Athena

The newest member of the zoo is a cute little kitten that we named Athena. It's a big name for such a little cat, but it fits her because Athena was the Goddess of War.
My mom, God love her, likes to sugar-coat. When she asked us to take this sweet little kitten that had wandered up to their barn, we asked her if she was friendly.
"Oh, yes. She comes right up and brushes up against me and talks all the time. She's so sweet," she said.
This was great! We already had two cats: Rocket and Abbie. Rocket is very playful -- overly playful. My son used to have scratch marks all over his hands from the cat attacking him. The cat is not scared of anything, and he sits lovingly on our laps. But I always feel like I need to warn people who want to pet him, "He bites." And if it is a neighbor kid who is getting especially affectionate, I sometimes add, "He'll rip off your arm and use it as a toothpick, so be careful." That usually gives them a suitable amount of caution. Abbie, the other cat, is not really even our pet. We call her "The Ghost Cat." We only see her when she wants to eat. Even then, if she sees one of us, she jets out of there like someone just lit her tail on fire. Anyway, we were looking forward to a sweet, friendly cat that didn't make us feel like we were taking our lives into our hands every time we touched her.
Athena is a beautiful cat. When we first saw her, we were so excited. She was cowering in the corner of her cage that my parents had transported her in. We knew she was a little scared from the trip to our house, so we just figured her eagerly-awaited friendliness would become apparent. She growled at us, but we knew this was normal behavior for a stressed cat. We just opened the door to allow her come out whenever she was ready -- which we were certain would be soon, of course, because she was so friendly!
Well, she got out of her cage and found her food bowl. But she was still growling. My mom said, "Oh, isn't that cute. She's talking."
"Mom, she's growling," I said.
"Oh, I don't think that's growling. She makes this cute little noise all the time. I think she's just talking."
I love my mom. She has such an optimistic point of view.
Athena has lived with us for a month now. She is still "talking." Matter of fact, she pretty much "talks" all the time. She mixes it in with a purr now and then, but she even growls while she's eating (it sounds like a low, guttural "Nom, nom, nom, nom.") She is friendly, though, while she growls. And she's friendly while she terrorizes our other cats. And she's friendly while she marks her territory on our clean clothes and on my husband's computer bag. Yes, she's friendly.
But darn it, she's a cute cat. And she is getting better. Matter of fact, she was just sitting on my lap. You know, maybe she really is talking. :)

Silver Linings

My son's favorite saying is "Where there are black clouds, there are silver linings." It is a line from a Dream Theater song. What a great way to look at life. It's not always easy to see life this way, but I'm going to try right here to do it.

Let me start with my last posting. Sweet Stephanie passed away. I suppose the silver lining there is that she is in a better place, probably looking down and feeling sorry for us lowly earthlings. And her sweet son is living the ultimate three-year-old boy life. He lives out in the country, catching bugs and going fishing. He lives with his Granny and Paw Paw. He has starting sleeping in his underwear -- "Cause that's what Paw Paw does." Everytime I see him he has a smile on his face.

So after that, my husband got diagnosed with colon cancer. Here I am, four kids, two cats, a dog, a chinchilla, and a snake, thinking of how terrified I am of the "C word" in my wonderful young husband. Okay, silver lining. My husband went in early! They caught the cancer in its early stages and they were able to surgically remove it all -- no chemo necessary. Not only that, but my husband got a nice long vacation with his very own personal nurse (yours truly) waiting on him hand and foot.

We had scheduled a family vacation to South Padre Island to visit relatives and play on the beach. We got my husband's diagnosis within a week of our departure date. We decided to just go. Life is too short (don't we know it!). The old mini van with over 100,000 miles on it was making this high-pitched squealing sound (and I was pretty sure that no one had hidden a baby pig in the car -- it was a possibility). I decided to take it in to get it fixed before embarking on the ten hour drive to south Texas. Lo and behold -- the squeal was a fan belt, but the bigger problem was the leaking water pump. Eeek! So thousands of dollars later, the squeal is gone. Silver lining? We got our car fixed before we broke down on the lonely stretch of nothingness (except for hungry vultures) between Kingsville and Harlingen. And there wasn't a pig living in the trunk of my car.

Okay, so we have the van loaded up and ready to leave for the beach when my son comes downstairs and says (in that oh-so-sweet teenage way), "Who used all the hot water?" Grrr. Well, no one had used all the hot water. All the hot water was slowly leaking out of our water heater and onto the garage floor. We didn't have time to worry about this -- we had a beach waiting for us! So we turned off the water heater and left, saving the thousand dollar water heater replacement for when we got back. Silver lining? We caught it before we left. Coming home to a flooded garage and a million dollar water bill would have been a really dark cloud. The silver lining might have been pretty difficult to find there.

We had a wonderful time on the beach -- beautiful weather, good food, fun times with family. That is, beautiful weather until Hurricane Alex hit. We were staying on the tenth floor of a condo and we could feel the building swaying with the hurricane's force. We got up early on the day we were planning to leave and high-tailed it out of there, getting soaked all the way down to our newly-fixed car. We drove across the only bridge connecting the island with the mainland, the rain coming down like a river on our windshield and the wind threatening to whisk our van off of the narrow road. Silver lining? The city closed the bridge shortly after we left -- we would have been stranded on the island. And the other silver lining was that I got to be in the middle of a hurricane!! How fun was that? Yes, I'm one of those crazy people who goes outside to look for the tornado when the sirens go off instead of hiding in the bathtub. Maybe I could have my own storm chasing show -- "Blog in the Blender." Nah.

So see? It's not so hard to find those silver linings in the dark clouds. I could tell you even more stories, but I'll leave you with this encouraging thought: due to my husband's illness and an unfortunate turn of scheduling (I was supposed to work on my second favorite holiday -- Halloween!), I have retired from my job and I will be a fulltime caretaker of the zoo (we're getting another kitten!) and writer. I can tell you're bowled over with delight. Keep looking for those silver linings, my friends!

Death

I have a friend who is so close to me that I call her my cousin. Her sister died a few days ago – she was 35. She was in good health, the single mom of a three-year-old boy. She had just started seeing a man that she really liked.

People say that life is fragile. After helping dozens of babies into this world, watching how hard it is to make that big transition from mommy’s perfect world to our polluted, loud, angry world where they actually have to breathe, and watching the babies do it successfully and well (sometimes against all odds), I realize that life is not fragile. There are people who even wish that life were not so un-fragile. Life is not fragile, it is capricious.

Just when we think we have it all figured out, we have a neat and orderly plan for our lives, something changes and all of our dominoes topple. Sometimes the change is good, like news of a new baby; sometimes the change is bad, like a cancer diagnosis or a sudden death. No matter what it is, it completely changes our lives. Sometimes, it can even be one thing that somebody says to us that changes everything.

After a sudden change in my life, I received the sage tongue-in-cheek advice: “Man plans and God laughs.” Is this truly the case? Is God looking down on us, throwing things at us like He allows in the story of Job, then laughing? Are we here for His entertainment? I have read books that say that our purpose on this earth is to bring people to God. As a good little Christian girl, I have really tried to follow this. But even I have to question. Our entire purpose on this earth is to create worshippers of God? Is our God so needy? So lonesome? I'm not questioning the existence of God. Using all of my mere human arrogance, I am questioning His motives.

If God really wants people to come to Him, He ought to give Christians great lives. It would be simple – if I follow God, I will have a simply good life. I’m not saying that we would be all rich and never have things like death (after long, full lives) in our lives. I’m just saying that little three-year-olds would not end up without moms, and Christians would not get their luggage lost in the airport.

I do believe that my friend’s sister is in heaven, and that I will be in heaven as well some day. But after watching my friend and her family suffer, and her sister’s little son tell my friend, “I don’t have a mommy anymore,” I do have to stop and ask, “Why?” And I want to know where my God is that loves us so much that he gave His only son.

Beauty Tip of the Month

Here is my beauty tip of the month, or week, or day, or whenever I decide to write a new one:

Emu Oil!!

Yes, crazy, but true. A friend of mine with beautiful skin told me to try it. Sure enough, I really have noticed a difference in my skin tone. I buy mine from www.willowgroveranch.com/ . It is an emu farm in Texas that does not add anything funky to its emu oil. And, the oil doesn't smell bad (that was my first question too).

Gardening

I am basically a city girl with a country heart. In every house that I have lived for the last 20 years, I have planted a garden. I have grown okra, pumpkins, tomatoes, watermelons, carrots -- lots of things. Unfortunately though, I am not an expert gardener by any stretch of the imagination.

In my first garden, I planted pumpkins because someone gave me some free seeds. I had vines at least 20 feet long crawling all over yard. Out of all ten of those vines, I got one pumpkin. I tried pumpkins again two years ago, and got vines everywhere, but not even one pumpkin.

My second garden wasn't even in my yard. I asked my neighbor if I could use their flower bed and I planted a bunch of vegetables --no vines this time. It did okay until the aphids attacked. Oh, and out of five bell pepper plants, I think I got two peppers. Some mysterious herbivore ate the rest of them.

I have to tell you before I describe my latest efforts at gardening, that I like to grow my plants from seeds. It's kind of like baking a cake from scratch. It makes me feel like I'm a real gardener. I told my husband that I was going to plant a garden. I have found that the best way to get him to help me is to just start doing it myself. I drew a picture of the garden and showed him where I was going to put it. Then I told him I was going to rent a roto-tiller and dig up the yard :-). Next thing I knew, he was out there with a shovel, turning over the soil and making a beautiful garden for me -- what a great guy.

I planted my seeds in perfect rows and even put little labels on the ends of the rows. I figured all I needed to do now was wait, and I would be eating delicious, fresh vegetables in no time.

Part of this country-girl heart of mine makes me adopt pets. I really should be living out in the country. I had just adopted a puppy when I planted my garden. She was the latest addition to a family (at that time) of three kids, three cats, and probably a rodent or two. I'm not sure if I had the fish then or not. My sweet, adorable puppy was a digger. And she got into my garden and scattered my perfectly placed seeds all over the place. I now had no idea where any of the plants were, or even what plants they were. I spent weeks nurturing a tiny little seedling that turned out to be a weed. Meanwhile, I had plucked out most of my carrot seedlings, thinking they were weeds.

This year, I have planted okra, peppers, potatoes (including blue ones!), cilantro, parsley, tomatoes, yellow squash, sunflowers, and cucumbers. I have an out-of-control raspberry section (in the back of the picture) that has threatened to take over the entire yard. My threats have not scared it. Not even the rabbits have scared it. Maybe I'll sic the dog on it.

So far, something is eating the potatoes, the peppers, and the cucumbers. I stole a couple of lady bugs from my five-year-old's lady bug collection (I believe I took Lotsaspots and Baby) and put them in the garden. I will be in big trouble when my daughter realizes they are missing. Good thing she can't read yet.

I see a rabbit in the yard, so I better go defend my territory. Happy gardening!

The Zoo is Open

So, here I sit, surrounded by my four kids and five neighbor kids, getting very helpful advice on how to set up my blog. My suggestions are met with lots of eyerolling, but of course, their suggestions are all good... ;)

I am going to fill this blog with lots of random funniness and extremely useful *cough* ideas. Come back soon to see the latest additions to the zoo!