Animal Family Members

Recently we had plans with  some dear friends for a big day together. They drove all the way from their north Los Angeles area to San Diego County for their first “get away” in a few years, and were able to spend one night in a beautiful, upscale hotel at the beach. Then disaster struck in the form of a sick, beloved cat. They got a call informing them that their aging, diabetic kitty was suffering.  

I know the call my friend made to let me know our special day was off was hard for her, but when a furry member of your family needs you, it takes precedence over fun. They had to head home, and unfortunately, ended the week by losing their baby.

One of the most difficult aspects of moving was giving up our two cats and our dear yellow lab. I got a great report about the kitties last week, but Buddy has joined his brother Spooner in pet heaven, which another friend calls,“Papinga Land,” named after her vet. She, too, has had to say goodbye to those furry family members. I imagine most of us have.

The question now is, should the animal be replaced? For me, no. I imagine it will be years, and perhaps never. I avert my eyes if I should ever see free puppies or a pet shop with kittens in the window. We have discovered a new freedom with no hairy carpets and floors, no worries about care and feeding when we want to go away, no vet bills or high cost of medicines and food.

My need for those moments of pet cuteness can be fulfilled by visiting my neighbors’ cats and dogs (there’s even a turtle who lives next door!), watching the dogs in the surf, and tuning into Animal Planet now and then.

Scrabble Babble

I really need to clean my bathroom but I just want to check my Scrabble games. Maybe it’s my turn on one of the six ( Cathy, Bonnie, Shirley, Bobbie, Donna, and Merry)  games I’m playing!

Hang on…I’m almost ready to leave but I have to check the spelling of avocado.

How can Cathy be beating me by a hundred points AGAIN!

I’ve never heard of these Anagrammer words like stourie, but Scrabble

takes them!

Can hardly keep my eyes open, but it’s my turn to play on two of my games.

My library books are almost due and I’ve only read one of them.

How can Bonnie, Shirley, and Bobbie be ahead of me in this game too? Bobbie used to be in my fifth grade class…can’t let her beat me!

Let’s see…my score 102, Donna’s 234…you do the math.

Words have always been my biggest interest in school, much more than math. Reading and writing have always attracted me like magnets, and Scrabble has been my favorite game since junior high. However, I’ve discovered competition isn’t my thing and I’d much rather play just for fun. That you can tell by my scores!  

Baseball and Horse Races

I know this sounds absurd, but recently we’ve gone to both an Angel game and to Del Mar to watch the horse races, and I’ve found they are surprisingly similar!

First of all, there is a lot of running involved; the ball players run around the bases and the people run to make their bets. Oh…the horses run too, usually in an oval, while ball players run in diamonds.

Each participant wears a specific numeral on their back by which their position is tracked.  There can be as few as five horses and as many as twenty in a race, but only nine players on each baseball team. The baseball uniforms are mostly white but can be changed according to location of the game. The horse colors

are always assigned the same numerals: one is red, two is white, three is blue, and so on. The names of horses can be unusual such as “Our Coco Beans” or “Tick Me Off,” while baseball players only sport names like Satchel, Cookie,

Pee Wee, and Duke.

The goal of each activity is to score by crossing over a predetermined spot in the dirt, and both can be very exciting for the observer especially if your choice of mammal has crossed the spot in the dirt first.

Some differences are that the horses want to pass each other, but the ball players must NEVER pass each other while running around. The horses might get hit by a stick to encourage them to run, but in baseball, the stick or bat is only used to hit the ball and must not come into contact with the player.

Money is involved in some way; tickets must be purchased to watch the action, and in horse racing, betting and winning money isn’t a secret.

No matter which sport one attends, the cost of food is outrageous, there are loud, sometimes obnoxious people in the stands, but a day in either park provides a lot of fun!

Fall Down Laughing

Today I fell down again. I’m the clumsiest, most off balance person I know! Now I must say it’s the first time I’ve fallen in a long time because being aware that I do this goes a long way to alert me to where I put my feet. You see, this isn’t something that has started happening because of age. I'm sure it's an inherited trait from my mom.

The first time I remember falling clear down was in college. I fell backward in my chair in the cafeteria in front of everyone at lunch. I won’t tell you who was just one table over and was too uncomfortable to come to my aid. But it was my brother. I didn’t really blame him…just too embarrassing to admit you’ve got such a klutzy sister, and I wasn’t hurt.  Within about a month, I fell again, down the steps in front of the school. The student body president and some of his friends witnessed that wreck, and all I could do was lay there and giggle as my ruined nylons sent one run after the other up my legs. Only my pride was hurt both times.

More seriously, I broke my ankle while roller skating with David when he was only four. Again, I lost my balance, thought I was going to crush my little boy, and forced myself backward, landing on my ankle. Tricky, huh?  We sat in the middle of the rink as a river of laughing kids skated around us. They were laughing because I was laughing! And then there was the time I lay on the garage floor several minutes wondering how badly I was hurt, and when Don was supposed to get home. Lessons that time were never to step on newspapers which were supposed to be soaking up spilled oil, and laughing doesn’t solve the problem. I can attribute my hip replacement to two other times of landing at the bottom of a couple of steps, and strangely enough, my reaction is always laughter! Hysteria perhaps?

Today when I fell, it had nothing to do with where my feet were except that I lost my balance reaching into a container on my closet floor, and by the time I had made a complete 180 my feet were tangled and I sat down hard on another box in the closet, scraping my arm as I went down. Laughing insanely, I managed to fall out of my closet and crawl up on to the bed where I stayed until my self control returned.  No harm done except to my self esteem. What kind of a nut falls over and then laughs about it?

Publishing Pressures

Lilian Jackson Braun was one of my favorite authors with her huge collection of light-hearted mysteries, most involving YumYum and Coco, mystery-solving Siamese cats. She published three best-selling novels, but then dropped from the scene in the 80’s. A New York Times article said, “ Discouraged by the market’s seemingly insatiable demand for sex and violence in mystery novels — her books have little of either — she set the series aside for 18 years. After retiring from The Free Press, she resumed with “The Cat Who Saw Red,” which appeared in 1986.”  

She went on to publish scores of her best-sellers the way she liked to write them.  Bravo!!  I can recommend her books to everyone I know.

At least three other of my favorite mystery authors have over the years become harder and harder for me to read comfortably because they have chosen to survive by introducing more sex and violence into their stories. In July I wrote about the corruption of our language, a problem which is also huge in many novels today. It seems the authors have forgotten how to use real adjectives, verbs, and adverbs in their writing, and just replace them with myriad forms of the f… word. The solutions open to me are 1) skip every third word (oops! Too late, already read the word), 2) choose new authors and hope for the best, or 3) watch more T.V….you’ve got to be kidding!!

Ocean

A few months ago an astounding piece of artwork turned up overnight in a most unlikely place. Under the train bridge on a busy street almost to the coast, a crew of workers posing in city maintenance garb, erected a six by nine foot mosaic of the Virgin of Guadalupe riding on a surfboard. Down the left side in carefully crafted letters it said, “Save Our Ocean.” The artist remained unknown for months as the city council tried to decide what to do about this unauthorized art which became known as The Surfing Madonna.

            Eventually, the artist came forward after the city council decided to take it down, possibly destroying it in the process. They felt it was a type of graffiti and to leave it would set a precedent. Since the artist had installed it, he knew how to get it down, and it is now in storage. Emotions have run rampant over the fate of The Surfing Madonna, endless conversations have been inspired, and we have lost a gorgeous mosaic. There are plans to reinstall it “somewhere.”

            Thankfully, we have not lost the inspiration for the art, as the motto “Save Our Ocean” abounds in the community.  Souvenirs, smaller works of art and photos inspired by the mosaic, postcards, and T-shirts all remind us to care for the Pacific Ocean.

            We feel blessed to be able to get to the edge of the largest body of water on the globe any day we choose, to enjoy the surf as it never disappoints. The constant motion, changing colors, and abundance of life keep us enthralled for hours. We are more clear-headed and focused as the oxygen and negative ions do their wonders. A sense of restored youth and memories of childhood adventures wash over us along with the cold waves. Even small cuts and hangnails heal more quickly in the salty water.

            When the picnic lunch has been eaten (along with a little sand), and the sun begins its descent to the horizon, we think about leaving, but stay until a fiery sunset lights the clouds and sends a glittering beam on the rippling surface of our beloved ocean to the wet sand. Inspired, we head home as the pelicans and gulls do, but look forward to another day of joy along the California coast.

(photo by Deb Capetz)

Coffee Addict

One of my earliest memories is of my mom, dad, brother, and me all sitting in our parents’ bed, reading the comics and drinking coffee. Yes…we were pretty young and drinking coffee. Wow. No wonder I’m an addict.

            As the years went by, one thing remained permanent; coffee; hundreds of cups during college, and surely thousands during my teaching years. When Don and I got married in my senior year at Biola, and we sat in our tiny kitchen after our honeymoon, my new marriage was threatened (not really) by his polite refusal of a cup of coffee! It’s hard to believe, but I cried and said, “My mother always drank coffee with me on Saturday morning!” Oh brother. However, he totally redeemed himself on a short trip in our VW a few months later.. We’d left before sunrise and as we drove over the Grapevine I whined, “I wish I had a cup of coffee.” My new husband reached back behind the seat and brought out a brand-new Thermos full of coffee!

            I actually tried to figure out my intake once, and came up with a shocking twenty-four cups a day. That was a wake-up call and I stopped cold turkey which was stupid because withdrawal was bad with flu-like symptoms, complete with chills and nausea. For several years afterward, I took my trusty Thermos to school, filled with a half leaded and half unleaded brew.

            My love of coffee proved to be dangerous and embarrassing a few times at my elementary school. The biggest mistake was taking a cup back to the classroom with me most days because recess was never long enough, and in the “olden days,” we had to stand duty on the playground during our break. The path to my classroom door had its share of coffee spills, but the real damage was to my desk. Don’t even ask how a whole cup of hot coffee ended up in the drawer! So thankful no child ever suffered from my addiction, not even my own as a distaste for the lovely brown liquid always heralded my three pregnancies and I did without for the first half.

            The brewing process has taken a long and “grinding” road through scores of different makers; aluminum and stainless steel percolators, a press, Mr. Coffee, Melitta, Braun, Krups, a wonderful grind and brew machine, espresso, and most recently, a Keurig. This is the height of lazy but delicious coffee making. Most unorthodox was a sock filled with grounds and prepared with the hottest water ever to flow from a faucet in a Yosemite Lodge room. I just dunked it in the cup in tea bag fashion. Tasty! Of course the sock was clean. Don assured me it wasn’t a new way, but the “cowboy way.” I told you I’m an addict, and they must have been addicts too! Proof of that was coffee in metal cups at the Bar D Ranch in Colorado hot enough to burn your lips off. Speaking of cups, I've amassed at least a hundred different mugs, most which say "Teacher." 

            We learn by example, and both my darling granddaughters like to make and drink “pretend coffee” when they’re at our home. Sometimes they serve on Grandmother’s special coffee table which I made myself from a $10 used end table covered with fifty or so coffee bean labels, displayed under glass. Smart girls. Even their Grandpops has his half a cup a day now!

Litter

Littering

We have two friends who are passionate about cleaning up the litter found along the side of the roads and in other public places. 

            A good friend from Upland walks the length of a long street there, making it his business to pick up the junk other people have so rudely thrown out into the native plants. Now some people might call them “weeds,” but they are lovely in their own way and native to the area. He fills Hefties full of papers, fast food bags, cups, wrappers, and occasionally, larger things like tires, chairs, or used fencing. Kidding about the last three; not that they were on the road, but that our friend picked them up. There was a small couch on the road for a year or so! Seriously though, his efforts do make a difference.

·                                              Another friend has spent hours and hours picking up trash along the coast where he lives. “His” beach has been trashed several times this summer, but he patiently turns the trash cans right side up, picks up the junk, and carts away the trash. He really cares about how California looks! The following is a website he posted recently about youth making a difference in cleaning up litter. pickupamerica.wordpress.com  This is his comment about it:  “They've picked up 118,589 pounds of litter across 1,105.4 miles! Click above to see their story & donate if you want to help in some small way-we did, and it feels right!”

·                                  I’m fairly certain that the people who read this blog are not the piglets who litter our land, but perhaps we all could exert some influence on those who do, especially the children.  

 

Litter

We have two friends who are passionate about cleaning up the litter found along the side of the roads and in other public places. 

            A good friend from Upland walks the length of a long street there, making it his business to pick up the junk other people have so rudely thrown out into the native plants. Now some people might call them “weeds,” but they are lovely in their own way and native to the area. He fills Hefties full of papers, fast food bags, cups, wrappers, and occasionally, larger things like tires, chairs, or used fencing. Kidding about the last three; not that they were on the road, but that our friend picked them up. There was a small couch on the road for a year or so! Seriously though, his efforts do make a difference.

·                                              Another friend has spent hours and hours picking up trash along the coast where he lives. “His” beach has been trashed several times this summer, but he patiently turns the trash cans right side up and refills them. He really cares about how California! The following is a website he posted recently about youth making a difference in cleaning up litter. pickupamerica.wordpress.com  This is his comment about it:  “They've picked up 118,589 pounds of litter across 1,105.4 miles! Click above to see their story & donate if you want to help in some small way-we did, and it feels right!”

·                                  I’m fairly certain that the people who read this blog are not the piglets who litter our land, but perhaps we all could exert some influence on those who do, especially the children.