TSUNAMI = UJIKINTOKI... NOT!

I have never been so happy to watch four straight hours of CNN Headline News with absolutely no dramatic ending.

Before I lived in Hawaii, I don't think I had any idea of what a tsunami was - perhaps some kind of sushi or Japanese dessert.

But when you live on a relatively small hunk of rock in the middle of the big wide Pacific ocean, you soon become painfully aware of what a tsunami is and what it can do.

Today, I am very very sad about all the people in Chile who have suffered in this earthquake, but I am very very happy that all the predictions for the tidal wave hitting Hawaii were wrong.

My daughter and her family were all able to evacuate to high ground, but I'm a mom - I'm grateful this is one tsunami that didn't even appear.

FELINE-LESS

I didn't realize how much of an impact a cat can have on your normal day-to-day activities.

You don't have to clean the litter box when you don't have a cat.

I can leave the bedroom door open at night (not that closing it had any real effect; Pandora would just throw himself against it repeatedly until he got it open).

When the dogs go outside, it is not necessary to immediately shut the front door (although with freezing winds blasting down from the mountainside, it is generally a good idea with the high price of propane and a heating bill to be paid).

And the lower part of the door to the laundry room does not need to remain a decorative little curtain to allow Pandora access to and from, and can go back to being that ugly metal air ventish section... or not.

When I am blogging, facebooking or wasting hours trying to beat Harmony and Heather at Bejeweled, there now is not a warm body strewn across my lap and 24+ lbs. of fur to help ward off all the drafts in my bedroom.

Yeah - I miss him just a little bit.

EVEN WITH THE BEST OF INTENTIONS

This morning I created a nice, neat little list of things I was going to accomplish today. Very check-off-as-completed, in-chronological order and with a picturesque border. Punctual. Precise. Very pretty.

And then, as with almost every single nice, neat little list of things in my life, one little tiny monkey-wrench was thrown in, and the entire endeavor imploded.

I need to keep reminding myself that life is about handling those monkey-wrenchs, not keeping to the list.

REFLECTIONS

This afternoon while wrestling with two dogs, a leash, my half-tied hiking boots and the front door, I had a bit of a epiphany (doesn't everyone in situations such as this? The yoga pose underneath the lotus tree is highly over-rated).

Well, a reflection, I guess, is a more accurate description.

I saw quite literally my front room backwards - looking into the mirrored frame under which hangs my jacket, several scarfs, and quite a few dust bunnies.

And it immediately clarified the order (or in my case, lack of) which demanded attention in order to reach that feng-shu peace and harmony I try (vainly) to reach in my home.

I thought about it for a while (once the dogs, leashes and boots were sorted out), and realized I needed to look at my life through that mirror sometimes. Not in an Alice-In-Wonderland sort of way (I stopped drugs a long, long time ago), but to refresh both the incredible blessings in my life and to highlight additional baggage that I unthinkingly still drag behind me every day.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some trash to move.

WANTED NEEDED PLEADED

NEEDED: HOME FOR SPOILED, OVER-INDULGED SMALL COUGAR, SINCE OWNER IS LOSING FIGHT AGAINST ALLERIES. REFERENCES, BACKGROUND CHECK AND DRUG TESTING ALL MANDATORY IN ADDITION TO PHYSICAL CHECK-UP.

So why do allergies crop up at simply weird times?

I understand why I am allergic to penicillin - I got it way too many times when I was a baby. Same with my second daughter; she had to go through the British military health system, and I think that is the only antibiotic they had access to in the 80's (better than leeches at least, right?).

And I do wonder if I have that horrible reaction to sulfa because God was trying to get my attention at the time (He did, by the way, get my attention).

But why oh why do I sneeze constantly when I'm around alfalfa hay?! I have horses (finally) that I completely ADORE - so my nose explodes when I feed them... twice a day... every day.

Why can't I be allergic to brussel sprouts - or nylon pantyhose - or the state of Arkansas?

Over the past six years, I have developed an allergy to my cat. My wonderful, affectionate, long-haired, constantly shedding and demostrative dog-humilating cougar/feline #1 animal (NOTE: Najale, Sally, Murray and Delilah, Pandora promised to kill me is I didn't list him first - honestly, I do love you guys)..

And since I figure since he's probably got another ten years of dog-abuse ahead of him - let's see if someone else wants a small puma to love for that long.

INSOMNIA OR INSANITY?

I've always been a night sort of person.

Anything after 8 p.m. is simply more fun - everything after midnight is hysterically funny - and watching that first faint blush of dawn on the horizon is always so beautiful.

But I do like sleeping - just sometimes I like doing it at 4 p.m.

All my life I have been exceedingly scornful of insomniacs, always confident that since I could always go to sleep almost immediately and stay asleep for... well, weeks, actually, but that is another story... since I could do it, everyone else must simply be wound tight or not relaxed enough or not eating properly.

Until my uterus and I parted company, with instant and complete menopause hitting me, and obviously some hormones dissappearing.

Suddenly I couldn't sleep more than a couple of hours at a time without medication. And began that damning routine of sleeping pills, the morning cloud of Ambien-still-in-the-bloodstream (much like being drunk, just not as much fun).


And Ambien CR is classified as a NARCOTIC - which means a physician has to approve every single prescription you get for it.

I mean, do people sell it on the street or something? "Hey, kid, here, wanna take something that will knock you out completely?!" Is there an unseen profit?

And right now I ran completely out on Saturday - my pharmacy didn't request a refill until today - and my doctor doesn't get back in the office until tomorrow.


Anyone wanna chat around 3 a.m.? Look and see if I'm on-line, okay?

FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER

I do not consider myself a "fearful" person. I've jumped out of an airplane  - I live in a drug & people smuggling corridor - I worked in Baltimore for two years - I've been through a 6.8 earthquake - I had three teenagers at home at one time - I routinely encounter rattlesnakes and tarantulas - and I have a 16.1 hand horse who continually tries to crawl in my lap like a little puppy.

But last night I jumped and screamed like a little girl.


I turned down my bed comforter, and found a big spider just SITTING there.

Now I can courageously face the fact that there are multiple spiders, mice, flies, and 26 year- old young men who call my home their home. I may not like sharing, but I can put up with it. I can even accept that while I am asleep, I probably do regularly have spiders sharing my personal space.

But I just can't get my head around FINDING them while the lights are still on.

Somebody wanna come over tonight and spend the night?

ANOTHER SERVING OF MUD, PLEASE?

This shows the first day of our little community's noble effort to collectively create a better road.

Add two days of fairly steady rain following this start, and you get this.

Tonight was the first time in many years that I fishtailed and almost got stuck trying to get out to the main highway.

One of the reasons I live in Arizona has been to AVOID cold, rainy weather that makes me ache all over - sunshine, where have you gone?!

XEROX COMMAND

I had quite forgotten how much I enjoy copy machines.

Our church has two copiers I can use for free, but I no longer have the code for either one, so I have to go through the librarians... which creates two major problems:

1) You can only request 15+ copies only on certain weekday evenings.

2) You have to give your orignals to the librarian to make the copies.

I do not normally think of myself as a control person, but man, when it comes to making copies, I AM.

I want to fill the copy paper - I have to check the toner amount - I will print ten 'trials' just to make certain it is set just so - and I MUST punch in the 1 to 2 sided or 2 to 1 sided or staple commands, or I will go MAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!

Whew.

So today I went to Staples, paid for the copier's use, and spent probably twenty minutes happily mixing colors of pastel paper, copying four originals to two double-sided, and just feeling pleased as punch how nicely they came out.

Are there any support groups out there for this sort of thing?

NOT QUITE THE RIGHT TIME

Somehow I am extra tired tonight, and I in a fit of community-mindedness volunteered to direct traffic at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, so I really should simply go to bed but I need to share this first:

My second-child/youngest daughter/second-oldest daughter/next-to-last born/middle child (isn't it fun how many it can be put?) has suddenly been called to work for extremely long shifts (for her, that means more than an hour and a half). She is extra weary (wow, that sounds familiar, doesn't it), and this evening was very very thankful to get home to her little apartment and just stare at the television while she put waited for her uniform to wash in the complex's laundry room.

But she called me around 9:00 p.m. this evening, almost completely hysterical.

Thankfully, I have known this young woman all of her life, and am familiar with her common and recurring habit of blowing situations out of proportion.

So I got her to take some deep breaths, calm down some, and tell me what the problem was.

And this was it:

Someone had removed her laundry from the washer (obviously because it was not removed quickly enough for them), left it on the counter, and (this is the kicker) STOLEN HER SOCKS.

It took another four minutes or so to discover that no, those weren't her only socks, that no, nothing else was missing, and she was able to dry her uniform and have everything ready for work tomorrow.

And it didn't help that when she blurted out "STOLE MY SOCKS," I collapsed into helpless laughter.

I need to learn to control my emotions better - because this kid is never going to be able to.