Recycling in the oddest places

I remember pumping my own gas when the price bursted to a whopping 19¢ a gallon. I also recall people looking at me askance because I, a woman, was pumping my own go juice during an era when the phrase “men pumping their own” had quite a different meaning.

I guess, to answer the ponderous question nagging at a few, these memories might make me proverbially old as dirt. And that’s OK, because someone had to be. I’m still about 19 in the cognitive arena; though my body feels assured I am just the Queen of Denial and need to get a grip.

But what all this brings me around to is this: I’ve always been a (1) person and (2) woman who went her own way down the road of discovery. I believe I’ve observed in a previous entry what an awful salmon I would have made – although the swimming against the current thing sounds just peachy to me. But the idea of group behavior… well that’s another can o’ tuna all together.

And so, you politely wonder, what has all this to do with recycling? Fear not, fretful reader. The question will be answered shortly.

Alhough I’m technically not old enough to be old as dirt, I am sure getting there inch by inch. And along with that realization comes another: that there is no such thing as aging gracefully. And so I’ve decided that I had better get a tad more active if I intend to keep my wits about me. I decided to take up geocaching after watching a show on National Geographic about brain elasticity. Good show, great information. Research shows that brain connections can continue to grow throughout a lifetime if given the proper motivation. Indeed, use it or lose it.

I, for one, am not comfortable with the latter. My mother had Alzheimer’s, and I am freaked out beyond belief by what happened to her.

Interestingly, part of the show dealt with the positive benefits of geocaching, an activity for young and old alike that gets you outdoors, gets your ticker pumping, puts you in comfortable social situations. And you guessed it: promotes brain elasticity because of the need to combine GPS technology with good ol’ common sense. Quite a brain healthy soup, as it turns out.

The nice thing about caching is you can do it alone or with friends. And you can do it in a rural environment fraught with wilderness areas (and recently, more wildland fires than I are to acknowledge) or you can marshal your troops in a more urbane environment.

Interestingly, I find geocaching to be much like yoga in its approach: you aren’t competing with anyone but yourself. The only satisfaction at the end of the process is a job well done.

And so I am caching here and caching there and really digging it. I recently finished out one of our local mountain parks, and was on my way back to my 4Runner to head back to the casa. I decided to make a pit stop first, and headed to the portajohn. I’m not necessarily enamored of those places, but it sure beats being butt naked in the woods when some hiker, geocacher, or disc golfer decides to take a gander in your direction. The woods ain’t so woodsy as they once used to be….

Being a height-challenged individual, I tend to look all over the place at my surroundings to make sure I’m not missing something. So as I sit myself upon the portable throne, I notice something that sets me off belly laughing. Didyaknow that portapotties are made from #2 recyclable plastic? I kid you not. Thus saith the embossment on the portadoor. I was personally engaged in a #1 when I made the observation about #2.

It just wouldn’t have had the same impact if the door had been a #3.

The power of lips

I rousted quite early this morning, primarily because I am dog-sitting for friends and the fear of dog poop on light-colored carpet is a powerful motivator. A truly astronomical benefit to being up so early was the opportunity to observe the so-called Super Moon, which was super spectacular morning.

As I am cruising to and ‘fro from my canine destination, I am taking my usual musical flashback to the 60s and 70s, when rock was truly magical (doesn’t every generation say this?). And I am doing that combo thing: singing here, whistling there. And then it strikes me like one of Zeus’s thunderbolts how absolutely marvelous a thing whistling is.

That is, if done properly.

There are those of us who never stopped marveling at the wonder that is the human body. After someone finished counting fingers and toes after we were birthed, there came a realization that this wriggle factor was only the beginning of the mystery. That much deeper, and sometimes darker, conundrums are there to tease the gray matter.

How incredibly interesting that something as inane as lips can be so interesting and provocative. All the babbling of infanthood leads to the good and bad verbal behavior of adulthood. To every kiss given to the objects of our affection. To every hurtful thing we intended or didn’t intend as sound is strung to sound, word to word, and sentence to sentence. Lips are also not a bad place to hang your lip gloss, if you get my drift.

But ah, the miracle of the whistle. My capacity to whistle goes back to childhood. My father -- a music major in college prior to switching up to political science – set a pretty high standard when it came to moving air. My dad played the trombone all his life, so he knew whereof he spoke when it came to deployment of lips.

Interestingly, I don’t recall ever hearing my dad whistle. But you could just see the pain on his face and the agony in his eyes when I whistled off key. So rather quickly I learned that I need to hit the mark or bear the consequences.

I was always jealous of those kids who could muster up that big-whup whistle as they shoved prodigious digits into their mouths. You know the one I’m talking about. This was a talent I never acquired. And the other pastime of childhood, placing a blade of grass between the fingers and sending some wind out in harmonic convergence, was also something that escaped me. My grass whistle sounded something akin to a banshee on a bad hair day.

Through consistent but unconscious practice, however, I because a pretty fair whistler. I don’t have that fancy and, sometimes overdone, operatic vibrato that some whistlers have. But I can do the next best thing: I can still whistle on key.

Have to admit: as a kid, and even today, there are probably few things as annoying to me personally as much as someone who whistles off key. Fingers on the chalk board and all that good stuff. I develop a case of lemon face pretty fast. I have the social decency not to smack someone in the kisser when B sharp comes out as A flat. But I gotta tell you, the inner urge is still there.

This represents something of a dichotomy for me. I am a true believer in the art of self-expression, and I readily acknowledge that the ability and talent to whistle runs through typical highs and lows. I guess I should consider the expenditure of energy it takes for the human brain to communicate with these flaps on our faces and tell them to do something… anything. And in this metaphysical sense, I am amazed at anyone’s ability to generate an imperfect or perfect sound.

Better to have whistled and lost, than never whistled at all.

I also realize that whistling is a sound that represents spontaneous joy. But really, folks. How joyful can it be when the act causes someone else to want to slap you into tomorrow?

Please don’t mistake me for a whistle snob. If you think I’m being a little nutzy here, think about it this way: What if one of the rounds of American Idol focused on the ability of candidates to whistle. See where I’m going? Advertising revenues for most things, with the possible exception of ear plugs, would certainly plummet as TV viewers beat a hasty retreat to just about anywhere that isn’t in front of the tube. The value of mute buttons cannot be overstressed!

Anyway, my thanks to Steely Dan for that super-lit pre-dawn jam session. I’ll save my evaluation of humming for another day….

The art of cat wrangling: redux and reflux

As they say in some of the worst works of literature: time passed (or, “It was a dark and stormy night.”).

And as they say in some circles: that’s an understatement.

I’m approaching the two-month mark in my capacity as Mountain High Cat Wrangler. Whodathunkit? Certainly not me.

Cali has made some small improvements since my last repor-tagggggggge. But "small" is the key descriptor in this discourse. I am thoroughly amazed at how (1) acclimated and (2) trained I have become in being a moderator between the two dueling gatos.

Maybe I am just in need of some good shrinkage to fix my mental state. But I seriously doubt it. I never thought I’d be digging deep into my cat wrangling skills at this late date. But I am, and now I wonder: what lunkhead turned off the light at the end of the tunnel? All my bills are paid up, for pity sake!

About a week ago, I was lulled into a false sense of security. I even contemplated, with more hopefulness than I’ve gathered for a long time, that one night Cali would jump into bed herself, noddle up into a fuzz ball, and all this would just be a reflection of a bad dream.

I am delusional. Instead of past blending seamlessly into the present, lines of demarcation have been drawn. Interestingly, when it comes to bed time, I am actually that line. My body is the literal divider between growls and claws, between sweet behavior and gatos gone bad. Cali to my right, Izzi to my left; and as Mark says, never the Twain shall meet. I am sleeping on a strip of bed that is about 6 inches wide and 6 feet long. Rock ‘n roll in either direction, and I am in a world of hurt.

Here’s what’s so odd. When the girls are on the kitchen counter for their snacks during the day, they are fine with each other. Each will groom the other, and they will position themselves in Yin-Yang style waiting for the food to hit their dishes. They will even eat out of each other’s dishes and not raise a peep.

Cali is finally moving around those places that Izzi has heretofore guarded. Like the tall kitty condo. And she’s venturing a little further out of the kitchen, and has even headed ‘round the corner down the hallway to the bedroom on her own steam. And she’s used her step-box to get into the bed. The secret, you see, is that all this is going on when I’m not around. So I know Cali has dealt with it in some form or fashion. I am now thinking that I’m the wildcard in this crazy equation.

But geez. She used to stay settled in bed until 4 a.m. before wanting her early morning snack. Then the time migrated to 3 a.m., and then 2 a.m. Last night, it was a hair shy of 1 a.m. What I’m trying to decide is whether it’s a good thing that the timing is moving up, or whether this is a warning that I will be officially screwed soon.

Izzi’s stalking ended for a while, but we are ramped up again as of four days ago. I’m thinking I could charge admission for the most recent staring matches.

I am seriously contemplating contacting Animal Planet.

These latest developments, needless to say, have my stomach in a turmoil. I have given serious consideration to buying stock in the company that manufactures Tums. I think I’m going to need a bulk discount at the very least for the foreseeable future.

The art of cat wrangling

Kevin Costner’s got nadda on me. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Dances With Wolves when it came out (and this recent bitter cold streak represents an excellent, if not captive, opportunity to revisit the Ol’ West), Mr. Costner wasn’t left to his own devices on the movie set.

Au contraire, I had to plunge head-long into the fray with Cali, my personal mega-cat, right before New Year’s Eve. Trial and tribulation has earned me the magnanimous title of Cat Wrangler in my mountain community.

I’m serious. There’s even some friendly banter at my expense on one of our local websites about The Situation at Casa Gatos Loca.

My girl, who exhibits every possible particle of Maine Coon-esque behavior known in the world of the feline, got pretty darned sick just as 2010 was preparing to segue into 2011. She’s 9 years old, so let’s just say she has entered what represents her middle-age years with quite a bang. Her partner in crime is Izzi, a contender at age 8 who is half Cali’s size and weight. Spirit-wise, however, they are a matched set.

The girls have always been the two proverbial peas in a pod. I have many photos of the two of them massed in a gigantic fur ball during one of their many midday siestas. The fact that they have similar coloration means that sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart without taking notice of certain bodily landmarks. Sounds sweet, doesn’t it?

I know what is normal and what isn’t for my girl gang. When Cali started to barf and then refused to eat and drink, it was anything but normal. And thus began a series of trips to the vet which now cause me to refer to my Just-Under-16-Pounds-Of-Joy as my Thousand-Dollar-Baby.

The problem came upon Cali so suddenly that my whole household went topsy-turvy with the spin of a pin head. My peaceable girls are suddenly ardent enemies. Izzi has somehow decided her original sister has been replaced by a replica Pod-Cat. Izzi, who stays safely ensconced inside and has never been allowed to venture outdoors, has always patrolled the perimeter of the inner grounds. In fact, it is not infrequent and out-of-the-norm to see her flying through the air with the greatest of ease over couches and chairs and at imaginary villains as she makes sure all is right with the outside world. She is the chief chic in charge.

But at this particular juncture, she has gone into Stealth Cat Mode. She starts to stalk Cali, something she’s never done. She gives Cali eyeball-to-eyeball ground-penetrating deep stares. She starts to guard the litter box and lord over the food dishes. I am watching a nature documentary unfold before my eyes: the strong preying upon the weak.

The initial trip to my local vet turns into a late-Saturday-night foray to the emergency vet in the flatland 30 miles away less than a week later. Cali has somehow tilted off her axis, and I am thoroughly convinced she is going to die that night. If I were legally capable of running lights and sirens during that 30-mile ride, I would have done so. Four hours later, I am sapped but returning home with my precious package of fluff. At this stage, I have inconclusive blood work results and an astronomical vet bill to show for the adventure.

The atmosphere in the casa becomes positively charged and hostile. With Izzi Sentry on guard, Cali is now traumatized and afraid to go anywhere on her own steam. Thus, I am carrying her between rooms, to and from the litter box. As a friend told me, it’s like I just had a child and I’m up every three or so hours for something or another.

I’m not proud to say finally have a nuclear meltdown. I am a puddle of tears wrapped in a thunderous headache. I am not fit for human association. I have had very few hours of sleep since this whole situation began, and adrenaline, like fumes, is becoming harder to muster.

The timeline moves along. Back to the vet for x-rays. Back to the vet for an ultrasound. At the conclusion of all this testing, we discover that everything is pretty much normal. The only thing that showed up during all the testing was a cyst in Cali’s pancreas. My vet, who I appreciate very much, tells me she doesn’t think it’s a terminal. Had it been, she told me Cali would be dying or gone by now.

The theory is that Cali was trying to cough up a fur ball and set off this extreme chain of events.

During all of the chaos, I have become the Administrator of Tough Love Central and have added the title of Cat Wrangler to my resume. A lot of this centers around giving the gato a pill. Here’s the mental image: Willingly stick your tender little pinkies into Jaws. Seriously….

We are cat dancing with each other now. She’s hiding under the bed. I have to get her out. She won’t come out. I have to get Izzi out of the bedroom, get the broom, close the bedroom door, get Cali’s cat carrier, belly crawl to the bed, push the handle of the broom to Cali’s location, scare the dickens out of her as I gently move the handle in her direction, watch her bolt into the bathroom to hide, risk life and limb by picking her up, ignore the growls and cries of distress (coming from both her and me), and then – and only then – put her into her carrier.

You see, the carrier is the only place she’s feeling truly safe these days since she’s clocked so much time there recently. The advantage of pilling her there is that she can’t back away from me or really get the claws revved up. After some contortions on my part, I manage to get the pill into her and then…

Everything is fine. At least for a nanosecond.

In all, I’ve spent more than a month getting up at O’Dark 30 to carry Cali to her food dish, or to the litter box, or to the bedroom, or back into the kitchen for a morning munch. But I can now proudly say the growling has lessened, and Cali is finally, finally starting to stand her ground with Iz The Terrible. I somehow have this image of Iz clawing imaginary notches –four at a time – whenever she prevails in the skirmishes. I’m sure Cali, who has always been very confident, finally got fed up.

What really seems to have turned the tide is a 99-cent squirt gun I bought from Target last week. It’s the team colors of the Denver Broncos, and Izzi is living proof that cats can make connections at lightning speed. After only two squirt gun corrections she’s knows that pushing the envelope and getting wet are synonymous. Haven’t had to use The Gun in days, in fact. All I have to do is make a squirting noise with my mouth, and she high-tails it away.

There is still enough posturing between the gatos to go around. And like the Hatfields and McCoys, I think the girls have forgotten what started the whole thing.

But I’m here to tell you one thing: I haven’t. I am Cat Wrangler. I walk tall and carry a big squirt gun.

No time to get my glam on

While the majority of the U.S. of A. was hugging its collective sheets this morning after a night of mindless, ritualized overindulgence on New Year’s Eve, I was hard at it for quite some time. It was fully O’Dark 30 when I woke up today, wondering if my humble hearth was alive and kicking with the embers of a fire. Fear of no heat is a deal breaker, and will get you out of bed pretty fast. When I glanced at the clock, it was a little before 5 a.m., meaning "nearly" a respectable time to arise from the cotton-headed land of dreams and take a stab at reality.

No biggie, you say. Guess again. It’s -15 degrees (below zero) outside. If a witch truly had a tit (as the old reference to cold weather goes), it would have frozen off long ago. The witchy woman would no doubt be thumbing through the yellow pages in search of a transplant.

It’s the kind of cold that makes animals go extinct without a problem.

Virtually every morning of my life here at altitude is the same: make the requisite visit to the baño, stumble into the kitchen where my two balls of feline fuzzed determination are poised for their morning snack, grind up some coffee beans so I can pour some liquid reality down my gullet. During the winter I open the doors on the woodstove and try to focus on what’s inside.

I have been heating my various houses with wood since 1975, and I am a past master at the art of keeping my fire alive through the night without getting up at odd times to stoke things up.

(Hint: that’s why 5 a.m. has become such a line of demarcation in my household. Anything before that is somnambulistic insanity. Anything afterward can be “attributed” to being close enough to 6 a.m. that "things" can be "fudged" a "tad.")

I would be an instant expert on TV’s “Survivor,” except for the fact that no one knows I’m alive, and that’s alright with me.

So by the time all of the above has transpired, we are roughly 15 minutes into a new day and a new year. I have no time to be blurry-eyed, as the most important chore of the morn yet awaits me. Like Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard (and that’s another story because, you see, Mother Hubbard Cupboard is bare in my casa), the stack of firewood in the living room is reaching a critically low mass. I have a date with destiny: it's time to haul in the next coupla’days worth of fuel.

The coffee pot has just given up its last steamy sigh, and I know this is good news. Two things you should never attempt to separate: a mother from her young, and a mountain person from her coffee. Both are genetically predisposed to take care of business.

All this deep background brings me to today’s topic. When your day starts out dark and cold, you aren’t exactly concerned about being a fashion plate. I rev into action: thickly-lined cranberry-colored sweatpants, a rust-colored fleece shirt, and turquoise (I’m much too conscious about color to just call them “blue”) socks. I am a color wheel gone mad! I am the Numero Uno candidate for the show, “What Not to Wear.”

Atop this psychedelic paraphernalia goes my black work jacket with its gray sweatshirt-appearing double hood. Somehow, the gray scale seems to tone things down a notch. I will never appear on the cover of Vogue (if indeed it's still being published), and a fashionista would undoubtedly throw me to the wolves and take pure delight doing so.

But I’m a damn sight warmer than a lot of other people who think mini-skirts and tank tops are dress d’jour during the winter.

Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, please note that I have not discussed my boots yet. Most people who muck about in these cold climes sport Sorels. I can’t because the liner is made of wool, and I am highly allergic to wool. I found this out back in the days of mohair sweaters. After begging my mom for one, I finally was the lucky recipient, wearing it on the first day back to high school after the Christmas holiday during my freshman year. By the time I got home, I looked like someone had scoured me with a Brillo pad and sent me home without an excuse.

Sorels are not exactly fashion plate material either in my estimation, although the company is certainly softening the blow and getting into designer booties.

As for me, my lil’ tootsies are sizzly-warm and safely tucked into my Columbia Sierra Sumettes. C’mon, you know they are great looking just by pronouncing every syllable of the name with an intention that’s slow as molasses. A hint of the rugged topped off with the Oh-So-Français-Sounding femininity of a fur (fake) cuff. Doesn’t hurt that they are Thinsulate-lined and warm as Hades. They do not, however, have those oh-so-cute pompoms on the laces that you might expect (my indoor slippers do, however).

So you see, I can, at the very least, trek très chic. And clad so gorgeously, I have managed to spend the ensuing hours shoveling decks and walkways, stocking up on firewood, and tromping around the yard taking photos of the natural drama unfolding in my own back 40.

Thank god the neighbors were asleep for most of the fashion show!