Call and Response

Inspirational song: Soul Sacrifice (Santana)

Few issues have hit me as hard as knowing that our government has taken thousands of children away from their parents and locked them in cages, in order to punish the families for walking in the wrong spot when fleeing violence and seeking asylum. In fact, our government has been atrocious in the last couple of years, when it comes to refusing to help refugees from all over the world. We are slamming a lot of doors in a lot of faces, and not all of us enjoy seeing that happen. I don't understand how a nation of immigrants (and yes, if your name is Smith, Jones, Miller, Conroy, Andersen, or any other similar name, your ancestors were immigrants here too) can be so hateful towards people who are still trying to come here. It shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be an unnecessarily prohibitive process. It actually has a positive effect on our economy.

But I am digressing. It's the children. This is what is tearing me apart. Children are suffering in order to punish and hold leverage over adults. The toxic stress that they are experiencing is damaging them in the short and long term. It's shortening their life spans and changing the neural pathways in their brains. They will never, ever recover fully from this. It will always be with them. It is state-sponsored child abuse. And for what? Because the current administration wants to deny asylum claims? Asylum is *legal* immigration, but it has been blocked and denied and punished. It has made people desperate, and they are making calculations no parent should be forced to make, whether to risk family separations in the US or returning to the countries they are fleeing, where they are guaranteed to be killed.

This topic makes me so sputteringly angry that I can barely even write about it right now. I've erased more than I've left in so far. Today, I needed to be around people who are as upset as I am, and I went to the local #KeepFamiliesTogetherMarch. I tried to come up with a sign to hold, to express how angry this policy makes me. Nothing seemed right to put on a poster board, and eventually I accepted that holding a sign would have made my hands hurt anyway and sent me home sooner. Instead, I let my shirt do the talking, and I wore a #basta shirt (the Italian exclamation meaning "Enough!") and a couple of pins I picked up last week at the Pride parade, "Love over Fear," and "Vote, F*cker!" I am so glad I went down, even without something to hold. There have been people on this streetcorner for months, every Saturday from 1-2. I've seen them, and there's rarely been more than 6-8 people. Today there were more like 150-200. We covered a full city block on one side, and two large groups on streetcorners on the other side.

Outside of football games, I'm not really good at chanting loudly about anything. I overcame my fear and answered when the call came out "Tell me what democracy looks like," and the crowd responded, "This is what democracy looks like!" There were other chants, but few stuck with me like this one. People are outraged, as am I. I needed to be reassured that we still have the power to change something. It's getting harder to believe that, when I can see the face of a child who doesn't understand why they were taken away from their mother or father, and made to sleep on a concrete floor, in a chain-link cage. This is something I cannot bear, and even I can be silent no longer.

I arrived about 5 minutes early, and already the crowd was building.

Did I Have That Right?

Inspirational song: Cherry Bomb (The Runaways)

What a weird day. I thought it would be mostly a recovery day, after trying to do too much in the heat all week. Or at least, trying to exist at all during the unusual heat that I'm not used to in Colorado in an un-air-conditioned house. I had a massage scheduled, and I spent the morning making notes for the latest story I'm working on, until it was time to go to the massage. I lingered over my coffee, and I selected to take a cool Epsom salts bath to loosen up before I went. I carefully timed my routine. At 1:05, as I was drying off from the bath, about to dress and go, my phone rang. It was the spa, telling me that I was five minutes late, and did I want to reschedule. Uh... I know that my appointment was written as 1:30 in my phone, and I would have had to scroll down to the 30 minute mark in the app intentionally, so I know the mistake wasn't mine. I said no, I didn't want to reschedule and wait a week, I'd just throw on clothes and take the 45 minutes that I could get (for the first time in years, I reserved only an hour instead of 90 minutes, because I was broke while my rentals were vacant). I calculated that it was worth it to take 20 seconds to brush my teeth before I went, but otherwise, I was unwilling to do much to prepare. T-shirt, yoga pants, flip-flops, and out. I didn't even put moisturizer on my face, even though I've done that religiously every day since I was 16.

I zoomed down the street, trying not to drive more than about 5 miles over the limit on my street, but when the super-long streetlight turned green while I was still 3/4 of a block back, I pushed it a little, determined not to waste 5 minutes until it was green again. It's possible that my headlights were fully into the intersection when the light turned red, but no more than that. I went anyway. I cut down the 25 mph street, and managed not to top 35 mph for most of it. When I passed the cop, he was out of his car, giving someone else a ticket. The next stoplight turned green 5 seconds after I stopped at it. I don't know how I got so lucky, but a scant 10 minutes after I hung up the phone from the spa, I was walking in the door, ready to get a 45 minute massage. I announced who I was as I breezed in, and the young woman behind the desk said, "I don't know what happened there, but you were right. Your appointment was at 1:30. As it turns out, his 12:30 didn't show up, so he can take you back early if you want."

So was I lucky? I went from freaked out about missing time to getting 10 minutes for free. Granted, it took all of that 10 minutes to calm my racing heart and settle down to relax my muscles, but eventually I did.

There was haze over town today, probably from fires on the other side of the front range. Even though it was still in the upper 90s today, it felt better than the Easy Bake Oven that we were in over the last four days. I intended to go back out during the afternoon to take care of garden stuff once I got home. I watered the flowers, and then went in to make lunch. Never did go back and plant my new daylily. It wasn't until night was falling that I remembered I needed to pick cherries before they rot on the tree. The limbs are heavy with fruit, and I nearly ruined all the good from my massage leaning over snipping cherries and pitching them into a bowl. When we planted this tree three years ago, I hoped that it would grow big enough to block the streetlight from my bedroom window. Tonight I was especially glad that it was directly under the streetlight. I wonder what people thought as they drove by, to see this woman picking cherries in the dark. I kept expecting a cop to drive by and quiz me, as if I were stealing from a stranger's tree and hoping no one would notice in the dark. I practiced what I would say about why I waited until night to do it. I don't know where the paranoia came from. Maybe a little leftover anxiety from the weird afternoon.

Let Them Eat Cake

Inspirational song: For You (Bruce Springsteen)

The birthday cake was a hit. That was the highlight of my day. I baked it yesterday, and turned it over to my foster daughter to decorate. The theme was a whole host of inside jokes from our D&D campaign and while she complained about it looking rough and amateurish, I thought it looked 10 shades of perfect. It couldn't have been more appropriate. Well, let me rephrase that, because the inside jokes are anything but "appropriate." It was exactly the design we needed for the intended audience. Our friend was pleased and surprised that we showed up to play D&D at his apartment with a cake and a gift (the gift was from my neighbor--my gift was the cake).

I don't have a lot to share beyond that. I'm a little deep in my own thoughts, and there isn't a whole lot to come out right now. No reason to worry. I'm just distracted. And overwarm. It was another record or near-record hot day, and my house is too warm to sleep in right now. So here are my pictures from tonight (and one from yesterday).

For a Friend

Inspirational song: Waiting for a Friend (Rolling Stones)

Ow, ow, ow. Too much of everything today. Too much heat, too much work, too much edema. I'm hot and tired and sore, and my house is ridiculously warm for it being after 10 pm. It's June in Colorado, and it was over 100 degrees as I drove home from Boulder this afternoon, across rural roads. That's just not how this was supposed to work. And it will be just as warm for most of this week. It was a bad day to have ovens on in non-air-conditioned homes, but I did it in two different spaces. I baked a gigantic cake (two different flavors of gluten-free mixes swirled in a 14" round) at home, and I ran the self-cleaning cycle at the condo in Boulder. It smelled too good at home, and it smelled so badly at the condo that it made my eyes water. The sad part is that I had gone there today specifically to make it smell better. After the last tenants moved out, something in the air was stuffy and sour, and it made the whole place smell like an unplugged refrigerator at a very old person's home. We never figured out the source, because there was nothing left in the house except an old doormat. I mopped the floors back to front, I cleaned the bathroom an extra time, and I sprayed Febreeze on all the honeycomb shades and in the cold air return filter (and I ran the fan for hours). Then after I made it perfect, I stunk it back up again with the self-cleaning oven. I left for hours (to bake the cake and dye my hair) and I had to come back early to air it back out again before I met someone there.

The person who has committed to rent the condo is coming from out of state. This person has never set foot in the space, but needs a place to land with a pet, to avoid getting a hotel. I took a few videos, walking through the condo, and texted them out, but still, the condo is being rented out on faith. So my new renter asked a friend to meet me there to walk through, and report back on how it looked in person. I arrived about 20 minutes early, threw open several windows, turned on a couple of fans, and sprayed one last round of Febreeze. Even so, you could still smell the oven just a little bit by the time the friend arrived. I 'fessed up to the source of the fumes, and then took her on a tour. I pointed at everything, made sure all the doors and drawers were opened, I walked her out to the garage and to one of the pools, and I answered all questions and volunteered a few things that she didn't think to ask. I'm fairly certain I passed inspection. The friend said that the place was super nice, and she shared that with my soon-to-be tenant. I was happy that this young woman was such a good friend to scout out the place to protect her buddy.

The cake I baked today seems pretty epic. I don't usually make such large cakes, not since I gave up wheat. This is a chocolate and vanilla swirl, in a brand new large pan. I lined the base with parchment, hoping that it would work as advertised and release easy enough. I was pleased that with the large surface area, the cake came out relatively flat, so turning it out on to a large cardboard round was easy, and I didn't have to trim it to make it flat. The worst part about the whole experience was not grabbing a fork and diving in. Thankfully, I'm not the one decorating this time. My foster daughter will be making it fancy for a mutual friend of ours. We picked out all sorts of colored sugars, pastes, and candles last night. I've seen her design. I am so looking forward to sharing pictures of it tomorrow. But not until then.

I didn't want to be the one to drive the cake over to the kids' house. As I said, I was (am) sore and swollen. But I sucked it up and took it over. My daughter was freshly returned from picking up a friend from the west coast who has come for an extended visit. I haven't gotten to see her since all the girls were in high school, so there will be lots of catching up to do. It will have to wait until we aren't all so tired we can't form sentences, because I'm fairly certain that's where all of us are tonight.

Picture tonight: just like her parents always do, my daughter brought back some pretty rocks from her trip. She gave me one that is shaped like a heart. I had to put it where I can see it on the porch, every time I walk outside. It's too cute.

Cloudy

Inspirational song: What's the Buzz? (Jesus Christ Superstar)

Botox for migraine works reasonably well. It has to be re-done every twelve weeks, but it doesn't last for every minute of that quarter of a year. Somewhere in the last two weeks, the effect stops, and with me, it stops like a light switch is flipped. I'm in the dark phase now, between the end of efficacy and the next chance I have to get re-poked. It's great and all that I am capable of scowling for these fifteen days, but it's terrible that I'm hallucinating the smell of cigarette smoke when it isn't really anywhere near me, and that I'm barely able to form sentences because I'm so distracted by the sensation of every nerve in my body having a surge of electricity all at the same time. Speaking is particularly difficult not just because of the distraction, but because my tongue is actually buzzing. My skin is so sensitive that wearing clothes is an agony, but taking them off is worse. Resting my hands and wrists against the laptop is sending shockwaves down my forearms. In short, this really blows!

I barely slept last night, and after the fourth or fifth wakeup, I stayed awake and read Twitter and Facebook in bed. There was a link to an article talking about all of the various ways lupus affects the body, and I am ashamed to admit, until I read this it never once occurred to me that there was a simple trigger for the "brain fog" and changes in cognitive function: the inflammation in the brain. I read everything I could put my eyes on two and a half years ago when I was diagnosed, but in the grand tradition of "Joe Versus the Volcano," I just accepted "brain cloud" without following up on what exactly that meant. This article this morning also said there was a lack of oxygen feeding the brain, but I didn't quite read whether that was directly a result of the inflammation or a different effect.

That forgetful brain, whether from the gap in Botox treatments or from the permanent brain cloud, has had me kicking myself over and over tonight. I needed to take care of something at the condo in Boulder, after running some errands in town ahead of a friend's birthday (he doesn't read this so I'm not ruining a surprise). I picked up my foster daughter, and convinced her to accompany me while I zipped over to Boulder. We had made it almost all of the way there, less than half a mile from the building, when I suddenly realized I never grabbed the key to get in the door. I screamed at my forgetfulness, and we barely slowed down as I turned the opposite direction from the condo, and looped back around to head back to town. I can't stop calling myself stupid, but maybe I can blame other factors for my brain fog. ("They told you you had a brain cloud, and you didn't ask for a second opinion??")

Uneven Wear

Inspirational song: Tomorrow (Annie)

As it turns out, driving well into June on snow tires was a bad idea. The bad idea was compounded by going five or six thousand miles on those same snow tires without rotating them. I have made several mistakes this year. And honestly, the first mistake was probably putting the damned things on my car in the first place. I think it snowed, what, four times total last winter? I can't remember a warmer, drier winter out here. It was a waste of time and money to swap the tires that were unnecessary for nearly all of the last eight months.

I couldn't reach my all-season tires until this last week. My garage has been stuffed full of lumber and steel intended to be the shed up on the mining claim in the mountains, and the tires were trapped behind all of that. As every single piece has to be carried by hand up the hill, and I have learned that I'm particularly useless as a beast of burden this year, it is taking a long time to empty the garage. I can only hope that by the end of the warm season that we can roll the Jeep back into the garage and have access to the full driveway again.

I took two of the snow tires home after the swap. I let Costco dispose of the two that were on the front. The tread was non-existent on the inner rim of each tire. No self-respecting shop would have put them back on my car next year. I guess I'll buy two new ones and put the old ones on the back in October. Or November. Or maybe I'll just not get snow tires at all this year. Depends on what the long term forecasts are.

Star Lord

Inspirational song: Woodstock (Crosby Stills Nash & Young)

We went to a baby shower today. This future human will be only the second installment in the next generation of my kids' Smith cousins. We do not yet know who he or she (or they--we are learning to expand our pronouns) will be yet. It's all going to be a big surprise for all of us, future mommy and daddy included. This afternoon we learned the potential masculine name set, but I never heard the more feminine version. I adored what I heard, and squealed like a tween girl when I heard it. I might have even hugged myself and swayed a little while I giggled, it was so perfect. I want desperately to tell you, but I think that's giving away too much of a secret that isn't mine to share. Let me just say that the concept of "star stuff" figures in heavily. The entire shower today was star-themed. (Although I can't say that "meteor showers" figured into the puns for the day, now that I think back. Might have been a missed opportunity, but she did quite enough to establish a theme and variations.) One of the future grandmothers (or maybe it was an honorary auntie) started referring to our family-member-to-be as "Star Baby," and it stuck. So we ate star shaped cookies (GF), watermelon, and pineapple, and there was even a star cut out of the rind on the brie on the cheese platter. There were star decorations hanging from the ceiling. But our host, the other grandmother-to-be, managed not to overdo the theme. It was just the right tone.

The games were harder than the typical baby shower games. No "guess the candy bar melted in the diaper" or "cut this ribbon to the length you imagine matches the pregnant belly circumference." This was "here are baby pictures for some of the people present, and all of the names of attendees are listed, so you can't use process of elimination, guess who is who" and a sort of Dating Game like quiz where the pregnant couple answered questions separately, and we had to guess how each of them answered (not what the "right" answers were). I came in squarely in the middle of the pack on both games. Not horrible losses, but nowhere near the winners. I couldn't even pick out the photo out of the siblings that was my own husband's baby picture. (He got mine right, but I wasn't surrounded by four other people who looked like me as a baby.)

I had several moments remembering all of my neices and nephews as babies, contemporaries of my own kids, and wondering how the last 20-30 years went by so quickly. I'm happy and impressed at how well these kids grew up, into caring and confident and truly good adults. All of them are wonderful, in my expert opinion. The next generation will benefit from having parents like this. Mazel tov, to the first nephew I met, and his lovely wife!

(ed. note: I was too busy losing at games and stuffing my face from the incredible cheese tray to take any pictures. The only one I have is the one I submitted of myself for the game. I have seen a different one of me from this sitting, but never before this one. It made me realize just how closely I'm related to my cousin who I hung out with most in my teen years.)

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Love is Love

Inspirational song: Pride (In the Name of Love) (U2)

I don't have a reputation as being overly fond of outdoor festivals. They are too... outdoorsy for me. Festivals also involve a lot more walking around than I usually like, and one way or another, the weather always gets me. It's invariably hot as the surface of the sun with unrelenting UV radiation, or seasonable strong storms blow through and send everyone under cover of tents. Today, I took the risk. I went to an outdoor festival. It was worth it. I went to the local Pride fest, in support of friends and family who place themselves all along the spectrum of sexual and gender identity. Plus, I was there in support of strangers whom I may never meet, whose rights I recognize and defend as fervently as I do my own.

We were supposed to march in the parade portion of the event, but the person who was organizing the banner-carrying and marching contingent of a local tech company, one of our D&D campaigners who asked us to join in as his friends, was hard to find when we first arrived. We slowly wandered through the closed-off street, looking at the booths getting set up, until we learned that the parade had already launched along the sidewalk up Main Street. We walked up a couple of blocks, and met up with the parade as it came back down Main. I didn't chant with them, as the calls and responses were more specifically tailored to people who identify as LGBTQIA some way or another. But I walked and waved a flag, and was there for my friend.

Being in Boulder County, even in a smaller town, this Pride fest was well-attended and cheerful. It was laid-back and homey as a Fourth of July celebration. I ran into friends from Rotary and people I hang out with at political functions. In fact, pretty much all of the local politicians and the candidates I am interested in were there. I'm upset that I didn't see my favorite US congressional district candidate, but I learned that he was there for hours. I felt guilty when people stumped for ones I did not select, knowing that my ballot is inked in and ready to submit, as soon as the office is open so I can get an "I Voted" sticker to wear around. We picked up swag, like stickers and bracelets, and I bought a beaded pin that had colors to represent the asexual point on the spectrum ("Aces"). I also covered my shirt with buttons from a couple spots, and wore rainbow temp tattoos on my cheeks.

There were a lot of people in tutus, a few people in furry costumes, some drag queens, some dancers in ballet costumes or sparkly sequins, but mostly people comfortable in their own skin, wearing t-shirts of all types, with slogans announcing their pride in themselves.

It was plenty warm and sunnier than I should have wanted. But overall I held up well, and man, did I have a great time. So glad I finally put both feet forward in support of my deeply held convictions.

It's Going to Work Out

Inspirational song: It's My Party (Lesley Gore)

Maybe Greg House was right. He said, "Everybody lies." That played out for me this afternoon. I had more than half a dozen people tell me they were desperate to tour the condo that we rent out, and that they were available today to see it. So I made a production out of preparing a stack of rental applications (that I wrote myself, culling the best parts of sample ones online, but leaving out info that I don't want to be responsible for, like people's social security numbers and banking account numbers), bringing my biggest, brightest open house sign, clipboards and pens, drinks and snacks (these for me), a chair, a book, and just in case my last renters didn't leave any, toilet paper. I got there right at 2 o'clock, exactly when I said I would. I set up quickly, and settled into my uncomfortable folding chair, and cracked open Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the first time in at least 15 years. (I bought a softcover boxed set just after Christmas, but had not even unwrapped the plastic until today.) I stood up and wandered around often, to minimize the damage to my body from the hard chair, and went outside a few times to be able to send texts and check the internet for more requests for info on the condo. I had made it to when Hagrid shows up to tell Harry he is a wizard before my first prospective tenant made it through the door, even with all of my walkaround breaks. They were on their way to Diagon Alley before the second and final set of people arrived.

For all of the people who sounded so excited about the property, two applications filled out over a 4.5 hour tour was a bit of a let down. Now, the news isn't all bad. I was also in talks with a young woman who is still out of state, who really, really wants the place, and is willing to start renting on the first of the month so that she can move in during the middle. As of right now, it's down to her and the couple who came in at 6 pm. There are two apps I'm waiting to see, before the Mr and I decide for certain. Even without the overwhelming crush of people I had expected, I'm in a good place. I have been stressed out while only grad students were asking after it, and none of them were even in Boulder yet, and wouldn't be until well into August. I watched the bank account that this rental feeds into get smaller and smaller, and wonder whether I had enough in reserves to make it through the first of month bills in July. Tonight I feel much less scared. One way or another, I'm going to get someone to rent the condo, and it's all going to be okay. Not going to miss a payment on that new hot tub.

I'm going to try again to post a video, one that I took today to show the woman from out of state. I didn't do a lot of stills today, so it's worth a shot. I might even do two of them, if it works. If not, there will be a blank box, and I'll go back and add an old photo from the internet listing. It has been a while since I tried this experiment. I miss my old phone camera that took little gifs that I could upload, and did once in a while.

Pins

Inspirational song: Killer Queen (Queen)

We didn't get a chance to do much for Father's Day with our daughter who lives locally. When schedules conflicted, we decided to punt our plans until today. It was the most logical day to do things together, since today was her birthday. We picked an activity that we haven't participated in lately (for two years, come to think of it), in a location we never tried before. We went bowling at an "entertainment complex" in town.

We learned a few things about bowling in a place that doesn't specialize in it as a sport, namely that the lanes aren't built to competition specs. The first time I tried to roll the ball, I stopped short and nearly pitched forward onto my face. There was a smushed piece of food on the lane (they allowed food service all the way down by the pit!), and I thought that was what caused it. I asked an employee to clean it up, and he did a good job of getting rid of it, but I still wasn't able to slide properly. I assumed it was just me being old and stiff and out of practice. But the other two struggled as well. Eventually I figured out that the approach to the lanes was actually vinyl (while the lanes themselves were wood). They just weren't slick enough. They were also short. We had to start bowling back by the scoreboard control. Halfway through the second game, we got a good look at how the pins reset. They were on strings, and they were pulled up and out of the way. While it might save hassle on pins getting caught in the traditional kind of setter, it means that you don't get the same kind of action that can spin and knock out a split, for example. It was kind of cool bowling together as a family, but I think if we try again, we can go to a real lane, rather than an arcade version.

My arms are tired, as is my brain. If I'm lucky I can fall asleep quickly before it really sinks in how old my daughter is, and how old that means *I* am. The years are zipping by, and I don't want to let that thought gain a foothold on me.

Goodbyes

Inspirational song: Rio (Duran Duran)

As expected, we said goodbye to our little buddy today. I described Rio's origin story in detail yesterday, and predicted that he did not have long left on this plane of existence. It was true. My daughter went home for lunch today, and was able to hold Rio as he died, as if he was waiting for her before he finally let go. We are all sad, but I choose to temper that with being very happy that we got to know him at all, and grateful that he stayed with us as long as he did.

He was born a feral kitten, caught when he was barely two months old, and a right pain in the ass when he was a youngster. He always thought he was tough, but we were onto him from the start. Little wild boy liked to sleep on pillows, and when he thought no one was looking, he liked to nurse on my daughter's earlobe. He also was notorious for biting Cricket on the butt. In fact, that was always my favorite story: I was sitting at my computer in the house in New Mexico, before we split up the GKs, and Cricket was sitting on the ottoman next to me. Rio came up, looked at Cricket and then looked at me. You could see the calculations going on behind his naughty yellow eyes. He looked at her, and he looked at me. And then back at her, and one last time to me, before he lunged, bit her butt, and ran off when she shrieked. He knew exactly how much trouble he would get into, but he did the math and decided it was worth it to bite the butt.

Just like humans have favorite colors, we associated Rio with yellows. My daughter always chose yellow collars for him, as if it were how he preferred to dress himself. I offered to take her to the plant nursery today to pick out a good perennial for his grave, and while she declined, she did ask for something with yellow flowers. I would have liked to put in a forsythia, but the location wouldn't support it. When I arrived at the nursery, there was a giant yellow columbine that looked enviable, but the ones available in pots were much too small for the occasion. Gold coreopsis was everywhere, but it wasn't what I wanted. I finally settled on a daylily, a variety called "Monterrey Jack," with creamy yellow flowers with a rusty orange eye. (I also grabbed a "Judy Judy" for myself, but promised to trade rhizomes with my daughter one day in the future, when the clumps of daylilies are big enough to split.)

We gathered around his gravesite early this evening, and had a small ceremony. We talked about him, and then we buried him, amending the hard clay soil with a little store-bought garden soil so that microbes could return him to the earth, and the daylily would have a better chance at life. The kids had a beautiful boulder to use as his grave marker. It was a lovely goodbye to a truly good friend.

Vigil

Inspirational song: Grandfather's Clock (Henry C Work)

Normally the sing-along song at Rotary that follows America the Beautiful is a light-hearted old-timey song, usually with a verse rewritten to fit about the ideals of service and fellowship of Rotary. Today it was oddly poignant and timely for me, and it hit me out of left field. I almost started to cry halfway through it. It was an old standard I used to love and played often on a collection of 19th and 20th century folk songs, called Grandfather's Clock, about a clock that was intricately tied to the life of an old man. The second verse started, "It rang an alarm, in the dead of the night, An alarm that for years had been dumb; And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight, That his hour for departure had come."

In 2002, we adopted three kittens: two sisters at first, and then a wild boy who was a few weeks younger than the girls. The sisters were Georgia and Stone, who came to be known as Cricket and Smacky as nicknames settled in. The boy was Rio, and no matter how hard we tried to make nicknames stick to him, the only one that stuck was boy, or rather "boi." Together they came to be known as "Godzilla's Kittens," a trio so naughty that we said these would be the perfect pets for the famous destroyer of Tokyo. When my daughters each grew up and moved out of the house, they took "their" cats with them. Older daughter took Smacky, younger daughter took Rio, and I kept Cricket. Four years ago I wrote at length about the heartbreaking rapid decline that Cricket took, and her death at age twelve crushed me. I started worrying about the other two immediately after, thinking that I'd be losing them in short order. They surprised and impressed me, proving to be more hardy as old farts than I could have expected. Smacky is all but toothless now, but she is still the queen of my older daughter's household.

Rio has been cuddled and coddled and loved to pieces by my younger daughter. He always was a skinny, raggedy boy, but over the last year, he started being noticeably frail and deaf. He slept a lot more. In the last month, he has slowed down even more. And this week, it has become apparent that his race is just about run. He made it to 16 years old, which ties the record set by his uncle Torden, who died two months before Cricket did. (Although technically the record-holder is now Smacky, who is slightly older than Rio.)

I went to visit Rio this afternoon. He is resting on a sheepskin and a pee-pee pad, with a blanket over the top of him, on the desk by the window in my daughter's office. He is dehydrated and breathing shallowly--or at least he was at 5 this evening. I told him I loved him, and I thanked him for being such a good companion to my daughter. And then I told him not to be afraid, and that it was okay to let go as soon as he was ready. He was still with us when I left the house. I don't think it will be long now though. I keep checking my phone for a message, and there hasn't been one yet. I'm very sad that it's time to go through this again, but I am so glad that he gave us so many good years, and that we put all that effort into calming down the wild child stray kitten who came to us as a surprise, at a time when we thought we were full up with Crickie and Smacky. He was worth everything. I hope he understands how lucky we were to have him.

Just Another Day

Inspirational song: Breathless (Jerry Lee Lewis)

This dilemma comes up every so often. Is it better to tell pretty little lies and happy stories so as not to be a downer, or do I tell the truth at the risk of sounding like I'm whining when I don't mean to? I'd love to use the distraction of positive spin like I often do, but I don't have it in me today. I felt awful, and I owe it to the pursuit of truth to admit that.

I do not say this to elicit a response of any sort. You are not obligated to say nice things to me. You're not even required to think charitable thoughts. You're totally allowed to say to yourself, "Again? Geez, she's always bitching about feeling bad." I only hope that somewhere in there it will occur to you how much it sucks from this side, and how reluctant people like me are to bring this up. Most of the time, I don't. I'd rather write about the cats or post pictures of my flowers than admit to days like today. For now, I am out of diversions.

I never got out of pajamas today. I stayed in my cushy rocking chair, feet up on an ottoman, blanket on most of the day (thankfully it was cold and rainy). My arms were sore and weak. I fell asleep a couple times. My mid back hurt like my kidneys wanted to register a complaint. And either as a result of being so still, or maybe the cause of it, my heart rate dropped low enough (54 when I measured) to make me feel breathless and uneasy.

None of this is really noteworthy. It's not unusual. Not a reason to call a doctor. Honestly, I hurt too badly to take painkillers, and all I could do was wait it out. Believe it or not, that's the right answer. Just wait. This is what chronic illness is like. In plain words, lupus hurts. When it hits me like this, I don't need anything other than space, and so I took it. Tomorrow could be totally different, but it has a better chance to be an improvement because I sacrificed all of my plans for today.

I took no pictures today. Not a one. I'll make it up later.

Phase One

Inspirational song: Cherry Pie (Warrant)

Last night I publicly committed to my plans to dig up the front yard and replace the weedy grass with flowers and shrubs. Today we took the first step to initiate a course of action. I bought a second small cherry tree from Costco as soon as plants started showing up in the spring. I got a cherry and another nectarine to pair with the one that took off like gangbusters in the back yard. The nectarine was planted more than a month ago, and if it is true that it takes two or more of them in relative proximity to each other to convince them to bear fruit, then it has already worked. The nectarine is covered in small walnut sized green fruits, all fuzzy and full of promise. (Murray needs to get serious about chasing off the squirrels -- it's on him now to protect the yard from them, and he doesn't seem as diligent as Bumpy was.) The cherry tree, on the other hand, stayed in its cardboard box for far longer than it was supposed to. It totally leafed out, and did its level best to thrive even under less than ideal conditions. Now that we have agreed that the next flower bed that we planned will be a full-on berm and rock garden, we decided it was time to break ground.

Mr S-P thought the tree was going almost straight out from the front door. I nixed that idea immediately. From the time the flower bed was conceived, in its reduced footprint, I intended it to go closer to the little spruce tree that came from the mining claim property. The spruce struggled the first two years we were here, losing all of its spring growth last year. We thought perhaps it was water-logged, and we considered raising it up on a berm. I wanted to shade it with the cherry tree, thinking that might make it feel more like the cooler climate where it came from. This year, we haven't been overwatering as much, so the spring growth is looking better. But we still have plans for the berm, so we will need to work out the math for the new topography around that spot. To get it going, he dug out the hole for the cherry, but then we ringed it with temporary flagstone supports, and we amended the soil around it. We bought some annuals (petunias) to cover the soil for the time being, but we need to build up the area around it before winter, so that the roots have enough insulation to keep it warm.

I noticed two things about this latest step: first, the rock ring feels absolutely right, like it was supposed to be there all along. I worried that I'd regret the change, but as soon as I saw the first phase, my stress level went down, like I'd been waiting for this transformation for too long, and was relieved it had finally started. (I say this knowing it hasn't been a week since I agreed that the front grass had to go.) Second thing, I am reminded of the house we had in North Carolina, the first one we ever bought. It had a terrible garage conversion when we bought it, and the room was essentially useless for anything but storage for us. One day while I was working at the library, I got a phone call from then-Sgt S-P. "Guess where I am? I'm in the doorway to our new den!" He had come home from a TDY somewhere, and had a few days off. He took his circular saw, and zipped an opening from the dining room into the crappy not-really-a-bonus room. Once he made the committment, we had to move forward with the remodel. It was a ton of work, but when it was done, it was spectacular. We all loved the room. This first phase in the total overhaul of the landscaping feels just like that. When it's done, I truly believe it will be perfect. There will just be a lot of digging and hauling between now and then.

Change It All

Inspirational song: Long Live Rock (The Who)

Three years ago, it was too soon. I wasn't ready to give up a lawn full of grass. The man wanted to rip out a bunch of it and replace it with something -- anything else. I couldn't come to terms with it. I am not a fan of totally xeriscaped yards. The last place we lived in California was covered almost entirely in lava rock front and back, and I absolutely hated it. I resisted any change until now. After three years of pulling weeds out of the grass (and seriously, there are more weeds than grass in some places now), paying tons of money to water it and it still turns brown, patching holes where Murray digs, and coming to terms with the fact that I live too close to the Sun to be able to mow it without wilting (me, not it), I am ready for something different. I even admitted out loud, in public, in front of strangers, that the man was right to want to pull out most of the grass up front.

We have been collecting small boulders for years, and lately we've been cruising past the building salvage yards for flagstones as well. (It's the time of year people rip out patios, and we are taking advantage of it.) I think we are close to having enough material to start the transformation. The flagstones are mostly destined to expand the patio on the south side of the back yard, once we rip out what was there, and provide a proper base. (Learn from our mistakes: we roto-tilled and then set the rocks down. All we did was grind up weed roots, so there was a smooth, even distribution of purslane. It was awful.) I'm going to start watching those same salvage yards for wood with a good patina to build a pergola over that same flagstone patio, so that it's more accessible to me, but that's a brand new idea, not fully formed yet. Might not happen this season.

The front yard is going to be a larger undertaking. Once the grass comes out, we're going to use boulders to make raised flower beds, in the same style as my Unless garden, but covering much more ground, probably with more and higher levels. There will need to be gravel and stepping-stone paths between the flower beds. I want there to be more space between plantings than there is in the Unless garden, so I might dig a few things out of there and move them around. I bought another cherry tree two months ago, to go near the driveway. We can break up iris bulbs and spread those out too. But obviously I'll be acquiring new flowers and shrubs. I don't know how much will happen this year. It might make more sense to do it in stages. For sure it's going to be a whole different vibe outside, starting very soon.

Fire Pit Friday

Inspirational song: Gimme Shelter (The Rolling Stones)

The sky is full dark, but my friends and I are bathed in the dull orange glow of a backyard fire pit. I suppose we should get as much of this as we can. There's not enough snowpack to see us through the summer and fall (and by not enough, I mean 0-20% of normal over the entire state), and soon all of Colorado will be under a strict fire ban. Not a happy thought.

I did just a little work outside in a tank top and no sunscreen, but I've been as tired as if I attended a double-header baseball game on the summer solstice. The sun is starting to wipe me out even sooner. Another reason to hope for rain and lots of it. Maybe then I can be outside and not feel like this.

I didn't take any photos while it was still daylight, so this is the best I can do for today:

Gettin’ the Band Back Together, Sort Of

Inspirational Song: The Boys Are Back in Town (Thin Lizzy)

After more than a month of delays and last minute cancellations, we finally resumed the primary D&D campaign, the one that Mr S-P moderates. While I made dinner (stir fry seasoned with ginger, sesame, and coconut aminos), the group filtered in and started to review where we left off. I did not remember a single detail of where we were and exactly what we had been doing last. As bits and pieces of the story were told, everyone else chimed in with remembrances as they picked up on it. My neighbor looked at me and asked how they knew any of this. Was it just because they were sober and he wasn’t? I said yes, and for me they are like half my age. Sober and young. I couldn’t compete.

We were supposed to supply up and head out to the next stage of our scripted adventure. I’ll lean heavily on those words “supposed to.” The most outside-the-box thinker in the group immediately threw up a giant detour. I would call it an ad-lib, but he seemed to have this whole script prepared, as if he had been planning it for all of the weeks we were off. It didn’t go as planned. Again, I need to stress my words: It Did Not Go As Planned. Speeches were made, love was unrequited, natural ones were rolled, and long story short, we now have an elf with the head from the original 1950s version of The Fly. We don’t know how long this will last. Could be a day, could be a fortnight. Needless to say, with one of our party horribly disfigured and unable to speak, we did not make any progress on heading out of town to catch the next bad guy. We are debating whether to buy a hooded cloak and a veil, and just tell passers-by that our companion has leprosy. Or we stay in town a day or two, and hope that the magic spell gone wrong wears off. If we stay, my little wizard gnome needs to go wander around and get herself into a mini-adventure, just long enough to gain 70 experience points so she can level up before we go. It would make a big difference in her survivability going forward.

As it is, my foul-mouthed gnome is pointing fingers at the fly-elf, and laughing like an elementary school bully, drawing portraits of his disfigurement to be used as kompromat later. I never said she was nice.

Lives Well Lived

Inspirational song: What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)

Just got home from a late dinner with an old friend I haven't seen in many years. The Mr got to see him a couple of years ago, but it's been much longer for me. This guy was the best man at our wedding, back when dirt was brand new. Maybe a decade or so ago, we would have closed down bars, even on a Wednesday night, but tonight was much more sedate. Life is catching up with all of us. We were careful about our food choices, and our single adult beverage selections were small pours. On the way back to his hotel, we talked about how weird it was that we are now the grownups, that it is our age cohorts who are the business owners, elected leaders, decision makers. For all that we still have those feelings of wondering who allowed us to be in charge of anything, because we are still teenagers on the inside, at least two of us agreed that the place where we are at now is just fine with us. Our old friend said that he believed he has lived his life well. Maybe his fourteen year old self would think he had wasted time or opportunities, but his middle-aged self did not agree. I appreciated his confidence and satisfaction with the cards he has been dealt. And I know he has had to play some really tough hands in the last ten years, even more so than what I've dealt with. I admired the sentiment, and I choose to follow his lead. I'm totally fine with who I am, where I am now, and what it took to get here. I can think back and wonder how things might have been different, but there's almost nothing I experienced that made me who I am, neither challenges to be endured nor fleeting victories, that I would go back and change, given the chance.

All that said, between my small glass of wine and staying out late, I'm not feeling particularly loquacious tonight. I stayed up too late last night, and didn't get enough recovery sleep. I'll leave my above paragraph as inspiration for all of you to reflect over your own life journeys, and exit the stage. Until tomorrow....

DDA

Inspirational song: Living in the Past (Jethro Tull)

A few weeks ago we had a speaker at Rotary who educated us on the intricacies of the three historical districts in this town. There are historically significant residential neighborhoods east and west of Main Street, and then more recently we got our downtown recognized as holding its own place on the National Register. We have landmark buildings that date as far back as the 1870s, but it’s hard to date anything accurately before 1910, when the records building burned.

JC Penney had his first store here—a butcher shop. It wasn’t a smashing success, and as we all know, he eventually got out of the meat business. The original butcher shop location is now a really good gluten free bakery (crazy delicious cinnamon rolls). Penney started his department store business elsewhere. It eventually came back to town, and until the 1980s it was located on Main Street, across from the butcher shop and down a couple blocks. I learned the history of that location today, and its current incarnation was just as cool to me.

Today was Rotary Day Out. What that means is the church where we meet is hosting vacation bible school, so we had to find someplace else to be. This happens every summer. A handful of businesses volunteer to host us, give a presentation about what they do, and they feed us. The location I chose was in a building that is listed as being built in 1910 (the year of the fire), but had water tap permits filed from 1908. A fellow Rotarian and his daughter/business partner have recently opened a specialty kitchen store. They hold cooking classes in a demo kitchen in the back of it. We met there for a lunch of prosciutto wrapped asparagus, salad Niçoise, and brownies. (Wish I could have had a brownie.) There was some amount of chef instruction included, but honestly there was also a lot of chatting at the tables, and I don't remember much about the lesson.

The building owner talked about what the building used to be, like a grocery store, an auto parts store (and there was oil spilled on the original wood floor because of it), the long-term location of the JC Penney's, and until recently, a music store. To put in the kitchen store, they completely gutted the building. He was particularly proud of their decision to remove the built-out walls, and chip away ALL of the mortar skim coat covering the original brick walls. They were indeed lovely. They repaired the wood floors in some key places, but left enough of the squeak in the boards to keep that 100+ year old building feel. He showed off the basement that had a selection of goods from his hardware store, so that people who live downtown don't necessarily have to drive anywhere to pick up a broom or duct tape. He had quite a few things to say about the downtown development authority, city codes, and engineering issues, especially with fire access in the storage area, and how close his three apartment units upstairs in the building were to not being able to have windows at all (for the building being right on the lot line). I love old buildings, and it was hard not to be creepy and stay for hours asking about every little detail.

Plan? Ain't No Plan.

Inspirational song: Can We Still Be Friends (Todd Rundgren)

The television is gonna be on all night again, isn't it? I don't know why I'm actually watching all this breathless news coverage. I don't want to be, but it's impossible to stop. I would rather be doing anything else, and if I'm super lucky, in about 10 minutes I'll be asleep for the night. The fans are finally bringing in cooler air from outside, and my bedroom is less oppressively hot than it has been all day. I should be sleeping, not watching ex-ambassadors and political scientists field time-filler questions from panels of journalists. I did agree with one who said repeatedly it was weird to hear the voice of the North Korean dictator, and I found it even weirder to notice that they referred to him by that title almost exclusively. It reminds me of the new nomenclature for mass murderers. News anchors have learned to call them "the shooter" rather than by name, both to deny them the fame they sought and to lessen the trauma inflicted on survivors and family of victims by constant repetition of names and blasting of photos.

I didn't intend on taking today as a recovery day, but I should have planned on it. I'm sore all over, but not as much as I expected after how hard I worked yesterday to make it up the hill a couple of times. I thought I was going to be doing a lot of computer work, and instead I drove around a little bit, soaked in the hot tub a little bit, put a tri-tip on the smoker, and then fell into a deep, deep slumber for a solid two hours. Good thing that dinner was mostly fire-and-forget. It wasn't so bad that I was unable to watch the clock while it smoked.

I've been trying to plot out the next story that has been burning a hole in my brain. I added two more backstories to characters, but they aren't very fleshed out yet. I need to carry a pen and paper at all times, and maybe get a grease pencil and sheets of plastic to keep by the hot tub. My mind plans and creates better when I'm relaxed, but when I'm relaxing I tend to be reluctant to reach for a writing implement. Maybe one day I'll be okay enough with the sound of my recorded voice to make audio notes, but time seems to be running out for that one.