Dogs...

I have two dogs, because if one is good, two are better.  Well, they are small, both under 18 lbs, and I anthropomorphize my animals, and think Pickle would be lonely without Punkin.  It is really the other way around, but only because Punkin is the little guy, now 6 years old, and Pickle is a venerable 10.  We don't have a fenced yard any more, so we must all go out on leashes.  Several times a day. The laundry room is our staging area for walkies.  There you will find a basket full of rolls of poo bags, fingerless mittens and socks for cold mornings, a wooly hoody, a light jacket, a raincoat, Birkenstocks, clogs, rubber boots, umbrellas, sun glasses.  That should cover every contingency.  Oh, wait.  There is also my baseball cap I got in Athens, for bad hair days.  I wear loungy things to bed, so I don't even have to change to go out first thing in the morning.  They are both really bad on a leash, my dogs.  And 18 months here in the Forever House have not improved their behavior.  I meant to get them into classes last summer, but went to hospital instead.  Lousy year, last year.  You never know, it could happen this year. 

Limbal rings and the parakeet's nose...

I am old.  This means I have seen a lot of life, and being naturally curious, I have accumulated a fair amount of useless knowledge.  A professor I remember from college, 56 years ago, put a big K on the blackboard, then circled it and wrote a bunch of I;s around it.  This, he said, is your knowledge.  And all around it your ignorance.  Then he did the same thing with an even bigger K.  So, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.  Personally, I love learning.  I went back to college a decade ago, and learned even more, some of which I wish I didn't know, like the Yellowstone caldera just waiting to annihilate us. Anyway, I learned recently about limbal rings, the dark circles some of us have around the iris of the eye.  They are apparently preferable, and there is talk of making contacts that have them.  Mine are interesting.  They have not faded away, as some are wont to do, but instead are more prominent, and dark blue!  Yes, blue rings around my brown eyes.  Well, not really brown, more of a honey color.  Okay, I am weird.  And then there is the parakeet's nose, that little colored cuff where the nostrils are.  It's call a cere, and when it is blue, that means the bird is male.  There, now you know what I have floating around in my head.

Things change...

Before I visited my cardiologist yesterday (and how surreal is that, to have my very own cardiologist never wanted one), I was resigned to being the bionic woman for the rest of my days, my little pacer thingy in charge of me, beating about 60% of my heartbeats.  And now, I find that that sweet little old heart of mine has other ideas.  Stage 3 heartblock cleared up!  Now little pacer is on stand-by, as needed basis.  Sort of a miracle.

Oh, mind of mine...

Today is Sunday, so I went to my oh so spiritual meditation meeting, where we talk about seeking our Higher Power through prayer and meditation.  I am actually too lazy to do that.  I seek HP when I am walking the dogs, even when I am picking up poo.  Yep, natural multi-tasker here.  My 15 minutes of quiet time this morning was spent wondering why, if this planet is spinning on its axis once every 24 hours, why can't I feel that?  I keep my feet flat on the floor while "meditating", and there is nothing moving.  And why isn't there more wind?  24 hours seems a short time for this big old ball to completely turn itself around, right?  Well, it kept me busy for 15 minutes.

Cowwoman lives!

These last few years have taught me that pain is hard to write about.  Lots of life-on-life's-terms has happened to me.  Let's see.  My dog died.  My daughter got married.  My father died.  I went back to Europe.  My mother died.  She took away most of my inheritance.  I got evicted from my little yellow house.  I bought my own house.  I went through escrow (hell on earth).  I moved.  I got sick.  On my birthday last year I nearly died.  I had brain surgery.  Currently, I am hovering in that neverneverland between convalescence and wellness.  Almost there!  So, long time no write.  Healing happens, though.  I have not painted at all for over a year.  Finally asked for help, got the studio in order, and, once I get my taxes figured out, I get to go back to creating.  Sloooooow.  Sigh.