Bomb London Next?

Headline in San Francisco paper this morning:

London protesters clash with police at mass rally

The article said "a quarter million mostly peaceful demonstrators marched through central London against the toughest cuts to public spending since World War II."

Oh my. It seems to be our policy these days to support anyone who protests against their established government. Well, except in the U.S.

I don't claim to support Gaddhafi, but how do I know he's any worse than the dictators of half the countries in the world? How do I PERSONALLY know that the people who are protesting have legitimate claims against him, or that even if they win they won't end up in a worse predicament, as often happens? How do I know the oil companies aren't just provoking this so they have a reason to raise prices here at home?

I don't know that, and you probably don't, either. And even if we did know, do you suppose anyone in our own government would speak our opinions? No. The only opposition we have are the loonies who are more concerned about abortion and Obama's birth certificate than they are about whether we're getting royally screwed. Ooops, no, that doesn't happen here, we don't have monarchs.

So Uncle B over there near London, maybe when our planes are on their way to Libya to drop off a load of obsolete weapons (need to clear out those warehouses so we can restock them) to the rebels, they'll supply your rebels also. And, just for good measure, they'll lob a couple of missiles into your government buildings.

We hope you'd do the same for us.

R.I.P. Dear Charley (2004-2011)

Our cat Charley has died.

I'd like to share a few memories about him, he was quite a special cat in this house. You've seen some of these pictures before, if you've been reading my blog very long. They're my favorites.

Charley's mom Fuzzbutt was one of five feral kittens born here in 2003. Gollum is the only one we ever caught. This was Fuzzbutt.

Fuzzbutt had four kittens of her own the next year. They were born in a box on our porch on a Friday night (May 15). By Saturday morning she'd already decided that wasn't a good place, so she moved two of the babies. She abandoned the other two and we had to raise the little guys on a bottle. These were the one-day old brothers:

I didn't expect they would survive, but they thrived on kitten milk replacer and later on goat milk.

Our old cat Velcro just ignored the kittens. Gollum stalked them.

We didn't name the kittens because we already had the other two cats and didn't need any more. They were just "The Fat One" and "The Skinny One." The fat kitten was cuddly and calm. The skinny one (Charley) was always active and into things. This was Charley.

Charley is on the right in this picture of the napping brothers.

We didn't look for homes for the kittens until they were fairly big. A friend from work came to pick one. She wanted a calm cat, so we recommended the fat one and she took him. We had the skinny one for another month or so, looking for a home for him. He was becoming a handsome cat. I know, he doesn't look very skinny in this picture.

Then one of Bob's friends called to say she'd found the kitten a home. Ashley picked him up one morning to deliver him to the new family. Bob and I just sat on the couch after she left, staring miserably at the wall. The house was too quiet without the pesty kitten in it. We missed him terribly. In less than an hour, Ashley was back. She had the kitten with her! The new family didn't want him, they wanted a female. Bob and I agreed we weren't going to turn loose of this kitten again, he was here to stay.

And so he did.

Charley didn't have a shy bone in his body. He loved company and was always at the door to greet people. He thought Kyle was pretty funny. In this picture, Charley is teaching Kyle how to play World of Warcraft. 

Charley also loved to see Alex and Jonathan. He'd climb Alex's leg to get to his keychain, and Jonathan's computer case was a favorite place to sleep.

We bought him several wonderful cat beds over the years.

But he much preferred to make his own beds.

His favorite place to sleep, though, was on top of Bob.

Charley had some faults. He was a thief. He stole anything he could use as a toy. He especially liked things that were round: the plastic ring from a milk carton, my elastic ponytail fasteners, jar lids. He knew how to pop flat things off the floor with one toe so he could pick them up in his mouth. He knew which drawer my hair things were in and if I didn't close it all the way he'd pick and pick at it until he could get one paw inside and open it. Then he'd fish through the drawer and pull out everything he wanted. He stole things from purses. Most of what he stole he'd take to Bob to throw for him because he loved to retrieve. And he was a tireless retriever.

Bob was his buddy, but that didn't mean he was immune from having cat tricks played on him. Charley also stole from Bob. Once he swiped a huge t-bone steak off Bob's plate when he left it unattended to answer the phone. You couldn't leave a glass of water on the counter. Charley would stick his foot in it and tip it over. I had to keep a cover on my coffee cup, or this would happen:

Charley was bad as a dog about knocking over the kitchen garbage can if there was a bone in it. It didn't matter how well you wrapped it and stuffed it waaaay down in the can, in the morning you'd find the chewed bone on the living room carpet and garbage all over the kitchen floor.

It was hard to raise chicks in brooders in the house after Charley grew up. He loved toys with feathers on them, squeaky ones the best. Chicks fascinated him. He figure out how to open cage doors or reach into very small places to snag a chick. We had to use a lot of duct tape to keep the cat out of the brooder.

Once Bob and I raised a baby scrub jay. We kept him in a cage on the porch so Charley couldn't get to him. (Charley never went outside.) For three months after the jay fledged, it stayed in the backyard and we hand fed it. We were gone one weekend and somehow the bird got into the house through the bathroom window, which had no screen on it. When we got home the house was totally trashed and there were jay feathers everywhere. Living with Charley was not always a joy.

When George showed up, Charley finally had a cat friend.

He even shared Bob's lap with him. 

It was hard the past few months watching Charley's health fail. We made him as comfortable as we could. We spoiled him. I don't know what Bob did, but I gave Charley tuna straight from the can and told him six times a day how much I loved him. Sometimes I'd be sitting at my computer and he'd sit next to me on the counter and touch my face very lightly with his paw. I don't know why, it's not something he ever did before, and of course it would make me cry. 

I'm glad I took lots of pictures of Charley over the years. This is one of my favorites, and it's how I'm going to remember him: a beautiful, playful cat always looking for a new friend or something to get into.

New Showmanship Bird

When Bob was in 4-H, he was very good at Poultry Showmanship. When I got home this afternoon, he showed me a new bird he'd been training for showmanship.

He found it in the pen with the mutt chickens. It had somehow ended up there with a dead Tubby Dove. Bob said he first noticed there were feathers everywhere and thought a raccoon had killed a chicken. Then, because there was a lot of commotion, he thought the chickens were fighting.

All the chickens were accounted for, though, and none seemed injured. That's when he saw the dead dove, and then the hawk. He said when the hawk was on the ground the three mutt roosters went after it like they wanted to fight. But when it flew off the ground, they ran away - squawking "hawk, hawk!" (That's what chickens do. I think hawks were originally called that because of the sound chickens make when they see one.) Anyway, he got a towel and some heavy gloves and caught the bird. And that's when I drove in the driveway.

So he showed me "Hawk Showmanship."

Examine the bird.

Examine the beak. Ouch. Almost as bad as a White Old English!

After I took the pictures with my iPhone, Bob turned the troublemaker loose. I'm guessing it has a nest around here somewhere. Katherine, is this a Cooper's Hawk? It seems too small for that.

Bob learned about handling raptors when we did volunteer work at Wildlife Care. He was 8 and most of the ladies who worked there were at least 80. When they got a call about baby owls in a tree or a wounded hawk somewhere, the ladies would grab Bob and head out to perform their rescue operation. Mostly they stayed on the ground and sent him up the tree, or down a hole, after the birds.

I'm sad about the dove.

Happy Birthday!

To me, to Ken, and to Gwynessa.

It's a gloomy day outside. The wind last night was unnerving, though I only heard a couple of crashes and bangs. No damage that I can see so far. Cherie, I hope your birds didn't blow away. (She lives down the valley a ways, where the wind was even stronger.)

This morning I planned to meet Melanie from work at Bert's Diner in Sheldon. I should have known better than to make a plan, the primary road to Sheldon was blocked with a downed power line. So we met at my house instead and took the scenic route through Wilton. Breakfast at Bert's is always worth the trip. Mel snapped this picture on her iPhone on our way out.

The crowd had thinned by then. On Sunday morning, people are usually lined up outside the door, waiting for a table.

I got home to a dark, chilly house. Just as I got a fire started in the stove, a delivery person knocked on the door with a huge bouquet of sunny flowers in her hands. It was from Jerry and Maureen.

Now my house is cheery. Thank you, everyone, for the birthday wishes. You made my day.

Dishes and the Jogger

As I was putting things away this morning, it occurred to me that our dish collection might look weird to other people.

Nothing matches. This is not a set of fine china, or even a set of mediocre daily dishes. It's mostly a collection of bowls. We have a few motley plates, but mostly we eat things that are better served in a bowl. Like crockpot soup, crockpot stew, salad, steamed veggies, stir fried everything, pasta (for Bob), and scrambled eggs. 

I do have a set of good dishes stored away for special occasions like Christmas dinner. They were my mom's. She got them from Montgomery Ward, with some silverware too. They're pretty high class for this household.

Oh, and I buy only the best quality paper plates.

Changing the subject. Every day I drive through Mather Field on the way to work and on the way home. Mather Field is an old Air Force base that was closed several years ago and has been turned into an office park. There are a few office buildings and lots of open space. The landing field is still used, mostly by UPS and other air freight companies. There is never much traffic, though, and I like that. For the past two years, almost every day at 4:30, I've seen this fellow jogging on the otherwise deserted sidewalks. 

He seems like an older fellow, maybe Hispanic. He's not an athlete, he has a little pot belly that's still there after all that exercise. He's out there in the rain in the winter and on the hottest days in the summer. Someday I'm going to stop and say hello and find out what his story is.

Back to the Walker

Today was my day off, so naturally I spent a portion of it at the podiatrist's office. I was the only person in the waiting room who was wearing green. What's wrong with people? It's such a simple holiday, you don't have to buy gifts, send cards, or eat junk food. Just wear green.

The x-ray showed that my foot is still A-OK. When the doc came in he looked at it and said, not really to me, "Let's see....how long has this foot been in a cast?" I answered, "At least 7 or 8 months." (Well, it seems that way to me.)

Lesson of the day: don't bother to joke with a foot doc, they just don't get it. Some days the doc comes in with a Mona Lisa smile. I never know if he's in a good mood, if he has indigestion, or if that's just the look he's pasted on his face for the day. It seldom has anything to do with good news; he'll relay bad news with the same grin.

This, however, was a good news day. They did not put a new cast on my foot (It's naked! I can wash it!) and I have clearance to use the walker instead of the wheelchair. Before I put the chair back in storage, and since I had it in the car with me, I went to the mall and put a few miles on it. I really, really like shopping in a wheelchair. If it just had a big basket on the back to carry packages it would be ideal. The sales ladies tied the bags to the bar on the back of it. That worked.

I bought a couple of neat things. Like a box of Raggedy Ann pink hot chocolate mix for cousin Beverly. And some very cheap Easter decorations for the bathroom. That's the only room I decorate seasonally. Except at Christmas the whole house gets decorated. Today of course, there are green towels and 4-H clover doodahs doing double duty as Irish decorations.

I still have to wear the monster boot for "a while." In my mind that's a couple of weeks. The doc is probably thinking a couple of months. I don't care, I'll take what I get and be happy. Most of the time. Unless I'm bitchy.

Perceptions

Communication can be difficult if you don't share perceptions with the people around you. This is what I used to be, and how I still see myself.

This, however, is more like my present reality.

It's rather difficult when I tell the boy to do things and he ignores me, forgets, or blows me off. He just doesn't understand the danger he's in if I ever get off these blighted crutches. (With apologies to Xena and Maxine.)

Wishing I Was There

Overcast day. Bob's at work, the cats are asleep all around the house. I intended to be elsewhere today but that didn't work out. My friends are walking the Shamrock'n half-marathon. Mostly I'd like to be doing that with them, (the body and mind are willing, the feet would probably disintegrate) but at the least I wanted to be at the finish line to congratulate them. They've worked so hard to be ready for this in a fairly short time. They've had to work around plantar fasciitis, allergies, falling on icy trails, and bad weather, and they did it! I'm REALLY proud of them.

Patrice is in the middle, then Danielle, and Melanie on the far right. I work with Danielle and Melanie, Patrice is Melanie's buddy. I don't know the first 2 on the left, they might even be real leprechauns. I grabbed this picture from Melanie's Facebook page.

Melanie called me at dawn to let me know that the traffic situation at Raley Field, where the race started and finished, was very bad and that it would be hard for me to park near the finish line. The race was sponsored by Kaiser Hospital. I was concerned that I'd be huffing along on my crutches and my foot doctor would be there to find out.

Oh well, NEXT time! The gals are going to do the American River race/walk in a month or two.

The other place I'd rather be this morning is off wine tasting with the younger people. Five of them met here earlier to car pool up to Amador County for a day at the wineries. I would have been an ideal driver, but my car only holds 5 people. Plus me, that would be 6. Besides, they didn't ask me.

The gang goes wine tasting every month or so. I imagine that's because the taste of the wine differs from month to month. (snicker) The first place they'll stop is Villa Toscana/Bella Piazza to see Bob and Gwynessa, who work on the weekends.

Now I'm going to sit here and surf the internet and stop thinking about where I'd rather be. The net is awash with news that makes me glad I'm where I am.

A Family of Cyclists

Motorcyclists, that is.

Today I am tearing things apart trying to find the registration paperwork for this bike.

Even Bob's friends who have seen it often over the years won't recognize this bike. Last time they saw it, it was in pieces, scattered all over the carport. Bob was "fixing" it. Three years later my brother came along, gathered up all the pieces he could find, and put it back together. Probably better than new.

That's the kind of person he is. Please note the very tidy garage in the background, the spotless garage floor.

Bob rode this Honda for quite a few years. This is a picture from almost 10 years ago. It's James Davis behind the Honda and Bob on the right behind James' bike. The boys were skilled at finding mud, which isn't easy around here. With our sandy soil, water doesn't stand and make puddles. See the muddy handprints on Bob's blue t-shirt? Must have been a passenger he lost somewhere out in the fields.

James died shortly after this picture was taken. Not on a motorcycle, he was simply trying to walk across the highway to his grandfather's house. We have all missed him sorely over the years.

Out here in the country kids grow up learning to drive and ride motorcycles very early.

Bob was riding by the time he was 14 months old. He practiced on his own first bike, and he rode Hodakas with his dad.

Hodakas are ancient dirt bikes. They don't go very fast. Look Ma! No Helmet! Yes, we do things a bit different in the country.

The boys always wore helmets when they bought their faster dirt bikes and started riding like stunt riders. I think helmets are a fine thing, but I rode horses for 40 years without one, none of the kids around here used one with their bicycles, and we didn't use them when we putt-putted around the fields on the Hodakas. Kids in the country have to learn to take care of themselves. The few accidents we've had over the years are nothing that a helmet could have helped; the worst problem is having to live near a busy highway that is heavily used by city people.

John and I have never claimed to be ideal parents. We were 40 when Bob was born, and neither of us knew much about babies. By the time he was a year old Bob preferred to sleep on a futon in the corner of his room, surrounded by his menagerie of stuffed animals.

See the teddy with the red shirt? Bob still has Teddy. We let the kid have a pacifier, too. It was no problem, he threw his last one away before he was old enough to start school. I guess my point here is that people try so hard to do everything exactly the way they're "supposed to," to heed all the warnings that are guaranteed to keep them safe. We didn't do that because we often were unaware and we lived far enough from Grandma James she couldn't instruct us on a daily basis. And guess what? The kid did just fine.

Al Jazeera

I was trying to find decent coverage of the situation in Japan this morning. The news sources I usually use all told the same story, which was "West coast of U.S. threatened by tsunami." Oh, and by the way, this is the result of an earthquake in Japan, where some people were killed. They also showed sensational videos, the same ones, over and over and over again.

I have friends in Southeast Asia that I was concerned about. Our news didn't even mention that part of the world, which is considerably closer to Japan than we are. Americans are so self-important.

Finally I found really good reporting, no hype - just the facts, and a more global outlook. I found it in the strangest place, Al Jazeera. I've never looked there before. I mean, wouldn't that be unpatriotic?

I bookmarked the site, though, and I'll definitely be checking it out daily, I am so tired of our news coverage, and I don't even watch TV - where the news people seem to remain in a permanent state of high drama, their faces contorted in mock outrage, predictions of dire consequences issuing from their lying lips.

If I get investigated by the Department of Homeland Security because I'm accessing Al Jazeera, so be it.

Added later: "Hillary Clinton says Al Jazeera puts U.S. Media to shame."

OK, so as usual I'm a day or two late. The rest of you probably already know what I only discovered this morning.

America is Not Broke

People seem to either love or hate Michael Moore. While I don't love him – I am sometimes embarrassed by his interview techniques – I often find myself agreeing with him. Such is the case with his recent speech, "America is Not Broke." You can either read it or watch it here.

If you're interested in reading more about the concept of disaster capitalism which has pretty much taken over the world, read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It's no wonder people all over the world are fed up.

For those who hate Michael Moore, learn to separate the man from the message.

Fairytale Landscape

I tried to get a photo of the lovely drive through Sloughhouse this morning, but it was overcast and gloomy and the picture didn't convey what I intended. So I'll describe it to you. The giant valley oaks are still bare of leaves, but their twig tips are starting to swell with new buds. The grass along the roadside and the creek has been green since October. Every stray ray of sunshine that peeks through the clouds gives it energy to grow. Here and there bright yellow mustard peeks through. The wild plums are in full bloom, their delicate white flowers like lace on the dark background of oak. A perfect place for naiads and dryads.

Nature has once again done a more skillful job of gardening than I have. My little flower garden is still pretty bare. There are miniature daffodils and a few perennials showing through the mulch, but I couldn't get out to plant pansies and all the other cheery, bright faces of spring this year. Guess I'll just enjoy the natural beauty of my neighborhood this year.

We had a mixed bag of weather this weekend, a little sun, a little rain. I had a surprise visit from my brother Jerry and his wife Maureen on Saturday. That made the entire day special.

On Sunday I got up at 5 a.m. to go to the poultry sale in Roseville with the belly dancers, Katherine and Cherie (not their professional names). I didn't have anything to sell, Bob got home too late from a long day at work the night before and there was no time to round up the spare roosters. We stopped for breakfast after we dropped the others' birds off at the sale. For those of you who don't know, you drop off birds at the crack of dawn, they are sold between 9 and noon, and you are mailed a check. Usually it's not a very big check, enough to buy a sack or two of feed.

I think breakfast is the best meal to share with friends, don't you? A cup or two or three of coffee and the conversation just flows. Except Katherine doesn't drink coffee. And she's usually not human until 9 a.m. (though she drives just fine in her sleep). So Cherie and I had to carry the conversation. That's OK, we're good at it.

The remainder of the weekend I spent reading or at my computer with at least one cat on my lap. Charley is not doing well. He has an inoperable tumor. He likes to just stay close, and that's fine with me. He hasn't lost his sense of humor, he still scrunches his entire little narrow head down into my cup to lap up the last drop. All the time I'm saying, NO. When he's finished he pulls his head out of the cup and looks at me as if to say, "What? I couldn't hear you, I had my head in this cup." I will really miss this cat when he's gone.

183 A Week

I remember to empty the spam from my gmail account about once a week. Today there were 183 spam messages. Most of them were selling Viagra. Hello, are these people stupid? I suppose the name "Jan" could be masculine, but I'll bet there are people named Betty who get this junk email, too. Do you men out there really order Viagra online from places that send email with half the words misspelled?

The thing that gripes me the most is that we who are the victims of spammers can't get back at them. I'd love to put together a sales pitch for some drug that cures stupidity and send 200 copies of it a day to all of them. No, make that a suppository that cures stupidity.

The only thing that's more annoying is the automated phone calls we all get just before an election. Oh, and the "Are your carpets dirty?" call. That one annoys me the most because YES, my carpet IS dirty!!!

I want a button on my phone that I can push when I get automated calls. It will send a pulse back over the line and blow up the phone that initiated the call.

In the old days I'd get a prank call once in a while. I miss those days, it was always fun to out-prank the juveniles. Sigh, communication has become so impersonal.