You never know what the day will bring

For those of you who are on Facebook with me and haven't kicked me out of your news feed due to my recent obsession with Cityville, you know by now that my grandson got into an accident on his dirt bike.

He's only just turned 6, but to his credit, he has been on a dirt bike for years already. He loved the sound of a motorcycle engine since he was a baby. But he is only six years old and he made a mistake. His great-grandfather owns 53 acres of land on which they dirt bike. Along a short strip of that acreage is Highway 141 headed northwest out of Des Moines. It's a dangerous and mostly rural strip of road. It has been deadly for decades, but they've put up stop lights in the smaller towns that line the highway and that has reduced accidents and deaths. It's a two-lane divided highway with a high speed limit. Which means, of course, that it's like a drag strip.

Long story short, he came to the end of the property and turned left to swing back and go over some hills - sounds like fun, but he swung too wide and ended up in the middle of the highway's slow lane. It chills me just to type it.

I could hardly stop praying long enough last night to go to sleep.

The 70-year-old woman who hit him head-on, God bless her, saw him in time to stand on the brake. Estimates are that she was down to about 20 mph when they collided. She asked the deputy if she did OK, was there something else she should have done, should she have swerved?

It's interesting to me that he said no, she shouldn't have swerved. He said she did everything right. I don't know if that's true or if he was being kind. He said if she had swerved, he might have been struck again by the car behind her.

The bike took the impact. It hit at the forks and pushed the tire into the bike. Unfortunately for him, he's pretty much sitting on the gas tank and he slid off the bike over the gas cap. I leave the rest to you. He is deeply bruised and swollen, but thank God, the doctor says there is no lasting damage. He can't take more than about 3 steps at a time today.

He has spoken to the driver and told her that he is OK. I hope it helped her. I can hardly imagine what she must have felt.

He was wearing full protective gear: denim, knee pads, riding pants, chest protector, elbow pads, gloves, a helmet that fit and a neck roll. His neck isn't even sore, PTL! I got to see him with my own eyes this morning and although I could tell he had his bell rung, he looks great. I took him his tiger and that seemed to make him happy.

In the Department of Grandparental Deception, I told him that during his CAT scan there were many cats, smart cats unlike my cats, that run around the tube and look to see if there's anything wrong on the inside of him. Then I explained that a PET scan uses pets of any kind as long as they're really smart...hamsters, dogs, cats, snakes, rats...you know, smart pets. They all work at the nation's hospitals.

That's why most all of our pets, while immensely lovable, are not always the smartest pets on the block.

Pearl Harbor Day and Eeyore's saga

I woke up and walked into the kitchen this morning. I saw the victim of a crime:

Eeyore is one of the plush Christmas ornaments for the bottom of the tree. Since cats live here, there aren't any hazardous ornaments down there. Fourteen years ago, I started this tradition because that August I had found a darling little abandoned kitten in the shrubs outside my apartment. I consider her to be the likely culprit. Here's her mug shot from this morning. Pardon her fuzzy edges; she just woke up:

Lily's first Christmas was the year she adopted Eeyore. She pulled him off the tree one day when she was marginally larger than himself. I put him back on the tree. She pulled him off. I put him on. She pulled him off and I finally got the message when I found Eeyore's nose in her water bowl in the kitchen. She had adopted a baby! For years she loved this little fellow like her kitten. She would carry him around by his scruff and lick him at bathtime. If I put Eeyore on the edge of the couch, she would watch him like a hawk and make little concerned meows until he was back on the floor.

Here is Eeyore all these years later. He's been loved on by a couple cats now and his nose has been mended where the stuffing started coming out from many baths and all the water he's had.

Here is the original replacement Eeyore, still safely on the tree. I'm not sure why the embellished, gift-bearing Eeyore was chosen this year, but mostly the mystery is why Eeyore? There's Tigger and Kanga and Pooh on the tree, but they get left alone. This is the first year I can remember the other Eeyore being pulled to safety off the dangerous dangly branches of the tree.

Also, today is Pearl Harbor Day. Not a day that will live in infamy since some schools never mention it. Enter Facebook where a number of us have posted a little memorial for the event. I hope it does some good for the next generation. It's a reminder that no matter how large a country's landmass, the battle can come to us.

I think that's an important reminder for the world we live in today.

Christmas Wrapping

I enjoy the song Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses. But that's just a little factoid here, not the real reason you're here. You're here to find out what I've taken ALL DAY to accomplish. I got up, ate breakfast and then trucked myself over yonder to Target to get a few things I needed. I made a list and I made it quick. Then I came home and prepared to wrap gifts.

It started with a plan. I made a fire in the fireplace. Later on I went out to the backyard to fetch some more firewood because this project took far longer than I anticipated. I wanted to listen to a radio program from 1937 called The Cinnamon Bear. Here's what Wikipedia says: The story focused on Judy and Jimmy Barton who go to the enchanted world of Maybeland to recover their missing Silver Star that belongs on their Christmas tree. Helping on the search is the Cinnamon Bear, a stuffed bear with shoe-button eyes and a green scarf. They meet other memorable characters during their quest, including the Crazy Quilt Dragon (who repeatedly tries to take the star for himself) , the Wintergreen Witch, Fe Fo the Giant and Santa Claus.

Paddy is a bear with an Irish accent and way of speaking. He says "Bless my stuffings" a lot and he takes the kids to find the lost silver star that should go on the top of their Christmas tree. They meet pirates who feed them candy, including superior fudge. The meet cowboys with a dry cleaning machine and are almost executed by the Inkaboos, which are blotting papers who are angry with the trio for standing on a boundary line in their shoes.

I was surrounded by assistants the entire day. If you look carefully at the inch of ribbon above my thumb, you will see the cat spit. Oh yes, the fine feline festivities. Everyone was enraptured with the ribbons.

It's a gift for a friend. Look and see the tooth marks in the ribbon. Yes, you know you've gotten a gift from the kitties! I took this photo right away. It has been molested even more and looks it. But it won the battle.

All the gifts will win the battle because now that they're wrapped, they're locked in the guest bedroom. And of course now that I have them wrapped, I know what I'm missing. I don't have any time left to shop, Amazon is not whipping three gifts to me with any sort of speed and I have two gifts not only not bought, but they are both for teenagers. I haven't the slightest idea what to get. But that's it. I'm done for today and I can't believe it took all day long to wrap so few presents, but I took my time and ran to Walgreens for more paper. I sat by the fire and listened to an old radio show that used to be a habit of mine for years when I lived in Chicago and a radio station played the show in installments for the Saturdays before Christmas. It was a nice day.

I hope you had a good Saturday.

My Maggie got a bite on the butt

This is Maggie about a week ago: much better days for little Maggie. She is a small cat, but she is a full-grown pygmy adult cat. She can be a snuggly sweetheart and an evil terrorist. Something bad happened to her yesterday. We put two and two together pretty quickly around here. We're into cats around here.

Last night Maggie didn't eat and she seemed like she was in a bad mood. OK, that's not entirely out of the ordinary. But this morning, she was nowhere to be seen and wouldn't come when called. When I found her, it was evident she wasn't well. We've been down this road before and quickly diagnosed the problem. Read on, dear reader:


This photo is my girl's booty. Very sad. She got a bite from another cat. It had to have happened when we were at work. She was bitten last November, too. I hope this isn't a trend in the making. It's an expensive trend. And I can't look at her without cringing and wincing and feeling my tummy flop.

She has a long drainage tube sutured into her haunch. OUCH AND OUCH. That will help it drain and to keep her from chewing on it and pulling it out, she's in a cone. Poor, poor Maggie. She just can't make it work. She walks straight into a wall and just stands there.

It's funny, but it's sad. See those big eyes?