Cats on Vacation

My friend Swiss Girl loves to travel and has a fun blog about her trips. She always takes pictures of the cats she meets along the way. She just got back from Istanbul so click on the pic if you've always wanted to know...

what Turkish kitties look like! 

My journée

***LOL  I'm SO tired I posted this on the wrong blog. Oh le sigh.***

CATS

- Minion has a chewing fixation. She's tearing up paper now, which is okay, that'll dissolve. She eats our wood baskets--not so okay, I've had to hide or cover them all. Trying to find something chewy for her. The dog chews the vet gave me were too tough, and when soaked too soft. I bought doggy faux-bacon strips, and she worked through a strip in a few minutes--at it up piece by piece. I need something tougher.

She likes to sleep on a Snuggy in her toy box. But then she started eating the toy box, so now the Snuggy covers the wood.

I don't mind if she eats pharmacy bags and amazon receipts. I drew the line at paper towels cause I fear they're less dissloving, more clumping. (She doesn't always ingest, but...)

 

 

When she tries to eat my love letters to Fernando, or my lists of French words to look up, I have to give her her own piece of paper. You can see what she thinks of that.

 

"If you would give me your finger 24-7 this wouldn't be an issue." 

 

HOME

- Fernando accidentally snapped out smoke detector off its bracket last month when trying to turn it off from a nuisance alarm (cooking something smokey.) It was a cheap one installed by the building, and also, I learned, in the wrong place. If you only have one, it should be by the bedrooms. This past week I installed the fancier one I bought, which detects both slow and fast moving fires. Today I bought another of that kind, as well as a carbon detector for my bedroom, which is over the garages where the dudes are always working on their cars and boats etc.

MOI

- Also saw my doctor re various little healthatude things that piled up during the year. I save them up for her. She gave me a dermatologist referral to get a benign but itchy mole removed, and I've always wanted to get some others removed. I something cut them with my nails. She also gave me a pump to clear up my lungs.

- Because of the AM appointment I had to get up early, which means it's 3 AM and I'm dead tired. So maaaaybe I can get back onto a normal bedtime (which for me means 4 AM instead of 6 AM.) If I'm asleep by 4 AM I feel healthy, I sleep well, less headache, I feel "en forme." But later than that and I start to feel crummy and I get headaches. But I haven't been able to break it! Every night I've been getting a surge of mental energy at 3-4 AM that lasts til 5 AM. Then I feel exhausted, I crash, and fall asleep around 6 or 7 AM. Luckily Haley wakes me up at 2 PM like clockwork so it hasn't gotten any worse than that. But I feel shplecky.

FROLICKS

- Tomorrow I'm hanging with my oldy high school friend Banana. (An oldy but a goody.)

So it's a few minutes to 3 AM. I've got to start pretending to go to bed, so I can be asleep by 4. Wish me luck!

Choose Life! (Because the alternative is less than dignified)

If I had to represent the last few months of my life in a metaphor, I'd choose a big pot of stew. Something that takes a long time to cook, that has at times been at a boil, at other times at a simmer, and into which a big variety of ingredients has been thrown. (Vegan ingredients, bien sûr.)

(Moroccan stew!)

Now the pot is pretty much ready. I've straightened all my ideas out, cleared up my head (and heart, where some more personal issues were concerned) and I'm simultaneously energized and... going nowhere.

"Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

Thank-you Stephen Leacock. Just too much is ready all at once. Like the hundred ideas I have to write about on this blog, and each night I'm on the horse, going nowhere.* But here's one attempt.

Here is the full theme to Oprah's new network, written by will.i.am:



It reflects one of my favorite life ideas, that came back to me just this week, from Deuteronomy 30:19...

"I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life." 

My excellent friend Mae asked me once if this means I think death is bad, so I want to be clear that I don't. I think it's natural, and life comes from death. But even at a genetic level we're programmed to fight for life, like cutting of our arm if it's trapped under a boulder, or saving those dearest to us.

Once death comes, okay, it's meant to come. But in the meantime... When we finally put my poor sick Sherringham cat down, he was so weak, he wasn't moving anymore, he wasn't drinking or eating, he pretty much wasn't choosing life anymore, and I was feeling guilty for having waited longer than I should have. But when it came for the pre-needle, the one to relax him, the little bugger fought it! He reminded me of the Dylan Thomas poem, raging against the dying of the light.

So we need to support our bodies. Choose life. This isn't meant as a shaming for those who commit suicide, because it takes a hella lot to get to the point where you don't want to live (boulder boy!) so I have only compassion for those who do. But short of that...

I don't want to say: We need to get out of bad situations, because that's obvious. No one wants to be in them. But we need to get out of the truly mediocre ones. I don't mean every aspect of your life has to SpArKLe! There's a lot of peace and beauty in normalcy, or ordinariness. Eating pasta and watching Jersey Shore. Your job doesn't have to be your dream job to be Just Right, and your home doesn't need to look like Architectural Digest or an Ikea Catalogue.

But sometimes we settle for situations that slowly bury us alive, one shovel full at a time. And you might not realize it until the dirt is choking you. Romantic relationships, poisonous friendships, or even just the non-choices. Not doing the therapy, or starting that class, or making that decision.

Years ago my husband got a coffee at Starbucks with this quote printed on the side, and it reminded him of someone (not me) so he kept it on his bookcase for, like, ever:

"Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever." (Po Bronson)

He never gave it to the person he was keeping it for, but I never forgot it was there. It would occasionally draw me to its side, and I'd flip over the crumpled cardboard and read the quote again, then float guiltily away. Over and over. Like a clean load of laundry I just don't want to fold and put away. ...Okay so sometimes the dirt can be landing on you, you're aware of it, and you still don't get up out of the hole.

Choose life. However you can, whenever you can. When you can muster up a little strength.

Daedalus simply presented Ariadne with a skein of linen thread, which the visiting hero might fix to the entrance and unwind as he went into the maze. It is, indeed, very little that we need! (Joseph Campbell)

And if you can't muster up the strength, I've discovered the secret failsafe built into the universe. If you stop choosing choosing between life and death, blessing and cursing, Life comes along, grabs you by the scruff of the neck...

And dumps you in a big pot of stew.

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*I asked urthalun how she keeps up with her wide blogatude reading and she replied she's a sans-young-kids, doesn't have a job, doesn't clean, and stays up very late. I LAUGHED. I have no kids, no job, don't clean, and was reading it at 5 AM, just before going to bed. :-D There's just no excuse for me!!