Day: September 2, 2018

Maria and I both work at home, and we both work all the time, day and night, most of seven days a week. It is part of being bloggers and writers and artists, it is partly our nature. In a couple of weeks, we are going to set out to find a beach for two or three days.

We both recognize that we are exhausted and need a break. Yesterday I decided we couldn’t wait for our little vacation, we needed a short  break right now. So I surprised Maria by getting a room in Brattleboro at one of those funky and cheap motel she loves so much.

One might call them sleazy, but in truth, they are neat and clean. Just cheap. She would get very upset if I booked a room in an expensive motel, those days are behind me and us.

While she was out at her Belly Dancing class, I got online and booked a room for $129 a night for one night, tonight. I have to surprise Maria, because she would try to stop me if I told her about. After some fussing, she is delighted, me too. Time to re-charge a bit.

And I surprised her when she came home. There was the usual huffing and puffing. We don’t need to do this, I have so much work to do, the Open House is coming, I need to finish a hanging piece so I can make some money, we are going a way in a week or so, blah-blah-blah, I thought.

Maria never thinks she is justified in spending money on herself, so I bought the room and paid for it.  All done, one night away for $120 plus one good meal, hopefully at an Indian or Turkish restaurant.

We will be back first thing in the morning to get to work, me on my blog and book, she on her art and  the upcoming Open House, (Columbus Day Weekend, Saturday or Sunday, October, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) which is a celebration of art.

We will essentially have time to unpack, go to dinner, read in bed, get up early and head home. But it will take us out of our own heads and help to re-charge our worn batteries.

I had a hell of a week, rewarding and exhausting. I spent $6,000 on Sakler Moo’s tuition and $2,000 on Ali’s Red Van (and the rotting roof on the porch cost $1,700.)  I will be awhile getting over that.

But you know what? It was close, but I had the money to pay for it all, and I am grateful and content. See you in the morning.

Audio: See You Tomorrow

As anyone who has grieved for a loved one knows, these are the dark days, the hard days. Carol is getting showered with advice, most of it telling her how bad things will be now that Ed is gone, how lonely she will get, how much pain and misery is ahead of her.

Something about Americans, especially those on social media, revel in telling other people how difficult things  can be, how dangerous and dark. I don’t much care for unwanted advice, and I very rarely give it.

Grieving is one of the most intensely personal and individual experiences in all of life, and I have no  right to tell Carol how she will feel and when, or whether the worst days are behind her or ahead of her. The only thing I do tell her, the only thing I know, is that this is a process and she is in it, and she will come out the other side alive and living her life, something that is unimaginable to her now, in these days of shock and loneliness.

I have not seen much of Carol since Ed’s funeral, she was busy with her family at the County Fair, and I was up to my neck in refugee business in Albany and work for the Mansion residents.

We had plans to visit today, but a friend showed up to visit with her and she wrote me to beg off. We are supposed to have dinner tomorrow night with her.

I didn’t realize that one of the great fears of the newly grieving is that everyone in their lives will vanish and leave them alone. This happens very often, and  Carol is warned about it every day by neighbors and online purveyors of gloom seeking to share their misery and need to warn.

“It’s nice to be doing things,” Carol wrote me, “but I know pretty soon I will be alone and people will forget! But I can always count on your and Maria.”

People will forget, and there is no reason they should all grieve with Carol. They didn’t all lose loved ones last week.

Most people don’t really wish to be around grieving, it frightens them for obvious reasons.

People get on with their lives, as they should, and the grieving are often left angry and alone with their loss and sorrow. We are a Darwinian culture obsessed with making money, and there is no money is helping people grieve, at least not yet.

I don’t actually think Carol will be alone, she has loving children and grandchildren, and a community around her that is committed to helping one another. I can’t say how she will grieve, nor is it my business to tell her.

I know a lot of people who have gone through the grieving process, not two are remotely the same. People have this curious need to assume that their experience is universal.

I wrote back to Carol that I will never forger her or leave her alone, and neither will Maria. I encouraged her once again to be careful who she listens to, this is a time to be around positive and nourishing people eager to live their lives, not live by the expectations of the legions of doom.

I believe we are all responsible for ourselves in the long haul, and Carol is tough and smart, she will live the kind of life she wants to iive and decides to live, in her own way and in her own time.

She doesn’t need for me to tell her that, she needs and will  come to see it herself. I have a good friend who lost his wife in a car crash some years ago, “you have no idea how strong you can be until you need to know,” he told me.

Carol adored Ed,  he dominated her world, she is understandably and appropriate devastated by his loss. She suffers from clinical depression. She is also full of feeling and life and is eager to engage with the world after decades of milking cows and riding around in tractors and, to be frank, living in Ed’s towering shadow.

We are all eager to see and rejoice in the emerging Carol. It is coming.

In the meantime, I will make this promise to her and to you. We will not ever forget about Carol, she is an integral part of our lives, our creativity, and our  history together. There are some things in her life that we can share, some things we can’t.

It will be great to see her tomorrow.

Carol Johnson, the big-hearted spirit who is fostering Albert, says he is one of the handsomest dogs on her up-for-adoption list. “He is good looking,” she says, “and he knows it.” Albert is also the primary playmate of my new dog Bud, who is still living with Carol while he undergoes heartworm treatment.

Like all of the Friends Of Homeless Animal dogs, Albert has a wrenching back story, cruelty and abandonment. He was tied up on a short leash in a yard, escaped and got stuck in the woods, where he nearly perished from exposure and starvation.

He is an alpha dog, says Carol and plays almost all of the time. He’s three years old, and is also expensive by FOHA standards – suggested donation of $650, because of the $1,200 in medical costs for the care he needed.

As I embark on this new chapter of my blog – we  had gotten several  very hard cases adopted already – I am interested in seeing and understanding why some dogs get adopted and others don’t. Albert is healthier and cuter than some of the dogs we’ve helped to get adopted her, yet he is clearly not a dog for everyone, money aside.

(The Army Of Good and I can help with cost if that is an  issue.) It seems to me that Albert needs a home with teenagers who like to do things outside, he sounds like a wonderful agility dog, and he would thrive around a home with a playful dog.

He is a non-aggressive but mouthy dog, he likes to playfully put his mouth on people, a bad habit dogs can always  be trained out of.

The challenge with somewhat hyper and playful dogs is to give them some alternative and stimulating activities other than playing with dogs – walks, ball chasing, pet playgrounds, agility competitions. That usually settles them down, Albert takes out much of his energy playing with Bud.

I’m not a huge fan of dog parks or of excessive playing, it arouses the dogs and cranks them up. Albert needs to learn how to do nothing.

We teach our dogs a lot of things, but we rarely think to teach them the one thing most dogs do not know how to do (unless they are older Labs) and that is nothing.

If someone does want to take a shot at Albert,  will be happy to work with them on some calming training, my specialty. I’ve done it many times, I have faith in it. Calming training is tailor made for dogs like Albert.

Albert, like so many border collies, needs to be cranked down with obedience training,   and a wider range of exercise and activities. So he needs focused training,  an active family, a good sized yard and some work to do.

And mostly, some loving and consistent humans.

He needs a confident and experience dog person, he has the temperament and smarts to be a great dog.

To do what I do requires an ego, I recognize and I think if I keep at it, somebody will want this dog. He is very appealing on many levels, he is bright and fun and loving. He just needs to learn how to live in our world. And I am willful, I know there is the right person out there for this dog, this person will know this as soon as she or see sees Albert.

So I’m going to keep at it. If we helped to get Evie adopted, there is much hope for Albert. He needs some love and attention, and I am sure I could help raise money for the donation feel. FOHA pays for transportation.

If you’re interested call Carol Johnson at 870 260 0032, or e-mail her at [email protected]. She is very open and very honest.

Audio: The right person is out there:

About a year ago, I noticed that I was not able to see the tops of letters of words in books I was reading, this had never happened to me. For an author and blogger and photographer, there were implications I really didn’t want to consider.

I went to my ophthalmologist, who sent me to a retinal eye specialist, who said there was swelling in the blood vessels, especially in my left eye. I began a series of treatments which included special drops, and then two rounds of laser surgery.

I started taking photos of my eyes, if you’re going to share a life, you have to share the life. The photo on the left was taken yesterday, the photo on the right was taken six months ago. The dots represent the vessels leaking, the shadow spots represent swelling.

The retina is on the left, I confess to being fascinated by these photos, they are strangely beautiful and also just strange. I never think  of my eye as looking like that. Eyes, like feet, are something I have always taken for granted. Until not.

The goal is to reduce or contain or eliminate the swelling and keep it away from the retina, When it gets too close, there is vision trouble (like the kind I had last year) or worse. Since the treatments, my vision is excellent and has remained steady.That is the good news. The bad news is that the swelling is still there.

You can see by the photos that the eye is better but not good enough.

A decade ago, I would have gone blind. Today, it’s different, they can control the swelling and sometimes eliminate it with laser surgery, or failing that, with monthly injections into the eye.

In October, I’m going for a third round of laser surgery, and if that doesn’t work completely, we’ll begin the regular injections, along with special eye drops.

The thing about getting older that I find so interesting is that I must come to see my body in a new and different way. What I eat or don’t eat becomes important. It needs to be maintained, and I also need to accept life and not lament it or whine about it.

That leads to old talk and old thinking, and old talk and old thinking are more lethal than most diseases. My doctor, Naomi Falk, loves the fact that i share these photos on my blog, she says I am the first patient that has ever done that, and she thinks it is both healthy and productive.

When I go for treatment, the staff pulls up the most colorful and clearest photos for me. It feels good to share things like this, I  feel like I have no secrets to protect.

So I’ll keep doing that, and thanks for existing.

Audio: My Retina