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.

New year, new intentons. Right....

Not particularly happy today.  Spent an extra half hour in bed, and both dogs couldn't make it to the back door without unloading.  God bless Resolve.  Went back to bed after we all had breakfast and another walkie-poo, and binged on Divorce on HBO On Demand.  But, once again, dogs were crossing their legs, so I am up, showered, dressed, and still doing nothing.  I have nightmares about camping on the couch, watching Keeping Up with the Kardasians, or Say Yes to the Dress.  Couch potato hell.  So far, not happening.  Here I am, writing!  Big atta-girl.  Next comes some piano playing, picking away at simpleton songs I used to breeze through.  Bought the damned thing, now must justify it.  I actually like it.  I think.  I want things to change this year.  Sadly, that means doing things differently.  and that is hard.  Well, not a easy as doing them the same. 

Adios, 2016 aka I'm glad you'te gone, you crappy year, you.

Long time no write.  Lots to tell here.  Let's see.  I just lived the most awful year in a month of years.  Mother is dead.  This is good.  Her punishment lived on, though.  She took away most of my inheritance, rather gleefully, if you ask me.  That is how the year began.  Then, in February, here came Beatrice, pictured here with her big sis, Nora, and blessings abounded.  Then a big brouhaha erupted around little old me in the fellowship, and I got ostracized from my sisterhood.  Sigh.  That is okay.  I saw the big picture, and no one else did.  Then my landlord got a bean in her butt and began doing "improvements" to my little yellow house.  Like a deck that remained half finished for months, followed by sidewalks that got torn up and turned into miniature mountains of detritus all around the front yard.  And then, surprise, I got notice to vacate in 60 days.  Lucky for me I am prescient, and had already explored my options, which leaned heavily toward buying a place.  Rentals in our area are astronomical.  And, as luck would have it, I stumbled on a manufactured home just a block away from the yellow house, now known as the forever house.  It is mucho larger, mucho prettier, mucho newer.  Huge kitchen, three bedrooms, one of which is now my mucho bigger studio.  So the year ended on a high note, after the horrendous move, which, surprise, did not kill me after all.  And now, here I am, in business again.  And, once again, getting back on track.  And speaking of tracks, there is this train that choochoos through our town on a regular basis, empty.  It is the "test train", we are told, but I think it is just a giant economy sized train set for some developmentally delayed guys who just like blowing the whistle.  Life is remarkably surreal at the moment.  So bring on 2017.  It couldn't possibly  be worse, or better, that its predecessor.