Today I refuse categorically to yearn I miss stupid things: that you rise early too still this morning it’s annoying to learn no one to talk to at the hour of stupid, no you Impatient with my feelings, I wish you ill hope you wake and want to whine and moan hope you wake early and feel over the hill but have to be quiet and grouse all alone hope your mind buzzes like a hive of grumpy bees while you spy on the internet and feel superior hope you gather more facts piled like logged trees and wonder why the piles don’t make you merrier I hope you slowly open and become aware you think you know everything and nobody cares
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Sol Duc is playing a game alone, capturing her back foot with her front, claws out on both. When she realizes I am watching, she puts her head down and pretends to be asleep. She isn’t asleep, I can tell by the claws and the ear tilt.
OOOOOO, ornery. What a lovely word! It can be purely negative or it can be positive and joking, or it can just mean stubborn.
This is one of Helen Burling Ottaway’s self portraits. My photograph, through glass. This is 20 by 26 inches, pastel chalk, dated 1979.
I had this up in the guest room, but a guest said he felt nervous with her watching. I laughed and said, “Ok, yeah, I can see that.” I moved it. My mother always looked fierce when she was concentrating. She captures that expression very well. People often thought she was angry when she was teaching, but it’s just concentration. I could tell the difference but the students could not.
Elwha and Sol Duc, at rest from their labors: eating, purring, demanding to be walked, and burying something interesting in the bowl for me to photograph. The toy mice are sopping wet.
Yesterday I pick up my Community Supported Agriculture box from Reddog Farm. The box was ready on Wednesday but I forgot! I thought it started next week! At the beginning of the season, the box contains tulips. Though the tulips are not in the box. There is a sign: choose five tulips from the cooler. I love the tulips!
I love my CSA too. I have been in a CSA for all but two of the last 23 years. The first one was Collingwood Farms. My children loved the potatoes. They would look at me with sad sad eyes and say “These aren’t Collingwood potatoes!” when I would substitute ones from the grocery store. I could tell too. The local potatoes are much sweeter and more delicious.
A friend came with me to get my box and then we had sauteed leeks and kale at lunch. And Elwha likes to help with photographs.
We are blessed with choices of a variety of CSAs. They come to the Farmer’s Market, which also started last Saturday. I missed the goat parade, but went a little later and it was packed with people and produce. Hooray for the local farms and all the people supporting them in different ways.
I have been dreaming regularly since mid-January, nightmares. The cause is my sleep apnea machine. I got it in December, but two days before I flew east to my son’s for Christmas. I did not take it with me. I delayed getting back for nine days to visit an ill friend in Michigan and help out. On January 11, I took the class on how to use the machine.
My initial “mask” was the “nasal pillow” one. I go to sleep by slowing my breathing and using the Zen Buddhist and Jon Kabat Zinn’s body scan to relax. However, if I slow my breathing, the CPAP will start to blow pressure when my breath out drops below a certain volume. Then I was breathing against pressure and it woke me up. Also I would sometimes open my mouth, which lets the air out and the machine instantly increases pressure and is much noisier.
I got another mask within ten days. This is a face mask. It did not have one strap around the head, but four. The hose is attached to the top of the head. The main pressure point is where the four straps meet right at the back of the skull.
The dreams started. Nightmares every single night. About being trapped and trying to escape. An octopus grabbing me by the skull. One dream about trying to rescue a man from a building that was under attack or going to blow up and he kept saying, “But I’m not READY. I have to PACK.” I’m arguing, “You can get more stuff! We have to go! We’ll get killed if we stay! Come on, I am here to rescue you.” He keeps looking for his stuff because he can’t believe that a 5 foot 4 female could actually be a heroine and there to rescue me. Dumb male. I wake up and laugh. Even men in my dreams have little respect for me. That is a pretty sad illustration of my lifetime experience with the other gender.
Anyhow, to have the insurance pay for the stupid sleep apnea machine, I needed 21 out of 30 days with more than 4 hours on the machine. And I have to do this within 3 months of getting the machine. I got it in December, remember? So I was motivated and hella grumpy with it. At least twice a night I would wake up from a nightmare and rip the darn thing off my head. The cats do not like it when it hisses.
I took to using it during naps too. Since I was NOT sleeping well on it, I was sleeping longer. Nine or ten hours a night, at least three or four OFF the machine. Pretty pathetic.
Last week I had my visit where I am blessed and the insurance will now pay for the machine. I begged a little to talk to the mask guy. They said no at first and then yes. He gave me another octopus headdress. This one also goes around the back of the skull, but the hose is hanging from the front. That means the weight is more in front.
It still took three or four days before I got to four hours on the new one. It works better and I am not dreaming about escape rooms twice a night. Phew!
The interview to have the machine paid for was pretty amusing. The insurance wants me to say I am sleeping better to qualify for the machine. I answered that I was sleeping longer. There are a bunch of questions. Mostly I could be positive except for the “are you waking up less?” “No, more.” “More? Why?” “Because the octopus has me by the head or I am dreaming I am trapped.” I had the nurse laughing at my answers, but I still qualified.
Anyhow, if I can invent a different mask that doesn’t feel like an octopus, I could probably be a gadzillionaire. I think I will look at some bondage stores, seems like they have various masks that could be adapted. Then they could do double duty and I will be a double gadzillionaire!
Mother got us a hammock, a two story structure. Our food can be in the lower section and I can sit above and keep an eye on it. Even when the bowl is empty. I am still hungry, but she is being a little more generous. She still feeds us in separate rooms. My sister and I race to check each other’s bowl when she opens the doors again. I like the wet food. My sister likes the dry food. Mother gives each of us some of both. We trade.
I am still doing offerings in my bowl in hopes that Mother will be more generous with the food. My sister had her head in the food bag the other day but Mother saw her and closed it up. I wish I had hands. I would open more cans.
I love my brother, but I must demur with him. He worries so.
It is true that we nearly starved as kittens. Our first mother disappeared and we cried and cried. We were picked up and brought to a strange cage place, with many many animals. It smells of fear and grief. Some of the cats are older and displaced. They have lost their families and are very sad.
Still, there was food! My brother is worse off than me, and often shoulders me aside when the food comes. I slap him with my claws if he is difficult and I get enough to eat. They give us more food than we can finish.
People handle us and pet us daily. At first I don’t like it but then I do. Elwha has a louder purr than me but I don’t care. The people must earn it.
Two women come one day and handle me and Elwha. They leave. Two days later we go to a very strange place and sleep. I wake groggy and kick my brother. The women are back and we are put in a smaller cage. This worries me but I am so groggy that I cannot fight. We are shaken for a while and then she lets us out.
In what turns out to be home and she is Mother now.
I am helping Elwha with his installations in the bowl. It is silly. We are not going to be starved. In fact, Elwha was getting portly and now he is a finer figure of a tom. Mother feeds us in separate rooms. I don’t put offerings in MY bowl, but I am willing to help him. We both enjoy the tissue paper, especially when it is red. It’s a bit of a waste to get it wet, but it makes him happy. I enjoyed shredding the last piece on the stairs, like a scene of death and destruction. I would dearly love to do the same to the birds, but Mother takes us out with harness only. I still like to go out.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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