Musings on a Small Life

I was lying awake at 3:30AM, all snuggled up and warm, and had a mini-lightbulb moment regarding purpose versus meaning.  I'm quite well aware that my purpose at this time in my life is to be a caregiver to the boys. To serve, if you will. It's pretty much the only reason I keep going on a daily basis. Whether that gives higher meaning to my life remains a mystery to me. Perhaps it's just semantics. But as with the words "happy" and "joy", I perceive "purpose" and "meaning" differently. ("Happy" connotes the material world and ego to me, whereas "joy" connotes something spiritual that is beyond words, that is undefinable, that is holy and sacred.)  "Purpose" for me also means something ego-based, whereas "meaning" takes on a spiritual slant something transcendent of the material, of being human. In the end, it really doesn't matter, does it? We just do what we need to do...

I usually check TinyBuddha.com (and SimpleReminders.com) daily, and today found this: http://tinybuddha.com/blog/releasing-expectations-okay-be-where-you-are/ It really resonated with me, so I thought I'd post the link, in case it resonates with anyone else. The author hooked me with this: "Now that I’m in my forties, I have experienced disappointment, failure, and confusion. Many times I have lost the path and sometimes it’s felt like there never was a path ." And this: "It’s not like I had it easy in my early life, but by my twenties I’m sure I thought it would all go to plan. It never went to plan. I’m not sure there ever was a plan ." It's hard to release expectations of what our lives "should" look like. At 50, I feel like I "should" be financially secure, able to pay my bills and deal with emergencies, save enough for retirement, and to maintain (and improve) the house. I feel like I "should" be able to cope b...

I had gift wrapping and Christmas cards on my agenda this weekend, but at 2:45PM on Sunday, I've run out of steam. I have this hazy memory of being more on the ball when I was younger, but that could be a convenient, and false, memory. I want a nap. Actually, I want a back massage and a nap. Neither of which is in the offing! However, I did manage to put up my outdoor decorations this morning. I was out on my stepladder at 6AM, working by the light from the street lamp directly opposite my unit. I think the most time-consuming thing was screwing in all those little hooks for the garland across the top of my garage door and around my door frame for the lights. It all took only an hour and a half, and I was out there without a jacket (thermal layers under my clothes, though). No way was I putting it off any longer, with today and tomorrow our mild days before we're back to winter temps. (Bonus, our snow has melted!) Then I went out for an inexpensive breakfast (I...

Thanks so much to all of you who commented yesterday, for being the voices of reason. In my head I know much of it is dependent on the cat's personality, and how much you can push them, even with time, patience and treats. Nicki, for instance, totally freaks--and I do mean freaks --at the first whiff of Advantage, so it's not something I'm able to apply to his neck, even if he's "confined" in a carrier or a room. Poor boy goes berserk. Literally. So it might be that even after a few weeks or a month he just will have none of the Aerokat. I'll do my best, because the potential/probable side effects from long-term Prednisolone use are very much in my mind, and if he won't accept the Aerokat, I'll be out of options. On a more upbeat note, his blood work came back great! His liver values were way down--the range is 27 to 158 U/L. Last year he was at 152 and this year he is at 79. I can't figure out why the significant decline, other than t...

Our "new" boss brought in cookies leftover from a meeting this morning. It's indicative of how I'm feeling that I ate three large, heavily-iced shortbread cookies before 10AM. They were very good, not that that justifies it. LOL. There's nothing like an abundance of sugar and butter to comfort oneself, though. Day 8 with Nicki and the Aerokat mask and I'm starting to think that all the cats I've seen in pics and YouTube videos actually were drugged. Or are extremely laid back cats, which is so not Nicki. In fact, my continued "failure" is what precipitated my early AM complete meltdown at home, though wasn't the only factor. Yep, Kim's going to fail yet another cat, health-wise -- or so it seems today. Are there any cookies left???

All I can say is that it’s TOO early for this white stuff! Snapped yesterday around 8:10AM, waiting for a bus. We have snow again today, though it was supposed to have rained. That’s not happening, at least not yet. More of the same for much of the week, and of course I have to take Nicki to the vet tomorrow for his anal glands and blood work. Fun times. BTW, the score is Nicki 247, Kim 0 re: the Aerokat mask. Well, almost. He’ll let me put it on for a few seconds, then pull away. He gets rewarded with a treat every single time he lets me do it, of course, so it’s going to be interesting to see who caves first. I’m a little discouraged, I admit. It’s easy to see why most people who have asthmatic cats don’t go this route, or so I’m guessing. Cost aside, it’s a huge challenge to train your cat to accept this. Entirely different if you’re wrapping him/her up or having an extra pair of hands and just doing it. I don’t want to go that route yet, today is “only” day 6. Still,...

He showed up a few minutes early, and yep, it was the constable -- he told me so himself as he was finishing up, but I knew he was the cop when he arrived in a white truck. (P had said the truck was white.) I told him I already knew, that I had Googled his name and had found a 2011 local news article that mentioned his name, wasn't sure it was the same person, thought maybe . Didn't mention P, of course! I also did not mention the a&&wipe neighbours, but I might have more generally run off at the mouth when he asked what the neighbourhood was like now, because he remembers the days when our complex (and the one below) would be getting a lot of police visits. He was very good -- called me by my name several times, which makes a "friendly connection" -- workers coming in don't do that. (Let me guess, he's the "good" cop.) Very observant, as a cop would be -- I was joking about all the junk and telling him my house was tidy (really), and he...

Yep, I'm doing the Friday happy dance, because it's been a long week. I had wanted today off, but my "new" boss is on holiday this week and my "old" boss wafflfed so much (uncharacteristically) when I asked that I finally said forget it, I'd take a day another time. It was p*ssy of him, but I wondered after the fact if he just doesn't want to get involved in any "supervisory" issues with me anymore. So I'm at the office, when I really could be taking care of a few things. I will, however, leave about an hour early today (came in for 7AM anyway, instead of 8AM, so I'm not cheating the institution out of my time), so I can get home while it's still light and get into my garage, to see what has to go, what's for donation, etc. Everything's a jumble in there right now. My bad. *** As for other things, I had ordered this blanket from Amazon.ca a few days ago. It was supposed to have taken till November 18th to get he...

I finally bit the bullet and went to Kijiji to look for someone who picks up junk, because I really need my garage cleaned out. I can't easily get to my Christmas decorations right now, tucked into a back corner as they are. Oops. It's not like I have a ton of stuff, but there are a lot of little things, and a few large items, that need to be cleared out. So I saw an add listing $x per load, all in, no added disposal fees or hidden costs and emailed the fellow yesterday. Supposedly he'll come by after work tomorrow (he has a "full size long box pick up truck"). And he will take a personal cheque--I asked. I could pay him cash, but prefer cheque because there will be a record of my payment. Of course I tried to find this fellow's address via Canada 411 and via a postal code look-up. (The ad has a postal code associated with it.) It's an address in the west end of the city. I also Googled his name, with the only local reference being to a 2011 news...

Some of you might remember that about a year and a half ago my old boss's boss was abruptly dismissed from this institution, by the second-in-command. Well, she, among several others, has just been given a distinguished service award for her years here. There's a group photo that includes her, posted on our institution's news site, and it has made my day .  What a brilliant, brilliant example of irony. Obviously she still has considerable support and backing here, and I hope that she who laughs last, laughs loudest and longest. Sunset sky snapped yesterday afternoon

OMG, I was just upstairs chatting with my former cubicle-mate, telling her about a PBS series called How We Got To Now , a program that looks at human-history changing inventions like artificial light, refrigeration, etc. Well, I'd seen the episode about light (fascinating), and was telling her that in the days of candlelight only, it was the norm for humans to go to bed with the dark, sleep for a few hours, wake for an hour or two, and then go back to bed for a few more hours until sunrise. During the awake time, around midnight or so, the historian being interviewed said people used that time to do chores, tend to the animals and of course make babies. (They'd have had a few hours' sleep and would be more rested for the baby-making -- lol.) Anyway, S was standing in her office suite doorway facing me and the hall, and I was facing her, with my back to the corridor. I was joking, suggesting that she use her middle-of-the-night awake time for her chores...or fo...

Check out this brief raw video footage of a 5-week old orphaned otter: http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Technology%20and%20Science/ID/2589374635/ I'm sure it's been posted on a zillion other sites, but I found it on CBC's web site. Image snipped from the end of the video. This little sweetie is so cute it almost kills me to look at her. Are we females hard-wired for baby mammals? We must be. Except I'm not hard-wired to go ga-ga over human babies. Only non-human, for some reason! Watching this has been my perk in an otherwise grey November work day. And I just found a good article on her -- the otter is a girl.  :-) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/05/shedd-aquarium-otter-pup_n_6108662.html  P.S. There's a better and longer video here: http://time.com/3560116/baby-otter-cute-swim-chicago-heart-bursting/ Peace . Comments are off for this, just enjoy the day.

I was walking from a nearby grocery store to the office this morning, saw a toonie on the sidewalk. (A toonie is our $2 coin.) I never see more than a rare nickel or dime on the sidewalk, which I typically will ignore, but of course I bent down to pick up $2. Who wouldn't? Well damned if the thing wasn't solidly glued to the sidewalk! I burst out laughing, figuring I probably was on camera or some student was in their apartment, keeping track of how many people stopped to pick it up. It was a silly, fun way to start the day.  :-) Peace .

We reverted to standard time around 2 o'clock this morning, supposedly giving us an extra hour of sleep. I have no idea who gets this extra hour of shut-eye, but it's never me. All it meant was that Nicki started his campaign to get me up to feed him at 2:30 instead of 3:30, finally succeeding at 3 o'clock instead of 4. He was really hungry, though, I'll give him that. (So was Derry.) Of course now he and Derry are snoozing, while I'm awake (sort of) and too wound up to go back to bed at the moment. Typical! BTW, he seems to be doing better, still sneezing from time to time, but not like he was. I have no way of knowing whether the FCV Protect has prevented the virus from getting out of hand, or if his body has been fighting it off on its own. I'm still giving it to him, but not umpteen times a day. Four times yesterday, will try for three times today. We all survived Halloween just fine, no graffiti or damage to the fence or unit that I've found. I...