Because I had such a large vet bill
with Joxer, I'm going to have a terrible problem this month - a
problem that some of you might be willing to help me with. Once
again it's time for me to pay $119 to networksolutions to keep my
domain and website. If you would like to contribute anything to
keeping this site online, I would greatly appreciate your help.
by Mail
thru PayPal
ReigningPages
3308 Caroland Dr.
Fort Mill, SC 29708
Checks and money orders should be
made out to "Michael Bivens"
All contributions will go towards only paying the
domain bill
As it must be paid by May 23rd, I only
have a few weeks to try to raise enough funds. I will keep you
updated as the month goes along on whether I'll we'll be able to keep this
site going.
A Canceled
Trip and a New Trip
I have been planning on
taking a special trip at the first of Summer - a trip back up to
Ohio! My little Ritchie (Richard's son, who isn't so little anymore
since he recently turned 18) graduates from high school. I am soooo
proud of him!
Ritchie and Joxer - about a decade ago!
However, because of that
vet bill for Joxer, all the money I had saved up (and money that I
haven't even gotten yet!) is gone, and there's no way I'll be able
to have enough to attempt a trip by June 1st. I'm really sad about
that too. I was really excited about seeing Ritchie graduate. I mean
I knew Ritchie before he was even born and he's been my buddy (and
the dogz' buddy) for nearly two decades now. I was also excited
about getting a quick trip back up to Ohio to see my friends who I
had to leave behind so suddenly, to see my mom-in-law (Randy's mom,
Carolynn) and of course, to go by the gravesite where I left my two
guys.
But there's just no way
that I know of that I'll be able to get back up to Ohio, right now.
However, I still have plans for a trip at the end of Summer which
ought to work out okay since the travel and hotel arrangements have
already been taken care of.
In my blog, I know
that I've often mentioned that I chat on the aidsmeds.com forums
quite a lot. I always keep my eye out for new members from OH and
the Carolinas, and welcome them with the tired-and-true greeting
there - "I'm sorry you are infected and had to look for a site like
this; but I'm also glad that you did find this site because there's
a lot of good knowledge and support here."
Matter of fact, there's so
much support and good will there, that every year the members vote
and then make arrangements to try to meet up somewhere in the world.
One year a group of members (usually 2 to 3 dozen!) met up in
Boston; another year in Toronto; another year was in Mexico City;
another year was London with a mini-gathering in Las Vegas. This
year, the group voted to gather (the event is called the "AidsMeds
Gathering" aka the AMG) in Seattle near the middle of August.
Of course, there's no way,
I'd ever have enough money for a trip like that; and that's where
greeting people from OH and the Carolinas comes into play. Last
year, I greeted a guy that is living near Dillion, SC (that's over
near Florence) and we have become friends chatting online and by
phone. My only complaint with being his friend is that there is no
direct road from here to there, so it would take a couple of hours
to drive and try to meet up at either of our houses - and that sucks
since we're actually in the same state.
But the internet and
phones have allowed us to chat frequently keeping tabs on one
another and learning more about each other. Both of us have dealt
with pneumonia, we're about the same age, we both lived up north for
a long time, and now we're both back home in the Carolinas living
with our Moms. I like to think that I've been able to offer him good
health advice and knowledge and he's avidly listened to me talking
about working for Catawba Care and my trips to the State House in
Columbia.
My friend surprised me,
and he says it's in appreciation for the work I'm doing in the state
to help people with HIV. He made the arrangements to get both of us
plane tickets and a room in Seattle for the AidsMeds Gathering! So
in August, I'll be heading across the Mississippi River for the
first time. This will be an amazing adventure!
Week Two:
Still in
Business!
reigningpages.com has been
saved! In response to my plea to help me keep my domain, one of you
answered with the help necessary to stay online. I would like to
thank my dear friends Loretta and Bob Bryce for their contribution
to cover the entire year's cost for my domain.
Special
Late-Breaking News:
I need to also thank my friend Mauricio from British Columbia,
Canada, who also contributed to reigningpages.com with a donation.
I'll be applying those funds directly to keeping my domain online.
Back in 2005, Jim helped me some with painting this fence and
"cottage gate" on the windows of Loretta's new store.
That's Jim "shopping
around" at the Grand Opening of Loretta's store.
Later, Loretta moved her
store to downtown Canal Fulton, OH, and has now relocated to
Coshocton, OH and is part of historic
Roscoe Village. If you get a chance to visit her store, make
sure to buy something since part of her profits have been graciously
contributed to keep this site going for another year - my 14th year
online!
Thank you
so very much, Loretta!
Special
Late-Breaking News:
I need
to also thank my friend Mauricio
from British Columbia, Canada, who also contributed to
reigningpages.com with a donation. I'll be applying those funds
directly to keeping my domain online.
Thank You, Maurice
And thanks to my Mom,
Celia, for her support. She purchased a
piece of my website to use for her bridge club's website -
Carolina Bridge
Thanks Mom!
Advocacy work @
the Strawberry Festival
I started off last Summer
working at the Fort Mill Strawberry Festival, so it's no surprise
that a year later, I'm at the festival again.
The local hospital,
Piedmont Medical, hosted us as part of their "Healthy Hometown"
midway once again. Working the last shift of the day, things were
pretty quite as the festival was winding down. However, I did meet
up with a new volunteer, which is always good, because the "more the
merrier".
Advocacy work @ SC
HIV/AIDS Care Crisis Task Force
I was very happy to be
attending this month's meeting of the Task Force for several
reasons. Some of my advocacy group members were going down to the
Columbia with me, our director Anita would be making a special
presentation about some of our recent activities, and I was going to
be given a chance to speak about our group and work - and show off a
special batch of "Positive Cookies" that I made for the
meeting.
Anita gave a good
presentation of our work, partially supported by a report I wrote
for her files - which I basically stole from the stuff I wrote here
in my blog last month about our meetings and our activities
contacting our legislators.
The numbers of people NOT
having access to treatment continues to rise
Here's me, Sandy and Keith
Afterwards we adjourned
for lunch with "Positive Cookies" for dessert.
We also met up with a new
Winthrop student volunteer who will be working with us in the
future.
Mother's Day
For Mother's Day, we went to visit Nana
and take her out to lunch at the same place we went for Easter. For
the most part, Nana is still doing pretty good. Her main complaint
is the wound left from having some skin cancer removed from her shin
a few months back has just refused to heal up (poor circulation is
part of the problem) and that has made walking and driving much more
difficult.
For Christmas, Mom and I
gave Nana the gift of food. Each month, we've been providing her
with 4-6 freezer dishes of food, that she can reheat to have real
home cooking without all the effort. For Mother's Day, Mom got her
some decorative plates to make her meals more "festive", and
insulated cup so her drinks will stay cool (and reduce her walking
into the kitchen) and several different types of goodies for
desserts.
Happy
Mother's Day
to all the mommies in my family:
Peggy, Celia, Ann, Lisa, Angie (Bivens), Angie (Clark), Terry,
Laura, Lara
Advocacy work @
Celebration Jam 2011
Nearly every weekend this
month has some event that Catawba Care is attending with the
exhibition booth. The Strawberry Festival in Fort Mill was last
weekend, and this weekend was Celebration Jam down in Rock Hill. I
volunteered for this one because it was at a location that I have
visited numerous times - the Emmett Scott Recreation Center. This
event was even more attractive to me because I have been to numerous
other events (like the Unity Festival and the North Medical Center
Health Fair) that were put together by the same guy that put this
event together.
Instead of the event being
inside as the other times I have been here at the Rec Center, this
event was held out in the parking lot - and what a great day it was
for it! Though there was the tiniest sprinkles of rain as we set up
the booth, the clouds blew away and the sun came out back it a nice
warm Spring/early Summer day. The trailer-truck stage was perfect
for this outdoor venue.
Using the agency's tent,
we were safe from the sprinkles and didn't get sunburned.
Denise, from the Prevention/Education
Dept. of the agency was on hand at this event to do on-site testing.
We are able to do in-the-field HIV tests that only take 10 minutes
to return results.
The event was set up so that the
visitors could collect a certain amount of signatures from the
"vendors" and then get a free lunch - hotdog w/chili, chips,
cookies, and drink. That was a great plan too! Not only did all
those visitors get lunch; but we had a guaranteed chance to talk to
everyone. We were able to talk to all those people about the testing
we were doing and the testing we do everyday just down the road at
the clinic, while passing out condoms and a lot of info about HIV
and other STDs.
Around the
Yard
Happily, Mom got me a cover for the
pool.
Sadly, it's been too chilly and too rainy to take the cover off
lately.
These beautiful lilies are
blooming in the front yard.
The surviving pear tree is looking
well.
My hollyhocks are sick! They have
hollyhock rust. I spoke to a master gardener and there's only two
possible cures. Spraying the plants down with a little solution of
Dawn dish soap and water "might" do the trick; otherwise the
solution is to cut them down and wait till next year.
The redbud is very happy and growing
well. It's amazing to see this and think just last Fall it was just
a couple of sticks and a few leaves.
Week Three:
I Went to a
Garden Party
Hopefully, you remember
last month when Mom and I took some trips to
Glencairn Gardens in Rock Hill. We
thought we took quite a few nice pictures and entered some of them
into a photography contest the Pack and Recreation Department was
sponsoring. Unexpectedly, a few weeks later, I got a phone call
telling me that I had won second place in the "Blooms" category and
that we were invited to a garden party honoring all the winners.
The party was held right
across the street from the park under several tents outside of the
park's Learning Center.
The party had a nice hors
d'oeuvres buffet and served wine and tea to drink.
All the winning photos
were displayed nicely and they were quite a nice collection. All the
winning photos will be moved and on display in the City Hall Rotunda
throughout the month of June, then these photos are going to be
turned into a set of postcards that the Park and Rec department will
be selling throughout the year.
2nd Place Winner
My winning photo
The centerpieces on the tables were
quite unique, filled with all sorts of things from the park - pieces
of flowering shrubs, honeysuckle, broccoli gone to flowers, leaves,
and all sorts of flowers.
As a gift, I was given this coffee mug
shaped just like a terra cotta pot
Sneaking into the flower
beds to get a better view for my photo.
<-- Next year's First Place winner???
Dazzle-n-Denim
For several years now,
Catawba Care has hosted an annual fundraising event called "Dazzle
and Denim". This year several of my volunteer/client friends and I
will be attending thanks to another volunteer/client sponsoring a
table so that we all can attend. I'm anxious to attend because I've
heard that it's a good party and I don't have too many chances to
attend parties these days. I'm also especially eager to attend
because I have helped by producing a video that will play during the
evening to a room full of staff, guests and donors.
Held at the Magnolia Room
at the Laurels down in Rock Hill, the staff worked hard on getting
everything ready.
I dropped by to give them a copy of the movie, and then I got out of their way.
Rather than dressing in
dazzle or denim, leatherman decided it was time for the peeps at the
agency to know why he was known as "leatherman" for so many years.
It has nothing to do with knowing our State Senator Leatherman; but
had everything to do with wearing leather. So I slide into my
leather pants and topped it off with a mesh t-shirt that looks like
spider webs with just enough silver in my necklace and watch to
count as "bling".
Keith, Christine (w00T! to
my case manager), Glenda (the RN extraordinaire), Sandy, and new
case manager Katrina
There were a lot of items
in the silent auction.
The buffet had an
excellent array of salad fixings, stuff mushroom croquets, broccoli
casserole, fruits, croissants and rolls.
Leatherman and my buddy Larry
Our table was sponsored by Keith's (on
the right, in black) bee farm business and was filled with all
volunteer/clients from the agency.
A local realtor/businessman, Stephen
Cooley, is the Board Director and he and our Executive Director
Anita Case, thanked everyone for coming to the event.
Anita thanked the sponsors, large and small, for their help putting
together the event, sponsoring tables for the event, and helping
raise money so that agency can contribute it's mission of caring for
people with HIV and educating the community about HIV.
The crowd was then treated to a short movie that described how the
all the parts of the agency joined to complete the mission of the
agency; while several clients talked about their experiences with
Catawba Care and how they were helped. Of course, the video was
something that I produced for the agency. I was very happy,
especially after having helped so much with the video competition
back on World AIDS Day, to work on putting something together for
this event. I'm glad I started working on the video early too.
Between getting clients to interview and editing the video down to
an appropriate time, it took a lot of work and a lot of time to get
it finished just in time for the big gala event.
Here's the actual video played at Dazzle-n-Denim
I was very surprised after
the video when Anita took a few moments to recognize me for my work.
What was even more surprising was that throughout the night a dozen
people stopped me to say how much they enjoyed the video and my work
putting it together.
Nest on the evening's
agenda was a live auction. Several pieces of art and several
vacation packages were auctioned off -
along with this beanbag toss game.
Sandy had a great time
demonstrating the game with a few tosses of the bean bags.
Dimming the main lights
and turning on the disco ball, the rest of the night was taken up in
dancing, drinking, and laughing.
Keith, and Nania (another of the
fabulous Catawba Care nurses) speaking to someone that's just been a
voice on the phone for many of us. That's Nikki, the rep from
MedExpress to calls us to schedule our monthly med refills.
mikie,
Larry,
and Ken
Obviously, my friends are
crazy ... as crazy as me. LOL
A good time was had by
all!
Brian and Sandy kicked up
their heels on the dance floor.
Everybody was having a good time!
Even Anita was grooving to the beat!
I, and all my friends, had
a really good time. Hopefully, the agency made some money that'll
help them keep doing the great job they're doing providing medical
care and case management to people with HIV in our three country
area, along with informing the community about HIV prevention.
Rain, Rain, Go Away!
This is not a picture of a cloudy
afternoon. This is a picture of intense lightning lighting up the
whole sky. Thankfully we weren't hit with the really bad storms that
recently swept through the center of the nation; but we did have a
few tornadoes and straight-line wind events in the area.
This storm came through around 1:30am and I stood out on my porch
and watched it for a while because there wasn't any rain. But
eventually the intense lightning and extreme winds really began to
scare me and I headed inside. I figured when the trees fell over,
the house might offer me a little bit of protection. LOL
Going to Rock Hill the
next morning, I saw damage all over the area. I counted 19 trees
that had crashed over at the sides of the highway and were lying on
the roadway actually blocking the right-hand land going north and
south on I-77. Just two exits down, in the cloverleaf of a highway
intersection, pine trees had been blown down in all four sections.
Around the
Garden
The peas are growing so well in the wire cage that I gave them in
the garden and
I had to stack around ring of wire so they could
climb even higher.
The bell pepper plants are
growing and starting to bloom.
Unfortunately, the dang broccoli is
blooming too. I just can't get the stuff to form heads before it
goes to flower. Argh!
The herbs, like parsley,
dill, cilantro, lettuce, onion, lemon balm, and mint are getting
big!
The tomato plants are
growing and getting blooms now on the "Early Girl" variety.
A friend gave me a horseradish plant,
well root, to plant. It's popped up now and is growing. It'll be
interesting to use this to make Jezebel Sauce later this Fall.
Around the Yard Some
More
The white daylilies are
still blooming and looking very good by the birdbath.
All the hearts-a-bustin' around the yard
have
these tiny little flowers on all the leaves.
Lamb's Ear are covering
and spreading throughout their flower bed near the pool.
The purple flowers are pretty but bring the bees around.
A bunch of cactus died off this past
winter; but a lot is still growing in the Mexican garden. My friend
Bill gave me a lot more cactus to replace what died; but I haven't
wanted to get all prickled yet, so I haven't planted it yet.
Since the morning glory seeds I planted
in March weren't coming up, I planted some more just a little over a
week ago. Now, I have little vines poking their heads out of the
soil.
The tiger lilies, aka
"ditch lilies" are beginning to bloom out by the pool.
Just two days later, and
the bed of flowers is really blooming.
I needed to plant the fern
we bought at the garden party so I picked a nice place out in a
shady area of the back yard. Out passed another bird bath is where I
cut down a tree (the one that crushed the fence, which was the fence
that ripped out my nipple ring), so I planted the fern out in that
area as it stays damp in that area.
More lilies are blooming,
scattered
about the front woods
Even though we've had a
lot of rain this month, the pool water has warmed up to a nice 80+
degrees. It's been great, in the sunny spots during the weeks, to
sit out reading and taking a cooling dip every so often. On some of
the hottest day, floating around in the pool has felt really nice.
Advocacy work @ Rock Hill
CoolFest
With the weekend came
another opportunity to work the Catawba Care exhibition booth.
People participated in "games" in each booth to win tickets to trade
in for prizes. I created an easy true-or-false game. Reach into the
jar, grab a slip of paper, read the statement, and guess whether
it's true or false. The statements were easy "HIV 101" statements
like "you can get HIV drinking after someone", "you can get HIV from
mosquitoes", "getting HIV means you're going to die soon" - all
false of course.
The table all set up at this event
Week Four:
Remembering Randy
Wow! In the blink of an eye, I can go
from thinking how long ago seventeen years is when Randy passed away
on May 25th, to remembering every detail of that fateful night in
100% detail. I'm glad enough years have passed that I mainly
remember the good times when I think of Randy and our relationship.
It's really only on this anniversary (and once in a full blue moon
when I'm speaking to groups about HIV and losing my two partners)
that I have such sad thoughts and think about those final hours.
I know I've published these pictures
before, and I would so dearly love to have the opportunity to take
newer pictures and post them here; but that's just not to be. I
still enjoy these pictures though. Randy was so young (heck! we both
were! I mean look at how much hair I had!!) and he was so cute. I'm
not at all surprised that I fell in love with him. I can see his
smile in each of these pictures and if I close my eyes and think for
a minute, I can almost hear his laugh and his voice.
Even though it still hurts missing him
as much as I do,
I'm going to always remember and love my Randy.
Advocacy
work w/ TellThem!
Unfortunately, I forgot to
take any pix but I had one last advocacy project this month -
and it went really well!
My contact to the Tell Them!
organization, Sondra, asked if I could help out with a unique
activity - their very first neighborhood canvassing. For this
project, we chose the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend as the
weather would be nice and hopefully many of the people in our target
neighborhoods would be home.
Although the state budget
has been passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor with
money supposedly designated to keep health care prevention programs
in it, that part seems to not be set in stone yet as they work out
the final details. It would seem obvious that an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure; but we need to make sure our legislators
understand this basic principle.
So Sondra and I met up in Rock Hill,
and knocking on doors, we asked people to sign our petition, that we
would be sending to our local Senator, requesting that the money in
the budget that was earmarked to go toward teen pregnancy
prevention, STD prevention and HIV prevention programs would stay in
the budget and go towards those programs. With 2,191 teen
pregnancies in York County in 2009, and 618 cases of HIV, we will
all be better off preventing these numbers from increasing rather
than dealing with the consequences - both in the human toll and the
financial toll.
We visited 118 homes, speaking with 47
people, of which 35 signed our petition. For a first time canvassing
activity for Tell Them! - and for me! - I don't think we did too bad
at all. Just the fact that we raised awareness about these issues
within a whole community of people seems to me like a job well done.
