Refrigerator Adventures and Extending the Dream...

A few days ago I used about ½ can of coconut milk to make curry and put the rest in a small round container in the refrigerator so I could make soup today with Thai tom yum (hot and sour) paste.

This morning I suppose I was thinking too much about Christmases past when I made my usual morning smoothie with yogurt, banana, and pineapple juice. It had a wonderful taste that I wasn’t expecting but didn’t think anything about it.

After I finished, I began chopping vegetables for the soup and then went looking for the coconut milk. Couldn’t find it. Got Richard involved tearing apart the refrigerator looking for it (he often moves things around). He couldn’t find it either.

Then I suddenly remembered I had gotten my containers mixed up and had used the coconut milk in the smoothie instead of the yogurt. No wonder it tasted so different.

So I opened a new can of coconut milk, used about ½ can of it, and put the rest in a small round container in the refrigerator.

Now I must make sure not to grab the coconut milk instead of the sour cream when I start preparing for the meal this afternoon.

And rewinding back to Saturday night:

Some young girls dream of being a ballet dancer but never the chance to even try. But for girls in this area who dream of tutus and dancing en pointe, the Children’s Ballet of the Ozarks gives them that chance. We were invited to see the girls next door dance in the CBO performance of The Nutcracker Saturday night.

We went and were very impressed with the entire performance. But what impressed us the most was that CBO has extended that dream to girls who do not have the typical “ballerina body.” Several of the teenagers in the corps de ballet were noticeably overweight. These teenagers will almost certainly never become professional dancers in elite ballet companies, but I liked that these young women are also being given the chance, at least for now, to have a taste of that dream.

And Merry Christmas to you all.

Who Are You?

Well, who are you?
(Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know

I find myself sporadically humming bits of the chorus to the classic Who song “Who Are You” (well, not the bits with the serious 4-letter word).

Much to our delight, quite a few Red Breasted Nuthatches have decided to spend the winter here. We have had the odd one at the feeders on occasion, but never this many. They are just adorable, and relatively fearless. I had one land on the feeder while I was still hanging it up -- I have to bring the ones that hang in front of the window where I work in at night because of raccoons. They talk to each other with their high-pitched “tinny yank-yank.” Unfortunately, nice picture window in Richard's office through which I have have the best chance to take a good picture of birds at the feeder is cracked and has become fogged. Pictures are not turning out.

Which is unfortunate because I could have used a picture to help figure out…

The Mystery Bird.

Husband and I spent probably 20 minutes or so the other day peering out the window at the suet feeder waiting for a bird to show up that we have never seen here before. He saw it first and alerted me so I joined him at the window with my trusty Peterson Field Guide.

This little one is a yellow/olive green in color, no wing bars, and a faint yellow eye stripe. There are 2 pages in the bird book of "Confusing Fall Warblers," and this one certainly was confusing. We finally decided it was a female Wilson's warbler, but questions remain.

Sometimes birds we have never seen before will show up for a day or two and then we never see them again. One can only spend so much time trying to figure these things out before you have to stop.

And then there is a Mystery Person.

My mom gave me the National Gallery of Art “Book of Days” early in the 1990s, but I had never really used it, so the entries for most days were blank. I decided last year in January to write a scripture verse every day from my daily reading. And as I moved into December I saw that on December 13 I had made a note to send Christmas cards, with a short list of people. Among those on the list was someone named Cody Davis.

Who?? I don’t have a Cody Davis in my address book. I have no clue who this person is. Of course I plugged his name in at DuckDuckGo to see if the results would ring any bells.  No bells are ringing. Cody Davis is a football player and seems to be a very decent man for a professional athlete. But no, I would not have sent him a card.

So again, I am left pondering “Who are you?”

Resemblances

“It was fascinating the way children grew features, morphing in and out of their parents’ likenesses in genetic peakaboo.”

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D
Nichole Bernier

Our dad died in November last year a few days before his 93rd birthday. He would have been 94 years old this year.

So 90 years ago (!) this picture was taken of him in on his 4th birthday (if I have counted the candles correctly).

 It is one of the few pictures we have of him as a young child.

Here is another one when I suppose he was about 1 year old.

Sometime in late summer of last year, my brother’s daughter gave birth to her second child, a boy.

This picture was from the invitation for his 1-year-old birthday party in September.

The second picture was taken with his sister for Halloween.




He has light hair and our dad did not, but aside from that, two of his great aunts (my sister and I) can really see a resemblance to our dad when he was that age. Or perhaps that is just what we want to see.

At any rate, it will be fascinating to see how his features morph as he grows – whether he will come to more and more resemble “our branch” of the tree or perhaps be a clever blend of all the different families that are in his genetic pool (and their gene pool is definitely interesting, including African ancestors, which is a topic for another time.)

We’ll just have to wait and see.

P.S. The sun has gone down here in south central Missouri on this Thanksgiving Day. I hope you all had a lovely day enjoying the company of friends or family, or both. We certainly did.

Starting Over

In the fall of 2011 we arranged for the city to plant a memorial tree—a tulip poplar— in the park, and the tree was planted in April 2012.  A few days later, another memorial tulip poplar was planted next to ours.

The man in whose memory that tree was planted was a prominent businessman in the town for many years. He was an elder at the church we attended for a while, but his attendance  record at services was dismal. When it came time to choose new elders or retain those already on the board, he was nominated again. At the business meeting, one of the congregation pointed out that he only attended services a couple of times a year (he was not at the business meeting) and needed to be replaced. He was reelected as an elder.

The fact that these two trees grew side by side was just an example of a powerful person in the community coming to the same end as a person with no power or influence whatsoever, which is where our son stood in the social strata of the town

That really isn’t important now I suppose, but what happened this year is that the tree next door to ours bloomed.

Which means our tree would have bloomed too, except our tree died.

Two years ago the tree almost blew over after a hard rain and strong winds. The city tied it to stake, and it seemed to be okay, but within a year it was obvious the tree was going die. When it finally fell over for good, there were no roots attached to the stump. 

The city replanted the tree this summer, and it has done quite well. 

 

We watered it through the heat of the summer. It has shot up and is already taller than my husband.

We got a taste of winter this week for a few days. There was a light dusting of snow one night – it reminded me of what it would look had powdered sugar been put in a strainer and then sifted over the ground -- and then perhaps an inch fell Wednesday night.

The new tree looks to be in good shape for the winter. Fingers crossed.

Fly like an eagle...

My birthday was last Wednesday, and I kept meaning to write something about that—especially after the wonderful day I had—but I seem to get derailed much more easily these days, and here it is a week and day later.

I had a lovely day. Several months ago, my dearly beloved asked me if I wanted to go to Rockbridge for lunch on my birthday. Rockbridge is rainbow trout and game ranch and is probably my favorite place to eat.

We rarely go though because he really dislikes driving there, and I don’t blame him for that. The drive takes a while. It’s 40 miles and change on a narrow two-lane road through the Ozark Hills. It is not a relaxing drive for the person who is driving. There are lots of unexpected twists and turns and hills, and turns on the hills – like the blueprint for a theme park roller coaster.

The woods are beautiful this time of year. The trout is delicious.

The river is wonderful.

But before we got there, we had an errand to run first. As we drove down the highway, just as we came even with our house, a bald eagle flew right over the car. We don’t see eagles very often, so that was a great visual gift.

Memories of birthdays tend to mush together as the years add up.  I know I couldn’t tell you what I did last year for my birthday… but I do remember very vividly the birthday I celebrated 10 years ago in Los Angeles. It was the last birthday that I celebrated with my mom.

I already wrote about it here so I won’t go over it again.

But I was looking at the pictures I took on that vacation, remembering my mom and the laughter and good time we had with the family, and the one of my dad putting together my birthday dessert really hit home. He frequently went around without a shirt, so I doubt a day went by that I didn’t see the “screaming eagle” tattoo that was so popular during WWII.

Seeing the eagle last Wednesday was a lovely reminder of him.

Another Fine Mess...

“Everyone moves with grace if they are in their proper element”
 Water Dancer by Jennifer Levin.

Well, I am not sure what my proper element is because I do not move with grace.

I am sort of a clumsy, uncoordinated person. I make messes. Some sort of clean-up will almost certainly be required after any activity in the kitchen that involves stirring, pouring, measuring, or transferring something from one container to another.

Yesterday at church I picked up a doughnut with chocolate icing. “Oh look,” said the woman next to me, “you’ve got it on your fingers and it’s on the table.” Sure enough. I did have it on my fingers and there were chocolate smears on the table. So she got the napkin and cleaned the table while I cleaned my fingers.

I mentioned to her that I was almost exactly like the wonderful character played by Joan Hackett in Support Your Local Sheriff!, who got flour all over her face in that hilarious scene where she is cooking dinner for her father and the sheriff. I burn my fingers now and then, but have never caught myself on fire. Fortunately.

This is probably going to be too much information, but bear with me here so you can grasp how awful this was. Our cat drinks a lot of water. We have had her tested for diabetes and other imbalances that might cause an animal to drink a lot of water, and everything was negative. So she also pees a lot. She is an indoor/outdoor cat, but she prefers to come inside to use the litter box.

She always pees right against the edge--sometimes over the edge, so I have to put plastic underneath the litter box--so instead of small, scattered clumps that can be sifted out with the slotted scoop, there is a thick ledge of it, usually running right across the back of the litter box, which I have to scrape off with the small shovel I used back in the day to scoop ash out of the wood-burning stove.

The last time I cleaned the litter box, which I do once a week, I bumbled this huge clump of urine-saturated cat litter. It hit my left foot (wearing house sandals), and a piece of it of it broke off and landed on the wood floor, where it left a big wet spot.

So I spent some additional time scrubbing the floor and cleaning the sandal and my foot.

We have had cats as pets for 35 of the 37 years we have lived here. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate cats. I am just tired of them. She is 18 years old. She can’t live forever, right? Well, I have been assured by two different people who know folks who have had cats that lived to 24 years. So we may have her a while longer, but I know that we will never have another pet cat.

Never.
Ever.
I mean it too. Never

So long, farewell…until next Spring

They arrive in early spring and keep us mightily entertained through the long, hot, summer days. Even before it is light enough outside for me to see them, I can hear them squeaking angrily at each other as they fight over who gets to land at the feeder and drink.

We put 4 feeders out on 3 sides of the house, all of them out of sight of the others, which is enough for each to have its own feeder, but it doesn’t work that way with them. They tend to move around the house in a group fighting furiously at each feeder. Once in a while two of them will land at the same time and each allows the other to tank up before they start the battle again.

Although 4 hummingbirds doesn’t seem like very many, it’s fine for us. In the past, my friend Judy, who lives about 5 miles out in the country, had as many as 50 or 60 of them, which meant a lot of sugar and a lot of work keeping the feeders filled.

Can you imagine what it might be like if they could do everything that they do but were much larger—say the size of Robins or Bluejays? Their spectacular aerial acrobatics would certainly become something to see. It might be dangerous to go outside. My father-in-law used to have a Chihuahua and I don’t believe I’ve ever met a nastier more unpleasant dog than that little bugger. I was always very thankful that it wasn’t the size of a German Shepherd.

It suddenly turned cold one night last week – nothing gradual about it – and the next morning all was quiet at the feeders. They have headed south and we hope they will have a safe winter along the Gulf Coast, or in the Caribbean, or Mexico, or wherever else they go.

I will leave the feeders out for another week, which are now being mobbed by yellow jackets, in case any stragglers come through. We will look forward to seeing them again in the Spring.

Lions, tigers, and dragons (?), oh my!

So I got a little carried away teaching Sunday School. We’re doing a good DVD series on prayer, and the “Bible Discovery” part of lesson took us to the end of Job, where Job has been wallowing in self-pity (and rightly so, I think) and demanding that God respond to his theological queries. When God shows up, He does not answer any of Job’s questions, but instead begins asking him questions: “Where were you…"

And I got a off topic a bit. We were supposed to be focusing on Job’s response at the end “I know you can do all things and no thought or purpose of yours can be restrained or thwarted…” . Some in the class may think I got off a little more than that and have well and truly gone off the deep end.

Keep an open mind…

Its snorting throws out flashes of light... flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out... smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds... its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth...

What animal comes to mind (the entire passage is Job 41)?

Fire-breathing dragon. Right?

Dragons are part of the folklore and mythology of just about every culture on earth, and I think that is because there were dragons on the earth once upon a time. Men have hunted many animals to extinction, why not dragons?

But then again, perhaps it really is just a crocodile.

Adventures in rural living

Chapter 1
Small towns appear about every 10-12 miles along the 4-lane highway that one picks up in Springfield to travel through this area of the state heading to Arkansas. The highway bypasses the towns, but there are plenty of access roads (our town has 3 exits on the highway), so none of these towns have died like what, unfortunately, happened to towns along the old U.S. Highway 66.

Some of larger towns have a Walmart. For us, the nearest Walmart is in any direction is about 25 (give or take a few) miles away, so going to Walmart is not a “quick trip” and is not convenient if we don’t have a lot of shopping to do.

Now the corporation that operates Dollar General Store came up with a brilliant idea: Put a Dollar General Store in each of the small towns along the highway. That way the residents in these small town don’t have to drive so far to go to a variety store.

But then the brilliant idea starts to dim. The corporation has some screwy ideas that can make shopping at the Dollar General incredibly frustrating. The store does not hire people to stock the shelves. The clerks who are supposed to be behind the checkout counter are required to stock the shelves during normal business hours, but they are not allowed to put a bell on the counter so customers waiting to pay for their purchases can alert the clerk. Sometimes you have to stand there at the counter and wait… and wait… and wait… for the clerk (who may be in the back of store) to realize someone is there. Another problem is that is even more frustrating is when something is gone from the shelf, it can be up to 6 weeks before the product is back on the shelf. We have experienced this numerous times.

My husband’s birthday was last Thursday, and on Friday, he asked me to stop by Dollar General on the way home from aerobics class and buy a couple of packages of thank-you notes because he needed to send some. The store has a $5 off coupon on $25 of merchandise purchased on Saturday, but you have to spend $5 at one time to get the coupon. He figured two or three packages of thank-you notes would be enough to get the $5-off coupon.

So I went to the store and looked in the logical places for the thank-you notes. The store has a rather extensive collection of inexpensive greeting cards for most occasions and that is where I buy the greeting cards I send. After wandering up and down aisles and looking on end caps and not finding any packages of thank-you notes, I finally asked the clerk.

“We don’t have any,” she says, “some of the stores have thank-notes notes but not this one. We don’t carry thank-you notes here anymore.”

I stood there a little dumbfounded. “Why?” She shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t know.

Part of the joy of small-town living. A variety store that doesn’t have what one would think is sort of a basic need for polite society. One of the pharmacies in town may have thank-you notes, so I will have to check that out. Otherwise, getting thank-you notes will have to wait until we have a lot of shopping to do at Walmart.

Chapter 2

Our computer guy used to tease Richard that he has more redundancy than NASA. I mean, the man has backups, and then backups for the backups, etc. This obsession of his has gotten us out real messes many times so I am not complaining.

So Saturday arrives and hums along -- thank-yous were tendered by e-mail and he did not shop at Dollar General and spend $25 on merchandise -- until about 5 p.m., when my dearly beloved announces, “I’m going to take my shower now.” He comes back surprisingly quickly. Right in the middle of his shower, the water just stopped. Zip. Zero. Nada. Fortunately, he had not started to wash his hair.

You get that initial panicky feeling. What? No water? You see we are not on city water. Our water comes from well and is pumped into a pressure tank in small well house behind the house.

So he heads out to the well house. He installed lights and a switch to turn them on to keep the interior warm in the winter so the pipes don’t freeze. The lights don't work. So that tells him it is an electrical problem rather than a failure of the well pump or the pressure tank.

He goes to the pole where the electrical meter is and opens the box below the meter and discovers the breaker to the well house is tripped, but the breaker appears to be broken and can't be reset. He very carefully disconnects the wires from the meter to the breaker and from the breaker to the well house, after much struggle (grinding rusted screws etc etc.), is able to get the box apart enough so he can pull the breaker from the box.

In the meantime, I have heated a 2-liter bottle of water (we have numerous bottles of water stored in case of power failures) on the stove and washed my hair.

The True Value hardware in town stays open until 7 p.m., on Saturday so he decides to go to there to see if they have the breaker he needs. He is not hopeful about this. This is a small town True Value, after all. And so he disappears down the stairs to the garage.

My heart goes out to him. He is the man. He is expected to fix these problems. I have calmed down. We were without power for 3 days once after the remnants of a hurricane came through here, so we are prepared. We have 5-gallon buckets of water to flush the toilet with, 2-liter bottles of water for cooking and dishes… we can handle this.

Maybe 10 minutes later he comes back in the house, walks over to the sink, and turns the faucet on. He just happened to remember that he has a bunch of breakers left over from years ago when he did the electrical panel in the house. Guess what? He has the right-sized breaker to go back in the box, and he was able to get that wired up again.

Sunday morning when we were eating breakfast he says, "You know, that had to be God yesterday. He was leading me. I couldn't have figured all of that out by myself..."

Yes indeed.

He leadeth me: O blessed thought!
O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate'er I do, where'er I be,
still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.

Watershed moments

People who get to know me well will eventually learn that I like spiders. I do not automatically kill every spider that I find in the house. We practice capture and release, unless it is a brown recluse that has is not being reclusive and is out and about (which is very rare). He will kill them, I usually let them scurry back into hiding. I suppose I am being foolish -- I knew someone who had to eventually have plastic surgery to repair the damage from a brown recluse bite.

I like to take pictures of spiders. Rest easy, here are just a few. I won't bore you to tears.

  

 

My birthday is very close to Halloween. One year a friend, who is a good with a sewing machine, was inspired to give me a tote bag and some pot holders made from spider web material.

The local market takes 5 cents off the total when customers bring in their own bags to put the groceries in. I have quite a few bags to use for this, and today I happened to grab the spider web bag as I headed out the door. Tuesday is “banana day” at the market, and the price-per-pound drops to 39 cents.

A young woman behind me at the checkout counter noticed the bag sitting on the conveyor

and commented that it was “cute.” So I had to explain that someone had made it for me because I liked spiders quite a bit.

She said she had severe arachnophobia. Her fear of spiders began when she was 5 years old. She woke up and a spider was on her face. That “did it” for her.

My interest in spiders began when I also was about 5 years old. I was out in our yard one day and I noticed this “fuzzy looking thing” on the wooden fence at eye level. I don’t remember touching it, but I must have, because suddenly hundreds of tiny spiders came pouring out from under, spreading out in all directions. I still remember how amazed and excited I was to see that.

Some researchers believe folks are born with an innate fear of spiders and snakes and that it is a “hangover from a survival instinct that evolved in ancient times.” I dunno.  Maybe.

I know that I was never afraid of spiders or snakes, and my parents (usually it's the mom who does this) did not teach me to be afraid of them. I think it would have been interesting to to visit with this young woman more about the topic but the line was moving. I wonder if she would have gone on to grow up to be afraid of spiders if she had not had that experience. Oh well...

In any event, our very different experiences as young children – hers and mine -- were watershed moments -- they certainly affected us for the rest of our lives.

Just another odd moment in the Ozarks

On the bench there was a jumble of oddments such as are to be found in every workshop, bits of cord, wire, metal tools, some bread and cheese which the mice had been at, a leather bottle…

The Wart was familiar with the nests of Spar-hark and Gos, the crazy conglomerations of sticks and oddments which had been taken over from squirrels or crows…

The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White.

When I decided I was tired of the name I had given this blog when I first started writing it, I knew I wanted to include “Ozarks” to reflect the south central area in Missouri where we live (very close to the Arkansas border), but I wasn’t sure what else to add. My friend Judy suggested the word “Oddments.” She and her husband owned a used book store, and when they went to book fairs, they would set up a table with the sign “Oddments,” indicating “these were unusual things that caught our eye that we thought would also catch somebody’s eye and think ‘well, this looks interesting’ and buy them.”

I was familiar with the word “oddment”, which the author T.H. White seems to find quite useful in the first part of his epic, The Once and Future King,  which I confess I have tried to read several times but can’t seem to get past the first 100 pages, despite colorful characters and delightful writing, but never thought to use it myself.

At any rate, all that to say this… I had one of those “odd moments” the other morning that brought home just how appropriate the word is.

I was walking the church loop when I saw something twinkling green on the barbed wire fence separating the asphalt from the goats. Of course I had to see what that was. And what a surprising thing it was!

I did not think this Japanese beetle (and another one I saw further along the wire) accidentally impaled itself or that it decided to sacrifice itself, as did the kamikaze pilots in WWII, as a way to atone for the damage it had caused in peoples’ gardens.

Nope. This is the work of a bird—the Shrike—which impales the prey it catches on barbed wire or thorns. I have never seen a Shrike on the wing, but I did find a dead one that had crashed into our plate glass window, so I knew a little bit about the bird and its habits.

I was just surprised to learn that they also catch and impale insects.

I don’t think anyone is going to shed a tear for these dead beetles.

Splendor in the grass

Even though it is a couple of months too early for fall colors, the big cottonwood in the front yard has started dropping its leaves because of the drought...

and the ground is covered with them.

Had I been walking in the front yard, I probably would not have noticed anything else golden or yellow in the grass besides the leaves.

The other morning though, I had just finished the straight mile portion of my morning walk (I leave the house at 5:45 a.m.) on the frontage road picking up trash and had started up the hill at the “church loop, ” the asphalt driveway that connects with the frontage road and circles around a large pond in front of the church. I happened to be looking down and noticed something yellow in the green grass.

As I said, it is a bit too early in the season for fall colors, and besides, the fence line (5 strands of barbed wire and two hot wires), which keeps the herd of goats next door off the church grounds, has been cleared of everything that could have turned yellow. So I had to stop and look.

I am glad I was paying attention.

Otherwise I would have walked right by.

I did not have my camera with me, so when I finished walking the loop, I drove home, thought about it a while, and then decided I had to try to get a picture of it. It was still there. I had to get down on my hands and knees to get level with it--and then get up again--which might have provided some amusement to anyone speeding by on the highway who might have seen me.

I had no clue what it was, and so I had to enlist the help of my friend Judy, who has several insect identification guides, and eureka, the mystery was solved: Eacles imperialis.

What a lovely, splendiferous thing to see.

Whoops...

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage--Martin Luther

 GAA!

I meant to write about this last Tuesday (June 26) because that was our anniversary.

In years past I have had trouble remembering the date of our anniversary. My parents' anniversary was a week earlier than ours and I often got the dates mixed up. This year I remembered okay, but really fell down on the job in other ways.

We were married in 1971, so this makes 47 years.

Weddings—at least in our social circle—were rather simple back in 1971.

My dress cost $80 off the rack at JC Penney. The bridesmaid’s dresses were homemade from patterns and material we bought at the fabric store.

The reception was cake and punch and, of course, the ubiquitous mints and mixed nuts in the church fellowship hall. It did not break the bank.

We normally do not do anything very extravagant for our anniversary, mostly being content to have a good meal in a nice restaurant. This one happens to be a Mexican restaurant, and as usual, the meal was excellent. I am sure that practically all Mexican food in the United States is a fusion of American and Mexican tastes, but the woman who owns the restaurant is actually from Mexico, so I feel like the food is perhaps a bit more authentic. At any rate, I tend to order something that I don’t usually make at home; in this case, chili relleno. I have tried a couple of times to make chili relleno, but I don’t do well in trying to neatly stuff ingredients inside something else and then dipping it in a batter and frying it. So I am happy to order it at the restaurant.

But to backtrack just a little: The situation here over the weekend before our anniversary was rather hilarious (depending, of course, on your sense of humor). He is hard to buy presents for because if he wants something, he just orders it right then online or buys it when he is out and about. I always know what I am getting because I always ask for a book, which he buys me, so there is no surprise there.

He did give me a suggestion about what I could get him, which was great – and I should have thought of it myself because it is has always been the “go-to gift” when I need to get him something.

However, he had to go to town and said there was no point in me making an extra trip to town to buy the present, so he ended up buying his anniversary present and giving it to me so I could give it to him.

And then last Monday when I did go to town for the usual—aerobics class, post office—I forgot to buy him an anniversary card, so he found a really funny one on the Hallmark Cards program he has on his computer and printed it and gave it to me so I could give it to him.

So Tuesday afternoon when we got back from our lovely meal, I gave him his bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry

 and the silly card he gave me to give to him, and he gave me the book  I asked for..

and a lovely romantic card.

It was a really good day. But somehow, this was just sort of...wrong; funny, but wrong. I am definitely going to do better next year.

A spoon full of sugar

Him: What is this? Room service?
Me: I want to get some pictures of her outside. I am going to do a blog post about the kitty.
Him: I didn’t know you could put swear words on a blog post.


She is old and the end of her days on earth is probably coming sooner than later. But who knows? She is going downhill, but her quality of life has not deteriorated so much that she needs to be euthanized.

She became our son's cat when he was living in a house in the Boot Heel, and he really loved her.

Then he moved to an apartment in St. Louis in 2001 or 2002, and because she was not suited to be an entirely indoor cat, he took a cat I had rescued from being put to sleep that had been de-clawed and who hated us (but she loved him) and we took Squeaker in trade. She was about 2 years old then.

We sort of have a love-hate relationship with her. Sometimes she is just adorable...

and sometimes she is incredibly irritating and we say mean things about her. But, we are committed to taking care of her as best we can.

So, she is at least 18 years old now. She has never been a robust cat, but her weight has dropped to barely 6 pounds. Her backbone is prominent through her fur.

She started coughing. I took her to the vet, but her lungs were clear. He gave us a liquid antibiotic just in case. What a struggle we had to get the medicine down her. Half of it would end up all over us. We had a few days left to give it to her before I figured out we could mix it in with her morning tablespoon of tuna and get it down her that way.

Then, a few weeks ago she started having seizures, and the frequency was increasing. The vet did a thyroid test to see if that was causing the weight loss. Her thyroid is fine.

He prescribed phenobarbital at 0.5 mL twice daily for the seizures. Apparently this formula is for pediatric patients, and the vet said it has sort of a cherry flavor.

After the struggle we had with the antibiotic, we knew we weren’t going to be trying to stick the syringe in her mouth and squirt it in.

Fortunately, she likes ice cream and especially strawberry cheesecake-flavored ice cream. 

The ice cream masks the taste of the phenobarbital, and she licks it up.

The medicine has worked well. She hasn’t had a seizure since we started giving it to her.

 So she gets a spoon full of ice cream twice daily to help the medicine go down.

Wait!! I am not done yet!!

I am not always comfortable talking on the telephone, so I have a tendency to wait for people to call me first. Last night, however, I did call my brother Daniel. I needed to know how he was.

Daniel was diagnosed in 2016 (?) with olfactory neuroblastoma, a very rare type of cancer that lives in the sinus cavity and likes to attach itself to nerves and bones.

After the third operation to remove “spots,” his physicians brought up the possibility of radiation therapy because the cancer kept coming back, but radiation therapy in that area of the skull is not without significant consequences. At the top of the list:  loss of an eye, loss of teeth, brain damage, including the brain stem, from radiation scatter… so Daniel decided he wouldn’t do it.

Then the cancer came back again, and he needed a fourth operation, and that time a nerve that provides feeling to his cheek had to be removed.

Daniel decided he better have the radiation therapy after all. He thought he could live without an eye if it came to that.

It was a grueling schedule -- I think he had to go 5 days a week for 6 weeks. He finished the final treatment last week.

And God was merciful.

Yes, one of his eyes got a little irritated and sore, but the hospital gave him some stuff to put in it and it is getting better every day.

Yes, sores developed in his mouth from the x-rays bouncing off the crowns on his teeth, but the hospital gave him solution to swish in his mouth and the sores healed. So far his teeth seem okay.

Yes, he did have some “fuzzy thinking” problems, but that seems to be clearing up.

They gave him pills for nausea that developed, and he actually gained a couple of pounds. He has not had any sinus infections.

We had a really nice visit.

I had sent him some pictures of “sights” around our place...

 gray tree frogs showing their ability to camouflage to the environment
 

a green snake I found in the honeysuckle by the garage....

 a large Promethea moth (about 5 inches across)...

a woodland fishing spider that was living in our basement (this is a very big spider --the board it is next to is 4 inches wide)

a toad and with an ant crawling on it...

 and he thanked me for the pictures and asked me to send some more.

I thought it was time to wind the conversation down, so I threw back at him the phrase he always uses when he is having a party at his place and wants to bring it to end “Well, it’s been real nice havin’ ya’,” (see previous below), only he immediately said

Wait!! I am not done yet!!!!

It was hilarious. I laughed and laughed. He actually did have some business to tell me about. He is the executor of the family trust our parents set up, so we wound up the conversation with that.

I am so blessed to have this delightful man as my brother.

Please God, let him live long and prosper.

He needs to see this little guy grow up.

“Well, it’s been real nice havin’ ya”

When one of my brothers and his wife had family over for celebrations, and he needed to bring the party to an end, he’d say something like

“Well, it’s been real nice havin’ ya.”

This was the signal for everybody wind it up and go home.

Naturally, it became a funny thing that we say to each other on occasion in various situations.

We arrived here in May 37 years ago, and in that time we have seen Baltimore orioles a few times in the yard. I bought an oriole nectar feeder years ago, and I can remember putting out orange slices for them. The oriole feeder eventually deteriorated and broke, and we hadn’t seen an oriole for several years, and I never bothered to get another one.

So, I was over the moon about 3 weeks ago when one showed up at the suet feeder, and then there was another… and another…. and another. We were eventually able to count 7 males and 2 females, and there were probably more than that.

I had the base of the old oriole feeder, so I had my dearly beloved enlarge every other hole on two hummingbird feeders to match the size of the hole on the oriole feeder. My friend told me they liked grape jelly, so we bought 4 jars of grape jelly and I put that out on small saucers in two places in the yard.

It was a mob scene. And not just at our house. The four couples at church who feed birds and have hummingbird feeders also had an unusual number of them. I noticed a bunch of them on the hummingbird feeders at the house by the park where I walk. It was like this whole area was a truck stop for these beautiful travelers heading north.

I had already decided once they got through the 4 jars of jelly that was it, and I was not putting out any more suet either.

And then by midweek last week they all left. The man who lives by the park said they left on Tuesday (I guess he was counting the days too). It was real nice having them, but I was happy to see them go.

Except it would have been nice if one pair had stayed and raised a family.

You're asking me?

My friend calls and wants some fashion advice.

Judy is going to a Big Band concert/dance at which family members will be playing, and she isn’t certain about what to wear. This would not be a problem if the event were held locally. People here generally do not dress up and basically wear what they want. I went to a wedding once where the bride’s grandfather arrived in a Dickey work shirt and pants. I have been to funerals where mourners came in bib overalls.

This is not local though, this is in St. Louis. St. Louis is the "big city." I have never been to an event like this in St. Louis to see what everyone else is wearing. I don't know if they have adopted the "California casual" attitude that is common back home, or if they are more upscale and elegant. But I imagine what might be okay in our little rural town might not blend in well with the crowd there.

I burst into laughter—not because she needs some help—but because I do not think I am the best person to be asking about this sort of thing. I clean up fairly well, but I don't have a very well-honed sense of fashion or style and have always “depended on the kindness of strang…” uhh, I mean my sister, to find appropriate clothes for me to wear to dress-up events. It is a shame Judy can’t call my sister and ask her.

But, she is my best friend. so I give it a shot. Judy describes a few things she is thinking about wearing, and they sound quite nice, and I agree that those will almost certainly be perfectly fine.

I laugh some more, and we hang up.

Just about then Richard comes in to tell me he is going to town, and I describe the conversation, and he laughs too.

Then says “You do realize that your shirt is inside out.”

Well no, I didn’t, unfortunately. I had gone to town that way earlier in the morning to run errands, and I was on display at the park, where I walked twice around the perimeter with another woman, at the bank, the grocery store, and the post office.

Did anybody notice? Probably not. But still…

Let the Adventure Begin...Again

“I found my missing compression stocking!”

I had an extensive blood clot in my leg several years ago that damaged the valves in some of the veins. I was strongly urged to keep my leg elevated, which I do by propping it on some storage containers under my work space, and to wear a compression stocking, which I also do. I have several types: some with open toes, some with open toes that I have sewed shut because they tend to creep up over the ball of the foot, and then there is my favorite, a skin-tone closed-toe model that feels silky like a nylon stocking.

I put the compression stocking on in the morning before I go off to exercise, and I usually peel it off in the evening when I am in the recliner reading. It frequently ends up in the crack between the cushion and the arm, which is where I expected to find it this particular morning. I didn’t.

Okay, sometimes I take it off when we are in bed watching TV after dinner. Perhaps it was under the covers. It wasn’t.

I had gone fuming around the house searching several other places where it might be, and had announced my frustration at not being able to find it.

I have a bad habit of picking something up and intending to put it away but then getting distracted before I get there and putting it down someplace not even close to where it should be and then forgetting where I set it down.

“Well,” he wants to know, “where was it?”

“Oh, I put it back in the drawer where it belongs.”

“WHAT?” Are you crazy? Putting it back where it belongs takes all of the adventure out of life.”

This from the person who has a sign by the bed: “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

In the meantime, he took the Easy-Off Oven Cleaner into his office. He says he has no clue why he did this. I mean, there isn't a grungy oven in there that needs to be cleaned, but there is one in the kitchen. He remembers seeing it in there near his work space, but, unfortunately, it isn't there now. He has no clue where it went.

I don't really want to clean the oven, but I do need to find the Easy-Off even if I decide not to tackle the oven. I guess another adventure is in the works.

P.S. The elderly woman I was visiting in the nursing home every Sunday died early yesterday morning. I am so thankful that I got to know her. She was a blessing and an inspiration. I thankful for God's mercy that she was being well cared for and didn't suffer.

Knowing What to Say

I drive a 24-year-old Buick just-get-me-there-and-back-please-God-sedan, so that is why in the Fall a couple of years ago I was in our newer car heading off into the country to do something for my friend Judy at her house. Judy herself was languishing in the nursing home with a badly broken leg – I think she was there about 3 months, first with external fixation to stabilize the bone while she waited for the swelling to go down so the surgeon could repair it, and then recuperating after the 9-hour operation to get all the parts back together.

The radio has not worked properly in the car for a while, and the repair people at Toyota can’t seem to figure out why. The only station it picks up is a classic rock station. When I turned it on, I heard sort of a haunting, strange song with unexpected lyrics:

Teach me how to speak
Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me will love be there
Oh, heaven let your light shine down

That song has been on my mind lately, because I find myself not being very sure about speaking or sharing things that are going to be helpful or beneficial. I wish I could be like my dad, who had a gift for visiting the sick and ministering to them in hospitals and nursing homes.

Heaven help me!!

Last Tuesday, the church folk gathered at the nursing home for a Valentines party for Bob and Pat, two members who are residents there now. Pat did not come because her condition had suddenly deteriorated. She was having pain in her legs, wasn’t eating, and couldn’t get out of bed. There were too many people there to visit with her, so I went back the next day.

This time she was her recliner, and so I sat next to her, and she grabbed onto my hand like a vice grip and did not let go. She had talked to her granddaughter in Indiana earlier in the day and told her to come because she didn’t think she was going to be alive very much longer. Her granddaughter had said ‘Hang on grandma. Don’t die until I get there.”

As Pat was telling me this she began to cry, afraid that she was going to die before her granddaughter got there. I started crying right along with her. Not sure how helpful that was. I found myself frantically trying to figure out what I could say to her to give her some comfort.

I told her the story about Richard’s father, who was in the facility in 1993. We were on vacation, and got a call from the staff that we needed to come back. He had pneumonia and was dying. It took us several days to get home. Richard immediately went to the nursing home to see his father. He died about 15 minutes after Richard finished visiting with him. The staff at the nursing home told us they were convinced he had “held on” until Richard got there.

So, I encouraged her to “hold on.” And she did. Her granddaughter came and had a good visit with her. Hospice took charge of her care and began administering pain medication, and probably some sort of tranquilizer as well, because yesterday, Richard and I went to see her, and there was quite a change. The “old” Pat, who loved to talk and had plenty of stories to tell, was gone, and in her place was “zoned out” Pat, with sort of blank expression on her face and who couldn’t seem to complete a thought or respond in the conversations we tried to start.

No one wants to see her suffer physically or mentally, but it is almost like saying goodbye to her before she is actually gone.

Bird Watching 101

People in the United Kingdom who like to watch birds apparently can get quite obsessive about it -- indeed, they have coined a term “twitching” to describe them.

I enjoy watching birds. There used to be a local chapter of the Audubon Society in town, and I went on several bird watching field trips with them, and I spent time sitting in a lawn chair in our front yard watching with binoculars, and I had a friend who enjoyed bird watching and I took her places – and on one memorable occasion when we stopped at an excellent spot in an old cemetery, I found my legs covered in seed ticks – but I was not a twitcher. Most of my bird watching these days is done looking through the windows of our house.

One of the last poems in my Ogden Nash paperback is about bird watching:

Up from the Egg: The Confessions of a Nuthatch Avoider
 
Bird watchers top my honors list.
I aimed to be one, but I missed.
Since I'm both myopic and astigmatic,
Bird watchers top my honors list.
I aimed to be one, but I missed.
Since I'm both myopic and astigmatic,
My aim turned out to be erratic,
And I, bespectacled and binocular,
Exposed myself to comment jocular.
We don't need too much birdlore, do we,
To tell a flamingo from a towhee;
Yet I cannot, and never will,
Unless the silly birds stand still.
And there's no enlightenment so obscure
As ornithological literature.
Is yon strange creature a common chickadee,
Or a migrant alouette from Picardy?
You rush to consult your Nature guide
And inspect the gallery inside,
But a bird in the open never looks
Like its picture in the birdie books—
Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage,
And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage.
That is why I sit here growing old by inches,
Watching the clock instead of finches,
But I sometimes visualize in my gin
The Audubon that I audubin.

I had just read the poem the day before I went to the nursing home to visit the 92-year-old woman from church who is convalescing there from surgery to remove colon cancer but is not recovering as fast as she would like. She wants to go home!

The nursing home has hung bird feeders in front of many of the windows, including hers, and she does enjoy watching the colorful cardinals and the other birds. I was sitting on the love seat under the window sort of at angle and we were discussing the birds. I was half turned around and looking out to my left, and I saw a large black bird sitting on what looked like a tree limb at the edge of one of the buildings, which is barely seen in the photograph from her window. I thought perhaps it was raven because it looked too big to be a crow. Perhaps it was a vulture.

But it didn’t move… and it didn’t move… and so I finally got up and got closer to the class and realized what I was looking at was the profile of a small satellite receiver...

I have trouble with warblers sometimes... 

unless they are mobbing the suet feeder and I can get good look at them...

but I am otherwise reasonably good at identifying the birds I see.

At least I thought I was. Now I’m not so sure.