New Life

If you chance upon this blogsite and actually read a few entries, you'll conclude that I am a lover of cats and dogs. Give yourself a jenius award on that one. My cat in particular has gotten a lot of ink these days, what with these last 2 months being her last 2 months. Maxine's sickness was of course her own personal hell of an experience, but her canine counterpart and I both suffered along with her- both seeing her pain, and then of course grieving her loss. I think it hit that dog even more than it did me- and I was hurtin' for certain. Still miss her. Like many who blog, the writing is often a form of therapy(gee, by that reckoning, I should probably be writing self-help books!)

Well this I guess would be that proverbial Next Chapter of things. I have two kittens these days, since last evening. One of them is nestled on my shoulders, probably wishing I'd quit moving around so much. The other one is playing around the legs of a small table to our left. And Lester is crashed out on the floor right next to the table. It's amazing how leery these cats were of him just 24 hours ago. One of them would hiss at him the minute he came near. She's now completely cool around him.

What a difference a day makes! 180 degrees as far as my now three animals. So yeah, as of Monday evening about 6, I've got these kittens, maybe 8 weeks old. Two girls, one yellow and white with a hint of future tiger stripes, the other orange and white with some yellow and brown mixed in. The yellow/white one is named Cindy, and the orange etc one is named Jill.

So my life is once again transformed. Cindy and Jill. No particular rhyme or reason with the names, the animals just seemed to have Cindyish and Jill-like qualities to them- based of course solely on my own subjective accounts of the various Cindies and Jills I've known. My family has just about always given its pets regular 'Christian' names: Bob, Helen, Roberta, Maxine, Sherman, Lester and now Cindy and Jill. I started to mention Pete and Cal, but they were short for Petronius and Calpurnia so they wouldn't support my statement about 'regular Christian names'.

Well that's my New Chapter. Jill is fast asleep on my lap and Cindy is on the table in front of me considering various courses of action.

Groanerz

These will induce groans, but maybe a smile or even an outright laugh. It'd be nice, but you can't take it too damned seriously. The fate of one's blogs is up to whoever reads this stuff. As far as you the blogger are concerned, once it's outa your mouth, it's outa your hands. So, in somewhat the style of Playboy magazine's Unabashed Dictionary. Here, then, is Rog's Thesaurus:

Rog's Thesaurus defines pickle profits as dill dough.

Rog's Thesaurus defines a hand job as yankety sex.

Rog's Thesaurus defines an arts critic as an armchair aesthete.

Rog's Thesaurus defines shifty corporate accounting as ledgerdemain.

Rog's Thesaurus defines an eye doctor from one of Alaska's islands as an optical Aleutian.

Rog's Thesaurus defines a humorous anthropomorphic cartoon sandwich as wry bread.


Well that's all I've got. Lucky you, right?

Getting back to nermal

This dead-pet shit really sucks! Tomorrow will make a week since I bid adieu to my cat, and like her health progress, it's gotten a little better and then worse again.



It's tough to lose a pet you've had for awhile like this. A part of life for us humans who love animals, and there are a hell of a lot of us, so in my current adversity at least I have a pretty good support group. Among co-workers I can count 7 who've gone through the same experience, and at least 4 of those while I was working with them. Not to mention friends outside of work.



I think it's hardest if you live alone. Your animal housemates become family then in more than just an honorary sense. They're your constant companions. They're the first things you see in the morning(well, for one thing, they're hungry!)and the last thing you see before going to bed at night.



My cat was usually nestled against me at both ends of the day, a warm mass of purring fur either lulling me to sleep or easing me awake. There were some occasions, particularly getting home from work, where I wouldn't see her for a couple hours--then she'd just appear, oh, 'time for food!'--but she was almost always at her station at bedtime and first thing in the morning. When she first got sick and had to be hospitalized, it was my first taste of not having that(unfortunately they don't give you a "surrogate"while yours is being worked on). Getting her home two days later, I was greatly relieved to feel the familiar paws walking over me at 5:30 in the morning, and her weakened but purring little form pressed against my stomach.



This was something I enjoyed the hell of while she was alive and miss the hell out of now that she's gone. Maxine sure liked to be petted. Ours was perhaps a parasitic relationship with me as "petter" and she as "pettee", but it still worked for both of us. Sometimes she would just throw herself on the floor, coquettishly, as if to say, "okay, do me, baby!" And then she'd get pissed if you stopped before she was done, and would go so far as to give you a little bite or slap to express her displeasure.



She and my dog pretty much grew up together, and had a very sibling-like relationship, with its share of teasing and power-plays. There was a layer of quasi-antagonism(on one occasion, she was sitting on the bed getting petted and revelling in all the attention, and hearing the sounds of canine toenails heading up the wooden steps from downstairs, got a priceless disgusted look on her face as if to say, "oh great! Here comes asshole!")mainly on her part, but underneath it, I think, a genuine friendship. I'd find them sitting together more and more as the years went by, and it seemed that they had their own sort of communication going on, their own relationship as well as theirs, individually and collectively, to me.

This is the first day I've felt her presence, and I felt it all around me at different points in the day. Hard to put into words, and in trying to verbalize it am half-wondering if that's just something my mind just manufactured to console me. But I've had the experience with people, friends who've passed on whom I've felt "stopped in" on me on a few occasions--felt like they were there in the room with me.

For some reason, I kept thinking tonight of that scene at the end of Tootsie, where Dustin Hoffman's character is making that last-ditch speech to win back the Jessica Lange character. She says, "I miss Dorothy", and he says "You don't have to. She's right here- and she misses you".

In my case of course, I hope she is. And I hope she does.

Life Without Maxine

Maxine is gone. My beloved feline companion of 12 years has moved on to that great litterbox in the sky(or at least gotten the hell out of her body). The last 2 months of her life were spent battling kidney failure and what was believed to have been a malignant growth in one of her lungs. In the microcosmic scheme of a cat's life, a long fight. Life rarely draws a perfect straight line between its point A's and point B's, and Maxine's situation definitely had some zig-zagging in there. Despair followed by hope and then more despair. If it were a piece of music, it would've been an ABA form of some kind. Too bad we had to return to that original theme..

In Poker, if you have a lousy hand and it doesn't look like you could improve it, you fold. You get on outa there. Not so easy in life. In life you hang in there, and usually a good deal longer than you should, just waiting for that one card that'll turn your pile o' nothing into a Straight or a Flush. With Maxine, we reached that point and I waited a solid week for that card that I really knew wasn't going to turn up. It just stayed a pile o' nothing. Actually that's how she laid about, mainly on the floor.

So last Wednesday, I had her euthenized. Everyone there at the Animal Hospital I talked to said it was the right thing to do- and they'd seen a lot of us in the past two months! The Vet who performed the procedure was the same one who'd seen her when Maxine first fell ill, and was wonderful to work with just as she was in the first stages of all this. That was the B section in this sad-ass piece of music, the point where there was hope. Well, some hope for awhile.

There was a woman there at the Animal Hospital that afternoon who was having her animal put down as well. Don't know anything about her, whether it was a cat or dog, but could plainly see she was having just as hard a time of it as I was. She was crying her eyes out, and they were offering her tissue paper and consoling her. They offered the tissue paper to me as well, but I was strangely grief-free. Dry-eyed for the moment, and taking care of the business at hand. But I knew it'd hit me at some point in the evening.

Somehow I thought the drive home would be the worst. That's when it would all sink in, the finality of everything, the fact that she's gone and won't be coming back. It was dawning on me, what had just happened, but more as an intellectual realization, with none of the emotional heaviness I'd expected. So with my emotions apparently intact, I stopped off at Walgreen's on the way home, picking up a few items for myself and for my dog- the one quadrapedal survivor- and even a card for the nice folks at the Animal Hospital. If I felt anything, it was relief.

Actually the worst part of it all was walking back into the house. The place is strangely quiet with one less presence in it, and you feel a sharp pain from the void this creates. She's not here anymore. Not even the cadaverous carcass of the ailing animal you half-wished were out of its misery, just thin air. So the torrent of emotion I'd been expecting came upon me while I was putting away the groceries. Life- my life-was moving on without her.

You can get pretty attached to your "critters", and they to you, over the years. They become part of the family, and if you live alone as I do, they become the family itself--or at least your little domestic unit. I mean, you don't anthropomorphize them(or shouldn't at any rate- not too healthy!)- they're still a cat and dog or whatever, but you do imbue them with familial human qualities, like those of a son or daughter. My male dog I frequently call "pal" or "buddy" much as I would a kid, and my late female cat was very much "Daddy's little princess".

Well it's been one evening and three days now. I devoted that whole first evening to just "drinkin' beer and feelin' sad", and unfortunately ran out of beer with plenty of sad left over. So of course it still hurts- at this point more of a dull ache, but still there. A pet of 12 years is a big loss, and I don't expect it to quit hurting for awhile. Life without Maxine sucks. But I guess that's just the price-tag for my life with Maxine, and given all the nice times I've had with her, I suppose it all evens out.

Still sucks though.

Sick Kitty Blues- maybe the last verse

One step forward, two steps back. Maxine, my cat, is going through changes similar to people suffering from serious illnesses, in that she made some progress and then backslid into many of the conditions she started with. If not worse.

At this point, she's pretty debilitated. Just wants to find a spot to land and stay there, keep as quiet as possible. So I'm trying to oblige her, and without too much hovering. Hard to do of course because you care so much and want to do what you can to make her better. Or at least comfortable.

It all started last month- or at least became noticeable then. Being a longhaired cat, there had always been the Furball Issue. So coughing was pretty much de rigeur. But this was a nasty sucker, almost a paroxysm of pain twisting her little body as it happened. Prompted a trip to the Animal Emergency Clinic, and then to the Vet, where she stayed for two days. Getting her home, I had several medications to give her three times a day--lotsa fun, since cats are so cooperative when it comes to medicating them--plus injecting her with fluids once a week. Fun fun.

But we seemed to make some headway. Markedly thinner than she was, and not as agile, but still hanging in there. On maybe 75% power, as it were. Still some appetite, though not the frisky animal who would bound down the stairs and through the house to the kitchen to be fed. Or the one who could leap tall furniture at a single bound.

Still, some quality of life. Happy to be here, glad to be part of the team. Well, unit is probably more accurate but she and Lester- the dog- and I definitely comprise a family unit of sorts. They pretty much grew up together, acquired maybe six months apart some 12 years ago. So the minute I bring her in the door from her 2 days at the Animal Hospital, Lester is sniffing all over her, glad as hell to see his lil' sis. Nonplussed from 2 days away from home, she wasn't real receptive at first- more like "get out of my face, asshole!" but warmed up to him later, I'm sure. Like I said, they grew up together.

My dog and cat have a very sibling-like relationship--well, since that's what they are, essentially, in the whole group dynamic of human-and-two-quadrapeds. They mess with each other, like brother and sister would, with teasing and power-plays. But I catch them sitting together a fair amount. They like one other, despite what they might have me believe. And as such, Lester is worried about his feline sister. I can tell by the look in his eyes, and by his pacing. Like many canines, he paces when he's upset.

I'm worried too. We've gone back two steps from the modest progress made at first. She's not eating, not much of anything this whole week-so no nutrition, save the meds I'm somehow getting into her. And her breathing is a lot more shallow. Plus, that shake-your-ass-off cough is coming back. So as I said, she basically just finds a comfortable spot and lands there, trying not to exert herself too much.

Well, tomorrow it's back to the Vet for me and Maxine. They're supposed to do a procedure that'll take some of the pressure off one of her lungs. Plus they'll get some fluids into her, something we were doing anyway once a week. Maybe this will all work, maybe it won't. But it's certainly worth a try.

It's been a bitch of a time these past almost two months. The further she descends the heavier my heart gets, until I think both of them are going to just plop on the floor like a couple of lugubrious horseturds. This past week especially has been a trip on the down escalator.

Well, we'll see what gives tomorrow. You can only do what you can do. After that, it's out of your hands. Whatever comes of it, we've had a nice time together, Maxine and I. 12 years. That's a while. That's a spell.

Wish us luck.

Keep your Sunny Side Up

Looking at the previous blog here, I'm thinking, 'what's the point of all this negativity on my part'? I mean really. There's enough of that shit going on everywhere as it is: people being all negative and judgmental and like that. I started to cite an example and then realized I was just adding part and parcel to it.

So to hell with my least favorite things. I mean, they're already there implicitly, by my non-patronage of those folks and products, so why belabor the point? Plus it would probably blow my day being cited as someone's least favorite anything(even though everyone is someone's least favorite something!), so I couldn't wish that on anyone else.

All That said, let us proceed to some things in this world I like:

Favorite Actor: Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman

Favorite Actress: Meryl Streep

Favorite Director: Stanley Kubrick

Favorite 70's Underground Cartoonist: R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson

Favorite 70's Porn Starlet: Roberta Pedon, Christy Canyon

Favorite Seafood: salmon

Favorite beer: Corona

Favorite Psychologist: Albert Ellis

Favorite breed of dog: Labrador Retriever

Favorite 80's band: Huey Lewis and the News

Favorite vintage TV show: The Twilight Zone

Favorite spectator sport: Boxing, college basketball, girls' gymnastics

Favorite junk food: Cheetos


Well those are some of the things that make me tick. Actually, the beer and/or Cheetos may make me do something else! But seriously- actually that was serious, I'm sorry to say- some of the things I enjoy in this world are listed above. Maybe they're also some of yours. Or maybe your favorites are all the "opposite" of mine. Who knows? Who cares? It's all good..

These are a few of my Least Fav'rite Things

I'm not saying they suck. This is not an attempt to slam anything or anybody, but just a sort of reverse approach to my tastes. (In some cases, I've put my favorites in there in parentheses). Again, just personal taste, all relative. For that matter, they may all be your all-time favorites(and with your least favorite things parenthetically noted..) If so, more power to 'em- and you. But if you're reading this, chances are your tastes are in at least the same ballpark as mine. So here we go:

Least favorite actor: Richard Gere

Least favorite actress: Ally Sheedy

Least favorite comedic actor: David Spade

Least favorite comedienne: Rosie O'Donnell

Least favorite HBO Series: Curb Your Enthusiasm (The Sopranos)

Least favorite comedian: Robert Klein (George Carlin, Jonathan Winters)

Least favorite city: Detroit (New York)

Least favorite beer: Miller High-life (Corona)

Least favorite soft drink: Fresca

Least favorite cartoon: Alvin and the Chipmunks

Least favorite newspaper comic strip: The Family Circus (Peanuts)

Least favorite Green Acres character: Lisa Douglas (Mr Kimball)

Least favorite singer/songwriter: Gordon Lightfoot

Least favorite coal: Anthracite (Bituminous)


Well there you have it. Some of the things in this world that aren't really part of mine if I can help it(even though they have every right to be here that I do, of course..).. Makes me wonder if I'd make anybody's least favorite list. I'd almost bet on it- although it would feel weird to win a bet like that.

Who Cares If You Read This?

Well where to start? How about in the middle? I have an Uncle, age 92, who also likes to blog. His are sent--that is, snail-mailed-- to various family members- this nephew included- on a more-or-less weekly basis and are basic accounts of what he's up to. Always an entertaining read. Reflections of what Charles Emerson Winchester once attributed to Col Potter as "gentle good humor". On occasion, he will comment on the state of the world, or a particular politician, but always gracefully. An ideological tap dance rather than any 'heavy-hoofed' pronouncements.

There was a blog of mine awhile back which was about the family(called My (Ig)noble Genes, should you care to read it) which my cousin- his daughter- forwarded to him. He wrote about it in his weekly missive, which kinda tickled me. Said that he enjoyed it but wouldn't feel comfortable being that introspective in a place where the whole world can see it.

Well the whole world can see it! Potentially. But in reality, this comic strip doesn't get a whole lot of traffic. As a matter of fact, I'd say hardly any. So with that in mind, it's easier to bare one's soul, what with virtually nobody watching. I have a friend who writes blogs that are sometimes searingly introspective, one of which(about our hometown)was so much so--at least to me--that I had to write a blog of my own about it. I sent it to her and she wrote back saying, in effect, "man, I sometimes forget other people read my stuff".

As a musician, sometimes I've played my best when there was hardly anybody there--or even nobody there. Yes, I'm sorry to say, I've played to nobody! But at the same time I'm glad to say, since I played better..

And so it is with blogging. Huh, I just thought of the title of this blog, right here and now. Sort of a take-off on an essay written many years ago by composer Milton Babbitt, called "Who Cares if You Listen?"

I don't care how damned esoteric you consider yourself to be. You still turn out your stuff with the idea of some kind of audience for it. But in some cases--mine, at any rate--you're more effective if you behave as if there was nobody in the room but you. The audience is still there, but instead of being within the four walls, they're between your ears.

No, today is the first day of the rest of my vacation

Getting into one's vacation is(at least at its optimal best) a bit like falling into a restful sleep in that your level of relaxation deepens as you go. Each day you shake off a bit more of the work/life monkey, lessen your karmic load by a few pounds. Or at least a few ounces..

And as I relax more, there are activities I'm increasingly able to enjoy. Things I have trouble getting into when things are more tense, things I've gotta be relaxed to be able to do.

Yeah, definitely that. Well, that's a given. And music is another one . If I get a nice mellow day in there, over a weekend or vacation either one, I'm usually ready to make some noise.



Strangely enough, if I get two consecutive days of total relaxation, I start cleaning. But only after two or more days of complete calm.



In the course of this vacation, I have experienced not two but three days running which were free of any kind of significant stress. Thus I have found myself with the full-fledged Will to Clean.

Thusfar in my week-off-from-work, I have created some music which may or may not be ultimately worthwhile in terms of its appeal. I don't know yet. But I do know that on my vacation- which isn't even half over yet- that I have cleaned. Oh yes I have cleaned. A mighty amount of stuff was removed and carted off to be recycled today. All I can say is there are a couple upstairs closets once teeming with junk who are probably pret-ty sorry they messed with Roger U Roundly...

So yeah, a productive day as far as all that. It does raise a question though. Since I have to be more relaxed to want to clean, does it follow then that cleaning is the higher art? After all, since the desire to clean requires more(get ready to groan)--purification on my part. Or is it that cleaning itself is such an execrable(or at least boring)task that one has to seek an altered state- be it drunk or stoned or just "relaxed" to get through it?

No, I think I clean at this point because I'm finally relaxed enough to see what's in front of me. And it's a fuckin' mess! Well it was....

today is the first day of the rest of my vacation

As is the case roughly every 12 weeks, I'm currently on vacation. Counting the 2 weekends that straddle my actual 'vacation time', 9 consecutive days of - well, not having to go to work anyway.

This is day number 2. Like its forerunner, it's turning out to be a fairly slothful, laze-about-in-front-of-the-TV kinda day. Among the items viewed were Spongebob, You Only Live Twice, and a variety of old sitcoms: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Bewitched and M*A*S*H.

On the Mary Tyler Moore Show, they listed Mary Richards' age as 38. Since she was also listed as being born in 1939, that would put the show in 1977. Wow. 32 years ago. Likewise the other shows--Rhoda in particular was very 70's as to their mode of attire..

So I suppose I escape into TVLand during at least the first part of these vacations. What the hell. It's not illegal or fattening, although its moral content is, I suppose, suspect.

I can feel my stress level dropping, incrementally(and, for what it's worth, excrementally)as I go here on my vacation time. A little bit at a time, I'm shedding those tensions, peeling them off my psyche, layer by layer.. And, little by little, feeling more relaxed, more peaceful.


This is why companies don' t like their employees to take more than two or three weeks off at a stretch. You've peeled off enough layers of tension that you just plain don't want to go back. Put another way, after too much time away from the office, you lose the callous on your psyche and could thus get one hell of a blister!



Well in a week's time, I'm still cleaning some junk out of my house. Even after 2 days, feeling a bit more "aired-out". Happily, this vacation coincided with our Neighborhood Clean-up Day, and I was able to divest myself of much unworkable(and downright obsolete)stuff such as an old word processor and typewriter and other such no-longer-functional domestic items.

Cleaning house literally as well as metaphorically. Feels pretty good. Just as with the mental house-cleaning, I won't get it all in a week's time. There'll still be things to tidy up, but at least I'll have made some headway in that area. I'll have gotten a room or two much less cluttered than when I found it.

Well for what it's worth, that's the state-of-the-Rog report, on this, the first day of the rest of my vacation. Still a good many 'first days' yet to enjoy.