Is there ever enough time for everything?

I think I must be kidding myself into believing this.  I’m the eternal optimist and always think I’ll get to it, but I have to admit one day goes by and then another and soon a week or two has gone by.  I still haven’t accomplished writing one post in over a month’s time.  There’s a lot going on in my life, but still you’d think I could manage one post in thirty days.  Wouldn’t you?

It’s hard to believe it’s been so long.  Impossible even for me.  I promise to get something out here in the next day or two.

One thing is for sure, it’s burning up here in the desert.  We’ve had 104 several days now.  It’s still 90 when I hit the sack at midnight.

We have another lizard in the fireplace entertaining the cats.  I have a new job, a messy house and I’m way behind in doing everything.  I’ve also had a couple of adventures.  I have some pictures I haven’t had time to download yet and a website I’m trying to revamp.  I’ve been reading too trying to get myself inspired to finish my mystery series.  Who else better to inspire one than Stephen King?  I can never put his books down.

The splendor of nature

Sunrise under a stormy sky

I’m posting some sunsets and other odd things today.  My life has been way too hectic to write up anything intelligent.  I seem to be moving at a pace that’s much faster than I’d like.  Between working, going to my citizen’s police academy and doing all the chores around the house, there’s no time left over.

 A fiery sunset under storm clouds

 

Sometimes I really wonder how all the people I work with are still going strong.  Many of them have been there way longer than me, not to mention are much older too.  Maybe they go home after their shift and collapse on the couch like I do.  Sometimes it’s a real chore just to get my body out of the car once I get into the garage.  LOL  I like my job, but it can wear me out.

 Raven using this box from Costco as a new hiding place

Raven and Koki with a toy mouse. 

 

I’m learning a lot at the academy.  I hope it’ll come in useful when rewriting my mystery series.  

We had our gates redone.  After 12 and 1/2 years they needed it.

There is life beyond work

It’s occurred to me that I’ve really been complaining about work lately so I think it’s time to write about something else altogether for a while.  While it’s true a lot of my time is taken up with work, there’s also life beyond the world of food demos. 

We’ve had some gorgeous sunsets here in the desert and I’ve managed to capture a few of them.  I just love all the oranges along with the gold and pink.  Sadly sunsets never last long enough for me.  I’m not always in a position to grab the camera soon enough either.  Sometimes the pinks and oranges give me a 360 degree view and that’s impossible to capture in one picture.  It’s a nice five to ten minute feast for the eyes though.

 Sometimes the rocks and mountains behind the house light up at sunset

Hubby got a shot of this big hawk on the roof the other morning

 

We’re also beginning to get just a small taste of the spring weather that’s coming and not too soon for me.  A few days ago it was in the low 60’s here, sunny with beautiful puffy clouds all over and just beautiful.  We had a slight breeze and it was so nice I would have liked to have bottled that day.  The next day it was back to the gloomy business with more rain and it was quite a bit colder again.  We’ve had a lot of rainy days this year, but I guess that’s better than snow and ice.  Luckily we’ve only had one day of that so far and it was hailing one night when I got off work, so that wasn’t at all fun to be out in.

 Koki likes to chase her tail on this level of the cat tree.  She's done this all her life.  She'll be twelve in May.

Raven and Koki on the cat tree

 

My cats are playing together more, which makes me very happy.  The two of them only have each other now so it’s good they can get along.  Of course I get no sleep when they both pile on the bed because one sleeps on my pillow and the other on my legs.  But I can’t throw them off the bed.  They won’t be around forever and I know I’m gone working a lot so I’m glad they’re happy to see me.

Koki sharpening those claws to attack me with later.  LOL

 

Raven with the new toy I got him for Christmas

 

On another note entirely, I’m not writing as much as I used to (except for blog posts) because I simply don’t have the time to sit quietly and think.  I hope to get back to my mystery series of future novels soon.  I found out about a citizen police academy on the radio last week so I inquired about that and have signed up for the classes that start in February.  Of course they do a background check but I expected that.  I wouldn’t want any criminals taking the class with me.  My purpose in doing this is to make my murder mysteries as realistic as I can.  My editor suggested I go to the police department and talk to someone there about protocol, so I figured this would be even better.  This class is two times a week for three months and will cover everything that the police department does.  There will be more about this later.

A furry friend says good bye

It’s been a difficult few days around my house.  I finally have sense enough to sit down and write a post.  My house has been filled with grief and so much sadness that I didn’t even want to get on the internet.

 Tootie is five in this picture

Last Wednesday, the seventh of September, we had to put down one of our cats.  It was time.  And though we hate to see that time come, it always does.  Animals have a shorter lifespan than us even if we wished it was different.

Our oldest cat, Tootie, has been on a downhill slide for a couple of years now.  She was pretty ill on Wednesday morning when we got up.  She had diarrhea and was meowing a lot and moving her mouth around as if she had something caught in there.  She threw up multiple times during the night.

 Tootie at age four.  Cats's always love boxes.

Hubby took off work and I had the day off anyway so we took her to the vet once they opened.  We knew she had dementia and would get lost in the house.  She also had limited hearing, which I think contributed to her being so vocal about everything.  On top of that was arthritis, so we were giving her joint medication for that.  It looked so painful for her to get up and down even with her medicine, although the situation was a bit better.  I knew she wasn’t very comfortable because she would move about the house to different spots trying to find one that suited her best.  She drank lots of water, but the vet said that was typical for an older cat on a previous visit.

 Tootie at age two

Little did we know once we left the house with her that morning that it would be the last time.  The other two cats knew something was up because they came to hang around her and watch her that morning.  Raven has been her best friend because they are both very social cats.  Koki is more of a loner and prefers to hang out by herself upstairs most of the time.  But that morning, she was downstairs too checking it all out.

 Here she is posing in the cabin we had in 2005

Once at the vet we discovered Tootie had a broken tooth.  We decided against having surgery for that because he said her kidneys were beginning to fail and she’d lost about three pounds since her last vet visit.  He told us the end was near, which means it could be weeks, or a month or two, but we had to think about her quality of life at that point.  She’d had sixteen-and-a-half years with us and had lived the best life we could give her.

 Looking majestic under the Christmas tree

Out of all the cats we’ve had, Tootie is the only one who adopted us.  When she was a kitten she came to our door in California and wanted to be let in.  She did a cute little cat dance with her fluffy tail curled in the air and repeated this performance four days in a row.  On the fourth day, I opened the door and let her in.  She walked into the house as if she’d always lived there and commenced to play with Comet, our youngest female cat at the time.  These cats played for three hours straight until they both collapsed on the floor exhausted. 

I found out later that hubby went looking for her in the neighborhood on his way to work.  She was later showing up at the house that day and he was worried about her.

 Posing on the dining room chair

The rest is really history.  She fit in good with the family becoming cat number four, at the time, and giving us two girls and two boys.  The rest of our cats were rescues.  I could go on and on with cat stories as I’ve had cats all my life and probably will have until the day I die. 

But this post is about Tootie and how wonderful she was, although we had some trying times over the last couple of years once she began to lose her mind and get bad arthritis in her legs.

This is one of my favorites.  Cats love to get on anything you put on the floor, or anywhere else.

Tootie was most photogenic cat we’ve ever cat and never has taken a bad picture.  She would also put up with me, like Raven, and let me put birthday hats on her.  She never knew a stranger either and would make friends with anyone who came to visit.  Raven is much the same way and misses her so much, as we all do.  He’s been looking for her in the house, although I know he knows she was ill when he last saw her on Wednesday.

 Tootie always seemed to know when I got the camera out.

I can’t tell you how sad and quiet it was around the house that day.  We cried most of the day and couldn’t eat.  I was so glad we didn’t have to go into work.  We threw ourselves into cleaning and cleaned the whole house from top to bottom to keep our minds busy and off things.  My house is so clean now I hardly recognize it.  But it’s so quiet because Tootie talked all the time and the other cats rarely do.

 She thinks she's hiding in this pot but still posing for the picture.

The next day it was back to work and although neither of us felt like it, it was probably what we needed to get out of the funk we were in.  We’re having her cremated so she’ll join the other urns in the house when we pick her up in a week.  Meanwhile, I hope she’s young again, free of all her woes and reunited with the other cats in the Summerland, (as I like to call the afterlife).  To me the Summerland is a wonderful place with flowers, butterflies, constant spring/summer weather, beautiful blue skies, lots of green grass and trees filled with happy birds, among other things.

 Give a cat a sack or a box and they're happy

I hope you’ve enjoyed all the pictures I picked out from Tootie’s life.  We were blessed she picked us for her human parents.  Rest in peace sweet girl until we meet again.

This was her tenth birthday

March 30, 2000 – September 7, 2016

Spring and other things

This is probably my favorite season, next to summer, for a couple of reasons.  Although the spring equinox was a couple of days ago, you wouldn’t know it here yet. We’ve had blustery weather with blowing cold wind and sand.  This isn’t the best thing around to experience but it’s still pleasant most of the time.  The new leaves on the trees and the early blooms are proof the new season is upon us. 

 Spring in Central Park NY from Pinterest

 

And I know when spring arrives that winter is a long way off.  That alone gives me reason to cheer.  I can see things growing overnight.  The new leaves are a soft, tender green.  Later they become darker and more leathery.

Life goes on with work and everything else that goes with daily life, so I haven’t had the chance to really relish in it yet.  But you can be sure I will.  We have had some magnificent sunsets lately.  There’s really nothing like sunset in the desert.

 Spring in Central Park NY from Pinterest

 

Today I was demonstrating laundry detergent at work so it was nice not to have to don the hairnet and gloves.  And I could give out samples to people who were so appreciative that you’d think I just gave them a winning lottery ticket.  It was a fun day even though not near as busy as handing out food, which I’ll be doing tomorrow.  I still made it fun for all of us, I hope, and ended up selling 39 large bottles of laundry soap in the process.  That’s pretty good considering there were four to five other brands on sale.

Tomorrow I do marina sauce and that promises to be messy and a lot busier. This job is challenging but a lot of fun.  At times like this, I’m glad I can wear black because I’m sure I’d ruin a white shirt.

 Desert Sunset

On another note we came home to discover the neighbors renting the property next door dug a large trench next to our wall.  They want to put a fence up we’re told.  What will go in this fence we don’t know yet and I’m afraid it will junk up the neighborhood.  As it is he works on rebuilding cars in his spare time.  They usually sit everywhere for weeks at a time.  We intend to keep an eye on this situation.  I went out to take photos of the whole project tonight to send to the property owner, who is a friend.  Of course the wife sticks her head out the window wanting to know what I’m up to.  I was on my property so it was none of her business, although she sent her husband over later to talk to us about it.  I guess we’ll see what comes of this.  I really don’t believe a thing they say and will be glad when they move.  Their lease is up in June.

 Desert Sunset

 

I guess some of you must face similar dramas during the course of your own lives.

Have a happy spring everyone. Get out and enjoy this nice time of year when we don’t need A/C or heat.  It won’t last long.

Always honoring my cats

My cats - the picture that's cut off is a collage

This is the cat wall in my office.  Every cat that comes to live with me gets a picture on this wall.  The pictures move with me from house to house and state to state.  I think they all deserve to be honored even if they’ve passed on to another plane.

It makes me happy looking at all their pictures.  I’m reminded of the crazy things each one has done and the unique personalities they all have.  There will always be cats in my life.  I simply can’t live my life without at least one to share it with.  All of them are special in their own way.

Remembrances

I hope everyone enjoyed their fourth and had a happy and safe holiday.

July fourth is always a bittersweet day for me because my daddy died on this date in 1980.  The first few years were rough to watch and enjoy the fireworks.  Now I use the day as a remembrance day and think of old times.

Every fourth, our daddy would load all seven of us up in the station wagon and we’d drive into town to watch the fireworks at the fairgrounds.  Those were the days of sweat and slapping mosquitoes, as we ooohed and aaahed at the amazing sight overhead.  Each blast was more colorful and bigger than the last one. 

I bet my husband will also look at this holiday as I do from now on.  His ninety-six-year-old dad passed away yesterday morning.  I’m so struck by this and wondering if there’s some deeper meaning there, something I can’t see yet.  After all, what are the odds that this would happen, for our fathers to die on the same day?

When the nurse told my husband Friday that his dad had about two days left because his organs were shutting down, I knew at that moment that he would go on Saturday, July 4.

He’s very lucky he had his dad so long and the man was in good shape and rarely sick, but old age caught up with him and I think he was tired.  We could see a downhill slide from the moment he had to give up his driver’s license six months ago.  Since he couldn’t drive, he sold his big diesel truck shortly after.  His freedom had vanished.  He loved to go to garage sales every Saturday and look around the hardware store.  No longer able to jump in the truck and go, he watched a lot of TV because he’d lost the enthusiasm to tinker on things, which he’d done since I met him more than forty years ago.

He was a good man who lived a healthy, long life and was never judgmental of others.  I’m sure it about killed him to admit he finally needed a cane to steady himself.  Even then, he wouldn’t use it all the time.

I know, when I get that old, if I do, I’ll be the same way.  Somehow, it’s different to know you have a vehicle in the garage that can take you any place you want to go, even if you prefer to stay home most of the time.  It must hurt many older folks to lose that freedom and be dependent on others. 

I wish my daddy had lived so long, but somehow it was meant to be that, at age fifty-five, he would leave this world behind.

My husband will be in another state for a while sorting everything out.  I’ll be a bachelor girl for a couple of months.  We’ll see how things go and what adventures I’ll get into.  Stay tuned.

The A to Z Blog Challenge

Hello everyone.  This is my fourth year doing the challenge.  I always think the same thing – how will I ever be able to accomplish this?  Somehow, I’ve managed every year and I hope to this year. 

My posts during April won’t have a theme, as usual.  I want to be able to blog about what feels right at the time.  I guess I’m the type of person who doesn’t like to tie myself down to any one subject all month.  Variety is the spice of life, so there will be a variety of subjects this year.

I’ll probably post some cat stories along the way because my fur babies are my kids.  I may also post about experiences in my life, great products I’ve tried, worthy books I’ve read, places and things I’ve seen, maybe even some recipes.  So I hope you’ll check back to read some of my ramblings.  I look forward to reading some of yours and to making some new friends by the end of April.

If any of you still want to participate in this challenge, you still have a few days to sign up here: A to Z blog Challenge

You also need to disable the CAPTCHA on your blog if you haven’t done so.  You want to make it easy for people to leave comments.  I wrote a post about this a couple of years ago.  If you don’t know how, please go here.

Let’s go forth and learn some new things from each other.

What can I say?

My cats are my life and they make things so worthwhile.  I really don’t know what I’d do without them in my life.  If you’re a cat and end up in my house, you have it made.

Tootie  

Koki teaching the boy bad habits 

 Raven snuggled up in the clean clothes -a favorite for the cats

 Things are turning colder and we live in the desert where we see temp extremes.  We did have a few flakes of snow that didn’t stick during Xmas dinner.  It’s taking a turn to that time of year I simply despise.  I can’t help myself.  I’m a warm weather gal, what can I say?  I know it is what it is.  But thank God we only have a little more than a month of winter left. 

English Trifle - what a great desert!

I’m trying to keep up on the house and also write as these dark winter days go by. 

I'm proud to finish the NaNo and write 50,000 words in Nov.  Here's my amazing T-shirt

We had to buy a new microwave because, as luck would have it, the old one decided to go out and we have to have things working when we sell the house.  I guess a microwave lasts about ten years for any of you wondering about this.

 Bird of Prey looking for food

Roadrunner trying to make itself look smaller

 

We have the usual animals coming by looking for winter food and birds on the suet we put out.  I only hope the new owners will fill the water pans and put out food for the critters.  I would hope they’re nature lovers like us.

Until next time.  Grasp the moment everyone because you never know when it will be your last.

Issues

First, let me apologize for missing Sunday’s post.  With everything going on here, I never got one written up.

 I’ve been helping my friend get her book on Createspace.  It’s been on Smashwords for a while.  The biggest issue here has been putting the book cover into the right format for Createspace, but it’s getting there.
 

Free clipart

Then we had all the writing group issues to smooth out and organize for our first meeting last Saturday.

 One of my sisters called me to tell me mama spent four hours in the emergency room.  She fell in the shower, but luckily didn’t break anything.  So she will heal, its just bruises everywhere, which isn’t good either but better than broken bones.  Everyone went to the hospital to support her except my youngest sister and me because we live out of state.

I had to go over to my neighbors too because starting tomorrow I’ll be taking care of her cat and garden again for the next three weeks or so.  She is off on a camping and hiking trip to the Sierra Nevada’s in CA.

Comet - Sunni's Photo's

Then, Comet, one of my cats has been sick, so today I took her to the vet.  She has terrible allergies this year and has never had them before.  I called his office on Friday.  They told me to get children’s Benadryl for her and give it twice a day over the weekend.  Well you can imagine how this went if you’ve ever tried to give liquid medicine with the syringe to a cat who wants no part of it.  We had Benadryl everywhere except in the cat.  What did go down her throat made her gag and she’d try to throw it up every time.  The only time things went smoothly was the first time because she wasn’t expecting it.  After that, she was ready for us.

 So today, she went to the vet and had an allergy shot.  She wasn’t happy about this either, but there wasn’t much she could do with three of us holding her down.  Once we got her back in the carrier to bring her home, she hardly made two meows.  I guess she was pleased to be going home.  She was raising a fit on the drive over there.  I think she’s better already.  We’re all happy about that.

 

Baby Jackrabbit by my front door

 

I was coming home from the neighbors later this afternoon and there was a baby jackrabbit by the front door.  Sadly, it was dead of natural causes (I guess) because we didn’t see a mark on it.  It’s been coming in the afternoons over the last week to sit in the shade there in a small cubbyhole on each side of our front porch behind a façade.  What a shame.  It was very young and made me sad it won’t grow up to roam in the desert behind the house with the rest of the wildlife back there.

 That’s been my week.  I haven’t written a word on my mystery book and I need to finish it.  I’m working on the last chapter.

My Favorite Quote

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” ...John Lennon

John Lennon - Wilipedia

There is nothing-truer than this and that is why I love it. This happens to me all the time. Things rarely turn out the way you think they will, or in the time-period that you want them to. It’s just a fact.

To participate in this challenge, click here for the prompts for each day of May:
Story of My Life: Blog every day in May: a challenge

You Need the Right Attitude to Live in Alaska

This is the first post of the A to Z challenge. I am glad to be part of it this year. Many thanks go to Arlee Bird for thinking up this big blog event and making it a success every year.

Free Clipart



Attitude has to do with everything in life. Sometimes I forget that and let my apprehension stand in the way, such as moving to foreign places. I always try to have an open mind and a good attitude about things, but I’m not sure what it is about moving to the unknown that makes this good quality go out the window. I guess the concept of living in a foreign place doesn’t set well with me at my age. It’s too bad this didn’t come up forty years ago when I was gung-ho to go anywhere and do about anything.

Back then, my sense of adventure led me to Alaska to spend the summer, not knowing it would be five long years before I got out of there. I’m not saying it was all bad, but we have no idea what a place will actually be like until we move there and can immerse ourselves in what it has to offer.

Denali National Park - Alaska

Downtown Anchorage Alaska in Summer



The Alaska experience was one that exposed me to things I would have never seen, or been a part of, had I not gone there. It is the “last frontier” here in the US. Many things about the state live up to this name. The biggest adjustment, besides all the cold weather, was the short seasons, and unusual differences between days versus nights. It is also amazing that you can drive no more than two or three minutes out of any settlement and be totally out in the wilderness. You can literally leave a large city like Anchorage with its skyscrapers, restaurants, and shopping centers and find yourself surrounded by woods and mountains thinking you are the only one there, not even knowing a large city is a couple of miles down the road.

Whittier/Portage Glacier - Not far from where I lived in Anchorage, Alaska

It is a very different country. The fur and pine trees grow stunted because of the cold weather temperatures, and on the mountains, there is a “tree line” where it is actually too high and too cold to grow any trees. Yet, because of the short growing season, the veggies are gigantic, growing to several feet long or diameters across. One can picture sitting there and watching them as they grow before your eyes because overnight they seem to pick up several inches. This same phenomenon happens when the trees leaf out in the spring. They go from bud to full leaf in a week’s time.

This broccoli weighs 35 pounds and was grown by John Evans in Palmer, Alaska



The state is like a picture postcard. Almost everywhere you look is some magnificent untouched landscape to photograph. I would love to share some of these with you, but I didn’t have a digital camera in those days. The pictures I do have are from an old 110 camera and not very good. The ones I’m posting on here I Googled and found on the internet.

Aside from the extreme cold, it was always dark in the winter and always light in the summer. I worked in a mall, went to work in the dark, and came home in the dark in the wintertime. The sun was up from about 11am to 2 pm, but was still dusky and you needed headlights to drive. The opposite was true in summer when you had to have dark shades on the window to sleep. The sun was still up at midnight. All of this stuff can really throw you off mentally. The summers never get warm either, unless you call the two days in July when it is 70 degrees warm.

There are as many bars as gas stations. It seems like there is one on every corner. This is because there is nothing to do in the wintertime except drink and party. It even gets too cold to ski or walk around in snowshoes. Depression is a big factor in the wintertime. They call it “cabin fever.”

Everyone has a foyer in the house, which is in essence a small compartment about three by four that sits between two front doors to the house. This is where everyone leaves all the cold weather gear you have to put on just to go outside anywhere, even if it’s just down the block. This space also acts as a barrier to trap most of the cold air before you enter the house. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get all this stuff on, or get it off after you’ve arrived somewhere. People go to dinner in fancy restaurants in snow boots in the winter.

Every house is also equipped with plug-ins to warm your car engine, so it will start and you can go somewhere. All the cars have engine heaters installed and a small plug sticking out of the grill in front.

I never saw so many wrecked vehicles either. Almost everyone up there owns a car with at least a couple of dents because the roads get slick in the winters. There are numerous fender benders daily. It isn’t unusual to see cars sitting off in vacant fields or stuck in the snow banks. Sometimes it is like driving past the carnage from the night before on your way to work. You definitely need to watch out for “sliding vehicles.”

Bull Moose in Chugach State Park - Alaska



Aside from all this, there are some amazing sights as well. Among those are moose grazing in the ponds, standing knee deep in the water, and picking wild blueberries with the black bears on berry-covered knolls in the summers. In addition, the glaciers are amazing with their enormous chunks of blue ice immersed in large, cold pools with the main glacier in the background that is several stories high. If I hadn’t gone there, I would have never witnessed all these things, or have been part of a moose butchering team. Let me note here that this was an experience and not necessarily a highlight of my life up there. Butchering animals is not my thing, but moose is definitely better than beef.

Fireweed and Clover grows wild everywhere on Alaska

This is fireweed on the Kenai River

Where else can you gather fireweed and clover to make your own honey? Or walk among squash and other veggies growing that are as big as wheelbarrows? Or view the Northern Lights in winter?

The Northern Lights - Alaska

So I wonder what became of my great attitude as I embark on this new adventure in Central America, if that is in fact where I end up. Maybe I should call upon my younger self to get me through this transition.


All landscape photos courtesy of Niebrugge Images

Broccoli from John Evans in Palmer AK