Where does the money go

 First off, thank you to Ginny!  For sending me a gift card to commemorate the arrival of Good Boy, which I promptly spent on this:

I mean, COME ON!! How cute is THAT?!





Since my sister left me money, the vast majority of it has been reinvested.  But I've been able to spend some of it in a "why not?" kind of way, like,

I sponsored a matching fundraiser for a local animal rescue, which raised almost three grand!

When an acquaintance of mine's mom passed away very unexpectedly, leaving my acquaintance to ponder the realities of, among other things, going from a three cat household to a six cat household, I placed a massive Chewy order and had it delivered to her, so at least she didn't have to worry about buying cat food and litter for a while.

I saw a facebook post in which a local wildlife rehabilitation outfit had trapped a small feral kitten for TNR, only to discover that the kitten had a prolapsed rectum and would need three hundred dollars' worth of surgery to correct the problem. The comments on that post were pretty dismaying, along the lines of "why bother? It's just a feral," and "do you KNOW how many spays and neuters three hundred dollars will pay for?", neither of which, as far as I was concerned, addressed the problem at hand, which was a little kitten with a correctable problem, so I contacted the outfit and paid the bill.  Take THAT, haters.  Haha.

I finally, FINALLY got t-shirts printed up for the little TNR group I run, and I'll be handing them out to the volunteers, i.e., my friends that I've sucked into helping, the next time we trap, which is coming up in a couple of weeks.

 

And finally, most of you know that I love summer.  I REALLY love summer.  And I love hot weather, as evidenced by the fact that yesterday it was approximately a thousand degrees here with one billion percent humidity, and I went and paddled a local river for three hours.

 

But!  What I DON'T love about summer is the nights when the temp doesn't leave the seventies and it's still one billion percent humidity, and all the fans in the world won't stop me from lying in my bed sweating.

 

So this morning I contacted my furnace guy, who also does plumbing and AC, to see about getting central air installed.  BECAUSE I CAN.  

 

And THAT's where the money goes.  :)  

In an Instant

Thank you so much for all of your condolences.  That was, of course, one of the hardest posts I've written here.  I'm so glad I have you all to share these things with, even if I'm not around near as much as I used to be.

The last week, evenings have been spent trying to make sure all of her various accounts (water, phone, insurance, etc.) have been notified and her accounts closed.  Some companies have been very accommodating; others, not so much.  Dear ATandT:  Seriously?  I have to bring in her most recent bill AND a death certificate IN PERSON to an ATandT store in order to cancel her phone service?  What. the. hell.

I've been emailing back and forth with her lawyer regarding getting her estate settled.  She didn't have a lot of "real property"; she rented a townhouse and had a 10-year-old car, so I imagine the estate part will be fairly straightforward.  Her financial advisor wanted to meet with me while I was in Texas, but our schedules just didn't align, so we agreed that we'd speak by phone once I was back home.  I knew that she was very careful with money and had invested for her retirement. She told me once that she was planning on making me beneficiary of her investment accounts.  I told her I appreciated the thought very much, but why didn't she just leave it to charity?

She didn't.  She left it to me.  I had no idea how much money she had; she'd been retired for 15 years and was drawing off those investment accounts, which is how it works, after all.  When her financial guy told me she had indeed made me beneficiary, I just hoped that there would be enough left in the accounts to cover her outstanding bills and pay the lawyer and funeral home bills.

The financial guy called me Wednesday night.  She left more than enough money to pay off her outstanding bills.  She left ... a lot of money.  Not "buy a private island in the Bahamas" money, not "buy a private island, well, ANYWHERE" money, but enough so that my life has changed.  Just like that.

I always assumed that I would have to work as long as I was able to do so, because I certainly had never made enough to set anything aside over the years.  I was looking forward to getting my house paid off next year, because that would be one less bill to pay, and would give me a little more breathing room when the furnace needed to be fixed or the roof repaired.  I was hoping to move someplace warmer .... someday.  But no matter where I moved, I'd have to keep working. That's just the way it was.

And now, just like that, retirement is a reality.  If I want to move someplace warmer tomorrow, I can.  If I want to take a nice trip, I can go right ahead.  The financial guy flat-out asked me, "Do you have a bucket list?  Pick a couple things and go right ahead."

WHAT. JUST. HAPPENED?

I still can't believe this is real.  I can't believe she's gone, and I can't believe the money.  And I will tell you right now, I would give that money back in a heartbeat if it would bring her back.

I could turn down the money, but it wouldn't bring her back.

And with one half-hour phone call, my life has changed.  In an instant.  Oh, Arline.

Passed Away

 From left:  Arline, my mom, and two of my sisters.  1963.

Longtime readers here will remember my sister Arline, known here on the blog as "Texas".

Last Sunday, Arline passed away.

She had had jaw surgery for a bone infection a couple of months ago, and had been losing weight ever since.  By the time a friend convinced her to go to a doctor two weeks ago (who sent her home, advising her to "drink more fluids" (she weighed 70 lbs. by then)) and then to the ER a few days later, CT scans revealed metastasized cancer and she was becoming non-responsive.   She was transferred to inpatient hospice care last Saturday.  I spoke with the hospice nurse Saturday night, who advised me that Arline had less than a week to live.  On Sunday morning, I booked a flight which would leave on Monday morning.

I didn't make it in time.  Her friends were there holding her hands when she died, but I was not.

 Arline and my mom.

I flew down anyway, both because I just wanted to be there, and also because as executor of her estate, I know that I would have responsibilities that needed to be attended to.

 Arline digging up daylilies.

Arline was 75, and was a beautiful, gentle yet strong-as-steel person.  She was a role model for me; from her, I learned that you don't have to have a husband or children in order to live a full, complete life.  I learned that having a fulfilling career is important to women as well as men.  I also learned how to think for myself and face the consequences of my own decisions.  I learned that just because everyone around you is spouting a certain opinion, it doesn't mean that you have to agree.  I learned that there can be strength in gentleness and listening.  I will miss her very much. I hope she knows I thought the world of her.  I hope I expressed that often enough.

Rest in peace, Arline.  I will miss you very much.

Thanksgiving Weekend

So, I was just sitting here watching TV on a Sunday night, and the ticking clock came on to announce that it was time for 60 Minutes (or, "60 Incriminating Minutes", as we used to call it in my family).

And then I remembered that it was a Thanksgiving Sunday, fifteen years ago, that I was watching 60 Minutes in California, where I had attended a funeral for a family member the day before.

Fifteen years.  Fifteen years!  Where on earth does the time go?

That family member has been dead for fifteen years now, and I'm still here. And I've been through so many incredible changes over the past fifteen years, well ... but here I am.  Still going.

Where were you fifteen years ago?  Enquiring minds want to know. 

Pop question: Getting Lost

I was watching Still Alice the other night, with Julianne Moore as a woman who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.

And of course, I got to thinking about my mom, who passed away from the regular type of Alzheimer's in 2013, so the movie was ... not easy for me to watch.

In the movie, one of the first outward signs of Julianne Moore's character's disease is when she can't find the bathroom in her house, and ends up wetting her pants.  And I remembered how, a few years before my mom was actually diagnosed, I knew that there was something wrong.  She was forgetting things, and losing things, and then, one day, she was relating an anecdote to a few of us about how she had gotten lost in Walmart, how she had been doing her regular shopping, and then got turned around somehow, and realized that she didn't know where the front of the store was or how to find the exit.

And everybody laughed, talking about how big the big-box stores were, and how disorienting, and how everybody gets lost in one from time to time.

And I was, well, nonplussed.  Because I can't even imagine getting lost inside a store.  How could you possibly get so confused that you couldn't find your way to the exits?  And I still remember how worried I felt about my mom when she told that story, and how baffled I was that other people were relating to it, because WHO GETS LOST INSIDE A STORE?!

So:  Here's my question:  Have you ever gotten lost inside a store?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Okay, YOU be the judge

Because I evidently can't let anything go, and this whole thing from last night is STILL upsetting me, here is the picture my sister (not Texas; another sister) (Alabama it was Alabama OF COURSE it was Alabama) posted to Facebook:

HOW is that not racist, exactly?  HOW?

I could not help myself.  That offensive pic showed up in MY FEED.  I commented:


"What the hell does that even mean? That the Obamas aren't "classy" because they're black? Jesus Christ."


When someone else commented that the picture wasn't racist, but was instead meant to be a commentary on Michelle Obama's table manners (HUH?), I said,
 

"If you post a pic of a bunch of rich white people in evening attire, calling them "classy", as a dig at the non-white people currently in the White House? Yeah, I'd call that racist. If you wanted to make a comment about their political leanings, you would have posted a policy paper or something."

Facebook:  Bringing those holiday dinnertable arguments with your racist relatives into the Modern Age.  *sigh*

And if there is anybody who can explain to me how that picture is NOT racist, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

 

Oh my God, f*cking facebook.

Okay, first of all, this post has some un-bleeped f-bombs.  Because, facebook, what the FUCK?  You've been warned.

Yes.  Facebook.  I'm on it, because a lot of the rescues I'm involved with have active fundraising pages, etc., there, and yeah, it is a good way to kill time and see how messed up other people are.  ha.

But sometimes it comes back to bite you in the ass.

Today, a rescue acquaintance I am "friends" with was posting about the heartbreaking decision to put her beloved cat, who had been ailing for the past year, to sleep today.  And while this is a woman with whom I never interacted on facebook, mainly because her political views are diametrically opposed to my own, I did post a couple of condolence comments on her posts.   Because I've been there, and I know how hard it is.

And THEN, I got home from work, and I was SO EXCITED because my little hibiscus tree, which I had almost given up on this past fall thanks to a dramatic full-leaf-drop, was blooming.  And I posted a pic of it on facebook, with a little backstory about how it almost didn't make it and I almost threw it out back in the fall, and the woman mentioned above, who NEVER comments on any of my posts, jumped in with "See?  U never gave up, and u kept it alive".

OH FUCK.

Maybe this is all in my head, and I SURE HOPE SO, but I'm afraid that she may have somehow (incorrectly) connected the decision to put her cat down with my (totally lighthearted) post about keeping an apparently-dying tree alive.

FUCK.

Here's the thing.  I am "friends" with a TON of people on facebook.  I get a mega-million posts in my feed every day.  If I started trying to tailor my own posts to avoid possibly saying something that might inadvertently upset someone reading MY stuff, I wouldn't be able to post ANYthing, which, frankly, would be just fine, but still.

what to do what to do

I replied to her comment,  saying that I probably SHOULD have thrown the tree out except I'm kind of a hoarder, haha.  And then I said that I was sorry for her loss, and that the last, best thing we can do for the cats in our care is help them when it's time for them to go, and that I hoped she'd take care of herself.

GOD.

So, yeah, massive facebook clunker, now I feel AWFUL.

but then!  BUT THEN!  It gets better.  Or, you know, WORSE.

Because right after THAT whole disaster, a post of a SISTER of mine (no, not Texas) shows up in my feed.  She'd posted a picture of the Bush family in evening attire, with the caption, "Remember when our presidents were classy?"

WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUCK

I commented.  I HAD TO.  "What the hell does that even mean?," I said.  "That the Obamas aren't "classy" because they're black?  Jesus Christ."

Oh my GOD.  Social media.  I gotta get offa there.  CHRIST.

But wait! Look!  My hibiscus:

At least I can post it here.

MOAH DRAMA!

Oh my God, the soap opera with my sister Ditzy continues.

All was quiet for a few days, and then the calls started again.  Monday, she asked me to come up on my lunch break, and when I did, she didn't even WANT anything.  "I just don't want to be alone all day," she said.

Well I DO, sis.  I DO.

She called me AGAIN yesterday morning, saying that she "might have to go to the hospital" and wanted to give me a set of housekeys in case she was "in the hospital for a long time".

With a MIGHTY EYEROLL, I went up at lunchtime.  She claimed she was feeling "worse",  and wanted to know if I could take her to the emergency room and wait with her there.

"Where's Chris (her long-time, long-suffering boyfriend)?" I asked.

"Oh, Chris will be stopping by," she said, vaguely.

"Ditzy," I said, "I think it's time that your two (adult) kids stepped up to the plate.  I can't take you to the hospital and then wait with you.  I have to go back to work.  I'll call the ambulance, and you call the kids and have them meet you at the emergency room."

Just then, Chris showed up.  I told him that I was going to call 911, and that Ditz needed to call her kids to meet her at the emergency room.  I called 911, the ambulance showed up (all her vital signs were COMPLETELY NORMAL, btw), they loaded up Ditz and got her on her way to the ER, and then it was just me and Chris.

And then the truth came out.

"I broke up with Ditz a while back," Chris said.  "But she just keeps getting sicker and sicker, and I don't have the heart to not be here for her now.  She even started wearing the engagement ring that I gave her again.  She hasn't worn it for years.  I told her that it wasn't going to make any difference, that I wasn't going to come back, but she still thinks I will, if she needs me."

Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

So THAT's where all this is coming from.  Long-time boyfriend dumps her, she's suddenly without someone to give her sympathy and headpats, and *I* start getting phone calls.  And she ramps up the illness level in a last-ditch effort to hang onto her man.

"Chris," I said, "you don't owe Ditz anything.  Lord knows you've put up with her fake "illnesses" for all these years.  The family wrote her off years ago.  If her two kids don't want to help her out now, then she's going to have to figure something else out, because I've had it with her, personally.  I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.  I'm not going to be her next enabler."

OUCH.  I SAID IT.

And now?  Caller screening, baby.  If she calls me at work, the call is going to go the answering service.  If she calls me at home (Update:  SHE DID), it's going straight to voice mail.  If her kids won't help her out, then she's SOL, because I'll be damned if I'll enable this bullshit. She can hire somebody to hold her hand.

And that?  Is why they oughta let me teach at Bitch School.  I'd be damned good at it.

Faking It

Oh, dear lord, family drama is once again rearing its ugly head.

I am about to go on an epic rant, here.  You've been warned.  Feel free to skip this one if you have a low tolerance for soap-opera-type family dynamics.

On Friday, I got an email from my sister Ditzy.  The subject line was "illness".

Do you ever get an email that you really, REALLY don't want to open?  Yeah.  I knew, I knew, that I was about to get involved in some next-level bullsh*t.

A little background here.  Ditzy is eight years older than me, making her 60.  And for as long as I can remember, she has been "sick".

Oh, there's never really been any official diagnosis, although chronic mononucleosis, Gillian-Barre syndrome, and others have been bandied about and then dropped when the next disease-of-the-moment comes along.

Her symptoms?  Well, when there's something FUN to do, like traveling, or going out dancing, or hanging out at the lake, there ARE no symptoms.  She feels great!  It's only when there's something NOT FUN to do, like, oh, I don't know, WORKING, or doing dishes, or cleaning the house, that her symptoms appear.

She's tired.  She doesn't feel well.  She needs to lie down for a while.

She's faking it.

After YEARS of trying and failing to get on disability (because she's NOT SICK), she finally hired a lawyer (and paid him a bunch of money which she borrowed from family members, natch), who convinced a doctor to diagnose her with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and then convinced the government that she was, indeed, deserving of disability payments.

She isn't.  But is she getting those payments?  Oh yes she is.

And now, she's convinced that she's "sicker", although how you can be "sicker" when you weren't "sick" to begin with is a good question.

When she emailed me on Friday, saying that she's got some mysterious new illness that tests can't diagnose (because she's not sick), I tried to be supportive.  I did.  I went up to her house and visited with her on Saturday.  She asked me to help her find out which Medigap insurance plan would be right for her and her fake illness, and I am doing so.  I offered to help her out with cleaning, cooking, running errands, etc., when I was able.

And then the phone calls started.  Yesterday she asked me to pick up some eyedrops for her and bring them to her house.  I did.  When I got there, she said she didn't have the money to pay me back for them.

She's not broke. I KNOW she's not broke.  She just didn't want to pay for the eyedrops.  Somebody ELSE, like ME, should pay for her eyedrops, just like somebody else, like ME and everyother TAXPAYER, should pay her disability payments.

Am I bitter? Oh, nooooooooo.

This morning, she called me again.  She had a bad night, she said.  She might need to go to the emergency room.  Could I give her a ride if she didn't feel better?

Here's the thing:  She keeps GOING to the emergency room.  She's been there FIVE TIMES in the last couple of months.  They run some tests, which show no problems (because she's NOT SICK), and they send her home.  She has been BEGGING her doctor to admit her to the hospital, which her doctor will not do (because she's NOT SICK), and so she just keeps going back to the emergency room, in the wan hope that THEY will admit her to the hospital, which they will not do, because she's NOT SICK.

So when she called this morning, I asked her why her long-term boyfriend, who works from home, could not take her.  ("Well, he might be able to, but he might not," she said.)  I asked her why her adult daughter could not take her. ("She works too far away," she said.  "She'd have to leave work, drive all the way here, take me to the emergency room, drive me home, and then go back to work."  (a) Her daughter works twenty minutes away. (b) It's not okay to ask your DAUGHTER to do that, but it's okay to ask ME to do that?)  I asked why her adult son, who works right here in this town, could not take her.  No answer.

In the end, I told her that if she could not find anyone else to take her, I would give her a ride, but I would have to leave her there at the emergency room.  I would not be able to wait with her.

But honestly?  If she calls back?  I am going to tell her to call either a cab or an ambulance.

Because I am NOT going to get sucked in to her fake "illness".  I don't even know why she's suddenly contacted me out of the blue; we haven't much contact since Mom passed away back in 2013.  Maybe she's run out of suckers, er, sympathetic ears?

Look, if she was REALLY ill, if she had cancer or was in a wheelchair or had some REAL ILLNESS, I would help her.  Of COURSE I would.  Just like I helped my Mom when she got sick. 

But Ditzy is not really ill.  She's faking it.  And I'll be damned if I'll be a party to it.




There.  Rant over.  I feel better now, just for getting this all down in writing.

Thanks for listening.  I owe you one.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa hold the phone

So, just when I put up that post about things being pretty boring around here, I pick up the obits section of the local paper and find out an old boyfriend has died.

Where to even begin about Bob?  Well, let's see, when were we involved ... I left my (ex)husband in 1989.  I think I met Bob in 1990-ish.  He moved in with me, and I think I moved out in 1993.  So ... twenty-two years ago?  My, how time does fly.

I met Bob in a bar and pursued him pretty hard, I'll be honest about that.  He was tall, good-looking, funny, and had a good job at the time.  By the time I found out he was also an alcoholic with a violent temper, he had already moved in.  Not long after that, he got fired from his job for showing up drunk.  Yeah, a real prize.

Those years with Bob were awful.  I didn't have a strong enough sense of myself, after my crappy marriage, to know to just end things quickly, to cut my damn losses.  I kept thinking that Bob would stop drinking, that he'd get another job, that he'd stop ... hitting me.  Plus, my entire family hated Bob, and I couldn't let them be proven right, could I?  Yeah, I was a dip.

Things didn't get better.  Things just kept getting worse and worse.  The drinking just kept getting worse, to the point where he was hiding bottles all over the place.  He was drunk all the time.  He started showing up to my work drunk.  The hitting continued as well.  And he never could hold a job for very long.

To be honest, I don't remember what the final straw was.  How I finally got up the guts to walk away.  There just came a day when I knew, I knew as surely as I'd ever known anything in my life, that I didn't deserve to be treated that way.  That if I stayed, I'd get dragged down to his level.

So I left.  It was hard.  I wasn't making a lot of money at the time and had a car that barely ran, but I knew I had to get out.  Oh, he begged and cried and pleaded on the phone, and he knew where I lived and he'd show up at my door at all hours, and it was awful. It was awful to wake up at two in the morning with him banging on the door, drunk and angry, yelling to be let in. But it wasn't as awful as living with him had been.  Life was a picnic compared to that.

You know, he was my last long-term relationship, and I think the awfulness of that whole mess is part of the reason why I've stayed single since.  I would rather, much rather, be alone that be involved with that kind of asshole ever again.

Supposedly, years after I'd left him, he sobered up, at least for a while.  He had moved down to Florida, and he called me once, saying that he was doing a twelve-step program and had called to try to make amends.

I think I screamed at him for about five minutes before I finally slammed down the phone.  I was angry, so angry, that I'd wasted all those years on him.  All those years when I could have been doing other things, instead of covering up for his drunk, violent self.  All those years when he made me feel like crap.  Like I was nothing.  I'll tell you what, it felt pretty damn good to yell at him on the phone, to tell him what I really felt about how he had treated me, and then hang up.  I remember feeling such a sense of relief, like, finally, FINALLY, it's all over.

He died a few days ago, in Florida, of lung cancer.  He was fifty-five.  The obit asked for donations to be made to a local Florida charity; I looked it up on line, and it's a homeless shelter.  I guess he never did manage to put his life together.

Goodbye, Bob.  You asshole.

Well, look what I just came across

I was sorting through old photo files today and found this:

Awwwww.  A girl and her horse.  Good ol' Trigger.

On the tenth day of Christmas, somebody gave to me ...

 ... ummmm ...

yeah.  I have NO IDEA.  Note the pointy spike on one end.  A zombie-killing weapon?  I'm stumped.  Ideas, anyone?

The Grind

I was out Christmas shopping yesterday (and I am now all done THANK GOODNESS), and came across an old meat grinder at an antiques store.  The ones I'd seen before at antiques stores were pretty pricy, but they were only asking five bucks for this one so hell yeah.

I remember my Mom making sausage with one of these when I was a kid.  And grinding up ham for ham salad.

I will probably never make sausage OR ham salad, but it's nice to have a reminder of my Mom.

There is something to be said for nostalgia.  And cast iron.

Timing

My Christmas cactus has decided it's time to bloom.

I bought this plant last December.  I had bought one for my Mom, to take to her in the hospital, and I thought it was so pretty I went back and bought one for myself.

The one I gave my Mom disappeared, somewhere between the hospital and the nursing home and the uproar of the last few days before she died.  But I've still got this one, and now that it's blooming, I think of her when I look at it.

Hard to believe it's been almost a year.

Hey heyyyy ... come out and PLAY

The other night, I had another dream about the house I grew up in.  I know why; it's because there's been yet more family f*cking drama going on lately, and any time that happens, I tend to dream about the house.

The haunted house, that is.

The funny thing is, I don't really believe in ghosts, per se.  I don't believe in the afterlife and I don't believe that some of us hang around after we die.

But there was something in that house.  I'm still having nightmares about that house, fifty damn years on.

I won't go into details about my dream the other night; suffice it to say it was a nightmare, and it was about the door to the storage room, and I finally got the courage to summon forth whatever was lurking in there, and

I don't wanna talk about it anymore.  Seriously, I don't want to talk about it.  It's too hard.  Most of the time, as soon as I wake up from one of these dreams, I'm fine, because I realize that I'm not actually back in that house, that I'm in my OWN house, which is not haunted in any way, shape, or form, but for whatever reason, I had a hard time shaking this one off. 

Maybe someday I'll stop dreaming about that house.  I hope so, anyway.

OMG WHAT THE F*CK HOLY SH*T

I just got a call from an insurance company.  Looking at the caller ID, I thought it was a telemarketer and almost didn't take it, but then I thought the better of it. 

Turns out, many many MANY years ago, my mom took out a life insurance policy and named me, her youngest, as the beneficiary.  I dunno why either; probably one of my dad's bar buddies was selling insurance or something. 

Mom passed away in December.  The insurance company got wind of it.

They're sending me a check.  For

oh crap I probably shouldn't say it here, should I?  Beware of scammers and all that.

For lots of dollars.  Not enough to pay off my mortgage or anything, but enough to take a very VERY nice vacation should I so choose.

Out of the blue.

All I can think of is, many years ago, when my great-aunt Grace passed away and unexpectedly left my Mom a sum of money, and how pleased we all were for Mom. 

And now it's me.

Thanks, Mom! 

OMG HOLY CRAP YIPPEE

Time flies

Sorry for the dearth of posting around here - I'm so damn busy it ain't funny.   Family drama, which I thought would die along with my mother, has managed to rear its ugly head again, so much so that I scared the cats the other night with my loud swearing as I listened to (yet another) message on my answering machine about the newly-sprung idea of MANDATORY contributions to my mother's headstone.  Coming from the people who couldn't be bothered to be here for her actual, you know, death.  Sweet Christ on a Cracker let her go already, people.  AND LEAVE ME OUT OF IT. F*ck.

Cat count?  Let's see.  There's my three, the two feral fosters, Mama Puff, four from Litter A and five from Litter B, for a total count of ... I'll think about it tomorrow.  Unfortunately, Kitten Season comes square up against Camping/Cookouts/Family Vacation Season, which means slow adoptions.  I'm drowning in cats over here. 

We did have an adoption event Saturday.  Can you believe that both of these gorgeous cats are STILL available?:

And there was a sighting of the rare and elusive Parrot Cat:

Someday, SOMEDAY, I'll have time to hike and relax and drink beer by the kiddie pool.  SOMEDAY.

The weekend that was

Well.  THAT weekend went by in a hurry, didn't it?

Saturday was an adoption event:

I'm pleased and amazed to report that the kitty quilts I made sold out:

And even more pleased and amazed to report that seven!  kittens!  found new homes on Saturday.  Including THREE  who went to ONE family, which, all I can say is, I bet they had a busy weekend. 

And no, none of those seven were my fosters; mine are still too wee to go to events.

I actually replaced that ratty old beach towel with a nice clean bed sheet this weekend and now?  The cats refuse to lie there.

Ah, kitten faces:

Litter 1 is starting to sample food and to use the litterbox. (whew)  Litter 2 is starting to emerge from their nest.  I predict chaos in the coming weeks.  Luckily, a neighbor girl has been coming over and spending lots of time in the foster room, which is AWESOME.

Let's see.  I also mowed the lawn and cleared out the gardens and did nine million tons of laundry and washed the car and drank some beer.

AND took a minute to think of my dad, a WWII vet, and all of the other veterans out there who keep us safe.

Hope you had a good weekend too. 

Me and Dad

When I was going through my photos for the memory board for Mom's funeral, I found this Polaroid of me and my Dad, dated July 1969.

Looks like we were both a little fashion-challenged.

The boat to the right is the Wanderer.  It was a big old fiberglass tank that was always full of spiders.  That's the boat we took up the Saint Lawrence Seaway and through the Rideau Canal one summer.   To the left is the Lovely Lady, the boat my Dad bought after he sold the Wanderer (and its spider population).  The Lovely Lady was built before WWII and was all teak and mahogany - a beautiful boat. 

Oh, and now you can see why my nickname was "Bowl Bean" as a kid.

Full speed ahead

I am going to get this off my chest, and then I am going to let it go.  This involves family drama, so feel free to skip right over this whole thing.  I am quite aware that publishing this may mean that some see me as a lesser person; frankly, I don't give a sh*t.  Herewith is the contents of an email I sent to a family member, a few days after Mom passed away, when I was taking crap from all sides.  I decided to damn the torpedoes.

"Just in case anyone is wondering why I am so furious with Shirley and Dale*:

Shirley took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mom  over the years. Forty thousand a year for providing a spare room for your still-active mother is considered reasonable? Shirley got an $800 monthly stipend, plus she took another thousand in cash out of mom's checking account every month. Some months it was more than a thousand. Plus mom paid the utility bill, and the cable bill, and the phone bill. PLUS “mom” often bought groceries at Wegman's.  A check was written on her account for $177.00 in groceries at Wegman's on the day before Thanksgiving; in essence, mom bought Thanksgiving dinner for Shirley and her family. A dinner that mom was unable to eat because she was struggling for her life with undiagnosed pneumonia.  (I was told only that mom had  "a cold".  If I had had any idea how serious the situation was, I would have taken mom to the ER.)

And in all the years that mom spent with Shirley, I never once saw Shirley give her a kiss, or a hug, or a shoulder rub. Mom got much more person-to-person contact from the aides in the nursing home than she ever got from Shirley.

Shirley and Dale berated Chris and Karen (my sister and her boyfriend) repeatedly, loudly and IN FRONT OF MOM, for feeding her. (Priceless comments were also made about "a choking cat will swallow if you shove food down its throat" and "Look at her!  What kind of life is this?", again, all in front of my conscious and aware mother.)  In reality, it was the lack of timely medical care that ultimately resulted in mom's death. If Shirley had not waited until mom was half-dead before finally taking her to a doctor, the outcome may have been different. And if Shirley and Dale had spent any time at all at the hospital or at the nursing home, they would have known that feeding mom was also being done by myself, the nurses, and the aides, because there was a very real possibility that mom would recover.  She was placed in a rehab facility and not in hospice because she was EXPECTED TO SURVIVE.  If at any time the medical staff felt that feeding mom was detrimental, they would have issued an NPO order, and the feeding would have stopped per mom's wishes via her Living Will. Again, if Shirley and Dale had chosen to be involved in her care, they would have known this.  Instead, they washed their hands of the whole thing, stopping by only to bitch at the people who were actively working to get mom back to health.  It is my understanding that Dale has been telling people that he spent hours with mom in the hospital and nursing home every day; that is a flat-out lie. He would fly in, toss a rosary over something, and go right back out the door.  

And on the Friday before mom's death, he declared to Chris that it was “all our fault that he couldn't go on vacation”, meaning, I guess, that Karen, Chris and I should have made mom die quicker so that his plans wouldn't be ruined. And then Dale and Shirley left for vacation anyway.

And, of course, the reason they washed their hands of mom's  care was because they were furious that mom was in a nursing home. Why? Because that meant the nursing home was getting a chunk of mom's trust fund, a trust fund that Shirley and Dale would be getting a portion of. More money for mom's care meant less money for them.

And then, with mom literally at death's door, they chose to go on vacation.

As far as I am concerned, Shirley and Dale are nothing less than monsters.  Who you choose to associate with is your decision; however, I am baffled that you would continue to support such despicable people."

I will tell you, I felt a lot better after I let that sucker fly.

*their real names, not the pseudonyms I usually use for them here.  F*ck it.