The Beautiful Mimosa

I need a few more shade trees spaced strategically around my house and ground. Driving home from work this morning, I spied a shapely, wide-spread specimen up ahead and eased back on the accelerator to get a better look at it. It turned out to be a mimosa, and I laughed out loud.

"Oh! The beautiful mimosas!" my mother-in-law used to exclaim, and it made her son, my husband, crazy. Off he would go into his tirade:

"They have thorns. They have big, sticky flowers that drip all over everything, and it's hard to get off - absolutely RUINS the paint job on your car!! And to top it off, they have a million seed pods, which all take root, and you end up with those damn trees coming up EVERYWHERE in your yard. And you CAN'T GET RID OF THEM!!!"

His mom's been gone for 20 years, but still, just mention "mimosa" and he gets this look on his face - kind of a mixture of disbelief, horror, and outrage. Deja vous - all of the above - makes you want to look over your shoulder at the pick-up to see if maybe they accidentally loaded one or two when you stopped at the garden store this morning.

He's not completely unreasonable. Once he winds down, wipes his brow, and takes a couple of deep, cleansing, calming breaths, he is able to concede that the trees with their feathery branches and pink blooms are pretty, despite being the horrid, nasty things that they are.

I can't wait for him to come home so I can tell him about the beautiful mimosa I saw today.

Do Not Read

No reading? Then what am I going to do?

I am into week 4 of the Artist's Way course by Julia Cameron, a course to help me in unblocking and discovering my natural creativity.

This week I am not to read. What? Not read? Admittedly, I do spend a large amount of time reading, mostly mysteries and detective novels, knocking them out at a rate of five or six a week. If I didn't have obligations of four hours of work and the time preparing and eating a civilized dinner with my husband each day, I'd probably spend even more time with my nose in a book. Besides the occasional really great book, I get hooked on series of novels in which each mystery stands alone, but the secondary story of the life of the main sleuth is ongoing, with new permanent characters being introduced in each succeeding book. I'm especially susceptible to alphabetical series.

According to the creator of this course, reading is one of the ways we blocked creatives try to avoid our own thoughts and feelings and the expression of them. If we are not reading, we will have to find something else to do, and she lists a number of things people might do when they are not reading. On the list are even some of the things I've been meaning to do whenever I get around to it: make curtains, rearrange the kitchen, repot some plants, sort closets, have friends to dinner, paint the bedroom...

I recall a time several years ago when I seemed to have a kind of "reader's block". That is, for some reason, I just couldn't get interested in a book, even a new novel by a favorite author. It was a troubled time in my marriage, and possibly I had thoughts and feelings that were too overpowering to be avoided. It was during this time that I first started blogging. I didn't write about my marital problems, at least not directly, but the stories I told, the memories I shared, and the issues I addressed all helped me to sort things out in my mind.

So I can understand how the reading deprivation may tend to jump start something else, and I'm even a little excited about it. Luckily I only checked out two books at the library the other day, and have just finished the first, so I'm not caught in the middle of one. I can experiment with this for a week.

The Task I've chosen to do, in case anyone is interested in doing it also, is Time Travel. I'm to describe myself at eighty years old, and what I've been doing since fifty that I have enjoyed. Then I'm to write a letter from myself at eighty to myself at my current age with advice and encouragement to follow my dreams.

A Task that intrigues me, but which I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle, is to examine one situation in my life that I feel I should change, but continue to ignore. And answer the question: What is the payoff for you in staying stuck?

Spider Bites

This is our sweet Harley.



That's his good side. Harley had a horrid experience this week. Over the weekend while our tiny grandson Mark was visiting for the first time, the dogs, inexperienced with small children, were separated into different yards for his protection. Sunday afternoon Harley began to show some bleeding and drainage from a small abscess on his right cheek. Jack recalled a recent incident when Leana reached out from the coffee table and hooked him good with her claw - dastardly cat! We were not terribly concerned.

On Monday the cheek was more swollen, with a wide open sore, and his sweet face and front legs were soaked with drainage. He was feverish, lying directly in the cool AC for a few minutes, then searching for a warm spot away from it, and drinking gallons of water. He paced fitfully at night as well, and I was up letting him out and in more than half a dozen times. When he sat, he franticly licked his right leg. He sat pushing against me at 4:00 am. Instead of getting up to let him out again, I began rubbing his rump and talking softly to him. He relaxed a bit, and I was able to reach halfway up his back with my other hand, petting and talking. He lay down with his full length pressed against my full length, and in a few minutes I heard snores. Finally, he got two hours of good, restful sleep.

Tuesday morning, although Harley seemed to feel a bit better after his good rest, the swelling and drainage were even worse. We began to suspect a spider bite - he could have been bitten by a brown recluse under the old mobile home while seeking cool shade. We called Dr. Penny, and she said, yep, that's what it sounds like.

Dr. Penny came in her mobile veterinarian van a little after noon, and she and Jack worked on Harley in the shade on the front porch. As much as he liked the nice lady, she had to sedate him in order to shave the affect parts and examine him. Sure enough, he had multiple spider bites on his cheek and leg. He must have laid down in a nest of 'em! But dogs have much stronger immune systems than humans, and they heal quicker. She shot him full of pain killer that she said would linger on in his system for as long as a month, and a mega-dose of a penicillin type antibiotic. Also vitamin B-12 and vitamin K. And gave him a little bag of pills to take over the next two weeks. She also recommended we get a large tube of Preparation H, which would help with the swelling and also help to draw the poison out.

She recommended that "nurse" Chelsea, our smaller white and black dog, who wants to lick and clean anyone who is wounded, be kept away from him, as the drainage from these wounds was very poisonous. She would have to concentrate her loving efforts on the ears and eyes of Frankie, the large pitbull mix who sleeps with Jack in the other room.

Each day Harley has looked better. And today, Friday, I'm letting everyone know that he is AMAZINGLY better. Yesterday I still had to coax him to eat, but today he ate his usual amount easily, although he does enjoy being coaxed. Who doesn't like a little extra attention, lol? The cheek is a bit crusty, but no oozing, and the leg bites never festered, so Chelsea can sleep with us again.

I've been wondering what Harley might weigh, as he hasn't been in to the vet's office in over a year, and an adult St. Bernard has a weight range of 130-200+ lbs. Dr. Penny isn't able to weigh such a big animal in her mobile office, but she estimates him to be in the 200+ area. She wrote "205" on his paperwork. Later that evening, she called to give us the results of his bloodwork - everything looked good, including his liver, kidneys and pancreas, which she said can be greatly affected by venom, as those organs filter out poisons from the body. I wonder if he fared so well partly because he is so huge.

Good lord! I just realized I have nearly 400 lbs of dogs! Harley at 205, and Frankie at 95... I wonder how much Chelsea weighs. I've been imagining about 70.
　
　

My Room

A task assigned to me in The Artist's Way, a workshop for unblocking your natural creativity, by Julia Cameron:
Describe your childhood room. If you wish, you may sketch this room. What was your favorite thing about it? What's your favorite thing about your room right now? Nothing? Well, get something you like in there--maybe something from that old childhood room. My childhood room was very large, probably about 14 feet square with 10 foot walls. It nearly echoed. It was a corner room in an old farmhouse built in the early 1900's, with two windows on the west wall and one facing north. My father had built a storage unit all across the west wall, which included a closet in each corner, a low six-drawer component under each window, and a vanity and mirror with two small side drawers in the center. The wood floor was almost covered with a linoleum with a light brown and blonde background and a geometric pattern that included some red and green. (At first I was trying to remember a similar floor with a floral pattern, but I think that was somewhere else, as each of the nine rooms and three bathrooms of the house had a different one.) The walls and ceiling had been textured but never painted. The head of the big double bed was opposite the mirror and windows, centered on the east wall right next to the door. At bedtime I could just barely leap from the hallway to the bed and hide under the covers, holding my breath for a long count, thus foiling the under-the-bed monsters. Apparently this was only necessary in winter when dark came early, the linoleum was freezing cold, and the blankets were thick and heavy.

My favorite thing about it? I guess simply that it was mine. In late spring and early fall, I liked the north window opening to the cool side of the house, shaded both by the two-story structure and by tall elm trees along the edge of the property. I liked the vanity, with an old embroidered dresser cloth, and interesting little knick-knacky things I had collected, some bought wih my own money from my little red velvet purse, which Granddad refilled with change from his pocket. I have no summertime memories, because we were never there in the summer.

What do I like about my room now? Ah, I like it because it is, or feels, large. After too many years of living in a teeny-tiny house, I crave space, and my new small house was designed with an open plan to satisfy that need above all. My room has two big walls for pictures or mirrors, mostly created from photos of my own. It has the perfect combination of quieting darkness in the sleeping area and energizing light coming from the bright open living area which has windows all around. My favorite thing about my room is the small nook created accidentally between the curtained closet and the laundry room, where my corner desk fits perfectly just under the one window. Right angle to the window, a short wall now holds an interesting poster, but may later display a pretty painting and/or some small shelves for paperbacks and knick-knacks.