Squirrel Euthanasia

This story has so much potential for full development and pondering, but here are the nitty gritty details.

Casey Jones managed to catch a squirrel today, which is something our beloved Estherjen (RIP) never managed, but much attempted to do.

I was alerted to this accomplishment by the Boy, who was somewhere between mortified and delighted to report that the yellow retrieverhound was playing chew-toy with said rodent. Apparently there was thrashing about of the then-LIVE squeaky toy. And there was, apparently, squeaking.

Now it's one thing to find a mouse the cat killed, and likely toyed with for a while before it died, but this was timed right in the throes of the action sequence.

Anyway, I rushed to the aid of the rodent, sending the most-proud canine strutting joyfully into the house. As I arrived on the scene, I saw the 3D, HD version of one of those cartoons where a critter splats up against a hard surface. (Picture Skrat in Ice Age as he hits a glacier.) Arms splayed, one of them inverted in a completely unnatural direction. Back half moist with Caseyslobber, stiff. Frantic breathing, but total stillness otherwise. Beady eye glistening and wide open. Oh. My.

Honestly, my first thought was to call a wildlife rehabilitator. I am not even kidding. But then I came to my senses and realized that this poor guy was beyond rehab, or at least a prudent use of fiscal resources required to rehabilitate a dime-a-dozen creature stupid or slow or sick enough to be caught by my not-so-bright-herself mutt.

I knew it needed mercy. Husband wasn't due home for hours. I just wanted to hold it, which, boys and girls, despite everything I know about rabies and diseases and such, I did. Kori brought me an old rag; I wrapped it up and it allowed me to hold its busted little body gently, without protest. I thought about all of the life-on-the-prairie sorts of books I've read (what would Caddie Woodlawn have done?), and figured its little head needed a swift blow to ensure immediate ending to this suffering. (I did run through my mental rolodex of NRA members I knew...)

But, friends, I couldn't muster the guts. Maybe I could have, but my dear friend's beloved was willing to assist, so I didn't have to be this poor little fella's grim reaper. I almost thought I could have suffocated it, held its little nose and mouth shut, but it might have started to struggle (not okay!), and in light of recent SC news, well, you understand...

So, my neighbor is my hero today. My kids got another life lesson. And, here's the bonus, I learned a little about myself. I am only merciful-ish, and I am pretty sure I don't want to be a farmer.

RIP, little guy. And for cryin' out loud, little guy's friends, get the hint: Rat-dog lives in my yard! Go somewhere else!

Summer Plans

This cracks me up.

The Hayspartyof4 should be receiving our passports any day now. We needed to get them because the Senior Hayses are taking us on a cruise to the Bahamas (yeah, we're grateful, but...). Now, we 4 had already planned to go to Sandusky, OH to go to Cedar Point and ride a bunch of roller coasters and such, but since we will have passports, we have added Canada's Wonderland in Toronto to our itinerary. Fun.

Well, it seems that Rush is on tour this summer, too, and we thought it would be entirely too cool if they were playing in Toronto at all in July, and, of course, as fate would have it, they are. So, we are now planning our Cedar Fair Parks tour around the tickets we have now purchased for the July 17 Rush show in the YYZ. Too much. (No, we will not be attending the RUSHCON in town that week...)

Anyway, just wanted to mention that, as it makes me smile to imagine the memories we will be making with our little family this summer, both on a boat with their grandparents and in the Honda with just the four of us. I can't wait.

Anyone know of any crazy roadside attractions on our route from SC to Toronto to Ohio and back?

I love:

I have so little to say here, it seems. But in the spirit of trying to post occasionally, I'll just post this because I can.

I love:

I'm baaaaaack!

Really, people, I know I haven't written in a long time, but no fewer than three of you have given me grief within the past two weeks about my leave of absence from the blogosphere. So, with nothing more to say, I sit here before the keyboard with a dozen or so writing assignments remaining to do for my grad course before Thursday, and for you, dear ones, I will find some little tidbit to keep me legit enough for you to pop by for the occasional reading visit. Okay?

Better still, I'll throw some possible topics out there and let you readers choose which you'd like me to pursue first. Oh, but wait, that requires that you actually comment, which might put a little pressure on those of you who prefer to be voyeurs. Regardless, you can have fun with the stories you imagine based on my list. How's that?

1. Estate Closing and other fun facts of life and death
2. Kori's Elf and the whole Christmas Thang
3. Gettin my baby fix
4. The pros and cons of having faily living nearby
5. The pros and cons of having family live far away
6. Belief systems, religion, and my acknowledgment of my struggles and delights within them
7. Cleaning house, literally and figuratively
8. On writing, and not-so-much
9. Procrastination tips for the organizationally constricted
10. It just seems like there ought to be ten

How's that for an invitation to return? Let me know which number(s) you'd like for me to explore so you can get deeper in my warped head.

Mercy

I just awoke from a decent night's sleep, considering that today is the first day of school and I have the first day jitters, which I am sooooooo glad to still get after all these many years! Anyway, what awoke me was my dream...

I have always had the most obnoxiously vivid and real dreams: recurring ones, nightmares, freaky morphing from one thing to the next kinds of dreams that I am sure the psychologists would enjoy hyperanalyzing. This is not always a good thing. I honestly can't tell sometimes if something that happened in my dreams happened or not, as they start to grow their own little synapses and mess with my memory... This is not a good sign of things to come, I imagine! And it might be because I watch entirely too much TV, but frequently, one night's dream picks right up where I had left off in the morning, like the next episode in the series. Annoying, almost.

Anyway, after a series of unfortunate events in my dream last night, I awoke this morning because of the way my dream ended...

Imiagine me standing in the middle of the road surrounded by people going about their daily lives. I am standing with my arms in the air and my face to the sky, just like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption, who had just crawled through the river of poo to escape prison and was feeling the rains pour down over him. And I am singing - well, more like bellowing - a song that I think I must have picked up from my momma's gospel eight-tracks back in the day...

God have mercy, mercy on me.
God have mercy, mercy on me.
God have mercy, mercy on me.
The Lord have mercy on me.

Now when I say bellowing, I mean that exhausted crying kind of singing you might hear someone doing and wonder if they are actually an injured cat. This was all accompanied, of course, by me doing some ugly crying (see previous post) so the words had to have been almost unintelligible to my ephemeral companions. If you run into me, ask me to demonstrate. I promise, it wasn't pretty.

So, you know me, I am trying to make sense of this, as it was enough to send me to the computer on this, the first day of school, rather than sneaking in another half hour of rest or a cup of decent joe.

I need me some mercy and I need to give it out, too.

There's some old school prayer that repeats the line "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Mercy is more than forgiveness, it's more than graciousness. There's a sense of compassion, of justice, of wholeness-of-the-Body involved. Now, I am not all into "sin" as a concept that I find troubling. (Another post altogether, I suppose) but I do know that most of us do wrong to each other without truly meaning to cause harm. Okay, I know I do... I won't speak for the rest of you. But I think I need to remember this MERCY thing more often, particularly as the new school year begins.

God have mercy on me as I do my best, which is often not good enough, with my children, my student-children, their parents, my colleagues, my siblings, my proverbial neighbors.

God have mercy on me as I hurt the people I love, the people I don't-really-LIKE, and the people I don't even know.

God have mercy on me as I grow out of my less-wonderful self into the self I hope to be.

God have mercy on me as I learn to show mercy on all the aforementioned parties.

Ahh. Now I feel better equipped to start the year!

Cancer conundrum

I do not want skin cancer. I'm not sure I can think of anyone who actually would want ANY cancer, for that matter, but I am particularly not interested in having skin cancer. It's sneaky. It leaves scars when they cut it out. Favorite TV personalities get killed off their shows with metastatic versions of it. Ick.

But I don't want to be soooooo pasty white that I LOOK like I have cancer. Honestly, I feel like I look ill if the middle of summer arrives and my skin is so pale and semi-transparent that you can see the roots of my leg hairs on my most clean-shaven days.

I figure I have melanin for a reason; why not put it to good use? Yeah, yeah, the doctors all say that no tan is a healthy tan, but I think they're just jealous because they are locked up in the hospital all day and can't sit on the boats we help them buy.

I also do NOT want a sunburn. So I slap on the SPF 70 and hope enough of it wears off to let just a teensy few of the sun's harmful rays stimulate my freckle-production that is the closest I'll ever come to being tan. Sunburn hurts. Tan does not.

This seems awfully petty, now that I read over it. Maybe more than a little vain. I should protect my skin. But hey, I should also lay off the Firefly, ice cream, cheese, and other yummies while taking up a regular and reasonably intense exercise routine.

So, I'm going to keep working on trying to find the balance which gives me an identifiable shade of brown without turning me into a lobster or setting me up for chemo later on. Wish me luck.

Ugly Crying

I've always been a weepy sensitive chick, which I am sure some of you will find not at all surprising and others will find beyond shocking, but I am easily moved by both the awesome beauty and heartwrenching ugliness of this world of ours. I can remember being a young teenager and crying as one of the little girls in our church played her violin. No trip to volunteer at the Special Olympics was complete without a good boohoo. Little House on the Prairie episodes, Kodak commercials, whatever. I'm a weeper. Heck, one of the ever-so-many reasons I avoid church of late is that I can't make it through a service without a good weep caused by my haint of a momma. (Yes, "haint." That old woman haunts me.)

So imagine the Hays Party of 4 watching "Marley and Me" this weekend. I have avoided this movie with all of my being because I had heard about its tearjerking ending and just didn't feel like playing. I for SURE wasn't about to go see it at the movie theater where I might not be able to make it out of the theater unassisted.

Now y'all know I love my Casey. And I still ache, years after their deaths, for my firstborn, Esther, and my bulldog, Abby. So I knew pretty quickly into the film that this was going to get ugly. I was doing fine, enjoying the humor and all that stuff, until a scene early in the film where Jennifer Anniston was comforted by her pooch. All too real. I was transported to a rotten spring day in 1996 when my dear muttbaby was exactly who I needed to overcome a little woe-is-me grief. I started crying and laughed at my fool self and said to my Jimmy, "Oh, this is going to get ugly."

All through the movie, Austin, who had already seen it, kept checking on me to see whether I was moved by the same parts that bothered him. At some point, Kori and Austin were both snuggled face first into Caseydog on the couch. I found myself reaching for her every now and then. WE all progressed from touched to weeping to sobbing uncontrollably. By the end, Kori, also a weeper, was an ugly mess, just like her momma. We're talking snot-bubble producing, upper-body trembling, can't even talk, laughing oddly at yourself kind of ugly cry.

And boy, did it feel good. I don't think I've had that kind of totally cathartic, completely cleansing, make your gut hurt kind of cry in a long while. Not even with the events of the past few years. I needed it, I think. Puts everything in perspective. Reminds you how good life is. Makes you see the people you love and remember to hold them gently and enjoy them fully.

Great movie. Cry and all. If you've never known the genuine love of a good dog, you won't get it, I don't think. But if you have, you'll give thanks for their companionship, their unfailing love, their model for humanity. Go rent it. Grab a hankie. Watch it with someone you love, the furrier the better.