Supersnore

Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and went to pick up my new latex and organic wool & cotton mattress. Latex, as you may know, comes from plants – the rubber tree, specifically. I like latex, and I like organic cotton, and wool that is not only grown and processed organically, sustainably and humanely, but which comes from the bodies of well-loved sheep – sheep who have names, sheep living within 50 miles of here. These are the materials that were allegedly used to create this mattress, manufactured with love by organized workers in a fair-trade certified facility blah blah blah ... The point being, I have my new bed, and I hope it's true that it's safe and nontoxic and that no prisoners or child slaves were forced to make it for me, because I kind of like the thing and want to feel good about having it for a long time.

I actually ordered it on Thanksgiving weekend, and then for one reason and another – the shipment from the factory was delayed, then there were the holidays, then various trips and other weekend obligations – ended up waiting more than two months to sleep on it. In the interim I became paranoid that I might have made a terrible mistake, and that when the mattress finally arrived I would decide I didn't like it after all (because naturally a mattress of such singular quality and extraordinary origin can never be returned). Somehow in my imagination the mattress kept getting thinner and thinner, until by the time we went to get it I was half expecting to see nothing but a glorified two thousand dollar camping pad all rolled up on the dolly like an oversized, flax-colored pair of tube socks in the bottom of someone's underwear drawer.

It turned out to be nothing like that, but looking at it on my bed, where the old mattress used to be, I can see why I imagined it that way. The old mattress, when it was new, it was almost two feet thick, and I'm not exaggerating. It was so fat I had to buy king-size sheets for it, even though it was only a queen. At the time I bought it, that was what I wanted. I had been sleeping on substandard beds for years and had decided to treat myself to something soft and squishy, like a nest. And I have to say, I loved it while it lasted. But nothing lasts forever.

Although according to the marketing I read, a natural latex mattress can be expected to last more than twice as long as a conventional wood, foam and metal mattress. Which is good, because it also costs at least twice as much. But the main thing I like about it is the way it feels. It's definitely soft and springy, the way you'd expect a rubber mattress to be. But it's firm, too. I don't roll to the middle the way I did in the other one, or bounce around the way I'm used to doing, every time the dog gets on or off the bed. It feels different, and I think that's why I kept waking up all night long last night – it felt good, but it didn't feel like my bed. I think I will get used to it though.

The other thing that was weird is that it's lower than the other one – a lot lower. It's so low that I felt myself using different muscles to get out of it when I got up this morning. And I really did feel like I was getting up this morning – not just stepping onto the floor, but more like standing up from being on the floor. I might start to like that too, after awhile; I used to always prefer having my mattress right down on the floor, until I got the big fat bed.

So yeah. This pretty much sums up everything you ever wanted to know about my bed. Except for the part about what kind of linens I like, and how many pillows and down comforters. We also looked at a couple of wool comforters and may try one of those for the summer ... but the new mattress is enough of a change for now.

Four fragments

I'm just throwing these down here because I want to remember them ... I haven't spent any time cleaning up the writing.

1. Fear and fearlessness
From some recent reading:

In many spiritual paths we are encouraged to take consolation from a story about the world. While she does not reject the helpfulness of mythologies and great narratives "that attempt to give meaning to the deep experiences we have," she believes that if you "take up a radical process of inquiry as a way of life, you may give up some kinds of consolation and comfort, but you're going to have the deep and abiding consolation of not needing stories for things to be OK."

It has more to do with experience than belief ... these (Buddhist) traditions have very few belief structures. They're mostly practices: sit, pay attention ... count your breath ... and so on. These are much more like riding a bike than they are like believing in something. They are actual practices you do with your awareness and with your mind. They allow deeper experiences to come to the fore. It's all about experience, not rationality, not dogma, and certainly not about adhering to any sort of narrative.

This is how it feels to me. The more I practice, and the more I let go of the story and all its associated drama, the better I feel. My mind is learning how to relax and live my life, instead of constantly analyzing and labeling and trying to make my experiences conform to some official pronouncement about how the world is, or what everything means.

I keep thinking about this young woman I heard about in one of the bike forums I read, a bicyclist who decided to take a detour on her way home late one night last week to ride down a favorite wooded trail and walk out onto the frozen Mississippi River in the moonlight. Since she was alone nobody really knows exactly what happened, but at some point during her walk the ice broke and she fell through and died. What did her mind do when she heard the crack? When she realized?

I think at a moment like that you're not going to be "thinking" about what you "believe."

Last year or so Mr. A and I were having omelettes at our favorite breakfast place when a woman at another table collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital on a gurney. Everybody in the restaurant was watching, including us of course, and as she was rolled past our table I wanted to run alongside the gurney and hold her hand and reassure her in some way. After she was loaded into the ambulance I said to Mr. A, "I would hate to be carried out like that, with all these people looking at me."

He said, "If anything like that ever happens, just close your eyes and they'll all go away."

At the time that suggestion, which I interpreted as recommending denial, seemed like the epitome of the "wrong" way to deal with suffering – the "right" way being of course to Look at everything – and not only to look at it but to really look at it, intensely, to Really See ... or at least to be willing to see. We often have this argument about other things as well – me believing that all the gory details are crucial to his ability to understand some disturbing story I want to tell him, when all he really wants to know (reluctantly) is the basics of what happened. I feel driven to look at everything, even horrible things that I can never get out of my head forever afterward.

Why do I feel like it's better to look than to not look? I think for me, it comes down to what makes me feel safe. I want to know what I'm dealing with! If I know something scary is out there, I want to see exactly what it is so I can make a good decision about how to act. Looking away makes me feel more afraid, because how can I take care of myself if I don't even know what's really going on?

And even if there isn't anything I can do "about" whatever it is that is happening, I can still attend to and own my experience of it. That's all anyone can really own in life, after all.

I want to be able to keep my eyes open when the ice cracks.

2. First bath

Today I went to spend the afternoon with my friends whose baby was born at the end of the summer, so very much earlier than they had been expecting him. He's four months old now, eleven pounds, and, according to the relevant authorities, finally ready for his very first "real" bath, a bath not in mom's arms in the big tub, but all by himself in his very own little baby tub. And one reason they invited me over, as it turns out, was because they wanted me to help them do it.

I'm still somehow always surprised at how many new, older parents – people older than me, in other words – ask me for advice about how to take care of their babies. I like being asked. Not that I'm any kind of expert. But I'm comfortable doing those tasks, and it seems like seeing me feeling comfortable doing them helps the parents feel more comfortable, too.

3. Interspecies friendship

Last night I was snuggling with Tater and we were looking into each other's eyes and I found myself really enjoying the fact that trying to "know" each other is not part of our relationship. I don't know what he thinks or how he experiences the world as a dog, just like he doesn't know my life away from home – what it's like to use a computer or ride a bike or shop in a store. It made me realize how much I project myself onto other people, and appreciate how in my relationship with him, I don't do that. His mind is mostly a mystery to me. And yet I feel more sure of him than of almost any other relationship in my life.

4. Crash

I crashed my bike in the rain the other night and ripped up both hands and my left knee. I wasn't going fast, I just turned too sharply on a slick spot and laid it down in slow-motion ... no cars involved, not even any nearby, except the parked station wagon in which a woman sat watching me with a blank look on her face as I picked myself up, got back on and rode away. I didn't notice how messed up my hands were until I got where I was going – ironically, a community meeting about improving bicycling safety in our town.

The only reason I'm mentioning it is because it led me to rediscover an amazingly cool product that I want to recommend – Band-Aid advanced healing bandages, the large ones. Both of my hands have some pretty gnarly chunks gouged out of them, right in that line where the meaty part at the bottom of your thumb folds into the middle of your hand. It's probably one of the hardest parts of the body to stick anything to, but these things – wow! They're made of this cool waterproof rubbery-feeling stuff that stretches with your skin – very comfortable. And the adhesive is amazing. I've had the same bandages on for two days of dish-washing, rainy dog walking, muck shoveling (we've had a bit of mud here of late), baby bathing, pulling apart of roasted chickens to make stock, and all kinds of other messy, greasy and disruptive activities, and they're still securely in place. But when it's time to take the bandage off, it doesn't rip your skin and hair the way regular band-aids do. You just lift up an edge and give it a little pull, and it somehow just magically stretches away from your skin and peels off like nothing. Hooray!

To rise up singing

Tonight was my first rehearsal with this new choir. I think it's going to be good. First of all, I felt reassured to find that the women were pretty much as I expected: middle-aged or older, kind faces, comfortable shoes, left-leaning politics and a socially-conscious sense of spirituality. They made me feel welcome without making me the center of attention, which was perfect. I loved the house we met in, too – humble and beautiful, with big windows looking out on a cozy garden of lush plants and giant oaks dripping with rain and moss. There was a sweet black cat that kept walking back and forth in front of my legs, and a woman in a reclining chair in the middle of the circle to receive the music; the group had been singing at the bedside of her husband, who had just died a few days ago.

The singing was the best. Almost all of the songs were super short – two or four lines, sung as rounds in two or four parts. There are several hundred songs in the repertoire so of course I only got to learn a small fraction of them tonight, but singing in rounds is a great way to quickly memorize a simple song, and even the simplest songs can become deep and beautiful when you layer them this way. My one disappointment was that I wished we could have spent more time on a couple of the songs; I felt like I was just relaxing into the rhythm and really beginning to absorb the music when the director would signal the last round.

This is something I like to do with a song I like sometimes – I listen to it over and over and over again until it saturates all my cells and I feel myself floating in it. It becomes the song in my head the moment I realize I'm awake in the morning, the song that repeats and repeats itself throughout the day. I sing it on my bike, sing it to trees and birds and passing animals. When something happens to piss me off or freak me out, I reach for the song to steady myself. When I want to bless someone silently without making a public fuss about it, I sing them the song in my mind.

My most recent song is really more of a fragment – the text starts like this: "May the long time sun shine upon you ...." According to the counter on my iPod, I have listened to this song almost 300 times in a row and sung it out loud (according to my own calculations) at least 150 times. Now I don't have to listen to it anymore; it's right there whenever I want it.

I'm looking forward to meeting some new songs that I will want to know like that.

Dancing the bobcat

I learned a new skill today that Mr. A informs me is known as "dancing the bobcat." Actually, even just driving the bobcat was new to me, as was using a gigantic auger to drill post holes into soil that is packed with head-sized stones the way a Snickers bar is packed with peanuts (only way less satisfying).

The stones are what led to the dancing. When the whole contraption was struggling and lifting itself up off the ground with the effort of coming up against them, I had the bright idea of steering the cat around slightly, hoping to slip the tip of the auger under the obstacle from the side and lift it up from underneath. This kind of maneuver causes the thing to jump and twist – not enough to actually turn itself over, of course – as if it were dancing. It was fun to practice, once I got over being afraid of killing someone. And several times, it actually worked.

Installing several hundred feet of fenceline will be our first sorta big step toward making some of the changes I've been itching to make around the property, and although there's still a lot more to do, we got a pretty solid start. I'm going to call it a good day.

P.S. That is not me in the picture, in case you were wondering.

Green eyed goblin

Just for the record, I've been fretting and flagellating myself ever since last week about that last post – the one in which I used the unfortunate phrase "frustrated artsy-sensitive stay-at-home mom." I hate it when I get snarky! First, because it disturbs the self-image I endeavor so desperately to maintain, in which I am a reasonably evolved, open-hearted and emotionally generous person. Which I really kind of think I am! Or at least would like to be.

The more important reason though is because I know that when I catch myself flinging jagged little poison barbs at other people, it's usually because there's something about them that I want for myself ... in other words, when I'm mean, it's usually because I'm not getting what I need. That may be true of most people, come to think of it.

So let it now be revealed that the real and true reason I used that unkind phrase is not because I believe I'm somehow artistically superior to those persons, but more because I'm jealous of what I perceive as their leisure to putter around the house all day in slippers and rustically gorgeous hand-knit sweaters, sipping endless cups of tea, checking email, taking fabulous dream-like photographs, gazing out the window, napping at will, and of course working on a never-ending stream of creative "projects."

I secretly would love to be able to live the life of a frustrated, artsy-sensitive stay-at-home mom. In fact, I already have the first three qualifications down – it's only the "stay-at-home" part that I've so far been unable to achieve (setting aside for the moment the vaguely disturbing detail that both of my children have tails).

Anywho. Today I hit an all-time low at work when I actually spent a solid half-hour of my precious life on earth laying out a story titled "Timmy to celebrate 6-month birthday." This is the kind of uncompromising, hard-hitting community journalism I deal with on a daily basis.

Although I will follow up this complaint by saying I'm still very grateful to be employed at all. And as it turns out, this time-cut may turn out to be to my advantage. I interviewed earlier this week with an interesting creative group that just happens to need someone for exactly eight hours a week, and if we do decide to work together the rate is a little more than twice what I'm getting at my regular job. Plus, the work should actually be interesting. And finally, a couple of my other sleeping clients have woken up lately as well, so there's slowly a bit of new stuff coming in from them now too.

All of which brings up the question: If I'm so desperate for time off to do art, take naps and travel, why do I load myself up with all this new work every time I find a hole in my schedule?

The obvious answer is because I always seem to be worried about money. Would it be possible for me ever to have enough money that I didn't feel compelled to work as much as I can? How much money would that take?

It's like I have this weird superstitious belief that working will magically protect me from ever having to live under a bridge – and that if I ever stop working, I'm doomed to do just that. It'll be just me and my overflowing shopping cart and my filthy sleeping bag and my ten or eleven mangy, flea-ridden dogs all milling around looking for edible garbage. When you see me, you'll look away.

A lot would have to change in my life for that to ever happen to me. But stranger things have happened to people. Even people who've worked hard their whole lives.

Someday, I would like to take some serious time off. For now, I'm just going to frame it as a goal and try to keep it in mind, and let the universe and my own imagination begin to work on making it happen. And if, in the meantime, stay-at-home humans around the globe wish to continue puttering, making crafts and drinking tea in blatant disregard of my frustrated yearning to join their ranks – I salute them.

Grumpity grump

Is anyone else bored and irritated yet by all this stupid pale blue + yellow, or gray + yellow (or pink) design stuff that's been dominating all the stupid precious design blogs for the last several years, the ones with all the fake wood-grain looking backgrounds, silhouettes of everything, swirly Photoshop line drawing collages, birds on branches everywhere, and darling little shy forest deer peering out from behind everything?

Does anyone even know what I'm talking about?

All I know is, if I see one more twee little ironically adorable woodland creature on yet another tissue-jersey skinny t-shirt or ugly vintage fabric tote bag "handcrafted" by some frustrated artsy-sensitive stay-at-home mom (no offense, anyone!), I am going to pull my eyes out by the roots.

P.S. Usually I don't like to post this type of complaint here ... Better just to make my own stuff – stuff that I do like! – and ignore the rest. But lately I'm feeling like these overdone design trends are totally contaminating, polluting and corrupting my sense of design – and yet – I can't seem to avoid being exposed to them constantly. It's like being trapped in a room full of other people smoking. I may never light up myself, but I still walk out reeking of it. Argh!

Gift of time

This is how I'm trying to view the announcement on Monday that everyone in my department at work is having their hours cut by 20%. This translates, of course, into a pay cut – on top of the pay cut I already absorbed last fall when a program I used to use a lot was trimmed from our benefits package.

It's safe to say that the newspaper business really is facing what you could call a crisis of adaptation these days. Yes, it's also a time of great opportunity for those who are willing and able to change ... but that's not my department. Right now I'm just very grateful I still have enough hours to retain healthcare benefits at all, and, suddenly, enough free time to catch up on all the little chores and errands I've been putting off, and possibly add a little more outside work as well.

Really, I've been saying for as long as I've had this job that this is what I wanted to do – work part-time there, and the rest of the time doing other projects. But until now I was required to work 40+ hours a week to keep this job, and after doing that I wasn't feeling much like doing anything else that involved computers.

So this could work well. I already have an appointment next week with a possible new client, an agency run by someone I've worked with before and who loves my stuff. Their needs are small and only sporadic, which would be perfect.

Because except for the pay cut, I'm actually kind of excited about this new development. I have just gained one whole day a week that I can fill with whatever I want. Suddenly, there is time to call the dentist (and go to the dentist). Getting birthday cards and boxes of chocolate in the mail will be no problem. I can be here when the people come to install high-speed Internet service, which means I can (finally) call and schedule the installation.

Another cool thing: because my boss feels bad about having to cut hours, and also about the fact that I have not had a raise in over three years (don't hate me for not being more assertive about this), I've been able to parlay this situation into something else I've been wanting – more days off. At this point I don't really care if they're paid days off or not – although money's always good. Mainly, I just want the time. And now I think I may be able to get it. My long-dreamed-of return trip to Portland will be happening soon, and now I can take more than just a quick weekend. I can visit my family in Utah and Colorado. If I can convince them to come here, I will be able to take a day or two to check out Yosemite, rent a house on the beach for everyone, or run (walk, in the case of moi) Bay to Breakers with my brothers this spring.

Living on very little money ... I'm already good at that. The only difference this will make in the way I live from day to day will be ... well, I don't think it will make any difference. I'll be saving less, but that's okay.

And anyway, if I start feeling poor or running out of interesting things to do (not possible, but let's just imagine), I can always fill the time with more work. Sell an article here or there, pick up the odd little design job, even go back to the tasting rooms – which although the pay is lousy, is always fun and festive, and the environments are by nature beautiful, inspiring and well-designed.

Spending more time with the dogs will be good, too. The Jeeps in particular, for obvious reasons. And it's always gratifying to see how ecstatic Tater gets when he hears the "W" word, or even just sees me opening the drawer containing his collar and leash.

And taking better care of Mr. A is another thing I'm looking forward to doing. He ... well, he's just an amazing man, to me. He deserves more yummy dinners and backrubs and chocolate cakes and fresh, folded laundry. My inner housewife is really busting to get out, now that I have a little extra time for her.

Speaking of which – Julie asked me to post the recipe for that persimmon cake I made for Christmas. Here it is, with warm thoughts and lots of love.

Tinarama's Warm & Fragrant
Soul-Healingly Delicious
Persimmon Cake
from Heaven

1/2 cup sweet butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour (I use whole-wheat because I like the dense texture, but any kind will do)
1 cup persimmon pulp (just break it open and squeeze it through your fingers – this part is fun – discarding the skin)
3 teaspoons brandy or Grand Marnier, or orange-flower water! (I just thought of that & haven't tried it, but now I'm going to!)
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger (use more if you want to use fresh grated ginger)
1 teaspoon cloves (ground)
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup golden raisins

Cream together butter and sugar, then add the flour, persimmon pulp, brandy, eggs and baking soda (mix it with a tiny bit of warm water first, a couple of teaspoons at most). Then stir in the vanilla and all the rest of the ingredients and mix it up for a few minutes. I use a big flat wire whisk to do this but an electric mixer will work too. The batter will be dark brown, glistening and kind of sticky.

The recipe I have calls for steaming this in hot water for two hours in a 2-quart pudding mold (it's actually a pudding recipe, not officially a "cake"), but I've always just baked it. I use a 6-cup bundt pan that looks like a rose on top – it makes a very pretty cake. In my uneven old oven it takes about 50 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees, at which point I bring it out, let it cool, and finally use a 1" silicon spatula to very gently loosen the cake from the insides of the pan. It's a non-stick pan, but if yours isn't you would probably do well to butter it before you put the batter in.

I turn this out onto a homemade snowflake "doily" and display it on my precariously balanced homemade cake stand – namely, a heavy porcelain restaurant plate on top of an upside-down heavy porcelain latte bowl, covered by an inverted domed glass mixing bowl. If I'm in an extra creative mood I might also decorate the top, for example with powdered sugar (which tends to be very quickly absorbed by the cake – all that butter) or a hard sauce consisting of a stick of butter (soft but not melted) beaten together with about a cup of powdered sugar and another spoonful of brandy or Grand Marnier (though the GM is a little sweet for my taste). You can also make it with whiskey, if you happen to have any on hand and like the flavor. This whiskey sauce is also very good on heavy, eggy, raisiny bread pudding, but that's another post.

And we're off

I greeted the new year a little early this year, at 4 p.m. local time, sitting at our little Irish pub with a table full of friends. Four in the afternoon here coincides with midnight in Ireland, we were told – so that got me off the hook for later in the evening, when instead of dragging myself around town to all the various (formerly) obligatory slosh-fests, I was free to ride my bike home under the most fabulous purple-and-orange sunset in recent memory, enjoy a dinner of steak, fresh (never frozen!) local crab, and an enormous caesar salad at home in front of the fireplace, relax into a long, hot bath in our garden tub, and drop into bed early enough to spend a couple of hours reading and still be asleep before the firecrackers and gunshots started popping at our heavy metal neighbors' place across the creek.

Then, at 4:40 a.m. on New Year's morning, I was awakened by a quiet hand on my arm. It was Mr. A, who had decided that he did want to drive down to Marin and climb to the top of Mt. Tam to watch the sunrise, after all. We had decided the night before to skip it this year, but as my sleepy brain started to clear I figured it's always better to start a new year doing something wonderful than just sleeping, same as any other day. So we did it, and it was amazing. Cold, clear and windy with an incredible view. The ranger was a little late getting the gate open, and by the time he finally arrived there were upwards of maybe 20–30 cars lined up to go in. We weren't the first people to the top, but it was damn close. We hung out up there watching the sun light up the sky and sparkle over the bay, then climbed down and went out to breakfast. After that there were naps, dog walks, more naps, an hour's sunset meditation on my special rock in the creek bottom, and early to bed again.

I should also mention that the day before New Year's Eve we went to Rodeo Beach and saw a gorgeous gold-and-pink sunset, followed by my first-ever bobcat sighting. It ran across the road right in front of us as we were approaching the 5-minute tunnel. At first I thought it was just a regular cat, because it moved like a cat – but other than that it didn't look a lot like one. It was way too big, for one thing, and way too bulky and muscular, and it had the typical short, thick tail and tufted ears and everything. Some people in front of us stopped their car and went over to the bushes it had run into and began throwing rocks after it. I don't know why anyone would do a thing like that; I'm sure the cat was long gone by then.

In other news, I'm still riding my bike every day, although today I took a break in honor of a giant storm that's rolling in – supposedly the biggest one we've had since that giant flooding storm that came through almost exactly two years ago. That one changed the course of the creek behind our house by about 30 feet; this one could do the same or more, since there are still several big snags upstream that I know have not been cleared. According to our neighbor who lives up there, this has something to do with creek conservation and the fact that so many different agencies have to be consulted before anything can be done; she says they were told there would be stiff penalties for anyone who attempted to take care of the problem on their own, without getting proper permits or whatever. So we shall see. The last storm left a cool little blue boat stranded on what might be called a sand bar, except it's made not out of sand but boulders. It was there for a few hours until the next dump of rain raised the water enough to take it away again.

But back to the bike. I've been feeling an uncomfortable conflict between admiration and consternation lately at the preponderance of painfully hip pseudo-Dutch-looking bikes that seem to be showing up everywhere these days. A few years ago I would have been right in there with them, because they are kind of cool-looking and I like the idea of riding a bike as transportation the way they reportedly do in Amsterdam, rather than seeing bicycles solely as some kind of carbon-fiber and chrome macho athletic equipment designed only for off-road use, or on-road use IF you agree to wear spandex and a horrible neon-colored plastic jersey. But I have to say, the more I've ridden a bike that is actually designed to be ridden – rather than to look cool – the more I've come to appreciate the bike I ended up with, even though it wasn't my first choice in terms of beauty or design.

Plus, I somehow feel sort of embarrassed now to see all these people appropriating what I've come to see as a symbol of something ... although I hesitate to put into words exactly what it symbolizes to me ... as a way to express their style-savvy and supposed "uniqueness." For instance, read this article. Or check out the uber-fab folks here (click "See J&O Friends"). There's also someone I know who's been tooling around town on a much cheaper version of a similar bike, no doubt assembled by tiny little pre-school-aged slaves in China or somewhere, and making me realize ....

Realize what? That I'm no longer interested in appearing to be hip? Anyone who doubts that has never seen me on my bike, all decked out in my dayglo green reflective waterproof rain gear, ridiculous oversized goggles (to keep the wind from blowing in my eyes), mismatched but effectively wind-proof gloves, battered riding boots (now stained with blue pavement paint from when we laid out the labyrinth) and about a million headlights, tail lights, lights on my valvestem caps, lights on my backpack, reflectors everywhere and a big rotating 10-LED blinkie rubber-banded to the back of my helmet.

I think it's safe to say I no longer care about having people see me as cool. I just want them to SEE me, period, and not run me over. Because the best thing about getting around on a bike is just the pleasure of riding it. As long as nobody creams you into the pavement.

And speaking of death (sorry!), my great-aunt died last week, on the evening of December 27 – her 101st birthday. She was well enough earlier in the day to enjoy her party and even have some birthday cake, and spent her last hours on earth visiting with her grand-daughters who have been taking care of her for the last few years. I'm going to hold the image of that good death in mind over the next year or so, whenever some of these other upcoming events start threatening to disturb my equanimity .... 

The Jeeps, for instance, is visibly deteriorating every day now. On New Year's morning, as I was standing half-asleep in the hall waiting for the bathroom, I heard a sound like a bucket of water pouring off the roof – and finally realized it was Jeepers, standing in the middle of the living room releasing the entire contents of his bladder onto the carpet not six feet away from me. I yelled at him to stop, but of course he didn't, or couldn't – or maybe he just couldn't hear me. It was the first time that's happened and now it's happened again every day since. Not just a little dribbling or "accident," but full-on, full-volume drainage.

I don't know if he just doesn't like the cold outside, or if he's not strong enough to get out there on time, or if he has a kidney infection or the beginnings of kidney failure ... I just don't know. But starting tonight he's going to be staying in the kitchen or the bathroom when we can't be there to keep an eye on him. We're already planning to replace all the flooring in the house this year, but I don't think that's any reason to Not try to keep the place decent for as long as it takes.