I RIDE THE WILD MOUSE

Monday, February 27, 2012

First of all, let me begin with the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last week, courtesy of my first session in grief recovery at Riverside Counseling Services.

My brain isn’t broken. My heart is broken. This means I cannot fix my heart with my head. This means my grief cannot be fixed with time alone, or by keeping busy, or by being strong, or by replacing it with chocolate.

With a lot of help, I am going to learn to face and feel and claim my losses. 

Oh brother.

I’m out to fix my emotional self and quite frankly stepping into those waters scares the shape wear right off of me.

It’s like walking down a familiar country road in the pitch black of night with my arms outstretched into the nothing with a tiny flashlight.

I know with help I will find my way, yet something tells me this heart healing is going to be as raw and painful at times as the sides of my mouth are after I eat an entire bag of salt and vinegar chips.

And what’s the name of this ride I’ve been on? I would like to get off, please.

Who knew there was such a thing—an emotional roller coaster with waves of dreadful rides 24-7 right here in my neck of the woods in the middle of winter.

I looked to “Wikipedia” for a definition of a roller coaster and specifically to find the right words to describe the degree of rise and fall that one of these machines takes, so that I could better explain the whirligig of feelings I am experiencing these days.

The definition of the “Wild Mouse” rollercoaster landed right in my lap and it fit so well I put in on overtop of my black cape.

“A Wild Mouse roller coaster is a type characterized by small cars that seat four people or fewer (and in my case just one).

It rides on top of the track, taking tight; flat turns at modest speeds yet producing high lateral G-forces. (Uh huh)

The track work is characterized by many turns and bunny hops, the latter producing abrupt negative vertical G forces. (Uh huh, there goes my appetite again.)

When approaching a turn from a straight section the intended impression is that one will simply continue straight, and thus plunge off of the device. (I can relate)

Almost all “Wild Mice” feature switchback sections, consisting of several of these unbanked turns, separated by straight sections. Usually the turns on the switchback section are 180 degrees, but some coasters feature 90 degree turns as well as more rarely steep runs with loops.”

I wanted to paste this description to my forehead and point at it when someone kindly asks, “How are you doing?”

And the Academy Award for “how well you am processing this” goes to . . . . Me? Not a chance, my friend.

I think “processing” is what happens in an abattoir.

While I have my moments of peace and quiet, which usually occur at 2 a.m. while I am asleep, I do not feel strong or courageous at the best of times nor that I am “processing” anything well.

I feel lost and abandoned and shafted and helpless and desperately sad to name five of the many, many uncomfortable emotions I have begun to recognize on my roller coaster ride.

And the best medicine I can think of is at my doorstep. Its name is counseling.

The Cape I Wear Is Not A Fashion Statement

Monday, February 20, 2012



I had homework to do this week that included reading three chapters of a book on grief and how to move beyond loss. I’m not supposed to go further in the book until I’m instructed to do so, nor am I supposed to use it to teach anyone else—and I won’t. But already I can see how extraordinarily beneficial this choice to get counseling on grief recovery is going to be for me. 


A well-meaning friend called me a “hurdler” the other day. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Was I the type who met life’s challenges with fortitude or was I the poor sap who despite my best efforts is constantly faced with obstacles that challenge my soul. Hmmm. Maybe I’m both. 
Today I am the latter.


I’m wearing a long, flowing black cape these days. It’s at least two city blocks long and it’s there all the time, double-knotted around my neck and complete with arm sleeves that prevent it from being mislaid. 


My cape is there with me in the shower, it covers my pajamas at night, and lies around my feet at the kitchen table each morning during breakfast. 
Even when I’m driving in my car or walking down the creek bed my cape follows behind me billowing in the wind and as soon as I slow down it snaps to a stop and falls in around me. 


I know this black cape to be one of the many faces of grief and as much as I’d like to rip it off, soak it in gasoline and burn it; I know I have much to learn from this unexpected bounty hunter. I will wear it, touch it, feel it, and stay with it until it falls off on its own. 

Self care is something I thought I knew about. I don’t use white sugar or salt, nor for the most part do I eat processed or fast foods. I don’t drink alcohol and I exercise (or at least I did up until 30 days ago) four to six times a week. 
I read a lot, get enough sleep and wear sunscreen. 


But there is so much more to self care that I have yet to learn—like slowing down in life and giving myself more attention than the me who is the caregiver of others thinks I should. 


Self-care also is asking for help, seeing a counselor, calling a friend or my mom and dad when I’m lonely or sad. 


Self-care is about stopping everything I’m doing for everyone else and sitting down and taking off my mask and having a good cry. 


Self-care is clearly about giving up control and allowing life to teach me what I need to learn. This unfolding Universe is showing me that over and over again. 


In hindsight, I think the Universe gave me a kick in the pants in that direction about 10 days before Jon died and although I didn’t know it at the time, I’m convinced the event, which I wrote in my diary about a few days ago, was meant to be a lesson for all of my todays.

“I keep thinking about that day in early January when I was outside giving the dogs their food. I was coming back in the house with my slippers on and I fell. I fell like someone had pushed me down all at once, on all fours, all at the same time smashing my knees and the palms of my hands into the cement pad at the top of the stairs outside.  I remember looking back to see what the hell did I trip on because I just don’t fumble. I never fumble. The pain took my breath away.
It’s February 19th and I still, after six weeks, have a mark on my left knee from the fall. It was mindboggling to me, the smashing of my body against that cement pad.
I never really made any more of until after Jon died and I started trying to reason all these things out. 
I wonder if that was some kind of Universal force that took me down as a reminder to me that I don’t have control all the time about what happens in my life. Maybe I was meant to realize it now; along with everything else I need to learn. I just don’t know.”


I wonder why it is that those of us dealing with loss put ourselves on the back burner when we need help and recovery from grief? Our immediate need to begin to recover from loss shouldn’t be any different or delayed than getting a car windshield repaired after a rock splits it.


You need that car to get you where you need to go the same as you need your mind and your body and your spirit to get you where you need to go.

If I am a hurdler, so be it. 
But I’m going to learn the right way to let go of this black cape so that I can leap into life again with happiness. 

Books Take Me Places I Need To Go

Monday, February 13, 2012



The time slot for this column seems to appear out of nowhere like the next guy’s electric bumper car in a race around the track at the fair. All of my time is spent trying to figure out what just happened, and then I look at the calendar and it says “Writing Day.” 


Crumb. 


These days my shoulder pads are heavy. On my left shoulder sits the fat little gremlin I call “What If”—and he’s an ugly old chap who pokes at and opens up my half-stitched scar of grief all the time. 


My right shoulder, too, is heavy. But it’s bodyguard-heavy with the indelible writing advice of Stephen King, “Come to the craft any way but lightly.” I take him very seriously, even now. Lucky for me he also has the best pitching ear, because I am deaf in my left one. 


I took on two big hurdles this past week by walking through the doors of the local library and the newspaper office to face friends and colleagues in their workplaces I have not yet seen since Jon’s suicide. 
(And I thought leaving the Christmas chocolate in the cupboard was difficult.) 


Those first steps to face people and revisit the thinking of those first hours felt like I was pulling my feet out of glue to reach land. 
But it is done and it was two steps forward. 


I went to the library for another reason and that was to find Joan Didion’s book, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Of course it was there waiting for me. Why wouldn’t it be? 


I stared at the words on the book cover and realized Didion’s husband John’s name was highlighted in blue. And if I took out the “H”  . . . 


I was standing in the aisle where all the new books were posted on shelves and it felt good to be among the words of all those authors. I decided right then and there that I wouldn’t leave the library until I had my arms full of books of great variety including funny. 


Nora Ephron’s yellow-colored book “I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman” jumped off the shelf into my waiting grasp. 
“The Chicken Chronicles” by Alice Walker was next, then a picture book on decorating, and a book called “Kaleidoscope,” on ideas and projects to spark my creativity. Yes, sparks of creativity is what I needed.


Just then, under what I can only describe as an intervention by sources unseen (if such things exist in libraries) I turned around and came face to face with a black book written by Kay Redfield Jamison called “Night Falls Fast – understanding suicide.” 
Now that I think about it, I’m sure I swore out loud when I saw it—I hope in a whispered voice. 


I was compelled to pile it with the others I was carrying, but I didn’t really want it and yet I did. Understanding might decay “What If,” or at least shut him up for more than five minutes. 


I was so proud of myself for my reading intentions—all of it—and I brought them home and set them in a little pile on the coffee table, in front of the big leather couch. I piled the books by size and walked away. 


For two or three days I stalked the table, pacing the cage and staring at the little mountain of knowledge and fluff with unease and apprehension but never touched it.

I didn’t know where to begin. Should I pick up a book that would make me laugh at my neck jiggle and then feel guilty again if I found joy in such times as these? What about decorating? Would I suddenly decide to rearrange the furniture and paint the walls? 
And “The Chicken Chronicles?”  It was about fowl friends named “Gertrude Stein” and “Agnes of God.” Anyone who knows Alice Walker knows it’s bound to be a profound story and I knew I couldn’t “bawk” at that.

The black book stuck out. Of course it did. I didn’t want to read it, but I did want to read it. 
I was drawn to it like my thirsty dog to her water bowl on a hot summer day. 


It was the first book in the pile that I picked up off the table. I opened it at random to page 297. Iris Bolton’s words from her book “My Son…My Son” said it all. 

“I don’t know why, I’ll never know why. I don’t have to know why. I don’t like it. What I have to do is make a choice about my living.”


And so I begin. 

Joy Is Medicine For The Brokenhearted

Monday, February 6, 2012

It would seem that “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion now sits at the top of my read list, up 60 rows from where it sat below “The Complete Bartender” by Robyn M. Feller.

Up until January 19^th I was entrenched in “The Sisters Brothers” by Patrick DeWitt, a novel that won its author the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. It’s an engaging story of two henchmen in the Old West pursuing their next target. Today if you offered me $50/hr to finish off the last 109 pages of DeWitt’s book, I’d never see a dime of it. I’m too busy disliking everything about everything.

I may read the book of magical thinking tomorrow but at this moment I am surely wallowing in the dark Leonard Cohen hits and shoveling in as many bags of potato chips as I can muster.

And in fact I became quite sick of myself today, wandering about this quiet house some 18 days post tragedy with nothing better to do than stare out the window wishing for things I could no longer have.

I re-read Andy Rooney’s “My Lucky Life” speech from October 2 of last year and rolled my eyes at how I’d spouted at the mouth in my column back then about my own life fortunes.

I also made the big mistake of watching the romantic movie “Love Actually,” which until January 19^th was one of my favorites. I might as well have stabbed myself in the eye with a kitchen knife than watch it by myself. What was I thinking? Magical, that’s what.

Yes, quite sick of myself today.

So mid-afternoon at the pinnacle of the Day 18 pity party I got in my car, sped out of the driveway and headed to town in a crying jag passing an ambulance sitting stationary in the airport parking lot across the way. No doubt there would be a patient inside in much direr straights than I. The sobering thought made me take pause from my wallowing.

I will admit that for the last 18 days I’ve not wanted to see any of my grandchildren. I couldn’t bear their optimistic and spirited attitudes to living a life when I was immersed in an unbelieving grievousness I never knew existed.

But today I’d tipped my cup.  I had to shake myself off and find at least a little bit of balance.

Kahlil Gibran was right on the mark with his poem “On Joy and Sorrow.” They are inseparable. While one sits on the edge of the bed, the other one is in bed with you.

I drove straight to the house where some little peppers lived, because I suddenly needed their joy like a breath of fresh air in May. It was all I could do to get there in one piece.

I was sitting on the couch when my three-year-old beauty came running out of the kitchen with a red piece of construction paper on which she had drawn a picture for me.

She explained away the big sunshiny sun and a round blob with stick arms and legs and big eyes (me, she said) and a stop sign, all drawn in black marker. Another nebulous figure, nearly invisible in red marker had been drawn hovering over me.  It was “Papa Jon.”

Gibran wrote, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

The delight in that moment filled me up. Children should be seen and they should be heard when we grownups are sad. This I know for sure. 

Open The Door and Kick Out The Elephant

Monday, January 30, 2012



On the afternoon of January 19th, 2012 my life and the lives of Dr. Jon Fistler’s children were forever changed and we were thrown to the wolves with unanswered questions and regret and unspeakable grief at the misunderstanding that followed his suicide.

I have discovered that I hate the word suicide. It is bitter and sour and razor-sharp and as I now understand it to be true—also is the biggest elephant in the room after someone dies at his or her own hand. 


In my last column of December 2011 I wrote the following:




I understand that no matter how life may saddle me, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should,” (taken from the “Desiderata”) says it best.
And while there are bound to be many future times when I will frown on that outlook, especially when life stinks, I will still believe it to be true.
That belief keeps me approachable to learning more the why and what of this fascinating and multi-layered world and the importance of my part in it. 


Oh how little did I know when I wrote that.
Well, if the Universe is unfolding as it should and I am to keep approachable to learning the importance of my part in this world—which, to say the least, is a  &%$#@! big pill to swallow right now—then I am opening the door and telling the elephant to “Get Out.” 


The shroud of secrecy and the stigma surrounding suicide following major depression must be exposed. There is no shame here. Major depression is a disease like cancer and we must give it the recognition it deserves. 


So here I am joining the ranks of the “left behind.” I have a very long road ahead to recovery from what has happened here and there are three precious and beautiful adult children of Jon’s who also now have to find their way back from the darkness created by this heartbreaking tragedy. We are helping each other. Their support of me and mine of them is the grace to come out of all of this. 


I had a wonderful experience of the miracle of love with Jon in Canada where he was realizing a long time dream of practicing veterinarian medicine in the Rainy River District. His life was so very full of promise,
God Bless him for sharing an all too brief 403 days of his life with me. I know in my heart our love for each other was a wonderful respite of peace and serenity for Jon, especially in those recent times when depression and darkness crept in to his mind. 


I know this much to be true. Jon was a tender soul. Maybe some tender souls just cannot carry the burden on this earth and need to go to a softer gentler place more quickly than others. Jon’s spirit now is free to work miracles from the other side. May he come into the peace of wild things that do not tax their lives with forethought of despair.


I also know for sure that those of us who are left behind in our heartache and our unknowing about major depression have a big job ahead of us. 


There is a German proverb that says: “To bury grief, plant a seed.”


So I’m asking everyone who knew Jon or has known someone who has committed suicide to first plant a seed of gratitude. 


Say “Thank You” out loud a lot for his or her life, even if you’re not sure to whom or to what you are saying it -- say it anyway, especially when grief is about to swallow you up. 


Plant a seed of no regrets in your soul. Those of us who were closest to Jon, let us feel no guilt, and we should not and cannot carry his pain or his burden. He would not want that and we need to be free to heal.


Plant a seed of communication. Talk about your feelings with someone who will listen, talk about depression, learn about depression and suicide and speak its name. Plant a seed. Grow awareness. Please.


I carry your heart Jon. I carry it in my heart.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

I Cannot Deny It Is What It Is

Monday, January 16, 2012

This is one of those weeks when I have nothing better to write about than some of the things that I can’t deny. 


I can’t deny myself the Dairy Milk chocolate bar I found in a flat storage container under my bed. I swear I’m getting rid of it in the quickest way I know how—one square at a time. 


On a similar scope, I can’t deny that my resolve to exercise more is meeting with hurdles. I was sick this past week (and not from too much Chocolate thank you very much) and I’m finding it really difficult to get back on the treadmill after seven days of rain. 


I can’t deny that I’m really not sure my dogs would save my life in a time of crisis should a wolf confront me during our daily walks on the frozen creek bed. 
I have deduced this theory because of a fire log that Cash had in his mouth when we started on our walk one day and which he dropped on the trail when he figured out it was too heavy to carry. 
On the way back home we rounded the last creek corner and he spotted the wooden thing lying motionless ahead of us. 


All chaos broke loose. 


The hair between the dog’s shoulder blades stood on end and he jumped around like the “Chester the Terrier” from the “Loonie Tunes” cartoons.
Cash howled at the menacing object, while Dot stood in place barking her own frenzy and pawing the ground like a raging bull in an arena full of red capes. 


Neither one of them dared go near the log. These mutts should not quit their day job to become bodyguards.
Henceforth, I can’t deny that on my walk I should carry a big stick for self-defence. 


I can’t deny that in as much as I love screaming down the snow hill here at high speed on a Krazy Karpet on my stomach with my arms outstretched one minute and behind my back the next so that I am streamlined in loge precision, my rotator cuffs think that was a stupid thing to do. 

I can’t deny that I am still learning to sail my “relation” ship with the past. 


I know this for sure because when I was standing at the burn barrel a couple of days ago watching the flames blacken the edges of some love letters I’d found from during my years of marriage to Peter, I was rushed back to sadness, pulled into perplexity at the folly of it all, jabbed with bitterness and bits of unresolved closure. 


I still am learning to sail away from that ship almost two years later, with clarity and dignity. 


I can’t deny the Karma of this very moment. Just now the phone rang and a twangy-sounding saleswoman trying to sell me carpet cleaning said “Hello, Mrs. Suppa?” 
I paused and said, “not any more,” and hung up. I can’t deny that made me feel awesome. 


And finally I can’t deny that while I was born in the arms of a wonderful imagination, all of this is true.

Granny's House Is Where It's At

Monday, January 9, 2012

I lay prostrate on my bed. Withered by the events of the day I read from “The Book of Ages” in hopes of regenerating myself by living vicariously through the lives of others my age.

“Pffft.” Big mistake.

According to the book of miscellany by Eric Hanson, at the age of 51 the late Fred Astaire was kicking up dust on the dance floor with Jane Powell in the musical “Royal Wedding.” In the movie, he also danced on the ceiling, danced with dumbbells, a coat rack, a framed photograph, and a chandelier.

In my neck of the woods I needed three tablespoons of pure white sugar and a cup of strong coffee to get my carcass off the bed and over to the closet to get my housecoat.

I am 51 years old and worn out by a mere overnighter with my 18-month-old grandson.

How did I ever manage to raise three children all those years ago? Oh yes, I forgot. I had girls.

Taking care of this little jalapeno is akin to nailing Jell-O to a tree. He has enough spitfire to be his own billiard game.

On Friday evening at 5 p.m., I walked through the door with the little gaffer and his overnight bag; let Charlie out of my arms and “BLAMMO!” he scattered in 15 different directions at once. 

I never stopped chasing Charlie for the next three hours. My arms and legs moved independently of my brain, which wandered adrift in nursery rhymes that some chump had written centuries ago about little boys being made of puppy-dog tails and snails.

No sir. Little boys are made of Mexican jumping beans, monkeys, red squirrels, elastic bands, and slingshots.

I was reminded again why all those years ago my baby brother was habitually encapsulated in a large, locked playpen. Mind you, now he has a strange attraction to skeleton keys—but that’s another story.

How did I ever manage to raise my own children with going mad? Oh yes, I forgot. I had girls.

If I wasn’t blocking Charlie’s finger poke shots at the plastic insulation on my windows, I was running defense for the blinking lights on my ‘Apple TV’ monitor and DVD player both of which I found rearranged on different shelves of my entertainment unit when I raced back to the living room after a lightening-fast trip to the bathroom.

At snack time, I thought I had a reprieve of sorts when I gave Charlie a little dish of Cheerios and raisins. He toddled off to the couch to watch a television episode of “Max and Ruby.”

In a few minutes, he came back to me at the kitchen sink where I was inhaling the last piece of Christmas chocolate and asked for more “Some?”

I smiled and motioned for the little dish from his hand. He looked up at me and three raisins fell out of his right nostril. The rest of his snack was divided between the couch cushions and the front of his pants.

When I put him to bed at 8:30 that night, I’m not sure who was more pooped out, he or I. I snuck around on tiptoe until I was sure he was asleep and then jumped into a shower hot enough to cook a bird and then stayed up too late eating potato chips and watching mindless television.

A 3 a.m. my sleeping skeleton was stirred from a dream date with George Clooney by the cries of my small fry.

I opened the door to Charlie’s room and was hit by the smelling salts of a fermented gift that had leaked well beyond the elastic legs of his diaper.

At 8 a.m. when Charlie’s rejuvenated and audible spirit had roused both dogs and the cat into a spat, I opened one eyelid to the piercing reality of the morning.

“I feel like I have been dragged down the street by two Great Danes,” I mumbled out loud. Hugh Jackman had said that in a television interview.

Uh huh. I understood the feeling.

But—and this is a big But—the monkey, chipmunk, red squirrel and jumping bean, and the busy, busy havoc of my little jalapeno pepper and his 3 a.m. poopy diaper are trumped by the look on the little boy’s face when at morning I open the door to his room and he stands there with his stuffed animal in his crib.

He faces lights up and so does mine.

Grandmothers (and Grandfathers too) are important in the life of child. My grandparents taught me that and it’s why I’ll do this again and again.

There's Something Wrong With This Picture

Monday, January 2, 2012

I wasn’t going to make a New Year’s resolution because I figured that any day of the year I could make a change for the better, so why limit myself to one in 365 days for a personal decree.

But at 11:55 p.m. on New Year’s Eve I became aware of the need to adjust my thinking as my right hand stalked the last chocolate toffee triangle on the plate while my left hand reached for a gooey butter tart. All I could think about was which piece of lovely I would shove in my mouth first.

I could blame my extremities for having minds of their own but that would be stupid.

Clearly I have a real soft spot for sweets. In fact my soft spot has grown to twice the size it was before I started my Christmas baking frenzy on December 17^th which threw a big wedgy into my plan to wear the new jeans I bought for myself. 

So right then and there 15 minutes before the clock struck midnight, I vowed out loud to three witnesses in the room that my New Year’s resolution was to stay away from goodies.

I lasted until New Year’s Day at 6 p.m. when I was looking through my coat for a grocery list and found an individually wrapped “Turtle” candy in one of my zipper pockets.

Toasted pecans, soft caramel, and smooth chocolate never tasted so good together. I shrugged off waves of guilt, popped it in and hummed the song “Start Again” in my Alfie Zappacosta singing voice.

Then at 7:30 p.m., starving to death, I opened the fridge door to look for supper leftovers and found a bag of homemade peanut brittle my daughter had given me over the holidays.

I could market myself as the human vacuum cleaner. The waves of guilt lapped at my waistline as I took a handful and crunched it down. I shrugged at my screaming conscious and chanted, “We just start again . . .”

I repeated this lovely melody for a third time later that first evening of 2012 when I remembered there were three homemade chocolate truffles left and that I should polish them off.

“Out of sight out of mind,” I reasoned to myself as I leaned over my soft spot at the bake board table in the kitchen, bit into the creamy centers, and hummed my mantra while reviewing photos on my iPhone that had been taken over the holidays.

I stopped mid-song and muttered; “There is something wrong with this picture.”

Less than 24 hours earlier I had done two things. I had made a resolution to keep my hands off sweets, and had had a riveting conversation around the supper table with Jon and another couple about the chicken neck syndrome that suddenly happens when you turn 50 years old.

Mine was swaying gently to and fro as my jaws chewed up the final truffle when I came upon a photo that I must have accidently taken at some point while looking down at the iPhone screen.  

For a moment I wasn’t exactly sure who it was I was looking at, and then I recognized the loose skin under her chin. 

I don’t think a cattle prod could have produced more get up and go than seeing what gravity does to a budding chicken neck.

From now on I resolve to take a whole new position in life—on my back and looking up.

I Will Never Stop Learning My Lessons

Monday, December 26, 2011

When I was a kid, I wished I could hide inside our Christmas tree and gaze at the world through a rainbow of bobbles and lights—the way  “Chip and Dale” did in the Christmas cartoon “Pluto’s Christmas Tree.”

Sometimes I still wish I could do that.

To compensate, I do the next best thing. One evening each year during the holidays, after all my Christmas decor is in place and the tree is trimmed, I get bundled up, turn out all the house lights except the Christmas ones, and go outside.

I pretend I don’t live here and peek in the living room window like a stranger looking in on the Christmas of someone else. It’s a favorite tradition where once a year I look in on my life in a perfect world.

I did this on Christmas Eve on Saturday night. Mother Nature was in her mild-mannered way and it wasn’t hard to stand out there for a time in relative comfort, unlike other years when the ends of my fingers would freeze in a New York minute.

I stood outside looking in and wondered how many children have played and danced and laughed throughout this house in the last 67 years. My mother and I and my cousins and my children and my children’s children are among them. It seems so trite to say “I love this place with all of my soul,” but it is my truth and where I belong no matter what else happens in my life.

My perfect little world thinking doesn’t last long. It’s not supposed to and that’s okay. Besides, if it did, I’d have nothing to write about every week.

Not long after I start frosting up the windowpane with my breath the cat and two dogs figure out no one is inside the house or around to catch them nosing for Christmas nibbles left in dishes on the coffee table. It’s all but a mad scramble for me to dash inside, scold, and then pick out all the red and green jujubes that were not dog-licked it the candy bowl.

I scrutinize what’s left after the cull, close my eyes and eat one and another amid muffled screams akin to Lucy Van Pelt in ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas.’

“I have dog germs! Get some hot water! Get some disinfectant!” 

Ah, yes, this is my perfect little world with dog germs, cat hair, and squirrels that fill the inside of my skates with pine cones so tightly that I need a jackhammer to get them out.

There’s but a few days left in 2011 and I suspect I’ll be eating too much leftover Christmas chocolate and soaking up the last fleeting days of Heather’s visit here with as much intention as I can muster. 

I go to great lengths to live a purpose-filled life—and often go far enough as to drive my loved ones bananas with my “non-stop” approach to every day.

I understand that no matter how life may saddle me, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should,” (taken from the “Desiderata”) says it best.
And while there are bound to be many future times when I will frown on that outlook, especially when life stinks, I will still believe it to be true.

That belief keeps me approachable to learning more the why and what of this fascinating and multi-layered world and the importance of my part in it. 

So my dear readers stand on the horizon of 2012 and look back at what you’ve seen and done and learned, and what you’ve lived through, cried through, laughed through and shared, and then grant yourself peace and go forward.

The Four Noble Truths encourage us to show up, pay attention, and tell the truth or keep noble silence, and stay wide open to change.

Peace to you.

And as the poet “Rumi” wrote, “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor . . . . treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.”

Make 2012 count.

The Cat Rules Are A Merry Mix

Monday, December 19, 2011

It’s down to a one-hand count to Christmas and I’m within moments of grabbing the nearest “Krazy Karpet” and disappearing to a remote location where there are no holiday stressors.

This time of year always gives me a renewed appreciation for mothers who work full time and still manage—atop their regular Wonder Woman deeds—to fit their Christmas baking, gift-buying and wrapping, and their children’s Christmas concerts into the chaos of the family circus.

Every year I intend to be more prepared and have my sugar cookie baking done and my gifts wrapped far in advance of the garland-spackled holiday and yet here I am again within an ear shot of Rudolph shouting “Full speed ahead” and nary an item checked off my Christmas “to-do” list. But I do have my tree decorated!

Of late, the Christmas tree is the centre of attention for “Millie the cat,” the newest member of the household, whose coat is as black as the inside of a cow—making her classically invisible in the house at night—and whose radar is equipped with the latest in stealth modifications.

Of important note is that she is referred to as “Jon’s cat” during bouts of mischief.

She is a feline who can’t get enough of rubbing up against the human ankle and whose endless purring whirrs of satisfaction and engaging meows were adopted in by “Yours truly” as part of Jon’s dowry.

But life with cat began with the “Cat Rules.”

Firstly I decreed that the cat is not allowed in the house. Okay, the cat is allowed in the house, but not in the bedroom or the living room. Fine, so the cat can come in the bedroom but not while I am sleeping. Yes sure, okay then the cat can come in the living room but not on the couch and not on my favorite chair.

Millie currently sleeps wherever the heck she pleases. Like I said, the cat rules.

In a scene that fell just short of something out of Steven King’s horror novel “Pet Sematary” and from which I have not yet recovered, I awoke one night shortly after her arrival to make the usual trip to the bathroom that follows too much tea before bedtime.

I was sitting there in the quiet darkness hazed over in some kind of midnight stupor waiting for the tinkle to begin when I had the odd and eerie feeling that I was not alone.

If someone had poured cold water down my back just then, the sensation would have been a dead ringer to the shivers I was getting at that moment.

I reached down to grab the flashlight (I have one in every room) and turned it on to find two green-hued golf-balled sized cat eyes boring a hole into my brain from where it sat like a statue on the side of tub beside the toilet. A third eyelid washed over one of her eyeballs as she squinted at me and jumped into my naked lap.

In a microsecond I shot to a standing position and the feline catapulted off and away somewhere that I did not pursue. I went back to bed and fell into a dream world of scary zombie cat movies.

I awoke the next morning to find a curious deja’vu situation in my living room reminiscent of the days leading up to Christmas last year, when “Oliver the cat” ruled the roost. Sadly, Oliver used up all his nine lives in the late summer when a night owl stole him away.

And like last year, once again I found Christmas tree ornaments strewn everywhere—and no cat in sight.

Upon investigation of the whereabouts of “Jon’s cat,” while returning the ornaments to their rightful place, I found her staring at me wide-eyed through the branches in the middle of the Christmas tree with that classic wild look that precedes the pounce.

I had a flash of anticipatory terror only this time it wasn’t just a scene from the movie “Alien,” when that seed pod thing jumped onto the face of the innocent astronaut. 

The cat-a-pult from the tree onto the front of my housecoat happened so fast that I was sure I would never recover from the shock. I wasn’t sure Jon would either when I ran screaming into the bedroom where he was fast asleep. He sat straight up in a wild “deer in the headlights” stupor as I rushed at him like a steaming locomotive with the cat knitted to my housecoat.

Author Helen Powers said, “Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attach the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling.”

“Jon’s cat” has made her attempts to claim rights to just about every spot in this little farmhouse some of the time and does exactly what she wants most of the time, but it is a scientific absolute that “Millie the cat” is an all-time hit around here.

But remember “The Cat Rules,” Millie. You are NOT the owner and I am NOT your staff.

By the way, would you like gravy with your salmon?