Monday Cat Blogging

 

Sitting With Cicadas

Monday Cat Blogging

Keep Your Hands Off of My Stack

What's worse than somebody breaking into your house and stealing some of your stuff? When it's one of your neighbors doing the stealing.

I foolishly left my garage door open for a period of time and when I went to close it, discovered that my bicycle and several tools were missing. Several things scattered on the floor as if I might have interupted the scumbags work. I peek outside and see my neighbor trotting across the street into his house....then I see him peering out the window.

I know he did it. Nothing I can really do about it. The police in this city are no help at all when it comes to stuff like this. I can't even get them to come over which would at least shake my neighbor a bit and maybe keep him away from my house in the future. I'm not going over to his house to confront him and risk getting a bullet just for a bicycle.

I'm just going to take the loss..which pisses me off. Not because some stuff was stolen, but the idea of other people stealing stuff. I work hard for what I have. It angers me that there are people who don't want to do the same.

Priorities of Living

Imagine that you lived tens of thousands of years ago. You're strolling along the savanna and you find yourself face to face with the little kitty pictured above. Would you be concerned about what you might have for dinner...or would you be more concerned what the tiger is wanting for dinner?

Would you care about your weight? Your looks? If you had money? What your friends think about you?

Would you be depressed? Would you mope about your rotten luck? Would you tell yourself that you don't want to live anymore and moan to everybody you know to see if they would rescue you..to show that they care?

The human instinct would be an overpowering urge to survive and to run like hell. Would you wait for somebody to make the cat go away, or would you do something about the situation yourself?

In a society that provides for all of our needs...whining is a luxury.

But like most luxuries...it's not very practical or useful.

Gas Shortage?

Protein shakes are wonderful. I find them a great way to have a quick meal without a lot of muss and fuss, they're relatively cheap, and good for me. This is all opposed to my old habit of grabbing some greasy burger or enjoying fine dining at Taco Hell. I use Myoplex vanilla flavor, throw in some fruit, blend it together and I've got myself a satisfying meal with all the needed nutrients for around 300 calories.

The only drawback is that the protein powder tends to produce a bit of gas. Combine that with the chicken, refried bean, and jalapeno burritos I had with another meal that day and.....





I'll be needing to re-tile the bathroom.

and my cat is still in hiding.

Round and Round and Getting Rounder

There is a vicious little cycle that I go through that I'm sure a lot of people experience. I decide "this is it...I'm going to do something about my weight...I'm going to hit the gym and get fit".

And I do. I go all out. Push my body to the limits and beyond.

And pay for it the next day. And the day after. And the next.

And wind up back where I started.... waiting for the next decision to do something about my weight.

On Leaving the World a Better Place

"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." ~ Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Quit Day

Monday Cat Blogging

I Finally Got Wood

The biggest obstacle in my quest for attaining health and fitness is not my age....it's this 35+ year smoking habit. Habit doesn't really describe it, it's an addiction. I have a habit of waking up early. It is my habit to check my emails and phone messages when I enter my office in the morning. I cultivate the habit of eating with my mouth closed and not belching when I dine around other people. My wife is trying to get me to break the habit of leaving my underwear on the floor.

An addiction is the continuation of an action that causes you harm in spite (and this is the important part) of the knowledge that it is causing harm and the desire not to engage in the behavior. That fits my experience with smoking to a tee. I know it's bad for me. I know it will kill me...and not in a pleasant way either. I continue to smoke. I quit for awhile. I relapse. I quit. I relapse. Over and over and over again.

A problem that I have is that I can't really go cold turkey off of nicotine. That would be the best way to lick this addiction. I mean, that's what works with alcohol, heroin, or meth addictions....you stop taking the drug...period. That's all fine and dandy if you are in a closed and controlled environment for 28 days or so. I have to continue with my life. I have to go to work. I also have to function. So I put on nicotine patches that give me just enough of the drug to be able to concentrate on my job and not bite some random person's head off during the day. The bonus of the patch is that it keeps me from lighting up a cigarette while I have the thing on. If I smoke anytime within eight hours or so from taking off the patch...I get sick as a dog. So, even when I get intense cravings, I'm pretty much stuck with not smoking for several hours. Unfortunately, this usually leads me to stop putting on a new patch in the morning just in case I may want a cigarette during the day. I know..it's crazy...but this is how addiction screws with your thinking process. Once I don't put on the patch, it's all over and I'm back to two packs a day like I never quit.

I need something for those brief yet intense urges to light up a cigarette. Food works great, but I can't eat all day and it's mostly impractical to carry around munchies everywhere I go. I need something intense to counteract the oral need to stick a burning weed into my mouth.

That's when I thought of cinnamon toothpicks. I searched high and low for some but they seem to be a fairly rare item these days. I looked for cinnamon oil but it seems like it's some kind of controlled substance and is harder to find than crack at an Amish barn raising party. I was about to give up and resign myself to chewing gum or something when I found the beauties pictured above in my local health food store. At $4 a pack they are pricey but still less than a pack of cigarettes.

I'll see if they will work and I can at long last leave this nasty habit behind me.

Grace Under Pressure

I feel good today. I feel good because I've come to the startling realization that, while I may not be physically in the best shape, I'm pretty strong with my mental health.

I recently changed duties at my job. The position that I had before for several years went to another....who left. Then to another who is desperately wanting to leave it because of the stress involved. It is a stressful job. Continuous crisis events, dealing with a wide range of people most of which are experiencing significant life crisis of their own. A thousand details. Countless decisions every day all day...some of which can be disastrous if the wrong choice is made.

It's a meat grinder; and I did it for several years. It was a difficult job but I made it look easy. I thrived on the pressure. I flourished being in charge. I walked showing grace under the type of pressure that appears to make most people crumble. I learned to let the turmoils of the job flow around me rather than batter me down to the ground. Like the trees that grew in my childhood home in West Texas...constantly blown by the wind and sand without giving into it's unrelenting force.

Now; however, I'm in a much calmer environment.

Yet I often feel like a misshapen tree in a sheltered forest. I miss the windstorms.

Safe Sex

Most of us know all about the birds and the bees. For the bee's part, going from flower to flower and collecting nectar is an integral part of reproduction for many plants. The bee gets a little dab of nectar and the flower gobs on some pollen to the bees knees. The bee flies to another flower for another sip of nectar, the pollen lands on the other flower and violins play.

The bees don't do this for the flowers sex lives. They do it for the nectar, so they can bring it back to their hive, throw it up, and make honey. Bees have a reputation of being busy because they have to spend all day going from flower to flower, hundreds of them, to collect enough nectar for their honey production. Given a choice, bees will be just as lazy as any creature and what creature doesn't love an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I put up a feeder right after I spotted a hummingbird in my yard. My hopes were that I might attract a few but the only things feeding on my feeder are these dang bees. I estimate that they are going through about a pint a week. I'm a little afraid to stop re-filling it. You know how sugar junkies can be went you cut them off.

It's okay, I guess. I like bees too. It would be interesting to find out what the honey they are making will taste like. The syrup smells somewhat like maple syrup and tastes like grape kool-aid. I wonder if the honey will be bright red?

The down side is that I have a yard full of frustrated flowers.

Long Week

Monday Cat Blogging

Viva la Vida

This is a difficult post. Difficult for me, that is, because I've a great many emotions churning and I'm not sure that I can make much sense out of them with words.

but here goes....

Last month, my father suffered a heart attack. It was pretty bad and he ended up getting a triple by-pass. He is still in intensive care but appears to be heading for a good recovery. He was lucky; he received excellent medical care and my father is also pretty tough for a man his age.

Still...wow....seeing him laying in a hospital bed...I believe it was the first time in my life that I've ever seen him vulnerable. He had tubes going into every orifice in his body and they even made a few new ones to accommodate more. Heavily sedated with only brief flashes of confused consciousness mixed with pain. Nothing to do but watch and wait. The thought banging against my rapidly dwindling sense of denial....he could die.

Of course, everybody dies. I know that. It's a given expectation that I would outlive my parents just as I assume that my children will long outlive me. Yet, I didn't expect my father to come so near to death. Not yet. I talked with him just a few days prior. He would always be there. Though he is in his seventies...surely his body would keep on plugging away for many more years.

And that is when I had another thought as I sit here several hundreds of miles away waiting daily for news of any progress.

I am my father's son.

This may be a preview of me if I don't change some aspects of my lifestyle. Certainly my body will age and parts will break down. Eventually there will come a time when nothing more is able to be fixed and I will die. The scary thing to think about is - do I want it to happen in twenty or thirty years, or next year?

I may yet have a choice.

My Dad....he still teaches me stuff.

Life Happens

Okay...I know it's been awhile since I've written, or updated on my weight loss, or even posted a cat photo. Among the usual little daily things that shift one's focus there comes along truly major incidents that quickly become much higher priorities. I'm fine. Somebody very important in my life isn't though, and most of my emotional energy is taken up with thoughts and feelings about him.

I thought of writing about it and I probably will, someday...but not today.

Moving Man

So....I have this friend who gets himself a new refrigerator and he asks me if I might want his old one. It's a bit larger than mine and several years newer so I sez "sure, why not?" My fridge is starting to see it's last days and when it kicks on, sounds like it's about to launch into space or something. The thing actually wakes me up in the middle of the night thinking that somebody is trying to break into my house.

Almost new refrigerator for nothing to replace my clunker? A no-brainer!

So....I went to the local U-haul it yerself place and rented a dolly. Then I went home and unloaded all the food from my fridge and crammed it into every ice chest and lunch cooler I could find. Strapped up the fridge and tried to find a door it would fit though.

Door to the garage...nope. Back door...not a chance. That left me with no choice but to push the thing through my living room and out the front door; after moving the sofa, then the TV, then the chairs, then the sofa again, then the TV, then the shelves of books, and the damn sofa again. I must also mention that when you unplug a fridge, it starts to leak really gross looking water that I managed to spread all over my living room carpet.

But that's okay because I finally have the fridge at the door with the delightful discovery that the frame is about 1/4 inch too small.

"Well shucks", I thought to myself (not really but my mom reads this blog), "it had to come into the house somehow". So I fiddled around and managed to take the door handles off the fridge, push it through the front door, drag it across my lawn, and put it in my garage for the time being. Hopped in my trusty pickup and drove across town to my friend's house, picked up his old fridge, loaded on my pickup, drove back home and wrestled it into my kitchen. My friend helped me with this last part and it was much easier. He also helped me load up my old fridge so that I could drive it over to a local charity to donate for somebody that may get some more use out of it. Driving slow because it was a bit wobbly in the pickup bed and the last thing I wanted to do was lose a Frigidaire on the freeway. Arrived at the charity warehouse and unloaded....five minutes before they were about to close.

This took ALL day. It was also a nice summer day of about 100 degrees with a humidity percentage not much less. The heat index was 107.

I definitely got my exercise in today.

Monday Cat Blogging

Father's Day

"Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name." ~William Wordsworth