hair and playing with balls. They had a castle in their world. I so wanted these amazing creatures. I got them, and mixed up all the mixes. I set them on the table to live out their happy life and to grow big enough to wear hair bows. They lived in their tank on the dining room table for a couple of days. That is until Adrain spied my little pets. I had taken off the tank lid and had gone to my room to get them some food and when I returned Adrain was drinking from the tank!

She drank half the tank water. Dad chewed me out and thought about calling posion control again. I put the lid back on the tank and thought for sure Adrain had drank them all. I put the tank on the window ledge and left what water was in there. To my surpised the little shrimps did grow, they looked nothing like the picture. I am not sure about the ones that inhabit Adrain, those are probably a different story. Adrain’s secret.

Ever since I can remember, I curl up and sit in my left foot. Things have been fine except for the last month. In the last month my left foot has been hurting. This is because I sit on it! The pain has gotten so bad that I can’t sleep. I have to see the doctor about this left foot. This is all because I have trained myself to sit on it. I even have to see the Psychologist to see if she can get me to stop sitting on my damn foot. Yep it isn’t enough that it hurts, I still do it.

Key is that I never do it with my shoe on. So as I type this out I am wearing my shoes. It is the only thing right not that is going to save my left foot from being smashed. I swear I am a foot sitter. Some people are baby sitters , pet sitters, and there are those tree sitters, I am a foot sitter. I swear I truly have to go to the doctor on friday about the foot I just can’t stop sitting on. Might have to wear shoes till they put me in the trance and tell me to stop sitting on my damn foot.

I try and not be very political. I have certain beliefs and things aren’t always going to be my way. Like for one the death penalty. I am not for the death penalty. I have always tried to make it clear if someone is to kill me, please make them live in prison for the rest of their life, do not let them check out of this life, the one they robbed from me. Make them live everyday with the thought of so much they stole from me by having things taken from them. I think killing them is an easy way out. If this ever happens to me, hopefully someone will remember how I felt and a judge or maybe a jury will put a lot of thought into it and honor my wish.

I got the president that I wanted. I watched all night hoping that in the end, I would see Obama win. At one time during the night, I had to go and wash my hair. I couldn’t stand to keep refreshing the map and watching the states turning red and blue. I need better health care and more income, like it is my life. Without the two I will have no life. Then I went out to get gas and cough drops. I was running low on cough drops and hoping for a sale somewhere.

I voted on every proposition. I wanted the gay marriage to stand. I didn’t realize how much this one would piss me off. I feel like gay people should be able to get married. First off marriage is nothing more than a contract between two people. It is a legal contract between two people. It is not romantic at all. I am a woman and no person in their right mind would want to enter into contract with me. I might be a catch because I have no personal debt, a prefect driving record, I am intelligent, etc. I have bills, just no debt. Why I am not a catch… I can’t get medical insurance. I have too many medical conditions. I had cancer in my 30’s! I can’t get life insurance more than likely. When I die the state is going to rob my estate. That does not make me someone that anyone would want to enter into a contract with. See it is just a contract. How in the world the union between man and woman became sacred is beyond me. This is about state law and church has to be removed from it. I don’t think it has. When I voted, I did not vote with my religious beliefs in the forefront. I also don’t believe that I have the right to push my religion onto others. So I stripped the prop down and I looked at it. I understand marriage as a contract and who am I to say who can enter into contracts of marriage. Their is some straight people that I don’t think should be able to get married. Do we as a state have to right to tell them they can’t get married? We have people that marry distant relatives, marry for money, marry each other over and over again. Gay people getting married does not effect me or any straight person on this planet.

If gay people want to get married, let them! It isn’t hurting anyone. Why are they not given the same rights? I totally understand why they want this right, but also they need to understand that it is not romantic and that it is nothing but a contract. It is a damn contract! When a person gets divorced they see how messy getting out of that contract is. Love is love and if people had love for one another they would just let them be, even is that meant same sex or your third cousin, you have married five times.

Can we have a recount, California?

For ten years, I haven’t seen a single trick or treater. They never wanted to venture into my yard. No matter if I decorated or not. I would prop my gates open and wait. Not a soul would ring the bell or knock on the door. Now that I have moved, I am starting to wonder if I need to buy candy. I haven’t put out a single decoration. Is trick or treating a dead art? Have sick people ruined the fun sport of trick or treating? Heck there has to be hungry college students out there! Do children now trick or treat at the mall, standing in line, to get a goodie, or walking around the plaza to the storefronts and standing in line.

When I was a kid we went till we dropped. When I got older, I moved from the plastic pumpkin to the pillowcase for my collecting tool. The last year I trick or treated I was 14 and I can’t even remember what I was. I think I was a mime. We trick or treated really fast. I had a shit load of candy. We shaving creamed peoples garage doors. The later that night we hung out in the drainage ditch. What happens in the drainage ditch stays in the drainage ditch.

When I was 15, I went to the youth center’s skate night for Halloween and I wore nothing but a black Glad trash bag. I also sprayed my hair funky colors and a can went a little crazy in the bathroom and painted the walls a hot pink that my dad could not get paint to color up. Primer dad, primer! I lead my friends to believe the trash bag was a great costume. Well it worked for me. Nita on the other hand needed duct tape at some point during the evening. She was a little too tall for the trash bag.

When I was 16, I went to school as a pregnant teenager. I wore a maternity shirt that said “organically grown”. I was just hoping this costume would get me sent home. It didn’t, I think I might of blended in too well.

This year hopefully, I will hear the chime of the door bell. I am going to have to start asking the neighbors if we get those rare things called trick or treaters.