I have the mulligrubs

Of course you don't know what "mulligrubs" means - it's a regional expression. There's a new book coming out and I want it - check it out:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105134163&sc=fb&cc=fp

mulligrubs (n) A condition of despondency or ill temper; a vague or imaginary unwellness. (Usage: scattered, but especially the South)

I live in the south now, I guess I'm entitled to use it.

Why despondent???

MY FRIENDS ARE GONE.

I'm not talking acquaintances, I'm talking real friends I related to and loved hanging with.

I have lost them in this order ...

Canadian Connie was a great friend, a smart, spiritual, real live person I could totally open up to. Earlier this year she moved to D.C. for a new job.

I have friends at the office - but as of March, I don't go to the office any more. I don't get that rush of love and understanding that comes from being with the most amazing bunch of shocking, profane, outspoken, tawdry, like-minded weirdos I've ever seen in one small place.

Randy is back up north as of April. For years my ex-bf was my best friend of all time. Just hilarious and irreverent and always able to make me laugh; until the day came that he stopped laughing. Even though the friendship has changed, it was a comfort knowing he was just 15 minutes away.

Richard ... we were crazy, we were children, we laughed, we cried, we told secrets cross-legged til 4 in the morning; then he was gone.

Emails, IMs, phone calls ... it's not the same. It just doesn't cut it.

MY MOM

She sent me TWO copies of the same book a couple months ago. Note that I didn't want the book in the first place. It's about the dangers of prescriptions - I don't TAKE prescriptions and have no intentions of taking any.

Then today she sent me an email asking if I had the antique metal portrait of my great grandparents. She thought she had it but can't find it. I have not seen that portrait in 20 years.

She can't be slipping gears, she just can't. They live in one of the harshest climates known to man and my step-dad is growing increasingly frail.

The last time I was up there - last August - "something" had shredded the neighbor's 80 lb. dog. They found bits and pieces scattered over a field. My parents live on my Finnish great grandparents' original 80 acres, complete with wolves, bear and cougars.

Their antique shop is one of the largest up there - and a maintenance nightmare of it's own. In the winter, snakes head for the warmth of the area directly under her cash register.

Plowing their parking area during the massive snows would be a substantial undertaking for ANYONE, let alone a woman in her 70s and man in his 80s. He keeps running the plow into their outbuildings.

They are at least an hour's drive from the nearest hospital - in good weather.

I don't even want to think about this. After the IV treatments for Lyme Disease, I moved away from Southwest Michigan because I realized I couldn't handle the cold; the UP would kill me.

If/when anything happens to my step-dad, there will be my mom, four Collies and a combined household/shop antiques inventory that would take a year to sort out. I do not believe the word "downsize" exists in my mother's vocabulary and there is no way she could handle "all that" all alone.

We don't own stuff ... our stuff tends to own us.

THERE'S MORE.

My daughter-in-law was laid off Friday. She's scared and happy because now she can take advantage of Governor Granholm's new benefit that pays college tuition for employees whose jobs were sent overseas. In a way it's GREAT because she'll get to spend time with the girls - and they'll all be able to spend more time up north with the GPs.

So I'm about 2,000 miles from the epicenter ... worried that at some point I may be asked to leave the place that gave me my life back.

Who knows, maybe they'll all wind up near me. Like John Lennon said "life is what happens when you're making other plans."

I guess you just have to be braced for anything.

Mulligrubs ...