LifePundit

I Love Good Old Boys

If you haven't seen it already, you must watch this video of a Good Samaritan armed with nothing more than a frozen turkey. I love Good Old Boys.

Here's the story: CBS/ AP) Authorities say a Good Samaritan used a frozen turkey to club a man as the man was committing a carjacking at a North Carolina grocery store. According to police: Thirty-year-old Fred Louis Ervin, of Raleigh, stole money from a Garner BP gas station before running across the street to the parking lot of a Harris Teeter in Fuquay-Varina, just south of Raleigh. There, he began beating Irene Moorman Bailey while trying to take her car. Other shoppers came to Bailey's rescue, including a man who hit Ervin with the only weapon he could find: a frozen turkey. He hit the suspect several times in the head with it. Despite head injuries, Ervin got away in Bailey's car, hitting several other cars as he fled. But he was arrested a short time later. Ervin faces several charges, including assault, inflicting serious injury, larceny and hit and run. He was being treated at WakeMed Raleigh Campus. Hospital officials said he was in good condition. Frozen turkeys are, of course, hard as a rock. "I don't know, in my 30 some year career, if I've heard of someone getting in a fight with a frozen turkey involved! " Fuquay-Varina Police Chief Larry Smith told reporters.

Turkey Holds Her Ground

I have so much to be thankful for that it seems ungracious to make such a stink about hosting Thanksgiving. Or rather, about NOT hosting Thanksgiving.

For those who have been following the saga with my MiL, I've held my ground. Paul worked until 11:30 Monday night and will be working late again tonight. I still have plumbing fixtures in my den though the toilet is gone. I hauled some lumber outside because  I couldn't stand tripping over it anymore, and besides, I couldn't vacuum and heaven knows I need to vacuum at least twice a year or I'll go crazy.

So, my MiL, bless her heart, sent out an e-mail to everyone that since I couldn't host Thanksgiving she will have it at her SMALL house and even though we will all be CRAMPED and she doesn't know what the children will do in her SMALL house or where she will put everyone and that she doesn't have room for the food in her SMALL refrigerator, we would just make do.

She wrote that she was overwhelmed by it all and really needed my help (this was on an e-mail sent to multiple people in multiple states). I had already told her that I would bring some of the dishes and all of the desserts. So I sent her an e-mail repeating myself and she responded to all people in all states that she felt like the cavalry had arrived.

Then she (in an e-mail to all) asked to borrow my turkey platter since all of her platters are too SMALL. She wanted me to send it to Paul's job site and they would pick up from there. I told her I didn't want to do that because the platter has sentimental and monetary value. So she wrote back to all of us in all states that she didn't want to use that platter because her sink is too SMALL to wash it. I told her that my sink is too small to wash it, too, and that I have to wash each end separately. I think her sink is bigger than mine, but hey! Who's measuring?

Paul offered to bring a fried turkey. My MiL said that she would have to make do with a breast because her refrigerator is too SMALL so he's not to bring it.

She lives in a two-bedroom, two-bath freestanding house in a luxury retirement community. She has a full-sized kitchen only slightly smaller than mine. She has closets galore, some of them EMPTY. My refrigerator is normal sized, not giant. This is all hooey.

Back to the platter. So she rejects my turkey platter and wants me to bring another, smaller platter. I'm not a store or a platter collector. I've got one turkey platter. So I suggest to her that perhaps she should carve the turkey and put it on her two smaller platters. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

Then she writes (to all) for me to be sure to keep all my dishes and desserts small and simple because her refrigerator and house is so SMALL.

And she also writes (to all) that she has no idea how to entertain all these people she's invited for the weekend so she's leaving what we do on Friday completely up to me. Oh no she's not!

I wrote back (to all) that there is nothing worse than having somebody plan your life and your time for you, and I would not be doing that to her guests. I gave her a list of things they could do and told her to let them choose how they wanted to spend their day. I may even be home writing which is what I planned to be doing back before my MiL invited everyone for Thanksgiving. Not that I'm not glad to see them but don't I get to say how I spend my holiday? Apparently not. I probably won't be home writing because that would be rude, plus I'm thinking my house is too SMALL for me to actually be able to write in or do anything so I'd better go sit in the car and possibly drive it somewhere far away.

In the meantime, Saintly Brother has invited me over. I'm thinking of sending the food to MiL's since it's too SMALL for me to fit in there and go to Saintly Brother's. Don't know where or if I'll eat (I've lost my appetite for all this) but I will be visiting at both places. Saintly Brother has some wonderful relatives coming whom I never see so I'm looking forward to stopping by there. I haven't spent a holiday with any of my side of the family in several years.

I do look forward to seeing Paul's brothers and his family. There's just such a high cost.

Am I being SMALL minded?

And I've got so much to be grateful for. I hate that it's so difficult to keep that focus in the middle of these SMALL concerns.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

The Twilight of My Peace

Twilight, the movie, opened last Friday. Lily went with a group of friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. My minister, who is the mother of the birthday girl, took them all. She said she wanted to know what they were watching, and I was glad to delegate that task to her.

I tried listening to Twilight, the book, on my iPod. I'm clearly not the audience. I couldn't finish it. I think it's the equivalent of soft porn for teenagers, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Lily has read every book in the series.

Lily spent the weekend cleaning up her room. She emptied photo frames and put pictures of the "hot" guys from Twilight in them. She even framed her ticket stub.

The walls used to have posters of large cats from the zoo, zebras and horses. One horse poster survived the Twilight purge. The rest of the frames are filled with Twilight-obelia and "hot" guys.

She showed it all to Paul and me. We made sincere grunting noises. They seemed to satisfy her. Later, Paul said, "At least they're hot guys she'll never meet."

Buddy (her horse) stood at the fence when we drove up from school today. Lily asked me to cancel her riding lesson because she had too much homework, and hasn't been riding much lately anyway. That was convenient for her teacher so we canceled.

Buddy was still at the fence when I walked down to the mailbox. I petted his friendly self and wondered if he could compete with a hot vampire. I think both of us shared this sad moment. He cannot.

I hope she'll come back to us soon. Maybe there's room for both hot guys and forgiving horses. That one horse poster remains.

Horses are forever. Vampires are just immortal.

Playing God

I knew it was bad when I saw Dipstick, my mother's cat that I took when she went into Alzheimer's care, dragging his leg and refusing to eat. His breathing was rapid and labored and his feet were cold. I made him as comfortable as I could until I could take him to the vet.

The diagnosis: saddle thrombosis. Dipstick threw a blood clot (he no doubt had heart disease but we didn't know that) that lodged in the branch of his arteries that fed his hind legs. Without blood flow, one leg was paralyzed and both were cold to the touch. The vet couldn't pick up a pulse in either hind leg. Dipstick purred while I petted him, but he was clearly a hurting kitty.

I've already been through this with another cat. That cat, Woody, suddenly started screaming in the early morning hours. His legs were paralyzed and he dragged himself around in excrutiating pain. I thought he had fallen from the hay loft and broken his back, or that a horse had kicked him. I took him to the vet and they opened their office early for me. I was shocked at the diagnosis of saddle thrombosis, and with Woody, I told them to try to dissolve the clot.

I should have listened more closely. Even if they did dissolve the clot, Woody would never regain the use of his legs. After a day of Woody being hooked up to IVs transporting every clot dissolver known to man, I got a phone call that they couldn't save him. He was getting much worse. I went to the vet's office to see my beautiful Woody panting, eyes glazed with medication and seeming to suffer. The vet euthanized him immediately, which was probably several hours after it should have happened. 

Dipstick didn't scream with pain like Woody did, but he was clearly hurting. The options were the same as with Woody, but this time, I decided not to try to save a cat that was suffering and would continue to suffer. I hate playing God.

The vet said it was possible that the clot-dissolving drugs would work, but that he had only been able to save one cat with them in his whole career. And that cat had developed the same problem two months later and had to be euthanized.

I said goodbye to Dipstick and petted him while they tried to sedate him before euthanasia. His blood flow was so poor that the sedation didn't work. Though I am usually with my pets when I have them euthanized, I couldn't do it this morning. Something about Dipstick being my mother's cat made it extra hard.

Dipstick got his name from Lily when she was quite young and had just seen 102 Dalmations. There was a puppy with that name who also had a black tail and a mainly white body in the movie, just like my mother's cat, Dipstick. Dipstick was a good companion for my mother when she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. He went where she went and kept her company. She loved him. Now she doesn't remember either of us.

I wish I could have done more for him than provide a merciful death.

Tree Cat Adopted by Neighbors

I left a voicemail yesterday for my good friend and neighbor that we'd gotten the cat down out of the tree and now she needed to come get it.

This was a joke.

Last night she came, with her son, and got the cat. I must be better at voicemails than I thought.

While Paul and I were watching a movie last night I saw headlights come up the driveway. "Uh oh," I said. "They're bringing the cat back."

But it was just a car turning around.

Hallelujah!

Cat Rescued after Eight Days in Tree!

She's down! After one week living in a squirrel's nest 30 feet above the good, safe earth, the cat is down.

The Humane Society said not to worry, cats were survivors and would come down. Animal Control doesn't rescue cats from trees. The fire department didn't answer either phone number (I didn't dare call 911). I couldn't find any macho bubbas to help out, either. You could hear the cat crying from our bedroom. It was enough to tempt us to shoot her down, just so we wouldn't feel so bad for her.

After calling anyone I could think of, my hairdresser made two very good suggestions. One was to get a piece of PVC and run a loop of rope through it. Use the PVC to reach up to where the cat is and loop the rope around its body. Tighten the rope and lower the cat down. (This idea was after she called her husband because she was worried about the cat.)

The other suggestion was to call our local TV station that has a program about solving local people's problems and tell them I have a very photogenic problem they can solve. So I did and left a voicemail.

Next I told Paul that I had called WIS-TV, which horrified him because he didn’t want them out here filming (they never called me back) so he sprung into action. Not that he had been inactive before, but he liked the idea of the rope and the PVC and arranged that very thing. Trouble is, he could only get the cat's foot or a neck hooked. It was like fishing for a cat in a tree. The cat was over 30 feet up.

Then Paul did something I couldn’t believe. He shimmied up the tree like Mowgli in “The Jungle Book.” He went up like a squirrel. No grasping of tree limbs (since the tree was bald in the middle section), just arms and legs around the trunk. I thought he was probably going to find out whether or not he could fly, but he made it. Then he caught the cat and climbed down by setting her on different branches as he went down, then would go down a little, grab the cat and put the cat on a lower branch, etc. Of course at one point the cat hung onto the tree and wouldn’t let go.

The cat is FAT! Not obese, but robust in figure. One week in the tree and no food. I don’t believe this cat ever came down. The cat food I left out and the tuna were untouched until Tiger found them. I think it was a 300 lb. cat that is now a 200 lb. cat. She’s got a beautiful coat, lovely green eyes and is so friendly you can’t take her picture. (I’m trying to do a flyer to stick in mailboxes – this cat has to be somebody’s pet.) The first thing she wanted to do was come inside. And she rubs on you and rubs on you and rubs on you and purrs and talks. I could get used to this cat. Of course, that would make 4.

I took the cat to a nearby vet clinic and they scanned for a microchip. No microchip but they confirmed that it’s a female cat. I asked the attendant to check and he pulled up her tail. She squirted poo on him – I didn’t know cats did that. They had a word for it and said that cats do it in the wild when they’re scared. If I even mention this to my husband, I’m sure he won’t even like the idea of a poo-squiring cat sleeping on our porch while we look for a home.

It's so nice to have her out of the tree. She was up there one night when it was only 20 degrees! Now, to find her owner or a home. (Or talk Paul into letting us have four cats, two horses, a dog and a rabbit.)

How Long Can a Cat Live in a Tree?

Last Thursday morning while out picking dandelions for the rabbit that I swore I wouldn't end up taking care of, I heard a mewing. I thought it was coming from the woodpile. Nope. It was coming from 40-feet up a not very accessible pine tree.

A stray cat with a loud opinion. "I want down!" it's been screaming. I'm about to start screaming, too.

This looks like a nice, friendly, sweet, cautious, stupid cat. She (I have no idea what gender this cat is but it appears to have possibly nursed at some point, hopefully not last week) talks to you and writhes around the tree limbs and trunk. She rubs her head on the branches while she talks to you and looks like somebody I would love to pet. If I had 40-foot arms. I've called a few neighbors and nobody knows whose cat she is.

Every day we try to coax her down. Every day she winds around the tree trunk way up high, sometimes going higher but never going lower. She sleeps in a squirrel's nest.

On Saturday Paul stood a 20-foot-ladder at the bottom of the tree, climbed it, and put up another long ladder. Surprisingly, he had enough sense not to climb beyond the top of the ladder on the ground. The cat will put her paws on the top rung, cry pitifully, and wind back around the tree.

We've rattled food. We've called sweetly. We have considered throwing things but haven't done so. The cat's been up there for over five days. It's been cold, rainy and windy. I'm glad to report that the cat's voice remains strong.

Yesterday I climbed partway up the lower ladder and put out an opened can of tuna. I thought that the smell would travel up the tree and lure the cat down. It didn't work.

I told Paul that I'd put the can there. So, it wasn't my fault, was it, when he climbed the ladder this morning for his daily conversation with this cat and the can of tuna cat food fell off the ladder, tuna-side down, and whomped him in the head. He had just had his shower, freshly washed hair and was dressed for work.

I told him that maybe he would be more successful with the cat since he was fragrant with tuna. He didn't find this funny but perhaps he will one day.

The cat was eager to come down. We must have coaxed and cooed for 30 minutes in the cold. Paul lifted the top ladder right to where the cat sat on a limb. The cat would touch the ladder with her paw, then make another trip around the tree trunk, crying.

I think we were all about to cry.

Then Paul got stuck, and realized that the tree limbs he had used to climb up higher than the bottom ladder were dead..... I thought I was going to have to call the fire department to rescue him, but he got down.

Paul had to take another shower to wash off the tuna. The laundry smells of tuna and I have a load of clothes going. The cat's still in the tree.

The tuna-splattered ladders are still in place. Maybe I'll have good news tomorrow.

Getting Faster but Not Better

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lab.drwicked.com

Later I'll have to do a post about how I cut 1020 words in 11 hours of editing, but for now, Go Me! See previous post here. This is hilarious. And yes, I'm really writing words on my novel. Not quality words but words are being written in sentences that follow one another in some reasonable fashion that passes for basic English, though not good fiction.

Write or Die -- This is a Hoot!

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lab.drwicked.com

Here's something for you other NaNoWriMo-ers out there. Write or Die.You set your word count and time goals and start typing in their little text box. Then you decide what mode you want to write in, gentle, normal or kamikaze.

If you pause too long to think, get some medicinal chocolate or check out the latest LOLcat, the screen will start to flash. In normal mode if that doesn't get you back to work, truly obnoxious music will play. In kamikaze mode, it will start erasing what you've written one word at a time.

Dr. Wicked, where have you been all my life?

I'll have to say I was productive. Only about once sentence in the 1002 words I wrote is actually salvagable, but who has time to worry about that when if you stop to think it will start erasing!

Off now to write or die. (And it's free, though he likes donations.)

Oops! I'm geting slower. Here are the results of my second attempt.

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lab.drwicked.com

Sick Kids and Field Trips

The bus taking the eighth graders on their much anticipated field trip to Washington, D.C., just left. Lily's not on it. She caught a bad cold on the church retreat over the weekend.

She's a healthy girl who rarely gets sick. But she gets sick every time she goes on a field trip. It's partly a matter of not enough sleep (there's not even eight hours scheduled for sleep on these trips), getting run down and getting exposed to the sick kids on the trip. Because there are always sick kids on the trip.

I agonized all yesterday and last night over whether or not to send Lily. If sh'es just got a cold, she could power through. But what if it's the early stage of something else, and she gets worse?

And whatever it is, who else might catch it?

I was surprised to find myself rationalizing all the reasons that Lily should go anyway. I was surprised because every time she comes home sick from a field trip and tells me that so-and-so was on the trip and was sick from the moment she got on the bus and sneezed on everybody, I feel like calling so-and-so's mama and asking her just what was she thinking to send a sick kid on a trip? It can't have been fun for the kid, and it's sure not fun for the rest of the  now sick kids.

When Lily was in private school she went on a field trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, that was nearly a week long. A doctor's daughter got on the bus sick. And by the end of the field trip, one-quarter of the children were sick. At least one-quarter. And one-quarter of these kids missed the next full week of school. I know this is unusual, but one of the children developed lung-scarring and missed part of the next year of school as well!

Lily is still talking about how awful it was to be sick and to be marched all over Williamsburg. Not the memory we were hoping for.

But even with those experiences behind me, I tried to rationalize a way it would be all right to send Lily. Oh, she's probably not contagious. Probably all of them have colds. She'll feel fine by tomorrow and can just rest on the bus. We don't want her to miss anything. And for goodness sakes, we've paid our money which we probably can't get back!

But Lily was so droopy this morning. No fever but not well. I didn't have the heart.

I called the lead teacher to tell her that Lily wouldn't be going. And although I heard disappointment in the teacher's voice, I heard something else: Relief! She said that two other sick girls were going and she was worried about them. They've been sick with something and had been running fevers. I could tell the teacher was concerned that they weren't as well as their mothers thought or claimed.

The group is going to be walking a lot in what we consider cold weather. They're going to be walking all day. That's not how you get over being sick. The lead teacher said that Lily would be miserable, and I'm sure that's true. Unless she suddenly gets well tomorrow. Oh well. That is life.

I'm surprised that the two other sick girls are going. And I'm even more surprised with what mental gyrations I was willing to perform in order to justify sending Lily, too. I was going to use the time alone this week to power through NaNaWriMo.

And I'm glad that the child is in bed, getting better (I hope). That's where she needs to be.

Even though I'm not happy about an Obama administration coming in, I do expect that Washington will still be there later and available for exploration.