Sunrise

just near the solstice and the sun comes up so early. I've been on night patrol with Prussia.

I should explain. I cancelled her appointment with the vet reaper way back when, and miraculously, she rebounded, put weight and spunk back on and has been enjoying life greatly. 

Until two days ago when she started to get weak in the legs, walk like a drunkard then finally lose the use of her legs at all. 

I have been blessed to be able to work from home so I can be near her. Nights I nap beside her, monitoring her. Bringing the food and water dishes to her face to take from. 

For now, I'm not taking her to the vet. She is resting and I pray that I can keep her comfortable until that final rest comes. That being said, I will of course bring her to the vet if she shows any sign of pain. 

For now, it's watching the sunrises together. 

classic

drove my friend out to jersey to pick up a motorcycle he bought off craigslist. the guy was also selling this 1967 mercury. his garage stuffed to the gills with love reminded me of my dad's. a happy feeling. 

on my doorstep

an unusually humane june, it seems. The rain comes frequently and it's cool. The leaves still feel tender, new on the trees. 

signs of summer

saturday at mc golrick park. the kids swarmed around the water fountain like flies, filling their balloons and shrieking with the joy of summertime.

this is really hard

i don't write anymore.  writing is something i have done since i was a little girl to clear my head, to keep me sane.  to organize my thoughts and madness.  and i just don't afford myself the time, therefore the peace for it anymore.
and now i feel myself desperately reaching for the keys, desperately reaching for some kind of peace.

she's having a really good day today.  i woke up for the third morning on the kitchen floor.  camped out on a thermarest beside her litter box and the butterfly chair stacked high with assorted towels and blankets, all of which bare evidence of her growing senility and discomfort, i.e urine.  i call her the princess and the pea and realize it's a doubly appropriate moniker--the princess and the pee, more like.
so yes, she hopped over me on those vet-shaved legs that days ago hooked up to an iv, on those legs that wobble with each step, and she made a bee-line to her food.  the same lump of food has sat on her dish neglected and rejected for five days.  she looked at it, and at me as if to let me know that though this food was disgusting and old, she was so hungry she would eat it.  I rushed for the fresh can and miraculously, she ate.

she ate.

this is really messing me up.  i've taken the fact that she has stopped voluntarily eating as a sign that she has thrown in the towel--that she wants to die.  i have force fed syringes of watered down nasty cat food into her tightly clamped jaws, each drop successfully ingested matched by smelly droplets landing on my vegetarian hands.  we've infused her with fluid injections twice a day to try to replace the function of her failed kidneys.  i have comforted myself in the knowledge that her body and mind have stopped trying survive, therefore i've told myself that euthanasia is the only humane thing to do.  but now she sits on my lap after having devoured her second meal of the day and i shake my head and wonder how i can make the decision to end the life of she who has been my baby for fourteen years when she is voraciously sopping up the pungent friskies gravy.  it's really messing with my head.

at key food this morning i picked out the smelliest fish flavored wet food i could find.  i started to stock about 10 cans and realized i only needed one or maybe two tops.  because at four pm tomorrow the vet is coming to our house to give her the fatal injection.  it's nice that we can do that at home, but nevertheless i'm freaking about about it.  i lost it in the cat food aisle at key food.  i pulled the leopard print sunglasses from my head to my eyes and jade hugged me tightly and i thanked my lucky stars for him.

he who is allergic to cats and itches every night as he falls to sleep because of prussia.  he who has come to the vet with me every time and taken over when i've started to pass out or sob.  he who has been the nurse and administered the needles while i've held her down, queasy with my eyes closed.  he who has handed over his debit card without hesitation when the bill totals hundreds every time.  he who will take me to the movies after the vet leaves tomorrow so i can try to take my mind from the pain, or at least cry in the dark.

i realize i'm being very melodramatic.  i realize i am not really a mother and prussia is not my child.  but since i've never been there, it seems an awful lot like that.

this is really hard.


this morning you tube recommended i listen to this song.  it's more uncanny than knowing what kind of shoes to advertise to me...

driggs avenue

oh yeah, i'll show you a bike load.

i will admit that riding a bicycle to costco sounds at best ill-advised, at worst, just plain stupid.  hourly zipcars litter every new condo complex in this land of newly built towers and car service van drivers loiter the exit doors of the warehouse behemoth like spiders ready to snare the vehicle-less brooklynites into their web of convenience.  

but i was only making the visit for one item.  one measly item!  a bike would do for one item, i told myself.  to this, you shake your head again and think me ridiculous to make the 8 mile bike ride with a shopping list that  contained only one item.  but when 50 tablets of that item cost $25 at rite-aid and 180 of them cost $11 at costco, i think you know where the starving artist is heading.  

the simple problem with costco is that it's impossible not be be bombarded with things you suddenly NEED to buy, even when you're wearing imaginary blinders against this likely pitfall.  the dirt cheap allergy medicine for jade was a no-brainer, and no problem.  same with the two and a half pound bag of coffee.  i had a canvas bag. 

but then IT caught my eye.  the necessary and completely stupid thing i told myself, rather, screamed  at myself that i HAD to have.  it was a plastic filing bin for $7.69.  only hours earlier i had contemplated making the ride to staples to pick up this very thing that i actually did need for more than double the price.  i had vetoed this earlier trip for the ridiculous reason that i had only just heard the night before of staples co-founder, Tom Stemberg, campaigning for Mitt Romney.  now i realize this is a ridiculous trap.  i understand that the chances that  the owner of costco isn't some evil denizen of the underworld are slim.  but having those words fresh in my mind, i could not, with a stable stomach, walk through the automatic doors into the super-chilled aisles of staples that day.  plus, how would i get the plastic bin home on my bike?  

of course, that last quandary still held true at costco, only worse, considering staples sits half a mile from my apartment, and costco, 8 times as far.  but did that stop me?  no!  i was in the COSTCO BRAIN.  must have!  such a deal!  

so i stood at customer service for 25 minutes while 8 different supervisors searched for string, or rather, opened and slammed the same drawer, shaking their head with incredulity and glaring at my bike helmet.  The ninth finally found it (naturally, a costco sized box of it) sitting on the floor beside all of their feet.  

so i set to work tying knots like i was the boss.  

as i pedaled home over the pulaski bridge, hands forced down to the full speed racer posture, my precious plastic booty forcing my actual booty to barely balance on the front tip of my seat, other riders laughed at me.  i felt ridiculous and a little tough at the same time.  

then i remembered the men and women i witnessed DAILY in shanghai, hauling loads like this one i saw outside of a fish market--meaning, some of those boxes have ice in them.  and fish aren't too light either:  

 

and i was truly humbled and felt ridiculous for thinking i'd pulled off some great feat of engineering.

hang it up.

just swam my last outdoor adult swim for the summer.  with much sadness i retire this trusty and bedraggled season pass and give thanks to the city of new york parks & recreation department, who gave me a beautiful summer, for free.  

confessions from a failed guppy

i've been writing entries to this feature in my blog for two years.  you just don't know it because i do it in my head while i'm swimming.  i guess i don't have the app yet that instantly translates thoughts into blog posts.  but i'm sure they're working on it!

nevertheless, the big revelation of this morning's swim is that i've been counting my distance incorrectly.  which in this case means that i've swam twice as far as I thought I had!  so instead of averaging a quarter mile a day, which sounds pretty pathetic, i've actually be swimming about 2/3 of a mile a day!  nice one, guppy!   can i pat myself on the back for a second here after a summer of committed daily swimming?  i think yes.

so that means that in the big lap contest that i was too shy to enter, i haven't come so far from missing the final prize--a mccarren pool early bird swim champ tshirt--which would require swimming 30 miles total.  i'm only missing the mark by a little, coming in at just under 25 miles!  now i wish i had signed up, because knowing that, i would have pushed myself harder.

next year, the t shirt is mine!  

what poodles skirts and 900 old cars mean to me.

sometimes I joke that I grew up in the 1950's as well as the 1980's, on account of my dad being the president of the redwood empire classic chevy club.  the club met once a month at Round Table Pizza, which was the big deal dining opportunity.  they had a salad bar there.  and yes, that's the kind of kid that i was.  i was more excited about the glamourous salad bar than the pizza.

on weekends i donned a red felt poodle skirt held up by the most boisterous petticoat my mama could find and a high ponytail for the 'chevy runs', driving all over california in a long line of sometimes breaking down classic cars, turning people's heads.  In parades my sisters and I wore roller skates and skated around the car with food trays.  my dad had us convinced that his 1956 chevy's antenna only picked up the oldies station.

naturally, there was no air conditioning.  this wasn't ever really an issue in sonoma county, land of the mild.  it was more of an issue on long trips, like when we drove down to flagstaff arizona one august for a convention in my dad's 1956 red and white bel air 9-passenger wagon.  let's see, there was dad, amy, abbie, our french exchange student marie-claude, naomi, and me.  that only made for two people per bench seat--practical luxury.  until you take into account that naomi and i, being the youngest, were always relegated to the back third seat.  the one with no windows and interestingly, no carpet on the red painted metal floor.  this was the trip where i first saw a sky full of summer lightning (astounding!).   this was the trip where i first learned the temperature could break one hundred (and beyond!  all the way to 125 through the appropriately named death valley).  and this was the trip where i learned you'd better damn well pick up your feet and sit indian style (oh wait, that's not pc anymore, right?  criss cross apple sauce?), if you didn't want to get any more car burns on your eight year old spider legs.  that counted for the sides of the car too,  where you'd better not let the probable interior temperature of 150 degrees lull you into a sweaty sleep, lest you accidentally slide up against the unopenable window and sizzling metal wheel well.  and by the way, complaints?  not allowed.

clearly, the chevy club functions were a huge part of my childhood, so i was happy to be home for my dad's annual extravaganza, in which 900 plus classic cars overtook downtown santa rosa.  and to share the madness with jade.

behold.
click on the link below to see the complete flickr set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18130457@N07/sets/72157630362928214/