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The Cat Came Back


Three Legged Black Cat

Image by broadsurf via Flickr

Monday marked the end to a very long weekend. One that began with a phone call early Friday morning from my sister, DNOS, and ended with a Father’s Day celebration at Edie and Silver’s Sunday evening. The evening being punctuated but not marred by my mediating a years old argument between DNOS in Iowa and our brother CB out in San Francisco.

And why? Because Baby is in the corner again.

I thought perhaps things had settled but on my way back from dropping Dee at school, Mom called me on my cellphone. As I was on a county road, I answered and let her know to call me when I got home. Yes, yes, I shouldn’t have answered at all. But my phone is an ancient piece of shit sans voice mail and caller id.

Given that Baby was still in the hospital, I feared the worst, but Mom only wanted to know if I was okay – after the mediation session the evening before – and to vent a bit. It is not easy being 79 and still called upon to parent as though your children were small and helpless.

But before I got home and called Mom back, I pulled into the driveway and saw a black cat.

It was just sitting on the stairs in front of the back porch, eyeballing me with the smuggest look I have ever seen on a cat.

After staring me down, it hopped down and sauntered towards the truck and as it passed, it swung a backward glance that can only be described as taunting.

And I thought – well, this can’t be a good sign.

In My Next Life


The public radio, Studio 360, gave a recent audience one of those fill in the blank cards asking them what they thought they might be in their next life.

Katherine’s answer isn’t lofty or ambitious. In fact some might say she lacks vision or is afraid to reach for her potential, but I thought it was very yoga and almost enlightened . After all, how many of us are aware enough of our true selves to know when we might have already “arrived”?

Rob and I were watching another episode of the unlamented mid-90’s Marines in space fare, Space: Above and Beyond.

“It’s not as even as borderline watchable as I remember it,” he remarked back when we were barely two episodes in. But with just a half-dozen or so painfully acted installments to go, we are committed.  Or should be.

The recent ones have been character development with each of the show’s primaries taking a turn. Last night’s belonged to McQueen, an artificially gestated human who is the commanding officer to a group of Marine pilots/expendable ground grunts. His dilemma? “Who am I?”

He had determined that he existed for a reason and if he paid attention that reason would reveal itself and he could – in essence – fulfill his destiny.

As it turned out, his existence was narrowly focused but very important to the survival of Earth. And really not all that important for me to go into because the bottom line is that McQueen knew who he was in this life. The one he was living. He was not waiting for a do-over. He didn’t believe in that in any case.

Katherine, the English teacher, knows who she is present and future and I am betting past as well.

In my next life, I hope I will just “be”. The “doing” is immaterial. But I am not certain I am that enlightened yet.

Four Years And the Purging Continues


Garage sale

Image via Wikipedia

Spent some time purging drawers and closets in anticipation of the hamlet-wide garage sale later this summer.

Dee has outgrown nearly everything, which caught me off guard because normally I shop for her every other year. She’s put on exactly zero pounds but shot up an inch-ish or better. It’s all legs. Devilish hard to fit the child’s waist. Girls’ clothing these days are vanity sized and reflect the chunkier body types that have resulted from our processed food/low-level of energy lifestyles. Dee is not the shortest kid in her class anymore, but she’s got a Scarlett O’Hara waist compared to nearly all of her peers. Tiny waist and coltish legs spells difficulty in sizing her, so just about every pair of pants I got her back in late February are now floodies and still a tad too big around her waist. Hobbit-legged and thick-middled, the girl ain’t.

I rummaged and purged my own rather meager collection of apparel myself, sticking slavishly to the rule that “if it hasn’t been worn in a year, its history”. I continue to pride myself on the fact that every article of clothing I own could be neatly packed into a large Rubbermaid tote should the need arise.

All this pro-activeness called to mind the agony of purging and packing for the move to Canada before Rob and I married back in June of 2007. In fact four years ago yesterday, we left Des Moines behind.

I sometimes miss the idea of that house.  The openness and space. Some of what we’ve done in our recent renovations replicates it in a way, but we are far from done and even farther from achieving liberation from boxes of packed away stuff that is never thought of much less in danger of every being used again.

Over lunch today, Rob ruefully expressed what he called his “buyer’s remorse” about the renovation project that never ends. Selling and buying new, however, was never an option. Real estate around here is overpriced and much of the newer stuff is poorly constructed. For a little bit of debt, we can create spaces in our existing home that will more than suit as opposed to taking on the monumental debt of a brand new mortgage for what amounts to overvalued real estate on a prairie that is downwind of various petrochemical plants. It’s somewhat of a no brainer.

It’s doesn’t make the process less cumbersome or tiring.

The last time I purged a house, it was slash and burn. Goodwill, friends and friends/relatives of friends benefited tremendously from my zeal to simply lighten my load. I gave away more than I sold and simply threw away everything else. And with only the occasional exception (it would have been nice to have kept that Pampered Chef pizza cutter because the one I have now bites in comparison), I haven’t missed anything.

That’s the thing about stuff that most people can’t wrap their minds around – it honestly won’t be missed once you are able to pry your fingers loose of it. In all likelihood, you will never waste another thought on it again.

I toy with the idea of just getting a waste-bin  delivered and just have a chuckfest. But, of course, I won’t. A lot of what constitutes clutter isn’t mine, and though I am convinced that it would be years – if ever – that anyone would ask after the departed items, I respect the fact that what I deem useless and spent embodies something important for others.

Accumulation of stuff seems to be a condition of life – unless one is a monk of some kind. Renunciates are what they are called in yoga. Renunciates eschew things in an effort to seek the balance between living in a physical world without placing too much attachment on it while Householders do the opposite while still being expected to rise above it all. I think the latter is the more difficult. Having fewer things, as I have learned, spoils a person. The more room I acquire the less I want to fill it up. The more stuff one has, the harder it is to decide what’s necessary and the greater the likelihood that one won’t recognize the tribble like nature of stuff. Stuff breeds because it feeds want.

Too much stuff blinds us as well because it fairly demands that we attach value – monetary and emotional – to it, making it harder to get rid of and easier to let pile up in one way or another.

I suspect I will spend the better part of the rest of my life waging a quiet war of attrition with clutter and accumulation. Most days I am zen about that but today it’s raining and cold and my hair is frizzy. Not that this has any bearing, mind you, and I have just been thinking  – again – about how to lighten Rob’s load without any success. Maybe banana bread and cookies? At least that’s not permanent clutter.