DUCK! LaRoo slithers under the fence, leaps the black inky squishy slough and is off like a rocket through the blueberry farm. The ducks take wing, LaRoo, still in white, trots back to us, smiling, shaking off her defeat. Now spent, she hasn’t the verve to hurdle the slough, so we watch, (no, no!) as she carefully slithers into the deep tarry ravine. I stand open mouthed, my OCD boiling like bile to my brain as dear calm Joe climbs the 5 foot fence to pull her out. Here she is, looking like a black & white cookie.
March 9, 2010
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March 6, 2010
Helping to build schools in Mali
Labors of love and sweat, building schools in Mali. Please share this and help kids who want to learn, and the adults who are passionate to help them.
Mali, West Africa http://youtu.be/Hif7aXq3e-E
February 13, 2010
Library, library, what do you see?
Rooooaring good time to come with Nancy Pearl (be still my heart. I am such a FAN!) and Richard Russo and a whole noisy library full of writers and people who love to read. And read and read.
http://www.kcls.org/literarylions/
A gift in every challenge
I didn’t set my alarm last night. It was Friday night and I was tired. ‘Well, if I wake up in time for yoga, great, if not, ok.’ I did wake up in time. I fed the dogs and Pony the hungry cat, gathered up my towel and mat and rolled disappointedly down the road. Disappointed because my publisher had very kindly rejected my latest children’s book proposal yesterday. The disappointment and self belittling had followed me the rest of day. I am really really good at self criticism. Let me tell you.. nah, I’ll spare us all.
Yoga. I love my yoga teacher, but I like subs. I get to hear a new voice, new pace, new instruction, meditations, even moves sometimes. There was a sub today, Marilyn. She teaches rehab yoga. Good, my back needs it from grooming Andy last night. Well, might as well groom a poodle – I’m a really lousy artist and loser writer and no one will ever publish another book and I’ll have to work at Kinko’s.
Time to loosen the kinko’s.
While we laid on our backs, breathing through our nose, she began talking. I followed faithfully (dog girl that I am) her song. Ok, she wasn’t singing, but it felt as sweet as any lull-abye. Soothing, reassuring, like a hand on my shoulder. I breathed. She sang. “Let go of criticism, competition and expectation.” Marilyn, what a great idea! And on she went, and on I followed until I was singing right along with her. Inside, going further into my belly and heart. I live in my limbs way too much. Stretching daily, it is my legs and arms that starfish out. This morning, it was an inner stretch, pooling, eddying, releasing, rushing river white water river to lake to stream to ocean, a wave, a shhhhh to shore. Still. Quiet. Voice.
On our backs again for the last, Marilyn repeated — “criticism, competition, expectation. Gratitude. Find the gift in a challenge. My biggest challenge these days is losing my friend Andrea. The gift in this challenge? I am with her, daily. I hear her, see her more than I have in years. I once wrote to a friend, “grief is our best friend.” Even grief can be a gift. Let go of criticism, competition and expectation. Find the gift. Be grateful. Right now. Breathe it out.
PS I figured Marilyn to be in her early 60s. She is 73. I want to be just like her when I grow up.
January 27, 2010
Memory like a dream
Like the soft steady wake up purr from vibrating whiskers on cheek, the cat is close. Or is that a motorboat on a lake.
The staccato accelerating roar of the crowd at the football stadium I never go, even in my nightmares. Turn it off. But in memory it gets turned up loud but I still can’t understand what they’re yelling about. Something about a wizard.
Memory amplified and out rolls the whole story. Following a day in the life, one full day like any other to take for granted. Alive with Andrea. Our best days were the uninterrupted, turn down the stadium noise, what-do-you-want-to-do, days. Get up, it’s warm and bright here. Kumkuats on the tree. Take your pick. Andrea driving her brown sports car, the brand most people would go, oooh, cool, but I can’t remember then and sure don’t now. Tamales from that place that catered her first wedding to her stolid mexican Joe, before we met right after we both had gay boyfriends. What’s That about? Real there in my dream, no stadium roar. I think of a huge dish, and find one tamale in a napkin on my lap.
It’s just how memories are.
January 20, 2010
Until we meet again, my little Minus Monk
I met Minus in a cold hosed down stink of an animal shelter in Los Angeles. We had gone there with friends to look at a dog they wanted to adopt (and did!). In passing, I saw Minus on the top shelf of a long row of cats. I did a double take and our eyes locked. My heart swooned. I like to think his did too.
I named him Minus because he was, at 3 or 4 months, already neutered, and a very small cat. Small or not, he was a Cat’s cat. No foolin’ around. No time for mush or fluff. Let’s just be cats, see. So we were, cat to cat, human to human. He roamed, he moused, he even brought me a squirrel baby to – raise. That was Pippi, the squirrel, another story, but one that Minus launched.
May your nails grow long and sleek and tough again, Minus, your eye bright as gold, your belly smooth and full like a buddha fisherman. You will always be in my soul, if not in my arms, my sweet little Minus Monk.
During our 10 month trip around the US. Minus loved the trailer. We will keep his ashes in there.
Under cover drape
Over the shoulder drape. Click here for Joe's eulogy
Old little tv drape. Nice and toasty
The kitty door Joe made for Minus at the foot of our bed in the Airstream. Minus would travel during the day in the back of the suburban (that towed our trailer). When we got to camp we'd take him from the truck and put him in the trailer. Then he knew his tracks from trailer and back. He'd go out and do his kitty thing. He always came back. In many ways he was easier to travel with then our poodle, Morgan. Minus loved the airstream. Joe built him a little dining room under the kitchen table so he could dine in peace without Morgan hovering. We all slept together at night.
Minus could make even trash look elegant
My song to Minus
Sung to “Good Morning” Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, “Singing in the Rain”
Minus, the finest,
he is a little cat.
He's Minus
the finest of cats.
Minus, the finest
of cats!
Oh, yes of cats
He's Minus
The finest of cats.
When we met Minus Monk
his future wasn't bright.
Love prevailed, we sprung his bail
now we're happy day and night.
Oh Minus, the finest.
The finest of cats.
Minus Monk, 1993 – January 19, 2009
January 17, 2010
Let’s not talk about age
At a dinner party the other night I noticed there is almost a competition, bragging in a sad way about whose dog or cat lives the longest. Like, it’s some feat, or fate, we have a hand in. Age as an accomplishment is not new. To be fair, I think some of that with animals is simply our fear and the mystery of living so intimately with someone whose life is in your hands, in many ways.
I’m going to try to stop thinking in terms of age. If you hear me referring to myself as old, please remind me that old as in what reference point, from the time I was born, or moments, inches, seconds away from It – the old stopwatch click. so I don’t really know. I could be the very oldest (seconds from death) possible, or I could be middle aged (live to be 100). We all just going along until we’re done. There is no middle age either. Middle age is 13 for some people. Less, for others.
Time to get my beauty rest.
"Hi, I live for 24 hours. But I don't know how to count so I'll never know when the end is near. Lucky, I guess."
Bear brownies
In my never ending search for food GoGo will eat, I defrosted a bag of bear organs my friend Nathan gave me. He shot the bear. I forget – have repressed, the details, but I do remember he ‘had’ to. It was not for sport or food. But since it was dead, he saved and used every part of it. He knows I feed my animals real food, so he packed away the liver, the heart, and a few other things I don’t recognize.
Greasy. Greasy raw, greasier cooked. First I put it all through the meat grinder, tears in my eyes. Oh awful, the sound, the splatter, the bloated dark spaghetti tendrils oozing their way out of the grid.
Gooshed onto a big pan and into the oven. How long do you cook bear organs? Who knows. I baked them at 350 for 1/2 hr. They came out perfectly done. Like a slimy greasy oozy meatloaf. I haven’t seen “Julie and Julia” yet. Is this how Julia got started?
The dogs and cats love it. Sacred beast for my sacred beasts. Puts hair on their chests.
Eat Up
January 13, 2010
‘Lead the Way’ video using “Don’t Lick the Dog”
I especially like Michael’s growl: http://www.vimeo.com/8703321
Cross your arms and turn your back when Jake jumps up and barks like that
Before you give a treat to Kate, make your hand into a plate.
Dogs aren't toys to hug and squeeze, or poke or chase or tug or tease. Just like you and just like me; dogs have personalities.
If they could talk these dogs would say, we wish all kids behaved this way.
January 7, 2010
Bone gel get wells
of poodles and discussion about what to feed GoGo, who eats less and less. She is disappearing, and I am so frightened to lose her. My friend Joanne suggested I boil down the bones of the turkey I baked for GoGo until it became gel. We did, and Joe ground up the bones and put them back into the pot, for more calcium. After 2 days of simmering it down to gel, GoGo won’t eat it. Ah well.
GoGo has never liked to eat, and now getting older and older, less and less. She has liver disease. She is surviving on hard boiled eggs, bread, vitamins, liver and a myriad of other things I tempt her with daily. Liverwurst to lamb lungs, dog brownies to canned food, seared venison, baked Alaska..
She is our miracle girl at 13-1/2, to just keep Go-going with a liver that looks like she drinks a pint of scotch every day. Keep on my little brown angel.
Oh yea – the phone doodles.
my darling girl
