Ann Offermans, 82, a career-long teacher of the handicapped, passed away on December 26 after a very brief bout with cancer, and an eight-year-long battle against Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

Ann was born Anna Maria Fijen in the town of Afferden, province of Gelderland, the Netherlands, on November 12, 1926; she was one of a family of seven girls.

In 1946, while still living in the Netherlands, she became a teacher to those with mental, emotional and physical disabilities. While working, she also studied towards her Master’s degree in Special Education.

After World War II, her father was a warden of Nazi sympathizer POWs at Amstenrade Castle in the province of South Limburg, and it was there on a tennis court that she met her future husband in 1947. They married in April 1954.

In 1959, they immigrated to the United States, and Ann received her U.S. Master’s degree in Special Education in New Jersey. She continued to teach in this field for the duration of her career, until she retired from Roosevelt School in the Pasadena Unified School District in 1989.

After also briefly living and teaching in Minnetonka, Minnesota, she became a resident of La Cañada Flintridge in 1970, and she called it home for the remainder of her years.

Ann loved spending time with her friends and family. Over the course of her life, some of her favorite pastimes included playing tennis and bridge, doing crossword puzzles, and, most especially, traveling the world (particularly enjoying the wildflowers of Switzerland). The last fifteen years of her life, she could be found nearly every weekday and Saturday morning sitting with friends at Zeli Coffee Bar.

Ann is survived by her husband John and her daughter Marianne. Services were held at St. Bede the Venerable church on Tuesday, December 30, followed by cremation; some of her ashes will be transported to the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Contributions in her memory may be made to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization or to the American Lung Association.

My heart is breaking, and this past week has been the worst in my life.  My 82-year-old mom has an eight-and-a-half-year history of COPD and osteoporosis, brought on by the steroids she has been taking to help her breathe. The osteoporosis causes compression fractures in her spine, which are very painful.  Anyway, on Friday (12/19) my mom's shoulder was excruciatingly painful, and on Friday night she was very nauseated. She had also made an appointment for Monday with her general practitioner, because she'd developed a swelling around her left collarbone.  I figured she had a fractured clavicle that was causing her pain, and that the pain meds were making her sick.  But things deteriorated over the course of the weekend, and we called her GP on Sunday to see what he thought. He actually made a house call (we're so lucky to have him!), and he was concerned about the swelling, especially when he noticed it was right above her mastectomy scar from 20 years ago. He wanted to get CT scans of the area as quickly as possible on Monday.

By Monday morning, she was so weak and a bit disoriented, so we took her to the ER at the doctor's advice. He admitted her to the hospital right away.  She was still pretty confused for most of Monday, but by the afternoon when she went to radiology, she was almost completely lucid again.

The news from the CT scans was devastating: the swelling was a mass that appeared to have already metastasized to the bone, and she had another mass on her liver. The doctor told my dad and I privately that he didn't think she had the strength to fight it, especially since it was in the liver already. He didn't tell her about the liver right away, just the mass on her chest wall, because he didn't want to overwhelm her. She was so courageous, saying she would have chemotherapy and beat this. She said she wanted to spend some quality time with me doing things we loved together, and she and I would get to have at least one more good mother-daughter talk so we could say everything we felt we needed to, in whatever time she had left.  We all figured we could tell her the full story and discuss the details on Tuesday. We were wrong.

By Tuesday morning, my darling mother was delusional.  She recognized everyone she knew, but she also hallucinated about things that weren't there and would start randomly asking us about thoughts in her head, assuming we already knew what she was thinking. She was somewhat lucid for about 15 to 30 minutes, but after that it just got worse. She started getting anxious, trying to get out of bed and pull the sheets off because she thought they were dirty, so they gave her an anti-anxiety medication push in her IV and restrained her gently with a vest that could be attached to the bed rails. When we asked her doctor how long she had to live -- days, weeks, or months -- he said "weeks" was about right.  He also told us that he would write an order for in-home hospice care, and we met with the social worker to arrange for her to stay in the hospital hospice ward until after Christmas, since we couldn't get a room at home cleaned out fast enough to fit the equipment and bring her home before Friday.

By yesterday, she was only semi-conscious and extremely agitated. The doctor told us that her biopsy showed that her breast cancer had returned, and this meant it had probably spread to her brain already, thus the rapid-onset dementia.  He said she now had only days to live.  My mom was born and raised in The Netherlands, and on Wednesday the few words she spoke in her sleep were all in Dutch, even though all her conversations with everyone on Tuesday had been in English. When the time came to give her a bath and change her bed linens, the process of moving her was so painful that she screamed at the nurses in Dutch the whole time, only she thought it was my dad and her parents who were hurting her. It was agonizing to see her suffer so much, and we realized that the trip home for hospice care would be miserable for her, so we decided to keep her in the hospital's hospice ward after all. She had asked us on Monday not to let her die in a hospital, but by now she was so out of it she didn't know where she was, and moving her caused her such pain, and she only had days left.

As I expected, today, Christmas, was rough, made more so by the doctor's call around 11:00 a.m. that he did not expect her to survive the day.  My dad and I went to see her three times, and she's in a medically induced coma now, as I understand it.  We were so grateful that today she has been peaceful, though her breathing is very labored.  We were also happy that we could hold her hands today, because yesterday, before they started her on morphine, she was so agitated in her semi-conscious state that every time anyone tried to touch her, she would push their hands away. She also couldn't stand the feeling of sheets or her gown yesterday, and kept pulling them off; but today she slept quietly. Her hands were so warm and soft, and her color was so good. I kept expecting her to wake up and say "hi kid!" She always said that to me while she'd squeeze my hand. It's still so hard to wrap my head around the fact that on Monday night I was having a normal conversation with her while she waited to go to radiology, and tonight she could be gone.

My dad and I are both dreading the idea that the final call might come during the middle of the night; but on Tuesday, in one of her semi-lucid moments, she asked us to promise her that she would die at night, so we wouldn't have to be there to watch it happen. Like we have any control over that.  But whenever it happens, we are so glad she'll finally be at peace. Tonight we told her that her work here is over, and we will miss her so much, but we'll get along without her. I hope she heard us and can let go of the body that has caused her so much suffering over the past eight years, but especially the past nine months.

My dad has no regrets. They've known each other for 61 years, and they've been married for nearly 55. He will just miss her so much. I, on the other hand, thought on Monday that I still had some time to just talk with her and tell or ask her so much. Then she pretty much slipped away from me overnight.

Please everyone, on this Christmas day, my only gift I can give you is to remind you to love and enjoy your families every single minute you can. Tell them the things you need them to know, because life happens quickly.

Using a new USB turntable to rip MP3 files from old vinyl records that I haven't heard in a long, LONG time.

There is nothing like having a great group of people make a big deal about your birthday to make one feel loved and appreciated! To wit:

January 31, 2008. Am I scared? Of course I am, otherwise I wouldn't be human. But it's time. In fact, it's overdue.

I just came from speaking with Marina and Vanessa, the two women who run Mutts & Moms, the agency that adopted Iggy the puppy to Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi. Nobody in the U.S. who's not in a coma has been spared the onslaught of media coverage and editorials about this story, so I'm almost embarrassed to add my thoughts to the whole hullabaloo. But as dog "mom" and an animal lover, I was genuinely curious. And to be honest, I went in siding somewhat with Ellen, because I believe she's done a lot of good in the past; but I've been a customer of Marina and Vanessa's shop for over a year, and I wanted to hear their side of the story. I was prepared not to continue shopping there if I felt that they were in the wrong. They did not want to defend themselves, and they didn't try to force their story on me; in fact, I had to coax it out of them.

They explained that they did try to accommodate Cheryl, Ellen's hairdresser, to whom Iggy was given by Ellen. They repeatedly called Cheryl and her family, asking them to come in for an interview (note, I did NOT say "fill out an application," which is what everyone seems to be hung up on). An interview with the family is part of their adoption process. But Cheryl refused each time she was asked, until eventually she said that Marina and Vanessa would have to come to her house for the interview at a specific time.

When Marina and Vanessa arrived at Cheryl's house at the appointed time, someone — presumably either Cheryl, Ellen, or Kelly Bush (Ellen's publicist) — had called TMZ, because the cameras were already there to film the whole situation.

The police were not brought in my Marina and Vanessa either, they were called by someone else, presumably Cheryl or her family, to keep Marina and Vanessa from taking the dog. It was only when Marina and Vanessa explained the situation to the police (and apparently Iggy's ID microchip was scanned, though they didn't mention that) that the officers stepped in on their behalf.

They went on to explain to me that the general rule they have against adopting out to homes with children under 14 exists when the adoption involves small dogs, and it's for the safety of the children. I was told that they have seen families whose younger kids are very good with dogs, including small ones, and the dogs do well for the most part. But they've seen situations when kids have a group of friends over, that the other children can be too rambunctious, or the noise and extra activity makes the dog so nervous that they act out, including nipping and other misbehaviors. So they've determined that it's best not to place small dogs in homes with kids under 14. But still, they were willing to meet with Cheryl and her family to determine if an exception could be made, and Cheryl refused to meet, except at the time and place she designated (as described above).

Finally, they told me that the contract is very clear that if an adoptive family can't or won't keep the dog they adopted, it is to be returned to the rescue agency. They do it because they can then be sure that the dog will be placed in another great home. They take responsibility for the animals they rescued. They were willing to interview Cheryl and her family for this.

So there are the facts. Now here's my opinion. Sometimes rescue groups are a little too diligent; perhaps Cheryl's home would have been perfectly suitable for Iggy. But their hearts are in the right place. And Ellen and/or Portia signed a contract. You know what? If you sign a contract, you have to abide by its terms, unless it's somehow not a legally binding agreement. And then you take that matter up with the courts. And if you feel you need redress, be responsible about getting it. Ellen has enormous power and privilege, and she didn't think about the consequences before wielding it, either in giving the dog away when it wasn't her place to do so, or in using her show to ask the agency to see things her way. Now a couple of children and the dog are paying the price for this dispute. And the rescue group is seriously considering not doing any more rescues, because after this whole debacle, they are having trouble placing dogs for which they are already caring; so going forward, more dogs will suffer. And that's the greatest tragedy of all this.

A really attractive-looking and interesting personality test:

Just saw this. LOVED it! Can't wait for the DVD! Also made me hungry for really good food.

I've been waiting for this movie to come out ever since we were first approached to do an advertising campaign for it at work. I was not disappointed.

Food Sticks. Breakfast Bars. Freakies Cereal. All parts of my childhood in the 1970's that were mostly forgotten, but every now and then popped into my head. Now, courtesy of the Intarweb and brilliant people, I can at least look at them every day, even if I'll never taste them again.

Pillsbury Food Sticks:


Carnation Breakfast Bars:
I could not get enough of these back in grade school and junior high!


Freakies and Cinnamon Crunch Cereals:

Nobody seems to remember these but me. :o(

With thanks to Dan Goodsell and his site The Imaginary World (also, his blog) for providing these images and allowing me to become 10 years old again.

As predicted, I've not touched my new MySpace account since my last post.

In other news:

Parts of the Flickr community are in an uproar because the company's management decided they needed to remove the ability for members in Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea to turn off their SafeSearch option.  Specifically, "If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off."  In other words, no access to moderate or restricted content.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't like the idea of censorship; but, knowing a little bit about doing business in other countries because of my own job at an online company, I don't think Flickr is necessarily to blame here. Governments have different restrictions on what and how content can be accessed online.  And businesses have to try to do their best to abide if they wish to continue to ply their trade in these countries.  Businesses generally error on the side of "overabundance of caution" when in doubt, because they have obligations to their customers, their employees, and their investors. Do they always handle it the way the customers would want? No. Do they always handle it correctly? No. But most of the time, they try to do their best. It's not in a company's best interests to alienate its customers, so they don't go into these decisions lightly. The online world is an extremely tricky business environment, and nobody will ever be 100% happy. But wouldn't it be worse if a company like Flickr couldn't do business there at all?

The German contingent of Flickr is particularly in an uproar, the most vocal of whom are nearly all claiming that German law does not require Flickr to take such draconian measures to protect themselves. Perhaps they're right, but I'd venture a guess that most of them are not attorneys in their native country, so I'd also be willing to bet they don't know for sure. I'm also a former lawyer, albeit not in Germany, and I have yet to hear of any law that is that clear-cut.

Again, I don't fully know how I feel about this yet, but as a marketer in an international online business, I want to give Yahoo/Flickr the benefit of the doubt that they have their customers' interests at heart and are just doing what they feel is necessary to be able to stay in business in the countries in question.

Hell just froze over; I signed up for a MySpace account. I swore this would never happen, but it has to do with a recent theme in my life, which is "you know you're getting old when you reminisce about places you went in your teens, and wander around town remembering exactly where they were, and what else was there." Allow me to explain.

So today I was reading an article in Fortune magazine about this former executive of HP who's locked in a nasty legal battle with the company. The article mentioned that this guy once started a nightclub for teens where alcohol was not served, and this reference sparked a memory of Marilyn's Backstreet, a club I used to frequent in high school that was strictly for kids 16 - 21. I remember where it was and can point you to the building that used to house it, now subdivided into a Jamba Juice and a furniture store. In fact, I used to live a block away from there in later years, after Marilyn's had gone out of business. I loved that place, because it was local, safe and a great scene back in 1983 (like I said, I'm old). It reeked of clove cigarettes, and the walls echoed with the sounds of Culture Club, Berlin, The Fixx, etc., etc. So this memory inspired me to Google Marilyn's, and I found there are many more like me who loved that place. There's even a MySpace group for said people. So, of course, I signed up as a MySpace member (the one website I thought you'd have to threaten my life in order to make me join), for the sole reason that I want to read their memories. I doubt I'll use it for anything else, and I REALLY don't see myself creating a profile.

Anyway, while I was reading reminiscences about Marilyn's, one of them also mentioned The Espresso Bar. You're probably thinking "A coffee place, right. So what's the BFD?" But remember, these were the early-to-mid 80's, back in the pre-McStarbucks days. Most people did not know what a cappuccino was back then, let alone latte, chai, or — wait for it — chai latte. And The Espresso Bar was a small place, not fancy. Kind of like the old beatnik days of coffee houses, I would imagine. Anyway, I've often wondered about it as I cruise through the outdoor shopping mall that we now call Old Town Pasadena, and I never really have been able to remember exactly where it was located. Whenever I went, I just followed my friends who knew where they were going, and I didn't really pay attention. But of course, there are people who do remember, and there's even a website devoted to the idea of bringing it back. Why did it never occur to me to search the interweb before?

Before I knew it, I was on a trip down memory lane trying to recall where pieces of my past used to be located. I remembered the Good Earth health-food restaurant that used to be near Marilyn's (I think that's now a Tony Roma's), and the Odyssey nightclub where my best friend and I would go when Marilyn's was too full of the poseurs we hated in high school, and we just wanted to dance without wondering if someone was going to ask us. The Odyssey was a primarily gay club near the Beverly Center, and there were at least one or two occasions when we were the only girls in the whole place. We loved it, because we could dance solo. There was also Swensen's at the Plaza Pasadena mall, where a guy I briefly dated my senior year worked. I'll never forget the taste of a cherry phosphate soda! And I can't forget Perkin's Palace either, a renowned local concert venue. And KROQ, "the ROQ of the eighties" where I spent some mornings ditching first period class my senior year so I could bring breakfast to Richard Blade and Raymond Banister, better known to their fans as "Raymondo and The Blade" when they were on the air. KROQ is still on the air, but that was during its heyday.

Well, enough of the old-ladylike behavior. Time to start living in the present again. But it sure was fun being 17 again for a little while!

As is often the case when I tell myself to start blogging or journaling again, I find myself at a loss. I have absolutely nothing I think is worth saying. And even though I have strong opinions on the whole "Paris Hilton in jail" thing, I refuse to stoop so low as to dedicate a post to them, just so I have some content. So I guess I'll just write about my mundane day. Maybe that will spark some other thoughts.

After my normal Saturday-morning workout, I came home and watched a little TV, plus spent a lot of time online playing in Flickr and YouTube. Took a nap for over an hour, then took Bijou to visit my parents. This made them happy, and it gave me a chance to show my dad how to use the new Flickr account I created for my dad, so he doesn't have to make comments from mine anymore. Then went grocery shopping and came back home. Despite my best efforts to watch TV and relax, I kept finding myself drawn back to the computer. I seem to be searching for a way to integrate my pictures, video and blog(s) into a cohesive unit, plus I am trying to think of what the hell to add to them. I did take Bijou out for a run before coming online, and I captured some video and pictures of it that I have yet to post.

Speaking of blogs, in an effort to find a blogging site/engine that most appeals to me, I signed up for accounts last night with </a>WordPress and Vox, in addition to the LJ and Blogger accounts I already have. Since Vox is owned by the same company as LJ, but is a bit simpler and has some cool sidebar modules, I thought I might like it better than LJ. But a big drawback is the complete inability (at least no ability that I could fine) to customize the overall look and feel beyond applying one of their templates. Granted, there were many of them, but not being able to use CSS (once I learn how) was a deal-breaker. So was the limit on template width, which caused some of my pictures blogged from Flickr to get cut off on the right. Also, there are no paid Vox accounts, which means ads show up on all blogs. BAD! Do not want! So the Vox account was history 15 minutes after I created it. I still have WordPress and Blogger, but I haven't posted to either yet. WordPress may or may not have the ability to hide individual posts from anyone but myself. If not, it will be axed as well. Also need to see what Blogger can do. Maybe I'll use all three, and have different themes for each (ambitious, no?).
On a wholly different note, I love, love, LOVE these commercials from


 

There's drama going on at one of my favorite online communities. I hate drama.

I know it's inevitable when you get a group of people together, particularly online where relative anonymity liberates said people to say and do more or less as they please. But it seems like every time I find an online community I like, it gets torn apart because people say and do things that hurt each other.

What is especially troubling is that it also seems like people are extending this rudeness into the real world, emboldened, I think, by their ability to do so online without real repercussions.

If I want this kind of drama in my life, I'll watch reality TV. Speaking of which, I wish they'd hurry up and air Season 4 of Project Runway!

I love weekends for the opportunity to play with my camera. But I sometimes lack creative inspiration. The cool thing is, today I was also playing with Picasa, and I found a really neat effect:



Woot!

yippeez! mai faverit lolcatz is now on flickr! icanhascheezburger has own flickr groop!

kthxbai

(I'm not really even a cat lover, but there's just something about cute fuzzy critters with bad grammar getting into mischief that I find hilarious and irresistible.)

Is it a full moon out, or has everyone been smoking crack? It seems like there's a lot of crankiness going around, and I mean it's everywhere I look. What's that about?

So to make you smile, I give you piles of poodles (one-month-old standard poodle puppies, that is):

I love how the extended family of adults all care for the babies of one mother! Apparently, their breeder is in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

And to make me smile, a picture of my own beautiful girl:

I'm sorry I hadn't seen you in four years.
I'm sorry I did not know you were sick.
I'm sorry I couldn't hold your hand.
I'm sorry I was not there for you if you were scared.
I'm sorry we never again had the chance to be the kind of friends we once were.
You seemed to instinctively know when I needed a friend - I'm sorry I couldn't do the same for you.
I'm sorry I never got to say good-bye.

Be at peace with God, and together watch over all who love you.

Hey-

Check out this great site that is giving away totally FREE Photo iPods!

Despite being a born skeptic, I've joined, and I think you should as well. Two people at my company joined a couple of months ago, and they both got free regular iPods. Now the site is giving away the ones with the color screen! I wouldn't do it before, but now that I've seen for myself that the offer is legit, I'm in!

All you have to do is join, complete an online offer, and refer friends to do the same. That's it!

Here is my referral link. To help me get my Photo iPod, click this exact link to join, or copy and paste it into a browser:
http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=12570386

I'll miss them . . .