Little Little Lightfoot . . .

That was what I crooned to him while we were stuck on Highway 18 this Sunday. We spent about thirty minutes or so parked on the highway waiting for an airship that used the 18 as a landing pad to transport an injured skier from Snow Valley. I was going nuts sitting there and he was none too happy sitting in the carrier so I pulled him out and we talked a bit.

He's an unaffected little fellow for all his recent trials. He's only three months old and three pounds, but he's already known freezing cold, hunger and abandonment. Such big ideas for such a little brain to live through. I think maybe that's the key. Big ideas pass unacknowledged and only little things register; like a chuck under the chin or a warm bed and good food.

Yes, I'm a Gordon Lightfoot fan. This would in part explain the name. He's handsome with red hair, very charismatic, has a lovely voice and holds meaning in my life. But he's also got four white feet. Light-foot, get it? Yeah, anyway, it's his first name. He doesn't have a middle name yet. I have a tradition of giving all my pets middle names that say something about why they're in my life or what they've brought to my life. I'm still working on his middle name.

I came to realize, watching him bound around the bedroom this morning, playing footsies with the dog from under the bed that I did the right thing in letting Cinny go. I don't care how many times you have to help a pet pass over, there's always doubt in your mind about whether you did it too soon or waited too long or was it fair to the animal to not let it choose it's own time? I know, watching Lightfoot bound about the place, that it's what Cinny wanted. He wanted to have this little happy healthy young body again. I think he knew what came next and he wanted it more than he was afraid of leaving.

I've come to believe over the years that these animals follow us, reincarnating again and again through this life and past lives and future lives. I knew the minute I heard about Lightfoot that I was supposed to take him in. I knew without seeing a picture that he was Cinny. I just knew in a way that defies explanation. When I met him it felt like coming home to hold him again.

Already I'm doing the "What the hell made me do that" examination which always means I did what I was supposed to do. I mean come on, I drove to Lake Arrowhead in Winter with ice on the road and insane people parked in turn-outs. I hate ice and I hate insane people. We won't even talk about what my car looks like now after that insane drive. I personally am praying for a good rain. It took me nearly two hours to get home when it should have taken less than an hour. I met a woman I've never known, sat down in her home, had my crotch sniffed by her dogs all to take in an orange kitten when truth be known I could have gone to the local animal shelter, thirty minute round trip tops, and adopt some other kitten. I think, when you look back on an experience and wonder why in the world you stepped so far outside your life or your comfort zone or your experience or understanding of the world to do something that makes no logical sense, you've done exactly what you were supposed to do.

So Lightfoot is home. Now I just have to get Bailey to stop hissing at the poor boy. Bailey is going to be the hard sell I can see that. The dog could really care less. It's just one more cat. She's thrilled that she can sniff cat butt without significant blood loss, but that's as far as her interest goes. Bailey though is going to take a long time to unwind from the knots she's wound herself up in. All in good time I suppose. What's meant to be will be.

Saving Lives

Years ago, someone saved my life. No he didn't push me out of the way of a careening bus or anything. But I was a sucker for him straight away. He had this lovely long strawberry blond hair that would make Robert Redford jealous. And green eyes that were the most amazing color, like new aspen leaves in spring. That's how he got to me, with the strawberry blond hair and the big eyes. I fell for him not long after I met him.

He claimed he was lost. Somehow he'd lost his way, his family had disappeared, he was all alone in the world. I believed him of course. I found out years later from his former family that in reality he was a habitual liar when it suited him, but I never held that against him. He did what he had to do. Ultimately he did what he was supposed to do in this world; he saved my life. I think he was born to be at the right place at the right time and it was all somehow planned. Whether he knew that or not I was never able to get out of him, but I'm convinced of it.

See, a lot of our conversations were one sided. I talked and he either listened contentedly or ignored me, depending. I never took it personally when he ignored me. He was attuned to a higher calling, he was listening for more important things than the sound of my voice most days. He was closer to God or the Gods or the universal spirit than I. He had a wisdom about him that was both ethereal and ageless and at the same time very down to earth and to the point. I never knew which point of view I was going to get from him on a given day. He could be brutally frank in his assesments sometimes. Many is the day I wanted to kick his butt across the room because he was being a stubborn SOB, but I never did. In the end I'd just take several deep breaths, curse the Gods and then trusted that he knew what he was doing. How someone could be both of the Gods and a royal fucking pain in the ass at the same time is one of the mysteries of the boy. He was unique.

Those of you who've met him probably know who I'm talking about by now. Cinny showed up at a time and place in my life where I needed to move on, literally, but I didn't know how. He was the most unaffected, happy go lucky, sweethearted individual I'd ever met. How anyone could dislike him I will never understand. He was ten pounds of pure personality with the sunniest disposition of any cat I've ever known. But my oldest sister took an immediate disliking to him. This is not surprising given her sour personality. I guess it was like nails on a blackboard to her to see a creature so happy and positive bounding around the place.

I was living with both my sisters when he showed up. When I was young I used to wonder if I'd ever be free of my family. I was afraid I'd die in that house I'd grown up in, that I'd never find the strength to leave or never be allowed to leave. After my mother and then my father died still I couldn't leave; I was too afraid I think, too convinced that I couldn't survive on my own. Growing up in an abusive family like mine you come to believe you're somehow fatalty flawed, fated to live and die in a cage. I didn't think I'd ever escape that house. I wasn't welcome or wanted there, but I didn't know how to survive out there either. I grew up in some inbetween place, some no man's land where there was just me, unwanted and unconnected to the family that brought me into this world and ill equiped to live in the real world that I didn't understand and that didn't understand me.

So along came this cat. I'm a sucker for soft and cute I will admit, but more than that he was so determinedly happy. He had done nothing to anyone and shown nothing but love to total strangers without qualification. My oldest sister didn't want to keep him. We argued about it, it was two against one but that didn't much matter. One day while I was at work she took him to the pound. When I came home that day and he didn't come running up to me I instantly knew why. I sprang him the next day and took him to live with a friend while I started looking for an apartment that took cats. He spent a month living with a friend who had just had knee surgery and couldn't walk. He spent most of that month camped out in her lap purring. Once again he was where he was supposed to be. The kid had a knack for being at the right place at the right time.

I moved out and took him with me. He was my best friend for a lot of years. I will never forget the time he decided to play in the christmas tree with his housemate and got caught up in the bead garland. He paniced and ran down the hall with garland wound around his neck. When I came out of the bedroom to see what all the noise was about he tried his best to look nonchalant with bead garland wrapped around his neck and trailing out behind him, the other end still attached to the tree. "Do, what do you mean what did I do?" I still laugh when I think about that look on his face. Like I said before, the boy was a habitual liar, no doubt.

He saved me and gave me my life. Without him the last 12 years would have been very different, if I even would have survived it all. I owed him big time.

I let him go today. He was unhappy and in pain with a half dozen physical problems. He told me last night, in his own way, that he'd had enough so I set him free this morning. He saved my life and the best I could do for him was set him free. It somehow doesn't seem like it's enough for someone who gave me so much.

Leaving the Parking Lot

Well truely, this just sucks. How does that Hiatt line go? "You think you come so far, in this one horse town, and she's laughing that crazy laugh because you haven't left the parking lot."


I have gray hair. I'm 46. A few grays is inevitable. I don't have a few, I have lots. I let the hair go too long between dye jobs and took a good look today. I'd say I'm about half gray now. *insert inconsolable crying here* I'm only 46 and I have gray hair and I'm entering menopause. I'm not enough of a writer to convey the grief I feel. And yes, I have the mood swings to go with all this. I'm starting to think that my mood swings have mood swings.


Life is indeed a journey. I know this. I've taken comfort for several years from knowing I'll live to grow old. Long story, but I know I have a relatively long life in this world ahead of me. I do believe that change is life and it's all part of the process and I embrace the process. I do. Really. I do. SHUT UP, I DO!


So why is it so hard right now? Why am I having such a hard time with it? I'm not afraid of dying some day. I haven't been afraid of death for quite some time. It's not death that scares me. I think I have trouble shaking this feeling that I had other options and I regret not taking them. And that's nonsense. I'm here for a reason, for a purpose, and obviously that purpose was never to be stunningly gorgeous and thin and wealthy. Yeah. My reasons for being though seem too far outside what this physical world believes are the reasons for living. They're convinced it's about being rich or beautiful or whatever amazing thing is in this week. How does that old line go "He who dies with the most toys wins." I know better. That's just a cover in the end for why we're really here; to learn and grow. The toys and the looks and the celebrity are carrots to keep you breathing.


See I know all this. I think I've come so far. But then I spot the gray hair enmass and none of that matters. Have I even left the parking lot? I had or am having, you can never tell with forums, a discussion with some other Pagans about definitions. The word spirituality came up. I defined spirituality as the part of me connected to a greater whole, the part that is not physical of this physical world body. I am both. I am physical and I am spiritual. But am I really? See, there's the buggy little thing about it; who really knows? I mean I assume because spiritual beliefs have played such a big part in the evolution of the human race that there just must be something to it. Right?

You can never be 100% sure can you? Once you die the truth whatever it might be will become obvious, but you can't know before that second can you? On the other hand what does it really hurt to believe you are as much a spiritual being of soul and energy as you are a physical body? What's the harm in believeing? Wait for it . . . because then the "dies with the most toys" people will be right if you are wrong. There is no lesson, there is no God to stand before, there is no Summerland, there is no eternal soul. It was really all just about the toys.

This one is right up there with pancakes or french toast with your eggs, ya know?

Underwater

That's what it feels like these days; that I'm underwater, struggling to make it to the surface and breath again. Drawing that breath, that simple single breath that would be so lovely, that would mean life.

There is no constant state of bliss here, or even acceptance or in fact any kind of even, consistent existence; an even calm breathing in and out. It's like I spend all my time and energy trying to create that; trying to get to the surface and breath again. Part of that is merely living, I know that. We spend a good part of each day recreating or lives in one way or another wanting tomorrow to be better, happier, stronger. But it's more than that. It seems that each step forward I take knocks me backwards two steps in ways I couldn't anticipate.

Give you an example. I bought a treadmill about four months ago. I used to be a runner, doing two or three miles a day when I was in my twenties and I loved it. I have no illusions about running again; I don't think me knees will allow it. But I had hoped to do some fast walking on the treadmill, timing myself, pacing myself and building endurance and muscle. See that was what started this; endurance. I weed wacked the yard. By the time I got done I was seriously winded and exhausted. I decided that 46 was not supposed to feel like that. What I now understand is that it wasn't just being out of shape that did it, it was more than that. But I bought the treadmill hoping to regain some endurance and seriously thought it was as easy as that to do. For many people it may indeed be that easy. But after almost 20 months my body has still not recovered from Celiacs and a hemoglobin of 7 and vitamin and mineral deficiencies and all that comes with this disorder.

I can't just go out and recreate my body. My body can't stand the strain just yet. And I'm frustrated because maybe it never will. Maybe this is as good as life will ever get. No one knows how completely I can recover, not the doctors, not me, no one. I've built up some endurance and some additional muscle. I can weed wack the yard without passing out. Yes, it's better than it was after four months of working out. But with that has come pain, very slow recovery, tendinitis and a plateau I can't get off.

Every time I think I understand the depths of this disease, the reach it has into my life, my past, my future I realize I've misjudged it yet again. I thought I would simply get better and better and that was how I would progress. But perhaps there is a limit to what I can do in the future. I hate limitations. It's one thing to not want to do this or that. For a long while there I didn't want to power walk or run. It never entered my mind for years. But now that I want it I've found I can't just have it if I work hard and behave myself. That idea that you can have anything you want if you try hard enough has it's limitations. I hate limitations. I can't work out more than three or four times a week or my body is incredibly sore and just getting out bed in the morning is hard. Forty six isn't supposed to feel like this, but apparently forth six with Celiac Disease is. My vitamin and mineral levels are still low. And I'm still weeding out allergies and intolerances. Okay, I'm also still trying to accept that I have allergies and food intolerances. But hey, you try avoiding corn and see how far you get!

Fooking Shieetteee

Okay, once again, in case you missed it the last time you I AM NOT AMUSED! Got it? I AM NOT AMUSED ONE FUCKING LITTLE BIT.

With all the work you've got to do in this world how on earth and heaven do you find time to fuck with me? Come on, you got cyclones and tornados and earthquakes in your arsenal, why bother with penny anty nonsense like fucking with my little insignificant life? Go fuck with a continent or two and leave me alone for awhile okay? How hard would that be?

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See, there's a problem for people with Celiac disease that no one really thinks or talks much about. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't, forever stuck in this no man's land in between your worlds of experience knowledge and attitudes. I will attempt to explain. But given how fucked my head is right now I make no guarantees.

I shop more and more at the organic store; necessity really, they carry gluten free products no one else does. But the organic industry thinks all things organic are good for you. This would include small organic farmers. Here in lies the issue. Strawberry farmers in California almost universally grow strawberries on a synthetic bedding material that is at best, well, plastic. Organic farmers prefer older more organic methods. This would mean they grow them on straw. In theory I should be able to buy California grown strawberries and be safe. But I bought some from the organic store, from an organic grower who believes straw, which is essentially wheat and barley shaft, is a far superior growing method. The strawberries grown that way are simply cross contaminated from birth with gluten, no way around it, no way to wash it off. I didn't know that. Nor did I know about organic strawberry farmers until this week.

I bought and ate some organic strawberries grown on straw Thursday. I was deathly violently ill Thursday night. Accidental gluten has never made me this sick before. My body has become more sensitive as time goes on. That scares me. I was close to calling an ambulance Thursday night. Fortunately the abdominal distress came and went within an hour after I upchucked everything in my stomach and then some. But the side effects then began to set in. The rage and depression came back with a vengance yesterday and today. I know this will pass, but I hate it. And the more I understand about myself, the more I also understand about my mother and I hate that too. I hate being anything like her even for a day. And today is mothers day. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm afraid to go out. I need to go to the store, but I'm afraid of what I'll say if anyone mistakenly wishes me a Happy Mother's Day. I should wear a sign or something if I do go out.

I've been sitting here thinking. I realize now she never was much of a mother, not ever really. I don't think she knew how to be and I don't think she really tried. I grew up without a whole lot of nurturing. So I've been seeking that from other people, in bits and pieces when my pride would allow me, and doing without, and now lastly trying to figure out how to nurture myself. That is a recent development and I don't think I understood on a conscious level that I was doing that. I get it now. I have no fucking clue how, but I get that I have been trying to do that the last few months in bits and pieces. It's nice when the subconscious and the conscious finally start to read each other. So what the fuck do I do with Mothers Day? I never really had a mother. I'll never have one. You can't go back, you can't recapture or recreate or even reinvent. There is no one out there who can make up for twenty five years of abuse and neglect and abandonment. I've never felt so alone. I know, I know, it's the gluten talking too, but Gods it's just so fucking hard.

It's Too Enormous

It was just too enormous a task no matter how you look at it. And it's a lesson to be learned. I spent a couple weekends early this month going through what was left of my parents house. I say left because my oldest sister took many things we'd specifically asked her to leave that belonged to all of us; namly family pictures, slides and documents. I wouldn't say I'm angry with her. For me to be angry would mean that I'd thought she was capable of better. I fully expected her to do worse than she did. I would not have been surprised if she'd dragged everything in the house out onto the back lawn and set fire to it. Many of the documents and photos we found we found because she simply missed them. There was just so much. Imagine what a family of six would accumulate - if no one every threw anything out - over the course of fifty years. That's about how long the house has been in our family, since it was built in 1954. There were boxes of stuff and we had to look through every box to be sure we weren't tossing anything important or wanted or needed.

It was exhausting and draining and mind numbing and heartbreaking. I think I came home with about eight boxes of things. Mind you all things I couldn't stand to see left behind. And there is still a large piece of furniture sitting in my friends house in Woodland Hills that I need to find a way to get home to me here. I couldn't stand to see that secretary go to a stranger, or get lost to time or worse dumpstered. So I took it, and I will find a way to get it up here.

I brought home old everyday china we used to use growing up that my mother never threw out. Thank the Gods she didn't throw it out. They are of course classic vintage patterns now. But it's more than that. It's a visceral connection that I have to this china. The touch, the colors, the feel is something rooted so deep in my soul. It was like coming home to touch them again. I hadn't held any of it in probably twenty or thirty years, but my body instantly remembered the feel and the weight and the colors. It would have been like abandoning a part of me to leave it behind.

And my grandfathers books. I took all of his books that were there; all his old books with the yellowing pages and the old spines and the lovely old book smells. Many of them have either my father or my grandfathers names written into the front cover. They're like an anchor of sorts, a connection so deep as to be almost unfathomable. We share that literature, those stories, the love of good books and storytellers and words and rhyme. The line is unbroken from grandfather to son to daughter. There is something shared by all three of us, some quirk of DNA or maybe just upbringing that makes us gravitate towards lovely lovely books with hard spines and words on pages.

I took many of my father's books as well. The collection was so vast though, and many of them were beyond me. I only understand so much about astronomy and there were too many technical books that I will never grasp. He and I always approached the night sky differently. He saw "The Winter Sky" and the stars in their place and which ones were visible and which would need a telescope and he knew where to find what he was looking for, where to look past the horrizon. While I would lay there and just marvel at them. It's always been one of the reasons I live up here, so I can see them all. No one in L.A. sees stars anymore; at least not in the sky. They see one or two and call themselves lucky. I see billions every night and am overwhelmed by the enormity and depth of the sky beyond our planet.

And I took what slides of my father's we could find, and his slide viewers. There is lesson in photograph there. Take more pictures of people. Twenty years from now no one will care what kind of roses you grew in the back yard, or how well your orchids bloomed in 1967. But they will want to see photos of grandmother and grandfather and the kids with the new puppy. Still the images of us he did capture made up for alot. I had forgotten so many things I saw in those slides. I'd forgotten about the old white station wagon, and the summer he put the first pool up, and those hedious matching sailor outfits, and how much he loved my mother. There were so many pictures he took of just her. I don't think she knew how often he captured her, how often he aimed for her and her alone, taking the picture just becuase she stood there. I truely hope at some point she understood how much he loved her. It would kill me to think she never understood or indulged it or even realized it. I doubt she returned the love. I wonder if she ever even understood what love is. But I hope she realized how much he loved her even if she couldn't return it. How hopeless a wish is that? Still I cling to it because I can't bare to think she was that oblivious. His love was there, all over those slides, screaming from them. What a wonderful quiet man he was.

So with the help of a few friends my sister and I went through it all and decided what to take and what to leave behind. It was daunting and traumatizing and gut wrenching. It still is. By now it is all gone. The Salvation Army came and took the furniture none of us wanted, and the knick knacks and the books. And what they didn't take the contractor dumpstered. And he has begun working on the house. And soon he will be done. And soon it will go on the market to be sold to strangers. And it will be gone from my life forever, never to touch or stand in again and I don't know how that will feel. I know it's not normal in this day and age for people to keep a house for fifty plus years, let alone grow up in the one same house. How does it feel to drive past a home you grew up in and know you're not welcome in it, that it belongs to strangers? I don't know, it's never happened to me. I don't think I could. I will go and see it one last time when he'd done renovating it. I want to see it happy again and repaired and beautiful. That is what this has all been about after all. But I will never willingly drive by it again. I don't think. I don't think I could stand it. Better it live in memory and go on from this point to be someone elses home. Bless and keep another family my friend.

duhhhhh . . .

The answers were literally HERE all along. At least I think they are. I read back a bit though old posts and found it last March. That's when I figured it out. This has never been the best stretch of months for me, not in over twenty years. In December of 1986 my sister in law passed, and two months later my maternal grandmother and a month later in March my Mother. I was 25 at the time and unprepared for any of it. Three years later, again in March my Father passed. Four years later same time my best friend, my oldest friend passed. This time of year has been painful too many times I guess.

I've never been one to give a season an emotion or a meaning. Winter isn't dark and dismal, how can it be when the snow lights up the world so brightly I need shades? And there have been years where it didn't bother me. I wish I knew why.

But I suppose I've been in too fragile a state lately. It's not just the dog, though that's certainly part of it. It's his house. We're finally at the place where my father's house can be renovated and sold. And I believe I have lost a sister in the process. But for so many reasons this is what had to happen. And in truth at this point I will miss the house more than the sister. I grew up in that house, spent my entire childhood there. It is my childhood. But it has to go on and house another family and belong to someone else. That should have happened decades ago.

So I'm still sad, in a general weepy sort of way. I think I will be for who knows how long. But it's easier knowing why. At least I think I understand.

I'm Too Old for This

I did a few truly stupid things the other night. I ate a pizza and I had a glass of sparkling wine. For me that was a pretty stupid choice. The pizza was gluten free. I'm not that stupid. But the tomato sauce on it was a poor choice. Couple that with the sulfites in the wine and I had a hideous night followed by a worse morning. I know better. I know what tomato anything does to me now. I know what sulfites do to me. I'd love to be able to say it was an accident. But I can't. I had to make the pizza dough and open the can of tomato sauce and open the bottle of wine. Those were all deliberate acts on my part.

I believe it was a futile gesture of rebellion. Futile because lets face it, there is no ONE to rebel against; no one but me to care what I did. I was only hurting myself and absolutely no one else. It was one of those insane gestures that you make when you've had enough and you don't know quite what else to do. Dumb dumb dumb. I wish I could explain it better than that but I can't as yet.

I do believe I've hit a rough patch on the road. I no longer crave Big Macs of Taco Salads or any of that other stuff. The whole restaurant thing is no longer a part of my life and I'm fine with that. I haven't eaten in a restaurant in over 15 months. I don't really crave any of it anymore. It's not about cravings. It is so not about that. So then what? Why do that to myself?

I was afraid I was going to loose the dog a couple weeks ago. She had to have four teeth pulled, and at her advanced age that's really rough on a dog. The vet and I made an conscious decisions years ago when I got her not to clean her teeth regularly because they were simple so bad when I adopted her at age four that we figured she'd have to have one or two out every couple years. That turned out not to be the case. She went almost seven years without dental work. But the anesthesia was really hard on her. I wondered those first couple days if she was going to snap out of it. As it was it took her almost a week to get back to her old self.

I know how hard it will hit when I do loose her. Somehow that's all part of this. I'm not entirely sure how though. Someone said in an interview the other day words to the effect that he'd lost things in this life he never thought he'd loose. I read those words and sat and cried for an hour. I'd love to track the man down and ask him how in the world he lives knowing that. I don't need to know the particulars he spoke of to understand the phrase. The easy things to loose are cars and houses and things. People and pets are harder to loose. But I think the hardest things to loose are those things that change your point of view forever. Once you turn that corner you can't ever turn back. Once it's lost it can never be gotten back.

I long ago lost the sense that everything would always work out in the end; I know now that sometimes it just doesn't and you have to live with the terrible aftermath. I've lost the sense that your family's love will always be there; people change in ways you couldn't have imagined and the love changes with them. I've lost a sense of knowing exactly who I am and have had to recreate myself without using parts from the past and a whole lot of imagination. I've lost the innocence of not knowing the whys of so much of my own life and history; I understand more and more every day and it draws me deeper and deeper into what was really my past and not the one I thought I had.

That whole wisdom with age thing just truly SUCKS. I don't want anymore wisdom or understanding. Enough. I can't handle anymore. Just let me play catch up for a year or two. Let me figure out why a dozen printed words on a page made me cry for an hour. Just give me a minute will ya Lady?