big time consuming

There are too many things in this world. Too many choices for us. Too many things to buy and eat. That is how people consume free time- consuming, to make up for their full days of outputting. Maybe it sounds right to balance these things. Except no one does. There's always a portion of people who mostly just consume and then there's the portion that outputs all their life. My perspective of the world is an overwhelming one. I feel like I haven't lived enough to be ready for now. But that's a waste of time to think about. I always seem to save things for later-put them off. But if I keep doing that, I'll never get them done. Things are being wasted just sitting there. Time is being wasted. Time that I could use doing the things that I need to have done. Of course, I could pretend that all time is not wasted, and that all time is special and we are so lucky to have it. 

yellow yellow

Just so ya know, I haven't been all too expressive for about a week now. Here's why. I've been feeling like a sick floppy rotten fish! Yes, I did go to Arizona at the beginning of the week and have whole tons of things to say about that, but a rotten fish doesn't seem to have much flop enough to even say "hello" sometimes. I had a doc appointment Thursday that I was dragged to, and they said if I wasn't feeling better over the weekend I might have to check myself in. I'm trying to avoid that. I've been having weird aches in the liver regions and people who look at me say I look yellow. Yellow jaundice yellow? Something is going on with my liver is all we can figure. If I keep feeling this way, I oughta be checked out by a professional. But for the time being I will just be sipping on water and beet juices. So there's a little magenta in the yellow. 

writer's block

Help me! Help me! Help me! 

This message will remain short because I really don't have much to say. That is why I am asking for advice, actually, to cure my writer's block. I want to write more, but can't seem to get started or feel any inspiration for it. Any pointers from all you writers out there? Please do tell!

*This entry is also a good excuse to show off this random bunny photo of a bunny with writer's block. 

In-Between News

I had my monthly scan today. It's funny, I went into it feeling pretty neutral and came out of it feeling the same neutralness. News is, things are still stable and look the same as they did in September. But this time, the plan is different. Since my hemoglobin was too low again to do any chemo today, I didn't. And my doc has decided to give me a month long big 'ol break from chemo altogether. I need to get my appetite back! Goodness! I don't think I weighed this little even in junior high school! I'm just bones. My shoulder blades stick way out and I have chicken little legs. Give me some FAT! My mom even went to the Goodwill to stock up on size 2 pants for me to wear. I have no hiney to hold my pants up! Hopefully my new Goodwill pants won't fit me in a month-they'll be too small, please. 

During this three week break of no treatments, you can bet my mom will be doing lot's and lot's of research. It's a whole new opportunity once again to "explore the options". In fact, she has already found a clinical trial to look into down in Scottsdale, Arizona. Looks like we might be flying down there soon to check it out. I'll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime, try to think of the fattiest foods you can think of and tell me what those foods are. It's best if you can think of things that taste good. I love cheese, you know. 

Valentines

While all of you were out sipping wine by candlelight with your sweethearts on Valentine's Day, I was at home slaving away at my Valentine-making factory.

texting and trespassing just don't mix

I've discovered a new T.V. show that I like and think is funny. The two main characters of the show are Bret and Jermaine. After watching a few episodes this afternoon, I took a sort nap and woke up feeling delirious, as expected. I lied there in my delirious state of mind and came up with my own "Flight of the Concords" scene. It's not all that funny, though.

Bret wakes up from a weekday afternoon nap completely delirious. He walks out into the apartment living room and there's a girl sitting on the couch grinning at him. She has braces. He says,

"Wha. Whaaat?"

The girl keeps on grinning in her kelly green polo shirt and short black cropped bobbed hair. She speaks but it is hard to understand because her accent is Korean. Either that or because she has a retainer that keeps flipping into view as she talks. But she keeps saying,

"Yeah. I was texting."

"Texting wha?" Bret responds.

"I was texting."

"And wha were you texting?"

She starts saying something about student housing, but then a tall dude wearing all white duds with a red rhino on his shirt and some gold chains walks in with his arm around his girl. 

"Yo man. We just here 'cause she trying to find us a place to stay, man. We just wanna make out, but them folks won't allow us at student housing."

So they heap up on a chair and start making out while Bret picks up his guitar and starts playing a song about trespassing and text messaging and how they don't mix. Then Jermaine appears wearing an orange dashiki and his hair is braided into corn rows. He sings back-up to Bret's song. 

Now remember. This was thought up at a time when I was more unconscious than conscious. It's not very funny, just very odd. 

I had a most wonderful acupuncture appointment today. What is so great about these appointments is that they are not just acupuncture alone. My acupuncturist is also sort of like a therapist in that he has incredible intuition. He has a manner of speaking with his words that is very poetical and a delight to listen to. He also has a unique sense of humor and he is great when his giggles about things. So it is doubly delightful to be at his appointments.

As he placed the petit thin needles in various points of my chest, arms, legs and feet, I asked him about his last name. He went on to explain that yes, he is Polish, like me. When he went to Poland to meet relatives of his for the first time, he said he got a real kick out of recognizing some of their traits as his own. His first cousins all walked around like pigeons, slightly slouched in the back and bobbing their chins out. They also had a tendency to want to interrupt conversations. When he walked around in the city of Krakow, he noticed that a lot of people bobbed around like pigeons and had a slight grouch-frown face. He said he walks around like that to. Now I know why people ask me sometimes, out of the blue, "what's wrong? Why are you frowning?" to which I say, "what? I'm not frowning. I'm perfectly fine." I asked if Poles have piercing blue eyes like my mom, and he said, why yes, that seems to be true, too. He himself has very blue eyes.

Back to the appointment . . .

The main organ he focuses on is my lungs, because that is what has been causing me the most grief lately. He said as an organ, the lungs have a sort of characteristic  as being organizational and wanting to be tidy and clean. He told me to imagine a library with all the books tumbling off the shelves and loose pages flying about. Right now, there are a lot of excess tissues in my lungs and there is little room. They are untidy and clogged with extra tissue. He told me to, when I meditate and do my breathing exercises, let my lungs know that they do not have to feel responsible right now to tidy up. It is too much and too overwhelming for them to worry about that extra work. It is the chemo's job to tidy things up and hopefully dispatch all that extra tissue swirling around. 

As I lied on my stomach so he could place needles into the lung points on my back, he brought up another idea. He knows how the forest is a place I think of when I am feeling anxious. I think of being in the forests near the cottage or in British Columbia (Saturna Island especially!) often when I am am feeling out of sorts. He is the first person I told about my dream of the old woman in the forest in the mountains, meeting her old bear friend. So he told me to place a tiny drop of pine scent essential oil in my palm and breath it in while I meditate and focus on breathing. He senses that I like the feeling of the crisp, cool pine air I breath deep into my lungs when I am hiking or cross country skiing in the forest. You can be sure I will be spending a lot of time in my forests now!

Ecstatically ECSTATIC!!!

Now I can really say, YES! REALLY (??!!???!!!????!!!!) Well, YES! It is! It is Good! My CT scan I had today is what I mean! I couldn't be more ecstatic, or, rapturous (which is another word for ecstatic, according to the thesaurus). This is what it is to be happy! The low down (or should I say the "high up"?) is that things are still all stable. This meanings really nothing has changed since September and that's four months. So the plan is to continue on with chemo, but we're adding a new one to the "cocktail" that has some potential to start shrinking stuff, or so thinks my oncologist. I don't know what to do with myself tonight. New episodes of "The Office" and "Thirty Rock" are on, but I feel I will be too distracted with happiness to keep my seat. I could work on my rug, but same thing, my rumpus will just want to jet off the couch. I guess I'll dance. Stevie Wonder would want me to dance, and so I think I'll dance to Stevie Wonder tonight. I won't be taping myself dancing to Stevie Wonder for YouTube or anything, but you can imagine it if you want.

I always, always get real antsy the week leading up to a CT scan. But this time it is more than usual. I think it is because in the past, mostly the news from a scan has been less than desirable, and so that is always the news I expect. Since I have been given little glimpses that the treatment I've been on lately might actually be doing something this time, I have more of a reason to feel more hope about the results. So this makes me all the more uneasy about it. Should I hope more this time? Or does that just lead me to be more disappointed when the news comes out bad? 

But just think how different my life could change all of a sudden if the news were good! I've been waiting three years for good news! 

Well I'll Be Darned!

I'm back already. And this is because I feel almost entirely opposite as I did the last time I checked in. And isn't it amazing! I think a bit of holiday cheer with my wonderful family, looking forward to seeing old friends who are in town, eating marvleously . . . and . . . my best x-mas eve gift, blood from a Type A positive donor! Thank you donor, where ever you may be! You have made worlds of wonder for me! I feel like the old self, the one I like, is back in me again.

Here's what happened. Feeling lousy upon waking on X-mas eve morning, I had to really drag myself out of bed that morning, panting, to get myself to the clinic for chemo. Chemo for X-mas! The clinic and the nurses were all jolly enough, but I sure wasn't, huummmpiff. My oxygen level was really scary low, like in the early eighties. I was so sore and weak all over. I asked for extra fluids because of how dehydrated I've been. When my blood lab results came back, the low level of hemoglobin was low enough for another blood transfusion. My mom was overjoyed because she asks for this every week and for some reason they never thought I needed another blood transfusion. So after my chemo was done, they sent me upstairs to the blood transfusion floor where it is like an old hospital and very quiet-like a secret infirmary. Everyone gets their own room with a bed, bathroom, window, and T.V. set. I settled in and the nurse-so kind, too- brought in a big floppy bag 'o blood for me. The blood was the darkest, richest maroon ever. They had a movie list and mom picked out "Office Space" from 1999- doesn't seem like that long ago, but you should check out how old school the computers were back then, and internet was still hardly used yet, too. 

Another nice surprise was that a hemophilia patient has been donating turkey dinners every X-mas eve to the blood transfusion floor for several years. So the nurse brought in steaming turkey dinners with real mashed potatoes for me and my mom to eat. I looked over at my mom eating her turkey mash and watching "Office Space" and realized my bag of blood was slow dripping right next to her head. I asked her if she thought it was weird, but she said no, and so we continued eating and watching.

Later that evening, we had my dad's side of the family over for dinner, but I was so conked out on Benedryl and drugs that all I could bear to do was sleep, pretty much. I could hear the chatter downstairs, but I couldn't manage to join them for long.

The next morning is when the miracle started! I got out of bed very willingly for the first time in weeks- and not just because I had presents waiting for me downstairs. I had energy like no way nooh how! I even skipped around for a while without the darn oxygen tubes up my nostrils! I felt like me! The me I like! I had a great morning with my folks, sisters, Emma-dog and sister boyfriend. We all seemed to be doing great. 

Then it was time to rest up a bit in prep for the BIG family (mom's side) who would flood the house in the evening. I was a bit nervous, I have to say. i hadn't seen people in a while, and I knew how negative I have been, and sickly, and I know that I look very different these days- skinny bones me, and no hair- including eyebrows and eyelashes, which really contribute in a large part to a person's facial features. I worried about whether I should try to doll myself up to look super silly (since dolling myself up to look any good, like, perhaps pretty, would be a ridiculous idea) or just go naked bones and not give a umpff. My dear cousin had been very thoughtful earlier this week and  brought over a sparkle sweater and some false eyelashes. I tried out the eyelashes and they were so Tammy Faye and obstructive to my eye sighting that I just couldn't pull that off. I'm not so good in the dolling up department when it comes to makeup. But I did wear the sparkle sweater. Pizazz. When people started arriving, I felt no reason to feel awkward at all. These were all people I have known and loved my entire life and nothing had changed. I laughed and talked with everyone like always, with no flinching flinchings what-so-ever. No one looked at me weird, either. For those hours everyone was here, I forgot I had cancer, and it was the most wonderful feeling to have had. My new blood carried me all over the house grinning like the old idiot that I like. 

So there, what a difference. And I'm still feeling the effects right now this very minute!!!!

My mother, my father and Hannah have been taking very very good care of me.

drugs are no good

There's too much going into being a cancer patient. It's too difficult to keep up with it all and there's no rewards. I'm starting to lose it. I take all these drugs now- drugs to get the cancer out, but then along with that, drugs to try to make me feel normal since the cancer drugs make me feel like I've died already. Drugs to cure the pain and aches, but then more drugs to cure the constipation I get from the drugs that cure the pain and aches. Drugs to keep me from getting other infections, like shots to boost my red and white blood cells, or anti-biotics to keep me from getting pneumonia. Shots to give myself so I don't get blood clots before it's too late. Drugs to keep my brain sane, knowing that I have a chronic and terminal "cancer" and all. Drugs to make me eat- everything tastes like grainy metallic paste. There's a headache. Drugs for headaches because all these drugs, well, they mess with your body and head and make you loopy with headaches. Drugs to keep the incessant cough and tickle in my throat from making me hack everytime I want to say something. How did I ever get into this? Yeah, so I'm more than fed up with this. I wish I could hibernate from it all and come out again brand new feeling, with no tubes in my nose, and eyes that have eyebrows and eyelashes so I don't scare the kids so much with my sallow Gullum-like glower. I'm beyond the sob my eyes out now. It's just glare at things, hold my body tight together so it doesn't fall apart and break and try to read or something- even that tastes bad, though. This unlucky capsule is where I have to live in day to day until a miracle let's me out. This all sounds like Gothic sludge, I don't know what else to say. I can't even see that the sun today is it's usual color. That's why I am apologizing now for putting a major hold on the blog-writing for now. No one wants to read a blog like this! And this is what I'm afraid it's going to be like for a while. Go check out fun, inspiring websites, like boingboing, or something or other. Don't worry, it's the same me writing this awful slop, but I just don't want anyone to have to drudge themselves into it. I'll come back later, maybe next year, even.

Irritations and a little pleasure, too

I have not opened my email for days and days, and now I have this big fear of doing so. I have instead cut myself off of communication (which I am really good at doing sometimes) and crawled under a big heavy blanket, still attached to the oxygen leash, of course. I like to be in touch, yes, but I have an anxiety of phone communication for some reason- I've always never liked it. It's always seemed a waste of long periods of time. The phone is for quick plan-making, not ceaseless, never ending jibber because there's really not much to talk about. If you wanna talk, come and talk in person, is what I say. Mind you, on the other hand, phone calls from a long lost friend who I physically can't see in person so often are always lovely. I won't bite any one's head off for calling me on the phone, since that would also be physically impossible, wouldn't it? Now I've really done it, no one will call me 'cause I'm nasty or visit me 'cause I might bite their head off. But email, that's communication, except when I let it pile up over days. And I so much want to respond to everyone, which could take three hours or more today, time I have and shouldn't complain about, yes.

Can't you tell that I woke up a lump of a grump today? It's really true. I slept nearly until noon, which my mom has never let me do since high school. My dreams were too heavy to come out of. My aches and pains were pinging too much. Overall, my 99% level of sleepiness was too much to come out of to leap up and greet the dawn. I would be in my mostly asleep state and hear my mom's loud, authoritative clogs marching around the wood floors of our house and beg for them to not to come towards my door. Every fifteen minutes or so, she would clog up to my bedroom door and tell me to get out of bed, but I just couldn't rationalize why that would make any sense, since it felt so good lying in the warmth and comfort of my far away, obscure dreams. So the morning went like this- fifteen minutes of peaceful bliss and uninterruption to the dreaded sound of loud clogs and her banter, "Get UP! It's almost NOON!", back to fifteen minutes of peace, and so on. 

A truce was made when she brought up a miracle custard and served me in bed, being I was being such a brat. "And you can go back to sleep after that for all I care," she said. I ate the custard, which is miracle because it was all I really felt like eating and it tasted splendid, and then let Moe-cat like the bowl. Then I turned on my heating pad and toasted awhile while listening to "A Prairie Home Companion." I only ever listened to this show in the past as background noise that my folks had turned on in the car. The voices then were all like how the adults talk on Charlie Brown, with Keillor's being very distinctive in tone, of course. But this morning I listened with undivided attention and he did indeed tell a story about ice fishing on Lake Wobegon and the annual church lutefisk dinner gone bad. There was some nice Gershwin music, played on the piano and sung, as well, and a sad ballad of Tom Wait's, sung by someone else, a woman, in fact. During this, my mother would intermittently interrupt me by bringing old junk of mine into my room to add to the junk mountains in my room. She has decided to clean out the attic, part of which is a small room with boxes of my old apartment stuff. Why she decided to open those old boxes and take out junk that I don't need right now and that won't fit in my small junk-heaped bedroom I don't know. Maybe she thinks these old things from my free past will be a pleasure. Really, though, it makes me groan to have more junk to add to the heaps. Pleasure, right now, is coming from listening to "A Prairie Home Companion" on the radio while toasting my back. It is a comfort, just like how my pillow is a comfort. 

So now you know what irritates me, and a little bit about what I might call a pleasure. It will be a pleasure when my mom finally gets those slippers she wants for Xmas, and she won't have to clog about the house. I will more likely greet her with a smile, then.

hey you kids

Huh. I didn't realize how strange that last blog entry was. Oh well. I'll leave it there anyway. 

But here's something different, and it still comes from my very own strange grey matter. This is all very pleasant, though. It's from a dream I recall from last week. I dreamt about Bomma. For those who don't know, that is what the Parker cousins called our Grandma. I dreamt that I came home and Bomma had left a message on the answering machine. It was very Bomma-like. My mom got a kick out of it when I told her about it. Bomma said, in her way, "Where are you kids? Where are we going to have Thanksgiving this year? Have you kids figured that out yet? I thought I would get one of those turkeys on sale at Cub." 

She hasn't called back since, but I suspect she might call again soon, because good heaven's, what on earth will we do for X-mas? Ham? Lamb? Beef tenderloin? 

Rugging in November

I'm working on a rug and listening to a jazz recording that my dad has been playing a lot lately- always when I'm working on this rug. So since he isn't home and I'm about to work on this rug some more, I've got to have the music, too. The music is very 1963 movie/New York City. There is one song, the third track, that is of a melancholic note, and about a third of the way into the intro, a flute gives it more of that sixties element, or shopping in the carpeted frozen foods section at Byerly's element- it does take me right there, too. Wait, isn't all of Byerly's carpeted? Maybe jars of pasta sauce don't break as easily when they fall, but when they do . . . .

Anyway. This sure is pleasant. I'm making a memory right now, which makes me think of a  thousand little memorable moments right from the one I am in the process of making. I think of rainy November nights in my old studio apartment in downtown Vancouver- big windows facing down onto the dumpsters where the bums dug in the rain. (I once threw a banana down, but the bum was offended or something and didn't want it).

I think of the shabby Steven's Square apartment in Minneapolis of my first-ever, jazz-loving, conceited boyfriend- same dark rain, but looking down onto the street near Nicollet where a cop car light was whirling. 

I think of my old high school friend who lived downtown St. Paul in a tall, tall apartment building with her mom. Same type of dark November night, but it was a Friday and we were trying, as highschoolers, to convince the bartenders at the Artist's Quarter on the corner to let us stay just for the music- really, truly, we just wanted to hear music. We were not there for the booze or the old guys older than our fathers.

Good Heavens! Here I've dug up this memorable set of moody memories and suddenly the music goes to church! Abbey choir of some sort. What is it? "The Rose Ensemble. Really lovely, but entirely different mood. Ahh, they sing at the Basilica in Minneapolis. Now maybe I should watch "Elizabeth" or something. I guess it's good to know I still have imagination enough to take me out of this house, away from the now. Who says it is no good to live in the past?

Old Woman and the Bear

Yesterday I had chemo, the rougher variety, the mustard gas one. I had been nervous about it all last week- mostly afraid of the uncomfort, the potential vomiting, losing my appetite and feeling overall lousy again. They gave me a lot of drugs that made me feel drowsy and keep me from throwing up. When I got home, I wanted to watch something pleasant on T.V. so I watched an episode from "The Planet Earth" dvd about seasonal forests (the fourth disk in the series). It starts out in the taiga with footage of a moose and a lynx. It also looms in on the Northwest coast forests, which made me nostalgic for British Columbia. I fell asleep during the program and when the program finished out it went to the main menu screen which played the same peaceful, less-than-one minute orchestral piece over and over again. This pleasant melody got into the background of my dream. My dream was beautiful, too. It featured an old woman with long, bright white hair that was loosely piled on her head. She was very tall and wearing a long heather gray sweatshirt over jeans and black rubber galoshes. She was hiding halfway behind a pine tree. It seemed she was all alone in a forest in the mountains and there were melting patches of snow here and there. The sun was very bright, and it seemed to be about mid-day and springtime. She was looking across to another pine tree where a tall grizzly bear was halfway hiding behind, standing on it's hind legs. They were looking at each other for a while, and then the woman slowly stepped away from her tree and moved towards the bear. The bear did the same. The two walked towards each other and the woman had tears in her eyes. She hadn't seen her old friend in years, and she knew it was her friend from long ago. They had found each other again. It was such a nice dream!

more about food!

Every day after work at a job I held one summer, I would dream on the bus ride home of the block of cheese in my refrigerator. As soon as I got in my door, I would pick up into a run to the refrigerator. I would shred of the Saran wrap from the day before, grab a blunt knife, and slam that cheese block onto the cutting board. As I sliced, my jaw would lock and I would salivate like a Pavlov dog. As soon as a slice of cheese was in my mouth, my jaw would function again, my heart rate would slow down again and I would really taste that cheese. Soothing a ravenous appetite is such a joyous sensation. So, what a shame and uncomfort to have to eat without an appetite for what you are eating. Or worse, to have no appetite to eat anything at all.

I love to eat. I love to just think of eating. One of my favorite hobbies has been to read cook books- no need for pictures, just reading the recipes gives me a rush! I borrow cook books from the library and copy the recipes by hand on to recipe cards. As I hand write each recipe, it is like I am actually tasting this or that dish- I taste each ingredient listed one by one. Then I toss those same ingredients together with the olive oil and garlic in a sizzling hot pan and taste those same ingredients all in a different way.

Before I knew I had cancer, I ate considerably well, as I was raised eating a variety of foods, mostly health consciously. But I also didn't have a stopper to eating deliciously "bad" foods, either. In college, when I lived in Canada, I ate a considerable amount of such "bad" delicious food. It was a habit to eat very late, when my appetite flared the most, and alcohol sometimes tended to add to the effect. I lived downtown near a wild, raucous street that served food to the after-bar crowds. Appetites were unstoppable, and the foods were just what we wanted most- ninety-nine cent pizza by the slice, take-out Chinese, swarma and deep-fried samosas, and poutine, which is a Canadian specialty of French fries smothered in gravy. All of this may sound like what you would find in a pig's slop bucket, and it is, but believe me, at the time between two and four AM, there could be nothing better.

That was before cancer. Everything changes when you get cancer. You think of everything differently and you become overtly hyped-out concerned about everything you do. For me, of course, the way I thought about food changed drastically. I strongly believe now, with much common sense, that diet plays huge in health and recovery from disease. How could it not? What we put into our bodies accounts for so much of what we are made of and how the body maintains and repairs it's self day to day. So, naturally, my diet became a huge obsession, and I constantly want to know what is good and what is bad for me to eat.

I turned from reading pleasurable fiction novels to reading books about nutrition and diets. I've read about and tried such diets as the Paleo diet, macrobiotic diet, all vegan diet, and I have even tried the raw food diet, which is just about impossible. The raw vegetable based diet appealed to me because of the miracle stories I kept reading about how people had rid their cancers from the raw vegetable diet alone! People hold great claims on such diets as the Hippocrates diet, of the Gerson therapy. I wanted to believe these stories to be true so badly, especially since none of the twenty or so chemotherapeutic drugs have done a thing for me within the past three years I've had this cancer. But a big part of me can not help but be skeptical about it. All the same, I took on certain elements of these drastic diets- it could only help, right? This meant I would eat fruit in the morning, but nothing else, because you never combine fruit with another food! Vegetable juices throughout the day consisting of kale, spinach, chard, dandelion greens, beet greens, burdock root, parsley and sprouts. Very bitter! NO meat, NO dairy (that means no beloved cheese) and certainly NO sugar- cancer cells thrive on sugar. I was really starting to limit myself, and from the foods I had always enjoyed eating so much. Eating wasn't fun, it was a chore, and I only did it because I had to.

Lately, eating has become very difficult for me, due to the super toxic chemotherapy regimen I am now on, of which one of the drugs has the components of mustard gas! Think mustard gas and try to eat a broccoli stir-fry at the same time. Think of when you had the flu and a well intentioned caregiver was trying to force you to just eat, just eat something! This is how I feel now. I know how important it is to eat, but just thinking of it makes me have strong gag-reflexes. Drinking my all-green vegetable juices at this time is out of the question!

It is strange, then, that there have been a few bouts where I actually could imagine myself eating from a spare menu of choices. These food items have cheese in them. Mac '' cheese spirals, string cheese, or a spaetzle with cheese casserole. The other night, however, after trying to eat a healthful bowl of brown rice with tofu and edemame, all I had a hunger for was a cheeseburger and French fries, and they had to be from McDonalds. I could imagine exactly how the thin cheeseburger would taste, with it's tiny diced onions, thin meat patty, three ripple dill pickle slices, a little mustard, a little ketchup, a rubber slice of cheese, and, if I was lucky, there would be a single greasy thumbprint on top of the bun from whomever wrapped the little burger into it's pale yellow paper wrapper. I thought about how this burger, and it's accompanying French fries, would taste for three hours after attempting to eat my rice bowl dinner. Finally, I revealed my hankering to my mother, who laughed and said she would take me to McDonalds to put an end to it. It was about ten o'clock PM when I finally sat down to eat my dream food, and my mom was just so happy to see me eating like a normal person.

This is Caitlin's new kitten, Henri. I feel partly responsible for him. What I mean is, Caitlin was over here last weekend and after the usual "How's it goin's" I asked her if she still wanted to get a kitten to keep Emma dog company. Caitlin looked suddenly a little sad, a little distant, and said, "Yeah . . . I can't afford a kitten right now though." Then she went downstairs for a bit and left me up in my room where I had to sit for a while to wait for my Niagra Falls bloody nose to let up (that's a different story, though). When Caitlin came back upstairs after eating a muffin, she said, "Well, I'm going to the Humane Society now . . . just to look." We know how hard it is to go to a Humane Society "just to look" at kittens. Especially when there is a kitten there like little Henri. He is an orange tabby, and they tend to be of the silliest company. Very loving to you, as a person receiving the love. And the purrs never stop. He purrs loud, loud I am told.

Now Emma has a new friend to follow around and be curious about. And it seems that Henri will warm up to her and they will be really good companions.

pampered people, pampered pets

Here is a picture of Auggie the cat after he had been stuck down in the basement. 

The other night as I was going to sleep in my bed, Auggie plomped down with me. He started purring by just being there- I didn't even pet him. He is very loud when he purrs, like an engine. We could both hear in the distance my mom scooping out his litter box. Auggie's lazy big head perked up from his paw rest and his ears stuck up wide to get a better listen. Then he rested his big head back down onto his paw rest and purred even louder. He was one satisfied cat. I love how pets know when they are being taken care of and they really love it and toast in it. I think it's alright for human's to be like pets- to let other human's take care of us and then bask it up, no regrets. Just appreciate it. 

The darn thing is us humans always think we have to return the favor- but you don't always have to. 

So much to think about!