Really?

There's a drug called Aciphex? Really? Say that one out loud. What marketing committee fell on their, well, rear ends for that one?

Ten on Tuesday: 10 things I am grateful for

There are, of course, all the big ones: family, friends, faith, health, financial stability, running water--that many if not all Americans are grateful for this week (or hope to be). These are a few I thought of that might be more specific to me...and this has been one big old crappy year so here goes.

1. Modern dentistry. Truly.

2. Next Gen. I am thankful for dorky star trek shows from the 1990s. Yes. I am.

3. Coffee on Wednesday mornings with Janet and Ann.

4. The sweetgum outside this window, for the first time in 11 years, was orange and black-purple and fire red. It's always just been yellow. Ah.

5. Sophia's classroom teacher.

6. Stability and the position in life I hold that has allowed me to live out this vow.

7. Edna St. Vincent Millay poems.

8. Time I've spent with those who are now gone.

9. People who don't even know me who stop here to read what I have to say. And the people who do know me who keep reading anyway.

10. The last line of the desiderata: With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

On My Porch

Little stray cat
half tailed, black brown fur matted
Wooly bear kitty

See, the dog died. And I had a trashcan filled with dog food. So I asked around, and Jim across the street took it for his dog. I was glad to move it along. My pantry has this big open space now. But the trashcan was heavy, and as I dragged it onto the front porch, about a quart or so spilled on the boards.

And see, our porch is wood, like a deck, really, and in bad shape but that's another story. I scooped up almost all the spilt food but crumbs and a few chunks remained. Whatever, I thought. Maybe a squirrel will eat it.

Then yesterday I saw what was going to eat it. A scruffy long-haired black and brown stray cat. Round yellow eyes. Fluffy, but probably covering up complete scrawniness. I caught it in the front yard and clicked to it, but it ran a bit further away. My neighbor who runs a cat rescue organization saw me and came out. Said she'd caught that one in a trap a few days back and it was totally feral. And I could see then that it was. But its ear was clipped (the sign of "I've been neutered" for outdoor stray cats). And I noticed it had half a tail.

Later, it was on the porch munching the dog food. Cleaned it all up overnight. This morning I got home from Target and it was on the porch finding the crumbs left behind. Saw me and ran, but not far. Just to the yard where the maple stump is. We regarded each other again. I took Leo and my things inside and then went down to the cats' bowls on the basement landing. Thought about how they could probably come upstairs now that Dara won't steal their food. Grabbed a handful out of Jack's bowl and took it outside. Cat was still in the front yard. I put the handful of dry food on the corner of my porch and went inside so I wouldn't intimidate it.

It's gone now.

I've never fed a stray before. But this one with its ear clipped probably is neutered and therefore isn't going to be producing more strays. And there's something about it, or maybe something about me, that urges me to make its life a little easier.

It's going to be cold soon.

By the numbers

From Not Mary Poppins (on the side bar there)

How old was your mom when she had you? 23

How many siblings do you have? 3

How many people live in your household? 5

What is your zip code? 63118

What year was your first car made? 1974 1/2 (Triumph Spitfire)

What year is your current vehicle? 2000

How many piercings do you have? 2

How many tattoos do you have? 0

How many creamers do you take in your coffee? Probably 2; I prefer a splash of 1/2 and 1/2.

What time did you wake up this morning? 7:51

What is the latest you’ve stayed up this week? 11:45ish

How old were you when the Challenger blew up? 11

What year did you graduate high school? 1992

How old were you when you got married? 21

How old were you when you had kids? 26, 29, 34

How many kids do you have? 3

How many pieces of jewelry are you wearing right now? 1

How many different houses have you lived in? 18 not counting dorms and temporary apartments (less than a month while we waited to move in sort of thing)

What is your average electric bill? $110

What is your lucky number? 6

How many windows are in the room you’re in? 2 sort of; it's a loft open to the stairwell which also has a window but originally it wasn't in this room proper.

How many TV’s are in your house? 1

How many boyfriends have you had? 4? Depends on what you mean...as few as 3, as many as
6.

Short thoughts for Sunday

Mike doesn't have a deer yet. There was an ice storm last January when Leo was born and so now there isn't a big acorn crop. Deer eat acorns and so their paths have changed. He's in a tree now. He'll be home tonight. At least Bill got a deer and so we'll have something (besides squash, as my pastor said this morning. I guess I talk about squash a lot here...).

Leo is finally getting that first tooth. I can feel the hard ridge under the gum. Finally.

The girls' room redecorating/rearranging of furniture has worked wonders so far and has brought to light the fact that Sophia cannot keep anything clean. And Maeve can. Funny.

Went to a "Friend Thanksgiving" evening last night that was just what I needed this weekend with Mike away. The girls played and ran around, I drank wine, and wow was that good turkey and dressing and gravy and so on.

Sophia sings in the church choir now. It's very cute.

We are almost done with Return of the King. It is SO MUCH BETTER read aloud. Wow. When I read it the first time, well, I was 12, but still, it was so dull. Read aloud, it's really good.

We are buying 80 pounds of fat on Friday to make deer sausage and burger. Assuming Mike gets a deer. Sigh.

All the leaves are off the trees outside and the light is bright for the time being. It's a nice day--a little warm, even--and cats are sunbathing in the window next to me. Girls are upstairs playing with crayons you can use on your skin. Sophia wanted to give me a tattoo. I declined the offer.

I have almost all my Christmas shopping done, but I stress "shopping" in that sentence. I have knitting and sewing still to do. Frighteningly large amount, in fact. And the Christmas cards. It's so pretty today, maybe I'll try to take the kids' picture. I might even write a letter this year, so that everyone else can feel happy about their own lives. Yikes has this been a crappy year for Chez Wissinger. But always within reason and never too hard.

I keep hearing Dara downstairs. It doesn't freak me out. It just makes me catch my breath and realize, no, I don't hear Dara downstairs. And I won't ever again.

But I've caught myself ruminating on Dog Part II. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm torn.

Meetings are soul-crushing

So last night was another meeting, worship commission. I'm not sure how I wound up on this commission, actually, when I think back. I'm on art & environment and that's part of worship and I think I came to a meeting to discuss Easter decorating or something and there I stayed. This has never been my favorite meeting (that would be parish council of old). It's always been a bit grim. And I accepted that because I felt like in my own small capacity (as Christmas and Easter decorator extraordinaire) I had something to bring. But I always went home and drank. Just kidding. Sometimes I had ice cream and watched star trek reruns.

There are some strong personalities in the room and I tend not to have much to say about things I don't have direct control or influence over because I'm a bit intimidated by several of them. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but in a way that I know I will defer to strong opinions because I do not have the experience, age, or education to back up my thoughts. So I don't say much.

Which makes me wonder why I go, right? I could just go to Art and Environment and leave it at that. But I fear that A&E will be misrepresented and so I go for that part of the meeting. And the rest of the time, I sort of endure.

But a few months ago, we had a wonderful meeting. As I left, I realized why. One person was absent and it made all the difference. The other strong personalities were still in the room but I felt like I could put in my two cents and not get shot down. And it wasn't that this one person was always the one being negative, either--it was like having her there made everyone else sort of on edge. And then she wasn't there and it worked how it should. It was the first worship commission meeting I'd attended in however long I'd been going that I didn't go home and complain to Mike. It was a good meeting. Productive, creative, light-hearted without getting too far afield or coarse or repetitive.

Last night was another meeting. She was there. At one point, I almost just left. Nothing big had happened, nothing over the top or shocking or terrible. It was just...her. I kept thinking about things I could have been doing at home: reading bedtime stories, helping with bathtime, with Leo. Laundry. Calling my aunt. Scrubbing grout. Whatever.

When it was finally done, I went to the car and KEZK had Christmas music on. The most wonderful time of the year, which is a song that makes me shake my head and laugh anyway, the relentless demands for cheerfulness. But I just cried. I had let her put me in such a bad mood. And I thought to myself, never again. I'm not going back. It doesn't do anything for anyone to have me be there. I report things about church environment, sure, but I could do that over email. Her presence snuffs mine out.

But what really should happen is she should go. Or she should be reined in. And I'm right about ready to do that. Just screw politeness and get brave and do it.

When it's all said and done, though, I don't have to go back to another worship meeting until February. So I'll just see if I'm in a better place by then. Because life is too short.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 things I remember about Dara

1. She would move those eyebrow dots, those umlauts, like she was Spock or something.

2. She'd sit on the landing, watching people move on the street. She could see them, they couldn't see her.

3. We'd go to Rock Eddy with her and she'd walk in the woods with us until she could hardly move. She'd whimper while she slept, sore city dog.

4. Cats would walk by her, get close and tease, and she would hold her head up and look alarmed. She wouldn't bite. Wouldn't lunge. But she wanted to.

5. She loved liver treats. She would do tricks for liver treats. She'd let me put a liver treat on her nose while commanding her to "leave it" and she would. She'd quiver and shake, but she'd wait until she was done.

6. She lived in our house for a week before she ran out the front door and ran away down to Grand. She got hit by a car, grazed on one side. We got her back, Mike carrying her in. She was fine--just dazed and her fur on that side was shorn a bit from the impact. She never crossed the street, any street, without us again.

7. She knew when the side gate was unlocked and would leave the backyard. She wouldn't go far. Just go sit on other folks' porches. Or ours.

8. In the middle of the night, I would sometimes wake up to her growling and then a single yelp. That meant it was early Tuesday morning and the milkman was here.

9. Other nights I would wake up to the horribly annoying sound of her licking her paw very very very slowly. Lick. Lick. Lick. This made me absolutely insane. But if I banished her from the room she would whine in the hall. So she got a sharp "Dara!" and she learned eventually that this meant the licking should stop.

10. She really loved the UPS guy. Probably her favorite visitor. He always brought treats and chatted her up.

So I don't have a heart of stone, just so you know

It was sad. She had a tumor on her thyroid that had spread and gotten very large and hard. The vet thought that it probably had metastasized as well, most likely to the lungs. We could hear her swallowing when he looked at her and it wasn't good.

And she'd lost 20 pounds since September. This was a gigantic shock--when you live with someone, even a dog, every day, you just don't see it until suddenly you do, and then you feel absolutely awful.

So I went to pick up the girls at SCOSAG (the children's art studio they go to, for those not sitting in south St. Louis right now) and Mike stayed with Dara. As I left, it was obvious, way too obvious, that she hurt and was not doing well. We had debated taking her home and...what? Wait for her to die this weekend? I just don't think that would have worked either.

The girls were really broken up about it, which made me sad, too. We'd prepared them but the actual time, when it comes, is always a zinger. Maeve demanded a puppy. Sophia thought maybe we should wait. But not too long. And then we got home and they realized that even though it was dark, it was only 5:20 and they could still play with friends. Away they went. I hope they were ok. We're bringing them home in 10 minutes to go get pizza or something. I don't feel like cooking right now.

We're heading to Rock Eddy in the spring, like always--the photo above is from this May. She's gone with us every time since we started going there nine autumns ago. We're going to take her ashes with us and spread them in Clifty Creek or something like that. That's where she was always happiest.

I just realized I'll have to tell the UPS guy. That makes me laugh and cry all over again.

Dara is sick

Something is wrong with Dara. Dara is our dog, a rottweiler mix humane society adoption dog we've lived with for 11 years--she's probably close to 13. And she's a big dog and they don't live forever and.

I don't talk about her much because we're not friends. I'm not a dog person. I never have been. Starting with our first lab back when I was 8, I find dogs to be stinky messy loud animals. I just don't like them. I do like Dara, because she doesn't lick me, doesn't try to get on my bed, and does her job (which is looking like a scary dog and barking loud when strangers approach).

She has had a long gentle decline into old age. Her eyes got a little cloudy, but she could still see ok unless it was dusk. She got slow, but some weight loss helped that. Her ears started to go a bit--and so she get jumpy with noises. But she's been ok. Then of course earlier this fall we had the explosive diarrhea all over my kitchen floor. Still recovering from that. I thought that was the end, frankly. But she recovered and came home and was ok. Old but ok.

She's not ok anymore. Last week she stopped eating her full allotment of food. Not a big deal, really. She'd come back and eat more later. She rested more, but, again, not a big change. But in the past few days, she stopped eating hard food altogether. Mike thought maybe she had a tooth hurting her, and picked up some ground beef. Made her beef and rice, which we'd done before for her when she was sick many years ago. She had a few bites but still wasn't interested. And then Mike mentioned last night that hurt tooth or no hurt tooth, it doesn't make you stop drinking water. I don't refill the water bowl--Mike's job--and he said he hasn't really had to refill it.

So that's no good. Food discomfort might be a tooth or old age or whatever, but even with my worst tooth pain I still drink water. So we're going to the vet today at 4:30 while the girls are at SCOSAG to try to get our vet to give us the hard truth. Really. If this is the end, it's the end. If it's a tooth infection that needs to be taken care of and on we go for another year or so, great. But if this is kidneys or something like that, then let's be honest with each other.

If I hadn't already said I wasn't a dog person there would now be no doubt. A few years back Bleys, my big orange kitty, got sick and it looked like it might be his kidneys. I was a blubbering mess. Absolutely stricken and horribly sad. He recovered--it was probably a little arthritis making it hard for him to jump to the counter where the food was kept, and thus he'd stopped eating, and thus weight loss, etc. Bleys is fine now. But Dara's potentially impending death isn't getting to me the same way. It will be sad but it's been a good life. It will be hard to find a dog as good and gentle and scary looking (the combo) as Dara.

Perhaps we won't try.

Christmas is Coming

It is.

It suddenly hit me that I have ten days until Thanksgiving and then it's less than a month to Christmas. I want to hide. Having a 10 month old is not making this Christmas season preparations easy, let me tell ya.

I am in charge of Christmas at my house. I decide what is going to each person, whether we're going to purchase or make or (yes, we do) regift whatever it is. I buy everything, make everything, clean everything, cook everything, decorate 50% of everything (tree is a family affair with me in charge and trying not to yell as children casually pick up and practically throw onto the tree ornaments that hung on my great-grandmother's tree ages ago. I do succeed--I have never yelled at kids over something so trivial. But I have to TRY). I wrap everything, coordinate everything, dress everyone, send everything, everything. It's mine. Not to mention being in charge of church decorating (that really should get more than two words--it is a big job) and helping out with my parents' Christmas party.

And I love it. This is not a complaint. I know as Sophia gets older she will want to do more, and she does already (she tries to wrap, she does). Maeve seems to be the type that won't want to help, but actually that isn't fair because she's always on the lookout for Sophia gift ideas. Very sweet.

This year, though, with the new HVAC and the "Economy" as everyone keeps saying, and three kids instead of two, and blah blah blah, I'm a little more creative in all this, which takes time (instead of money). And attention. It takes attention. Leo, have I mentioned that he is moving around, cruising and crawling and eating dog food? There isn't a lot of "put the baby down get some knitting done" time. And there certainly isn't any time with less attention to baby than that, even. I am having a hard time getting sewing done. Sewing is more dangerous with babies than knitting, after all.

My kids (all kids) crave tradition and routines, even routines that are out of our routine, like holiday traditions. Cutting a tree down with my parents, decorating it that evening. Baking. Setting up their little trees in their room. Reading the right stories, seeing the right movies, doing Christmas crafts, and so forth. Last year we did not make a gingerbread house, and I've been reminded by Sophia that this should happen in 2009 (remember last year? I had an inner ear infection and was 8 months pregnant? Does it ever end??).

So I'm trying to get ready. Trying not to despair. I can get that superhero cape made for Maeve, nothing to it, if I just get to it. The two knitting projects, the few small sewing projects, the Christmas cards. I just have to do them. As many many pastors and homilists have pointed out to me and so many other congregations, I have as much time as anyone else. I just have to choose how to use it.

Viagra from Russia?

Ok, I'm tired of getting anonymous commenters leaving me ads about viagra and messages in Russian with links to places I don't want to go.

So I've added word verification as well. I'm sorry, I know that is annoying since I also have comment moderation (due to a troll). But it just got too annoying to find an inbox full of crap from all angles possible!

Thanks!