Feeling Like Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle fell asleep under a tree one day and woke up twenty years later to find that his world had changed a bit.  I didn't fall asleep under a tree, but the after-effects of knee surgery have rendered me only semi-functional for almost a month.  Now that I'm off the heavy-duty pain medication, I'm trying to catch up on things that have been neglected. 

Could it be that a month in our fast-paced modern world is equivalent to twenty years in Rip's slower paced 19th century world?  Maybe not, but it's amazing what can pile up in a 21st century month.  I had hundreds of junk e-mails to be deleted from computer, netbook, and iPhone. 

There was a mountain of postal mail - almost all of it destined for the trash can.  I'm not a radical tree-hugging environmentalist, but I think all this junk mail is a terrible waste of natural resources.  But then I guess the design, printing, and delivery of junk mail provides a lot of jobs.

Why do upscale mail-order companies produce a new catalog every week?  The merchandise is always the same and the prices seldom vary.  But every week there's a newly designed catalog.  No wonder their prices are outrageous - they've got to pay for those slick publications.

Why do charitable organizations send you a letter, asking for a donation, with a dime or nickel attached to the letter?  Is this the unspoken message: "You're going to feel guilty if you keep our coin, so assuage your guilt by sending us $20.00 - or better still, $200.00."  I put these coins, along with my pocket change, in a charity piggy bank to be donated to someone or some organization at Christmas.

Do politicians know that all those flyers they have printed up go straight to the trash can as soon as their backs are turned? 

Maybe my out-of-commission month can't really be compared to Rip Van Winkle's twenty years, but I doubt if it's an exaggeration to say that I get more mail in a month than Rip got in twenty years.

Me, My Knee, and Feline Therapy

I had knee replacement surgery three weeks ago.  During my three day hospital stay the nurses brought me various pills at regular intervals.  Of course, I had some discomfort; but for the most part I wondered what all the hooplah about knee surgery was all about.  The classes I had attended in preparation for the event had emphasized that knee surgery is a BIG DEAL.  I reclined on my hospital bed - under the influence of powerful pain medication - and decided everybody had exaggerated.   "Knee surgery is a piece of cake," I mused.

The first night at home was a nomadic affair.  My husband and I assessed all the beds in the house to see where we thought I'd be the most comfortable.  We decided our bed was too high.  The Futon in the front bedroom was too low.  The four-poster bed in the guest room seemed to be just right.  Thinking it to be the perfect Goldilocks "just right" solution, I tried to get comfortable on a pile of pillows.  It didn't take me long to discover that - even with all the pillows - I wasn't elevated enough.  My nose stopped up and I couldn't breathe. 

I moved to the recliner in the front bedroom.  I found a reasonably comfortable position for my poor knee.  It seemed to be a little more demanding than it was in the hospital.  Even so, I went sound asleep.   I woke up about two hours later, wondering why my face felt like a block of ice.  I figured out that the recliner is positioned right where the air-conditioning vent blows a steady blast of cold air.  This is Louisiana, not Montana, so I don't have a supply of ski masks at hand - and I wasn't about to turn the air-conditioning off.  I had no choice but to relocate.

Jerry helped me up.  All of a sudden my knee has become a real issue.  It's very picky about how I move it.  We gather up pillows, throws, water bottle, medicine, lip balm, and God knows what else.  I grab hold of my walker and struggle down the hall to the livingroom recliner where I'm finally able to get as comfortable as my knee would let me get.  Jerry went to sleep on the couch.

I had no idea a cat could wake you up from a sound sleep just by looking at you.  Under normal circumstances Teche, our big black and white cat, is confined to the livingroom-kitchen area of the house at night while we occupy the bedroom part of the house.  Teche is not used to his territory being invaded at night.  Several times I woke up to discover my favorite feline, sitting on the arm of my recliner, with his nose about three inches from mine - giving me an intense stare.  I thought his look plainly said, "You DO know that something is WRONG with you?!"  I'm still grateful that he made no attempt to get on my lap and spread himself out over my incision.  I don't know why he didn't recline on my lap because, heaven knows, he's a dedicated lap cat.  I'm always amazed by the savviness of animals.  Apparently Teche knows that my lap is unfit,  and he is content - even now - to visit me from his position on the arm of the chair.

We continue to spend most nights in the livingroom.  Teche has adjusted to this new arrangement.  But his brand of cat therapy includes getting the people up by 6:30 a.m.  He's not happy until the curtains are open, the lights are on, and the coffee's brewing.  "They can sleep in my part of the house," he thinks, "but they'll do it on my time schedule."

I came home from the hospital on a Friday.  The official physical therapist came on Monday morning - a perfectly harmless-looking young woman with a pleasant, perky demeanor.  I've come to realize that therapists are many-layered people.  Don't be fooled for one minute by that harmless facade.  Over the last two weeks she has made me do things that I wouldn't do to a perfectly good knee - let alone one that that has been cut into.  I wonder about her memory.  At times she seems to forget that my left knee has suffered recent violence at the hands of the surgeon.  She acts like we're simply carrying out an exercise program to strengthen perfectly good knees.

On two occasions I barely saw her out the front door before having a crying meltdown - declaring loudly to my husband that, not only is knee surgery a BIG DEAL, it's a MISTAKE! ------- But today, I'm optimistic.  Therapy seems to be getting a little easier.  I got through another day of it and lived to tell about it.  I'm able to get around the house pretty good without my walker.  This morning I cleaned the kitchen and walked around the house, picking up various out-of-place items that had accumulated on the kitchen bar.  It occurred to me that I could not have done these tasks before surgery without having to have several sitting-down breaks. 

So maybe all this therapy is paying off.  Maybe knee surgery is not a mistake after all.  We'll see.  The jury is still out.  There will probably be more crying meltdowns in the future, but somehow I think maybe the worst is over.  Just maybe.  Now, let's see - is it time for a pain pill?

The Hat - A Memoir

Why is it that some long past, trivial events stand out in bold relief in our memories while more important matters sometimes fade into obscurity? I don’t know the answer. When youth left me so did most of the answers.  In mid-life I’m left only with examples to wonder about - like one golden, sunny day that I sat in a boat with my mother and father and a friend of theirs named Joe. I was a little thing - two and a half or three - according to my mother. It’s the absolute earliest memory that I can mine from the archives in my head.

I don’t remember preparing for that little voyage out in the bay, and I don’t remember coming home from it. But I do remember Joe’s hat. It went overboard at some point. I don’t know if he dropped it in the water or if the wind blew it off; but I can still see it clearly in the glistening water, moving rapidly away from us, getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I remember somebody remarked that it was gone.

I wasn’t greatly disturbed that Joe had lost his hat, but I knew that something remarkable had happened. The fact that Joe’s hat could be on his head one minute and gone forever the next was an amazing thing. But more amazing than that was the fact that retrieving that hat was completely beyond the ability of any one of those three grown-ups in the boat with me. They had been gods right up until the moment when Joe’s hat began to fade in the distance - gone forever. I don't remember being frightened by this event, but - as little as I was - I knew that it meant something.  I knew that it had somehow changed my life.

In telling this tale, I wonder if I’ve found an answer. Maybe these "trivial" events that establish themselves as permanent fixtures in our memories are not trivial at all. Maybe they are the only events that are important to our eternal selves - to that part of us that will never die. And just maybe some of the things that we think are so important don’t matter much after all.

A Conservative Reads Obama

I'm a conservative - a traditionalist - and so my political philosophy does not coincide with President Obama's.  But it never hurts to know something about the background of the man in the White House no matter who he is.

Most presidents write about themselves after they've left office.  Obama wrote of himself before taking office, giving us an opportunity to learn about his background early on. 

I was surprised at the size of Dreams From My Father - 400+ pages - since Obama was only in his thirties when he wrote it.  But I like thick books so I ploughed in.  It's well written and interesting, reading like a novel.

Shortly after Obama was born, his black Kenyan father had to choose between two college scholarships.  One was to Harvard, and one to another prestigious university.  The non-Harvard scholarship not only paid tuition, but would have paid living expenses for the family of three.  The Harvard scholarship only paid tuition.  Obama's white American mother was in favor of the one that paid living expenses as well as tuition.  As I read this, I sympathized with her.  That would seem to be the sensible choice for a family man.  But Obama's father told her he couldn't pass up a Harvard education, and so he abandoned her and the infant Barack so he could pursue this education without being burdened with a family.

Obama's early childhood was spent in Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather - she had remarried by this time.  The stepfather's religion was a mixture of Islam and local religious superstitution.  Eventually the marriage failed, and Obama, his mother, and his baby half-sister returned to Hawaii where Obama's maternal grandparents lived.

By this time Obama was ten or twelve years old.  His white grandfather sometimes took him along on visits to his favorite barroom that had pornographic posters on the wall and was frequented by pimps and prostitutes.  According to Obama, his grandfather was usually the only white man in the bar.

Obama's mother was a hard worker and - to her credit - did everything in her power to see that he got a good education.  I don't think she ever stopped loving Obama's father in spite of the fact that he had abandoned her and their baby.  She built him up to be a hero to the young Barack.

Obama's college days were spent in the company of "politically active blacks, foreign students, Chicanos, Marxist professors, structural feminists, and punk rock performance poets."  Socialism and black liberation theology were significant influences.  Since my knowledge of black liberation theology was scanty, I decided to do some research.  According to James Cone, a prominent black liberation theologian, this belief system includes - among other things - the belief that white people owe black people a lot; and if they (white people) want redemption, they must make material restitution.  This is a far cry from traditional Christianity.

Although Obama's community organizing in Chicago produced some small victories for the black community, I got the impression that the black communities in Chicago weren't much different after Obama left than they were before he arrived.  The people he dealt with while he was there were interesting.  They ranged from hard-working blacks with moderate views to radical black nationalists.  They all spent a lot of time discussing "black self-hatred," the unjust past, and their inability to move beyond it.  The idea that the answers to their problems lie in black unity seemed to prevail.  One of Obama's associates - a black teacher who led a mentorship program in Chicago's public schools said, "I teach them that Africans are a communal people."

Obama tells about his close friendship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a black liberation theologian; and he (Obama) praises the Black Value System that Rev. Wright's church adopted.  This value system is described as "articles of faith no less than belief in the Resurrection."

Obama traveled to Kenya and spent time getting to know his father's family.  His father is dead by this time.  His older sister, Auma, fills him in on the family history.  I thought this was the most interesting part of the book, and I found myself really liking some of Obama's Kenyan relatives.

Dreams From My Father was well worth reading.  It explains the development of Obama's collectivist, socialist views.  In light of the information he gives in this book, it is understandable that he wants to fundamentally transform America into a country that differs substantially from its roots of individual and personal liberty. 

Rocky's Journal - Entry 2

This is the second entry in Rocky's journal.  His journal is dedicated to all animal lovers who like to indulge in attributing human traits to our furry and feathered friends. Although it's fanciful, it's not fiction. The events are real - just from Rocky's point of view. My apologies to readers who think this sort of thing is silly.

The vet was out here again last week.  I hung my head over the stall door and watched as the Doc and the two vet students who came with her examined Tesoro's back left foot.  When the vet came about three weeks ago, it was his front right foot.  He got lame in the back foot just a day or two after getting over the front foot.

They poked and pinched his hoof while he stood there eating hay - an extra ration, I might add, that Fay and I won't get.  But they thought he wouldn't mind being poked so much if he had something to munch on. 

After the poking was over, they decided to walk him around out in the pasture to see how his back foot behaved - and sure 'nuff, it behaved like a lame foot.  I could have told them that.  Then they brought him back in the barn aisle and decided to give him some shots - something called a nerve block.  At this point I decided not to begrudge him that little bit of extra hay.  After a few minutes, they said his hoof was numb and they took him for another walk in the pasture.  And guess what?  No lameness.  I think all this was to prove that the problem was in the hoof and not further up in his leg bones. 

Next they hauled the portable x-ray machine out of the vet's truck.  And poor old Tesoro got another shot -  a sedative so they could get him to put his two back feet on wooden blocks.  He sure looked silly with his back feet on blocks that made his rear end higher than his front end.  But he was so woozy he didn't care.  He didn't even feel like eating hay.

The vet seemed to be happy with the x-rays since they showed an abscess and not laminitis.  I didn't think it was anything too serious since I hadn't noticed any vultures circling the pasture - no more than the one or two regulars that are always patroling the neighborhood, looking for something to eat.  I'm glad I'm a horse and not a vulture.  It's a lot easier to find grass than it is to find old dead things.

They tied a plastic bag with Epsom salt water in it around Tesoro's foot and soaked it for a few minutes.  Then they put some of that slimy green paste on the bottom of his hoof and put a homemade boot on it.  This homemade boot is - you'll never guess - a disposable baby diaper - complete with cartoon characters printed on it!  I'll swear, I couldn't help snickering when I saw it.  Then they wrapped the diaper in shiny silver tape and, I have to admit, it looks right spiffy.

An hour after the vet left, Tesoro was over his wooziness so Jerry let us out in the pasture.  And - can you believe it! - we weren't out there five minutes before Tesoro came toward me and Fay at a good clip to run us off our patch of grass.  Sometimes I wonder if he doesn't fake these foot problems just for the attention. 

Artist Trading Cards

It's amazing how you can rock along with your normal routine life and suddenly stumble on something that you didn't know existed.  The internet, of course, is a fantastic place to stumble on new things.  Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, I've recently fallen into the world of Artist Trading Cards.  And believe me - it's a well populated world.  There are enough websites and YouTube videos about Artist Trading Cards to keep you busy for hours on end.  There are websites that facilitate the trading of ATCs.  There are websites that sell ATC supplies - boxes and albums for storage, plastic sleeves for protection,  and rotating stands for displaying.

The only firm rules about Artist Trading Cards - often referred to as ATCs - is that they must be 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches and must be traded, not sold. (There's a way around the "not sold" rule - more about that later.) Any medium can be used to create an ATC - paint, ink, chalk, colored pencils, rubber stamps, collage elements, etc.  Some ATCs are made of fabric and stitching.  Some have three dimensional features. 

I had lots of fun this morning creating the ATC pictured above.  The lighthouse scene is a rubber stamped image that I colored with watercolor pencils.  The sky was "painted" by dabbing a sponge on a blue rubber stamp pad and then dabbing the sponge lightly onto the sky area.  The water at the bottom of the card is a torn piece of aqua-colored paper.  The torn, ragged edge of the paper conveniently looks like surf pounding the rocks at the base of the lighthouse.  The pretty young miss was cut from the glossy cover of a mail-order catalog and glued onto the card with a glue stick.  I wasn't happy that the young lady was glossy and the rest of the card wasn't.  I remedied this by using a small artist brush to apply a thin coat of matte gel medium to the dear girl.  I'm pleased with the result.   As Dee Gruenig, the queen of rubber stamping, often says about her own creations, "It's so cute, I can hardly stand it!"  Is it really art?  I don't know, but it sure is fun!

I've created four or five ATCs in the last two weeks.  I have to confess that I like them so much, I'm not sure I want to part with them.  They may never be traded.  I've ordered a couple of ATC boxes for storing my creations.  Maybe when I've made enough of them, I'll be willing to part with some of them.   I think the only reason great artists are able to part with their work is that they are confident they can produce more good work.  When you're an iffy artist like I am, you're never sure you can pull it off again.

Now, back to the "not sold" rule.  It appears to me that if you want to sell your little works of art, you just call them ACEOs.  I'll bet you didn't know there's a whole 'nother world of ACEOs - Art Card Editions & Originals.  There's brisk commerce in the ACEO world - just search for ACEOs on E-Bay and you'll see what I mean.

Whether you call them ATCs or ACEOs, creating these little works of art is a lot of fun.  It's an inexpensive hobby, requiring few supplies.  If you're on a tight budget, you can cut your cards from cereal boxes.  If you want your cards to be a little more sophisticated, 100# Bristol board is perfect.  It's sold in tablets at Michael's and Hobby Lobby and is not too expensive.  Old magazines and catalogs are great sources for collage elements. 

One of the best features of this hobby is that an ATC is a small project that can be completed in one sitting.  And I imagine if I ever decide to trade some of my ATCs, I will probably make some new friends.





 

Small People

British Petroleum Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, recently announced that BP cares about the "small people."  I cringed when I heard him say it - as much for him as for the "small people" on the Gulf Coast to whom he was referring.  I knew he would regret his choice of words.  The "small people" were offended, which is perfectly understandable.

Since I'm not as affected by the oil spill (yet) as those south of me, I'm able to give Mr. Svanberg the benefit of the doubt.  I'm not sure he meant to denigrate anybody.  Since he is Swedish, English is not his native language.  Maybe "small people" is a perfectly acceptable phrase in Sweden.  Maybe Mr. Svanberg doesn't understand that we Americans like everything to be big.  We're a big country.  We like big SUVs.  We like big football players.  We like super-size meals at fast food joints.

At the same time, we're very well aware that "small people" do exist.  In fact, most of us know that we are "small people" in the sense that we're not political leaders, multi-billionaires, powerful corporate executives, or universally recognized celebrities.  But we don't want to be called "small people."   It makes us feel - well, small.  

This leads me to a question - how can a powerful corporate executive like Mr. Svanberg, refer to "small people" without offending them?  After all, sometimes it really is necessary to make a distinction between big powerful people and "small people." 

Abraham Lincoln said, "God must love the common man, he made so many of them."  Did Abe say this with tongue in cheek?  I don't know, but I don't think I like being called "common" any more than I like being called "small."

The only other possible phrases that come to mind are "ordinary people" or "average people."  These are not as offensive as "small people," but they're not all that attractive either.  Maybe there's something in all of us that makes us want to be "exceptional people."

I'm interested in your opinion, Dear Reader.  If you're a "small person," what descriptive phrase do you prefer?  If you're Carl-Henric Svanberg - well, never mind.  I'm sure you have something more important to do.