Dark knight

Reason # 26 for owning a clowder of cats: *

They alert you when there is a bat clinging to the inside of the screen door.

Last night the cats were obviously excited about something, and they've never ever lied. I turned on the porch light because I assumed it was, as usual, something in the back yard.
The bat was backlit as it clung to the screen door. Bat wings are a thin skin, so the wings glowed blood red.
I pride myself on not being overly "girly" about such things but I will admit my heart rate rose. Aside from being startled, I feared batley might bite one of the cats.. Rabies, all that. Where is Ozzy when you need him?

So I woke up my husband.

He got out of bed, slowly.
He got dressed, slowly.
He chose a towel from the linen closet, walked over to the door, gingerly put the towel over the bat and took it outside. He turned to me with a huge grin on his face, let the bat go, then mumbled something about getting some sleep now, and went to bed.

Batman. Our hero.



*Yes, "clowder" is one of many collective nouns for cats, although someone should tell my spellcheck what I'm talking about.

Memento mori

How many funerals have you been to?
I've been to a LOT. Mostly because I worked for a funeral home for a year.

I miss a lot of things about it. For one thing it was peaceful. Generally, low stress. (After all, the worst was over for a lot of those folks.) Secondly, I could be unabashedly kind to people which I took a great pleasure in. Thirdly, the people who do that sort of work are good people. My co-workers were decent to their clients and to one another. Nice.

It's true, I saw some strange things and visited some places I'd never though I'd go. But I never saw anything I would consider gross or anything that gave me nightmares. Working there gave me a deeper understanding of the process of grief.

If you were wondering, I was the one in the black suit standing at the door or the back of the chapel. I would set up the chairs, cue the music, set out photos or flower arrangements. I'd help folks find the coat room or get them a cup of coffee. Minor things that they would thank me up and down for at the end of the day. Simple kindness.

I won't ever forget the biker funeral where the family requested to pour beer in the casket, how they slipped me a mini schnapps bottle and invited me out to the bar as they left. Or the inner city funeral where the son dropped to the ground wailing. (An outpouring of emotion seemed more natural to me than the people who held everything in.) Military honors like a color guard, bagpipes or a rifle salute always impacted me no matter how many times I saw them. I was privy to customs and religions, and afforded an intimate glimpse into people's lives, and their deaths.

I will never forget the funeral of an infant, the heartbreaking photos of the young couple holding their stillborn child. Their blank and empty stares. Many, many times I hid my own tears and many times I drove home thanking my lucky stars relieved that the people I love are still alive.

Confronting mortality on a daily basis is draining and I'm sure that's why there's a lot of burnout in the funerary profession. A general sense of humor is essential to break ongoing tension and to maintain a healthy perspective. I felt sorrow get under my skin a few times but managed it well enough for the time I was there.

I heard "Amazing grace" at least once a week and Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful world" too many times to count. I drove the hearse once. It was November and the roads were slippery. Going across town I was crazy nervous until I reminded myself that my passenger was already deceased, what was the worst that could happen?

One of our tasks during the funeral was moving the casket from the visitation room to the chapel as visitors seated themselves for the service. This is done behind curtains, and the casket is wheeled through a narrow hallway from one room to the other. One funeral director affectionally called it " the magic trick" and I came up with a magic word: "Abracadaver"!

I left the job because a local museum offered me a position in my field that was higher paying and gave me more hours. It was a difficult decision because I found working for a funeral home rewarding. I felt honored to be part of those people's passings and in bestowing simple kindness and respect to their families and friends I felt as if I was doing my part to honor them.

It's good to keep mortality in mind. It keeps us from taking things and people for granted and reminds us to live in the moment. Blessings all.

Earthly delights

I'm not a very good gardener, but I've never let that stop me. I should read up on soil types, ph levels, and how and when to fertilize. It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I'm a hopeless romantic.

I LOVE my garden. It's not very big, or a tidy, groomed garden. In fact I like it looking wild and a little messy. It feels more natural to me that way. I try not to interfere with nature if I don't have to. I do however, move things around if they look unhappy. Things die from time to time but other plants are so tenacious they inspire me with their sheer will to survive.

I dig out the worst of the weeds. Weeds don't bug me like they probably should. I remember asking the botanist at the museum his definition of a weed. He explained it commonly referred to hardy plants that take up residence and encroach where we don't want them to. He said "weed" was a relative term, that possibly anything you didn't want in your garden might be considered a weed.

Some "weeds" I have great fondness for. I bet I'm the only girl on the block with a tattoo of a bittersweet nightshade. A weed, that if you look close is delicately beautiful with it's purple flowers, yellow center and tiny brilliant green dots. It has berries that turn from green to yellow to orange then red, sometimes it has all of it's berry colors at once! Very pretty, but you have to look close and pay attention.
(Speaking of which, I'm referring to bittersweet nightshade not DEADLY nightshade. If you look online you can find too many tattoos labeled deadly nightshade when the reference used for the tattoo was the bittersweet variety. Oops! Therefore, I can further qualify my statement that I'm probably the only girl on the block with a bittersweet nightshade tattoo who intended on it!)

In Spring I venture out and poke around at the still cold ground and try to remember where things will eventually come up. I'm still out there nosing around in October when my fall flowers bloom and the cold nights turn the lilly foliage brilliant yellow. I love every moment, I watch and wonder at it all. See, hopeless romantic.

My garden will never win awards, or impress any serious garden club. That being said, maybe I'd have less inclination to paint plants if I were a better gardener! Sometimes knowing too much about how something works can take the magic away. I'm hopelessly in love with my wild, room-for-weeds garden, just as it is.

Moon Surprise

I was putting on my shoes when I heard my husband call through the screen door, "Nora, I need you in the back yard RIGHT NOW". It was June in Wisconsin and we live near enough to the Milwaukee river that June can be an exciting month. There have been numerous bird sightings, odd insects, deer, opossum, raccoon, owls, rabbits galore, red squirrel, grey squirrel, coyotes, and on one rare occasion a mink. We ran out to find, sitting in our yard with it's head barely above the blades of grass, a tiny white kitten.

I'll take the opportunity to tell the reader that we had 3 cats already. Yes, intentionally. We don't have children and aren't planning to, we have cats.

I've never seen anything like her, she was as small as my hand. Very calm. Calmer than I was that's for sure. Our friend from Scotland was visiting and said he thought by the timbre of my voice that something was terribly wrong but I was just weeping out of sheer astonishment and joy.

We searched the yard for Mamma cat or litter mates. No one was around. Later we fed her with an eyedropper, she was THAT small. Small but healthy the Vet said, and about four weeks old.

Funny thing is that there was never a discussion about "What to do". It was the Universe bestowing upon us our official 'crazy cat people' status. We always knew it, now it showed.

I was hoping kitten would bond with me, but when she met Cedric it was all about him, I never stood a chance. Cedric is our gregarious, charming, very-dog-like cat. He took over and would cry outside her door while she would be crying for him on the other side. They had that whole Romeo / Juliet thing going on.

There was a full moon last year, on the day she showed up. Between her pale blue eyes and mottled coat, she makes a good "Moon".."Moon Surprise" that is.

Happy Birthday Moon Pie.

Lucky me.

Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Really. When I was 7 or 8 years old my Mom and I went with a bus full of people from Milwaukee to the Field Museum in Chicago to see the "Treasures of Tutankhamen" exhibit. I remember her preparing me, telling me how old the objects were, their story, and how they were precious beyond compare. Real, live, treasure. I remember the lines of people queuing up the enormous stairs outside the museum and how when we entered the exhibit how she lifted me so I could see inside the cases. In one was a chair for a child, made for someone just around my age, the boy king himself.

We had dinner with Mom's friends who had traveled with us that day. The man leaned over and asked, " Would you like to be an Archeologist? You could work at the Museum." I had no idea what an archeologist was but the idea of working in a museum was so exciting, so beyond anything I'd imagined myself doing. That night I hung the poster we'd bought of Tutankhamen's golden death mask on my bedroom wall.

I got older but always maintained an interest in ancient Egypt. I wore a cartouche with my name in hieroglyphics on it until it's silver began to wear away, I attended lectures whenever I could including one on my 18th birthday titled: "What's new in ancient Egypt? " I read books and was riveted by any PBS special on the subject. I was an Egypt geek.
Eventually, I went to art school (Archeology wasn't in the cards for me). Got a job at a natural history museum and was lucky enough to be part of the exhibits department there for fifteen years. In 2001 I visited Egypt, for the trip of a lifetime. In 2005 there were layoffs, I lost my job and then there was, depression.
One day I got a call asking if I'd be willing to travel as an artist with an exhibition. I was given all the pertinent information, what was expected, per diems, lodging, pay, etc. I agreed. The very last thing I asked before hanging up the phone was, "What's the exhibit?" "King Tut". I tried not to squeal. I think I may have said, "Cool". I can't remember the exact words, but I remember the exact feeling-- Lucky.
I've been on the Tut crew for about five years now. Sometimes as I look in the cases at the treasure inside I can still conjure that childhood feeling of being lifted by loving arms, my eyes wide and my feet dangling.