BOOMERS IN FULLERTON

6 of us boomers went to the Fullerton DanceSport tonight for a dance lesson to celebrate Darlene's birthday. The dance lesson was PASO DOBLE. Okay, for all of you out there that watch Dancing With The Stars, you know that the PASO DOBLE is not a beginner's class. Especially if the rest of the class has already been taking it for several weeks. So...Tom, Tom and Kathy bailed and went to the closest bar. Darlene, Amy and Rex were good sports and took the dance lesson. Then we all walked to Rutabegorz to have dinner. The rest of the evening was great. Dinner was great. My only question is..."What the hell are Tom and Amy doing?"

FREE KINDLE BOOKS FOR THE NEXT 10 DAYS: first is TG, then BUF

Fifteen year old schoolgirl, Mary Margaret Riley, takes a job in the Catholic Church rectory answering telephones in 1963. Father Antonio Velasquez arrives at the parish having just been transferred from Boston. Mary Margaret is flattered at the attention he pays her, and is honored when he appoints her his special assistant. But when Father’s compliments turn into inappropriate touching, Mary Margaret is first shocked, then flattered, then inconsolable, but always silent. She tries to approach her mother but, as usual, is admonished. Her dad, though loving, is absent, which leaves Mary Margaret terribly alone to deal with this manipulative, lecherous priest.

Fast forward to 2007. Mary Margaret, now Maggie, goes to Los Angeles for settlement conferences with the Los Angeles Archdiocese. While there, she meets another victim of priestly sexual abuse, Javier Lopez, and the two become friends as they share stories of their lives scarred by the abuse, and their hope that the future will be made easier for them when they receive their monetary award. More important for Maggie, is being able to once again meet Father Antonio face to face and tell him of how he ruined her life.

 The California Gold Rush all but over, abandoned first by her mother who leaves with the gold, then by her Pa who just leaves, fourteen year old Grace has a lot of growing up to do. Vina Ranch in Tehama, California isn't home, but it's safe. Still, Grace longs to be reunited with her parents, and her new friend, sixteen year old Jesse Partain is eager to help.

They devise a plan to ride their horses to Sacramento in search of Pa when Grace receives a letter leading her to believe that's where he is. It takes two days to ride to Sacramento, and along the way they have a frightening encounter with an Indian fighter and his gang who've captured several Indian children after killing their parents. Fortunately, Jesse knows the Indian fighter, and Jesse and Grace are allowed to go on their way.

Grace and Jesse find Pa, all right, but he's in an opium den in China Town, sick and heavily addicted to opium. Grace refuses to leave him there, so they take him out of the den, bathe and feed him, then load him onto one of the horses for the ride back to Tehama. Once there, the ranch housekeeper helps them get Pa through opium withdrawal and back to health.

Pa eventually recovers and is able to work on the ranch. Grace works in the kitchen with the housekeeper. She and Jesse become better friends and a romance begins to bloom.

Though she's grateful that her Pa is back to health, Grace still wants her mother. Even though Pa has told her time and again that Mother ran off with the gold money, Grace doesn't believe it in her heart and soul.

When a stranger traveling through the area stops at the ranch and tells them a story about a woman from San Francisco who has been traveling the area looking for her lost husband and daughter, Grace realizes it must be her mother. Once again, Grace and Jesse hatch a plan for another adventure filled trip to Sacramento.

MISS MARIGOLD'S FIREMAN

JUST PUBLISHED ON KINDLE! NOW AVAILABLE AT WWW.AMAZON.COM.

Miss Marigold's Fireman is the sequel to Miss Dairy Queen.

     At 42, Marigold James is reconciled to remaining single for the rest of her life, so being a first time mother is the absolute last thing on her mind. That is until her niece Misty and friend Scarlett show up and ask her to adopt Scarlett’s baby when she’s born.

    
    Then, of all things, the universe sends her a knockout fireman who lights her fire--and he also happens to love kids!   

    

     Does Marigold’s newfound happiness last, or will it all be torn away from her when the baby’s birth mother returns to town?

MISS DAIRY QUEEN and MISS MARIGOLD'S FIREMAN

My latest book, MISS MARIGOLD'S FIREMAN will be released on Amazon Kindle within the next two weeks. Yay! Below is a description of the book:

     At 42, Marigold James is reconciled to remaining single for the rest of her life, so being a first time mother is the absolute last thing on her mind. That is until her niece Misty and friend Scarlett show up and ask her to adopt Scarlett’s baby when she’s born.

    
    Then, of all things, the universe sends her a knockout fireman who lights her fire--and he also happens to love kids!   

    

     Does Marigold’s newfound happiness last, or will it all be torn away from her when the baby’s birth mother returns to town?

     MISS MARIGOLD'S FIREMAN is the second book in my California Gals series. The first book is MISS DAIRY QUEEN. To celebrate the pending release of FIREMAN, I'm giving away MISS DAIRY QUEEN free on Kindle for one week beginning tomorrow. Enjoy!

SUPER BOOMER GREAT-AUNT OLIVE A. JAMES ALLESHOUSE

LIVED TO BE 112 YEARS AND 340 DAYS OLD

     Lately I’ve been thinking about my Great-Aunt Olive A. James Alleshouse. I don’t know why. She lived to the ripe old age of 112 years and 340 days, making her a verified supercentanarian. I looked her up on the internet and noticed she died on May 13^th, 1995. Monday is May 13^th, 2013. Maybe I’m getting a message from the great beyond telling me to write down my few memories of Aunt Olive.

     Olive A. James was born on June 7, 1882 in Iowa. The computer records say she was born in Texas. That is a mistake. She lived much of her life in Texas, but she was born in Liberty Center, Iowa. She was my grandmother, Florence Edna James’ sister. My grandmother was two years older, having been born in 1880.

     Aunt Olive married Martin L. Alleshouse and they lived most of their married life in Texas. They did not have children. Aunt Olive worked as a teacher and as a librarian for the Houston library. In my search, I found an interesting tidbit. She’d done work on a historical project at the library and on file is an article she’d written on the Florence Crittenton Home in Houston. (The interesting part to me is I volunteered for several years at the Florence Crittenton Home in Fullerton, California. Just a little cosmic connection I suppose.)

     My grandmother, Florence Edna James, married my grandfather, Ira Judkins. They had 10 children, 9 of them lived into adulthood. According to my mother, Kathryn Kimzey Judkins, whenever Aunt Olive visited her sister Florence, she would give her a good tongue lashing for having so many children. Maybe that was Olive’s secret to longevity. No children. She lived to be almost 113 years old. Florence died when she was 57 years old.

     As a widow, Aunt Olive moved to a retirement village in Peoria, Illinois. She was around 60 at the time. She turned over all her worldly goods to the retirement home on the condition that they cared for her the rest of her life. I guess she got the better end of that deal!

     Aunt Olive took up painting in her later years. I remember when she sent 9 of her paintings to Iowa for all of my Judkins aunts and uncles. We gathered at Uncle Theo and Aunt Iris Judkins' home in Winterset, Iowa, and they placed numbers on each of the paintings, then drew numbers to see who got what. That was certainly fair, but my dad ended up with one of the not very pretty paintings. It was of the Washington monument. I don’t know what happened to that painting, but I do know my parents weren’t terribly fond of it. (Another coincidence is that I’ve recently taken up painting.)

     When my parents, Bert and Kathryn Judkins, and my Uncle Joe and Aunt Atha Judkins, were in their late 60’s they made a visit to Aunt Olive in Peoria. Mom told me that Aunt Olive called them “you kids” the whole time they were there. She was over 100 years old at the time, so I suppose to her, they were kids.

     Maybe I should set a goal to break Aunt Olive’s longevity record? We all need goals, right?

 

60 Minutes: CHARLES CULLEN NURSE SERIAL KILLER

Did you watch 60 minutes last night about the nurse serial killer Charles Cullen? He did the things I wrote about in my book, Medicinal Remedies. It's available on Amazon.com as an ebook and as a paperback. It's also available on Barnes and Noble.com. There are also 3 paperbacks available on ebay (different cover on the paperbacks). My nurse killer thought she was doing a good thing when she "put people out of their misery", Charles Cullen not so much.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rY35Q9hjL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-52,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

 

DRUGS, THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

I graduated from nursing school and received my Registered Nurse license in 1972. Newly married, and pregnant with my first child, I accepted a transfer to work at a new drug treatment center on the grounds of the Los Angeles County hospital. Patients were initially admitted into the detoxification unit where we helped them withdraw from whatever drug they were addicted to. At that time the favorites were barbiturates, sedatives, and heroin. These patients writhed in bed for the better part of seven to ten days, hallucinating, sweating profusely, vomiting, and having diarrhea. There really wasn't a good way to withdraw from drugs. Eventually they would recover enough to be transferred out of the acute ward and onto the general ward. If they progressed well during therapy sessions, and stayed clean and drug free, they would then move to the next unit where therapy was more intense and they enjoyed a bit more freedom. The ultimate goal was to be able to transition to a halfway house on the hospital grounds before being reintroduced into the community. Sadly, there were many failures and few successes. I remember some of the failures vividly.

     The first one that comes to mind is a young black female prostitute who was seven months pregnant when she came in for detoxification from heroin so her baby wouldn't be born addicted. She didn't last through the first three days of withdrawal and was packing her bags to leave AMA, (against medical advice) when I noticed her syphilis test had come back positive. I notified the doctor right away and before she left I injected her buttocks with more penicillin than I'd ever given anyone before or since. I've wondered all these years if that poor little baby was born alive and what happened to it. I can only imagine.

     One weekend I was working when the lab technician came up to me and said someone had stolen all of the used needles and syringes off of his lab tray. Alarm bells went off in my head. I figured that someone most likely had gotten ahold of some heroin and was planning a party. I had to work fast. I called the medical director and told him what had happened, and then gathered all of the patients together. Of course no one admitted to stealing the syringes and needles, so I mobilized the staff to search every inch of the unit. We finally found the stash hidden inside the zippered vinyl cushions on the chairs in the sun room. However, it was too late. The patients were already exhibiting signs of being high. Using drugs while going through drug rehabilitation was a violation of their individual contracts. I called the medical director again and he told me to discharge every patient that showed signs of being high on drugs and to do drug testing on all of the other patients. I still don't know where I found the courage to stand up to all those people who didn't want to leave, but with the help of my staff, I somehow managed to escort them out and lock the doors behind them. In retrospect, I was so angry at what they'd done on my watch that the adrenaline was flowing and most likely kept fear at bay. I was a bit worried when I left to go out to my car at the end of my shift, but no one was lying in wait. Once the weekend was over, several of the people came back, were remorseful, and were readmitted to the program where they had to start over from the beginning.

     One of the young men who returned was a teenager. He was a really cute little guy with blonde curly hair and big blue eyes. He’d been fun to have on the unit as a recovering drug addict. He was accepted back in, but changed his mind and left. Shortly after he left, another man came to the door and told us the teenager had shot up with heroin and overdosed. Someone dragged him inside and the doctor and I started working on him. He was in full cardiac arrest but we managed to resuscitate him and inject him with a medication to reverse the effects of the heroin. We saved his life, but I often wonder how long he lived. I still think about him and whether or not he managed to become drug free make it to adulthood.