Milton Maize: July 1999 - July 2013

Am I really blogging about this?

I guess I am.

Tomorrow we have scheduled our Goodbye to our beloved family pet, Milton.

Milton is 14 years old. For those of you keeping track at home, he’s as old as we've been married … we got him right around the time cats are able to leave their mothers. So we say he was born on our wedding day. J

We call him a number of things … rarely Milton. Fuzzbutt, Pook, Pookie, Pookie-no-Paws, etc. But he’s Milton, after the town of Milton, Florida, where we found him he found us.

I was sad and lonely; we moved to Florida right after we got married and Ian began flight school. Rachel ate Wheat Thins and watched Court TV.  A LOT.  And Law and Order. *dundun*

One day, while watching television!, we saw a commercial for … I dunno, cat litter or something, which featured an adorable kitten. Ian, an avowed cat-hater, responded to my mopey-sappy face: “Let’s go.” And it was off to the pet store.

Pook was a tiny little fuzz ball who leapt onto my bed and face every morning. He meowed at the backside of the door when Ian left for “work.” He took amazing running leaps after toys and laser pointers, and made a game of flying vertically up to a hand placed on the doorframe at light-switch height … This became an oft asked-for game. He did this funny exercise with the open flaps of cardboard boxes, and ADORED the taste of packing tape. 

Ever the patient, resilient, flexible cat, Milton made several plane and car trips – from Florida to Texas by car, from Texas to Pennsylvania by plane, back south by plane … etc, etc.  He was so mellow we just plunked him in the backseat in his open carrier where he spent the entire trip. Whenever he accidentally found himself outside, he would travel only a few feet, re-discover that outside is bad, and come running to be let back in, meowing all the way.

He loved to catch and eat bugs. Once he used my brother-in-law as a launch pad to nab a giant mosquito high on the wall in Mississippi (they grow them big down there). Once I had a fly infestation in our house in Norfolk. Pook and a shade-less lamp on the hallway floor made short work of low-flying snacks.

In our Norfolk apartment, he would leap from the bathroom sink onto the shower doors where he would perch, mildly intrigued as we showered.  He slept in the in-box, he’d stare for hours at a belligerent squirrel who insisted on taunting him from the window ledge.

He’s been mostly good with the kids, although other peoples’ kids and anyone who dares exceed the 3-pet rule is in mortal danger. He also tends to bite the hand that feeds him. Or the calf, ankle, toe … Ok, so he’s a pesky bugger sometimes. But he's also our "first kid." 

I love him dearly. I do.

His kidneys are failing.

He’s not in demonstrable pain today; he greeted me this morning by sitting on me till I tossed him aside to get up. He’s curled up beside me on the couch in pleasant slumber as I type.

But he’s taken to using alternate locations for relieving himself (albeit mostly easily cleaned up, bless him). It’s been a few weeks now, increasing in occurrence. A visit to the vet this week revealed a non-functioning kidney and a quite enlarged one. The beginning of the end.

And so here I sit, with a perfectly “normal,” cat beside me … a loyal companion, a source of joy and comfort for many, many years. There’s nothing WRONG … he’s not choking, or limping, or crying, or peeing blood.

And yet, I've seen pets announce their demise that way. And it’s horrible. For them, and for the family.

So I don’t have anything else to say about this except that I feel like a cruel executioner for having an appointment with the vet in the morning. I know I could extend things by antibiotics and hydration shots. But to what end? Do I need to have a whimpering, lethargic cat to convince me he’s ready to leave?

A friend reassured me: “Letting him suffer just so you don’t have to make the decision isn't nearly as compassionate.”

She’s right.

But I am beyond pained.

Demolition Men, Chimney Sweeps and Not-So-Merry Poppins

We have an old house.

It's about 100 years old. It's a colossus of a thing; a perfect square: full basement, 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors PLUS an attic you can stand up in.

Big.

We purchased this home in 2007 and immediately began beating it up. 

And by "me," I mean Ian, and whichever Dad/Dad-in-Law was available. And a few (will they stay?) friends. 

It was dirty, hard work. We gutted the bathroom and kitchen and entire third floor and attic. We absconded with several hundred bats which were subsequently living in the house since we took out their walls. We rewired and re-plumbed. Installed a new powder room. Installed a custom kitchen. Installed overhead lighting, wall/plaster repair, carpet removed and replaced, hardwood installed, insulation ... Lots of this done before we moved in (God bless my folks for putting us up for a year). Most of the above happened before Ian's magical medical mishap a few years ago.

Fast forward to 2013: We were finally able to get moving on the third floor, to turn it into usable living space. The plan is for it to be a rec room of sorts, with the potential of a master suite/guest suite. Full bathroom going in. So we had insulation guys come and do their magic, we're in the process of framing out the walls and soon, drywall and flooring and lights and TA-DA!  Room.

In the meantime, we figured it made sense to make a few other improvements at the same time; ie, while the drywall guys were here. This meant that while the third floor has been progressing at a steady pace, all of a sudden people were coming over to do demolition. As in, "Hon, Fred will be here at 8 am tomorrow."

"Uh ...Oh. Okay!"

So we got a roll-off box (Dumpster is, in fact, a trade name. FYI). We started to hack away at the two remaining gutting-worthy rooms: the dining room and entryway. The reasons for these efforts are several, some of which are installing electrical fixtures, outlets, switches, insulation, general wall/ceiling surface improvement.  

Indeed, on Monday, Fred arrived. I got up early and decided to avoid the noise and do some cleanup work in the basement (on the future improvement list as well). Over the hum of the washing machine and dryer, I could hear the pounding begin. 

If you've ever experienced this type of work, you can scroll down and yawn. If you have not been a part of an old home remodel, let me give you a bit of important information: Old construction is not like new. If you don't know what "lath and plaster" means, see THIS on how it's done to begin with, and THIS to see what it looks like 100 years later when you're pulling those outer-coats down. Only in that last picture, it seems the homeowner is looking to patch a small hole. And leaving the lath (the wood).

We are not leaving the wood. It's gotta GO. Oh, and this includes the ceiling. See that grit at the bottom of the photo? That will be important later.

Okay.  So, our house is plaster, brick, lath, sometimes in that order, sometimes not.

Back to the basement. I take a break and come upstairs. Soon after clearing the kitchen, I start to encounter a faint haze in the air. Walking through the dining room the mist gets heavy, and soon I encounter the cloud. A cloud smelling of the strongest whiff of under-the-bed dust you've ever breathed. The border-less cloud which now engulfs both front rooms and hallway of the first floor. It lingers in the air as the smoke and ash in World War II movies. There is a smash, a crumble, and a POOF of more of the stuff ... a constant, slow-moving fog of ash.

Of course, I should explain one other facet of the death cloud: it contains coal dust. Homes of this era had coal furnaces on the lower floors, and the coal-based heat was piped throughout. This means that on its way through the wood and plaster and brick, coal left its black, gritty mark.

Which has now become airborne.

It settles gently onto couches. Chairs. Plants. Paper. A laptop. Books (Oh, God, the books). Picture frames. Carpets. The cat.

As I get about five feet from the front door, I realize it is too late; the prep work done by the men to prevent this disaster has been inadequate. While they took care to mask with sheeting and tape over the inner foyer door, it has not occurred to anyone smashing away at the tiny room that THE POCKET DOOR WHICH ROLLS INTO THE WALL BETWEEN THE PARLOR AND ENTRY HAS NOW PROVIDED A FLOOR-TO-CEILING DIRT FUNNEL.

Into the room(s). All. Over. Everything.

Tears were shed. Swearing was accomplished. Mom was summoned ...

In brief: we have commenced wiping down and vacuuming everything. EVERYTHING. As I said - PAPER. This stuff is not sawdust, it's not drywall dust. It's not even the thickness of talcum powder. But it includes a sticky quality that means when you run your finger across the desk, a fine powder sticks to your finger, sure, but a smear also occurs on the desk. A staining, gritty, sticky smear.

So that's what Rachel (and a few others) have been doing for the past three days. Ian & Co. have been tearing out the entryway and dining room. They're almost done. (We were much more successful in sealing off the dining room. Whew.)  The next steps will be some wiring and then the drywall cavalry and then I should be safer from dustdirt. Should. 

That is, until another project becomes ten others .... 

Demo-Chic

Thinking about Thickeners

What are xanthan gum and high fructose corn syrup doing in my balsamic vinaigrette?

I pondered this after a recent bout of label browsing ... something I'll admit to almost never doing.

Aside from the HFCS providing a bit of sweetness to my salad lubricant (I'm guessing, also, a preservative quality?) it and its gum pal add something intriguing: TEXTURE.

Which led me to think about all the "goo" we use to make things tasty. The cream sauce over the chicken has to be think enough to stick to the top and pile onto the plate, not zoom around the rim, attempting an escape. The dressing must sit ON the lettuce, rather than filtering to the bottom where one must either discard the remainder or slurp it up indelicately.

Soup, unless it be the broth-around-lumps type (ie: french onion, chicken noodle), must be thick enough to stick to the spoon and easily make the trip to the face.

Melted butter would saturate a few popcorn pieces on the way down, creating a few soggy butter bombs amongst the fluffy goodness ... so we use coconut oil, etc., to make the goo stick but not soak.

All these thoughts led me to recall reading that toothpaste bubbles and tingly mint are absolutely extraneous; they don't mean cleaner teeth. We've become accustomed to the FEEL of them, hence we shy away from "paste" that is just that: paste. Same thing with bubbles in shampoo and soap. We feel cleaner if we have the foam.

All this random thought to say: perhaps if we changed the way we "needed" our products to behave, we could more easily change our food intake and consumption of chemical-based home and personal care products.

Slurp.

The "Cost" of Healthy Eating

We've all heard it said: "Eating healthy is so EXPENSIVE."

Disclosure: I rarely look at prices of things I buy at the grocery store. Perhaps, for comparison's sake, between brands of, say, popcorn, pasta ... that kind of thing. But I'm blessed not to have to choose between a carrot and a Coke.

Also: there have undoubtedly been cost comparisons done between shopping organic and not, shopping the perimeter of the grocery store and not ... And more poignant would be studies done on the TRUE cost, in terms of our health, of eating garbage because it's cheaper. [insert one of 9,999 food-based documentaries here]

That said, I had fun shopping yesterday, and I made a list of all the good stuff I bought ... I thought I'd share it with you.

1. I did not "shop around," look for sale prices, use coupons, or choose the cheapest store in town. In fact, I chose arguably the most pricey location for groceries.

2. I don't know "how long this will last us" before we shop again. That will depend on the vacuum factor (ie: how much of the fruit the kiddos realize we have before I get a chance to eat some of it - my son eats a quart of strawberries in one sitting) and the longevity and/or freezability of the produce (assuming some of it is not gotten to right away and therefore needs to be "put on hold." I'm GUESSING it will be at least three weeks till we hit the store again.

3. We have milk delivered.

4. Some items I would not normally purchase. As I said, I had a fun day in the produce aisle! and some items are specifically for the program I mentioned in Wednesday's post).

5. some items are organic, others are not; I try to stick to organic for the "dirty dozen."

Now, on to the list:

3 lb Macintosh apples 4.49
2 lb bag lemons 3.99
bag of limes 2.99
radicchio                                    .83
1 mango 1.00
5 kiwi 2.95
3 pears 2.23
bundle asparagus 2.87
bananas 1.37
3-pack seedless cucumber 3.99
3 lb bag yellow onions 2.49
avocado 1.79
head of cauliflower 3.99
celery 2.39
broccoli         2.00
leeks (soup?) 2.54
kohlrabi (saute?) 4.46
green pepper 1.09
red pepper 2.51
blueberries 3.99
blackberries (2) 6.98
raspberries (2) 9.98
baby tomatoes 3.99
strawberries 1.99
4 oz mushrooms 1.69
---------------------------------------------
Produce Total 78.59


"Other" (I'm putting things I consider condiments in parenthesis ... something you'd put ON something else and wouldn't be filling stomach space)


rice crisp streusel snacks 3.39
bag of brown rice 4.49
wheat pocket pitas 1.99
tortillas         2.79
whole wheat penne 2.19
no-boil lasagna noodles 2.39
minute rice, brown 2.19
rice cakes         1.39
cheerios (buy 2 get 1 free) - (3)  7.78
vegetable stock cups          (3.99)
spray sesame oil (5.99)
can of hearts of palm 5.39
natural peanut butter 3.39
almond butter 10.99
white vinegar (2.99)
mayonnaise (3.99)
whole wheat couscous 10.79
cranberry juice 3.00
bag of pre-cut salmon steaks 11.98
tofu           1.99
Colby jack cheese sticks   3.34
block of feta cheese   7.99
------------------------------------------------
"Other" total 104.42

Note: I consider quite a few items in this second list exotic: SPRAY sesame oil, hearts of palm, almond butter ($11!!!), salmon, even. And the streusel snacks, a total impulse buy. And a few of the items I could have purchased in cheaper sizes (a block of cheese, instead of the convenient, pre-packaged cheese sticks. a carton of veggie stock instead of smaller servings.) Still, my total for everything listed was $183.01. How long could/would a 2 lb bag of rice and a 3 lb bag of apples last you? If that's ALL I had to eat, how long could I make 8.98 last?

Issues, Issues

I have food issues.

Don't we all?

The other day I was reviewing my info packet for my upcoming adventure in health and fitness. I was also doing some research on my daily meal "replacement" shake - reading the ingredients list, etc.

A neighbor came by and asked about all the stuff I had spread about. "What's that?" she asked.

I proceeded to explain to her my plan of attack. I mentioned that losing some weight factored into that plan (albeit a secondary benefit of overall fitness and attention to health).

"Is that a concern for you?" she asked.

Truthfully, weight has never been a primary concern for me. My weight has fluctuated depending on life circumstance (I was, at one point in my adult life, a size 5 at 5'8"; metabolism like a maniac and college food will do that for you.). When I've been overweight, I notice because my clothing fits tightly, which is annoying because 1. I want to be comfortable and 2. I loathe clothes shopping.

We OWN a scale, although it's rarely pulled out. What would I do with the information anyway? "Huh. I weigh more than I did before!" "Hey, look! The numbers went down! Neat!" Purely academic.

What matters to me, though, is my level of physical activity (little to none), flexibility and mobility (again, not so much), and overall health (eating HABITS come in to play here). These are the things that SHOULD matter to EVERYONE. The time to "get in shape" is, and always has been, NOW.

Which leads me to MY issue: I don't enjoy eating.

No, really.

If left to my own devices, I FORGET to eat.

"Gee, I'd LOOOOOOVE to have THAT problem," I've heard MANY times.

Uh, nope, no, uh-uh, no way -- you would not. As my family can attest ... a person who has gone the day without eating is NOT a happy camper. Lack of nutrients turns me into a Grade-A b@#*h (ok, turns might not be the correct term --  who am I kidding? it's like alcohol ... you start out a jerk you become a loud, belligerent jerk.). It is not a weight loss plan, it's a prescription for stupid. Starving yourself (whether intentionally or not) wrecks your metabolism, messes with your blood sugar, and just all-out hoses you up. Then when you stop long enough to realize, "hey, wait, I didn't EAT anything," what are the chances you're going to make healthy, rational decisions about what to consume? spend a few extra minutes in the kitchen preparing some veggies or complex carbs? nope, you grab a bag of chips (or in my case, Wheat Thins and Marzetti's Southwestern Ranch Dip) and do the cookie-monster gobble. And then eat double at dinner before settling in to an evening of in-activity and acid re-flux.

At least, that's my tendency.

So no, the "meal replacement" shake I'm having every day, without fail, for lunch, is NOT a weight-loss solution. It's called ACTUALLY HAVING LUNCH (by drinking it! bonus! I don't have to EAT!) and reminding myself daily that I CAN and WILL make wise choices when it comes to what I put into my body.

And now cheer me on as I endeavor to make the more difficult commitment to a daily fitness routine.

No, I'm not "trying to lose weight."

Just actively .... not being stupid :) Only that doesn't make a very good slogan, does it?

Jump

Five Minute Friday: JUMP

(to play along, or read other entries, follow the link above)

GO:

Look before you leap? I've considered myself one of those folks ... who weigh the situation. Put a toe in. Carefully consider. And those are good things. Wouldn't want to go off (is the expression half-cocked? origin?). Perhaps I have some pride in this aspect of my personality.

However for the past month or so, while struggling with depression, I've chosen to JUMP into a few things, all at once, no reservations or negative self-talk, no "what ifs." Just JUMP.

1. I've chosen to jump into a Beach Body exercise and fitness plan. The pack of stuffs should arrive early next week. I've also chosen public accountability for this journey.

2. I've committed to learning to ride my bike this year; again, a public declaration. I've had folks offer to help me learn! and for that I'm grateful, although I doubt they know what they're getting into :) I'm a tough case when it comes to wheels... it's a LONG WAY DOWN when you're old!!

3. I've jumped with both feet into Early to Rise ... which is a book, a mindset, a new way to be. I've bounced after the initial jump ... sleeping in, getting up early only to fall back asleep on the couch ... but still the rewards have been many-fold and I'm encouraged by the new way of "doing my days."

4. there are a few other "private jumps" I've made or am making ... the only thing I need to say about them is that they are related to changes I know I need to make. Making my stated priorities match up with my actual days.

As I jump into this next season, which includes some physical fitness, I also hope to be able to jump ... as in get my butt into the air, with a lighter step and a bit more ease.

And also, just because it's in my head: JUMP! 21 Jump Street, Jump for My Love, and Jump Around. Some earworms for you today.

STOP.

Sometimes you just gotta talk about it

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings. ~ Miles Franklin

That has always been a favorite quotation of mine. It rings true for so many situations ... when someone is telling you a story (maybe for the 20th time), remember - there's the telling (for the teller) and the hearing (for the hearer). Sometimes those purposes overlap, but ... when I find someone rambling about something which doesn't concern me, or downright bores me, I try to remind myself: they need to TELL someone. It's a NEED.

So the other night I sat with Ian and "rehashed" a bit of the drama which unfolded 2 years ago this week. 

I've shared with people who weren't necessarily connected to us at that time - it's new and fresh to them, so I hit the high points and stress the transformation. I've rehashed the story with people who WERE with us during the tumult*. Many have read the blog, IAN's read the blog, he's been told by me, his mom, my dad, guys at church ... pieces of what happened over those weeks. 

There is usefulness, I suppose, because he doesn't remember anything up until he was transferred to the rehab facility. The hospital part is all so vivid to me, and the rest who were there, but to him ... pretty much a blank. Although he DOES have bits and pieces of "memories" which didn't actually happen (like being CERTAIN Audrey was just down the hall, also with a breathing apparatus, hospitalized.  Or that I was visited by the CACO officer in the hallway to ... do that whole "Mrs. Maize we regret to inform you" thing. Lousy nightmares, those.)

I can't believe he doesn't remember seeing the room sideways, or when it took 4 of us to move his legs to walk into the bathroom, or getting the feeding tube and being so angry they weren't starting actual food into it... all this before he was sedated in the slightest. So I told him all about it. Again.

But not for him.

For me.

It was good to think about it again. Make it real instead of such a shadow. Did all that really happen?? Really? Has it only been two years? Did I really eat and sleep and shower at the hospital for over a week straight without leaving (with folks taking care of the kids and house that entire time)?? Was it THAT serious?

Yes.  Nod your head yes - affirm me.

I'm so happy with how far we've come. What we've OVERcome. How blessed we are, how amazing others have been to us. I don't dwell on the ugly memories.

It's just nice necessary to talk about them sometimes.

*My sincerest apologies if I've been a broken record. I really haven't meant to bore you with rehashing. Somehow when it pops into the mind, it has to come out of the mouth, to give it a name, a face, and let it gently pass by. Thank you kindly for your gracious ears.