A-LONE!

I tried to start this with a song title and the two that came to mind were either "Alone again or" or "Along again naturally". I didn't like the need for the word "again" as the second word of each of those, "again" just made it sound so despondent and that wasn't at all where I want to go here…but it did lend further thought to the discussion. Why does "alone" need to be quantified by "again"? Why can't someone just be "alone" and then "not alone"? What's the opposite of alone anyway? Is it coupled? That doesn't work because that means that you're either alone or with one other person. Alone would seem to lead to lonely and lonely just doesn't have a good vibe to it. But you don't have to be alone to be lonely and when you're alone you may very well be quite content and not the least bit lonely.

But I digress.

My best friend's daughter is heading off to college in a few days. My best friend has been dreaming about this moment for YEARS. She can't wait to not have to cook for anyone or clean up after anyone. She yearns to sit peacefully on her patio with the Sunday Times and a cup of coffee. These are the daydreams she's shared with me through all the years of getting up early on a Saturday to get to a soccer game or when she's stayed up too late making sure that all the kids hanging in her basement have safely made it their respective homes.

My BFF (we'll call her BFF) has been divorced for more than a decade. Her long-term significant other lives several hours away and although he's often with her he also travels frequently for business which means that she doesn't have him to worry about full-time.

Her older child mostly lives with his girlfriend now; although they are nearby they aren't there full-time so he's no longer a full-time member of the household.

That left just her daughter and now her daughter has to report to her college dorm by 8AM this coming Sunday morning and when BFF heads home that afternoon it will be to house empty of all humans (but still populated by a cat and large dog).

All of this suddenly occurred to her last night while we were out having dinner and sangria at our favorite local restaurant. Alone. She's going to be ALONE. Not long after she said this we both realized she had NEVER lived alone. NEVER. She lived with her parents until college, at college she had two roommates (both of whom she's still friends with), after college she got an apartment nearby with a friend, I was invited to go in with them but the other person was CRAZY and I opted to get my own little garden apartment. BFF went from a year or two of living the wild and crazy single life to being engaged and married. By the time her marriage was splitting up she had two kids so even after hubby was gone there were still those other two humans to reckon with.

WOW!

I've lived alone for long stretches of time twice as an adult and both times were wonderful. During my second turn at alone-ness I even bought my own little house. A cottage really, very small but cute as could be and quite comfy on a nice sized piece of property and all mine. I never thought of being alone as being an unnatural state of being. I never had a problem with it. I can remember at least two times when I had my little house and I was on my way home from a long day at work, I turned onto my street and as I approached my home I thought, "this is the HAPPIEST moment of my LIFE!" I could go in and not walk into anyone else's mess; no laundry on the floor, no dishes in the sink. The house would be just as I'd left it that morning. I could settle in at my coffee table with whatever I wanted to have for dinner; I could read a book and not have to wrestle for control of the TV, hell I could listen to the radio instead and not even turn on the TV.

Don't get me wrong. My current husband? Yeah, I'll keep him. One reason though is that we're both excellent at being alone. He "gets" that alone thing. He's been there himself. When we met we were each living alone (well, not really, we each had a dog); he in a one bedroom apartment and me in my little cottage. There were no roommates to deal with when we slept at each other's places it was just us. With no roommates in the mix we could bring our respective dog along for any sleepovers. We had privacy and time to get to know each other.

I mentioned this to A3 this morning (you know her, my current phone friend who doubles as an actual friend) and we started going through her family and realized that of anyone she's the only one who has spent any time alone and even her time on the A (as in alone) list doesn't really tally up to more than a few months.

So what to make of all this? Can we be alone? Do we want to be alone? For some weird reason I always thought that alone was a natural state of being and we had to adjust ourselves to be with other people but maybe the reverse is true, maybe coupled or grouped is natural and alone is completely unnatural. I doubt that pre-historic humans could have subsisted alone, they needed their community to hunt and gather and care for each other. As civilization progressed people lived in villages and towns, they had large families, they went from their family of origin home to their family of marriage home and started pro-creating. There were always people around. I'm sure no one EXPECTED to come home to an empty house or to things just as they'd left them that morning. It's me, isn't it?

We really AREN'T "alone again naturally".

Leeetle Birdie…

I don't really like birds. In truth they freak me out a bit. They look so DAMN pre-historic. They really do. Birds, to me, are shrunken dinosaurs. I try to like them, I really do, but they just don't conjure up the image of a warm, cuddly pet in my mind.

Considering my feelings about birds I think it's odd that today I had two mentions of two different cockatiels today. Isn't that odd? My one friend told me that her parents found a very friendly cockatiel in their garage. Clearly the bird was someone's pet but despite diligent efforts on the part of my friend's parents they can't seem to find the owner which has left them in the awkward position of suddenly having a pet bird for the time being.

Then I get to work and one of the blogs I subscribe to showed up in my inbox and what is mentioned in it? Yup, pet cockatiels! Weird, right?

There was no point to this except for the oddity of having cockatiels creep into my Monday morning uninvited and unexpected. That's never happened to me before.

Phone Friends

Didja ever have phone friends? Those people you talked on the phone with for HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS? I guess it's not so common anymore. We text now. We're short and to the point at least for the most part. Who would EVER stay on the phone for 3 hours…or all night? Yeah, ALL FUCKING NIGHT?

I've had 2 "phone friends" that I can think of. Three if you include my current friend who is down in Maryland but I don't think of her in this category because if we lived closer I'd force her into my group of regular friends so she's only safe based on distance.

I guess in fact the other two didn't qualify as only "phone friends" either but it was before the time of e-mail and texting (yes, children there was a time before e-mail and texting, trust me, there was).

Phone Friend #1, we'll call him "P" (that's odd, phone friend #2 has the same first initial, perhaps we'll just call him #1 or P1, yes that's it P1). P1 was a guy friend in high school. We would talk all night and often fall asleep on the phone together then wake each other up in the morning by screaming over the phone. Classy, I know. I never dated P1. I never so much as kissed him. In person, in school, we were "friendly" but didn't really move in the same groups. It's weird, ya know. We were both pretty "popular" (I'm crazy, crazy people are always reasonably popular because others are afraid of us, trust me, it's true) but in different groups and in different ways but come night time? We were each other's everything. We'd talk about all sorts of stuff which totally escapes me all these years later. We never kept in touch a single day past high school but for those 4 years we logged thousands of phone hours together. Sweet.

In the '80's I had P2. I miss her…a lot. She was one of the most unique and wonderful people I've ever known and I've only seen her once since the '80's. We were both at a Sopranos (yeah, the TV show) premier party in NYC. She was married to some very normal guy. She seemed happy. I hope she is. We would talk for HOURS most week nights in the middle of the night. She was one of the few people I've ever known who was so much like me. We "got" each other. She had a little dog that she adored and a house she owned in an off-beat part of NYC that would've scared the average person but for her…it was home. Damn I miss her (and no, I can't even fucking find her on facebook so stop asking).

My current friend that almost makes this category doesn't have "P" as a first initial. I don't want to just be phone friends and I don't think we are. But I have to say that as far as P2 goes, I miss her, I do. A3 is my current phone friend and the only reason we're "phone friends" is because I have a long commute to work and she lives a few hours away. She's not close enough to see all the time. It'd be great if she were closer mostly because we're both breakfast people (a whole OTHER category) and our significant others are NOT breakfast people so I'd have someone to meet for breakfast if she were closer but that's not in the cards and that's fine. Life happens that way.

I don't really know where this rant came from but now I'm missing those first two phone friends and making a commitment to A3 that she will NOT fade away. Not fade away, great song, better sentiment.

More musings on life and death

So after that other post the thoughts of life and death and round and round kept playing round and round in my brain. It brought to mind a Joni Mitchell song, "The Circle Game". She basically takes you through a person's life in the space of a 4 minute song. And that's bothersome on some level but mostly because IT'S TRUE.

I sent an e-mail to a friend recently about how much I hate the end of summer and when I detailed why I hated the end of Summer she wrote back that those were the very reasons she LIKED moving into the other seasons, she liked how orderly the other seasons are compared to summer.

Summer feels like endless time sprawling out without end. Summer is soft breezes, miles of sand and ocean; it's long, long days that just slip into night and the dawn comes quickly after. Summer feels unplanned and free without the passing of time but that isn't the reality. The reality is that even while we sit on the deck and watch dusk creep slowly from the sea and we sip our beers and margaritas and talk and laugh at nothing at all time is ticking on no matter how easy it all feels.

The end of summer brings those ordered seasons. It's back to school, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving and C'mas and New Year's Eve. They stack up at the gate like planes waiting to take off from Newark airport. Time is planned and ordered, commitments are made (where to spend the holidays, what to buy for whom, etc). This is what unnerves me and forces the passage of time on me. There are songs about this stuff, about being "in the autumn of my days…" and other references to the waning of life just like the waning of the seasons.

When summer lands on our sunny shores I see nothing but blue skies and amber sand and time STOPS. It stands still for those 10 weeks while we all become young again. We stay outside until well past when the street lights come on and enjoy the velvety warm nights and the sticky-sweet mornings.

Summer lets me be carefree again. I take long bicycle rides to nowhere and lounge in the pool even after a busy day at work. But autumn, no. Autumn doesn't lead to carefree fun it means buckling down. Autumn means finishing up projects before the end of the year. It means planning and planning and executing and planning. Not Summer, no way.

With all the talk of death and loss as the summer wanes it's hard not to look around and wonder how much will be different next Summer at this time. How much more loss will we suffer? How much more heartache and heartbreak? I'm not being a Nelly Negative here but it does kinda hit you that first week that you wake up at your normal time (5:30AM) and it's dark out instead of light, maybe some of that darkness bleeds over into where my head goes.

Will everyone I love still be here next year? I hope so but there have already been losses this year, some sudden, some expected but none of them welcome. I don't like this feeling of the passing of time, it goes too quickly. Why am I not still 22 or 26? Why can't I still fit in size 2? Why don't I stay out until 3AM and be ready for more of the same the next day?

No answers and no way to stop it, just carry on and hope for the best, it's all we can do but I sure wish we could roll back the clock to a lifetime of endless summer days and short summer nights.

And we do all go 'round and 'round and 'round in the circle game, don't we?

Mostly Dead

I heard from a friend today that one of his friends is, well, mostly dead. That may sound harsh but it's a fact. The person is in a coma and has been for 3 weeks, there's no hope of recovery. It got me thinking and it wasn't pleasant. First of all, I'm a pretty optimistic person overall. Life is great, a veritable bowl of cherries. I don't act old (or not VERY old anyway). I try to be youthful enough without being dopey about it.

All that said I can't help but stare down a host of missed opportunities. Oh yeah, I've heard it all before, "you're still young yet" and "you've got plenty of time to still pursue your dreams" and on and on. Okay folks, slap yourselves because as lovely as it would be to think those things there comes a time when you need to know you're options are gettin' pretty limited. Yes they are.

Look, here's a fact folks, I'm never gonna be an Olympic athlete. Yup we were all just treated to those Summer games in London and those athletes were young. Yeah there were a few true old-timers on some of the teams but they were pretty rare and no doubt they'd been in the game for quite some time. Yeah, I got no hope of that. I realize that even in my prime I would've never been considered an athlete but maybe if I knew then what I know now I would've tried a bit harder. I would've found something and really thrown myself into it. Those gymnasts were amazing, they flew through the air defying gravity. That would've been nice to pursue…maybe.

And then there's all the other loves of my life, I had wanted to be a food scientist, not gonna happen. I loved radio like you can't even imagine and I was young at a time when radio was fresh and exciting, yup that's off the table now. Writing, yup, loved that when I was young, still love it but let's face it, even if I did get something out there now it wouldn't be like I'd be staring down a lifetime career as a writer, I'd be spending my "declining years" as a writer. Okay, that'd be pretty cool but it would still be a last ditch effort.

I have an acquaintance just finishing up the long process of becoming an architect, it hasn't been easy and it has taken a long time. Apparently there is a lot of work that goes into becoming an architect; you have to invest a lot of time and obviously a substantial amount of money to get to the point that you are finally an architect and making the big bucks. She's gutted out the whole process, the internships with low or no pay, the exams, etc. What an accomplishment and every time I see her, despite all the effort she has put in she's always so happy that she did it, she fulfilled an awesome goal and she went after something that really spoke to her. I wonder if she'll regret something ELSE when she reaches my age or if she'll continue on the fearless path she's started on.

I'm seeing some Facebook posts about a friend of several of my friends, I didn't know this person but she seems to have been a very talented photographer and it's clear that she died and from the looks of her photos she certainly died far too young. I haven't yet found out how but it does seem sudden. How sad to for her to be cut-off from life that way. She was beautiful, her photos look wonderful and her friends are all shocked and saddened, one friend wrote a truly lovely poem about her. But there it was…death.

It's hard to think about, but it's all around us all the time. Certainly as we get older it rears its ugly head more frequently but that makes it worse not easier. It taps you on the shoulder and kinda reminds you that you're also in that line somewhere.

This isn't intended to be morose it really isn't. Just real, it's just real. My friend happens to be on the radio and he talked about this openly today. He brought up the concept of death…hell, not the concept he brought up the REALITY of death and put it out there. A bold move, in our overly polite society death just isn't talked about but there it was on the radio. He played some stuff, some sad, some poignant and some that just plain put it out there.

I do want a do-over. I really do. I'd be braver and less afraid of failure. That was my thing when I was young enough to have the expanse of time stretching out ahead of me like a highway across the mid-West, I was scared of failing, scared of making a fool of myself, scared of SOMETHING. Damn that really sucks but it is what it is. I'm still optimistic, I'm happy to have what I have but there's just so much out there that I never bothered to go for.

Well, in all of this I'm wishing that friend of a friend a peaceful journey from this world, he's lingered 3 weeks now between life and death and that can't be very fun either so a toast to The Brick for a peacefully journey ahead.

Asshats on Facebook

Yes, this does actually apply to some of my friends, the real ones, not just the ones you "approved" on Facebook but the ones you even KNOW who are on Facebook. What is it that qualifies you for the truly gross title of "ASSHAT"? It's when you post something that doesn't quite give enough info to make sense to anyone or to just a few select people. If you just got good news, bad news, or even weird news that morning….either post the fucking news or shut yer damn piehole. Seriously. I do NOT want to read something that HINTS at your newsworthy item. Either do the big reveal or share it the old fashioned way, with a personal phone call to your key "stakeholders" (to share an offensive corporate term).

I did a quick log onto FB tonight and got hit with one of these little nuggets. "Nothing like starting my Saturday with good news in the mail. Yes I am happy, Woot!" No further info. We're all just supposed to get on the party wagon with that one, right?

As if FB doesn't make assholes of us all enough times a day when we cave into the madness we end up posting teasers like the above. Look, I would LOVE to know what is making a friend so happy on their Saturday but I can't be bothered pandering to their little guessing game. People, either share with others or shut the fuck up.

That is all…for now.

Breaktime

On Facebook I get lots and lots of animal rescue info. Some of it is awesome good news but much of it is heartbreaking bad news. Abused, abandoned dogs, dogs on death row for no reason other than careless humans too cheap or lazy to spay/neuter their dogs and others sent to their death just due to shelter overcrowding. It makes my soul hurt.

I do some small amount of animal rescue, not as much as I could, or should, but…some. I have 3 rescued dogs, rescued Australian Cattledogs. They're fun, they're awesome, they're DOGS. For all the sad stories, for all the happy stories, there are also just the day-to-day stories.

Yup, no matter what; these dogs, in THIS HOUSE have their own little world and their own little lives. They are fed, cuddled, loved, yelled at, laughed at/with. I guess that's the best part of having them, that they're HERE. Just every day they're here for me and hubby.

Hubby is on vaca this week. He spent the middle of the day on a fishing boat, after a dip in the pool it was naptime. Our male dog LIVES TO LIE DOWN WITH HIS HUMANS. This is his favorite thing to do so off they went to dreamland. Two hours later I heard T-bear barreling down the stairs and then tossing himself on his back in the middle of the foyer and rolling from side-to-side on the rug. There he was; a 45-pound dog, fairly large when it comes down to it, and joyfully rolling around like a puppy (he's 9 years old).

T-bear came to our family after spending 3 months in a shelter. He had been turned in by a family that bought him from a pet store. That means he was born in a puppy mill. Puppy mills are evil horrible places. T-bear was turned in to the shelter when he was just over a year old. He was no longer a cute little puppy, he was now an adult dog, big and untrained, and off he went to the shelter. He was one of the lucky ones, he was in a low kill shelter with an awesome director who wanted him to end up with the right family, he did; he ended up with us. He's the king. Right now he's zoned out happily on two dog beds piled on top of each other because he CAN be. Because he's safe and loved and cared for (and there are lots of dog beds in this house).

Our oldest dog suffered a stroke 9 weeks ago. I came home to find her completely paralyzed, unable to do so much as bark. We've spent $7,000 in the past 9 weeks to get this 12 year old dog healthy again. She's had acupuncture and physical therapy in a hydro tank. We're lucky, we can actually afford this extravagance but we also have pet insurance and today we received a check in the mail for nearly $5,000! Awesome, perfect, nice to get that money back but what's even nicer is that our dog can walk (and bark) again. She was a rescue, just like T-bear. I met her foster family in a park somewhere, she'd been with them for a few weeks and they were anxious to move her along so they could get their next foster. She was only about 9 months old at the time, she's been with me ever since.

Our youngest dog, our "accident" is a failed foster. She was due to be put down, euthanized, PTS as it's commonly called simply due to overcrowding at the shelter where she was. She was only 6 months old at the time, a baby condemned to death because she was in an overcrowded shelter, she'd been there too long and she was deemed less adoptable than some of the others (not good with men…she's fine with men). She's crazy and wild and skittish. Her family died in an accident and she landed her sorry ass in a shelter. A baby who had a family suddenly in a scary place with no one to explain things to her and no way to understand what landed her there. Her behavior was most likely not great, how would you feel in those circumstances, would you allow strangers to stuff you in a cage and handle you less than lovingly? Probably not so the only way they would turn her over was if rescue would take her, lucky for her, we could pull her just in time. She was adopted out once but got returned to us, she had already bonded to us and she just wanted to come "home" to us we kept her.

These are all successes. They're ALIVE, they made it. But the things I see on Facebook these days are heartstoppingly sad all those who don't make it and even worse the cruelty of humans towards these helpless animals. What is wrong with us humans? How are we so justified in our arrogance to other animals? We seem so sure of some pre-ordained hierarchy not just within the animal kingdom overall but even within each species. We see this in how humans treat other humans, we judge on race, culture, or other stupid variables. We go so far as to pass laws to make sure that the "inferior" groups are aware of just how inferior they are. It's shocking when you really think about it.

And because we humans have learned NOTHING from our past mistakes, we're now pushing these prejudices onto our canine companions. Yup, arrogant humans get to say what breeds can live or die based on vast and ignorant generalizations. This canine holocaust is benignly called "breed specific legislation" (BSL), look under those meaningless words and what you find are laws not just authorizing mass killings, no these laws oftentimes DEMAND mass killings of specific breeds of dogs even if those INDIVIDUAL dogs have done nothing. In some instances families are told to surrender a harmless family pet to be euthanized simply because they look like a breed that falls under these laws. Hard to believe isn't it? I wish I was making this up but I'm not.

Pit Bulls are the most commonly executed breed. This confuses me to no end. You all do realize that "Petey", the dog from the Little Rascals, was a pit bull, right? I mean for years and years pitties were "America's dog". They were THE family dog to have around. What happened folks? They did change, we did. We became stupider and less tolerant.

Facebook is doing an excellent job of getting this info out there. Rescue groups and individuals are sharing information like the sad and stupid killing of Lennox the pit bull in Belfast and other similar situations but I have to say that it is actually starting to tear my heart to shreds. I go through periods of not being able to even look at these items anymore. I feel helpless and useless. Why can't I do more? I haven't done enough.

My comfort? The only real comfort I can get is looking around me on a night like this and seeing these three rescued dogs comfortable and SAFE. Safe from the scary life of a shelter dog, safe from the fear of abuse or abandonment, they're here with me and my husband and they are loved and cared for and fed and loved and kissed and petted and played with. They're safe.

I want every single dog to feel this way and live this way. I want humans to wake up and get over their arrogance and stupidity. We need to know that the prejudices we harbor are wrong against other humans and equally wrong when applied to other species. Wake up people we really aren't all that great.

For right now though, right this very second, I'm not looking at those stories on Facebook; nope. I'm writing this blog post and I'm glancing up at some very contented canines who are happy and safe and loved.

As Bob Barker always says, "Please spay or neuter your pets!"