dogs and the lack thereof, and what to do about it

Since Angus' passing, I've been telling myself over and over again what a relief it is not to have to take care of a dog. I drive into the barn at night and sit in the car for a minute, thanking God that my workday is over and I'm home . . . and that I don't have to rush to the house to let a bursting-bladder dog outdoors. I do have more time. But I don't do anything with that unused time except sleep and think too much. 
When I think too much I get sad. 
I have been very sad. 
I identified a great deal with Hyperbole and a Half's "depression" posts. 

Husband and I talked about dogs . . . should we get another? The cost of the medical treatment! The pain of the inevitable leaving! Oh, wasn't Marly a good dog? And Chase? And wasn't Max just the cutest little fluffball with the little pink puffy hearts floating out of his head? And Angus was such a little tough guy... Our voices begin to turn nasal and crack; we turn away from each other, embarrassed with our moist eyes and quivering lips.
We've gone by turns, evening after evening looking at every dog on Petfinder and every rescue site we could find and then, for a couple of nights not looking at all to avoid the pain of wishing we could save them all. Or even one. Just one, to keep us company. To be happy to see us when we get home at night. To walk around outside with us, barn to house to shed to hedgerow. To ride with us to the hardware store...

And then Husband saw an Australian cattle dog "free to a great home." The dog is four and a half hours away and he sounds like a dream. I've been corresponding with the owner to learn more.
And today there is an adoption clinic where we might meet a girl dog who has pretty yellow eyes and a red-brown coat.

I have come to question rescue outfits' write-ups. I imagine the rescue people see so much that people do wrong with dogs, that they don't see how dogs are when they can run at will and then get called in to watch movies and snuggle with their owners. Country dogs are different from city or suburban dogs. The poor rescue people see the ones that people left behind or dropped off . . . the unwanted ones who aren't out there running around for fun, so the people think unfenced yards are Bad Things. 

Anyway, it appears that the two of us will expire unless we avail ourselves of a dog buddy.
Stay tuned.

A few passing observations

US Deputy Attorney General James Cole . . .

 

. . . looks like the actor, Dennis Farina.

 

Betty Ford admitted she was addicted to drugs and alcohol, got treatment, 

and everybody stood up and cheered for her. 

Such a heroine. 

Where's my parade?
I'm not bitter, you understand. I'm glad for myself, but it came to mind, 
nudged by recent "news" stories.

Angelina Jolie had her breasts removed [and replaced].

What a brave soul!

Her new breasts will have an even bigger following than her natural ones did.

Me, I just go around with my prosthesis falling out the neckline of my top 
and going PLOP! on the floor 
if I bend over to get a package of copy paper. 
Nobody's elbowing me out of the way to get a look at it.

Oh, don't read this.

Joe asked what I've been up to.
Not much.

Spring came out and went back indoors again. If she comes back I won't trust her. What a thing, to be unable to trust even spring.

Peep is a good and pretty girl. She comes when called . . . a high screechy Peeep! Her own voice is so small that she is almost inaudible. She's working on learning hunting, but she isn't very good at it, except with pieces of gravel and half-dead flies. She's pretty good at catching those. She holds the gravel in her paws and stands up on her haunches and twists her body this way and that way and then throws the gravel and runs like a wild cat, her tail twisting behind her. The flies are disposed of much less histrionically.

My nephew's daughter has been born and celebrated. 
I was the fifth person to hold her on the day she was born, as if we were passing her along the branches of the family tree.
She is able to lift her head at the tender age of six weeks. Clearly, she is an exemplary child: no doubt she will cure cancer, rid the world of war, and feed all the poor. 

Husband and I are being murdered by taxes. As is my wont, I shoulder into my Duty mode, hunker down and stow away money each paycheck like a Christmas Club so that when the bills come I can haul it all out and give it away. The assessor says we've been undervalued for years, and only now are we equitably assessed. If equity is the goal, then why is our valuation the same as somebody with three times as much land, a six-bedroom house and nine outbuildings? 
Husband hunkers down too, but he vents, scaring me. 
"We won't be able to afford a pet!" 
"I'd rather live in the city and pay lower taxes!"
I shrink down inside and wait, quiet.

Robert Benchley died before I was born, and James Thurber passed away in 1961, the same year as my father. I've been rereading them both. Their humor is timeless. They make me laugh out loud.

Signed up for Netflix and we're working our way through our free first month. So many movies I haven't seen! I couldn't watch movies while the poodle boyz were still alive: they would bicker and fight and I'd have to take them out of the room. I'm queuing up movies that Husband has already seen, but he doesn't mind, bless his little heart. Saturday evening is movie night. Husband says, "Don't call it that. All the kids at work have Game Night and Movie Night and Margarita Night. I can't stand to have Nights." 

Peep among the books

Peep continues to find Perfect Cat Cubbyholes. The testing for toeholds, that she did on her first afternoon here, has finally been remembered and put to use. Here is the girl, striking a pose.

Happy Easter

from Peep . . . 

. . . and her grateful PeepMom

Reclining animals

Some indoors...

...and others forty feet from the back door.

She shall be called Peep

Thank you, Hilary!

I was able to stand being petless for, ohhh, eight days. 

I had started checking Petfinder.com after three days. Looking at dogs until none of them seemed like a comfortable fit. And to adopt a dog when mud season is at hand is to invite misery into one's life.

On the eighth day a cat face brought me up short, made me gasp, made me sigh: Ohhh. 

I phoned the shelter seven minutes after they had closed for the day, left my name and phone number and the name of my vet's clinic. The next morning a young lady phoned from the shelter to tell me she had already checked with Casey at my vet's office, and all I would need to do would be to come by with my $70 adoption fee and a completed adoption application and I would "be able to take her home this afternoon." 

Oh! All through the rest of the morning, excited as a six-year-old on Christmas Eve! I was in love and I hadn't even met her yet. I was barely able to concentrate at work, and left early. A dash into the supermarket for kitty litter and kibble and on to the animal shelter. I leapt from the vehicle as its last vibrations settled, grabbed the cat carrier in one hand, and ran, unburdened arm outflung, toward the building's door. And waited, dancing foot to foot, behind a couple who wanted to browse for a kitten. I had to run out to the car to retrieve the completed application, left behind in the headlong rush. At last! At last! The shelter keeper moved to a large crate behind her and asked my girl if she was ready to go home, and I had my first in-person view of my beauty. First impression: tail in extra long, nearly prehensile. As I took her from the keeper, like a monkey she wrapped that tail around my arm. She rubbed her face into my hand, let her head be tucked under my chin for a cuddle. It was hard to let her go long enough to get her into the carrier. On the way out the door, the kitten-searching couple held the door for me, peeked through the grille in the carrier. 
"Isn't she beautiful?" I breathed. I had owned her for two minutes and I was already showing off her charms.

The minute she was into the house and out of the carrier, she was up and down, tiptiptiptiptiptiptip up the stairway and pumpumpumpumpumpumpum down again, into every corner, under everything that could be gotten under, examining the bookshelves for toeholds, winding that tail around lamps, happily submitting to interruptions for cuddles and then heading back out on her tour. That was last Thursday afternoon. She has been in residence for two full days only, and parts of Thursday and today. She is now able, for periods of sixty or fewer seconds, to be still enough for photographs.

I have taken care of old infirm pets for so long that I delight in her eating and drinking, her capable use of the litter box, her ability to transport herself from place to place without my help. She makes tiny noises only . . . a hardly audible prt as she runs (always, runs) to me, her face bright with greeting. 

I have a furry to love and to love me again.
I have a small four-footed creature who will care if I come home at the end of the workday.
She has healed my heart.

Angus 1996-2013

When I started this blog I had three dogs and one cat.

Today I am officially petless.

How much cleaner the house will be. 

How much better I will be able to concentrate without frequent interruptions to lift up, lift down, carry upstairs, carry downstairs.

How much more freedom of movement in my bed at night without a warm body smashed up against the small of my back.

I dropped him off at 9am. The doctor and I talked about "what if it IS a mass," instead of a carnassial tooth abscess, and how to proceed if it was.
She phoned me at work at a little after 10am, while Angus was under, and said it was a mass. She couldn't tell if it was cancerous, but it sure was aggressive. She said if she had to guess she'd say it was a sarcoma or something else....melanoma? Or both, now that I remember. She said there was a hole where something normal should be. The swelling had gotten so much worse since the last time she saw him, last week. His mouth didn't have room for his tongue anymore. Does it matter, then, if the mass is benign or malignant?
I said, "I guess it's time to let him go."
She got one of the techs on the line as a witness and I had to say it again.

Jen said, "Why don't you go home June? Take a mental health day." So I left work and I have food, medications, rugs, blankets all out of sight. The food and meds I'll give to the shelter. The blankets will return to "human afghan" service from whence they came. I started to change my sheets but I don't want to wash him out of my bed yet. We cuddled all last night, his lumpy little head on my hand.

I'm going to miss the little boy an awful lot.

Wintering over

Wouldn't you think that peace lily's pot would've lost its price sticker by now???

I've been uncharacteristically vigilant about keeping the porch plants alive over the winter . . . I owe them that . . . they are such a joy to me on the porch during The Warm and Light Time. It's a little bit of an undertaking to get them all watered. I carry them from their perch in the corner of the bedroom upstairs to the bathtub and water them with the handheld shower thingie. 

Works quite well, but after I've finished getting all the drenched potsful of dirt and plant back to their windowside home, my back feels as if it's been broken. 
Small price, I guess. 
A little drink now and then is all they ask.

A late Valentine's Day post, borrowed from Rev. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Ph.D.

Rev. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Ph.D.: 

The Souls of Our Dogs: 

A Valentine's Day Tribute to Our Best Friends

February 14, 2013 13:04:43

No treatise on the soul ever taught me as much as my dog, Winston. What a happy irony! I am a theologian being patiently tutored on friendship, loyalty, and love by a brown-brindle English bulldog. It seems only mete and good to pay tribute to the soulfulness of humanity's best companions on Saint Valentine's Day. For many of us, our dogs are the epitome of love incarnate.

Since our species, Homo sapiens, and our domestic dogs, Canis lupus familiaris, have shared a partnership through the good times and bad befalling the human race for better than 35,000 years, we have had ample time to learn many of the answers to life's deepest questions from them. "Who are my neighbors, and how am I to relate to them?"
Dogs have demonstrated unfailing help in time of need: herding our flocks, hunting alongside us, using their superior senses to warn us of dangers we could neither see nor hear, and watching over us while we slept. "Are we alone in the universe?" Dogs have shown us unstinting loyalty and companionship, offering us warmth to ward off the chill of the void, nuzzling us time and again out of our existential angst with their cool, damp noses--peering into our souls with their unfathomably rich brown, and blue, and hazel eyes. In the bargain, they have won a dependable source of food, shelter, and companionship from us. Little wonder, then, that the earliest elevation of dogs to the status of persons in prehistory took place by burying our faithful friends alongside us in human graves as early as 14,000 years ago.

My bulldog, Winston, knows nothing of these things intellectually. But I am convinced that he possesses all the best hallmarks of his race instinctually. He does not care about my ethnicity or race or gender or sexual orientation, whether I am rich or poor, whether I occupy the clifftop of my theological guild, or inhabit a more modest spot near the bottom of it. All that matters to him is that I am his human, and the joy with which he greets me at the door, flews all aflutter, and toenails skittering across the floor in his ritual dance of hello lets me know that I am home, and all is well. For to the world I may be only a single person. But to this bulldog, I am the world.

The ancient Romans believed that a great she-wolf (a lupus) suckled Romulus and Remus in her cave-den, the Lupercal, along with her own pups. True or not, her gentler great-grand-pups and we humans have been mutually caring for one another long enough for us to know that something of the best within us emerges in the company of the single species on earth who will be faithful to us to the last beat of their hearts.

Pagan Roman priests, the Luperci, and the Christian bishops who succeeded them argued theology to a fault, as the petty wrangling over the festival of the she-wolf, the Lupercalia, and the Feast of Saint Valentine demonstrates. Which was the correct god of the Lupercalia: Faunus or Inuus, Mars, Juno, or Bacchus? What rendition of the Holy Trinity proved orthodox enough to consecrate Valentine's martyrdom and make him a bona fide saint? But the dogs of then and now, Winston's kindred, fetched love away from abstraction and made acts of love obvious in each generation until this very Saint Valentine's Day. For us humans willing to learn from our dogs, it was never the finer points of dogma that counted a biscuit--the celebration of love and companionship is all that ever counts in life: canine, human, and divine.

So, do dogs have souls? When they die, do all dogs go to heaven, as the animated film of the same name suggests? I may remain agnostic about the obscure points of such a theology, but I am not undecided that, as St. Francis of Assisi prayed, all our pets manifest the beauty of creation and the holy joys of lives wholeheartedly lived. Prepare your best Saint Valentine's Day cards for them, then: our pets are our sisters and our brothers, and they call us to be better people and better stewards of creation than we are now.

Winston sighs as he nestles at my feet while I write. He looks up at me with his harlequin face, half white and half black, the yen and the yang in fur and wrinkles and underbite. Theologically, I wish I had something "profound" with which to conclude this post. All I can manage is a cliché I cannot better no matter how I try. In my life, I only wish I could be half as good a person as my dog believes that I am. Happy Saint Valentine's Day, Winston, you soulful dog, to you all your kin!  

~http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/blackberry/p.html?id=2667424

Happy talk

It's nice to talk to people in far away places. 

I often engage catalog call center employees in conversation. Had a long and enjoyable conversation with a woman in Oregon several years ago. We knew each other's life stories by the time we hung up. Poor call center employees probably talk to some surly people; it's fun to joke with them, ask where they are, talk about the weather. I like to think I'm improving their days as I am mine. They probably think I'm crazy. Are they wrong?

Last week at work a man named Frank called me from Southern California and asked how I was. "I am wonderful!" I told him. He then heartily inquired as to how things were in the Great Northeast. 
"Oh, it's lousy," I said. And then I apologized to him, saying, "Sorry, I'm well stuck in my winter doldrums." 
He was looking for information about a property in the village and had been given an out-of-date address. I couldn't find the information in my records, but asked for his phone number in case I found something useful. He ended that conversation with, "You are a delight!" 
I fiddled around and found the property he inquired about and called him back and gave him all the info he wanted, and then he advised me to tell my boss and all my coworkers that I was wonderful. When people say things like that to me, my usual response is "I do, quite frequently." 
I think in this case I responded that he should tell everyone he knows, and to refer to me by name.

Blessed be antibiotics!

The doctor couldn't get a real good look in Angoo's mouth . . . he was a little intractable . . . but she's fairly sure it's a carnassial tooth abscess, like Max had. With Max the abscess broke a hole through his face, which is not unusual. If Angus didn't have cardiac issues the doctor would do surgery, clean it out and send him home with antibiotics. Instead, she sent us home with antibiotics and if the right side of his face is still swollen in ten days, we'll have to reconsider on the surgery.

And she emptied his anal glands which were just full to overflowing.

I don't know if HE's feeling better but I am limp with relief!

I came home and we wandered around outdoors a little and then we came in and he ate his supper and we sat on the couch together. I read, he napped. I didn't bring in wood or fix supper or do much of anything except commune with my beloved little dog.

And I feel pretty good about that.

Angus is sick

Angus has an infection in his head. I fear that it's been there for longer than I'd like to think about. Old dogs, you know . . . even poodles . . . develop a stink . . . so we didn't pay much attention until he really began to reek more than a nearly seventeen-year-old poodle should. I have an appointment for 3:00 Monday afternoon. I'm thinking it's an ear infection that grew into something monstrous. He's always been prone to ear infections. 

We've been living from day to day since the middle of last week, hoping that the doctor will say, "Here's some antibiotic. This'll fix him up in no time," but I'm not really expecting that. What I'm expecting is surgery with the attendant cardiac risks for a dog who has . . . issues . . . in that area. 

Well, what can I do? Que sera, sera.

Husband thinks he's petted out because he can't stand the ending part. Everybody always feels that way, but we've always had at least one dog since our fifth year together. 
What would we talk about if we should have no pet at all? 

Dreaming dogs and weather

A friend sent me this video this morning. If I could exercise like that while sleeping, two thirds of the contents of my closet would become available to me once again. Long ago somebody said to me, "Why do people always wake up dogs when they're dreaming? They always say, 'Oh look, he's having a bad dream!' and wake up the dog. Maybe the dog's enjoying the dream!" That conversation changed my view of dreaming dogs.

Screeny view from the bedroom

We had some snow overnight at the beginning of the weekend, and yesterday and today, sunny. Cold, to the tune of 27F right now (-17C sounds so much more dramatic to me), yet sunny enough that the snow is melting off the roof. I wish it would stay: it's a good insulator.

I am pining for warmth and green. 

Miscellany

When I was in my twenties or thirties a woman who had been my friend for years and years said to me, in a conversation about a mutual acquaintance, "He's like you."

"How so?" I asked.

"You know... Needy," she said.

I was offended, hurt. 

I think being insulted by being called "emotionally needy" is a result of being emotionally needy. There is the chance, too, that my friend was simply indulging in one of the opportunities that long friendship offers, that opportunity being bitchiness in the guise of neutral conversation.

One morning in the last month, the sky, with the sun peeking askance through the dense slivers of clouds, looked just like artfully layered mourning dove feathers. Taupe and pale gray and peachy-creamish and dark gray. It was beautiful. The colors were so gentle and soft, dense rather than wispy, that a photograph would have looked like nothing, would not have conveyed the peace of the light.

When my mother died, I was so relieved that I could finally cut myself free of Family. Now the nephew and niece-in-law have mucked that up with their spring delivery.  If I want a piece of Baby Girl, I'll need to be in touch with my parents' other child. It has been my experience that particular life issues recur until I've dealt with them. I think this is one of those issues. 

Dammit.

And the cold goes on and on. I took a nap this afternoon and I wouldn't have minded if I stayed asleep, or at least in bed, all covered up, until tomorrow morning. Supposed to be all the way up to 21F tomorrow.

Mmmm.

And sunny.

Tried to do laundry today. I've been saving it up all week. The drain pipe must have frozen because as the cycle reached the first "drain," it dripped down through the ceiling into the downstairs hallway and down into the cellar. I took the rest of the stuff to the laundromat where they will wash it and fold it for me and hand it back in plastic bags. Every time I have occasion to use that service, I think, "Why don't I do this all the time?????" Drop it off, pay some money, have the whole day free of laundry!

Clothing the grandniece

I have been knitting small things for the incoming grandniece. 

She isn't due until April, you will remember, so I have time to make lots of things. 

When I retrieved my knitting tools from the attic, I found a dozen or more skeins of yarn 
that I bought about eighteen years ago!
I've been using those sherbet colors . . . lime, lemon, raspberry . . . 

for the sweater, the hat, the booties, the fumless mittens. 

It's the finishing I don't like. Tucking in the tails from the beginning, pulling the edges to find the stitches to tie parts together... I get impatient with those details unless I settle my mind first and consciously stay exactly where I am in the work. 

Good advice for general life, eh?

For my friends outside the Triscuit range

Nobody paid me or gave me anything to publish this post. I just like the things. 
My favorite is the Low Sodium; they still have enough salt, especially since I usually put hummus or cheese on top. 

How Triscuits Work

Varieties of Triscuits Deli-Style Rye Garden Herb Thin Crisps Rosemary & Olive Oil Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil Reduced Fat Roasted Garlic Fire Roasted Tomato Cheddar Original Low Sodium

Production of the Triscuit wafer began in 1903 at the Niagara Falls, New York plant with the Triscuit packaging proclaiming “Baked by Electricity.” The wafer measured 2-1/4 inches by 4 inches and remained that size for twenty-one years. At that point, the ovens were altered and improved and the cracker size changed to 2 inches square.
To make Triscuits today, the wheat is first cooked in water until its moisture content reaches about 50%. It is then tempered, allowing moisture to diffuse evenly into the grain. The grain then passes through a set of rollers with grooves in one side, yielding a web of shredded wheat strands.

Many webs are stacked together, and this moist stack of strands is crimped at regular intervals to produce individual pieces of cereal with the strands attached at each end. These then go into an oven, where they are baked until their moisture content is reduced to five percent.

In 1935, in order to better address consumer taste preferences, Triscuit crackers were sprayed with oil and lightly salted. The flavors remained the same until 1984 when popular tastes changed again. The public wanted nutritious wafers, but they also demanded more out of those wafers, including additional choices, “crunch” appeal, and flavor varieties. There are now eleven Triscuit varieties on store shelves.

Different food

Husband and I have been married for a long time. The only thing we get excited about anymore is food. 

I have my mental Rolodex of dishes, things that require no recipe reading, things that are easy to put together when I get home from work. An additional requirement is that the meal be able to stay Prepared-And-Tasty for a couple of hours because neither of us ever knows when he'll get home after his workday. Husband is tired of all of my old standbys. Additionally, he's tired of food in general because he eats lunch in restaurants every single day. Me, I'm off to the office daily with my Tupperware container of leftovers or my hummus and Triscuits. It's a big day for me when we order pizza delivery for a group lunch.

"Different! I want something different!" he said early last week.
He consulted one of his Jacques Pepin cookbooks and made, two nights in a row because it was so good, Mustard Crusted Chicken. I loved it! It was delicious. I was glad there were only four pieces of chicken so I didn't embarrass myself. The following night he made a different chicken recipe. That one wasn't such a hit with either of us. Yesterday I phoned him and said, "If you aren't already planning it, don't make anything fancy tonight."
"Why not?"
"Oh, I'd just as soon have some Triscuits or a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich."

Early this morning I woke up and mentally cast about for some kind of different food to prepare for him. The internet offers me recipes for which he has already expressed distaste.

• I'm not really a soup kind of guy.
• I'm not really big on salad.
• I'm not crazy about chili.
• I really don't like Feta cheese.
• I'm not big on wraps. This last one is a big disappointment to me because wraps are like the Indo-European language family with a million offshoots. To my mind, you can put anything in a wrap and it becomes Different and Delicious.

Many of the recipes call for ingredients I've never heard of . . . one-eighth teaspoon of some spice that I'd have to order online or drive three and a half hours to Brooklyn to get. If I make the dish without that particular spice, I fear, all the rest of my efforts will have been in vain. The finished product will be met with a gimlet eye, and a quiet, polite, and cheerful "It isn't my favorite." It's hard to take for a woman who breathes a little faster at the thrill of goulash made with ground beef, or macaroni and cheese. "Fancy" to me is macaroni and cheese made with Swiss cheese in addition to cheddar.

Several weeks ago, Phyllis brought sweet potato lasagna for lunch. It was left over from her family's dinner the night before. This morning I got up early to search for a recipe. I found one. It calls for:

• sweet potato (slice and bake first)
• kale (cut up and blanch first)
• zucchini (slice and bake first)
• two or three kinds of cheese
• red onion (slice and bake first)
• broccoli (cut up and blanch first)
• God knows what-all else.

It also calls for four cups of good marinara sauce. I have a freezer full of tomatoes that I harvested, skinned, and bagged last summer. I can't use jar sauce! So that means making the sauce first...

Suddenly I'm thinking of the relatively exotic meals that I find "in my grocer's freezer case." Sure, they're expensive, but what's the cost of the leftover spice for which I paid $6 and which I'll never use again? I think my shopping list just got a lot shorter.

1/1/2013

Angus the poodle, Husband and I will be welcoming the New Year by sleeping, unless one of us needs a trip to the small room at that exact moment. I'm excessively pleased to have the day off from work tomorrow. It's one of the few holidays with no obligations of any kind. I must say that last week and this week are confusing me beyond repair. Half a day off followed by a whole day off followed by two days of work separated by a snow day when I couldn't get to work followed by a regular weekend; repeat.

As I left the office at noon today, I said to Jane, "Tomorrow's Saturday, right?"

"No," she said. "Tomorrow's . . . Sunday."

"Oh, well then," I said. "I'll see you the day after tomorrow."
"Thaaaaat's riiiight," she said.

It was worth a try.

Thank you, Wikipedia, for this image.

Shelter/Rescue animals are The Best

And so are the people who do the work (that never ends) at the animal shelters.

Two minutes and fifty-two seconds of people who have just fallen in love, or are about to:
Richmond (Virginia) Animal League's Operation Silent Night.  Husband and I have vowed never to have any but a shelter or rescue animal. Or perhaps a barn cat who'd like to have the best of both worlds.

We need a cat. 
The mice are, nightly, holding fancy dress balls in my house, in celebration of MiMau's demise. We need an orphan kitty who knows how to hunt. I've been spending time on Petfinder, but Husband says the farmers over the hill probably have barns full of cats they'd be happy to give up. When I drive past the farms, I slow down and watch carefully. All the cats are smart, staying inside in the warm barn, not outdoors gracefully stretching and washing hind legs, displaying themselves for adoption. 

It's only a matter of time. 

Good news and good news.

The good news is that I'm going to be a great aunt in April. My sister's son and his wife are my only chance to be an elder to any blood relation so this is a big deal for me. They came to visit a few weeks ago and brought their wedding album that they said they'd just gotten . . . two years after the wedding. So we went through the album page by page, photo by photo. I was looking up at one of them, talking, as I turned the last page and when I looked down, there was the black and white sonogram picture, with two little soft fuzzy onesies underneath it. I was nearly overcome. "Oh. Oh! Oh oh oh," I said, as the tears welled up in my eyes. It was nice to be told about such an event in person. When my nephew was in the works, I heard the news in roundabout fashion: my sister told my mother, who mentioned it offhandedly a week or so after the pregnancy's confirmation. When he was born, nobody told me for a few days either, and that only when I asked. So this felt special to me.

I've been up to the attic and have retrieved all my knitting supplies. One sweater finished, many blankets, thumbless mittens and little hats to go. And such cute little simple dresses to make! I haven't yet mentioned it's a little girl, have I? Her mother says she'll be as girly or not-girly as she wants to be. Me, I'll be dressing her in pink and ruffles as long as I can get away with it. 

And the other good news is that I finally got a phone call from the head of the hospital's cardiology department in response to my letter of complaint about that doctor at my stress test. He phoned my cell while I was driving to work on a Monday morning, and I pulled over and spoke with him for nearly a half hour. It seems that the woman who was so unprofessional with me is, in fact, a cardiologist, not simply a technician as somebody had suggested she might be, and I am not the first to complain about her behavior. I gather that the witchy woman will be called upon the carpet and disciplined in some manner. My caller also told me that the test was not so inconclusive as the witch would have had me believe, and after he gave me his interpretation of the results, I decided to have an angiogram. Which I did on December 5. 

And lo and behold, what did he find during the angiogram, but that my left anterior descending coronary artery (aka the widowmaker . . . horrors!) was 80%-90% blocked. 

~drawing from http://www.drarunmehra.com/anginapg.htm

He put in two stents . . . first a littler one and then a bigger one . . . something happened in there after the first one was put in place that made a second A Very Good Idea. The result is that my heart is now able to move the oxygenated blood back out instead of having it accumulate in there like a filling Zip-loc bag. It is a wonderful thing to be able to take a deep breath. It is a wonderful thing to not "lose my breath quickly." It is a miracle to breathe at will and not feel as if I'm climbing a ladder, reaching for my next breath . . . with that breath two rungs above my clawing hands. I'm awfully glad I wrote that letter of complaint.

So.
There you have it.
Good news and more good news.
I am a grateful woman.

Nonsense

Awake here in the middle of the night I read story after story about Newtown, Connecticut. I read the comments from people who blame President Obama, from a man who has legally owned and shot guns all his life, from victims of similar past horrors.

I don't know a thing about guns. I surely don't know why anybody needs a gun that can mow down fifty people in one fell swoop.
I think most gun owners are probably responsible.
But the guns get stolen, don't they? It happened yesterday.

Lots of people in this country are sick in the head. Lots of those people are young or stupid or both.
We start medicating children when they're just past toddler stage because nobody can be bothered to teach their kids how to act, how to control themselves.

Everybody's angry here and nobody's listening to other people. Everybody's shouting down the other's opinion, learning nothing.

I don't know the answer, but I know there are a lot of things here that are very very wrong.

I tried five times to write something that made more sense, but here in this asylum, nothing makes sense, so why should I?

A Woman's Poem

I've been among the missing for a while, mostly due to a lack of thought worthy of expression.

Fortunately, someone emailed the following to me, and it suits my mood, so I'm sharing it with you.

Husband is not like the "he" in the poem.

Anymore.

At work, I answer the phone.

This morning when I got to work, there was a message on the office phone. The message was from a woman who gave her phone number but no name. She was asking that someone pick her up. I returned the call prepared to give the woman the phone number for the county transportation department, who could send out a bus to her.
The person who answered the phone was the caller's sister, who said she had her sister staying with her, and . . . "She isn't feeling well . . . mental health wise. She thinks she's well enough to ride the bus. And she isn't. She's getting almost too bad to live with."
I know how the woman feels. "I understand," I said. "My mother..."
"...was like that?" the woman asked.
"Yes. And nobody helps you unless they're a danger to themselves or others."
But mentally unbalanced people can do a lot of damage without being called "dangerous."
As we hung up, I think that woman felt better. I felt worse, having been sucked back into The Bad Times With My Mother.

A few weeks ago, a woman called, having seen an ad for a business advertising "cash for houses." She phoned the number in the ad, and the receptionist didn't know how it worked and said she'd have a representative call back. She and her sister were trying to sell their deceased mother's home, and what did I think about it, did I know anything about that particular "cash for houses" business? The woman wasn't computer savvy, so I  Googled the outfit and read a little about it. I counseled her to expect to get a lowball offer on her mother's house, if she just wants to dump the house, it would be a way to go. I hung up and said to Jane, "I feel like Dear Abby."

On October 21 and again on October 31, I picked up the phone at work to speak with a woman who was inquiring whether or not the Village would be having Halloween on the 31st. I'm not actually positive it was the same woman both times, but the voice was similar. On the 21st she explained that the weather forecast called for rain, and she didn't want to send her child out to trick or treat in the rain. On the 31st, the caller didn't offer any explanation for her concern. Both times, I think I said something like, "Halloween is Halloween. It happens on October 31st. It isn't something the Village schedules."

I suppose there are community groups that have Halloween gatherings, but they aren't affiliated with Village government. I won't be surprised if someone phones about when the Village will be holding Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve. The Halloween woman, or possibly, the Halloween women, has apparently grown up in a world in which she looks to the government for answers to her every question, and probably complains that the government tells her what to do every moment of each day.

Bye, kitty

MiMau passed away on November 5 at 7:30 in the evening, lying on the bed with Angus and Husband, and Husband petting her head. November 5 is now significant not only as the day that, thirty-four years ago, I met Husband, but also as the day MiMau died.

Random observations

A day before we were touched (barely, thanks be!) by Hurricane Sandy I counted eighty-two crows flying southward over the house. There were more after I stopped counting . . . maybe a hundred of them in all. All of them flying directly south, which seemed counter-intuitive to me. If I were a bird, no doubt the reasoning would have been clear to me.

Two days ago I saw a deer in a field as I drove by. It was mostly in its fall/winter dun coat, but with brush strokes of black on its face and elsewhere on its body. I've never seen a deer so darkly colored. It was beautiful. I slowed the car and the deer and I stared at each other. I do love moments of eye contact with wild critters. I always hope to soak up some of their wisdom.

The morning after the worst of the storm, the southern sky was filled with sharp-edged soft gray and taupe dove feathers of clouds, all separate from each other, with blue sky behind them. It was a sweetly peaceful and comforting sky.

I turned all the clocks back last night, early in the evening. I couldn't make my body believe the hour, and I went to bed very early . . . and woke up at 3am. Maybe if I pay no attention to the clock but sleep and wake at will all day today, I'll be able to be adjusted by the time I begin getting ready for work on Monday.

Have you read Margaret and Helen's blog?

I love 'em!
I love 'em!

A link: Margaret and Helen, Best Friends for Sixty Years and Counting 

In Trackless Woods

In trackless woods, it puzzled me to find

Four great rock maples seemingly aligned,

As if they had been set out in a row

Before some house a century ago,

To edge the property and lend some shade.

I looked to see if ancient wheels had made

Old ruts to which the trees ran parallel,

But there were none, so far as I could tell-

There'd been no roadway. Nor could I find the square

Depression of a cellar anywhere,

And so I tramped on further, to survey

Amazing patterns in a hornbeam spray

Or spirals in a pine cone, under trees

Not subject to our stiff geometries. 

~Richard Wilbur

A few weeks ago I heard this poem on The Writer's Almanac and it stunned me with its verity. Nothing is so amazing as the symmetrical beauty of natural things.

MiMau is A Good Cat

MiMau is a good fifteen years old now, and she grows thin. We have been to the vet a couple of times with our complaint. There's nothing wrong with her except that she's hollowing out between her hip bones and her ribs. Her fur is as thick and soft as ever. There is occasional evidence of hairball accumulation, but blood tests show nothing even borderline. Certainly her hunting skills have not diminished. Nearly every day, there is a deceased mousey directly in our path as we exit the front door. She's a humane killer: the little bodies show almost no violence, just one killing strike. She used to eat the fresh meat, then she chose to dine on only the heads. Now, apparently, she's killing simply for sport, and to stay in fighting trim should we move away and leave her on her own. Not a chance.

She's a great cat and I'd give her anything that would fatten her up again. She likes to have me sit next to her while she eats her kibble. Maybe she'd like some canned food, but I doubt it. She's never liked it. Maybe some canned salmon? Fresh salmon? 

MiMau demonstrating her successful hunting technique: 

Wait quietly, and the prey comes to you.

The dying of the light

Rage, rage against it all you like: the light of life, and of day, and 

of carotene and anthocyanin all fade in 

a dishearteningly short time.

September 29, 2012

The very same trees, October 14, 2012

Testimony: Exercise Improves Life

I am enjoying a jewel of an October day. 

This morning it was rainy and dreary and cold and I could think of nothing more fun to do than cuddling up with my book and blankets. I drifted off to sleep with the blankets wrapped around my head and only a nose hole for air, pretending to be a squirrel in a hollow tree with my fluffy tail wrapped around me. 

When I woke up, the weather was glorious! Blue sky, warm air! 

Out of bed, into tank top and jeans and onto the porch to help Husband stack firewood. 

It's the annual ritual: last weekend the pretty summer furniture and all the plants came off the porch and this weekend the space transforms to woodshed. Last year Husband did the great majority of wood transfer all by himself and this year I'm getting in on the chore. It goes much faster and, after all, it's exercise. I feel so good, being able to help him without my back seizing up on me! A benefit of moving, walking, breathing hard on a regular basis!


Nice.

PS: The photo is from January 2011, I think. We do not have snow yet.

Early October, early evening

Things I haven't told you

I didn't tell you about the great blue heron who was crossing the road. I slowed way down so that I might get close enough to see his details, but wary heron unfolded his wings and rose off the macadam while I was still a couple of hundred feet away. I have heard that migrating ducks look for herons to find resting places . . . the ducks are supposed to know that if a shy heron is hanging around the place, it's safe. I think that idea might give ducks a little more intellectual credit than they might deserve, but what do I know?

I didn't tell you about the red tailed hawk that watched me walk by on the seasonal road. When he saw me coming, he took off, but came back and perched in the same tree that he had left and stayed in the top of the tree, glaring at me from thirty feet in the air. 

I didn't tell you about the Canada goose family waiting at the side of the road until my car passed. Papa and Mama waited with Baby Gosling between them. When I remember the trio, it seems to me that Baby Gosling might have had a red balloon floating above him, the string tucked under his wing.

The Canada geese are getting ready to migrate. This morning I passed a stubbly corn field filled with them. They're perfectly camouflaged for hiding in cornfields; the only way I could see them was to look for their heads above the cut stalks. The flocks have begun maneuvers in preparation for migration. I had Angus outdoors this morning, heard them honking and was pleased to be looking in just the right direction to see them appear over the trees that border the fields. Fortunate. Most times, I hear their voices and can't tell where they will appear. There must have been a hundred of them, all honking. As they flew into view they were just a mess of geese, but they formed up into some ragged Vs as I watched. These might not even go away for the winter. Quite a number of them stay around all year, as the robins do. It seems to me that robins used to go away in the cold weather; now they loiter through the winter.

I didn't tell you about the man who came into the office whose brogue charmed me. "He says I need to sign this in front of you," he said. 
I couldn't help it. I asked him, "If I bring you the phone book, will you read it to me?" 
Afternoon boss says the man blushed. I had looked down at my clasped hands (I think I was blushing, myself) so I didn't see if we were becoming rosy simultaneously.
I did the notary public thing (Do you affirm that the contents of this document are known to you and that it is the truth?) and he nodded and blinked his blue eyes and said, "Yis . . . yis."