Poor Little Kitty.....

Don't worry, she didn't die or anything. She did, however, force me to admit I was wrong about something, and that is as close to death as we come around here.

The gray and white kitten is named "Missy," although Hubby calls her "Little Brutus." That would be because the orange one he calls ... you guessed it ... "Big Brutus." That Hubby is creative if nothing else. The orange one is named Olive, but he never gets called that anymore.


Little Brutus is as sweet a kitty as you would ever meet. She is very easy-going, undemanding, and easy to get along with. All she wants is an occasional bite of dry cat food and a warm spot in which to lie. During the summer it's the front porch, as in the photo above.

During the winter, it's underneath the wood stove in the living room. Unless it gets really, REALLY cold, when she climbs up behind it. I'm surprised her fur hasn't caught on fire yet.


She doesn't like to be held much, as you can see in the photo below. She is trying to negotiate her freedom with Hubby, and they are both pretty stubborn.


When she was just a little bitty thing, she swallowed thread. Not just any thread, but quilting thread. She had it looped under her tongue, and she swallowed both ends. We took her to the vet, and he said the first thing he would have to do was x-ray her to make sure there wasn't a needle in there. Good Lord. I hadn't even thought of that. To make a long story short, $450 later she was fine.

Then one night we heard a commotion at the foot of the bed, her flopping around and gasping, and Hubby thought she had swallowed something again. He foolishly stuck his finger in her mouth to get whatever it was out, but he didn't leave it in there long.

Turns out the kitty has epilepsy. Her seizures almost always occur when she's asleep, and since she sleeps on our bed, that means that when she has one, we are jarred from a sound sleep to the sounds and sights of her seizing. It is very disturbing. The vet said the seizures weren't harmful to her, and unless they got worse in severity or longer in duration, we should just ride them out. He said she would not grow out of them, but that they traumatized us more than they did her. After all, how much memory can she hold in that tiny little brain?

We kept her seizures noted on a calendar for a long time, trying to decide if she needed to start on medication. The vet was reluctant to do that, since it meant keeping her on it for life, but if they became worse I was willing to do it.

Then they just stopped. I felt all smug and all, since both her regular vet and another vet I met on a bicycling trip told me she would NOT grow out of them.

It's been at least five years since she had a seizure. But she had one this morning. Unfortunately (and also comically, so sue me), she was asleep at the top of the stairs (underneath a wall heater unit) when the seizure began. We were alerted to the situation by the sight of her flopping all the way down the stairs. Gus ran to see if he could help her, and the other cat looked at her like she had lost her mind.

It was over in a matter of seconds, probably less than a minute and a half. She lay there panting, pupils dilated to the point that there was no color in her eyes. Then she got up, shook herself off, and went straight for the food bowl. Apparently having a seizure is hard work; she is always starving right after she has one.

I hope this is not a sign of things to come. Not only is it scary for all of us, but I just washed the sheets AND bedspread on our bed.

OverSTEPping the Boundaries.....

I was slightly bothered by a newspaper article in our local paper today about the controversy surrounding a recent step team competition in Atlanta.

If you're not familiar with stepping, the routines are comprised of intricately choreographed foot stamping and hand clapping, inspired by cultural dances in Africa.

The uproar surrounds the fact that the University of Arkansas' ZTA sorority group won the competition, and they are .... um..... white. The debate is over whether "the integration of a once-ethnically exclusive activity constitutes a form of cultural theft." I don't think we want to go down the road of what defines a culture and what might be considered cultural theft. I could write an entire blog post on that topic, but it might be dangerous.

I am far from being a racist, but (and?) I am offended by the suggestion that any activity should be limited to any ethnic group. I'm not talking about the Russian ice dancers misrepresenting the Aborigines culture at the Olympics, I'm talking about whether or not a group of white sorority girls should be allowed to come up with their own (apparently awesome) step routines and win a contest that has historically been associated with African Americans.

The article says there was supposition that the judges, awed by the unlikely white competitors, may have been "wowed" by them and inflated their scores.

Come on. They were "wowed" just because they were white?

Or perhaps were they "wowed" because the girls were that good?

Here is a clip of part of the routine.




The article goes on to say that the sponsor, a major soft drink company that is NOT Pepsi, later announced that there were "scoring discrepancies" and awarded the second place team (of African American steppers) an equal amount of scholarship money as the winning team.

Naturally the video itself has generated a ton of controversy on YouTube.

To be fair, I haven't watched clips of any of the other teams, so I can't objectively compare their performances. But they look pretty darn good to my (admittedly unlearned) eye.

They were judged, though. I'm guessing by a PANEL of judges, not just one.

I have to wonder....

What race/ethnicity were the judges?

Friday Night.....

Spending the night with my sisters after going to the gymnastics meet tonight. It was a win for UGA, but we've got some work to do before UCLA comes to town next Saturday.

Tomorrow morning we are going to meet with our brother and mother to make final arrangements for Mom. She's not dead (that would be why she's invited to the meeting) or even sick. She just wants to make sure everything is taken care of.

We just want to get together for breakfast and laughter.

Gus and the Beauty Shop.....

I realize that having to search for a new dog groomer doesn't rank up there with one of life's GREATEST problems, but it is an inconvenience. Valerie was recommended by a co-worker and his poodle Pebbles, and we have taken Gus to her for about three years. She has (had) a small shop behind her house, and she was on my way home from work. Hubby would drop Gus off at Valerie's place at 2:00, and I would pick him up at 4:00. It worked so much better than those places where they insisted I leave him at 8:00 and pick him up at 4:00.



I think he looks cute with long hair, but it was a mess to brush. I suppose. When we let his hair get this long, Valerie charged us extra because it was so matted underneath.

The first time I took him to a groomer in a strip mall, it was a brand-new place. I was excited about getting Gus groomed there. Until I went to pick him up.

"Don't shave him," I said.

And this is what we got. When we got out of the car at home, Hubby met us at the door.

"Well that sucks," he said.

Notice that Gus is too embarrassed even to face the camera.

I gave the place another try, next time telling them, "We don't want him shaved. Leave some length."

They shaved him again. We didn't go back there again.

The next place we tried was in town, and they said I could drop him off at 8:00. "But if you need to drop him off earlier, just let us know and we'll be here at 7:30."

I did let them know, they weren't there by 7:30 or 8:00, and I was late to school. Then they sort of forgot to call and let me know he was ready and charged me $50.00. We didn't go back there again either.

I was relieved to find Valerie. Her price was VERY reasonable, her location was perfect, and Gus loved her. She said when she was blow drying his hair, Gus would almost fall over because he was on the verge of going to sleep.

And now Valerie has decided to get married and move to Texas, of all places. I thought she was already married, but apparently that was her parents' house she had her shop behind.

We are once again in the market for a good groomer. Gus has high expectations, so it won't be easy.

What's He Going to Eat NOW?.......

Hubby went for his regular check-up for his diabetes today, and I think he was nervous about it. He doesn't always check his blood sugar regularly, but he starts checking it right before it's time for him to go to the doctor. He also starts eating better about a week before he goes for his check-up. He KNOWS that his A1C is an average over the last three months, but he somehow thinks that being "good" for a few days before he sees the doctor will make a difference.

His blood sugar has been creeping up for the last week, and it has about driven him crazy. Then I remind him that stress also affects his blood sugar, and I think THAT stresses him out. Then I remind him that he is 62 years old, and he tells me to go crochet or something.

His A1C this morning was 6.7, which still isn't horrible, but it's higher that it has ever been for him. As if that isn't bad enough, the doctor told him his cholesterol is high. We can't be absolutely sure that's what the doctor says, because he mumbles so horribly that I've never been able to understand a word he says. Hubby claims to carry on entire conversations with him, and I suppose that must be because they are both members of the mumbling fraternity.

Now in addition to carbs, we have to watch out for cholesterol.

For myself, I could do this very easily. I DON'T, but I could.

For Hubby, however, it is a real challenge.

He likes steak. And potatoes. And very little else.

No fish, no seafood of any kind (except canned tuna and salmon, which don't really count but I guess I have to be thankful for anyway), no vegetables (except the occasional green beans, which the Army forced him to eat "three meals a day" according to him), no pasta, no rice, no grains. He will eat a salad if I put it on the table, but not really by choice. He will eat cole slaw, but that is loaded with mayonnaise. He will eat both squash and zucchini - if they are fried. He will eat chicken on occasion, but he'd rather not.

I fretted all afternoon about what kind of changes to make to his diet. We've been very lucky with his diabetes in the 8 years (good Lord - has it really been that long?) since he was diagnosed. I've even joked that because I can't understand anything his doctor says, perhaps he doesn't even really HAVE diabetes. He may have diagnosed a pulled groin muscle and Hubby just THOUGHT he said diabetes. His blood sugar counts have always been reasonable, and he's gotten away with way more than he should. He religiously eschews all sugars, however, which is much better than I would be able to do myself.

After careful consideration of what we had on hand, Hubby's health concerns, and what he would eat, together we decided on tonight's dinner.

Steak and deep-fried onion rings.

You gotta die sometime.

Motorcycle Snobs....

If you don't ride a motorcycle, you might have never noticed this. I didn't before I rode a motorcycle, but my sister did.

Motorcyclists acknowledge each other with a downward wave when they pass each other. I saw this numerous times before I became a rider, but I just thought it was a coincidence that every motorcyclist seemed to know each other. Duh.

When I got my first motorcycle almost four years ago, Hubby took me on a few short little rides so I could get used to the bike. Well, that's what I THOUGHT he was doing. He only knows one speed: wide open. And he doesn't know that he's supposed to look in his mirror every now and then to see if I'm still back there. That's why he didn't even know I had dropped my brand-new motorcycle the very first time I tried to ride it out of our subdivision. I had ridden it one quarter of a mile. Broke its little taillight off. A stranger stopped to see if I needed help, but Hubby was long gone. But I digress.

On one of those short rides, we met another motorcyclist, and he acknowledged me with the downward, sort of two-finger wave. I got all emotional and almost had to pull over. I had a Sally Fields moment, thinking "They like me! They really like me!" I was a member of the club.

My step-daughter said she and her then-boyfriend only acknowledged "real" bikes. When she said that, I took it to mean that they only acknowledged other Harleys, and I was a little offended. I also secretly wondered how the heck they could tell what brand a motorcycle was by looking at it from the front going 60 mph. Or in my case, 40 mph. In retrospect, I think what they meant was they didn't acknowledge the so-called "crotch rockets". Or those little scooters that sound like a mosquitoes on steroids, but I'm with them on that. Now that I ride a Harley myself, though, I don't have to have motorcycle envy. Hubby swears he doesn't care for Harleys and he's prouder of his Honda, but I'd like for him to explain then why he went to the trouble and expense to have new pipes put on his almost brand-new Honda last year. What do they do? Make his Honda sound like a Harley. But I digress again.

Sometimes when I'm riding my bicycle, I like to throw down the motorcyclists' gesture just to see what the rider will do. Most of the time they ignore me completely. Occasionally one of them will, probably out of sheer habit, return the gesture, and I can tell that he is thinking, "Damn, that is a BICYCLE. I didn't mean to wave at that broad." Because I'm pretty sure most of them would refer to a woman on a bicycle as a broad.

Occasionally I just make eye contact with a motorcyclist and smile, and sometimes one of them will make an awkward wave-type gesture, not entirely sure of what to do in that situation. Once on BRAG a motorcyclist was stopped at an intersection waiting for about a gazillion bicyclists to go past, and I gestured that I wanted to trade bikes. Either he didn't understand my sign language, or he didn't understand why there were a gazillion bicycles on the road in the first place. He didn't even have the decency to smile, much less laugh uproariously, which is what I thought it deserved.

When I'm on my motorcycle and I see a bicyclist, I feel obligated to let him/her know that I also ride a non-motorized two-wheeler. But most of them glare at me for polluting the environment and not getting my arse out there to pedal myself. When I come up behind two of them hogging the entire lane and making me go into the oncoming lane to get around them, I want to stop and tell them that it's bicyclists like THEM who get the rest of us killed. Or at least have bottles and cigarettes thrown at us. Sometimes I give them the motorcyclist greeting, left hand extended downward, but most of the time they look at me as if to ask, "What in the world are you pointing at?"

When I'm on my bicycle and I see a motorcyclist, I also want him/her to know that I have one of THOSE, I'm just CHOOSING to pedal and get some exercise. I don't want motorcyclists to speed away all smug and all.

When I rode my bicycle on Sunday, I saw several motorcycles on the road at different times. It was the first decent day of the year, so I wasn't surprised. I also saw a robin and a family getting their boat ready to go to the lake, but they may have been rushing things just a bit. One motorcycle that I saw was one of the larger ones, and there was a .... larger .... man riding it. I waved, he nodded, we went on our way. Then I made a turn or two, and there he was again, coming out of a driveway. I don't know if he lived there or if he just decided to take a break. I smiled and rode on. He came out into the road behind me, and he slowed down to match my pace. That means he was just about to fall over. He pointed at my bicycle and said, "That's what I NEED to be doing."

I nodded at his motorcycle and said, "That's what I'm GOING to do, just as soon as I get home." And then, of course, I had to.

I just wanted him to know that I had a choice. Just in case he happened to be one of the motorcycle snobs.

Ten Things.......

My super sweet blogger friend Maggie (hey, that's two days in a row!) gave me this beautiful blog award. I don't think we ever get too old for awards of any kind.

I'm supposed to tell 10 things that make me happy, link it to the friend who sent it to me, and send it to 10 friends. Two out of three isn't bad.

These are in no particular order, but a la Jay Leno, I'm starting with #10.

Ten things that make me happy:


10. Sisters' Saturdays.
9. Riding my motorcycle
8. Riding my bicycle.
7. A stuck landing.
6. Fried pickles.
5. 63-degree days in February.
4. Hearing our national anthem at the Olympics.
3. Finishing a crochet project.
2. Getting comments on a blog post.
1. Field trips that take two-thirds of our student body away for most of the day when I'm not going with them. Can you tell I'm excited about tomorrow?