Happy New Year

Celebrate with good sense

Hi everyone.  I could write some craziness as things cross my mind all the time that bring a smile to my face.  I guess this is a good thing, although sometimes I do have to question my sanity.

Just Friday my boss called asking me to come into work on short notice.  I had ten minutes to get there because someone had called in at the last minute.  Of course it takes me longer to get to work than ten minutes, but this would’ve been okay.  The situation was I wasn’t dressed for work so I couldn’t just bolt to the car and get on the road.  I had planned to spend the day finishing the calendar for my mother.  So I said no, even though I rarely do that.  There is life beyond work after all.

I felt bad about saying no because I honestly love the people I work with, the customers not so much because most of them are very rude and disrespectful toward us.  But I would miss most of my coworkers immensely if I ever left there.  One of them is leaving.  Saturday was her last day so we said out goodbyes on Friday.  She and her sister helped me so much when I first started there.  I’ll always be grateful for that and will pay it forward to all the newcomers because it really helps to have someone on your side when you’re new and trying to learn everything.

Tonight I had finished the calendar, finally I might add, and I was feeling giddy because I have so little time for extra activities beyond work and daily life.  I actually accomplished a big task I’d been working on for the last month. 

 Clip art from the net.  I've never tired of watching this movie.

 

I was sitting in my chair tonight trying to relax and thinking about being Dorothy on the Wizard of Oz.  She finally made it home with Toto and said, “I love you so much Auntie Em and Uncle Henry.”  I envisioned myself hugging some of my coworkers and saying what a pleasure it is to have them in my life.  Now maybe this has been on mind because a coworker and I were talking about the Wizard of Oz on Friday.  We were discussing riding out brooms about the warehouse because we were constantly sweeping.  We both wondered who the bad witch on the Wizard of Oz was because we knew the good witch was Glenda. 

I had to giggle at myself.  Hubby was cooking dinner and told me to stop talking so I was fantasizing instead and thinking I must have the perfect job because it requires me to talk all day long.  Now I know my brother-in-law would also have a fit because he always says my family was born with a phonograph needle in our mouths.  Oh my!  That is so funny, don’t you think?  All of us are talkers and I can’t really envision life any other way.

Happy New Year to all of you who are following me.  I hope 2017 is the best ever.

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

Happy Birthday to Mama

This is Mama on her birthday 2 years ago.  I'll post a recent one as soon as my sister sends it.

My sweet mother turned 85 today.  We’re so thankful to still have her in our lives as we had quite a scare last month when she ended up in ICU after a stroke.  We didn’t know how things would turn out, but she’s a fighter just like her mother and came bouncing back from that pretty quick.

Not every person life-flighted to a hospital ends up coming out of there alive.  I hope we don’t have another incident like this in the future, but she has dementia.  The doctors say this condition weakens your blood vessels so even a small bump on the head can cause a vessel to break.

 This is my mother a couple of hours before her stroke

My little sister and I live out of state so our middle sister kept us informed daily on what was going on with Mama.  In fact, I think the whole family would be lost if Tedo didn’t step up to the plate to take charge and organize things.

Once in a while all seven of us and Mama get to talk on a conference call.  Those are fun times but noisy with everyone laughing and talking over each other, like we do in person.

 This is Mama today - age 85

And this is various family helping her celebrate.  It would be impossible to list everyone here in any order that made sense, but this group includes siblings, nieces and great nephews and friends.

 

Mama is back in the nursing home where she lives now.  She has lots of friends there her age.  My sister had her cake made and arranged to get everyone there tonight to help her celebrate.  She sounded very happy on the phone.  I wish I could have been there, but talking to her and pictures is the next best thing.

Happy Birthday, Mama, and many more, I hope.

Happy May Day and Beltane to those of you that celebrate that.

Thanks to everyone who reads my posts and leaves a comment.  You all make me smile.

Freedom means a lot…even to animals

This short story and video came across my email and I had to share.  Most animals in this world are subjected to cruelty with humans never giving them a second thought.

I admit it did cross my mind, when this poor creature was loaded into the trailer that his destiny was not going to be a happy place.  I wanted to cry so I’m glad I was wrong.  Watch this video and witness this animal’s joy over being free.

Can you imagine living in a small cage all of your life?

Growing Old and Staying Alive with Joyfulness

A close friend sent me a slide show of gorgeous photos with a nice message about age from childhood to senior citizen.  I know many of us have heard some of this before, but as we go through our busy lives, it never hurts to have a reminder.

Life has its moments of joy, disappointment, sorrow and trials.  We’ve all been through enduring the bad moments and celebrating the good ones.  There is no way to avoid all the unpleasant stuff because everything coming our way is a learning experience in one way or another.  A positive attitude will get you so much further in life than dwelling on the unavoidable negative things and being a grumpy person making everyone in your life miserable.

I want to share this well-done slide show with all of you.  Please watch to the end for a nice message on how to stay young all your life, no matter how long or short it may be.

Being Happy Doesn't Mean Life is Perfect

Royalty free images



Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.


I’m not sure who first said this quote, but how true it is. It seems a perfect way to start this post. We can choose to be happy or sad, mad or glad – it’s all up to us in any given situation. I have to bear this in mind lately because since I got back from Oregon, it’s been one thing or another around my house. Lots of small stuff in the big scheme of things, but still optimism and patience is important.

I went out to water my patio plants because they really needed it. I had the gal looking after my cats’ water them once while I was away. Wouldn’t you know the hose would spring a leak and watering became an ordeal, getting more on me than the plants, causing me to resort to using a bucket. This took two dozen trips to finish the job, but in the end made things easier.

After I finished that and came in the house, it seemed a bit stuffy so I thought I would take advantage of the few nice days left before winter and open some windows. Well we have roll-up blinds and some of the chains decided to break. When I think about it, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before with daily use over several years. However, this caused another two-hour project while I took them down to see if I could rectify the situation. After finally getting the mechanism apart and the chain back on, I discovered it was on backwards, so had to start over again. It was just one of those days.

I finally got on the net to order new parts, knowing all my dinking around is only a temporary fix. When I tried to call the factory, I discovered the phones were out! Thank goodness for cell phones. The first call was to the landline provider to see what that problem was. Some technical difficulties, they said, and didn’t have a predicted time when that service would be back up and running again. It was widespread, encompassing several towns around us. We weren’t alone; however, this didn’t really make things any better. The next call was to the factory to order new parts for three blinds. Four hours later the phones came back on.

To top the day off my husband’s computer decided to quit. Therefore, we’ve been messing with that for several days now. He is not a happy camper and thinks I have all the answers, despite the fact he thinks I know little about anything – except computers apparently. What I’ve learned about them is by the school of hard knocks and hours of research and fooling around over the years. As I mentioned before, I’m stubborn and have great tenacity. It’s a good thing one of us is like this, since we have gotten little help from tech support concerning this problem so far. That is one thing about calling anywhere today and definitely a pet peeve of mine. You get stuck in a computer phone system and routed all over the place by robotic voices and finally end up in India or China with someone who’s English is not understandable. Very frustrating, so as I’ve said many times, Google is my best friend when left to my own devices to repair things.

Of course, all of this means I’m getting no work done and am way behind on my freelance assignments. It’s just something else to add to the stress level.

So, you can see when it rains it pours, but I guess if we didn’t have a bit of rain in our lives we wouldn’t truly appreciate all the good times as much as we should.

Besides that, getting angry and stomping my feet won’t solve anything – not really, perhaps only making me feel better for a short while. Of course, the notion of going out in the desert for a good scream has crossed my mind. However, it would be just my luck that my neighbor would call 911 thinking I was having and emergency. Walking away and taking some deep breaths works better. I can usually come back with renewed optimism and some new ideas for conquering the problem I’m facing.

How do you deal with things like this?