Life Goes On, Somewhat Crazily

I realize I've been M.I.A. since last August. Even then, I didn't post much last year; from the looks of things, there were four (!) posts all of last year.

Of course, getting started here again has been interesting, to say the least. Anyone who's a writer (or artist of any sort) can related that too much time off makes it a little difficult to get motivated to head off in a forward direction.

But what the heck, I'm back.

Several weeks ago, I came so close to cutting my hair short (at least, short for me). The last time I had a major hair cut was for a job I'd landed, back in 1980. I can already hear at least one or two people thinking, Yikes! No need to tell me that was a long dang time ago.

The job I'd landed was working for a local fire department. The department had hired eight of us (if I remember correctly), including two women. (This is where your's truly fits in.) There was only one other department in our county, here on the west coast of Florida, that had a female firefighter; she'd been on the job less than a year.

I had already started off, near the end of 1979, as a volunteer with Pinellas Park Fire Department, shortly after the department had hired a new chief, so I had a somewhat vague idea of what to look forward to.

The department Jane and I were hired on at seemed okay with the length of my hair. I'd start off my shift with my hair in a braid. If we had a fire, and needed to wear our bunker gear, it was no big deal to grab the end of the braid, put said braid on top of my head, put my helmet on, and immediately, no hair showed.

However, when we started at the local fire academy, the then-head of the academy made it clear that I had to have my hair cut above my shirt collar. After all, that was how short the men had to have their hair. While our chief went to bat for me, I still had to get it cut short. Problem was, having it that short, I couldn't braid it and keep all the hair from sticking out from under the helmet.

At that point, I vowed never to cut my hair again, until I was good and ready.

So why was I thinking of cutting it recently? Well...Six weeks ago, I slipped and fell, landing hard on my back. Instant excruciating pain.

Silly me. Once I was able to move, and actually talk (I'd spent several minutes babbling, leaving my sons thinking I'd had a stroke), I got up and decided to take a shower. I was sure I'd simply pulled a few muscles in my back.

An hour or two later, though, when the pain showed no sign of subsiding, I agreed to go to a local free-standing ER to get it checked out. As it turned out, I'd fractured one of my vertibrae! No wonder it hurt!

Several hours later, after a room opened up in the main hospital (several miles away, with an in-house ER), I was transferred by ambulance and taken straight up to the assigned room, where I spent the weekend. While there, I ended up with an MRI lasting about half-an-hour (never a fun thing for someone who's claustrophobic). Fortunately, it turned out okay, still a fracture, but without further complications.

Two days later, I got to come home. But for six weeks, I've been stuck wearing a dang back brace. The first coupld of days, my hair kept getting caught in the brace; it was then that I seriously thought about cutting my hair shoulder-length. I didn't, though, and I'm now glad I didn't.

It's only a few more days until I get another X-ray to see if the back has healed enough to do without the back brace. Siiiiigh...

Also, to throw in some more fun, our two cats are now 15 years old, and starting to really show their age. Karma is showing it a little harder than is sister, Drexie, is. But either way, Karma and Drexie are getting up there.

At one time, Karma had topped off at 12-pounds and change; he's now down to 5.8 pounds, and has the beginnings of kidney issues, while Drexi, who used to be 6-pounds, is a little closer to 7 pounds now. They both seem to sleep more these days. Karma is also showing some signs of slowing down, and not able to jump as well as he used to.

Anyone who has had cats (or dogs, or any other pets) and who've gotten seriously attached to the pets knows how bitter-sweet it can be, watching the decline, knowing it's simply a matter of time when the pets are no longer around. That's what we're looking at with Karma and Drexie. I know we'll all be basket-cases when their time comes. But in the meantime, they'll get all the love, cuddles, and treats we can give them.

One last word: love your family, even the pets.

Karma Kitty

Drexie Calabash

My Friend, Kevin

The text hit my cell phone this morning when I turned it on. It was from my friend Kevin's brother, and it was to let me know that Kevin died last night.

I'd mentioned Kevin several times in this blog, though it had been a while since I mentioned him. I'd also posted a photo of Kevin in my photography blog, as well as an article on my production site in which Kevin figured in prominently ("Wait'll You Hear This One!" on this page).

Kevin and I met when we both drove cab in Florida. He started a few months after I did, then quit, finally coming back several months later, continuing through the beginning of 2015. I'd know him for more than 20 years. He was one of the last people I knew from my cab driving days.

He is responsible for my having two cats, as mentioned in "I've Gone to the Cats...". He'd given us Karma; we then adopted Drexie to keep Karma company.

Kev and his dad had shared an apartment for years. Then, when Dad had died (everyone who knew Kev well got to the point where they'd just call his dad Dad, rather than "your dad"), Kevin moved into our spare bedroom for a while. It worked out for a while...until it didn't, at which point, we had him move out.

Shortly after he moved in, one of his brothers died. There had been a total of four brothers and one sister. In the year or two after Kev moved out, another brother and his sister died. Then it was only Kev and his brother, J.C. (yes, I'm using only his initials here, for his privacy).

J.C. and I would touch base periodically about Kev. The last time was maybe a couple of months ago, when I'd texted about any news. J.C. had called and let me know that Kev was in bad shape, but was, at least, in a place where he was getting care, meals, a bed...

Then, this morning, the text from J.C. that Kevin had passed away. I called back shortly after noon, got J.C.'s voicemail, and left a message. He called back after this six.

We both agreed that Kevin had been difficult at times, but that we both had plenty of good Kevin memories.

"At least he's not in pain any more," J.C. mentioned, and I agreed.

Yes, there were difficult times, some of which led to his moving out, but which I won't go into here; it wouldn't serve any purpose. But there are plenty of good memories. It's hard losing a friend, especially one of the last remaining friends from a particular time in my (and Kevin's) life.

Kevin, you'll be missed. Peace, my friend. This song's for you (it was one of his favorites, that I know about): Low Rider.

Summer Solstice

So today's the first day of summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. As if we could really forget it. Anyone with a TV has heard the local news babbling for the past week that today would be the summer solstice. According to the local news (here on the west coast of Florida), the event took place at 6:51 AM, EDT. I slept through it, or, at least, tried to. Not that the earth shook, or anything loud happened to announce the occurrence...But I'd gone back to bed to try to catch a couple of extra minutes of sleep.

My son, M., had to work today. His schedule is such that he has a one-day-weekend every other week; the up side is that the other weekend is a five-day-weekend. He works Wednesday through Saturday, has Sunday off, then works Monday through Thursday, while another guy at work works the opposite of M. So, this weekend, while M. has a one-day-weekend, the other guy has a five-day-weekend.

M. has to get up at 5:00 AM to get ready, so I frequently set my alarm as back-up, just in case he conveniently sleeps through his, then I'll go back to bed until 6-ish. This is mainly to run interception at the front door, so that Karma, our resident Houdini, masquerading as a black cat, doesn't try escaping. I think he does this just to keep us on our toes; he'll go for a few weeks without incident, then, when our guard is down, Zooooom! Out the door! This morning, after M. left, I went back to and tried to sleep until 7:00. Never quite happened, what with Karma and Drexie wanting breakfast...

Good thing M.'s not into celebrating the Summer Solstice. Also, I guess to do it up right, we really should live near Stonehenge. But we don't. However, The Old Farmer's Almanac has suggestions for celebrating the solstice, some of which are do-able. Because of local laws, lighting a bonfire is out. And I seriously doubt that I'll be fishing or camping. But cooking outside is a possibility; so is planting a tree (we have plenty of them in our yard, most of which my sons and daughter and I planted), letting the light in (Florida is the sunshine state, after all!), reading a book, listening to songbirds, or watching the night sky.

Anyway, once I was up, I had my first couple of cups of coffee (does that count as celebrating the solstice? Probably not.), then got ready to go out for a walk. I'd wanted to walk and/or run for an hour, but got a late-ish start. I figure that with the heat and humidity, half-an-hour was not bad. I'll probably go back out this afternoon for another walk.

In the meantime, I guess I'd better get started on another Saturday. One of the neighbors is already out mowing the lawn. I kid him that he's obsessed with his yard, and he gladly admits that he is, although he's eased up a little on it over the last year or two. But when the worst you can say about a neighbor is that his lawn is perfect, I guess one can't complain. (We'll leave politics out; the neighbor and I generally do.)

Whether you tend to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes or simply are aware of when they happen, I hope you have a decent day. And if nothing else, maybe read a book while in a park, listening to the nearby birds. If nothing else, it'll at least break up your day a little.

Karma

So Karma's been acting a little off the past few days. In this case, I'm not talking about the cosmic boomerang effect, where "you reap what you sow." Karma Kitty is our five-year-old black cat. He thinks of himself as a panther masquerading as a cat; it's the whole cattitude thing.

But he hasn't been acting quite himself the past few days. I tried to pinpoint it exactly, and kept hoping that it was my neuroses tip-toeing in through the front door. Karma would run full-tilt through the house mid-morning, playing a rousing game of banking-off-the-walls-and-skid-down-the-halls-sideways-tag with his sister Drexie. They love the game, and have been known to include a sideways sweep of the dining room table when they're in full play mode.

But by noon, he wouldn't want to play. Or drink. He'd eat a little of the crunchy food, look at the litter box, then slink off to sleep where he'd be undisturbed. He also looked like he wasn't feeling up to snuff.

So this morning, I called the vet's office. We've been taking pets to the same veterinarians for a little over twenty years. It's been the same two male vets since we started going there and, over the years, an occasional new vet. I can't say enough good about Pinellas Animal Hospital.

Anyway, I knew I'd have to see about paying them next month, but Karmie was sick now. The crazy jabbering monkey keeping up a neurotic monologue in the back of my mind kept telling me, "Nope, doesn't matter how long you've taken pets there, they'll want money now...You might as well hand the cats over and let someone else have them, someone who's rich." Stupid jabbering monkey neurosis, getting me scared...

But when I called and explained what was going on, you know what they said? "Bring him on in. We'll work something out. We know you're not going anywhere." What a relief!

So, I called someone to bring us to the vet's and arranged for someone else to pick us up for the ride home. And then the fun began.

The pet carrier had been recently cleaned and a nice soft bath towel had been placed inside for Karma to lie on before being brought into the living room with the door open. Sometimes, if I do this a little while before we have to go, Karm will wander in and act like it's his cave. Other times, he realizes that he's going for a trip to the vet's office.

This time, it was the latter...and he was having none of it. It took three of us to corral him and get him into the darn thing. You've heard "It's not the size of the cat in the fight, but the size of the fight in the cat"? He may be a 12-pound-and-change cat, but the fight says panther. By the time we got him in there, we needed the box of bandaids.

Within a few minutes of arriving at the vet's, we were in ushered to an exam room. The new tech asked what was going on, then went to pull Karma out of his carrier.

"You might want to grab some gloves," I warned her. Karma's low-throated yowl and hiss reinforced my warning. After gloving up with elbow-length gloves and taking Karm out, the tech weighed Karm, then had the vet come in. Within minutes, Karma, a.k.a. the Great Hissing Yowler, was in the back room for a few tests, after which, he was deposited back with us while the vet awaited the results.

Karm dove for the carrier, which I'd had the foresight to close. No getting in there until we were ready to leave! He literally ran circles around the carrier, occasionally slapping it with a front paw, trying to find an opening, to no avail. So, the G.H.Y. stalked around the room, yowling and hissing his great displeasure, taking an occasional lunge and swipe at arms, legs, whatever was available.

Finally, at one point, he jumped on top of the pet carrier, and promptly peed. The stuff dripped through to the inside of the carrier. I glanced down, then did a double-take: sure enough, when he jumped off the carrier, I saw that there was blood in his urine...and I freaked! Part of me wanted to take the bath towels we had brought from home and wipe off the carrier, but I knew I wanted the vet to see what had happened.

"Why don't they hurry?" I muttered. "What's taking them so long?" M. kept telling me it was going to be alright, but I wasn't buying it.

Finally, the tech came back in. "It'll just be a few more minutes," she said.

But then I pointed to the bloody mess in the carrier. "He just did that. I'm really worried!"

"I don't blame you," she said. "I'll bring this in the back room and show Dr. G. and then clean it up for you."

After an what seemed like an eternity, I was told that the G.H.Y. had cystitis, which apparently is common in cats, especially as they age, especially if they're male. And the bloodly mess apparently is not unheard of.

After loading him up on fluids, antibiotics and a few other meds, they handed me one very indignant cat and a bag of canned cat food.

"He'll need to be on this for a while," Dr. G. told me.

"How long?" I asked. "Forever?"

"Why don't we play it by ear," he said.

Then, making plans to call on Monday and bring him back next week, I spoke with one of the front office people, a woman who is always asking after "the kitties." "Here's the bill, and when you come in next time, just bring in a couple of checks, with the date that you want us to deposit each in the memo line. You know we'll work with you!"

We're home now, Karma loves his new food, used the litter box, and is now resting on the couch.

I might take a little longer to recouperate...