Hope For the Best

Inspirational song: The Wells Fargo Wagon (The Music Man)

Generally, I try to live very frugally, but in the last week, I've had a few extravagances and indulgences. I'm not just talking about finding myself miles from home, taking a gamble on several expensive gluten-free baked goods from Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and the Diggety Donuts truck that I've been wanting to catch for a year now. (Not kidding, my first donut since August or before, and it was a little gluten-free glob of heaven. My friend had one too, and I think she agreed they were so worth it.) Some of my shopping was, if not necessary, a worthwhile strategical move. There are housecleaning challenges that come with having long-term sick pets, and drawbacks to homes designed poorly for storage and utility spaces. This place barely has functioning closets, and not nearly enough of them, so a utility room with space for a cat box was obviously too much to ask for. It was a trade off I made to get the parkland. Last week I decided it was time to order furniture to remedy that failing, and yesterday the new cat box bench arrived. So far, no takers, but eventually they'll get used to the idea of having their own powder room downstairs. I think I should bug them like they do to me in mine. I'll stop short of trying to sit in their laps while they are in there, though.

Monday I decided to call and see whether I could upgrade my technology a little bit. My satellite tv service has apps I could use to watch on mobile devices, and has for some time, but I haven't been able to take advantage of the services I'm paying for, because I don't have a wired Internet connection in my living room. I had to spend several weeks burning through everything I had saved on my DVR so I could send it back when instructed to, before I would make the call for the new unit with built in wifi. As of right now, I have either watched or deleted all but two episodes of Believe and tonight's Daily Show, so I can swap the receivers. And now I am feeling a huge sense of shame that this is an accomplishment. All I can think is that this is such a first world problem, I need to go do something worthwhile in the world to compensate for my shallowness.

In my first world orgy of cinema, I watched a movie I haven't seen in at least twenty years, that I recorded over a year ago. It was a very early Mel Brooks movie, The Twelve Chairs. I remember loving it the one time I saw it in my youth/young adulthood, but I didn't remember why (other than an incredibly young and attractive Frank Langella). I studied Russian language and culture in high school and college, and this brought back so many memories of all the tiny details I loved. Just hearing people called by their patronyms, or even hearing the word "kopec" spoken made me smile. The cinematography was beautifully vintage, and I wish I had not deleted it before I checked to see where it was filmed. The lyrics and cadence to the title song were instantly recognizable as Mel Brooks' style, and there was a recurring musical motif throughout that was nearly identical to the violin music so pivotal to Young Frankenstein. I need to do a little Googling to see what that melody is. I recorded it off of Turner Classics, apparently, and before it started, the host said that Mel considers this one of his favorite movies he ever made. Having finally seen it again, I can understand why. I might go so far as to add this one to my permanent collection.

Sound and Fury

Inspirational song: What Does the Fox Say (Ylvis)

Sometimes the best part about being at this Park is the sound. I wish I had an easy, surefire way to capture the sounds with high fidelity, to share with you when words aren't enough. There is so much I could add to my stories. But the sounds are hard to predict, and they would be assuredly impossible to capture properly. Today I had one last day to sit with my feet dangling in the mah jongg master's pool, while her very silly dog did anything except her business, and I listened. Our sister developments are carved out of thick, swampy woods, and while my Park has a busy road separating me from the wilds, her house backs up to dense overgrowth. I often hear birds of prey, woodpeckers, squirrels, and other animals creating quite a ruckus, when I'm back there. Today the tree frogs were singing the song of their people. I love being in the audience to these concerts, although I am not ever tempted to rush the stage. I have noticed that there is an inch-thick swinging vine dangling from one of the tall trees behind her house, and I'm suspicious that it is poison ivy. That alone is enough to keep me from wanting to explore, if I were the type to be tempted. The woods are heavy around here, a barely contained jungle just waiting for us humans to turn our attention away for a second. I have no doubt, if the population of humans here disappeared tomorrow, the woods would swallow this neighborhood back by next spring, like we were never here. (Except for all the plastic.)

I have started in on the front beds again, chopping down suckers from the crape myrtles and yanking out weeds. I was diligently applying my energy to the rose garden off the end of my porch, when a commotion caught my attention. It was a bumble bee defending its home against a wasp above my head. A couple years ago I hung a birdhouse shaped like a comical beehive with a bear on top of it, in the crape myrtle closest to the house. My hope was that birds would take up residence and drive the cats crazy as they watched through the front windows. I haven't seen many birds near it, but today I got the impression that a real bumblebee has taken to it. It was upset that the wasp wanted to see inside of it, and it had choice words for the intruder. (All some variation of "buzz you," I'd guess.) It wasn't easy to get my hands close enough to get a good picture, without one or the other thinking I was in the way of their domestic squabble. I think I did well enough.

While I was down there, I also startled a bright green frog, possibly the same one who so sweetly posed for me on the other side of the fence, three feet from where I found him today. And while I was taking his picture, I noticed that the weeds right next to the fence were covered in sawdust. Leaning closer, I heard a distinct chewing sound. I shall be calling Terminix in the morning. I don't know how I'm going to manage to have them there without damaging the bees, but I draw the line at insects eating my damned house.

We must have had another lizard bloom, because the cats are going crazy outside again. I saw an enormous fat tail while I was pruning the roses up front, but I could never get around to finding the front half of that lizard. It was most definitely not an anole. And out back, my giant huntress spent about twenty minutes torturing a stripey blue skink, completely ignoring my demands that she drop it, stop chasing it, stop hiding it with her belly because she wasn't fooling anyone, and leave it alone or I would spray her with the hose while I watered the garden. She ended up damp, and I think the skink ended up dead. She just wouldn't listen.

Keep It Down

Inspirational song: Pride (Robert Palmer)

I'm starting to come to the realization that I have a long way to go. I thought I'd made inroads on ridding myself of the old pain and anger that used to eat me up inside, but I found that it didn't take much to send some of it bubbling to the surface. My poor husband just happened to be the one who was on the other side of the conversation when I was reminded of a long-running injustice (believe me, you don't want me to say more), and there I was, ranting about insensitive things other people said in the past. I suspect he was glad that he had to sign off and go to work. I didn't mean for all of that to spill out, and it was really his bad luck to have to read the baleful cries of my inner child. I hope it wasn't as bad as it seems in hindsight. Most of my rant dealt with my inability to solve a problem that shouldn't be this tough, and the feeling that everyone accuses me of lying when I explain how much I'm trying to do to accomplish my goal. It may take the rest of the night trying to rebury all the frustration and feelings of being judged unfairly.

My doctor called today to give me the results of all the testing from last week. So far every single thing run is showing nothing out of the ordinary, with one exception. I have a significant vitamin D deficiency. I just don't know how that is possible, considering how much time I spend in the sun. I guess I just don't synthesize it like I ought. I'm not looking forward to any kind of supplementation. I'm still fond of the notion that I should be able to get everything my body needs through good nutrition and clean living, but apparently that's too much to ask. My mother suggests getting the gummies version of vitamin D supplements. Yeah, that will make me feel like a grownup. But I'll probably do it.

I finally found a quick and easy way to remove the lizards who come into my house to die in horrible ways. I'm pretty sure tailless lizard number one survived his encounter with the boy cat and his flight through to the front porch on the dustpan (having been swept there with a bathroom squeegee). Tailless lizard number two might not have been found in time. He was pretty limp by the time Athena let me scoop him up. There have been several who seemed to play possum with me, only pretending to be vanquished, so the cats will leave them alone. I rarely find lizard bodies in the places where I dump them, so either they get up and run away or something big is coming along and eating them. I prefer to think that they come out of their little states of shock and go off to live normal, productive lives.

In Order of Appearance

Inspirational song: I Got the Music in Me (Kiki Dee Band)

If ever there was a chance I could conceal my nerdy obsession with organization, I ruined it today. I can't tell you how many hours I spent cataloging the list I keep of the inspirational songs, so that I can have an easier time referencing them. Yes, I said it, I burned hours of good gardening time this morning, putting the running list of the songs I put at the top of each post, into alphabetical order by artist. Alphabetical by song will be tomorrow. But since there are over 370 on the list already, and it's only going to keep growing, this is the best chance I have to avoid repeating myself. Unfortunately, I learned early on that I already did repeat myself, far sooner than I imagined. I was starting to feel so cocky too, thinking I'd made it a year without a duplication. But there it was, staring me in the face--two listings for Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Almost ironic, that my disappointment was because of that song.

I know most people would have considered this cataloging exercise to be torture. I couldn't have been happier myself. I enjoyed deciding that it would indeed be listed as "Lady Gaga" rather than "Gaga, Lady," yet it was definitely "Glitter, Gary." I looked it up to be sure that "Reverend Horton Heat" is the band name, not the man, thus no "Heat, Rev. Horton." I have learned that I used far more Beatles songs that I realized, and far fewer Marillion, which surprised me. I wasn't surprised at all to see how often The Who turned up on the list. Ten times actually sounds like a small total for my favorite band. I can probably count on one hand the number of times the songs I chose were throwaways. I really do consider them an intrinsic part of each post, the soundtrack that should be rolling through your head while you read. There are nights I don't start writing until the late news is almost over, because I have a topic and no song. There are professionals who get paid the big bucks to select well-known songs to accompany movies (I'm thinking of you, Nick Angel), so why shouldn't I take this part of my format just as seriously?

I was born to this level of nerdiness. I couldn't shake it if I tried. Back in seventh grade, I was the flute player who organized the music in her folder in alphabetical order, and the eighth graders who picked on me (first and third chair to my second) would rearrange it just to watch me freak out. In tenth grade, I started a hand-written list of every band I could think of, and two of the best songs they released. I enlisted help from my friends, and I think a few of them enjoyed the thought exercise. I remember the boy I had the hugest crush on that year read over it, and was horrified that I had chosen the follow up single to Twilight Zone for Golden Earring, rather than Radar Love, which at the time I didn't remember was their song. This craziness has only increased as I have aged. My dear friend was over here a few weeks ago, and when we mentioned how much we each love the movie Amadeus, I told her to pop in it in to play while I cooked for us. I told her to find the musicals genre, and it would be in chronological order. She looked at me like I'd grown a second head, when I explained how I'd cataloged my DVDs. It's probably a good thing I didn't need her to help me retrieve anything in the kitchen...

Dropping

Inspirational song: Threw It On the Ground (The Lonely Island)

Usually I stand up for cats in general to people who write them off as difficult or aloof. But today, I'm a bit annoyed, tired of the attitude that my particular Pride adopts. I'm not a neat freak, but I have had it up to here with picking up the same things off the floor every single day. I try to contain my messiness to a few piles of paper, and a scattering of random accessories (hair clips, garden gloves, etc) across a few horizontal surfaces. I am convinced that the old man cat has devoted all of the time he has left on this earth to finding ways to get me to yell at him, not that he could hear me. He follows me around the house, yelling in his deaf Siamese cat voice, and he sleeps only in places where I have my little junk piles, so that he can spend his entire nap squirming and pushing things onto the floor. Like an idiot, I just pick them up and put them back where I had them, and the cycle resumes, Every. Single. Day. He is the only one of the gang who even tries to make it look like an accident. The girl cats grab things with their paws, and intentionally flip them to the ground. "What's this? The cap to the half and half? Ground." I have stopped bothering to look for hair ties on my bathroom counter or bedside table, where I put them when I let my hair down at night. The first place I look, as I'm brushing my hair back into a pony, is the floor, by the toe kick of the cabinet, or just out of view under my bed. I will never agree with people who think cats are aloof, but I'm right there with people who say that cats are jerks.

I need to put out another urgent call for advice on my magnolia tree. Whatever is attacking it has spread throughout the entire tree now. The leaves are spotty, turning yellow and brown, and dropping off in great numbers. I want to save it. It's a huge tree. Please, does anyone have a suggestion for a treatment? Who has experience with diseases or pests that affect magnolias? Or is it just a mineral deficiency?

It was time to prune the first round of spent blossoms off the roses today. It seems like it was just a few days ago that I was squirming with anticipation of the first flowers, and now they're already scattering petals and getting crisp. I thought about collecting the petals, for some crafty reason that I never fully developed, and I started stacking the clipped roses along the rail of the deck. It didn't take long before I found Athena, standing in the succulent bowl, reaching for the collected roses, pulling them to the ground. Thanks, Ewok. Thanks for being a jerk. I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything different.

Air-Conditioned Gypsy

Inspirational song: Going Mobile (The Who)

I had to cave in this evening. I had to go ahead and close up the house and turn on the air conditioner. It's earlier in the year than I would have liked, but since it's not supposed to get lower than the mid-60s at night until late next week, I had two choices: refrigerated air or a week without sleep. Fingers crossed that the a/c isn't already on straight through until October.

Yesterday I told a story that had a glancing mention of the giant van we used to drive when our girls were little bitty. Maybe that's why it was on my mind so much today. We used to refer to it as The Living Room, because it was huge: it had two couches, two recliners, and a stereo. Behind the third row bench, there was a four foot deep storage area, that came in very handy on long drives to those group campouts we enjoyed so much back then. One year we went on a very long drive, from where we all lived in Colorado, through the heart of Texas. To make the trip all in one shot, as broke college (or fresh from) kids do, we piled all of our suitcases, sleeping bags, and soft equipment up to make a rather comfortable sleeping berth for the next driver in the rotation. Trying to sleep in a moving car has always been a tricky proposition for me, because I'm either upright and letting my head flop around, killing my neck, or I'm trying to stretch out in the back seat, and finding that I'm just too tall to be able to sleep in motion like I could when I was a kid. (And of course there are the issues of bouncing, bad roads, loud music to keep the driver awake, and a lack of control over cab temperature.) But on this Princess and the Pea tower of mattresses and (down alternative) feather beds was the best I ever slept in a moving car. I will never miss the gas mileage of that old Royal Barge, nor do I miss trying to park it, but it sure made cross country trips comfortable. Someday maybe I'll drag out the rest of the story of that drive through Texas, of going in circles trying to find an open gas station in Abilene at 2 am, and creepy weirdness that gave rise to the legend of the Zombie Cops of Abilene (at least 10 years before zombies were "cool").

I had an MRI this afternoon. I think I handled it pretty well. One of our best friends, a man of great intelligence and reason, admitted a few years ago that the close quarters of the machine freaked him out far more than he expected. I had no such reaction. In fact, I had a hard time staying awake. They put big over-ear headphones on me, and tuned the music that piped through them to a radio station of my choice, and wedged me in tightly so I couldn't fidget. Honestly, what with the loud music and vibration of the machine, it was like sleeping on that luggage berth in the old van. Halfway through, they stopped, pushed contrast through the IV, and started the machine up again. The radiology tech, a super nice guy, forgot to turn the music back on for the first minute or two, and the whirring, clacking, and vibrating was worse than the first half of the scan. It was more like trying to sleep when a car is driving over a textured highway that is awaiting a fresh coat of asphalt. Now I just have to wait for next week, when I can call my doc and ask for an evaluation of the scan and the new blood test results. I'm sure I can find a way to relax this weekend, to make the time pass more quickly. I'll find some kind of diversion.

Adjust

Inspirational song: Crooked Cigarette (Reverend Horton Heat)

I'm finding myself sinking deeper into an unjustified self-pity, and I really need to slap myself out of it. No one likes a whiner. Most of the things that are going wrong around me are incredibly trivial, and I offend myself for letting them get to me. For example, I stopped at the beauty supply store on the way home, to pick up the chemicals to lighten my hair, and I grabbed some clearance nail polish as impulse items. The nail polish I tried is apparently chemically breaking down, and no amount of top coats I put on top of it can save the lumpy pockmarked appearance. Every time I catch myself obsessing about it, I can't believe how small I'm being. I'm even cranky over the test strip I did on my hair with the color lifter, because it's as blonde as it can be at the roots, but the previously dyed length is staying stubbornly brown. What is wrong with me that I'm letting this bother me? I need an attitude adjustment. I don't have any right to be disappointed with junk like this.

It's possible that I'm less resilient because some of the news today was a bit more monumental, and little of it was any good. This weekend marks the one year anniversary of my husband leaving for his adventure, and when it started, I honestly believed that by now I would be starting to plan for his return. I expected to be panic cleaning the house, making reservations for things to do with his earned vacation, and generally nesting in anticipation. I knew already there was going to be some delay. But now even the known delay was too optimistic. It sounds like there may now be weeks tacked on to the end of the months that were added earlier this year. This isn't any fun anymore. And to be honest, that's almost exactly what he keeps saying, when we think long-term. Terrifying changes could be on the horizon, terrifying because I don't handle uncertainty well. I'm going to be a mess until it's all sorted out, and implemented.

Years and years ago, we used to go camping with large groups of our friends. We had an old trailer that I think we inherited from my grandfather, and we used it to haul things like fire barrels and ice chests that held enough food for dozens of people. One year, we were packing up to leave, after a long weekend of drunken revelry with the gang, and something went wrong with the trailer. I think it was a broken axle or something, probably more serious than a simple flat tire. While I was stumped, wondering what the hell we were going to do, the man just emptied the camping equipment, dividing it between all our friends who had a few inches of car space to spare, and then he enlisted help in flipping the trailer upside down and lashing it to the roof of our full-size van. Our old college roommate couldn't believe how the man just rolled with the punches, quickly finding a work-around for something that would have broken most people (me included), and he didn't even look flustered. I need his calming influence again. Can't he just come home already?