For My Mom - Who Lost Her Furbaby Today....

Rainbow Bridge 

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown... 

Claude vs. Habibi

 

Meet Claude… Jean Claude to be precise.  We thought he might prefer being considered French, he has the ears and body of a Papillon, but the markings of an Australian Shepherd or Blue Heeler.  I found Jean Claude wandering, alone, starving and scared in my driveway, weaving under parked cars.   No Tags… No Identification… With the help of my downstairs neighbors and my son, we cornered him and safely tucked him away in a crate and took him home… Put an advertisement up under Lost & Found, and we walked him around and around and asked people if they knew “Claude”… their reactions were all the same, “No, but oh my Gosh, he’s so cute!!!!”  Yes, he is – a very well behaved, little gentleman, and quite happy to be tucked under my son’s arm – on his lap – chilling… With my son leaving for work (and being gone throughout the entire week) and myself having to work long days – sometimes up to 10-12 hours away from home – I began to panic .. who will take care of Claude?  So, my son brushed Claude, put a leash on him, and went downstairs to socialize with the neighbors – and they now have Claude.  Claude is with a Mom, Dad, and little 5 yr. old girl and a family cat, and unless someone claims him as their own in response to flyer and internet Lost and Found, he’ll be living with this nice family.

This makes a certain “Furball of Terror” very happy…. Habibi went crazy, he loomed over the dog, eyes twitching, low growly sounds, just all ALPHA Cat, this is MY Home, that’s MY MOTHER, and you need to leave… Poor Claude, he’d start looking to bury himself under a pillow on the couch to hide from this Mean and Angry Puffball.

This is the kind of behavior one must expect, when you leave your teenaged cat around a computer, they start playing Mafia Wars and get a serious ‘Tude.

Meanderings…..and Fluff…..

These videos just make me pee my pants … I laugh so hard!!!!!!  I love Simon’s Cat, and mostly because he’s so much like Habibi…

My son has been off with his father working … and I do believe he’ll be home tomorrow.  YAY… He will be my movie date – going to see Midnight in Paris – have been dying to see it – waiting for it to be released here – and Finally!!!!  Since our weather is awful, the smoke is so bad here – my car covered in ashes the other day, though now it’s misty – raining and washing the ash away … we need this rain so much – but sadly it’s making the smoke worse… ((hack hack, wheeze wheeze))

I’ve been working working and working – making me quite DULL… I find that to be quite the norm for me… though happy to be able to say “I am working” – that’s a grand thing these days!!! Not to be snubbed!!!! 

I think the MOST exciting thing was that I bought a Kindle!!  I have so far finished reading a murder mystery and all ready started on the second one of the series..

I have Monday off – HIP HIP HOORAY – so I plan to go shopping and pick up some much needed things for myself – including a new outfit.  Tuesday, one of the girls I work with is having a “Short Sale” Seminar, and I am going with the group of us that work on the short sale files… I want to have something nice to wear – something new.

July 1st begins my big Summer vacation to the Carolinas.  I have to go to an aunt’s surprise birthday party – my kidlet and I will be headed to stay with her under the “pretense” we want to be there to spend the 4th of July holiday with her… when we will really only be there for the 2nd and 3rd – the 4th has been promised to my dear friend that moved to South Carolina… and we will spend the rest of the week with her and her husband – driving into the mountains, going antiquing (and I know it is DIFFICULT to believe, but my son is very excited about the antiquing!!)… we even plan to go to Atlanta, Georgia’s aquarium and the Coca Cola plant – to do the Coca Cola Experience – and to Mayfield Farms’ Ice Cream plant – Ice Cream Experience… Kid is too young to gamble, so I have to forego this trip with visiting the casinos in the mountains… might be a good thing!

Hope you liked the cat video as much as I did…..

Where's Smoky the Bear When You Need Him?

http://www.news4jax.com/news/27836034/detail.html

I have been holed up at home in the air conditioned, cleaner/filtered air.  My city is engulfed in smoke.  It was in the 90s today and sun was shining bright but there was nothing but smoke and haze as far as you could see - it was like living in Hades - you feel like everything around you is going to burst into flames - it's so dry, so hot, so miserable... and a bit unnerving.

My son is suffering headaches.  I have suffered asthma attacks, headaches, and sinus problems... and I cannot imagine how others with worse health, serious breathing problems are handling this...

The only reprieve we have had lately from this smoke is when we went to the beach and stayed with friends.  It was gorgeous, clear air, we played in the pool, took walks on the beach, and enjoyed the company.  It was short - but a wonderful break... But on the drive home, as we were up on this high bridge crossing the causeway back to the main land - we could see spots here and there of just wild fires/brush fires... and that was 150 miles South from here - it's not just Northeast Florida - but seemingly most of Florida.

I'm ready to pack my bags and leave for the North Pole....

“Now I... I know we're not in Kansas!” ~ Dorothy (Wizard of Oz)

 

Right now it’s black outside, thunder rolling in, severe storm warnings all over the television, news, online, radio…

What a frightening sight… I feel so bad for those who have lost everything and their loved ones to these terrifying storms that are continuing to just sweep over our country.  I have never seen poverty such as I saw when I lived right where the red dot is at the South-end of the State of Illinois.  Our country’s “Heartland” is getting such a beating …and they say this is just the beginning…  

My tornado experiences:

The first time, I sat on a bridge in rush hour traffic, chatting on the phone with my brother, who at the time lived in Seattle.  I looked up and saw a short way away these ribbons coming from the sky into the water, really cool looking “water spouts”… harmless if they remain as water spouts… but they didn’t – they came over and hit land – turning into TORNADOES… they pulled up trees and damaged some homes, but thankfully I wasn’t in the middle of it – and nobody was killed… but I got to see it all happen sitting up high on that bridge.

The second tornado was when I was hurrying to pick up my son because his kindergarten was closing early due to the tornado warnings and bad weather warnings.  As I was flying down the street, everyone came to a huge halt, and I sat there and watched this “wall” go across the road a few feet from the car in front of me… I could not believe my eyes, I could not believe none of us were harmed and there was no damage as we watched a tornado cross the road… by the time I got to the school I was shaking and holding the tears back… and there was my little tow-headed boy jumping into the car all full of excitement because a tornado went through his teacher’s home!!!!!!  Little boys!!!!! Such sweet innocence…poor teacher.

The third tornado was when driving home from Disney World, we were in my little SUV about 10 yrs. ago, my friend, our kids, flying home down the Interstate when we hit some fierce looking storms, and we did not hear the sound of a freight train – instead we felt the air just suck up, out, very strange feeling, and behind us, pulling on my car, goes a tornado across the road… that was scary… I know my son still remembers waking up to wanting to know why we did not wake him up to see it all… he slept through it – how he slept through our screaming is unknown!!!

And, I hope that that is all I ever see or experience….

“Mais, jamais d'la vie!”……

 

The kid and I are invited in a little over a week to spend some time with my friend from Louisiana.  She and her family will be staying in a little ocean front condominium about 1 hours drive from my home.  They are Cajuns, she, my friend, more particularly being born and raised in the Acadiana section, what I call the Bayous…

On her first day of school, at the age of 5 or 6, her dad took her and her siblings (by boat) to the small one room school.  The teacher returned them back to their parents, and said “Until they have shoes and can speak English, they cannot go to school.”  That was a while ago, but NOT that long ago… and she and her family were true and true Cajuns, speaking the French dialect.  She’s tried to keep it alive with her own young-uns, passing down as much of the history, culture and language.  Her brother is a professor of music at one of Louisiana’s universities, and has traveled all over the World introducing Louisiana’s Cajun (historic) music… I feel that Cajuns have a certain “joie de vivre” that makes them so much fun to be around.

When I dated, not that long ago, a guy that works for the oil companies, who also lived in Louisiana, I got introduced to many “Cajuns”.  I found everyone I met to be warm and “jolly”… they loved their food and drink, very much!!!  They loved sitting down and eating, drinking and talking for hours… maybe it’s the closest I can come to how I feel about the Belgians, Dutch and the countryside of France… just this wholehearted enjoyment of the senses, warm personalities… just something that a lot of my country misses out on… 

I was very sad that the man I was dating did not find any enthusiasm in Zydeco or the dance halls/bars - - - and I never got to enjoy that part of the area when I’d go to visit him… but I did get to smell the sweet air of the countryside, the Mimosa trees were in bloom and so fragrant, to see the run down old “Estate” homes, like sad, sad “Taras” or “Monticellos” which once held wonderful soirees in their time… now surrounded by fallow fields, when my “boyfriend” at the time took me on long rides on his motorcycle… we’d ride for hours and hours – on long, pitted, bumpy country roads, stopping here and there in every Whistle Stop on our way to quench the thirst from being in the sun and hot winds… I loved it… I got to see a part of my country I had never seen before… I got to meet people that seemed so friendly and yet, foreign… That ride on the motorcycle was like riding on a time machine, into the 1950s – like the setting of “A Long, Hot Summer” with Paul Newman…

And, don’t let me start with how the men seemed so “appreciative” of the women.  Maybe there was some romance seeped into me because I was visiting a boyfriend, but it just seemed like the men there jumped at the chance to flirt, to hold a door open, to just be appreciative of the female species… I loved it… I just found myself beaming from ear to ear over the small little flirtations … It seems to me, a single woman should not be single very long when living in the Lafayette area – there were plenty of men, and lots of pretty big smiles and twinkling eyes, senses of humor, and my favorite, “joie de vivre”…

Maybe I should go stay with my friend in Louisiana the next time I feel an inkling to find some romance!!!!!!

“I am in a very unsettled condition, as the oyster said when they poured melted butter all over his back” ~ Edward Lear ‘literary nonsense’ (1812-1888)

 

Today is my birthday – and I feel 24 yrs. old…. I’m not… but I feel like it.  My day began with a scurrying to the driver’s license office, and renewed without any issue.  A trip to Starbucks for my free Birthday drink.  Off to work… and my Facebook page was inundated with Birthday wishes from strangers, friends, and family alike… I can’t keep up with all the birthday wishes; never have I had so many people wish me Happy Birthday!!!  Love it… it was a definite brightness to my day – that even a stranger, never meeting me in person, took that few seconds, that one moment, and wished me something positive.  It may seem corny or insignificant, but it isn’t really… a huge world, billions of people, and so far I’ve had over 100+ well wishes… from EVERY continent!!  It provides me hope and faith that there is more positive and goodness in humanity than not…

Good news:  My child is home for the next 3 months on Summer Break.  Last Friday I drove to Miami, after working all day and being sick, and packed him up, slept in the dorm with him, and then drove home the next day, unpacked, and still I am doing laundry.  No Complaints – I am thrilled to feel needed – even if it is just as a laundress.  I am so “co-dependent” and this makes my world go around…  I am planning on taking a nice summer vacation with him this year.  How I’ll afford it, I don’t know – but we’ll be creative and manage. 

Bad news:  My Habibi is (pardon my French) an Asshole/Bastard Cat… He IS… I get a text message the other day with a photo of his puddle on the clean carpet… It says “I regret to inform you, but the asshole peed on your clean carpet, AGAIN!”  He just finished a round of antibiotics – 2 weeks of fighting to shove two pills a day down that little Bastard Cat’s throat.  The only thing keeping him ALIVE, that adorable, smushy, sweet face and the fact that no matter how nasty he can be, he’s one of the loves of my life!!!!  MEN!!!!  {{Just Kidding}}  I’ll be taking him back to the vet this weekend for another urinalysis to see if we cleared up the infection – if it is clear – then he goes on Kitty Valium.

Work:  I had to stop with the overtime and killing myself with all the work and help… I wasn’t being compensated for it, refused compensation, and because of that… I quit putting in that much of my day and night, while other employees abuse and use their positions here – taking advantage every chance they get – the real killer was when I had the office bully slam something down on my desk and then follow it with some ugly offhanded comment – all completely unprovoked and unnecessary.  I’d already been advised of her attempts at alienating me from my co-workers with gossip and belittling me and my work and abilities.  Jealousy? I would say so….