My world... and welcome to it!

The pattern of things going wrong in Tullahoma whenever I am in San Diego has taken a turn.  I hope all is well in San Diego, because everything HERE has gone to worms.

First off, my housekeeper Stephanie took a week off to be with her beautiful niece Amanda and I was left to my own devices taking care of the house.   I actually was doing semi-okay on my own, except that my hubby came up lame in a big way, and threw a spanner in the works.  His leg was so painful that I couldn’t share the bed with him, so I was sleeping on the couch or on the recliner.  That was the second can of worms- I am not a pleasant person when I am not rested.  And I am never a pleasant person when my hubby is unwell.  It scares and frustrates me when the man is ailing.

I have been dealing with fear and frustration since we got back from California two weeks ago.  Dave has had another in a series of leg “flare-ups”, attributed variously to arthritis, tendonitis, and a damaged (local) lymphatic system , a complication from the bite of a black widow spider.  Yes, he has been bitten by a black widow spider.  Don’t ask.  He doesn’t get sick or injured often – which is a good thing, because he will not take care of himself in either case- but when he does, it is always picturesque.

And this time is no different.  A limp became lameness became a horrendously swollen leg; an ache became a twinge that became raging pain.  Through it all, he went to work.  By the end of each day, he was barely able to walk.  When a week of raging pain finally drove him in to see his doctor, the doc barely recognized him, it had been so long.  Doc injected cortisone into the knee and sent Dave home with an appointment for later in the week, but no drugs other than OTC ibuprofen.  An additional week of suffering, and Dave was back in the doctor’s office.  This time, instead of driving something into his knee, Doc now tried to pull something out- the excess fluid that was making Dave’s right leg look like he had elephantiasis- but it couldn’t be done.  He prescribed some medications, at LAST, so the man could at least get some sleep and scheduled Dave for an MRI the next day.

And the results are in.  Turns out Dave has both a torn ligament AND torn cartilage in his right knee.  All this damage was caused by an old fracture to the tibial tubercle, (a large outcropping of bone at the head of the tibia).  As the bone remodeled over the fracture, it became a dense mass with spurs that shred ligaments and cartilages.  But here’s the kicker.  Dave cannot remember breaking his knee.  To the best of his knowledge, Dave has never broken his knee.  And here’s where my frustration comes in.  I can remember at least two instances over the years where he “hurt” his knee badly enough to have fractured it and refused to go to the doctor.  He just stayed off the leg for a few days- you know, like you do- and let nature take its course.  MEN!!!  Now he’s telling everyone that I knee-capped him while he was sleeping.    

Of course, Dave being laid low has upset Mama.  She manifests upset in unique and peculiar ways.  First, she goes into what I call “babble and shout” mode.  She wanders through the house, making bizarre noises- gobbling like a turkey, shouting “YEAH, YEAH, YEAH” at the top of her lungs… If that doesn’t get her some attention, she sings in her shrill tuneless voice… for hours…   and hours…  The latest expression of concern is to imagine she has been robbed.   She has been obsessed about losing a necklace I have never seen her wear, so we tore up the house looking for it.  She became convinced she lost it at church, but it wasn’t in the lost and found, and the altar guild is pretty thorough.  She thinks its been stolen.  She thought her wedding rings had been stolen about three years ago, and after filing a police report, she found them in her purse.  I’m guessing the necklace is either mythical or in her purse.

Today, as Dave remained sequestered in our bedroom keeping his leg elevated, she insisted that Stephanie and I search her bedroom for an 8 X 10 portrait of herself that has gone missing.  We have searched for this before.  I am fairly certain she sent it to her daughter, but what the hell?  My time has no value anymore, so I helped search.  We didn’t find it, of course, so now – don’t get ahead of me - she is convinced someone has stolen it.  Since the only people who come into the house are friends and family, it would seem that she suspects those nearest and dearest to her of being thieves.  YOU have NOT been robbed, I say firmly.  Why would anyone leave your cash and jewelry and steal your portrait ? I ask, being the damn fool I am.  

Because it ‘s beautiful, she replies.  

Kinda hard to respond to that.

Off to bed, me, to cap my hubby’s other knee.  I think I’ll use Mama’s cane.

Punctures, pictures, and other minor crimes

My buddy Richard punted the Round Robin story ball back into my court, and I inadvertently punctured it. It be dead. Sorry. I like the idea that young Gryphon started, but think an email version would work better, as each addition could be tagged on and forwarded and the entire work would be of a piece. Anyway, killing the robin is probably one of my lesser crimes.

I am in San Diego for the first time since February, and am enjoying – NOT- the cold and damp of “June gloom”. It is otherwise nice to be here, great to see my lovely daughter Kelly again, lovely to finally meet Orrick, and beyond wonderful to have a mocha frappucino at Starbucks once again!

News from the home front- somehow the sand filter for our pool has been punctured and will have to be replaced. According to my son, by way of my husband who actually spoke to him, the punctures appear to be deliberate. I can’t imagine who would deliberately vandalize our property…

Well, that’s not strictly true. When I heard of the damages, my first thought was that the pool company I recently fired might have sent ole Terry over for a bit of mischief, or that Terry, who is not the brightest bulb in the box, might have done it on his own, forgetting he was fired, and doing the typical kind of damage to the system that got him fired in the first place. Like backwashing the pool to the point of draining out half the water, and floating the liner. Like improperly closing the pool and using the wrong chemicals so that our liner is permanently stained. Or like replacing a pool pump that was under warranty and only needed a $20 part. I could go on, but if I do, I will be compelled to go puncture Terry, and he probably had nothing to do with this latest damage.

Why do major things always seem to happen while I am out here? Televisions go south, trees fall on outbuildings, the pool is attacked by gremlins… Thank goodness my beloved son is on the scene to handle emergencies, but it is stressful fretting about them from half a continent away.

On a happier note, Kelly and I have done some shopping, a lot of cooking, and have shared some quality time with Orrick, who is a very nice man. Dave took us out to our favorite Italian restaurant Bellagio tonight and then we raided Barnes and Noble. It is heaven to have REAL BOOK STORES in the area. Expensive, but heaven. Wednesday we are going out for a day of beauty at Reflection Day Spa.

I was there on Tuesday, getting my hair cut. My stylist Tammy has moved on, as all good stylists seem to do, and I was assigned to Derrick. It has been a long time since I have had a male stylist, and it felt a bit weird, but I am very pleased with the result, and will use him again in six weeks, if he is still there. Stylists are a lot like nomads. They “fold their tents like the Arabs and as silently slip away” every 8-10 months. Which in turn makes me a nomad, because when I find a good stylist, I tend to follow him/her to the new shop. I followed one stylist to five different shops before I realized she was trying to lose me. Hope Derrick has better stamina.

And now, for something completely different- La Chef Kelleé, in our kitchen. Hope she doesn’t beat me to death with a spatula for posting this.

It should only be a poltergeist!

I got up in the middle of the night and tripped on something. Since I don’t sleep in my contacts and my glasses were out of reach, I just nudged the unseen something out of my way, made for the bathroom- where everything came out all right- and then went back to bed. In the morning, I discovered the something was the white rubber stopper from my tub. How in the world, I wondered, did that thing get here? I put it back where it belongs.

Later in the day, I stumbled upon a black rubber something that turned out to be the gasket from my garbage disposal. I jumped to the only logical conclusion for these bizarre events- we must have a poltergeist. You know, poltergeists really piss me off, so I did the obligatory three turns to the left followed by spitting on the floor which is guaranteed to piss them off in return, and put the gasket back into the kitchen sink. Done and done, I thought.

But I was wrong. (I will give you a moment to get over the shock of that statement.) It wasn’t over, because the next day, the two items were right back where they didn’t belong, in the middle of my bedroom (white) and the middle of the kitchen (black). I realized I was wrong on two points- we don’t have a poltergeist, and this thing isn’t over.

And as long as Hobbes lives with us, it may never be over. Yes, Hobbes, the water-loving feline has developed a fetish involving sink and tub stoppers. He needs them. He craves them. He may even worship them, who knows? Whatever his pathology may be, I don’t want him tearing up the plumbing. My problem is I am stymied as to how to discipline the little twerp.

The problem: You can’t reason with a cat (hello! They are morons!), you can’t hit a cat (they are vengeful and will pee down your heating vents), and, especially in the case of Hobbes, you can’t scare a cat. They can be startled, but, being essentially brainless, they are, of course, essentially fearless. I have a discipline tactic that is fool-proof, but sadly it’s not Hobbes-proof.

You may remember me telling you about using the tried and true water treatment on Hobbes to discourage him from naughty behavior. This tactic has worked on 15 of the 16 cats on which it has been used. You fill a squirt bottle with water and squirt kitty whenever he misbehaves… cats hate water… millions of squirts later, VOILA! You have a trained kitty. Unless, of course, kitty LIKES to be squirted.

Hobbes likes to be squirted. He likes to get into the kitchen sink. Since squirting didn’t deter him, I tried pouring a full 12 ounces of water on his head to get him out of the kitchen sink, and he liked that, too. He likes to slide around in the bathtub while it is still wet from my shower, and then slide across the laminate floor on his wet paws. Hobbes Brinker, the skating cat. He has learned to flush the toilet because he likes to play in the swirling water.

Sigh. I am at the end of my tether.

Newest wrinkle: He likes to sleep in Mama’s sink.

Mama, of course, doesn’t care for this behavior. She screams at him thirty or forty times a day.

Hobbes apparently likes being screamed at as well.

It’s very wet and noisy here. How are things in your world?

When the round, round robin come blog-blog-blogging around...

I have a friend who writes a wonderful blog.  His moniker is Gryphon and his blog is entitled “Life Among the Natives”.  I have been his “Annie Wilkes” – read biggest fan- for many years because he has a happy facility with the language and a most original mind.  You will find a link to his blog to the right.

Last week he set up a round robin writing challenge.  He provided the opening lines and then tagged me to add to it.  I, in turn, will tag someone else to pick it up and so on.
Here is his opening, in quotes, and my addition, in italics.
     “The Dancing BearThe bear came to me again last night in my dreams, dancing in a ray of moonlight outside my bedroom window. I felt no fear in seeing him there. I knew he would not harm me. But I also knew, somewhere deeper, that to go to him would be my death...”
     Fortunately, I woke up at this point.  I always wake up at this point.  I am used to bizarre dreams.  I have had a series of recurring dreams my entire life.  When I was a child, I dreamt of being trapped upstairs in a burning house while my parents, safe on the ground floor, made no effort to save me.  During my teens, I dreamed of an endless thirst for milk; of being consumed by snakes; of losing my teeth as they tumbled out of my mouth like falling dominoes.  I have dreamed of falling, of flying, of swimming in my house, inexplicably filled with water, and feeling perfectly sanguine about it.  I have even dreamed of dancing bare in the moonlight- not quite the same thing as the dream that awakened me.
     And now I will tag my daughter, having cruelly written her into a corner.  It will be interesting to see where she goes from here.
Kelly's blog

I fear I may be a totally frivolous person. *Sigh*

I think I may have a small shopping problem.  I have had it for awhile… well, actually, for about 40 years.   I was 16 when I got my first paycheck and I had to turn it over to my boss to cover my purchases.  I worked in a milliner’s shop.  Isn’t that charming and quaint?  I don’t think millineries even exist anymore.  The merchandise was charming and quaint as well, hence my incredible vanishing paycheck.  

For a great deal of the past 40 years, I was able to control the urge to splurge fairly easily.  I had no money.  Since we moved to Tennessee, however, our standard of living has just gone up, up, up.  I have been doing my best to ensure that my spending keeps pace with Dave’s earnings, but lately, I have become aware of some warning signs that maybe I am being just a bit, shall we say, OVER THE TOP about the whole redistribution of wealth thing.

First of all, local merchants have begun sending me cards if they haven’t seen me in awhile.   I’m not talking about the standard sales notifications, or general “special invitations” that thousands of others also receive.  No, no, no, no, no, I get handwritten notes.  

Second, I noticed that I got a LOT of Christmas cards last year from merchants, thanking me for my business.  I think I got 987, if I remember correctly.

Third, I am now getting gifts.  There is this absolutely wonderful shop here in town called “The Purple Cabbage” that, among other things, sells handmade and monogrammed clothing for children- all the things that drive a Granny wild, especially if Granny has four adorable granddaughters and the youngest two are a “girly girl” and a baby who adores dresses.  Today, because of my extreme loyalty to The Purple Cabbage, I was inducted into the “Kiss Club”, which means I will receive special invitations and advance notice of sales.   As a token of my new status, the lovely women who run the shop gave me a giant Hershey’s (best chocolate in the world) kiss.   So, okay, maybe not the best gift for a diabetic, but they LIKE me, they really, really like me.

Peebles likes me.  Macy’s likes me.  Dillards likes me.  Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Williams-Sonoma… and don’t get me started on craft and scrapbooking stores, which ADORE me.   And I love them in return, though sometimes my love is unrequited.  For example, I single-handedly put Amazon.com into the black.   I was one of its first customers and, to this day, must be one of its best.  In the early days, when the company was struggling, my patronage was appreciated.  I used to get Christmas gifts from Amazon.com.  I still have and use the to-go cup I got one year, but you know, when they get big, they forget the little people who helped them on the way up.  JEFF BEZOS, YOU BROKE MY HEART IN 17 PLACES!

But I digress.  Lately, I have begun to wonder if I am using shopping to compensate for something lacking my life.  Obviously, things are not what I am lacking.  I am awash with things… and so, thanks to me, is everyone else in my immediate emotional vicinity.  I thought about it in great depth, and finally decided that I needed help-   Shopper’s Anonymous or some kind of a 12-step program.  And I found one!  The brochures were very heartening.  I was happy to learn that I am not alone, I am not a bad person, and, since I don’t put us in debt, I am not destined to be locked in a room by an irate husband and forced to undergo retail deprivation.  It really sounded like just the program for me, so I signed up.  And paid for a year in advance.

Sadly, I have not made it to a single meeting.  Some genius booked them into the mall.

Ciao, bellos.  There is a mocha frappuccino and some leather Italian sling-backs calling to me.   I’m coming, dahlings!

They need to go home

My husband is a second generation American. His grandparents came to the United States LEGALLY in the early part of the 20th century. My friend Sandie was born in Italy. Her family immigrated LEGALLY when she was a child. Waves of people from other countries have LEGALLY swelled our population over time from every culture on the planet. They all had several things in common:

• They came into this country LEGALLY. Things in South America cannot be worse than they were in Poland during the Second World War, or Europe around the WWI, or China NOW, and yet people filled out the proper forms, went through channels, waited if waiting was a requirement, and came into this country with honor and honesty, not by stealth and criminality.


• They had no sense of entitlement. Prior immigrants didn’t come to this country expecting all the rights of citizenship without first becoming citizens. I cannot tell you how offended I have been by the Latino protests over immigration. What next? Felons on parade? The temerity, to come here illegally and protest our justified concern over their illegal actions, never ceases to amaze me.


• They had to learn THE language… which until recent times was without question ENGLISH. Dave’s folks had to learn it. So did Sandie. So did millions of other people. When the Irish came over by the millions- legally- stores did not advertise their wares in Gaelic for their convenience. When the Indians or Pakistanis immigrated, Lowe’s did not put up signs in Farsi or Hindi. Outside of ethnic neighborhoods, the language of the land was ENGLISH. It pisses me off every time I walk into a Lowe’s to see all the signs are bilingual. What are we, Canada? Belgium? Those countries deal with expensive, bureaucratic nightmares because of bilingualism. Do we really want to go there?


• They became Americans. Everyone has ties to their homeland. Hell, my mom’s family came from England in the late 1600’s, and my dad’s came during the Great Potato Famine, and we still have respect and pride in our ancestry. But we are AMERICANS. Not Irish Americans, not English Americans… Americans. We salute one flag. We recite one pledge. Each wave of immigrants prior to the Latinos strove to become American. This wave is another kettle of fish.

In my humble opinion, people who enter this country illegally are criminals. We have immigration laws. They should either be enforced or repealed. Mexico, in particular, will never be compelled to solve it’s own social and economic problems as long as its citizens can cross our borders and benefit from the society generations of legal immigrants have created here. Illegal immigrants are not vested in America. If they can’t or won’t become naturalized Americans, they need to go home and help solve their country’s problems. And we need to help make that happen.

The Turn of a Phrase

More and more, it seems that archaic phrases are creeping into my vocabulary. Well, at least they must seem archaic to anyone not in my generation. But the generations ahead of mine used these phrases to good effect. They were communication tricks, and moral lessons, and good indicators of which was the right path. And they were colorful.

For example:
“If you lie down with dogs, you will rise up with fleas”. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. It was said with a self-righteous sniff, usually after one person had been wronged by another (as expected and predicted), to the person who had been wronged. I am sure it was meant to be comforting.

“Birds of a feather flock together” was another favorite. It often went hand in hand with “Water seeks its own level”, meaning that the people being discussed were no better than they ought to be and probably a whole heck of lot worse.

It was very important when I was growing up to “earn your keep”. My husband and kids hate this phrase, but it’s so ingrained in my psyche that I use it without thinking. “Make yourself useful” is tolerable, but “earn you keep” seems to smack of dependency and servitude, and impending homelessness if you don’t toe the mark. Well, it did when I was a kid, too, and I was never fully confident that my folks weren’t going to sell me to the gypsies at any given moment, so I tried very hard to earn my keep, and they kept me, so there you are. People don’t threaten their children with the gypsies anymore, do they? Are the gypsies gone, do you think, or have they just stopped buying children?

There were special phrases descriptive of being unwell. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet” harks back to the day of the horse, I guess. Or “She looks like death nibbling on a cracker.” I just love that one. Wonderful imagery and it makes no sense whatsoever. People were genuinely concerned when the illness was real, but had no patience with “malingerers”. I am sure folks still malinger, but you don’t hear that phrase much anymore.

On a tangent: I am a whistler. I am a damn fine whistler, but it drives people crazy, except Mama, who loves my whistling, and wants a recording of it to listen to when I go to California. I became a whistler in imitation of my Grandma Brooks, who was a virtuoso whistler out of defiance. HER grandma had told her that whistling was a bad habit, and meant the devil was after her soul. Her mama told her the “whistling women and cackling hens always come to very bad ends.” Well, Grandma did not come to a bad end at all and lived a rich, full, and productive life of service, so her defiance seems justified. I whistle just to be near her again, and it has become such a habit I don’t even know I am doing it most of the time. I think every life deserves its own soundtrack, and I am whistling mine. I think of it as “making a joyful noise”.

There used to be phrases in school that they don’t use anymore, and it’s a shame, because they were so very useful. My favorite is “I before E, except after C, or when sounding like “A”, as in neighbor or weigh.” That one is wonderful! Or in housekeeping” “The way to set the table right is forks to the left, all else to the right,” Lousy poem, but good way to remember. Do people even teach their children to set the table properly anymore? Or even make them do it? Do kids have to do chores nowadays?

I know I did. When I was a child of about 8, my mother and grandmother started me off with simple tasks- drying the dishes, dusting the furniture, ironing the hankies. Yes, Virginia, we really did carry handkerchiefs and we really did iron them. I had chores because “idle hands are the devil’s play ground.” Over time, I graduated to doing the dishes and running the vacuum and ironing pillowcases and sheets… stop rolling your eyes, there was life before perma-press. I was taught simple sewing and mending because “A stitch in time saves nine” and mending saves money. To this day, I mend things, so I guess I really am a cultural dinosaur.

I learned to “separate the wheat from the chaff” and to “skim the cream from the milk”. I was expected to “put my best foot forward” and “walk the straight and narrow.” I was told that “the truest steel is tempered by the fire” and that God never “gives us burdens unless we have the strength to bear them.” I never “hid my light under a bushel” and always tried, as my grandmother admonished me, to “lighten the corner where you are.”
I don’t know how well I have succeeded, but if “a workman is worthy of his hire”, I think I have earned my keep. I’m rather proud of myself. I must look like the cat that ate the canary.

We should have named him Neptune...

Kelly linked to a “personal DNA” test that is quite fun.  If you’d like to give it a try, click here.  Kelly is a Considerate Leader.  Jake is a Cautious Inventor.  I am a Benevolent Visionary.  Funny, I didn’t see THAT coming.

I have spring fever.  The birds woke me up at 7 AM this morning, and I did NOT experience the desire to purchase a shotgun.  I am not a morning person.  I am, however, an idiot.  I have just ensured that the birds will wake me at the crack of dawn by setting up five bird feeders.  See, spring fever.

I am not blind to the irony of a cat owner setting up bird feeders to attract birds.  My kitties are the indoor variety, however, and so just sit at the front door, salivating and plotting their escape.  Being cats with tiny little brain pans, their only strategy so far has been to periodically charge the door when it is opened and this strategy doesn’t work.  It is annoying, but it doesn’t work.  I see Hobbes and Patches with their heads together, diagrams and maps laid out in front of them, synchronizing their watches- and then they charge the door.  Cats do not seem to learn from past experiences.

Hobbes is turning out to be an interesting cat.  He loves water.  I have trained cats using a spray bottle in the past pretty effectively; well, as effective as can be, since we are discussing cats here. If they get on the table or counter, I squirt them.  Since most cats hate water, after 6 or 7 millions squirts, they associate getting wet with whatever it is they are doing, and stop doing it.  Hobbes, however, seems to enjoy getting wet.  He engages in forbidden activities so that I will squirt him. His hydrophilia does not stop there.  He splashes in his water bowl.  Since he shares this bowl with Patches, she is not amused, and since the floor is slippery when wet, neither am I.  He loves to play in the toilet and doesn’t seem to mind when he periodically falls in.  He particularly loves to watch/interact with a flushed toilet.  He also likes to shower with me.

I’ve had cats that were curious about the whole bathing thing before.  They would jump up on the tub, look in, horrified and appalled by water falling from the ceiling and the stupid human just standing there, for Pete’s sake, and then take off.  Not Hobbes.  Hobbes gives me “Psycho” moments.  My bathroom door does not stay closed unless locked, and I don’t like to lock it in case I fall or faint or am attacked by newspaper wielding bell-boys.  Hobbes takes advantage of the easily opened door and lets himself in.  He stealthily gets up onto the tub rim and begins to pat at me through the shower curtain.  The first time I felt something touch me while I was showering I nearly had a coronary.  Good thing the door was open, because I went through it, dripping wet and buck naked, and stood trembling in my bedroom, looking for something to defend myself with.  Fairy figurine in hand, I went back into the bath, and found Hobbes in the tub, batting at the spray at the far end of the tub.  We bathe together regularly now.  

Hobbes is an “in your face” kinda kitty.  Patches likes to curl up on my lap, or in the curve of my legs while I am sleeping and purr her deep, loud and throbbing purr.  It is so soothing.  Hobbes likes to curl up on my face. I push him off, he comes right back.  I throw him off and he comes right back.  It’s actually a signal that he wants to play, and I can get him off my face by playing with him.  We usually play “kill the kitty”.  

     Well, gotta go.  The workmen are here to put down the tile in Mama’s bathroom, and she and Hobbes, apparently fascinated by the process, are driving them crazy.  Guess I should go rescue the poor dudes.  Ever notice that “senile” and “feline” have all the same letters but one?   Mama is wandering around in “shout, sing and babble” mode, and Hobbes is investigating the disconnected toilet which is sitting in the tub.  I’d squirt him, but I don’t want to encourage him.  Wonder if I should squirt Mama?

Not for the FAINT of heart...

Dave left for San Diego without me on Sunday, so I am home alone with La Mama. It had to be… one contractor will be installing a new floor in Mama’s bathroom on the 15th, and another is coming to fit my trapezoid windows in the great room with some light filtering system or another. Mama is paying for the second, because she is the one who really wants the light to be filtered, though neither Dave nor I care enough one way or the other for it to matter.

Our last trip to San Diego lasted three weeks, which I know from experience is one week too long for Mama to cope with. She manages our two-week absences fairly well, but the extra week that is necessary from time to time is too much for her to bear. It drives her crazy. It’s a short drive. Invariably, our time home with her after a prolonged trip takes on a surreal quality that defies description.

The latest wrinkle is fainting. Mama gave fainting a test run last summer. She went with me to meet the kids at the old house when we were trying to get it ready for renters. The house was cool, there was plenty to drink, and she had a place to comfortably sit while we worked, and she had the kids running in and out to keep her amused, but she apparently wasn’t getting enough attention. She went out to sit in the hot, closed car. When I noticed she had gone, I brought her back into the house and told her to stay there, that is was dangerous to sit in a closed car in the Tennessee summer. She stayed indoors until it was time to leave.

She headed for the car and we were right behind her, but, at the last moment, Becca and I had to go back in for something. We were in the house all of two minutes and when we came back out, Mama was falling into a “faint” that was so blatantly phoney Becca laughed out loud. I just stood there, at first amazed, and then irritated, then went back into the house to get a wet cloth and a glass of water for her. When I came back out, she was swinging her feet and squirming to get more comfortable. I got Mama seated properly in the front seat- Becca was no help, she was laughing too hard and trying not to let Mama see or hear her. I washed Mama’s face, gave her the water, and left for home without confronting her about the obviously fake faint. I figured, what’s the point?

Fast forward several months to last Friday night. I was going to be gone the next day; I was attending the District IV meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, where I was elected district president. My friend Taffy was spending the night, as she was riding with me and we had to leave very early. Mama came out and said hello to Taffy then retired to her bedroom. We ordered pizza. The moment it was delivered, I went to get Mama. She toddled out of her room, said “Oh, oh” and fell into my arms. I yelled at her to stop it, but of course she didn’t, so I hollered for Dave. I couldn’t hold her and I was afraid to drop her on the floor, so I was doing a slow-motion squat when Dave finally arrived and lifted her off me. He struggled to get her into a chair. She opened her eyes. “What happened? What happened?” she asked breathily, the image of wide-eyed innocence and surprise. “We don’t know” Dave replied sourly, at which Mama promptly “fainted” again. Two more faints later, we got her into the livingroom where a larger audience- the two of us AND Taffy- awaited, and, true to form, she promptly fainted onto the couch. I took her pulse. I counted her respirations. Her color was fine, her skin was warm and dry. Thus reassured that she was in fact faking, I turned to my pizza.

Of course we had a reprise of the “what happened?” scene, but we flatly refused to say “You fainted.” I got her to drink some regular Coke, in case her sugar was low, and she sat with us for about 20 minutes, then took her Coke and her pizza with her to her bedroom. I followed her to make sure she got there safely. When I returned, Dave and Taffy were just shaking their heads. Easy for them to do, they get to go elsewhere :)

Dave tells me Mama made an apology of sorts the next day and managed to apologize without admitting guilt or asking forgiveness. Tell me she’s mentally deficient. I dare you.

Ice dancing! That's what the Olympics is really all about!

Ice dancing. That was the only thing that pulled my attention to the Olympics. I was a dyed in the wool Torvill and Dean fan, and really enjoyed the ice dancing this time around, though no couple ever approached T and D’s dynamism, elegance and style. The Italian couple did produce some historic histrionics that were amusing, if not Olympian.

Ah, the Italians. This Olympics was friendly, fun, and life affirming, like the Italians. I love the Italians. Ciao, bellos. Job well done. The passion did in fact live in Torino. I will miss “being in Italy” now that the Olympic games have ended.

I won’t miss the Olympics, however. How can I when there are Olympics of some sort every two years now? Too many sports on TV to begin with and then a two week saturation of sports every two years!!?? It bums me out. I just don’t get sports. I can see how some of them might be fun to do, but very few of them are much to watch. Where is the plot? Where is the character development? At least most of the Olympics involves short-attention-span sports- four minute programs, 2 minute slaloms, everybody trying to get done FASTER than everyone else, (which I appreciate, I must say), but there are SO DAMN MANY OF THEM. One event after another, six hundred preliminary runs, quarter-finals, semi-finals… They go on forever. I’m exhausted! I need some Masterpiece Theatre therapy and I need it now. And a mocha latte.

P.S. GO, APOLO! God bless Joey Cheek. And did the Flying Tomato get to meet Sasha Cohen?

I'm developing a starboard list... well, a list, anyway

My daughter Kelly has been in an organizing frenzy these past three weeks. She is eying the office right now with a lean and hungry look, just waiting for me to remove my messy self so that she can pounce on the chaos and beat it into submission. I must admit, my office is a mess, but in my defense, I am working on a scrapbook for my daughter-in-law Becca, and scrapbooking is messy. Not just when I do it, when anyone does it. Kelly has reorganized the guest room closet, my closet, the front closet, the guest bath, the entire kitchen, the living room and the porch. We are so organized here you wouldn’t believe it. If I am not careful, she will reorganize me into a corner and never let me out- file me under “Needs to be contained” or something. I am obviously out of control.

I think I am driving her crazy.

I know my driving is driving her crazy. I am having trouble with the vagaries of California driving. Today I went the wrong way on a one way lane. Don’t ask. We survived the experience, and I didn’t even get a ticket, but my reputation as one of the world’s lousiest drivers appears to be in no danger of immediate improvement. Fortunately, being a lousy driver means I fit right in out here. They breed them here.

Other than that, I think Kelly and I are enjoying each other's company. We have been shopping, more than once, and have been to the movies, and we have been the ladies who lunch at least a couple of times. We are accommodating ourselves to one another at home as well. We have developed a pretty good division of labor here. I do the laundry and the cooking, and she does everything else. I like it!

Both she and her brother have been updating their blogs, which is nice. It's nice to dip into their musings and to see what goes on in their heads as well as their lives. In their most recent blogs, my superlative children have been compiling lists- five places they have lived, five places they have visited, etc... (You really should read their blogs, they are very original thinkers). That said, I am not about to be outdone by the younger generation, so here are a few little lists of my own.

The five (or six) most obnoxious people in the world, in no particular order:
Oprah Winfrey
Dr. Phil
George Bush
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise

Five things that should never have been invented
Brassieres- protect your floppies, my ass. Instruments of torture.
Spike heels- they make your calves look good but they punish every other part of the leg.
Remote controls- there went the only exercise most Americans got.
Fast food restaurants
iPods- like big screen TVs, video games, and computers weren’t generating enough
hermits. Gee, I wonder why interpersonal relationships and communication skills are crumbling. I said, I wonder why… take those damn things out of your ears, I’m trying to talk to you.


Five things that need to be invented, exclusive of cures for diseases:

• Renewable fuels that will free us from the need for foreign oil.

We are the biggest market for oil, which means they have us over a barrel until we find a way to teach them not to bite the hand that feeds them… I know, let’s make fuel out the grain that feeds them. Let oil prices drop to 10 cents a barrel, and then how will certain people support terrorism? Huh? Huh?

• Comfortable, affordable air travel- or better yet, transporters. Yeah, that’s the ticket!


• Self-driving cars- for obvious reasons.


• Self-cleaning clothes- and then I will only have to do the cooking.


• Calorie free sweets that don’t give you the green apple quick-step. I want calorie free chocolate and I want it now!

Okay, that’s enough out of me for awhile. My children really don’t appreciate it when I appear to be parodying them, so I will stop.

We are some pretty good broads

I am a member of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC); I have been a member, past secretary, and past and present president for the GFWC Centennial Woman’s Club since I joined in 2000. In March, I am running for the District IV presidency and think I have a pretty good chance of winning, since I am the only nominee. I shall be elected unanimously! So there, G.W., THAT is a mandate. I love the GFWC. I love the ladies it has brought into my life, the good works I have been a part of, and the FUN! (We meet once a month in a members’ home, and run away from home to conventions and have really good times).

What I don’t really cherish is report writing. Once a year, each club must report its year’s activities to the state, which then compiles those reports into one for the nation, which then compiles those for an international report. The reporting process has been streamlined, but for a club that does a lot of small projects, the number of reports to be filed can be daunting. This year, I wrote narratives for 13 separate department chairs, and completed a club rating form. Our club is superior, by the way… in case you had any doubts.

The reporting does give you a feel for what your group has actually accomplished though. Here’s an overview of what 23 woman in a small Southern town did in 2005:
We supported 29 different community programs such as Meals On Wheels, Senior Citizens, Shepherd’s House, Haven of Hope, Karing for Kids, Toys for Tots, including arts and educational programs. Some of that support went to the Alzheimer’s Association, American Diabetes Association, American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the Multi-County Cancer Association. We volunteered 4,848 hours in 2005- that’s about 17 hours per month per member. We funneled $7,580 back into our community, and recycled over 3 tons of paper and metal.
We presented 8 educational/informational programs to our membership, and participated in one international program, Heifer International.
Not bad for 23 working (mostly) women who meet one night a month, and have a rip-roaring good time when we do. We have two “mottos”. The first is “Good Women, Good Works, Good Times”- to which our members have tacked on “good food”, because we always have good food at our meetings- we all know how to cook and we all like to eat. The second is “Doing great good in many small ways”, and I think we do that. We have figured out a way to have a positive impact on our community is a way that is undemanding and yet meaningful. We are some pretty good broads.
Now… vote for me for District Prez :)

This, that and the other

It’s been six years since my last herniated disc.  I have beaten the average, which, until now, has been a herniated disc every five years.  (Remember, that’s an average- they came hot and heavy in the 80’s but left me pretty much alone during the 90’s.)  I spent my 50th birthday in an ambulance en route to Centennial Hospital, suffering from the last, and most painful, of the herniations, a thoracic one.  Happy birthday to me… this was also the hospitalization where morphine sent me into a psychotic episode, but that’s another blog.

Why am I writing about this grisly medical history?  Well, first of all, because I think it makes me unique.  At least I don’t know anyone else who has had four herniated discs.  The second is that I fear a fifth one is eminent.  

My neck was aching for a couple of days before we left for San Diego, but I just figured it was stress.  It is stressful, tying up loose ends, providing for Mama in our absence, trying not to forget anything… and dealing with the week-long guilt trip Mama lays on me every time I travel.  If we had left Mama in Michigan- not an option, obviously- things would have continued as they had for years.  She would have seen us once or twice a year.  She lives with us now, and has our complete attention for two weeks a month, and provided care daily- but to hear her tell it...  Oh, never mind, it’s making my neck hurt to think of it.

Anyway, my neck was grouching on the way to the airport, and complaining louder than Mama by the time we got to Dallas.  Dave bought me a neck pillow which was very helpful, but my neck was as stiff as a board by the time we reached the apartment.  Two Lidocaine patches helped, as did Ibuprofen and the neck pillow, but I can feel the bones shifting when I move my head.  Not a good omen.

Other than that, it is good to be back.  Kelly has the apartment super-organized- I can’t find anything, but when she tells me where things are, it makes perfect sense.  She is preparing for her starring role in “Boy Meets Girl” and it is enlightening to see everything that goes into preparing for a role.  We will be doing some costume scouting soon.

I am working on the Club reports, which is always slow going and tedious.  I am being disciplined- I am doing no crafts until the reports are done and in the mail.

We had dinner at the Shakespeare Pub and Grille last night with Jeff Bromfield, a Cubite formerly from San Diego but now back in his home of origin, good ole Tennessee.  What a lovely man.  The Pub is almost authentic (the ceilings aren’t low enough), the food and drink and atmosphere are as Englandish as one might hope, and there is a British stores store for any ex-pats who are craving Marmite or Weetabix.  A little slice of London on the bay of San Diego.  You gotta love this place.

Hey, fiddle-dee-dee, an actor's life for me... well, for Kel, anyway

Our daughter Kelly made the trip west safely and quickly, I am happy to report. My friends and I have been having a ball reading her blog (click on the link to Kelly’s blog on the right to see why). She took an oversized key-chain I gave her of a rat dressed as Ole’ Blue Eyes. If you press his hand, he sings “New York, New York”… very funny. She used Frank Sinatrat, as she named him, as a sort of roaming gnome traveling companion, and her pics of him are a hoot in and of themselves.

She celebrated her 34th birthday alone in San Diego, but Dave and I had laden the dining room table with birthday goodies, so she was alone, but not forgotten nor neglected.

I cannot believe my little girl is 34. I remember 34; the thirties are great. If I could age backwards, I wouldn’t go any further back than 30. I hope Kelly’s are as rich as my 30s were, but I really have no fears on that account. She was back in San Diego only two days when she was cast in yet another play. San Diego loves our girl.

Just to embarrass her as much as possible, I am posting some pictures of her. Here is a picture of Kelly and fellow thespian Warren Gore taken a few years ago. I love this picture of Kelly, because it really showcases how beautiful she is and how elegant she can be, though there is no convincing her of that fact.

I am adding a couple of shots of the scrapbook and scrapbook cover I made for her. The original cover started off as plain wood. I used acrylic paint to create a pickled effect, then decoupaged photos and other embellishments to make what I thought was an interesting and unique cover. Only one problem: due to a design flaw, you couldn't turn the pages of the scrapbook after the first couple. So I bought a traditional cover and embellished it for her pages and left the wooden cover for her to use for the photos of her trip west.

The second cover was colorful to begin with, so I just added text and star embellishments and Kelly's picture.

I could really embarrass her and publish some of her baby pictures, but I won't... because she if I do, she will knock me to a peak and kick the peak off when I return to San Diego. Just take my word for it, she has been gorgeous at every age.

She is also a bit OC- she has sent me pictures of her reorganization of the pantry.... and the kitchen... and the computer room... and the balcony. I won't be able to find ANYTHING when I return, which, I must add, will delight her immensely.

On the home front in Tullahoma:

Re cats:

Hobbes has recovered from his surgery and if we thought denaturing him would calm him down, we were sadly mistaken. I have learned that Patches is extremely possessive of the litter box, because when I filled it with shredded paper for Hobbes, she had a conniption fit and bit me on the leg. She forgave me after I showed her the new box filled with her favorite litter just for her. I'd bite her back, but a mouthful of fur doesn't appeal to me, and Hobbes bites her enough for the both of us.

Re My Woman's Club:

The GFWC Centennial Woman's Club had their international dinner at my house on Tuesday, and honey, it was a feast. We had an Italian theme, and we were inspired. Sandie Simms made her minestrone soup (to die for), I made chicken cacciatore and rice, Renee Keene made chicken spaghetti, Taffy Cayce and Johnnie Hill brought antipasto plates, Ida Smith brought a pasta salad, Ann Waggoner made something wonderful with puff pastry, Kathy Orr brought lasagna, Marcia Kribs made from- scratch Italian bread, Nancy Hale made an INCREDIBLE tossed salad, Shelia Burton brought pizza, and Yvonne Gilliam made a Bacardi Rum Cake that was the perfect ending to a most excellent meal. We Southern ladies know our way around the kitchen, let me tell you. Sandie Simms was our featured speaker and gave a wonderful talk on her native country and the small town where she was born. Her photo album was fascinating. Great time! But then, that fits our club's motto "Good Women, Good Works, Good Times". We always have a good time. I love these ladies. They really enrich my life. Here's a picture of Kelly and I and some of the good women of GFWC Centennial at 2004's fund-raiser. I am the rotund one on the far right in green gingham. Kelly is the beauty in the white hat and lavender dress.

Re Mama:

The big screen TV died while we were in California, and Mama did NOT kill it. She just made resuscitating it an experiment in terror. Constant readers know that Mama refuses to answer her phone, so coordinating the arrival of repairmen and the removal of the TV involved convoluted, triangulated phone calls between me, my son, and my housekeeper. We THOUGHT we had it handled. Stephanie was going to get to the house the day before the strange men arrived, and have Mama call me so that I could explain what was going on. I was also going to ask Mama to pay the repairman with the understanding that I would pay her back when I returned. Jake was going to be there when the repairman came so she wouldn't be uneasy about a stranger in the house. It is a plan that should have worked. Except- Mama was mad at me and wouldn't let Stephanie call me and refused to listen when Steph tried to explain what was going to happen. Any mention of the TV triggered indignant cries of "I didn't break it!" and temper tantrums. Poor Stephanie. Jake went ahead and made arrangements, but the repairman got to the house before Jake did and Mama wouldn't let him. When Jake arrived mere moments later, expecting to find a fully prepared grandmother, he found instead an irate banty rooster who first would not let the man remove the TV from the livingroom, and then refused to write a check because, as she so vocally insisted "It's not my fault. I'm not going to pay, it's not my fault. It's not my fault." Poor Jake had to write a check, and poor me had to over-night a check back to him to cover it, which cost me $50 just for the over-night mailing. The TV is back in good working order, and some good may have come from this, because Mama refuses to touch it now.

Gotta go. Gene Autry is on.

Westward Ho!

There is a line in the movie “Parenthood”, spoken by Jason Robards, which I will paraphrase here. On parenting: You’re never done. You never get to cross the goal line, spike the ball and do your touch-down dance. Nothing brings the truth of those lines closer to home than having an adult child on the road, driving alone from Tennessee to California.

I remember reading teen books when I was younger about young women on the road- Annette Funicello in her red roadster, for example- and it was all great fun and high adventure and absolutely nothing I would ever do. I was 32 before I ever drove on a freeway. I drove from Michigan to Tennessee with my then small children in the back seat, and had to stop in Toledo to get on top of my anxiety attack. We made the trip in 10 hours. It was and will remain the longest road trip I have taken where I was the driver.

I drove to Dallas with my sister in 1988 to see our brother, but that doesn’t count, because I was just the navigator, and because of my unerring sense of direction we circled a McDonald’s in Little Rock, Arkansas, unable to actually GET to it, until it began to feel as if it was enchanted- so tantalizingly close, so ephemeral as we approached. We finally did enter the McDonald’s and ate there, but from that point on, I was just a passenger. That’s the way I like it, if I have to travel by car, and I don’t like to have to travel by car.

So I marvel at the courage and panache of my daughter, who has just called to say she is on the road. I haven’t slept well in weeks in anticipation of this call, and have been fervently praying that she would find a traveling companion at the last minute… now I won’t sleep until I hear that she is firmly ensconced in a well-fortified hotel room, having had a safe drive and a good dinner and a day without incident. Then I will worry until the next day’s call. You never stop being a mother, waiting up to make sure your child makes it safely home. No touch-down dance. Sigh.

I won’t be here when she arrives; I will be flying to Tennessee as she drives through the Golden West. She will be coming “home” to an empty apartment. No one to help her unpack. No one to listen to her tale of adventure. It will be the end of a very long trip alone.
On the other hand… maybe it’s better that she makes this trip alone. After all, the Donner party traveled west as a group, and look what happened to them.

Take a little scrap of my heart now, baby

There is a lovely feeling of peace that comes over you when you finish a big project, a sense of accomplishment, a kind of release.  At least, I imagine that’s the case.  I can’t say I have experienced it first-hand lately.  The end of my big project seems to have the same properties as a mirage in the desert- it appears tantalizingly close but I never actually seem to get there.
I have been working on a scrapbook.  I literally started from scratch by buying an unfinished wood album cover and painting and decoupaging it myself.  It looks pretty good, if I say so myself.  I managed to give the wood a pickled look using acrylic paint and the effect is not too shabby.
I have painstakingly compiled photos, memorabilia, embellishments, papers and supplies, layed out almost thirty pages, cropped, pasted… I have put roughly four-five hours a day for the last two weeks into this book and last night, I thought I was finished.
I assembled all the pages and put the album cover together.  It was gorgeous.  Only one problem.  It was so thick that after turning the first couple of pages it became almost impossible to turn the rest.  So, I added extenders, and it did get marginally easier to turn the pages.  Marginally.  So today I will go and buy more extenders.  And if that doesn’t work, I will buy a traditional album cover, put the pages in it, and frame the wooden one I made.  Why not?  It’s art.  In either case, I have to invest yet another day on this “finished” project.
I have been making “this is your life (so far)” scrapbooks as birthday presents since March of 2005.  The first one I ever made was for my granddaughter Kendall, who, it appears, promptly lost it.  So much for sentimental value.  Delaney’s was next (she was six in May).  I made a mini-album for Dave in June, which, touchingly, he carries with him when he travels without me.   I assembled an album roughly the size of “War and Peace” for my son Jake, and looked forward to going through it with him, which never happened- that was August.  I made one for Haley in October and a very abbreviated one for Emily in November. Well, she is only two, after all.  The plan is to add pages at every birthday.
They are a lot of fun to make, but they are also a lot of work.  Scrapbooking is not easy.  It requires thought, planning, a rudimentary sense of design, patience, imagination and time.  Fortunately, I have lots of time.  Each scrapbook has been better than the last as my experience has grown.  I am proud of them.
I have one more to assemble, hard on the heels of this last finished/unfinished project.  It is for my daughter-in-law Becca whose birthday is next month.  I know Becca will appreciate it as she is a scrapbooker, too.  As for the others…  I fear I may just be amusing myself with this latest craft.  I really meant them to be acts of love as much as works of art, but then, they are just scrapbooks after all.  
I sometimes feel that everything I do these days is inherently trivial and pointless.  I enjoy myself, don’t get me wrong, but I used to be integral, I used to have an impact, make a difference.  I got a call a couple of weeks ago from students who were in my very first Anatomy and Physiology class, just wanting to touch base and say hello.  That happens a lot, and it means a lot to me.  I miss teaching.  I don’t miss all the bull-shit attendant upon academe, but I do miss TEACHING.  
So… maybe I will teach a class on scrapbooking.  Who knows?

My own private Jeffrey

     I remember a Bill Cosby comedy routine of many years ago about a flight he endured with a two-year old named Jeffrey.  Everyone knew Jeffrey’s name by the end of the flight because they had heard his mother say it so often-“Jeffrey, sit still!”  “Jeffrey, get up!”  “Jeffrey, don’t do that!”  “Jeffrey, be quiet!”  “JEFFREY!”  It’s the nightmare flight everyone endures sooner or later if they travel frequently.
     My Jeffrey was 13 and named Seth.  We met on the Dallas-to-San Diego leg of our trip west, a leg that began with our not getting upgraded to first class as we had hoped and finding that I was not the only person who had a ticket for my seat.  Dave to the rescue!  We got that fiasco handled and had just settled into our seats when young Seth appeared.
     He was carrying a backpack and had a plastic card holder around his neck, the badge and emblem of the child displaced by divorce.  It is shocking to me how many children are put on flights to fulfill their parent’s custody rights, and many of them a lot younger than Seth, who introduced himself and took his seat by the window.  
He immediately began to talk, revealing an astounding ignorance of a wide range of topics. He was a handsome boy with dark, dark eyes and long, thick dark lashes and a flawless complexion.  There was the suggestion of a mustache on his upper lip, which surprised me when he told me his age.  He was all legs and arms, knees and elbows, as thin as a rail with long, tapered fingers that were beautifully maintained.
He was also hyper.  He couldn’t seem to sit still, or to remain focused on anything- except his thirst- for more than 30 seconds.  He showed an interest in the book Dave was reading and the anagram puzzles I was solving.  I showed him how to access the tray, and he immediately was captivated by the cleverness of the engineering.  He then produced a nerf ball and challenged me to a game, the division of the tray serving as a net.  After trouncing me, he lost interest, and was off and talking again, obsessing for the next 30 minutes about his thirst.
I learned a lot about him.  He lives in San Diego with his mother, but his dad lives in Arkansas and he was returning from a mandated three week visit.  He talked about his little 5 year-old sister whom he does not get to live with and how much he loves her.  In two years, he will be old enough to choose whether or not he goes to see his father, and while his relationship with his dad is rocky, he will probably keep going so he can see his sister.  
He talked about his father’s lack of success in marriage and mentioned that marriage number three seems to be coming to a close. He talked about his school, his girlfriend, his role as school-yard counselor/therapist, his various career plans… and while he talked, he squirmed, rang for the attendant, and generated enough nervous energy to power a city.
He asked me if I was a Christian, and when I said yes, he said he knew it, he could tell just by looking at me.  I asked if he could tell I am Episcopalian just by looking at me, but he didn’t get it.  He assumed I was retired and yet was shocked when I told him I was born in 1949.  He didn’t do the math, but I am sure he thought me as old as Methuselah.  He bombarded me with questions: were there cars when I was a kid?  Phones?  Airplanes?   I told him I was 20 when men first walked on the moon and he was actually speechless for several seconds.  
After obsessing (verbally) about being thirsty, he was relieved when the attendant showed up with drinks.  He downed his first Sprite in about 15 seconds.  At last!  His thirst was slaked!  Then he started eating beef jerky.  A second Sprite… a glass of water…  Whenever the attendant returned, he bombarded HER with questions- how did she know who had buzzed?  What if more than one person buzzed at the same time?
I gave him my PDA so that he could play Solitaire and he enjoyed that for about half an hour.  About an hour out from San Diego, he decided to take a nap, but he couldn’t get comfortable.  He tried to curl his elongated body into the seat, which of course was impossible, and tossed and turned.  I offered him my shoulder and he rested his head on it for a minute or to, but then the tossing and turning began anew.  Shortly before landing, he did, in fact, doze off, but not before I had been elbowed and kneed into submission.
When we landed, Seth had to stay behind to be escorted off the plane by the attendant and so we said our good-byes. I told him I was pleased to have met him, and meant it.   I am old enough to be his grandmother and yet we almost immediately got along and were able to communicate.  There is something lovely that happens when adolescence meets menopause - as long as they are not related or sharing the same household.  
Seth was a very sweet boy, and he made me laugh.  I enjoyed his company, but his energy absolutely exhausted me.  Thirteen was never designed to be confined in small spaces for prolonged periods of time.  Especially not crammed into that small space with fifty-six.

Cats redux

     We could not find an owner of the little gray tabby that Dave rescued from certain death by winter.  Dave, who is NOT a cat fancier, has taken a fancy to the little fella, and seemed downright pleased when I announced I was keeping him (the cat, people, the cat…. Jeez!)  He has named him Hobbes.  (Does that make David Calvin???)
     I took Hobbes to the vet right after Christmas, where he was pronounced a keeper and given all of his shots, was de-wormed, and treated for ear mites.  Are cats BORN with ear mites?  Does anyone know?  Because every cat I have been owned by- and Hobbes makes #15- has had them.
     Hobbes fits right in.  He easily learned to use the cat-door and the litter box, he knows where the food is, and he knows how to torment the living hell out of Patches.  He chases her relentlessly, and she is too dumb to realize that she is three times his size and could defeat him just by sitting on him.  Squashed kitten.  He’d be a grease mark on her butt.  Butt no, she tears through the house, wailing, howling, hissing, with Hobbes hot on her heels, the both of them knocking things over and making a mess.  It’s good to have a kitten in the house.
     Hobbes seems genuinely fond of David.  He curls up at his side while he is working at his desk, or wraps himself around Dave’s shoulders and purrs in his ears.  David, for his part, seems equally enamored of Hobbes.  Maybe you just can’t help but bond with something you have rescued and is grateful for it.  
     Hobbes loves Mama and I as well, but for different reasons.  He seems to love the way I taste, and he seems to love the wonderful, loud and piercing noises Mama makes when he rakes her feet with his claws- which, by the way, he can kiss good-bye (as well as his kitty balls) on January 23.  All responsible pet owners should neuter their pets, so no lamenting his lost reproductive potential, please.  And for those of you who are philosophically opposed to de-clawing, I will only remind you that I recently buried a beloved cat friend who died at the age of 18.5 years- and lived to be that age because she was de-clawed and was an indoor cat.  May Hobbes (and Patches) both exceed that record.  Amen.
     Must go now, and retrieve my great toe.  Kitty teeth are brutal.

Cats I have known and loved

I have been owned by a succession of cats since 1987.
It began when someone gave my daughter, who was 15 at the time, a beautiful little kitten she named Chevy. I balked at letting her keep Chevy because I was (and am) massively allergic to cats. But what can you do when your little girl is in love with a ball of fur? We took Chevy to the vet and got her her shots, and made arrangements for neutering, etc., when she was old enough. Two weeks later, however, she began having seizures, so one day while the kids were in school, I took her to the vet. She had distemper. The shots had come too late for her. I could have taken her home and let my daughter watch her slowly die, or have her put gently to sleep. Since, to this day, my daughter is bitter over my killing her cat, you know the choice I made. But on the advice of a friend, I did not go home empty handed. I took a little black tabby home with me so Kelly could have something small and soft to cuddle while she mourned poor Chevy. The black tabby was Shadow.

People may choose to bring cats into their homes, but cats decide with whom they will bond. Shadow had ear mites and worms and needed dosing and care that I had to provide since Kelly was in school all day and she decided to bond with me. Now I had killed Kelly’s first cat and stolen the affections of the second. That’s why, about a year later, Samantha, a seal point Siamese, came into our lives. Samantha was completely Kelly’s creature.

Shadow mothered Samantha and they developed a close relationship. About a year later, Roxie, an orange tabby, joined the zoo, and Shadow mothered her as well. Gemini, Tugger, MacGyver, Bubba, Lillian, Vivian, Sinbad, Rusty, Rosabelle and Patches succeeded Roxie. Poor Shadow. Each new addition after Roxie was greeted with a combination of irritability and dismay. Shadow, though the oldest, was not the alpha female, and the younger cats bullied her unless I protected her.

We never had more that five cats at a time, and after living with five cats for a couple of years, we found good homes for Gemini and Tugger and declared a three-cat maximum from that point on. Roxie died young of kidney failure. Fool that I am, I paid for dialysis trying to save that sweet cat. She greeted me every time I came in the door. We had a buffet by the front door, and as I came through it, she would be on the buffet, waiting to love on me and help me shake off the stresses of the day. I still miss her.
We were down to two cats, Shadow and Samantha. Then Kelly rescued a kitty from a dumpster (Gemini, so named because she looked like Shadow’s twin). THEN Kelly was given a gorgeous gray kitten as a tip on a Domino’s run that I named Tugger and we were back up to four cats. Gemini and Tugger really bonded with each other- they were kind of like feline, female Fred and George Weasleys. I really enjoyed them, but Dave was adamant about the three-cat rule. A friend of mine in graduate school had just lost her 18-year old cat- she had had the cat since she was five- and she was heart-broken. I offered her one of my cats, either Gemini or Tugger, but told her it was a wrench to separate them because they were so close to each other. She took them both, God bless her.
It’s funny. Of the two, I favored Tugger. My friend favored Gemini. People react to cats like they react to people. Some personalities just jibe with your own. Gemini was sweet and affectionate and a bit of a follower. Tugger was crazy, and wild, and fearless, and silly and a natural born leader. The two of them made life very interesting. Both Shadow and Samantha cried for days when they left, just like mama cats who have been separated from their kittens. It made me feel terrible. I missed them, too. But we were back to being a two-cat family again.
Then my son showed up with a huge, glorious black male who was clearly part Maine Coon, and my son expected to keep him. We had never had a male cat before, so I was a little leery, but it worked out that he was a terrific cat. What a character! I told Jake he could keep the cat if I could name him MacGyver- I was really into MacGyver at the time. The cat was well named as he seemed to live for adventure. Shortly on the heels of his joining the ladies, Bubba turned up. Bubba was another absolutely beautiful male, and as sweet a cat as I have ever met, but I don’t remember how it is he came to live with us.
The four cats got along well, but when my second granddaughter Haley was born, we found she was highly allergic to cats. (Jake’s family and Dave and I were sharing a house at the time.) Okay, the cats had to go. Kelly took in Shadow and Samantha and I found a good home for MacGyver and Bubba and for a while my house was catless.
[I must state here that I was able to find homes for these cats because they were healthy, neutered, and de-clawed. To those of you who have problems with the idea of de-clawing cats, I’ll just say deal with it. No cat with claws will ever live in my home. I value my belongings. Beyond that, the average life span of outdoor cats with their claws is 5 years. The average age for indoor cats who have been de-clawed is twice that. If you could ask the cats, I’d bet they say it was a fair trade-off. ]
Jake and his family moved out on Normandy Lake and during the moving-in process, found that two little kittens had been abandoned in their house. They were an awfully cute pair that Jake named Lillian and Vivian, and I have pictures of them nestled in Jake’s shirt pocket. Since they couldn’t live with Jake, they lived with me until I could find homes for them. In the meantime, since Jake wasn’t living with me anymore, I retrieved Shadow and Samantha from Kelly.
Then Jake bought a boat, and found that an adorable male kitten had been part of the package deal. We named him Sinbad. I can’t remember who adopted Sinbad, but do remember being sad to see him go.
Dave, Shadow, Samantha and I moved into the house we live in now in 1997. Shortly thereafter, my adorable next-door neighbor showed up with an orange tabby orphan that I instantly fell in love with. I named him Rusty. He used to be in the garage waiting for me when I got home from work every day and talked to me- mostly “feed me”, “water me”, “change the litter”, and “scratch me” but he was really good company while I did all those things. By now, Shadow was 10 and Samantha was 9 and they were too old and too jaundiced to be much amused or enamored of an active young male but I was. I only had Rusty a year. He had a bad habit of rushing the door to get outside, and he must have sneaked past us, probably while we were bringing in groceries, because dinnertime came, and there was no sign of him. We searched the neighborhood, handed out leaflets, but we never found a trace of him. A year later, the same thing happened with Samantha. She was almost 11 when she slipped out the door, something she NEVER did until we moved to this house, but was now making a habit, to my chagrin . I was getting ready for bed when I realized I hadn’t seen her in awhile, and searched the house for her. I searched the yard, the lot next door- no luck. I called. I whistled. (I have trained each of my cats to come to a whistle, believe it or not). A terrible thunderstorm came up, so severe it drove me back into the house. I kept expecting to see her run up onto the porch to get out of the weather but it didn’t happen. I don’t know if she went off to die like some animals do, or if the severe weather killed her, but she was gone, and I mourned her for weeks.
About this time, my son’s marriage broke up. Kendall and Haley’s mother, in an attempt, I think, to ingratiate herself to the girls, gave them each a kitten. Of course they couldn’t keep them, so I got a tearful call from Kendall, asking if the cats could come here to live so that the girls could at least visit them from time to time. Who says “no” to heartbroken child? So Rosabelle and Patches came to live with me. That was five years ago. Shadow just rolled her eyes, glared at me, and went into my bedroom to grumble under the bed. More damn kittens. Jeez.
Rosabelle was Haley’s cat, and she reminded me very much of Roxie. Last year, while Dave and I were in San Diego, Jake and the kids came over to swim and apparently let her out without knowing it. Normally, that would not have been a problem. The yard is now fenced, none of the cats could get out of the yard, and I often let them out in yard with me. Jake was coming back the next day to mow the grass for us and would have put her back in the house. Except that the moron pool guy- who really deserves a blog of his own in the future- came in the interim and left the gate open when he left. Jake found Rosabelle the next day. She had been mauled by dogs and did not survive.
Which brings us now to Shadow and Patches. Patches is Kendall’s cat, and is really a pig with fur. She eats constantly and is fat, fat, fat, even though I monitor her food and have her on a weight control cat food. She eats her food and then eats Shadow’s. She’s a bit of a knucklehead, but I really love her.
And Shadow… my dear old lady cat, whom I have had since 1987, died this afternoon of kidney failure. She has been failing for the past couple of years, and this year the decline has seemed to accelerate. She had lost her appetite and so lost a lot of weight, she was losing her fur in clumps, she had arthritis in her hips, and she was going blind. She had a bad tooth, so I had been treating her with antibiotics and today she was to have the tooth extracted. In preparation for surgery, the vet did blood work and found she was in acute kidney failure. Needless to say, he did not attempt to extract the tooth. She died at 2:30 pm. I went to get her with an air-tight plastic bin that contained a soft baby blanket she loved and her favorite toy. Terry was very sensitive and laid my dear girl out so that she looked like a kitten sleeping. Dave and I buried her in the backyard and will plant flowers in the spring. She would have been 19 in April. Nineteen. I had had her for fully half my marriage.

The ironic thing is that two nights ago, when the temperature dipped below freezing, Dave told me to bring in a kitten that has been hanging around on the front porch for days. He’s not fond a kittens but had no desire to see one freeze to death. The kitty obviously belongs to someone as she is wearing a very expensive collar. She seems to think she lives here now and has been tormenting Patches for two days, which may actually be a good thing as it may run some of the fat off of her. But tomorrow, I am going to take Baby Kitty’s picture and make flyers to hand out in the neighborhood. Somebody thought enough of her to give her that fancy collar. Someone may love her and be missing her. I know how that feels.

Grocery Diva

I hate grocery shopping. Maybe if I did it every day instead of every week, I would hate it a little less, because I would have fewer bags to wrestle with. Nah. I hate the stores; they are too bright, too cold, and too damn boring. I hate check-out, I hate loading the car, unloading the car, putting away the groceries, breaking down bulk purchases into smaller portions, recycling plastic bags … need I go on?

So… out here in California, you can actually grocery shop ON-LINE! How cool is that? You make your list on line, choose the brand names you want (or don’t), permit substitutions (or not), pick a day and time and voila! Groceries come to your door like magic. You still have to put them away, but somehow it’s not so onerous when a nice man has done all the aisle surfing and heavy lifting for you. Kinda like a provender Christmas- “OOOH, what’s in THIS bag?”

I have only shopped online for groceries twice, and I am 1 for two. I didn’t screw up the first time I did it, when I didn’t know what I was doing, but made up for it big time yesterday, when, theoretically, I did know what I was doing.

The first time the groceries came, a very nice man named Luis gave me some very helpful hints on how to maximize my shopping experience and refused a tip. “Give it to your church,” he said, and I will when I get home. Five dollars from Luis. God bless him.

Yesterday, after using all of the helpful tips Luis gave me, I was awaiting the delivery of the last groceries we will need for this trip. A knock at the door, and there stands another nice young man with a crate of food. I sign for it, and hand him a 100 dollar bill to pay for it. He
looks startled. “Can’t you change a 100 bill?” I ask, slightly panicked because that’s all the money I have, and the groceries are $92. He shakes his head, so I figure, what the hell, it’s Christmas and tell him to keep the change. He is gob-smacked. Thanks me innumerable times. I wave him out with a smile and a “Merry Christmas”. I am feeling pretty darn pleased with myself, and a little humbled that an $8 dollar tip could mean that much to someone.

Until I remember that I prepaid the groceries with my credit card.

That child walked off with a $100 tip.

Well, what the hell, it’s Christmas.

Except now I have to tell Dave what I have done. I stress all day. I’m not stressing about the money, I am stressing about the sheer absent-mindedness of the act. My brain is absent way too frequently these days. I think I may have Alzheimer’s because I keep forge… Sometimes I really fear I may have Alzheimer’s, because…

Anyway, the man gets home, and I tell him about my day. You have got to love a man who reacts this way: “What a great day you gave that kid! Who gets a $100 tip? He will remember that his whole life. And in time for Christmas, too. How cool is that?” To which he added, “Don’t make this a habit.”

So, God bless the young man and may his Christmas be bright. And God bless my husband for his generous heart. And God help me, because I am obviously losing it.

I really fear I may have the beginnings of….. what was I saying?

Dinner with the Nige

Dave and I had dinner tonight with Nigel Bryant, native of Beaulieau (pronounced Be-oo-ly), England. The Nige works for CTS-UK so we get to see him from time to time while we are in San Diego; he comes over for corporate meetings. Nigel is married and has two kids, all of whom I met when I traveled to England with Dave in 2001 (?) Jackie, Rachel and Hannah are lovely people, and I had the pleasure of dinner in their home and a tour of the New Forest area around Beaulieu which is delightful. It was my only visit to the Bryant household, but Dave has been many times. Dave used to make several prolonged visits to England every year and has come to love England as a second home. Whenever he is there, Nigel invites him to dinner, and whenever Nigel is here, vice versa.

Usually, I cook for Nigel, and spoil him with an elaborate dessert. I love having him sit at my table, and listening to him and Dave discuss business, books, family, and history. They discuss cricket, soccer and wine, too, but those topics don’t interest me much. Nigel is always good company, though he sometimes turns his sharp wit on people we all know, and says the most outrageous things. He makes me laugh. Tonight, we took him out to dinner to a restaurant called The Butcher Shop. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? Not quite as bad a name for a restaurant as the Camel’s Breath Inn but still unfortunate. As it turns out, it is a very good restaurant, very good ambience, food, and service, and, happily for Nigel, a decent wine cellar. They make a hell of a dessert there as well. I can recommend it highly, but make reservations before you go or the wait will be wearing.

We had a lovely meal and a lovely time, marred only somewhat by talk of retirement plans. It’s not that I don’t want these men to retire; they have both worked hard and long and deserve comfortable retirements; it’s just that whenever retirement does come, our dinners together will become a thing of the past. People always say they are going to keep in touch and get together from time to time, but it doesn’t often happen that way. When our friend Bill Hooper retired, he moved to Florida and disappeared from our lives forever; no attempts at contact by us have been reciprocated by him. Nigel will be retiring to England, which is considerably further away than Florida. He won’t be retiring soon, but it is on the horizon, and it makes me sad. I’ve grown very fond of Nigel.

It’s hard to fathom that we have come to that time of life when we are planning to retire. I say “we” because I have a mouse in my pocket; I am already sans employment if not retired, having resigned my associate professorship in April to become a gypsy. But, as Dave said to our son about two weeks ago, in four years we will be 60. That doesn’t seem possible. Dave’s been working for Cubic for 25 years, and that doesn’t seem possible either. I know we are older. I can see it looking at us. And I know we are slowing down, losing strength, beginning to creak and ache but our SPIRITS don’t seem any older. We both still have the same joie de vie that we have always had; we still have enthusiasms and hobbies, skills and pastimes; we still dance to rock ‘n roll, look forward to movies, eat popsicles after dinner until the box is empty and rub each other’s feet. We are youngsters trapped in fading bodies. And we are still in love. I think we are too young to retire. Maybe we should start our own business. Maybe a restaurant? I'm sure we could think of a really horrible name for one.

Happy birthday to my baby sister Susan, born on this day in 1950. You do the math. Love you, Sis.

A Christmas Mish Mash

First, a rant.
You know, I love to shop, and I do a lot of shopping by catalog and on-line.  Every year about this time, I start getting unsolicited catalogs in the mail.   Actually, the deluge usually begins around Halloween, and the first few hundred are actually kinda neat; fun to look at, fun to share, fun to see the innumerable things that are available for purchase, fun to laugh at the pretentious, inflated prices of most of them.  Until this year, no one else I knew seemed to get many catalogs, so it was easy to hand them off.  Even so, by Thanksgiving, I was usually more annoyed than amused at the sheer volume.  This year, however, annoyed does not begin to encompass my feelings.  How about HARASSED?  Or PISSED OFF?  Not only am I being swamped by catalogs, but so are my friends- most getting catalogs for the first time.  They are a bit bemused about it, but I am PISSED OFF!  WHY is it possible for Land’s End, for example, to spend next to nothing  inundating me with catalogs- the SAME catalog, multiple times- while it costs me 37¢ to mail a one-ounce letter?   I jokingly threatened to save all the catalogs that came between Thanksgiving and Christmas and then take a picture of the stack, but within less than two weeks, the stack was already knee-high.  I am sick of merchants, people!  I am sick of Christmas carols before Halloween, I am sick of lugging tons of catalogs out to the street to be recycled, and sick at the thought of how many hundreds of thousands must be ending up in landfills.  I want to amend the Constitution: the Christmas season does NOT begin until the day after Thanksgiving; no merchant can send out more than one catalog a season- and it has to COST THEM to do it.  

And now, for no apparent reason except these things just popped into my mind, Compare and Contrast… or something like it.

Living with one old lady and two cats rather than with two kids and a dog.
I have done both.  Believe it or not, there are some similarities, at least in comparing the old lady to two kids.  There is no comparison between dogs and cats, however, except that they both shed.  Cats have fur balls.  Dog lick their balls.  Enough said.  

• When my kids were living at home, they bickered all the time.  Mama bickers with the cats all the time.  Verbally, it makes the exchange one-sided… but not quieter.  


• Kelly bossed Jake (and vice versa), and Mama bosses Patches.  


• With two kids, there was always some debate about who made the mess (unless I saw it being made with my own eyes).  With Mama and the cats, it is always a given… given a particular mess, I know exactly who made it.  


• My kids didn’t pick up after themselves, and neither does Mama or the cats.


• My kids played with their imaginations, and verbalized their play.  Mama does the same thing, except that she is always pissed off at her imaginary friends and shouts at them a lot.


• Before the kids could drive, I ran Kate’s Taxi Service.  Now, I run Kate’s Taxi Service for Mama.


• I used to live in fear of losing my kids whenever we went shopping.  I have no fear of losing Mama when we shop.  I am inured to it now.  She disappears every time.

One Christmas, Two Locales:
Christmas in San Diego is slightly different than Christmas is Tennessee.  It’s not just the warmer weather; we have lots of green Christmases in Tennessee.  It’s the trees that get decorated.  There is something so wrong and yet so wonderful about lighted palm and eucalyptus trees.  They don’t really look Christmasy, unless it’s in a “Nightmare before Christmas” kind of way, but they are strikingly beautiful.  We got in last night and so were driven through San Diego in the dark and got to see San Diego in all its Christmas glory.  There were fireworks as well, as the Chargers won a game in Qualcomm stadium which is just down the road from our apartment.  We don’t usually get to see fireworks in winter in Tennessee.  There is not as much Christmas carol playing here as there is in Tennessee, and what there is did NOT start before Halloween.  

The apartment in CA and the house in TN
     The apartment is clean, uncluttered and totally lacking in cat hair.  It’s nice to give my clothing a two-week respite from feline shedding every month.  It is noisy here, mostly traffic and car alarms going off, though on the weekends the air is alive with the sound of inebriated twenty-somethings who haven’t yet learned how to drink without getting drunk.  At least they walk home, but they walk under my window, and they usually sing, swear, fight, or screech while they are doing it.  Males tend to fight, vomit and go to sleep.  Females tend to scream, cry, and beat on the sleeping males.  Not much of that going on in my house. My house in Tullahoma is filled with collectibles and furniture and is decorated to the nines for Christmas.  We have a 12 foot tree that is spectacular and decorations in all the main rooms and on the porch.  The apartment has a metal tabletop “tree” from IKEA and two metallic reindeer.  HOHOHO!  All we need is a lighted eucalyptus and we are ready for the holidays.