Who Says Cats Aren’t Useful

In the past year, I’ve been remembering what it’s like to have cats. I had them before I got married, but my husband repeatedly swore he was far too allergic to have cats and couldn’t ever take the shots. I like almost all animals, but since I’ve never really been a cat person, I married him anyway and lived without cats for many years. (Interesting side note: It sounds as if he has had a miraculous recovery since we divorced and has practically become a male cat lady. Hallelujah!)

Since adopting Catsby, I’ve been re-learning that kitties can be very sweet little companions who can not only run to greet you at the door when you get home (especially when getting home coincides with snack time, and you are, in fact, the resident hair net-less Lunch Lady), but they come in handy in many other ways as well. For example:

Snow cleanup required? Call in kitty snow removal to act as a catuum.

Doilies getting dirty? Armrest slipcovers getting a little worn? Try a furrier solution! 

Tired of the same old coffee table books and décor? Try arranging a caterpiece. Note the ability to double as a paperweight.

Vents too drafty? Stop those annoying breezes with an air catditioner cover!

 Good news! Not Your Mother's Book...On Cats came out yesterday!

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. ~Thomas A. Edison

Trying Toads

I’ve been trying to challenge myself more, writing wise, and it just so happens that  Imaginary Garden with Real Toads provided some pretty compelling inspiration in the artwork of Kathryn Dyche Dechairo.

For L

Broken heart, broken vase

Broken vow, ripped lace

Broken promise, broken face

Mending done, shield in place.

  

It doesn’t matter what they are unhappy about, you will get the blame. If they treat their children badly and cause their children to become angry, you will be blamed. If they loose their job, have car trouble or just can’t seem to catch a break, you will be blamed. You may go months at a time without seeing them or talking to them, but you can bet that if something goes wrong, you will be blamed. ~Cathy Meyer, About Toxic Ex Spouses

And She Loved to the Very Bottom of her Heart

Though he hid it well, my husband was a very jealous man.

And here I was, unable to quit thinking about my first love, a childhood romance. But I had put away childish things for a more practical life, and I was happy.

Except I wasn’t.

So I met my love when my husband wasn’t home—briefly at first, and then more and more until I felt as if we could never truly be apart again. I looked forward to our trysts with an unparalleled giddiness and left feeling flushed and spent and whole.

“You're back,” an old college friend remarked over the phone. Had I been gone? “Yes, for a long time,” she said.

And then, after a phone call, I made the announcement. “I am guest columnist at a newspaper.” I still remember the way his face went red, then white with anger.

I never looked back.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all who love words as I do.

It’s Valentine’s Day. It’s not the day you run away from love. It’s the day you chase it down. ~Cameron in “Modern Family”

Book Blurb Friday #8

It feels good to get back to blogging with Book Blurb Friday, hosted by Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff! Each week, she posts a pretend book cover. The challenge is to write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. I really struggled with picking one quote this week...so finally settled on two.

And thank you so much to Sioux of Sioux's Page for the award! I hope to pass it along in the coming week along with Donna's "Sisters of the Quill" award, which I never got to pass along before my dog got sick.

Here's my Book Blurb Friday, at 139 words.

~Soul of Stone~

Annie thought she had married the sweetest man. But right after the wedding, it seemed as if her husband’s pleasant exterior crumbled. It wasn’t until much later that she realized appearances were all that mattered to this effigy of a human. Like a statue of Narcissus, the husband she had once loved knew only how to pose in order to manipulate others like chess pieces. Underneath it all, her husband was stone cold evil who never truly loved, but viewed others solely in terms of himself.

When she filed for divorce, Annie learned about the rest: the cheating, the tens of thousands of dollars he’d stolen outright, and always the lies he used to cover it all up. Yet again, he portrayed himself as the victim. She learned that divorcing a Narcissist means the worst is yet to come.

…most people are unsuspecting and are unaware of the degree to which they are being taken advantage of, used and abused. This unawareness is not due to a general lack of intelligence in people, but to their tendency to project their own range of normalcy onto others. Hence, their disinclination to suspect someone so profoundly depraved to be in their midst, carrying on an existence that is fundamentally and thoroughly alie (sic). But the character disordered conveniently regard this trait as evidence of intellectual inferiority and will take a twisted delight in the knowledge that they have so many fooled. ~Doug McManaman, “Narcissism and the Dynamics of Evil.”

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, preducing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside a falsehood hath!” ~Shakespeare, Act one, Scene 3, Merchant of Venice

Not Your Father’s Grandma

I have to admit that aging is made easier for me thanks to my heroes. My heroes are those women I run into everyday who are amazing, dynamic, fun human beings in addition to being older women. I just recently met two of them.

While Christmas shopping, I stood behind one of them in the long, long bathroom line at the department store. She looked a little like a jeans-clad Auntie Em. “I say we storm the men’s room,” she announced, elbowing me conspiratorially. “We can do it if there are several of us. Are you in?”

I laughed and nodded, but this was before I realized she was serious. “It’s not like I’ve never done that before,” she laughed. Well, me either, frankly. But I found out men get very upset when women go into their bathrooms, even though all of those stalls just sit there while we needlessly suffer. Go figure! But besides that, men’s rooms creep me out a little. That foreign wall décor is just icky….

My almost-partner-in-crime, Auntie Em, was a little miffed with me when she found out I was a wimp. That’s okay. She was still my hero just for thinking about it.

Then there was the woman I talked to at my hiking group. She had to be close to twenty years older than I am. In town visiting her mother, she said. The mother was in her nineties. The daughter, the hiking one, is a therapist, she told me. Still working, of course.

When she started asking questions about me and I told her I was divorced, she turned to study me for the first time. Her eyes took my breath away for a second. My mother’s eyes. Fierce eyes. Fiercely sharp and fiercely good, all at the same time. She pronounced me a “courageous woman” in a way that made me feel frightened and moved and oddly transparent. I like to believe that sometimes God sends people to deliver the messages we most need to hear. Courageous woman. I secretly carry these words like a totem, a gift from a wise Earth Mother, hug them close to my soul.

She told me about her various groups. Biking is over, she lamented, as is kayaking. And swimming of course. So she hikes. That was when I realized she had been slowing her pace to stay behind enough to talk to me, because I was starting to get a bit winded on the hills.

I know who I want to be like…when I don’t grow up.  Happy New Year!

That is what you love a friend for: the ability to change your angle of vision, bring back your best self when you feel worst, remind you of your strengths when you feel weak. ~Erica Jong

Senior Sex(less) and the City: Episode #6

Sort of Married Guy
The divorce is almost final, he said. You know how it is, he said. Just waiting on the final signatures, he said. Almost divorced is like sort of pregnant. You are or you aren’t. No signatures? Come back when you get them. On second thought, don’t. Sort of Married Guy might as well wear a sign that says he A.)Wants to commit adultery, but B.)He doesn’t want to go after a sort-of married woman because he doesn’t want any husbands beating him up. Besides, even after those signatures, if he doesn’t take time to reflect and regroup, healthy relationships are not his priority. End of story. Except it’s not the end of this story! A few months later, I ran into Sort of Married Guy again. He asked me out again. “Get those papers signed yet?” I asked, just out of curiosity. Almost, he said. You know how it is, he said. Just have to get a couple of signatures, he said….

Next week: Episode #7, Twinkly

And AFTER Them, Too

When I married, I wore white pearls. And when I divorced, I purchased a strand of black ones.

It was the only time I’ve ever bought myself better jewelry. It was an impulse. They were the perfect divorce gift. Although not usually a jewelry person, I love them and all that they celebrate.

There is nothing proper or pristine about them. They are neither trite…nor polite. They don’t stand at picket-fence-perfect attention or march virtuously across my skin. No Pearls of Innocence, these.

To me, they are smoky, exotic. They are sultry sunset-lustered and night-nacred. They are city lights in the rain. They are oil slicks on blacktop after a race. They are a Caribbean adventure. They are the sea just before sunrise. They are the anti-June Cleavers.

And they represent a promise to myself, my black pearls, that I will take me for better or for worse, that I will honor me all the days of my life. And that I will stay true to myself, always.

The simplest things are often the truest.~Richard Bach

Totally Random Tuesday: Marriage

Marriages are about discovering each other by being ourselves. Friendships are about discovering ourselves by being with each other. Amazing how different those two are. That would explain why friendships seem to last longer than some marriages, too—we are infinitely more interesting to ourselves than to anyone else.

The REAL Real Fathers

I was helping in a high school math teacher’s classroom when one of her troubled students stomped out, so frustrated that neither of us could reach him and so angry that I was a little afraid of what he might do. Later I passed him standing with an elderly custodian who was leaning thoughtfully on his broom. I caught a snippet of their conversation as I passed. “Remember,” the custodian was gently coaxing, “how we talked about taking deep breaths and counting when you’re angry….” And the boy, taller than his elder by at least a foot, was nodding, calm now.

I smiled. Thank heavens for father figures. At one time I thought men were the gentler gender, the nurturers. Now I realize how very lucky I was to have taken good men for granted. And they are becoming even more rare. There are women who abandon their children, certainly, but the families without fathers are everywhere, it seems—my home included.

Adults who remove themselves from their responsibility to others are not only impossible to respect, but in a sense they remove themselves from true meaning in life. In the grandest of schemes, deadbeat parents essentially render themselves nothing more than life’s chaff. The most crucial and elemental priority in parenting is loving the children enough to be there. To abandon a child of any age for purely selfish reasons is one of the most abhorrent of all evils.

Child support payments alone, even when paid on time and in the correct amount, are mere attempts to buy off responsibility. Cheap attempts. Trust me: the percentage that goes for child support—at least in Missouri—doesn’t pay for a fraction of the true costs to rear a child. And that’s only the financial costs. To say that money is all it takes to rear a child is ignorance bordering on imbecility. If that were all it took, we could lock children in a room, shove money under the door, and—voila!—the quality of the adult who emerged would depend solely on the size of the money pile.

And then we hear about the vicious: the ones who imitate kindness in order to abuse.

It’s a shame that the deadbeats and perverts seem to eclipse the genuine men, the men who are willing to help guide the young. And they do exist, of course. They are teachers, coaches, stepfathers, members of the clergy, maybe, sometimes a nice neighbor. Or a school custodian. They are fathers to children who are not their own. They are the kind of men who know that only brutes conquer and cowards control. Real men stand up and lead.

This is because real men have more than muscle: they have minds and hearts and souls as well. These are the kind of men who put a paternal arm around the shoulders of our youth because these men possess the inner strength that matters most in life and the wisdom to know how important it is to pass along. They are strong enough human beings to stand up and take responsibility for what lesser men have deserted. Their gift to young people is their gift to the world. And it is huge.

These are the true unsung heroes of life. Yes, they do save lives. And they save the quality of so many more. As long as these men exist, fatherless boys will glean a real man’s character and enjoy the self respect that comes from being one. Fatherless girls will seek respectable men and enjoy the mutuality that comes from loving one. Because of these men, how many lives are improved? These pieces of Self given conscientiously enough will never die, but grow exponentially. On this path, immortality is a given. These men are fathers in the very best sense.

On this Father’s Day, don’t forget to thank a man who gives his time to young people—a father figure. If they are not his children, thank him all the more. Thank the man who is big enough to see outside of himself. Thank him for being one of the many who strives to do a father’s job when a “real” father won’t.

I believe you have a responsibility to comport yourself in a manner that gives an example to others. As a young man, I prayed for success. Now I pray just to be worthy of it. ~Brendan Fraser

An Old Year's Resolution

My New Year’s resolution from last year was to get out more.

When I was married, my husband and I rarely went anywhere together. When I went anywhere, it was with friends or my children. Like many mothers, I let myself slip into the habit of mainly doing for others and putting my own needs—not to mention wants—last.

I think of those years as being lean and dry as toast.

But this past year, I got out just for myself. Saw virtually all of the movies I wanted to see (and even a few I didn’t care about that much). Went on tours, saw museums, went to festivals. Went to wine tastings, went on a hayrack ride, even. Had many wonderful dinners, lunches, and a breakfast or two. Went to concerts under the stars. Went to parties and teas and gatherings and picnics and dances. Shopped much, bought next to nothing. Met tons of new people. Wonderful people. Flirted, toasted, twirled, played…laughed.

In short—aging or not—I had more fun last year alone than in the past 20 combined.

I don’t have much money. Many of the outings were cheap or even free. But this year I realized I am poor only in money. I can live with that. Here’s a new toast, a non-dry one: to another year rich in laughter.

Happy 2010.

(The above picture was one my daughter drew for me when she was little to use as computer wallpaper.)

The only person who is with us our entire life is ourselves.Be ALIVE while you are alive. ~George Carlin

"They" Were Wrong

When I was young, I used to be slightly haunted by a line in the John Cougar Mellencamp song that goes, “Oh yeah, they say life goes on/long after the thrill of living is gone.” I worried it might be true that the thrill of living leaves us as we age. How hard it would be to live life without that thrill, I thought.

And then during my divorce and the events that led up to it, I realized there was no thrill. Just relentless responsibilities, attacks, hassles, worries. And on top of it all, I worried about the loss of that thrill. Was it gone forever?

Today, on this November day, I look around. The ginger (above) is wafting the most lovely gardenia/papaya scent throughout the house. The passionflowers are still draping the French doors. Outside in the sunlight, a Bouncing Bet flower is still in bloom, and so is a rose. Sweet alyssum is everywhere. The dog is making me laugh, rolling in the grass and leaves, snorting, celebrating the luxuries of sun and earth and air. My daughter finally got over her flu and is playing classical music on the piano, the notes drifting out into the yard and into my soul. I recently heard from another loved one and couldn’t help but grin at the smile in his voice. Got the nicest letter—yes, letter!—from a friend I haven’t heard from in ages. Got a birthday card from another friend I haven’t heard from in even longer. Spent yesterday sipping wine and laughing with some great people at a winery, overlooking the hills of Augusta. When I look back over something sweet that happened at work last week, I can't help but smile. All of it gives me a thrill—all of it.

If someone had told me years ago that I would love this part of my life so much—divorced, and in the autumn of my years—would I have believed them? And yet not only is the thrill of living not gone, but I get it at the slightest, silliest things.

Oh, yeah, life goes on…and the thrill of living gets even more strong.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. ~Anne Frank

Chakras Again

I haven’t mentioned chakras lately because I’ve been on the solar plexus one. It seems that, instead of requiring yoga positions for proper chakral tuning, this one necessitates some actual abdominal exercises. So I ran some off from an exercise website, and that was plenty exhausting, let me tell you. Am thinking this one could take a while.

Is it working, though? Well, I had several great weeks at work, got offered a good—if temporary—job, have had fun weekends, and got asked out by someone who didn’t mention steaming his brain fungus or start a conversation discussing his close encounter with aliens. And I suddenly can’t quit writing. Hmm....

Everything You Do Or Don’t Do Is An Expression Of Your Walk With God. ~Robb Thompson

Merry Belated Chakra Unblocking

Blogs are supposed to have pictures, so I am trying one. It is a picture of my chakra stones, which are sitting in the sun in order to “neutralize the stones’ energy palette.” I hope it isn’t possible to over-neutralize, because although they were supposed to sunbathe for a couple of hours, they’ve been there...um...since Christmas.

But first, here’s why they are there in the first place.

I've been on a self-improvement kick, and I had someone tell me that perhaps my chakras need to be unblocked. This was an older man, and he offered to unblock them for me. When I asked him about my chakras, he produced a picture of them. Only this picture looked like a smiley-faced Homer Simpson drawn by a little kid. Homer had a bunch of dots on him.

I didn't ask how the chakras were unblocked, but I couldn't help but notice there were naughty bits chakras.

Ordinarily I would think no one would want to unblock my naughty bits chakras, as those particular chakras are simply not what they used to be, and they never were that wonderful. But this guy was older than I am, and who knows, maybe he isn’t particular.

So I politely declined, but the whole thing made me laugh so hard that I felt wonderful. So I started to think chakras must have a great purpose, after all.

Fast-forward a few months to Christmas day. I was taking my garbage out when I looked in my mailbox out of habit. And there, in the mailbox, was a little present from a friend.

The weird thing is that I remember bringing in my mail on Christmas Eve. So all I can figure is that it originally went to a neighbor’s house, and they re-delivered it. Or my friend suggested that my mailman might have brought it out of niceness. She says hers does things like that. Mine’s nice and all, but that’s practically a saint in my book.

Anyway. It turned out that her gift was a tiny kit so that I can unblock my own chakras. It has these pretty stones, and she knows I love polished stones. The stones are mounted like a little necklace even though they are really supposed to be placed on the body part where the blocked chakra resides.

I'm still not entirely sure how that works, so that’s why the stones are overbaking. I mean over cleansing. But I've decided I am officially going to begin the unblocking process. Will let you know how it goes.

Tell me all your thoughts on God/'Cause I would really like to meet her/And ask her why we're who we are. ~ ”Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla

And Now for Something Completely Different

I've been having the most fun lately messing with my blog. Which reminds me of something that happened to me last year. I fell in love with a guy through his blog. Yes.

It was fate, I could tell, because I kept hitting the same guy’s blog for different reasons. I love gardening, and he has this gorgeous garden. Then I hit the same blog looking for quotes. He had these pithy, philosophical things to say.

There was a picture of him on one page, and not only was he about my age…could it get any more amazing? He was good looking.

He also had cats, judging from one of his pictures. Although I don’t currently have cats, any cat-hating men are automatically relegated to the “NO WAY” pile. But then….

I looked at the cats more closely. There was something about the photo. Was it that the cats were entwined a little too sensually? No, that wasn’t it. And then I realized: it was the sheets of the bed on which they were lying.

Gorgeous sheets. High thread count. Tone on tone. Clean. The embodiment of elegant masculinity. They were even drawn back artistically.

Gay guy sheets.

I later found a picture of his partner, also quite handsome.

Damn.

Not that I’m going to be picking up guys from their blogs, but still.

Another one bites the dust. ~Queen

Write On, Dude

A Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers II is out today. I have several reasons to be jubilant about this.

My husband used to put me down. He made nasty little threats. Took my graduate school money. Wouldn’t let me take one day off. Wouldn’t let me take a vacation. Got mad when I had friends. Got mad when I painted or drew. Got mad when I distinguished myself in any way. Oddly, I never really thought of it as abusive because I laughed at him and did most of what I wanted, anyway. But I got what I always called “the punishments.”

And then one day I volunteered to write my subdivision’s newsletter. My husband was mad. Again.

It was only when he tried to punish me for writing that I really began to see him for what he was. I was living life with a human being who seemed only to know how to take--a parasite. Suddenly, I wanted to fling him off and feel free again. And the way I did that was by writing. It felt like I wrote myself back into existence. I felt paradoxically whole again.

He got mad when I used his computer...I used it anyway. Wouldn’t baby-sit the children so that I could take a computer class...I took it while the youngest was in preschool. He wouldn’t keep an eye on the children so I could write the newsletter...I locked myself in the bathroom and scribbled on scraps of paper while they lay on the floor outside and put their little fingers under the door.

When I tried to write creatively, the computer “crashed.” Twice. When people dropped off items for the newsletter, he literally pushed himself into the conversation. He had jealous fits when men brought articles for me to print. He tried distracting me every way he knew how. He even tried pretending to people that he’d been secretly doing the writing for me.

But I wrote and wrote and wrote. And I found myself again in those words. And finally, much, much later than I should have, I left him.

I left in spite of poverty, attacks, and struggles. I left in spite of the fact that most of my extended family is dead. I left in spite of a future that’s worse than uncertain; more poverty, attacks and struggles are certain. And I’m not a bit sorry.

Then last week, he shorted child support even though last I knew, he made 16 times what I do (although I do 100% of the parenting and pay 20% of college and medical expenses). So when I emailed him to ask where it was, I got this telling little email: “I would think that by now with all of your writing deals and book signings that you really wouldn't have time to mess with trying to extort yet more money from me.”

So right now, I am laughing….And I am writing. And those snarky little words are music to my ears.

Is it tacky of me to be telling this? Probably. But the truth is, if I had read this a few years ago, it would have helped me…so I will write. And it helps me now…so I will write. As long as this controlling person attacks me, I will write. As long as any controlling people attack anyone, I will write and write and write. And if they don’t attack, I will still write…about something else.

It's not bragging when I announce I have a story coming out. That’s not it at all. It's not about being a great writer. It's not even really about writing. It's not about being special or successful or making money. It's about refusing to give up or give in to a person who—for reasons I will probably never understand—thought love meant destroying me. It’s about celebrating. It’s about saying, you can take everything away from me, but you can’t take me. I am still here. And in spite of it all, I am happy.

The truth is that monetary poverty is nothing—nothing—compared to the starvation of the creative spirit.

“I dedicate this book to that part of myself that inched forward when a thousand winds blew and she had but one small pink birthday candle to hold up her wish….” ~Tama J. Kieves, This Time I Dance! Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work You Love

Good Book

I just finished reading a good book called Controlling People: How to recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You by Patricia Evans (©2002 by Adams Media Corporation). There are parts that so closely nail controlling personalities, it occasionally made me gasp aloud and require a break just to let it sink in.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. ~Charles Baudelaire

When Words Don't Quite Fail

Right after I filed, I actually had someone ask me point blank why I was getting a divorce. He prefaced this with, “As you know, I’m a good friend of the family.”

One of the last times I saw this particular “good friend,” an older, alcoholic former boss of my ex husband’s, he was soused and grabbing my knee under the table at a dinner party my husband and I were throwing. I hadn’t talked to my good friend in close to 10 years and wasn’t at all unhappy about that. So my first response was stunned silence, which I think is one of those times in life that guileless honesty has given me the perfect retort.

Then I got to use the comeback I’d fortunately filed away for just this occasion. It is: “I simply don’t deserve him.”

The response was perfect. "Oh, why yes, yes, of course. That is, ahh, oh. Oh, yes, of course. Oh, uh huh, I see. I—Yes. Uh huh. Oh."

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. ~Martin Farquhar Tupper

Today I realized the chief difference between my view of the marriage and my ex husband’s. When I look back on all those years of marriage, I see all the times I should have left--and can’t forgive myself for staying. He sees all the times I stayed and can’t forgive me for finally leaving.

“The greatest of teachers won’t hesitate/to leave you there by yourself, chained to fate….” ~Live, "I Alone"