I'm Still Here

One of my munchkins under a tree.

Signed up today to be a volunteer at the animal shelter.

Sent a package to France.

Ordered Carrots Love Tomatoes and Roses Love Garlic.

Had Frances for four days.

Bad woman is leaving the university.

All I do is go to dr's appointments.

More snow coming.

Going to Naples, FL, at the end of March.

Wrote another poem about my dad.

Reading The Noonday Deamon.

Made homemade brownies.

Was told that head cancer is increasing in women, possibly due to diet sodas.

Getting a second opinion on my tongue thingie.

Can't get in touch with my friend in Spain.

I think Tilda Swinton is gorgeous.

Have an infestation of aphids on my house plants.

Bought a Three Graces garden gazing globe stand that's so heavy I can't get it out of my car!

Going to a one man performance tomorrow night.

Can't find my 9x9 baking pan.

Ty stuffies have gone the way of online Webkinz.

Bought a dog toy that is GUARANTEED indestructible!

Have you ever gone night swimming in a lake or ocean?

Can I transfer my computer songs to an IPod?

I want the MacBook Air.

Changing my bed sheets always feels like a monumental achievement.

Chihuahua Meetup cancelled for tomorrow due to an expected 2 inches of snow; wusses.

Got the new Primary Care Physician I wanted.

Am finishing another collage box.

Mood: up and down.

Medications: up.

Bindi, DOWN! Good dog.

Baby Misty

JP said that I no longer mention my cats, they have no blogger personality. Well, here you go JP. Didn't you actually come with me to the shelter when I picked up Misty for the first time? This is my old friend R., who doesn't even care for cats, but she looked so lovely in her tie-dyed shirt, that a photo of her holding baby Mist seemed the thing to do. This was taken in the shelter about a week before I adopted her I think. We just went for a visit. In the words of dear departed Steve Irwin, "Isn't she go-geous?!" Odd, I can't remember Misty much as a kitten (like I can't remember Bindi much as a puppy), but this is a beautiful reminder.

Happy Valentine's Day, all, and a special shout out to K., whose birthday is today. Hope it's a good one.

I have the movie Chocolat on in the background. I'd like to live with Juliet Binoche and Johnny Depp, just so I could look at their intensely lovely faces each day. Oh, and it's a wonderful film, too. Perfect for the day.

Watched Steve Martin's Shop Girl on dvd last night. A sweet movie, with extraordinary photography of Los Angeles, which I never think of as an attractive city, but then I've never been there. Clair Danes is so much better now that she is older. Also watched Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou, a disturbing but I think true-ish account of the Sierra Leone illegal diamond trade. Buying diamonds is so problematic. Does anyone know if diamonds are still stockpiled and only a certain amount allowed on the market so as to keep the price high, as is portrayed in the movie?

I get my tongue biopsy results tomorrow. Check this site for the info. Shout out to EGV: what were your biopsy results?

Can't find my scissors. If anyone ever wants to send me a gift, scissors is a good one. I need a pair in each room.

Sun is out today. Time to go visit the road's water feature with the canine.

And finally, to all lurkers: POST A COMMENT, PLEASE!! K. is usually the only one who does, and I'm very grateful to her, but come ON!

Chi Town

And not the one in the middle of the country. These photos are from the Chihuahua Meetup Group on Feb. 2. It was kind of lame: the organizers had no toys for the dogs, no drinks for the owners. It was kind of fun anyway. Next time I'll bring a bunch of toys.

Cold

I've got a cold. Fortunately, I have nothing scheduled for this day, so can lay low. The nutritionist I used to see called me this morning, just to check in. I told her about the thing on my tongue, and she said it sounded like oral lichen planus. She's very very smart, and I learned a great deal from her. I googled lichen planus, and sure enough, it sounds (and looks) like what I have. I won't post a photo since some of you were grossed out by my blood mandala. Wusses. The biopsy is tomorrow, so should have a diagnosis soon.)

M & S came for dinner last night. Had S's favorite menu: turkey hotdogs, cauliflower, and potatoes. She ate a ton! She didn't even want her dessert. She told me she is getting two mice tomorrow, one white and one black. She doesn't have names yet. I told them stories about my childhood pets, Homer, and Cleo, and several others, hamsters and gerbils. I liked them very much.

Just saw this in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/health/07diabetes.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

You know how when you get an amaryllis bulb and it's so beautiful when it blooms, but you can never get it to bloom again? Well, I've got two from years past blooming again. I think it's because I kept fertilizing the bulbs before they went dormant, as that's what provides the energy for the plant to bloom again. Yea, me!
I rock as a gardener. Both me thumbs be green. (I won't tell you about the plants I've lost from trying to find the right windows for them here. I'm trying to keep at least one double lavender/pink tropical hibiscus alive, but I don't know.

















The Metaphor of My Father's Coat

I've been wearing it
The buttons have been
one by one
falling off
The thread old and weak
I sew them back on.

There is no lining
No inner layer
although once it existed
the lonely zipper
runs along the inside edge
with a memory
perhaps
of a warm protective interior lamina

What I miss most about my father
is not having known
his closeted self
The qualities I imagined
longed for
believed were present

I wear his coat
Allow molecules
particles of the past
his past his life
embedded in the cloth
to skim my exterior

Lacking a lining
it's all I have left.

Haunts

Today I was very sad. Had nightmares last night which left me feeling ill at ease this morning. Couldn't shake it. Went to pick up some things at the pharmacy, and began crying about two events in my past, way far back, that I haven't been quite able to resolve. Fortunately, I saw my acupuncturist this afternoon and she was soothing.

A rose is a rose, and so much more

Let's start the new month with something beautiful -- a photo of the roses that M. brought to Bindi's birthday party. Shout out to everybody: when you need a surefire great gift, bring a dozen roses to someone. Huh, I just noticed that this configuration of roses is a mandala itself. And of course, each individual bloom is also a mandala. I am so drawn to the form, and it appears everywhere.

Had lunch with MS yesterday. She's so great, but is being wildly exploited at her job. Then I went to the dog park with the Bindster and ran into a massage therapist I went to once, a long time ago. I always go to women, but one day when I just walked in to see if anyone was available, he was the only one. And while I was on the table, and telling him about the tension in his neck, he made a very inappropriate comment that the weight of my breasts might contribute to my neck tension. I never went back to him. I've been to a lot of massage therapists, and never has anyone made a comment like that. Uck. Then, when we were chatting in the dog park while our dogs ran around, I told him about spending $3,000 on having Bindi's knees operated on. He said, "I'm very pragmatic. I would have put her down." I was kind of shocked, and felt it was a very cold thing to say to me. Again, uck. He said, "There's always another dog that needs adopting. They're not children." Puke. I mean, sure, if you don't have the money, or you're not attached to the animal, perhaps this would be the best option. But most people I know with animals are attached to them, and would go to great lengths to maintain the life of the animal who means so much to them. And he had this amazingly gorgeous dog, an Australian cattle dog/some kind of shephard mix.

Today I'm going to register to vote in this new town, then take S.'s birthday present to her (thanks, IKEA!), and pick up my new glasses frames, the red wire rimmed ones. I need the lenses replaced in my every day glasses, my computer glasses, and my reading glasses. That's not gonna be cheap.

To be against happiness is to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is a call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.

Eric Wilson

Against Happiness: In Praise of Meloncholy