China cat is the Whiner. He complains about most things unless I’m holding him, preferably under a blanket. He’s a skinny Lavender/Blue point Siamese so I figure without any meat on his bones, he must be cold all the time, and that’s why he always wants to be under a blanket. I wake up in bed with him under the covers, too. And he’s a bit finicky about food. Sometimes I put food out and he goes over and sniffs and if it doesn’t meet with his approval, he starts scratching the floor trying to cover it up like it’s an almond roca in the litter box. What a critic.

Buster is the Fetch Cat. She was a feral kitty that was very sick, weighed 2.5 pounds and was on the brink of dying. Who could resist? She has grown up to be a beautiful cat with a very sweet disposition. She hides when people come around (I’m not people) and because she was so sick, her voice is more like a tiny squeaky croak, plus she doesn’t see very well. What she does do well is play fetch. Her favorite fetch toys are the plastic rings from the necks of milk jugs and plastic covered twist wires from electronics packaging. She’s very specific about this. After years of being with me, she finally sits on my lap, but I can’t hold her.

Leelu is a very Naughty Cat. She was a rescue kitten. I’ve only had her for a few months and I’m hoping she grows out of the naughty stage pretty soon. She’s so darn cute, ornery, lovable and exasperating. She climbs curtains, digs in the plants and chews off their leaves, gets up on anything and everything and knocks everything to the floor, which then becomes a cat toy. Yes, I’ve been using the water spray bottle and saying NO, but she just waits until I get settled down to do something and she’s right back at it. She yells at me when she’s in trouble, and I’ve literally soaked her with water (and my house) trying to instill in her right from wrong. I’ve given up. My daughter is babysitting what’s left of my plants and I will look at getting new curtains someday. For now, don’t judge me by how my house looks. It’s Leelu’s house.

The words come into my head
Titty pink
I see a pink 1965 mustang enter the freeway to my
right, but why titty? It no more resembles a breast or
tit or hooter or any color of any part of anyone’s
anatomy than…well, maybe on some mammal, but not one I
know personally

The words come into my head
What a grotesque color
I see a florescent yellow motorcycle pass on my left
and leave a glowing trail which my eyes can‘t let go
of because I can‘t believe someone would choose such a
gaudy insult to motorcycles on purpose…but maybe he
likes yellow, and perhaps it tastes good to him

The words come into my head
Well, they’re not really words,
I see a beautiful sunset and clouds the color of
nothing I know, and the language that speaks to me is
in an omnipotent, ancient knowing that has no words
and yet sounds like everything that matters.

The words come into my head
I miss her so much
And suddenly I can’t see the world around me at all,
but am reliving the moments of tremendous tender and
fear sweating scenes of when I lose another piece of
her and couldn’t I have done better and maybe it’s all
a mistake and if I keep her in my mind and ignore what
my eyes are trying to tell me she will be real because
I’ve worked so hard to see her again

The words come into my head
The words from everywhere I’ve been and everything
I’ve done and they show up uninvited and full of
themselves and keep meditation at bay because they
don’t want to lose their place in my universe, my
chaos

The words come into my head
But sometimes I don’t hear them before they shoot
right out of my mouth and I wonder if I was witty and
charming or acerbic and mean and do I owe an amends to
someone or did I really say it in the first place

The words come into my head
Life is too short
I look around and see the world and know that I must
change and change, and change again until I, too, am
gone.

We were taught to get along, share things, not be mean, not call names…and then we all got juice and cookies before a mandatory nap.

Life was good, it made sense, we followed simple rules and got rewarded with simple pleasures.

Now life sucks…we can’t trust anyone because everyone lies, manipulates, steals, and they’re all armed with humongous blame-throwers. Everyone gets pitted against each other and no one is getting any juice or cookies.

Some observations:

We’re constantly bombarded with politicians’ shenanigans and witness the ego-driven power-grabbing hoopla that long ago replaced election campaigning. Who are these people, and why would any of them think they can hide their flawed human character from the x-ray vision of the publicity machines? And at this point in time, how can anyone continue to believe that our political party system is a viable means of electing the most appropriate people into office?  To borrow a phrase,”This shit ain’t working no more,” succinctly points out my feelings regarding our political system. I, like most people, do not have an answer, but I sure as hell hope somebody comes up with at least a step in the right direction. I’ll vote yes on that, but hell no on everything else.

We’re plied with blatant and subtle lies from advertisers, whose job it apparently is, to make us purchase things that are not exactly what the implications have led us to believe. For instance, the ad that says you can pause the movie you’re watching in one room and continue it in the next. Not true, but many people are paying for it. With enough of the right equipment, you can watch something in one room, stop watching it (not pause it), and if you’re lucky and all your equipment and internet service is working properly, resume watching in a different room. Pause and stop are two different functions and people are led astray by this. I know because I worked on the support end of this lovely lie and had to constantly tell people that they had to stop watching, not pause. If they pause the movie they cannot bring it up in the other room because it shows it’s in use and not available. People were very unhappy about the lie. I don’t work there anymore.

On one news station we get a report that is in direct opposition to another news station’s report. Which one is true? The one you believe to be true…then you spend time trying to convince someone who believes the other news report that they are wrong. WTF! Personally, I prefer news that is based on scientific fact so I lean toward watching news, rather than opinions. I have some friends and relatives, however, who prefer to watch news with a smirk (as I call it). I have tried watching this news, but to me it’s like watching a bad soap opera or WWF wrestling…the actors are terrible, the story line is ridiculous and I’m incredulous that anyone thinks this is real. I am not making the mistake of trying to convince anyone that what they’re watching is pure horse shit, because I want my juice and cookies.

I’m going to take my nap now.

I imagined I would be married to my best friend, living at the beach, running a business, playing music whenever it suited me and selling off my properties to assist in my retirement when it came time.

That was my reality until my spouse, who had been my best friend for many years, decided he was tired of our marriage and fell in love with someone younger and slimmer. The economy, which I heard was supposed to be getting better, took a turn for the worse and I had to close my business. My properties went on the market, but no one is buying and I’m in the process of losing my home. I moved to a small southern Oregon town where my daughter lives so I could at least be close to family while my life fell apart…falling apart in a single-wide in a mobile home park…I always wondered why people lived in these things. My other two properties are rented and barely sustaining themselves, and I’m stuck taking care of them with no buyers in sight.

I’m not living the life I had imagined.

I was living it, but like so many people these days, my retirement is close enough that I can see the whites of its eyes and it’s not looking like the leisurely and relaxing time for which I had planned. Instead, I have a low paying, miserable job which underutilizes my skills, that I cannot find my way out of because I can’t live without a paycheck and no one seems to be hiring people of my age group.

I’m pretty sure I’m living someone else’s life…this is nothing like I had imagined.