speaking of cats...
While she's no Kazik, she's mine, lopsided markings, assertive personality, and all.
She always where she's not supposed to be.
And she follows me around like my "familiar." Heh.
I got her from a pet store, where she was sitting in her pan of litter because the cage wasn't big enough for her to sit anywhere else. Funny looking and no longer a kitten, she lay like a sphynx in the sand, refusing to look anywhere but straight ahead.
She cost me $25 bucks. She's worth a million.
Calli. Because she's a tortoise-shell calico. Or Kali, because....
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Goodbye, Kazik.
Almost a dozen years ago, when my daughter went to the animal shelter in Boston to get a cat, she saw him slumped in the corner of his cage, looking (in human terms) depressed -- unlike the other cats who were vying for her attention. When she had the cage opened and lifted him out, he immediately put his paws around her neck and started purring, nuzzling her neck and then hunkering down into her arms and sighing with relief. When put pack into his cage, he went back to his corner and lay as if dead. The worker there told of how he hated the cage and how unlikey it would be for someone to adopt the two-year old of mound of matted, hacked out, and drooling fur.
She was hooked.
Cleaned up, fed, and loved, he turned into an amazingly kingly feline in both nature and stature (despite his short legs).
She named him Kazik, the nickname for Kazimierz, which translates into Casimir, which is the name of one of Poland's greatest kings.
Kazik had been having some physical problems lately. The test had shown a urinary track infection, diabetes, and more. He was on medication.
Yesterday evening, she found him on the floor near his litter box, laboring to breathe. They rushed him to the veterinary emergency room. All four of them went together -- my daughter, son-in-law, grandson, and Kazik. It was past the toddler's bedtime, but they all went together. Kazik was deeply loved by all of them.
Only three of them came back. They had to make the tough but necessary decision. Kazik died in her arms.
On the way home, my grandson insisted that he didn't want to leave Kazik there. "Nooo, want Kazik to come home!"
They tried to explain that sometimes animals and people, like trucks, get broken. Sometimes you can fix them. But sometimes you can't. They are too broken.
She had just had a similar conversation with him about Bambi's mother. "Want Bambi to be with his mother!" he cried. She didn't talk about the hunter; rather she told him that Bambi's mother was hurt and broken. And how his father would take good care of him. "Nooo! Fix Bambi's mother!"
When my grandson asks, they will tell him that Kazik is never coming home. That he was too broken to fix. They will talk about how they all loved him and how sad they all are that their wonderful pet is gone, and they will soon let him pick out his own cat from the shelter.
It's my grandson's first lesson about dying. It's only the beginning of the lesson. As he asks, they will do their best to explain -- within the context of their non-religious beliefs. (It's so much simpler to explain if you believe in heaven.)
Kazik, yesterday. My mom at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Life is a long letting-go.
Goodbye, Kazik. You were, indeed, a loveable king of cats.
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the keys to the kingdom
Well, they're really not, but you would think that they were the way she saves keys. Most of them look like they're from luggage that was thrown away years ago, or for little tin boxes that she no longer has -- except for the one that she does have but doesn't have a key for. Will she throw them away? Oh, no. Because you never know.
Then there's all the amber jewelry she brought back from her last trip to Poland, which had to be a good 35 years ago. She kept giving me these strands of graduated polished amber chunks, which I really hate and never wore. So now I'm faced with her stash and the stash she gave me (which I never got rid of because she periodically asks me if I still have them and wants to see them).
Over the years, however, I did take some of them apart, combined them with other objects, and redesigned them into necklaces I would definitely wear. Except, as I get older, my neck gets shorter (at least it seems that way) and I tend not to wear necklaces. I stopped wearing bracelets when I started using a keyboard. They just got in the way.
The necklace I like most that I remade now has a white and gold amber pendant (which I bought) hanging from it that looks rather like a stylized Amazon labrys.
I would definitely wear that one, if I had any place to go.
These days I live in jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. So what about all those shoes? Leftover from a life full of work and dancing, they are slowly being left to those who might better use them. It's a slow letting go.
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my most popular post
Now some of my new readers will have a chance to get a glimpse into my strange interests.
Back in July of 03, I posted about being plagued by sitings of the numbers 11:11.
There are 91 comments on that post from people all over the place who keep seeing that number as well as other number series. That's my most popular post, if you judge by the comments left.
Urm. Not a distinction I necessarily am delighted about, but there it is.
I'm thinking about it now because it's happening again. I'm seeing 11:11s.
It is sooooo bizarre.
And if you think that's bizarre, wait until I post about how I'm preparing to cleanse the "negative energies" in both the place to which I'm moving and my daughter's house. Since my daughter and her family moved into their house less than a year ago, they have had such a stream of bad ju ju (property-wise and health-wise) that it does make one think that there's something to the idea of a "jinxed" house. They did clean out the mold in the cellar and put in new replacement windows, as well as other obvious things one can do to make sure one's home is not toxic. But somehow the bad vibes go on. (More on my plans for that another time.)
Meanwhile, just take a look at some of those (count 'em) 91 comments. If you're still curious, check out my posts on seeing 11:11 here (18 comments on that one), and here (where there are two comments).
Count the comments. 91 plus 18 plus 2. 111. I didn't know that until I was looking for the links to put in this post.
See??
Ah, shades of Granny Weatherwax.
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shoes, shoes, and more shoes
Three pairs of shoes!!! That's Old Hoss' advice in his comment to the post below.
Why I have three pairs of sneakers alone, not including my radical pink ones. And every woman knows that you can't have too many black shoes -- flats, heels (various heights), sandals... And then there are boots, and you need at least two dress boots -- black and tan -- and then you need good snow boots (at least you do if you live in the Northeast)! And now it's almost summer, so there are sandals to wear with skirts, sandals to wear with shorts, dress-up sandals, sandals you can wear on the beach -- slides, straps, leather, rubber, denim, metallic, black (of course), beige, and, to be in style, orange.
Only men can live with three pairs of shoes!
I wonder if I could only take three pairs of shoes with me to wear for the rest of my life, which I would choose.
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the long letting-go
I've never been one to easily let go of things that are "mine" -- except for money, that is. That seems to slip away amazingly easily.
Situations have to get very, very drastic before I let go, even of responsibility. When I run out of closet space, storage space, time, and hope, when it's obvious that I have no choice, then I let go -- of people, jobs, old t-shirts, books, shampoos for blonde hair. And shoes. Sometimes, shoes are the hardest.
As a single mom, I kept my house in the country until, all at once, the roof leaked, the septic field needed to re-done, and the deep ruts in the long, up-hill driveway were beating up my undercarriage.
I have this fantasy of living like (what I prefer to believe were) my gypsy ancestors -- a colorful life with few important possessions, an aura of mystery, and all the time in the world to be magically creative.
But I'm not ready for that yet.
I'm still in the long-letting-go phase.
When there are more bad days than good days, when the elemental connection is broken, then I'll be ready.
I've begun cleaning out the clutter of my everyday life, beginning with the shampoos. I've got a way to go before I move on to people. And shoes.
Meanwhile, in this time of riding caregiving's emotional waves, I hold onto the lifelines I have -- my daughter and her family, my friends, this space.
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forgetting to remember
No, not mom -- me. The great comments left here by some of my fellow bloggers are a good reminder to me to be sensitive about what I post here about others, including my mom. And they've given lots of good pointers that I can share with the kids -- and teachers as well.
I'm thinking that I wish I had the wit to take the approach that Old Hoss does.
I've been know to be clever. I've also been know to laugh. I'm just out of practice.
Maybe to start with I'll share my clever recipe for sour cabbage soup. My mom hankers for Polish food these days, so last week I improvised cabbage soup from what I had in the pantry.
1 package of bagged shredded cabbage for cole slaw
1 medium can of sauerkraut (rinse first if you don't like it too sour)
1 can of diced tomatoes, including liquid
two peeled and diced potatoes
1 can of chicken broth
1 can of vegetable broth
if you have available - throw in a few country style pork ribs
add water as needed
Now, here's what really makes it great:
chop and sautee three yellow onions until light golden brown and add to soup.
Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream.
It makes enough to freeze and have for several more meals.
And sauekraut is very healthy, you know. As is cabbage.
I share this recipe even knowing that I risk getting some gaseous comments. But this is about as clever as I can get today.
It actually was a better day than usual around here, all things considered.
Categories:
runnin' on empty....
....so thanks for the encouraging comments that blogfriends have left on other posts here.
I promised my dad, on his deathbed, that I would take care of my mom. I knew it would be hard, given who we both are -- which is about as opposite as two people could be.
I think there's much to be said for asserting one's independence early in life, exploring one's inner and outer worlds, taking risks and learning to make the best of the consequences. That's how I've lived my life (which, I hope, has quite a few years left to it; although, I do wonder if there might be something hereditary that will show up in my brain).
My mom had a hard life. The oldest of three girls (she also had two older male siblings), she had to leave high school when she was sixteen and go to work in a carpet mill. Yup, think of the photos of sweatshops that you have seen -- that's what it was. She and her sisters also strung beads to earn more money for the family.
She's the last one left of her family of origin.
I can tell from things she says now that her younger sisters did not have the expectations laid on them that she had. I don't think she was mothered very well, although she does talk a lot about how helpful her mother was to friends, neighbors, and relatives -- especially if they were new Polish immmigrants. I can't help wonder how much her mother didn't do for her because she was doing for others and expected my mother to do the same. Perhaps she spent much of her life running on empty.
After the first world war, my grandmother took her five kids to Poland because they were so poor. For eight years they lived and worked on the old family farm that had a house with a thatched roof.
That's my mom in the midde soon after they returned to America. My grandfather had gotten a decent job in a sugar factory.
As I give up more and more of my current life to help make what's left of hers easier for her, I'm trying to remember why I need to do that.
Because I promised my dad. Because she often was there to help me out when I needed help. Because I still can. Because it's what we've always done in our family. Because I will regret it if I don't. Because I would not want to die alone.
I'm runnin' on empty today. So I blog. Talk on the phone to my daughter and my son and my grandson. They keep me going. For now, they keep me going. Even on empty.
Categories:
another bad day
bad day here. very very bad day.
she's unconsolable. everything is slipping away.
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It's Polka Time!
Yesterday was a bad day, but now it's Sunday morning and she's got the Polka music program going on the radio. So, we do it. We polka. She leads. I take off my shoes so that I don't step on her sore feet by accident. She's a good leader. I'm a good follower. "Na lewo," she says. "Na prawo." (to the left, to the right) We never dance in a straight line. "Ah, an Oberek," she says. So I stay for another one. She's so frail under her loose blouse, the one that fit her fine last year. I manage not to step on her feet. She's happy, dancing the polka. Me too. It's like the old days, when we even had costumes. Below, us, sometime in the early 50s.
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and in between, I read
In between the cooking and the calming, the caring and the crabbing, I read. Women authors, mostly. Fiction almost entirely.
Right now, I'm reading Louise Erdrich's Four Souls. She writes with the cadence and imagery of her Native American people. I've read just about everything she's written because she transports me into the hearts and minds of individuals who wind up inhabiting my thoughts long, long after I've closed the covers. She's the widow of another Native American author, Michael Dorris, who committed suicide. I've not read any of his stuff.
Lately I've taken to browsing the "new fiction" section at my public library. The book I found there and read before Eldrich's is The Problem with Murmur Lee by Connie Mae Fowler. I recommended it to a friend but she said that she just couldn't get into it. Thought it was too fragmented. I, however, loved it -- wonderfully quirky over-the edge characters and a equally quirky story line that kept me curious, even after I learned what Murmur Lee's "problem" was.
But the best new book of all that I've read lately is Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It's a story about mother and daughter difficulties, about cultural identity, about the burdens of "gifts" others don't understand, about healing family rifts. It's a story that spirals up so that it ends where it begins except at another place. I will have to read more of this Indian writer.
In between the searching and swearing, the sighing and sleeping, I read. And read. And read.
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some things get getter; some things get worse
The good news is that I have something interesting to which to look forward. In May, the New York State members of the Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership organization will be meeting for a conferece at the Legislative Office Building in Albany, and I've been asked to be on a panel about blogging. I don't have the details yet, but I expect it will focus on blogging ethics, connections to traditional journalism, whether it all needs legislative regulations to keep it civilized.
So, if any of my readers have any suggestions for online statements/opinions about any of those kinds of things, please leave me a link. I know of a few myself, including Rebecca Blood's essay, Chris Nolan's recent description of "stand-alone journalism" that I found via b!X's Portland Communique, and also b!X's Communique link-handy page about weblog ethics and elements of journalism.
I'd also like to hear from "personal" (in contrast to political) bloggers, like me, regarding how they feel about government-imposed regulations on blogging. Please pass my request for comments around; I would love to be able to cite other "personal" bloggers' opinions, not just my own.
And then, on the other front....
It's 3 am and, again, the phone is ringing. This time it's her pearls. You move the filing cabinet with all of her valuables into her bedroom so they are next to her all night. Then the robbers can't sneak in when she's sleeping and keep taking her things. This morning you find her cash-filled wallet in the bottom of the pillowcase of the bottom-most pillow on the made-up extra bed. It's been missing for several days, but she didn't put it there, she says.
And now back to an aspect of the panel discussion: is this the kind of thing that one should "ethically" be posting about. Is it an invasion of her privacy?
I would very much like to know what you think. What kind of guidelines have you imposed on yourself when it comes to what you post about and what you don't?
Leave commnets, please!!
VERY IMPORTANT ADDENDUM:
What I should have stressed is that this is a panel at a YOUTH LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE, so these are all high school kids we will be addressing. Some might already be blogging. I should have phrased my post to relate specifically to what adult bloggers would want high school potential bloggers to know. My fault for not being clear enough. Afterward, each panelist will have about an hour with a group of kids who are interested in the panelist's "area of expertise." I suspect the panel topic will be closer to "what can you do in your own life to take leadership and prepare yourself for leadership." Or maybe "searching for and sharing the truth." Or maybe not. I don't have the specifics yet. I probably jumped the gun in asking for input. But I think I was wrong in assuming that the whole panel will be about blogging. I am the blogging person -- that's why I was looking for input. Sorry if, in my getting the cart before the horse, I indicated that the whole panel was about blogging.
This is a really good example how one should make sure she has all the facts before she blogs. Bad, bad Kalilily.
I said it better over here at BlogSisters because I took the time to think it through.
Kalilily Time is sometimes time out of whack.
Categories:
the living ends
These are the living ends of my lineage.
My mom had a great time visiting her one and only great grandchild. He'll be three in July, and he just loves to talk and demonstrate all of his trucks. He also learned several words in Polish, which delights me mother to no end.
Spending four hours driving, the trip back home straight into the setting sun, pretty much wiped me out.
"Staroszcz nie radoszcz," my grandmother used to say. My grandson can't say that yet and has no need to. What he loves to say is "Na Zdrowie!" and clink glasses with you. He makes us laugh -- the best therapy of all.
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Heading out.
Taking my mom to visit with my grandson for the day. It's almost a two hour drive each way, but I'll turn on the NPR station that is the same here and there and become better informed. And I figure that my mom might as well enjoy her great grandson while she still can.
We're off. I'm looking foward to the giggles.
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all play and no work...
Of the four members of my band of women who got together for a shared-preparation brunch last Sunday, two are retired and two are still working. The other (newly) retired one, who still works one day a week and is an excellent quilter, talked about now feeling something is missing in her life. Part of it is a chance to be among people, but the other part has something to do with needing to feel that she's contributing something to society.
One of the group wasn't there. She's also retired and has been in Virginia for the past four months golfing, dancing, socializing, reading, and relaxing. When she's back home, she pretty much does the same thing.
Maybe the rest of us are jealous of her affluence and freedom, but we all seem to feel that we couldn't live a life that was all just play. I have heard her say that she's playing now because she can, and who knows how long fate and aging will let her do that.
As much as I complain about caregiving, it does give my life purpose, meaningful work (if you can call looking for a "lost" wallet -- again -- in the middle of the night "meaningful"; what the hell happened to the beeper that I put in it??!!)
When my mom is gone, I'm sure it will take a while to adjust to having all that free time. Will I need to find something meaningful to do?
Is visiting my friend when she goes to Virginia, visiting my counsins in Florida, and visiting and playing with my grandson meaningful?? Heh. Do you think I'll care??
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Pope Ratzo
You've just got to go over to Frank Paynter's and check out his take on Pope Ratzo.
Amen, amen, I say unto you, if this doesn't schism the Catholic Church I don't know what will. I can hope, can't I?
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Can't Stop the Clock
I got up late this morning because I was up late last night checking in on some of my blogging colleagues. Through Ronni's Time Goes By, I discovered Old Horsetail Snake
From Time Goes By:
A newish addition to the Older Bloggers list is Old Horsetail Snake – 74-year-old Gene Maudlin by name - who blogs from Salem, Oregon about – well, let him tell it:
"I live in what is called, formally, an Assisted Living Community Center. That's a euphemism for old folks' home. There are about 60 of us, of varying ages, condition and intent (some came to live, some came to die). Our ages range from 67 to 102. The 102 is in better shape than the 67.
"'So it goes,'" as Kurt Vonnegut said, often, in Breakfast of Champions. So, this is our story, one comic or tragi-comic piece at a time. And, for the record, some of these stories are true!"
I've always thought that weblogging would be a great hobby for older people who are confined for one reason or another. Old Horsetail Snake is a great example of how to keep yourself sane through blogging. And humor.
Ronni also mentions an innovative new service that could be a boon to older people (and others as well.)
Daylo is a new portal website that connects people who need a particular service to people in their neighborhood who can provide that service.
As Ronni explains:
Here’s how it works: You need some assistance, like Millie, packing for a trip. Or you need a lamp switch fixed or some IKEA furniture assembled. Maybe your computer is acting up and you haven’t a clue what’s wrong. If your knee has you laid up for a few days, you could use a dog walker, someone to do the grocery shopping, yardwork or even cooking. This is about hard-to-find help that isn’t listed in the Yellow Pages.
What a great idea!!! Hmm. I have an IKEA-type piece that's sitting in the corner waiting for me to have the time to put it together. Actually, I can still do those kinds of things. I recently put together the neatest little butcher-block top kitchen workstation that has a place to hid your trash can. Well, it took me a while, and my mother kept coming over periodically to see what I was ranting about.
Mom gets her cataracts measured today in preparation for cataract surgery on one eye. One eye at a time. Maybe seeing more clearly will help her see more clearly. You think??
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how to get ahead in Bush's regime
Can't pass up sharing this great overview, which I'm stealing from Yule Heibel, who got it from the Toronto Star (to which you need a subscription to get to the article).
Succeeding in the Bush White House
Analysis: Dishing up wonky intelligence, low-balling troop losses and being a `kiss-up, kick-down' bully are all good ways to get ahead
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
One will always live in infamy for gravely misjudging the cost of the Iraq war and the reception accorded U.S. troops, publicly underestimating the American death toll and blaming scared journalists for not reporting the war's good news.
The second sat behind Colin Powell in the U.N. Security Council, nodding solemnly and sagely as Washington provided a dossier of inaccurate, fanciful intelligence to justify the Iraq war.
The third was described last week as a "serial abuser" — a bully who berates and intimidates subordinates and a U.S. unilateralist who once declared that no one would notice if the top 10 floors of the United Nations secretariat disappeared.
In the private sector, Paul Wolfowitz, John Negroponte and John Bolton may have been shown the door for their transgressions.
In George W. Bush's world, they all received promotions, joining others who have been honoured, lauded and handed plums after dishing up faulty pre-war intelligence or mismanaging the Iraqi occupation.
Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary who said Americans would be greeted in Iraq as liberators, takes over as president of the World Bank on June 1.
Negroponte, Bush's envoy to the U.N. in the run-up to the war, is headed to easy confirmation as the country's first national intelligence director.
Undersecretary of State Bolton — a caustic purveyor of American muscularity who has emerged as the most controversial of all the president's men (and women) — looks as if he will be confirmed in days as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
They join a long line.
Condoleezza Rice, who sounded some of the most apocalyptic pronouncements on Saddam Hussein's imminent threat to Americans, is the secretary of state.
Alberto Gonzales, complicit in a memo that was interpreted as a green light for prison torture, is now the attorney-general.
Former CIA director George Tenet, who was famously quoted as telling Bush the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a "slam dunk," was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as was Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq whose first moves were blamed for helping fuel an insurgency that has cost more than 1,500 American lives.
Defence chief Donald Rumsfeld was the most senior of Bush's cabinet secretaries to retain his job in the second term. And the most powerful hawk of them all, Vice-President Dick Cheney, is wielding behind-the-scenes power as never before.
At a series of Senate confirmation hearings since January, Democrats have huffed and puffed, accusing Bush's nominees of everything from lying to outright incompetence. But each of the president's choices has so far been confirmed.
The Iraq war may not be a resounding success, but those behind it have found it a fabulous road to career advancement.
It appears the easiest route to success in the Bush White House was to be at the centre of a war that was waged under false pretences, then mismanaged from the day Saddam's statue was toppled two years ago.
"That's a fair assessment," says Allan Lichtman, a political analyst at Washington's American University. "But it's not so much that you get promoted for messing up the war ... you get promoted if you stay with the program.
"You certainly don't get rewarded in this administration for being a voice of dissent."
The U.S. confirmation process is the closest the American system has to a parliamentary Question Period, but like the latter, it is more theatre than substance.
The theatre was never more vivid than during last week's Senate hearings on Bolton — a tenacious, abrasive, hard-line hawk and prominent proponent of the "weapons of mass destruction will be found" school.
Bolton sat implacably through the playing of a 1994 speech in which he infamously said there "was no United Nations" and no one would notice if the top floors of the U.N. building in New York vanished.
Rather than a U.N., he said, "there is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world — that's the United States — when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along."
California Democrat Barbara Boxer said Bolton had shown nothing but disdain for the institution to which he will now be posted and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Joe Biden of Delaware, added: "I'm surprised that the nominee wants the job that he's been nominated for, given ... the many negative things he had to say about the U.N."
Bolton's character has also been called into question.
He has been described as a "kiss-up, kick-down" guy who berated underlings and sought to have them fired because they did not provide the intelligence he wanted on Fidel Castro's germ warfare capability in 2002.
Carl Ford, a former assistant secretary of state who was caught in the middle of the spat between Bolton and two analysts, said Bolton had "gone ballistic" over his underlings' refusal to provide what he wanted.
"I left a meeting with the impression that, for the first time, I was being asked to fire an intelligence analyst for what he may have said or done," said Ford, who has been with the government for 30 years and describes himself as a loyal Republican.
He said Bolton seemed incredulous that someone would challenge him, particularly someone so low in rank.
Conservatives have accused Democrats of character assassination.
"As the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton will speak truth to power," said Howard Kaloogian, co-chair of the conservative Move America Forward.
"So far, we've seen nothing but inexcusable grandstanding from those still bitter that their party lost in the last presidential election, and they keep clamouring for a different foreign policy than was endorsed by the American people."
Otto Reich, another assistant secretary of state who worked alongside Bolton, defended him in an op-ed piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, saying:
"Bolton deserves to be confirmed, but regardless of the outcome of the hearings, he has provided another valuable service — he has revealed Senate hearings to be the weapon of choice of vicious and anonymous staffers and their narcissist bosses to engage in character assassination and ideological vendettas."
Wolfowitz was perhaps Bush's most surprising choice, but he won global approval after initial European reticence.
No one questions Wolfowitz's intellect — but he, like Bolton, is a proponent of the muscular American approach on the world stage.
"It makes you wonder whether all the administration's words about mending fences with our allies are just lip service," said Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. "After deputy secretary Wolfowitz's repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq, I don't believe he is the right person to lead the World Bank."
Negroponte has the most impressive resumé and his nomination has been sent to the Senate floor for an expected easy confirmation.
But for more than 20 years, he has been dogged by accusations that he looked the other way as ambassador to Honduras while death squads and human rights violations were rampant in that country.
And he had to admit last week that he was as surprised as anyone that those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which represented such a grave threat in his 2003 pronouncements at the U.N., had never been found.
Of course, much of the evidence Negroponte took to his U.N. colleagues had been delivered to the CIA by an Iraqi defector nicknamed "Curveball," subsequently revealed as a well-known "fabricator" with a drinking problem who was often obviously hung-over in meetings with U.S. intelligence agents.
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pomegranate is my word for today
As I was driving around doing some quick errands the other day, I realized that I didn't bring my bottle of water with me in the car, and I was getting thirsty. So I figured I'd stop and pick up some fruit for me and my mother and get something to drink while I was at the market. As I happened by the juice aisle, I noticed a bottle of pomegranate juice -- ah, just what I need: something tart, thirst quenching and uniquely healthy. It was expensive, but I bought it anyway. Before I got back in the car, I took a big swig, put the cap back on the bottle, and put the bottle on the floor on the passenger side. Yup. As I turned a corner, the bottle tipped over. That's OK, I thought, the bottle is capped. Nope. Pomegranate juice all over the mat and seeping underneath. Ever try to rinse out a filthy car mat soaked in sticky juice? It's a frustratingly impossible job.
Sort of like caregiving. Especially when your phone rings at 1 am and she says she can't sleep because she can't find her white beaded purse. You say you're sleeping and will look for it tomorrow. And then your phone rings again at 2 am. Come over here and sleep here she says. You know she's afraid someone keeps coming in and taking her stuff. It's either that or you're taking it, she figures. There's perfect denial on her part that it might be that she keeps forgetting where she put things. So you go and sleep in the bed next to hers, even though she keeps rambling on about who knows what until 3 am or until you fall asleep (whichever came first).
Pomegranates are full of seeds and also full of myths and religious connections.
"Iranians believe that Eve was tempted with a pomegranate in the Garden of Eden...."
Mostly I drink pomegranate juice because it has more anti-oxidants than red wine. Scientists in Israel have shown that drinking a daily glass of the fruit's juice can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. (same link as above)
I also like the taste, and I have so few sensual pleasures in my life just now.
What I have is work, and lots of it. Including despamming my comments and trackbacks several times a day. Can't Blogger.com do something about the spammers who use their free weblogs to create home bases? I emailed Blogger about the abuse of their service but haven't heard back. Now that big Google owns what was little Blogger, I guess the personal service that Ev used to provide is not at option.
Bleh. I need a stiff drink. Except it's still morning.
That's what pomegranate juice is for.
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Morning Pages
Several years ago, one of my woman friends and I both read The Artist's Way, which suggests that you sit down every morning and write, long-hand, for half-an-hour,your Morning Pages. I never was able to do that. But typing is different. I can type in ten minutes what it would take me a half hour to write. (Of course, the linking takes time; but what's a blog without links?)
So, this morning I sit here in my nighshirt (I don't like pjs), reflecting.
My mom likes to watch the sunset (some obvious symbolism there, huh?), so after dinner yesterday I took her outside and we sat on a bench near our building that faces west. We sat, quietly, each lost in our own thoughts.
Her feet and legs hurt when she walks. She can't find shoes that look good (she's still vain) and are still comfortable. She pretty much wears old shoes of mine that are stretched out and softened by wear.
I have a lot of shoes. That's the answer to what women want, right?
I also have a drawer full of make-up. And a cabinet full of hair styling products. I've got to tackle both in the next few weeks and try to get rid of what I don't use. The probem is, of course, just like with my clothes, I start figuring that I might wish I had them after I throw them out. Then I remind myself -- hey! You're going to be living in the woods. You won't even have to bother getting dressed at all if you don't want to.
I dread moving on to attack my mother's 89 years of accumulated STUFF -- in boxes in the back of the closet, filling dressers and bureaus and table tops. I'm determined to downsize my own belongings so that my daughter never has to go through this kind of purging for me.
But downsizing is really hard to tackle -- most of all, of course, if it's your weight.
Today I'm getting together with my band of women friends for brunch. We all bring something. I'm bringing dessert -- a strawberry apple pie.
I like to cook. I just don't like to clean. Or clean out.
Time to get dressed. And also compose the note that I always have to leave for my mother when I go out: where I am going to be, the phone number there, my own cell phone number, and the time I'll be back. She seems OK if she has that kind of information handy in writing. Otherwise, she forgets. And then she panics.
It will be easier when we move next door to my brother. I hope.
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a post a day....
Maybe a post a day will keep frustration away. It seems to work for Jeneane, who certainly has more do deal with then most of us -- recent surgery; a plethora of baby hamsters; a bright, curious, and energetic young daughter; a husband who travels for his music; and, on top of all that, work.
It's worth a try.
Woke up this morning to a phone call from my mom saying she can't find her watch, her money, and her curling iron for her hair. I had already put small beepers in her purse, on her keys, and in her wallet. I keep the fourth, and then I can beep my way to their unfamiliar locations. But putting beepers on her curling iron and watch just won't work. So those are still missing.
I'll distract her today by taking her out to get a battery for an old watch.
Meanwhile, I wish a had a fairy godmother who'd come in and clean my apartment.
Now, where the hell are my keys? My watch?
No beeps for me -- not yet, anyway.
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Trying to look forward.
A friend called me yesterday to see if I was OK, since she noticed that I wasn't blogging. Then Betsy Devine pinged me and that sent me over to Frank Paynter's evocative Spring post, which made me really yearn for those kinds of connections again. Not just to nature or Nature, but to those feelings of honoring small, everyday details of a life lived with joy.
The real truth is that I have nothing to write about. And forget any joy. My days are filled with helping my mom find the half-dozen things that she misplaces each day and insists that someone came in and stole -- with giving myself a headache shouting so that she can actually hear me and repeatintg everything I say at least three times before she actually understands.
So we took a ride today, she and I, to where we will be moving in a few months. These are my views of the area near where we will be living, where the Catskill cliffs rise awesomely in all seasons and against all colors of sky.
The sky today was a definite early Spring blue even though the trees in those mountains have barely begun to bud. By the time we move, they will be lush and green and I will bring in bags of topsoil for an herb garden in spite of the shale and scrub.
Meanwhile, I share here a chuckle I got the last time I checked Ken Camp's blog. He stole the following from his son, and I'm herewith stealing it from him because it reminds me just how crazy so many other people are and so I feel a little saner.
TOP TEN THINGS AMERICA LEARNED FROM THE SCHIAVO CASE
1) Tom Delay is a qualified neurologist.
2) Two dozen court cases weren’t enough to really figure out what’s going on.
3) Michael Schiavo is after money, which is why he turned down millions of dollars to sign over guardianship.
4) Right to life applies only when it’s politically expedient.
5) Medical diagnoses are best performed by watching highly edited videotape rather than in person by trained physicians.
6) Minimum wage-making nursing assistants are more qualified to diagnose a persistent vegetative state than experienced neurologists.
7) Fifteen years in the same persistent state is not really enough time to make an accurate diagnosis.
8) Marriage is the most sacred of all unions, except when it isn’t.
9) Interfering in a family’s private tragedy is a great reason for President Bush to cut short a vacation, but getting a memo that warns of a terrorist attack isn’t.
10) Right-wing pro-lifers are the most compassionate people on Earth, which is why they are robbing gun stores or offering money online to make sure Michael Schiavo dies.
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Get ready for the Blog Sheroes!
I wish I could be there, and I would hope that lots of Blog Sisters will spread the word. Anything that bills itself as "Tits, Twats, and the Politics of Blogging" is my kind of meet-up.
Blog Diva Liza Sabater and Nichelle of Nichelle's Newsletter are doing the cleverly worded organizing.
There definitely are blog sheroes I'd like to meet who just might be there:
Lorraine of Stregonaria (I'm assuming she took her blog name from the Italian word for witch. My kind of woman!) Her latest post points to a NY Times article proving that "Homo Erectus was a Progressive." Lorraine, who also posts on DailyKos, ends her post with:
Having just argued that compassionate politics do not have to be reliant on notions of God, that we do not have to cede ground to the Right on this, reading this article presents proof that caring for other human beings is a human impulse, a late impulse that contributed to our evolution, the thing that, gasp! makes us human.
So, long, long ago, our ancestors kept a toothless old man alive. For what reasons and at what cost to themselves? At some point, humans developed the notion of a common bond, of an empathy for their fellow travelers.
Do we have any doubt which party can claim that as our lineage?
And then there's Elayne Riggs. (In the early Blog Sisters days, we had a thing going about Elayne with a "Y" and Elaine with an "I".... we're both pretty assertive about our identities.)
I noticed a couple of interesting recent links on Elayne's blog. One is about the death of Dale Messick, creator of my other favorite comic book when I was a kid (the top one, of course, was Wonder Woman) -- Brenda Starr. As the Times reports: Of her heroine's profession, she once explained, "She was already a reporter when the strip started, but she was sick and tired of covering nothing but ice-cream socials. She wanted a job with action, like the men reporters had."
Elayne also links to Tilde~'s Cafe Press She-Blogger site. I just love the image on the shirts, which, of course, can't be copied so I can't put it here. But I sure wish I could. I'll just have to buy one.
While the younger Blog Shero set is planning for its wild night at Madame X's, I'm gettng ready to take my just-turned-93-year old neighbor grocery shopping tomorrow. Oh, to be young and a sassy Shero once more!!
As Tild~ says on her Cafe Press t-shirts:
SHE-BLOGGER:
She had the experience of an older woman,
the morals of a liberal --
and all of the internet for her wanton playground!
ADDENDUM: Heh. Over at Tild~'s, there a whole bunch of "Sweet, Savage She-Blogger 1940s-style images. Check 'em out!
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Of Heritage and Hierarchy
Yeah, this is about the Pope. The Polish Pope being mourned by people of many religious persuasions, not just Catholic. We share the same heritage, he and I, with Polish blood running strong in our veins. Well, not his, any more, but you know what I mean -- that tireless dedication to democracy and equality (except, on his part, where Catholicism was concerned), that hunger for Solidarność (except, on his part, where Catholicism was concerned).
For almost all Poles, Polish history began somewhere in the 9th century when Christianity did its thing with the "Polians"(dwellers of the field).
From here:
Polishness was traditionally identified with Roman Catholicism. Indeed, it was the "baptism of Poland" which put the country on the cultural map of Europe in 966. However, the Polish - Lithuanian Republic was a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational country (Catholicism, Orthodox, Judaism and even Islam). This tolerance attracted religious dissidents from all over Europe. The decline of the Polish Republic and the transformation of a multi-ethnic society into a modern ethnically homogenous nation, plus the struggles for independence with Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia, strengthened the stereotype of the Pole - the Catholic. Under the partitions the Catholic Church was a mainstay of the Polish identity.
An acceptance of hierachy is fundamental to Catholicism. There are people, then there are nuns, then there are priests -- and then the clergy has its own hierachy, culminating in the Pope. As a red-blooded and full-blooded Pole, dedicated to democracy, equality, diversity -- and, as importantly, the importance of dissidence -- I could never understand how the Catholicism (as different from the more general concept of "Christianity") practiced by the Polish Pope jibed with his Polish roots.
Now, I happen to know a lot about Catholicsm, having gone through 13 years of its schooling. I also know a lot about growing up Polish, having been part of a large extended family of first and second generation immigrants. In my early years, I was even bi-lingual.
Polish and Catholic. That's how I grew up.
My family, of course, was ecstatic when the first non-Italian Pope in some 400 years wound up being Polish.
As a diplomat, as a performer for peace, as a negotiator, Karol Wojtyla ... revolutionised the papacy with his formidable energy and intellectual abilities, but his most lasting memorial was achieved in politics - the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.... He left one of his most momentous acts to the twilight of his papacy - an attempt to purify the soul of the Roman Catholic church with a sweeping apology for sins and errors committed during its 2000 years of existence, implicitly invoking the Crusades, the Inquisition and the Holocaust.
However, as the leader of a purportedly "Christ-ian" sect, Pope John Paul II set the causes of gender equality and personal rights back into the last century. Christ, as I learned about him wasn't at all hierarchical. He left that behind with the Old Testament god.
Because of the Polish Pope's personal charisma and his success in living up to the legacies of his national heritage, people all over the world stand ready to excuse him for his unfortunate success in further entrenching the reactionary and oppressive hierachy that Catholicsm has always been.
In his usual cut-through-the crap style, Andy Rooney, on tonight's 60 Minutes pointed out how most people who say they are Catholic don't really follow the leader of their religious hierarchy. They use birth control, have abortions, get divorced and remarried. They marry individuals of other religions. They do all of the things that Pope John Paul II said they're not supposed to do.
As for me, the older I get, the more I enjoy being Polish (especially since now there are web sites that deal with Polish paganism -- you know, all that Polish history that happened before the 9th century). And the older I get the more I can't stand the hypocrisies of hierarchies.
May he rest in peace, even though, because of the influence of his narrow religious opinions, many of the rest of us won't be able to.
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