Get Ready Wall.....Here Comes My Head Again

Yes, yes......it's true ........I am back at that point in my existence where it has  become necessary for me to hit my head against the nearest wall 4 or 5 or half a dozen times.  Don't feel sorry for my head.......it deserves this treatment.  Hopefully it may knock some sense into the so-called brain that lives in there making all kinds of idiotic, ill-thought-out decisions which the rest of me then  has to deal with.    As Ollie used to say to Stan, "This is another fine mess you've gotten us into!".

I can see all of you reaching for the phone to call for the White Coats and the strait jacket.........don't bother, please.  I have not quite split into multiple personalities which talk to each other (although I have often overheard me saying to myself out loud, "If I were you, Lois, I would do such and such."  Sigh.  It is just that, despite endless promises to myself, I have once again become embroiled in another one of those Save the Poor Critter" melodramas

Of COURSE I know better.......  Hence the head-bashing punishment routine.  But no matter how much I know better that does not seem to save me.  So here I am, running around the neighborhood in my bathrobe with my kitty carrier calling, "Here, pussy, pussy", catching up the little waif of a grey kitten/cat and schlepping her home (after first having emptied my bathroom  of anything breakable and installed, cat box, food and water dishes, kitty beds and various toys thereby making the room unusable for anything but temporarily housing a kitty).  And, at the stroke of midnight there will be no more food or water and at 7 am tomorrow she will be on her way to FIXNATION CLINIC to, as they say in the animal world, be "fixed".  Not that there is anything wrong with her, you understand....except that she is a succulent tempting female and two of the males that my 84 year old neighbor and I feed have been following her around drooling, making moon eyes and acting like she was the feline Marilyn Monroe........uh oh.

Some Wretch dumped this sweet child out into the cold before the holidays and she has been dining at the Califa St. buffets but when the other diners, Whiskas and Buster, suddenly would not let her out of their sight for a week we feared the worst and now that they have lost interest we are fearing even worse than the worst.  Her virginity lost, apparently knocked up, abandoned by the men who stole her innocence.......the old familiar melodrama enacted one more time...........

Frankly since vet rates have skyrocketed I have renounced this role of Rescuer, but I have just been advised by Catsters that there is a Blessed organization called Fixnation which supports the principle of Trap, Neuter and Release for feral and homeless kitties and dogs and will spay/neuter them for FREE.  This is a project close to my heart......no more homeless kittens and pups by some year or other  in the very near future ....hence I reluctantly got sucked into donning my red cape  in the nearest telephone booth  and jumping off the roof with my kitty carrier.

Now, if I can only manage to get myself out of bed at 7am tomorrow to transport her to the hospital, and if I can just tolerate not being able to use my master bathroom for a few days or a week till she recovers from surgery then all we need is to find some wonderful soul who will give her a good home.  I have my Cat Sitter working on this as we speak.

Please pray that Mr. or Ms. Wonderful appears miraculously ..............I do not need nor can I accept being the mother of 4 cats.  Winnie and Gussie have hissingly and growlingly expressed their violent objections to the idea........Baskin has not voted yet but I don't care what he wants in this case..  Sigh.......now, where is that damned wall again..........
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Make note of this address all ye who care about animals.  They neuter wild/feral animals free and tame animals for $55........a great price which includes shots and all that good stuff.  They will even lend you a trap if you need one.  And they have locations all over.  Please.

                                       www.fixnation.org
                                   

the 2011 Challenge

           I am in a very strange meditative, contemplative, brooding or otherwise introspective state.  Unfit for communicating with decent folk for sure.  During my annual year-end Inspection I have  become painfully aware that The Body which has housed my Spirit for, lo these 83 years, has been  broken, mended, re-mended, battered, tattered and torn too many times to count and seems hardly fit for further habitation. However, it is the only vessel I possess to occupy in this life so I guess I am stuck with it for the duration.  I have been trying to figure out  how to Charleston or Turkey Trot or even Boogie into a new year in this dubious condition and don't yet have the answers.  I do hope you precious and beloved people will all stick with me while I figure this out.        I also wish, while I am cogitating, that one of you would advise me about how to control where the type goes when I install a picture or illustration into my blog.  I find I am trapped into this endless column of words which the Blog God keeps rearranging on the page as I type, but am not permitted to create a spaced paragraph without going down to where my so-called toes are.  This is all very disconcerting and I am afraid if I continue to struggle with it I will get so annoyed, enraged and generally hot-under the collar that my glue will melt......a result which I fear would be tragic indeed.....I mean....who knows what the lower portion of my Spirit,now modestly hidden by its fragmented container,  looks like.......mustn't frighten the children, you know.   Or frighten myself for that matter.     Therefore, I am going to quietly withdraw and continue my pondering.  I will surely let you all know if I arrive at any bloggable conclusions.                                                                        

AARRRRRGGGGH ! * See Below for Translation

Well, old dears, I somehow seem to have made it to the final day of 2010
and what I would really like to say is something like "Good Riddance"  or "Tenks Gott, Not a Moment to Soon" but I will be dignified and grown up and won't say those things...........

Instead I will report on the funniest and most absurd piece of junk mail I have ever received......I tried to scan it and put it into my file to be extracted and down (or is it up) loaded to this  blog space, but I cannot locate the effing thing so I will simply reprise it for you. 

It was a promotion from one of my  credit cards (an airline) and it offered me an opportunity to earn enough miles to fly free anywhere in the world AND take a companion with me if I would only charge $30,000 in purchases to my card before December 31, 2010.

Needless to say I haven't tried,  but I am sure that even if  I had given it my best effort I would have failed miserably.  In fact, if I had a loose Thirty Thou lying around I can think of a number of things I would rather do with it than buy stuff so I could fly free to anywhere in the world......unless, of course they can promise me that the companion I would  be allowed to take with me would be my secret crush, (are you ready for this?)  Mark Harmon.........or possibly Hugh Laurie.

So, instead of trying to spend  all  that gelt on frivolity I have decided to save my strength and merely tell you all one more time how much I appreciate your loyalty and cyber-friendship.  You all were the  bright spot in my 2010 and I love you for it.  May you all have a lovely holiday and a warm, safe, healthy and love-filled 2011.

*  Happy New Year !

A Brief Note from the Grinch

Before I begin to muse about my feelings about this time of the year I have to make one thing perfectly clear. My feelings for the abomination which has come to be called the"holiday season"  are beyond words for me.   A nice idea totally ruined.

Now,  I have never  been a  big fan of holidays in general.....of course when I was going to school or working I loved having a day off but mostly I would go around muttering, "Bah, Humbug"  even on the 4th of July and Labor Day. It wasn't the idea of what the days commemorated..........I always felt that the ways they were celebrated demeaned them.  And I  REALLY dislike the year-end holiday season.......no....dislike is not good enough.....detest, abhor, loathe are better words to describe it.  For one thing,  I hate the ends of things......even when they are followed by a beginning of something.  The ends create a definitive mark in the saga of your life and rub your nose in it.  No more ignoring how much of the journey, the adventure, the struggle, the whole wonderful effing thing is behind you.  No more just shuffling along happily procrastinating about everything and pretending that you'll take care of it tomorrow.  At the "ends of things" you must face your shortcomings and acknowledge your failures.  And then go on....... somehow........

And the "beginning of things"  is even worse"..........a measured span of time during which you have the obligation to try to correct the flaws and committed disasters.  I used to falsely promise to do better before the next "end of things",  a ghastly charade I have abandoned in my old age.  NO, NO- No more resolutions for me......they simply set a person up for more failures.  I much prefer to see time as an unmarked span .......a road of ups and downs during which I try to do the best I can.  I have been doing that for the past gazillion years or so and am still working on getting it right.  The quality of my "best" varies a lot ............sometimes it is more like my worst, but I have been working on the lesson of trying to accept my "best" whatever the degree of quality.

At this moment my "best" has consisted of some  very strange undertakings.  I am convinced that I must apply instantly for membership in  marvelous Ms. Mary Moon's (Bless Our Hearts) Church of Batshit Crazy.  If ever anyone deserved to be a congregant it's gotta be me.  The recent downpours in Southern California found me cutting apart plastic gallon milk cartons to make teensy awnings for the hummingbird feeders that are not protected from the rain.  Can't have the little monsters getting drowned while trying to sip their 93 or so meals a day, now can we?  And then, of course, when the concrete around the pool developed puddles as deep as lakes I had to construct a makeshift  bridge of some 2 x 4's I had in the garage so that Baskin, my crazy cat who chooses to live outdoors and eat indoors, could enter the house through the door I leave open for him to dine on kibble without being up to his kitty knees in water....(I don't think they make galoshes in sets of 4, especially in such a tiny size).  The best thing about such bizarre projects is that no standards have yet  been established....consequently I can bask in the glow of having really done my  best.

All of this reminds me of the most wonderful compliment I have ever received.  One of my dearest friends (now gone) was Bob, a brilliant man I worked with for many years during my days as a starving artist.  He founded the little greeting card company for whom I designed cards and subsequently ended up as Art Director and my boss when we worked at UCLA designing and producing all their publications.  When I was struggling against a deadline  to produce a poster for one of the Theater Arts projects and groaning about  being unable to come up with anything I felt was acceptable, he stopped what he was doing, turned to me, looked me in the eye and said, "Lois, believe me, your worst is good enough". 

Happy Holidays  and God Bless Us Every One!

Were You Ever So Happy You Had to Cry?

Ladeeeze and Gen'mun  ...............Step right up an meet the cat who finally had  enough sense to come in out of the rain!  Well, not literally "meet him" but you faithful readers will know that I am referring to Baskin, my mentally challenged orange kitty.

This is the third day of our rainstorm and as I sloshed out to the far corner of the garden to feed the  birds and squirrels I saw the dry little orange shape tucked cosily inside the garden shed where I have fixed a bed for him and left a bowl of kibble.

Sigh........Sob..........rejoice everyone........my work here is done!

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever....But What About When It Is Raining?

 Well, I'd better take care of first things first...........I am thrilled and grateful to report that my vision is coming back!  Those blurry white smudges on the keyboard of my computer seem to be letters and the same goes for the blurry black spots on the white page of this blog.  Damn.....I guess that means I am going to have to start correcting my typos again.    That's OK.....I'll accept that task for the blessing of being able to see them.

Not all of the fuzzies are gone, but I am hoping that they will sharpen up in the next few days.  They'd better.  After all, tomorrow is 12 hour Sunday football day and there is hardly anything worse than staring at a TV screen that is supposed to  be showing 3 football games in a row  when, obviously, what is really going on is that some blurry red and blue or black and white spots keep bouncing around aimlessly on a green pool table.   I have no idea what the hell sport that is, but it ain't football and, take my word for it, it'll never catch on.......worse than Curling even.  Only a blithering idiot would watch THAT for 12 hours......and speaking of the mentally disadvantaged........

I certainly hope that none of you other people out there have the misfortune of  being owned by a mentally challenged cat.  I have often spoken about my dear orange tabby, Baskin, who doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain......    As it happens, today it is raining in Southern California, a thing that occurs far too infrequently.  However, for some of us it presents some unusual problems.

For instance, Baskin has decided that, no matter how luxurious the accommodations are in my Elite Cathouse,  he would much prefer to sleep in the dirt under a tree.  This despite the fact that I have created a nice cosy "camping out" environment for him in the shed in the back yard since he refuses to come inside to sleep.  So one early morning chore is to rush to the back door where he is usually waiting stoically to be let in to have his breakfast.  (Can't leave it outside for him because the raccoons gobble up everything both front and back when they visit).   I say "stoically" but the truth is I have no idea what goes on inside that little orange head.......he could be furious, bored, plotting revenge, fantasizing about a bird or a mouse,  reviewing his stock portfolio or "to do" list for the day or, as I suspect, thinking of absolutely nothing..  I can sometimes guess what one of the other cats may be thinking, but with Baskin....never.

So, when I pry open my eyes and see that it is raining I picture a soggy, bedraggled Baskin and rearrange my schedule to make letting him in priority #1.  The hummers will just have to wait.  And so it was today.  I flung open the door and he waited the prescribed number of moments for me to retreat be3fore daring to enter the house and munch his kibble.  By the way.....this cat gets offered the finest of canned gourmet catfoods but spurns them all in favor of dry kibble.  Then I watched him leap  the puddle outside the door and stroll casually toward the back of the garden.  Sob.  However, when I went out later with the birdseed and nuts for Squirrel I discovered, wonder of wonders,  there was Baskin lurking in the nice dry garden shed and I thought for a moment I might have misjudged him. I left a bowl of kibble for him inside the shed thinking that perhaps he had a bit a smarts after all.  Sadly, I think not, because after I was back in the house I looked out and saw him hunching himself up under the oleander bushes which used to provide him fair shelter before I had them and all the heavily foliaged (is that a word?) trees and bushes pruned for the winter.   Sigh.

Damn, damn, damn.......no, I am not cursing over Baskin's IQ, I am desolate because I had another large paragraph typed and ready to go  and I must have hit the key marked "disappear"  "cause it is gone.     I  have just decided that perhaps I am tempting fate by blogging on without my breakfast so I will just hit "post" and continue this ramble later.  Raisin Bran, here I come.

Is That a Light I See at the End of the Tunnel .....(or an Oncoming Train???)

I think I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.....no.....that's not a metaphor.....not a simile.......I mean the actual light!

I am down to wearing a mere 3 pairs of spectacles  and using only one or two magnifiers.  (You can tell I am somewhat better because I have compulsively attended to my typos,,......)

This has been 3 weeks I intend to blot out of my memory even if it takes a lobotomy.  Urgh!

Don't give up on me, dear ones..,,,,,,I WILL be back.