YESTERDAY

I was driving home and I had my camera in my purse; I snapped the first shot on the freeway. I wish I could have captured the huge flock of birds that took off from the empty field. I stopped my vehicle on a side road near my house and took a few pictures as the sun was going down.

Another Ollie Shot

If anybody out there is an expert on this breed, I'd appreciate an answer. I looked into Havana Browns, and he fits their look and behavior. This guy was a feral rescue. I was originally told he was unadoptable and thus got stuck with him, after I'd paid for the shots and neuteuring. I was told he was above the age where he'd adapt to humans. However, with some work, he has settled into my home. I guess that's suggesting the Tasmanian Devil (the cartoon version) can settle into a home---you get the picture. Ollie has interesting features and he really makes use of his paws to grab at me. He tugs at my shoes the way a dog would. He can open cupboard doors to access what he wants. He doesn't like to share his favourite toys (mice) and will get the doors ajar to purloin the packages. He then hides them so that the other cats can't utilize them.

MONORAIL CATS (It's best not to know what feral rescues do)

Ollie, who I suspect may be a Havana Brown (his mother is a black American short hair and there was a Siamese male in the neighbourhood when she became pregnant) encounters Schmutz on the railing. Disaster was averted in the end.

Here, Now...Cold!

LADY INJURY: Melissa C Water (My Review of Her Book)

.I had meant to write this earlier, but developed computer issues. Here goes:
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Every year I have to re certify on training on self injury and suicide. This training is dry and big on the "whys" but lacks information on telling people how to "just stop it." As I pointed out to one of my co-workers, imagine telling a smoker to stop smoking without the added replacement of sucking on candy, or a nicotine patch or whatever other crutch they chose. If it's a behavior that people need because they're anxious or are afraid of feeling, they need to have something to replace that coping mechanism. This year, I also had to do a "Mental Health" refresher. I had just finished reading "Lady Injury" by Melissa C Water when I attended that course. Somebody posed the question of what to do with the self-injuring person. The person giving the course told us that the worst thing to do, if possible, is to place them in a clinical setting. Don't give them attention, he said, unless they are a real harm to themselves. It will only cause the behavior to increase and worsen. Hmmm....this differed from the experience that Ms Water encountered in the book.
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Melissa Water speaks openly about her experience with self injury and an eating disorder. She does so without making it sound glamorous. I highly value her ability to do this. There are far too many people who seek validation in posting photos or videos of themselves to prove that they were somehow the sickest or the thinnest. Alcoholics on a dry drunk know that feeling; people getting excited by comparing notes on their disease. Melissa manages to write so that she provides information and a warning; heed my words.
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"Lady Injury" details what happened to Melissa when she admitted to her doctor that she was self injuring. Her confession got her confined to the mental health unit. What was initially to be a short stay became a long one. A woman who had always functioned on her own, sank into an eating disorder. I don't want to give away the plot, so I will say that issues from her childhood prevented easy treatment. She endured restraints, observation rooms and medication that caused side effects.
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I found myself questioning some of the treatment she was given. For example, female patients were openly mixed with male patients. As many of them may have had assault trauma in their background, I don't see this as a great idea. Obviously, in mental health units people cannot lock their own doors. There would therefore be security issues allowing for a male patient to walk into a room. People need to be able to focus on getting well, not on somebody grabbing them, or flirting with them.
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People don't understand this behavior; even those who take the courses. People do it for different reasons. The teenaged girl with too much eye-liner who does it once and posts it on Youtube does not have the same motivation as the person who hides it, wears long sleeves and feels shame. That person's like the highly functioning alcoholic. Melissa opens the eyes of the reader when she describes her intense need at times to punish herself. As with people who suffer from OCD, once the thought is there, it goes on and on and on....She is graphic in the drive which propels her and it will shock some.
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I think parents who have teenaged girls whom they suspect of "cutting" would benefit from reading this book. Melissa has a Youtube channel and a large number of girls have watched her videos. People who work around kids or in the social services also need to learn more about this topic.
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The book follows the format of a journal.

AND YES, IT DOES GET WORSE...

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Each time I returned from my parents' home to prepare for work, I would open my door with hesitation and fear. Would one of my cats not greet me at the door? You see, Lumpy has cancer. I found a mass in July and took him to the vet. Two years ago he'd had a tumour removed, much to the bemusement of people. He was a stray I'd rescued and the cost was significant.
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I knew in my heart that it was back and I was correct. I told the vet that it had suddenly come up; that it had grown like something out of a bad '50's B-movie. He was scheduled for surgery in less than a week and I took him in at the allotted time. He'd been deprived of food all night and was not amused, to say the least.
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The vet called me back less than an hour later to tell me that she couldn't go ahead. She had never seen a tumour grow that quickly. Due to its placement around major arteries in his neck and his spine, it was risky. He was also an old boy----his precise age unknown as he was a rescue, but I'd had him for ten years. The vet told me to take him home, love him and he had a few weeks. This cancer has no pain and his death will be sudden, she assured me.
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That was in July and it's now December. The mass is huge, yet he eats like an entrant at Nathan's Hot-Dog Eating Contest.
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I heed the advice of the vet. Love him.

IN THE YEAR OF THE FALLING LEAVES (Reflections)

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He is gone. I wish I could explain my lack of writing to my computer. I would bemoan my luck with technology. Yes; it got to the point where I.E. would no longer even open a basic search engine. My Bookmarks were all lost. But, that's for another blog. In the scope of things....
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Dad did not make it. I've found myself shut off and detached, yet as I type this, I'm starting to cry. I find that writing is my outlet for my emotions as is that perfect line in a book or poem. I've avoided people since it happened, as I don't want to feel it. But, I am certainly not an idiot. Refer to some law of physics if you must, but energy cannot be held back. I know I'm the proverbial body of water building up behind the dam.
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Perhaps you've read some of my blogs about my Dad. I always knew that he was proud of me. He was a person who worked too hard all his life. There were so many things that he meant to tell me. He had started to share some of the stories. I've written about my Grandparents during the war and how they had a Jewish family stay with them for a year and a half. The fact that Dad didn't even see that this was anything to be proud of speaks volumes about him. Likewise, I have written that a Russian Prisoner of War was lodged with them at the same time and had to be taken away because he wasn't treated harshly enough. That decency---the very humanness displayed by my Grandparents, was something Dad inherited. He had friends from all walks of life. There were street people he would recognize, and they him. Their talks were always real and just two men, eye to eye.
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As a kid I was so proud of my Dad the day he came home and told me he had actually found something akin to buried treasure. He'd been working in an attic one day, when he found a small trunk hidden behind old insulation bats in the wall. Inside were old coins, gold pieces and other goodies. Dad brought it down to the owner. It turned out that the man's father had been a collector who'd died, and nobody had known where these items had vanished. Far too many people would have taken it and run. I am thankful for his guidance. I've found purses since then, one containing the passport and wallet of a Japanese tourist about to board her bus. The joy and relief on the faces of people in such circumstances is something that could never be topped. I feel for people who didn't have elders in their childhood to pass on these messages.
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After we returned from Europe, we certainly weren't rich in the monetary sense. It had cost everything. My mother actually had to use an old ringer washing machine as we could afford nothing else. So many of my things were second hand or homemade. There were no trips to Disneyland. But I certainly value things now. I know that the person beneath the clothing, or the extra weight, or whatever else it is that our society tells us matters, is the important thing. I would never have been one of those kids who bullied another, thanks to the values given to me.
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Dad had not felt well, but things went bad very fast, which is the way these things tend to go.
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I've given it some thought, and I am going to share some of my experiences and writings. Perhaps somebody who lost a loved one might stumble upon this blog. Later this week I shall include some of the passages from those long months. I know that my writing in ICU earned me some curious looks, but that and C.E. Lewis' edition of "Poems Worth Knowing" helped me deal with the despair of those flashing red alarms on what Mom called the machine.
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Why "The Year of the Falling Leaves?" As I stood in various hospital rooms, I would look out the window and watch them fall.
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I have to work tonight, so despite the fact that I'm happy to have solved many of my computer issues (a new browser and elimination of my old Security Provider for one that doesn't freeze up my screen with constant scans), I need to sleep. I hope.