Mommy Cat

Last fall I fostered kittens, two at a time, until they weighed in at whatever weight they need to be to get spayed/neutered, and then put up for adoption, or they drove me crazy,

whichever came first.

This year we appear to have licked the stray cat problem here in Charleston County; there just haven't been baby kitties available to foster.

I called from time to time, and was told at one point that all they had available was a mom/litter combo.  This initially freaked me out -- how could I possibly know how to take care of a mom and her babes?  And then -- duh -- I realized that there would be far less for me to do than with a pair of kitties, because mom would be doing all the work.


So now I have a mom and three babes.  The babes told me to call them Yakko, Wacko and Dot, and mom has always just been Mom or Mommy.  She is amazing.  When the babes were a week and a half old, she was all over them, but in the calmest way you could imagine.


For example, after a day or two living in the bottom half of fairly spacious carrier, they began to wander.  As one of them got a little too close to the edge of the carrier and the beginning of the real world, Mom, without hardly moving a muscle, put her paw right over that little thing, stopping her with a little hug.


Mom enjoys her food, too; not the dry food, but the canned food. The only time she ever shows real animation is around mealtime. Confident the kitties could live without her for the couple of minutes it took to scarf down a meal, she would just gently push them out of the way and make for the dinner bowl.  But she didn't let it bother her if they were hungry, too.This was the only time the kitties didn't come first.  Even so, it didn't matter what she was up to, if they came up to her and started searching for a nipple, she'd plop right over on her side and let them have at her.
   

Multitasking

Now that they are a couple of weeks older, I have seen them walk right over her to get to their meal.  Including walking over her head.  She's as calm as ever; I'm sure whatever they do, she is just sighing and thinking, proudly, "kids".


Most amazing, is that they are now interested in her food bowl, and it's perfectly all right with her.  She'll let them nudge their way in at mealtimes, and even walk away for awhile, till they're done tasting.


Now that they are more independent, she jumps up on a shelf to sleep, not too far, just far enough that she can watch them learn to be independent and still keep an eye on them, in case they need her.

Just like any good mom would do.

Things Fall Apart

A couple of months ago, during Wimbledon, my television satellite went out after a storm, of course on a Saturday.  Direct TV was nice enough to offer to send a repair person out at no charge the very next business day, but I had to decline, because I had to work that day, and there was no getting out of it.  So I waited till Thursday and it was quickly repaired.  Little did I know that a couple of weeks later, the black cloud would return with a vengeance.

In the past, say, month, these things have broken:

The spin cycle of my washing machine --  This was the start of the avalanche, and turns out not to have been as bad as I thought – it actually does stop when it is supposed to, just not when I lift the lid.  Like the satellite – and the crocus -- I think this was just a harbinger of things to come.

The pool pump – This was my own fault; I should never have gone on vacation and left it.  After 6 weeks with 2 days of rain separating it, and apparently no rain the ten days I was away, the water level was hazardously low, and the pump badly needed backwashing.  It was raining when I got home, however, so I agonized over whether to turn the pump off in order to backwash, as I have a super swift electrical system that prevents the pump from starting when it's wet.  This is like the overkill at the airport, you know, the body searches that prevent terrorist attacks.  Anyway, to my surprise it started back up, pool got backwashed, started up again.

But the next day, after the bad weather had passed, the power in the area flickered a few times, as it tends to do on nice days, and the pump exhaled its final breath.  As happens after drought followed by torrential rains, the ants came out to party in the wiring, and I'm not sure if that was the cause of the failure, or if the failure (the whine whenever I tried to turn it on) called in the ants.  The cost: over $400 ($100 of which was for labor that took about 10 minutes.)  In my world, this was over one week's income.

Pool water – Since my return, I have dumped at least $200 worth of chemicals in the pool, and while my blood pressure and I are thankful to still be able to swim, the amount of chlorine that seems to vanish daily is giving me agita.

My lawn mower --  An hour into my interminable lawn, the wheels stopped spinning (could this be a theme???).  In the spring the wheels stopped spinning, shortly before the father and son visit, and it turned out to be a stick stuck in the works.  So I made the bold move of attempting to have a look.  Removing all the parts of the yard that got stuck in the wheel area didn't help, looking through the lawn mower book from the library was as successful as my attempts to learn Italian, and the You-Tube clip of how simple it was to take the thing apart and repair it was just plain scary.

When the son made a return visit, he took a look and commented snootily, "I'm not a lawn mower expert you know."  Yeah, but I thought a Harvard physics undergrad might show a tad more interest in how things work.

Result was a new lawn mower, the cheapest one on the lot, cost a week's pay.

Wheelbarrow – Damned thing lost both nuts and bolts that hold the bar in place that I assume keeps the whole thing from falling apart.  While these items just fell right off the wheelbarrow, my attempts to unscrew same type of item from my old, busted up wheelbarrow have been unsuccessful, as the rust appears to have welded it together pretty good.

As if it were not bad enough that things were breaking down all around me through no fault of my own, I suddenly had a rash of breaking glasses and dishware that could have been the result of my preoccupation with all the other damned things that had broken.

Car – I can't ever have a rash of things breaking down without the car demanding some attention.  This time, and for the second time in the car's history, the fan continues to run when I turn off the engine.  And my so-far excellent mechanic either doesn't know what's wrong or just isn't inclined to fix it.  I don't know which, because the sister-in-law who sits behind the front desk won't allow customers to talk to him.  Last she told me was that "all kinds of crazy things happen to cars in this heat".  Except the following morning I moved the car from the front of the house to the side of the house, and it did the same thing.  Since I don't want to get on the bad side of sister-in-law, as she appears to be an unmovable object in the relationship I have with my mechanic, I don't have a clue as to what to do about this.

Ants – What would a grueling hot, humid, miserable summer be without an ant infestation?   Not just the outdoor pump destroying ants, but an indoor ant event.  Three separate occurrences, and I'm not going to say there aren't more where that came from, but I've been ant-free for three days now.

And finally, and I say finally only because not enough time has passed to determine otherwise…

The nice folk who have in the past allowed me to use their wireless have gone and left me without internet.  There is no way I can afford the exorbitant cost of internet connectivity, so until another kind soul moves into the area with a wireless connection and the willingness to share, I will just have to do without.  Luckily, the library has free wireless, so on days when I venture out from this godforsaken wilderness, I will lug my laptop to the library and attempt to catch up.

And hopefully, there will be no further mishaps to report on for awhile.

What Could Be Worse?

Actually, quite a lot of things could be worse.  My shoulder is injured but it's not a terminal illness.  My kids don't like me, but they aren't, either one of them, in prison.  I only owe $40,000 on my house, and that's just about what I have left in my life savings.


My son is home for a couple of weeks; we had minimal but pleasant conversation in the car, and he didn't start sniping at me until the third or fourth time I asked him to take a look at the lawnmower.  A few minutes ago, my Harvard physics major snarled that he's sorry but he's not a lawnmower expert.  And I should stop yelling at him.


But he does want me to tell him what it means that I have car trouble, in re: getting him to the bus station, in the nether parts of the county, so he can visit his friends.  Well, son, I am not a car expert, so I'll have to get back to you on that.  Meanwhile, let's just leave it that I am responsible for ruining your social life.


My mother wished it on me, you know.  When I was a teenager, she said someday I would have kids that treated me the way I was treating her.  A wish I would never make towards my own children.


The face wants to smile, so I keep reminding myself of how much worse it could be.  But the face won't smile because I can't really convince myself, as things break around me and my savings are gouged monthly, that my life is actually good.


And let me end by apologizing for my misery.

And So It Goes...

When I moved to the boonies looking for peace and space, the former which by the way has eluded me and the latter which has to be mowed every five damned days, my children were small.  I guess I thought they'd be with me forever.  But now they are both gone.  My son turned twenty a few days ago, and each time I see him it is for shorter periods.


When we first moved, we had a next-door neighbor that I met once.  I can't remember whether she was 70 or 80, but months after we moved in, she had a stroke and her daughter put her in a nursing home, I believe.  Then she died.


I think of her sometimes, and now that I've turned sixty, and my son has definitely gone, I see myself going that same route.  No family, except for when I can no longer live on my own, at which time they swoop in and send me to a nursing home and sell my house to pay for it.


So, I wonder, why am I working so hard to lose weight and maintain my health, what am I living for?  Why worry about paying off the mortgage?  What am I living for anyway?


So I want to have a drink or five, which I know won't do the trick, and engage in a little binge eating, which will make me feel like shit tomorrow.


So I just try to take one step at a time.  Just like my neighbor did, just as so many of us do to cope with being alone, as we grow old.

Dueling Parents -- Part II...

...of many parts, as The Wedding is two years away, preceded one month by The Harvard Graduation.


This part is called The Engagement Party.  It began innocently enough, with me initially (pre-engagement) suggesting a trip to the distant land of Urbana, which sounds like a trip to a 50's episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Then the promised engagement happened, and my daughter began to plan an engagement party, and coordinated it with my visit so I could meet her friends.  Not that I'm insecure, but I was more tickled by the proof that she wanted me there than that she was having an engagement party.


Of course, her dad, who visits his family in Chicago in July and August, would be safely settled back in Virginia in September, so I was looking forward to a weekend with the girl with only the minimal social anxieties of whether her best friends would like me or only tolerate me on her account.


Next came word that Dad had offered $100 to help pay for liquor costs, even though he wouldn't be there.  She appreciated the sentiment as much as the money.


Then I received an email from her saying that her dad was considering delaying his trip home by a month so that he could be at The Engagement Party.


Not for nothing, but I had just been through two weeks of this man during my son's brief visit home where the only sound in the house seemed to be Dad expounding on any and all subjects:  physics, history, politics, music, sounding very much like Charlie Brown's teacher and having very much the same somnolent effect on me.  There was only one temper tantrum, in public where they have the most impact, and very brief, because I walked away from it.


To be brutally honest albeit melodramatic, the visit broke my heart.  I have such short times with my kids now that they're grown, and to have to share the whole visit with a man who, especially when in parent mode, tends to suck all the air right out of the room, is emotionally exhausting.


So the thought of sharing this rare visit with my daughter with the other parent caused my brain to implode, and I immediately emailed the man and told him, nicely, that if he went, I would change my visit to later in the month, and then emailed my daughter to let her know and to assure her that this would be far better than having to host The Battle of the Parents on the weekend of her engagement party.  Afterwards, I realized that I had just lost the Qualifying Round, given that my husband cannot be manipulated, as he has absolutely no ability to feel guilt.


Additionally, I, who have enough guilt for both of us, was worried that now my daughter would be angry at me, the innocent victim.  So I emailed her again, and told her that I was just trying to do the right thing, and not ruin her party, and maybe we should talk.


Which we did, a day later, giving her time to organize her thoughts, talk to her dad, and deal with me in the kind of grown-up manner that left me awed.


Basically, she sees The Engagement Party as a dry run for The Wedding, as far as how the relatives will behave.  Further, she is trying to establish some ground rules for Future Family Gatherings, and For Children.


Being engaged has temporarily it appears brought out the Pollyanna in my daughter.  Living my life under the cynical Boy Scout motto Be Prepared, I described some more down-to-earth expectations .  I explained that the secret to her dad and me getting along is lots of distance, and very few mutual get togethers with our children.  We don't share well with others, and we especially don't share our children well.  I believe I am the better behaved, if only because I am able to shut up long enough to listen to my children, while his idea of a good time is allowing his children and anyone else fortunate enough to be around to listen to him.


And he gets away with it every time because it is unconscious.  Therefore, and especially apparent after 73 years, the behavior is unalterable.  We have been in every conceivable convolution of therapy during our marriage, and the pattern remains the same, except that I have learned to walk away from the tantrums and not hold a grudge.  The expounding still leaves me drained and withdrawn, and no means I have used to attempt to deal with it works.  I am either ignored or I piss off my children, I leave the room and feel sad, or I interrupt and believe everyone hates me for interrupting.


So as I talked to my incredibly mature daughter about this tangle, I believe she understood that we are never going to be able to do the parent thing together for longer than short bursts; same for the grandparent thing.  Give me some time without the man and I'll be okay around him, but don't throw us into the same room with you guys for the same amount of time, because I will feel defeated and jealous from his first words all the way through to his last, throughout which he will only stop long enough to go outside to take a few puffs off his cigar.


She was great.  She sympathized, empathized and even told me that I could let her know if he was having that effect on me during the party and she would help.  I told her thanks, but that really wasn't her job.  She even expressed the desire to throw us into a room together and instruct us to work it out.  I told her that if that could work it would have worked a long time ago.  And actually, in fact, in a room alone together we get along pretty well.


It's really the Dueling Parents thing.  And the only way to fix it is to let it happen as little as possible.


Sorry, darlin', I love you very much, but two single parents involved in your life is always going to be far better than a pair of parents.  I promise you I will always try to behave, but I learned a long time ago that I have no control over the man who claims he still has no idea how he affects me, and that after all these years, and all the distance, he still is able to push my buttons, and it very nearly always is around you guys.


To share your optimism for a moment, though, I want to add that we will be fine at the Engagement Party, and the Wedding.  And I would like to thank you for being the grown-up in the room.

On Weddings

Not that I wasn’t happy for my daughter when she announced her engagement, and I surely didn’t react with the moron-like “Well, that’s too damned bad” of her father, but I basically think of weddings as a great party followed by family health insurance.

On giving this more thought, I realized that I have pretty much specialized in the non-traditional marriage.

My first marriage was a weekend at the Cape pretend ceremony, which both sets of parents bought because the alternatives were too outrageous to consider, while we cohabited and waited to turn legal age. When that happened a few months later, we hustled off to New Hampshire with a couple of friends and made it official. We likewise separated less than a year later, only divorcing when my father-in-law could no longer stand the thought of being my father-in-law and proceeded with the proceedings, what seems like years later. There were no kids to fight over, and he got the cat and one of my 3-piece set of luggage, which latter he refused to give back.

I changed my name back to my birth name unofficially a few years later. The only paperwork on it is the communications with the Attorney General’s office in Rhode Island agreeing that, yes, as long as I had been consistently using my original name and wasn’t planning on using it to swindle anyone, I could assume it as my legal name without any legal proceedings.

My second marriage has been pretty much as ass-backwards as the first. In the midst of Long Island and my Ph.D., I persuaded my future husband to become my husband sooner than later, and we could move in together after I got my Ph.D. I think I told him I would move back to Maryland when the dust had settled, but as with doctoral programs, dust takes forever to settle, and it made more sense to start my career on Long Island. Eventually, being the silver-tongued doctoral candidate that I was, I convinced him to give up his secure job and come up to live with me, where I would make tons of money and he could live comfortably forever.

After managed care decimated my career and burned me out, and income dwindled, I decided to take my two wonderful children and leave my despicable husband. We three moved to South Carolina, which falsely promised a slower, happier way of life. It’s 11 years later, and we remain happily married, due in great part to the fact that we see each other twice a year, for three-week visits, and don’t complicate things with sex. Referring to him as my husband just confuses people, so I sometimes refer to him as “my kids’ father”, but that is an incomplete description. He is my best friend, and when I have a problem and I need some perspective, he’s the one to call. We came to a reasonable child support arrangement that will be ending in two years, and, as the visits by my youngest become shorter and less frequent, I wonder how much I will be seeing him in years to come, which makes me sad.

We actually get along better before the kids arrive, or after they leave, and we are no longer playing dueling parents I like my second marriage just fine. As for my first, it was necessary and relatively painless, as was the first wedding ceremony.

The second wedding ceremony was the best party I ever had. And we still have family health insurance.