love thursday 06.30.11 ~ love and compassion

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Dalai Lama

Recently, I read Love For No Reason at All. It was not unlike many other books I've read over the years about lovingkindness and choosing love in all situations. For some reason (or no reason at all), this book got through to me at a new level. Maybe it was the book. Maybe I was just ready.

Whatever.

I have a new practice. When I get frustrated or angry at someone in traffic, for example, I express myself through expletives then I catch myself and say, "And I love you for no reason at all."

Perhaps one day I will go directly there as my default

wednesday will be even better

How do I know? It's massage day.

I.

Am.

So.

Ready.

tuesday has to be better

On the way home from work Monday night my car quit. My computer is still in the shop. My cat is...see the previous posts.

Is it too late to choose door number one?

grateful

(banana with clematis in bloom)

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.

Luther Burbank

I look forward to returning to mundane conversations instead of convalescent reports. However, in the meantime, the convalescent is doing quite well. We are able to space out the pain meds a bit. He spent the afternoon on the bed with me, wrapped in my down comforter. He's eating and drinking, and all bodily functions are "go".

I am grateful. These days, gratitude is top of the list.

What are you grateful for? I'd love to hear.

learning to live with disability

the garden

You know how bad you feel when you didn't know your cat was under your feet and you step on him?

Imagine your cat has only 3 legs, is newly out of surgery, finds moving to be painful, and still isn't very steady.

Sure, I was barefoot and didn't kick him hard. But it didn't take much to knock him off his one good back leg.

Yep. That's how awful I feel.

he's home

Except for the collar and the little bit you can see of his partially shaved tail, you'd never know from this picture the trauma he's been through in the last 48 hours.

We got home about 5:00 on Friday. He got himself out of the crate and proceeded to make his wishes known. He headed straight for the kitty door...which I had locked. Then he tried to hop up on the dining room chair...which I prevented. Next he went to the stairs...which I body-blocked by sitting on the bottom step. He lay down and sized up the situation, looking for the openings...which he found. I intercepted him, but he was not going to be deterred. Finally, I convinced him to let me carry him upstairs.

He is not supposed to run, jump, lick, or climb stairs for two weeks. We'd been home less than an hour and he'd tried them all. On one hand, that its a very good sign. On the other, this could be a long two weeks for the humans.

Once upstairs, he tried to crawl in his favorite cubby to sleep. With the collar and missing one hind wheel, he couldn't navigate getting in and turning around like he ideally does. He lay on the floor by it and slept for almost an hour. In catly fashion, having slept that spot dry, he headed for his next favorite perch--the office chair in my room--and once again, I interfered. Persuading him to let me help, I lifted him up on the chair where he remains almost four hours later.

And we are watching him like a hawk lest he try to get himself down.

He's doing well on pain meds every six hours. We will decrease them as he can tolerate and we have good markers to recognize when pain increases.

Welcome home, HoneyBoy. Thanks, everyone, for your support and prayers.

honeyboy update

HoneyBoy (and all the rest of us) had a hard day. Here's the short version:

He came in the house about 11:30 on Wednesday night with a badly injured back leg. We packed him up and took him to the emergency vet clinic as quickly as we could get there without causing any of us more harm or injury.

The vet on duty (who used to work at my regular vet clinic) said it would take him a couple of hours to clean him up and splint it. We could wait or go home and come back in the morning. We chose to go home...and pretend we could get some sleep. HA!

He called shortly after we got home and said that the leg was not viable. It couldn't be saved because vasculature was too badly damaged and without circulation, the tissue would die.

SO and I picked HoneyBoy up Thursday morning and took him to the regular vet where they did the surgery in the afternoon. He came through the surgery fine. We picked him up at the vet clinic and took him back to the ER to spend the night on IV fluids and pain meds. This morning we'll take him back to the regular clinic to spend the day and after work will bring him home.

We are exhausted. Everyone we talk to or read tells us that cats manage very well with amputation and it is harder on their humans than on them. I hope that is true. I hope it is easier on him.

Thanks for all your prayers. We appreciate continued good wishes for him in his healing.

May you be blessed.

love thursday 06.23.11 ~ honeyboy prayers

Please pray for HoneyBoy. He apparently got hit by a car and is having surgery today. I will let you know more later.

The whole family thanks you.

summer list

Things that made me feel good today:

Freshly shaved legs.

Kitties coming in when called.

Mowing, edging, blowing, and even whacking the ditch.

Dinner on the porch.

Seeing a friend...though brief.

Fixing a computer issue and having the parts on hand to do it.

Finally getting communication from the shop that has my computer and learning that it can be fixed.

Receiving a check in the mail.

Sitting outside at 10 p.m...in the warmth and twilight.

Sun...on the first day of summer.

And you?

summer

The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love.


Sitting Bull

Because some of it has finally arrived here...on this first day of summer! Hallelujah!

almost two

Three days without my computer...

...but I still have my kitties.

another day of this

Ergo (don't you just love that word?), I didn't get much accomplished...including writing. To those of you who gave me prompts or resources for prompts, thank you. I will check out the links and respond to the prompts.

I will be without my computer for a few more days so it may take me a while to get oriented. I am using my Droid and a loaner computer in the meantime and I am a bit discombobulated. (Try writing that word with Swype!)

Have a happy sabbath, Sunday, and/or Father's Day...or Feather's Day, according to Swype.

exhaustion

Like he, I am exhausted. I hope to be striking a similar pose soon.

My computer is in the hospital. Maybe for a week. I will be challenged, using my Droid to post.

Bear with me...please.

prompts

All of you who are writers...

How do you get started?

What motivates you?

I would very much appreciate anything you have to share.

And if you are so inclined (whether you consider yourself a writer or not), I'd love it if you'd give me a prompt. I'll see what I can do with all that are left for me--either as a comment or an email.

I thank you in advance.

carl calleman on the mayan calendar

Some of you have expressed an interest in the Mayan Calendar. This is an interview with Carl Calleman who is an expert on the Calendar. He is the one who has stated that the calendar ends on October 28th of this year. That's right...2011.

The 2012 date, he says, has no meaning and that whatever happens will be a process--not an event.

I think that he is describing evolution--biological and spiritual.

See what you think:

if you eat, you must watch this

I'm on her team...

midnight at the oasis

appearances

(pilot light)

A monk of the Thebaid received from God the grace of ministry, to serve the poor as they had need. In a village once he happened to be holding a love-feast. A woman dressed in rags came up to him to receive her share. When he saw the rags, he meant to take a great handful, so as to give her a big helping: but his hand was kept nearly shut, and he took only a little. Another, well-dressed, woman came up and, seeing her clothes, he meant to take a little handful for her but his hand was opened, and he took a big helping. So he asked about the women, and found that the well-dressed woman had been a lady who had sunk to poverty and still dressed well because she felt that she had a standard to maintain for her family. But the other had put on rags so that she would receive more.

The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks

The pilot light on the fireplace puts out plenty of warmth for a furry orange-ness on a rainy day. He never worries about what to wear.

security

Security is mostly a superstition.

It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller

Security is a myth. Beauty is reality.

quality and equality

Quality is good for ice cream. Equality is good for the soul.

Ben & Jerry

solutions

Peace is not just the mere absence of violence or disturbance. It's when there is a possibility of conflict, but you deliberately avoid violence and adopt methods to solve the problem through peaceful means. That is real peace.

Dalai Lama

love thursday 06.09.11 ~ love.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Theresa

thank you

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart

message of peace

guitar players

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

Leopold Stokowski

I know this is the wrong response, to the following video--but I may never pick up my guitar again....

merton

"…for nonviolence seeks to 'win' not by destroying or even by humiliating the adversary, but by convincing [the adversary] that there is a higher and more certain common good than can be attained by bombs and blood. Nonviolence, ideally speaking, does not try to overcome the adversary by winning over [them], but to turn [them] from an adversary into a collaborator by winning [them] over."

Thomas Merton

from Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice

borrowed planet

And there’s something else that always irritates me. There’s a saying, “We haven’t inherited this planet from our parents, we’ve borrowed it from our children.” When you borrow, you plan to pay back. We’ve been stealing and stealing and stealing. And it’s about time we got together and started paying back.

Jane Goodall

jane v jane

(zippy, not cheetah)

I was so jealous of that other wimpy Jane. I knew I would have been a better mate for Tarzan myself. I was jealous!

Jane Goodall

I rather wanted to be Cheetah, myself. Or Tarzan--so I could have Cheetah for my own chimp. That's probably how I came to want Zippy and love him so much.

How about you? Who did you want to be?

love thursday 06.02.11 ~ love the difference

Here's the article.

That's right love the difference.

And you know what? We're all different.

Truth.

higher order

(black bamboo shoots)

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

Wendell Berry

I've been ruing the fact that I am driven by biology--somewhat like the rats and roaches. So much is required to keep the form working.

Like eating. I love food--don't get me wrong. But it takes a lot of time to find food, prepare, and eat it. Why can't we just eat once a week? Or even once a day....

Showers--I mean, really. Some days I just don't even want to get wet.

Sleep? Mini death every night? And theoretically it takes up 1/3 of your life.

But Justice and Mercy--those are always welcome and always in season. Surely. Goodness, too.