My Life According to Facebook

I always dread these type of year in review things on Facebook...mainly because I just don't "do" photos. Most family members know this but there is  always some people on the fringe of the family that just don't get it and upload and tag...ugh.

And the last few years I've done these...it was all about death. My dead sister, my dead dog. Yeah, that's a real fun year Facebook.

So I was super surprised and oh so pleased to get this:

Apparently 2015 was all about the Mace! Macy Blue!!! From L-R: at the beach; our Thanksgiving hike, on the porch sofa (hanging with our house guests), in Auntie B's backyard, the day she figured out stuffies; our painting from Chewy.com, MB's paw on my shoe - her little safety trick when we are away from home and she wants to drift off to sleep but she's afraid I'll leave her. This was when I knew she liked me finally! (Back on the left) After getting skunked, stalking my coffee; With all the toys I bought her when our houseguests left us. We were sad...we needed toys! And playing with her elephant.

It's so wonderful to see how far she's come!!

I'm Half Alive but I Feel Mostly Dead

Sigh... You know that really tired down deep in your bones? Yeah, I got that. Today was the first day in about three weeks I didn't  have to be somewhere . I still had things to do: beads to ship, rubber stamp orders that have been piling up for weeks. Instead of doing what I should, I hung out in my pjs, drank a second cuppa, snoozed, made lunch, slept hard, hiked hard and got my tomatoes in the ground after dark.

This last week has been particularly emotional and grueling. I've been working a lot and feeling a bit lost without those boys I got to teach for 22 days. I got to see them yesterday after a week away. I got a hug from all of them. Made my day! But being back on a single track teaching gig has my head spinning. Last week I taught TK (4-5 year olds)... my hugger was also a puker that day! Next was 6th grade. Then it was 10th grade math, followed by psychology and American history for 12th grade - Where the prof had the audacity to call Elvis the "supposed King of Rock and Roll!" SUPPOSED??? WTH??? He didn't give himself the name like the supposed King of Pop did! That our society has regressed so far that Elvis has become the supposed King makes me sit here shaking my head wondering about the future of the planet.

Two people I know passed away last week. One was an Internet friend but a political blogger I've read for years who had lots of real life ties to people I know. We had become friends on Facebook a few months ago after his mom passed away and... I so wanted to meet him someday. I find it sadly ironic he died after seeing the dentist. The other was someone from real life that I haven't gotten to see much in recent years. Surgical procedure / complications / blood clots / heart failure / life support. Each update was sadder than the last. And one of my California family is battling cancer. That my sister adored him (and Mom too) makes it that much sadder. My mom asks for updates daily as if some miracle is bound to happen...making me ache that there is nothing new or good to tell her.

I tell you all this to explain...I'm just tired, exhausted and wonder if the world is ever going to feel normal (better??) ever again.

 All is not dark and sad or tired. This girl brings me great joy every day! Look at her playing with a new toy a friend sent her:

I hope we'll get back into our blogging routine soon...

*apologies to Jewel for the title.

Last Christmas

I've been thinking a lot about last Christmases this week... I guess because the previous two were my very last with two of the dearest souls in my life.

I didn't realize that last Christmas would be Mabel's last. I didn't even take pictures of her opening the tennie ball and cookies I'm certain she got.  We had such a quiet and laid back Christmas...just the two of us. Mabel was clearly not into any toys any more but her inner labradork still loved "tennie balls."

The only photo I took anywhere near Christmas was this shot of Mabel and Sue greeting one another with a kiss the day after Christmas... Hank is in the background...his last Christmas too.

I was so relaxed and happy... I don't know what would have been different had I known.

The Christmas of 2012 was the last with my sister.  This is my sister's last Christmas tree. My brother in law and I struggled to get it up and get the ornaments just right to please my perfectionist sister. In the end, she got out of her sick bed in the middle of the night and rearranged everything to her liking just in time for Christmas Eve.

I didn't take pictures of my sister...she looked too frail and I might would have had to admit it was our last Christmas, even though some part of me certainly knew.

This Christmas, my 91 year old mom joined Macy and I for the holiday. Macy's first Christmas ever apparently... 

She clearly had no idea what gifts were...

Or what to do with them... 

I had to open it for her... Then, she was a happy girl! 

Mother brought swine flu with her...coughed everywhere and got me sick two days before surgery... Yes my second shoulder surgery date...and still no surgery! Macy just loved on us both.

We took a two plus hour hike on Christmas Day...Macy has spotted her Otto and her auntie RottRover here.

This Christmas was pretty nice... But I keep having that nagging feeling…like there something I should be paying attention to...just in case it's another last Christmas.

If Not for Bad Luck

You know, I stole a line from Velvet several years ago (2009)...summing up a year as "spectacular for its suckitude."And I've labeled nearly every year since as such.  It has been a bloody horrible run of suckitude!

• 2009 - Economic downturn and financial woes, Station Fire, loss of our trails in the rains that followed.  I posted on the very same day that I longed for better days. 
• 2010 - a spider nearly killed me and a 23 year friendship bit the dust and the pain still reverberates -  even though I know I'm better off without someone who simply doesn't value me and is so comfortable lying. 
• 2011 - My dear sister started her third and final battle with cancer. 
• 2012 - More trips back home to be with my sister. By the holidays, we knew her battle was almost over. 
• 2013 - My sister passed and I spent the year adjusting to her loss...still am really. I got mad at myself just the other day for not calling her in so long! 
• 2014 - Mabel died way too quickly.  Torn labrum and impending surgery on my shoulder. A new career teaching... I don't love it  but I don't hate it any more - most days.  Oh, and a fire! Or two! 

I've already told you about the local bakery that burned. I can't tell you loss I felt...from losing a selling venue to no where for a quick outing with friends.  As I've watched the building sitting there all burnt and sad, I've thought a lot about the loss from a fire. But that didn't mean I wanted to experience it first hand...

Almost two weeks ago, the tenants that live in my townhouse - my first home of my own - called to tell me it was on fire! We think it started in their dryer... clean your lint filters people! Luckily, it was confined to the garage.

And to add insult to injury, neither of us have insurance. I had to make some rough choices back in '09... health insurance or my interior townhouse policy. I chose health knowing it was a  calculated gamble. My homeowner's association has an exterior policy that will return the home to four walls and a roof. The rest is up to me. But I'm on the hook for the ginormous deductible... about 1/3 of my last year's below poverty wages!  OY! Some part of me is so scared, I don't know what to do. And some part of me knows there is nothing to do...yet.

 

I just know that I am fed up with negative. I'm tired of dealing with BS. Negative people exhaust me (and I have one I must talk to every single day). I am going to focus on the positive if it kills me! Oddly enough the things I have to pay for in my own unit were on my to-do list anyway: the water heater was old, the laundry cabinets were saggy, the patio door didn't close. The only extra is a garage door opener. Not too bad...

Maybe this gets my perpetually late renters out of my house. Maybe this is about shutting one door to open another. Maybe it's to teach me to never gamble with insurance.  I don't know... but I will rise from these ashes!

Celebrating Her

I've now spent two of my sister's birthdays without her. It hasn't gotten any easier. I always touch base with my Mom and my brother-in-law and then I always try to do something that would make Patsy happy. Whether it's a good meal or a movie or just being outside, I find some moment that she would just love and I feel her with me.

My mother is always so sad on this day, so full of longing and tears. I listen, I cry with her but I know my sister would not approve. Oh, she'd be happy we miss her...but not about the sadness.

My brother-in-law always changes her flowers at her grave and often takes her a balloon on special occasions. Patsy loved balloons. Today, as has happened before, the balloon he got for her got away from him and quickly made its way to the heavens! We often say, she wanted her balloon right away! It makes us laugh.

My brother-in-law has a special lady and, as luck would have it, today is also her birthday. I love that! We all do. It gives him and Mom and me something to celebrate on this day that has been so special to us. It's hard to be sad when you want to be happy for someone you care about.

I changed my profile pic on Facebook to one of her. It helps knowing that good friends and family know why and they often chime in on how much they miss her too.

After my check-ins, Macy and I, Otto Rotto and the Rottrover were all off to the beach. We went to a different one this time as our friend Wizard couldn't make it. One that another of our hiking buddies knew of.  It was kind of impromptu, planned earlier in the week. Patsy adored the ocean...could stare at it for hours. I knew she would approve.

Macy loves to body surf and will often dive into the waves!

As magical things go, this beach was so special! It was the beach I see in my head. You know, the one without any people? In 50 years, I've never been to this beach...I thought it didn't exist...just some kind of fantasy! But it does!!! It was amazing! We walked over four miles and saw five people and five dogs. In all that walking, we only leashed up to avoid a dead seal!

It was magical for the dogs too! I am NOT exaggerating when I tell you we found around FORTY balls to play with!!

 

Our Blue Heaven

Patsy was on my mind... I had several beautiful shells and one stunning rock wash up at my feet.  It was such a blissful day and the perfect way to celebrate a special day!

Her Life in Pictures: Two

Mabel Lou continued to have a lot of firsts in her 2nd year with me. I was starting to figure out what a drama queen she was...She would often get in her bed and do this and make these guttural vocal noises.  What a crack up!

We were both falling deeply in love with our creek. My feet were getting worse and I was headed for foot surgery. I was grateful that she would go and explore on her own and come back to whatever rock I was on. It was exasperating, hiking her all out for over an hour, she'd come back to the the car and dash off into a vacant field chasing bunnies for another hour! SO much energy!

She was so hard headed, wouldn't listen. But she would look at me out of the corner of her eyes as if to say, "Go to hell!" when I gave her a command!

Mabel and my bestie's lab, Sarah Jean, were constantly together. Sarah helped with Mabel's training and got as exasperated with Mabel as I did! Back then, you couldn't hike right by the water. There was a natural rock levy. Sarah Jean and I would hike along on the top of the rock levy. But we couldn't move fast enough for puppy Lou! And she just loved to splash and be in the river.  So as we moved forward down the stream, Mabel Lou would run up and down, up and down the face of the levy... about a 5 - 6 foot drop into the river. She just had boundless energy to spare. Several times a hike, Sarah and I would look at Mabel, look at each other and roll our eyes!

I'm including this pic for the Creekerati ( my pet name for the people and dogs in our pack). Many of them have heard me talk of "Volkswagon Rock," a HUGE boulder that was in the stream bed back then.  The perspective is off in this pic but that's the rock behind Sarah and Mabel! It really was the size of a car! And the one in the foreground is nearly as large. Both washed away in the '05 flood!

I took so many pics of Mabel in the stream that spring and summer! That's when I landed our first CreekHiker logo out of sheer luck in timing! Mabel was terrified of deep water...thanks to me. My pool is deep and I always feel the need to make it perfectly clear to any new dog how to get out of the pool. Which means getting them in the pool! I throw them in and show them the way out... very dramatic! Mabel actually cut a path behind some shrubs to avoid running near the pool!

  

Mabel made her first flight to Louisiana to visit family that summer. I didn't take many pics of her there but I do love this one. We put her in one of my brother in law's kennel runs for a family event. She was NOT happy! But she was trying so hard to be cute!

 

I had foot surgery that October and was in a wheelchair quite a while.  I took no photos of the girl between summer and Christmas! We spent Christmas here...just the two of us as I was still recuperating and trying to learn to walk again. Here's Miss M opening her gifts:

By Spring of '04, my sister's breast cancer had returned and she and my mom came to live with us for over three months! Mabel was the buffer between all of us. She kept the peace and loved us all through it! My sister and I would leave very early every morning for the 150 mile round trip to the proton radiation center. Many days we would return to find Mabel and Mom like this:

 

And I think that's when I officially gave up the "No Dogs on the Sofa" Rule! Thanks Mom! 

My sister would often sit by the pool and Mabel would lurk near by. I'm certain she knew how sick her auntie was.  Mabel would always watch over her outside.

Her Life in Pictures: One

Humor me if you will...but writing is the way I heal my heart. Mabel Lou came along at the very beginning of my digital age. I've looked and looked for photos from that last roll of film I shot the day May came home... Her baby book doesn't hold them. I wrote in the details but the only photo is from her adoption announcement. I did find several of those pics on my computer though. Must have scanned them a long time ago. But I do know I bought my first digital camera the week after she moved into took over the house.

I thought it would be fun to look back over her very large life in a series.

Mabel made it perfectly clear from her first trip through the house just where she expected to sleep. Even though she was less than 1/2 the size she would grow up to be, she still only left me a sliver of the bed.  Look at the size of those paws!

Even though she had a bed in the den...one she looked so tiny in...

Mabel Lou also made it known where she preferred to be:

Every time I came out of my office, I found her on the sofa. It was the source of so many of our disagreements. When that sofa breathed its last, I replaced it with one I called "Mabel's sofa."

I am absolutely stunned at how lush the backyard looked back then. Amazing what money will pay for! Expensive water bills are a thing of my past! It feels irresponsible to me to have a green lawn when we live in a drought! And just look at those fences that Mabel would eventually tear down! No raccoon was ever safe behind that compared to the strength and determination of Miss Lou!

She was so tiny and scared of the raccoons at first, when I had to leave her alone, I would find her asleep on top of a glass table! I could just imagine coming home to a cut up pup! But one night, we heard the racoons under the deck and she raced to the end of the patio. She stopped there and looked back at me. Her look said, "You comin'?"

I told her, "No. That YOUR job!" If I only knew how seriously she would take me on that!

The other side of the yard was just as lush. This was before we got bloom drop in this area! Oddly enough, this is the first year I've planted veggies in years. I think my girl knew I was going to need a summer project.

One of her very first trips to the creek. She looks so small in the domain she would come to rule! As I was making calls today to plan her funeral, I realized, with the exception of my bestie, every friend we have, we met at the creek!

Ah....nothing like a fat puppeh tum right after a meal! She never liked having her tum rubbed and would sometimes growl if I tried. I think it made her feel vulnerable and a pup that had seven homes before finding her forever home probably didn't like that emotion very much. As she got older, she would grant me very brief tummy rubs, but I clearly got more out of it than she did. She was all about her head being petted!

Her first Halloween... She ate the halo! Dressing up was not for dignified rottenweilers according to Mabel Lou! Note the placement of her knees to avoid the bone on bone pain of hitting her Greyhound ribcage.

 

The photo is far more appropriate... you can see the devilment in her eyes!

Her first Christmas. The whole family came here and everyone spoiled her! My sister brought her tons of toys. My brother-in-law would work with her on training and allow her to sit on him on the sofa. My mother overfed her and her cousin Huggy played and played with her. She was a rather gracious hostess! With all that attention, how could she not be?

She adored Huggy and even figured out how to open his crate!  Still, Mabel being Mabel, she would get terribly jealous over her Granny! Here she is trying (succeeding!) to horn in on Mom petting Huggy.

Hug and May using my brother in law as a pillow:

And my personal fave...one you've maybe seen before. Mabel in her "Harley Mama" phase in the car. She would straddle the console, long skinny legs on either side of it and her left forearm draped over my right shoulder as I drove. She would use her left paw between her hind legs to brace her body! This phase only last a few months and I was quite happy when she simply grew too large to sit like that! I was always terrified she would go through the windshield!

Termite Trails

Do you ever feel like your life goes in some kind of strange pattern and if you could just stop, pull back and view it all from a distance, it might - just maybe - all make sense??

That's what I think of when I see the patterns that the termites have carved under the bark of this fallen tree in the creek. I took a different path last week and found myself astraddle this tree and became mesmerized by the termites and their world. 

I need this. I need moments of wonder that have nothing to do with my own life. Moments free of the pressures...real and imagined. The need to earn a living. The loneliness of this life. The sadness of losing so many I have loved. The anger from changes I'm not ready to accept. The pettiness of people who value surface over substance. They wear me down and I need an escape... daily.

That is my biggest fear about any job. How will it work in winter when the sun isn't up til 7 and is gone by 4?

The other week, when I wrote this poem about Mabel, I was crying so hard. Not just because the thought that our days together are not nearly as long as I wish they were but because my Mom had tore into me that day. Instead of being able to write about that, I wrote about my love for my dog.

I was going to explain all that on another post from last week, but my muse apparently forgets just where she's supposed to lead me and when. Sigh... Silly Muse!

In true narcissistic form, my mother rarely asks how I am and it's even rarer for her to wait or listen for an answer. So imagine what planets must have collided that day for her to do both!

I answered that I thought I was getting a cold, which set my mother off.

Most days our phone calls consist of me typing and semi- ignoring her on my speakerphone as she rips into some relative's life. "Why does he do that? His ex-wife is a _____________! He ain't got no sense"... and on and on it goes. I do pay some attention...listening for any problems I may have to deal with but when her complaining and negativity and criticism of others gets too much for me to bear, I make up some excuse to get off the phone.

She rarely rips into me as I'm the only person who has anything to do with her. But my potential cold...

"You drag yourself out to that damn creek at all hours of the damn day to please a damn dog!"

Before I could begin to defend my life and my choices she tossed in, "And you could've had you a nice job in a warm building but no... You want to work in a damn cold shed..."

I wasn't in the mood to fight. I simply said, rather tersely, "I have to go."

I just sat here crying, hating the fact that my mother, my only blood family, has known me for 50 years and yet...she doesn't KNOW me. Nor does she want to.

If she knew me at all, she would know that I've been slipping off out in the woods for a good walkabout alone for...well, since I could wander off and trust that she wouldn't panic and miss me!

She would go visit her girlfriends... all of them lived on the edge of some wooded area... and off I would go. One lived through the woods from a drive in. I used to love to slip off in those woods on a summer night when I could still hear their voices but see the movie. My grandmother had 160 acres next door to my uncle's 60 acres. I knew every fruit grove and pond and dilapidated house on both properties.  My step-aunt and step-grandparents had back to back dairy farms and fish ponds on 70 acres. My uncle in our town lived on 60 acres of hobby farm land. My uncles in Denham Springs and New Orleans each owned triple lots. There was much to explore.

Even when I moved to LA, I wanted to explore my little section of town on foot. And as soon as I discovered our rugged mountains, I would go for hikes alone as often as I could. I would even drive home along Mulholland - the mountain road that straddles the peak between city and valley - after a hard day just so I could pull over and take it all in. And just breathe. I need that. I've always needed that.

Living in Argentina, working on a movie, I would walk the three miles to work as often as my over-protective driver would allow.  I would walk for dinner and if I could leave the office, I would walk to pick up lunch or to the pharmacy. Sundays, my coworkers slept til noon and we would meet for lunch and adventure. But I was always up by 5:30 for a walk to the docks for sunrise, through a garden, breakfast at the only pancake house I could find followed by a walk to the park and the graveyard. I loved the quiet beauty of the Recoleta Cemetary. I saw more of Buenos Aires than all of my friends put together. And I saw it on foot.

Walking takes all my fears and frustrations and puts them on a shelf. It is my daily time to breathe...just breathe. It is why, despite my weight issues, I have amazing blood pressure. Despite my penchant for sweets, my sugar is low. It is why I had pneumonia but had no idea... walking moves the crud out of your lungs!

And the only thing that has changed in my life is, as I've gotten older, I realized it's probably not safe for a woman to be out in the middle of nowhere all alone. And so I carry a phone and a dog. You see, the dog is for my pleasure, not the other way around. Yes, I adore that our walks make Mabel so very happy. But they make me happy. If they didn't, we'd be leash-walkers.
 
Like those termite trails, all roads seem to converge. Mine converge on the back porch, where my tennis shoes are waiting for another walk. That's the only thing that has ever made any sense to me.