Aw...come on...she's such a sweetie.

What was that?

Why did I close the bathroom door behind us?

Oh...you know how dogs are...

it's just to keep that bad dog out.

Ha-ha...you thought it was to protect the dog?

Protect him from what?

Such a sweetie.

I swear she has your name written all over her.

She's so perfect for you.

Look...she's even smiling at you.

What's that you say?

These five bandages taped to my left hand?

I hit myself five times with a hammer...

I'm such a klutz.

Oh, come on...she's just bored.

Why would you think she was sizing you up for the kill?

Oh...the toilet.

Let me explain...

Just ran out of storage space, that's all.

Hahahahaha!!!!!

You thought it had something to do with the kitty?

Just look at that sweet face...

I swear that little darling's falling in love with you.

A growl?  Not a growl...just her quirky purring.

She already thinks she's your little sweetheart.

I'm

going

to

miss

 my

little

*Disclaimer*

I still have my little kitty, although I do have the bandages on my hand from the kitty bites when she went skitzo with the pain after the shock of her ordeal began to wear off...so to preserve the rest of my limbs, she's on pain medication; although it doesn't sedate her as I had hoped.

She began hiding behind the toilet making pill popping impossible, and the need to be able to put her in the carrier on Friday when she goes in to be stitched up was giving me nothing but stress; sooooo...I eased her out of her hiding place by removing the over toilet shelving, then stacking kitty litter bags in the empty spaces and used a cardboard box to gently ease her out of her safe-from-mommy space.  She finally laid on the towel I put down allowing me to pull it out with her on it and plugging up the rest of the area around the toilet with cardboard boxes, litter bags and bath towels.

She made a wobbly escape to the only safe place left...her carrier.  And to think, for a while I thought I was up against an impossible quest.  Sometimes it pays to keep coming up with alternatives until the right one finally pops into ones head.

Is life ever simple?

I'm looking at this little leaflet that was included with the simplehuman trash can I ordered to store the peanuts-in-shell I mostly feed to the bluejays and squirrels.  It doesn't quite hold the entire box of nuts, but I'll live with that cause I need to be able to reach the bottom of the can without having to go to the chiropractor afterwards.  Its purchase is a last ditch effort to restore my barnyard looking kitchen back to some semblance of a lovely place to enjoy preparing and eating a meal. 

Love this brand of trash cans...I found them when the need arose to curb a trash loving junkie hound from eating used kleenx, and scattering the leavings all over the floor as he picked out what he thought was the gourmet of the lot.  I'm trying to multi-task as I attempt to write this post off the top-of-my-head, and lately I've sucked a bit at that crazy idea...so I'm trying to go back and forth...writing a bit, then checking on the potato and onion pierogies that are simmering in the skillet to have with my lunch with a steaming hot cup of Lady Grey tea...mmmmm.

Tools for simple living...as if simplehuman products are the answer to making my life simple.  My panasonic microwave died a spectacular arcing and fireworks death several weeks ago, so I bravely decided to not replace it and learn to live without it...thus the need for the chef's choice electric glass kettle to prevent me from ruining my small sauce pan, or better yet burning down my kitchen.  I've discovered a watched pot never boils, but if you leave the room it bubbles up at sonic speed and cremates the pot innards.

A little 8-inch (believe me...8-inches is little compared to all the food guzzling people do now days) waffle iron now sits beside the glass kettle.  It makes an adorable round waffle that is divided into five hearts.  I fell hook, line, and sinker for that review of the lady saying now she could make those little heart waffles topped with strawberries and sour cream that she loved on her visits to Europe...mmmmm.

Buying the all-clad cookware to pamper myself in my older age, was a luxury time saver as well...the stainless steel clad around an aluminum core is the easiest pan I have ever cleaned.  If anything is stuck to it, soak it a bit and it comes right off.  Of course, it's stainless and stainless steel scratches, so I find myself searching out all the old cleaning products that my mom used, as they were so much more friendly with your belongings.  I already know that I will never have scratch less pots and pans, because a life of trying to make my pots and pans look like they have never been used is pure craziness to me.

I do have the ones I use most sitting out in the open on a hammered steel triangular tower, as they hogged up the cupboard space and all my bake ware was piled shamelessly in a mess on top of each other.  The clatter of pulling a pan out of the stack would send the felines and canine scattering for cover to the bedrooms.  I've been munching on my pierogies and sipping Lady Grey tea...so soothing for my headache that has been hounding me for most of a week.  It eases up...gets ugly...eases up...gets ugly...right now it has eased up; I haven't found that magic combination yet that will send it far away, but I'm trying.

Miss Chloe, dog wrangler apprentice flunky, is much better now and becoming a little testy.  She's tired of living in my bathroom...heck, I'm tired of her living in my bathroom.  Taped the shower curtain to the outside of the tub to keep her from falling in.  Vic's bathroom is Yvonne unfriendly and taking spit baths isn't a way to go for very long.

Her leg reopened because part of the tissue was dead or dying and infection set in.  She's been on antibiotics, and I apply a concoction the vet made to dry up the infection and help the healing process.  She has about a five inch gash on the backside of her leg that is fairly deep and still draining, so she stays in the bathroom until she is stitched up.  She's scheduled for another vet visit next Friday.  If all is still good, then she will be stitched up.  Also suffering a broken rib, she will always sport a nub on her right side after she heals.

I am amazed at how she manages with no pain killers...puts all the bitch-about-the-little-things people to shame.  She moves around quite a bit, loves to be loved, she's started to play a little, puts up wonderfully with all the doctoring I do to her...she's a survivor, and dare I say...the perfect feline.  No ear mites, no diseases, no worms, she clearly was someones pet...how could anyone discard her is beyond my comprehension.  A mother cat and another kitten showed up the same time she did, so I don't know if they are connected or not; I'm not checking out the other two, I don't have the time, money, or room.

So very sad how people discard these poor souls on our park all the time, all the years the park has existed.  So many people with no sense of responsibility or compassion.  These persons have absolutely no place in my life, except for their discards that I have rescued or mourned for.

Doesn't she just melt your heart?

Chloe went to the vet this last Wednesday - Andee on Thursday and he is on a type of thyroid pill to see if it will help kick in the production of the other type of T-cells he needs, otherwise he will be on two types of thyroid pills for the remainder of his life - Chloe again to vet on Friday.  Chloe's visits were emergencies, as there were no last minute openings.  I took her in at closing time, 6 pm, and I had several other people with closing time appointments waiting with me.  An extremely bad week of emergencies and lots of bad tempered people voicing their opinions at having to wait so long...what is wrong with people.  So one has to adjust...doesn't anyone know how to adjust anymore without bitching?

I've worked with the public most of my life and people can become nasty when they aren't number one, so all three days at the clinic I let everyone go ahead of me, no matter what order I was scheduled.  I was told that I was the only kind one of the bunch, the only one that still could laugh and joke after waiting so many hours.  I've had to wait longer than that at the emergency ward at the hospital.  Becoming irate in these circumstances is a waste of good energy.  I have a wonderful relationship with the clinic. ..they're my friends...they're my pets best friends.  I do get rewarded for good behavior...I get discounts and even have had a free visit here and there when I have waited way too long.  Kindness begets kindness. 

    

Well, I've rambled on and on...finished off the cooked-to-perfection pierogies and took the last sip of wonderful tea, and I'm thinking my life has never been simple...never.  Tools for simple living?  Okay...these are my tools for a simpler life...not a simple life...an endless supply of humor, patience that never runs dry, compassion and empathy.  Life is much simpler when one can go with the flow and not dwell on the bumps along the way.  I find that I am happiest when I make others happy.  Really simple.

Andee doing what Andee does best...

         

         

Falling for Fall in My Gardens

I've learned to harden my heart against stray animals...it's been a necessity for our household; otherwise, I would be well known around these parts as the CAT LADY of Upper Antioch Heights; you know, that person who at last count has 268 meowers and a few barkers thrown in for good measure carousing the jammed packed shredded interiors, dining on salmon chunk hor d'eouvres, and lapping up all the white wine in the cupboards before their maid, cook, and poop picker upper is dragged off to the Clover Bottom Estates for the once-upon-a-time-mindful mindless.

Sometimes I slip up...well, more like a voice from somewhere above nudges me and says not this one...you can't walk away from this one...period!  She's little Miss No Name for now...I've never been one to pick a pet name out of thin air in any manner of timeliness.  Sweetheart Jesse was Mr. No Name for two months...see what I mean...I think it has something to do with perfection, you know...that perfect name and no other will do.

I was told a kitten was in the culvert by the office.  It had been seen several times that afternoon, and I did what I usually never do...as cats are dumped at our park all the time by shit people (I'm sorry, that's the only word I have for people like that)...I took a look.  After being coaxed out, it was clear it was injured.  I called my vet...it's 1:45 pm on a Friday and my vet is closed on Saturdays, I'm 40 miles from home, another 20 miles from my vet clinic that can get me in at 5:00 pm...I tell my boss I have to go, take a potty break, and I'm flying home in my little toyota solara with half grown kitty as my very quiet passenger.

A stop at the house for cat carrier, then on through all that city traffic to the vet...couldn't believe I made it there by 4:30 pm.  We think something large with teeth grabbed her on the inside of her left leg and shook the hell out of her.  She had a hole in her upper leg as big as a baseball and her body was covered with bruises.  It was time consuming cleaning out all the maggots and disinfecting it all, and the decision to only partially sew it up to let it drain was made.  I almost got a headache waiting to see if she was feline leukemia free...cause if she wasn't she wouldn't be coming home with me...I had to think of Andee and Zoe.  No leukemia...yeh!...given some fluids, an all fleas drop dead pill, and we made it home just in time for Vic's 8:15 pm phone call from Afghanistan.

She's taking up all my time right now...plus I've had to actually start thoroughly cleaning my house for when I let her venture out of the bathroom, where she is protected for now from the other cats, so she can rest in blissful peace.  I'm not sure at this moment if she will be okay.  She's been up and around, but she not eating as well as I would like to see....time will tell.  She's due again at the vet this coming Wednesday.

My gardens wait for no one...and winter follows fall, so these photos will be seen this winter if I wait until I have time to apply labels and some witty clever commentary.  Enjoy, and I should be back before winter :)

Spider webs in the grass in fog

Vine with leaves of three, four, and five...

Friend or Foe?

Spreading Liatris

Milkweed Bug

Driftwood

Choose which you like best...

   

My Panama Journals...1987-1991 Chapter One

Prelude
This story has taken an odd form for me...written in the third person...more like a novel.  It seems to be the only way I feel like digging up this part of my past.  There were good times, but also troublesome times, both with the world around me and the emotions inside me.  I didn't want to be there this second time around, but I did choose to follow my new husband to his new job, rather than stay behind alone.  It proved to be a decision I sometimes regretted immensely.



Interlude of Discontent - 1987

If one is so unfortunate to have their world capsized during the most inconvenient and non-opportunistic period of said person's downward spiraling existence  it's ever so difficult not to succumb to the pitfalls created when their aspirations and needs are sucked right out of their being leaving only dust in the wake.  She could have been strong...she should have been strong.  Someone responsible for planning and coordinating events in the theater of defense; she knew he would be the best agent for her future in the same realm...she just knew it.  Partners...they looked out for each other.

To find out, after she had stepped off the face of the earth, those decisions of a private nature were pulled out of thin air, only thin air, she felt defeated...like plucking the wings off a butterfly that had come to rest on the outstretched hand of that cruel child.  She mentally beat herself up over, and over, and over again for allowing herself to trust without cleaning out all that excess relationship crap stuffed in her running on empty burnt out head and heart.  She was going to have to suck it up and get on with this detour of her life to the tropics, and let go of the madness that boiled in her veins, realizing she had just chucked her career down the toilet, and her life was completely changing.

Sitting at the dining table, her gaze of emptiness lingered on and on...concrete...all there was to see through those floor to ceiling windows stripped bare of drapes long before she ever moved in, was the windows of the other three apartments and that bloody bare concrete courtyard.  She never opened those windows to step out onto the balcony.  What would have been the purpose...she hated all that concrete and all those windows.  It would have been like being the center of attraction on a stage for all her landlords siblings in the other three apartments to view.

She wondered who was staring at her now as she sat there motionless, staring back through those windows whose reflections prevented her from seeing past the glass.  She knew she was being spied upon, it was mentioned at the dinner party her landlord's son and family graciously invited her and her husband to on the third floor.  They commented on her dinner parties, they knew how many sat at the table and how many bottles of wine were served.  They had no shame in spying, it was all just part of their routine.  All so unfair...hers was a lower apartment...theirs were upper apartments.  They could all watch her life pass by, she could only see glass.

She had not been prepared to step off that airliner on that October day into a life filled with Panama militia carrying rifles at ever corner she maneuvered past.  A dull sense of fear was slowly wrapping itself around her as she walked down those corridors to collect her baggage and check on Michael and Bryon who had been stuffed into the cargo hold for such a long flight from Charlotte to this city of Panama on the Pacific Ocean.  The felines would be whisked off to quarantine, and she with husband and luggage in tow were hustled off to the transient quarters of some army base.

Her life became one indoctrination meeting after another, and then she was expected to gather on the parade grounds and stand at attention while all the beginnings of her, her husband, and all the other newbie's new lives were discussed.  Knowing nowhere to eat that first evening, the first meal of her adventure was a Panamanian version of American pizza made with a tasty quart of salt.

Not wanting to go through another salt choking episode the next evening, the next choice was the military dining hall...bad choice.  She concluded the Panamanian cooks, from which she could not escape, were out to kill her, out to cram a bucket of salt down each Americans throat each meal each day.  Something had to change fast before she shriveled up into a little slice of spicy beef jerky.

Left alone in the military's version of a motel six complete with a free roach...is there any place left in this world roach free she wondered; she entertained herself with reading a magazine, yawning, staring at the four walls, reading the next magazine.  When she couldn't stand it any longer she ventured into the lobby to see if she could survive what was non-interestingly playing on the one television set available.

Dinner was her salvation, when husband and she managed to escape to one of the Panamanian downtown restaurants, or better yet; driving downtown, then on to the shoreline drive to the far away Marriott that was just a bit more like home to her.  She fell in love with the Marriott...deep, deep love with its gardens, lovely rooms, non-salty cuisine, and the weekend Mongolian barbecues.  It was where they moved to the second month, after the cats were released from their torturous prison.

The cats...oh, yes...her cats, her month of sweating a quart of mealtime salt out of her pores in that sweltering humidity every day she visited the vet clinic that contained her two felines in its outdoor kennels of environmental isolation, out in the open, out in the humidity, out in the elements; her Michael and Bryon cringing from the Panamanian keepers who yelled constantly around them, dared to put newspaper down for their potty pans like they were related to dogs, and each day put more cheap food into the bowls that still contained the dried up food from the mealtime before.

Michael

She spent her second, third, and fourth week each day carting in kitty litter to change their pans she provided, opened up canned food they were used to after cleaning out their bowls, and put them in harnesses and leashes to let them escape for an hour into the court yard where she sat on the one lonely bench with her two cats beside her, caressing them with guilt, and gently talking away her hour with them.

Bryon

                                                                             

She and her husband repeated the same thing in the evenings, minus the courtyard meditation; but not minus those four inch long flat as a tongue depressor cockroaches that seemed faster on their feet than the speed of light that was nowhere in sight now.

In her daytime vacations with the feline duel, she would morph into a glob of dripping sweat in two seconds flat, so she daily packed a thick hand towel with her that made its way home after the hour soaking wet.  She began to notice the leaf cutter ants marching in single file across the courtyard up that huge tree that occupied the center, with another line of ants leaving the tree back across the courtyard with a piece of leaf in each of their jaws...such perseverance and dedication.

If an ant can survive that kind of life, surely she could survive her plunge from the privileged into the bowels of tropical sweaty hell.  Surely she could adjust to every sweaty moment of that growing uncertainty that was beginning to plague her that she indeed had made a very grave mistake.  She needed to survive.  It was paramount that she find that one ray of shining light that would be her salvation. 

     

Living on Empty

             A bit of whimsy...nothing more...nothing less...

            *Perfection...More or Less*

            Doesn't that sound a bit,

            well...oxymoronic?

            Perfection more,

            perfection less...

            kind of like no perfection at all.

            You know...

            imperfection.

            Just saying...

            I have absolutely nothing on my mind,

            on my second glass of wine,

            a blank slate,

            and it's way too late

            to hope

            I'll find salvation

            from this idiotic post.

            Beeeeeeelch!!!

            Good grief...

            I'm off to beddie bye time.

            Sleep tight...sleep tight?

            What does that, rated one step

            above imbecilic, phrase imply?

            Is it being duct taped to the mattress pad?

            Mummified in the bed sheets?

            All curled up into a tight little wad?

            Dead to the world and bed bug bites?

            Why am I doing this?

            Why can't I just go to sleep?

            Deep-deep-deep sleep,

            ZzzzZZzzzzzzZZzzz

            O bloody zooks...

            not that same nightmare again!