The Best Laid Plans

Inspirational song: Going to California (Led Zeppelin)

The first time we moved cross country as bright-eyed twenty-somethings with preschooler kids, we hit the highway leading east out of Boulder right around 10 o'clock at night, at least twelve hours past our scheduled departure. That wasn't how we planned it, but nonetheless, that is what happened. It took us forever to empty all of our belongings from our small basement apartment and load them into a Ryder truck. I'm fairly certain that we ended up leaving a few things behind, on purpose, like the first vacuum cleaner I ever owned. The truck was full and we were totally over it and didn't care anymore. It was the first time we did that, but certainly not the last. We've driven away from grills, fire pits, furniture, and most recently three overstuffed dumpsters in the alley behind our house in New Mexico (that's where all city trash pickup occurred in that particular town). Those last few hours, when you're tired, and there's still four or five boxes' worth of random crap spread out over the entire house, are the worst. Just walking back into the house after carrying a box to the truck, to see how much was still there, always made my body release stress hormones in a rush, that spread like a wave of pain over my face and my chest, as if I'd walked through a curtain of hate. As you get closer to the end of a move, tiny inconveniences and undone projects become insurmountable hurdles, and trouble-shooting skills vanish. There's always more to pack, more to load, more to clean. I don't know which is harder, moving out of places you own, or places you rent. I stress out about move-out inspections, convinced that I won't pass them, and I'll lose a damage deposit or not be able to turn in my keys until everything is finished (I really did have to stay an extra day over this once). Leaving the two houses we owned was as big of a nightmare, especially the one we had on the market to sell, that needed to be pristine to show. We ended up renting out both (although we sold the first in time to buy the second). I don't know whether anyone else gets as worked up as I do, just to drive away.

I have been getting regular updates from daughter number one all weekend, as she packs up all her belongings from the condo in Boulder, loads up a rental truck (that we had to persuade her to get--she thought she could just pull a little trailer behind her doomsmobile-style SUV), and follows in her parents' footsteps and abjectly fails to get out of town anywhere close to her schedule. Her plan was to have old college buddies or coworkers or someone help her load the truck, but no one answered the call (except her sister who was able to help with a few big pieces of furniture before she went on her own excursion). So she loaded the truck mostly by herself, discovering how much stuff she actually accumulated in five years of living in a small condo, and watched her deadline to leave get closer and closer, and then farther and farther away in the past. She wanted to be able to attend a family wedding, that was at the perfect halfway point, so she could celebrate with the family one last time before being off on her own in SoCal. She was planning on driving all night, getting a room to clean up and let her animals stretch their legs, and then going to the wedding. When the first plan failed, she was still determined to leave in the morning, and drive like a bat out of hell to her destination, only hoping to arrive with enough time to wash road grime off of her before the ceremony. And then the reception. And then maybe in time to drop off her wedding gift and apologize. Her rental truck was fully loaded this morning, her SUV wheels up on the tow dolly in one shot, and all that was left was to disconnect the drive shaft on the towed vehicle and she and the pets could go. And that's when she realized that the socket wrench and extension tools were packed somewhere under all of that nonsense. And she thought about that lucky break getting the car up in one try. If she pulled it off to go to buy another set of wrenches, she was certain that she would never get it back up on the dolly again, to save her life. So off she walked to the nearest store. New socket wrench and extension acquired, her tribulations had not ended. She spent hours fighting four bolts that absolutely refused to budge. She called me so many times, exasperated. I felt awful that I was here, unable to help, and in my compromised state, unable to think of either a solution or a resource to call. Her entire family was out of state at this wedding. Every time I tried to think of someone to call, the faces that popped up in my brain either didn't still live in Boulder, or never lived there at all. Finally, hotel reservation canceled, she decided it was time for a shower and food, and maybe a nap. She needed to be able to approach it with fresh eyes.

In the time that she rested, her father responded to the bat signal that we threw out. He was able to do what I couldn't, and found someone local to send her way, but not until tomorrow. He tried to play the "I told you so" card with her, like any father would, but I have been firm about not jumping on that bandwagon. There has never been a move that she has taken with her highly mobile family that went off without a hitch. We never leave on time. Not once, not ever. It's not that we don't try, but that we try to do it all ourselves, and invariably things happen. Hell, the last time we left California, my car crapped out its transmission, and we had to stay in a hotel (one room, with two teenagers, five cats and a dog) for three days because we'd already vacated our house (we didn't own that one). If we can't manage a move ourselves, as much practice as we have had at it, I can't expect my baby to pick up a skill she was never taught, and do it perfectly herself on the first try. I just keep telling myself she is learning valuable life lessons now, and all I care about is that she and her three pets arrive safely, whenever that is. Time is relative.

The World Looks Different from Here

Inspirational song: Space Oddity (David Bowie)

I was sixteen the year my cousin came to town to go to the local university. From then on, my habits changed, as my social life took off. A couple of my high school friends and I spent nearly every day at his house, hanging out with him and his college friends. We had big parties on the weekends, and at least once a week fed our nerdy souls with a long running D&D campaign. I started dating a college boy, learned how to drink hard alcohol, and kept a wild girl schedule during those years. One night, early in spring break, we had one of those parties on a weeknight, that most likely ended up with D&D, or maybe it went the other direction. Things ran really late, and I started to get really tired, but I don't think I had driven myself to the party barn, so I had to wait for my boyfriend to drive me home. I eventually gave up waiting, and I stretched out on the floor, along the base of the couch, and went to sleep. Without me nagging him to drive me home, my boyfriend just kept hanging out with our friends, until somewhere around 2 am, when he realized I had been asleep for hours. When I finally turned up at the house, my mother was livid, and grounded me for one of the few (only?) times in my life. The next day, I could barely pick myself up, so I was slow to make my case to my mom, that I didn't stay out on purpose. It might not have been that day but the next when it occurred to both of us how sick I really was. Back in those days, I felt that very few illnesses warranted a trip to the doctor, but that one did. Months and months of burning the candle at both ends left my immune system down, so naturally I contracted mononucleosis. I spent weeks lying around, a month out of school, and closer to three months weak as a kitten.

This week has felt like having mono all over again (without being a skinny little teenager). I even caught myself being afraid of anything bumping into my stomach, like those months in high school, with a compromised liver and spleen. When I got the first occurrence of this infection I have now a year and a half ago, it took me at least four months to get it completely out of my system. Besides not being enthused about going through an extended illness again, I am left wondering, if I had lived this life 200 years ago, what a fey little creature I might have been. I would have been considered that awful word "sickly," and probably not been very long-lived. I think perhaps I should keep in perspective how much I have been able to accomplish than if I had been alive in any other era. The alternatives are a little too depressing.

I am going to keep my chin up and focus on what I can do now. And one of those things is play at Bonfire, around the cool construction I have been forbidden from revealing yet. Too bad I wasn't able to help build anything this time around. Once I'm recovered, whenever that is, I'm sure they will let me play with the power tools too, or at least wield a paintbrush. I will play to my strengths.

I Still Believe in Hopeless Causes

Inspirational song: Don't Call Me a Fool (Charlie Robison)

In all honestly, I very nearly forgot to write tonight. I was so busy having all of my hopes dashed, I didn't pay attention to the clock. The first football game of our season is over, and already I'm having flashbacks to the last few hard years of shame. As I said of the Hello Kitty brouhaha this week, I am no fair weather fan. I will love my Buffaloes in sickness and in health, in good times and bad. But I do still have that hypercompetitive woman inside of me who would like to watch games when we win, especially when it is the Rocky Mountain Showdown, the in-state rivalry between the two big public universities, CU and CSU. My man wrote me when it was over, and said that both teams played a good half, CU the first and CSU the second. That has been the story of the last few years. I want to hope, but I feel pretty foolish doing it sometimes. I guess it's time to take off the school-logo-emblazoned t-shirt and infinity scarf. But I'll be putting them back on next Saturday. And the foolish hope will be back, running through my heart like a 1300 pound female bison stampeding down a football field.

Now that football season is in full swing, I can believe that autumn is right around the corner. I have been desperate for it to arrive. This has been one of the worst summers, on every level, I have ever endured. But its days are numbered, and I'm building up a head of steam to get out and put it to rest in the Park. Brown leaves have been falling on the deck for a couple weeks now, and what was left of my vegetable garden has nearly completely died off. It's time to rip out dead stalks and consolidate what's left to just a few pots. I haven't decided whether to buy mums, to prolong the pain. I surprised myself by watering out front, but the deck plants are still unloved and limp. I may dig up a few of the herbs I like best, and bring them inside, so I can have things like lemon verbena and marjoram a bit longer. The only problem is there is not a single really sunny window in this entire house. The windows that would have given me good light are blocked by large trees or the porch overhang. My options aren't all that promising.

The last decade of being a Colorado fan should have left me numb to these feelings of disappointment. But, alas, here I am, depressed and quiet. Hopefully next week I will be physically improved, because I learned that watching a game on television that makes me clench and squirm in my seat is really stupid to do when I am suffering from an intestinal infection. Or, maybe the Buffs could just win a few games, so I get less twisted up inside. A foolish hope never dies.

Clarity

Inspirational song: Hungry Like the Wolf (Duran Duran)

Up until today, I pretended that I cared about keeping all of my outdoor potted plants alive. I think I admitted to myself today that I'm over it. There isn't any rain coming anytime soon, and there doesn't seem to be any force out there strong enough to make me go out and water anymore. I did it a couple times this week, but today I am willing to let everything turn brown. Will autumn ever arrive? I know the local weatherman has promised meteorological fall starts at the beginning of September, but that means nothing down here in the Deep South. It's supposed to be hot and dry indefinitely, and I'm so over it.

I checked in with my doctor today, and he chastised me for attempting to eat soft foods yesterday. Today I'm back on just clear liquids. I think I'm okay with it, which surprises me. I can tell that I'm really hungry, but every time I try to imagine consuming anything, I am totally turned off by all foods. Lucky for me, there's no one here who is willing to sneak food to me. Dogs and cats just think I'm a big, cranky pillow, and not a one of them is going to bring me anything from the fridge. So I accept my role as one of the couch cushions, and I will go another few days without eating.

Without consuming measurable calories, there isn't a whole lot to power my brain. Writing is quite the challenge right now. I think it's best I quit the field and go searching through the pictures I tried to take of the cats who made sure I was anchored to the couch all day, to see whether any of them are worth posting. And then I'll drift off to sleep, yet again, and dream about being ready to eat something I can't see through.

Better Yet?

Inspirational song: Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Bob Dylan)

As soothing as strong painkillers are when they are really needed, when I am on them, I find myself very impatient for the moment I don't need them anymore. I had hoped to be completely done with them by today, but I've had to take two over the course of the day, and there's a good chance I'll need one before bed. I hope it is my last for this flare-up. I've come to live a much slower life over the last couple years, but the lethargy of narcotics makes me feel like I am wasting my life entirely. I spent too much time asleep today. I was up at a reasonable hour, but by noon I needed a long, long nap. I did make the observation today that this time around is way better, if for nothing else, I am not sharing a hospital room with a crabby roommate who couldn't walk all the way to the bathroom, so she had a potty chair set up next to the curtain, about three feet away from my face. Compared to that, this is a hundred percent win.

In my confinement on the couch, I spent some time searching for the end of the internet. I watched a series of videos from Australian TV, that made me even more impatient for this round of antibiotics to be over. I never liked killing off the good intestinal bacteria along with the bad, and this two-part (plus extras) report on intestinal flora reinforced that for me. Researchers are learning so much more about our microbiome and its health implications than we ever expected there was to know. Actually, let me walk that back. I had an idea that we needed to have a good relationship with beneficial bacteria for a healthy immune system. I used antibiotics only as a last resort, I refuse hand sanitizer out of habit, and I totally let my kids play in dirt when they were little. I've had plenty of people tell me to take probiotic supplements, but I always felt there needed to be more than just a pill. Sounds like research is backing me up on that. I'd already gone gluten free out of necessity. Before I got sick again, I was starting to ease off dairy, too. Now, after the ten days of antibiotic hell are over, I will really have a clean slate. It will be up to me exactly what gut bacteria I reintroduce. I'm kind of looking forward to the challenge of getting it right. When it comes to food, I like the good stuff. I'm totally up for a diet of mostly vegetables, fruit, beans, and peas. I need to read up on animal proteins, and how to get the quantities right to keep the flora balanced. I enjoy a good science experiment, especially when I am the lab rat. Call me weird, and I freely admit that I am, but this sounds like fun right now.

If you're curious what Aussie video I'm talking about, here is the link. I encourage you to watch. There were some new findings and chemistry lessons that were interesting.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/gut_reaction_part_1/default.htm

Sure Enough

Inspirational song: I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) (The Cox Family)

Wow, y'all, this is for real. Sunday night, when the pain first started, I was pretty sure I had the abdominal infection again, but I believed that if I addressed it right away, I wouldn't go through the actual illness. What foolishness was that? I saw my doctor yesterday, and he gave me a couple antibiotics to take, but I was only able to get one set down last night. This morning I had to have a CT scan done, and wasn't allowed to have any more of them until it was over, so it was like throwing those first three pills down a well. I'm trying to catch up now, since I got home at noon, but I can't say the evil little bugs didn't have time to form a defense once they'd seen a preview of the meds I was planning on using against them. I have felt worse all day rather than better. I'm definitely sicker, with a slight fever and a complete inability to keep my eyes open. I just wish I knew what it was about Percocet that makes me so loopy that I wish I could just swing in a hammock for a couple days straight. It makes sitting still feel like being in a boat on an active but not choppy lake.

Getting the cat scan this morning was a couple layers of fresh hell I hadn't planned on. I objected to the flavoring they used in the typical contrast juice, so my only other option was barium sulfate in suspension. The tech forgot to bring me my second bottle of the vile concoction in good time, so she said they were just going to delay my scan by half an hour while I drank the other one. Oh, no, it's fine, sitting here in the waiting room, watching the same five stories on CNN, trying not to vomit barium on other patients, while my belly is trying to rip open. It is awesome. Let's do this all day. I didn't get enough of the nasty drink down by the time they finally brought me back, so they made me sit on a different bench, still drinking, occasionally pacing around to spread the solution past my stomach, for another half hour. Once I was just about done, they brought another woman back, and ran her scan, so I had to wait even more. My veins suck, so it took another ten minutes for them to find a good one and get an IV into the back of my hand, so they could gently push contrast, slowly enough not to blow the vein. All in all, I was inside the radiology clinic for just over four hours, and with travel time, this little jaunt took me five and a half hours. Just so my doc could call me and say, and I quote, "Guess what you have!" (Fearing my appendix could also be included, I said I had no idea.) "Diverticulitis!" (This particular doc seems to have a pretty goofy sense of humor, which appeals to me.) I suppose the comfort to be taken from this is that I was right and I recognized the signs very early. I warned the man that this is a powerful argument on my case that we should not choose a site way out in the boonies for our forever house, more than a twenty minute drive from a hospital, but he seems to have completely ignored that part of our chat. I'll keep reminding him as necessary.

I don't see much reason to stay awake any longer tonight, except possibly to put a little more time in between today's antibiotics doses. Every time I wake, I find a cat sleeping on the pillow I clutch to my abdomen when I feel like this. I'm smarter than I look, as I explained to a certain needy white cat as she strolled across my midsection. I know there's nothing a cat likes more than to step on an injured human. The padding makes it possible to rest. If I can stay awake just long enough to hit the "publish" button tonight, I will call it a successful day.

Not This Again

Inspirational song: Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills (Ray Stevens)

So, I guess there was a little more to my dyspepsia yesterday than just a grumpy sour stomach. Avert your eyes now if you can't handle me complaining about my health like an old woman. I'll try not to use too many icky personal words. Can't guarantee that, though, because I'm trying to rush the blog out now, before the Percocet I just took kicks in. Anything could happen. I'll try my best not to give out my internet passwords and social security number while my defenses are low.

Nearly two years ago, I started having a whole lot of abdominal pain, feeling like I had been gut-punched, but it would last for days or weeks. I was in denial for months that this was a real problem, and I refused to seek medical attention for it. It slowed me down at Christmas that year, and I did a lot of sitting around when I should have been having a good time with my family at my dad's cabin. The next month, on a ski vacation that my man had been trying to arrange for years, first he and then I caught a horrible stomach bug that took us out of commission for most of the holiday with the kids. When I came down with sharp stomach pains at the end of January, the memory of the violent intestinal distress from the ski trip blocked out my memory of the months of abdominal soreness, and the ubiquitous news reports of the Norwalk virus making the rounds convinced me that I merely had another stomach bug, and the absolute worst luck in the universe. I started having stabbing pains one Saturday morning while I was out with ladies from my club, and by the time I was home after brunch, my whole world went to hell. I was just sure it was that virus the teevee people told me about, and I stayed on the couch all of Saturday and Sunday, thinking I just had to ride it out. By Sunday evening, I was dehydrated, smelly, and had given up on wearing pants or brushing my teeth after I barfed. The man was out of town, as he always is when I get sick, so I had to call one of the neighbors to come help me. I knew I was too far gone to be able even to walk to her car, much less sit upright in it to ride to the emergency room, and there was no way I could sit in an ER waiting room and survive. I needed to go in the fast lane, in style. I got my first ambulance ride, pantsless and smelling like death. The radiologist handling my CT scan told me I had "a very angry belly." Gee, I think I figured that one out.

It turned out to be diverticulitis, common among older members of my family, but I might be the youngest to present with an active infection. It took three nights in the hospital and couple quarts of morphine to get me through that first experience (or so it seemed), and it took three rounds of antibiotics and months to heal fully. It had a devastating effect on my productivity, and I completely gave up all my aspirations of leadership in my club. I didn't know which direction the cause and effect went, the stress from the club keeping me sick, or the sickness making me less capable leading the club. Either way, it drained the life out of me.

Last night, I started to hurt again. The infection two years ago was the first thing that qualified as a bona fide 10 out of 10 on the standard pain scale for me in fifteen or twenty years. I got very close to that overnight. I learned my lesson about putting off a trip to the doctor, and I went racing in today. It appears to be the same thing, but we are nipping it in the bud. I am back on antibiotics and pain pills, and I get to spend a few days on "bowel rest," eating/drinking only clear liquids. I've chilled a couple flavors of Jello, and started mixing chicken stock and vegetable broth, and telling myself it's filling. So far, so good. But I have a long way to go before this episode is over. For now, it's time to let the Percocet do its job.

Perfectionist

Inspirational song: You Don't Know How It Feels (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)

What exactly have I gotten myself into? People don't really think of me as hypercompetitive, since I don't tend to be cutthroat when playing games with my friends. I laugh at myself when I lose a week (or two or three in a row) in fantasy football. I clap when other women in my club win hands of bingo, even though I never win myself. I refused to play Monopoly or Risk, even with my kids, for most of the last twenty years, because I hate how they pit family members against each other, and can only be won when some of the players team up against a weaker player. But when it comes to creative pursuits, or feats of academic excellence, I can't stand to lose. I get vicious at pub trivia. I burn up inside with jealousy when anyone else is recognized for drawing, sewing, or designing talent, even though I am entirely confident in my own abilities and don't need emotional stroking to feel creative. I never turned down an interscholastic meet in high school, and I have to actively pull my fingers off the keys when I score better at Facebook quizzes than my friends. (I got a perfect score on a little geography quiz tonight that I thought was seriously too easy, but it just felt rude to say so on my dear friend's post, so I didn't.) I can delude myself into believing that I could perform better than nearly every singer when I am out on a karaoke night. So how do I react when my only competition is myself? It depends on the situation, but I have been known to get super obsessive about beating my own records. I challenged myself to write every day, even when I had nothing to say. So far, zooming up on 500 posts, I have yet to miss. I have made myself open up the computer at the end of every day, and I just start typing. Sometimes I have spent the entire day planning out what I want to say, and sometimes the stream of consciousness takes me places I never knew existed. Today I really didn't feel like writing. I had to spend a lot of time today putting on a happy face that just doesn't fit. I've had to say things are going well when clerks and cashiers and people I don't know from Adam ask me how I am. I've been sore and cranky and dyspeptic. I was a little spacey while driving, and I'm a little surprised I didn't have a wreck. But because I can't break a perfect streak, I had to figure out how to shrug off the bad mood, and continue living my life in full view of everyone. Once I admitted to myself and to my family that I was really just an attention whore (and started swearing that all I wanted as gifts for most holidays was time and attention), and I opened up my life to the public record, I realized I had fallen into a trap. I didn't allow myself room to be anti-social or private. I don't know how to take it back anymore. I'm afraid if I stop for just one night, I'll never write every day again. I'm stuck in a snare of my own making. Ah, well. I will just make the best of it, because I know that I'm my own competition, and that chick never lets up. I have to win.

Reclaiming Territory

Inspirational song: Surrender (Cheap Trick)

Somewhere over the course of this unbelievably crappy summer, I gave up entirely on just about everything. I stopped going outside, and I surrendered the Park to the spiders and the heat. I never got anything edible from my vegetables that I tried to grow, and I've barely even touched the herbs in a month. I stopped clipping the suckers off the stump from the Bradford pear, and now it looks like a chest-high bush. This week the rains finally dried up, and intense heat baked everything. The few containers of flowers that had been holding on are now looking limp and some of them are downright crispy. Inside wasn't much better, with gray clouds of shedded cat hair rolling down the hallway like tumbleweeds, and six months worth of utility bills and mortgage statements obscuring an entire counter, waiting to be thinned and filed. The wall of plastic tubs holding rugs has closed in my living room, making my visual space more confined and oppressive. My mental state deteriorated as the housework fell further behind, a sort of death spiral of depression and clutter, feeding on itself.

It's time to change all of that. I've started to take back some of the ceded territory. I am trying not to think about how much is due to the loss of Cricket and Carlotta, but between them, I've been able to reclaim my master bathroom and the first eight feet of the deck. I put energy into cleaning like I haven't been up for in weeks. The giant stack of paperwork is almost completely sorted and filed. The projects I put off are starting to get scratched off the to-do list. I even found the motivation to start scrubbing baseboards and trim work, so that the paint gleams bright white again. I completely ignored them for months, and although you really don't see them clearly from a standing position, once they are brightened up, it really makes a visual difference in a room. It's like slouching just slightly, not so much that you are slumped over, but just enough to constrict your breathing. Once you stretch and throw your shoulders back and stand up straight again, you realize how much more deeply you can fill your lungs, and you wonder why you let your posture go, even for a moment.

I'm also ready to think about traveling again. I couldn't consider leaving town for the last two months, once Cricket was on the final stage of her illness. I shouldn't have left in June, as bad as she was, but I didn't realize it would be such an awful weight to lay on my friend who came by to feed the cats while I was gone. For months I didn't know whether I would be tied to the house this fall, or even beyond that. For the first time I can begin to look at things that I want to do away from home, and make real plans to go places. I have two short trips in mind, one my annual football pilgrimage and one a chance to see old friends in my favorite big city (DC). Getting out and about would be healing, I think, and I need that after the last year. My world was starting to get too small, and it's time to expand it again.

Promises Kept

Inspirational song: With a Little Help from My Friends (v. Joe Cocker)

I have tried hard to handle things here by myself for months. In the last month, I've had to cop to my limitations and send up the bat signal for help on at least two occasions. My neighbor's son has mowed my grass a total of three times so far, and each time I feel more and more indebted to him. Last night, after Cricket passed, I had to call out for help again. One of my bonfire friends came over today to help me lay her to rest. In fact, she ended up doing all the digging, in the sweltering heat. Fortunately, Cricket's final resting place ended up being in dappled shade during that part of the day, else I'm not sure we could have achieved our task.

Since the late winter, when I first started letting the whole Pride outside, Cricket would immediately run around to the side of the Park where the canna lilies grow. Every time I needed to round them up to go inside, I would collect her last, because I always knew where I would find her. She was there so often, I started asking her whether that was where she wanted to be buried when the time came. I really didn't expect it to be so soon. She seemed so supremely happy there, I had to assume that she really did want to be there forever. Later in the spring, she spent a lot of time hiding in the thicket, but that seemed to be a way to escape from the younger cats who picked on her, ultimately leading to her being granted her own principality upstairs, months ago. I only entertained the notion of placing her in the thicket for an instant. It would have been too hard to dig in, and it was more of a hiding place than a favorite hangout. After Torden died two months ago, and I placed him beside the garage, on the outside of the fence, I started imagining that I would put Cricket down from him, in the next available planting spot, where I could put an American Beauty Berry bush over her, as I put the Rose of Sharon on Torden. (My friend who helped me dig gave me both of these plants as a gift.) I leaned toward using the garage spot, just to be sure the dogs would leave her alone. But this morning, as I made plans and waited for my girlfriend to arrive, the man reminded me of my promise to Crickie to put her in the cannas. We looked at both sites, and my friend agreed, that she should go where she was most happy. She all but asked for it, and honoring her last wish was the least I could do.

After the burial, while I was home alone, I got a delivery of flowers. It took my breath away when I read the card, how understanding was the sentiment, and how beautiful was the gesture. My younger daughter sent her condolences, and asked me to put a rose on Crickie's grave, and a daisy on Torden's for her. And she reminded me that I am, indeed, still a poopyhead. Technically, the flowers that arrived included mums, not daisies, but that was a little creative license at the florist's from what came on the card. They were undeniably beautiful, and as with my promise to Cricket, I did exactly as my daughter asked. And then I went and bought myself some groceries, since I have barely eaten in the last couple days, along with a bottle of red wine, and twelve lottery tickets for the drawing to come within the hour. I don't really expect to win anything, but I felt like buying one for each year she was alive. I needed to do some sort of gesture like that. In between the moment I found her last night, and when I collected her and placed her in the freezer, I also did a little nail art in her honor. It was said recently that if she ever could have signed her name (and we used her official name "Georgia"), she would have made it full of loops and swirls, and she would have dotted the i with a daisy. She was just that much of a girly-girl. So I painted all of my nails bright magenta, and put little daisies on my thumbs and big toes. It seemed like the best way to be able to think about her all the time, every moment my hands were in view. As if I could ever forget her.

The Queen of Cricketstan

Inspirational song: Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles)

I don't want to be here. I don't want to be facing a blank page, trying to figure out what is left to be said about Cricket. I don't want to have another dead cat in my freezer, waiting for me to dig another grave beside my garage. I don't want to be crying like a child every few minutes, until my eyes burn and my head hurts. I don't want to have to spend the next two to three weeks cleaning my house, to remove all traces of her illness, where she pooped on the floor for months, and it seeped between floor boards and tiles before I could find it and scrub it with gallons of sanitizers and miles of paper towels. I don't want to feel relief that that part is over, and I can stop having to clean up poop two and three times a day, sometimes more. I don't want to go through all the stages of grief, until I arrive at the acceptance that she is no longer hurting, no longer scared. And above all, I don't want to have to go through this alone again. 

I've told the story of my beautiful calico before, very recently. She and her sister were abandoned outside, on the doorstep of the shelter, on a cool, early April morning. Someone left the whole litter in a paper grocery bag, and the shelter split the litter between two nursing mothers. When my girls and I arrived a week or two later, we claimed the two of them, eventually reuniting them. I believe names should have meaning, and I gave them names that showed that they survived a huge obstacle and thrived. Even before they were old enough to come home with us, they were named Georgia Pacific and Stone Container, in reference to the paper bag that transported them to the shelter. Nicknames quickly replaced their official names, but we still sometimes called my girl Georgia. People say that calicos are one person cats, and Cricket was entirely my cat. I never doubted for a moment that I was her favorite mama, of the three that she had by the time she became mine. The smug look on her face that she threw at the girls, whenever she sat on my lap, changed our entire lexicon. From the moment I put voice to her expression, the word "poopyhead" became the most uttered word in our house. (The original statement was "I'm in mommy's lap and you're not because you are poopyheads.") 

The last several months have been difficult. I knew Torden was running out of time, even before we moved out here. He was a very old cat and had gotten frail and stiff. He'd already beat the odds by fifteen years. But if anyone had told me even six months ago that I would lose Cricket so soon, I wouldn't have believed it. This blindsided me. I really didn't recognize what was happening to her until it was way too late, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life wondering whether I could have changed the outcome. At this point, I would have had to have read the signs more than a year ago, because she was sick for far longer than I knew. She had already become thin, or at least completely ceased being chubby, by the time my man left in April of last year. I just interpreted that as her becoming a senior, and not needing to carry so much weight. I was so blind.

I have a lot of grieving to do. I am so ready for this annus horribilus to end. 

Why We Didn't Do It

Inspirational song: Warm Wet Circles (Marillion)

One of my favorite people on earth challenged me and the mah jongg master to do the ice bucket challenge yesterday. I had been keeping a low profile on this one, but if anyone could have convinced me to do this, my challenger was she, or so I thought. The MJM and I had been in discussion since last night, trying to decide what to do, and if we were to do a video, how would we do it. Neither of us was particularly afraid of being soaked by icy cold water, but both of us stopped short at the idea of appearing in a video. We are comfortable enough in our own skins, but really, we didn't want to have to see ourselves online, doing this stunt. We got together this afternoon, and sure enough, we were soaked to the skin, but that was because we went swimming instead. Let me explain how we came to this decision.

Every time I have listened to someone make his or her statement before the water dump, they challenge some friends, and they say, "Or you can make a donation." Or. I don't like that word "or." The implied message is that dumping ice cold water on one's head is a less onerous event than making a small donation to the ALS Association. Every speech I have heard so far makes it sound like the donation part is skipped because of the ice water. Even if that is not the truth, I don't like the way that sounds. It reminded me of a few years ago, when all the girls wrote the color of their bras as their Facebook statuses, with the idea that it was "raising awareness for breast cancer." Exactly what did that accomplish? Just because you play a game doesn't mean you are doing anything to solve a problem. People are "aware" of breast cancer. What we need are clear recommendations for how to prevent, detect, and survive it. I understand that ALS didn't have the name recognition that breast cancer has, so to some extent, awareness is helpful. I just feel like the script has gone astray here.

I also have noticed that these videos have been very light on details for where exactly one goes to donate. After conferring with my MJM, I decided our visual response to the challenge would address that. Whether you have been challenged or not, if you want to do something meaningful to help this cause, you can go to the ALS Association website, at www.alsa.org. Be one of the millions of new donors. Or you can be a repeat donor-- the MJM actually donated to this association last year, in honor of one of her extended circle of friends who died from ALS.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find my debit card and make my donation. Feel free to join me. No challenge, no pressure. Just giving you the idea.

Busted Flat

Inspirational song: Me and Bobby McGee (v. Janis Joplin)

Since moving has been on everyone's mind so often lately, when I polled my man and my daughter for suggestions on topics for this evening, simultaneously, on separate continents, they suggested stories of our moving disasters. In a split second I have gone from having nothing to write to needing to pare it down to fit in my standard space. I'm so glad I asked. The sad thing about it is that I asked for things that are funny, because I was tired of writing depressing posts. What kind of freaks are we that when asked for amusing memories, my family members immediately go to "our rental truck is broken and we are stuck in the middle of nowhere for hours" as if that was hilarious?

As often as we have moved, all around the country or just across town, we have only allowed movers to help us out one time, when we moved from a temporary rental house to a newer one 40 miles closer to where the man worked in California. That experience, watching men who looked like they were pulled from a halfway house to spend the day throwing my furniture and boxes around soured me on the experience so badly, I stopped suggesting we hire movers ever again. These men took my full, vintage Danish modern dresser, and rolled it up the stairs when they unloaded it. Rolled it. On purpose. Stood it on one side, then flipped it on its top, then stood it on the other end, and finally landed it on its feet at the top of the stairs. If I had been in any shape to argue, I would have let them have it. But I woke that morning with food poisoning, and very nearly had to miss the entire experience. I almost wish I had. Moving stresses me out, and I have often been at my lowest points as we hit the road. The first time we left California, I had the worst bout of flu I have ever experienced, and I was barely functional as we pulled out of the driveway in Santa Barbara county. By the time we hit Burbank, my fever broke (after about six days with one), but I still felt totally wretched. It was evening, and the plan was to make it to Barstow and find a hotel as soon as we peeled off on the 40. We had not done our homework, and didn't know that there are no hotels on the 40 at that point, and so we just kept driving, farther and farther into the desert, until we pulled into a tiny truck stop in Needles, and just pulled onto a side street to sleep for an hour or so. I couldn't fall asleep, as exhausted as I was, because so many cars and trucks kept pulling in and out of the gas station, making noise and flashing their headlights in my face. I said to my daughter, "Could this get any worse?" As soon as I finished speaking, a noise caused me to look in the mirror, where I watched Berkeley the cat climb onto the deck behind the back seat, and barf right next to the window. Why, yes, yes it indeed could be worse. And this is what my daughter told me to tell you was a funny story from our past. Freaks, I tell you, they are freaks.

That trip out of California got better from there, in a real sense. It was early December, and as we drove through Amarillo, someone had used those fuzzy window paints in a gas station to write "Faliz Navidad," and I got a lovely chuckle at their showy, celebratory illiteracy. A little farther down that road, still in the Texas panhandle, and we approached Groom, where they have a stations of the cross roadside attraction, and a cross that is easily four or five stories tall. Back in those days we used to use little walkie-talkies between the car and truck, and in the dark car, from the radio in my older daughter's lap, we heard the squelch sound and my younger daughter's voice say sweetly, "Somebody big died there." Child always had good comedic timing.

But for all the late night punchiness of that move, at least we made it to our destination on time and intact. My man suggested I write about the times we broke down, and helpfully pointed out that there were only three. Sure, three times that the Budget, Uhaul, or Ryder trucks had major mechanical malfunctions. But honestly, I think he's missing several that qualify. The move from North Carolina to California immediately preceding the December move was a nightmare. The first truck was gas powered, and barely made it up the mountains in North Carolina, and by the time we hit the Eisenhower tunnel in Colorado, it was spewing thick black smoke from the drive train underneath. We spent a couple nights in Frisco, and when the replacement (meatier diesel) truck arrived at our hotel, the Ryder crew backed it up to the old truck, and the man stayed up all night with them moving every single item straight across and stacking it front to back. So much for our careful arrangement to have most needed items where we could grab them first. Two moves later, going from Oklahoma to North Dakota, we hadn't made it out of Braum's territory in Kansas (if you've ever eaten ice cream in Oklahoma, you know what I mean) before the brakes on the trailer pulling my man's truck seized, and stopped us for two nights in the middle of nowhere on I-35, waiting for U-Haul to send a new trailer. The second California exodus gave us three nights in Flagstaff, waiting for a repair to the Budget truck, and if I'm not mistaken, it ended up being yet another transfer of goods, in the middle of a repair shop parking lot, in July. These are things my man considers funny stories, and these are the only big incidents he remembers! Let me see... I believe the first big trip from Boulder to North Carolina involved my van broken down on the side of the highway just past Asheville, while the man kept driving all the way to Fayetteville, before he realized I hadn't been behind him for seven hours. That was the trip that taught us never to travel without electronic communication (and cell phones weren't so common back then). North Dakota to California wasn't so much a breakdown as a spring blizzard, that meant we couldn't go through Denver to see family, and we had to hunker down in Cheyenne for a night (where we're pretty sure the cats were doing swirlies in the bathroom while we went out to dinner), before taking off across icy roads in Wyoming, on our way to Utah. That trip I learned how much I dislike towing a trailer, as I nearly fishtailed my way into oblivion, surrounded by trucks who didn't give a flip that it was my first time out, I had to maintain highways speeds on ice. And I'm thinking the man has forgotten that on our last move, to get here, we hadn't made it an hour out of New Mexico, before the U-Haul trailer got a flat, in the early July heat wave in west Texas. We pulled in to our hotel in Oklahoma City at about 4 am, and were scheduled to have breakfast with my entire family. I didn't know that there was that much coffee in the world, but I drank it all to stay awake with the family.

You know, looking back at this, maybe I don't want to move from here after all. Maybe I can learn to live with the humidity and the spiders. We have some seriously bad automotive juju.

Tough Girls

Inspirational song: Delia's Gone (Johnny Cash)

I had to resort to a murder ballad to help me coalesce all the vague emotions that refused to become a blog tonight. I'm trying hard to come to terms with making the awful decision of whether to force Cricket to give up her valiant fight to stay alive. I am learning every day how little of her personality and mental state is left in that shell of a cat. Her current state is no way to live. But I am not a strong enough person to end it. So I keep waiting, wondering how much more of this both she and I can take. She's like a goldfish, only concerned with the next feeding. I get a glimpse of her old self maybe once a day, and it doesn't last long. Most of my time with her is watching her run back and forth across the counter, sometimes slipping into dishwater or off the edge, completely forgetting that she just ate a mouse-sized lump of wet cat food. What is her stomach telling her?

I need to take back the immediate halo around the house as well. I'm tired of feeling trapped in here, afraid of all the spiders. The news anchors joked about it being spider season last week, and I thought they were dreadfully behind the power curve. It's been spider season here since late June. Carlotta is looking like she is slowing down. Her legs are less golden and more brown now, and her web is much messier than she kept it through July. She was plump after her giant grasshopper meal last night, but still seemingly clunky and slow in appearance. I wonder how many of the new spiders all around are her progeny. But she's not the biggest one of the lot. The monster on the front porch has her beat by a generous amount. And the smaller girls above her net appear to have had a disagreement. I was afraid to get too close, but it looked to me like there was a battle to the death, and the loser's corpse was still in the net.

The two black cats stay very close to me. I begged them tonight to stay healthy for a long time. I'm done with illness. I'm sick of it, so to speak. Luckily they seem spry and active. Athena has turned the concept of the cover monster on its head, and decided that she will kill it at its source. I'm going to have to start wearing steel socks to bed.

I'm so worn out by all this waiting. I have felt trapped in the house as long as Cricket has been in swift decline. Once it is all over, I'm going to need some time away from here. And probably a bottle and a shot glass.

Fighting the Inevitable

Inspirational song: Jump (Van Halen)

I think when you find yourself thinking it's nap time at 8:30 at night, it's time to admit to yourself that maybe you're just tired and you need an early bed. I have been letting my schedule run later and later, and it is now completely out of hand. Last night I crawled in bed after 2, which is average lately, and I read until after 3. Exhausted, I turned out the light, and tried to sleep, but couldn't. Somewhere around 4 I answered an email from the man, and he asked me what the hell I was doing still awake. It's time to reset my sleep cycles. I had gotten greedy about wanting to stay up for email attention, but I'm going to start working my way back to reality now.

I wished I had a waterproof camera tonight. I was invited to swim after playing mah jongg, and the warm water was a welcome relief after playing for a long time, sitting on wooden chairs. The mah jongg master's dog is in great conflict with herself. She is terrified of getting all the way in the pool, where her feet don't touch the stairs, but she has a favorite ball, a hollow skeleton of a sphere, made of squishy rubber. When she sees the ball, she is desperate to get to it, but only up to a point. After an entire summer of training, she will put all four feet on the top stair, and she will dig at the water in an effort to drag the ball to her face, but there is nothing and no one to get her to get an inch farther into that water. She'd have the ball in her mouth, and the master would pull and pull all around the edge of the pool. I held my breath and watched the entire time, thinking that this would be the moment she jumped in after the ball. It never happened. Her self-control was so impressive.

While I wrote just now, I kept hearing a chirping sound. Eventually it occurred to me that it was full dark outside, and that wasn't a bird or a squirrel making that noise. I was just able to make out that there was a grasshopper (locust, cricket, whatever) on the window above my head, whose body was heaving each time it chirped. Two or three chirps after I located it, it jumped away from the window, and that was its undoing. My living room is brightly lit, and the glare on the window is strong, but I can still make out Carlotta, six inches away from the glass. She is eating well tonight, just as soon as she finishes killing the grasshopper who will never jump again. He's fighting it, though.

Plan of Action

Inspirational song: Brother 52 (Fish)

Oh, mother, forgive me for starting off in this fashion, but... Shit is getting real now. I made one suggestion for a place I would like to travel when we throw our whole clan on wheels next year, and I was greeted in response with a set of Google turn-by-turn directions that covered a five thousand or so mile trek from here northward, and then going crossways from New Brunswick to Alaska. That made it suddenly more real to me, to see an actual route. I didn't know whether we had planned to pop into Canada at all, but here is a map stating outright that the man wants to spend months going from one end to the other of it. I have to admit, I find this quite intimidating. It's not like I've never left the country. I've lived abroad as a child, and I've made quick excursions to Canada, Mexico, France, and Great Britain since then. Nevertheless, I feel like I've allowed my horizons to shrink, and this really did frighten me to see at first. I thought about arguing with my man, trying to scale it down a bit. I've spent the last hour or so letting myself dither and panic just a little, and now I'm starting to breathe again. I find that I'm glad I didn't immediately write that email pushing back on the plan. If I let my fear of the unknown rule me, then this year of travel will be doomed from the start. Canada is not some lawless minefield, just waiting to chew me up and spit me out. There will be rugged countryside along the way, sure. But it will be gorgeous, with wonderful people, and I will be absolutely fine the whole trip. I'm not going to starve, I'm not going to freeze. In my defense, with my man behind the wheel, there will be several times when I'm hyperventilating at the driving conditions. In almost three decades together, there have been more terrifying mountain car trips than I can possibly count, with steep drop-offs that start right at the edge of the car, and roads that just crumble into rocky slopes of nothingness. I have lost my acrophobic shit sitting in the passenger seat, wishing I could jump out and run away from the motorized death box, so many times, it amazes me that I am still married to this man. But it will be to my advantage that we will be in a school bus turned RV, and most of the awful four-wheeling foolishness will be relegated to that silly jeep we will be towing, when I can bow out of being a passenger. I've come to terms with most of this plan in a very short time. Now, I need someone to reassure me that the part of this route that involves putting a school bus on a ferry will be okay. Because right now, I am not seeing it.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about thinking over the last few months. I figured out the right path to turn this blog into a long-format book, but I didn't just start writing it front to back. I designated a spiral notebook to be the secret keeper, and for two months I have been jotting down references to scenes I'd like to tell in detail. One or two sentences, or even just a catchphrase, and I made a list pages and pages long, that tells the whole story. I have been promising myself I would start soon to write it all out, but I still struggled with where to start. I finally figured out how to tackle it, where to start unraveling, and tonight, I grabbed a pen and got to work. Even after telling myself that it doesn't have to go in order, much as this blog jumps around from the present to the past to the future and back, I still thought I had to organize before I composed. What utter nonsense. I scanned the list of notes, and I told myself just pick one, put a number by it, and start writing. So finally I did. I chose something that looked small and easy, like the day in fifth grade when I debated with my social studies teacher in front of the class whether the death penalty was an appropriate punishment (at nine I already wasn't a fan of it, but that didn't mean he cut me any slack for being a sensitive little girl), and I thought I'd write a short paragraph, maybe six or seven sentences. I ended up writing all around it too, and in my scratchy, condensed note-taking handwriting (I have different styles for different purposes), I got a good page and a half. It felt almost too easy. So I went digging for another short memory, like the day my grandfather tried to prevent my boyfriend (now the guy I married) from going up to our cabin because of how his long hair offended my grandfather's old fashioned ideas about gender and fashion. The same thing happened, although I felt like that scene is a little abbreviated. I can't decide whether to attempt a third one tonight, but it felt good to finally start making my dreams become real that I might stay up late and do it. The cats are used to me leaving the lights on until three in the morning most nights, so they just deal with it. I've been thinking about doing this for so long. Now I'm actually doing it. I can't let my laziness or self-doubt stop me, even though I know it's going to be an uphill climb. I'm in motion now. I have to keep moving.

Looming in My Living Room

Inspirational song: Too Much of Anything (The Who)

It's not often that I quote other people directly in this space, but I do it occasionally. Today, for the first time, I am resorting to copy and paste to make my point. Last night, in a conversation about the caravan, which happens very often now between the man and me, I suggested that it would be a crucial investment to finally get our own espresso machine to take with us. My way of thinking is that it pays for itself in the first ten trips to Starbucks that we can skip, so while traveling, let's call that three weeks. I was told, and this is the pasted quote: "I don't think you're grasping the power/weight/space issues correctly." The same guy who is very excited to go on a minimally-salaried sabbatical from all of our obligations is telling me it's more efficient to get our latte fixes (which neither of us is ever really going to give up, let's be honest with ourselves and each other) from a retail establishment? Okay, sure, I will have to stock up lots more coffee beans and half and half to make up for what isn't coming from a barista, but it's not like I was going to go without in the first place. There are a lot of tradeoffs I'm willing to make. I can store all of my family heirloom furniture and dishes. I can donate half of my wardrobe to the consignment shop that my club runs, and live in a handful of jeans, t-shirts, and sweatpants for a year. I'm pricing out what I thought would be a cheap set of Corelle dishes, that will be lighter and harder to break on bumpy roads (and which were far more expensive than I would ever have predicted, as I learned tonight), and I looked at enough lightweight stick vacuums on Amazon that a picture of one appears on the top of my Facebook feed every single time I check it. But to imagine that I couldn't find a square foot of storage space for an espresso maker, for when we are camping in some mountainous backcountry is foolish. He wants to be far away from the madding crowd, as the saying goes, so that means one of us is going to be responsible for all the cooking. I think she who will be the master chef will get to select her own tools. (Besides, this is the only way I can guarantee that my kitchen is kept gluten free, and I am safe from cross contamination. I was thinking today, what happens when he cheats and has a piece of pizza when he goes back to his office here, and then unsuspecting, I kiss his mustachioed face? I worry about this.)

It is the story of our lives, whenever one of us points a finger at the other's foibles, we forget about the giant stack of corresponding weaknesses we have lurking in our own closets. Here is the man exposing my unwillingness to travel super lightly, or to forgo every one of my modern conveniences. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I can trim off lately, and I think he'd be surprised at what I'm ready to give up, at least for a year. But I'm very curious... He has talked about selling a few of these rugs he sent home, as if doing so on the road would be preferable than creating a brick and mortar store, as one of my BFFs and I would like to do. At this moment, I'm staring at eight full eighteen gallon tubs of rugs, five full thirty gallon tubs, and two twenty-seven gallon tubs with one monstrously large rug each, plus one nylon duffel bag with the Broncos-colored rug in it. And I have the choice of emptying and re-sorting every single tub, risking contamination with dog and cat hair, in order to fit in the one undyed wool rug that is left over, or heading back to Target for a ninth purple tub. If I am not mistaken, there are three more rugs heading this way, to add to the Great Wall of Carpeting that is taking over my living room. So the question becomes, where exactly on the bus will all of these rugs fit? Does he plan on pulling out all fifteen (or more) tubs every time someone wants to see what we've got? Somehow, that doesn't sound like a workable plan. So let's talk for a little while about power, weight, and space issues, Mr Man.

When I look at these rugs, I think a brick and mortar store sounds so much easier to wrap my head around. That way, they can be displayed flat, in an environment free of pet hair, well lit and with a pleasing ambiance for shopping. But then every time I think about a store, I wonder, do we have enough inventory to support a shop? Should I have him hurry up and buy twice as much, so that we have time to factor into our retail price the cost of his follow up plane ticket to fly back and restock us? It's a perpetual motion problem. And I don't know at what point it all becomes too much. At some point it might cross the line from business venture to hoarding nightmare, and I hope that someone stops me before my toes touch that line.

Pandora

Inspirational song: Just Remember I Love You (Firefall)

Several times this summer, and most especially this week, I let external and internal forces swamp me. The news has been dreadful for months, and it keeps coming in giant waves of badness. I've been locked in an epic battle with the man, that really looks more like negotiations based on us emailing Zillow links, over what our next two to five years will hold. My emotions have been thrown in a tumble dryer, and my heart feels concussed and overheated. So how is it, when life is the most frightening, when I'm sitting with a dying cat on my lap, watching television coverage of a militarized police over-reaction in the heartland, or pondering a dramatic shift in lifestyle and income looming on the horizon, that I feel like just as soon as this crap finishes shaking out, my life is about to get significantly better? Where does this hope come from? I feel like I'm three big steps across a bed of coals, and I just have two more to reach the other side, stronger and freer than ever. Bring it.

I've generally been able to accept the bad times as a necessary corollary to the good. Most of the time, I'm not stuck in a why-me mindset, and instead I look for the lessons in the failures and the redeeming qualities in the situations or even people who disappoint me. I still love my friends, even when they are jerks. I still consider myself an incredibly fortunate person, even when I'm going through long losing streaks. And I believe that there is a great deal of positive energy on the horizon, if we can just survive the horrible news cycle.

I caught an episode of The Sixties on CNN, and watched and listened to a group of counter-culture icons describe how they had so many people wanting to travel from California to a certain gathering in New York, so they took an old school bus, and painted it in psychedelic colors and roamed the country in it. Of course I watched that segment of the show intently, comparing it to our own plans for converting a school bus into a temporary caravan for the Smith Park clan (well, the man and I plus the quadrupeds - Carlotta is not invited). My man has said more than once that he wants to paint the outside of the bus in elaborate, vivid designs, echoing the buses he has seen on his travels around the world. I'm less enthusiastic about that idea. I don't need to recreate the Acid Test during my year on wheels. I'm not out to "unsettle America," but rather to put my own mind and heart at peace. I have suggested I would prefer to design a caravan that is pure American Arts and Crafts movement, as if Gustav Stickley and William Morris designed a Pullman Car. (Yes, technically, Morris was English Arts & Crafts, but go with me on this.) My man is more excited about finding the beauty in the great outdoors, but as an avowed indoor cat myself, I'm determined to bring what I find beautiful with me as my private spaceship.

I don't know when I switched from being upset and terrified that the man wanted to go on the road for a year, to being excited at the freedom, potential for spiritual growth, and danger of it all. But somewhere very recently, no more than a week or two now, I have totally committed to this. I realize that getting my heart set on it means that I risk great disappointment if unforeseen circumstances rip it back away from us. But that is the calculus of opening Pandora's box. There is no telling what will come flying out. Over the course of my lifetime, I have flipped open that lid so many times I've lost count. But never, not once, have I lost hope.

Where Is It?

Inspirational song: That Smell (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

I debated for a couple hours whether to risk the utter mortification that will come with stripping away the facade of Park perfection and revealing the true horror of inhabiting my home right now. Then the professional eater dog came up to where I sat, chin resting on hands, elbows on knees, and she put her mouth within sniffing distance of my face. I released a burst of curse words and loud moaning, and immediately got up to toss both dogs out in the back yard, and I got over myself. It's time to get real.

First, a little backstory. I've always had an incredibly sensitive nose. It makes me a great cook, used to get me teased by my parents and brother when I was little, and once it actually saved my family's lives. The same kid who my dad swore could sniff out the McDonald's when we drove into Munich every time (I still get mad and humiliated when I think of that), woke in the wee hours of the morning in our hundred year old house in Oklahoma, smelling burning rubber. I came downstairs and flipped on the lights, to find a small bath mat had been kicked onto a lit floor furnace, and it had started to smolder. When I tell you I smell something, it's there. It just has to be found.

When we lived in California the last time, I swore there was something awful in our house. For weeks, I swore I could smell something that had gone bad, but the kitchen was clean, the catboxes were scooped often, and all the animals were accounted for. But where my computer was located, at a desk near the kitchen and the back door, kept smelling worse and worse. It started to give me headaches. It hurt the inside of my sinuses, and it made my eyes water. But no matter how much I complained, the response from the rest of the family was always, "No, Anne, just you." One day, my desperate searching turned up something. I had ignored the Little Playmate cooler that had been set just inside the kitchen, leading from the back door, for weeks. My house was generally tidy, but there were a few things lying around, and I just didn't think it was important to run it back to the garage. The closer I got to it, the more pungent the smell, and I gathered my courage and opened it. It literally knocked me to the floor. I picked myself back up and shut the thing, and yelled to the man and the kids, "I TOLD YOU THERE WAS SOMETHING BAD!" On a big grocery trip, more than a month earlier, someone (I'm guessing the man) slipped a bag holding ground beef into the cooler to get it home, and brought it inside. It was skipped when we put everything away. It was the worst, most violently astringent smell I've ever encountered. It was worse than a run of the mill dead animal body, which is bad enough. You never forget something that awful.

I mentioned a couple days ago that I'm building up an immunity to some smells, as I constantly clean up after Cricket on the floor. I still notice when she's left me a mess, but my gag reflex is greatly reduced. I have been noticing something building in the house, and I keep checking to make sure all of the plastic grocery bags of stinky paper towels and barely digested cat food have made it to the outside trash. I'm good on that score. I have been taking the regular trash out even when the bags aren't full, and today I scrubbed the can with the peroxide-based cleaner. I have been moving furniture, making sure there wasn't something under the couch or behind a chair that a cat dragged over and lost interest in. I put my face next to both drains in the sink and sniffed. I looked for a rotten potato or onion in the pantry. I got a coat hanger and tried to fish out anything that might be stuck under the stove. (The big kitty boy is thrilled at the six mousie toys that came out, covered in dust bunnies.) There is nothing in this house that I can find, but I can smell it. No amount of candles, incense, or Febreeze is killing the stink. I am on my last nerve here.

While I wrote, I heard a noise from the chimney, like a shift in temperatures made the metal in the flue expand or contract. I think I need to get a flashlight. I might be on to something. Stay tuned.

Feeling It

Inspirational song: Blowin' Like a Bandit (Asleep at the Wheel)

After a full day to absorb it, no, I still can't help feeling like I've lost a family member in Robin Williams. I think no celebrity death has affected me like this since I was an adolescent and John Lennon was murdered. I may not be howling like I did that night, but I have shed far more than one tear, and I'm still slightly sick at my stomach. Pictures and video of him have covered my television and internet for more than 24 hours, and in every single image, I look back and all I can see in his vulnerable face is the sadness that never left his eyes, even during his manic comedy. I can't see a single smile reaching all the way to his eyes, and that makes it that much worse. I can only hope in death he has found the peace and self-acceptance he never seemed to have in life.

I pushed myself today, and I'm glad I did. After today, I have one visit left with Bones, and I don't expect to see him again after that unless I have a fall or an accident (which I'd prefer to skip, thank you very much). I did more exercises, with heavier weights and higher intensities than I have been doing this round. He was more aggressive with me as well, but his efforts gained me more flexibility than I've had in years. Funny, if you always tuck your legs to one side when you sit on the floor, you tend to stick that way. Maybe generations of mothers were correct after all. But he pushed and twisted and worked out some of the kinks. Now I'm sore, and every time I stand up to clean house, I make it about five minutes before I find myself sitting down again for a little break. I think I'm finally to the point where I can step it up and get back into a more serious weight lifting routine again. I took the last 10 months off, because of everything that happened. I consider it a promising sign that I'm starting to think fondly of the gym, instead of shuddering at the idea of setting foot in that torture chamber again.

Maybe a month ago, one of our closest friends from college remarked that the rains where he lives now are nothing like the violent, dramatic storms of the Rocky Mountains. He's on the opposite coast from me, but I have to agree with him. Most of the storms that come through here are quiet (if often heavy and windy), compared to the electrical storms that would light up Boulder when we lived there (and assumably still do). Tonight was an exception to that rule. Just past full dark, the flashes started, and my giant kitty boy took off for a dark cubby hole somewhere the lightning couldn't see him. They were close and they were loud, and they came one on top of another. I paused my noise-making machine, turned off most of the lights, and listened to the fury of the storm as it rolled over. My skin felt like it was floating off my body every time the ions in the air buzzed in time to the flashes. I probably should have moved away from the windows, like they say to do, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I tried to get a picture of Athena staring outside, or of the round-eyed look of alarm on her face, but as soon as she saw me move my hands, she jumped under my chin to be comforted. I couldn't help but wonder what it will be like, the first time (or the first fifty times) a storm rolls over the top of the bus, with all of us on it, much closer to the sounds of the rain on the metal roof. The cats are going to poo themselves. But if they don't, that storm is going to be a hell of an exciting experience.

I'm Not Sick But I'm Not Well

Inspirational song: Flagpole Sitta (Harvey Danger)

I spent the day feeling heavy and spent after my primal scream last night. The blog might not have sounded like a scream as I unburdened myself, but trust me, on the inside my voice was as raspy and desperate as the Gregg Allman I referenced, or as frantic as Janis Joplin screaming in Piece of My Heart, but still as choked and tearful as Ian Axel crying Say Something. Once I unburdened myself, I went to bed early (1 am is early for me), and stayed in bed as late as I could get away with it this morning. I felt hung over and feverish. I carried the heaviness with me most of the day, and admitted to myself that I felt broken. I can't believe I'm going through this a second time this summer, a second time by myself with no family members to lean on in the house. The stress of dealing with another terminally ill pet has combined with the stress of living alone for so much longer than I bargained for, and the last week has been a major drag.

And then I read the internet. I got the news first from my younger daughter's status, that our beloved actor, comedian, and wild card Robin Williams died in an apparent suicide. I am absolutely crushed, but at the same time, his horrible action makes me realize, I have a lot more coping mechanisms than I was giving myself credit for all day. Yes, this situation I'm in makes me feel legitimately depressed. But I do believe it is situational. I am cognizant that I will not be alone forever. My man will come home, and I will feel much less lonely. Cricket will pass, but I will have had weeks to say goodbye and prepare myself emotionally, entirely different than if she had perished in an accident. Next year will be difficult and frightening for me, if we cut loose our moorings and go full gypsy wanderers, but at the same time, it will be an adventure with the man I love, and that will make it all possible. No matter how lonely, anxious, or even depressed I think I am, I am no where near as desperate as Robin Williams was last night. I'm heartbroken that he felt there was nothing left for him anymore. I don't think a single one of us who read the news a few hours ago wouldn't have been there for him if he could have asked us.

Maybe feeling trapped inside the house was adding to my funk. It poured rain yet again today. I can't believe how hard it has rained, nor how many days in a row. I lived in arid states for so many years, I really never learned how to process this much precipitation. It's humid and stinky and oppressive out there. I am so grateful to my neighbor's son for coming over again today with his riding lawn mower, before the rains came in the afternoon. With everything on my plate right now, having that little act of kindness to help pull away the stress made him my hero of the day. It took him about fifteen minutes to knock out what would have taken me well over an hour, not counting the cool-down break in the middle. If autumn arrived tomorrow, I'd happily wave goodbye to summer. August just makes me ill. A certain soap and candle shop in the mall had all of their fall line out yesterday, when my friend and I went in for a sniff. There might be a couple pumpkin-scented things in a bag on my right, just waiting for the nights to cool down, and my mood to improve. Come this autumn, everything will be all right again.

Palliative Care

Inspirational song: Whipping Post (Allman Brothers)

Oh, Cricket. How did we arrive at this place? With me watching helplessly as your body turns against you, and nothing I have tried is bringing you back from the edge? We tried steroids; we tried antibiotics. We separated you from the younger cats who picked on you, and fed you wet food four and five times day. We even tried an herbal extract and supplementing your food intake with high calorie nutrient pastes. You are disappearing in front of my eyes, and I can't stand it.

You were such a beautiful kitten, and I told you the truth when I said your arrival on the planet saved me. On a Good Friday, a dozen years ago, I said goodbye to my beloved cat Berkeley, who was my baby for fifteen years. On that Easter Sunday, you were born, and a day later you and your siblings were abandoned at the door of the pound, a litter of kittens in a brown paper bag, in the chill of an early April morning. We were so lucky you lived. The day your eyes opened, the first human face you saw was mine, at the very moment I first saw your perfect little face, and we fell instantly in love. While the girls were fawning over your sister, whose gray fuzzy self reminded them of Berkeley, I knew that you, you multi-colored little egg roll, belonged to me and me alone. Of course we immediately adopted you and your sister, and you were so impatient to come home with me. Every day I visited you, every day the shelter was open, you turned your back on your foster mama cat, and climbed the wire of your cage to get to me. They thought we were so funny, sitting on the concrete floor of the shelter, playing together, until it was time for me to go home without you. I was so happy when they relented when you weren't quite six weeks old, and let me take you and your sister home, finally. You were so tiny, and you had me wrapped around your little opposable thumbs. I could be sound asleep, and I could feel you staring at me from the floor, willing me to wake up and lift you to the top of the bed. I should never have started that, because you made me lift you onto the food counter for years afterward.

As a young cat, you were so chubby. You got as round as a bowling ball those first few years, and we thought of you as a soft little dumpling for most of your life. You lived as a pampered concubine for over a decade, your only job to sit on mommy's lap and make faces at the girls when you told them that they couldn't sit on my lap like you because they were poopyheads. As a senior, you started to slim down, but I just thought that you were just getting to a healthy weight. It never occurred to me that you were starting to lose too much weight until a few months ago. I thought your bad attitude was just driven by those other cats who picked on you. How could I have missed all the clues until it was too late? Now you are so frail, freakishly thin, and no food sticks in your body. Neither of us is happy anymore. At least you are willing to come out in the rest of the house again, and not hide in your sanctuary in my bathroom. I spend at least a full hour out of every day cleaning up your messes from the floor. I think I've lost all gag reflexes and I think my sense of smell is destroyed. I get so sad when I pet you and all I feel is your spine and ribs. It breaks my heart to see your fur starting to fall out. I know you are miserable, and I am too. I don't want you to suffer, but I just can't make that irreversible decision. I can't do it, Crickie. I have to wait this out until the bitter end. I think it's going to be soon, but you keep finding the strength to hang in. I don't know where it's coming from. I think you need to come to terms with what is happening. You need to stop putting yourself through this. It's time for us to say goodbye. I will love you forever, Mouse Face. But all good things must end, and the end is coming very soon. Good lord, I feel like I'm dying too.