November 2011

It is interesting being owned by a cat that is 16 years old and nearly deaf. Now before I get started, whether he is deaf or not is up to debate, because some think he has perfected the art of selective hearing but I think he’s gone deaf. Being his servants, it is still up to us to meet his needs whether he can hear us or not. It’s not his problem, it’s ours.

The reason I think Tom is deaf is because I can now walk up to him while he is napping/adding an abundance of fur to the furniture and he will just stay there sleeping. His ears will not twitch in our direction, nor will he stir in any way. I’m careful not to startle him but touching him when he’s sleeping but I do check to make sure he is still breathing. I don’t use a mirror to do that.

I woke him up by touching him a while back and it was the first and only time that he jumped up on all fours and hissed at me. Tom isn’t much of a hisser, he’s more of a bully. Over the years we’ve had a few dogs as guests and he just kind of puffs up and then walks over to guest dog and swipes them in the nose. The few times a cat has been in his territory he has screamed like a banshee, but he’s not much of a hisser. When he did hiss at me, he then recognized me and started purring and rubbing against me. I took this as some sort of apology. We made up.

Speaking of screaming like a banshee, though he can’t hear he still makes his needs known through vocal communication. The cute meow has been replaced by a shriek at seemingly ear-rattling decibels, especially when heard at 4:30 in the morning. In an effort to keep the blog family friendly, I will not use the words I have heard from others in the house when hearing these screeches. Despite these noises, I refrain from spooking him through touch when he’s sleeping. If we need to relocate him because he is in an inconvenient location (I know, shame on the servants for finding the king in an inconvenient location), I usually stomp on the floor, banging my foot hard enough on the ground to create a small seismic event. He then awakes and looks off in a completely different direction. I bang the foot again and he swings around and sees what’s up.

The other day I reminded him that he has another 22 years to go if he wants to outlive the oldest cat on record. We call her the “siamese wench.” She lives in Australia, and while she seems quite sweet on her YouTube video (which I can’t find using the iPad app) but Tom has his eyes on the prize.

Actually, I think he couldn’t care less, because he went and added some fur to the couch.

As I was getting settled in for some alone time during my lunch hour, I noticed a slight “tinkling” sound coming from the roof of the Jeep. A quick inspection of the situation revealed that it was not a seagull peeing on the Jeep because I didn’t share a piece of my cookie but rather the sound of hail hitting the car.

In response to the presence of winter weather conditions, I did what anyone in this area would normally do. I promptly flailed my arms in the air. No one was around to hear my cries of “Help me! Help me!”. I then started the Jeep, put the defroster on “recirculate” so that no outside air could get into the vehicle. This was to make sure that I was able to fog the windows up as quickly as possible, as recirculating the same air over and over produces a better fog. Once the fogging was in progress, I jammed the Jeep into four-wheel drive, slammed the accelerator down as hard as I could and went running up the embankment of the adjacent parking lot. Coming down the other side of said embankment in second gear and with a loud thud and bouncing motion, I then popped it back into two-wheel drive and made like a mad man across the parking lot, ignoring any arrows, lines or vehicular or pedestrian motion in the lot. I then pulled up in front of Dollar Tree, with the obligatory right front tire up on the curb so that I could take up as much of the fire lane as possible, and then ran inside, huffing and panting about the ice. I grabbed a cart and with big swooping motions I was able to clear two shelves of bread and toilet paper into the cart. It was just a quick stop at the dairy section for six gallons of whole milk and four gallons of skim (I could mix the two later for 2%) and faster than Laverne and Shirley could get their Scooter Pies across the finish line, I made my wait through the checkstand and went outside, flinging everything from the cart helter skelter into the Jeep. I then got in, started it up and ignoring any traffic control devices that beckoned to the contrary, took off as quickly as possible for the closest hill where I could hide and write blog entries about how awful the weather is and come up with cute names like “Snowpacalypse”, “Snowvember”, “Snowcachoochoo” and “Snowmageddon”.

Then the ice turned to rain.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I have mentioned before that my commute to and from work passes through a rather large Amish community. I’m actually thinking that there may be a couple of different Amish communities grouped together, because there are a couple of one-room schoolhouses that are separated by only a mile or two. I can’t imagine that this is an elementary and high school arrangement. I don’t know for sure, though.

On my commute I often run across quite a few horse-drawn buggies. Some of the buggies have a roof and sides and whatnot to keep everyone but the horse out of the elements, but the majority of them are open wagons. The driver usually sits on the right side of the wagon. The horse still stands in the middle, but out in front.

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of the open buggies was carrying three men to and from the small city that’s about 12 miles from the Amish communities. These three men are married (as noted by the presence of a beard). They wear their usual wide-brimmed hat and sensible work clothes with a blue shirt and dark pants. The are unprotected from the elements and they have plastic cooler/lunch boxes roped to the back of the buggy.

One other thing that I have noticed is that they never seem to be interacting with each other. They don’t even seem to be facing the same direction; they position themselves so that they’re not facing each other. The driver is thankfully looking forward. I see this as some sort of buggypool where they don’t have to contribute to the gas fund unless they all contribute to the care and feeding of the horse (I hope the horse isn’t gassy). But where most modern carpools have people that converse one another (I assume, since I’m big on that whole alone thing), these gentlemen don’t appear to be talking to each other at all.

I find this fascinating.

The other night it was well into the evening darkness at 17:30 and it was raining like crazy when I passed them. The sky was opening up and dumping buckets on the land and I passed the three gentlemen in their buggy, all positioned as to not be really looking at each other but soaked to the skin. From what I could tell they had a blanket to cover their laps but other than that they were getting wet. I briefly thought about helping them but then thought they would probably reject the offer and besides, I didn’t have room for the horse nor the buggy in the Jeep.

I enjoy their tenacity. I like the fact that they feel strongly in their beliefs that they didn’t apparently think twice about riding out in the elements like this.

I wonder if the horse enjoyed the experience.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I am having a little bit of a struggle when it comes to my attempts at healthy eating. The struggle revolves around two things: balance and having too much information. These things are something that I think about on a daily basis since, well, I eat on a daily basis.

I have read some of the online studies about the dangers of diet drinks. You know the ones, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Rite. These guys substitute sugar with aspartame, something that was concocted in a laboratory years ago and give the pop companies the opportunity to proclaim “Zero calories! Hosanna!” I can’t remember the last time one of the soft drink companies included “Hosanna” in the one of their ad campaigns but with the changes in the direction of the country as far as society and religion goes, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Hosanna” appeared on their advertising in the near future.

I know the stuff ain’t good for you. The problem is, I enjoy the caffeine kick and quite frankly I enjoy having something fizzy in my mouth once in a while. (Don’t go there). I mean, eating a bucket of popcorn with an unsweetened iced tea at your side just doesn’t feel right, however, I don’t want to load up on the calories from a hi-test soda pop. That’s why I go for the artificially sweetened stuff.

Back in the day there was the original version of Tab (not that pink crap they spewed out a few years ago) and that was sweetened with saccharin. Studies concluded that saccharin use led to cancer in lab rats (I’m not referring to the American public here) so they came up with aspartame instead. Lately we have the likes of Splenda, which as I understand it is sugar with some extra chlorine added to make it pass through without garnering any extra calories. I stay away from the stuff because all I can think of is laundry knowing there’s chlorine involved and I can say that Splenda gives me a massive headache every time I consume the stuff. Just like the fumes from laundry bleach. I stay away from it as much as possible.

Skirting the calories by consuming the artificial sweeteners is not a healthy way of living when you really think about it. That’s where the too much information part of the equation coming into play. The balance part of it all is the fact that we are on this earth to live life and why should we deny ourselves of a little perk once in a while? Erma Bombeck once wrote that she bet that a lot of women were regretting skipping dessert the night the Titanic sank. How awful, to think that one would skip a piece of peanut butter pie or something in an effort to remain healthy for tomorrow and then find out that they’ll never get that chance to indulge because the ship they were on ran into an iceberg. So that’s where the balance part of this comes in – do I want to run the risk of whatever these artificial sweeteners are doing to my body when I’m craving a diet pop instead of denying myself this very simple pleasure?

Right now I go by the rule that I drink a diet beverage of any kind, I must drink an extra helping of pure water that day to balance it out. I guess flushing it out of my system (at least in my mind) brings me some sort of peace to this. Maybe I’ll just stick with that approach.