Blustery winter night musings

Hurts to sit, hurts to stand, let's see if I can type semi-reclined...with a cat on my arms because apparently this is an open invetation.

Quote of the day: "Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything's different." C.S. Lewis

Current weather: pouring down rain, windy, 46F...in January! The exclamation point is for the temp, not the wind and the rain.

                                                            *     *    *

Apparently I am terrified of "doing it wrong" or not knowing how to start or over-thinking everything I want to do, so I've made a vow to just write something, anything, every day. There used to be a nifty little web site where you typed like a crazy person and earned little rewards for typing more than X amount every day, but about two months after I discovered it the site went to paid subscriptions and I bailed because I just can't afford pretty much anything that isn't food, household expenses, gas, and other boring grownup things. I'm just going to have to make my daily quota without benefit of virtual awards, because I really need to make writing a habit and a need as much as brushing my teeth and drinking enough water. I think it's that important for me.

I don't have kids, but that doesn't mean I don't have plenty of distractions to keep me from just sitting down (or standing up) and getting the writing done. At this moment I can just barely hear my rooster crowing in the henhouse behind the gusting wind and the rumble of the rain on the kitchen skylights, and I'm tempted to go see if they're all right. Even though I know the difference between the squawk of a terrified chicken and the casual call of a rooster who doesn't care that it's the middle of the night but feels the urge to alert the world to his magnificence, I still worry, because a few minutes ago I heard the neighbor's mare whinnying in her paddock next to my chicken coop. In a suspense film this would be a dead giveaway that some creature, human or otherwise, was lurking about in my yard. In this case, however, knowing what I know about horses in general and this one in particular, I'm pretty sure she's just annoyed that her "boyfriends", the two geldings who live in our pasture, are locked up in the barn for the night and not able to visit with her across the fence, and she's calling to them for attention. A whole pack of coyotes could parade by any of those horses and they wouldn't bat an eyelash, but separate them for five minutes and it's the end of the world.

Being very distractable means I tend to go through my day bouncing from one task to another and not really completing anything. I start to do something, but then that something reminds me of another thing I should do first, so I defer to that, then the process repeats itself. Making a list of things to do helps a bit, but I still rarely if ever get to the end of a list, no matter how small I make it. Right now the most important thing I keep putting off, besides writing, is walking. I really need to walk at least three times a week, and really more than that, if I ever want to get my health back up to a decent level. The flat disk in my spine is acutely painful all the time these days, but I don't think walking on level ground will exacerbate it much. I have to get my overall health buffed up or I'm doomed. Walking, pilates, and some free weights are where I need to start. I was doing pretty well with weights over the past few months, but then I dropped the ball over the holidays. I'm trying to keep painkiller use to a minimum, so I'm in pain most of the time and spend several sessions each day lying on ice packs so I can stand and walk a bit. Maybe the walking will help with pain management as much as taking vitamin C seems to help, I don't know, but it can't hurt to try, I guess. If my pain escalates I'll have to do something different.

Changing my diet has certainly helped. Removing wheat from my life was huge. Within a week I saw a major change in my GI system and went from borderline IBS to almost normal function for the first time in my life. After a week or so I noticed something else: my headaches, an almost daily condition, almost disappeared. Now, instead of being thankful for the occasional headache-free day, I'm surprised by the occasional headache. Again, this had been going on pretty much since my teenage years, non-stop. Nothing seemed to help prevent them, and only ibuprofen relieved them. Now I rarely take anything for a headache, and it's usually because I cheated and ate wheat or too much sugar and that triggered it.

Fixing my terrible sleep patterns is an ongoing struggle. I know I'd feel better, have less depression, and probably less pain if I could get to bed earlier and sleep through the night, but I fail more often than not in this department. My biggest hurdle is having to share a bed with my spouse, whom I love, but...I'm just not great with sharing sleeping space with another human. It's hard for me to relax when there's another person in my bed because I really need my personal space. The cats are fine, but another human, especially one who becomes very annoyed if awakened in the night by anything, makes for stress that impairs my ability to relax most nights. The upshot of this is that I want to be sure he's good and solidly asleep before I crawl into bed. Occasionally I make an attempt at getting to bed before him, but this usually results in us heading for the shower at the same time and then doing the "After you." "Oh no, after you!" dance. Then either I feel like I need to rush through my ablutions and race for bed, or I send him in and start some project which results in my usual staying up too late again. Someday I hope we have a house with two bedrooms so this won't be an issue. Until then, I really need to find a way to get to bed earlier, because I need a lot more sleep than he does. He seems to be good with around eight hours, but I'm groggy with less than nine or ten, especially if I don't sleep soundly. I'm experimenting with various supplements to help with this, and niacin is helping a lot. Valerian root and melatonin never seemed to do much, but 1,000 mg of niacin about an hour before bed seems to help me relax. Herbal tea is good, too. I read an article that talked about using honey before bed, so I try that sometimes, too. Then there's the pain management. Right now I'm pretty much stuck with taking a couple of naproxen every night in order to notch the spinal pain down enough to get to sleep. By morning it's worn off, but it usually gets me through the night. Getting a better form of magnesium has helped with muscle cramping, too. It's a constant experiment to adjust the supplements and diet and painkillers, but I kept myself out of the ER in 2013: yay!

It's half-past midnight, so I should quit. I dreamed about the "square house" night before last. It shows up every once in awhile. Not sure what it means. In my dreams it's supposed to be the house of a family in Seattle, the kids of which are friends of mine and I believe my sister's. It's not really the old Lyons' house on Queen Anne, at least I don't think it is, but then I barely remember that place. It's like a cross between that house and a place near the U of WA in which I rented a room for a few months after college, not long before I moved to Japan. Edwardian, square, bigger than a bungalow. Three stories with a central staircase and a sun porch on the East side. A house of many rooms, once grand but now a bit frayed at the edges. Lived in, loved, and full of the accumulated detritus of the years. It doesn't represent "home" to me, but I'm not sure what it does represent, then. I've been dreaming about it since the 80s, I think. One of these days I'll figure it out. In the meanwhile, time to hit the shower and sneak in to bed. Sam cat is probably warming up my spot right now, as is his wont. He won't mind when I move him over so I have a place for my feet. He'll just curl up and go back to sleep. Cats are pretty unflappable when it comes to sleeping arrangements.

Happy 1st Birthday, Elanor

As of today you've been all the way around the Sun once. That's a long, long journey for a little shiny black beastie. You launch in to each day with fierce abandon, always ready to let bystanders know what's on your mind. Every exertion is punctuated by a growl, grunt or yowl. The rain, much to your disgust, has yet to cede to your muttered complaints, and yet you will rant to anyone with an ear on your dissatisfaction with the weather on stormy days.



You have ridden part of the solar circuit swaying in the tops of various trees, your nose in the wind, like a lookout in the fighting top of a ship of the line.

Part of the journey you've spent burrowed deep in various piles of bedding, visible only as a shapeless lump. The world is your gymnasium, it's wads of paper your footballs, the chickens in the yard your ninepins, and various laps your yoga mats.


You are Eric the Red's last "child", as he is growing old and losing patience with kittens whom he would once have cheerfully raised. You befriended Sam, the patch tabby we brought home from the shelter a month before we picked you up. He is no longer a sad, lonely ex-street cat with few social skills, but a happy, goofy, friendly cat who is happy to play tag with you indoors and out.




You started life with a double hernia which you ignored, but which frightened us terribly. The kindness of friends paid for your surgery and today nobody would ever know this lithe, ferocious little panther had ever been fragile and broken.

Here's to another wild ride around the sun, little demon.

 

Feeling a little blue

Next month it will be a year since my cat Gimli disappeared. I still grieve about it. I still miss him terribly. He was amazing: so full of life, such a huge personality, such an imp. I loved him a lot. I haven't been this broken up since my first cat, Isis, died in 1988. I don't know why I bond so strongly with some of my cats. Maybe it's because certain of them have personalities that synch with mine in some mysterious way, and that fulfills a need for me that I don't fully understand. I've had so many disappointments, so many dreams squished, made so many bad decisions in my life, and maybe the affection of these inscrutable creatures is a kind of psychological balm. They're always there, consistently loving, yet unpredictable and fascinating. They know when I'm hurting and are content just to sit with, or on, me and commiserate.

A quick lick on the nose or a head butt from a lithe, sinuous, amazingly athletic predator goes a long way to make up for slights or other fallout from humans who really should have more understanding. That feline companionship is truly comforting when I'm sick or in physical pain. I always feel terrible when they're hurt or sick and my efforts to soothe or heal them don't seem to be working, or just take longer than I'd like to see results, because they're always there for me. They are perhaps not exactly my "children", but I am responsible for their well-being. I love them, and can't imagine life without them.

If I die while still harboring cats or any other animals in my life, I can only hope that some caring individual would take them in and care for them until the end of their lives. I guess I should set up a will with a section in it for just such a contingency. My husband is a good man, but I wouldn't want to burden him with the care of so many animals after my passing. He enjoys the cats on his good days, but taking care of animals isn't something he ever asked for. As I write this, a very old lady cat is sitting in my lap. She started out semi-feral and is now retired from the feral life. I hope I can end my days as gracefully as she is doing, and with my fur as unruffled.

Bro Camp

Friend and filmmaker Brady Hall posted a link on Facebook today to an oh-so-precious little trailer for a slick Manly Man Camping Getaway dude experience. After an initial few seconds of "this looks kind of cool..." it abruptly degrades into a bad episode of "High Five'n White Guys go camping!" (For those of you who didn't live in Seattle in the 80s and 90s, here's a clip of said High-Five'n White Guys from an episode of "Almost Live")  Were it not for the fact that this is a real "dude ranch" type adventure company, the casual viewer could easily take this for a spoof. Even knowing that this was a real thing, I laughed all the way through after the first few seconds.

"Artisinal food"?! Cocktails, propane grills, and a baggage truck...seriously. It's the Dood Ranch! No, it's Bro Camp! Please, I went on Sea Scout adventures in high school where we did more manly things, and I'm a girl. I'd forward this to some rancher friends in Texas and Colorado for the humor value, but they'd have to be hospitalized afterward from either laughing or barfing. The hipster "guy-next-door" voice over extolling the virtues of finding oneself in rugged outdoor male-bonding combined with images of guys unloading gear from a chase truck, eating catered food served by a chef, chugging bottled brewskis, and throwing hatchets at a log make for a jaw-droppingly awesome experience, but probably not in the way intended. I do not exaggerate, my husband's mouth was actually agape whilst watching this for the first time.

The makers of this video seem woefully removed from any kind of reality to which I can relate. I host events at my house that are more rustic than Dude Bro Camp, or whatever Wilderness Collective, the company that puts on these outings, is called. As mentioned above, when I showed this to my spouse he was utterly gobsmacked. He was particularly in awe of the French press coffee, commenting "I took my girls on camping trips when they were babies that were more arduous than that." It's true. In fact, he and I have been on "romantic getaway" type camping trips that were more rugged than this, including one where we snowshoed several miles in, hauling our gear on a sled and pitching a lean-to under a pine tree, cooking our food over a fire with iron and tinware. Oh, and we set up a rustic shooting range and plinked at some rocks and pinecones with our rifles. The rules for that trip were "no gear or supplies that could be had after 1898". Nuts to your pansy theme parties, we do theme camping.

Needless to say, the Facebook comments on this short film were as expected. Even folks whom I know are city dwellers are in awe of the "dood" factor on display here.

M: "This thing is a joke right? It's like a bad SNL skit."
L: "For $2,500 I could go on one hell of a camping trip with plenty of fancy cheese and cocktails..."
E:  "they should just put on their hunting tweed and discuss the colonies while the beaters flush the pheasants."

I don't know if these guys are necessarily "rich and fancy" as one commenter put it. I'm guessing they're just typical urban guys who are trying to fill that manly man vacuum in their lives, although guys who obviously have a lot more cash to blow than I do. Men are meant to "go out and DO things", not just sit around. Are these guys really so unimaginative or inertia-bound that they can't just go hiking or car camping on their own?  I'm not saying women aren't supposed to do things, too, but men are hardwired to go out in to the bush and bag that mammoth and dance around with a bunch of other guys high-fiving, shouting, "Yeah! Food for a month for EVERYBODY!" This is another reason why Bro Camp, while I'm sure it's a lovely time, doesn't really fit the bill. These guys need to be handed fishing poles and told to go catch dinner. They need to learn to build decent cookfires and cook their own grub.

To be fair, Wilderness Collective offers several types of "adventures", of which this is perhaps the most redolent of reality TV. I kid you not, they even include a film crew in the package. One of their other offerings is a mule-packing trip in to the Sierras which looks a heck of a lot more macho than this motorcycle and chase truck deal.

My poor spouse, on the other hand, would probably be happier with a little less manliness around our place. He's out chopping wood every day, feeding and mucking horses, and when I call him to take care of a varmint it's a coyote not a spider (I'm a lousy shot).