Woah, Time Warp...

It's been about 7 years since I put anything on this blog. It's how the Dad for whom I'm now the 24/7/365 care-giver used to keep up, somewhat, with my life. Now, he wishes I was living anywhere but here, sometimes. Or, at least, had taken him up on that travel-trailer parked in the side yard so we both would have some privacy. But that is verboten per the geriatric Doctor, who says it would be considered neglect if someone wasn't living with him. 

Sigh.

And my Bearded Dragon is on Walkabout, an Aussie thing. Meaning, she, George, absconded when I took a couple seconds too long to turn around and see where she went, about a month ago Thursday. I think she was making room for the 2 Siberian Huskies I have accepted into our small cabin near Lake James, NC. It's where some of "The Last of the Mohicans" was filmed, roads dug up and residents mad that they had to drive 20 minutes out of their way around the lake to get home from work. Anyway, back to George. I've been on some Bearded Dragon boards and am somewhat hopeful that I may see her again, since it's in the middle of the summer and there's plenty of food and places to skedaddle to if a predator is around. Like the 6 cats and 3 dogs. Well, 2 of them never go off leash. The new pets. Dexter and Mina.

Dexter is the darker dog. Mina is the reddish-brown Husky. She's a bit fat and lazy, like me. Dexter is higher strung and too skinny, like my Irish twin. Heh.

OK, that's enough for tonight. 

Peace, 

a

Her last walk*

Her name was Scully. Yes, she was named after Dana Scully from The X-Files. I am a terminal geek. She had inoperable cancer and had to be euthanized summer before last. Less than two months later my Mom died, also of inoperable cancer. That summer sucked.

So did last summer, when my 11-year-old GSP** got sick with some undetermined bug that all but shut down his kidneys. There is nothing like giving an uncooperative dog 2 ounces of water every 15 minutes to appreciate his emptying a 20 ounce water bowl at one long drinking session. Oh, did I mention the IV saline we had to rig up for his dangerously dehydrated spotted butt?

That was July, halfway between the anniversaries of Scully and my Mom's deaths. I disappeared for about four months and only started coming out of my depression when I weaned myself off of anti-depressants, ironically enough. And started exercising again. And writing my morning brain-drain pages while basking in front of a blue light for 20 minutes in the morning. It wasn't just one thing, it was a combination of activities which propelled me toward healthier thoughts.

I will always fight SADS (expletive Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome). It affects me in summer (expletive heat) and winter (expletive lack of usable wavelength sunlight). But I must remind myself that it's better when I write, when I play with images, and when I move my lazy @ss.

Let's hope I continue to post here on a semi-weekly basis. Yes, I have another RLB*** challenge, and blogging is one of those things I should do...

* Scully was 14.3 years old.
** German Shorthair Pointer, AKA spotted dog.
*** Robert Lee Brewer, poet, editor (Writer's Market, etc)

I have a valid excuse this time...

My Mom had been fighting cancer since 2007.  It metastasized in her lungs last fall.  After two sessions of chemo, she called into the hospital because she felt horrible. And then spent several hours on IVs to get her electrolytes in-balance and re-hydrated, she and her oncologist agreed to stop the chemo.

So she focused on quality of life rather than quantity.  And focused her energy on self publishing a novel and a slightly fictionalized memoir of the 23 years my family spent living in the Alaskan Bush, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.  I read about 100 pages of it before my life exploded this past summer.  I also haven't read her novel.  Any of them -- published or unpublished.  It's like I am too close to her and them to be objective.  And I feel bad about it.  But I still haven't read them.

So, they are on my "to read" list.  Whenever I stop reading the head-candy crap I've been able to focus on lately.  Wonder why that is?  Dog died.  My Mom's dying.  I can hear her gasping for breath right now as I'm writing this.

I'm waiting on my younger sister to come back here to my Mom's cabin tomorrow.  I left a message on my older sister's answering machine.  Guess I should call my brother-in-law and see if he can get her a message at work.  Since I don't have that particular number.

I'm signing off and going to write my mid-afternoon pages, a la the Artist's Way now.

If I can focus on it, that is.

I don't plan on

Posting many of my poems on this site, but wanted to share these two in light of last week's events.

I wrote the first poem as a response to Robert Lee Brewer's 2008 Poem a Day Challenge, day 5 prompt:  write about something you dread.  As Scully had just turned 10, I wrote about dreading "The day".

Decade

My ten-year-old Weimaraner,

the one whose leg may be broken,

who sports yet another set of stitches,

I fear the day I will have to hold her

muzzel close as she struggles

for air. I shy from the day I will see

her deep keel still, her eyes haze, her

tail cease to move, her paws lie still.

I avoid the thought of where she

will lay down for the last time, or

where I will spread her ashes, or upon

which mantle I will keep her urn. I look

into her yellow eyes and vow to spend

more time tossing the ball, scratching her

ears, rubbing her near hairless belly. I know

that I will forget that silent promise until the

next medical emergency will remind

me that she was 69 on her last birthday.

For Scully --

  June 27, 2012

I carry my grief like a gift,

tucked under my heart.

Encapsulated by my ribs,

absorbed like nutrition

with every heartbeat, the cells

of my body drink grief up.

It sweeps through cell

membranes, into nuclei.

Inserts itself into  my DNA,

becomes a permanent feature

in its permanent tomb.  My grief, a tiny 

reminder of the place you held in my life.

A Cat Named Dog: RIP, Scully

A Cat Named Dog: RIP, Scully: I euthanized my 14-year old Weimaraner yesterday.  Then went over to a friend's house with the young whippersnapper (10 year old) Duncan an...

RIP, Scully

I euthanized my 14-year old Weimaraner yesterday.  Then went over to a friend's house with the young whippersnapper (10 year old) Duncan and we held a wake for her, with my S.O. joining us after work. 

It was a hard decision I spent 5 days agonizing over.  And spent all those days saying goodbye -- taking her to the neighbors field to hunt through the grass for voles and moles, letting her eat the homemade, high protein food I finally made (when I ran out of the dry food over the weekend) for her and Duncan's enjoyment, crying whenever I saw her weeble-wooble down the front porch stairs with increasing frequency as the inoperable fibrosarcoma tumor grew and displaced her organs.  

I'll tell y'all the story of how I acquired my grey-ghost, back in 1998, when I lived in Salem, Oregon.  I lived with a guy for a little over two years too long.  I knew as soon as I moved in with him it was a mistake but it never seemed to be a good time in his life to bring it up, as he was sorta a drama queen.

I knew the relationship was over when I started fantasizing of trading in the boyfriend for a dog, because of the unconditional love a dog would give me.  And I knew, going into a relationship with a dog, that I would be paying all his or her bills from the get go and wouldn't be disappointed when he or she didn't come up with their half of the monthly bills.

So at work, I saw a picture of a small grey puppy for sale, a puppy with these huge ears flopping down to her shoulders and fell instantly in love.  I bought the dog and then spent a month trying to find a place to live which would let me move in with a soon to be 60 pound pooch.

I never regretted that decision, despite her terrible twos and the shoes, CDs and blankets I lost to a mouthy dog,  which was much easier to deal with than a secretive boyfriend who didn't pay his share of the bills.

I'll miss you, Lumpy.

Some background behind the name of this blog

I grew up in the Alaskan Bush in the 70s and early 80s, before the state took over all the school systems.  My parents taught for the Bureau of Indian affairs for more than 20 years, from the early 60s to the early 80s. 

I was raised in the Yukon-Kuskowim Delta, residing in various villages, though my family lived everywhere from Barrow to Bethel.  Technically, I did too, but I didn't experience much as an egg.

Kimik is the Yu'pik word for dog. I only remember one husky named Kimik growing up, though my Mom says there were at least a couple before him. 

Fast forward to the Blizzard of '93, when I was a senior in college.  Not sure who-all remembers that blizzard which blanketed much of the east coast and brought life to a standstill.  Imagine, a female cat escapes from the house and survives the storm by making sweet love with a wild tomcat.   A couple of months later, I made the mistake of telling the owner of the slutty cat that I would take a kitten if he could not find anyone else.  To someone trying to get rid of unwanted kittens, that means I just got rid of a kitten!

Of course I named the cat Kimik, because that's what my family always named pets.  OK, it was the first choice of names.  And it amused me to have a cat named "dog".   Little did I know that cat would be the most dog-like cat I'd ever know.  He was vocal, affectionate, & very jealous of other pets.  And would sit on your lap basking in your attention for as long as you'd let him. 

Just before I moved to the west coast in the spring of '94, I dropped Kimik and another cat off at my sister's house -- temporarily.  She called me about a year later to say that I could no longer claim ownership, because she'd had them longer than I had by that time.  The cats sent me a T-shirt when I had my salt water tank.  You have to see the shirt to get the joke.  I'll post it here, eventually.

It was years later, after my new dog, Scully*, and I moved in with her, her husband and three cats did I get tested and realize I was allergic to cats.  I lived there for 3 miserable years, averaging a sinus infection about every 2-3 months. 

And that's the abbreviated story behind A Cat Named Dog.

* She was named Scully because Kimik was still alive.  You can't give the same name to two pets living at the same time.