Critter Update

For the longest time, I always thought of Freya Fishwhore as the typical nit-witted nitwit, with all the brains and wisdom that graces a turnip.

Mostly, I'm right, however... Freya Fishwhore can talk. I know, I know, you think I've been in quarantine too long, but I'll have you know that I've rather enjoyed quarantine because being around people makes me anxious. Staying home is good. There's plenty to do. I have a computer.

Occasionally I get the urge to take a car ride and make sure the rest of the world is still getting it's mail delivered to the planet. It is, and I'm done.

Anyway, Freya has developed a rather rudimentary (and occasionally just plain rude) vocabulary. It started one fine evening, when Tammie and I were sitting around and Freya came in and stated, "I'm a cowww!"

Tammie and I looked at each other and she said, "Did she just tell us she thinks she's a cow?"
"Yes. I do believe she did. I don't know if I should correct her for being wrong, or praise her for talking about it."

Several months later, she stood outside the bedroom door and said, "Mooommmmaaa" in her most plaintive voice. Tammie was in there, trying to nap. It was sweet. And a little annoying. It's very difficult to sleep when someone keeps yelling for you.

Recently she got a little sassy when she wanted to go hang out by herself in the bedroom. Tammie asked, "Don't you think you've been in there by yourself long enough?" and the answer was quite clear: "No."

We'd love to get this on video, but she's a typical feline when it comes to cooperating, and falls silent the moment the phone is aimed at her.

Rocky is still Rocky. His eating habits are bar none, the most irritating thing about him. Well, that and the ability to take up the entire loveseat by himself. And overreact about everything. But the eating! Sheesh.

Right now, he's working on his breakfast. Mind you, it's 11:50 in the morning and we usually feed the hounds around 6:00. But Rocky rarely eats then, for whatever reason. If we leave his bowl down, he will spend the entire day guarding it. He won't move, he'll bark at anything that looks at his bowl. Even me.

So, today, Tammie is feeding him, a few kibble at a time, by dropping them on the floor for him to scavenge. She's thrilled. It's a good thing she adores the hell out of that dog, let me tell you.

Douglas is doing very well. He's lost enough weight we cannot call him a sausage any more. He has found a new purpose in life, and that is taking over everything. He can jump up on the furniture and snuggle with whatever human happens to be sitting there. His favorite thing in the world is to cuddle up next to a person and have Thor join in the pile. Then Douglas will clean Thor's ear until he's tickling the single working brain cell inside that damn cat's head. Then Thor will turn to get the other ear cleaned out. It makes them both happy.

Miss Bitte is fine. Just fine. The new residents are annoying, although jumping onto the back of the recliner is a lot more fun now. The old woman who sits there makes all kinds of interesting noises. But she always has at least one chihuahua in her lap, so there's no going in for a scritch, despite the magic fuzzy blanket of warmth. It's quite the conundrum for her furry little brain, warm place with chihuahua, or high perch and the knowledge that her presence is annoying. Such a dilemma.

Then there's "Teeny" the dog that came with Tammie's mother.

Let's just fast forward to the point where we can go for a mile walk at a reasonable pace and no one dies. When she first got here, I got her to the end of the driveway and half way to the corner before she had to be carried back. She's an older dog, but no one seems to recall how old she is. She's also discovered what it means to be a dog and have the run of a secure yard (with grass!) and only two limited meals per day. Two meals of a single serving each! Plus some kibble snacks for good behavior.

She's a sweet little thing, and has decided I'm pretty cool, mainly because I take her for walks where she can sniff at giant piles of bear poop, snuffle around the coyote poop, and bark at raccoon poop. She will also leave her contribution to the poop parade, usually at the doorstep of the local wild rabbit warren in the vacant field of blooming sneeze (a.k.a. Scotch broom). Her likes include, ignoring the boy dogs, chasing Miss Bitte (that cat is gonna wallop her a good one soon), snacks, breakfast, snacks, dinner, walkies with Karen, pooping, and visiting the rhubarb. She also loves Rocky's favorite teddy bear and will give it a vicious shaking and play tug-o-bear with it, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ROCKY!!!

Her dislikes: loud noises, walking when the wind is blowing (unless it's blowing from behind her), tall grass (which, when you're a chihuahua, is pretty much everywhere), and being told NO! especially if it involves food. Tammie carries scars from trying to get her to drop something she shouldn't eat.

Thor is still the dumbest cat on the planet and I really don't like him. He's taken to finding new and creative places to take a dump, and has also taken up the hobby of bathtub peeing. Really. I do not like that cat. His only redeeming quality is my darling love adores him. If she didn't, he'd be an outdoor cat.

The New Computer

For about a month or so, I've been experiencing things. Ungood things. Unfun things, and they're all related to my desktop computer.

I love that machine. It is small, fits perfectly on my desk and still has room for the printer. Then it started forgetting stuff. We'd be in the middle of something and everything would stop, except the strange whirring noise from inside the tower.

The screen would sit there, staring into space, a small puddle of drool forming near the keyboard. At first, I'd try distracting it by clicking something, but that never worked. Sometimes a gentle "tap-tap" on the tower would startle it awake again and we'd be back in business.

Sometimes that wouldn't work and I'd walk away. Usually, in a few minutes, there would be some kind of noise, or the screen would go black for a few seconds and tah-daaah! it would be like nothing happened. Well, nothing is EXACTLY what happened, but you know what I mean.

Then it started staying like that for a longer period. Like 10 minutes. Then 15. I don't know if we would have made it to 20, because I'd just to a hard boot and restore things when prompted. But every time that happened, I would worry.

I'd been given a new (open box, but still new) external hard drive and everything was neatly backed up on it. However, when I went to check on it, I realized I didn't have the key code to access that information, so if there had been a catastrophic failure of epic proportions, I would have been totally screwed. A friend suggested a specific cloud service, so I went for it.

I was warned it would take a while to do that backup, so I was prepared, or so I thought. 12 hours in, it got hung up on a single file, where it sat for many hours. All attempts at moving things along failed, so I turned off the computer.

The next day, I started it up again, and fortunately the backup resumed where it had left off. 20 hours later, it was done. 20 hours, plus the original 12... that makes for a very long time to do anything on a computer.

I knew it was time, so I bit the bullet and called a friend for help. I must say, I am very grateful for the computer savvy people in my life. Especially the ones who do not treat me like an idiot. She asked a few questions, did a quick search, and came up with exactly what I needed for a price I could afford.

She said, "It's solid state, so it will be a lot faster."

She was not kidding. It downloaded chrome in 4 seconds, and took another 30 to install it.

It's not the latest OS or whatever, but it's plenty for me.

Soon, very soon, I'll be attempting to get all my stuff back from the cloud where it rests in tranquil safety. I just hope everything will play nice and all my stuff will come back to me.

(I'll cross my fingers once I'm done typing).

Have a Happy Whatever Day

If you identify as a mother, then I wish you a happy day. If you don't, then, have a happy one anyway. My blog, my rules.

Motherhood is a weird thing. For some, it's a time of unending joy, for others it's just one goat rodeo after another. For most, whether you're having days of sunshine and rainbows, or chasing after a small naked person, you still love and cherish them.

But there are those who don't have such an easy time. They cannot bond, they cannot love, they cannot cope, they barely manage. They don't understand the fuss and foolery over such a day. Maybe they couldn't connect with their offspring, or there offspring couldn't connect with them. There is no shame on them for how they feel, but there is a little shame on those who make them feel guilty for not living the life of Hallmark bliss.

My mom and I had one of those relationships that I thought was normal when I was a kid. I thought all mothers behaved certain ways, and it wasn't until much later that I learned my dear momma had some issues. I thought it was normal to believe the neighbors were spying on us and that all curtains needed to be closed to keep them from seeing what we were up to. I thought it was normal to go from extreme happiness to rage to despair in one day, or even one hour. I thought all mothers did that, they just hid it from everyone except their family. Mental illness is a trip and a half. When I was an adolescent, it became very hard for the two of us to maintain a civil relationship because I was weary of trying to always stay on the good side of her off days.

There were other things that kept her on the other side of normal, but as I grew older (and, thankfully, wiser) I learned the whys and whats of her illness and I learned to forgive. Her childhood was one of constant uncertainty. For years, the only thing she could count on was school. She was the younger daughter of a single mom. She and my aunt were raised in the middle of the depression in an area of the country that has never had a good economic base, unless you owned a lumber mill or a logging truck.

Our family had neither.

Grandpa did what he could, when he remembered. He and grandma split when my mom was about 2, and he ended up spending a great percentage of his time with his girlfriends and their kids. During extra lean times, he would go out and hunt for game (in season or not) and that's what he would bring to his daughters. But despite being an excellent hunter, he didn't always find the time, or opportunity, to provide for his family. He had other irons in the fire. Mind you, I adored him when I was a kid, but his actions did not have a direct impact on my life, so that luxury of unpolluted love was mine.

She did her best to keep me in touch with my grandparents and cousins, but she had some pretty strong opinions about all of them, and she never failed to share them with me once we had returned home. Years later, she wondered why I didn't maintain a close relationship with them. It was kind of hard to do when you weren't sure it would meet with approval, so I kind of gave up.

Not all of her criticisms were wrong, however. One side of the family made sure to remind her that she was from the wrong side of the tracks and flaunted their lifestyle in such a way as to make her feel even less of a human being than she already did. She tried, but it was a struggle, one that would fire up that mood swing and away we'd go. I no longer have contact with that side of the family, their choice, not mine, but I'm gay and they can't accept that, so there we are, but this isn't about me.

This is about mothers. Mothers who were handled the title in the form of a fussy bundle of wet-and-sticky and told to Go Out and Make a Good Adult, and they did their best. It never measured up to the moms on TV, or in books, or in the homes of friends, and when you're a kid, that's all you see. You don't see the struggle, or if you do, you don't recognize it as struggle, you see it as normal.

This is about mothers. Mothers who were never given the chance to give birth, but desperately wanted to be a mom and mothered someone else's child. A child that they would give much-needed calm attention to, and quickly forgive mistakes that a biological mother is just too tired, or not wired to do.

This is about mothers. Mothers who were without children until they married someone with kids, and had to co-parent with people who may or may not be getting along, who could be using the children as weapons to hurt the other parent, with no regard to the damage happening to their children. This is the land of step-parenting, more minefield than play field. Always watching your step, always trying to protect those who needed it while keeping balance in your own life and marriage.

This is about mothers. Mothers who aren't assigned female by birth, but they transitioned into one and took on the responsibility of being a mother to someone who needed them. They bring a whole new light and love to the child they raise.

This is about mothers. Mothers who aren't assigned female, nor do they wish to be, but they take on the role of caregiver to a child they love. They are both mother and father.

This is about mothers. Mothers caught in the middle of joy and crazy. Mothers who do their best, love their children, and hang on even when it feels like the rope is fraying and the knot is coming undone. This is for you. This is for all of us.

Happy Mother's Day to us all.

Yard Work

Today I was planning on getting some writing done for the blogs and the manuscript, which is why I grabbed the weed whacker and laid waste to a bunch of vegetation that didn't need to be growing right there!

During my attack on nature, I managed to whack some blackberry vines and slugs and shit. Pretty much in that order, too. The blackberry vines made my poor little machine stutter and launch a full attack on my pants legs by slinging said vine piece right at me. There was swearing.

It did the same with the slug. And the shit. I was not amused. Most of the slug sort of bounced off my leg, but the string vaporized the pile of poo and left a lovely line of fragrance just below knee level.

I cannot begin to tell you how thankful I am that a) I was wearing long pants, and b) that it didn't get higher than my knees. Also, it was a small pile (probably Chihuahua in origin). I would have been in trouble if I'd hit a mound of bear scat. Seriously, those bruins have left some big piles in our yard.

Yeah, welcome to the coast! Beautiful sunsets (when it isn't raining), lots of fresh air (usually forced into your lungs by high velocity winds), and wildlife galore (most of which will get into your yard and eat all the green beans you planted, or snack on the neighbor's garbage in your driveway).

Good times!

Tomorrow will probably involve more whacking, as the elusive muse insists I get out and do something constructive that doesn't involve me sitting at the computer begging, pleading, and crying for some inspiration. Of course, it might not be my muse insisting I do the yard work, it could be my sweetie, or the cats. Sometimes it's difficult to tell them apart.

There was also an incident with the lawnmower that I'd rather not experience again. It involved a couple of snails and many thanks for that protective dohicky that comes down when you're not using a grass catcher, because those shells would have stung a bit. Also, the noise... Then there was the large hole left in the yard by my darling when she was doing some planting of things and needed some soil. I damn near disappeared up to my armpits while covered in slug snot and dog shit.

Our weather today was spectacular, totally blue sky, without a cloud in sight and it got up to 80 on the front deck! For the Washington coast in May, that's saying something. Someone mentioned that sunlight kills the virus and I pondered hanging out on the deck in my all-together for some pro-active virus killing. Ooh! There's that thing where folks were sunning their, um, nether regions for an infusion of something-something-the neighbors already think I'm nutso. Tammie let me know she would prefer I not do that, as it would probably confuse her mother (who is living with us and brought her dementia with her, so confusion is the current situation at our house).

Still... if it works...

Thoughts of Quarantine

I wasn't planning on mentioning the current pandemic thing happening, or the quarantine, or my feelings about any of it, but... I'm kind of grooving on how Mother Nature is using this time to do some repair work.

Tammie and I were talking about it this morning, how we keep reading about those folks who are busy mucking out closets, deep cleaning their houses, evicting every speck of dirt and filth and virus from their domicile. We, on the other hand, have not.

Once we got the master bedroom ready for her mother, we kind of slacked off. We did managed to clear out the storage shed in the back yard, which was a total bonus. We can actually get in there without having to tie a rope around one ankle first.

But other than that, we've not been doing the deep clean. We've been relaxing, doing a little healing of our own.

Ever since we bought the hat shop, we've been busy. I mean, not many breaks at all kind of busy. For the first three years or so, I was working full time at the school, then weekends and summers at the shop. It was exhausting. Then we brought my parents into our home and that dialed things up a notch or two. When they passed in 2017, we thought we'd catch a break, but there were legal things that needed attention: a house in Oregon to clean out and sell, and keep the shop running despite the horrible condition of the building (crappy landlords suck, folks).

What I'm saying is, there was no rest.

We kept going, trying to do it all and exhausting ourselves in the process. Then came the pandemic, Tammie's mom, and the lockdown, pretty much in that order. The shop was closed (in fact, the whole town is closed), and we were forced to stay put.

We looked around at all the boxes that need sorting, carpets that need cleaning, a yard that needs a nuclear bomb, and now a garden that needs tending.

And we've rested. The boxes are still full, the carpets are still funky (Tammie vacuums, but we have pets and we live at the beach, so there will be funk), and a yard filled with goathead stickers and sheep sorrel. The garden is being tended by Tammie, but the beauty of container gardening is the ease of tending. She waters, snacks on young leaves of radish, bok choi, and whatever the hell she has out there, and heals.

I've been trying to do some writing on book 3, beta reading a friend's manuscript, and trying to figure out how to print my manuscript on both sides of the paper (it flat-out refuses, no matter what settings I use).

We art around at the table, making cards to send out. We walk the dogs along the dirt lanes around our home, and revel in the relative silence. It's nature silence, you know? That silence filled with birdsong, the rustling of critters in the underbrush, and the sigh of the ocean.

So I don't feel guilty about not having a pristine house at the end of this, because this rest is doing more for me than a spotless house and manicured lawn ever could.

And I'm writing more, which heals my soul.

Important Things Afoot!

Hey! Did I mention one of the Most Important Things To Happen To Me in my last post? No? Maybe? You're not sure?

Lemme check my notes, brb...

Ah, no. I didn't. To be honest, I'm only slightly surprised, considering all the things that are happening all at once and not just all over my house. I mean, there's a lot going on here, but it's nothing compared to the pandemic, which has been... oh, let's just not go there, m'kay?

Anyway, I was fiddling about with the pile o' crap on my desk (also known as Manuscript Notes, bills that may or may not have been paid, Important Documents that I have no idea what to do with at the moment but I'll figure it out, cancelled checks, cords to things, an old mp3 player (is "old mp3 player" a redundancy? Am I sounding a little scattered to you?), an amulet sent by a dear friend that needs to be re-secured to the top corner of my monitor, a rubber ducky, and a treasure trove of sticky note pads in various sizes)... dammit, where was I... Oh, yeah, fiddling about...

I came across a couple of letters that changed my life.

No, seriously! I kid you not. See, it started when I emailed someone who works for one of my all-time favorite magazines, RubberStampMadness. Folks, I am a stamper. Back in my AOL days, I was part of a very active group called RubberStamp Enthusiasts (and I have that group to thank for helping me remember how to spell enthusiasts). I even had my own business (with my own designs, catalog and everything!) I was in deep, folks, real deep.

Then shit happened. A lot of shit and the stamps and my business kind of fell to the wayside. Actually, they got stuffed into the garage when we moved and I couldn't find them, so I gave up. It was sad, I missed them, I missed stamping, I missed a lot of things about that craft.

But I had children to raise, a job to do, a marriage to attempt to salvage (I failed on that count, but it's for the best, believe me) and then other stuff. However, every time I went to the craft store, I gravitated towards the stamp section, fawning and drooling over the rubber images, papers, inks, and ALL THOSE AMAZING TOOLS!!! (most of which I already had, but couldn't get to because "buried in the garage" is kind of a death sentence for stuff like that).

When I moved to the coast, I took a few stamps with me, but the majority of them, the ones I finally found when I cleared out the garage, a.k.a. the tomb, were donated to a group of new stampers. It was a lot of stamps and the memories that were attached to them. I was ok with my decision, simply because moving to the coast meant I would be taking care of my elderly parents and my hat shop.

One Yule, Tammie gave me a subscription to RubberStampMadness and holy moly, folks, it all came flooding back. I took the next opportunity and pulled the small collection of stamps and supplies out of storage, cleaned them up and fell in love again. There was stamping! Then we hit the craft store and there were more stamps!

Then! THEN!!! We discovered a delightful surprise! Just a few minutes from our house was an honest-to-goodness stamp store! With stamps, and papers, and tools! Everything! The beast was awake and hungry for rubberstamps!

Now that you're up to speed, I'll continue with my story of The Important Thing. I sent a LONG message to the admin of the RSM facebook page, kind of explaining things and gushing my love for the magazine and how good it felt to be back in the rubber room again.

She sent it to the editor of the magazine and folks, THEY PUBLISHED ALL THREE COLUMNS OF MY LETTER!!!

But that wasn't the best part. I got a letter in the mail from the editor ASKING ME IF I'D LIKE TO WRITE FOR THE MAGAZINE!!!

I said I'd think about it.

Then I ran around the room, shrieking and waving the letter. I emailed the editor and said, YES!!!

The best part was I got my assignment almost right away, and when that was finished, I got another one. The magazine is published quarterly, and right now I have a piece in the summer issue (under the Spotlight column) and in the fall I have the Card Shoppe feature. I'm so excited.

Go ahead and get you a copy! If we ever meet face to face, I'll even sign it for you. Yeah! Just try to stop me! :)

Ooh! A Blog Post!

It’s been a spell, hasn’t it? Life has been busy, up until March 2020 when every-damn-thing came to a screeching halt.

To be honest…I’m kind of liking this, but then I have a distinct advantage over a lot of folks caught up in this maelstrom of toilet paper panic. I am an only child, so being somewhat isolated is pretty familiar territory for me.

When the shelter-in-place/lockdown started, I felt this thrill of OH BOY! OH BOY! OH BOY! I’LL FINALLY GET MY MANUSCRIPT DONE!

Yeah. Shut up.

Instead, we did a very hurried clear-out of the master bedroom where my folks had stayed, and got it ready for Tammie’s mom to come stay with us. The day before the travel ban started, we scrambled to meet Tammie’s son (known as Beans on my old blog) at the halfway point. We chatted for a few minutes, walked the dog, and plague-hugged (wagged elbows) at each other before getting into our respective cars and heading in opposite directions.

Once again, we are on familiar ground with a dementia patient and have gotten into a routine of questions and answers, lather, rinse, repeat. Every morning, she comments that the neighbor across the street must still be in bed. “But it’s none of my business,” she’ll say. Just to change things up a bit, I’ve supplied her with information on said neighbor. Tammie laughed when I told her mom that “he only comes out at night.” See? It isn’t all bad.

She brought her dog with her, a small tank of a Chihuahua inappropriately named Teeny. That dog is NOT teeny. Well, she wasn’t, but thanks to some careful ministrations by yours truly, she’s lost about four pounds. She’s got a few more to go, but there is a definite improvement. Now she can galumph down the hallway with the other Chihuahua whereas when she first arrived, there was no galumphing. At all. It’s hard to galumph when you’re twice the weight you’re supposed to be.

Trust me, I know this.

She’s a funny little dog, with some strange quirks, and she recently fell in love with Rocky’s favorite teddy bear, much to Rocky’s dismay. She even fell asleep with it tucked under her chin. I melted, folks, mel-ted.

The cats aren’t exactly thrilled with the new addition, and Miss Bitte has been adamant about who is the alpha critter on campus. Despite Teeny’s weight issues, Miss Bitte still has size, agility, speed, and weight on Teeny and has not hesitated to prove it. It can get a little noisy.

Freya FishWhore has taken up semi-permanent residence in the bedroom, except at night when we finally wrangle the dogs (and lately, Teeny has been sleeping with us because long story that I’m not putting here) so Miss FishWhore retreats to the living room for most of the night, then around 4:00 in the morning, she thinks we’ve been in her space long enough and begins yeowling her displeasure with our reluctance to abandon our warm and comfy (and slightly crowded) bed.

The other night I was staying up late to finish a batch of bread when Frey began bellowing at the bedroom door. Occasionally she changes things up a bit and words come out of her face, and even though I know she’s not doing it on purpose, it sounds so intentional. That night she stood outside that door and said, “Ah, mama!”

Ah, mama, this is gonna be a wild ride.