Changed My Mind

This is my new, improved stomach. Amazing how changing a stomach can change a mind. Age no longer seems so important. The difference is, for the first time in 22 years, I can eat a normal meal without puking; I can sleep lying back; i.e., I don't have to sleep sitting up. Whoa, wow and whoopee, who'd a thunk it mattered so much.
ABOUT CATS, SPECIFICALLY, THE CONCEPT OF THE AUXILIARY CAT
Poor Fina has been the "other cat" for two years. Now, suddenly, she has accepted the term "auxiliary" and her outlook has greatly improved. She has declared that she will henceforth be called Fifi, a name that suits her personality. Let Calliope, aka Pyepye, be the Queen. Fifi will be the Princess. Let Pyepye get first dibs on the lovey love chair. Pyepye is such a demand bitch that she will eventually become petulant and leave; and in the lovey love chair seconds ain't so sloppy. Bottom line, contrary to popular opinion, the human can be shared.

The Old Woman In Hiding

First let me say that today was, for those who don't mind cold and raining, magnificent. The birds were skipping from tree to tree like flat rocks across a pond.

That's the upbeat part of this post. Now let me makes some random observations about life. Or death, which is the same thing. It's like this. I make a joke of being the Old Woman with Walker. But the walker is not a joke. It's real. I use it because I can't walk across the room more than about three times without it. I work it for the astonishment and sympathy people afford me. I decorate like every day is fiesta. I use it to carry things; that's convenient. But on the whole, it sucks using a walker. But nobody wants to know that. Nobody wants to see that. I make them see the walker by making it a joke.

Likewise, nobody wants to hear that I'm at a place in life when I count the past by the time I may have left. Sure, I'm not old old. But I'm in, at best, the last quarter of my life. And I don't want to hear "You're only as old as you feel", because guess what, boys and girls, the Woman with Walker feels old. And I don't see any percentage in trying not to feel how I feel. I mean, I'm not gonna die of it. But I am gonna die. Yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody's gonna die sometime. But I'm gonna die sometime relatively soon. That scares me. It pisses me off. It intrigues me. So if there's anybody out there who feels that way, or wants to hear how that feels, I'd like to talk about it.

The First Day of the End of My Life

I wasn't home the day Dylan died on the living room couch. Leila, who was visiting, had been in and out all day. She had made several trips to the hospital to see me. I was due to come home the next day with my new titanium knee. Early in the evening she called to ask how to change the way Dylan had the stereo/TV set up. He had been playing with his X-box; she just wanted to watch TV, and hear it. I couldn't explain it over the phone, so I told her to ask Dylan. "He's asleep," she said. "Well, wake him up," I said. I heard her call his name a couple of times; then she came back to the phone and said, "He's not okay. I need to call EMS." She promised to call back, but after what seemed a long time she hadn't. So I called the apartment. "Ginger, he's not okay," she said. "He's dead." Just like that--he's not okay, he's dead. We had some kind of conversation after that and then I hung up the phone and started to scream.
Later I found out that while she waited for EMS Leila sat holding his cold hand and stroking his cold face and scolding him for leaving me. When the paramedics got there and confirmed that he was surely dead and had been for some time, she still tried to persuade them to try resuscitation. For months any time her hand felt cold she remembered that time holding Dylan's cold hand and stroking his cold face.

The Coroner's Office didn't think he meant to die. They called it an accidental overdose. He had a heart condition neither of us was aware of and, according to his best friend, whom I trust, heroin was a new drug to him. He just made a mistake.

I of course never saw him dead on my couch. When I did see him at the funeral home several days later, because we did not have him "prepared" for public viewing, his scalp had not been sewed up after autopsy. So they had a towel, golden in color, wrapped around his head. It fell about his face at angles, making him look like a pharaoh. He had a devilish little smile on his face that seemed to say, "I know something you don't, Mom." The undertaker assured me that he had not altered Dylan's face since he came from the Coroner's office, that that was in fact the expression he bore when he died. It figures. He always liked to have one over on his Mom.

I lived on the couch for months while I recovered from knee surgery.

I love him. I live.

The Moon Is Dead

Driving out 281 toward a shot in the knee
I heard the news
The moon is dead
There was no hesitation, no doubt
This was good news
Contamination no longer an issue
No need to pick up trash on the moon
License for astronauts to sneeze
or even puke on its face

I have an affinity for the dead
an impulse to chronicle decay
every day I snap a photo
a cactus morphing in the alley
indifferent partner in the dance
of weather and neglect

Dylan is my favorite dead person
his Bubba my favorite dog
I keep an altar
in his room and in my heart
and sometimes see them rambling
on the slant side of vision
peering into the window of the library
from the salivating darkness
I almost hear
"Must have tacos"
as I unlock and re-lock the door
and step into the storied night

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TURNING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Last night for the first time since I bought this beast, I turned it off because I was tired. Until then it's been like a drug or a really good book; once I started it up I would keep going for a ridiculous length of time, wearing myself out ad getting no sleep. And yet, it often feels like work?
What makes the computer so compelling. I watch children at the library and they're transfixed. Their parents try in vain to break their concentration; I hear them pleading with their children to go out on the playground. Hopefully, I think, this concentration is good, this ability to focus. But is it, or is it like the mindless focus on television that captured their predecessors and made of them couch potatoes?
As for myself, I have no answer. I do not focus. I wander. There are too many possibilities here. It's like being in the grocery store trying to remember what I meant to buy.

Mash-up's and other lost causes

This is a real mash-up. However...

As defined by Wiki-pedia

"Mashup may refer to:
Mashup (digital), a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video, and animation, which recombines and modifies existing digital works to create a derivative work.
Mashup (music), the musical genre encompassing songs which consist entirely of parts of other songs
Mashup (video), a video that is edited from more than one source to appear as one
Mashup (web application hybrid), a web application that combines data and/or functionality from more than one source
A usually large and serious traffic collision between vehicles, especially on a major highway such as a freeway or a turnpike. "

So I'm gonna claim that my cat photo thing is technically a mash-up, my U-tube feed thing, Views of the Absurd, is technically a mash-up; my newsread thing, Ginger's Shared Items, is technically a mash-up, and while I was never involved in a real mash-up, I did total my Toyota Echo in June of 07. If none of this satisfies you I mention Chicago Public's mash-up in my post Qibble Bibble Who'll Take a Nibble,1/3/09. And please remember, you guys said a mention is sufficient.
As for Flikr, I believe I covered that in My Friend Flickr (10/16/08). Not to mention I'm the person from Landa who posts all those photos to the SAPL Flickr. And I have hundreds of photos on my own Flickr account. I covered Web 2.0 in All That 2.0 Stuff. I covered anything technology related in Lost in The Clouds, a sub-text of My Friend Flickr. I covered anything Web 2.0 related in All That 2.0 Stuff (12/23/08). And I covered the 2.0 award winner in Week Whatever (12/29/08) where I discuss my adventures with LinkedIn.
So that leaves learning how to download an audiobook. My bad. Instead I downloaded and read an E-book. Let me here say, by way of mentioning, that after a long struggle to find a soft ware that would work to download music to my Ipod, I'm reserving it for music. I did look at audiobooks to download and noted that there's some great stuff there; but I'm just not into listening to books. I read books. I listen to music and poetry and commentary and stuff like that. But I'm too inclined to fall asleep listening to books. So, am I covered, or do I actually have to download an audiobook?

Observations About Cats

CATS BEAR GRUDGES
This is no cause for concern. Your cat never liked you anyway.
CRAIG FERGUSON SAYS YOUR CAT WANTS TO KILL YOU
This is nonsense. Your cat knows where the fancy feast comes from. Your cat doesn't care if you end a sentence with a preposition. Your cat doesn't care if you end a sentence with the word preposition.
YOUR CAT DOESN''T READ
If you think your cat reads, you have been mislead by its psychic powers.
YOUR CAT KNOWS WHAT YOU ARE THINKING.
Your cat is telling my cat what you are thinking right now, in real time. This is no cause for concern. My cat will not tell me what you are thinking.
My cat never liked me anyway.

Random Thoughts about Loving America

Michelle Obama took a lot of flack for saying, at some point early in the campaign, "This is the first time I've been proud to be an American." It took me a little longer; but finally, Tuesday, January 20, 2009, I was proud to be an American. But more than that, for the first time in my life, I feel safe. Oh, I know bad things will happen to me, to us, to the world But Barak Obama will remain perfectly calm, serious, practical, and capable. I've never expected that of a President, of anybody. Maybe, with his example, someday I can even learn to expect that of me.
That's why I chose this picture to publish on my blog instead of one showing his beautiful smile. Because in the middle of the biggest, bestest, feel good national party in the history of America, he gave a calm, serious, practical capable speech about how hard it's gonna be to do what must be done to save us all; and instead of saying "bummer", folks just said, "Yeah, that's right" and partied on, not to forget how scary the world is, but to acknowledge how capable he is of leading us.

Dream Come True

I was sitting in my elephant garden this afternoon thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if you could make paper out of elephant poop and, guess what, you can!

My Turn Now-or Thing 24

Okay, it's my blog, now. I release myself from the implicit bondage of the 23 Things. I'm not sure where I'll go from here. I'm sure it doesn't matter to anyone but me. A blog like this is public only in the sense that walking down a city sidewalk or wandering in a crowd is public. The chances anybody will notice are one in a (enter the number of people on the sidewalk/in the crowd). So maybe I'll write poems. or publish my photos, or talk about the good books I've read/am reading or investigate web thingies, Firefox add-ons and plugins might be a fun place to start. Who cares? Raise your hand.
Anyway, technologically what I have done recently is I've found a media player that will allow me to download tunes to my I pod. I could not get I Tunes to download completely on Vista. After the fourth time uninstalling it I decided to leave it uninstalled and find something else to use. I'm using Winamp, which is a free download.

Quibble Bibble Who'll Take a Nibble

I tried for hours to do a Flickr Badge like the one on the SAPL 23Things blog. The code just wouldn't work. I finally copied the source code from the SAPL page and compared them. I fixed all the discrepancies (there were several) except of course the specific references to my photo set and I still couldn't get it to work. So I gave up and did this instead. I wanted to finish with my poem about the 23 experience; but I realized that I hadn't mentioned mash-ups (although I looked at the one on Chicago Public's page).But there's a certain irony in finishing with the cats.Calliope, the coy chubby callico refers to my laptop as The Bad Thing becaue it occupies her space and my attention.
By the way, my 71/2 habits are scattered and odd; but they are there if you look. So I want a prize. I finished. I worked hard and played harder.

www.flickr.com

pyediopye's Cats photoset

23rd (count them twenty-three) Thing

what made me start

the video
o it must have been the video
the sci-fi thing
with the blind robots
finally breaking free

i not blind
no robot
and never hoping
freedom
grew resentful at once

but then something Flickred
on the screen

and the voice I learned
from Saul Bellow bellowed
I want I want
and the little voice whispered
I have a good eye
like it used to say
I have a good ear

but the secret secret voice
that survived brain surgery
that denied
nine years of denial

sang

I can have a laptop
and this time it can be red

the rest was remembering
how to play
the game